Fair and Tender Ladies

by Lee Smith

  Well, you know the rest. They backed off at the sight of those reporters. They backed off for good. This land will be here waiting for David when he gets back.

  You know the rest. You saw the story in the newspaper. You saw the pictures.

  But it’s a fact that there was not enough coal in that outcrop to justify them going up there after it, anyway. They were just going to mine it because they could, pure and simple.

  What did you think of my lipstick?

  Love,

  MAMA.

  Dear Maureen,

  Thanks for your letter. I am sure you will get the letter-writing badge if you keep it up so good. You can write to me anytime honey and I will write back, I am a fool for letters. Your mama will tell you that! And speaking of your mama, tell her that you can stay over here with me anytime too, whether she is going to the Darlington 500 again or someplace else. I will be glad to keep you. I will tell you all the stories that you ever want to hear. I am glad you like the family ones. I do, too. They are the best! But I have to say, I was surprised to learn that you have never heard tell of your greatgreat-uncle Revel. Then I thought, well why would she? And did I tell you he had a dog? The name of his dog was Charly.

  Now here is a story that Revel used to tell when we were girls, it never failed to scare the pee right out of us.

  There was a poor little girl—and he would name the little girl Ivy, say, if he was telling it to me—there was a poor, poor little girl that went out walking in the woods one day looking for something to eat, and she found a chunk of meat right there on a big flat rock. And so she snatched it up, and ran right home with it, and put it in the beans, for they had not had meat in that house for days and days. And it got to cooking, and the whole house smelled good, and all the children were happy.

  But then all of a sudden came a big awful growling outside and a terrible voice said, WHERE IS MY CHUNK OF MEAT?

  So the little old woman gets under the featherbed. And the little old man gets under the featherbed. And all the little brothers and sisters gets under the featherbed. And then the girl hears the gatechain rattle, and then she hears something climbing up on the porch roof clawing on the house-roof.

  WHERE’S MY CHUNK OF MEAT? The terrible voice says again. And soot commences to fall down the chimbley. So the girl goes over and looks up the chimbley and sees a BIG OLD HAIRY BOOGER sitting up there on the smoke-shelf.

  And the little girl asks, What you got such big eyes for?

  The hairy booger says, Stare you through.

  And the little girl asks, What you got such a bushy tail for?

  The hairy booger says, Sweep your grave.

  But when the little girl says, What you got such long sharp snaggly teeth for?

  The hairy booger says, EAT YOU UP!

  And he does so in a flash.

  This is where Revel used to yell and grab me. Lord I was scared! I used to love stories such as that, when I was your age. I liked to get real scared. And I loved hairy boogers.

  Now I remain your loving old,

  MAMAW.

  Dear Joli,

  I will make it short since I am feeling real bad today.

  The quilt you are talking about was Momma’s burying quilt which she did not get to use since she died down in Majestic at the boardinghouse, and she was robbed in death and carried over to Rich Valley by her mean old daddy Mister Castle and lies there yet beside her daddy’s body, the way he planned it all along, in a little cemetery with a wrought-iron fence around it. I hear they are putting in a mall right up the hill. I have always meant to get somebody to go over there and dig her up and bring her back to the mountain, but somehow the years have slipped by and I have not done so, till now it seems worse to move her than to let her lay. Anyway, it was Momma’s burying quilt, first.

  And then when your daddy and I moved back up on Sugar Fork, I found it in an old cedar chest that was made by—I believe—Early Cook, Rufuses daddy. Anyway there was the quilt, folded just so. Never used.

  And because I love a crazy-quilt and hate a waste, I took it out and put it on our bed. We used it for years and years. I know you remember seeing it on the bed when you were little. It held up real good. I used it until the Christmas that Ethel gave us those new drapes and the comforter she had ordered off for, in the Early American style. That old quilt was getting pretty worn out, anyway! Then when Martha and Rufus got married, I gave it to them along with everything else I could find around here that we weren’t using, so Martha could set up housekeeping. And you know Martha—she likes the old ways, and for everything to stay the same as it always was, so I bet she is using it still, on her and Rufuses bed. I would not be atall surprised by that.

  All this is by way of saying NO, honey, I can’t send you the quilt for your exhibit, I am sorry. Now I am going to quit writing this letter and lay down. More and more lately, your face has come into my mind, the sweet way you looked as a girl. You looked like a little fox! I hope you will be able to come and see me soon.

  For I remain your loving, loving,

  MAMA.

  Dear Maudy,

  I don’t know what you mean, a bad influence. You will kindly remember who you are talking to, Miss Priss! That is what your daddy used to call you. He loved you so much honey. And I do too.

  But it will do her more harm to be in the Little Miss Gatlinburg Christmas Contest than it will to hear a good story. Mark my words.

  I would write more, and give you a real piece of my mind, but I am not feeling too good today. It must be something I ate. I hope you will send Maureen over here again soon. We had a real good time.

  Even though I am a Bad Influence, I remain your loving,

  MAMA.

  Dear Ethel,

  I will make this short.

  I am still over at Bristol in the hospital but going home soon. About the only thing that gives me any pleasure here is the roses from you and Pete, thank you so much, they are beautiful. I am so happy that you all are coming for a visit. You will find me at home! I do not intend to stay over here despite what the doctors are saying, it is no use in it, they know it as well as me. I do not plan to spend my last days laying up in a strange bed and not knowing a soul, like Victor. So I have said, Forget it! And they are all giving me a fit, especially Joli and Danny Ray who think they know everything. I hope you will be on my side. I have lived like I wanted by God, I will die that way too. Plus, doctors don’t know everything. I might just up and get well and do something crazy! Anyway I am going home as quick as they will let me leave here, although I don’t know as I will recognize the place since Marlene Blount and Maudy have gone up there and cleaned the house from top to bottom, so I hear. I reckon it needed it, but I do not appreciate anybody going through my things like that, would you? Lord it is hard to be old. It is hard to act nice, the way folks expect you to.

  Anyway Ethel, thanks again, you know how I love white roses and have since a child.

  You will find me back up on Sugar Fork where I belong.

  Love,

  IVY.

  My dear Joli,

  I know I am worrying you by staying up here by myself. I am sorry for it honey, but I can’t do nothing else. It will not do you any good to try and hire anybody either, I will just run them off the way I run off Martha, and I love Martha. But there does come a time when a person has got to be by theirselves. May be you will understand this, and may be you will not, when you get to my time of life. I know it is hard for you now, caught up as you are in the great roiling churn of things, to consider any other way to be. But it comes to us all, honey. It comes to us all.

  Joli, you ask about the letters.

  I don’t know if I can explain this to you or not. I will try, though. Because you are a writer, I will try. I know that your aunt Silvaney died in the Elizabeth Masters Home in the great flu epidemic that took so many lives. Of course I know it! I am not a fool. I have been knowing it ever since Victor came home from the war and went over there and found out abou
t her death. I got so mad at him I liked to have died, for telling me! I did not want to know it then. For it didn’t matter, Silvaney, you see, was a part of me, my other side, my other half, my heart.

  So I went on and wrote her letters, all the years. I put them in the cedar chest which is where Marlene and Maudy found them.

  And you know what I have done with those letters now?

  I gathered them up and took them out back to the firepit, where we used to lay the kettle to boil our clothes when I was a girl, it taken me several trips as I move so slow now. I cleared out the snow in the firepit and took my big old kitchen matches out there and burned the letters every one. Now and then I would stop and look all around, but you know how quiet the land lies in the snow. And it all looks different. The shape of Pilgrim Knob looked different, and Bethel Mountain down below hung in wreathy mist, and even the slope of the orchard looked different, strange and new. I don’t know—it was kindly exciting! It was a new world, with even the shape of it changed. The clouds hung low and dark and puffy. My breath hung in the air. The smoke from the burning letters rose and was lost in the clouds. It took me upwards of an hour to burn them all. With every one I burned, my soul grew lighter, lighter, as if it rose too with the smoke. And I was not even cold, long as I’d been out there. For I came to understand something in that moment, Joli, which I had never understood in all these years.

  The letters didn’t mean anything.

  Not to the dead girl Silvaney, of course—nor to me.

  Nor had they ever.

  It was the writing of them, that signified.

  So now I have sent them up in smoke and given the cedar chest to Maureen for a hope chest (I hope she will not grow up to be Miss America!) and I remain forevermore your loving,

  MAMA.

  My dear Silvaney,

  I know you have not heard from me in a long time, I am so sorry for it. I have been sick. Today I am better thogh. All throgh my sickness I have been thinking, thinking, and now I am dying to write I am dying to oh Silvaney, today is the lastest snow! You know a March snow brings good luck, and a pretty spring. It will be gone by noon. Right now I am looking out the window at it. It is real pretty, laying like lace all over the yard, down by the steps I see my crocuses poking through gold and purple, purple and gold the colors of royalty and church. The whole round world is so bright with the sun, and the snow melts before my eyes, a hundred little rivers running down the yard and all of them shining. I hear Dreama back there in the kitchen banging things around. She is all the time trying to cook up something I will eat. She is a real good cook like her mama was but I don’t have a taste for much these days except Orange Julius which people bring me from the mall. I guess it has gotten all around how much I like Orange Julius. Just about everybody that comes up here now, brings me one. Dreama is cooking bacon, I can smell it. I wont eat a bite. What Dreama will do, is fix me up a breakfast plate, and then she will eat it all up her ownself! We are like Jack Sprat and his old woman, I get thinner and Dreama gets fatter, I bet she is pushing 200 now. Silvaney admit it, aint you suprised to hear that Dreama Fox is up here now taking care of me? She has rented out her house to a third grade schoolteacher with real short hair. This is what happend. I had not been home from the hospital but about one week when there came this knock on the door and Bill goes to open it and there stands Dreama big as life and twice as ugly, wearing that hat, carrying a matched set of Samsonite luggage. It suprised Bill so bad he just stepped back without a word and she came right on in not saying hidy nor bye-your-leave nor nothing, and marched straight on back to the back room, where she has been ever since. She calls up Bill or Corey to bring us food from the store. Or she will just call the Piggly Wiggly if she cant get any of them on the phone, and say who she is and what she wants, and sure enogh they will send it up here directly. They dont deliver to anybody else. But you know there is not a soul in this county that will tell Dreama no. She tickles me. Even as sick as I have been, she tickles me. Of course we do not speak. Lord no. Not one word. Dreama Fox still thinks I am a fallen woman, I reckon. She has not spoke to me for years and years, and she is not about to start now. And its a funny thing—I would of run anybody else off that any of my younguns tried to put up here to take care of me, just like I told them I would, but I can put up with Dreama. Dreama is okay, I couldn’t say for why. And it is okay with me that she still won’t speak, because I have got so much on my mind these days, and no time to waste on talking. Right now I can see the forsythia blooming under the snow. Don’t you remember how we used to make angels Silvaney, until we were wet clear throgh? A heavenly host of angels all across the yard. The ice is melting. The Ice Queen walks in beauty like the night of shooting stars and cloudless skies. There’s a big hawk circling in this blue, blue sky. Lord it is a pretty day, it reminds me of my daddy and how he gave us that birch bark to lick and said Slow down now, slow down now Ivy. This is the taste of spring. I never have slowed down. But oh how Oakley loved the spring when I close my eyes I see him always Oakley always coming out of the black and smoking mine, bearing his own sweet face like a present, I seen him coming from a long way off, and I see Lonnie Rash the day he left for war, and all the high muddy water rushed under the bridge there is a time for war I see Franklin the night we danced and danced in his fathers house while the fans whirled overhead and the furniture covered in sheets loomed up from the darkness like so many ghosts there is a time to dance and I see you and me Silvaney on Old Christmas Eve when the lady sisters came and flew away across the snow and we stood in the door to watch them go while the moonlight turned the snow to diamonds all around and there is a time to be born when Joli came it was moonlight too, moonlight advancing slow across the quilt square by square she was little and perfect, sugar and spice and everything nice in the moonlight her new skin as pale and perfect as Mrs. Browns camio Mrs. Brown my first love which passeth understanding oh who ever loved, that loved not at first sight? I used to think I would be a writer. I thought then I would write of love (Ha!) but how little we know, we spend our years as a tale that is told I have spent my years so. I never became a writer atall. Instead I have loved, and loved, and loved. I am fair wore out with it. I see Miss Torrington so severe her kiss like fire on the back of my neck yet first born of all my kisses all my life, I thought once I would go to Boston and see the sights, instead I have lived here on this mountain I climbed it once, I went as high as you can go following Honey’s white shirt up and up and up past the treeline, Honey’s hair shone golden in the morning light. It is all so long ago. We ate rabbits, squirrel my David will not hunt Whitebear Whittington lives yet up on Hell Mountain He lives there even now I tell you and he is wild, wild. He runs throgh the night with his eyes on fire and no one can take him, yet he will sleep of a day as peaceful as a lullaby Wyncken Blynken and Nod one night sailed off in a wooden shoe, sailed on a river of crystallight and into a sea of dew I do not want any bacon. I do not, I am too busy there is a time for every purpose under heaven The hawk flys round and round, the sky is so blue. I think I can hear the old bell ringing like I rang it to call them home oh I was young then, and I walked in my body like a Queen

  Acknowledgments

  With very special thanks to Kathryn Stripling Byer, whose fine poems inspired this novel and sustained me while I wrote it; to Dan Patterson, for his help in finding old-time gospel music; to my cousins Randy Venable Sinisi and Melissa Venable Poynter; to Anna Jardine, for her heroic copyediting of the manuscript; to Clyde Edgerton and Wilton Mason; and to Hal, for everything.

  I have gathered Appalachian legends, history, songs, and tales from people I know and also from the following sources:

  More Than Moonshine, by Sidney Saylor Farr, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Reminiscences and recipes: a wonderful book.

  Our Southern Highlanders, by Horace Kephart, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1976. Original copyrights 1913, 1922, The Macmillan Co., New York.

  Grandfather T
ales, edited by Richard Chase, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1948. It was in this volume that I came across the stories of Whitebear Whittington, Mutsmag, Old Dry Frye, and Chunk O Meat.

  The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, by John C. Campbell, reprinted by The Reprint Company, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1973, from a 1921 edition in the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. With permission of the Russell Sage Foundation.

  Growing Up Southern: Southern Exposure Looks at Childhood, Then and Now, edited by Chris Mayfield, Pantheon Books, New York, 1980.

  Such as Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties, edited by Tom E. Terrill and Jerrold Hirsch, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1978.

  My Appalachia, by Rebecca Caudill, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1966.

  Voices from the Mountains, collected and recorded by Guy and Candie Carawan, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1975.