On Snowden Mountain by Jeri Watts

Author:Jeri Watts [Watts, Jeri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536210019
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

I wished for a book. A book that would require so much concentration, I wouldn’t have to think about what I had seen on that mountain. About what I had seen when Russell’s father caught up to him.

I ached to wrap my fingers around any of the confusing books my mother had back in Baltimore that Aunt Pearl had forced me to leave behind. I knew she did it only because we needed to go quickly; I knew there was no room in the hurried bags we packed. Yet I longed to lose myself in a book so confusing that it would not, could not, make me think about all that was going on around me. But there were no books. Instead, I sat down at the kitchen table while Aunt Pearl fried apples. The room was dressed in a warm, flavorful aroma. The air almost shook with it. It draped its fabric around me and made me feel hugged. Maybe this was as close as I’d get to God’s arms holding me.

“Aunt Pearl,” I said, “what do you think about when you’re frying apples?”

She glanced back at me, her round face filling the space above her shoulders. “What are you going on about?” she asked.

“Just wondering if you think about things.”

She turned back to the apples, spattering in the pan. “I suppose. Why? What are you thinking on?”

“Oh.” I hadn’t expected her to ask me. I decided to be honest. “I was just wondering about people around here. Like, uh, I don’t know, about Mr. Armentrout, for instance.”

I waited for her to tell me that was none of my business, to hush me as she usually did when I would tread too close to criticizing anything in the mountains.

She just sighed and pushed back a bit of gray hair from her forehead. Only in the heat — of cooking, of apple buttering — did any of her locks dare to stray from the tight bun. It made her look softer, kinder.

She turned the heat under the apples to low, put the cover on the pan, and sat across from me at the table. “I heard from Moselle Toms today at market that you were spending time with Russell, Rooster’s boy. I don’t like hearing things from Moselle, things about my family that I ought to know.

“There I am, picking over Noel Abramson’s puny pork roasts, and this voice comes needling into my brain. ‘I never expected a girl as fine as Ellen to spend time with an Armentrout.’”

“An Armentrout,” I said.

“My Lord but she lit up like a Yule log then. ‘She does spend a lot of time with that Russell. Amy Pickens saw them once and Esther Madison too. Oh, they’re spending time together. Maybe sparking?’ She made it sound filthy. I even looked at my shirtfront, to see if it was soiled.”

I started to speak. She raised a beefy hand and went on. “Rooster Armentrout is from a long line of men who live off the land. They don’t like anything that isn’t familiar, anything that hasn’t been done before.

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