Chapter 22

Ada June watched all the commotion at the preacher's place from across the holler. She'd seen serenades before, but this was the preacher and his new missus, a schoolteacher. Ada June did hope all this carryin' on wouldn't make her want to leave already.

She had a feeling about the schoolteacher, even if she did say Bo couldn't come to school. If she stuck to that, Ada June wouldn't go either. In her head she saw books sprouting wings and flying off. She wanted to grab them to not let her dream of learning to read be gone completely. So many things she'd had to give up on ever having.

Like a ma and a pa. She did have a ma for a spell. She reckoned she had a pa too. Everybody did. Even Jesus, Preacher Gordon told her. God up in heaven made it happen somehow. Ada June couldn't figure out how that could be, but Preacher Gordon said you didn't have to figure it out. You just had to have faith and believe it.

She wanted to believe that if she prayed hard enough and had faith enough, the schoolteacher would change her mind about Bo. But she'd prayed hard after her ma died that her pa, whoever he was, might decide he needed a daughter. 'Course that hadn't happened. She reckoned she didn't have the kind of believing faith the preacher said a body had to have to get the Lord's favor, but she did wish he'd pay mind to her prayers about Bo and school.

The sound of laughter drifted over to make her feet itch to head across the holler, but she stayed put. Better to be here alone than over there where folks might stare at her like she didn't have good sense or something. Like maybe she should just go off to some place where they didn't have to look at her and think about who her pa might be.

Back after her ma first went on to heaven, Ada June used to stare at every man she saw, wondering if maybe this one or that one might be her pa. Some folks said her ma had come across the hill to Sourwood chasin' after Ada June's pa, but true or not, it didn't do much good thinkin' on it now. She breathed out a sigh. A puff of her breath hung in the air.

Bo sat on her feet, doing what he could to keep her toes from freezing, but it weren't like they were gonna find much warm tonight. She wasn't about to go back to Aunt Dottie's. She saw Mr. Luther come in. Had barely got to the woods without him spotting her.

She'd already packed in the wood and a bucket of water from the creek, milked the cow, fed the hog and the chickens. She gathered in the eggs, though they were some scarce. Then she'd got Emmy Lou ready for bed.

Aunt Dottie had been in a stir trying to come up with something fine for the preacher's wife. She weren't at all excited about the flower seeds, but Ada June told her it could turn out to be the best present, seeing as how it would keep giving all summer long. That was more words than Ada June usually let out at once, but it had made Aunt Dottie hug her. Well, as much as she could hug anybody with that baby belly.

Aunt Dottie must have done give the schoolteacher her seeds because she came out on the preacher's porch. Ada June started to head over to help her up the hill to her house, but when Effie Foster followed her outside, Ada June stopped.

Miss Effie would make sure Aunt Dottie was took care of. And sure enough, her boy, Billy Ray, broke away from a group of men to go help her. Ada June took another long look over toward the preacher's house before she turned and headed into the woods. Bo ran on in front of her. Aunt Dottie would know she wouldn't be coming back to their house with Mr. Luther there. She said Ada June ought to try to get on his good side, but Ada June didn't think he had a good side. None he was aiming to turn toward her anyhow.

But she was cold. Smoke drifted up out of the chimneys in the holler below her. It would be mighty nice to lay down in front of one of those fires. Like it had been that afternoon when the schoolteacher invited her in to get warm.

She fingered the matches she'd swiped from Aunt Dottie's mantel. Mr. Luther wouldn't be happy if he knew she took them, but he couldn't have no way of knowing how many Aunt Dottie might have used up whilst he was off logging.

Could be that house where she and her mother had lived was still up there on Pap Leathers' hill. If it was, she could get a fire started in the fireplace to get warm. But the way up there was steep, and she'd have to go by that spot where her ma died. Worse, she might see that man. Not the one that had grabbed her and carried her to Miss Nicey Jane's house. That other man. The one they'd run out in the snow to get away from.

She shook her head. He wouldn't be there now after all these years. Could be he'd never been there. Maybe she'd dreamed it all up the way Miss Nicey Jane said she must've done. That was when Ada June quit talking. Didn't seem no use if nobody was gonna believe what she said.

But she best wait to make that climb in the daylight. Instead, she headed to her little cave in the side of the hill. She had put some wood in there before the snow. A fire at the front of the cave would keep her and Bo warm and varmints away. She had some cornpones in her pocket and an egg she'd sneaked for Bo. She'd make sure to break it for him and let him lick it off a rock. Best he didn't figure out he could steal eggs out of hen nests. Nobody could abide an egg-sucking dog.

Come morning she could wash her face in the creek and go to church. She'd smell like smoke but that wasn't such a bad thing. She always stood in the back close to the door anyhow, with Bo behind her being quiet as a cat ready to pounce on a mouse. Preacher Gordon never minded Bo being there in church. Maybe he'd talk the schoolteacher out of thinking Bo was some old hound what didn't know how to behave.

Once she got the fire going, the little cave was right warm. It wasn't a real cave. Just a dug-out place under a ledge some bear might have wintered in back when they wandered about these hills. Pap Leathers told her the bears had moved on down to some big mountains to the south where folks couldn't hunt them. Pap Leathers knew lots about everything. She wished he was there with her, telling some story that was maybe true, maybe not. He wouldn't ever tell her which it was. Always said to ask her ma. Whenever she did, her mother laughed and said sometimes the truth was hard to figure out.

Ada June wished she could remember some of Pap's stories. Remember more about him. She did remember he told her he weren't her pa and not her grandpa either. She didn't ask her ma if that was true. She knew Pap wasn't fooling about that. She did wish he could have been her kin. When she told him that, he said he'd be proud to have a girl like her.

Maybe that was how Joseph was with Jesus when he took him to raise after he married Mary. He was bound to be proud to be his pa. Preacher Gordon said Jesus never done anything wrong. Not one thing. That was hard to imagine being possible, but Preacher said it was written in the Bible and was God's own truth. So Joseph was bound to have been proud to call him son.

Of course, he took over as pa soon as Jesus was born. Even before, what with taking care of Mary and seeing that she did all right having a baby in a barn.

Sometimes that same kind of thing happened up here in the hills too. Not having babies in cow barns, or if they did, she never heard about it, but folks taking in babies to raise when something happened to their ma or pa. Once Pap and then her ma died, it might have happened to Ada June too if she'd been a baby. But nobody much wanted a skinny girl who weren't all that cute.

Of course, folks thought Aunt Dottie and Mr. Luther had took her in to raise, but weren't no truth to that. They give her a plate at the table so long as she packed in wood and such and took care of Emmy Lou when Aunt Dottie weren't feeling pert.

Bo licked Ada June's face before he settled down beside her on pine branches she'd brought in for a bed. She'd found some that weren't so prickly. Bo was right. She needed to go to sleep. She'd have to wake up early to go milk Beulah at Aunt Dottie's if she wanted to get to church. Beulah had to be milked morning and night, and Aunt Dottie would have a struggle doing that with how she was getting burdened down with baby. Mr. Luther was there, but he wouldn't do no milking. That was women's work.

Women's work. She reckoned that if she was doing the work, she could count herself a woman, even if she was only ten going on eleven. Sometimes a girl had to grow up fast if there weren't nobody to want to take her in as family.

The want for family made her heart hurt. She put her arm around Bo and pulled him close against her. He laid his head on her chest and went to sleep. After a while, so did she.