I don’t know my birthday. The date on my ID card, 7/3/1922, was invented by an Army enlistment officer when I told him that I didn’t know how old I was. I’m sure my ma knew, but she died before I could ask her. I’d imagine it was written down in the family Bible, but that was destroyed in The Fire. As for my pa, I don’t recall him ever being sober enough to remember, if he ever knew at all. Certainly never got no cakes or presents growing up.
I don’t think I’m over 100, but regardless, I don’t have much time left. There is a story that I need to tell before I pass on. A story from when I was very young.
Better start at the beginning. I was born in the Smoky Mountains on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, in a place called Blackberry Hollow. I was the youngest of three children. Had a brother named Jack and a sister named Mabel. Would’ve certainly been more children, but my ma died giving birth to her fourth. Along with the baby, a girl named Sarah.
We had a small farm, about a forty acres or so. Planted corn mainly, ‘long with some turnips, potatoes, and greens. Kept a few hogs and dairy cows too. Weren’t prosperous by any means, no one in the valley was. Wasn’t easy farming, on account of the rocky soil. But we did alright. Not from farming, my pa was too drunk most of the time to properly tend his fields. But he did tend his still, hidden back on an isolated mountain top so no revenuer would ever find it.
Lived about three miles from the town center. Wasn’t much of a town. Two churches, one a Missionary Baptist Church and the other a Primitive Baptist Church. Which one we went to depended on the fancies of the woman my pa was currently courting. Couldn’t tell you the differences between the two, the sermons always seemed to be about the various reasons you were going to hell for eternity. There was also a general store and a one-room schoolhouse, which I never stepped foot in best I can recollect. Didn’t learn how to read and write till much later. And that was it for the town. As I said, it wasn’t much.
The town’s long gone. The government bought it up to form the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Heard that some of the buildings survive. Can’t confirm that, never been back to check. And never will, after what happened there.
Now as you can probably imagine, there wasn’t no doctor in the town. The nearest would have been a good thirty miles away in the county seat. That would be a day’s journey at least, over narrow mountain roads. No one had any cars in the valley back then, for even if they could afford them, there was no way for them to traverse the rocky paths. So what you did when you were ill was see the witch, Ma McDermott.
Now, Ma McDermott looked like a hag from a fairy tale. She was nothing but skin and bones, her skin so thin and pulled so taut that it looked like her skull would burst through at any moment. Her bony fingers seemed to be twice the length of a normal man’s, and were capped with long, pointy yellow nails. She walked stooped over, with the help of a hickory stick nearly twice her height. Strangest of all were her eyes: pale yellow, like a daffodil.
It was rumored that she was over two hundred. And I believed it.
She had a small shack back in the woods behind the general store. Here, she saw her patients. She could set a fracture, dispense a herbal remedy for morning sickness or the ague, and rub a salve on a burn. She knew some midwifery. In many ways, she was like the hundreds of other folk healers who practiced in the mountain towns. But she was rumored to have a dark secret.
There was an abandoned grist mill, deep in the woods, probably about five miles from the family farm. It was said that there Ma McDermott practiced black magic, séanced with evil spirits, and even called forth the Devil. All the children of the hollow knew to avoid that place. My pa, who, given his near-constant state of inebriation, didn’t teach me much of nothing, warned me multiple times to avoid the old mill. And I listened. Until one night.
It all started the day my brother Jack died. Believe it was March, for I remember the fields were aflame, the farmers burning them to clear out the weeds and debris prior to the first planting. Jack and I were playing Hide-and-Seek. I was still counting down when I heard screams coming from the silo. I ran over and saw Jack up to his waist in grain, his arms flailing, being sucked down like it was quicksand. A few seconds later, he was completely submerged.
My pa told me to run to a neighboring farm to get some help. He, along with three other men, spent hours scooping out the corn until they pulled out my brother. His body looked so peaceful, like he was asleep, but even as a young boy, no more than 5 or 6, I knew he was dead.
I never recall seeing my pa cry, but he was clearly grieving. He became catatonic, lying in bed all day, not getting up except to get more whiskey. It was up to Mabel and me to feed the hogs, milk the cows. We should have been plowing, getting ready to plant, but we were too young to do that by ourselves.
Finally, about a week after the accident, my pa finally got up. I remember riding into town, dressed all in black. Don’t remember the service, but I remember the burial. As the preacher man was reading some psalm, I heard footsteps behind me. I looked behind and saw Ma McDermott standing right behind me, grinning from ear to ear like a mad woman. Before I could scream, she vanished into the thin air.
Later that afternoon, I decided to go fishing, hoping to get the image of the witch out of my mind. Just had a little bamboo pole, but I was determined to catch a nice big rainbow trout and bring it home for dinner, hoping that it would cheer pa up. I fished for hours, going down stream further than I ever had. All I got was a few nibbles.
I set back empty-handed, taking what I thought was a shortcut through the woods. The darkness snuck up on me, and I soon realized I was hopelessly lost. The temperature was dropping rapidly, as it does in the mountains, and I had on just a thin coat. I kept walking aimlessly, praying that I would find my way, when in the distance I saw a little bit of golden light.
I ran towards it. As I got closer, I realized it was an old mill, the big water wheel having split right in two. Freezing, I began to run to the door, when what I saw through one of the windows stopped me in my tracks. Propped up in a chair was my brother, the top of his skull cleanly sliced off and set down on a long wooden table in front of him. Also was the table were various vats, containing chemicals of different colors, copper wires running between them. Floating in one of them was a brain. Presiding over this macabre spectacle was Ma McDermott.
I tried to run, but by body was paralyzed. I watched Ma McDermott remove the brain and set it back into my brother’s skull. Nothing happened for several seconds, but then, suddenly, my brother’s eyes opened wide. But they weren’t his eyes, they were demon eyes. Devil eyes. Somehow they radiated evil, pure evil. Ma McDermott looked up at me, the same grin on her face that she had at the burial. She started cackling.
I ran. I didn’t know which direction I was headed, I just ran. Away from the mill. Away from the witch. I kept running even though my legs had long ago given out, even though my heart was pounding harder than I knew it could. Never once looked behind me, for I knew I would see the witch, riding her hickory stick, cackling, grinning from ear to ear. Eventually, after what seemed like hours, I came out on to the main road that led from the town to my farm. I didn’t take a rest, but kept running, all the way back to the farm.
My sister was at the door, crying. I hugged her, for the last time, and went upstairs and tried to wake my pa, but he was passed out from the drink. I told my sister that Ma McDermott was after us, what I saw, but she didn’t believe me and went to bed.
I made sure that all the doors and windows were locked and got my pa’s hunting rifle out. I sat by the front door, the gun, which would have been to heavy for me to aim, resting on my lap.
I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke to my pa shaking me. Smoke was filling the house. He picked me up and rushed us outside, before running back in for my sister.
As I sat in the cold night air, I saw, from the light of the burning house, a figure walking stiffly towards the pines, moving like he was hewn from wood, like a Cigar Store Indian come to life. In his right hand was a torch, still ablaze. Despite the distance, I knew who it was. My brother. A few seconds later, I saw my pa running outside, carrying the body of my sister. She was dead
My pa thought it was a rival moonshiner who set his house alight, but I knew the truth. Although I never told him. If he lived longer, I might have, but he took his life a few weeks later. I watched him walk outside calmly one morning, carrying a rifle. I watched as he put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
I was sent to live with one of my pa’s brothers, who was the foreman at a textile mill in Asheville. For years I had nightmares that Ma McDermott, or my brother, or what was once him, would show up in the night at my windowsill to snatch me away. But they never came.
For my whole life I’ve wondered what was Ma McDermott doing with my brother’s corpse. What her motive was. I’ve never come up with any satisfactory answers. I just hope, that when my time comes, I will be in Heaven, with my ma and pa, with Jack and Mabel and little Sarah. I pray every day that I will not end up in Hell, with the Devil, and with Ma McDermott, the Witch of Blackberry Hollow.