carbonation going straight to my brain.
“Here, now.” Ella Jean was down in the bag again.
Next came saltine crackers in little cellophane packages, filched from the dining hall. They were delicious, too, and we ate them up ravenously. Ella Jean still had that special quality about her; she was simply more alive than anybody else. We rumbled on through Asheville past tall office buildings, then houses with yards, then farms and open road.
Up and up we went, into that far countryside I had only seen as framed by the windows of Highland Hospital and the literal frames of the landscape paintings in the Art Room, where several of my favorites were watercolors by Mrs. Fitzgerald. First we came to the little farms and pastures and churches on knolls, each with its own graveyard, then the piney foothills, and finally those high, solemn blue mountains themselves, traveling up and up on roads so twisting they took my breath away and caused the truck’s engine to sputter until I thought it would surely die. Earl turned off the main road into a forest so thick and dark it was like a tunnel, then steered us back out into the sunshine, where the gravel road narrowed to a scary ribbon as it hugged a cliff side. The drop on our right was perpendicular. I could not even see what lay beyond the miles of empty air below. I shut my eyes and clutched Ella Jean’s brown arm.
“Aren’t we almost there?” I asked.
“No we ain’t,” she said, with evident satisfaction. “You just hold your horses.”
I shut my eyes. The truck climbed to the top of that mountain, then another, and crossed a creek on a rickety wooden bridge with no guardrails.
“Now?” I asked.
“Yep.” We had come to a high narrow valley—or “holler,” as Ella Jean called it, looking out upon yet another range of rolling blue peaks. A dirt road ran up the holler, where several cabins were visible back in the trees, with their outbuildings.
“But where’s the town?” I said.
“Ain’t none.”
I smiled to imagine Mrs. Hodges’s reaction to this news.
The truck turned, forded a smaller creek, and made the last steep, short drive up into a clearing, where stood a large misshapen boy—or was he a man?—leaning against a kind of small barn to watch our approach without any emotion at all on his wide, flat face. Several little dogs were playing at his feet.
“That’s Wilmer, he’s real sweet,” Ella Jean said. “He lives in that there barn.”
“Hey Wilmer,” she called. A smile broke over his whole face. Earl stopped the truck and people came running out of the log house like the figures in Mrs. Carroll’s Austrian cuckoo clock. In addition to Wilmer, there were two little blond twins named Billy Ed and Mister. “He’s the one that was so sickly when he was borned,” Ella Jean explained, “so we just called him Mister instead of give him a name, that’s what we always do, in case they up and die on you, but he didn’t, and this time it stuck.”
“Sissie, Sissie!” the twins ran to Ella Jean and hugged her legs.
“Now this here is Evalina,” she said. “Can you say that? Eva-li-na.”
“Ev-a-li-na!” they chorused, and I had to kneel right down and kiss them. I was very startled by their presence somehow, though I’d been told there would be children up here. They were wriggly and dirty and very real, like Ella Jean was—certainly more real, I felt suddenly, than my own life at the hospital. I knelt and hugged them tight, along with an older girl, maybe seven or eight, named Baby Doll, though she certainly did not look like a baby doll, dish-faced and sallow. Nobody here looked anything at all like Ella Jean.
“Y’all come on.”
I glanced up to see a tall, long-faced woman standing at the open door, holding a pie pan. She crossed the porch and threw the contents of the pan out into the bare “yard” below, where the dogs began yapping and fighting over it.
“Them’s little fice dogs,” Ella Jean said. It seemed
“Here, now.” Ella Jean was down in the bag again.
Next came saltine crackers in little cellophane packages, filched from the dining hall. They were delicious, too, and we ate them up ravenously. Ella Jean still had that special quality about her; she was simply more alive than anybody else. We rumbled on through Asheville past tall office buildings, then houses with yards, then farms and open road.
Up and up we went, into that far countryside I had only seen as framed by the windows of Highland Hospital and the literal frames of the landscape paintings in the Art Room, where several of my favorites were watercolors by Mrs. Fitzgerald. First we came to the little farms and pastures and churches on knolls, each with its own graveyard, then the piney foothills, and finally those high, solemn blue mountains themselves, traveling up and up on roads so twisting they took my breath away and caused the truck’s engine to sputter until I thought it would surely die. Earl turned off the main road into a forest so thick and dark it was like a tunnel, then steered us back out into the sunshine, where the gravel road narrowed to a scary ribbon as it hugged a cliff side. The drop on our right was perpendicular. I could not even see what lay beyond the miles of empty air below. I shut my eyes and clutched Ella Jean’s brown arm.
“Aren’t we almost there?” I asked.
“No we ain’t,” she said, with evident satisfaction. “You just hold your horses.”
I shut my eyes. The truck climbed to the top of that mountain, then another, and crossed a creek on a rickety wooden bridge with no guardrails.
“Now?” I asked.
“Yep.” We had come to a high narrow valley—or “holler,” as Ella Jean called it, looking out upon yet another range of rolling blue peaks. A dirt road ran up the holler, where several cabins were visible back in the trees, with their outbuildings.
“But where’s the town?” I said.
“Ain’t none.”
I smiled to imagine Mrs. Hodges’s reaction to this news.
The truck turned, forded a smaller creek, and made the last steep, short drive up into a clearing, where stood a large misshapen boy—or was he a man?—leaning against a kind of small barn to watch our approach without any emotion at all on his wide, flat face. Several little dogs were playing at his feet.
“That’s Wilmer, he’s real sweet,” Ella Jean said. “He lives in that there barn.”
“Hey Wilmer,” she called. A smile broke over his whole face. Earl stopped the truck and people came running out of the log house like the figures in Mrs. Carroll’s Austrian cuckoo clock. In addition to Wilmer, there were two little blond twins named Billy Ed and Mister. “He’s the one that was so sickly when he was borned,” Ella Jean explained, “so we just called him Mister instead of give him a name, that’s what we always do, in case they up and die on you, but he didn’t, and this time it stuck.”
“Sissie, Sissie!” the twins ran to Ella Jean and hugged her legs.
“Now this here is Evalina,” she said. “Can you say that? Eva-li-na.”
“Ev-a-li-na!” they chorused, and I had to kneel right down and kiss them. I was very startled by their presence somehow, though I’d been told there would be children up here. They were wriggly and dirty and very real, like Ella Jean was—certainly more real, I felt suddenly, than my own life at the hospital. I knelt and hugged them tight, along with an older girl, maybe seven or eight, named Baby Doll, though she certainly did not look like a baby doll, dish-faced and sallow. Nobody here looked anything at all like Ella Jean.
“Y’all come on.”
I glanced up to see a tall, long-faced woman standing at the open door, holding a pie pan. She crossed the porch and threw the contents of the pan out into the bare “yard” below, where the dogs began yapping and fighting over it.
“Them’s little fice dogs,” Ella Jean said. It seemed
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