Daddy's Brothers by Anita West Moss ca. 1987-89 ©

This is another of the stories that Mama typed up between 1987 and 1989. My apologies for the story using the "N" word a good bit. I didn't want to change it because that is how they really talked, unfortunately - I hope you will enjoy the story anyway...

I do not know why Milt was terrorized by the Klan. I know that my great-grandfather was killed by the Klan for selling land to black people. Virgie, Milt's mother, routinely delivered babies in the black community, and it is likely that Milt showed some kindness to that community as well 

pictured - Rubel Moss in the cap, Henry the Mule, and Charlie Moss

Daddy's Brothers by Anita West Moss

My daddy was among the three youngest of sixteen children, except that only thirteen of them lived to grow up. Grandma Moss, who had been Virgie Duke, always spoke of the tiny still-born twin boys who were buried at Greenbriar Cemetery in a common grave under twin heart-shaped headstones with grief and longing.  Somehow her hopes seemed to be in those identical boy babies who never saw the light. But the one she fretted over the most was Ira Green Moss. He was named for old Dr. Walden, a country doctor who traversed the muddy roads of Monroe County in North Mississippi delivering babies, black and white, and shaking his head over children strangling to death with Diptheria or heaving to death with whooping cough. Their tiny doomed graves speckle Greenbriar Cemetery even now. Almost every family, black or white, had an Ira Green in it somewhere. Grandma said her Ira Green was a child especially blessed with second sight. She knew this because he was born with a caul over his face, "And I'll tell you what else, that little thing never had a chance for a normal life because his heartbeat on the wrong side. Yes, sir, that little thing's heart was where his lungs was supposed to be. I don't know where his lungs was though, but many a time the little thing would just struggle to draw breath." Then, when Ira Green was five, Grandma said, "He just taken sick late one evening in April. That very day he looked out across the field and said how pretty the young cotton looked where it had been fresh-plowed-- he said it looked just like it had been starched and ironed and I give him berry pie and ice cream for supper. Then he just taken sick and was gone before day. I knowed then that the Mosses was doomed."

So Grandma's best hopes perished early in those three tiny graves way at the back of the cemetery near the woods. I used to find the tiny blackened stones when I was a child and ponder whether or not those little children, my kin, could watch me all the way from heaven.

But even with Ira Green and the twins dead, Grandma still had four fine sons, not to mention all that gang of gals. Her sons were Milton, Hezekiah, Charles, and Rubel. Milt was the oldest and had already achieved a kind of sainthood by the time I could remember because everybody said that he had "worked himself to death." Perhaps he did. My aunts and uncles used to talk about how he would light a lantern and clear new ground all night long - just like he had gone crazy. My daddy always said that was the reason Milt went blind, but my aunt said no - it was because he forgot the Lord. Aunt Maggie said, "When Milt set in to plow on Sunday when the Lord has strictly bidden us to remember His day and keep it holy, well, then and there the Lord decided Milt had done went too far." My daddy said, "Well, you may be right, but I'm gone tell you one thing and it's the God's truth. The old nigger woman they called Calacie brought Milt's sight back to him. I know - for I seen it."

None of the relatives at the Sunday dinner table believed a word of it; they said and went on chomping chicken and dumplings. "Rubel", Aunt Maggie said, "You ought not to talk such stuff on the Sabbath. Think of them children. They say old Calacie is a witch. Why Edna Betts works at the Amory Hospital and says on Saturday night they'll bring in grown niggers, mostly men, lying stiff as a corpse and swearin' that Calacie has hoodooed them." 

My daddy said he didn't give a cuss about no hoodoo but that he had seen Uncle Milt's eyesight restored himself. "She just stood there with her hand on his shoulder, all clutchin' like, and her eyes closed tight and her lips drawed back from all them gold teeth and mumbled some of them hoodoo words and Milt said to me, "By God, Jack, I can see." (My daddy's name was Rubel but his folks all called him Jack.) But then Calacie commenced to whine in a high sing-song voice that sounded 'bout like a screech owl and then she said, "But, white man, you have no faith in the dark power and the vision will fade." And then Milt said, "You damn right I ain't got no faith in no damn dark hoodoo power." And then my daddy said Uncle Milt couldn't see no more nor ever again,  And my daddy said, "Milt just give up after that and went down and went down and died."

But Grandma Moss said, "Humph, it was that trashy second wife of his that brought him down - her and that passel of younguns. Milt said she was so lazy she wouldn't even get up and fix them children a decent breakfast. But her folks was shiftless like that. They would lay up and eat store-boughten vittles with the finest garden spot in the county with nothing planted but a few scrawny greens. Milt would have been alive and prosperous today if Carrie hadn't up and died on him like she did."

Our family would only be friends with Uncle Milt's first set of children -- Leo, Mary, and another Ira Green were all the children of a fine woman from a good family with Uncle Milt. But when Carrie died after Mary's birth, Uncle Milt married beneath himself, Grandma always said. So none of the Mosses wanted to have much to do with Bessie Allred's brood, especially when Uncle Milt died and left them all. Some people say Bessie supported them all being nothin' more than a public woman but she pretended to sew for a living. My daddy always sent them money every fall after he had sold his cotton crop. He said that was little enough to do for poor Milt's kids. One time when I was about six years old, we were having a big Sunday dinner for my big brother, James Russell, who was home from Camp Chaffee, Arkansas. All my aunts and uncles gathered to see Rubel's boy handsome and smart in his Eisenhower jacket. We thought he would soon be going to Korea to fight the communists but he only had to go to San Antonio, Texas. Mama said it was a shame too because that's where he met a catholic woman, a grass widow with a child. Mama never did get over it, but the woman had the priest say a mass for Mama's soul when she died. So that time the daughter-in-law had the last word on religion but she never did get my brother to become catholic himself.  Anyway, that Sunday, I was sitting up in my favorite pecan tree reading my favorite book because it was only one of two that I had - - Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. About the time that Kay is getting kidnapped by the evil and icily beautiful snow queen, a big truck full of strangers came lumbering down the driveway. They said they were from Arkansas. I counted twelve altogether and hightailed it in the backdoor to tell Mama. "They's twelve people from Arkansas out front," I announced full of importance, "They say they're kinfolks and have come all that way just to eat dinner with us." Mama had a pie server in her hand as she was serving fancy jello salads onto a platter; a recipe in McCall's Magazine told how to make them. Mama said the magazine said it was a cool and refreshing way to eat in the summer. The pie server paused only a moment before Mama sighed and began cutting the salads in half. "Lord, Lord," she said, "just give me strength to get through it and hope there won't be no Sunday dinners in heaven." Then she told my sister to break the ears of corn in half. And then she mumbled something about Jesus, loaves and fishes, and multitudes.

These kinfolks turned out to be some of Uncle Milt's second batch of children. They also had a handsome young man in a uniform with an Eisenhower jacket. My daddy called him "Little Milt" because he was Milton, Jr. and because he looked so much like his daddy. Not long after those kinfolks went back to Arkansas, we heard that Little Milt had been killed in Korea, but Uncle Milt's other son, Ira Green, from the first batch, lived a long time until one day a bulldozer crushed him to death. My daddy said it was because Ira inherited Uncle Milt's stinginess and wouldn't buy a proper ramp for unloading the bulldozer but tried to get it off the truck by rolling it down a couple of logs. My daddy said Ira had turned totally black by the time they finally got him out and that it was a tribute to Guy Pickel, the town undertaker, that Ira made such a good-looking corpse after all of that. Uncle Milt's line is healthy, though. Ira Green had a son himself, Ira Green, Jr. who runs a motel in Hattiesburg and has four sons growing up.

My Aunt Inez said it wasn't hard work or witches or wives that killed Milt. She said he never was the same after them murdering, thieving Ku Klux broke in his house and beat him up and stole his money and burned the cross out in front of his house and scared the children to death. She said that experience just soured Milt besides the injury to his head had caused him to go blind. She said Milt said it was a shame that a man could work so hard just to have worthless trash like that break in on him and terrorize him and his family. She said one of the Ku Klux had hit him with a stick of stove wood and that's what made him go blind. But no matter the way, poor Uncle Milt went to his grave and him not even forty years old. So that's what happened to Milt, Virgie's oldest boy.

Grandma Moss thought Hez would be all right because he was so big and tough. She said Hez was the sweetest thing the way he would pick up his little brother Ira Green and tote him around the farm to watch the comical guinea hens and hunt their eggs. All the girls around Amory had been after Hez when he got back from World War I because he looked so handsome in uniform, but Granma said Hez loved his mother the best and took no interest in those little fool girls like Janie Williams that was always runnin' after him. Hez did like to gamble and brag about how strong he was and how much work he could do and he drank whiskey some too. That's when he got into fights. "Remember," Grandma said, "Hez always called himself Pig-Iron Pete and bragged they wasn't nobody in Monroe County that could whoop him."  "By God," Daddy said, "that was nigh the truth, too. And eat - Hez could out-eat anybody. Remember that Fourth of July when Hez won that contest for eating the most homemade ice cream? That was the time he beat Whit Whitaker. 'Course Whit would have won, but he'd taken sick. Dr. Walden said Whit had froze his stomach from eatin' so much ice cream and that it was a thousand wonders that he didn't die right then. Dr. Walden said any fool that would eat enough ice cream to freeze his stomach ought to die." 

But Grandma and all of them said it was a shame that Hez didn't find a good decent girl to settle him down. Mama said it was too bad he had that Simms girl living in the house with him. Mama said she talked to the girl herself and told her she and Hez should marry because folks was talkin' but the girl said her folks was too poor to feed her and she needed someplace to stay and Hez took her in and she cooked for him. And Hez said, by God, he didn't want a wife but when the sheriff came to lock him up, he said it was a shame that an honest man couldn't even hire himself a cook. But after that, Mama and Daddy ran off and got married, and they lived with Uncle Hez. Mama said Uncle Hez always bragged on her and said she made the best biscuits of anybody and the best banana pudding and the best fried chicken and fried okra. Grandma Moss got jealous then and said that, by Ned, Daisy ought to make good biscuits, chicken, and vegetables because she herself had learned her everything she knowed about cooking a good meal and getting it on the table.

They said during that time, after Grandpa Moss had died one night right around midnight my Uncle Charles took off for St. Louis. People said he had gone wild listening to nigger boogey-woogey music. They said he even played a bass fiddle himself in an after-hours speakeasy joint and watched women do the shimmy and the shake. Clarence Bright even told around the county that Charles had taken up with a girl no better than a common public woman, And everybody said it was too bad that Charles had run off and left only Hez and Rubel to help Virgie Moss with all that gang of gals to raise. They said Charlie had gone to barbers' school and made his living cutting hair and spent the rest of his time dancing the Charleston and listening to Handy's dirty boogey-woogey music and blues. One of the Duke boys went off up there to see him and said it was all true and that Charlie never even went to church and would even cut hair on the side on Sundays. In fact, Herbert Duke said that Sunday was the biggest day because Charlie would cut the gangsters' hair on that day, and they gave him flashy tips because they had so much money from selling illegal whiskey. Herbert said Charlie even had a tap-dancing job at a local show. That may even be true because I once saw Uncle Charlie do a tap dance on the front porch. The preacher was shocked that Uncle Charlie would dance at all, much less at his mother's house on a Sunday. But my daddy never did forgive Charlie for running off to St. Louis. He said it over and over again; the litany came even the night he died, "Papa made his way back to the house after the Ku Klux left him to die in that ditch filthy and chilled to the bone that January night. He died that night before midnight just a-freezin' to death after I built him the best fire I knowed how and then Charlie run off to St. Louis and Mama sendin' all them worthless lazy gals to school with just me to do it all -- the milkin', the plowin', the hoeing, the layin-by, cutting all the wood and all. Hell, I didn't get no education because Charlie run off and them girls was spoilt. I just never had no chance, don't you see?"

But Uncle Hez was good to Mama and Daddy. Mama told how he would always buy oranges and coconut on Christmas and how he'd brag on Mama's coconut cake and how moist it was so it melted in your mouth. "That's because I learned her how to pour the coconut milk on the layers," Grandma said. Mama said it was worth it all to hear Hez laugh and slap his knee when they told stories and popped corn before the fire in the winter. He liked to tease Mama about the time my daddy scared her hiccoughs away by yelling, "Watch out for that kangaroo nest!" Hez laughed and asked if she thought them durn kangaroos would have done hopped all the way across the Pacific Ocean and across California, and Texas and all just to set up housekeepin in her kitchen! My daddy said that fall when Uncle Hez died that they had the biggest cotton crop they'd ever had. He said Hez was feelin' good about it. Hez and a no-account fellow named Suggs had gone to unload a wagon of cotton in the cotton house. The way Suggs told it, Hez had climbed up on the wagon, grabbed the biggest and heaviest sack and pitched off the wagon dead. Later Mama said that she dreamed Hez come to her and said, "Yes,sir, Daisy, that son-of-a-bitch Suggs robbed me. He took that twelve hundred dollars and me layin dead and helpless. By God, Daisy, that Suggs fellow took my money. And everybody thought this was so, but couldn't prove it, especially when Suggs left Monroe County not long after that. Mama said she had that dream for years. She reckoned when she stopped having that dream that Suggs had died himself. and Hez somehow got even with him on the other side.

Mama said the night Hezzie lay a corpse, that Grandma Moss lay in the bed and cried and said it was all her fault that Hez had dropped dead and him not even thirty-six years old. "Yes, sir, Daisy, I as good as took a gun and shot him in the head. If your boy wants to marry when he is seventeen years old, don't you say a word to stop him." Then Grandma told Mama how Hez had loved a girl named Mayrene Myatt. She had to go off to Texas with her folks but she had promised to marry Hez. Hez said write me and as soon as I sell my cotton crop, I'll send you the money to come back and we'll get married. Grandma said she didn't like the Myatts and thought Mayrene just wanted to trick Hez out of the money to marry somebody else, so she took all the letters when they came and burned them. Hez never did even know Mayrene had written at all. He thought she had just taken off to Texas and forgot him. That's when he commenced to drinkin' and gamblin' and quit going to church. "Yes, sir, Daisy, he was as good a boy as you'll ever see, and I just the same as shot him."

They buried Uncle Hez with his WWI uniform on and soldiers came to play the bugle over his grave and fire shots over it, and the government draped a flag over his casket and then two soldiers folded it and gave it to Grandma Moss. I used to see it in her big wardrobe smelling like mothballs. She kept it in with all the nightgowns she wanted to be buried in, but the moths and the mice ate it up in the end. When Grandma Moss died, we found a shred of that flag at the bottom of the trunk.

Long after his death, I'd play near his grave and talk to him and remember him even though I had never seen him. He was a corporal, the tombstone said. "That was something," I thought, "a corporal!" The stone said he was gone but not forgotten. "That's true" I whispered, "I remember you, Uncle Hez, I remember you better than anybody."

After Uncle Hez had pitched off the cotton wagon with a heart attack and all the gang of gals had married off or got settled off in Kentucky with my Aunt Lou, who had educated herself to be a college teacher, Charlie came on back from St. Louis, married a fine girl, bought a farm, and settled down. But he still cut hair on Sundays instead of going to church, and once, James Reed Harmon, the county sheriff, had to arrest him for being a damn shadetree barber, said he wasn't allowed by the law to cut hair even on Sunday without proper papers and such. But Uncle Charlie would still tap dance and cut up on the front porch sometimes. My daddy said that was one good thing Charlie got from St. Louis; he said that there wasn't many families that had somebody that could cut hair and tap dance both.