Oral History (9781101565612)

by Lee Smith

  I shall descend for the evening meal.

  September 18th

  I am all but overcome at the impossibility of the task which lies ahead. I make this entry in the lovely late afternoon, in my one-room “schoolhouse,” as it is called, after my “students” have left for home. Following tradition, I am boarding, this month, with a local family, the Justices. At the weekend, I return to Black Rock, to my dim yet increasingly well-appreciated room at the Smith Hotel, to a hot (and weekly!) bath, and to Mrs. Poole’s delicious, as it turns out, rice pudding. I make this entry here, I repeat, in the schoolhouse, because I can find no privacy at all in the Justice cabin, where, according to long-standing custom, everyone sleeps in one room. This is the home of Harve Justice, mountain farmer, cabinet- and coffin-maker and whittler par excellence, his silent scrawny wife, Hildy, and their three sons.

  The food there is abominable: boiled beef, tough as brogans; thick flat peas; sticky yams with an acrid, burned taste; green beans cooked to death in a kind of greasy gruel; and the ubiquitous cornbread which appears at every meal. More like some kind of seed-cake than like a raised bread, made from the ground corn they have grown themselves, this is the family staple in these hills. No wonder that these people, often handsome and hardy in youth, sicken and die so soon! Their diet is not only inedible but appalling from a nutritional standpoint (sanitary precautions being, of course, unknown . . .).

  Last Wednesday afternoon I entered the cabin to find a particularly vile odor rampant in the close air. “What’s that I smell?” I inquired of Mrs. Justice, who started violently (these mountain women are unused to conversations with men) before replying: “Hit’s sallet!” she said. Salad! I thought. At last! I could all but taste the crisp green lettuce on my tongue, when reason again took over. “Salad!” I cried. “How wonderful! But what’s that I smell?” “Hit’s sallet,” she said again, and set her mouth, and refused to answer any more questions. So the peculiar odor remained a nauseating mystery until Harve and the boys returned from squirrel-hunting and she served us our dinner, which turned out to be, as prophesied, “sallet” indeed: a rank oniony collection of mountain greenery collected on the slopes and cooked to death with a piece of pork. “Hit’s creasy-greens,” Harve said, and mentioned several other unfamiliar names. Despite the Justices’ great hospitality—hospitality being, indeed, the rule among these people, who never pass each other on the trail without an invitation to “come along home”—despite it, I say, I am resolved to obtain a bed-tick and a few other items of convenience and sleep right here in this school room during the school week, largely in order to fend off my own imminent starvation!

  Also, I feel that in so doing, I shall be better able to keep in mind the rather lofty ideals and desires which brought me here in the first place. Good intentions so easily disappear, I find, when they come face to face with the exigencies of comfort. And I have been brought here, I repeat, by more than mere “good intentions,” a phrase too wish-washy to have any meaning within these four rough walls.

  My “schoolhouse”: a “puncheon” floor, as it’s called, logs split halfway, laid side by side; rough log walls, with the mud “chinking” in need of some repair before winter comes; a squat black woodstove which reminds me, for some reason, of a funny little foreign man; a chalkboard; a beautiful oak desk made by hand by Harve Justice, my erstwhile host; and the roughly built benches on either side of the center aisles, and the long wooden tables covered with carvings put there by several generations of schoolchildren. Schoolchildren! the very term conjures up a vision of happy youth, and although some of the children conform to this ideal, most of these “students” emphatically do not, resembling, instead, wizened and already woebegone grownups who expect nothing more from life than the subsistence their parents have torn from these mountains. I have no children at all over the age of ten or eleven, although I encounter plenty of older school-age children as I come and go, to and from the Justice cabin to the schoolhouse, or back to Black Rock at the weekend. The eleven- and twelve-year-olds are judged to have had “enough schooling,” most of them, unless they are considered exceptionally “smart,” in which case they are sent over to Black Rock to board and attend school there—the only upper school in the county. But most of them quit at about age eleven. The girls are put to work in house and field for a year or two until they marry, which they do at appallingly tender ages. The boys go to work on the farms or in the last few of the lumber camps which have denuded this virgin forest of all its best and mightiest trees, or they are sent down into the coal mines where often their small size allows them to chisel out the dark ore from the lowest, the smallest and most dangerous seams. Union regulations prohibit child labor, of course, yet these are small nonunion mines, the mountaineers here being, it is said, too cantankerous to organize! But also it is true that the large coal mines are all across the neighboring state lines, in Kentucky and West Virginia. This is a poor, poor land, where even the sketchy soil holds no rich secret. Oh, it is a black life I picture, and yet, in all honesty, I have to admit that the brightest often do go on to school. From boarding in Black Rock and attending the high school there, some of them have traveled on to colleges and then to distinguished careers in varied professions throughout the state, and indeed, the country. Few, it is sad to say, choose to return. And among my boys and girls I can already pick out the few who will go on perhaps, and the many others who will stay. It breaks my heart! It breaks my heart to read aloud to them, for instance, as I did today—we are reading, together, aloud, Robinson Crusoe—and see the light which comes to their quick little eyes and know how soon, for how many, it will be extinguished. (I have been thinking today how images of light have for so long been associated with learning, with religion, and with love. . . .)

  Oh, they are an intriguing and exasperating lot! A quick, humorous anecdote before the light fades: I have been attempting, by hook or crook, to interest the Skeens boys, Merle and Harlan, in the fashioning of complete sentences. Not only did they first appear to see no reason for learning this task at all, but they also displayed absolutely no aptitude for distinguishing the subject from the verb, or for having both of these elements present in their rudimentary written “sentences.” At last, through casual conversation, I elicited the fact that the highest point in their lives, thus far, had come when their uncle took them out of the county last summer, all the way to Cincinnati, where they saw a major league baseball game! Aha, thought I. I began to fashion sentences employing baseball terms, and their interest rose dramatically. My little experiment was so successful that I decided to have them “show off” for Mr. Perkins when he paid us a visit last week—to see whether I am still alive, I suppose, as we far-flung teachers in the one-room schoolhouses have no real official contact with him or the School Board all year long. At any rate, Mr. Perkins came for a visit, wearing a bowler hat. He is a slight man, waxy-faced, with drooping mustaches. I bade him sit down. I introduced our two prospective scholars, Merle and Harlan Skeens, who grinned and blushed, exactly as if they were actors playing the part of idiots in a play. I outlined their difficulty with the creation of complete sentences, and told Mr. Perkins that I had, however, through the use of baseball as subject, found a way around the problem. Mr. Perkins, well aware that, as he had told me earlier, “Some people cannot be taught anything,” cleared his throat and looked askance. Undaunted, I proceeded to write “The home run” on the board. Then I asked Merle to use this term as the subject of a complete sentence. Merle rubbed his freckles and giggled. Then he appeared to frame a sentence in his mind; in fact, he moved his lips. He sidled up to the chalkboard and very carefully, very laboriously, he wrote “away,” and then made a huge round period. Here, then, was Merle’s complete sentence: “The home run away.” I could feel my face flushing warmer and warmer. Mr. Perkins stared at the chalkboard without comment for a while, and then his weak chin began to quiver spasmodically and he broke forth into his peculiar whooping laugh. “Whoo! Whoo!” he laughed,
wiping at his eyes. Merle Skeens, poor thing, grinned in pleasurable incomprehension until I excused him, excused both the Skeens boys, in fact. Only when they had left the schoolhouse did I permit myself a chuckle of my own.

  September 29th—Important!

  I have a funny little fellow in my class named Jink Cantrell. This is a child of ten or so years, exceptionally bright and able. So bright, indeed, that I had sent a note home to his parents volunteering to tutor him and one or two others in Latin, after regular school hours, one or two days a week. This was on Monday. Tuesday came, and Jink was absent. He was absent again today—Wednesday—and as I straightened up the schoolroom I could not help but wonder whether I had overstepped my bounds, perhaps, and offended . . . I clapped the erasers together, raising chalk dust which hung dreamily in the shafts of sunlight that came in the windows.

  It was then that she came; it was then she appeared, and stood in the door.

  I must say without preamble that she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, with an ethereal, timeless, otherworldly quality about her. Her alabaster face is framed by the finespun golden curls, almost like a frizz, about her head—hair like a Botticelli! Her eyes are deep, limitless violet. Her lips are red and full. When she smiles, a blush and a dimple grace her smooth fair cheeks. Her rough attire—a dark green wool skirt, brown handmade sweater, tan, nondescript coat—served only to accentuate the delicacy of her beauty. The sun streamed in the schoolhouse door behind her, turning her curls into a flaming gold halo around her head.

  “Yes?” I said. “Yes? What is it?” I put down the erasers, moved toward her. “Yes?” I said. I felt as if something in my life were decided at that very moment, or resolved. An image springs to mind, although it makes no sense: I felt as if I were Jesus, and the stone door to my tomb was rolled away!

  She smiled. “I’m Jink Cantrell’s sister,” she said, “And Daddy, he sent me over here to tell you Jink don’t need no special school. He said Jink can take what the rest of ’em gets, and hit’ll be moren enough.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “My daddy said he won’t be beholden.” The girl looked me full in the face, and I understood.

  “Tell your father,” I said, picking my words carefully, “tell your father that I did not mean to offend him, nor to suggest that Jink needs extra help. Tell him that I think your brother is very smart, that’s all, unusually intelligent, and I wanted to give him some additional tools to use when he goes on to high school.”

  “He ain’t going on,” she said. “He won’t need no tools.” She wandered into the schoolhouse and stood fingering the fountain pen on my desk. “Pretty,” she said.

  “He’s very bright,” I said.

  “Well, he ain’t a-going on,” she repeated. “Daddy ain’t a-going to let him. Ora Mae has quit already, and I’m through with it, and Isadore quit, and Bill and Nun. And Mary’s poorly. Ain’t none of us-uns gone on, and anyway, whar’d we go if we was to do it?”

  “To high school,” I said. “In Black Rock. Listen . . .” I found myself growing terribly agitated, a problem I have had at intervals of course throughout my life. She was so lovely—a girl from another world. “Who are those others?” I asked finally. “Isadore, and . . .”

  “Bill and Nun,” she said. “They work with Daddy,” she said, and a strange closed look passed over her face. “Mary’s too sickly,” she said.

  “Tell him to let Jink come to school,” I said. “I am not going to try to take him away. He will not need to stay after school for the special class so long as he can come at all,” I said. “The more he learns, the more he can help your father,” I said. “Tell him that.” She stood by my desk, fingering the silver pen which I had inherited from great-uncle Aston.

  “Hit’s so pretty,” she said.

  “Take it!” I leaped forward in my eagerness—having lost, I repeat, control—and in my eagerness I nearly knocked her over. “Take it!” I said. “It’s yours! I want you to have it,” I cried.

  “Hit ain’t mine,” she said in a quiet, reasonable voice, looking at me curiously. “Hit’s yourn. And Daddy’d whup me up one side and down t’other if I was to come home with something like this.”

  “Oh.” I was so near to her I could scarcely breathe. “Well, don’t take it then,” I said. “It’s nothing, anyway. Nothing!” I said. I flung the fountain pen violently from me; it hit the wall and fell to the floor, rolling several feet before it came to a stop lodged against a bench.

  She stared, following the progress of the fountain pen. Then she turned her slow and blindingly beautiful gaze to my face. I can’t think how I must have appeared to her then.

  “I swan!” she said. “You do beat all.” And then she began to laugh, a lovely musical sound, and she laughed so hard—at me!—that at length I found her laughter irresistible and joined in, laughing and laughing. I leaned against the wall and held my stomach, laughing at myself.

  Finally she wiped her eyes and made as if to straighten her curls, which she wears, as I say, in the most remarkably artistic disarray. “Lord!” she said. She turned to go.

  “Wait!” I rushed up and clasped her from behind, the tiny waist. She spun around.

  “Where do you live?” I asked. “I must see you again.”

  “I live on Hoot Owl Holler,” she told me, “and you’d best not come up there atall.” She slipped from my grasp.

  “Wait!” I called from the door. “I don’t even know your name. Who are you?” I called.

  She stood on the swinging bridge that crosses Meeting House Branch here in front of the school, swaying gently in the autumn air. Behind her, the woods were aflame with color.

  “My name is Dory,” she said then. “Hit means gold.” I know, I thought. I know.

  October 14th

  During the past two weekends I have undertaken a conscious effort to make the acquaintance of the more genteel citizens of Black Rock, and during the busy weeks of teaching I have attempted to lose myself in my work.

  To no avail.

  Her image remains constantly before me, as she stood on the swinging bridge, as she laughed in the schoolroom with myself the occasion of her mirth—she stands, I say, front and center in my mind, and all else happens in some nether region of consciousness where I appear to function quite adequately without concerning myself unduly. I have now dined with my “boss,” Mr. Perkins, the local superintendent of schools whom I mentioned earlier in this account. Again I have turned down his offer of a post in classics at the high school in Black Rock. I do intend to serve in the hinterlands and I have, I feel, at last made that clear to him. Perkins is a weak little figure of a man, his mustache contrasting oddly with his baldness. His large and imposing wife, Ruella, gives piano lessons at their home and directs the local choir. She is a woman with a high, strained speaking voice and tremulous lips; she appears to be eternally in the grip of some unknown angst (I like that phrase!), and eternally upon the verge of tears. I am resolved to keep my distance from this family, but Mrs. Perkins has set her cap for me, I fear. I think that is the expression.

  For the Perkinses are in the unfortunate possession of a marriageable daughter—an attractive girl, indeed, this Camilla: dead-white skin; soft, very fair hair; a kind of listless beauty; a slow grace. Perhaps Camilla is even lovely; it is difficult to imagine what will become of her here. I cannot say. But there came a moment when Camilla and I were alone in the Perkins’ parlor, a moment when I stood by the piano turning the pages of her sheet music as she played, brilliantly, and sang the bittersweet “Mighty Lak a Rose.” Her voice is pure and sweet. But for me, Camilla can be but a faint shadow of that other I have seen, my mountain girl, my Dory.

  In addition to the Perkins family from whom I had best keep my distance, I judge, I have called upon the Rev. Aldous Rife, who was a friend of my great-uncle’s—an aging and embittered Methodist minister who has lived here for thirty years and “buried two wives, thank God,” as he says, in the proce
ss! As a young man, he was a circuit rider. Now he ministers to the congregation of the little gray stone church in Black Rock, the only congregation here which does not thrive. And no wonder! He is a wild, white-haired old man, as stern as Jehovah himself. He does not “hold with,” as he puts it, revivals and snake-handling and foot-washing and speaking in tongues. He does not hold with total immersion in the river, as practiced by the Primitive Baptists and the Apostolics and other denominations back in the hollers with such names as Church of Christ and Church of God Comming (sic) Soon. He does not hold with what he calls “carnival emotionalism.” (He, too, was educated at the University, perhaps fifty years ago.) And yet he is clearly fascinated by these practices and by these mountain people. He showed me an entire desk containing “notes” he has made over the years. They say his own preaching is dry and somber; no wonder his congregation has almost gone. Soon they will all die, as will he. It is difficult to imagine what keeps him at it, what perverse desire to continue what is clearly a failure, to continue it, and draw it out to last as long as it possibly can. I judge him a misfit!