Fair and Tender Ladies (51 page)

October 9, 1965

 

 

Dear Maudy,

 

Well congratulations. I guess. Of course I am real proud of your Maureen for being Little Miss Tri-City, thanks for sending the picture of her in the newspaper. She looks so delicate. She takes after her aunt Silvaney the most, I believe. All that fine pale hair. Did you make her dress, or buy it? Remember how you used to sew in high school. I don't know if I would go on to put her in the Little Miss East Tenessee Pageant or not, if I was you. I would think twice. Because she
does
look so delicate, and it might be too much of a strain. How is she doing in that little school, anyway? And speaking of that, Maudy, why don't you go back to school yourself? Did you ever think about it? Joli did, you know. I was always sorry you married so young and never went, you are a smart girl, even if you did not sound so smart in your last letter.

Honey, hold on to your hat.

I would think twice before I left a perfectly nice husband and a redwood ranch house just because my husband looked funny to me all of a sudden. What do you mean anyway,
looked funny?
All you wrote is that you were laying out in the sun in the backyard and Mark came home from work and walked across the patio and you took off your little cotton eye patches and watched him come closer, and he
looked funny
to you. Honey, that is not enough! It might of been the sun. Of course it is true that Joli got a divorce but it is also true that she had a good reason, it was more than just having Taylor Three look funny to her. I mean, Taylor Three
was
funny. Ask Joli. And just think about it.

Besides, who would drive Maureen over to Knoxville for the Little Miss East Tenessee Pageant? Who would teach those girls how to walk? Settle down. Oh Maudy, a person can not just go through the world doing whatever the hell they want to, whenever they want to do it. I know this better than anybody.

Take a course down at the new college, why don't you? Go out and get yourself a pantsuit. Paint the bedroom. Or, why don't you start a store, and sell clothes? You would be good at that. And I have always thought you took after Ethel in knowing exactly what folks would want next. Plus you and Mark could take out a loan real easy, I'm sure of it.

And speaking of Ethel, let me just tell you what Pete Francisco has gone and done now. He has bought Ethel a motorboat and named it
The Ethel!
Can you stand it? She says it is stencilled in gold on the side. For the life of me I cannot picture Ethel sitting up in a boat, riding through the blue waters of Florida with Pete Francisco in The Ethel.

But Maudy. Think it over. You have always had a flair, honey.

In any case I will remain your loving,

 

MAMA.

Dear Joli,

 

It was
chicken gizzards,
but why you need to know is beyond me. Are you going to put it in a book? Or have you got one?

Anyway, what you do is peel the outside off of the chicken gizzard and rub it on the wart. Then you bury the gizzard and forget all about it. When you forget, the wart will be gone.

If you
don't
forget, I won't promise a thing!

And don't forget the love interest.

I remain your fond old,

 

MAMA.

Dear Silvaney,

 

I have quit the settlement school now in spite of the pleas of all, it is hard to say why. For I liked it down there, and the people, and they do a lot of good especially at the new orphanage. But I am old and crazy, I have a need to be up here on this mountain again and sit looking out as I look out now at the mountains so heavy with August heat in this last long hot spell before the fall. I can feel the season changing, in my heart. I have been reading the Bible, Silvaney, that fancy white Bible that Garnie left up here so long ago. I have been sitting out in the heat with three of Oakley's animals placed just so around my chair for company, and reading this white Bible, and watching dust devils rise up in the yard.

I do not like Proverbs which is what Garnie quoted to me, all those years ago. The proverbs are mean-spirited which is probably why Garnie liked them! And the Song of Solomon is dirty. It reminds me of Honey Breeding who I have not thought about in years, and how it was with him. I don't know where he is, or if he's still alive now. But I have not forgot him either. It's a funny thing to me how some folks can pure tee vanish off the face of the earth, Revel is another who has done so. And Johnny—although they say he is a jazz man now and goes by the name of J.Q. Rivers, I don't know. This is what Joli thinks.

But Ecclesiastes is good and makes sense. I like to read Ecclesiastes 3 and run my hand along the fine-grained wood of this deer that Oakley cut out of a poplar stump, it makes me think I am close to him.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to get, and a time to lose, a time to keep, and a time to cast away, a time to rend, and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war, and a time for peace.
I have copied it down out of the Bible. It makes sense to me, Silvaney. Lord knows I have had my time to dance and my time to mourn. Now I think it is the time for me to cast away, and get about my business, if only I could tell you what it is (Ha).

I have been having a lot of stomach trouble lately, I think my age and these hard years are catching up with me. It will leave for a while but then it comes back. I won't go into the particulars! But it makes me want to keep silence and think hard, it is time for that. So far I have not been to the doctor but brewed up plenty of bitters which has helped me a lot. I have fallen off some in the course of it however. The other day I put on some old pants I had not had on in a while, and they just
hung
on me. I had to gather the waist up with a belt. My breasts look like those bean bags that I used to make for the kids.

Molly cried when I told her I was quitting down there, but she took both of my hands in hers and said
Ivy, Ivy, you have been such a help to me! You will always be my friend,
and this is true. But she is a grand lady now, with a bosom like a dove and a big desk full of important papers. Congressmen come to see her.

And I am a mountain woman whose time has come to cast away stones which I told her, and she hugged me tight.
Why Ivy, you are just skin and bones!
she said then.
You have been working too hard. Go then, back up on Sugar Fork, and rest some. You have certainly earned it. For we are well begun here
—and Molly gestured with her hand, a square hand like a man's, at the old school building and the new school building and the brick dormitories they are putting up down by the creek. In shop class, the boys are making a big wooden sign that says
Majestic Mission School.
They are carving out the letters one by one. They are real proud of it. A man from a New York newspaper is coming next week to do a piece on Molly and the school.

Just think, Silvaney—this is my little friend Molly, from childhood! And Violet Gayheart has gotten famous too, she is a union organizer, and Joli is the writer which I always wanted to be. I am so proud of them all that I am like to bust over it. But this is not for me. I have got things to think on, and letters to write. Such as to the Peabody Coal Company that is augering up there on the mountain behind me, and making my creek flood. Marlene and Bill just called to say that they are going to bring a new color T. V. up here for me to watch in my retirement and I said
No thanks
but they are likely to bring it anyhow. Marlene will not take No for an answer. She reminds me of me! Then Rufus and Martha called up and said why didn't their middle girl, this is Johnny Sue, come up here and keep me company? And I said,
Thanks but no thanks. I am going to live up here alone and get used to it,
I said.
Them that wants to see me, can come up here.

I remain your (thin) and loving sister,

 

IVY.

Sept. 5, 1974

 

 

Dear Danny Ray,

 

Martha says you called up long distance while I was laying down. I have not been feeling too good, I guess she told you. Well, there is not too much to say about me and the Peabody Coal Company! I am surprised you saw it in the paper. Although Joli did too, she called me up crying and wanting to come down, but they told her I am not feeling good, and not to come right now.

I did it for David, of course.

You know he lived with me two times, once when he was little and once when he got into trouble in his teens, and he loved it over here, and said he was coming back after college. Then—I don't know if you know this or not—he got into all that trouble in college, it was something about drugs I believe although Joli never would say, and then he got kicked out and drafted, and sent to Viet Nam. I cannot even immagine it over there, nor my little David carrying a gun. They used to make fun of him up here, Martha and Marlene's kids, because he couldn't stand to hurt a thing not even a butterfly, and refused to go hunting.

I remember he hurt Bill's feelings when he was 16 and Bill came up here to give him a brand new shotgun for his birthday and expected him to go over to Matewan with him and some other men, hunting bear on Hell Mountain. I still recall David's answer, and how his face looked, to this day. He was standing out in the yard and it was starting to rain, a cold rain, November the first it was, that was his birthday. And Bill right there, a heavy man, a man that still wears a crewcut. And you know how good-hearted he is!

David grinned as big as life. He ran his fingers down the slick stock of the gun. This is a beautiful gun, he said. But I don't believe I'd use it enough to take it.

You mean you don't want it? You could tell that Bill had never heard of such a thing. When you all turned 16, he wanted his own gun worsen anything.

You would be wasting your money, Uncle Bill, David said. Go on and give it to Ernest or one of the others. I wouldn't use it enough, he said. I am going back up to Doctor Mom's before long anyway.

You are? I said. For this was the first I had heard of it. Joli had a boyfriend youngern her, and David didn't like it.

I reckon so, David said to me. I guess I ought to finish high school up there, so I can take some more French.

French! Bill said it like a cuss word.

Your mama went to France on her honeymoon.
All of a sudden I remembered that.