by Dot Jackson
The band was finding their key and one of the sawmill boys came sidling up and asked me would I dance and I said yes. And the revelry commenced with “Cotton Eye Joe” and the whole crowd, nearly, in the circle. As we promenaded by I saw Ben Aaron looking at me with that same look Coy Ray must have used when he wilted Rose. And I thought, well, Rats! What did he bring me up here for if I was not supposed to dance?
Not everybody was having fun. The Aleywines sat tight against the wall. Bat Dung glowered. The girl looked absolutely pasty. She was a pretty little thing, with a fluff of dark brown curls, but nobody was inviting her to dance. I couldn’t imagine her daddy being a gallant dancing partner, even if a person could get near him. Whew! The bare idea of dancing with Bat Dung!
After a couple of tunes, the band just stopped, and Jack raised his hand and said, “All right now! The youngest married couple here, come up and get a prize!” There was mumbling and craning and a pair came forth, they were fifteen and sixteen, and their dewy faces shined when the boy pocketed a five-dollar bill.
Now I wasn’t about to let my cousin’s hard looks cow me, but I thanked my partner kindly and went and took a seat beside a stout lady who was gasping and fanning. And Ben Aaron sat down upon his barrel, where he always sat to play, and lit his pipe, and Coy Ray laid his banjo down and hunkered down beside him, to rest, and the Frenchmen took up their guitar and their fiddle and began one of those metronome reels—you know, where the guitar goes ump-thunk, ump-thunk, like the ticking of a clock, and the fiddle-dee-fiddle-dums are as precise as cross-stitch. They were so good and regular I knew if I danced to that I would fall down.
And then they were stopped. In mid-swing. Jack called up the couple with the most children and there was all that hoorah again, and a skinny little bald man and his big rosy wife called out, “Seventeen!” and trotted up to get their crisp five dollars.
I noticed that Bat Dung was getting more interested. Five dollars was a lot of trips back into those dark holes with a guano bucket. I also noticed some agitated whispering between Ben Aaron and Jack. Ben Aaron was rubbing his hands and frowning. Every little bit, they would glance down at certain ones but plainly did not want us to notice. Whatever it was he had been thinking about all night, Ben Aaron had not made it work, quite yet.
So he started the band off on a dreamy, draggy waltz, very slow. I stole a peep at Bat Dung and I had a mean idea, I wondered if they would think to give a prize for the dirtiest neck. But no. Jack called for the oldest mule that had made the trip that night, and that took some hollering and debate and finally an old man who looked to be a hundred yelled out in a quavery voice that he had ridden there on one that was thirty-one. And he hobbled off with another five dollar bill. I wondered who was handing out all those bucks behind the scenes.
Well, the band took a break, then. Jack said, “Now don’t nobody go away—the BIG prize is yet to come!” I wondered what it was. I had an idea it wasn’t going to be real free.
They brought out sawhorses and boards for tables, and the ladies set out sweet cider and tea cakes, and the men were ambling slyly out to their cars and wagons, and lingering, smoking, passing the demijohns and fruit jars around and coming back refreshed. I decided to go speak to that Aleywine girl, Bat Dung or no. I would offer to bring them some cider, and I had started over that way when Ben Aaron strode up and got me firmly by the elbow.
“I want you to go sit with Bat Dung Aleywine,” he said. “And I want you to get him to dance. I don’t care how you do it, you just get him to dancing and keep him dancing no matter what.”
I opened my mouth to protest but he looked so deadly serious that I just nodded, and edged around the crowd. Somebody was yelling at Ben Aaron to get back up and play. There was a lot of whooping and clapping going on and he started to go up, but then he ran back and caught me again, and whispered desperately in my ear, “And for God’s sake, remember his name ain’t Bat Dung.” Then my cousin loped back to the stage and pulled his barrel forward and sat on it, and somebody hollered, “The Devil’s Dream,” and he began to play.
I slipped through the crowd until I got to Bat Dung. Er, Luther. I took Sue Annie’s hand, it was cold as a frog. She was such a slight thing, with her heart-shaped face and little pointed chin, her gray eyes full of suffering and her olive skin so pale. I told her I was Rose’s neighbor, and how sad I was that Rose couldn’t come tonight. I asked would she like some cider, since it was plain her daddy would not budge, nor let her, either.
She gave me a wan little smile and said yes, thank you, and I went and brought us all a drink. And then I took my seat by Bat Dung. He was listening raptly to the fiddling.
There were a few men that had been out to the wagons who came in frisky and commenced stomping and kicking around. Then lo and behold a hefty lady joined them, holding up her skirts. And one by one young girls came forward, wholly in the spirit, dancing up in front of a man and matching shuffles and flinging heels. I was entranced. My eyes were glued on them. There was a frantic quality to the fiddling; the dancers’ heads bobbed like corks and their feet were a blur. And yet they looked in their faces so blissfully relaxed, their legs independent of the rest of their bones and brains, following the dictates of that mesmerizing tune. Nothing else in the universe mattered.
When they had run down Ben Aaron sat mopping his brow while Jack proclaimed the high point of the night.
“All right, neighbors, here’s what you’ve been awaitin’ for. I’ve got a twinny…dollar…BILL here in my hand.” (He flourished the twinny…dollar…BILL.) “And it’s agoin’ to some lucky couple here tonight. Now. You boys out-tair that think you can dance. Catch you a good breath and a high-steppin’ womern. ’Cause you’re gonna need ’em both tonight!”
Well. There was a general stirring around, looking around and considering. Weighing chances. Jack’s hollerin’, “We gon’ start this music, start the circle movin’, keep it amovin’. Couple hangs in the longest, buck and squaw, gon’ walk off with this TWINNY DOLLAR BILL! These musicianers, Brother Wilcox, here, Brother Steele, the Brothers Boulanger, Brother Spivey, back ’air, they’ll hep you keep ahoppin’, they’ll lead and inspire you, as long as you can stay in this circle and dance. Ain’t that right, boys?”
“Eah. Yes-SIR. That’s the truth!”
The musicianers were plunking and re-tuning. I could feel one’s eye on me, sharp as a hawk’s.
Strange matches were being made on the floor, for this strange game. There was a lot of laughing and horse-trading. One real big lady in front of us was trying to peddle off her man to a young, strong girl. “We’ll split that pot!” she said. Old men were willing to trade off lively-dancing wives. Half a twenty-dollar loaf was, after all, ten dollars; it was hard times. Girls who could dance like that, or would show it, were a whole sight scarcer than men. It was the men who strutted their tail-feathers and danced like cocks. When a woman did it, she was remembered. I heard it again, in my head. “Daisy McAllister. The dancinest woman alive.”
A couple of men cast looks over at me, but where I was sitting made them think better of it. The raggedy circle grew on high hopes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bat Dung make a motion to get Sue Annie up to dance. It was a half-hearted move; he knew it was futile. She was sitting with her eyes half-closed, with her head leaned back against the wall like she was about to puke. But he got up. And finally she got up, and shivered, and hugged her shoulders and sat back down. Her eyes got wide as something wild’s. Her face was bluish, like skim milk. Either the girl was mortally sick, or she was petrified. She darted another quick look at the Frenchman. The sweat was rolling down his face. His shirt was stuck to him.
The caller looked out over the assembly. “I see some folks ain’t even game to TRY,” he said, incredulous. “Who’s gon’ let all this money go without a TRY?” Bat Dung puffed his cheeks and blew a dejected sigh. Ben Aaron was glaring slits through me. I turned to Bat Dung. And what do you think? Bat Dung was turning around to me. Why, it was th
e most natural thing in the world.
“What say, Missy—will we win it?”
“Why, thank you, B…Luther! We will try!” I said. And I rose and took Mr. Aleywine’s arm, and asked the blessing of his daughter, whose eyes were sparkling with tears.
“I hope you good luck,” she whispered.
I couldn’t even answer. You too, I thought. You too.
Don’t know why this stays with me but the start-off tune was “Bile Them Cabbage Down” and we were caught in it like leaves in a whirlpool. Shuffling, stomping, shuffling, stomping like some kind of drum. Fast. I wished it was not so fast. A couple of times I saw my partner look back to see how his girl was passing her time. And then he got so caught up, so oblivious, we were flying. It was like a stampede, the pounding feet, and the bystanders were clapping and stomping while the sea of denim and feed-sack prints rose and fell, rose and fell with that driving beat. For the first time in a dozen years, I bet, Bat Dung was grinning. He was having a good time.
There was no break in the rhythm, not one lost beat when Coy Ray moved up front with his banjo and slipped into his specialty, slick as grease. Tom Spivey plunked behind him on the bass and in that false-high, minor-keyed nasal whine, commenced to singing, “Run nigga run nigga run nigga run nigga pateroler gonna gitchee pateroler gonna gitchee, Run nigga run nigga run nigga run nigga pateroler gonna gitchee better git away…”
It was hypnotic. I could feel the swamps and cotton fields under my feet. Out of pure terror I could have danced a hundred miles. Nobody would notice that there was only one fiddler now, a tall, gray-headed man, my cousin Ben Aaron. None of us could know the fearsome crisis going on outside, as the Frenchman cranked, jumped in, swore, jumped out, cranked again. A confederate cranked and the engine turned and died. Turned and balked. Turned and shimmied into life, sputtering, shuddering, backfiring like a gunfight.
On and on the circle went, panting, groaning, on went the red faces, bobbing by. Sweat streaked Bat Dung’s face and made black puddles on his collar. He danced me up and down like I was a wood doll on a stick. He had this peculiar hopping hitch to his step, and he was energized a lot by the sight of others dropping out. He would not drop out. He was unbeatable. He was crazy. He encouraged me as best he could: “Git yer secont wind, Sissie.” And that had its problems too.
But there is such a thing. It came in the oddest way. It was as though something jerked me up by the hair, straightened my back, lifted my ribs. I felt it in my nose, and my eyes. It was like I was somewhere else, and had just put down fifty pounds. I wonder now if it had something to do with the countenance of my cousin, who never took his eyes off us for an instant.
Tune after tune. Just to be sure. My legs were like jelly. “Old Joe Clark,” they had no bones at all. “Soldier’s Joy?” Whose joy? I was sinking. Why would my Ben Aaron, who loved me, try so hard to kill me? I retched. The lights went dim. We were turning, turning, like leaves in Seven Mile Branch. Turning like the skinny wheels of a T-Model Ford, spinning, leaping, rolling, whirring, joyously showing the town of Caney Forks their dust. Gone.
So was I gone. But not for long. Not so anybody noticed. I woke in a chair, panting, and they hadn’t missed me at all. Ben Aaron was fanning me with his hat that smelled of sweat and sawdust. Sweet. He was all joy. “I think we ought to make that twenty dollars each,” he said. “I’ll match that twenty dollars!” (I would figure up later how much this escapade had cost him.)
Bat Dung was jubilant. People were pounding him on his soaking back, going on over him, and somebody gave us each a swig from a fruit jar, and it burnt like fire.
This might have been the happiest moment in Bat Dung’s life. He looked around to share it with his daughter. But she was gone.
Ben Aaron slipped me out and deposited me in the sheriff’s car, and the sheriff brought me to Aunt Nam’s for the night. I had visions for a while that Bat Dung would figure the whole thing out and come looking for more of his style of vengeance.
Truth was, I didn’t see him anymore till nearly spring. I was down at Ollie Trotter’s, buying onion sets. And Bat Dung was there. Only I almost didn’t know him. He was clean and shaved, had on nice clean clothes.
He showed me a little sailor suit he was fixing to buy, a tiny blue suit with a whistle on a cord tie at the neck. He was taking it to Canada, he said. Catching the train in Red Bank on that very day.
He pulled a wrinkled letter out of his breast pocket and unfolded it for me to read. “Dearest Daddy,” it said. “We have a baby boy. His name is Jean-Paul Luther Boulanger. He will be christened the first Sunday in March. We would be real glad if you could come.”
22.
OLD TERRORS, NEW DREAMS
SLEEP ON, BIRD. THERE’S A HAIR-PULL FIGHT GOING ON BACK IN the hemlocks, but you needn’t pay it any mind. Owls have got a nest back in there and they quarrel. Don’t know if it’s him and her going at it or if she’s got a boyfriend that intrudes sometimes.
But it brings back that first fall; first time I heard that I thought for sure it was the boogerman about to get us. Still had the quilt up over my head when the kids woke up and said, Hey! Listen at the owl-fight! They’d heard ’em up at Coy Ray’s and loved it. So have I, ever since. It brings back a happy time that makes me ache to remember it.
I guess partly it was so new, and free. I always think of it when the fog is full of the smell of late apples, or when the moon comes up big and orange, over the ridge. Oh, the most is the smell of persimmons all mushy on the ground. There are so many on this place. Nam knew where the best lady-trees were; only the ladies had fruit. She cautioned us to watch ’em, to let the ’simmons dangle like little Christmas balls on their bare limbs, till they were frosted the color of sunset and so heavy with sugar they’d fall. Anybody that robs a persimmon tree before it’s ready to share gets a mouth full of repentance.
Clear nights when I would lie sometimes just too stirred up, I guess, to go to sleep I could hear Coy Ray’s coon dogs, singing along the ridge. Oh I know I ought to have been sorry for the coon and all that but most times the dogs were more noise than threat. A half-witted coon is smarter than a dog. And I would lie back and listen, wrapped in the wild sweetness of the night.
I said that one day to Ben Aaron when we were out with Coy Ray, stacking stovewood. I said how much I loved it.
“Eh, law, ’simmons do bring the possums out. That possum music’s mighty sweet I know,” he said, making a big yawn. Coy Ray drew back a pine knot and glared and scrinched his teeth. The vilest insult you could pay a man was to hint that his coon dog might hunt possum.
We would keep a fire going, then, most all the time. The mornings would be sparkly with frost; I could hear the children’s feet crunching a long way down the road, where the ground would freeze and spew up. The days were getting short. The kids would not be home from school before the long, cold shadows.
I made it my pleasure to spend a lot of time in the woods. I picked up great sacks of hazel nuts and hickory nuts and walnuts and chestnuts and at night we would sit by the fire and crack nuts and pick ’em with a hairpin. The kids were not enthusiastic except that Nam had offered five cents a cup for walnuts for her Christmas cakes. They were the very dickens to shell but the money talked. So they picked.
And we brought down hampers full of books from the attic, and lit the lamps and read by the fire. It made me feel close to our folks, sitting on their hearth, reading their dusty old dog-eared books. They had marked places with broomstraws and slivers of dress-goods. There was a pulverized brown thistle marking a page in the Life of Burns; it was at a poem that went, “Farewell, my friends! Farewell, my foes! My peace with these—my love with those—The bursting tears my heart declare, Farewell, the bonny banks of Ayr.”
It would have been one of the old ones, I thought, a hundred years ago, that put that homesick flower there. And I wondered about another one, I remember; somebody had marked Gray’s “Elegy,” in another poetry book, with a yellow baby-curl tied with a
faded blue ribbon.
Somebody had loved horses; there was a set of leather-bound horse-breeders’ journals with the most beautiful pictures of race horses. And somebody read a lot in Latin; there were several Latin books. And somebody read in French.
One awfully pretty day at the end of October, Ben Aaron came by to get (he said) a bucket of persimmons. Nam wanted to make a pudding. I had made a couple of pies, and we heated up the soup-pot and had a little dinner, just Ben Aaron and me. He acted preoccupied, somehow. He picked up a little book of French poetry that was lying on the kitchen table, and thumbed through it, and sort of absent-mindedly stuck it inside his jacket.
I said I’d go with him, down to the grove to pick up ’simmons, and we went along down the field, and he was so quiet, and I said, What was the matter? Well, he said, sighing, he had heard on the radio that the stock market was just in a terrible dive. Some rich people were ruined. People were jumping out of windows.
“What is that going to mean to you, you think?” I said, not seeing any way it would mean a thing to me. I took his arm and we walked along, through the warm dry grass.
“I expect no more than I’ll let it,” he said. “We’ll weather it.”
We found a lot of persimmon trees, along the edge of the birch grove. Most of the fruit was fallen and shrivelled but we filled the bucket, and ambled back up the field. Slowly. And we came to a big rock and he sat down in the grass and propped his back on it, and I sat down by him and spread my skirt down over my feet, and it was warm, there, in the sun, and the dead grass smelled so sweet. And he pulled that French book out of his jacket and read to himself, a little while, and then he read to me. He read beautifully.
“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked him. I remembered what Nam had said. I was thinking how Mama’s face would look if she could see this.
