Southern Legitimacy Statement: I was born and raised on the Appalachian end of Virginia. All my family are still there. I return often to do family stuff up on the mountain.
What Lives Up Mud Creek Holler
“Lord God.” Tudy’s voice broke. She paused, mouth pinched shut, composing herself. A red handkerchief covered her head allowing a few silver curls to poke out the sides. “They say she’s eat up with cancer.” She plucked the silver cross dangling around her neck, rubbing it with thumb and forefinger.
The four Grannies assembled on wooden chairs positioned at the center of the living room in a small circle.
The house’s heavy front door propped wide open. Porch post shadows stretched across the rough floorboards like prison bars, and beyond that a field of golden hay lay past the green yard. The smell of rain saturated the air and clouds rolled overhead.
“Bless her heart,” Drema murmured, glancing at Tudy. “Are they sure?” Her flower-covered moo-moo hung below the chair seat, almost to the floor. “She didn’t smoke or drink. A good, god-fearing woman. Awful, just awful,” she said, spitting out the last words, mouth crumpled at the injustice of death.
Thunder growled as beans snapped between withered fingers, slow and steady.
A cool breeze blew through the house, billowing and flapping the white curtains hanging over the windows. Milkweed sprouted along the dirt driveway, perfuming the air with sweet scents loosened by their orange blossoms. The temperature was comfortable for work or sleep as rain pattered on the porch’s tin roof.
“I think so,” Tudy said.
“Well,” Cricket offered, straightening her back. Her foot tapped on the floor like she sent a secret code to the beyond. “These doctors don’t know everything.” Her thin eyebrows raised high. Memories of her fight with breast cancer threatened to swallow her, but she took a breath. “God works in mysterious ways,” she said, her finger pointing. “Prayer,” she teared, “has wonder working powers.”
“Amen,” Tudy echoed, folding her hands in quick prayer and glancing skyward. “The whole church at Green Cove is pray’n.”
Lightning flared across the sky and illuminated the low dark cloud bottoms. The rain shifted from a drizzle to a steady pour that battered the tin roof, drowning conversation.
The woman’s fingers worked, violently snapping beans like little bones and tossing them into the pot. Silence grew thick like cobwebs.
Elvie, pleated in wrinkles and wearing glasses big as saucers, spat into a gold colored spittoon beside her foot. The smell of Bruton snuff burned the air around her like a halo. Her head nodded uncontrollably with age, giving her a skeptical appearance. She’d listened to too many die while praying for miracles. “She’s bad off,” she challenged, dabbing the corners of her mouth with a tobacco napkin. “Her blood and bones are eat up with cancer.” Elvie clutched the armrest of the wheelchair and tilted forward, near yelling. “I tell ya right now.” She swiveled her head, eyeballing each Granny. “We can pray.” She paused three heartbeats, “but it don’t look good.” She sat back, still, and satisfied.
All the women gawked in silence. Their pile swelled. Knuckles whitened and hands trembled as they moved quick and angry through the green beans. Pull, snap, toss. Pull, snap, toss. Pull, snap, toss.
Outside the circle, a small boy, perhaps five years old, sat on the floor, alone, with a red toy truck in his hand. He caught the change in the atmosphere. Choked conversation and furious snapping. The boy glanced up, saw their wet eyes, long faces pinched with worry lines, and felt their sadness thick in the room. He gripped the truck tight enough for the edges to poke his small palm. The discomfort caused him to remember the morning his momma gave him the toy, hugging him tight a few hours before her first day on second shift at a factory job off the mountain. The toy still smelled like her perfume back then. He didn’t see her much now, he thought, touching his Granny’s shoe.
Drema reached down and rubbed his head, gazing at her grandson.
He glanced up into her eyes and smiled.
“Don’t you worry about this ole cancer monster,” she said. The corners of her mouth turned up into a tender grin.
The boy nodded at her, innocent.
He’d never heard of cancer. But he knew that monsters were bad. Last Halloween, his Granny told him of the Headless Horseman that roamed the holler. That monster occupied his thoughts when he laid alone in the dark at his Granny’s house, listening to the apple tree branch scratch against the window. He’d pull the patchwork quilt over his head, squeeze his eyes shut, and whisper a prayer to Jesus like his Granny taught him.
They lived up a holler, narrow like a tunnel, called Mud Creek. Giant trees on either side of the one lane road leaned over the car, covering a shaded stretch that required headlights on the brightest days in summer. Moss covered rocks and Rhododendron grew thick alongside the road. Gnarled roots twisted and tore out of the earth, stretching toward the road like dirt-covered, spectral arms. He’d stare out the window as they drove slow through potholes, the car dipping and rising, always afraid they’d break down or that Granny would ask him to go on foot for help. Fear that he’d get lost in the tangle of limbs or that something sinister would reach out of the wet, leafy darkness on either side of the road and grab him by the arm and pull him into the brush, chilled his little heart. The thought made tiny baby hairs stand up on his neck and arms every time they eased up the holler road to Granny’s house.
The little boy on the hard wooden floor in his blue denim overalls, no shoes, and dirty bottomed feet, thumbed the tires of the red truck in a repetitive motion that kept them spinning. He began to wonder about the bad news of cancer, and whether that monster might move into his Granny’s holler with the Headless Horseman.
The old women kept bantering for hours as they snapped green beans. The young boy stretched on the floor, pushing his tiny car back and forth, feeling sleep creep up with the breeze. Numb vibrations flowed up his legs, through his body, and extended out his arms. His eyelids grew heavy with time and his vision turned gauzy. The women’s voices fell distant as rain became a lullaby, until he discovered himself in the back seat of Granny’s car, surrounded by darkness.
***
The car stopped. He sat up, confused, head pivoting in search of Granny.
Jumping to his knees, he spun around, and peered out the rear window, thinking, maybe, Granny was behind the car. But she wasn’t.
He was alone, in the holler, and it was dark. He’d have to walk to Granny’s house. He could find it. The house was just up the road a way, but he’d never walked alone in the dark.
Should he stay in the car? Or should he get out and walk? What if Granny needed help? Could he even find her in the dark?
A noise in the bushes outside the car grabbed his attention and jerked him to the window, where he smashed his nose and forehead against the glass, peering out, listening.
Something bumped the car. Spinning around, he faced the sound. He stood in the rear floorboard and stretched his small body over the front bench seat to get a better view out the windshield.
The blackness outside was complete. He couldn’t see anything but his own reflection staring back in the windows.
Alone, he felt dread pinch his throat. Outside stalked a monster, maybe even cancer, devouring his courage, and eating Grannies.
The boy whimpered. Water spilled from his eyes, dribbling down his cheeks. His face puckered tight.
The car shook violently, rocking back and forth.
Screaming, he thrust his arms out to steady himself against the motion.
A voice hollered. It was Granny. She called for him in the distance, but he couldn’t see anything.
Something grabbed his shoulder. He seized it, terrified. And in a flash, light swirled, shapes merged, and his vision cleared.
Flat on the floor, heart pounding, he found the old women hovering over him, absorbed by his face, smiling.
“You were just have’n a bad dream, young’n,” Drema said, as she rubbed his hair back, wiping sweat from his forehead. He relaxed into her warm touch. She thumbed a tear off his cheek, just like his momma used to do before the factory took her nights away. “You’re alright.”
She pulled him up and hugged him, rubbed his back, and observed him close for a few seconds.
“Bless his heart,” Tudy chimed, standing before the boy. “You want some water,” she asked.
Shaking his head no, he admired his Granny’s face. She pinched his cheek and stood.
Tudy returned and handed him a plastic cup filled with water. Slowly he woke, sipped from the cup, and sat cross-legged in the floor, listening.
As the rain gave way to humid stillness, the women divided their beans into baskets and lined them in a row by the front door.
Goodbyes mingled with hugs and promises of next time.
The red truck waited on the floor beside him. Cool metal met his palm when he picked it up. Spinning the wheel, he watched it and thought about the monster called cancer. A new fear dawned for the boy – cancer could eat up his Granny just like the others. He spun the wheel again and again, mashing faster and harder with his thumb, until his Granny stopped him.
