Otherwise Known as Possum Read online

  Market days bring together town folk, farmers, and country people like nothing else but a church social could. Everyone took the chance to trade or shop, bringing carts and packs full and leaving with them just as full. Plus, of course, everyone had to catch up on as much news as they could carry.

  “Market looks to be bigger this time,” Daddy said. “Folks done puttin’ up summer gardens and crops are ready to barter out. Got anything in mind?” From where we stood, I could see jars of molasses, lumpy sacks of potatoes, bales of hay. The smell of fried chicken and fried catfish and fried who-knows-what all hung in the air. “Marbles, maybe.” I wasn’t sure if I was still mad at him.

  “Again? You sure you wouldn’t like you some toilet water or something else a young lady of your age should want?”

  Who was that asking? Sun didn’t seem that hot. “Dumb, frilly stuff? No, thank you.”

  “Lotta girls your age don’t think it’s dumb,” he said.

  Like he would know.

  “Maybe a pretty little school dress?” He pointed the way we’d just come, and my eyes followed his point past a few tied-up saddle horses, two trucks, a car, and a buggy, all the way to—wouldn’t you know?—that Mary Grace Newcomb, stepping from around the buggy and looking like she was drowned in pink snow.

  “I ain’t gonna walk around like no … ice cream sundee.”

  “What side of the bed you get up on this morning, girl?”

  I ignored Daddy’s question by focusing my ears on the sound of a wagon rattle-rolling over the hard-packed road somewhere behind me and trying to guess whose it was and whether it was coming or going. Behind and over the sound were others, people greeting and bickering, bartering, farewelling, and laughter, and—

  “Hel-lo there, Lem.”

  Miz Pickerel! Last we’d seen of her, on church Sunday, she’d looked like any one of those old Crows that always seemed to be tormenting me and Daddy. But alone here, in a soft hat the color of June sky, she looked different. Kind of sparkly.

  “How do, Miz Pickerel.” Daddy smiled small but genuine.

  How I loved that smile. And wanted it for just Momma and me.

  “And Possum Porter. My, how you are growing! Are you and your daddy having a good time?” She sounded like she was cooing to a litter of kittens. It was hardly the look or the voice she’d used in front of Miss Nagy on the day of the sweet tea rebellion. I blushed then, not so much at the thought of my little trick, but at the thought that Miz Pickerel might be thinking about it at the same time that I was thinking about it.

  I shrugged and stared at the hem of her dark-striped dress. It looked to me like she’d wrapped herself in a preacher’s tent. But forcing myself to look up at her, I had to admit that the color in her cheeks beat the cracked and powdered pale of most of the Town Ladies.

  “Market’s a little bigger this time, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice then suggesting that it was Daddy, not me, who was the baby.

  “Cannin’ time,” Daddy said, nodding. “I was jis’ telling Possum it looked bigger. Don’t you think so, sweetheart?”

  I shrugged again. I couldn’t believe I’d thought she was nice. ’Course, that was alongside the likes of Miss Nagy. At least Miz Pickerel’s face wasn’t as sour as old Miss Nagy’s. But still.

  “Did you see where they’re selling apples?” he asked her. I perked, as I wanted to get apples for Daddy’s surprise pie, even if I was a tad cross with him yet.

  “Keep going, and you’ll run right into them. Possum, you the one likes apples?”

  Shoot! I didn’t want anyone catching on to my plan, especially not her. I shrugged. My shoulders were getting their work done.

  “Noralee made a fine pie,” Daddy said, watching his feet as he shuffled up some dust. “We both of us miss that.”

  “Well, which one of you is the baker now?” Miz Pickerel asked gently.

  Daddy smiled. “I was gonna take a hand at it. You know—”

  “Why go to all that trouble? You’re talking to the best apple-pie maker there is. Fine cobbler too.”

  “I don’t want you to go to any—”

  “Trouble? It’s a pleasure.” She was blinking her eyes like she had dust in them. “I’m fixing to bake tomorrow, and I won’t hear another word against it.”

  “We sure appreciate you being so neighborly,” Daddy said.

  Was I hearing right? Did he just give away my job?

  “Don’t we, Possum?” He took my hand and squeezed it.

  Sure, I appreciated having my Daddy’s care and feeding taken from me and given to nearly complete strangers. I shrugged and took back my hand.

  “I’m heading over to the rooster pen, picking me out a nice fryer. I don’t suppose—”

  “Good-bye, Miz Pickerel,” I said, pushing Daddy away. “We got to go now.”

  “What’s got into you?” he asked when we were a few feet and one mule-cart from that pie-baking devil.

  “You wouldn’t be visitin’ and carryin’ on so if Momma was here.”

  Daddy rubbed his eyes with one hand.

  “You want me to forget about Momma?” I asked, fearing the answer even though I needed to hear it.

  “Possum! Don’t you ever say that again. You hurt me and you hurt yourself speaking such wickedness.”

  We passed washtubs full of Nehi and Co’Cola. My feet stopped like of their own accord, but Daddy kept on. “I’m not sure this is turnin’ out to be a Nehi kind of day,” he said.

  And getting worse all the time, for coming up behind Daddy I saw Miss Arthington, all done up like a chocolate bar, but with brown flowers on her blouse. Aren’t brown flowers the dead ones?

  “Good afternoon, Mister Porter.”

  Daddy raised an eyebrow at me and put on a smile as he turned. “Hello there, Miss Cordelia.”

  “Miss Cordelia”? When did Daddy take to calling Teacher by her Christian name?

  “Say hello, Possum.” I managed the kind of wave that wouldn’t scare a butterfly.

  “We’re makin’ the rounds and runnin’ into neighbors right and left,” Daddy said. His voice was smooth, but I noted his eyes bouncing like rubber balls from me to her and back.

  That was when I saw Miss Arthington signaling to Daddy, like trying to send him secret messages. Like if she thought I was a stump named Mary Grace instead of a person with eyes and sense.

  “LizBetty,” Teacher said of a sudden, “would you please get me a Coca-Cola?” She reached for the clasp on her handbag.

  “Please, let me,” Daddy said, digging into a pocket of his coveralls. Daddy was the handsomest man there. Still, I was glad to see he wore the ones patched on both knees, including the crooked one I’d re-sewed myself not long before.

  Miss Arthington smiled. “If you’d like, bring three straws, and we can share.”

  I didn’t know my face could burn hot and cold at the same time, with prickles in the tip of my nose and ears like they were on fire.

  Daddy handed me five cents, still warm from his pocket, and they felt heavy as lead. I closed my hand around them.

  I had no intention of getting a soda pop. I needed to get away. I shoved my fists deep into my pockets till I got to Guernsey’s pig pen. I threw the pennies into the slop trough hard as I could. “Take that, and that, and that,” I muttered, picturing Teacher’s face on each bitter-odored coin.

  Then I walked back toward Daddy and ducked behind a barrel of Bill’s Pickles.

  Daddy was leaning in toward Miss Arthington. Leaning in a bit too close, far as I could see. The breadth of Elliott County might have been close enough, to my mind.

  I strained to hear.

  “—so nice for school. How—?”

  A commotion in the rooster pen drowned out Daddy’s reply.

  “A lady—pretty as a picture,” Daddy said.

  He thought she was pretty? That mushroom? I couldn’t hear what Teacher said next.

  Then Daddy said something about our house.

  “Why don’t I co
me by when she’s not there?” Miss Arthington said. “She won’t suspect.” That I heard clear as church bells.

  I expected Daddy to get red-faced mad and tell her to mind her own business and stay away. Instead he nodded. “After school,” he said. “She and her dog usually take off into the woods till she gets hungry enough to come in. If you’re sure it’s no trouble, you could easily come by before she—”

  Too much for me. I bolted, a dam full to bursting behind my eyes. I couldn’t decide who I was madder at: Daddy for conspiring against me, Momma for dying, or me for crying like a sissy. Again.

  What I knew was I had to get away, and I didn’t want to be found for a while. I went out to GrandNam and GrandPap’s tree and sat in the clearing where nothing would grow. Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured things I didn’t want to see, but at last I must’ve slept.

  When I woke, I spotted Venus, first gal at the sky ball as usual. I lay on my back, hands laced behind my head, and looked up. I remembered something that, as usual, hadn’t made any sense at the time. Like black night turns into mere dark once your eyes are used to it, memory shadows shaped themselves into understanding. Mary Grace was right. Daddy was courting Miss Arthington. Clearly, I had to get done with school as quickly as possible, if nothing else, to keep those two apart.

  But at last I was cold and hungry enough to go home even though I didn’t want to be home.

  Home was supposed to be where people cared about each other. My daddy and his daddy built our house of rough-cut lumber. He taught me how they’d smoothed all the door casings and baseboards with a hand plane.

  Since I could remember, whenever Daddy was bothered, he’d go to his shop and work a piece of wood, sometimes sanding for hours. Used to be I’d run my hands over some of his sweet-smelling wood, knowing the sweat and sadness he put into it. After Momma died, some wood got sanded down near to paper.

  Usually, I loved the feeling of heading toward home, but on that evening, it felt about as familiar as watermelon in winter. The smell of sawdust and varnish reminded me only of what was missing, of what we had lost.

  Watching Venus glide toward the horizon, I walked home by myself and was in bed well before she turned out her own lamp.

  That night, instead of my usual post-town dreams about candy and show horses and distant friends, I dreamt about the day we buried Momma and Baby. Parts of it were like it really was, only nightmarish. Other parts were like cotton candy and not near so bad as the real thing.

  In the dream, it was raining on people in our backyard. They were all huddled around Momma’s pecan tree, next to the hole that would be her final resting place. Inside the hole was the box Daddy made. Inside the box, only we couldn’t see them, was Momma, with Baby in her arms, wrapped in a clean flour sack. Preacher’s mouth moved, but there was no sound in my dream, not raindrops on pecan leaves or hymns or my screams, which were tied up inside my head and throat and stomach like some long, twisted, wet sheet making all the pain wind together till it hurt in my teeth.

  Trav wasn’t allowed at the ceremony, so I leaned into the man at my side. He was old, almost thirty, the handsomest and saddest man there. He put a hand on my back, and the coffin was lowered into the ground, as if his touch made it go down, even though I could see the men working the ropes.

  I held a small bouquet of wildflowers and dropped them onto the coffin. What I wanted was to drop myself and go with them to wherever God had in mind. It must be pretty there, not raining, and we’d all be together, the three of us. I could get to know my little brother. But I knew I needed to look after Daddy. It’s what everyone kept saying, and it’s what I promised.

  My sleeping self watched my dream self close her eyes and shudder. Then I woke on the floor, Trav licking my face.

  I climbed back into bed and did the same thing I had just watched myself do at the end of the dream. I took my sorrow, all wet and raw like a chew bone straight from Traveler’s mouth, and buried it deep inside myself. I closed my eyes and shuddered. Then I tried to forget where I put it.

  After that I fell back asleep and dreamt nothing.

  The Monday after market weekend dawned stormy and gray, which also happened to be about exactly how Daddy was acting. I never thought I’d rather be at school, but I wasn’t about to stay where the air was full of electricity and angriness, even if the alternative was a dose of that human castor oil, Mary Grace Newcomb. At least if I was at school I could keep an eye on Miss Teacher too and know she wasn’t anywhere near my daddy.

  ’Sides, at school I enjoyed the scratch of pencils and the squeaks of wooden desks, and I liked to watch the chalk dust swim through sun patches. Of course, it was interesting to talk trapping with one of the Justice boys at lunchtime or win a few marbles from Conrad Harris after school. And it was never too soon to see Tully again, even if we’d been out the night before frog gigging till midnight. Even the mix of smells from lunch pails and wood smoke was a welcome change from the nothingness smell of a house without Momma.

  Matter of fact, if it hadn’t been for Trav, I might just as soon have been at school reading Heidi or Just So Stories from Miss Arthington’s shelf as go home to the empty house. Daddy seemed to spend every waking blink in his shop. And if he was in the house when I got home, as often as not, he’d make some excuse and leave till after dark.

  But I was going to fix all that. I had to. I was going to find a way to stay home with Daddy and fix up our lives as best I could. Before he started to forget about Momma. Before Miss Arthington wiggled her scrawny self between us, trying to fill a hole in our hearts that couldn’t be filled.

  ’Cause even with home being less and less like home, I did not look forward to being pestered by the likes of Mary Grace Newcomb. Every day began with the “Pledge of Legions” said to the flag of our country, which hung in a corner, and grief from that girl.

  We were sat together I guess because we are about the same age, give or take a lick of sense. And as soon as a day started, I felt like I’d been there forever.

  “Something stinks,” she whinnied, soon as I sat. She made a face like an apple core and pinched her porky nose with two pink fingers. “My momma would never let me outta the house smellin’ like you.”

  The clock being on the back wall made it hard to know how long I’d be stuck alongside her. I was clean enough to pass Daddy’s inspection, so I couldn’t figure. “Must be you,” I whispered back. I began to understand why an animal in a trap might chew off its own leg.

  Then I remembered, the day before, me and June May found an interesting tree trunk, which we suspected of being rich in honey. We smoked out the bees from one end and took home two pails full of combs. ’Course, raw onion rubbed on is the best cure for bee stings, so maybe I did have a whiff of something about me.

  I was about to explain all this to Mary Grace when she trod my foot. Right then I decided to bring fresh-cut onion to school daily. Maybe one in each pocket.

  Nor did I enjoy this kind of distraction. If I had to be at school, I planned to show this teacher how Momma had already taught me everything worth knowing.

  I just wanted to first see how things worked, which is about the best kind of learning a person can have. Daddy taught me to watch on top of the water to know where the fish whistle underneath. Far as I know, my daddy never didn’t catch a fish he wanted.

  Already I could see Miss Arthington had a system. Some kids sat in front getting lessons; everyone else sat to the back and studied quiet till it was their turn. I liked to watch the bigger kids using what they called flash cards to help the littler ones with sums.

  All the day, Miss Arthington taught about English and geography and arithmetic and history. After we played outside, we sang together. It wouldn’t have been too terrible, if I hadn’t known that every day I spent at school pushed me further away from Daddy and the life we built together, us and Momma and Baby.

  “You sure were in fine voice today on ‘The Old Gray Mare,’ ” Tully said with a snicker.
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  I snorted. “I tried to be loud enough to cover someone, I’m not saying who, who sounded like a sack of cats being drowned.”

  But I could not drown out when Mary Grace ran on all day answering Miss Arthington’s questions.

  Even if they weren’t directed to her.

  Even if they weren’t questions.

  Even if she didn’t know the answers.

  As I told Tully more than once, Mary Grace talked pure to hear her own voice, not that it was special.

  “Aww, I dunno, Possum. She seems awright, I reckon.”

  “Please, her voice sounds like it’s been covered in molasses on purpose. Mostly it comes out real sl-o-ow, then sometimes it shoots out faster and spikier than the quills on a porcupine.” Tully just shook his head and said nothing, because what was there to say when faced with the sad truth?

  When Miss Arthington asked about the second president and Mary Grace started on about how Thomas Jefferson was her great-great-great-great-so-and-so’s something or other, I was ready to smack the girl just for breathing.

  Instead, I raised my hand.

  It was that or explode.

  Miss Arthington “called on me,” which is what they say, even though it’s not visiting. I stood like I’d seen the others do. In my saying-prayers voice, I said: “The second president of the United States was John Adams.”

  Teacher looked like she’d just eaten something GrandNam made. Mary Grace Newcomb looked like she’d just eaten something Traveler made, and I sat down feeling like pie.

  “Now, students, if I may please have everyone’s attention?” Teacher clapped twice. “Pencils down please. Face front, hands folded, feet on the floor.”

  When it sounded like everyone had settled, Miss Arthington said, “I have an announcement.”

  Mary Grace primped her curls, like one had to do with the other. Then she went stock-still, staring at Miss Teacher. Or rather, at what Miss Teacher held.

  “Class,” said the teacher in a hen-scratchy voice. “I am pleased to announce that this beautifully illustrated book of fairy tales will be the prize in an essay contest.”