Dust On the Bible

By Bonnie Stanard

In Dust, as 1944 WWII’s autumn becomes winter, we experience Christmas in South Carolina through the eyes of twelve year-old Lily. Because she can’t always understand the meaning of what she sees and hears, we learn that beyond Lily’s senses there are secrets and adult human drama she is not privy to. Big events - letters from France, hog slaughtering, the cow’s death, school fights, Gone With the Wind - give us a feel for rural South’s rhythms of life in the mid-1940s. Dust is a chapter in a young girl’s coming of age experience at an important and changing time in her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682228784

Bonnie Stanard

Bonnie Stanard has been an editor, writer, and teacher in her native South Carolina as well as in Richmond, Atlanta, and Brussels. She is the author of six previous historical fiction novels, two children's books, and the chapbook Time Carries All Things Away. She has won various awards for her fiction, including InkSpot's list of Best Books of 2016 for Master of Westfall Plantation, the 2018 President's Book Award by Florida Authors and Publishers Association for the children's book Cat's Fur, and James River Writers finalist for Best Self-Published Novel of 2016 for Dust on the Bible. Her poems have won recognition with a Pushcart Prize nomination as well as placing in competitions such as Rash Award in Poetry, Carry McCray Award, River Poets Journal Contest, and Marsh Hawk poetry book contest.

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Acknowledgements

CHAPTER ONE

Brass Mirror

On a Saturday morning, Lilleitha stood at the woodstove and baked her backside. Waves of warmth cast a spell over her. She stared at whatever she faced—slabs in the wood box, an enamel dishpan on the shelf, Grandma’s knives stuck behind a wood slat nailed to the wall. Steam rose from the iron kettle so silently she could hear whispers coming through a crack in a windowpane. It was hardly October and already a cold morning. She served herself grits Aunt Theda had left simmering on the back of the stove. A pan of biscuits rested on top of the iron skillet where the fatback had been fried.

She listened for family sounds, a door slamming or voices, whether Grandma or Grandpa, Archie or Uncle Freeman. Even the yard hens were quiet, as was the cow in the barnyard and the mules in the stable. Eventually a hound moaned under the steps. Lilleitha’s mother was often at the barn milking the cow by the time she got out of bed, even on school mornings when she hustled to catch the bus. Some parents complained about the pupils’ long ride to Cane Shoals School, but Lily didn’t mind it. She liked to be going places. What she did mind was being in the class with Vera, who had by mean tricks taken charge of practically all the sixth grade girls.

It wasn’t unusual to hear Grandma spurt out, Ohhhh, nowwwww! Where’d I put my glasses! for she was often misplacing this or that. Even with nobody around, she talked out her complaints, and on any given morning, that might be a dull knife or an empty water bucket. Nobody liked to haul out to the well to draw water.

Then there was Grandpa, whose temperament could be gauged by the heft of his footsteps on the floorboards, which registered room-size tremors when he was irritated. And if it looked like a rainy day, he could be counted on to shake the house, for cotton was still in the field. Most nights at the supper table he and Uncle Freeman talked about the cotton they needed to complete another bale and who would take it to Hudson’s Crossing to be ginned.

As the nights grew longer and colder, the family spent more time in the small kitchen, the only warm room. It was what made the Reinhart home different. It was effectively a one-room building, separated from the main house by a covered plank walkway and just big enough for the iron cook stove, butcher table, and dish shelf.

In recent history, kitchens had been built as part of the house as the inconvenience of going outside to the kitchen had taken precedence over whatever danger the fires posed. Aside from that, once electricity became available, people expected to have electric stoves.

The cook stove was mostly Aunt Theda’s territory, though Lilleitha was expected to keep up the supply of wood and carry out the ashes. Every day after school she toted stove wood from the woodpile and stacked it on the walkway at the kitchen door. Grandpa and Uncle Freeman regularly stocked the woodpile with logs and slabs, which they sawed into pieces short enough for the stove. Those pieces that were too thick had to be split with an ax, which Lily did. She was also responsible for chipping splinters from pitch-filled pine knots Uncle Freeman brought from the woods. These, along with corn cobs, were used to start fires.

Though allowed to use a knife or ax, Lily was strictly forbidden to touch matches. Starting fires and lighting the lamps were duties reserved for adults.

The kitchen could accommodate the family for breakfast because the seven members of the household ate at different times, which had become their custom after a couple of bone-chilling mornings in the dining room. Lily’s mother, uncles, and grandfather ate early breakfasts and left to do chores, but Aunt Theda or Grandma was usually in or about the kitchen anytime. On this particular morning Lily alone sat at the side of the rough-hewn wood table pushed against the wall. Something about her solitary breakfast gave the emerging day an added chill.

From the house a door slammed shut, and before anybody entered the kitchen, Lily knew from the footfall it was Archie, her mother’s youngest brother who had graduated from high school the previous May.

He rushed in, drew up at the cookstove, and turned his back and front to the heat. With a rag in hand, he opened the small door and used the poker to shake the grate enough to sift embers into the chamber for ashes. He took a couple pieces of firewood from outside the door and shoved them in the stove before serving himself a breakfast.

They sat at the table and ate in silence, Lily leisurely staring at the stove.

Where’s Aunt Theda? She avoided mention of the matter on everybody’s mind.

Archie shrugged.

Grandma Angeline, whose hefty neck and shoulders suited her authority, entered the room, limping more than usual. I’m not ready for this cold weather. If it don’t warm up some, I might as well go back to bed.

Ma, can I borrow two dollars? said Archie.

What you want with two dollars? Grandma’s voice rumbled as usual, as if she weren’t worried about Archie like everybody else in the family. Because he had been born some time after all the rest, he had been brought up as much by his sisters as his parents. Lily’s mother Florence, the oldest, had already graduated from Cane Shoals School when he was born.

I want to buy a emery hone. He had the best knife on the place and kept it sharp.

Don’t you have one?

It broke. He had made a deal with Tib, who owned the nearest store, to sell the wood duck decoys he made.

Grandma poured herself a cup of chicory coffee and sat with a groan in the only other chair. Tib sells emery hones?

Archie shook his head. Pa said I could have the pickup to drive to Hammond’s Store when he gets back. Hammond’s, the biggest store within twenty miles, was in Hudson’s Crossing.

Nobody asked where Grandpa had gone. For over a month he had been getting up every sunny morning except Sunday and going to Sugar Bottom to pick up the negro hands who picked cotton.

Though they were talking about a knife sharpener, Lily detected an undercurrent of concern in Grandma’s manner. The previous December, Archie had registered with the draft board when he turned eighteen, as required by law, and had been classified 1-A. Uncle Freeman, who had gone to Local Board Number Three in Hudson’s Crossing with Archie, had registered three years earlier in 1940, when it had been required of men aged twenty-one to thirty-one. Uncle Freeman’s draft status of II-C placed him down the list behind other boys in the county because he was a son doing farm labor, work considered necessary to national defense.

Their low-key tension over Archie’s 1-A classification had intensified since Grandpa had run into Melvin Pope, who was on the draft board, and found out a new quota had been issued requiring additional men from the county to be conscripted.

Of the negro hands who picked cotton, there were three who had agreed to work on Saturdays. Even if Florence went to the field with them, Lily was allowed other chores on the weekend. After her mother milked the cow, Lily walked Clio into the pasture and staked her out where grass continued in vigor despite the retreating sun. At the barnyard, she shelled corn, filled the water troughs, and fed the hogs. Patty Pie, the family sow ever since Lily was in first grade, usually had about a dozen piglets every year. The shoats Bister and Curly had been born the first of March in a litter of ten. Patty Pie had crushed three of the piglets, leading Grandpa to suspect she was getting old for breeding. As soon as he weaned the litter, he sold the piglets, except for Bister and Curly, saved for butchering.

Lily split wood and carried it to woodboxes or stacked extra on the porch. As the weather grew colder, more wood was needed for the stoves and fireplaces.

When she heard the sound of the mailman’s car on Cane Shoals highway, she ran to meet it. She could tell by Mr. Hallman’s hangdog look that he was sorry about delivering the letter with the U.S. Department of Army imprint on the envelope and addressed to Archie.

Lily put the letter on the dining table where it disposed the room to frequent visits. Aunt Theda took a look and said it might be something that went out to every boy that registered. Grandma inspected it and rubbed it between her fingers. It feels bad to the touch.

Archie drove the pickup into the yard, got out with a new knife sharpener, and started for the house. Lily rushed to him with the envelope. He glanced at it and looked at Lily before tearing it open. Shit! he said after reading it and handed it to her. The notice that his induction would likely take place in twenty-five days spread to family members like a contagion.

* * *

As Lily dressed for school Monday morning, she put aside her coat and wore a sweater, for more moderate autumn temperatures had returned. She caught the school bus and left as Grandpa returned with a pickup load of negroes to pick cotton.

When the bus dropped her off in the afternoon, Lily found Archie and her mother Florence in the field picking alongside the hands. She put away her books and went to the field. The longer she picked, the longer the row seemed. It stretched like elastic, going on and on as if it would never end.

In the absence of anything to think about but the removal of cotton from burrs, her thoughts turned to the newspaper she had seen on the dining room table with pictures of American soldiers fighting in Italy—the tanks, jeeps, and bombers. They inspired her with a fervor to save America from the Nazi menace. Her mind wandered into adventures in which she parachuted into enemy fields; flushed Krauts out of foxholes; or drove an Army tank.

Sometimes when she paused to straighten her back and stretch, she could sense Archie’s bad mood, for he hadn’t taken his Army notice as a chance to have adventures. It was just the latest of his disappointments. He was picking cotton when he had wanted to be in college, getting more schooling. Grandpa had said there was no advantage to it. The only public work that could be found in the county was at either the sewing plant or the coffin factory in Hudson’s Crossing. Both of them were run by men from New York.

Archie had suggested going to Columbia, but even there the cotton mills were about the only businesses with any number of employees. You want to spend four more years in school to work at Columbia Mills? Grandpa had said. Some day, you’ll inherit enough land to start your own farm. He put great stake on land. You can’t have too much of it, he’d said. To that end he had bought twenty-nine acres from a neighbor two years previously and was saving to buy more land.

The problem was, Archie didn’t care that much for farming. Once he had said he’d rather be a barber, but Grandpa said most people cut their own hair. The Reinharts, except for Uncle Freeman, got their haircuts from Aunt Theda.

Uncle Freeman had said Archie would make a good preacher, which brought a laugh from both Archie and Lily. She had said, Preacher! He don’t even go to church.

That don’t mean he’s not a man of God, said Aunt Theda.

Lily had thought the church was the place where people found God. What did man of God mean? Can anybody be godly? she said.

Anybody that minds his own business, Grandpa had said.

Just the followers of Jesus, said Aunt Theda.

Roy Acuff is about as godly as you get, said Uncle Freeman.

Lilleitha, carry these eggs to the house, said Florence.

If you godly you not human, said Grandma.

There followed days in which Archie was granted extra consideration. If Uncle Freeman got into an argument with him, the family defended Archie. If Archie wanted the pickup, he got it. It didn’t take long for Archie to abuse such solicitude, and for Lily to tire of his clout. She sneaked into his room and borrowed his fiddle while he burned off a field with Uncle Freeman and Grandpa. The bow raked across the strings producing a screech that put Lily’s teeth on edge. She decided it needed tuning. In the process she broke one of the strings.

Leave my stuff alone! Archie said when he came in. He got so angry he chased her around the house with a broom.

I don’t believe you can pass the physical, you so skinny, Grandma said to Archie, but his physical examination didn’t alter his classification. In a follow-up notice, the Army required him to report to the county draft board. Lily could worry only so long about Archie’s future in the Army. She read his funny books in which Captain America blasted the Nazis to smithereens. From those pages she revived her belief that Archie was lucky to be off on a fighting adventure.

Lily stayed home from school on the day Archie had to leave. Grandma’s nose was running as if she had the grippe. Put this in your pocket. Keep it close. She handed Archie a small round brass mirror.

Archie rubbed the brass and said, Where’d you get this?

There was a cousin, a Fallaw, carried it in the Civil War and fought at Richmond, said Grandma.

Archie handed it back. I might lose it.

It’s come through awful fighting. It’ll bring you through too. Grandma tucked it into his shirt pocket.

He gave her a self-conscious hug. Even Florence patted Archie on the shoulder. Aunt Theda, whose sniffling turned into an embrace, embarrassed Lily, for hugs of that kind weren’t normal in the family, except in cases of serious sickness. When Archie gave Grandpa an awkward hug, Lily ran and hid, too embarrassed to endure a hug from him. She peeked out the window to see him lope to the pickup and wave good-bye. Uncle Freeman raced the motor and kicked up dust leaving.

CHAPTER TWO

Barnyard Voices

The field across Cane Shoals highway lost its snowy white crest as cotton picking came to a conclusion. Some evenings Lily rode in the pickup with Grandpa as he gathered the burlap sheets that had been filled and bundled with cotton and hauled them to the barn where they were emptied. As white fluffs tumbled into a heap, a warm smell like burning paper flooded the barn. The cotton was stored until there was enough to make a bale, at which time he took it to be ginned in Hudson’s Crossing.

Of a school morning, if Florence didn’t call up the stairs, Lilleitha, time to get up! Aunt Theda did. Lily slept in the loft above the front, or oldest, part of the house. It was a long open space that extended from one gable end to the other and was divided in the middle by the landing of the stairs. At the gable ends on each side was a window that overlooked the tin roof of porches that wrapped around three sides of the house. The low ceiling of unpainted boards gave the loft a woodsy quality.

Grandpa’s frame house, made of heartwood pine, was one of the oldest in the Cane Shoals area. Mott Reinhart, the son of a German immigrant and Grandpa Levi’s grandfather, had bought it from a relative who moved to Mississippi.

Lily had heard stories of her ancestor Mott, whose English had been as thick as served his purpose. When describing him, Grandpa Levi had said, In the course of selling a horse, Grandpa Mott couldn’t understand English a-tall if he didn’t like the deal. According to family legend, the War of Secession was good for the horse trade business, and, by the time General Lee surrendered at Appomattox in the spring of 1865, Mott had a house, seventy acres of cleared land, cotton seed, and two mules.

Lawton, his son and Grandpa Levi’s father, worked the land and lived a life of dust and sweat. At his death he owned over a thousand acres, much of it new land. Grandpa Levi said of his father that he was good at figuring and could lift a grindstone without breaking a sweat. He told the story that Lawton once worked a mule so hard that by afternoon it fell dead pulling a load. He went back to the stables and hitched up another mule to finish a day of hauling logs to the Wyonee River. In those times, money could be made floating logs down the river to Charleston.

Lily dressed, went downstairs and out to the kitchen for breakfast. She was careful to listen for the bus, for the driver had left without her one morning when she couldn’t find her shoes, which had rankled the entire family. Uncle Freeman had had to take her in the pickup, and it was almost out of gas and they couldn’t get another ration card for two days. When necessary, they used the mule and wagon, but it slowed everything down, especially when hauling cotton.

Her bus route, one of the longest, meandered over country roads as far as Sweet Gum Branch prior to arriving at the farm. Before the school bus came to a stop on Cane Shoals highway, its impatient horn sounded. Lily picked up her books and lunch sack and dashed out the door.

They stopped and picked up Lynette Watson, the only other sixth grader on the route. Lily didn’t often sit beside her, not that she avoided her, but Lynette always chose a seat at the front of the bus. Lily, who thought their driver was a jerk, kept her distance from him.

Lynette was wearing her dress with brown teddy bears, the same one she had worn for several days, even though the girls teased her about it. Everybody knew teddy bears were for babies.

When it came time for the morning bathroom break, the class marched outside to the toilet, built on the side of the school building like a shed. It was nothing like the one at Lily’s house, which, because of the smell, was down the path and in the woods. The school bathroom’s shiny white sinks and cement floors were hard places that echoed every sound.

Most astonishing of all were the commodes, hidden in little metal cabins. At first, Lily had flushed and flushed, just to see the gush of water swirl around and then magically disappear down a hole in the bottom. Some of the pupils either didn’t know how to flush or forgot, for at times the room smelled so strong of dookey that everybody held their noses and raced in and out.

Lily was careful to go into the cabin to do her business only when Vera was inside one. One time Vera and the girls had held the door shut, and Lily had been stuck inside while they threw wads of wet toilet paper over the door. All because Lily instead of Vera had been chosen by Miss Widener to read the devotions in chapel.

At break, the girls congregated inside the bathroom and giggled. Lily didn’t go near them, for it seemed like every other day somebody told a nasty secret and somebody else got her feelings hurt.

Vera asked in her sugary way, Lynette, you got teddy bear underwear too? It was like Vera to disguise damaging words in a friendly tone. She sneaked behind Lynette and flipped up the teddy bear dress.

I see Lynette’s britches! Thelma chanted and others joined in. Vera tugged the skirttail up and Lynette pulled it down, and the two of them circled round and round. Almost everybody closed in on Lynette and yanked up her dress and looked at her dingy underdrawers. Lynette dropped to the floor and sat on her skirt, tears in her eyes. After the others left the bathroom, she cried, and Lily gave her toilet paper to blow her nose.

Don’t say anything to Miss Widener, Lynette said, wiping her eyes.

Lily understood. Nobody openly took sides against Vera.

In the afternoon once her feet touched down on Grandpa’s land, she felt safe, even from Vera. With the bus spurting away, Grandpa’s hounds Blizzard and Angel met her, wagging their tails and sticking their noses into her dress. She scratched behind their ears and raced them to the porch.

Archie’s first letter home came a week before his nineteenth birthday. Aunt Theda had put together and mailed to him a birthday package with socks from herself, a deck of cards from Uncle Freeman, money from Grandpa, a salve Grandma had made, and a new Green Lantern funny book from Lily.

Archie’s letter, written from boot camp at Atlantic City, New Jersey, was passed from one person in the family to another. When Lily’s cousins Calvin and Ina Marie came to visit on Sunday, Lily read aloud to them Archie’s story of getting in line for shots, for a haircut, for clothes. The regiment ran out of pea coats and he got a denim jacket instead. He drilled six hours at a time, ate navy beans and cabbage every meal. As she neared the end, she slowed down to read, All of these strangers. I never saw any of these guys in my life. There’s nobody in the barracks I know.

With Archie away in the Army, Lily occasionally explored his room. She cut her toenails with his midget scissors and whipped up foam in his shaving cup to decorate her face. Her favorite thing was the cast iron eagle bank Archie had gotten in a trade for a mallard decoy. When she pulled a lever, baby eagles rose from the nest, opening their beaks just as the mama eagle dropped the coin down on them, as if it was a big fat worm.

The floor, like that of other rooms, was made of lumber from eighteenth century pine forests. Cracks between the worn boards had separated enough for Lily to see the sand underneath. If Grandpa’s dog Blizzard lay under the house, Lily stopped what she was doing and knelt on the floor to whisper his name through a crack. The dog perked up his brown ears, turned his squared muzzle, paused, and listened. The pattern of white hair extending from Blizzard’s crown to his black nose made it easy to see his head, even in the shadows. Blizzard! He looked in all directions. Blizzard! He became a statue. Blizzard! He barked timidly and yelped.

Had the dog looked up, his muzzle would have practically touched her lips. Lily whistled as best she could. The harder she puffed out her lips, bowed her tongue, and blew, the skinnier and shriller the wheezing noise she made. Uncle Freeman said her pucker was a problem, and Lily wondered if she’d be a good kisser when the time came. Come here, Blizzard! The dog was so confused he turned in circles looking every which way but up. Lily giggled, brimming with satisfaction.

She tried to play Archie’s fiddle but was careful not to tune the strings too tight as she had once done, which got her into big trouble when Archie had had to order another one from the Sears Roebuck catalogue. As soon as she plucked a few strings, not only her mother but Grandma and Aunt Theda said in chorus, Lilleitha, put Archie’s fiddle back and come out of his room! Aunt Theda added, And since you not busy, bring in some stove wood.

After the first frost, which usually came in October, Grandpa set aside a