Mammaw insisted on packing a little bag with dried-apple pies in case Catherine got hungry on her way to Lexington that afternoon, and Grandmommy had to recount all that had happened in the past two weeks, as though Catherine hadn’t been here to see for herself. Grandmommy’s tale kept coming back to her son Spencer, however, and his rescue at the mine, which she attributed to the good life Papaw had led: “If you do what’s right,” she said, “then at the end of your life … you can lie down … and be peaceful with yourself.”
“That’s right, Iree, but Spencer’s not about to lie down. He’s got that garden to plant,” Mammaw said. Then she hugged Catherine as though she wanted her to stay forever—to help plant the garden and pick the beans and eat them with fatback and be still another girl to sleep in Mammaw and Papaw’s house as long as she wanted.
Daddy drove the girls to school in Papaw’s car, with Catherine’s bags in the trunk. He announced that he’d found a man who would trade him a six-year-old Chevy pickup for labor: Daddy would be putting a fence around the man’s two acres of land. The deal had been closed with a handshake, and Daddy was pleased.
“Guess you come at the worst possible time,” he told Catherine, “but you look at it another way, maybe it was for the best. If ever Ivy June needed company, it was now.”
The rescue of the five miners was the chief topic of conversation at school. Whose cousin had been on the rescue team, whose aunt had volunteered for the Red Cross, which ma had driven an ambulance?
There was an assembly of thanksgiving in the gym first period, and two minutes of silence for the two miners who had died. Ivy June bowed her head without guilt this time, grateful beyond words that Papaw had been spared, sorrowful for the families of the miners who had been swept away.
“You’ll have a lot to tell back in Lexington, won’t you?” Mary Beth said to Catherine as they walked back to their classes.
“To tell it’s one thing,” said Catherine. “To be here—that’s something else.”
Together, Ivy June and Catherine gave their mostly finished report about celebrations and festivals, city and country, and it was a relief to talk—to think—about anything else. The class laughed when Ivy June repeated the snipe-hunting story that Papaw had told them. She was surprised when Luke Weller spoke up, a one-sided grin on his face:
“I had that trick played on me once when I went to visit my cousins,” he said. “Only, I caught on to what they were fixing to do, and after they left me holding the sack, I hightailed it back to the house and got there before they did.”
Everyone laughed some more, and Ivy June felt that if she had done nothing else that day but make Luke Weller grin, it was something.
At lunchtime, Ivy June was surprised that a few of the other girls brought little going-away gifts for Catherine. They didn’t offer used clothes, as the girls in Lexington had offered Ivy June. Mary Beth gave Catherine a little bar of homemade soap with a real violet pressed in the top, and Angela gave her a pen with three different colors of ink.
Shirl’s gift was rolled up and tied with a pink ribbon, and Catherine unfurled a huge, triple-extra-large T-shirt with the words One Big Happy … on the front. Catherine shrieked with delight, and so did the others.
“He did it!” Shirl explained. “Fred Mason’s cousin ate the four-foot sub all by himself—had three witnesses—and he got the big T-shirt and gave it to me.”
“It’s big enough for two people!” Catherine said, holding it up.
“Well, let’s see!” said Shirl, and immediately, standing back to back, the two girls pulled the enormous T-shirt over their heads, two arms sticking out each sleeve, four legs out the bottom, and tried to walk together. They even had the eighth graders laughing, Jimmy Harris included.
When school was over, Ivy June walked out to the parking lot with Miss Dixon and Catherine. Mrs. Fields would be waiting for Catherine at the library in Hazard.
“Flora’s going to be at the house to help me get it ready for Mom,” Catherine explained. “I want to put up a Welcome Home sign on the porch. I’m going to have lunch ready for her too, and sort of be her nurse till she’s well.” She suddenly flung her arms around Ivy June.
“Goodbye,” she said into the side of her neck, and Ivy June could feel her swallow. “Thank you for everything. If we wrote a story about this, no one would believe it all happened in the same week, would they?”
“Never,” Ivy June agreed. “Can’t hardly believe it myself.” She glanced over at her teacher. “What do you always tell us? That real life is stranger than stories?”
“I believe it’s ‘truth is stranger than fiction,’” Miss Dixon said. “I’m glad you remembered that.”
“It’s strange, all right.” Catherine hugged Ivy June one last time, and as she got in the car, she whispered, “Hang on to your lucky rock, Ivy June.”
Ivy June grinned. “It’s yours now—something to remember me by. Check your pocket.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
July 4
Seems like a year since I wrote in my journal. Everything I had to share with the class, I already told straight out. Didn’t read any of this. Too personal.
Papaw retired from the mine yesterday, and we didn’t need any fireworks to celebrate. Daddy got us some sparklers, though, and the Hedges came down with their grandkids, and I mean we had these little lights traveling up and down the hill from Mammaw’s to Ma’s, all of us shrieking and carrying on. When the sparklers burned down, all that gunpowder smell filling our noses, I just sat on the porch looking up at the stars, thinking what Papaw said once about the dark being bright compared to the mine. Thinking about how he never has to go in there again.
We’re going to Cutshin tomorrow and get us a dog from the Prathers. That was something else Papaw said he was going to do when he retired. The Prathers’ hound had puppies couple months ago, and Papaw says it’s about time our cats got a little excitement.
Shirl came over on Memorial Day—Decoration Day, as Grandmommy still calls it—and after we’d been to the cemetery, we sat on the porch watching cars go by on the road the other side of the creek. Bet we counted twenty cars in an hour. People from Cincinnati or Cleveland or Morgantown or wherever they moved to, all coming back to visit the graves, just like they do every year.
“Last Decoration Day for somebody,” Grandmommy said, and she knows it could well be her. But she also knows that if it is her that’s gone, she’ll be buried over there beside Grandpappy, and we’ll all be there, making wreaths of summer flowers. We’ll sit in the shade with the other folks we see once a year and talk about all the times Thunder Creek was flooded, who’s moving away and who’s coming back.
I made a wreath for Mr. Weller’s grave. They never could afford a headstone, but there’s a marker with his name on it. I wanted Luke to know that somebody thought to bring flowers for his daddy, same as I’d want him to do for Papaw, if it was him.
Catherine’s mom is doing okay. I’ve had two letters from Cat since she left, and I’ve so far sent her one. She wants to know if we can call ourselves half sisters. Says you can say that without people asking how it got to be half. So I can call myself Ivy June Combs sometimes if I want, and she can call herself Catherine Mosley, just for the fun of it. She jokes that she’ll send me a picture of her every Memorial Day if I’ll send her one of me on Decoration Day.
When we’re both eighteen, we’re going to get together no matter where we are, and we’re going to squeeze into that ONE BIG HAPPY T-shirt and let somebody take our picture.
And because truth is stranger than fiction, maybe I’ll move to Lexington, she tells me. Maybe we’ll both of us move to Cleveland. Or it just might be that I’ll go to college and she’ll be there, and we’ll end up roommates. It could happen.
Ivy June Mosley
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s books take place in many different states and settings, but rural areas are among her favorites. Her father was born in Mississi
ppi, though his parents later moved to Maryland, and her mother was born in Iowa. Phyllis herself was born in Indiana, and vacations were usually spent on her paternal grandparents’ farm in Maryland or on her maternal grandparents’ farm in Iowa. When she received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Phyllis and her husband, Rex, traveled through the little mountain communities of West Virginia and Kentucky, and coal country also captured her interest.
Mrs. Naylor is the author of 135 books, including the Newbery Award–winning Shiloh and the twelve books of her boy/girl battle series, which begins with The Boys Start the War and The Girls Get Even. She and her husband live in Gaithersburg, Maryland. They are the parents of two grown sons and the grandparents of Sophia, Tressa, Garrett, and Beckett.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon
is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.
Faith, hope, and Ivy June / Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: During a student exchange program, seventh-graders Ivy June and Catherine share their lives, homes, and communities, and find that although their lifestyles are total opposites they have a lot in common.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89101-4
[1. Student exchange programs—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction.
3. Toleration—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.N24Fai 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008019625
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Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Faith, Hope, and Ivy June
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