Oral History (9781101565612) (3 page)

But then Little Luther wakes up with a jerk. “Why
hello there, honey!
” he almost hollers. “Just catching a catnap myself. That's all, just a little catnap. Listen now. Listen here. I bet you've never heard this one.” Little Luther grabs up his dulcimer and starts in on the cabbage-head song which, sure enough, Jennifer has never heard, and after a while she is joining in on the chorus. Jennifer has a sweet, pure little voice with no feeling in it at all. Little Luther does “Fox on the Run.” He is a real treasure. The boys turn up the TV louder so they can hear it. Al and Debra's whole house is loud and happy except for Ora Mae, who sits like a pile of dough in her green easy chair. Then the door of the van opens, to Jennifer's complete surprise, and here come Al and Debra, who must have been in there working on the carpet all along! Debra runs right up on the porch and starts clogging even in her thong sandals, and Al leans up against the porch post and sings along with his dad. Al has a deep, rich boom-boom kind of a voice, which goes fine with his daddy's high thin one: they sound great together, in fact.

“Oh, I don't mind,” Jennifer says. It's
her
honors project, after all.

“Shit,” Al says. “
Hear something? Hear something?”
he mimics. Al gets up then and goes into the house, yelling for Debra. The screen door slams.

From his cabin door, Almarine Cantrell owns all the land he sees. He's not but twenty-two years old now. Young, then—you could call him young for owning this much land and that's a fact, but they's other ways Almarine is not young now and never was young atall. He growed up right here, right on this place. Nobody ever knowed what he was up to.

Where's Almarine? they allus said, and who told the answer to that? Not his mama, nor his daddy, nor yet those sorry brothers of hisn, nor even me over here where I live on the south side of Hurricane Mountain where I have been a-living praise God for more years than I could tell you if I was to sit down and try to count them which I won't. I been here a long time. Years. I know what I know. I know moren most folks and that's a fact, you can ask anybody. I know moren I want to tell you, and moren you want to know. And if I never knowed exactly where Almarine was when he was little, I could of give you a good idea.

He'd be down on Grassy Creek all by hisself most likely, seeing how the water ran over the rocks and how cold it kept even in summer, or he'd be up in the crook of the biggest sycamore there at the bend afore the trace starts down through the spruce-pines, a-setting up there still as a little old owl for hours and hours just waiting to see if anybody ever come up the trace, which nobody ever did, or he was out back in the dugout where they kept the meat all winter on the cold dirt floor, and potatoes and onions down in the straw in the grabbling holes, but him not a-grabbling neither, just sitting there still as you please and breathing that musky salty smell in there, a dark smell like something too old to figure whatever it mought have been.

Well, that was Almarine. Almarine fell down between the cracks in the family like some children will.

In spite of him being so pretty, with all that pale-gold hair, in spite of him being no trouble to a living soul. Almarine was said to spend nights in the laurel slick over by Frenchman's Cave, nights by hisself out there when he was not but nine or ten. Now that's the wild side of Black Rock Mountain. And Almarine knowed where Grassy Creek starts, away up high on Hurricane behind this land of mine, away up there where it comes a-bubbling and a-snorting like a regular fountain right out of the ferny ground. Almarine went beyond that spring, too, straight up the rocky clift where the trees won't grow and this little fine green grass grows all around in a perfect circle. A lot of folks won't go up there. But Almarine went and lived to tell it and went again, and nobody marked his comings or goings in particular, or cared how he could scream in the night like a painter until the painters all around were screaming back. Almarine trained a crow one time, till it could talk. It could say about fifteen words when his brother Riley kilt it with a rifle, out of spite. That's how Riley was. But Almarine! Almarine had the lightest, biggest eyes when he was a little child. It seemed like he never blinked. He liked to look out on some distance.

Almarine didn't need nobody, is what it was, and there's folks won't take to a child like that. Still and all, he was sweet when nobody else in that family was, so this was a part of it too. People don't like somebody to be so sweet it makes them look bad, that's a fact. Which he was. I mean he was that sweet. In fact Almarine was that kind of sweet moony child who'll likely end up without a thing in this or any other world, without a pot to piss in.

How Almarine ended up with all this land is a curious thing.

His daddy, Charles Vance Cantrell, was a big old man as mean as a snake and hard on women and children. He had him one gold tooth in the front. Charles Vance Cantrell was Irish or so he said at one time. He had him a long gold chain with a big watch on it that had some dates and “Dublin” carved into the back, but don't you know he lost it in a poker game at old man Joe Johnson's store like he lost those mules and everything else he owned sooner or later except his land, and Lord knows it's surprising how he never lost that too. He never put up his land. Anyway, Charles Vance Cantrell—they called him Van—was a fat old man who gambled a lot and would just as soon strike you as speak. He come by ship, he said, and then by wagon, and they was religion mixed up in it someway, but of course you couldn't never prove it by Van Cantrell. He brung that wife of hisn, that Nell, from Ireland with him, or so we thought, although wasn't nobody sure since she was so ashy-pale and she never said a word until Van went off to fight in the war after which she perked up considerable. It would of been all right with me if she had not, now that's the truth. I never give a fig for that Nell.

Anyway, Van went off through Indian Grave Gap, over Snowman Mountain and down into West Virginia, where he joined up with the Union. Nobody knowed if he joined with the Union out of principle or because, what I thought, it was the quickest army to get to, and Van Cantrell ever loved a fight. Now some men hereabouts took up on one side, and some the other. They was nary a slave in the county. So they done what they felt to do. It split some families down the middle, I'll tell you that. Churches too. They is a church in Abingdon that to this day has got one door for those who stood with the Union in the war and one door for Johnny Reb, and this is true, and I'll swear it. To this day.

Van Cantrell stayed with the army as long as he could, and lost one leg above the knee afore he come home. Things was different when he got back, he found out right away. Old Nell Cantrell, who had not done a thing but lay in the bed having a sick headache since the day he carried her in that wagon up the trace, Old Nell was up and farming! She had planted her some cabbage and some corn; she had three hogs on the side of Hurricane Mountain. She never got back in the bed neither. She didn't have to, since Van was laid up hisself and couldn't get around like he used to do. Thank God! is what she thought. But she needed some help of course, and so she had them three boys right in a row—stairstep boys, with Almarine in the middle. The other two, Riley and Shelby Dick, took after their daddy, and they growed up a-fighting and a-fussing just like him. They would throw your wash off the line, I've seed it, they tromped on their mama's beans. It was clear from the beginning that they would kill each other or get kilt theirselves before they was through, which is nearabout what they did.

But this happened first. Van Cantrell's leg started up oozing a clear liquid where it had been cut off and healed over. It was a clear smelly liquid, not like pus, which seemed to ooze right out of the very skin without no break that you could find atall. You never saw the beat of it. They called me, of course, and I done what I knowed, but nothing I knowed done any good. The first thing I done was lay me a spider web acrost it, hold it on with soot and lard. Now this had no effect. The next thing I done was what my mama showed me and which I am knowed for everywhere in these parts, what I do to stop bleeding. They will call me anytime, day or night, and when I hear who it is I start saying the words even afore I get my bonnet on, I start saying the words which I know by heart from my mama, and when I get there, most times, the bleeding's already stopped. It is Ezekiel 16, sixth verse, what I say. I done this for Van Cantrell too, done it two days running with nary result. But it is for bleeding, like I said, and not for no smelly old ooze.

“Hit ain't going to work,” I told Nell when the sun come up. Then she sent Riley off for old Doc Story, but by the time he got acrost Black Rock Mountain, Van was dead. We had to burn sulfur in there for two weeks to get the smell outen the cabin.

Anyway, without no old man to keep him in line, Riley got hisself in trouble over a girl and had to leave this county fastern squat. This left Shelby Dick, who was the youngest, and Almarine, but him and Almarine fell out someway over a knife and whose it was, or who knows what it was they fell out about, but pretty soon Almarine was gone too, leaving Shelby Dick to farm with his mama. Now this was fine with Shelby Dick and with old Nell Cantrell too. Nobody took much to Almarine as I have said, and even when he was there it was like he wasn't really there so twerent much difference atall with him gone. Almarine allus wanted something—who knows what?—and that's why he kept staring out beyond them hills.

He was gone almost five years. And whatever happened to him in between, that's his story. He never did tell a word. Almarine went off sweet and shy and distant, like I said. He come back all of them things—not changed in any way you could put your finger on—but with another set to his jaw and a hard look sometimes around his eyes. He appeared tired. He appeared oldern he should have been, for his age. Old man Joe Johnson said he heard that Almarine had been in prison someplace, and the way Almarine looked, you could feature it. Of course folks'll say anything but it's true, a man is his father's son. Anyway it was clear that they had been some hard times, even if we never knowed what they was, just like when Almarine was a little boy and you couldn't guess what he was up to.