The Day of Small Things (7 page)

I called out soft, “Come here, child,” hoping she’d not take flight. “Come see your Granny Beck.”

The sounds in the boxwoods hushed and I called again. “Come here, honey, I got a pretty for you.”

She was like a half-tamed woods creature—poked her head out the bushes a little ways and looked at me with great blue eyes in the midst of a dirty sun-browned face. Her hair was a greasy snarl and the dress she had on weren’t much better than a feed sack with holes in it.
I can do something about that
, I thought.

I dug into the pocket of my skirt for my charm. “Look here, honey, what I got,” I said and she come out of the bushes and up the steps slow, her feet just a-dragging.

But when she got up close, her eyes went to mine before she looked to see what was in my hand and that was when I knew.

“Oh, honey,” I said, feeling like I could bust out crying any minute, “there is so much I have to learn you and maybe not a lot of time left. But I’ll make a beginning right now and tell you of the fairy crosses and how they come to be. Put out your hand.”

When I give her the little rock charm, she studied it close and a smile started across her face, turning her from a wild thing into a pretty child. She touched the cross real gentle, running a finger all along it, tracing it up and down.

Her eyes got real big, then she whispered, “This is from the Little Things, ain’t it?”

Law, they was a catch in my heart at them words. I begun to answer her but the tears come on me all to once—tears of joy that I have found her.

(Least)

N
ow see can you read that next part to me, honey.” Granny picks up her rug machine and begins filling in the background on the bottom part of the big rug we have on the frame. I take up the book and begin.

“He was too … young, this little … elf
. Granny, what’s an elf?”

Granny Beck is helping me learn to read! It is our secret, for Mama don’t hold with me learning. She says it will bring the fits on if I work my head too hard. But I have been reading and reading and reading and still not had ary fit!

We started with the Baby Ray book Fairlight gave me when she left, and I can read it all now, every word—all about Baby Ray’s one little dog and two cunning kitty-cats and three white rabbits and four yellow ducks and five pretty chicks.

Baby Ray’s mother sings a go-to-sleep song to him that I have learned for myself. It is this:

Granny Beck says that this is a pretty good song but when I am a little older she will teach me songs that will help me do things—songs of power she calls them.

“Go on, child,” Granny says, “I ain’t for sure but I think an elf is a right small person.”

I read some more—this is a poem. Which is like a song but you just say it instead of singing. This poem is all about a little boy who wants to know when tomorrow will come. And his mama says,

The book I am reading out of is called
McGuffey’s Fourth Eclectic Reader
and it is much harder than Baby Ray. But I go on reading the poem and now the little boy goes to bed, and when he wakes up, he kisses his mother and asks is it tomorrow. But she says no; now it is today.

Which is aggravating but I have studied on it and there ain’t no way it could be any different. Another thing I have studied on is how all the mothers in these books are so loving to their children, especially at night. I would like it if Mama put me to bed. But she is too wore out, I reckon. And anyway, now I have Granny in my room and that is as nice as can be.

I have never kissed my mother.

“You read that real good,” Granny Beck tells me when I am done. “But I reckon you best get back to the rug lest your mama be ill at us when she comes home. I know Fronie—she’ll have it calculated to the inch how much we should’ve hooked today. Go on now, child; put the book back in the hidey place. And iffen you don’t care, bring me a sup of water when you come back. Then I’ll tell you some more stories while we work.”

I do like she says but instead of water I run quick out to the springhouse and pour off some buttermilk for us. There is cornbread from breakfast and I get that too and fix us each a bowlful. Granny don’t eat much, especially when Mama is watching, and she has gotten thinner since she’s been here.

We have had the whole day to tell stories and practice reading, for Mama has gone with a neighbor all the way into Asheville. She has taken every one of the rugs we have made to sell for top dollar at a place called The Treasure Chest and she won’t be back till after dark.

Me and Granny Beck are sitting on the porch, hooking on a big round rug that is black with red flowers called poppies all over. It is the prettiest thing—I wish we could keep it but Mama says that would be foolish with times as hard as they is—that we will need every cent we have to pay our taxes this year.

Mama is a lot happier about having Granny to live here for now Granny and me are turning out the rugs like one thing. Granny says she likes to do it but I know it hurts her hands and she sometimes has me to bring her a bowl of hot water to soak them in.

I am so glad Granny Beck is living with us. Her and me are Best Friends. Which is good, since Lilah Bel has
got religion so bad, she don’t hardly ever come up to play, and when she does she still won’t play nothing but revival. Iffen I try to talk about the Little Things, she sulls up and says they’s likely demons and I will go to the bad place if I keep on messing with them.

Granny knows about the Little Things. She don’t think they’s demons either. She says their real name is Yunwi Tsunsdi. She told me all about them when she gave me the little cross made from their tears—and she told me about them crying when Jesus died. I thought Lilah Bel would like that story for it had Jesus in it but she put her fingers in her ears and said she would go home if I said any more about the Little Things.

Granny Beck’s papaw was full blood Cherokee and it was her papaw who told Granny Beck about Cherokee Magic, which Granny is teaching me. She says it has to be passed on by kin, knee to knee, and it can’t be learned from a book.

There are lots of good stories and some scary ones—I hate the one about the Raven Mockers that eat the hearts of dead people. Another bad one is Old Spearfinger, a dreadful kind of a witch with one long finger made of bone and she will stab people with that finger and kill them and eat their liver. The worst is that, being magic, she can make herself look like someone you know and then, when you aren’t paying attention, she will stab you with that finger. Sometimes I have bad dreams about Old Spearfinger and think that she is standing in our room at night, just staring at me and Granny Beck and biding her time.

But Granny says I must learn all the stories, every bit, so I will know how to use the Gifts. I had thought maybe the Gifts was things like the fairy cross she give me, but
Granny says no, the Gifts ain’t things you can see. She says I will understand better later on.

I know all about the Yunwi Tsunsdi now—how they live away up on the mountains in caves or under big rocks or in the places some call laurel hells on account of how the laurel grows so close and twisted a man or dog can get hung up in it and never get out. Back when I told Granny that I had seen the Little People dancing and playing their drums, she scowled and looked at me hard.

“Best not go lookin for the Yunwi Tsunsdi, child. People who see them are like to be bumfuzzled all their lives,” said she, and I wondered was it the Little People who made me take spells. I asked her but she wouldn’t talk no more of them just then for, she said, night was coming on fast and it’s reckoned unlucky to talk of these things after dark.

It’s not all that late now but the sun is down behind the trees, so when I take Granny her bowl of buttermilk and bread I don’t ask for no Cherokee Magic stories; instead I ask her to tell me the story about John Goingsnake and the Trail of Tears.

“Law, child, I reckon you could tell it to me by now, you’ve heard it so many times.” She sops a piece of cornbread and bites into it.

“Please, Granny Beck—one more time.”

Granny finishes up her cornbread. She wipes her hands good on her apron. Then she takes up her rug machine and goes to poking the black strips into the burlap backing of the rug.

“I’ll tell it, honey, but we both got to work fast now, while it’s yet light.”

So I take up my rug machine and some of the red strips
and begin to fill in the poppy outlines while Granny Beck tells her story.

“It was almost a hundred years ago, in eighteen and thirty-eight, the army rounded up the Cherokee people who had lived in these mountains long before the white man had come. The soldiers burnt the Cherokees’ houses and fields, cut down their peach trees, and said that all the Injuns would have to go west where a new home was waiting for them. The people tried to fight back but there was too many soldiers with too many guns. So the soldiers herded the Cherokee people up in a bunch to drive them like cattle to a place in Tennessee from where they would commence the long walk.

“Now, one of these Cherokees was John Goingsnake, who had been strong against the removal but when he saw it weren’t no use, he give in, for he had a young wife and a baby girl and he feared what would become of them was he killed in a fight with the soldiers. So John Goingsnake and his wife and baby girl was in with them folks being marched out of Carolina into Tennessee.”

“Tell the names of the wife and the baby,” I say, not wanting her to leave out any part of the story. The steady sounds of our rug machines as we punch the strips into the tight burlap backing could be the sounds of the Cherokees tromping along and that thought makes the hair on my arms stand right up.

Granny Beck keeps working. But she nods and says, “Bless me, how could I leave that out? The wife’s name was Nancy and the babe was called Rebekah.”

“Like you,” I say and she nods again.

“That’s right, honey, like me. Now, the Cherokees tramped along and it was a dreadful weary time. A few of them had horses and wagons but John Goingsnake and
Nancy was afoot, leading a pack mule loaded down with all they owned and the little one riding in a basket at the side. The soldiers was all on horses and they made the whole gang step along right quick. It was terrible hard on the old folks and the little ones. And when some begun to fall sick, it was hardest of all on them. The soldiers piled the sickest ones into a wagon and it never got too full for every night when the wagon was unloaded, there would be two or three to bury. The Cherokees would dig the graves and sing over the dead, telling them they were the happy ones, to be staying forever in these green hills.”

Granny falls quiet and swallows hard like there is a lump in her throat.

“And then …” I say to get her going again.

“And then came a day when Nancy awoke one morning, burning with a cruel fever and so weak she could hardly stand. ‘Don’t let them put me on the wagon,’ she said to her husband, and she staggered to her feet. By holding to the mule’s pack, she could just make out to stumble along. But soon she was plumb give out and John pulled half their goods off the mule—blankets and tools and anything to lighten the load so Nancy could ride. He put the baby on his back and they kept going, Nancy just barely able to hold on.

“Now, they was being marched to Tennessee along an old road called the Catawba Trail and it followed the river here in Marshall County. In time, this same trail come to be the Drovers’ Road and now the railroad track sets atop it.”

I have been through the woods down to the river though don’t nobody know this, and I have sat and watched the train go by on the other side. And now that I know this story, I can see in my head the poor Indians
tromping along so sad and it makes me like to bawl to think of it. It was by the river that they camped that night …