Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia

The First Ride

42 LISTEN HERE hood could ever be so fine as the five-gaited saddle horses that took prizes at the Wayne County Fair, nor mules so strong and sleek and black and big, hickories so straight and tall, nor Teachers' Institutes so filled with romance and leg 0' mutton sleeves. I knew the big hickories were gone like the chestnut oak, skinned for its tanbark and left to die; the big chestnuts were dying with blight, oxen were seldom seen, metheglin never brewed at all any more, and most of our kin were gone away. Still, it was there, a place in the geography of time, built on the same things that shaped our lives-the land and the river. Everybody owned at least a little land, and the expression "land poor" was common. Many families ofthe town had at least a vegetable garden and a family cow, daily twicedriven to and from some pasture field nearby. "He comes of good farming stock," was enough said of the birthright ofa man, and earthly dreams were not of mink coats and Cadillacs or of vice-presidencies in great industrial establishments, but to own a good farm with a big stretch of bottom land and a fair boundary of timber. THE FIRST RIDE (1989) Note: This story was written in the late 1930s and posthumously published in Appalachian Heritage. She heard her mother's voice hoarse, with fright pressing it into a flat stream of sound, "You'll have to hurry." And then her husband's call, "I've fin'ly got him saddled," while Rebel the big gray stallion neighed and pawed by the porch steps as if he too knew the joy of the long wild ride that lay ahead. Her husband came to the door, and her father turned slowly away and then back to her so that she saw his old face, puckered into pale lines of fright and sorrow. She smiled at him and saw thoughts written into his eyes plain like words. He was loath to have her go and feared for her the long ride. She laughed to show him that she was not afraid, but her tongue seemed heavy and useless for words so that she made them no answer as she galloped away. Behind her she heard their calling and the crying of the child. She did not turn her head or hesitate. Her name on their tongues was enough; they wished to advise her thus and so and warn her ofthis and that and maybe tell her again of the need for haste. Soon the wind had blown their cries away, and the road, white sand on the ridge crest now, ran smooth and straight between the black trunks of the high pine trees whose deep moon shadows lay like black bars across the silver of the sand. lliRruETIE SIMPSON ARNow 43 She raised one hand and half rose in the stirrups and pretended to snatch at a twig on a black gum tree as they flew past, and dropped again to the saddle and laughed to herself as the wind quickened about her ears and raised her hair like the horse's mane. That was the way to make Rebel fly, Luke her brother had once said. She too had wanted to make Rebel fly, but her mother would never let her ride as she had always wanted to ride; her mother lived for the neighbors and God. The neighbors and God, but tonight she could laugh at the neighbors and God. This night was not like other nights, there was the road and the moon and the wind and the everquickening need for haste. She thanked the woman sick and about to die who gave the reason for this ride, and sorrow for the woman lay vague and weightless in the back of her mind behind the half-believing wonder that it was she who rode so, riding as she had always wanted to ride, with trust for her body in the horse's feet, and her soul flung to the moon or maybe to the wind. Tonight the wind came neither west nor south, but out ofthe neverland that lay between and held the freedom and strength of the west and the lazy whispering laughter of the south. The wind was the smell ofspring with larkspur and wild roses by the creek and the dover in the hill field and the pine scent sharp through the sweetness, and over...