[Appalachian Mountain Town Tale, 1940s]
Top of the mornin’ to ye!
Y’all used to be my nearest neighbors—before you picked yourself up and moved off the mountain and then crossed over to the other side of them tracks. These days it seems like ever body has moved further on down the mountain.
Well . . . since y’all asked, I’ll tell you the story.
When I was just knee-high to a grasshopper, something awful happened while I was sittin’ on the back porch over at Fanny Mae Mason’s house. Her young’un, Betty Sue, and me was just sitting down on them unpainted floorboards playing Tiddlywinks, that’s all. We was kinda crowded in alongside the ice box. That back porch room was small, but it was the biggest of ‘em all by a long shot.
Some of it had to do with Betty Sue’s mama. Gawd-a-mighty! I hated to keep remembering again and again what I saw happen with my own eyes. Ever body in that neighborhood knew Betty Sue’s mama. She dipped snuff. And she couldn’t read a word or write one neither, bless her heart. Me and Betty Sue was just barely learnin’ to read ‘n write our own selves.
But Fanny Mae Mason sure knew how to keep that small place of hers about as clean-as-a-whistle. The living room linoleum was always real shiny-clean, except for that one good-sized worn-out spot. It was a smidgen dull looking and on the dark side. But that’s not the only good thing I got to say about her. I just gotta give Betty Sue’s mama some credit for keeping Betty Sue’s socks the whitest I ever seen. Many a time, I saw her socks soakin’ away in a small pan of smelly bleach water. It happened ever time her socks got too dirty to wear again.
Anyways, when Mr. Hawkins-Mills arrived on their back porch that day, he was carrying a heavy block of ice to put in her icebox. With the sun still high in the sky, that ice just kept right on dripping all over the place. Mr. Hawkins-Mills slipped on the wet floorboards, and his ice pick must’ve cut him up real deep, all the way through his own gut—ripped it wide open. He was dead as a doornail by the time I got up and over to him. And it looked like Ms Fanny Mae Mason had a faintin’ spell—right on top of him.
But before she fainted, she spewed a whole mouthful of tobacco juice all over that iceman’s face. Who would’ve figured that later on Ms Fanny Mae Mason would git herself charged with the murder of Mr. Hawkins-Mills?
I remember putting on my roller-skates real quick-like and headin’ down the mountain for help from Lula Bell Barnes, who was Ms Mason’s older sister. She helped with the young’uns just in case troubleshooting was ever needed. Her place was just down ‘round the first bend in the road.
I was about a stone’s throw away from her cabin when I saw the sheriff’s black-n-white cruiser coming in my direction. He slowed down long enough to ask me—Where are you skedaddlin’ off to in such a hurry, young’un?
When I told him real quick about the iceman bein’ dead up at Ms Fanny Mae Mason’s house, the sheriff leaned hard out his window and told me plain as could be—Young’un, you skate yourself right back up to that house. You gotta tell me all of what you saw and what you know.
The sheriff then took off in the other direction with his red light atop his cruiser going around ‘n around, but I didn’t hear a siren. He must’ve reckoned there was no need to go hurrying up there—just to be readying poor Mr. Hawkins-Mills six foot under. I skated back up the hill fast as I could, with me sweating away—just like that big old block of ice.
After the accident, Betty Sue and me stayed friends for quite a long spell. But nothing about us was the same. And I never set foot on her back porch, again. And for some reason or other, Tiddlywinks just got to be too hectic a game for me. So instead of playing games, we laid on our bellies out on the grass—just gawkin’ at the toy section of a big, old, dog-eared copy of the Sears Catalog from back last Christmas. And that’s about all I knew at the time.
But as to the sheriff, he and his deputy had stopped by later on that ill-fated day, asking a whole bunch of crazy questions. Like for example—Betty Sue, did you ever see your mama a kissin’ that iceman?
And then he started in on me. When he asked me if I ever saw that iceman at her house before—I told him about a time when I was sleeping over there, and I heard Ms Mason and the iceman talking from the bathroom. She must’ve been wiping off all his drippin’ from the ice. He didn’t even thank her for that. Said he wasn’t gonna deliver to her much longer on weeknights.
Then the sheriff started asking what I knew about Betty’s Sue’s daddy . . .
Betty Sue’s daddy was W.W. Mason. Ever body called him Dubya Dubya. He worked on the railroad all week long, but he found his way back home in plenty a time for Saturday nights.
And I remembered to tell the sheriff that Dubya Dubya was real fast at swirling off an orange peel with his pocketknife—all in one piece. And he’d been the one who taught me how to tie up my own shoelaces. But by the time the sun set on any Saturday night, Dubya Dubya would git as drunk as a skunk.
After that, I told the sheriff there was one other weeknight when Dubya Dubya come home unexpected-like, and he started yellin’ at his own wife—for no good reason. All she was doing, as far as I could tell, was helping the ice man dry his self off again. This time they was in her bedroom.
The sheriff wanted to know if I noticed anything else that was different about Dubya Dubya. And I didn’t notice much, except to say that Dubya Dubya had started teaching me a brand-new way of peelin’ an orange—all in one piece. It was by using only his thumb and a forefinger—without having to use his pocketknife at all.
It was then that I overheard the sheriff order his deputy to run some fingerprints on Ms Fanny Mae Mason against that old pocketknife of Dubya’s that they found in her bottom drawer. And I wondered to myself why his knife was in her dresser drawer, all wrapped up in a couple of torn out Sears Catalog pages. But at the time, I was grateful that none of them pages came out of the toy section.
Then a day or two later, I started thinking about Ms Mason faintin’ on top of that iceman. And I started trying to figure it all out. And I did! It was Dubya Dubya’s pocketknife, instead of that ice pick, that cut Mr. Hawkins-Mill’s gut wide open. That’s why Ms Fanny Mae Mason went to prison. She was gittin’ even with him for not delivering some kind of weeknight hanky-panky. And when she hit him right between his eyes with a mouthful, she was letting out even more dirty anger. Her faintin’ wasn’t real. She wanted to fool us young’uns so she could hide what she was doing. She knew we was watching. I bet she tripped him, too, instead of him slipping on the wet floorboards.
In the end, it all added up. Fanny Mae Mason gutted poor Mr. Hawkins-Mills—and she did it on purpose. What a dirty, cryin’ shame!
After about a year or two, we all got the awful word that Ms Fanny Mae Mason had died in prison. More’n likely it had something to do with her snuff-dippin’ habit—and what a dirty habit! To think about her place being kept so clean, and the way she made Betty Sue’s socks clean as could be. But on her insides—that dirty dipping went ‘n done her in.
The next thing I heard was that Dubya Dubya picked his self up and moved with his young’uns over to Morehouse Junction. And I never saw hide nor hair of Betty Sue Mason—ever again.
Well, it’s gittin’ late now and that’s all that I know.
I’m much obliged to y’all for dropping off that brand new Sears Catalog to me. Downright neighborly of you. Come next Christmas, if you take a notion to git me another new one. I heard by that time, rural-route-delivery could be starting up ‘round these parts. Until then, it’ll take a whole lot of my time just thumbing through this one and dog-earring the best of the pages, and all that. So, I’m itching to git started on it.
Y’all run along now. I’m figuring it was far out of your way to git here, so you better git going.
If I don’t ever see you again, I want you to know that I always thought highly of y’all. Just ’cause we was born ‘n bred in an old mountain town don’t mean we don’t know the difference between good ‘n bad, or right from wrong.
And I didn’t need no highfalutin lawyer neither to figure out who killed poor old Mr. Hawkins-Mills. All it took was some real good common-sense thinking.
And there’s just one more thing I want y’all to know while I’m at it. I’m feeling real lucky to be living up here on the edge of my mountain ‘cause when I look down from here, I can see both the right side and the wrong side of them tracks. But I don’t like what I been seeing on either side, what with all that crowdin’ and rushin’ around.
Living up here on the edge feels a whole lot more relaxing and free-er to me—if the truth be told. And even that Shakespeare fella once said To Thine Own Self Be True.
Anyhow, y’all be real careful going down them sharp hairpin curves now.
Bye-bye.
Ruth Friedman was born in Appalachia. As a young adult, she left home with little more than a GED education, a portable typewriter, and a burning desire to write. She landed a job in New York City with Esquire Magazine. From there she became a copywriter, and later a Direct Mail Manager, for McFadden Publications. In her retirement, she recalls a severely impoverished 1940s Appalachia. “Livin’ on the Wrong Side of the Tracks” is a fictional short story revealing a plethora of almost real memories of those improvised country people and their strife.
**Featured image: Snappygoat via Pixabay, altered b&w