June 1976: McMinn County, outside of Athens, Tennessee

The faint sweetness of the coneflower bouquet could not cover the pungent smell of channel catfish that hung from the line that the child carried slung over her shoulder.  She walked down the middle of the dirt road with her bare feet kicking up dust, the legs of her britches rolled up to her knees, both of which were skinned and pink where she had slid on the rocky bank of Oostanaula Creek.  But skinned knees were a small price to pay for the plump fish she had managed to catch that morning.  They were her currency; with them she could ask without embarrassment to borrow another book from the personal collection of Miss Miriam Porter, the kindly town librarian.

Coming up the road to Miss Miriam’s redbrick house, the young child spied someone sitting on the front porch swing.  It wasn’t her beloved librarian; it was a young girl, a very pretty young girl with two dark brown pigtails framing a very pretty face.  She wore a pink dress the same color as the coneflower bouquet, ruffled white ankle socks and brown mary-jane’s. 

“Hey ya,” the child hailed the other girl.

Two dark eyes looked up over a book and studied the mess standing there in the road. “Hello.” She went back to her book.

The child sniffed and wiped her nose across her arm.  “You kin of Miss Miriam’s?”

“I am.”  But the pretty girl didn’t bother to make eye contact and continued to read.

“I’m her neighbor.  Live ‘cross that way.” The child pointed with her hand that held the coneflower bouquet.  “You can see my tree house from her back lawn.  That’s mine.  I built it.  Well me and my daddy did anyway.”

The pretty girl sighed a little, closed her book and set it in her lap and looked again at the dirty child in front of her.  She saw the child was wearing overalls with no shirt underneath.  The dirty blonde hair was cut short and the head was top heavy with thick bangs, which hung down into hazel eyes.  The face was sunburnt, splashed with freckles across the nose and cheeks.

“May I help you with something, little boy?” the pretty one asked speaking in her characteristic way of sensing her own superiority.