Oral History (9781101565612) (27 page)

“If ever I marry in this wide world, it'll be for love, not riches. Catch a little girl about five feet high and fuck her through the britches,” Little Luther sang.

Lute's eyes went big and he poked me in the side. “You hear that one?” he said.

Little Luther went on singing a whole bunch of stuff you don't hear him sing when the womenfolks and girls is around, now that don't count Mamaw of course nor Granny Hibbitts. Some of the time they was—were—out there at the hog-killing and some of the time they were up at the house getting ready to put up the meat.

While they were up there, Little Luther sung, “Ring-a-ding-a-doo, Now what is that? Something soft and warm like a pussycat. With long black hair and split in two, now that, my friend, is the ring-a-ding-a-doo.”

Lute punched me in the ribs so hard I liked to drap my knife. I could tell my face was getting hot out there despite of the cold. All the men was looking at us and laughing. Lute's daddy was getting the leaf lard outen the gut and throwing it into the pot on the warming-fire where it set to hissing and popping, rendering is what Mamaw calls it, and afore long I knowed we'd pour off the lard to save it up and then we'd eat the cracklins. My stomach got to hurting, that's how bad I wanted them cracklins, it was like I could taste them already, and Little Luther set in on the verse.

I kept looking down and scraping, with my face not working right. I hated that part about the schoolteacher and also I hated the way Little Luther's little old chin would wobble when he sung, and how he'd grin, the idea of him singing all them dirty words and then making eyes at Dory. I kept looking down and scraping, had no place to lay my eyes. I didn't want to look at Little Luther, nor at none of the other men who was looking at me, nor at Lute, nor most of all at that hog-head fetched up agin the rock.

I got to grinning despite of myself. Then I got to laughing, and before I knowed it, I was singing along with the rest.

I finished up singing loudern Lute. They poured off the lard and all of us got some cracklins. They were the best thing I ever ate in this world, I thought right then while I was eating them, you never tasted nothing so good. I ate them cracklins till I liked to bust, staring that hog-head straight in the eye. Then they sent me up to the house with a bucket of trimmings for the womenfolks to put in the sausage-pots.

On the way up there I walked right through the middle of the kids, still playing all over the yard, and I thought how little they were and how a man don't have time to play. When I got in the kitchen I seen that they had set some of the biggerunses to working in there, grinding up the meat and canning the sausage, and I was glad I didn't have to do that no more neither.

“Mary's been asking for you,” Dory said, elbow-deep in sausage in a washtub on the table.

“I got to go right back out there,” I said. “I brung you some more trimmings,” and I set the bucket down next to the washtub and picked up the empty one to take back with me.

“You orter go in and see Mary,” Dory said. “She's doing poorly again.”

When Mary does poorly she has these little spells, like a kind of conniption-fit, she'll fall right out in the floor and then wake up and not know a thing about it afterwards. She'll be real tired too, and have to lay down on her mattress-tick, which is what she was doing right then. The fire was going and they had pulled her right up by it to stay warm. Wasn't nobody else in the room except Old Man Little fast asleep and snoring real loud like a engine, and a Davenport girl nursing a baby, and that crazy old Rose Hibbitts over in the corner, talking to herself. I didn't like it a bit for her to be in there with Mary. But I had to get back out.

“Howdy,” Mary said when she saw me, and I said howdy back. Then she closed her eyes, it was like she went back to sleep. I couldn't see but her head, she was all tucked in under the bear-paw quilt. So I started backing off.

“Wait,” Mary said. She has the littlest voice after she's had one of her falling-out spells. She said something else but I couldn't hear her.

“What?” I said, coming closer.

“Ooh,” Mary said. “What-all have you got on your pants?”

I looked down and seen the blood and hog-hairs on my pants legs, where I'd been wiping my hands.

“I've been out there working,” I said, “and I've got to get on back.”

Rose Hibbitts started talking out loud to herself then, the wildest stuff you ever heard. I was getting too hot from the fire and I started feeling kindly sick-like too, I guess from eating all them cracklins. I didn't see how Mary could stand it to be so close to the fire all wrapped up like she was. It looked to me like she would be burning up. I felt like I had to get out of there fast.

But Mary said, “Read to me, Jink.”

“What?” I said, moving back from the fire.

“Read to me,” Mary said, and I knew I was stuck for sure. So I went and got Tom Saw yer—Mary loves it about the cave—but when I come back, she had turned her head to the side of her pallet and fallen fast asleep. She breathed in and out, in and out through her open lips, just like one of Dory's babies. I was glad. I was about to die from the heat and I wanted to get on back. So I made for the kitchen lickety-split and run smack into Old Rose Hibbitts, liked to scare me to death, too. I never seen her move from her corner afore I run into her.

“Listen here, boy,” she said, “You Almarine.” Up close her breath smelled like something that had been dead a week and her eyes was bloodshot and terrible. She couldn't never keep people straight, like the way she thought I was my daddy.

“Now I just got a phone call,” she said, “which you orter know about.”

Despite of me feeling so hot and sick, it was all I could do not to laugh. We'd all been hearing about Rose Hibbitts and her phone calls, they'd told it from yan to yonder. Seems like Wall Johnson, Lute's daddy, let Old Rose talk on the telephone one time down at the store in Tug, and she taken a fancy to it, and now she thinks she gets these phone calls all the time. Of course she ain't got no phone, and we don't neither.

“I have just received a phone call,” she said, old eyes burning into mine, “that you might be interested to know about.”

“I got to go,” I said, but I couldn't pull loose from her fingers, like sharp little claws fastened into my jacket.

“It was a phone call from hell,” said Old Rose. She was breathing right into my face. “A phone call from hell,” she went on, “from that red-headed Emmy, that witch you took such a shine to.”

“Well, what'd she say?” I asked, since I couldn't get loose and I couldn't think of nothing else to do. Besides I thought I could tell Lute about it, I knowed he would bust a gut laughing.

“She says Dory's the one she has loved all along, and she claims her for sure, and she don't give a damn for a man!” Old Rose spit it out in my face.

Now this taken me aback, it weren't—wasn't—funny at all like I thought. I hate it when folks start up all that stuff about Dory. It made me mad as fire. So I brung up my leg and I kicked Old Rose in the back of her knees, which laid her out face-down on the floor.

“You shouldn't ought've done that,” said the Davenport girl.

“Done what?” I said. I had to get out of there. I left with Mary still asleep and Old Rose Hibbitts crying and grubbing around on the floor, I wished she'd of up and died.

But then when I got back out there, the men was telling ghost-tales too. It was like I couldn't get away from what I had to, nevermind which way I'd turn.

“I recall one time back in aught-nine,” said a Little, I dis-remember which one, and he told about how two witches got in his cattle and how they acted, how they kicked his old lady in the side and broke two of her ribs, and then they give down speckled milk. I wished they would all of them shut up and get Little Luther to sing some more nasty songs. Little Luther must of gone on up to the house, though, or anyway he wasn't out there when I got back. And Parrot Blankenship had got here now, dressed up fit to kill, the talkingest man you have ever seen, and they was most of them gathered around him. I couldn't help but go listen, myself.

Now Parrot Blankenship was the man who come up here to court Ora Mae. It surprised us all to death when first he come. I never thought about Ora Mae ever getting sweet on anybody, or even about Ora Mae being a girl, which of course she was, afore Parrot showed up. I thought about Ora Mae like I thought about Isadore and Nun, say, something you've got to contend with, or even less than that, like some walking part of Mamaw that wasn't hooked on, I guess, but not like a girl like Dory. Wasn't nobody else thought of her like that neither, nobody around here that is, but Parrot Blankenship, he was a foreigner, didn't know no better, or if he did you couldn't prove it. Anyway he was a foreigner, wouldn't say where he'd been raised up, but he'd tell you the names of places he'd been, Wheeling and Charleston and Dayton, Ohio, and Detroit and Cincinnati, he'd roll off them names so fast like he was a train rolling right through your head, and his eyes just sparkling. You could not pin him down to a thing. Nor would he say what he had done for a living, nor where he bought all them fancy clothes.

“I've got irons in the fire,” he used to say, and Mamaw would snort and spit. She didn't think much of irons in the fire. But when Parrot talked, Ora Mae stared at him like he had fallen down offen the moon, it was like she couldn't never look her fill. Now
she
didn't talk,
he
did. And Ora Mae would sit there big-eyed, listening. Not a soul could see what a man like that saw in Ora Mae, and they talked it around and around. Because Parrot Blankenship was the kind of man you'd feature with a yellow-haired woman eating in a restaurant someplace, but not here. And he was the only man that had ever come up this mountain and not been taken with Dory. Dory thought Parrot was funny. She'd laugh and laugh when he talked, but Ora Mae didn't crack a smile, just sat real still like a rock which made Parrot talk faster and faster.

So the men were telling ghost-tales, and Parrot had come, and now the men were gathered around him because he was the kind of man that other men just naturally take to. Me too. I liked Parrot, everbody did. You couldn't hardly help it, even if you never knowed a thing about all them irons in the fire.

“Well now I'll tell you about witchery,” Parrot said. “Hit was a hot hot summer one time I was working over in Doran, West Virginia. I took a room with a widder lady reputed to be a witch. But I was young then, and full of piss and vinegar, and I thought not a thing of that.” Everbody nodded, and Lute and I was back to scraping, and I nodded too. “I was too young to listen to what I should've,” Parrot went on. When Parrot tells a story, you can't help believing it's every word true, like the way he'll throw off on hisself instead of building hisself up bigger, and look you in the eye, and grin at how dumb he was. You can't help liking a feller like that.

“Now I did notice that the widder lady's horse was acting right peculiar. When I come there he was a big old roan horse, full of spirit, liked to kicked the side outen the barn and used to gallop around the pasture. But the longer I stayed with the widder lady, the more tuckered out he commenced to look, and come the time he couldn't hardly make it around the pasture one time. Nothing but a shadow of what he was, and the light had gone from his eye. Well, I didn't think nothing of it at the time, just remarked it, and I went on about my business.”

Which was what? I wondered, but I kept quiet, and Parrot went on.

“Then one day I was coming home from work and I seen a big lump out in the pasture, and I went over there to look, and sure enough it was that big roan horse laying dead with the flies all over him. When I got close up, I seen what I could not see before—he was down to naught but skin and bones, the skinniest horse I ever laid eyes on, and I marveled at how he had lived as long as he had. Then I looked up—there was one pine tree out there, in the middle of that pasture—and seen three black crows sitting on a single limb of that tree watching me. ‘Shoo!' I hollered then, but they never moved, and I have to tell you, that spooked me for fair. So I took off, and went on back to the widder's house, and never said a word about what I'd seen. I went right on straight to bed and I slept like a rock the whole night long.

“Well, boys, the next morning I woke up, and I hurt so bad all over, it was all I could do to get outen the bed. Seemed like my arms and my legs was so heavy I couldn't hardly move 'em, and I was still dead for sleep. So I got up and went along to work anyway, but I wasn't worth a damn all that day nor the next, when the same thing happened over again. But the third night, I figgered it out.”

Parrot Blankenship had every one of us right in the palm of his hand by then. The women were hollering out the door for more trimmings, but wasn't nobody about to answer nor to fetch them any till Parrot was through.

“I went to bed early, same as usual, I was so tired by then, but then I woke up in the middle of the night with the awfulest ache in my side, I thought I might have the appendix. But when I looked at my side I seen it was a horse's side, and they was a woman's foot kicking bloody spurs into it.”