Aunt Dicey Jane's Sins

FICTION Aunt Dicey Jane's Sins Curtis R. Shortridge REVENUERS AND MISSIONARIES stopped by Aunt Dicey Jane's home all the time. She had been the matriarch of the Jeb Stuart Stacy family ever since Jeb got himself killed by a bear, and she was much respected among the clans. Her place up on the Look Out offered the best views for miles in all directions. It also sat right at the juncture where the mountain ran off in the four opposite ways. Travelers often passed by her house, taking one or the other of those trails. The Big Hickory Way, atop Smith Branch Mountain, was the primary path through Felix County for local and foreign wayfarers. It ran just under the hill and fifty yards north of Dicey's cabin. The West Virginia Border was just five miles north. Kentucky was fifteen miles to the west. Tennessee, the farthestborder, was sixty-three miles south. The Big Hickory Way was the quickest passage, but everyone knew it to be the most hazardous highway between all points. Outlaws, revenuers and missionaries moved along it cautiously, using it mostly to journey between the small communities of Grundy, Hurley, Paw Paw and Oakwood in Virginia, Bradshaw in West Virginia, and Pikeville in Kentucky. All of them—loggers, miners, moonshiners, farmers, outlaws, sinners and saved—bought Aunt Dicey Jane's crafts and begged of her wisdom with each visit. Diplomatic and tactful, she convinced each thathe gotjust what he wanted from her. Aunt Dicey knew they all wanted something. In spite of being respected in her community as a wise and visionary person, Aunt Dicey Jane felt in need of filling the immense void and longing which had come steadily into her life over the years. It was not a need or desire to substitute for Jeb. He had been her life's one and only love. It was something greater. Nor was it concern for her children. J.D. had early come under the wild Stacy influence, but jealousy among those Stacy descendente had sent him back home before the revenuers could capture him making and peddling their moonshine. Her other children had built cabins within hollering distance, across the way on Chicken Ridge, and her grandchildren were constantly toddling around the old place. 62 So it was none of these. Since everything had become more civilized and she was now rarely needed to solve problems among the clans, Aunt Dicey Jane had decided the time was right to be baptized. This was the one thing she knew she must do before she was called home to be with Jeb and the Lord. She had to travel with her family over the Smith Branch Backway to Elk Branch Holler, where old man Trigg Shortridge had established the Little Vine Primitive Baptist Church. Dicey Jane tried to go every time they held meeting. The trip took every bit of an hour and a half, but she had done it for years and rarely missed. Each time she went, she packed ample eats for the walk. Since Dicey Jane had to use her cane, she needed the other hand free for balance. That, and she was too proud to ask her children for assistance. So she always stuffed her bosom with enough sausages and biscuits to last the entire day. Over the years, some members of the congregation observed Aunt Dicey Jane had become a little stout. During church that Sunday, Aunt Dicey Jane came forth at the invitational hymn and insisted that she be baptized that very afternoon in the gushing Slate Creek, which formed in the valleys below herhome. Uncle Joe Reynolds was the congregation's moderator, and she requested that he perform the ritual. Of course, it had long been Uncle Joe's greatest desire to help Aunt Dicey get her final requirement in. Being a wise old Primitive Baptist preacher, Uncle Joe knew in the back of his mind that Aunt Dicey's conversion and baptism would set the course for a tremendous religious awakening in the wilderness. He was delighted. About two o'clock that late spring afternoon, the congregation gathered near the old Frank McClanahan Hole for Aunt Dicey...