Retta scowled, and I jumped up to fetch a tea towel.
“Well, now,” he said, pressing his hands against his shirt pockets fattened with his glasses and pens, a comb, a matchbox, a tobacco tin, papers, and other oddities—his life poking out of the bulging fabric. “I best let you ladies retire and journey on back to my home,” he said drunkenly, swaying a little as he stood.
“You need any help, Alonzo?” I asked, worrying if he could make it down the path without falling off the mountain.
“Obliged, Honey, but it ain’t more than five minutes down, and I’ll be tucked in tight as a tick ’fore you can holler my name and it comes boomerangin’ back.” He chuckled.
Alonzo left, and me and Retta retired to her robin’s-egg blue and white metal glider on the porch.
Under a quilt, I snuggled up to the old woman and laid my head on her shoulder like I used to when I was a little girl. The porch lantern burned low; scents of woodsmoke, tired cooking oil, and spent sparkle from our supper lingered. A lone coyote called from the hills as the lantern cast warm light across the wooden slants.
Retta’s cat, Pennie, mewed as she jumped onto the porch, rubbing her long whiskers against the quilt. I scratched her cream-colored head, listening to the cat’s purring contentment.
Retta went inside and came back out with a dish of meat scraps for the cat. Greedy, Pennie chewed loudly and licked the plate. The cat cleaned her whiskers, then headed over to Junia’s stall.
After a few minutes, I sat up and said, “Retta, what would you have done if that judge sent me away?”
“Humph, that boy would’ve know’d better than to try. An’ iffin his ma ever found out, she would fuss him into the next county, iffin I didn’t boot him there first. Humph,” she said again, fluffing her long skirts. “Boy done got too briggity going to them fancy stone schools and big universities for the book-read. Well, I’m a moonlighter an’ I went and got my readin’ an’ writing smarts too. Up at the ol’ Moonlight Schools, an’ lawsy, do I know’d a thing or two I could teach him.”
“Retta, you never told me you attended the Moonlight Schools. What was it like?”
“It was long ’fore your time, Honey. I think I started going in 1913. But as ya probably know, the Moonlight Schools were held at night and only when the moon was fat an’ bright, so me an’ other folks could learn our letters, read an’ write. Walk safely up them ol’ moonlit paths to the one-room schoolhouse to meet my teacher, Miss Sundie Ball.” A secret glimmered in her eyes, and she raised a finger and said:
“The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.”
“‘The Ladder of St. Augustine,’” I said, remembering Mama’d told me the night schools began around that time for the uneducated, elderly hillfolk and the Kentucky men going off to fight in the Great War. It was vital to free folk from illiteracy, to save those imprisoned by its bondage, she’d said.
I traced the pie-crust pattern on the seat of Retta’s glider, trying to picture Retta and the others hobbling along the moonlit paths. For a moment, the notion made me sad, and I envied those who’d gone to a real school. It felt like I’d been robbed, cheated out of a chance to be like other students. Even ol’ Retta had been given that.
Retta said, “The moonlighters know’d ol’ Longfellow well. His was the very first words they learnt us to write… Ah, ’Tunia, it’s getting late, I need to go to bed now.” She stood, unsteady, flailing an arm.
“Retta, what’s wrong?” I jumped up and took a firm hold of her.
She winced. “It’ll pass, child, these ol’ bones are jus’ tired. Ain’t used to so much big to-dos, and all in one day.”