The Red Rag Under the Churn
33
Wiley and the Hairy Man
Tombigbee Region, Alabama
Wiley’s pappy was just about the laziest, no-account man in Alabama. He never did a lick of work, letting the weeds grow till they were higher than the cotton, stealing the neighbors’ vegetables on dark nights, and robbing corpses before they could be buried. Everyone hereabouts knew that Wiley’s pappy was never gonna cross the river Jordan. No, sir! The Hairy Man would come for him, and he’d never get to heaven.
Well, Wiley’s pappy fell off the ferry one day, and everyone reckoned the Hairy Man must have gotten him because they never found the body. They checked up and down the river and in the still pools by the sandbanks, but there was no sign of him. While they were checking the fast waters downstream, they heard a gruff laugh coming from the far bank, and they knew it was the Hairy Man. That’s when they stopped looking for Wiley’s pappy.
Wiley’s mama was a smart woman who knew lots about conjuring because she came from the swamps of Tombigbee. She told Wiley that the Hairy Man was gonna come for him too, since he’d already gotten Wiley’s pappy.
“So you’d best keep a careful look about you.”
“I’ll be careful, Mama,” Wiley promised. “I’m gonna keep my hound dogs with me all the time, just like you taught me.”
“That’s right. The Hairy Man doesn’t like hound dogs,” said Wiley’s mama.
So Wiley was right careful to keep the hounds with him when he did his chores. But one day, as Wiley was chopping down some poles in the swamp to use for a hen roost, a stoat went running right past his hound dogs. The dogs jumped up mighty quick and chased that stoat clean across the swamp and off into the woods. They ran a long ways down the river, until Wiley couldn’t hear them yelping any more.
But Wiley could hear something stomp, stomp, stomping through the trees—and he knew it was the Hairy Man. He looked up, and sure enough the Hairy Man was coming through the trees toward him. The Hairy Man was as ugly as sin, with hair all over his body, and eyes that burned like fire. The Hairy Man was grinning and drooling all over his big teeth, and Wiley didn’t like the looks of him one bit.
“Don’t you be a lookin’ at me like that,” Wiley said to the Hairy Man, dropping his ax and climbing a big bay tree that was nearby. He figured the Hairy Man couldn’t climb the tree because his feet looked like cows’ feet, and Wiley hadn’t ever seen a cow up a tree.
“Now what’d you climb up there for, Wiley?” asked the Hairy Man.
Wiley kept climbing higher as the Hairy Man stopped at the bottom of the tree. The Hairy Man sure was ugly. Wiley didn’t like the looks of him one bit, and didn’t stop climbing until he reached the top of the tree.
“How come you’re climbing trees?” asked the Hairy Man again.
“My mama told me to stay away from you, and that’s what I aim to do,” Wiley said, wishing that the tree would grow faster.
Wiley noticed that the Hairy Man was carrying a sack over his shoulder. He didn’t like the look of that sack any more than he liked the look of the Hairy Man. “What you got in that sack?”
“There ain’t nothing in my sack . . . yet.” The Hairy Man grinned up at Wiley and seized Wiley’s ax.
“Get out of here!” shouted Wiley.
“Ha!” retorted the Hairy Man as he began chopping down the bay tree.
Wiley was plumb scared. He held on tight to the tree and tried to remember what his mama had taught him about conjuring. There must be something he could do. Then he remembered a chant his mama had taught him.
“Fly chips, fly. Go back to yer place,” Wiley shouted. The wood chips flew back into the tree and sealed the hole the Hairy Man had made with the ax. The Hairy Man cursed and shouted and started chopping faster. Wiley knew he was in trouble, but he chanted faster and faster. The wood chips flew in and out, in and out of the bay tree, but soon they were flying more out than in. The Hairy Man was bigger and stronger than Wiley, and he was gaining on the boy.
Wiley’s voice was getting hoarse from all that chanting, and he was mighty afraid. Then he heard a faint yelping from far away. His hound dogs were coming back. Wiley drew in a deep breath and shouted, “Here dogs! Here dogs!” Then he kept chanting the spell, “Fly chips, fly. Go back to yer place.”
The Hairy Man laughed. “You ain’t got no dogs. I sent a shoat to draw them away from you.”
But Wiley shouted for the dogs again, and this time the Hairy Man heard them yelping too. The Hairy Man looked worried.
“I’ll teach you to conjure if you come down,” he tried to bargain with Wiley.
“My mama can conjure, and she’ll teach me all I want to know,” Wiley said.
Enraged, the Hairy Man cursed and stomped his cow feet. Wiley and the Hairy Man could hear the dogs getting closer and closer. The Hairy Man shouted one more curse word, threw down the ax, and ran off into the woods.
As soon as Wiley got home, he told his mama all about how the Hairy Man almost got him.
“Did he have his sack?” asked Wiley’s mama.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s gonna come after you again, Wiley,” said Wiley’s mama. “Next time he comes, don’t you be climbing no bay trees.”
“I won’t, Mama. They ain’t big enough.”
“Don’t you be climbing no tree at all,” Wiley’s mama said.
“What should I do then?” asked Wiley.
Wiley’s mama told him how to trick the Hairy Man so he could get away. Wiley listened carefully.
“I dunno, Mama. It just don’t seem right,” Wiley worried. But he promised to do what his mama said.
The next day, Wiley tied up his hound dogs before he went down to the swamp to finish making his hen roost. It wasn’t too long before he heard a stamp, stamp, stamping sound coming from the woods. Wiley looked up, and sure enough, there was the Hairy Man coming through the trees, grinning and drooling all over his big teeth. The Hairy Man knew the hound dogs were tied up at the house more than a mile away. He was carrying the sack over his shoulder again, and Wiley wanted to climb another tree to get away. But Wiley stayed where he was, remembering the promise he’d made to his mama.
Wiley and the Hairy Man
“Hello, Hairy Man,” he said, just as his mama had told him to.
“Hello, Wiley,” said the Hairy Man, taking the sack off his shoulder and opening it up.
“Hairy Man, I hear you’re the best conjurer in the world,” said Wiley quickly.
“You heard right,” said the Hairy Man.
“I bet you can’t turn yourself into a giraffe,” Wiley said.
“That’s an easy one,” said the Hairy Man, and he turned himself into a giraffe lickety-split.
“Bet you can’t turn yourself into an alligator,” said Wiley. The giraffe turned and twisted and became an alligator, but it kept its eye on Wiley the whole time it was transforming, to make sure he didn’t run away.
“Well, that’s pretty good. But just about anybody can turn into something as big as a man. It takes a mighty strong conjurer to turn into something small, like a possum.”
“Ha!” said the alligator, twisting and turning itself around until it turned into a possum. Quick as a wink, Wiley grabbed the possum, tied it up tight in the sack, and threw it in the river. Then he started home through the swamp. But he was only halfway there when the Hairy Man came walking toward him through the woods. Wiley yelped in horror and climbed up high into a tree.
“I turned myself into a wind and blew my way out of that sack,” said the Hairy Man proudly as he came up to Wiley’s tree. “Now I’m gonna sit here till you get so hungry you fall out of the tree.”
Wiley didn’t know what to do. His hound dogs were still tied up a mile away. The Hairy Man sat with his back against the tre
e and said, “You still want to see me conjure?”
Wiley had an idea. “Well,” he said. “You did some pretty fancy tricks, Hairy Man. But I bet you can’t make things disappear so nobody knows where they go.”
“Huh,” the Hairy Man snorted. “That’s what I do best. See that old bird’s nest? Now look—it’s gone.”
“How am I to know it was there in the first place? Bet you can’t make something I know about disappear!”
“Ha! Look at your shirt,” said the Hairy Man. Wiley’s shirt had disappeared. Wiley kept his face serious. He didn’t want the Hairy Man to know what he was up to.
“That’s just an old shirt. This old rope I got tying up my britches is conjured. You can’t make something conjured disappear, Hairy Man.”
The Hairy Man was mad clean through at Wiley’s tone. “I can make all the rope in the whole county disappear,” he shouted.
“Ha, ha,” Wiley laughed scornfully.
The Hairy Man jumped up and yelled, “All the rope in this county—disappear!”
Wiley made a quick grab for his pants as the rope holding them up disappeared. Then he yelled for his hound dogs; the rope he’d tied them up with had disappeared too. They came yelping and barking, and the Hairy Man ran off, mad because Wiley had tricked him again.
As soon as Wiley got home, his mama asked him if he put the Hairy Man in the sack like she told him.
“Yes, ma’am, but he turned himself into wind and blew himself out again. Then he trapped me up a tree.”
Wiley told her how he tricked the Hairy Man so he could escape.
“Wiley, you fooled that Hairy Man twice,” said his mama. “If you can fool him once more, he’ll leave you alone for the rest of your days. But he’s mighty hard to fool a third time.”
“We’ve gotta think of something, Mama.”
Wiley’s mama sat down next to the fire and she thought and thought. Wiley wanted to think too, but he knew he had to protect them from the Hairy Man first. So he tied one dog to each door and put the broom and the ax over the window so they’d fall down if anyone tried to open it from the outside. Then he built a big fire in the fireplace so anyone trying to come down the chimney would be burned.
By the time Wiley had finished protecting the house, his mama had thought up something.
“Wiley,” she said, “go fetch me the little suckling pig we have in the pen with that old sow.”
So Wiley went down and caught the suckling pig, leaving the old sow squealing indignantly in the pen. He gave the little pig to his mama, who stuck the pig in Wiley’s bed.
“Now hide yourself in the loft and don’t come down no matter what,” Wiley’s mama told him. So Wiley went and hid in the loft. It wasn’t too long before the wind started to howl outside, and the trees started shaking, and the hound dogs began to growl. Wiley looked out through a crack in the wall and saw the hound dog by the front door watching something in the woods. It started to snarl as a horned animal the size of a donkey went running past. The hound dog barked something fierce and tried to break free, but he couldn’t get loose. When a second animal came running from the woods, the hound got loose and chased it far away into the swamp. Wiley hurried to the other side of the loft to look out at the back door. The rope that Wiley had used to tie his other dog was broken too, and Wiley could see the hound chasing something that looked like a large possum into the trees.
“The Hairy Man must be on his way,” Wiley muttered. And sure enough, Wiley heard a stomp, stomp, stomping noise coming from the trees. Then Wiley heard the sound of feet up on the roof of the house. The Hairy Man started to swear. He’d touched the chimney, hot from the big fire Wiley had made in the fireplace. So the Hairy Man jumped off the roof, walked right up to the house, and knocked on the front door.
“Mama, I’ve come to take your baby,” the Hairy Man shouted. “I got your man, and I want your baby.”
“You ain’t gonna get him, nohow!” Mama shouted back.
“I sure will, Mama. I’m gonna bite you till you give him to me. I got blue gums, Mama, and my bite is poisonous as a cottonmouth’s.”
“I got poisoned gums of my own, Hairy Man,” Mama said.
“I’ll set your house afire with a lightning bolt,” the Hairy Man threatened.
“I’ll put it out with sweet milk,” Mama retorted.
“Mama, I’m gonna dry up your spring and send a million boll weevils to eat up your cotton and make your cow go dry if you don’t give me your baby.”
“Hairy Man, you ain’t gonna do that. That’s just mean.”
“I’m a mean man,” said the Hairy Man. “There ain’t no man alive that’s as mean as me. Now give me your baby.”
“If I give you my baby, you gonna leave everything else alone and go right away from here?” asked Mama.
“I swear that’s what I’ll do,” said the Hairy Man.
So Mama opened the front door and let the Hairy Man in.
“He’s over in that bed,” said Mama. The Hairy Man ran over to the bed and snatched the covers away.
“Hey!” he shouted. “There ain’t nothin’ in here but a suckling pig.”
“I never said what kind of baby I was giving you,” said Mama. “And that suckling pig was mine to give, before I promised it to you.”
The Hairy Man had been tricked for the third time and he knew it. He stomped and yelled and swore and knocked over all the furniture. Then he grabbed up the baby pig and ran out into the swamp, knocking trees over in his rage. The Hairy Man tore a path through the swamp that looked like a cyclone had set down right next to the house.
When the Hairy Man was gone, Wiley came down from the loft.
“Is that Hairy Man gone for good, Mama?”
“He’s gone for good,” Mama said. “That Hairy Man can’t ever hurt you again because we fooled him three times.”
Wiley gave his mama a big hug, then they got out the last of his pappy’s moonshine that they had been saving for a special occasion and celebrated long into the night.
34
Spanish Moss
The Florida Coast, Florida
It was early fall when the captain and his men made camp on the coast, planning to hunt and fish for a week to supplement their meager supplies with fresh meat. Their regiment was charged with exploring and taming the wilds of this new land they had discovered, and they planned to march northward for many days.
Among the company was a beautiful Native American woman they had captured during a skirmish a few days previous. The Spanish soldiers had killed all their native attackers but had spared the life of the woman and had brought her along with them. In truth, they might have let her go had the captain not been smitten by her. She was tall and graceful, with masses of long dark hair and luminous dark eyes. He had never seen her equal for loveliness or spirit.
The captain tried to woo the beautiful captive as they journeyed northward, inviting her to dine in his tent, picking wildflowers for her, and reciting Spanish poetry to her. But the lovely captive spurned his advances and demanded that he release her so that she might return to her people. As his hopes of winning her love evaporated, the captain’s infatuation turned to hatred. He was furious at the woman’s open defiance, afraid that it might undermine his standing among the troops.
The situation came to a head that evening. The woman was stirring the fire, and a long strand of her silky hair fell across her cheek. When the captain reached out and brushed it gently back behind her ear, the woman slapped his face, right in front of his men. Enraged, the captain struck her a fierce blow, sending her flying backward into the dirt. Leaping to his feet, he towered over the beautiful captive and swore he would cut off her head and put it on a pike by the entrance to his camp as a warning to any who defied him.
The woman raised her chin defiantly and said, “If you do this evil deed, I swear my spi
rit will follow you wherever you go!”
With an incoherent shout of rage, the captain drew his sword and slashed downward three times. The third cut severed the woman’s head from her neck. Grabbing the head by its silky black hair, the captain strode to the edge of camp, blood dripping in his wake. He thrust a pike through the bottom of the head and buried the end of the pike in the ground so that the head could be seen by all his men. The woman’s face was set in a look of defiance, even in death, and her long, silky hair twisted this way and that in the breeze. The captain marched back to his tent and got very drunk, and the men avoided him for the rest of the evening.
But in the morning, one of the officers came hurrying into the tent, his cheeks pale with fright. “Sir, the head . . . the woman . . . ” he stuttered incoherently, unable to finish a sentence. The captain waved for him to continue, but he just beckoned mutely to his superior officer to follow him outside. As soon as he stepped foot out of the tent, the captain could see what had frightened the man. The woman’s head atop the bloodstained pike was now standing right outside his tent. Overnight her long black hair had turned gray; her face was pointed directly toward his tent, her defiant dead eyes fixed upon its entrance.
The captain’s heart thundered within him at the sight. “Is this someone’s idea of a joke?” he roared, using anger to hide his fear.
“No, sir,” the officer babbled. “The men swear that they did not touch it. They say it is the curse come true.”
“I don’t believe in curses,” the captain snapped, cold sweat running down his back, despite his words. “Put the head back at the entrance to the camp, and tell the men that the first one who touches it will be severely punished!”
The captain stormed back into his tent. It was only when he was alone that he staggered into a chair, his knees trembling too much to keep him upright. What had he done?
During breakfast, his eyes moved more than once to the bloodstained pike at the entrance to the camp. As he finished his meal and rose to his feet, the pike suddenly vanished. The captain gasped and hurried forward, one step, two. He almost rammed into the head on the pike, which reappeared right in front of him, the woman’s eyes gazing defiantly into his own, her long gray hair blowing wildly about the bloodstained pike, even though no wind was blowing. The captain screamed in terror, staggering backward with his hands in front of his face. He babbled a prayer aloud as his men came running. At the sight of the ghastly head on the pike, they retreated behind their captain.
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