Chapter 31

"Over here, Miss Mira. I'm thinkin' you ain't never seen a bloom like this."

Mira tilted her head a little and gave Ada June a teacher look.

"I mean I'm thinking you haven't never seen a bloom like this." Ada June changed her words before she motioned for Mira.

Mira smiled as she followed her. She'd have to take satisfaction in Ada June correcting the use of "ain't." She wouldn't worry about the double negative. One step at a time. Besides, when they were out in the woods, Ada June was the teacher. Not Mira.

Winter had passed into spring in Sourwood. The pinkish purple of redbud blooms looked lovely against the green of pines. Dogwoods had buds that promised more beauty to come. Fragile-looking wildflowers poked up through last fall's leaves.

Ada June and Joseph had waited on the schoolhouse steps until after Mira finished straightening the room to have it ready for Monday. They were excited about taking her wildflower hunting. Now, out in the woods, they ran ahead to find flowers to show her.

Each Friday when she closed the school until Monday, she thanked the Lord for another week of learning and for helping her meet the challenge of teaching a roomful of children of disparate ages and abilities. She had come to love all the children, but these two, Ada June and Joseph, were the closest to her heart.

She had leaned on the Lord to help her love a few determined troublemakers, but she wouldn't think about them this afternoon. Instead, she would push aside all worries about next week's lessons and take joy in the sunshine and her two flower guides.

When she caught up with Ada June, she didn't see any blooms, only a few fan-shaped green leaves. "Where's the flower?"

Ada June giggled and lifted up two of the leaves to reveal a white bloom hiding underneath.

Mira stooped down to get a better look. "Oh, that's wonderful."

Joseph came up behind them, his face in a little pout. "I was going to show you one of them."

Mira smiled at him. "Good. I'd love to see more."

"Did you find a purple or red one? Those are the prettiest." Ada June looked around. Her dog was right beside her as always.

The girl didn't seem at all bothered that Joseph might find a better flower than she had. She had such a generous heart that Mira could not understand why so many of the children excluded her. At least, Joseph had given up that kind of behavior. Despite the difference in their ages, Joseph and Ada June found common ground in stories. He'd even made friends with Bo.

Now Mira softly traced the petals of the bloom under the leaves. The children in Sourwood were something like these flowers with their beauty hidden beneath their rough exteriors.

"Show us the ones you found," Ada June said.

The boy, his pout gone, took off up the trail, with Ada June and Bo on his heels. Mira followed more slowly as she breathed in the fragrance of the woods and listened to the birds singing.

Even after the children went out of sight, she didn't worry about getting lost the way she had her first time in the woods. While she still didn't know every path, she felt at home in Sourwood now.

Rarely did she give more than a fleeting thought to the life she had so fearfully left behind in Louisville, except when she got a letter from Miss Ophelia. Then the thoughts were only of how grateful she was to the woman for pushing her to take the challenge of coming to Sourwood.

In her last letter, Miss Ophelia told Mira to bloom where she was planted. Mira smiled when she noticed a delicate-looking white anemone flower. She hoped to have the same persistence to bloom as these wildflowers that appeared spring after spring.

"Miss Mira, has you done got lost agin?" Joseph came back down the path.

"Not lost. Just woolgathering." Mira walked faster to catch up with him. "Lead the way to those flowers. By the way, what are they called?"

Mira needed to ask Miss Ophelia to send a flower book. Even better, perhaps the children could draw pictures of the flowers and put the names with them to make their own Sourwood flower book. She would need some drawing paper for that.

Joseph looked back over his shoulder at Mira. "Ada June names them bent head something. Don't know how she knows that. Granny Effie would know, but Ada June ain't got a granny to teach her that kind of stuff."

"Maybe Miss Dottie or Miss Elsinore told her." Mira didn't bother correcting his use of "ain't." How people talked was hard to change, and they were in the woods to have fun.

"Nah. They wouldn't know." He sounded very sure of that.

"Why not?"

"You have to be old to know stuff like that."

"I see. But Ada June isn't old."

"That's how come she probably don't know what's she's talkin' about."

Mira laughed. They definitely needed a flower book.

Ada June was on her knees on the side of a steep hill beside a whole patch of the broad-leaved flowers. She flipped some up to reveal rosy-red blooms.

"Just pick one of them and bring it here," Joseph told her. When she hesitated, he went on. "It ain't like there's only one of them. There's probably a hundred, right, Miss Mira?"

He knew his numbers but still hadn't quite embraced the concept of how many one hundred was.

"Perhaps not that many, but if Ada June would rather let them keep growing, I can see from here."

Ada June shrugged and broke off a stem before she scurried across the steep hill to where Mira and Joseph waited. Bo ran ahead of her. He didn't slip in the leaves. Ada June did.

Mira caught her breath, imagining a bone-breaking catastrophe. "Be careful."

Ada June grabbed a sapling to stop her slide and laughed. After she stuck the flower stem down into the top of her blouse, she scuttled the rest of the way to them. She was still smiling when she handed Mira the flower.

"That was a little too steep," Mira said.

"This ain't all that steep," Joseph spoke up. "You oughter see the hill behind Granny Effie's. It about tips a feller backwards whilst he's climbin' it."

Ada June nodded. "A body can make it up most any hill as long as you grab hold of something with roots that will hold. Else you're liable to be at the bottom again and have to start up all over." She pointed down the hill.

"I'll remember that." Mira looked at the flower under the two big leaves. "A very pretty color."

"I was the one what pointed them out to Ada June."

"You have a good eye for flowers." Mira bragged on him.

"You do," Ada June added.

Joseph beamed. "Come on. I know where some are that look like britches."

"Dutchman's britches," Ada June called before she took off after him.

Mira walked faster to keep them in sight. She didn't know why she felt so out of breath. The paths that snaked around the hills were steep, but she had followed Gordon up and down many of them in the last months to talk families into letting their children come to school.

When the going was steep, she got a little winded, but nothing like today. She wanted to stop and lean against a tree to rest.

The fact was, she'd been feeling under the weather all week. Not with a cold but just tired, and the eggs she had for breakfast hadn't set well with her. Maybe she should ask Miss Nicey Jane for a tonic. Not that the tonics she made for Elsinore were doing much good.

The poor girl's cough kept getting worse. She seemed to be fading in front of their eyes even while Selinda grew bigger. Miss Nicey Jane said Elsinore was grieving herself to death, and she didn't know of any tonics to cure that. The news had finally made it through the hills that Elsinore's Benny had been killed in a coal mine accident nearly a year ago.

Everybody said Elsinore should entertain Horace Perry's courtship now, but although Elsinore had unbarred the door and let him come in, she wasn't entertaining anything other than wood for her fire and food for her table.

Mira thought being pushed toward considering a marriage to Horace Perry had Elsinore more ready to take to her bed. Not that he wasn't a good man. Elsinore didn't argue against that, but he was twice as old as her. More than that, he was not her Benny.

The girl needed time to properly grieve. Mira dared to say something of the kind a couple of weeks ago when the women were discussing what to do about Elsinore in the churchyard. Miss Nicey Jane had let Mira know that somebody brought-in couldn't know how things were in the hills. A woman without family had to keep going however best she could, and if a good man was waiting at the door, that woman should be grateful. It didn't matter how he looked or how old he might be.

"What has the girl done already but grieve for nigh on a year?" Miss Nicey Jane's eyes had tightened in disapproval of not only Elsinore's hesitation to accept the logical solution to her problems but also of Mira speaking up.

When Mira made no answer, Miss Nicey Jane's face softened as she patted Mira's arm. "Things aren't the same up here in the hills as down where you're from. Women have to do whatever they have to do."

Wasn't that what Mira herself had done? But she wasn't about to share that with Miss Nicey Jane or anybody else in Sourwood. No one needed to know she had married Gordon less than a week after seeing him for the first time in years. After she had called his proposal ridiculous. Her face still flushed hot when she thought about how forward she'd been on the train to Jackson.

She had taken advantage of his desire for a teacher for his mission school. In turn, he had taken advantage of her need for a teaching position and for a home. Whatever had put them together, it was working. Not "whatever." Gordon said chance had nothing to do with it. The Lord had put them together for his purpose. For good.

Gordon. He was a gift to the Sourwood people. He was a gift to her. He whispered words of love to her now when they came together and didn't seem concerned that she could not say the same back to him. She was glad to be by his side. Glad he was willing to add his prayers to hers about the schoolchildren. Blessed that he was understanding, and thankful for his kind spirit that loved so freely.

In time, she hoped to answer his love with hers. In time.

The sound of Ada June's and Joseph's yells pulled her away from her thoughts. Bo's barks added to the commotion. Mira took a deep breath and hurried up the hill.

"Just because you're feared of somethin' don't mean you have to kill it," Ada June yelled.

Beside a huge boulder, Joseph had a rock in his hand ready to attack something behind Ada June. "It's a snake." He sounded more than sure that was reason enough to kill it.

"It's not a rattler. Just a little garter snake. Leave it be. It don't hurt nothing."

"I seen it strikin' at you like as how it wanted to bite." Joseph kept his arm up ready to throw the stone.

Snake. That word put chills up Mira's back. She didn't like snakes and had been on the lookout for them ever since Gordon had warned her to watch her step in the woods.

Ada June reached down next to the boulder, grabbed the snake behind its head, and held it out toward Mira. "Miss Mira, tell Joseph this kind of snake won't hurt anybody."

Poisonous or not, it was still a snake. Mira took a step back and held her palm out to keep Ada June from coming closer. "I can see it from here."

"She don't like 'em either." Joseph waved the rock menacingly.

"That's true, Joseph. I don't. But put the rock down. Ada June is right. The snake won't hurt us. Especially if she puts it down to let it go on its way." She managed a smile. "Just think of the stories it will have to tell its friends after being threatened by a giant and saved by another one."

"We ain't giants, and snakes don't have no friends." Joseph made a face but dropped the rock.

"I suppose they have at least one," Mira said. "One named Ada June."

That made Ada June giggle as she stroked the little snake's head while its tongue flickered in and out, and it twisted its body trying to escape her clutches. Bo sat on his haunches and looked as ready as Joseph to grab the snake and put an end to it.

"You might like it, Ada June, but it don't like you." Joseph backed up faster than Mira when Ada June moved toward him.

"All right, scaredy-cat. I'll let it go." When she put it down, Bo jumped for it, but the snake slithered to safety under some rocks.

"Looks like Bo knows more'n you and that snakes ain't meant to be friends," Joseph said.

Ada June put her fists on her hips and glared at Bo. The dog's ears drooped as he hunkered down and whined.

"Maybe we should stick to looking for flowers," Mira said.

"Suits me." Joseph started past the boulders.

"Not that way." Ada June grabbed his arm. "We best go on up the hill or over that way."

Joseph stopped and looked where she pointed. "You wanting to go to Miss Elsinore's house? Won't be no flowers to amount to anything around her place. Ever'thing's all tromped down around there."

"We can find plenty on the hill up to Granny Perry's house or toward Aunt Dottie's." Ada June still held his arm.

"But I'm thinkin' over that way will be more than plenty." Joseph wasn't giving in.

"I can show you a cave up past Elsinore's," Ada June said.

For a moment, he seemed ready to give in, but then his eyes tightened in a stubborn look. "Probably full of rattlers."

Ada June lost her patience. "We can't go that way." She looked at Mira. "Tell him, Miss Mira. It ain't safe." Ada June didn't notice saying "ain't" this time.

Nothing seemed different about one hillside or the other. Then Mira took a better look at the huge boulder behind Ada June and knew this was the very place where she'd ended up lost on that January day after her first visit to Elsinore. The place where Riley Callahan had come out of the shadows to make her want to run from him even if she didn't know which way to go.

Now she felt the same odd chill as if she expected the man and his hound to appear from the other side of the rock the way he had then.

"We better do as Ada June says. We don't have much more time before we'll need to go home." Mira kept her voice light.

"I don't see why she gets to say what we do." Joseph tried to shake her hand off his arm.

Ada June held tight and leaned down to look right in his face. "That's Mr. Riley's place over thataway. You understand?"

He turned around at once. "I reckon there might be rattlers over there."

"Rattlers for sure." Ada June sounded relieved as she followed Joseph along a faint path across the other hill.

Mira had no idea why Ada June was so against going onto Mr. Riley's hillside, but she was glad to leave the boulder behind. She ignored the heaviness in her legs and kept up with the children. She had promised them a wildflower adventure. A little fatigue was no reason to ruin the day.

Sunshine pushed down through the trees. She wondered which tree gave Sourwood its name. Gordon said they were beautiful when they bloomed. She needed to ask when that was. It could be she should also ask why Riley Callahan's hillside wasn't safe.