I reached in the basket for the buttermilk and a cup. To my surprise, instead of the tin cup that I expected, I brought out a pink lustre one, part of my favorite childhood tea set. I found myself turning the cup over and over in my hands. It was beautiful. Thin, translucent pink. How had it ever survived my awkward child’s hands? Perhaps because I had always loved it. Then I realized I was seeing the pink through a blur. So mother had wanted the cup to say something to me. Well, perhaps I was being foolish to leave my wonderful home. Or was I? I only knew that it was an experiment I had to make.
For in spite of the homesickness, I felt elation about being turned loose to make my own way in the world. I had sense enough to keep it strictly to myself, but secretly I was certain that I was about to take the world by storm. Not even father’s disapproval of teaching school in a place like Cutter Gap had lessened my enthusiasm. After all, those other men and women down through the centuries who had accomplished things must have had to shrug off other people’s opinions too. For no reason at all, those lines from Lord Tennyson that I had memorized for a high school literature course came into my mind . . .
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life . . .
It was odd that I had had to find my clue as to how to get on with that life from a stranger on the Montreat platform rather than from my family or the preacher in our church back home. The family would be there about now in the Huddleston family pew, probably standing to sing the Doxology. No doubt my brother George had asked to sit with some friends of his on the back pew. Father had not yet discovered how often the boys slipped out before the sermon, then reappeared at the end of the service.
The First Presbyterian Church of Asheville with its blue carpets down the aisles, the memorial plaques around the walls, the great pulpit chairs with their tall carved backs . . . Sunday after Sunday I had sat there as long ago as I could remember. Our preachers had all been good men, nice men, kind men. Of course, I had seldom been able to keep my mind on what they were saying. But I had always thought the trouble lay with me, not with them or their preaching.
It was only at Montreat last summer that I discovered that my attention was not so hard to get after all. Now I guessed that somewhere—out there—there was something exciting about religion which had not come through to me in my church back home. And I sensed that I could have sat in the Huddleston family pew every Sunday until I was an old lady, and it would not have been any different. That was why I had had to leave, explore for myself—“Life piled on life.”
And now with each turn of Old Buncombe’s wheels, I was being carried closer and closer to that new life. Already we must be crossing from North Carolina into Tennessee.
Suddenly the railroad tracks were running between the walls of a narrow valley. Here in this more protected area was a dazzling winter landscape. Everything was covered with ice, yet this was not the usual ice storm. Apparently fog floating off the higher peaks had covered everything with a gossamer coating of ice so fragile that every lineament of every object stood out from every other object sharply defined, highlighted, underscored—frozen lace.
Then the sun was sinking and every prismatic color was reflecting back from this ice-encased world. The valley had become like Ali Baba’s Treasure Cave that I had read about as a child. I found my eyes and throat aching with the beauty that blazed outside the train windows. Jewels seemed to glitter from every bush, every withered blade of grass, every twig: sapphires and turquoise, emeralds and amethysts, rubies, crystals, diamonds.
The glow was dying as the sun dipped behind the hills rimming the valley. The winter twilight was coming now, coming fast. Darkness fell so swiftly in these mountains. The train began to slow down and the engineer blew a long warning whistle. Conductor MacDonald announced that we were coming into El Pano and began lighting all the railroad lanterns on the floor in front of the coach. Old Buncombe’s wheels ground to a stop. Hastily I thrust my arms into my coat, buttoned it, picked up my muff and my suitcase, and started down the aisle.
“Let me help you with that, Miss Huddleston.” Mr. MacDonald took my suitcase and swung it to the ground beside the train. “Easy, the steps may be slippery. The last one is high. Watch it. You’re a mighty pert girl, Miss Huddleston,” he said earnestly. “But land sakes—watch yourself out there at Cutter Gap.”
“Thank you, Mr. MacDonald,” I tried to sound confident. Already my eyes were searching the dusk. There wasn’t much to see—just a tiny station building and four or five houses. I had hoped that someone would be coming toward me questioningly. How often during the last weeks I had pictured the scene . . . “Miss Huddleston?” they would ask. “Are you the new teacher for the mission? We’ve all been anticipating your arrival. How nice, how very nice—” And they would look me over. And their eyes would say, “We were expecting a young girl, but you’re a grown woman.” And I would be very warm and very gracious and would extend my hand in greeting, as mother and father did, and they would be more impressed than ever. But no one was approaching at all.
Several men came out of the station and began to unload crates and boxes from the baggage car onto a cart. From time to time they would pause in their work to stare at me. Deliberately I turned my back, my eyes searching the dusk once more. No—no one. Conductor MacDonald was giving me a quizzical look. I didn’t want him to see how disappointed I was that there was no welcoming committee for me. Perhaps they were just late in arriving. My eyes searched the road beyond the houses. But as far as I could see, the snow-covered landscape was deserted.
Then there was the “All a-boarrd.” The men wheeled the cart of crates and boxes away from the baggage car. Old Buncombe began getting up a head of steam. I watched as the train got underway, at first slowly, then with gathering speed. It was smaller now, the smoke from the engine little white pulls against the somber, snow-filled sky.
I felt fear rising in me—a greater fear than I had ever known. That train was my last link with home. Everything dear and familiar was disappearing there, right there over that horizon with that train. What was I doing standing beside these train tracks in a strange village? I did not know a single human being in this desolate town. What would I do now?
In the still air Old Buncombe’s whistle blew—far away. The sound echoed faintly in the valley between the mountains. The fear in my chest clutched at the sound, as if to capture that, if nothing else. Then even the sound was gone, and there was nothing, nothing but emptiness. I stood there wanting to move and yet not able to, staring at the spot on the horizon where the two tracks converged into one.
The men stopped the cart and I felt their eyes on me. They would think it odd my standing there alone. So I swallowed back the lump in my throat, took a firm grip on my suitcase, and blindly, scarcely knowing what I was doing, headed for the little station.
Behind the grilled window the ticket agent wearing the green eyeshade did not look up as I approached. I spoke as softly as I could because the group of men lounging around the stove were watching me curiously. “Could you tell me—is there anywhere in El Pano where I could spend the night?”
He did not seem to hear me. “Sir—” I raised my voice. No question about everyone in the station hearing now. “Could you tell me . . .”
“Young woman, you’ll have to speak up.” The eyes under the green shade were defensive.
After I had almost shouted my question, he finally got it. “Well, let’s see now. Maybe Miz Tatum’s.”
“Where is that?”
“Eh? Oh, close. Nigh. You just—guess it’s easier to show you.” He ducked out through a door beside the cage. “If it wasn’t gettin’ dark you could see Miz Tatum’s from here.”
I followed the man
into the stinging cold. He pointed across the tracks. “Can’t quite make it out, but it’s that big house, second one down. You’ll find it.”
I nodded. “Just tell Miz Tatum that Farse sent you. You’ll get plenty to eat and a clean bed. Course Miz Tatum can talk the hind legs off a donkey,” he chuckled, “but I reckon you can stand that.”
I thanked the man, and he disappeared back inside the warm station.
It was not easy to carry my suitcase and hold up my skirts at the same time. Once I slipped, and the snow churned up over my shoe tops, sifting down into my stockings. I pulled the hem of my coatsuit free of the wet clinging mess and struggled on through a ditch and up the other side.
A Victorian frame house loomed out of the darkness. The peak of the roof, trimmed with wooden cutouts, was silhouetted against the dusky sky. The lamplight in several of the windows and smoke pouring from both chimneys were welcome sights.
I set my suitcase on the porch, shook my skirts again, and twirled the bell. The tall big-boned woman who opened the door almost filled the opening.
“Mrs. Tatum?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Christy Huddleston from Asheville. The station man—I think he said his name was Farse—told me that you take in roomers and boarders. Could you put me up for the night?”
“Sure could. Don’t have no rooms filled right now. C’mon in out of the cold. Bad night, ain’t it?”
“Yes. It is.” Even as the door shut behind us, I could feel this woman’s lively interest, her mind bristling with questions about me. But she was trying hard not to be too forward.
“I’ll show you to your room, child. Here, let me take the suitcase. I’m used to carryin’ heavy things. You can bring the lamp though. Right on up. That’s right. That room just ahead.”
It was a plain room with a shiny brass bed. But everything was clean, as the station man had said. “Now, you make yourself to home, and I’ll fix you a bit to eat. Tell you what, I’ll build up the fire and you can eat by the stove.” Mrs. Tatum was already halfway down the stairs. “Come on down when you’re ready . . .” Her voice trailed off and a door slammed in the back of the house.
There was no heat upstairs. Eager to get to that fire in the stove, I changed as quickly as I could, then I picked up the lamp and groped my way down the stairs.
The downstairs hall was dark, but a ribbon of light at the bottom of a door and voices beyond told me where the family was gathered. As I opened the door, I saw a group sitting around a small stove. The walls of the room were tongue-and-groove, painted nondescript tan. A Brussels carpet, scrim curtains, and some house plants in the windows gave the room a certain hominess.
Mrs. Tatum had put on a large calico apron and was clearing the table. “Come on in, child. This here’s Mr. Tatum. Miss Chr—Christy Huddleston. Uncommon name, ain’t it? And this is Mandie Lou and Joshu-way . . . and my brother Thomas Grant. And Grandsir McBride. Now you set yourself right down and I’ll have your supper in no time a-tall. The rest of us are finished. Know you must be starved.” And the big woman picked up a stack of dishes and hurried off toward the kitchen.
The girl named Mandie Lou sat staring unabashedly at me. The man called Thomas Grant was the first to speak. “You come from Asheville-way? Not many women come through here on the train. Where you bound?”
Upset as I was over the recent turn of events, I wanted to be friendly. After all they were being kind to me. “I’ve come to teach school at the mission. You know—out at Cutter Gap.”
Mrs. Tatum was back in the doorway. “Landsakes, child. You a-teachin’? Cutter Gap? Why child,” she clucked her tongue and a look that I couldn’t quite interpret came into her jet black eyes. “Well, here’s your supper. You help yourself. Here’s some spareribs and pickled beans. And there’s some sourwood honey and some apple butter to put on the biscuit bread. I saved the sourwood honey for something special.”
While I ate, the group around the stove slipped silently out of the room one by one. I had a feeling that they were going out to spread the news of my arrival to some of their neighbors.
Mrs. Tatum seemed to be busy in the kitchen, then suddenly she was back in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “Are you gettin’ enough to keep body and soul on speakin’ terms?”
“Oh, yes—plenty, thanks. It’s good too. Anyway my mother had packed me some food for the train trip and I ate it late.”
“If I may ask,” the voice was hesitant. “How did your mother take it, your comin’ to teach in the Cove?”
This was not something I wanted to discuss. “Oh, it was all right with my parents. After all, I’m nineteen.”
“Have they seen Cutter Gap?”
“No. No, they haven’t.” I wondered if all middle-aged people thought alike. Yet, seeing the earnestness in her black eyes, I couldn’t be offended.
“Look, I’m not good at fancy talk.” She slowly began to scrape the plates and pile them one on top of another. “But I just don’t think you know what you’re gettin’ yourself into. You come from a highfalutin’ home”—I opened my mouth to speak, but the voice rushed on—“easy to tell that. Your clothes, pretty fancy do-dads—The way you talk. Oh, I see a lot of folks, and if I do say so myself who shouldn’t, I’m a pretty good judge of folks.”
“Mrs. Tatum, my home isn’t that fancy. I’m not afraid of plain living.”
“Mercy sakes alive, you don’t know how plain. Me now, I wouldn’t want to live back in that Cove. Have you ever had to wash your clothes by beatin’ ’em on a battlin’ block? Or did you ever have to sleep in a bed with the quilts held down by rocks to keep the wind from blowing the covers off?”
Thinking she was exaggerating, I simply smiled. Yet her fears—not so much what she had said so far, just her attitude about the Cove—had started little shivers up and down my spine.
“I don’t want nothin’ to happen to you. I’m not speakin’ now of your gettin’ shot at, though plenty has been shot at. Sometimes real bad things happen—oh, at weddings or play parties or jamborees when the liquor’s bein’ swigged a little too free. Oh, I know those mountain people all right. They’re not naturally bad. And when a body minds his own business, most generally you needn’t be afraid. But that’s not it . . .”
She could talk the hind legs off a donkey, the station man had said. Was this just so much talk? More to be polite than anything else, I asked, “Well, what then? What is it you’re afraid of for me?”
“It’s your feelin’s. Back in the Cove they don’t take much stock in foreigners.”
My astonishment must have showed. “I don’t understand! I’m an American citizen, born right in these mountains.”
“Now don’t get riled. By foreigners they don’t mean folks from across the waters. Foreigners is folks from out the Cove. And they’re proud back there. When they feel that somebody is different from them, they don’t like to be beholden, don’t like to be monkeyed with. Can’t blame them really. It’s going to be well-nigh impossible for you to help them. The only person I ever saw that could stick it out is a lady named Miz Henderson. Other teachers has tried and given it up as a bad job.”
Eager to change the subject from my probable failure in which everybody but Dr. Ferrand seemed devoutly to believe, I pounced on the name of Miss Henderson. “Oh, would you tell me about her? I’ve heard only enough to make me curious.”
Mrs. Tatum reacted to this opening much as if I had just handed her a birthday gift.
“Oh, she’s a character right enough, if I do say so myself who shouldn’t. Imagine a high-toned lady like her livin’ up there in the mountains by herself! And her a Quaker lady at that. Uses ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ sometimes just like in the Good Book. But she don’t dress like a Quaker, no little bonnet on her head, nothin’ like that. Likes fine wearin’-clothes, dresses like quality folks.
“Howsomever, there’s lots of talk about how she ever come to Cutter Gap in the first place. Don’t seem like the missionary type, to m
y way of thinkin’. Some say her fiancy—how do you say that?—went off with another woman and that Miz Henderson come to the mountains runnin’ away from her broken heart. Some say her lover got his neck broke in an accident with runaway horses. Course nobody really knows, and me, I just saw wood and say nothin’.”
I could scarcely visualize Mrs. Tatum “saying nothing” at any time, but since she was not really telling me what I wanted to know about Miss Henderson, I asked, “How far is Cutter Gap from here?”
“Seven mile, more or less.”
“How can I get out there tomorrow?”
The tongue clucked again. “My, you are eager, aren’t you? Rarin’ to go, jousty.” The woman sighed. “Ben Pentland carries the mail to the Cove, but he ain’t been out since the snow fell.”
“How could I talk to Mr. Pentland?”
“At the General Store most likely, come mornin’.”
Then apparently Mrs. Tatum decided to make one last try. “Look, maybe you don’t like somebody like me that you never saw afore tonight buttin’ in, but my advice to you is to get a good sleep and when the train comes through next, you get yourself right back on it and go back to your own folks. There now, I’ve said it.”
But, I wondered, how could I run away like that before I’d even seen the Cove? “Mrs. Tatum,” I explained, “you see, I’ve given my word about teaching school. A promise is a promise. I’ll be careful not to stomp on those proud feelings of the folks back in the Cove.” Even as I spoke, the expression on Mrs. Tatum’s face told me that she did not really understand. “Thanks a lot for the supper, Mrs. Tatum. And please don’t worry about me.” I smiled at her. “Is this the lamp you want me to take upstairs?”
As I turned to go up the stairs to my room, she was standing in the dim light of the lower hall staring after me, looking puzzled and distressed.