Nancy A. Collins Read online

  Knuckles and Tales

  Nancy Collins

  Copyright © 2003

  Dedication

  In loving memory of Ida Margaret “Bill” Willoughby

  1910-2002

  INTRODUCTION

  GONNA SEND YOU BACK TO ARKANSAS

  It took me the better part of my life to finally stop being ashamed of my heritage. I don’t mean my genetic background, which is largely Anglo-Scots-Irish with the occasional dollop of French and American Indian for flavor. I’m talking about where I’m from, not who I am, although, on a certain level, the two are inextricably intertwined. No, my secret shame lay in geography, not genetics.

  I am a third generation Arkansan, or, if you prefer the antique spelling, Arkansawyer. I grew up in the part of the state known as the Ark-La-Miss; those counties located in the far southeastern corner, in the very heart of the Mississippi delta, near the borders of Louisiana and Mississippi.

  I remember the day in third grade when the teacher announced to the class that the “official” spelling of our home state was `Arkansas’. Up to that point, `Arkansaw’ was a legitimate alternative. Either way you spell it, I am an Arkie, born and bred. And for most of my conscious life, I felt like I had to beg pardon for that fact. This shame did not originate within me, but was instilled from without.

  I grew up in a couple of small rural communities where the local economy revolved around what was referred to as `agribusiness’ and the railroad switching yard. Like my parents before me, my only connection to the culture at large was through the mass media. However, where my mama and daddy only had radio and the movies, I had the television.

  To my young mind there was little to differentiate the news and the TV shows from one another; both occurred in foreign places far removed from the world I knew and involved people I did not personally know. I was in the second grade before it occurred to me that the war the newscasters were talking about on the evening news was going on in Vietnam, not the Germany of Combat and Twelve O’Clock High.

  Like all children, television showed me worlds and lifestyles I could never have known in a small, relatively isolated farming community. But like Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American children, I hungered to see something of the world I was familiar with, people and things I could relate to. When I looked to the magic mirror of television, hoping to glimpse a reflection of myself and my family and the lives we lead, all I saw was programs like The Andy Griffith Show, The Real McCoys, The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petit Coat Junction, and Hee-Haw.

  While there was a recognizable likeness of my world in the fictitious Mayberry and, to a lesser extent, the eccentric farm-folk of Hooterville, for the most part Southerners, and Arkansans in particular, were represented as figure of burlesque: ignorant, rawboned hillbillies who ate road kill. Jethro Bodine, a flesh-and-blood Li’l Abner minus the social commentary, was as much a symbol of the state in the eyes of others as the University of Arkansas Razorback.

  The Southerners of the silver screen weren’t much better, either, although there was far more variation, from the realistic milieus of To Kill A Mockingbird and Thunder Road, the Southern Gothic opera of A Streetcar Named Desire, and Grand Guignol of Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, to such exploitation/action movies such as Deliverance and Southern Comfort.

  According to the popular culture, Southerners were either slack-jawed hicks, murderous rednecks, corrupt sheriffs, faint-hearted Southern belles, effete alcoholic gentry, or indolent hillbillies snoozing on their ramshackle front porches with a jug tucked in one arm and a pig under the other. It was also a foregone conclusion that none of us wore shoes, had indoor plumbing, and that we all held a grudge about the Civil War.

  If being a Southerner wasn’t embarrassing enough, being from Arkansas was adding insult to injury. Although Arkansas was a part of the Confederacy, it wasn’t home to any noteworthy battles, save for Pea Ridge, which couldn’t hold a candle to Manassas or Gettysburg, and Missouri claimed the Ozark skirmishes between Union forces and rebel guerilla bands such as Quantrill’s Raiders and Bloody Bill Anderson. As tenuous a source of pride the state’s past may have provided, its present was nothing to crow about, what with Arkansas perennially hovering in the second-or-third-to-last spots for public education, literacy, and high school graduations. (The standard, half-joking, response of native Arkansans when faced with such depressing statistics has traditionally been: `Thank God for Mississippi!’) The statistics for teenaged pregnancies and alcoholism in the state during my youth were as high as the illiteracy rates, and in the late 1970s Arkansas had the dubious distinction of being the Unmarried Teenage Mother Capital of the United States.

  While I was growing up, Arkansas’ favorite sons were Buddy Ebsen, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, Charlie Rich, Glen Campbell, Dizzy & Daffy Dean, Lou Brock, and Meadowlark Lemmon. Save for The Man In Black, there wasn’t a thimble full of cool to be found.

  There wasn’t much a young girl, yearning to someday become a writer, could look to for inspiration. It wasn’t until I was much older, and had moved way, that I learned that Levon Helm hailed from my home state, as well as such literary and publishing mavens as Charles Portis (True Grit), Helen Gurley Brown (Cosmopolitan), Maya Angelou (I Know Why The Sweet Bird Sings), James Bridges (The Paper Chase, The China Syndrome, and Urban Cowboy), Ellen Gilchrist, John H. Johnson (publisher of Jet & Ebony) and Dee Alexander Brown (Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee). I guess literary achievements weren’t considered as important to state pride as playing the Grand Ole Opry or making the Baseball Hall of Fame (not that there’s anything wrong with either of those).

  Both my parents and grandparents were proud of their Southern heritage, even though the only reason my mother’s family ended up in Arkansas was because my Great-Grandfather Willoughby got drunk on a trip from Illinois to New Orleans and threw all the deck chairs off the river boat and was put out at the first port of call. They tried their best to instill a sense of history in my siblings and I, and to a great extent they succeeded.

  But the Mass Media is in constant competition for a child’s mind and attention, which was as true then as it is now, and for every lesson in regional pride I received there were numerous movies and television shows telling me that being from the South was either laughably square or something approaching Original Sin.

  As I grew up and ventured outside the humble environs of my birth, I found myself experiencing a strange form of discrimination. In this day and age of Political Correctness, where the celebration of Mothers Day can be banned from a private day school for fear of insulting those children who might not have a traditional mother, apparently the only ethnic group its still okay to ridicule and make fun is the Southerner, and White Southerners in particular.

  Many of those hailing from the Northern states were surprised to learn that someone as educated and well spoken as myself was not only from the South, but a product of Arkansas in particular. I can not begin to count the number of times some `Yankee’ (as my Grandma would put it), upon learning where I was from, would smirk and say something along the line of: “So, they wear shoes where you-all live?” Or, even better: “That means you’re white trash, huh?”

  Such was my pre-programmed shame of being an Arkansan, it took the better part of a decade for me to stop apologizing for where my parents had chosen to birth me and start getting uppity. Sometimes you have to run away from home in order to appreciate it. After I graduated from high school, I was desperate to shake the dust of my hometown off my heels and get out into the big, wide world I had glimpsed inside the TV set.

  However, once I did some traveling, I discovered that the South did not have a monopoly on hicks, rednecks, racists, crackers, good ole boys, hillbillies, peckerwoods and tr
ailer trash. And the more I get to see of the rest of America, with its suburban sprawl and food court culture, the more I have come to appreciate my upbringing in a small rural community. Unfortunately, another of Arkansas’ favorite sons proved to be the evil genius who unleashed Wal-Mart, first on his home state, then on the rest of the country, where it has effectively gutted and killed small towns like the ones I grew up in.

  It was about that time I began writing the first of my Southern Gothic stories. In my own way I am trying to put down on paper memories of a way of life that was disappearing even as I lived it. The world of my childhood, with both its good points and bad, has all but vanished, and what little still remains is dwindling with each passing day. There is an urgency to try and place on paper a time and a place that, in many ways, seems as ancient and removed from the reality of modern-day America as the flickering images seen in Depression-era newsreels.

  There is a kernel of reality lodged in the heart of most of the stories you will find in this collection. The Sunday-Go-T-Meeting Jaw was inspired by my Great-Grandfather Collins, who served in the First Alabama Volunteer Militia and had most of his lower jaw blown off during the Civil War, which forced him to wear a wooden prosthetic. How It Was With The Kraits was based on an actual mother-and-son team who lived in our town. Raymond was sparked by my memories of an old classmate of mine who was, indeed, lobotomized and then was dumped back into the hell of junior high school. The Pumpkin Child took seed from fond memories of my Grandfather Willoughby’s annual ritual of taking the family out to select jack o’lanterns from the huge pumpkin patch behind the shack of an ancient African-American man who claimed to have been born a slave, and the old Caddo burial mound that was located on our family farm. Junior Teeter And The Bad Shine is based on a horrific moonshine party gone wrong my father had to deal with during his stint as a Deputy Sheriff. Catfish Gal Blues was born from the countless Sunday afternoons my father drove us out to the levee to look at the Mississippi. Billy Fearless is set in the Kentucky of my Grandmother Willoughby’s ancestry. And the McQuistion Sisters who appear in various guises throughout these stories were real women-a trio of spinster schoolteachers who lived next door to my family for several years and whose collective age was greater than that of the United States at its Bicentennial.

  It’s taken me a long time, but I’m no longer ashamed of being from Arkansas, even though the Clinton administration often put my resolve to the test more than once. But you are what you are, and part of what makes you who you are is where you’ve been. I haven’t lived in the state since 1980, and I’ve resided in numerous places throughout the country in the last 21 years. But Arkansas has placed its mark on me. You can hear it in my voice, my vocabulary, even my sense of humor. Arkansas is in my blood.

  But it will always be Arkansaw in my heart.

  Nancy A. Collins May 13, 2001 Atlanta, GA.

  WELCOME TO SEVEN DEVILS

  * * *

  SUNDAY GO TO MEETING JAW

  The hungry man squatted in the shadows of the tree-line marking the boundary of Killigrew land, never once taking his eyes off the back of the house. His hot, bloodshot eyes followed the handful of chickens scratching haphazardly in the dirt. Although he had not eaten in three days, the chickens had nothing to fear from him. His hunger could no longer be appeased in such a simple fashion.

  He hugged his bony knees with broomstick arms and studied the faded lace curtains that hung in the long, narrow windows of the two-story clapboard house. He stiffened as he caught a glimpse of a woman, dressed in black. He began to sweat and shiver at the same time. Had the fever come back? Or was it something else this time?

  The back door slammed open and an elderly Negro woman, her head wrapped in a worn kerchief, stepped out on the porch, drying her wrinkled hands on an voluminous apron that hung all the way down to her ankles. After studying the coming twilight, the old Negress descended the stairs and hobbled toward a small, neatly kept two-room cabin near the house. From the looks of the rest of the half-dozen slave quarters, the old mammy was the only remaining servant on the place

  It was getting dark. The family inside the house was no-doubt gathered around the dinner table. If he was going to do what he planned, he’d have to move from his hiding place soon. The starving man’s stomach tightened even further.

  Hester Killigrew pushed the food on her plate with her fork. Collard greens, roast sweet potatoes, and corn pone. Again. White trash food. Nigger food. Least that’s what Fanny Walchanski said.

  Fanny’s father, Mr. Walchanski, owned the dry goods store in Seven Devils. He was one of a handful of merchants who had benefited from the arrival of the railroad in Seven Devils last year. Mr. Walchanski was very well-to-do, Fanny was fond of pointing out to anyone within earshot. Hester could just imagine what Fanny would have to say if she discovered the Killigrews took their meals in the kitchen instead of the dining room.

  Hester looked at her mother, seated at the head of the table, then at her little brother. Francis was busy shoveling food into his rosebud mouth. Francis was only two and a half and couldn’t remember how it’d been before the war. Back when there’d been more than just Mammy Joella to see to them. Sack when they ate in the dining room every day on proper china.

  Hester knew better to complain about their situation. It was sure to make her mother scold her or, worse, break into tears. Hester realized they weren’t as bad off as other folks in Choctaw County. They still had a roof over their heads and ate cm a regular basis. There wasn’t as much red meat as before, and they had a goat for milk instead of a cow, but there were plenty of chickens and eggs.

  She remembered how Old Man Stackpole sat in his big old empty mansion until he went crazy and set it on fire before shooting himself in the head. Maybe he got sick of eating greens and corn pone all the time, too.

  There was a knock on the back door. Since Mammy Joella had gone back to her cabin for the night, Mama answered it herself. Hester craned her neck to see around her mother’s skirts. A tall, thin raggedy man stood on the stoop, his hair long and grimy. He looked-and smelled-like he hadn’t washed in weeks. For some reason Hester was reminded of the nutcracker soldier she’d seen in the window of Walchanski’s Dry Goods.

  “If you want work, I don’t have any to give you-and no money to pay you with, if I did.” Penelope Killigrew said tersely. In the year since the war ended, ragged, hungry strangers looking for food or temporary work were common. Most were trying to make their way back home the best they could. Others, however, were trouble looking for a place to happen.

  The stranger spoke in a slobbering voice that reminded Hester of the washerwoman down the road’s idiot son. “Nell-Don’t you know me?” Penelope Killigrew started to cry and shake her head ‘no’. Francis, who’d been happily crumbling corn pone with his pudgy little hands, looked up at the sound of his mother’s sobs. Hester thought the funny-looking stranger had done something. She jumped from her chair and hurried to the door.

  “What did you do to my mama?!?” she demanded. Penelope Killigrew turned and grabbed her daughter’s shoulders. She was smiling and crying at the same time, like the time she wouldn’t put Francis down. Hester started to get scared. “It’s alright, honey! Everything’s going to be alright! Daddy’s come home!”

  Confused, Hester stared at the half-starved stranger dressed in the tatters of a Confederate uniform. He stared back, his rheumy eyes blinking constantly. Now that she had a good look at him, she realized why he’d reminded her of the nutcracker soldier.

  He had a wooden jaw.

  000

  Hester slammed the door to her room as hard as she could. She didn’t care if it shook the whole house. She didn’t care if it knocked the house to the ground, for that matter! Mama made her go to her room. Well, that’s just fine! She could be just as mad as Mama!

  Mama lost her temper because she refused to kiss him. Hester didn’t care if she got switched for it later. She wasn’t going to kiss him! She didn’t care what
Mama or anyone else might say!

  That man wasn’t her Daddy!

  Everyone kept insisting that Hester was too young to remember things from before the war. That was stupid. If she could remember their ole dog, Cooter, why not Daddy? She certainly could remember the War-leastwise the occasions it wandered into their lives. Hester didn’t know why Mama kept telling the Nutcracker she didn’t know better. Maybe it made her feel better about having a stranger in the house. But why did Mama have to pretend he was Daddy?

  Daddy was the handsomest man in Arkansaw. At least Choctaw County, anyway. He was big and strong, with shoulders like a bull. He had dark hair with deep blue eyes. He laughed a lot and had a charming smile. Even other men said so.

  Hester remembered how she used to sit on the floor in the parlor, playing with her rag doll, listening for the sound of his boots in the hall. Then he’d sweep her up in his arms, swinging her high in the air. Sometimes the top of her head brushed the chandelier and made the crystal drops shake and dance. It sounded just like angels singing. She’d squeal and giggle and Daddy would laugh too-the sound booming out of his chest like thunder. Mama didn’t approve of such tomfoolery, though. Hester supposed she was afraid they’d break the chandelier.

  Hester was six when Daddy went off to fight for President Davis. Mama cried a lot, but Daddy said it was something he had to do. Hester didn’t really understand what was going on at the time, but she thought Daddy looked handsome in his gray uniform. They all went down to Mr. Potter’s rotogravure palace down near the train depot and Daddy had his picture taken. Mama kept it in the family bible, pressed between the pages like a dried flower.

  Daddy left in 1861 to go help General Lyon fight General McCulloch at Oak Hills, near Missouri. He wrote letters every day and Mama would read them aloud in the parlor before going to bed. Most of the time he wrote about how much he missed them and how bad the army food was.