Ellie watched him. He looked older than Okey. Old as her grandfather. And when news of the war had finished, he wiped a hand across his eyes.
Ellie silently called the boy at school the strongest cuss word she knew, turned back to her room and fell asleep, tears in her eyes for her Uncle Joe and all the real soldiers.
Ellie’s Christmas
ELLIE AND HER MOTHER AND HER SISTERS ALL WENT to the Church of God every Sunday. Okey just stayed in bed, sleeping off his Saturday night.
At Christmas everybody at the Church of God drew names and gave gifts. No one was to spend more that fifty cents on a gift. But for some families, like Ellie’s, an extra fifty cents was hard to come by at Christmas time. Especially when it was fifty cents times five.
Ellie drew the name of a boy who lived at the mouth of Goldy’s Hollow. His name was James Meador, and he was the only child of a truck driver and his wife.
Since Ellie was nearly two years older than James, she knew she should be sensible about giving him a present.
She wasn’t.
For days Ellie walked around with the paper bearing James’s name on it all wadded up and sweaty in her hand.
Ellie looked at socks in the dime store. And handkerchiefs. She looked at baseball mitts. And at gloves.
Almost everything was over fifty cents. She also didn’t like any of it.
Ellie lay awake in bed at night and worried about a gift for James. She imagined what she’d give if she had five dollars to spend and could spend it. She would buy him a paint set. James looked like the kind of boy who would appreciate a paint set with real brushes and paint that didn’t wash off. And maybe a little easel.
Ellie fell asleep counting the pots of paint.
A week was left until the big Christmas program, with the play, and the passing out of brown paper bags filled with treats, and the exchanging of gifts. And Ellie still dreamed of paints and still had nothing to give James.
Her mother had started to complain. All the other girls had bought something for somebody at church. Why couldn’t Ellie just give James a nice pencil set or a box of colored erasers?
Ellie could not bring herself to buy James a pencil set.
And the night before the Saturday program, Ellie went to bed with still no gift to wrap for James. Her mother had given up on her and had bought James a package of No. 2 pencils in mixed colors.
Ellie lay stiff that night and concentrated. She bit her lower lip until the skin was loose, and she thought. Okey snored, Bullet’s chain clinked and the family fell fast asleep, but still she pondered. And when everyone was really dead asleep, she thought of it. She climbed out of bed and headed into the kitchen.
The next day when the Farley women went to church, they each had a package. Including Ellie. It was a wide, flat box that looked like it probably held handkerchiefs. When Ellie’s mother saw it, not wrapped but at least tied up with yellow yarn, she put the package of pencils in a kitchen drawer.
When the Christmas play put on by the younger children ended, the Ladies’ Circle members gathered near the pulpit and handed out the treat bags to everyone.
Then, after all the children (and some of the adults) had taken a good peek inside their bags to see just what kind of fruit they’d got and what sort of nuts and how much rock candy … then came time to open the presents that had been placed under the tree.
To ease the confusion, the congregation was split up into their regular Sunday School classes, since that was how the names had been drawn in the first place. Ellie and James were both in the Young People’s group.
It was difficult for Ellie to guess why James waited until all the rest had opened their presents before he opened his own. But Ellie, holding her breath, as well as the small pack of colored erasers she’d received, noticed that he did wait. And it seemed that when the yellow yarn finally came off the box and the lid was lifted, everybody was ready.
James seemed so surprised, at first, by what he saw, that his face was simply blank. And then, slowly, it opened into a smile.
First he drew from the box a large reindeer. It was a deep red and had horns frosted in sparkling white sugar. Its legs were curved, as though it were leaping—or flying—and a green bell was painted around its neck.
Next James lifted out a snowman. A snowman of rainbow colors—pink face, green arms and a green belly with three blue buttons. He was wearing a top hat of the same deep red as the reindeer, and it was laced with the same sparkling sugar.
James held each cookie up for the others to see as he explored the wide box, and when the box was empty, he sat surrounded by fifteen cookies, each painted and shining and bigger than James’s own hand.
Everyone looked longingly at the treasures as James carefully nested each back into the box (Ellie’s sisters were just flabbergasted), and Ellie blushed as compliments flew her way. She wished Okey had come.
James was not an eloquent boy and his face had spoken plainly enough, but as everyone left the church for home, he caught up with Ellie and split the reindeer cookie with her.
Crazy Cecile
ONE OF ELLIE’S UNCLES—HER LEAST FAVORITE, NAMED Trapper—married a western woman while he was living out in Arizona a while, and he brought her with him when he came home to visit so she could see the snow.
Her name was Cecile, and she reminded Ellie of the witch in Snow White. The witch who tried to kill the girl who was fairest in the land. The girl with white skin. Like Ellie’s. That witch.
Ellie called her Crazy Cecile when nobody was around to hear.
Crazy Cecile would do things no one else dared do. Unspeakable things. If the beef was tough and stringy at supper, they could all count on Cecile to say, “Toughest, stringiest beef I’ve ever eaten.”
It made Ellie’s mother nervous about her cooking.
And all five girls were absolute wrecks about their looks when Cecile was around. She’d tell one her hair could grease a car, or another her pimples would be improved if she washed regularly. The day she commented on how flat Wanda was, the whole household went into dark corners.
Okey was the only one of them that Crazy Cecile didn’t pick on. It was a mystery to them all. Okey cussed too much, drank too much, raced his pickup too much, and he was even growing slightly bald.
Crazy Cecile was unconcerned.
They all tolerated her as best they could. The older girls stayed mostly with friends, Ellie’s mother spent hours in the kitchen, Okey ignored her and Ellie wasted more time outside with Bullet.
One night, though, Cecile and Trapper had an argument and he went off in Okey’s pickup to buy a carton of cigarettes and blow off steam. Then, Cecile could not be avoided.
She sat at the kitchen table and cried. So they all sat with her, even Okey.
She sobbed and rocked and said Trapper would leave her for sure. Her crying was loud, full of strange sounds from her throat, and her nose dripped. Ellie thought she was disgusting.
No one seemed to know what to say to Cecile. The older girls looked embarrassed. Ellie’s mother looked perturbed. Okey looked confused. But no one was willing to leave her.
Cecile wailed and said things about Trapper none of them knew—about Trapper losing his job, getting arrested, wrecking their car.
Her face was awful. Puffed-up eyes, scarlet splotches up and down her neck, and a real mess around her nose.
Ellie wanted to throw up.
But softly, Okey rose from his chair, walked over to the sink and pulled a clean dish towel from the drawer. He held it under some hot water, wrung it out, then came back to the table.
Okey bathed Cecile’s face. He held the back of her head with one hand and wiped her tears, using the hot cloth, with the other.
It quieted Cecile. It quieted them all, deep inside. Okey didn’t say much. Just, “There now,” and “All right, Cecile.” But the sight of him bathing that woman’s face shook them all.
Cecile sobbed a few times more, then stopped altogether. Okey sat down again an
d lit up a cigarette.
“Well, Cecile,” he said, “looks like you and Trapper have got yourselves some trouble.”
Cecile nodded and clutched the dish towel.
“Seems to me,” Okey said, “Trapper ought to come home. Live around here somewhere, where he’s got family.”
Cecile started to nod her head, but then her eyes widened.
“Live here?” she said. “In these rotten hills?”
She flipped the dish towel onto the table.
“I’d rather die.”
She pushed back her chair and went into the living room.
Okey and Ellie and Ellie’s mother and the four girls all looked at each other.
Okey grinned.
“That woman’s crazy,” he muttered.
Ellie giggled.
“Yep,” she said.
All of them grinned at each other. Okey shook his head and went off to bed. The girls headed for the television. And Ellie sat with her mother.
“You think she’s really crazy, Mama?”
Her mother nodded her head.
“Anybody who won’t live here,” she said with pursed lips, “has got to be.”
Ellie’s Valentine
ONE DAY IN FEBRUARY THERE CAME A SNOW INTO THE mountains that was so big even the old ones couldn’t remember any storm ever outdoing it.
It began secretly during the night, and when Ellie’s mother called them all out of bed the next morning and they got a look outside, the first thing the girls wondered was if school would be called off.
They turned on their radio to listen for news of the county schools. But the radio announcer said that, as far as he knew, all the schools were open. The county superintendent had not called.
Ellie kicked the bottom of the refrigerator. But her sisters squealed with delight.
Okey said, “Well, praise the Lord. I couldn’t have stood staying cooped up with six women in this house.” Then he went outside to check on Bullet.
Ellie slowly pulled on her clothes. The real reason she didn’t want to go to school was not the staying at home. She didn’t want to go because it was Valentine’s Day, and she couldn’t bear it if no boy gave her a special valentine. She had already considered being sick for the day, but the thought of staying around Okey and her mother and their squawking had changed her mind.
She knew why her sisters were so happy to be going to school. They all had boyfriends and they knew something special was waiting for them.
Nothing was waiting for Ellie but disgrace.
The snowplows had been through during the night, so the only real trouble they had walking to the bus stop was getting out of their yard. Huge drifts lay alongside the road, and the trees suffered under heavy sleeves of snow. It was still dark, for the sun hadn’t risen yet, but the snow served as some illumination. The girls tramped out to the stop.
Their bus stop was one of the few that had a shelter. Just a wooden building with three walls and no front, but it kept the wind off on bitter mornings.
This morning, though, the snow had been shoved by the plow right up to the shelter and partly into it. About four feet high. Enough to discourage anybody with cold feet and legs from trying to dig through.
“Oh, no!” cried Eunice. She had taken an especially long time to arrange her hair at home. Standing in the road, waiting for the bus in the wet snow and wind, would ruin her, even with the scarf she was wearing.
“My hair!” she cried.
The other girls, less concerned than Eunice about hair matters, ignored her.
Eventually more riders showed up. Judy and Joseph White. C. E. and Cathy Connor. Sonny Mills.
The bus was going to be late. They had already figured that out. So they all hopped and jumped and danced and whistled and whooped and crowed and giggled and shivered and moaned in the road. Waiting for County Bus 53.
And just when they were beginning to give up, just when Ellie was starting to take hope that she could avoid this year’s Valentine’s Day, the wide thick headlights of the bus came over the top of the half-moon hill and everyone (except her) cheered and stamped, then finally climbed on. She was last.
The driver, Mr. Danner, nodded to each of them. He wasn’t usually friendly. Just picked them up and dropped them off. Did his job. Sometimes, though, he’d blow the horn a few times and wait in the road a minute if someone was missing from a bus stop. He’d wait to see if the late one would come puffing over the hill. Or if the rider lived next to the road, Mr. Danner would look toward the front window of the house for a sign of whether someone was coming or not.
Some bus drivers didn’t bother to honk or to wait. Ellie knew that, so she decided she liked Mr. Danner.
The bus lumbered along the snowy road on its way toward the elementary school to drop off Ellie and the kids through eighth grade before it headed on out to Monroe County High School with the rest. Ellie sat alone. She looked out the window and silently cursed Valentine’s Day and boys and school and her sisters and all that made her plain miserable.
The next stop was at Willie Peters’ house. All six kids were at that stop, hopping and blowing. At each stop it looked like almost everybody was making it to school, even the ones who had to walk down off the mountains.
When they came to Blue Jay Six Hill, Ellie wished in her heart the bus might not make it. Might just slide all the way down the hill and back the way it had come. But even Blue Jay Six Hill let her down, and they kept going.
Ellie could just see what would happen at school. They’d make some stupid little valentine to give to their parents or Someone Special the way they always did. Then the boys would sneak around and slide their valentines under some girl’s desk top. And Ellie would clean out her desk at the end of the day and come up empty-handed.
She decided she’d make a valentine for Bullet. Let him chew it up good when she got home.
The bus began slowing down for a stop. Ellie looked out the window to see who was waiting at this one, then she realized there was no bus stop on this stretch of the road. Everybody else did, too.
“What’s going on?”
Mr. Danner let the bus idle a few seconds, then shifted, pulled the emergency brake and shut off the engine.
The loud heater stopped blowing and the sudden silence scared them all.
“It’s a tree!” someone in front shouted.
Ellie jumped up to get a look with everyone else. Sure enough, it was a tree. A big tree, an old tree, a tree too tired to carry all the snow. And it had cracked and fallen across the road, waiting for County Bus 53 to find it.
Hallelujah, Ellie thought.
Mr. Danner climbed off and stood outside, speculating.
Finally he climbed back on.
“Well, kids,” he said, “looks like we gotta hike.”
“Hike?”
“No other way to get around it. Can’t back up on this mountain, that’s for sure. And that tree’s not going anywhere. We’ll have to walk to the Meadors’ on up the road.”
Everybody started talking, giggling, full of excitement. Except, of course, the high-school girls, like Eunice, whose plans were falling to ruin.
Ellie couldn’t believe her luck.
“Okay now, button up. Gloves on, you little ones. You big ones, too, for that matter. Leave your books and lunches on the bus. We’ll get ’em later.”
Mr. Danner led the way out the door. And all twenty-eight of them followed. The kindergartners circled around the bus driver, holding each other’s hands, and the group started walking.
A little boy fell at once. Mr. Danner picked him up and muttered something about slick cowboy boots.
Laughter and talk echoed from them into the woods. Ellie was thrilled. Not only did it look like she was going to avoid humiliation at school—she was actually having a good time. A real adventure in the life of Ellie Farley. Wait until Okey heard about hiking in the dark morning, stranded, hungry (she’d stretch it a little), searching for shelter.
He’d be
impressed.
After about ten minutes of walking, though, some of the little ones started asking exactly how far it was to the Meadors’. Even the big ones didn’t know for sure if it was just around the next curve, or the next, or the next …
Then, after about fifteen minutes of hard walking on that icy road in the snow and wind with no house in sight, the laughter and the talk got thinner. After about twenty minutes, it stopped. And Ellie was breathing hard, her throat was feeling cold deep down inside, and her eyes were watering up.
Someone in the group of kindergartners sobbed. That’s all they needed, all the little ones. They started sniffling, one by one, and before anybody was ready for it, they were wailing.
Ellie decided disgrace, shame and humiliation were all better than what the hike was turning into.
Mr. Danner tried to give the small ones hugs and words of encouragement, but there were eight of them and only one of him.
“My feet hurt,” one boy cried, tears streaming warm down his cold, red face.
Everyone waited to see what Mr. Danner would do.
“Okay, Bobby,” he answered, “If your feet hurt, let me give you a lift.”
To Ellie’s amazement, he lifted the child onto his shoulders.
“Now, let’s try again, kids. Just a little further on.” He smiled at them, patted Bobby’s legs and went on.
But another little one started crying. And, to everyone’s surprise, one of the high-school boys caught up with her and lifted her into his arms.
It made Ellie almost wish she were five years old.
And as they all struggled along, the smaller ones grew so cold and tired that eventually, one by one, they were each picked up by someone larger.
Everyone was silent. Ellie was sad. And so cold. Worst morning of her life.
Those who were carrying the smaller children struggled not to slip and fall, but some fell anyway. And the two would go down together. Some of the small ones could laugh it off and start all over. But others cried.