The Hills Remember

by James Still

  “I’d buy me a broadside off the peddle woman,” I said. “I would, now.”

  Sid reached up and caught hold of the porch joist. He was that tall. A grin wrinkled his mouth. “They dropped no pennies in my pay pocket,” he said. “Get that Lott to beg you a broadside. He hangs around that Todd woman every chance. This morning I saw him standing in the road middle talking to her, standing there with his brogans hitched with yarn strings.”

  Harl struck his hands together, laughing. “I nigh broke my neck stumbling over Lott’s boots last night,” he said. “I tuk me a blade and eased it up through the eel-strings. They cut like butter.”

  “You oughten to do it,” I said, feeling sorry for Uncle Lott. “It’s not honest.”

  “I’d give a pretty to stick him and Sim Brannon in that mine alley and set off a box o’ dynamite this side,” Sid said. “By grabs, I would.”

  They scrubbed their boots on the porch a bit more, clapped out the carbide flame on their cap lamps, and went inside. The floor was dark where they stepped, marking their way over the scoured planking.

  I pulled off my shoes as Father had done, tipping into the house. I set them on the hearth of the front room and looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Fat smells of soup beans drifted in from the kitchen, hanging among the beds. I stood on my toes, reaching into the clock, feeling behind the pendulum for the pennies kept there. I pulled them out, cupping them in my hand. There were four, worn and blackened, having no faces to speak of. “If’n I had me a penny—” I said aloud; and then I suddenly put them back, spying about to see no one was looking. I took my shoes and went into the kitchen. Father was warming by the stove. I stood behind his chair and looked over his shoulder, but I couldn’t raise the courage to ask him for a penny piece.

  Harl and Sid were already at the table. “The beans aren’t nigh done yet,” Mother warned, but they would not wait. They filled their plates from the boiling pot, whispering together as they ate. We heard Sim Brannon’s name spoken. Little wrinkles of anger dented their foreheads. Uncle Lott looked up from the corner where he was making a hickory whistle for Lark, a grain of uneasiness in his eyes.

  Lark heard too. He came and stood between Harl and Sid, not being the least afraid. “I seed Sim Brannon one time,” he said. “I reckon he’s the biggest man ever was.”

  Father chuckled in the deep of his throat. “The biggest man ever was come from a fork o’ Flat Creek,” he said, recollecting. “Died more’n thirty years ago, and he tuk a nine-foot coffin. Bates, his name was, kin to the Bateses on Shoal Creek. Stood seven feet six, in his stocking feet.”

  Uncle Lott leaned against the wall. He was cutting a blow notch in the hickory whistle. “Abraham Lincoln was a big man,” he said, “biggest feller I ever saw.”

  “You never saw Abe Lincoln,” Father said.

  “I never saw him in the flesh for truth,” Uncle Lott said, “but I saw a statue o’ him in Louisville once. It stood nine foot, if it stood an inch, and his head was big as a peck measure. Oh he had a basket of a head to carry his brains in.”

  “That was just a statue, a-made big and stretched out,” Father explained. “The man who hacked that rock picture carved him standing out on purpose.”

  Harl and Sid held spoons in their fists, listening to Father and forgetting to eat. Father never batted an eye telling this tale. It was the bound truth. “This feller Bates, he wasn’t just strung out tall,” Father said. “He was big according, head to toe. Three hundred and five he weighed, and not a grain o’ fat he had. I saw him pick up Podock Jones once, rocking him in his arms like a baby. I liked to died laughing, seeing ole Podock’s beard waving up and down, and him looking like a born dwarf.”

  “By grabbies,” Uncle Lott said, “I’m kin to the Bateses on Flat Creek.”

  Harl’s spoon clattered on his plate. “How much kin air you to that queen bee who peddles ballad verses?” he asked. The black bead of his eyes was on Uncle Lott. “I see you two forever swapping talk.”

  Mother opened the stove door and took out the cornbread. She shook the pan to see if the pones were stuck. “I hear Rilla Todd’s a good woman, and sets honor by her dead husband,” she said. “Got a homeseat her pure own. That’s more’n most folks can brag about.”

  “Her man’s been dead three years,” Harl said. “Three years buried and she hain’t married another.” He looked slyly at Uncle Lott. “I don’t figure she’ll be taking up with jist any ole drone.”

  Uncle Lott knicked at the whistle. The vein patches were bright on his cheeks.

  “That woman’s the best song scribe ever was,” I said. “Makes verses up right out of her head.”

  “Reckon she’d make a rhyme about Sim Brannon if something went bad wrong with him?” Sid said, stretching his neck to swallow.

  “Now, looky here,” Father warned, “Sim Brannon could break a common man down like he was a shotgun. I’m agin’ starting trouble.”

  “I wouldn’t be scared to tip him,” Sid said.

  “Sim’s been fair with me. Anything he’d name I’d stand by.”

  “Feller can’t make shoe leather digging that sorry bone vein. Had my way, the roof o’ that tunnel would be setting agin’ the ground.”

  Sid looked suddenly at Harl. He spoke, “If that tunnel was closed—” then bit his words off. They whispered together again. They pushed their plates back and went into the far room, and presently left the house.

  Before the beans were full done I tiptoed into the front room and felt inside the clock. I took the rustiest penny—so black it looked like a button. “I’ll put one back in its place the first chance,” I thought. “I’m just a-borrowing.” When I slipped it into Uncle Lott’s hand he spied hard, at first not knowing what it was. I whispered in his ear, and he grinned. “I’ll be seeing her tonight,” he said. “I’ll buy you a broadside for shore.”

  We sat down to eat. Our plates were filled with beans from the pot, the goblets poured full of buttermilk, the bread broken and passed. Uncle Lott ate hurriedly, and set off on the dark road, and we were alone in the house. There was none of Sid’s and Harl’s tromping in muddy boots, or Uncle Lott’s groans after a heavy meal.

  “It’s good to have a little peace,” Mother said. “It’s like heaven on earth.” The dread went out of her face. She glanced around the table and her eyes grew bright as a bird’s. “You’ve every one got buttermilk mustaches,” she said, laughing quietly. We wiped them off with the backs of our hands, and then we played a riddle game. Fern knew a pack.

  “Six legs up and two legs down, and that’s the way he went to town.” . . . “Nothing on God’s earth got legs on hits back, now.” . . . “Twelve pears hanging high, twelve fellers riding by; now Each tuk a pear, but left eleven hanging there.” . . . “By grabbies, that one can’t be.”

  Lark got down from the table and crawled about, blowing the whistle Uncle Lott had made for him. “I’m an engine pulling sixteen coal gons,” he said. While Mother washed the dishes we played crack-a-loo, pitching beans at a floor seam. Mother lifted her hands out of the dishpan. They hung like dripping leaves. Her face became grave, her eyes dulled. “Pity it can’t be like this every night of the world,” she said. “Living apart, having our own.”

  Lark went to sleep under the table. Father picked him up, taking him to bed in the far room. Suddenly we heard a quick step, and a sharp word Father had spoken to himself. He came to the door between, standing there holding a leather pouch. His face was tight with anger. He pulled the slip string of the pouch and thrust his hand in, unbelieving. “All my dynamite caps have been tuk out o’ this pocket,” he said. “What sort o’ rusty can that pair o’ witties be up to now?”

  Mother wakened me in the black of the morning, standing over the bed with a lamp. I saw the fright in her eyes, and her trembling hands. The glass chimney shook inside its ring of brass thumbs. She told what had happened to Harl and Sid—the little she knew, all not yet being known. “Living or dead, there’s no telling,
” Mother said. I jumped out of bed, and into my britches. I jumped out thinking of Uncle Lott and the pennies. “Two eyes, two pennies,” he had said, and now both Harl and Sid might be stretched out cold, and there would be nothing to hold their eyelids down. I was good scared.

  Uncle Lott’s bed was empty, the covers thrown back from the trough his heavy body made in the mattress. He and Father had hurried to the mine when the word first came. Harl’s and Sid’s bed hadn’t been slept in, and I thought how they had been buried all these hours, deep underside the earth, with nobody knowing whether they still drew breath. A chill fiercer than the cold of the room crept under my shirt.

  Drawing on a pea jacket, I went barefoot into the yard. The road was alive with folk shaken out of Sunday morning’s sleep, trudging over frosty ruts toward the mines. Daylight grew on the ridge. A smoky coldness hung in the camp. Men had their hands almost to elbows in britches pockets; women clasped fingers into balls against their breasts. Voices rang in the air, arguing. “Hit’s like it was with Floyd Collins. Recollect? Buried in that sandstone cave, yonder in bluegrass country.” . . . “What, now, would them fellers be doing in a mine, middle o’ the night? I ask you that.” . . . “Them Middletons hain’t caught in that tunnel. I figger hit’s just a general fall, the ground a-settling down of its own accord.”

  Fern came and stood beside me, watching, sleep still in her face. Three boys ran up the road shouting. “Look,” Fern said. “Yonder comes the fortune-telling woman.” I looked, picking her from the others. She came hobbling, her uncombed hair tucked beneath a coat collar; and she was old, old, and the seams of her face were like gullied earth. Fern drew back, speaking under her breath. “Now, never do I want my fortune told, a-knowing everything coming, a-knowing when I’m going to die.”

  Cold ate through the pea jacket. I shook. My teeth struck together. “I wouldn’t want a ballad writ about folks gitting killed in the mines neither,” I said. “I wouldn’t, now.”

  The sun-ball rose, yellow and heatless. The burning slagheap near the tipple wound its smoke straight as a pole into the sky. The chill drove us indoors, and we looked over the camp from our kitchen window, seeing the chimney pots were cold, the people all gone to the drift mouth. I begged to go. I cried a speck, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. “Wait,” she said. “Your Father said he’d send word.” And while we waited she brought a cushaw from the back porch, and began to peel off the mellow skin. “Three pies I’m going to make,” she said. “Harl and Sid’ll be starved when they get back.”

  Fern’s chin quivered. “Never a bite they’ll eat,” she said mournfully. “Their mouths shut for good, their eyes with pennies atop.” She crossed the room, and I knew suddenly where she was going. She went out of the kitchen. I heard the clock door snap. I stood by the window, as quiet as a deer mouse, scarcely drawing breath. She came back looking hard at me, knowing. She whispered to Lark and they both looked, eyes round with accusation.

  When the cushaws were boiling Mother got out a bag of cracklings. She crisped a handful of rinds in the stove. “Six pones o’ fatty bread I’m going to make,” she said. “Lott and your Father and all the other fellers digging will be hungry. Nary a bite they’ve had this living day.” She started a pot of shucky beans cooking; she opened a jar of wild-plum pickles.

  A granny woman came down from the drift mouth. We saw her through the window, her breath blowing a woolly fog. We hurried into the yard to stop her at our gate. “What have they learnt?” Mother asked.

  The granny woman cleared her throat. “Nothing for shore,” she said. Her voice was thin like a fowl’s. “There’s a chug o’ rock fell down, but no sound beyond. Feller says he seed them go in the mine last night. That’s all they know—jist a feller says. Oh never’d I trust a man’s sight Saturday after dark.”

  She moved on, grumbling in the crisp air, and we heard a tramp of footsteps on the road. The miners were going home. They came on by our house, blowing into their freezing hands. They huddled together against the cold, speaking hoarsely amongst themselves. “Them two hain’t there, and never was.” . . . “Aye gonnies, gitting a feller up with a lie-tale in the dead o’ Sunday morning. Hit’s a sin.”

  Morning wore away. We no longer looked out of the window, no longer hoping, believing that Harl and Sid were buried beyond finding. The shucky beans got done; the cushaw pies, yellow as janders, were shelved behind the stove. The fatty bread waited in pans to be baked at the last moment. Mother gave Lark a pickled plum and his eating of the vinegary fruit set my teeth on edge. Hunger crawled inside of me, though larger than any hunger, larger than anything, a knot of humiliation grew in my chest. It grew like a branching root. “If only I never tuk that penny piece,” I kept saying to myself, dreading the time when Mother would know of it, being sure Lark would tell, for he was only six and could not keep a secret. “If only I hadn’t borrowed—” And I looked up. We all looked, startled. There was Sim Brannon standing in the kitchen door, filling the space with huge shoulders and the greatness of his body. His head stuck inside the room, for the door was not tall enough.

  “We’ve come on that pair o’ rascals,” he said, his words and laughter sudden as a thunderclap. “They dinnymited the tunnel betwixt them and the opening, closing up that thin-vein holler where I try out my new diggers. They set the charge wrong and trapped themselves proper.”

  “Are they hurt?” Mother asked anxiously.

  “Not a scratch, and hollering to git out,” Sim said. “Everybody give up and left except Lott and your man. They scrabbled and they dug, and now they’s only a foot o’ rock betwixt. Any minute they’ll dig through. Oh I tell you, that Lott is a man-mole. I hired him square on the spot.” He glanced at the bean pot, the pies, the pickled plums. His lips slackened with hunger.

  “When the digging’s over,” Mother said, “all of you come and eat here. They’ll be plenty for all.”

  “We will, now,” Sim said gratefully. “I hain’t et since last night. We would o’ pretty nigh caved in if Rilla Todd hadn’t set a bucket o’ coffee biling for us at the drift mouth.”

  “Ask Rilla Todd to come too,” Mother said. “Say she’s welcome.”

  Sim turned to go, stooping under the door top. He paused suddenly, his great head bent, listening. Boots tromped on the back porch; blunt steps passed into the far room, walking, walking. We waited. After a while two heads stuck through the kitchen door. Harl and Sid stood there with clothes bundled under their arms, their mining gear hung over their shoulders. They looked at the table, then fearfully at Sim, and drew back. Mother opened her mouth, but no words came out. The door slammed, and they were gone.

  “Looks to me you’ve lost two boarders and me two miners,” Sim said, grinning.

  Uncle Lott told us as we were sitting at the table. Rilla Todd sat beside him, weaving her willowy fingers in her lap. “We’re marrying next Sunday for shore,” he said. His face reddened, the thread veins quickening on his cheeks.

  “A feller getting a job, house and a dough-beater at one time is square in luck,” Sim said, his words booming with laughter.

  “Nothing sorry as a bachelor feller,” Father said, teasing. “A woman helps a man hang on to his money, and keeps him honest.”

  Fern and Lark looked queerly at me. Lark’s chin was barely above the table. “Thar’s one o’ my pennies a-missing out of the clock,” he said. “That hain’t honest, now.”

  I felt shriveled and old. All I had eaten seemed a great knot inside of me. My spoon clattered to the floor.

  Uncle Lott grinned. The ends of his blunt mustache pointed out like fingers. His cheeks burned. He shoved a hand into a pocket and drew something out. It was a rusty penny. He spun it on the table. “I borrowed it to get a little chew o’ tobacco,” he said, “and I plumb forgot to spend it.”

  The bread was broken, the shucky beans passed, the pickle bowl lifted hand to hand. Mother glanced at Father and Lott and Sim. She looked at Lark and me. Her eyes grew bright as a wren’s. “All of
you fellers have buttermilk mustaches,” she said.

  On Quicksand Creek

  Aaron Splicer drove a bunch of yearlings into our yard on a March evening. Heifers bawled and young bullies made raw cries. We hurried out into the cold dark of the porch. Aaron rode up to the doorsteps, and Father called to him, not knowing at first who he was. “Hello?” Father spoke, and when he knew it was Aaron, called heartily, “’Light and shake the weather.”

  Aaron opened his fleeced collar, rustling new leather. His breath curled a fog. “If this Shoal Creek mud gets any deeper,” he called, “it’ll be beyond traveling. A horse bogs to the knees.” He slid to the ground, limbering his legs.

  Father led Aaron’s horse into the mare’s stall. He brought a brass-trimmed saddle onto the porch. Aaron shook his boots, loosening mud balls, letting them fall on the steps. His tracks smudged the floors. Mother prepared a meal for him, our supper having long been eaten; and Lark and Zard and Fern pried at Aaron with their eyes. I studied his leather clothes: ox-yellow coat, belt wide as a grist mill’s, fancy boots. I’d never seen boots matching the ones he wore. Father had a costly pair, a pair worth eighteen dollars, yet they weren’t lengthy, or pin-pointed, or hid-stitched like Aaron Splicer’s.

  Aaron shucked off his coat. A foam of sheep’s wool lined the underside. “Thar’s not a cent in yearlings,” he said. “Hit’s jist swapping copper for brass. Beef steers are what puts sugar in the gourd, and nary a one I’ve found betwixt here and the head of Left Hand Fork.”

  “Crate Thompson cleaned the steers out o’ all the creeks forking Troublesome,” Father said. “I’ve heard a sketch about him being on Quicksand now. I reckon they’s a sight o’ beef in the neighborhood o’ Decoy and Handshoe.”

  Mother brought a plate of creaseback beans, buttered cushaw, and a sour-sweet nubbin of pickled corn. Fern raked coals upon the hearth for the coffeepot. While Aaron ate, Father had me and Lark brighten Aaron’s boots. We scraped the caked mud away, rubbed on tallow, and spat on the leather. We polished them with linsey rags until they shone.