Coming to all bound up, Painter heard Hazelwood to say we should best shoot him on the spot and sling him down the shaft of an old tin mine to save the county money and the poor victim much discomfort and trauma. This was laughed off by some of us, though Pink alleged as this was far the best suggestion of the campaign. For my part, I am sorry to say, the proposal seemed not without merit, but I registered at once we were too many eyes and tongues to keep such a course concealed. The banter seemed to have a sobering effect on the accused, however, who was thereafter compliant except on the matter of his army hat, which he insisted in vain we fetch from his camp among the hemlocks. Watching in lantern light his coiled hair as he sat the jack on our descent, I could not but think this was all a tainted business, neither clean nor worthy of our charge.
After the prisoner was delivered to Lexington the next day in sheveled and humbled state, the posse was dismissed, and the cost of this chapter of the manhunt to the county has been in excess of thirty dollars, including rations, grain for the horses, and three dollars bounty for each volunteer. The distance covered in the hunt, much of it through rough mountain, could scarce be less than a hundred miles, though the map reckoning from Lexington to the headwaters of the Pedlar and back is but forty-two miles. I must continue to implore the county to ordain a constable to take jurisdiction in the Irish Creek region, as upheavals there are frequent and the labor and cost of enforcement from town prohibitive. Though yet a somewhat hale specimen, I do not possess the resources for many more such misadventures, and I relish them not at all.
Tonight I will cap my pen with some small satisfaction and truckle off to bed somewhat less burdened. If the trial unfolds as I foresee, I can either stay my current course or option for the stabling enterprise in the autumn with assurance of widespread support, not to mention Adair’s delight, which is nearly enough to put the heart back in me.
~ * ~
Final Testament of Brodie Painter, September 7, 1906
She said he would not be about, would be down in the levels to fetch a spool of wire and a rabbet saw. That is the story I opened to lawyer Spencer, but he allowed as how it would not wash in court. There was a prejudice against me among the hatefuls, and I’d have to make shift for myself. This being my last shot to spill the whole tale with noose-day just around the bend, Mr. Prescott, please be kindly to mark it all down, spike to scut.
As I was saying, Ina and me was no strangers one to the other. There’s many a time we had spoke previous, and she had showed me her sweetmeats when I first chanced on her up in the orchard. We had enjoyed full congress every occasion afterwards, as I honed for her steady. Though I am an old hand at scamping about, swiving and giving mustache rides to loose gals from here to Christmas, she was the sort that put your sense away from you, made you give up all other donies and train your heart on her. I thought she seen it that way too, and when we twined, I law, it was like a fire on fire. She made my blood to sing.
I had been paying her that fashion of courtship for two months and had already gave her patent slippers and a red frock when Pogue discovered the pretties and wrenched the matter out of her, and what she pleaded to me was he was agreeable to my repeating so long as he reaped a full dollar each time I called, on account of her age. He would make hisself scarce off with the hogs or out after squirrel, except I could oftener hear him blowing that French harp up in the brush. Spook music is what he made, and it was no aid to love dealing and rankled me somewhat. Still and all, we had some merry times, and when I debouched, I would leave my dollar on the keghead.
That was the bargain, and it suited me well enough till she commenced to whisper that himself was rutting at her too, which was by my reckoning full tilt unnatural. A Pogue will do that, you know, will jape even his mother when in a needful state, and there’s slathers of them down in southside who show the nasty fruit of it. She asked would I spirit her off, as she knowed the whereabouts of his money poke and had some kin over to Kentucky we might veil with and farm moon till Pogue turned over a new leaf, which gave her the giggles. You know, his name. Though I had done struck my bargain with him and spit over it, that was in ignorance, and I won’t suffer nobody cutting my territory like that, won’t tolerate it.
So that afternoon I come up the wash expecting nothing but a couple of gills from the jug and needling her to the bone, which I done fine and fancy. She has all the buck and moan of a Cuban washwoman, you know. It was a mighty tussle. Later, whilst we was laying up in the shucks listening to the quillerees high in the oak woods, she was snuggling while I stroked her slow along the moosey. As she is honey-voiced, she commenced to croon a little infare, and then we fashioned out our plan to make tracks off for blue grass in just a week, when Pogue would be off trading his angel’s teat whiskey. I knowed well my brother Dari would help smuggle us out in a freight wagon, then onto a slow train, and no man be the wiser where she was gone. It was a sweet thought, and whilst I savored it, my heed was down. I was a mooncalf in full daze.
I know you have cause to judge me on further accounts, the killing of Cash and more trifling matters. If ever a man needed a view window in him, Cash was it. He had cleaned my brother’s plow twice over the matter of one sorry salt lick, and had once slandered my mama to boot, so his calendar was out of pages. He gloried in everybody’s miseries. I admit to plugging him with my daddy’s pitted old 32.20, but don’t be forgetting he had a rifle gun hisself.
There’s always those who put the stain on ridgers like me just to even things. I can shoot sharp and ride like a demon and cipher faster than a storm bolt. My whiskey is always silver bead, and I can ringer a horseshoe most every time. I can shear muttons, skin and stalk and witch wells. I have always been a step ahead of others, and the snake-faced bastards didn’t savor it.
Much accused meanness I am lamb-innocent of, but I have drawn slurs like a gutted cur draws flies. It is no doubt the Melungeon in my blood that makes me the blame goat for so much, and even in the Spanish war I found charges heaped against me before ever I could kick off the blanket of a morning. If I am guilty of half what they have laid to my door, let my spirit take flame in hell’s hottest stall. I have stilled and scrapped and raised my voice against the heel of lily-white men who wish to scoundrelize us of color. I have thumped those who come up against me and swapped rich people’s cattle for binge money, but I never raped at that girl or any other, nor needed to, and what Pogue got he requisitioned on his own account. He will be little missed, especially among those who relish real music.
He come stomping up the porch afore I knew he was on the mountain a-tall, and he called out her name like a he-bear roaring. Ina run out the room with the quilt wrapping her while I snatched my trousers up and legged in. He was storming at her, and when the smack of his hand on her face sounded, I run out the feather curtain and into the kitchen room with my boots in my hand. He saw me then, mister, and slung her aside like a poppet. I could see his face was the hue of lean meat, and he shouted out, Painter of the painter cats, you have brought your prides out into the open in my house onct too often. That was when he snapped the twine round his neck and drew the straight razor from his shirt front. I could see it was a nicked and ugly thing, rusty and long unused for shaving, as Pogue’s whiskers were end-of-winter.
He started circling and me circling backwards till I spied the meat knife amongst the dishes, so I seized it up and took a crouch to fend him off. He jumped and I jumped, and it was arms and legs a-tangle for a minute there, me not sure where he left off and myself started, but for his teeth in my neck. Then in a quick jab I drew blood from his belly, and when he staggered back, I went slashing random-like and got the throat, I reckon. I was right drunk, but I am not a man to mess with. If you have seen a pig cut, you have seen that much spray, but if not, you can’t even speculate, so I must of got him. He went to knees, then face forward, and the girl was screaming like a wildcat till something over her head seemed to catch her voice and bandy it back down. That was when she went dark and
dropped to a heap on the floor.
The boards was loose fitted, and I could see young shoots prying green underneath and thought I might be sniffing the tang of new-sprouted mint. When I leant over to stir Ina that we might scape the place together, I slicked on what must have been his blood leak and fell on my backsides hard, for which there was nothing but to laugh it. All the bouts and skirmish I had been through, and never before ripped a man’s life out of him, excepting Cuba and also Cash, but the court quit me on the Cash matter. It takes a part out of you, killing a man. It sucks you down like a water whirl. Now here 1 was over a crow-haired, scarce-hipped girl-child all trussed up in the kind of trouble that won’t rub off with neither words nor worry, and here I am now about to climb my last stairs.
Laying there, she was blue in the face as a possum’s cods, and tossing dung and dogwood on the coals in the stove box, I kettled water and thrashed about for some mixings. I was still blurred in my sight with the whiskey and having some trouble sorting things. What I found was a honey jar with a mouse drowned under the comb, but I poured off the top and tippled a dad of blockade in to stiffen it. That and the cooked water I brought to her lips with honest regard, but once I roused her, she right off started to take Pogue’s part, weeping and carrying on like I was the varlet, and I couldn’t wedge in so much as a word but what she would scrowl out again. I never known the beat of it, and seeing no hope of our traveling plan coming to bloom at that point, I reckoned such as me had best be scarce when the world come to know whatever story she was fixing to tell. Couldn’t no good come of it for me, that was a sure fact. It was a red business all around.
Riddle me how you would of acted in such a mangle. I could figure the law would be on me like ducks on a crippled June bug, so I rifled and skeltered the place till I found the wall board warped out from prizing. Back there was the money poke, sure as ramps root neigh creek, and I took half the eagles, thinking Ina would need some her own self. Then I lit out, not giving a back glance.
What come strange to my ears in the court was all these other tales spun concerning my rangering about in the weeks following. What I really done was leg it down to Vesuvius and wait under Orion and the bears on a steep where the train would stop to take on water for steaming up the grade. Once on, I rode all about, hopping off for provender and some loft sleep, but high-tracking it from Green Cove to Damascus, Bansock to Luray, Lithia back up to Second Pigeon, steering clear of Lexington and its ward. I rode the Norfolk and Western back and fro all over the mountains, breathing in the smoke whilst it shadowed laundry on the line by daylight, laying on my back to watch it silvering against black night. All my running mates from the N & WI would surprise at their lunch pails or when they were frying up corn dodgers at railside. They credited the story I have rendered you and gave me forage, but I will not raise their names in this matter, as I know the law’s grudges do not die off easy.
This is my honest story of how a misfortunate man come to be painted as desperado. They come after me in their black coats like corpse birds and sneaked up on me asleep by my fire. They beat me and gave me the boot, called me nigger and spat in my face. They shoved and cuffed my whole family, too.
This is how a man with no evidence against him got hunted down by a pack of bounty hounds. Scribe this down right, mister, and you can show it to whosomever might have an eye for justice, ‘cause the public needs knowing even too late to save my neck what manner of rascals ran their statutes and how a man can suffer evil though he swore on the preacher book and let only unscutched truth cross his red tongue. I’ll sing the devil this same tune tomorrow in his crowded coal hole, Mr. Prescott. A man in the derbies and the scaffold’s shadow has no call to throw the lie.
~ * ~
Oral History, Staunton, Virginia: Ina Grove Fell, 1964
When I came to a woman was screaming through the rain. That’s what I thought. I didn’t rightly understand where I was, the room blurry with a funny smell, but I could hear her voice, all fury. A light was coming through the apple tree and then the window, a green light, and I thought it was going to sift through me like some loose flour. Thirst was what I felt, almost that only. I thought the scream was going to shake me back to darkness, and I was shivering. Then I knew the woman was that blue jay nesting in the north haw. I smelled the hard smell and saw a rough face moving between me and the green light, and then I felt sore all over, a slow ache that went sharp in my fork. My knickers were gone entirely, and all my clothes. I was twisted in a robe like a Bible wife, but it was a quilt. Things started to remember. The face was moving, and something rusty was dried on my legs, and something else. This feeling had been upon me before, but never so severe. I thought I would die and I wanted to die. I wanted that jay woman to cease screaming, but I was crying to match her, and I thought another bird like some sparrow with purling notes should light in the apple tree any minute and trill out so its song might lift me or duck me under for good. I might just drink it and be drunk by it and rise up invisible as a ghost and shed all my troubles. Woe be.
That was a long time back, and I was only a girl who saw blackbirds in her mirror and eyes of a cat. Some things you misremember, and others shimmer and divide up. I think my daddy used to say we tell stories to forget what we need to get behind us, but I have never told this one, since I was spared most of court. What I swore then was what I thought, and though I had been something of a wild girl, nobody had the right to do me like that and go free. Since Uncle Leaf was dead, it was best to forgive him any trespass or unseemly reaching and move on. I did. I moved on. I know that Painter pushed at me before and pushed till I gave in listening to the yellow jackets drilling windfalls, a red color like off the ripe fruit overhead. When he was done I felt different with a hard rank smell on my clothes and salt in my eyes, but he gave no gentleness, saying all woman folk are born with the round heels. Then he galloused up and said he’d see me again, not even looking back. I hoped he’d never.
When I saw Uncle Leaf sprawled in the blood, his eyes were open and baleful, glaring fierce, and I did not know if he was alive or dead. Stop hexing me, I shouted, and the other face was still moving around me, about the house, its voice saying calming things, but I was not calmed.
Some times you don’t want to say a thing as it will loose a whole waterspill of words you can’t bear to hear, the rushing of every fear you’ve ever had burning as it crossed your tongue. I was wracked and damaged, and my only close kin looked dead, no matter how angry his eyes, no matter how little pity he’d showed in his life. The other thing in the room was gone then, but I could taste honey. The watchbird had screamed itself from blue to red, and then it fell off. I went swoony again and slid into the dark.
That night the Io moth came to my window like a mask, its buckeye eyes boring into me. I had been often accused of making flirtation and primping, but this was a new thing, and I did not take pleasure from any of it at all.
Those years I worked for Granny Kate with the stain on my name, most people showed kindness, and I learned the ways of her milk cows and how to churn. Flies would light in the cow pies and then on the bucket rim. People drank it anyway. They didn’t see. She gave me Chichester’s English Pennywort concoction with a paste of her own devising, and what made me swell seeped out one night, but not without pain of the damned. Granny taught me her potions and poisons and how to gather makings off in the forest. Also to read. Four years after the misdeeds I climbed up after a Christmas snow shower with a jug of coal oil and splashed it about inside the rubble of the old place. I set the match and stood back, shivering under a rind moon, watching the boards smoke and catch and blossom. It was time to sear the ghosts out, time to send my girlish wall etchings back to whence they came, though they had once been my only true friends. I knew the hive in the walls was still and the bees sleeping in their wax wouldn’t feel a thing.
Only the spy apple tree by the window caught the fire, its limbs spidery against the winter air and then glowing. The house shouted and crashed,
black clouds coaxing night to hurry on, and when the roof caved, something inside me lifted, delivered me, and I was no longer so lost.
I became a woodsweed girl with pestle and mill and steam kettles, a whole cellar of concoctions, but when Granny Fell foxed out that my mama had passed over birthing me, she said I could be a thrush witch, named after the bush bird, and that was my main call, blowing the sick color from the throat of a child. I cut bloodroot and pulled sang. I gathered galax. I was a cat keeper and night-walker, a tender of gold bees, and I could sew and bantle, nurse and drive a nail straight to the heart. I was alone. I got by.
I won’t say there was no other. In the doughboy times I slipped off some and had no regrets, but I had already shut my heart and shot the bolt. It was just a letting go here and there, then back to my pets, my own cow barn by then with peafowl strutting. I would lie under the rhododendrons and stare a lady slipper in the eye. I was comrade to orchids and a friend to owls.
It was the year that rain was raining all the time, and I recall Granny wet and cold when she found me, me cold and wet too by then, because the roof was not tight. It was the year the ferro beetles showed up for their seven-year courtship, and what I heard them saying, even in town, was spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. It was a question why my uncle and another with skin so blue he was a dark flower at first would pitch into killing rage over me, as not one seemed to want much to do with me most days. That is the limitation of a man.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2006 Page 39
