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610 LISTEN HERE SHADOW OF THE MOUNTAIN (1977) from Part III Two ofthe local women's club leaders stopped by to welcome me. They were bored and boring. They gave me a bank calendar, a Gideon Bible, and a free set at the local beauty parlor. On the way home I stopped off to see Mollie. We had a good laugh over which one of us should use the beauty parlor coupon, since we both have our thin frizzy hair in braids. Today Mollie talked more ofher mountain girlhood She asked me ifI was tired oflistening to an old woman, that she would know she had run me offwhen I didn't stop by again. Mollie saidshegrew up scaredofher daddy. She remembered him today, back when she livedin Kentucky, which was really her home, Hazard, Kentucky. There folks didn't think they were too good for her like the ones in Rocky Gap. The residents ofthat dismal Cumberland town knew they were in Little Hell and the poverty they were born with hadsent them there. Her daddy plowed around the graveyard on the form they settledfor as many years as they thoughtpeople in the community would remember there was afomily buried up there. Then came the spring of1900 and he broke the graveyard land Time for a new generation, he said, at the turn ofthe century, so he planted it in corn. Iftheir bones were close to the top, they would be likepowder, hefigured There was bone meal in fertilizer and it ought to begoodfor his crop, he toldher with a laugh. Ifthey hadn't been lazy andhadplantedtheir kin deep, he'd never reach them with his plow. The Lord would make him pay, Mollie's mother said, and his corn wouldgrow dark green from their bones to spite him and have kernels on their ears as hard as a dead man's teeth. Mollie said her mama had strong feelings about laying aside room for the dead. But the corn didn'tgrowgreener; the corn was the same as in the otherfields. Allthat there was to spite her daddy was his little girl, Mollie, digging around his stalks with a spade. He snatchedher up by the back ofher dress andit made a tear, outloud, at one ofthe rotten arm seams. In her mind an animal hadgrabbed her, and she could never think ofher daddy without being afraid to turn her back on him. "You going to leave the roots bare to the sun. "He scoldedher andshook her until the spadefellfrom her hand. "No, Papa, "she said clearly, hiding herfear ofhim. 'Tm going to dig out the grave ofthe little girl. She was near my age, they say, when she died ofthe pox and they buried her with a china doll. A real china doll with white slick legs and arms. Her dress might be allgone now in the dirt and even the blue eyes SYLVIA WILKINSON 611 and red lips a-painted on might be wasted, but I figure that china lasts longer than bones. " '1 wanted that china doll bad, "Mollie told me seriously, and every spring at land-breaking time she walked theforrows lookingfor it. She hadfound it a thousand times in her dreams and it was beautiful She ran for every white root and cutworm that turned up with the plow, thinking it was an arm or leg ofher china doll She was shamedfor telling her daddy. He laughed loudly at her and teasedher untilhe broke her doll dream topieces in her headandshe never hadit again. I looked at Mollie's hands, wondering how she could ever have wanted a china doll or even felt its slickness, how she was once a soft child The sides ofher fingers are crusted.from whittling in the winter, making toothpicks and sewing quilts without a thimble, or.from pulling husks offcorn. She is always doing something with her hands when we talk. Her skin looks like an oldpiece ofwood that the water has run overforyears; the hardflesh is left in ridges andthe soft has worn away. It appears she could be snappedapart like the sticks she uses to kindle herfire. The women here are so different.from those southern ladies that weargloves for everything they do, church, washing dishes, gardening, as iftheir hands must never come in contact with anything coarser than they are. Gay MacKensie's hands were scarredand callused.from herjackknife. I watch Mollie use her hands as tools. I've seen my mother buy tools for what...

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