The Meeting, and: Dear Cousin Hettie

SOURCES CITED Bakeless, John. Daniel Boone: Master of the Wilderness. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1939. Bowdre, Paul Hull, Jr. 1964. Rptd. as "Eye Dialect as a Literary Device," in Williamson and Burke, pp. 178-186. Higgs, RobertJ., and Ambrose N. Manning, eds. Voices from the Hills: SelectedReadings ofSouthern Appalachia. New York: Frederick Ungar Publ. Co., 1975. Ives, Sumner. "A Theory of Literary Dialect," 1950. Rptd. in Williamson and Burke, pp. 145-177. Marckwardt, Albert H. American English, second edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Murfree, Mary Noailles (Charles Egbert Craddock). The Prophet ofthe Great SmokyMountains. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1885. Norman, Gurney. Interview with author, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky., April 24, 1984. Parks, Edd Winfield. Charles Egbert Craddock. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1941. Thornborough, Laura. The Great Smoky Mountains New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1937, p. 132ff. Williamson, Juanita V., and Virginia M. Burke. A Various Language: Perspectives on American Dialects. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. ,Wolfram, Walt, and Donna Christian. Appalachian Speech. Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1976. Two Poems by patricia shirley THE MEETING Law, Pauline, don't seem like you'd be growed up and leaving home already, but I seen it coming since that boy commenced making eyes and hanging around your daddy's porch. I know about them things, for I've seen it aplenty in my time. Even your Grandpa Carl did his share of sparking sixty years past, and it was fine! Time don't dawdle long but runs with a heap of things you wish later was back. 45 I recollect another August, hot like this, a year after the Kaiser's War and the Spanish Lady, when the world was trying to forget what was lost. And I was restless. Our corn was tired and thirsty in the field, and the chickens hunted cool spots under the house to lay, When on that sweaty Sunday, Ma said to Brother Bean after he'd preached, "You'll had better go home with us." And he did. A mess of other folks was there eating fried chicken and Ma's peach pies, before we set out in the yard yearning for a little air, it so still, and the men folk played bat and ball and sweated in the near field except Brother Bean and Uncle Henry Kline who talked on the porch about lost souls and bad politics. And the younguns run wild not feeling the heat that made Aunt Zilpha hold out her dress front and fan down her bosom, while Grandma Taylor took turns nodding in her slat-back rocker and fidgeting for her pipe she wouldn't touch in front of the preacher. And the big girls giggled and put on airs, if they thought a boy looked their way. They tossed their hair they'd curled up in rags the night before, and smoothed down their white muslin dresses while hoping they looked growed up. But I thought the whole passel of them was silly and wished for something new in my life, cause I was tired of the same old sixes and sevens. And like an answer, come a roll of thunder 46 over yon mountain, and we heared a singing down the swag where the creek crossed the road, and it was a lively tune sung good by a stranger's voice. We all stretched our necks to see the tall feller come a'striding up the hill, strong and handsome, with corn-silk head shining to match the smaller one leaning against it, a little feller astride his daddy's shoulders, tuckered out. And the big one sang loud and clear, "Somebody stole my old coon dog, I wish they'd bring him back. He'd run the big pigs over the fence, The little ones through a crack." And then Aunt Zilpha got her spectacles settled and said, "Law, Henry, if it ain't your brother's boy from over in West Virginie along with his motherless tyke." She yelled loud, "Howdy, Carl, what are you doing in this part of the world?" Then Carl was amongst us, looking like he'd knowed...