by James Still
I thought, I’m liable to be a cattleman when I grow up and travel far. I’ll wear a fleecy jacket, and a belt three inches wide, and fancy boots.
Mother sent Holly and Dan to bed. The baby was already in the quilts. Before going herself, she brought in a washpan and a ball of soap. Pap poured hot water from the kettle, and Aaron washed his face and hands, then pulled off his boots and socks and soaked his feet. His feet were white as milk. His heels bore no sign of ground-in dirt like ours.
I set off behind the yearlings at daybreak, and I had reached the mouth of Steer Fork and turned down Troublesome by the hour the sun-ball appeared above the ridge. The yearlings pitted the mud with their hooves, and I oft sank to my shoelaces. My breeches legs were splattered; my feet got stony cold. A wintry draft numbed my ears and nose. Yet the willows looked expectant, ready to leaf. The air smelled of rising sap.
The yearlings nearly ran my legs off. They dawdled, or they bunched, or they scattered. Anything to plague me. They made the most of my inexperience. I herded the day long, trotting right, racing left, reversing track, understanding then the work of a penhooker. And I gloried in it. I savored the sting of the weather, the waywardness of the calves. I relished being master.
Chimney sweeps* were tunneling the sky when I rounded the yearlings into Aaron Proffit’s place. Dusk crept into Mayho by three roads, coming to sit among the sixteen homeseats crowding the creek or hanging off the hillsides. I saw Pud, Silas Mcjunkin’s son, atop a fence post, nibbling a straw. He was about fifteen and mantall. His hair shagged over his collar and hid his ears. He was as muddy as I. Pud helped pen the calves, and I got a whole look at Mayho before night blacked everything.
We beat on the Proffits’ kitchen door. Aaron’s woman opened it a crack, but we didn’t cross the sill, for she saw our muddy clothes and told us to sleep in the barn. She poked out a dish of hand-pies† and a raggedy quilt. When we asked about our pay, the money Aaron had told us she would hand over, she said Aaron was on Quicksand and had sent word for us to come help him drive. He would settle with us then and pay double. And she said she would hurry word to my folk where I was by the first person going the road.
We ate the pies in the barn loft. We burrowed into the hay, leaving only our heads sticking out. Frosty as the night was, we shunned the quilt. Pud said, “Aaron’s old hen had to shake the mice out to offer it.”
I hated to lose the dollar, and the chance of two dollars tempted me. Yet I said, “My folks would be worried if I didn’t come straight home. Especially with Pap off to Logan’s sawmill.”
“Aaron has us over a barrel,” Pud said. “Let’s go drive for him and see he comes across with what’s due. He’s a tightwad, I’ve allus heard. Yet he won’t skin us. No, sirreebob! One fashion or another, we’ll see our money.”
“I ought to light out for home,” I said. “I plumb ought to.” But I didn’t.
We came on Aaron Prof fit a half mile up Lower Quicksand Creek at Tom Zeek Duffey’s place. He was expecting us and had already rounded four prime steers into Tom Zeek’s barn lot. He kicked the board fence, testing the lot’s tightness. The fence was weak. He said, “I figure I’ve put the cat on Crate Thompson, wherever he is. He’s trading slow, like he had eternity and no competition. I aim to clean the beef out of this valley in three days and leave him the pickovers.”
Tom Zeek’s woman called us to supper. Not a bite had passed our lips that day, except for a robbing of chestnuts from a squirrel’s nest and the sharing of a hunk of corn bread Pud had carried for two days in his pocket. The table held fourteen different dishes, and Pud and I ate some of everything. We drank buttermilk so thick a duck couldn’t have paddled it. We stayed the night, sleeping deep in a goose-feather tick.
The next morning Aaron rousted us before daylight. Tom Zeek Duffey’s woman fed us slabs of ham, scrambled eggs and locust honey, and flour biscuits the size of saucers. We set off, with Aaron leading.
Aaron bargained and bought the day long. We slept on the cold puncheon floor of a sawmill near Handshoe that night, with the boiler fired for heat. For supper and breakfast we ate pinfish* out of flat cans Aaron got at the Elmrock store. We started downcreek again, and where it had taken one day to go up, we spent two gathering the cattle and herding them to Tom Zeek’s. Pud and I ran hollering and whooping in the burgeoning air.
We rounded eighteen steers and seven yearlings into Tom Zeek Duffey’s lot. Tom Zeek told us Crate Thompson was across the gap, at John Adair’s, hardly a mile away. “Hit mighty nigh cankered his liver when he learnt he’d been beat out,” he said and, winking at me and Pud, added dryly, “Crate started trading soon enough, but what he lacked was a pair of sharp-toed seven-mile boots.”
Aaron grinned. We chortled.
Said Aaron, “I aimed to singe his whiskers, and I done it.”
Tom Zeek Duffey’s lot was packed with cattle. The lot was roomy enough for a cow or two, a horse or so, but not for a drove of beef steers. Aaron drove extra nails in the board fence. He stretched barbed wire along the tops of the posts, and he sent for Tom Zeek’s son-in-law to come help drive the herd to the railroad siding at Jackson the next day. He had no further need of Pud and me. He declared, “I wouldn’t trust this pen more than a single night. Too cramped, too flimsy.”
“Why not take these boys on to Jackson?” Tom Zeek suggested. “Provide a trip for them out into the world and an opportunity to spend the money they’ve worked out.”
“These tadwhackers, no!” Aaron blared. “They would scare worse than a deer at the sight of a train engine. And if Pud walked the Jackson streets with that shaggy head, they’d muzzle him for a sheep dog.”
Pud sneered, “My hair hain’t so long you can step on it with your finicky boots. Anyhow, hit’s pay time. Let us see your wallet.”
“I’m out of pocket at the moment,” Aaron said, unabashed at showing himself a miser before Tom Zeek. “Cash on the barrelhead I had to pay for the cattle.”
“Well, sir, I’m setting me up a barrel.”
“I’m broke teetotal,” Aaron argued. “I won’t have money to settle with you until the cattle are sold, so I’ve figured you two would be satisfied with a small yearling for pay—one between the both.”‘
“You aim to fill your gourd and leave ours empty,” scoffed Pud. “We’re not in the calf business. Hand over what we’ve earnt, or you’ll wish to your stingy heart you had.”
“A small yearling for you boys, or you’ll have to wait. I can’t come up with what I haven’t got.”
“Gosh-dog!” Pud swore angrily. “I hope every bull and cow and calf you own dies of the hollow tail.”
Tom Zeek chided Aaron, “I like to see boys right-treated. Make fair weather with them if you can.”
“I’ve made them a good offer,” Aaron replied. “Youngsters their age wouldn’t know what to do with money did they have it. They’d throw it to the wind.”
Pud walked gloomily behind the barn, and I tagged along. He fished a wad of tobacco leaf from a hip pocket, chewed, and spat black on the dry stalks. “I’m one jasper Dude Proffit hain’t going to cheat,” he said.
“He put the cat on Crate Thompson and is proud of it,” I said. “Now he’ll brag he slicked one on us.”
Pud snorted suddenly. “I’m of a mind to go talk to Crate,” he blurted. “Crate Thompson being sore as a gumboil at Aaron, he might know what we should do.” He brightened, and he blew the cud against the barn wall hard enough to make it stick. He strode into the barn and fetched out the mule shears.
I cut Pud’s hair. I cut the locks bunched on his neck, the brush hiding his ears, the thicket on top of his head. I clipped and gaped and banged his head all over.
“I feel most nigh naked,” Pud said when I had finished. “Wish I had me a looking glass to see in.”
After dark we crossed the high gap to John Adair’s home place. John and his woman were outside, milking and feeding stock. Crate Thompson sat before the hearth, driving sprigs* into a shoe sole.
The shoe was a common old anybody’s shoe, and not a proper penhooker’s. Crate was as hefty as any of Aaron’s steers.
“Draw up chairs,” Crate said, speaking with lips tight so as not to swallow the sprigs in his mouth. His eyes were intent on Pud’s cropped head. Pud sat down, but I remained standing, awkward and restive. If Crate remembered me from his cattle-buying trips along Sporty, he didn’t show it.
Pud told Crate our trouble. Crate dropped the shoe, listening with a stub finger sunk into the bag of his chin.
“Where has Dude got the cattle penned?” Crate asked, his words issuing between the sprigs.
“In Tom Zeek Duffey’s lot.”
Crate spat the sprigs into a hand. Through his gray eyes a body could almost see ideas working in his skull. “Well, now,” he spoke slowly, “I can’t think of anything save a dumb-bull to cure Dude Aaron.”
“Dumb-bull!” Pud cried in awe.
Crate’s great chin quivered in pleasure. “Two nails, a leather string, a twine cord and a hollow log are the whole works.” He paused, jabbing himself. “But I’ll have no hand in it.”
“I’ll build my own bull fiddle,” Pud said happily. “I know how they’re made. Hit’s just tick-tacking* on a big scale.”
“There’s a law against them,” Crate reminded.
“Who gives a hoot?”
“There are fellows roosting in the jailhouse for less.”
“I’m not aiming to be skinned.”
“Ah,” Crate uttered, eyeing Pud’s head. “A fine scalping you’ve had already.”
Pud snickered.
Crate said, breathing satisfaction, “John should have a hide string hereabouts and some beeswax to grease it.” He shuffled out of the room to locate them.
“I’m scared to do it,” I told Pud. “I’m scared to tick-tack.”
“We’ll have Dude Aaron calling on his Maker,” Pud declared.
“I ought to be going home,” I said.
Pud fashioned the dumb-bull on the ridge above Tom Zeek Duffey’s barn where the woods had been timbered and hollow logs were plentiful. The rising moon had the shape of a grass hook, just right according to Pud. Too much light would have been a drawback. Pud kicked trunk after fallen trunk until one resounded from the blow. A winged creature fluttered out, beating the chilly air. It complained overhead, Ou? Ou?
“Screech owl,” Pud said.
Pud set to work on the dumb-bull. He drove twenty-penny nails at the ends of the crack in the log. He cut notch holes in the tip ends of the hide string and stretched it taut over the nailheads. My job was to wax the string of hide while he patterned a bow of a hickory sprout and the twine cord.
We perched on the log, waiting for the cattle to settle for the night. Although we couldn’t see them under the hill, we heard them moving in the crowded lot. The steers were tramping restlessly, the yearlings bawling.
Presently Pud said, “Aaron has dropped his boots by now, and I’d bet my thumb the toes stuck up in the floor like jackknives.”
A bird chirped sleepily near us.
“I’m freezing,” I said. Anxiety burned cold as foxfire inside of me. “Let’s kindle a little fire. They won’t spot us.”
“No need,” Pud said. “We’re a short time here. I’m only waiting until the brutes quiet. My opinion, it’s best to catch ’em napping.”
I made talk, hungry for company. I asked, “What are the towns of Jackson and Hazard like?” My teeth chattered.
Pud chewed a sliver of bark. “Folks wear their Sunday clothes on weeky days,” he explained. “Their houses are so close together they can shake hands out of the windows.”
“I aim to see both someday,” I said. “I plan to. I’ve lived in a mine camp, but it wasn’t a real town. A bunch of houses in a hollow.”
“I’ve traveled a sight,” Pud related. “I vow I’ve been near to the earth’s end. Once I went to Glamorgan, in Old Virginia. Hain’t that going somewheres?”
I nodded in the dark, remembering Mayho, the chimney sweeps riding the sky. I thought, I’ve already seen Mayho town, and I’ve been on Quicksand Creek. That’s far traveling.
After a while Pud said, “I’d bet Crate Thompson was planning to tick-tack himself, he thought of it so quick. And he had the hide string, cord, and nails too handy.”
“Unh-unh,” I disagreed. “A man of his weight couldn’t climb this hill.” If Sula Basham was the tallest being earthly, Crate appeared to me the hugest.
We hushed and waited. I dozed.
A rooster crowed midnight, and Pud jumped to his feet. “Hit’s time to witch the steers,” he said, shaking me. I trembled with dread and cold. I was numb and stiff, and I yearned for home. Pud dragged the hickory bow lightly across the dumb-bull’s single string, and the sound brought me fully awake. It was like a wildcat’s scream, long and blood-clotting and deafening. But that wasn’t a patching to when Pud bore down. Then it wasn’t a single wildcat. It was a woodsful, tearing each other’s eyeballs out. It was Bedlam, hell broke loose. I believed the racket carried for miles.
Pud let up. The timber was alive with varmints. A squirrel tore through the trees, squawking. Wings flapped, and paws rattled underbrush. Below, in the barn lot, the steers bellowed. We could hear them charging the fence, crazy with fear. They butted the panels in anguish, and the ground rang with the thud of hooves. In their midst the yearlings bawled like the lost.
“We’re not right-treating Tom Zeek Duffey,” Lsaid. “We oughtn’t destroy his fence. He and his woman slept us and fed us good. “
“We’re doing Tom Zeek a favor,” Pud said. “We’re putting him in line for a new one.” And he sawed the hide string again. Goose bumps raised on me. A scream came from the log like something fleeing Torment. We heard the fence give way, the boards trampled, the posts broken off. The steers lit out, bellowing and blowing, running upcreek and down, awaking creation.
Lamplight sprang into the windows of Tom Zeek Duffey’s house. A door swung wide, and the shape of a man bearing a shotgun was outlined in the light. The gun lifted, steadied, and a spurt of flame leaped thundering. Birdshot rattled winter leaves below us.
“The dude can shoot a lead mine and still not touch us,” Pud said. “Too far to up here.” Yet it scared him, I’d say, as much as me. My legs wavered; my knees felt unworthy. Again the gun lifted, barrel angled higher, and discharged, and the earth within rods of us was peppered. When the gun made to fire a third time, Pud dropped his bow and ran full split, melting into the dark.
I ran too, trying to follow. I ran into a tree and fell stunned upon the ground. My head rang; sparks dazzled my eyes. When I got up, Pud was out of hearing, and there was no sound anywhere.
I crept on my hands and knees a long spell, for the moon had set and it was totally dark. I climbed upward, to the top of the ridge, skirting Tom Zeek Duffey’s place, and descending to the creek on the lower side. I crept and walked for hours.
Daybreak came as I reached the valley floor. Spring birds were cutting up jack, bloodroot had poked up blossoms, and overnight the hills had taken on the color of greenback money. Where there had been mud two days before, there was hard earth, and a pleasure to walk upon. And standing in the road was a fat heifer. She gave a glad moo and trotted toward me. I let her get ahead. I drove her toward Sporty Creek. She looked to be sugar in my gourd, and a pair of thorn-toed boots on my feet, just like Aaron’s.
When I got back to Sporty Creek, Pap was loading the wagon with our plunder to move to Plank Town. Uncle Jolly was to keep our cow and calf and my colt against the day we might return. The nanny as well.
*cushaw: winter squash
*chimney sweep: chimney swift
†hand-pie: hand-shaped pie with fruit filling
*pinfish: sardines
*sprig: tack
*tick-tacking: bowing a taut waxed cord to produce an eerie noise
8
plank town
We were living at Logan’s camp when Uncle Jolly appeared on the plank
road, heading toward our house. We hadn’t seen him since spring. He arrived on an idle Thursday when only the loggers were at work, and folks sat visiting or being visited on porches. The mill operated three days a week. The saws were quiet, the steam boiler sighing instead of puffing. Smoke raised from the burning sawdust mountain as straight as a pencil.
Word had reached Uncle Jolly that Dan had lost two of his fingers and they needed transporting for burial on Sporty. The third and fourth fingers of Dan’s left hand had been severed while he played at the mill. Fof Pap, who was already fed up with eight months of short workweeks, Dan’s accident was the last button on Gabe’s coat.*
Uncle Jolly came riding his anticky horse down the plank road with Jenny Peg prancing sideways. Upon sighting them, Pap announced, “Here comes the witty,” and to make Dan brighten sang out:
The biggest fool you could ever seek
Dwells in the head of Sporty Creek;
He puts on his shirt over his coat,
Buttons his breeches around his throat.
Dan’s face lightened. Since losing his fingers, he had become pampered beyond endurance. Any time Pap took seat he climbed onto his knees. He had turned into a worse pet than the baby.
The trick horse bowed. Jenny Peg bowed so low Uncle Jolly slid down her neck to the ground. He caught up Dan, sprang onto the animal’s back, and circled the house before saying a hey-o or a howdy-do to us.
Everybody humored Dan. Although the bandage was long off, the edge of the palm healed, he still drew attention. My playfellows broke off their games to stare at him, to gaze at the stake in a corner of the yard where the fingers were interred in a baking powder can. We had visitors aplenty. Camp folk made our narrow porch their porch.
They came with gifts for Dan: chestnuts, hickory sugar,* trifles. Cass Logan, Pap’s boss, was a regular caller, dropping in for a moment with popcorn or a trinket, flashing gold teeth, and saying, “There you are, little master.” Cass was concerned that Pap might law† him.
Uncle Jolly swung Dan to Pap. Pap handled him as carefully as he might a basket of eggs. Teasing, Uncle Jolly inquired, “Does sawdust smell as sweet to you as coal dust?”