by Lois Lenski
Billy stood on the porch and listened. Then he heard the sound of chopping. He hurried round the house and up into the woods. Not far off, he could see Uncle Pozy chopping a tree with his axe. Just as he came up, the tree leaned slowly over, and with a crash, fell to the ground.
Uncle Pozy looked at Billy and smiled. “Hit’s got to be a tree of good straight grain,” he said.
“Is this oak goin’ to be my basket?” asked Billy.
“No,” said Uncle Pozy. “We’ll leave this un lay a while. I been workin’ on another tree down to the house—peelin’ off long strips of the white tough inner bark—splittin’ it into ‘splits’ you might say. Hit’s kinder tricky till you know how, but you’re never too young to learn.”
“Same kind o’ splits you bottom chairs with?” asked Billy.
“Precisely,” said Uncle Pozy. “’Bout twelve feet long, and thin like ribbons—that’s what we weave baskets with. They’re all wet and slimy from the sap at first, so I hang ’em over a limb to dry. See?” He pointed to a tree near the house. “Then I fold ’em up like strips of rawhide and tie ’em in bundles, so they’re easy to carry. We’ll get us a bundle and I’ll start you to weavin’.”
“You like to do it, Uncle Pozy?”
“Law, yes,” said the old man. “I been a top-notch basket-maker all my life and I know my trade. Ary kind o’ basket you want I can make—large farmer’s baskets for measurin’ grain, small baskets for balancin’ on a woman’s hip or across the neck of a horse in front of the rider, pie and picnic baskets, egg baskets, mendin’ and sewin’ baskets, clover seed baskets, meal baskets.…”
“Whew!” said Billy. “Never knew there was so many kinds. Mammy says the trouble with your baskets is they never wear out.”
“Shore,” said Uncle Pozy. “That’s why I’m so poor. Folks buy ’em once but not twice. I’m the best basket-maker on the mountain—I can make a basket so fine and close-wove, hit will hold water.”
“Golly!” said Billy. “I thought only cedar buckets did that.”
They came back to the house, where Uncle Pozy picked up a bundle of splits, and settled themselves to work. The old man cut a set of spokes, took up the split for a weaver and handed it to the boy.
“You can make a small one first,” he said. “Keep the spokes straight and even, son, as you weave in and out. I’ll help you to shape it, and finish it at the top with a fresh-cut hickory hoop that’ll bend the way we want it.” He went ahead with a basket of his own, keeping his eye on the boy.
It was hard work to handle the long weaver, and to keep the spokes straight, but Billy’s hands were tough and he kept at it.
“Uncle Pozy,” he said suddenly, “do you reckon there’s any stills over Bearskin Creek way?” He must talk to somebody about the things that made Granny Trivett act so queerly.
Uncle Pozy frowned. “Might could be,” he said slowly. “Plenty thicketty bushes to hide in. The laurel’s so thick over yonder you can hardly see daylight at noontime. Probably full of bears too.”
But Billy refused to be side-tracked. He did not want to talk about bears.
“If you knew of a still over there, what’d you do?”
Alarm filled Uncle Pozy’s eyes and sharpened the tone of his voice: “Lord love ye, son, I’d stay as fur away from there as possible, and I’d say nary a word to anybody about it.”
Billy pushed the weaver under the next spoke. “I wasn’t hankerin’ to talk to nobody but you about hit …” He paused, then went on quickly: “Would a good man be runnin’ a still, Uncle Pozy?”
“That’s hard to say, son,” said the old man. “People didn’t used to think it was wrong, but now hit’s against the law to make corn whisky. Time was, when my Pap was young, a man could do as he pleased with the extry corn he raised, but not now no more.” His voice had a sad ring to it. “Keep out o’ that ere Cove, son. Hear?”
“Shore will,” said Billy. He bent over his work again.
When dinnertime came, he was glad to stop. Uncle Pozy could cook as well as make baskets. The meal of fried ham-meat and gravy, stewed apples, “leather britches” beans and corn-bread was as good as if Mammy had cooked it. After the dishes were washed up, Billy wanted to go back to his basket, but Uncle Pozy said no.
“First you must rest awhile, son. You can set and listen while I play a tune or two on my dulci-more.”
“Your dulci-more?” Billy’s eyes opened wide. “You’ll play hit for me to hear, Uncle Pozy?”
They both used the usual mountain pronunciation of the word “dulcimer.”
“Shore, son.”
“Where’d you get hit? Is hit a store-bought dulci-more?”
“No, son. I made hit my own self. I like to pleasure myself with a little tune now and then.”
Uncle Pozy went to the fireboard and took down the curious instrument. It looked like a long, narrow violin, with four heart-shaped sound-holes in the body. It had a long, narrow strip of wood on top, over which were strung three metal strings, with cross wires for frets.
“Oh, Uncle Pozy,” cried Billy, “do you play hit like a banjo?”
“No,” said the old man, sitting down. “Hit’s got three strings, do, sol, do. You hold it on your knees, so, and you touch a goose quill between the wires, so, to give the tone you want. And you use this noter to play the tune.” The noter was a wedge-shaped piece of wood.
“You made hit your own self?” cried Billy. “Hit ain’t been bought at the store?”
“No, son,” said Uncle Pozy, “I made hit outen poplar wood.”
“Hit makes music like a store-bought banjo?”
“Oh, no, son,” said Uncle Pozy. “Not loud and noisy like that. Hit’s just a quiet little tune-box, just for soft, lonesome little tunes you play at home by yourself. Hit don’t play loud dance music, like a fiddle or a banjo. You just pick it along while you’re singin’, like this:
“There was an old man he had a wife,
Dan doo, dan doo,
There was an old man he had a wife,
Cling-a-ma cling-a-ma clear-o;
There was an old man he had a wife,
And she plagued him out of his life,
To my kum lam, slam, dam, cleary-o, Jimmy go.…”
“That was plumb purty,” said Billy, his eyes shining.
“Now son, you try hit,” said Uncle Pozy. He put the instrument on the boy’s knees and explained to him just what he should do.
“Take an easy tune first. You know Go Tell Aunt Patsy, don’t you?”
“Law, yes,” said Billy, breathless.
It took some moments of trial before the strings gave forth the semblance of a tune. But at last they did, and Billy sang all six verses of Go Tell Aunt Patsy.
“You’ve got the knack, son,” said Uncle Pozy happily. “Now how about workin’ some more on that basket?” Abruptly, he took the dulcimer and hung it up over the fireboard. “Can’t live on music all day.”
Billy went back to his basket with a will, and since it was a small one, he was able to finish it with Uncle Pozy’s help.
“You can make a big un next time you come,” said Uncle Pozy. “A half-bushel measurin’ basket—that’s the easiest kind to sell.”
“Hello! Hello!” came loud shouts from the road at the foot of the slope.
“That’s the Holbrooks, come to take you back,” said Uncle Pozy. “Skedaddle quick!”
Billy waved goodbye to the old man high up on his porch, and took his seat in the jolt-wagon. He looked down at the basket in his hand and saw not a basket, but a banjo.
His dream was more real than ever.
CHAPTER VI
The Cowcumber Tree
Billy was eager to go back to Uncle Pozy’s again. The dogwood was in bloom all over the mountains, but corn-planting time had come, so there was no getting away.
“Uncle Pozy’s plantin’ his corn too,” said Mammy. “In corn-plantin’ time, you don’t bother nobody. Corn’s our livin’ and everything else has t
o go by when hit’s time to plant. If folkses don’t make a crop o’ corn, they go hungry.”
Mammy and the children were up in the new corn patch on the side of the mountain. Mammy had brought out gourd and pumpkin seeds. “We’ll plant the punkins in with the corn,” she said. “They’ll make good cow-feed come winter.”
“Let me plant the gourds, Mammy,” begged Letty Jo. “A whole row along the edge of the corn-patch.”
“Law, no, gal,” said Mammy. “Not there. Go sprinkle ’em in the corners of the rail fence down yonder. They have to have somethin’ to climb on. Besides, they’re wildy things. They don’t like bein’ put in a row with garden truck. Fling ’em in the briar patch in the fence corners. Then they’ll make a good crop o’ gourds.”
Billy made furrows for the corn with his hoe. After Letty Jo had planted the gourd seed, she came to drop corn. With a bucket on her left arm, she picked out corn with her right hand and dropped it into the furrow. “I’m the fastest corn-dropper on the mountain,” she bragged. “I can keep up with ary horse a-plowin’ …”
“I ain’t no horse,” growled Billy, “nor mule neither.”
Mammy followed with a hoe and covered the grains with dirt. Billy had to work fast to keep ahead of them.
“Fetch that basket o’ seed-corn yonder, Red Top,” called Letty Jo.
Red Top was a strong and active little boy. He ran, stumbled over the basket and sent it rolling and bouncing like a rubber ball, down, down the mountainside. He clapped his hands to see it.
“Lordy mercy!” cried Letty Jo, frightened. “What’ll Pap say?”
“Oh, the seed-corn!” wailed Mammy. “And that’s the lastest we got, too. We’ll have to goose-pick hit up.”
“Git them chickens off!” screamed Letty Jo. “They’ll eat hit all!”
“Shoo, shoo!” Red Top and Mazie ran to chase the chickens.
Then Mazie tripped and went tumbling down hill. Letty Jo picked her up and kissed the hurt places. They all squatted down to recover the spilled seed-corn.
And just then Pappy came.
He came riding down the trail from the mountain above. When they were least expecting anyone, there beside the patch stood a horse with a rider. It was Pappy on Old Dandy.
“You give me a start, Rudolphus Honeycutt!” exclaimed Mammy, stumbling to her feet. Her face turned pale inside the deep tunnel of her sunbonnet. “Just like a ha’nt, you come so sudden.”
“I’m flesh and blood, right enough,” said Pappy looking down at his family. “Come just in time to see what you been a-doin’ with the seed-corn.”
“Hit was an accident.” Billy spoke up.
“Red Top fell over the basket,” put in Letty Jo.
“I didn’t see it …” Red Top hid his face in his mother’s apron and began to bawl lustily.
“Shore, the boy was just prankin’,” said Pappy with a sarcastic smile. “If I had time to light down, I’d wear out a hickory on the teeny chap.”
“The little rascal’s not worth a pinch o’ salt,” said Mammy. “I’ll touch a switch to him soon as we git this corn picked up.” She sounded as cranky as Pap, but she pressed Red Top close and patted him on the shoulder.
“Watch out for that ole Dominicker rooster!” she screamed. “Bless goodness, what’s the matter with him? He’s bloody as a hog. He’s been fightin’ that Wyandotte again. Why them roosters can’t leave each other alone and stop fightin’ when they got all the woods to range over …”
“They like seed-corn better, Ruthie.” Pappy smiled his sarcastic smile again.
Red Top chased the rooster away, came back and squatted dutifully to pick up corn, now and then lifting a wary eye in his father’s direction.
“I’m gettin’ the high-sheriff after them Trivetts, Ruthie,” said Pappy in a low voice. “They’re all the time trespassin’ on my bound o’ land.” Forgetting caution, he spoke louder: “Why, they think they own the whole mountain—them two. When all they got is a passel about two inches square up there, round that hut o’ theirn.”
“But Rudy, Gran’s an old woman,” said Mammy. “She’s nigh ninety, if she’s a day. Nobody knows how old she is. She might could be a hundred even.”
“She ain’t too old to be traipsin’ all over the mountain, grubbin’ up all the young trees. Anybody that takes as much as one berry offen my place, has gotta give me half of it.”
“Looky here, Rudy,” warned Mammy. “She might set a spell on you. There’s some that says——”
“I ain’t afeard of her ’witchin’ me,” said Pappy.
“You might say she’s kin to us, too,” Ruthie went on. “My uncle Vertie married that niece of Granny Trivett’s, her that was Sue May Littleton.”
“And you call that kin?”
“Hit ain’t what you call nigh kin, but hit’s kin, especially when all Granny’s fifteen children has either died or moved to fur-off parts and forgot her, and she’s only got one little chick of a grandchild left to bide with her.” Ruthie’s voice grew more confident. “My own Granny’s dead, and so’s your’n. We’d ought to look after Granny Trivett like she was our own kin.”
“Nonsense!” said Pappy. “Her and that gal Sarey Sue air the troublesomest pair in the mountains. I aim to put a stop to their roamin’. I’ll have the high-sheriff get out a warrant for ’em, for trespassin’ on my land without leave. They ain’t never asked if they might could grub roots on my land. I don’t like hit, and I’ve ordered ’em to stop time and again. Now I’ll law ’em.”
“They ain’t got no other way to git a livin’, Rudy.” Mammy’s voice had lost its ring of assurance. “They’re poor—dirt poor.”
“Why don’t they bide to home and make their crops then, like other folks?” asked Pappy. “No—they go out roamin’ on other folkses’ land.…”
“You don’t own the whole of the mountain, do you, Rudy?”
“I’m goin’ down to the courthouse and git a lawyer to see how the deed reads and learn just where the boundary lays,” said Pappy. “That’s where I’m headin’ right now. Reckon I won’t be back afore night.” He paused, then went on: “That old witch had the gall to say she owned that whole stretch up yonder, under that great cowcumber tree. You shoulda heard her stand there and argify about hit. Said as how she had a paper hid somewhere that she couldn’t read, but she knowed hit said her Great-Granpappy owned the whole of this mountain.…”
“Likely he did, Rudy,” said Mammy, with spirit. “He was the first settler in these here parts. Everybody knows old Great-Granpappy Goforth come over from the old country way back afore the George Washington war, ’cause he couldn’t stand them kings a-rulin’ over him, and raised up a big family of four wives and twenty-two young uns and was a law unto hisself. Why, everybody in these hollers and coves is some kin to him, way back somewheres.”
“He takened it, you mean—just helped hisself to this mountain. But he lost hit all, bein’ so shiftless and lazy, long afore Granny Trivett was ever borned,” said Pappy. “More’n likely she don’t own ary foot o’ land at all. The deed’ll prove hit. I’ll get the high-sheriff to turn her out and get shet of her.”
“Throw her out of the house where she’s lived for nigh a hundred years? You won’t do that, Rudy,” said Mammy.
“She’s got plenty o’ kin down the country—let her go live with them.” Pappy’s voice was cold and harsh.
“Oh no, Rudy, she couldn’t live nowheres else.”
But Pappy did not seem to hear what Mammy was saying. “She’s got the gall to say she owns that great cowcumber tree,” he went on angrily. “I’ll haul her up in court.”
“What do hit matter who owns that big ole tree?” said Mammy. “Hit’s been a-standin’ there since long afore Great-Granpappy Goforth ever come to these mountains. Hit’ll be a-standin’ there long after all us Honeycutts is under the sod.”
“No, hit won’t!” said Pappy, with a heavy frown.
“What you mean, Rudy?” cried Mammy in a frightened
voice. “You ain’t fixin’ to chop hit … and log it down the mountain …?” She paused, then burst out: “Granny’ll law you if you cut down a ‘boundary tree.’ …”
Rudolphus Honeycutt suddenly noticed that his children were lined up in a row behind his wife. They were all standing solemnly, from Letty Jo down to little Mazie, big-eyed and silent, drinking in every word. Astonished and angered, he began to shout:
“Git to work, you-all! Bestir your lazy bones. See that you git all that corn planted by nightfall.”
“But we ain’t got enough seed-corn, Rudy,” Mammy reminded him.
“You woulda had, if you hadn’t spilled hit. I’ll stop at the mill and fetch some,” said Pappy, and then he rode down the hill and away. The clop-clop of Old Dandy’s hoofs came echoing back behind him.
They all fell to and not a word was said until the seed-corn was picked up.
“Mammy,” said Billy timidly, “you won’t let Pap cut down Granny Trivett’s big cowcumber tree, will you?”
“Hush your mouth, son. You’d ought to been workin’ instead of listenin’.” Mammy took up her hoe.
“If Pap’s gone to get the high-sheriff——” the boy began again.
“Don’t you worry, he won’t.”
“But he said he would.”
“He won’t,” said Mammy. “He don’t want to see no high-sheriff round here no more than Granny Trivett does. He’s got reasons.”
Billy pondered. It was all very puzzling. Why did Pappy go after the high-sheriff if he didn’t want him to come? Then he remembered No Man’s Cove down on the far side of the ridge, directly below the cowcumber tree. Was Pappy afraid the high-sheriff might find out that something funny was going on there? Did Pap know about it, or didn’t he? It was all very strange.
Billy puzzled it over and came to one conclusion. He must warn Granny. He wasn’t entirely sure of his mother. He knew her sympathies were with Granny, but she might not let him go to warn the old woman. She might be obliged to remain loyal to Pappy. Maybe that was why she said that Pap would never bring the high-sheriff. She said: Pap’s got reasons. What did she mean?
