I nodded, fascinated by what she was saying because I, too, had experienced that sensation of walking backward into time, only it had seemed repulsive rather than fascinating. Before this, I had always thought of the American frontier as romantic. Now I was not too sure.
“The glimpses multiplied,” she continued, “like that day I came upon a mountain girl playing a dulcimer. Do you know what that is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I’ll show you one one of these days. It has from two to eight strings—usually three—and is strummed with a goose quill. It must be a crude copy of some very old instrument. Well, anyway in a sweet thin voice this girl sang one English and Scottish ballad after another. Once I began to notice I heard the old ballads everywhere. Strange how music and poetry can preserve the feel of another way of life. Sitting on a cabin porch, I’d see an English manor house with clipped lawns and lords and ladies strolling arm in arm.
“Then my ears began catching seventeenth-century words—a lot of them straight out of Shakespeare and Spenser. When the women talked about Bone-Set as a cough remedy, Mare’s milk for whooping cough, or Sweet William for a tonic, through my imaginary peephole I could see a thatched-roof cottage set in an English herb garden. So that’s how I began to visualize something beyond the dirt and the poverty. You see, they do have a fine heritage, but they need to be reminded of it over and over.”
I remembered Mrs. Tatum saying that Miss Alice was the only person who had been able to help these proud mountain people. Suddenly I saw why they had accepted Miss Alice’s help. She had uncovered a legitimate source of their pride—the strengths of a fine heritage—and used it, built on it.
But a doubt crept in. Even the proudest background can become degenerate or lost in a poor environment. What I had seen so far made me think that was exactly what had happened.
“My dear, you’re sitting there wondering if through wishful thinking and a good imagination I’m not reading into these people a lineage that actually died several generations ago.”
I grinned at her, startled. “Well, yes—I don’t know how you knew—” This was my first experience with what I would come to know later as a characteristic of Miss Alice’s: A perception of other people so acute that it not only caught reactions but came close to reading minds.
“So your real question is, what solid values are left today out of any good inheritance? Well, just as soon as you begin teaching, you’ll find one—sharp minds, good brains—only they haven’t had much of a chance.
“There’s exceptional awareness too, basically a spiritual quality, I suppose. It could be used to create and appreciate beauty—in things, in lives. Instead, a lot of the sensitivity is used now for smallness; getting their feelings hurt easily, that sort of thing. But put the fine minds and the sensitivity together, and you have gigantic hungers of mind and spirit.
“Then something else they inherited from those ancestors of theirs—those people with their proud self-reliance and intense love of liberty—and that’s an iron will. But this will that could result in major achievements is now used mainly to keep feuds alive.”
“You mean real shooting feuds?”
“Real shooting and killing feuds.” For the first time Miss Alice’s face was grim. “We’ve had a lot of violence. Probably only two sections of the country are worse—the Cosby, Tennessee area and Breathitt County, Kentucky.”
I absorbed this information in silence, thinking how quickly my father would jerk me home if he knew this. “What do you and Mr. Grantland do about feuding?” I asked finally.
“That’s another story. The first thing I did was buy a gun and learn to shoot.”
“You did! I thought the Quakers—”
“Believe in non-violence. Of course. You’re right. I’ve had my dear ancestors spinning in their graves ever since. Now that I’ve seen violence close up, I believe in non-violence more than ever. But I had to meet these men on their own ground. So now I’m a better shot than a lot of them, and they all know it and respect it. It’s given me a base for talking straight to them that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I tell them, ‘I like your fierce pride and your loyalty to your family. That’s why I long to keep you from doing anything that will shame your sons and your sons’ sons.’ ”
The room was very quiet. There was only the creak of the snow-laden branches outside and the gurgling of the stream under its ice coating behind the house. The words just spoken had marched proudly out of the Quaker lady’s mouth, and now stood straight and tall in the quiet room. Even when the feuding mountain men were not altogether sure what such words meant, the hearing of them must make them feel good, I thought, cleaner somehow, as if they were hearing a bugle call in the clear cold mountain air.
With a shock I realized that two hours had passed. Mr. Grantland had promised to show me the Cove in the immediate vicinity of the mission house and to talk over some teaching plans with me.
As I rose to go, Miss Alice held out her hand to me. “Christy Huddleston, I think thee will do.” Something about the warmth in the timbre of her voice as she slipped back into her Quaker speech brought quick tears to my eyes. Did she mean that I was accepted?
Looking back I can see that the young walk unabashedly into many a situation which the more experienced would avoid at all costs. Not that I was cocky or overconfident that first day of school. The truth was that I was trying hard to settle the butterflies in my stomach so that Mr. Grantland would think me an experienced teacher.
He was only seven years older than I, but somehow he seemed a thousand years older in experience and self-assurance. I thought of the Tuesday before when he had sat astride the rafters of the unfinished schoolhouse, driving in roofing nails with powerful blows, shouting down orders from time to time to the men helping him. Later I had watched in admiration his quick orderly decisions as he had supervised the placing of the secondhand benches and battered school desks and the installing of the potbellied stove. It was no small project, this building of the combination school-church. Mr. Grantland had been struggling all through the autumn to erect the building and to provide a usable road from the mission to the railroad flagstop at Fairview Flats. He had only volunteers for helpers. Sometimes those who had promised to come appeared for work, more often they did not. That was why progress had been so slow. Now that school was opening, the building of the bell-tower could proceed only on Saturdays and school holidays, so it would go more slowly still.
For this first day of school he had put away his working clothes and was dressed in a tweed suit with a white shirt and bow tie. His only concession to the snow was heavy boots laced almost to his knees. The boots were in ludicrous contrast to the dainty heels and pointed toes of my kid and patent leather shoes picking their way along the nicely cleaned boardwalk with David Grantland keeping pace beside me in the deep snow.
“Is this a fashion parade on Fifth Avenue?” His voice was teasing. “Those are silly, silly shoes. Ice-pick toes.”
“I know.” “Hold on! Steady!” he exclaimed as I slipped and his arm reached out to support me. I could feel the warmth of his hand even through my coat. I wondered if my hair still looked all right and if he liked the way I wore it.
The yard was swarming with children waiting for the first glimpse of their new teacher. Most were flaxen-haired, skinny, too pale, none dressed warmly enough for January. Some were climbing over the piles of lumber and rocks in the yard, some running in and out of the building, their high-pitched voices ringing in the clear air. What if I could not handle such lively pupils?
“These children are really excited,” Mr. Grantland said. “There’s John Holcombe. Must have come early to get the fire started. You’d be surprised what a big event the opening of this school is in these people’s lives.”
Seeing us coming, the children had stopped whatever they were doing to stare at me. As we got closer, I saw with a shock that many of them were barefooted. I knew that some had had to walk several miles in the snow
. Suddenly I was painfully self-conscious about my foolish shoes. Their bare feet made me want to tuck my own feet out of sight to hide the tokens of my vanity. What a lot I had to learn!
At that moment a little boy detached himself from the silent starers and came running up to us. He had carrot-red hair with a cowlick and blue, blue eyes. There was a shy eagerness about him. “Teacher, I’ve come to see you and to swap howdys. I memorized your name. It’s shore a funny name. I never heerd a name like it afore.”
“Miss Huddleston,” Mr. Grantland said solemnly, “this is Little Burl Allen, one of Bob Allen’s sons.”
So this was one of the children who would have been fatherless if Dr. MacNeill had not operated. All over again I felt grateful for the last good news I had heard about Mr. Allen. I reached down for the little hand. It was cold. “I’m delighted to swap howdys with you, Little Burl.” The gentian blue eyes were looking me over carefully, taking in every detail. He was so little—and those icy feet! I longed to pick him up and get him warm.
As Mr. Grantland and I were climbing the steps to the school, I whispered, “At least we could do something about their bare feet. It’s shameful. Why hasn’t the mission done something about it?”
Mr. Grantland stood looking down at me, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners, a smile tugging at his mouth. “I know it’s a shock. Was to me too at first. But up in these mountains the youngsters have gone barefooted all their lives—summer or winter. And they’re as healthy as pigs.”
The school room smelled of varnish and wood smoke and wet wool and cedar pencils and chalk. Already there were puddles of water on the floor from the melted snow the children were tracking in. Most of them filed up to the teacher’s desk and stood gazing at me. Many of the girls looked too shy to say anything, but there was whispering among the boys. I overheard snatches . . .
“Got uncommon pretty eyes, ain’t she?”
“Ah, ye always git stuck on Teacher.”
“No such thing!”
“Full of ginger. Reckon she’ll have us a-studyin’ fit for a dog?”
“Naw! She’s too little to tan any britches.”
It was a full fifteen minutes before Mr. Grantland could drag the children away from my desk and get them quiet.
He had another problem too: getting some older boys inside who were loitering in the yard. To my surprise, the girls had seated themselves on one side of the room, the boys on the other. I did not know at the time that this was a centuries-old tradition, even followed by the adults in church on Sunday. Mr. Holcombe hung around, ostensibly feeding wood to the fire, not wanting to miss a thing.
I stood beside the battered teacher’s desk on its raised dais and surveyed the situation. Several of the pupils seemed to be older than I—including the three boys who had been the last ones to enter the schoolroom. Yet there were some tiny ones, surely not more than five years old. Such an odd assortment of garments they wore—coats several sizes too big, with sleeves turned up. Many of the youngsters looked sleepy, many had faces too old and sober, almost like the faces of tired old men and women. There were several cross-eyed children and some whose eyes were quite bloodshot. I recognized four of the Spencer children and nodded to them—John, Zady, wasn’t it? Clare, and Lulu—the ones with whom I had shared Mrs. Tatum’s food on my way into the Cove. John was wearing a sweater with carefully button-stitched holes where the elbows had once been.
Now Mr. Grantland was introducing me. He was telling them that my home was in Asheville and that Dr. Ferrand had persuaded me to come to Cutter Gap. As he spoke, I was trying to estimate the number of children in the room. I counted the number of desks in each row—nine; number of rows—eight. Seventy-two, with five desks empty. How preposterous! How could one teacher handle sixty-seven squirming children? How different the reality was from the way it had sounded in front of Miss Alice’s fire during our first staff conference with her. At that time, she had asked Mr. Grantland to take over the Bible, arithmetic and mathematics classes; I was to handle the rest. Then Miss Alice had helped me plan a daily schedule. On paper the plan had looked so logical. Now I was not sure.
The introduction over, I moved in front of the desk. “Thank you. I—I’m glad to be here. I know that both you, Mr. Grantland, and you, Mr. Holcombe, have all sorts of things to do, so we won’t ask you to stay.” I could not bear the thought of these men watching my first fumbling attempt at teaching, so I gave them a bright, confident smile, hoping that they would take the hint.
A titter began at the front of the room and swept backward. What had I said that was so funny?
I saw amusement in Mr. Grantland’s eyes. Did that mean I had bungled something already? Suddenly I knew how much I wanted his approval.
He asked softly, “Sure you don’t want me to stay?” The look in his eyes suggested that I would be wise to let him. For a moment I wavered, especially when I noticed how closely he had been watching some big boys at the back of the room.
“Lundy Taylor,” he commented in a low voice, indicating a boy as swarthy-complexioned and as large as a grown man. I saw that the face above the red pimply neck could have used a shave and looked sullen and insolent, with a vacant expression. “He’s never been to school before with Allen children.’’
I did not know what he meant, but I did know that these big children, even bigger than I, were my problem. Miss Alice had explained that in the mountains where women were still not accepted as equal, it was important that I grapple with the situation by myself and win recognition on this first day as “Teacher.” That was why she thought it best to stay away. So I tried to put finality into my voice as I said, “Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks so much.”
Mr. Grantland was reluctant but without another word, nodded and left. As Mr. Holcombe grabbed his old black felt hat and slowly turned to go, he advised, “Miss, let John thar or my Sam Houston help you stoke the stove.” Then he too disappeared.
I took a deep breath. So now we were on our own. All at once the children seemed like giants. I leaned against the edge of the desk for support. A little boy in the front row whispered behind his hand, “She’s narvious.”
“How can y’ tell?” another voice whispered. “Look at her shakin’.”
He was right. My legs were trembling violently. Suddenly I could appreciate Miss Henderson’s comment about the school prayer. It seemed that Tennessee law required that each school day begin with a reading of at least ten verses of Scripture and then a prayer. When I had confided to Miss Henderson that I was not sure I could pray before a roomful of children, she had replied crisply, “You’ll need all the prayers you can get.”
The evening before I had decided that for the Scripture I would read the 24th Psalm. I opened my Bible and in a voice as firm as I could make it, read:
“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas,
and established it upon the floods.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
or who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart . . .”
The laughing started again, this time even more openly. I could not understand. Was it the “clean hands” that the pupils thought so funny?
The giggling did not make the prayer any easier, but I held up one hand to try to quiet things down and plunged in: “We thank Thee for those who cared enough to fix up this beautiful new school for us. Help us to appreciate the chance we have here to learn. Be with us as we begin our school. Amen.”
“And now we’ll have a singing period,” I announced. “Let’s start off with ‘America.’ ”
“Don’t recollect that ’un,” a small voice in the front row retorted.
“Don’t know ‘America’! You’re teasing me! You know, the one that goes—” Though I was still a little trembly, I cleared my throat and began
“My coun-try ’tis of t
hee,
Sweet land of lib-er-ty,
Of thee I sing—”
Several of the children were shaking their heads. “No ma’am, we’re not throwin’ off on you” . . . “No, Teacher, jest never learnt hit.”
It scarcely seemed possible that any American schoolchild anywhere would not know “America,” but I decided that this was no time to make an issue of it. “Well then, ‘America the Beautiful.’ That’s a good one.”
Once again heads wagged. “Vow and declare, Teacher, never heerd tell of it” . . . “Guess, Teacher, you’d better rassle up a song we can handle.”
“Then you tell me the songs you do know,” I said in desperation.
A small forest of hands shot into the air. Since I did not yet know names, I had to point to call on each child. “All right, your song?”
“ ‘When the Roll Is Called up Yonder,’ ” an older girl answered.
“A boy now. What’s yours?”
“ ‘Froggie Went A-Courtin’ ”—from a little fellow. “And your song?” I pointed to a larger boy.
“ ‘Oh, for a Faith That Will Not Shrink,’ ” he said proudly. I thought this was rapidly turning into the most incongruous list I’d ever heard. Fingers were wiggling violently to my left. “Yes?”
“ ‘Marching Through Georgia.’ Could we commence with that ’un?”
“We’ll see. All right, one more?”
“ ‘Sourwood Mountain.’ ”
“Yes, yes,” a chorus went up. “Let’s settle on that.”
“Yes, Teacher, that ’un first. That’s the sweepingest song.”
Someone in the room went “Fa-sol-la” to give the pitch and they were off, the singing quite out of my hands:
“I’ve got a gal in the Sourwood Moun-tain
She’s so good and kind,