LIKE OLD DOGS
My mind was so full of questions it didn’t pay attention to where my feet was taking me. I ended up at the cemetery that set in a pocket between the hills.
Grass grew tall around the gravestones, but I been there afore and knew where our kin was. Mamaw and Papaw Pickens, Mama’s folks, shared a stone. I didn’t remember neither one of ’em. They’d been gone a long time.
Granny and Granddaddy Cutler had separate stones. Daddy used’a put flowers on his mama’s grave on her birthday ever’ year. I recall Daddy’s mama jist a speck. She had tight curls dangling by each ear. It felt good to remember somebody. Pick said Daddy sent Raynelle and Blissie to stay with Granny Cutler after Mama left. Mama left in 1925. Granny’s marker said 1927. Sometime during them two years, ever’thing I knew fell right out’a my head.
If Daddy’d sent us away, why didn’t I recollect that? Pick thunk I stayed with Jane Louise. I didn’t recall no such a thing.
I quit my lollygagging and sent my feet forward with a purpose. They hurried down the muddy street of Smoke Ridge, past the company stores, blacksmith shop, and Mr. Putney’s office, on past the school house, and down the hill to Jane Louise’s.
The muggy August air seemed to hang in the holler like a bucket of sweat, dousing me as I come down the hill.
And noise from the mine near-about knocked me off my feet. The mine entry was over the next rise, and all I could see was the top of the tipple where it bent like a knuckle. Full mine cars was hauled up the tipple’s tracks with a ratchety-ratchety sound, reached the knuckle, tipped, and dumped coal over its edge. Unseen train cars waited on tracks below, and the rattle and bang of coal tumbling into them sounded like a hammer pounding iron.
The noise didn’t seem to bother Jane Louise’s mama, who set on her porch peeling a potato, the peel hanging in one long strip. The door of the one-room shack was propped open with a rock, but sunshine didn’t reach its dark innards.
I’d forgot how tiny the Heckathorn place was. Jane Louise and her mama had moved there after her daddy got kilt down in Evarts over a year ago. Caught in the middle of a fight betwixt angry miners and sheriff’s deputies.
“Hey, Miz Heckathorn,” I called out. “Is Jane Louise home?”
“No, she ain’t, Adabel. She went for a walk with Chester Putney.” Chester Putney? So Jane Louise’s plan with the brown Betty worked. I wondered if Corky Danfield knew she was keeping company with somebody else.
I stood quiet for a moment, watching that potato peel git longer, reaching almost to the porch’s floor planks. “Miz Heckathorn, ma’am, when you lived in your old house, did I ever stay there with ya? Back when my mama first left?”
She let the peel drop to the floor and put the peeled potato in a pan. She rubbed the back of the knife blade against her cheek whilst she was thinking. “I don’t recall nothing like that. Nothing a’tall.”
“But ya recollect Mama leaving?”
“I jist recollect how broke-hearted your daddy was. He loved your mama deep.”
It was hard to think of Daddy loving anyone deep. I wish Pick could’a heard her say that.
“Mama didn’t tell ya she was goin’ leave, ma’am? Do ya know what made her go?”
“She never said nothing to me, but some folks thunk your mama was like her mama, and she done left to …” Miz Heckathorn picked up another potato to peel without finishing her sentence.
“Left to what? How was Mama like Mamaw Pickens?”
Her knife stopped, and she looked up at me, a bit of a blush creeping across her cheeks. “I ain’t quite sure how to explain it,” she said. “Ya’s a mite young.”
“Could ya try?” I asked, barely breathing, waiting, giving her time to think. “I’m older’n I look. Thirteen now.”
Her knife commenced to cutting again, and her eyes didn’t leave the potato. “Back in them days, Jeff Pickens—yer papaw—was like an old dog,” she said, as the strip of peel grew longer. “Jist an old dog a-setting on the porch waiting for his master to open the door and let him in. But your mamaw was more of a frisky dog, running the yard a-chasing squirrels.”
“Chasing squirrels?”
She cocked her head sidewise and opened her eyes wide, watching me with a waiting look.
Her meaning finally caught hold. “Glory be!” I said, my own blush spreading up me. “My mamaw? A frisky dog?”
She nodded. “Practically afore the last shovel of dirt was throwed on your papaw’s grave, Leona Pickens lit out for parts unknown. Folks said she took up with some feller who had a bit of money to spend on her.”
Lit out for parts unknown? But Mamaw Pickens was buried right by her husband’s side beneath the same stone. Like two old dogs. I had jist seen it. Hadn’t I?