Mama folded up the letter. She handed it to Aunt Vic. Aunt Vic pa.s.sed it on to Aunt Lovie. They cried like little girls like me.

Chapter 6

Mama had said I could go home with Aunt Vic-to spend a whole week-because I hadn't been to her house in a long time, and because Aunt Vic wished she had a little daughter with braided hair and blue-green eyes. All she had was her three grown-up sons, Casey, Hi-Pockets, and Jim-Bo, and Ginger, and Speedy, her horse.

Both Aunt Vic and Aunt Lovie told Mama they knew I would be perfectly safe, but neither one said safe from what. Oh, well, it didn't matter. Grownups never get around to telling all they know.

I was glad Aunt Vic liked my long braids. While she was lifting Ginger, and then me, up into the buggy seat, I looked at her hair. It had started turning gray on top, same as Mama's and Aunt Lovie's. But mostly it was still brown, and her eyes were more brown. Aunt Vic was real pretty. She smiled nearly all the time, too.

"Bandershanks, let's fold the buggy robe around you and Ginger," Aunt Vic said as we were leaving the church grounds and waving good-bye to Mama and Aunt Lovie. "In late fall like this the wind comes swooping down out of the north and blows right nippy."

Aunt Vic's lap robe was a lot prettier than ours. Hers had a long purple fringe. But Ginger didn't like the robe or the fringe. He squirmed and twisted and stood up on the seat, turning himself round and round. Aunt Vic had to sweet-talk him and rub his ears and sweet-talk him some more before he would ever curl himself up and put his head in her lap to go to sleep.

We rode past Papa's new store, the cotton gin, Mister Goode's grist mill, and on toward Ash Branch. Speedy trotted along right pertly where the road was level, but at the foot of the first steep hill he slowed down.

At the top of the hill was the falling-down church by the graveyard. As we came alongside the churchyard fence I was wishing Aunt Vic would stop so I could go see the little lamb on one of the tombstones. I liked that little gray lamb.

Sometimes when Mama drove our buggy by the old church she let me get out and run inside the gate to pat the lamb for one quick minute. And every May, when we all gathered at the graveyard and stayed all day to chop down the weeds and nettles and to sc.r.a.pe away the briar vines and gra.s.s, Mama let me look at the little sheep as long as I pleased. He had about the best spot in the whole graveyard-just inside the fence, under the highest pine.

There he could always rest in the shade.

I glanced up at Aunt Vic and knew she wasn't going to stop.

She didn't have any flowers with her, and she never walked among the tombstones unless she had a bouquet for Uncle Hugh's grave.

Uncle Hugh didn't have a lamb on his headstone. Lambs are for children. His stone, and the one at the head of Grandpa Dave's grave, had both been made to look like trees turned to rocks and then chopped up and stacked up, one short log on top of another.

Mama had said that showed both Uncle Hugh and Grandpa Dave were Woodmen of the World.

I decided not to ever, ever be a woodman. I wanted a lamb, not logs, on my tombstone.

The road became narrow and more and more crooked as we pa.s.sed into the thick woods below the graveyard. The long shadows of so many tall pines made it seem like twilight, Aunt Vic said. Then, in a few minutes, we came out into a big clearing, and Aunt Vic turned the buggy onto a straight stretch of lane where there were cornfields on either side. She said they were Old Man Hawk's fields.

The corn had been stripped of blades and ears so that there was nothing left but row after row of shriveled stalks leaning against each other, waiting to fall to the ground. The goldenrod in the fence corners, so lovely in September, was dried up, dead.

But the persimmon bushes and the young sa.s.safras trees looked quite lively as their half-green, half-red leaves shimmered in the late afternoon sun.

"Their leaves will stay just that bright till killing frost comes," Aunt Vic told me. "And I think they're just beautiful!"

I looked at the leaves again. They were pretty.

"You know, Bandershanks, you can enjoy different things if you keep your eyes open. But if you don't open up your eyes, you miss half of everything along the way."

"How do you miss them?"

"You just won't see what's right in front of you, if you don't look! What you look at has a lot to do with the way you feel and think. And what you think about is very important, Bandershanks. You see this tall gra.s.s and broom sedge all along here between the road and Old Man Hawk's rail fence?"

"Yes'm. It's higher than my head!"

"Notice how it sweeps low with every breath of wind. Now, hon, you can look at that gra.s.s and say to yourself, 'My goodness, the wind sure is blowing.' Or, you can look at it and think, 'Ah, that waving gra.s.s has something to say.'"

"Ma'am?"

"High gra.s.s, in its way, is saying 'All creation knows its Maker. Even wild weeds in the wind bow down, pay homage.'"

I listened. Not a sound. I looked up at the broom sedge again and listened harder. Then I looked up at Aunt Vic's ears to see if they were shaped the same as mine. They were. Still, I couldn't hear the gra.s.s and weeds saying a word!

Aunt Vic reached into her satchel and took out a white, puffy handkerchief that had tatting lace all the way around it and wiped her nose.

I wished I could be a big lady and have a hand purse and carry handkerchiefs with frilly lace.

We came to the house where Old Man Hawk and his wife lived.

We didn't see them, but Mister Hawk's mule Nellie was standing in the barn lot and his c.o.o.n dogs were on the front porch. The minute the two dogs saw our buggy, they jumped off the porch and ran out to the road, barking and barking.

"You scared of them big dogs, Aunt Vic?"

"Why, no. They won't bother us. Ginger knows that!" She lifted the lap robe and peeped at Ginger. He hadn't opened his eyes.

Mister Hawk's hounds soon quit barking. After they'd watched us a little longer they let the hair ridged up on their necks fall back in place and trotted back to the porch to lie down.

As soon as we crossed Ash Branch I knew we were nearly to Aunt Vic's house. Her house wasn't like ours. Sure, it was sort of oldish gray, same as ours. All the houses in Drake Eye Springs were gray, because that's the color houses turn unless you put paint on them. But Aunt Vic's house didn't have a long porch across the front. It had just a half porch. And she didn't have fireplace chimneys at both ends of her house. She kept her front room warm with a nice Ben Franklin stove.

Whoever made Aunt Vic's house forgot to put a wide hall down through the middle so her dogs could trot through whenever they pleased. I knew Ginger didn't like that. The main thing I liked about Aunt Vic's house, though, was that her kitchen was another little house sitting out in the back all by itself.

Aunt Vic helped me out of the buggy. But Ginger jumped out.

"Let's go straight on in the kitchen, Bandershanks. I want to kindle a fire in the cook stove before we go to the cow pen to milk."

After supper, I watched Jim-Bo oil his squirrel rifle. Aunt Vic called him Baby Jones because he was her youngest boy, but he was still lots older than me. Both of my older cousins, Casey and Hi, had pulled off their boots and had edged their chairs close to the heater so they could prop their feet against the top of the wood box while they read.

Jim-Bo had started calling me his Cuddin Sally Sue. I told him and told him that wasn't my name!

"Well, all right, you're Cuddin Sookie Sue."

"That's my doll's name!"

Jim-Bo put his gun back on the rack. "Ail right, Bandershanks," he said, "do you want to hear some fiddlin' music!

How 'bout it, will y'all play some for Bandershanks?"

"Sure. We need practice, anyhow. Eh, Hi?"

"Huh? What'd you say, Casey?"

"Let's practice a little for Sat.u.r.day night and play a tune or so for Bandershanks. She don't never hear dancing music."

"Suits me." Hi-Pockets turned down a page in his magazine and slid it under his chair. "Jim-Bo, go get us the guitar and fiddle outta the side room."

"You've got legs!"

"I've done pulled off my boots."

"And I reckon your little bittie tootsies might get cold walking from here to the side room and back!"

"Boys!"