THE NEXT DAY was bright with sun and bursting like a hog bladder with the excitement of the elections. I went early with Roseanna. She smelled so sweet and looked so purty in her new calico. Her hair was all curled and shiny. Because I’d fallen asleep early, she couldn’t do my hair up in rags, so she fixed it in one long braid down my back and put a sassy ribbon on it.
When we got to the schoolhouse, the menfolk were already there, all done up in their best, standing around and joking in little groups, and they stopped all that jawing and stared at Ro when we walked up. I could have busted with pride. Even Ambrose Cuzlin, my teacher, who was standing by the schoolhouse door welcoming everybody, had a grin for Roseanna.
Everybody was there. One glance around told you that. Republicans and Democrats, young men and old, the well-placed and the dirt-poor, Hatfields and McCoys.
Ro and I sort of stayed off to ourselves for a while, under a locust tree. Nobody bothered her outright, because my brothers were there, all of them, and that’s quite a parcel.
Floyd had brought his moonshine, of course. Tolbert came with his wife and baby. Brother James was there with his family. They live a mile below us on Pond Creek. James has five children already and is older than Floyd even. James is a deputy sheriff and everybody knows he doesn’t pussyfoot around the law but is a man to be reckoned with.
Brother Sam was there with his Martha, too. They live on Dials Fork. Bill, who was twelve, was with Bud, who was just sixteen and coming on to be a man. Calvin was eighteen, and already one. Pharmer was fifteen, brave, handsome, and good already with a gun. I’ve got a brother Lilburn, in his twenties, but he’s off somewhere looking for gold. Lordy, I could have left somebody out. When it comes to my family, I never know.
Alifair, Adelaide, and Trinvilla were coming later with Mama.
All the boys gave me and Roseanna their howdy, then walked off to be with their friends. It seemed so funny to see all those people walking in our schoolhouse, and I was more than just a mite glad that Mr. Cuzlin had made us neaten it good. He was proud of that log schoolhouse. All by himself he put backs on the puncheon seats.
There was lots of shouting and insulting and slapping on the back the way men do to each other. The womenfolk were gathered under the trees in their Sunday best, setting down baskets of food and spreading cloths on the tables. Everybody brought food, even the young girls. Not Roseanna. She brought herself. It was enough, and everybody knew it. Children ran back and forth playing tag and crack-the-whip. Some of the smaller boys from school had squirt guns.
I saw Nancy McCoy. She was fifteen and still in school with us. She’s Uncle Harmon’s youngest, spoiled and fussed over by her big brothers because her pa was killed before she was born. She thought she was the puniest girl on Peter Creek. Well, she couldn’t hold a candle to Ro, even though the boys all moon like sick calves over her at school, including the younger ones. If you want to talk about perdition, she was headed for it all right.
Onliest one who wasn’t there was Belle Beaver. She lived in a little lean-to in Happy Holler. She was a fancy woman. Alifair, who thinks she knows everything, said Belle was whipped out of North Carolina, so she came here. But women didn’t want her around and had already gone in a delegation to my brother Jim to see about running her out. So far Jim hadn’t said he would and hadn’t said he wouldn’t.
Me, Adelaide, and Trinvilla walk by Happy Holler on our way to school. Adelaide and Trinvilla really run by, afeared of seeing Belle. I think Alifair told them that she can taint them with her evil ways. I know she can’t, because Ma sends me two or three times a year with baskets of vittles. I’ve never been in her shanty, but she’s always been nice to me. I’m not afeared of her.
Everything was going on the way it should, with the men voting and feeling good about themselves and everybody gathering around to eat and catching up on things. You couldn’t help but notice that the McCoys stayed on their own patch of ground and the Hatfields staked out another. Most of the Hatfields came over from West Virginia, so they couldn’t vote. They came just to find out what was going on. There was some calling back and forth. Some howdies, and lots of long looks, but no trouble. Not until young Johnse Hatfield started walking in our direction.
My brother Bill had already started playing his fiddle. I was listening to that sweet but mournful sound behind all the talk and laughter when I looked up and saw Johnse coming toward us. “Ro,” I said.
She’d have died before she let on she knew he was coming. She was sitting there making a cornhusk doll for me and calling something over to Nancy McCoy about her dress. But she knew Johnse was coming. Every pore of her knew it.
“Pa will kill us, Ro.” Hatfields and McCoys never spoke to each other. If we broke that rule here, every man would have his hand on his gun quicker than you could say moonshine.
Yet here was Johnse Hatfield walking toward us.
“Howdy there, girls.” And he leaned against that locust tree, grinning for all he was worth.
I could have thought a lot of things in that moment. But the first thing that came to my mind was how I’d learned in school about the Minute Men in Lexington up north and how they stood and faced the British soldiers. “Then someone fired a shot,” my teacher, Mr. Cuzlin, told us. “And it was the shot heard round the world.”
That’s what Johnse Hatfield’s howdy was that day to us. The shot heard all through West Virginia and Kentucky. I may have been only seven, but I knew that much, anyways.
DID THE TALK and laughter all around us stop? Did the people look, without turning? Did they hear without trying? Did the birds stop singing and the whole world tilt just an itty-bitty bit? I felt it. All of it. But nothing else mattered, because though Ro hadn’t yet favored him with a howdy, or even a look, my eyes filled up with Johnse Hatfield.
I knew what Pa told us about Hatfields better than I knew my Bible lessons. The waters saw thee, Oh God, the waters saw thee and were afraid: the depths also were troubled.
Was Psalm 77 about God? Or the Hatfields? Could it be about Johnse Hatfield? Teeth so white, smile so sassy, eyes so blue? And dimples! What was it Ma said about dimples? “Sometimes you don’t know if the Lord poked His finger there or the Devil.” With Johnse I was sure it was the Devil. He moved like a painter cat. He smelled like my brothers, of strong soap, tobacco, corn liquor, and horses. But oh, I never felt like that around my brothers. So then, why was my soul troubled? And me only seven! Think what Ro was feeling! I looked up at him worshipfully.
My sister tossed her head but still didn’t look. Kept on with that doll like her life depended on it. “Hello yourself. You’re takin’ quite a chance coming over here like this, aren’t you?”
“I figure you’re worth it.”
“Do you now?”
“Sure ’nuf.” Still with that insolent grin. Still leaning against the locust tree. “You got a feller, Roseanna McCoy?”
“Nope. But I can’t see what business it is of yourn.”
“I could make it my business if’n you gave me the chance.”
She was still sitting there working on that doll. “And how do you plan to do that, with my pa and brothers and fifty other McCoys all around us like bees around honey?”
“You got the honey part right,” Johnse said. “Why don’t you leave the bees to me? I kin handle ’em.”
“I’d like to know how, is what I’d like to know.”
“Heck.” And Johnse moved from the tree, a little more toward her. “They’re all so fired up on corn liquor and politics nobody’d even notice if’n we sashayed down to that bunch of trees over there by the creek where it’s cool. Nobody’d even miss us.”
“You think that, do you?” my sister asked.
“I know it. I’d bet my life on it.”
Roseanna finished with the doll and handed it to me. “There you go, baby. You wait here. I’ll be right back.” Then she got up, smoothed her skirt, and still without looking at Johnse, they walked together away from the locust tree and down to the creek.
The waters of the creek will see thee, Johnse Hatfield, they will see thee and also be troubled.
I waited. She didn’t come right back. I got a plate of food and went to wait under the locust tree with my cornhusk doll. I’d wait all day if Roseanna wanted. But she just didn’t come.