Prose

My father, Joseph Dutton was a good man. A religious man, a devoted man, an intelligent man who oft quoted not only the Bible, but many illustrious tomes.

My mother, Cebah Dowlen Dutton was a very wise woman. A naturalist, a keen observer and trusted few organized religions. She might have aligned with agnostics but she never said as such. 

My father and his family back as far as the early 1800’s were founding members and devoted followers of The First Christian Church in Somerset. My dad attended church every Sunday, singing in the choir and pouring his hard earned money into the collection plate each and every Sunday. He doled out a nickel to each of his kids to put in the collection plate for Sunday School. (Here I impose my own feelings, I am glad I nicked my nickel now and then to buy butterscotch life savers from the Beecher Hotel lobby just down the street from the church… rich city kids always had spare change for such things.) 

My mother, on the other hand, was loathe to believe in “all that malarkey.” Particularly if it was associated with the Baptist religion. Seems as a young adult she and her brother Madison were harped upon at the nearby Baptist Church to “repent and be saved.” Saved from what?” my mother said…. quite often. 

My Aunt Margarite, mom’s older sister, guffawed and said, “nice fairy stories.”

My Dutton aunts were devotees of religion and THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH. My mother thought they were pompous when they traveled to Lexington to Stewart’s Department Store to buy cashmere coats, kid gloves and the latest chapeau. My mother had homemade dresses and used cast off dresses to remake into dresses for her three daughters. She once dressed my younger brother Joseph for church in woolen short breeches (cast off from somewhere) my mom fumed for years as some haughty woman, nose down, said, “isn’t that such fun, a little boy in woolen shorts and before Easter.” 

My mother relegated herself to the basement of the church, tending the nursery ("spoiled little brats") and perhaps earning a buck a week for changing diapers, wiping noses and rocking colicky babies. She mostly never complained because she sure as hell was not going to sit in a row with the Dutton aunts, Willie and Gladys. My Dutton uncle Silas and his wife the Gladiator attended TFCC when I was a child but abandoned it for the same Baptist church that pestered my mom & her brother to repent. 

So here is my peeve. My dad, a good and kind man, was never an elder nor a deacon nor an officer nor position nor anything in the church. Ever.

Dad was on the football field in the mid thirties when the new preacher, Lee Davis Fisher, strolled across the field. My dad, a running back, asked his fellow players about this striking young man. “Why Joe, they said, that’s your new preacher.” Lee Davis Fisher was a learned man, a good man and certainly not a fire and brimstone man. He had a quiet presence and a dignified air. He never asked his congregation to be saved. He asked them to join the church and to believe in heaven, a good place to go. Another good place to go would be Joe and Cebah’s house after church on Sunday where my mom would prepare fried chicken, fresh and unbelievably juicy and crisp. There would be green beans, mashed potatoes, cole slaw in spring, yeast rolls, apple pie, freshly churned butter and tea (a luxury) and also coffee! Midday coffee, unheard of unless the preacher was coming. Mom liked Brother Fisher, she did. And he like my parents. He really did.

But this is where I falter. How could this kind and intelligent preacher come to our humble house and enjoy a full afternoon of food and conversation but never feel my father was worthy of a position in his church? Dad had a gabardine suit, a crisp white shirt, starched and ironed each week by my mom. He had a nice tie and a top coat for winter. He was a strikingly handsome man and he had legacy in that damn church.

Was the fact that he drove the cattle truck in all the months except winter, an old Jeep bench seat in the back for Phyllis, Ruth Ann & Bobby? Joseph and me in the front with Mom & Dad. In the winter all of us kids would pile in Gladys 1953 Plymouth and Mom and Dad would drive in the cattle truck. Daddy always parked in a small lower lot from the main parking lot.

We never entered TFCC through the front door, we entered through the basement door where mom would go to the nursery and we would go to our Sunday School class. Dad would go up the back stairs to slip on the back row of the choir, singing the hymns he dearly loved. It is all quite inexplicable to me.

Every Sunday night Mom & Dad would go back to church, dad singing in the men’s choir and mom tending the kids. We were left at the old house with Grandma, Willie, Gladys and DH. Sometime around 1956 Gladys bought a tv set. Sunday nights were the highlight of the week. I found faces and voices to fill an imaginary world. 

Back to the business of religion:

After years and years and years of going Sunday after Sunday, my Dad and Mom abruptly stopped going to church. No explanation, just stopped going.

Did my dad become disillusioned? Did my mom finally persuade them to no longer go? Did they drift away after Lee Davis Fisher left the pulpit? I have no answers. 

I only know, for certain, that my dad held a part deep inside his soul that honored THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

I equally know, for certain, my mom held significant scorn for the same institution. 

They both had a deep conviction of truthfulness, decency and a love of words and music.

Dad believed in forgiveness, mom in retribution and revenge. 

I harbor a bit of both.

I do wish, just one more time, I could hear them sing "Church in the Wildwood". 

There’s a church in the valley by the wildwood 

No lovelier spot in the dale

No place is so dear to my childhood 

As the little brown church in the vale.

Oh come to the church in the wildwood

Oh come to the church in the vale 

No spot is so dear to my childhood 

As the little brown church in the vale 

How sweet on a clear Sabbath morning 

To listen to the clear ringing bells 

Its tone so sweetly are calling 

Oh come to the church in the vale 

There close by the side of that loved one 

Neath the tree where the wildflowers bloom

When farewell hymns shall be chanted 

I shall rest by her side in the tomb.

Come to the church in the wildwood 

Oh come to the church in the vale

No spot is so dear to my childhood 

As the little brown church in the vale.

Sitting cross legged on the hard ground, I was twiddling with a tear in my dress. The single pocket was dangling, nearly torn off, leaving a gaping hole big enough for me to slid my finger in the hole to scratch my chigger bites. 

I stretched my left foot out to scratch my scraped bare toes before resuming my cross legged position.

Before me was our biggest kitchen dishpan, one side warped, the results of being heated over an open fire. The dish pan was cradled between two big stones with barely a twig fire underneath. I guess Moma didn’t want me to burn completely up or at least not catch fire and have to be wrapped in Grandma’s quilt to squelch the flames on my body. I thought to myself everyone would rush out and stare at me and try to figure out what salve would best heal me up. Moma would carry me inside the cool house and let me lie on the linoleum floor until my wounds were better and I was no longer sobbing. 

Moma’s voice jarred me from this lovely reverie of a burned body and the attention I would get while being laid up. “ Hurry up with those jars and stop that daydreaming!”

I turned my attention back to the warm water in the dish pan, Moma had bought a special boxed soap for washing dishes and canning jars but I dare not put anymore than a little fist full in the water because that would be wasteful. Daydreaming AND wasting soap would be a lethal combination for a wistful child. 

Dust and pale green mold coated the pint jars, the quart jars were worse as they had been stored on the dirt floor of the cellar. Moma said to wash the rims of the jars first, they had to be spotless or the jars would not seal and a whole summer’s worth of canning would be ruined. I dipped the washrag in the warm sudsy water, knotted it up to expel the excess water and started scrubbing the rim, my small hand slid down the inside of the jar easily, round and round I swirled finishing with up and down motion on the outside of the jar. The big wash tub was filled to the top with cold spring water for rinsing the jars.

After a good scrub and rinse the clean jars were lined up on an old oil tablecloth to dry. 

I was thinking about paper dolls inside folders with shiny covers and dolls with pink, yellow and blue dresses to cut out. I was hoping if I got the jars super clean, my oldest sister might bring me a paper doll from the JJ Newberry store. She had a job there selling perfumes, lotions, dusting powder and creams to the town ladies and most likely to my aunts, Willie and Gladys, who always had a cardboard container of dusting powder on their dresser. The white dusting powder billowed white puffs over the entire top of the dresser. 

My sister never said much about the ladies that shopped at Newberry’s. It was a five and dime store, fancy ladies probably went over to The Fair Store. I didn’t know one thing about that store, and I couldn't have cared less, they didn’t carry paper dolls or movies star magazines or comic books. Who on earth would want to go there?

Anyway, my sister told me about a drunk man that came to Newberry’s to buy Bay Rum. He didn’t splash it on his shaven cheeks, he swilled it almost daily to get drunk. I pondered and pondered about “drunk”, trying to sort it out. Somehow my overactive imagination conjured up an ornery looking man with crazed eyes that ate little kids after he had swilled Bay Rum. I was trying to figure out how to get to the paper dolls at the JJ Newberry store without being grabbed and eaten by a drunken Bay Rum drinking devil when Daddy came across the yard. He had been in the back fields mowing hay all morning. I hurried my hands across the rim of a quart jar knowing we would soon be having our noon meal. No one paid much attention to me so when Daddy spoke it startled me. “Don’t go walking back toward the fox den.” Pause.

“That mama fox has a litter of kits.” 

Pause. “You need to leave her alone.” 

I had never heard the word “kits” but I felt quite smug in knowing that only a silly girl would go near baby kittens, the mama cat would be sure to move them and then it would take a half day or more to find them again. I knew that for sure, I was always trying to find the nest after I had played with the baby kittens, newly born, and ever so soft to touch. Baby mice stay put even if you played with them every single day. 

Daddy walked over toward the smokehouse and I wiggled around a bit to watch and see if he offered any more clues about kits. He didn’t say another word and mom hollered to get inside and eat before she threw the food out to the other dogs! We headed into the kitchen together. 

The cornbread was so hot I nearly burnt my shriveled fingers. I couldn’t decide whether to smush my cornbread in the pinto beans or slather it with butter. I slathered the cornbread in butter, it lasts longer that way. 

The afternoon hummed along, the jars were washed and I helped pack the broken up green beans tightly in the jars. Moma told me to measure one teaspoon of salt in each jar. Moma had a teakettle of boiling water to fill up each jar, then she screwed the bands and lids on as tight as she could. She removed my dishpan from the smoldering fire, threw on a few logs and poked up a big roaring fire. She gently placed twelve jars in the big blue galvanized canning pot, covered the jars with water and eased the canner onto the fire for the final process of canning beans that would feed us through winter. She didn’t scold me for one jar not being clean, so I wandered off across the field to the cow barn. I thought about climbing in the hay loft and smelling the new hay before I slid down through a hole in the loft floor to try to land on a cow’s back. 

I never had much luck with landing on the cow and if I got cow manure on my feet I would need to walk to the spring by Sam Mounce’s old house to get my feet clean. I decided, against my daddy’s warning, to go straight to the fox den. The field beyond the barn was stubbly and poked my bare feet something fierce. I walked around the upper edge of the fox den until I reached the thicket of cedars where the den was hidden. The den was under a rock ledge jutting out about 3 feet or so. A tangle of blackberry briars and scrub bushes concealed the opening.

I stood there above the den with my heart pounding a mile a minute when a hawk squawked in the big oaks a few yards away. It flew directly over my head into the cloudless sky.

One thing is true in this world, certain things happen to make other things happen or to keep things from happening. I had an epiphany on that summer day. I turned back toward the hickory nut tree and sat down on a smooth gray rock. Nothing came to my mind not even paper dolls or being a movie star. I scratched my legs, covered in mosquito bites, picking on them until they nearly bled. I strained to hear the sound of the kits that might be playing outside their den but all I could hear, off in the distance, were the crows in the cornfield. 

I felt a yearning. 

I wanted something that was shiny and glittering but I knew right then, in that place, my soul was safe.

Alice came in summer. Each summer. She and my Aunt Marguerite rode the Greyhound bus down to our house from just across the river near Cincinnati. Marguerite was Moma’s older sister. She had opinions. Moma never knew when Aunt Marguerite and Alice were coming; they just appeared. Alice had fancy store bought clothes and was a bit older than me, so I could count on getting a box of good hand-me-downs clothes. I specifically remember the box they bought when I was six. I found a bright yellow sunsuit with white and red flowers dancing on the material, I thought those flowers might jump off in my hands. I had never seen, let alone worn, a sunsuit. I didn’t even know that word. Alice set me straight when I called it a dress. Alice was taller than me and sturdy.

Alice had short blond hair with ringlet curls. AND she had white sandals on her feet! I wanted to try the sunsuit on right then and there, straight out of the box, in front of the smokehouse. I stripped off my raggedy dress down to my cotton underpants. I had to put each foot in the ruffled openings on the sunsuit while trying to stay balanced and not falling down. I tried to pull up the sunsuit but it kept falling off around my ankles. Alice was laughing at me and I felt humiliated with my cheeks burning like fire.

Aunt Marguerite came across the yard hauling another box of moth ball smelling clothes. She took one look at me, nearly naked, she pulled firmly on the sagging sunsuit crisscrossing the straps across my back then buttoning the straps on the front of the sunsuit. The sunsuit drooped down almost to my belly button. No one seemed willing to adjust the straps or hitch it up with a safety pin like Moma would. Aunt Marguerite sternly said you two go play.

She had opinions.

Alice played with my older brother and not with me, telling him secrets and such. Alice told my brother about Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier. I would tag along when they wandered off to play cowboys or adventurers down by Caney Fork Creek. Alice knew all about an adventurer named Davy Crockett. Alice knew everything about Davy Crockett because she watched him every time he was on television. I didn’t know a thing about Davy Crockett. He wasn’t in any comic books and we had no television so I just took Alice’s word for it. My brother and Alice wouldn’t let me play or go into Davy Crockett’s hideout they made by the creek. However, from my exiled position, I could hear Alice singing, “kilt him a b’ar when he was only three… Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.” As an outsider to the whole Davy Crockett secret, I starting concentrating on the bear wondering if, at age six, I could kill one too. 

My Moma’s oldest sister was Aunt Frances, she was kind and a very good artist. She loved birds and wee rodents. She kept a red bird in a cage in her kitchen. I know this because one time she took me to stay in her house. I was so excited. Her husband Benny worked at The Sunshine Baking Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio. Benny and Frances’ house was far, far away from our house. I thought it would be like going to my Grandma’s just over on the next hill but even better because Uncle Benny and Aunt Frances always brought big boxes of stale sweets from The Sunshine Baking Co. Circus peanuts, orange and chewy; snowball cookies with marshmallow and pink coconut on top. So gooey and delicious. They made a cracker called Cheez-It but I only had a few of those. My sisters and brother liked Cheez-its best and that suited me just fine. They didn’t have one drop of sugar and made your fingers turn orange. 

So off we went in their car, crammed to the brim with five people and all kinds of corn, squash, eggs and buttermilk that Moma would send back to keep them from starving in the city. We drove and drove and drove. I started feeling sickly and scared. I was afraid to mention it because Moma told me to behave myself and do as I was told. When we got to their house, it was pitch dark. Someone turned a light on in the kitchen and I thought I heard all kinds of rustling and fluttering. I was so scared I could not move. As soon as we got inside, Aunt Frances stripped me naked and put me in a big white tub with warm water up over my legs… I didn’t have to scrunch my legs up like I did in the galvanized tub Moma pulled into the kitchen right next to the wood cooking stove. Aunt Frances scrubbed every inch of me. Hair, ears, fingernails. She wrapped me in a scratchy towel and handed me a long nightgown that had belonged to my cousin Celia. Frances only had two kids, Celia and Benny. They were older than me and stared at me all the time. That made me feel even more sickly. 

I had to sleep in the bed with Celia and I think it was about then I started to cry. I didn’t want to be a cry baby; Moma could not stand cry babies. Frances came into the room, got me up and said patiently, “I’ll put you on the couch.” She put a quilt over me and told me to quieten down. I tried to cry quietly, best I could. When morning came, Frances came to get me as she took the covers off the cages in the living room and suddenly all the parakeets and one big parrot started squawking. If I had known about hell, I am sure that is where I thought I had landed.

Frances was a good cook, not like Moma, but I thought it was nice to have cereal with gobs of sugar and white bread toast with a thin smear of margarine. 

Sometime after breakfast, I started to cry again. Aunt Frances showed me her elf houses made with walnuts halves and dried moss. I continued to sob. She offered to let me play with the parrot. I was afraid to tell her I was petrified of birds and baby chicks. I decided if I cried louder she would put that hideous thing back in his cage. She did. I was quietly sobbing but no where near finished with my crying fit. 

Somehow I managed to make it through the day but the minute it fell dark Aunt Frances made my pallet on the couch. When I thought about the pallet, the inky darkness , those birds in their covered cages, fear and sadness overwhelmed me. Tears welled up in me followed by wailing sobs. Aunt Frances was kind and put her arms around me. It made me feel funny inside. I don’t remember Aunt Frances saying a word, however, I gulped out: “ I want to go home.”

The next morning Aunt Frances fed me the same breakfast as the day before. Her kids were silent, staring at me. As Aunt Frances began washing up the dishes, I must have been gawking because she picked me up and sat me on the countertop right by the red bird in the cage. “Here,” she said, “ you can turn the water on.” Softly she placed her hand over mine and twisted the knob and warm water gushed out. She gently moved my hand under the warm water and then, she smiled at me. I felt so special I forgot to bawl for an hour or two. After the noon meal it was determined that we would go shopping for a present to take home to Moma. She loaded Celia and me in the car heading for a department store. I knew that word because Moma bought our shoes for winter at Hughes Department Store, right in the middle of Fountain Square. 

Frances held my hand in the department store. We walked straight back to the kitchen area. She picked up a hand held grater with a green wooden handle at the top. I thought the fancy teacups were much nicer but in just a few minutes we were out the door with the hand held grater bought and paid for. I don’t remember crying after that because Aunt Frances told me I would be going home the next day! 

I made it through the night and jumped off my pallet before daybreak. Aunt Frances scrubbed me up, again. After breakfast, she and Uncle Benny drove a long way to the train station. As we drove along, my aunt told me she would walk on the train with me and put me in a seat. She told me Moma and Daddy would meet me at the Ferguson Station. She brought an older gentleman over and said, “he will look after you until you get to Ferguson.” I didn’t feel frightened because Moma always listened for the train at Norwood Crossing. It came by every day at the same time. All Moma would have to do is listen for the train at Norwood Crossing and she would know to come get me. 

I had a flour sack with my clothes inside and a brown paper bag with the hand held grater for Moma.

When the train started moving, my heart nearly lurched out of my chest. A whistle blew as the train zipped past buildings, across green fields and straight through the middle of thickets of trees. I pressed my nose against the glass pane with only one word in my mind. Home.

I remember the first time I stood on Grandma’s stool. I was very young, four or five. My Aunt Willie, aged and kind, lifted me onto the stool and told me to look in the mirror.

She said it was magical! I would see a little girl.

The mirror set atop an old walnut bureau and I think the mirror tilted. The top of the bureau was covered in stuff….trinkets, hair brushes, hairpins, hat pins, jars and bottles covered in dust. I leaned my elbows on the edge of the bureau and peered into the magical mirror. I could make out the ghostly little girl but somehow, it was ever so slightly frightening. I tiptoed up a bit higher and looked with all my might, still ghostly. As I spoke, timidly to Aunt Willie asking if it was a ghost; she cackled a bit like a witch and said, “why no! It’s you!” She took her bony hand and swiped the white dusting powder from the center of the mirror and asked me if I could see the little girl. 

It took me years and years to work out the magic, white face powder and mirrors.

To this day, I have little or no interest in mirrors. 

The second time I stood on the stool was in the parlor of the old house. The parlor was only opened 3 or 4 times a year. Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. My maiden Aunt Gladys had a town job. She could afford store bought things. She had a tin foil Christmas tree, each fake limb held a bank envelope with a dollar for each of us kids. It came at a bit of cost to actually get our hands on that envelope. 

On the particular day of my standing on the stool, Moma took my hand with Joseph on her hip and walked us into the parlor. She took me to a long shiny box across the back corner of the room. Nary a beam of light was in the room save the flicker of a coal oil lamp and the last embers in the grate fire. 

Moma took my hand and led me to the large box. I stepped on the footstool and looked in the box. My grandma was lying there in a black satin dress with a starched white collar. Her hands were folded near the waist of the dress. Her eyes were closed but her little round glasses were placed perfectly across her long, narrow nose.

My childish brain wondered why she had her ‘Sunday go to meeting dress’ on and where was her apron and why wasn’t she giving me my 1/2 stick of candy? All my siblings got 1/2 of the striped candy sticks but my Grandma always saved the solid white candy stick for me. She kept the pasteboard box of candy sticks on a shelf behind homespun cloth curtains. This was where Grandma kept her important things: sewing needles, thimbles, buttons, embroidery thread…her things. The three tiered curio cabinet was to the right of her rocking chair under the big window with gauzy white curtains and violets on the window sill.

Grandma’s footstools were a work of art. My Grandma was so very kind. She sewed beautifully.

Lapwork, my Moma called it.

She cut pieces from old woolen jackets, dresses and the occasional piece of finery, meaning silks, satin or linen. The mystery of the footstools is: where did she get those large juice cans that formed the stool?

Seven cans, strategically placed and stuffed with batting. Here I am, late in my life, contemplating how those juice cans were procured. Certainly, the Dutton’s never consumed store bought juice. Some weak, graying tea without a chip of ice was served on the aforementioned holiday occasions. My Moma would scoff all the way home about that wretched taste. Back to the juice cans. My other Aunt Gladys, Silas’s wife, was a born scavenger. The best I have ever known. She would summon one of us kids to accompany her to a country road she believed to have a great dumping site over a steep bank deep in the woods. Our job was to shimmy down the bank clinging onto saplings and tree branches to the hillside dump. When we reached the huge moldy piles, we were to sort through the many fabrics, sweaters, old rugs, large tin cans, unbroken jugs and jars and any other glistening item that would catch the Gladiator’s eye. She would guide with her voice, over there, go down a bit, what’s under that rug? It’s a wonder we lived through it. 

The orange juice cans. I’ve been mulling this over and over in my mind.

My Grandma and Gladys, Silas’s wife, made many, many of these stools. Gladys never missed an opportunity to score freebies. I suspect that orange juice was served at Central School, a town school with far more resources for luxury items than our one room schoolhouse in Caney Fork. Gladiator was a teacher at Central for many years. Did she collect the juice cans once a week or once a month pitching them in her cellar until the footstool notion was seized upon? 

Or did she stingily buy a tin of juice once in a blue moon and collect them for years? 

I find the entire world of my youth a panoply of bits of unfinished seams. Gladiator unraveled sweaters to repurpose the yarns (seen in the footstool). My relatives tore strips of old woolen cloths to make rag rugs. Each scrap of cotton cloth was saved, recut and reused. Quilts and coverlets filled the Jackson Press in the sitting room.

Most valuable of all was flour sacks! Washed and sun dried on Saturday and by Sunday morning, a new dress for me! 

I was a day dreamy child, I paid little attention to the sewing lessons and lap work. I still have no use for spending a day sitting still sewing or stitching. 

However, it has recently dawned on me, I might have paid just a wee bit more attention.

Aunt Willie and me were in the garden picking green beans. Uncle DH planted Kentucky Wonders that had vines as big as me. Moma said they weren’t fit to eat; she planted White Runners. Willie was pushing the vines aside with her cane but I thought I would show off and let her see how nimble my little fingers were for moving the vines without mangling them up. Moma taught me about picking green beans in a very stern way ! “Just pick the beans! If you tear up the whole row, you won’t be eating this winter.” Anyway, those big old KY Wonder beans were as tough as Moma said but I was still scared to death I would pull up the whole row. Willie did not seem to mind one bit and she kept thrashing the thick vines with her cane. We got a mess of beans after a bit and headed back to the kitchen to break them up. 

I held the screen door for Willie as she hobbled in holding the dishpan of beans. It was steamy hot in that kitchen and I dreaded having to sit in the heat by the wood stove to break beans but Willie did not cotton to staying out in the sunlight. 

Uncle DH was inside and even with my little brain I knew that was unusual. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a small block of wood on the oilcloth. I don’t think he said a word to Willie and me but he might have. 

There was a window behind the kitchen table but it faced north and was situated right in front of the coal house. 

The black coal dust had coated that window for years so looking out or looking in or seeing a beam of sun just didn’t happen. Plus all the grease from the big wood cooking stove that never went out, as far as I know, was stuck on the window too. 

Willie sat down in the chair opposite of DH. She told me to get a bucket to throw the strings in from the beans. The bucket was behind Uncle DH.

I peered around the crook of his arm. He had a very small piece of fur on the chunk of wood. Without much fanfare, he handed me the larger piece of fur from the table. It was the softest thing I’d ever touched in my life. “What do you think about that?”

I am not sure what I said. 

I was mesmerized with that small black piece of softness.

“Come here and I’ll show you what I’m fixing.” 

DH pulled up a pair of Aunt Gladys’ clip on earrings. They had twirls of tiny sparkly stones that I couldn’t take my eyes off. Moma did not have anything like that, but Gladys had a town job and could buy things that sparkled and shined.

And, she didn’t have six mouths to feed. Moma said that all the time. 

DH took my hand and put one of the jewels in my hand. The back had a little trap on it to snap on the ear! DH told me not to fool with it, so I didn’t. But I wanted to. He was meticulously cutting out little rounds of mole fur and putting them on the trap so Gladys’ earlobes wouldn’t get red and sore. 

He had a little container of Elmer’s glue and Grandma’s little lap work scissors! I knew this was important work because no one had touched Grandma’s sewing basket since she died a few years back.

Nothing much happened in the old house and this day was no different.

I got the bucket and went back to breaking beans. Just like the coal dust windows, things never seemed to change in the kitchen until: 

Part 2

I was walking home from Caney Fork School and decided I was brave enough to walk right by Leonard Girdler’s house and on up the hill to see Aunt Willie on my way home. Willie would sometimes give me one of Gladys little round store bought cookies but Gladys caught on and started counting them daily.

At least I could count on getting a peanut butter cracker. 

As I got near the old apple tree I could see a big truck right in the middle of the dirt road. 

Two men and Uncle DH were leaning against the truck jawing. I decided it was best for me to climb the rock wall and walk around by the magnolia tree to the back door. The screen door was pushed wide open and I couldn’t see Willie. I walked into the kitchen and right in the middle of the floor was a huge white contraption. I could not go forward and I was afraid to go back out where that big truck was wedged on the road. 

I called out for Willie and she called back to me, “I’m in here.” I was stuck behind that big white thing that was taking up every inch of the kitchen.

I decided to crawl on the straight back chair and then hoist myself over that thing and dash to the sitting room to the comfort of Aunt Willie. Just as I got my legs over the edge of the white thing my fingers grasped a coiled something that I tugged on to pull myself up and over to the other side.

Just that moment, DH and the two men came through the door and there I was, skinny as a pencil, draped over the new electric stove holding the coiled burner with my fingers.

I don’t remember much of the kerfuffle of getting me down or anyone scolding me. The men had moved out the tall bench that held the water buckets and in no time flat they had scooted the new electric stove in the corner by the pantry. Moma said you couldn’t cook anything fit to eat on a stove like that. 

That seemed to be what my Aunt Gladys figured out. The stove got covered in coal soot. There were a few canning jars lined up on one side and an old dishpan covered the cooking burners. The dishpan was filled with jar lids, clothespins and some old rags. 

The wood cooking stove remained the source of cooking food for my two maiden aunts and Uncle DH. That white electric stove never boiled a pan of water after a few months of being there and the newness wore off. 

Across from the wood stove was the kitchen table. It had a faded blue and yellow oilcloth spread over the top.

Two chairs sat on each end. DH sat near the door and Gladys sat near the newfangled electric stove. Willie had to get her chair from behind the pantry door. Gladys would drag it across the linoleum floor to the table. Willie’s back would almost be against the wood cooking stove but I guess her old bones liked being warm. There was barely enough room on top of the table for three plates. Across the back of the table was a sugar bowl, a salt cellar, a jar filled with spoons, another jar with forks, several jars of jelly with little rounds of green mold on top and a jar of peanut butter. One corner of the table held four mismatched coffee cups. I wondered if that extra cup was for my grandma. I never twisted up the courage to ask. 

There was a dough board cabinet next to the table on the opposite end from the electric stove. I never in my entire life saw that cabinet opened. Over the years so much stuff was piled in front of it, you couldn’t get to it anyhow. So whatever was in there, I guess they just left it to the mice and mold. 

And mice! I always liked mice and never considered the havoc they could wreak. I loved finding a moma mouse nest filled with tiny mouse babies. I would let them run up and down my arm. The mouse moma didn’t have to worry about me. I always put them back carefully and covered them in a little mound of mouse fur.

But when those little rascals got in the pantry right off the kitchen of the old house, it was a sight to behold. Willie sent me in for a dipper of cream. I had the cream pitcher clutched tightly in my hand so I wouldn’t drop it and break it in pieces. 

I pushed open the pantry door, it was so heavy I had to push with my shoulder. A faint bead of light ran across the center of the floor. The mice were running to and fro trying to get back in the corners for safety. I pushed on in because I had a task to do and besides, I wasn’t afraid of mice. 

I went to the cream crock and carefully lifted the plate from the top. A dipper hung on a big nail beside the crock. I took it in my right hand and shifted the cream pitcher to my left. I was being careful not to overfill the cream pitcher because spilling cream is bad luck. And plus, you might get fussed at for making a mess. 

In the dim light I could barely see anything but when I drew the dipper back out of the crock there was a dead mouse as plain as day. I wasn’t very good at quick decisions or I would have put that mouse right back in the cream crock or flung it into a far corner. Instead I dropped him in the creamer pitcher and took him in the kitchen to ask Willie what to do! Oh lordy me, what happened next was screeching and flailing and I couldn’t say a word or ask anything. I just stood there, cream dripping on the floor and a dead mouse in the bottom of the cream pitcher and Willie fit to be tied.

Finally, she heaved out the words, go throw it in the fencerow. She didn’t say which fencerow so I trotted back toward the barn and threw the dead mouse into the honeysuckle and blackberry briars. I did not break the cream pitcher and I felt proud of that. 

When I got back to the kitchen, Willie had regained her senses and gave me one of Gladys round cookies with a hole in the middle. We didn’t clean up the mess or get any cream, we just went in the sitting room. Willie turned on the tv and some people were talking that I did not know one thing about. I asked Willie if we could watch Queen for a Day but she said it didn’t come on until 3:30. Willie was plum tuckered out from all the carrying on in the kitchen and she promptly fell asleep. 

I wanted to turn the tv up real loud so I didn’t have to listen to the tick tock tick tock of the mantle clock. I didn’t have one notion about how to turn up the tv anyway. 

I guess I could have gone ahead and walked home but who knows what awful stuff might be waiting for me to do once I got there so I decided to just stay there dangling my legs and rock back and forth in my grandma’s rocking chair.

Seems my whole life started with once upon a time. The first I heard of the ghost soldier was at Randolph's Store. I was standing by the big glass jar filled with hard candy. I was plunging my hand in and out rustling the candies to and fro. No one was paying me any mind; they had more important things than me to worry about. "Yeah," said Mr. Randolph as he sliced a few thick slices of boloney and wrapped it in brown paper, moving it across the weathered counter toward my dad. Not much else was said for a few minutes. I drifted toward the Nehi orange sodas barely hearing their muffled words. As soon as I heard ghost soldier I moved stealthily back toward the grown ups. Mr. Randolph said, yeah again and then, "I heard tell he only wanders about on the new moon." Daddy said he thought that was probably just an old wives' tale. My Moma (not included in the conversation) shot a menacing look in the direction on the menfolk. That caught my attention as much as the ghost soldier.

Again, silence.

Then my dad said no telling how much suffering took place up there.

Mr. Randolph said, "how many they got buried up there?" Daddy started quoting the words etched on the obelisk but it didn't mean a thing to me. I wanted to know about that ghost soldier.

It was not to be revealed on this day or for many days thereafter. Mom gathered the few items she needed and Mr. Randolph said, "Joe, you and your woman have a good brood." I thought that might be a good thing but as soon as we hit the dirt path toward home, my moma said, "I could wring that old codger's neck." I knew all about wringing necks, Moma could wring a chicken neck in record breaking time. Daddy kinda smiled but he didn't say another word. I kept thinking about that baloney. The next time I heard about the ghost soldier was at twilight. My aunt Willie decided we needed to go to the barn to check on an old setting hen. I was terrified of setting hens. Willie got her walking stick and we headed toward the barn. 

One of the big doors was opened, the other pulled closed. The inside of the barn was almost pitch black. As we stepped through the barn door, Uncle DH rattled the closed door from behind. Aunt Willie flung her walking stick in the direction of the noise thinking it was a raccoon. Uncle DH said, from behind the door, "it's the ghost soldier." Willie said he might near scared us to death. Uncle DH was a gentle soul with a gruff exterior. He sensed my terror and said, "you don't need to be afraid of that ghost soldier, little girl. He laid down his life for this farm. He stayed on to look after all of us."

I guess we forgot all about that old setting hen because we headed back to the old house and DH made me a peanut butter cracker and a glass of spring water. When I got home I asked Moma about the ghost soldier. She said, "all I can tell you is I wouldn't go wandering around after dark." That didn't help much. I was still scared.

Next time I was walking home from Caney Fork School. I preferred to walk by myself. Sometimes I would cut through the fields, sometimes I would skirt along the edge of the creek, sometimes I would march right straight through the sawmill. I loved the smell of freshly sawn wood and those gigantic hills of sawdust.

Sam Mounce worked there and had lost a finger in those big old saw teeth. He looked my way as I walked by not saying a word. I heard the words ghost soldier. I slowed down. Sam Mounce was nearly deaf so when he spoke it was in a loud, clear voice.

"I hear tell he walks around old man Perry's house about every night."

"Has he ever been seen around the pump house?"

"Not that I ever heard of."

"He ain't never bothered nobody."

"He's been out most nights since the war."

War! I knew all about war. Uncle DH talked constantly about THE WAR. I had the snippet I needed. DH and the soldier were in the war together. Uncle DH would surely be my resource for the ghostly comings and goings on Dutton Hill. A curious child, such as myself, would be bold enough to ask. However, grownups were not prone to having long conversations with kids. Uncle DH was no exception. He encouraged me to stand my ground with my older brother and gave me a nickel rather often but conversations, almost never.

But Aunt Willie loved to talk. I liked sitting nearby as she waxed on about the olden days.

Sometimes I would make up stories in my head with little pieces from her memories. We had finished watching Queen for a Day on the wavy black and white tv and Willie was nodding off in her rocking chair.

My chirpy little voice startled her but she adjusted her glasses and answered my query. "The ghost soldier, is that what you want to know about?"

Yes.

"Well, I used to see him all the time up by the wild plums. He was a handsome young man. You know I had some suitors in my day." I didn't know a thing about suitors. Not one thing. I was trying to figure out suits on a soldier. So I asked if the ghost wore a suit. Daddy had a suit.

Aunt Willie said, "well not a dress suit but a soldier's suit. A UNIFORM!" Uni-form un-e-form. I forgot all about the ghost soldier as I wallowed that word around in my head.

Long, long after my childhood I chanced upon the ladies that owned the Virginia and Kentucky theaters in town. I cannot, for the life of me, remember their names. They paid me five dollars and a free movie pass to come to their house and wash their long silky hair. As I was gently combing the tangles out of the older sister's hair, she suddenly told me her mother knew the family of the ghost soldier. They had returned to the battlefield when she was a small child and her mother had helped them find the obelisk. Seems the menfolk didn't last long as the mother was widowed and so was the youngest sister. The older sister never married. These women knew many, many details of my family, the Civil War and the young men buried on the hill. The elderly ladies both insisted the ghost soldier could be seen in the vicinity of the old oak tree on the night of the new moon!

Life trudged on and all the fairies, ghosts and daydreams were all but forgotten.

The old folks are gone. The oak tree is gone. The old house is gone.

The obelisk stands.

The ghost still roams.

PS: I haven't seen a doodlebug in years.

The old cow barn still stands. The tobacco barn has burned, the corncrib long forgotten. The cow barn with its hayloft and shed sides still support the stalls, weathered and worn to near total destruction.

Just tear it down is the newfangled wisdom. My brother arched his brows and stood firm. The swallows return to their nests each year and as long as I am alive they will not be disturbed , he firmly declared. My brother is the caretaker now of the fence rows and meadows, of the cherry trees, of the creek beds, of the springs hidden deep in the woods. 

The world has encroached in the many years since the swallows came to nest in the breezeway of the barn. As the cows lumbered to the stalls for morning milking, the swallows darted and dove in and out as their naked necked babies peered over the mud nests. The swallows are back my mom would say as she milked. My youngest brother came last to the family. A late in life baby. A late winter baby full of the promise of spring. 

My brother is a prodigy. He learned to sing before he was sturdy enough to walk. He drew with multi-colored crayons before he could construct a full sentence. He learned the curly dramatic shapes of cursive writing long before the jaws of education admonished him to remedial printing. He heard the swift wings of the barn swallows and knew the hope of spring’s promises. 

He was the gift. 

My brother is an artist. The world is his canvas, the earth his color palette, the hills, creeks, flora and fauna his inspiration. He plays and sings melodies from the spirits that only can be found in the tuning fork of the wind or the birdsong. His words are stitched from volumes of dreams carefully crafted in his notebooks. My brother sees, hears, lives his art. A new emerging bud, a feather, a whippoorwill call, the color of the morning sky, the tiny blue of barefoot flowers are perfectly rendered on page, poem or palette. 

My brother’s soul is tender. 

My brother’s heart is open. 

My brother’s love is pure.

My brother is The Gift.