Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  Victor and them are partners now and he does not drink a thing except about two times a year, when he goes on a big spree and does all kind of crazy things according to Ethel and Stoney. Like he asked an old maid woman from Matewan to marry him, and so here she came with all her things in a car and her father to give her away, and Victor met them at the door and said, I am so sorry, miss, I cannot recall the incident in question. When he’s sober, he’s real serious. In fact sometimes he is too serious, he will go on and on when you wish he would just shut up. But I am not mad at him now.

  Anyway they came, we cleared the field, we burned the brush, and then we plowed with the mule that Oakley’s daddy gave us when we came up here, that’s Sal, and the old bull-tongue plow that Oakley found out by the orchard, rusting in the weeds. I reckon Momma just left it laying there, halfway between the field and the house, when she didn’t have the strength to carry it no further. Her and you and me was not enough to run this place, I don’t know why she entertained the idea for even a minute. A farm is a lot of work, believe me. You need a man.

  But you know Momma—bound and determined to have it her own way, and now that we are all getting older, I see how we take after her, Beulah, all of us. I know this is something that you don’t want to hear.

  Well, nevermind. Nevermind, it’s all water under the bridge as Granny says. Anyway, when they were hitching up Sal to the plow, Victor stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the plow for a while, kind of puffing his breath in and out of his whiskers and mumbling something you couldn’t hear. Victor is heavy now, he wears a straw hat and suspenders. He pushed that hat way back on his head. His face was all red from climbing up the hill.

  I do believe that is Daddy’s plow, he said finally, and Oakley said, Yes it is.

  Well, humph humph, was what Victor said, or all you could understand. But Victor stood there looking at the plow for a while, all redfaced, until Oakley said, Well, let’s get a move on, and we did. And now I wonder what all was going on in Victor’s mind—if he had come back from the war sooner, we might of all stayed up here all along. Or if he never had gone to the war in the first place. Because it sure took the starch out of Victor in some way, I mean the war. He is not up for farming now, nor anything else much either. But I will tell you, he flung himself into the plowing, and Stoney did too, as much as they were able. Mostly they burned off brush and let the Gooch boys and Oakley hold the plow. After while Victor came up on the porch and visited me and Ethel, and we got to talking about the time we fooled Garnie with the chestnuts. I thought Victor would bust a gut laughing. Ethel was darning socks which I never get to, and making a lot over little Joli whose so pretty. But Ethel doesn’t want no children of her own, not her! She says she has done took inventory, and they are already full up! Ethel is just as spunky as ever, she does not give a damn what folks think. And Ethel will make two of Stoney Branham, who has shriveled up while she has expanded. But Stoney is wirey, Stoney is game. He liked to work himself to death that day on the hillside, and said he will be looking for his share of the profits! He struts like a banty rooster, giving orders. Of course he is fooling, he doesn’t mean it, but him saying it is good because it allows Oakley not to feel so beholden.

  Oakley has got a little beat down, of late.

  When the plowing was done, we drug the field with an evergreen bough.

  By then it was sunset, and the field tilted dark and pretty against the wild red sky. We all walked down together, me and Oakley with our arms around each other’s waists, the way we like to walk, and Ethel and Stoney, and Victor leading Sal, we walked down off the mountain, but I looked back once more to see that field, that sky. The field is so steep it looks like the side of the globe that Mrs. Brown used to keep on her desk, and it is curved like the curve of the earth. And all the sky beyond it is just huge. That night it was plum red, too. We walked through sarvis and dogwood and apple blossoms. Even the lilac bush by the back door had buds on it, you remember Revel brought it to Momma one time from far away.

  Well, so much for the plowing.

  We planted our potatos in the dark of the moon, later that spring, just Oakley and me. We planted when the signs were in the legs. Granny came by the house that afternoon to say, It is a fine night for planting potatos, so that is what we did. Only we got to giggling. Oakley says he doesn’t believe a word of this plant in the dark of the moon stuff. But it is fun. First we got us a cup of blockade liquor that Oakley had put by someplace, and we drunk it down and checked on Joli and Martha. Sound asleep. Then we got the kerosene lantern and the seed corn, and set out for the field. It was so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and windy. Lord, was it windy! My hair was whipping around my face and my skirt blew up all around my legs, I felt like I was going to fly. It was the windiest, wildest night. Well, we got to cutting up, and Oakley grabbed me and gave me a big hard kiss, and one thing led to another. Before long we had fell right down there in that soft black field beneath the soft black sky. I know you don’t want to hear this, so I won’t tell it. But we did it, all the same.

  Oh Beulah, Beulah, Beulah, write to me. I feel like I don’t know you any more. But I am still

  Your sister,

  IVY FOX

  January 7, 1931

  Dear Miss Torrington,

  You can not immagine what a big surprise it was when the box arrived from Boston, nor how I felt to open it up and find the clothes, and the books for the children. My husband Oakley wants to join me in saying, Thank you. Please tell your nieces and nephews how much we appreciate the clothes. My daughter Joli reads the books aloud to Martha who can not read. But Joli is sharp as a tack! I know you would love to have her in your class. I try and fail to immagine your class, your school, or even you, Miss Torrington, after all these years.

  To answer your question, I do not read much any more. I do not have the time. Sometimes Oakley gets me books from the Presbyterian School when he goes to town, or Ethel or Geneva will bring me a book when they come up here, but often I send them back unread, I confess it. Ever since my little twins were born, it is like I don’t have near enough hands, or time either one. The time just slips away.

  The twins are Bill and Danny Ray, born Christmas Eve 1929, now they are already one. They keep me hopping, believe me! They look just like my husband Oakley.

  You are good to send these things, Miss Torrington. I hope from the bottom of my heart that you are well. I cannot immagine your life, no more than you can mine.

  But I will always remain your thankful student,

  IVY FOX.

  January 10, 1935

  Dear Miss Torrington,

  We thank you for the box from your school, it arrived just in time for

  January 4, 1937

  Dear Miss Torrington,

  I am sorry I have not written to thank you for the boxes you sent us this Christmas and in the past. You are so kind.

  I would like to announce to you the birth of my daughter LuIda, 1935, and of my baby Maudy, last summer. So you see how it is.

  Happy New Year 1937, from

  IVY FOX.

  June 10, 1937

  My dear Silvaney,

  It seems so natural to me now to write your name, yet it has been years since I have done so. Years. And in all truth I can not say why I have got my old yellow paper out tonight, nor my pen that Miss Torrington gave me so long ago. Silvaney, Silvaney, Silvaney. Lord it does feel good to write your name. Silvaney. Silvaney. I have missed you so. For years I could not get over the fact that you will never come to us here, I had sulled up about it, you know how mad I can get! My mind could not move around this fact, to write you a letter. You or anybody else. But now all of a sudden this time is past, I can not say how or why, and again I am dying to write.

  It is the craziest thing.

  Somehow, I have been dying to write to you ever since the lights came on last week, now this is the rural electrification project I am talking about. It is really something. They have p
ut in poles and run electric lines all the way up Home Creek, it’s the law! Some day they may come up this holler too.

  Last Tuesday me and Oakley were sitting on the porch, just resting after dinner which I don’t get a chance to do much of, and lo and behold, all up and down the bottom, lights came on! And you can see them shining on the lower slopes of Bethel Mountain too, they twinkle like stars. Oakley said Ho! and started praying. But I said, Oakley, it is nothing to be scared of, or pray about. It is just the rural electrification which we have heard tell of. Praise be to God! said Oakley who has gotten real religious. I think you ought to say, praise be to the Appalachian Power Company, I said, and Oakley laughed. You are a sassy woman but you are mine, he said. We both got up and stood gripping the porch rail, looking out on this space that we have looked out on for so long, this side of Bethel Mountain that we feel like is ours for sure.

  Who all do you reckon lives over there? Oakley asks real slow.

  I don’t know, I told him.

  But I know what he means. It is like we have owned that mountain, owned this view. It is like there has been nothing out there but what we have seen with our own eyes or heard in the night, nobody living there but what we made up in our heads. And now—lo and behold—there is lights all over the bottom of Bethel Mountain, there is somebody there clearly, people living in our view. I counted 14 houses, maybe more, it’s hard to tell, the way the lights will cluster, the way they will twinkle through distance, in all that clear blue air between here and there. Who all do you reckon lives over there? I don’t know. I can not immagine. But looking down the fork toward Home Creek, I can see the lights of the neighbor people’s houses—the Rolettes, Oakley’s folks, and the Breedings who live now where the Conaways used to live when we were growing up. Oakley went on to bed but I stood there, holding the rail real tight and staring. I stared down Home Creek and over on Bethel Mountain. I felt like I didn’t know anybody. Who all lives there? It is a mystery. I heard Maudy start up fussing, start to cry, and I felt my breasts get tight the way they do, I unbuttoned my blouse to ease them and stood there in the breeze and looked out at the lights—it was just like Christmas across the bottom, like a lovely lady’s necklace laid out on the side of Bethel Mountain. Oh, those lights! Maudy was crying hard. My milk started running down so I went inside and fed her, and then went to bed and laid there beside Oakley but I couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t think. In my mind I could still see the lights.

  Then this morning I woke up early and started my letter to you.

  I will write more later.

  Silvaney, I have been caught up for so long in a great soft darkness, a blackness so deep and so soft that you can fall in there and get comfortable and never know you are falling in at all, and never land, just keep on falling. I wonder now if this is what happened to Momma.

  You know I used to have so much spunk. Well, I have lost my spunk some way. It is like I was a girl for such a long time, years and years, and then all of a sudden I have got to be an old woman, with no inbetween. Maybe that has always been the problem with me, a lack of inbetween.

  For all of a sudden when I saw those lights, I said to myself, Ivy, this is your life, this is your real life, and you are living it. Your life is not going to start later. This is it, it is now. It’s funny how a person can be so busy living that they forget this is it. This is my life.

  But now I am so tired, Silvaney, just plain tired, tired unto death it seems. Maudy is the prettiest little baby I have ever had, but when she sucks it is like she is sucking my life right out of me. I am nothing but skin and bones now anyway, everybody says so. Oakley’s mama Edith Fox keeps sending boiled custard up here for me and I eat and eat, but I can’t gain. I can’t seem to put on a pound. I am not old yet, Silvaney, 37—that don’t sound so old! But I have fallen down and down and down into this darkness, I can see it all so clear now, and bits and pieces of me have rolled off and been lost along the way. They have rolled off down this mountain someplace until there is not much left but a dried-up husk, with me leeched out by hard work and babies. I feel like a locust—like a box turtle shell!

  I hadn’t ought to be so tired. I have worked all my life, you would think I’d be used to it by now. I was up cooking and washing dishes the third day after the twins were born. I milked the cow on the third day. I felt real fainty but there was not anybody else here to do it, I forget why. So you would think that with Maudy, I wouldn’t of been so tired, but I was, even though Oakley’s sister Dreama came up here and stayed a week to help me. After Maudy, I laid in the bed and slept like a rock, and did not dream. I never dream.

  I never get out and go places any more, Silvaney. A woman just can’t go off and leave so many children. So I don’t hardly ever get out nor go anyplace. I dont go to church with Oakley except once in a blue moon—I’ve always got a baby to look after, anyway—and I don’t get down to town but once every month or so. You know we have still got no near neighbors up here either, and I dont give a fig to go off real far visiting. I keep up with Ethel and Geneva, and lord knows, the Foxes come up here moren I like anyway. I can’t seem to take any interest in reading, which I used to, nor voting, which Oakley does. Oakley is all the time politicking around with somebody, he is a real good Democrat. One time he voted for a dead man because he was a Democrat.

  But it seems like I don’t want to do a thing when I’m not working, except rest. And when I rest, I lean back and shut my eyes and fall straight as a plum down into that darkness that I have been talking about.

  I have been down in that darkness now for years.

  Although in a way it seems short, like one long day that has lasted for years and years. I feel like I’ve been frozen, locked in time.

  Oh Silvaney, all of a sudden I am thinking about that game Statues we used to play, and how you loved it. Don’t you remember? Victor was the one that would fling us around, and however we landed, we’d have to stay. Beulah always used to try to land some fancy way. Beulah used to cheat on how she landed. Well, the twins play it now, right here in the dirt in front of the house, where you and me played.

  Now I feel like I’ve been playing Statues and got flung down into darkness, frozen there. I see myself frozen this way, frozen that way.

  I look down in my mind and see my statues.

  The first one is me with Granny right before she died, only on the day in question I didn’t know she was dying. This was early spring, I believe it was two years ago. You aint yourself, Granny had said to me, now hand that baby over to Dreama—this was LuIda, newborn,—and come along here with me. It was March again, and a cold wind blew in little fits and starts, it pulled Granny’s long skirts up around her skinny ankles in the old men’s shoes. She had tied a bonnet under her chin and it was hard to see her face, you had to look straight at her, head-on. She had her willow basket over her arm and her sharp little knife in her hand.

  I am too tired, I think I said.

  Hand that baby over and be quick about it, Granny said, and so I did. Tenessee went in the house and sat down in the floor and started making newspaper hats for the children, Get you a coat, Granny said, and so I did, and so we left. Little LuIda was crying when we left.

  We went looking for sallet greens.

  You have got to purify your blood, Granny said, and get your strength back. And she showed me how to find the little bunches of watercress growing in the rocky falls of Sugar Fork on up by Pilgrim Knob, and she showed me where to find the little green spears of poke, and how to cut them off right above the ground. They are real good if you cut them young, but if you let them get too big they are poison, and will kill you. We chopped dandelions no bigger than your little finger, and the fiddlehead ferns still curled up tight, and went along the sunny spots by the trace for lamb’s quarter and dock. Before long Granny’s basket was brimming plum over, and I had a stitch in my side from walking.

  Lets us sit down a minute, I begged her. I am about to die.

  So we sat in the sun abov
e the creek and she told me what the greens are for, dock for the heart, dandelion greens for the liver. Granny says your blood gets dark and slow in the wintertime, and needs to be salivated. I got to looking around at the pretty day and thinking how we played party close to there, Beulah and you and me, with flowers in our hair.

  Now Ivy, pay attention.

  Granny’s hand was like a claw on my arm. Look at me, Granny said. Here’s how you boil your bitters, and I looked straight into her bonnet, at her apple-doll face. Remember, she said, and I have. I saw the clouds already forming in her sharp blue eyes, and I have always remembered, and now in the spring of the year I go out and gather the greens the way she told me, and boil them like she said, and give everybody a good dose of bitters whether they want it or not, to thin out their blood for the summer. And we never eat sallet greens, which I fix like she said with bacon fat and vinegar, sugar and salt, but what I think of her. The sharp bitey taste of the greens takes me straight back to that sunny blowing day by Sugar Fork when we sat on the rock ledge and Granny said, Ivy. Remember.

  And I have remembered. I remember everything. But now that I am writing it all to you, Silvaney, it is coming over me real strong how bad I miss Granny since she died.