Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  Ah Ethel! Pete Francisco says, shaking his head and making a tch-tch noise with his teeth. What can you do with such a woman? he asks, spreading his hands wide, after he tells a tale about how he bought Ethel a fur coat and she took it straight back to the store. Fur in Florida? Ethel snorts. She thinks it is crazy. Pete Francisco grins and shrugs. All the movements he makes are big movements, like he is in a movie. That’s because he is Italian, Ethel says. Bill and Marlene think he is Jewish. He is something foreign, in any case. And Ethel is pleased as punch with him, you can tell. When he went out of the room for a minute, she said Ivy, isn’t he a sight in the world? and I had to agree, he is!

  Pete Francisco used to run a trucking business out of Memphis Tenessee. Now he has retired to Florida where he runs this Quik-Pic that Ethel got a job in, which is how they met. I guess it is a case of opposites attract. For although they are so opposite, I can not now immagine one without the othern. Ethel and him stayed down at Ruthie’s hotel. I can’t get over Geneva dying, even now. It does not seem right to say, Ruthie’s hotel. But anyway. Ethel and Pete Francisco did not even have a reason for the trip! I think Ethel just wanted to show him off, what I think. She knows everybody in town, from standing in the store so long. So she got Pete Francisco all dressed up and set him out on the porch Sunday afternoon, so folks could see him. She was like a big child at Christmas, with a new little toy.

  Ethel was also pleased to see she sold the store in the nick of time, for Hawk is about to go broke with it. The Magic Mart is taking all of his business. And with the road finished finally, folks can just drive over to Richlands and go to the shopping center if they’ve got a mind to, which they do. Ethel got out while the getting was good.

  But it is getting real built up around here, Joli, and real tacky, People are throwing these jerrybuilt buildings up anyplace, even out into the river which is not a good idea as they say that’s what caused the flood—that and all the strip mining. But Bill says you can’t stand in the way of progress. This makes me sad to hear. I wish he hadn’t of quit farming, and let that tobacco field fall to weeds. I keep thinking about this land and how Daddy said, Farming is pretty work. It hurts me to see the scrub pines taking over what used to be the garden. Do you remember how steep it was? I have got me another little garden up close to the house now, but it’s not the same.

  Bill and Marlene are doing real good in the real estate business though, Marlene turns out to be one sharp cookie. She works even harder than Bill if you ask me. I keep their little Ellis a lot, he is a precious angel in the world. Marlene’s two oldest boys are going off to college on football scholarships, both of them. Ernest is going to Kentucky and John to East Tenessee State. Bobby has got one more year to go in high school, like David.

  Honey, just send him on, and do not worry about him too much. It is a boy’s nature to get into things, and one of those things is trouble. A boy will get into trouble if he can. I never will forget the time I had with Danny Ray, and look at him now! A lawyer! It beats all. Of course I know from T.V. that there is a lot worse stuff for them to get into now than there used to be. One thing to remember about a teenager is this—they will not believe a thing you tell them, not one word of it. A teenager has got to do it all himself, or herself, as the case may be. Maudy was a case too. But they all grow up, believe me. They all grow up. So, send him back over here. I will do my best to straighten him out. I will put Bill and Rufus on it too.

  That is all the news for now except I guess you read in the papers about Francis Gary Powers and the U-2 plane, well he is from right around here. He is one of those Powers from over at Hurley. He used to play football for Hurley. And speaking of news, what do you think of Jackie Kennedy, I think she is too thin, and bowlegged. But Maudy thinks she is just perfect, in fact Maudy has bought a little round hat like Jackie wears. Maudy reminds me of Beulah, the way she likes to dress up. Dress up and then drive around in the car, that’s all she does. Mark won’t let her work. I don’t think she is all that happy with him either, if you want to know. He is gone so much. But now she says she is going to teach twirling at the Charm School in Richlands, and how to walk. Part time. One thing you can say for Maudy is, she walks great! Mark wants to have a baby but Maudy does not yet, she is on birth control pills.

  I said to Maudy, Those birth control pills are great. They are the greatest thing since drip dry. You ought to get yourself some, Joli, just in case. You can’t ever tell when a love interest might come along. I would, if I was still young.

  Send David.

  And speaking of love interests, don’t forget to put a bigger one in your next book. People don’t like to have too much thinking in a book. Mister Rochester in Jane Eyre is my idea of a good love interest, Joli. Or Heathcliff. I would have him be smoldering.

  And I remain your loving,

  MAMA.

  Dear Molly,

  I could not believe it, to hear from you of all people, and after so many years! In a way it seems like no time atall since we jumped rope together and mined for gold. In another way it seems like more than years. It seems like lifetimes and lifetimes ago. For we are old now Molly, old—leastways, I am! My face has got lines all over it especially the eyes, and it is hard to tell my hair was ever red. Yet sometimes I feel just like that girl again, and even more so. I still get all wrought up about writing my letters, as you see. When I can get the time! I have got so many grandchildren around here now, they are like to drive me crazy. They want to stay up here with me all the time, they like it up here since I do not bug them as they say. Ha! So I do not have much time to sit and enjoy my old age, to read and think of things, as I would like to do. I have got plenty of thinking saved up to do when I get the time, believe you me.

  But if you really want me to, I can help you some with the settlement school. I can tell you who to hire around here and who not to, for sure. Lord knows it is a good high school, you know my Joli graduated from there, the one that is a famous writer, and Danny Ray that is a lawyer, and Maudy my least girl. So I think that putting in a college down there is a fine idea and needed. I am so glad to hear that you are the one coming back here to do it, for you know us, and our ways. You will have to go slow, you know. You remember how we are so proud here, and what Granny Rowe used to call techious. But we need an education, these children around here needs the light.

  Ruthie will send me word when you get here. I will try and help you all I can Molly, if an old mountain woman’s help is what you want.

  In spite of the years I remain your long lost friend,

  IVY ROWE.

  April 11, 1963

  Dear Danny Ray,

  I am writing to give you a piece of my mind. For I think it is high time I did so. You have got a nerve, going into politics over there. What is the matter with this county, I would like to know? I guess that wife of yours is too good for the likes of us. Just don’t forget your raising, Danny Ray. I did not raise you to be a fat cat, or a Republican. Stick with the Democrats.

  Oh honey, I do not blame you, and I am proud of you too. When I look at those pictures I am proud as punch. I like the one of you all in front of the fireplace with the twins in the armchair. Little Elizabeth favors Maudy, don’t you think? I don’t know as I like Louise’s hair so short, but she is your wife after all, so what? She is such a pretty little thing, to be so smart. You better watch out, or she will make more money than you do! Head doctors are in, what they tell me. But I like Louise, Don’t you remember how her and me sat up all night talking, that last time I came to visit and could not sleep and got up in the middle of the night and cleaned the bathroom? A fine new bathroom like that, it ought to stay clean, I remember saying. Besides, I wasn’t doing anything else. Louise said, Except sleeping! Lord how we laughed.

  The truth is, Danny Ray, I don’t sleep good anywhere but right here in my own bed on Sugar Fork where I have spent my life. And I don’t sleep much, either. It seems like I have got too many things to think about, to sleep good. I have got
a lot on my mind! When you get old, the time draws shorter and shorter for you to figure it all out.

  And I’m an old woman now. I can say what I want to, and this is what I want to say. Now that you are a big politician, I want you to know what is going on over here. For sometimes it seems to me that we might as well not be in Virginia atall, or any other state. We are like a kingdom unto our own selves. Everybody has took everything out of here now—first the trees, then the coal, then the children. We have been robbed and left for dead. I mean it—I can name you who all is on this mountain now. All the young ones have up and gone, including you, Danny Ray.

  Or take Home Creek, for an instance. You can walk up and down Home Creek now and not find hardly a man that works. You will recall how it used to be when you were coming along and we would go down there to see your daddy’s folks, and how Edith Fox used to make a pie and send a piece to each and every, up and down the creek, and everybody had a garden with a hollyhock or a sunflower in the yard, and there was such a feeling of neighborness. Don’t you remember those big sunflowers that the Rolettes grew? It is all gone now.

  Let’s start at the head of the creek. Charlie Rue died young of his lungs and so his wife Rowena lives in the house now, on his social security and his union check, and she has raised up a passel of younguns one after the other, mostly her grandchildren. Every one that turns sixteen, before you know it, is out and gone. They have lit out for Detroit or someplace else, you can’t blame them, they is just not a thing for them to do here.

  It is crazy to me that Joli’s boy David wants to come back so bad. He says he is coming here after college, to live. In a pig’s eye! I said. You will be back just like your mama and Danny Ray, I said. No, I mean it, Mamaw, he said, grinning real big. I aim to farm. He sounded just like his grandaddy, years ago. Don’t you know that nobody does that any more? I said. I am not nobody, David said, and I reckon he is right in that. He is just David, and not nobody else, that’s for sure. Calls his mama Doctor Mom now. I’ve got this pain in my left side, Doctor Mom, he says. Oh go on, David! says Joli. Of course she is a Doctor of English not the medical. But you can’t get too put out with David, which is why he used to get away with as much as he did. He could get away with murder, just like you.

  Anyway you can walk the streets of Majestic now on a Saturday and not find hardly a one between high school age and old, unless they are out of work. It’s true, yet you recall how Majestic used to be come payday, or Court Day—all the hustle and bustle, so much happening. There was so much life here then. Well it is gone now. Like chimney smoke into thin air.

  Now we have come to the Rolette house which has been took over by Musicks since Reva and Delphi passed and Gus went to jail. This is Clell Musick that got his arm cut off at Blue Star Number Six a while back and has got so many children. I imagine he gets a check from the state but he would not get one from the union, he was never a union man. So many in this county are not, you know.

  There is nobody in the Foxes house at all but Dreama who is still mean as a snake, and just as stuck up as ever. As for the Copes and the Charleses, there is two men both too old to get a job yet too young to retire. So they are stuck in the middle. Stuck and out of work! They got laid off when Panther Coal put the new machine in over on Hell Mountain, and they have been laid off ever since. Folks do say that Luther Charles is real bad to drink. And I say, Who is to blame him? So you see how it is here.

  Bert Cope is the one that Molly sent up before Judge Grant for not sending his children to school. I said, Molly, don’t do this, he can’t help it or they would be here, but she done it anyway. There is something about a maiden lady that makes them headstrong as a girl. So the Judge sends out a warrant, and then it is Bert Cope’s day to come to court.

  Let’s just go over there, I said to Molly, and see what he says. For I wanted her to hear it.

  Nothing he says can justify keeping those children out of school. So says Molly, who has gotten right set in her ways with old age. I think a person will go one way or the other, don’t you? Either they will get more set in their ways, or they will get all shook up. I am shook up, myself.

  Anyway, the upshot of it was, we went, me more or less dragging Molly. First the county attorney appears, to prosecute for the state, which is Molly. The county attorney is a young whippersnapper from someplace over in Kentucky, who has not been living here long. Then the truant officer, Bob Wright, says that Bert Cope is the father of six children that ought to go to school, and hardly do. They have not been to school for a month. The county attorney asks the court to impose a fine or a jail sentence, whereupon Bert Cope just starts laughing. He is about fifty years old and you can tell from the tilt of his back that he has spent his years in the mine. His hands are big, fingernails black with coal dirt.

  He spreads his hands and says, I agree with everything that has been said. Hell it’s true, it’s all true, and everybody knows it. Nobody wants my kids to go to school any more than I do, they are driving me crazy. And my old woman, she is crazy, I reckon. I punched Molly, for I had heard this too. I’ve been out of work for nigh on to four years now. I’ve been all over this coalfield and over into West Virginia looking for work. Well there aint none to be had. I drawed out my unemployment over three years ago and all what I’ve had since is just day work here and there, when I can get it. But I am old for day work, and it’s hard to get. I sold my car, my shotgun, my radio and even my pocketwatch that my daddy left me, to get money to feed those kids. And now I don’t have a thing in the world that anybody would want. I’m dead broke and wore out. We are over a mile from the schoolhouse and I have not got the money to buy my kids the shoes and clothes they need to go to school. Me and my oldest boy has got this one pair of shoes between us and that’s all. Bert Cope holds up his foot, wearing shoes that look sorry to me. When my boy wears em I don’t have any, and when I wear em, he don’t have any. If it was not for these rations the government given us, I guess our whole family would of starved to death long afore now. So if you want to fine me sir, why go ahead! Bert Cope grins a big grin that shows some missing teeth. I aint got a penny to pay it with, so I reckon I’ll have to lay it out in jail. This is fine with me. So if you think that putting me in jail will help my younguns any, why you go right ahead and do it, and I’ll be glad of it. I need me a good long rest. And if any of your fine gentlemen will find me a job where I can work out something for my kids to wear, then I’ll be much obliged to you for all the days of my life.

  By the time Bert Cope had finished saying his piece Molly was crying, not making a sound, into her lace handkerchief. Judge Grant cleared his throat and asked Bert Cope some more questions. Bert said he had a fourth grade education. He worked in the mines for twenty years and spent three years as an infantry soldier in the war against Japan. He had not gotten wounded, though. If he had gotten wounded, then he would be getting a check from the V.A. But he did not. Then Judge Grant asked him whether he had any skill but mining coal, and Bert Cope said, No. Then Bert went on to say,

  Judge I’m not the only man on the creek that is in this fix. You know it is true. Miss Molly here will back me up in saying it. There’s other children along the creek don’t go to school, for the same reason mine don’t. Now you all aim to make an example of me. You all think if I go to jail for a week that they will get the money to get their kids to the schoolhouse, but it aint so. It aint so atall. Aint that true? Bert Cope asked Bob Wright, who nodded.

  Judge Grant is not a fool.

  He looked all around the courtroom. He looked for a long time at Bert Cope and then at Miss Molly Bainbridge. Well you do your best, he said at length to Bert. If they don’t go to school, they will be in as bad a fix as you are in now. Case dismissed.

  Bert Cope smiled a long smile which did not reach his eyes, and put on his hat, and left. He has a long stride, I thought as I watched him cross that courtroom, a stride like a mountain man. And I felt then as I have often felt since, that I do not belong down there in M
ajestic myself, but up here on Sugar Fork where I am from. Molly thinks she needs me at the school, but she don’t. About all I do down there is tell her who is who and where they live, and she is getting to know it all now anyway. So I might retire! My car, this old Chevy that Bill give me, is about give out anyhow. But that’s another story. We’ll see.

  The upshot of it all was, now all those little Copes are coming to school of course, for Molly has bought them shoes. And now she is going to start a foundation, and maybe an orphanage. I want you to tell people about it, Danny Ray. You might as well be good for something!

  As for the rest of Home Creek, it is more of the same. Except for Rufus and Martha who have got another problem as they live too close to the mouth of the creek, and it nearabout flooded them out last month. It did flood, over on Jump Creek. I went over there with Molly to look. It was the awfullest sight in the world. The thing about a flood is, it don’t destroy. It is not like a fire. It just ruins everything, and then you are left with what all is ruint. We went in one house and there wasn’t hardly a thing left except this little old T.V. going and these children huddled up all around it. They were just as dirty as could be, and scrawny. Big eyes like holes in their heads. Molly gave them some apples. On the T.V., there was a butler. A butler! How do you reckon it makes them feel, watching that? For there are no shows about such as us. Molly says it is awful, the way folks that have not got even a toilet will beg, borrow or steal to get a T.V. I do not think it is awful though. I can see why.