The Haunting Hour

2. Hound Hill, Tn

Loaded up the milk and eggs to take over to Miss Dripp’s boardin’ house. Pop had me doin’ deliveries since those days I wasn’t much use for anything else. When he would scowl at me limpin’ around the kitchen in the mornin’, I’d say at least I didn’t come home in a pine box, but Pop said Navy boys never do. They either come home on two legs, or if they are lucky, sink fast to the bottom of the ocean so they black out before they run out of air. And if they ain’t lucky, they get torn apart by the sharks. If he only knew what it was like out there in the great blue nothin’. I didn’t come home on exactly two legs, I told him. Maybe one and a half. But he just turned his head and spat juice at the coffee can on the dirty, warped linoleum. Guess he was sore. I didn’t make admiral or earn a medal for moppin’ decks or somethin’, and the war was still marchin’ on without me single-handedly winnin’ it.

I did miss the water. I missed that salty mist that collects on your lips that you can lick anytime you want. I missed that sway too, and I still felt it sometimes outta nowhere like when I stood up outta bed too fast or when I walked from the barn carrying milk buckets and could hear that little splash caused from my leg bein’ all catawampus. Never got seasick—some of them boys puked and dry heaved till they passed out, woke up and started pukin’ all over again. They probably should have a test for that before you **. Of course, some kid from Nebraska or Iowa ain’t gonna know till it’s too late. I got lucky in that inner ear department. Lotta luck when it came to wartime, I reckoned, and you don’t get any good without some bad. I had a couple fellas still out there writin’ me, lettin’ me know how it’s goin’. Hope they pull through and take that big gray girl all the way up Tojo’s a*s.

Now Mrs. Dripp had her an expansive ole house far off the little two lane lookin’ down on a deep holler and down into the river valleys. The rutted gravel drive was damn near straight up to the front door, and would chip your tooth if in the driver’s seat. There was many a time when people were stuck up there for days during a torrential rain or an ice storm. Luckily, Mrs. Dripp could cook up an old shoe and you would lick your lips after you had the last bit of shoelace. She kept folks happy that stayed there and all kinds of travelers knew she kept a mighty fine home. A railroad ran north and south a few miles over and even the hobos had a permanent sign for kind woman at the bottom of the drive if you knew where to look. Sure, not a good many of them had the salt to hike up all the way to the front door, but a few did and they would gladly chop some wood or pull weeds for a few hot meals and even a cot on the screened-in porch where the boards were still tight and the breeze blew cool up on top of the knob. It was common knowledge that inside was for payin’ customers only, and Mrs. Dripp wasn’t one to bend the rules when it came to the lodgin’ business.

I was expected on Tuesdays and Fridays to deliver eight quarts of milk and two dozen eggs. If I got there at just the right time on a Friday and the salesmen and hawkers had done headed for their own homes, there might be some biscuits and gravy left over that I was welcome to, and Lord knows I welcomed it. When Mama was alive, she always made her gravy too runny and Pop would raise hell about it, but Mrs. Dripp would make it thick and I’d drink a mug of it if I could. I hoped Mama, wherever she was, never heard the tale of that. Now, another thing Mrs. Dripp always had around that piqued my interest were a few to a bushel of wayward girls. Happened to be pretty shy around girls now with my leg, but ain’t nothin’ wrong with stealin’ a glance at a beauty hangin’ sheets on the line in the late mornin’ sun. When the light hit her little cotton dress just right, you could see silhouetted curves bendin’ and flowin’ like an alpine stream of soft flesh, clean and cool, always movin’ and makin’ that rushin’ sound that makes you sleepy and tender inside. I guess that’s what angels look like if they’re havin’ to hang Jesus’ linen on a Friday mornin’.

‘You’ve got a profound interest in the air-drying sciences, Mr. Barrett?’

Mrs. Dripp looked up from the greenbacks she had pulled out of her bosom to follow my eyes out there to the show. She sounded like a foreigner around these parts, but it was just a stubborn New York snap that I had heard plenty of times on the ship.

‘Just admiring work well done, Mrs. Dripp. You got yourself a well-oiled machine here.’

‘I’d say you’re pretty well-oiled at the moment.’

Mrs. Dripp’s face was somewhere between a smile and a sneer. I couldn’t tell which way she was leanin’. Figured to err on the side of caution.

‘No, ma’am. Got my mind on all things dairy today.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about, Mr. Barrett. Reason most of my girls are here is they’re giving away the milk for free. Can’t make a living doing that, can you? I would think you would know that more than most, being in this particular line of work.’

‘Very true, Mrs. Dripp. You cannot.’

I took the cash that Mrs. Dripp offered and slipped it in my overalls. I didn’t expect any gravy that day.

‘Good day Mr. Barrett. I will see you Tuesday I am sure.’

‘Yes ma’am. Tuesday. Tuesday it is.’

I walked back to the pickup trying as hard as I could to mask my limp and steal one more glance at that vision behind the billowing sheets. It wasn’t much what I snatched from the corner of my squinted eye, but it was enough. Enough till Tuesday.

If I arranged the jars just right, I could see that young fella who brought the milk and eggs. The window was filthy and small, but I learned to wobble the crank enough to where, if I stood on a couple of apple boxes, I could make him out fine. He wasn’t too tall or lean but he was deep in the chest. His overalls had that soft fade that called out softly to the touch of my fingers. Sometimes he limped back to his truck, other times he walked as a soldier marchin’ straight and true to his likely doom. His hair was sandy and it had a dull, fluffy glow in the sun. I would’ve sure liked to talk to him sometime. Sit on a swing and share a bag of lemon candies. Mrs. Dripp would never have let me talk to him—can’t talk to no man. I wasn’t pregnant, and never even kissed anybody other than my Daddy on his rough and salty cheek. She said those were the rules and she promised Mama and Daddy that she would keep me out of trouble. She never did say why I couldn’t have a bedroom though, livin’ down there in that creepy ole root cellar with the dusty spider-ridden preserves and beets and pickled okra lined up on the shelves—now, that to me was some serious trouble. Could barely see the sun, but whatever light shone in through the jars turned it a shade of auburn brown as it shuffled slowly across the knotty floorboards that were spaced out enough to let the smell of the old earth in. No tellin’ what unmentionable spirits were risin’ up through the floor at night. Seemed like somethin’ from the earth was always after you and wouldn’t stop till you’re swallowed up and it was on top pinnin’ you down for all eternity.

Wasn’t like this back home. We had a tight weathered floor that Mama and the Mama before her and the Mama before her kept swept and oil-soap clean. I loved to feel my walk fall into the slopes that formed from years of feet travelin’ the well-known paths from the kitchen to the feather bed, or the back door to feed the blue tick hounds, to the soft creak of the front porch swing. The air was always sweet in our little valley and the honeysuckle seemed to come right up to your nose when you walked the road to town with grass growin’ free down the middle. It wasn’t no big town and there wasn’t a thing about it that really deserved a spot on the map other than that perfect little spot where the two creeks met. The woods hemmed it in tight and there wasn’t a cleared spot of land that wasn’t used for somethin’. I guess the folks figured the trees kept it protected, and I suppose they did, as I don’t recall my folks ever sayin’ a thing about twisters or blizzards. It was always nice and cool in the summer from all the shade, you had to really try and hunt the sun through the leaves if you needed a reminder it was there. Wasn’t really a road in or out, but there was room for a wagon if the horse didn’t mind gettin’ brushed up against by white oak saplings or steppin’ through Virginia Creeper fightin’ to make the jump across to the far side.

We had whatever a person needed. We had a store with hard candy and flour sacks lined up under the counter. We had a post office, for the Sears Roebuck to come by twice a year to drop off whatever you had saved up for. We had a church too, a grand one with a steeple and a bell. They had built it right before the civil war, and had both yankees and rebels in the pews prayin’ or bleedin’ and usually both, but never dyin’. Not one passed durin’ the whole war in that holy house. Now, there was a little graveyard back behind it for the surroundin’ families that amounted to a dozen washed smooth tombstones propped up against trees with the caskets down between the roots that had to be cut out to even fit ‘em down there.

Most people just buried their own back by one of the crooked creek beds and stacked some rocks and a few bloodroot blossoms on top and went on livin’. The people did just that, livin’ pure, at tune with mother nature for what Mama said was a lot more than 250 years, carvin’ out just enough to find peace and a full belly. No place I would rather be, with my Mama singin’ her favorite hymn, or my Daddy out late runnin’ after the dogs, that lantern bouncin’ through the bare trees up along the gentle ridges behind the house. I suppose I would’ve lived there forever, raised my children in that same house, married some boy who was too dumb to find his way outta the wilderness. There was a strong magic there and most of the time it seemed good. An old presence protectin’ its flock from the wolves howlin’ hungry outside, hidin’ the little town tucked away in the tall trees. The church bell rang, the mail wagon came. You’d buy your country ham and sit for a spell while you drank cool spring water. The dirt never kicked up dust and the poison ivy never sprouted up around the children’s bare feet as they chased the roosters through the brush or went huntin’ arrowheads down where those creeks met, where they say the Indians used to talk and listen to their gods. Everybody knew everybody and any quarrel was nipped in the bud before it got to be a row. Not that it was common as people around there weren’t prone to fightin’. There was never a need. I guess that’s why, when black shiny automobiles came barrellin’ in one early spring mornin’ and the men with the thin ties and big maps stepped out and came knockin’ on doors, there wasn’t much to be done. And sure enough, there I was. Way down low on top of a hill with everything I ever knew drowned under a lake contrived by those men.