by Lee Smith
“I’ve been out there working,” I said, “and I’ve got to get on back.”
Rose Hibbitts started talking out loud to herself then, the wildest stuff you ever heard. I was getting too hot from the fire and I started feeling kindly sick-like too, I guess from eating all them cracklins. I didn’t see how Mary could stand it to be so close to the fire all wrapped up like she was. It looked to me like she would be burning up. I felt like I had to get out of there fast.
But Mary said, “Read to me, Jink.”
“What?” I said, moving back from the fire.
“Read to me,” Mary said, and I knew I was stuck for sure. So I went and got Tom Saw yer—Mary loves it about the cave—but when I come back, she had turned her head to the side of her pallet and fallen fast asleep. She breathed in and out, in and out through her open lips, just like one of Dory’s babies. I was glad. I was about to die from the heat and I wanted to get on back. So I made for the kitchen lickety-split and run smack into Old Rose Hibbitts, liked to scare me to death, too. I never seen her move from her corner afore I run into her.
“Listen here, boy,” she said, “You Almarine.” Up close her breath smelled like something that had been dead a week and her eyes was bloodshot and terrible. She couldn’t never keep people straight, like the way she thought I was my daddy.
“Now I just got a phone call,” she said, “which you orter know about.”
Despite of me feeling so hot and sick, it was all I could do not to laugh. We’d all been hearing about Rose Hibbitts and her phone calls, they’d told it from yan to yonder. Seems like Wall Johnson, Lute’s daddy, let Old Rose talk on the telephone one time down at the store in Tug, and she taken a fancy to it, and now she thinks she gets these phone calls all the time. Of course she ain’t got no phone, and we don’t neither.
“I have just received a phone call,” she said, old eyes burning into mine, “that you might be interested to know about.”
“I got to go,” I said, but I couldn’t pull loose from her fingers, like sharp little claws fastened into my jacket.
“It was a phone call from hell,” said Old Rose. She was breathing right into my face. “A phone call from hell,” she went on, “from that red-headed Emmy, that witch you took such a shine to.”
“Well, what’d she say?” I asked, since I couldn’t get loose and I couldn’t think of nothing else to do. Besides I thought I could tell Lute about it, I knowed he would bust a gut laughing.
“She says Dory’s the one she has loved all along, and she claims her for sure, and she don’t give a damn for a man!” Old Rose spit it out in my face.
Now this taken me aback, it weren’t—wasn’t—funny at all like I thought. I hate it when folks start up all that stuff about Dory. It made me mad as fire. So I brung up my leg and I kicked Old Rose in the back of her knees, which laid her out face-down on the floor.
“You shouldn’t ought’ve done that,” said the Davenport girl.
“Done what?” I said. I had to get out of there. I left with Mary still asleep and Old Rose Hibbitts crying and grubbing around on the floor, I wished she’d of up and died.
But then when I got back out there, the men was telling ghost-tales too. It was like I couldn’t get away from what I had to, nevermind which way I’d turn.
“I recall one time back in aught-nine,” said a Little, I dis-remember which one, and he told about how two witches got in his cattle and how they acted, how they kicked his old lady in the side and broke two of her ribs, and then they give down speckled milk. I wished they would all of them shut up and get Little Luther to sing some more nasty songs. Little Luther must of gone on up to the house, though, or anyway he wasn’t out there when I got back. And Parrot Blankenship had got here now, dressed up fit to kill, the talkingest man you have ever seen, and they was most of them gathered around him. I couldn’t help but go listen, myself.
Now Parrot Blankenship was the man who come up here to court Ora Mae. It surprised us all to death when first he come. I never thought about Ora Mae ever getting sweet on anybody, or even about Ora Mae being a girl, which of course she was, afore Parrot showed up. I thought about Ora Mae like I thought about Isadore and Nun, say, something you’ve got to contend with, or even less than that, like some walking part of Mamaw that wasn’t hooked on, I guess, but not like a girl like Dory. Wasn’t nobody else thought of her like that neither, nobody around here that is, but Parrot Blankenship, he was a foreigner, didn’t know no better, or if he did you couldn’t prove it. Anyway he was a foreigner, wouldn’t say where he’d been raised up, but he’d tell you the names of places he’d been, Wheeling and Charleston and Dayton, Ohio, and Detroit and Cincinnati, he’d roll off them names so fast like he was a train rolling right through your head, and his eyes just sparkling. You could not pin him down to a thing. Nor would he say what he had done for a living, nor where he bought all them fancy clothes.
“I’ve got irons in the fire,” he used to say, and Mamaw would snort and spit. She didn’t think much of irons in the fire. But when Parrot talked, Ora Mae stared at him like he had fallen down offen the moon, it was like she couldn’t never look her fill. Now she didn’t talk, he did. And Ora Mae would sit there big-eyed, listening. Not a soul could see what a man like that saw in Ora Mae, and they talked it around and around. Because Parrot Blankenship was the kind of man you’d feature with a yellow-haired woman eating in a restaurant someplace, but not here. And he was the only man that had ever come up this mountain and not been taken with Dory. Dory thought Parrot was funny. She’d laugh and laugh when he talked, but Ora Mae didn’t crack a smile, just sat real still like a rock which made Parrot talk faster and faster.
So the men were telling ghost-tales, and Parrot had come, and now the men were gathered around him because he was the kind of man that other men just naturally take to. Me too. I liked Parrot, everbody did. You couldn’t hardly help it, even if you never knowed a thing about all them irons in the fire.
“Well now I’ll tell you about witchery,” Parrot said. “Hit was a hot hot summer one time I was working over in Doran, West Virginia. I took a room with a widder lady reputed to be a witch. But I was young then, and full of piss and vinegar, and I thought not a thing of that.” Everbody nodded, and Lute and I was back to scraping, and I nodded too. “I was too young to listen to what I should’ve,” Parrot went on. When Parrot tells a story, you can’t help believing it’s every word true, like the way he’ll throw off on hisself instead of building hisself up bigger, and look you in the eye, and grin at how dumb he was. You can’t help liking a feller like that.
“Now I did notice that the widder lady’s horse was acting right peculiar. When I come there he was a big old roan horse, full of spirit, liked to kicked the side outen the barn and used to gallop around the pasture. But the longer I stayed with the widder lady, the more tuckered out he commenced to look, and come the time he couldn’t hardly make it around the pasture one time. Nothing but a shadow of what he was, and the light had gone from his eye. Well, I didn’t think nothing of it at the time, just remarked it, and I went on about my business.”
Which was what? I wondered, but I kept quiet, and Parrot went on.
“Then one day I was coming home from work and I seen a big lump out in the pasture, and I went over there to look, and sure enough it was that big roan horse laying dead with the flies all over him. When I got close up, I seen what I could not see before—he was down to naught but skin and bones, the skinniest horse I ever laid eyes on, and I marveled at how he had lived as long as he had. Then I looked up—there was one pine tree out there, in the middle of that pasture—and seen three black crows sitting on a single limb of that tree watching me. ‘Shoo!’ I hollered then, but they never moved, and I have to tell you, that spooked me for fair. So I took off, and went on back to the widder’s house, and never said a word about what I’d seen. I went right on straight to bed and I slept like a rock the whole night long.
“Well, boys, the next morning I woke
up, and I hurt so bad all over, it was all I could do to get outen the bed. Seemed like my arms and my legs was so heavy I couldn’t hardly move ’em, and I was still dead for sleep. So I got up and went along to work anyway, but I wasn’t worth a damn all that day nor the next, when the same thing happened over again. But the third night, I figgered it out.”
Parrot Blankenship had every one of us right in the palm of his hand by then. The women were hollering out the door for more trimmings, but wasn’t nobody about to answer nor to fetch them any till Parrot was through.
“I went to bed early, same as usual, I was so tired by then, but then I woke up in the middle of the night with the awfulest ache in my side, I thought I might have the appendix. But when I looked at my side I seen it was a horse’s side, and they was a woman’s foot kicking bloody spurs into it.”
“Aw, shoot, Parrot,” Peter Paul said, but Parrot grinned and went on.
“And then I commenced to notice I had four legs instead of two, and that they was horse’s legs, and the reason I couldn’t seem to catch my breath atall was because they was somebody on me riding hell-for-leather up a rocky mountain trace, and kicking my side all the way. So then I pricked up my ears—I had these big old horse ears, you know—and I heard more horses galloping behind me, and I swiveled my head around to look, and sure enough here come two more horses and riders behind me, the riders all dressed in black and bent low to the saddle, and my rider sawed back on the bit, liked to broke my jaw, and hit me across the flanks. ‘Git on,’ come the voice, and then I knowed it was the widder on my back.
“Well they urged us on till I just about drapped in my tracks, and finally we come up to a cave in the mountain and they reined us in at last. My legs and my flanks was quivering so I couldn’t hardly stand, but I took enough notice to see what it was that they was a-doing, and why they had rode us here.
“They had two saddle-bags apiece, and they swung them down now offen us and placed them in the cave, and by the weight of them and how they clanked I could tell they was full of money. So I just snorted and pawed at the ground, and acted like I didn’t notice, and after a while the three of them come back outen the cave. The other two was men, as mean a-looking men as ever you hope to see, one with a scar come all the way acrost his face like this”—Parrot drew a scar acrost his face—“and the other one missing three fingers on his left hand. So they all mounted up and rode us home. And the next morning, fellers, when I woke up I was stiff as a board and I knew she’d kill me before she was through if I couldn’t do naught to outsmart her.
“So I laid out of work that day and went downtown to get my breakfast, and while I was in there eating, I heard them all talking about the bank robberies taking place in that section, and how they’d had three in a row so far, and the sheriff with nary a clue. Well, I didn’t say a word to that, mind you, or act like I was interested atall, I just ate my ham and biscuits with nary a word, but I was turning it all in my mind and before I knowed it, I’d come up with what I was going to do, fellers, I’d made me a plan.”
Lute and I were so busy listening we’d forgot to scrape.
“Well, they never come that night, nor the next, nor the one after that, I slept like the dead for the next three nights, and then on the fourth night when I woke up with that piercing pain from them spurs digging into my side, I was fit as a fiddle and ready.”
“What’d you do?” Lute asked.
But Parrot held up his hand and said, “Son, I’m getting to that. I wanted that money, you see, I wanted to know how to get back there, and so all the way up the mountain that night I made out like I’d gone lame and I stumbled, and the widder woman cursing me every step of the way, but what she didn’t know was that I was blazing the trail with my hooves, kicking over rocks and stripping the bark offen bushes and trees, so come morning I could find my way to return. Well, we got up there and sure enough there was the cave, and sure enough they all jumped down and pulled off the saddlebags and ran in the cave. And I was determined to mark the spot. Now how can I do it, I thought to myself, so I can be sure to find it come daylight? Because that cave was fairly hid in the brushy-thicket, you couldn’t even tell it was there if you didn’t know. The only time you could see it atall was when they pulled back the brush, you could see the opening. I knowed I could never tell it without no mark.
“So I thought to myself, and I thought to myself, and I thought, ‘Parrot, now how can you mark this spot?’ and then I got an idea. I screwed up my vitals as hard as I could and laid a big old pile of shit right there outside that brushy thicket and then I worked loose from where she had tied me and I trotted over there to the brushy thicket and pushed through with my nose until I had got my head inside that cave. And you won’t believe what happened next.”
“What?” I don’t know if it was me said it, or maybe Lute said it, or maybe we said it together. Wasn’t nobody saying another word, everbody crowding right around Parrot to hear what was coming next.
Parrot made his voice go real low and scary, you had to cock your head to hear what he said.
“I stuck my head in that cave like I said, and it was hot in there, which surprised me, and it had a funny smell to it, and it was black as the blackest night you have ever seen or ever imagined in all your life. And then I heard this voice, this real loud voice hollering at me. It said”—Parrot hollered too—“Parrot Blankenship, Parrot Blankenship, you’ll be sorry for what you done!
“And then I woke up, boys, and I was in the widder’s bed with my face in her crack, and I had done benastied myself!”
It took me a minute to get it, and then I started laughing so hard I drapped my knife. All the men was—were—fit to be tied, laughing and slapping their legs, and Wall was fanning his face with his big black hat. This went on for a while, and it took a while before we got back to the hog-killing. We were on the last one by now, the Davenports stringing him up.
“Now boys.” Peter Paul Ramey went and stood in front of the last hog—the hog was still so hot from being scalded in the drum that he was throwing out steam from his whole body, steaming out white in the cold air—“You come on over here, boys,” Peter Paul said, and me and Lute got up and went over there, and I didn’t know what was fixing to happen.
Peter Paul stuck out his hand with the hog knife in it, handle turned to me, and said, “You cut this one, boy,” and he told Lute to catch the innards in the tub and to scrape out what did not come natural. I knowed I was fixing to disgrace us all, and be sick or fall out on the ground like Mary in one of her fits, and I looked around quick but thank God anyway Mamaw was up at the house. They must of been ten or eleven men between me and the house, so there wasn’t no running thataway, and nothing behind me but Hoot Owl Mountain and I guess I knew already I couldn’t go up there and stay for good like I’d thought about for so long, me and Dory and Mary and him. All the men were breathing out white in the air and grinning.
“Start right here,” Peter Paul said, pointing, and I knew there was nothing for it but to do it.
So I drawed in my breath and got the knife around the handle with both hands and raised my hands above my head and jabbed it in as hard as I could and pulled it down as far as I was able, and all of them innards came tumbling and quil-ing out and the men were hollering and laughing, and Lute cotched them up in the tub. Then Peter Paul grabbed up a piece of innards and throwed it around my neck like a rope and one around Lute’s neck too, it was hot as fire and smelled awful, and I got mad then and yelled out and throwed it straight back at Peter Paul. I didn’t care what happened. Lute throwed his down on the ground and stomped on it, and then the men were whooping and slapping us both on the back and we all started drinking liquor.
I tipped my head back and took it down like it was water, and it felt like it burned a path right down my gut, or like somebody had slit me right down the middle the way I had done that hog, Old Man Justice said he had never seen a cleaner cut. I must of got drunk then, I don’t recall too much of the rest o
f the afternoon, but Lute and me and the other men drunk some more and finished off that hog and then some of them went home and some of them went on up to the house to eat. I was on my way up to the house too, last I remember, it was well-nigh dark and I was walking up that way when I had to piss so I went off in the woods and then the first thing I recall, I woke right up in the pitch dark with no notion of where I was, nor who I was, nor whether it was night or day, nor nothing. Then I heard Mamaw calling my name, so I knew who I was, and then it all come back to me and I leaned over and puked till I liked to puked up my guts. I got up—my legs were still real wobbly, the way a foal is the first time it stands—and made my way outen the woods and on up to the house.
“Jink! You Jink!” Mamaw hollered out the back door, but I never answered her back. I went around to the front and walked in where they had a fire and some several still there sitting around it, and Little Luther strumming on his guitar and Dory sitting close by him.
“Everbody’s been looking for you, Jink,” Dory said to me when I come in. “Honey, where you been?” But Dory never took her eyes offen Little Luther, and I could tell she didn’t care where I’d been, and I could tell she had softened up toward him now.
So I went on up to the loft and looked at Mary, fast asleep on the tick next to mine, it was kindly dark up there but I still could see Mary’s face, and leaned down to see was she breathing, she looked so poorly. Mamaw was yelling out my name, but I would of died before I’d of gone down there now.
I hated them ever one. I laid down and looked out through the dark and the firelight shadows up in the beams and then I got up after while and looked down and Dory and Little Luther was kissing, or I thought they was but the fire had got so low you couldn’t tell, or I couldn’t, I guess I was crying too, and me a man, and I hated them ever one worse than ever and I could see all their faces out there in the dark and they was ever one of their faces black. So I got up and went over in the corner where I had it wrapped up in a old torn shirt stuck down in the tore-up bed-tick. It was dried as hard as a rock but I could feel the little dents in it all over and I knowed—knew—it had come from Florida in the South, and in the dark I made like it was still bright orange, as orange as it was when he give them out, as orange as the sun when it come up that morning and as round as Dory’s belly used to be, as round as the whole big globe of the earth he had, and I thought to myself how I’d up and leave here after while, me and Mary we’d up and leave and strike out walking as far as we could get acrost the big round world.