PURSUING DAISY GARFIELD
"A rollicking novel that fuses the Ozarks folk tradition with meditations on beauty, suffering, and the meaning of it all."
An Excerpt from Pursuing Daisy Garfield
"Come here," she said to William, almost as if she were calling a dog. "Closer." He stepped so close to her he could feel her breath on his lips. "Touch the back of my neck," she said. William slipped his fingers under her hair. "Now touch my cheek." He stroked her cheek as gently as he killed her husband.
The Folktale Road to Reconstruction!
Stories understood as stories, naked and with no pretensions, can be refreshing and restorative. Faith begins and ends with the imagination, and the imagination begins and ends in faith.
Folktales and Folktellers
Carrying the folk tradition forward--
The "folk tradition" is both a respite and a reconnaissance, a place of retreat whence we survey the difficulties ahead. All human concerns are represented: The desire for justice and the suffering from injustice; lust and love, friendship and enmity; God and angels, Devil and demons. The folk tradition is the wellspring of our most sophisticated stories and the anteroom for emerging archetypes. So it is that I present a few of my favorites below, some of which serve as inspirations for the stories and meditations in the Blog.
"Spanish Gold"
As written by Vance Randolph
See the "Tale of Elbie Squires"
One time there was a fellow named Hamilton Sipes went over in the Indian Territory and he married up with a Choctaw. There or four years later he come back home, and he had a buckskin map marked with pokeberry juice. This here map showed how to find a buried treasure in a cave, right close to where Ham was raised.
The way Ham told it, a bunch of Spaniards come up here in the early days, and they had gold by the bucketful. Some say they had stole it down in Mexico, but maybe they dug the stuff out of the ground right here. Anyhow, they sure had it. When the Indians jumped on them, they hid the gold in a cave, and then they tried to get away down the river, but the redskins killed every last one of ‘em. It is against Choctaw religion to mess with dead men’s gold, but one of the warriors made this here map, and it was handed down in his wife’s family. Ham got hold of it some way, while he was a-livin’ in the Territory.
When he got back home, Ham just visited round amongst his kinfolks for awhile. Then one day he borrowed a pick and shovel and started out to get the gold. There was seven pony-loads of it, according to the old story, and Ham figured he’d be a rich man. He found the cave hole all right, and there was the three turkey tracks carved on a rock, just like it was on the map. Ham stopped to rest right outside the cave, when all of a sudden, he heard a noise, and here come a terrible big rock a-bouncin’ down the mountain. He throwed himself under a ledge, or it would have killed him sure. He just left the pick and shovel lay and went over to Zeke Mosier’s place. Poor Ham was scared so bad he couldn’t eat no supper, and he had the dry shakes all night.
Uncle Zeke tried to tell him there ain’t nothing to be scared of. It’s in the nature of a rock to roll down hill, he says, All them big boulders in the river bed must have fell off the mountain sometime. “That narrow shave you had yesterday was just a accident,” says Uncle Zeke, “and it wouldn’t happen again in a thousand years.” Ham knowed this was true, but he had lived with the Indians too long. He couldn’t forget them old Choctaw stories about what happens to fellows that dig up dead men’s treasure.
It was pretty near a week before Ham come back to the cave, and this time Uncle Zeke tagged along. Just as Ham went to pick up the shovel, a copperhead bit him on the wrist. It wasn’t no time till his arm was swole plumb to a strut, and he was a-suffering something terrible. Uncle Zeke hitched up and took him into town, and the town doctor give him medicine with a big needle. He finally pulled through, but it was touch-and-go for awhile. And Ham says them Indians ain’t such fools as some folks think, and the gold can lay there till hell freezes solid for all he cares.
Some other fellows went and dug in the cave, and nothing happened to ‘em. But they didn’t have no map, so naturally they never found the gold. Ham’s money was all gone by this time, and he couldn’t get no credit at the store. He got to thinking how lots of folks has been snakebit right in their own back yard, when they wasn’t looking for no treasure at all, but just picking up chips or something. And there wasn’t nothing spooky about rocks rolling down the mountain neither, when you come to think about it sensible. So finally Ham says he will make one more try for that there gold.
It was a terrible hot day when Ham and Uncle Zeke started out. When they got to the cave Ham set down just inside the entrance and spread his map out on a flat rock. All of a sudden it got so dark he couldn’t hardly see the pokeberry marks on the buckskin. The sky turned plumb black, and then come a terrible roaring up the holler. “Cyclone!” says Uncle Zeke, and they both throwed theirself down on the floor of the cave. The air was full of big trees and branches for a minute, and then it was all over. Ham and Zeke wasn’t hurt, but they was covered with dust, and the buckskin map was gone. The cyclone had blowed it plumb away.
Neither one of them fellers said a word till they got back to Zeke’s house and took a couple horns of whiskey to clear the dust out of their throat. Then Zeke began to grumble about the map being lost. “It ain’t what you might call lost,” says Ham. “I reckon it was just took back where it come from.” And the next morning Ham Sipes was gone too, and we never did hear from him no more. The folks always figured he must have went back to the Choctaws over in the Territory.
From Stiff as Poker (originally published as The Devil’s Pretty Daughter) by Vance Randolph, New York: Columbia University Press, 1955, pp. 31-34. Randolph writes that he heard the story from “Mr. H. F. Walker, Joplin, Mo, July, 1923. He had it from an old-timer at Sulphur Springs, Ark.” Randolph continues, “The Ozark country is full of yarns about buried gold. I am personally acquainted with men who spent years in the search for this legendary treasure.” Also, see my story about Elbie (L.B.) Squires of Stella, Missouri, and the discovery in Bear Cave.
The Deputy's Wife
As written by Vance Randolph
See "'Cream on the Turnip' by Parker Stark"
One time there was a patch farmer, and he got to be a deputy sheriff. Sometimes he would have to be away from home two or three days. He thought maybe his wife was trifling on him, so he used to sneak back at night and hide in the orchard. He never did catch nobody, but he still figured maybe she was trifling on him.
He thought about it a long time, and finally he fixed up a way to find out for sure. He got a crock of cream out of the springhouse and set it under the bed. Then he took a big turnip and tied it on a string. He fastened the string to the springs, just long enough so the turnip would not touch the cream if one person was laying in the bed. But if two people got in the bed, the springs would sag enough to let the turnip down into the cream. Then he told his wife that he would be gone until noon the next day, and rode off down the trail. He figured that if a man came to see his wife in the night there would be cream on the turnip, and he would have her dead to rights.
When he got to town the sheriff told him to go and arrest a fellow way down in the south end of the county, and off the road at that. So he did have to be away all night sure enough, and part of the next day too. And that night the sheriff sneaked out to the deputy's house. The sheriff was a big stout man, and he weighed pretty near two hundred pounds. He put his gun under the bed, and when he went to get it in the morning he seen the turnip and the crock of cream. "What's this contraption under your bed?" says he.
The woman she looked under the bed and seen how things was. "I told you my husband was a smart fellow," she says. "He must have set this here trap to catch me." And then she jumped on the bed by herself, and the turnip did not touch the cream. But when her and the sheriff both got on the bed, the springs sagged down till the turnip was pretty near out of sight. "It's lucky you seen that thing," she says to the sheriff. So then she took a towel and wiped the turnip dry. "That would-be Edison won't find no cream on his plumb-bob, " she says, "and I'll give him hell for even suspicioning such a thing." And then they laughed some more, and the sheriff he sneaked out the back door, same as he always done.
Well, when the deputy come home it was about two o'clock, and he was pretty tired, because he had been up all night. The first thing he done was to yank the covers off the bed, so he could look at the turnip. The woman follered him into the bedroom. "For goodness sake," she says, "what are you up to now?" The deputy gave her a sour look. "I invented this here machine," says he, "to find out who's been sleeping in our bed while I was gone." The woman laughed mighty scornful. "There wasn't nobody in that bed but me," says she. The deputy shook his head "You don't weight no three hundred pounds all by yourself," says he, "and you couldn't flounce around enough to register on this here invention." The woman come up close, so as to take a good look. "Register, my foot!" she says. "I don't see no cream on the turnip."The deputy went out in the yard, and cut him a stout hickory. "No, you don't see no cream on the turnip," says he. "But how come two pounds of butter in that there crock?
From Who Blowed Up the Church House? Vance Randolph with notes by Herbert Halpert, New York: Columbia University Press, 1953, pp. 11-13.
What Cows Do on Christmas
As written by Vance Randolph
ONE TIME there was a little boy lived away back in the hills. His paw and maw was good Christian folks, but kind of old-fashioned. They told him that Christmas comes on the sixth of January, and on Christmas Eve the cattle fall down on their knees at midnight. And they said the cows could talk that night, just like people.
Well, everybody knows Christmas used to come several days later than it does now; some of them old settlers still have their Christmas in January, and they call it Old Christmas. That’s history, and you can’t get around history. But it ain’t likely that the cattle are going to kneel down at midnight, because a cow don’t know nothing about religion, and how could they remember what day it is, anyhow? Still, you got to admit that cattle can kneel down whenever they feel like it, so it might be the notion would hit ‘em all at once on Christmas Eve. But we all know in reason that cows can’t talk, because it is against nature. Them old folks didn’t have no education, and they believed all kind of things that people don’t take any stock in nowadays. So they told their little boy about it, and he thought they was telling the truth.
Well sir, when it come the fifth of January, nineteen hundred and four, that little boy never went to sleep because he wanted to hear the cows talk. And when the clock says a quarter to twelve he got up easy, and put on his clothes. And when the clock says ten minutes to twelve he unbarred the door. The old folks was sound asleep, as he could hear them a-snoring like somebody sawing gourds. The little boy stayed out at the barn quite a while, and when he got back to the house the clock says twenty minutes to one. The little boy barred the door again, and took off his clothes, and crawled back in bed. The old folks was still a-snoring. The boy never let on, but he knowed his paw and maw was both liars. And he didn’t believe nothing they told him after that.
The folks made the little boy go to church every Sunday, but he figured everything the preacher said was a lie, just like that whopper about the cows talking on Christmas Eve. They kept telling him every boy ought to learn how to read and write, but he thought that was a lie, too, and run away from school every chance he got. His paw told him not to fool with them white trash girls that lived up the creek, but he done it anyhow. And by the time he was fourteen years old that boy run off to Oklahoma. Near as the folks could find out, he just hung around gambling halls and whorehouses. Finally he shot a deputy marshal and it looked like they was going to hang him, so he went to Texas and nobody knows what become of him after that.
The church people never could figure out how come that boy went wrong, but the truth is the whole thing started when his paw and maw told him that fool tale about the cows a-talking. From that time on he thought all the folks was goddam liars, and he didn’t believe nothing anybody said. It just goes to show that you got to be careful what you say to little boys, because they take everything mighty serious. It’s different with little girls, of course. Girls are a lot smarter than boys, and they don’t pay no attention to their paw and maw, anyhow.
From Sticks in the Knapsack and Other Ozark Folk Tales by Vance Randolph. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958, pp. 48-49.
