Chapter 14

More Rules

It’s been a week since Mama singed my ears with rules and remembers for Gettysburg. Today Daddy asks me to help him open the sluice gate. I reckon he’s fixing to dish out his spoonful.

“You got something on your mind, Daddy? You never needed my help with this before.”

The wood sluice gate holds back the branch. Most days, water rushes past with a never-you-mind, until Daddy opens the gate to let water stream through wood troughs to our cistern. From the cistern, we pump water to our kitchen sink. Daddy says it’s always good to head toward summer with the cistern full.

Today, he examines the wood troughs, adjusts one, and examines it again. “Ya know your mama’s canned up a peck’a worry about ya traipsin’ off with Grandpa,” he says. “I told her ya kin take care’a yourself. But ya got ta do somethin’ fer me.”

“What kind of something?”

“Be mindful’a Grandpa. He ain’t a young sprout no more. Make him rest when he’s tired, and if’n his haints start gittin’ the best of ‘im, put his mind on somethin’ else.”

I don’t know if I’ll even recognize Grandpa’s haints, and it’s not easy to makeGrandpa do anything he doesn’t want to. “You’re asking a mountain of me, Daddy.”

“Just keep your eyes open. If somethin’ gits him bogged down, coax ‘im back up.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

He opens the sluice gate and, Whoosh! Water tumbles through, pushing against itself, roaring and bubbling. The sound of it pounds against my ears, almost as if the branch is setting down its own rules.

*    *    *

The sun has barely edged into afternoon, but Mama’s tired. Daddy says she needs to rest, so I play mumblety-peg on the creek bank with Grandpa.

“Fred learnt me ta play mumblety-peg when we was sprouts.” Grandpa says. “He could flip a jackknife off his nose without using his hands and make it stand oak-tree straight in rock-hard dirt.”

I grin. “Could he catch a jackknife with his teeth, too? After he walked down the center of Rebecca’s Branch without getting his feet wet?”

“That’s enough sass.”

Grandpa taught me to play mumblety-peg when I was only six. Mama nearly had a conniption. She surely had one when Daddy bought me my own jackknife a year later. Its bumpy-textured, stag handle was big back then, but my hands have grown to fit it.

Usually Grandpa talks while we play, but today the burbling voice of the branch is the one I hear. Something is on his mind, and it takes him a spell to get to it.

“Ginnie Lee,” he finally says and pauses as if the words are hard to come by.

“What, Grandpa?”

“When we git ta Gettysburg, and ya’s meetin’ a mess’a new folks, I want ya ta talk proper like your ma does.”

“Shucks, Grandpa, do you think I’ll shame you?”

“It ain’t that. I never learnt book-talk like your ma speaks. She learnt ya right, and most times ya remember real good. But sometimes when ya’s a-spendin’ time with a’ old hill codger like me, ya fergit.”

Grandpa’s right. His way of talking is as catching as a yawn during a dull Sunday sermon. After a string of his stories, my mouth spills out ain’ts and druthers and drops g’s like they’re slippery.

“Mind what I say,” he says. “Show them folks a girl kin be proper brought up in these hills.” It’s not like Grandpa to care what other folks think. That’s Mama’s way, not his.

“And a proper young lady don’t tote a jackknife in ‘er pocket,” he adds, as he flips his knife off his elbow and lands it in the dried mud.

I copy his gesture and plant my knife right beside his. “Might be you’re scared a proper young lady will best you at mumblety-peg.”

He retrieves his knife. “I reckon ya kin tote the knife along,” he says, wiping the blade on his sleeve. “Just keep it firm in your pocket when we git around other folks. Ya hear?”