by Dot Jackson
And he was not all that old either; truth is, I don’t suppose he was as old as Ben Aaron. But Bat Dung was peculiar. Quick to take offense at the smallest little thing. Like if somebody called him Bat Dung.
How he came to be called that, Bat Dung had a big high bluff at the back of his land and way up in the face of it there were caves. You could see ’em from the river. Looked like the eyes and nose in a skull, way, way up in the cliff. Looked like wildcats and panthers and things probably lived in there. Except you wondered how anything that didn’t fly could get to ’em.
One thing that went in there did fly. Bats. Of an evening the bats would roll out like a black cloud, darkening the sky. They must have lived in that cliff for a million years. Doing their business, dying, falling down, making dust. It was a regular guano factory back in there, and guano was about the most valuable fertilizer in the country.
Bat Dung did not fly. He used ropes. He had it fixed so he could let himself down from the clifftop on some kind of a rope contraption and he would go back in the caves and bring out guano. Bring it out by the bucket full, and let it down to the base of cliff on a pulley, where he could pick it up in his truck. He had himself a real good business, bagging that stuff and selling it.
The first time I saw him he brought a truckload of guano down to The Birches when we were working our first crops. Coy Ray did the trading with him. I would probably not have seen Bat Dung that day except that he came up to the spout to get a drink while I was out there filling the wash pot. And I thought to myself, now that is the dirtiest man I ever did see.
’Course, I never let on. I just put out my hand to him, I said, “How-d’y’do-sir, I am Seneca Steele.”
He glared and backed off. Left me with my hand out in space. For a minute I thought maybe it was me that smelt so bad. He did bob his head and lift his hat, but he was annoyed that I was there. I somehow got the feeling, as he drank with his dirty hand and got out his dirty handkerchief and dabbed his dirty mouth, that Bat Dung was no ladies’ man. He probably had faults, I said to myself, but womanizing would never be among ’em.
Which was a kind of a paradox. Come to find out, he was a brother to that awful Chick Aleywine that was supposed to be keeping house for Coy Ray. It looked like the only thing that pair had in common was a fear of soap.
But Bat Dung was a worker. Some people thought he was probably one of the richest men in the valley. He was not known to spend. “Parsimonious,” Aunt Nam declared, “is Bat Dung’s middle name.” I knew it wasn’t Charm.
Chick’s life was much more “loose,” so to speak. Chick worked mostly lying down, Ben Aaron said. Plenty of that kind of work in a sawmill town, he said. It didn’t sound too good. But anyway she was a jollier sort than Bat Dung.
The next time Ben Aaron came down I made it a point to find out some things. “I think I’m in love,” I said.
“Don’t get your heart broke,” Ben Aaron said. “Coy Ray ain’t about to throw Chick over. Have you seen the dinners on that woman?”
“No, and I surely hope you’ve not,” I said. I made my neck long so I could look down my nose and he turned a little bit red, which rarely ever happened. Then I told him about my meeting with the other Aleywine.
I acted us out, how it passed between Bat Dung and me at the spout. I thought Ben Aaron would laugh. But he did not.
“Mind how you deal with Mr. Aleywine,” he said. “I’d about as soon you never dealt with him atall.”
“Why?” I said.
He was puffing on his pipe, squinting off across the cove. Finally, Ben Aaron said, “He ain’t got no sense of humor.”
To make that point he told me how one time somebody painted “Bat Dung Express” on the passenger side of Bat Dung’s old truck. Said they did a real nice job. Big arty letters; the T was made like a bat dropping doo-doo. And Bat Dung drove all around the country with it there, and the more folks snickered the more puzzled and aggravated he got. Till he stopped at a filling station and went around to put some air in his tire. And saw it.
“He flung a fit,” Ben Aaron said. “Two boys standing there, he went at ’em with the dung shovel, broke one’s arm, made the other’n get a rag and kerosene and scrub off the paint while he held the shovel on him. And they hadn’t done a solitary thing but laugh.”
That wasn’t really all, Ben Aaron finally admitted. Bat Dung had a serious history of righteous indignation.
He was shell-shocked and in an Army hospital in France when the armistice was signed. He’d been gone from home over a year when he finally got back, and he walked in his own front door one day, so happy, thinking he would surprise his wife. Well, it was some surprise to both of them. There his wife was, big.
“He never said hello, yay, nay nor kiss my foot,” Ben Aaron said. “He just went right on past her to the wood box and took him up a pine knot and brained her. Just like that. There stood their little girl, looking. I guess she was, oh, four or five years old. And Bat Dung took that little kid by the hand, then, and walked off to town, and told the sheriff what he’d done.
“Of course they had to arrest him. Had to have a trial. But they couldn’t help but find that he was crazy. He had to go to the asylum for a little while; they couldn’t just let him come right back home.”
I wanted to know whatever became of that little girl. I wondered if she could be right in her mind, after she’d seen such a thing.
“Oh,” Ben Aaron said, “what really set Bat Dung to raving was sweet sister Chick getting that child to look after while he was locked up. You know he had to be thinking about what that heifer might be doing right before her or even teaching her to do. But it wadn’t but a few months till he got out, and first thing, he went and got the kid, and they went home.”
My cousin was looking down at his long, fine fingers which he was polishing with his handkerchief, studying about something. “Bat Dung keeps a sharp eye on that youngun to this day,” he said. “What little bit I have seen of her, she is a very nice young lady. But I am sorry for her, I’ll tell you, if ever she makes one step out of line.”
The fall of 1929 was not for celebrating in the world we had left behind, but Wall Street seemed like as far away as Jupiter from this place. Hardscrabble was nothing new along Big Caney. We had some sleepless nights but ours were full of coon dog songs and brandy and persimmon beer, and of fiddling and dancing and acting the fool. It was, as we were reminded often by our Baptist Cud’n Barzelai, a time set aside for the Devil and all his filthy works.
One afternoon the kids and I were down at the edge of the field loading pumpkins on the wagon when Rose came riding up from the ford on a mule. She was coming at a pretty good clip.
“Mr. Steele sent word by Pap, he’s comin’ down to get you directly,” she said.
“I can’t think whatever for,” I said. I had begun to notice that Ben Aaron liked to use Rose as an emissary, or diplomat, or buffer in his dealings. At least with me.
“It’s some kind of a farmers’ social thing up at the Forks,” she said. “What it is, there’s going to be this big dance. After the speaking. Mr. Steele thought you would like it ’cause him and Pap has promised to make the music.”
Oh well, then.
“I couldn’t think of leaving the children,” I said. I was wondering what I was going to wear and how long I had to get myself washed and get into it.
“Well if Pet and Hugh don’t care to come home with me I’d be glad they’d just stay the night with us,” she said. That meant, I figured out, that if they didn’t mind staying with her, she’d keep ’em.
“Are you not going to the dance?” I said.
“No mam. Chick and me, we got a bushel of fruit that needs to be done up. I think I’ll just stay home and make them apples into sass,” she said.
That didn’t sound quite right for a sixteen-year-old. Even one as old at heart as Rose. Anyway my conscience was rapping on me. I said, “Look here—you go to that dance. I’ll take care of all the kids.”
Yes, I did know. The Boulangers were Canadian lumberjacks, good musicians, too, with great dark soulful eyes and rosy cheeks and hair as black and shiny as a crow. Now THEY had charm.
“Well it was one of them took a shine to me and danced me all over that place,” Rose said. “Pap thought he was trying to get wise with me. But he wadn’t. He was real nice. Told me I was good looking, such stuff as that. And no more come of it than that. But Pap was mad for a week. He was swole up like a toad. He was almost as mad as Bat Dung.”
“Oh, Lord,” I said. “What did somebody do to make Bat Dung mad?”
Well, Rose said, that other outlandish brother had tried to dance with Sue Annie, Bat Dung’s daughter. “And Bat Dung come after him like a rooster. Scared the liver out of ’im.
“But even so,” Rose said, “that Frenchman he went to Bat Dung’s HOUSE to try to see Sue Annie. And he run into HIM instead. Come off with a big flat nose and a pump-knot the size of a horse apple on his head. But at least he come out…”
Rose leaned down, talking much lower, letting the mule graze. “The worst is—I got this at the mill while I waited for the meal yesterday—well, Bat Dung has got Sue Annie locked up. She can’t get out, can’t nobody else get in. Pap and me, we have our fusses. But Pap ain’t that kind o’ mean. Bat Dung will kill a man.”
I believed that was so. Now, what to do?
Rose studied the ground. “We can pray, I reck’n,” she said. “I tell you, folks don’t like to mess in another family’s business.”
As it was, Rose said, with her friend Sue Annie imprisoned, and no partner to dance with that Coy Ray would approve, she believed she’d sit this one out at home. “Mr. Sutherland, he said he might come help me catch up with my arithmetic tonight,” she said, pretending it was an afterthought. That young teacher, I had seen the tender way he watched this gilded creature who sat at the head of the “high school” row in his schoolroom. All wisdom and innocence, she thought she had a secret.
“Long as nobody comes to court me, long as it has to do with work, it’s all right with Pap,” Rose said, sighing. “Long as that old sow cat is there to watch me. Eh, law.” Ben Aaron’s assessment of the Chick matter crossed my mind. I could see her keeping watch with her green cat eyes, and her two-tooth grin.
One thing still did not jibe. “I’ve got no business to go to any dance, for I’ve got nobody to dance with either,” I said.
“I don’t know what Mr. Steele has got on his mind,” Rose said. “All I know is he never asked ME.” The implication was that for some reason—and I suspected that Rose knew exactly what it was—he had asked ME. And I had every right to be suspicious.
Rose hollered for my kids. “If y’uns want, we’ll all take our quilts and go sleep up in the loft, in the hay,” she said. That sounded good to me. Cole Sutherland taught them all, in school. Pet had a ten-year-old’s crush on him; wild mules could not keep her away from the Wilcox domicile since there was no doubt in any of our minds that he would be there. Hugh would joyfully have lived on Wilcox Ridge with all those red-haired, freckled little boys and their dogs; it was his escape from a female-dominated world.
So Rose handed them up behind her, onto the mule, and off they went, happy as larks. And I ran to the barn and fed the stock.
I washed, then, and put on a blue gingham dress I had made, after my Grandma Daisy’s pattern. I thought of Daisy, “the dancin’est woman alive,” as I fastened the straps on those black shoes with the clicky little heels.
Here I was, a runaway married woman hiding out in my granny’s house, getting ready to go to a dance, doing up my hair, powdering. It troubled me as I put a little grease on my eyelashes and stood in front of the old dresser mirror to study the effect. In the mirror there were two of us. I can only tell you. Two so alike they both were surely me, but one had on something white and her long black hair was loose and sort of floating. “Pinch a little color in your cheeks,” she said, in a voice that was not exactly mine. I pinched. And then I heard hoofbeats on the road, and Ben Aaron’s footsteps on the porch, and I was back alone.
It was the strangest feeling. So warm and loving. I was standing there dazzled, with Daisy’s black-fringed woolen shawl over my arm, when I heard Ben Aaron rap at the front door.
I never knew how my cousin might arrive. In a rickety wagon? A logging truck? This time he was on his big old gray horse, and he was leading a slick, dark little mare with a funny-looking saddle.
“Here—swing your leg over thisaway,” he said. “Did you not ever ride side-saddle before?”
“Mercy, no,” I said.
“Well this is to suit Aunt Nam,” he said. “She claims it’s vulgar for a woman to straddle a horse.”
It was a perch that would take some getting used to, but I smoothed down my skirt, and Ben Aaron rode around to the left of me, the better for us to talk. Which, for some curious reason we did not. No matter, I thought. The sundown behind the mountain was turning everything to gold. The hills below us looked like some grand jewel box had turned over on them, with rubies and emeralds thick all over. After we crossed the Hogback the river shined like a golden ribbon, in the deep dusk of the valley. We were part of the landscape; all around us was hushed and still.
And the moon came over the ridge, big and full, and it shined a chilly light. I pulled the shawl tight and studied my cousin Ben Aaron Steele. He was thinking. Something deep and troubling, he was thinking. Something grave. Whatever is going on, I thought, I will remember this night. If it is something bad I will remember the way this looks, the way we are, right now, and I will not regret it.
When we had passed through the Boney Creek Bridge I finally said to him, “I’ve got no business going to a dance. I’ve got no partner.”
“Aw,” he said, straightening up. “You know these ol’ play-parties. Somebody will turn up. You know they’s always some old widower or a foolish-witted boy or two around without a woman.”
That did not sound reassuring, somehow. I thought about that first dance I went to, down at Red Bank, where my dear Cousin Ben was the fiddler in charge.
“Will there be a fight?” I said. It was only curiosity.
“I hope not. But if there is,” he said, looking at me intently, “you light out of there for Nam’s as fast as you can go. Don’t even look back. You hear?”
I shivered. But I didn’t ask any more.
We went to the sawmill; one of the big, closed-in ramshackle sheds was cleared out and there was a meeting already going on. Outside there was a little knot of figures huddled. We got down and one of the lurkers took the horses, and Ben Aaron took me by the hand and we went up to the door and looked inside.
I had been away from town long enough that it startled me to see electric lights. I blinked and looked around. Every farmer in three counties was in there, it looked like. Somebody was reading a copy of Senator Borah’s speech about the plight of the farmer; it was about tariffs and stuff I knew nothing about. I mainly looked around to see who was there. I noticed my cousin was very soberly doing the same.
And then I saw Bat Dung, sitting over against the wall. There were a couple of empty chairs beside him, on one side. On the other sat a slim, dark-haired young girl.
Ben Aaron gave me a little shove inside and turned back to the dark and was gone like a shot. Before I could go after him old Vicie Hambright grabbed me and started a long account of her latest bowel complaint. My gut curdled while I stood there saying “Oh, how dreadful!” I was dying to know what was go
ing on outside.
There was a bunch out there leaning around on the Frenchmen’s old Model T. I could see the fire of their cigarettes. When I poked my head out into the dark I could make out Coy Ray, and the Boulangers, and Ben Aaron, and one other, Sheriff Wylie Brock. They were talking very low.
I caught somebody saying, “Kill ’er if he knew.” Lord save!
“Sweet Jesus!” said Ben Aaron. The fiddling Boulanger—I never could recollect their names—he was hunched over with his elbows on the hood of the car, and his head in his hands. And they huddled closer, and talked lower, and then Ben Aaron laughed out loud and said real low, “We’ll get ’er with a dollar.”
“Oh, he dearly loves the dollar!” somebody said.
And then they moved and stood in the doorway, just the fiddlers and pickers, waiting their turn. And there were more people coming to the dance, laughing and gossiping, and when the meeting was over, the band set up and twanged and tuned, and people moved their chairs back against the walls.
Bat Dung was up and steering his daughter to the door. She was looking at him, pleading. I could see her mouth working. He had her by the arm, tugging.
Now, Jack Garner was going to do the calling. He was the head sawyer at the mill. Ben Aaron was up there on the make-shift stage, whispering in Jack’s ear. And Jack clapped his hands to get attention. “Don’t nobody leave that likes to have a good time,” he hollered. “We’re agoin’ to have a GOOD TIME here tonight!”
’Course that just sailed by Bat Dung. I shuddered to think what he would call a good time. He was still making progress toward the door with his captive.
“Anybody leaves is gon’ be sorry—we got all kind of PRIZES coming up,” Jack yelled. “Gon’ be MONEY change hands here tonight. The real SPONDULIX!” There was a sort of a panicky edge to this exhortation. Like a preacher who had seen the fires of Hell.
Folks hollered and cheered. I noticed even Bat Dung seemed to be quite moved. He hesitated, and then he steered his girl back to their chairs. I hoped nobody else saw the victorious look she shot that fiddling Boulanger.
