Oral History (9781101565612)

by Lee Smith

  Almarine had up and got rid of Red Emmy, was the long and short of it.

  He had throwed her outen the door and she had left. Mrs. Davenport had told Harve that she seed Red Emmy going off up the trace toward Snowman Mountain where she come from, all bent over and moving slow. Mrs. Davenport said she seen her face and it looked like a old, old woman. All of this had put such a scare into Mrs. Davenport that she went straight home and got in the bed and wouldn’t cook no dinner, Harve said. Harve said he bet she’s there yet. Luther Wade said he had run into Bill Horn—now Bill Horn works over in Roseann for the lumber company, comes home whenever he takes a mind to—and Bill Horn said he was crossing Snowman on the trace and heard the awfulest hollering and laughing you ever heard, coming down from the Raven Clift. He said it made his horse shy and the hair on his arms stand straight up. They was all laughing over Mrs. Davenport down in the bed and Bill Horn taking a fright.

  I sat there a-sipping and never laughed or said ary a word.

  I was a-looking out the valley there—it’s real pretty where Joe Johnson’s store is—over toward Black Rock Mountain off in the sky, and all of a sudden it was like a thundercloud rolls acrost my eyes and it all turns dark and I’ll swear I can hear her laughing. Then I rubs my eyes and takes another sip and it’s all gone, Joe Johnson’s girl is whizzing that bug around my head.

  “You ought not to laugh,” I says. “We ain’t seed the end of it yet.”

  “Now, Granny.” Joe Johnson comes out and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Now, Granny,” he says. “Almarine took up with a crazy girl, and now he has run her off. There ain’t a man among us mought not of done it nor worse. That gal and her daddy was crazy as coots.”

  But I can’t get what I seed and heard outen my head. I stands up slow. “You mark my words,” I say, and I take up my stack-cake real careful, and set off a-traveling for home.

  “Crazy old woman,” that Stacy boy says, and I hear him alright, but I never look back nor give any sign. Thinks he is a power with the U.S. Mail.

  I walk the trace for home and after a time the moon comes up to light me on my way. Now this is a big full yaller moon, and no harm in it. I cross Grassy on the stepping stones at the mouth of Hoot Owl Holler, and the water is all shiny from that moon. There’s a little wind through the sprucey-pines, sounds like a song. I look up Hoot Owl Holler and I can’t see a thing, but I don’t feel nothing neither. It feels real calm and pleasant now in Hoot Owl Holler, and I lean down and get me a drink outen Grassy Creek and I heads upstream for home.

  So Almarine gets shed of Red Emmy, and it’s not two months before he has got him a wife for sure. And this time he done hisself proud.

  He was over in Black Rock on a Saturday as I recall, to buy him a new mule and shoe his horse, when a wagon comes in all burdened down with goods and children and womenfolks walking along. They was not but one man, a little old bent-over man said he was bound for Kentucky and how far was it, and set down there where Squirrel Waldron’s forge is, a-wiping his face.

  Squirrel looks up from shoeing Almarine’s horse and says, “You have got you a mess of family, ain’t you?”

  The man wipes his face again and says, “Lord, Lord.”

  It don’t look to anybody like he’ll make it to Kentucky the rate he’s going. Then the womenfolks—twere his wife and her sister, if I recall—they go down to Poole’s store to buy them some food, and the children start running all over the place a-banging Squirrel Waldron’s tools. Squirrel being real particular about his tools. Almarine is just standing there a-watching it all, and they’s other folks too have come out to see. There hadn’t been such a commotion in Black Rock for a while.

  This old man wipes his face and says “Lord, Lord,” and then he whoops at two of his biggest boys to get him something. He whooped in a foreign language. So they go to rummaging around in that wagon, spilling goods all over the road, and then they come up with the fanciest saddle you ever saw, silver tracings all over it. They brung it over to the old man and lays it down in the road. By this time a considerable bunch has gathered around to look.

  His wife and her sister has come up too now, all babbling and crying they ain’t got enough money for food.

  “How much you gimme?” he says.

  “Well now, that depends,” Squirrel says. He wipes his hands on his apron and comes around closer to look. What the foreigner don’t know is how much store Squirrel sets by his trading. So they commence to trading—it takes a while—and while they is at it, a gal jumps outen the back of the wagon and runs around the side to look, too. Almarine seed her right off, he slips through the folks to her side.

  Everbody said it and I’ll say it too—this was about the prettiest gal you ever laid eyes on. She was slight and just as dauncy as a little fancy-doll, the smallest, whitest hands and the littlest ankles. She had that blue-black hair they all had, excepting hern was all in curls, and a face like a heart, with them big blue eyes. She sees Almarine coming and blushes, and looks down at the ground.

  “Whar you all headed?” Almarine asks real polite, and she says, “Kentucky.” She has a low voice what reminds Almarine somehow of a dove.

  “Ye reckon to make it?” He grins that big grin and she goes to giggling.

  “I don’t keer iffen we make it or not,” she says. She shakes her curls at Almarine and when she done so, he sees a flash of gold at her ear. She’s got real gold earrings, they come from her mother who died, and this foreigner is nought but her uncle—but Lord, I’m ahead of myself. Anyway she shakes her head at Almarine and stomps her little foot. “I’m tired of traveling,” she says.

  “Let’s take us a little walk, then,” says Almarine.

  So he taken her by the arm and off they go toward the Dismal River. They do make a picture, him so big and fair, and her so dark. She goes with a spring in her step, she goes with those curls a-bouncing. Now half of the people is watching them two walk off, and a-shaking their heads, and the other half is watching Squirrel Waldron trade with the foreigner.

  Almarine and the gal come back in about a hour.

  Squirrel has got him a new saddle by that time, and the mules is fed, and they’ve got some food, and two of those little children is laying asleep under that sycamore in the front of Squirrel Waldron’s place. When Almarine and the gal comes in view, the women start hollering out for her to hurry and get on in the wagon. But she don’t hurry. She and Almarine walks along slow and they’re holding hands.

  “Get in the wagon,” the man says to the gal, but he looks like he don’t give a damn. He looks plumb wore out.

  Almarine and the gal walks up to him and stops. Everbody is drawing around now, you can tell that something is up.

  “How far you aiming to get with them mules?” Almarine says, and everbody turns around to consider the mules. Now the mules was the only thing that hadn’t come in question all that day, but they was sorry. One of them was the sorriest.

  The man looked at Almarine through his little old runny tired eyes.

  “I’ll get whar I need to,” he says.

  “Hit’s a long way,” Almarine says. “You gotta go on through the Breaks and up the Big Sandy before you get anyplace atall.”

  “Git in the wagon,” the man says to the gal, but not taking his eyes offen Almarine. The gal don’t move but the red comes up in her cheeks.

  One of them foreign women sets to crying and throws her shawl up over her face.

  “Now, Almarine,” Squirrel says.

  “I just got me a new mule,” Almarine says. “Hit’s over there.” Everbody looks where he’s got it hitched in front of Mr. Poole’s store.

  “What I purpose is this,” says Almarine. “I’ll give you that mule scot-free, hit’s a good mule, and you let Pricey Jane stay here with me.”

  Lord, everbody sets to talking at once! and Squirrel, he is trying to talk Almarine out of it. But Almarine don’t give a inch. He stands there staring down at that little old man, stands tall with the sun shining of
fen his yaller hair. It don’t take long. The man looks at that mule, then he looks at Almarine, and then he nods his head one time. His boys give a whoop and one of them runs over and gets the mule and hitches it on behind the wagon and the man gets in the wagon seat, “Giddyup,” he says, and he clicks his tongue, and off they go. That’s the last anybody ever seed them in this world, going off through Black Rock a-raising the dust, that man a-driving and looking straight ahead like there ain’t nobody even with him, all those kids a-scampering ever which way around the wagon and them two women walking behind crying and holding on to each other and dragging their skirts in the dust. There they went, and it ain’t a one of them ever come back.

  Almarine give a whoop and picked up the gal and swung her around and around, both of them laughing to beat the band, and everbody is running off to be the first to tell it iffen they can.

  Except for Miss Lucille Aston. Now she’s real important.

  Miss Lucille Aston is the sister of old Judge Aston and she come from Richmond to keep house for him when his wife died and he started going blind. She puts on airs all over Black Rock and she would up and die rathern set one foot in the hollers. Miss Lucille Aston hires women to come in and clean her house and she keeps everything just so. She had her some fancy long curtains made in Richmond and shipped into Roseann on the lumber train, and she makes them women what works for her polish the silver all the time. She mought as well live in New York City, what I say. Wearing them hats with the feathers downtown. Well, Miss Lucille Aston was out doing her shopping that day, had her a parasol and a little boy along to carry whatever she found that was fitten to buy. And so it was that Miss Lucille Aston just happens along in front of Squirrel Waldron’s place with her parasol and her little old loaded-up boy at the very time Almarine was a-trading to get him a wife. She stood right still and watched it all, pig-eyes a-flashing fire.

  “I saw that, boy!” she hollers out at Almarine, who is whooping it up in the road, as I said.

  He never paid her no mind.

  “I said I saw that, boy!” she hollers out even louder, and Almarine sets the gal back down on her feet and turns around.

  “Air you a-talking to me, ma’am?” he asks real polite. The feathers on her hat is shaking she’s so mad and all of her chins is a-shaking too. Her mouth is drawed up in a bow.

  “You can’t trade a mule for a girl, boy,” she says. “I never heard of such a thing in all my days. I don’t know where you’ve been, but I tell you it can’t be done here, not in this town, not in this day and age,” says Miss Lucille Aston.

  Almarine starts laughing, which flusters her up even more. She pokes her parasol out at the gal.

  “How old are you?” she asks in that way she has, but the gal bows her head and giggles. “I’ll bet you’re not even sixteen.” Miss Lucille Aston squints her little pig-eyes, but the gal draws up close to Almarine and won’t say ary a word. “I’m going to speak to the sheriff about this,” she says.

  Now that tickles Almarine good. Everbody knows the sheriff, old Cord Ballew, who has daddied more children than ary other man in these hills. You can feature what he’ll have to say.

  “Why don’t you do that?” Almarine says. “Hit ain’t any of his business, lady, meaning no disrespect now, and hit ain’t any of your business neither.”

  That little boy was so surprised he drapped all of Miss Lucille’s packages down in the road and had to go scrabbling to get them.

  “Well!” she says. “Well!” She is flapping around like a chicken with its head cut off. Then she stands stock still.

  “I hope you’re planning to marry her, at least,” she says.

  “Oh, yes ma’am,” Almarine grins. But you know it hadn’t yet entered his head, most likely. Young folks just gets them a roof and moves under it and when the circuit rider comes around he makes it legal by saying the words, or they don’t fool with it one way or the other. It’s nothing but words, what I say.

  “Then you come right along with me,” Miss Lucille Aston snaps out, and Almarine is so surprised, he done it. He and that gal follers Miss Lucille right down the road to the judge’s fancy house, Almarine a-waving to folks along the way like he’s one big parade. They goes in the door and walks on blue-flowered carpet straight up the stairs and in the bedroom where old Judge Aston is a-laying in the bed with the curtains drawed. He’s blind, don’t know iffen it’s night nor day.

  “Lucille?” Almarine said the judge had a voice like a little old woman’s.

  “I’ve brought two young people up here and I want you to marry them,” Miss Lucille says, and they all stand there in the dark while Miss Lucille and the judge argues about it until of course she gets her way. You know Miss Lucille is bound to get her way. So old Judge Aston lays in the bed and says they are man and wife. Don’t know iffen it’s legal or not, ain’t nobody ever heard of him marrying folks before. What it is, he’s scared of his sister. They’s a spirit lamp in the corner, spraying camphor all out in the dark. When he says the words, you can’t hardly hear his little old voice for that hissing lamp. And of course you can’t see him nohow.

  “Now leave this house,” says Miss Lucille, and they do it while Miss Lucille stands in the doorway under the fancy fanlight and cries, and cries like her heart will break, and don’t nobody ever know why.

  So this is how Almarine traded a mule for a wife while that foreigner greened out Squirrel Waldron—the silver in the saddle being nothing but shiny metal, which you mought of knowed. But Almarine got him a bargain. She come without nothing, but she didn’t need nothing. Almarine had it all. She rode behind him on his horse back to Hoot Owl Holler, horse’s new shoes ringing like bells when he hit a rock. This was right in the early fall, potato-digging time, and punkins a-coming on. She walked in the cabin door and it was home.

  Her name was Pricey Jane. She weren’t a foreigner neither, or leastaways not as much of one as them others was, her having lived most all her life around Matewan. Her mama had died right about the time when her aunt and her uncle was passing through and so she just up and come on with them, wasn’t nothing left for her there around Matewan. She was glad enough to stop and glad to stay. In fact Pricey Jane was pure glad about everything, she was a girl like a summer day. And work! Lord, she turned that cabin upside down and sideways cleaning it, she was a-drying apples on the shed roof, she churned butter so light it’d melt in your mouth. And it was a sight the way she follered Almarine around, and how she’d reach right out and touch him whenever they passed in the house. Almarine was like a different man. Or I’ll tell it—he was like he used to be. He was like the sweet boy he was before he run off and got tangled up in foolishness and darkness, before he got hisself bewitched. It done my heart good just to pass by the mouth of the holler and look up that way, see clothes out on the line and Almarine a-working his land. I recall how once I passed there in the snow and it looked plumb like a picture, cabin closed agin the snow, icicles hanging from the shakes, cedar trees full of snow and smoke a-rising from the chimley to the sky.

  Almarine had him a hog-killing that year and folks come from all around to see his gypsy-gal wife, what they called her, only of course she werent no gypsy. She was a good girl, Pricey Jane. All that was gypsy about her was them big gold hoops in her ears. Everbody liked her fine. I recall how folks was a-milling around in the yard while they biled the hog and Uncle Roy Estep had his dulcimore acrost his lap. He has got a game leg, you know. But when Uncle Roy done that one about “Who’s gonna shoe your pretty little foot and who’s gonna glove your hand? Who’s gonna kiss your ruby red lips? Who’s gonna be your man?” I seen how Almarine looked at Pricey Jane. He was not bewitched no more, it was a clear-eyed look, I’ll tell you, the way a man don’t often look nor often love. She was already big then, and she had that baby she was carrying come spring.

  And had a powerful hard time of it, too. I said she was frail, and she was. She bled a long time after and she taken a long time a-getting her strength back. She ne
ver complained one time neither, and you would of thought the sun rose and set in that baby. Named him Eli. Almarine used to set with him by the hour.

  Now there was another baby I had heard tell of too, but I never breathed ary a word. I travel these mountains up and down, I’ve got my ways of knowing. And I had heard it told how Red Emmy had had that baby of hern all alone where she lived in the Raven Clift, and how she had nursed it at her breast three days and then had flung it straight into the fire. I had heard it told for a fact. Ever now and then somebody’d swear they had seed her—or say they mought of seed her, moren likely—and said she was a-running through the woods talking all to herself and laughing, and you couldn’t get nary a word. They said her hair stringing down her back was all gray now with red showing through it like streaky paint. I was afeared for Almarine and Pricey Jane, hearing them stories, but Red Emmy kept her distance. She never come down, as far as I knowed, offen the wild side of Snowman Mountain. She never left them caves and rocky clifts, not even to trade in Joe Johnson’s store at Tug. Some folks said she had died up there, but I knowed she had never died. And meantime Almarine and Pricey Jane was so happy, and this went on for three years.

  Three years of summers coming and going, and snow on the ground in the cold, and I’m still traveling my mountains but I know it in my heart I’m slowing down. I can tell how I’m getting old. Some days I’ll set by my fire all day, and think back on things that was, and them things is ever as clear to me as the here and now. Some days I swear I can’t tell no difference between them, and I tell you, I don’t give a damn.