They were baffled. Estabrook lowered his voice and stepped forward. Weve just come from Grundy, Virginia. Are you familiar with it? His moustache carried too much wax.
I reckon Id better be, Trenchmouth answered, looking the man of equal height in the eyes. I spent a month in their pokey. Hed never heard of Grundy.
For what crime may I ask? McDougal was, for all his sociological book smarts, short on real sociology. He knew not when his leg was being pulled.
For makin love to the Fire Station mule, Trenchmouth said.
Bestiality, Miss Avon wrote in her book.
Estabrook let it go. Are your ancestors from Grundy?
Nossir.
There was a pause. Trenchmouth used a rag to take the dented coffeepot from the stovetop.
May I ask where your ancestors are from?
He poured coffee into a straight-seam cup, took it with him to sit at the table. They watched him sip one-handed while leaning back on two chair legs. Through thick steam, he watched them write in their books. Where are my ancestors from? Paris France London England, Trenchmouth said. Are you going to measure my head?
They asked if they might watch him eat, suggested it was close to suppertime. He opened a can of sardines and, with his pocketknife and fork, cut the little, greasy lengths into five pieces each, equal in size. Then he inhaled them off the plate, his pursed lips a slurping vacuum, an assembly line of sorts, one piece, then another, then another. He began pouring sips of coffee into his cupped palm, drinking it in the same slurping fashion. They wrote furiously.
He said his blessing when the meal was finished rather than before. Half tongue-talking, half a list of surrounding counties, whispered. They tried to take dictation, tried to write his nonsense words on pages next to the words describing others encountered in their studies. Freed Negroes. Mixed Half Breeds. Low Down Yellows.
They measured his head after he asked again. The girl, at his insistence. They agreed only if she was gloved. He almost fell asleep from the sheer pleasure of her touch.
He made up and spoke on special customs for them to write about. Drinking squirrel blood to clear up foot fungus, hot poker in the ear for a stomach ache. When asked about the Widow, her source of income and earning capacities, he lied convincingly. Tobacco farmer, he said. Outhouse builder. About to strike it rich. When asked why he hadnt taken her last name as his own, he lied again. His surname, he said, had to be kept that way to continue the family name, as his father had run off to Paris France London England.
They wrote it all down.
The time came when McDougal asked, And your mouth ailment? Id say persistent gingivitis? Have you seen a physician?
Beelzebub, Trenchmouth said.
Beg your pardon?
The one sent down to fire. He give me this mouth. He took another slurp of his coffee, cold now, swashed it around inside his mouth, spat it on the floor in front of Miss Avons pointed boots of fine leather. Dust flakes on the river air, Trenchmouth said, just like those there. He pointed to the whirling specks caught in the fast-fading sunlight through the kitchen window. They can infect a body, through the gums, the mouth and the throat brain. Beelzebubs cells, dont make em mad. He smiled full on. They quickly cut off their stupefied stares, looked down, wrote more.
I can see through things, Trenchmouth said.
The door opened and the Widow came in with her finger on the trigger of a Derringer inside her coat pocket. Shed heard them talking from twenty feet off, got prepared for those that would sabotage her shining. Who are you? she said. Trenchmouth sat still, looked past his mothers silhouette to his sister, holding a sack of something. She was miniature through the opened door. Hed stopped smiling.
Im Arthur H. Estabrook of the Carnegie Institution, maam. Hed planned on continuing, but she cut him off.
Out, she said. Miss Avon had already slipped through the doorway.
We were hoping to speak with you as well.
Out, she said louder, and the men listened, spoke no more save a few parting courtesies.
Clarissa came in and began unloading goods from the grocers. The Widow stared at the boy until he started doing the same.
In all the awkward comings and goings, the door had been left open too long. It would take a day or more to push out the chill.
For as much as the Widow didnt like strangers in her home, she held off punishing the boy for a good little while. The next day in town, she went to the hotel housing the three city sophisticates. Theyd stayed at the Urias, rebuilt after the fire that killed Frank Dallara. Anse Pilcher, the proprietor, wasnt in a hurry to talk to the Widow, nor she to engage him, for like Trenchmouth, she despised the man. Witnesses had said hed allowed Frank Dallara to burn, couldve pulled him out but didnt.
The eugenicists had checked out. She asked around. Traveling through, folks said. Professor-types. Nations capital.
She waited another day to say anything to the boy. Then, after dinner, when Clarissa had gone up to hide from the only people in this world who loved her enough to die for her, the Widow stopped drying clothes at the iron-and-rubber wringer, wheeled around, and smacked Trenchmouth hard across the forehead. Hed been waiting for her to say if his chores were done.
It isnt even that you let them people in here, she said. Their home, like everybodys in those mountains, had always been open to strange travelers. Its that you sat with them and let them pick at you like a monkey in the jungle. I know what they do, how they do to people like us. And you gave em more of the same.
She waited another day to say anything to the boy. Then, after dinner, when Clarissa had gone up to hide from the only people in this world who loved her enough to die for her, the Widow stopped drying clothes at the iron-and-rubber wringer, wheeled around, and smacked Trenchmouth hard across the forehead. Hed been waiting for her to say if his chores were done.
It isnt even that you let them people in here, she said. Their home, like everybodys in those mountains, had always been open to strange travelers. Its that you sat with them and let them pick at you like a monkey in the jungle. I know what they do, how they do to people like us. And you gave em more of the same.
He wanted to tell her he hadnt. That hed thrown a purposeful wrench into their scientific machinery, one-upped their high-minded talk with talk of his own. Talk so crazy it would cause them to second guess their eugenic gibberish. But he didnt say any of it because he knew it was time to listen, and because he didnt know anymore if what hed done was so revolutionary after all. In retrospect, it may have been plain stupid.
Men like those want to brand you and hang you out to dry. Her hands were on her hips then, and Trenchmouth, shamed, couldnt look up much higher anyway. They got to trace you back like a hound dogs blood line, call you part Powhatan or Negro, explain to the folks riding cable cars why anybodyd want to stay in a hole between two hills like this one. The Widow worried that she was losing him again to bamboozlers, that just after rescuing him from wicked wander, he was back to being used. She let go her hip grip and slicked back her hair. He looked up momentarily and noticed the grey in her roots, something that hadnt been there last time he looked. They had their way, she said, quieter, more tired, wed all be the same.
As them? he asked, genuine.
Just the same. She looked at the redness where shed smacked him, wished she could rub it away. Or maybe, theyd have us just not be at all.
TWELVE. Here Came A War Or Two
The reason folks like Mr Estabrook found fascination in the dispossessed always had roots in something like envy. Envy for upward bootstraps. Envy for those they didnt focus on: those among hill folk who, despite the world against them, had an intangible drive for mastery of one thing or another. And Trenchmouth was one of those. Beyond his skills of digging and climbing and inventing and pleasing women, which only a handful of folks were aware of, lay his obvious aptitude for lining up and taking a shot. That is, he could sight and drop most any target with most any weapon. What Frank Dallara had seen all those years earlier had come to full fruition with practice. The dead-eye boy had fallen a prize bear. The crack-shot had collected trophies. And such riflery merits did not go unnoticed in trigger-happy times of impending World War. Even in the hills of southern West Virginia, folks had been itchy since the day a Sarajevo boy not much older than Trenchmouth had stuck his revolver inside the car of the Archduke and squeezed the trigger. The Black Hand had spoken and the world had to listen to its fallout. Within a year, the papers told of the Germans, their use of poison gas.
Four short months after Trenchmouths fourteenth birthday, his president declared war on those gassy Germans. The man-boy wished himself older by a few calendar lengths. He wanted to knock down something other than big game.
But June 5th, 1917, came and went. Conscription they called it. The Williamson Daily News declared No Slackers Will Be Found In Mingo, and it held true. Every man of fighting age joined up. This excluded coal miners whose duty it was to keep producing in time of war. But in Mingo, even the miners couldnt help but go to war, and scores of them came home asleep forever. Nowhere on top of earth can be found a more fighting bunch of brave young men and every one seems ready to go when the bugle call is sounded in this county, the newspaperman went on. Twenty-one to thirty was the rule, but younger got in. Still, despite his older size and look, Trenchmouth was just too short in the tooth. So while the district attorney called on all county sheriffs to report the names of slackers those eligible but not enlisted Trenchmouth sat and fidgeted and twice watched The Narrow Trail, showing at the Hippodrome. On the screen, background orchestra roaring, the good Outlaw Ice Harding broke a wild horse and called it King. Together, they held up stagecoaches. Then the Outlaw rode out of town. For a boy of sixteen, there was nothing more beautiful than an Outlaw riding away free.
While the older boys fought and died, Trenchmouth practiced his marksmanship and his Outlaw stare. Now and again, he sparred with Arly Scott Jr, who was a promising young amateur.