Read Online Anybody Shining by Frances O'Roark Dowell - Free Book Online Page B

if that is what it takes to show you that we are kin and should be the best of friends.
    Besides, if I stopped writing you, how would you know what me and Tom got ourselves up to?

    Three days ago I walked over to the settlement school to be neighborly, and who did I run into first thing but Ruth Wells? And didn’t I just wish I’d worn me some shoes and maybe a dress that didn’t have a spray of spots on it from the time Mama made me chop off a chicken’s head because she was too busy with Baby John? I am here to tell you that a chicken’s neck will spurt blood something fierce the second its head is removed, and it’s better to wear old rags to get the job done and not your second-best dress.
    Ruth come up to me with her fine manners and said, “Arie Mae, I would like to meet Pastor Campbell’s wife, Sarah. Mother tells me she comes from Virginia and was educated at Hollins College. And now here she is, hiddenaway in this primitive place. I think she must be fascinating!”
    Primitive? I have never thought of Stone Gap as being primitive, but maybe you can’t truly know the place you live in. Or maybe I don’t rightly know what primitive means. I can report that the post office has electric lights, which seems fairly advanced to me.
    But that was neither here nor there. “If you’uns come up the mountain after dinner tomorrow, why, we’d be happy to make your acquaintance with Miss Sary. She’s about the nicest person I know.”
    Ruth smiled at me like I was a little child and said, “Why, thank you, Arie Mae. I knew I could count on you.”
    The more I thought about it when I got back home, the more I didn’t want to take Ruth to meet Miss Sary. I was afeared she would turn her sniffy nose up at Miss Sary’s humble home, even if she claimed she found her “fascinating.”
    But the minute Lucille heard that Ruth Wells was coming up to our house so we couldtake her to Pastor Campbell’s, well, there was no turning back. Having heard me describe Ruth, Lucille could not wait to become her bosom friend. Lucille is drawn to ribbons and pretty gold lockets on thin gold chains, and bossy girls do not bother her in the least bit. It is girls like Lucille, the ones who are always trying to better themselves and other folks too, who are custom-made to be friends with girls like Ruth Wells.
    I have to give Ruth one thing—she has pretty manners. She said, “How do you do, Mrs. Sparks,” in a very friendly tone when James introduced her to Mama, and then she commented on Mama’s piecework that was laying over the back of a chair. “Why, is that the Churn Dash pattern?” she wanted to know. “I hear that’s very complicated.”
    â€œYou know about piecework?” Mama asked, clearly amazed. “I didn’t know folks off the mountain pieced.”
    Ruth smiled a gracious smile. “I don’t actually make quilts myself, but Mother has aninterest in domestic handicrafts. She is writing a book about quilts from the Civil War.”
    â€œYour mama’s writing a book about quilts?” Mama looked over at one laid across the chair, then shook her head. “That’s an everyday sort of thing to write about, ain’t it?”
    â€œThat’s why Mother finds them so interesting,” Ruth explained. “They are everyday things, but they’re also beautiful.”
    Mama continued to look doubtful. “I reckon.”
    As soon as Lucille got a taste of Ruth’s refined ways, she run into the bedroom and changed into her Sunday best. I knowed she was wishing her Sunday best was a lot better than it was. When she pranced back to the kitchen, Mama took one look at her and said, “Uh-uh, Miss Lucille. You go right back in that room and change into what you had on. You’ll ruin that dress tramping around in the woods.”
    Tears sprung up in Lucille’s eyes, and I wondered