Earl And Jessie, carpe diem
Appalachia 1851 a.d.
Earl Jackson sat on his porch every evening about thirty minutes before sundown and listened. Earl loved to listen. No matter what time of year he listened he could hear distinct sounds of birds and other critters of the mountain that most would not hear if they did not listen for the sounds they made. And he could hear the trickle of the little brook beside his cabin, and the cackle and cluck of his chickens and the gentle grunting and squealing of his pigs. And all these sounds pleased him, but he went to his porch every evening not to hear just these sounds but also to listen intently to another sound that pricked his heart like good mountain whiskey. Sometimes it felt good, sometimes it hurt, but always it was worth it.
Another mountain rose on the other side of the little valley down toward which the brook by his place flowed, and on that other mountain Jessie Pender went to her front porch every evening about thirty minutes before sunset and began strumming her old dulcimer and singing to the critters of the mountain, the birds and the rabbits and the squirrels and the gobblers and her pigs and chickens and milk cow. Sometimes Earl thought Maybe she's singing to me and playing for me too. Her husband had been gone for almost fifteen years now and she had started going to her porch and playing her dulcimer right after he left. She could see the road from there in several different places as it snaked up the mountain toward her house and then on up to where it crossed the ridge above her place and descended into the next valley toward the town by the river in the bottom of that valley. She looked to see if he might be walking up the road on her mountain, and she looked up to see if he might be coming down the mountain on the road as it descended from the ridge above. She had done this for almost fifteen years now, and from that first day she had brought her dulcimer to the porch and strummed it as she sang and called to her husband, and he never came walking up the road from the valley below or walking down from the ridge above.
Earl listened, and it seemed to him that of an evening when Jessie started singing, a spirit flowed out from her porch and settled over the valley, and then the birds stopped singing and chirping and the pigs stopped squealing, and the other mountain critters stopped and listened and surely were touched by her sounds and by this spirit, as he was. This year the ritual was especially intense because of a dove that flew in and alighted on his split rail fence every evening just as Jessie began strumming and singing. Doves keep one mate, and this for life, and where one goes the other follows. As you travel these mountains watch for that and you will see. But this dove always came alone. It came when Jessie started singing, and it left when she stood and went back inside with her dulcimer. Soon Earl came to believe that this daily appearance of the lone dove was a sign, but he could not fathom what it was signing.
One evening Earl sat on his porch and watched Jessie come out with her dulcimer and start playing. He looked over to the rail fence to watch the dove fly in and alight there. This evening the dove did not come. Earl focused on the absence of the dove more than on Jessie this evening. When the sun had set, Jessie went back inside her house and the dove still did not come. Earl did not sleep well that night.
The next afternoon the same thing happened, and then the following afternoon and the one following that. Earl decided he must go tell Jessie about the dove.
The next day, early in the morning, Earl made the one hour journey by foot to Jessie's house. She saw him coming way down the road and went out to meet him as he neared the path that led up from the road to her front porch.
—What in the world brings you all the way across the draw Earl? You ain't been over here in two or three years.
—Jessie, I got to tell you something that's been happening. I been listening to you play of an evening for quite a while now, and this year a lone dove started flying in and perching on my fence right when you started playing. Then he'd leave when you finished and went back in the house. Trouble is, he ain't showed up this whole week and this is already Friday. It's a sign, Jessie. I'm telling ya I know it in my heart.
They walked up the path to the porch and sat. They looked out across the valley where Earl's house and his outbuildings sat in a patch of green halfway up the other mountain. It wasn't a half a mile away as the crow flies, but it was close to an hour by the road on foot or in a mule wagon.
—He ain't coming back Jessie. I know in my heart it's a sign. He ain't coming back. I know you've been wantin' him to come back for fifteen years now, but he ain't coming Jessie. He's dead. That's got to be what the sign means.
Jessie looked Earl in the eye while he spoke. When he had finished she got up and went inside and after a minute she came back out with her dulcimer. She sat and played slow, and tears splashed from her cheeks onto the instrument in her lap. She played and finally she stopped and looked out across the valley. This time she did not look down the road into the valley, as she had done for fifteen years, and she did not look up the road toward the ridge above. Earl kept a few sheep, and she looked across the draw at his little flock, which appeared as a tiny white patch against the green pasture. For several minutes she watched the white patch move slowly across the green field. Earl waited and watched her.
—Earl, I know you've been coming out and settin' on your porch watching me just about every day since your sweet Glenda died. I can see ya across the valley there, just like you can see me. That's been seven years Earl. That means little Josh is already seven years old. How's he doin'?
—He's good Jessie. He's a little too skinny. We ain't had a decent home cooked meal since he was born and she died. I've fed him, but I ain't much of a cook, and it's been just him and me. He goes around the hill to his grandma's some, but she stays likkered up. That's where he is right now.
She looked at him, and then looked back across the valley. —Yont me to come cook you some dinner?
Earl was surprised. —I’d love that, Jessie. You talkin' about today noon?
—Yeah, I reckon I am. It ain't even the middle of the mornin' yet. You got a chicken we can dress and fry up? Or maybe make some chicken and pastry?
—I got a yard full o' chickens, and it don't matter how you cook it. You need to get ready or anything?
—Naw not really, but you'll need to go catch the cow and put a lead rope on her. She won't just follow us the whole way over there without a rope on her.
Earl was caught off guard. Normally guests did not bring their cows with them to dinner, even here in these mountains.
—Why in the world would the cow be coming with us Jessie?
She looked back across the draw at the green field with the little white patch moving slowly across it. She looked for a long moment.
—Earl, if I come cook you and Josh some dinner I ain't leavin'. I ain't leavin' tonight, I ain't leavin' tomorrow, I ain't never leavin' Earl, and you know as well as I do that cow's gotta be milked mornin' and evenin' or she'll get the fire in her tits and die on us. I cain't leave her here if I ain't comin' back cause she cain't skip a milkin'. You can come back with a wagon tomorrow and get the pigs and the chickens and whatever else needs to be took care of right away, but if I go I ain't leavin'. You sure you still hungry enough to have me come over and cook you some dinner?
As she spoke, Earl watched her with his mouth hanging open. This had come out of the blue and he was stunned. Earl was generally a slow going, steady man, but this was moving fast.
—I'm about as hungry as a man can get, Jessie.
—Awright. You go catch the cow and I'll pack a sack. You understand dontcha Earl? I ain't never leavin' if I come with ya. You need to get ahold o' that 'fore I come over there.
Earl stood for another moment with his mouth hanging open, staring at her.
—I believe I got that Jessie. I shore do. I'll be back up here with the cow in just a minute. You go ahead and get yore stuff together and we'll go have us some dinner, you and me. Lord have mercy! I reckon I'm fixin' to get me another cow!
And thus it was that Earl and Jessie became Earl and Jessie, and Jessie never left. She never, ever left.
***
There is a patch of ground in the east of the North American continent that lies roughly between southern New York and the northern reaches of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, where more than twenty-five million people live and procreate. The distance from top to bottom is about one thousand miles as the crow flies. The region includes four hundred and twenty counties in thirteen states, but these twenty-five million people don't pay much attention to counties, states, and other forms of government. They are mostly concerned with eating and drinking, procreation, and doing the will of the Lord. Almost all of their pursuits are conducted within these basic categories of human activity.
These are mostly mountain people. They inhabit both the little mountains of the north and the south and the periphery, and the big, rugged, backbone mountains of the high wild country.
Somehow the character of the people seems to mirror the character of the mountains they inhabit, except that one would be hard put to find more than just a few wild people in the middle country of the big, hard, backbone mountains, probably not more than would reside in any specific aggregation of homo sapiens anywhere. This might be somewhat puzzling, but up in the high country where life can be mean and raw there are countervailing forces and experiences enough to soften the jagged edges of the struggle; thus the disproportionate number of good, sweet people in these big, wild mountains.
The people in the northern part of this territory are different in some respects from the ones in the south, but not so much in ways that matter. Those in the north speak with a bit of an accent — so say the southerners — and they don't eat much grits or cornbread in the north. But they all, everywhere, survive. This they all know how to do. They know how to keep warm in winter and cool in summer, and they rarely go hungry. Theirs is not what their neighbors outside the region would call haute cuisine, but most of the Appalachians wouldn't care much about haute cuisine anyway. But they can hustle up a bowl of fried fish or chicken that kings and queens would slobber over, and they can serve you biscuits and cornbread and hushpuppies and greens of a hundred sorts that are subliminal. From north to south they know how to use a blade and a gun, and most of them have a number of these, and they set aside money to pay for ammunition before they buy groceries or pay their taxes. With one bullet an Appalachian woman can put as much as a hundred pounds of meat in the house. Or, conversely, keep two hundred pounds out.
These people don't cotton much to style in their attire but tend more toward comfort and utility, which is really a part of surviving. Most of them wear warm coats and pants in the winter and short sleeves in the summer, without much regard to fabric and color as long as it is comfortable. One could argue that they do pay attention to style in their headgear because of the ubiquity of the duckbill cap that most of the men and many of the women wear, but because they will wear the same cap all day every day for ten or fifteen or even twenty years, it is stretching it a bit to call this headgear stylish. These caps are functional. If a man has long hair, as many do, the cap will hold it in place. If he has short hair the cap will cover it and he can dispense with combing it. And if he has little or no hair it prevents heat loss in the winter and scalp blisters in the summer. And many a cap has a ten dollar bill hidden in the inside headband that is removed only in the most extreme emergencies. Not a few of these caps have a little fishing gear attached or stashed for those very same emergencies.
These people don't like to overwork themselves. And why should they? If a man and woman have the basics — shelter, food, comfort, and maybe transportation — why should they waste their time expending energy for someone else when they could be making music or poetry or liquor (some would claim that there is no material difference), or just plain philosophizing or daydreaming? Many Appalachians consider these to be important, life-sustaining pursuits that are much more valuable than what the outsiders would impose upon them. This has consternated to no end the outside politicians and do-gooders who have spent a hundred years trying to bring the Appalachians into the modern economy. They have had some success, mainly in the liquor and associated industries, which were already well established informally anyway, and to some extent in industries that are associated with hunting and fishing. Remarkably many of these people whose only educational diploma was delivered to them when they finally completed the eighth grade can rebuild or soup up any engine that you put in front of them if it predates the electronic age, and many are catching up with that, and the outsiders have had some small success in recruiting some of these geniuses into the national racing industry. But generally these economic missions continue to fail because most of the people in this vast territory prefer not to overwork themselves, preferring instead to spend their lives living.
Many of the economic missionaries to the area have abandoned their mission and have adopted the Appalachian lifestyle after only a few years of living in the territory. In some cases this has resulted from matrimony, in others from despair in their failed missions, and in still others from enlightenment and the discovery of real living. Those who despair tend to be depressed for a time but as life moves on and their neighbors stop by and sit a spell, and bring them some fried fish or fried chicken, or a mess of pork chops and maybe an occasional jar of mountain nectar, their depression is eased and they too begin to see their community in a new light and to enjoy a more decompressed lifestyle. Once settled in, many of these renounce their mission and never leave. They put in a little garden, get a couple of pigs and rig up a pen of some sort for them in the backyard, get a dozen or so chickens, and maybe some rabbits and a couple of milk goats, and of course a duckbill cap, and they are home.
***
As the years and decades have become centuries, and change has come to this land, as it does to all without fail, the little spring-fed brook that starts right behind Earl Jackson's house has channeled enough water to fill a river, and it still flows, picking up volume as brooks and streams along the way join it and contribute. There are still a few cows and sheep and goats and pigs and chickens on small farms scattered around the mountains and the valleys, and homo still rises at dawn and feeds them and counts them, and claims them as his.
Earl and Jessie are still there, resting in that green field where the sheep used to graze. Jessie never left. She never, ever left. There is a fence around the plot, and there are other graves there now. One can still hear the mountain sounds of Earl's and Jessie's time, but they now compete with the roar of engines on the road and in the fields, and even in the sky.
The doves are still there and they come and they go, and frequently in the evening before the mountains darken, they fly in and alight on the fence that surrounds Earl and Jessie and they coo and they nudge each other, and again that timeless spirit spreads across the mountains and the valleys, and the creatures hush, and if one listens intently as the light fades and darkness deepens, one can still hear, as they sound that distant ancient cadence, the call of the dulcimer and the songs of the hills:
ecce homo, ecce homo
Abba, Abba