Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

THE WITNESS

IT HAPPENED ON no particular day-not close enough to Christmas or his birthday for Sam to mark the time. It was warm, though, because he was playing outside, and there were white flowers on the tree in Aunt Till’s yard. Her cat Old Painter lay tucked in the hedge, keeping one yellow eye on the birds wobbling on the clothesline. He scarcely moved when Sam crept close to his hiding place and snapped a twig from the hedge. Sam was thinking about elephants.

Dad ought to be home soon. Maybe he could get him to tell the story again. Sam walked to the ditch at the edge of the yard and looked down the gravel pike toward town. No one in sight; it was too early yet for Dad to have walked the three miles home from the machine shop. The ghost train had just rattled past on the tracks behind the house.

When the family first rented the white frame house, the year Sam was three, it was supposed to be haunted. Pictures fell off the wall for no reason; dishes rattled on the shelf and sometimes fell. Something white had been seen at night moving behind the house. A few weeks after they moved in, their neighbor “Aunt” Till had been hanging out her washing and had called across the hedge to pass the time of day with Sam’s mother. The two women met at the privet hedge, and Aunt Till talked a mile a minute. Addie, who like all Solitary McCrorys lived in mortal fear of being talked at, stood twisting her apron until she came up with something to say. “What about them ghosts?”

She started to recite the peculiar goings-on, but by the time she finished Aunt Till was smiling and shaking her head.

“Shoot far,” she said. “When them heavy coal drags come south or the time freight goes by headin’ north, that whole little house of yourn purt near shakes itself to pieces. No wonder yer pictures fall. You’ll fall out of bed if you ain’t keerful.”

But the white phantom out back?

Aunt Till studied about it. “Well,” she allowed, “sometimes of an evening I go out back there in my nightgown, looking for that no-good rascal Old Painter.”

They weren’t bothered by haints after that, though Old Painter continued to roam and squall. They took to calling that northbound freight the Ghost Train, first as a family joke, and then from force of habit.

Sam was twisting the hedge twig into the damp ground, trying to make it stand up by itself. He pulled the leaves off the lower part of the stem to give himself a better grip. After a few more turns the stick found a wobbly purchase in the wet earth. Sam scooped up a handful of dirt and patted it around the base of the twig. He wondered if it would take root if he left it long enough, like Grammaw Hemrick’s switch. Every time they went up home to Preachin’ Grampaw’s, Sam would stare at the mulberry tree in the front yard, and try to picture Grammaw as a young bride from Sinking Creek riding sidesaddle over the mountains with a young black-haired Preachin’ Grampaw.

He must have heard tell a dozen times how she got off her horse at her husband’s homeplace and stuck that riding switch in the ground in the front yard, where it grew into a mulberry tree with limbs strong enough to support him and Jamie both for berry-picking. Sam liked going up-home even if he was a little scared of his stern old grandfather. The house was always full of grown-up uncles, and there was Jamie, the youngest, who was only two years older than Sam, even if he was an uncle. That mulberry tree was the least of the wonders up in Pigeon Roost. The uncles had rigged up a generator in the barn and made their own electricity with creek water, so that the old homeplace had real electric lights, while Sam’s parents’ house like the rest of those in town was still using oil lamps. Sam liked to hear the uncles tell how they rigged up the old waterwheel on the gristmill with the materials Lewis brought back from up north, and how they wired up the house, the barn, the outhouse, the chicken shed, and even the backyard and put in electric lights. Then Francis would tell one of his stories about coon-hunting or bee-tracking. He always had a couple of hives in white boxes down near the creek. Last, and best, was Sam’s daddy’s turn. Wesley, the town-dweller now, would allow as how it was all right to track coons or play with your mechanical toys, but he was a man of experience: he’d been there when they hanged the elephant. Sometimes he’d even get Grammaw to take down the family album and he’d turn to a picture of himself and announce: “That was the day they done it.” The photograph showed a solemn young man with the Hemrick cheekbones staring into the camera. It was a close shot of his head and shoulders against a gray sky; there was no sign of the elephant or its railroad gallows, but Sam never forgot which picture was the crucial one, proving that his daddy had actually been there.

Sam tested the twig with his forefinger. It gave a little to the pressure, but remained firmly in position. The gallows was ready. Now he’d go and get the tiny wooden elephant that Dad had carved for him. It took Sam a while to get back out of the house, once he got in. He found the elephant right off, but when he went to ask his mother for twine, she’d put him to work setting the jars of home-canned pickles and beans on the table. She was busy in the kitchen frying up side-meat and potatoes for supper. By the time he got back out, Dad was already home, chopping firewood for the kitchen range.

“Don’t get too close here,” he warned when Sam stopped to watch. “Wood chip might catch you in the eye.”

Sam nodded and took a step back, but kept watching. Dad wouldn’t be doing any storytelling now-too busy. Once he got the stove wood chopped, they’d have to go in and eat, and by then it might be too late for him to be allowed outside. Sam thought about this stay of execution for his wooden elephant. He almost had the story down by heart, anyway. He decided to go back to the twig and do it from memory. He could always ask Dad later if he forgot any of the parts to the story.

Sam walked over to the hedge and took the string and the carving out of his pocket, and lay down in the grass beside the gallows-twig. He wrapped the twine once around the tiny elephant’s neck, and began to experiment with different ways of wrapping the end to make a knot. As he worked, he thought the story to himself in the words Dad always used.

“Her name was Murderous Mary-leastways that’s what they called her after Kingsport. She was a performing elephant with one of them little traveling circuses, and they were doing a show in Kingsport. Some figure she had a new trainer; boy didn’t seem to know much about the beasts, seems like. He was a-setting on her head and parading all them circus elephants to a water hole, when Mary spied a watermelon rind by the side of the road and she went for it. Well, when she veered out of line, that feller on her head, he jerked at her hard with a spear-tipped stick that they have, but he musta done it too hard because Mary threw back her head and let out a bellow. Then before he knowed what was a-happening, she reached around with her trunk and snatched him off her back and threw him at a lemonade stand.

“He probably coulda lived through that, but Mary wasn’t about to let him. She went over to him and stepped on his head, and that was all she wrote. That was one dead trainer. The blacksmith run out of his shop right then with a 32-20 pistol and put a couple of shots into her, but it didn’t do no good. They say she didn’t even act like she felt it. I wasn’t there when it happened. That was in Kingsport. They got her on back to the circus with the rest of ’em and she was in the show that same evening.

“By morning, though, people had been a-studying about it and decided that if she’d gone and killed a man, she’d best be made to pay the price. They couldn’t do the job in Kingsport, though. Warn’t no gun around that could put her down. I’ve heerd they tried to electrocute her, but that didn’t do no good. Said she just danced a little, that’s all.

“Then somebody took a notion they ought to hang her, and the circus came on over to Erwin. It mighta been acoming here anyway. Mary was still a-working. Wasn’t no place to lock her up. They used her to push the wagons off’n the freight cars and set the tent poles up, and that afternoon, when the show was over, they took her down to the railroad yards, where they kept the big derrick-”

“Get in the house!” The voice in Sam’s head was drowned out by the same voice from behind him, the quiet kind of yelling that really meant business.

Sam looked up at his father. For a moment he thought that Dad was angry about his elephant game, but then he saw that he wasn’t even looking at Sam. He kept glancing toward the backyard. Before Sam could get to his feet, Dad jerked him up by the scruff of his trousers, and gave him a swat on the bottom.

“I said: git!”

Sam got.

He ran for the house without a word, because he could tell from Dad’s voice and the look on his face that something was up. Dad was still standing there in the yard. Sam glanced over at the woodpile beside the car shed. The ax was stuck in a log, just where Dad had left it. He took the steps two at a time and slammed the front door behind him.

In the small parlor, Sam looked around. Mom was still in the kitchen, seeing to the biscuits, or maybe she was in their room feeding Frances Lee. Anyhow, she hadn’t seen him come in. He hoped she hadn’t heard the door. Walking as quiet as he could to make up for the door-slamming, Sam slipped off to his room at the back of the house. The window beside his bed looked out on the backyard and the railroad tracks. It was a little, bitty square of a window set high up the wall just to let light in, but Sam knew that if he stood tiptoe on the top of his mattress he could just see out of it. He used to count the cars on the night train that way when the folks thought he was already asleep.

Sam scrambled up on his bed, and braced his hands against the wall to steady himself. When he stood up on tiptoe, his eyes and nose just cleared the sill of the window.

Dad was standing a foot or two away from the side of the outhouse, his hands in his pockets, like he was waiting, but Sam couldn’t see for what. No train was coming. The track in front of him was empty, and past it was Old Man Larson’s pasture, then the woods, then Buffalo Mountain, like the back of a big green elephant against the red sky. Sam turned his head again to see what Dad was doing, and a movement down the tracks caught his eye.

Down the tracks walked a young black-haired man in a gray suit coat and bib overalls. He was a good long way away, but he kept walking slowly down the tracks, between the rails, not on the rails like Sam did when he was playing tightrope walker. Sam looked to see where he was headed, and by then he had got it figured out. Up the tracks came a tall, sandy-haired man in white painter’s overalls.

And Sam had a ringside seat!

The two of them kept walking toward each other, not saying a word. When one of them got level with Aunt Till’s house and the other got level with Sam’s, Sam saw Dad duck behind the outhouse, and he heard the crash and whine of revolvers. He just had time to see the gun in Black Hair’s hand before the man fell on his back. Sandy Hair stood still for a minute watching him, and then he turned and walked into Sam’s yard, where Dad met him. They talked to each other for a moment and Sam could see Sandy Hair pointing to the blue-steel revolver he still carried. Dad nodded, and Sandy walked past him into the car shed. Dad made no move to follow him. He came out almost at once and left. Sam noticed that he wasn’t carrying the gun anymore.

He turned to look at Black Hair on the railroad tracks. An older man in a black coat had reached him, and was getting him to his feet. Sam could see the red splotch on the bib of Black Hair’s overalls. The older man had put his shoulder under Black Hair’s arm and was half carrying him down the railroad embankment and into Sam’s yard. Dad spoke to the older man for a few moments-the hurt man had his eyes closed and didn’t say anything.

Then Dad went into the car shed and backed out the Model T Ford. He helped lay the hurt man in the backseat of the car, and then he got behind the wheel, nodding for the older man to get in. The man motioned for Dad to wait and disappeared into the car shed. In less than a minute he came hurrying out and got in the car. Dad backed down the driveway, and Sam ran to the front window to see which way they were headed. He got there in time to see a flash of black turning up dust in the direction of Johnson City.

“Reckon we’ll eat,” said Mom, coming up beside him.

It still wasn’t dark. Dad had come back home and parked the Ford in the driveway, but he didn’t come in the house to eat. Sam waited until Mom got busy in the kitchen with the washing up and then he slipped out the front door. Dad had a bucket of water and a rag, and he was cleaning off the backseat. Sam watched him scrub the leather seat covers with the rag and then wring it out red into the water bucket.

“Is he gonna be all right?”

“Like as not,” said Dad, without looking up. He didn’t turn around or leave off scrubbing until he heard the other car pull up into the driveway. The second black Ford stopped a few feet behind Dad’s car, and the driver got out and came toward them. He was a big man with a white coat and a Wyatt Earp mustache. On his finger was a big ring in the shape of a snake, with two red stones for eyes. Sam knew him from church: he was the High Sheriff of the County.

“Go on off and play,” said Dad.

Sam trudged off as slow as he could safely go, to the spot by Aunt Till’s hedge where the elephant was still hanging. He took it down from the hedge twig and stuffed it in his pocket. If he took it back to the house now, he could walk past the cars and hear what was being said. Sam took the elephant back out of his pocket so that his errand would be conspicuous, and, dangling it on a string in front of him, he started back for the house. The High Sheriff was standing there with his hands on his hips, looking at Dad with his head cocked sideways like a rooster.

“I wish I could help you, Sheriff,” Dad was saying as Sam drew close. “But I didn’t see a thing.”

“You sure now?”

“Well, I was in the car shed here, arranging some tools when it happened, so I-”

Sam saw that Dad had stopped talking because he’d noticed him listening. Dad hadn’t seen the fight? But Sam had seen! He was just opening his mouth to tell the wonderful tale to the High Sheriff when Dad grabbed his arm and swatted him on the bottom again. He chased him into the house and told him in no uncertain terms to stay there, so Sam had to watch the rest of the conversation through the parlor window, hiding in the curtains.

After a few more minutes of conversation, the High Sheriff got back in his car and drove off. Dad came in the house then.

“Is there gonna be a trial?” asked Sam’s mother from the kitchen doorway.

Dad shook his head. “No witnesses. And the wounded man don’t know who shot him.” He turned to Sam who wanted to ask questions, but thought better of it. “Don’t play in the car shed for a couple of days.”

Sam nodded, and went off to his room. That question didn’t need asking.

The next day while Dad was at work and Mom was making bread, Sam pilfered the car shed. The sides of the shed were lined with shelves filled with fruit jars, tools, and odd scraps of wood and metal. Sam picked his way past the two-by-fours and the brass-bound trunk and began to investigate the bottom shelf where the tools were kept. When he noticed three red-and-white fishing floats on the shelf, he opened Dad’s tackle box and found the first revolver, a.32 special, nickel-plated. It was a shiny thing with red rubber grips on the handle, and it used to hang by the trigger guard on a nail over the bed. One of the family stories that they told up-home was how Sam had been a fretful baby the summer he was teething, and he used to cry for the shiny toy hanging on the wall above him. Finally Mom unloaded it and gave it to him to play with, and the rubber handle grips felt so good to his itching gums that it did keep him quiet. When Dad finally traded it for that Atwater Kent table radio, it still had Sam’s tooth marks on the grips. Sam held the Smith & Wesson up to the light, using both hands to steady it. One of the cylinders was empty. Sandy Hair’s weapon. He found Black Hair’s stuck in a fruit jar at the back of the jar shelf. Sam couldn’t reach it, but he could tell by the shape that it was a.38 Colt revolver, nickel-plated from the shine of it. Sam was careful to put things back the way he found them before he left the shed.

A couple of days later Sam was helping Dad untangle fishing line, when the older man in the black coat came up the driveway. Sam excused himself to go out back to the outhouse, and he went around the corner of the house toward the backyard. When he thought it was safe to peek around the corner, he saw the man go into the car shed and then drift back out and stroll back down the driveway. When Sam got back to the front steps, Black Coat was gone. So was the nickel-plated Colt when he checked the car shed the next day.

On Saturday Sandy Hair himself came up about suppertime. Dad was chopping stove wood, and Sandy Hair even took a turn or two with the ax while they were talking. Sam stayed still at his marble circle near the privet hedge, hoping nobody would notice him and chase him inside. He kept shooting aggies, pretending not to notice the visitor at all. He was too far away to hear what was said, but he kept watching for Sandy Hair to head for the car shed, and sure enough in a couple of minutes he did. He stayed around for a few more minutes, talking to Dad, and Sam thought he could see a bulge in his brown suit coat. When Mom came out on the steps to call them in for supper, Sandy nodded to her and strolled away. It was Sunday morning before Sam had a chance to check out the shed again. The family was getting ready to go to church, so Sam got himself ready in a hurry and said he’d wait for everybody outside. He slipped into the shed and went straight to the tackle box. The floats were back in place, and the Smith & Wesson was gone.

That afternoon the family piled into the Ford and took the dirt road across the mountains to Pigeon Roost. After Grammaw Hemrick’s Sunday dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and new peas, Sam got to sit out on the porch with Dad and all the uncles, and Dad told the story about the day they hanged the elephant. Sam waited for him to tell the new story, the one about the duel and the hidden gun, but he never did. Dad never did tell that story, and finally Sam came to understand why.

More than twenty years later, Sam would come home from the Pacific with captain’s bars and medals for what he did in the Philippines. He’d talk about the war anytime his children asked about it, but always just the one story: about a little monkey he’d found orphaned in the jungle, and made a pet of. Just the one story, over and over.