by Lee Smith
“What happened to them?” I asked.
“Bill eventually made the mistake of arguing with Bob Irons, a man as dangerous as he was. Bob hit him over the head with a revolver. Then John Henry and Harrison went to the hotel where Bob was staying, and shot him through the window as he was eating lunch. They shot him between the eyes and he fell forward into the chicken and dumplings.” Aldous grinned, but I was of course appalled.
“Well, that time the law succeeded in rounding up Bill and John Henry, but it was an uneasy time, I’ll tell you, with them over here in jail. Everybody was just sitting around waiting for Harrison to come and try to get them out. One time some horses got loose across the river, where the high school is now, and a rumor got out that it was Harrison Baisden coming to free his brothers, and everybody in town hid. The sheriff and his deputies locked themselves up in the vault.”
“Is that true?” I demanded, cracking a sliver of ice with my foot. Aldous is, as I have said, a strange old bird.
“Yes,” he answered. “Finally the two brothers were taken to jail, but on the way back here for the trial, Harrison ambushed the sheriff and his party and freed them single-handed. They took all the horses, tying up the sheriff and his men. So Harrison rode off on the sheriff’s horse, or so it was said, along with his brothers, and nobody in these parts ever saw hide nor hair of the Baisden boys again.”
“What hotel was it?” I asked. “The one where the Irons fellow was shot?”
“The Smith Hotel,” Aldous said. We walked side by side down the path toward the mouth of Grassy.
“When was this?” I asked.
“Twenty, thirty years ago,” he said. “The time doesn’t really matter.”
“Of course it matters. This could be a fact of history, or it could be a county myth, a folk tale,” I said. “I know you collect them, and you know it too. I suspect you make some of them up.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Nothing ever changes that much.”
“I’d better get on back,” I said, and at the widening creek we turned, and as we retraced our steps he said, “Listen, Richard. There is story upon story I could tell. I could tell you a more recent one, and more horrible, about the six Negroes lynched and shot while they hung in the air, until their bodies were full of holes, and this is true, and this was done by a vigilante posse to avenge the robbery of a drummer on the way between here and Claypool Hill, and not a one of those men was ever tried nor even caught.”
I stared at him. But he kept his gaze straight ahead, walking, and it was impossible to tell his intent. “I can come closer still. I can tell you about how Paris Blankenship got him up a company here to go to war. Just formed his own company right here on his own recognizance, in 1916 I guess this was, and he had well over 200 men quartered over there by the bend of Dismal, below town, and all of them armed, and he’d come into town to requisition food, you know, or supplies, and everybody was too afraid to say no. Mr. Poole—that’s Justine’s ex-father-in-law, he’s dead now—he was the mayor then, and he went over there once to try to get Paris to pay his grocery bill, and he had to go by two or three armed guards, he said, until he got up with him. Paris was in a tent having a foot-bath. And Mr. Poole kept asking him about his money, and when was he going to get it, and when was this-here company going to war, and so on, but all Paris Blankenship would do was grin and say how fine his feet felt. And then finally he said, ‘Poole, you ever have any trouble with your feet?’ and when Mr. Poole allowed as how he did, upon occasion, experience some difficulty with his feet, Paris recommended this foot-bath highly. And the upshot of it all was, Mr. Poole ended up with his feet in the foot-bath, and Paris Blankenship picked up Poole’s shoes and socks and walked away, and Poole never got his money back nor any answer at all to his questions.”
“What happened?”
“Eventually Paris’s company was taken straight into the Rainbow Division,” Aldous said. “And the Army paid off those bills. But they didn’t take Paris himself, oddly enough, or maybe they had too much sense. So Paris was in the Coast Guard in Norfolk during the war, which landed him in some kind of trouble what with everything that was naturally happening in Norfolk at the time, and then he spent some time in prison before he came back here.”
“And went into the liquor business,” I said.
“And entered the liquor business with Almarine Cantrell,” said Aldous. We had nearly reached the store by then; he stuck out his hand.
“I know what you’re up to,” I said, “but you won’t scare me off.”
I shook his hand then; we shook vigorously, as if a bargain had been struck. Perhaps it has.
Strange Baptism
It was the fourth night of the revival, which I have been attending vigorously in hopes of meeting Dory there, and three “souls”—mine not among them—already had been “brought to Christ.” The congregation, accustomed to my presence, appeared to have lost all restraint, or to have forgotten, at least, that initial constraint which they felt I placed upon them. Fainting had become commonplace, as had chattering wildly “in tongues.” I had been accepted, I think, and yet, I remained a sojourner still. I sat among them, but near the back, still as much observer as participant, inwardly cursing my fate, that trait of character which has made me thus, and awaiting her.
The scene was intensely dramatic, rivaling anything, in terms of a scene guaranteed to produce nearly overwhelming emotion, I have ever seen. The wind howled fiercely outside, yet the stove in the corner kept us warm and cast its ruddy glow upon all those present, some twenty-five people, I should say, a glow augmented by the fat-pine flares which burned wildly at the front of the church, all of this firelight producing a kind of magical, intensely lyrical, special sense of being removed from the exigencies of time and place, a sense of being among the chosen, borne out by Autry Lily’s text, “The Church Is the Body of Christ.” I’m sorry to say that most of his message did not live up to the title or to the promise of such surroundings, being more of the same blood and gore. I’m sorry too to admit that I found myself listening to his (often comical!) grammatical errors rather than trying to grasp his intent. I found myself counting the flakes of dandruff on the back of Rupert Dodd’s black coat, and wondering if she would come the following night, or if she would never come.
So when it came time for the invitational, as it is called, I was quite surprised to find myself somewhat moved. I could not tell whether the agitation I began to experience at that moment had to do with a true religious impulse, or with my anxiety over her, or whether I had simply been swept away by the strangeness and beauty of the scene. They sang it all together, that high wailing “Jesus says please, son, Jesus says please,” with the Hibbitts women screeching like banshees, and before I knew “what had grabbed me,” as Autry Lily would say, I was up on my feet and moving forward along with several others. And yet, even at this crucial moment, I remained a sojourner still—it pains me deeply to admit this—I was observing my actions even as I performed them. I moved forward and knelt at that crude altar, hoping for God knows (literally!) what: grace? immortality? love? Autry Lily embraced me. Even at that moment, the moment of my putative “salvation,” I recoiled from the odor of his body: he stank. His breath stank too. Next to me was a pale skinny pubescent girl, a Wade, all flailing arms and legs, who kept yelling out, and the rest of the Wades had to come up to the altar to hold her down. Others came forward, too, to congratulate us, or welcome us into the fold, or whatever they call it, and then the whole congregation was moving forward. I felt as if I had been awarded the trophy for a race someone else had run. And yet, just for a moment, there had been . . .
A blast of cold air swept into the meeting house then and I looked back at the door. She had entered, red-cheeked and breathless: she paused, just there, her eyes seeking mine. I mumbled something or other to Autry Lily and those around me; then without further ado, I rushed straight out of the church!—leaving quite a commotion, needless to say, in my wake. Now e
veryone knows. By now they will have “told it up and down the holler,” as they say. I don’t care. For once I am living my life rather than watching it pass in review. I said I rushed out of the church.
This happened next: I took her hand and led her along the path to my schoolhouse. We did not speak. We entered; I bolted the door behind us; we did not speak. We went straight to my corner bed and made love as no mortals have ever made love before! She answered my passion with her own, taking me beyond all boundaries of physical sensation I had ever experienced or even imagined. And then, stretched body to body on my bed-tick, our legs intertwined so that I could feel the sticky semen (mine!) all over her thighs, and only then she told me.
“Hit’s over,” she said. “Paris has kilt Daddy, he come in the late afternoon around milking time and catched him there by the gate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, clutching her frail shoulders so sharply that she recoiled. “What did he do?”
“Kilt him, shot him two times in the chest, shot him clear offen his horse.”
“Jesus,” I said, yet any thought of Jesus remained, I confess, far from my mind at that time. I fingered her smooth soft breast.
“Mamaw ran down there when she heard the shots, so she was the one who found him. She knelt down and put his head in her lap, and helt him like that till he died. She said he never woke up one time.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, but Dory went on. “Mamaw has done saved that apron, and she brung it up to the house and showed it to the boys and she ain’t never going to wash it, she says, till justice is done.”
“By which she means . . .”
“By which she means till the boys kills Paris Blankenship, I reckon,” Dory said.
“Will they do that?” I had the curious sense of having fallen completely—although I must say Aldous warned me—down the “rabbit hole,” so to speak, of having entered another world. I could not even see this girl I lay with in the dark. I touched her abundant, springing hair; the delicate line of her cheekbone; her jaw; her nipples; the dimpled curve of her back; her buttocks. A strange phenomenon: we are almost exactly the same size, toe to toe. I felt as if she completed me, and I completed her, as if we were truly one.
“They’ll kill him, all right,” she said, and it was curious to me how she seemed, if not to want this outcome, at least to expect it. She reached for my penis then and I succumbed eagerly to her ministrations, entering her again before, toward dawn, she dressed and left, leaving me here exhausted yet too emotionally tense for sleep, leaving me here to write this account as the cold winter dawn creeps into the room at last, bringing me to my senses not at all—or: yes!! Bringing me to my senses! For this is exactly what she has done.
Merry Christmas
Dory and I spent Christmas here, in the schoolhouse, before this roaring fire in the little fat-bellied stove. We spent Christmas in bed, to be accurate; and I must say that never has a holiday passed so sweetly. The snow, which began three days ago, on Christmas Eve, has now piled up in drifts around our door. It has transformed all the landscape hereabouts. The pines on the other side of the creek are quite weighted down with it, and the little creek itself is a dark tinkling rift through the snow, a rift which changes its delineations almost daily as the wind changes the configuration of the snow. Long icicles hang from the cedar shakes of the roof. We are all enclosed here, as in God’s womb (intriguing image!) surrounded by the rounded mounds of icy snow, by hillocks where no hillocks ever were, by icy sheets glistening like diamonds, tree to tree. It is a veritable new world! which corresponds, needless to say, with the state of my soul. If this is sin, then I am Christendom’s worst (or best!) sinner. If I be damned, then let it be. But I think otherwise.
For I have found here all the grace I ever hope to see. To wake up in the night, in the close darkness lighted only faintly by the stove, and then to feel her body curving into mine. To wake up in the morning in that first pale pearly light, and watch her as she sleeps: rosy mouth slightly open on the pillow; her breath the faintest of whistles, in and out; the high lovely line of her cheekbone; the dark lashes curling against her cheek; and all that hair in a tangle like a golden halo across the pillow.
Night before last I heated the water and we took baths, or a kind of bath, I sponged her off all over, head to toe, and she sponged me, and again I had that curious sensation that she is not separate from me, that indeed we are truly one. We used, ironically enough, one of those washcloths Mother packed, that match the set of white towels with the embroidered border of green pine trees. In my mind I see the guest bathroom at the Ampthill house in Richmond, the house where I grew up, where these are used: I see the spotless white-tiled bathroom, the green rugs, these towels hung on wooden racks in descending order of size, the bath towels, then the regular towels, then the face towels, these washcloths—oh why do I go on and on? I see this white cloth with its pine-embroidered border, see it there, and then I see it here. I rub it across her pubic hair, between her legs. She is amused by my insistence upon these baths, used, as she is, to bathing seldom in Hoot Owl Holler. I soap her thighs, her knees, her feet, and she squeals and giggles . . .
I know it cannot last. I know it, and yet this knowledge renders here each moment doubly sweet. For it causes me to feel each moment twice with her, as it happens, as it goes—of course it cannot last. A knowledge rendered more poignant still by her ignorance of it. Each moment we spend together is a moment torn from time. And my supply of tinned food from Wall Johnson’s store continues to dwindle before our eyes, and still I keep her here, they do not come.
“Richard,” she says, “do you reckon they’re going to like me?” She’s standing by the window now, it is morning, she wears her handmade shift and one of my shirts. “Say. Do you reckon they will?”
“Sure they’ll like you,” I say. “Who would not?”
“Tell me about the train,” she says, and I tell it again: how we will board the spur line at Claypool Hill, and how she will wear a hat, and how we shall disembark at Marion, and spend the night in a fine hotel and eat in the dining room, and how, the next day, we will take the train for Richmond, and how we will rumble across the whole state, and I tell her the names of the towns we’ll pass through, Roanoke, Lynchburg et al., and I tell her that there will be a rose in a silver bud vase on our linen-topped table in the dining car, and a little silver pitcher to hold the cream.
We do not speak of her brothers, or what they’ve done, or where they might be now. She has not mentioned them since she told me when she came three days ago, at the commencement of this snow, when she showed up across the creek and cried out to me and I rushed over the bridge to take the little bundle she had brought. Her coming thus has ended the six weeks which began at the revival, when first she came, six weeks which I confess I have passed in a kind of trance, it seems; I cannot now recall much of that time. I know she came to me, and I to her, I know that more than once at least we met and coupled like animals there in the woods, on the dark wet freezing ground, we rolled in the underbrush with no light to see by. I did not care. It grew increasingly difficult for me to keep my mind on my teaching position, on my work; I chucked my earlier plans for a Christmas pageant. But the huge package for my students arrived, which Mother had packed and sent, I do recall passing out the gingerbread men and the nonpareils and the chocolate stars and—wonder of wonders, for them—the fresh oranges! But more than once I was forced to dismiss my students early, I trembled to such an extent, and always in those days I smelled of sex, of her body, of our juices which flowed together into one. I thought everyone could smell it, all must know! In fact I recall particularly one excruciating evening when I dined with Aldous at the home of the Perkins family, I was dark with fear lest I should be discovered, but no one seemed to see or smell or seemed to know. Camilla played “We Three Kings of Orient Are” in a rousing manner upon the piano; “Whoo! Whoo!” Mr. Perkins laughed at some joke which I must have made, I cannot now remember.
; I went always, in those days, in a state of grace, or dread perhaps, a state at any rate of a kind of emotional pointillism, with each nerve quite on edge. I felt fragile, I felt razor-thin, as if to be toppled by any breeze—and it is true of course that I was steadily losing weight, a matter remarked upon by both Aldous and Justine Poole. And meanwhile her brothers hunted Paris Blankenship down like a man might hunt a deer, and found him at last, she told me, on the wild side of Snowman Mountain, and shot him through the heart, and strapped his body to his horse and sent it home. I cannot seem to end a sentence today, nor see to my punctuation, these sentences just run on, I write while the sun shines so brightly, the snow is melting, Dory naps. Her brothers are murderers now—Isadore, Bill, and Nun. They are wanted men; there is a warrant for their arrest. But they have gone away, it is said they have gone to Ohio, and they do not come, and now it is Granny Hibbitts who comes, I see her across the creek, and Wall Johnson wrapped in that huge black coat, who has brought her, and Aldous of course who stands back by the trees with the faintest of smiles on his lips, and there are Vashti Cantrell and Ora Mae as fierce as eagles beneath their hats, they wear big dark boots like crones in a fairy tale, they have come, I see, they all are there like figurines in the snow, like porcelain figures in the crêche on the mantel at home which is appropriate is it not for this is a kind of nativity isn’t it—the nativity of me!—they are all like little dolls, their breath little puffs in the air I cannot see them well for the blinding light from the sun on this snow, I won’t say a word.