Christy

It is late in the year 1912 when Christy Huddleston sets out from her hometown of Asheville to her new posting at the mission in Cutter Gap. Her father accompanies her to the train station and instructs the conductor to keep an eye out for his daughter’s safety—a comment that Christy silently resents because she is set on proving her toughness and resilience. The scene flashes back briefly to the circumstances that led her here—a church conference where the speaker, Dr. Ferrand, cast a vision of the needs of the backcountry missions he had organized in Appalachia, one of which was in Cutter Gap, Tennessee.

As the train rolls on to El Pano, the nearest station to Cutter Gap, a winter storm sets in and cloaks everything in snow. Christy wrestles with conflicting feelings of fear, homesickness, and excitement as she thinks about the prospects ahead: “For in spite of my homesickness, I felt elation about being turned loose to make my own way in the world. I had sense enough to keep it strictly to myself, but secretly I was certain that I was about to take the world by storm” (28).

Having disembarked at the lonely El Pano train station, and finding no one from Cutter Gap there to meet her, Christy inquires about a place to stay for the night and is directed to Mrs. Tatum’s boarding house. When she gets there and introduces herself, she receives a warm welcome, but Mrs. Tatum is concerned about her plan to go work in Cutter Gap as a teacher. She characterizes the people there as being closed off to outsiders, possibly dangerous: “And they’re proud back there. When they feel that somebody is different from them, they don’t like to be beholden, don’t like to be monkeyed with. […] It’s going to be well-nigh impossible for you to help them” (35). Mrs. Tatum mentions Miss Henderson as the only outsider who has had any success reaching them; all the others have left. Christy assures Mrs. Tatum of her commitment and resolve and plans out the next stage of her journey: accompanying Mr. Pentland, the postal deliveryman, on his seven-mile route up to the Cove (the area of Cutter Gap).

Christy meets Mr. Pentland at the general store and discovers that he intends to get to Cutter Gap by walking through the snowstorm. Mr. Pentland is initially disinclined to let her come along, but she persuades him she can handle it. As they walk together, he tells her about some of the mission staff, including Miss Henderson and David Grantland, the young pastor who recently started his ministry there.

Eventually, they reach Jeb Spencer’s cabin, where Christy meets her first resident family of the Cove. She is particularly struck by the wife (Fairlight Spencer) and the children, noting the simple grace and steadfast strength of the women in this backcountry culture: “I found myself thinking that these were the faces of pioneers. […] It was as if a group of faded tintypes from some family album had come to life before me: all of the women with that austere hairstyle; the faces sensitive but grave, a certain strength and spartan quality to them all” (50-51). Suddenly, a man rushes into the cabin and announces that a local, Bob Allen, was hit by a falling tree and needs assistance. He was on his way to El Pano to pick up Christy when the accident occurred.

Bob Allen is carried into the cabin, and shortly thereafter the local doctor, Neil MacNeill, arrives: “He appeared to be a man in his thirties, big-boned, a large frame even for a man. He had a shock of reddish hair, unkempt […]. His features were rugged with deeply etched lines” (53). Doctor MacNeill assesses the patient and decides that he must try a risky surgery, one he has only ever seen once and never performed himself: boring a hole in the skull to release the blood. Bob’s wife Mary, now present, gives her permission, and the doctor sets to work. Christy watches the operation, anxious with the feeling that the locals will blame her for the accident since it was because of her that Bob Allen had ventured out. With the surgery complete, Doctor MacNeill announces that Bob is still alive, but that only time will tell if he can make a recovery.

Having arrived late at the mission house and slept through the night, Christy awakens and meets the other residents. The pastor’s sister, Ida Grantland, greets her and fills her in on the state of things at the mission—most importantly, that the school at which she is to teach has never actually held classes before; Christy will be teaching its first term. Christy also meets David, the pastor, who seems warm, confident, and capable, and Ruby Mae Morrison, a local young woman who moved into the mission due to difficulties with her family.

Christy is most interested, however, in meeting Miss Alice Henderson, of whom she has already heard so much. On going to Miss Alice’s cabin, she encounters an older Quaker woman who is healthy, confident, and calm. Miss Alice speaks graciously but directly, inquiring about Christy’s motives in coming and sharing her perspective on the mountain people who live around them. Miss Alice sees them through the lens of the strengths and virtues that they’ve inherited from their proud familial traditions going back to the Scottish Highlands, and Christy finds that a helpful perspective.

Christy attempts her first school lesson. She meets some of the Allen children again, whose father was now showing signs of recovery, as well as children from other families—like Lundy Taylor—who held perpetual feuds against the Allens. Given the extent of feuding in that society, several of the children had never been around those of other families.

Christy leads the class in a scripture reading and tries to get them to sing a song together. However, she finds that the children are always laughing at her for some reason and that the backwoods songs they know are all different from the more widely known ones with which she is familiar. She is also surprised to find that one student has brought his pet raccoon to school, and she narrowly avoids a mean-spirited prank from some of the boys, who have put fire-heated marbles down on the schoolroom floor. However, she is undeterred and starts making plans for how she can obtain the books and supplies needed to improve the school.

A month into her experience of teaching school, Christy has managed to overcome some difficulties but still finds the culture of the mountain people impenetrable at points. They seem to prize Latin instruction as the only valuable form of education and are amused by her strange accent (which was the cause of the children’s laughter in school).

A visit to the O’Teale family cabin throws a stark light on the needs of the area. Their cabin evokes squalor and violence even upon her approach, and once inside, Christy is dismayed to see that the O’Teales’s disabled son is kept in a pen and reduced to an animal-like existence. Dismayed by the filth and brutality she observes at the O’Teale cabin, she goes back to the mission but still feels ill due to her experience. Miss Alice talks with her, sympathizing with Christy’s concerns about evil and moral darkness in the world but assuring her that God’s love is greater than evil. She says all that is required of her is to be willing to work alongside God’s purpose in Cutter Gap.

Despite the trauma of what she saw the previous evening, Christy decides to remain at the mission. Encouraged by Miss Alice’s counsel, she resolves to accept the mission not simply as a temporary posting, but as her mission: “Somehow this Cove was my Cove. The children were my children. Little as I had to give, I had to give it here” (107). She continues teaching but is taken aback by Lundy Taylor’s behavior in the classroom. Another student expresses perplexity at Lundy’s presence there, noting that the Taylors have never willingly consented to be around any of the Allens, with whom they have a longstanding feud.

Nonetheless, Christy sets out to improve the school’s long-term situation. She makes a list of essential items the mission needs and brainstorms ways to obtain them. Securing a horse for the mission is also a pressing need, but they lack the necessary funds. With Miss Alice's encouragement, Christy prays for God’s provision. Shortly thereafter, a check for $106 arrives—enough for a horse—sent by a woman in contact with Christy’s mother. While David considers the answered prayer a mere coincidence, both Christy and Miss Alice see it as a divine intervention. Encouraged by this result, Christy writes to advertisers in a ladies’ magazine, requesting donations of their products to support the mission.

One of Christy’s trials as a resident of the mission is enduring Ruby Mae’s constant attention and rambling monologues. Taking inspiration from Miss Alice’s perspective, Christy learns to appreciate Ruby Mae’s thoughts as a window into the minds of the mountain folk. More and more, Christy finds herself appreciative of Miss Alice’s wisdom and her effectiveness in ministry. The highlanders admire Miss Alice for her Quaker beliefs and her simple yet forthright explanations of Christian doctrine. One of Miss Alice’s greatest goals, particularly for the mountain women, is to get them to see the joy in God's creation and understand God’s love for them.

One day, Kyle Coburn arrives at the mission and asks Christy to help dress the McHones’s baby girl, who passed away shortly after birth, for burial. Despite feeling completely unprepared for such a task, she gathers some supplies and goes to the McHones’s cabin. There, she learns that the baby died due to a superstitious treatment for an imagined disease. Opal McHone, believing the baby to be “liver-growed,” had twisted the baby into a dangerous posture, and she died.

The horror sickens Christy: “The baby must have had cruel internal injuries. […] [Opal] was not a callous, indifferent mother but had acted out of love, love mired by her ignorance and by the superstition handed down to her” (120). After washing and dressing the baby, Christy and Ruby Mae head back to the mission along with Uncle Bogg, who is unnerved by the noises he hears along the way. He has seen unfamiliar men lurking in the woods and worries that someone is watching the women.