Child of the Mountains

3





It’s about my daddy.




THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1953

I wonder how come sometimes you love someone and hate them at the same time. I can’t figure out how my heart can hold all them good and bad feelings about my daddy. I had me a nightmare about him again last night.

Daddy never even got to lay eyes on BJ. My daddy got killed when he went on a construction job at a church in Poca three months afore BJ come along. Mama saved the newspaper article about what happened. I used to get it out of the family Bible and read it sometimes. It says that Daddy died when a wall they built to hold back the dirt for the basement caved in. The loose dirt and cement blocks fell right on top of him. They couldn’t dig him out in time to save him. Uncle William always says he’s surprised it weren’t him that got swallowed up by the ground, working in the coal mines as he does.

I hate to think of Daddy being buried alive like that. I still get the nightmares about it a lot. I wake up shivering—cold and hot at the same time. My breath gets swallowed up inside me, and I scream, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

When I got the nightmares at home, Mama would sit beside me on the bed, stroking my hair and cooing to me, “Shhh, Lydia. It’s all right, baby.” Then she would sing, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” Sometimes Gran would bring me a cup of chamomile tea.

But when I woke up screaming last night, Uncle William just yelled from his bedroom, “Be quiet in there, Lydia. You’re having another bad dream is all. I got to get up at four o’clock. Now turn over and go back to sleep.” I think Aunt Ethel Mae slept through the whole thing.

I turned over like Uncle William said, but sleep never comed back. I finally got up and sat by the window. The stars seemed to wink like they was a-telling me they knew my secret but wouldn’t never tell a soul. I wondered iffen Mama could see the stars winking at her through the bars in her cell window.

Sometimes I have nice dreams about the good times with Daddy. I can smell the sweetness of his chaw and the warmth of his sweat after he worked hard all day. I help him saucer and blow his coffee after he washes up and sits down to supper. Mama pours him a boiling hot, steamy cup when he finishes eating. He pours some of it into the saucer and adds a little cream. Then he winks at me. I come running over and help him blow on it to cool it off. He slurps it down from the saucer. Then we look at each other and say, “Ahhhhh, now, that’s good coffee!” He pours some more coffee in the saucer, and we start all over again. When he’s done, he picks me up in his strong arms and swings me around while he sings:

“Old Dan Tucker was a mighty man.

Washed his face in a fryin’ pan.

Combed his hair with a wagon wheel.

Died with a toothache in his heel.

So get out the way, Old Dan Tucker.

You’re too late to stay for supper.

Supper’s over, breakfast’s a-cookin’.

Old Dan Tucker just stands there a-lookin’ ”

I squeal and laugh and feel like Daddy is the best daddy in these here United States. Then I wake up calling to him. But he ain’t there and never will be again.

I still like to think about the fun things we done and the funny stories he used to tell.

We had us a special joke. He’d ask, “How does a cat go?”

I’d say, “Meow.”

He’d ask, “How does a dog go?”

I’d say, “Bow wow.”

Then he’d ask me with a big grin on his face, “And how does a turtle go?”

He tricked me the first time, but ever time after that, him and me would both say, “Sloooooooooooooow.” We’d laugh, and he would give me a big hug.

After we moved into Gramps’ house, Daddy added on a bathroom. I’d stand outside and watch him work. Sometimes he let me help. I wore a old jacket that Mama picked up at the Salvation Army so’s not to ruin my good one when I played. Daddy and me called it my cementing jacket. I’d hand him tools, and go in the house to get him something to drink when he felt thirsty.

One time he had me fetch a straight, thick stick. I weren’t old enough to write, so he put his big hand over my tiny one and helped me scratch Lydia in the wet cement. I can still feel his warm, sweaty fingers a-closing over mine. We put my name behind the hole for the toilet. We didn’t want Mama and Gran to see it and get all mad. When Daddy put the linoleum down, he cut a rectangle out so’s my name wouldn’t get covered up. Ever time I cleaned the bathroom after that, I always peeked behind the toilet to see my name. It sure seems strange to have to look behind a toilet to get a good feeling about my daddy.

Gran didn’t seem to remember none of them good things when Daddy died. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” she said. “That man was as useless as tits on a boar hog.”

Mama told her she shouldn’t say such things, even iffen his body weren’t able to soak up all the corn liquor he drunk. Daddy could get awful mean when he was all liquored up—as mean as he was good when he wasn’t drinking. His whiskers couldn’t hide the nasty look on his face when he comed home late, reeking of his time with his drinking buddies, as Gran called them. He smelled sour and fiery.

I’d take one look at him and run to hide under the kitchen table. Then I’d stick my fingers in my ears and close my eyes tight. But it didn’t never shut it all out. Never.

Mama and Gran always stood between him and me. Sometimes Daddy hit Mama and Gran and cussed at them like they be snakes. But he was the snake—a mean old copperhead that would strike at anybody that got in the way. Mr. Hinkle read us a scary story called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Halloween. Dr. Jekyll was a very good person, but Mr. Hyde acted like a monster. Then you find out they was one and the same man. That man be just like my daddy.

One day Gran stirred apple butter in a giant pot over a fire in the backyard. She said she thought it tasted better when it cooked outside than on a stove. Mama and me sat on the porch, sewing on a quilt. The rocking chair that Daddy built for Mama when they first got married creaked back and forth, back and forth, as she hummed and sewed, hummed and sewed. The smell of the apple butter seeped around us, warming me inside. Daddy should ought to be here, too, I thought, a-playing his jaw harp on one of his good days.

“Mama, why did Daddy have to go and get drunk all the time?” I asked. I bit my lip when it come to me what I done said. Mama always told me, “Iffen you ain’t got nothing good to say about someone, don’t say nothing.” And here I sat, saying something bad about my daddy.

But Mama didn’t bat an eye or drop a stitch. “Your daddy didn’t drink like that when we first got married, Lydia,” she said. “Paul was the handsomest man in the holler, maybe in the whole state of West Virginny, with his coal black hair and hazel eyes.” She put down her sewing and looked at the sky like she could see him a-floating in the clouds.

I reached over and touched Mama’s yellow hair that fell below her waist. Most times, she wrapped it in a bun. I loved it when she took out the bobby pins and let it hang loose. It remembered me of sunrays. Her blue eyes was the sky. “Mama,” I said. “He got hisself the prettiest woman God ever created.”

Mama smiled at me and patted my hand. Then she stared at the sky again. “I met him at church,” she said. “We both sung in the choir. He had this deep voice that sent shivers right up and down my spine. One Sunday morning, Pastor John asked me to sing a solo. I sang ‘We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.’ After church, your daddy strutted right up to me and told me that he could feel hisself climbing that ladder to Heaven when I sung. Then he asked iffen he could walk me home, just as bold as if he knowed me all his life. On the way to the house, he knelt down and picked me some flowers. ‘Here’s some lady slippers for my lady,’ he told me. His smile and them little yellow flowers lit a candle in my heart.”

Mama smiled and got a real faraway look on her face. I think she might have misremembered that I was there. She took a deep breath like she was a-smelling them flowers again.

“When we first got married, your daddy was good and kind to me,” she went on, “just like my own papa. But then the war with the Nazis broke out. The day after your daddy heard on the radio that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he tried to join the army. But they turned him down—said he had flat feet. He told me, ‘It ain’t much of a man who can’t even fight for his country.’ ”

Mama looked down at her lap and picked some loose threads from the quilt offen her dress. I kept on sewing. I was afeared that iffen I said anything, she would stop talking.

She shook her head. “Your daddy sure didn’t act like much of a man after the government turned him down. He stopped going to church. Most of his friends went to fight across the waters. A couple of them didn’t never come back. He said he was too ashamed even to go to the funerals. He found hisself some new friends at the honky-tonk. Instead of worshipping God, he started worshipping demon liquor.”

“Ow!” I said afore I thought. I had stuck my finger with the needle. A drop of blood oozed out.

Mama jumped like a squirrel that done heard a shotgun fired. She handed me her hankie. Then she looked me in the eye. “Lydia, it ain’t right for me to tell you all this. It’s too heavy a burden for a young’un.”

I spit on the hankie and wiped my finger. Then I looked straight on at her. “He’s my daddy. I got ever right to know, Mama.”

She sighed and got real quiet, like she was a-puzzling it out. Then she looked out the window again and commenced to talk. “I kept thinking maybe iffen I loved him more, he would change,” she said, almost whispering. “I tried real, real hard to be a good wife.” She sighed again even deeper. “But I learned me a important lesson. You can’t never change nobody but yourself. Ain’t nothing I could of done to make your daddy happy. He hated hisself too much. And all that hate just kept spilling out on your gran and me.”

“When I’m all growed up, Mama, I ain’t never going to let a man hit me,” I told her.

She turned and looked real hard into my eyes. “Good for you, Lydia. You deserve a man who will treat you like the precious jewel you are.”

“Mama,” I said. “You deserved better, too.”

“You’re right, Lydia. All us womenfolk should ought to be treated with respect. I had up and decided never ever to take his meanness no more. Your gran and me had us a plan to leave your daddy after BJ got borned. But the good Lord seen fit to take matters into His own hands.”

My mouth got all dry and my insides felt squeezed together just thinking about it. “Where would we of gone, Mama?”

“The Lord would have provided, Lydia.”

I had me another question I was afeared to ask. It kept me awake sometimes pondering on it. I figured I might as well spit it out. “Mama, did Daddy go to the bad place after he passed on?”

Mama took both my hands. “Now, Lydia, don’t you go a-fretting your pretty head about that none. Do you recollect the story about the thief on the cross asking Jesus to take him to Heaven just afore he died? What did Jesus tell him?”

I had rememorized a lot of Bible verses. Gran saw to that. “Jesus said, ‘Today thou shalt be with me in paradise.’ ”

“That’s right, Lydia. I believe your daddy was like that thief, a-waiting until the last minute to do the right thing. I imagine he done hisself some fast praying and getting right with the Almighty when that dirt was a-pouring down on top of him. You’re going to see your daddy beyond the Pearly Gates someday. He’s going to tell you he’s sorry and that he loves you. He’ll mean what he says, too.” She smiled at me. Then she picked up her sewing and started up rocking again. Real soft-like, Mama sung:

“My heart was distressed ’neath Jehovah’s dread frown,

And low in the pit where my sins dragged me down,

I cried to the Lord from the deep miry clay,

Who tenderly brought me out to golden day.

He brought me out of the miry clay.

He set my feet on the Rock to stay.

He puts a song in my soul today,

A song of praise, hallelujah!”

I leaned my head on Mama’s shoulder. With Daddy gone, I thought we wouldn’t have us no more troubles. The hitting and yelling stopped, but more troubles snuck up on us as quick as fleas to a dog.