The Appalachian Chronicles: Shades of Gray

by Seneca Fox

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  Startled by the sound of footsteps, I sat-up and looked out my tent. “Betty?” I whispered. There was no reply. As the dream faded and my eyes adjusted to the faint light, I looked around intently, but no one was there.

  “Did I say, Betty?” I asked myself before I smiled at the memory of a woman walking up the driveway that led to my boyhood home. Betty visited our home once a week. She helped cook, clean, and take care of Max and me while our Mom went out for the day. I was no more than five or six years old when I last saw her; until today, I hadn’t thought about her in years. As I sat remembering Betty, I was filled with an old, yet warm and comfortable feeling.

  As a child, I had a loving relationship with Betty. She was always kind. She knew how much I loved mashed potatoes and cookies. Some days, when she had enough time, she would peel potatoes, boil them, and then whip them and lather them with more butter than any modern, health-conscious cook would use in a week. On other days, she would make cookies or brownies. Max and I always argued about who got to lick the spoon. When she was tired, she would sit and close her eyes. “Are you asleep?” I would ask.

  “Just resting my eyes, child. Just resting my eyes.”

  Betty was a large woman. I don’t know that she was tall – adults always seem tall to children – but her ankles were thick with edema and she waddled when she walked. Her arms were sturdy. Some days when the work was done and we were tired, she would sit on the couch and I would crawl up next to her and lay my head in her lap. She would hum and gently scratch my head. I was lucky – everyone should be so lucky. Betty was the first person outside of my own family that showed me what it meant to unconditionally love someone.

  I started to hum – the same spiritual that I often heard Betty hum. She hummed with a soft, deep resonance. Mine was suppressed, inhibited by the concern that I might wake someone. I hummed for a few seconds before a revealing thought occurred to me. “Max? Why, it’s the same… ‘Swing low…’ Wait a minute.”

  The connection was perplexing at first. But, the more I thought about Betty and Max and the fact that he often whistled the same song, the more I remembered pieces of other events, events that were previously a mystery to me. I recalled my mother watching television and crying at the sight of a young black man standing stoically in front of a crowd of white people as they spat and shouted at him. She called to my father, “Honey, come here.”

  When my father entered the room he asked, “Is that Betty’s son?” My mother nodded. “Oh no,” he said.

  Betty’s house was burned a few days later. No one was hurt, but when my father drove by he said, “Son of a bitch, I knew something like this would happen.” Minutes later we stopped at another house. Betty, her son, and several other people were sitting out on the porch. My parents and Max got out of the car. They asked me to come, but I was frightened by the many strangers standing around. Betty and her son talked with my mother and father. Max stood quietly next to my father who was resting his hand on Max’s shoulder. After talking for a few minutes, my parents hugged Betty, and my father shook her son’s hand. When Betty reached out to hug Max, he instantly wrapped his arms around her waist and would not let go. My mother and father finally pried his hands loose, pulled him away and returned to the car. Tears were streaming down his face – Betty’s too.

  As best I can recall, I asked, “What’s wrong, Daddy?”

  He answered, “Betty has to move away.”

  “Why?”

  “Because bad people burned down her house and she has no place else to live.”

  “Where will she go?”

  “New Jersey,” he said.

  I sat there quietly for a minute, trying to comprehend all that I was witnessing. I realized that Betty and her family were lucky to avoid having been hurt by the fire or the people who started it. I also knew that New Jersey was far away and that we might never see Betty again.

  As we drove away, Max clawed at the window, “Betty, Betty,” he cried. His body was shaking. I was hurt too, but it was Max’s reaction that I vividly remember. I doubted that the kind of pain he was feeling could ever be relieved. As I listened to Max’s sobs, I felt compelled to say something. The only words that my juvenile brain could summons were the words that I’d heard my father say when he drove by the smoking remains of Betty’s house. “Son of a bitch,” I repeated.

  Sitting, half-in and half-out of my tent, recalling the way I felt when my father drove away and left Betty and her family behind, I suddenly understood that my feelings where stronger than I had wanted to admit. Fragments of sentences spoken by Gilbert and Art, as they argued about the differences between neo-Confederates and white supremacist darted around in my head. I saw myself standing at the edge of the circle of tents talking with the Confederate reenactor as the banjo player repaired his instrument. I relived the moment I almost fell into Leland’s tent, the moment when his son spoke of not being prejudice. Visions of the remains of Betty’s house smoldering and Max crying out when he realized that he might never see her again made me angry. Then there was Max sitting alone by the fire, swirling his coffee cup, whistling and, on some level I believe, remembering Betty. She and her family had been assaulted in the ’60s, a time when many brave men and women, mostly black, suffered because they stood up to the hatred spat upon them by bigots. Some, like Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and too many others died at the hands of white supremacist – died as they called to others to rise up against an ancient form of hatred.

  Thoughts and recollections circled though my head until I grew frustrated with my inability to clear my mind; so, in a desperate attempt to break the cycle of obsessive thoughts, I decided to write in my journal. As a teenager, I learned that whenever I became agitated or angry that merely attempting to write down my thoughts had a calming effect. So I grabbed my backpack, released the drawstring, and pulled the pack open. A vintage, Boy Scout cooking kit was stored in a mesh stuff bag that was setting in top of the pack. When I pulled the bag out the kit fell onto the ground. I picked the kit up, intending to put it back in the bag; but, as it passed in front of my face I caught a glimpse of an odd reflection. Slowly, I raised the kit up in front of my face again and I saw a gruesome distortion of my own reflection.

  “Whoa, there’s a face only a mother could love,” I said before I laid the kit down and reached for my journal.

  A few minutes later I was writing furiously...