Read Online All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rick Bragg
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big sacks could hold more than a hundred pounds. The best pickers picked out the trash and sticks, the worst would shove a big rock in the bottom of the sack and hope no one saw it when it was upended into the cotton wagon. Whites and blacks picked together, but did not make the same money. It wasn’t right but it was the way it was.
“Even when Momma was old, she was still pickin’,” said my momma. “She could pick purty good. She could outpick Niter, but then anybody outpick poor ol’ Niter. She could pick a hundred pounds, too, but it took her five years.”
The only work the family did not share was the still. Like most cultures where hard likker and religion flowed together, Granddaddy did his whiskey making and drinking away from the children. It was fine for a man to drink, as long as he didn’t expose his children to it, and it was fine to get blind drunk as long as a man could keep his dignity and his hands off his wife and children when he was angry or had the blind staggers. It is an odd thing now, thinking back, that even though I grew up surrounded by drunks, not one time can I remember any man besides my father openly drinking. I would see an uncle or two sneak a nip from a bottle hidden under the seat, but they did it furtively, almost ashamedly. It is why my grandfather never respected my father. He couldn’t hold his likker or his temper, but we will get to that later.
Now and then, the law would come to visit. The sheriff would make a perfunctory trip out, but instead of searching through the pines for the still he would sit on the porch until suppertime, and have some beans and cornbread. Other sheriffs were more vigorous, but my granddaddy fooled them again and again. He would walk the hills until he found a nice bluff, hollow out a place to put the still, and cover the opening with brush. He would walk a different way to the still every time, to avoid wearing down the grass and weeds and leaving a trail. He probably could have ridden a rhinoceros through the ragweed for all the danger he was in of being found out, since the typical Southern sheriff was not exactly Daniel Boone when it came to following a trail. My uncle Jimbo likes to tell the story of the time a sheriff came out and stood on top of the hill, sniffing the air, smelling the whiskey cooking almost under his feet, but just stomped around and cussed. Then my grandma invited him to supper.
The lifetime of drinking killed Charlie Bundrum in the end just as surely as it did my own father. The doctor called it cirrhosis of the liver. He did not die a little at a time, like most people do. He kept walking, kept working, kept laughing, until one day he just didn’t get out of bed, and died that same day.
He lived long enough to see most of his family married off, to sit knee-deep in a pool of squirming grandchildren. He saw my mother fall in love with the good-looking, dark-haired, part Cherokee boy, and did not stop them when they drove up to Tennessee to get married by a justice of the peace. She was almost eighteen, and if she was not the most beautiful woman in the county, I do not know who was. The photographs from that time show a tall, slim, blond woman with high cheekbones and a peace about her that comes through even in faded black-and-white. She looks serene. I don’t know. Maybe that is how she stood it.
My grandfather lived long enough to hold her first child, David Samuel, named from the Bible. He took one look at the long body and nicknamed him Bone. Sambone. And while he loved his grandchildren he seemed to love him most of all, and would hold him in his big hands for hours, or just watch him play in the dirt between his big boots. It was as if he knew his own death was coming, and he wanted to be close to this precious life as much as he could.
He lived long enough to see the true nature of his son-in-law’s character emerge, saw the cruelty, and his first inclination was to hunt him down and kill him. The second
“Even when Momma was old, she was still pickin’,” said my momma. “She could pick purty good. She could outpick Niter, but then anybody outpick poor ol’ Niter. She could pick a hundred pounds, too, but it took her five years.”
The only work the family did not share was the still. Like most cultures where hard likker and religion flowed together, Granddaddy did his whiskey making and drinking away from the children. It was fine for a man to drink, as long as he didn’t expose his children to it, and it was fine to get blind drunk as long as a man could keep his dignity and his hands off his wife and children when he was angry or had the blind staggers. It is an odd thing now, thinking back, that even though I grew up surrounded by drunks, not one time can I remember any man besides my father openly drinking. I would see an uncle or two sneak a nip from a bottle hidden under the seat, but they did it furtively, almost ashamedly. It is why my grandfather never respected my father. He couldn’t hold his likker or his temper, but we will get to that later.
Now and then, the law would come to visit. The sheriff would make a perfunctory trip out, but instead of searching through the pines for the still he would sit on the porch until suppertime, and have some beans and cornbread. Other sheriffs were more vigorous, but my granddaddy fooled them again and again. He would walk the hills until he found a nice bluff, hollow out a place to put the still, and cover the opening with brush. He would walk a different way to the still every time, to avoid wearing down the grass and weeds and leaving a trail. He probably could have ridden a rhinoceros through the ragweed for all the danger he was in of being found out, since the typical Southern sheriff was not exactly Daniel Boone when it came to following a trail. My uncle Jimbo likes to tell the story of the time a sheriff came out and stood on top of the hill, sniffing the air, smelling the whiskey cooking almost under his feet, but just stomped around and cussed. Then my grandma invited him to supper.
The lifetime of drinking killed Charlie Bundrum in the end just as surely as it did my own father. The doctor called it cirrhosis of the liver. He did not die a little at a time, like most people do. He kept walking, kept working, kept laughing, until one day he just didn’t get out of bed, and died that same day.
He lived long enough to see most of his family married off, to sit knee-deep in a pool of squirming grandchildren. He saw my mother fall in love with the good-looking, dark-haired, part Cherokee boy, and did not stop them when they drove up to Tennessee to get married by a justice of the peace. She was almost eighteen, and if she was not the most beautiful woman in the county, I do not know who was. The photographs from that time show a tall, slim, blond woman with high cheekbones and a peace about her that comes through even in faded black-and-white. She looks serene. I don’t know. Maybe that is how she stood it.
My grandfather lived long enough to hold her first child, David Samuel, named from the Bible. He took one look at the long body and nicknamed him Bone. Sambone. And while he loved his grandchildren he seemed to love him most of all, and would hold him in his big hands for hours, or just watch him play in the dirt between his big boots. It was as if he knew his own death was coming, and he wanted to be close to this precious life as much as he could.
He lived long enough to see the true nature of his son-in-law’s character emerge, saw the cruelty, and his first inclination was to hunt him down and kill him. The second
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