THERE WAS an unusual chill in the mountain air for late September, but winter comes early in West Virginia, especially on Teeter Ridge. The late afternoon sun was filtered by a swirl of low-hanging clouds, causing the tops of ridges to glow with a somber yellow. The unpainted clapboard house clinging to the side of a hill looked forlorn and foreboding, as if dreading that its aged timbers would once again be drenched with chilling rain.
Jared Teeter stood on the front porch, gazing at the unplowed fields in the valley below, paying no notice to the excited voices inside the house. He left the porch and walked out to the barn with its empty chicken coops and silent stalls – stalls also now empty but still smelling of fresh manure and hot milk. A rat scurrying through a pile of hay in the loft caught his attention momentarily, and he listened intensely, as if expecting the sagging structure to come alive with sounds; then he turned and walked back to the porch. Far in the distance he could see a pickup truck winding its way slowly up the mountain road. He called through the screen door, “Cloma, I think they’re beginnin’ to come.”
An answer came back, “You best feed the hogs now. There won’t be time after everyone gets here.”
He smiled, saying to himself, “She’s as confused as I am. She knows darn well that the hawg pen’s been empty now fer more than two weeks.”
But just to be sure that it really was empty, he left the porch again and walked toward the fenced plot of barren ground.
Jared Teeter had been born in 1932 in this wooden frame house surrounded by a hundred and sixty acres of West Virginia soil which had been known for almost a century as Teeter Ridge. He was the only one of three Teeter sons to stay behind and live on the land. Both of the other brothers had left home before they reached age twenty, one supposedly going to Baltimore and the other to Chicago. Neither ever returned. Following the death of his father in 1950 and his mother one year later, Jared had lived in the house alone until he married Cloma when he was twenty-three and she sixteen. Their two children, Kristy, the oldest at sixteen, and Bennie, two years younger, were also born in this house. Cloma was now pregnant with a third child.
For several years after it became apparent that he would someday have to leave, Jared clung stubbornly to the land; but each year the tax bills and the cost of clothing and food and gasoline and farm supplies pushed him deeper and deeper into debt. When he finally sold the sturdy old house and the land and paid all the back taxes and the mortgage and the bills, he had only six hundred dollars in cash to show for his lifetime of trying and struggling and finally being forced to admit the stinging reality of defeat. With this money he would have to seek out and build a new life for himself and his family, and he had chosen to do this in Florida.
When the final realization came to Jared, and he had signed the deed to the land, he did not tell Cloma or the children for more than two weeks. They suspected something unusual was happening when Jared sold the milk cow and the hogs and chickens and then his old Cub tractor. Then one day he left in the pickup truck and returned with a 1960 Dodge van, a useless vehicle for a farm. At this moment Cloma knew, but she too remained silent in front of the children.
Jared told them one night at the supper table, and the news was more than they could at once comprehend. Neither Kristy nor Bennie had ever been further away from the farm than an occasional trip into Charleston, and to them this land and the school and church in nearby Dink was all of the world that existed. At first there was a lot of crying. Deep gloom enveloped them, but eventually they accepted the inevitable. And then both of them were pervaded with the excitement of soon seeing a part of the world that had, until then, been only make-believe.
This was the last day for the Teeter family to remain on Teeter Ridge, and that night all the friends from neighboring farms would come to pay their respects.
Jared walked back into the house and to the bedroom, where Cloma was packing the last of their clothes. She looked up at him and said hopefully, “Jay, the bed ... can’t we at least take the bed?”
He had anticipated she would ask this, and had dreaded the moment. He knew what the old brass bed meant to her. It had been his wedding present to her, and in this bed both Kristy and Bennie had been conceived and born; and now another child was within her as a reminder of what this bed meant to their lives together. She had expected that this new child would also be born here. Finally he turned his eyes from her and said softly, “No, Cloma. I’m sorry. There won’t be room in the van. I’ll get you another brass bed as soon as we’re settled.”
“It won’t be the same,” she said. “You know it won’t be the same.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. Then he turned and walked back to the front porch.
Again Jared watched as the pickup truck groaned up the last few feet of road and turned into the yard. Cloma’s mother and father got out and walked to the house. The man was tall and lanky like Jared, but his hair was silver-white and the skin beneath his eyes was deeply marked with chicken tracks caused by too many years of squinting into the sun while following a plow. The woman also had a wrinkled face, but her body was rotund, and she wobbled as she walked.
Jared extended his hand and said, “Howdy. Come on in the house.”
The woman greeted him warmly and then went into the house. The man shook hands and remained outside with Jared. He said, “We come a mite early so’s I could bring you this. It’s fer the trip.”
Jared looked at the bills as the old man took them from his coat pocket. He said quickly, “No. I thank you greatly, but I don’t need money. We have enough. But I do rightly thank you.”
“Take it,” the old man insisted. “It’s only fifty dollars. We want you to have it as a gift — for the new baby when it comes.”
“No,” Jared said firmly. “You need it more’n we do.”
Cloma’s father knew it was useless. He put the bills back into his pocket, suspecting that Jared really needed the money but also knowing what was meant by mountain pride. He said, “Well, if you have need of us in the future, you just write and let us know. We ain’t got much, but what we got we’ll share.”
“I appreciate that,” Jared replied, wanting to drop the subject and say nothing more about the money. “Can you smell a storm comin’?” he asked.
“Yes. I smelled it all the way up the mountain. It’s gain’ to be a humdinger, too. You can bet on that.”
Just then two more pickups and an old Chevrolet coupe pulled into the yard. These were followed almost immediately by two more trucks. As each vehicle arrived, the occupants came onto the porch and were greeted by Jared. The women then went inside to present gifts to Cloma of hand-made aprons and pot-holders and baby clothes.
The men segregated themselves on the porch while the younger people and children chased each other around the house and through the yard. Conversation on the porch was lively: “We shore hates to see you go, Jay. Maybe you could stay yet and make it o.k.”
“Ain’t no way,” Jared replied. “Use to be a man could make it on a farm just by growin’ enough to feed his family and havin’ enough left over to get stuff such as flour and salt and shoes. ’Tain’t true no more. Now the taxes and the machines and the gasoline and the stuff at the store takes ten times what a fellow can make. The eggs ain’t worth the price of chicken feed, and the milk ain’t worth the cow feed. Just ain’t no way anymore fer a poor man to make it here.”
“That’s the God’s truth!” one man agreed. “Hit’s got sometimes where I think I’m goin’ to have to et the slop rather than feed it to the hawgs. Them hawgs can always run in the woods and dig out snakes and acorns, but a man ain’t a mind to do that.”
“Don’t know what none of us is gain’ to do if’n things don’t change soon,” another said.
“How fer down in Floridy you plan to go, Jay?” one man asked.
“A fer piece,” Jared replied.
“You remember last year, ale Jim Bigley had to sell out too and leave? He went down to Jacksonville. We got a letter from him sayin’ he found work there in a shipyard. Maybe you could stop in Jacksonville and get work with ole Jim.”
“Nope,” Jared said. “I’ll not stop in Jacksonville. So long as we’re gain’ to Floridy, I want to be where everything is covered with palm trees and oranges. Jacksonville would be ’bout the same as Georgie. I’ll go as fer south as a man can go, slam down past Miami, to Homestead. I done looked it up on a map.”
“That’s a mighty fer piece, all right. But maybe we can all come down and spend Christmas with you. I hear they’s a heap to see on one of them Floridy beaches in the winter.”
One man laughed and said, “That’s probably why ole Jay wants to go so fer down there, so’s he can sit around all day and stare at them half-nekked women on the beaches. I’ve seen pictures of them beaches afore.”
Jared said, “Well, you’re all welcome to come and stay with us at Christmas time if you’ve a mind to. We’ll be settled by then, and you’ll be most welcome. And maybe we can leave the womenfolk at home fer awhile and sneak off to the beach.”
“You better shet that up for now,” another man said. “Here comes Preacher Will and his missus into the yard. You know he ain’t gain’ to want to talk about no nekked women runnin’ around on a beach.”
“He might surprise you,” another said, laughing. “’Specially if they’s vittles on that beach.”
Kristy and Jeff Billings left the others in the front yard and walked to the fence by the abandoned hog pen. Jeff was one year older than Kristy, and they had been “promised” for the past year since Jeff had carved JEFF + KRISTY on the “promising tree” adjacent to the school in Dink. The old hickory was scarred with dozens and dozens of such inscriptions. Many of the inscribers later became lifemates while others eventually went their separate ways.
Jeff and Kristy’s courtship had progressed according to normal mountain customs: passing notes in class, carrying books after school, sitting next to each other in church, long walks on Sunday afternoons, and slipping out of the Saturday night barn dance in order to hold hands and to dare one kiss that would send both of them into violent spells of dizziness.
Kristy was sad that she was going to leave Jeff, but she was too young and too filled with the excitement of life to constantly grieve over it. Jeff wanted to grieve, but instead he pretended that he didn’t have that much interest one way or another. On this last night, both of them felt like throwing away their masks and pouring out their inner feelings, but the mountain urge to be above such emotion was prevailing.
Jeff finally broke the silence and said, “I don’t care nothin’ at all about movin’ to Floridy. The mountains is good enough for me.”
Kristy thought for a moment, and then she said, “Have you ever seen an orange tree?”
“No. And I don’t want to either.” Jeff pouted as he said it.
Both said nothing more for a moment, and then Kristy said, “Jeff, I really don’t want to move away either. I cried about it for a long time, but I’ll not cry any more. I don’t really care about orange trees either. What I want someday is an old house just like this one here in the mountains, and a garden to grow things, and a stove to cook meals on, and a brass bed just like Mamma’s, and babies . . . lots of babies . . . your babies, Jeff . . . that’s what I want most of all. . . .”
Her face flushed as she said it, and Jeff could smell the sweetness of her reddened flesh as she brushed lightly against him. She took his hand in hers and said, “I’ll miss you and the mountains, Jeff, but mostly I’ll miss you.”
Her words rushed through his mind like a mountain wind. He wanted to reach out and hold her close to him forever, but he restrained his emotions and said, “Will you write to me when you get to Floridy? I’ll write you back, and then maybe I can come visit you when school ends and the spring plowin’ is done.”
“I’ll write as soon as I can,” Kristy promised. “And you better write back right away, you hear?”
Jeff then said, “I brung you a present. I’ll go fetch it from the truck, and I’ll bring a flashlight so you can see it.”
It had now become so dark that Kristy couldn’t see Jeff as he turned the side of the house and ran toward the pickup. She was excited by the thought of an unexpected gift, and she wondered what it would be. In a moment Jeff returned and said, “Bet you’ll never guess what it is.”
Kristy said impatiently, “Jeff, show me! We don’t have much time left. They’ll be callin’ us to supper soon.”
Jeff held his hand out and then turned the flashlight on a brightly colored rag doll. He said, “I know you don’t play with dolls no more, but my Ma makes the best rag dolls in the mountains, and I had her make this one for you. I remember when you were about six, and we were playin’ down by Panther Crick. You got mad and throwed your rag doll into the water, and then you cried somethin’ awful as it shot away down the crick and disappeared around a bend. I wanted you to have another one now and take it with you as a reminder of the mountains.”
Kristy took the doll and held it against her breasts. “I didn’t think you could remember something that happened so long ago,” she said. “And I do love this one. I’ll keep it always.”
“It ain’t much,” Jeff said proudly, glad that she liked it, “but my Ma made it, and I wanted you to have it. She wanted you to have it too.”
“Could you turn off that light now?” Kristy asked.
“Yes. I just wanted you to see the doll.”
As soon as the light clicked off, Jeff felt Kristy press against him. He also felt the coming of a violent dizziness.
Preacher Will was the only man present who sported a huge stomach and a fat face. His black wool suit also contrasted with the other men’s faded overalls, dungaree pants, khaki pants, and denim windbreakers. For several minutes he stared intensely at the table laden with fried chicken, sliced ham, fried squirrels, venison roast, sweet potato pies, and com pone. He seemed to be having a hard time restraining himself, and then he said loudly, “May I have yore attention, please?”
All the men came in from the porch, and the women became silent. The preacher said, “For the time bein’, leave all them youngens out in the yard. It’s time for grownups to have vittles, but afore we eat all this good food the ladies has brought, I best turn up thanks. And I can tell that some of you sinners needs blessin’ too afore you gets into them jugs of com likker I know you got in the trucks. So bow yore heads, please, and cut out that snickerin’ afore the Lord sends down a thunderbolt amongst you.”
As soon as all became silent again, the preacher said, “Lord, bless this food on this special day, but more ’specially bless the family of Jay Teeter as they depart from amongst us and seek a new life in strange places. Be with them as they search the way, Lord, and see to it they find the kind of home that all God’s chillun deserve. They’s good folks, Lord, and we’ll all miss ’em mightedly, and we ask that You keep ’em in Yore hands and help ’em find the happiness they now seek. Bless us all, oh Lord, and watch over these mountains and all God’s chillun. Amen, and let’s eat.”
Jared said quickly, “Thanks, Brother Will. We appreciate those words. But before everyone starts eatin’ I got a few words to say too. When we leave in the momin’ we’re not takin’ anything in the house with us. They just ain’t no room in the van. So I want all of you to come back here in the mornin’ and take out what you want. Everything stays behind.”
One man said, “That ain’t right, Jay. We could sell all this stuff fer you and then send you the money. I’d buy some myself.”
“Won’t sell a piece of it,” Jared said firmly. “All of you know that my Papa built this house afore the turn of the century, and most of this stuff has been in the house since then. Some of it he made hisself. I couldn’t sell one piece of it, and I won’t rest easy unless I know it’s all in the hands of friends.”
Cloma spoke up and said, “Don’t nobody take the brass bed, though, if you get here afore Papa. Papa has said he’ll take it to his place and store it for me, and then we can send for it when we get settled. Everything goes but the brass bed.”
Jared was relieved to hear this and was glad that the bed would be safe with Cloma’s father. He said, “I’ll leave the house open in the mornin’, and you can all come back and clean it out. Whatever you don’t take will just be wasted with the real estate man, so take it all. Let’s eat now, and then we’ll have a little fiddle music and some stompin’ before everyone goes.”
No one needed a second invitation to fill their plates, but no one was as fast as the preacher in reaching the table.
Jared stood on the porch and watched as the last truck headlight disappeared around a bend in the road far below. He sensed that he might have seen the last of his friends for a long time to come, perhaps even forever. He turned and went into the house and said to Bennie, “You best go outside and fetch Skip in, and see to it he stays inside. We’ll be leavin’ afore dawn, and we won’t have time to be chasin’ a dog all over the woods.”
“Yes, Papa,” Bennie said, scrambling for the door.
Jared then took a kerosene lantern from the kitchen shelf, lit it, and turned to Cloma. “I’ll be gone fer a bit, but it won’t be too long.”
She understood what he must do. She said, “You want that I go with you?”
“No. ’Tain ’t no use fer you to be out in the dark and the night air. I’ll go alone.”
A dome of orange light sprang outward as he went down the back steps and across the yard. He walked rapidly as he followed a narrow trail that turned north from the barn and ran along the edge of the ridge. Soon he entered a thick growth of hickory trees. The flickering light revealed two granite tombstones in a little clearing which was surrounded by a rusted cast-iron fence. He opened the gate and went inside.
He set the lantern on the ground and dropped to his knees in front of the graves. A glass vase holding faded plastic flowers sat between the two stones. Jared remained silent, thinking of those two times in the past when he had taken a shovel in his hands and physically dug the holes where the two bodies now lay. He had always assumed that he too would someday lie in this plot of ground, but now it seemed that this would never be, and he was afraid.
He also thought of his lifetime on this land, of how deeply his roots were sunk into the West Virginia mountain soil, and the thought of tearing them up so late in life was like ripping out his very heart. For weeks he had been consumed with doubts and anxiety, with a fear of leaving all that he knew and facing the unknown; but he had kept it all hidden within himself as best he could. He did not want Cloma and the children to see his true feelings, for he knew that he must show strength for all of them.
Finally he broke his thoughts and said, “I’m sorry, Papa . . . and Mamma . . . I done the best I could, but it weren’t enough. I just couldn’t make it no more . . . I tried, but it just couldn’t be done. I purely hate to go off and leave you here alone, and I never thought I would. But they ain’t nothin’ more I can do. I’ve made sure nobody will ever put plow or axe to this grove and disturb you. It’s in the deed, writ right in there, so you can rest easy on that score. Maybe some day we can buy back the land and be with you again. I promise you I’ll do my best, I’ll try; but now we gotta go. The Lord be with you . . . Papa and Mamma . . . the Lord be with you. And rest well.”
He then got to his feet quickly and walked back along the trail, not looking back again at the grove of darkened hickory trees.
When he approached the house, all was in darkness except for a dim glow coming from behind a drawn window shade in his and Cloma’s bedroom. Sharp rumbles of thunder were rushing in from the west, signalling the coming of a storm. Brilliant fingers of lightning shot downward and disappeared into the black outlines of distant ridges. For a moment Jared watched as the lightning moved eastward, and then he opened the back door as quietly as possible and walked softly down the hall to the bedroom.
Cloma was in the bed asleep, so Jared tried to make no sound as he removed his clothes. He looked at Cloma’s tousled blonde hair and marveled at how much Kristy looked like her. Both had the same blonde hair, delicate nose and cheekbones, and thin mouth. Bennie was just the opposite, with Jared’s black hair, full face, and the tall lanky body of a mountain man. Although tall, Bennie still had the look of a boy, but Kristy — like most mountain girls her age — already had the fully developed body of a woman, a mountain child-woman. Jared had always said that both he and Cloma had been allowed to stamp one child each from their own individual molds. When Cloma had become pregnant again, Jared teased her that now they would have a sandy-haired boy who would have the features of both of them.
Suddenly Cloma said sleepily, “Is that you, Jay?” Then she pushed herself up and said, “The youngens was dog-tired from all the excitement of the day. They went on to bed right after Bennie caught Skip and brung him inside. I hope you didn’t have much for them to do tonight.”
“No, there wasn’t nothin’ more to do. It’s best they went on to bed. We got a long way to travel.”
He turned off the light and slipped under the covers beside her, putting his hand across her swollen stomach. It seemed to him that every little thing that he did now reminded him of something in the past. As he was immersed in darkness he thought of how proud he had been that day several years ago when he finally ran the electric line to the house. All of them had stayed up half the night clicking the lights off and on, like children with new toys on Christmas morning.
Cloma pushed herself closer to Jared and said, “I’m afraid, Jay. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am.”
“Afraid of what, the storm?” he asked.
“No. Not that. I’m afraid of what lies ahead for all of us.”
“You got nothin’ to fret about,” Jared said reassuringly as he moved his hand back and forth across her stomach. “We’ll make it fine . . . I promise you. The Lord will look after us. What I’m worried about most is you and that little fellow inside you. You sure you feel up to leavin’ now? We could move around and stay with different folks ’til the baby comes.”
“I feel fine, and I’d rather go now. That way we could be settled sommers when the baby comes. It’d be easier to go now than wait ’til later.”
“All right. We’ll go on and go as we planned. But if you get to feelin’ poorly along the way, you best let me know. We’ll stop sommers and stay put ’til you feel like movin’ on again.”
Cloma did not answer, and Jared could feel that she had already drifted back to sleep. He held her gently and said softly, “Don’t you fret none, Cloma. We’ll make out fine. You’ll see.”
For several minutes Jared listened as the storm moved closer to Teeter Ridge. He knew that soon now it would lash his land with its full fury. He was concerned about the hogs and the chickens and the cow until he realized that they were no longer there. He suddenly sprang upright in the bed as if a bolt of lightning had crashed through the roof and seared into his body. A cold fear of what lay ahead swept through his veins and caused sweat to form on his brow. He tried to calm himself but the flashes of lightning and the booming thunder made the apprehension worse. His hands trembled as he tried to push himself back under the covers.
Cloma came awake and said to him, “What’s the matter, Jay? You’re jumpin’ around like a new colt.”
“’Tain’t nothin’ but the storm. It sounded like the lightnin’ hit awful close by. I’m sorry I woke you again, so just go on back to sleep now.”
Again he put his arms around her, this time trying vainly to shut away all consciousness of the storm and to dispel from himself the pent-up spectre of disaster that had finally erupted from every pore of his body.