by Lee Smith
Now. I was describing a typical Sunday service—any Sunday in November. After the singing, and the praying and the preaching and the moaning and the crying out, after all this, when the meeting is concluded with everyone venturing back to their homes in what I would assume to be vast trepidation that indeed He will come to “judge the quick and the dead”—instead of the trepidation and apprehension I would expect to be occasioned by such an awesome final injunction, I see joy, real joy, upon the faces leaving this meeting house. It is as if God’s eraser has wiped each slate, has smoothed each brow, has calmed each soul. Something real is here at work, as I have reported to Aldous Rife, who did not disagree. (Aldous appears to disagree with nothing, however: to leave all his options distressingly open, or perhaps distressingly closed?)
But something real is here. I feel it as I stand in the wind before the meeting house at the close of meeting, as I see the people move forth once again into their lives. They are indeed, as they say, “sanctified.” I do not understand it. I do understand however that I, who have spent my life in “being good,” I who was christened in a long white gown in the hallowed nave of St. Stephen’s Church, Richmond, and who was then baptized effetely in the Episcopal manner—I have not been sanctified. Nor am I “saved.” Rather am I a sojourner, as old Aldous referred to me, merely a sojourner here, standing outside this little meeting house in the biting November wind at the close of worship. I am resolved to attempt to “open my soul to God” and “let him in,” although I face this decision with a great sense of inner trembling, really with a kind of dread, for I deeply fear the loss of control. And yet I sense it to be a prerequisite for the kind of emotional experience these people deem necessary to salvation, what they call “taking a great through.”
And why not? I have eternity to gain and naught to lose! A “revival” is to occur here shortly and I am resolved to attend, to give myself over, insofar as possible, to these sentiments.
And so I leave the meeting house a sojourner still, with my collar turned up and my hat pulled down against the wind, a sojourner not only in the symbolic sense, as are we all, caught here between birth and death, and doubt and belief, and evil and good, but a sojourner in the most literal sense of that term, as I am between places, between the meeting house and my schoolroom-home, or between my schoolroom-home and my rented room in the Smith Hotel in Black Rock, or between the mountains and the flatlands whence I came, or—as the Cherokees said, and this applies to all this lovely hazy land—“between the mountains and the sky”!
My mind whirls, it churns and eddies like the angry brown floodtide which even now rips through the “holler” outside my schoolhouse with such abandon, carrying off stumps, logs, and—just a moment ago—a wooden crate with a hen on top, clucking wildly. Although the rain has ceased, the stream shows no sign of diminishing—water, I imagine, continues to gush down from the mountains into the freshets which feed the stream.
O God!!! Why do I go on—and on!—about “freshets which feed the stream”? O God.
This is what happened:
She came to me today, and we kissed, and we almost made love. Would have so done, in fact, but for the accident of rising water and her brothers coming to take her home!
It was the fourth straight day of rain. December rain here is bitterly cold and dismal, the low clouds creating a darkness which hangs on the land and changes it, to my mind, entirely—all the wild beauty stripped away and replaced by a frighteningly sombre flatness and grayness, a palpable depression. Needless to say, few children attended school. The Johnson boys from Tug, who live so near, the Justices, one or two of the Wade girls, two out of six Rameys, and Jink Cantrell, who had walked all that way in the drizzle primarily because I had promised him that when he had finished his pages of extra sums (he had done so), he should have a little copy of Tom Sawyer to keep for his own. He came in wet and grinning, hand already outstretched. Dory’s charm can be read in his face, that charm which derives, I suppose, from the father, whose good looks were legendary in his youth, according to Aldous, who has for years been writing a kind of “history” of this region.
Lessons went well. It did seem strange, however, to have so few pupils: early December should be the peak season for school attendance, since the children are not needed for planting or harvesting, and the paralyzing snows which come in January and February have not yet begun. The gusting rain of the two days previous had fallen off to a faint, dull drizzle; inside, by the stove, we were warm and content. At lunchtime, I had planned a surprise for these few hardy souls who had braved such weather to come to school—Ovaltine!
But well before noon, we were interrupted by a rousing knock on the door—Wall Johnson, who had come in his wagon as far as the bend to get his sons and take them home, and who volunteered transportation to all the others as well.
“Creek’s a-rising, Richard,” he said. “Iffen you-all don’t get out of here, hit’s like to wash out the footbridge and then you’ll be stuck fer sure, I reckon. You’ll have to walk the long way round over Black Rock Mountain.”
The children chirped like excited birds as they gathered their belongings together. Wall Johnson, wearing a wet black hat of a vaguely Western cut and a great dark coat, looked like a man out of a novel as he stood dripping just inside the schoolhouse door, his wet red whiskers clumped together in an almost comical way. “You’d best come on, yourself,” he said. “You can stay with us fer a spell.” But the idea of such close quarters with the unfortunate Mrs. Johnson made me demur.
“I thank you kindly,” I said, and meant it. “But I’m all stocked up here, Wall, and I guess I’ll just ride it out.”
He nodded, gathered up the children, and left. As I stood in the door watching them cross the creek I saw that, indeed, it had risen almost unbelievably in the past two hours: it rushed along now at a mere four or five feet beneath the swinging bridge (or “footbridge” as the natives say). I stood there enjoying the sudden contrast of warmth and chill—the momentary excitement of this “flood”—and no sooner did Wall Johnson and the children pass from sight, than she appeared!
She stepped suddenly out of the dark wet woods on the far side of the rising creek, wrapped in a long blue coat and wearing a scarf. Before I could call out—if, indeed, she could have heard my voice over the sound of the rushing water—she was running across the bridge which now seemed to sway dangerously, perilously: my heart leaped into my throat.
For I realized, in that instant, the truth.
I loved her, and no amount of reason, as supplied by Aldous Rife, or “Mighty Lak a Rose” as supplied by Miss Perkins, or silk stockings and manicured hands which await me in Richmond, or even religious conviction (what I know to be right vs. what I know to be wrong)—nothing at all can change this. It was as if the six weeks since last we met had never passed, as if all my efforts to forget her had not transpired.
I stepped out into the rain and she ran right into my arms.
She lifted her face to mine, and I kissed her; I could not have done otherwise! Then I drew her inside. She flung off the scarf and pressed herself to me again and I kissed her again. In some part of myself I was amazed, and yet there was that sense of the inexorable, that inevitability which I feel with her always.
“You never come,” she said, making it not an accusation but a statement. “I been waiting but you don’t come.”
“I will,” I said. I think I moaned. “Or you can come here.”
The instant I said it, I was appalled, but she looked around the room and then took off her coat, laying it across a desk. “I might ought to do that,” she said. “Hit might be the best if I did. You’ve cleaned it up,” she said. “It looks all different from when Mr. Parrish was here.” (Mr. Parrish was the teacher who preceded me.)
“I’m living here most of the time now,” I said, indicating with a trembling gesture the corner I have made my own—the blanket strung up on a length of rope, which affords me my private “bedroom,” and my desk, and m
y few cooking utensils. And then it hit me, what she had said: she expects to see me. She is willing to come here! My mind reeled.
“Where’s all the kids?” she asked. “Where’s Jink?”
“Wall Johnson came and got them all,” I said. “They’ll be back at the store by now.”
“Well, I reckon Nun’ll get him, then,” she said. “We come down when we heard that the creeks was on the rise. We had to go to the store anyway.”
“You did,” I said stupidly. I was conscious only of her standing there before me in the room; but then she turned from me abruptly and began to pace back and forth before the stove, and I noticed for the first time that she appeared agitated, even upset.
“You ought to’ve come,” she said, facing me finally.
“I know it,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“You ought to’ve sent me word,” she said. “You can do it by Jink or by Rhoda, and then you ought to’ve come—hit’s been awful,” she said, and then to my dismay she burst into tears!
I began to realize that there was more to this than met the eye.
“What do you mean?” I asked, taking her hands.
“Air you my sweetheart or not?” she said.
Needless to say, I was stunned. But of course I could not refuse her. I nodded, I think, too surprised to speak. Who knows whatever goes on in the minds of girls! Her simplicity touched my heart.
“What’s been awful?” I finally asked.
“Daddy and Paris has fallen out,” she said, “and hit’s real bad, and you never come—”
“But you told me not to come,” I said logically; logic not being, apparently, her strong suit, this set her to sobbing again.
“Listen,” I said. I enfolded her in my arms and attempted to calm her, stroking her hair. But for once—for possibly the first time in my life—I found myself at a loss for words!
So I stroked her hair.
We stood before the stove, we two, in this empty schoolhouse, while rain fell steadily on the roof and the creek roared past outside. The schoolhouse was dim, warm. Dory’s wet wool clothing gave off a peculiar kind of a smell—pleasant, really—which will stay in my mind forever. For once I had nothing to say. I held her close, I stroked her hair. And then I felt my manhood rising unawares, and died of shame and a kind of glory as I realized she must feel it too, pressing against her body.
“Honey,” she said. Who would have thought that anyone would ever address me so? She kissed me, opening her mouth.
“Dory.” It was all I could say. Kissing we made our way to my bed in the corner where we sat, or fell, in a kind of a heat, and she leaned back and pulled me to her. I fumbled at her waist and finally succeeded in pulling up her blouse—to my surprise, she wears no brassiere! Or maybe none of these mountain girls do. Her breasts are the most perfect breasts which exist in all the world!
“Sit up. Sit up for a second,” I said. “I want to see you,” and she sat up and lifted her blouse to reveal them, two white orbs as round as apples, with the nipples aroused and pointed.
“Suck me,” she said.
“What?” I could not believe my ears.
“Suck me,” she said, and took my head and drew me to her breast, offering it up with her hand, and by now I was near delirium. While I sucked at her nipple she took my other hand and guided it up her thigh beneath her skirt and inside her panties until I could feel her wet warmth. She pushed my fingers inside; she began to move her hips. (A hasty parenthesis: this was a “far cry,” as they say, from the coquettishness of Miss Melissa Hamilton—who, though her demeanor promised all, had given virtually nothing. Virtually: ha! For a second I envisioned—God knows why!—my father and Mrs. Sibley! For a second, too, I was distressed, I confess it, by Dory’s apparent knowledge of love-making, but then I recalled her upbringing in that randy cabin with all those boys, the animals around the mountain farm, and I understood her desire to be a kind of purity: everything is transparent with her. When she’s hurt, or worried, she cries. When she’s happy, she laughs. When she wants a man, she . . .)
Who knows what might have happened, had not her brothers come?
We were there on that very bed-tick, behind the blanket, me kissing her open lips and exploring her innermost parts, my member about to burst my trousers, when guns were fired into the air, repeatedly, across the creek.
Dory pushed me back and sat up.
“No,” I said.
Gunshots rang out again.
“Hit’s them,” she said. “They mean for me to go,” and hastily she stood and tucked her blouse and donned her coat. “Lord, no wonder,” she said from the door. “Hit’s almost up to the footbridge”—meaning, of course, the water.
“But Dory, Dory—how can I see you? What must I do?” I called out then but she was gone.
I relieved myself by my own hand and stood for a long time there at the door with the fire at my back, the chill ahead. I was there when the creek rose that final foot and brought a huge stump whirling down with it, destroying the bridge. Now I am completely cut off, at least for the time being, a circumstance which seems most in keeping with everything else in my life. For what am I to do? Impossible to “court” this girl in the approved mountain fashion; impossible to “take her home” to my family in Richmond—I can see Victor’s snide smirk even now, in my mind’s eye—and yet, impossible not to have her.
Smith Hotel, Black Rock, December 12th
Tonight, at dinner in the Smith Hotel, the table conversation centered around none other than Almarine Cantrell and his “feud” with Paris Blankenship! (Mountaineers being of course famous for their feuds, which appear to offer vast amusement for everyone not involved, and violence being here the order of the day.) The quarrel is over money, of course, and they say that Mr. Blankenship is “out” for Mr. Cantrell, whatever that means. (It certainly means I shall not set foot in that holler until this business is concluded!) Mrs. Justine Poole shook her blond curls back and forth as she spooned up the gravy, making a “tsk-tsk” disparaging noise. She wore large imitation-emerald earrings, and a great deal of rouge. Dinner concluded, we all stood up and most of us made for the new movie house where we watched and laughed at the humorous remarks which Big Harp Combs, a lawyer, addressed to the crowd throughout the feature. Mrs. Justine Poole, seated beside me, placed her hand on my knee; she sniffed grandly when it became clear I would not respond, and left the darkened movie house slightly before the rest of us—three drummers from out of town, an unscrupulous land speculator who goes about the country buying up mineral rights with something he calls a “broad-form” deed, a lawyer from Claypool Hill here to settle a will, and yours truly. We were a disparate crew. We strolled back to the Smith Hotel through the clear cold air, smoking cigars.
I try to imagine taking Dory to a picture show, walking along a sidewalk with her, as we did tonight, yet she seems to exist for me only in that shadowy setting—those three mountains, that closed valley—whence she came.
Plans: I shall tell Granny Hibbitts to tell her to come to meeting: any night of the revival, I’ll say.
Imagine my surprise when, after school today, one of the Johnson boys arrived to tell me that old Aldous Rife had driven his car from Black Rock to Tug and awaited me there at the store.
“You better come on,” the Johnson boy said, and I came straightaway across Meeting House Branch over the sturdy new bridge which Harve Justice finished building only today.
Aldous stood on the front porch in his three-piece striped suit, overcoat open, smoking a cigarette. His wily old eyes narrowed when he saw me, and he smiled. “Richard,” he said, and we shook hands. He suggested a walk, although the weather was far from clement—we’re having quite a “cold snap,” as they say—and we set off accordingly along the path that runs from the mouth of Grassy Creek, there by the store, to the point where Grassy merges with the Dismal River, around the bend. Ice had formed along the edges of the creek and our breath blossomed white in the air as we spoke. I expected hi
m to open the discussion with the subject of Dory Cantrell: instead, he fooled me.
“You know why they call this Tug?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“It was along about the end of the French and Indian war,” he said, “that a patrol came through here, under the leadership of a man named Milligan, headed for Kentucky. They were down to almost nothing, in terms of rations, by the time they came through, and it was wintertime, but Milligan pushed them on. There wasn’t nothing here then,” Aldous said, staring around absent-mindedly. “No store, no nothing. This was all way back, mind you. There wasn’t nothing here at all except for an old Indian woman had her a cabin back there where Wall’s store is now. She used to buy hides off her people and tan ’em, and she had her some leather tugs out drying on a frame when they come back through, having been to Kentucky and back, and starving by now, and those men were so hungry they grabbed the leather tugs off that frame and ate them, that’s how hungry they were.”
“Did they make it back?” I asked.
“Some did and some didn’t,” he said.
Grassy Creek, before us, swirled and tinkled in the pale cold sun, the ice along its edges as brilliant as diamonds. Our breath hung in the chill air, like clouds over the creek. Impossible to imagine how this creek—how all the creeks—had looked, only several short days ago! I shivered, as much from the idea of the terrible hunger Aldous described as from the cold bite of the wind. We walked on.
“What do you want?” I asked him finally. “Why have you come?”
But instead of responding to my questions, he stared across the creek and into the trees on the other side. “Have you heard about the Baisden brothers?” he asked, and I said I had not.
“There were three brothers,” he said, “John Henry, Harrison, and Bill, and they were among the meanest sons-of-bitches that ever walked these hills. They came from over around Pigeon Creek, and they would fight at the drop of a hat. When the Baisden boys came to town”—I assumed he meant Black Rock—“when the Baisdens came to town, decent people went inside and locked their doors. They killed five men at least, and maybe more. But nothing could be hung on them, nothing could be proved. Harrison had an ivory toothpick, I remember, on a gold chain, and shoulder-length black hair. And I remember when they were building the courthouse tower, the Baisdens rode into town and shot out the brand new clock, and no sooner did they get it replaced, about five months later—they had to send to Cincinnati for a new clock—than the Baisdens came back and shot that one out too. They cared nothing, Richard, nothing”—here, Aldous turned to look at me intently—“nothing for human life.”