Chapter 10: Cherry Is Heroic

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Chapter 10: Cherry Is Heroic

Daffodil in snow.

June 10, 1844, Monday.

Rhododendrons

In the barn loft, Jim Tanner was dreaming. It was a seasonal dream: the mountain laurel and rhododendrons were in bloom. Jim was wandering through a forest of brightly-coloured flowers. In the distance, he spied a tall wooden tower, kind of like an old blockhouse fort, he thought. There was a window in the top of it (as there was not in blockhouses). Through the glass of the closed window, he could see the silhouette of a young woman. She was combing her hair.

In the dream, Jim started to climb the rhododendron-covered trellis to the window, while singing 'Open Thy Lattice, Love'. He had almost reached the window when it, indeed, opened. A girl's voice called out, 'Tarnation! Hellfire and brimstone!'

Jim woke with a start. First, because he was freezing. Second, because somebody really was shouting 'Tarnation!', and that voice could only belong to Cherry Johnston. Jim tumbled out of the hayloft to see what was going on.

It was still June (he hadn't overslept), and there were rhododendrons in bloom beside the Peace and Poverty. However, the flowers were shining pinkly through a load of fresh, white snow. Snow was still falling down: fat, white flakes of the stuff, like a curtain. Cherry Johnston, in moccasins, woollen skirt and buckskin jacket, was standing amid the falling snow and shouting at whatever weather spirit had caused this unseasonable outrage.

'Tarnation!' she shouted again. 'This ain't right! Stop it, stop it right now! Don't mess with my seedlings!' Jim didn't know whether to laugh, or to join her, so he did both.

'I hope it stops soon,' he said, thinking, Please, Lord, or please don't let it kill the fruit this year.

Cherry and Jim joined the Gallaghers in their kitchen, warming themselves by the stove. Old Josiah Ferguson, who was in town to have a horse shod, sat with them.

'I don't know what the world is coming to,' said Mrs Gallagher. 'Do you think it's a sign of the End Times?'

Josiah shook his head. 'No, ma'am, I don't. Every time somethin' strange happens, people will say it's the End Times. But I've seen it snow in July. That was the year of eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death. Never did get warm that year. But the world kept on a-turnin'.'

'I hope that won't happen this year,' said Jim, and Mr Gallagher agreed with him.

'I was a kid then, and it was a dang hard year, 1816.'

They needn't have worried: an hour later, the snow stopped. Almost immediately, it began to melt. The sun came out, and the air began to warm. Cherry and Jim looked at each other and smiled. It was just a freak snowfall, such as often happens in that part of Pennsylvania. They headed outside, where Cherry decided to help Jim feed animals, while the little Gallaghers hunted eggs and laughed when they found some in a temporary snowbank.

'Will you come to the inn this Saturday night?' Jim asked Cherry. 'Hannibal said he'd be there. George Hayes and I want to try out a kind of a show he learned off a wagon driver from Ohio.'

Cherry was interested. 'I'll make him take me, too,' she announced firmly. 'Y'uns are safer to be around than those drunks over at Barnett's.' She would have said more, but they both suddenly jumped at a loud series of shrieks. They were coming from the house next door.

'That sounds like Mrs McNab,' said Jim, and they both ran. Jim got to the door first because he was closer to begin with. What he saw made his hair stand on end.

Rattlesnake

Mrs McNab and her four children were standing near the back wall, as far as they could get from an open cupboard. It was obvious why: in the open cupboard, nestled in an opened bag of oats, was a coiled reptile. Obviously, it had come in out of the cold. Obviously, it had opened the oat bag. Obviously, it now regarded the bag of oats as its property. And it resented the intrusion.

'Don't go near it, Billy,' said Jim. 'That's a rattler!' And, indeed, the disturbed snake identified itself audibly. Jim's mind was racing. What to do? He was picturing something complicated involving a stick – preferably a long one – and a gunny sack, and nerves of steel, which he did not have, and…

Before his reasoning could go any further, a flash of buckskin flew past his peripheral vision, as Cherry's arm shot out to grab the angry rattler. Before anyone could take two breaths, she'd snatched it up behind the head and broken its neck in one quick motion. Still holding the now-limp snake by the neck, she took it out the front door and placed it on the ground, covering the remains with an overturned bucket.

'Don't touch that!' she told the children. 'That snake's venom can still kill you, and those jaws could still clench.' Wide-eyed with wonder, the children nodded agreement.

Jim looked at Cherry with possibly even wider eyes than the children did. He looked at her the way an ancient tribesman might have regarded a goddess.

'Oh, thank you, Cherry,' said Mrs McNab. 'I didn't know what to do. I was waiting for the snow to stop before walking to the school, and I thought I'd check that the children had enough of everything for the week, and…' At this point, the shock caught up with her, and she had to sit down. Ann thanked them both again and went to make her mother a cup of tea. Jim promised to come by a little later to walk them to the school.

Back out on the street, Jim turned to Cherry and asked, 'How on earth did you do that?' Cherry shrugged.

'It ain't the first time,' she commented. 'I did a rattler like that when I was about five. Durn thing was threatenin' my baby brother. Don't nobody mess with me and mine.'

She headed off toward the blacksmith's shop, leaving Jim scratching his head.

'She's always been like that,' her brother Hannibal told Jim later. When our brother Sam was a baby, a panther climbed in the window one day. Started to make off with the baby. Cherry ran after that thing, just a-screamin' and throwin' everythin' she could find. The panther was scared of her, I reckon. It dropped Sam and took off into the woods. I asked her the same thing you did.'

Hannibal scratched his head. 'You know what she said? "A painter ain't nothin' but a big ol' cat."'

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Dmitri Gheorgheni


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