The Hills Remember

by James Still

  Work for my election and I’ll have you principal of a school even if it croaks every politician in the county. I’ll have you teaching young ’uns quicker than hell can singe a feather. It smothers my heart to know hard learning is being dragged along a furrow, wasting to moles and crows. My old teacher used to say that once a body breathed chalk dust and pounded the Big Thick Dictionary he was spoiled for common labor. Name the schoolhouse you would be master of. I’ll ring you.

  Hear me. I’ll be coming to Roaring Fork the minute I find shoes to fit my nag. She’s finicky as a woman and won’t travel barefooted.

  Keep your eyes skinned for a wife.

  Faithfully,

  Crafton

  Salt Springs, June 1st

  Perry Wickliff:

  I’ve got wits that beat seven indictments, I’ve had lawyers walking on pencils, but danged my eyes if I can make sense of why you answered my letter by word of mouth. I’ve been of the belief mail carriers were paid to haul messages in envelopes, not in their skulls. How much postage did you stick on his upper lip?

  How big the yarn swelled in the carrier’s head is ontelling. When a tale passes teeth twice you won’t recognize it. Anyhow, what he told I wouldn’t have made public for a war pension. I figure it has cost me in the neighborhood of a dozen votes. The gist of it was I had attempted to bribe you into working for my election—a falsehood and you know it. I asked you free will, no strings tied.

  My burden in life to be misjudged. I aimed to help you stop farming, a trade you couldn’t master to the day you die. I get my jowls slapped. Worry you not, I’ll win the race beholden to none, fair field and no favor. Of the thirty-two candidates at the writing I’m the only one with the policy of moving into the jailhouse stick, stove, bed and wife. I’m the pattern of a man who understands what a lock-up needs. From cold experience I know the head-down feet-up way it’s now being operated. They don’t know dirt from horse manure.

  At last Roaring Fork has a candidate, some jasper who calls himself Muldraugh. My opinion, a stalking horse put in by Zeb Thornton to snag my votes. Like the female candidate, he hasn’t an icicle’s chance in a hot skillet. Muldraugh, aye. What kind of a name is that? He was born yonside Pound Gap, in Virginia, a full sixty-five miles from here, and didn’t move into our country until he was a right smart sized boy. The day hasn’t come when this county will support a foreigner for public office.

  Perry Wickliff, if you still want to climb on my bandwagon, I’ve left the tailgate down. Yet mount of your own accord. I’ll plague you no longer for scattering your brains to the sparrows and living in a bachelor’s hell. A final offer I make. Would you take the school at Dirk, a hop and jump from your scarecrow farm? Whoever is the teacher, I’ll have him flagged out.

  Forty-three candidates had filed by the day they closed the books. So many running the winner won’t need more than a double handful of votes. I figure I’ll win by a basket full.

  Faithfully,

  Crafton Rowan

  Salt Springs, June 8th

  You, there, Perry Wickliff:

  I got the postcard and have sized you up as a fellow with no more political sense than a dry-land goose. Are you too stingy to paste a stamp on a letter? Why, mail carriers spend half the day reading postcards and spreading the news. So you advise me to hurry shoes on my spoiled nag and come speak for myself. And you hint Roaring Fork hasn’t seen my face in forever. This coming from a man who beyond a doubt was rode out of a schoolhouse on a rail.

  My opinion, you’ve fallen into Zeb Thornton’s trap head and ears. The reason I haven’t been over for a spell is a personal matter not a whit ruled by the oath Zeb swore at the time of our calf trouble, his threatening my life did I so much as set a toe in the Roaring valley. A free country. I’ll travel anywhere I get a ripe notion, and if I choose to shun a mother-in-law’s district to keep the family peace, that’s my right too. I vow I’ve had my last trade and traffic with Zeb Thornton.

  On behalf of my pieded pony, I’ll say she’s less spoiled than the common run of folks. Has more sense than a tub of educated fools playing farmer. She can do everything but talk, and so gentle you can sit in a chair and curry her. She’s bare-hoofed as a tenderfooted critter ought to be until her true size is located. If it comes to a force put, I’ll forge a pair of shoes for her my own self.

  Wickliff, I’m seeking the full facts of why you were cut loose from that teaching job. I smell a rat hide. Upon my word and honor, it appears the political foxes of Baldridge County done a good deed for once. They got rid of a sorry schoolmaster.

  I’d stake my hat the crows are starving in your fields.

  Crafton Rowan

  Salt Springs, July 10th

  Dear Perry:

  During the past month you have caused me trouble and sorrow beyond my human due. After the varmity manner you treated my jail race I sunk so low in spirit I let Garlan Hurley talk me out of running for the office. He figured to heir my Salt Spring votes. He wore me down into accepting forty-five dollars. But ho! Before I could get to the clerk’s office to withdraw, my name had been sent to the printers. My name was on paper.

  Could I lie down on a legal ballot? It was run whether or no. No two ways talking. I had to repay Garlan or stand up to bullets. But I’d already been fleeced of the money. The son of a gun who owns the land adjoining mine claimed I’d swung over on his side and cut timber. I ask, Who knows where lines run nowadays with the landmarks gone, the streams changed course? Any jury would have handed in a verdict in my favor. Yet you can’t fight law battles while running races. My neighbor got my forty-five dollars, Garlan Hurley my pieded pony.

  Are you a fellow who will acknowledge an honest debt? Recollect the message you sent by the mail carrier early in June, and the postcard shortly thereafter? By my soul, they cost me at least thirty-six votes. I’m of a mind there are three dozen uncommitted you could swing to me. A word said in my behalf would drop them into my pocket—enough with Salt Springs’s backing to ring me in. I’m counting on you to settle your obligation.

  With crops layed-by it would do you pleasant to travel the waters of Roaring head to mouth. You stir out little, goes the talk. Folks rarely see a hair of you. That’s not right, living like you do. Marry, say I. Any good woman will do. Marry and start filling up the house with babies. Then you’ll have something to live and work for.

  Listen to me, Perry. Old Stedam Byrd, a mile downcreek, has two single daughters, twenty years old or so. Big, hefty girls, not yet claimed. Spruce up your horse, angle your hat, and go visit them Sunday. Begin lining things up for yourself and my candidacy. They’ll pour the fried chicken to you, with a horn of something to drink beforehand to make it slick down easy. Stedam controls four votes.

  I’ve come on the true reason you left that teaching job in the middle of the school term. A trustee reports you waked him at midnight to say that after six years of teaching you were bone-tired of minding other people’s young ’uns. I declare you justified, remembering when a chunk of a boy I ran teachers distracted. Why, I struck a match once that burnt a schoolhouse down.

  The reports lately claim your cornfields are the blackest and the growingest in the mountains, due to the extra seasoning of rain Roaring Fork alone enjoyed this year.

  Faithfully,

  Crafton

  Salt Springs, July 21

  Dear Perry:

  I would travel to Roaring and start canvassing if I had a beast to ride, and if I didn’t have to keep a lookout here. With candidates thicker than horseflies at a stock sale, I daren’t take eyes off my voters. Garlan Hurley and others of his sorry pattern are trying to wean the loyalty of my blood kin. Who Garlan’s kin is, don’t ask. He couldn’t name his own pappy.

  What hurts, these jaspers are imping my policy, declaring for a clean jail and home cooking. Trying to cut my throat with my own butcher knife.

  I believe to my heart Garlan’s another stalking horse put in by somebody. Everything’s in a rigamaroar. A misery
to win a vote and then have to turn sheepdog and guard it against thieves. Bat an eye and you’ve lost lambs.

  My faith in humankind tells me you are working in my behalf. Let it out about the candidate on your creek being a foreigner, not of this country. And don’t forget Ben Manley’s influence—the Ben at the mouth of Buckeye Branch. I’ve learnt he has two daughters pretty enough to draw skims across a male’s sight. I recollect their mother, a picture-piece at sixteen with catbird’s eggs for eyes. And she’ll remember me, though won’t admit it. I recollect she plaited her hair into two big plaits. I’d take and tie ’em together, and latch them under my chin. Aye, the good old days! Ben Manley votes three.

  Oh I miss my pieded pony as I would my feet. I’ve walked until my hamstrings are rebelling.

  Faithfully,

  Crafton

  Salt Springs, July 30th

  Perry:

  Seven days until the election. Time’s burning. Hurry along to Moab Colley’s place on Oak Trace. One daughter left untaken in his household. She’s not a pullet, has shed her pinfeathers, but bear in head you’re on the high side of the twenties. The thing is, Moab gives his daughters fifty dollars, a cow, a walnut bedstead and nine quilts to start them in life. He votes five.

  The way the signs are reading the old jailor can prepare himself to clap the big key into my hand come the first of the year. With forty-three candidates tearing up the patch a small wad of votes will fan a body in. Aye, my election is safe as gold. My solid Salt Springs following, stacked onto the votes tricked from under the whiskers of candidates elsewheres and laid alongside the Roaring Fork support, ought to raise a pile nobody can top. When they open the ballot boxes—heepee! Watch the geese fly out.

  The master crop of corn you’ve raised is the wonder of the county. A rumor says it might run to sixty-five bushels to the hillside acre. In this world the Man Above throws a mighty weight to the side of those who know not what they are doing.

  Faithfully,

  Crafton

  Salt Springs, August 4th

  Perry:

  I hasten this postcard, the only rag of paper in the house. A last favor I ask. Go to the polls tomorrow, stand as close to the ballot box as the law allows, and a span closer, and urge the folks to pile on a winner. Say I’m the pattern of a man to elect.

  I figure I’ve got the jail job in the frog of my hand. Hurrah for me!

  Craft

  Baldridge County Jail

  August 11th

  Dear Perry:

  I’ve borrowed this sheet of paper off the jailor to let you hear my side of the case against me. I ask Justice, Can I rule what a spoiled pony will do? Can a body legally be jailed for giving a critter food and shelter when it turns up hungry and barefooted at his barn gate? Garlan Hurley kept her a solid month and never bothered to nail shoes to her tender feet. Oh he’s not got a heart, just a big wart in his chest. But I can read this case bottomside up. I’ll come clear in court. Nothing ever got stuck on me.

  Perry, I’m trying to raise bail. And the only cattle trader I know of who will buy calves off-season is Zeb Thornton. Let out to him I have a couple of fine heifers, both promising milk- and butter-makers. And he’s to deal through me, and not let my wife know. It’s a force put.

  I can’t groan for laughing at the way a female beat out a raft of men in the jailor’s race. Thrashed us to a fare-ye-well. Every man jack of us had to go to the bull-hole. She rounded up more votes than the rest of us put together. Yet I don’t understand it. All signs seem to fail nowadays.

  I’ll be here when the woman takes office in January unless I can sell my calves and make bail, and unless the chinch bugs walk off with me plumb. Always I’ve claimed the county lock-up needs a woman’s broom and skillet—a woman with a man standing by. On your behalf I want to report she is fair as a picture, and single.

  Faithfully,

  Crafton Rowan

  School Butter

  “If Surrey Creek ever reared a witty,” Pap used to tell me, “your Uncle Jolly Middleton is the scamp. Always pranking and teasing. Forever going the roads on a fool horse, hunting mischief. Nearly thirty years old and he has yet to shake hands properly with an ax haft or a plow handle. Why, he’ll pull a trick did it cost him his ears, and nobody on earth can stop him laughing.”

  But Uncle Jolly didn’t need to work. He could pick money out of the air. He could fetch down anything he wanted by just reaching. And he would whoop and holler. Folk claimed he could rook the horns off of Old Scratch, and go free. Yet he didn’t get by the day he plagued the Surrey Creek School, and for once he couldn’t laugh. He bears a scar the length of his nose to mark the occasion. Duncil Burke taught at Surrey the year Uncle Jolly halloed “school butter” at the scholars. A fellow might as lief hang red on a bull’s horns as yell that taunt passing a schoolhouse in those days. An old-time prank. If caught they were bound to fare rough.

  I attended the whole five-month session, and I was a top scholar. I could spell down all in my grade except Mittie Hyden. And I could read and calculate quicker than anybody save Mittie. But she kept her face turned from me. Mostly I saw the rear of her head, the biscuit of her hair.

  The free textbooks I learned by heart, quarreling at the torn and missing pages. My reader left William Tell’s son standing with an apple on his head; Rip Van Winkle never woke. I prodded Duncil, “My opinion, if you’ll let the superintendent know he’ll furnish new texts. Pap says Fight Creek and Slick Branch teachers brought in a load for their schools.”

  A sixth-grader said, “Ours have done all they come here to do.”

  “Surrey allus was the tail,” Mittie said. She didn’t fear to speak her mind. “Had my way, I’d drop these rags into the deepest hole ever was.”

  Ard Finch, my bench mate, snorted. He could hoot and get by, for he was so runty he had to sit on a chalk box. He could climb the gilly trees beyond the play yard and not be shouted down. He could have mounted to the top of the knob and Duncil not said button. And he was water-boy and could go outside at will. Ard wouldn’t have cared if books wore down to a single page.

  “New texts will be furnished in due season,” Duncil said. He believed in using a thing to the last smidgin. He set us to work. I was put studying a dictionary, and I boasted to Ard Finch, “I’ll master every word there be. I’ll conquer some jaw breakers.” But I got stuck in the a’s. I slacked off and read “Blue Beard.” Short as it was I had to borrow four readers to splice it together.

  The next visit Uncle Jolly made to our house I told of Surrey’s textbooks. I said, “Duncil’s too big a scrimper to swap them in. A misery to study, hopping and a-jumping.” And I spoke of another grievance. “Reader-book yarns are too bob-tailed anyhow to suit my notion. Wish I had a story a thousand miles long.”

  Uncle Jolly cocked his head in puzzlement. He couldn’t understand a boy reading without being driven. He peered at me, trying to figure if I owned my share of brains. He tapped my head, and listened. He said he couldn’t hear any.

  Uncle Jolly rode past Surrey School on an August afternoon when heat-boogers danced the dry creek bed and willows hung limp with thirst. I sat carving my name on a bench with a knife borrowed from Ard Finch. I knicked and gouged, keeping an eye sharp on Duncil, listening to the primer class blab: “See the fat fox? Can the fox see the dog? Run, fox, run.” A third-grader poked his head out of the window, drew in and reported, “Yonder comes Jolly Middleton.” There came Uncle Jolly riding bare-bones, his mare wearing a bonnet over her ears and a shawl about her neck.

  “Hit’s the De’il,” a little one breathed, and the primer children huddled together.

  A cry of glee rose at sight of a horse dressed like people and scholars would have rushed to the windows had Duncil not swept the air with a pointer. Only Mittie Hyden kept calm. She looked on coldly, her chin thrown.

  I crowed to Ard, “I’d bet buckeyes he’s going to my house.”

  Ard’s small eyes dulled. He was envious. Being dwarfish he yearned
to stand high. He said, “My opinion, he’s going to Bryson’s mill to have bread ground.”

  “Now, no,” said I. “He’s not packing corn.”

  “Did I have my bow and spike,” Ard breathed, “they’d make the finest bull’s-eye ever was.”

  Uncle Jolly circled the schoolhouse. He made the beast rattle her hoofs and prance. He had her trained pretty. Then he halted and got to his feet. He stood on her back and stretched an arm into the air; he reached and pulled down a book. Opening it, he made to read though he didn’t know the letter his mare’s track made.

  Mittie Hyden sniffed, “The first ’un he ever cracked.”

  Duncil tried to teach despite the pranking in the yard. He whistled the pointer, threatening to tap noggins should we leave our seats. He started the primer class again: “See the fat fox? Can the fox see the dog?” But they couldn’t hold their eyes on the page. Scholars chuckled and edged toward the windows. And Ard smiled grudgingly. He would have given the ball of the world to be Uncle Jolly putting on a show. He grabbed the water bucket and ran to the well.

  Mittie said, “We’re being made a laughingstock.”

  We quieted a grain, thinking what Fight Creek and Slick Branch children might say.

  Uncle Jolly put the book into his shirt and spun the horse on her heels. He pinched her withers and she cranked her neck and flared her lips and nickered. He laughed. He outlaughed his critter. Then he dug heels against her sides and fled upcreek.

  “Surrey will be called dog for this,” Mittie warned. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. “It’s become the worst school in Baldridge County. Textbooks worn to a frazzle, teacher won’t ask for new. Not strange we’ve drawed a witty.”

  Duncil’s face reddened. He was stumped.

  “Uncle Jolly is smart as ants,” I defended, “and his mare is clever as people.”

  Mittie darted a glance at me. She closed her teeth and would say no more.