I expect that a sociologist would tell us that in a poverty-stricken society, among a people largely without education and with fiercely insular interests, a people whose daily anxieties are concerned with the effort toward bare survival, cruelty is a form of release and a necessary though regrettable mode of communal discourse. That is one indication why sociology is mostly pretentious humbug while good fiction is enduring and engaging truth.
Of course, I have set up a straw man to knock down and trample upon. So far as I know, sociologists have left Still's stories mercifully alone. That is a good thing because the author would, I believe, disagree with almost every one of a sociologist's premises about his Kentucky subject matter. If I read correctly the tone and temperament of these stories, then Still would not describe the condition on Troublesome Creek as poverty. The people have no money, it is true; but it is also true that one is poor only in comparison to someone who is wealthy, or at least better off than oneself. As no one is wealthy on Troublesome Creek, then no one is poor either. The lack of money is such an ordinary fact that, like the weather, it is simply taken for granted, usually not even noticed. If survival is sometimes a narrow squeak, it is this danger that gives relish to it and helps to define the character of the place and of the people. Poverty -- insofar as it is isolated as a fact unto itself -- is seen in Still's work as a positive value rather than a negative one.
The same with education. Very few of the charcters
in these stories have much book-learning. So what? The older characters
-- and even some of the younger ones -- voice a deep and abiding
skepticism about the value of education. They do so not because they are
envious and barbarian by nature, but because they recognize institutional
education as an intrusion upon their native cultural values and think of
it as fanciful and irrelevant to the world in which they live. There are
some important exceptions to my description, but I think it is largely
correct. And it is notable as marking Still apart from his colleagues in
Appalachian fiction. If there is one single large theme that dominates
the bulk of Appalachian fiction it is the coming of education to the
backward knobs and hollers. From Thomas Wolfe to Jesse Stuart to Lee
Smith, this story has much exercised our writers. But education is a
paradoxical theme. If the characters in these books are proud to have
pulled themselves up by their multiplication tables, then they are forced
to recognize that in doing so they have put some distance between
themselves and the culture which nurtured them. They have become -- to
greater or lesser extent -- outsiders, and have made themselves objects of
wonder and scorn, admiration or contumely. And this queasy bit of
alienation makes them, I would submit, not entirely trustworthy as
reporters. If I read Still's attitude correctly -- and, to be honest
about it, I'm never certain that I do -- he has no illusions about
education as panacea. He believes that Appalachia might have done as well
without education as with it. He sides as much with the most thoroughly
unlettered of his characters as with the proud readers. Education is
associated with the inhumane coal mines and the scurvy attempts at
industrialization as well as with the pleasures of Daniel Defoe and
Jonathan Swift. He takes one side as much as the other: this
ability, or propensity, is one that perhaps distinguishes Still's writing
from all the rest of Appalachian writing. The rest of us are apt,
consciously or unconsciously, to editorialize. And to editorialize, I
must say, in an ambiguous and illogical fashion. "The old way," we say,
"was often harsh, unfeeling, cruel, unhealthy, and disastrous. isn't it a
shame that is is passing away?" We seemed proud of our birthright, sure
enough, but are also willing to sell it for a mess of algebra. Poverty
and lack of formal education are two parts of Appalachian life that have
drawn much liberal concern. Enormous and complex government programs have
been set in place to combat these two evils which I believe Still does not
regard absolutely as evils but simply as historic cultural conditions with
their own cultural validity. I do not know how he feels about health
care, another target of liberal govenmental programming; perhaps he feels
the same distrust. And maybe he is correct in these views that I have
imputed to him. It is difficult to understand and accept the inner values
of a culture when they collide with the notions of the larger American
culture about what is right and wrong. We are all too quick to leap to
judgments without closely observing what it is that we judge. Cruelty
is a case in point. I certainly am not going to aver that James Still
sees human cruelty as a necessary part of the Appalachian culture and
approves of it. I think, in fact, that he condemns it as much as a
literary artist is at liberty to condone or to condemn; but I also think
that he is clear-eyed about cruelty; he takes it in stride in his fiction
and is at some pains never to sensationalize it. But first we must
distinguish what cruelty may be defined as in Still's work. He sees, in
the first place, one mode of Appalachian social intercourse as a
complicated series of dares and challenges among the males. The story
called "The Stir Off" is a good -- and
goodnatured -- example of his delineation of the sort of behavior I am
talking about. In this story the young boy goes to a molasses stir-off, a
traditional social event, sponsored by the family patriarch, Gid
Buckheart. This rambunctious father has five sons, "tough as whang
leather," and four daughters. Plumey, one of the daughters, is to be
married -- seemingly against her father's wishes -- to a fellow named Rant
Branders. This impending surprise marriage requires the presence at the
shindig of Squire Letcher, a "law-square" who is to legalize the wedding.
Not only does old Gid Buckheart oppose the young Rant Branders, he also
seems to feel that he has an ancient score to settle with Squire Letcher.
The stage is set for many different conflicts. Which begin soon enough.
Jimp Buckheart is the narrator's friend and has invited him to attend.
They are about the same age -- both quite young. Jimp is in favor of the
marriage because the prospective bridegroom has promised to hammer out for
Jimp a pair of brass knuckles. The narrator protests: "Hit's not honest
to fight with knucks unless a feller's bigger'n you." But his sense of
honor is assuaged when he finds out that Jimp only wants to fight his
brother Bailus. Jimp, it seems, owns a pet weasel which Bailus wishes to
borrow for rabbit hunting. "Ere I'd let Bailus borrow, I'd crack its
neck," Jimp says. The two boys then make a tour of the grounds, as Jimp
explains the complexities of the situation and characterizes several
members of his family for his guest. Then they stop to rest in a weed
patch "where noggin sticks grew tall and brittle." Here Jimp comes up
with a civilized suggestion for a pastime. "Let's crack each other's
skulls and see who hollers first," he says. The narrator admits that he
"winced, dreading the pain," but he does not back down. "We broke five
sticks apiece, and felt for goose eggs on our head." As the story
continues, the narrator takes a ride on Jimp's "fly-jenny," a kind of
crude Kentucky mechanical bull like those the urban cowboys test their
manhood on nowadays. Two unnamed fellows provide the party with
entertainment by "rooster-fighting," that is, by boxing without the use of
fists. The tough father, Gid Buckheart, challenges Squire Letcher to a
fight and menaces him into falling into the "sorghum-hole." The squire
comes out "green as a mossed turkle." This event is the signal for a
pitched battle. "And then it was Old Gid's boys began punching, and
fellows shoved and fought to keep clear of the hole. Jimp and I were in
the midst of the battle. Gid's boys soused a plenty; they soused folk
invited or not, and they ducked one another too." Then the father, Old
Gid, challenges his prospective son-in-law, grasping his hand, and Rant
Branders satisfies him that he is indeed a proper man. "He stood prime up
to Old Gid, and wouldn't be conquered." The wedding is allowed to take
place. Then Jimp must challenge his guest. "Me and you hain't never
fit," he says. "Fighting makes good buddies." Of course, it is not in
the other boy to withdraw. They fight, observed by Jimp's younger sister,
Peep Eye, who has taken a liking to the narrator. "We fought with our
fists, and it was tuggety-pull, and neither of us could out-do." When
they stand apart, reconciled, Peep Eye runs up, strikes the narrator in
the mouth, and runs away again. "Jist a love lick," Jimp explains. "The
blow hurt," the narrator says, "but I was proud." Rough and ready
stuff. When Amy Vanderbilt throws a party, this is not how the guests go
at it. But maybe they don't have as much fun, either. There is,
however, no cruelty in "The Stir-Off," apart from Jimp's threat to crack
his pet ferret's neck. I might even go so far as to say that there is not
much aggression, if by aggression we mean serious intent to do another
person bodily harm. Bodily pain is not regarded as harm but almost as the
memorable part of friendly communication. The pain is real enough, and
the narrator admits that he dreads it -- but there is no anger in it. In
order to stage the final fight that makes them "good buddies," the two
boys have to trade ritual insults, working up enough artificial cause to
make the blows convincing. But we can admit that it takes a special
cultural context to enjoy this kind of party. The cheerful wililngness to
give and take painful blows -- especially to take them -- is not a talent
all of us are born with; and I imagine that an observer with a different
cultural background, someone from Rome, say, or from Newport, Rhode
Island, might see this molasses stir-off as a convocation of murderous
lunatics. Still intends it as an account of a genial and quite
well-behaved social event. "The Stir-Off" is a happy story. It is
in unhappy stories that we find cruelty, and it is interesting to compare
the cheerful violence of "The Stir-Off" with the sullen nonviolent cruelty
we find in another story, "The Moving." The
central narrative of the "The Moving" is quite simple, as in most of
Still's work. Hardstay mine has closed down and a family is moving out,
probably for good. Other members of the community come out to see them
off. These include Loss Tramble, a jeering man with a misshapen sense of
humor, Cece Goodloe, a mischevious fellow, Hig Sommers, a retarded person
who gets events reversed in his head, and Sula Basham, "tall as a
butterweed, and with a yellow locket swinging her neck like a
clockweight." There are some other characters who mostly just stand
about. The people of the settlement bid the family goodbye, exchange a
few remarks among themselves, and then the family departs. That's all
there is, in probably not more than 3000 words. Yet in these words a
great deal is shown and intimated; there are many impressive shifts of
tone and feeling and judgment. I surmise that in order to interpret a
possible reading of "The Moving" we must understand that the mining
community is sad to see the family leave. We are not told that the
citizens are sad; sentimentality is not James Still's stock in trade. The
one indication the reader gets is in the widowed Sula Basham's exchange
with the mother. "You were a comfort when my man lay in his box," she
tells her. "I hain't forgetting. Wish I had a keepsake to give you,
showing I'll allus remember." The mother replies that she will always
remember Sula, and Sula says, "I'll be proud to know it." From these
brief remarks we learn that the departing family is of a kindly nature and
has fulfilled its community responsibilities. It is a family well thought
of. But the sorrow felt at their departure is couched in language that is
mostly scornful and querulous. Sill Lovelock says, "Hit's mortal sin to
make gypsies of a family. I say as long's a body has got a rooftree, let
him roost under it." Lovelock is not accustomed to voicing sadness; words
of frustrated anger are as close as he can come, and his last farewell is:
"You're making your bed in Hell!" It is likely that the mother and father
can interpret the sad feelings behind Lovelock's harsh sentences, but the
story is told by a young boy who cannot. For him it is a comfortless
leavetaking. During the process of departure, Cece Goodloe pulls two
practical jokes, "rusties," as they are called in Appalachian dialect. He
snatches off the hat of the retarded man, Hig Sommers, and he unhooks the
harnessing of the mare to the departing wagon. "Father smiled while
adjusting the harness. Oh, he didn't mind a clever trick." In fact, this
sort of rusty really is regarded as a clever trick, but it may seem to the
reader a particularly inopportune time for one to take place. It is not
in itself a cruelty, though the occasion may make it seem so to the
narrator. What is most cruel in this story is the ill treatment of Sula
Basham, the tall widow-woman, by a character named Loss Tramble. As soon
as he lays eyes upon her he begins to torment. "If I had a woman that
tall," he says, "I'd string her with gourds and use her for a martin
pole." And the young narrator records the fact that a "dry chuckle
rattled in the crowd." Again, when the father wants someone to return
his housekey to the mining commissary, Tramble volunteers. "I'll deliver
that key willing if you'll take this beanpole widow-woman along some'eres
and git her a man." Sula remarks with some heat that it's a certain fact
there's no man in Hardstay worth her time. Tramble will not let go his
single ugly joke. "I allus did pity a widow-woman," he says a few moments
later. "In this gethering there ought to be one single man willing to
marry the Way Up Yonder woman." he says a few moments later. By now Sula
has had enough of this guying and takes a threatening step towards Tramble
-- and Sula is a formidable physical specimen. "I want none o'your pity
pie," she says. I hope that you-all are as happy as I am to discover
that Sula's patience finally runs out. In the last paragraph of the
story, the narrator hears the smashing of glass; someone has heaved a rock
though a window of the family's deserted house, and the boy looks "back
upon the camp as upon the face of the dead." More happily, he sees "the
crowd fall back from Sula Basham, tripping over each other. She had
struck Loss Tramble with her fist, and he knelt before her, fearing to
rise." My heart leaps for joy when I read that sentence. Earlier in
this episode, the mother has felt constrained to calm Sula, to soothe her
in her vexation at Loss Tramble, in her anger at the heartless crowd
gathered round. "The Devil take 'em," she says. "Menfolks are heathens.
Let them crawl in their own dirt." Menfolks are heathens: that
seems to be about the size of it. The mother, in her remark here, shows
the depth of her weary resignation to what she regards as an inescapbable
fact. Men are heartless violent creatures who lack not only gallantry and
any respect for the dead, but also have not the least conception that
other people have feelings and may be hurt. Men have, in her view, no
true sense of humor; humor is for these heathens merely an excuse for
cruelty, merely a pretext for excoriating the feelings of another person
in a socially acceptable way. The worst is, there is not even that much
purpose in it. Tramble intends to vex Sula; the point of the joke is to
get her riled and cause her to lose her temper. But he cannot see how far
he has transgressed the bounds of charity, of ordinary human decency. It
is not as much his petty malevolence, bu this ignorant blindness that
makes him a "heathen;" he has not the imagination to place himself in
another person's shoes. That kind of sympathy is as alien to him as the
concept of the neutrino would be. This blindness, this total
incomprehension, on the part of men is summed up in "The Moving" in the
figure of Hig Sommers, the witty. Hig is not a cruel person, but
well-meaning; but he is retarded and reacts to situations in a backward,
upside-down manner. When the departing father wants someone to take his
key to the commissary, Hig volunteers. "I'll fotch it," he says. "I'm
not a-wanting it fotched," the father says. "You've got it back'ards,
Hig. I'm wanting it tuck." And the final image we get of the mining
settlement as we leave it behind forever is that of the witty. "And only
Hig Sommers was watching us move away. He stood holding up his breeches,
for someone had cut his galluses with a knife. He thrust one arm into the
air, crying, 'Hello, hello!'" These are the last sentences of the story
and they follow immediately those sentences which had made me so happy,
the ones in which Sula Basham knocks down Loss Tramble with a blow so
powerful that he is afraid to get up again. Such a compact juxtaposition
of contradictory emotions is rare in fiction and, I would think, extremely
difficult to bring off. There are many stories which leave the reader not
knowing whether to laugh or cry, but there are very few stories which
leave him actually disposed to do both. We know who has cut the
galluses of Hig Sommers' overalls. It was Cece Goodloe, who also unhooked
the trace chains of the family wagon. To cut the galluses of someone's
overalls is regarded as an acceptable and even a clever rusty; it is
recorded as such other times in Still's fiction. But surely it is not
acceptable, surely it is despicable, to pull rusties on a retarded person.
If, up to this point in the story, we had regarded Cece Goodloe as a
mischievous but probably harmless joker, our perceptions of him must now
change. He goes into the crowd with the rest of the "dead," the
"heathens." And perhaps we were wrong all along. Maybe these men of the
mining community feel no inarticulate sadness at the family's departure;
maybe they are only little, sneaking, hard, unfeeling men who lack the
courage to move from this one place they know and are envious of the
father's courage. It is Sula who tells them that "This mine hain't
opening ag'in. Hit's too nigh dug out." And their answer to that is:
"They's Scripture ag'in a feller hauling off the innocent." I admitted
early on that I am often uncertain how to read some of Still's finely
laconic stories. And here I don't know how to read the character of this
group of men. Are they saddened at the family's leaving but with no way to
voice their sadness? Or are they only contemptibly ugly little creatrues
to be left to stew in their own pettiness?