Listen Here (16 page)

(February 1, 1925–October 27, 1993)

Lillie Dorton Chaffin Kash grew up in eastern Kentucky, the daughter of Fairy Belle Kelly Dorton and Kenis Roscoe Dorton. A graduate of Pikeville College (B.S., 1956) and Eastern Kentucky University (M.A., 1966), she began her career as an elementary school teacher and a librarian. In the 1960s, she became a freelance writer of poetry and books for children. As a wife, a mother, a teacher, and a writer, she explained, “I do most of my creative writing at odd' hours, mostly from two a.m. to six a.m.”

From the beginning, Chaffin (pronounced CHAY-fin) received wide recognition and a number of awards for her writing, including first prize from the National League of American Pen Women for the picture book A
Garden is Good
in 1964, the International Poetry Prize for
A Stone for Sisyphus
in 1967, the Child Study Association Children's Book Award for
John Henry McCoy
in 1971, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination for
8th Day, 13th Moon
in 1975. More than three hundred of her poems appear in anthologies and journals, including
Jack and Jill, Child Life, Humpty Dumpty
, and
Prairie Schooner.
She served as poetry editor to the literary magazine
Twigs
and as fiction editor for
American Pen Women.

After the death of her first husband, Thomas W. Chaffin, in 1981, she married Vernon O. Kash, who died in 1985. She is survived by one son and four grandchildren.

She described herself as “a child of local economics tied to coal mining, part of everything ever seen, heard, read, and imagined.” Having focused her writing on natural subjects and on motherhood, she hoped to be accepted by readers as “regional in the best sense of the word.”

Books for children:
Freeman
(1972),
John Henry McCoy
(1971),
A World of Books
[Autobiography] (1970),
I Have a Tree
(1969),
In My Backyard
(1968),
Bear Weather
(1968),
America's First Ladies
(1968),
Tommy's Big Problem
(1965),
A Garden is Good
(1963).
Poetry:
Appalachian History and Other Poems
(1980),
Love Poems
(1976),
Star Following
(1976),
8th Day, 13th Moon
(1974),
First Notes
(1969),
A Stone for Sisyphus
(1967),
Lines and Points
(1966).

Contemporary Authors, First Revision
, Vols. 33–36, 180–81.
Something About the Author
, Vol. 4, 44–46.

from
8th Day, 13th Moon
(1974)

Much has been made of gifts—
Sheba, Wise Men, shepherds, kings
have chosen only the best and traveled far
making delivery—and always, perhaps, a little
selfishly, knowing of whatever joy given they were truly
the recipients.

And so it is with me. I sift store shelves, inspecting
first for safety, discarding all with implications
of war, illness or dependence. And settle for a book
without words. It is shaken, squeezed, left unclaimed
until balls have rolled away, planes have lost rudders.
Then book in hand, child on my lap, gift and giver are complete.

from
8th Day, 13th Moon

The child who once magnified
my body's special, dark processing
room, who absorbed his substance from
my chemistry, now is his own—
would wrench himself from affection's
hold.
       Let him be free. I have been
what I must—brief room and board—
hostess to a growing miracle. I will
be what I can.

from
8th Day, 13th Moon
(1974)

Loneliness will come. Surrounding yourself
with friends is no insurance; some morning
they will all sleep late or have chores to do,
or you may hear them suddenly speaking
a foreign language, and you with no
interpreter. Some day their tongues could be
whips chasing you. Or you could one night find all
the luxurybound books had the pages clipped
at climaxes or you've read everything,
and setting out to borrow see yourself
the only person on the street, in town.
In times like these don't panic; go as straight
into yourself as you can; and since
this is an alien place, explore, search out.
Better a strange friend in an unknown place
than none, and one you meet at least halfway.

from
Appalachian Heritage
(1987)

When morning comes, I rise
Up like a crocus
Bright and frost free.

Earth that slept beneath
My feet wakes in day lilies
Greening, blossoming.

A one man crusade,
I plant strawberries and
Asparagus for the future.

Like a clump of honeysuckle,
I am filled with art
And with music.

My address is green,
My hands are in the earth
Planting, growing, harvesting.

I learn from crickets
Each autumn to sing
Of last rituals.

(October 17, 1948–)

Novelist Loletta Clouse spent her childhood in Cumberland Homesteads, a New Deal community in middle Tennessee that was designed to give destitute workers both employment and the opportunity to own a thirty-acre farm. “My grandparents were original Homesteaders,” says Clouse. “Before that, they had lived in a coal mining camp, which is where my mother grew up; her childhood stories left a deep impression on me.”

After earning a B.S. in education from Tennessee Technological University, in Cookeville, Tennessee, Clouse spent a year driving a bookmobile in rural Appalachia. She then went back to school and earned a Master's degree in Library Science from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Clouse is currently a library branch manager with the Knox County Public Library system in Knoxville, Tennessee.

“Writing offers that rare, intoxicating moment of being totally engaged in what I am doing,” says Clouse. “I have had moments when the words rushed through me faster than I could think. I have had moments when I had to pull the words out of my brain like splinters. Ironically, I have gone back and tried to detect this in my work and I can't tell the inspired words from the words produced through slow agony. Inspired was just a lot more fun.”

Clouse's novel,
Wilder
, is set in 1932 and is based on her grandfather's memories of a strike in the Cumberland Plateau mining town of Wilder, Tennessee. In this scene from chapter 6, Lacey Conners struggles with her feelings for two very different men, steady John Trotter and unpredictable Coy Lynn Wilson.

Novel:
Wilder
( 1990).

George Brosi, “New Appalachian Books,”
Appalachian Heritage
20:1 (winter 1992), 72. Review of
Wilder, Library Journal
115 (1 October 1990), 112.

from Chapter 6

Lacey filled two plates with mounds of food and carried them to a large oak where John was already spreading a quilt. The preaching had been going on for over three hours, and the crowd was drained. They eagerly filled their plates with food the women had brought in covered dishes and spread on long tables covered with white tablecloths. People made their way to the shade of the trees to stretch out, eat their dinners, and rest.

The women were already forcing second helpings on Brother Roberts, the traveling preacher. He had drawn quite a crowd with his talk of hellfire and brimstone and was no doubt entitled to second helpings for the souls he had worked so hard to save, Lacey thought. His face, so recently puffed and mottled with the heat, had gone slack. With his thin, white hair smoothed back into place and the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, he looked like anyone's favorite uncle, smiling and nodding as the womenfolk flocked about preening and pandering.

In spite of all his descriptive talk of the fate that would befall those who did not heed the Word, many of the men had wandered in and out of the brush arbor during the long sermon to gather in small groups to whittle and talk of other things. However, the women had sat in rapt attention, their faces turned upward at the preacher's heavenly words, glancing down only to shoot meaningful looks at the men and children.

Lacey looked at John who was attacking his food with relish. He glanced up, his mouth full, and grinned sheepishly. It was a look so sweet and familiar it tugged at her heart and sent a spasm of guilt to her stomach. She had spent most of the last three hours trying to keep her mind on the sermon. Secretly, she searched the crowd for Coy. She realized it was a most unlikely place for him to be, but she could not keep her thoughts off him. It had been four days since she had faced him on the back porch and heard him say he had come back for her. By now she was sure that she had imagined it or that he had been making a fool of her again. It confused her more with each rethinking. She had never been so angry with anyone in her life. Most likely he wouldn't even remember what he had said. He was the type, she reasoned, that said whatever struck his fancy without thought to what folks might think, least of all her. Still, he'd had a look about him standing there in the mist, his brow creased, his eyes shadowed, like he had suddenly come to some realization.

Law' me, Laeey
, she thought,
you surely are the craziest thing! Coy Lynn Wilson couldn't be nothing but trouble. He just seems bent on destroying everything in his path.
It made her think of a storm that had set down on the Runion place once. The force of the high winds had swirled and twisted the tall grass into tight masses and bowed the heads of the trees. And even then she had wondered why. It was such a senseless striking out. Coy was like that: powerful and beautiful and dangerous. Like a raging storm, he would move on until he burned himself out. Speaking up to him had been like throwing herself in the path of that storm. She had been surprised when her words had stopped him short. His fierce dark eyes had widened, and for a moment his body had stiffened in surprise.

“You haven't touched your food, Lacey,” John admonished.

“Too many goings on, I recken,” Lacey mumbled. Slowly she came to the realization that she was still at the brush arbor with John. She had the feeling that hours or even days had passed and John had been sitting patiently waiting for her return. “I see you done all right for yourself,” she said, noticing his empty plate. “Would you like me to get you some more to eat?”

“No thanks. Guess I done eat a cow's bait, at that. Being outside must give me an appetite. That sure was good huckleberry pie. I notice you brung it.”

“You don't have to say so just 'cause I brung it.”

“I wouldn't. You know that.”

Lacey smiled her thanks, and they sat in silence. John didn't seem to have much need to talk, and she couldn't think of any news to tell him. He hadn't brought up the matter of them getting married, and she was relieved. She needed to bring up the subject of Will, but she wasn't sure how. John had never discussed any of the problems in the mines with her, and she didn't know how much she should know. Her pa had always talked to her like she was a man. It might have been little more than his way of worrying out loud, but he was always telling her about the daily goings on in the mines and about the true working of things. He talked about the men who made the decisions that affected their lives and the way they worked. Because he understood power, he knew how little of it the miners had, and it had made him a cautious man.

“John, Pa says there may be trouble again in the mines,” she ventured, cautiously.

“I recken. Your pa's got reason enough to believe it.”

“What reason you got to believe it, John?”

“Oh, they's been talk of another wage cut. Won't be no trouble if we accept what they give us.” John kept his voice low and glanced over his shoulder before continuing. “They been cheating on their agreements for some time now. We the same as don't have no contract. If we accept this next cut, they as same as broke the union in this county.”

Lacey was struck by the hardness in his voice. “You sound like you're not planning on accepting it.”

“Look around that table over there, Lacey. How many women you think pulled out the last of their canned stuff to set that spread? How many families you think'll have to scrape by tomorrow on fatback and greens? And it ain't just that. We've had three men killed in the mines in the last two years. They don't care nothin' about our safety. The mine inspectors just look the other way while the miners cut corners trying to make a living wage. They don't have time to set timbers and shore up walls. And all the time the mine owners yelling they're losing money.”

Lacey had never heard John talk so, and she wondered if he was thinking of his father. “You believe in the union, don't you, John?”

He looked at her with veiled eyes that revealed only the seriousness of his intentions, then looked around cautiously to see if her voice had carried. “A lot of good men believe in the union, Lacey. I'm just one of them. This here is the only miner's union south of the Ohio River. I just happen to believe that's worth fighting for. I know your pa thinks it's a chancy thing, and I want you to know I wasn't the one that brought Will into it. He done that on his own. I know one thing. There comes a time when a man stands to lose it all, no matter which way he sides. I'm a miner, and I'll always be one.”

“Pa's not against the union. He's just seen a lot of hard times that made him cautious.”

“Hard times is what the union is all about. The union give us the only say-so we've ever had in the mines on how things was to be. Joining up is something a man's got to do of his own free will, or it don't mean nothing, especially when the going gets rough.”

“I don't think I've ever heard you talk so serious, John.” In fact, she had never heard him speak so many words on any subject.

“I always wanted to live out my life in Wilder. I thought you felt the same way.”

“It's my home, John. You got no call to think you care more about it than I do.”

John looked at her shamefaced. “No, I ain't got no call. I know how you feel about this town. The truth is, ain't none of this belong to us. No matter how hard the folks here work, they ain't never going to own the house they live in or the land it's on. The coal company owns it. Lock, stock, and barrel. They do things to suit theirselves. If they took a notion to fire a man and throw him out of his house, it wouldn't matter if he'd worked ever day like a dog in the mines and lived in that house for ten year. They could do it 'cause they got the power to say what goes. I recken that's why I get worked up when I think of the union. The union seems like the only chance we got to hang on to what we got, to build any kind of life here.” John scratched at the soft ground with a twig, making circles in the dirt. Without looking up, he whispered, “I'm doing this for you, too, Lacey.”

She looked at his veiny hand, the coal-stained fingernails nervously pushing at the ground. It was the first hint of his plans for their future. “John, you're into this deep, ain't you?”

John gave her a sidelong glance.

“What'll the company do to you if they find out?”

Shrouding his eyes with a hand, John stroked his forehead and spoke softly. “Everything they can, Lacey. Everything they can.”