Fair and Tender Ladies (52 page)

Didn't do her much good either, David said. He handed the gun back to Bill. Let me just go over there on Hell Mountain with you all, he said, and NOT hunt. I'd like to go over there, David said.

You could see Bill thinking it over, figuring what he would say to the other men to explain a boy that would not hunt.

Do you reckon you will get up close to any real bears? David asked. Or is that all talk? I guess you will drink some whisky, he said.

Bill laughed. Now we might see a bear or we might not, he said. Depending.

Depending on what? David asked. On how much whisky you drink?

On that and other things, Bill said. There's bears still up there, though. Nobody has mined that mountain because old man Hide Johnson owns it all, he still owns it, Bill said, spitting. But he lets us go up there because this one old boy that goes with us, that is his son-in-law. And there's bears still up there, believe you me. They're cornered up there now.

Well, I would be proud to go along then, David said, grinning. That's what I want for my birthday.

Then you got it,
Bill said. Of course he did! You couldn't refuse David a thing. Nobody could, he had this way about him. Bill left and David came over and hugged me.
Mamaw!
he said.
I reckon you knew I would have to leave here sometime.

I reckon,
I said, but in all truth I had got so used to his presence that I had kind of forgot. When I hugged him, he was all bones. Bones and freckles, that was David. Red Rowe hair.
Why do you want to go up there anyway?
I asked him, meaning up on Hell Mountain after bear with a bunch of men as rough as a cob.

I just want it,
David said.
I want to go everyplace I get a chance to. But I' ll be back here before long.
David said this to me the day he was 16.
Okay, Mamaw?

And I, hugging all those bones and angles, I said,
Okay. Honey. Okay.

So you see, Danny Ray, I did not have a choice. You know how Momma had sold some of the mineral rights to this land years and years ago, to John Reno when we were living at the boardinghouse with Geneva bless her soul, and so hard up for cash. I don't blame Momma for it. Everyone else done the same then. Nobody knew any better. And it has looked for all these years like the Peabody Coal Company was not going to exercise those rights anyhow, so I had kind of forgot about it. Then they done the augering up by the blackberry clifts, and messed up the creek, and then they up and brung a bulldozer in here to strip the outcrop. There is not enough coal in there to warrant it either. So this was where I had to do something, and fast! For if they had done what they were intending, they would of mined out that whole clift right up beyond Pilgrim Knob, and left us just sitting in a watershed. Come the first spring rain, this whole place would of washed right down the mountain! Now Danny Ray, I
know
this! I am not guessing. I have been out and about enough with Molly, I have been all over this county, I know what I am talking about. I have seen it happen again and again, to others bettern me.

The first thing I did, when I heard of it, was put a
No Trespassing
sign on the road down there by the creek so they could not come up here, but they come up with the first dozer anyway, up as far as the steppingstones. So then I went out there and said,
You had better not come any further.
I had Oakley's old thirty-ought-six with me and it was not loaded, but this bulldozer man, he didn't know that. He was a Northern negro. His eyes got as big as silver dollars.
Lady, please put that gun down,
he said. He spread his hands, the insides of which were pink. I had not seen a negro since Tessie.

You can't come up here any further,
I said.
I mean business.

I reckon you do,
he said. He grinned a big white grin and climbed down off the dozer, leaving it right there shaking like it had the palsy even after he turned it off.
I am not about to mess with you,
this negro said.

So the upshot of it was, he told it down in town, and they was a big whoop-de-do over it and Molly hired me some fancy lawyers and we were going to court, but then we could not get to court in time. The company planned to strip it before we could get the restraining order. This is what Bill came up to tell me.

But I wish to God that you would lay off of this, Mama,
he said,
instead of raising such a ruckus. I don't see why you want to carry on so. This farm is not worth saving,
he said. Bill is into real estate now, him and Marlene, they know all about land values.
Let it go,
he said.
Come on into town now and live with us. We' ll take good care of you,
Bill said. He was wearing a khaki suit, twisting his hat in his hands. He did not say, Since you are sick.

What I did not say was, I wouldn't live with you and Marlene Blount if you were the last people in the world despite your good intentions. For I don't believe in real estate, or in good intentions, and I won't live in town. I will never again be beholden. It is a time to keep. So I did not say.

I did not say, I know I am sick. I have nothing to lose.

I did not say, My grandson is fighting in Viet Nam while you are running the Kiwanis Club.

I said,
I will think about it.

But when they brought that second dozer up here, I was ready for them. I knew they were coming, Corey had heard it in town and called me. I went out before daybreak, all dressed up. I knew they'd be taking pictures. So I put on some lipstick that Maudy had left over here, and a pantsuit Joli sent me which I had not worn yet, it was way too big. I took a book to read, Exodus by Leon Uris which I had bought at the Rexall, and a whole bunch of nabs to eat, and went out there in the pitch black dark. If I'd had some whisky, I'd of took that too!

I climbed up on the seat of the dozer and sat there. I was not going to move. After a while I could hear the other dozer coming up the trace. I could hear the engine rumbling, and the
crack
it made every now and then breaking a branch. I wondered if it would be that same negro, or another one. I ate a nab. My back was hurting real bad. Then I separated out another sound, another engine, and here came Martha and Rufus in their old car, ahead of the dozer. They parked and came over to me. It was still real dark, I could hardly see them.

I am not getting down,
I said.

Rufus started laughing.
Who says you have to? We just came along to keep you company,
Rufus said. He lit a cigarette, and the match flared up in the dark.

You better watch out you don't blow us all up,
I said.

That is the spirit,
Rufus said.

Then Corey showed up with a chainsaw and cut down a pine tree so it fell right across the trace.
That will give them some pause,
he said.

And then the sun rose, and then that second dozer got up to the pine tree, down there by the steppingstones, and it stopped, still going chug-a-chug-a-chug, and the bulldozer operator—who was a big white man this time—put his hands on his hips and looked up at us, across the pine tree, and scratched himself. He shook his head. Then he turned his back on us and folded his arms and waited for the rest, who were not long in coming. It was a pickup and a car full of company men in navy blue suits, all of them fat. Then there was another car right behind
them
with three reporters in it and one of them taking pictures. All the reporters were thin. I was just glad I had on that lipstick.
Hot Pink,
this is the lipstick Maudy wears.

Well, you know the rest. They backed off at the sight of those reporters. They backed off for good. This land will be here waiting for David when he gets back.

You know the rest. You saw the story in the newspaper. You saw the pictures.

But it's a fact that there was not enough coal in that outcrop to justify them going up there after it, anyway. They were just going to mine it because they
could,
pure and simple.

What did you think of my lipstick?

 

Love,

 

MAMA.

Dear Maureen,

 

Thanks for your letter. I am sure you will get the letter-writing badge if you keep it up so good. You can write to me anytime honey and I will write back, I am a fool for letters. Your mama will tell you that! And speaking of your mama, tell her that you can stay over here with me anytime too, whether she is going to the Darlington 500 again or someplace else. I will be
glad
to keep you. I will tell you all the stories that you ever want to hear. I am glad you like the family ones. I do, too. They are the best! But I have to say, I was surprised to learn that you have never heard tell of your greatgreat-uncle Revel. Then I thought, well why
would
she? And did I tell you he had a dog? The name of his dog was Charly.

Now here is a story that Revel used to tell when we were girls, it never failed to scare the pee right out of us.

There was a poor little girl—and he would name the little girl
Ivy
, say, if he was telling it to me—there was a poor, poor little girl that went out walking in the woods one day looking for something to eat, and she found a chunk of meat right there on a big flat rock. And so she snatched it up, and ran right home with it, and put it in the beans, for they had not had meat in that house for days and days. And it got to cooking, and the whole house smelled good, and all the children were happy.

But then all of a sudden came a big awful growling outside and a terrible voice said, WHERE IS MY CHUNK OF MEAT?

So the little old woman gets under the featherbed. And the little old man gets under the featherbed. And all the little brothers and sisters gets under the featherbed. And then the girl hears the gatechain rattle, and then she hears something climbing up on the porch roof clawing on the house-roof.

WHERE'S MY CHUNK OF MEAT? The terrible voice says again. And soot commences to fall down the chimbley. So the girl goes over and looks up the chimbley and sees a BIG OLD HAIRY BOOGER sitting up there on the smoke-shelf.

And the little girl asks,
What you got such big eyes for?

The hairy booger says,
Stare you through.

And the little girl asks,
What you got such a bushy tail for?

The hairy booger says,
Sweep your grave.

But when the little girl says,
What you got such long sharp snaggly teeth for?

The hairy booger says,
EAT YOU UP!

And he does so in a flash.

This is where Revel used to yell and grab me. Lord I was scared! I used to love stories such as that, when I was your age. I liked to get real scared. And I loved hairy boogers.

Now I remain your loving old,

 

MAMAW.

Dear Joli,

 

I will make it short since I am feeling real bad today.

The quilt you are talking about was Momma's burying quilt which she did not get to use since she died down in Majestic at the boardinghouse, and she was robbed in death and carried over to Rich Valley by her mean old daddy Mister Castle and lies there yet beside her daddy's body, the way he planned it all along, in a little cemetery with a wrought-iron fence around it. I hear they are putting in a mall right up the hill. I have always meant to get somebody to go over there and dig her up and bring her back to the mountain, but somehow the years have slipped by and I have not done so, till now it seems worse to move her than to let her lay. Anyway, it was Momma's burying quilt, first.

And then when your daddy and I moved back up on Sugar Fork, I found it in an old cedar chest that was made by—I believe—Early Cook, Rufuses daddy. Anyway there was the quilt, folded just so. Never used.