lintheaded from the factory or if, Lord forbid, I saw her coming out of a privy.
I decided it was a lot harder to walk through Mill Town than to have our school cluttered up with snot-nosed children who had cooties and the itch, and who at dinnertime stayed at school to eat biscuits and syrup, making us town children feel guilty for going home to a big hot dinner. The mill boys were always picking fights with town boysâtripping us up or calling us names. Of course we did our share of tripping and worse. But it was our dern school, for gosh sake.
Before Lightfoot, I had a healthy disrespect for all mill children. Since Lightfoot, just being around them was like getting fussed at for wearing shoes in winter and having a cow and a family cook.
Lightfoot wasn't like the other mill children. Wasn't like any girl I ever knew, for that matter. Wasn't silly, wasn't always twiddling her plaits, didn't tattle or gossip, didn't hit boys over the head with books or scrape the back of your neck with a sweetgum burr when you weren't looking. She was quiet and sweet and smart. Ragged, of course, but real clean, and thin without having the bony-faced, sunk-eyed look of mill children who've been hungry all their lives. Lightfoot had what I thought of as the fresh free look of the hills on her.
The way I got to really know her, I had to stay after school one day for flipping spitballs, and she was staying late so Miss Neppie could help her catch up. This was back in January, soon after she came to Cold Sassy from the foothills of the Blue Ridge. At some point, when Miss Neppie went to Mr. McCall's office, I asked Lightfoot how come she left the mountains. "My mama always wanted us to move to Cold Sassy," she said. "My mama she had the TB, you know. Last summer, jest fore she passed, she wrote her brother in Mill Town and he said we was more'n welcome to stay with them. Mama kept sayin' Pa would have steady work in the mill and I could git me a good education and amount to something."
The girl didn't seem to have heard yet that nobody in Mill Town ever amounted to anything.
"So after the fall crop come in, my daddy he sold his plowin' steer and his piece a-land, and we caught the train to Cold Sassy."
"You got any brothers and sisters in the mountains?" I asked.
"Yeah, lots of'm. But they all married or dead, one."
As T.R. and I walked the railroad tracks past the sweaty, dirty, hostile faces of Mill Town, I couldn't help wondering if a summer of slaving at the spindles would take away Lightfoot's hopesâand my notion that she walked in a cloud of fresh mountain air. Fixing my eyes on the repeating crossties, I walked fast. And even faster as it dawned on me just how much I didn't want to see Lightfoot McLendon with lint in her hair.
I also didn't want to see Hosie Roach, a snot-nosed twenty-one-year-old mill boy in my class who stunk like a polecat and had tow-colored hair so thick and tangled it looked like a cootie stable. Hosie wasn't big as me, but whenever we had a fightâabout once a weekâhe usually won. Gosh, what if he and a bunch of other mill boys ganged up on me.
Getting beat to a pulp might have been better than what happened later at the trestle. But of course I didn't know it at the time, so it was a grand relief when my dog and I got past all chance of seeing Hosie or Lightfoot, either one.
Once we were out in the country, we had a high old time. The dog romped through the daisies and weeds and tall grasses growing along the tracks. He scared up rabbits, barked at terrapins, caught gnats and flies in his mouth, and every few minutes looked back to be sure I was still coming along behind. Two bobwhites scooted across the tracks right in front of us, heads up and backs straight as tin soldiers', but they flushed before T.R. could point.
That dog must of wet every black-eyed Susan and every head of white Queen Anne's lace we passed. I never saw such a dog for doing Number One. Grandpa called it the
I decided it was a lot harder to walk through Mill Town than to have our school cluttered up with snot-nosed children who had cooties and the itch, and who at dinnertime stayed at school to eat biscuits and syrup, making us town children feel guilty for going home to a big hot dinner. The mill boys were always picking fights with town boysâtripping us up or calling us names. Of course we did our share of tripping and worse. But it was our dern school, for gosh sake.
Before Lightfoot, I had a healthy disrespect for all mill children. Since Lightfoot, just being around them was like getting fussed at for wearing shoes in winter and having a cow and a family cook.
Lightfoot wasn't like the other mill children. Wasn't like any girl I ever knew, for that matter. Wasn't silly, wasn't always twiddling her plaits, didn't tattle or gossip, didn't hit boys over the head with books or scrape the back of your neck with a sweetgum burr when you weren't looking. She was quiet and sweet and smart. Ragged, of course, but real clean, and thin without having the bony-faced, sunk-eyed look of mill children who've been hungry all their lives. Lightfoot had what I thought of as the fresh free look of the hills on her.
The way I got to really know her, I had to stay after school one day for flipping spitballs, and she was staying late so Miss Neppie could help her catch up. This was back in January, soon after she came to Cold Sassy from the foothills of the Blue Ridge. At some point, when Miss Neppie went to Mr. McCall's office, I asked Lightfoot how come she left the mountains. "My mama always wanted us to move to Cold Sassy," she said. "My mama she had the TB, you know. Last summer, jest fore she passed, she wrote her brother in Mill Town and he said we was more'n welcome to stay with them. Mama kept sayin' Pa would have steady work in the mill and I could git me a good education and amount to something."
The girl didn't seem to have heard yet that nobody in Mill Town ever amounted to anything.
"So after the fall crop come in, my daddy he sold his plowin' steer and his piece a-land, and we caught the train to Cold Sassy."
"You got any brothers and sisters in the mountains?" I asked.
"Yeah, lots of'm. But they all married or dead, one."
As T.R. and I walked the railroad tracks past the sweaty, dirty, hostile faces of Mill Town, I couldn't help wondering if a summer of slaving at the spindles would take away Lightfoot's hopesâand my notion that she walked in a cloud of fresh mountain air. Fixing my eyes on the repeating crossties, I walked fast. And even faster as it dawned on me just how much I didn't want to see Lightfoot McLendon with lint in her hair.
I also didn't want to see Hosie Roach, a snot-nosed twenty-one-year-old mill boy in my class who stunk like a polecat and had tow-colored hair so thick and tangled it looked like a cootie stable. Hosie wasn't big as me, but whenever we had a fightâabout once a weekâhe usually won. Gosh, what if he and a bunch of other mill boys ganged up on me.
Getting beat to a pulp might have been better than what happened later at the trestle. But of course I didn't know it at the time, so it was a grand relief when my dog and I got past all chance of seeing Hosie or Lightfoot, either one.
Once we were out in the country, we had a high old time. The dog romped through the daisies and weeds and tall grasses growing along the tracks. He scared up rabbits, barked at terrapins, caught gnats and flies in his mouth, and every few minutes looked back to be sure I was still coming along behind. Two bobwhites scooted across the tracks right in front of us, heads up and backs straight as tin soldiers', but they flushed before T.R. could point.
That dog must of wet every black-eyed Susan and every head of white Queen Anne's lace we passed. I never saw such a dog for doing Number One. Grandpa called it the
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