Read Online Oral History (9781101565612) by Lee Smith - Free Book Online Page A

was.
    â€œNow you get up,” I said, when I thought this had lasted long enough, but he did not.
    â€œThey’s something else,” he said.
    â€œThey’s always something else,” I said. “Well, let’s hear it. What is it?” I asked.
    â€œShe’s gonner have a baby,” Almarine says. He cries down into his hands.
    â€œGood God in heaven,” I say. “It won’t be no baby like none of us-uns ever seed, I’ll tell you that. You get rid of her, Almarine,” what I told him, “afore you get you a passel of witch-children up there.”
    Almarine stood up. I’ll swear it was the prettiest day, full June, bees a-buzzing and butterflies flitting all over the creek. Queen Anne’s lace ever place you look. Almarine rubbed at his eyes like he couldn’t see.
    â€œI come back here a free man,” he says. “I served my time. I growed up here, Granny.”
    â€œI knowed you,” I says.
    â€œI love this holler,” he says.
    â€œThat’s so,” I told him.
    â€œI ain’t a-going to lose it,” he says. Then he looks down at me and grins. Despite of him being so thin, he looks like himself now in the face, around the eyes. “I won’t have no witch-children in my holler,” Almarine says. “I don’t know what come over me,” he says.
    â€œHolp a old woman up,” I says, and Almarine done so.
    Then he puts his hands on his sticking-out hipbones and laughs so loud it comes back from the rocky clifts.
    â€œI still need a wife,” he says.
    â€œI reckon you do,” I told him, “and I reckon I’ll be traveling on down to Tug now. I got me a baby to cotch.”
    Almarine stood tall by Grassy Creek just a-grinning, and watched me on my way.
    Marylou Harkins had a britches-baby, taken it two days to come. End of that, and I went around to the store, and what-all I hear from Joe Johnson is mighty good news. They was some several folks in there as I recall, and all of them dead to tell it. Harve Justice was in there, and One-Eyed Jesse Waldron from the Paw Paw Gap, and Luther Wade sat picking on the porch. He can play a guitar as sweet as you ever heard. I sets down on the porch to rest my bones.
    â€œHow’s that baby?” Joe Johnson hollers out, and I holler back it is fine.
    â€œHit’s a little girl,” I say. “They ain’t named her yet.”
    â€œI reckon ye could use a little of this,” Joe Johnson hollers, and he sends his girl out with some liquor in a glass.
    â€œI reckon I could,” I allows.
    They was all of them a-watching me real careful while I takes me a sip.
    â€œWhat air you all up to?” I asks, I see how they’re watching so close, and Harve Justice slaps his leg and laughs real loud.
    â€œBoy, you sound like a mule,” I said, which was true, and all of them starts in laughing then. Joe Johnson’s girl is catching june bugs in front of the porch.
    â€œI guess you ain’t heerd it, then,” Harve says. He is a big old skinny feller can rile you to death without even trying.
    No use to rush him neither. So I sit here on the porch with Luther a-picking, and all of us sipping a little, and that Stacy boy rides up with the mail and folks starts to come from all over. It’s getting on for afternoon by then. That Stacy boy thinks he is something on a stick, got him a leather pouch says the U.S. Mail. Joe Johnson gives his girl a string and so she’s swinging that june bug around in the air, just a-whizzing him, flash of greeny gold. Marylou Harkins’s mama come over after a time and brung me a apple stack-cake for my sweet-tooth, she says, and I thanks her kindly. I love a apple stack-cake. I was feeling real good a-setting there on the porch, and by the by it all come out like I knowed it would.
    Almarine had up and got rid of Red Emmy, was the long and short of it.
    He had throwed her outen the door and she