Blue Ridge Billy Read online

  Billy helped Granny unload the wood and put the cow in the shed. “I got to be goin’,” he said.

  “Come in, have a chair and rest yourself a while,” said Granny.

  “Well, I just believe I will,” said Billy.

  He stepped on the porch and began to sniff. The air was filled with fragrance—the pungent sweetness of sassafras, the sharp tang of various mints, the cleanness of pine bark. Great piles of roots and bark lay on the floor in dark corners of the cabin room. From the ceiling hung bunches of leaves and branches of various wildflowers and herbs. Billy sniffed again. The smell of all these wild things was satisfying.

  The room was simply furnished with a bureau, a table and two split-bottom chairs. A spool bed stood in one corner, covered with a patchwork quilt, and a hand-hewed loom and wooden chest in the other. The fireplace, used for cooking, was at the end.

  “Been yarbin’ lately?” asked Billy, using the usual mountain expression for “gathering herbs.”

  “Law, yes, we been out all evenin’,” said Sarey Sue. She poked at the backlog in the fireplace, then threw some small sticks of wood in front of it.

  “Where’d you go? Back up on Laurel Mountain?”

  “Law, no,” said Granny, “over to the Peak. There was some certain roots there I’d a mind to get.”

  “Why that’s a fur piece!” exclaimed the boy. “Must be nigh five miles, ain’t hit? You-all must be tired in your bones.”

  “I don’t never get tired,” said Granny. “Or else, maybe hit’s the smell o’ yarbs gives me strength.”

  Sarey Sue sat down on a small overturned keg on the hearth, picked up a curious-looking instrument, and pushed it back and forth. Strange sounds began to come out of it, making a tune.

  “We’ll have us a music party!” announced the girl, leaning back and pumping vigorously.

  Billy Honeycutt stared. “What’s that ere thing?” he stammered.

  “Hit’s an accordion,” answered Sarey Sue. “My Pappy had it afore he died.”

  “I been a-wantin’ to sell hit,” said Granny. “Hit’s worth a sight o’ money. But Sarey Sue won’t hear to it. Her Pappy had that instru-ment and she’s a mind to keep hit. That’s Sourwood Mountain she’s playin’:

  “Chickens a-crowin’ on Sourwood Mountain,

  Hay diddy ump diddy iddy um day;

  So many pretty girls I can’t count ’em,

  Hay diddy ump diddy iddy um day.

  My true love is a sun-burnt daisy,

  She won’t work and I’m too lazy …”

  Sarey Sue’s merry music filled the room. Then she stopped pumping and the tune was ended.

  “How’d you learn to play?” asked Billy.

  “Just by ear,” said Sarey Sue. “I was nigh six years old when I just took it up and begun to play.”

  “She’d sit as unconcerned,” added Granny, “and work at it as if her life depended on it, while folks stood around and laughed at her. How her Pappy laughed! Now she don’t never think what she’s doin’. She just rattles away on them little ole tunes, and we never get lonesome no more.”

  “Nobody’s lonesome round here,” said Sarey Sue, pumping again.

  Billy sat still and watched her. His ears feasted on her tunes.

  Everybody called the Trivetts poor. But they had an instrument that made music, to keep them from getting lonesome, way up here on the side of the mountain. It made finer music than Walt Moseley’s guitar, finer even—no, almost as fine—as Uncle Jamie’s fiddle. No, Granny and Sarey Sue weren’t poor. They were rich indeed. They could have music whenever they wanted it.

  “We never have no music frolics to our house,” said Billy. His voice was sad. “My Pappy don’t like tune-singin’—only hymns at the church-house. We ain’t got no instru-ment at all, no guitar nor banjo.” He pronounced the words git’-tar and ban-jer.

  “Your Mammy sang when she was young,” said Granny. “All them Bronsons could sing. And your Uncle Jamie, her brother, he still sings. Why, he’s called Fiddlin’ Jamie, the Singin’ Fiddler, all over the county.”

  “Law, yes, they all sing at Uncle Jamie’s house,” said Billy, “all the boys, Rick, Glen and Jack. And so does Ettie Bell.” He paused, staring at Sarey Sue’s accordion.

  “I wisht I could get me an instru-ment …” He breathed the words softly—he scarcely dared say them. “A banjo to pick …” It was like wishing for the moon.

  “Sarey Sue’s Pappy made hisself a banjo once,” said Granny brightly, “when he was just a little rabbity feller like you. He stretched a tanned groundhog skin over a cheese hoop, and shaped a stick of wood for the banjo’s neck. He put beeswax on sewin’ thread for the strings.”

  “You might could get some horse hair from your Old Dandy’s tail, for the strings,” said Sarey Sue.

  Billy shook his head. “Sounds like a heap o’ work to me.”

  “You might could grub yarbs—sassyfrack or gen-sang—and earn money and get you a store-bought one,” said Sarey Sue hopefully.

  “Huh! You grub the whole endurin’ day, gatherin’ stuff like that, and get maybe a penny a pound, or two or three cents or somethin’. I’d be a little ole man afore I’d get me a banjo.”

  “Hit’s hard work, grubbin’ yarbs,” admitted Granny. “If hit wasn’t for that ole cow-brute and the milk and butter she gives us, and them chickens, we couldn’t make out to live. The roots and yarbs just bring in a little extry. Poor people has a time in this world. I reckon they’ll fare better in the next.”

  “Don’t you get nothin’ for goin’ around and takin’ your yarb tea and makin’ ailin’ folkses well?” asked Billy. “Somebody’s always callin’ on you to doctor ’em.”

  “Not money,” said Granny. “The Lord give all the roots and yarbs for folkses to use, so I couldn’t take no money for ’em. Sometimes somebody brings me a ham or somethin’. Last summer when Saphronia Lyle like to died, and I saved her, she brung me a goose. I been storin’ the pickin’s away till I git enough for a feather bed.”

  “Then we’ll sleep in feathers,” said Sarey Sue, “not on shucks no more.”

  But Billy was not thinking about feather beds.

  “Won’t you come grub sassyfrack with us?” asked Sarey Sue.

  The boy shook his head. “Too much work to do at home.”

  “Law sakes,” laughed Granny. “There’s always a way round the mountain, if you can’t climb over. You don’t need no instru-ment to make music with, as long as you got a tongue in your head. Why don’t you sing?”

  “Songs ain’t no good except to set and listen to,” said Billy. He dropped his head shyly. “Don’t know ary tunes to sing.”

  “You, Billy Honeycutt, don’t know no tunes? Why, every boy that’s worth a cent can sing. Ain’t you ’shamed of yourself, when all your kinfolks been singin’ from morn till night? You don’t know Cacklin’ Hen?” The next minute Granny was singing:

  “Old hen cackles,

  She cackles in the barn;

  Old hen cackles,

  She cackles in the barn!

  Why she make such a hollerin’ in the barn?

  Old hen cackles,

  She cackles in the lot;

  Old hen cackles,

  She cackles in the lot!

  Next time she cackles, she’ll cackle in the pot!”

  “My Pappy used to sing that!” cried Sarey Sue, clapping her hands.

  When they stopped laughing, the room grew quiet again. Granny leaned back in her oak-split rocker and began to hum softly to herself. Was she going to sing a ballad-song, one of those weird, high-pitched tunes of hers?

  Billy’s mother had told him that Granny’s head was full of the old songs she remembered from her grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s singing. Granny was like all those old people who had gone on before—she could sing and sing. She knew all seventeen verses of Barbary Allen. But she only sang when she felt like singing. Sometimes she wouldn’t sing at all. When you asked her to, she never would.
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  The boy sat very still, looking at the floor.

  Then the sad, mournful tune began to fill the room. It was the ballad of The Two Brothers. Sarey Sue set her accordion on the floor, cupped her chin in her hands and listened. Billy closed his eyes dreamily. The words were soft but plain to hear. A little later, Billy made his way down the dark mountain with the tune ringing in his ears:

  “Monday morning go to school,

  Friday evening home;

  Brother, comb my sweetheart’s hair

  As we go walking home.

  Brother, won’t you play a game of ball?

  Brother, won’t you toss a stone?

  Brother, won’t you play no other game

  As we go marching home?

  I can’t play no game of ball,

  I can’t toss no stone,

  I can’t play no other game,

  Brother, leave me alone …”

  CHAPTER II

  A Turn of Corn

  “Whoa mule! Whoa, I say!

  If somebody don’t head that mule,

  He’s goin’ to run away.

  Whoa mule! Whoa, I say!

  Got him hooked in the harness,

  Got him hooked at last.

  I see my mule a-comin’

  He’s comin’ with a smile;

  If you don’t watch out

  He’ll kick you half a mile!”

  Billy Honeycutt’s voice rang out loud and clear through the quiet valley. He leaned against the sacks of corn and jerked the reins. His mule, Old Bet, picked her steps carefully.

  The road, a rough wagon track, was filled with muddy ruts. It had rained hard for several days, and heavy wagons loaded with timber, bound for Mountain City, had left deep tracks. Winding in and about, the road followed Roundabout Creek. In two miles, it crossed the creek twenty-seven times—or, was it the creek crossing the road? Billy sometimes wondered. Usually, in dry weather, he rode on the fine gravel in the creek bed, but today the creek was full of water. A heavy rain always filled the creek up. Old Bet did not like splashing through it so many times, but Billy did.

  Soon he reached the village of Solitude.

  The creek turned in a wide curve to the left behind Jeb Dotson’s store. Part of it ran under the store. At the left rear corner, the building had a wooden leg, which rested on a rock in the creek bed.

  “Golly!” exclaimed Billy, pulling up his mule and staring in at the rear window. “Ketch me sleepin’ in that ere bed with the water risin’ and all!” For Jeb, a bachelor, lived in his store, and his bed, as any one could see from the window, was right in the corner, with the creek running under.

  “Jeb’ll git washed away some night,” said Billy, and rode along.

  The creek flowed on for a short distance to the dam, where it widened into a broad millpond. From one side, a narrow race carried the water along the side of the hill to a point above Hamby’s mill. Billy jogged down the road, past Jasper Jackson’s big house and the church-house, till he came to the post office, where he pulled up. The post office was probably the smallest in the United States. It was not more than eight feet square, with a partition through the middle, and a tiny stove in the outer half.

  “Howdy, Miss Viney. Ary letter for me?” he called.

  The postmistress, who had a long nose but a genial smile, put her head out of the little window in the partition and shook it. “Who’d be a-writin’ to you, Billy Honeycutt?”

  “Dunno,” said the boy. Like many mountain people, he believed that post offices were meant to produce letters, and he always lived in hope. “Giddap!” he called. He slapped Old Bet and started on again.

  Soon, walking in the road ahead, he saw the familiar figure of Sarey Sue Trivett. Her small face was enclosed in a huge slat sunbonnet, and she carried a sack of corn slung across one shoulder.

  “Howdy, Sarey Sue,” said Billy, as he came up to her. “Walkin’ to mill?”

  “I reckon,” answered the girl with a grin.

  “Where’s your mule?” inquired Billy.

  “Hain’t got none, less’n I borry your’n.” She shifted the sack to her other shoulder.

  Billy reached the mill first. He tied the little gray mule to the hitching rail, beside a brown-and-white-spotted horse already there.

  The great mill-wheel stood still, but a steady trickle of water, escaping from the mossy race, dripped noisily onto the rocks below. Old Hamby sat humped over on a chair outside the door, napping. Under his dark felt hat, his long beard gleamed white. Startled from his doze by the sound of footsteps, the old man rose, picked up his stick, and looked to see who was coming.

  Suddenly a loud squealing of hogs rang out. It could be heard plainly above the steady dripping of the water.

  “Hogs fightin’,” said Billy. “Some hogs is just mean and ornery.”

  Old Hamby looked back up behind the mill to the field where his barn and hog-pen were. Then he turned to the boy with eyes which gleamed piercing and black under his bushy brows.

  “No, son,” he said. “They’re not fightin’. That just means there’s gonna be a bad spell o’ weather. A sow can see the wind and tell when the weather’s fixin’ to change.”

  The old man scanned the sky. Billy looked too, and saw heavy, dark clouds rolling up. A strong wind shook the tree tops.

  “‘A sow can see the wind?’” he asked, in amazement. “‘A sow can …’ what did you say, Granpap?”

  But the old man had turned his back and entered the mill. Billy followed him into the dusky interior. Sacks and barrels of grain stood along the wall. Everything in the mill, the platform, the hopper, the stairway to the loft, was covered with white dust.

  Old Hamby dumped Billy’s shelled corn into the hopper and turned the lever, but nothing happened. The miller waited and looked around. Then he frowned and swore.

  “What’s the matter, Granpap?” asked Billy.

  “Danged if I know!” answered Hamby.

  “Mill’s broke,” said Billy to Sarey Sue Trivett, as she came in. The girl dropped her sack and pushed her bonnet back.

  “Who said mill’s broke?” shouted the old man angrily.

  Sarey Sue and Billy stood by the door and waited. First a hen, then a rooster walked boldly in, looking for stray grains of corn. Old Hamby’s cat rose from its bed on a pile of sacks and walked out. Sarey Sue kicked it idly with her bare foot.

  Then, suddenly, a pig ran squealing past the open door, with a boy behind it.

  “Did you know a sow can see the wind?” asked Billy. But Sarey Sue did not hear.

  She and Old Hamby hustled out the door. Billy went too. He forgot his question when he saw Burl Moseley chasing the pig and beating it with a stout stick. Burl Moseley was the son of Walt Moseley, who lived in Buckwheat Hollow near Three Top. Billy knew now that the spotted horse belonged to the Moseleys.

  “You son of a gun! You blatherskite!” shouted Old Hamby. “Lay your hands offen that pig or I’ll wear your pants out!”

  “I’ll ketch him for you,” shouted Billy, giving chase.

  Hamby turned to the mill again. He walked around inside, then came out. He crossed the bridge over the creek to a rise of ground beyond the wheel and stared. There, on top of the race, lay his big wooden barnyard gate. It had been taken off its hinges. No wonder the sluice-gate wouldn’t lift to let the water through.

  Two more hogs came running. The old man stumbled and almost fell over them.

  “Who let them hogs loose?” asked Sarey Sue.

  “Burl Moseley!” shouted the miller angrily. “He done it while I was dozin’. I’d like to lick the livin’ lard out of him. Bouncin’ fools, all them Buckwheat Holler boys, just baitin’ trouble ary place they go.”

  “Can ye grind a little turn o’ corn for my Granny?” asked Sarey Sue.

  “Not till we git that big ole barnyard gate off,” said Hamby.

  Billy came tearing back. “I’ll lay for that feller. I wisht I’d brung my pig-sticker. I’ll get me a pocket full o’ r
ocks …” He stopped when he saw what the miller was looking at.

  “Burl done it,” explained Sarey Sue. “Hamby’s firin’ mad.”

  “He couldn’t a done it by hisself,” said Billy. “That barnyard gate’s too heavy.”

  “There’s the ladder he used,” said Hamby. “He had help from some other bouncin’ fool.”

  Billy helped move the ladder and lean it against the race. He climbed up and helped lift the heavy gate down. Then he saw Burl Moseley peeping round the corner of the mill, laughing. With him was Buck Norton—also from Buckwheat Hollow. The two were enjoying their joke on the old man.

  “I see you-uns,” shouted Hamby. “Just wait till I ketch ye!”

  But Billy did not wait. He went straight for the two boys with his fists. They met on the bridge across the creek and fell over in a mad tumble, arms, fists and legs working wildly.

  Old Hamby and Sarey Sue walked past them, into the open door of the mill. The miller turned the lever, and the rushing water poured over the wheel which began to revolve, and fell in a shower in the creek below the bridge. The yells and shouts of the fighting boys were drowned in the deafening noise.

  Old Hamby measured out his toll from Billy’s meal, then poured Sarey Sue’s corn into the hopper. The girl stood just inside the door and watched the fight. Over and over rolled the boys, nearer and nearer to the edge of the bridge. Some boys and men came down the road from the store and stopped to watch.

  “Look out!” screamed Sarey Sue once or twice. “I’m skeered, Granpap, they’ll roll over in the creek and git drownded!”

  “Good! Let ’em roll,” answered Hamby. He came to the door, and rubbing his hands together, grinned with delight. “Little Billy Honeycutt—he’s a regular wildcat, now ain’t he? A chip offen the old block. I never thought he had it in him. He always looked a peaceable young feller to me.”

  “Not when he gits riled,” said Sarey Sue, smiling back.

  The rolling boys hovered on the edge of the bridge.