Episode at the Pawpaws

WHEN the west wind blows up a thundershower that brings a moment of relief to the parched inmates of the jail house and sends the scorching July sun into retirement, then old Sam Johnson takes down his banjo and floods the corridors with his music. lie is old and gnarled, is Sam Johnson, but the passing years have not deadened his singing voice or obstructed the easy grace of his fingers. He plays and sings, as he played and sang years ago round the camp fires of Joe Taylor’s outlaws, the haunting folk songs of the hillmen that nearly always express the sorrow and the yearning hopefulness of life. He sings: —

With Sam Johnson, reminiscence follows music as surely as the rainstorm follows the lightning flash, and the well of his memory is filled with a store of strange and striking occurrences.

‘That song,’ says he, laying aside the banjo, ‘ is about the prisonment of mankind. You and I are prisoned here in the flesh, but lots of people outside are even more prisoned than we are because it’s a prisonment of the mind. The most jailed-up man I know has the right to go anywhere, but for more than fifty years he never leaves his own property, and then it’s a trip to the graveyard.’

‘That,’ says Phil Allen, ‘must be General Montgomery.’

‘He’s the man,’ says Sam Johnson. ‘Listen.’

I

It’s fifty-five years now since the General comes back from England and buys the Montgomery place, and my father is one of his first tenants. That’s how I am born in the shadow of the Montgomery house. You know where it is, eight thousand acres in the bend of the Kanawha below Pliny, and still the finest farm in all the mountains.

People that don’t know the General’s story wonder how it comes he settles down in an out-of-the-way section of the country, but that’s because the General is the man that burns Brittonsburg. Maybe you don’t know that story, so I ’ll tell you.

Back in 1863, when General Lee goes into Pennsylvania, one of the generals under him is Montgomery. At that, General Montgomery is the youngest general in the Rebel army. He is a poor man when the war starts, but belongs to a good family and marries a woman from the first families of Virginia. He gets the reputation of bein’ the hardest-boiled and the most despised officer in the army, but he is a valuable man for some purposes and goes up in the world. Lee uses him in Pennsylvania to superintend the foragin’, and that is how the General is in charge at Brittonsburg.

They tell a nasty story on the General at Brittonsburg which maybe is and maybe ain’t true, but, true or not, most everybody believes it. He tells the people of Brittonsburg, accordin’ to the story, that he won’t burn the town if they give him half a million dollars. The people of Brittonsburg scrape up the money and then the General burns the town anyway. He does this, they say, so he can pocket the half a million.

Anyway, the Government seems to think there is somethin’ to the tale, for the General is one of the Confederate officers they single out for punishment. So the General catches a ship to England as soon as the war is over, and stays there till 1875. Then he comes back and buys this place in the mountains, and never leaves it till his dyin’ day in 1928.

The Montgomery farm is one you can’t find the like of anywhere in the mountains. In the first place, it’s in the bend of the river where there is three thousand acres of bottom land. In the second place, the General is the first man that has tenant farmers do his work for him. His barns are ten times bigger than any other barns in the mountains and his acres are all cluttered up with little houses where the tenants live.

II

I remember the first time I see the General like it is yesterday, though I can’t be more than three years old. My baby brother is poorly at the time, and the doctor says he has to have cow’s milk. My old man buys a cow, and a day or two later he hears from the General.

‘Look here, Nate,’ says the General, stormin’ into the front room with his dander up, ‘you know it’s against the rules to have a cow on this place. What do you mean, anyhow?’

‘It’s on account of the baby,’ says the old man. ‘He’s poorly and the doctor says to give him cow’s milk.’

‘Damn the baby!’ says the General. ‘There ain’t pasture enough for my own cows as it is. Get rid of her.’

The General has sixteen cows and plenty of pasture land for a hundred, but he is that way with his tenants.

Raisin’ a large family breaks my old man’s spirit, I guess, for he says, ‘I’ll get rid of her, of course, General, but I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do about the baby. You could n’t let me have a little milk from your cows, could you?’

‘What!’ snaps the General. ‘Take it away from the hogs? Don’t be foolish.’

The General is a big man with a long, lean frame and a shock of hair that is gray even then. He lives fifty years after this, but I can’t seem to remember when he ain’t an old man; most of the time I think of him as a terrible unhuman monster that takes milk away from the babies. All his tenants feel the same way about him. They say he acts that way because he is raised to be a ‘nigger driver,’ and a poor man in his eyes ain’t half as important as a cow or a pig.

A man that lives on the Montgomery place can’t own a horse or a cow, and he can’t raise a garden. Them that raises gardens, says the General, has plenty to eat in the summer time and won’t work. The General himself has fine gardens and orchards, but never a vegetable or a slice of fruit goes to the tenants unless they steal them. Many a time when the cows are fresh and the hogs can’t possibly drink all the milk, I see them pour the extra milk into the gutters. And durin’ the blackberry season the General burns the brier patches to keep people from pickin’ the berries.

He pays his men about half enough to keep them from starvin’ to death, and the only way a man can keep even with him is by stealin’. All the tenants know this and act accordin’. I remember once when I’m a little older the General sends me and another boy with a team of mules and a road wagon to take a load of apples to the hogpen. His hogs drink milk and eat the finest fruit, but we don’t dare bite into an apple while we’re workin’. This time it is late in the evenin’, and the General says to leave the wagon beside the hogpen overnight and shovel the apples in the next mornin’. We do as he says, but after we take the mules back to the barn me and this other boy sends out the word to the far places. All that night you will see the General’s tenants sneakin’ up to the road wagon with empty coffee sacks and comin’ away with full ones. This is what the tenants call ‘keepin’ even with the General,’ and they get a big kick out of it.

As a boy I never think of the General as a man at all, but as some kind of a God-Almighty bein’ that rules the universe. When I think of it now, it’s hard to believe that right in these mountains, where a man will get himself shot for lookin’ cross-eyed in them days, there is a white-haired old man that beats his men with a cane and scares the very life out of them. Of course he don’t ever leave his farm, and a man with any spirit won’t work for him, but even so that don’t explain how it is he puts the fear of God into a man by simply lookin’ at him. There is somethin’ about this man hard to describe — a wild, cruel hardness that makes his blue eyes red like the rims of Hell and gives him a look of the Devil.

He is cunnin’ like the Devil, too, and clever as sin, and when he speaks it seems like the earth trembles.

III

That’s the way the General looks to me when I am a boy, and I am goin’ well on to fourteen years old before I ever see a sign of his bein’ a human bein’.

It happens about this time I get my first pair of store pants and make sheep’s eyes at Bob Sanders’s sister. Bob Sanders is the boy that helps me that time with the apple wagon. Of course I don’t really go courtin’ Bob’s sister, but Bob is a feller likes to play a banjo, and I go over there to practise. We play mighty late one night with Bob’s sister sittin’ up to hear us and makin’ me feel funny inside when she smiles my way, and along about midnight Bob says, ‘For my part, I can stand somethin’ to eat. What we need is fried chicken.’

He winks at me when he says this, for we know some of the General’s chickens is gettin’ out of the chicken lot and roostin’ in the pawpaw bushes in back. Several days before this we say we are goin’ to have chicken one of these nights. So this looks like a good night for chicken, and we tell Bob’s sister we will be back in half an hour.

This is one of the darkest nights I remember, but Bob and me know the way and we make the pawpaws without any trouble. We don’t see a light at the General’s place, which looks like he’s in bed, but we have to be careful on account of the watchdog. The General’s watchdog is the meanest in the county.

We have some trouble locatin’ the chickens in the dark and have to move about more than we figure on, so that we get clear down to the edge of the thicket. Here we spot ourselves a fine Rhode Island red pullet and are gettin’ ready to nab it when somethin’ moves not ten feet away. We know then somebody is with us, and the voice of the General comes out of the darkness and says:—

‘So! You’re back again, eh? All these years you keep comin’ back again and again. Well, I ’ll stop you this time.’

With that a gun flashes and a bullet skims the tip of my left ear. Naturally this scares the life out of Bob and me, and we don’t stop to find out what causes it. We break down plenty of pawpaw bushes gettin’ out of there, and finally get to the next holler safe and no holes through us. Then Bob scoots for his place and I scoot for mine, forgettin’ the chicken completely.

The shots wake up my family, which lives closest to the General’s house, and the old man wants to know what makes the racket. When I tell him, he says I am all kinds of a fool and will probably get in jail yet. We are still talkin’ about it when somebody runs into the yard, and the General says, ‘Open up, Nate! For God’s sake, open up quick! ’

We all figure that hell breaks loose sure enough this time and that the General follows me home. The only thing to do is to pretend like we don’t know what it’s all about, so I climb in bed and start sawin’ wood with a forty-horsepower snore while the old man greets the General.

‘Come with me, Nate,’ says the General. ‘I want your help. Bring the boy along, too.’

It ’pears like he is mighty upset about somethin’, and the old man, thinkin’ I snore too loud anyway, wakes me up. We light two lanterns as quick as we can, and go outside where the General is waitin’.

‘One of you walk on each side,’ says the General, ‘and keep close. Take hold of my arms. Go easy now, and if you see anything, throw yourselves around me.’

He is tremblin’ like a leaf and it’s a shock to me to see that the General is scared. Instead of the usual way he talks to people like they are lower than whale bait, his voice is soft and pleadin’ as if he needs help. We take hold of his arms and steer him back to the house as careful as we can, and all the way he keeps talkin’ in his pleadin’ voice.

He says, ‘They pretty near got me that time, but I was too quick for them. An hour later, though, they would get me. It’s the dark of the moon, you see, and I know their habits.’

Of course that don’t mean much to us, so the old man says, ‘Who is it you’re talkin’ about, General?’

‘Don’t you know?’ says the General. ‘It’s this feller from Brittonsburg — the feller from Brittonsburg and his brother.’

The old man says this is the first time in his life he hears — and one of the few times anybody ever does hear — the General mention Brittonsburg. Not a man on the place has the nerve to speak of it to his face. But under the spell of the night and the fear inside of him, the General breaks down and tells the story.

IV

‘Years ago, Nate,’ says he, ‘I’m the officer in command of the Confederates at Brittonsburg. Maybe you’ve heard about it in some of the lies they told on me when we burned the town. Well, there’s a thing happens at Brittonsburg that I don’t breathe to a livin’ soul, not even my wife, but it’s a thing that stays with me night and day every minute since. I’ll tell you about it, so you’ll know how to help me.

‘It’s this way. There’s a spy in the army up there, a woman spy by the name of Ethel McGuinness. You won’t find her in the history books, for the simple reason that nobody knows she’s a spy till just before Gettysburg, and only a few people know what happens to her after we find the evidence. The truth is, she is buried on the road to Gettysburg.

‘The same night I have her courtmartialed and shot as a spy a funny thing happens. I am workin’ late that night with a guard around the house, but only one sentry at the door, when I look up all of a sudden and find a Yankee civilian in front of me. He is a medium-sized man, very well dressed for war times; and, lookin’ beyond him, I see that the sentry is gone.

‘This Yankee civilian has a dangerous look in his eye, and he says, “General Montgomery, you have burned my home and now you have shot my wife as a spy. If you’re a prayin’ man, pray, for I’m goin’ to kill you.”

‘Of course I’m prepared for little incidents of this kind, and I kick a lever under the table that wakes the guard in the guardroom. Before I finish my prayer they are on him from behind and have him throttled. So far as I am concerned, the incident is closed when I make the sign that means, “Shoot him at sunrise,” but the Yankee gives a big laugh, and says, “You think I don’t know what that means, don’t you? Well, I do, and let me tell you somethin’ else. You can shoot me if you want to, but that won’t end it. Did you ever see anybody that looks like me before?”

‘I notice all the time he looks mighty familiar, and now it comes to me who he is. He is the twin brother of that sentry of mine that lets him in to me, and before this he’s a Yankee soldier. In looks he’s a dead ringer for the other feller, and I know what he means when he says that won’t end it. These fellers have mountain blood in them, and belong to a family that fights blood feuds. When they mark a man they will get him, if it takes a lifetime.’

The General’s voice trembles when he says this, and we see he ain’t so brave about it, neither. He may be the man that orders other men to be shot without the quiver of an eyelid and the man that maybe burns Brittonsburg for a half-million dollars, but he is in mortal fear of dyin’ himself. That wild look you see in his eye whenever you meet him is only half meanness. The rest of it is terror.

‘That night,’ says the General, ‘there must be treachery, for he gets away. And we don’t find his brother, neither. From that day to this they always dog me. In England I see one or the other, or maybe both, every time I go to the window. Twice they try to kill me, and only my iron jacket saves me. When I leave England and come here I lose them for a time, but now they’ve found me again. Them shots you hear a while ago mean they are still on the trail. I shoot at them, but they escape me. Always, always, they escape me.’

The last part of the General’s story makes me think he is nutty, but I don’t say so. In spite of his meanness I feel kind of sorry for the old codger, and we stay with him till daylight. We don’t see nothin’ nor hear nothin’, of course.

After daybreak I go up to the pawpaw thicket and get Bob Sanders’s cap that he leaves behind when he starts for safety. Then me and the old man go back home and go to sleep.

V

After this you will think the General will act a little more human toward us, but such ain’t the case. If anything, he gets wilder and meaner and more devilish-actin’ than before. He storms all over the place and raps his men with his cane somethin’ scandalous. I see him hit the old man one day, and I say to myself right then, ‘The first time he cracks me will be the last time. I ain’t married to this place, and I won’t stand for it.’

The very next day the General sends me with a team of mules and a wagon to get a load of firewood. All the General’s mules is mean, and these is the worst of the lot. After I load up the wagon and am ready to start for home, the mules decide they like the scenery up there and won’t move. I get me a club and start layin’ it on.

Whatever the men that drives mules thinks about the way to get them started, the General says you can’t whip a mule on his place. His theory is, I suppose, you will wait till the spirit moves them if it takes all summer. Well, about the time I convince them beasts that God likes animals in action, the General pulls up alongside mad as a hornet.

‘What!’ says he. ‘You dare strike my mules! Take that, you good-fornothin’ swine!’

He lays me a crack over the shoulders with his cane that makes me madder than ever. I throw down the lines and say, ‘ If you don’t like the way I drive these mules, suppose you drive them yourself. I don’t like the job nohow.’

He turns pale as a ghost when I say this, and his lips twitch like he is losin’ his mind. Then he is on me. As he comes he grabs an axe off the wagon bed, and hits me with the flat side at the base of the neck. It ain’t his fault he don’t kill me. When I wake up I know I am in bed in the General’s house, and Fannie, the General’s nigger woman, is nursin’ me.

Fannie is a good nurse and I don’t seem to be hurt much after all. The first mornin’ the General sticks his head in the door and sees I ain’t dyin’, and goes his way. That’s the last I see of him.

Fannie tells me he’s got worse and worse since that night he shoots at somebody in the pawpaw bushes. Nearly all the time he stays in his iron room with his guns around him. It seems like he can’t sleep unless there is music in the house. He gets three nigger musicians from Point Pleasant, and all night long they play outside his door. Their music is all sad music. I can hear that nigger tenor yet singin’: —

Through it all the General stays in his room with the door barred. What he thinks as he sits there with his guns around him and that devilish nigger music in the air nobody knows. At night while I’m there he don’t go out, but every mornin’ he clumps down the hall with his cane in his hand and you can hear the nigger wenches scream when he clouts them in the kitchen. Them nigger musicians is plumb scared to death, and the whole place goes round with their eyes poppin’ out.

On the third day I’m ready to leave, and I tell Fannie I don’t aim to take no more beatin’s from the General. I’ve got an uncle on Big Hurricane Creek in Putnam County, where I figure I’ll hang out till somethin’ breaks. Fannie says, ‘Gawd knows I wish I could go too, Mistuh Sam, but I’m too old, I guess. Good luck and Gawd bless you.’

She’s a right: nice old mammy, Fannie is, and I’m sorry a little later when I hear they take her to the graveyard. The General’s niggers don’t ever seem to live long.

VI

The first thing I do when I get home is to leave there. I make a vow then that never again will I set foot on the General’s property. First, I go up to my uncle’s for a while and then one day Joe Taylor comes along and gives me a job as water boy. Seven years I work for him without goin’ back, until I get the news that my kid brother is dyin’. In a way this is just another thing against the General, for I don’t forget how he refuses to let the boy have milk when he is a baby, but in all decency I have to go see him.

They bury the boy in the lot back of the hogpen next to that old nigger mammy, Fannie, and afterwards I stay on about a week helpin’ with farm work. I don’t see the General for several days, but they tell me he’s got over his wild spell. He’s still cranky, and hard, and treacherous to his tenants, but he ain’t been violent since that time he hit me with the axe, and he’s sent back the nigger musicians long ago. Sometimes durin’ the dark of the moon people hears him at night out in the pawpaw bushes, but nothin’ happens. He’s still a little nutty on that subject, but maybe he’s gettin’ better as the years go by.

While I ’m home this time I go back to my old habit of goin’ over to Bob Sanders’s of an evenin’ to play the banjo. Bob’s sister is a fine-lookin’ woman by this time, so the old man says my chief business is to see the gal. Maybe he’s right. Anyway, Bob and me sing and play the banjos till it gets late, like we used to a long time ago, and Bob’s sister sets up with us. I can tell from the way she looks at me with her eyelids kind of drawed down and a little smile at the corner of her lips that bein’ a bold, bad outlaw with Joe Taylor’s men don’t hurt none in that direction.

The night before I’m due to leave we get tired of the music, and start talkin’. We talk about old times and all the things we used to do together, and finally Bob says, ‘It’s this kind of a night and about this time of the year when you and me try to steal them chickens that time. Remember?’

Of course I don’t forget that, and we rehash the whole thing, till Bob says, ‘That reminds me, them infernal chickens still roost in the same place. We really ought to go and get them.’

He says this as a joke, but the old lure of stealin’ chickens is strong enough to take us out in the yard, where we can look longin’ly at the pawpaw thicket. The night is pitchdark like that other night several years ago, and while we can’t see the pawpaws on account of the darkness, we know how they look from long experience, and we wonder if the General is out there among them. Afterwards both of us say that thought about the General comes to us at the same time, a kind of premonition, I guess, for no sooner do we think it than somethin’ happens. There is a flash of fire in the midst of the pawpaws and a moment later we hear the reports of a pistol. Three shots there is altogether, and then down across the stillness of the valley a single cry of a human bein’ in agony.

We look at each other dazed-like for a minute until the lights come on at our place and the General’s, and we know other people has heard the shots, too. There is a lot of bustlin’ about with lanterns all of a sudden, and then we hear the General callin’: ’Oh, Nate!’ says he. ‘Nate Johnson! Come here quick!’

It sounds like he is mighty upset about somethin’, so Bob and me hit it over that way as fast as we can. The old man and several people from the house are on the job when we get there. The General is sittin’ on a stump a little ways up the thicket.

‘You’ll find him a little ways up that holler,’ says the General in a voice I can’t hardly recognize, it’s so hoarse and husky. ‘ Bury him where you find him.’

We go up the hill and find the victim lyin’ face downward in a pool of blood. With the glare of the lantern on him we see he’s a stranger in these parts, and he’s dead as a doornail. He is a medium-sized feller of middle age. On his left hand is a diamond ring with the initials ‘E. M.,’ and the label inside of his coat says ‘Churchill’s, London, England.’

We dig a grave there beside him and drop him in it. The General is the only mourner at the service. I don’t know why the General’s voice is husky and full of fear and a big tear stands in the corner of his eye, but the more I think of it the more I believe the General remembers this dead man has a twin brother.