Thursday, December 12th, 1945
Charlie closed the front door behind him and made his way down the hall to the bathroom. His white collared shirt was torn, bloody, and his mouth and nose were bleeding.
“Charlie, what happened?” Ruby said. She stood still in the hall.
“It’s OK, Ruby. I’m fine.”
“Charlie, you’re bleeding. What happened?” Tears filled her eyes.
“Dad? What’s wrong, dad? Are you OK?” Charlie’s oldest son, Don, stood in the hall behind his mother. He was sixteen years old.
“I’m fine, son. Darling, I’m fine. It’s nothing. Let me get cleaned up. I can get a new shirt.”
Ruby ran to him and put her arms around him. “Charlie, what’s happened to you?” Charlie winced as she touched his cracked rib. He hugged her back. “It’s nothing, darling. Nothing I won’t recover from.”
“Dad, who did this?” There were angry tears in the boy’s blue eyes, behind his black rimmed glasses.
“It’s OK, son.” Charlie put his hand on his son’s shoulder while he held his wife with his other arm.
“It was Asa, wasn’t it? I’ll kill him. I’ll kill that son of a bitch.”
“Son.” Charlie spoke firmly. He kept his hand on Don’s shoulder. “That’ll only hurt you. Nothing need be done. They think they can scare me. We know they can’t. We know that, don’t we, bud?” Charlie smiled and there was blood on his teeth.
“Dad, they can’t get away with this. We gotta do something.”
“Son. Sometimes doing nothing is doing something. You’ve gotta think ahead. Past your feelings. He’s already lost. It’s over. He thinks this’ll scare me. He’s wrong. We know that, don’t we?”
“But, dad, we can’t let him get away with it. He can’t hurt you and get away with it! You’re better than all of them.”
“I’m gonna take a bath. Trust me, I’m fine. I’ve had it worse than this. This is nothing.” He smiled and Don saw the blood on his teeth. “All I have to do is buy a new shirt and take a bath. And I’m fixed.” Charlie kissed Ruby on her forehead, looked into her hazel eyes and held her gaze for a moment, patted Don’s shoulder, walked past them into the bathroom, shut the door behind him.
Don and his mother, Ruby, stood in the hall and listened to the bathwater run.
He spent the next week in the hospital. Ruby took turns checking on him and taking care of Don and Harold. Whenever Charlie woke up in his hospital bed—there was Ruby—sitting in the chair beside him. Perhaps he woke up once and she was gone, and he asked the nurse after her. Perhaps the nurse had said, “She’ll be right back, Charlie. She’s taking Harold to piano lessons.”
Asa Little had run against Charlie for Menifee county judge. Charlie’ oldest son, Don, went around the county—to all the houses in town and down every backwood holler—telling people why his dad should be their judge. Everyone in Menifee County knew Charlie and Ruby Mann: they owned, and ran, the general store and post office—each had taken turns being postmaster—for a number of years. Asa Little was a large man—6’2” and 240 pounds—and had a reputation for violence. Asa won the election by six votes. But everyone knew this wasn’t right. There were stories of fraud. Charlie asked for a recount. The results came back. It was a dead tie. At first, the courts decided that Asa and Charlie would split the term—2 years each. But after some maneuvering and court filings—the governor refused to split the term—it was decided that they’d cast lots for the four-year term.
It all came down to that day in the Menifee County Courthouse in downtown Frenchburg. The courthouse stands at the junction of 460 and 36. Dark towering mountain hills frame downtown. Beaver Creek meanders alongside the main roads—460 and Back. In a basket, there were many pieces of folded paper—most blank—one with Charlie’s name and one with Asa’s name. After Asa and Charlie each chose blank sheets, it was Charlie’s turn to draw again. Charlie unfolded a piece of paper with his name on it. Afterward, Asa walked upstairs to Charlie’s new office in the courthouse and beat him relentlessly—so severely that he spent a week in the hospital. Charlie was only 5’8” and 140 pounds and had no real chance at defending himself—although he tried—against the much larger man who outweighed him by a hundred pounds. I imagine that Asa kept kicking Charlie while he laid on his office floor, bleeding. There was no one to help him. Later, Charlie was able to pull himself up by the seal of the courthouse window and get the attention of the people below, in the street of downtown Frenchburg. He was taken directly to the hospital. Ruby, and their sons—Don and Harold—had been shopping in Mt. Sterling and heard what had happened. They went directly to the hospital. The above scene—where Charlie walked, injured, into his house after the beating—never happened. But I kept the scene because it succinctly shows how everyone handled it. Charlie took it in stride. His son, Don, was enraged. His wife, Ruby, was fearful and worried.
Asa Little’s house stood directly across the street—on 460—from the Menifee County Courthouse. Behind the house, the mountain hill climbed dark and tree-spiked toward heaven. The dark hill blocked the sun until 10 am. On the morning of Wednesday, December 13th, 1945, while Charlie Mann was waking up after his first night in the hospital, and Ruby was dozing in the chair beside him, their son—Don Mann—and three of his cousins stood on the cold sidewalk in front of the courthouse and stared across the street toward Asa Little’s house. The sun had not yet risen over Beaver Ridge, and Don felt cold. He wore long underwear under his jeans and a long coat and hat. His cousins were dressed warm in layers, too. Don knew he’d feel warmer when the sun broke over the ridge. Don and his cousins all wore pistols holstered at their side—outside their coats. Cars would pass by on 460 and they paid them no mind. No one said a word to them. They knew. Don and his three cousins barely spoke a word that day. The Little house shadow stretched out across 460, covered them, and, behind them, climbed the stone courthouse wall. The house shadow moved by degrees throughout the day—down the stone wall, uncovering Don and his cousins, then snaking back across the road. A couple hours before noon, the sun warmed his face and Don ungloved his hands. After noon they turned from the house to quickly eat sandwiches. The sun made its way over the ridges and valleys, over the entirety of the Cumberland Plateau behind them. They stood still like statues, not uttering a word, staring across the road toward the Asa Little house. In the house, nothing moved. The shadow of the courthouse began to branch out behind them, then over them, across 460 and eventually covered Asa Little’s house. The light reflected on Beaver Creek became purple tinged. The light was almost gone. It became soft like the brown blanket Charlie kept in the back seat of his car. Don felt the cold move past his skin and muscle and nerves and settle into his bones—especially in his hands, shoulders, and cheekbones. He and his cousins stood still, like one body, resolute as a hawk in a tall pine surveying its valley. Their guns sat silent in their holsters. Eternally visible. I wish I could build a statue for each of them right there outside the courthouse, on the sidewalk in downtown Frenchburg, that would make them, and that moment, immortal. So that the sun would forever play its shadows over them, every day, until their stone statues crumbled and the ridges descended.
After the last moment of dusk passed, they walked to Don’s car. Asa Little never confronted Charlie again.
Two weeks passed.
On the Sunday after Christmas, Charlie, Ruby, Arlie, Rosetta, Don, and Harold sat around the kitchen table. Ruby had made fried chicken, cornbread, green beans, and mashed potatoes. It was dusk. Soft amber light streamed over the sloping yellow-green hillside, through the kitchen window, and lightened the black and brown grains of the oak table. Charlie and Arlie took turns telling the old story they’d told a hundred times before. It had become a recitation. The story from their childhood.
“It was a Sunday,” Arlie would start.
“And it’d been raining the day before,” Charlie would interject. “But the dirt road was mostly dry.”
And Arlie would go on. “And me and Charlie were driving the buggy up and down Main Street to show off for the girls walking home from church.”
“Was it the third turn?” Charlie asked. He took a drink of moonshine and passed the Mason jar back to Arlie. Charlie leaned one arm over the back of his chair and smiled.
“Third turn.” Arlie took a drink from the jar. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “And we’re smiling back at the girls and—BOOM!” Arlie slapped his thigh. “We drive her right into a deep puddle. Snaps our wheel in half. You could hear the wheel snap all down the road.”
Charlie laughed. Everybody knew his laugh. It was the kind of laugh without any meanness in it. It was the kind of laugh that you had to smile at. It was genuine. Charlie lost himself in it. Arlie laughed too. He was glad to hear his brother laugh again. Glad that they could tell the story together again.
Ruby rolled her eyes at their story. She’d heard it more than twenty times by now. “You boys need anything else?” She got up from the table.
“Thank you dear,” Charlie said. He smiled at Ruby. She gave him a glance. But when she reached the kitchen door, she stopped a moment, looked back at him, and smiled.
When the light was gone, and the kids were in bed, Charlie, Arlie, Ruby, and Rosetta sat out on the back porch and looked out over the sloping landscape behind the house. There were no night clouds, and the moon was almost full. It lit up the land. Tree shadows fell across the hillside and the short yellow grass looked lunar. The hillside in front of them was cleared but trees peppered the foothill to their left.
Charlie and Arlie sang the old hymn they always sang— “Precious Memories”. They sang harmony: “Precious mem’ries, unseen angels/Sent from somewhere to my soul/How they linger, ever near me/And the sacred past unfold.” For the last two lines of the chorus Arlie sang a close high harmony part: “In the stillness of the midnight/Precious, sacred scenes unfold.” Ruby and Rosetta listened. Ruby looked out past the back porch over the moonlit hillside to the ridge peak that walled her world.
***
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
I’m writing this at my oak kitchen table and looking out the window. The sky is dark and covered with thin gray clouds that move fast across the horizon. It’s just finished raining and bluejays dart down onto the grass and peck at leaves, then light back onto small tree limbs. There’s a pair of them. They land in trees near each other as if they’re keeping an eye on the other. Just a moment ago, they were both in the same small apple tree. They flew off at the same moment, and now perch on the large bare cherry tree at the back corner of the yard. The ground is yellow, green, and brown. The trees are bare limbed brown, with cedars and a Norway Spruce proving the exception—still wearing their proud dark green coats. A baby cardinal—with brown feathers covering its wing—lands on the maple closest to my window, then lights to the small bare apple tree where the bluejay had just been. Then, to Norway Spruce. Then, back to apple. Then, far back to bend a bare cherry limb like an Olympic diving board. Then, way up and around electric wires and out of sight. Moments later, the small cardinal is back in sight. On the middle apple tree. I wonder at the relationships between birds. I wonder at their generations. I don’t listen to them enough. I don’t pay them enough steady close attention over time. I want to know all their names and the patterns of their flights, their comings and goings. What their movement says to each other. What it means. I am an outsider, but I want to understand.
I have the flu. The same influenza virus that killed my great-grandfather Charlie Mann’s first wife, son, and daughter has also invaded the related cells of my body. I suppose those two children—who didn’t survive childhood—could have been my grandfather or grandmother. They’re certainly my great-uncle and great-aunt. Now, influenza can still kill, of course, but I have better odds than my great-grandfather’s first family did in 1919. One hundred and one years ago. I have had the flu twice before. I survived it to be able to write this. But that’s mostly luck. The luck of being born in the time I was. Which is only dumb luck. And only goes so far.
Last September I went to a family reunion and saw two photographs that were partially the genesis of this essay. Let me describe them to you exactly how I saw them:
They are both black and white.
In the first photograph, the background is darker. There are white winding lightning bolt-like creases running along the surface of the photograph. It features my great-grandfather, Charlie Mann, standing at the right, wearing a tux coat and a white button up shirt, buttoned all the way up, with no tie. His right hand hangs by his side, and his wife’s arm is draped around his left arm. His first wife is pretty with dark hair, a mature expression, and a proper looking, almost Quaker-like dress that comes in at the waist. She wears a black necklace close around her neck. She stands straight and tall. In front of them sit their two children. The little boy—no older than four—has dark hair combed to the side, an unhappy expression on his face and sits hunched forward a bit, wearing a white suit with bowtie. His little sister sits beside him with a bemused and happy expression. Her hair is blonde and she wears a white dress. She can’t be much older than two. The boy and his little sister are holding hands. Her hand falls over his, and his forefingers and thumb grip her small hand. I am glad they don’t know what fate awaits them as they look eternally outward from this photograph.
In the next photograph are three figures. My great-grandfather, Charlie Mann, stands to the left in this photograph. His left arm is draped around his first son, Harold—who sits in front of Charlie and Ruby. Charlie’s hair is completely white in this second photograph; it showed no gray or white in the first. His facial expressions are more relaxed, less defined. There is a smoothness where there once were deep lines. He wears a less formal suit coat and bow tie. Ruby leans into Charlie and Harold. Her expression is childlike and innocent. She looks young. She wears a less formal dress than Charlie’s first wife. Ruby’s dress has an open neck and is frilly and flower-dotted. She has short brown hair and big brown eyes.
***
Tuesday, January 17th, 1922
Charlie gripped the steering wheel and guided the Model T along the curving gravel road. The wheel had warmed from his hands. His back was straight, and he looked through the frost-tinged windshield out on the road. His hair was almost completely gray—even though he was just 38—was neatly parted and curled at the part. He looked like a senator.
Ruby sat in the passenger seat with her hands clasped neatly over her schoolbook—which rested in her lap—and looked out at the mountainside trees at the edge of the hollowed valley. The hill was shadowed in faint light, mostly bare brown limbs, peppered with dark evergreen and white barked birches. Through the frosted passenger window everything looked unreal, like a painting. She wore a faded yellow dress with a wide collar, and she felt the cold from the window on her nose and face. Over the foothills, sunlight worked through cloud and illuminated her frosted window.
“Are you warm?” Charlie looked over at her and smiled. The cloud-filtered morning light struck the far side of her straight brown hair.
“Yes, thank you.”
“There’s a blanket in the back seat. Better to be brave and warm than shy and cold.”
She smiled. She watched him driving as the car moved slow and sure along the ridge, down the winding road. There were trees on his side of the car, and a sharp slope jutted up to the hill peak; on her side, the ground fell off sharply beside the road, and ran down like a steep wall to the valley floor.
He felt her eyes on him. “What’s school like today?”
“Oh, nothing special.” She rested her fingers flat on the cool smooth textbook cover and looked back out the passenger window, over the valley, at the distant wall-like hills. She couldn’t see past the hills.
“I know you’re cold.” Charlie grabbed the brown blanket off the back seat and held it out to her. She put her schoolbook down on the floorboard; she pulled the blanket over her legs and up around her shoulders. She settled in for the ride to Hazelgreen Academy. She didn’t mind the long drive. She felt safe in the car. Up until the last six months she’d been living at Hazelgreen Academy because her family was low on money. A lot of the mountain kids lived there because they lived too far from the school. Now, Ruby lived with her older sister, Rosetta, and her sister’s husband—Arlie—Charlie’ brother. The brothers were close. Ruby liked living with her sister and Arlie. She liked riding to school in the mornings with Charlie. He was always nice and cheerful. Ruby watched the sky get small and the ground get big as their car climbed up and around a steep foothill. At the peak, she looked down over the valley at her right, at the big open sky that met the wall-like foothills. The sun pushed through cloud, and the light hung onto the frost on the car window. Everything outside the car felt unreal—it all seemed like scenery for their drive. This was her favorite part of the day.
“Look at that sun trying to fight through. How ‘bout a song, Ruby?”
“No!” she said, with embarrassment.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sing? Your voice is as pretty as those clouds.”
“Which clouds?”
“Those right there.” He pointed out the corner of the windshield, on her side, and kept his other hand on the wheel. “Those purple clouds.”
She looked at the purple clouds between her and the sun and tried to tell how they were like her voice. “Oh,” she said.
“Maybe tomorrow?” Charlie looked at her.
She smiled a shy smile. “Maybe.”
“OK. Only if you want to.”
“OK.” Ruby looked back out the passenger window at the clouds Charlie said were like her voice. She hugged the blanket and listened to the gravel crunch under the car wheels. She liked the way it sounded. She felt comfortable driving in the mornings with Charlie. Like it was something she’d always done. Like it was something that would always go on. She wanted the drive to last a long time.
Charlie and Ruby were quiet for a while. The clouds got brighter, and they moved along the ridge towards Hazelgreen. Charlie turned right, off 460. Onto 203. A while later, in Hazelgreen, he turned left onto 191, then right onto Academy Road. He stopped in front of the large brownstone classroom building. Mid-size cedars, white pines, and occasional birches peppered the hilly land surrounding the classroom buildings and dormitories. The campus was clean, fresh, and new. Even scenic. Charlie looked over at Ruby. The engine ran.
Ruby passed the brown blanket back to Charlie. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Have a good day. See you at dinner?”
“OK.” She hugged Charlie around the neck, picked her book off the floorboard and stepped out. She closed the door behind her and walked toward the classroom building door. Before she reached the door she looked back and waved at Charlie over her shoulder. He waved, beeped his horn, and drove off.
Ruby walked into the main hall and thought about Charlie. She used to only see him on weekends when he had his family—his wife, son, and daughter. She would babysit the boy and girl sometimes when Charlie and Arlie had to travel to Mt. Sterling or Lexington. She had never talked to him about losing them. She was surprised and glad the flu hadn’t killed Charlie, too. It had killed a lot of people. She wondered how he could be so kind and cheerful after what he’d been through. Ruby saw one of her friends in the hall and walked up to her. They talked and waited for the bell to ring.
Charlie drove back along the same roads. This time, the ridge gave way and the valley spread out on his side of the car. The sun was still behind cloud, and he was glad. It wasn’t too bright. A thin layer of gray, like a painting, covered the sky that touched the valley. He looked over to the empty passenger seat where Ruby had sat and thought of the blanket in the back seat that’d kept her warm. The car felt empty like a night cloud, and he made himself think about the rest of his day. What would the business of the store be? The blacksmith is in today. He’d have to drive to Mt. Sterling after lunch for supplies.
A sign on the side of the ridge announced he was leaving Wolfe and entering Morgan County. He imagined, in reverse, the Morgan County curves ahead of him—that he’d just passed with Ruby—that would lead him back into Menifee. After stopping in the store, he’d drop into the post office across the road and see if they needed anything. He looked forward to seeing and talking to the folks in the store and post office. He looked forward to seeing people he knew in Mt. Sterling. He looked forward to seeing his brother’s family—and Ruby—at dinner. He didn’t look forward to going home after, but he should be good and tired after the day. And that was good. Maybe he would play violin if he wasn’t tired enough. Until he fell asleep. A lot of mornings he’d wake up in his boots with the melody of “Sally Goodin” in his head, his violin laying on the made-up bed beside him.
Charlie parked his Model T in front of the general store off 460 in Wellington. Behind the store, the land dipped low, fast, then climbed hard up toward the ridge. His car door snapped shut behind him and a moment later the bell hanging over the door rang out as he walked in. He always walked fast, and wasted no time getting from where he was to where he was going.
“Howdy, Ralph.” Charlie nodded at his man behind the counter.
“Howdy, Charlie.” Ralph leaned against the counter and wiped his thumb on his white apron.
“What’s the news?”
“Near or far?”
“Both, I reckon.” Charlie looked around the store and smelled the frying bacon scent arriving from the back.
“Well, we’re low on eggs and the emperor of Korea died.”
“That right? Emperor, huh? What was he like?”
“Regular emperor I s’pose.”
“Hmm.” Charlie rubbed his chin and wondered what an emperor looked like these days and what kind of person he was behind the scenes. “Enough eggs to last till tomorrow?”
“Cuttin’ it close but should last till tomorrow.”
“I’ll bring some tomorrow morning. Got any fresh coffee?” Charlie walked behind the counter and made his way to the coffee pot.
“Five minutes old.”
Charlie grabbed his mug from the cabinet, and poured it full. Steam rose. “That’ll do. Blacksmith in?” He walked with his coffee back toward the smell of frying bacon to talk with Faye.
“He’s in,” Ralph yelled after him as Charlie walked away into the kitchen.
***
Over the past few months, I’ve driven back to Menifee, Morgan, and Wolfe counties several times. Many of the roads I drove on were the ones Charlie Mann had paved during his time as county judge. The New Deal—and his persistence—enabled Charlie to build roads throughout Menifee county that were second to none. Those were the very roads that led his children west, away from their home place.
On a Sunday in January, I drove down 460 through Menifee County. Spare shards of snow spit from the sky. They flew at my windshield. I took the path to Hazelgreen Academy. Ninety-eight years after Charlie Mann drove Ruby to school that morning, I saw what they saw. Mine was a paved road instead of dirt or gravel-covered. But, although much had changed, I knew many things remained the same: the way the road snaked along the edge of the ridge; the valley and foothills that streamed along outside Ruby’s window; the steep tree’d climb outside Charlie’s window.
When I arrived at Hazelgreen Academy, I found it in ruins. But, at the same time, it retained a strange clean, warm, endearing quality. A kind of eastern Kentucky majesty. I could tell this was once a great place. Giant pines scattered the campus and soared close to heaven. I knew some of them were here with Ruby and Charlie that morning, ninety-eight years ago. Ivy had taken over one building—doors, windows and all—like a virus. One large four-storied building was torn open at its center. The wreckage was immense. As is all the wreckage of once proud places. It looked like a model of an architectural design. Like something that would sit on a desk in the office of some architecture firm. Each floor of the once great building showed at a ninety degree angle. Sagging floors had finally given way to gravity. The walls and floors had resisted gravity for a long time. They were built to last. They withstood time with grace. Even their falling apart—even their wreckage, their mold, and their disorder—was tinged with grace. Bricks piled on top of each other at odd angles, in no discernable order. Those bricks had once echoed Ruby’s voice.
I read somewhere that every time somebody dies, it’s like a library burning down. This makes me think: libraries hold books, which are only of value when people read them; people hold stories, which are only of value when people listen to them. So, when someone dies, a world of stories disappears forever. A world of stories. Gone. But how often do people tell their stories? How often do we really listen? How aware are we of the stories that define us? How aware are you of the stories that define you?
Don Mann—my grandfather and the son of Charlie Mann—took me to Menifee, Morgan, and Wolfe counties, once. This was twenty years ago. He drove his big gray Buick, with alarming speed, down 460. We stopped in a Menifee County general store and he talked with the old men that sat around drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. In the last year of his life, he always told me that he wanted to take me to Menifee County and show me our family’s land. God’s Country, he called it. We never had a chance to take that second trip. I think, by then, he had forgotten the first. In his last year he wanted a computer to write down the stories that were important to him, even though he couldn’t type and was not good with technology. We tried to help, to no avail. I wonder what stories he would have told? He must have known his world of stories would disappear soon, with him.
It’s a Monday in January. The sky no longer spits snow. I drive out of Menifee County back towards home. Back to the time and place I live. I turn left at the fork in 460 in downtown Frenchburg. Past the courthouse where Don Mann and his cousins made their stand that day seventy-five years ago. Don Mann told me that story not long before he died. I drive between the courthouse and the Asa Little house, silent, looking close for any trace that remains.
As I drive past the town, and out of the foothills, I think of Hazelgreen Academy. It’s several counties behind me now. I imagine Hazelgreen Academy as a destination on that morning car ride ninety-eight years ago, and I imagine it as it is now.
I wonder how many stories are buried. Lost. I wonder what traces remain.
