by Glenn Taylor
Herchel could hear Jack Dempsey barking from clear across the Cut. He’d left the dog in the house, had assumed canines weren’t welcome at worship.
He looked up at his handiwork. They’d decided on a scissor truss for the ceiling, and Herchel had stained the beams to match the pews. He smiled and noted how the peaks were perfect, the butt cuts too. The air inside was like a lumber mill. Dusty and new. He looked at the heads of the Wells family in front of him, so still and accustomed to worship.
Herchel hadn’t been in a church for ten years.
Beside him sat Jerry, who was clinching his cheeks to stifle a fart. He sweated though it was temperate. Pressed his boot sole to the floor and bounced his leg up and down.
Jerry had never stepped foot in a house of the Lord.
It was quiet as the agnostics and atheists and Baptists and Episcopalians shifted on the hardwood. Willy broke free from his mother’s lap and bounded up the steps to the pulpit, a simple lectern made from pew scrap, no insignia. Sawdust danced under his clumsy saddle shoes. Ledford stood to give chase, but Staples said, “Let the boy be.” He was coming down the aisle with a cardboard box in his hands. He pulled from it and handed, to each in attendance, a King James Bible and a hymnal. Hymns of the Spirit it read, gold embossed.
Staples bent to Willy, who jumped up and down on the plank steps, the smack echoing from the trusses above. He stopped when he saw the sugar cube being handed his way. The boy snatched it and stuck it in his mouth. Staples told him, “There’s more where that came from if you sit on your mama’s lap and be still.”
At the pulpit, Staples stood tall. He wore a white dress shirt and black tie, and he’d made an effort to comb his hair and tame his beard. They looked up at him, and he smiled, nodded. Said, “Welcome.”
He began his sermon with the same explanation he’d delivered out front to the Bonecutter brothers, who were not in attendance. Then he put on his spectacles. He took a wad of paper from his shirt pocket and flattened it on the lectern’s face. Braced his palms there and cleared his throat. “When we think of eternity,” he read, “and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God?” He looked out at them over his spectacles.
Ledford recalled the words as those of William Wilberforce. Outside, the wind picked up. It rattled the panes of the single-hung windows, each cracked open to let the place breathe.
The preacher closed his eyes and inhaled deep. Then he looked at the faces before him and began. “My name is Don Staples,” he said. “I was born in McDowell County in 1893. I came up mean and nasty. Broke the Hindenburg Line in the First World War.” He let that sink in for a moment. “Then I came home and was married and became a father. I failed in both endeavors. I ran wild for a time before I was called by God to the Virginia Theological Seminary, where I first read of William Wilberforce, the man whose words I spoke to you just now.” His bad eye rolled slow. “At the seminary I met the great-great-great-grandson of the abolitionist Absalom Jones. I followed Will Jones to Mingo County in 1927, and together we built a church where black and white miners worshipped side by side for a time. That time ended in fire and hatred, and the hard years came, and I left that parish in 1933, worked all over as a preacher with the CCC for four years, and then I came to Huntington, helped on flood relief. Took a job teaching at Marshall.” He paused. Took another deep breath. A nuthatch bird lighted on the window pane and called. “In all my travels on this earth,” Staples went on, “from France to Germany and from the ocean shore to the coal mine, I have seen the ugly capabilities of man.” He took off his spectacles. “I have seen ignorance and fear where the principles of justice should be. I have seen oppression in the name of religion, and of God. I have seen a den of robbers.” He stood stock still. “But here, today, I see no such things.” He looked at Ledford and then Rachel. Mack and Lizzie. Herchel and Jerry. Mary and Willy. He looked long and hard at Harold. “I see no ignorance in your faces, no fear in your posture.” He smiled. “I see liberation.”
Staples spoke then of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, and of the people laying down palm tree branches. Jesus tossed over the tables of the money changers, Staples told them. “Drove em on out,” he hollered, pointing to the doors.
Willy got loose and ran up and held out his hand for another sugar cube. Staples obliged with two. The boy returned to his mother’s lap and Staples went on. “Righteousness is not always mighty, and power is not always rich.” He folded his papers and stuck them back in his shirtpocket. “Who wants to sing a song?” he asked.
They turned to “Bring, O Morn, Your Music” and sang of the ocean’s laughing rapture and the people’s thousand tongues calling for light.
Staples promised them that he’d never afflict their ears with boredom. He said clapping was welcome, as was hollering and the stomping of feet. If any played an instrument, bring it, he said.
Rachel raised her hand.
“Speak freely here,” Staples told her.
“We have a piano being delivered.”
“Amen,” Staples said.
Rachel was at peace with what had happened to her. She had two healthy children. She’d have another one day.
Staples asked if any would like to step to the lectern. Said that all were welcome to speak their minds, no matter the subject.
There was only quiet. The nuthatch bird had gone from the window and the wind had ceased to blow. Mack Wells checked his wristwatch. Jerry prayed for the service to convene. He couldn’t hold his monumental fart much longer.
A marble fell from Mary’s dress pocket and rolled to the center of the aisle. Harold sprung from his seat and retrieved it. He held it to his eye. “Blue cornhusk,” he said.
Ledford nodded. He’d given the boy a book on marbles. Ledford hoped to be manufacturing such a variety within the year.
Harold handed the marble to Mary and walked back toward his seat. He stopped short, thought for a moment, then climbed the stairs to the lectern. Staples stood aside.
Lizzie leaned forward in the pew, thought for a moment about stopping the boy. Instead, she reclined and reached for her husband’s hand.
None could see the boy wholly where he stood behind the wooden stand. Only pantlegs, shoes, and shoulders. The top of his head. “Next week’s my birthday,” Harold said. His voice had come out softer than he’d thought. He could feel a tremble in his hands. Still, he spoke. “I want a ball glove.” The adults smiled. “I want more Negroes to be allowed to play ball with white men, like Jackie Robinson.”
He turned and looked at Staples, who nodded and told him he was a natural.
“Boys at school say mother and dad is crazy for moving out here. They say white folks isn’t no good.”
Mack watched his boy close. He was fascinated by his only son. Lizzie started to correct his grammar. Aren’t any good, she thought to herself. Then she sighed and sat back in the pew.
Harold said, “I only know Baptist. And I don’t know any white Baptists.” He coughed and inadvertently knocked his head on the lectern. He rubbed it away. “Stretch, this boy at school, says white folks…” He met the eyes of Loyal Ledford, who wore a look much like his own father’s. “I don’t think that Stretch knows what he’s talking about,” Harold said. “I think God made all people good and then some of em get taught bad.” He lit off fast down the stairs and into his seat. Mack put his arm around him.
“Amen,” Staples said again.
OCTOBER 1951
MACK WALKED THE LENGTH of the Cut with a notepad and pencil in hand. Back at the chapel, he’d noticed Jerry following him but paid him no mind. He’d come to expect such things at Marrowbone. Jerry followed Mack, and the chickens followed Jerry.
In front of the vegetable garden, the two men made eye contact and nodded. Mack began writing down greenhouse dimensions, and presently Jerry approached him, making signs wi
th his hands. “Sorry, I don’t understand,” Mack said.
Jerry motioned for the pencil and notepad. On it, he wrote, What are you scouting? and handed it back.
“Oh, I’m trying to figure a system for the whole place. We need a water station in case of fire. Could double for irrigation.”
Jerry nodded. He was impressed. He took the notepad again and wrote How do you know all this?
“Army,” Mack said. “Engineer unit.” Across the creek, there was a trampling of leaves from the woods. Mack trained his eyes in its direction. The sound had come from out beyond the empty A-frame that would house his brother and mother. Mrs. Wells had been a cook all her life, and when her sons told her the pay rate at Ledford’s new outfit, she quit her job at Smalley’s Cafeteria and said, “Sign me up.” Mack’s brother Herb could swing a hammer, and he was the type to wander where whimsy led.
The leaf trampling grew louder, and Dimple and Wimpy came out of the woods, riding double astride Silver. Dimple was at the reins and Wimpy behind him, a rope in his grip that trailed back and lashed to Boo’s bridle. The mare was acting as packhorse. Her load was no ordinary supply. Tethered to her saddle, jutting up like a stalagmite, was the severed head of a ten-point buck. Its blood ran down Boo’s barrel and flank, zebra stripes on a paint horse. Big ancient saddlebags rocked with her gait, and they too dripped blood. The handle of a meat cleaver stuck out from a pocket. On the opposite side, a canvas bag hung like a close-quartered hammock, shoulder to flank.
They’d hung, bled, and dressed the mighty deer in the woods, and now they were bringing it home.
Jack Dempsey the Plott hound followed along. The horses had gotten used to him as a pup, and he slept most nights in the barn. He stood almost thirty inches and weighed sixty-three pounds. A fine dog. He’d once gone after a black bear and faced it down. Herchel had come running when he heard the awful snarls. The young bear nearly sliced Jack Dempsey dead before Herchel shot his 20-gauge in the air.
Even Dimple couldn’t help but pet the dog, and Dimple hadn’t touched a canine since one bit him in the face as a boy, granting him a nickname for perpetuity.
The brothers eased their mounts over the footbridge slow and steady. The creek beneath was low. The footbridges, built just after the ’49 flood, had yet to be tested.
The twins rode to Mack and Jerry, nodded. Mack and Jerry nodded back.
“We’ll roast at Ledford’s pit tonight, that’s all right by him.” Dimple wore no gloves on his hands. They held the reins bloody red, fingernails outlined in dried black scab. Across his forehead was a crimson smear where he’d wiped at sweat while cleaning the deer. “It’s a biggin,” he said.
Wimpy nodded. “That sounds good,” Mack said. “There’s plenty a firewood stacked.”
“Your mother have any venison recipes?” Wimpy asked.
Mack shook his head no. “Well,” Dimple said, “they’ll be some good stew bones from it anyhow.”
They rode off to the head of the hollow, where the old butcher’s shop awaited.
That night there was a bonfire and a feast, and afterwards, Herb Wells produced his guitar. It was a big old Stella twelve-string, the only worthwhile possession their daddy had left behind when he disappeared in ’31. Herb hummed low and used a steel thumb pick to walk the sound out. Rachel had set up folding chairs in a circle around the pit. They sat close and tapped their feet on the dirt, and watched the blue-tips dance. Their backs made a wall to keep the children from the fire while they duck-duck-goosed in a round, oblivious to the night’s cold air.
The goats were free again. They’d bent the wire on the pen fence and hurdled. Now they circled the gathering, clacking heads and testing their horns on Jack Dempsey the dog, who ignored them, then bit their hides without breaking skin.
Herchel laughed.
Mrs. Wells didn’t care for the goats. She excused herself to the Ledfords’ bathroom.
Herchel was a little bit drunk. He sang a made-up line along with Herb’s guitar. Jack Dempsey blues, goat horn blues.
Ledford said, “Herb, if you stand and play that guitar in a wide stance, those goats’ll come over and scratch your balls for you.”
Herb laughed while he played. He wound down his picking and they congratulated him and Staples said, “It’s no wonder I’ve not seen you at worship, Herbert. Man plays like that has already inked in blood.”
Ledford watched the easy laughter on the faces of those around him.
Herchel pulled a flask and tilted it to his lips. He passed it to Jerry and Herb, who did the same. The firelight played across their foreheads, and it shone in the lines of the face of Mrs. Wells. It reached clear to the wrinkles of the Bonecutter brothers, who stood apart from the circle and listened.
Staples sang a song for the children, who patted their laps in time with Herb’s picking. Was a tiny old man that lived at the dump, uh-huh. He was short and squat like a sycamore stump, uh-huh. Harold Wells laughed genuine. His mimickers, Mary and Willy, followed suit. Staples sang on, Had a mile-high trash heap bed for his head, if you like city livin just go on ahead, uh-huh, uh-huuh, uh-huuh.
Ledford recognized the tune his mother used to sing him.
Jack Dempsey moseyed over from the porch and sat at Herchel’s feet. Herchel rubbed hard at the dog’s ears. “Watch his eyes,” he said. They shut slow with each touch, reopened, and shut again. “He cain’t stay wake when you rub him like that.” Herchel then demonstrated what happened when he scratched the dog’s snout. Jack Dempsey’s top lip curled, showing his teeth. Then he sneezed three times fast and explosive. Herchel did it again with the same results. It sounded like a lightbulb busting. Everyone laughed.
“Ledford, you remember that time he was a pup and heard that shotgun blast?” The liquor was warming all of Herchel’s extremities now.
“Jerry, you remember?”
Both men acknowledged that they did. “He tucked and run like the sky was a fallin.” Herchel slapped his knee. “I never seen nothin, man or beast, what proved the turn of phrase like Jack Dempsey done. I seen those little brown droppings with my own two eyes. That dog had the shit scared out of him.”
Everybody laughed harder then, but Herchel cut his short. “Beg pardon ladies,” he said.
“I heard worse,” Mrs. Wells answered.
Wimpy walked over to them. It grew quiet. Some were not yet accustomed to the brothers, as their presence was primarily from a distance. “Enjoy the venison?” Wimpy inquired.
All nodded. “Truly delicious,” Rachel said.
Wimpy kicked at a pebble with his boot tip. “I come up with a name for your company,” he said. His gaze was to the ground, eye sockets deep, shrouded from the firelight.
“Let’s hear it,” Ledford said.
“Well, I reckon you could name it for the place where you built it. Could call it the Marrowbone Marble Company.”
The moment the words were spoken, Ledford found them both peculiar and perfectly suited. Destined, he decided, and he wondered how he hadn’t thought of it himself. “That’s just about perfect,” he told Wimpy. “Thank you. Very much.”
Wimpy nodded, turned, and walked away. “I’ll make a fine sign,” Staples called after him. He fingerpainted on the air.
Wimpy waved without turning.
It was nearly ten when Rachel called bedtime for the little ones. They begged for one more ghost story.
Herchel leaned into Herb Wells. “They want the shit scared out of em,” he whispered. Herb agreed.
The fire threw less light. Dimple and Wimpy left their positions and went off to bed.
Staples gave the children one more. “This tale’s called ‘Hickory Nuts,’” he said. “Heard it from my mother.” He leaned forward in his chair and drew a house in the dirt with his finger. The children sat close. Staples spoke, “An old man down in Switchback wanted to sell his big brick haunted house, but nobody would bite. So, he offered a reward to anybody who could stay in it all night and prove it wasn’t inhabit
ed by ghosts. My granddaddy volunteered.”
“Really?” Harold asked. He sat on his knees with his hands in his pockets. Beside him, Mary and Willy did the same.
“Really. So, my granddaddy sat in the haunted bedroom that night and stared at the big fireplace with a candle on the mantel. He lit a match and stuck it to the candle.” From behind his back, Staples produced two kitchen matches and struck them on his front teeth. They blazed up big and he bugged his eyes above the glow. None cried or ran away. “Tough crowd,” Staples said. “How old are you Willy? Seventeen?”
“Free and a half,” Willy said. He held up his thumb and two fingers. Ledford and Rachel stood by and chuckled. He pulled her to him, her back against his chest, his chin on her head.
Staples licked his thumb and finger and squeezed the matches dead with a hiss.
At this, Willy beamed. “There we go,” Staples said. He winked at the boy. “With the candle, my granddaddy lit a fire in the fireplace from wood that was already stacked and dried. It lit up the hearth, which was built from rough stone. It also lit up the floor, and there he found a burlap bag of hickory nuts and a hammer. So, he cracked some nuts. Soon enough, a human finger stuck out from the stone hearth.”
“Not really,” Harold said.
“Really,” Staples answered. “A whole human hand. And it caused the candle and the fire to flicker and dim. And my granddaddy knew if he asked the hand a question in the name of the Creator, it would be obliged to answer. So, he asked, ‘What in the name of God do you want from me?’ And the hand showed its palm, and a tiny mouth opened in the center of the palm and said, ‘Raise this rock.’”
“It said what?” Mary was shivering by then. She pulled her knees to her chest.
“It said, ‘Raise this rock.’”
Willy asked, “When you goin make that fire on your toof agin?” That tickled Mrs. Wells, who set off a rumble of laughter from Herb and Herchel.