Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  Dear Victor,

  I am so mad at you.

  I have been fretting over my behavior for these last weeks and I declare, I am still mad at you. I have been studying on how to write you a letter. To tell you the truth, I don’t know. Now I am writing you, but I still don’t know! I am still mad. But Oakley says I owe you a apology. O.K., I am sorry. I am sorry I sulled up on everybody like that. I am going to write to Ethel and tell her too, and Stoney. For in all truth, it was real good of you all to come up here and help us. I don’t know what Oakley and me would of done, either, if you had not helped us clear this land, and then Stoney bringing us the Gooch boys from the store too, and all those goods. So we are grateful to all of you, as well as Oakley’s folks who have helped us out so much.

  But to be perfectly honest Victor, I am sick to death of being grateful. I am tired of being beholden.

  I want to be again like I was as a girl, you remember how I used to run these hills the livelong day and not say boo to a soul. But it may be that you do not remember, for you went away, you went off to work and then to the war in France.

  So you and me, that used to be so close when I was little, have got disaquainted.

  Well, let me tell you, I used to do just as I saw fit. And I went where I pleased and done what I felt like in Majestic too, even after I got ruint. So, although I am suppose to apologize, I will not act beholden. I don’t feel like it. I have gotten too hateful and too sad. Mostly I am sad, over the way we have all got so split up by tragedy and the years.

  But it was awful, how you told me about Silvaney.

  I know I ought to thank you for going over there to find out about her after all this time, but it is terrible to me to learn the truth. I always thought she would get better, and would want to come home. Whatever I was doing, whatever befell, I always thought Silvaney was right there looking over my shoulder some way, I can’t explain it, and that one day I would go get her and bring her home. I have felt like I was split off from a part of myself all these years, and now it is like that part of me has died, since I know she will never come. I feel like she has gone to a foreign land forever.

  Victor, I guess I am sorry I got so mad! I know you are not suppose to get mad at the person that tells you the bad news, but I always do!

  It seems like I wouldn’t act this way. It seems like I would of growed up some, after all this time. I keep waiting for this to happen, but it has not. I remember as a child, I thought all the older people around us were grown up. Now I think they were just old. Because although I am a married woman now, I still feel like the girl that grew up here, the one I used to be. I still get too wrought up. But you do not need to worry about me, Victor, if you are, because I love Oakley, and him and me are doing real good, although I am working my fingers to the bone I am back where I have longed to be, where I belong. The garden is coming up now, so in spite of myself almost I am the happiest that I have ever been.

  So I do apologize.

  Your crazy sister,

  IVY R. FOX

  June, 1927

  Dear Violet,

  Don’t worry, we will be real happy to keep Martha over here for a while longer. Oakley says so too and means it. She is good company for my Joli. They are having the best time! You know I always thought I would have Silvaney with me, but now that she won’t be coming, there is a place here tailormade for your Martha, believe me. So don’t even feel bad. I don’t know if I told you or not but this is a big house, bigger than the houses we had up on Company Hill—oh that seems like years and years ago to me, Violet, it seems like a dream—his here is a big double cabin with a loft on each side and a breezeway in between which had fell down but Oakley has shored it up now as good as ever. We set out there of an evening right where my daddy used to set to play a tune, and Oakley whittles which he is really good at, and I shell my beans which have come in good already, or I might sew some, or whatever. It is no end of work up here. But night comes in slow over Bethel Mountain and we watch it come, like it is sneaking in I reckon, stealing across the mountains ridge by ridge, they go blue and purple before your very eyes, and then the mist will rise. When it gets too dark to whittle, Oakley will quit doing it and come and sit on the floor by my chair and lay his head in my lap and we will stay there like that for a while. And then before long we will rise, and go to bed. The last thing Oakley does every night is stretch his arms, a big wide stretch that takes in everything before us, all these mountains ridge on ridge, and Home Creek down below in the noisy dark, and Sugar Fork, and all this little farm. Oakley says he has finally got him plenty of elbow room. Then he wraps me up in a hug as big as Bethel Mountain, and then we go to bed where we lay tangled in each other all night long. Sometimes we will wake to love then sleep to wake again.

  All of this is a big surprise to me Violet. Having so many chores now gives me time to think, and I often think back on you and Rush, I believe you had such a deep love yourself, I did not understand it at the time. Sometimes I despair of ever understanding anything right when it happens to me, it seems like I have to tell it in a letter to see what it was, even though I was right there all along!

  I have been thinking about Franklin too, and I know I was crazy to go with him so long. It seems to me now that Franklin was like a sickness that came over me and stayed. But I still can’t feature what you told me about him getting caught in nigger holler with his pants down! Now I see what Tessie must of known, and why she never liked him. I didn’t understand it at the time, like I was saying. But believe me, I am happy now. I am happy to have Martha here too.

  So, you go ahead and do whatever you have to. But for God’s sake be careful. You know that I will remain your good friend,

  IVY R. FOX

  Dear Beulah,

  I am writing again because you did not answer which makes me feel like we parted on a sour note, and I can’t stand this since so many in our family are lost in light already, dead and gone. You know you have never wrote to me once not even after getting the letter where I told you that Oakley and me got married. Well, what do you think of that? You know we have ended up back here on Sugar Fork, and Oakley is farming which he has always wanted to do, so far it is hand to mouth but we are happy. I know how much you hate Sugar Fork, and I can see for why, but oh Beulah you would not if you could see it in the spring.

  The apple trees behind the house were like a rolling sea of sweet pink clouds. The rosybush by the front porch steps is still in bloom, and the lilac by the back door never had so many flowers. It is beautiful up here. Try to think of me like this, in all these flowers, and don’t be mad at me or disappointed because I failed to marry Franklin Ransom as you hoped, or make a schoolteacher either as Mrs. Brown and Miss Torrington wished. I guess I am too flighty to make a good schoolteacher anyhow—I still get all carried away! So I will just write my letters instead, for it means so much to me to keep in touch.

  And as for Franklin Ransom, I am lucky I got out of that, believe you me! I am writing today to tell you what happened, in case you haven’t heard. Well, it seems that Franklin Ransom had him a girlfriend in nigger holler all along, even when me and him were going out so much together, yes all that whole long time. Her name is Walterene Parrish. Franklin had daddied two little nigger babies on her, so they say. But after the mine disaster, when his parents left Diamond under a cloud, he went back over to Kentucky, and Walterene—now that’s Tessie’s sister’s girl—took up with a big huge Northern nigger that had just come down here. But one day Franklin drove back over to Diamond and went knocking on Walterene’s door again and she let him in same as always, and they were going at it for fair when this big new nigger got off of his shift and came home. And he up and pitched a fit! They say that Franklin said to him, You must not know who I am, you must not know your place either, and that nigger said, I don’t give a damn who you are, you had better get your white ass out of my house right now, and then he shot Franklin in the rear end with grapeshot and made him run naked all the way down
nigger holler to his car! I guess this Northern nigger had not yet learned how to act down here.

  Anyway, folks did not take it laying down. You know how they are anyway, them that lives low down on Company Hill. They are so bad off theirselves that they have got to have somebody else to look down on, they have got to believe that there is somebody, someplace, lower than them. This is why they hate niggers so bad, in my opinion. This is why they done what they done, in my opinion, which was awful. Plus they are just naturally spoiling for a fight all the time. But what they done was awful.

  A bunch of them got good and likkered up and went over there and lined both sides of that nigger holler just at dark, and let loose with a round of shooting you have never heard the likes of—and come morning, half of those niggers was gone. They had left out in the dead of night. They say that Walterene took off so fast, she left her beans in a pot on the cookstove, and her clothes flapping out on the line. Well, this is what folks say, anyway—so I am glad I failed to make a good thing out of Franklin, after all! I hope you will be glad too, and forgive me.

  And times are still real bad over at Diamond, I reckon you have heard. I don’t know what you have heard, though. The company side of it, I reckon. I swear, Beulah, I can’t see it. I have to say I am all for the union myself, and Oakley says that not a day goes by but what he thinks of Ray, and blames the company for it. So I reckon you have heard what Violet is doing. We hear that the strike still goes on, and that the company has brought some thugs in there with Gatling guns to protect the scabs. So we don’t know where it will all end, or when. But folks are leaving there in droves now, they can’t hold out no longer. Violet is still right in the thick of things, her and her boy R.T. She is going to get run out on a rail soon, according to Oakley. She says that her and R.T. might go over to Harlan after this strike gets settled, and work for the union there. So Oakley and me are like to have her Martha for a good long time.

  Speaking of children, how are John Arthur and Curtis Junior and Delores? Fine I hope. Give them all a big hug and a kiss for me, and do not let them forget me Beulah, especially John Arthur. Tell him how we used to go down the hill to see the train at Diamond. I think Oakley is real jealous of Curtis for having Curtis Junior. Oakley wants a boy the worst in the world, and says he heeds one to farm with! Or may be two.

  I was thinking the other day about you and about Curtis’s awful mother Mrs. Bostick, and how mean she was to you. Have you all ever made up yet? My new in-laws are anything but mean. In fact they will kill you with kindness if you let them, Edith Fox will cook you to death and Ray Senior would give you the shirt off his back. You know we stayed with them down there on Home Creek until the thaw. Oakley couldn’t stand to be at Diamond another minute after Ray Junior got killed. The Foxes are so nice they are almost too nice, if you know what I mean. At their table you have to hold hands and bow your head and say grace before each meal. And every night of the world, Ray Senior reads the Bible out loud. But since he can not read as good as me, he got me to read it while we were staying there. Oakley was real proud of me. He just looked at me when I read, and I could tell he wasn’t listening to a word of it. I could tell.

  We went to church with them too. Now this is the regular Primitive Baptist Church at Deskins Branch, you turn left there at the fork of Home Creek instead of going like you would go on to Majestic. My word, Beulah—they don’t meet but twice a month, and so it goes on for ever. They start with singing, and Delphi Rolette lines out the words which he has been doing for twenty years, and then there is preaching and then more singing and then more preaching, it will wear you out. I kept thinking about Garnie through it all. I guess we have lost him too at least for now. We have given him up to God! After the service, the moderator will open the doors which means he will ask, Are all in love and fellowship? which they never are, and then anybody that has got a complaint, comes forward. If there is somebody that has not been coming to church regular, for an instance, they will notice him to come in and give an account of himself. Or they will church you for walking drunk. We went to church two times with Oakley’s family and both times I was scared to death that somebody would say, There is one here that don’t believe! meaning me. And I thought it might be Oakley’s sister Dreama that would say it, she’s real religious. I know it hurts Oakley a lot that I have not been saved, but when Mr. Rolette lines out the invitational and Oakley squeezes my hand, I do not feel a thing except Oakley squeezing my hand. But I have thought to myself, may be I will walk up there and get saved after all, and be baptized in the river, then if it is true I will go to Heaven and if it is not true, it won’t matter anyway. And Oakley would be so happy. But finally, Beulah, I find that I can not—they could see it on my face in a minute if I was to lie and put on like that. For you know me, I can not lie—I could not fool a cat.

  So the Foxes failed to save me but they fattened me up some which was a good thing too as it has been such hard work since we come up here.

  I can’t tell you how I felt, the day we came—it was early March, wet ground, cold wind, cloudy. When we came up along Home Creek I was sorry and surprised to see the trash that folks have throwed in the water alongside the road—for there is a road now, Beulah—and the lowdown kinds of people living any old way along there. The woods look ragged too, they have timbered out all the big trees, and it’s not much along there now but scrub pines. The big tulip poplars are all gone. So I was glad when we left the bottom, and started up Sugar Fork. The trace had gotten so overgrown that we had to keep stopping to move logs and branches that had fallen across it, and Oakley’s daddy said, Me and Delphi will have to come back up here and do some grading, and they have done it since. Now you can ride nearabout the whole way up here in your truck, if the water is not too high that is, you know you have to ford the creek twice on the way. But the water is still as cold and as pure as it ever was, the best water in the world, it tastes as good as it did to Momma when she and Daddy stopped to drink, riding Lightning. I was thinking about Momma and Daddy while I waited for the men to clear the brush, how brave Momma was, not knowing where she was going or what in the world she would find. Now I felt that way myself, but I did not feel brave. I felt cold and scared. And on the final turn, when we parked in the clearing beneath the he-balsam and I stood looking down the bank holding Joli’s hand while they started unloading, then I thought of Babe laying dead right there in the creek, and of Silvaney stepping across the steppingstones to find him. Mama, Mama you are hurting me, Joli said for I was squeezing her little hand too hard. Come on honey, Oakley said then and we came, me wondering—I am wondering still—how I ever rode Babe’s horse all the way down to Home Creek that night for help. Lord, it seems like a million years ago. It seems like another person, but it was me.

  We had to walk through briars and branches to the house, our feet slipping on the wet stones. And then for a minute I got real scared—the way I used to feel when I looked at Momma’s face in the wind up on Pilgrim Knob or heard Daddy breathing horrible by the fire—but then when I stopped to try to breathe, I looked down and seen something I had not seen since we left there, those little yellow beauties and blue-eyed grass that come first every year on the mountains, don’t you remember too? And then I said to Oakley, Look here, spring is on the way for sure. Then we were home.

  But everything is smaller than I thought, or remembered, or immagined. This may be because I was a child then, and now I am grown, but I find that all has shrunk some way, and I do not like it. The sycamore tree, for an instance, stands half its size! It does not take long for a house to fall in either, and Nature to take its course. The breezeway between the cabin halves was all to pieces, with ivy growing up the broken wood. Oakley has shored it up and added on, it is like a new breezeway now. Up in the loft, that first day back, I found a twist of tobacco that must of been Granny Rowe’s, as dry as a piece of rope, and some several old gourds full of seed that was never planted, that seed rattles around in the gourds like little stones. Now I ca
nnot bring myself to throw them out, I don’t know why.

  And I had clean forgot about the chest up in the loft, Momma’s old chest, you will not believe what I found inside! The beautiful crazy quilt stitched together with golden thread, that Momma used to call her burying quilt. And I thought to myself, now Momma is dead and buried in Rich Valley these many years, so she will not need her burying quilt, and I am alive and making a house here with Oakley Fox, and we need a pretty quilt the worst in the world, and so I just snatched it up and aired it out and put it on our bed, now it is the prettiest thing in the whole house! And I will use the old chest for Joli’s hope box. I thought I would not mention to Oakley about it being a burying quilt unlessen of course he was to ask me flat out, Ivy, is this a burying quilt? But he will not. It will not cross his nor anybody else’s mind, and if you come up here, don’t you tell it!

  Oh Beulah, I hope you will visit us sometime. I hope you are not still mad at me, or at Ethel either one. I may have mentioned to you that her and Stoney Branham came up here to help us clear, plus Victor, and Oakley’s folks and some other people—anyway, it was like a party. We cut the brush and pulled it up and piled it in big piles and burned it, and the pale blue smoke from the burning rose straight up to the blue-blue sky. The purple judas-trees were already blooming, and pink and white dogwood, and red and white sarvis even though all the trees were bare except for the greening elmtops. Cardinals were back already, calling Sugar sweet, sugar sweet. Lord, we got so dirty, got so tired. Victor is a big heavy man now, Beulah, and Stoney Branham is getting real old. Didn’t either one of them work too hard, they mostly told these Gooch boys what to do. Stoney and Ethel acts so funny together, it would make you laugh to see them. They are a sketch. Mister Branham is what Ethel calls him still, and draws up her mouth so severe which will make him act evermore the fool. Now, now Mister Branham, Ethel says, real disapproving. He likes it, she likes it. I guess they cut up like that in the store.