Listen Here (65 page)

(April 15, 1939–May 22, 2000)

South Carolina Poet Laureate, Bennie Lee Sinclair, was the ninth generation of her family to live in the mountainous upstate region of South Carolina.

At Furman University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa, she met Don Lewis, and in 1958 they married. They built a small cabin on two acres given to them as a wedding present and held part-time jobs in addition to their work scholarships. Sinclair edited Furman's literary magazine, picked peaches, gardened, and collaborated with her freelance photographer husband on occasional projects.

Throughout the 1960s, Sinclair's husband supported them as a professional potter, as she faced the deaths of her father and her brother and began to write poetry. One of the first poets to whom she showed her work was the future United States Poet Laureate Mark Strand, who encouraged her efforts and wrote the introduction for her first collection,
Little Chicago Suite.
Her childhood memories of the South Carolina community of “Little Chicago,” a crossroads named during Prohibition when local bootleggers' gunfire there coincided with a shootout in the more famous city, led to the title of her first volume.

The author of four poetry books, a novel (
The Lynching
), a collection of short stories, and the editor of two local history books, she has received the Stephen Vincent Benet Award, a citation from Best American Short Stories, a writing award from Winthrop College, the Appalachian Writers' Association Book of the Year Award, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination for
Lord of Springs
, as well as other awards.

During the early days of
Appalachian Heritage
, she served as an advisory editor and contributor. “Without realizing it,” she said, “I was establishing an identity as an Appalachian writer and becoming part of an exciting revival and continuance of Appalachian letters.” She described Wildernesse, her home, as “a 135-acre wildlife and wild-plant sanctuary in the southern Appalachian mountains of South Carolina. Remote and beautiful, it affects my life and work strongly.”

From the 1970s until her death in 2000, she worked as a Poet-in-the-Schools, served as a Writer-in-Residence, taught creative writing, gave hundreds of readings, and continued to write poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

Poetry:
The Endangered: New & Selected Poems
(1992),
Lord of Springs
(1990),
The Arrowhead Scholar
(1978),
Little Chicago Suite
(1971).
Autobiographical essay:
“Appalachian Loaves and Fishes,” in
Bloodroot
(1998) ed. Joyce Dyer, 262–71.
Fiction:
The Lynching
(1992),
Carolina Woodbine I
(1977).
Nonfiction:
The Fine Arts Center Story
(1980),
Taproots: A Study in Cultural Exploration
(1975).

Contemporary Authors
(1981), New Revision Series, Vol. 1, 601–2. Joyce Dyer, “Bennie Lee Sinclair,” in
Bloodroot
, 261.
Furman Magazine
20:3 (summer 1973).
North Carolina Arts Journal
4:12 (1979). William B. Thesing and Gilbert Allen, “Stewardship and Sacrifice: The Land and People of Bennie Lee Sinclair's South Carolina,” in
Her Words
(2002), ed. Felicia Mitchell, 274–85.

from
The Arrowhead Scholar
(1978)

When I came home
the dogs barked,
and you stepped out to the car
through the dark trees

in a hurry, without your coat;
and when I followed you in you
quickly built me a fire.

Later, while you slept, I lay
and watched the moon through our window
and snowflakes on the glass

until, when the cold came through,
I whispered you awake
that you might make me a fire
more slowly than the last.

from
Little Chicago Suite
(1971)

Wearing a crown of curlers,
she steps out on the trailer porch
to feel the sun. The morning
is reflected in her eyes:
mountains coming blue, a trace
of greening in the forest across the road;
the road itself, tarblack and free.

She has never heard of Emma Bovary.
Relinquishing her brief parole,
she sets the ironing board
before the television, props the baby
against a chair and, sighing,
takes the curlers from her hair.
So goes the wonder of her days.

The lineman knows that she is beautiful:
he spent an hour working at the pole
to watch her hanging clothes, but he
will never tell her, and she
will never know why spring;
why the sight of her young ones growing,
makes her sad.

from
Lord of Springs
(1990)

In my dreams they return as they should,
my father's rabbits I loosed one day
when I was four, the year
that he, too, left—
not suspecting how wildly they strained

toward field and wood,
or that even our deep yard, rimmed with roses,
seemed merely extension of cage.
They appeared reliable and tame
as I whispered through the wire, worked the latches,

remained with me for awhile
browsing clover—their fur, their markings
intact, in health and lovely.
Perhaps it would not have occurred
to desert roof, kin, feed—pit hunger against hunger

in a dark rife with owls and traps—
if I had not thought to free them.
Most, we never saw again.
But one or two came
back to the edge of our lawn

thinner, harried—like him
to visit, but never quite within.
It is only in my dreams
I welcome them truly home.
Salving their wounded eyes, patching

ears torn by gun and thunder
I lift them into their pens, shut the doors,
making all as it was before.

My father. His rabbits.

from
Lord of Springs
(1990)

(October 9, 1914–)

Verna Mae Slone grew up in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, near the town of Pippa Passes. Her formal education ended before she had completed high school because her family needed her to work.

She wrote her first book,
What My Heart Wants to Tell
, when she was in her sixties. The original manuscript was written in longhand and intended for her grandchildren, because “so many lies and half-truths have been written about us, the mountain people.”

When excerpts of Slone's reminiscences were read on National Public Radio, an editor at New Republic Books asked to publish the entire manuscript. “I believed you had to have a college education before you would be accepted as a writer,” says Slone. “Because I believed that, I was the most surprised person of all that
What My Heart Wants to Tell
did get recognized and published.”

Slone is the tenth generation of her family to live in eastern Kentucky, and she bristles at the hillbilly stereotypes so often applied to the region. “These lies and half-truths have done our children more damage than anything else,” writes Slone. “They have taken more from us than the large coal and gas companies did by cheating our forefathers out of their minerals, for that was just money. Their writers have taken our pride and dignity and have disgraced us in the eyes of the outside world.”

In this scene from her autobiography
What My Heart Wants to Tell
, Slone recounts the life and death of her handicapped sister, Alverta.

Nonfiction:
What My Heart Wants to Tell
(1979).
Fiction:
Rennie's Way
(1994).

“Verna Mae Slone [bio and autobiography],” in
Table Talk: Appalachian Meals and Memories
(1995), ed. Sidney Saylor Farr, 3–17. Carla Waldemar, “Old Kentucky Home,”
The Christian Science Monitor
71:110 (2 May 1979), 19.

Chapter Twenty

Sarah Alverta was my sister's name but I always called her Sissy. She was born with a normal mental capacity, but when she was eighteen months old, she had a fever that lasted six weeks. The doctor called it a brain fever. When she recovered she could not talk and her mind never grew anymore, but remained as the mind of a two year old. She might have been taught some if she had had the right teacher. We ourselves could have done more for her, if we had been rash with her; but we loved her so much we gave her her way in everything. The whole household was run to suit what we thought was best for her. My sister Vada was the one who loved her the most and took constant care of her, sleeping with her at night, washing her clothes, even diapers.

She was a few years older than me, but I soon learned that whatever she wanted of mine, I was supposed to give her. I did not resent this because I had been taught that she was someone very special. I remember once I had a fried egg in my plate and she reached with her hand and took it and ate it. I thought it was a big joke and laughed.

Once we were playing near the chair shop where my father was making chairs. The little nobs or ends of wood that were left as scraps from the ends of the finished chair post made very nice playthings. With a child's imagination they could become anything from a father and mother with a whole family, to a table covered with pots and pans. To me they could be anything. All Sissy liked to do was beat them together to make a loud noise, or pile them up in a large heap and then kick them over.

I can remember many happy hours playing with Sissy and these wooden scraps. But what I am going to tell you next was told to me by my father.

He heard a loud noise, looked out, and found me pulling and tugging at Sissy. She was hitting me and kicking but I would not let go. Both of us were screaming and crying.

My father came running and parted us and demanded, “What are ye doing? Ye know ye must never fight with Alverta.”

“But, Papa,” I said, “there was a big worm. It might bite Sissy.”

He went back to where we had been playing and he found a large copperhead, which he killed.

We did not get much candy, but each time my father went to the store he always brought back three large red and white peppermint sticks of candy, which were called “saw logs.” There was one for each of us: Alverta, Edna, and me—the youngest of all the kids. Sissy wouldn't eat candy. I don't know if she just did not like the taste, or if it hurt her several decayed teeth. But she loved the red and white striped color, so she always wanted one, mostly to play with. My father would always tell me, “Now don't ye take Alverta's candy, but ye watch her and when she gets tired of playing with it, you can have it to eat.” I would follow her around for hours, and sometimes wait until she took a nap, but sooner or later, I got her candy.

Alverta loved anything that was red. One Christmas my sister Vada got a large apron, which was then known as a coverall. It was something like a sleeveless dress that opened up and down the back. The color was a bright red with a small, springly, flowered design. Alverta fell in love with it at once and Vada cut it up and made a dress for Sissy. She had this pretty red dress on that Easter morning that had such a sad ending.

Several boys had met in the large “bottom” or meadow just across from our home at the mouth of Trace to play a game of “round town,” a game somewhat like baseball. Lots of girls had come to watch from our porch and yard. Everyone was having a good time. It was Easter and everyone had on their new clothes for the occasion.

When we heard a terrible scream, everyone ran in the house and found Alverta's clothes on fire. Lorenda ran for the water bucket, which was empty. Vada began tearing at the burning clothes, but before Renda could get a bucket of water from the well, Alverta's clothes were burned.

My father had just been gone for a few hours on his way to Wheelwright, where he had a job as a “planer” in a carpenter shop.

Someone sent for a nurse who stayed at the Caney school. Someone said, “Who will go overtake Isom?” Hazy Caudill said, “I have the fastest mule, so I will go.”

In my childish trusting mind I thought “everything will be alright again, when Papa gits here.” The next thing I remember was running to meet him, when I saw him coming, and he hugged me until it hurt. I did not know until later that he had been told I had been the one who got burnt.

Sissy lived until about midnight. I can still see my father as he pulled the sheet up over her head and told the nurse, “It's over.”