Oral History (9781101565612) by Lee Smith Page B

stood behind them trees. All I want to do, I says to myself, is see how Almarine is a-doing. That’s all I want, I says. I says I’ll look my fill, and then I’ll be traveling directly.
    I watched while the storm come on.
    Thunder rolls, then comes lightning, over on Black Rock Mountain. The wind is a-whipping the trees and the ash leaves is showing their silver backsides. Almarine keeps on plowing as long as he can with her right along behind him. Most womenfolks would of run for the house, but you know Red Emmy don’t fear no storm. Well, the rain comes falling in big old draps makes a splash in the dirt like a silver dollar, and Almarine’s mule commences a-neighing and raising up in the trace. Almarine lays down the plow and turns, and Emmy is twisting up the rest of the corn in her apron. She raises her face up to him and now she’s wet and her hair is dark and like it’s stuck flat to the side of her face. Her skin shows real bright in that crazy light that comes in a early-spring storm. This was the firstest thunderstorm of the year. Almarine draps that plow, and turns, and looks at her, and she moves toward him and him toward her and they go to kissing, right there in that half-plowed field in the wind and the rain. By then I knowed bettern to come out, I wouldn’t of come out for the world. So there they are kissing, with Almarine’s mule a-rearing and a-hollering, and ever time it lightnings, their faces comes plain in the sudden dark.
    You never saw such kissing in all your life! Made me feel like I had not felt for years and if that surprises you, you ain’t got no sense. Now a person mought get old, and their body mought go on them, but that thing does not wear out. No it don’t. And anyway they was kissing, and I was a-watching, and then still holding on tight to each other they start for the cabin acrost the field. They had plumb forgot that poor mule. Well, I never said a word but when they passed by where I was, Red Emmy done something made me see she had knowed I was there all along. Of course she knowed it! Child of the devil. But I had like to forgot it, that day.
    Red Emmy turned her head away from her kissing one time, once only, and looked at me directly where I was hid. The lightning flashes right then and I see her face and it is old, old. It is older and meanern time. Red Emmy stares me right in the eye and she spits one time on the rainy ground. Almarine never seed a thing.
    Well as soon as she spits, I get a pain in my side liked to bend me double, it is all I can do to get outen that holler that day and get over on Snowman Mountain where I belongs to be curing the thrash, stead of going spying on a witch and her business. That pain bent me double for seven days, wouldn’t nothing cure it. I learnt me a lesson for sure, and all during the froze-time, I never went up there no more.
    So I never knowed exactly when things commenced to change, and Red Emmy’s true nature come out. Which it’ll do ever time, you mind me. The devil mought loan out his daughter, but comes a time when he’ll take her back. Almarine must of knowed this too, somewhere in the back of his mind. When she turned to evil for good, he must not of been that surprised. The first I heerd of it myself, was old man Joe Johnson down at the store says Almarine is looking puny. He says Almarine come by for some coffee, all white-faced and thin as a rail.
    â€œThat boy don’t look good, Granny,” Joe Johnson says. Joe Johnson has got this big white beard stands out in a circle around his face. I was getting me some salt as I recall. “That boy looks plumb tuckered out. You orter go up there and see him, Granny. I tell you, they’s something wrong.”
    â€œI ain’t going up there,” I says. Joe Johnson always gives me some tobaccy for my pipe and gives it free.
    â€œYou ort to go,” Joe Johnson says. He shakes his head back and forth like he is