While a college student, Heidi Neumark took a year off from prestigious Brown University to be part of a volunteer program sponsored by a group called Rural Mission. She was sent to Johns Island—off the Carolina coast—where she learned from the sons and daughters of plantation slaves who allowed her to listen in as they sat around telling stories. In her words:

"The most important lesson I learned on Johns Island was from Miss Ellie, who lived miles down a small dirt road in a one-room, wooden home. I loved to visit her. We'd sit in old rocking chairs on the front porch, drinking tall glasses of sweet tea, while she'd tell me stories punctuated with Gullah expressions that would leap from her river of thought like bright, silver fish: 'Girl, I be so happy I could jump the sky!' I never could find out Miss Ellie's precise age, but it was somewhere between 90 and 100. Maybe she didn't know herself. She still chopped her own firewood, stacked in neat little piles behind the house.

"Miss Ellie had a friend named Netta whom she'd known since they were small girls. In order to get to Netta's house, Miss Ellie had to walk for miles through fields of tall grass. This was the sweet grass that Sea Island women make famous baskets out of, but it was also home to numerous poisonous snakes: coral snakes, rattlesnakes, water moccasins, and copperheads.

"Actually, Netta's home was not that far from Miss Ellie's place, but there was a stream that cut across the fields. You had to walk quite a distance to get to the place where it narrowed enough to pass. I admired Miss Ellie, who would set off to visit her friend full of bouncy enthusiasm, with no worry for the snakes or the long miles. I also felt sorry for her. Poor Miss Ellie, I thought, old and arthritic, having to walk all that way, pushing through the thick summer heat, not to mention the snakes.

"I felt sorry—until I hit upon the perfect plan. I arranged with some men to help build a simple plank bridge across the stream near Miss Ellie's house. I scouted out the ideal place—not too wide, but too deep to cross. I bought and helped carry the planks there myself. Our bridge was built in a day. I was so excited that I could hardly wait to see Miss Ellie's reaction. I went to her house, where she wanted to sit in her rocker and tell stories, but I was too impatient with my project. I practically dragged her off with me. 'Look!' I shouted, 'a shortcut for you to visit Netta!'

"Miss Ellie's face did not register the grateful, happy look I expected. There was no smile, no jumping the sky. Instead, for a long time, she looked puzzled, then she shook her head and looked at me as though I were the one who needed pity. 'Child, I don't need a shortcut.' And she told about all the friends she kept up with on her way to visit Netta. A shortcut would cut her off from Mr. Jenkins, with whom she always swapped gossip; from Miss Hunter, who so looked forward to the quilt scraps she'd bring by; from the raisin wine she'd taste at one place in exchange for her biscuits; and the chance to look in on the "old folks" who were sick.

"'Child,' she said again, 'can't take shortcuts if you want friends in this world. Shortcuts don't mix with love.'"