by Robert Coles
“There was a time I thought I’d never stay here when I got big and could leave, but I guess I’ll stay for a little, and see if I like it, now that I’m grown. In a few years they might take me in the Army, and then I’d be able to look over other places to live. Of course, the bossman can tell the Army not to take you, if he wants, because he needs us. He told me if I wanted to go North, he’d let me, but we’re to have a child soon, and I have trouble with my eyes, seeing. The bossman said there’d be doctors working for the Army, and they wouldn’t let me in. He said one of these days he was going to take me over to his doctor and have him fix up all my ailments, and especially fix my eyes. I said thank you; and I’m still waiting on him, and he’s never yet repeated himself or took me over there. But I’ll be fine, I hope.”
One can only hope, as he does. One can only hope that he will be fine, and his family will be fine and other such families will be fine. One can only hope that his nation keeps on being “fine” — the envy of the world, the pride of the West, the home for hundreds of years, it has turned out, of loyal and resigned young sharecropper men who say that all will go well with them, but know how wicked and cursed the order of things is, know it in ways people like me — however earnest and prolonged our scrutiny — can never really know.
Hidden Children
They live up alongside the hills, in hollow after hollow. They live in eastern Kentucky and eastern Tennessee and in the western part of North Carolina and the western part of Virginia and in just about the whole state of West Virginia. They live close to the land; they farm it and some of them go down into it to extract its coal. Their ancestors, a century or two ago, fought their way westward from the Atlantic seaboard, came up on the mountains, penetrated the valleys, and moved stubbornly up the creeks for room, for privacy, for a view, for a domain of sorts. They are Appalachian people, mountain people, hill people. They are white yeomen, or miners, or hollow folk, or subsistence farmers. They are part of something called “the rural poor”; they are sometimes called “hillbillies.” They are people who live in a “depressed area”; and they have been called part of a “subculture.” They have also been called “backward,” and more inscrutably, “privatistic.” They are known as balladeers and they are thought to have a tradition of music and poems and stories that is “pure” — right from old England and old Scotland and early if not old America.
As for the minds of those mountaineers, the rest of us outside their region are not supposed to have any way of really getting around certain traits that (so it is claimed) make the inhabitants of the hollows hard to reach psychologically, even as their territory and their cabins can be virtually unapproachable. Up in the hollows, the story goes, one finds sullen, fearful, withdrawn men and women who distrust outsiders, shun much of the twentieth century, cling to old and anomalous customs, take to liquor rather freely, and in general show themselves to be survivors of a rural, pioneer America for the most part long since gone. Up in the hollows, one is also told, the worst poverty in the nation exists, with hundreds of thousands of people condemned to a life of idleness, meager employment, long, snowbound winters and summers that can be of limited help to a man who has only an acre or two for planting on the side of a steep, rocky hill. Finally, up in the hollows history’s cruel lessons are supposed to be unmistakably apparent: an ignored and exploited people have become a tired people, a worn-out people, a frivolous or unresponsive people, the best of whom, the ones with any life at all in them, continue to leave, thereby making an already dismal situation an almost impossible one.
No one, least of all the people in or near the hollows themselves, would want to deny all of that. Appalachia is indeed cut off in some respects from the rest of us; and the region’s people are indeed quiet and reserved and often enough full of misgivings about “city people” and “outsiders,” and the declarations of concern and the offers of help that have lately come from “them,” whom one mountaineer I have known since 1964 goes on to describe as follows: “They’re full of sugar when they come, and they say they want to do something for you; but I can’t stand the sight of them, not one of them, because they’re two-faced and wanting to treat you like you are dumb, a fool, and someone that needs to be told everything he should do and can’t figure anything out for himself.”
Yet, that same man, who lives way up one of those hollows (in Swain County, North Carolina) has other things to say about visitors and tourists, and by implication, other things to say about himself and his own kind of people: “A lot of cars come riding through here, you know. Everyone wants to look at the hills, and the bigger the waterfall you have to show, the better. They’ll stop their driving and ask you directions to things, if you’re down there on the main road, and I always try to help. You see, we’re not against those people. It’s beautiful here, right beautiful. You couldn’t make it better if you could sit down and try to start all over and do anything you want. If they come here from clear across the country and tell you how they love what they’ve seen and they want to see more, I’m ready to help them, and I always act as polite as I can, and so do they, for the most part. The ones I don’t like one bit are different. They don’t want to look and enjoy your land, like you do yourself; no sir, they want to come and sit down and tell you how sorry you are, real sorry, and if something isn’t done soon, you’re going to ‘die out,’ that’s what one of them said. I wasn’t there, but I heard he came from Asheville, or from some big city, maybe not in North Carolina; and he was supposed to get us meeting together, and if we did there’d be some money in it for us, and he kept saying we’re in bad shape, they tell me he did, and worst of all are the kids, he said, and didn’t we know that.
“I didn’t hear him or his exact words, of course, but it’s not the first time it’s happened like that, because a year ago I heard someone talk the very same. He came to the church and we all listened. He said we should have a program here, and the kids should go to it before they start school. He said the government would pay for it, from Washington. He said they’d be teaching the kids a lot, and checking up on their health, and it would be the best thing in the world. Well, I didn’t see anything wrong with the idea. It seemed like a good idea to me. But I didn’t like the way he kept repeating how bad off our kids are, and how they need one thing and another thing. Finally I was about ready to tell him to go home, mister, and leave us alone, because our kids are way better than you’ll ever know, and we don’t need you and your kind around here with nothing good to say, and all the bad names we’re getting called. I didn’t say a word, though. No, I sat through to the end, and I went home. I was too shy to talk at the meeting, and so were a lot of the others. Our minister was there, and he kept on telling us to give the man a break, because he’d come to help us. Now, I’m the first to admit we could stand some help around here, but I’m not going to have someone just coming around here and looking down on us, that’s all, just plain looking down on us — and our kids, that’s the worst of it, when they look down on your own kids.
“My kids, they’re good; each of them is. They’re good kids, and they don’t make for trouble, and you couldn’t ask for them any better. If he had asked me, the man out of the East, Washington or someplace, I would have told him that, too. We all would have. But he didn’t want to ask us anything. All he wanted was to tell us he had this idea and this money, and we should go ahead and get our little kids together and they would go to the church during the summer and get their first learning, and they would be needing it, because they’re bad off, that’s what he must have said a hundred times, how bad off our kids are, and how the President of the United States wants for them to get their teeth fixed and to see a doctor and to learn as much as they can. You know what my wife whispered to me? She said, he doesn’t know what our kids have learned, and still he’s telling us they haven’t learned a thing and they won’t. And who does he think he is anyway? I told her it’s best to sit him out and we could laugh out loud later when we left the church.”
Later, when they left the church, they went home to their children, who were rather curious about the reason their parents had seen fit to go out to a meeting after supper in the middle of the week. There are five of those children and they range from four months to nine years. All the children were born in Swain County, North Carolina, as were their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents going back a century and more. Nor does Mrs. Allen want her children to be born anyplace else, or for that matter, under any other circumstances: “This is good country, as anybody will likely admit once he’s seen it, and there’s no reason to leave that I can see. You ask about the children I’ve borne; well, they’re all good children, I believe they are. I’ve lost two, one from pneumonia we thought, and one had trouble from the moment he was alive. He was the only child that ever saw a doctor. We brought him down to Bryson City and there was a doctor there, waiting to see him. The Reverend Mason had called over, and he went with us.
“The doctor looked over the child real good, and I kept on fearing the news was going to be bad, the longer he looked and the more tests he did. Then he said he’d need extra tests, even beyond what he did, and we would have to come back. Of course I told him we’d try, but it’s real hard on us to get a ride, and there’s the other children I have, and my mother’s gone, so they have to be left with one another the whole day, and there’s a baby that needs me for feeding. The doctor said he could understand, but he needed those tests, and he was going to have to call some other doctor way over in Asheville or someplace and ask him some things. Mr. Mason said he’d drive us again, and we’d better do what the doctor said. Mr. Mason asked the doctor if there was much hope, even if we did everything and kept on coming back, so long as we had to, and the doctor shook his head, but he didn’t say anything, one way or the other. But then my husband, Mr. Allen, he decided we’d better ask right there and then what was happening, and he did. He told the doctor that we’re not much used to going to see doctors, and we’d like to know where we stand — it’s just as plain and simple as that. The doctor asked if he could talk to Mr. Mason alone, and we said yes, that would be fine by us, but please couldn’t they decide between themselves and then come and tell us something before we go back. And they did. They didn’t talk too long before they came out, and said they would be honest with us, like we wanted, and the problem was with little Edward’s muscles, and they weren’t good from the start, and chances are they’d never be much good, and if we come back for the tests we might find out the exact disease, but he was pretty sure, even right then the doctor was, that Edward had a lot of bad trouble, and there wasn’t much that could be done for him, and we might as well know it, that he’d not live to be grown up, and maybe not more than a year was the best we could hope for.
“I was real upset, but I was relieved to be told; I was thankful as can be for that. I guess Jim and I just nodded our heads and since we didn’t say a word, and it was getting along, the time, the doctor came over and he asked if we had any questions to ask of him. I looked at Jim and he looked at me, and we didn’t think of anything, and then Mr. Mason said it was all right, because if we did think of something later, we could always tell him and he could tell the doctor. The doctor said yes, and he said we were good people, and he liked us for being quiet and he wished he could do more. Jim said thank you, and we were glad he tried to help, and to be truthful we knew that there was something real bad wrong, and to us, if there isn’t anything we can do, then chances are there isn’t anything that anyone can do, even including a doctor, if he didn’t mind us saying so. Mr. Mason said he wasn’t sure we were in the right, and I said we could be wrong, and maybe they could have saved little Anne from her fever that burned her up — it was the pneumonia, we were sure. The doctor said there wasn’t much use going back to what was over and done with, and I agreed. When we left, Mr. Mason said we could take the child back to the doctor anytime and he would drive us, and the doctor told the reverend he wouldn’t charge us, not a penny. But Edward died a few weeks later. He couldn’t breathe very good, like the doctor explained to us, because of his muscles, and the strain got to be more than he could take, so he stopped breathing, the little fellow did, right there in my arms. He could have lived longer, they said, if we’d have let them take him and put him in a hospital, you know, and they have motors and machines, to work on you. But I don’t believe the Lord meant for Edward to go like that, in a hospital. I don’t.”
Her words read sadder than they sounded. She is tall, thin, but a forceful and composed woman, not given to self-pity. She has delicate bones, narrow wrists, thin ankles, decidedly pale blue eyes, and a bit surprisingly, a very strong, almost aquiline nose. She was thirty and, I thought, both young and old. Her brown hair was heavily streaked with gray, and her skin was more wrinkled than is the case with many women who are forty or even fifty, let alone thirty. Most noticeable were her teeth; the ones left were in extremely bad repair, and many had long since fallen out — something that she is quite willing to talk about, once her guest has lost his embarrassment and asked her a question, like whether she had ever seen a dentist about her teeth. No, she had never done anything like that. What could a dentist do, but take out one’s teeth; and eventually they fall out if they are really no good. Well, of course, there are things a dentist can do — and she quickly says she knows there must be, though she still isn’t quite sure what they are, “those things.” For a second her tact dominates the room, which is one of two the cabin possesses. Then she demonstrates her sense of humor, her openness, her surprising and almost awesome mixture of modesty and pride: “If you want to keep your teeth, you shouldn’t have children. I know that from my life. I started losing my teeth when I started bringing children into the world. They take your strength, your babies do, while you’re carrying them, and that’s as it should be, except if I had more strength left for myself after the baby comes, I might be more patient with them. If you’re tired you get sharp all the time with your children.
“The worst tooth to lose is your first one, after that you get used to having them go, one by one. We don’t have a mirror here, except a very small one and it’s cracked. My mother gave it to me. When I pick it up to catch a look at myself I always fix it so that I don’t see my teeth. I have them in front of the crack instead of the glass. I’d like to have the teeth back, because I know I’d look better, but you can’t keep yourself looking good after you start a family, not if you’ve got to be on the move from the first second you get up until right before you go to sleep. When I lie down on the bed, it’s to fall asleep. I never remember thinking about anything. I’m too tired. So is Jim; he’s always out there working on something; and so are the kids, they’re real full of spirits. No wonder I lost so many teeth. When you have kids that are as rowdy and noisy as mine, they must need everything a mother’s got even before they’re born. Of course, even now Jim and I will sacrifice on their account, though they’ll never know it.
“I always serve myself last, you know. I serve Jim first, and he’s entitled to take everything we have, if he wants to, because he’s the father, and it’s his work that has brought us what we have, all of it. But Jim will stop himself, and say he’s not so hungry, and nod toward the kids, and that means to give them the seconds before him. We don’t always have seconds, of course, but we do the best we can. I make corn bread every day, and that’s filling. There’s nothing I hate more than a child crying at you and crying at you for food, and you standing there and knowing you can’t give them much of anything, for all their tears. It’s unnatural. That’s what I say; it’s just unnatural for a mother to be standing in her own house, and her children near her, and they’re hungry and there isn’t the food to feed them. It’s just not right. It happens, though — and I’ll tell you, now that you asked, my girl Sara, she’s a few times told me that if we all somehow could eat more, then she wouldn’t be having trouble like me with her teeth, later on. That’s what the teacher told them, over there in the school.
“Well, I told Sara the only thing I could tell her. I told her that we do the best we can, and that’s all anyone put here on this earth can ever do. I told her that her father has worked his entire life, since he was a boy, and so have I, and we’re hoping for our kids that they may have it a lot better than us. But this isn’t the place to be, not in Swain County here, up in this hollow, if you want to sit back and say I’d like this and I’d like that, and you’d better have this and something else, because the teacher says you should. I told Sara there’s that one teacher, and maybe a couple more, and they get their salaries every week, and do you know who the teacher’s uncle is — he’s the sheriff over there in Needmore. Now, if Sara’s daddy made half that teacher’s salary in cash every week, he’d be a rich man, and I’d be able to do plenty about more food. But Sara’s daddy doesn’t get a salary from no one, no one, you hear! That’s what I said to her, word for word it was. And she sat up and took notice of me, I’ll tell you. I made sure she did. I looked her right in the eyes, and I never stopped looking until I was through with what I had to say. Then she said, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and I said that I didn’t want any grudges between us, and let’s go right back to being friends, like before, but I wanted her to know what the truth was, to the best of my knowledge, and nothing more. She said she knew, and that was all that was said between us.”