Light to the Hills: A Novel (66)

Sass sat in the front corner of the wagon bed, hugging her knees tight and gazing out at the trees along the way, though she wasn’t really paying attention to the woods. She chewed her thumbnail down to the quick and then sucked on the salty trace of blood that seeped out. When Mama glanced backward, she scolded her.

“Take your hands from your mouth, Sass, or you’ll get worms.”

Sass kept her hands folded in her lap for a minute, but her fingers soon crept to her hair, where she wound and twisted a lock around and around until she’d knotted the end into a fine mess without even noticing.

“I saw a newspaper in the store today,” Cricket called from the back. “There was a picture on the front of a great big contraption, looked like a flying cloud, caught a’fire. All the old-timers out front were talking about it.”

Fern sat up importantly. “I heard that, too. My—friend—in the store told me about it. It was something they called a zeppelin—a flying machine with folks inside it—that caught fire and crashed. Hindybur, I think was its name?”

“Hindenburg is what folks were sayin’,” reported Cricket, his shoulders back. “Some kinda airship way up north in New Jersey.”

“How awful,” said Mama. “Why folks’d want to dangle up in the air like that in the first place seems like a foolish notion to me.”

“They’re not dangling, Mama,” replied Cricket, now an expert on the subject. “They’re flyin’! Seems grand. Reckon it’d be like being on top of the mountain all the time, looking down on everything below like a’ eagle.” His arm dipped and dove in the air as he squinted up at it. “I’d try it!”

“What goes up must come down, Cricket MacInteer. You’re a boy, not a bird. Best to keep your feet on solid earth where they’s planted.”

They rode on, winding in dappled sunlight beneath the newly leafing hardwood canopy. The white and pink sprays of dogwoods in bloom brightened in the occasional clearing.

“Y’all watch for green ramps or dandelions along the way,” Mama directed. “They’ll add some taste to our meat. Once the garden comes in, we can count on some better eating.” She pulled Plain Jane up short and sent Cricket springing out to the edge of the path after a tender sassafras sapling.

“Mind the snakes, now,” she called. “It’s getting warm enough to see ’em sunning. Adaire Miller just told me, while I was looking at cloth for Finn’s shirt, that her nephew went to bring in kindling and wasn’t paying a bit of attention in the world. Got bit by two rattlers at once’t. One in the foot and one in the hand. Lucky they was near enough to call on the mine doctor or he might’a been no more for this world.” Mama shook her head with the pity of it. “Adaire says his arm swelled up so big, his skin like to split right open.”

Hiccup pointed past where Cricket dug, farther out into the woods. “Mama!” she cried. “Morels!”

Sass’s head swiveled to look, her heart quickening in her chest. “I believe you’re right, Hiccup,” Mama said. She tossed a burlap sack to Hiccup and sent her scampering to where she’d seen the telltale mushroom caps. Cricket joined her, and the two of them gathered several handfuls into their sack in a few minutes.

“Those’ll go just right with the ramps and taters for supper tonight,” Mama said.

“Sass showed me how to find ’em and cut ’em just right.” Sass tried to catch Hiccup’s eye, to remind her to leave it at that.

“Did she now? That’s right, you two collected a nice poke of morels not long ago.”

Hiccup nodded. Sass threw a loose clod of dirt at her to get her attention. “When we saw that rooster.”

Stop talking, Hiccup, hush, hush, hush!

“A rooster? Back in them woods?” Mama laughed. “Hiccup, are you telling another one of your flying-bear stories?”

Hiccup had had quite an imagination when she was a toddler and once burst in breathless and excited after playing in the yard, babbling she’d seen a flying bear go right by the chicken pen. Even after he’d asked questions every which way, Daddy never could get out of her what she’d actually seen or whether it had been anything at all. Ever since then, they’d dubbed fishy tales “flying-bear stories.”

“No. Sass and me caught a white rooster with the rooster man.”

Sass stayed quiet, knowing she was taking a chance that Mama would diagnose her with some illness and dose her with something when they got home.

“Is that so?” Mama said to Hiccup. “Extra roosters running loose might end up in a pot if they’re not careful.”

“Oh, no, this un’s not for eating,” she replied, her explanation serious. “This ’un’s a pet.”

Mama mussed Hiccup’s hair and swatted her on the fanny as she and Cricket climbed up into the wagon. “Go on with you now.” She signaled Plain Jane to start up once they’d all settled in.

At home, Sass endured a double dose of horsemint and boneset tea and swore to her mama she did not have a cough or stomachache. Mama threatened to make her eat an onion roasted in the ashes of the stove, but Sass perked up enough after the tea that she convinced her to relent. No sign of Finn since they’d arrived home. Cricket and Daddy had stabled Plain Jane and fed the livestock while Fern and Sass unloaded the wagon and helped Mama start supper. The sky faded into shades of purple and orange as the sun dipped, and a damp, thick fog rose from the creeks and rivers to blanket the mountains like a shroud. The lantern lights within the cabin shone out into the haze of fog like a yellow-eyed panther. Sass sat on the front porch, absently stroking Digger’s soft ears while she stared off into the trees. Tuck curled up beside her. They always seemed to ferret out her troubles.