Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Okay, I know I promised to finish this on Sunday, but I've been distracted by a few craft projects. And I've finally been playing with my drop spindle. I seem to have the hang of it, but thus far it's resulted in a twisty, slubby mess. Which I'm told is okay and once I become proficient I'll be unable to create what's called a "novelty" yarn. I'm going to knit a scarf from it. Or at least that's the plan. I'm really liking it--but I'm suspicious that my sheep have gone to their final pasture--ie--are dead. Haven't seen hide nor fleece of them for a while. Either that--or they've taken permanent residence down the mountain where they were spending the summer. They should have returned by now.

At any rate, I haven't finished the story--but here's the awaited Part Two:

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“I know—let’s get him out of there and take a picture of the four of us.”

It was a bad idea whose time had come. They didn’t have too much trouble getting Junior out of the casket. As stiff as he was, he slid out like a knife from a sheath. There was a little wiggling and wedging involved but overall, Junior slid out of that coffin pretty easy. Once out, they were surprised to find that the nice wingtip shoes they’d included with his suit were not on his feet.

“Well, that won’t do,” said Boo. “I bought them shoes special for him for his 80th birthday party.”

Jim fished around in the bottom of the coffin, finally coming up with the shoes. “Here they is. They just put them down there in the bottom. Let’s get them on him.”

They tried to sit Junior in his favorite chair, a green pleather Laz-E-Boy he’d got at the factory seconds store in Morristown. Junior stubbornly refused to fold into a sitting position so they put the chair in the reclining position and laid him out like a board on a sawhorse. The foot part of the recliner kept going down so Boo got a cinderblock from the porch and propped it up. However, they soon found that Junior’s feet would not go in the shoes.

“I’ll get the camera,” said Jim.

What followed next would remain fuzzy in memory for the men, given the state of inebriation of three and the relative deadness of the fourth. When the film came back from the Wal-Mart Photo Center, the record showed that they first took photos of them standing around Junior in his favorite chair, stood him up and put their arms around each other, somehow wrestled Junior into his old hunting jacket and posed him with his rifle, took him outside and leaned him against his old Ford truck, then, for some reason, tried to feed him ice cream. Throughout all the photos, Junior remained agreeably and thoroughly dead.

The real trouble began the next morning when Mrs. Bess Truholt, one of Boo’s high school girlfriends who ended up marrying the late Skeeter Hall after Boo got too fresh with her on the walk back from church one Sunday, knocked on the door the next morning. Not getting an answer, she peeked in the window and what she saw made her drop that wet coconut cake and run screaming back to her car.

Once safely in her car, Bess called her best friend, Trudy, and said, “Junior Mantooth done rose from the dead, kilt all his family and ate them!”

Actually, what Bess saw through the window was the three men passed out in the living room in various states of disarray and Junior, propped in his chair in his hunting outfit, a rifle over his lap, melted strawberry ice cream smeared all over his face and leaking from his mouth like bloody drool.

Her car peeling out of the driveway roused Ed, who looked around the parlor of their house, the recliner where Junior, despite his deadness, seemed to have had too good of a time and said, “Oh shit.”

There are some stories that start where they should have ended. This might be just that sort of a story. For instance, I might tell you that Junior Mantooth was a righteous man who lived a righteous life and died well. That would be perfectly true. I might tell you that two thousand souls attended his viewing and the streets of Newport City, Tennessee looked like a street carnival that day with all the folks who come down out of the mountains to pay their respects and to visit with friends they hadn’t seen in many a long while. That would be true, also.

When Junior died, Clarence Huff, the funeral director came to the house and respectfully conveyed the old boy to the funeral home where they embalmed him, dressed him in his finest suit and placed him in their white “Gone to Glory” model casket with the pewter fittings. The viewing was set for a Saturday with the memorial following. Then, he was taken back to the family home where the wake was to be held. An old-fashioned vigil was scheduled all through Saturday night with the burial on Sunday at the family cemetery next to his three wives, parents and deceased daughters. All of this was in accordance with Junior’s last wishes. He always said he wanted his final homecoming to be the biggest party the mountain had ever seen.

Junior’s family, whittled down to two widower brothers and a bachelor son, had been taking care of him during his long illness and as anyone knows, menfolk ain’t good for nothing around the sick. Still they managed best they could, making Junior’s final years as comfortable as they were able. But it meant they couldn’t go down to the dump and jaw with the other old boys, couldn’t bear hunt during the season, nor fish and drink like they wanted. So, not surprisingly, Uncles Boo and Jim, and son Ed, were a bit overwhelmed by the social whirlwind that was Junior Mantooth’s funeral.

All the widow women showed up with dishes of food when the boys had been living off cornbread and beanie-weenies. A few came and cleaned up the house for them. An endless string of visitors came by the house and signed the registry at the funeral home. Junior had been a popular man and a generous one. Rumor was he had made a fortune ushering geologists around the mountains. They also said Junior had hidden gold around the place in a fleet of old junk cars and that was why the boys never could get rid of all the junk around the property, so all those widow women were smiling especially bright for all three of the fellows.

The ladies from First Baptist, Edwina Assembly of God in Jesus’ Name and Bridgeport Church of God all got together to help coordinate the wake, following Junior on his final trip from town to his home after the memorial service. The daytime headlights trailing the hearse stretched for six miles on the drive back to the house. Buddy Don’s Barbeque catered the event and was waiting in the yard with three whole hogs for the mourners. The Heavenly Hay Gospel Choir performed. It did indeed look like Junior’s last wishes were observed to the letter and his going away party was a shindig to say the least.

By nine p.m., the crowd had thinned out and by eleven p.m. only Boo, Jim and Ed’s friends were left. Junior lay in his casket in peaceful repose. A few hip flasks were produced and they began toasting Junior and recalling his long life. It started around two o’clock in the morning after many shots of Popcorn Sutton’s finest corn likker.

“You know? I don’t think we ever got a picture of the four of us together.”

“Seems a shame, don’t it?” said Ed, a bleary tear rolling down his cheek. “It’s just been the four of us these past five years since Daddy had the stroke.”

Boo reached in the casket and smoothed the old man’s hair. “Ain’t seen Brother look so fine in a long time. Clarence did a real good job of fixing the droopy part of his face.”

“I know—let’s get him out of there and take a picture of the four of us.”

It was a bad idea whose time had come...

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion of "Junior Mantooth's Last Outing!"

I haven't written some tales just for you guys in a while, so this Halloween weekend I'll be giving you two stories--one today and one tomorrow. As these things go, I'll be writing from the seat of my pants--making it up as I go along.

I offer to you two completely true tales (as true as the tail I was born with!) to confound the imagination. There is a sixth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is the middle ground between light and shadow - between man's grasp and his reach; between science and superstition; between the pit of his fears and the sunlight of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area called The Creepy Appalachia Zone.

Red Arlington's Conversion

Some remember it only because it happened on the coldest winter these parts had seen in many a long year. They remember it because their breath fogged and froze into tiny ice crystals that shattered on the ground as they waited on the banks of Big Creek down by Sawmill Hole where Junior Tarlington’s sawmill wheel churned up the silt. When the wheel was braked, it was a fine place for a river baptism. They remembered because it took six strong men wielding mattocks and seven-pound sledges to break through the foot of ice and the bonfire built on the side of the creek barely saved Pastor Granger’s fingers and toes from falling off. They remembered because it seemed only fitting that the good Lord deemed as mean a man as Red Arlington would have to nearly die submerged in the frigid water to come up a saved man, sputtering “Hallelujah” between chittering, clenched teeth.

But the family remembered for another reason. The story started months before when the killing frosts had only just settled. It’s the story of Red Arlington’s choice, which wasn’t really a choice at all. For who would chose to dance for eternity locked in the Devil’s sulphurous embrace?

By all accounts, Red Arlington popped out of the womb mean as a henless rooster. His momma took the weed and nearly died of it—worse case of milk fever the doctor had ever seen. Some said Red was raised on rattlesnake milk because of it, but the truth was it were the milk of a contrary nanny goat. Same difference some said. At seven years of age, he wrapped a hound’s tail in tarred straw and lit it afire. At fifteen, Lucy Hall disappeared after walking home with him—not that they proved anything but there were always whispers. Then there was the time they found him sitting on Joe Lawes’s corpse while frying up a rasher of bacon. He claimed he didn’t have nothing to do with the man dying and all, but that’s a tale for anther time. At any rate, the mean little infant grew into a mean child, and the mean child into a mean adult. There’s not enough space here to chronicle the sins of Red Arlington, but suffice it to say, he was a bad, bad man.

His folks had hoped his marriage, celebrated at the business end of his father-in-law’s rifle-gun, would calm him down a bit. But after his bride popped out a few babies, Red predictably turned to making corn likker. And he was no master of the distillery arts, just in it for the easy money that come from them Chicago men who cared not a whit Red’s still was hacked together from car radiators or that once in a while a dead possum or some brake fluid added a special zing to his product. No telling how many dead Yankees adorned the endless scroll of Red’s transgressions awaiting him in heaven.

He kept his still down near Granny’s Branch, down-creek from a few homesteads—which is to say the branch water wasn’t a pure as it could be, if you get my drift. The rotgut Red made, didn’t make him a kinder man and oft was the night his wife boarded the door up to keep him out. She’d sit covering the ears of his two babes while Red cursed a streak of filth like to wake the dead from their inconstant dreaming.

It was the night of the third killing frost, and the leaves on the mile-a-minute vines had wilted, turning greeny-grey as a corpse’s toenails. The moon was setting over Sol Messer Mountain, but only a sliver and not near enough to light the footpath Red stumbled across on his trip home from the still. The lower path was near level, cut into the side of a steep ravine—one misstep would carry a man down into the darkness, dark even in the light of day, that misshapen holler. He sang into the frosty morning, that singing voice of his a redeeming feature. But when his toe stubbed against a root, he cursed, “Goddamnit to Hell!”

And that were when it happened. Those mile-a-minute vines came to life and snaked up, wrapping themselves around old Red’s ankles. They twisted and warped, dancing like a thousand whipping copperheads and pulled Red down, down, down. He screamed, grabbing onto the roots, rocks and dirt. He clawed and scratched, blood bubbling from his split fingernails. There wasn’t no one to hear him cry as the vines tortured and dragged him. Dragged him down into the cold, dark holler.

And he thought for a moment, it was a mercy he passed out.

When Red came to, he smelled the smell of land-fish mushrooms growing all around him and he felt peculiar warm for such a cold night. He tried to move, but couldn’t as it seemed he was embraced by a pair of arms holding him still.

“Ah…” sighed a sibilant voice, dry and crinkly in his ears, but womanly in tone, “Your song and words are precious to me, dear man. I fear I’ve fallen quite in love with you. Won’t you come below and dance with me? Dance a waltz to the devil’s box?”

He felt dry lips caress his ear and smelled the stink of the grave on the breath of this woman spirit. In a flash of insight, he thought to fool her and said, “My lovely, of course I’ll dance a merry fiddle dance with you. I’ll dance the night long, but let me go say goodbye to my family. I’ll return tomorrow night early and we will run away together. On this you have my promise.”

She sighed and he felt her tongue on his cheek—warm and forked. And so she released him. Red woke again on the path, shaking and shuddering, vomiting and feverish—and so stumbled back to his home just as the sun was rising—thinking he’d escaped a terrible fate.

Red stayed away from his still, the next night and the next. Until his wife tired of his laying about the house and scolded him, telling him to get his lazy self a job or cut up some firewood so they’d have money and some warmth for the winter. Red, never one to take an honest job in exchange for easy money, made his way back to the still to set up for another run of moonshine. He slept there at the still until he finally had to make his way back home one night.

This time, Red took the middle footpath home—it was a more difficult path than the lower one, but he was loath to take the same way home he had the night he dreamed (for surely it was a dream?) of the devil woman. As he climbed up and around the switchbacks, he hummed to himself—more to keep himself company and ease his nerves than anything else. At one point, the rotten rock and screed gave way and Red stumbled to his knees hollering, “Jaysus-fucking-Christ on a cracker!”

And that’s when it happened again. It seemed as though the entire mountain fell under his feet and Red was swept down, down, down past the lower path and into the cursed holler. Again, he scrabbled and scraped, grabbing onto any passing tree branch, trying to stop his fall by churning his feet, but to no avail. He tumbled and spun, down, down, down—down into the dark holler.

And this time, he did not think it a mercy when his eyes closed.

When he woke, the she-demon had her arms locked around him, but facing him so he could see her face. She was powersome beautiful in an evil way with mischievous eyes and pointed ears. The smell of mushrooms, he remembered from last time, he knew now was her special perfume. She scritched his back with her razor-sharp nails and pressed her pointy breasts against him and said, “Though you do me wrong and lie to me, I can’t help my love for you, dear man. It was naughty of you to tell me you would return and then not. But your song and your words bewitch and please me. I cannot help myself. Won’t you please come below and dance with me? Dance a waltz to the devil’s box?”

Red gave a nervous smile and thought fast. “Oh, sweet lady, I did not do you wrong, I swear,” he said. “You see, I play a bit of fiddle myself and I was composing a song to your beauty. It took me all this time to get it right and I didn’t think it worthy for your beloved ears until just this night. I was on my way home to fetch my fiddle and return to you. With this song as a gift.”

She drew a little blood with her nails, stinging him like a mankiller wasp. Then she thoughtfully said, “I will allow you to go back and collect your fiddle, since I dearly would like to hear this tune you’ve wrought. But bring yourself back to me this next night or there will be Hell to pay, mark my words.”

And with that, Red found himself back on the middle path, sick as a bluetick and stumbling home.

Red stayed home as long as he could. He did not leave his house and peered fearfully out the windows when night fell. He slept in fits and starts throughout the day, until his wife became irritable with him being underfoot.

“Why don’t you go out and get a real job?” she pleaded with him. And normally Red would backhand her across the mouth, but he watched her and womankind warily now. Still, he wasn’t ready to do such a thing, so he eventually headed back to his still. This time he stayed even longer, but finally it began to snow. It was a terrible snow that fell that winter and this was the first taste of it—and Red knew he had to make his way home if only for shelter.

This time, he took the longest way home, the upper path. It was treacherous, icy and slick. Red, not normally a praying man, found himself singing church hymns as he made his way up the steep mountainside. Closer and closer to the top he came and as the path became more dangerous, he prayed. Prayed real hard. And when a boulder came crashing down, he hollered, “Oh, Sweet Jesus, save me!”

But this time, he did not fall and the mountain did not come crashing down on his head. Instead, his demon lover emerged from the mist, rising up from the dark holler like a virago, like the possessed spirit she was. She rose until she dwarfed the mountain, wailing and rending her demon garments.

“Damn, you, Red Arlington! Damn you to Hell! You done broke my heart and I no longer find your songs sweet. You’ll make music no more, swear.”

And just like that, she was gone.

Red Arlington never made music again, and he never allowed it in his house with the exception of shape-note singing. No devil’s boxes were allowed. He was baptized that January in the frozen creek, and proclaimed himself saved—his sins forgiven.

But just you be careful, mind you what you say, if you travel the low road on a fall night when the moonlight slivers through the trees. They say the devil waits out there for you in a handsome form, waiting to take you below. Down, down, down—to dance to the devil’s box.


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Happy Halloween!

I think I’ll dedicate this story to Pastor Jimmy—because I think he’d enjoy this churchy little cautionary tale. And it’s based on a story I collected from Friend Scott about one of their mutual relatives.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you the strange tale of Junior Mantooth’s Last Outing. It’s sort of an Appalachian zombie story. Based on truth. I swear. You can read it in the paper.

They call them "Mankillers" here in the Appalachians. The sting is said to be nearly deadly and more painful than death and they can kill cattle it is said. They fly at night and are attracted to lights. It's the European or Giant Hornet...only surpassed by their somewhat larger cousin the Asian Giant hornet.

Often, you will see their two foot or larger long nests displayed in homes or stores throughout the Appalachian area as a piece of natural art. I have an old photo of my grandmother seated in front of such a nest. I've always wanted to find one myself.

One bit of folklore about the hornets is that if their nests are built low to the ground, a hard winter follows. It's one of my favorite Appalachian weather myths, along with the number of thunder storms in May equaling the number of snows coming in the next winter.

You can follow a mankiller back to her nest by following her--they fly in straight lines--but the closer you get to the nest, the more likely it is you will suffer one of their ferocious stings. They are pretty docile and slow-flying away from the nest. But an inch and a half wasp, is not a creature you want to aggravate. They look so much bigger, too, when they are flying.

The most annoying thing about them is the night flying business. While Scott was here, he kept leaving the door open at night and he managed to let five in the house. He's really tall, Friend Scott is, so I let him kill them while I cowered in the hallway yipping little screams every time the thing zoomed by. When you kill that many giant stinging insects, you start feeling like your skin is a bit crawly. So we both sat there twitching and slapping ourselves.

The discussion had started with Scott in the truck one day. I'm not sure exactly how the subject matter turned to the pre-birth "marking". I think I was asking if he had heard about this imaginary birth defect mentioned in Catherine Marshall's Christy. I wanted to know if any of the superstitions regarding births had survived from that time.

One of Scott's cousins (all of Scott's relatives will be called 'cousins' since I'm not quite sure how to describe exactly how everyone is related to Scott) was "marked" by a mule. Her mother, while pregnant, had to crawl under a barbed wire fence to escape an aggressive mule. His cousin was born with a mule shaped birthmark on her lower back.

Scott tells me another cousin who was born retarded who was "marked" by a horse. This was a much more severe "marking". The mother was frightened by a horse while pregnant. The baby was born with a mane of sorts. A narrow stripe of hair that grew down the spine.

I brought this topic up a woman I visit yesterday. She knew about Scott's relatives' markings and was able to fill in some blanks Scott had in the telling of the tales. She also related a tale of a woman she knew who worked at an orphanage. One of the children in her care was white from the waist up and black from the waist down. The parents had abandoned the child since it was so severely "marked". This had the ring of truth and I think I recognized a mosaic twin in this story.

An acquaintance's grandson is "marked" on his legs with port wine birthmarks. She isn't sure how his "marking" occurred but it is assumed that something scared his mother when she was pregnant.

These sorts of superstitions surrounding birthmarks, deformities and retardation were commonplace and widely accepted in the nineteenth century. But they are still regarded to be fact here.

Finally, as she warms to the topic, she relates this fantastic, grotesque tale. She loves any sort of story dealing with birthing.

Her face gets her serious storytelling look. It's a sort of look that goes with speaking in a half-whisper, even if we are the only ones in the room.

"Were this woman that lived down the holler. She lived with a German Shepherd."

Yikes. I know what's coming. I don't want to hear this.

"And I want you to know...she got pregnant by that dog!"

She is quite enjoying this tale. She looks outraged.

"When that baby were born, they had to kill that dog to get at her. It were born looking like a dog. It died."

"Oh, no!" I say. "You know that can't be true."

She gives me the stock phrase that is undeniable proof that the story is indeed true.

"I swear! It were in the paper. You can look it up!"