Azalea: The Story of a Little Girl in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Well, if he must—

“It don’t seem as you ought to be so long getting into such a few clothes, Jimmy,” a soft voice called. “You’ll be falling into lazy habits if you don’t set a watch on yourself, and you’ll never get shet of them, long as you live.”

“Yessum,” said Jim.

“I can see your pa a-coming ’cross the fields now, and I reckon if you don’t do some hustling he’ll catch you dawdling.”

“Yessum.”

“And, Jimmy!”

“Yessum?”

“I’ve been hearing that Aunt Nan Leiter’s got a making of that blue dye like I’ve been wanting. I reckon after you’ve got the wood you’d better walk over yon and get the bucket of it she promised to give me.”

“Yessum.”

“And, Jimmy, here’s your pa.”

“Yessum.”

“Ain’t you washed yet, son? Shame on you!”

There was a wild splashing of water on the back porch where the wash basin stood, a gasping and panting, and then, with one last “Yessum,” James Stuart McBirney stood in the door. His turned-up nose, his freckles and his blue eyes all shone as if he had polished them, and his curling, clay-colored hair had drawn itself up in tight ringlets about his head.

He had been hoping that no one would pay any attention to him, and he had his wish. Ma was setting breakfast on the table, steaming hot from the hearth. Pa was standing outside the door shading his eyes with one hand.

“What all are you peering at that a-way, Pa McBirney?” asked his wife. “Is it some one coming over the gap? I heard tell that Sam Bixby and his brothers was about to bring over a string of horses from their place for trading day at Lee. As like as not it’s them you’re seeing.”

“No it ain’t, Mary—and it ain’t nobody we ever set eyes on before.”

“Why, Thomas, how can you tell that, with them just coming over the top of the gap?”

“Well!” said Pa McBirney, “I’ll be dumfoundered!”

At that Jim and his mother went to the door. They thought it was about time to see what was ailing pa. The three had a way of sharing everything; and it was no wonder that they did so, for they had only themselves for company. Their cabin, with its two large rooms, its open chamber between, and the lean-to, where Jim slept, sat on a pleasant bench of Mount Tennyson, two thousand feet above the level of the sea. Through their yard ran the road that carried people from over Burlingame way, on the other side of the mountain, down to Lee, the town that lay below them in the purple valley. Sometimes, when the wind was right, they could hear the mill whistles blow at Lee, or the church bells ring; and sometimes they could see the houses there as plain as anything. But usually the little town looked to them as if it were wrapped around in purple veils; and when the rain came, it was swallowed up in white blankness.

The McBirneys thought they lived in a very pleasant and exciting place. Sometimes as many as five or six teams passed their door in one day, and it was seldom indeed that anyone drove by without stopping to pass the time of day. If by chance the McBirneys were sitting down to a meal, the travelers were asked to share it with them, and to water their horses and take a little rest before going on down the mountain. Ma said it was a fine thing for them, being taken unawares like that. It made them keep the house tidy and themselves ready to see folks. But there were weeks of rain or snow there on the mountain side when almost nobody passed, and when the McBirneys couldn’t get to town; and the only sounds to be heard were their own voices and the baying of the four hounds, or the crying of the trees and the crackling of the fire on the hearth.

Not long ago, there had been four of them instead of three. There had been Molly, Jim’s little sister, a little girl with hair the color of corn silk, and eyes as dark as “spider lilies.” And now she was lying under that tiny heap of earth beneath the Pride of India tree, and Jim’s mother was different—quite different—from what she had been before. Her face was sweeter, perhaps, but it looked so that Jim couldn’t keep from crying, to himself, of course. And in spite of all they could do, all three of them kept counting Molly in; and now as he ran to the door to see what was going on up there at the gap, he couldn’t help thinking how much more fun it would have been if he and Molly had been pushing and scrambling and pretending to see which could get out first, in the old way. In those old days his mother would have been calling out in the laughing voice she used to have:

“Come along, children, something’s going on.”

But now father, mother and boy were silent as they stood together looking up where the red road made its way through the forest over the gap.

Pa was the first to speak.

“As near as I can make out,” he said slowly, “it’s three wagons loaded to the limit, and a lot of people on foot walking alongside.”

“Queer doings, ain’t it?” murmured ma.

“I allow I’d better run up the road a piece,” Jim said, slipping in his words softly, as if he hoped they might go unnoticed, “and see what’s doing.”

“And I allow,” said his father in his most downright voice, “that we-all will just sit down and eat that there good breakfast ma has cooked, and if we keep eating steady we’ll be through with the whole business before them folks, whoever they be, gets anywhere nigh.”

“Oh, yes!” added ma, “I do wish you’d sit down and eat things while they’re hot and fit for eating.”

So they sat down and went at their breakfast as if it were a piece of hard work that must be got out of the way, and then, having finished and slipped what was left to Molly’s cat and the four hounds, they got out of doors as quickly as they could.

“The procession is hid around the bend of the road,” said ma.

But even as she spoke the words, the “procession” appeared, though it was almost above the McBirney’s heads. Both men and animals were moving along very slowly, as if—as pa put it—they were “dead beat.”

“It looks,” said ma softly, “like a funeral.”

“No, it don’t nuther, ma,” pa answered sharply. “It don’t look nothing like a funeral. It looks like a family moving.”

“It’s a mighty large family then, Thomas.”

“Maybe it’s folks going down to work in the cotton mill at Lee,” Jim suggested. “I heard Rath Rutherford saying there was agents going all through the mountains, asking folks to go down and work.”

“Yes, folks with children,” snapped Pa McBirney. “That’s the kind they want, and that’s the kind that’ll go—folks that can get their boys and girls in the mill and make ’em work for ’em. I’d see myself lying down and letting my children put food in my mouth!”