On Agate Hill

by Lee Smith

  Start at the beginning? All right, I’ll start at the beginning. But what is it? When did the beginning start? Did it start way back when me and Jacky was born six days apart to two sisters, and both of us named Jack? And him light complected and me dark, so that they took to calling us Yellow Jack and Black Jack right off the bat, for nicknames? Or did it start when I was two and Mama pitched forward in the fire carrying me, and you can see here what happened. Just go on and take a good look. Mama’s own face was disfigured so bad that she never would let nobody see it but me, she got herself a black bonnet with a black veil, and walked with her head down. Daddy took off soon after, he was not from around here anyway. Come through selling sewing machines.

  Well, Big Jack taken us in, that was Big Jack Jarvis, Jacky’s daddy, and they all nursed Mama until her death which was not long in coming, and raised me like a son. So you see, sir, Jacky and me goes as far back as it gets. We were brothers, and more than brothers. He was like my other half.

  When I first seen Molly? Jacky come riding up here with her, acrost the Rag Mountain bald. We can see folks coming from a long ways off. Now we live right out in the open, and the wind blows up here all the time, and there’s a lot of folks that can’t stand a wind like that, it will make them kindly nervous, and crazy-like. Why our uncle Calvin got himself the prettiest little redheaded wife one time, he found her over on Knox Creek, singing in a tavern. Anyhow, Calvin brung her up here, but she didn’t stay no time, this wind gave her conniptions, she said, so she lit a rag for home. Then he got himself another one, now that’s Clara, she’s still here, a different kind of a woman entirely, she can work all day and then sit so still in one of them flour sack dresses, she looks like a sack of flour herself. That’s the kind of woman you want up here, a woman that has got some gravity to her, so she won’t blow off.

  But Molly Petree is not that kind of a woman. No sir.

  So when I first seen Jacky riding her acrost the mountain on that big horse of his, I thought, Well this ain’t one for the books neither, I reckon, though she was the prettiest one yet, the prettiest one that had ever been brung up here, and just laughing to beat the band. Well, they was both of them laughing so hard, they liked to fell off of the horse. The porch was full of people, it being payday down at the mill, and the lot was full of horses and wagons and mules, with some men pitching horseshoes over at the side there, and everybody that was watching set up a holler.

  BJ, BJ, come looky here, said Clara, and Calvin’s little Jacob, and so I put down the hoop cheese after I finished cutting it, and stood back in the doorway wiping my hands on my apron, watching Jacky and her come acrost the bald. Jacky rode the horse right in among everybody, making a big commotion, the way he will.

  BJ! Jacky hollered at the top of his lungs, BJ, get yourself out here! I have done it! I have gone and got me a wife.

  Oh Lord, I thought. I reckon we are in for it now.

  Because the truth is, and everybody around here knows it, Jacky Jarvis was not the marrying kind. Now I am his first cousin, and I growed up side by side with him closer than a brother, and I know him through and through, better than anybody. Jacky does not mean to be bad, but the fact is, he just loves women, the way he loves music and liquor and cards and traveling, why he wants everything there is, and he don’t see any reason why he can’t have it, either. Now you wouldn’t think a woman would want a man like that, you would think they would rather have somebody reliable, such as myself, but they don’t.

  Nobody can hold a candle to Jack when it comes to women.

  When he wasn’t hardly out of shirttails, I reckon he was not but twelve or thirteen years old, he had him a girlfriend over the hill there, Bonnie Weaver, a good four or five years older than him, marrying age, and they done everything there was to do up until her mama sent her off to live with her aunt so as to get her away from Jacky. Now this was before Jacky’s daddy—my uncle Big Jack—died, oh he beat Jacky with a belt over it, and Jacky cried and said he was sorry, but then it wasn’t two months until it was another one, that sweet little Becky Pratt. Lord I can’t even remember them all. They warned all the girls in the county about him, in church. From the pulpit! But Jacky didn’t care, and it didn’t do no good, either.

  Mister George Elias himself came up here complaining that Jacky had been making eyes at his young wife—now that was a serious business, make no mistake about it, as he was a mean old son of a bitch if there ever was one, but Big Jack had a way about him too, and he set Mister Elias down and gave him a drink and then some several drinks of his good whisky, and convinced him he had made a mistake, and talked him plumb out of it! It were a marvel.

  Big Jack was a big old man, what you might call a character. Used to could buck dance all night long, best dancer in these hills. He had the gift of gab too. Son, he said to Jacky when Mister George Elias left, a man that don’t follow nothing but his cock will end up in Hell, and deserve it, now do you understand me?

  Yes sir, Jacky said.

  But then Big Jack died, and Jacky went back to his old ways. He was a back door man primarily, and it didn’t even appear to be his fault. Seemed like he had to beat them off with a stick. Well he daddied some children round and about, and lived here and there, but he never married, or at least not so as you could tell it, though he got pretty cozy with that pretty young widow Icy Hinshaw, who lived down in the Ponder Cove. Her daddy used to play music with Roscoe and them, time was, and Icy was a fine little fiddler herself.

  Jacky thought the world was there for the taking, that was the long and short of it. He liked to make people feel better, and he does make them feel better. He lights them up. When you talk to him about it, he’s got a whole system figured out. According to this system, a lie is not a lie if it makes somebody feel better. The truth don’t do you no good if it makes you feel bad. It’s all relative, Jacky liked to say, a word he learned from a preacher’s wife in Jellico, Tennessee. Everything is all right as long as you don’t get caught. Getting caught is the problem, not whatever you done to get caught. And if you done it out of the county, you didn’t do it, nor leastaways it don’t count.

  Now don’t get me wrong here. Jacky wasn’t bad, you understand. He didn’t mean harm to a soul. He was sweet, and fun, and generous to a fault, why he would give anybody the shirt off his back, and done so. I couldn’t make no money here at the store when Jacky was working. He’d give everything away if you didn’t watch him like a hawk, even to folks like the Rumples who ain’t never made good on a debt in their sorry lives. So it was a big relief whenever Jacky went off playing music somewheres with the rest of them, I done a lot better with him gone.

  Me? It didn’t bother me none. I loved him as good as the ladies, I reckon. Everything took on a kind of a glow when Jack was around. You never knew exactly what was going to happen, neither, which made things kindly exciting. It can get pretty dull up here when they’re all out on the road and nothing much is going on and the wind blows all the time, whoo whoo whoo. It can spook you pretty good sometimes. Make you feel real lonesome away down inside of yourself. A man can get tired of it, I mean the same thing day after day, getting up in the dark at four thirty, going in and opening up, brewing the coffee, making biscuits—now I am a pretty fair biscuit cook, I’ll admit it—then saying howdy to Rufus Butler and Old Joe Kapp and the rest of them that has been coming in here every morning for thirty years. It can get old, I’ll tell you. Especially in the wintertime. A man needs a little spark. So I never got too mad at nothing Jacky done, I figured we would all live through it, whatever it was, but I have to say, it was a big surprise when he showed up here with the likes of Molly Petree.

  LATER IT ALL COME out, of course, how it was that they had got married. He had up and gone for her in the middle of the night, over there where she was a living with Chattie Badger, and had come on in the house with no word beforehand to her nor anybody else, and Molly she had jumped right up out of a deep sleep and put on her clothes and gone with him directly.
No talking about it, no bye-your-leave nor nothing. Went right with him. Didn’t take a thing but the clothes on her back, and didn’t care to! Jumped up behind him on that horse Betty and they took off in the light of the moon heading down toward Jefferson at a pretty fast clip.

  Why, where are we going? she asked once, thinking they were headed the wrong way from Plain View, and he said, I done told you once. We are going to get married. Then they rode into town, straight down Main Street just as the first pretty streaks of dawn was showing in the sky, and turned up Perkins Lane into old Judge Worth’s yard, riding around to the back of his big brick house.

  Now it just so happened that the Judge hisself was standing on the back stoop in his purple satin robe smoking a cigarette while his hired girl Liz Ramey was fixing him some eggs for breakfast. They say he always ate four fried eggs for breakfast. He was a big man. Yessir. Big old belly, big old head of white hair.

  Boy, what do you want? he said.

  And Jacky said that they wanted to get married.

  Well, you’ll have to wait a while, then, the Judge said. You are welcome to come in the house while I have my breakfast, and then I will dress, and then we will get prepared for the ceremony, and then we will do it.

  We thank you kindly, sir, Jacky said, and we just appreciate it ever so much, and we don’t mean to put you out none, but the fact is that we are kindly in a rush here. So I am wondering . . . what if you was to marry us right now?

  You mean, on the horse? The old Judge leaned over the rail to get a better look at them.

  Yes sir, Jacky said. I’ve got some money here, sir, and I’ll be happy to pay whatever it costs.

  Well I’ll be damned, the old Judge said. Then he said, And what about you, young lady? Is this your intention too?

  Yes sir, Molly said.

  Well then, I reckon we will just get on with it. Liz, he hollered. Liz, come out here, and she did, and she was the witness, and they were married in a minute, with the Judge not showing a sign of recognition at the sound of their names which was wrote down on the paper and give to them right away. They never even got off the horse. Jacky folded the paper up real little and put it in his shirt pocket and paid the Judge and off they went while the Judge went back inside the house and sat down to breakfast, and his eggs was still warm.

  So Molly was real partial to Betty ever after, brushing her and patting on her all the time, and taking her a lump of maple sugar out to the barn ever day even when she got too old and broken down to ride, which was a time not long in coming. Oh, there was no question of giving Betty away, nor putting her out to pasture, Molly treated her like she was folks. Like she was company! Why she doted on that horse. Now maybe she wouldn’t have, as Clara said one time, if they had of had any children, but they didn’t. No, they was not blessed with children, you see, and that is the whole story. I’ll tell it. Lord yes, I’ll tell it all directly, but it is a long sad tale, and that is the heart of the thing.

  MOLLY PETREE IS A fine lady, and we hadn’t ever had us one of them up here before. Oh I don’t mean she put on airs, nor nothing like it, but there was a quality about her, a way she had with everybody, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what it was. She was just plain nice, for one thing. And she would set right beside you and listen to everything you had to say, for hours on end, asking stuff like where I got this or that for the store, and what all me and Jacky used to do when we was kids, and she didn’t even seem to care what I look like. She’d look me square in the face and not flinch, for a fact, now. And she’d get down on the floor and play with the children like she was a child herself. She’d try to get Luvenie to talk, which she wouldn’t, and she’d be real nice to Aunt Belle, who is crazy, and then she’d dote on Swannie—which is the way she really got around me, for Swannie was the sweetest one up here, and never complained, she was just like an angel.

  Swannie is Jacky’s sister, sir. Yes sir. I will try, sir.

  I lived in the house right out back with Miss Luvenie and Belle and Swannie, that way I could slip in and out of the store real easy, for somebody had to be in there ready to trade at all hours whenever we was holding a dance, or somebody was spending the night out in the wagon yard. Came to where I didn’t need hardly any sleep myself, just a catnap here and there.

  Molly took to Swannie right off the bat, sitting down next to her despite of the smell on that very first day she come here, and saying, Why, how long has this leg been like this? and Can’t anything be done? the answer being, of course, No, that Swannie would have to go down off the mountain for an operation, and then she might die anyway, and she didn’t want to go, and all together it would cost more money than any of us was like to get together in one lifetime.

  We’ve got that pasture land for sale, I told her, pointing out the window. Hell, we’ve got that whole mountain for sale, but it’s not like anybody is coming around here banging down the door to buy it.

  Oh my goodness. Molly pulled off the coverlet to look at Swannie’s leg herself. I will do that, she said to old Aunt Belle, who was fixing to swab it with kerosene.

  Good, said Belle in that highfalutin way of hers, because I have reason to believe that Mister George Roten will come calling for me shortly, and I must go to prepare myself.

  Molly cut her eyes at me. It was a pleasure to meet you, she said politely, as Belle swept out of the room like a damn queen.

  Now Belle is seventy if she is a day, and she ain’t never had a sweetheart to her name, yet she claims she had one that was lost in the War, Morrison Maitland his name was, and she has been mourning him ever since, and trying to get another one. She will set her cap for first this one, then that one. Like this George Roten, from over at Lansing. Why he is not but about forty years old, and married. Everybody around here thinks it’s a big joke, Miss Belle and her beaux. But it’s real sad if you think about it, like Miss Luvenie is sad, not talking and running off in the woods the way she does, and Swannie, with that rotten leg.

  Molly brightened things up, for a fact. Took over from Aunt Belle right that minute with Swannie’s leg. She used to say, Why Miss Belle, you haven’t got any business doing this kind of dirty work. You look so pretty today. Why don’t you just get yourself a drink out of the cooler, and go sit on the porch?

  What’s that, sir? Molly and Jack? They took over the house that used to belong to Big Jack, right out on the bald. It had stood empty for some several years, but Molly claimed she liked it. It’s a nice big cabin with a big porch. And the way they was carrying on together, it looked like they would fill it up with children in no time. So we cleaned it up for them. It’s real pretty out there. There’s a lot of wind, a lot of sky. You can see all around you in ever direction, and I reckon Jacky liked that part of it too. Can’t nobody sneak up on a man, now can they, brother? he said, and I said that no, it was not likely.

  I did not say that I could understand how he might be worried about this.

  It’s a nice view anyway, over there toward Tennessee. To my mind, it’s a prettier view than North Carolina, the mountains are higher and farther away, so that a feeling of distance and peace comes over a body, looking at Tennessee. Might be cause it was free in the War, I don’t know. But Molly was happy in that house, I’ll swear it. Ain’t no use you trying to make out a case that she was not. She loved him, and she loved being up on Plain View with us. She purely did.

  Molly was a hard worker too. Even that first day, her wedding day, she rolled up her sleeves as I said and then set about tending to Swannie and then went all around shaking hands with everybody in the store and out in the wagon yard. Hey Jacky! Have you gone and married a politician? somebody hollered, and Jacky he just grinned.

  We were not beneath her, is what I mean. She was interested in us. She was interested in everybody. And she didn’t even get mad when they came around serenading that night just like I figured they would, Jacky’s old running mates Ernest Dollar and General Gentry and Jubal Smith and that whole bunch, banging on pots and pans and su
ch, I believe you call it a shivaree.

  Her and Jacky had already gone to bed over there in their new old house. Calvin’s Clara had got up some bedding for them, and they had pulled the old rope four-poster bed over in front of the fire. I had helped them clean out the house, but then I got out of there. I couldn’t afford to think too much about it, you know, them in the bed and the firelight jumping around on the walls which was covered with old newspaper pictures, pasted on. I had clean forgotten that until I went over there to help them. Uncle Hat Ashby helped too, and Biddle and Calvin. We made short work of it.

  Good night! we all said, and Congratulations!

  But then. Just after midnight, here come the shivaree, with pots and pans banging and them whooping and hollering, all liquored up. You might of thought she’d be scared or something, a educated, fancy woman like that. Jacky was mad, I’ll tell you. He come out on the porch bare-chested, clutching his pants to his waist, and told them all to go to hell. But then she run out wearing her shift and her cloak, hair bouncing all around, and clapped her hands and said why didn’t they all get off their horses and stay awhile? Can’t you get some whisky or something from the store? she asked Jacky point-blank. So then he had to, and then we was in for it. It was a fine time, I’ll tell you, the first time that porch had been full of people in twenty years, I’ll bet, and not the last, either.

  They sung the sun up, and her and Jacky was the last to go to bed. I fixed them some breakfast first, ham and eggs. They did not come out of their house until after noon the next day. Everybody in the store started clapping when they walked in. Molly smiled and curtsied to them all.