Spitting Image Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  acknowledgments

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  twenty-nine

  thirty

  thirty-one

  thirty-two

  thirty-three

  thirty-four

  thirty-five

  thirty-six

  thirty-seven

  About the Author

  Clarion Books

  a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003

  Copyright © 2003 by Shutta Crum

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Crum, Shutta.

  Spitting image / by Shutta Crum.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In the small town of Baylor, Kentucky, twelve-year-old Jessie K. Bovey and her friends confront some of life’s questions during their summer vacation in the late 1960s.

  ISBN 0-618-23477-2 (alk. paper)

  [1. Family life—Kentucky—Fiction. 2. Fathers—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Kentucky—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C888288 Sp 2003

  [Fic]—dc21 2002015912

  eISBN 978-0-544-30687-5

  v1.0913

  For my sister, Brenda (Crum) Proos, with love

  acknowledgments

  This book could not have come about without the support and honest criticism of the following people: my good friends Ruth Haldeman, Susan Livingston, and librarian extraordinaire Paula Schaffner; my hard-working and supportive critique group—B.J. Connor, Gail Flynn, Tracy Gallup, Mary Lind, Ginny Ryan, Nancy Shaw, Debbie Taylor, Shanda Trent, Hope Vestergaard, and Joan Weisman; my young critical readers—Lydia Aikenhead, Anna Flynn, Emilie Flynn, Alec Lind, Anna Lind, Ian Lind, and Rebecca Schaffner; Dr. Marvin Meyer, DVM; my loving and confident family, who never doubted that this book would come to be, especially my husband, Gerald Clark, and my parents, Melvin and Evelyn Crum, who helped me with many of the details of country life in Kentucky; and editor Dinah Stevenson, who took the leap of faith.

  one

  I SAT IN FRONT of the hardware store eating ice cream with my best friends, Robert Ketchum and his little brother, Baby Blue. The sidewalk dipped, and the window ledge was the perfect spot to plop down, stretch out our legs, and rest our feet.

  It was less than two miles into Hiram from where we lived in Baylor. We had walked into town to buy the cones. It was my treat. I’d saved up sixty-five cents from helping my good friend and neighbor, Lester, at the filling station he owned in Baylor, the Gas & Go. When we got to Hiram, we had headed straight for the Dixie Dairy Delight, next door to the hardware store.

  Mmm! We barely spoke, eating up that good cold vanilla ice cream. Missy Salyer, who I used to be in Girl Scouts with, called out, “Hi, Jessie,” as she rode her bike by. Lorelei McMasters and DeeDee Byrum passed without so much as a nod. Lorelei’s father is the mayor of Hiram and DeeDee’s father is the banker. Neither one’s got a sociable bone in her body, unless you’re a boy and happen to be named Billy Lee Wells or Brian Holcum.

  Robert and Baby Blue hardly even looked up as Lorelei and DeeDee went by. I stuck my chin out as far as I could and took a great big tongueful of vanilla ice cream and let it sit there in plain sight, for just a moment longer than necessary.

  “Ugh!” Lorelei shuddered.

  “Grow up,” I heard DeeDee mutter.

  Suddenly, I noticed something different about both of them. Since school had let out last month, they’d grown bosoms.

  “Did you see that?” I whispered to Robert. “Miss Stuck-Up and Junior Miss Stuck-Up have grown—out in front.”

  Robert looked, but they’d already gone by. “What d’you mean?” he asked.

  “Booo-zums,” I drawled, like the boys from school did. “Big ones.”

  Robert looked again, shrugged, and went back to his ice cream cone.

  “So. . .” I nudged him with my elbow.

  “So?” he asked.

  “So they’ve got to be fake. Isn’t that disgusting?”

  “Hmm,” he replied, licking his fingers and neatly dabbing at his chin with a paper napkin. “I don’t care what Lorelei and DeeDee do.”

  I swear, even though Robert and I have been friends since we were little babies, sometimes he just makes me want to scream, especially when all he seems to be interested in is what’s going on in his own head. “Don’t you care when someone’s being a big fat faker?” I asked him.

  That was when I saw that wrinkled-up, hard-thinking look on his face that he gets sometimes. “What?” I asked, throwing my hands up in the air. “What?”

  “Just trying to guess what you’re gonna do with the rest of your money.”

  I’d saved sixty-five cents, and cones were only five cents each. The other two quarters were for something special. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out!” I shouted, and punched him on the shoulder. Then I jumped up. “C’mon!” I ran into the hardware store, and Robert and Baby followed.

  two

  THE HIRAM HARDWARE STORE was stacked to the ceiling with tall dusty boxes full of knobs and brackets and metal hinges. I’m twelve now, but when I was little, I thought that if I pulled out one of those boxes all the way, there’d be a tiny square tunnel leading in from the world beyond our corner of Beulah County, Kentucky. I thought I might find secret messages there. Or, if I leaned in close, I might hear tales of wonder starring me, Jessica Kay Bovey. I knew there must be a bigger world that I was part of, only I was too little then to pull out any of those heavy boxes.

  Finding your place in the world isn’t that easy. Sometimes you have to push out and clear a space you can claim for yourself. And sometimes, when you’re not even thinking about it, a space just opens up and you walk in and meet the outside world that’s come looking for you. That’s what happened to me when we ran into the Hiram Hardware store that day.

  A woman I didn’t know was standing in front of the counter. She was short and had gray hair. She was so plump and neat, I thought she looked kind of like a fresh marshmallow with a brown belt around the middle. She turned and smiled at us as we came barging through the door.

  Old Joe and Adam were waiting on her and Leroy Weaver. Adam was weighing out nails for Mr. Weaver while the stranger looked about, smiled, nodded, and answered one rapid-fire question after another from Adam’s Uncle Joe.

  “Yes, I’m staying with Mr. Weaver and his family up in Rockcastle,” she answered. Rockcastle is one of the hollers around here.

  “Not sure how long I’ll be staying.

  “Oh, yes, everybody’s treating me fine.

  “We’ll be holding some meetings soon to find out what people around here need.

  “I’ll be working with the fa
milies in the hollows first.”

  I wasn’t sure we could get a word in slantwise, but finally Adam got his uncle to quit giving her the third degree. Then Adam turned to us. “Well, right here, Miss Woodruff, you’ve got three of the finest, upstandingest citizens in Beulah County,” he said.

  “Hello. I’m Robert E. Ketchum,” Robert said, and stepped right up to her with his hand stretched out. Robert has perfect manners, though God knows where he got them from since his daddy, Doyle, doesn’t have a lick, and his mama, Beryl Ann, is usually working too hard to be around much. I figured he must have got them from all the books he’s always reading.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” said Miss Woodruff, taking Robert’s hand and shaking it. “What does the ‘E’ stand for?”

  “Eisenhower.”

  “Were you named after President Eisenhower?” she asked.

  “Well, actually, no. After Robert E. Lee,” Robert said. “But I just got the ‘E’ as a middle initial, and I’m still looking for the right name to go with it. So it could change.”

  “How interesting.” Miss Woodruff beamed and turned to me. “And you are?”

  I wiped my sticky hand on the seat of my jeans and held it out. “Jessie. Jessica K. Bovey. The ‘K’ just stands for Kay. That’s K-a-y,” I said, giving Robert a bug-eyed stare over Miss Woodruff’s handshake.

  “Nice to meet you,” she replied. She looked at Baby. Sweat, dirt, and ice cream had caked into the rolls of fat around his neck and arms and, somehow, into his pale, almost white hair. His shorts were sliding off his round belly, and his thumb was in his mouth now that he was done with his ice cream. But he’d managed to keep his shoes on.

  I pulled his thumb, with a little popping sound, from his mouth. “This is Baby Blue,” I said. “He’s four, but he doesn’t talk much. He’s Robert’s brother.”

  Miss Woodruff held out her hand and solemnly shook Baby Blue’s small, sticky one. “Another wonderful name,” she commented.

  “It’s really Morton Ketchum. Their daddy, Doyle, named him after a box of salt. But he doesn’t answer to that. We all call him Baby Blue because that’s what their mama, Beryl Ann, calls him.”

  “I see.”

  Well, I wasn’t about to tell a perfect stranger the whole story of how Doyle was so drunk the night Baby was born that all he could concentrate on was a box of salt in the hospital cafeteria.

  We just stood there smiling at each other until Adam said, “You know. Miss Woodruff, Jessie lives in Baylor. She would be the perfect guide for you around there.”

  “Guide?” I said.

  “I’m a VISTA volunteer,” Miss Woodruff said. “It stands for Volunteers in Service to America. I’ll be helping people get their medical problems attended to, finding out what kinds of educational needs people have, food and clothing, that sort of thing.

  “And,” she continued, smiling at us and nodding in Adam’s direction, “I thought it’d be altogether nicer if someone local could introduce me. From talking to Mr. Weaver and these gentlemen, I get the impression people are leery of strangers coming up to their front door.”

  Joe said, “Leroy’s oldest ones are helping in the fields right now, so we have to find somebody else who can show her around.”

  “Well, if anybody knows folks and their business,” Adam put in, winking at me from under the John Deere baseball cap he always wore, “it’s Jessie. I don’t think her mother will mind. Mirabelle’s pretty nice. And on a good day, with the wind in the right direction, Jessie’s not liable to bite your head off, either.” Even though Adam was about Mama’s age, or a little older, he was always teasing us kids.

  I started to fold my arms and give him my Oh, yeah? look when Miss Woodruff asked, “Would you help me out? At least around Baylor?”

  Miss Woodruff had an awfully friendly face. Her eyes had about a hundred laugh lines spiking out from behind her small round glasses. And I knew that Adam was a good judge of both people and dogs, even if he did like to pull my leg. “That’ll be fine,” I said, nodding at Miss Woodruff. “I’m sure Mama won’t mind. There aren’t that many people who live in Baylor anyway.”

  By this time Mr. Weaver was ready to head out with his purchases. So I told Miss Woodruff how to find my house and we all waved “bye now” to them.

  After they’d left, Robert and I looked at each other with our eyebrows raised. “Staying with the Weavers?” we whispered, almost at the same time.

  I wondered how they were putting her up, and I knew Robert was wondering the same thing. Mr. and Mrs. Weaver had so many kids that every bed in that old run-down house of theirs had at least three or four people sleeping in it. And I knew for a fact that their oldest boy, Ben, sometimes slept out in the barn. Surely they weren’t making a grown woman sleep on a pallet on the floor?

  The Weavers were about the poorest family in Beulah County. And even though this was 1967, and there was talk of going to the moon some day, the Weavers still didn’t have running water. They had an outhouse out past their barn.

  “Staying with the Weavers?” I asked Joe and Adam, louder. “Why?”

  “Why?” Joe echoed. “Good question. I guess Leroy gets some extra money for putting her up. She’s one of those do-gooders from up North.”

  “She doesn’t talk much like a Yankee,” Robert said.

  “Nope. She’s originally from Cincinnati. But that’s still north of the river.”

  “How does a VISTA person do all that stuff she talked about?” I asked.

  “Another good question,” said Joe, leaning on the countertop. “I think the way it works is that these volunteers come into a community and live with ordinary folks to find out what kinds of things we need. Then they go about helping us figure out how to get those things, or making arrangements to get the government to provide them. It’s all part of some fancy plan President Johnson’s got. A ‘War on Poverty,’ they’re calling it.”

  “Poverty’s a good thing to have a war against,” Robert said.

  “Sure it is,” Joe replied. “The problem is, some people don’t think they need any help, and the only thing up-North do-gooders do is get them all riled up. If she’s not careful, it could be like stirring up a mess of red ants, especially since the mine over on Greasy Ridge closed and a lot of the miners are out of work.”

  “But helping someone’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Most times it is,” Adam cut in. “Now, talking about helping”—he straightened up and looked professional—“how can we help you young people today?”

  Robert and Baby both looked at me curiously. I’d almost forgotten. “I want to buy one of those raffle tickets the Hiram Rotary’s got for sale there,” I said, and pointed to the sign on a red box on the counter.

  Adam turned the box around and looked at the sign. “Well, we got us a problem. You have to be eighteen to purchase a raffle ticket in Beulah County. You see, it says so right there in little print. What were you going to do if you won those auto parts? Does your mama’s car need fixing?”

  I rocked back and forth a little bit before answering. “I was kind of hoping to get that second prize.”

  “I see,” said Adam. “But you know, Jessie, even if you did win the dinner-for-two prize, you can’t go to the Roadside Grill. They’ve got a bar and a floor show; they don’t allow children in there.”

  “I know. I was just gonna let. . .” I didn’t want to blurt this part out, but it looked like I was going to have to. “I was just gonna let my mama take . . . take whoever she wanted,” I said, picking at a staple somebody had stapled into the edge of the counter. “Just . . . somebody.” I shrugged.

  I’d been planning this for ages, ever since I first heard about the raffle. I just had to get a ticket for Mama. She really needed to get out. Lately, she’d had to work more hours than ever at the Gas & Go because Lester was sick so much. I could see how tired she was.

  I looked at Adam, leaning back, so tall against the shelves behind him, a curious smile
on his tanned face, waiting for me to finish.

  “OK, a date,” I admitted, putting my hands on my hips and staring him dead in the eye.

  Adam and Joe chuckled. They looked at each other, and then over the counter at us. Adam cleared his throat and pushed back his baseball cap. “I see,” he said. “Any idea who she might want to take?”

  Now, if it had been anybody else besides my friends Joe and Adam laughing, I would have said it wasn’t their business. Instead, I smiled at Adam and answered sweetly, “Not yet.”

  “Hmm,” he replied. “In that case, how about I buy a ticket and promise to give you the prize if I win? I haven’t bought one yet, and I was of a mind to do that very thing today. I don’t know of any law that says I can’t give away something I win, and I can’t think of a better use to put it to if we do win.”

  “Great!” I said, and watched as Adam filled out a little slip of paper and put it in the Rotary box. Then I asked, “Can you buy another one? For Beryl Ann?”

  Robert elbowed me—hard—in the side. I knew it was rude and all to ask for a double favor like that, but I wanted Beryl Ann, who was my mama’s best friend and like a second mama to me, to have a chance to win, too. I stood my ground and never even glanced at Robert. Adam scratched his cheek for a moment.

  “You can see I got fifty cents to pay you back with,” I added, pulling my quarters out of my pocket. “That’s enough for two chances. I earned it filling in for Mama and Lester at the Gas and Go.”

  “Sure, why not,” said Adam, laughing.

  “Thank you kindly,” Robert said as Adam added another slip to the raffle box.

  I gave Adam my fifty cents to pay for the drawing slips. Then Robert and I each grabbed one of Baby’s hands and left the store.

  Just as we stepped out, we almost ran headlong into Dickie Whitten, who was riding past on his bike. Dickie lived between Baylor and Hiram, in Dog Gap Holler, and had just finished seventh grade, a year ahead of us.

  “Watch it, Spaz Boy!” he yelled, swerving to keep from running into Robert on the sidewalk.