So before they could stop me I had told them about it.
“Some day,” I said, “I am going back and call on that woman. I will give her some patterns for weaving, and maybe she will have some old, old ones that she will give me.”
“Can you weave?” asked the lady. “You are very young and—and not a mountain girl, are you?”
“Oh, I’m a mountain girl,” I said, remembering back just as far as dear Mother McBirney and the cabin with my bedroom in the loft. “I’m Azalea McBirney of Tennyson Mountain, and I’m—I’m a weaver.”
“Azalea,” murmured the lady. “That was the name of poor Jack’s wife, wasn’t it? I always thought it a sweet name.”
Something shot through my brain. It was like a stroke of lightning. It was the strangest thing that ever happened to me. In a second, by some power I can’t explain, I began to know things. I saw them as if they were a vision. I sat right up in bed, and pushed my hair back from my face. I recollect that I kept pushing it back and pushing it back, as if it got in between me and what I wanted to understand.
“What Jack? What Jack?” I demanded.
“Jack Knox, my dead brother,” said the man soothingly. “No one you know I am sure, my dear. Don’t excite yourself, please.”
“Jack Knox! Jack Knox!” I said. “That was the man that married my little mama and left her to care for me alone. Jack Knox! No, I don’t know him. I don’t remember him at all. And I’m glad of it. Jack Knox! Jack Knox!”
You know it isn’t like me, Carin, to feel angry at anyone. But my mind seemed to have no resistance. Whatever idea got into it insisted on raging around in it. I couldn’t stop it. I was ashamed, and yet I couldn’t manage myself.