Weeping Willow (16 page)

Authors: Ruth White

BOOK: Weeping Willow

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Cecil coughed.

“Did you know the Democrats are trying to run a Catholic for President?” he said lamely, desperately trying to pursue a conversation.

“Who is he?” I said.

“John Kennedy from Massachusetts.”

“They’ll never elect a Catholic for President,” I said.

“They might.”

“Naw, they won’t.”

The conversation died again. In the next moment, Cecil mumbled something and headed out the door, and I sat there puzzling over what had transpired.

TWENTY-SIX

Mr. Gillespie still talked about the college down in the mountains of North Carolina. He wanted to interest somebody in applying there, but nobody paid him any mind. The town kids were all planning to attend some university or other, and the holler kids who were going anywhere at all were going to Radford Teachers’ College or Bluefield Business College or somewhere like that. The rest of us were through with school.

But on a rainy Tuesday in February he asked me, Rosemary, and Bobby Lynn to stay after school, and he showed us this material he had on Mountain Retreat College.

“They have a superior music curriculum,” Mr. Gillespie said. “And they are especially supportive of the average student who doesn’t have much money.”

I was looking out the window of the band room, watching the rain fall on the graveyard on the hill and remembering that first day I saw Mr. Gillespie. I couldn’t bring up those feelings I had for him. Where did they go?

“My wife received a fine music education at Mountain Retreat,” he said. “She’s now teaching piano and voice lessons, and she loves it.”

“It sounds like a dream come true,” Rosemary said, as she poured over the M-R catalogue.

“I wish you three girls would think seriously about going there,” he said.

“I want to,” Rosemary said. “And Mama and Daddy want me to, too.”

“What about Roy?” I said.

“What about him?” Rosemary said.

“He’ll be hurt,” Bobby Lynn said.

“Hurt because I want to better myself?” she said.

“What about you, Bobby Lynn?” Mr. Gillespie said.

“Mama and Daddy both want me to go to college, but I’ve never been too crazy about the idea.”

“You have too much talent to waste!” Mr. Gillespie said. “You too, Tiny. All of you are gifted in different ways in music.”

“Oh, it’s too late to think about college now,” Bobby Lynn said. “We’ll never be accepted now.”

“Sure you will. A small college like Mountain Retreat will accept students right up to the last minute. They always have vacancies. What about it, Tiny?”

“It’s out of the question,” I said. “I have to go to work the day after graduation.”

They all looked at me. Everybody knew Vern was gone, I reckoned, but nobody ever asked me about him. As our meeting broke up, Rosemary was delirious with joy. She had made an important decision at last. And it looked like her marriage was on hold. She sent for an application to M-R that day.

At home I found a letter from Jesse waiting for me, but there wasn’t much in it to excite me. He talked about his training and about Texas. It was signed “Sincerely, Jesse.” But I answered it right then anyway. I tried to be warm and friendly and funny, and I signed it “Affectionately, Tiny.” Then I began the endless wait for his next letter, which never came.

Rosemary received her application in a few days, filled it out, and sent it in. At lunch time, Bobby Lynn and I went through her M-R catalogue together. As I looked at the pictures I felt this vague kind of longing, something akin to homesickness, stirring in me. There it was—this perfect little school nestled snugly into a pocket of the mountains of North Carolina. All the buildings were made of rock, and they seemed to blend into the mountains like they grew there naturally. There were bright, pretty young people singing on an outdoor stage. There was a soccer field, a mountain trail leading straight up to the sky, a lake and waterfall that looked like they should be on a picture postcard, a covered bridge, a wishing well, a prayer room in the woods, and a big stone gate that said WELCOME TO MOUNTAIN RETREAT. Oh, how I envied Rosemary suddenly! I wanted to go there!

“I think I’ll send in an application,” Bobby Lynn said casually. “You know, just for the heck of it.”

So she had the fever, too.

I plunged into depression. Never before had I been jealous of my two best friends. I was always happy for whatever good things came to them. But here they were ready to set out on the most glorious adventure of them all, into an enchanted world, and I was to be left behind. I took the catalogue home and tortured myself with it all evening. I tossed and turned for hours that night before I finally slept. Then I had a nightmare.

I woke up gasping, unable to recall what I was dreaming about. I wondered if I cried out in my sleep. The house was quiet and cold. The stoker must be out of coal.

There were tears on my cheeks, and I turned my face into the pillow. Would the nightmares go on forever? Would I ever get over it? Beside me, Phyllis sighed softly and turned over. I wondered if she had nightmares, too.

I reached out and found my heavy robe on a chair beside the bed. The M-R catalogue fell to the floor. I scooped it up, got out of bed, put on my robe and slippers, and went down to the kitchen, where I opened the oven door and turned it on to heat up the room. It was 2 a.m. I began to leaf through the catalogue again. Private voice lessons, it said, mixed chorus, orchestra …

Mama came into the kitchen.

“You okay, honey?” she said.

I looked up, surprised.

“Sure, why do you ask?”

“I heard you cry out, then I heard you get up. Nightmare?”

“Yeah, a little one.”

She put her arm around me and I was touched.

“I think Beau and Luther forgot to fill up the stoker,” I said. “The furnace is out.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think we’ll start it up again tonight. Want some cocoa?”

“Sure.”

I watched her mix cocoa, sugar, and milk in a saucepan.

“What’re you reading?” she said.

“Oh, just a catalogue from Mountain Retreat College.”

“Is that the college where Rosemary is going?”

“Yeah, and Bobby Lynn, I think.”

She looked at me.

“You want to go, too, don’t you?” she said.

“I know it’s out of the question,” I said.

“Let me see that book,” she said, and I handed it to her.

She read snatches of it, looked at the pictures, and made cocoa all at the same time. Finally she poured the cocoa into two cups and sat down with me at the table.

“This looks like a wonderful place,” she said.

“It’s almost nine hundred dollars a year,” I said.

“That’s not much when you consider room and board,” she said.

“But I am going to work so I can help out here,” I said.

“There must be a way,” Mama said.

I felt a thrill of hope when she said that.

“You deserve to go if you want to,” Mama said.

“Are you saying … ?”

“I’m saying we’ll think of a way … somehow … something … I know you want to go.”

“Oh, Mama.” I about cried.

She patted my hand.

“Look at this little bridge … ain’t it pretty?” she said.

“Look at the prayer room!” I said excitedly. “On page 31. It’s even prettier!”

So together we went through the catalogue. She was almost as excited as I was at the possibility of my going to M-R.

“Somehow, Tiny,” she said before we went back to bed, “we
will
manage. I promise. You will go!”

“Oh, Mama! Thank you!”

And I hugged her tight. Then I went back to bed and slept soundly.

The next day I couldn’t wait to tell Rosemary and Bobby Lynn I was going to M-R with them. We hugged each other and squealed, and ran to tell Mr. Gillespie, who was pretty proud of himself. Then I sent for an application.

That night Mama took an old cigar box and wrote COLLEGE FUND on the top of it. Inside she dropped a ten-dollar bill and several ones from her purse. I added some ones from my own purse. Then we wrote ideas for raising money on little slips of paper and dropped them into the box. On one of them Mama wrote STRAWBERRY MONEY.

“But you have to have a car, Mama!” I said to her.

“No, I don’t. I can go on riding with Dixie.”

“But there’s other places you have to go besides work.”

“I’ll manage. I’ll get by.”

Then my heart was heavy. I couldn’t, in good conscience, take the strawberry money from Mama—maybe next year, but not this year. She really needed a car, and she would need it more with the Henry J gone. On another slip of paper I wrote SELL RUBY MOUNTAIN TO THE COAL COMPANY.

“No!” Mama said emphatically. “It would be like selling our souls.”

The next day, Mr. Gillespie told me about the National Defense Education Act of 1958.

“You can borrow the money from the government —some of it anyway—and pay it back at a low rate of interest.”

He helped me send for an application for that loan, and that night we put GOVERNMENT LOAN on a slip of paper and into the box.

“They also have work scholarships,” Mr. Gillespie told me later. “That means you earn part of your keep by helping out there at the college. My wife worked there in the dining room.”

That went into the box, too. My spirits rose higher and higher. The application arrived. I filled it out and sent it in, and waited. Rosemary, Bobby Lynn, and I dreamed a lot and talked incessantly about college.

“I think I’ll ask Aunt Evie to come in and stay with us when you are gone,” Mama said one night.

“That’s a great idea!” I said. “She can cook and take care of the house and at the same time get out of that shack!”

“Yeah,” Mama said. “We can be a lot of help to each other.”

So it seemed to be working out for everybody.

“I’m going to miss you, Tiny,” Phyllis said to me as she snuggled up to me on the couch, and put her cold, dirty feet on me just like always.

“I won’t be gone forever,” I said, placing an arm around her. “Promise me you will take good care of Nessie.”

“Oh, I will!” she said. “Will you write letters to us?”

“You bet!”

We were all three accepted at M-R, but my spirits took another plunge. Even if I managed to scrape together nine hundred dollars, it seemed that was only the beginning. There were clothes and books, lab fees and recreation fees, travel expenses, car upkeep, extra fees for private lessons, spending money, and on and on.

“And what about next year?” I said to Mama. “And the year after that?”

“We’ll worry about one year at a time!” Mama said. “Now, you stop that fretting!”

Then one day in March I got the surprise of my life. Mr. Norse, our principal, announced that the valedictorian for the class of 1960 was Cecil Hess! We were at an assembly and Cecil was sitting right beside me, and I about fainted. He turned and looked at me and smiled before he stood up to the applause.

Cecil! Valedictorian! Now, wasn’t that just like him? I never knew his grades were that good. Never even suspected. Nobody did.

“So what are your plans?” I asked him that evening as we took a walk up the road. “Going to college?”

“Sure. I was accepted at the University of Virginia long ago. A full scholarship comes with the valedictorian honor.”

“Cecil! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

But I knew. I never asked him. I was never interested enough in Cecil to ask him much of anything, and he was never one to talk about himself. Look how I had taken him for granted! Sweet, dependable, agreeable Cecil, always there like a rock, a silent rock.

“What else don’t I know about you, Cecil?” I said.

“There is one thing,” he said and smiled mysteriously. “Maybe I’ll tell you before we go away to college.”

“What! Tell me now!”

He laughed.

“Okay, I’m really a prince in disguise. My father was the King of Somewhere-or-Other, and he wanted me to have a normal childhood, so …”

“So he sent you to live up a holler with a coal miner. Quite a sense of humor, that king!”