After Bedtime Stories

My father was a great talker and storyteller. I suppose he acquired a good bit of this skill during the time he was a traveling salesman. He had several tall tales that he told on a regular basis, but what I liked best were the stories that were swapped when my uncles came to visit.

There were thirteen children in Daddy's family, ten boys and three girls, which meant that there was as much as ten to fifteen years' difference in some of their ages. Even though they all had grown up in the same house with many of the same neighbors, the age differences gave them all different stories, and most of them were as good as Daddy in telling them.

None of my relatives lived close by, so when they came, they usually stayed several days. This was in the early 1940s, but their stories were about people and events at the turn of the century a time that seemed far in the past then and seems even farther today.

The story sessions usually occurred after supper. The children could listen in, but we could not participate in any way or interrupt with questions. Those who could not follow these ground rules were invited to go elsewhere. I always stayed.

Because "you children need your sleep/' we were usually sent to bed at about 9 o'clock. The grownups would stay up and talk sometimes way into the night. It always seemed to me the best stories were told after we were in bed and supposedly asleep. Of course, we were just in the next room and the door was open, so we could hear everything if we could stay awake. My brother usually went to sleep before his head hit the pillow, but I would fight to stay awake to hear what was being said. I would pinch myself, sit up in bed, and do all sorts of things to keep from dozing off.

It was not unusual for two of Daddy's brothers to be visiting at the same time. These were always the best sessions. Everybody would be adding to the stories or asking questions about a specific point until it was almost impossible at times to tell who the main storyteller was. The following stories came from those sessions.

Papa was a nightrider
On one occasion we were sent to bed at the usual time, and for some reason, I let myself fall asleep. I don't know how many tales I slept through before I awakened with a start to hear one of my uncles say, "Do you really think he was one of 'em?"

"Well, I've heard tell that he was."

"I've more than heard. I know he was."

"Aw come on. You don't know Papa was a nightrider."

"I do, too, know he was. If you'd seen what I saw one night, you'd know it too."

"Well, how come me or Vasco didn't see it?"

"'Cause you two had already left home and I wasn't about to tell anybody about it. Nobody was supposed to know who they were and I wasn't about to talk about it and have them pay me a visit even if Papa was one of 'em."

"Well, what did you see?"

"It was late one night. I don't know how late but the horses woke me up. I went to the window to see what was going on. What I saw when I looked out almost made me pee in the floor. There were about eight nightriders on horses. All of 'em had on robes and hoods so you couldn't tell who they were. Two of 'em had pine torches. I thought they were paying us a visit, but I couldn't imagine why. Just then I noticed Papa's horse tied to the post out front and someone came from around the house, untied him, and mounted him. He had on a robe and hood like the rest, but he had on Papa's boots and he got on Papa's horse. It had to be Papa. The whole bunch rode off down the road."
"Well, I guess Papa was one."

"They did some good, you know."

"Sure they did. If you wasn't doing right, you didn't need but about one visit from the nightriders to get you to make some changes."

"I heard tell that they got aholt of ole Charlie Beard one night."

"What did he do?"

"Well, you know he was bad to drink and beat his wife and kids when he got home. One night he was in the middle of beatin' on 'em when the nightriders showed up. Cured him right straight. He stopped hurtin' his family and quit drinkin', too. Started going to church. In fact, he got to goin' to church so strong some of the folks wanted to make him a deacon."

"Did you ever see 'em again?"

"No, and I never wanted to. From then on, if I heard horses in the night, I just pulled the covers up over my head and stuck my fingers in my ears till they went away."
"Well, ain't that somethin'. Papa was a nightrider."
After hearing that story, I had a different perspective of my grandfather. I only thought of him as a fat old man sitting in his favorite chair dozing most of the time. But in his younger days he had been a vigilante riding through the night making sure that the people along the Bogue Chitto behaved themselves.

That Caldwell Girl
"Say, whatever happened to that Caldwell girl?"
"Which one?"

"You know, the one that was so good looking. I think her first name was Burney, or somethin' like that."
"Oh, I know the one you mean. Her name was Brunie. Brunie Mae."

"Yeah, that was it. She was younger than me, but we were always talkin' about how pretty she was. I'll bet she got her pick of the men when she got grown."

"Well, she did for a while, but things changed after the accident and she never got married. She's an old maid."
"You don't mean to tell me Brunie Mae Caldwell's an old maid? It must have been some kind of serious accident to cause that."

"Well, it wasn't exactly the accident. It was more the story about the accident that done it. It was about the thunder mug."

[Note: For the uninformed, a thunder mug is a large ceramic chamber pot. It probably got this nickname from its tendency to act as an echo chamber and amplify the sound that occurred while it was being used.]
"The thunder mug! Aw, come on. You've got to be pullin' my leg on this 'un.

"Naw I'm not. I'll tell you what happened. One night Brunie Mae got up out of bed to use the thunder mug. The thing musta' been cracked or somethin', 'cause when she sat on it, it broke. Busted all over the place, I was told. Now, that should have been the end of it, but one of her brothers told one of his friends, and this friend told some¬body else and so on. You know how somethin' like that goes. Well, somewhere along the line, somethin' got added to the story and the story that came out of all this was that when the thunder mug busted, Brunie Mae was cut very seriously in a very strategic place. In fact, this cut was so serious that it rendered her unfit for marriage."
"That's amazin'. Did it really?"

"Naw, I don't think she got cut at all, but once that story got out, nobody could get it stopped. Her brother tried to tell people it wasn't so, but folks accused him of lyin' for her. And you know she wasn't goin' to let anyone examine her. The boys quit comin' around - even the ones who wanted to. They couldn't stand being kidded about courtin' 'damaged goods.'"

"That's really somethin'. Brunie Mae Caldwell, the prettiest girl along the Bogue Chitto. Turned into an old maid by a busted thunder mug. I swanee. I swanee."

Old Seth Jackson
"You know, I've heard that you and those other boys really treated old Seth Jackson bad there one time."
"What other boys you mean?"

"Well, I hear tell they were mostly some of our Beard and Dunaway cousins. Y'all used to get together and ramble around the community playin' pranks on folks."

"We did. We did. But we never did any real harm and that thing with Seth was us just sort of leadin' him to do what he wanted to do in the first place."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I'll tell you just what happened. You know that Seth's place was right next to Jacob Proctor's. Jacob was a real good farmer and Seth wasn't. Jacob's crops were always about the best around. Everything he planted grew and produced. On the other hand, it seemed like when Seth planted cotton he got more weeds than anything else.

"The main crops were bad enough, but what really got Seth's goat was the watermelons. Jacob always had about an acre patch and they were always big and sweet. He even won some ribbons with them at the county fair several times. People were always complimentin' his melons and takin' on about ‘em and this really made Seth jealous. Seth's melons were all right, but they couldn't hold a candle to Jacob's. Seth got more jealous every year until he came just about to hate Jacob. We all knew about his feelins' and that set the stage for us.

"Seth liked moonshine pretty well. So, one night we bought a jug from ole one-eye Pete and went by Seth's place. We gave him a swig or two and told him we were going to ramble around some and that he could come along if he wanted and share the jug. He did and we struck out. We'd stop ever so often to pass the jug. In the dark, Seth couldn't see that we were just holdin' it up to our mouths and not drinkin'. After he got pretty drunk, we started talkin' about Jacob Proctor and that really set him off. He cussed Jacob and really got to carryin' on about him. Then one of us mentioned the watermelons and that was like tyin' a lighted corn shuck to a cat's tail. ‘Course we egged him on a little every now and then. He finally said that what Jacob Proctor deserved was to have all his melons busted and the vines pulled and stacked around a stump. Being the good drinkin' buddies we were, we offered to help him do it."

"Seth was pretty drunk and disoriented by the time we got to the watermelon patch. That patch really looked pretty in the moonlight and I said it would surely be a shame to tear up such a nice melon patch. But Seth wasn't about to back down. He said he'd come to tear up Jacob's patch and he meant to do it, and if we wouldn't help, he'd do it by himself. So he started in to bustin' melons and pullin' up vines. After he had a good start, we helped him finish the job. It was a big patch and it took a good while to do it with all of us workin' pretty steady at it. Even in the moonlight where you couldn't see real good, that patch real¬ly looked bad with busted melons all over the place and that big pile of vines stacked up around that stump.

"All that exertion and moonshine had taken its toll on Seth and we had just about to carry him home. Jenny was awful mad when we got there, so we didn't stay longer than it took to lay him on one of the beds."

"And he had no idea what he'd done?"

"Naw, he didn't that night. But when he started out to the barn the next mornin' and saw all his melons busted and the vines stacked around the stump, he knew we'd led him to his patch rather than Jacob's."

"What'd he do?"

"What could he do? He couldn't get us for messin' up his patch 'cause he'd helped do it. And he couldn't tell anybody that it was a mistake, that it was supposed to have been Jacob's patch that got messed up. We had him by the short hair with a down-hill pull and he knew it. He did get a lot of sympathy from folks in the community which made him feel good - or at least better. Jacob even came over and told him to pick melons from his patch 'cause he had so many that year."

"Did he?"

"Yep, he did. Ol' Seth swallowed his pride and picked melons from the patch he intended to destroy. You know, he wouldn't speak to any of us for about six months, but I think we taught him a good lesson that night. Yep, I think we did."

Lillie Jean Buckner
"Y'all remember Lillie Jean Buckner?"
"Sure do. Sure do. She was the scandal of the com¬munity there for a while."

"What ever did she do with that baby that was born on the other side of the blanket? I think it was a boy, wasn't it?"

"Yep, I think it was. Well, they just raised him as one of her little brothers and he probably never knew the difference. They had a whole bunch of kids which Miz Buckner produced on a regular basis. And she was so fat no one could tell if she were pregnant or not. Ever so often another youngun' just sort of appeared. They didn't have no place to send Lillie Jean off to, so when she started to show, they laid her in and wouldn't let her go out or no one see her and one day there was another little Buckner at the house."

"But everybody really knew?"

"Sure they did. But you know, nobody was goin' to say anything public like. They were nice folks and didn't nobody want to hurt their feelins."

"How old was she when this happened?"

"Oh, I think about 16 or 17. Somewhere about there."
"Well, what ever happened to her?"

"Well, you know none of the local boys would court her, so after she got out of high school, she went to McComb and got a job in a drug store. Met a travelin' man who called on the druggist. Sold drugs for some big com¬pany. Wasn't too long before he married her and took her off to live in Memphis. I'd say she done pretty good after all. She musta really been partial to travelin' men."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, that's where the baby come from."

"Aw, you don't know that. I heard she never told no one who the daddy was."

"She didn't. But I know it was that drummer who came through the summer before, sellin' all sorts of beauty aids."

"I remember him. He had that fancy buggy. Had leather fringe all around. Had a curved dashboard with the design painted on the front with leather paddin' on the top and that fancy black mare pullin' it."

"That's right. All the girls just fell in love with that rig and that drummer would let the girls put on some of his sample cosmetics and then take them out for a ride in that buggy. Sold a lot of stuff that way. Lillie Jean just let him take her for one ride too many."

"How do you know that's what happened if Lillie Jean never told nobody?"

"It came out at the birthin'."

"But you wasn't at the birthin'." And I know old Doc

Peters wouldn't talk to nobody about what went on."

"You're right about Doc Peters and you're right that I wasn't there - but Nub Carter was."

"Nub Carter?"

"Yeah. You remember him. Doc Peters would get Nub to drive for him when he had to make night calls. Doc never got enough sleep, so Nub would drive the buggy while Doc slept on the way out and on the way back. And Nub didn't mind talking if you caught him in the right mood."
"And you got the story from Nub Carter."

"That's right. When Lillie Jean's time came late one afternoon, they sent for Doc Peters and Nub drove him out to the Buckner place. She was going strong by the time they got there. Doc got things organized and worked with her for the longest, but the baby just wouldn't come. Lillie Jean wasn't cooperating much and Doc got pretty exasperated with her. Nub said that on the way back into town, Doc was still upset and said that he lost enough sleep because people were always getting sick or hurt through no fault of their own, but he sure hated to lose a night's sleep birthin' a bastard.

"Anyway, Doc had Nub fetching stuff and he was in the bedroom a lot. Lillie Jean was floppin' all about the bed and moanin' and not doin' what Doc was tellin' her to do and Doc finally just got real put out with her. He almost yelled at her, 'Dagnabit, girl! If you'd get yourself in the position you were in when you got this baby, we'd get somethin' done.'

"Nub said Lillie Jean raised her head, looked Doc straight in the eye, and yelled, 'I would, Doc, if I had a leather dashboard to put my feet up on!'"

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