Light to the Hills: A Novel (6)
Rai waved her hand at them. “Y’all go ahead. Don’t wait for me.” Fern had drawn water from the well earlier, and Rai set a tin pitcher of it on the table.
“My folks are from up in Big Leatherwood originally,” Amanda said. “After they married, they settled in Putney on the Cumberland.” Rai lifted a cast-iron skillet from the woodstove and spooned greens seasoned with a little bacon grease alongside the potatoes. Far from her folks, the young woman must have taken up delivering books to make do. Rai hoped Amanda’s husband was sharing the load.
By the time the sun went down, Harley was usually so tuckered out he’d fall right to sleep at the supper table. Rai would let him sit there snoring like a snugged-up winter bear while she tidied up and got the children settled. He’d only get in a blessed few hours before she roused him to head back out to the mines for the night shift. Even so, they scraped to keep shoes on little feet and a bit of sugar and coffee in the larder.
Harley wiped a stray bit of greens from his beard. “So, up north of Harlan. Got a cousin or two that direction. You know any MacInteers over thataway?”
Amanda sat with her hands in her lap, and Rai finally got to study her without being rude. She figured Amanda Rye must be some sort of lady, with her dark lashes against her pale-white skin and the way she held her back straight against the cane chair. The same way she rode that big gray mule. Her nose turned up just the slightest bit at the end, and loose strands of brown hair hung in a sweep around her face. She chewed slow, careful bites, like she knew she’d be having another meal in the morning. “We weren’t there long, moved around wherever work took my daddy. After I married, we lived in the mine town for a bit before I left for the free town on the far side of Grant’s Knob. My boy and I are renting a place with my friend Mooney and her daughter right now.”
Harley looked down at his plate, pushing the onions around in the bacon grease. He glanced at Rai before asking the young woman, “Why’s that?”
Amanda cleared her throat. “At present, I’m obliged to take what work I can find for my boy and me. My folks—that’d be Jack and Beady Wick—have all they can handle with their church work.” Here she paused, casting her eyes on Rai, who’d finally settled at the table and had a mouthful of potatoes. “Lost my husband, Frank, a few years back. He—” She paused, doling out her words in careful measure. Her spine lengthened farther, pressing against the chairback. In her lap, she clearly fidgeted with her hands. “Was out looking for work and got swept away in a flash flood.”
“Why, I met Beady Wick at a shucking acrost the mountain.” Rai smiled, hoping to fill the space with her warmth, while her mind tugged at the mention of the name. “Hard worker! She had almost two bushels done before I’s halfway through my one. So you’re the Wicks’ girl?” She’d heard whispers about Jack and Beady Wick’s daughter, noted the glances between some of the women at the shucking that afternoon when talk turned to folks’ children. She’d seen one or two sharp nudges, and the subject had switched to tomatoes. Rai hadn’t heard the full story and wasn’t one to pry. It was curious, though, to finally lay eyes on the girl.
A person’s name carried everything. In closed rural communities like those in the Appalachian hills, a name was a placard identifying your people and your past and, more often than not, charting your future. If a person were on this side or that of old Civil War feuds, their name might toss them into a lifelong brawl that would dog them until the grave, through no blame of their own. Blood might paint a person in a line of healers or miners or bootleggers, and good luck breaking that mold. However carefully parents bestowed a child’s given name, it could be dropped or twisted into all manner of nicknames based on her personality or looks. But the family name was the thing that clung, the thing that dragged behind a body on a string of tin cans, announcing who she was to those who knew—or knew of—her people, no matter how far she moved or how many times she took another name in marriage. Tenacious as a hound on a treed raccoon, mountain people picked and dug until they got to the root of a person.
“I should have noticed. You do favor your mama some, now that I know to look. We been to the Pickins church a time or two and know a few of the families that live thataway. News did trickle down some about your misfortune. I was right sorry to hear of it. You know how folks is to talk. Can’t think when we were up there last, but it’s been a good while.”
Amanda nodded, and a flush crept up her neck. She appeared to have trouble swallowing her bite of food. “I don’t see my folks much. My mama’s family was hard hit in Paducah after the big flood. Wasn’t much worth saving, but she gets up there now and again. Between the trips and church work, time is scarce.” The clink of forks and plates hushed. Everyone had a tale or two of kin who’d lost everything when the Ohio flooded, as it was prone to do in some areas. Land stayed submerged for weeks, horses and cows tumbling head over hoof in the sweep of water before they succumbed. Even when the waters receded, the silt and scrabble that washed over the already-hardened soil in the west made it almost impossible to grow even a family vegetable garden, never mind produce anything extra to sell or trade. So many people lost life and land that a number of folks in the eastern mountains had long-lost kin showing up on their porches, needing bed and board that were already in short supply.