Fair and Tender Ladies (23 page)

Then there is the company offices, and the community hall—this is for box suppers and meetings and cakewalks and such as that—and a barbershop, and a bunkhouse which is a long building like a giant chicken coop that the men sleep in who have come here to work but have not got their families, or may be they are single men, and then guess what! A
movie house,
where they run a new movie whenever they can get a hold of one. All these buildings look alike, yellow-painted wood, they are the last word in modern!

And then the houses start, they are all alike in long rows that fill up the whole south side of Company Hill, row upon row of little yellow frame houses with a porch in front built up on wood pilings so there is a space under the porch and most times dogs and kids up under there, and somebody will be sitting on the porch, a wife or her mother most likely, looking out upon the next row of houses, down the line of tin roofs shining in the sun. Oh there is a lot to see here, believe you me! In the lowest rows, the houses are so jam up on each other that you have not got hardly any breathing room, But no one cares of course for the money is so good. A man can make $7, $8, $10 a day in the mines if you can immagine this! And to think of how hard we used to live, just hand to mouth and never hardly laid eyes on cash money.

No wonder Beulah is getting so uppity. The houses start out being real little, two rooms I think, and then they get bigger halfway up. Beulah and Curtises house has got four rooms and a little dirt yard too. Beulah keeps everything pretty. We have got a pump out back that we share with three other houses and an outside toilet with a box to catch the shit in, that is between our house and the next one which is where some people named Gayheart live. A colored man comes two times a week to haul the box away. I am not sure what the people down the mountain do for this, if they use in the woods or what. But we have got this colored man because Curtis is so important. The colored mans name is Earl Porter.

On up Company Hill above us, they have got some houses with five and six rooms and steam heat and I dont know what all, and above
them
is what you call Silk Stocking Row which is very grand. It is where the doctor and the engineers and the company men live, and their wives have got colored women to work for them so they dont have to lift a finger except to dress up and go to card parties, which they have a lot of. You can see the colored women climbing up there every morning with their heads wrapped up in rags. They live over in colored town, in another little holler, and sit by themselves in the movie house. You ought to see them, Silvaney! Some of them are black and some are brown, but they almost all have dark eyes. Their teeth and the whites of their eyes are
very
white and seem to shine out at you, and the inside of their hands is pink! They say their babies are born pink, and turn dark later. Sometimes at night you can hear the colored people singing, such songs as you have never heard. And also there is a bunch of other foreigners off to themselves in the other direction, down the Diamond Creek road, they have got crazy names and speak in another language. Curtis calls them hunks and wops. I have not seen any of these yet, or anyway not to know it.

But I have gotten off the track as usual, for right at the top of Company Hill is the superintendent's house, this is what I want to tell you about, it is really something! There is not a house in Majestic that can hold a candle to it, nor anywhere else even France, I immagine. For it was built by the owner—that is one of the richest men in the world, the company owner—for a summer place, and Beulah says it has a ballroom, and a conservatory full of flowers, and five bedrooms with mirror doors. How Beulah's eyes glitter when she describes it! The owner built it for his new wife as a surprise, and when she came here for the first time, they say she had 16 pieces of luggage which the colored men carried up the hill, and 14 hatboxes, and then two weeks later they carried everything back down because she hated it here, and said it is too depressing! So the owner never comes here any more, and Mr. Ransom the superintendent gets to live in the house with his wife who likes to put on the dog and does not find Diamond at all depressing. I would not either if I was that rich!

So this is it, Silvaney—Diamond, Va., picture it if you can. If you stand in the bottom by Diamond Creek looking up the mountain, as I did yesterday in the pale pearly early morning light when I had to run down to the company store for cornflakes, if you stand in the bottom and look up, you have to catch your breath, it is just fantastic! Row upon row of houses and people in every one like bees in a hive, you can not believe it is such a town! It seems to have sprung from the mountain already-made like mushrooms spring up on the mountain after rain. Or sometimes it seems to me like a toy town built by a big rich child. It is also like this for they have playmoney here, or scrip which it is called. You can spend it in the company store just like money, it is good as cash. The company will buy you
everything
if you live here, and take it right out of your pay so you do not have to worry about a thing. It seems like a giant play town to me, or like paradise.

But I see I have forgotten the main thing probably, which is the railroad that cuts through this bottom like a knife following Diamond Creek and then the Big Sandy—next stop, Hazard, Kentucky. The train comes along every morning and every evening just about suppertime, and I reckon I will
never
get used to it! I still drop whatever I am doing and fly to the door to see it pass through town, the locomotive puffing out great clouds of white smoke and shooting up columns of red sparks. It gives you a real excited feeling to watch the train. And sometimes when I take little John Arthur downtown to get him out of Beulah's hair—for she has been short with him lately, ever since Curtis Junior has come—why then sometimes we will put our hands on the track and see can we feel it vibrate, or put our ears down there and see can we hear it hum. And little John Arthur gets so excited when he hears that whistle and then it really comes, he just has a fit. He puts his hands over his ears and holds his breath till his little face turns plum red—that funny face which looks so much like Daddy's—and jumps up and down all over the place. I have to hold onto the back of his belt whenever we are downtown and the train comes. And it only stops for a second.

The depot is right in the middle of town, next to the company store. The train stops with its brakes screeching and white steam hissing all around, and the bell ringing like crazy. The men sling the bags down onto the platform, mail and packages, and pick up whatever the station master has got for them, and sometimes a passenger will come down the steps brushing himself off and looking around, and sometimes a person will be waiting to get on. It is all very loud and exciting and fast. There is not but one passenger as a rule or two at most, company men on company business, for this is a coal train and make no mistake about it! It is the Norfolk and Western Railroad. Then they are off again with a whistle and a grinding roaring noise, and the white numbers flash by on the passing cars.

The caboose is full of boys that tip their hats and yell and wave to little John Arthur and me, but they do not look at me
like a girl
since I am so big now. I can not get use to it. You know I wrote to you how the boys would stare and stare at me in Majestic, those boardinghouse boys, but now if these boys look, they drop their eyes real quick or look away. I guess they think I am a married girl. My stomach is so big that my bellybutton pooches out, you cannot immagine it! The boys in the street look away, the boys in the caboose tip their hats like I am a hundred years old. I stand real straight and stick my belly out and dont care what they think! They dont know I am ruint, nobody knows, nobody knows me here. I look them all in the eye till they look away. Then the train is gone, around that bend yonder, to the mine.

You cant see it from here. And if you walk up there, past the company graveyard, you still cant see much—the tipple, loading coal into the railroad cars, the old tipple beside it falling down, a mess of cars and trucks and such as that, and jerrybuilt buildings and shacks scattered all around, and the old pony pen where they used to keep the mine ponies, and then the mine itself which is not a thing but a hole in the side of the mountain that looks like a big old cave. And that is
it!
It dont seem like much, not like anything to get all fired up about, or build a town for. But this is it, Big Blue Diamond No. 9. That's where the train is headed.

And then the train is gone and youre still standing there watching after it and the rails are still humming and youve got coaldust in your hair. It does get real dirty here in Diamond and thats a fact. Other than that, it seems like paradise to me!

Now it is summer of course and the mountains are pretty and green and you cant see the dirt anyhow. And it rains here most every afternoon, we have a thunderstorm, so all the houses and the fence rails and such as that gets washed off good. It would be a nice holler for a garden but you dont have to put in a garden, you can get what you want in a can from the store. Or those that did plant will bring you something, like that woman that brought Beulah some crookneck squash this morning. Oh, it
is
like paradise! So orderly and everything done for you, it is hard to beat. It is hard to believe the company will treat their own so good.

I said as much to Violet Gayheart, they live next door, yesterday when I was out stringing up our wash in the yard, and she was out there stringing theirs. Violet has got one baby and one big boy. Violet looked at me good.
Huh!
she snorted. Then she rolled her eyes up like a negro and busted flat out laughing. She has a high wheezing laugh like a horse.

What are you laughing at? I asked her. I didn't say nothing funny.

You,
Violet Gayheart said. What is the matter with you? You are so ignorant. You act like you came from the moon.

What do you mean? I said. This here looks like a pretty good set up to me. It looks like the nicest place I have ever lived by a long shot, with a free doctor and all, and I think there is a good feeling of neighborness here too. Maybe you are just used to it, I said to Violet Gayheart. Didn't you say you all have been over here ever since this camp opened up?

Violet looked at me close and said, May be. Then she put her wash back down in her basket and took the clothespins out of her mouth and pushed back her curly black hair and said
Listen here, honey.
Violet Gayheart is tall and bony, with pale blue eyes and a wide full mouth. She wears red lipstick all the time. Violet is not too much older than me I would bet but she looks older, she seems older too. She is not from around here. She and her husband came up from someplace in East Tenessee I believe, and he has got a job about as good as Curtis I reckon, which is how come them to live as high up on Company Hill as Beulah. Violet's husband, Rush, sets timbers in the mine, he is in charge of that.

Close up, Violet's eyes look washed out and old. She licked her lipstick and put one hand on her hip and walked over towards me.
I'll tell you the God's truth,
Violet said, but I do not know what this is since just at that minute, Beulah came out on the porch and called me in because she was not feeling too good. Later she said she thinks Violet Gayheart is too rough. Rough! I was tempted to say. Rough! Well I don't care a fig for rough, since I am ruint anyway which is worse, but I held my tongue. For Beulah has got good intentions I know, and her and Curtis are so nice to take me in.

But it is a funny thing about being beholden, once you get beholden to somebody you are likely to hate them a little bit although this does not make a bit of sense as they are just being nice. I have been thinking about Daddy and the time he said to Mister Brown,
We will not be beholden.
Now I see why.

Anyway it is not long now, not long Silvaney, before my baby comes. I remember all the things we used to think about babies, do you? or that people used to tell us—like the hoot owl will bring you a baby, or a girl can find a baby underneath a cabbage leaf in the garden. I watched Momma get bigger and bigger with Garnie and didnt have no idea that's where he was, or that there was any baby in there atall! I remember how surprised I was to come in that afternoon and find Momma holding a baby, which was Garnie.

My baby kicks and kicks, she is full of life, sometimes she keeps me awake all night long but I will not take a sleepy dram from Doctor Gray nor anything else that might slow her down. She is coming soon, I can tell it. She is riding low now and this makes me pee all the livelong day! I have already got a stack of little sacks for her to wear. And do you know what, Silvaney? I just cant wait to see her. And I know what I will name her too, but it is a secret so far. I have told no one. Her name is
Joli
which is French, it means Pretty and reminds me of Mrs. Brown. Because my baby will be pretty, and go to France. I will be so glad when she gets here! Because the truth is Silvaney, I am a little bit lonesome here in Diamond, Va. in spite of being stuffed in a four room house with Beulah and Curtis and little John Arthur and Curtis Junior, I know it sounds crazy to say so, what with so many people all around us living on this mountain like bees in a honey comb. So many many people, yet I am lonesome, and cant explain it. There is nobody for me to talk to here but when Joli comes, I will talk to her. And I cant wait!

 

Your loving sister,

 

IVY ROWE.