Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  I couldn’t keep quiet then. Franklin, Franklin, what are you doing? I screamed. We’ll go in the river, Franklin. We’ll hit the bridge—and then, Silvaney, we did! Franklin ran his father’s car into the bridge on purpose, and busted out the headlight on my side and tore up the fender. He meant to! And by the time we got to Diamond, that tire was flat too. We drove on the rim the whole way back. I don’t know what all it did to the car. I don’t know what Franklin’s father said about any of it.

  Poor Beulah. She always thought we were courting. I don’t know what we were doing, Silvaney, but it wasn’t courting! On August 16, Beulah and Curtis moved. Me and Joli rattled around that little house like peas in a pod, with all them gone.

  Beulah left in a seersucker suit and a flat little hat, she believes in dressing up for a trip, in case you should die in a car wreck. Curtis looked at me hard, from the car, a look I couldn’t read. John Arthur and Curtis Junior waved and waved. The company moved their stuff in a company truck. I reckoned they would move me out too, come fall. That’s what they do. I knew I’d have to go in one of those little old houses down in the bottom, which is where the rough people live, and I was dreading it so. Still, I knew I had to hold onto my job, because jobs are so few and far between now.

  Joli went over next door and got Violet’s Martha, to spend the night with us. When Martha doesn’t try to talk, she is just like anybody. I miss Beulah a whole lot even if we had our differences. Blood is thicker than water, as they say. And I don’t know how she’ll fare up there.

  Anyway Beulah and Curtis moved out, and the next day Franklin showed up at the store grinning just like he hadn’t done what I knew he had, like him and me was starting over from scratch, and he kept hanging around there giving me the eye, until after a while I found myself going along with him. He is the kind of a man you will go along with. And that night he showed up at the house late, drunk and crying, and told me all kind of sweet things. You see what I mean? I can tell you a lot about Franklin, I can put some of the colors in, but I can’t get the outline right. He stayed the night of course and when Tessie came in the morning, she rolled her eyes and set her jaw to see him, and shook her head.

  I was on my way down the mountain to work when all of a sudden I heard Violet calling Ivy! Ivy! after me, and I stopped.

  Violet was out of breath. Her early morning hair was wilder and curlier than ever, that red lipstick gone. Her mouth looked pale and serious. It was still hot that morning but cloudy, looked like rain. Honey, she said, You need to think real serious about what all you are doing.

  What do you mean? I said.

  A man like that, he’s not like usuns, Violet said. You haven’t got any business fooling with him, honey. He is on the other side.

  What side? I said. I don’t know what you are talking about, Violet. I pulled away from her even though I knew she had good intentions, and ran off down the road just as the first drops started to fall, making big round splats in the dusty road like a silver dollar. For I am tired to death of people giving me good advice, even people with good intentions, it may be they are the worst of all.

  I looked back up the mountain once and saw Franklin Ransom standing out on the porch with his shirt hanging open, watching me go, I reckon. I did not wave. Behind him on the mountain the dark clouds were piled up higher, and the thunder rolled, low and lazy. Lightning cut through the clouds. This is the next-to-last time I ever saw him.

  I was in the store pricing baby clothes when it happened, three weeks after that. It was September 20, I will never forget that day. 1926. I had just drunk a cup of coffee and was talking to Mrs. Joines, who worked there too. She was complaining about her mother. Some of the people at the store had started treating me different ever since word had got out that I went some with Franklin, but not Mrs. Joines. She is common as the day is long. Of course she will talk your ear off, always has. She was telling how her mother won’t eat any food except white food, like grits and potatos and light bread, when the whistle blew.

  Mrs. Joines quit talking with her mouth wide open, and I laid the baby clothes back down on the counter. The whistle has never blown like that, between shifts, in all the years I have lived at Diamond. But it blew and kept right on blowing, and we all knew what it meant.

  I walked out of the store and up the hill to Violet’s. She stood at the door, as hard-faced as anybody I ever saw. The high shrieking sound of the whistle was all around us.

  Go on up there, I said. I knew it was Rush’s shift.

  Violet took off running. She didn’t wear a coat. She didn’t take a thing.

  The whistle kept blowing and blowing, like a nightmare. From houses all over Company Hill, people lit out running. Cars started up. Women and girls stood in the doorways holding little children’s hands, like I held Martha’s. The door was wide open behind us, letting cold air into the house. You couldn’t even think with that whistle shrieking. Down in the bottom, folks milled around the store and the company offices. They looked like little dolls, like little toy folks from where I stood. They gathered on the porch of the company store. Cars came and went, toy cars. Horns blew. Then they let out school, and children came pouring out the schoolhouse door and started up the hill or joined those walking and running up to the mine, a line like a colorful snake going up the mine road behind the store and out of sight around the side of Diamond Mountain. I stood there and watched for Joli. She is real little for her age now. Not sickly, just little. When the whistle finally stopped, the silence was awful. Then Joli came running up the road, home from school, asking questions.

  What is it, Mama, what is it? Joli said. Is it a fire? and I said Honey, don’t you know? It is trouble at the mine. I believe it is big trouble. And Joli’s pretty little face went sad. She has a pointy chin, and with all that red hair, sometimes she looks like a funny little fox. Is Martha’s daddy down in there? she asked, and I said Yes honey, he is.

  But Martha just swung on my hand and grinned. She didn’t really understand it, she is older than Joli but simple.

  We had no sooner gone back in the house than R.T. came busting in. This is Rush and Violet’s big boy.

  Where is Mama? he said, and I said, Up at the mine. Then he looked all over the house—he acted real scattered, I don’t know what he was looking for—and then he bolted back out the door and said he was going up there too. Goddammit, goddammit, R.T. was saying. He was crying. He is a great big boy with light eyes and curly black hair like Violet.

  I wanted to go up there myself.

  I batted around Violet and Rush’s house doing first one thing, then another. I made the girls some cinamon toast and washed Violet’s kitchen floor but I couldn’t bring myself to make the bed, it seemed too personal with Rush in the mine. Finally I couldn’t stand it in their house any more so I took the girls over to my house, but that was even worse with Beulah and Curtis and everybody gone. I opened the cupboard and it was empty, all of Beulah’s rosy dishes gone. Then I started crying for it seemed to me then that life is nothing but people leaving.

  Mama, what is the matter? Joli said. Don’t cry Mama.

  And I said, Nothing honey, I miss Beulah and them, is all. Then I sat down and hemmed a skirt for Joli and darned some socks, then I got the little girls dressed up in sweaters and took them out in the yard and got them to scratching pretty pictures in the dirt with some sticks, and I swept off the yard real good.

  Silvaney, you would not believe what a beautiful day it was! The prettiest day of September, the prettiest day of the fall! By then it had turned plum warm, with a light cool breeze, and the trees over on Diamond Mountain shone out like flaming jewels in the bright clear sunshine. Leaves were falling everywhere, but not in our yard where we have no trees. All we have is dirt, and I sweep it in pretty patterns. I took the girls out to the side of the road to look at our froghouses and they were still right there, standing fine.

  Old Mr. Vance Looney came panting up the hill but when I asked him what the news was, he said, No
word, no word. By noon you could see the smoke coming up over the top of Diamond Mountain. Mr. Looney said there had been a firedamp explosion, as near as they could tell, right after the seven o’clock shift started. They said it sounded like thunder rolling away off towards Kentucky, the way thunder sounds in the summer. But it was September of course. Mr. Looney said that some men came running out hollering that timbers were falling everyplace, and the mine-train rails had been blown all to hell and back, and the walls were caving in on the passage to the No. 8 face. Those who had been mining down the other two passages were walking out now one by one and two by two, straggling through the smoke, their faces black, coughing. But not a one of them came back up Company Hill. Somehow I knew they wouldn’t. I knew they would stay there. They would all stay there until they got everybody out that was coming out. I stood on the porch—I just couldn’t sit still anyplace—and the girls played paper dolls while I looked over at Diamond Mountain. Smoke drifted up lazy. It was such a pretty day. But I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t keep my mind on a thing.

  My mind went fluttering around and around like the yellow butterflies in the Queen Anne’s lace back up on Sugar Fork, not landing on something, not landing on something—what? Two neighbor women came by and asked me if I had heard any news and I said no, and then they left. I made some brownies for the girls and some soup beans for anybody that might want to eat them later. But I couldn’t eat a thing.

  When I went back out, the wind was coming up and the sun was lower. Now the toy cars were backed up all over the bottom and you could hear the steady low sound of so many voices, even up on the hill where we were. Relatives coming in, talking, waiting. People in trucks from god knows where. I saw a truck that looked like Oakley’s daddy’s, but from that distance it was hard to tell. My mind went fluttering, fluttering, it would not settle.

  Then I couldn’t stand it any more.

  Come on, girls, I said. Martha, you run home and get your jacket. Joli, here’s your coat. We’re going up to the mine.

  I don’t want to, Mommy, Joli started whining. I’m too tired.

  Oh sweetie, I said. I pulled her over and kissed her and pushed her hair back. Joli’s hair is red as mine, curly as yours. I buttoned up her fuzzy pink coat which used to belong to one of Doctor Gray’s girls. It has big square buttons.

  I have got to go up there, I said.

  Then I thought to pack some of the soup beans in a dinner pail. I took a sack of cornbread for Violet and R.T. who had not showed their faces since morning.

  We walked down the hill at four o’clock, me and the girls, holding hands. It was getting colder. When we passed the store, some people were singing a church song on the steps. Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. I could hear Bonita Munsey who has a real good voice. We got a cocacola from the store and went on, in a big crowd now. It was like they picked us up and carried us along, like we were riding a raft downriver. Past the baseball field, the pump, Mister Everett’s house, the bunkhouse, the station, across the railroad tracks. Winding up the hill. I seen him coming from a long way off, somebody sang. I couldn’t hardly breath which had nothing to do with walking. It was more like a nervous breakdown as in Jane Eyre. My butterfly mind went from Sugar Fork to Majestic to the black rushing water of Diamond Creek where I first met Franklin.

  By the time we got up there, it was nearabout dark and they had dug through. They were bringing them out. The mine itself was a great charred gaping hole with smoke still coming from it, but they were pulling cars out hand by hand. There was an awful lot of smoke and yelling. At last, at last, the rope that pulled the cars would start to move, slow at first then a little faster. That meant a man was on the way out. The only way they could identify the bodies was by the check number on them. The men were black, smoking. But some of them came out alive. The groaning and suffering was terrible. And the rescue business is mighty slow. Doctors and nurses and men from all around were up there helping out. They had stretchers and tents and lanterns and carbide lamps. It was starting to get dark.

  The rescue workers had roped the rest of the people off, up on the hillside right above the mine. You couldn’t stand anyplace near the entrance, where they were bringing them out. Some of the women still had their cook aprons on from that morning. A line of men kept them back from the mine. Dragging Martha and Joli by the hand, I made it up there finally and found Violet, but she wouldn’t eat anything.

  Here, she said, Let this girl here have it, she needs it, Violet said and pointed to the woman beside her who had undid her blouse and was giving her baby some titty right there. I’d be obliged, the girl said when she got through feeding her baby, and then Joli held it for her while she ate. The girl’s baby was just tiny. I couldn’t believe Joli had ever been so little. I couldn’t believe how long ago it was that she was born—eight years which had rushed pell mell, like high water under the bridge at Majestic.

  It got dark. Below us, we could see the moving people black against the lights. Flares went up. And every now and then, they would come and call out the name of the man they were bringing out. Snead! Lowell Snead! Every woman there would strain forward and then fall back, and that man’s family would let out a cry or a moan and a rush forward. Violet said that R.T. was down there working.

  I always put plenty in his lunch bucket, Violet said almost to herself, just in case he got trapped again. And I always put some soda in there for his digestion, it cramps you to work bent over.

  I hugged her.

  You go on back, she said. Take the girls—who had fallen down in a pile like little animals, fast asleep. I looked down at them. Joli was sleeping with her mouth open, like always. I thought of that little poem she loves. What are little girls made of? What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.

  I can’t leave yet, I said, which was true. I said, Let the girls sleep. My mind was just fluttering as I stood there with Violet, waiting for Rush. Asa Horn! Raymond Childress! they yelled back the names. Some of them were walking out now, people said. There had been a whole roomful trapped that they’d just got to. Hope lifted, people stirred. But Violet said nothing. I think she knew even then that he was dead. The girl with the baby was praying out loud. Jeffrey Wayne Stacy! they called, and she said, Oh Jesus, oh please Jesus, and stumbled forward. I saw her clearly for a moment, all red in the light, then she was gone. Gayheart! Rush Gayheart! they yelled.

  Go on back now, Violet said, and walked out slow.

  But still I couldn’t leave. My mind fluttered and fluttered and finally landed, and then I knew who I was waiting for—not Rush!—and why I couldn’t leave.

  It was close to dawn and not many were left on the hill when they called his name.

  Oakley Fox!

  I jerked the girls along crying down the hill, almost fell through the lanterns lined up like a ring of fire. The mine gaped. I didn’t know if he’d come out dead or alive, covered up or walking. There was a row of bodies laid out to the right there, and women bent over them grieving. They were taking some of them away. The whole place was a mess of red light and darkness and movement and noise. Joli was crying hard. I half carried her along. And then I stopped. The huge black mouth of the mine yawned smoky and wide before me, and three men came walking out. One of them was Oakley. Limping and holding his arm funny, black-faced—still I could tell him, by the straight forward shock of his hair and his square shoulders, the way he held himself. It was like the mouth of the mine had opened up and let him go, like he had been spared, or like he had just been born.

  Oakley! Oakley! I hollered. I could see him turn his head blindly toward my voice. But he couldn’t see me. He couldn’t see anything yet, you could tell. I think his mouth moved. Oakley! Oakley! I called, pulling Joli and Martha through the people, to Oakley at last who stretched out his arms as wide as the world when he finally saw it was me. The way he smelled made me choke when he hugged me, it was so bitter and strong, but then
he held me back out and looked at my face and then hugged me again. His lip was bleeding and his whole collar was stiff with blood. Baby baby, it’s you, Oakley said, and reached around Joli too. Then he leaned on me and we all walked out to the waiting cars together.

  Just as we were getting into a car, I looked up—I will never know why, exactly—and there not three yards away, leaning against a truck, was Franklin Ransom. He was staring at me so hard I felt like his eyes burned holes in my body. Now, what in the world was he doing there? Helping out with the rescue? Just curious? I sank back into the car as they were getting ready to close the door after us, and looked down for a minute to make sure the girls fingers were not in the way, and when I looked back up, he was gone. The truck was still there but Franklin was gone, and I have never seen him again. I guess I never will. He is over in Kentucky with his precious Nana or so I hear, and his daddy is in big trouble over safety regulations, and his mother stays in bed all the time due to nerves.

  Rush Gayheart was killed in the mine, along with Ray Fox Junior and 17 others.

  Oakley and me got married.

  And we will be leaving here.

  We will go back to live in the house on Sugar Fork, and we will come and get you too Silvaney, and you and me will clean the house together and scrub the floors with creek gravel, and clear the dead leaves out of the spring. And we will get chickens and let them run up on Pilgrim Knob, and cut back the weeds, and plant the garden. I remember Daddy saying, Farming is pretty work. And when Oakley kisses me, it seems like I can hear Daddy saying, Slow down, slow down now, Ivy. This is the taste of spring.

  Your happy sister,

  IVY R. FOX

  P.S. It will not be long.

  PART FOUR

  Letters from Sugar Fork

  April, 1927