Fair and Tender Ladies

PART ONE

Letters from Sugar Fork

My dear Hanneke,

Your name is not much common here, I think it is so pretty too. I say it now and agin it tastes sweet in my mouth like honey or cane or how I picture the fotched-on candy from Mrs. Browns book about France, candy wich mimicks roses. Have you seed any such as this? I have not. I have seed them in her red book that is all. My teacher is called Mrs. Brown. She is from far away also, she has lived in the city of St. Louis oncet with buggies and streetligts, I know all about it now. And I know all how you live too, we have seed the pictures, I cannot feature it all so flat ther with flat water so brigtly blue and never a mountain nor nary a cloud in the sky. You are lower than the sea so that oncet a boy has had to stick his finger in the wall to hold back the water, this is scary to me. I have nare seed the ocean nor has anyone I know seed it althogh Daddy has been to the city too, he did not like it with bad water and no air and no mountains like Bethel Mountain yonder, Daddy says he needs a mountain to rest his eyes aginst. But in the book I have seed those fields of flowers, tulips, we think you have wooden shoes. Momma makes all of our clothes we have storeboghten shoes thogh they are black, they have copper on the toes so as not to wear out very fast. I disgust them and wish for wooden shoes and a lace cap like yourn and such pretty long white stockings, you look like a little Queen.

I know it is not you in the book but I think it is you. I hope you will be my Pen Friend.

My momma had also a white dress with lace as a girl, I have seed the picture. She stands by the door it is a fancy door of a house in a town I know is Rich Valley where she has growed up and ther is her big father smiling holding her hand but now a hardness has come up between them. He has a black suit and a black mustashe and a gold watch chain hanging down in the picture, he is rich, his name is Mister Castle and we do not know him atall. He is smiling but he is mean. My momma Maude was then fifteen, her momma had died of her lungs in the year 1886 so that Maude was the ligt of her daddys life, and the only joy of his hart.

Then my daddy come to Rich Valley and she took up with him, and her and him set to walking out together of an evening like you do.

Mister Castle said NO I forbid it, he has no prospects, and said he wuld send my momma to her mothers sister in Memphis Tenessee where my momma never had been or even heard tell of, to learn her some sense and how to act like a lady at last. Instead my momma packed up her own mommas silver brush and comb which was all she took, and lit out in the dead of nigt for Sugar Fork with my daddy John Arthur Rowe. He is a redheaded man he had been over ther in Rich Valley with his brother trading mules. My momma and him rode double astride on daddys horse Lightning. She was glad to leave, she said, and never looked back nor cared for a thing but my daddy.

They carried a pine knot that burned in the nigt to show them the way. They passed throgh Squeeze Betsy in the Pound Gap it is so black at nigt the rocky-clifts is so high they nearabout black out the moon. And then you come up on Bethel Mountain wich is high and lonesome and a hoot owl screeched out in the nigt it like to have scarred my momma to death she was a town girl she like to have plum lost hart then and ther, Daddy says. He says the pine knot was burning yaller and you culd see little critters eyes all shining yaller in the ligt from the edge of the woods. They is still bears and catamounts up on Bethel Mountain, to this day.

Well Momma and Daddy come on to Slate Creek and follered it down to Home Creek where they forded it at the grist mill and Momma got down in the dark and wetted her face with the water, she said her face was burning as hot as fire she was all atremble from what she had done and they never knowed at that time if Mister Castle wuld of sent a posse out after them or not. My daddy a Batcheler was considerable older than her. Momma said she seed her face in the still black pool by the pine knots yaller ligt and she looked so wild, she culd not of said who she was, she culd not of called her own name. But she said that the water in Home Creek was so cool, and tasted the sweetest of any she ever had. And Daddy kissed her, and they got up agin on Lightning thogh Momma was so sore by then that she like to have died, she said she was down in the back atterwards for days and days.

So they rode on alongside Home Creek and by then it was getting ligt, on the prettest path you have ever seed, it is still rigt here, it runs throgh sprucey-pines and he-balsams and past three little old waterfalls. When you get to that third one you start looking out for them two big cedar trees and you leave Home Creek rigt ther where Sugar Fork comes into it and foller Sugar Fork up and up, you will ford it twicet, its the loudest and singingest little old creek you ever dreamed of, and direckly when you cant go no further youl be here, here in my daddys house which was his daddys house afore him way up here on Blue Star Mountain.

And it aint nobody up here but usuns.

Daddy had lived up here farming all by hisself since his own daddy died of his hart and his momma died of the bloody flux and his sister had maried and gone off and his brother Revel had took to helling around so. Sometimes Daddy wuld go down the mountain somewhere and holp Revel with his buisness, which is mules. But then he wuld come back up here direckly, Daddy wuld, he dont love noplace in the world he says like he loves Sugar Fork.

Well it was getting on for daybreak when my daddy and my momma come riding up there plum wore out, and Lightning so puny he is going on dead, he never was the same horse after that nigt Daddy said, you can see for why. Uncle Revel wanted to trade him after he got so puny but Momma said NO and she fed him out of her own hand and wuld not let nobody ride him but her until the day he died, wich was not long in coming. That ride had used him teetotally up.

The sun come peeping up then over the top of Hell Mountain like a white hot firy ball rising up from the fog that always hangs on the mountaintop of an evening. It will burn off in the day.

Momma looked around.

She saw Sugar Fork sparkle in the sun like a ladys dimond necklace.

She saw Pilgrim Knob rise up direckly behind the house, and Blue Star Mountain beyond. They call it that because of how blue it looks from down below, along Home Creek and Daves Branch, why you can see Blue Star Mountain clear from Majestic on a pretty day. And you can see the Conaways and the Rolettes and the Foxes cabins, coming up Home Creek from the schoolhouse like her and daddy had done that morning, now you can see all them neghbor peoples houses fine but you cant see ourn, nor get to it nether, without wanting to. You are not going to happen upon us, is what I mean. And Blue Star Mountain dont seem so blue nether, when your up here. But it is the prettest place in the world.

And so my momma looked all around, and she seed all of that.

She seed the shining waters of Sugar Fork go leaping off down the mountain into the laurel slick. And she seed that this is a good big double cabin here with a breezeway in between where it is fine to set and look out and do your piecework. And she seed the snowball bush in the yard and the rosybush here by the porch all covered with pink-pink flowers. It was June. And Momma looked up in the sky she said and she seed a hawk gliding circles around and around without never flapping his wings, agin that big blue sky. She said that hawk made three circles in the sky, and then Daddy turned to her real formal-like and cleared his throat and said Maude, it is what I have to give you. It is all I have. But she knowed this, she had knowed it all along. It will do, John, is what she said. Then she busted out laghing and my daddy picked her up and carried her in the house wich is where I live today, in Virginia, in the United States of America. But you must put Majestic, Virginia, U.S.A. and many stamps on the outside of your letter Mrs. Brown said or it will not come here.

Now I am glad I have set this all down for I can see my Momma and Daddy as young, and laghing. This is not how they are today. For I have to say they did not live haply ever after as in Mrs. Browns book. I reckon that migt even of been the lastest time my Daddy ever lifted her up, or lifted ary thing else heavy. Because before long a weakness was to come upon him, from the hart.

Now this is Daddys bad hart, wich he has to this day, he is the disablest one up here rigt now. You can hear his bad hart for yourself iffen you come over and put your ear up agin his chest, it goes dum-DUM dum-DUM like our banty rooster that goes coo-COO coo-COO of a morning on Pilgrim Knob. You can hear Daddys bad hart just thumping away irreglar in his chest. He is little now too, hardly no meat atall on his bones, but his hair is still thick and red and his eyes are so blue and just as lively as Sugar Fork. He will still tell a story. He is little thogh like a brownie in Mrs. Browns McGuffey Reader.

Do you have a reader? Do you like to read? I love it bettern anything and mostly poems such as Thanatopses and the little toy soldier is covered with dust but sturdy and stanch he stands and the highwayman came riding riding up to the old inn door. I love that one the bestest.

Mister Brown is a forren preacher from the North but does not preach he is the husband of Mrs. Brown my teacher. He says to her, what is your substance whereof are you made? and other poems. He carries bunches of flowers up from the creek for her and one time it was about a month ago he brung them rigt into the schoolhouse and give them to her with a funny little bow like a Prince you ougt to of seed him, we was all rigt ther when he done it. Her cheeks turned as red as a apple, I wuld of had a fit if it was me.

For I take a intrest in her and Mister Brown and in what I have told you, the story of my Momma and Daddy. I take a intrest in Love because I want to be in Love one day and write poems about it, do you? But I do not want to have a lot of babys thogh and get tittys as big as the moon. So it is hard to think what to do. My momma was young and so pretty when she come riding up Sugar Fork, but she does not look pretty now, she looks awful, like her face is hanted, she has had too much on her. Too much to contend with she says.

So next I will write you about my Life, it is what Mrs. Brown said to do, I want to be a writter, it is what I love the bestest in this world. Mrs. Brown says I have a true tallent she thinks, she gives me books to read but Momma gets pitched off iffen I read too much, I have to holp out and I will just fill my head with notions, Momma says it will do me no good in the end.

My hair is long and yaller-red it comes down to my waist and Silvaney holps me to wash it, we spread it over a chairback to lift it to dry in front of the fire. Momma come in last night when we was all drying our hair, Silvaney and Beulah and me and Ethel. Silvaneys hair is real long and curly and wellnigh white, and Ethels is real ligt yaller, and Beulahs hair is as red as that sourgum tree rigt now up on Pilgrim Knob, she takes after Daddy the mostest. Momma just set to starring with her eyes as big as a plate and then she commences to weeping out loud.

Now Maude whats the matter, Daddy said to her from his pallet up next to the fire, we keep him up there so close but he cant hardly get warm even thogh it is not but October and we aint yet had a killing frost. Whatevers the matter now Maude, Daddy said.

These girls is all so pretty she said theyd be better off ugly, these girls is all so pretty theyd be better off dead.

Hush now Maude you just hush she dont mean it girls, shes just wore out, Daddy said to us. She is all wroght up dont pay her no mind now girls, Daddy said.

He is there on his pallet pulled up by the fire we are all in a row with our hair spreaded out on the chairbacks to dry.

So this is the members of my Family, I will tell you as Mrs. Brown said. And of my Chores and our Culture too. I wuld like to see your face, I feature your face as white as ice and your eyes so blue, like the Ice Queen but smiling with cherryred lips. I know you have windmills and big pieded black and white cows in the flat green fields. Well we have got a cow too her name is Bessie but she is close to give out at this time.

We grow nearabout all we eat, and mostly the corn wich will work you to death. So I cant go to school sometimes in the spring when we plant it or later on you have got to get out there and hoe it to beat the band, and the side of Blue Star Mountain is so steep youve got to hill it good or it wont grow atall. And we used to grow us a patch of cane too and then we wuld make molasseys, folks wuld come from all around and holp, but we have not got no cane this year as Daddy is poorly, he has to lay down.

And we grow cabbages and sweet taters and white taters both and shucky beans and we have got some apple trees too but Bess as I said is sick, this is fidgeting Momma to death what to do, for the twins is so little yet, we need the milk for Danny is always weak. They is chickens and turkeys grabbling out in the woods and guinea hens up by the house. They say pot-rack, pot-rack. I hate it when Momma kills them, you dont want to get you a pet hen, you will be sorry, nor a pet pig nether like Lizzy that was mine.

But we raise what we need, we dont go to the store for nothing but coffee and shoes and nails and to get the mail, we do not get any mail much but sometimes a letter from Daddys sister in Welch or Mommas friend Geneva Hunt from childhood or a pattern Momma sent off for. Momma can sew anything. She culd sew so pretty if she had the time. Beulah and Ethel sews too now. The store is at Majestic it is the P.O. too. This is where Mrs. Brown will take my letter to you, then Bill Waldrop will put it in his saddlebag and carry it over the mountain, a ship will carry it over the sea. Does this seem magicle to you? It seems so to me.

I wish you culd see Stoney Branhams store at Majestic, they is a woodstove at the back where all the men gathers round and spits tobaccy and waits for Bill Waldrop to come, and lays bets on what time he will get ther. They talk and talk about who has seed a bear or who is laying up in the bed sick or who has been bit by a snake or where lightning has struck last, or they will tell a tale, and the womenfolks that is in ther will be looking at thread or may be some flowered piecey-goods. Stoney Branham sends tobaccy back to Daddy who coughs so deep now it is just like thunder over Hell Mountain when he coughs now it is relly terible. They is more wrong with him now than his hart.

Do ye reckon John Arthur will make it throgh the winter, Stoney said to Granny Rowe it was a week ago Monday I heerd him myself, anybody culd of heerd him, that had ears. Wich means Silvaney who got all wroght up something awful, she run out back of Stoney Branhams store and cried, she knows a lot more than you think.

I will tell you of my Family now and she will be first, I love Silvaney the bestest, you see. Silvaney is so pretty, she is the sweetest, all silverhaired like she was fotched up on the moon. She takes after a Princess in a story, Silvaney does. Her and my brother Babe was twins, wich runs in the Family. Silvaney is five years oldern me.

But something is wrong with Silvaney, she had brain fever as a baby, now she will never be rigt in the head. It dont matter, shes so sweet, but she scares easy, sometimes she will put her apron up over her head and start in crying and other times she will get to laghing and she cant stop, you have to pour a gourdfull of water down over her face. Momma says she run a fever for days and days it has burned out a part of her brain. So Silvaney dont go to school to Mrs. Brown but you cant tell it just to see her, she is the prettest thing. So Silvaney is bigger and oldern me, but it is like we are the same sometimes it is like we are one. We have slept in the same bed all of our lives and done everything as one, I am smart thogh I go to school when I can and try to better myself and teach Silvaney but she cant learn.

Lord me and her have had some fun thogh, just usuns, we get a piece of tin sometimes and some rocks and sneak off and build us a little stove rigt out in the woods and gather up sticks and make us a little cookfire under the tin then we have got a little stove. Then I will take out the meal I have stole from the chest on the porch and wound up in my skirt, and get some water from Sugar Fork, and we will make up some little pancakes and have us a play-party rigt there in the woods by the creek in our secret place. We put black6eye susans and Queen Annes lace in our hair.

We have party names too, I am the Princess Lucia she is the Princess Melissa Clarissa and Beulah used to play too sometimes, she was Miss Margaret White, who knows where she got that name? But Beulah will not play no more, she is courting Curtis Bostick from Poorbottom, he rides up here on his listed horse and takes her walking. I do not know what they will do when it gets cold and they cannot go walking, as we are so many here in the house and Curtis Bostick dont know how to court good inside a house Beulah says he just sits like a bump on a log. He is not a bit good at sweethearting, to do it as much as he does.

Anyway now we do not have Miss Margaret White so we have made up a Miss France who wears a big pink hat and sticks out her finger and laghs la-la-la, I cannot tell if Silvaney knows that Miss France is made up or not. Well Ethel is only nine but she will not play party, when I say I have some scrumptious cake she says it is only pone and when I say, hear the lovely music Miss Ethel it is violins, she says my name is nothing but Ethel, just plain Ethel, and that is birds.

Ethel will not even play Town but Victor will watch sometimes and Garnie will preach. What you do is make you some little houses outen sticks and you can chink up your logs with mud iffen you wish to, and you can have some rocks for furniture, all covered over with moss that you find by the creek where it gets so little and bouncy starting up Pilgrim Knob. Now this will be your fancy furniture, that is your bed and chairs and all, and you will make corncob people, you can have pinecones for pigs, and a cow and the chicks in the yard.

And your own people can come to and fro, they can go courting and have a baby and die or get saved or whatever you want to happen. One time me and Victor, this is my elder brother, he wont play no more nether, one time me and Victor stoled us some thread and hitched up some big old bugs and made us horses named Buck and Berry. And iffen you want little old Garnie to play, you have got to let him preach a funeral and sing, been a long time travelling here below, been a long time travelling here below, been a long time travelling from my home, to lay this body down. But then you will have to pour water on Silvaneys face, she crys so hard at a funeral. Momma said, stop this, this is awful, and Silvaney is too old to play. But we sneak off, we have us a time, I guess.

What do you all play?

Mrs. Brown said I should tell you about our Chores but they are never over, it is so hard on a farm without no mule we had one but it died a year ago come April I think it was. And Daddy has had a big falling-out with Revel now so we cant get no more mules from him, aint none of us set eyes on Revel for over a year. So we go down on Home Creek and get the loan of one from the Rolettes. Folks is real nice, they know Daddy is sick. So Victor he runs the farm, and Momma, the bestest they can, and I will get up in the morning before full ligt and milk Bessie, and Beulah she will start in cooking and Ethel will dress the younguns and Silvaney looks for eggs. And then I will bring up the milk and strain it and put it in the churn and rinch out the strainer and things, and hang them up, and later on I will have to churn or go out and hoe the corn and such as that, it is always something to do on a farm.

The next leastest has to watch out for the leastest ones, and I loved to do that, I used to take Garnie and Ethel up under the rocky-clifts by the cornfield to watch them while everbody was working, its fun in there you can go way back and keep so cool. One time we was up there and I seed a rattlesnake all quiled up and singing to beat the band, I had to snatch up Ethel, she thogt it was a play-pretty.

Babe killed it with a hoe. He loves to kill things, Babe does. I am so glad he is gone from here now, I hope he is gone for good. This is my eldest brother named Clarence Wayne but called Babe, he is mean as a snake hisself. He works for Frank Ritter Lumber Company now in Bone Valley we think, he dont send us hardly a thing.

When we was all real little I recall Daddy showing us how to make frog houses out in the yard, this is where you put your bare foot down in the dirt and push up the dirt all around it and then you take out your foot and you have got you a house, you would leave them there of a summer nigt for the frogs to come. But Babe used to stomp them down. They say he takes after my daddys brother Revel Rowe and this is so, but Revel is funny too and a handsome man even iffen he is sorry as they say.

I will stop now and fold up this letter which I have writ as neat and as small as posible, it has took days and days, I hope you will enjoy to read it, and be my Pen Friend always. I will carry this letter down to Mrs. Brown when next I go, I have not been to school for a long time now nor has any one of us, as my daddy is not doing any good atall, nor is Danny, and it is coming on for winter at this time we have to pull the fodder now and get it down offen the mountain on the woodsled, this is very hard without no mule. We have all holped to do this Chore.

I wonder very much what your Chores are, and do you grow very tired, also? And are you afeared sometimes of things you cannot put a name to, as I am? Sometimes I am afeared so and I culd not tell you for why, it is like a fire in my hart when my daddy coughs so loud or Momma sets her face agin us and will not speak. And I look at Silvaney who smiles with the ligt in her eyes that scares me for she does not understand. So I will love to have a Letter from you. I hope your family is gayly I remane your devoted Pen Friend I am hoping.

IVY ROWE.

Dear Mrs. Brown,

Victor says he will bring this letter to you, he will come by on his way to Majestic where he is going to see old Doc Trout to try and get some medicine for Daddy who is not doing good at all. Daddy is cold all the time and his face is so dreamy it seems. We keep that fire just roaring we are like to burn down the house Momma says, but it does him no good. He eats scarcely a bite these days and looks so little, like ther is nothing in the bed at all. We have got him under the rising star quilt that Granny Rowe made and given us. We have got him rigt up by the fire too, it does no good. So you see I can not come to school now and for why.

I am so thankful for all the writting paper you have sent to me, and for the poems of Eugene Field. I read them out loud to my daddy, this is all that will bring a smile. He loves to hear of the Sugar Plum Tree in the garden of Shut-Eye Town. My bestest is Wyncken Blinken and Nod one nigt sailed off in a wooden shoe, Sailed on a river of crystal ligt, Into a sea of dew.

But Mrs. Brown this poem makes me so sad too because of the wooden shoe, I have wanted a Pen Friend always ever since I learned of them and I do not understand what you mean that my letter is too long and not approprite. I did not know you wuld read my letter ether. So I have written another letter to send to Miss Hanneke Van Veldt I will send it to you also by Victor, it is very short.

Granny Rowe has come to holp us, she chews tobaccy and spits in the fire. Granny Rowe is my antie I think not my granny relly. Granny Rowe has give Daddy a potion it dont do no good, he has vomited yaller insted. Momma is given him whisky and honey its bettern nothing at best but it makes him dreamy. Theys ice in the water of Sugar Fork now it hangs to the rocks on the side it shines out so pretty of a morning when the sun comes up. It is cold up here now we are keepen the younguns inside iffen we can do it, it is hard to make those twins do ary a thing thogh and Momma is acten so funny sometimes she sits out in the cold at the back of the house and oncet I follered her up Pilgrim Knob, she tried to hold later that she was chasing after chickens but she was not.

She was standing there on the rocky-clift looking out in the wind and her hair blowed all around her face but she never cared. Who knowed what she was thinking? and they was never a chicken in sight. I think of you so and I think, does she still wear the purple dress, and the hat with the fether? And the ladys face so fine on the pretty pin I think it is camio. Another one I love is the Little Boy Blue but it makes us cry and mostly Silvaney. We do not know what is a trundle bed. I hope you are keeping fine, I shall remane forever your devoted,

IVY ROWE.

My dear Hanneke,

I am a girl 12 years old very pretty I have very long hair and eight brothers and sisters and my Mother and my Father, he is ill. We live on a farm on the Sugar Fork of Home Creek on Blue Star Mountain the clostest town is Majestic, Virginia. It is so pretty up here but rigt now it is so cold.

I want to be a famous writter when I grow up, I will write of Love.

My Chores are many but sometimes we have some fun too, as when we go hunting chestnuts away up on the mountain beyond Pilgrim Knob which we done yesterday, Victor taken us. Daddy loved this so but he cant go no more as he is sick.

We start out walking by the tulip tree and the little rocky-clift ther on Pilgrim Knob where the chickens runs but then we keep rigt on going follering Sugar Fork for a while, you get swallered up in ivy to where it is just like nigt, but direckly you will come out in the clear. You will be so high then it gives you a stitch in your side you have to stop then and rest, and drink some water from Sugar Fork which is little up there and runs so gayly. And so you go along the footpath where the trees grow few and the grass is everywhere like a carpet in the spring but now in winter the grass is all froze and you can feel it crunch down when you step, you can hear it too. We was having a big time crunching it down. When the sun shined on it, it looked like dimond sticks, a million million strong.

Now this was me and Ethel and Beulah and Silvaney and Garnie. Victor taken us. I am wearing Daddys old black coat, I resemble a hant, we are laghing and laghing. When we get to the chestnut trees they is four of them, and Victor says hush now, you hush Silvaney we will play a trick on Garnie whose never been up here before.

So we get Garnie jumping up and down on the froze-grass, and crushing it down, and Victor he runs around behind this great big old rock up there and grabs aholt of the leastest tree and we walk over there with Garnie, not acting like nothing is happening.

Get you some chestnuts Garnie, Ethel says.

Wheres the chestnuts, Garnie says.

Dont you know how to get no chestnuts honey, Beulah says, you just start picking them up like this, look at me, it is all they is to it honey, Beulah says.

So we all bend over and act like we are putting chestnuts in the poke but Garnie cant see no chestnuts.

Wheres the chestnuts? Wheres the chestnuts? he axes pulling on Ethel so hard that he liked to of pulled her over.