The following tale is from the book Come Go Home with Me: Stories by Sheila Kay Adams. Copyright 1995 The University of North Carolina Press. Reproduction in any form is prohibited without the express permission of the Press.


It's a Sign

There was a small branch that wound and twisted its way down from the Sim Top, through the Burton Cove, on down through Sodom, and later joined with Big Laurel Creek. It wasn't very wide or deep, but in places it formed pools that were so clear that you could see the sand and rocks on the bottom. It was the perfect place for minners to live. As children, we would make hooks out of straight pins, catch a few worms, and fish for those little fellers. We always put them right back in the water so there neve r got to be a shortage of them.

One hot September day, I was helping Granny clean up after breakfast. She brought the tail of her apron up and wiped the sweat off her face. "Hit's hotter 'an Satan's house cat today."

She walked to the open door and stood, one arm braced against the facing, and looked for all the world a picture, framed and motionless. Then she whirled of a sudden and said, "Grab a flour sack, honey. Let's go to the woods and gather us some buckeyes. We'll git us a dope from the peddler."

She reached around behind her and untied her apron and threw it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. I reached in the kitchen cupboard and brought out a flour sack that bore the same pattern as the underwear I had on, and out into the sunshine we sailed, Granny in front, singing at the top of her lungs, me in tow. Granny's digging stick swung gracefully from the leather string around her neck, and she paused briefly to grab her hoe from where it leaned against the barn. She never went into the woo ds without her digging stick, the handle worn smooth from years of use digging out 'sang root. And she never went without her hoe, the edge of which was honed to razor sharpness. The hoe served a dual purpose. It could be used as a walking stick on the steep mountainsides, or it could slice the head off a copperhead in one blow. Granny was an accomplished copperhead killer.

By midafternoon, we had filled the flour sack full to busting, had located several 'sang roots, two of which were now in Granny's possession to be washed and hung behind the stove, where they would dry and later be sold. We had turned over rocks in the branch so we could watch the spring lizards jump straight up and then slither farther into the mud to be still as death, and we had a run-in with a huge thousand-legs. Granny capped her hand over my mouth when we saw the thousand-legs, because if you show them your teeth they'll every one rot out.

We had wandered through the mountains and gradually worked our way back down to the branch, where we laid down on our stomachs and watched the minners dart back and forth through the shafts of sunlight that sifted down through the leaves of the buckeye trees. We dipped our fingers into the water and the minners came right up; and if we stayed real still, they would nibble our fingertips. If we moved our hands the slightest bit, they would streak off in all directions, only to return when the water became still again.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, came the sound of a strong breeze-- but the air was perfectly still. Granny looked up and about that time a big yellow and black butterfly landed on the bank beside her, and then another, and another. They swooped down out of the sky and covered the banks of the stream, the trunks of the trees, and me and Granny. They settled on our arms, our hair, our faces. I will never forget the way Granny looked with her hair and face, arms, and shoulders all covered with butterflies opening and closing their wings. Granny's skin looked to be a moving, living mass of yellow! And through the living yellow I could see Granny's shining blue eyes. I got so excited that I jumped up and started trying to catch them, and Granny spoke sharply to me for one of the first times in my life.

"Git down an' be still girl!"

I was so startled and hurt by Granny's tone of voice that I did as I was told immediately. The butterflies soon settled back on me, and I looked at those on my arm. I could see their tiny, bright eyes, their curled, velvet tongues; even more, I thought I could see their "life's-blood" running through their paper-thin wings.

And then, in a fluid and beautiful motion, they lifted as one and spiraled into the blue September sky and were gone. Granny reached out and took me in her arms and held me fiercely for a minute.

"It's a sign, Sealy, it's a sign of some kind. God sent them butterflies just for us. I'm sure it's a sign . . ."

Time passed; it always does. I still remember, though. And sometimes in the heat of late summer or early fall, I go back to the little branch there beneath the huge buckeye trees and sit on the bank with my feet dangling in the water, searching in vain for the minners that nibbled at my finger thirty years ago. And I turn my face up, searching the endless blue for a cloud of yellow, listening for the rustle of a thousand little wings.


Come Go Home with Me is available starting in September 1995 in paperback ($10.95) or hardcover ($19.95) at bookstores or from the University of North Carolina Press. Toll-free credit card orders: Phone 1-800-848-6224; fax 1-800-272-6817.


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