Sneak Preview

Friday was Halloween costume day at school and Josie was a Witch Kitty. She and her mama made a song which she sang for me. 

Witch, kitty, witch kitty, witch kitty cat.

Which kitty, which kitty, which kitty is that?

I told her I'd like to borrow the furry ears and she told me that I could get some at Target or Publix. She also suggested that I might like to get a dress and tights like hers . . .

In other news--I continue to be pain free without more pills . . .

 

Dolly and Alonzo (Continued)

Feels better, don't it, getting out of that wind? My old heater keeps it nice and warm in here and we can set and sup our tea whilst I finish that long-winded story.

  

Well, as you can imagine, didn't nobody know quite what to think about this young man who said he was Dolly's long lost husband. If he'd lived, Alonzo would have been older than Dolly. Common sense said this feller had to be some kind of flim-flam man. But there weren't no way of convincing Dolly of that and finally the neighbors threw up their hands and went back home.

Weeks passed and the preacher and most everyone else in riding distance had come to see Dolly and take a look at this feller who claimed to be her long-lost Alonzo. The Gentrys in particular hung around, asking him questions about family stories and trying to trip him up someways. But he knew a-plenty about the family and some of it was such that didn't bear talking about. 

At last everyone decided that if it made Dolly happy to believe that this was Alonzo and if this young man wanted to take on the care of a woman who could be his grandmother, well, then so be it. Though they all resolved to keep a close eye on things at the little cabin.

And for the next three years, Dolly seemed to live in a happy glow. The young man took hold and plowed and planted and when he wasn't tending the garden, he was fixing the cabin where it needed fixing. And every night, in fine weather, the two of them would sit on the porch holding hands, just a-talking and laughing. 

I told you Dolly was right old -- but she lived another three years and passed away right there on the front porch with Alonzo at her side and holding her hand and the near neighbors there too -- which was a mercy or else some might have suspected the young man had gotten tired of caring for the old lady. A sudden stroke, the doctor called it. Or maybe it was a heart attack. I disremember what Luther said

Alonzo stayed on in the cabin. Folks had admired how sweet he treated Dolly and as there weren't no near relative with a claim on the property, didn't no one dispute it. He was still a young and handsome man and many a girl made eyes at him but he told folks that Dolly had been his one true love and once again she was waiting for him somewhere.

She didn't have as long to wait this time. Alonzo died of pneumonia in 19 and 42. I was one of the ones to help tend to him in his last days and he told me the quarest story.

He was laid up in bed, fighting to breathe but the story came out in bits and pieces. He said he'd told Dolly what had happened to him and though she'd believed it, she doubted anyone else would. 

"It's been bitter lonesome," he told me, "since Dolly passed, knowing that most think I don't belong here. And I'm glad to be going to join her again. But I need to tell someone what it was that happened to me -- as much as I can remember anyhow. I don't have no notion of the why and the how of it, just that it happened to me."

  

Law, I can see him now, laying there, his handsome face gray and his hair all whichaways. I'll try to tell you the rest just the way he told me and you can decide it you believe him or not.

"It was 18 and 65 and the war was going bad for our side. Our company was with Johnston -- General Joe we called him --  somewhere east of here, and we was retreating as fast as we could. We had just come out of some woods to the edge of a big field and the sight of it, so pretty and peaceful and not yet touched by war at all, put me in mind of the fields around my own little home and then I began to think of Dolly and that light tht I knew she still  lit every night. 

"There was a white horse out in the field and I remembered how my granny had always wished on a white horse everwhen she seen one. Granny set great store on wishing, and she always told us that everyone was granted one big wish at sometime in their life -- if they had the sense to make the wish at the right time. 

"I looked again. And something about the lay of the land and the way the lines pointed towards the white horse made me think there was a message here for me, that this was my chance for a wish. 

"Like I was walking in my sleep, I left my post and the cover of the woods. I started toward that white horse, wishing with al my heart that I would someday get back home to my Dolly.

"The next thing I knew, came a great roar, like a dozen howitzers going off at once, and I was flung high up in the air."

Everything went dark but I kept my eyes fixed on that white horse and my mind fixed on my Dolly."

"Time passed though I didn't have the least notion of how much. I was just hanging there, trapped between forever and the blink of an eye, but when the darkness lifted, I found myself in the same field. With a white horse still grazing. But instead of spring, it was autumn. 

"And when I looked around, I seen that more had changed than just the season. Where there'd been a wagon track along the side of the field, was a fine flat road and when I made my way to it, I saw that it was covered in some hard stuff. 

"That'll be hard on the horses was my first thought and then I had to jump out of the way as a wagon or coach of some kind came tearing along and like to run me over if I hadn't jumped for the ditch. It was there and gone but I got a good look and seen that it ran by itself without nare horse or mule. And I lay there wondering. "

He went on to tell me how he had traveled by night, heading west towards the mountains and staying in the cover of woods when he could. He'd had some rations in his knapsack -- salt pork and army biscuit and when those ran out, he'd gone hungry till he could find a farmhouse to beg a bite. And at last he'd made his way to the valley and the little cabin where the light was still burning.

"As I'd traveled along and seen all the changes in the land, I'd begun to understand just how much time I'd lost in that explosion or everwhat it was. I'd come across a newspaper someone had used to light a campfire and the part that hadn't burned showed the date 1939 and talked of war in Europe.

"Well, I don't mind telling you, I near about gave up. So many years -- and still there was war. Hadn't folks learned nothing?

But on the chance that my Dolly was still waiting -- and I knew she would be if she weren't dead -- I kept going.

"You know the rest. It was cruel, the difference in our ages -- and all that we'd missed. At first Dolly cried and didn't want me to look at her and then she tried to tell me I should move on and make a life for myself with some young woman. . ."

A fit of coughing took him so fierce that I didn't think to hear him speak again. But then he whispered, "I couldn't leave her -- she was still my Dolly. First I was too old for her, than too young. I have hopes that the next time, we'll get it right. I know she's waiting for me."

And them was the last words he said. He closed his eyes and seemed all but gone. One of the neighbors come in to take her turn setting with him and I went on home, feeling sure I'd not see him again. He died later that day and the one who was there said that just before sunset, Alonzo had opened his eyes wide and looked toward the door, smiling like he saw someone he'd been waiting for. And then he was gone.

Something in your eye? There's a box of Kleenex there. It takes me that way too when I think of them and all that waiting. 

No, they were both buried on a little knoll near the cabin. Just the two of them. I used to go out there when I was able, and tidy the little plot and leave some flowers. But the whole place is growed up now -- it'd need a bullnoser to clear the way up to that knoll. There was even a locust and a poplar growing through the rotted porch floorboards last time I went up there. 

Still, there was the strangest thing. I was heading back home, having seen I couldn't get up to the graves, when I heard something like whispering from that falling down porch. And a laugh that sounded like silver bells.

Miss Birdie in the Graveyard -- Dolly and Alonzo

Well, what's a-gonna happen! Here I was thinking you'd forgot about Halloween, busy as you've been these days. Why, yes, I'd be proud to ride with you up to the graveyard. I got my basket of spice cake all ready. Come on in and git you a chair whilst I find my warm coat -- they's a right sharp breeze a-blowing  out there.

 Law, seems to me this old road gets steeper every year. I clumb it last Decoration Day and like to give out before I got to the top. Don't reckon it's along of me being up in my nineties now, do you? Still and all, at least I'm here and have a good friend to ride me up this old road.

Now I'll set my bits of cake on the headstones and have a word with the folks while you do your picture taking. It's a sight on earth, seeing how that last bit of sun lights up the hillside, most like a blaze of fire.

. . .

Well, there's a job done. And a little of the cake left for me and you. Let's us rest here on this log bench Bernice's boy set up for the old folks last Decoration Day.

I know you're looking to hear a story about these folks up here and I been puzzling on just what story I could tell you. Then I remembered about one who ain't here. I can show you his first stone though . 

It's right over this way, that homemade white painted  concrete marker. Alonzo Amos Gentry -- yes, he was of Luther's kin and no, I didn't forget about the cake. I told you, he ain't here. 

 Part's crumbled away but you can still make out the words --A. A. Gentry - CSA - 1838- 1865. His folks set it here when they got word he'd been killed in some kind of explosion at the tail end of that bitter war. Later his comrades told the family they never did find his body, that he'd been blown to bits. But his mama she wanted to have a marker to put flowers on and where she could set and grieve.

Alonzo was conscripted by the Confederates, though like many a one round here, he went unwilling. And especially because it meant leaving the new bride that he'd waited so long for and the little home he's built with his own hands. 

He was twenty three and Dolly just fifteen years of age when they wed, but Alonzo had been in love with her since he could remember -- the families had been neighbors and he had singled out Dolly for hisn by the time she was nine or ten.

It ain't common for a great boy to pay much mind to a little girl. "But she was the prettiest, smartest, bravest little thing that ever there was," he said, "with a smile that could break your heart."

He said the other fellers laughed at him for being so backward and not taking up with one of the likely girls that was closer to his age. But he was sure as sunrise that him and Dolly was meant for one another. 

"Even when she was just a little thing," he said, "she would put her hand in mine and stare at me so solemn and wise, like we'd always known each other."

Alonzo was set on marrying his Dolly but, though her folks like Alonzo fine, they said Dolly couldn't marry till she was fifteen. So Alonzo waited, working harder that anyone you ever saw to build a little cabin on some land his daddy gave him and to make a home for him and his sweetheart. For three long years, Alonzo sharecropped and worked on that cabin, building furniture and a barn and chicken coop, and clearing land for his own crops and all the time putting money by for his Dolly.

And right along, Dolly was weaving and sewing and making quilts and such for their life to come. Her and Alonzo had to do all their courting under the eyes of both families, both  mamas being right strict. And when at last they married, on the very day of her fifteenth birthday, they moved into that little cabin, made homey with the pretty quilts and things them two had made whilst waiting.

Now this was just afore North Carolina got into the war. And at first, those two lovebirds thought the war wouldn't touch them. But then Alonzo was conscripted.

Dolly wept her pretty eyes red and clung to his arm but there was nothing for it -- Alonzo marched away with her last words ringing in his ears. "I'll keep a light burning in the window every night," said she, "to make sure you find your way back to me." 

Yes, it was sad when news come that Alonzo had been killed in an explosion and Alonzo's death. His mama took on till they thought she'd pass away of grief but Dolly bowed up and swore that he wasn't dead. And every night, she'd light a candle and set it in the window. When candles was hard to come by, she'd use a tallow dip. Long years later, she had a kerosene lamp setting on a table by the window and she'd light it at sundown.

How long did she do this? Well, it must have been fifty or sixty years. She'd lived alone all that time in that  little cabin Alonzo built, getting by on what she could grow and with some help from her family. By then folks was used to seeing that light and though some called her Crazy Doll and young uns was scared of her, believing her to be a witch, she held her age right well, keeping all her teeth and her pretty ways -- and more than one old widow man went sniffing round her door.  

I never knew her but Luther remembered her -- she was some kind of cousin to him though he called her Aunt Doll -- and he said she had the sweetest smile.  And he remembered the commotion it caused the first night Dolly didn't light the lamp in the window. 

The folks who lived across the way from her cabin always kept an eye out for Dolly, and the light was their way of knowing she hadn't been took sick or maybe taken a fall-- this was in the early Thirties, I believe and Dolly would have been in her eighties. 

So when it got to be black dark and still no sign of the light, the folks across the way hurried down to the little cabin, fearing the worst.

When they neared the cabin, they saw Dolly setting in a chair on the front porch and heard her laughing -- like silver bells, it was, one of them told Luther's mommy.  

"Miss Dolly, are you all right?' they called out. "You didn't light your lamp and we-"

"I am better than all right," she called back, her voice plumb rippling with gladness. "Alonzo has come home!"

And then they saw there was a feller setting in the chair next to hers and a-holding her hand.

Now these neighbors truly loved Dolly but they was afraid that she had lost her mind -- it ain't uncommon at that age --  and that some scoundrel who knew her sad story was aiming to take advantage of her by claiming to be Alonzo. Her little farm wasn't much but it could have been tempting to one of the hoboes that were beginning to drift through back then.

And so they come on to the porch to have a look at the rascal.

He stood up as they climbed the steps and gave them a howdy. He looked kindly dazed, the folks said when they told the story later, and was wearing what looked like an old- fashioned uniform, worn and dirty, to be sure, but not old
iffen you know what I mean.

"I thank you kindly for looking after my Dolly," he said. "But I'm back at last." He looked down at her soft wrinkled old face smiling up at him and brought her hand to his lips. "Seems like we've spent an awful lot of time waiting on each other." 

Just then the full moon begun to rise and in its light, the neighbors saw that he was a handsome young man, not much above thirty and the spitting image of the tintype picture Dolly had had on her mantel as long as anyone could remember.

Law, feel that wind! If you don't care, honey, let's us get on back to my house and I'll tell you the rest of the story while we have some hot peppermint tea to ward off a cold.

(to be continued tomorrow)

Miss Birdie in the Graveyard -- Born Again

Now I was wondering would you come along this evening, busy as you've been. Time just gets away from us, now don't it? Come on in and git you a chair whilst I finish putting up this ginger cake. It's getting right cool out out there, ain't it?

Why, yes, I'd be glad of a ride up to the graveyard this year.  I druther walk like I usually do but seems like I can't hardly go today. The wet weather we had back of this has brung on my arthuritis like one thing.  

Do I have some more stories for you about the folks buried up there? Oh, honey, that place is plumb full of stories and we ain't to the end of them by a far piece. Just let me get my coat on . . .
                                            

My, but this vehicle of yours does Cadillac right along. Turns this rough old road smooth as silk. And here we are and the sun still a double hand span from setting. Time a-plenty to set out my bits of cake and have a word with the Quiet Ones.

I'll begin with Cletus and Luther and my angels whilst you walk about  -- I know how you like to make pictures and that cold snap has purely turned the maple into a blaze of glory, now ain't it?  Puttin' on that last bit of fancy dress afore the bare bones of winter.

Have you a good look around and see if any of these graves sets you to wondering. Like I said, they's stories to tell for every one of them . . .

She watched as the old woman moved slowly from grave to grave, stopping at each to take a bit of ginger cake from the oak split basket on her arm and lay it on the stone. Soul cake, some traditions called it, a sop for the dead. But these offerings were more homely, inspired, not by fear or some special reverence, but by affection. The little figure whispering above each grave was simply doing for her departed neighbors what she would do for the living, sharing food and, perhaps, a little gossip. 

At one recent marker though, Birdie simply shook her head, chuckled, and moved on, leaving no cake.

There's a story there, I bet.  I'll ask her.

The shadows were lengthening as Miss Birdie neared the upper edge of the old graveyard where the markers were  older and mostly untended: some evidently homemade, some no more that a large rock in the tall grass.

Well now, did you get you some pictures? I'm ready to set a spell. This bench the church folks put up last year is right welcome. Let's have us some of this good cake while I catch my breath.

How come I not to leave cake at that new headstone down there? Honey, they ain't no one buried there. Oh, there's a name and dates all right but  . . . well this was the story I heard.

 

It happened back a few months. Rawly Snelson and a bunch of his buddies was hoorahing around. They had told their wives that they was fox hunting and they had brought along some dogs to let loose -- this ridge the graveyard's on is a fine place to hear the hounds chase a fox. That sweet music echoes all around up here.

Nah, they don't kill the varmint. The fox always gets away when he's had enough of the  chase. The men do it purely for the sound of the dogs baying and they kin tell one from another by their sound. But the reason Rawly and his buddies loved to fox hunt so good was that they could build a fire and set around it and drink beer and cuss and pass around a jar of white liquor. Every one of them has a wife who is dead set against drinking and cussing and Rawly's wife hadn't spoke to him in days on account of she wanted to go visit her family in Mills River and Rawly kept putting her off.

So, honey, this was the boys' night out and they was making the most of it, down there on that little flat spot outside the graveyard -- right near where you parked your vehicle.

The way I heard it was that they was all of them right far gone when they took to daring one another to go and walk amongst the gravestones without no flashlight. Grown men, would you credit it! So after a lot of elbowin' and bold talk, Rawly ups and says 'I'll do 'er. Ain't no ghost gone mess with me.'

And off he goes without a flashlight nor even a match for they made him turn out his pockets and leave his lighter and matches behind too. 

It was black dark for the moon had already set and Rawly had to most feel his way up the path to the graveyard. But time he topped the rise, he could just make out the gravestones, kindly glowing pale against the dark, and he set in to make his way through them like he had vowed to do.  

He was past the first few rows where all them Cantrells is buried but all of a sudden something come swooping down just brushing by his head and not making the least sound. 

'Ooooh!' cries Rawly, who is having second thoughts now. He  turns to go back to the campfire, figgering he'll get to the edge of the grave yard and stay out of sight of the others till enough time has passed that he can claim to have got to the far side and back. 

And then he sees something. He can just barely make it out, dark as the night is, but it is white, near bout man-size and fluttering in the wind just a few feet off the ground. It ain't got nare head but one arm lifts and waves, like it was calling to him.

"Oh, Lord!" cries Rawly and commences to run.

But now he is bumfuzzled and in a hurry and he trips over a quartz rock -- that one yonder for the Bedford baby, its poor folks  both passed away from the Spanish Influenza not long after it died and no one ever thought to give the baby a better stone. 

Where was I? Oh, yes, he trips over the stone and takes a tumble right into Miz Clara Clemmons new dug grave -- she was to be buried the day after next and the fellers digging it hadn't finished the tidying up.

Between the fright and the white liquor, Rawly passes out there at the bottom of that six foot hole and it ain't till nigh daybreak that he come to.

Why didn't his friends come looking for him? Well, I never could get the truth of that. Either they was too drunk themselves or too skeered or, and this is how they told it, they thought he'd played a trick on them and walked home. so when their dogs begun to straggle back and the jar of white was empty, they all began to think that home and bed was where they'd like to be too. And off they went.

So just at first light, Rawly begins to stir. The hard clay he's laying on is none too pleasing and his head is aching and his mouth feels like something crawled in it and died.  And he lays there and it comes to him that maybe it's him has died. He is afraid to open his eyes but he reaches out and feels the cold, slick clay walls to either side of him.

"Oh, Lord!" cries Rawly. "I'm too young to die in such a foolish way. Lord, save a sinner! I swear, if you'll but give me another chance, I'll be a better man. I'll cut out the drinkin' and cussin', Lord. I'll go to church with Nelly every Sunday and Wednesday too, Lord! Yes, and revivals -- whatever that good woman asks of me, I'll do 'er."

Rawly still has his eyes squinched shut, kindly waiting to get some answer from the Lord but nothing is happening.  Finally he says, "And, Lord, I'll even move to Mills River like Nelly wants and go to work for her daddy like she's been after me to do ever since we was wed. (Even though that old man is mean as a snake,)" he says quiet-like so the Lord won't hear. "I promise, Lord, I'll be a new man."

All of a sudden he feels cold water pouring over his face and the shock of it makes him open his eyes. He looks up to see blue sky and what he takes for an angel, dazzling in the light of the rising sun, standing there on the edge of the grave with a watering can in its hand.

"Get up out of there, Rawly Snelson," the angel says. 

And praising the Lord, Rawly clambers out of the grave and goes to fall on his knees before the angel till he see it ain't no angel but one of the Dotson girls standing there.

"I reckon it's a good thing I decided to come along early to water the azaleas on Mommy's grave," said she. "No telling how long you'd have laid there making all kinds of promises."

Rawly is blinking in the sunlight and wondering if those promises count since it's only Ceely Dotson and not an angel after all. He rubs his chin with one hand and looks around, trying to understand what has happened. Next to the hole he spent the night in is a pile of dirt with a long handled shovel stuck in it. A dirty white shirt droops from the handle. 

Ceely Dotson looks him up and down. "Rawly Snelson, you got that second chance you asked for. I'm happy for you and I can't wait to tell Nellie and all the folks at church that you are a new man. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, ain't that the truth!"

...

And, honey, Rawly is.  Least far as I know. Him and Nellie up sticks and moved not a week later. But she paid for that marker to be set up near the grave where Rawly's old life ended. Hand me my stick and you can read for yourself what it says as we pass by.

As they made their way  through the shadows back to the waiting jeep, they paused at the marker. The polished black headstone bore a simple inscription :

Rawly Snelson - 1991 - 2017 - ?

Born Again and Gone to Mills River.