The Hills Remember

by James Still

  The Ploughing

  I ran into the fields one April morning, thinking to climb to the benchland where Uncle Jolly was breaking new ground. The sky was as blue as a bottle. A rash of green covered the sheltered fence edges, though beech and leatherwood were browner and barer still for the sunlight washing their branches. I began to climb, hands on knees, the way being steep. I went up through a redbud thicket swollen with unopened bloom and leaf, coming at last to where Uncle Jolly was ploughing. The bench spread back to a swag, level as creek land, set up against air and sky and nothing. Uncle Jolly had already broken a half acre of furrows in the rooty earth with the horse-mule Uncle Luce had loaned him.

  “Whoa-ho,” Uncle Jolly said when he saw me. He drew rein and leaned against the plough handles, blowing. He whistled a long redbird whistle. His forehead was moist, his shirt stuck to his back. He’d been hustling the mule, and was glad of the rest. “Hain’t you got a sup o’ water?” he asked.

  “I never thought to bring water,” I said. “I’ve come up to learn to plough.”

  A drop of sweat hung and stretched on Uncle Jolly’s chin. “Hell’s bangers!” he said. “This fence rail of a beast would pull you clear over the plough handles.”

  “Now, no,” I said. “I’m a mind to learn.”

  He grinned, scratching into the thick of his hair. “A chap never larnt too young,” he said. “Just you fotch a jug o’ spring water, and I’ll try you a furrow.” He hung the reins about his neck and leveled the plough. He dug a brogan toe into the black dirt. “Aye, God, this land’ll make,” he said. “Hit’s rich as sin.”

  I brought the jug of water. Uncle Jolly crooked a finger in its ear, swinging it up on his shoulder. He drank loud swallows. Water ran down his neck; it drained thread streams under his collar.

  He lowered the jug and stuck his tongue out. “Seems a bull frog’s swum here,” he said. “Hit’s sort o’ wild.” He took another drink. I reckon he drank a quart. “I allus liked a wild taste—the wilder, the better,” he said.

  “What’s this mule’s name?” I asked.

  Uncle Jolly sat the jug by. “Banged if I know,” he vowed. “Luce told me, but I can’t recollect. Ought to be named Simon Brawl, he’s so feisty.”

  A flock of goldfinches circled the new ground, their cries sowing the air. Per-chic-o-ree, per-chic-o-ree, per-chic-o-ree. They settled at the field’s edge and it was as if the dry stickweeds had suddenly burst yellow blossoms. They pecked at seed heads; they rattled empty pods of milkweed stalks.

  Uncle Jolly glanced over the ploughed land. His furrows were straight as a measure, running end to end without a bobble. “Hain’t many folks know how to tend dirt proper,” he said. “A mighty piddling few. Land a-wasting and a-washing. Up and down Troublesome Creek, it’s the same. Timber cut off and rain eating the hills away. Hit’s alike all over—Boone’s Fork, Little Carr, Quicksand, Beaver Creek, Big Leatherwood.”

  “I want to learn proper,” I said.

  “What’s folks going to live on when these hills wear down to a nub?” Uncle Jolly complained. He lifted the plough, setting the point into the ground. I stood there, not knowing what to do. “Best you walk betwixt the handles to get the lay,” he said. I got between, holding the crosspiece. Uncle Jolly grasped the handle ends and clucked. The mule didn’t move. He whistled and shouted, but the mule paid no mind. Uncle Jolly grinned. “This fool beast won’t move less’n you call his name, and that I can’t remember.”

  He tried a string of names. “Git along, Jack! Pete! Leadfoot! John!” He reached down and caught up a handful of dirt, throwing it on the mule’s back. The mule started, skin shivers quivering his flanks.

  “It’s like that every time I stop,” Uncle Jolly said. “A horse-mule stubs pine-blank like a man.”

  The earth parted; it fell back from the shovel plough; it boiled over the share. I walked the fresh furrow, and balls of dirt welled between my toes. There was a smell of old mosses, of bruised sassafras roots, of ground new-turned. We broke out three furrows. Then Uncle Jolly stood aside and let me hold the handles. The mule looked back, but he kept going. The share rustled like drifted leaves. It spoke up through the handles. I felt the earth flowing, steady as time.

  I turned the plough at the end of the third row. “This land’s so rooty,” Uncle Jolly said, “I’m going to let you work over what I’ve already broken. You can try busting furrow middles. Strike center, giving left nor right, and go straight as a die.”

  I grasped the reins and handles. “Get along,” I called, big as life. The mule didn’t budge. He lifted his plugged ears and looked at me, sly and stubborn.

  “He’s a regular Simon Brawl, all right, with steelyard peas for hoofs,” Uncle Jolly said.

  The mule started after I threw dirt on him. He went down the first row peart enough, ears standing ends-up, for Uncle Jolly began singing at the top of his voice:

  Oh I had a little gray mule,

  His name was Simon Brawl,

  He could kick a chew terbacker out o’ yore mouth

  And never touch yore jowl.

  I ploughed three furrows, and pride swelled in me as sap blows a willow bud. It was like being master where till now I’d only stood in awe; it was finding strength I’d no knowing of. When I doubled back on the fourth row I saw Uncle Jolly sitting on the ground, leaning against a chestnut stump amidst the stickweeds, his eyes closed to the sun. The mule saw Uncle Jolly too, and his ears drooped. He began to walk faster. The harness rattled on his bony body. The furrow crooked a bit, and I got uneasy.

  “Hold back thar!” I shouted, but he didn’t mend his way.

  At the fifth row’s end I looked anxiously at Uncle Jolly, hoping he would take over. One glance and I saw he had gone to sleep. I was ashamed to call. The mule hastened the furrow, the plough jiggling, scooping dirt, running crooked as a blacksnake’s track. I jerked the lines. I shouted all the mule names I’d ever heard. The share hooked a root and the reins pulled from my hands. The plough jumped a furrow, rising alive-like. And then I called Uncle Jolly, being at last more frightened than ashamed. Uncle Jolly slept on.

  We no longer bore north and south. The mule cut northwest, southeast, back and forth, catty-cornered. My feet flew over the ground. We ploughed a big S. We made a long T, crossing it on the way back. I reckon we made all the book letters. We struck into the unbroken tract, gouging a great furrow, around and around, curling inward, tight like a watch spring. I couldn’t shout or raise a sound. There was no wind left in me.

  A voice sprang across the bench. “Hold thar, Bully!” The mule stopped in his tracks, and I went spinning over the plough. I got up, unhurt. A bellow came from the stickweed patch; it was a laugh near too big for a throat to utter.

  I looked in time to see Uncle Jolly rise to his feet, then crumple to the ground. He threshed among the weeds, his arms beating air, laughing in agony. He jerked; he whooped and hollered. He got up twice, falling back slack-jointed and weak. A squall of joy flowed out of him.

  And when Uncle Jolly got his laugh out, he came across the field, weaving drunkenly. The mule watched him come, lowering his head, acting a grain nervous.

  Uncle Jolly sniggered when he reached us, and I saw a fresh throe boiling inside of him, ready to burst. The mule raised his head suddenly. He licked his yellow tongue square across Uncle Jolly’s mouth.

  “I bet that-there’s a wild enough taste,” I said, scornfully.

  The Force Put

  “Fetch the lamp,” Pap said. “I can’t see by the light of this blinky lantern.”

  Saul Hignight’s calf had a cob in its throat, and he had brought it to our place on Sporty Creek in the bed of a wagon. He lifted it in his arms, letting it down onto a poke spread upon the ground. It was a heifer, three weeks old, with teat buds barely showing.

  I went after the lamp, but Mother feared to let me hold it. She put the baby in the empty woodbox and gave him a spool to play with. She lit the lamp and took it outside, standing over the heifer
so that the light fell squarely where Pap wanted it.

  The heifer breathed heavily. Her mouth gathered a fleece of slobber. She looked at us out of stricken eyes.

  “I’d have brought her before dark,” Saul Hignight said, “but I never knowed myself till after milking time. I kept hearing something gagging and gasping under the crib. Figured at first it was a pig snuffing.”

  “Had you got to the calf sooner, the cob wouldn’t have worked down so far,” Pap said. He rolled his right sleeve above the elbow. Saul wrenched the calf’s mouth open, and Pap stuck his hand inside, up to the wrist. He wriggled his arm, reaching thumb and forefinger into the calf’s gullet.

  Saul said, “I fished for that cob till my fingers cramped.”

  We crowded around, looking over Pap’s shoulder. Slobber bubbled on Pap’s arm. He caught the calf’s throat with the left hand and tried to work the cob into the grasp of his right.

  “The cob is slick as owl grease,” Pap said. “An eel couldn’t be slicker or harder to get hold of.”

  The calf bellowed, a thing stifled bellow through her nose. Her legs threshed, her split hooves spreading. She breathed in agony. Her fearful eyes walled and set.

  Saul Hignight glanced suddenly at me. “Here, boy,” he called, “help hold the critter.” I moved slowly, fumbling. “Help hold!” Dan sprang forward and caught the calf’s hind legs, not flinching a mite. Saul glanced back sourly. I turned aside, though not being able to turn my eyes away.

  Pap pulled his hand from the calf’s throat. “I can’t reach the cob, for a fact,” he said. “My fist is three times too big. Three times. Maybe a young ’un’s hand—”

  “Here, boy.” Saul cranked his head toward me. “Stick your hand down to that cob and snatch it out.”

  I shook my head. Saul grunted and spat upon the ground. “The critter’ll die while you’re diddling,” he said, his voice edged with anger. “Try it. I don’t want to lose this one. A bully-calf, I wouldn’t mind. But a heifer—”

  “Me, now,” Dan said. He squatted on his knees. He worked his hand into the calf’s mouth and into its throat, nearly to the elbow. He grasped the cob and pulled with all his might. It wouldn’t budge. The calf fell back upon the poke, gasping for breath. Her belly quaked.

  Saul Hignight stood up. “Hain’t a grain of use to try anymore,” he said. “She’s bound to die. Born during the wrong signs of the moon, I figure.” He clapped the dirt from his hands and rubbed them on his breeches. “She would of made a fine little cow. Her mother was a three-galloner. Three full gallons a day, not a gill less. She’s of good stock.”

  There seemed nothing more to do. Saul whistled to his mules and turned the wagon around, ready to start. “I can load the critter and drop her off somewhere down the road,” he said. “She’s as good as dead. The buzzards will be looking for her tomorrow.”

  “Let her be,” Pap said. “I might be able to dislodge that cob yet.”

  Saul climbed into his wagon. He clucked and jerked the lines. The mules set off into the dark. “She’s yours,” he called, “skin and hide and tallow.”

  “Oh could we save her,” Mother anguished, “there would be milk for us when the cow goes dry. Milk for the baby.” The lamp trembled in her hand.

  “There’s one sure way to get to the cob,” Pap said. He weighed the chance in his mind. “One way sure as weather, but the calf might bleed to death.” Mother and Pap glanced at each other. Their eyes burned. “Bleed or choke,” Pap said finally, “what’s the difference?”

  “Let me try first,” Mother said. She handed the lamp to Pap, warning him to hold it steady. She poked a hand into the calf’s mouth, pushing the tongue aside, forcing the locked jaws apart. She worked feverishly. But she couldn’t dislodge the cob. She had Holly try. Then she nodded to me. I knelt before the calf, looking into the cavern of its mouth, dreading to put my hand in.

  “Hit’s no use,” Pap said. “Fetch the hone rock, a needle, and thread. And wax the thread.”

  Mother ran for them, knowing just where the hone was stored and where the needle and thread were kept. She came back in a moment, took the lamp, and handed the hone to Pap. She sent Holly into the house to stay with the baby. “He’s fretted with being alone,” Mother said. “Find something to amuse him.”

  Holly returned almost as quickly as Mother had. “I gave him a hen-fooler to play with,” she explained, “and tore a page from the wish-book for him to rattle. I left him crowing.”

  Pap drew a Barlow knife from his pocket and snapped it open. He spat upon the hone and began to sharpen the blade with a circular motion, swiftly and with precision. The calf was weakening, being hardly able now to suck breath enough for life. Her eyes were glazed. She picked at the air listlessly with her feet.

  The calf was turned to its right side, the head lifted back. Mother reached the lamp to me, telling me how to hold it—close and yet away from knocking elbows. “Both hands under the bowl,” she said.

  She caught the calf’s head between her hands while Pap dug fingers into the calf’s throat, feeling for the proper spot. He hunted for a place free of large veins. “This is a force put,” he said.

  The blade flashed in the lamplight. It slid under the hide, making a three-inch cut. Mother looked away when the blood gushed. It splattered on her hands, reddening them to the wrists. Holly began to cry, softly and then angrily, begging Pap to stop. “Stand back, and hush,” Pap said. “You make a fellow nervous.”

  The blade worked deeper, deeper. The horror of it ran through my limbs. The lamp teetered in my hands. Water ran from my eyes and dripped from my chin. I couldn’t wipe it away for holding the lamp bowl.

  Pap opened a space between the muscles of the calf’s neck, steering clear of bone and artery. The calf made no sound. Only its hind legs jerked and its hide quivered. Dan held to the legs, watching all that was being done and not turning a hair.

  At last Pap laid the knife aside. He eased thumb and forefinger into the opening and jerked. The cob came out, red and drenched. It spun into the dark. The calf fell back weakly, though beginning to breathe again—a long, strangling breathing.

  “Needle and thread!” Pap demanded quickly. Mother reached it to him. Pap folded the inner flesh and sewed it together and then stitched the outer cut. And having done all, he looked at Dan and grinned. “Here’s a fellow who would make a good doctor,” he praised. “A cool helper. Not one to panic. I’m saying he can call the calf his own.”

  I handed the lamp to Mother so I could wipe away the shameful tears. I didn’t want the calf. I’d been promised a colt.

  On Pigeon Roost Creek

  I remember the day the court woman came up Pigeon Roost Creek. It was around the first of October when there’s a frost pinch in the air and the moon comes up rotten-ripe and full in broad daylight. I was sixteen then, and I’d been in the hills barking squirrels, carrying a rifle-gun near heavy enough to crack my shoulderbone. A day-burning moon always was lucky for me. I’d got two bushtail squirrels and was coming down a woodsy swag to the county road when I saw a little side-pacing filly trotting over the ruts. A woman came riding straddleback, and she wore a quare hat-piece, red as a rooster’s comb. I leant my rifle-gun against a stump and stood gaping. Womenfolks up Pigeon Roost made their hats out of dyed shucks, or they took a throw of homespun and stitched a bonnet. Even if they sold enough eggs for a store-bought hat, it never popped your eyes out to look at it. And no woman on all the forks and traces of the Little Tennessee rode straddleback, shameless, like a man rides.

  Well now, I waded sawbriars to the road, snatching threads out of my britches, hardly believing my sight. The woman drew rein when she came up to me, and the filly swung her head nervouslike, not knowing what to think either. I knew right off it was Holt Simms’s nag, knowing by the bright spot betwixt the eyes. She must have put a spell on Holt to borrow that nag, I thought, Holt being stingy as a dried gourd.

  She sat there laughing, fluttering like a pouter pigeon trying to lig
ht. I got a square look at her. My eyes got big as a barn owl’s. Her face was more like a poppet-doll’s than real folks’, pretty as a calendar picture. I’d never seen the beat. It’s bad luck for a woman to ride a fellow’s nag, but I couldn’t blame Holt, not a grain.

  Now I know what looks fair to me. I’ve got my own notions. Hulda Miller, up Crofts Knob, always did suit my idea to a fare-you-well—suited me so fine I was stone-blind jealous of Harl Burke taking her to Fifth Sunday meetings, buying her basket at box suppers, and courting at her house on Saturday nights. I liked Harl a sight, though. As good a fellow as I ever hunted with, willing to go the whole rope, free as toll-corn pouring out of the hopper. And he had one of the keenest little hounds ever rubbed a nose on a fox track, called Ring. Ring’s ears were big as mullein leaves, and he had a sad human look in his eyes. I know a good dog when I see one, know when they’re built to fly off the face of the earth. I was raised up having two or three snoring under the bed at night, and one to put my feet on under the table. Never ate a piece of meat in my life but what a hound got the rind.

  I stood looking at the stranger, saying to myself, by juckers, if the girls on Pigeon Roost won’t turn grasshopper green when they see her traipsing into Harding, dressed fittin for a wedding.

  She laughed down at me, and I tell you I felt like a groundhog dressed the way I was. Well, now I was just seventeen, and I reckoned it didn’t matter if my britches were a nest of patches and wouldn’t hardly hold shucks. Dirt on me was wood’s dirt, clean and pure. She looked augur holes at my ragged shirt. I could have told her I had me three new-sewn ones at home, with nary a patch, but you can’t tell a stranger things like that when they don’t ask. It wouldn’t sound proper.

  When Ellafronia Saul got through looking—that’s what her name turned out to be—she said, “Good day,” low and sweet like a turtledove afar off. I said howdy just like this—“Howdy-do!” Then I didn’t know what else to say. My tongue got sticky as a ball of resin in my mouth. Now, I could have said it was the best fox-hunting time ever was with the leaves rattling underfoot and hounds lean as shikepokes, but she didn’t look to me like she’d know a hound from a fiest. I writ that down in my head against her. I just stood there like a branfired fool, wishing I’d been born with a tongue sharp as a spread adder’s and sense to grease it with.