Light to the Hills: A Novel
Bonnie Blaylock
Chapter 1
At dusk, the far stretch of shifting blues and greens where the mist over the mountains met the sky reminded Sass of an ocean or, rather, how she imagined it. People say an ocean never stops moving, that it changes colors depending on the clouds passing by, and that you can get lost just staring at the endless reach of it. It sounded downright lonesome. The eastern Kentucky mountains stretched and reached far off like that, too, as far off as you looked, but to Sass, they also folded you close inside the trees and streams and old, grown-over trails from deer, loggers, and footsteps of the Cherokee who’d lived there first. Sometimes, when she idled long enough to stare, long enough to hear the breeze whisper through the tall hickories like the sigh of a ghost, Sass imagined that the rounded forest ridges of the Appalachian hills moved. Not by some miracle of faith that some people believed could do such a thing but by sheer force of their own will. She swore if she looked just right, she could see those hills push upward, like great shoulders shrugging with a so it be, or maybe the kind of give-out sigh her daddy breathed when he crawled up out of those hills of a morning, teeth shining bright in his coal-blackened face.
Today the far-off ridges seemed to lie still, but Sass knew all the busy critters that rustled underneath the trees—deer, turkey, foxes, and bears, even painters, though these she’d never seen, only ever heard them scream like a woman scared to death. Panthers, she corrected. The schoolteacher had once pronounced the word, and Sass turned it over in her mouth, whispering it out loud and biting the tip of her tongue on the middle sound—thuh. Funny how folks outside the hills said different words but meant the same thing.
Sass didn’t have time to lollygag and watch the mountains move today. She was hunting sang so that she could get a birthday present. It was 1936; Sass had just turned twelve, and her mama warranted she had enough sense to keep clear of the snakes in the woods, or if she didn’t by now, some fangs might serve her right. A full satchel of ginseng would bring a nice sum, and her mama had said she could pick a piece of birthday candy from the mine store if she found enough. Twelve was a mite big for candy, but she wasn’t about to refuse the offer once it came her way. Sweet is sweet, anyhow.
Sass trailed along by herself in Gingko Holler, where the roots of the poplar trees clung for dear life to the steep, rocky slopes. September was schooltime, but there weren’t many days she could be spared to walk the miles to school and back, the way her daddy saw it. Tending her little sister and the weeds in the garden were her jobs, the main ones. She hummed along through the undergrowth, snippets of familiar hymns or reels, keeping her eyes peeled for the flashes of red berries beneath five leaves.
Hunting ginseng wasn’t the easiest chore. Besides keeping shy of poison ivy and poison oak, it took gentle hands to get the roots out, lifting them free just so or risking leaving some of the treasure behind in the soil. Then, just when the root was safe in the bag and it was time to move on, the berries had to be replanted so that new shoots would come back after a couple of winters.
The warm autumn air hung thick and close as a cloak around her shoulders as Sass knelt at the base of the plants. Her older brother, Finn, had taught her to find and dig the roots when she was just five. It was easy to talk him into a walk in the woods back then, even if he had to hoist her onto his back and tote her most of the way, her small fingers gripping the collar of his shirt. The clear mountain air is good for what ails you, he’d told her, and she’d known even then he was thinking of having to forsake it for the dark, dusty mines the following year, when he’d turn thirteen. More than anything, Sass wished Finn could be free of that burden. Sass dropped the root into her satchel, her fingers smudged with dirt, and she tied the neck of the bag with a satisfied jerk of the twine. That was another thing Finn had shown her: how to make a slipknot that could snug up a bag as quick as a long-eared hare.
Usually lit by shafts of sunlight reaching down through the swaying treetops, the woods dimmed, and Sass squinted to see under the thicker brush. She stopped humming, and without the lilting notes filling her ears, the full quiet of the woods settled like a last breath before sleep came. The noisy black crows that had announced her appearance earlier had shushed their black beaks. Heavy drops of rain splashed against the leaves underfoot, and the wind started to mean business. A brief flash dazzled her eyes, and she caught the movement of a pair of panicked squirrels leaping across the treetops.
“One, two, thr—” Sass counted automatically and quit when the bass crack of thunder shuddered deep inside her. The brewing storm was closer than she’d thought. With one hand, she brushed a strand of sweaty brown hair out of her eyes, and she quickened her steps. She scouted for an oak tree and, finding one nearby, used her sturdy cane pole to stir the leaves at its base. Lucky she spied one in the storm. She stooped to gather a handful of acorns, slipping them into the limp pocket on the front of her thin cotton dress, an assurance, she believed, to ward off being zapped by lightning.
Sass smelled the rain now, the moist tang of the earth as it opened its anxious, thirsty throat. The rain, and something else. The spray of light freckles danced on her nose as it picked up the spicy scent.
“Knew it,” she said, marching toward the telltale leaves. “Mitten, oak, and hickory,” she recited, already digging out the root of the familiar plant. Her mama would be pleased. She could make some spiced tea or keep it on hand for a salve. It was sassafras, the curious sapling that grew three different-shaped leaves on one tree. She held the unearthed plant in her hand, shifted the strap of her sang bag on her shoulder, and turned toward home, the patter of raindrops faster now.