by Lee Smith
But we don’t care. We are done with all that.
Henry and Juney dug up the big field beside Liddy’s kitchen. Here. You can see them out there working in the garden right now, through this chink of a window.
Just look!
What a garden!
Now in midsummer we have row upon row of tall rustling corn with silk at the tops of the ears and morning glories climbing all over the sturdy stalks, potatoes and cabbage and onions and beets, big old pie plants and shiny elegant eggplant, hill after riotous hill of squash — Hubbard, pittypat, yellow, and green — with their yellow flowers blooming. Beans climb up the strings laced between their poles like Jacob’s ladders. Skinny orange carrots stand in the dirt with their lacy tops waving. Gourds and watermelons hide among their vines growing bigger and bigger. In spring we have early greens and little butter lettuce and also ruffly lettuce, like crinolines. Pumpkins and mustard and curly kale in the fall, and collards with their huge veiny leaves.
But look.
Juney moves across the garden on his hands and knees as the sun moves across the sky, pulling radishes like jewels out of the earth, onions and potatoes with dirt clinging to them. Henry follows, holding the old flat basket, both of them unhurried, for they know they have all the time in the world. Here we’ve got nothing but time! Juney wears a pale blue shirt and an old straw hat. His fingers scurry like spiders, finding sweet peas. Henry goes away with his basket full and comes back with another basket. Now Juney stands and moves among the corn rows, lost to view. Juney can tell a perfect full ear by the feel of it, he is never wrong.
On Saturday we will take all these vegetables to market in town along with some eggs and some flowers stuck into old coffee cans that Mister Jordan gives us from the coffee shop every Saturday. We like to go to market. We sit on the bench outside the old courthouse until everything is sold. Then Juney will play us a tune on Spencer’s old harmonica, he plays “Shortnin’Bread” and “John Henry” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” Juney learned these tunes from negroes when he lived in the woods and on the place by himself for so long like an animal. The negroes called him the Big-Headed Boy.
“Stagolee and Billy, two men who gambled late, Stagolee threw a seven and he swore that he threw eight,” Juney will sing while everybody gathers round. One time a nice young man came out here and recorded Juney singing into a machine. Another time some bad boys from town came out here and picked him up in a car and took him to sing at a party. They dumped him back onto the piazza the next day and he was hurt, he ran into the woods and was gone for days, I do not know what happened to him. Their mothers came out from town to apologize. “Stagolee shot Billy, Billy fall down on the floor —” Whenever Juney sings and plays the harmonica, a good-sized crowd will gather.
Oh I know what they say about us in town, and I say, the hell with them! I tell you, I don’t give a damn. I have got to be an old woman in the twinkling of an eye, and it is sort of a relief, I can tell you. I do what I want to now. Last week I traded all our eggs for ice cream at Holden’s Grocery. Now that I have shrunk down little as a child, I figure I might as well act like one. I don’t care. I like ice cream. Juney does too. We like to put bourbon in it, and make ourselves a milkshake.
Look at him out there in the hot hot sun, moving so slow along the rows. He is as good as he can be. Two negro women have come now to sit patiently on the bench over there under the tulip tree, one of them is reading a magazine, perhaps she will leave it for me. I like to find out what they are up to, all these girls. These two have come to consult Juney, and I know they will wait all day long if they have to. One of them looks to be pregnant, though it is hard to tell from up here. A little split oak basket sits between them, covered by a red cloth, so I know we will have something nice for supper.
I hope it is salmon cakes. We like salmon cakes too.
We love it when people bring their babies, which they often do, Juney has a way with babies. They quit screaming the minute he lays them flat on their tummies across his knees. His fingers are so little and quick, he can get out splinters, thorns, and fishbones in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. He blows down their throats to cure thrush. He says something into their ears for earache — who knows what Juney says? — and uses spiderwebs to stop bleeding. He did this to me one day when I had cut my finger with the kitchen knife, and it stopped immediately.
Juney is sweet as pie, my little man, as Simon called him. It kills me to think of him running wild in the woods all those years, it’s amazing he’s still alive. Or maybe not. But I wish so much that I had been here to find him and catch him and hold him tight. That’s all he needs. So I can’t die, for then who will do it? I think about this all the time. He won’t come to Henry. Sometimes Juney just sits like a sweet potato, with no more going on in his mind than that, his face so sweet and blank, but at other times he still takes off through the woods and no one can find him though he always comes home eventually. He is so tired then, he sleeps for days.
Juney moves along the rows while the negro girls fan themselves with their magazine. They have been joined by a white man in a white suit. It is not uncommon for people to drive miles to speak to Juney, though he does not really talk much. “No,” he’ll say, or “Yes,” or “Something like that.” It seems to be enough. Mostly he just listens and touches them, or touches something that they have brought with them, such as a handkerchief from somebody sick, or somebody they love or hate or something. There is no end to the kinds of trouble that people get into. There is no end to the terrible things that happen to them. Not a day passes that we don’t have somebody. They wait as long as they need to. They bring what they can. Sometimes it is a cake or a pie or a loaf of bread or a pretty rock or a feather or a hundred dollars or a bottle of bourbon. We like bourbon. Sometimes it is nothing. It doesn’t matter. It is a gift, as Juney’s illness, if it is an illness, has left him with certain gifts.
Now Juney moves across the garden on his hands and knees like a bug, lifting tomatoes up one by one to Henry who places them carefully in the basket so that they will not bruise. Our tomatoes are the best at the market, people always line up before we get there and we always sell out in fifteen minutes, or just as long as it takes me to weigh out the tomatoes and make the change, doing the sums in my head. It’s a funny thing. Sometimes these days I can’t remember people’s names, or whether I had breakfast or not, or what I was going to do when I went over to the stove. But I can still add the sums up lickety-split in my head, and recite most of “Hiawatha’s Childhood” for Juney. This is his favorite poem. He loves to say “Gitchee gumee” and “the shining Big-Sea-Water.” He also loves
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred
and “Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.” Juney loves poems, and he loves stories too.
“Say it, Mammalee,” he begs. Over the years he has gone from calling me Molly, or something like Molly, to Ma, to Mamma, to Mammalee. “Say it, Mammalee,” he begs, and I do, telling him, for instance, the story of the time Spencer caught the big fish, or the time the ghost horse galloped around the circle, or the time Old Bess and Virgil flew away over the snow, or the time Mary White and me saw the fairies, for I remember everything. “Say it, Mammalee,” Juney says, and I do. I say the world for him.
So I am the one who adds up the sums and tells the stories. Henry is the one who drives the car, for we have got a blue humpbacked car now, brought out to us from town by little Russ Grady, the son of old Russell Grady who was Simon’s attorney. We go to market in the car, Henry driving, me wearing Mitty’s old black hat, I know it scares the children, but you know what? I like to scare the children! And I believe they like it too.
• • •
July 22
I have forgot to say that twice lately I have waked to find myself in the passage, then last night I woke up out on the hill in the moonlight,
you know I used to sleepwalk as a girl. The full moon cast shadows behind every tree and the night breeze blew my nightgown around my legs. I had no memory of how I got out there, or even of going to bed, or what we ate for supper, or anything. But there I was on the hill, and then there was Juney too, he held out his little hand which did not surprise me, for Juney knows everything. Oftentimes he will answer questions before I even ask them, such as once I was wondering whatever became of Nicky Eck and he said, “Kilted, Mammalee, kilted.” His illness, if it is an illness, has left him with certain gifts. Sometimes I think he sees all our lives as if we are the people in the village in the paperweight Ben Valiant gave me so long ago, he sees our comings and goings to and fro, he sees me nursing Christabel deep in the night while the rain drums so loud on the roof and there’s nobody awake but us, he sees Simon’s Minha Nega and his twin boys caught forever in the water at the bottom of the lake with the skirt of her blue embroidered peasant dress swirling all around them.
I took Juney’s hand and we walked out of the woods and across the yard together past the big garden with our shadows going out in front of us like giants. “Look Mammalee,” said Juney, waving his arms, and then both of us waved our arms up and down and our shadows waved back, we were both laughing so hard it was so funny though it was the middle of the night, I could not do without my little man.
He was working out in the garden with Henry when I woke up in my small iron bed in the tenant’s house, this used to be Selena’s house, and this was the children’s bed. Somehow it had already got to be afternoon.
I have forgot to tell you that Godfrey came back here once in the wintertime, snooping around in a big black car, he said that Blanche has been dead of tuberculosis for lo these many years and that Victoria had become a famous whore in San Francisco, then a rich man’s wife. She lives in a hotel now and wears an evening dress to dinner every night. Well I was glad to hear this! But all my life I have wondered, whatever became of Mary White? Godfrey of course did not know. Godfrey himself is a fatcat. He did not stay long or even get out of the car for Henry stood right there beside me holding the ax as he had been chopping firewood when they drove up. Godfrey had a lady in the car with him who kept saying, “Honey, let’s get out of here! This place is giving me the creeps!” Later we learned that he went on into town to look up the title on this property, but little Russ Grady handled that! “You are not to worry,” big Russell Grady always told us. “Mister Black has taken very good care of you.”
Washington came back too, years ago. He had become a lawyer with gray hair, in a three-piece suit. We sat in the parlor and visited, and looked at photographs of his wife and his five children, two boys and three girls, all of them dressed up. One of the boys looked exactly like Washington used to. He tried to give us money but we refused. “We don’t need a thing!” I said, while Juney nodded up and down. Juney liked Washington right off. Washington’s name was Elijah Washington Hall. He was in the Legislature in Pennsylvania then but he is dead now, a card came in the mail, edged in black. Washington had a big gold watch on a golden chain it told the time in six different places in the world but not the time out here at Agate Hill, we are on different time here.
So much has happened, and yet nothing has happened, for each day moves so slow, the way we like it on this place, Juney and Henry and me, the seasons as they come and go the days the hours each with its appointed task for we are creatures of the seasons here, like rabbits and whistle pigs, snakes and catfish. We keep chickens and bees and raise vegetables. We are a part of the earth and the sky, the living and the dead, and we make no distinction between them. One great war has come, and another is likely, Juney says. So it will happen. Now there are electric lights in town, and many cars on the road.
Tomorrow we will go to market. I must not let my little man play marbles with the little boys. He always wants to play but their mothers jerk them away oh nevermind, that was years ago. These years have passed as in the twinkling of an eye as in the Bible, a book I have never much cared for.
Now Juney is lining up the coffee cans on the bench in front of Liddy’s kitchen and Henry is cutting the flowers to put in them, so I had better get down there. Henry does not have an eye for it, and Juney can’t see worth a damn. So I am the one who arranges the flowers I will say them aloud to Juney, “Red zinnia, orange chrysanthemum, purple aster, sunflower, sunflower, rose.”
“Say it, say it, Mammalee,” Juney says.
I am the one who arranges the flowers. Henry is the one who will drive the car.
July 23
And today is the day we will go to market if this morning ever comes! I have been awake all night long I believe I have got my days and nights turned around now but nevermind it is all the same to me I will sleep when I’m dead anyway! So why worry about it!
The moonlight is beautiful, shining bright as day in the yard, falling upon this page upon this diary and the box that contains my life. Agate Hill is a magical place again, as it was when Fannie was still alive, for they are all still alive now, all of them including Mary White, see there she is in her red coat at the edge of the trees I am going down to her now. We will climb up the hill in the moonlight together it is bright as day but look, I cast no shadow. Oh why must she run ahead? Why will she not wait for me? We are going up to our Indian Rock we will dance and yell when the storm comes closer, first the thunder then the lightning you can count in between them one thousand foot soldiers, two thousand foot soldiers, three thousand foot soldiers to see how many miles away the storm is. The lightning is striking, the thunder rolls. It comes closer and closer.
But there up the hill is the Manbone Rock, thank God, and the cave, and the shadows Jacky makes with his fingers, and the jumping fire. “Molly,” he said when I came into the store with the lantern. “For God’s sake, Molly,” he said. He lay half on the floor and half across our big sack of flour which was covered with his blood for he had been gutshot, his stomach open. “Help me,” he said. “For God’s sake.” Jacky lay outstretched reaching for BJ’s gun which lay on the floor where he had dropped it, but now he could not get to it, the blood was coming too fast.
“Help me, Molly,” Jacky said.
All around us the store was in perfect order as we had left it, BJ and me, waiting for the morrow, with the piece goods all folded and the sums all totaled and the new round of hoop cheese under its glass dome.
“What must I do?” I asked, knowing the answer already.
“Honey, for God’s sake help me. Get. The gun.”
I went over and got it and put it into his hand which fell open, he could not hold it. “Who did this?” I said, but he shook his head and smiled at me all of a sudden, that sweet old crooked smile while his heart’s blood pooled on the floor. I was walking in Jacky’s blood. “Please, honey,” he said, and I took the gun in both hands and shot him in the neck so that his head fell over to the side with his eyes wide open and the smile still on his face and then I lay down there beside him, I would have done anything for my Jacky.
I was still there when BJ came in through the door hollering, for he had heard the shot, and came over to us and jerked me up though I wanted to stay, stay stay right there with my Jacky. But BJ jerked me up and thrust me toward the door and said, “Get over there, Molly, or I will kill you too.” He tossed the gun out the door and opened the big cans of kerosene and threw it all over the back of his beloved store all over the clothes and the groceries and the piece goods and held me tight when I tried to stop him for I saw what he was going to do. Then BJ threw the lantern into the clothes and flames sprang up like an explosion lighting up BJ’s poor face as he thrust it into mine.
“Now listen to me, Molly,” he said, pinning my arms behind me. “You woke up, and you smelled smoke, and you came out here, and you found this fire, and Jacky was already shot, and you tried to save him, but you could not. You could not!” as the yellow flames licked Jacky’s face and lit up his yellow hair. I realized that it was BJ’s intention
to let Jacky burn, in order to save me. But somehow I got free and grabbed Jacky’s leg and then finally BJ started helping me too and then somehow we dragged him outside just as the dance floor fell in.
Oh Mary White, don’t you remember how we danced and danced as the storm came on, what did we know then of lightning? Jacky’s gone, one more time, Jacky’s gone. His banjo rings yet in my mind. Oh Mary White, I am glad I gave all my heart I would do it again I will tell all these young girls. And don’t you remember how we used to sneak up and lie on our Indian Rock at night? It was still warm from the sun, its heat went all through our bodies, and sometimes we fell asleep there as my stone babies sleep now on their mountain up at Plain View. Why here is Christabel, child of my heart, why here she comes running toward me with arms wide open, her face like a flower. I am the one who arranges the flowers. Zinnia chrysanthemum New York ironweed purple aster goldenrod sunflower rose. It is time to go to market. It is time. I am the one who tells the stories, Henry is the one who drives the car, and Juney is the one who holds the basket of eggs still warm on his lap while the land flows past on each side, tree and rock and fence and flower, all the hours, all the days, Juney is waving at everybody. Oh I could not do without my little man.
TUSCANY MILLER
30-B Peachtree Court Apts.
1900 Court Blvd.
Atlanta, GA 30039
Dear Dr. F:
And that is THE END! The end of the diary, that is all she wrote. Her death certificate at the courthouse says July 23,1927. So I don’t guess they ever made it to the market, do you? Or maybe they went on without her, Henry and Juney, what do you think? They were all so crazy. This is all pretty crazy but it is so sad too, it really gets to me, I have to say. I start crying every time I read the end.