The Indian summer sun had set over the Appalachian valley, and Granny Tallet and I lingered on the porch, watching the horizon hold the last light in its folds. She wondered aloud how many folks were watching that same sunset, then recalled old Joe Matthews, who after his conversion at the big revival back in the thirties used to watch every sunrise and sunset for the second coming of the Lord, once even declaring he saw a chariot in the clouds. Something ought to happen after a beautiful sight like this, she said with a heavy sigh, and we stepped inside where the fireplace was ready with the dry brush we had cleared that day from the flower beds. She struck a match and touched the dead mass with a finger of flame, the first fires of autumn.
As the fire leaped into the gloom of the old chimney, my eyes went to the dusty, unopened bottle of whiskey that had sat on the mantel for as long as I could remember. Granny Tallet seemed to know my thoughts. That old bottle had been there as long as she could recall, she said, and when I asked whether Papa Koy had ever drunk whiskey, she told me he never touched the stuff. The bottle had been put there as a reminder, after Sam Amos quit drinking.
By Granny’s notion, a drunkard was a man born with whiskey in his veins, but Sam was never that kind. He came from a sober family, and there was no reason for him to take to the bottle. Dr. Penlon used to say there was a wild streak in nearly every person, and sooner or later it was bound to break out.
It was that wild streak, Granny reckoned, that sent Sam to the Army before he went to preaching, and the same wild streak that put it into his mind to drink whiskey, even though his father and grandfather had never touched it. The beginning of it, most likely, was the new bar in town. They had a debating society in those days, a lyceum, though Sam called it a jawing club. Dr.
Bingham, Judge Grace, Judge Elroy, Colonel Walker, and all the big men of town would go down and argue about everything done in the county. When the bar got its license, they debated that too. Dr. Bingham was in favor, saying what would the great state of Tennessee be without whiskey, and that if you shut your eyes and said the word Tennessee you would see a glass of Jack Daniels and a pretty woman smiling over it.
Judge Grace was clean against it, hollering that the woman would not be smiling but crying her eyes out, for the stuff had ruined the lives of many otherwise good men. They argued up and down until their friends had to hold them back from coming to blows. But that bar was the beginning of Sam’s troubles. He was a sociable sort of fellow, and it was natural for him to go in and see his friends, and the first thing anyone knew, he was drinking with them.
Not much at first, but enough to unsettle his brain and make him talk wild and act foolish. Before long he was following that same old beaten path men have walked since the days of Noah. He got to neglecting his farm, and he would go to town every week and come home in such a condition that it was not safe for Miley and the children to be in the same house with him. Folks used to say the first drink made Sam a fool, the second made him the devil, and the third put both the fool and the devil to sleep.
Sam was as smart a man as you would find anywhere, but the man who can stop at one glass does not live in Tennessee, Granny said, and so Sam went from the first class to the second, and from the second to the third, and from the third to the gutter. She recalled one county court day when she and Papa Koy were passing in front of the old Methodist Church and saw Sam coming along leading his bay mare. That mare was the pride of Sam’s heart; he used to say there was more good blood in her than in any six families in the state. Sam was a mighty fine judge of horseflesh, a love he had gotten from his father and his grandpa old Harrison Amos, one of the biggest horse raisers in the state.
Sam called to them and said he wanted to make a trade, swapping his horse for their yellow dog. Papa Koy agreed, took hold of the mare’s bridle, pulled a piece of string from his pocket, tied it around the pup’s collar, and put the end of the string in Sam’s hand. He told Granny he was going to give Sam a lesson that might shame him out of his drinking for a while. Then he led the mare to the stable and told the man to feed and water her, saying he would call for her later that evening.
When it was time to go home, they set out to find Sam, and after looking up and down the square and all down the main street, they found him lying helpless in the back of a grocery store. Papa Koy got two men to help lift Sam into the back of the wagon and drove over to Sam’s farm, knowing Miley would be waiting and grieving. Sure enough, there she was standing under the big sycamore tree at the gate, looking and listening for Sam. She told Granny afterward that she had stayed that way many nights till her clothes were plum wet with dew, and that for the rest of her life she hated the sound of crickets and katydids because they reminded her of that year.
When Papa Koy drove up alone, Miley was too scared to speak, thinking he was coming to break the news that Sam had fallen off his horse and broken his neck. She leaned forward, hardly enough breath to speak, and whispered where’s Sam. When she learned he was right there in the wagon, she said thank God, she was afraid he was dead. Granny remarked that it was not every woman who would thank God a man was alive when he was brought home dead drunk.
They got Sam into the house, took off his coat and shoes, and laid him on the bed. Papa Koy started to leave, and Miley asked where Sam’s horse was. He told her to send Sam over to his house in the morning, and he would put him on the trail to his mare. The next morning about eleven, Sam came looking as wrecked and miserable as a man could look, saying he had come for his horse.
Papa Koy told him the mare belonged to him now, that Sam had swapped her the day before. Sam laughed and said he reckoned he did owe something for being brought home, but surely Papa Koy would not take his horse. Then the yellow dog came around the corner of the house wagging its tail, and Papa Koy pointed and said Sam had swapped his horse for that dog. Sam was thunderstruck, unable to speak, and when he finally got the nerve he asked if Papa Koy meant to say he was such a fool that he swapped the finest piece of horseflesh in the state for that old yellow dog, him being the best judge of horses in Rhea County.
Papa Koy confirmed it was Sam’s own proposing. Sam sat down on the doorstep, folded his arms over his knees, dropped his head, cursed himself and cursed the whiskey, and swore he would never touch another drop, that all the devils in hell could not make him break his oath. Papa Koy said that was the reason he had kept the horse, and told him to go into the stable and find her safe and sound with the saddle and bridle on the right hand side of the door, and may God give him grace to keep from making such a fool of himself again. But it was not a month before Sam was hauled home again in the back of a wagon.
Late one Monday night he was so drunk that he hit Miley and kicked her and the kids out of the house. The next thing anyone heard was that Miley’s father had come to take her back home. Miley told Granny long after the trouble was over that she had been hoping the bruise on her cheek would be well before her paw saw her, and she had been putting cold and hot water on it and everything else she could think of to draw the blood out. But somebody told the old man how bad things had been going, and it was not two hours before he was there to move her back.
Miley was washing up the dinner dishes with her face bound up in one of Sam’s handkerchiefs when her father came in, his lips and hands trembling. He told her to put her things together as quick as she could, that he had come to take her home. He was no advocate of folks separating, but when Sam took her from his house he promised to be good and kind to her, and he had broken his promise. No child of his was going to stay with a drunk who laid his violent hands on his wife.
But Miley spoke up and said she knew drinking whiskey was bad enough, but it was not the worst thing a man could do. It was not what a man did when he was drunk that made a woman hate him and leave him; it was what he did when he was sober. And when Sam was himself, there was not a kinder, better husband anywhere. Sam gave a gasp and looked up at her as if he could not believe his ears.
He burst out crying, fell on his knees, threw his arms around her, and held on tight like a drowning man trying to save himself. He said he had asked God to help him and it seemed he did not care, but if she would stay with him he promised to quit and never lay his hands on her again. Miley’s father stood there looking at the pathetic Sam, and it took everything the old man had in him not to kill him that day. But he promised Sam there would not be a next time, got in his wagon, and drove off.
All that day Sam stayed around the house, following like a dog following its master. Every now and then he would say he had to quit, he promised he was going to quit. But Miley had heard him break that promise so often that she did not have one bit of faith he would keep it now. The very next Monday was county court day.
All day Sunday Miley was praying Sam would not go to town, but right after supper he told her they were going, taking her and the young ones, and they would get an early start. Miley could not sleep that night and prayed it would pour down rain or something would keep him home. The sun came up clear, and there was nothing to do but dress and go to town with Sam. He took particular pains with himself, putting on his Sunday clothes and shaving and combing his hair till he looked more like his old self than he had since he took to drinking.
The road to town had never seemed so short. As soon as they got to the square, Sam went straight down the main street in the direction of that bar. Miley’s heart gave a jump and she shook all over like she was having a chill, but she said nothing, knowing that if Sam had made up his mind to drink that day there was no way she could stop him. Sure enough, he went right on in and stood in front of the bar.
He called to the bartender to fix him up a glass of that old bourbon just the way he liked it and bring it out to him. The barkeeper fixed it up and came out smiling like a basket of chips. Sam handed over the money, held the glass up, looked at it, put his face down and smelled it, and put his lips like he was going to drink it. Then all at once he turned to Miley and said look here Miley, and dashed the glass down into the gutter.
It broke into a hundred pieces, and the whiskey splattered all over the horses’ hooves and the barkeeper’s shoes. Sam was as white as a ghost and shaking as much as she was. He nodded to the barkeeper and said that was his last drink, turned around, and drove up towards the square. Miley began crying for joy, but truth be told she still did not know whether it was his last drink or not, he had broken so many promises before.
Sam seemed to know what was on her mind and asked if she believed him or not. All at once she thought of the scripture that said by grace are ye saved through faith, and of the day her paw had come to take her home, and how Sam had kept saying to keep on believing in him, that her faith would save him. She laid her hand on Sam’s knee and said yes, she believed in him. The moment she spoke the word, she said it looked like a stone rolled away from her heart, and she felt in her soul that she had come to the end of her trouble, and the world appeared to be made all over anew.
When they got to the square, Sam handed her a roll of bills and told her to go in and buy herself and the children some Christmas gifts while he got the groceries, and they would meet at the drugstore and go home whenever she was ready. Miley bought the things for the children, but when she looked in the windows and show cases for something for herself, she could not see a single thing that would make her any happier than she was. She put the rest of the money in the waist of her dress, and when Sam met her in front of the drugstore she handed it back, saying there was no use wasting money on a woman who had got everything on Earth that she wanted. She would not let Sam buy her a thing that Christmas, and yet she felt like she owned the entire earth.
When Sam dashed that glass of whiskey on the ground and said it was his last drink, he told the truth. As time went by, everybody in Rhea County began to feel sure he had quit for good. Parson Page said something to him one day about the grace of God saving him, and Sam shook his head and said he was certain God was too honest to want credit that did not belong to him. It was not the grace of God that stopped him, he said, it was the grace of his wife.
Dr. Penlton was standing nearby and said all Sam needed was a great moral uplift, and in a case like his there was nothing better than the love of a woman. Granny never got through wondering over the way Miley bore with Sam in the days he was walking the downward path. Human nature is a curious thing.
Miley was high tempered and quick spoken, and if anybody had asked Granny how Miley would act if Sam took to drinking, she would have said Miley would quit. But she did not. She was as patient with him as any mother ever was with her son. She would put him to bed and wait on him, and when he came to himself she would never say a word about what had happened.
And Granny reckoned it was her grace that saved him. It is a curious thing how two people will live together for years and never know how much they love each other, but let a little trouble come up and they will find all the love they used to have is there and more. Parson Page once said that love and money are alike in one respect: they will both draw interest, and Granny reckoned many married couples are richer than they think they are. She pushed her spectacles back upon her forehead, folded her hands, and leaned back in her chair, lost in the revery that generally followed the telling of a story.
I gazed at the firelight and felt the cord of human sympathy drawing me nearer to the people of her day and time, for during my childhood there was no greater storyteller than Granny Tallet.