by Lee Smith
“You shut your mouth,” I said. Daddy was acting like he couldn’t hear none of this. Then I got my rifle and my guitar and then I left. I know they was wondering what I wanted with all of that, and I was wondering too. It was like my head was a-spinning around. I throwed everthing in the truck and then I clumb in too, and pulled that thing what throws the seat forward—I have to sit way up, on account of my leg—and it come up so fast I knocked my gun in the floor, give me a big scare. It could of gone off and kilt me, and then wouldn’t that be a sight? I got to grinning, thinking about it, cranking the truck. I hadn’t grinned in such a while, it was like it was hurting my face. So I don’t have to shoot nobody after all, I thought, not even myself. But still I wanted to see him pass.
I went by Wall Johnson’s store and him and Merle and some other fellers was coming out the door and they tried to wave me down but I drove on, I wasn’t stopping for nothing, and I drove on past Tug and through the Paw Paw Gap where they wasn’t no ice atall, Daddy just made that up, and then I drove over the mountain to Claypool Hill and pulled off at that bend of the Levisa River where you can see the stretch where the railroad track comes when it goes out of town. It took me a hour or so to get there, and I still didn’t have no gloves, I just wanted to see him pass.
By then it was dark for sure. I got my gun and got out of the truck and walked over there by the river so I could see better. It was cold, Lord! I blowed on my hands and stomped my feet, but didn’t nothing help. I wondered if Dory knew he was leaving, too, if she was thinking about him. I wondered how she felt and what she thought. It was cold as a bitch that night and I got to wishing I’d of shot him anyway, then I wouldn’t have to stand out here and wait no more. Then I got to whistling till my lips got too cold to whistle. First I’d feel alright, and then I’d feel awful. Things was confused in my mind. I thought how Mama had said Dory was ruint, which was just about what you could figure Mama’d say, but I knowed she weren’t never ruint. I thought on Wall Johnson saying he wouldn’t take no man’s leftovers. Well by God I’ll take what I can get, I thought all of a sudden. I’ll take it and be damned, I thought, and then I heard it coming far away around Black Rock Mountain, and then I heard it coming closer. By and by I seen the light, coming around the bend, and then before I knowed it, here it was going by me kicking up the awfulest ruckus you ever heard way out here in the night. Steam pouring outen the engine, and you could see the men in there, stoking the fire, one of them looked like Bill Horn’s boy. They was not but five cars and a caboose, and two of the cars looked to be empty, from what I could tell in the dark. But I knowed in my bones he was on it someplace, up there in the engine with them or else in one of them other cars. I knowed he was on that train. It went on with a great big roaring racket and leaving smoke in the air. I pulled my gun up to my shoulder then and sighted down it, just for the hell of it, at the swinging light on the back of the caboose. It swang back and forth, back and forth, in and out of the sight, and then the train was gone and him with it. I went back and got in the truck and got my guitar and made up this song, my fingers was too cold to pick, but anyway I made up this song.
Darlin’ Dory stands by the cabin door
Standing with her Bible in her hands
Darlin’ Dory stands by the cabin door
A-pinin’ for her city man.
You can throw that Bible down on the floor
You can throw it out in the rain
Prayin’ for him all night long won’t do no good
For he ain’t a-comin’ back again.
Well he ain’t a-comin’ back to the meetin’ house
and he ain’t a-comin’ back to the school
City feller gone with a head full of dreams
Oh, why can’t you see him for a fool?
Dory let me dry those tears away
Dory come back in and shut the door
A month or two don’t add up to a life
A slip or two don’t make you a whore.
Dory come back to your own true love
A month or two don’t add up to life
Dory let me dry them tears away
Dory let me make you my wife.
It took me nearabout a hour to make it up. I knowed I wouldn’t never sing it to nobody, least of all to her, but anyway I made it up and then I knowed what I was going to do and I felt good, I tell you, I got to feeling like myself again for the first time all winter. I laughed out loud in the dark and cranked up that old truck. She was my girl afore she was hisn, whether she knowed it or not. I allowed as how she was my girl now, whether she knowed it yet or not, either. I knowed then that she might not love me as much as I loved her, but that was all right with me too. She’d love me more than she thought. A girl needs a man she can depend on, and by God there’s worse things than that. By God there is, I says to myself, gunning that truck back home, and she’ll come to know it afore she’s through. In a way I still wish he hadn’t of left, though, I was going to shoot him dead as soon as he walked out of Justine Poole’s no doubt about it. I had been laying for him. I wondered how Daddy knew. You have to get up mighty damn early to get ahead of Daddy. I rode along grinning, and it was cold as a witch’s tit. But I tell you, it wouldn’t have turned a hair on my head to shoot him, that’s a fact.
MRS. LUDIE DAVENPORT
Now I want to tell this the way it happened, and I want to tell you all the circumstances of it. For I believe it’s been going on a long time, and it’s high time you heard it out loud. It ain’t gone do no good to tell it, I know that, nothing ain’t gone to change in the telling, but leastways somebody can warn the younguns. The younguns orter be told.
Now you know me and how I love the Lord, you know I’d die before I’d tell a lie. So you can take every word of this as the Gospel. And anybody that loves the Lord as much as me, you know they fear the Devil too. You can’t have one without the other any moren you can have the dark without the light. It don’t make no sense if you leave out the other half, is what I’m a-saying, and I have knowed the Devil for real ever since the first time he appeared to me when I was not but eight years old at a church dinner on the ground, and told me to do something nasty. Not me, I said, you go on, old Devil, and find you somebody else! So he up and disappears, and it was not but five or ten minutes later that Mama’s little chow dog, which was always so nice and sweet, come a-running out of the woods all wild-like, and bit Grandaddy on the knee right through his Sunday trousers! Old Devil had got into Mama’s little chow dog. Now all this took place in Bluefield, W. Va., before I was brung here by Harp. And I have knowed the Devil, old Nick, nearabout as good as I have knowed God. And there ain’t nothing he’ll do, nor no way he’ll work, to surprise me.
Anyway, I pick up on stuff. I know things afore they happen sometimes, I seen my daddy dead in a dream. I seen two black-headed babies in a dream and I had black-headed twins. It was me, you recall, way back—must of been twenty-five years ago—that seed the witch a-leaving after Almarine had throwed her out, that heard her laugh. It was old Nick in a woman’s form and I’ll swear it, just like he went into that chow dog. It put me to bed for a week. So you can talk about devils and witches all you want, and it ain’t none of it news to me. I been in on this thing from the word Go.
Well I had put up pickle lilly the night before. Now nobody around here makes it as good as me. So ever time I put it up, I have to go around here and take some to everbody, I take some to the Rev. Autry Lily, bless his heart, his wife is sick in the bed, and I take some over to Rhoda just naturally, everbody takes her things the way you used to take them to Granny Younger, and besides I had this wart on my hand that I wanted took off, and then I’ll take some to my son Bill, that is one of them black-headed twins, whose wife is too feisty to cook good. So I had put up pickle lilly the night before, and I had my day all cut out for me.
This is the way I put it up if you have to know. I take me about a peck of green tomatoes, and a peck of string beans, and a good-size bunch of little old o
nions and green peppers, and I get me some red peppers too, and two big old head-cabbages, and I chop it all up and put it in the pot. Then I pour in my vinegar to cover, and I add my sugar and some pickling spice, and then I boil it down. It takes about two hours to boil it down.
My mama used to say tomatoes was poison, she wouldn’t touch a one. Well, some things change.
And some don’t. I was a-crossing Grassy Creek—coming back from Rhoda’s with a poultice on my wart—on the footpath in the early morning dew, I’d left Harp at home a-laying up in the bed, when all of a sudden I felt a cold wind rise up on me out of noplace, and it July. I said I felt that wind rise up. And then the hair on my arms rises straight up too, and I got goosebumps all over. I knowed I had felt that way before, and it twenty-five years gone. But you don’t forget a thing like that, nor how you felt. I quick-looked all about, wasn’t naught to be seen but the little flowers and the ferns and all down by the creek, and the fog how it hung by the shady bank, and the sun coming down through the trees. But I felt as cold as death. I looked up the holler toward the Cantrell place, which you just could see if you tried, but wasn’t no sign of life up there nor a thing to remark in particular.
Lord knows what-all goes on up there anyway, as I said it that morning to Rhoda who laughed the way she does and says “Nothing much.” “Nothing much!” I says. “I would not call it nothing with one girl pregnant and going around like she’s having some kind of a spell, with a crippled boy lagging after her, and the little girl sick, and that Jink that takes so after his daddy when he was that age, always slipping out and mooning around.”
“It’s a fact, he does,” Rhoda said, kind of surprised-like, and her daughter who’s tetched in the head rolled her eyes back and said, “Does what?” and Rhoda said, “Take after his daddy,” and then Rose set in to crying again. Rose was trying to braid her hair.
“Here, now,” Rhoda told me. “You keep this on it a hour or so, and then when you get home, I’ll tell you what you do. You take this off, and you let it bleed some, and you put the blood on a penny and lay the penny in the road, and when somebody picks it up, the wart will go away.” Well, we’ve all gotten old now and that’s a fact, but Rhoda has wrinkled up in the face like a pecan nut with her eyes still as blue as the sky. I call her Rhoda myself, seeing as how we growed up together so, but there’s lots of others just calls her Granny. And anyway you take her things when you put them up, just like you did Granny Younger, you know how you do. They was a Ramey girl over there that morning, in fact, bringing Rhoda some beets. Beets! Harp wouldn’t eat a beet if he had to. He’ll eat anything else in this world.
“They’s a curse on the holler,” Rose says, follering me to the door, “and on all them pretty girls.” Rhoda just smiled her little smile, I’d give a lot to know what she thinks sometimes of what Rose says, and Rose’s eyes burned out like cinders in that ashy pale face as she braided her long gray hair. Lord, we’re all of us getting so old!
But I’m no fool, I’ll tell you, and when I crossed back over that creek is when I felt that cold air rise and then directly I heard that laugh which there wasn’t no mistaking even if I hadn’t heard it for twenty-five years. I was over the creek by then, and let me tell you I took off as fast as these old legs would carry me. And still I heard that laughing, it was like it come down out of the trees, and then it was right on my heels, or it’ll move up ahead on the path, and me just a-freezing to death and moving as fast as I’m able. I see that big pine tree up ahead where I’m fixing to turn to get to Bill’s, and I’m thinking well, thank the Lord, when all of a sudden there starts up this barking at my heels. But of course there wasn’t no dog! No, it was Almarine’s ghost-dog, the one that never come back after he kilt that witch, and this ghost-dog consorts with her now and follers wherever she’ll go. It was a good thing for me I started saying the Lord’s Prayer out loud then, and I said it as loud as I could.
It’s a wonder I ever made it to Bill’s in one piece. I knocked and knocked on the door until finally she came to open it, that Susie, and I see at a glance she’s been back in the bed, with him already up and gone to the mine. That’s Bill. And that’s that lazy Susie.
“Why, what’s the matter, Ludie?” Susie said, acting just so sweet like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth when you know that’s not really her nature, and she holped me to a chair and got me a drink of water. Then I told her all about the witch a-coming to hant me in Hoot Owl Holler and how that ghost-dog barked at my heels. Then I felt so weak-like when I was through that I had to lay down in the bed myself, I had plumb give out. And I slept like a log that whole afternoon, waking up just in time to hear the tail-end of her telling Bill and the boys about it when they got home.
Bill scratched his head and turned that hat with the light on it around and around in his hands. “Well hell, Susie,” he said. “What you want me to do about it?”
“She just wants me to wait on her hand and foot,” Susie said, which was a lie, and I sat up and said so to her face.
“I have seed a ghost,” I told them all, “and I have lost my wart poultice, and I have been chased by a ghost-dog. I am not in bad shape considering,” I said, and then I laid back down and told it.
Now Bill Jr., who is the eldest grandson, was standing there so still, listening, with the coal dust ringing his eyes, and when I was finished he said, “That puts me in mind of something, Mamaw. You know last Christmas when Donny Osborne fell offen the mountain and broke his leg over there on Snowman where them big white rocks is? You-all remember that? Well, he swore it was a dog chased him offen the clift but he didn’t never see no dog. He said it like to drove him crazy barking.” Bill Jr.’s eyes went around at us all, and you know he’s so honest since he has got saved.
“Hellfire,” Bill said, and then he told Susie to heat up some beans to go with the pickle lilly.
“You can’t stay but a day now,” she said to me while the men was outside washing. “Or who’ll take care of old Harp?”
“I tell you it was her,” I said, “and that infernal dog, and I don’t care if you’ll listen to me or not, there’s a-plenty that will,” I said, and there is. Believe me, there is.
AT THE SMITH HOTEL
Later today this room will be hot, too hot for a boarder to stand it even if there was a boarder here to do so, which there is not, times being hard as they are. Come three o’clock, it’ll be like an oven in here. Justine Poole will close it off then, and she’ll close off the three other rooms which get the sun. She’ll sit on the porch drinking tea. But right now it’s nice up here. Both the windows are open wide, shades up, and the breeze comes in and moves the soiled muslin curtains which flutter like moths, and noise comes up from the street. Car horns and the occasional clip-clop of a mule-wagon going past, and the women’s voices twittering to and fro, in and out of hearing, beneath the windows. Men’s voices too, more men than you’d hear if it wasn’t hard times and so many out of work, men’s voices low and halting, with sometimes a hoarse shout of laughter. The union man has a high-pitched voice, and a different accent. “Absentee money,” he says—you can hear him above the rest—and “work like dogs,” but you can’t hear what-all he says. Anyway it’s Saturday, day after payday for those lucky enough to be working, close to noon, and the breeze comes up in the windows blowing the curtains and now Blind Bart has started up on his harmonica over there in front of the courthouse, playing “Saro Jane” low and sweet, to suit the morning. Later on when the Busy Bee opens up down the way in the house where the Astons lived, and they start selling beer at Old Man Long’s and Loretta’s Place, why then Blind Bart will change his tune and Justine Poole will switch from tea to bourbon on her porch, awaiting the rivet salesman from Bluefield, as the town cranks up for Saturday night. But it’s still early now, still cool up here, although the sun is bright as it shines through the turning dust in the air, showing up all the gray smudges on the white wallpaper between the violets, falling in a solid golden block across the twisted
white sheet on the bed.
Aldous Rife, naked, lies flat on his back with his bandy legs spraddled out so the breeze can get to his vitals. Justine Poole lies on her stomach with her bare ass stuck up in the air and one foot stuck up too, bent at the knee, tracing circles in the sun with her small, surprisingly pretty little foot with its red, red toenails. She props herself up on one elbow now, and starts to fool with the tangled gray hair on Aldous’s sunken chest.
“Cut that out, honey,” Aldous says like he always does, but he knows she won’t. Justine is all the time brushing off your lapel or squeezing a blackhead or doing her own nails or smoothing your hair down in back. She’s got to be doing something with her hands. Now this is a trait that Aldous might not have liked in another woman—say, one of his wives—but he likes it fine in Justine. Justine is a busy woman, always was. You know she’s got things to do. So when she sighs all of a sudden, a big long sigh like she’s lost the last friend she ever had or hoped to have, and rolls over on her back and lets her arms flap down at her sides, this surprises Aldous. It’s not a bit like Justine.
“What’s the matter?” he asks her.
“I was just thinking about that boy from Richmond, that Richard Burlage,” Justine said. “You know this used to be his room.”
“Did it?” Aldous is surprised. First they use one room, then another, depending on what time of day it is and which rooms Justine has rented out. They’ve been at this for twenty years.
“He kept it the whole time he was here,” Justine said. “September to January.”
“I know how long he was here,” Aldous says drily. “In fact I am still surprised that I got him out of town in one piece. I wrote his father quite a letter, Justine, did I tell you that?”
“Letter saying what?”