Читать книгу Jewel - Myrna G. Raines - Страница 3

The Great Depression, it was so called. A far-reaching depression that swept the entire nation and affected rich and poor alike, and was like no other America had ever known. Very few escaped the devastating consequences, and it would be many years before the country recovered from the debilitating effects. In the canyons of Wall Street, men lost great fortunes when the stock market failed, and many could not bear to see their very fortunes swept away with the tides of calamity. It seemed far too often, for those who could afford to buy newspapers, that people read of another who had taken their life, the mortification of losing everything they owned on this earth too much to bear. Most leapt from the tall windows that comprised their office buildings, landing with their dignity splattered on the streets below.

In the hills of West Virginia, there were those who had never heard of a stock market, Wall Street, or what it meant to invest money in anything except food and at times, drink. This story is of those whose greatest priority in life was making it through the day, allowing tomorrow to take care of itself.

Employment was practically nonexistent. Struggling to come out of that Great Depression that left soup lines in every city, Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United States, promising a chicken in every pot. He set up the WPA and CCC Camps for those who were indigent. These programs employed those men who could not find employment to build and maintain roads and bridges, with the CCC Camps filled with young men who were paid wages to work in the forestry service.

Most knew little about those things, but they quickly learned about war. And after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, more than one young man from the hills were called to serve his country. Never having been far from home, these men were introduced to a different way of life, an urban life that drew them away from their roots to the many conveniences of various cities and towns. Some did return, however, different, but still sons of the mountains. The hills would always be their home.

A diligent and determined person could survive, could eke a living off the land if they were fortunate enough to own a plot. Not a high quality of life, but one that allowed a family to exist. And barely exist they did, cooking up beans and potatoes for one meal, potatoes and beans the next, along with the inevitable eggs and wild greens. A treat was a chicken for Sunday dinner. And many a fowl, rabbit, or squirrel, gave their lives for the cause.

Such were the times when a man could build his own house, on his own land, and never a naysayer could hand down rules and regulations as to why the man could not. The cabin on Logan’s Mountain came into existence simply because the man needed a place to live. This particular cabin was built with great care in 1938 as a necessity, more or less. Hugging the lush green hillside, the home would eventually hold an unexpected tragedy that would immensely affect the lives of the Logan family, and as humble as it was, it would become a haven for some, and would eventually bring forth a unique legacy for the family sheltered within its walls.

As for size, the cabin wasn’t much to speak of. With little help and less money, the builder did the best he could under the circumstances. As he was planning to marry soon, it was with the utmost urgency that he raise the cabin, but nonetheless took great pains to build it to his exact specifications.

It took many hours of backbreaking labor to clear the spot of rocks, trees, and vines, with help from his older brother and the two old workhorses they owned. Surrounding the space he’d cleared stood a forest comprised of pine, oak, maple, cedar, elm, birch, and the like, with a lot of locust trees, walnut, and mountain laurel thrown in with all the rest of the unrestrained forest, as forests are wont to do when there is no interference from man.

A lane cut diagonally through the dense woods to allow access to the cabin. Not a wide lane, that lane leading up to the ridge road, but only a little more than enough room for the width of a horse and wagon. The lane was rutted from wagon wheels with grass growing through the center in the summer time, and was either a quagmire of mud when it rained, or so dry it was pure dust when it didn’t. Couldn’t hardly see that lane ’cause the man hadn’t cleared the trees on either side of it and in the summertime a canopy of leaves covered the lane as if it were some sort of passageway. The kids played a lot on the lane pretending they were in a rabbit’s den or maybe in the war in a foxhole. Sticks served as guns. They had no toys, but Mommy had made the girl a rag doll, and she carried it with her as if it were a real baby.

The cabin did not face down the hill, as one would expect, but instead set sideways with the front porch facing right if you were looking up toward the cabin from the springs and the rock cliffs that were scattered here and there down toward the valley below. A small stream was at the bottom of the hill, rushing over rocks and debris on its way to the Guyandotte River. Nobody ever called the river by that long, official name. It was known simply as the Guyan.

Two curtained windows set off the front of the place, twelve small six by nine panes to each window, six on top and six on the bottom, shaded by the porch. The entire length of the cabin was only about thirty feet; the front porch being sixteen feet long by eight feet wide. The family spent a lot of time on that porch, especially in the evenings after the day’s work was done. A railing had been added as the children grew to protect them from falling off the edge, although they wouldn’t have fallen far, perhaps two or three feet. No worse than fallin’ off a bed.

A window had been cut out also on the left side of the cabin that looked down the hill, but on the right side a stone fireplace took up six feet of the wall, square in the center. There were no windows in the back of the cabin, only a back door that wasn’t centered, but set almost to the right side wall where the fireplace was located. Daddy decided to build a small lean to kitchen in which he installed another small window and put the back door out there straight across from where it had been. Mommy set the table and chairs under that window, which left only enough room for the cook stove and a small cupboard. She made curtains out of feed sacks to cover the front of the cupboard so the dishes and pans would be out of sight. From the back door you could easily get to the outhouse, the chicken coop/hog pen, the tool shed, and the barn that had been built to follow the curve of the land, sort of catty-cornered to the house. The cellar was to the right of the cabin if you went out the back door, and was dug into the mountainside, shored up with timbers and had a small door for an entrance. Mommy could handily walk through that door, but Daddy had to stoop down in order to get into that cellar if the family needed any of the perishables kept there.

The man plowed up and planted the garden out in front of the house, leaving only about forty feet or so for the yard. He tended the apple, peach, cherry and plum trees along with the grape arbor, which were in front of the cabin also, out past the garden, and when cash was needed, cut timber from his fifty acres and sold it, or in the fall of the year, dug ginseng root and when it dried, sold that. The woman tended the children and the house, canned the fruits and vegetables, and took care of the chickens. She also milked the cow and churned sweet butter from the cream. It was a hard life, every day being filled with much work to do, but fitting work that helped them to survive.

For the past nine years or so the couple had lived in that cabin, as the year was 1947, and the lean-to kitchen and three kids had been added. There would have been another young’un in the family, but Mommy lost the first baby she carried when she was only about three months gone. Daddy took the baby that didn’t look like no baby at all and buried it in a shoebox up on the hill. Mommy cried for weeks, and told Daddy he didn’t have to marry her after all. But they was already married by that time and Daddy was glad they was. And then a couple of years later Clay, Jr. came along, and Mommy and Daddy were happy because they had a healthy baby boy, but the one they had lost was not forgotten.

Every other Saturday, the man hitched up the old horse, Maxie, to the wagon and set off for the small community two miles away to buy flour, meal, sugar, coffee and occasionally a newspaper, which once read, was pasted to the inside walls of the cabin to help insulate the place. Flour and water was the paste they used to make the newspaper stick. Held pretty good, that flour and water paste. On those jaunts into town, sometimes Daddy would take the oldest boy, or sometimes the girl, but not very often. The baby never went anywhere except to church with the family, or occasionally around to Clive’s, the man’s older brother. A rare treat was when both the boy and the girl climbed into the old wagon with their daddy and rode into town, thinking it was the adventure of their lifetime. On those days, they wore their church clothes and Mommy made them wear shoes. About the only time they wore their shoes except when they went to church. Mommy would take lard, rub a little on the shoes and shine them up. They really looked pretty, all spiffy and new looking. When they were going out where people could see them, the girl’s hair was properly combed and maybe braided, tied on the ends with strips of material from a feed sack. Mommy’s eyes would tear up sometimes, wishing she had real satin ribbons to put in her little girl’s hair. The boy’s hair was wetted and slicked down, with a perfect part on the side when he went anywhere.

Money was scarce, so every penny was counted, and if their daddy felt magnanimous and bought them a piece of penny candy, the children thought they were in hog heaven. Riding in the back of the wagon on the long trip from town to the cabin, they’d make the candy last as long as possible, taking only small licks at a time, sharing licks if they had different flavors. The boy and the girl learned to share everything they had, since neither of them ever got much.

On this particular Saturday, Daddy took both the boy and the girl into town with him. It was their mommy’s birthday, so he gave her a little rest from having to watch the kids, but she still had to tend to the baby. Daddy told her to put the baby to sleep and lay down for a while. He had big plans for that night, he said, seeing as to how it was her birthday. Mommy just grinned, but wore an apprehensive look, because you never could tell about Daddy… just what he might do.

When Daddy took them into town, he sometimes took them into the places he did business, and sometimes he left them in the wagon. Being kids, they questioned that, but Daddy just said it wasn’t none of their concern what he did in those places he wouldn’t take them.

It being a special day, besides the provisions, Daddy bought a yellow ceramic vase and filled it with crepe paper flowers of different colors and presented the gift to Mommy when they arrived back at the house. Crepe paper flowers were readily available at that time of year because it was near Decoration Day, and many women made the flowers to decorate the graves of their dead. They’d work for a month or more on them, so as to have them all ready when Decoration Day did roll around. Daddy talked Mommy’s Aunt Bertie into giving him some of those homemade flowers to take to Macie for her birthday, thinking she’d really like those colorful flowers that she could keep and not have to throw away like real ones.

The children jumped around, laughing and happy to see that Mommy was really pleased with the gift Daddy done brought her. She wasn’t expecting to get a present at all. Tears gathered in her eyes and she gave their daddy a big hug for the vase and he swung her around and kissed her right on the mouth. Wriggling out of his arms, Mommy took the flowers and set them smack dab in the middle of the mantle over the fireplace where anybody who came into the cabin could see them, but the kids couldn’t get to them. They very rarely had any company, but sometimes the man’s brother and his wife would come around the mountain to visit. And she’d asked them when she’d seen them at church the week before to come for her birthday. Maybe they’d come and maybe they wouldn’t because they hadn’t said for sure. They were like that. If they had said for sure, they’d have been there, rain or shine.

Mommy had to go change the baby, and he’d just peed, so she hung the diaper over the line at the foot of the bed for it to dry. Since it was so hard to wash clothes, the baby used the same diaper two or three times if he just peed in it. Mommy put the poopie diapers outside in a covered bucket until she could wash them. She sat down in the rocking chair that sat between the beds, facing the flowers, and fed the baby, pulling her breast out of the front of her dress for the young’un to latch onto. Smiling at the flowers on the mantle the whole time she fed baby Nathaniel, she reached down and patted Shannon on the head, giving her a brilliant smile and Shannon felt like she’d been the one who brought the flowers. And she smiled back, squatting at her mommy’s feet like she did every time Mommy fed the baby if she was anywhere around. Watching Nate eat fascinated Shannon and she couldn’t wait till she got old enough to get her some young’uns. Nate was such a cutie pie and Shannon watched his little mouth tug on the dark rosy nipple. Every once in a while, he’d let go and turn his head to grin at her. Nate seemed partial to Shannon and Shannon sure loved baby Nate.

Daddy and Clay, Jr. went out back to unhitch the horse and Mommy yelled for them to check and see if the hens had laid any more eggs. Mommy only had three eggs in the house and she wanted to bake a cake for her birthday but she didn’t want to waste them if they didn’t have any more. They had to have some for breakfast the next morning. Daddy said they’d check and sent Clay, Jr. to look and see. Mommy turned twenty-six that day.

They ate their meager supper in the small lean to kitchen, shooing flies away from their food. It was too hot to shut the doors and Daddy hadn’t bought screening to make any screen doors yet. The ones from last year was still in the barn leaning against the wall, cause the screens was tore out of them where the kids always pushed on the screen and not on the wood, no matter how many times Mommy and Daddy told them not to push on the screens. It was only the middle of May, but it was already getting awfully hot. Daddy was fixing to get some screen when he went to town that day, he told Mommy, but didn’t have enough money to buy the roll of screen and the vase of flowers for her birthday. Maybe next time after he sold some more locust posts, he’d get some. Shannon thought Mommy liked the flowers a whole lot better than she would any old screen door.

Seven year old Clay, Jr. and five year old Shannon sat at the rickety table and savored the sweet, moist cake. They only had three chairs and so Clay, Jr. got one because he was the oldest. Shannon sat on the table with her legs hanging over the edge. Mommy and Daddy had a big slice of birthday cake and Daddy told her it sure tasted good. He just kept going on about it, probably because Clive and Dorie hadn’t shown up to help them eat it. It had been quite a while since Mommy had baked a cake and you could tell she was disappointed that they hadn’t come for her birthday. Little Nathaniel sat on the floor looking up at them, probably wondering why he couldn’t sit at the table with the big folks. Shannon watched him reach his little arms up every few minutes and after a while Mommy picked him up and sat him in her lap, feeding him small bites of cake with her fingers. Shannon sat on the side of the table and swung her legs back and forth looking forward to the next rich explosion of flavor in her mouth.

Daddy and Mommy put them to bed early, saying something about celebrating and Clay and Shannon didn’t want to go to sleep and miss it, even though they didn’t know what sort of celebration they were talking about.

It was hot in the cabin and Clay Jr. was sleeping in his under shorts and Shannon in only her panties. A lightweight quilt was at the foot of the bed in case it turned cool during the night, but right then it was stifling. The sandman was sneaking up on their droopy eyes, and it was hard to stay awake with Mommy sitting in the rocking chair humming to the baby. It wasn’t long before Shannon and then Clay Jr. was overtaken by sleep as they were young and had had a big day.

Sometime during the night, Shannon woke up enough to hear her daddy say something to Mommy, and his voice sounded funny. Didn’t hardly sound like Daddy. “Jus’ a little drink, honey. Won’t hurt you none.” And her mommy laughing a little, saying back that she didn’t want none and he better quit because he’d had enough. “Aw, c’mon, honey. I brung you flowers, didn’t I? An’ I got this new jar I jus’ got today. Thought I’d break it out. Oughta be real good.” Shannon pulled the cover over her and drifted back to sleep again, what she’d heard completely leaving her mind as if it were an illusive dream.

Shannon woke to the bright early morning light and looked across to Mommy and Daddy’s bed. It was Sunday and she couldn’t wait to go to Sunday school. She sat straight up, an alarm going off in her head that something was wrong. Mommy and Daddy were always out of bed when she woke up. It was way past daylight and Daddy was always up and out by daylight. Turning over and kicking the cover down off her that she had pulled up sometime during the night, she reached across the bed and shook Clay, Jr. He swatted at her, not wanting to be bothered. Shannon swatted back.

“Lookee, Clay! Daddy’s not up yet. Is he sick?” Shannon knew the only time she stayed in bed was when she was bad sick.

Clay, Jr. rose up on his elbow and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, looked across to where indeed his daddy and mommy were still lying in the bed. In a stupor, yawning, he climbed over Shannon and staggered the few feet across to Mommy and Daddy’s bed. A chill raced through him and he shivered as a cool breeze from the side window blew against his nearly naked skin. He shook his daddy’s shoulder and nothing happened, so he shook it again. Daddy wasn’t moving but Mommy was making some kind of moaning sound like she had a bellyache. Her eyes were closed, though, like she was moaning in her sleep and she looked awfully peaked. Little Nathaniel, who was lying on the other side of Mommy up against the wall, was still asleep.

“Daddy! C’mon, Daddy! Wake up! It’s time to get up!” Clay, Jr. pushed harder on his daddy’s shoulder, shoving him a little closer to Mommy. Daddy didn’t answer him and Mommy stopped moaning, a little bubble of pinkish spit coming out of the side of her mouth. A small breath escaped through Mommy’s lips and the bubble busted. Nate woke up and started fussing, moving toward Mommy. Shannon, standing beside Clay, Jr. saw the baby’s small fingers clawing at Mommy’s nightgown, wanting to be fed.

Shannon didn’t know what to do about baby Nate, finally climbing over her daddy who was stiff as a board to unbutton her mommy’s nightgown so Nate could eat. He scrunched down over Mommy and tried to take the nipple into his mouth. Mommy still didn’t wake up even though little Nate was trying hard to latch onto her tit. And Shannon was trying to help the baby get hold of the nipple, but she couldn’t do much. She started crying, then screaming, shaking her mommy, and when that didn’t help, she finally resorted to hitting her in the face with her tiny fists.

“C’mon, Mommy,” she whined. “Please get up.” Then more forcefully, “Wake up, Mommy! Nate’s awake!” Mommy was dead to the world, as she had heard her daddy say a hundred times. Nate let go of his mommy’s nipple and started crawling over her and Daddy. But Clay, Jr. grabbed him before he could fall, and got him down off the bed. He sure didn’t eat very much.

Shannon turned and stared beseechingly at Clay, Jr. He just stared back at her, his face wet with tears, not knowing what to do. Daddy was cold. And he didn’t look like Daddy. His face was all screwed up like he’d been eating crab apples and there was something that looked like dried blood at the corner of his mouth. Clay, Jr. made Shannon feel Daddy’s face which was usually covered with sweat at this time of year, but he was dry and cold like a smooth rock they’d picked up off the creek bank.

And they got really scared. Their mommy and daddy always woke up if you even touched them and they didn’t know what to do, looking to each other for answers they did not have nor could have known. The bed smelled funny and stunk like one of Nate’s poopie diapers.

“I gotta go and git Uncle Clive, Shannon. Daddy ain’t never slept this late since he got back from the war. He’s gotta be awful sick. And Mommy won’t wake up neither. Whatsa matter with ’em?”

Clay, Jr. remembered their daddy coming home after the war, but Shannon could only remember bits and pieces. Mommy told her that Uncle Clive had helped them out a lot when Daddy was gone and that Mommy’s younger brother, Shelmer, come and stayed with them most of the time, doing the work Daddy always did. Seemed like Shannon could remember Daddy coming down the lane, carrying some kind of bag over his shoulder and being dressed all in white, but Mommy said that she couldn’t remember that because she was just two when he come home. Somebody must have told her that and she just remembered the telling is what Mommy said. But Shannon knew better and finally quit trying to convince her mommy that she did remember Daddy coming home.

“Ya can’t go, Clay!” Shannon couldn’t stand the thought of Clay leaving her there with Mommy and Daddy still asleep. “I’ll be scared all by myself. It’s too far to Uncle Clive’s house. ’Sides, we gotta change Nate like Mommy does.” Shannon had never been left alone in her life. And how could she change little Nate’s diaper? She knew it had to be changed because Mommy changed it every morning as soon as he woke up.

Shannon and Clay, Jr. got the baby up on their bed and made him lie down. Shannon looked down at the sopping diaper in the rubber pants and started crying harder, turning and begging her mommy to wake up, but it didn’t do no good. She knew to take the rubber pants off, get a dry diaper down off the line strung across the room at the foot of the bed, fold it, pin it on and then put the rubber pants back on. The dirty diaper went in the bucket outside the door and he had to have pooped the way it was stinking in there. Shannon knew how to change the baby. She was just too little.

“I gotta go get Uncle Clive, Shan! I got to!” Clay Jr. cried. “He’ll know how to get ’em awake.” Clay, Jr. wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “You gotta stay here and watch out fer Nate.” Clay, Jr. was scared to death it was something real bad, something besides them just being real bad sick. You could wake somebody up if they were just sleeping. He had to get Uncle Clive around there!

“I wanna go, too!” Shannon shouted. “Claaay!” But Clay took off out the door in his under shorts and bare feet in the cool morning air. He had to run up onto the ridge and around the road to get to Uncle Clive’s house, but today he took off around the side of the mountain through the woods the way Daddy sometimes went. It was shorter that way. They didn’t have any young’uns but Uncle Clive would be out of bed. He had chores to do before him and Aunt Dorie went to church.

Shannon started to run after him, but then she thought about baby Nate being there by himself if she did, and as young as she was, knew she couldn’t leave him. She was bawling her eyes out, but set about changing the baby’s diaper. She got the rubber pants and the diaper off, with Nate gurgling and reaching up to pull on her dark brown locks hanging down on his little chest when she bent over him. Nate was such a happy baby and never cried unless he was hungry or sleepy. He hadn’t pooped. But she could still smell the stench of it in the room. Her little nose wrinkled up. Maybe he just farted. She was glad she didn’t have to change no poopie diaper. She could do this if he’d just quit yanking on her hair. It hurt something awful. Pulling her hair out of his chubby fists, she threw it back over her shoulder where he couldn’t reach it.

By the time she climbed up on the bed so she could reach the line and got the diaper folded somewhere near the way Mommy did it, Nate was down on the floor crawling around naked as a jaybird with his bare butt shining. Shannon ran to close the front door Clay had left open so Nate couldn’t get out on the porch. Wrestling him back up on the bed, she got the three cornered diaper in place and couldn’t find the safety pin. She looked everywhere for it and then saw it in Nate’s hand heading straight toward his mouth.

“No!” she screamed at him in her childish voice that still had a barely noticeable lisp. “Gimme ’at!” Shannon grabbed for the pin, sticking herself, and put her finger in her mouth, sucking on it. She finally succeeded in getting the pin and then she stuck Nate who set up a wail. And that didn’t even wake Mommy who always woke up when Nate cried that hard. But she had the diaper on. Getting the rubber pants on him was a real challenge because he kept trying to turn over so he could climb down off the bed, but she managed to get them on, too. Not as good as Mommy did it, but they were on over his diaper so he wouldn’t pee everywhere. She wrestled him up off the bed and he was heavy, so she let him slide down her onto the floor. He couldn’t get hurt there, she figured. That’s where Mommy always put him.

Rummaging around in the kitchen, she found some sugar and the squares of old sheets that Mommy had cut up to make sugar tits with. She fixed one, twisting the material like Mommy did, and tied the knot in the string perfectly. She’d just learned to tie knots. She didn’t know how when she was smaller and then Clay, Jr. showed her how to tie a bow. Taking the strings and tying them around anything, she practiced and practiced till she got it right. It was Shannon’s way. She wouldn’t let anything defeat her, so she never thought of giving up until she could tie a perfect bow. Handing the sugar tit to Nate who happily stuck it in his mouth and started sucking on it, he was holding it in his fat little fist with sticky drool running down his arm.

Shannon was getting hungry but didn’t know how to light the stove. She couldn’t pick up that heavy wood and shove it in the side of the cook stove and start the fire. Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t let them touch matches, anyway. She thought about eating some of the birthday cake left on the table with part of a flower-printed feed sack over it, but Mommy would be mad if she ate it for breakfast. So she found a box of oats that Daddy had bought the day before and opened them. The string that you pulled to open the oats gave her some trouble and she spilled some when she finally got the round box open. She poured the oats in a cup that was setting on the table, put some sugar in them and stirred them up with her finger. She sat and ate those, sticking her tongue down in them and letting the oats and sugar granules stick to her wet tongue then pulling it all back into her mouth. She was just waiting for Uncle Clive to get there because Mommy and Daddy were still lying in the bed.

Maybe he’d bring them some medicine! When they was sick, Daddy give them lightning hot drops and fever tablets and when they got worms, he gave them turpentine with a little sugar mixed in. She’d kept after her daddy until he told her the turpentine and sugar was to keep the worms from coming up from their belly into their throat; that some kids had got strangled on them. But Shannon hated passing stomach worms in her poop. Felt like a big old fishing worm.

Shannon waited for an hour and Clay hadn’t come back with her uncle. It was a long way to Uncle Clive’s house when you were walking it. Then you had to stop and let down the gates and be sure you locked them back so the cows and horses wouldn’t get out and go someplace else. Shannon didn’t know that Clay, Jr. had took to the woods so he could get there in a hurry. She’d play with Nate for a while, look out the door, and then go back to Mommy and Daddy and try to get them awake. She cried a while, scared because Mommy and Daddy looked so funny, and screamed when, in her mind, she saw them disappear. Being a child, after she could plainly see they were still there, she laughed at little Nate trying to climb into a chair. He’d be getting hungry again soon and she didn’t know what to do. Let him eat Mommy’s other tit, she reckoned.