Casteel 01 Heaven Page 6

  "You're making fun of me," I complained before I justified myself. "We happen to live with our grandparents. Grandpa never says anything that's not absolutely necessary, and seldom does he find words necessary.

  My granny rambles on and on incessantly, talking about how good all the old times were, and how rotten things are now. My stepmother fusses and fumes because she's got more than she can do . . . and sometimes when I go home to that cabin, and face up to all the problems, I feel not two hundred and fifty but one thousand years old--only without any wisdom from living that long."

  "Hey," he said with a smile, "a girl who knows how to talk honestly. I like that. I understand. I'm an only child, and I've grown up with uncles, aunts, and grandparents, too, so I do understand. But you've got the edge on me with two brothers and two sisters."

  "Is it an edge of advantage or disadvantage?"

  "Whatever you make it. From my point of view, Heaven Leigh, it's an advantage to have a large family so you're never lonely. Lots of time I'm lonely, wishing I had brothers, sisters. I think Tom's great, loads of fun and a good sport; and Keith and Our Jane are beautiful kids."

  "And Fanny, what do you think of her?"

  He blushed and looked uncomfortable before he spoke slowly, cautiously. "I think she's going to grow up to be an exotic beauty."

  "That's all you think?" He had to know about Fanny and all her promiscuous ways with the boys in the cloakroom.

  "No, it's not all I think. I think of all the girls I've ever seen, and all the girls I hope to see, the one I see named Heaven Leigh is the one with the potential to be more beautiful than any other. I think this Heaven is exceptionally honest and forthright . . . so if you don't mind, and I hope you don't, I'd like to walk you home every day from now on."

  I felt so happy! Soaring high, laughing before I ran on ahead and called back, "Logan, see you tomorrow. Thanks for seeing me home."

  "But we haven't reached there yet!" he called, taken aback by my abrupt ffight.

  I couldn't let him see where we lived, how we lived.

  Why, he'd never want to speak to me again if he really knew our circumstances. "On another day, a better day, I'll invite you in," I called, standing at the edge of a clearing in the dappled sunlight. He was across the small bridge covering our narrow stream. Behind him was a field of wild yellow grass, and the sun had snagged in his hair and eyes. If I live to be a thousand, I'll never forget the way he smiled, then waved and called back, "Okay. I've staked my claim. Heaven Leigh Casteel is, from this day on, mine."

  All the rest of the way home I sang to myself, happier than I'd ever been, forgetting all about my promise to myself that I positively would not fall in love until I was thirty.

  "Yer lookin mighty happy," commented Sarah, glancing up from the washboard with a weary sigh. "Day gone good?"

  "Oh, yes, Ma, it went fine."

  Fanny stuck her head out of the cabin door. "Ma, Heaven's gone an got herself a valley

  boyfriend--an ya know what kind they are."

  Again Sarah sighed. "Heaven, ya ain't gone an let him . . . have ya?"

  "Ma!" I cried out in protest. "You know I wouldn't!"

  "She would too!" screamed Fanny from the door-way. "She's shameful in t' cloakroom with t'boys, really- shameful!"

  "Why, you big liar!" I started to go for her, but Tom shoved Fanny out onto the porch, where she fell and immediately started howling. "Ma, it's not Heavenly who carries on. Fanny's t'most indecentacting girl in t'entire school, an that's sayin a whole lot."

  "Yeah," muttered Sarah, turning the wash over to me, "sure would be sayin a lot. Guess I know who's t'one who's t'worst, without yer havin t'tell me. It's my Indian Fanny with her wild devil ways, her flirtin eyes that's gonna get her inta t'same mess I'm in soona or lata. Heaven, ya stick t'yer guns, an say no, NO, NO! . . . Now take off that dress, an get t'work on t'wash. Ain't feelin so good lately. Jus don't understand why I'm tired all t'time."

  "Maybe you should see a doctor, Ma."

  "Will, when they got free ones."

  I finished the wash, and with Tom's willing help hung the clothes up to dry. When we finished it looked like a yard rag sale. "Ya like Logan

  Stonewall?" asked Tom.

  "Yes, I think so . . ." I answered, blushing several times.

  He looked sad, as if Logan might put a wall of difference between us, when nothing could, not ever.

  "Tom, maybe Miss Deale will give you another watercoloring set . . ."

  "It doesn't matter. I'm not gonna be an artist. Probably won't end up much of nothing, if you're not there to help me believe in myself."

  "But we're always going to be together, Tom. Didn't we swear to stay together through thick and thin?"

  His green eyes looked happier, then shaded. "But that was before Logan Stonewall walked you home."

  "You walk Sally Browne home sometimes, don't you?"

  "Once," he admitted, blushing, as if he didn't know I knew about that, "but only because she's something like you are, not silly and giggly."

  I didn't know what to say then. Sometimes I wished to be like the other girls, full of silly laughter about nothing at all, and not always so burdened down with responsibilities that made me feel older than my years.

  Later that same night I gave Fanny a good scolding about her behavior and the consequences. She didn't have to explain again. Already she'd confessed to me, on a rare occasion when we were like sisters needing each other, that she hated school and the time it took from having fun with the other girls her age. Even at the tender age of not quite twelve, she wanted to make out with much older boys who might have ignored her but for her insistence. She liked the boys to undress her, to slip their hands into her panties and start those exciting sensations only they could give her. It had distressed me to hear her say that, and distressed me even more to witness how she acted in the cloakroom with boys.

  "Won't do it no more, really I won't let them," promised Fanny, who was sleepy and agreeable to any suggestion, even an order from me to stop.

  The very next day, despite Fanny's vow, it happened all over again when I went to Fanny's class to pick her up and head her back home. I forced my way into the cloakroom and tore Fanny away from a pimply-faced valley boy.

  "Yer sister ain't stuck-up and prissy like ya!" the boy hissed.

  And all the time I could hear Fanny giggling.

  "Ya leave me alone!" Fanny screamed as I dragged her away. "Pa treats ya like yer invisible, so naturally ya kin't know how good it feels t'like boys and men, and if ya keep on pesterin me not t'do this an not t'do that, I'm gonna let em do anythin they want-- an I won't give a damn if ya tell Pa. He loves me an hates ya anyway!"

  That stung, and if Fanny hadn't come running to throw her slender arms about my neck, crying and pleading for my forgiveness, I might have forever turned my back on such a hateful, insensitive sister. "I'm sorry, Heaven, really sorry. I love ya, I do, I do. I just like what they do. Kin't help it, Heaven. Don't want t'help it. Ain't it natural, Heaven, ain't it?"

  "Yer sister Fanny is gonna be a whore," said Sarah later, her voice dull and without hope as she pulled bed pallets from boxes for us to put on the floor. "Ya kin't do nothin bout Fanny, Heaven. Ya jus look out fer yerself."

  .

  Pa came home only three or four times a week, as if timing how long our food would last, and he'd come in bringing as much as he could afford to buy at one time. Just last week I'd heard Granny telling Sarah that Grandpa had taken Pa out of school when he was only eleven in order to put him to work in the coal mines--and Pa had hated that so much he'd run away and hadn't come back until Grandpa found him hiding out in a cave. "And Toby swore to Luke he'd neva have t'go down inta them mines agin, but he sure would make more money iffen he did once in a while . . ."

  "Don't want him down there," Sarah said dully. "Ain't right t'make a man do somethin he hates. Even iffen t'Feds catch him soona or lata peddlin

  moonshine, he'd die fore he'd let em lock
him up. Ratha see him dead than shut up like his brothas . . ."

  It made me look at the coal miners differently than I had before.

  Many of them lived beyond Winnerrow, scattered a bit higher on the hills, but not really in the mountains like we were. Often at night when the wind was still, I'd lie awake and think I could hear the pickaxes of those dead miners who'd been trapped underground, all trying to dig their way out of the very mountain that was topped by our own cabin.

  "Can you hear them, Tom?" I asked the night when Sarah went to bed crying because Pa hadn't been home in five days. "Chop, chop, chop . . . don't you hear em?"

  Tom sat up and looked around. "Don't hear nothin."

  But I did. Faint and far away, chop chop chop. Even fainter, help help help! I got up and went out to the porch, and the sound was louder. I shivered, then called to Tom. Together we drifted to where the sound came from--and there was Pa in the moonlight, shirtless and sweaty, swinging an ax to fell another tree so we could have firewood, come this winter.

  For the first time in my life I looked at him with a kind of wondering pity. Help help help echoed in my brain--had it been him crying out, had it been? What kind of man was he anyway, that he would come in the night to chop wood without even stopping in the cabin to say hello to his wife and children?

  "Pa," called out Tom, "I kin help ya do that."

  Pa didn't pause in his swing that sent wood chips flying, just yelled: "Go back and get your rest, boy. Tell your ma I've got a new job that keeps me busy all day, and the only spare time I have is at night, and that's why I'm chopping down trees for you to split into logs later on." He didn't say a word to indicate he saw me beside Tom.

  "What kind of job have ya got now, Pa?"

  "Workin on a railroad, boy. Learnin how t'drive one of them big engines. Pulling coal on the C and 0. . . come down t'the tracks tomorrow about seven and you'll see me pull out . . ."

  "Ma sure would like t'see ya, Pa."

  I thought he paused then, the ax hesitating before it slammed again into the pine. "She'll see me . . . when she sees me." And that was all he said before I turned and ran back to the cabin.

  On my coarse pillow stuffed with chicken feathers I cried. Didn't know why I cried, except all of a sudden I was sorry for Pa--and even sorrier for Sarah.

  Four SARAH

  . ANOTHER CHRISTMAS CAME AND WENT WITHOUT REAL gifts to make it

  memorable. We were given only small necessities like toothbrushes and soap. If Logan hadn't given me a gold bracelet set with a small sapphire I wouldn't even have remembered that Christmas. I had nothing to give -him but a cap I'd knitted.

  "It's a terrific cap," he said, pulling it down over his head. "I've always wanted a bright red handknitted cap. Thank you very much, Heaven Leigh. Sure would be nice if you'd knit me a red scarf for my birthday that's coming up in March."

  It surprised me that he wore the cap. It was much too large, and he didn't seem to notice that I'd dropped a couple of stitches and that the wool had been handled so much it was more than a bit soiled. No sooner was Christmas over than I started on the scarf. I had it finished by Valentine's Day. "It's too late for a red scarf in March," I said with a smile when he wrapped it around his neck--and he was still wearing that red cap to school every day. If anything could have made me like him more than his devotion to that awful red cap, I don't know what it would have been.

  I turned fourteen in late February. Logan gave me another gift, a lovely white sweater set that made Fanny's dark eyes blaze with envy. The day after my birthday Logan met me after school where the mountain trail ended; he walked me to the clearing before the cabin, and every day after until it was spring. Keith and Our Jane learned to love and trust him, and all the time Fanny plied her charms, but Logan continued to ignore her. Oh, falling in love at age fourteen was so exhilarating I could have laughed and cried at the same time, I was so happy.

  The glorious spring days sailed too quickly by now that love was in the air, and I wanted time for romancing, but Granny and Sarah were relentless in their demands for my time. There was planting to do as well as all the other chores that were my duty, but not Fanny's. Without the large garden in the back of our cabin we wouldn't have been as well nourished as we were. We had cabbages, potatoes, cucumbers, carrots, collards for the fall, and turnip greens, and, best of all, tomatoes.

  On Sundays I looked forward to seeing Logan again in church. When we were in church and he was seated across the aisle from me, meeting and holding my eyes and sending so many silent messages, how could I help but forget the desperate poverty of our lives? Logan shared so much of what was in his father's pharmacy with us; small things he thought commonplace filled all of us with delight, like shampoo in a bottle, perfume we could spray on, and a razor and blades for Tom, who began to grow more than auburn fuzz over his lip.

  One Sunday afternoon we planned to go fishing after church, though Logan didn't tell his parents who he was chumming with. I could tell from their stony faces when we occasionally met on the streets of Winnerrow that his parents didn't want me, or any Casteel, in their son's life. What they wanted didn't seem to matter nearly as much to Logan as it did to me. I wanted them to like me, and yet they always managed, somehow, to avoid the introductions Logan wanted to make.

  I was thinking about Logan's parents as I furtively brushed my hair while Fanny was in the yard tormenting Snapper, Pa's favorite hound. Sarah sat down heavily behind me and pushed back long strands of red hair from her face before she sighed. "I'm really tired. So blessed tired all t'time. An yer Pa's neva home. When he is he don't even look t'see my condition."

  What she said made me start, made me want to look and see what Pa was missing. I whirled around to stare at her, realizing that I very seldom really looked at Sarah, or else I would have seen before this that she was pregnant . . . again.

  "Ma!" I cried. "Haven't you told Pa?"

  "Iffen he really looked at me, he'd know, wouldn't he?" Iridescent tears of self-pity formed in her eyes. "Last thin in t'world we need is anotha mouth t'feed. Yet we're gonna have anotha, come fall."

  "What month, Ma, what day?" I cried, unsettled by the thoughts of another baby to take care of, just when Our Jane was finally in school and not quite as troublesome as she'd been, and Lord knows it had been difficult enough with only a year separating her and Keith.

  "I don't count days t'tell doctors. Don't see a doctor," whispered Sarah, as if her strong voice were weakened by the coming baby.

  "Ma! You've got to tell me when so I can be here if you need me!"

  "I jus hope an pray this one will be blackhaired," she mumbled as if to herself. "T'dark-eyed boy yer pa's been wanting--a boy like him. Oh, God, hear me this time an give t'me an Luke his look-alike son, an then he will love me, like he loved her."

  It made me hurt to think about that. What good did it do for a man to grieve too long--if he did--and when had he started that baby? Most of the time I could tell what they were doing, and it had been a long time since the bedsprings had creaked in that rhythmical, telling way.

  Gravely I told Tom the news while we were on the path to the lake where we would meet Logan to fish. Tom tried to smile, to look happy, and finally managed a weak grin. "Well, since there's nothin we kin do about it, we'll make the best of it, won't we? Maybe it will be the kind of boy that will make Pa a happier man. And that would be nice."

  "Tom, I didn't mean to hurt you by repeating that."

  "I ain't hurt. I know every time he looks at me he wishes I looked more like him than Ma. But as long as you like my looks, I'll be satisfied."

  "Oh, Tom, all the girls think you're devilishly handsome."

  "Ain't it funny how girls always put devilishly up front to make handsome not quite so meaningful?"

  I turned to hug him. "It's those teasing green eyes, Tom." I bowed my head so my forehead rested on his chest just under his chin. "I feel so sorry for Ma, all worn out and so big and clumsy-looking, and you know, up until today
, I never even noticed. I feel so ashamed. I could have done so much more to help her."

  "Ya do enough already," Tom mumbled, pulling away when Logan stepped into view. "Now smile, act happy, for boys don't like girls with too many problems."

  All of a sudden Fanny appeared, darting out from the shadows of the trees. She ran straight to Logan and threw herself at him as if she were six instead of a girl of thirteen, already beginning to develop rapidly. Logan was forced to catch her in his arms or be bowled over backward.

  "My, yer gettin more handsome by t'day," crooned Fanny, trying to kiss him, but Logan put her down and shoved her away forcefully, then came over to me. But Fanny was everywhere that day with her loud voice to scare off the fish, with her incessant demands for attention, so the Sunday afternoon that could have been fun was spoiled, until finally around twilight Fanny took off for parts unknown, leaving Logan, Tom, and me standing with three small fish not worth carrying home. Logan threw them back into the water, and we watched them swim away.

  "I'll see ya at the cabin," said Tom before he darted off, leaving me alone with Logan.

  "What's wrong?" asked Logan as I sat staring at the way the setting sun was reflecting all sorts of rosy colors on the lake. I knew soon it would turn crimson as the blood that would spill when Sarah's newest baby came into the world. Memories of other births came fleetingly into the dark crevices of my mind. "Heaven, you're not listening to me."

  I didn't know if I should or should not tell Logan about something so personal, yet it came out voluntarily, as if I couldn't keep anything secret from him. "I'm scared, Logan, not just for Sarah and her baby, but for all of us. Sometimes when I look at Sarah and see how desperate she is, I don't know how long she can put up with her kind of life, and if she goes--and she's always talking about leaving Pa-- then she'll leave behind a new baby for me to take care of. Granny can't do anything much but knit or crochet, or sew braided rugs together."

  "And already you have more than enough to do, I understand. But, Heaven, don't you know everything always works out? Didn't you hear Reverend Wise's sermon today about the crosses we all have to carry? Didn't he say God never gives us one too heavy?"