by Smith, Lee
“Mought be hit were your mama,” Almarine says, and she says, “It was not,” and flounces off. But a little while later she comes back around with another fried pie right outen the fire and draps it smack in his hand.
“Now what you want to do that fer,” Almarine says, seeing as how this hurt, but she just laughed a little laugh and flounced on away. Her name was Nancy Wiley.
“Sweeten you up,” she says over her shoulder, and everbody laughed at Almarine. So when old Joe Johnson takes out his fiddle, you know who Almarine takes by the hand, and you see how sassy she is. Then they go around and around. Old Joe Johnson waggles his head when he fiddles, I wish you could see him, he’s got a big old beard and a belly as round as a tick and those little stick legs. Old Joe Johnson sings,Rattlesnake, oh rattlesnake,
What makes your teeth so white?
I’ve laid in the bottom all my life
An’ I ain’t done nuthin’ but bite
bite
bite
I ain’t done nuthin’ but bite.
Joe Johnson is a sight, you wouldn’t think it to see him of a day in that store. Old Mrs. Virgie Justice is leaving now—she don’t hold with dancing—and taking Hassell Justice with her, a-looking back over his shoulder. Time was when Hassell could cut a rug, afore he got tangled up with that Virgie.
Oh it was a frolic time all right, at Peter Paul Ramey’s new cabin on Hurricane Mountain, and Hester Little was there to call the steps. Old Joe done Shady Grove and Cumberland Gap and then he done Cindy. I been to the East and I been to the West, I been to the jaybird’s altar. But the prettiest gal I ever seed was Jimmy Sherlock’s daughter. Now that don’t make no sense. And oftentimes, courting don’t neither. But it don’t make a lick of difference. Almarine and Nancy Wiley went around and around with their faces giving back the light of the fire and him so tall, and her so little and dark. Her mama was watching her like a hawk-bird. Her mama had this real long nose.
“Where do you live at?” Almarine asked, and Nancy Wiley said, “Who wants to know?” Little bits of her hair bounced out from under her cap, and all the gals were giggling behind their hands.
Almarine just grinned. Whatever he had been up to those five years, you could see it had not been courting.
I traveled back home acrost the ridge just a-grinning myself. I had a full belly but I was light on my feet as everly. I don’t need no light to show me where I’m going, nor a body to lead me the way. I know all the ways there is on Hurricane Mountain. Traveling light that night through the pure dark I grinned to myself, as I said, to consider Almarine courting.
Once when I stopped to light my pipe I heard me a big old thunk when a blacksnake fell out of a tree. Then I heard that little rustle-rustle they make in the leaves when they slip away. Now a blacksnake can climb up a tree, but he can’t never climb back down. He has got to fall out like a log. It tickled me, hearing that blacksnake fall. I likened it to Almarine in my mind. The biggest falls the hardest, what I said.
Well the upshot of the working was, Almarine come back over here on Hurricane Mountain and started courting that Nancy Wiley. I have to say this did not last long. It was clear almost from the word Go that Nancy Wiley’s daddy was in the bed and not going to be getting up from it anytime soon, and Nancy Wiley’s mama as much as said that if Nancy was to move over to Hoot Owl Holler, why they thought they mought all of them come. This is Nancy’s stove-up daddy, her hawk-nosed mama, and some several littluns besides. It taken Almarine aback when she said it. Almarine got up and went over and looked outen the window and said he had to go out and see to his horse. He was on it and gone afore you could say squat, with Nancy hollering holy hell at her mama while Almarine rode away. And there was not a thing in the world they could do about it neither. Things had not progressed that far to where he was bound for good. Nor could their daddy have got up outen the bed if it come to that. So Almarine got home free, that time.
The next time was over in Black Rock where Almarine had found him a town girl named Judy Lynn Long. He saw this girl in the five and dime, what it was, and follered her home. Judy Lynn Long was a sweet thing but she took a lot after her mama who put on airs, and her elder sister Louise who was even worse. They kept doilies on their chairbacks in that house. Still, Almarine took her a-walking. She had a dimple beside of her mouth. Almarine taken her to talk by the Dismal River and kissed her lips. She had something on them which tasted sweet, and Almarine loved that. For all his size and all his land, remember, Almarine was nought but a country boy, come to town to court. In the end it was the sister caused all the trouble. She taken a shine to Almarine herself, and then she started a-crying and wouldn’t eat. They said she wouldn’t touch a bite. “I am distraught,” their mama said, and Almarine mounted that horse again while the getting was good.
Hog killing, Christmastime—come and went. Almarine bided his time. It was coming spring when he set off again, down toward Roseann over Snowman Mountain. It was a cold, cold day with a pale bright sun and the ground still froze where you placed your feet. Almarine stepped along right smartly. He had his gun, and he had his dog, and he had him some new boots he had bought offen a man in Black Rock, new boots for to do his courting in. Them boots crunches down on the moss, still froze, and the little slivers of frozen ground. But some of the birds was back, he saw, and the redbud was fixing to show. Almarine walked along the trace a-whistling and then all of a sudden he stopped. He couldn’t have said why he stopped whistling, nor what passed over the day. It was like it all growed brighter, that kind of a shining day you get sometimes at the tail end of winter.
All of a sudden a redbird flew right up in front of his face.
“Ho redbird,” Almarine said.
Seeing a redbird gives you a wish, you mought know what Almarine’s was. As for whether he got it or not, I’m never the one to say.
“Ho redbird,” Almarine said again, for the redbird had never flew away. In fact it hopped right along the trace ahead of Almarine’s new black boots.
“Sic em, Duck,” Almarine said to his dog—the name of his dog was Duck—but Duck never moved a foot. Duck cocked his head at that redbird and whined, and the hair rose up all along his back. Seeing this made Almarine grap his rifle and hold it closer, and look all around the mountain. Now Almarine was on the wild side of Snowman, as I said. Nobody much lives over there. They’s a stretch of the trace goes down from the Stiltner place to the county line and it runs over rocky ground—they is big old white rocks strewed off down the side of the mountain—and this is the stretch he was passing through. The rocks is funny here. Some of them so big-like, and laying in funny forms. Like they was throwed out agin the side of the mountain. You can’t see how they got where they are. They is no rocks like it anyplace else on any of these three mountains.
The little redbird is singing to beat the band, and Almarine stares all around. Duck is growling and backing up with every hair on his back standing right straight up. The sun shines white offen all those rocks, so they take on a diamond glow and shine in that bright cold sun. The air itself is so fresh and cold it’s like it beats on your face almost, it’s like you can’t get no breath. And Almarine, big old man that he is, Almarine feels all light-headed. He sees these bright white shapes, looks a lot like snowflakes, in front of his eyes. Only there ain’t no snowflakes. This is when Duck commences to growling, then to barking, and then takes off lickety-split back over the trace.
“I be damned,” says Almarine.
This little redbird now is still a-hopping along the ground, and Almarine kind of follering. This little redbird sings the prettiest song a body has ever heard. The little song is so sweet and so sad it brings tears into Almarine’s eyes, or mought be it’s only the cold. But it makes a pull on Almarine’s heart. He knows he is going to foller it whether or no. The little bird flies up in the crook of a tree, offen the down side of Snowman Mountain. Almarine follers it offen the trace without even considering what he’s about or where it might lead him. He don’t have
a choice in the world. There goes that redbird and there goes Almarine. He is surefire surprised to see how a trail opens up where there never was one before, and how his boots travel right along it.
So Almarine goes off down Snowman Mountain a-follering the redbird with the day all shiny around him. Little freshets of water is busting outen the rocks all around, the way they do in the spring of the year. Every year this happens, along about the time of the thaw, waterfalls springing where they wasn’t no water before, and running along down to the creeks. This water is the coldest and the best you ever put in your mouth because it comes from the driven snow. Almarine stops where a freshet has bubbled into a rocky pocket in one of them rocks, and takes him a long cold drink. It wasn’t like water atall. It was like liquor the way it run straight to his heart, and the way it made his hands and his feet set to tingling. Almarine is feeling light-headed now, and he’s starting to grin. On he goes, down he goes, on the path between them big white rocks with the redbird a-leading the way. He stops one time and looks all around, just to get his bearings. But he don’t know from no-place where he is. The rocks above and below is a-shining so white in that so-bright sun, and the water coming down off them is a-shining too, and tinkling as it runs off down the mountain. The sky up above is a fine deep blue, blue as a robin’s egg, without no cloud in sight. Right by his boot is a little yaller flower that Almarine has not seed the likes of before, in all his years running these mountains. So Almarine leans over and picks it. This is a pretty little flower what resembles a rose. It has sprung straight up from the rocky ground on a pale green stalk without nary a leaf. Almarine studies the flower awhile and then the redbird starts up again all of a sudden, and he quits studying it and looks ahead, down the mountain.
What Almarine sees sets a stamp on the rest of his life.
The streams had all flowed into a pool which was set in a little circle of rocks at the bottom of the mountain. This was a deep pool, too, plumb full of that crystal-clear water, so you know how cold it was, and a woman was kneeling before it a-washing herself. Almarine come upon her from the back. She was down on her knees leaning forward, dipping up the water in her hands. She was naked from the waist up. Her black skirt was pulled down around her hips and her shirt-waist was throwed on the ground. The skin of her back showed the whitest white that Almarine ever seed, and her hair fell all down her back to her waist. And that hair! Lord it was the reddest red, a red so dark it was nigh to purple, red like the leaves on the dogwood tree in the fall. And the redbird perched on a rock to the side of the pool and directly he started to sing.
The woman whirled around. She stood. Now everything that happened, happened real fast of course, but for Almarine it was like it taken a hundred years. She seemed to turn so slow, and her hair whirled out slow as she turned, like a red rain of water around her head. In his mind he would see her again and again, the way she stood up so slow and how she turned.
“Git outen here,” she said.
But she made no move to cover her glory and Almarine looked his fill. She was a woman as big as he was, a woman nearabout six feet tall. Her eyes was as black as night and her nose was long and thin. Her mouth was as red as a cut on her face and the color flamed out in her cheeks. It was a long face. Bony. But Almarine thought she was beautiful. Her hair hung all down her back like one of them waterfall freshets along the path and her breasts were big and white with her nipples springing out on them red as blood.
“My name is Almarine Cantrell,” he said, “and I aim to take you home.”
When he said that, it was like a shadow crossed her face. She looked sadder for a minute than a body has ever looked. She looked like all the sadness in the world was in her heart. She knowed it couldn’t happen, that is why. Because this was old Isom’s red-headed Emmy who could never have a mortal man in all her days. She belonged to the devil is why. Her daddy had done pledged her years before. And all those years she had fucked with the devil and not give a fig for a regular man. But she had never seed a man like Almarine neither. It was like she knowed for the first time what it was she couldn’t have. It was like it pained her so bad in her true heart’s core—iffen a witch has a heart, that is, which I don’t rightly know to this day. Anyway she looked at Almarine a long time with that woebegone face of hern, while all around them it was bright and still there on Snowman Mountain.
Now Almarine didn’t know none of that, about Red Emmy being a witch. All Almarine knowed was that he had follered a path and come upon a woman he had to have and there she was, standing well-nigh naked before him in the middle of the morning. And she didn’t try to cover herself neither. And that look on her face gone straight to his heart, for they was never a young man yet who don’t want to go out and right a wrong, or kill a man, or have to do something to earn his right to what is there for the taking, all along. Only he don’t think he can ask, nor take, without earning it. Without no pain. Oftener than not, a young man’s a regular fool.
Red Emmy throws back her head and a new look, tight and closed-up, comes over her face. A darkness comes into her eyes. Still looking hard at Almarine, she stoops over quick and graceful, her breasts a-swinging, and picks up her shirt-waist offen the rocks.
“Would ye kindly turn yer head fer a minute?” Red Emmy asks most polite, and Almarine looks to the side.
She’s gone when he looks back.
Almarine screams like a painter and plunges ahead down the trail to the little pool. He runs off in the woods to the left, and yet again to the right. He runs all over the place a-hollering, but he can’t find his red-headed woman again, nor has she left any sign. She has gone as quick as ever she come, like firesmoke up into thin air. Almarine sits on a rock and cries and then he stands up and swears to find her. He fires his gun off once, straight up in the air. It echoes off all them rocks. Almarine puts that yaller flower in his pocket, starts for home. He has forgot all about the courting trip he had planned, to Roseann, West Virginia. He has forgot everything he ever knowed nearabout except for that red-headed Emmy.
Almarine come over to ask me about her, but I daren’t tell him a thing. I was churning the time he come.
“You better go back over to Black Rock,” I says. “Find you a sweet God-fearing town girl, what I say.”
“My mind is set,” Almarine says. “Ye could holp me if ye would, old granny.”
“I will not,” I says. “I don’t know a thing.”
“I’ll find her whether ye holp me or no,” Almarine says. “I don’t give a damn fer yer notions.” And then he turned on his heel and left. I watched him walking off down my holler a-swinging his arms. I would swear in my soul he was whistling. A young man like that, he don’t have ary idea what he’s fooling with, and not afeard of a thing. Well, I went back to my churn but the butter never come that day, I can’t say twere ary surprise. I was lying through my teeth to Almarine, and butter won’t come on a lie.
I had not set eyes on Isom fer thirty, mought be twere forty years. Isom kept to his doings, me to mine. They was a time when we was children, we was friends. We both growed up right here on the side of Hurricane, but then Isom’s maw died and his daddy beat him so bad that he took to the other side of the mountains. A mountain man, old Isom was. He used to come down to Joe Johnson’s store at Tug with them bags of ginseng—you could get five dollar a pound for it, even back then, you get eight dollar a pound for it now—and trade for supplies and then hightail it back up on Snowman Mountain. Then he started a-sending that Emmy. As for Emmy, I’ll get to her in a minute. Old Isom is what I want to study, for a spell. Because it’s a funny thing how I had not seed him for years, and yet in a way I felt like I knowed him bettern I ever knowed ary a soul. They was a time once when me and Isom— but Lord, that’s another story. Isom had done gone his way, I’d went mine. For Isom was evil clear through. He kilt his brother and beat his paw before ever he took to the mountain, or so they say. Myself I knowed Isom, albeit I hadn’t seed him, like I knowed the back of my hand.
But didn’t nobody know how he got that gal. Some says he had him a wife and he kilt her, and others says he just drempt Emmy up outen the black air by the Raven Clifts. Others says he stole him a baby from West Virginia.
Abednego White swears Isom has got them ravens trained to cotch him chickens and bring them up there. He says those chickens is a-flapping their wings all the way, with the ravens a-carrying them. Abednego tells it for a fact. But anyway Isom got him a girl someway, and then he pledged her to the devil, as I said. She growed up with ravens, in caves. She was a fair sight oldern Almarine, too, Red Emmy, she must of been forty when Almarine happened upon her. I’d say she was forty if she was a day. But a witch don’t show age like a regular gal, her body’s too full of blood.
So I never said a word while Almarine searched, and searched, and searched all over Snowman Mountain. He tried and tried to find that path again, leading down from them old white rocks, that path and the little pool, but it was like it had plumb disappeared. Try as he would, Almarine never could find it again. Nor could he spot the little redbird, nor find that yaller flower he thought he’d put so careful in his pocket, nor any other flowers like it. It was like it was all in his mind. Iffen it was or iffen it wasn’t, twerent up to me to say, but I’ll say this—iffen a body searches for so long, he’s bound to find something, that’s a fact. And soon he come upon her up there by her daddy’s cave, a-cooking out over a fire. It was fixing to get dark that evening, and the smoke swirled all around.
Almarine stood right there and viewed her through the smoke.
“How are you called?” he said. Then he started walking toward the fire.
She looked at him through that smoke like she didn’t want to speak, and then at last she said, “Emmy.” Her voice seemed to come from a distance. “You better git on away from hyar,” she said, but then her daddy come a-running all wild-haired outen the cave and knocked her to the ground and fired a pistol at Almarine’s head. He had already killed him two or three, it was said, who’d come around courting his Emmy. Of course, they said too that he and Emmy were moren a hundred years old, or old as the hills or older. Folks’ll say anything.