Appalachian Daughter

by Mary Salyers

  “Pass me some more of them dumplings,” Grandpa said.

  JD picked up the large bowl and looked into it. “Sorry, Grandpa, but they’s all gone.”

  “You mean we’ve et all them chicken and dumplings already? Them was real good dumplings–light as a feather–best chicken and dumplings I ever tasted, wasn’t they Johnny Ray?”

  Johnny Ray smiled and then gave a forlorn look at his own plate, still full of green beans and new potatoes.

  “Clean up your plate, Johnny Ray, so you can have some of Aunt Lillian’s banana pudding.” Corie Mae carried a stack of small dishes to the table.

  “I’m too full.” Johnny Ray pushed his lower lip out in a pout.

  “Guess you can sit there till your plate’s clean, then,” Corie Mae said, and began dishing up banana pudding for everyone else. While Corie Mae left to carry some dirty plates into the kitchen, Uncle Thomas took Johnny Ray’s plate, raked most of the beans and potatoes into his own plate, and motioned for Johnny Ray to begin eating what little remained.

  A few minutes later when Johnny Ray asked if he could have his banana pudding, Corie Mae snapped, “I told you to clean up your plate.”

  “I did, Mama,” Johnny Ray bragged, and Corie Mae stared at his empty plate with a puzzled look. No one said a word, but Maggie saw Uncle Thomas punch Johnny Ray under the table. She had not thought about it before, but she suddenly realized that Uncle Thomas was often guilty of deceit and now he was teaching it to Johnny Ray.

  The girls helped their aunts wash the dishes and then joined the rest of the family on the front porch where most of the men smoked. Grandma Campbell had a dip of snuff in her lower lip. Corie Mae had taken Junior and Jay home for a nap.

  Grandma sat beside Grandpa in the porch swing, a flyswatter in her right hand and her spit can on the floor to her left. The other adults sat in straight-backed chairs while the kids sat on the porch steps or on the floor. “Tell us a story, Uncle Thomas,” Johnny Ray begged.

  Uncle Thomas leaned his chair against the porch rail on its two back legs. Maggie never knew whether to believe his stories or not. Even though she now thought him a big hypocrite, she had to admit that Uncle Thomas told wonderful stories. Johnny Ray and Jeannie moved closer, looking up at Uncle Thomas with shining, eager eyes. Maggie sat beside JD on the steps facing the yard where she could hear but wouldn’t make eye contact with Uncle Thomas.

  “See, right before I joined the army, old man McCann come down here one day and asked me to help him load up a steer he wanted to take to the sale barn. So I went up there where the Johnsons live now to see if I could help. He’d put a cattle bed on his wagon and backed it up to the stable door and made a ramp. He wanted to run the steer up the ramp and into the wagon, but the steer would balk. Ain’t no way he was going up that ramp.

  “We’d get him started toward the ramp, and ever’ time just as he was almost there, he’d jump sideways and run to the other side of the stall.” Uncle Thomas gestured so forcefully he lost his balance and the front legs of his chair slammed down like a sudden clap of thunder. “He stepped on my foot and about broke my big toe when I tried to head him off, and then he butted old man McCann back against the wall and knocked the breath clean out of him.” At this point JD got up and quietly walked away.

  Uncle Thomas lit the cigarette he had taken from the pack of Lucky Strikes lying on the porch rail, and tilted his head back to blow a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “First, I didn’t know what to do–old man McCann was laying over in the corner, looking like he wasn’t breathing at all, and that stupid steer was looking at him all walleyed, pawing the hay-covered stall with his front hoof. I was standing over McCann trying to figure out what to do when he finally opened his eyes and drew in a breath.

  “Now, when that old man got back on his feet, he was real mad. He picked up a piece of two-by-four that was laying in the hay manger. This time when that old steer got up to the ramp, McCann yelled real loud, ‘You god damn son of a bitching bull!’ and whacked him on the be-hind as hard as he could with that board.”

  Grandma gasped. “Now watch your language, Thomas Duncan Campbell. You know I don’t allow no swearing in my house.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama, but I’m just telling it like it happened. That’s exactly what old man McCann said, ‘You son of a bitching bull’ and whacked the daylights out of that steer’s be-hind.”

  “Humph!” Grandma spit ambeer into her tin can.

  “Well, when McCann hit him, that steer jumped so high he was in the wagon all in one leap. I guess he thought McCann was going to hit him again cause he tried to climb right over the top of the cattle bed. Somehow, he got both his front feet caught, and there he stood on his hind legs with his front feet wedged between the two top slats and his head hanging over the top. He bellowed, stomped, and jerked every which way. I thought he would tear that cattle bed right off the wagon.”

  “How’d you get him down?” Kenny asked.

  “Well, I’ll tell you. I said, ‘Mr. McCann, what you going to do now?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I reckon he’ll hang there all right till I get him to town.’ So he put the tail gate up, got on his old tractor, and pulled the wagon out into the lane. “Then he said to me, ‘Sonny.’ He always called me ‘Sonny.’ ‘Sonny,’ he said, ‘I want you to stand here on the drawbar so’s you can watch him while I drive.’ I tell you, it was a sight to see. Here we was driving down the road with that steer hung up by his front legs, his head hanging over the rails and him looking at me with his walleyes and bellering like a pig stuck in the fence. And old man McCann just grinning and waving to everybody we passed like it was the way everybody took a steer to the sale barn.

  “And when we got to the sale barn, nobody could believe their eyes.” Uncle Thomas puffed out another cloud of smoke. “Mr. Justice come out and took a look. ‘Well, hell, McCann, what you got him hanging up like that for?’”

  “‘Don’t you be helling me, Justice. It just seemed like a good way to bring him in.’

  “‘How you going to get him down?’ Justice wanted to know.

  “‘I sold him to you. You get him down.’

  “‘Damn it, man. You probably already broke his legs.’

  “‘I never done no such thing. He got hisself up there. Let him get hisself down.’”

  Uncle Thomas flicked his cigarette butt into the yard. “Those two old men stood there yelling and cussing each other for a good fifteen minutes. Finally Jeff Holmes come out, and the two of us prized the slats apart enough so’s the steer could get loose. Lucky for old man McCann his legs wasn’t broke, cause Justice allowed as how he’d not pay a dime for no damn steer with two broke feet.” Uncle Thomas scratched his head. “I reckon that was the last time McCann ever asked me to help him.” He roughed up Johnny Ray’s hair. “What do you think, Buddy? Was that a good enough story for you?”

  “Oh, that was a wonderful story, Uncle Thomas. Can you tell us another one?”

  “Maybe later.” Uncle Thomas stood. “Hey, kids, let’s go shoot some baskets. Johnny Ray, you can play on my side.”

  Ray also stood. “Maggie, you girls go shoot baskets, and I’ll do the milking. Come home for supper in about an hour.”

  On the way over to Uncle Thomas’s barn, Maggie passed the two cars parked beside the house. JD, sitting behind the wheel of the black car smoking a cigarette, motioned her to come over. “How do you like my car?”

  Maggie’s mouth dropped open. “How’d you get a car?”

  JD looked around to be sure no one could hear him. “Daddy bought it for me. It’s to bribe me to stay here and keep my mouth shut.”

  Maggie went around to the passenger side and got in. “This is nice!” She ran her hands over the dashboard and the green plaid seat covers. “I never dreamed you’d actually have a car. What is this ? A Ford?”

  “No, a Chevrolet. Daddy says I have to help make the payments, so I’ve got to get a job right quick.”

  “When can I have a ride?”


  “Tomorrow.” JD opened his door and got out. “Now, we better get our butts over to the barn.”

  JD and Kenny had nailed an old peach basket above their barn door for a hoop. Lots of Sunday afternoons, all the kids played with the basketball Kenny had gotten for Christmas a couple of years earlier. Uncle Thomas, Johnny Ray, Kenny, and Betty Lou made up one team; JD, Maggie, Stuart, and Jeannie the other. After half an hour, JD’s team led by 30 to 15, and Maggie had made 20 of those points.

  “How’d you get so good?” Uncle Thomas asked her.

  She suppressed the urge to smirk at him. “I don’t know. Just luck, I guess.”

  “Going to go out for the team at school?” Uncle Thomas threw the ball to Kenny.

  “Oh, you know Mama’d never let me do that. She really don’t even want us girls to come over here to shoot baskets.”

  “Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Uncle Thomas suggested.

  Maggie shook her head. “Kids, time to go home for supper.”

  * * *

  After a busy week, Maggie and JD finally had a few minutes alone on Friday evening when he came over to the barn while she milked. Maggie asked him about Stella’s baby.

  “Meeka’s fourteen months old and toddles all around. Stella’s sister, who lives in the other side of the double house, takes care of her while Stella goes to work.”

  “Can she talk?”

  “Says a few words. She calls me ‘Hayde.’”

  “What does she call Uncle Thomas?”

  “Dada.”

  “Uncle Thomas pay attention to her?”

  “Every night when he gets home from work, he plays with her until Stella gets supper ready. He gives her lots more attention than he ever gave me or Kenny.”

  “What will happen when your mother finds out about Stella?”

  “Let’s just hope she never finds out because she’ll be mad enough to chew nails and spit rivets. Anything in her way she’ll bust like kindling. I sure hope I’m not around if it happens.”

  “I’m worried about what Grandpa will do when he hears about Stella. You know how he can’t stand colored people, calls them “niggers,” and always badmouths them.”

  “Listen, Maggie, nobody knows except you and me, and we ain’t telling. So if we keep our mouths shut, Mama and Grandpa won’t never know. That’s the way it’s got to be.” Maggie nodded. JD also had told her he and Aunt Opal hadn’t spoken since he got home. “I’m not speaking to her till she apologizes for beating me up. Daddy told me I should just stay away from her, and she wouldn’t bother me no more. They had a big argument about it last night. Probably good he’s gone most of the time working in Detroit. They’d be fighting like cats and dogs if he stayed here much.” He helped Maggie put the cows into the pasture.

  “Daddy said I should spend more time helping Grandpa,” JD said, “cause he’s not able to work like he used to. But Grandpa’s worse than Mama. I can’t do nothing right. He yelled at me yesterday when I helped him hoe corn. Said I worked on the wrong side of the row. Like I hadn’t been hoeing corn since I was six years old. What the hell difference does it make what side of the row you’re on? He threatened to hit me with his hoe if I didn’t get on the other side.”

  The week after Uncle Thomas and Uncle WC went back to Detroit, JD got a job pumping gas and doing work at a filling station. Maggie seldom saw him except when he roared down the road. Ray told Corie Mae if JD was not careful, he was going to skid on some gravel and wreck his precious car. Maggie worried her mother would forbid her to ride with JD. Why did I think I’d have a better summer when JD came home?

  * * *

  Early in July Maggie saw an opportunity to make some money selling blackberries. Wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt under a pair of her father’s bib overalls, she carried two large pails onto the front porch. Corie Mae followed her through the screen door, carrying seven-month-old Jay on her hip. “Now, where’s Johnny Ray?”

  “Do I have to take him with me?” Maggie pleaded. “He won’t pick berries; he’ll just complain the whole time.”

  “Now, Maggie, I ain’t too set on you going berry picking anyway. So iffin you don’t want to go, that’s just fine.” Corie Mae’s compressed lips made a line across her face. “But if you’re going, you ain’t going by yourself. You know I don’t allow my girls out in the woods alone.”

  “Okay, Mama.” Maggie noticed the edge in her mother’s voice. I’ve tried so hard not to upset her. Wonder what she’s mad about now.

  “Johnny Ray,” Corie Mae called, “get yourself out here right now.” She shifted Jay to her other hip. “Want me to get a switch?”

  “No, Mama,” Johnny Ray whined as he came through the screen door. He also wore a long-sleeved shirt and overalls that had once belonged to his cousin JD. The many patches on the knees indicated they had passed on to JD’s younger brother Kenny and then to Stuart before they had become Johnny Ray’s.

  Corie Mae put her hand under Johnny Ray’s chin and turned his face toward her. “Now, you listen to me. You stay where you can see Maggie all the time, and you mind her too. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Take Sadie with you. She’ll sniff out any snakes. If you get these two buckets full, that’ll be the four gallons you promised Mrs. Kaiser.” She shifted Jay again to the other hip. “Now, if the prison whistle blows, come straight home. Sometimes when convicts escape, they come right up this holler.”

  Maggie walked down the porch steps to the yard and called, “Here, Sadie.” The beagle promptly came out of her dog house to join them as they went down the stone steps to the dirt road.

  “I want you’ns back by dinnertime,” Corie Mae called after them.

  They walked a few yards down the road in silence. Maggie noticed the Queen Anne’s lace along the dirt road was beginning to bloom and wild daisies polka dotted the hillside. She took a deep breath to take in the fragrance of the sweet honeysuckle growing on the fence. Then Johnny Ray got that mischievous twinkle in his eye. “I know why you want to pick blackberries and sell them. It’s cause you want to buy store-bought underwear so’s the girls at school won’t laugh at your flour-sack bloomers when you take gym class.”

  “Why, Johnny Ray Martin, whoever told you such a thing?”

  “Nobody. When I was sick last week and slept downstairs in Junior’s bed, I heard Mama and Daddy talking. Mama sounded all mad. She said you was getting too highfalutin’ just because you was going to be in high school next year. She said you was thinking you’s too good to wear the clothes she made for you. But Daddy said to let you do it. It couldn’t hurt nothing. Besides it’s no fun to be laughed at. Mama said okay, but she still didn’t like it none.”

  “Well, don’t you go blabbing it, you hear?”

  Johnny Ray grinned. “On the first day of school soon as we get on the bus, I’m going to yell real loud. ‘Hey, everybody, Maggie’s got on store-bought bloomers!’”

  “You do, and I’ll...”

  “You’ll do what?”

  “Tell you what I’ll do, Johnny Ray Martin.” Maggie gave him a coy look from the corner of her eye.. “If you pick that bucket half full of blackberries today, I’ll give you a dime.”

  “Really?” Johnny Ray’s eyes widened. “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  So that explains why Mama’s mad. Daddy took my side and overruled her. She appreciated when her father often intervened when she and her mother were at odds. Over the last year, the friction between Maggie and her mother had become more frequent. She couldn’t help grinning.

  “Where’re we going to pick at anyway?” Johnny Ray asked.

  “When Mama did the wash for Johnsons last week, Mr. Johnson told Mama we could pick in the field behind their barn. He said nobody else would pick them, and they’d just rot on the vine.”

  Johnny Ray stopped dead in his tracks. “I ain’t going.”

  “Don’t be silly. Mama said you had to go.”

  “But
we might see Audie Lee.”

  “What if we do? He won’t do nothing.”

  “JD told me he catches birds and bites their heads off. He said if you meet up with Audie Lee Johnson, he’ll open up his sack and make you eat a dead bird.” Johnny Ray turned and started walking toward the house.

  “Mama’ll whip you if you go back. Besides, I won’t give you a dime.”

  Johnny Ray turned to face her. “But I’m afraid of him!”

  “JD just tells you stuff like that cause he knows you’re a scaredy cat. Audie Lee can’t talk, but he don’t hurt nobody. He just roams around picking up odds and ends. Grandpa Campbell saves his tobacco sacks for him, and Audie Lee finds pretty rocks in the creek to put in the little sacks. He likes marbles and buttons, too.”

  “I’m still afraid of him.” But he began to walk slowly back toward her.

  “Besides,” Maggie argued, “we won’t pick near the house. We probably won’t even see him.” She wished she felt as confident as she sounded. For years, she had heard tales about all the weird things Audie Lee Johnson did. She knew most of it was not true, but he did give her the creeps. She hoped she would never meet him when she was alone.

  They had walked a quarter mile down the road toward the state highway. Maggie stopped and pointed to the hillside beside the road. “Johnny Ray, look how deep this gully is where that bad storm washed out the road.” The water had come down the hillside like a river leaving a gorge six feet wide and three or four feet deep, completely washing out the road.

  “If Daddy and Grandpa hadn’t fixed it, we still couldn’t get across.”

  As they stared at the ugly gully dissecting the hillside, Maggie saw a glint of sunlight on something about six feet up the trench. She jumped into the ditch and climbed on all fours up the steep crevice. Whatever it was, it had been buried in the hillside for a very long time. “Throw me that stick over there, Johnny Ray, so I can dig this out.”