Blue Ridge Billy

by Lois Lenski

  “Lordy mercy, son,” she continued the girl’s story, “if that snake had a struck Sarey Sue, I don’t know what I’d a done. Sarey Sue’s big for her age and heavy, for all she looks so spindlin’. I’d a been bound to git her out of there, but she’d a been too heavy for me to tote, and I couldn’t a left her there—she’d a been dead afore I coulda brung help.”

  “And we couldn’t run a step,” added Sarey Sue, “’twas that rough up there—right atop the Drop-Off.”

  “All the snakes is comin’ out o’ their winter nestses now,” said Billy. “I reckon the spring sunshine feels just as good to them as to us. But I hain’t seen no dogwood out yet.”

  “I hain’t neither,” said Sarey Sue. “Well, talkin’ hain’t grubbin’. Gimme that maddick!” She took the heavy digging tool and began to swing it up and down. Her thin arms looked as if they could not lift it, but she swung it briskly, digging a deep hole beside a young tree.

  “That ain’t sassyfrack!” screamed Granny. “That’s a hickory. Leave hit alone, gal. Don’t ye go grubbin’ up all the trees in the woods.” She turned to the boy. “Sarey Sue thinks she knows roots and yarbs, but seems like I can’t never learn her.”

  “She must be dumb,” said Billy. “Hickory and sassyfrack don’t look the same.”

  Sarey Sue kept right on digging, until she got a piece of the root. She brushed the dirt off, put it in her mouth and chewed it. Then she threw it down. Granny was right. It was not sassafras. “Didn’t hurt the little ole tree none,” she said. She dug again and pulled up another root.

  “What’s that?” asked Billy.

  “Law me, don’t you know?” asked Sarey Sue. “Stone root. Root’s hard as stone, so hard you can’t break it with your hands.” She chopped it in two with her mattock. “There, feel of it,” she said. “The inside feels cold and hard like stone.”

  Billy agreed. “What else you got? Thought you was just grubbin’ sassyfrack.”

  “Little of everything,” said Sarey Sue. “Crowhosh, coon root, hog-grub, poke root——”

  “Never seed poke root ever git dry,” interrupted Granny. “Let it lay out in the sun for days and days and hit won’t dry. Don’t pay to mess round with hit.”

  “There’s lobelia,” said Sarey Sue, pointing. “That’ll kill ye.”

  “Some folkses take hit and make a syrup,” said Granny. “Best thing for a cough that ever was.”

  “Lordy mercy, I’m skeered to drink it!” exclaimed Sarey Sue, laughing. “Blame stuff’s pizen!”

  “If a chicken eats one seed of it,” said Granny, “hit’ll drop over dead.”

  “Sassyfrack’s the best root to grub,” said Sarey Sue. “They make them cold drinks out of it. They can’t git enough of it.”

  “Sassyfrack tea’s mighty good,” said Billy.

  “Wisht I had five acres of it,” said Granny. “I’d clear it all out. Don’t darst burn the wood, though. Hit’s bad luck to burn it.”

  Suddenly Billy remembered Uncle Pozy and his baskets. Instead of talking to the Trivetts, he ought to be out with Uncle Pozy, choosing a white-oak tree for splits. “Well, I got to mosey on down the mountain,” he said.

  Before he could move, Granny Trivett leaned over and clutched the boy’s arm. “Who’s that a-goin’ there?” she whispered.

  Below them, moving above a clump of laurel, they saw a man carrying a gun on his shoulder.

  “Why, hit looks like Pappy out huntin’,” sail Billy, surprised. “I’ll holler to him.”

  “No, ye won’t,” said Granny. “Ye just hush.”

  “Hit shore do look like your Pappy,” said Sarey Sue.

  “I hear hounds a-squealin’,” said Billy. “They’re after a fox.”

  “Not in broad daylight,” said Granny in a low voice.

  Billy knew that foxes were hunted in daylight, and coons and possums at night. He was big enough to fox-hunt himself, and he knew all about animals and their tracks. Granny was talking through her hat. But why?

  “Let’s go down where Pap is and see,” said Billy.

  “Law, no, you stay right here,” said Granny, “and hush your mouth. Don’t talk so loud. Don’t ye know folks down there in the holler can hear every word you say?”

  “Let’s go see what he’s ketchin’——”

  “Law, no,” said Granny, pressing her lips firmly. “A woman mustn’t never go near a man a-huntin’. Hit brings bad luck, they say.”

  “Then I’ll go see myself,” said Billy.

  “You’ll stay right where you be!” Granny’s voice was cold and stern. Billy looked at her, astonished.

  “I guess I’ll go where I please. I’m just out roamin’ like I always do——” he began.

  “No, you won’t!” And Billy knew, from the tone of her voice, that he’d better mind her.

  “’Tain’t huntin’ season in the spring, nohow,” said the old woman scornfully. “What kind of a boy be ye, not to know that?”

  Billy knew that plenty of people hunted out of season in the mountains. Granny was still talking queer. Was she trying to mislead him?

  “Well,” said the boy lamely, “they most generally never ketch the fox, nohow. But I did hear hounds a-squealin’.…”

  “Way over on Three Top likely,” said Granny.

  “But Pap’s down here, he ain’t over on Three Top.…” It didn’t make sense. People often said Granny was queer. He began to believe it.

  She made no answer, but lifted her mattock and started digging again. Sarey Sue pulled roots from the ground and shook off the dirt. Billy was afraid to move a step. He thought of Uncle Pozy and wished he’d gone the long way around by the road, so he could have avoided the Trivetts. He began to fidget. Why should they keep him standing here all day?

  After a while, Sarey Sue spoke: “There’s a heap o’ sassyfrack down in No Man’s Cove. We was aimin’ to go there this fore day when we started out. We ain’t a fur piece from there right now. The man’s gone. Hit’s safe for us to move on now, ain’t hit, Gran?”

  The old woman nodded. She took her almost empty snuffbox from her pocket, dipped the brush and put it in her mouth. “I reckon we might could,” she said slowly. “You comin’ with us?”

  Billy nodded. He started out behind them. He’d go part way and turn off to Honeysuckle Hollow.

  “We went this way last week, mind, Gran?” said Sarey Sue. “When that cow-brute o’ ourn losted herself and we had to go out huntin’ for her? Old Brindle’s always gallivantin’ off somewheres.”

  The trail was a faint one, down over rocks and boulders, below the high cliffs of the Drop-Off and through thick clumps of rhododendron and laurel. The mountains on both sides seemed to squeeze close together, their slopes getting steeper, until the valley below became a narrow ravine with a stream at the bottom.

  “Let me go first,” said Granny Trivett.

  The boy and girl waited while she moved past them. They came to a lively waterfall and stepped on stones to cross it. Out of hearing of the rushing water, Granny suddenly stopped. The others came up.

  “Turn round and go back up the ridge,” she said. “I hear men’s voices.”

  “Hit’s the timber men,” said Billy. “Pap said they was workin’ on this side the ridge, on Fate Merrill’s place, fixin’ to slide logs down a ravine near Bearskin Creek after the next freshet.”

  “’Tain’t timber men,” said Granny firmly. “There ain’t no log-roads hereabouts. Nobody’s loggin’ or sawmillin’ round here.”

  “But that was Pap we seen, and he said he was loggin’ over to Bearskin Creek!” protested Billy.

  “Hush your loud mouth,” said Granny. “Even a whisper can be heard clear acrost this holler. Come with me now.” She led the boy and girl out onto a protruding rock, from where they had a clear view over the deep, shut-in valley and a wide expanse of far-off ranges lost in blue haze. “See that cliff there, with all them thicketty bushes in under it?” She pointed a bony finger.

  They looked
where she pointed.

  “Look close now,” said Granny. “See that little breath o’ smoke waverin’ out and around that cliff, like a thread o’ steam oozin’ out of a teakettle?”

  The boy and girl stared.

  “Now listen,” she added. “Hear them voices? Men talkin’.”

  “I hear ’em,” said Sarey Sue.

  Billy nodded. “What you reckon they’re up to?”

  “Hit might be a still!” said Granny grimly. “I ain’t sayin’ hit is, and I ain’t sayin’ hit ain’t, but hit might be.”

  Both Sarey Sue and Billy understood the word “still.” They knew that “moonshine” was mountain whisky made in secret, because it was against the law to make it. A “still” was the place where the liquor was distilled from corn juice.

  “But I thought they only made ‘moonshine’ by the light o’ the moon,” whispered Sarey Sue.

  “Sometimes you’re dumb, and again just plain silly,” said Billy.

  “Hit’s less’n a mile to the Tennessee line, here,” said Granny thoughtfully. “Right good location for a still.”

  “Why?” asked Billy.

  “So when the high-sheriff comes unexpected-like, the owner can take a little step over the line and the high-sheriff can’t follow him,” explained Granny.

  “But if a man grows more corn than he needs, and ain’t got no way to sell it, what’s wrong about makin’ whisky out of it, if he can sell the whisky?” demanded Billy.

  “Did your Pap say that?”

  “Well—no, not exactly.”

  “That’s a question each man’s got to answer for hisself,” said Granny, “whether he wants to go again the Law or not. Seven years in jail is a long time to be penned up. And whisky ruins the lives of them that drinks hit.”

  “Let’s go down and see who’s runnin’ the still,” said Sarey Sue excitedly.

  “Silly again!” sniffed Billy.

  “Mercy God, gal young un!” exclaimed Granny, terrified. “You don’t know what you’re a-sayin’. You’d be takin’ your life in your hands. Them men’s got guns to point at anybody comes prowlin’ round. Why, a man sits with a rifle-gun on his knee on every path leadin’ to the still. ‘What might be your business hereabouts, young un?’ he’d say. Then he’d shoot in the air and you’d hear the grapevine of shots goin’ off all the way back to the still. No, we don’t go nigh it. We don’t want to know who’s runnin’ hit.”

  The old woman started back up the trail. “Come on!” she called sharply to the two at her heels. “We don’t know nothin’. We ain’t seen no smoke. We ain’t seen no still. We ain’t seen no men—nothin’! Mind, now, nothin’!”

  Billy remembered the figure of the man with the gun over his shoulder.

  “Well, hit ain’t Pap nohow. Pap ain’t gone huntin’ today, neither. Pap’s loggin’ on Bearskin Creek,” he said stoutly. He started off to the right on a path through the forest.

  “Don’t you go runnin’ off there!” called Granny. “Come back up over the ridge and go home.”

  “But I’m goin’ to Uncle Pozy’s in Honeysuckle Holler!” protested Billy. “I been aimin’ to go there all along.”

  “Well, you ain’t!” said Granny fiercely. She seized the boy by the shoulder, pushed him ahead of her and gave him a kick.

  There was nothing to do but obey.

  “Git along home with ye, now, ye little ole fool!”

  CHAPTER V

  A Split-oak Basket

  It was harder and harder to get to Uncle Pozy’s. The spring work began, and Pappy put more responsibility on Billy because he had to be away so much.

  The timber men had slid as many logs as possible down to the foot of the mountain after the spring freshets. Now they were hauling them in wagons to market, to Mountain City in Tennessee. The road over Stone Mountain was bad and the trip often took four or five days. Pappy did not like to be away so long, for he was anxious to get the spring crops started.

  “We’ll plant the corn in new ground this year,” he said one evening as he rose from the supper table.

  “Where, Rudy?” asked Mammy.

  “We’ll clear off that piece right up yonder,” said Pappy, pointing out the back door to the steep mountainside above the house. “Come, son. I’ll lay out your work for the next few days while I’m off haulin’ them logs.”

  “That mountain’s mighty steep for plowin’,” said Mammy.

  “Little Old Bet would fall shore and break her neck,” said Letty Jo.

  “Better plant taters up there,” suggested Billy. “Ollie Holbrook says when you dig ’em, you just put your basket at the bottom, open up the row and let ’em roll down!”

  “I ain’t asked you-uns for your advice,” said Pappy, without a smile.

  Pappy was a tall, lanky man, with a brown, leathery skin and a thin, hatchet face with a strong jutting jaw. He wore brown jeans-cloth shirt and trousers, held up by cowhide suspenders. His hair showed a faint tinge of red and his eyes, of cold blue, were sharp.

  “Come along, son.”

  They climbed up the hill.

  “Your Mammy’s right, Billy, hit’s too steep here for plowin’,” Pappy said. “So you’ll have to grub hit with the maddick. Grub out all the sprouts and brambleberry vines and throw ’em in heaps for burning. Save out the sassyfrack—hit ain’t good to burn the wood, and your Mammy wants the roots for tea. Letty Jo can take care of ’em. When you get the piece all cleared of sprouts, we’ll burn the brush and run the harrow over it. Then we’ll be ready to plant.”

  “But the rain will wash all the seed-corn down hill,” ventured Billy.

  “No, hit won’t,” said Pappy. “Just do as I bid you. Start off first thing tomorrow.”

  “Pap,” said Billy, “I bet the fish air bitin’ good today.”

  “Well, you keep right in the middle o’ that row, and they won’t bite you!” answered Pappy sternly.

  Billy looked around. “How far do I dig? There ain’t no fence to go by.”

  His father began to step off the boundaries. “After we get the corn planted, we’ll get rails and lay us up a fence.”

  “But Pappy——”

  “Now, son!” His father came closer and looked down at him. “You can fool around with them sorry, no-count boys while I’m gone if you’re a mind to.…”

  “What sorry, no-count boys?”

  “Them Buckwheat Holler boys who fit you and give you that black eye.”

  “Oh, Burl, ye mean. Burl Moseley. He ain’t got the sense of a dead crow, but he’s tough as a laurel burl. I never see him—hardly ever,” said Billy, smiling a little. “I licked him good. He’s afeard o’ me.”

  But Pappy was serious.

  “I tell you right now, young man, you ain’t gonna be a little ole sorry boy, and squirrel hunt and fish all day long. Now, young feller, I dare you to try it.”

  “I won’t go huntin’ till fall, Pap,” said Billy meekly.

  “Fishin’ then. You mind what I say,” continued Pappy. “Get this work done or take your medicine. I ain’t gonna raise me up no little ole timidy men around here. Make up your mind you’re gonna be tough!”

  “I ain’t never to fight back?” asked Billy.

  “You’re to fight back when they pick on you first, or insult you. But if you stay away from them Buckwheat Holler boys, they can’t pick on you first,” said Pappy. “Do what I say or you’ll get into trouble.”

  The grubbing was not easy, but no harder, Billy reflected, than digging roots and herbs in the woods like the Trivetts. The boy worked steadily, but it was slow. Mammy came and helped him, while Letty Jo grubbed out the sassafras, then carried it down to the house, to scrape or “ross” the roots and dry them.

  Billy worked steadily for three long days. Sometimes he sang or whistled the ground hog song:

  “Whet up your knife and whistle up your dog,

  Whet up your knife and whistle up your dog,

  We’re going to the holler to catch a ground hog,<
br />
  Ground hog! …”

  Other songs kept popping into his head. The sun shone bright and warm, and there was no rain. The patch, as paced off by his father, was practically cleared—all but a narrow strip at one side.

  “I declare!” said Mammy, when the boy came in on the third evening, his hands covered with blisters and his nose peeling with sunburn. “I declare if Billy Honeycutt ain’t the workin’est boy in Hoot Owl Holler! What on earth’s got into him?”

  “Can I go see Uncle Pozy tomorrow?” asked Billy. It seemed a good moment to put the question.

  Mammy laughed. “So that’s hit! I reckon you’ve earned it, son. Ollie Holbrook’s takin’ his family over to Honeysuckle Holler to spend the day with his wife’s folks. You can ride along in their jolt-wagon.”

  Billy threw his hat in the air and yelled for joy. He was doubly glad. He would enjoy the ride, and he wouldn’t have to climb over the mountain this time. He wanted to stay as far away from No Man’s Cove as possible. Granny Trivett had given him a big scare that day.

  “She’s only a fraidy-cat of an old woman,” he said to himself, “but I druther go round by the road.”

  Ollie Holbrook’s family were happy and jolly, and Billy liked riding with them. Ollie and his wife sat on the front seat, and their nine children, with Billy, sat some on chairs and some on the floor in the back. The jolt-wagon, pulled by two strong mules, made good time over the bumpy roads. They went through Solitude, past Jeb Dotson’s store, the church-house, the post office and Hamby’s mill, without stopping. Then they took the Honeysuckle Hollow road past the school-house, and after five more miles came to Uncle Pozy’s, where Billy jumped down. The Holbrooks promised to stop for him on their way home in the evening, and waved him a cheery goodbye.

  Billy ran right up the steep slope without stopping. “Hello! Hello, Uncle Pozy!”

  There was no answer.

  “Heigh-ho! Uncle Pozy! Uncle Pozy!”

  Maybe he was not at home. The little one-room cabin looked deserted, except for a well-fed cat that wandered out the open door. Baskets were scattered about the room, and by the fireplace there was a great pile of splits, looped and tied in bundles. The floor was strewn with chips and looked as if it had not been swept for a month.