At one point in the evening, they started passing around a bottle of whisky. They called it “conk-buster,” and it was plenty powerful. Then one of them started telling a story whose main character was a “dusty butt,” which I gathered meant a low-class lady of the evening, who got in with a “pancake.” When I asked what that was, another fellow told me it referred to a subservient type of Negro man. He actually used the word “subservient.” And then, when we dug into that feast, they told me we were “collaring a hot.”
I took notes as fast as I could, but I know I missed some of what they were saying. Seems like five or six were talking at once, telling stories, all vying for my attention.
And then, something happened that’s been on my mind ever since. One of the men in this Rooting Hen was a small guy with a beard like puffy cotton, sitting at a table with a really big mammy-type. He’d been hitting the brew pretty hard and was slurring his words, but I could tell he wanted to be in the conversation. I was sitting at the bar with Pete and Diffie and a lot of guys, the place full of smoke and music and everyone talking over everyone else, and finally this old gentleman kind of staggered up and leaned in.
“You boys tellin’ this ofay writer all kinda stuff,” he said, grinning at me. “You gone tell ‘im ‘bout th’ cleansin’, that this year be the jub’lee of the cleansin’?”
Well, John, it was like a B-western when the hero pushes through the barroom doors.
Every bit of talk suddenly stopped and all I could hear was a raspy-voiced Negro on the jukebox singing about somebody dusting his broom. All around me, eyes had turned toward the old man, and the eyes weren’t slack and friendly anymore. They seemed to be, I don’t know, full of warning. Of course, I was full of beer, and a few pulls of whisky, too, but I wasn’t so blotto that I didn’t know something had changed in that room, and in a damn big hurry.
Whatever it was, the old guy got the message. He staggered back like he’d been shot, muttering out something that sounded like an apology, as the woman at the table pulled him back into his seat by his belt loops, her eyes flashing to our group. Things only stayed like that for a few seconds, but it seemed like forever – that fellow on the jukebox singing about his broom the only sound in the whole joint. Even the smoke seemed to stop swirling and just freeze in place.
I turned to Pete and started to say something, just to hear the sound of someone else’s voice. But then one of the patrons passed the whisky – I mean, the conk-buster – to me and said, “Drink up, writer. We gots lots more stories.”
Well, I did, and things became a little confused not long afterwards. I remember riding in the back seat of Pete’s Hudson and asking him something about what the old man said. It seemed like Pete and Diffie looked at each other funny before Pete told me something dismissive. I can’t remember what he said, but I remember it had to do with listening to “old fools.”
Although I didn’t make a big deal of it, I think – I feel like – there’s something more to it than that. Maybe one day Pete will tell me. For right now, though, it’s just another piece in the mystery I’ve somehow stumbled onto.
Cats. Witches. And now, the “jubilee” and the “cleansing.” If all those are pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, how many more pieces will I need before I can start seeing the big picture?
We didn’t get out of the Rooting Hen ‘til after midnight and I have notes for twenty or so different stories, plus another dozen names and addresses. And except for that incident with the old man, none of those people could have been any nicer to me, a white boy from another part of the country. I know a lot of it had to do with Pete and maybe even Diffie, but still...
You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to write every one I’ve got addresses for and thank ‘em for being so nice to me. That’s the least I can do.
All this writing and the beer and conk-buster hangover is catching up to me again. Plus, I haven’t eaten since that bacchanalian dinner and now I’m starting to get a little hungry. Ma sometimes puts out sandwiches on the weekends. I think I’ll go downstairs and see if she’s done that yet.
After I eat, I’ll see about writing a few of those folks back around Harrison, and then I’m turning in early. So I guess this is all you’re getting from me this round. Write back when you can.
Your pal,
Robert
P.S. Pete’s a wonderful guy. You gotta meet him.
May 23, 1939
Tuesday morning
Dear John,
I have been doing ok. Had another nutty, no, weird thing happen. Not quite another jigsaw piece. More like the same piece showing up again in the pile.
First let me say that I LOVE Franklin D. Roosevelt! I got a letter today from D.C. telling me that I have qualified for a promotion to clerk-typist GS1 with a salary of $1800 a year.
Wowsers! When I finish here in a few months I will be reassigned to Our Nation’s Capitol. The letter didn’t say so, but I’m sure they need a lot of us fellows, and gals, in Washington because of the defense build-up. Sooo, the Devil bless Hitler. Without his little toothbrush-moustache craziness I would still be a temporary WPA Field Operative with no prospects after this job is over. My big step up as a public servant hasn’t happened yet and I know not to count my chickens, etc., but God bless FDR. I’ll be a yellow-dog Democrat forever.
From dog to cat. Yes, that damned calico has been in my room again. I woke up last night just like before, scared to the core by something. This time, when I opened my eyes I was facing my desk and in the moonlight I could see the thing clearly, sitting there, pawing at my papers. The sight froze my spine. I lay there not moving so much as an eyelid for I don’t know how long, my heart thudding against my ribs, until that paralyzing feeling of terror began to fade. My eyes adjusted until everything was in sharp focus, and every little movement of that godforsaken animal seemed magnified. I found myself gripped by the fear that she would turn her head and fix her cat eyes on me.
I look at those words and try to imagine what you’ll think when you read them. But John, I have to tell someone this stuff. I can’t tell anyone here. They’d think I was a candidate for the laughing academy. I’m afraid you might figure this is some elaborate joke I’m playing on you, trying to get you to fall for something that I’m just making up. I think back to how we both grew up, loving magic and the supernatural and studying it and even trying to see if we could conjure stuff up ourselves – and getting damn close, as you very well know. But this doesn’t have anything to do with that. I’ve also thought that maybe you’ve got it in your head that I’m doing this to show you I can write a scary yarn just as well as you can, especially after your Weird Tales sale. But please don’t think any of those things. I swear what I’m telling you is true.
I watched that cat for three or four good minutes, until I was sure she was reading my stuff. I thought I could even see the cold moon-glint changing in her eyes as they ran up and down the pages.
Finally, I couldn’t take it any more. I yelled, just like I’d done the first time I’d caught it in my room – but this time, instead of taking off, she turned and stared at me. Now that both scared me and pissed me off.
After her first visit, I decided I didn’t give a tinker’s damn about how you’d razzed me about keeping a gun under my pillow, so I flipped the light on and came out with my .22 revolver. This time I got the reaction I wanted. Those eyes got big as milk saucers and that baby blasted across my desk, skidded on the papers, got tangled up in the chair legs, and went halfway up the wrong wall before getting it right and vaulting out of the transom like before.
Maybe it was a nervous reaction, but seeing that big old cat go from scary to terrified made me burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. The minute before, she had been staring me down like she was the Devil’s own, not a bit afraid. And then, when she saw the gun, complete panic and a pratfall under the chair. I laughed and laughed until Ma knocked at my door, having heard me holler, I guess, and undoubtedly wondering just what in hell
was wrong with me, although she was nice enough not to say it.
We just finished breakfast, and Ma didn’t bring up the subject of my outburst last night. I appreciate that, especially since I don’t know what Patricia would’ve thought, and she was right there serving up the food to me and Paul and Mr. Clark. (Dave’s on the early trick again.) If either of them heard me holler last night, they didn’t say anything either. So Patricia doesn’t have to worry about going out with a crazy man. Not that I’ve asked her yet. But I’m getting up the nerve.
Trying for several interviews today out in the hills. It’s cloudy and at breakfast Mr. Clark said there was a big thunderstorm on the way and maybe a tornado. Apparently it’s the season for those. So I’d better rev up the big Indian and get on my way.
More in a day or two.
Your faithful pal,
Robert
May 24, 1939
Wednesday afternoon
Dear John,
No tornado, but we had a lot of thunder and lightning last night, changing to a light but steady rain by daybreak. It rains a lot here, which is why everything is so green. Wet air comes in and hits the Ozarks, rises and cools and dumps buckets of H2O on us. At least it pushes the temperature down several degrees and you don’t smell the slaughterhouse at all.
I talked to a couple of neat old people today, going up the highway north about five miles and then west on dirt roads another five or so. If I hadn’t had my goggles I wouldn’t have been able to make the trip. As it was, I slowed way down when I hit the dirt roads. They were now topped with an inch or two of thin mud, making it tricky, but even slipping and sliding from one side of the road to the other I kept going. When I was done with the second interview, it took me right at an hour to get back on the highway. Man, that old blacktop sure looked good. Even though the rain water was splattering and blurring my goggles, I got back to Ma Stean’s in jig time with my papers nearly dry. I took a hot bath right there in the middle of the day, sitting in the tub and talking to MacWhirtle for a good half-hour. Now I feel like a new man and figured I’d write you to warm up the typer before I start working on the stories.
Even though it was an awful long ride through the rain, it was worth it. Both of the yarns I collected were about, you guessed it, witches. One was told to me by a 90-year-old woman, Maria Williams, about an old lady her ancestors found out was a witch. They killed her son, who was feeble-minded, but she got her revenge. The other was a great story about “witched guns” from Boyd Bird Barling of Flat Gap – honest! – who heard the tale from his grandpappy who heard the story from his grandpappy who was there. That puts the action back about 120 years, which is a common period for these stories I’m gathering. Boyd Bird is 78 years old, and he heard the story as a kid 60 years ago from a man who’d heard it as a boy 60 years before that. So the setting is early in the last century, say the 1820s, when this part of the U.S.A. was pretty much a raw wilderness full of wild Indians and lots of other perils. I can understand why it’s a great idea to collect these stories. I and others like me with this Folklore Project are opening windows to the past that will soon be shut forever, because I don’t think the kids and grandkids of this generation really care. In fact, the few I’ve run into around here don’t even seem to understand why I’m doing what I’m doing.
The old folks, though, they know, and it’s important to them. But I have to admit that a lot of ‘em don’t quite savvy the whole picture. Yesterday, when I was helping Pete shut down, a deeply tanned old fellow wearing new bib overalls over a red union suit faded almost to pink came into the station office and asked, “You thet fella takin’ down all our folks’ stories, ain’tcha?”
I said I was.
He looked me up and down for a minute without speaking. Finally, he said, “You bein’ hurtful?”
“What?” I asked.
“You bein’ hurtful in what you writ?”
Pete was back in one of the bays, so he wasn’t there to translate for me. The best I could gather, the old boy wanted to know if I was making fun of the people I interviewed.
“Nossir,” I said. “I’m being respectful.”
He took off his wide-brimmed straw hat and produced a polka-dotted blue handkerchief from his overalls pocket, stirring around the slickness on his browned brow. Then he nodded and stuffed the cloth back inside his front pocket.
“That’s good,” he said. “All them folks knows you’re here, and they wonderin’ whatcha up to.”
“My intentions are good. I just want to get the old stories on the record before they disappear,” I said. “For the government.”
He nodded again, but this time I thought I saw the same flash of warning in his eyes that I’d seen from the storytellers back at the Rooting Hen.
“Jus’ make sure you tell ‘em good, then,” he said.
“I will.”
He turned to go. Just as he reached the door, he turned around. “And son,” he added, “you don’t need to tell everythin’ you hear.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could say anything, he’d shuffled out the door and was heading past the pumps. As I watched him go, Pete came out of the bay, wiping his hands on a rag.
“You know who that is?” I asked, pointing toward the retreating back of the old guy.
Pete squinted. “Yeah.” He paused, studying the rag. In the short time I’d known him, I’d come to understand that his silence and pretended attention to something else meant he was carefully deciding what to say next.
“He’s a Gabber,” Pete said finally. “They’re thick as flies in this town and all through the hills. Gabbers own the packin’ house and most of the rest of Mackaville. You’ve prob’ly run into some of ‘em already.”
“Not yet.”
“Well, now that I think about it, you have. Diffie’s a Gabber. Barely. He and his old man are shirt-tail relatives of the brothers who own Gabber Meats. Diffie’s pop is some kinda pencil- pusher at the plant. Lots of Gabbers on hog farms outside town, too. You got any of ‘em on your gummint list?”
I tried to remember. “Seems like maybe I do,” I said.
“Just make sure to holler before you try to go in one of their houses to do your interviewin’. Them Gabber boys make the best ‘shine in the Ozarks. It’s a family tradition they’ve kept goin’, and it’s rumored there’s more’n a few revenooers planted out on their property. Better let ‘em know you ain’t one, with you wearin’ that CCC outfit and all.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
He started shutting everything down then, and I fell into line behind him, thinking over what the old guy had said to me. Wiping down the counter and pop box while he took care of the cash register, I replayed the conversation in my mind.
We were outside locking down the pumps for the night when I said, “That Mr. Gabber wanted to know if I was being ‘hurtful’ with what I was writing. What in the hell did he mean by that?”
Pete shrugged. “Dunno. Guess he was looking out for his people. Folks around here got an awful lot of pride, mainly because most of ‘em don’t have a whole hell of a lot else.”
“So he thought I might be making fun of them by telling their stories?”
“Maybe.” Pete shrugged again.
“He told me a couple of other things. He said ‘them folks’ knew I was here, and that I didn’t have to tell everything I heard. Who’s ‘them folks,’ and what shouldn’t I tell?”
He was getting in his green Hudson and at first I didn’t think he heard me, because he shut the door and cranked the starter before answering. He was stalling again, thinking about what to say. So I just stood and waited, listening to the purr of the motor.
Finally, he rolled his window down. “I guess there ain’t a town in the world without some kinda secrets they don’t want let out,” he said. “Folks who live in a place know its secrets, what to tell and what not to tell, and I guess they’re just kinda juberous when someone they don’t know comes in and starts diggin’ ‘round. Ma
ckaville ain’t no different. I know you, but they don’t.” He gave me a little salute. “Seeya tomorrow,” he added, and roared off.
I stood there, watching him leave. Throughout the afternoon, big thick cumulus clouds had been piling up on the western horizon, darkening the tops of the green hills. It looked like my fellow traveler Mr. Clark was going to be right about the storm.
Sure enough, he was, as I told you at the beginning of this letter. But it wasn’t the approaching storm that gave me the shivers as Pete drove down the little street and out of my sight. I was thinking that maybe I’d just been handed another piece or two of that damn jigsaw puzzle.
Your faithful correspondent,
Robert
May 28, 1939
Sunday morning
Dear John,
Thanks for your latest. It’s good to know that you believe what I’m writing you, but I guess I wouldn’t have expected any less. It’s especially good that I got your letter Friday, the day after another... incident happened. You told me in your letter that you’d be the last person in the world to think I was crazy. This may cause you to re-evaluate your position.
I’ve been telling you about my problems with that big old calico cat. Well, since her visit last Monday night I’ve encouraged MacWhirtle to buddy up with me at night and he’s been sleeping at the foot of my bed when he doesn’t crawl over me and curl up in front of the window. Three nights ago, he and I finished off a box of Apple Snaps, which by the way are great cookies, and snuggled down.
I guess I’d been asleep for a few hours before I woke up, again with that same sense of dread I’d felt both times the cat had been in my room. I mean, I was soul-sick with fear, and as my consciousness raced up from deep sleep to high anxiety, I felt Mac’s little body shaking against my stomach.
I was on my side facing the window, so I couldn’t see the desk, but once again I could hear papers being scratched at and turned. As scared as I was, MacWhirtle seemed to be even worse. He was shaking so hard he was almost in convulsions.
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