The Hills Remember

by James Still

  “What was the two dollars for?”

  “A one-line quote in a magazine.”

  “It figures. But that’s not my lookout. You were somebody once, for a minute. . . . Obit prices have been cut down to seventy-five dollars, but no matter. Money means next to nothing to me.”

  “But you’re managing for others to pay your telephone bills.”

  “That’s their problem.”

  “How old are you?”

  He told me. He was five years my senior. When I remarked on this, he said, “I’ve already outlined a number of my clients and expect to do so with many another.”

  I thought I heard a fiendish giggle on the other end of the line. “You are worth seventy-five dollars to me.” Again the giggle. “Dead.”

  “You know my name. May I ask yours?”

  He spoke it, but in the manner some scribes affect an unreadable signature at the end of a letter. I was never to know for certain. It was either Vogel or Bogle. Perhaps neither. After then, recognizing his voice, I’d say, “From the morgue?” and he’d say, “About the morgue.”

  During the first call he explained, “I know all about you—the facts. You’re not an alcoholic. That’s a switch. You don’t hate your mother. You haven’t tried suicide. You’re too damn normal. Normality is bad for a poet. It doesn’t go with the territory.”

  I had not fully awakened. At that hour my wits were not fully engaged. I couldn’t think of a thing out of the ordinary.

  “Keep working on it, there’s something,” he said with assurance.

  “How did you get my telephone number? It’s unlisted.”

  “I have my methods.”

  My telephone number had been changed to unlisted due to its being one digit off the one held by the Water Control Board. At least one call, usually several, came between eight and five to report a broken water main or the curious taste or color of the water that day. They had come in the daylight hours at least. Yet it was a nuisance.

  After that first call from Vogel or Bogle, or whomever, his calls were always past midnight—two A.M. was his favorite hour.

  Within the year I had this unlisted number changed—not due to Vogel or Bogle, however. I began to receive, day and night, occasional mysterious communications. They were succinct, to the point, no greeting or sign-off. Just “Corner of 8th and Chillocothe, four P.M. sharp,” or some other location, never the same. “Bus station, baggage box 67, key’s in the lock.” “Hogger’s Restaurant, first table on the left, eight P.M.” This sounded ominous.

  Shortly after I had the new number Vogel—or was it Bogle?—called. He had his methods. I recognized his voice.

  “You again.”

  “About the obit.”

  “This is getting to be a nuisance,” I said, and added, “A health hazard. I am not as young as I used to be. Are you aware of the hour? If I’m waked up in the middle of the night I might not be able to sleep another wink.”

  “Hard on me, too,” he said. “I’m growing older than you. It’s all in your behalf. What was it T. S. Eliot said? Something about going out with a bang not a whimper. That’s what I’m trying to help you with.”

  “Let me tell you something,” I said. “I‘ll let you in on something that has just happened. A professor at the university has compiled and published an anthology—vanity press, naturally—of seventy-eight poets who were born or have resided in this state. This will tell you my present status. I was not accounted worthy to be included.”

  “You were somebody once,” was the reply. “You may be again. Poets are forever. Take John Donne—was he the king of the hill when he died? The world hadn’t heard of him. He’s somebody now.”

  “All I am is a tinkerer—a tinkerer with words. As for recognition, the little I had, that will be all.”

  “You’re not thinking hard enough. There’s something you’ve done or are doing that lifts you above the mundane.”

  “I tinker, as I said. And garden. Should have been a botanist. I have a primitive desire to dig in the earth and plant seeds. To grow things. Will that do for your purposes?”

  “Don’t tell me all that stuff. I know it already. Dull, dull. You know what I want. Keep thinking,” he advised and hung up.

  By the third year, I had still not been able to contribute to his obit on me. Then I had a bit of gratuitous information. The Gary Independent had been sold to a Chicago publishing house. They had bought only the subscription list, and the morgue. He was out as a reporter but could still capitalize on the obits he had in process. Obits were always in process until the death of the subject. And the price was up: one hundred dollars per obit.

  There were other calls. One from St. Louis. He was retired, living on his retirement benefits, his obits his only employment. He was at a sister’s home.

  “Who’s paying for this call?”

  “Goes on the house billing, naturally.”

  How to get this man off my back? It no longer mattered. It happened almost unintentionally. While I didn’t particularly welcome the calls in the night, by this time I had become something of an insomniac, and I began to indulge the old codger. I knew he was old, being five years my elder, and a quaver had developed in his voice. I had never gotten his name for certain, no longer tried. And I’d tease him about who was paying for the long-distance call until he’d reply, “Not me, and that’s not the subject.” He was always forthright.

  During these years I had moved to a small town, then into the country where I could bring my gardening skills into full play. With both moves I acquired new telephone numbers, listed ones. Had they not been listed, he would have acquired them. He had his methods.

  One day I had summoned the county agriculturist agent to come test the mineral content of a garden plot where I had fought goat’s-foot morning glories for years. I’d cut them down to a stalk, year by year, never allowing them to seed themselves. I told the agent of my victory over the goat’s-foot and said, facetiously, “I’m afraid I’m going to lose seed of them.” The agent laughed and said, “We can’t allow that to happen.” I had been to war with this noxious vine. I came to miss it. Given time, my enmity had mellowed.

  That night there was a call toward four A.M. Vogel or Bogle hadn’t called for more than a year, and I wasn’t certain of the caller.

  “Is this from the morgue?”

  “Right,” said the speaker.

  I didn’t indulge in chitchat. “I think I have something for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Reckon you know about the government having seed banks at several locations around the country, to keep old varieties of vegetable and crop seed from being lost?”

  “Say on.”

  “Well, I’m afraid the goat’s-foot morning glory is going to be lost to the world. I’ve started my own seed bank to save this unappreciated bane of the agricultural world.”

  The voice on the other end of the line exploded, “That’s it! Not dynamite, but a firecracker. It’ll have to do. What I have been waiting for. Good for one hundred bucks! All poets have some eccentricity. This is yours. Now you can die. But take your time.”

  I fired back, “And your eccentricity is collecting dynamite caps.”

  The telephone clicked off.

  I never heard from him again.

  Acknowledgments

  A number of people helped to make The Hills Remember possible, and I thank them all: Teresa Perry Reynolds, whose support of this and other James Still–related projects is deeply appreciated by all who value Still’s writings; the staff at the University Press of Kentucky—Laura Sutton, Ashley Runyon, Steve Wrinn, Allison Webster, Ila McEntire, and Fred “Mack” McCormick—for guiding this project through the publishing process; Jonathan Greene, of Gnomon Press, for permitting republication of the Still stories from Pattern of a Man; Ruth Hausman, Steven Solomon, Whitney Mays, and Tiffany WIlliams, for clerical assistance; the staff at the University of Kentucky James Still Collection office, for help in the acquisition of never-be
fore-published Still manuscripts; the staff at East Tennessee State University’s Interlibrary Loan Services, for help in the acquisition of previously published Still texts; and Kathy H. Olson, for moral support throughout this project.

  Publications

  “These Goodly Things.” The Better Home 1, no. 3 (July-August-September 1935): 15.

  “All Their Ways Are Dark.” Atlantic 157, no. 6 (June 1936): 708–12. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Horse Doctor.” Frontier and Midland 17, no. 1 (Autumn 1936): 25–28.

  “Bare-Bones.” Appalachian Heritage 38, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 21–24.

  “One Leg Gone to Judgment.” Mountain Life and Work 12, no. 3 (October 1936): 9–10.

  “A Bell on Troublesome Creek.” The Better Home 2, no. 4 (October-November-December 1936): 3.

  “On Defeated Creek” [later “The Scrape”]. Frontier and Midland 17, no. 2 (Winter 1936–37): 120–24.

  “The Quare Day.” Household Magazine 37, no. 1 (January 1937): 36.

  “Job’s Tears.” Atlantic 159, no. 3 (March 1937): 353–58. Reprinted in The O. Henry Memorial Award Stories of 1937, ed. by Harry Hansen (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1937): 211–21. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “The Egg Tree.” Yale Review 27, no. 1 (September 1937): 100–109. Reprinted in The Yale Review Anthology, ed. by Wilbur Cross and Helen MacAfee (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1942, 1970): 354–63. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Lost Brother.” Frontier and Midland 18, no. 1 (Autumn 1937): 13–16.

  “Brother to Methuselum.” Story 11, no. 64 (November 1937): 45–52. Reprinted in Kentucky Monthly 2, no. 7 (July 1999): 48–52.

  “So Large a Thing as Seven.” Virginia Quarterly Review 14, no. 1 (Winter 1938): 17–25. Reprinted in The O. Henry Memorial Award Stories of 1938, ed. by Harry Hansen (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1938): 267–76. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Mole-Bane.” Atlantic 161, no. 3 (March 1938): 372–74. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Journey to the Settlement” [later “Journey to the Forks”]. Mountain Life and Work 14, no. 1 (April 1938): 11–13. Reprinted in a pamphlet published by the Hindman Settlement School, Fall 1938; in Read 1, no. 2 (April 1941): 5–6; and in Short Short Stories, ed. by William Ransom Wood (New York: Harcourt, 1951): 57–62.

  “Uncle Jolly.” Atlantic 162, no. 1 (July 1938): 68–71. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Bat Flight.” Saturday Evening Post 211, no. 10 (3 September 1938): 12–13, 50–51. Reprinted in The O. Henry Memorial Award Stories of 1939, ed. by Harry Hansen (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1939): 31–48. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Pigeon Pie.” Frontier and Midland 19, no. 1 (Autumn 1938): 44–45. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Twelve Pears Hanging High.” Mountain Life and Work 15, no. 1 (April 1939): 14–18. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Two Eyes, Two Pennies.” Saturday Evening Post 211, no. 40 (1 April 1939): 12–13, 94–95, 97. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “Sugar in the Gourd” [later “On Quicksand Creek” and “The Dumb-Bull”]. Prairie Schooner 13, no. 2 (Summer 1939): 99–104.

  “The Ploughing” [later “Simon Brawl”]. Atlantic 164, no. 6 (December 1939): 776–78. Reprinted in Read 42, no. 16 (15 April 1959): 21–23. Incorporated into River of Earth.

  “The Force Put.” Excerpt from River of Earth (1940). Published under current title in Sporty Creek: A Novel about an Appalachian Boyhood (1977).

  “I Love My Rooster” [later “Low Glory”]. Saturday Evening Post 212, no. 40 (13 April 1940): 16–17, 62, 64, 70–71.

  “Snail Pie.” American Mercury 50 (June 1940): 209–14.

  “The Moving.” North Georgia Review 5, nos. 3–4 (Winter 1940–41): 18–20. Reprinted in Wind (1974–1976): 87.

  “The Proud Walkers.” Saturday Evening Post 213, no. 45 (10 May 1941): 111–14. Reprinted in The O. Henry Memorial Award Stories of 1941, ed. by Herschel Brickell (New York: Book League of America, 1941): 289–304.

  “The Stir-Off.” Mountain Life and Work 17, no. 3 (Fall 1941): 1–7.

  On Troublesome Creek. New York: Viking Press, 1941. 190 pp. Contents include “I Love My Rooster,” “The Proud Walkers,” “Locust Summer,” “The Stir-Off,” “On Quicksand Creek” [originally “Sugar in the Gourd”], “Journey to the Forks” [originally “Journey to the Settlement”], “Brother to Methuselum,” “Snail Pie,” “The Moving,” and “The Scrape” [originally “On Defeated Creek”].

  “Hit Like to ’a’ Killed Me.” Louisville Courier-Journal (19 April 1942): 22.

  “Mrs. Razor.” Atlantic 176, no. 1 (July 1945): 52–53. Reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, ed. by Martha Foley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946): 419–24; in The Pocket Atlantic, ed. by Edward Weeks (New York: Pocket Books, 1946): 68–72; in Mountain Life and Work 30, no. 3 (Summer 1954): 34–37; in Deep Summer: A Collection of New Writing, ed. by Albert Stewart (Morehead, Ky.: Morehead State College Press, 1963): 30–33; in 23 Modern Stories, ed. by Barbara Howes (New York: Vintage Books, 1963): 87–91; in The World of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 1, ed. by Gloria B. Levitas (New York: George Braziller, 1965): 1084–87; in Statement (Spring 1967): 25–26; and in Appalachian Heritage 8, no. 2 (Spring 1980): 47–49.

  “Cedar of Lebanon” [later “The Sharp Tack”]. American Mercury 62 (March 1946): 292–95.

  “Maybird Upshaw.” American Mercury 63 (August 1946): 61–66.

  “Pattern of a Man.” Yale Review 36 (Autumn 1946): 93–100. Reprinted in Troublesome Creek Times (13 May 1981).

  “School Butter.” Virginia Quarterly Review 22, no. 4 (Autumn 1946): 561–69.

  “The Nest.” Prairie Schooner 22, no. 1 (Spring 1948): 53–56. Reprinted in Mountain Life and Work 44, no. 1 (November 1968): 13–16; and in Home and Beyond: An Anthology of Kentucky Short Stories, ed. by Morris A. Grubbs (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001): 31–36.

  “A Master Time.” Atlantic 183, no. 1 (January 1949): 43–46. Reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, ed. by Martha Foley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950): 390–98; and in Voices from the Hills: Selected Readings of Southern Appalachia, ed. by Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose N. Manning (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1975): 253–62.

  “A Ride on the Short Dog.” Atlantic 188, no. 1 (July 1951): 55–58. Reprinted in The Best American Short Stories, ed. by Martha Foley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952): 298–304; in American Accent, ed. by Elizabeth Abell (New York: Ballantine Books, 1954): 101–9; and in Appalachian Heritage 2, no. 4, and 3, no. 1 (Fall-Winter 1974–75): 136–40.

  “The Fun Fox.” Woman’s Day 16, no. 12 (September 1953): 101, 137–41. Reprinted in Mountain Life and Work, 44, no. 4 (May 1968): 12–15.

  “The Burning of the Waters” [later “Tight Hollow”]. Atlantic 198, no. 4 (October 1956): 55–60. Reprinted in Mountain Life and Work 45, no. 7 (July 1969): 11–17.

  “The Run for the Elbertas.” Atlantic 204, no. 1 (July 1959): 46–53. Reprinted in The Landrum Leader [Landrum, S.C.] 6, no. 12 (21 April 1960): 6; and in Appalachian Journal 6, no. 2 (Winter 1979): 142–55.

  “Encounter on Keg Branch.” Mountain Life and Work 45, no. 2 (February 1969): 15.

  Pattern of a Man and Other Stories. Lexington, Ky.: Gnomon Press, 1976. 122 pp. Contents include “Mrs. Razor,” “A Master Time,” “Snail Pie,” “A Ride on the Short Dog,” “The Nest,” “Pattern of a Man,” “Maybird Upshaw,” “The Sharp Tack” [originally “Cedar of Lebanon”], “Brother to Methuselum,” “The Scrape” [originally “On Defeated Creek”], and “Encounter on Keg Branch.”

  Sporty Creek: A Novel about an Appalachian Boyhood. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977. 125 pp. Illustrated by Janet McCaffrey. Short stories arranged as a novel; contents include “Simon Brawl” [originally “The Ploughing”], “School Butter,” “Low Glory” [originally “I Love My Rooster”], “The Moving,” “The Force Put” [e
xcerpt from River of Earth], “Locust Summer,” “The Dumb-Bull” [originally “Sugar in the Gourd” and “On Quicksand Creek”], “Plank Town,” “Tight Hollow” [originally “Burning of the Waters”], and “Journey to the Forks” [originally “Journey to the Settlement”].

  The Run for the Elbertas. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1980. 144 pp. Foreword by Cleanth Brooks. Collection of short stories; contents include “I Love My Rooster,” “The Proud Walkers,” “Locust Summer,” “Journey to the Forks” [originally “Journey to the Settlement”], “On Quicksand Creek” [originally “Sugar in the Gourd”], “The Stir-Off,” “The Burning of the Waters,” “School Butter,” “The Moving,” “One Leg Gone to Judgment,” “The Quare Day,” “The Fun Fox,” and “The Run for the Elbertas.”