Outside The Box

Last week I left the mountains beginning to select their fall attire and traveled south to another place rich with history and tradition, and fading memories. Within a few hundred yards of the place where my brother and I roamed the woods on misty September mornings, Erskine Caldwell was born. A little further up the road, Lewis Grizzard grew up, and Margaret Anne Barnes.

Kathy Sue Loudermilk and Murder in Coweta County had not been written when William and I wandered in the woods and fished the ponds and big lazy creeks of cherished memory. We had not read Tobacco Road or God’s Little Acre when we tiptoed through the shadows to creep up on the old house where our mother said the famous writer had been born. It was abandoned then, and naturally, we assumed it was haunted. We may or may not have thrown a rock at the side of the house (Mama didn’t raise us to bust windows), to frighten away any ghosts waiting to spook us.

Erskine was born in White Oak in Coweta County, but the town of Luthersville, down in Meriwether, claimed him as their own and moved the house there to be part of a museum. He wrote about poverty and racism in the South, but there was no sign of either at the County Line Cafe that sits at the edge of town. Sometimes it takes a reporter or a politician to detect such things, and remind us, frequently, that they exist, but none of those folks were invited to breakfast that morning while neighbors and strangers enjoyed friendly conversation over eggs and hash browns.

It had been too many years since I visited my brother’s place in the country. Each of us made a home on the farms where our maternal and paternal grandparents lived. He preferred white oaks and slow-moving streams while I favored whitewater and sourwood honey. The barbecue is better down there, but we have fresh-caught trout.

William took me to see the old house, now fallen down. A sturdy chimney presides over the departure of memory as the earth slowly reclaims its own. I remember our mother’s story of the first night she spent in that house as a little girl. Snow blew in through a hole in the roof until the clouds passed, and they could see stars. Bundled against the cold under layers of quilts, she and our grandmother cried together until our grandfather climbed up on the roof in the middle of the night and patched the hole. It was an early chapter in a story of strength and sacrifice and perseverance as he rebuilt that house by hand and made a fine home of it. It was already old, but he built it back strong, and only the ravages of time could bring it down.

The old barn still stands, and a corner of a shed that resisted the second law of thermodynamics long enough to gift me with a glimpse of a moment frozen in time. Stooped low to peer under the collapsing roof of the room where the fishing tackle of legend was stored, I saw a corner still intact, and a rod and reel that was old when we were young hung just where our grandfather left it. I was reluctant to disturb it, to break the charm and allow entropy to rush in, but that old fishing pole will hang on my own wall now and preserve the memory a bit longer, until time reclaims that as well.

A mile or two up the road are the remains of the old Bailey Brothers’ farm where we spent many a quiet Saturday afternoon fishing in the well-stocked ponds of Miz Lucille. One of Dad’s hobbies was managing fish ponds for people in exchange for fishing rights, and Lucille’s ponds were stocked with bass, bream, and catfish aplenty. I attribute my good health today to the grace of God and a body that grew up eating fish on a regular basis of a quality that no longer exists.

Over the years, Lucille became a good friend of the family, and after her husband, Will, passed away, we helped her fend for herself, alone now in her big rambling house. Word got out among the kind of folks that will steal from a widow that she was alone and her pond full of fish was unprotected. Lucille had a different opinion, and a shotgun she knew how to use. Respect for her shotgun kept the house safe at night, but a couple of rogues knew its limits and taunted her on the nights when they stole fish out of range of her ire.

“Now Miz Lucille, don’t be like that!” They would laugh at the shotgun blast from the house on the hill and continue stealing fish. The next morning she would find their calling card: empty beer bottles, and cigarette butts.

When she told Dad about her frustration, he provided a .22 rifle, a few boxes of .22 long rifle cartridges, and a short course on ballistics: “Wait until the moon is shining through the clouds and aim at the water well away from where you see the glow of the cigarettes. You might have to repent if you kill one of them. If you hit it just right, the bullet will ricochet, and that will sure get their attention.”

Lucille did just as Dad said, and she could hardly stop laughing when she told us about it. “I waited until one of them lit his old cigarette and then I started pinging the water. After the third or fourth ping, they dropped their poles and ran, and I heard them holler and crash through the woods on the backside of the dam. One of them even left the seat of his pants in my barbed wire fence! They haven’t been back since!”

Lucille didn’t have any children but she took pleasure in us kids and always had cake and Kool Aid ready when we would visit. She let us wander about her house and explore its many rooms. The Bailey Brothers were something of a rarity in those days. They were farmers who became wealthy from farming. The house was filled with antiques, furniture imported from Europe, teak and mahogany, hand-carved banisters on the stairs, oak paneling, and beadboard.

We remember Lucille’s vigor and joyfulness, but like the southern gothic novels that rise up out of the damp ground like a morning mist in that land of heat and humidity, she left this life with a struggle. Brought down by a stroke late in life, she lost the ability to speak or to care for herself. With a child’s memory I don’t know the gothic details of her family history, or why the cold and venomous sister we would sometimes see at Lucille’s resented her, or anyone who came to visit so much. Perhaps it was a simple case of jealousy and greed for her sister’s wealth, but when Lucille was stricken, her sister placed her in a private care home with strict instructions for the staff to allow absolutely no visitors.

This was unacceptable to my brother and our dad, who determined to visit her anyway. They were convinced that Lucille was still “in there,” only trapped by a body that would not respond and a sister who coveted what she might leave behind. In a flash of inspiration, William managed to gain access to her room with an electric typewriter. With a gnarled hand gripping a pencil, Lucille was able to type one letter at a time with the eraser end and let the world know that she heard and understood everything, and still had a mind and a will of her own.

Lucille is long gone, but the shell of her magnificent house still stands. Everything of value has been stripped from it and sold. It’s almost an embarrassment to look at it now. It feels like accidentally catching a glimpse of moonlight shining through your aged grandmother’s nightgown. Yet the house, though unclothed and exposed to the world, still stands erect, with dignity. Standing on the porch, you can look across the field where acres of barns and outbuildings once stood. The land belongs to her beloved church now, which tells me that Lucille had her way in the end.

I miss my brother. Too many miles of frustrated and despairing people waiting in traffic make the journey between our memories more difficult. We grew older together too many miles apart, but when we laugh and remember, we grow younger.