mist that rose from the creek and floated on the night breeze toward the mountainside. Large animals ran through the woods and the leaves said shhhhhhhhhh. The katydids and whip-poor-wills chanted run away run away run away. The mountain itself leaned over the house and watched her. When it breathed in it sucked the curtains tight against the window frame. Once Charlie learned how frightened she was he brought home a dog that had been hanging around the work camp, but it was a skulky, mistrustful creature that spent most of the two weeks it stayed there cowering under the house. One morning she tossed a biscuit toward it while it wasnât looking and it took off down the road and never came back. She began sleeping with the head of the ax resting on Charlieâs pillow. She kept a butcher knife underneath her side of the mattress, its handle poking out where she could grab it. Charlieâs shotgun leaned loaded in the corner, but she was almost as afraid of shooting it as she was of the things she imagined coming through the window.
But she stayed. Word surely got out about the Shires girl who spent the week by herself up App Valley, but nobody came to rape her. She never stopped being afraid, but learned to go to sleep anyway. Over time fewer faces appeared at the window and the panthers stopped coming entirely. She missed one period and then she missed another. Charlie had the week of the Fourth of July off and they laid by the crops. She didnât tell him. When he returned to work she found herself facing the prospect of several weeks with relatively little to do. What surprised her most during the lull was how lonely she was. She tried taking naps after dinner to pass the time but the house was too hot, the air too still. She always wound up crying. She sat on the front steps and stared down the road and imagined someone coming around the bendâa neighbor girl her own age who lived just over the hill and had a lot of fun about her and loved to play games and sing and sit beside her and lean close and whisper about the boys she knew. But when that girl never materialized (Plutina knew that in reality nobody at all lived over that hill or that hill or that hill or that hill almost halfway to Argyle) she dragged herself up to milk the cow and feed Charlieâs hateful mule. When she tried singing alone she found her voice too loud for the valley, the mountain too close and too big, the echo it shot back at her sharp as a scold. The nearest church was six miles away but they were Holy Roller Jesus jumpers who spoke in unknown tongues. The nearest Baptist church was all the way in town. Sometimes she got mad at the silence and went into the yard and worked up her courage and made herself holler out of spite. One moonlit night she dreamed she saw her mother walking through the vegetable garden and woke up heartbroken because she hadnât come in to talk. Sometimes she waded in the creek and caught crawdads and looked into their uncomprehending foreign faces and let them go.
The only neighbor near enough to be honestly called one was Mr. William Tolliver, who lived a mile or so beyond the Shires at the end of the road, on the only other farm in the valley. (Beyond Tolliverâs place the mountains became impassable to anything other than a creature willing to crawl through the laurel straight up and straight down.) Tolliver was known to everyone who knew him or knew about him as Mr. Tall, because, well, he was. At somewhere north of six and a half feet, he had more than a foot on Charlie. Although Mr. Tallâs front door lay within an easy stroll of her own, Plutina had never laid eyes on him, or even his farm. Charlie had told her to never walk in that direction, and she hadnât. Mr. Tall was a hermit. All she knew about him she had learned from storekeepers and the women in the churchyard the few times Charlie had taken her to town. (Oh, people always said, a little startled, when she told them
But she stayed. Word surely got out about the Shires girl who spent the week by herself up App Valley, but nobody came to rape her. She never stopped being afraid, but learned to go to sleep anyway. Over time fewer faces appeared at the window and the panthers stopped coming entirely. She missed one period and then she missed another. Charlie had the week of the Fourth of July off and they laid by the crops. She didnât tell him. When he returned to work she found herself facing the prospect of several weeks with relatively little to do. What surprised her most during the lull was how lonely she was. She tried taking naps after dinner to pass the time but the house was too hot, the air too still. She always wound up crying. She sat on the front steps and stared down the road and imagined someone coming around the bendâa neighbor girl her own age who lived just over the hill and had a lot of fun about her and loved to play games and sing and sit beside her and lean close and whisper about the boys she knew. But when that girl never materialized (Plutina knew that in reality nobody at all lived over that hill or that hill or that hill or that hill almost halfway to Argyle) she dragged herself up to milk the cow and feed Charlieâs hateful mule. When she tried singing alone she found her voice too loud for the valley, the mountain too close and too big, the echo it shot back at her sharp as a scold. The nearest church was six miles away but they were Holy Roller Jesus jumpers who spoke in unknown tongues. The nearest Baptist church was all the way in town. Sometimes she got mad at the silence and went into the yard and worked up her courage and made herself holler out of spite. One moonlit night she dreamed she saw her mother walking through the vegetable garden and woke up heartbroken because she hadnât come in to talk. Sometimes she waded in the creek and caught crawdads and looked into their uncomprehending foreign faces and let them go.
The only neighbor near enough to be honestly called one was Mr. William Tolliver, who lived a mile or so beyond the Shires at the end of the road, on the only other farm in the valley. (Beyond Tolliverâs place the mountains became impassable to anything other than a creature willing to crawl through the laurel straight up and straight down.) Tolliver was known to everyone who knew him or knew about him as Mr. Tall, because, well, he was. At somewhere north of six and a half feet, he had more than a foot on Charlie. Although Mr. Tallâs front door lay within an easy stroll of her own, Plutina had never laid eyes on him, or even his farm. Charlie had told her to never walk in that direction, and she hadnât. Mr. Tall was a hermit. All she knew about him she had learned from storekeepers and the women in the churchyard the few times Charlie had taken her to town. (Oh, people always said, a little startled, when she told them
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