Hill Man

by Janice Holt Giles

  Besides farming, he felt called to preach the Word of a Sunday, and he held with the primitive, foot-washing, shouting-and-singing kind of religion common to the hills. He was a sight to see in the pulpit. Used to wonder how he had a hair left in that beard of his, the way he used to pull at it when he got up steam in his preaching. But there was a kind of slow dignity about the old man when he got up to step into the pulpit. His hair was slicked down and parted. His shirt was white and clean. He always wore his best black coat. His Sunday coat. And he commenced slow-like, weighing his words and bearing down on the congregation with his sharp, old, beady eyes like he was seeking sin in everybody there. Like it was hiding in the corners and if he looked sharp enough he’d find it. Then he’d commence to sweat a little and the words would come a mite faster. About the time he ripped his coat off, he was really getting under the power. Then he’d pound the pulpit, the words pouring out his mouth and the froth and the foam of his spit mixing with them. The sweat would slick his face and run down his neck, wilting his white collar. Soon or late he’d tear that collar off, but it wasn’t till the buttons went to popping loose on his shirt front that he was what you might say at his top speed. From then on his eyes kind of glazed over and his head jerked and he yanked at his beard and poured it on. A good hill preacher, at his best, goes a lot like a tobacco auctioneer. Folks that’s used to it can follow him, but if you’ve not heard a hill preacher when he’s gospel-happy, it wouldn’t make much sense to you. It goes too fast, and there’s too many “ahs” in it. “I tell you-ah- my brethern-ah- hit don’t make no diffrunce-ah- when the Lord-ah- comes to judge his own-ah- the sheep-ah-will be separated-ah- from the goats-ah- and the Lord-ah- will judge-ah- them that’s his own-ah- and you better-ah- make mighty shore-ah- that you’ll-ah- not be amongst-ah- the goats-ah!”

  That was a favorite theme of Old Man Cromwell’s … the sheep and the goats. And it always made Rady mad. “Old goat hisself,” he’d mutter under his breath. “He’ll have to go home an’ lay Marty to git it all outen his system!”

  Marty was Rady’s stepmother. She was the old man’s third wife. Rady was the second oldest boy. His ma had died before he could remember, and before he could remember, either, the old man had married Sturmy Jones. He’d wore her out in less than ten years, and before she was cold in the ground, he’d married her sister Marty. Marty was on her fourth kid now. She was, as Rady put it, pregnant as hell all the time.

  A lot of the hill preachers have big families. I’ve often wondered about it. But I reckon Rady put his finger on it. There must be something about religious fervor that kindles something else. Kindles it, but stops short, so that when a guy works up a lather about religion he’s got to top it off by going to bed before he’s wholly satisfied. It works that way for a lot that’s in the congregation too. During revivals in the summertime there been many a couple got all hot and bothered under the spell of the preacher and took to the bushes to cool off. More than one young’un hereabouts owes his life to a revival meeting!

  It was tedious setting through the old man’s long-winded sermons of a Sunday morning. He held forth a couple of hours most times, and has been known to go three. We used to sit on the back row and get so bench-worn we could hardly heave ourselves up when meeting broke up. One morning Rady pulled out his penny for the collection plate and commenced tossing it and slapping it down on the back of his hand. I was setting next and I got mine out and slapped it down. “Heads,” I called it, and Rady nodded. It was tails, so he took it. The boy next to me saw what was going on so he hauled his penny out. He won and Rady passed him the penny. They matched again, and he lost. Again, and he was without pennies. Rady eased down on the floor so as to reach across to the next guy, and took his penny too. That’s all we ever had for collection. Pennies. One each, that is. There was about eight of us on the back row, and before the plate come around Rady had all our pennies. I never thought but what he’d put them in the plate, but when Lem passed it, Rady dropped in his own penny, solemn as an owl, and that was all. The rest of us could of gone through the floor when we had to pass the plate along empty-handed. Lem’s eyebrows shot up and his face got long, but of course all he suspicioned was we were holding out to buy candy with.

  We jumped Rady when we got outside. “Hey, we wasn’t matchin’ for keeps!”

  “I was,” he said, “an’ when you match with me, you better be!”

  The next Sunday morning we wouldn’t match, on account of we knew Lem Milford would say something to our folks if we missed putting in two times hand-going. When the plate came down the row I saw Rady drop his in, but I also saw his little finger flip two or three coins up into the palm of his hand. I tried it, too, and got by with it. After Lem had taken the plate up front, me and Rady passed the pennies around and showed the rest how we’d got them. Now that we had a way to get enough money to match with, the time passed a heap quicker.

  But we had to quit matching pennies with the collection money after John Orson got caught. Lem caught the kid red-handed. Made him open out his palm and spill the pennies right in front of everybody. The kid went to sniveling. “They all do it,” he said, smearing snot over his face with his shirt-sleeve. “They do it all the time. But this is the first time I ever done it.” Which was a lie. He’d been doing it as long as we had, but was just clumsy.

  Old man Cromwell come charging down the center aisle like a bull after a red flag. “Rady Cromwell!” he thundered, “stand up there!”

  Rady stood up. He was just about as cool as a cucumber. “You know anything about this?”

  “Yessir,” Rady said, never batting an eye, “the kid’s been snitchin’ pennies outen the collection plate right along. Not only pennies but nickels an’ dimes when he could git ’em. Fur as I know, none of the rest is in it.”

  “He’s a-lyin!’, he’s a-lyin’” the Orson kid yelled.

  “What have the rest of you boys got to say?” the old man said, turning to us and letting his eyes run over us hard and bright.

  “Rady’s right, sir,” I said, and the others joined in.

  “It’s like Rady said, sir.”

  “Yessir. Rady’s got the straight of it.”

  We lied. And thought nothing of it. We’d of stood by the kid if he hadn’t of squirmed on us. But Rady was right. “Hell,” he said, “a guy won’t stand by the rest ortent to be stood by. Let him take what’s comin’ to him!”

  So the Orson kid got the skin beat off his back twice. Once by his old man, and the next day by Rady. But it was Rady knocked his tooth out. He never did have that tooth put back in, and every time I ever saw John Orson from then on and got a glimpse of that vacant space in his teeth, it reminded me of the beating Rady had give him. He like to of killed him. But that ended our penny-snatching.

  Rady had a busy mind, though. He was like a rat gnawing in a corn crib. When he got through with one ear, he commenced on another one. He figured a deal on the schoolbooks next. “Wanna make a dime?” he asked the little kids.

  “Shore!”

  “O.K. Drop yer reader by the big beech tree this evening.” “What fer?”

  “You wanna make a dime or don’t you?”

  Most of them did, so they dropped their books by the beech tree. Then Rady took them to the bookstore in town and sold them. Sold them cheap, I reckon, for two-bits maybe or thirty cents. But that was good profit, for he was only out a dime on each book.

  “Where you gettin’ these books?” the bookstore man asked him one day when he took three or four in to sell. I reckon he thought Rady was stealing them.

  “I buy ’em,” Rady told him, and that wasn’t no lie.

  “Well, you can quit buyin’ ’em,” the man said, “this is the last lot I’m goin’ to take off your hands. There’s been several in here the past week or two complaining of their kids losing their books might regular.”

  “They’re gittin’ paid,” Rady said.

  The man looked at him sharp over his glasses. “Listen, sonny. Th
e kids may be gittin’ paid, but their folks is payin’ twice. Don’t bring no more in here, see!”

  But Rady made a dollar and a half before that deal folded.

  He got into trouble once though. He talked his kid sister into letting the guys see her with her pants down for a nickel a peek. Promised her half they took in. Then he tried to hold out for two-thirds. Said he was the one went out and worked up the trade But she was a big operator too, so she raised so much hell and made so much noise Marty caught on. Then Marty told the old man and he horse-whipped Rady. When he got through whipping him he rubbed salt in the welts and Rady’s back was sore for a month. But what he minded most was that after the whipping the old man took him in the house and set him down and read the Bible to him. All the places that talk about fornication and nakedness and whores and harlots. Rady said that was the part of the Bible the old man liked best anyways. Being religious like he was he couldn’t let his mind dwell on such things most times. It wouldn’t of been right. But what was in the Bible was holy. And a man could fill his soul on fornication with the blessing of the Lord just by knowing the right places to read.

  “I never minded the beatin’,” Rady said. “I had that comin’ to me, I reckon. But hit made me sick to my stummick to have to set there an’ listen to the old sunovabitch read the Bible. Makin’ it sound so holy an’ all the time rollin’ the words around in his mouth like they was a chew of tobaccer Christ, but the Bible is a filthy book!”

  I reckon that’s one reason why Rady wasn’t never what you’d call a religious man. Got turned against it early.

  He learned to shoot craps from the niggers down in the river bottoms. The rest of us learned from him. Same with stud poker. We used to sneak off down in the holler back of the church and play poker with a deck of greasy old cards he got hold of, and shoot craps on a saddle blanket off Jubal Moore’s old mule. Didn’t any of us have but a few nickels to rattle around in our overhalls pockets, but the way they changed from our pockets to Rady’s was a sight to see!

  Down in the holler, too, was where most of us took our first drink of moonshine. Rady showed up with a gallon jug one night. We must of all been around sixteen then. “Ten cents a drink,” he said, and started the jug passing.

  “Whaddya mean ten cents a drink?” we argued.

  “Lissen,” he said, “any of you goops got a buck an’ a half to pay fer a jug?”

  We hadn’t.

  “So it’s ten cents a drink, see!”

  But he never pulled that on us but once. We chipped in and bought the next jug ourselves. And I reckon it coming so cheap was what made most of us get pretty drunk the next Saturday night. Was a revival meeting going on, it being summertime, and there was a mess of people there. The meeting was being held in a tent pitched out in the churchyard, with the sides rolled up on account of the heat. We never went in, of course. Wasn’t but a few fellers our age got religion sufficiently to set through them sermons. But we always went. We’d go down in the holler and shoot craps by lantern light until the shouting commenced, and then knowing the meeting was breaking up soon we’d light out back up the hill. Most of us had a girl we wanted to walk home.

  That Saturday night, though, we tasted the jug right regular and being unused to drinking much we got in a fair way of being likkered. Enos Higgins made a fiery brand of moonshine and it never took much to unsettle a man’s head. For my part I couldn’t see the spots on the dice long before Rady had the idea to break up the meeting.

  “Whose shotgun is that?” Rady asked, nodding towards a gun leaning up against a tree off to one side.

  “Mine,” Duke Simmons said.

  “What you bring a gun to meetin’ fer?”

  “Come early through the woods. Figgered I might git a shot at a squirrel.”

  Rady rammed a hand in his pocket and brought out a fist full of bird shot. He sifted it from one hand to another, letting the shot trickle through soft and rattly, like rain on a shingle roof. “Jubal Moore’s old mule hitched at the same place tonight?” he asked.

  Everybody commenced grinning. Duke pulled out a shell and Rady fixed it. “Head him towards the tent,” he said. “Ever’body mix an’ mingle with the stampede. Don’t nobody run away.”

  Duke turned the mule with a handful of corn shucks and then got away quick. The shot never sounded very loud, of course, but man, when it hit that mule he let out a bray you could of heard to King’s Crossing and back! And then he commenced running!

  When he trumpeted off everybody in the tent jumped a foot high and then when they turned and saw that mule headed for the tent there was the almightiest lot of screeching and bellowing ever you heard! Folks tried to climb the tent poles. They clawed up on top one another! And they got down on all fours and scrooched in under the benches. The preacher took one look and then he tried to crawl in the pulpit. He got in, too, all but his backside, and that being a mite on the bulgy side, it just stuck there and wiggled while he prayed! The choir, robes and all, took to the timber, and it was like a flapping of mighty wings! Man, man!

  That old mule lit out across them benches, braying and bucking and pawing the ground. He split a couple of them into right sizable pieces of cook wood. He sure cut a real wide swath through that tent, and kept right on going over the ridge. Jubal never found him till the next day, and then he was easing his sore behind in old man Crimmer’s cow pond! Such a commotion!

  We come up fast on the tail of the mule and mixed with the crowd, acting just as scared and just as bewildered as the worst of them. Wasn’t a one of us missing, and when the folks quietened down some it was Rady lifted a righteous voice. “Who could of done sich a thing? Who would think of breakin’ up a meetin’ thisaway Hit must of been the Bruton boys!”

  There was a heap of talk, naturally. And a few looks cast our way. But there we were, as innocent as could be, right in their midst. So, in general, it was decided the Bruton boys had done it. They had the name of going around breaking up meetings like that. We saw the oldest one over at the county seat a couple of weeks after that.

  “Wouldn’t visit around over on New Ridge fer a time,” Rady told him.

  The guy grinned. “Sunovabitch,” he said, “we never broke up that meetin’.”

  “I never said you did,” Rady told him, “but they’s several that thinks so.”

  “We don’t use mules,” the Bruton fellow said.

  Rady walked off, but over his shoulder he called back, “Try one sometime. Hit’s a heap more excitin’ than pistol shots!”

  He was always promoting something, Rady was. I got to thinking about it one time and it looked to me like most of us lined his pockets considerably one way or another when we were kids. A dime here, two-bits there. He did business with anybody and everybody. And he did almost any kind of business. A penny in his pocket wasn’t small potatoes to him. It was a penny, and it was his. By the time he was fourteen he was running a regular junk yard. He’d buy anything anybody had for sale, if he could rake and scrape up enough to buy it with. And most times he could. An old bicycle rim … a broken down cook stove … a wheelbarrow without the wheel. One way or another he always had something to trade with, and he always come out on top in a trade. He knew how to take things to pieces and sell every last bolt and screw for scrap.

  Once folks thought sure he’d been suckered. He went around buying up old tables and chairs. Give as high as three dollars apiece for them. But they’d ought to figured he knew what he was doing. Was an antique buyer in the county seat and he bought everything Rady brought him, and gave him good money for it. When folks found out about it they kind of complained. “You’d ort to of told us, Rady,” they said. “You hadn’t ort to of done so to us. Hit wasn’t hardly right.”

  “Why wasn’t it?” he said, “you thought three dollars was a good price when I give it to you. Snickered behindst my back … figgered you’d got the best of me. A guy ain’t smart enough to figger a trade ain’t got no business tradin’ is what I say.”

 
; “That Rady Cromwell,” folks would say, and they couldn’t help laughing over some of his deals, “that Rady Cromwell is a cute one. Plumb shrewd he is. He’ll alius come out on top.”

  He was a likable guy, even when he sharped you. And there wasn’t nobody but what had to admit he sharped them clean. He never cheated. He hated a cheat. He was just smarter than most in a trade, and there wasn’t nothing wrong with outsmarting a man. Fact is, if you let a man get the best of you in a trade, it was a thing to be ashamed of. Rady had little to his shame, though.

  When he got his full growth, around seventeen, he wasn’t as tall as his old man, but he was built powerful through the shoulders and neck like him. And his legs were as solid as piano posts. He was kind of short-legged and he had a way of standing spraddled, like he’d grown right out of the ground. He was weighted well, too. Never no paunch on him, but he was fleshed out considerable. He wasn’t to say handsome, but he wasn’t bad-looking, either. His hair was a brownish-red, thick, and I reckon you’d call it curly. Kind of bushed up like the old man’s. His eyes were blue, a kind of flinty, bright blue, and he could hold a man’s look unblinking longer than anybody I ever saw. It was never Rady’s eyes dropped first.

  He had a heavy beard, but he never let it go after he commenced to shave, like the rest of us did. Most of us don’t shave but once a week here on the ridge. But Rady said he couldn’t abide the feel of his beard growing, so he shaved every day. Had a smooth, thick skin, not like the thin white kind that commonly goes with red hair. When he was little he freckled, but when he grew up the freckles faded. When he got mad, though, seemed like the blood drained out of his face and you could see half a dozen freckles standing out on his nose. We used to know when we were joking him too far by the way his freckles’d commence showing. And we had a kind of joke about it. We’d say, “Look out! Rady’s freckles is showin’!”