The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  There could not be a more oddly beautiful and yet frightfully contrary mission than this which we have undertaken. Perhaps, having lived so many years within the staid and ivy-laced walls of the college, it was natural for me to believe that there would be order to this process of encountering the mountain folk and gathering their stories. I had (quite foolishly) assumed that word would be sent ahead of us, and upon our arrival in each town, zealous folk would rush to the door of whatever housing had been arranged for us.

  How naive I was!

  Thus far, not a thing has been planned on this journey, nor do the folk in these hills understand why, in the name of heaven and earth, we would be mapping their roads and documenting the goings-on in this hardscrabble country. Yesterday, an old woman waved a finger at me and asked if I knew there was a Depression going on.

  “Yes, I do,” I said to her. “I lost my husband in the Crash of ’29. He fell from a ferryboat that very evening and drowned.”

  She frowned at me as if she had not an idea of what I meant, and then she spat a plug of tobacco over the railing before shooing me off her porch. It is no help to tell them I am a Federal Writer, either. They mistrust the government all the more. These hill folk are a people unto themselves and wary of strangers. Generally, the outsiders they do see are sniffing about for untaxed liquor stills and illegal moonshine storehouses.

  You can imagine, I suppose, the looks we draw as we claw our way up some treacherous road to a squat mountainside settlement or a ragged cabin teetering on the edge of the earth and sky and begin unpacking our camera and surveying equipment.

  My companion, Thomas, is a country doctor’s son, raised nearby in Tennessee, so this is not unfamiliar to him. “I can see you’ve never been far from the city, Mrs. Lorring,” he observed today, upon finding me perched atop a woman’s well house with my notepad, after having been chased away with a shotgun and set upon by her cur dog.

  “For heaven sake, that creature would have tackled and maimed me, if it had caught me!” I protested to Thomas, at my wits’ end. “And what if I’d had Emmaline with me?” I was quite put out with Thomas at that moment. He is a delightful lad, but much like the silly college chaps of whom I have oft warned the female students. He makes light of things when he should be taking them seriously.

  “He doesn’t look all that hungry,” Thomas commented, after studying the dog, and then he lifted me down from the well (a good thing, for I was in a straight skirt and tailored jacket to look nice for the day’s interviews, and I was wondering how to descend from the wellhouse without creating an embarrassing situation. I could not, at that moment, recall how I’d managed to scramble atop it, but thank heaven it was a covered well!).

  “You don’t look any worse for the wear, Mrs. Lorring,” Thomas said, giving a full grin and struggling to restrain his laughter. “If that dog wanted to have you, believe me, he would’ve, though. Next time, be sure to stop at the edge of the yard and hail the house, so’s to check that you’re welcome. That’s the proper way in these parts. You don’t never just walk right onto someone’s porch, unless you know you’re sure enough invited.”

  Shifting the empty notepad under my arm, I brushed a mess of snarled red hair from my eyes, giving both Thomas and the house a good look and thinking he was again playing one of his silly pranks. “Just … stand at the edge of the yard and yell?” (Said most incredulously, of course, such a novice was I.)

  “Yes’m.”

  “Thomas, for goodness sake! Do not say that word. You sound like a bumpkin. And ‘don’t never’ is a double negative, by the by.”

  “Yes’m. I won’t … never.”

  “Why must you annoy me so?” (I will flatly confess, Ruby, that he is a good boy and I am grateful for his guidance and protection, but he is no small trouble.)

  “It keeps the days short, Mrs. Lorring.” He moved aside to recover his tripod and transit from the grass. The dog, now reclining in the shade nearby, had the gall to wag its mangy tail at him! “My pappy used to say, any day you don’t find a reason to laugh is like livin’ two days, neither one of them worth a whit.”

  “Your father,” I corrected, as I was in quite the mood by then. “It is good advice, though, I suppose.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is.” His blue eyes fell to mere slices, like small slivers of sky, brooding over something. He cocked back his head, another question finding its way to his lips. He did not ask it, though. Instead, he bent to his instruments. “And, Mrs. Lorring, be sure you leave Emmaline in the car ’til you know you been welcomed in a place.” He glanced to our WPA car, where Emmaline was napping. Fortunately, she had missed the entire incident involving the dog, but I will tell you, Sister, that she has held up very well these first days of our journey. She is such a brave little thing. She welcomes each new experience with vigor and anticipation, never the least bit afraid. Of course, this only means that I must be afraid for all three of us. Rest assured I am doing a fine job of that!

  “The house there by the Mill Camp Store, that’s the district nurse’s place, I found out. Miz Merry Walker.” Thomas started away again with his tools in hand, the ever-present mountain wind billowing his loose canvas shirt and pinning the brown trousers close around his legs. “Seems if you can get Miz Walker to favor you, she can tote you all over the territory and introduce you to the midwife women and the healers. She’s about to travel the hills, telling the midwives about a teaching meetin’ with a doctor from Raleigh next month.” He sent a grin and a wink over his shoulder, like a boy who’s certain he’s answered the winning question correctly in the spelling bee. “You might just get yourself somethin’ to fill up that empty notepad, Mrs. Lorring.”

  I confess, I was still in a bit of a stew at that point, so I responded with a huff and a stomp of my foot rather than a thank-you, but as I have already conveyed, Thomas can use a bit of reining in. He tends to leave the ground first and then assess how high the jump may be.

  After our many years of foxhunting together, Sister, you know the potential results of that! I would say it is a wonder that we haven’t careened from one of these narrow, perilous mountain roads thus far, but I do not wish to worry you. Rest assured that Thomas has experience with the back paths in Tennessee, and he is quite the capable driver.

  I will pause for now and add to this letter later. I’ve been watching across the way as I write, and I see that the district nurse has just arrived. I am off to make a friend, I hope… .

  Ruby lifted her head and growled into the shadows, the noise slinging me from Appalachia to the Excelsior’s second floor—from Alice’s body to my own. I jerked upright, looked around, had the creepy feeling that I was being watched, but the salon was empty, the stairwell door still closed.

  “What’s the matter, Ruby?”

  She hushed, rolled her eyes my way, then rested her head on her paws, like she was embarrassed for sounding a false alarm. I couldn’t blame her. The place was murky and eerie so early in the morning, which was why I’d dragged Ruby down here in the first place. She probably would’ve rather been upstairs sharing Clyde’s breakfast.

  I, on the other hand, wanted to be anywhere but there, especially after my late night out, sitting on a pier under the stars with Casey Turner. We’d talked about the Outer Banks and about the Excelsior building. Casey appeared to be my one-stop solution. But the last time I’d jumped into something that seemed too easy, I’d ended up with a lovely mill building to convert into a restaurant. At an inexplicably low price, in a deceptively great location.

  Maybe that was what worried me most. Casey made it all sound way too simple, almost elementary. I knew it wasn’t. There were so many issues to be considered, so many potential ramifications. So many loose ends that seemed impossible to tie into neat little bows.

  It was easier to turn back to the next page of Alice’s letter. These pieces, I knew how to put together.

  Hello again, Dear Sister. Let me go on with the story of my meeting with the district nurse and a
ll that came of it.

  As a side note, Thomas and I have discovered a bit of a mystery in the course of our duties today. I am determined to document and perhaps solve it while I am at work in these mountains.

  I will leave the details to the end of this letter. First, let me tell you the story exactly as it happened, and it will be as if you were here with me:

  Upon seeing the district nurse return to her home, I exit the car where I have been waiting and hurry to her porch, catching her before she lets herself in the door. I quickly explain my business and offer to help with the parcels she is juggling. Though she is only dimly aware of the Federal Writers’ Project, she seems delighted to visit with someone from the city. Aside from that, she is a Roosevelt woman herself, so we have something in common.

  I soon learn that, in ’32, her Raleigh hospital went the way of bankruptcy, as so many did. Soon after, Mrs. Walker accepted this position as district nurse as a means of leaving behind the destitute city scenes and exchanging them for a different sort of desolation. “Here in the mountains,” she muses as the door swings open, “the people are equally afflicted with crippling poverty, but they are prepared for it. They have always lived hardscrabble, surviving on what they can grow and produce.”

  The cities, she goes on to point out, are filled with the ugliness of this Depression. One can scarce turn a corner without observing the scourge of breadlines, hoboes wandering in search of food or work, ragged children playing like pack rats in sewer drains while their hopeless fathers succumb to liquor and their mothers sit at empty cupboards.

  Yet the mountains provide a feast for the eye if not for the stomach. The mountains fill the senses in a way even money could not. Scenes of natural glory hide the ugliness of human deprivation. The people live firmly tied to their land and their traditions. They seem quilted by soft, even stitches to the sense that this is the natural way of life. Hard. Randomly cruel … and then, in the blink of an eye, possessed of great magnificence.

  “This place will steal your soul and hold it captive,” Mrs. Walker warns, gazing into the distance as we stand at the door.

  A cloud shadow sweeps down the path and then dances up a ridge, disappearing into a smoky mist that comes out of nowhere. I am struck by the contrasts of this place, the suddenness of light and shadow, of storm and clear sky, of threat and welcome.

  Mrs. Walker is, in herself, a contrast. The widow of a doctor, and quite clearly aristocratic in her speech and mannerisms, she is as plain as homespun cotton. There is not a fancy thing about her. Her graying hair is wound in a braid around her broad, German face. Her nose is a cheery bulb and her cheeks are naturally red and shiny. Framing her hazel eyes, lines lie deeply etched, and her hands are rough as a cob, the skin chapped and calloused. She does not seem to mind it. She is as utilitarian and practical as the gray nurse’s uniform she wears.

  She quite readily agrees to speak further with me. “I’ll enjoy the company,” she says, and quickly invites me into her square and trim white home. While the furnishings in the front room are spare, the china cupboards and velvet settee give evidence that Merry Walker once lived a grand life. The place is neat as a pin. The homemade bench placed along one wall, I assume, is for her patients.

  “My daughter is with me in the car,” I explain with some trepidation, hoping this will not change the tone of Mrs. Walker’s welcome. “But she is no trouble. She is a very accommodating child and quite happy with her colors and her paper.”

  In truth, Emmaline has worn the colors down to the nubs already, and there is scarce enough to pinch between her little fingernails. I haven’t an idea of what to do about it. I had imagined that they would last longer. We have been advanced our first month’s salary, but I must make certain it lasts. Better no colors than no food or roof to shelter under. We have already spent nights in the car twice, while Thomas slept outside in a tent. There is often in this country no stopping point at which a room can be had.

  “Nonsense,” says Nurse Walker. “How can a girl grow into a woman, sitting in a car with colors? To understand life, one must experience it!” Her silver-flecked eyes seem to bore through me as if she is well aware that I have been keeping Emmaline away from these mountain people and their children, who are oft clothed more in scabs and vermin than in pants or shorts or dresses.

  “Of course,” I say to Mrs. Walker, and I move to retrieve Emmaline from the car, but Mrs. Walker catches my arm and says, “Come along inside. I’ve a patient I think you might like to meet after a while. You and I can chat until then. Able will go after your daughter.”

  She calls down the hall and out comes a tall, thin girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age. She is wrapped in a knitted shawl, though the day is not cold. Long, curling tendrils of dark hair reach to her waist. Her skin is the color of burnished hickory, and her eyes are a striking pale blue. The closest thing I can liken her to are the gypsies we saw passing along the road on our trip to Ireland the year we turned ten. Do you remember them, Ruby, with their jingling bells and mysterious ways? This girl could be one of them.

  Her shawl shifts aside, and I see that she is heavily pregnant. I cannot help but stare. She is only a child.

  Does Nurse Walker approve of this, I wonder? Surely not!

  Passing bashfully by, the girl nods at Mrs. Walker’s instructions and then is gone before I can wonder whether Emmaline will be frightened by her.

  “You must excuse Able,” Mrs. Walker says regretfully. “She hardly knows a thing. A week ago when I made my rounds, she followed me down the mountain. She won’t say who the father of the baby might be or whether she’s run away from a husband. I don’t quite know what to do about her. Sweet, dear child.”

  “A husband!” I gasp, craning to watch the girl descend the porch steps, balancing her load. “Surely not.” Yet I am sickened by the possibilities, either way. She is not so many years older than Emmaline! Who could have done such a thing to this child? What has she endured in her short life?

  “It’s not a rarity that I come across such things,” Mrs. Walker admits. All she knows of the girl is that her name is Able and she is neither Negro nor Cherokee nor white, but another thing I will tell you of at the end of this letter. “Certainly, I couldn’t just leave her on the mountain, but I’m afraid trouble may come of it.”

  Together, we peer through the window and watch Able and Emmaline making friends. Able seems quite interested in the car, and Emmaline invites her inside to see. They close the door, perhaps sharing Emmaline’s colors and book.

  Nurse Walker takes my hand and pats it between hers. “Looks like they’re chums already. Come along and I’ll brew some coffee for us. Tell me more about this Writers’ Project… .”

  Over coffee at a small table in the kitchen, I acquaint myself further with Merry Walker. I am also introduced to Jolly, a lop-eared brown hound that Merry laughingly refers to as her “resident assistant.”

  It isn’t long before a knock comes at the back door and Jolly announces the visitor with a bark and a long, yodeling howl. Nurse Walker’s patient has arrived, and I, in turn, have the source of my first story.

  On the back porch this day is an old Negro man who has come here about trouble with his eyes. He has traveled quite a distance, Mrs. Walker being the only bona fide medical professional available in the area. The patient’s granddaughter has brought him by mule cart, which stands parked in back. The mule is quite happily chewing the bark off Mrs. Walker’s apple tree, which she sternly requests be stopped immediately.

  The granddaughter hurries off to handle the mule, and I am introduced to Bass Carter, who is in his eighty-seventh year. He becomes the subject of my inaugural narrative. “Don’t know why you folks wadn’t askin’ ’bout them times long ago, back when they was more a us,” he says to me after my purpose has been explained. “The gub’ment, you say? The gub’ment wanna know ’bout us peoples? Well don’t that beat all!”

  “Yes,” I agree, and smile at him, and think of the many
colored women who worked in Mother’s kitchen and in Grandmother’s. While we had a fine time vexing the help, it dawns on me now that we never asked any of them for their stories. In all those years, it never occurred to me to care.

  Now my very livelihood depends on my ability to persuade Bass Carter to share his experiences with me. Suddenly, I see that Bass Carter’s story matters as much as my own. Perhaps more. He has lived longer, being not quite three times my age.

  There is an air of quiet dignity about him as he sits back in the rocking chair and speaks.

  “I’s borned on the Culberson plantation. Don’ ’member it much. My mama’s name Nessie and my daddy’s Franklin. Both a them pick cotton and tabacee, minute the day come up to when the day go down. By the light a the moon if’n was bright ’nough. But I don’ ’member much ’bout that. First thing I ’members clear is Massa get my mama to clean me up, bring me to the big house. I know my Mama’s sad ’bout it, and I don’ know why. I’s only five year old. The kitchen women gimme fine suit a clothes and they puts me in it. Shoes and ever’thin’! I can’t even walk in them thangs! But that day, I’s da birthday present for the massa’s grandson. He three year old and need him somebody to play wit’. Massa give me to him fo’ his property. I’s gonna have a easy life now in a new house. No mo’ pickin’ cotton. Only trouble is, that house a long way off… .”

  Onward goes Mr. Bass Carter’s story, as I alternately listen and scribble notes and try my best to commit to memory the patterns of his speech, the rise and fall of his voice, the juxtaposition of words. Via our FWP leaders, we have been instructed to deliver “no ivory tower writing” but to bring “the streets, the stockyards, and the hiring halls into literature.” This admonishment bids us to accurately record our informants and to make them feel that they are critical to our mission.

  This is no trouble for me as I sit with Mr. Bass Carter, his granddaughter nearby, eyeing me with some wariness as her face rests against the nose of the dozing mule. Bass Carter’s eyes grow cloudy and far away, and I am transported to the time before the War between the States, a time that is bred into our awareness as Southerners, yet most often lauded as a day of grace and grandeur. Mr. Bass Carter causes me to wonder … how different is that history when seen from the fields and the lowly slave cabins?