Sandra Forrester - Leo and the Lesser Lion

I dont remember dying. Not the drowning, not being pulled out of Sweet Springs Lake, not being brought back to life. But just about everybody else in Lenore, Alabama, seems to have the events of that dayMarch 21, 1932burned into their skulls. And what they dont know for certain, theyre good at making up.

For a long time after, I was more of a curiosity around town than Willard Stokes, who was born with extra fingers and not enough toes and I dont know what all. When people saw me on the street, theyd stop whatever it was they were doing just to gawk. The old men outside the courthouse, for instance, spitting tobacco juice into the dust and playing checkers, wouldnt take their eyes off me till I went inside one of the buildings along Main Streetthe library, maybe, or Tilletts Grocery to pick up something for my motherand then theyd crane their necks to watch me come back and turn onto Markham Street, heading home.

Before that day at the lake, one of the old men might have said without much interest, There goes Doc Pettigrews girl.

Is that Kathleen? another would ask, squinting in my direction as he mopped at the sweat on his neck with a handkerchief.

Nah. Kathleens nearabout grown. Thats Mary Baylissthe little one.

But now the checker players, along with everybody else in town, knew me on sight. I was, after all, the girl whod come back from the dead.

Once, not too long after that day at the lake, the old men were talking when I passed by, and I heard my name. Then one of them said, Too bad about the boy. Now, he was a pistol.

I hurried on so I wouldnt have to listen to what came next, but I knew theyd be thinking back on every prank my brother had ever pulled. Most folks favorite seemed to be that Founders Day when the town leaders came up with the idea of having a parade, complete with hay-wagon floats and a marching band. And, as expected, the Baptists went all out. Leo said they took every opportunity to strut their stuff because Lenore had nearly as many Catholics and Lutherans as Baptistsowing to the early settlers coming over from Germanyand the Baptist preacher was right touchy about it. And besides that, everybody knew Reverend Scarborough never missed a chance to put on the dog.

So First Baptist raised a great big banner over their wagon that read: For He is our God; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Psalm 95:7. In keeping with this theme, theyd tethered some real live sheep at the back of the float, while at the front, the reverend and his deacons were all decked out in fake beards and long bathrobes, looking like theyd last been seen around the time of Moses.

I was only three, but Ive heard that story so often, it almost seems like I can remember Leo lifting me up on the Baptists wagon. Like I can see the crowd of onlookers pointing at the float and laughing their heads off, a reaction Reverend Scarborough sure hadnt anticipated. Leo told me how the reverend seemed confused at first and then his face turned red and he looked mad enough to spit cotton. But it wasnt till the parade was nearly over that the preacher finally caught sight of me standing there among the sheep. Leo said I was grinning and waving to my many admirers, wearing our grandmothers floweredy Easter hat. And nothing else.

I can picture the old men outside the courthouse chuckling as they relived that day, and one of them saying, Yessiree, that Leo was a buster. Its a crying shame what happened, and him so young.

It all started with the boat. If Mr. Davies hadnt given Leo that old rowboat, we wouldnt have been anywhere near the lake and none of it would have happened. At first, Id think about that a lot, even though it didnt change a thing. I couldnt seem to help it.

But that Saturday night in March, two days before my life would change forever, I didnt even know yet that there was a boat. I was just sitting in bed scribbling awaywith my cat, Rosie, asleep in my lapfeeling pretty near content.

If the neighbors had looked out at our house around eleven-thirty, they would have seen that all the windows were dark except for one of the dormers on the second floor. That was my room. It was way past my bedtime, but I was writing in my tablet like Id been doing for the past two years, ever since I did that report on the Alaska Territory for Sister Agness class and came across something that made me sit up and take notice. I was at the library reading about Alaska in an old National Geographic when this one paragraph just leaped out at me. It told how a lady explorer named Dora Keen had risked life and limb to climb a glacier-covered mountain called Mount Blackburn. She faced all kinds of dangerssnowstorms and avalanches and freezing coldbut thirty-three days after starting up that mountain, she became the first woman to ever make it to the top.

Well, I just kept reading that paragraph over and over, soaking up the details. And the wonder of it. Because Id never heard of a woman doing anything like that before. In school, when the nuns talked about explorers, they were all men, like Christopher Columbus or Lewis and Clark. Nobody had ever mentioned Dora Keen, who, in my opinion, was a sure-dog marvel. And thats when the idea started growing inside my head that I could be an explorer someday, too, just like Dora Keen.

Then I started wondering if there might be other women Id never heard of whod done astonishing things and decided to make it my business to find out. Leo and Miss Ida Henderson at the library helped me look through newspapers and magazines, and sure enough, we came across a whole slew of ladies who should have been written up in the history books but werent. So Leo had one of his brilliant notionsthat I write my own book about themand he bought me a Big Chief tablet at Gilchrist Mercantile to get me started.

We talked over what to call it and finally settled on Remarkable Women and Their Amazing Adventures. I printed that on the cover, and then Leo said I should add By Bayliss Pettigrew, which I thought was a nice touch. Inside, I wrote about every woman wed found, and I kept coming up with new ones till all but the last few pages of my tablet were filled with these ladies and their adventures.

Anyhow, that Saturday night in March, I was putting down the facts of Ruth Law flying an airplane from Chicago to New York and setting a new record, but also keeping my ears open. At the first squeak of my mother and daddys bedroom door, I was ready to scoot under the covers like Id been asleep all along. But it wasnt anybody in the house who broke the silence; it was the sudden pounding on the front door that startled me so, I nearly jumped out of my skin before recovering enough to switch off the lamp.

I sat there holding Rosie, my heart thumping like crazy, while the pounding on the door grew louder and more desperate. It took a few seconds for me to realize that it was probably just somebody needing Daddy, somebody with sickness in the family or a baby on the way. Not everybody had a telephone, especially out in the country, so it wasnt unusual for folks to come by the house at all hours.