by Lee Smith
Van Cantrell stayed with the army as long as he could, and lost one leg above the knee afore he come home. Things was different when he got back, he found out right away. Old Nell Cantrell, who had not done a thing but lay in the bed having a sick headache since the day he carried her in that wagon up the trace, Old Nell was up and farming! She had planted her some cabbage and some corn; she had three hogs on the side of Hurricane Mountain. She never got back in the bed neither. She didn’t have to, since Van was laid up hisself and couldn’t get around like he used to do. Thank God! is what she thought. But she needed some help of course, and so she had them three boys right in a row—stairstep boys, with Almarine in the middle. The other two, Riley and Shelby Dick, took after their daddy, and they growed up a-fighting and a-fussing just like him. They would throw your wash off the line, I’ve seed it, they tromped on their mama’s beans. It was clear from the beginning that they would kill each other or get kilt theirselves before they was through, which is nearabout what they did.
But this happened first. Van Cantrell’s leg started up oozing a clear liquid where it had been cut off and healed over. It was a clear smelly liquid, not like pus, which seemed to ooze right out of the very skin without no break that you could find atall. You never saw the beat of it. They called me, of course, and I done what I knowed, but nothing I knowed done any good. The first thing I done was lay me a spider web acrost it, hold it on with soot and lard. Now this had no effect. The next thing I done was what my mama showed me and which I am knowed for everywhere in these parts, what I do to stop bleeding. They will call me anytime, day or night, and when I hear who it is I start saying the words even afore I get my bonnet on, I start saying the words which I know by heart from my mama, and when I get there, most times, the bleeding’s already stopped. It is Ezekiel 16, sixth verse, what I say. I done this for Van Cantrell too, done it two days running with nary result. But it is for bleeding, like I said, and not for no smelly old ooze.
“Hit ain’t going to work,” I told Nell when the sun come up. Then she sent Riley off for old Doc Story, but by the time he got acrost Black Rock Mountain, Van was dead. We had to burn sulfur in there for two weeks to get the smell outen the cabin.
Anyway, without no old man to keep him in line, Riley got hisself in trouble over a girl and had to leave this county fastern squat. This left Shelby Dick, who was the youngest, and Almarine, but him and Almarine fell out someway over a knife and whose it was, or who knows what it was they fell out about, but pretty soon Almarine was gone too, leaving Shelby Dick to farm with his mama. Now this was fine with Shelby Dick and with old Nell Cantrell too. Nobody took much to Almarine as I have said, and even when he was there it was like he wasn’t really there so twerent much difference atall with him gone. Almarine allus wanted something—who knows what?—and that’s why he kept staring out beyond them hills.
He was gone almost five years. And whatever happened to him in between, that’s his story. He never did tell a word. Almarine went off sweet and shy and distant, like I said. He come back all of them things—not changed in any way you could put your finger on—but with another set to his jaw and a hard look sometimes around his eyes. He appeared tired. He appeared oldern he should have been, for his age. Old man Joe Johnson said he heard that Almarine had been in prison someplace, and the way Almarine looked, you could feature it. Of course folks’ll say anything but it’s true, a man is his father’s son. Anyway it was clear that they had been some hard times, even if we never knowed what they was, just like when Almarine was a little boy and you couldn’t guess what he was up to.
So I am telling how Almarine come back one day in August 1902, a-walking up the trace in mincy shoes and a snow-white shirt without one thin dime to his name. He just missed burying his mama, who had died about five days prior. His face never changed a bit when he found this out, but I for one couldn’t fault him on it since the sweetness and goodness you find in most women were not present, it has to be said, in old Nell Cantrell. Not at the first when she was young and laying in the bed so sickly and down in the mouth, nor yet later when she took to farming herself and smoked that pipe. I smoke a pipe too and you know it. The pipe’s not the point. It was the way she gone about everything, like she was too smart for this world, like she couldn’t be bothered to smile. She sulled around all the time. A decent woman, folks said. Hard-working, could hoe her corn like a man. But any sweetness in the family, it went straight to Almarine. I see I have forgot to mention Shelby Dick. He died in a whorehouse fire in Roseann, West Virginia, two years before Almarine come a-walking up the trace in that soft white shirt.
Shelby Dick broke his mama’s heart.
So Almarine got it all.
And Almarine sits now in the cabin door in his daddy’s chair, and he owns all the land he sees. Truly this holler is so much a part of Almarine that he doesn’t even think of owning it, not any moren a man would think of owning his arm nor yet one of his legs. The whole time Almarine was gone, most of him stayed right here. He wasn’t nothing but a half-boy, a half-man I guess you’d say, but now he’s come back here with all of them dead as stumps and he won’t have to leave again, he won’t have to go noplace, ever again. Almarine’s soul swells out over this whole holler. He rolls a cigarette outen rabbit tobaccy and gets up and goes in to the fire and lights it and comes back out. Dragging the smoke in deep, he tilts hisself back in the chair and runs his hand through his long light hair. Then he blows smoke out the cabin door, smoke so blue it gets lost in that blue haze that comes creeping up the holler of an evening, like right now.
Leave him be.
Let Almarine set awhile. He’s not but twenty-two years old, and look at what-all he owns. Hoot Owl Holler is the prettiest holler on God’s green earth, the way this creek runs through. Most hollers don’t have no creek. And Almarine’s cabin sets high, high up in the head of the holler, it gives him a view. Most hollers don’t have no view. Almarine’s daddy mought of been a son of a bitch, but he was a strong man and he knowed how to build a cabin. This cabin is here to stay. It’s got a puncheon floor instead of pure dirt, which most don’t. A front room, a back room, a lean-to and a big high loft where old Nell’s beans have been strung into leather-britches since July, a-drying against the winter, alongside her strings of apples and peppers, pears and tobaccy twists. She’s saved the seed in gourds, there at the back. She’s got them lined up on the farthest wall. A fireplace in the front room, little old jumping fire. Beds with corn-husk ticks on them, quilts. Jacob’s Ladder, Poplar Leaf, Bear Paw, Star. The quilts is real pretty and bright in the lights and shadows throwed up by that little fire. One of the beds has got a down tick on it, and that one will be Almarine’s. Many’s the time he held the goose while Old Nell plucked the down—and got bit, too, over and over, for all his trouble—but never has he slept on down his whole life long.
So let him. It’s his house.
Let him look out the door past the ash-hopper nailed on the tree, where they ran their lye, out past the big black kettle on the tripod, where Old Nell boiled her clothes. It’s all hisn, now. It’s all hisn including Hoot Owl Mountain behind the cabin, them apple trees and pear trees at the foot of it, the burying ground up on top. Old Nell’s up there already, along with the other two. He owns that mountain now. He owns a strip on the side of Hurricane Mountain too, that strip running next to me where the dogwood’s so thick in the spring. He owns the garden on the other side, and starting up Snowman Mountain, he owns them blackberry bushes all in a tangle there where the garden stops and the mountain starts. Now these three mountains is all different, let me say, Hoot Owl and Hurricane and Snowman, with Hoot Owl Holler smack in the middle of them three like a play-pretty cotched in the hand of God.
Hoot Owl Mountain looks like how it sounds, laurel so thick you can’t hardly climb it atall, in fact you plumb can’t do it iffen you don’t know the way. They’s not but one trail up Hoot Owl Mountain and it goes on to the burying ground. So you start up that trail through t
he laurel and it’s so dark in there you can’t hardly see your way. You get through that laurel and then you’re climbing, see, but climbing slow—it’s a big mountain, and the trail goes round and round. They’s trees up Hoot Owl biggern you ever saw in your life, they’s ferns nigh as tall as a man. On up, they’s caves in the rocky clift and one cave a man got lost in, so they say. They say you can hear him holler. Now the burying ground on the top of the mountain is a flat grassy bald, and it’s real pretty. They’s a wind that blows all the time. I like that burying ground. But I mislike Hoot Owl Mountain myself and don’t go up it lessen I have to, but you can find yellowroot there, and ginger, heartleaf and pennyrile, red coon for poison ivy. What I need. Hoot Owl Mountain is a dark mountain though, maybe it’s all them pines, and it don’t get hardly no sun. Fog will hang on the north side all day long, with that blue mist spread over the top. Moss grows everywhere under them pines, moss thick enough to sleep on if you cared to. Not me, mind you. They is something about Hoot Owl Mountain makes a body lose heart. If you laid down to sleep on that pretty moss, you mought never wake up again in this world. It’s no telling where you’d wake up. They was never anybody knowed to court on Hoot Owl neither, you see for why. I keep a buckeye in my pocket, traveling Hoot Owl. I get right along.
But up on Hurricane, where I live, now that’s as pretty a place as you please. Grassy Creek running down it, all them little falls, why it is music to your ears just a-walking up Grassy Creek. It is pussywillow and Indian paint, Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susan. It is swimming holes with water so clear you can see straight down to the bottom. They never was any water bettern Grassy Creek. Then you get on up, you’ve got your oak, your chestnut, your tulip tree. Big old trees all spreaded out which lets the sun shine through. The mast under these trees is so good it’s what they call hog heaven up here on Hurricane Mountain, everybody lets their hogs run here. Hurricane Mountain is a fine mountain and they’s other folks lives here too, you can see for why. Now I’ve got my own holler, mind. Nobody ever lived in it but me and Mama, and Mama’s dead. But I’ve got my neighbors up here on Hurricane, not like Almarine. They’s a bunch of Horns, been here forever, and some Justices, some Rameys, Davenports. They is one-eyed Jesse Waldron lives all by hisself in the Paw Paw Gap. Rhoda Hibbitts not far from me with them two ugly mealy-mouth daughters of hern, and no man in sight. That wouldn’t bother me none if I was Rhoda. I’d not put up with a regular man if you paid me. But it grieves Rhoda considerable. Take ’em to town, I says. Well, that’s another story.
And Snowman, over on the other side of Hoot Owl Holler, why Snowman’s the biggest of all. They’s a rocky clift the other side of Snowman, looking down into West Virginia, that’s the spitting image of a man, and that rocky clift is so high that snow will stay on it nigh into April sometimes, why they call it Snowman. If you want to go to West Virginia, you follow the trace over Indian Grave Gap and down Coon Branch and into Roseann where the lumber company’s at. It’ll take you a day and a half to get over Snowman from here if you walk it steady. Mought be it’ll take you two days. And they’s folks all over Snowman—Ratliffs and Presleys, Ashes, Stacys, and Skeens. There’s moren I know including lately them foreigners come in with the lumber trade.
This is not to mention old Isom Charles nor yet Old Isom’s red-headed Emmy up there on Snowman Mountain, that same red-headed Emmy who’s to be the ruination and the end of Almarine. I’ll get to them. Nobody knows them anyway, half-crazy a-living way off up there under the Raven Clifts. I’ll get to them in my own sweet time.
Anyway here’s Almarine, not knowing any of that. Almarine a-looking out the door of his cabin where the creek goes down the holler, and down, and down again in front of the cabin until it turkey-tails out in the bottom and runs along flat down there so far you can’t hardly see it, beyond that stand of sycamores where it flows on through the spruce-pines and from there down the Meeting House Branch and into the Dismal River at Tug, where the store is.
Almarine looks past the creek and the dropping-off holler, Almarine looks out on space. Away acrost his valley he sees Black Mountain rising jagged to the sky—county seat beyond it, Black Rock where the courthouse is—and if he looks to the left on past it, he sees all the furtherest ranges, line on line. Purple and blue and blue again and smoky until you can’t tell the mountains apart from the sky. Lord, it’ll make a man think something, seeing that. It’ll make a man think deep.
And Almarine is thinking, I seed him from the trace. Tilted back and thinking, a-smoking that cigarette, with night coming on like it does.
“Well Almarine,” I says.
And Almarine says, “Granny.”
Then he says, “Come and set with me, Granny,” and I was proud to do it. I set in the chair and Almarine hunkered down in the doorway smoking, he hunkered down there just like he used to do as a little set-along child. It seemed like no time since he was borned. But he had growed up into the finest-looking man you ever laid your eyes on, that’s a fact. All that pale gold hair and them light blue eyes, and so tall and so straight. Everbody else around here is mostly dark complected and mostly slighter than Almarine.
“Air ye going to stay now?” I asked him, and Almarine said he was.
He said he was home for good.
That did not surprise me none, as Almarine was made for this holler and it for him, iffen he left it or no. I could see how he knowed it for home.
We set out there while the fog rolled up in the bottom and the lightning bugs commenced to rise all along the banks of the creek. “Ever thick fog in August means a heavy snow come winter,” I says, and Almarine grins. It was getting so dark I couldn’t hardly see him, white tooth-shine in the dark.
“Old Granny,” he said. “I misremember all of that.”
“Don’t make no differ,” I said. “Old woman like me.” I stands up to go. “What you need is a girl,” I says to Almarine. “What you need around here is some children on this land, and a woman’s touch in the house. You better find you a girl,” I says.
Then I left, off up Hurricane, how I go.
Later, I wished I’d of bit off my tongue.
Sometimes I know the future in my breast. Sometimes I see the future coming out like a picture show, acrost the trail ahead. But that night I never seed nothing atall. If I had, it would of been graves and dying, it would of been blood on the moon. And I never saw a blessed thing in the night but them lightning bugs a-rising from the sally grass along by Grassy Creek.
Because of course Almarine went right out and done it, what I said. Everbody does what I say. Almarine went a-courting. He courted on Hurricane, he courted over in Black Rock. He courted until he run acrost Isom’s red-headed Emmy, and that was the end of him. I’ll tell it all directly.
I’ll tell it all, but don’t you forget it is Almarine’s story. Almarine’s, and Pricey Jane’s, and Lord yes, it’s that red-headed Emmy’s. Mought be it’s her story moren the rest. Iffen twas my story, I never would tell it atall. There’s tales I’ll tell, and tales I won’t. And iffen twas my story, why I’d be all hemmed in by the facts of it like Hoot Owl Holler is hemmed in by them three mountains. I couldn’t move no way but forward. And often in my traveling over these hills I have seed that what you want the most, you find offen the beaten path. I never find nothing I need on the trace, for an instance. I never find ary a thing. But I am an old, old woman, and I have traveled a lot in these parts. I have seed folks come and I have seed them go. I have cotched more babies than I can name you; I have put the burying quilts around many a soul. I said I know moren you know and mought be I’ll tell you moren you want to hear. I’ll tell you a story that’s truer than true, and nothing so true is so pretty. It’s blood on the moon, as I said. The way I tell a story is the way I want to, and iffen you mislike it, you don’t have to hear.
Now it was late in the year for courting. Most folks court in the spring. But they had a working over here on Hurricane for the eldest Ramey boy, Peter Paul, and that young
wife of hisn, and Almarine attended. This was in September, little old nip in the air. I love a good working myself. All the womenfolks and gals had brung the food and laid it out on a piecey-cloth right down on the ground. So they was a-sitting and a-talking and keeping the dogs away, and watching this big old fire, and the littlunses running ever which way and playing fox and geese, and the biggerunses—girls, I mean, playing pretty girl station. Boys had to help on the cabin. And the biggest gals was all of them looking at Almarine. I done said he was something to see. One thing being how he was so much biggern all the rest, just purely and strictly the size of him, another thing being how he was always so easy to laugh. Nobody had seed him for five years, and he was a sight for sore eyes. And Lord, he was strong as a ox! When it come time to roll the ridge-pole up them rolling-logs, there it goes easy as pie. And Almarine just a-laughing.
Dinnertime comes and all the menfolks and the boys eat first. Womenfolks and the gals carries the cookpots around. Now you won’t catch me a-carrying no cookpots. But I have borned my share of these folks, and I am an old, old woman, and I aim to do as I please. There is food at a working to last you up near a week. It’s coming on for dark now, big old fire and the fat-pine torches stuck in the grassy ground. Cabin done excepting the shingles and the outside chimley, save for another day. Crackling bread, fried chicken, shucky beans, sweet potatoes, and a big old pot of corn, fried eggs and buttermilk and liquor, what you want. I like a little liquor myself. The gals comes around with the food, and one of these gals comes right frequent to Almarine. She’s a pretty little girl with curly black hair. Almarine just a-grinning, you could see he was taking it in.
“Did you make this?” he asks her, when she brung him a fried apple pie.
“I did,” she says right back, all peart, and never once drapped her eyes.
“Mought be hit were your mama,” Almarine says, and she says, “It was not,” and flounces off. But a little while later she comes back around with another fried pie right outen the fire and draps it smack in his hand.