Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey (3 page)

She paused and picked up my tumbler of whiskey and held it up against the dusky western sky to make the liquor gleam in a deepened hue. She put the glass down again and said, “My mother would call that ‘the color of sin.’ To her it was ‘the distillation of damnation.’” (Mrs. Weatherford, for her part, took an occasional vodka, neat.) She said, “Poppa made a clear, corn whiskey that would burn the gallstones out of your uncle’s brother.”

“You’re talking moonshine?” one of her friends asked.

“White lightning, bottled-in-the-barn booze. Ozark nose paint. Field whiskey. By whatever name you want, Momma knew it as sin, and she knew it was only a question of time before the Lord was going to settle up with Poppa. Now, at her insistence, he would read the evening Bible verses to us, but he could just as well have been reading the labels on a feed sack, and when it came to his still, there wasn’t anyone — man or woman or wife — going to argue him out of that. And the Sunday-school teacher didn’t help because he was known to accept on the q.t. a quart every holiday, including his birthday. He drank in his cellar and never showed himself until he’d finished it all and slept it off. The congregation said his wife was usually down there with him. And sometimes, so we heard, they’d get ‘plumb nekkid.’ Otherwise, he was vociferous against alcohol, and Momma accepted him because she thought his words might work on somebody. He liked to say, ‘I have known the jeopardous sin of liquor,’ as if those days were past.

“And of course Momma knew that without the money from Poppa’s still, she’d be hard-pressed to set the table three times a day for four of us. I’m talking now of the early thirties. Even our church dresses had mendings over the mendings. Poppa wasn’t above nipping into some of his finishings but never in front of us children. Even on a cold night, if he had a couple of nips, he’d stay down in the shed where the works were, curled up near the fire. He called it ‘the works.’ I think he drank mostly because of our poverty. He was ashamed of not providing more for us.”

Mrs. Weatherford, once she had our attention, would take long pauses, holding them like a concert master just to the right moment, then she’d follow on with her memory as if it were a score she knew well but hadn’t conducted in years.

Nodding toward the sunset, she said, “Over there, it’s almost like the northern lights. They call them the northern lights because they don’t shine in the South, or at least not very often down this way. In northwest Arkansas they hadn’t shone ever as far as anyone back then could recall. Nobody had any idea what they were.

“Well” — and here she took her first long pause — “they did shine one night, and they did it with a glory as if they were making up for all those years of dark skies. One evening Momma came out of the kitchen onto the porch to sit a spell before bed. My older sister, Maylene, and I were there waiting for her. It was late in the year, and she had her shawl on. She sat there humming a hymn, collecting herself, always wanting to be ready for salvation. She stopped in the middle of her hymn and said, ‘Why, girls, look over in that corner of the sky!’ and she pointed to the north toward a long ridge that sort of shut us in. ‘The Atgoods’ barn must be on fire!’ It was well past sundown, but the sky was rosy like dusk, except that bright sky was in the north. We went round the house to the front to see better, and there it was — the whole north was a pale curve of light rising from the tree line. We stood and watched it until we were certain it was truly getting brighter. Momma went to the window to holler up Poppa to come outside. He stepped out on the front stoop in his union suit he slept in when the weather cooled.

“By now there were rays like searchlights shooting up. Then the bottom part started turning orange and flickering just like fire. Poppa said, ‘That ain’t the Atgoods’,’ and Momma said, ‘Oh dear Jesus!’ I thought this was all good fun until I saw her face. She was alarmed. Alarmed bad. And I looked at Poppa. It was the same expression when he saw Maylene fall off the mule.

“I’m vowing to you the sky was like the old picture-show curtain in Fort Smith. I mean the sky was moving the way folds in the curtain swung when it got pulled open or closed. We just stood there watching until lower down the sky started getting even brighter, and rays seemed to kind of clump up and form into a big, flickering crown just like a king would wear.

“At the sight of that, Momma stepped back so sharply she banged her head against the house and didn’t even know it. She said, ‘It’s here! It’s here! It’s happening tonight!
This is the night!
’ And she grabbed me and Maylene and started pulling us toward the house. ‘What’s here?’ Maylene said. ‘What’s happening tonight, Momma?’ ‘The Lord, child! The Lord! The Lord’s a-coming!’

“Now, she was a practical woman, more clearheaded under pressure than Poppa who was still standing there in his droopy union suit and his mouth hanging open. I was starting to cry. Maylene said, ‘Should we get under the bed?’ ‘No, child! You don’t hide from the Lord! You girls go inside and put on your church dresses and lay out straight on the bed! And I mean straight.’ She shoved us toward the house, then called out like an afterthought, ‘And wash your feet!’

“We did it fast, but we didn’t get in bed. We went to the window. Now the sky had flashes coming up from below like gigantic flames. Momma had hold of Poppa’s arm and was shaking it and talking fast. All I heard was ‘And, Cloyd, I mean now!’

“The whole sky seemed to be on fire. Momma saw us in the window and yelled, ‘Get into bed and get R-E-A-D-Y! Ready! The Gates of Hades have been opened, girls!’ She and Poppa disappeared around the back and headed down into the hollow toward where the still was. But we didn’t get into bed — we went to the back porch and hid in the shadows. There were terrible sounds, Momma shouting, something smashing into wood and metal, glass breaking, and every so often a shower of sparks rose up. That went on for maybe twenty minutes, and then we smelled smoke, and then we saw a glow in the treetops down in the hollow. Maylene said, ‘Poppa’s burning the works.’

“It didn’t take long. We saw Momma coming toward the house. We ran back to the bed and got ourselves all laid out like we’d been told. She came to the door and looked in on us. I said, ‘I’m scared, Momma.’ She stepped into the room and stood over us. ‘This is Judgment Day, girls. If you’ve done right, you’ll be ascending. Graves all over the county are opening. The Arising has begun! The Glory has come!’ and she left the room. Then Maylene started crying. She was afraid Resurrection zombies were going to come forth and reach through the window and carry us off to damnation.

“Then Poppa came back. He wasn’t scared anymore. We heard him say to Momma — his voice was so weary, so defeated — ‘It’s gone. Every last quart of it. Gone.’ And Momma said, ‘Our need for money is gone too, Cloyd. This is all dross now. Wash yourself and come in and pray with us.’

“Momma called us into the front room and told us to get down on our knees. Maylene said, ‘Are we going to die now?’ And Momma said, ‘Girls, I can’t tell you. I’ve never been through one of these before.’

“Poppa came in with his church shirt on. I don’t know whether his face was red from the fire or from crying. Momma commenced praying, pointing out how we little ones were too young to have much sin attached to us. Then she took up Poppa’s cause, a more complicated one, given the liquor and his occasional cussing. I don’t remember much of it because I was watching the window. The sky had faded, but there was still enough light to see Jesus when he appeared to call us Home. After a while we went back to bed to wait, and the next thing I remember is the window was white with light and Maylene was asleep, her mouth open. I poked her to see if her soul had ascended yet. ‘Quit it!’ she said. Apparently it hadn’t.

“It was dawn. I got up. My Sunday dress was a muss of wrinkles. I went down to the hollow to where the works had been. It was just a heap of ashes and some twisted and scorched metal and broken glass everwhere.

“Everbody was up when I got back. Poppa was at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He wouldn’t talk. Momma said, ‘We’ll just go about our affairs until the Lord or one of his angels comes for us. But first, get down on your knees.’ And she went to praying again, pointing out the innocence of children, making specific comment about her responsibility for the time in the schoolyard when the elastic in my underpants broke and let them fall to the ground. Then she called on Poppa to ask forgiveness, but he just kept his head on the table. So she tried to intercede for his ‘Sin in the Hollow,’ emphasizing that the liquor he made was to provide for his family and, besides, he’d now renounced ‘Distilled Damnation’ by destroying the ‘Machinery of the Devil’ and pouring the ‘Liquid Hellfire’ into the ground. At that, Poppa raised his head as if to say something, but only a little moan came out, and he just put his weary head back down.

“Momma went on, working her way into her sins — leaving a few out, like judgmentalism — but before she could finish, we heard the sound of some old flivver come sputtering up toward the house. Maylene ran to the front porch and said, ‘Is Jesus coming for us in a Ford car?’ I went to the window and peeked from behind the curtain. I told them I didn’t think it was Jesus unless Jesus wore baggy seersucker pants and a slouch hat.

“We were all frozen. Even Poppa had his head up. There was a rap at the door that might as well have been a rifle shot, we all jumped so. Nobody moved. I’d never seen Momma so fixed. There was another rapping, and a voice said, ‘Hey in there! Lampkin!’ Poppa, maybe figuring he had nothing more to lose, slowly went to the door. ‘Lampkin!’ the voice called again. Like a summons.

“Poppa opened the door, opened it real cautious. The voice spoke again, too low for us to understand, and Poppa turned to us inside and said, ‘Tain’t Jesus. It’s a feller from Ioway.’ Aware that it might be Jesus in disguise to test her charity, Momma ordered Poppa to let him in. The stranger stepped in, removed his hat, and turned it nervously in his hands. Nobody said a word. We were waiting for him to tell us how to proceed to Heaven, or perhaps Hades, in Poppa’s case. The man just twiddled his hat. Maylene whispered to me Jesus hadn’t shined his shoes. Finally, to break the silence, he said, ‘That was some show in the sky last night.’

“Poppa said, ‘Tell my missus why you’re here.’ Can you imagine it? Momma was about to hear Jesus address her with his instructions for her salvation. If you could see her face! It was saying, ‘Yes, Lord? Yes, Lord? Show me The Way, Lord Jesus! O, the glory!’

“The stranger, still fiddling with his hat, turned to Poppa to make sure he was to divulge his mission. ‘Tell her,’ Poppa said. ‘Go ahead on.’

“‘Well, ma’am, I’m passing through, you see, and I got directed out here to your place.’ Momma, so excited, interrupted him, ‘And you’ve come for us!’ and he said, ‘Ma’am, I just come for a couple of quarts.’”

Here Mrs. Weatherford conducted a long pause. The longest yet, and she punctuated it with a sip of her vodka.

“Poor Momma!” she said. “Why, that stranger didn’t come to carry away her soul! He came to carry away a couple of quarts of Arkansas nose paint.”

And again Mrs. Weatherford performed a pause before her baton of words moved again.

“But then Momma recovered. Fast recovery was one of her strengths. It was a test! And she and Poppa had passed it! In triumph she said, ‘Gone! All of it gone! Cleansed with Righteous Fire! Gone!’ It was too much for Poppa. He went back to his chair and buried his head in his hands again. The stranger didn’t quite understand, but he knew something was wrong. He said, ‘Did you folks have a fire last night? I’m smelling smoke or something.’

“Momma said, ‘A Righteous Fire, right here on Earth, right here last night. One to match that glorious one of Yours in the sky.’ The man, who was stepping toward the door to leave, said, ‘It was a glory for certain last night. It was as good as we used to see them up in north Iowa, but I never seen so much flickering orange before.’

“At that, Poppa raised his head. ‘What’s it you’re talkin about?’ and the stranger said, ‘Them lights last night. That oral borlis or whatever they call it. You know, them northern lights.’

“Poppa got up real slow and went up to the stranger and said, ‘That’s what northern lights is? All them movin colors?’

“‘That’s them,’ the man said, and excused himself. He could smell trouble. Poppa told us to go to our room and close the door. We heard him yelling, then there was a terrible thud, and we came rushing out. Jesus must be throwing Poppa like he did the moneylenders! But there Poppa was, standing over Momma who was sprawled on the floor with a bloody lip. He was saying, ‘I just hope you didn’t know all the time, because if you did —’ Then he hurried out to catch the stranger before he got away. Loud enough for Momma to hear, he said to the stranger, ‘Give me ten days. You’ll have to bring your own jugs.’”

Mrs. Weatherford stopped and drained her little glass. One of her friends said, “And your mother?” Mrs. Weatherford thought about it. “Momma took that as final proof that some men can’t ever, by any force, be healed. Her time with Poppa would be in this world and only in this world.”

Then, cradling the empty glass, Mrs. Weatherford closed her eyes and seemed to be gathering herself. There was something more. The last lines of her recollections were always something more.

“My mother,” she said quietly, “was so locked into her notion of an afterlife of one kind or other she just didn’t put much value on their final years together here on Earth.”

3

Rivers and Dominoes

T
HE ARKANSAS JUNKET
was to be the first leg of a long trip that would become a continuing but not continuous journey. Q and I would set forth for several weeks, loop about, return home to pick up the mail and water the wilted begonia, then strike out again. A circuit more of directions than destinations. This pattern, I confess, had something to do with my becoming a high-mileage, back-route geezer who loves his travels but has come in his seniority to want them in smaller portions. Nothing sharpens a traveler for the road better than the grindstone of home, and never have I arrived home but with great relief nor have I ever set out except with eager expectation. The English writer William Hazlitt said in 1825, “I should like well enough to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterward at home.” Circling in and out of our place would be a compromised solution to such a wish.