pepper raleigh

Now in the Appalachian Mountains they say if you rock an empty cradle a baby will die.  That Wednesday is the best day for a marriage unless it happens to be May and they say to eat black-eyed peas for good luck on New Years Day.  Raw wet tobacco will draw the venom from an insect’s sting, carved hearts in trees kill witches, and if you tell your dream aloud before breakfast it won’t come true.  

Pepper Raleigh, growing up in West Virginia, knew these things well just like she knew how to make the best chow-chow east of the Appalachian trail, how to bake a dried apple stack cake that’d make a grown man cry and how to skin just about any critter that crawled, a few that ran too.  She used to have this crisp auburn hair like the leaves in fall and it was just as wild as the sunset.  Now these days, old Pepper likes to sit on the front porch and she doesn’t like to say nothing at all.  She rocks.  We all reckon she learned that from her Ma.  And she didn’t always hate men.  Pepper Raleigh that is.  No, she loved one.  Once.  Once when she was young.  Until one day he died.  And she didn’t know why.  

Pepper Raleigh had feet as hot as coals and they were always running.  Since she was sixteen.  Running from town to town.  Never very far.  Never nothing too chancy.  Just traveling town to town.  Same state, same types, same steady systems of breathing.  An in and out usually followed by an in and out.  But Clive, this man she had loved once, he had a putter to his breath.  Maybe more of an in-in-ouuuuut.  And maybe that was why he died.  Pepper Raleigh didn’t know why.

Now, as previously alluded to, when Pepper Raleigh turned sixteen things changed.  She raised her dirty freckled face up from her jacks and dominoes and looked to her mother for advice.  But her mother had seen sixteen other children turn sixteen within the span of twenty-eight years and so on Pepper’s day Ma was old and rocking, like Pepper does now.  Her chair a slow creak, the bottom of her red plaid blanket tucking under the rocker with each sway forward.  

“Ma, what now?”  Pepper Raleigh had asked, and this was when her hair was still sunset and she still had freckles but they were ornate like that of a fancy French impressionism picture painting and when she smiled, why hell, it was more than a sunrise.

So Ma, who spoke like a tire deflating just after it’s hit a jagged piece of glass, Ma said to her,  “Braid your hair, scrub your face, and little darlin’ find yourself a man.”  

Now at the time, Ma’s eyes hadn’t lifted into Pepper Raleigh’s for so long the girl couldn’t remember their color.  So she figured it was all right for her to get gone.  So she braided her long hair and pulled it over her shoulder.  She scrubbed her face ‘til it hurt so bad and turned so red she couldn’t no longer see those fancy French freckles.  And then she knew it was time for her little darlin’ self to find a man.  

Pepper slept tight that night, the last night she was fixing to stay, and she was warm under that potbelly stove just turned on for November.  That night she fell straight asleep and fell straight into her dreams.  Now in her dreams she saw a man.  And he was tall and he wore a hat and under it was hair like the fur of a black bear – silken and soulless and dark.  And his eyes like the feathers of a flycatcher – grey and green and vibrant but also dull.  And his hands were made of something Pepper had never seen.  Soft.  Clean.  Nimble.  Like a lady woman or a keyboard piano player or a president of the United States.  His fingertip brushed against her pretty chiffon shirt that she did not own and as it brushed it left no debris.  No grease nor dirt nor mud nor coal.  And Pepper shivered with love in her dream as her body enjoyed the warmth of the potbelly stove just turned on for November. 

Now, the next morning Pepper awoke and she ran to the breakfast table to tell Ma of the dream and of the man with black bear hair and flycatcher eyes and hands like a lady woman or a keyboard piano player or a president of the United States.  Ma had been cooking breakfast when Pepper ran to her and Pepper was all in a tizzy of excitement and so she blurted out each word, each syllable growing in volume and urgency until by the end of the sentence she was just catching for breath.  So when the tale was done Ma just cracked the egg she had been holding in her hand on the skillet and it hissed.  Neither said a word.  

“You eat breakfast in your room?” 

“No.” 

“Hmmm.” Her vibrating voice almost near harmonized with the sizzling egg, “I’m fixing this egg here for my breakfast.”  

And Ma’s eyes did not look up and the egg fizzed hiss crackle pop and Pepper remembered that dreams don’t come true when told before breakfast.  But Pepper considered herself a modern woman and therefore did not let old fashion sayings deter her.  And so she left that morning without eating any breakfast at all and walked through the trail, crunching on the leaves as she went, until she reached the first town. 

Anawalt was a nice town with nice people and nice men but they were all blonde and they weren’t very tall.  But still she stopped off at the general store and asked where she might find the most important man in town.  

“You have any man that wouldn’t have callouses or scars on his hands?  A man with the kinda hands that would just chill everwho or everwhat he touch? Hands real soft-like.  Like a lady woman or a keyboard piano player or a president of the United States?”   

But Anawalt had no such man so Pepper Raleigh moved on.  

Right on down to Bradshaw.  And at Bradshaw she cozied herself right on up to the clerk at the general store and she pulled on her braid real seductive-like because he had black bear hair and maybe his eyes were more in the reminiscence of the feathers of a grouse but she hadn’t yet got a good long look at his hands.  

“Mr. Wallace, I think you may be able to help me if you tried.”  She said and batted her eyelashes slow and deliberate.

“How might I do that young miss?” 

And that was when she told him she was looking for a man. And she asked him, she asked where she might find the most important man in town. 

“Mr. Wallace, you have here any man that wouldn’t have callouses or scars on his hands?  A man with the kinda hands that would just chill everwho or everwhat he touch? Hands real soft-like.  Like a lady woman or a keyboard piano player or a president of the United States?”   

And Mr. Wallace, figuring Pepper Raleigh had been fixing to make his bed, slid his hands across the counter so she could see the hands of a true man, but a trail of grease and nails embedded with soil was all Pepper Raleigh could damn well see.  And so she threw her braid behind her shoulder and grabbed her things to leave. 

Pepper Raleigh hiked then for some time and soon she grew tired.  So tired she leaned her body right up against a dying tree.  Let her body slide right near down to the dirt, put her hands on her temples, scrunched her knees to her chest and she sat and she began to think.  Now that was when she heard some crunching in the far off yonder leaves.  

“Lady miss, you heading down to Clendenin, Davy, or are you heading down to Ellenboro?” 

Pepper Raleigh wasn’t too sure where she should travel next so she decided to ask the stranger where he suggest she go.  She went to lift her head but before she could, a shiver crawled up her cheek from the man’s touch on her chin.  Now he was a man that didn’t have callouses or scars on his hands.  A man with the kinda hands that would just chill everwho or everwhat he touch. Hands real soft-like.  Like a lady woman or a keyboard piano player or a president of the United States.  And Pepper Raleigh’s mouth dropped when she saw his black bear hair and his flycatcher eyes.  And when he smiled she just near died.  

And he, who incidentally was of the name of Clive von Wolman, was just as enchanted by her sunset hair, fancy French freckles, and more than sunrise smile.  They were married in the next town, one called Falling Spring or Glasgow or maybe it was Hundred.  Hundred sounds like a town to get married in and so that was where they did.  And now this was a month before Clive died and before Pepper didn’t know why.  

Now it turned out Clive was a traveling salesman.  The kind with nice suits and defective merchandise.  So small town folks like the kind Pepper had grown up with didn’t take too kindly to Clive von FancyPants and his lady woman hands.  But he was pretty and Pepper wasn’t all too intelligible and so Pepper stood by his side.  Besides he bought her pretty chiffon shirts like she never owned before.  And maybe they didn’t talk too much and maybe his touch was more chilling than exhilarating like it had been in her dreams and maybe she’d briefly wonder if the old sayings held some stock.  But then she would laugh and thank the Lord she found Clive, even if maybe he was just three quarters of the dreams she had come true.  Most females she knew didn’t even get an eighth of one.  

And so the two traveled on with their hot feet and Clive lied and sold and Pepper cooked and cleaned and loved.  

They were wandering somewhere near Triadelphia when word had traveled faster than Clive’s leather boots and the men in the town were sitting and ready with rifle guns for the sure approach of the lying traveling salesman and his wild freckled wife.  They waited on the foothills just staring at the trees turning their autumn auburn and as they waited they breathed.  A steady in and out usually followed by an in and out.  So when Pepper approached, the Triadephians didn’t see her hair through the camouflage of the leaves and they didn’t hear her either, since she breathed in that same West Virginia fashion of in and out followed by in and out.  

But they saw Clive’s black bear hair.  Saw it like a lamppost at dusk.  And they heard his anywhere but West Virginia puttering of breath, one unused to the high altitudes and the constant haunted clenching of long forgotten ghosts at their rough stubble ridden necks.   And they heard him and they shot their rifle guns and Clive… well, Clive died.  Pepper Raleigh didn’t know why.  

Well, she right knew he was lying and cheating but she didn’t know why he had to get caught.  What had she done to deserve to watch her man fall like that?  And so she braced herself for the same fate, since she figured there wasn’t no reason left in this world.  

But see Pepper Raleigh still had them French freckles and sunset hair and that more than sunrise smile so the men of Triadelphia took real kindly to Pepper Raleigh.  The Pepper Raleigh who loved Clive von Wolman who they had just shot and who had just died.  Now Ma had always told her to stop the clock the hour that a loved one died, lest someone else in the house fall to the same fate.  Told her to put a four-leaf clover in her shoe so that the first man she met that day would be her true love.  But Pepper Raleigh had already had a dream and she had already told it before breakfast and so that was why Clive von Wolman had died. 

Now it turns out Triadelphia was a nice town with nice people and nice men and they all had a little party for Pepper Raleigh the day after her dear Clive had died.  Figured the young pretty lady woman could use a little cheering and a little courting.  Figured she had been duped just like the rest of them.  

“Come on out tonight, Pepper! We’ll show you a good time.”

“Sure, Pepper, there’ll be soup beans and chow chow and the only thing we seem to be missing is a dried apple stack cake.” 

So Pepper, being especially gifted at the baking of dried apple stack cakes, volunteered to make the delicacy.  

That night the entire town arrived at the social and the boys were picking real good-like on their guitars and mandolins and the singing was just right.  Folks were kicking their legs out and looping one another into each other’s arms.  And Pepper Raleigh, both for her sunny disposition, given the circumstance, and her dried apple stack cake, was just the belle of the ball.  

“I’ve been hearing all sorts of commotion about this here dried apple stack cake of yours, Pepper Raleigh!” Just about every eligible young bachelor ended up saying as they cozied on close to her, eyes grazing up and down her pretty floral dress.  

“They don’t even know the half of it.” Pepper winked to each of them as she pulled out a hidden cake, “this here cake is even better than the one they been chowing on.”  

Pepper would pull on her braid all seductive-like then, so naturally each of these same bachelors smiled with some devil behind their eyes and next they would take a slice of her hidden cake, each figuring they had caught her special fancy.  

Now around 10:30 the party was hitting a real high note and everybody had drank just about enough moonshine to be feeling all right but not enough to be punching anybody quite yet.  The special and the non-special dried apple stack cake were both long finished and starting to sit pretty heavy in the Triadelphians’ bellies, especially those special bachelors.  They figured they might as well dance off the pain but soon the pain was growing so drastic they were sweating.  And the picking kept picking and the sweat kept dripping and the bellies kept gurgling until no one could hear nothing save the bombs going off in them bellies.  The young men were just about near passing out by 11:15, and by 11:22, why they were all dead.  Drop-dead on the dirty old dance floor. 

Pepper Raleigh didn’t always hate men.  In fact she loved one, once, and then he died.  Pepper Raleigh wanted to know why.  Wanted to know why her three quarters of a dream had to be shattered to a flat zero and why other females were at least allowed one eighth.  And a modern woman like herself could not put any true credence in old wives tales.  So maybe if a girl took the last piece of bread from a plate, she’d end up an old maid.  It was possible, she thought, that somebody’s lips itching meant they was hankering for a kiss or that people take as many spouses as the number of seeds that will stick to their forehead.  Perhaps curses befall those who run backwards and maybe dreams told before breakfast don’t come true.  But being a modern woman, despite not being all too intelligible, there were some things she did know.  Like she knew that three tablespoons of arsenic in even the sweetest tasting pastry given out by the sweetest lady would kill every bachelor in town.  

That night it poured throughout Triadelphia.  Poured all up and down Appalachia.  Poured right into the graves of those boys before there was time enough to cover them with dirt.  She smiles to herself now, rocking on that porch, whenever she remembers that detail.  She ain’t all too modern not to believe some of the old lore.  Like rain falling on an open grave binds the soul to hell.