Written by Nancy Dillingham – (Mature theme)
— I —
Summertimes, my daddy’s uncle John sat in a black coat and hat on the high front porch in his house beside the creek, legs crossed, scrutinizing the world with distant eyes as it moved up and down the road before him, and, on occasion, when I passed him coming down the lane that joined our bottom land and said “Hey” to him in a breathless little syllable because Mother said to be polite, his voice, dry, low, when he spoke to me, whistled by me ear like an alien wind.
— II —
Before, when Uncle John’s wife died, Daddy swore that on the night he sat up with Aunt Dock’s body before the funeral the next day the devil dragged chains up and down the stairs at midnight and that everyone else who was there that night heard the noise also, an awful sound. He was so spooked that he never went into Uncle John’s house again, and thereafter, when Mother mentioned Aunt Dock’s name, Daddy always got that look in his eye like a trapped animal and bolted from the room.
— III —
To hear Daddy tell it (and others who were there), the door to the room where Aunt Dock lay in her casket somehow jammed just as the chains were being dragged up and down the stairs. According to the story, a powerful force of wind came from nowhere into the quiet of the room and the stillness of the night and blew the door shut. Inexplicably it stuck as if by suction—maybe it had swelled from the rain the day before—the house was near the creek—and everyone was a prisoner suffocating in the small room for what seemed like an eternity of time before they managed to force it open again. Daddy said they made a long, human chain of their own and tugged as one in a frightful act of desperation until they pulled it open and breathed again. Daddy beat a hasty retreat into the night.
— IV —
Whenever Daddy or anyone else told that tale I imagined a different scenario completely.
It was Aunt Dock herself dragging the chains up and down the stairs in a final act of revenge. I had heard the tales about Aunt Dock who had long red hair, painted her face and wore dangling earrings. Daddy laughed somewhat nervously I thought and cast a sidelong glance at my mother when he said that Aunt Dock liked to throw one back, meaning she liked to take a drink of whiskey like the men, and that Uncle John had tried to tame her, to break her like a horse, and that she was a “handful.” Daddy added, always in a mock-serious tone and with another wary glance at my mother, “You have to break a horse, don’t you?”
— V —
He had to break her like a horse so that she would be fit to ride. I imagined Uncle John flailing away with a horsewhip as Aunt Dock tried to dodge him, to fend off the blows, to protect her face. I saw the wild, frightened look in her eyes and imagined the cold that shook her to the bone, the hay frosty and stiff as icicles—no warmth anywhere in the cold isolation of the barn loft, certainly not in Uncle John’s menacing, lusterless eyes, cold with fury. I felt the sting on my cheek as the horsewhip connected. I felt the searing pain. I tasted the blood and smelled the mustiness of the hay as Aunt Dock fell, face first, into it, bleeding into it. I gasped for breath with her as she felt his body, suffocating and heavy, on hers, felt the whip, a makeshift bit between her teeth, silencing her screams, felt her submission to the final indignation as he branded her forever his and she drowned in his workmanship of it.
— VI —
Whenever smoked curled out of Uncle John’s chimney in an “S” shape—for Satan?—I wondered aloud if the devil were coming after Uncle John and his evil deeds. Child, you have such an imagination, my mother said. Then something happened that made them all think twice about my suppositions. One day, when Uncle John was attempting to shoe his horse, a normally docile old mare, she kicked him in the head, killing him instantly.
Daddy said he had a brain hemorrhage. The night before the funeral I peeked over the rim of the casket and looked at Uncle John. I pressed one finger into the hoof mark on his head. It was hot to the touch.
— VII —
After that, the horse was generally unmanageable. It roamed the pasture among the chokeberries and the thorn bushes. Daddy fed it. One morning I went to the pasture alone and through the fence I gingerly touched the mare’s flank and ran my hand down to her hoof. She lifted it and placed it in my hand. It was hot to the touch. I looked into her eyes and gently stroked her head. The early morning sun caught on her mane and it glowed red.
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Writer and educator Nancy Dillingham is a sixth-generation Dillingham from Big Ivy in WNC. Her poems, short stories, and commentary have appeared in various literary journals and newspapers such as Asheville Poetry Review (10th Anniversary Issue), Great Smokies Review (on line–Spring 2011), Parting Gifts (Winter 2010-11), The Arts Journal, Bay Leaves, A Carolina Literary Companion, Half Tones to Jubilee, The Lyricist, Victoria Press, Raleigh News & Observer Sunday Reader, Asheville Citizen-Times, Mountain Xpress, WNC Woman, Weaverville Tribune, and Big Ivy News. She is the author of 8 books of short stories and poems: New Ground (1998); The Ambiguity of Morning (2001); First Light: Poems (2003); Thanks for the Dark but That’s Not Home: Poems and Stories (2006); Colloquy in Black and White: Poems (2009); Home (2010 March Street Press), nominated for 2011 Poetry Book of the Year by Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance; and Americana Rural (2012 Wind Publications). She collaborated on Reflections in a River: Photographs by Joan Medicott and Haiku by Nancy Dillingham (2011 Grateful Steps). She is co-editor, along with Celia Miles of three anthologies: Christmas Presence from 45 WNC Women Writers, Clothes Lines from 75 WNC Women Writers, and Women’s Spaces Women’s Places from 50 WNC Women Writers She also co-edited, with Irene Dillingham Richards and Ken Richards, The Family Named Dillingham: 375 Years in America–1630-2005. Most recently her poetry appeared in Blue Ridge Parkway Celebration, Silver Anniversary Issue and Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel: Contemporary Appalachian Writing.