Fair and Tender Ladies (30 page)

It got dark. Below us, we could see the moving people black against the lights. Flares went up. And every now and then, they would come and call out the name of the man they were bringing out.
Snead! Lowell Snead!
Every woman there would strain forward and then fall back, and that man's family would let out a cry or a moan and a rush forward. Violet said that R.T. was down there working.

I always put plenty in his lunch bucket,
Violet said almost to herself,
just in case he got trapped again. And I always put some soda in there for his digestion, it cramps you to work bent over.

I hugged her.

You go on back,
she said.
Take the girls
—who had fallen down in a pile like little animals, fast asleep. I looked down at them. Joli was sleeping with her mouth open, like always. I thought of that little poem she loves.
What are little girls made of? What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of.

I can't leave yet, I said, which was true. I said, Let the girls sleep. My mind was just fluttering as I stood there with Violet, waiting for Rush.
Asa Horn! Raymond Childress!
they yelled back the names. Some of them were walking out now, people said. There had been a whole roomful trapped that they'd just got to. Hope lifted, people stirred. But Violet said nothing. I think she knew even then that he was dead. The girl with the baby was praying out loud.
Jeffrey Wayne Stacy!
they called, and she said, Oh Jesus, oh please Jesus, and stumbled forward. I saw her clearly for a moment, all red in the light, then she was gone.
Gayheart! Rush Gayheart!
they yelled.

Go on back now,
Violet said, and walked out slow.

But still I couldn't leave. My mind fluttered and fluttered and finally landed, and then I knew who I was waiting for—not Rush!—and why I couldn't leave.

It was close to dawn and not many were left on the hill when they called his name.

I jerked the girls along crying down the hill, almost fell through the lanterns lined up like a ring of fire. The mine gaped. I didn't know if he'd come out dead or alive, covered up or walking. There was a row of bodies laid out to the right there, and women bent over them grieving. They were taking some of them away. The whole place was a mess of red light and darkness and movement and noise. Joli was crying hard. I half carried her along. And then I stopped. The huge black mouth of the mine yawned smoky and wide before me, and three men came walking out. One of them was Oakley. Limping and holding his arm funny, black-faced—still I could tell him, by the straight forward shock of his hair and his square shoulders, the way he held himself. It was like the mouth of the mine had opened up and let him go, like he had been spared, or like he had just been born.

Oakley! Oakley! I hollered. I could see him turn his head blindly toward my voice. But he couldn't see me. He couldn't see anything yet, you could tell. I think his mouth moved. Oakley! Oakley! I called, pulling Joli and Martha through the people, to Oakley at last who stretched out his arms as wide as the world when he finally saw it was me. The way he smelled made me choke when he hugged me, it was so bitter and strong, but then he held me back out and looked at my face and then hugged me again. His lip was bleeding and his whole collar was stiff with blood.
Baby baby, it's you,
Oakley said, and reached around Joli too. Then he leaned on me and we all walked out to the waiting cars together.

Just as we were getting into a car, I looked up—I will never know why, exactly—and there not three yards away, leaning against a truck, was Franklin Ransom. He was staring at me so hard I felt like his eyes burned holes in my body. Now, what in the world was
he
doing there? Helping out with the rescue? Just curious? I sank back into the car as they were getting ready to close the door after us, and looked down for a minute to make sure the girls fingers were not in the way, and when I looked back up, he was gone. The truck was still there but Franklin was gone, and I have never seen him again. I guess I never will. He is over in Kentucky with his precious Nana or so I hear, and his daddy is in big trouble over safety regulations, and his mother stays in bed all the time due to nerves.

Rush Gayheart was killed in the mine, along with Ray Fox Junior and 17 others.

Oakley and me got married.

And we will be leaving here.

We will go back to live in the house on Sugar Fork, and we will come and get you too Silvaney, and you and me will clean the house together and scrub the floors with creek gravel, and clear the dead leaves out of the spring. And we will get chickens and let them run up on Pilgrim Knob, and cut back the weeds, and plant the garden. I remember Daddy saying,
Farming is pretty work.
And when Oakley kisses me, it seems like I can hear Daddy saying,
Slow down, slow down now, Ivy. This is the taste of spring.

 

Your happy sister,

 

IVY R. FOX

 

P.S. It will not be long.

April, 1927

 

 

Dear Victor,

 

I am so mad at you.

I have been fretting over my behavior for these last weeks and I declare, I am
still
mad at you. I have been studying on how to write you a letter. To tell you the truth, I don't know. Now I am writing you, but I still don't know! I am still mad. But Oakley says I owe you a apology. O.K., I am sorry. I am sorry I sulled up on everybody like that. I am going to write to Ethel and tell her too, and Stoney. For in all truth, it was real good of you all to come up here and help us. I don't know what Oakley and me would of done, either, if you had not helped us clear this land, and then Stoney bringing us the Gooch boys from the store too, and all those goods. So we are grateful to all of you, as well as Oakley's folks who have helped us out so much.

But to be perfectly honest Victor, I am sick to death of being grateful. I am tired of being beholden.

I want to be again like I was as a girl, you remember how I used to run these hills the livelong day and not say boo to a soul. But it may be that you do
not
remember, for you went away, you went off to work and then to the war in France.

So you and me, that used to be so close when I was little, have got disaquainted.

Well, let me tell you, I used to do just as I saw fit. And I went where I pleased and done what I felt like in Majestic too, even after I got ruint. So, although I am suppose to apologize, I will not act beholden. I don't feel like it. I have gotten too hateful and too sad. Mostly I am sad, over the way we have all got so split up by tragedy and the years.

But it
was
awful, how you told me about Silvaney.

I know I ought to thank you for going over there to find out about her after all this time, but it is terrible to me to learn the truth. I always thought she would get better, and would want to come home. Whatever I was doing, whatever befell, I always thought Silvaney was right there looking over my shoulder some way, I can't explain it, and that one day I would go get her and bring her home. I have felt like I was split off from a part of myself all these years, and now it is like that part of me has died, since I know she will never come. I feel like she has gone to a foreign land forever.

Victor, I guess I
am
sorry I got so mad! I know you are not suppose to get mad at the person that tells you the bad news, but I always do!

It seems like I wouldn't act this way. It seems like I would of growed up some, after all this time. I keep waiting for this to happen, but it has not. I remember as a child, I thought all the older people around us were
grown up.
Now I think they were just old. Because although I am a married woman now, I still feel like the girl that grew up here, the one I used to be. I still get too wrought up. But you do not need to worry about me, Victor, if you are, because I love Oakley, and him and me are doing real good, although I am working my fingers to the bone I am back where I have longed to be, where I belong. The garden is coming up now, so in spite of myself almost I am the happiest that I have ever been.

So I do apologize.

 

Your crazy sister,

 

IVY R. FOX

June, 1927

 

 

Dear Violet,

 

Don't worry, we will be real happy to keep Martha over here for a while longer. Oakley says so too and means it. She is good company for my Joli. They are having the best time! You know I always thought I would have Silvaney with me, but now that she won't be coming, there is a place here tailormade for your Martha, believe me. So don't even feel bad. I don't know if I told you or not but this is a big house, bigger than the houses we had up on Company Hill—oh that seems like years and years ago to me, Violet, it seems like a dream—his here is a big double cabin with a loft on each side and a breezeway in between which had fell down but Oakley has shored it up now as good as ever. We set out there of an evening right where my daddy used to set to play a tune, and Oakley whittles which he is really good at, and I shell my beans which have come in good already, or I might sew some, or whatever. It is no end of work up here. But night comes in slow over Bethel Mountain and we watch it come, like it is sneaking in I reckon, stealing across the mountains ridge by ridge, they go blue and purple before your very eyes, and then the mist will rise. When it gets too dark to whittle, Oakley will quit doing it and come and sit on the floor by my chair and lay his head in my lap and we will stay there like that for a while. And then before long we will rise, and go to bed. The last thing Oakley does every night is stretch his arms, a big wide stretch that takes in everything before us, all these mountains ridge on ridge, and Home Creek down below in the noisy dark, and Sugar Fork, and all this little farm. Oakley says he has finally got him plenty of elbow room. Then he wraps me up in a hug as big as Bethel Mountain, and then we go to bed where we lay tangled in each other all night long. Sometimes we will wake to love then sleep to wake again.

All of this is a big surprise to me Violet. Having so many chores now gives me time to think, and I often think back on you and Rush, I believe you had such a deep love yourself, I did not understand it at the time. Sometimes I despair of ever understanding anything right when it happens to me, it seems like I have to tell it in a letter to see what it was, even though I was right there all along!

I have been thinking about Franklin too, and I know I was crazy to go with him so long. It seems to me now that Franklin was like a sickness that came over me and stayed. But I still can't feature what you told me about him getting caught in nigger holler with his pants down! Now I see what Tessie must of known, and why she never liked him. I didn't understand it at the time, like I was saying. But believe me, I am happy now. I am happy to have Martha here too.

So, you go ahead and do whatever you have to. But for God's sake be careful. You know that I will remain your good friend,

 

IVY R. FOX