“Hit’s tomorry night. You want to stay over and go?”
“Sure. I aint danced in a long time.”
Next day I washed the best dress I had along and dried it in the sun. I washed my hair and tied it back with one of Alice Thornsberry’s green ribbons. Albion whistled when he saw me and held my hand all the way down the creek.
It was dusk when we arrived, and the school house was lit up like a jack-o-lantern. We heard fiddle music and the soft thumping of feet on the board floor. I squeezed Albion’s hand.
“Listen there! Aint that the happiest sound you ever heard?”
“For a fact,” he agreed. “I’m already dancing in the road here.”
He gave a little slide and skip. Albion was a good clog dancer. It was a cause of scandal to the Regular Baptists on Marrowbone Creek, whose preacher didn’t hold with dancing. When confronted once in Henryclay with a Regular Baptist pining after his soul, Albion pointed out in the same calm way he defended his winemaking that King David “danced before the Lord with all his might” in the streets of Jerusalem.
“He werent wearing much neither,” Albion added. “Reckon I can dance with my clothes on.”
“Hit’s for such sin that Jesus paid the price with his blood!” the Regular Baptist had cried.
“Praise the Lord!” Albion answered with equal fervor. “Aint it good to know we’re bought and paid fer?”
He heard later that the Regular Baptists had prayed for an hour the next Sunday that he might be saved. He shook his head and said, “What a bait of time taken away from thanking God.”
Outside the schoolhouse, men gathered to take the air and smoke their pipes or spit tobacco juice. They hunkered down on their haunches and rocked back and forth.
“Good band, preacher,” said one.
“Sounds like it.” Albion squatted down. “Where’d Ralph git them from?”
“Heard them up in Inez last month. Called the Blackberry Pickers.”
I stiffened. Albion was still talking with the men. After a moment I slipped over to the doorway and looked inside. Three men played “Soldiers Joy”—a round-faced fiddle player, balding with a fringe of curly hair around the back of his head; a thin, sallow guitar picker. And Rondal, flailing the banjo.
Pappy Thornsberry stood inside the door. “Aint seen a banjo picker yet that cracked a smile. You ever notice that, youngun? Now that fiddle player, he appears to be having fun.”
I moved past Pappy toward the center of the room, bumped into several dancers. Rondal held his shoulders back, the banjo resting on the slope of his abdomen. He stared over the heads of the dancers, pursed his lips. The others nodded at him and stepped back; Rondal took up the melody. His hand moved across the banjo head as though he were rousing it, scratching and stroking. The fiddle came back in, strong and harsh. Rondal dropped his head and retreated. His eyes swept over the dancers and he saw me. He stared, still flailing, and then he smiled slightly and nodded his head. He looked away, but he still smiled.
“Who’s that feller?”
Albion stood beside me.
“Hit’s—he’s just—” I stopped for his eyes brimmed with hurt.
“Hit’s all right,” he said. “I understand. You ready to dance?”
The desks had been pushed against the wall and a square dance formed. The band played “Handsome Molly,” and Fred Combs stood by them to call. Around we went, and Rondal flashed into my vision each time Albion swung me. After the dance we went to the dessert table and Albion bought me a slice of sugar-dusted apple pie. We didn’t speak. Dancers swirled past, their feet banging the floorboards and skittering on across, their legs swinging loose at the knees like doors on hinges. One old man, Mr. Pauley, danced by himself, a shuffle step with an occasional lunge like a chicken pecking. He hooked his thumbs around a pair of bright red suspenders. Behind him Rondal scanned the room with studied disinterest.
Albion and I danced again. Then he went to talk to someone in the corner, came back to me.
“I promised Mildred Combs I’d look in on her granny. She’s ailing and didnt feel up to coming tonight. I’ll be back in about an hour.” He squeezed my hand, let it go. “You’ll be just fine,” he said.
He walked away, his shoulders slumped. Well good, I thought. Ifn you dont want me bad enough to fight, you wont git me.
I sat beside Granny Thornsberry, asked her about planting camomile, but didn’t hear her answer. The band stopped playing and a cake auction commenced. The band members leaned their instruments against the wall and stretched. Rondal started toward me and I looked away.
“Well,” he said, close by, “hit’s been a long time.”
I looked up. “Yes. How you been?”
“Fine sometimes. Not fine others.” He pulled over a chair and straddled it backwards. “You come with your husband?”
“No, we aint married. He wants it, but I aint sure.”
“You aint changed much.”
“You neither.”
“I got a few gray hairs now.” He ran his fingers along his temple. “That’s what Colorado done to me.”
“Was you there when them women and children got burned up?”
“I was there.”
“Where are you these days?”
“I work at a sawmill up in Martin County. Wolf Creek.”
“No more organizing?”
“Time’s a coming. Aint much can be done while this here war’s on.”
I was relieved that he had not given up, then ashamed that I would want him to be doing such dangerous work.
“You want to meet my brother and my buddy?” He took my arm and helped me up. They sat near the stove and shared a whole rhubarb pie between them.
“Isom Justice,” Rondal said. “My brother, Talcott Lloyd. This here is Carrie Bishop. I knew her over on Pond Creek.”
“I wondered how you found a good-looking woman so quick. Honey, you’re the best-looking thing I’ve seen this boy with.” Isom sized me up with his snapping brown eyes. I would never have believed a word he said.
“This here is one of our last times to pick,” Rondal said. “Talcott is going in the army.”
“I hear the fighting is gitting bad,” I said.
“Be safer than a damn coal mine,” Talcott said.
“He’ll be all right,” Isom said. “They’ll hear he’s a miner and set him to work digging trenches. He wont even git to carry a gun.”
“Hell, better not be that a way,” Talcott said. “I aim to learn some things while I’m in there. They teach you to use them machine guns like old man Davidson has got squirreled away.”
Fred Combs waved his arms from up front. “Band back up here,” he hollered.
“Hey, boys,” Rondal said, “what if I want to dance with this here woman? Can I do it?”
“Dont see why not,” Isom said. “They’s bound to be some feller here can pick a banjer for one or two numbers.”
“I want ‘Sally Ann,’” Rondal said and winked at me. “You recall that there song, dont you?”
His shirt was open part way down his chest and I could see the curly brown hair.
“I recall,” I whispered.
“Myself, I got fond memories of it,” he said.
They found a man from Marrowbone to pick the banjo. Fred Combs called for a circle dance and we joined it. Rondal danced hard, vigorous, banged his right boot on the floor.
“Circle up four around that floor,
“Circle around that ole barn door.”
His fingers dug hard into my waist. We spun around for a corner swing.
“Back to your center with an elbow swing,
“On to your partner with a turkey wing.”
He caught my eyes each time we passed.
“Birdie in a cage, aint she sweet?
“Hear that birdie go tweet tweet tweet.”
They circled up and threw me inside. No way out even if I tried.
“Birdie out and old crow in,
“Six hands
up and gone again.”
Rondal pranced into the center and punched the air with his elbows.
Isom sang counter to the tune, Sally Ann Sally Ann Sally Ann Sally Ann.
Oh-h-h, ha-a-aw! Pappy Thornsberry called from the corner.
“Chase that rabbit, chase that squirrel,
“Chase that purty girl round the world.”
We tore off in opposite ways, touched strange hands all round the ring. Then Rondal had me, swung me high.
“Sue’s in bed with the hog-eyed man,
“I’m goin home with Sally Ann.”
When the dance ended, Rondal said, “Let’s go outside,” and pulled me along behind him. We stood just beyond the door. He drew me into his arms and I rubbed my lips against the soft skin of his neck. The smell of him was strong and familiar, mixed with the scent of the honeysuckle that bloomed beside the school. A moth brushed against my cheek.
“Damn miller,” Rondal said, and waved it away.
“He’s drunk on honeysuckle,” I said. I kissed his neck. “You got a woman?”
“I see a woman in Inez. A redhead.”
“You love her?”
He shrugged.
I gathered all my courage. “I love you. I allays have. I’d a married you in a minute ifn you’d asked me.”
“I never asked you,” he said proudly.
I pulled away.
“Hit’s been four year,” he said. “Cant you forgit? We was just two nice people that wanted to be together that night.”
“Dont speak for me! I made a choice and I wont have it made light of! And now you bring me out here and git me all stirred up. Why? Just to prove that you still yet can?”
He leaned back against the wall like he was exasperated.
“You was lonesome then,” I said, “and you are now. I can tell it. Why wont you let me love you?”
“All right. I am lonesome. That make you feel better?” He turned his face away. “Carrie, you ask too much. You would take what I do so damn serious. I like a woman to help me forgit. With you, I’d never git away from it.”
“You dont know that. You’ve never given me a chance.”
“I aint ready to give you a chance. I aint ready to give nobody a chance.” He nodded toward the door. “Let’s go back inside.”
“No. Hit’s too close in there. I dont feel very good.”
“Suit yourself. But I got to pick some more ifn I want to git paid.”
Inside I watched him put his arms around Isom’s shoulders. They laughed together. I turned up the road toward Albion’s, stumbling in the darkness. Once I fell and skinned the palms of my hands. At last I reached the barn. The rough board door opened with a rusty scream and I went inside. A bat flapped past my head and then all was still.
“Old man,” I whispered, “I know how you felt.”
I groped past the mule and the milk cow, found an empty stall and huddled in the corner.
“Come git me!” I called out. “I dare you. Make me crazy like you.”
The sleeping cow breathed with a slow, regular snuffling sound. My eyelids were heavy. I leaned back against a bale of hay. Albion would not find me here. No one would ever find me and I would never need to be with anyone again.
When I woke it was still dark. A hand rested on my shoulder and a light blinded me.
“Carrie? Thank the Lord! I was worried to death trying to find where you’d gone, and when I saw you a laying like that—you was—your head was all rolled back like—”
I sat up and rubbed my stiff neck. Albion set down the lantern and knelt beside me.
“Why’d you have to find me?” I moaned. I burst into tears. “Leave me be.”
“No. I aint leaving you alone. You had enough of that. And so have I. You aint the only one that’s been crying tonight. I been doing nothing but walking and crying ever since I seen how you looked at that feller. I been fooling myself, I reckon, because you aint never looked at me that a way, and I doubt you ever will.”
“You mean you aint seen Granny Combs tonight?”
“I aint seen Granny Combs. I walked to the head of Kingdom Come and back down to the school. Since then I been looking for you.”
“I wanted to be with that old man that kilt himself. I know how he hurt.”
“No. Hit’s a different hurt. You dont want to be like him.”
I shuddered. “Hit’s what I’m scairt of. To be like him.”
He held the lantern to my face and I put my hand to my eyes.
“Why’d you leave that feller tonight?”
“He didnt need me there. I tried to tell him how much I love him. But he wont hear it. He cant let himself be loved.”
“You’re just like him,” Albion said. He pulled my hand down, held the lantern closer. “You want to love your own way. You’re scairt of something else.”
He blew down the lantern’s chimney and the flame popped and died.
“I got to tell you something,” he said. “I come to a decision while I was traipsing this holler tonight. I’ve talked for a spell about leaving here, going to West Virginia. I been scairt to say too much to you for fear you wouldnt go with me and I’d never see you again. But the call is stronger and louder. I got to go, Carrie.”
“When?”
“Soon as I’m able. I plan to go down the mines. I know hit sounds crazy when I got such a good life here. But my daddy allays aimed to make it back there. He raised me with that notion. And God keeps telling me to do it, too. I’m a preacher, pledged to bring His word to the lost. There’s where they are, Carrie, over yonder there. I hear them crying out in my sleep. I got to go.”
He stood up.
“I wanted you to go with me. As my wife.”
“What about the Homeplace? Aint that my land? Ben and Florrie need me.”
“Talk to God about it. Stay in the barn ifn you need to.”
“Out here? In this haunted place?”
“It’s where you come to be,” he said. “I’ll be up at the house.”
I sat still, my hands in my lap, and waited for God to speak, fearing I would hear the old man instead. Nothing. “Hit aint Old Christmas,” I said aloud. I tried to imagine Albion selling the animals and setting out alone for a coal camp. I saw him disappear into a dark, gaping hole, not to mine coal but to preach the Gospel. And, God help me, I saw Rondal, another prodigal returned for a different reason, drawn, as he must be some day, to Blackberry Creek. I knew then that I loved them both, and that there must be a reason for it.
I gathered my skirt about me, rose up and walked to the cabin. Albion sat on the porch.
“He makes me feel alive,” I said. “But I’m at home with you. I want to go with you.”
He held out his arms and I went to him. He set his hand to my breast, then took it away.
“We’ll wait,” he said.
Twelve
C. J. MARCUM
THE COAL OPERATORS STARTED THE BASEBALL LEAGUES. I HEARD tell of baseball, but I never paid it much mind before that.
Davidson had a team, and Felco, Carbon, Chieftan, and Vulcan. They was a separate league for Negro miners. I thought baseball was silly, even wrote an editorial saying so in the Free Press. Every Sunday in the summertime, the miners and their families went to the ballfields. You couldn’t never get that many of them out to talk about something serious, like politics. And yet, when it come time to swat a little white ball, there they’d all be. Even worse, the baseball games caused the miners to turn on each other instead of cooperating. The Vulcan miners despised Carbon, Carbon detested Felco, they all hated Davidson, which usually had the best team.
“You think the operators dont know that?” I wrote. “They love to see the miner fill his head with such foolishness. They love to see him fret about anything except who will control the mines.”
So when Isom wanted to get up a team, I was agin it. It was a typical Isom Justice idea, pure foolishness with nary a bit of use to it.
But I couldn’t help linger by as
they built the ballfield at Annadel. It took up the whole bottom above the whorehouses. They filled in pools of black water, cleared a mess of chiggerweeds and planted the whole thing with a scrubby grass. The fan-shaped ballfield, bounded by its wood plank fence, fit perfectly where the creek runs in hard by the hillside near home plate and falls away to open up room for the outfield. Centerfield is higher than the rest of the field, for the mountain begins its rise there and the ground swells up like they is something ready to bust through. I watched them build and was took with a hankering to play that centerfield. But I didn’t say nothing about it for two year.
Annadel plays in the Independent League for teams that ain’t owned by coal operators. Jolo is in that league, and Justice, Stone, Logan, and War, Iaeger and Davy down in McDowell County. Annadel come in third the first two year in the league and won the championship every time after that. The first season we won it all was the year I joined up, and maybe that had something to do with it.
Isom had kept after me to play. “Big as you are, I bet you could hit a few homers.”
“Ifn I wanted to,” I replied. I thought baseball was beneath me. But I went to the home games anyway. I was elected mayor in 1915 and it was my duty to attend all such civic functions. That’s what I told myself. It was a long time before I admitted I loved baseball.
In 1916 I attended a Wednesday night batting practice. Afterward Isom let me use his glove and he hit grounders to me. The ball jumped offn his bat with a crack and slid past me. I chased it.
“Dont worry,” Isom hollered. “I got a bagful. Git in front of the next one, block it with your body ifn you have to.”
“Hell!” I protested. “That thing’s hard as a rock.”
“Most it will do is knock your front teeth out. Then you’ll look like a ball player. Come on. Keep your glove to the ground unless the ball hops at the last second. Then you got to foller it all the way.”
The ball skipped off my glove and struck me hard in the chest.
“Grab it quick! Throw it back!” Isom screamed.
Furious, I lunged at the ball and flung it. It sailed past Isom and rattled around the wooden bleachers.
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