LYNN COULTER - Granny Woman

I am white-haired now, and when I run a comb across my head every morning some
of my sparse hairs catch in the teeth. When a woman grows old, her hair thins
out like that, like a life grows thin and stretched out, too, reaching the end
of usefulness. It is a sign to us that we are to cast aside all vanities before
we die. But God knows I am not ready yet, for I have much to account for. He
cannot always forgive His children till they have born the weight of their sins.
It has been so since Adam and the first woman, and so it must be with me.

It began with lightning. I hadn't been born that August morning when Daddy
hitched his mules, Jenny and Jim, to plow the cornfield he share-cropped for old
Odum. He only stopped to eat the hoecake Mama brought him for his midday meal.
Then she, who did not know yet she was carrying me, took the reins while he sat
down to rest under a hickory nut tree.

It had been a thundery-like day, she told me later, hot air and still, sky low
and gray. Across the field bees droned in a honeysuckle thicket, lulling Daddy
down to sleep after he'd ate. So Mama, thinking to let him rest, kept on
plowing, gee-hawing to Jenny and Jim and slapping the reins on their romps every
now and then, stinging the dust out of their coats.

Storm came a-rambling over the purple mountains. She saw the clouds grow dark as
coal and roll down to the valley floor. She wrapped them reins tighter around
her fists. It wasn't far to go and she determined that that field would be
plowed.

Daddy drowsed as thunder rumbled in the air. The hairs on Mama's arms prickled
up, but she dug her boot heels into the rocks and dirt of these Appalachian
hills and leaned into the plow. Rain fell, cold, like needles. She seen
lightning crack over by Odum's place. One more row, she thought, and the field
would be done. Sky darkened then like night all over. 'Fore long she was
steering by flashes of lightning. One jagged streak hit across from her, and
smoke curled out of a brambly patch into the rain. She got scared then, slung
that harness aside and ran underneath the hickory nut tree, shaking Daddy's
shoulder and hollering, come on, let's us go, and them poor mules just standing
out there in the middle of that field braying and stomping their hooves for her
to come get them, and about that time the lightning hit with a crack like
almighty God himself had spat onto this miserable earth. It didn't hit that
tree, though, like true lightning ought to. No sir, it hit them poor mules,
Jenny and Jim, struck them both dead to the ground. Killed both my Daddy's mules
in one blow.

There was nothing nobody could do. Mama and Daddy knelt under that tree, holding
onto one another, wet leaves plastering onto their backs and hickory nuts
shaking down in still-green shells till the storm passed. Then they crept out
from under those branches dripping rain and felt of the bodies of Jenny and Jim.
Burnt hair-smell tinged the air. They rubbed those mules' stiff ears, Daddy
pumped their sides till his arms ached trying to squeeze breath back in their
lungs. The mules' noses were still warm, but the life wasn't in them.

I was born next spring, and as I grew I learned what the lightning had done that
day. What it took away, the life-spirit it took out of them mules Jenny and Jim,
it gave me to give away again. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. * * *

I was christened Elorie Kay when the Baptist preacher came round on the circuit
in 1881. I was eldest of eight, and when the little 'uns commenced to call me
"Lokie" it stuck to me all my days. I lived with my Mama and Daddy and cared for
them till they passed. After they were gone, I swapped butter for chores or
sewed for town ladies. Then I put my hand to herbs, tansy-root to boil for
headache-tea, steeped laurel leaves for a compress when bleeding won't stop. I
learned without learning, really. Just knew. Camomile for stomach ailment, orris
root on a pillow to make a gift dream of a man to marry. And more. Folks heard
about me, how sometimes I helped womenfolk get babies. It was the power to give
life, what the lightning had given me that day. My reputation spread, and I
became a granny woman.

It was the first hoar-frost morning of fall, that day I saw her coming up my
path. Her bucket full of red-jacket taters swung hard against her legs. Folks
know I am fond of new taters now that I have got too old to hoe my own.

Her head was bent low against the wind that whistles down my mountain, heavy red
curls streaming over her shoulders. I knew her to be Gurlie Kennedy, who had
married a year before. She had not married young, as is the custom; I heard tell
that her Pa near despaired of wedding her away. She was not ugly but her face
was flat and plain. She was big-boned and awkward, too, with long arms that
stuck out of the sleeves of every dress her Mama sewed, and calloused hands at
the end of them long arms. She clumped up my path in a man's brown brogan shoes,
for her feet was too wide to wear a woman's slipper. But for all of this, she
was strong. Her broad shoulders didn't hunch under the weight of that bucket.

I welcomed her to my fire. She shrugged off her crocheted shawl like it was
itching her back.

"Granny Lokie, I am in need of your service."

"Why, child, what could you need of me?" I couldn't imagine this big healthy gal
needing me to help get a baby.

"You know I'm married to Guy Howard." Now this did surprise me; I had not known
who she wed and they seemed an unlikely match. Guy Howard was one of the fairest
men in the valley and many a girl had set her cap for him. He helped at his
daddy's piece goods store, which would be his one day. He had even given me, old
woman that I am, a feeling like fingers raked down my spine, with them black
eyes of his.

"Guy Howard wants a baby, Granny." She sat down on the floor beside my fire and
wrapped her big hands around the china teacup I gave her. "I can't seem to get
one."

I took up a lit twig from the fire and touched it to my pipe. "Y'all ain't tried
long enough yet, Gurlie. Give it a while, come back and see me." I told her
this, for it was true.

"He don't want to wait. His ma and pa is pushing at him for he's almost
thirty-year-old." She stood up to face the fire and I saw her dress was patched
in the back. Shameful, I thought, the wife of a piece-goods merchant had no
cloth for a decent gown.

"How old are you, Gurlie?"

"Nineteen." Then she rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and stared down at the
floor. Her brown shoes stuck out from under her skirt. "I ain't a pretty woman,
Granny. I'm afraid he'll leave me if I don't get a baby."

Awkward-like, she knelt down and laid her head in my lap, making out like she
was sobbing. I rubbed her knotted curls and then shook my apron to shoo her off.
"I'll help you, Gurlie," said I, "though it's against my judgment. But you drink
my potion ever time he comes to you. It's helped women before."

She smiled up at me then, and I saw that her brown eyes was dry of tears. Dry as
the cornstalks burned by frost in the garden outside my cabin door.

I saw her a time or two after that, for she came back for more potion, and she
paid me with crops from her daddy's land or a remnant of calico from Guy
Howard's store. Then I did not hear from her again. For a while I wondered what
became of her, if she'd got her baby or if Guy Howard had let it go. And finally
I forgot about her. It was almost two years gone by before I heard of her again.

I had walked to town that day for flour and coffee and spied her through a store
window across the street, patting a baby swaddled in a ragged piece of flannel
up against her shoulder. I asked the clerk measuring out my flour into a cloth
bag about her, and she allowed yes, that was Gurlie Howard, and yes, she had
finally got her baby. In the telling of this she spilt a handful of flour on the
wood floor but then sculled it across the planking with her foot. "You won't
have to pay for that," she said to me.

It struck me, how she moved her big foot and how she spoke. Her hair, wound in a
bun on top of her head, sprung out in wiry red strands from a nest of hairpins
she'd stuck there. She looked at me and spoke what I was thinking. "She's my
sister," she said. "I'm Lute Kennedy, the youngest."

"Well," I said, "I'm Granny Lokie. I helped your sister get her baby." And I
said this with satisfaction and pride.

She turned away from me and twisted a string around the neck of my flour bag.
"Here," she said, thrusting the bag at me. "Don't pay me for it."

I walked home that afternoon like a fool, full of myself, vain that one such as
me could sow life into a barren girl. Sitting in the rocking chair on my porch
that evening I watched the sun hide behind the mountains, staining the fields
all around with red. I napped till my chin bobbed against my chest. Then I
snapped awake, feeling like you do when you're groping your way through a dark
place and know just by knowing that something's in front of you.

It was Guy Howard standing on my path. I knew it was him, and yet he looked
sick, pale-faced and eyes yellow where the whites should be.

"So you're the granny," he said. He stood there for a while, and then he climbed
onto my porch, towering over me, breathing hard as if he'd run all the way up
the hillside. "Witch woman."

I gripped the arms of my rocker and raised up. I thought I was not afraid of any
man. "What brings you here, Guy?" My tongue and brains were still thick from
sleep.

"I heard you was in town today," said he, "buying goods. Gossip said you was
behind it."

I shook my head. "What ails you!"

He stepped so close to me I could smell moonshine from his mouth. Over the ridge
the light faded, leaving his face as dark as shadows. "You give Gurlie that
black medicine."

I couldn't reason out what he meant. "To get a baby with you, is all."

He grabbed me by the front of my dress with one fist and shook me like a dog
will shake a dead rabbit. "Made me a laughing stock, you hear?" he shouted. Then
he threw me back into my rocking chair and sobbed. "Got me an idiot, not fit to
live nor kill." He stood there crying, his shoulders shaking under his black
coat. Then he turned and staggered down the porch steps. I heard him stumbling
through the brambles, and I sat there shivering till the moon rose and the
crickets dared to sing.

I did not sleep that night nor many after that. And when I had called up my
courage, I walked to town before dawn one day and watched until I saw Guy Howard
open his store. Then I tore out to find Gurlie.

I found her outside their cabin, clipping wet clothes to a line hung between two
skinny saplings. Something made a gurgling sound under a tree nearby. I spied a
split-oak basket, and that dirty blanket in it must be the baby, covered up.

I called to her as she wrung out a shirt and flapped it in the air. "Gurlie?"

She swung around like she was scared.

"It's just me, Granny Lokie. I come to see your young'un."

She threw the wet clothes down and run to the young'un. She dropped to her knees
beside the basket and picked up the baby, holding it close and rubbing its hair.
The blanket slipped down and I saw its back was twisted a little, a shape like a
garter snake will make in the sun if you rake over the rock it's sleeping under.
"Let me see," I whispered.

She never said a word, just looked like daring me to touch. But then she lifted
it off her shoulder and cradled it in her arms. It had curly red hair, same as
her. But its eyes were roving, unsettled on her face, or mine, or anything. It
rolled its black eyes, Guy Howard's eyes, toward the sky and trees above, rolled
them like it was lost in that sky.

"How come this to happen, Granny? "she cried at me. "Your potion done this. Guy
Howard is like to kill me for this!"

So it was a girl. Oh, my heart like to have broke, and I knelt down beside her.
"Gurlie, this ain't never happened to no one I helped before, I swear it."

She moaned and clenched her bundle to her chest and rocked back and forth on her
knees, not looking up and never speaking again. I left her there, the wet shirts
and pants flapping on the clothesline in the wind, gray clouds swarming in the
east.

I feared to see her any more. Once or twice I saw her sister Lute when I went to
town, but I bought off of anybody else I could to stay out of her store. I knew
they blamed me.

Folks talked hard about it. Word came to me that Guy Howard beat Gurlie and was
drinking so bad his Daddy had threatened to cut him out of that piece goods
store. And still I thought, I'd do more harm than good to see them again.

Fall came; persimmons glowed red in the woods. Under November's moon I dug herbs
before the first hard freeze. Nights I sat before my fireplace, scrubbing dirt
off roots and scraping the mealy flesh for potions I'd use for the sickness
winter would bring. Sometimes my hand shook and I sliced my thumb, wondering,
was it a spoiled root I had picked for her? The wrong herb, steeped too long or
simmered too slow? What had I done to bring this misery on?

It snowed hard on the path to my cabin that winter, and nobody trod upon it to
break the brittle crust. Nobody brought their babies to me to treat for croup,
nobody came for a poultice for an aching limb or fever. And so I suspected
nothing when I opened my door to a knock one night and found Lute there.

"You got to help her," Lute said. I closed the door to the cold, but she just
stood, not shedding her coat or scarf. "Him and his daddy fought today about the
store. Gurlie begged me to stay with her, she's so scared of him."

I felt bile rise in my throat. "What can I do?"

She shook my arm. "Tell him the baby ain't Gurlie's fault. You got to help her!"

And what could I do? My heart was sore afraid I had done this. I did not believe
it was His will. It was my meddling, all mine.

So I ran behind her, quick as my old legs could carry me, back to Gurlie's
cabin. Its door stood ajar. Inside a lantern threw a yellow gleam on a table
with cups and pots knocked askew. Something dark dripped from table to floor.

Me and Lute hung onto the door frame, taking it all in. It was quiet as the tomb
inside except for the baby's crying. Guy Howard was gone. Gurlie lay on the
floor, stretched out on her stomach. Crawling along the floor, the baby girl
reached out to twine her fingers in her mama's knotty red hair and laughed.

We rolled Gurlie over. One button on her shirtwaist had broken in half and the
sharp edge had gouged her in the hollow of her throat. A drop of brown blood had
dried there. I listened for her breath. Then I found a quilt on a pallet and
laid it over her from brow to knees. Lute dropped across her sister's chest,
screaming and crying. I was so stricken I couldn't speak. At last I collected my
wits enough to take the baby against my shoulder to warm her.

I don't know how long we sat there beside Gurlie. Sometime before daylight he
came back in. Lute lay quiet now over Gurlie's body, but she roused up when she
spied him.

"Murderer!" she screamed.

"Get outta my house, witch," he hissed at me. He looked past Lute like she
wasn't even there. Striding into the room, he yanked the blanket away from the
baby's face, the baby asleep now in my arms.

"Leave us be, Guy," I said, my voice afraid and quivering. I had stayed beside
Gurlie all night, and my legs were stiff and aching. I couldn't shake the sleep
out of my limbs fast enough to rise, and I hugged the baby close as I cowered
beside Gurlie. "We'll see about this baby. Let us be."

"I'll kill you," he said to me, but his voice was calm and even now. He towered
over us, Lute and me and the baby, crouched beside Gurlie on the cabin floor.

The baby woke up and looked at him with her rolling black eyes, and her eyes
circled round and round the roof of the cabin. A chill ran down my back and I
wondered, does she see her mama's ghost above us?

Guy lunged down at me, as if to rip that baby out of my arms, but Lute cried out
like a wolf and threw her weight against his outstretched arms. He turned to
fling her off, but in the motion he lost his balance. He stumbled over Gurlie's
still body and fell across her, Lute carried down, too, and falling over on top
of him, clawing and scratching and screaming what he had done.

I scrambled aside as they fought, managed to roll myself and the baby away from
them and stagger to my feet. Without a backward look, I ran to the cabin door,
flung it open and ran through the woods to my cabin with the baby in my arms,
Lute's cries behind my back.

With shaking hands I ran inside and bolted my door. I reached up over the
fireplace and took down my shotgun. If he came for us tonight, I would be ready.

But he did not come. Not that night, and not that next morning. I sat like a
rock, not moving except to see about the baby, asleep in my bed. And by
afternoon I knew what I must do.

I dumped my potions out of my carpet bag and folded up my blankets and clothes.
I collected all the money I had, and packed up food and the milk my cow had
given the day before. And when all was done, I hitched the horse to my buggy and
laid the baby on the boards between my feet, covering her with a blanket against
the wind. I whipped the reins across the horse's rump and we sped off, the buggy
rocking hard, toward the valley. Overhead, clouds were gathering. The air was
dead-still, like the eye of a storm. This was my chance, I reckoned, to escape.
He would not know old Odum's place lay in the valley, empty and dark, forgotten.
But I knew. I knew, too, the storm would sweep over us once the eye had passed.

It has been almost a year now. I pay a boy to run to town for whatever I cannot
grow here on the land my daddy sharecropped for Odum when he was alive. The boy
keeps his mouth shut for an extra coin. But soon my money will be gone, and we
cannot hide here much longer. I can't think what I will do except to leave this
place and go somewhere else. It will not be easy, for I am an old woman, and
what have I to offer but what I know as a Granny Woman? And how can I offer
that, now?

He will find us. I know he will find us, sure as I know my name. I do not ask
for word of him or of Lute. I am afraid to know what might have happened in the
cabin that night. I do not need to ask. I know he's coming for me, coming for
that baby. I hear the booty owls call his name of an evening, feel the cold of
him in the wind that blows before a rain, smell his hate in the wood-smoke of
the fire on old Odum's hearth, my hearth now. He is out there.

It is late summer now, and some nights heat lightning dances a jig above us on
the mountain ridge. Sometimes the light wakes me, though there is nary a sound
in the heavy air. When I wake my heart pounds with fear; I think for a moment
the light is a lantern, that someone's sneaked into the cabin, come for the
baby. I drape my shawl about me and tiptoe across the pine planking to the comer
where she sleeps. She breathes soft and low. Lightning breaks again, and I see
her dark lashes, Guy Howard's lashes, laying on her baby cheeks. I snug the
quilt over her and tuck it in against the curve of her thin spine. Tonight, at
least, she is safe. Tomorrow, who can say? I am an old woman, after all. In the
distance, the lightning flashes in a frenzy, and I feel the storm is drawing
near.

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