Fair and Tender Ladies (50 page)

Ruthie will send me word when you get here. I will try and help you all I can Molly, if an old mountain woman's help is what you want.

In spite of the years I remain your long lost friend,

 

IVY ROWE.

April 11, 1963

 

 

Dear Danny Ray,

 

I am writing to give you a piece of my mind. For I think it is high time I did so. You have got a nerve, going into politics
over there.
What is the matter with this county, I would like to know? I guess that wife of yours is too good for the likes of us. Just don't forget your raising, Danny Ray. I did not raise you to be a fat cat, or a Republican. Stick with the Democrats.

Oh honey, I do not blame you, and I am proud of you too. When I look at those pictures I am proud as punch. I like the one of you all in front of the fireplace with the twins in the armchair. Little Elizabeth favors Maudy, don't you think? I don't know as I like Louise's hair so short, but she is
your
wife after all, so what? She is such a pretty little thing, to be so smart. You better watch out, or she will make more money than you do! Head doctors are
in,
what they tell me. But I like Louise, Don't you remember how her and me sat up all night talking, that last time I came to visit and could not sleep and got up in the middle of the night and cleaned the bathroom?
A fine new bathroom like that, it ought to stay clean,
I remember saying.
Besides, I wasn't doing anything else.
Louise said,
Except sleeping!
Lord how we laughed.

The truth is, Danny Ray, I don't sleep good anywhere but right here in my own bed on Sugar Fork where I have spent my life. And I don't sleep
much,
either. It seems like I have got too many things to think about, to sleep good. I have got a lot on my mind! When you get old, the time draws shorter and shorter for you to figure it all out.

And I'm an old woman now. I can say what I want to, and this is what I want to say. Now that you are a big politician, I want you to know what is going on over here. For sometimes it seems to me that we might as well not be in Virginia atall, or any other state. We are like a kingdom unto our own selves. Everybody has took everything out of here now—first the trees, then the coal, then the children. We have been robbed and left for dead. I mean it—I can name you who all is on this mountain now. All the young ones have up and gone, including you, Danny Ray.

Or take Home Creek, for an instance. You can walk up and down Home Creek now and not find hardly a man that works. You will recall how it used to be when you were coming along and we would go down there to see your daddy's folks, and how Edith Fox used to make a pie and send a piece to each and every, up and down the creek, and everybody had a garden with a hollyhock or a sunflower in the yard, and there was such a feeling of neighborness. Don't you remember those big sunflowers that the Rolettes grew? It is all gone now.

Let's start at the head of the creek. Charlie Rue died young of his lungs and so his wife Rowena lives in the house now, on his social security and his union check, and she has raised up a passel of younguns one after the other, mostly her grandchildren. Every one that turns sixteen, before you know it, is out and gone. They have lit out for Detroit or someplace else, you can't blame them, they is just not a thing for them to do here.

It is crazy to me that Joli's boy David wants to come back so bad. He says he is coming here after college, to live.
In a pig's eye!
I said.
You will be back just like your mama and Danny Ray,
I said.
No, I mean it, Mamaw,
he said, grinning real big.
I aim to farm.
He sounded just like his grandaddy, years ago.
Don't you know that nobody does that any more?
I said.
I am not nobody,
David said, and I reckon he is right in that. He is just David, and not nobody else, that's for sure. Calls his mama Doctor Mom now.
I've got this pain in my left side, Doctor Mom,
he says.
Oh go on, David!
says Joli. Of course she is a Doctor of English not the medical. But you can't get too put out with David, which is why he used to get away with as much as he did. He could get away with murder, just like you.

Anyway you can walk the streets of Majestic now on a Saturday and not find hardly a one between high school age and old, unless they are out of work. It's true, yet you recall how Majestic used to be come payday, or Court Day—all the hustle and bustle, so much happening. There was so much
life
here then. Well it is gone now. Like chimney smoke into thin air.

Now we have come to the Rolette house which has been took over by Musicks since Reva and Delphi passed and Gus went to jail. This is Clell Musick that got his arm cut off at Blue Star Number Six a while back and has got so many children. I imagine he gets a check from the state but he would not get one from the union, he was never a union man. So many in this county are not, you know.

There is nobody in the Foxes house at all but Dreama who is still mean as a snake, and just as stuck up as ever. As for the Copes and the Charleses, there is two men both too old to get a job yet too young to retire. So they are stuck in the middle. Stuck and out of work! They got laid off when Panther Coal put the new machine in over on Hell Mountain, and they have been laid off ever since. Folks do say that Luther Charles is real bad to drink. And I say,
Who is to blame him?
So you see how it is here.

Bert Cope is the one that Molly sent up before Judge Grant for not sending his children to school. I said,
Molly, don't do this, he can't help it or they would be here,
but she done it anyway. There is something about a maiden lady that makes them headstrong as a girl. So the Judge sends out a warrant, and then it is Bert Cope's day to come to court.

Let's just go over there,
I said to Molly,
and see what he says.
For I wanted her to hear it.

Nothing he says can justify keeping those children out of school.
So says Molly, who has gotten right set in her ways with old age. I think a person will go one way or the other, don't you? Either they will get more set in their ways, or they will get all shook up. I am shook up, myself.

Anyway, the upshot of it was, we went, me more or less dragging Molly. First the county attorney appears, to prosecute for the state, which is Molly. The county attorney is a young whippersnapper from someplace over in Kentucky, who has not been living here long. Then the truant officer, Bob Wright, says that Bert Cope is the father of six children that ought to go to school, and hardly do. They have not been to school for a month. The county attorney asks the court to impose a fine or a jail sentence, whereupon Bert Cope just starts laughing. He is about fifty years old and you can tell from the tilt of his back that he has spent his years in the mine. His hands are big, fingernails black with coal dirt.

He spreads his hands and says, I agree with everything that has been said. Hell it's true, it's all true, and everybody knows it. Nobody wants my kids to go to school any more than I do, they are driving me crazy. And my old woman, she is crazy, I reckon. I punched Molly, for I had heard this too. I've been out of work for nigh on to four years now. I've been all over this coalfield and over into West Virginia looking for work. Well there aint none to be had. I drawed out my unemployment over three years ago and all what I've had since is just day work here and there, when I can get it. But I am old for day work, and it's hard to get. I sold my car, my shotgun, my radio and even my pocketwatch that my daddy left me, to get money to feed those kids. And now I don't have a thing in the world that anybody would want. I'm dead broke and wore out. We are over a mile from the schoolhouse and I have not got the money to buy my kids the shoes and clothes they need to go to school. Me and my oldest boy has got this one pair of shoes between us and that's all. Bert Cope holds up his foot, wearing shoes that look sorry to me. When my boy wears em I don't have any, and when I wear em, he don't have any. If it was not for these rations the government given us, I guess our whole family would of starved to death long afore now. So if you want to fine me sir, why go ahead! Bert Cope grins a big grin that shows some missing teeth. I aint got a penny to pay it with, so I reckon I'll have to lay it out in jail. This is fine with me. So if you think that putting me in jail will help my younguns any, why you go right ahead and do it, and I'll be glad of it. I need me a good long rest. And if any of your fine gentlemen will find me a job where I can work out something for my kids to wear, then I'll be much obliged to you for all the days of my life.

By the time Bert Cope had finished saying his piece Molly was crying, not making a sound, into her lace handkerchief. Judge Grant cleared his throat and asked Bert Cope some more questions. Bert said he had a fourth grade education. He worked in the mines for twenty years and spent three years as an infantry soldier in the war against Japan. He had not gotten wounded, though. If he
had
gotten wounded, then he would be getting a check from the V.A. But he did not. Then Judge Grant asked him whether he had any skill but mining coal, and Bert Cope said,
No.
Then Bert went on to say,

Judge I'm not the only man on the creek that is in this fix. You know it is true. Miss Molly here will back me up in saying it. There's other children along the creek don't go to school, for the same reason mine don't. Now you all aim to make an example of me. You all think if I go to jail for a week that they will get the money to get their kids to the schoolhouse, but it aint so. It aint so atall. Aint that true? Bert Cope asked Bob Wright, who nodded.

Judge Grant is not a fool.

He looked all around the courtroom. He looked for a long time at Bert Cope and then at Miss Molly Bainbridge. Well you do your best, he said at length to Bert. If they don't go to school, they will be in as bad a fix as you are in now. Case dismissed.

Bert Cope smiled a long smile which did not reach his eyes, and put on his hat, and left. He has a long stride, I thought as I watched him cross that courtroom, a stride like a mountain man. And I felt then as I have often felt since, that I do not belong down there in Majestic myself, but up here on Sugar Fork where I am from. Molly thinks she needs me at the school, but she don't. About all I do down there is tell her who is who and where they live, and she is getting to know it all now anyway. So I might retire! My car, this old Chevy that Bill give me, is about give out anyhow. But that's another story. We'll see.

The upshot of it all was, now all those little Copes are coming to school of course, for Molly has bought them shoes. And now she is going to start a foundation, and maybe an orphanage. I want you to tell people about it, Danny Ray. You might as well be good for something!

As for the rest of Home Creek, it is more of the same. Except for Rufus and Martha who have got another problem as they live too close to the mouth of the creek, and it nearabout flooded them out last month. It
did
flood, over on Jump Creek. I went over there with Molly to look. It was the awfullest sight in the world. The thing about a flood is, it don't destroy. It is not like a fire. It just
ruins
everything, and then you are left with what all is ruint. We went in one house and there wasn't hardly a thing left except this little old T.V. going and these children huddled up all around it. They were just as dirty as could be, and scrawny. Big eyes like holes in their heads. Molly gave them some apples. On the T.V., there was a butler. A butler! How do you reckon it makes them feel, watching that? For there are no shows about such as us. Molly says it is awful, the way folks that have not got even a toilet will beg, borrow or steal to get a T.V. I do not think it is awful though. I can see why.

Anyway, the water in Home Creek did not get that high last time, but it bears watching. The T.V.A. says it is just a matter of time before the Levisa River has a flat out flood. Down in Majestic, it covers the back road with every big rain. Myself I recall the days when the river ran clear and deep with great fish in it, and folks rode the log rafts clear to Kentucky. When I was a girl, oh how I longed to go! But now the river is hardly there, a dirty little trickle, or else it is like a flood. I am lucky to live up high in the holler, I say!

Well Danny Ray, this is what is going on where you are from, I guess you have got an earful! I hope so. I hope you will think on these things, and tell people. For I remain your loving and feisty old,

 

MAMA.