Authors: Vicki Lane
Least
Dark Holler ~ June 1930
The yard dog speaks and I look up from the peas I’m shellin. They’s a woman and a girl coming up the road and Mama takes the bowl of peas from me and jerks her chin at the door. Go on, she says. Through the house and out the back way. Git you a hoe and go to work on them beans. I’ll call you when the folks is gone.
I duck my head yes ma’am and go quick like into the house. But oncet I’m to where Mama can’t see me, I stay near the window so’s I can hear them talk. Mama don’t never talk much ’cept for when she’s a-tellin me what to do. And now that Fairlight’s run off and got herself married, they ain’t no one to talk to me, bein’ as Brother’s as close-jawed as Mama.
Come git you uns a chair, says Mama as the woman and the girl start up the rock steps. I hear the mule-ear chair’s hickory bark seat squeak like there’s mouses in hit as the lady sets herself down.
Ooo-eee! she says, now hit’s been a time since I come up here to Dark Holler. Like to forgot what a climb hit is. But I had in mind to git up to the burying ground and tend to my mamaw and papaw’s graves. Come Decoration Day, I’ll be goin with Henry over to the Buckscrape to where his people lie. Fronie, tell me, was that your least’un I saw just now, scootin into the house? Law, she’s growed like one thing. Don’t she go to school? Lilah Bel here’s in the third grade now and readin like one thing. Hit beats all, the way she took to learnin.
I skooch close to the window and careful-like peek around the edge to look at the girl who can read. Fairlight taught me my letters and C-A-T cat and H-A-T hat but then she went off. Mama don’t hold with me learnin to read, is what I heared her tell Brother. Hit’ll just aggervate them funny spells she takes iffen she gits all tired out with tryin to learn more ’n she’s able.
The girl who can read is taller ’n me and she has the darkest eyes and straight dark hair cut short like girls in the wish book have theirs. She has picked up the bowl of peas and has set in to shellin them without noone tellin her to. Mama looks at her and nods her head. You don’t know what it is, Voncel, to have a young un what ain’t right. No, she ain’t able to go to school—takes these funny spells now and again. And then Mama leans closer to the visitor lady and whispers, She’s just simple and that’s the truth. And it worries her to be around folks. But we git on. Now tell me, Voncel, was you able to bring me them rug patterns?
I see that the girl named Lilah Bel is looking right at the window where I’m peeking out. I stick my tongue out at her then I jerk back outta sight and go quick and quiet out the back way. My special hoe, the light one with its blade worn down like a piece of the moon, is leaning gainst the logs there on the back porch and I grab it and take the little path through the dark whisperin trees to the bean patch.
I make haste along the narrow trail so’s I kin get them beans hoed and Mama won’t get ill at me. And then I hear the drums and see the edges of their world.
Hit’s allus that way—first the drums and the lights and then they show themselves. I step off the path and hunch down low so’s I kin crawl up under the droopin branches. Hit’s under that biggest one of them old groanin trees where they have their nest. I hunker down there and listen to their sounds. Then I make a picture in my mind and the little things begin to creep out.
Also by Vicki Lane
Signs in the Blood
Art’s Blood
Old Wounds
And coming soon from Dell
The Day of Small Things
IN A DARK SEASON
A Dell Book / June 2008
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Vicki Lane
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33778-2
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