The Giver of Stars

2

Baileyville was unremarkable among the towns of southern Appalachia. Nestled between two ridges, it comprised two main roads of a stuttering mixture of brick and timber buildings, linked in a V, off which sprouted a multitude of winding lanes and paths that led at the lower level to distant hollers, as the small valleys were known, and at the higher, to a scattering of mountain houses across the tree-covered ridges. Those houses near the upper reaches of the creek traditionally housed the wealthier and more respectable families – it being easier to make a legitimate living on the flatter lands, and easier to hide a liquor still in the wilder, higher parts – but as the century had crept forward, the influx of miners and supervisors, the subtle changes in the demographics of the little town and its county, had meant that it was no longer possible to judge who was who simply by which leg of the road they lived on.

The Baileyville WPA Packhorse Library was to be based in the last wooden cabin up Split Creek, a turning on the right off Main Street and a road that contained white-collar workers, shopkeepers and those who made a living mostly by trading what they grew. It was squat on the ground, unlike many of the lower buildings, which were set on stilts to protect them from the spring floods. Cast into part-shadow by an oversized oak to its left, the building measured approximately fifteen strides by twelve. From the front it was entered by a small flight of rickety wooden stairs and from the back by a wooden door that had once been wide enough for cows.

‘It’ll be a way for me to get to know everyone around town,’ she had told the two men over breakfast, as Bennett yet again questioned his wife’s wisdom in taking the job. ‘Which is what you wanted, isn’t it? And I won’t be under Annie’s feet all day.’

She had discovered that if she exaggerated her English accent, they found it harder to disagree with her. In recent weeks she had begun to sound positively regal. ‘And, of course, I will be able to observe who is in need of religious sustenance.’

‘She has a point,’ said Mr Van Cleve, removing a piece of bacon gristle from the side of his mouth and placing it carefully on the side of his plate. ‘She could do it just till the babbies come along.’

Alice and her husband had studiously avoided looking at each other.

Now Alice approached the single-storey building, her boots kicking up loose dirt in the road. She put her hand to her brow and squinted. A newly painted sign proclaimed ‘USA PACKHORSE LIBRARY, WPA’ and the sound of hammering emerged in staccato bursts from inside. Mr Van Cleve had indulged a little too freely the previous evening and had awoken determined to find fault with whatever anyone happened to do in his house. Including breathing. She had crept around, wrenched her way into her breeches, then found herself singing softly on the half-mile walk to the library, just for the joy of having somewhere else to be.

She stood back a couple of paces, trying to peer in, and as she did, she became aware of the low hum of an approaching motor, along with another, more erratic sound she couldn’t quite distinguish. She turned to see the truck, noticing the shocked expression on the driver’s face. ‘Whoa! Mind out!’

Alice spun around just as a riderless horse came galloping down the narrow road towards her, its stirrups flapping, reins tangled in its spindly legs. As the truck swerved to avoid it, the horse shied and stumbled, sending Alice sprawling into the dust.

She was dimly aware of a pair of overalls leaping past her, the blare of a horn and a clatter of hoofs. Whoa … whoa there. Whoa, fella …

‘Ow.’ She rubbed her elbow, her head ringing with the impact. When she finally sat up she saw that a few yards away a man was holding the horse’s bridle and running a hand down its neck, trying to settle it. Its eyes rolled white, and veins popped on its neck, like a relief map.

‘That fool!’ A young woman was jogging down the road towards them. ‘Old man Vance tooted his horn on purpose and he bucked me off in the road.’

‘You okay? You took quite a spill there.’ A hand reached out and helped Alice to her feet. She stood, blinking, and regarded its owner: a tall man in overalls and a checked shirt, his eyes softening in sympathy. A nail still protruded from the corner of his mouth. He spat it into his palm and shoved it into his pocket before offering a handshake. ‘Frederick Guisler.’

‘Alice Van Cleve.’

‘The English bride.’ His palm was rough.

Beth Pinker appeared, panting, between them and snatched the reins from Frederick Guisler with a growl.

‘Scooter, you ain’t got the damn brains you was born with.’

The man turned to her. ‘Told you, Beth. You can’t run a Thoroughbred out of here at a gallop. It gets him wound up like a spring. Take the first twenty minutes at a walk and he’ll be good for the day.’

‘Who has time to walk? I got to get to Paint Lick by midday. Shoot, he’s put a hole in my best breeches.’ Beth tugged the horse over to the mounting block, still muttering under her breath, then turned abruptly. ‘Oh. You the new girl? Marge said to tell you she’s coming.’

‘Thank you.’ Alice lifted a palm, before picking at the selection of small stones embedded in it. As they watched, Beth checked her saddlebags, cursed again, wheeled the horse round, and set off back up the road at a sideways canter.

Frederick Guisler turned back to Alice, shaking his head. ‘You sure you’re okay? I can fetch you some water.’

Alice tried to look nonchalant, as if her elbow wasn’t throbbing and she hadn’t just realized that a fine layer of grit was decorating her upper lip. ‘I’m fine. I’ll just … sit here on the step.’

‘The stoop?’ He grinned.

‘Yes, that too,’ she said.

Frederick Guisler left her to it. He was lining the walls of the library with rough pine shelves, beneath which stood boxes of waiting books. One wall was already filled with a variety of titles, neatly labelled, and a pile in the corner suggested some had already been returned. Unlike the Van Cleve house, the little building held an air of purpose, the sense that it was about to become something useful.

As she sat rubbing dirt from her clothes, two young women walked past on the other side of the road, both in long seersucker skirts and wide-brimmed hats to keep off the worst of the sun. They glanced across the road at her, then put their heads together, conferring. Alice smiled and lifted a hand tentatively in greeting, but they scowled and turned away. Alice realized with a sigh that they were probably friends with Peggy Foreman. Sometimes she thought she might just make a sign and hang it around her neck: No, I didn’t know he had a sweetheart.

‘Fred says you took a fall before you even got on the horse. Takes some doing.’

Alice glanced up to find Margery O’Hare looking down at her. She was atop a large, ugly-looking horse with excessively long ears, and leading a smaller brown and white pony.

‘Um – well, I –’

‘You ever rode a mule?’

‘Is that a mule?’

‘Sure is. But don’t tell him. He thinks he’s a stallion from Araby.’ Margery squinted at her from under her wide-brimmed hat. ‘You can try this little paint, Spirit. She’s feisty but she’s sure-footed as Charley here, and she don’t stop at nothing. The other girl ain’t coming.’

Alice stood up and stroked the little mare’s white nose. The horse half closed her eyes. Her lashes were half white and half brown and she gave off a sweet, meadow-grass scent. Alice was immediately taken back to summers spent riding around her grandmother’s estate in Sussex, when she was fourteen and free to escape for whole days at a time, rather than constantly being told how she should behave.

Alice, you are too impulsive.

She leaned forward and sniffed the baby-soft hair at the mare’s ears.

‘So you going to make love to her? Or you going to get on and ride?’

‘Now?’ said Alice.

‘You waiting for permission from Mrs Roosevelt? C’mon, we got ground to cover.’

Without waiting, she wheeled the mule around and Alice had to scramble aboard as the little paint horse took off after her.

For the first half-hour Margery O’Hare said little, and Alice rode silently behind, struggling to adjust to the very different style of riding. Margery wasn’t stiff-backed, heels down and chin up, like the girls she had ridden with in England. She was loose-limbed, swayed like a sapling as she steered the mule around and up and down slopes, absorbing every movement. She talked to him more often than she spoke to Alice, scolding or singing to him, occasionally turning 180 degrees in her saddle to shout behind, as if she had just remembered she had company: ‘You okay back there?’

‘Fine!’ Alice would call, trying not to wobble as the mare tried again to turn and bolt back towards the town.

‘Oh, she’s just testing you,’ said Margery, after Alice let out a yelp. ‘Once you let her know you’re in charge, she’ll be sweet as molasses.’

Alice, feeling the little mare bunch crossly under her, wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t want to complain in case Margery decided she was not up to the job. They rode through the small town, past lush fenced gardens swollen with corn, tomatoes, greens, Margery tipping her hat to those few people who passed on foot. The horse and the mule snorted and backed up briefly as a huge truck bearing timber came past, but then abruptly they were out of town and headed up a steep, narrow track. Margery pulled back a little as the track widened, so they could travel side by side.

‘So you’re the girl from England.’ She pronounced it Eng-er-land.

‘Yes.’ Alice stooped to avoid a low-hanging branch. ‘Have you been?’

Margery kept her face forward, so Alice struggled to hear her. ‘Never been further east than Lewisburg. That’s where my sister used to live.’

‘Oh, did she move?’

‘She died.’ Margery reached up to break a switch from a branch and peeled the leaves from it, dropping the reins loose on the mule’s neck.

‘I’m so sorry. Do you have other family?’

‘Had. One sister and five brothers. ’Cept there’s just me now.’

‘Do you live in Baileyville?’

‘Just a lick away. Same house I was born in.’

‘You’ve only ever lived in one place?’

‘Yup.’

‘You’re not curious?’

‘’Bout what?’

Alice shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What it would be like to go somewhere else?’

‘Why? Is it better where you come from?’

Alice thought of the crushing silence of her parents’ front room, the low squeak of the front gate, her father polishing his motor-car, whistling tunelessly through his teeth every Saturday morning, the minute rearrangements of fish forks and spoons on a carefully ironed Sunday tablecloth. She looked out at the endless green pastures, the huge mountains that rose up on either side of them. Above her a hawk wheeled and cried into the empty blue skies. ‘Possibly not.’

Margery slowed so that Alice could draw level with her. ‘Got everything I need here. I suit myself, and people generally leave me be.’ She leaned forward and stroked the mule’s neck. ‘That’s how I like it.’

Alice heard the faint barrier in her words, and was quiet. They walked the next couple of miles in silence, Alice conscious of the way the saddle was already rubbing the inside of her knees, the heat of the day settling on her bare head. Margery signalled that they would turn left through a clearing in the trees.

‘We’re going to pick up a little here. You’d best take a grip, case she spins round again.’

Alice felt the little horse shoot forward under her and they were cantering up a long flint track that gradually became more shadowed until they were in the mountains, the horses’ necks extending, their noses lowering with the effort of picking their way up the steep stony pathways between the trees. Alice breathed in the cooler air, the sweet damp scents of the forest, the path dappling with broken light in front of them, and the trees creating a cathedral canopy high above, from which birdsong trickled down. Alice leaned over the horse’s neck as they surged forward, and felt suddenly, unexpectedly happy. As they slowed she realized she was smiling broadly, without thinking about it. It was a striking sensation, like someone suddenly able to exercise a lost limb.

‘This is the north-east route. Thought it would be wise if we divided them into eight.’

‘Goodness, it’s so beautiful,’ Alice said. She stared at the huge sand-coloured rocks that seemed to loom out of nowhere, forming natural shelters. All around her the boulders emerged almost horizontally from the side of the mountain in thick layers, or formed natural stone arches, weathered by centuries of wind and rain. Up here she was separated from the town, from Bennett and his father, by more than geography. She felt as if she had landed on a different planet entirely, where gravity didn’t work in the same way. She was acutely aware of the crickets in the grass, the silent slow glide of the birds overhead, the lazy swish of the horses’ tails as they swept flies from their flanks.

Margery walked the mule under an overhang, and beckoned to Alice to follow. ‘See in there? That hole? That there’s a hominy hole. You know a hominy hole?’

Alice shook her head.

‘Where the Indians ground their corn. If you look over there you’ll see two worn patches in the stone where the ol’ chief used to rest his backside while the women worked.’

Alice felt her cheeks glow and stifled a smile. She gazed up at the trees, her relaxed mood evaporating. ‘Are they … are they still around?’

Margery peered at her from under her wide-brimmed hat for a moment. ‘I think you’re safe, Mrs Van Cleve. They tend to go to lunch about now.’

They stopped to eat their sandwiches under the shelter of a railroad bridge, then rode through the mountains all afternoon, the paths winding and doubling back so that Alice couldn’t be sure of where they had been or where they were headed. It was hard to gauge north when the treetops spanned high above their heads, obscuring sun and shadow. She asked Margery where they might stop to relieve themselves, and Margery waved a hand. ‘Any tree you like, take your pick.’

Her new companion’s conversation was infrequent, pithy and mostly seemed to revolve around who was and wasn’t dead. She herself, she said, had Cherokee blood from way back. ‘My great-granddaddy married a Cherokee. I got Cherokee hair, and a good straight nose. We was all a little dark-skinned in our family, though my cousin was born white albino.’

‘What does she look like?’

‘She didn’t live past two. Got bit by a copperhead. Everyone thought she was just cranky till they saw the bite. Course, by then it was too late. Oh, you’ll need to watch out for snakes. You know about snakes?’

Alice shook her head.

Margery blinked, as if it were unthinkable that someone might not know about snakes. ‘Well, the poisonous ones tend to have heads shaped like a spade, you know?’

‘Got it.’ Alice waited a moment. ‘One of the square ones? Or the digging ones with the pointy ends? My father even has a drain spade, which –’

Margery sighed. ‘Maybe just stay clear of all snakes for now.’

As they rose up, away from the creek, Margery would jump down periodically and tie a piece of red twine around a tree trunk, using a penknife to slice through it, or biting it and spitting out the ends. This, she said, would show Alice how to find her way back to the open track.

‘You see old man Muller’s house on the left there? See the wood smoke? That’s him and his wife and four children. She can’t read but the eldest can and he’ll teach her. Muller don’t much like the idea of them learning but he’s down the mine from dawn till dusk so I’ve been bringing them books anyway.’

‘He won’t mind?’

‘He won’t know. He’ll come in, wash off the dust, eat what food she’s made and be asleep by sundown. It’s hard down there and they come back weary. Besides, she keeps the books in her dress trunk. He don’t look in there.’

Margery, it emerged, had been running a skeleton library single-handed for several weeks already. They passed neat little houses on stilts, tiny derelict shingle-roofed cabins that looked like a stiff breeze might blow them down, shacks with ramshackle stands of fruit and vegetables for sale outside, and at each one Margery pointed and explained who lived there, whether they could read, how best to get the material to them, and which houses to steer clear of. Moonshiners, mostly. Illegal liquor that they brewed in hidden stills in the woods. There were those who made it and would shoot you for seeing it, and those who drank it and weren’t safe to be around. She seemed to know everything about everyone, and delivered each nugget of information in the same easy, laconic way. This was Bob Gillman’s – he lost an arm in one of the machines at a factory in Detroit and had come back to live with his father. That was Mrs Coghlan’s house – her husband had beat her something awful, until he came home boss-eyed and she sewed him up in his bed sheet and went after him with a switch until he swore he’d never do it again. This was where two moonshine stills had exploded with a bang you could hear across two counties. The Campbells still blamed the Mackenzies and would occasionally come past shooting the house up if they got drunk enough.

‘Do you ever get frightened?’ Alice asked.

‘Frightened?’

‘Up here, by yourself. You make it sound like anything could happen.’

Margery looked as if the thought had never occurred to her. ‘Been riding these mountains since before I could walk. I stay out of trouble.’

Alice must have seemed sceptical.

‘It ain’t hard. You know when you have a bunch of animals gathering at a waterhole?’

‘Um, not really, no. Surrey isn’t big on watering holes.’

‘You go to Africa, you got the elephant drinking next to the lion, and he’s drinking next to a hippo, and the hippo’s drinking next to a gazelle. And none of them is bothering each other, right? You know why?’

‘No.’

‘Because they’re reading each other. And that old gazelle sees that the lion is all relaxed, and that he just wants to take a drink. And the hippo is all easy, and so they all live and let live. But you put them on a plain at dusk, and that same old lion is prowling around with a glint in his eye – well, those gazelles know to git, and git fast.’

‘There are lions as well as snakes?’

‘You read people, Alice. You see someone in the distance and it’s some miner on his way home and you can tell from his gait he’s tired and all he wants is to get back to his place, fill his belly and put his feet up. You see that same miner outside a honky-tonk, half a bottle of bourbon down on a Friday and giving you the stink-eye? You know to get out of the way, right?’

They rode in silence for a bit.

‘So … Margery?’

‘Yup.’

‘If you’ve never been further east than – where was it, Lewisburg? – how is it you know so much about animals in Africa?’

Margery pulled her mule to a halt and turned to face her. ‘Are you seriously asking me that question?’

Alice stared at her.

‘And you want me to make you a librarian?’

It was the first time she had seen Margery laugh. She hooted like a barn owl, and was still laughing halfway back down to Salt Lick.

‘So how was it today?’

‘It was fine, thank you.’

She didn’t want to talk about how her backside and thighs ached so badly that she had nearly cried lowering herself onto the seat of the lavatory. Or the tiny cabins they had passed, where she could see the inside walls were papered with sheets of newspaper, which Margery told her were ‘to keep the draughts out in winter’. She needed time to process the scale of the land she had navigated, the feeling, as they had picked a horizontal path through a vertical landscape, of being truly in the wild for the first time in her life, the huge birds, the skittering deer, the tiny blue skink lizards. She thought she might not mention the toothless man, who had sworn at them on the road, or the exhausted young mother with four small children running around outside, naked as the day they were born. But mostly the day had been so extraordinary, so precious, that she really didn’t want to share any of it with the two men.

‘Did I hear you was riding out with Margery O’Hare?’ Mr Van Cleve took a swig of his drink.

‘I was. And Isabelle Brady.’ She didn’t mention that Isabelle had failed to turn up.

‘You want to steer clear of that O’Hare girl. She’s trouble.’

‘How is she trouble?’

She caught Bennett’s flashed look: don’t say anything.

Mr Van Cleve pointed his fork at her. ‘You mind my words, Alice. Margery O’Hare comes from a bad family. Frank O’Hare was the biggest ’shiner between here and Tennessee. You’re too new to understand what that means. Oh, she might dress herself up in books and fancy words, these days, but underneath she’s still the same, just like the no-good rest of ’em. I tell you, there’s no decent ladies around here would take tea with her.’

Alice tried to imagine Margery O’Hare giving a flying fig about taking tea with any ladies. She took the plate of cornbread from Annie and put a slice on her plate before passing it on. She realized she was ravenously hungry, despite the heat. ‘Please don’t worry. She’s just showing me where to deliver the books.’

‘I’m just saying. Mind you don’t hang around her too much. You don’t want her ways rubbing off on you.’ He took two slices of cornbread and put half a slice straight into his mouth and chewed for a minute, his mouth open. Alice winced and looked away. ‘What kind of books are these, anyway?’

Alice shrugged. ‘Just … books. There’s Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott, some cowboy stories and books to help around the home, recipes and suchlike.’

Mr Van Cleve shook his head. ‘Half those mountain people can’t read a word. Old Henry Porteous thinks it’s a waste of time and tax dollars, and I have to say I’m minded to agree. And, like I said, any scheme with Margery O’Hare mixed up in it has to be a bad thing.’

Alice was about to speak up in Margery’s defence but a firm pressure from her husband’s hand under the table warned her off.

‘I don’t know.’ Mr Van Cleve wiped away some gravy at the side of his mouth. ‘I’m pretty sure my wife would not have approved of a scheme like this.’

‘But she did believe in charitable acts, Bennett tells me,’ said Alice.

Mr Van Cleve looked across the table. ‘She did, yes. She was a most godly woman.’

‘Well,’ Alice said, after a moment, ‘I do believe that if we can encourage godless families to read, we can encourage them to turn to scripture, and the Bible, and that can only be good for everyone.’ Her smile was sweet and wide. She leaned forward over the table. ‘Can you imagine all those families, Mr Van Cleve, finally able to truly grasp the word of God through a proper reading of the Bible? Wouldn’t that be a marvellous thing? I’m sure your wife would have had nothing but encouragement for something like that.’

There was a long silence.

‘Well, yes,’ said Mr Van Cleve. ‘You could have a point.’ He nodded, to suggest that that was the end of the matter, for now at least. Alice saw her husband deflate slightly with relief and wished she didn’t hate him for it.

Three days in, bad family or not, Alice had swiftly realized that she would rather be around Margery O’Hare than almost anyone else in Kentucky. Margery didn’t speak much. She was utterly uninterested in the slivers of gossip, veiled or otherwise, that seemed to fuel the women at the endless teas and quilting sessions Alice had sat in on up to now. She was uninterested in Alice’s appearance, her thoughts or her history. Margery went where she liked, and said what she thought, hiding nothing behind the polite courtly euphemisms that everyone else found so useful.

Oh, is that the English fashion? How very interesting.

And Mr Van Cleve Junior is happy for his wife to ride alone in the mountains, is he? Goodness.

Well, perhaps you’re persuading him of the English ways of doing things. How … novel.

Margery behaved, Alice realized with a jolt, like a man.

This was such an extraordinary thought that she found herself studying the other woman at a distance, trying to work out how she had come to this astonishing state of liberation. But she wasn’t yet brave enough – or perhaps still too English – to ask.

Alice would arrive at the library shortly after seven in the morning, the dew still thick on the grass, waving aside Bennett’s offer to drive her in the motor-car and leaving him to breakfast with his father. She would exchange a greeting with Frederick Guisler, who was often to be found talking to a horse, like Margery, and then walk around the back where Spirit and the mule were tethered, their breath sending steam rising into the cool dawn air. The library shelves were almost finished now, stacked with donated books from as far away as New York and Seattle. (The WPA had put out a call to libraries to donate, and brown-paper parcels arrived twice a week.) Mr Guisler had mended an old table donated by a school in Berea so that they had somewhere to lay the huge leather-bound ledger that listed books in and out. The pages were filling quickly: Alice discovered that Beth Pinker left at 5 a.m., and that before she met Margery each day, Margery had already done two hours’ riding, dropping books at remote homesteads in the mountains. She would scan the list to see where she and Beth had been.

Wednesday 15^th

The Farley children, Crystal – four comic books

Mrs Petunia Grant, The Schoolmaster’s House at Yellow Rock – two editions Ladies’ Home Journal (Feb, April 1937), one edition Black Beauty by Anna Sewell (ink marks on pages 34 and 35)

Mr F. Homer, Wind Cave – one edition Folk Medicine by D. C. Jarvis

The Sisters Fritz, The End Barn, White Ash – one edition Cimarron by Edna Ferber, Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C. Douglas (note: three back pages missing, cover water-damaged)

The books were rarely new, and were often missing pages or covers, she discovered, while helping Frederick Guisler to shelve them. He was a wiry, weather-beaten man in his late thirties, who had inherited eight hundred acres from his father and who, like him, bred and broke horses, including Spirit, the little mare Alice had been riding. ‘She’s got opinions, that one,’ he said, stroking the little horse’s neck. ‘Mind you, never met a decent mare that didn’t.’ His smile was slow and conspiratorial, as if he wasn’t really talking about horses at all.

Every day that first week Margery would map out the route they would take, and they would head out into the still morning, Alice breathing in the mountain air in heady gulps after the stifling fug of the Van Cleve house. In direct sun, as the day wore on, the heat would rise in shimmering waves from the ground, and it was a relief to climb into the mountains, where the flies and biting creatures didn’t buzz relentlessly around her face. On the more remote routes Margery would dismount to tie string to every fourth tree so that Alice could find her way back once she was working alone, pointing out landmarks and notable rock formations to help her. ‘If you can’t work it out, Spirit will find the way back for you,’ she said. ‘She’s smart as a tack.’

Alice was getting used to the little brown and white horse now. She knew exactly where Spirit would try to spin, and where she liked to speed up, and she no longer yelped but leaned forward into it, stroking the horse’s neck so that her neat little ears flicked back and forth. She had a rough idea now of which trails went where, and had drawn maps for each, which she tucked into her breeches, hoping she could find her way to each house on her own. Mostly she had just begun to relish the time in the mountains, the unexpected hush of the vast landscape, the sight of Margery ahead of her, stooping to avoid low branches, pointing out the remote cabins that rose up like organic growths amid clearings in the trees.

‘Look outwards, Alice,’ Margery would say, her voice carrying on the breeze. ‘Not much point worrying what the town thinks about you – nothing you can do about that anyway. But when you look outwards, why, there’s a whole world of beautiful things.’

For the first time in almost a year, Alice felt herself unobserved. There was nobody to pass comment on how she wore her clothes or held herself, nobody shooting her curious glances, or hovering to hear the way she spoke. She had started to understand Margery’s determination to have people ‘let her be’. She was pulled from her thoughts as Margery slid to a stop.

‘Here we go, Alice.’ She jumped off by a rickety gate, where chickens scratched in a desultory way in the dust by the house and a large hog snuffled by a tree. ‘Time to meet the neighbours.’

Alice followed her lead, dismounting and throwing the reins over the post by the front gate. The horses immediately lowered their heads and began to graze and Margery lifted one of her bags from the saddle and motioned to Alice to follow. The house was ramshackle, the weatherboarding drooping out of place like a wonky smile. The windows were thick with dirt, obscuring the interior, and an iron wash kettle sat outside over the embers of a fire. It was hard to believe anybody lived there.

‘Good morning!’ Margery walked halfway towards the door. ‘Hello?’

There was no sound, then the creak of a board, and a man appeared in the doorway, a rifle cocked on his shoulder. He wore overalls that had not troubled a washtub in some time, and a clay pipe emerged from under a bushy moustache. Behind him two young girls appeared, their heads tilted as they tried to peer at the visitors. He gazed out suspiciously.

‘How you doing, Jim Horner?’ Margery walked into the little fenced-off enclosure (it could barely be called a garden) and closed the gate behind them. She appeared not to notice the gun or, if she did, she ignored it. Alice felt her heart race a little, but followed obediently.

‘Who’s this?’ The man nodded at Alice.

‘This is Alice. She’s helping me with the travelling library. I wondered if we could talk to you about what we got.’

‘I don’t want to buy nothing.’

‘Well, that suits me fine, because we ain’t sellin’ nothing. I’ll take just five minutes of your time. Could you spare a cup of water, though? Sure is warm out here.’ Margery, a study in calm, removed her hat and fanned her head with it. Alice was about to protest that they had just drunk a pitcher of water between them not half a mile back, but stopped. Horner gazed at her for a moment.

‘Wait out here,’ he said eventually, motioning to a long bench at the front of the house. He murmured to one of the girls, a skinny child with her hair in plaits, who disappeared into the dark house, emerging with a bucket, her brow furrowed with her task. ‘She’ll get you water.’

‘Would you be kind enough to bring some for my friend here, too, please, Mae?’ Margery nodded at the girl.

‘That would be very kind, thank you,’ said Alice, and the man startled at her accent.

Margery tipped her head towards her. ‘Oh, she’s the one from Engerland. The one married Van Cleve’s boy?’

His gaze switched impassively between them. The gun stayed at his shoulder. Alice sat gingerly on the bench as Margery continued to talk, her voice a low, relaxed sing-song. The same way she spoke to Charley the mule when he became, as she called it, ‘ornery’.

‘So I’m not sure if you’ve heard from town but we got a book library going. It’s for those who like stories, or to help your children get educated a little, especially if they don’t go to the mountain school. And I came by because I wondered if you’d like to try some books for yours.’

‘I told you they don’t read.’

‘Yes, you did. So I brought some easy ones, just to get ’em going. These ones here have got pictures and all the letters so they can learn by themselves. Don’t even have to go to school to do it. They can do it right here in your home.’

She handed him one of the picture books. He lowered his gun and took the book gingerly, as if she were handing him something explosive, and flicked through the pages.

‘I need the girls to help with the picking and canning.’

‘Sure you do. Busy time of year.’

‘I don’t want them distracted.’

‘I understand. Can’t have nothing slowing the canning. I have to say it looks like the corn is going to be fine this year. Not like last year, huh?’ Margery smiled as the girl arrived in front of them, lopsided with the weight of the half-filled bucket. ‘Why, thank you, sweetheart.’ She held out a hand as the girl filled an old tin cup. She drank thirstily, then handed the cup to Alice. ‘Good and cold. Thank you most kindly.’

Jim Horner pushed the book towards her. ‘They want money for those things.’

‘Well, that’s the beauty of it, Jim. No money, no signing up, no nothing. Library just exists so people can try a bit of reading. Maybe learn a little if they find they have a liking for it.’

Jim Horner stared at the cover of the book. Alice had never heard Margery talk so much in one sitting.

‘I tell you what? How about I leave these here, just for the week? You don’t have to read ’em, but you can take a look if you like. We’ll come by next Monday and pick them up again. If you like them, you get the kids to tell me and I’ll bring you some more. You don’t like ’em, just leave them on a crate by the fence post there and we’ll say no more. How does that sound?’

Alice glanced behind her. A second small face vanished immediately into the gloom of the building.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Tell you the truth, you’d do me a favour. Would mean I don’t have to carry the darn things all the way back down the mountain. Boy, our bags are heavy today! Alice, you finished your water, there? We don’t want to take up any more of this gentleman’s time. Good to see you, Jim. And thank you, Mae. Haven’t you grown like a string bean since I last saw you!’

As they reached the gate Jim Horner’s voice lifted and hardened. ‘I don’t want nobody else comin’ up here botherin’ us. I don’t want to be bothered and I don’t want my children bothered. They got enough to deal with.’

Margery didn’t even turn around. She lifted a hand. ‘I hear you, Jim.’

‘And we don’t need no charity. I don’t want anyone from town just coming by. I don’t know why you even came here.’

‘Headed to all the houses between here and Berea. But I hear you.’ Margery’s voice carried across the hillside as they reached the horses.

Alice glanced behind her to see that he had raised his gun to his shoulder again. Her heart thumped in her ears as she picked up her pace. She was afraid to look back again. As Margery swung herself onto the mule, she took the reins, mounted Spirit with trembling legs, and it was only when she calculated that they were too far away for Jim Horner to take a shot at them that she allowed herself to exhale. She kicked the mare forward so that she was level with Margery.

‘Oh, my goodness. Are they all that awful?’ Her legs, she realized, were now entirely liquid.

‘Awful? Alice, that went great.’

Alice wasn’t sure she’d heard her correctly.

‘Last time I rode up to Red Creek Jim Horner shot my hat clean off.’ Margery turned towards her and tilted her hat so that Alice could see the tiny hole that scorched straight through the top of it. She rammed it back onto her head. ‘Come on, let’s kick on a little. I want to take you to meet Nancy before we break for lunch.’