'JOHN, IS THAT YOU?'

BY ALAN LEVERITT

Arkansas Times publisher Alan Leveritt has lived on his greatgrandparents’ farm in North Pulaski County for 40 years. This is the latest in a series of columns about day-to-day life on the land where he raises heirloom tomatoes and other crops for local restaurants and the Hillcrest Farmers Market.

This old log house has stories to tell, and I suppose I do as well. A man named Mason is said to have built my house around 1859 right off Batesville Pike in North Pulaski County. Back then that was the highway to St. Louis. A band of Native Americans known locally as the Bayou Meto Indians lived along Bayou Meto creek just down from the house. Shortly after my ex-wife Mara and I rebuilt the dilapidated cabin in 1982 and moved in, I was rummaging through an old collapsed smokehouse when I came upon a rotted mule bridle wrapped around a large spear point. I’m sure that my great-grandfather, John Williamson, known as Pa in our family, had been plowing down near the bayou when he surfaced the spear point with this plow. My grandmother, Mama Grace, said that an old Indian graveyard existed somewhere downstream but if it’s still there and hasn’t washed away, I haven’t found it.

My great-grandparents were considered prosperous by the standards of North Pulaski County at the turn of the last century. Though they didn’t have running water or electricity, Pa owned his land and a Model T truck.

Forty years ago when I first moved to the farm, I still had a lot of elderly relatives out here who had known Ma and Pa. One described Pa as “peculiar,” which is polite country code for “he could be a real ass sometimes.” Ma and Pa were members of a little faith healer congregation and at some point they donated a nearby piece of land where they built the church, which is still there. On Sundays they would hitch a mule to a carriage and ride the short distance to church. If Pa was politely described as peculiar, my great-grandmother Alice (Ma) was often summed up with the comment, “Well you know she wore red dresses.” That was country code for “she was difficult.” More positively, it meant she was not afraid to give her husband a clear picture of what was on her mind.

One Sunday on their ride back from church, Ma was giving Pa hell, an argument that had apparently preceded that morning’s service. Pa had said little but about midway he stopped the carriage, got out, pulled a twoby-four plank out of the back of the carriage and brought it down over the mule’s head with all his might. He looked at his wife, threw down the board and walked the rest of the way home, leaving Ma and the dazed mule parked in the middle of the dirt road. Things never got better after that and they finally divorced, a rarity in those days.

My grandmother, who attended the faith healer church, became a Southern Baptist, though she was more like an anti-clerical Baptist. She did not like preachers. Parasites was too strong a word, but you get my drift. The church members out there would host the preacher for Sunday dinner each week and Mama Grace complained that he showed up at their farm far too often. That meant she would have to kill an additional chicken, which could be in short supply depending on the time of the year.

The church eschewed doctors in favor of prayer for sick congregants. In February of 1939, Pa came down with pneumonia after a cold, wet day in the field. He forbade Mama

Grace to fetch a doctor from Cabot and instead insisted on hosting the church people, who attempted to cure him through prayer. When he slipped into a coma, Mama Grace jumped on a horse and rode the 12 miles into Cabot for a doctor. When she and the doctor returned the next day, Pa was already dead. That evening she walked out to the barn where she knew Pa had buried a coffee can filled with gold coins. The can was gone and the earth covered in coal oil to disguise its recent disturbance.

We had to take the old log house down to three walls when we renovated it. Carl Gumann and Stan Phoebus, two talented interior finish carpenters, camped out in the cabin for a couple of weeks while completing the house. It was a long way into town and there was no running water or electricity yet. I drove out one morning to check on the boys and it was evident that something disturbing had happened to Stan. He said he was sleeping on his cot when he was awakened by a woman’s voice repeating over and over, “John, is that you? John, is that you?” It scared the hell out of him and he called out to her, “No, this is Stan Phoebus!”

After that there was silence.

That afternoon my mother drove out to check on our progress and I told her the story. A shadow passed over her expression and she appeared to almost start crying.

She told me this story.

After Pa’s death, Ma would take the train to McGehee at least once a month to visit Mama Grace and her young family, including my mother. Ma and my mother would sleep together in the small shotgun house on Adams Avenue. They were close, and Ma confided that she had regretted the divorce her whole life — and that she and Pa were talking of getting back together when he died. She had never recovered from his sudden death and their stillborn reunion. Many, many nights, my mother said, she would be awakened with her sleeping grandmother sitting straight up in bed, calling out, “John, is that you? John?”