Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  You never know what somebody else wants, that’s all I have to say, and if you want Stoney Branham then I am glad you married him, even if he is 25 years older than you. I dont care. I dont care what you do as long as it makes you happy. Just hold up your head and dont listen to what all they say. Anyway it does not matter whether Stoney Branham was your sweetie or not before Lois killed herself, anybody honest would own he must of needed a woman for years, whether he had one or not, since his own wife was just laying up there in the bed crying and eating prunes. So my advice is, hold your head up high, Ethel, and shut your ears. For people will forget it soon enough. There is so much else to occupy their minds anyway, what with the war and the flu, by the way some several up here have got it, and two have died. I am not taking Joli out anywhere because of it. So, people will not be talking about you and Stoney Branham too long!

  And as for Beulah, dont you worry about Beulah, because she will get over it.

  I wish you all the happiness and love in the world, please tell Mister Branham—I mean Stoney. And I remain

  Your loyal sister,

  IVY ROWE.

  Mrs. BONNIE RASH WILKES

  15 JOHN ST.

  ELIZABETHTON, Tenessee

  Dear Mrs. Wilkes,

  I am sorry that it has taken me a long time to answer your letter, but as you see, I am living over here in Diamond, Va. now, and so I just got it a few days ago, and since then I have been brokenhearted.

  To answer your question, yes I did love your brother very much, and so I am real sorry to hear of his death in France. I can not believe it. He was just a boy. And I am real sorry for you too. I know how much he loved you.

  Yes it is true as he told you that we were to be married after the war. Everything he told you is true. I am sending your mother’s necklace back to you. I know you will want to keep it. She was a pretty lady with such a sweet face. I am glad I got to wear it for a while. Do not worry about me sending the necklace back, as I still have something else to remember Lonnie by. And I will remember him always, as he was a nice boy so sweet and mild it seems impossible to immagine him dead in something like a war. I will remain yours in sorrow,

  IVY ROWE.

  November 20, 1918

  Oh Silvaney,

  Lonnie is dead in the war, it has upset me so! For in my mind I keep seeing him in the countryside of France in Mrs. Brown’s book, walking down a long straight road lined by trees that look like big fancy feathers, and fat round haystacks in the fields on either side, and a wide blue sky with puffy clouds, as in the book. There is not a road anyplace around here so straight, nor such a swatch of sky. And then in my mind the guns roar and the picture goes all bright with Lonnie’s blood. I see it over and over again. I feel like this is my fault although Beulah says I am being ridiculous, that Lonnie would have gone to the war whether I married him or not. I guess this is true. But I do not feel ridiculous. I feel so sorry now. I feel like I did love him, though I did not. It is starting to get cold here now, I look out at the mountains from the window where I rock with Joli, and the leaves on the trees seem red with blood. May be I am crazy. But probably I am just contrary and spoilt, as Beulah says. She thinks it is high time for me to get out of here and find a job and earn my keep. She says that I have always been made too much of, may be this is true. Big Curtis thinks he can get me one down at the soda-fountain in the store, I guess it will be all right but I have gotten kindly shy from staying home so much with Joli. About the only outside people I see are Violet, next door, and Oakley Fox who is real sweet and comes by a lot. You remember Oakley.

  You ought to see Joli, she is so beautiful! I hate to go off and leave her of a day. In fact I would not leave her if it was just Beulah here, because Beulah is too quick to get mad, and all these babies are a handful. I am the one that keeps them mostly, now. But Curtis has just gotten a raise and Beulah has hired a colored woman, Earl Porter’s wife Tessie, to come in of a day and help out. So I will have to go out to work, and I am trying to switch Joli over to a little cup.

  She does not look a thing like me or like Lonnie either one, she only looks like herself, although I guess you can tell she is a Rowe by the red hair. And hers is all curls, just like yours! She is smarter and bigger than Curtis Junior. When she sucks at my titty I know it is nearly the last time, nearly the end. Silvaney, there is something about nursing a baby that is like having a sweetie, you feel the same way I mean. And it feels so good and I hate to stop it, to stop nursing Joli or to leave her at home, I hate to leave her at all.

  I want to tell you how it was when she was born. I will write it down plain for I want to remember it always, and I can tell I am forgetting it already, the way I am afraid I am forgetting some things about Sugar Fork and even Majestic. I think this is one reason I write so many letters to you, Silvaney, to hold onto what is passing. Because the days seem to go faster and faster, especially now that I have got Joli, the days whirl along like the leaves blowing down off the mountain right now. I remember Geneva saying that the older you get, the faster time goes by. Well, I want to stop it! I want to hold up its flight like you would hold up a train, and steal what I can from each day. But it is awfully hard to remember having a baby because your body wants to forget it right away, it hurts too bad, and if you remembered it all, you would never have another, Granny says. So you forget. You have to.

  Here is what I do remember, though—first the water splashing on my feet and the great pushing opening tearing feeling, but it was like somebody pressing something heavy on my legs. My thighs hurt the worst, they hurt awful, and this went on for a long time and then right before she came out I could hear it, Silvaney, I swear I could hear my bones parting and hear myself opening up with a huge horrible screeching noise, and all the splashing down my legs felt cold, not hot. Beulah says I screamed so much I embarassed them all, but Granny says I did real good considering it was my first. So may be what I heard was me screaming, but I don’t think so. I think it was my screeching bones.

  And then Joli was out dripping blood and gore and making a funny little snuffly noise and Granny cut the cord with the kitchen knife and bound her with the strippy cloths and handed her over to me. She was big! And she grabbed onto my finger and held on for dear life, and squnched up her mouth and started crying. And all the poems I ever knew raced through my head, for she was the prettiest thing I have ever seen. Then Granny wrapped her up good and laid her in the dresser drawer propped up between two chairs, for we did not have another cradle yet, she was early.

  Granny said, You will be fine, Ivy. For once you have had an easy time of something. She stroked my hair, pushing it back off my face. She smelled like tobacco, like woodsmoke, like snuff, like something old and tough I couldnt name you. The wrinkles in her face are so deep they are like cuts right down to the bone. In fact Granny looks like one of those dried-apple dolls now in the face—except for her eyes which are bright blue and twinkling and not filmed over in white like so many old peoples.

  Granny poured me a drink of white liquor and then took some out on the porch for the rest of them. I heard Beulah say No thank you, and Curtis will have only one glass, Granny. But Granny said, Them that tries to rule the roost will find the cock has flown. And so Beulah said, Well pour me some then, and before long she was giggling as much as Tenessee. I think she will soften up on Ethel before long, too.

  As for me I laid in the bed and watched the moonlight come across the quilt star by star—it was in the Heavenly Star pattern—coming toward me, and I could hear my baby snuffling in the dresser drawer, and then bye and bye Granny came and gave me some more liquor and took the rag packing out from between my legs and got some more. The blood smell was not so bad. It was sweet some way, it was not like anything else in the world, and now it will always be mixed up in my mind somehow with the moonlight and my baby, for then Granny handed her to me. I held her close by my side and looked at the moonlight on the closest star, red and blue and pink and purple, it seemed to glow out lik
e the cathedral windows in Mrs. Brown’s book.

  After a while I could hear the rest of them coming in from the porch, and making up extra pallets and shifting people around, and then it got quiet, the quietest night in the world. Granny slept sitting bolt upright in a straight-back chair beside me. But I was all wrought up, I was far too excited to sleep, I would not have dozed off for the world. I kept thinking, This is important, I want to remember this, it is all so important, this is happening to me. And I am so glad to write it down lest I forget. I lay there real still while the moonlight slowly crossed my quilt, and listened to a hoot owl off in the woods, and little Joli breathing, and—come morning—the long sweet whistle of the train.

  When we got up Granny fixed the baby a sweet tit, and by afternoon she was sucking on it, and then the next day she wanted some titty too, and Granny and Tenessee went on home and we began, Joli and me, and the rest of our days have been marked by when she eats and when she sleeps. She doesn’t hardly cry at all. But now Silvaney, winter is coming on, and the war is over thank god, but these days are passing so fast. Big Curtis just came home and said I am to start at the soda-fountain on Monday, and so I will. But I remain your loving sister,

  IVY ROWE.

  Dear Victor,

  I am so happy to hear you are back from the war safe and sound and a hero, I am sorry about your leg though. Are you going to look for a place of your own now? Or stay on at Geneva’s for a while? I know you are looking for work. It is a shame the Frank Ritter Lumber Company busted, they thought so highly of you I know.

  Coal is the only thing over here, but the coal business is slacking off now and it looks like hard times on the way. Money has been so easy during the war that no body knows how to act without it. There is a big increase in drinking and fighting and spreeing around, since so many have been laid off. They dont know what to do with themselves. And Oakley says the company is shorting men on weight now up at the mine, but Big Curtis says it is not true. Curtis wont hear one bad word about the company! So I dont know for sure. But folks are mad about everything. My own job at the store gets me real tired but I am lucky to have it, I see that now. Everybody comes in spending that scrip, and then on payday there is no pay. Some of them owe so much to the store it looks like they will never pay it off. So this place is not paradise by a long shot. I used to think it was.

  But the worst thing going on around here is the flu, and speaking of heros, you ought to see Oakley Fox and his little brother Ray! Dont you remember them, from down on Home Creek? Little Ray weighs about 300 pounds now. But he is just as nice as Oakley. And lately with so many folks dying right and left, Oakley and Ray and their daddy—who came over here a purpose to do it—has been working night and day laying folks out. Wont nobody else touch them, so the Foxes have got to wait on the whole town. Oakley says the company is paying them for their time. Everybody else is scared they’ll catch the flu. Oakley says him and Ray wont catch it because they take a big bottle of horse temperature medicine and rub it across their lips. It is thick yellow-looking stuff which has made Oakley’s whiskers yellow for good, I think. They are waiting on people day and night—they will wash them, dress them out, lay them out, put them in the casket and dig them a grave. Most families are making their own caskets since they cost $35 down at the store, where we have got a whole stack of them in the corner. They look awful, but you cant quit looking at them once you start.

  Somebody will come in the store buying lipstick one day, then the next day they’ll be dead. This is true. It happened last week to Trula Bond who bought Fire and Ice, I sold it to her. And the Fox boys laid her out, the way they are laying out everybody.

  Only that time I happened to see it. They are burying them now in the company burying ground up on the mountain, not too far from the mine, and I walked up there yesterday evening with my neighbor Violet Gayheart and her two kids, to wait for her husband Rush to get off his shift. Violet goes up there every day and a lot of times I go too, I like to give Joli a breath of fresh air. Usually I look away from the burying ground because it looks so awful, with those new red mounds of dirt against the snow. So many have died.

  But this time, it was right at sunset, there were the Foxes burying Trula Bond with that rickety wagon Mister Fox has had forever it seems, I believe it is the same one we used to ride in when we were kids. There was Oakley Fox and Ray Fox with yellow whiskers and yellow hands, and Trula Bond’s family crying. Violet and me stood by the roadside and watched. Nobody sang or anything, they done it all real quick.

  Then Oakley saw us and came over to me and I said, Oakley, how can you stand to do this? and he said, Ivy, somebody has got to, and then he walked me home. Oakley is real big and good to lean on. The sky was red and the mountains and the limbs of the trees were black against it. Sometimes I think a winter sunset is the prettiest kind.

  Have you got any snow over there? We have got a lot here now, but it gets so dirty from the coaldust, you cant even make snowcream. Do you remember the snowcream Momma used to make up on Sugar Fork? I used to think it was so good. I want to make Joli some.

  Victor, I know I go on and on sometimes in my letters, it is a great failing too. But I am trying to work around to what I want to say. Big Curtis has heard that you are drinking a lot these days, please stop, you know it runs in the family. Remember Babe and Revel. And I am sure you will find something real good to go into, bye and bye. Why dont you come over here and see us? Do not worry about us not having room, you can stay down at the bunkhouse with Oakley and Ray. It is not a palace, but I bet it beats the war. And I want you to see my baby.

  Love from your little (Ha!) sister,

  IVY ROWE.

  July 9, 1919

  Dear Ethel,

  I have had it with people trying to marry me off! Now it is Beulah and Curtis. This is what happened.

  Every year on the Fourth of July, the company throws a big party, with a couple of bands, and dancing, and ice cream and fireworks. It is the only time all year, and the only place except the movie house, where the people from Silk Stocking Hill will mingle freely with them that goes down in the mines.

  Now it soon became clear that this Fourth of July celebration was a big deal to Beulah, and you will see why in a minute!

  But first—you should have heard her! She went on and on, she like to have dogged me to death. Now Ivy, what are you going to wear to the picnic? Now Ivy, you cant wear that for heaven’s sake, here why dont you try on this old polka dot thing of mine! Oh of course you can, we’ll take it up in the waist. No, dont go with Oakley, go with us. You can see Oakley when you get there. Now that is just silly Ivy, the fireworks wouldnt do a thing but scare those babies, and Tessie is perfectly willing to come. No, Tessie wouldnt be going to the fireworks anyway, none of the colored people go, dont be silly. Why, they dont even want to! Ivy, have you ever thought of bobbing your hair?—Which I would not let her do, Ethel, although she has bobbed her own hair and I guess it is right in style.

  Anyway since it seemed to be such a big deal to Beulah, I left Joli at home with Tessie Porter and went to the Fourth of July picnic even though I had no real interest in it, I would of liked just one day to rest up and play with Joli. But I went, to please Curtis and Beulah.

  I wore Beulah’s white dress with cap sleeves and red polka dots and a red patent leather belt, and white high-heel sandals. I thought we were supposed to look so good in green, with our red hair, I said just to tease Beulah, but now Beulah says we look good in red! Beulah reads all the magazines, she keeps right up with fashion.

  Joli waved her little hand bye-bye when we left. She is real smart I think she is smarter than Curtis Junior.

  So Beulah and me and Curtis set off down the hill, all dressed up, and I must say the company had gone all out! The celebration took place in the bottom, on the baseball field, and they had stretched red, white, and blue bunting from here to yonder, and had two bands playing, and flags flying, and watermelon and ice cream and I dont know what all, a
nd folks so dressed up you couldnt hardly tell who they were. The same folks I see every day in the store, I mean, now wearing their finest.

  But you can tell the miners no matter what, from the black rings around their eyes like a possum. This is from coaldust. You cant wash it off. Oakley has got it too. It looks almost like makeup, as if he is a movie star, a shiek of Araby! And you notice it most particularly on Oakley who is so light complected otherwise, with those light brown eyes. I kept looking for him at the Fourth of July but I couldnt see him anyplace. A whole bunch of people were gathered around a truckbed, listening to a speech by a man in a bluestriped suit that Big Curtis said was famous. You could tell how proud Curtis was that the company men nodded to him, and spoke, and that he wore a tie, like they did. The miners wore open-neck shirts for the most part. It was hot, and getting hotter. Let us pledge anew in the words of Mister Wilson, the famous man said, to make the world safe for democracy! And everybody cheered. The famous man was sweating up a storm. But then when Mr. Ransom, the company superintendent, got up on the truckbed to make his speech, some men started whistling and he couldnt talk until some other men came and walked them into the woods. It was supposed to be no liquor there, but you could tell that a lot were drinking.

  I was getting real hot and wishing I had put my hair up, and wishing I had brought Joli anyway, in spite of Beulah. I was too hot to eat a thing except one deviled egg. Finally I wandered off down the creek a ways while the rest of them were eating.

  Nobody was around. I could hear bees buzzing, birds chirping, the faraway sound of the band. I was so hot I took off my shoes and went wading, even though the water in Diamond Creek is black as night because they wash the coal in it upstream. The water was shiny and cold and black. It felt so good, Ethel, and it struck me, this was the first time I had been by myself since Joli was born. So I sat down there on a big flat warm rock with my feet in the dark rushing water and kind of laid back and let the water run over my hands, too, and I might even of slept for a while when I heard somebody say, Hello there!