The Common Lot and Other Stories

by Emma Bell Miles

  . . .

  Old Dartus Rhea and his wife, whom everyone knew as Aunt Lucy, lived on the road that climbs out of Puncheon Camp Creek up to Moccasin Gap and crosses Sourwood Mountain. Their house was a convenient stopping place for the tanbark men and drovers who came up the mountain from the far valley on the way to Watauga. From the road a man could see the roof spread out like an old hen’s wings among the apple trees, and the bee gums round it like little chickens; but if he wished for something to represent a rooster he must have strained his fancy to make one of the log barn, or of the great rock, from under which flowed the spring where Aunt Lucy kept her piggins of butter and crocks of cream.

  From their back porch the Rheas could see all over three counties, and the view was equally wide from the middle entry, where the loom sat all summer. There also, from the time the peachblows cast a shadow and the coral honeysuckle budded out, Uncle Dartus used to sit, listening to his bees and the running spring branch and telling tales of the war. To look at him you would never have thought that he had been with General Miles in more than a dozen battles. And he never spoke an ill word of anyone.

  Uncle Dartus and Aunt Lucy never felt lonesome, although the nearest neighbors lived in the coves and ridges far below. For it was known to the country round about that their coffeepot never went dry or got cold by day; and any stranger who lost his way between the last cabin above the gap and the first in Red Gully Cove was always directed to Uncle Dartus’s.

  “Come right in and wait for supper time,” the old man would say. “Lucy she’ll make up some good biscuits; and we’ll go in the smokehouse and cut a ham.” They always had honey and apples.

  One fall it happened that they both felt unusually well and hearty. They had done fairly well for old folks that season, what with their truck patch and trading and a few pigs and sheep that ran over the ridges. A heavy mast of acorns and chestnuts fed the pigs fat, and all three cows brought heifer calves, and the chickens turned out well. Aunt Lucy thought that her luck with the chickens was because she had invited old Ann Goforth to stay with them on New Year’s Day and had given her a poke of dried apples and eggs. Old Ann was part Indian and never was good company, but if she had not come early to sit by the fire that New Year’s morning the first visitor of the day would have been Preacher Drane—and that according to local superstition would have caused all the settings of eggs to hatch out roosters, and might also have hindered Aunt Lucy in her soap making.

  Aunt Lucy’s luck held in other ways. She sold a six months’ accumulation of spinning truck and received cash for it. She could no longer see to weave the old-fashioned coverlets and counterpanes, although she made all her dresses of linsey-woolsey and “checkerty-plaid” cotton, dyed with copperas, indigo and madder and peach-tree bark and walnut leaves; and her good honest blankets were warm and lasting. They came to the notice of some people from Watauga, who bought all she had made up.

  Then Dartus’s nephew, Timon Poe, brought his young wife, Cynthia, to visit them in the early summer, and while they stayed he and Dartus lined bees. They found three or four rich honey trees and added the wild colonies to the home stand. So what with one thing and another the old man and woman had reason to feel contented and comfortable.

  When the frost came, ripening the muscadines and nuts and making persimmons sugary, they sat by the fire talking things over; but they did not let each other know that they were in high spirits, for they believed that it is bad luck to boast of good health and bad manners to boast of good living. Dartus, however, rubbed his hands together and said: “I’ll be limb-juggled, Lucy honey, ef I ain’t in-about minded to git us a turkey this Christmas.”

  Perhaps the turkey would have been more appropriate for Thanksgiving, but, although they had heard of such a holiday, they were not sure of its date and would not have known how to keep it.

  Dartus talked on of the time when he was a little boy and his people sat by the fire Christmas Eve with whatever company had gathered and sang songs until after midnight. He had honestly believed, he said, that the elder bushes bloomed out in the snow at twelve o’clock and that the cattle all went down on their knees round the manger.

  “I don’t know but what they do too,” he declared. “Because I’ve waked up on a bitter cold Christmas Eve and heard ’em a-lowing and a-mooing; and I’ve seed the elder buds all busted out and frostbit the next day. Oh, yes, a body always ought to try to keep Christmas!”

  Then Aunt Lucy told how her father’s family generally killed a deer and baked a great apple cake nearly two feet high, or else roasted a shote with sweet potatoes.

  “Now, you and me, Dartus, we couldn’t make out to eat a whole shote, without some of my folks was to come from Meigs County to help us,” she said; “but I aim to bake us a little small cake.”

  “And maybe I can polish up Old Sister,” said Dartus, as he looked up at the long muzzle-loader that with its shot pouch and powder-horn had hung over the fireboard since they were married, “and I’ll kill us a wild turkey or a pheasant, or anyhow a mess of quail.”

  The reason that they had fallen out of the habit of keeping Christmas was that they were both good church members and did not approve of the misrule that some people in the mountains set up from the new Christmas Day to the old, which falls twelve days later. They might have joined in the usual round of visiting, but it happened that all their near relations were away at one distance or another. Roistering with gunpowder and moonshine whiskey and cards was not what they wanted. But as the winter deepened over Moccasin Gap they felt more and more like celebrating in some way.

  All the week before Christmas was dry, clear weather, crispy cold. Old Dartus was out with his rifle every day on the mountain side and in the breaks of Puncheon Camp Creek. But he was not, at his time of life, as quick with “Old Sister” as a frightened turkey hen can be with her legs and wings; and all he brought in was one opossum, tolerably fat, that had lived on stolen corn and chickens. He put the creature, grinning and snapping, into a coop; and the next day he hitched his mule to the spring wagon and set out for Watauga.

  It was the Saturday before Christmas—the country people’s day for going to town. Every wagon that came down the gap rang loud and far on the frosty air, for the road was hard as iron. Aunt Lucy heard them and stood by the fence with a homespun square pinned over her head, saying, “We’re jist toler’ble. How’s your folks?” to everyone that passed. She was kin to nearly everyone in the far valley, and some stopped and talked a long time with her.

  When Eph Latiner came by she was glad to have him stay and tell her all the news from Blue Springs and Carson’s Cove. His wagon was piled with holly and mistletoe and club moss and cat brier that he was carrying down to sell along the streets; but underneath the green he had a coopful of fat young turkeys that he was taking to market.

  The way Uncle Dartus had spoken made Aunt Lucy believe that he was more than half joking about having turkey for Christmas dinner, and she thought that it would be an excellent idea to surprise him; so she bought a fat turkey from Eph with her own blanket money.

  But when Dartus drove into the lot that evening, with provision of salt and water-ground meal and lamp oil and coffee and a little sugar, which was about all that they ever bought, he, too, had a turkey.

  “Well, Lucy, we cert’n’y surprised one ’nother,” he said. “It was more’n we really ought to ’a’ spent, but never mind I believe the one Eph raised is a leetle the biggest. Fat, ain’t they?”

  Dartus locked the two birds in the henhouse together, and gave them all the corn that they could eat the next morning.

  On Christmas Eve the weather turned colder, and a sharp wind blew down the valley. Everyone that passed was glad to stop and get warm by Dartus’s fire and drink a cup of Aunt Lucy’s coffee. Coldest of all travelers on the road was poor Timon, Dartus’s nephew, tramping homeward with a sack of meager supplies on his shoulder.

  “What you-uns goin’ to do for Christmas, Timon?” inquired Aunt
Lucy.

  “Mighty little, Aunt Lucy,” he answered, spreading his hands to the blaze. “Cynthy’s poorly, and the baby, it favors a little picked bird. I ain’t got to work at nothing all fall for havin’ to take keer of them. I reckon me and her’ll jist set and look at one ’nother for our Christmas.”

  She noticed then how thin his clothes were and how out of heart he looked; and she went into the kitchen and made haste to pack a bucket of honey to send to Cynthia. By the time it was ready she thought of something else and looked about for Dartus, to consult with him. But Dartus was not to be found at the moment, and Timon was in a hurry; so she ran out to the henhouse and, groping in the dusk, found a turkey. Tying its legs handily with a soft rag strip, she presented it to Timon.

  She felt reluctant to tell her husband of what she had done on impulse—“me a-givin’ away all that good turkey meat, and it so high! He’ll be apt to read me the parables about it.” She put off telling him until the last minute on Christmas morning; when he came in with a blank expression from a trip to the henhouse, she knew that she must make her confession.

  When she had finished, Dartus said sheepishly, “I toted one of them birds across the holler yestidy evening to pore old Ann Goforth.”

  “You did!”

  They looked at each other across the scalding water and carving knife that she had got ready.

  “Well, thar goes our Christmas dinner,” he said ruefully. But he crossed the kitchen and kissed Aunt Lucy’s withered check. “Old honey girl, I wouldn’t ’a’ thought of you doin’ that; I didn’t ’low you thought that much of my kinfolks.”

  “So it’s you and me, instid of Timon and Cynthy, that will have to set and look at one ’nother Christmas Day,” she answered; but she said it happily.

  “Well, ’y jings, Lucy, it wouldn’t be so bad ef we was to,” he reflected, noticing her mounting color and her smile. “But there’s the possum. I’ll go out and skin him whilst you fix a potful of sweet taters, and I reckon we won’t go exactly hungry.”

  suggestions for further reading and research

  Abrahams, Roger D. Foreword to The Spirit of the Mountains, by Emma Bell Miles, v–xii. Facsimile edition. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975.

  Brooks, Shannon. “Coming Home: Finding My Appalachian Mothers through Emma Bell Miles.” NSWA Journal 11, no. 3 (1999): 157–71.

  Brosi, George. “The Heart-Wrenching Life of Emma Bell Miles.” Appalachian Heritage 33, no. 4 (2005): 11–21.

  Brosi, George, ed., and Grace Toney Edwards, guest ed. Appalachian Heritage 33, no. 4 (2005).

  Cox, Steven. Introduction to Once I Too Had Wings: The Journals of Emma Bell Miles, 1908–1918, edited by Steven Cox, xxv–xlvii. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014.

  , ed. Once I Too Had Wings: The Journals of Emma Bell Miles, 1908–1918. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014.

  Edwards, Grace Toney. “Emma Bell Miles: Appalachian Author, Artist, and Interpreter of Folk Culture.” PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1981.

  . “Emma Bell Miles: Appalachian Poet.” Now and Then 2, nos. 1–2 (1985): 18–21.

  . “Emma Bell Miles: Feminist Crusader in Appalachia.” In Appalachia Inside Out, vol. 2, Culture and Custom, edited by Robert J. Higgs, Ambrose N. Manning, and Jim Wayne Miller, 709–13. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995.

  . “Emma Bell Miles: Pioneer Folklorist of Appalachia.” In The Many Faces of Appalachia, edited by Sam Gray, 23–28. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1985.

  . “Emma Bell Miles: The Spirit of a Crusader.” Appalachian Heritage 15, no. 3 (1987): 5–9.

  . “One Hundred Years of Spirit from Emma Bell Miles.” Appalachian Heritage 33, no. 4 (2005): 54–57.

  Engelhardt, Elizabeth S. D. “Carving Spirit into Rock.” Foreword to Once I Too Had Wings: The Journals of Emma Bell Miles, 1908–1918, edited by Steven Cox, xi–xvi. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014.

  . The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003.

  Gaston, Kay Baker. Emma Bell Miles. Signal Mountain, TN: Walden’s Ridge Historical Association, 1985.

  . “Emma Bell Miles and the Fountain Square Conversations.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 37 (Winter 1978): 416–29.

  . The Kay Baker Gaston Collection of Emma Bell Miles Materials. Special Collections, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

  Miles, Emma Bell. Chords from a Dulcimore. Chattanooga: Self-published, 1912. Available in Jean Miles Catino Collection, Special Collections, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

  . “Fountain Square Conversations.” Chattanooga News, April–July 1914. Available in Jean Miles Catino Collection, Special Collections, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

  . Journals. 1908–18. MS. Available in Jean Miles Catino Collection, Special Collections, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

  . Letters. 1907–17. MS. Chattanooga Public Library, Chattanooga, TN. Copies of the letters are also available in Special Collections, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

  . Our Southern Birds. Chattanooga: National Book Company, 1919. Reprint, Morristown, TN: Globe Book, 1922; and Signal Mountain, TN: Walden’s Ridge Historical Association, 1983.

  . “Some Real American Music.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 109, no. 649 (1904): 118–23.

  . Strains from a Dulcimore. Edited by Abby Crawford Milton. Atlanta: Ernest Hartsock, The Bozart Press, 1930. Reprint, Signal Mountain, TN: Mountain Press, 2001.

  . The Spirit of the Mountains. New York: James Pott & Company, 1905. Reprint, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975.

  Miller, Danny, Sandra Ballard, Roberta Herrin, Stephen D. Mooney, Susan Underwood, and Jack Wright. “Appalachian Literature.” In A Handbook to Appalachia: An Introduction to the Region, edited by Grace Toney Edwards, JoAnn Aust Asbury, and Ricky L. Cox, 199–216. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006.

  Prajznerová, Kateřina. “Bioregional Biography: The Landscapes of the Lives of Emily Carr and Emma Bell Miles.” In Alternatives in Biography: Writing Lives in Diverse English-Language Contexts, by Stephen Hardy, Martina Horáková, Michael Matthew Kaylor, and Kateřina Prajznerová, 231–300. Brno, Czech Republic: Masaryk University Press, 2011.

  . “Emma Bell Milesova.” In Literární biografie jako kř ižovatka žánrů, by Michael Matthew Kaylor, Stephen Paul Hardy, Martina Horáková, and Kateřina Prajznerová, 169–76. Brno, Czech Republic: Masaryk University Press, 2011.

  . “Emma Bell Miles’s Appalachia and Emily Carr’s Cascadia: A Comparative Study in Literary Ecology.” 49th Parallel 20 (Winter 2006–7): 1–16.

  Whisnant, David E. Introduction to The Spirit of the Mountains, by Emma Bell Miles, xv–xxxv. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975.