Light to the Hills: A Novel (28)

“What do you mean?” Amanda had looked up at him as the sun melted slowly down the mountain. If he had a nickname for her, that meant he intended to come around to use it.

“Amanda’s all right for a first name, but your middle name should be Lynn.”

“Amanda Lynn?” When she said it out loud, he burst out laughing.

“That’s right. You can share the name of the instrument you play so well. A-manda-lin.”

She slapped his arm. “Now I’ll never be able to hear it any different.”

A pair of crows cawed to each other through the treetops, their ruckus pulling Amanda back to the present. She drew herself up in the saddle and glanced through the woods on either side. Except for the crows, she and Junebug were alone. She squeezed his flanks to pick up the pace, remembering Alice’s tale at the WPA office.

“Amanda Lynn,” she mumbled. She hadn’t played since Miles had been born. She’d sold her tater-bug mandolin before finding the librarian job. Yet another thing Frank had managed to take from her.

That day after the singing, Amanda had caught Gripp leaning against the side of the church building, watching her exchange with Frank. He raised a hand, and although Amanda hadn’t so much as said two words to Gripp Jessup all day, she’d had the feeling that because of her budding friendship with Frank, Gripp automatically assumed the same familiarity.

When Amanda’s father learned Gripp had not yet found salvation, that fall, he took the man on as his special project. He was handy with carpenter’s tools, and Jack hired him on for odd repair jobs at the church. Frank and Amanda had obviously hit it off, and when Gripp was around working, most times, Frank found reason to visit and help out as well.

Amanda and Frank carried on sparking as she came up on seventeen. Under the watchful eye of Mama, the pair sat side by side on the front porch rockers, baskets between their knees as they shucked corn, strung beans, or snapped peas. Mama warned Amanda that she knew what nonsense idle hands could get up to, and she always seemed to have plenty of tasks at the ready when Frank came calling.

When the damp spring arrived, sometimes a week or two passed before Frank could make it up to the church. Mountain runoff and spring rains filled and spilled over the creek banks, and not even the most surefooted horse could be urged across the rushing waters. Amanda couldn’t keep from thinking about the last time she and Frank had been together—Frank stealing kisses when Mama went out to the corncrib to wring a rooster’s neck for stew: his calloused hands, warm and rough on her arms, her shoulders, her neck; his mouth on hers, his breath hot in her ear and his growth of beard scratching her cheek as he whispered her nickname against her hair, “Amanda Lynn, Amanda Lynn.”

If she and Frank got hitched, it would be just the two of them, without her parents watching every minute, and without Gripp springing up around every corner. Amanda’s daydreams about Frank clouded with the thought of Gripp. When she’d open her eyes, flushed and breathless from Frank’s embrace, she’d often catch a movement by the side of the smokehouse, of something slinking flat in the shadows. A weasel, she thought, or perhaps another egg-sucking dog from down the road. Even as she’d thought it, she’d known it wasn’t a critter after the hens. How many times had she said goodbye to Frank on the doorstep and seen Gripp leaning against the fence by the roadside? She’d tried to speak to Frank about it, hoping he’d ease her mind.

“Frank,” she’d said, “I don’t care much for Gripp. I ain’t about to keep gettin’ stared at all day.”

Frank had toyed with the tail of her braid, flipping it back and forth against his palm. “Pretty as you are? Feller can’t hardly help it.” Amanda kept her mouth in a tight line.

“Seems like every time I turn around, he’s right there gettin’ an eyeful.” She blushed and looked up at him sideways. “Even when you’re bein’ sweet with me.”

Frank smiled and kissed the curled end of her braid. “Aw, you don’t need to pay him no mind. Likely he’s jealous and pining for what you and me got. Getting spied on ain’t the worst thing.” He’d brushed it off as harmless. “I told you we could rustle up a more private spot.”

“Pa would skin you alive if he heard you say that. ’Sides, that’s not the point. I been hearing folks talk. Heard he’s been finding things to do ’sides working for my daddy.”

“Well, now,” Frank allowed, “there might be some truth to that, but ends gotta meet some way or ’nother. Pockets ain’t gonna fill their selves.”

“But moonshining, Frank? Cockfights and gambling? Wide is the road that leads to destruction.” She turned her head, so the braid slipped out of his fingers. How often Pa had preached that sermon.

“And the Lord helps those that helps themselves.” He snorted a short laugh. “Shoot, nobody’s living in high cotton ’cause of it. It’s just a way to get by. Gripp ain’t doing nothing folks don’t want him to.” Frank looked her steady in the eye. “Even folks in that little white church up there.”

Everybody knew such things went on out in the lattice thickets of mountain laurel and grapevines. It was a balancing act, following the Lord but doing what needed done. Loving Jesus, but drinking a little. There was scripture truth and the truth of signs and tokens they all lived by—like planting by the moon or dowsing for water. Opposites like these somehow made sense together, like oil and vinegar could gussy up a pot of greens.