Come on and go with me Ivy, he says. Martha can keep the babies. You can’t go if you are carrying a baby, of course. So I have got out of it a lot, that way! So sometimes now I go and sometimes I don’t, but I’ll tell you, I can’t tell the difference. I swear I can’t. I would not say this to another soul, Silvaney, It don’t make me feel better nor worse, to go to church, except I get tickled sometimes at this Reverend Ancil Collins whose idea is that you have to get shut of your actual mind when you preach, just open your mouth and it will all come to you. He throws the Bible down on the floor and wherever it comes open, he takes his text. I was thinking the other day, I would love to know what Mister Brown would think of that! For he was a preacher too.
But I have not thought of Mister Brown in years and years, and thinking about him and her has made me weepy and given me the all-overs. For they were young when they lived here, and I remember I thought they were so old. Well, I am old now! I am older than they were then. It does not seem possible.
And sometimes I feel so old. I would a lots rather sit on the porch and think and look out at the world, than to go to church. I don’t know why I have never got the hang of it. I guess the most religious thing about me is that I do say my prayers when I go to bed, you remember that little prayer our momma taught us which she learned in Rich Valley as a child. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take. Do you still say this too? I think it is such a pretty prayer. But I would just as soon sit in the breezeway looking out at Bethel Mountain, as to go to church. I would just as soon sink into this soft warm darkness where I have been for years. I will rock my sweet Maudy and hum perhaps, and watch LuIda play with this babydoll that Miss Torrington sent, it has big blue glass eyes like marbles, and eyelids that open and close. LuIda is so cute with her babydoll. It is like, she’s got her baby, and I’ve got mine. I don’t know where Bill and Danny Ray are. Up to no good, I reckon, I can’t keep up with those boys! In fact I can’t keep up with a thing it seems like. Oakley ought to take more of a hand with the boys. I can hear Martha singing in the kitchen. But if I was to go in there, she’d shut up. She won’t sing if you are in there with her. Martha loves the radio down at Ethel’s and will sit by it for hours, and then can sing anything she hears on it, all the way through, and remember all the words. You can hear her singing all over the house. Yet if you ask Martha what month it is, she hangs her head and doesn’t know. She sings so pretty now. My back hurts. It may be that I am going to start bleeding, whenever I bleed I get the blues.
Oh Silvaney. Silvaney. I recall one Sunday about a year ago when I was sitting here, Oakley was gone to church all day, to a baptizing I think, and when he came home he sat in that chair and we looked at Bethel Mountain together which we have done so many years and Oakley said, Ivy, you can look out on that Creation and know there is a God. I reached over and got his hand and held it. I couldn’t see his face. And I couldn’t see God’s face neither.
But now, Silvaney, now we sit and watch the lights on Bethel Mountain twinkling like fairy lamps through this blue haze. I feel like there’s a big change coming on somehow, when I look down this holler and see light. It makes me feel all electrified, myself! But it ain’t got up here yet. So I remain
Your loving sister,
IVY.
Dear Ethel,
Now that Joli has gone off to the Radford Normal Institute we want to tell you again, thanks for keeping her in town for high school, for I feel to the bottom of my soul that it is a good thing. I am not surprised that the state is sending her to college, neither. I have always said, Joli is real smart. And didn’t she look pretty in her cap and gown? and just so solem, like a little owl. I thought my heart would bust. She was proud, too, you could tell. It will be such a good thing for her, in the long run. The hardest thing for her was leaving Martha. But Martha don’t mind, as I have tried to tell Joli. Martha is real happy to be with you when you’re here, but when you’re not here, she don’t notice. Martha has not got a sense of the passage of time, that’s how she stays so happy. Five minutes or five years, it is all the same to her. Well, it is not the same to us. We still miss Joli real bad—especially Oakley who has a little game he always played with her when she was small. Every night he would say, Well, how is my little squirrel? and Joli would make a squirrel noise. Or, How is my old cow? and Joli would go, Moo. They have played this game for years and years. So at graduation, that is why I cried when Oakley went up and said, How is my little kitty cat? and Joli said Meow. And everybody else was laughing but I was in tears. Well, that is what was the matter with me!
Ethel, I guess you would think that when a woman has a lot of children, then each one means a little less. It is not so. Children will swell up your heart. I know you say you are glad that you and Stoney have not had none of your own, that hisn have been enough of a headache, but I would bet it is not true, Ethel. You just talk big, in my opinion. But you are as soft as a featherbed underneath.
Speaking of Joli’s graduation, you know what I was thinking of? I would of given anything if Beulah could of been there. I think she would of been so proud too, it is the kind of thing that Beulah always wanted for us all. I know you say, Good riddance! but I can not. I wish so much that Beulah would send us a postcard at least and let us know where they have moved to.
Well, I am still right here! I reckon she knows it. She can get ahold of me anytime she wants, or you either one.
We are sorry to hear that Stoney is not feeling too good. I am not feeling too good myself. I don’t know what gets into me sometimes. I am just wearing down, I reckon. Like yesterday, I was churning the milk which I always do, and all of a sudden I thought, Now I wonder how many times I have churned up butter in this churn? A thousand times? a million times? For it was Momma’s churn before it was mine. I have done it so much that I don’t even think about doing it any more. I don’t even notice what I am doing. Nor making the butter into pats, nor stamping them down, nor cleaning the churn. And the minute I started noticing, and thinking about it, the paddle broke. I left it laying right there on the porch. I turned out the clabber into the hog pen, which I have never done before—I reckon the pigs were in hog heaven! Then I went in and laid down on the bed in the middle of the day! But I did not sleep. I laid there wide awake until the boys got home from school, then I got up and acted like nothing had happened. Well, nothing had! Or, nothing that you can put your finger on, nothing that you can name.
Then Oakley came in and cut me a new paddle and this morning I was churning again. I reckon that this new paddle will last me twenty years at least, I know the old one did. It seems like I can see the little pats of butter stretched out from here to yonder, a long yellow line. Don’t you remember the story about little black Sambo, that ate up so much butter?
Lord, Ethel.
May be I am having the Change of Life early.
I will see you soon I reckon because Oakley says he is going to start him some hives, so we will be coming down to Home Creek to get up with that Breeding man that courses the bees, and then we will ride over and see you. I hope Stoney will be feeling better by then. Edith Fox always makes boiled custard for those that are weak in heart, you might give Stoney some. Thank you again for keeping Joli, I hope you have given her some good sense too! I remain
Your sister,
IVY FOX.
July 6, 1940
Dear Silvaney,
You are the only one I can tell this to, for I know you will not tell a soul. You can not. But oh Silvaney, something awful is about to happen here.
And it looks like I can’t do nothing about it.
It is a funny thing how much you have been in my mind, even before this started. I have been thinking about you lately. I don’t even know if you recall how you used to not sleep good, nor eat, and run through the woods of a night with a light in your eye? And this used to scare me.
But now I must say, I have these feelings. And I to
o lie awake in the night with a strange pounding heart, I have to get up and walk a little. I don’t know what has got into me, and I have been wondering—does this run in the family? For my boy Danny Ray is as wild as a buck and into everything, not like his brother Bill, nor like Oakley. For Oakley is a saint in this world, he has got no idea of what I am feeling. I won’t tell him. I keep thinking, This will pass. This too will pass. And then I will be just plain Ivy again and not like I am now, somebody I don’t know with my body took up by something wild I can not name.
Oh Silvaney. Those days when I sank into the easy darkness took their toll. It is like I went so far I scared myself, and now I have to come back up. It is like I’ve had an electric shock. So now I am so much alive, I am tingling. I believe I know how you felt, Silvaney. For the first time, I know. I am on fire. I can feel it running through my veins and out my fingers. I feel if I touch kindling, it will light. I feel like fire itself. And I have felt this way now for several months, so I know it isn’t Him. You see what I am saying? I felt this way before he ever came, before I ever saw Him. But in the long run Silvaney that may not matter, for he has been here two times now.
It is happening.
And yet you know that I love Oakley. He is my life. I love this farm, and these children, and Oakley, with all my heart. But there is something about a man that is too good which will drive you crazy, you can’t hardly stand it. It makes you want to run or scream or roll down the hill in the leaves the way we used to do, never checking for rocks, nor thinking where we might land. It makes you want to dance in the thunderstorm like we danced up on Pilgrim Knob. For a long time I thought I was old, Silvaney. I sat in my chair in the breezeway like Momma sat in hers, feeling old.
But now I am on fire.
His name is Honey Breeding.
He got this name because he is a bee man. So I don’t even know his given name. But he is a cousin to the Breedings that live now in the house on Home Creek where the Conaways used to live, next to Delphi and Reva.
Oakley—poor Oakley!—brought him up here. We had gone into town about a week before, and left word with Honey Breeding’s people for him to come, and told him to get in touch. In the meantime Oakley made us some beegum hives which is just the kind of thing he likes to do. He went and looked at the Breedings hives to see how to do it. Then he told the kids he’d give a quarter to the one that could find a hollow beegum tree first, and they commenced to looking, and Bill found it and got the quarter. The beegum tree stood just above the treeline on Pilgrim Knob. Oakley took the boys up there when he cut it down. They used the old crosscut saw. It took a morning. I could hear them up there doing it while I stayed in the yard with LuIda and little Maudy. And sure enough about suppertime, they all came down dragging one of the beegums. This was a long section, hollow, right out of the tree. They were all tuckered out. The next day they cut it in two and made our beegums. Oakley bored four holes up close to the top of each one, and put two sticks in there to form a cross. The bees would make their brood comb on these sticks, Oakley said. I remember him telling me this.
Oakley seemed real sweet to me that afternoon, real young, drilling those holes. He was all excited about the bees. It is the kind of work he likes to do, close work in wood, where things can be made to fit exactly. It is more satisfying than farming I guess where you can’t say if it will rain or not nor tell the price of tobacco.
Hand me that level, he’d say to the twins. Or, Sand this off. By the end of the day, we had the two prettiest beegum hives in Buchanan County. Oakley had put them up on a footing, to keep them dry, and built them both a heading, and a little slanted roof. He put them out back of the house in the orchard so the bees could get at the apple blossoms.
Along about dark, Oakley stood back and put his hands on his hips, which always means he is pleased with his work.
Now for the bees, he said.
At dinnertime, he explained to the kids what a bee man does. Now this here bee man, Oakley started, eating fried chicken. I remember it very well because me and Martha had killed a chicken that afternoon. She wrung the neck which I can’t stand to do and she is good at. He don’t live noplace. He don’t have a home, said Oakley.
Aw Daddy, said Bill.
Nosir, that’s a fact, said Oakley. Reach me another one of them wings. I love a wing. He winked at Martha and she passed him the whole platter. Oakley pinched me on the butt. Good chicken, he said. Oakley had not paid me so much mind in a while. He had got all worked up over his beegums, he had come outside of himself. And he is a fine man. It is just that you forget it sometimes, living with a man for years and years. It goes the other way too of course. A woman can get to be a habit as much as a man.
I slapped his hand away. Get on, I said, but I saw his eyes light up, I knew he would roll on me later and I was all on fire, eat up with fire as I mentioned, but not for that. Oakley has got to where he never talks nor pets me any, just does it and goes to sleep, while I lay there in the darkness immaginning god knows what, immaginning stars. I lay awake like that sometimes for hours.
Bill and Danny Ray were giggling.
What does the bee man do? Martha looked up from feeding sweet potatos to Maudy. Sometimes, Martha will surprise you.
He goes away back in the woods and finds a bee tree, Oakley said. Then he cuts it down and catches the swarm and brings it to your house and puts it in your hive.
Don’t he get stung? Bill wanted to know.
Bees won’t sting a bee man, Oakley said. He don’t even wear a hat.
Dad-dy—Bill said. Bill is the smart one.
Oakley just grinned at him. It’s a fact, he said. But if you was to try it, they’d liable to sting you to death. So you stay in the house now, you hear me, when he comes around.
Yessir, Danny Ray and Bill both said, but I will tell you right now that there is no way in hell to keep Danny Ray in or out of anyplace atall that he don’t fancy. You can forget it.
Well, when is he coming? I asked. I put Maudy back down on the floor where she always goes straight for the dog, it is real sweet how he acts with her.
May be tomorry, Oakley said. Or it may be next week. He’ll come up here whenever he catches us a hiveful of bees, he said.
Wait a minute, Bill said. Don’t he do anything else? Don’t he have to farm?
Nope, said Oakley. He goes around these mountains place to place, and don’t stay nowhere long. There’s always somebody needing bees, or needing to split a hive.
What’s that? asked Bill.
You’ll see soon enough, Oakley said. Have you all got any more of that chicken? he asked me, and I got him some. Oakley is sweet. What is going to happen is all my fault, but I can’t help it. I can’t be no better. I can’t do no different, either, I swear it.
Is this bee man married? I asked all of a sudden to my surprise, and Oakley busts out laughing. Hell no he aint married, he says. He roams these hills like a coonhound, what I hear. I hear that he has daddied him some babies here and there though. Oakley winked at me. I could tell what he had on his mind, and we did it later of course, after Martha and me had done up all the dishes and bathed the babies and got the other kids to bed. Oakley sat on the breezeway smoking his pipe and staring out at the rural electrification, all this time. As soon as I sat down he reached for me but I jumped like a shot when he touched me. What ails you, Ivy? he says.
And I say, Nothing.
For it is not worth telling. It is not worth it to try to say how I want to scream all the time or when I look out at the mountains I want to reach out and rip them all away leaving only the flat hard sudden sky. That is crazy. So I didn’t say any of this. We went to bed and did it, and the next day, Honey Breeding came.
I was down in the springhouse.
Now I have to explain this. When you’re down in the springhouse, your eyes get set to the gloom. Oakley built this little house right down in the creek two years back and cut out the steps going down here where it’s so steep.
And
I love it here! Honeysuckle vines have grown up all over the bushes along the path, and wild white roses all down the steps. Sometimes I go down there just to catch my breath. It is like another world. Well, we had been looking for the bee man to come all day, but he had not, so we had gone on about our business and it had got to be nearabout evening again and Oakley had gone off to help his daddy with a load of bricks and I had gone down in the springhouse to take some butter. I had little LuIda with me, she loves the creek. She always paddles her hands in the water while I do whatever I need to. It’s hard to get her to start back. So I had ahold of LuIda’s hand and we were climbing the steep stone steps. The air down there is cool and green, it has to come down through so many leaves. The steps are cold, wet. I always go down them barefooted, it feels so good.
Mam?
He stood at the top of the steps, outlined against the sun.
Mam? he said it again. He has a soft low pretty voice that sounds like it’s right in your ear even when it’s not.
What? I said, putting my hand up to my eyes to try to see better. But the sun was a blaze behind his head, and I could not. The sun shot out in rays behind his head. LuIda started crying. She grabbed my knees and held on tight, and then I couldn’t walk either.