Free Anybody Shining by Frances O'Roark Dowell Page B

recipes.”
    â€œGhosts,” Ruth said firmly, “are for weak-minded people.”
    Miss Sary just smiled at her and held out the plate of cookies. “Have another, won’t you, Ruth?”
    Me and Tom exchanged a look. We didn’t even have to say what we was thinking. We was going to track down Aunt Jennie Odomand find out about her daughter, Oza. If there was truly a ghost living in these woods, why, surely that was news worth reporting.
    After we finished eating cookies, Miss Sary got out her atlas, and we had a time pointing out all the countries we wanted to visit. Ruth said she wanted to go to Africa and see the tigers, and James said he thought tigers mostly lived in India, and they argued about that for a while until everybody felt wore out and fidgety and we went home.
    Oh, but didn’t I lay in bed that night with a grin plastered across my face? Me and Tom had us a story to report. We would track down that shiny girl, Oza Odom, and we would write up her tale just like real authors. Why, I could hardly get to sleep just thinking about it.

    Tom and I have made a pact to go to Aunt Jennie Odom’s on Friday, three days from now. In between now and then he is hoping the cut on his hand will heal. When I asked him how he got it, he said it was from makinga split-bottom chair. He was weaving reeds together real tight for the seat when one of the edges sliced his finger.
    I never knowed anybody who made a split bottom chair before the songcatchers started their school, but Tom says they are a mountain crafts tradition. Sounds like an awful dangerous tradition to me. I think I’ll get my chairs from the Sears catalog, if it’s all the same.
    Signed,
    Your Cousin,
    Arie Mae Sparks

Dear Cousin Caroline,
    Mama and Daddy had the biggest quarrel this afternoon, and anybody could have told you how it was going to turn out. My daddy goes around acting like the boss of everything, but in the end Mama always manages to get her way.
    We children weren’t meant to overhear, of course. We’d been out picking peaches for to make peach butter and weren’t expected home for some time yet.
    It was on account of Lucille getting stung by a bee and having a fit that we come homeearly. Now, most folks will cry a tear or two when they get stung, as it hurts so awful bad, but Lucille acted like she was breathing her last. Since folks have been known to die on account of a bee sting, me and James decided we best not take any chances, even though we knowed it was probably just Lucille making much ado over a tiny thing.
    By the time we reached home, Lucille seemed to have recovered, though she kept a hand over her eyes so we would know that she was still suffering in her soul. James and I helped her up the porch steps, but just as James was about to pull open the door, Daddy’s voice come out the window and froze us all in our places.

    â€œIdy, I won’t have you singing for them folks. They have come up here trying to change our ways to their liking, and I won’t put up with it.”
    â€œThey say they’re trying to preserve our ways,” Mama’s voice come in reply. “That’s why they want me to sing for them Baltimorepeople, so that they can truly know what mountain singing is.”
    â€œOh, they’re fine with our ways from a hundred years ago. It’s our ways of today they don’t like so much. It’s like we’re supposed to be froze in time. Don’t ever turn on the radio, they say, don’t ever read you a newspaper that someone brung over from Asheville. You might get corrupted.”
    â€œMiss Pittman said you could play your fiddle, Zeke. Wouldn’t you like to play your fiddle for a crowd?”
    â€œNot that crowd,” Daddy said. “They don’t know enough about fiddle-playing to appreciate it. Besides, I’m tired of playing them old songs.”
    â€œYes, Zeke, but the songs you like so much are ones you