Oral History (9781101565612) (23 page)

“Well, goddammit,” she said, in a voice as close to meditative as Justine Poole will ever get.

She left.

I left, too.

And so it is that I write these words in transit, as I pass back across Virginia the way I came. It seems years since I made this trip, and yet it has been a mere five months, though I feel that lifetimes and lifetimes have passed. It appears I am the only one awake in this whole car. The light is dim, nearly purple; the purple light and these shadows sway with the ongoing rhythm, that ceaseless clackety-clack.

Virginia rolls by me darkly, beyond the window. We pass through a tiny station at full speed. For a second, the stationmaster himself is visible on the lighted platform, hand raised in greeting, mouth frozen in a smile. Is this all there is, all there ever is? the moment of lighted clarity, and then the rushing dark?

And I am torn asunder by conflicting thoughts, each one as valid, it seems to me, as its opposite. I am a sinner, bound for hell; I am a saint, purified by love; I am only a fool. I shall regain my strength and then return to these mountains, I shall sweep her up and take her back to Richmond with me as my wife; I will come back here and marry her, we will raise a family, I shall do some sort of manual labor, leaving each day with my tools while she waits with her hair bound up in a bright blue scarf; I shall never marry, I shall become an artist, I will transform all of this into a novel. And meanwhile the train clacks on, bearing me back to Richmond, bearing me home, and yet ever and ever more clearly I see her again as I saw her first on the swinging bridge over Meeting House Branch, a girl so lovely as to take your breath away, and all the leaves of autumn swirling about her, red and orange and gold.

I was out in the yard working on that old truck we got off of Giles Hogg when Daddy come back from town and come over there and told me what old man Rife had told him that morning. I'd been out there working on that truck since dinner nearabouts, and my hands had like to froze off. I had some gloves up at the house, but I didn't give a damn. That whole winter I was a fool for work, it seemed like I couldn't get enough, and I couldn't do nothing else. I couldn't sit in a chair. And I never played no music all that time. So I was under there working when Daddy come.

“Son!” Daddy hollered. “Get out from under that truck and mind what I'm telling you,” Daddy hollered out in the yard.

“I done heard you the first time,” I said.

“Then get out from under there,” Daddy said, “and get on up to the house.”

“I'll be there in a minute,” I told him. “You go on.”

“What?” Daddy hollered. His hearing is going bad.

“You go on,” I hollered back. “I said I'll be up there directly.”

I watched from under the truck where I could see his boots, which stayed right where they was for a while and then I could see he had done give up on me when he turned and left. I stayed under there for a while longer though, thinking things over, afore I come out myself. Thing was, I never knowed that Daddy knowed what I'd been projecting, until he said. So I was kindly surprised-like, that he knowed what I'd had in my mind, what I was fixing to do. Thing about Daddy is, he's so old and all, and he acts like he can't hear much, but I guess he hears what he wants to, like the rest of us. I guess he hears enough. Anyway I laid under there in the cold and I was sorry I wasn't going to do it, at first, and then I was glad, I guess, even though I was sorry too. If ever a man needed killing, that was the feller, and now he had done got away. I stayed under there and thought about it, I stayed till my face worked right.

Then I got out and got my tools and went up to the house and they was all in there, Mama and Daddy and Earl was, anyway, and Earl's little girl Blanche, and they was all acting like they was so goddamn busy, like they wasn't nothing atall going on.

I put the tools in the box and got the keys to the other truck and told them I'd see them after while.

“Hit's coming on for dark,” Mama said. “I saved you some supper,” she said next. “Why don't you just stay home?” Mama's the kind can drive you crazy without even trying.

“Let him be, Mary,” Daddy said, and then he tells me there's a icy patch on the road at the Paw Paw Gap and to watch out for it.

“I ain't goin that way,” I said. But seeing as how they already knew so goddamn much anyway, it looked like, I'd be damned if I'd give them any more satisfaction and say where I
was
going. I don't reckon I knew myself, until I got ahold of those keys, and then it come to me. All I wanted to do was drive over to where I could see the spur line, coming from Claypool Hill, and see that train pass by. Iffen he was on it, and Aldous said he was going to put him on it, why then I wanted to see it pass. It was a long way and a crazy idea and I knew I had better get going.

“Mama says Dory is ruint,” Blanche said.

Blanche was holding the yarn up and Mama was winding a ball. I looked at Mama and she wouldn't look back, and then Blanche said, “What's
ruint
?”

“You shut your mouth,” I said. Daddy was acting like he couldn't hear none of this. Then I got my rifle and my guitar and then I left. I know they was wondering what I wanted with all of that, and I was wondering too. It was like my head was a-spinning around. I throwed everthing in the truck and then I clumb in too, and pulled that thing what throws the seat forward—I have to sit way up, on account of my leg—and it come up so fast I knocked my gun in the floor, give me a big scare. It could of gone off and kilt
me
, and then wouldn't that be a sight? I got to grinning, thinking about it, cranking the truck. I hadn't grinned in such a while, it was like it was hurting my face. So I don't have to shoot nobody after all, I thought, not even myself. But still I wanted to see him pass.

I went by Wall Johnson's store and him and Merle and some other fellers was coming out the door and they tried to wave me down but I drove on, I wasn't stopping for nothing, and I drove on past Tug and through the Paw Paw Gap where they wasn't no ice atall, Daddy just made that up, and then I drove over the mountain to Claypool Hill and pulled off at that bend of the Levisa River where you can see the stretch where the railroad track comes when it goes out of town. It took me a hour or so to get there, and I still didn't have no gloves, I just wanted to see him pass.

By then it was dark for sure. I got my gun and got out of the truck and walked over there by the river so I could see better. It was cold, Lord! I blowed on my hands and stomped my feet, but didn't nothing help. I wondered if Dory knew he was leaving, too, if she was thinking about him. I wondered how she felt and what she thought. It was cold as a bitch that night and I got to wishing I'd of shot him anyway, then I wouldn't have to stand out here and wait no more. Then I got to whistling till my lips got too cold to whistle. First I'd feel alright, and then I'd feel awful. Things was confused in my mind. I thought how Mama had said Dory was ruint, which was just about what you could figure Mama'd say, but I knowed she weren't never ruint. I thought on Wall Johnson saying he wouldn't take no man's leftovers. Well by God I'll take what I can get, I thought all of a sudden. I'll take it and be damned, I thought, and then I heard it coming far away around Black Rock Mountain, and then I heard it coming closer. By and by I seen the light, coming around the bend, and then before I knowed it, here it was going by me kicking up the awfulest ruckus you ever heard way out here in the night. Steam pouring outen the engine, and you could see the men in there, stoking the fire, one of them looked like Bill Horn's boy. They was not but five cars and a caboose, and two of the cars looked to be empty, from what I could tell in the dark. But I knowed in my bones he was on it someplace, up there in the engine with them or else in one of them other cars. I knowed he was on that train. It went on with a great big roaring racket and leaving smoke in the air. I pulled my gun up to my shoulder then and sighted down it, just for the hell of it, at the swinging light on the back of the caboose. It swang back and forth, back and forth, in and out of the sight, and then the train was gone and him with it. I went back and got in the truck and got my guitar and made up this song, my fingers was too cold to pick, but anyway I made up this song.

It took me nearabout a hour to make it up. I knowed I wouldn't never sing it to nobody, least of all to her, but anyway I made it up and then I knowed what I was going to do and I felt good, I tell you, I got to feeling like myself again for the first time all winter. I laughed out loud in the dark and cranked up that old truck. She was my girl afore she was hisn, whether she knowed it or not. I allowed as how she was my girl now, whether she knowed it yet or not, either. I knowed then that she might not love me as much as I loved her, but that was all right with me too. She'd love me more than she thought. A girl needs a man she can depend on, and by God there's worse things than that. By God there is, I says to myself, gunning that truck back home, and she'll come to know it afore she's through. In a way I still wish he hadn't of left, though, I was going to shoot him dead as soon as he walked out of Justine Poole's no doubt about it. I had been laying for him. I wondered how Daddy knew. You have to get up mighty damn early to get ahead of Daddy. I rode along grinning, and it was cold as a witch's tit. But I tell you, it wouldn't have turned a hair on my head to shoot him, that's a fact.

Now I want to tell this the way it happened, and I want to tell you all the circumstances of it. For I believe it's been going on a long time, and it's high time you heard it out loud. It ain't gone do no good to tell it, I know that, nothing ain't gone to change in the telling, but leastways somebody can warn the younguns. The younguns orter be told.

Now you know me and how I love the Lord, you know I'd die before I'd tell a lie. So you can take every word of this as the Gospel. And anybody that loves the Lord as much as me, you know they fear the Devil too. You can't have one without the other any moren you can have the dark without the light. It don't make no sense if you leave out the other half, is what I'm a-saying, and I have knowed the Devil for real ever since the first time he appeared to me when I was not but eight years old at a church dinner on the ground, and told me to do something nasty. Not me, I said, you go on, old Devil, and find you somebody else! So he up and disappears, and it was not but five or ten minutes later that Mama's little chow dog, which was always so nice and sweet, come a-running out of the woods all wild-like, and bit Grandaddy on the knee right through his Sunday trousers! Old Devil had got into Mama's little chow dog. Now all this took place in Bluefield, W. Va., before I was brung here by Harp. And I have knowed the Devil, old Nick, nearabout as good as I have knowed God. And there ain't nothing he'll do, nor no way he'll work, to surprise me.

Anyway, I pick up on stuff. I know things afore they happen sometimes, I seen my daddy dead in a dream. I seen two black-headed babies in a dream and I had black-headed twins. It was me, you recall, way back—must of been twenty-five years ago—that seed the witch a-leaving after Almarine had throwed her out, that heard her laugh. It was old Nick in a woman's form and I'll swear it, just like he went into that chow dog. It put me to bed for a week. So you can talk about devils and witches all you want, and it ain't none of it news to me. I been in on this thing from the word Go.

Well I had put up pickle lilly the night before. Now nobody around here makes it as good as me. So ever time I put it up, I have to go around here and take some to everbody, I take some to the Rev. Autry Lily, bless his heart, his wife is sick in the bed, and I take some over to Rhoda just naturally, everbody takes her things the way you used to take them to Granny Younger, and besides I had this wart on my hand that I wanted took off, and then I'll take some to my son Bill, that is one of them black-headed twins, whose wife is too feisty to cook good. So I had put up pickle lilly the night before, and I had my day all cut out for me.