Hazel Shine
Born up near Cornelia, Alabama on Big Canoe Creek, in 1902, Phoebe Hazel Harp Campbell outlived both her parents before she turned nine. Her Mama had loved an extravagant name so, and she’d been in the valley of the shadow of childbirth so many times and buried so many babies that Papa’s heart finally just went out to her. Lord knows it was little enough to ask, and they couldn’t afford to give the baby much else. The little walled plot out back of the house had seven small flat stones, lined up like stoic soldiers, with Ada, Frank, Gert, Clara, Dan, Ben and Ed chiseled on their faces. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell were getting on up in years, both well past thirty, when they came to the realization that Mama was in the family way again. It came as a sorrowful joy somehow, for Providence had taught them to hold out very little hope. So Papa finally let Mama have her way about the naming of this last baby, the one and only child of theirs who would, as it turned out, live.
After much intense and private deliberation, Mrs. Campbell decided on the name “Phoebe Harp,” (”Harp” as a middle name after her mama’s people) and Phoebe Harp it was to be, for a year or two. Then, when the child was old enough to talk, she began to call herself Hazel. Mr. Campbell had uncharacteristically taken total leave of his senses in regard to his daughter and was ready to allow her to have her way in anything, including her name. He presumed that the child had the good sense to see that “Phoebe” was too fancy a name for anybody. But Mama wouldn’t have it. Phoebe did suit her, she insisted, because anyone could see that the child was tiny and bird-like in her flitting around and lighting on any odd thing inside the house and and out. She was so seemingly weightless to lift, it was as if her bones were hollow. Papa couldn’t disagree. She did remind him of a little brown wren. Brown and gold eyes, she had, and golden brown hair. and after toddling around behind Mama in the garden for a week or two, she was beginning to be golden-brown all over, except for the pink in her cheeks that reminded him of his mother’s damask roses. And yet, even with that coloring, their little girl was so delicate-looking that Mr. Campbell was almost afraid she would wither or dissolve at the slightest touch. So he dared not disallow her a single thing. Mama was more insistent with Phoebe. Instead of changing her name altogether to the more no-nonsense and down-to-earth “Hazel,” Phoebe succeeded only in adding another name to the impressive list of names she already had.
Papa knew one thing. Hazel was an intelligent child, and that was a fact. She had initiative. Not only that, Hazel always had a general understanding well beyond her years. Growing up an only child, she was soon like an adult in her quiet conversations and practicality. She was curious about every little living thing that fell into her path. She would often be found studying small bits of nature, a seed or a tiny blossom, until she felt she had it figured out. Her heart went out to any wounded or stranded small animal. She was always bringing some tiny injured thing out of the cold and wet and into barn to tend back to health or ease its dying. People, she was wary of, because she saw so few of them. She became so shy in the company of strangers that she hardly spoke a word. She would look down and hope to be invisible. But she listened.
Hazel was a slender, energetic child. Sometimes in her hurry, she seemed a wee bit awkward. Papa joked that Hazel burned up every grain she ate, as if it was a waste to feed her. Skinny, she always thought herself, and she never liked her own looks. Papa did though. Hazel knew Papa would never have changed one thing about her. And so she didn’t care and she didn’t give it much thought. Came to terms with her own skinniness and lack of beauty at the age of six.
It was about that time her parents realized that Hazel was sadly short-sighted. Not that she had a lack of foresight, indeed, Hazel seemed to have more of that than most. But just in the sense that she couldn’t see much further than her own hand. By that time Mr. Campbell’s sorghum mill was doing a good little bit of business, and even turning a profit. And so when the peddler came around, Papa bought Hazel some eyeglasses. She tried on several pairs from the peddler’s case and chose the ones that seemed, astonishingly, to work best. And thereafter, Hazel could see the stars at night and she fell down much less often. Sometimes, though, Hazel took her glasses off and stared into the night time sky or got down on the ground at noon and studied tiny beings in the grass. This puzzled both her parents, but they let her do about it as she pleased.
Papa taught Hazel to read with the Bible, the only book they had, and to count and figure with an ever-increasing number of smooth stones. It was not because he was a scholar, but because he knew the practical applications of both skills. He also taught her the value of thrift and order, which she took up right fast, given that those virtues were a part of her own nature as much as they were his. Mama taught her plain vegetable gardening, and flower gardening too, as far as her limits could go, plain and fancy sewing, and how to cook plain and keep house. Mama and Papa commiserated aloud after Hazel was in bed nights about the isolation of their circumstances and the plain fact that’s there’d be no living siblings for Hazel. It would, they feared, put her at a distinct disadvantage in overcoming the shyness bestowed upon her by nature. Hazel knew when the time came for her to deal with strangers, she’d be able. And she told them so. Though it may see odd to you and me, Mama and Papa believed her. And it didn’t seem odd to Hazel. They carefully taught her right from wrong, though she seemed to already know. She learned honor and honesty and human charity from Bible stories and Aesop-like tales with morals worth remembering. So that by the time Hazel was seven or eight, she knew how to make do and how to appreciate the world around her and the people in it.
In 1910 a rash of influenza came through Cornelia. They had not known of the epidemic at home, but when Papa started out for town Hazel felt a strange tightness inside herself and tried to persuade him to stay home. He laughed and said he’d be home again before dark. And he was. But he came with grim news. The influenze had sickened a dozen a people there and already five were buried or about to be. There were bound to be more deaths.
Papa got sick first and suffered longer. Mama died first. Hazel nursed them and made do the best she could until she was weary to the point of weeping, and weeping already anyway. She near ’bout despaired. Then Mrs. Shine, the Campbells’ nearest neighbor (from about two miles away over toward Helms), came bustling in and put Hazel to bed and cooked and cleaned and washed the clothes and bedsheets, bathed and dressed the bodies and organized the funerals and had Mr. Shine come and build coffins and do the outdoor work. Hazel was filled with so much gratitude that she never forgot how important a good neighbor can be. From that day forward she promised herself she would be one.
On the morning after Mama died, both Hazel’s parents were laid beside the babies. It was a comfort to Hazel to know that her family was resting side by side together, tucked underneath the greening blanket and into the earth, as if it was a soft feather bed and they were all taking a long nap. She wasn’t worried in the least about the future. Hazel was confident she could make do right there in the only house where she’d ever lived. She knew exactly how to perform every task that her parents did. But Mrs. Shine convinced her to change her plans with some sensible talk about the dangers of a little girl living alone. So, though Hazel was as confident as she could be that she’d fare just fine, it was to relieve Mrs. Shine’s fears that she finally agreed to go on home with her. And she allowed Mrs. Shine raise up her the rest of the way, which wasn’t to be very far.
At the age of fourteen, Hazel married Mrs. Shine’s son, Ernest, and the young couple headed off to the town of Gearing, where they were hiring at the mill. Ernest got on, and they set up housekeeping in a tiny dwelling that had been intended for the servants of the big house it sat behind, which was right up in the middle of town. They thought it was grand. The rent was reasonable, even for them, and they made a home of it.
Not long after the signing on at the mill, on an evening in August, there came a knock at the door of the Shine’s little residence. It caused Hazel’s heart to jolt against her rib and her hand to thrust itself against her chest to keep the beating fear inside of it. Ernest got up from his supper and, in spite of Hazel’s warning head shake, he took two steps towards the door. Hazel pulled at his sleeve. Ernest grinned and said she was silly and opened the door to as ordinary-looking a fellow as you’ve ever seen. He was calling at the Shine residence in his official capacity as a member of the draft board. He was polite and plain-spoken. Nothing about him suggested any hint of wrong-doing. He sat down at the Shine’s table and helped Ernest to fill out his registration papers, explaining all the time that it was now the law in the United States for young men to register for the selective service.
Hazel felt an unusual abiding apprehension behind her breastbone that never seemed to subside. About two paychecks after the man came calling, Ernest got a letter from the government calling him up for the war. Within two weeks of the letter coming, he was gone on the train with several other boys. And within two months of going, Ernest was dead somewhere in France. The letter came early in 1918 and said that Ernest had died in the line of duty and had been a good soldier. Hazel allowed herself a sensible time to grieve and then woke up early on the morning after the letter came and took it up to read it again by the weak light of dawn. Ernest had died on 18th day of December in 1917, Hazel’s fifteenth birthday. That was the day when the anxious feeling crowding her ribcage had dissolved away to calm. Hazel did not take a second to wonder at this. She felt calm still. She just pulled herself up, dressed quickly in the cold room and took a hard look at her circumstances. She was a fifteen-year-old widow alone in the world with no formal education. She had six dollars and some change in the sugar bowl and less than a cup of meal in the cupboard. It was early in the month and the rent was paid. Directly after waving Ernest and his train into the distance, Hazel had sought and secured work two afternoons a week dusting and straightening in the town’s two dry goods establishments. It paid very little but gave her something to do. There’d be a pension from the army, but Hazel wouldn’t depend on it till she had it in hand.
Hazel left her little house at six a.m. and went directly to the co-op, where she knew they’d be open already. It was, as it turned out, a fortunate time go asking for work there. They’d never hired a woman before, nor much less a girl, but the boy who loaded the big burlap bags of peanuts onto the train car headed for Atlanta was late. The man couldn’t leave his register and “Them peanuts has got to go.” So Hazel had herself another job.
As she went home at the end of the day, Hazel felt tired but still tranquil. She missed Ernest in a way and in another way she felt him nearer now than when he’d been overseas. It seemed he was nearer now than he’d ever been. She walked along, looking down at the sidewalk, as she did so often, at the places where her feet would set down in the next step or two. In this manner, she took herself home to her simple supper.
Energetic, organized, sadly near-sighted, the young widow Mrs. Shine woke up early every morning, grateful for the new day and her old peddler-sold eyeglasses, and went about making her little corner of the world as tidy and clean as can be. It took her no time at all to set her own house right. In not much more time than that really, she’d secured yet another job.
Mrs. Polk had a nice little business doing machine sewing in her home for near ’bout everybody in town. The seamstress hired Mrs. Shine to come in three afternoons week and help with the hand work and pressing. Mrs. Polk told Mrs. Whittle that Mrs. Shine did the finest hemming she’d ever seen, and the odd thing was she always did it with her glasses off. As the years went by, Mrs. Polk taught Mrs. Shine about tailoring and making upholstery and lined draperies. Mrs. Polk discovered that Mrs. Shine had a good eye for what style of dress looked better on one body than another, what went well together, what made a room comfortable to the eye and spirit. She often shook her head with her hands on her hips and declared to no one in particular, “That Miz Shine can just see how things will go.”
Mornings, Mrs. Shine worked at the feed and seed co-op, tending the bedding plants, ringing up fertilizer, acting as billing clerk. At the co-op Mrs. Shine learned of people and plants the likes of which she’d never heard of or even imagined back in Cornelia, their needs and behaviors, which ones you could count on and which to avoid. The co-op manager, Mr. Truitt, found out for himself that Mrs. Shine had a knack for gardening and was always good for advice on the best tomato or melon or way to fertilize. She could take one look at a house and yard and just know, without thinking, what shrub or blossom ought to be where, whether sweet peas or jasmine would flourish best on a trellis in whatever situation, how the roof of the eave on the northeast side would cast an unexpected shadow in the spring beneath one dormer window, where a lemon verbena would never make it, but a rhododendron would make itself at home. Mrs. Shine would often take her glasses off and get down near the ground to look. If anybody asked her what she was looking for, Mrs. Shine would shrug her shoulders. “Caint zactly say.”
On those alternate weekday afternoons, when she tidied and dusted in the town’s two dry goods stores, she tried to be invisible. Never drawing attention to herself, because she didn’t want attention, Mrs. Shine became like a part of the stock on the shelf. People knew she was there, but they paid her no mind. She went about her business and they theirs. Most folks focussed all their attention on their own wants and needs, their own worries and problems, but Mrs. Shine had no wants or worries. She was satisfied with so very little in the way of belongings. She harbored no envy, nourished no reckless ambition. But she was interested in the people of her town. She listened attentively as she worked.
Mrs. Shine had heard all the stories that flew around town. Sometimes she caught one as it came around for the second or third time, always a little changed with every telling. She was a good listener, not talking much herself. Just saved up a little reservoir of knowledge or gossip, dependin’ on your point of view.
Somehow, she began to attract talkers. People just wanted to tell her things. She paid attention to what they said, but never gave any of it too much weight in the big scheme of things. She knew that tales told around a small town may be partly true, but are mostly gussied up with imaginings. But she analyzed automatically all she heard in the boiling copper of her brain. The spiritous vapor drifted off the top and distilled it down to a drops of what Mrs. Shine believed to be truth. Hear enough of ‘em and a person begins to understand what really went on.
Sometimes it seemed to other people, and to herself too, that Mrs. Shine didn’t put these things together with logic as you would a jigsaw puzzle. It was as if she had an aptitude for vision. An intuition into what was true and right and beautiful and what was not. When something she heard troubled her, such as tales of cruelty, Mrs. Shine wouldn’t try to think it through. She let it alone and the tale seemed to decide itself whether the it was true or not. She saw it in the same way she saw the hawthorne bush in the corner of the yard long before it was there. It belonged.
One summer afternoon in the Mason-Hicks, while Mrs. Shine was on her knees polishing the brass cuspidor (which was very near the door, but out of the path of foot traffic), a man came in tugging a little boy along who was about seven years old.
Mrs. Shine liked children, as a rule, better than she liked most other people. Most children seven years old or less still have some fragrance of innocence about them. This boy did not. He yanked himself away from the man and charged directly at Mrs. Shine, as if he intended to bowl her over. Which he did. And then flew out of the door and into the street. The man was right behind him and neither inquired into Mrs. Shine state of health or injury, much to her relief. She did not want to be helped up. She didn’t even want to be noticed. So she righted herself quickly and went back to polishing brass, watching all the while through the glass door light to see if a tin lizzie would run him down. The streets of Gearing were full of such mechanical beasts in 1918. They flew by at 20 miles an hour, sometimes three or four in a day. But none were passing as the boy raced into the path. Only a mule-drawn wagon rolled along, which the boy easily evaded, after spooking the mule and near ’bout overturning the load of hay. Then he kept running across the courthouse square, with the man chasing after.
Inside the store near the men’s handkerchiefs two ladies whispered, unaware that Mrs. Shine, down near the floor, could hear them very well.
One said, “Mr. Richardson had better get a- holt of that boy. He’s the worst child we’ve ever had to deal with in all my years of teachin’ at the Baptist Sunday School.”
The other replied, “Did you hear how he behaved at Mary Nell Humphries birthday? Threw the ices brought in from Birmin’ham all over the porch. Mrs. Humphries paid two dollars for them fruit ices and a dollar to have ‘em brought out on the train.”
Mr. Cosper, the shoe clerk, gasped and announced to all “That Byrd Richardson is a menace. I’m gettin’ where I hate to see him comin’. He’ll be the death of somebody one of these days.”
The Right Southern Corner is a series by Sara Rast
Copyright: 2010 Sara Love Rast. All rights reserve
