She swept the dirt out the door and off the porch. While she was outside, she looked around the corner at her troublesome little brothers. She’d sent them out to take turns on the swing that hung off a big oak tree. They weren’t near the oak tree. They’d found a big mud puddle and were stomping and splashing around in it, both of them covered in mud.
Angie sat down heavily on the edge of her porch and, in case either of her brothers bothered to note her reaction, did her level best to look calm and not, in any way, agitated. Inside, however, she was seething, simmering anger over Miss Norah’s slothiness. Was that a word? Laziness. She knew that was a genuine one.
She heard the sound of rustling leaves, then the rhythmic clomping of an approaching horse, so she jumped off the porch, dusted her skirt, straightened her bonnet, all in hopes the rider would turn out to be Finley James. But it was only Brother Wyatt riding past the schoolhouse on his beautiful black horse. She called to him and waved, then walked through the yard to greet him as he came through the trees.
“Looking for Paw? He’s over yonder, getting ready for the brush arbor.” She stroked Lyric’s black velvet nose, wishing she had a bit of carrot for this fine horse. The finest horse in Rowan County, Paw said.
“I am indeed. Thought I’d come up to help.”
“Paw said you’re welcome to stay at the farm.”
“Thank you, Angie. I might take you up on that, if I’m not any trouble.”
“You’re no trouble. Them boys,” she said with an eye on those two little brothers, “they’s nothing but trouble.”
“No school again today?”
“No. It’s a worry. Twice this week.” She glanced up at him. “Say, mebbe you could do the teaching, if Miss Cora fires Miss Norah.” She bit her lip. “Oh, Paw warned me to keep quiet about that and not tell anyone.” But Brother Wyatt wasn’t jest anyone. He was . . . about as close to a holy man as a man could get.
“I won’t tell a soul.” Then he shook his head. “But I can’t teach at Little Brushy. Too much to do.”
Her brother Mikey had started toward the schoolhouse, but Angie saw and cut him off. “Oh no . . . no, you don’t. I jest swept dirt out of that schoolhouse that you brought in. You two git. Go worsh off.”
His twin Gabe was jest as muddy. He lifted up brown palms, as if he was surprised to discover the dirt. “Where?”
“Oh good grief. At the well.” She sighed. “I gots to do everything for them boys.” She turned back to Brother Wyatt, who was watching the scene, amused. “It’s only funny if you ain’t the one to scrub their clothes.”
“I suppose so,” he said with a laugh. “Don’t be too hard on them. Mud puddles are a favorite pastime for little boys. I well remember.” He pulled on Lyric’s reins to turn her back to the trail. “I’ll see you later tonight, Angie.”
She smiled, despite her annoyance with her brothers. It was always a treat when Brother Wyatt stayed with them. Paw would get out his fiddle and Brother Wyatt would sing and Angie and her brothers would clog to their hearts’ content.
Later that afternoon, Angie baked two loaves of fresh bread and took one over to Miss Mollie.
Next to her paw and them brothers, Angie Cooper loved Miss Mollie best. Everybody did. Her lap was always big enough for a crying child, and she always had something sweet to spare from her pantry. Folks in the holler knew to go to her for all their troubles. Collywobbles, heebie-jeebies, colic, too-much celebratin’. Miss Mollie might not be learned, but she knowed most everything worth knowin’.
Angie was particularly fascinated with the love potions and charms concocted by Miss Mollie, all kept in her head. She claimed credit for every love match in the holler, which Angie’s paw said was jest an old woman’s muddle-mindedness.
But Angie thought her paw was wrong on that. Once she’d asked Miss Mollie why her love potions hadn’t done right by Miss Cora. Thrice divorced! No one in the holler ever got themselves divorced. They might hate each other with a fiery passion, but they wouldn’t nary think of divorcing. One holler over, there was a maw and a paw who had said naught a word to each other for years and years and years. They couldn’t remember what they was mad at, but they stayed good and mad.
“Well, there you see,” Miss Mollie had sniffed. “Cora didn’t ask for my holp.”
That settled things for Angie. Miss Mollie was the one to go to for love and everything else.
“I recollect a surefire one,” Miss Mollie said. “If a man wipes his hands on a woman’s apron, he’s shore to fall in love with her.”
Angie looked down at her clothing. “Does that work for a pinafore? Or does it have to be an apron?”
“Apron,” Miss Mollie said firmly, and then, “I think.”
ON SATURDAY, Finley James came to till Arthur Cooper’s field so he could spend the whole entire day at the livery, its busiest day. Angie took a jug of cold water down to the field. She offered the jug to Finley James, then made a point to accidentally-on-purpose pour water all over him. She held out the corners of the apron she wore, her mother’s blue one, for him to wipe his hands on, but he refused.
“You’re all gaumed up,” he said. “And you stink awful bad too.” He grabbed the jug, drank down the rest of the water, handed it back to her, raked his hands through his hair and plopped his hat back on, then returned to plowing.
She looked down at her apron, streaked with chicken dung after mucking out the henhouse. She sniffed her underarms and realized she did smell a little ripe. Miss Mollie shoulda told her to clean up first. Sometimes she thought the old woman’s wits were growing addled.
Bother!
AS THE DAYS PASSED, it wasn’t difficult for Lucy to find practical ways to help ease her cousin’s immense workload. Cora’s day, Lucy had quickly discovered, would start in one direction and veer off into dozens of small distractions. So Lucy’s main objective would be to handle as many of those distractions as she could. She set to work to organize the chaos. Scattered all over the office were notes—meetings, reminders, invitations to speak, and an abundance of to-do lists. She pinned a calendar to the wall, an attempt to keep Cora tethered, to try and create some semblance of order for her.
This morning Lucy found a file full of neglected correspondence from teachers and principals who applauded Cora’s work as superintendent of schools, including many invitations to speak. Lucy found one letter from Kentucky’s Christian Women’s Board of Missions, asking Cora to speak at their convention in Louisville about Progressive Reform. She was a gifted orator and would love to make more time for speaking engagements, but she was bent on improving the fifty-one little one-room schoolhouses sprinkled throughout the county. An education, she believed, was the great equalizer, the answer to all of life’s injustices.
Lucy hoped Cora was right about that. She was astounded at the abject poverty, the enormous gulf between townspeople and hillbillies. She corrected herself. Cora disdained the term hillbillies. She was a fierce advocate for the mountain people, speaking of them almost as if they held on to characteristics fading away in the rest of America: honesty, pride, ambition, reverence for God, a simplicity that she described as a purity of heart. She felt that the barriers between mountain people and city people were geological, not intrinsic. The mountains isolated them and kept them from the opportunities that were due to them. Educational ones, mostly.