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The Edge |
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Display a printable version Agatha
Well, she was stone hard; make no mistake, a skinny slab of back woods hickory in a size two dress, with bowed legs and a limp from a broken left hip that never did heal right. Her hazel eyes flicked sparks when Agatha got angry. Very thick, plated hair ran down her back. Now streaked white and grey, just enough of the original chestnut color remained to show us she'd been once young. "And it sure ain't Ag neither," she scolded. "That's just too close to 'hag' for me." Most new cousins made the mistake of calling her Ag, just once, that first day. Of course, most of their parents put them up to it, too, knowing how Agatha would react. Flat-landers, as Agatha reminded us every summer, had "citified manners - which ain't for squat." "City done took the starch outta your collars," she'd snort at us sometime in the first half hour of our annual summer visit. "Done made y'all soft." A day or two with Agatha stiffened our spines and whipped manners into Agatha-shape. She was as fast with her hand as she was with her sharp tongue. It was even money which was tougher. When she didn't like something one of us did, she'd whip out her hand and your ear, I swear, would be numb for a week where her rock hard thumb and forefinger clipped it almost off your head. If that didn't bring a tear to your eye, Agatha would flay your ego alive with a tongue that would scald any sailor in port or at sea. But she always knew exactly when to stop. Just as you'd well up in tears, she'd flash that mostly toothless smile and all fears and sorrow and pain melted under a hand that could be as gentle as it was hard. She had a magic healing touch, too. "Well, that'll do to be goin' on with, I recon," she'd say, then laugh a throaty laugh and hug the offender tight. Mother's mother's mother, Agatha was. Not our grandmother, but our great grandmother. She wouldn't tolerate us to call her either grandmother, or great grandmother. She was just Agatha for as long as I knew her. Going to Agatha's was a treat not to be missed by any of her young kin. It wasn't until much later we learned that all generations of youngsters passed through Agatha's cabin one summer or another. The lucky ones ? like me ? spent several of the best summers of our lives there. We formed lifetime friendships ? and family feuds ? during those visits. Agatha made each summer a real treat. "Y'all skin them city cloths," was her first order every summer just as soon as the last mother left. It was also our first shock. "I ain't got the grit to do laundry more'n once a week no more." That left us dressed in ragged cut-off shorts and tank tops, all matched the same grey-white that came from coarse laundry, Agatha-made soap and no bleach. While we were never naked as a daily routine, it was as close as her personal decorum allowed. Other times ? several during any good summer - if we were lucky - outright nudity was not only in vogue, but a necessity. Veterans of previous visits waited breathlessly for that first blazing July day when Agatha herded us all the way downhill to the swimming hole. Agatha was no mean swimmer, having dipped in most of the streams and ponds in the hills at least once in her life. "Las' one in's a suck egg," she called as she shucked her own smock and top. In she'd dive, buck naked, without a second thought of any kind. Of course, she shocked the new kids every summer. I know I'd never seen a completely naked adult before I saw Agatha. "What?" We were too shocked that first time to do more than giggle and blush and stare at the granite beneath our feet, sneaking quick, embarrassed glimpses of a naked, sagging Agatha. She waded out, planting herself in front of us, then laughed at our blushing faces. Her nudity was our problem, we learned right then, not hers. "Oh, well, skin dries faster than them old clothes," she cackled, standing at her ease with a hand on her bony hip. "City kids," she snorted and shook her head, "but y'all go right on ahead if you've a mind. O' course, them clothes is gunna feel like a dead fish the rest of the day. And I don't wanna hear nothin' about it, neither." I spent the best part of the early afternoon in the swimming hole dressed and, true to her words, the rest of the evening in nasty damp and clammy clothes. She finally gave in, had us ? me and Bobby Glenn and the other two new ones that summer who refused to skinny dip - peel out of our clothes. She spread our clothes over some of the bushes surrounding her place where they dried very quickly while we tried to hide our meager sex and blushing madly. "No I ain't got no dryer," she said. "And I ain't lightin that damn stove neither." Took us that once, swimming dressed, and then we never thought about it again. Still don't. Makes the new ones uncomfortable every year, but we old timers just laughed and pointed at the cowards. She was a caution and a sage, to be sure, Agatha was. One of the real joys of staying with Agatha was her privy. She smiled, actually cackled when she thought of the parade of us going up the small hill to use it. Outside - even in those days - her privy was outside. One chore no one ever forgot was to bring Agatha the latest Sears. "Of course there's a stool back in the house there," she said one day when we asked, "but y'all use Uncle Bud's hole up there. Uncle Bud dug down about ten feet stealin' coal one year. Thought he'd pulled a fast one on them mine owners. Then he done tapped into the top of their old mine shaft. Damn near fell in first time." She paused and got distant and shivered a bit and whispered, "Uncle Bud, he was a caution." We giggled because she called her privy Uncle Bud's hole. We loved it because when you shouted down the hole, it echoed like there was no tomorrow: A deep shaft, no question. An Agatha-veteran escorted each new boy up to the small shack, lifted the lid and let the new boy drop a rock. You could count to twenty, or more if you were really fast, before that rock struck home. After a time, perhaps out of the boredom of the moment, you used to count as fast as you could, just to see how high the number could go before your water splashed waaayyy down there. Every summer began almost the same way. Agatha knew the ride from the city was a bladder buster. She felt the need to remind us, year after year. "Y'all use Uncle Bud's hole up yonder when you gotta. You just mind Old Smoke. He'll be waitin for the right soul to come in and set too long. You just make sure you ain't the one he's waitin for." Old Smoke. That's what she called it. Old Smoke. We thought Old Smoke was a possum, maybe a bob cat. Early one summer, must have been my second or third, we were sure we'd cornered Old Smoke up in the rafters because it buzzed like crazy whenever we opened the door. We told Agatha we'd heard Old Smoke; that he'd been there for several days. She blanched and got to the door as fast as I'd ever seen her walk. "All y'all stay right here," she said, shooing us to her front porch near the door and hobbling up the well worn path. Of course, we did no such thing. As soon as she rounded the corner, we ran and stuck our heads around - slowly you understand - as she was still fast as hell with that whip-like ear clip. She peered through the privy door carefully, like a sneak thief breaking into a house. Although bent low by age and 'the rumatiz', according to Agatha, she stooped lower than usual and shaded her eyes as she scanned the rafters. We heard her cackling laugh as she straightened up and looked down the hill towards us. "Y'all may as well come on up here and see," she called to us, even though we'd ducked around the corner of the house as quickly as we could. "And bring that broom with ya." We trudged up the hill, towing her sorghum stick broom. "Old Smoke," she snorted after we gathered. "Huh. Ain't nothin' but a bunch of old wasps." She lifted the lid and swatted the nest into the hole to find its final rest a few hundred feet below. Then she turned on us and used to broom to 'sweep' us down hill, giggling and screaming with delighted fear, hobbling as fast as she could and making us whoop with every sweep to the bare legs of those who got too close. "Settle down here," she said to us. Every evening we gathered on her porch and watched the lightening bug dance in the woods. Bats, night hawks, swallows and swifts - all sorts of hill birds - chased the last insects from the sky as the evening purpled around us. That was her version of TV and as close as we ever got to the real thing while visiting Agatha. A tough addiction to break, television. "What you wanna watch some old fool dead thing like that when you can watch all glory for real right here?" She said. She was right as usual; nothing on television has ever come near to duplicating the purple evenings and dancing fireflies of those hills. Let a thunderstorm rip through and we had front row seats to "the birth of all creation," Agatha explained, hugging as many close as she could. *** Twenty years later, events transpired to drive me back to Agatha's cabin. I caught a ride, several in fact, to shake off anyone who might think to follow, and hiked the last fifteen miles or so into the hills, stopping by the old swimming hole, empty of kids now in late October. I let sunset die to purple shadows, remembering fond summers of youth. Tonight it was simply a well known place to make certain no one followed me. Agatha's cabin was there and I gasped, tears filling my eyes, as I saw it almost buried in leaves. Tucked away under the massive hickory trees I remembered from so very long ago, I don't think I've ever been happier to see her place. It was smaller than I remembered ? meaner - somehow cruder, and much further away from the highway than I recalled. Weathered and unpainted clapboard siding wreathed the frame and grey smoke the poured from her rock chimney. Back up the hill, just visible in the late autumn gloom, sat Uncle Buck's hole. Agatha's was the haven I'd dreamt of these past horrid days. Agatha waited on her front stoop, a slab of oak as old as she was, her rocking chair going fit to beat the band. "I'm sorry, Agatha. Bobby Glenn Earle . . . it's my fault," I began, but she cut me off. "So it's you, is it?" She smiled, wider and with more joy on her face than I can ever recall seeing before. "I hate to do this, but I have ?." "No need, no need," she waved away any explanation. "Didn't know it was you, of course, but I knowed someone would show up shortly. Old Smoke tol' me. And here you are." I hung my head with a short nod and sat beside her on the stoop. She sighed and the pace of her rocking slowed some. I felt her frail hand, as dry and brittle as the autumn leaves surrounding us, stroke my hair as my forehead found my knees. For the first time in a long time, silent tears slid down to soak my pants leg. "You just go ahead and cry now," she said. "You got lots of time now. Ain't no one gunna come bother you. No one'll find you at Agatha's. Hell, no one'll even think to come lookin for ya here. Them is just the first tears. First of an ocean, I promise you that. First of an ocean." "You don't know," I sobbed. "You can't know. You don't get the paper. Me and Bobby Glenn?." "Don't need to know," Agatha's hand turned into a vice on the back of my neck and then relaxed when I stopped talking. She patted my shoulder to soothe her pinch. "Don't want to know. Old Smoke knows and that's enough to be goin' on with." "Not that old ghost story," I wept. In spite of, or perhaps because of, my current problems, I wasn't in any mood to humor her. Nor was I still a child. "I'm sorry, Agatha, but I really don't want to ?." "Uncle Bud," she sighed so quietly I almost missed it. "He was a caution, Bud was. Couldn't leave the skirts alone, Bud couldn't. Never passed up a chance and made up plenty of his own chances, too, mind. "I'd heard stories - all us girls had. We kept together up here when we visited Auntie Grace. Bud was on us like bees on honey every summer, sniffing like an old hound, always in rut. "Grace - that was his wife, my mother's sister Grace was - made him dig that privy out back yonder that summer," she said again, a quaver in her voice now. "He paraded the lot of us back there to show us his handiwork. "Just after that he broke through the top of the shaft - couple days later - made him angry as a hornet, I can tell you. No more free coal unless he wanted to dig again. The next day they was a bad cave in and the minin' concern stopped digging. Killed lots of men. They left them in that cold, dark shaft. Just never opened her up again. Bud built his privy on top. Used to tell us, on really dark nights, that the sounds down there was them lost men in the cave in, callin', trying to get out again. He was a caution, Bud was. "One night I had the cramps and I couldn't stand it no more. Was early July. We'd been in the apples, green as they was, and I had the skitters. Bud followed me, of course. Took me on the path to the privy. I remember like yesterday. Old Smoke don't never let me forget. "I was just fresh, as my Auntie used to call us when we first started our monthlys. He got me with child, your grandfather, that'd be. My only, turns out. Of course, there was no goin back home after that. "I waited for Bud then. Laid for him, you might say. Caught him about two months later, headed back up the path. Pole axed him stone cold just as he opened the door and dropped his overalls. I lifted the lid and pushed him in. He come to about the time his feet slipped on beyond the rim. Screamed some of the way down, then cursed real loud, and, just before he hit bottom, laughed to beat the devil. "Old Smoke come boilin' up outta that hole, don't ya know," she'd stopped rocking. Her hand rested on my shoulder so lightly I had to look to make sure it was there. "Bud's ghost?" I whispered. "Oh, no," she smiled briefly, then that smile slipped away. "Bud's roastin in hell where he belongs, sure enough." "What then?" "My keeper, my personal prison warden," she sighed, relived. She smiled, relaxed and the pace of her rocking picked up some. "Yours now." "How do you know??" "Oh, I don't know what you done," Agatha assured me, patting my shoulder. "What's more, I don't wanna know. Old Smoke, he knows." "It's a him then," I said. "What's it do, torment me?" "Not directly, no," Agatha said. "You won't be seein' Old Smoke much after tonight. Until the kids start comin' again, of course. He'll show up about once a summer. Checkin' prospects, seein' whose next, I reckon. "See, Old Smoke keeps the Angel of Death away." "What?" Enough was enough, as far as I was concerned. I wasn't a small child any longer, to be thrilled by the late night ramblings of a cherished old relative in her dotage. "You don't believe that." "Killin' Bud, got to be," Agatha said with a sigh. "I warn't old enough to have raised that much hell when Bud took me. I lied like a rug. Said I heard Uncle Bud get up in the night to do his usual and said I went right back to sleep, din' pay him no notice. A'course, I kilt him stone cold dead. Old Smoke is here to make sure I remember. I cain't leave the mountain - well - couldn't. Now I guess I won't. Guess it don't make no matter now. You won't be leavin now, neither. Old Smoke won't let ya." Agatha smiled. The very last of cold October settled at our feet and I shivered a bit. Grey smoked cascaded like water from the roof of her house and hovered on the ground like fog, filling the air with the smell of burning sulfur rather than smoking hickory. "Old Smoke," she nodded towards the grey mist. "Come to see you. Come to take a good look. He come every summer you was here right enough. That's why your folks drug you up here ? you and all the rest - all them times. Old Smoke needed to look all y'all over. He looked your folks over in their turn, too. You note that they all showed up, every one. Them as didn't sure paid awful for it," she shook her head. "Awful." I wasn't sure I wanted to know what happened to those who ignored Agatha's annual summer summons. Old Smoke pooled in front of us, more solid than a summer mirage, more substantial than wood smoke. Surging to and fro, with a tide and pulse of its own, Old Smoke washed back and forth across the path. "It don' matter what you done down there in the city," she said, nodding towards the trail head. "You done the best thing in the world for me. You released me. Old Smoke is yours now. You won't never be sick, but you won't never be pain free again, neither. He'll keep the Angel of Death away from you now. I suspect that angel was following you up the path. I used to see it here now and then, up in among the trees, before Old Smoke chases it away." "How long?" I whispered, dreading the answer. "I'm one hundred and fifty six years old," she stated flatly. "I was fourteen the summer Bud took me. They ain't a bone, they ain't a joint, not a sinew in this old body that don't hurt. I can't die ? well ? couldn't die. Every time the Angel of Death come for me, Old Smoke stood in the way and run him off. You'll note Old Smoke ain't made no move to do that now." She nodded towards the path, just beyond the tree line another entity shimmered, hovering ? not on the ground in front of us like Old Smoke ? but a more ethereal mist, shimmering and glowing - some how at once more dread-filled and peaceful than Old Smoke. "I'll be done right soon now," Agatha whispered and smiled. Her face relaxed and I could see that, in her youth, she'd been extraordinarily beautiful. Years dripped off her and seemed to flow into me, through her hand that still rested on my shoulder. New aches and pains and cramps attacked me, but she wouldn't let go. Perhaps she couldn't. "You just put me down there with Uncle Bud, boy. No fuss. No bother." With that, and a long sigh, she died.
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| Last updated on 1/6/2011 9:41:32 PM by Jennifer Brozek |
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"You call me Agatha, not Aggie," she barked at me and Bobby Glenn Earle, then cursed because it suited her. "Aggie. Like I was some damnfool stone."
Ken Staley lives in Coeur d?Alene Idaho. Recent short stories have appeared in SpokesWrite, Northwest Passages: A Cascadian Odyssey and Anthology Magazine. He is currently working on a series of short stories and two novels.