by Jojo Moyes
“Hello?”
A woman’s face appeared at the screen door. She glanced out, as if checking something, then turned away, speaking to someone inside. “That you, Miss Margery?”
“Hey, Miss Sophia. How you doing?”
The screen door opened and the woman stood back to let Margery in, her hands on her hips, thick dark coils of hair pinned to her scalp. She lifted her head as if surveying her carefully. “Well, now. I haven’t seen you in—what—eight years?”
“Something like that. You haven’t changed none, though.”
“Get in here.”
Her face, so thin and stern in repose, broke into a lovely smile, and Margery repaid it in full. For several years Margery had accompanied her father on his moonshine runs to Hoffman, one of his more lucrative routes. Frank O’Hare figured that nobody would look twice at a girl with her daddy making deliveries into the settlement and he figured right. But while he made his way around the residential section, trading jars and paying off security guards, she would make her way quietly to the colored block, where Miss Sophia would lend her books from her family’s small collection.
Margery had not been allowed to go to school—Frank had seen to that. He didn’t believe in book learning, no matter how hard her mother had pleaded. But Miss Sophia and her mother, Miss Ada, had fostered in her a love of reading that, many evenings, had taken her a million miles from the darkness and violence of her home. And it wasn’t just the books: Miss Sophia and Miss Ada always looked immaculate, their nails perfectly filed, their hair rolled and braided with surgical precision. Miss Sophia was only a year older than Margery, but her family represented to her a kind of order, a suggestion that life could be conducted quite differently from the noise, chaos and fear of her own.
“You know, I used to think you were going to eat those books, you were so hungry for them. Never knew a girl read so many so fast.”
They smiled at each other. And then Margery spied William. He was seated in a chair by the window and the left leg of his pants was pinned neatly under the stump where it ended. She tried not to let the shock of it show as even a flicker on her face.
“Good afternoon, Miss Margery.”
“I’m real sorry to hear about your accident, William. Are you in much pain?”
“It’s tolerable,” he said. “Just don’t like not being able to work, that’s all.”
“He’s about as ornery as all get out,” said Sophia, and rolled her eyes. “He hates being in the house more than he hates losing that leg. You sit down and I’ll fetch you a drink.”
“She tells me I make the place look untidy.” William shrugged.
The Kenworth cabin was the neatest, Margery suspected, for twenty miles. There was not a speck of dust or an item out of place, testament to Sophia’s fearsome organizational skills. Margery sat and drank a glass of sarsaparilla, and listened as William told her how the mine had laid him off after his accident. “Union tried to stand up for me but since the shootings, well, nobody wants to stick their neck out too far for a black fellow. You know what I’m saying?”
“They shot two more union men last month.”
“I heard.” William shook his head.
“The Stiller brothers shot the tires out of three trucks headed out from the tipple. Next time they went into the company store at Friars to organize some of the men, a bunch of thugs trapped them in there and a whole bunch had to come over from Hoffman’s to get them out. He’s sending a warning.”
“Who?”
“Van Cleve. You know he’s behind half of this.”
“Everybody knows,” said Sophia. “Everybody knows what goes on in that place but nobody wants to do nothing.”
The three of them sat in silence for so long that Margery almost forgot why she had come. Finally she put her glass down. “This isn’t just a social call,” she said.
“You don’t say,” said Sophia.
“I don’t know if you heard, but I’ve been setting up a library over at Baileyville. We got four of us librarians—just local girls—and a whole lot of donated books and journals, some on their last legs. Well, we need someone to organize us, and fix up the books, because it turns out you can’t do fifteen hours a day in the saddle and keep the rest of it straight, too.”
Sophia and William looked at each other.
“I’m not sure what this has to do with us,” Sophia said.
“Well, I was wondering if you’d come and organize it for us. We have a budget for five librarians, and there’s a decent wage. Paid for by the WPA, and the money’s good for at least a year.”
Sophia leaned back in her seat.
Margery persisted: “I know you loved working at the library at Louisville. And you could be back here in an hour each day. We’d be glad to have you.”
“It’s a colored library.” Sophia’s voice hardened. She folded her hands in her lap. “The library at Louisville. It’s for colored folk. You must be aware of that, Miss Margery. I can’t come work for a white person’s library. Unless you’re actually asking me to ride horses with you and I can sure as anything tell you I’m not going to be doing that.”
“It’s a traveling library. People don’t come in and out borrowing stuff. We go to them.”
“So?”
“So nobody even needs to know you’re there. Look, Miss Sophia, we’re desperate for your help. I need someone I can trust to mend the books, and get us straight, and you are, by anyone’s standards, the finest librarian for three counties.”
“I’m going to say it again. It’s a white person’s library.”
“Things are changing.”
“You tell the men in hoods that when they come knocking at our door.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“I’m looking after my brother.”
“I know that. I’m asking you what you’re doing for money.”
The two siblings exchanged a look.
“That’s a mighty personal question. Even for you.”
William sighed. “We ain’t doing too good. We’re living off what we got saved and what our mama left. But it ain’t much.”
“William!” Sophia scolded him.
“Well, it’s the truth. We know Miss Margery. She knows us.”
“So you want me to go get my head busted working in a white folks’ library?”
“I won’t let that happen,” said Margery, calmly.
It was the first time Sophia did not answer. There were few advantages to being the offspring of Frank O’Hare, but people who had known him understood that if Margery promised something would happen, then in all likelihood, it would. If you had survived a childhood with Frank O’Hare, not much else was going to stand in your way.
“Oh, and it’s twenty-eight dollars a month,” said Margery. “Same wage as the rest of us.”
Sophia looked at her brother, then down at her lap. Finally she lifted her head.
“We’ll have to think about it.”
“Okay.”
Sophia pursed her lips. “You still as messy as you was?”
“Probably a little worse.”
Sophia stood and straightened her skirt. “Like I said. We’ll think about it.”
* * *
• • •
William saw her out. He insisted, raising himself laboriously from his chair while Sophia handed him his crutch. He winced with the effort of shuffling to the door, and Margery tried not to let on that she saw it. They stood at the door and looked out at the relative peace of the creek.
“You know they’re fixing to take a chunk out of the north side of the ridge?”
“What?”
“Big Cole told me. They’re going to blow six holes straight through it. They reckon there’s rich seams in there.”
“But that part of the mountain is occupied. T
here’s fourteen, fifteen families just down by the north side alone.”
“We know that and they know that. But you think that’s gonna stop them once they sniff paper money?”
“But—what’ll happen to the families?”
“Same thing that happens every time.” He rubbed his forehead. “Kentucky, huh? Most beautiful place on earth, and the most brutal. Sometimes I think God wanted to show us all His ways at once.”
William leaned against the doorframe, adjusting his wooden crutch under his armpit while Margery digested this.
“It’s good to see you, Miss Margery. You take care now.”
“You too, William. And tell your sister to come work at our library.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Huh! She’s like you. No man going to tell her what to do.”
She could hear him chuckling as he closed the screen door behind him.
SIX
My mother didn’t hold with twenty-four-hour-old pies, except mince. She would get up an hour earlier in order to bake a pie before breakfast but she would not bake any kind of custard or fruit pie, even pumpkin, the day before it was to be used, and if she had my father wouldn’t have eaten it.
• DELLA T. LUTES, Farm Journal
In the first months after she had moved to Baileyville, Alice had almost enjoyed the weekly church dinners. Having a fourth or fifth person at their table seemed to lift the atmosphere in the somber house, and the food was mostly a cut above Annie’s usual greasy fare. Mr. Van Cleve tended to be on his best behavior, and Pastor McIntosh, their most frequent visitor, was essentially a kind man, if a little repetitive. The most enjoyable element of Kentucky society, she observed, was the endless stories: the misfortunes of families, gossip about neighbors—every anecdote served up beautifully formed and with a punch-line that would leave the table rocking with laughter. If there was more than one raconteur at the table it would swiftly become a competitive sport. But, more importantly, those animated tall tales left Alice to eat her food largely unobserved and unbothered.
Or, at least, they had.
“So when are you two young ’uns going to bless my old friend here with a grandchild or two then, huh?”
“That’s what I keep asking them.” Mr. Van Cleve pointed his knife at Bennett and then Alice. “A house isn’t a home without a babby running through it.”
Maybe when our bedroom isn’t so close to yours that I can hear you break wind, Alice responded silently, scooping mashed potato onto her plate. Maybe when I’m free to walk to the bathroom without covering myself to the ankles. Maybe when I don’t have to listen to this conversation at least twice a week.
Pastor McIntosh’s sister Pamela, visiting from Knoxville, observed, as someone invariably did, that her son had gotten his new wife with child on the very day of their wedding. “Nine months to the day the twins came. Can you believe that? Mind you, she has that house running like clockwork. You watch, she’ll wean those two and the day after she’ll be carrying again.”
“Aren’t you one of those packhorse librarians, Alice?” Pamela’s husband eyed the world suspiciously from under two bushy brows.
“I am indeed.”
“The girl’s gone from the house all day!” Mr. Van Cleve exclaimed. “Some evenings she gets back so tired she can barely keep her eyes open.”
“Strapping lad like you, Bennett. Young Alice there should be too tired to get on a horse in the first place!”
“She should be bow-legged like a cowboy, though!”
The two men roared with laughter. Alice forced a wan smile. She glanced at Bennett, who was steering black beans around his plate with intent focus. Then she looked at Annie, who was holding the sweet-potato dish and gazing at her with something that looked uncomfortably like satisfaction. Alice hardened her look until the other woman turned away.
“You got monthlies stains on your breeches,” Annie had observed, as she brought Alice a pile of folded laundry the previous evening. “I couldn’t get it all out so there’s still a small mark.” She had paused, and added, “Just like last month.”
Alice had bristled at the idea of the woman monitoring her “monthlies.” She had the sudden sensation of half the town discussing her apparent failure to fall pregnant. It couldn’t be Bennett’s fault, of course. Not their baseball champ. Not their golden boy.
“You know, my cousin—the one over at Berea—she couldn’t fall pregnant for love nor money. I swear her husband was at her like a dog. She went to one of the snake-handling churches—Pastor, I know you disapprove but hear me out. They put a Green Garter around her neck and she was with child the very next week. My cousin said the baby has eyes as gold as a copperhead’s. But then she always was the imaginative type.”
“My aunt Lola was the same. Her pastor had the whole congregation praying for God to fill her womb. Took them a year, but they got five children now.”
“Please don’t feel obliged to do the same,” said Alice.
“I think it’s all this riding the girl is doing. It’s no good for a woman to sit astride all day. Dr. Freeman says it jiggles up a lady’s insides.”
“Well, yes, I do believe I’ve read as much.”
Mr. Van Cleve picked up his saltshaker and waggled it between his fingers. “It’s like if you shake a jar of milk up too much, it turns sour. Curdles, if you like.”
“My insides are not curdled, thank you,” Alice said stiffly, then added, after a moment, “But I would be very interested to see the article.”
“Article?” said Pastor McIntosh.
“That you mentioned. Where it says a woman shouldn’t ride a horse. For fear of ‘jiggling.’ It’s not a medical term I’m familiar with.”
The two men looked at each other.
Alice dragged her knife across a piece of chicken, not looking up from her plate. “Knowledge is so important, don’t you think? We all say at the library, without facts we really do have nothing. If I’m putting my health at risk by riding a horse, then I think it would be only responsible for me to read the article you’re talking about. Perhaps you could bring it with you next Sunday, Pastor.” She looked up and smiled brightly across the table.
“Well,” said Pastor McIntosh, “I’m not sure I could lay my hands on it just like that.”
“The pastor has a lot of papers,” said Mr. Van Cleve.
“The funny thing is,” Alice continued, waving a fork for emphasis, “in England, nearly all well-brought-up ladies ride. They go out hunting, jumping ditches, fences, all sorts. It’s almost compulsory. And yet they pop out babies with extraordinary efficiency. Even the Royal Family. Pop, pop, pop! Like shelling peas! Do you know how many children Queen Victoria had? And she was always on a horse. They couldn’t pull her off.”
The table had grown quiet.
“Well . . .” said Pastor McIntosh “. . . that is . . . most interesting.”
“It can’t be good for you, though, dear,” said the pastor’s sister, kindly. “I mean, strenuous physical activity is not good for young women at the best of times.”
“Goodness. You’d better tell some of the mountain girls I see every day. Those women are chopping firewood, hoeing vegetable patches, cleaning house for men who are too sick—or too lazy—to get out of bed. And, strangely, they too seem to have all those babies, one after another.”
“Alice,” said Bennett, quietly.
“I can’t imagine too many of them are just floating around, flower-arranging and putting their feet up. Or perhaps they have a different biological makeup. That must be it. Perhaps there’s a medical reason I haven’t heard of for that, too.”
“Alice,” said Bennett, again.
“There is nothing wrong with me,” she whispered angrily. She was furious to hear the tremor in her voice. It was what they had needed. The two older men exchanged kindly looks.
“Oh, don’t you get you
rself worked up now. We’re not criticizing you, Alice dear,” said Mr. Van Cleve, reaching across the table and placing his plump hand over hers.
“We understand it can be a disappointment when the Lord doesn’t bless you straight off. But it’s best not to get too emotional about it,” said the pastor. “I’ll say a little prayer for you both when you’re next in church.”
“That’s most kind of you,” said Mr. Van Cleve. “Sometimes a young lady doesn’t always know what’s in her own interests. That’s what we’re here for, Alice, to mind your best interests. Now, Annie, where’s that sweet potato? My gravy’s getting cold here.”
* * *
• • •
What did you have to do that for?” Bennett sat beside her on the swing seat as the older men repaired to the parlor, finishing off a bottle of Mr. Van Cleve’s best bourbon. Their voices rose and fell, punctuated by bursts of laughter.
Alice sat with her arms crossed. The evenings were growing cooler but she positioned herself at the far end of the swing seat, a good nine inches from the warmth of Bennett’s body, a shawl around her shoulders. “Do what?”
“You know very well what. Pa was just trying to look out for you.”
“Bennett, you know that riding horses has nothing to do with why I’m not getting pregnant.”
He said nothing.
“I love my job. I truly love my job. I will not give it up because your father is under the impression that my insides are jiggling. Does anyone say you play too much baseball? No. Of course they don’t. But your bits are jiggling all over the place three times a week.”
“Keep your voice down!”
“Oh, I forgot. We can’t say anything out loud, can we? Not about your jiggling bits. We can’t talk about what’s really going on. But I’m the one everyone’s talking about. I’m the one they think is barren.”
“Why do you mind what people think? You act like you don’t care for half the people around here anyway.”