Whistling Past the Graveyard (7 page)

“It weren’t the wind,” said Granny Adkins.

The young man perched on the edge of the other rocker, head tilted to lift one ear like a startled bird, listening to the sound. He was stick thin and beaky nosed, and Granny thought he looked like a heron—the way they looked when they were ready to take sudden flight. “Are you sure?”

“Sure as maybe,” said Granny, nodding out to the darkness. “The wind fair howls when it comes ‘cross the top of Balder Rise. Howls like the Devil himself.”

“Sounds like a howl to me,” said the young man. “What else could you call it?”

Granny sucked in a lungful of smoke from her Pall Mall, held it inside for a five count, and then stuck out her lower lip to exhale in a vertical line up past her face. She didn’t like to blow smoke on guests and there was a breeze blowing toward the house. A chime made from old bent forks and chicken bones stirred and tinkled.

She squinted with her one good eye—the blue one, not the one that had gone milky white when a wasp stung her there forty years back—and considered how she wanted to answer the young man.

Before she spoke, the sound came again. Low, distant, plaintive.

She left her initial response unspoken for a moment as they sat in the dark and listened.

“There,” she said softly. “You hear it?”

“Yes, but it still sounds like a—”

“No, son. That ain’t what I meant. Can you
hear
the sound? The moan?”

“Yes,” he said, leaning into the wind, tilting one ear directly into its path.

“Now,” said Granny, “can you hear the wind, too?”

“I…” he began, but let his voice trail off. Granny waited, watching his face by starlight, looking for the moment when he
did
hear it. His head lifted like a bird dog’s. “Yes…I hear it.”

They listened to the moan. It was there, but the wind was dying off again and the sound was fainter, thinner.

“That, um, ‘moan,’” the young man said tentatively, “it’s
not
the wind. You’re right.”

She nodded, satisfied.

“It’s a separate sound,” continued the young man. “I—I think it’s being carried
on
the wind.” He looked to her for approval.

She gave him another nod. “That’s another thing about living up here in the hills,” she said, tying this to their previous conversation. “When you live simple and close to the land, you don’t get as blunt as folks in the cities do. You hear things, see things the way they are, not the way you s’pose them to be. You notice that there are more things around you, and that they’re there all the time.”

The young man nodded, but he was half distracted by the moans, so Granny let him listen for a spell.

His name was Joshua Tharp. A good name. Biblical first name, solid last name. A practical name, which Granny always appreciated because she thought that a name said a lot about a person. She would never have come out onto the porch if he’d had a foreign-sounding name, or a two first-name name, like Simon Thomas. Everyone Granny knew with two Christian names was a scoundrel, and half in the Devil’s bag already. However, this boy had a good name. There had been Tharps in this country going back more generations than Granny could count, and she knew family lines four decades past the War of Northern Aggression. Her own people had been here since before America was America.

So, Joshua Tharp was a decent name, and well worth a little bit of civility. He was a college boy from Pittsburgh who was willing to pay attention and treat older folks with respect. Wasn’t pushy, neither, and that went a long way down the road with Granny. When he’d shown up on her doorstep, he took off his hat and said ‘ma’am,’ and told her that he was writing a book about the coal miners in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and was using his own family as the thread that sewed the two states together.

Now they were deep into their third porch sitting, and the conversation wandered a crooked mile through late afternoon and on into the full dark of night. Talking about Granny and her kin, and about the Tharps here and the Tharps that had gone on. Joshua was a Whiskey Holler Tharp, though, but there was no one left around here closer than a third cousin with a couple of removes, so everyone told him to go see Granny Adkins.

“Hell, son,” said Mr. Sputters at the post office, “Granny’s so old, she remembers when God bought these mountains from the Devil, and I do believe the Good Lord might have been short-changed on the deal. You want to know about your forebears—and about what happened when the mine caved in—well you go call on ol’ Granny. But mind you bring your full set of manners with you, ‘cause she won’t have no truck with anyone who gives her half a spoonful of sass.”

Granny knew that Sputters said that because the old coot phoned and told her. Wrigley Sputters was a fool, but not a damn fool.

Come calling is exactly what young Joshua did. He came asking about his kin. That was the first day, and even now they’d only put a light coat of paint on that subject. Granny was old and she was never one to be in a hurry to get to the end of anything, least of all a conversation.

Joshua’s people, the true Whiskey Holler Tharps, were a hard working bunch. Worked all their lives in the mines, boy to old man. Honest folk who didn’t mind coming home tired and dirty, and weren’t too proud to get down on their knees to thank the good Lord for all His blessings.

Shame so many of them died in that cave-in. Lost a lot of good and decent folks that day. Forty-two grown men and seven boys. The Devil was in a rare mood that day, and no mistake. Guess he didn’t like them digging so deep.

Granny cut a look at the young man as he sat there studying on the sounds the night brought to him. He was making a real effort to do it right, and that was another good sign. He came from good stock, and it’s nice to know that living in a big city hadn’t bred the country out of him.

“I can’t figure it out,” said Joshua, shaking his head. “What is it?”

Granny crushed out her cigarette and lit another one, closing her eyes to keep the flare of the match from stealing away her night vision. She lit the cigarette by touch and habit, shook the match out, and dropped it into an empty coffee tin that had an inch of rain water in it.

She said, “What’s it sound like?”

That was a test. If the boy still had too much city in him, then there would be impatience on his face or in his voice. But not in Joshua’s. He nodded at the question and once more tilted his head to listen.

Granny liked that. And she liked this boy. But after a few moments, Joshua shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s almost like there are two sounds. The, um,
moan
, and something else. Link a faint clinking sound.”

“Do tell?” she said dryly, but with just enough lift to make it a question.

“Like…maybe the wind is blowing through something. A metal fence, or…I don’t know. I hear the clink and the moan, but I can’t hear either of them really well.” He gave a nervous half laugh. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“Never?”

“Well, I—don’t spend a lot of time out of doors,” he confessed. “I guess I haven’t learned how to listen yet. Not properly, anyhow. I know Granddad used to talk about that. About shaking off the city so you could hear properly, but until now I don’t think I ever really understood what he was saying.”

Another soft moan floated over the trees. Strange and sad it was, and Granny sighed. She watched Joshua staring at the darkness, his face screwed up in concentration.

Granny gestured with her cigarette. “What do you think it
might
be?”

“Is it…some kind of animal?”

“What kind of animal would make a sound like that, do you suppose?”

They sat for almost two minutes, waiting between silences for the wind to blow. Joshua shook his head.

“Some kind of cat?”

That surprised Granny and now she listened, trying to hear it through his ears. “It do sound a might like a cat,” she conceded, then chuckled. “But not a healthy one. Had a broke-leg bobcat get his leg caught in a bear trap once and hollered for a day and a night.”

“So—is that what it is? A wounded bobcat? Is that clinking sound a bear trap?”

Granny exhaled more smoke before she answered. “No, son, that ain’t what it is.”

“Then…?”

She chuckled. “It’ll keep. You interrupted your ownself, son. You was asking me a question before we heard yonder call.”

He nodded, but it was clear that he was reluctant to leave the other topic unfinished. Granny felt how false her smile was. The mysteries out in the dark would keep. Might have to keep without the other shoe ever dropping.

“I…” Joshua began, fishing for the thread of where they’d been. “Right…we were talking about the day Granddad left for Pittsburgh. He said it was because there was no work, but he never really talked about that. And when he moved to Pittsburgh, he always worked in a foundry. He never wanted to go back to the mines.”

“No…I daresay old Hack Tharp would never set foot in a mine again. ‘Specially not in these hills, and probably nowhere. Lot of folks around here with the same thought. Those that stayed here gave up mining. I know men who wouldn’t lift a pickaxe to go ten feet into a gold mine, not after what happened. Hack was one of ‘em.”

“Tell me about him. He died when I was ten, so I never had a grown-up conversation with him. Never got to really know him. What was he like?”

Granny smiled, and this time the smile was real. “Hack was a bull of a man, with shoulders from here to there and hands like iron. A good man to know and a handsome man to look at. Hack worked himself up to foreman down in the Hangood Mine. Swung a pickaxe for twenty long years down in the dark before he was promoted, and still sucked coal gas for twenty more as the foreman. The men liked him, no one crossed him, and his word was good on anything he put it to. Can’t say as much about a lot of people, and can’t say half as much about most.”

Joshua nodded encouragingly.

“But Hack up and moved,” said Granny. “He was the first, and over the years more’n sixty families have left the holler. Ain’t no more than a hundred people left on this whole mountain, and I know of four families that are fixin’ to leave before long. Might be that I’ll be the last one here come next year, if
I’m
even here a’tall.”

“People started leaving because the mine closed?”

“They started leaving
after
the mine closed. This place went bad on us that day, and it ain’t ever goin’ to get better.”

The moaning wind and the soft metallic
clank
drifted past the end of her statements almost as if it were a statement itself.

Joshua cleared his throat. “Do you remember when Granddad left? I got the impression it was pretty soon after the disaster.”

“It were on the third Sunday after the cave-in. Hack packed up only what would fit into that old rattle-rust Ford pick-up of his and drove off. Never came back, never called, never wrote. But…before he left, though, he came to say goodbye to ol’ Granny.” She sighed. “’Course I wasn’t Granny back then. Just a young, unmarried gal who thought the sun rose in the morning ‘cause it wanted to see Hack Tharp.”

“Pardon me if this is rude, but…were you and Granddad sweethearts?”

Granny blew out some smoke. “There was no official understanding between us, you understand. Every girl in five counties wanted to catch Hack’s eye, but for a while there I had some hopes. Maybe Hack did, too, ‘cause I was the only one he lingered long enough to say farewell to. And—I blush to say it to a young feller like you—but I was something back then. You wouldn’t know it now, lookin’ at this big pile o’ wrinkles, but I could turn a few heads of my own. Thought for a while that Hack might have been charmed enough to stay ‘cause I asked him, but the cave-in plumb took all those thoughts out of his mind. He was set on leaving and he knew that I never would.”

“Even if he’d asked?”

She sighed. “There are some things more important than love, strange as it sounds. At least…I thought so back then. You see…I had a talent for the old ways. With a talent for dowsing and a collection of aunts who were teaching me the way things worked in the world. Herbs and healing and luck charms and suchlike. Some folks call us witches. Even seen it in books. Mr. Sputters at the post office showed me a book onest called
Appalachian Granny Magic.
And I guess it’s fair enough. Witch comes from some older word that means ‘wise,’ and that’s all it is. Women who know such and such about things. My Aunt Tess was a fire witch. She could conjure a spark out of green wood with no matches and a word. My own mammy was the most famous healer in the holler. People’d come from all over with a sickness, or send a car for her to deliver a baby.”

“I heard about that. Granddad told me a little. He said you could find water. He called you a
dowser
.”

She nodded. “I been known to do that now and again. Mostly I make charms to ward off badness and evil. Half the rabbits in these hills walk with a limp since I started selling they's feet to ward off ill luck. And you can walk for two days and not find a soul who ain't wearing one of my snakeskin bags on their belts. Real toad’s eyes in ‘em, too, because fake charms don’t stop nuthin’.” She smiled. “Does that scare you, young Joshua? All this talk about witches?”

“Not as much as that sound does,” he said, nodding to the night. “It’s really creeping me out.”

Granny puffed her cigarette.

“But the witches thing?” Joshua said. “No, I read up on that when I started researching this area for my book.” He cleared his throat. “You were telling me about how Granddad came to say goodbye.”

“So I was. Well…Hack Tharp stood foursquare in my yard, not two paces from where I sit right now. ‘Mary Ruth,’ he said, ‘I’m gone. I can’t live here no more, not with all the dead hauntin’ me. My brothers, they never had a chance. They was so obsessed with earning that bonus that they went crazy, picking and digging like the Devil was whipping them, and then that whole mountain just up and
fell.
And it went down fast, too. Killed ‘em before they could git with God. I was right outside taking a smoke when the mouth of Hell opened up and swallowed those boys. I haven’t had a night’s sleep since it happened. And I won’t ever sleep a night if I stay here.’