For Dear Life
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For Dear Life

And Selected Short Stories

Virginia Pruitt, Howard Faulkner

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eBook - ePub

For Dear Life

And Selected Short Stories

Virginia Pruitt, Howard Faulkner

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About This Book

The republication of this novel reintroduces readers to a strong southern writer, an interesting female voice, and a compelling story. This realistic portrayal of life among the rural poor of the early twentieth century shows the struggle of a tough-minded woman who fought her entire life to overcome the obstacles that confronted women and the working poor. Presented here with two previously unpublished short stories, For Dear Life, edited by Virginia Pruitt and Howard Faulkner, will appeal to those interested in women's studies, social history, and American studies, as well as to anyone who enjoys quality fiction.

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For Dear Life

Chapter 1

I’ve often read books about people who grew up in the country, and have been amazed to find that they all seemed to have been great philosophers. They saw, and felt, a great deal more than I had time to see or think or feel. They seem to have responded poetically to clouds floating in a blue sky, and rhapsodized on the music of summer rain. I often wonder if they had to go two miles in musical summer rain to milk, and to carry the full pail carefully home without getting rain mixed with it, and then walk three miles through stiff clinging mud, to school. I know that often in the heat of noonday, leaning on a hoe, looking across valleys at the mountains, so blue, so close, my only conscious thought was, “How can I ever get away from here? How can I get to where they have books, where I can be educated?” I worked hard, always waiting for something to happen to change things. There came a time when I knew I must make them happen; that no one would do anything about it for me. And I did.
I was born in a barn. A very big barn that had been built for the curing of tobacco, with a great deal of space in the top for hanging the frames for tobacco leaves. Of course there was no tobacco in it at that time, because, as I was told, the horses were in one side of it, and the family in the other. My father had moved from Marion County, North Carolina, to this place, called Leicester, and apparently the addition to the family was taken as a matter of course. My mother had had ten children, so I suppose it was nothing to get excited about, and no one did.
My father had started to build a little house but it was not finished enough to live in, so the family lived in the barn. I can’t imagine how they all slept, for there were eight children and my father and mother; they must have slept on the floor on the hay. The horses lived right in the barn, which made a good beginning for me, for all my first five years were spent with all the animals common to a farm in North Carolina.
One of the most bitter tragedies of my first five years was the death of my black cat named Job, that I loved more than anything in the world. To see the head of my strong lithe shining black cat mowed clean off by a mowing machine was not to be borne, and I tried to sew it back with a needle and thread, weeping bitterly. For days I could not possibly believe that Job would not come back. He had always slept with me. Even though my mother went from one child to another, at night, making us put the animals out, I had always managed to hide Job. When I pulled out my trundle bed that night, I felt that all the world had fallen to bits, and I cried myself to sleep.
Finally the house was finished, and how it covered us all has never been clear in my mind. There were two rooms downstairs, one of which had a fireplace, and perhaps two upstairs; there was a lean-to kitchen. I remember very well that my sister Anne and I slept in a trundle bed that was pulled out at night and rolled back under the high bed during the day.
There was a fence of palings all along the front, extending past the barn, across the brook and reaching clear to the big stables. This fence was, in many places, completely covered by honeysuckle vines that smelled sweet. Inside the fence were many kinds of roses, lilacs, and jonquils, which we always called March Flowers. This little house, the first home I ever knew, was on the highroad about twenty miles west of Carleton. The nearest village was four miles away, and was only a small group of houses and a post office. We rarely got that far away from the farm, and to go to Carleton was an adventure that occurred only twice a year. The road was a narrow country road, dry and dusty in summer; in winter a river of red sticky clay that clung to the wagon wheels and horses hooves like glue. When the wagons settled deep in this clay, the horses would pull and strain and sweat; then my father would hitch his two strong mules to the wagon and pull it out.
My ancestors had apparently always been there in North Carolina. At least I have never heard of any one who ever knew any one in the family that ever heard of living in any other land. We seemed to just belong to this soil, always in the past, now and forever.
Pictures of my father show that he had been quite a handsome young man, very tall and straight, with reddish-brown hair that curled all over his head, and light brown eyes. What dreams he may have had, and what realizations! To have married so young, to have been so poor, and to have had so many children! When I first knew him he seemed an old man, although his hair was still brown and still curled, but he was getting bald. A tornado sort of man he was, with his enormous energy; always full of great plans, for improving the farm, for raising better crops. He was always buying new tools and machinery that were never used, but left to sit and rust. I know this worried my mother.
His impetuosity was always getting him into trouble. Once, in the night, he heard a sound in the cellar and got up impatiently to investigate. Seeing what he thought was a black and white cat, he gave it a blow with a piece of a slat. It defended itself right well. We had to bury his long drawers far away from the house, and we were sick from the odor for weeks. Wagons passing would drive as far away from the house as possible, the occupants holding their noses. What he said about that animal, “that spawn from Hell, that emissary of Satan; that living example of all that is bad on earth”! Never did he display such flexibility of profanity, such blasting, helpless rage. The odor lasted for months and his rage blazed continuously, only smouldering at times when he could forget it. One strong whiff was sufficient to start him off again.
Sometimes his zeal for perfection worked to his disadvantage. Once he raised the largest potatoes any of his neighbors had ever seen, and he was proud of them. He hitched his mules to a wagon and took them into Carleton to sell. My sister Lucille and I went with him, they sitting on the seat, I on the potatoes. He showed the buyer the potatoes with great pride, and when he saw the man scratch his head in perplexity my father just stared at him. “What’s the matter with them potatoes?” he asked. “Too big,” the buyer answered laconically. Father’s jaw dropped; he looked stunned. “Too big?” he shouted, unbelievingly. The man explained that he sold them by the quart, and as one potato would more than fill a quart measure the women wouldn’t buy them. When my father realized that the man really meant it, his face crumpled up like a baby ready to cry, and his lips worked. I saw the temper flash in his eyes for a moment, as he swore a couple of oaths. Then he turned away, crushed, and we began the long ride home. His back looked discouraged, pitiful. It made my heart ache for him, and at the same time I hated him for his helplessness. I suffered less when he flew into rages. I wept for his sense of futility and his incapacity to cope with things.
Once my father bought a cow; a very old and poor cow. We could, and did count every rib. He said, “Wait till she gets proper food and you’ll see. She’s a nice cow.” That night we put her in a pasture of rich grass and clover. Next morning she was dead, her body all swollen, her feet sticking up in a grotesque manner. I can see my father’s face as he returned from the field, the muscles working, tears streaming from his eyes. I wondered if he wept for her suffering, or for her loss.
My brothers were grown-up men, and I cannot recall ever having actually seen the oldest one, Joseph. I did not know them at all, except as feet, or at most, knees. At first there seemed a great many grown-ups around, vague indefinite personalities with whom I had no communion. Edward, the second son, was very handsome and seemed the favored one, since he always went to school while Winfield, the youngest son, remained at home to do the hard work. I liked him the best of my brothers, although I never talked to him, nor knew him really.
My oldest sister, Sallie, was small. They said it was because being the oldest she had to carry the baby, and as there always was a baby, she never had time to grow up. Then there was Adelaide, blonde and handsome, and my favorite. Next came Lucille the beautiful one, Mary the modest, and Anne the spitfire, and me, Belinda. I remember my mother, a dour woman with whom I never talked, the day four of her children left home. Two brothers went to the Spanish war, Adelaide went to Boston and Lucille to Carleton. I remember thinking it was all very exciting, but I thought it odd that my mother didn’t say good-by to any of them. She wasn’t around at the time they left. Later I saw that she had gone down to the far pigpen and that her face was as white as chalk. It tore my heart so to see her, that I felt hatred of her. I couldn’t bear that she should suffer and I disliked her for it. Why, I don’t know.
My mother was a very silent woman. I think it was because she had been told long ago that she didn’t know what she was talking about. One of the first clear memories of my father was his bitter denunciation of “Petticoat Government.” Everything he didn’t like about the government, he called petticoat government. I think that was his way of putting my mother in her place. So she got tired probably, and only one thing would stimulate her to argument, and that was politics. For years and years a bitter fight went on between a Republican mother and a Democrat father. Frequently it continued far into the night, with swearing and breaking of furniture. Whenever it started, it was going full force at the time I can first recall. The older ones had become accustomed to it and were not scared any more. If the argument got too violent and an unusual number of chairs or dishes were broken, we hustled off to bed to be out of the way. Finally it was settled by Mr. Bryan.
On a beautiful sunny day my father went with about a dozen other men into the village of Leicester, to hear Mr. Bryan speak. They rode off proudly and gayly; my mother said nothing, but I think she was disgusted. What happened I never knew, but along late in the afternoon they rode back, dirty and tired, raising clouds of dust. Father waved good-by to the men, rode into the yard and got down, calling to my mother, “Woman, come out!” My mother came to the door, stood looking at him, calm and expressionless. He took off his wide-brimmed black hat and said, “Woman, you’re right and I’m wrong! I’ll never vote a Democratic ticket again as long as I live.” My mother just smiled. They never fought about politics again.
My father’s father had owned a large farm and many slaves, but I think they were all opposed to slavery. I know my father was, and I remember hearing him say that he was glad the South had lost. My mother never talked much about the war, but I remember her saying once that her brother and two cousins were marched into a river and shot down before her own and her mother’s eyes. There were many tales of friends hiding silver and valuables from the Yankees, and of how every animal was shot, leaving them destitute. When my father and mother got married, they didn’t have one cent, and how they ever lived I don’t know. Their first two babies died, and once she spoke of returning from burying the second, but she made no complaint. It was as though it was too deeply painful for ordinary words, and it tore my heart to think of such desolation and poverty, and they so young.
My father wore mutton-chop whiskers, shaving only a small part of his face. He rarely bathed, but all the children got thoroughly washed every Saturday night and as we went bare-foot we washed our feet every night. When my father bathed, a large tub of water was brought into the kitchen where he would splash about, making an enormous amount of noise and disorder. The floor would be more wet than he, and the entire household was disrupted for the whole day. So no one ever suggested that he take a bath. No one wished for such a calamity.
Besides being a farmer my father was a blacksmith, and all the children envied us the chance to blow the bellows which made a strong swishing sound as the air came through the coals. He kept shoes on all his own horses and mules, and most of the neighbors brought theirs to him. I loved intensely the life that went on around the forge,—the old farmers chewing and spitting tobacco juice; the jokes and the talk of all that went on in the county. But most of all I loved the forge after dusk, when the sparks flew up against the black night, the figures moving between, making huge shadows. I loved all the odors; the shavings from the horses hooves, coal smoke, rusty iron, negro sweat, the red-hot iron hammered into different shapes, and the peculiar acrid odor of the cooling iron as my father thrust it into a tub of water. He would put me on the back of a horse being shod, and I felt proud and more important than the children who had no father who was a blacksmith.
My father also made coffins for people who could not afford a store one. It was always exciting when he and mother worked on them at night, and we were allowed to help. He was very deft about it, bending the wood to fit the arms, nailing it securely. When finished, mother tacked white or black calico all around inside, making fancy pleats around the head. They looked very neat and comfortable. Sometimes they brought the body and we all helped to put it in, fixing the hands properly. My father would curse and swear, damning everything and everybody if he misplaced a tool. As he worked he would tell with great glee how the rats had gnawed the knuckles of old man Winters, and how frightened the women were when they saw something moving around under the sheet.
Once he made one for Old Joe Pomeroy, who was well over ninety-eight years old. Old Joe boasted that he would see a hundred, but when his mule which he had driven in an old buggy for time out of mind got frisky, throwing Old Joe out against a stone wall, every one thought he was done for, so his son, a boy of seventy odd, asked my father to go ahead and have the coffin ready. He worked late in the night, and mother made the inside all nice for him, and we all went to bed. But Old Joe fooled everybody, for next day he was feeling fine, and got up, showing no obvious ill effects from the accident. Indeed he lived for well over a year, and failed to make the hundred mark by a small margin. In the meantime the coffin was pushed under a bed, and served as a place for my cat to have her kittens. After several months mother got tired of having it under the bed, and had it carried out to the barn. Anne and I put straw in it, and we had three hens setting on eggs; they were just due to hatch when Old Joe had immediate use for it. We argued and pled for our hens, but were forced to remove them to other nests. They said Old Joe died from a mess of turnip greens. My father said, “Nonsense! Hell, no turnip greens that ever growed could kill Old Joe Pomeroy!”
My mother was quiet. She had black hair in loose waves around her face. Her eyes were very blue. When I first knew her she was quite pleasant, though not a great talker. I never had a conversation with her in all the time I knew her and I have no idea what went on inside her. She worked hard, and had all her life. I heard her say once that she always had a baby at each end of the corn row; one she was nursing, and to one she gave a bacon rind to chew. She just laid them down and left them while she hoed corn. And the snakes didn’t bite them.
She got up about five o’clock every day, made a fire in the stove, cooked breakfast for a crowd—for in addition to the family there were usually a number of men helping with the farm work—and after breakfast, she went to the fields with the family. At noon she carried the children home, cooked dinner and after resting for an hour, went back to the field. When it was quite dark, they came home, and she got supper for them all. After putting the children to bed and washing the dishes, she knitted or carded wool, for light diversion. She made all the cloth that was used for suits for my father and three tall sons. She wove all the cotton cloth that was used for sheets and bed ticks, and wove coverlets of intricate designs for the beds. For all these she first made the thread from raw materials, dyeing it to suit her taste. They were woven on a large loom. She would sit on a bench with her foot on a pedal, sending and returning a sort of bobbin to and fro with her hands. She was a very healthy woman, handsome with her blue eyes and black hair, and I think quite happy. I think she loved my father deeply, and loved working for her children. I know that they were married for at least forty years, and in all that time there was absolutely no other outside interest for either of them. Although I never saw the slightest display of affection either in actions or words, I know as I live, that they would not have understood any intimation that there might be any one else of importance to them in their personal lives. There was something irrevocable in their union;—it would be impossible for me to imagine one without the other.
My mother’s sister May was married to a man named Lafayette Brooks, and my father hated him like poison. I don’t know why, and no one ever said, but I think it was because Joseph, my oldest brother, spent too much time with Uncle Fate, and my father was jealous. Their house was on a hill, with tall pine trees in front which gave it a remote, cold, dignified look. It was painted white and looked spruce and well kept, while ours never had a coat of paint in all the years we lived in it. Our house looked poor and dingy, but probably that was because there were so many children. Aunt May didn’t have any at all.
We always knew when the field next to Uncle Fate’s was going to be plowed and planted, because the night before my father would get down his shotgun and spend hours cleaning it; taking it all apart and oiling it, whistling happily and licking his lips. This created tension in my mother and Aunt May. As a final disposal of Uncle Fate, my father would say scornfully, “The son of a bird dog! He’s so stingy he gets out of bed to turn over to keep from wearin’ out the sheets.”
I never liked Aunt May, but we went to her house a lot because she gave us wonderful food. Everything grew so big and plentiful for them! My mother had the same trees, bushes and plants, but we never had such quantities as Aunt May. Even wild things like chestnuts, persimmons, and wild grapes, grew bigger for them.
We never had family reunions, with all the grown-ups at table, and the children under foot as other families seem to have had. Only Aunt May and Uncle Fate lived near us, and as my father hated Uncle Fate, they never visited us. The only two relations I ever did see were Uncle Dink, who came once a year, whose real name was Benajah, and Aunt Matilda.
Uncle Dink was my mother’s youngest brother. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now, why he was called Dink, when he had the beautiful name of Benajah. He was a tramp,—he lived nowhere for certain, and was never known to have worked. He walked hundreds of miles, visiting relatives, and I imagine, remaining until forced to move on either by hints or more forceful persuasion. He rarely remained long with us, because, I think, he was afraid of my father, although I never heard an unkind word between them. Still, Uncle Dink seemed uneasy.
Anne and I were delighted when he came, for he knew all sorts of games, and made toys for us. He told exciting stories, to none of which my father gave the slightest credence, showing his scorn of such talk by a snort, and spitting with great vigor dangerously near Uncle Dink.
Uncle Dink was slight and blond, with a reddish mustache. His city clothes, different from the home-made ones of my father and brothers, were worn threadbare, and there was something pathetic about him,—a forced jauntiness that made me want to cry. He probably was lazy, as my father said, but he made wonderful new games for us from the crudest material. My father’s scorn, though wordless, was nonetheless scathing. My mother said nothing with great eloquence, but I loved it when Uncle Dink came.
The last time he came he did something that made my father so mad, so exasperated, that he yelled and swore at him, and I think poor Uncle Dink was too frightened ever to come again. What happened was that when we went to the field to transplant small cabbage plants, father told Uncle Dink to come too. He came, reluctantly. It was tedious, backbreaking work, and the sun was hot. A hole was made in the loose earth, with the finger, then water was poured into it; then the plant, carefully removed from hundreds on ...

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