Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  He stomped past Ludie real mean-acting and stomped across the parlor rug dripping water and mud everywhere and went straight to the coffin and raised up the lid which they had not nailed down yet. Oh my God, he said in a terrible voice. He wore a big black hat and his long white hair stood out in a wild way from under neath it. I stood up and tried to speak. He was dripping water on Mommas face. He looked at her for a minute and then let the top of the coffin drop and then he covered his face in his hands and made the awfullest sound I have ever heard. Lord Lord, Ludie was in the hall screaming. Garnie came running too but the rest of them had all gone down the hill to Hazels.

  Who are you, I said finally, but then all of a sudden I knew.

  It was our grandfather Mister Castle from Rich Valley that we have always heard tell of. His yellow face was old and mean and cut through by wrinkles as deep as the ruts in the road down Sugar Fork. His nose stuck out like Pilgrim Knob. One of his eyes was bleary and white, the other keen. He looked at me with that keen good eye.

  She is mine now, he said. She will go with me.

  He had three of his men along and one of them held me back while the other two carried her out to the truck in the rain. They carried her right past Ludie having a fit in the hall.

  Beulah, I have been real sick with my baby as you know and I cant recall or tell the next part too good. It was thundering and lightning by then, this was the first big thunderstorm of the spring, and it thundered so loud right when they drove off that I couldnt hear the truck. It was raining cats and dogs too. I seem to forget what happened then for a while but soon they all came running back up the hill and milled around here hollering and deciding what to do next, and the upshot of this was that they got the sheriff and went over there to Rich Valley and got there just in time to find that he had berried her already in the family berrying ground over there with a wrought iron fence around it, right behind his big white house. Geneva said he stood out in the pouring rain with a gun and dared them to come any closer. But he was enjoined to put the gun down finally, by the law and common sense, and then he agreed to speak with Sam Russell Sage who went in the house and stayed for forty minutes while the rest of them stayed outside. And some several of Mister Castles men stayed out by the berrying ground in their truck which they had driven right across the yard. Geneva said Mister Castles house is beautiful but falling down.

  Anyway Sam Russell Sage came out after while, by then it was getting dark and the rain had stopped, and addressed the crowd. He said that as Maude Castle Rowe was properly berried next to her own mother after all, he could find no fault with the arrangement although it had been wrongfully executed by the understandably distraught father. He said he thought it would cause more grief than good to dig her up again right then, especially in view of the circumstances, and said that everyone should get back in their vehicles and leave this sad spot immediately. He said that her soul was in Heaven anyway, and these earthly considerations meant nothing to God.

  Beulah, you can immagine what I thought when I heard that! What about her berrying quilt? I asked, Laying in that chest up on Sugar Fork? But it is done. And now even Ethel has said, Oh Ivy, it is done.

  But Judge Brack agrees with me, he says it is the worst thing he has ever heard of, and he said right to Genevas face, Your fancy man is nothing but a sharlatan my dear, and I will wager that a considerable amount of money changed hands that afternoon in the old mans house. Geneva has denied this of course, she was furious. But you know Geneva who has got so much good sense, does not have any sense at all when it comes to a man. She can run a boardinghouse like a genius but she cant see through Sam Russell Sage.

  I will write more when I am feeling like it. I feel so bad now, like I too have been berried in a strange town among strangers, I can not say. I miss Momma. But I remain your devoted although ruint sister,

  IVY ROWE.

  My dearest Silvaney,

  I am writing to you in a hurry, in the middle of packing to leave. I want you to know always where I will be. Now it is with Beulah and Curtis, in the company town at the Diamond Mining Company on the back side of Diamond Mountain. Beulah wrote and asked me to come and now Curtis is here to fetch me. He is down below in the parlor right now with Geneva and all the rest of them, listening to Johnny play the piano, a new song he just picked up from a company man. The music comes up through the floor, it is like I can see the music waving in the air.

  Out my window the mimosa tree is waving too, its branches like pink feathers waving in the air. It is so beautiful. The sun is going down now. I look out over this whole town which was mine, I check my room again and I check each drawer in my chester drawers but there is nothing left. Nothing. I have stripped my bed and folded my sheets and the blue counterpane at the foot of the bed so that Ludie can take them. Ludie had a baby. I will too. Curtis Bostick is waiting below. He has gotten real heavy and hooks his thumbs in his suspenders when he stands around, like he is a big shot, but he is not. I think he is practicing to be a big shot. Anyway you would never reconnize him as that skinny boy that used to come up the holler courting Beulah so long ago.

  Down below they are singing Oh how I hate to get up in the morning which is about the war, it reminds me of Lonnie Rash. Johnny has got to where he plays the piano so good, I guess he got it from Daddy and uncle Revel who were so musicle. Johnny will stay here with Geneva and go to school, that is if she can get him to, he doesnt want to do a thing but play that piano. Johnny wears a mans hat. He picks up songs from the company men that come through, from people that come to stay in the boardinghouse, from the radio. Johnny is a town boy now, when I ask him things about Sugar Fork he cant hardly remember. Even the music he plays is different from the music we grew up on.

  I will be glad to get back to the mountains myself even if it is not Sugar Fork. I have grown so sad here. But now, although I am glad to go, I am sad to leave. I am just a mess, I reckon.

  Garnie will stay here too. He works for Sam Russell Sage and thinks he is really something, Sam Russell Sage has got him preaching now and calls him, The Boy Wonder.

  So it is only me leaving.

  Ethel will stay over at the Branhams. It is like they are her family now, and in fact we do not have a family any more Silvaney, we do not, they are all gone off into thin air or the world of light. The sun is going down now, I have to get a move on. Doc Trout came over this afternoon and stopped me on the porch and pressed my hands together and kissed them, I could not believe it! He said, Let me know if ever you want for a thing, you or that baby of yours, for you have made another conquest, Ivy Rowe. He is the strangest man Silvaney, I think he likes me better since I am ruint!

  And so does Miss Mabel Maynard who came up to me today and said she wanted to wish me well, now that I am leaving, and apologize for her behavior, and then do you know what she did? She laid her hand on my stomach for a minute, and then bursted into tears, and ran away! Judge Brack is being real nice to me too, and Geneva. Everybody is very nice to me here but they think it is smart for me to leave since I am ruint. And there is another thing too, Geneva thinks I dont know it but I do. Ludie went in Mommas room today and put new linen and fixed the lamp, so I know Geneva has rented the room out to somebody else. I cant stand that. So I am glad to go. The ladies march in a line across these walls but I am no lady now. I can hear Genevas voice above the rest. Someday Im going to murder the bugler, someday theyre going to find him dead. It is a funny song. We are at war now. Our country is at war but I need a new start in life, so I am leaving. And I will tell you a funny thing Silvaney, this morning I got up real early and ran all over town like I used to do and spoke to everybody like I used to do, and then I came back here and took a sponge bath and stared at myself in the glass. My titties are big now and my stomach is getting big too, I can not wear most of my dresses already, it is like I am somebody else.

  But I am not sick anymore. I feel strong. I feel real good, and I have to say I am excited to leave, for you know I have always wa
nted to travel. I am ready to get out of here! So I will close my trunk and pull my curtian and finish this letter, and go. Curtis said he wants to get on the road before dark. We will drive down the river towards Kentucky, and cross the new bridge. I think that travel by night is exciting. And I will tell you something else that may sound crazy Silvaney, I think my baby is excited too, I think I can feel her moving. And this is another thing. I know she is a little girl. I will raise her so good up on Diamond Mountain where no body will know her mother is your ruint sister,

  IVY ROWE.

  PART THREE

  Letters from Diamond

  My dear Silvaney,

  You will not believe it!

  Here I am over on Diamond Fork with Beulah and Curtis having a new life, and guess what? The very day I got here Beulah had her baby, that was a week ago, it is another boy which they have named Curtis Bostick Junior. Big Curtis is tickled to death! He has been grinning up a storm and giving out cigars at the store. Curtis Junior is a long thin baby with a pointy head that I hope will smooth out in time. I hope my baby will not have a pointy head.

  Beulah had him in a real medical way which was a good thing too as he come out a britches baby and Doctor Gray had to cut her and then stitch her up some. I hope my baby will not be a britches baby. Beulah is not feeling too good yet, either. The coal company doctor was the one that came down here, Doctor Gray who is a little old sad looking man with a very young wife that leads him a merry chase so everyone says. She gets herself up like a movie star. And this is how come Doctor Gray to live here, because of a scandal about his wife. Doctor Gray is from the North originally and talks like Miss Torrington.

  And Beulah is acting real funny. Right when Doctor Gray was in the middle of stitching her up, she says, Ivy where’s Curtis? and I said, He is out on the porch sitting with those men that have come over here, for I didn’t know anybody’s names yet. Are you sure? Beulah said, and I said, Yes. Then Beulah said, Doctor Gray, Doctor Gray! sounding very desperate. Her voice put me in mind, all of sudden, of Momma. Yes, Mrs. Bostick, said Doctor Gray. I want you to go ahead and fix me up so I can’t have any more, Beulah said. Can you go on and do it right now? At these words Doctor Gray poked his head up from between her knees and looked over his spectacles at her and said, Now Mrs. Bostick, you know that is not possible.

  I bet you could put something up in there while you are doing this, Beulah said, but he said No mam, I can not, in a definite Northern voice.

  Oh merciful Jesus, oh god in heaven, Beulah started crying then—she was real brave up to that point—and she cried for the next three days, just crying and crying without let up or reason, and her milk did not come down. Finally then, on the fourth day, she quit and it did, and we did not have to have a wet nurse after all. I said I could nurse him, but they said, No you can’t, it is bad luck before you have had your own baby, so I did not. But I have got milk in my titties Silvaney right now, I can feel it when Curtis Junior is sucking, they want to be sucked too.

  And Beulah is still acting funny! When she was taking on so, I said to Curtis, lets get Granny Rowe to come around the mountain and give her something. For we are not too far from where Granny and Tenessee live.

  No, I dont reckon that is a good idea, Big Curtis said real slow, but then he must of said something to Beulah about it because the next thing I knew, she was all upset and hollering at me.

  Dont you ever, Beulah said, I mean ever Ivy Rowe, call old Granny over here with all her crazy old ideas. I wont have it. I will not. Beulah laid in the bed with her red hair splayed out on the pillow like a sunset. She is very beautiful. I will not forget, she said, how we lived on Sugar Fork, how I bore that one—she pointed at John Arthur, playing with a pan on the floor—by myself on a cornhusk tick and cut the cord myself with the hatchet. I will never forget it, she said. And I will not have that for my boys, she said, or for me and Curtis, or for you Ivy, or for your baby. We will have more. Beulah set her jaw when she said more. I looked at her good. She is serious, Silvaney. She hates Sugar Fork when she thinks of it, and yet I love it, now isnt this odd? us being from the same family and all. She hates Sugar Fork and all the old ways. She will not even talk about it. Still I do recall Beulah working her hands to the bone up there, and her with a baby to boot. She had a hard time. We all had a hard time, and that was all we knew. But I never thought about it—too busy thinking about myself all the time, I reckon! Poor Beulah.

  With her jaw set like that, she put me in mind of somebody else, I could not think who at the time, and then that night when I couldnt sleep, I sat right up in bed all of a sudden and it came to me. It was Big Curtises mother! who used to be so bossy you will recall, until Curtis turned against her and married Beulah. To this day, they dont speak. And now Beulah is acting like Mrs. Bostick. And you would think that Curtis would mind this, but he doesnt. Despite of his size Silvaney, he is the kind of a man that likes to be pulled around by a ring in his nose. I guess some do. And Beulah has got big plans, you can see it in the set of her jaw and the steely shine in her gray-green eyes. I remember how much she loved to play Party. I remember way back when her and Curtis first got married and she asked Ethel and me over there for supper in that little house by the lumberyard in Majestic, and everything on the table had a cream sauce, and Beulah had on black jet earrings, and after supper, on the way back, Ethel said, Beulah is putting on airs.

  Well, now she is putting on more airs! She has got her hopes pinned on Curtis doing real good with the company and them moving him up to a better job someplace else. It is a good chance this will happen, as Curtis is a hard worker with a fine head for figures, and the kind of a man that other men like. Right now he works in the company store, which is why they have got a house up on the hill here.

  You can tell how important somebody is by how far up on Company Hill they live. This whole town was built by the company, that is the Diamond Mining Company, they own everything here lock stock and barrel, and the name of the town is Diamond, Va. It takes up the whole holler. Down in the bottom by the creek is the company store where Curtis works. They say that he is standing in the store, which means that he is a clerk.

  The company store is where you go to get your mail and groceries and clothes and damn near everything else, as Curtis says. It is a great big wooden building painted yellow like all the buildings here, now it is starting to turn gray from the coaldust. It has a wide front porch where everybody gathers to talk, the women of a day, the men of an evening, and to smoke cigarettes. The company store is the heart of this town, it is the heart of the world it seems, it is very important, and so is Big Curtis! This surprised me too.

  The schoolhouse is down there in the bottom also—the company hires the teacher, and runs the school. The teacher is named Mr. Hyde, he loans me books. And now the company has even bought bats and gloves for baseball, and made a field. They say the superintendent is crazy about baseball. There is a company team, too. If a man can catch a ball then we will give him a good job in this mine, Big Curtis says with a wink. That is all it takes. And he wont have to mine too hard neither.

  Then there is the company offices, and the community hall—this is for box suppers and meetings and cakewalks and such as that—and a barbershop, and a bunkhouse which is a long building like a giant chicken coop that the men sleep in who have come here to work but have not got their families, or may be they are single men, and then guess what! A movie house, where they run a new movie whenever they can get a hold of one. All these buildings look alike, yellow-painted wood, they are the last word in modern!

  And then the houses start, they are all alike in long rows that fill up the whole south side of Company Hill, row upon row of little yellow frame houses with a porch in front built up on wood pilings so there is a space under the porch and most times dogs and kids up under there, and somebody will be sitting on the porch, a wife or her mother most likely, looking out upon the next row of houses, down the line of tin roofs shining in the sun. Oh there is a
lot to see here, believe you me! In the lowest rows, the houses are so jam up on each other that you have not got hardly any breathing room, But no one cares of course for the money is so good. A man can make $7, $8, $10 a day in the mines if you can immagine this! And to think of how hard we used to live, just hand to mouth and never hardly laid eyes on cash money.

  No wonder Beulah is getting so uppity. The houses start out being real little, two rooms I think, and then they get bigger halfway up. Beulah and Curtises house has got four rooms and a little dirt yard too. Beulah keeps everything pretty. We have got a pump out back that we share with three other houses and an outside toilet with a box to catch the shit in, that is between our house and the next one which is where some people named Gayheart live. A colored man comes two times a week to haul the box away. I am not sure what the people down the mountain do for this, if they use in the woods or what. But we have got this colored man because Curtis is so important. The colored mans name is Earl Porter.

  On up Company Hill above us, they have got some houses with five and six rooms and steam heat and I dont know what all, and above them is what you call Silk Stocking Row which is very grand. It is where the doctor and the engineers and the company men live, and their wives have got colored women to work for them so they dont have to lift a finger except to dress up and go to card parties, which they have a lot of. You can see the colored women climbing up there every morning with their heads wrapped up in rags. They live over in colored town, in another little holler, and sit by themselves in the movie house. You ought to see them, Silvaney! Some of them are black and some are brown, but they almost all have dark eyes. Their teeth and the whites of their eyes are very white and seem to shine out at you, and the inside of their hands is pink! They say their babies are born pink, and turn dark later. Sometimes at night you can hear the colored people singing, such songs as you have never heard. And also there is a bunch of other foreigners off to themselves in the other direction, down the Diamond Creek road, they have got crazy names and speak in another language. Curtis calls them hunks and wops. I have not seen any of these yet, or anyway not to know it.