Oral History (9781101565612) (20 page)

“I'm living here most of the time now,” I said, indicating with a trembling gesture the corner I have made my own—the blanket strung up on a length of rope, which affords me my private “bedroom,” and my desk, and my few cooking utensils. And then it hit me, what she had said:
she expects to see me. She is willing to come here!
My mind reeled.

“Where's all the kids?” she asked. “Where's Jink?”

“Wall Johnson came and got them all,” I said. “They'll be back at the store by now.”

“Well, I reckon Nun'll get him, then,” she said. “We come down when we heard that the creeks was on the rise. We had to go to the store anyway.”

“You did,” I said stupidly. I was conscious only of her standing there before me in the room; but then she turned from me abruptly and began to pace back and forth before the stove, and I noticed for the first time that she appeared agitated, even upset.

“You ought to've come,” she said, facing me finally.

“I know it,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“You ought to've sent me word,” she said. “You can do it by Jink or by Rhoda, and then you ought to've come—hit's been awful,” she said, and then to my dismay she burst into tears!

I began to realize that there was more to this than met the eye.

“What do you mean?” I asked, taking her hands.

“Air you my sweetheart or not?” she said.

Needless to say, I was stunned. But of course I could not refuse her. I nodded, I think, too surprised to speak. Who knows whatever goes on in the minds of girls! Her simplicity touched my heart.

“What's been awful?” I finally asked.

“Daddy and Paris has fallen out,” she said, “and hit's real bad, and you never come—”

“But you told me not to come,” I said logically; logic not being, apparently, her strong suit, this set her to sobbing again.

“Listen,” I said. I enfolded her in my arms and attempted to calm her, stroking her hair. But for once—for possibly the first time in my life—
I found myself at a loss for words!

So I stroked her hair.

We stood before the stove, we two, in this empty schoolhouse, while rain fell steadily on the roof and the creek roared past outside. The schoolhouse was dim, warm. Dory's wet wool clothing gave off a peculiar kind of a smell—pleasant, really—which will stay in my mind forever. For once I had nothing to say. I held her close, I stroked her hair. And then I felt my manhood rising unawares, and died of shame and a kind of glory as I realized she must feel it too, pressing against her body.

“Honey,” she said. Who would have thought that anyone would ever address me so? She kissed me, opening her mouth.

“Dory.” It was all I could say. Kissing we made our way to my bed in the corner where we sat, or fell, in a kind of a heat, and she leaned back and pulled me to her. I fumbled at her waist and finally succeeded in pulling up her blouse—to my surprise, she wears no brassiere! Or maybe none of these mountain girls do. Her breasts are the most perfect breasts which exist in all the world!

“Sit up. Sit up for a second,” I said. “I want to see you,” and she sat up and lifted her blouse to reveal them, two white orbs as round as apples, with the nipples aroused and pointed.

“Suck me,” she said.

“What?” I could not believe my ears.

“Suck me,” she said, and took my head and drew me to her breast, offering it up with her hand, and by now I was near delirium. While I sucked at her nipple she took my other hand and guided it up her thigh beneath her skirt and inside her panties until I could feel her wet warmth. She pushed my fingers inside; she began to move her hips. (A hasty parenthesis: this was a “far cry,” as they say, from the coquettishness of Miss Melissa Hamilton—who, though her demeanor promised all, had given virtually nothing.
Virtu
ally: ha! For a second I envisioned—God knows why!—my father and Mrs. Sibley! For a second, too, I was distressed, I confess it, by Dory's apparent knowledge of love-making, but then I recalled her upbringing in that randy cabin with all those boys, the animals around the mountain farm, and I understood her desire to be a kind of purity: everything is transparent with her. When she's hurt, or worried, she cries. When she's happy, she laughs. When she wants a man, she . . .)

Who knows what might have happened, had not her brothers come?

We were there on that very bed-tick, behind the blanket, me kissing her open lips and exploring her innermost parts, my member about to burst my trousers, when guns were fired into the air, repeatedly, across the creek.

Dory pushed me back and sat up.

“No,” I said.

Gunshots rang out again.

“Hit's them,” she said. “They mean for me to go,” and hastily she stood and tucked her blouse and donned her coat. “Lord, no wonder,” she said from the door. “Hit's almost up to the footbridge”—meaning, of course, the water.

“But Dory, Dory—how can I see you? What must I do?” I called out then but she was gone.

I relieved myself by my own hand and stood for a long time there at the door with the fire at my back, the chill ahead. I was there when the creek rose that final foot and brought a huge stump whirling down with it, destroying the bridge. Now I am completely cut off, at least for the time being, a circumstance which seems most in keeping with everything else in my life. For what am I to do? Impossible to “court” this girl in the approved mountain fashion; impossible to “take her home” to my family in Richmond—I can see Victor's snide smirk even now, in my mind's eye—and yet, impossible not to have her.

Tonight, at dinner in the Smith Hotel, the table conversation centered around none other than Almarine Cantrell and his “feud” with Paris Blankenship! (Mountaineers being of course famous for their feuds, which appear to offer vast amusement for everyone not involved, and violence being here the order of the day.) The quarrel is over money, of course, and they say that Mr. Blankenship is “out” for Mr. Cantrell, whatever that means. (It certainly means I shall not set foot in that holler until this business is concluded!) Mrs. Justine Poole shook her blond curls back and forth as she spooned up the gravy, making a “tsk-tsk” disparaging noise. She wore large imitation-emerald earrings, and a great deal of rouge. Dinner concluded, we all stood up and most of us made for the new movie house where we watched and laughed at the humorous remarks which Big Harp Combs, a lawyer, addressed to the crowd throughout the feature. Mrs. Justine Poole, seated beside me, placed her hand on my knee; she sniffed grandly when it became clear I would not respond, and left the darkened movie house slightly before the rest of us—three drummers from out of town, an unscrupulous land speculator who goes about the country buying up mineral rights with something he calls a “broad-form” deed, a lawyer from Claypool Hill here to settle a will, and yours truly. We were a disparate crew. We strolled back to the Smith Hotel through the clear cold air, smoking cigars.

I try to imagine taking Dory to a picture show, walking along a sidewalk with her, as we did tonight, yet she seems to exist for me only in that shadowy setting—those three mountains, that closed valley—whence she came.

Plans:
I shall tell Granny Hibbitts to tell her to come to meeting: any night of the revival, I'll say.

 

Imagine my surprise when, after school today, one of the Johnson boys arrived to tell me that old Aldous Rife had driven his car from Black Rock to Tug and awaited me there at the store.

“You better come on,” the Johnson boy said, and I came straightaway across Meeting House Branch over the sturdy new bridge which Harve Justice finished building only today.

Aldous stood on the front porch in his three-piece striped suit, overcoat open, smoking a cigarette. His wily old eyes narrowed when he saw me, and he smiled. “Richard,” he said, and we shook hands. He suggested a walk, although the weather was far from clement—we're having quite a “cold snap,” as they say—and we set off accordingly along the path that runs from the mouth of Grassy Creek, there by the store, to the point where Grassy merges with the Dismal River, around the bend. Ice had formed along the edges of the creek and our breath blossomed white in the air as we spoke. I expected him to open the discussion with the subject of Dory Cantrell: instead, he fooled me.

“You know why they call this Tug?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“It was along about the end of the French and Indian war,” he said, “that a patrol came through here, under the leadership of a man named Milligan, headed for Kentucky. They were down to almost nothing, in terms of rations, by the time they came through, and it was wintertime, but Milligan pushed them on. There wasn't nothing here then,” Aldous said, staring around absent-mindedly. “No store, no nothing. This was all way back, mind you. There wasn't nothing here at all except for an old Indian woman had her a cabin back there where Wall's store is now. She used to buy hides off her people and tan 'em, and she had her some leather tugs out drying on a frame when they come back through, having been to Kentucky and back, and starving by now, and those men were so hungry they grabbed the leather tugs off that frame and ate them, that's how hungry they were.”

“Did they make it back?” I asked.

“Some did and some didn't,” he said.

Grassy Creek, before us, swirled and tinkled in the pale cold sun, the ice along its edges as brilliant as diamonds. Our breath hung in the chill air, like clouds over the creek. Impossible to imagine how this creek—how all the creeks—had looked, only several short days ago! I shivered, as much from the idea of the terrible hunger Aldous described as from the cold bite of the wind. We walked on.

“What do you want?” I asked him finally. “Why have you come?”

But instead of responding to my questions, he stared across the creek and into the trees on the other side. “Have you heard about the Baisden brothers?” he asked, and I said I had not.

“There were three brothers,” he said, “John Henry, Harrison, and Bill, and they were among the meanest sons-of-bitches that ever walked these hills. They came from over around Pigeon Creek, and they would fight at the drop of a hat. When the Baisden boys came to town”—I assumed he meant Black Rock—“when the Baisdens came to town, decent people went inside and locked their doors. They killed five men at least, and maybe more. But nothing could be hung on them, nothing could be proved. Harrison had an ivory toothpick, I remember, on a gold chain, and shoulder-length black hair. And I remember when they were building the courthouse tower, the Baisdens rode into town and shot out the brand new clock, and no sooner did they get it replaced, about five months later—they had to send to Cincinnati for a new clock—than the Baisdens came back and shot that one out too. They cared nothing, Richard, nothing”—here, Aldous turned to look at me intently—“nothing for human life.”

“What happened to them?” I asked.

“Bill eventually made the mistake of arguing with Bob Irons, a man as dangerous as he was. Bob hit him over the head with a revolver. Then John Henry and Harrison went to the hotel where Bob was staying, and shot him through the window as he was eating lunch. They shot him between the eyes and he fell forward into the chicken and dumplings.” Aldous grinned, but I was of course appalled.

“Well, that time the law succeeded in rounding up Bill and John Henry, but it was an uneasy time, I'll tell you, with them over here in jail. Everybody was just sitting around waiting for Harrison to come and try to get them out. One time some horses got loose across the river, where the high school is now, and a rumor got out that it was Harrison Baisden coming to free his brothers, and everybody in town hid. The sheriff and his deputies locked themselves up in the vault.”

“Is that true?” I demanded, cracking a sliver of ice with my foot. Aldous is, as I have said, a strange old bird.

“Yes,” he answered. “Finally the two brothers were taken to jail, but on the way back here for the trial, Harrison ambushed the sheriff and his party and freed them single-handed. They took all the horses, tying up the sheriff and his men. So Harrison rode off on the sheriff's horse, or so it was said, along with his brothers, and nobody in these parts ever saw hide nor hair of the Baisden boys again.”

“What hotel was it?” I asked. “The one where the Irons fellow was shot?”

“The Smith Hotel,” Aldous said. We walked side by side down the path toward the mouth of Grassy.

“When was this?” I asked.

“Twenty, thirty years ago,” he said. “The time doesn't really matter.”