by Ruth White
“So we buried her next day,” Woodrow went on. “Uncle Russell didn’t have the money for an undertaker and a casket and all, so he made his own coffin out of pine. Aunt Millie always loved the smell of pine. And he lined it with that warm, soft stuff Aunt Millie used to line quilts, to keep her warm, he said. Then he dressed her up in her white wedding dress ’cause it was the only fine thing she had to wear. And he left her diamond ring on her finger because he couldn’t get it off. It was just a li’l ol’ diamond anyway, but she was always so proud of it. She never took it off from the day she married Uncle Russell, and she would tell folks how he had saved up money for three years and ordered it special from Baltimore.
“We all gathered at the graveyard—the Praters and the Honakers. Aunt Millie was a Honaker before she married Uncle Russell, but don’t hold that against her. And all the neighbors came, including the Sloans. I’ll tell you how those Sloans are—they wouldn’t miss a funeral for anything, especially Bertie and Gertie.
“So we had a graveside service there above the old home place where all the Praters are buried. First, the preacher prayed with us over the open casket. Then we placed holly with the red berries on top of her ’cause there wasn’t a flower to be found anywhere in that cold. Next Uncle Russell fastened the lid down with leather ties he had made, lowered her into the hole, and shoveled it full of dirt his own self while we all cried; then it started to snow.”
There was silence for a moment, except for the frogs and Franklin Delano wheezing. He had the asthma. A little breeze rippled through the apple trees, and an owl hooted. We shivered and moved closer to the fire, just like we could feel that cold winter day Woodrow was talking about.
“Mama and Daddy and me, we went over to Uncle Russell’s to fix supper for him and keep him company, for he was tore up pretty good. And when it got dark he said to us, ‘Reckon y’all could spend the night?’
“We said we reckoned we could. By ten o‘clock it was snowing hard. We stoked the heatin’ stove, rolled ourselves up in quilts, and talked quiet-like for a long time, mostly about Aunt Millie.”
Woodrow’s voice grew soft.
“There was a nice smell in the room that somehow seemed to belong to her, and there were shadows on the walls, and I wondered, Was she close by? Could she hear us? Hadn’t she said death is no more than changing forms? So maybe she was one of them shadows or a whiff of whatever that was smelling so good.
“Then Uncle Russell took the one bed, Mama and Daddy took the other, and that left me to sleep on the floor in front of the heatin’ stove. But I didn’t mind. I thought I could keep the fire burning all night.
“I’ll never forget it. My old dog, Moses, had recently died, and I still missed him, so I was dreaming about him when it seemed like I heard somebody calling my name—‘Woody’—kinda soft. Then the voice said, ‘Woody, I’m so cold.’ And again, ‘Woody.’
“Well, there was only one person in the world who called me Woody, and you know who that was?”
“Who?” we all said at the same time, but we knew who.
“Aunt Millie! Nobody else ever called me Woody except for her. I woke up shivering and pulled the quilt tighter around me and listened, but all was quiet. Out the window near me I could see snow coming down thick. Then I knew something wadn’t right. I could feel a cold draft, and I thought the door musta blowed open, so I rolled over and looked at the front door. Then I like to died. She was standing there in the open doorway.”
“Who!”
“Aunt Millie!”
“Her ghost?”
“That’s what I thought—a ghost! But it was really her standing there in that white dress with snow all over her hair and blood all over her front.”
“Blood?”
“Yeah, blood. She was looking right at me and holding out one hand toward me. It was that hand that was bleeding.
“‘Woody,’ she said. ‘I’m so cold.’
“And I started hollerin.’ How would you feel if you saw a dead woman standing in the doorway at night in the snow calling your name? Well, I’ll tell you one thing right now, you wouldn’t feel good about it. And if I’d been an old person like Granny or Grandpa, I woulda had a heart attack on the spot. I about did anyhow.
“Mama and Daddy and Uncle Russell came rushing in, and when they saw Aunt Millie, all three of them froze where they stood. I’ll declare, the natural laws of the world seemed reversed. You couldn’t believe your eyeballs.
“It was Uncle Russell who came to his senses first. He grabbed her and brought her in to the heatin’ stove.
“‘My darlin’s come back to me,’ he said.
“When it was all sorted out, what happened was this: The Sloan sisters, Bertie and Gertie, saw that diamond ring on Aunt Millie’s finger at the graveside service and decided to dig her up, take the ring, fill the grave again, and nobody would know the difference. But when they tried to get the ring, it wouldn’t come off her finger. So they took a knife and cut her finger off.
“That’s when Aunt Millie rose up and shouted, ‘What the hell you doin’ to me?’
“And that scared Bertie and Gertie so bad they ran away screaming, and Aunt Millie crawled out of the grave. She was a little bit out of her head and didn’t rightly know what was happening, but she knew how to get home.”
“How could that happen?” Garnet said. “Did she come back to life?”
“Shoot no, Garnet, she never was dead to start with. We buried her alive. But she sure seemed dead. Bertie and Gertie Sloan actually saved her life by trying to rob her grave.”
“Well, did she die then?” Franklin Delano wanted to know.
“Nope. That night Uncle Russell took her to the Clinch Valley Clinic, where they stitched up her hand and kept her for a while. Then they sent her home. She’s alive and kicking to this very day.”
“And what about Bertie and Gertie?” John Ed said.
“Both of them, their hair turned white overnight. And the next time anybody saw them, they were down at the Church of Jesus getting saved. They swore never to steal anything again, and they sent Aunt Millie’s ring back to her by way of the preacher. They had put it in a li’l ol’ aspirin tin with cotton all around it. ’Course Aunt Millie had to wear it on her pinkie after that. But she said that was a small price to pay for her life.”
“Is that the truth, Woodrow, or did you make it up?” Buzz said.
“It’s the truth, Buzz. It really happened. You’re always wanting to know is something really the truth,” Woodrow said.
“Well, I like to know,” Buzz said. “I don’t like stories that somebody made up.”
We didn’t say a word about his canned-tomatoes story.
“Now I have another story,” Buzz announced. “It’s about a rabid squirrel. It’s a true story, too.”
“Hold on there,” Peggy Sue said. “Which one was it, a rabbit or a squirrel?”
With that we got hysterical, and started telling jokes one on top of another. Woodrow wanted me to tell the eyeball one, but everybody had already heard it, so I asked him to tell the two-tents one, which he did, and everybody liked it. In the midst of this carrying on and acting a fool, I glanced up at Buzz and I saw he was not laughing at all. Huh-oh. Somebody musta stepped on his corns real hard. He was looking at Woodrow like he might want to clobber him.
“Hey, Woodrow,” he hollered suddenly. “Was your mama cross-eyed?”
Those foul words fell like a wet blanket on our good time. Nobody said anything for the longest time. I guess we were trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t make Buzz madder or insult Woodrow either.
“No,” Woodrow said at last. “Just me.”
“Oh well, where’d you get ’em?” Buzz went on. “Maybe them cockeyed stories the girls seem to like so much crossed your goofy eyes, huh?”
We had interrupted his story about a rabid squirrel. It was plain we really didn’t care about his stories, and he was jealous of Woodrow.
“Well, I’ll te
ll you,” Woodrow said brightly. “When they were giving out looks, I thought they said books, and I said, ‘Give me a funny one!’”
That got us started again. It was like the knockknock jokes. Everybody had one.
“When they were giving out brains,” Peggy Sue chimed in, “I thought they said pains, and I said, ‘Don’t give me any.’”
“When they were giving out noses, I thought they said roses, and I said, ‘Give me a big red one!’” Willy said.
And around and around it went. I stole a peep at Woodrow. He seemed to be having a good time still.
It was after everybody left that I said to him, “Sorry about Buzz, Woodrow. Next time we’ll not even ask him.”
“Oh shoot! Don’t worry about Buzz,” Woodrow said cheerfully. “He won’t have time to give us any trouble for a while. He’ll be too busy scratching.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“You know that stump he just had to sit on?”
“Yeah.”
“It was chiggers national headquarters.”
Thirteen
The next morning it rained early on; then the sun came out bright, and a warm steam rose up from the ground. I loved to go mushing through the grass when it got like that. But if I wasn’t careful I would step on an earthworm. They were crawling up to the sun to tan their slinky pink bodies on the walkway or rocks or any bare place they could find.
“Catch me some fat, juicy ones, Gypsy,” Grandpa said, as he took his toolbox around the side of the house. “There’s some baby birds out there in the orchard and I’m thinking their mama died. We’ll go feed ’em.”
“Oooo, no, I’m not about to put my fingers on BELLE PRATER’S BOY 111 them,” I said, sounding for all the world like Mama. “Maybe Woodrow will do it when he comes back.”
When the rain stopped, Granny and Woodrow had walked to the Piggly Wiggly to buy groceries. I was practicing the piano when they left or I would have gone with them.
I followed Grandpa around to where he was fixing some shaky railing on his wraparound first-floor porch. He was on the Slag Creek side, on his knees nailing a brace against a rail. I got down beside him and commenced handing nails to him.
“Grandpa, how come the way a person looks is so important?” I said.
“A person had orta put up a good appearance, I reckon,” he said.
Even though Grandpa was a schoolteacher at one time and knew better, he sometimes let his grammar slide back to the way he talked when he was a boy on the top of Wiley Mountain. He called it his everyday voice.
“But what if there’s something a person can’t help?” I said, raising my voice to the normal shout.
“Like what?” he shouted back.
“Like crooked teeth,” I said. “You can’t help them.”
“You could get braces,” Grandpa came back.
“Well, supposing I had a big wart on my nose?” I said.
“Doc would take it off for nothing,” Grandpa said.
“He’s good about stuff like that, and the Lord knows, we wouldn’t have our pretty Gypsy going around town with a wart on her nose.”
“What about crossed eyes?” I said.
“Oh,” Grandpa said. “Is somebody poking fun at Woodrow?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Buzz Osborne. He’s so mean.”
“You never could tell them Osbornes a dadblamed thing. No need to try,” Grandpa said.
“It seems like anytime a person wants to hurt another person’s feelings, he says nasty things about his looks,” I said, exasperated. “What possible difference could it make how a person looks if he is a good person?”
“It shouldn’t make no difference a’tall,” Grandpa said. “But it does to most folks.”
“Being good-looking ain’t everything,” I went on. “Look at Eleanor Roosevelt. She’s plain, but she’s the most wonderful person. And she’s accomplished so much. Miss Hart says it makes her proud to be a woman.”
“And Miss Hart’s right as rain,” Grandpa said. “And look also at Abraham Lincoln. I reckon an uglier man was never born. But see what-all he did for his country.”
Then Grandpa smiled and patted me on the head.
“But a pretty girl like you sure is nice to look at, Gypsy.”
“Mama cares more about my looks than I do,” I said. “She’s the one wants me to have this mane.”
“Well, I’ll tell you right now, girl, that mane, as you call it, is a sight. Everybody has something to say about your hair.”
“Let’s say I took a notion to cut it. Ain’t it my hair? Can’t I cut it if I want to?”
“Why would you want to go and do a thing like that for?”
“Because it’s so much trouble. I hate taking care of t.”
“I gotta feeling that would be a thing up with which your mama would not put,” Grandpa said.
That was one of Grandpa’s little jokes—mocking what he thought were silly rules of grammar, like not ending a sentence with a preposition.
“The most important question still is: What does it matter how pretty or ugly a person is?” I said seriously.
“You got me,” he said.
Then Grandpa laid down his hammer and pulled one of those big red bandana handkerchiefs out of his back pocket. He sat down flat on the porch beside me, removed his glasses, and started to clean them. This was a signal to me that Grandpa was fixing to say something important.
“I’ll tell you a thing, Gypsy, that your mama probably never did tell you,” he said softly.
“Shoot,” I said.
“It was your daddy’s idea to have your hair grow out so long and silky and shiny.”
Grandpa stopped talking and touched my pigtails.
“You were only five when he died, but even then you were a picture. I recall it was one day during his last few weeks that he said to your mama, ‘Love, promise me you’ll never cut my Beauty’s hair.’
“And Love promised. So that’s why she won’t hear of cutting it.”
I didn’t speak, because this big thing was stuck in my craw so that I had to swallow and swallow and blink and blink. It was akin to that day Granny told me about my daddy “ … come riding over Cold Mountain on a black horse … big as life … so tall and straight in the saddle …”
“Now,” Grandpa went on matter-of-factly, like we could have been discussing just any old body. “Appearances are just that, Gypsy—appearances, and not the genuine self. When I was teaching school, I noticed the best-looking girls and boys could be mean as copperheads, and the ugliest ones could be as goodhearted as they come. But that’s not to say either that a pretty person can’t be good, too. They can … like your mama. Or that an ugly person can’t be bad. They can that, too. But it’s only what’s in the heart that counts.”
“Then why do folks even notice Woodrow’s eyes? Anybody can see how good he is. He’s so much fun and he knows so many stories. And he treats everybody like they’re special.”
“I know,” Grandpa said. “He is good like you say, and he is sensitive, too, like Belle was. She wanted more than anything to be pretty like your mama, but she just wasn’t. And folks were always comparing them. Right in front of Belle they’d talk about what a beauty Love was.
“When she ran away with Everett Prater, she was feeling low … like she couldn’t do any better—not that there’s anything wrong with Everett. Nothing a’tall. But Belle didn’t even know him. And she hadn’t a clue what she was getting into, moving up in the shadow of those hills where the sun don’t even shine till noon.
“And here with us she had everything she needed and lots of things she wanted besides. We had hopes of sending her out into the world to study piano with the best of them. She was better than good. You’re a lot like her in that way, Gypsy.”
I was surprised and pleased. It was the first time Grandpa had ever mentioned my piano playing. And it reminded me that nobody ever bragged on me for anything except my looks. And they couldn’t say enough about that. Yeah,
I guess somebody might occasionally comment on the fact that I could tell a good joke, but how nice it would be to be admired, I thought, because I am interesting like Woodrow, or talented or smart … anything but just pretty. There had to be more important things than just being pretty. Then it occurred to me that that was an easy thing for a pretty girl to say. With poor Aunt Belle there was nothing more important. So what was the answer? I was confused.
I became aware that Grandpa’s voice was becoming agitated and louder.
“It was Belle’s choice,” he was saying, “to go live the old-timey ways with Everett’s clan. We went to see her, your granny and me, but she never made us feel welcome. Then she took to hiding from us when she saw us coming.
“‘Tell them I died,’ she’d say to Everett. Just being sassy, you know. But Everett would repeat to us what she said. And it hurt your granny’s feelings so bad, she’d cry. It did nothing but irritate the fool out of me.
“Then Woodrow was born, and we went to see him. She was nicer to us, so we went back now and again. And we would give her books, because that was the only thing she would take from us.
“We figured out she was embarrassed with her living conditions, so we didn’t go as often. Ever’ now and then we’d bump into her and Woodrow down on Main Street doing some shopping, and she was friendly enough. Then one Decoration Day the two of them came to the ceremonies at the cemetery to put flowers on the family graves.
“After your daddy died, she started coming to visit once in a while, and your mama took you up there to play with Woodrow occasionally. I thought maybe Belle and Love would make up and be friends, like sisters should be, but it never happened.
“She never confided in Love or any of us how she was feeling. If she needed anything, if she was sorry or blue or wanting to come home. When you’d ask her how things were, she’d answer fine, things were fine. Everett was fine. The baby was fine.”
Grandpa cleared his throat and ran his hand over his balding head.
“If she had said something. Any little hint. We would have done anything for her. We thought the world and all of her.”