The Mockingbird's Ballad

"I'm going! I am going, J. N.!" Lou's face was flaming, her back ramrod straight, and she pressed her hands down hard on the kitchen table. She sat across from her cousin J. N. Her twin brother, Alex, sat to the right. At her emphatic declaration J. N. hung his head rocking it back and forth. Alex and Lou's mother, Nancy Bird Fields (Lonesome Cedar of the Bird Clan,) who was J. N.'s aunt, the widow of William Norman, and mother of John Ross, was sitting across the room by the fireplace slowly rocking. Her eyes had an empty, hurt look. If she was aware or was listening to the discussion, she showed no sign of it.

"No, Lou. No! You can't go. It's foolish and damn dangerous! For God's sake, you're a girl not yet 15."

"I'll be 15 next month, J. N. I'm nearly as big as you are and taller than Alex and Johnny! I know more about mules and horses than any of you. Daddy said how good a farrier I've become." Lou's brown eyes moistened, her tears struggling with her raw rage.

"You're a girl, Lou, a girl!" he said in frustration. "A mighty ugly girl, but still a girl." J. N. smiled, hoping his effort at humor would change the intensity of the argument or somehow distract Lou. Maybe she would focus on his jab rather than her determination to go to war. Lou did pause a second at the "ugly" remark.

"Yeah, I'm ugly! What does that have to do with anything? I can whip you and most anyone I've ever come across! Age and being a girl ain't nothing," the five and a half foot tall fourteen-year-old asserted. Her hands were as big as J. N.'s and bigger than those of most boys. Her hair was straight, her face plain with a light copper cast. Since she could walk, Lou's manner had always been rough and tumble. She had a collection of dogs, cats and raccoons, even a bear cub the summer she was ten; she had roamed the creek, valley, coves and ridges for years. Dolls and fancy things did not hold her attention. She liked to tinker, fix things and be physically active, whether at the bellows, over her shoeing box or turning somersaults to make her grandparents, John L. and Mama Bear, laugh.

J. N. had to admit she was not in any way dainty or fragile. She was strong, willful and agile. "Lou, for a girl, could be a pretty good boy," J. N. thought. She had had her grandfather cut her hair like Alex's since she was seven. J. N. could not remember if she had ever had curls. Her hair hung straight and thick over her ears. It was cut below her ears and parted in the middle with the shine of a crow in sunshine.