Walk on Earth a Stranger
Page 3
“And then what happened?” I ask, because I’m supposed to.
He sets down his cup and rocks forward, eyes wide with the fever. “When I got up in the morning, what did I see but my own little Lee with that nugget in her chubby hand, banging it on the floor and laughing and kicking out her legs, like she’d found the greatest toy.”
Mama sighs with either remembrance or regret over the first time I divined gold. I was two years old.
He says, “So I re-hid it. This time in the larder.”
“But I found it again, didn’t I, Daddy?” I cover the ramrod in a patch of clean cloth and shove it down the muzzle. It comes out slightly damp, which means I might have faced a nasty backfire the next time I shot.
“Again and again and again. You found it under the mattress, lodged in the toe of my boot, even buried in the garden. That’s when I knew my girl was special. No, magical.”
Mama can’t hold back a moment more. “These are rough times,” she warns as she drops pieces of turnip into the pot. She has a small, soft voice, but it’s sneaky the way it can still a storm. Mostly, the storm she stills is my daddy. “Folks’d be powerful keen to hear tell of a girl who could divine gold.”
“They would, at that,” Daddy says thoughtfully. “Since there’s hardly a lick of surface gold left in these mountains.”
This is why we are not rich, and we never will be. Sure, the Spanish Moss Nugget bought our windows, our wagon, and the back porch addition. But the Georgia gold rush played itself out long ago, and it turns out that not even a magical girl can conjure gold from nothing or lift it from stubborn rock with just her thoughts. We’ve labored hard for what little I’ve been able to divine, and I’ve found less and less each year. Last summer, we diverted the stream and dug up the dry bed until not a speck remained. This year, we attacked the cliff side with our pickaxes until Daddy got too sick.
There’s more gold to be found deep in the ground—my honey-sweet sense tells me so—but there’s only so much two people can accomplish. Daddy refuses to buy slaves; he was raised Methodist, back in the day when the church was against slavery.
Today’s nugget is my first big find in more than a year.
Lord knows we need the money. Which is a mighty odd thing to need, considering that we have a bag of sweet, raw gold dust hidden beneath the floorboards. Daddy says we’re saving it for a rainy day.
But Mama says we hid it because taking so much gold to the mint would attract attention. She’s right. Whenever we bring in more than a pinch or two of dust, word gets out, and strangers start crawling all over our land like ants on a picnic, looking for the mother lode. In fact, I’ve earned my daddy a nickname: Reuben “Lucky” Westfall, everyone calls him. Only the three of us know the truth, and we’ve sworn to keep it that way.
In the meantime, the barn roof is starting to leak; the cellar shelves are still half empty, with the worst cold yet to come; and we owe Free Jim’s store for this year’s winter wheat seed. A big nugget like the one I found could take care of it all. It’s a lucky find, sure, but not so lucky as an entire flour sack of gold dust worked from a played-out claim.
“So, Leah,” Daddy says, and I look up from wiping the stock. He never calls me that. It’s always “Lee” or “sweet pea.”
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Where exactly did you find that rock?”
“By a new deer trail, west of the orchard.”
“I heard the rifle shot. Sounded like it came from a long ways off.”
“Sure did. Longer still before I got him. I nicked him in the flank, and he ran off. I tracked him down the mountain and across the creek to . . . Oh.”
I had crossed over onto McCauley land.
Daddy’s rocking chair stills. “It doesn’t belong to us,” he says softly.
“But we need—” I stop myself. Jefferson and his da need it as bad or worse than we do.
“We’re not thieves,” Daddy says.
“I found it fair and square!”
He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. If Mr. McCauley came by and ‘found’ our peaches in the orchard, would it be all right to help himself to a bushel?”
I frown.
“She should put it right back where she found it,” Mama says.
“No!” I protest, and Daddy gives me the mind-your-mother-or-else look. I swallow hard and try to lower my voice, but I’ve never mastered the gentle firmness of Mama’s way. I’m a too-loud-or-nothing kind of girl. “I mean, if we can’t keep it, then the McCauleys should have it. Their cabin is in bad shape, and their milk cow died last winter, and . . . I’ll take it back. I’ll give it over to Jefferson’s da.”
Mama carries her pot to the box stove and sets it on top. “What will you tell him?” she asks, giving the stew a quick stir.
“The truth. That I was hunting, that I tracked my wounded buck onto his claim and chanced upon a nugget.”
Mama frowns. “Knowing Mr. McCauley, the story will be all over town within a day.”
“So? No one needs to know I witched it up.”
She slams the pot lid into place and turns to brandish her wooden spoon at me. “Leah Elizabeth Westfall, I will not have that word in my house.”
“It’s not a bad word.”
“If anyone hears it, even in passing, they’ll get the wrong idea. I know we live in modern times, but no one suffers a . . . that word. There’s no forgiveness for it. No explaining that will help. I know it full well.”
Mama does this sometimes. She alludes to something that happened to her when she was a girl, something awful. But I know better than to press for details, because it won’t get me anything but more chores or an early trip to bed.
“And I’ll not remind the entire town that we send our fifteen-year-old daughter out hunting on the Lord’s Day,” she continues, still waving that spoon. “Our choices are our choices, and our business is our business, but no good will come from throwing it in people’s faces.”
“I’ll take it back,” Daddy says. “I’ll tell him I was the one out hunting.”
“Reuben, you can hardly walk,” Mama says. “No one will believe it.”
“I’ll wait a few days. Let this cough settle. Then I’ll go. Maybe I’ll do it right before heading to Charlotte.”
This is what Daddy tells us every day. That when his cough “settles,” he’ll take to the road with our bag of gold. He’ll have it assayed at the mint in Charlotte, North Carolina, where no one knows us and no one will ask questions.
“Sure, Daddy.” I don’t dare catch Mama’s eye and give space for the worry growing in both our hearts.
I rise from the table and walk with heavy steps to Daddy’s rocking chair. I pull the nugget from my pocket and place it in his outstretched palm. The gold sense lessens as soon as it leaves my hand, and for the briefest moment I am bereft, like I’ve lost a friend.
“Well, I’ll be,” he says breathlessly, turning it over to catch the morning light streaming through our windows. “Isn’t it a beauty?”
“Sure is,” I agree. It’s so much more than beautiful, though. It’s food and shelter and warmth and life.
He sets down his cup and rocks forward, eyes wide with the fever. “When I got up in the morning, what did I see but my own little Lee with that nugget in her chubby hand, banging it on the floor and laughing and kicking out her legs, like she’d found the greatest toy.”
Mama sighs with either remembrance or regret over the first time I divined gold. I was two years old.
He says, “So I re-hid it. This time in the larder.”
“But I found it again, didn’t I, Daddy?” I cover the ramrod in a patch of clean cloth and shove it down the muzzle. It comes out slightly damp, which means I might have faced a nasty backfire the next time I shot.
“Again and again and again. You found it under the mattress, lodged in the toe of my boot, even buried in the garden. That’s when I knew my girl was special. No, magical.”
Mama can’t hold back a moment more. “These are rough times,” she warns as she drops pieces of turnip into the pot. She has a small, soft voice, but it’s sneaky the way it can still a storm. Mostly, the storm she stills is my daddy. “Folks’d be powerful keen to hear tell of a girl who could divine gold.”
“They would, at that,” Daddy says thoughtfully. “Since there’s hardly a lick of surface gold left in these mountains.”
This is why we are not rich, and we never will be. Sure, the Spanish Moss Nugget bought our windows, our wagon, and the back porch addition. But the Georgia gold rush played itself out long ago, and it turns out that not even a magical girl can conjure gold from nothing or lift it from stubborn rock with just her thoughts. We’ve labored hard for what little I’ve been able to divine, and I’ve found less and less each year. Last summer, we diverted the stream and dug up the dry bed until not a speck remained. This year, we attacked the cliff side with our pickaxes until Daddy got too sick.
There’s more gold to be found deep in the ground—my honey-sweet sense tells me so—but there’s only so much two people can accomplish. Daddy refuses to buy slaves; he was raised Methodist, back in the day when the church was against slavery.
Today’s nugget is my first big find in more than a year.
Lord knows we need the money. Which is a mighty odd thing to need, considering that we have a bag of sweet, raw gold dust hidden beneath the floorboards. Daddy says we’re saving it for a rainy day.
But Mama says we hid it because taking so much gold to the mint would attract attention. She’s right. Whenever we bring in more than a pinch or two of dust, word gets out, and strangers start crawling all over our land like ants on a picnic, looking for the mother lode. In fact, I’ve earned my daddy a nickname: Reuben “Lucky” Westfall, everyone calls him. Only the three of us know the truth, and we’ve sworn to keep it that way.
In the meantime, the barn roof is starting to leak; the cellar shelves are still half empty, with the worst cold yet to come; and we owe Free Jim’s store for this year’s winter wheat seed. A big nugget like the one I found could take care of it all. It’s a lucky find, sure, but not so lucky as an entire flour sack of gold dust worked from a played-out claim.
“So, Leah,” Daddy says, and I look up from wiping the stock. He never calls me that. It’s always “Lee” or “sweet pea.”
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Where exactly did you find that rock?”
“By a new deer trail, west of the orchard.”
“I heard the rifle shot. Sounded like it came from a long ways off.”
“Sure did. Longer still before I got him. I nicked him in the flank, and he ran off. I tracked him down the mountain and across the creek to . . . Oh.”
I had crossed over onto McCauley land.
Daddy’s rocking chair stills. “It doesn’t belong to us,” he says softly.
“But we need—” I stop myself. Jefferson and his da need it as bad or worse than we do.
“We’re not thieves,” Daddy says.
“I found it fair and square!”
He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. If Mr. McCauley came by and ‘found’ our peaches in the orchard, would it be all right to help himself to a bushel?”
I frown.
“She should put it right back where she found it,” Mama says.
“No!” I protest, and Daddy gives me the mind-your-mother-or-else look. I swallow hard and try to lower my voice, but I’ve never mastered the gentle firmness of Mama’s way. I’m a too-loud-or-nothing kind of girl. “I mean, if we can’t keep it, then the McCauleys should have it. Their cabin is in bad shape, and their milk cow died last winter, and . . . I’ll take it back. I’ll give it over to Jefferson’s da.”
Mama carries her pot to the box stove and sets it on top. “What will you tell him?” she asks, giving the stew a quick stir.
“The truth. That I was hunting, that I tracked my wounded buck onto his claim and chanced upon a nugget.”
Mama frowns. “Knowing Mr. McCauley, the story will be all over town within a day.”
“So? No one needs to know I witched it up.”
She slams the pot lid into place and turns to brandish her wooden spoon at me. “Leah Elizabeth Westfall, I will not have that word in my house.”
“It’s not a bad word.”
“If anyone hears it, even in passing, they’ll get the wrong idea. I know we live in modern times, but no one suffers a . . . that word. There’s no forgiveness for it. No explaining that will help. I know it full well.”
Mama does this sometimes. She alludes to something that happened to her when she was a girl, something awful. But I know better than to press for details, because it won’t get me anything but more chores or an early trip to bed.
“And I’ll not remind the entire town that we send our fifteen-year-old daughter out hunting on the Lord’s Day,” she continues, still waving that spoon. “Our choices are our choices, and our business is our business, but no good will come from throwing it in people’s faces.”
“I’ll take it back,” Daddy says. “I’ll tell him I was the one out hunting.”
“Reuben, you can hardly walk,” Mama says. “No one will believe it.”
“I’ll wait a few days. Let this cough settle. Then I’ll go. Maybe I’ll do it right before heading to Charlotte.”
This is what Daddy tells us every day. That when his cough “settles,” he’ll take to the road with our bag of gold. He’ll have it assayed at the mint in Charlotte, North Carolina, where no one knows us and no one will ask questions.
“Sure, Daddy.” I don’t dare catch Mama’s eye and give space for the worry growing in both our hearts.
I rise from the table and walk with heavy steps to Daddy’s rocking chair. I pull the nugget from my pocket and place it in his outstretched palm. The gold sense lessens as soon as it leaves my hand, and for the briefest moment I am bereft, like I’ve lost a friend.
“Well, I’ll be,” he says breathlessly, turning it over to catch the morning light streaming through our windows. “Isn’t it a beauty?”
“Sure is,” I agree. It’s so much more than beautiful, though. It’s food and shelter and warmth and life.
