“Did he shoot people with it?” I asked.
“He should have,” Uncle Everett offered. “The banks in town foreclosed on one of his farms. And he knew the bas . . . , ” he glanced toward me and smiled, “the man that did it.”
“Everett, please! Don’t teach the boy bad words. I want at least one Edmonds to grow up with dignity.”
“Like you, Mama?” he smiled.
“Everett!” objected my mother. “Mama Edmond’s right. Tommy has a chance to become somebody. Can’t you leave it at that?” My mother had long red curly hair, and strands of it poked out around her scarf. Petite in size and stature, she looked like a panda, wrapped in her white scarf and black coat. Her rosy cheeks appeared enflamed from the cold.
Uncle Everett turned about and stared hard at my mother; then he turned back, and, with a flick of the reins, slapped the hindquarters of the big horse that was pulling the wagon. Sally immediately picked up her gait.
I don’t remember the drift of the remainder of the conversation, just my mother’s look when Uncle Everett stared at her. I was seated between her and my grandmother. Pearl rode on the front seat with Uncle Everett. Pearl was tall, big-boned, with black hair plaited in a single long pigtail. It flopped along the back of her neck, on the outside of her denim jacket. Uncle Everett began to reach over and rub Pearl’s thigh. As I reflect on the event, I think he was only teasing her, but it resulted in a swift comment from my grandmother.
“The family flaw!“ she grumbled, as she put her right arm around me and squeezed me against her black woolen coat. Its stiff collar cut into my lips.
The ride to Uncle Jim’s farm and my great-grandfather’s grave seemed to take forever. The road climbed for a long while up and up through the Knobs. It wound its way from cove to cove, through stands of pine, poplar, and hickories, and past huge black oaks, yellow birches, and milk-gray beech trees. Suddenly, Uncle Everett slowed the wagon and reached for a shotgun under the seat. He guided the wagon to one side and pulled back lightly on the reins. “Whoa, Sally,” he whispered. The wagon came to a stop, to the sound of a slight jangle of harness.
“Shhh!” Pearl added. “A turkey in the road.”
I leapt like a cork popping out of a bottle when the gun discharged. Everyone laughed. But he bagged the turkey. Pearl retrieved the big bird and flung it up in the rear of the wagon. It was a plump hen, with shiny black feathers and gray warts about its comb.
Uncle Jim’s place, or my grandmother’s home place, finally came into view as the wagon descended the road. You could see a glint of the Holston in the distance and hear its rolling murmur from the hill. As a child, I recall no memorable reaction to the cabin, but it was a log structure, with an upstairs room under a tin roof. I just remember the old couple coming to the door, Pearl carrying in the turkey, the warmth of the fireplace, and quilts stacked everywhere. We ate the lunch we had brought; then, while my grandmother and mother sat about the fire with the gaunt couple, Uncle Everett, Pearl, and I climbed a hill through bramble and broom sedge to an overgrown gravesite. Wooden slabs marked each grave, save for one in the middle that was of stone. I must have played around in the cold, while Uncle Everett and Pearl cleared brush and thorns from the graves. My grandmother and everyone else finally came up the hill and stood about the markers for a while. There were tears in my grandmother’s eyes. With quiet solemnity, she bent down and touched her father’s headstone.
Moments after that, it began to snow. Tiny frozen flakes whirled in the raw wind. Light and small, they made a faint, crackling sound as they swirled about us and settled in the tufts of the broom sedge.
“Lord, we’d best get out of here!” grunted Pearl, wrapping her arms about herself and clapping her hands to keep warm.
It flurried all the way home, and we arrived in a hovering dark. I remained on the wagon with Uncle Everett and stayed with him until we had driven the wagon into its shed, unhitched Sally, led her to the barn, and brushed her down. Uncle Everett guided her toward her stall. I fetched four large ears of corn and fed them to her—one ear at a time. Before we left, Uncle Everett pitched several forkfuls of hay into her stall and patted her rump. “Never neglect your horse, Tommy. She’s a good one, if I say so myself.” He rumpled my hair with his hard hands and held my right hand as we walked back to the house.
Chapter Two
Quilly Hall consisted of four rooms in the main section, plus a large dining room and kitchen, which my great-grandfather Edmonds had added as time went by. A stairwell in the kitchen led up to two large bedrooms: one over the kitchen and one over the dining room. Both additions were constructed of a dull red brick, mixed and fired on the farm, with lattice interior walls, covered with plaster and left white. The rock stone part of the house had two large rooms downstairs, plus Quilly’s hall, and two sprawling bedrooms upstairs. These were separated by a wide landing, crowded with a massive armoire, as there were no closets in either bedroom. My mother and I slept in the room whose back window overlooked the springhouse, apple shed, and the tarred road that led into Abingdon. My grandmother was sole occupant of the finer of the two bedrooms. All four rooms—upstairs and down—in the rock section were heated by immense fireplaces. Large wooden mantles stretched across them, crowded with clocks, pictures, and vases, adorned with dried flowers in the winter and fresh ones in the summer to match the hue of the vases. In my grandmother’s bedroom, and in the living room downstairs, lacy, embroidered doilies ran the full length of the mantles.
My favorite haven in the house was the living room. Next, came Quilly’s hallway, and lastly the dining room. Deep recessed windowsills guarded the three muslin-curtained windows in the living room. The side window provided a view of the back driveway; the other two looked out over the front lawn. I could climb up and sit in either of the two front windows and gaze out across the porch and into the yard. On cold wintry days, great fires blazed in its hearth. One of Pearl’s many chores consisted in seeing that adequate kindling and logs were always provided in the wood boxes and that the cinders were raked out every morning and carried outside before my grandmother came down to take her coffee in front of the main fireplace. My mother prepared the coffee and would bring it in to my grandmother in a fine, china cup, half-buried in a deep saucer. Then my mother and grandmother would rock in front of the crackling logs and sip their coffee out of the saucers. They loved cream—rich, yellow, fresh cream—and plenty of it. Pearl made certain that their cups were refilled as long as they chatted there and that the cream pitcher never ran dry.
I generally had breakfast in the kitchen, in front of the cook stove, with Pearl. She’d fry me an egg and a sausage patty, or serve oatmeal, or, frequently, white milk gravy, amply ladled over a hot biscuit. After that, I would join my mother and grandmother in the living room. Sometimes my grandmother would turn her coffee cup over and place it in the saucer and wait for the grounds to dry. She’d have my mother do the same. After several moments had passed, she’d turn the cups back up and read their fortunes. For someone as sophisticated as my grandmother, I was enchanted by these “gypsy episodes,” as Uncle Everett referred to them. Although my grandmother had graduated from the Martha Washington Seminary for Girls, this facet of her Holston heritage remained with her till death.
“Ah, Shaula!” she’d say to my mother. “Here’s this tall handsome man again. See!” she would point in the cup. “And his beard. He has raised his hand to stroke it. And he’s looking right at you. And this door! He’s going to come to our very door.”
“Mom! One man in my life was enough. You’ve got to get a new line. I’m thirty-two years old now. Who would be interested in me?”
“Well, don’t laugh