Running on Red Dog Road

by Drema Hall Berkheimer

  Each one of the testimony-giving men had been the worst drunkard or the biggest liar or most lowdown cheater or gambler or some combination of all those things, that is, of course, until he got saved. Their stories were well-rehearsed from repeated tellings, and most of us pretty well knew what came next.

  Some of the men never felt called to testify. Maybe it was because they didn’t want to disappoint the folks who’d expect them to confess to the same awful sins the drunkards owned up to, puffing their chests as they got to the worst parts. The men who didn’t testify looked hangdog to me, like they were ashamed they didn’t have sins bad enough to brag about.

  Grandma said some in the church believed Roby had no business testifying because he wasn’t saved.

  I asked why everybody called him by his first name.

  “Same reason. It’s because he hasn’t got saved and joined the church family. If he was older, we’d call him Mister Stover, but he’s hardly more than a boy and folks have known him all his life, so we’d have trouble with the Mister. I expect he would too. Irregardless, we’re glad Roby and Roberta are worshiping with us regular. All are welcome and equal here, saints and sinners alike.”

  I didn’t know much about saints, but I did know that Roby was a big sinner. Maybe the biggest one I’d heard testify.

  Grandma wondered if Roby might be getting a mite too fond of standing up and repeating the same old story over and over.

  Grandpa said it wasn’t for him to chastise anyone for speaking out in the house of the Lord.

  As he sometimes did when he got up to testify, Roby added on a sin we hadn’t heard before, something about doing his saint-of-a-wife wrong. I didn’t know what he had done, but I could tell it was bad from the sheepish look on his face. He said he couldn’t say more because the innocent children and womenfolk there didn’t need to hear such talk, but surely everybody knew what he meant.

  I didn’t.

  Whatever it was that Roby confessed to caused heads to wag and whispers to hiss up and down the scarred wooden pews.

  When I asked Grandma, she said I didn’t need to be worrying myself about Roby Stover’s sins, just to worry about my own.

  She stood there looking at me until I remembered.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said.

  I was a little anxious about that look. I hoped she didn’t know about the times Sissy and I played gin rummy all night. That was the only sin I could think of that might send me straight to Hell. I wondered if Sissy would go to Hell too but decided she wouldn’t. She was a Methodist, and they didn’t care one way or the other if you gambled all night. No matter how I ran it around in my head, I couldn’t make it come out fair that I’d go to Hell and she wouldn’t for the very same sin. It came to me then that some things never would be fair. I’d decided to be a Methodist when I grew up. So I hoped God would remember that and take it into account.

  Grandpa preached a whole flock of angels down from Heaven that night. Despite his best efforts, it looked like nobody was coming forward to get saved.

  But Grandpa wasn’t one to give up easy.

  “Let’s sing the first and last verse one more time,” he said for the third time. “The Lord is reaching out to you tonight, ready to cleanse you of your sins for all eternity. If you are tired, He’ll be your resting place. If you are disappointed, He’ll be your hope for tomorrow. If you are lonely, He’ll be your faithful companion. He’s calling for you to come home.”

  The congregation, heads bowed, sang, “Come home, come home, ye who are weary come home . . .”

  Roby lurched up from his seat and began to shout, “Praise the Lord!” and “Hallelujah!” with tears flying off his face and splotching his blue chambray work shirt. Grandpa continued with the invitation and others sang, while still others started praying and speaking in tongues. Grandma went down on her knees and began to utter words I couldn’t make sense of. Every line and wrinkle dissolved from her face. Lit from within, her gaze transfixed by sights unseen by me, she repeated the words again and again, her voice soft and urgent.

  Next thing I knew, Roby was on his knees, head held in his hands, praying like his life depended on it. Even though he was a sinner, Roby Stover was one of the best we had at praying. Grandpa went back and knelt by his side, his right arm around Roby’s shoulder, beseeching him to come forward and give his life to the Lord.

  As the last of the chorus was sung and nobody answered the call, Grandpa strode to the front and lifted his arms to give the benediction.

  Afterwards, the men and women broke into separate clusters in the churchyard. Grandma huddled with Sister Wood and some others from the Home Missionary Society. I waited nearby, straining to hear every word the women said.

  “Must have taken her better than a week to make that dress.”

  “Outlandish for a married woman, if you want my opinion.”

  “Beaver’s Grocery is carrying notions. But land’s sake, they’ll put you in the poor house.”

  “I heard tell Jayboy, he’s her youngest, is home on furlough from the Navy.”

  “You don’t reckon he’ll go sniffing around that Jones girl again?”

  “He won’t if her daddy catches wind of it.”

  Roby’s name wasn’t even mentioned. The women had witnessed his tearful confessions before and were sure to again. Besides, they had newer things to gossip about.

  As Roby put Roberta in the neighbor’s car, he gave her a quick pat on the behind.

  Sister Wood’s eyebrows shot up. Before she could sputter a single word of rebuke, Roby turned tail and swaggered off in the direction of the ash pit.

  On the way home Grandma said it was such a pity Roby didn’t get saved.

  “Yes,” Grandpa said, “but I’ve got a feeling the Lord’s going to win the battle next time. Sure as the world, I do believe it. Do I hear an amen?”

  “Amen,” me and Grandma said.

  14

  A Gizzard on My Fork

  Sometimes the Pentecostals held a revival meeting in a tent that looked big enough to hold the circus that came to town every year. Ragtag boys from the neighborhood hoped to earn pocket change for setting up rows of mismatched fold-up chairs. A big sign across the makeshift stage declared JESUS SAVES, and the evangelist preaching might be a little bit famous in Pentecostal circles.

  Side flaps of the tent were folded up so you could hold to the hope a whiff of breeze would find its way through the crowded rows to where you were sitting. A chorus of preaching and praying and shouting and singing blurred into the night. The hymn “Just as I Am” flowed over bowed heads as the service came to a close.

  Moths as big as baby birds flocked around the lights.

  We kept the good bedroom, the downstairs one with a small sitting room attached, for visiting missionaries and preachers, the rest of us crowding upstairs into three low-ceilinged attic bedrooms. The little-bit-famous preacher came home with us from the evening service. Grandma heated up the blackberry cobbler and whipped up a whole mixing bowl of fresh cream.

  The preacher patted his mouth with a napkin made from a white flour sack.

  “Sister Cales, I have been privileged to dine in some of the finest cafés and eateries in Franklin County, and I have not to this day been served anything of an equal to your blackberry cobbler.”

  Grandma thought that was worth another helping. The pie, spooned up in flat soup bowls with a generous heap of the cream on top, washed down easy with big glasses of sweet milk.

  And that put everyone to sleep in no time.

  Missionaries who always seemed to be just back from Africa stayed with us. Sister Guyandott lived with us all summer one time. She wanted the church to send her supplies packed in popcorn to share with the natives who didn’t know about civilized treats like exploding corn. She also wanted a supply of unpopped corn so she could demonstrate the magic of it when she got back to Africa. I thought she wanted to scare the natives right out of their pagan beliefs into being good Pentecostals and coverin
g up their naked bodies from necks to ankles and elbows and never again painting their faces or wearing beads around their necks or feathers on their heads.

  After the closing service, the Pentecostals held a dinner on the ground. A picnic could be held by anyone, but dinner on the ground was different—only the church held dinner on the ground. Food was pulled from baskets and boxes and paper bags and set out on sawhorse tables made with planks and covered with extra sheets the women had brought. If I squinted my eyes against the sun, the circle of quilts spread on the ground turned into a kaleidoscope of fanciful designs. Folks sitting down to eat their dinners and catch up on the news gradually blotted out the colorful shapes.

  “Brother Harvey, you got any Elsie’s pups left? Like to have one for my boy if you do.”

  “Sister Sutphin, how’s your girl over in Charleston doing?”

  “James Junior, you get your feet off that quilt before I come over there.”

  “Be sure to get a piece of Sister Wood’s fried chicken. She soaks it in buttermilk, you know.”

  Their voices had the twang of the mountains, like a softly strummed banjo gone a little off tune.

  There were whole hams and fried chickens and meatloaves, baked beans and cabbage slaw and deviled eggs, pickled eggs and pickled green beans and homemade sour pickles that turned your mouth inside out before they ever touched your tongue, biscuits and cornbread and loaves of light bread from the store. The men without wives brought the store-bought bread.

  “That stuff ’s not fit to eat,” Grandma said with a little sniff, but she put a piece on her plate when she thought I wouldn’t notice. I wanted her to stay in a good mood, so I didn’t let on.

  Sister Wood’s platter of fried chicken was disappearing fast. Grandma said for me to hurry on over there and get a piece. I sure hoped I could find me a gizzard. Sister Harper saw me poking through the chicken and said, “Honey, I brought them pickled beans you like so much. You go get you some.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said, coming up with a gizzard on my fork.

  The flat pan of macaroni and cheese Sister Blankenship served up looked just like Grandma’s. When I mentioned it, she laughed. “Well, it ought to. I’m the one told her how to go about fixing it.” I put some on my plate. Still, I made sure to save a little room for Grandma’s cake. I remembered to tell her I didn’t think Sister Blankenship’s macaroni was quite as good as hers. She said, “I swan, you are a sight.” But her eyes told me she liked the compliment.

  I wandered over to find me a spot. The Drunkard’s Path was my favorite quilt pattern, but I guess Grandma thought it wasn’t fitting for a church social, so she’d brought a quilt called Jacob’s Ladder. She was busy talking to Sister Wood. I stopped to listen and caught the tail end of something about that last one being the image of his best friend. I was hoping to have more to tell Sissy, but I couldn’t make out much of what they were saying. I sidled my way closer.

  Grandma gave me a look.

  I scooted out of there to get me a piece of cake.

  Desserts of all kinds and colors made accidental centerpieces on the tables. There were rhubarb, cherry, and apple crumb pies worthy of blue ribbons. An angel food cake piled with strawberries, another cake stiff with walnuts, and a vanilla cake with boiled frosting all vied for attention.

  But Grandma’s cake was best.

  She made an Appalachian stack cake with lots of thin molasses-flavored layers put together with homemade cinnamon apple butter. She said the cake was sad, but that didn’t have anything to do with being down in the dumps, it was just our way of saying it was moist and heavy. She told me that stack cake was used for weddings and funerals and other socials back when she was a girl. Baking was costly, so each woman brought a layer to add to the cake or a jar of apple butter or cherry preserves to smear between the layers.

  Brother Dub called for me to bring him some of Grandma’s cake. His last name was Williams, but everybody always just called him Brother Dub. Grandma said the Dub probably came from the first letter of his last name. He only had one leg so it was kind of hard for him to get around. Grandma said he’d got his leg blown off in the War and that was a shame. I cut an extra big piece and walked it over to him, balancing it on two slightly greasy hands.

  By way of thanks he said it looked like I just might grow up to be as fine of a woman as my grandma.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was wrong about how I was going to turn out. After all, he had no way of knowing about me and Sissy gambling with real cards all night.

  Finally everyone picked up their dishes and quilts and, like a scene played backwards, everything went back into baskets and boxes and paper bags.

  It had been a grand day.

  A shooting star silvered through the dusky sky. I stopped and closed my eyes to make a wish. I wished for my mother to come home.

  Grandma said if I didn’t stop being such a slowpoke we never would get home.

  “Yes ma’am,” I said.

  15

  Suffer the Little Children

  Like a tribe worshiping a false idol, we sat bowed around the big Philco radio in the front room, leaning forward not to miss a single word Rochester said about Jack Benny and his cheapskate ways. My brother, Hursey, home from Romney School for the Deaf, came busting in, raring to tell Grandma something or other. Although I motioned him to wait, it was too late—we’d missed the funny part. It was done without giving it a thought—that hand I held up to stop Hursey from interrupting, but there was a look came over his face I’d never noticed before, maybe because I wasn’t much interested in anything that didn’t have me in the center of it. Yet the hurt I sensed come over my brother at that moment came over me as well.

  Hursey Clev, feisty and sharp as a tack, was the spitting image of our daddy, whose given name he carried, and the Clev, of course, he got from Grandpa Luther Clevland Cales. My mother was only sixteen when she had him, just a child herself, my daddy twenty-three. They’d run off and got married when she was fifteen, but it was too late for Grandpa to do much about it besides shooting my daddy with his double-barreled shotgun.

  Grandma said the thought likely crossed his mind.

  A smile twitching at her mouth, she shook her head. “Oh he was a charmer, your daddy was, coming around with silver-blond hair and a silver tongue. The way he set his sights on your mother, there was no stopping him. Your mother was shy as a girl, but willful too. Some are at that age, as I expect you’ll find out when you have young’uns of your own. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “I don’t want any babies when I grow up,” I told her.

  “You’re likely to change your mind when you get a little farther down the road,” she said.

  “Nope, not a one,” I repeated.

  Dangling a soggy baby on my hip all day didn’t interest me one bit. I had in mind to ride an elephant through the jungle with a parrot named Echo on my shoulder and sing songs we both knew all the words to, like “Zippity Doo Dah” and “You Are My Sunshine.”

  Grandma told me the story about when my brother was little and got very sick. She said it wasn’t like him not to be outside running and playing with the other children who lived nearby. But one day he took to laying around, all the energy sucked out of him. Then he started complaining of a headache and felt warm. By suppertime he was burning with a fever that cold rags didn’t do a thing to bring down. Next day he was vomiting and said his neck hurt, so the company doctor in Lynwynn, that’s the coal camp where they were living at the time, was sent for. But first he had to deliver Marlene Mae Haegar’s baby up in Yell Again Holler. Marlene was having some trouble so the doctor couldn’t say when, but he promised to come when he could.

  A holler was the small valley between the folds of two mountains. Yell Again Holler got its name because it was so narrow ever little noise carried so far that if you wanted someone who lived along the flats, you just stood at the bottom and yelled the name of who you wanted to come down to meet you. You
were sure to be heard by the first house, they’d yell again to the next, and so on, until word got to the right person.

  After Marlene suffered hours of tears and travail, the doctor delivered a boy, a blue baby who never took his first breath. She was bleeding bad, so he’d had to tend to her, the baby dark and lifeless in her arms, before he could start for our house.

  Noon came and went before the doctor finally got there, Marlene Mae Haegar’s blood still wet on his clothes. Grandma heated a basin of water and sliced off a piece of lye soap so he could wash up before he looked down Hursey’s throat and in his ears and up his nose and listened to the gurgles of his stomach and the beatings of his heart, prodding and poking at his little boy body. She remembered a streak on the doctor’s forehead where he’d pushed his hair aside with a bloody hand when he was tending Marlene. Funny how some little thing like that will stick in your mind.

  Grandma had stewed an old rooster until the meat on his bones fell off, thickened up the broth, and pinched off biscuit dough to make the kind of puffy dumplings Hursey liked. Still, he only ate a bite or two. The doctor was another story. He hadn’t eaten a hot meal since the day before, so he made up for it by downing a big portion of that rooster along with generous helpings from the pot of leather britches, potatoes, and onions jiggling together in a savory broth. Leather britches were green beans threaded onto strings and hung from the ceiling to dry, which toughened up the shells. If you wanted a mess ready for supper, you had best put them on the fire before you measured out the coffee for breakfast.

  He sure did hate to eat and run, but it couldn’t be helped, the doctor had said, pulling off the napkin he’d tucked under his collar to protect his stained green necktie. He said there’s a baby over toward the tipple waiting to be born and he prayed to God that little one would have a better outcome than the one he just came from. He told Grandma to try to get some broth down Hursey and to keep on with the wet rags. Other than that, there was little else to be done.