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She
lived in a vintage milk truck near a small railroad trestle that crossed
Hatcher’s Bottom. This rivulet coursed through some swampy woods that
hadn’t been cut since immediately after the Civil War when a Yankee
timber company came down during a particularly dry year and pretty much
took everything. Since then, nobody figured it was worth the trouble to
try and put a road in that muck and it had grown back into a pristine
forest.
Folks
speculated that Miss Emma was an Indian. Looking back, I don’t think
they knew what they were talking about. We didn’t know what an Indian
was supposed to look like. We couldn’t tell the difference in her and
any other old lady, though she did have some peculiarities that we found
intriguing. She covered her really long white, braided hair with a wide
brimmed straw hat, wore khaki pants (this is back when you expected
women her age to wear dresses) and sported men’s mid-calf, lace-up
boots. She sniffed powdered tobacco, a pinch at a time, up her nose. The
brown stains of the snuff made her nostrils look about twice as big
around as they really were. The wooden bead of her hats’ chin strap
always dangled under her jaw, that is, unless she had her hat on her
back as she carried stuff on her head, as she often did, toting laundry
from the spring or walking back from town on the railroad track with
supplies from Bard’s Store.
Miss
Emma was known to eat whatever she could gather from the woods.
Muscadines, dewberries, persimmons, pawpaws, nuts, various greens,
mushrooms and roots were her fare when she could find them. She could
fish, trap and hunt small game with her .22 single-shot rifle. She also
had a garden and various fruit trees. She would offer us food when we’d
come by and even took us along fishing once. After less than a quarter
of an hour, she found it obvious that we wanted to play more than catch
dinner. This was serious stuff to her so, she paddled us back to the
bank in a huff where she ran us off once again in one of her cussing
rages that so characterized Miss Emma and made most people keep their
distance. But, knowing her as we did, we knew that in as little as an
hour, she would be our friend again. She was like that…ready to cut
you with her gutting knife one minute then slicing you a chunk out of an
apple with it next.
I
don’t know how it got there but, like I said, she lived in the back of
an abandoned milk truck. She slept in the back and stored firewood,
buckets, nets and tools in the cab. There was a lean-to pole shed on one
side of the truck that had a wood stove and a makeshift table and
stools. She had a big cast iron caldron out away from the truck for
making, among other things, Brunswick stew and fish soup. She had no
running water, no gas, no electricity…she lived by her wits and by
some sort of pension check she collected from the post office every
month…and by cooking what she called "spirit water." She
sold this hooch to the fur trader/bootlegger just out of town near the
river. Miss Emma was pretty stout for her size and up until she was way
up in years, could tote a four-gallon demijohn full of the liquid on
either end of a bois d’arc yoke the five miles down track to the
trader’s shack. He paid her well for her ‘squeezins’, as he called
it, because the alcohol was so incredibly concentrated that he could
water it down before re-bottling it in pint and quart jars for resale to
his oblivious clientele.
It
is said that taxmen (or "revenuers" as they were commonly
referred to) had been after her in a big way during the ‘40s and ‘50s.
She made illegal whisky for over 50 years and never got caught. Locals
believed her to be so akin with the woods and the swamps and streams
that flowed through them that the wild animals would tell her when it
was best to make her liquor and warn her when law men were about.
When
she died she was well over ninety, some guessed over a hundred. For as
long as anyone could remember, she never got sick or complained of any
ailments. That night she just passed in her sleep. A minister who was
visiting her with food, as he had done for several years, found her. He
was the only grown-up we knew of that ever went to see her.
She
was buried after a nice collection was made for her interment. She had
many admirers who came to see her be laid to rest and even more who were
curious about what she looked like close up. After all, they’d avoided
her while she was living and now it was time to see what there was to be
scared about.
Not
much was known about the crazy old lady who had lived in the woods for
as long as anyone could remember. She didn’t talk much and never about
her past. As far as anyone knew, she had no family. The postmaster said
the only mail she ever got was that pension check. After the funeral,
the minister and others from the church went through her things. They
found fancy linen, silver, crystal stemware, expensive china,
photographs of a much younger Emma on her wedding day and love letters
from the early 1900s. Something horrible touched Miss Emma, broke her
heart and nearly broke her mind. She took whatever her secrets were to
her grave. They never found the still.
Disclaimer: The story you just read is based on reality. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Any likeness any character in this story has to you, your family or anybody you know or have known is completely coincidental.
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