Miss Julia

MISS JULIA’S BIRTHDAY

By Bob Blackman

Copyright (C) August 31, 2006

Like Lot’s wife, she stood statuesque upon the mountain, gazing blindly toward the town. Gladding, (a town she’d never seen, except once on a picture postcard sent to her second cousin, Fran) languished in the valley thirty miles below.  Not a whisper of a breeze stirred the crispness of the morning air. It was the third of May.

Thirty years old.  Thirty hard years on the mountain. Fifteen years married to Will Skanks, eleven of those his widow. Fourteen if you count the three he was away, fighting the war in Italy, France, and Germany.  Two sons, buried beneath the frost behind her Father’s barn, John, not yet a year old, taken by the chills of winter the year his daddy left for war and Henry, the sunshine of her life, (who never knew his daddy) barely eight when tumbled from the willow and broke his neck. Her father Jake, and her two sons, slept beneath the sod, along with Annabel, Isaac, and Ben, her siblings. Now there were just the two of them, Momma and herself. Three if you count Elizabeth who ran off to Charlotte with Albert Turner and never returned.

Albert Turner was a surveyor, come to map out a road across the mountain from Gladding to Ferndale.  He was tall as an ash and skinny as a rail, with hair the color of corn silk. Three months he stayed on the mountain infecting Elizabeth with his stories of Ashville and Spartanburg and Charlotte. Three enchanted months filled with laughter, summer dances and endless stories of far away places.  Just three months and then he was gone, and he stole Elizabeth away with him.  They never built the road, and Elizabeth never came back. 

No, there’s just the two of them and momma practically an invalid. She was thirty years old, had never left the mountain and now was certain she never would. At least Will got to see Europe before he died. Killed in action, the telegram said, but they never sent his body home and never told her where he died. Most likely Germany, she thought.  Two months earlier he’d written that he was in Northern Italy and they were on the march to Germany.  It wasn’t fair that he had died so near the end of the war.  It wasn’t fair he went to Europe leaving two babies (one of which he never knew) on the mountain. It wasn’t fair that momma hadn’t left the house since papa died three years ago.  It wasn’t fair that Elizabeth was living in a big house in Charlotte and it certainly wasn’t fair that John and Henry lay buried back behind the barn where one day she would join them, having never left the mountain.

Will promised to take her to Gladding when the war was over. He’d saved a hundred dollars from his army pay and when he came home he was going to take her to Gladding and buy her a new dress. Not a catalogue dress from Sears but a real fancy store dress, then he’d take her to a fancy Italian restaurant. He said he hoped there was an Italian restaurant in Gladding because he had eaten some Patate e Baccala (prepared by the women of some Italian village after they were liberated) and he wanted her to taste it. Later she had learned it was codfish and potatoes, which didn’t impress her at all. Still, it would have been a real restaurant in Gladding so what they ate wouldn’t have mattered, but Will never came home.  She never went to Gladding, never ate Italian food, never brought a store dress, and never knew what had happened to the hundred dollars he had saved.

On the mountain she could never save a hundred dollars.  She was a school teacher.  She had finished the eighth grade, (brightest child he’d ever had, Mr. Thrum, had told her papa) the same year she married Will. Then the war came and Mr. Thrum enlisted so they asked her to teach the little ones and sent the older ones to the school in Echo Holler. Eleven students she had, five boys and six girls, first through third grade in one classroom.  Mr. Thrum never returned so she continued teaching even though she never earned a certificate so only got paid half what a real teacher would earn. I don’t need much, she thought, just enough to take care of myself and momma. It would be nice to have a fancy store dress, but where would I wear it anyway.

A bright ray of sunlight burst over the ridge. “You okay, Miss Julia? You looked like a statue you was standing so still.” It was Buddy Henson, her only third grader.

“I’m fine, Buddy, you’re just in time to help me carry these berries up to the school house.”

“You must have got up mighty early to pick all them berries.”

“I thought I’d make us a cobbler for lunch, but the time must have gotten away. What inspired you to get to school so early this morning.”

“Maw said I should come early and help you get the room ready on account of it’s your birthday.”

“Well isn’t that sweet,” she said, handing him a bucket and ruffling his hair. “It looks to be a good start of a grand day.”