Children of Crisis

by Robert Coles

  “I went down the mines for them, for the children, I think I could say that. We had two when I went, and five when I came home. Then came the trouble Laura had, the bleeding, and we lost a baby and then we lost another one and more bleeding and I thought we’d never have a child again. But a few years ago something must have happened inside her, you never know what, and here we are with babies again, and it’s like having two families, the older family first, and then we had a little rest, and now the younger one. Maybe if I’d kept on working in the mines, I could have taken Laura to a doctor someplace, and he would have figured out what there was wrong and what we should do. Around here there’s no doctor, and who can get up the money they ask, even if we could find one. I saw the first doctor of my life down there in Harlan County. The coal companies have them around, and the union has some of its own, you know. They gave me a going-over before I started working, and they said I needed a dentist, and I had some trouble with my bones here and there, I guess; but I was all right for work, they said.

  “As I see it, if I’d stayed in the mines we could have gotten Laura to a doctor, maybe in Harlan County. But I might have had to go to one first. The men I worked with, a lot of them had been down those mines longer than me, and it was a terrible sight to see them — working so hard, and they knew — oh did they! — that they were getting killed by the work they were doing, but they had to do it, because there wasn’t any other choice. I’d come back and tell my daddy about what the mines do to you, and he’d say I should stop it and stay here in Deep Hollow. He’d say you can’t win everything, that’s the most important thing to know, and never forget. If I was to stay a miner, he’d tell me, we’d all be living better, and Laura might see a doctor; but I’d be dead just like those miners are dying. If I was to stop and come back, then we’d be in a lot worse shape about owning what we want to own; but I’d be around to enjoy what we do have.

  “Now you ask me what we have. I’d answer you this way: the nicest land in the world, and the nicest people in the world to live on it. That’s a lot to have, I tell my kids, when they start crying and bellyaching about something, and they’ll ask me why it is the people on the television programs live so rich, and we’re not living very good up here — well, it’s then I’ll tell them they’re not seeing the half of it. They’re not seeing all the bad things about those cities, and all the meanness you’ll find out there. Some of the older miners, they’d been in the war against the Germans and the Japs, and they can tell you and so can my daddy and my older brothers. They’ve been to those cities. I’ll tell my kids that if they don’t believe me or anyone in Deep Hollow, then by God I’ll take that car sitting out there and somehow I’ll make it work again, and we’ll get ourselves over to Harlan County. There still are some miners there, and I’ll let my kids talk with them and let my kids see how they live, the people who do make a lot of money! Sure, they have nicer houses than we do, but the coughing they do, and the spitting up of the black stuff — knowing every second that the coal dust is in you, eating up your lungs — it’s all enough to make you want to turn right around and come back here, yes sir; and stay here until your last breath and be glad to be buried right over there.”

  He would point dramatically when he said something like that, point with his arm not his finger, with his whole body in fact; he would even get up and start walking toward the area where generations of Workmans have been buried by their kin, in simple caskets made out of wood from Deep Hollow. He never would go more than a couple of steps, however. In a few seconds he would be right back in his chair, talking with me and having himself “one or two more” and insisting that his guest do the same: “I guess you’d like to know if we raise up our kids some way that’s different from the way other people do. Isn’t that it? If you ask me, I’d say that Laura is real good to the kids and I try to be, too. We want them to remember their first years later on as a real good time — when they had a lot of fun, and when they learned all about the hollow and how to take care of themselves and go and do things out there up the hill and in the woods and down by the stream. We want them to be able to say when they’re grown up that they’re proud they were born to us, and they’re proud they’re living right here in Deep Hollow, Kentucky, yes sir. And if we’re going to be good parents, we’ve got to teach our kids a lot about Deep Hollow, so they can find their way around and know everything they’ve got to know. It’s their home, the hollow is. People who come here from outside are not likely to figure out that we’ve got a lot of teaching to do for our kids outside of school, and it’s not the kind they’ll get in books. My boy Danny has got to master the hollow; that’s what my dad used to say to me, all the time he would tell me and tell me and then I’d be in good shape for the rest of my life.”

  How does Danny get to master the hollow? For one thing, he was born there, and his very survival augurs well for his future mastery. Laura received no medical care while she carried Danny; the boy was delivered by his two aunts, who also live in Deep Hollow. Danny’s first encounter with the Appalachian land took place minutes after he was taken, breathing and screaming, from his mother. Laura describes what happened, and in time goes on to talk about a number of related matters: “Well, as I can recall, my sister Dorothy came over and showed him to me, and then he was making so much noise we knew he was all right. His birthday is July tenth, you see, and it was a real nice day. I’ll never forget, because that morning, while I was in pain and hoping the sooner the better, my sister said there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and that meant everything would be fine, and besides she saw two foxes and they were playing nice, and she must have been walking quiet because they didn’t pay her any attention, and she said it was good luck when you can just come upon them and they don’t get away so fast. She brought me a pail of blackberries that she’d picked and she said they were for later. When Danny was born Dorothy took him over and showed him the blackberries and said it won’t be long before he’ll be eating them, but first he’ll have to learn to pick them, and that will be real soon. Then he was still crying, and she asked me if I didn’t think he ought to go outside and see his daddy’s corn growing up there, good and tall, and the chickens we have and Spot and Tan, because they’re going to be his dogs, just like everyone else’s. I said to go ahead, and my sister Anne held me up a little. She lifted up my head so I could see, and the next thing I knew the baby was out there near Ken’s corn, crying as loud as he could, bless him, in Dorothy’s arms.

  “Of course everyone came around to see the child. Dorothy told them all to go back down to her house, but even while I was being delivered they must have been out in the woods, waiting to see what would happen. When she came out with Danny, all my children showed up, and my husband and Dorothy’s husband and her children and Anne’s husband and her children. They stood around and they said Danny was a red-haired one, like me, and wasn’t it good how loud he was with his crying. Ken held him high over his head and pointed him around like he was one of the guns being aimed. I heard him telling the baby that here was the corn, there was the beets, and there was cucumbers, and here was the lettuce, and there was the best laying chicken we’ve got. Next thing he told the baby to stop the crying and he did, he just did. Ken has a way with kids, even as soon as they’re born. He told him to shush up, and he did, and then he just took him and put him down over there, near the corn, and the other kids and my sisters all stood and looked. Dorothy was going to pick him up and bring him back to me, but Ken said he was fast asleep and quiet, and let him just lie there and we should all go and leave things be for a while. So they did; and Ken came in and told me I’d done real well, and he was glad to have a red-haired son, at last, what with two girls that have red hair but all the boys with brown hair. He said did I mind the little fellow lying out there near his daddy’s farm, getting to know Deep Hollow, and I said no, why should I, and he’s better off there than in here with me, what with being tired and the blood we have to clear away and it was too early for him to touch
me, because you know they don’t eat too good at first, and only after a week or so do you feel like they’re really drawing on you and getting something for themselves, like they should.

  “I don’t like to feed my baby inside, if the weather holds good on the outside. I’ll just go over there under that hickory and sit and rest and the baby will sit and rest and there’s a good wind that cools us off. Of course in the winter that’s different. In the winter if you go more than a few steps away from our stove, you’re likely to get a bad case of the shivers. I sleep near the stove, the baby right beside me. I have him all wrapped up in his daddy’s shirt. Yes, I’ll put paper around his bottom, to keep the shirts as clean as can be. I have the rope to the paper good and tight, and it’s all right on the child, not too tight. It’s better in the warm weather. You can just let the child be; you can let him lie in the sun, or so he won’t get burned up, you can put him under that hickory — the largest one right over there. A little of the sun dries him out, and the shade of the tree soothes him.”

  She was talking about Danny, but she was also talking more generally; for instance, she can remember similar events in the early life of “little Dorothy,” who is a year and a half younger than Danny. I have watched her with both Danny and “little Dorothy” or Dottie, named for the aunt who has delivered all Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Workman’s children. I have watched her sun the little boy and soothe him, sun Dottie and soothe her. I have sat nearby as she breast-fed her child quietly, calmly, neither proudly and ostentatiously nor with any shame or worry. Shortly after each child of hers is born, the boy or girl is set down on the land, and within a few months he is peering out at that land, moving on it, turning over on it, clutching at wild mountain flowers or a slingshot, a present from an older brother, or a spoon, a present from an older sister. Next comes crawling; and mountain children do indeed crawl. They are encouraged to crawl. They take to crawling and turning over and rolling down the grass and weeds. They take to pushing their heads against bushes and picking up stones and rocks. They take to following sounds, moving toward a bird’s call or a frog’s. I have rarely seen mothers like Laura Workman lift up babies like Danny or Dottie and try to make them walk by holding them and pulling them along. No books are read to determine which week or which month should find the baby doing this or that. Life in Deep Hollow and in other such hollows is not lived by the clock or the calendar, by comparisons, by competition, by repeated resort to “authorities” who have something to say about everything. Danny crawled until he stopped crawling and that was that. I happened to watch him stop crawling, start standing himself up in order to walk, and I am sure that I was more moved by these events than his parents — which is emphatically not to say that they had become bored or indifferent. As for Dottie, I saw her begin to crawl, and that evidence of progress did get a reaction from her mother: “It’s good, because now she’ll get to know her daddy’s land — where he does his growing and where he keeps his baskets and his tools, and the bushes over there, they’ll stop her from getting into anything too steep.”

  When Danny one day stood up and looked around and plopped himself right down again, his mother said nothing, and when I brought the matter up again, by remarking to Danny’s father later that day how sturdy his boy appeared on his two feet, there was only a smile in reply. On other occasions Mrs. Workman did talk about such matters, about the way her children learn to move about: “I guess maybe when they start walking I know they’re more on their own. I always hope that by then they’ve found out all they want to know by peeking into all the places — you know, when they crawl all over and try to see where everything leads to. Yes, if I had to choose a time I like best for them, it might be when they’re crawling. That’s a good time. I like them up and walking too; but they don’t get as much fun out of it themselves, I don’t think, as they do when they use their arms and legs like that and just drag themselves here and yonder all day long. When they’re starting to walk, they seem to have lost all they’ve learned while crawling, if you ask me. They’ll be walking, and they’ll forget about the big rock and fall, and they’ll forget the land is on a slope, and they’ll forget about the ditches we have near the crops. My husband won’t be too patient, either. He’ll wish they were either back crawling or up to running all over, that’s what you’ll hear him say. He doesn’t like hearing them cry when they keep on falling, and he thinks they’re happiest either crawling or when they’re older and free to be on their own. When they’re starting to walk they get more scared than any other time, and they’ll be slower to move. But I never hurry a child. The Lord made them the way He did, and when they’re going to do something they’re going to, and that’s what you have to know.”

  Certainly she does know that; and she also knows that the chances are her children will leave her very early to wander far over the hills — and in so doing stay close to what she considers “home.” When her children grow up, however, she expects they will have little interest in going any farther away than they have already been — even as many other American children, kept relatively close to their parents’ small front yard or backyard during early childhood, begin to leave home almost with a vengeance when older. At three Danny had been all over his father’s land, and up and down the hollow. He would roam about with his older brother or sister, tagging after them, trying to join in with their work or play. He had learned how to hold on to things and ascend an incline. He had learned how to pick crops and throw a line into a stream and catch a fish. He knew his way down the creek and up the hill that leads to the meadow. He knew about spiders and butterflies and nuts and minnows and all sorts of bugs and beetles and lizards and worms and moles and mice — and those crickets making their noise. He went after caterpillars. He collected rocks of all sizes and shapes; they were in fact his toys. He knew which branches of which trees were hard or soft, unbending or wonderfully pliable. He knew how to cool himself off and wash himself off and fill himself up — all with the water of a high stream. At three he had been learning all that for about a year. He didn’t stop crawling and start walking “for serious” until he was two. Once he started walking he was brought to the Workman’s outhouse and told what it is for. He was told to use the woods if he had to, but if he could, to wait for the outhouse. Actually, I was present while both Danny and Dottie were being toilet-trained, as we put it, and what they really had to learn quite thoroughly was the importance of not “going” in the cabin.

  The Workmans, needless to say, have no medical education; they are not aware of the neurophysiological or psychological facts that pediatricians rely upon when they tell mothers how to start “training” their children. Of course in recent decades pediatricians and child psychiatrists have not always been consistent and sensible; they have at one time advocated training children at a year or a year and six months, and more recently relaxed by suggesting parents might wait a year or more longer. Through it all, the shifting currents of “enlightened” middle-class opinion, the Workmans held fast to their old family traditions, the myths and superstitions of their kinfolk. They emerge as rather interesting indeed. Mrs. Workman does not talk easily or at length about such matters, but eventually her remarks tell exactly what she has in mind: “I do with them what my mother told me, and I guess she did like her mother told her. That’s what she said to me when she helped me with Alan, our first. She said I should just not fret over him. There’s no point doing much until he’s old enough to walk and keep walking, that was her advice. The reason is if they can’t walk, they can’t really take care of themselves that way. She said it was natural for a child who’s lying around and crawling around to be messing around, too. Just cover them with paper, or keep them outside where you don’t care. That’s all. Now, when they start standing up and carrying themselves here and there on their legs, then they’re moving on their own, you see, and you can just take them by the hand — their hands at last are free! — and say look child, here’s where you do it and there and there and there, bu
t not here — you hear? — not here!”

  She had raised her voice, and she was certainly emphatic as she spoke those last words, so they deserve that exclamation mark. Yet, I also sensed a tone that was remarkably even or flat, remarkably without the veiled anxiety and even hysteria one sense in most mothers elsewhere, particularly, I suppose, those who come to see a child psychiatrist for advice. Moreover, children like Danny and little Dorothy seem to pick up the meaning of that tone rather well, because I watched both of them listen and hear and finally, heed what they were told; and at no time did they or their mother get into states of high tension or alarm. For one thing, as mentioned, the children were old enough to understand what their mother wanted; and beyond that, their mother’s requests were rather modest. While they were learning to accede to those requests by day they were given the protection of an old piece of cloth on their bed: “I’ve used that cloth with all of them. I’ve washed it and washed it, and still it’s good to use. With the small babies, when they’re crawling around the house I’ve tried covering them with paper, so I don’t have to keep putting clothes on them, and they they dirty them, and I have to wash them, and then the clothes wear out — and we don’t have the money to buy a lot of ne clothes, and especially all those clothes they have for babies, and like that. My mother would tell me that when kids are real young it’s hard to dress them and maybe it’s wise never to dress them at all, except to keep them warm in winter. Even then you’re running a risk, you are, with whatever you use, be it a blanket to wrap them, or anything else. I guess I just try to do the best I can, and sometimes I’ll do what my mother said, and sometimes what my sister Dorothy says, and sometimes I just go and act on my own hunch — and let me tell you, the children get on all right, and they grow, you know, and before long it’s all something that happened back in the past, because they’re walking and they’re on their own a lot, and they can take care of themselves, yes they can, and there’s no trouble with messing or like that. The woods up there is our biggest help, much more than the outhouse, and that’s as it should be.”