Rennie's Way

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34 It would be four more years before the sisters saw each other again. Sarah Ellen had promised Rennie she'd write every week. She kept her promise. What Johnnie had said to her had sunk in. She told Rennie all about her classes, the folks she lived with, her friends. "Wish you could see these libraries," she would say. She sounded happy, but Rennie worried that Sarah Ellen was just making it sound too good. She must be having some troubles and making some mistakes, but if so she didn't share them with Rennie. Rennie wrote to Sarah Ellen every week, keeping her informed of everything that happened on Lonesome Holler— who got married, who had a new baby, who joined the church, when the potato bugs destroyed her patch of potatoes , how many cans of berries she had canned, how much the price of sugar had gone up. When Sarah Ellen read the letters she thought, "Rennie should write a book. A letter from her is just like settin' on the porch and talking. I can't get homesick. All I have to do is read her letters and I feel like I'm back home." She kept every one of the letters in a shoe box and read and read them again and again. Once she let one of her English teachers read one. "Your sister should try her hand at writing a book." "But she only has an eighth-grade education." "Your sister is a born storyteller," he answered her. The truth is that it was hard for Sarah Ellen to adjust to a life so different from what she had been used to. She didn't like being called a hillbilly, not the way they made it sound. But she was proud of her heritage. She would show them that a girl from Eastern Kentucky had what it takes. Sarah Ellen wrote to Rennie that she had decided not to come home for summer vacation. It would cost too much for her train ride there and back. She and a friend were going to Canada with a group of young Girl Scouts as counselors. She would get a small salary and get to see a lot of the world. "Did you ever dream that a girl from Lonesome Holler would be in Canada?" she asked Rennie. The three following summers were the same. Rennie knew it was for the best, but she did so want to see her baby sister. "I want her to grow up, yet I'd like to keep her a baby forever ," she thought. Now at last the long wait was over. Sarah Ellen was coming back to the hills, this time traveling alone. She had written Rennie what day she and Johnnie should meet her at the depot. When Sarah Ellen first got off the train Rennie didn't know her, she looked so different. Like a brought-on person, she thought. But when Sarah Ellen saw Rennie, she dropped her suitcase and started running and pushing her way through the crowd. She lifted Rennie off the ground and swung her around and around. "Set me down, ye goose," her sister tried to say, but she had no breath. When she could speak, Rennie sobbed, "Sarah Ellen, ye talk like a brought-on person." "So I do. You pick it up after staying around them for so long, but it will soon wear off now that I'm back with my real folks." "I jest hope it's not catchin'," said Johnnie teasingly. "Same old Johnnie," Sarah Ellen said. "And is this the same old truck?" "Well, in a way it is. I've had to replace a few things, like the motor, the bed, the wheels," Johnnie laughed. "It don't use gas," Rennie kept up the banter. "It runs on will power—Johnnie's will power." "Me and this old truck have been together fer a long time. We're the same as married. We've promised to stick together until death do us part." They were soon on their way. It was amazing how quickly Sarah Ellen slipped back into her hillbilly speech. She didn't notice it herself, but Johnnie and Rennie exchanged smiling glances over her shoulder as she talked on and on and on. 205 ...