The Hills Remember

by James Still

  “Hoo-oo-ee, look at this.”

  The owner of the chestnut mare was making a second run up the hollow, terms offered after the first sally having proved unacceptable. He varied his cry:

  “Round and sound, tough as whang,

  Two good eyes, and four in the spring.”

  Carping finally put aside, the remainder of the complainers joined the trafficking. The hollow was too crowded for much free movement, particularly along the bed of the branch.

  A person on foot had to look alive to avoid being bowled over, trampled, a tail switched in his face, or salted. Where the mounts stalled the earth was slick. Departures were frequent. A horseman would give up and declare, “Today I ought to of stayed home. My bones told me and I didn’t heed.” But there was no lack of calls of “Hoo-oo-ee,” and “Y-u-u-p, follow me,” and “Check her, noot. Shoot her up in through there and let me see her action.” Runs were often aborted. As a consequence of the new officer, Lafoon Magoffin, putting a quietus on the town, a rabble of young men and boys had climbed the slope behind the courthouse, skirted the bench of the ridge to the upper end of Chicken Roost, and descended to spectators’ positions above the throng.

  Godey and Mal had dismounted, Godey leading the mule, Mal keeping to the rear for what cover the animal afforded, when they were spotted by the grease buyer. The buyer hailed, “I’m here, you short fellers. The high dollar is over here.”

  Without turning his head, Godey answered, “Hold your ’tater, brother fox. Be it I need you, I’ll pull your chain.”

  Breaking from the press, a trader split for the entrance muttering, “If ever I visit this place again it will be when two Sundays come together. Plague take such a combobulation.” Two horsemen of like mind accompanied him.

  A man on a jack drew rein in the boys’ path and gave Riar’s mule calculated inspection. He wore woolen army pants, a flannel shirt. His steed was fitted out in a platted cornshuck collar with buckeye hames. Folded coffee sacks served as both pad and saddle and surmounted ribs as prominent as barrel staves. He gazed and did not speak.

  “How does he look to you, friend,” Godey inquired, though outwardly the man appeared not to possess a copper.

  The man reached into his shirt and scratched the small of his back. “He’s a brother to Methusalem” was his slow reply. “He’s been here.”

  Godey’s chin cranked. “Are you some sort of sharp tack?”

  The man blinked. “Could be,” he acknowledged, and then, “Wicked, hain’t he—your plug. A wild ass. Mean as Lafoon Magoffin.”

  “He’s no plug,” Godey said levelly. His questioner might be another Tight Wad Thomas with pants full of money. “Of purebred stock, and so gentle you can sit in a chair and shoe him.”

  “Oh yeah?” came the scoff. “I’d bet different. A mule will play the gentleman for years just to get into a prime position to kick your brains out. I’m knowance to the fact.”

  “Tell me,” snapped Godey, “are you wanting to trade, or are you talking to hear your head rattle?”

  “Raised in the Devil’s barn,” the man continued. “I can read it in his eye.”

  “A mule is a mule,” blurted Godey, and he urged, “Let’s talk turkey. I’ll sell him hide and ears for twenty dollars. And throw in the eyeballs.”

  “Twenty is too rich for my blood.”

  “All right. What about a swap? I’m asking ten to boot.”

  The man furrowed his brows until they met. He clawed where the tail of his woolen shirt was eating him. “I can’t stand the pressure,” said he.

  His patience ending, Godey crackled, “Then keep him, keep him. Cheap-jacks belong together.”

  “You’ve branded yourself with your tongue,” the man reprimanded, clucking his mount toward the entrance, and he grumbled, “Everybody is wearing boots today.”

  Cupping his hands about his mouth, the grease buyer blatted, “You youngsters, you with the gray, guide him over here.”

  “You heard me, snakebrains,” Godey reminded. “I said, ‘Hold your ’tater.’ ”

  The owner of the chestnut executed a deal, swapping for a filly and receiving thirty dollars in the exchange, a halving of the earlier asking price for the claimed reason “It’s worth it to fly out of this hurrah’s nest.” Dismounting, switching rigs, he slapped the chestnut’s rump and said, “Good-bye, old girl,” and the jockey ground was short two more traders. Others followed, and the gathering had the aspect of breaking up.

  A walker had a foot stepped on and let out a yowl that brought the county agent humping. Only a broken toe had been suffered and the score evened by a drink from the bottle of the offending animal’s master. The agent delayed the return to his seat as a general exodus seemed imminent, and taking stance midway the hollow, attempted to dissuade those leaving, plumping for the log-pulling contest, his inducement the five-dollar award to the winner. None turned back, the main excuse being thirsty mounts, and not a few seized the chance to pour scorn on the head of the unknown witty who had picked Chicken Roost for a stamping ground. Avowed one, “If he had the brains The Man gave a chicken, he’d lay doorknobs.” Several such scaldings launched the agent toward his stump, and he did not leave it again until a horseman forgot to duck in galloping under a tree.

  By the time Godey and Mal approached Fester Shattuck, he had slipped from the beech and lay dozing in the leaves, the fancy saddle propping his shoulders. Having downed the best part of a pint of sugar-top, maintaining a balance on a skinned log was tedious business.

  “Hey-o, neighbor,” Godey hailed. “What are you doing sleeping in the middle of creation?”

  Fester’s lips parted. He blinked himself awake.

  “Swapped out already?” Mal breathed in awe. “Gosh a’mighty.” Fester was a Ballard Creeker he could trust, having much to account for himself.

  Fester’s eyes rounded. They were like holes in the sky. “Ho,” he managed drowsily.

  “It’s his history,” Godey joshed, “and the worst of it is he runs out of ear tobacco, the Old Maud brand”; and taking the hapless Fester to task he scolded, “Fes, old neighbor, I swear to my heart if I had a smoke-grinder for sale you’d be my first customer.”

  Sitting up, Fester rubbed his face.

  Mal said, “He’s proving his wife’s complaint. She swears he’ll begin with a fat horse and finish owning a pair of dogwood hames. And he can’t seem to mend.”

  Chuckling, Godey said, “His woman—why, he’d swap her for a whimmy-diddle did somebody make him an offer.”

  Fester swallowed, his Adam’s apple jerked. Doddling his head he disagreed, “Uh-uh, I wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. She’s all I’ve got—her and our babies.” His eyes watered; he hiccupped. Then he reflected, “I have this pretty rig to trade on, and the day hain’t started hardly. The sun sets late in July.” Not one to borrow trouble, he ignored the presence of Riar’s mule.

  “Ah,” jabbered Godey, “a Sunday saddle,” and he bent to examine the tooling and brasswork. Sobering suddenly and winking at Mal, he cried in feigned wonder, “Fes, my buddy, you’ve done it finally. You’ve tricked some unlucky soul out of his drawers, robbed him totally. A bluegrass quarterhorse wouldn’t be a fair swap to it.”

  On cue, Mal slavered, “A plumb doll.”

  Fester livened and gulped. “You reckon?” But he knew the boys too well for much assurance. He made an honest plaint, “People won’t usually swap a horse for a rig and have nothing to haul it.” He thrust an arm into his saddlebag and found his bottle, and thinking better of it, withdrew his hand empty.

  “Unload it,” cheered Godey. “Sell for cash and buy what suits your fancy,” and for backing appealed to Mal, “Am I speaking the truth, knucklehead?”

  “You’re right as a rabbit’s foot,” said Mal.

  “You can’t miss with a gold mine,” continued Godey, patting the leather, tracing the tooling with a finger, stroking the pad. He fiddled with the saddle until he had deposited his ball of cockleburs betw
een the pad and the seat. “I’d call it the fastest saddle in seven counties. Throw it onto a brute and they’ll take off like Lindbergh.”

  “As certain as the mumps,” said Mal, and in the next breath, “Have you seen anybody else besides us from over on our creek?”

  Fester shook his head, and he had a question of his own. “You boys,” he inquired, “did you come through town, past the new Law?” He poked a hand into the saddlebag against the moment the boys would go.

  “Naturally,” answered Godey. “Right down the street, could have knocked his hat off with my elbow. No other way to get here except fly.”

  Fester’s voice sank. “Aye, not me. I cut in behind the stores when I had wind of him. My life long I’ve heard bad on Magoffin. No heart in his breast, a de’il on earth. Folks shun him the fashion they would a copperhead.”

  “That shikepoke of a policeman?” ridiculed Godey. “Why, I done everything but spit in his face and here I stand, untipped, living proof. All a body needs is nerve.”

  “Shorely, shorely, you didn’t,” insisted Fester. “You’re rigging me. Forever people have told me—”

  “I said, ‘Hey-o, Jack nasty,’ and he grinned fit to pop.”

  Said Mal, “Godey is spilling the gospel, Fes, every word the truth.”

  “Eternally I’ve heard—”

  “You heard like Litt,” said Godey. “I believe to my soul if I’d o’ called him by his nickname he’d have busted out laughing.”

  Fester yielded again to the support of the saddle, clutched the bottle, and puzzled, “Magoffin must o’ joined the church, must o’ repented his sins. No other accounting for it. Not his regular nature.” He closed his eyes against the light. “But I’ll not risk him. Now, no. He might backslide. I’m going home the course I got here, by the offside of Roscoe.” Godey’s stomach growled. Tugging on the mule’s halter, he said, “Play chicken then, if that’s your nature. You can’t cure a coward.” And moving on, he babbled, “We’ll see you later when we can talk to you straighter.”

  The trading continued, diminished though it was, and from his vantage point, the county agent concluded it would hold out only as long as the drink. But if the ranks of the traders thinned, there was a gain in onlookers from the town roosting above the commotion, apparently awaiting the log-pull, as nothing else promised.

  “Hey, hey. You’re beholding something. Ya-hoo-oo.”

  The shouter was halted within twenty feet of the beginning of his run.

  “What’s your price?” a walker demanded.

  “A ginger-wine beauty, worth the candy, and I wouldn’t part with her except I can’t feed both a horse and an automobile.”

  “Don’t tell me your troubles, I have my own. Name your lowest figure.”

  “Seventy-five cash—cash on the barrelhead. And she’ll bring it, my fellow citizen, every formal dollar.” “Don’t citizen me. Now, that’s your first offer. Skip the bragging and let me hear your last ’un, and don’t stutter.”

  “You hain’t deaf, you son-of-a-gun. I’m wanting seventy-five and I’m getting it, or I’m taking her to the barn.”

  “Then keep her, for you’re the feller who can’t afford to. Stall her and feed her on ten-dollar bills this winter.”

  “I might do ’er, fat mouth. I might.”

  Godey and Mal had stopped, Mal still searching for recognizable faces, Godey attending the hagglings in the vicinity. Tongues were thickening, and an occasional finished bottle sailed into the timber with the bawl, “There goes a dead soldier.”

  “Your stud is too active. Been high-lifed, my opinion. Watch him walk, wagging his hips, picking up them knees. Tomorrow you’ll have to snake him out of the stable.”

  “That cob—hoofs split like stovewood. Huh, you’re not talking to me. No foot, no horse.”

  A medley of voices rose.

  “Hey, you folks, crowd up to my filly. Pass a hand across her flanks. They’re as soft as a woman’s glove. She’s a picture, I’m telling you. Was she people, I’d marry her.”

  “Yeah, she’s got freckles on her butt. She’s pretty.”

  “Did you say boot? Is boot all the word you know?”

  “Turn the critter into soap and I’ll bath myself next Christmas.”

  “The only bath you ever had was one time you fell in the creek.”

  The parleys broke up suddenly, nothing bought, nothing sold or traded, and with three bottles flung into the trees and a shout, “Old Aunt Dosha, if you don’t keer I’ll leave my demijohn setting right here.” In a troop the contenders rode out of the hollow, and a bystander observed, “Appears everybody has come here today a-leaving.”

  The county agent fidgeted on his stump. It was nine forty-five, and by rough count only twenty-seven traders remained. He noted that the man formerly occupying the skinned log had abandoned it for a seat on the ground, the saddle his support, and that farther down the hollow another was sprawled in the leaves, overcome by drink. The latter lay upslope, out of harm’s way.

  “Who owns this plug?”

  The grease buyer had tapped Godey’s elbow and stood calculating the weight of the mule. He had a choked countenance, and his lips were as long and as mobile as a sheep’s. Following this strike he intended to depart, for the pickings had grown too slim to bother remaining.

  “Who’s holding the lines?” Godey snapped.

  “I mean is he yours—your property?”

  “Anybody claim he hain’t?”

  The buyer’s lips unfolded. “Nobody, sprout. I’m trying to establish ownership before I bargain.”

  “Bargain, aye. What’s on your mind?”

  “Ah,” cozened the grease buyer, “let’s cut the gab and get to cases. I want to buy, and you want to sell. Correct?”

  “You’re the one popping fool questions.”

  Not completely satisfied, the buyer turned toward Mal. “Does your partner own the animal, or have the authority to dispose of it?”

  Casting a glance toward Godey, Mal answered, “Figure he’d come with him if he didn’t?”

  Godey diverted his attention, feigned to go. He advised, “Trot along and see to your bone-bags, snakebrains. We’re wasting breath.”

  The long lips of the buyer worked for a moment. Whipping out a checkbook, he spieled, “I’ll pay three dollars.”

  “Three dollars,” blatted Godey. “You’re laughing me to death. Are you counting me a dumb-head?”

  “Four.”

  “Fifteen,” countered Godey.

  “Seven.”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Whoa,” cried the buyer. “Whoa. You’re going up, getting higher. You’re supposed to come meet me.”

  “Eighteen” was Godey’s level reply, “and my next price will be twenty.”

  “Eighteen. Gosh a’mighty. Too much.”

  “You paid twenty last year. I have the facts on you. But I’ll take eighteen if you’ll hush.”

  The buyer’s lips were busy. “You’re a sharp duck,” he uttered, and flaring the checkbook against a tree inquired, “How do you sign?”

  “What’s it to you?” asked Godey.

  “I . . . I want to write your name on the draft so you can get your money at the bank.” He hesitated, brows furrowed, checkbook poised in air. “Do they know you at the Bank of Roscoe?”

  Godey grunted. “The big question is do they know you.”

  The buyer’s hand fell. “Any check I sign is gold, for I’m acquainted hereabouts and have trafficked in these parts many a season.”

  “The only paper I’ll accept is colored green,” asserted Godey. “You pay others cash. Why cull me?”

  “I’ll require your name for my record anyhow.”

  Agreeing promptly, Godey said, “You can have it. You’re paying eighteen cash dollars to Hebron Watley. I’m him. Now, are you suited?”

  The grease buyer mulled the matter over, lips champing. After an interval he explained, “I’m not wholly persuaded you have title to the animal, and pay
ing by draft is proof I acted legally. My checks are as negotiable as greenbacks. The bank and Roscoe merchants will honor them. So it’s a check, I’m afraid, or no deal.”

  Godey laughed sourly. “A check of yours wouldn’t be as good as a page of the Sears and Rearback catalog. Wouldn’t cover as much ground. Even a cob is worth more.”

  Without further ado the buyer pocketed the checkbook and turned away. “I’ll be seeing you around,” said he, and, “Don’t stuff any beans up your noses.”

  “We’re not about to, snakebrains,” returned Godey, “and don’t you be eating any horse apples.”

  Almost directly the boys encountered a trader who had a bridle draping his shoulders, a token of his having sold out and in the market. The corners of his mouth headed a riverlet of ambeer, a gray tousle stuck through a rent in his hat. The man paused to scrutinize Riar’s mule, to remark, “Where’d you dig up the brother to Methuselum?” and to twist open the animal’s lips and observe, “Could stand a new set of grinders the same as myself.”

  “He’s got four legs, and he walks on all of them,” Godey replied. “He’s been over the road but there’s a lot of plowing in him yet.”

  “Very little, to my notion” came the judgment, and the man continued, “I won’t work myself, and something or somebody has to.”

  “He’ll surprise you, old son. He’s the berries.”

  Mal chimed, “He’s a clod buster.”

  “He won’t do,” declared the man, passing on. “I can’t afford a brute as worthless as I am.”

  Fester improved his resting place after the boys left him by wadding the saddle cloth into a cushion for his head. The sleeper downhollow lacked such comfort, the earth his pillow. Fester took repeated sups from the dwindling half-pint of sugar-top, squinting to gauge the hour. Although he could not discover the sun, the glistering leaves at a point along the ridge proclaimed it not quite ten o’clock. Ample time remained to mend his fortune. He drowsed, chin in his collar, and when he did stir briefly and crack his lids, he gazed as upon an apparition. A Tennessee walking horse, with pen-hooker Rafe Shanks astride, was entering the hollow. The horse was on parade, a showing-forth of equine perfection, a display of grace and poise by both mount and rider.