The custom was to combine hard work and play, make a holiday of it, with the women providing plenty of food. All the men took pride in their ability to handle the broadaxe. A fine “scriber” who could hew logs to precision was a man to be admired. Some could split and notch up to two hundred logs a day. I had watched some of them at work. It was beautiful to see the walnut and other straight-grained timber split like mellons beneath their axes. I loved the ring of the axes in the still air of a winter’s day, the rhythm with which they swung the axes, the fragrance of the newly cleft wood.
Saturday saw us resolutely heading for the Holt cabin, David with his tools over his shoulder. By reputation the Holts’ was one of the cruder places and there would be no way to avoid eating the noon meal inside. By the time we got there, most of the people had already gathered.
Deer Mountain, which rose directly behind the Holts, still had dense undergrowth. Some of the men guests were already toiling side by side up the slope, each having been given a vertical strip to clear. I saw that the hillside was a tangle of huckleberry bushes, poison hemlocks, scrub oaks, rhododendrons, small pines, and tough little locusts to be grubbed out.
Mr. Holt dropped his mattock and came toward us. “Howdy, Miz Christy. Mornin’, Preacher.” His attitude was not exactly gracious; there was a trace of gloating in it.
This was my first good look at Ozias Holt. Always I found it difficult to guess the age of the mountain people, but Mr. Holt was no youngster: there was gray in his beard, which was short around his chin, bushy at the sides of his face. He had a prominent nose and large ears. He was wearing overalls over a gray shirt and the inevitable dirty and torn felt hat. With a crusty forefinger he pointed to the strip they had saved for David.
David appeared not to notice that Mr. Holt was the only man who had really spoken to us. Several of the others had looked up briefly, then had gone on working silently—among them Bird’s-Eye Taylor. He stood staring at us, looking through me, giving no indication that he had ever before seen me. I could not believe that the rest were really that preoccupied with their axes and their mattocks. Their silence created an ominous atmosphere.
But David only grinned at me as he took off his jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and prepared to go to work. I wished that I could stay in the open air and watch the men, but Rebecca Holt had already seen me from the cabin door and was beckoning me in.
When I walked through the door, as always it was my nose that registered the first impression. By now I could even sort out some of the specific odors—cornpone and bacon grease, half-cured animal pelts, wood smoke, snuff—and always, somewhere in the background, the smells of chickens and pigs and unwashed clothes and perspiration and urine.
The women welcomed me. Some of the Sewing Circle group were there: Liz Ann with her month-old baby in her lap; Granny Barclay, Lenore Teague, Opal McHone, Fairlight Spencer, and some others. Most of them were wearing cotton dresses faded from much washing. Fairlight came forward to greet me eagerly.
The room was already so crowded that I wondered how any space was going to be found for the men. Rebecca Holt had set up a table of pipe boards across trestles for the noon meal. The five beds that this “settin’ room” ordinarily held had been pushed back against the wall.
Two of the Holts’ eight children would not leave their mother’s skirts. Both of these had dirty faces and running noses. I had to look the other way. Despite all my experience at school, I still could not get accustomed to the no-handkerchief custom.
Then I spied four dirty faces grinning down at me from the hole in the ceiling at the top of the ladder leading into the loft. The common term “loft boys” was so apt! Apparently the older children had found the best spot from which to see and hear everything, lying on their stomachs peering down on the room.
At first the talk was general. Yet inside the cabin, as outside, there was something different today. For one thing, I found myself missing Aunt Polly Teague. At any moment, I kept expecting to see her balmoral petticoats come sweeping through the door.
Aunt Polly’s premonition had been right: the week after David and I visited her, she had died of congestive heart failure. As Dr. MacNeill had walked in three hours before the end, he had found her lying in bed singing a beautiful melody in a loud, clear voice. Yet everyone in the Cove knew that the old lady had never been able to carry a tune.
“Hit’s heavenly music,” she had told him. “Was give to me.”
And the look of heavenly music had still been on her face when Lenore had found her four hours later.
But Aunt Polly’s absence was not the only difference today: there was something else, a restraint unusual for the women. Since the cabins were far apart and there was so little social life, female tongues usually wagged unceasingly in an effort to catch up on all the news. So why the reticence today?
I decided to test it out. “I’m sorry Mary Allen isn’t here. I wanted to ask her about Little Burl. He hasn’t been at school lately. Got hit in the stomach, you know. Has anybody heard how he is?”
Silence hung heavily around me. Fairlight’s face clouded over. Her eyes grew wary with pleading in them as she looked at me. “I heard that Burl can’t eat much. Reckon he’ll make out though.”
What does the pleading look mean? That I should not talk about the Allens? On which side are the Allens in the moonshining situation anyway? David said that this was one issue on which everyone in the Cove hung together. Yet here’s Little Burl already an indirect victim. Are the Allens torn about it as a result?
By the time the men had been called to the midday meal the tension in the room was unmistakable. If only I knew the right way to rip open the subject bothering everyone. How much better it would be if only these people would air their questions, doubts, and fears instead of suppressing them.
It was the mountain custom for the men to eat first and for the women to serve them, then the women ate at what was called “second table.” As soon as the men were gathered and seated, Mr. Holt asked David to say the grace, “Preacher-parson, will ye wait on the table for us?”
David stood up. His deep voice filled the room. “For the bounty of this table, for the hands that prepared this food, for this home, for friends to help us, Lord, we give Thee our thanks. Amen.”
He looked beaten. His broad shoulders were sagging, his shirt wet with perspiration. After all, he was not used to grubbing out mountainsides! As he reached for a piece of corn bread, I saw that the insides of his hands were like raw meat.
After the blessing David said little, perhaps because he was so tired. He seemed preoccupied with little interest in the food before him.
Then a large bowl of applesauce was passed. David helped himself to a generous portion as if relieved that here was one dish without grease. But he must have found the applesauce tart, for after his first taste he asked, “Mrs. Holt, could I have some sugar for the applesauce, please.”
“Sure, Rev’rend. Long sweetnin’ or short?”
I knew that “long sweetnin” was molasses or wild honey—the honey often scooped out of a tree trunk with grimy hands. “Short sweetnin’ ” meant brown sugar. There was little or no white sugar in the mountains. David settled for the short sweetening.
“Have to git it for you,” Mrs. Holt chortled. With that, she moved some dishes aside, hoisted her skirts and stepped up on the plank table, her legs up to her thighs in plain view of all the men. She reached for something overhead in the rafters. Dirt sifted down onto the heads, the table, and the food. No one seemed to notice.
Finally Mrs. Holt clambered down, triumphantly clasping an old shoe box. She lifted off the lid, dipped into it with her fingers, and vigorously shook a generous portion of brown sugar on the mound of applesauce on David’s plate.
David gulped, thanked his hostess, then determinedly dipped into the applesauce.
Usually Workings were also jollifications. The custom was for the women to bring their quilt pieces or keep their hands busy
with stringing dried shucky beans. One or two of the men would bring fiddles or dulcimers. At intervals during the day or when the work was finished, there would be fiddling and ballad-singing. Uncle Bogg’s jokes and tall tales were always a part of every Cutter Gap get-together.
But today there was little fun. Though the women were quietly chattering among themselves as they waited on the table, the men had little to say. Their silence was becoming strained and ludicrous when Uncle Bogg took it upon himself to try to liven things up. “Just listen to them wimmin cacklin’ like hens,” he began. “Just t’other day I asked a woman-person to show me her tongue. Wanted to see if it was wore down. She couldn’t stop cacklin’ long enough even to show it to me.”
Since this seemed to be directed at Rebecca Holt, she lashed back as if on cue. “Con-found ye, you ugly old coot. Got no time to fool with ye. I’ll feather into ye and sweep ye out of here like you was dust bunnies.”
The laughter rippling over the room had relief in it. Encouraged, Uncle Bogg went on as if he were composing an essay on women’s tongues. “Oh, la! We cain’t handily blame Becky, men. You could take all the brains she’s got and put them in a goose quill and blow ’em in a bedbug’s eye.
“Tell you somethin’. Tongue-tied wimmin are ve-ry scarce and ve-ry valuable. If ever you find one, men, hang onto her. All wimmin’s tongues be good for onyway is for spreadin’ secrets. And secrets are like measles: they take easy and they spread easy.”
Now Uncle Bogg had his audience in hand. The mountain folk liked his brand of humor. It was astringent enough to suit them, always picturesque, often crude. And their guffaws were all the reward the old squire required. It was generally known in the Cove that the old man could forgive anything more readily than not responding to his jokes.
He looked over at David. The tense lines in David’s face had still not relaxed. He was smiling with his eyes but he was off somewhere lost in his own thoughts.
Uncle Bogg’s blue eyes flashed as they fastened on David. “Some men,” he said pointedly, “are so fun-proof you couldn’t fire a joke into them with a double-barreled gun. What ails you, Preacher? You on the down-go today? Aaa-law!”
“Uncle Bogg,” Mr. Holt said, “I’ve got it in mind that you mought tell us that tale about the preacher named Dry Guy.”
Something inside me turned icy. David must know as well as I did that Dry Guy was a story about a preacher of whom all the mountain people wanted to be rid. They ended up by killing the preacher.
A sly smile spread over the old squire’s face. When he opened his mouth, his near-toothless state together with the fuzz of hair over his ears gave him an infantile look. “Why, Ozias, that’s a good idea. Waal, let’s see now. Onct in this-here Cove there was this old preacher-person named Dry Guy. Weren’t good for much ’ceptin’ takin’ up collections in all the sarvices and eatin’ all the fried chicken he could git.
“Now some differ as to what’n’all happened. Thar be them that say a chicken bone got stuck in the preacher’s throat and he choked to death and went out that way. Then there be others that say that after most all the chickens in the Cove had got their necks wrung for the preacher’s dinners, weren’t nothin’ for it but to git shut of him. Thar be ways.
“Waal, there was a-goin’ be a baptizin’ down by the crik one day, so two of the men sat old Dry Guy’s dead body on the crik bank, propped him up to look natural-like, elbows on his legs, head on his hands.
“Along come a bad boy. ‘Howdy, Preacher,’ he says.
“Guy jest sat thar, a-starin’ and a-meditatin’. Must be havin’ lofty thoughts for sure, the bad boy was a-thinkin’. ‘I say, howdy, Rev’rend Guy.’
“Didn’t answer nothin’.
“ ‘If’n ye don’t give me the time of day, I’m a-goin’ knock your elbow right out. Howdy, I say.’
“Answered not a word.
“Lickety-split, that bad boy swiped at old Dry Guy. Preacher fell over, tumbled down the bank into the crik water and sank.
“Now I’ve done it, the boy thought. Done drowned the preacher. I’ll hang for that, sure.
“Come time for the baptizin’, folks from all over gathered on the crik bank waitin’ for the preacher. Didn’t come and didn’t come. Folks got to askin’, ‘Where in thunder is Rev’rend Guy?’ That bad boy was a-sittin’ thar on one of the benches in the back, hearin’ all the talk. Got tickled, couldn’t stop gigglin’ for the life of him. Meetin’ finally broke. Folks went home.
“When everybody had gone, bad boy fished Dry Guy out of the crik and put him in a gunny sack. Dragged it down the road a piece, wonderin’ what in tarnation to do with it. Comin’ the other way was a couple thieves, had stole two hogs and had them sacked and on their shoulders. Saw the boy a-comin’. Dropped the sacks and run. Hid in the bresh.
“Bad boy, he hadn’t seen the thieves a-tall. Set Dry Guy down to see what was in them sacks in the road. Delighted to find a porker. Picked up a sack with a pig and went a-whistlin’ down the road, leavin’ Dry Guy thar.
“Thieves come out directly, picked up the two sacks, went on home. Hung the sacks on hooks in the smokehouse.
“Next mornin’ old woman wanted her some side meat for breakfast. Went to the smokehouse, cut the sack, let out a bloodcurdlin’ scream. Thar was the preacher, sacked and a-hangin’ on the meat hook.”
I wanted to scream like the old woman, “Stop it! Oh, stop it! This is cruel—cruel.” Ordinarily the tall tale was funny enough as Uncle Bogg told it, but with David so obviously in mind as the butt of the joke, today the story had a macabre quality. Most of the women were staring at the wall or at their hands in their laps. Fairlight’s face was flushed. David looked drained of color. He was doing his best to appear nonchalant but was not quite making it. But the story went relentlessly on . . .
“So they had to git Dry Guy off’n their hands someway. Found a wild horse and roped him, tied Dry Guy to him, turned that horse loose. All the men-folks tore around shootin’ rifles into the air, shoutin’. Scared that horse most to death. Horse took off with Rev’rend Guy a-bouncin’ first to one side, then t’others, a-headin’ straight for the North Carolina line. Ain’t been seen since. Must be a-tearin’ yit.”
The men were laughing, the women were silent.
“Aaw-law! C’mon, men, on your feet!” Uncle Bogg concluded. “Back to grubbin’.”
In the midst of the joshing and hilarity, all the men left except Jeb Spencer and David. I guess that Jeb did not know what to say or to do, but that he wanted somehow to help David.
Finally David got to his feet, his shoulders sagging. I tried to catch his eye but could not. Slowly, he turned to go, Jeb close behind him.
I felt the need of doing something with my hands—quick—so I started clearing the dishes off the table. But my mind was in the yard, wondering what was going to happen next.
Later that afternoon I left the quilt-piecing inside the cabin to see how the outside work was progressing. Several of the men had already finished their strips but David still had almost half of his to clear. In a situation like this, especially with a newcomer, I would have thought that those who finished first would lend a hand to the others. No one was making any such gesture to David. Yet I sensed that even if they had offered to help, though David would have been grateful, he would have refused. For gradually, over the last weeks, we had come to recognize the mountain code: no man’s leadership was accepted on someone else’s say-so.
The fact that the American Inland Mission or any other group sent in a man tagged “leader” impressed the highlanders not at all. For them there was but one criterion of leadership: recognized ability and superiority. And for a man this had to include the hands and the brawn as well as the book learning or the glib tongue. It had become increasingly obvious to David that the mountain men would listen to what he had to say from the pulpit only if first he proved himself to them as a man among men. And this would have been all right except that the proving had to be by their st
andards, not those anywhere else in the world.
I brought David a dipper of cool water, and as he drank thirstily, I was concerned to see that the palm of his right hand was now bloody. His left was almost as bad. When I asked about bandaging it, he shook his head grimly. “Thanks, no. I’d better try to finish this way.” He smiled at my solicitude. “You can doctor me this evening.” Then he picked up his mattock again.
About an hour later, we women heard sounds of a disturbance in the yard. I rushed to the back door, dimly aware of Fairlight just behind me. I thought that I recognized one voice—Bird’s-Eye’s. David was almost at the top of his strip, Bird’s-Eye shouting up at him. His voice was slurred and thick.
“Ain’t been treated so fine today, have ye?” he taunted. “That’s what we think of folks that pester with other folks’ business.” He spat contemptuously on the ground. “You’uns and your religion.” He spat again. “Religion ain’t got nothing to do with blockadin’ or feudin’ or gredges or bushwhackin’ no way. Religion is for women-persons and white-faced weaklin’s and liver-growed babies. You keep your religion inside the cupboard in the church-house where it belongs or I’ll give ye this—”
As he raised his rifle to his shoulder, I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the scream that rose in me. Three rapid shots spattered into the ground at David’s feet; the fourth whistled within inches of his head. Then Bird’s-Eye stood there, brazen and churlish, with his hand cocked tantalizingly over the trigger which would release the fifth cartridge.
David had not jumped—as I had—at the four shots. The situation in the yard was inflammable. I could feel my heart beating wildly. What if David started talking and said all the wrong things, and then some of the men ganged up on him? Jeb Spencer and Tom McHone and several others looked embarrassed, but most of them wore hard faces—immobile, registering nothing. Not a man moved. David was pale but he was looking Bird’s-Eye straight in the face, his brown eyes unblinking.
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