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

had left. Mrs. Davenport had told Harve that she seed Red Emmy going off up the trace toward Snowman Mountain where she come from, all bent over and moving slow. Mrs. Davenport said she seen her face and it looked like a old, old woman. All of this had put such a scare into Mrs. Davenport that she went straight home and got in the bed and wouldn’t cook no dinner, Harve said. Harve said he bet she’s there yet. Luther Wade said he had run into Bill Horn—now Bill Horn works over in Roseann for the lumber company, comes home whenever he takes a mind to—and Bill Horn said he was crossing Snowman on the trace and heard the awfulest hollering and laughing you ever heard, coming down from the Raven Clift. He said it made his horse shy and the hair on his arms stand straight up. They was all laughing over Mrs. Davenport down in the bed and Bill Horn taking a fright.
    I sat there a-sipping and never laughed or said ary a word.
    I was a-looking out the valley there—it’s real pretty where Joe Johnson’s store is—over toward Black Rock Mountain off in the sky, and all of a sudden it was like a thundercloud rolls acrost my eyes and it all turns dark and I’ll swear I can hear her laughing. Then I rubs my eyes and takes another sip and it’s all gone, Joe Johnson’s girl is whizzing that bug around my head.
    â€œYou ought not to laugh,” I says. “We ain’t seed the end of it yet.”
    â€œNow, Granny.” Joe Johnson comes out and puts his hand on my shoulder. “Now, Granny,” he says. “Almarine took up with a crazy girl, and now he has run her off. There ain’t a man among us mought not of done it nor worse. That gal and her daddy was crazy as coots.”
    But I can’t get what I seed and heard outen my head. I stands up slow. “You mark my words,” I say, and I take up my stack-cake real careful, and set off a-traveling for home.
    â€œCrazy old woman,” that Stacy boy says, and I hear him alright, but I never look back nor give any sign. Thinks he is a power with the U.S. Mail.
    I walk the trace for home and after a time the moon comes up to light me on my way. Now this is a big full yaller moon, and no harm in it. I cross Grassy on the stepping stones at the mouth of Hoot Owl Holler, and the water is all shiny from that moon. There’s a little wind through the sprucey-pines, sounds like a song. I look up Hoot Owl Holler and I can’t see a thing, but I don’t feel nothing neither. It feels real calm and pleasant now in Hoot Owl Holler, and I lean down and get me a drink outen Grassy Creek and I heads upstream for home.
    So Almarine gets shed of Red Emmy, and it’s not two months before he has got him a wife for sure. And this time he done hisself proud.
    Â 
    He was over in Black Rock on a Saturday as I recall, to buy him a new mule and shoe his horse, when a wagon comes in all burdened down with goods and children and womenfolks walking along. They was not but one man, a little old bent-over man said he was bound for Kentucky and how far was it, and set down there where Squirrel Waldron’s forge is, a-wiping his face.
    Squirrel looks up from shoeing Almarine’s horse and says, “You have got you a mess of family, ain’t you?”
    The man wipes his face again and says, “Lord, Lord.”
    It don’t look to anybody like he’ll make it to Kentucky the rate he’s going. Then the womenfolks—twere his wife and her sister, if I recall—they go down to Poole’s store to buy them some food, and the children start running all over the place a-banging Squirrel Waldron’s tools. Squirrel being real particular about his tools. Almarine is just standing there a-watching it all, and they’s other folks too have come out to see. There hadn’t been such a commotion in Black Rock for a while.
    This old man wipes his face and says “Lord, Lord,” and then he whoops at