The next day we went into the hole after we shot the coal, on our hands and knees, Joe Kracj first, then me, then Daddy. Like we always went in. Suddenly the air cracked; Daddy gripped my ankle and dragged me backwards; thunder filled my ears and a steaming slab of rock sat where Joe had been. I screamed. Daddy kept dragging me backward. I screamed again and again.
I sat beside a prop while they dug for Joe. Daddy sent me away but I crawled back in to see if I could help. A gritty fist stuck out from beneath the slab of rock. They broke the rock up and lifted it away. His arm was mashed flat and spread wide like the body of a frog run over by a wagon wheel. Daddy turned away, cussing, and saw me.
“Jesus God! Didn’t I tell you to git?”
“Take him on home, Clabe,” someone said.
He carried me out. The women had heard the whistle blow and gathered at the tipple to learn who was killed. Mommy was there. She came forward, her face wild.
“What are you doing down there?” She shook me. “I done lost you. Coal mine will git you sure. You’re bound to git kilt. I seen it coming.”
She kept shaking me. I tried to cry out for her to stop, but no words would come. Daddy carried me home, undressed me, bathed me and sat me before the stove. He paced up and down.
“It happens,” he said. “Hit’s one of them things. Joe’s number was up, that’s all. When it comes, you cant stop it, no matter where you are.”
I opened my mouth to speak but still I could not. I was mute for three days. My tongue felt like it had swelled to twice its normal size, and it pained me to swallow. Talcott crept to where I sat beside the stove, plucked at my sleeve.
“Why cant you talk none, Rondal?”
I shook my head and concentrated on breathing, afraid that if I didn’t think about it, I would stop.
C.J. heard what happened and came to see us.
“I’m setting up my store next month,” he said to Daddy. “Drug store. Let the boy come to me. He can go to school, work the store in the afternoons, send the money back to you.”
“What do you think, Vernie?” Daddy asked.
“I dont care,” Mommy said in a flat voice.
“He’s still yet my boy,” Daddy said. “He dont want to leave home so young. Besides, I need his help. He cant make as much in no store.”
“Twenty-five cent a day,” said C.J. “Hit’s something anyhow. Ask him. Ask him what he wants to do.”
“He cant talk,” Mommy said.
“Ah-h,” I said. “Ah-”
They all looked at me.
“Ifn that boy leaves,” said Daddy, “I’ll take Talcott in. Hit comforts me to have my boys around.”
C.J. walked to the door. “You got to talk, Rondal. You got to say what you’re going to do. Hit’s your choice.”
I motioned for a pencil to write with.
“No,” C.J. said. “You got to say it.”
So I tongued the words as though speaking a new and exotic language.
“C.J.” I said. “C.J. Take me.”
Talcott ran away from home the day after I left. Daddy found him below Felco and wore him out with his strap.
Three
CARRIE BISHOP
YOU HAVE SEEN OLD PHOTOGRAPHS, BROWN AND SWEET-LOOKING, as though dipped in light molasses. My memories of the Homeplace in Kentucky are like that. Sweet, bittersweet.
When I was ten years old, Ben Honaker lent me his copy of Wuthering Heights. I loved it, just for the name of it, even before I read it. It has the sound of a lost and precious place, Wuthering Heights. I learned from that book that love and hate are not puny things. Nor are they opposed. Everything in this world that is calculating and bloodless wars against them both, wars against all flesh and blood, earth and water.
Even now, when I whisper that name, Wuthering Heights, it is the Homeplace I see. My people crowd around me, Ben and Flora, Miles, Daddy, Aunt Jane and Aunt Becka. And I see myself, waiting for Heathcliff, waiting for someone to come from outside, bearing with him both passion and menace.
I knew he would come from the outside, because Daddy and Aunt Becka said I would never find a man on Scary Creek or Grapevine. I was too forward, they said, too stubborn. I was not pretty like Flora. Flora looked like the princess in children’s stories old folks tell—white skin, rosy cheeks, and black hair. She took after Daddy and Aunt Becka’s side of the family, which was part Cherokee. I took after my dead mother’s side. Freckles splashed my face, my shoulders, my arms. My nose was a trifle large, my hair drab brown.
“Carrie takes after the Mays,” Aunt Becka said to Daddy one night when we were in bed before the hearth and supposedly asleep. She was Daddy’s oldest sister. “She’s even got her Papaw Alec’s nose, poor child. Hit wouldnt look so bad on Miles.”
I couldn’t sleep for worrying and went straightway up the river the next morning to the Aunt Jane Place. Aunt Jane May lived at the mouth of Scary Creek where it flowed into Grapevine. Aunt Jane was both my grandmother and my great-aunt. She was Daddy’s aunt who had married Alec May, and their daughter Tildy was my mother.
I cried out my hurt feelings to her. She sat composed, her hands laid flat on her lap so the blue veins stood up in ridges.
“Dont you pay no mind to your Aunt Becka,” she said. “That woman will wrap her tongue around any kind of silliness. You’re the picture of your mother, and I love to gaze on you for it.”
“Am I ugly?”
“Course you aint ugly. You favor your Papaw Alec a heap, too. His face had character. They wasnt no forgitting what he looked like, no more than you could forgit the mountains. When I stand on my porch and look at those mountains, I still yet see him everywhere.”
Uncle Alec had been dead for a long time, killed in the War Between the States.
“You think he’s a ghost?” I asked. “You think he still yet comes around here, and that’s why you cant forgit him?”
Aunt Jane smiled. “Maybe. Sometimes I feel him close. But ifn he’s a ghost, he’s a contented one. He walks for joy, not for disquiet.”
I began to watch for him then. I thought he walked abroad in the fog. The mists rose from the river each morning to cling to the mountaintops, and in the evenings, after a rain shower, patches of fog ran like a herd of sheep up the hillsides. I would go out then, breathe the air and feel it clean the bottom of my lungs. A path wandered behind the cabin down the riverbank. Grapevine was broad and green, slow running, never more than waist deep on a grown man save during the spring thaw. I waded into the water, my skirt hiked to my thighs. Silver explosions of trout churned the water and minners darted fearlessly about my legs. I came abreast a stand of cattails and halted. The sweep of Grapevine curved away north, its path to Shelby and the Levisa hidden by the far mountains layered one after another, the mist dancing up their flanks. Every way I turned the lush green peaks towered over me. Had it been winter or spring, they would have been iron gray, or dappled with pink and white dogwood, sarvis, and redbud, but always they would be there, the mountains, their heights rounded by the elements like relics worn smooth by the hands of reverent pilgrims.
I swept my arm up and flung water like beads of glass.
“Hey, Uncle Alec,” I whispered.
My sister Flora was sixteen when Ben Honaker came to teach. She was the oldest pupil, and the tallest. She sat in the last desk of her row so she wouldn’t block anyone’s view. The new teacher noticed her right away. He was only twenty years old and Scary Creek was his first school, yet he moved gracefully between his desk and the chalkboard as though he had always belonged there. He was tall and slender, his hair was the color and texture of corn silk, and thin on top. He told us he had come from just over the mountain on Tater Nob Creek, that he had been to the normal school at Louisa. I was inclined to fall in love with him, but noticed how he kept watching Flora. I took stock of my tender years and decided it would be nice to have a new brother, for I was tired of Miles.
On that first day, Ben Honaker read aloud the “Midnight Ride of
Paul Revere,” and his voice rose and poured forth a torrent of heroic deeds. When he finished, he closed his book with a satisfied thump and smiled at Flora. During the arithmetic lesson she finished quickly and he checked her work approvingly. He asked her to help the younger students. Later he gave us a geography lesson. He spoke of the fabled land of Persia where the earth quaked and buildings and rocks tumbled down about the heads of the people. I tried in vain to imagine an earthquake on Grapevine, the river roiling, the mountains moving like bones beneath the skin. But it seemed impossible that our land would turn on us.
He held Flora back after the others had been dismissed. I sat on the stoop to wait for her.
“Why are you still in school?”
“Because I like to learn.” Flora’s voice was soft and shy.
“A girl as smart as you should be off to the normal school, or maybe even to Berea.”
“I dont want to go way far off from home. Dont want to teach neither. Hit would upset me too much when the younguns did wrong. When I was helping them with their lessons today, I couldnt stand to have them make a mistake. I felt like hit was my fault. And I couldnt never fuss at them.”
“What do you like to do?”
“I like to grow flowers. I like to take care of the animals. And I like to read. I like to read a pretty word and say it out loud. Me and my brother and sister all likes to read.”
I took this as my cue to step inside the door and call attention to myself.
“That there is Carrie,” said Flora.
“Oh, yes. Carrie likes geography.”
I grinned. “I like to hear all them outlandish ways folks do.”
“Would you girls like to borrow some of my books?”
He opened a chest in the corner, just an old battered trunk, but a treasure chest to us. Flora chose a book of poems by Keats, and I picked Wuthering Heights because I liked the name. We hugged them to our breasts as we walked the two miles to the Homeplace. The trees were beginning to take on their autumn colors, frosted with bright reds and yellows as though spattered with wet paint.
“Florrie, that teacher is sweet on you.”
“Naw,” Flora said, and blushed.
But it was true. Ben Honaker wasted no time in courting her. Soon he took supper with us three times a week, and walked Flora to church on Sundays. I was glad to have him around, for he was a contrast to our daddy, Orlando Bishop. Daddy was a cold, quiet man; he was sparing with his praise and his expectations were high. He took for granted that we would do well with our chores and our schoolwork. Anything less than our best was reason for disdain. He seldom rebuked us with words, but his black eyes would be contemptuous. There was no approaching him then.
Miles was the oldest of us children. He detested farming and barely tolerated his chores. Daddy knew it and they clashed often. When they were at it, the rest of us knew to be silent.
Miles hated to hunt, was uncomfortable with guns even though he was a fairly good shot. He didn’t mind killing things so much, but would rather be curled up with a book. Daddy would make him go anyway, and if he came back empty-handed, would berate him before us all at the dinner table. I longed to go hunting, but Daddy only laughed when I mentioned it.
“Aint fitting for a girl,” he’d say.
I knew that many of the girls at school could handle guns, but that didn’t convince him. He said we were raised better than that.
Miles and I finally came to an agreement. He would secretly teach me to shoot. Then I would take over his hunting chores. After that, Daddy was not so mean to him, but Miles was still restless and dissatisfied. At seventeen he was done with Scary Creek School. He should have gone out to get himself a piece of land, or married and settled in on the Homeplace. But he claimed he wanted to leave. He wanted to go to Berea but was afraid to ask Daddy about it.
Ben came to his rescue. He acknowledged there was nothing wrong with a man who did not like to farm and said as much to Daddy. To our surprise, Daddy said mildly that Ben may be right and that Miles could go if he wanted. Miles was admitted to Berea for the next year. He was a great deal easier to live with after that.
Only Aunt Becka was unhappy when Ben and Flora announced their engagement. It wasn’t that she disliked Ben. He praised her cooking, and she enjoyed serving his favorite meal of chicken and dumplings. She declared that Flora could do no better for herself, if she must marry. In other words, Ben Honaker was just fine, for a man.
Aunt Becka was married once, for a month. It was well before my time, but I had the story from Aunt Jane. The man carried Aunt Becka away to Chloe Creek in the next county, and she showed up on the front porch of the Homeplace one month later, having walked all the way and slept in the open for three nights, the last in a pouring rain. Aunt Becka took her own name back again. It was said later that her husband took off for Arkansas or thereabouts, where he no doubt became a bigamist.
“Was he mean to Aunt Becka?” I asked Aunt Jane.
“Law, no, child. He was just more man than your Aunt Becka wanted.”
Aunt Becka and Aunt Jane did not care for one another. That was why Aunt Becka lived with us at the Homeplace instead of the Aunt Jane Place where there would have been more room. Also Aunt Becka claimed we needed a mother. I would have preferred Aunt Jane or Flora for a mother, but Flora was always hurt for Aunt Becka’s sake when I said it. I was surprised then, when I found her crying in the loft after her engagement announcement. She said Aunt Becka had frightened her.
“How’d she fright you?”
“I cant talk about it,” Flora sobbed. “You aint old enough.”
“Well, then, I know what hit’s about. She was telling you scairdy things about men, werent she?”
When she wouldn’t answer, I knew I was right.
“You aint got no call to be scairt of Ben, do you? He’s just Ben.”
She sniffed. “Course I aint scairt of him.”
“Dont pay Aunt Becka no mind,” I said. “Aunt Jane says men are just too much for her.”
“Aunt Jane shouldnt say such things to you.”
“But hit’s true. And you know why? Hit’s because Aunt Becka aint got no hair between her legs.”
“Carrie Lee! Why ever would you say such a thing?”
I knew to shut up, that this piece of information should have been kept to myself. I had learned it by accident. We never saw Aunt Becka naked, for she jealously guarded her privacy. The Homeplace consisted of one large room and a smaller loft reached by steps on the outside of the cabin. We children slept in the loft during the warm months. In winter we spread our featherbeds on the floor before the hearth and wrapped ourselves in our mother’s multicolored quilts. Daddy slept in the four-poster in one corner. If strangers stayed overnight, we got under the covers and pulled off our clothes. But if it was just us, we stripped down without a thought—until we started growing hair. It happened first to Miles, then to Flora, and I waited expectantly for it to happen to me. Then I saw Aunt Becka.
Aunt Becka’s bed stood in the corner beside the supper table. At night she draped quilts from the rafters so she could undress alone. Even in the heat of summer she slept behind the wall of quilts. She was equally secretive about her bath. We had to all troop outside when she was bathing. In good weather we sat on the front porch until she was done. In the wintertime we saved our outside chores until Aunt Becka’s Bathtime, as we came to call it. It was then I saw her naked. Daddy and Miles were cleaning out the stables and Flora was gathering eggs. I sneaked to the window, scratched a clearing on the frosty pane with my fingernail, and looked in. I didn’t expect to see anything unusual; I did it because Aunt Becka didn’t want me to. Then I saw that Aunt Becka was hairless.
At first I thought this was merely interesting. But soon I began to worry. I was as bald as she was. Suppose I didn’t grow any hair. Suppose that was why Aunt Becka didn’t get along with men. I confided my fears to Aunt Jane.
“Law,” said Aunt Jane, “hit’s just the way she’s made,
child. And you’re too young to be fretting about sprouting hair. Hit will sprout when the time comes.”
We were in Aunt Jane’s root cellar, picking preserves for supper, for I would be eating with her. The jars gleamed in the lantern light. They held peaches, pears, sauerkraut, green beans, tomatoes, jams.
“Pickled corn,” I suggested.
“If hit’s sour, I’ll eat it,” she agreed.
She didn’t say any more about Aunt Becka then, but when we were eating she said, “Your Aunt Becka is funny turned, but she’s a good woman. And she’s kin. Aunt Becka cant help the way God made her, and she has a right to be the way she is. I should never said things about her to you before, and I wont never say them again. As for you, you just be like your own self. And ifn Aunt Becka dont like it, you and her might not git along. But God help the stranger tries to hurt you, cause Aunt Becka would tear them limb from limb. Whip anybody tried to harm a hair on your head. Dont never forgit it.”
I remembered her words after I spoke to Flora, and was sorry. I thought of them again the night before Flora’s wedding. It was Old Christmas Eve, and Aunt Becka sat us before the fire, as she always did, fed us roasted apples, and told us how the animals in the barn, the cows and mules, knelt in homage before the Baby Jesus on that night, and spoke to one another. I had not noticed before how wrinkled Aunt Becka was becoming. She sat beside Aunt Jane, placid, and they were like the lion and lamb reclining together for a time. It pleased me to think of our animals in the barn waiting together for Old Christmas, kin like we were. We were flesh of one another’s flesh, and we would live together until we died, then we would be together in Heaven. Mother would be with us as well. Heaven would be a place very much like Grapevine, lacking only an angel of death.
I couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about it, and of Ben and Flora, soon to be wed. When I was certain everyone slept I crept from bed, pulled on my wool dress, and wrapped myself in a quilt. Outside, falling snowflakes struck my cheeks. It was a pitch dark night but I knew my way to the barn and never once stumbled. I lit the lantern hanging inside the door. The animals shook their heads and their gargantuan shadows leaped like a flight of blackbirds.
Storming Heaven Page 4