They said it wasn’t a real bad stroke, but it must have been bad enough because Mrs. Mabry didn’t come down to the grocery store after that. But that didn’t mean I never saw her again. Now that I knew where she lived, me and Momma went to go check on her, just like we were used to checking on Mr. McCaffree. ‘Course, we had to take the car to where Mrs. Mabry lived, it was too far on foot. But we went once a week to take her some groceries and make sure she had what she needed. She could get around the house alright, but she had trouble with stairs and one of her arms didn’t work so well. Other people went to check on her too, since she didn’t really have nobody. That’s just how folk are around here.
About three months after she came home from the hospital, Momma and I pulled up the house just before dark. I was raining and the storm was getting worse. The mud was sucking at my boots even though I tried my best to avoid it. The paper bags got all wet and I was afraid the canned goods would spill out the bottom all across the yard. By the time we had finished taking the groceries inside me and Momma were both drenched. I felt wet right down to my bones.
Mrs. Mabry couldn’t talk too well, but she always tried. It seemed to tire her out some days. I learned kinda quick how to recognize when she was just bone tired. The rain seemed to be sucking all her pep out of her that day. She just sat in her rocking chair watching me and Momma put the groceries in the fridge and cabinet. She didn’t say nothing as we worked, just watched with a steady gaze. When we were done I went out to the living room to sit on the couch while Momma tidied up a bit.
Sometimes Mrs. Mabry got her paper pad and wrote things down for us, little instructions that she didn’t want to struggle through trying to explain. She still sounded a little like she had marbles in her mouth. She was looking at me with kind of a funny look as I waiting for Momma. She reached to her end table, which was draped with a lace doily that looked like it hadn’t been washed since she put it on the table top, and picked up her pad of paper. It was one of them yellow legal pads. She scratched out a note with her dull pencil and passed it over to me.
I didn’t know when I told you to come visit that you’d be visiting me a lot. I stared at the words for bit, not knowing what to say back to her. I raised my eyes, and she was giving a smile that only raised half of her face. “Why’d you invite me?” I asked, thinking back on that day in the grocery store. She had looked so mean and cruel and scary, not at all like the frail old lady who sat across from me, smiling as best she could.
“Lonely,” Mrs. Mabry said, the single word crawling out of her like a inchworm. It crawled up inside my heart and I felt it trying to find a home there. Lonely.
“Did you think I would come, when you asked?” I had been almost sure it wasn’t a real invitation at the time, but I had been so curious I didn’t care.
There was suddenly a twinkle in her eye. “I hoped,” she said. Then she gestured for the legal pad. I handed it back to her and she slowly scrawled another sentence underneath the one she’d already written. I waited, the scritch-scritch of the pencil the only other sound in the house other than Momma humming while she tidied. Mrs. Mabry handed the legal pad back to me. The word nearly stopped my heart, but not stopped it cold. Almost like, it stopped it warm, if that makes any sense. Like my whole heart was ready just to burst with something that felt good that I couldn’t identify. Pride, or maybe joy, or perhaps even love.
You remind me of me when I was young.
I looked up at her and I smiled a big smile. “Will you tell me about it?” I asked. I handed the legal pad back to her.
I phoned Kathy Jo before I went to bed that night. We’d gotten that phone put in only about three years ago. Daddy always asked what we wanted it for, we could just talk to each other if we wanted to talk. But Momma had convinced him we needed it in case of emergencies, and to check on Aunt Annabelle when Uncle Alvey was in a bad way like he got from time to time.
The phone rang twice before Kathy Jo picked it up. “Hello?” she said lazily.
“Kathy Jo, it’s me, Peggy June. Listen, I know where to go, but we gotta go tomorrow.” I was rushing. I didn’t want anybody to start eavesdropping after the dishes were all washed up. Momma didn’t make me help because I’d been up to check on Mr. McCaffree that afternoon, and it was rule that you didn’t do dishes if went to check on him. That’s how she got us to agree to visit with him.
“What? Tomorrow? No, Peggy June. I gotta work at the store!” she protested.
“Listen! Momma’s gotta take Mr. McCaffree to town tomorrow morning. Tell your daddy to tell my daddy you’re sick. Then go out like you’re going to work once he leaves.”
“That’s not gonna work. If I tell Daddy I’m sick, then Momma’s gonna wonder why I’m going to work.” I could almost she her crossing her arms, wearing that smartypants smile like she knew so much better than me about everything just ’cause she was older.
“Come on, Kathy Jo! Figure out how to make it work. We gotta go tomorrow!”
She huffed into the phone. “Alright, Peggy June. I’ll figure something out. But you owe me for this.”
“Oh, I know. I’m gonna owe you a long time I think,” I said, grinning at my own joke. “See you tomorrow.”
Momma left the house next morning about 8:30, to give her enough time to get all the way to the hospital with Mr. McCaffree. Daddy said he was going down to the store early, so he left around the same time as Momma did. I pretended I didn’t feel good, just like I’d planned, and as they went out the door, I thought they might have suspected something was up. They didn’t say nothing to me about it though, just gave me that stink eye look as they went out the door, Jenny Kate and Mary Sue in tow.
“If you start feeling better later, you better find a way down to the store to help out,” Daddy said. “It’s stocking day.”
It sounded more fun that it actually was. Calling it “stocking day” made it sound like Christmas, but it was only when we put new cans out on the shelves. “Okay,” I said weakly, pulling an old afghan up to my chin as I hunkered down on the couch. I pretended to drift off to sleep until I was sure everybody was gone. Then I popped up and waited for Kathy Jo to come get me. It was like watching water boil- worse actually. Most boring morning of my life, watching out the window for Uncle Alvey’s car to come rolling into the drive.
When it finally did, I was so excited I hollered. I flew out of the house at lightning speed, making for Uncle Alvey’s old Ford as quick as a thoroughbred. I yanked open the door of the truck and climbed up onto the bench. Kathy Jo looked a bit nervous as she eyed me from behind the wheel.
“I sure hope you ain’t gettin’ us both in trouble with this con you’re pullin’ on your momma,” Kathy Jo said. “I didn’t exactly lie to mine, but I didn’t tell the truth neither, you hear me?” She lectured like she was grown. Irritating, since I would be just as grown as she was in a few years. She was looking over her shoulder as she backed down the gravel driveway.
“She’ll never know, Kathy Jo. Just hush up,” I said. “Just take me up past Mr. McCaffree’s place. He told me yesterday you gotta just keep on going until you get there.”
“That’s the way to everybody’s place,” Kathy Jo huffed. But she did as I said without any further comment on it. I held my breath as we rolled back Mr. McCaffree’s house. Of course nobody was there. He’d gone with Momma to town, but it still made me nervous. That irrational part of me was thinking all kinds of horrid stuff like “What they never left, and she sees us?” Silly, really. Momma would never let Mr. McCaffree miss his appointments.
We drove for longer than I thought was right, and I was just starting to wonder if maybe Mr. McCaffree had gotten it all wrong somehow when we turned round a bend in the road and I saw it- the Chew Witch’s old rickety bucket of a truck parked outside a rough looking house. I saw rough looking because the wood was rough and unfinished. There were web all over the outside windows. The roof looked like it might have leaks in it, and some of the gutter was hanging off the side of the porch. The porch was nice looking either. It had a big hole in it near the stairs. As we pulled in behind the Chew Witch’s black truck, I could see that somebody had put a couple cinderblocks on top of each other to create a makeshift stair case that avoided the rotted out wood.
Kathy Jo killed the engine of the Ford and we sat in silence for just a minute, staring at the house. My palms were all sweaty. “Well,” I said, trying to find my courage. “You gonna come with me?” I asked.
She sighed real heavy, and then shrugged. “Why not. I came all the way here.” Kathy Jo hopped down out of the truck and I followed quick behind her. But we went slow up the cinderblocks and across the porch. This place looked as good as abandoned and it gave me the creeps. I knocked on the door anyway to show Kathy Jo I was braver than I felt.
The Chew Witch didn’t answer. I knocked again harder. All I heard in return was the calling of birds up in the trees. I looked up at Kathy Jo. “What should we do?”
Kathy Jo frowned. “Well, she’d gotta be here. Her truck is here.” She stepped up beside me to the door and turned the handle. It wasn’t locked. The door creaked open, and Kathy Jo called inside, “Hello?”
From somewhere inside the house we heard a thumping, real rhythmic, but also frantic, like someone was trying to get our attention. All my hair stood on end. “Mrs. Mabry?” I called, louder than Kathy Jo had called. “Are you home?”
The thumping sound grew louder. Me and Kathy Jo followed it, winding through the house until we found the room where it was coming from. The door was only closed over, and we could see the footboard of a bed. “Mrs. Mabry?” I asked again. And this time we heard a human noise, like a whimper almost. It was a horrifying sound, but also one that made you wanna spring into action to help. Kathy Jo pushed open the door of the room so we could see all the way inside.
Mrs. Mabry was lying in her bed, still in her nightgown, but her face looked all wrong. She was thumping her arm against the headboard. She didn’t turn to look at us at all, she was just staring straight up at the ceiling. The way her mouth drooped on one side filled me with dread. I’d seen Kathy Jo’s granny like that once, before she died. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but I knew we had to get her help.
“She’s having a stroke, Peggy June!” Kathy Jo ran over to the bed. “It’s okay, now,” she said tenderly, grabbing Mrs. Mabry’s hand to still it. “Hey, hey, you just hush. We’ll get you some help, ok?”
Mrs. Mabry sounded like she was trying to talk back, but it was just a jumbled up mess, like her mouth was filled with marbles.
Somehow- and I still don’t know now- me and Kathy Jo managed to carry Mrs. Mabry out of her house and put her in the bed of the Ford. Then Kathy Jo drove as fast as she dared down the mountain to the grocery store. Before the truck even stopped rolling, I had flung open the door and went running and yelling for Daddy. He came fast, practically running up the store aisles himself when he heard that distress in my voice.
“Peggy June!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were sick, child!”
“Daddy, you gotta call an ambulance,” I said, not wanting to waste any time.
“What?” he asked, his confusion rooting him to the floor. I could see the phone right next to the check stand. I started to move towards it, but Daddy caught my arm. “What’s going on?” he asked, all stern, but also looking mighty scared.
“Daddy, Mrs. Mabry’s in the back of the truck. Kathy Jo says she’s had a stroke you gotta get an ambulance here to help her!”
I was so glad that he didn’t ask any other questions of me before he picked up the phone and called 9-1-1.
The chew witch lived up in the hills, on one of them dirt roads that never had any gravel on it in the first place, because nobody had the money to spread it or care enough to. Her real name was Clara Lou or Lou Claire or something like that but everybody called her the chew witch because my cousin Kathy Jo once called her that when she was five and didn’t know better, and it stuck better than gum up under the railing at the grocery. Our grocery, that is, where I spent many a summer afternoon bored to near death, picking paint and gum off the railing outside. Or trying to anyway. Some of that stuff was stuck tighter than the nickname that Kathy Jo gave poor old Lou Claire….or you know, maybe it actually was Clara Lou. It was definitely a double first name just like almost everybody I knew who comes from the holler. In my family there was Mary Sue and Jenny Kate and me, Peggy June. Our Momma and Daddy ran the only grocery for about 15 miles round, at the base of one of them smaller hills that’s not quite one of the mountains of Appalachia, but pretty darn close. We sat outside that grocery store at the railing for half our lives it seemed like, waiting for anything exciting to happen. Nothing ever did.
Unless the chew witch came in. That’s the only place I ever saw her. She never came to church or went to get an ice cream cone or a soda across the street at Pete’s, and who knows how she put gas in the rickety old black pick up. I never saw her at the gas station up by the state highway. That truck was missing a bumper and three hubcaps, and looked like it might just shake all to pieces, it’s pistons and hoses flying out from underneath it all over the road if she hit a bump too hard. It was mighty sight to see, the old chew witch working that clutch as she came down the hill in to the grocery store parking lot, truck belching more than my uncle Alvey, who was always sneaking away when Momma wasn’t looking to have another beer in the cooler. She’d slide that big old pick up-and when I say, old, I mean that truck was probably older than my daddy-nearly right up to where our toes were hanging over the railing, and she would climb down and just give us the dirtiest look, like we were in her way. Kathy Jo called her the chew witch because she was always chewing when she came in, and she looked mean as a snake. Kathy Jo was old enough to run the register when me and my sisters were still too young to do anything but sweep up and stay out of Momma’s hair, which is why we spent so much time outside at the railing, just watching for something to happen. If the chew witch showed up though, we would quickly find something very interesting inside, so we could watch her as she shopped.
She never bought anything that looked like she could make a meal from- just odd ends and bits and part that maybe sorta might go together if she was hungry. Looked like she was hungry all the time, honestly; she was such as skinny old crone. Mommas said it’s because she chewed too much tobacco and didn’t eat enough food and I believed her. She always left a big steamy pile of nasty tobacco spit in her parking space before she climbed back into her truck. I didn’t know hardly any ladies that chewed tobacco, so it made send to me that Kathy Jo would have noticed that at age five, and fixated enough on it to make it part of her no so pleasant nickname. And as for the witch part- well, let’s just say nobody ever liked a weird old lady who lived alone.
I was maybe 12 or 13 years old when she came in the store on blazing hot day in July. She bought two cans of beans and a bag of flour. It was one of the small bags too, not the big five pound one like most people bought. I had been watching her from behind the rack of potato chips when Momma spooked me by whispering in my ear to mind my own business. I knocked the rack over when I jumped, and then I had to clean up that mess, Momma fussing that I might have crunched up all the chips. Jenny Kate and Mary Sue laughed, but Kathy Jo just gave me a mean look, like I was doing something wrong. When the chew witch left the store, I went up the register to fuss at Kathy Jo to mind her own business, but before I could say anything about it, Kathy Jo began lecturing me, like she was in charge or something!
“There’s nothing special about her, Peggy June. She’s just an old lady who lives up the holler. Why do you spy on her?”
“‘Cause she’s a weird old lady that live up the holler!” I said, feeling my face flush. I didn’t like to be corrected or embarrassed and I’d been both in the last five minutes.
“Well, maybe you ought to get to know her then, and she’ be less weird,” Kathy Jo grumped at me.
“Maybe you should get to know her,” I said, crossed my arms as I pouted. I didn’t have a better come back than that. Kathy Jo was a bit smarter than me, so even if I did, she’d have been clever enough to turn it back around on me in some way that would make me look worse than I already felt.
“Well, maybe I will! Besides, she told me just now to tell you and the girls to knock it off.” Kathy Jo always called the three of us sisters that girls, like she was an adult or something. She wasn’t. She was only 3 years older than me.
“Oh?” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “What’d she say?”
Kathy Jo leaned over the belt and looked at me pointedly. “She said, ‘tell your cousin that she can follow me around all she wants, but she won’t see anything really exciting unless she follows me home.’”
I didn’t know if it was a threat or an invitation or something else. But it did put an idea in my head.
The Quick and the Dead 