by Pamela Morsi
“Uh…yes, I’m looking for Aunt Will.”
The woman’s eyes widened with surprise. “Aunt Will is retired. She’s no longer practicing any healing arts. If you tell me your symptoms, I can steer you in the direction of what an herbalist might recommend.”
“Oh, I don’t have any symptoms,” Jesse assured her quickly. “I’m just looking for Aunt Will. I’m…I’m her niece or great-niece or…something like that.”
The woman took a step back and kind of squinted as if that would give her a better view of Jesse. Even the girl reading looked up with interest.
“Most everybody around here is related to Aunt Will, including me,” she said. “Who might you be?”
“Jesse Winsloe,” she answered, holding out her hand.
“You’re DuJess? DuJess!” the woman cried out ecstatically, using the childhood nickname Jesse had almost forgotten. “Look how grown-up you are.” She ignored Jesse’s handshake and grabbed her in an enthusiastic bear hug. “Camryn, this is your cousin, Jesse,” she said to the teenager.
“Hi,” the girl responded with a little wave.
“Floyd, Alice Fay, this is Mac Winsloe’s little girl,” Marcy announced to nearby customers.
Over the next five minutes, every person in the store had met Jesse and explanations were given on how they—or their spouse or their neighbor or their best friend—were related to her. Their names flittered around Jesse’s brain.
Surely, I’ve misunderstood. This old guy can’t really be called Sneezer. Does somebody really name their daughter Walter Lou?
Everyone seemed either delighted to meet Jesse for the first time or recalled seeing her on some long-ago occasion. A few even reminisced about her dad.
Jesse made an effort to be polite and sound interested. It was one thing to know you have a hundred cousins. It was quite another to encounter them all at once and be expected to know who they are.
Even her direct family connection with Aunt Will was muddled in contradictory stories and multiple ancestors. Jesse had heard it said that Aunt Will was her grandmother’s sister. At other times she was Grandma’s cousin. So who knew? Jesse certainly didn’t. In the Ozarks, kinship was such an important aspect of everyday life, everyone seemed to grow up knowing how they were related to everyone else. Jesse didn’t recall her dad ever talking about it. If he had, she’d apparently never paid attention.
“You know, this whole dang community, our hearts just broke when we lost your daddy,” Sneezer declared solemnly.
“Just a tragedy plain unbearable,” Alice Fay agreed. “I don’t know how you and your mama got through it.”
“Uh, thank you,” Jesse said. “Thank you, we truly appreciate your sympathy. And all the condolences people here sent to us. It was… It was very kind.”
Jesse didn’t know what to say. She never knew quite what to say. The awkward moment lingered overlong.
Marcy gamely attempted to change the subject. “I heard you’re getting married,” she said, brightly.
Now that was a discussion Jesse didn’t want to have. She would have almost preferred more discussion of her dead father.
“Did you bring your fellow up here for us to get a look at?” one of the cousin/customers asked.
“No,” she replied. “We’ve broken it off. It’s…uh…gotten a little complicated.”
Marcy nodded sagely. “When it comes to men and women, it always is.”
All of them chuckled a bit uncomfortably at that.
Jesse didn’t offer any more details and Marcy quickly changed the subject again, forestalling anyone who might have been tempted to pry.
“Aunt Will’ll be over the moon to see you,” Marcy said. “Your daddy was her favorite and you’re the last part of him.”
“I expected her to be here,” she told them. “I guess that was crazy considering her age. Is she in a nursing home or something?”
“Lord, no,” Sneezer said, chuckling. “We’d have to hogtie her to take her to one of those places.”
Alice Fay added, “And as it is, we’d have to catch her first. Half the mountain can’t even keep up with her, let alone bring her to heel.”
“She’s up at Onery Cabin,” Marcy said. “She keeps to herself mostly. Thinking about things, I guess.”
“Onery Cabin,” Jesse repeated, not actually remembering such a place. “If you could give me directions…”
“Did you come in that little blue car?” Floyd asked her. “That low-center will never scale the approach.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You can’t get your car up there,” Marcy said. “Just lock it up and leave it here in the lot. Somebody will run you up in a four-wheel.”
“I wouldn’t want to be any trouble,” Jesse insisted.
“Good gravy, girl,” Walter Lou declared. “Trouble is what family is all about.”
All her relatives found that very amusing. In the end, Floyd and Alice Fay drove her up the mountain in their truck. It was a wild, bouncy ride over what was basically a set of tracks around the side of a hill.
After innumerable twists, turns and double-backs, the path finally widened into a farm site on an upward slope with a cabin wedged up the hill.
Floyd immediately turned his vehicle around in the widened space so that he was facing back down the mountain.
“We won’t stay,” Alice Fay told her. “We’ll give you and Aunt Will a bit of privacy for your reunion.”
“Oh, sure, thanks,” Jesse answered.
By the time she had her feet on the ground, Floyd was handing her the suitcase from the back of the pickup.
“Now if you need anything, DuJess,” he said. “You send word and I’ll be here double-quick.”
“Sure,” Jesse said, patting the side of her handbag. “I’ve got my cell phone.”
“That ain’t going to do you no good up this way,” he told her. “But you can run down this west path to the Doc’s place or back the way we came to Marcy’s. Phones’ll work there.”
“Thanks,” Jesse said.
She waved as the two drove off and then turned to trek up the last fifty yards to Aunt Will’s new home.
Her initial impression was that the place could have been a film set for some Hollywood version of Lifestyles of the Poor and Redneck. A half-dozen sheds and buildings sat in various states of disrepair. The roof of the barn sagged as if it might collapse any minute. A white clawfoot bathtub was being utilized as a water trough, perhaps by the innumerable chickens pecking around in the yard or maybe the half-dozen small pigs that were on the loose and fending for themselves.
The sturdiest structure on the site was probably also the oldest. It was a hewn log cabin with a mud and stick chimney. The place was more hodgepodge eyesore than rustic hideaway. As she neared the porch Jesse noted stacks of wooden crates and baskets of muddy roots. Under the shake roof overhang, wreaths of braided onions dried in the breeze. An aged slat rocker sat unoccupied. In the more distant corner there was also a green plaid armchair. It was dirty and had numerous rips in the upholstery that allowed the whitish foam stuffing to escape.
Suddenly, from the depths of that chair emerged the biggest, meanest-looking dog Jesse had ever seen. One side of his face had suffered some disfiguring injury. The jaw hung slack and the eye on that side was missing. Jesse froze in her tracks, terrified that she might be mauled by this monstrosity of a pet. She glanced around, looking for a stick or a rock or anything to defend herself. There was nothing close but she was afraid to move. Surely if the animal were dangerous, Floyd and Alice Fay would have said something. Jesse waited tensely for a moment before realizing the dog wasn’t so much growling or barking as he was howling; loudly, purposefully howling.
“She don’t bite,” a voice called out. “She’s my hillbilly alarm system, letting me know that they’s strangers about.”
Jesse turned toward the sound and there was Aunt Will just stepping out from the far side of the barn. The little flutter of delight that Jesse
felt inside surprised her. She hadn’t thought she missed the old lady, but now she realized how much she had.
Aunt Will was much as Jesse remembered, firm-jawed and straight. But she was altered, as well. Her hair had always been steel-gray twisted into a braided bun at the back of her head. Now it was pure white and significantly thinner, as she was herself. Jesse recalled her as a sparse, muscled outdoorsy kind of woman. Now she seemed surprisingly frail and leaned upon the stick she carried at her side. She’d always worn thick glasses that made her brown eyes seem huge. But she had none on today. Could the woman even see her?
“Hi, Aunt Will. It’s me, Jesse…Jesse Winsloe.”
“I think I know my own kin,” she answered. “And you don’t have to holler. I may be old and blind, but I can hear a footfall in this forest from a league distant.”
Jesse kept from smiling. She sounded exactly like the perpetually matter-of-fact woman she’d always been.
“Hush now, Lilly June!” she hollered and the dog immediately quieted and returned to the front porch armchair.
“The dog’s name is Lilly June?” The question was incredulous.
Aunt Will just smiled. “Named her after a girl in my school.”
The old woman began to carefully pick her way down the path. Jesse hurried up to meet her.
“Whose truck were it brung ya?”
“Floyd and Alice Fay,” Jesse answered. “They…uh, they couldn’t stay.”
“S’pect not.”
Face-to-face, her aunt seemed so small. Jesse could still remember gazing up at her and now she could look down on the top of her head. Aunt Will pulled her niece into her arms. Jesse was hesitant to hug her very tightly. She seemed all bones and very breakable. The thinness was in contrast to the taut rounded belly she encountered. Her long-limbed rangy aunt now had what looked like a beer gut.
“I’m so glad you came to see me, DuJess,” she said quietly. “I’ve been fretting about you for a month or more.”
“You’ve been worried about me?”
Jesse was surprised. She was pretty sure that her mother hadn’t spread her bad news.
The old woman nodded. “I felt it here,” she said, placing a gnarled fist against her chest. “I knew that you were unhappy.”
Jesse shrugged and put the best face on it. “My engagement is off,” she said simply. “I’m about as bummed as I’d expect.”
Aunt Will nodded as if she understood. “Come in and help me fix up some dinner,” Aunt Will said. “A person’s got to eat no matter what the circumstances.”
Jesse took Aunt Will’s arm as if concerned she might stumble, but her steps were sure-footed.
Inside the cabin was dark and smelled like a strange mixture of sweet herbs, bitter roots and wood smoke. One cozy rocking chair with a quilted seat and back was set near the fireplace. A braided rag rug lay in the center of the floor. The walls were partially covered by aging wallpaper that had been tacked up with brads. The corner farthest from the door boasted the room’s only window. In front of it was a small table with three chairs. The back of the room was apparently the kitchen. It consisted of a rusty four-burner stove with an oven on the side and an ancient undersized refrigerator. Off to the left was a small add-on bedroom and a ladder leading to an attic loft. Electric lighting consisted of a naked bulb hanging down from the ceiling with a pull chain in lieu of a switch.
Drying plants hung here and there as if haphazardly placed. There were shelves at almost every level. And a tremendous number of books vied for space among glass jars and ceramic jugs.
Jesse washed up at a drainboard sink that stood on two spindly legs.
Aunt Will handed her a towel. “Sit yourself down,” she said, indicating the chairs around the table. When Jesse took her place, Aunt Will poured her a glass of cold tea from a metal jug she brought out of the refrigerator. Jesse expected it to be bitter, but it wasn’t. It was sweet, but smelled a bit like a new mown lawn.
“It won’t take me a minute to fry us up a tater.”
A fried tater didn’t sound like the best idea Jesse had all day, but she was more tired than hungry. And she felt guilty having the old woman wait on her and said so.
“Don’t think a thing of it,” Aunt Will said. “I’ll have us dipping a spoon in less than a jiffy. And life’ll offer chance enough for you to return the favor.”
As Aunt Will puttered in the kitchen, Jesse gazed through the window. It had undoubtedly been cut there near the corner of the cabin to provide more light to the cavelike interior and to show off a nice view of the valley and the big, nearly squarish mountaintop in the distance. But that view was only barely visible—what she could mostly see was the dingy grime on the outside of the glass, decorated with spiderwebs so thick they looked almost like curtains. Jesse was not a fan of insects, lizards, snakes, snails or slugs. But she knew from experience that the Ozarks were replete with all of those.
She turned from the window to watch her old aunt at work. Even at her advanced years, she moved with the efficiency and confidence of a woman familiar with her kitchen. And the space boasted the most modern conveniences…of some decade long, long ago.
Aunt Will stood at the stove and with hardly a glance at her own hands, sliced the potatoes into hot grease.
“How’s your mama’s health these days, DuJess?”
Jesse smiled. Inquiring after family health was the height of Ozark etiquette.
“She’s fine,” Jesse answered. “She and Roger took a cruise in the summer, they came back all tanned and rested.”
Aunt Will hesitated as she used the spatula to turn the potatoes in the frying pan.
“What’d she do with those boys when she was gone?”
“I kept them,” Jesse answered. “I got laid off from my job, so I gave up my apartment and moved back home.”
Aunt Will nodded sagely and spoke from experience. “Tough times often calls for doubling up.”
Jesse had a flash of memory, picturing the inside of her parents’ garage where her things were neatly boxed and ready to move into a new home with Greg. She’d refused to be sad about losing her apartment, assuring herself that it was merely an interim step to a new house, a new life. Though for now, it was all just storage.
The sound and scent of frying in bacon grease soon filled the room. Neither Jesse nor her mother cooked that way. But there was something comforting about it. Her stomach growled eagerly in anticipation. Aunt Will scooped the fried potatoes from the skillet onto plates, which she brought to the table. She returned to the refrigerator where she brought out a bottle of ketchup and a jar of homemade piccalilli.
“Eat this up,” she said, indicating the green tomato relish. “This jar is from last year. And we’ll be needing to stir a new batch any day now.”
Jesse only vaguely remembered the existence of chow-chow piccalilli, but she tasted it and found it pleasingly tart and crunchy.
Aunt Will smeared ketchup atop her fried potatoes and urged Jesse to do the same. The old woman ate silently, seriously, as if consuming food was no casual activity, but a task essential to life and not to be taken lightly. When she was finished and had poured more tea, she finally spoke.
“So your fellow done slipped the hook.”
Jesse nodded.
“I’m so sorry to hear about that, DuJess. I’m so very, very sorry.”
Jesse was sorry, too. But the last thing she wanted to do was talk about it. She deliberately shifted the conversation elsewhere. “Yes, it’s certainly a lot of change for me. But from the looks of it, your life has really changed, too. Why in the world did you move way up here to this run-down wreck of a cabin?”
Aunt Will grinned.
“You don’t like my new home place?”
“The one down the mountain was a lot nicer and a lot more convenient.”
“Too convenient,” Aunt Will answered with a huff. “Folks was used to bringing all the troubles my way. The youngers wanted me to quit my yarbing cures. The only way I co
uld make a go of the dad-gummed retirement thing was to put a spot of distance between myself and the ailing. Now if a body needs my help, they’ve got to want it enough to trudge up this mountain. Not that that’s so easy for the sickly.”
Perhaps it was a good idea to put some distance between Aunt Will and her former patients. But as she glanced around, the place seemed barely habitable.
“This cabin is pretty raw, Aunt Will,” Jesse pointed. “Maybe you should get someone to pull a mobile home or something up here.”
That suggestion gave the old woman a good chuckle.
“You don’t like Onery Cabin?”
Jesse wondered how the ancient place kept from falling in on itself.
“Not so much,” she answered.
“Well, you’re in good company. The rest of the folks around here ain’t so crazy about it, neither,” Aunt Will admitted. “That’s why it’s been empty so long. But I wanted to come back up this way here and I did.”
“So, you’re living up here in Onery Cabin just to be ornery?”
Aunt Will gifted Jesse with a big smile. “It’s not ornery cabin, it’s Onery Cabin. I know it sounds the same, but it ain’t. It’s named for the man what built it. He was my great-granddaddy. My grandmama was born here. She always loved this place.”
“Your great-grandfather’s name was Onery?”
“His name was really Henré,” she said. “Most folks on this mountain are Scotch-Irish or one or t’other. Us, too, I suppose, but we got some French in us, as well. That’s how you got your name.”
“My name?” The suggestion caught her momentarily off guard. “Jesse is a biblical name. Oh, you must mean my middle name. Nothing is more French, I guess, than Marie.”
“So it is,” Aunt Will said. “Though I think your mama come up with that one. But I was talking about DuJess,” she continued. “That’s the frenchified name.”
Jesse was puzzled. She had never really liked the nickname. Her mother had never used it. Only the memory of it on her father’s lips made it palatable at all.
“I’d always thought DuJess was an Ozark pronunciation of duchess,” she admitted.
Aunt Will shook her head. “No such thing.”