The Hills Remember

by James Still

  “I’m traveling to the county seat,” she said. “I’d like to know the distance.”

  “How it runs to a count, I don’t know,” I said. “Never heard it told. Must be nigh on to four miles by crow-fly, and six by the creek road.”

  “I’m not thinking of flying,” she said, laughing again, and setting her briar-toed shoes in the stirrups.

  I saw her teeth were white as ladybean seeds and even-set as corn grains on a nubbin. They never got that way rubbing them with a redbud stick either. I didn’t wonder Holt Simms loaned that nag to her, in spite of him being so stingy he’d eat salt to save sugar. If she had asked for my rifle-gun, reckon I’d have given over, much as I think of my old lead-pusher. But Grandma always said it’s bad luck to let a woman mount a horse broke to ride men.

  She used to put a lot of store by signs and folk-say. “Set my clock by the almanac,” she’d say. “That there’s God’s time.” And Grandma used to vow an almanac had more sense in it than all the statute books in Hardin Courthouse put together. I learnt a peck of signs from her. Never let a woman look down a new-dug well. Drop a hook in a waterhole where a woman’s been fishing and you’ll grow roots in the ground before you catch a bite. A woman can be bad luck, and she can be good, depending on whether the moon is lean or fat, a-waxing or a-thinning. And signs run to truth for reasons unbeknownst.

  Well, that woman sat there looking at me, making no least move to go. My curiosity got to rubbing like a cuckerburr in my shoe, and I finally got my mouth to open to speak again.

  “Have you got blood kin up at Sawyers?” I asked, acting like I didn’t already know pine-blank.

  She laughed out, her voice sounding like a little bell swinging on a ewe-sheep’s neck.

  “None I ever heard of,” she said. “I’m the court secretary for the new session.”

  “Are you the short writer?” I asked.

  “I take testimony in shorthand and transcribe it into the records,” she said. She gathered up the reins. Holt Simm’s nag looked around at me sort of hacked, shin-shivers trembling her flanks.

  “Have you got a case coming up in this court?” she asked, idle-mouthed and teasing.

  “Now, no,” I said. “Never had a grain of law trouble in all my born days.”

  “I didn’t think you had,” she said. “You probably keep too busy sewing patches on that shirt to have time for breaking the law.”

  She jerked the reins and started off, grinning back at me. I stood there sort of lightning-struck for a minute. Then I got so mad I kicked a mud rut and mighty nigh broke my big toe. I jerked that shirt off, never even unhooking the buttons, and threw it into a haw bush. It hung there scarecrowlike and I don’t reckon a cowbird lit in sight of that bush all year.

  I set out for home, not knowing whether to be mad or tickled. The sun-ball got to pinching my bare back, and sawbriars clawed raw meat. Yonside Painters Ridge I cooled off in a beech swag, setting me down on a moss rock, and then I remembered it was Thursday, my luck day, the day I was born on. I hollered right big, feeling good all of a sudden. My hounds set up a howl down at the homeplace, a full mile away. I went off down the swag, walking spry as a fellow who has seen a redbird on a spring morning.

  Harl Burke came down Mole Creek Friday night, rousting me out of bed about the time I got settled into the feather tick. I’d been wrestling corn shocks since daybreak in the high field, and was so dog-tired seemed like there was lead in my bones. I heard Harl calling by the shed-room window, calling low in his throat so Grandma wouldn’t wake. I went outside in my shirttail, squinting my eyes in the moonlight. It was that bright. There was Harl and four young hounds hitched to a traceline. Ole Ring was sitting on the top step, looking broody-eyed. When I cracked the door open he shagged up to me, licking the flat of my hand. I thought so much of that hound I didn’t even wipe the dog-spit off.

  “You must o’ beat the guineas to the roost,” Harl said. He pulled his case watch out and clicked the lid open. “Hain’t more’n eight o’clock by my bug-hull.”

  “Hell’s bangers!” I said. “Where’ve you started with that litter o’ pups?”

  “Figgered I’d take the young ’uns up the ridge a piece and let ole Ring learn ’em a few tricks,” Harl said. “Fotch your two pups and we’ll learn ’em what a fox track smells like.”

  “Ought to bring ole Trigger along,” I said. “She’ll throw a pure fit if she’s left behind.”

  “I want my pups started proper,” Harl said. I reckon he hadn’t forgot the time she’d lost track and treed a coon. But I always treated my dogs square, young or old, letting them have a little run when they felt like it. Ole Trigger’d been a good one in her day. Bet every dog on Pigeon Roost was kin to her, one way or t’other. Trace it back straight, and Ring himself might o’ had the same blood. She’d got old though. Twelve, I reckon, rusty jointed and slow as Egypt. Been gumming her food for years.

  “Now, no,” Harl said. “Leave that fleabag behind. This hain’t no granny frolic.”

  The pups whined, anxious to be off. Ole Trigger came from under the house, shaking doodlebug dust off her hide. She set up a racket when I hitched a cord around her neck, tying her to a blackgum stump. I tried to quiet her and the pups, but you can’t choke five dogs with two hands. Grandma waked, sticking her head through the door crack. She had her store-bought teeth out, and her mouth was wrinkled as a mare’s nose. “Begone,” she said. “Can’t get a grain o’ sleep with them dogs yowling around.” And then she saw Harl standing beside the bubby bush. “Is that you Harly?” she asked, the words dropping sleepily from the hollow of her mouth.

  “Hain’t my ghost nor shadow,” Harl said, teasing. He thought a lot of Grandma, though he wasn’t no kin.

  Grandma squinted into the yard. “Harley-son, hain’t this a Friday?” she asked. Harl grunted, looping the leather strings around his wrist, drawing the pups short.

  “Nigh broke your chine-bone hunting on this day going on three years ago,” Grandma reminded. “Fell over a cliff-rock.”

  “One night or t’other, makes no differ” Harl said. “I figger I don’t see right good of a nighttime.”

  “I figger there’s a sign writ agin’ you on Fridays,” Grandma said. “I figger there is.”

  I fetched my two pups out of the pen, and hung a horn-bugle around my neck. We took up the ridge, tromping through ivy thickets, coming out into a patch of moonlight on top. Yonside, the hills stretched their backbones as far as eyeballs could look. The creek hollows below were day-white, withouten a thimbleful of fog. Lex Tomlinson’s Creek. Heel Creek. Turkeyfoot Trace. I could see them head to mouth, every creek and crosshatch.

  Harl straddled the log, catching the line over a limb-knot. “Grandma Shackett’s got more quare notions than a frog’s got wart bumps,” he said.

  “They work out for a fact sometimes,” I said. “They pine-blank do.”

  “I hain’t going agin’ prophecy,” Harl said. “No fox hunting I’ve done Friday nights in three years.” He pulled a slab of rotten bark off the log, crushing it in his hands—hands big nigh as a slab of bacon. “Hit was a sight, me running off that clift. Not a drap I’d drunk either, not a smidgin.” He handed the leather string to me. “Set the dogs doing. Ring’ll pick up a track, and the pups can follow. I’m having nary a thing to do with this pup-run. And when you get back, I’ll tell why I fotched you out o’bed.”

  I took the lead lines, breaking through a sourwood thicket along the ridge hip, proud down in my bones to see ole Ring tracking in front, and me making a fancy he was my own. He came on a warm scent after a quarter of a mile and struck down the ridge like a ball of lightning. The pups got so excited they dragged me amongst a thorn bush before I could get the leather knot untied. I listened to their barking for a spell. Ole Ring sounded like a fiddle played down low on the G-string. The pups kept letting out shrill yips of joy, but they were too slow to get a glimpse of a foxtail.

  Well, now, I just set me down on a fern clump and l
ooked out across the hills, mellow as ripe cushaws in the moonlight. There was Crofts Knob, and yonside, though I couldn’t see that far, was Todd Miller’s homeplace. And I got to thinking about Hulda sleeping there with her pretty face on a goose feather pillow, and this same moonlight shining through the window. She’d gone to bed early, I figgered, being Harl never turned up around dusty dark, and maybe she cried a speck when he didn’t come or send word. Oh that Harl was the luckiest fellow ever drew breath. The cleverest foxhound in Tennessee River country he had, and Hulda Miller setting company with him two nights a week. That’d come pretty nigh being heaven on earth, it seemed to me then, and I haven’t laid-by that notion since.

  Oh it fair gave me the mulligrubs to think about it. But there was Ellafronia Saul, a lady stepped square out of a wish-book, and court opening Monday coming. Aye gonnies, I’d be on the spot, first bench behind the jury. Then I got to wondering why Harl fotched me out of bed, and on a Friday night too. My mind gamicked around till it hit on the short-writing woman again. Maybe he’d seen her down at Sawyers. The idea jumped me clear off that fern clump. I plumb forgot about the hounds. I went back along the ridge to where Harl waited, and it was the truth. He’d seen Ellafronia Saul. Stot Howard, a one-horse lawyer from Longfield, had been squiring her around the courthouse, making her acquainted with the folks. Stot had asked Harl to get some guitar and fiddle players for a square dance at ole Judge Middleton’s place Friday night. “He’s figuring on your mouth-harp,” Harl said.

  Now, I’m right clever on the mouth-harp. Dolesome ballads pleasure me a lot. “Rowan County Tragedy.” “William Bluet.” “Ole Talt Hall.” I do a passel of jig-songs and ditties too. If it comes to a pinch I can play for running sets. When I’ve got my druthers, though, I like to do a little foot-scraping myself.

  We sat on that beech log, Harl still pulling bark, crumbling it into dust. He told me square how it was with him. It’d been love the first look. By juckers, it’s quare how a two-hundred-pounder, tough as whang leather, could tip over so sudden-quick. It seemed a pity about Hulda. “You’ve been sparking two years,” I said. “Hulda’s set nobody else down in her parlor-room all that time. She’d make a man the finest dough-beater ever was. Washes clothes so white, looks like dogwoods blooming around her house on Tuesdays. Good to weave and to mix at the dye pot.” Oh it must of seemed quare, me talking up Hulda so bonny when Harl knew pine-blank I’d been green-snake jealous of him. “I bet this bluegrass woman never done a thing but set up in a courthouse and diddle jackleg lawyers,” I said.

  “I’ve got me an idea o’ settling in pennyrile country,” Harl said. “Land stretching there flat as your hand. . . .” And then he cocked his head to one side, listening for the dogs. Ole Ring was having it all by himself down on Heel Creek, and the pups were lost at the forks, working the brush in a circle.

  Finally Harl slid off the log, shaking himself. I was getting mighty sleepy myself. “Reckon you’d better blow on the horn-bugle,” he said.

  I blew three blasts, nigh loud enough to wake the dead. Ole Ring heard and came up the ridge after a spell, but the pups took their everlasting time. When they plugged into the clearing Harl hitched his four together, making ready to go. “I’m thinking if hit’s handy, you could fotch Hulda down the dance Friday night,” he said. “I’ll be sort o’ busy rousting the music and mealing the floor.”

  Harl started off, ole Ring at heel. I laid me down on a leaf pile, my mind filled with a peck of things to thresh over. The pups wandered into the brush. I kept thinking I’d call them and strike down the ridge. The moon set behind Crofts Knob, and it got chilly. I slept, and the next thing I knew it was cracking day, and there was ole Trigger licking me smack-ker-dab in the mouth, and rattling the chain it had taken her all night to pull free of the blackgum stump.

  I reckon a dozen almanacs have hung by the mantelpiece since that square dance at ole Judge Middleton’s. But it’s as green in mind as the rashes growing here on Pigeon Roost Creek. It was the last one the ole Judge had in his house. Longer than I can recollect, he’d held one first week of fall court, even after his daughters married bluegrass lawyers. Fellers came sober to his place, and put on their manners. You couldn’t clop brogans down careless on floors, and them shining like a looking glass. Things went proper. It’s a pity the judge got riled over what happened that night. Nine times worse it might o’ been any other place, by grabbies.

  I had in head going up Crofts Creek, telling Hulda I’d be there along nigh the shank o’ Friday evening to fetch her down to the dance. I had my mouth full of a lie-tale about why Harl couldn’t come. Then I got skittish and sent Riggins with the word, promising him a pup out of Trigger’s next batch. Riggins came back pretty soon, swearing Hulda had struck at him with the bald-headed end of a broom. “She was that het up,” he said. “She knows about you and Harl hanging around Ellafronia Saul.”

  Now, I’d gone to court three times; been going anyhow since I was a chap. I went wearing a branfired new shirt, with nary a patch. Holt Simms was there too, big as life, on the front bench. Harl wandered in and out, restless as a she-fox. I could see he had the mulligrubs. Stote Hyden sat beside Ellafronia at the lawyer’s table, whispering behind the pan of his hands. He’d open that pocketbook mouth of his, and she’d smile as if he owned creation. Once I met her at the stairtop of the courthouse, but she acted like she didn’t know me from Adam’s ox.

  Well, I went to that square dance all by my lonesome. Rode a little pieded nag down to Sawyers, with my mouth-harp deep in my hip pocket, bright as new money. And I had something else tucked under my hatband. Grandma always said if a fellow wants a passel o’ luck in one batch, just carry a feather off a hoot owl’s head. I hitched my nag in Judge Middleton’s yard, seeing I was a grain early, for only three horses were tethered there.

  I was easing the saddle a bit when a yip came out of the dark, and there was ole Trigger. She’d trailed me all the way, bless her mangy hide! I ran her under the porch so she wouldn’t go tracking right into the house.

  “Hickory Shin” Bates was sitting in a corner of the parlor-room, rosining his bow. Darb Suttles had his mail-order banjo, and John Cotter and Mell Sorrels held guitars on their laps. A piano box sat in the corner, but not a soul on Pigeon Roost knew how to play it. Ole Judge Middleton’s daughters used to make it sound like a cage o’ mockingbirds, I’ve heard it said. We got in key, and by that time the folks started coming, traipsing down the hall in twos and ones, the fellows slapping each other on the back, the girls edging along on their toes, hardly letting their heels touch the floor, rustling new dresses; and the Judge, and the ole Miss Middleton, stood under a great lamp swung from the ceiling, bowing and creaking stiff backs, and the top of the Judge’s bald head shone like the moon-ball itself.

  “Blow a song-piece on the mouth-harp,” somebody said, and I played “The Merry Golden Tree,” a ballad of a foreign country land, and Darb Suttles sang the words low in his throat, sad as a turtledove’s call.

  There was a little ship and it sailed upon the sea,

  And it went by the name of Merry Golden Tree

  As it sailed upon the low and lonesome low,

  As it sailed upon the lonesome sea.

  And while Darb sang, Hulda passed into the hall with her brother John, and I glimpsed her wish-book dress, white as tuliptree blooms and scattered with rosebud prints, real as life. I looked at her pretty face, and my mouth got dry, the harp tightening on my lips. I knew again what a fool Harl was, and the witty I’d been. And suddenly there was a hush. Darb’s words petered out, and my breath thinned into the harp. Ellafronia Saul came down the hall on the arm of Stote Hyden. She tripled along, a little smidgin of a woman, rising not a grain taller than Stote’s top vest button, and the dress she wore rippled like shoal-water in moonlight. By grabbies, it seemed I was looking at her for the first time. Her neck wasn’t much bigger than my wrist, and her poppet-doll face was as pale and brittle as Grandma’s hen-and-biddy dish.

 
I looked the parlor-room over and found Harl sitting yonside the piano box. He’d tickle-toed in, unbeknownst to me, and he sat there glaring into blue air, the mulligrubs eating him up alive. Ellafronia had turned him down for Stote, I knew pine-blank. I spied at her again. I couldn’t think of her cooking fatty-bread and washing Harl’s britches, to save my life. She was a woman tender as a snail’s horns.

  About that time, Crat Lovens jumped-hopped to the floor middle and hollered right big, and when Crat hollers, the rafters shake.

  Come on folks, come ye one and all,

  Grab yore partners, we’re ready for the haul.

  We struck up “Hook and Line.” I bore down on my harp to keep “Hickory Shin” from drowning me out. Darb Suttles fretted the banjo like a spider hustling a web, and John Cotter and Mell Sorrels flicked their metal-tipped playing fingers over guitar strings lightning-fast.

  The dance began, slap-clop, crow-hop—Crat Jones calling the sets out of the cave of his mouth. “Find yore partners, hain’t no sin; promenade, and gone agin.” Hulda was paired with her babe-brother John, Stote Hyden swung Ellafronia Saul. Fifteen couples moved over the mealed floor—“Left, to right, and ocean wave. . . .”

  Harl sat through the first set, leant against the piano box, and when it had ended and the couples rested for second wind, he came out upon the floor, his face a little skinned-looking from a new shave, and his gray eyes burning. Hulda caught hold of her brother’s arm, afraid Harl was coming to her, and maybe a grain afraid he wasn’t. Harl stepped up to Ellafronia, gentle as a ewe-sheep, as if Stote hadn’t been within forty miles. I got scared, I tell you. It looked like bad trouble. A flick of scorn ran over Ellafronia’s face. She turned her proud head toward Stote and winked—batting one eye, foxy as ever I saw. Stote gave over, though his face was tight with anger. The second set began. Rusty jints had got warmed up, and this time we played “Ole Joe Clark” to a fare-you-well. Oh that there “Hickory Shin” Bates purely sawed catgut.