by James Still
I jist stands thar starin’ at Ambrose. And I seen the happiest look come on his face.
He laughs right out loud and keeps greasin’ that skillet with his bow. Keep yore skillet good and greasy. Then I knowed he hadn’t been hit.
Oh hit would take a charmed bullet to drill ole Fiddlin’ Ambrose.
I grabs Hebe Fuller’s daughter agin and swangs right swift ’round the corner, feelin’ sort o’ proud o’ ole Ambrose never turnin’ a hair.
Oh they’ll never forget how he played that set.
When I come back ’round to Ambrose’s chair I looks at him agin. He was still laughin’ and his fiddle ain’t stoppin’ a minute. But he looks quare. He was gittin’ pale. All the time he’s workin’ that bow like a cross-cut saw in a walnut log.
Then I takes another look and I see somethin’.
Ambrose is holdin’ that fiddle up high but he can’t hide it.
I see his shirt and the dancin’ jist run clear out o’ my feet. It was time to swang, and I swung like my jints was frost-bit. I kept a-goin’. I knowed Ambrose wanted it that way.
We was nigh through that set when the music stopped.
We was caught thar with our feet clear off the floor and no music to put ’em down with.
I heered Ambrose’s fiddle hit the floor and one strang twanged.
I never looked. I couldn’t look.
I jist drapped down on one knee. My eyeballs was hot as a coal.
Brother to Methuselum
Here on Oak Branch of Ballard Creek we are nearly all kinfolks. We mostly marry amongst ourselves, live and die where we were born, and don’t try to run after the rest of the world. Let one of us get twenty or thirty years along, outlast pneumonia fever, typhoid, and grippe, we’re apt to inhabit this earth a good long spell. Two or three got to be a hundred or so, so agey they looked liked dried cushaws. But not another who started living square over again after they had passed the century mark as did Uncle Mize Hardburly. He raised a new set of teeth, grew a full head of hair. Not even John Shell, the oldest man in the world, who had his picture in the almanac advertising purgatives, could make this claim. And besides, Uncle Mize’s face lost its wrinkles and became as smooth as a June apple.
Uncle Mize was a hundred and three when he began to sprout his hair and teeth. Hair grew back on his noggin as thick as crabgrass in a corn balk. The teeth—they were the real thing. Aye gonnies, it was beyond belief unless you saw them yourself. Gazing into his mouth was akin to peeping into a hollow stump nested with joree eggs. There were the grinders, eyeteeth, and incisors. The full set. And was Uncle Mize tickled! He could stop gumming his tobacco and recommence chewing.
After his rejuvenation, Uncle Mize got to hopping around to beat crickets. He throwed away his specs. Rarely used them anyhow, except to see how finances stood in his snapping pocketbook. He propped his walking stick in a corner, for keeps. Aye, I couldn’t remember him without that stick, which was carved to the appearance of a copperhead snake.
Unnatural it was bound to be, Uncle Mize getting young again and the Hardburly burying ground full of people not nigh so ancient. He had outlived two wives. Nine children awaited final judgment in the graveyard. His whole family set had gone to glory, or torment—who can say?—except two sons, Broadus and Kell. But Uncle Mize took to his rebirth like a sheep to green ivy, gammicking over his farm, beating in a crop, cussing and bossing as in younger days. Broadus and Kell hadn’t cleared a new-ground in fifteen seasons. Now, by the hokies! They had to hoist their backsides, whet their shanks, grub and dig. They had to shake hands with a plow handle.
Broadus and Kell were twins, sixty-one years of age, and single. Yet, gosh dog! They couldn’t be blamed for not finding dough-beaters when women followed shunning them. They were as alike as churn dashers, homely and tall and stringy, a mite humpbacked, and as common in the face as the Man Above ever shaped and allowed to breathe. As the saying goes, they’d been hit by the ugly stick. How a handsome-looker like Uncle Mize could have sired them beat understanding. Or was there a stranger in the woodpile? Oh there were some people sorry enough to think so.
Maw vowed the brothers put her in mind of granny hatchets burrowing in a rotten log, beetle-eyed and nit-brained. Human craney crows, she called them. Why, I don’t suppose even a three-time widow would cut eyes at either. Not along Oak Branch, or the whole of Ballard Creek. Not anywhere in the territory. They were willing all right, willing as ferrets in a rabbit hole, but they got nowhere in the marry market. Kell gave up the hunt at around fifty years of age. Broadus never did.
On account of his years, Maw and the other women on Oak were easier on Uncle Mize than on his sons. Nevertheless Uncle Mize had his rakings. They low-rated him partly because he didn’t belong to their congregation, didn’t pull his chin long as a mule’s collar on Sunday. He would go to church—go at church, say. He’d loll in the shade of the gilly tree in the yard, and did a preacher step on somebody’s toes too hard in the church-house, they could steal out and talk with Uncle Mize, swell their chest with the fresh air blowing across Oak from the hickory ridge, and forget about eternal damnation. Jawing with Uncle Mize they would presently feel content to wring the pleasures such as they were from this world, and allow the next to rack its own jennies.
I followed hanging after Uncle Mize. You understand how a seventeen-year-old youngster is, big ears and small gumption. Don’t know his ankles from a hole in the ground. I relished talk with a speck of seasoning, and Uncle Mize was the fanciest blackguarder in the mountains, slicking the devil’s blessings over his tobacco cud, pouring on the vinegar. He could split frog hairs with words. And Uncle Mize was as generous as weather. He’d let me borrow his pocketknife, and most trees on the meeting-ground have my name carved on their trunk. He kept the knife in his snapping pocketbook and sometimes I found money wedged between the blades. Those days I didn’t wink at a dime. Even a penny.
So Uncle Mize shunned the rocking chair and got around more. He visited us sometimes despite Maw’s disapproval that he was on top of the earth instead of under it. Once she said in his presence, “Hit’s unearthly for a body to become young once they’ve been old. Hit’s contrary to prophecy and the plan of creation.”
“Cite me,” Uncle Mize challenged. “Quote me scripture on it.”
Said Maw, “If it hain’t in the Book, it ought to be. Oh I’ve seen plum thickets bloom pretty in a January thaw and freeze out in February.”
“Hazel bushes bust blossoms the first month of the year,” Uncle reminded, “and they flourish and endure. It appears the idea of the Almighty for them to flower and beget in winter. And that might sometimes happen in the case of mankind.”
Maw had clacked her teeth and hushed. She couldn’t outtalk Uncle Mize.
Uncle Mize figured people were jealous. He was reviving, rising again, and they were scared he wasn’t mortal. Whether folks will admit to it or not, they want to outlive everybody they know. Especially their enemies. Aye, Uncle Mize didn’t account it peculiar, his turning the calendar backwards. “I’ve aimed to be around a right smart number of years, and I’ve lived accordingly,” he’d say. “I ’stilled my own whiskey, raised my own bread and meat, growed the tobacco I chew, done a mite of everything, and not too much of anything. I split the middle. I’ve dodged the doctors—the main thing. Oh I’ve had sicknesses, yes sir. But when herbs of my own brewing wouldn’t heal, I let the flesh cure itself. And, by the gods, I believe I’m a brother to Methuselum.”
Fellows teased Uncle Mize, yet they made small scrimption off of him. He was as foxy as the next ’un. They’d inquire was he getting youthful all over, or was it in spots.
“Aye, neighbor,” Uncle Mize would cackle. “I’m resurrected from alpha to omega, from toe to crown. I’m a match to the apple they call Worldly Wonder. And, hear me, my friends, I’m likely to sire another drove ere there’s singing on the point.”
“You mean you would wed again?” they would cry.
Uncle Mize woul
d go along with the kidding. “Why, I’ve married two times in life,” he’d banter, “and I might decide to go for twice more—shoe the horse all the way ’round.” But Uncle Mize was talking to hear his head rattle. He didn’t have any such business in head.
Uncle Mize kept the buck passing, not allowing it to stick on him. Nevertheless, square down, he must of understood he wasn’t immortal. Yet he stood in with the best of them, for a while. Now, no, they made nothing off of Uncle Mize. You can’t gig a fellow who is laughing harder than you are. It’s like spitting into Oak Branch, expecting to hit a fish in the eye. But Bot Shedders, the mail carrier, tried the hardest.
I recollect Uncle Mize got in behind Broadus and Kell and put in a big crop that spring. By hooker-by-crook he planted eleven acres of new-ground corn. Persuading Broadus and Kell to work regular was akin to whooping snakes. Kell was forever hunting a shady spot, Broadus haunting that county seat. Broadus could figure up more reasons for going to town than overalls have pockets. He went to see females riding sidesaddle, though his excuses were otherwise. Though he’d never see sixty again, he wouldn’t give up pining after the women. I suppose he was hammered together that way. So it took coaxing and begging and cussing on Uncle Mize’s part to get the work done. Toward the end of April he had to hire me.
Broadus and Kell set off one morning for the high swag of the ridge to thin and plow corn. I stayed behind to help plant beans in the sass patch. Me and Uncle Mize finished in less than an hour and then lit out for the swag ourselves, hoes across our shoulders. It was a pull, mounting the slope, but Uncle Mize skinned up it as easily as I. We rested on stumps at the top and gazed below at the corn growing black-green and bonny. The blades rustled, the air smelled of tansy. Two crows flopped overhead.
“Be dom,” Uncle Mize chuckled, “crows know a master crop when they spot one.”
We dropped into the swag through a redbud thicket and made our way to the edge of the field. Broadus and Kell weren’t in view. The mule had dragged the plow across the rows and stood biting tops. Uncle Mize flew mad. What he said would rot teeth. Then he hushed and listened. A belch sounded nearby. He grabbed up a sassafras root and tickle-toed toward the noise.
Broadus and Kell were stretched behind a dead chestnut, a fruit jar between them, drunk as hooty-owls. Kell slept peacefully while his brother dropped anty mars down his collar. Beading an eye on Uncle Mize, Broadus lifted the jar and said, “Come take you a sup, Pap, and loosen up your whistle.”
Uncle Mize swung the sassafras. It zizzed, breaking the jar to smithereens. Broadus sprang to his feet, aiming to hightail it, but Uncle Mize brought the root against his skull full force, and it wasn’t a pulled lick either. Broadus laid over, cold as clabber. Kell must of dreamt there was a war broke out, for he staggered up, threshed his arms, and when he saw who was there, grumbled, “What you acting so brigetty about, Pap?” Uncle Mize answered with a blow of the root, and Kell could only crouch and fend off the whacks.
On untwisting the mule’s harness, Uncle Mize started plowing himself, busting middles, geeing and hawing, and I tried to keep ahead in the row, thinning stalks, but I couldn’t. He worked like a twenty-year-old, like a whiteback. And he had the field cultivated by dinnertime. He finished it snorting worse than the mule. I saw Uncle Mize was trembly. I saw the wings of his nose and the tags of his ears were pale. The plowing had hurt him, had set him back considerable. He had overdone.
Uncle Mize took the punies. He moped about the house, satisfied to reclaim his walking stick and rocking chair. He wasn’t so branfired feisty thereafter. He would holler to folks going Oak Branch road and invite them to come in and gab with him. He didn’t have to beckon Bot Shedders. Bot regularly stopped his mail hack and retailed gossip an hour or so.
Bot was company for Uncle Mize, with me in the fields trying to conquer weeds, and Broadus and Kell piddling. Broadus and Kell! Be there a shady row, it would take them half a day to hoe it. They made friends with the crabgrass, it appeared. They left standing more than they slew.
Well, we’d go in for dinner and find Bot telling some winding yarn that would redden the face of a Frankfort lawyer. I wouldn’t believe Bot Shedders on his deathbed.
Bot would stay for dinner usually, and I’ll be dadburned if he wasn’t a bigger eater than liar. I’ve seen him down a half-gallon of buttermilk, a bowl of shucky beans, two potato onions, and four breakings of cornbread at a sitting.
One day I heard Bot tell Uncle Mize something offhandedly. He glanced at the old witch of a cousin who did the cooking and said, “Uncle Mizey, you ought to get you a woman to pretty up the house. Be it I was single, and turning back the calendar, it’s plime-blank what I’d do.”
“Talk sense, old son,” Uncle Mize threw back, without smiling. And that was the first I knew he wasn’t for joshing any more. It figured. The plowing had undone him.
Bot pulled a dry face. “A man needs a woman to snip the hair out of his ears and keep his toenails trimmed.”
“Ruther to own a redbone hound,” Uncle Mize said. “When I get easement, I’m apt to take up fox hunting again, the sport that used to pleasure me. I’ll spend nights in the hills, listening to the music.”
Bot grunted. “It’s to be expected a man would lose his courage after he passed the hundred mark. Hit must make a parcel of difference. Even seventy-five might be the cut-off for some, and at eighty the fire is out shorely.”
To this Uncle Mize said grumpily, “You have no fashion of knowing until you’re there yourself.”
“I was a-guessing,” Bot said. “Speculating. But I’ve sort of a notion you’ve crossed the river. That rocker has captured you for good.”
“I have as much man-courage left as airy a person on Oak,” Uncle Mize declared. “The fact is, women don’t trip themselves up running to marry the oldest feller this side of the Book of Genesis.”
“Any day you want to,” Bot said, “you can order a woman. If you own property, have a few dollars in pocket, it’ll draw ’em like yellow jackets to stir-off.”
“I’ve never heard tell of such,” said Uncle Mize. Bot was such a fibber, who could believe him?
“Upon my honor, you can order a woman through a newspaper.”
Bot’s stomach got to shaking, but he managed to hold his face in check.
“I’ve no mind to order a woman for myself,” Uncle Mize answered, thinking this was another of Bot’s big ones, “but, by the hokies, I’d do anything to locate wives for Broadus and Kell.”
Following that, Bot Shedders handled affairs to suit his own notion, without even saying “chicken butter” to anybody. He stopped by daily, and when I’d come in he’d be jabbering. And it got to where he would laugh at nothing at all. You might say, “Git,” to a dog, or, “The moon’ll be full tonight,” and he’d double up. He might bust out with nobody saying anything. Yet a month passed before I caught on. One noon when I walked in from the fields, there sat Bot with a mess of letters. I’d never beheld so many to one person—sixteen by count. He reported they were for Uncle Mize, and Uncle Mize was staring at them and hadn’t cracked an envelope.
“Who do you figure wrote them?” Uncle Mize inquired.
“Why, Uncle,” Bot explained, “these are from women craving a husband. Craving a man the worst way.”
Uncle Mize glared at Bot. For once Bot had told the truth. “Where did they get the idee I wanted a wife?”
“I put your name in the papers. Just you looky here.” Bot drew a newspaper clipping from his billfold and read aloud: “Oldest Man in Kentucky Seeks Wife.”
“Well, well, well,” Uncle Mize breathed, and then he said, “Open and read some of their scratching.”
Bot ripped the lid off a letter, reading it to himself first. He got to laughing, gagging like a calf with a cob in its throat. He forgot to spit, and ambeer dribbled his chin.
“Reading must be a slow and tickling business,” Uncle Mize gibed. “What’s the holdup?”
“This one’s from Georg
ia,” Bot cackled. “Says she’s seventy-two, been a widow forty years, doesn’t paint her lips or dye her hair, and keeps a clean house. Says she wants to spend her remaining days of grace with a mate.”
“She sounds decent,” Uncle Mize allowed, “but she’s along in age. Too old for me. A woman ripens quicker’n a man.”
“Ah,” Bot chuckled, “if it’s a pullet you want, maybe she’s here somewheres.” He ripped more envelopes, glimpsing at the pages, saying at last, “Here’s a girl from Oklahoma who is sixteen. Says her step-paw spanks her for wearing high heels and twigging her hair, and she intends to run away from home. Says she has eternally dreamed of marrying a mountain man, age no hinder. And she signs, “Gobs of kisses, Suzie.”
“Well, coon my dogs!” Uncle Mize blurted. “I hain’t going to rob a cradle. No, sir.”
Bot wanted to rip more, but Uncle Mize claimed he’d heard all the reading he could abide for one day. Since the plowing he tired easily. “That Suzie,” said he, “ought to have the spankings poured on the harder. Was I her pappy, I’d draw blisters with one hand, bust ’em with the other.” Then he said, “I don’t believe I’ll marry, and none of them two now seem fit for Broadus and Kell either. Too elderly, too young, none in betwixt.”
“My opinion, Broadus wouldn’t be choosy,” Bot said. “Anyhow, the letters have barely started coming. You’ll have a square pick of the world.”
The puny spell hung on. Uncle Mize stayed several days in bed. He was up and down all June and July, drinking cherrybark tea to strengthen his blood, a rag on his chest smeared with groundhog grease for his wind. He wasn’t in pain, just weak, sluggish, no account. Bot Shedders stopped by every mail day, keeping peg on Uncle Mize’s health, delivering more letters. For Uncle Mize he was right smart company.
Oh, I reckon it was dull for Uncle Mize the days the mail didn’t run and with me and Broadus and Kell in the fields. Or me in the fields working by my lone, Kell asleep under a bush, and Broadus at the county seat. Time can hang heavy as a steelyard pea. Flat on his back, I expect a man will do a lot of cogitation. It might have caused Uncle Mize to take a fancy to one of the letters. For days handrunning Uncle Mize would say to Bot, “Bohannon”—that was Bot’s real name—“read that there letter again,” and Bot would know which one.