Some boys and girls in America

Front matter

MARGARET T. APPLEGAKTH

Class

Bonk : /\lp 4~ ^

Contents

I Let’s Discover America, 13 II Tobijah and the Tucker Tarheels *,23

III Early Bird Catches Christmas *, 44

IV Big Chief Like - Thunder - on - the - Mountain

II

/ TpOBIJAH had his hands full. More than full!

For this is the story of “when pappy went to fight the war and never come back to the mountings.” And without pappy, Tobijah had the whole family on his hands. Somehow they seemed even more than they actually were, owing to their names: straight out of the Bible these came, for once upon a time pappy and mammy had had a Bible, indeed they had, but when they made the moving—would you believe it?—that Bible “got losted”! So now that they were so com¬ pletely out of a Bible it was a great comfort to mammy that parts of it were left securely fastened on her chil¬ dren. No one in the mountains had any finer mouthfillers, for mammy and pappy had certainly been won¬ ders in picking names so that not a child of theirs could ever get mistaken for a neighbor’s (as so easily happens when a whole blockful of Marys, Ruths and Williams rub elbows in one city street). But who could ever mix Tobijah or Habbakuk, Solomon or Queen-of- Sheba (all in one piece you said her, or just Quee for short!), Bethlehem or Boanerges? For the next-tothe-last baby they had selected Pildash, thinking it would be easier to shout across the hills when he reached the running-away age. Meanwhile they called him Dash, for short, for just as city children save their 23 sashes and their Sunday clothes for state occasions, so the Tuckers saved their names for special times!

They never tired of questioning about this Book they came from: “I reckon you-uns must have read it plumb through, mammy, to find so many names ?”

But mammy shook her head and pappy shook his. “No! No!” he said, “she done had no book-raising, your ma were just jerked up, so to speak.”

“Then how come you ever found us in that Bible ?”

So finally, in the secret of the family, they admitted that they had never read the front part of the Book at all,—it took a powerful lot of spelling to read even a page. (“Indeed it must!” gasped the little awe-struck Tuckers.) But way over in the back they had been fortunate enough to find some pages labeled in big letters “Proper Names.” And if proper for Bible people, how very, very proper for the little Tuckers! It was the luckiest thing in the world that they had had a name all picked out for the newest baby, for you will remember that when they moved over the hills of North Carolina their Bible “got losted.” But the name was firmly fixed in every one’s mind all ready for the baby: the very best name of all, pappy thought, for he had discovered that the oldest man in the world had been called “Methuselah”; and before he went to war he used to pat his new little Methuselah Tucker on the head and say: “Now quit your squawling, Thusey; I reckon you’d best save your breath till you gets old like pappy.”

Methuselah, however (who should have been a boy, of course, but wasn’t!), had her own ideas of life, and being quiet was not one of them. She wailed loudest of all on the day when pappy went down the mountains to fight the war, and perhaps she really knew best about this. For you will remember that pappy never came back. Which was the reason why Tobijah had his hands full.

There is something entirely different about Carolina mountain fields. Even after you get the rocks out of them they lie, bias-fashion, upon steep hillsides and many a tarheel farmer has been known to tumble out of his own cornfield into a neighbor’s! But Tobijah did not have even that small comfort, as there was no neighbor near enough. Just rocks. And rills. And templed hills. Yet he never sang, “My Country, ’Tis of Thee!”—for the simple reason that he had never heard it. You may think this queer, when pappy had gone off to fight our war; but, you see, pappy only went because down at the cross-roads one day another man happened along and told him that there was a big war, that strong men were needed, that they paid $30 a month to soldiers—so pappy enlisted. But he him¬ self had never heard “America” until he reached the training camp. So you will see that there are parts of the United States quite different from other parts— way, way behind the times, fully two hundred years be¬ hind! And in the mountains of North Carolina life is especially different, somehow. Very primitive, with log cabin homes that look as if they had fallen by sheer chance into little clearings on the mountain sides.

Oh, that Tucker log cabin! With its rough-hewn logs warped so wide apart that the cat and all her kittens could slip in or out of the chinks by day or night quite easily; and through those cracks b’r’r’r’r’r! how the mountain winds did whistle on chill evenings! But there was the open fireplace where mammy cooked the meals right on the hearth (with “spits” and “cranes” and “baking boards”)—just such a fire and just such a cabin as the one where Abraham Lincoln used to read and study and ponder years upon years ago. But, ah me, there was this difference between Lincoln and Tucker, for neither Tobijah, ’Bakuk, Solomon or Queenofsheba could read or write a single word. Mammy had no book to teach them letters from, for one thing: and what’s the good of reading anyhow, she probably thought, when there were nine hungry mouths to feed and Tobijah must hoe and plant, Queenofsheba must be forever going down the hill to fetch a pail of water, while Habbakuk tended pigs, and Boanerges chopped wood, wood, wood! Thusey had the only really pleasant Tucker occupation, since lying on her back and howling came so very natural to her.

On a certain afternoon that began like any other afternoon, you are to picture Queenofsheba down by the brook washing the clothes with a vigorous rub-adub-dub. Dash splashed around in the brook making a perfect nuisance of himself, stumbling over boulders; and Quee was being rather stern with him, I fear, when suddenly she stopped in the middle of a sentence and stood there with Dash dangling in mid-air. . . . For an apparition was approaching! “A ghost!” she trembled. “But are there ever haunts afore sundown?” No, of course not; don’t be plumb foolish, Queenofsheba, can’t you see it’s just a white-robed lady on a whitish horse, riding along up the bed of the brook, looking much relieved to see somebody ahead. Even somebody with a small boy dangling in mid-air at the end of an arm!

Queenofsheba dropped poor Dash, and stared at this Lady From Far Off, longing to run, but rooted to the spot. All the women she had even seen wore sunbonnets, yet here was a person with something entirely different—covered with “artificials.” Queer: but nice! Then the Lady smiled, and Quee felt the stiffening begin to return to her startled knees.

“Is there a house near by?” the stranger asked.

Quee nodded. (Her tongue was still tucked up close against the roof of her mouth from fear.)

“Then could you show me how to get there, for I’ve lost my way; and maybe your father could direct me.”

“Pappy went to fight the war, and he never come back.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry! But your mother—is she home ?”

“Yep, mammy’s around. Fetch your nag this way.” So Quee and the Lady went up the hill to the log cabin. And nothing was ever quite the same again for the Tuckers.

For although the Lady had lost her way and had seemed in a hurry to find it again, she gave one glance at that lonely cabin with a hill sitting in its front yard and another hill sitting in its back yard and no neigh¬ bors to be seen for miles, then she sat right down in mammy’s wobbly splint-seated chair and started in talking with this backwoods mother who probably had had no caller in years. Ma Tucker must have been “sav¬ ing up” for company, for she simply couldn't get talked out—all about how pappy went to war, how Thusey never quit yelling (“Now what makes her, anyhow?”), how Tobijah had done stuck his toes into these cornfields and was aiming to get crops like pappy got. . . .

The Lady From Far Off unpinned the hat-with-theartificials and said she'd spend the night, for the sun had actually begun to set before mammy got halfway through with Tobijah, and there was still little dumb Beth to discuss. So mammy beamingly mixed up some flapjacks and slapped them on a piece of board to bake on the hearth, then sliced off enough bacon for supper.

But when they all sat down to eat, the small Tuckers were really too tongue-tied to chew! At least until the strange Lady looked out at the sunset and cried: “Oh, just look at those hills and valleys now! As if a giant clerk in some big store had unrolled yards and yards of soft green velvets, piling them up in folds of loveliness for us to choose from! I choose that little blue-green ridge for mine, the one that’s leaning up against the fat pink cloud. . . .”

“My! Don’t she be a queer-un?” snickered Bo¬ anerges, taken off his guard by this delightful non¬ sense about clouds and stores and velvet hills.

“I’m not the least bit queer!” the Lady laughed. “Now tell me, Boanerges, where did such a peaceful little fellow as you ever get that fierce and war-like name ?”

“Pappy fetched it out of the Bible/' explained a chorus of small Tuckers, “pappy fetched us all out of the Bible!”

“And then the Bible got losted,” Boanerges added with gentle regret.

“Oh, what a pity! And haven’t you a Bible now?”

“No,” sighed Ma Tucker, “but it wouldn’t do us no good if we did have one, since nary a Tucker can read now that pa’s all gone. I reckon Bo and Dash ain’t never even seed a Bible, nor Methuselah, either.”

“Well, that’s soon remedied,” cried the Lady From Far Off. “Wouldn’t one of you like to go out to the saddle bag on my horse and bring me the Bible in¬ side it?”

Every blessed little Tucker made such a wild dash for the “Bible nag” that they almost took the log cabin along with them as they squeezed pell-mell through the doorway.

“Ah me!” sighed the Lady to herself, wishing she knew some get-rich-quick way to work wonders in that gloomy house that had no books, and indeed, no any¬ thing else to speak of: the queerest furniture you ever saw, with Tuckers sitting around on empty kegs for chairs, and one curious bed in the corner—so lumpy that it looked like snow-crowned peaks of the Alps; and not so very snowy, either, when Thusey was always being ordered to quit her wallowing around on top of it. The Lady couldn’t help but wonder where she her¬ self would sleep that night; one bed would certainly be popular with ten sleepers claiming it!

But before she solved this problem the Tuckers came marching back in dignified procession, as people should who carry the Book they came from, a Book they never really expected to see. Yet here it was! With real gold edges, and leather-like pebbly black ant-hills all over it. “Or like the back of some snake,” suggested Solomon. But Queenofsheba silenced him with an awful scowl,—imagine saying such a common thing about a book so precious that she carried it in the folds of her calico skirt, afraid to handle it!

“Did we sure-enough come out of that there ?” Dash asked, pointing, and probably wondering how from head-to-heels he had emerged from it.

“Don’t you dast to touch it, Pildash Tucker!” Queen¬ ofsheba ordered fiercely. And the Lady From Far Off could have cried whole buckets of tears to see the stricken disappointment in those little Tucker faces. Why, why, they had been counting on touching it. “Not jess a lick-and-promise touch?” Dash begged wistfully.

“My dears,” the Lady smiled, “it’s specially made for you to touch and touch and touch. And what’s more, in the place I come from there are lots of other Bibles, so this one I give to you right now. Yes, for keeps! If you like, I’ll read you stories from it, shall I?”

They “liked”!

As little thirsty plants drink in the rain, they sat around her, afraid to miss a syllable. Ma Tucker nodded proudly: “Yep, it’s sure enough the Book you-uns was took from. Perhaps you could even find their places in the Bible, could you ? Then I could see onct more how they look in printing.”

So the Lady pointed out the Queen of Sheba chapter and the book of Solomon: you should have seen the twins! The little mountain Queenofsheba flounced her skirts with regal haughtiness while Solomon Tucker tried to look wondrous wise. And failed! How could he, when bangs of tousled hair drooped into his eyes and rope suspenders held up clumsy homespun trousers several sizes larger than he needed? (Ma Tucker sewed them to last all the time that he was growing up!) As for Boanerges Tucker, his gentle face grew positively awe-inspiring when he found that his name meant “Son of Thunder,” and that originally there had been two of him called James and John! So the Lady went the rounds—Habbakuk, Tobijah, Pildash and Methuselah: they each saw their names in print and heard all there was to tell about them, until the Lady From Far Off imagined she had finished everybody. But no, Ma Tucker pushed forward a small girl: “There’s still Beth; nary one of us knows what ails her, but she’s never spoke up proper. Just sets all day and looks around. Mebbe you-uns could do Beth a good turn by fishing her story out of your Bible.”

“What’s Beth’s whole name?”

Ma Tucker apologized: “I reckon you-uns won’t think much of it; you see, I was plumb took with it onct when I had a spell of sewing quilts, I fancied the hem part of her name—Bethlehem! Reckon mebbe you can’t even find it in that there Book.”

Bethlehem Tucker’s big shy eyes peered at the Lady From Far Off, and nobody understood at all why the Lady should gather the little dumb girl into her arms and onto her knees as she kissed her, crying: “Oh, but Beth has the loveliest name of you all, the very love¬ liest, for wasn’t it in Bethlehem where Christ was born ?”

A silence fell. At first she thought this was because the Tuckers were impressed. But when she looked into their faces lighted only by the flickering logs upon the fireplace she saw that their expression said as plain as day: “Well, what of it? We’re waiting.”

“D-don’t you know who Christ is ?” she stammered.

“Nope!” The little Tuckers shook their heads, and Ma Tucker added: “ ’Taint as if I hadn’t always aimed to tell ’em lots of things, but I been so took up with work and tiredness. Eight kids is plenty. I reckon they knows who God Almighty is, all right, though.”'

“Oh, yes,” nodded the Tuckers, God Almighty they knew. He was where you went when you died good. But when they heard the whole story of Bethlehem they agreed it was by far the dearest name of all, and smoth¬ ering their yawns begged eagerly to sit up all night and hear some more—for wasn’t this their only chance in a lifetime to catch up with news? But it was far too late already; so Tobijah dragged from underneath the bed another mattress on which all the boys lay down, while the others slept sideways, like sardines, upon the lumpy bed. And because she was the guest, the Lady From Far Off was given the edge nearest the fireplace, furthest from those draughty chinks between the logs.

Long after the nine others were sound asleep she lay on the uncomfortable ridge of her share of the “Alps,” staring at the rafters. Queer things dangled down at her, looking queerer than ever in the shadows cast by the flickering firelight—but she knew that the fattest danglers were smoked hams hung up for winter use, while those slender spidery things were strings of dried fruits and vegetables. She pictured all the weary dig¬ ging, planting, and raking which Tobijah had to do before those vegetables could be harvested—with Habbakuk’s and Solomon’s help. She looked at the old spinning wheel in the corner on which all their shape¬ less Mother Hubbard frocks had been spun, and she pictured how mammy and little Queenofsheba prob¬ ably toiled from dawn to dusk. One day exactly like another.

“I’m probably the only exciting thing that’s ever happened to them!” she sighed, and the logs on the hearth snapped apart as if to answer: “Quite true! Quite true!” while the night wind whistled down the hillsides moaning through the chinks: “You! You!”

“Yes,” agreed the Lady sleeplessly, “you needn’t re¬ mind me! I know only too well that I was sent to save these lonely Tuckers—and all the million others like them! But, dear Christ of Bethlehem, how—how ?”

* * *

But in the morning when the mists rolled up from the valleys the Lady From Far Off knew “how.” She tiptoed to the doorway and hurried to the brook to wash, but the twins discovered her with toothbrush and paste.

“How often do you-uns do that there?” Queenofsheba questioned curiously.

“Three times a day!” the Lady answered, whereupon Solomon said scornfully: “ ’Pears like you-uns was a heap of trouble to yourself!”

“Down where I live every single boy has toothbrush drill,” she smiled, and spent the morning telling other wonders of this school for boys where she longed to have Tobijah come. There he could learn new ways of farming as well as get book-knowledge, and—would they believe it?—but some Christian children from up north had sent money to pay for some boy’s schooling one whole year—some very special boy, they wrote. And it had dawned on her that Tobijah was special! Could they spare him for this chance ?

Such a hub-bub! Solomon was sure that he and ’Bakuk could hoe and plant and harvest. Boanerges also boasted of his powers. Dash volunteered to mind the pigs! So when must Toby start? And how long must Toby stay? And wouldn’t it be fine when Toby was a scholar! My!

There was no calendar in the cabin, of course, but before she left, the Lady notched the door-jamb with nine nicks. “Each day cross off a nick,” she ordered, “and on the ninth morning start for school, Tobijah. I’ll be watching for you! Good-by.”

So nothing ever was the same again. For in their endless loneliness she had wakened a new interest. And there was the precious Bible, too, wrapped in mammy’s patchwork quilt. Moreover, every morning Tobijah marked off a nick upon the door-jamb until the ninth dawn came. Then solemnly the Tuckers escorted him to the rising of the nearest hill.

“Nary one of you must come farther,” he ordered, trying hard to swallow a queer marble in his throat.

Queenofsheba clutched his arm: “Stuff your head jam-full, Toby Tucker! And now I reckon we’d best turn back, for Dash and Thusey have come a right smart piece for babies.”

So Tobijah traveled on alone, while the marble in his throat grew boulder-size. And he thought it was a powerful misty morning. But the sun had never risen quite so pink or clear; the mist was all in Toby’s eyes, I fear.

“Hi, there!” yelled Queenofsheba from ’way off. “Mind — you — care — for — mammy's — shoes! Save—• ’em—till—you— gets —there!”

From the far bend of the woods below Tobijah waved obediently. He could not yell on account of the marble that felt like a boulder. But what had struck Quee, anyhow? He hugged the shoes closer under his arm: he reckoned he knew without being told how to be careful of the onliest shoes in the whole Tucker family!

At noon he ate a hunk of bacon and dry bread, then tramped on and on and on till sundown, when he slept in a farmhouse. Dawn saw him off once more, and toward noon he spotted “it” down in the valley: neat red roofs that covered clean white houses: School!! Another mile, then he sat down to put on mammy’s shoes. They felt too tight! He dusted off his tight homespun breeches and stepping jauntily up the pebbled driveway, tried to act exactly as if he’d come to school in the valley a dozen times before. But the marble that had spent yesterday in his throat was now bouncing around in his heart, and I don’t know what he would have done if his Lady From Far Off had not been near-to, watching for him at the window, so that the worst was over before it began. And Tobijah started in school.

* * *

1 Everybody who has ever gone to school knows what a vacation is—everybody but Tobijah. He was simply thunderstruck.

“I thought I was in for a year!” he exclaimed, when the long holiday period arrived. He hardly knew what to make of it, until he suddenly realized that of all places in the world a certain little log cabin in a certain little cleared patch of ground on a certain hillside couldn’t be reached fast enough. But the Lady From Far Off had a wise suggestion: “Wouldn’t the family love to have you bring them something ?”

They would! But the things Tobijah wanted were curious indeed. There was that dog-eared old cata¬ logue from a mail order house in Chicago, the one with a thousand pages—could he have that? Certainly, for wasn’t it discarded in the waste-basket, being for the year 1903! Well, next he would like eight tooth¬ brushes, or were they too expensive ? They were, but the Lady never said so, and provided eight with her compliments. Then he wanted to borrow a bell. The very biggest soundingest bell, one that could clang up a hill and down a hill. It was a secret, this! But he promised to bring it back when school opened. So with the heavy catalogue and the toothbrushes under one arm, and the big bell and mammy’s shoes under the other arm, Tobijah tramped home.

And the little Tuckers nearly ate him alive! They had not counted on vacations, either. But now they wanted to know what school was like, anyway.

Well, it was a building, but not the kind of a build¬ ing you-uns ever saw. For it was a house on top of a house, then another house on top of that other house. Floors, they were called. Had any Tucker ever known that houses came in layers? None of them had, not even mammy. ’Peared to her like you couldn’t get up from one floor to another, could you?

“There were steps, indoors; they went through the ceilings into the place above. First week, mammy, every time I walked up I tumbled down,” Tobijah ad¬ mitted sheepishly. “What with the newness of wear¬ ing shoes and not knowing where to step on the stairs, lots of new boys kept falling, too.”

Mammy stared: “Don’t tell me you-uns wore them shoes right along that first week ?”

Yes, and that first month, and all the other eight months, too. Boys always did, in school. But he had tramped home, barefoot, to save them! Then he told about wallpaper. Not a single room with chinks through the log walls, but paper with pictures every¬ where. And pianos to play music on. And a bed for every boy to sleep in alone. Toothbrushes, too. One apiece! You used them this way, see—up and down, with a plenty of water. Yes, they were a present for keeps. So was the big fat book of pictures.

But what was school? Well, school was a room with black walls, and when the teacher ordered it, you wrote on the black walls with a white stick. And his room was full of very little children learning A B C’s.

“But you ain’t little!” cried Queenofsheba,

“But I had to learn A B C’s, didn’t I?” groaned Tobijah, his cheeks flaming red at the bitter shame of those days when he, so big at fourteen, had to sit with the astonished primary infants and vie with them in scratching letters on slates! How could he tell the Tuckers what grit it took; or how once he tried to run away, but the Lady From Far Off had again been near-to, and stopped him. These things were not for Tucker ears, since it was plain that from Thusey to mammy they knew he must have been the smartest boy in school. (“Some day I’m aiming to be,” Toby ad¬ mitted.) But one secret he did share: the secret of the bell that could clang up a hill and down a hill.

“I got two months till school takes up again,” he ex¬ plained, “so I reckoned we could have some reg’lar do¬ ings here every morning, while I learned you-uns and the Briffle children down the hill how to write. Then if you-uns ever gets to school you won’t have the misery of squatting with primaries to giggle at your blunders. See?”

Of course they didn’t see all that Toby saw in his mind’s eye; but they did see that these “reg’lar doings”

were going to be powerful fine. So clingle-clangle-clink the bell rang up the hills and down the hills each morn¬ ing until little Carolina tarheels from the Briffle’s cabin and even from the far-off Jones’ clearing pricked up their ears and ran like mad to reach Tobijah’s school.

You may wonder what he had to teach, with only nine months of education to his credit. But what he knew, he taught. And every day with tedious slowness he spelled out a Bible story. And once when he was telling of town life in valleys, a little neighbor tarheel piped up curiously: “How come we mountain folks is all so different from town folks, Tobijah?”

Tobijah had heard this told in school, and as nigh as he could recollect ’twas this way: “Two hundred years ago, when America hadn’t been over here from Eng¬ land but a short spell, there was folks that got tired of living in the lowlands by the sea, so they started west in wagons. Some of them got clear west, too, but some of them stuck in these here mountains. Why? Well, maybe a wagon broke down! I dunno for sure. Or maybe somebody fell sick! I dunno. Anyhow, those folks that stayed back there by the sea all these two hundred years live in big cities now, with a plenty of schools and churches and books and Bibles. The folks that went clear west in wagons they live in big cities now, too, with a plenty of schools and churches and books and Bibles. But we mountaineer folks who stuck here in these mountains, we’re scattered all over the hillsides with nary a neighbor, and nary a school or a church or a book or a Bible. Just stayed two hundred years plumb behind the times, we have! But now that I knows it, ’pears like God says the onliest thing for me to do to catch up is to have these reg’lar doings with book-learning for you-uns. See ?”

They saw! And oh, but they longed to catch up with those two hundred lost years! In their own peculiar way they have been trying ever since. And what if Queenofsheba’s first way was making paste to paper every inch of their log cabin walls with pages of that mammoth mail order catalogue? So that wherever your eye looks you can see pictures of engagement rings, watches, pianolas, shaving mugs, safety razors, baby cribs, plowing machines, china dishes, shoes, hats, victrolas and cold cream?

We dare not laugh at her, for as Ma Tucker said: “ ’Pears like I take a heap of comfort mooning over all these pictures I never once heard tell of till Tobijah went to school! ’Pears like eddicating a boy does a heap of good to the hull family! And now Tobijah’s plumb set on taking ’Bakuk down to school next fall. But the Teacher-Lady says she dunno; where’s the money coming from? But Boanerges he’s been pick¬ ing berries and toting them down to the cross-roads hoping somebody would come along to buy them off him, and he’s earned all of seven cents so far! He’s the workingest boy! Just think —seven cents! But I reckon it may take a speck more than seven cents to get ’Bakuk eddicated down at Toby’s school. I dunno. But now Solomon says: ‘Ma, ain’t you-uns aiming to give me book-larning to be as wise as that Bible Solo¬ mon?’ Anyhow, ’taint so powerful lonely up here now

Oh, That Lonely Tucker Cabin 41

“1 love thy rocks and rills Thy woods and templed hills —”

Surely you can see from the rocks and rills in this picture what a curiously lonely life must be led by Log Cabin families, when a hill sits in their front yards and another hill sits in their back yards. Yet there are two million of these People-Who-Were- Left-Behind-Two-Hundred-Years-Ago (as Tobijah has explained to us in the story) living in high nooks and crannies of the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and North Carolina.