When somebody set the slate dump on fire, it burned for more than twenty
years.
It didn't go up in flames, the way a pile of wood might. There were tiny
bits of coal intermingled with thousands of tons of slate, so the fire
smoldered and smoked, producing a stench that sometimes could be smelled
miles away.
"I don't believe I'd go up in that holler, if I was you," Thelma Smith
told me. "It looks awful up there now, and smells even worse."
But I think she knew, even as she said it, that it would be impossible
for me to visit Wharton, West Virginia without visiting Jarrell's Branch.
After all, I'd been born in that hollow, back in 1936. My family had lived
in a two-story gray house, at the foot of the slate dump, until I was eleven
years old, and some of my most vivid memories had been formed there. So how
could I come this close without going the rest of the way?
"I'll go as far as I can," I said. "I just -- well, I just have to,
that's all."
Thelma nodded understandingly. "I'm sure I'd feel the same way, if I'd
been gone from here as long as you have," she admitted . . .
The wind was calm that day, so I didn't even smell the sulfurous odor of
the burning slate dump until I was above the Prince Workman place. It wasn't
a strong odor, but the air seemed lightly scented with it. An unpleasant,
foreign odor. Something I'd never smelled back when I was still living in
Jarrell's Branch.
Ahead of me was the last curve between me and my old homeplace. But what
would it look like now? I dreaded the prospect of what I might find when I
rounded that final curve. I knew the house would be gone, but what about the
landscape? Would I still be able to recognize where our garden had been and
where our house and barn had stood?
I drove slowly around the curve, then stopped my car and got out. I
stared at the hollow ahead of me, unable to believe my own eyes.
Trees had crept down from the mountains, planting themselves in what had
once been our garden. The wilderness had taken over our apple orchard, too,
completely obliterating it. There was a pond of water where our house had
once stood, and the road now turned up the mountain about where our barn had
stood. An earthen dam crossed the hollow just above my homeplace.
I remembered the way our house had looked when I was growing up -- a
two-story gray house with morning glories climbing the porch posts. I
remembered the way it had looked at night, with light spilling from its
windows.
But Thomas Wolfe once said you can't go home again, and you really can't.
You can go to where your home once was, but you won't find things the way
you left them. What you will find is that, while you were away, time came
marching by, changing or destroying everything in its path . . .
My brother L.R.'s name was Lewis Reginald, but no one ever called him
that. We called him either L.R. or Frog.
We were on our front porch one evening, just before dark, and frogs were
croaking in the pond out by the barn. Suddenly L.R. looked up and asked,
"Where did I come from?"
It's a question that's asked sooner or later by all children, of course;
but, back then, it was a question that was rarely answered truthfully.
Parents simply found it too embarrassing to talk about sex or pregnancy or
birth. So when a child asked that question, an evasive answer was given or a
story made up to hide the truth.
When L.R. asked the question, Mommy and Daddy looked at each other. Mommy
said nothing, so Daddy knew it would be up to him to supply the answer.
After thinking about it for a moment, he said, "You hear them frogs? Well, I
was out there at the barn one evenin', and the frogs were croakin' like
they're doin' now. I happened to look down at the frog pond and noticed this
big, yellow lard can floatin' in the water. At first I thought it was trash
that someone had throwed there, so I got me a stick and drug the can over to
the bank. I could tell by the weight of it that it wasn't empty, and when I
opened it to see what was in it, guess what I found?"
L.R. shook his head, staring wide-eyed at Daddy.
"I found you," Daddy said. "So that's how we got you. Found you in a lard
can, floatin' in the frog pond."
"But how did I get there?" L.R. asked in astonishment. "Who put me in a
lard can and throwed me in the frog pond?"
"No tellin'," Daddy replied. "But you was lucky I come along when I did,
otherwise you might've growed up to be a frog!"
And, from that time on, my brother went by the nickname of Frog.
