by Wiley Cash
“Where you wanting me to stop?” that man asked me.
“It don’t much matter,” I told him. He must’ve thought he had a real mountain yokel on his hands, and I can’t say I much blame him. If I wasn’t the greenest thing he’d ever seen, then I don’t know what was.
“Well, what kind of work are you hoping to find?” he asked me.
“That don’t much matter neither,” I said.
That must’ve frustrated him because that man stopped that wagon right smack in the center of town with all those cars and trolleys whizzing by and me sitting up there all bright-eyed and scared. He sat there with the reins in his hands and watched me get down and dust myself off and reach up for my little piece of luggage.
“What you figuring on doing now?” he asked me.
“I’m figuring on finding me some work,” I told him, and it wasn’t hardly no time at all before I’d done just that.
That night I found me a bed in a little tenement shack for girls, and the next day I took a job as a laundress taking in wash from the summer folks who stayed in the boardinghouses around the square and uptown in the hotels. And Lord, if those folks from places like Charleston and Atlanta and Savannah didn’t have just about the nicest, finest clothes I’d ever seen. But even all that fine fabric didn’t make that job no easier; washing is some hard work on your hands. You keep them wet like that for long enough, and you can just about peel off your skin like an onion. It’ll give you some soft hands, but Lord if they don’t get to hurting you good after you done it awhile. I hated it, but that was about all the work I could find. It was early summer and a good three months before the apple season sprung out there in the south of town and there wasn’t no tobacco coming in yet, so washing was about all the work I could get and about all the experience I had with the kinds of jobs folks did in town.
I washed clothes like the devil all summer long to keep my belly full and my back covered, and the first day them tobacco barns on the river opened up I was down there trying to hustle up a little work. They took one look at me, a skinny little girl from the hills, and they said, “What in the world do you know about tobacco?”
Of course I’d worked burley all my life, and I told them, “I know more about it on both ends than you do on this one. You let me work for you and pay me a fair take, and I’ll show you just what I know.” And let me tell you, there was me at fourteen hustling that market like nobody’s business.
“You there,” I might say to some or other seller, “what in the world did you do, drag that burley through the French Broad on your way here? Y’all going to have to dry that out good before it gets on this scale,” and “Yes, sir, you got yourself a right pretty crop, and we want to make you a right pretty deal to go with it.” I used to carry on like that just about all the time, trying to get those buyers a good price.
They’d say, “Where in the world did you learn to talk burley like that?” and I’d go into some or other long windy about being born with a burley knife already in my hand, and I’ll be doggone if some of them fellers didn’t want to believe it.
But if that wasn’t a tough time for folks with all the boys gone off to fight and then bringing that sickness home. It wasn’t bad enough the city was about slam full of lungers. You could see them sitting up on the screened porches of some of the sanitariums along the road from town and on the way to the tobacco barns. Folks would try and hide it, but you could tell them right off when you saw them. Just sickly looking and trying their best to hide those little handkerchiefs, those little red spots on the cotton. When the boys started coming home from the war in spells, it got a whole lot worse than it was before. The flu they brought home with them just spelled out disaster, and not only in town neither, and not just in this part of the country. Thousands died, thousands. We ain’t never seen the like of it since, and I hope we don’t in my day. Whole families just up and dying in only a week or two. Ain’t never seen the like of it since.
I CAME HOME TO MADISON COUNTY THAT FALL AFTER THE LEAVES had turned and were just about off the trees, and on the road up the mountain I guess I had what you might call a premonition.
“Addie,” a voice said somewheres in my mind, “when you get up there things ain’t going to be the same as they was when you left.” And for some reason, and I can’t say why, I knew I wasn’t going to find my great-aunt alive.
The place was just as still and quiet as it could be—no smoke coming up out of the chimney, nothing but weeds and a shriveled-up crop in the ground. I listened to the wind tumbling through the dead stalks in the field, and I remember that it put me in mind of hearing paper trash blow along the sidewalk in the town I’d just left from. If I’d have closed my eyes I might’ve thought I was right back in downtown Asheville carrying a heap of dirty laundry down a lamplit street instead of lugging my own little piece of luggage and a purse padded with a couple bills and some loose coins up the hill toward home.
Sure enough, I found her in the bed by the cold fireplace covered up to her neck with all the quilts she’d made. I can’t say just how long she’d been dead, but I’ve seen pictures of those Egyptian kings after they find them in their tombs, and I think it’s fair to say she was on her way to that. But she’d took the time to plait her hair, and it’s because of that that I can fool myself into remembering that she looked just like a little girl laying there with those tight gray pigtails splayed out on the pillow beside her. If she’d still been alive and it had been somebody else laying there, even a stranger, I think I would’ve cried just for seeing a dead body. But it wasn’t nobody else but her and there wasn’t nobody else there but me, so I figured there wasn’t much use in all that carrying on.
Then, at that time, I couldn’t believe she’d been laid up dead for who knows how long and there hadn’t been nobody coming up to check on the old woman and the little girl living on top of Parker Mountain. I found out later that folks had in their minds all kinds of no-count ideas about me and her living up there alone. They said she ran a still out there in the woods and had me out selling liquor to men on the other side of the mountain down near Greenville, Tennessee. The kids up there thought we were witches hiding out and eating the fingers and toes of little boys we caught on the land. With people holding truck in ideas like that, I reckon it makes pretty good sense that they’d stay as far away from us as they could.
I’d always known she wanted to be buried with her people up in the field above the cabin where they’d buried family for years. She’d take me up there on Decoration Day, and we’d sweep the stones clean and clear what grass and weeds there was growing up around them. She’d lead us a little service under a stand of oaks up there, sing songs, say a prayer or two. From that high up you could see the county rolling away from you to the east, and if you turned and looked around the other way you could see the range running clear to Tennessee. It was a right pretty place, and I figured that was where I’d lay her to rest.
Now, I didn’t know the first thing about burying a body, and I for sure didn’t know a thing about building no coffin. But I did know how to dig me a hole, though, and that’s just what I did that next morning on top of the hill. I climbed up there just as the sun was breaking good on the ridge to the east, and I laid into that ground with a pickax and an old shovel. I didn’t stop digging until that hole was as deep as I was tall, and even then I knew that it wasn’t quite deep enough, but I was just too wore out to keep on.
After I finished I set off down the mountain and stopped at the first cabin where it looked like people were living. When I got close I seen a woman out in the field, and I called out to her.
“Ma’am,” I said, “I hate to bother you.” I looked on the other side of the field and seen an old man coming up out of the barn. He seemed like he was surprised to see a girl like me walking up the road to his place. That woman looked at him, and then she bent down to her work again. The old man made his way across the yard toward me so slow I thought he might not ever make it.
; “What is it you’re needing?” he asked me once he was close enough. He had on him an old pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, and through those glasses I could see how worn his eyes looked, like he’d spent his whole lifetime squinting up at the sun.
“I hate to bother you,” I said again. “I live up the road a piece with my aunt—”
“I know who you are,” he said. I shut my mouth quick, and he just stared down at me. Then he turned his head and spit a brown stream of tobacco juice into the grass beside his boot.
“Well, I just came in from Asheville yesterday evening, and I found her passed away. I’m down here wondering if I could borrow—”
“What took her?” he asked.
“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “I reckon it might have been this flu. But I can’t figure out how. I’m sure you know folks up on this mountain here didn’t have too much to do with her. I don’t know how she could’ve caught it with nobody stopping by to see her, her not having no friends that I know of.” He looked at the ground for a minute, and then he spit another stream of juice into the grass and rubbed it in with the toe of his boot. “I need to borrow some tools from somebody so I can fix up something fit to bury her in,” I said.
He looked up from the ground out to where his wife stood in the field. She’d quit working and was looking over at us, like she’d been able to hear us talking to each other from all the way across the yard.
“I’ve got cash money,” I told him. “If that’s what it’ll take, then I’m ready to spend it.” He looked back at me.
“There ain’t no need for that,” he said. “You go on and lay her out. We’ll be up there with it in the morning.” He turned, and I watched him walk back toward the barn. The woman was staring at me from the field. I raised my hand to her.
“Thank y’all!” I hollered.
I BEDDED DOWN IN THE BACK ROOM WITH HER STILL OUT THERE IN the bed by the fireplace, and that night I had me a dream. I can tell you that I ain’t never had such a dream before in my life, and not since have I remembered one so clearly.
It was dusk and I was walking up the hill from down there in the bottomland where the river snakes its way west to Tennessee. In the dream I wore some kind of baptismal robe that was so long that it drug along behind me in that dark, black mud, and I can remember just as plain as day looking down to see where it was still wet around the hem from me being in the river. It looked like I’d only stepped ankle-deep into the water and then changed my mind and walked right out, because in my dream the rest of me was dry and I didn’t have no memory of being dunked under that cold water. No memory of any prayers being prayed over me and no ringing in my ears from the testament of faith I’d have likely been expected to share.
I didn’t know just where I was at first, but the sun had sunk down below the hill that I was walking toward, and the whole country out there was just as quiet as it could be. It was then, with my back to the river, that I got the sense that somebody was following me, that somebody was right there on my heels going up that hill right along behind me. I stopped walking, and I turned around and I could hear my robe dragging over the grass and I could feel my bare feet stepping on that wet cotton hem. When I looked behind me, there was Jesus. He had on him a blue robe that was as dark as pitch where it was soaked through from the waist down, and I knew he’d been all the way out there in that water just waiting on me, and somehow or another I’d decided not to go out and meet him.
I knew it was Jesus sure enough because he looked just like they always said he would: olive skin, soft brown eyes, light brown hair. But in my dream he was much older than what you might find in a picture Bible or in the paintings that might be hanging up in a church. In my dream he was much older than they let him live to be. I could see the years around his eyes and his beard had patches of gray and white in it, and when he walked toward me from the river he had a little hitch in his step like his hip or his leg was hurting him and giving him a little bit of trouble. I just stood there watching him, and when he got within earshot, he hollered out to me.
“Why’d you stop walking?” he asked.
“Because,” I told him. “I didn’t know you were back there.”
“Yes, you did,” he said. “You just forgot. But go on, I’m following you now.” I just stood there not knowing what to say, and Jesus waved his hand like he was shooing me away. “Go on,” he said. “It’s all right. I told you, I’m following you.”
I turned around and faced that hill again, and when I did I felt something heavy in my hands. I looked down and saw that I was holding a plate with a napkin over it that was wet with grease, and when I lifted that napkin I saw that it covered a heap of hot fried chicken. All of a sudden I felt somebody walk past me, and when I looked up I saw it was a woman in a long white robe just like the one I had on, and when I looked her in the face I felt like she was somebody I might’ve known once upon a time. She held a plate in her hands too, and beside her was a man with a guitar strapped over his shoulder and he held a tambourine in one hand and a jug of something in the other. When I looked around that bottomland, I saw it was plum full of people in robes carrying food and instruments up the grassy hillside in the growing dark, not a one of them saying a word, not a one of them making a noise. They looked just like ghosts or haints, and then it struck me that they might just be angels. Jesus walked right up beside me, and we stood there watching them walk past us and on ahead of us, and I could feel that fried chicken cooling under that napkin and that plate was growing cold against my fingers.
“Go on,” Jesus said again. “I’m right here behind you.”
I set off walking up the hill even though I knew I wouldn’t ever be able to catch up with all them folks, but I knew it didn’t matter because we were going to a Decoration Day and I knew they’d have the food set out and the hymns going and the sweet tea poured when I met them at the top of that hill. I looked up there where some of the people were already starting to crest the hill, and there was a woman facing me, and when I looked close I saw it was my great-aunt and she was looking down at me and smiling like she was waiting for me and might just be willing to wait there forever. She didn’t look like the tiny, shrunken thing I’d found by that cold fireplace. She looked straight and strong and shiny like a new silver dollar. I knew that I was going to wake up before I got to the top of that hill where she was waiting. Jesus must’ve known it too, for I felt his graying beard against my cheek and I could hear his breath in my ear where he walked right along beside me.
“Look at her, Addie,” he whispered. “That’s what immortality looks like.”
I HEARD THAT MAN AND WOMAN FROM DOWN THE MOUNTAIN DRIVING their wagon out there in the road early that next morning, and I stepped out the door and saw him leading a big brown mare up the hill by the reins. A cart was bumping along behind her, and the coffin he’d made was resting up on top. It wasn’t too much more than a rectangular box made from a few old boards, but I can tell you that I was glad to have it.
“Thank y’all for coming,” I said when they stopped in the road in front of the cabin.
“It ain’t nothing,” the man said.
“We’re glad we could help,” the woman said. He unloaded that box, and I helped him carry it inside where I’d laid my great-aunt out on the bed.
“I’ll leave this to y’all,” he said, and he walked past us back outside. The woman helped me lift my great-aunt into the box, and I straightened her dress and smoothed it out. She was so light it was like lifting a little child. I’d unplaited her hair the night before and combed it out the best I could, but it didn’t look like her. It was like we were loading up somebody I didn’t know to carry them up the hill to the graveyard, and I expected my great-aunt to walk in the door any minute.
“Addie,” she’d say, “what in the world?”
The woman and I stood there looking down at her where she laid in that box. It was quiet inside there, and I could hear the horse’s feet shuffling in the dirt road outside.
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br /> “We should leave it open until we get up there,” the woman said. “Odus will nail it shut then.” She went outside, and I could hear her out there in the road talking to the man. He opened the door and stepped inside.
I helped him carry the coffin out to the cart, and when the sun hit her face I saw for the first time just how bad she looked. Her skin was so white you could almost see through it. He fastened the coffin down on the back of that cart, and the three of us followed the road up the mountain to the graveyard. Once we got up there I helped him unload her, and the woman got the ropes they’d brought to lower her down into the hole I’d dug the day before. The man had brought along a hammer and a little sack of nails for closing down the lid.
He pulled the lid off the sled and he sat it over the top of the coffin, and then he got down on his knees and started hammering it shut. Every time that hammer hit, it echoed up through those oaks with a report that seemed like it would carry forever—a sound like a rifle blast ringing out over the mountains. When he finished, we lowered her down with the ropes, him on one side of the grave and me and his wife on the other. Once we finished, we just stood there looking down into that hole.
“Do you want to say something?” the woman asked me.
“I don’t figure there’s much to be said now,” I told her. Besides, I knew that what I’d wanted to say to my great-aunt I’d already said to myself, and if she was listening up there she’d have heard it just the same.
After finding her dead and alone, I told myself I wasn’t going to die in a drafty cabin with nobody to find me but the critters and maybe some snooping kids. I thought, Addie, it ain’t no way to live up on this mountain alone for the rest of your life; you need to get down to where folks are, and so I up and left, and I’ve lived just outside Marshall since ’20. I reckon that’s been along about sixty-odd years.
