Rosemary’s Remembrances: Rosemary and Rue
February 5, 2024
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February 6, 2024
Rosemary and Rue
I reckon I’m getting old. That’s why I’ve decided to write all this down. I was writing my Last Will and Testament (not that I have much money to leave folks) but I realized the things I really wanted to leave to people, well they won’t hardly know what they are, so I figure I need to tell ‘em.
I’m full of stories, but people are too busy for that these days. Anyway, I don’t even think I’m good at tellin’ tales, so I guess I feel better about writing them down and tucking them away.
I suppose everybody collects stuff over the years, but I’ve tried to only hang onto the things that’s real beautiful to me, or make me remember something I love to remember. I’m gonna write about what each one of these things make me remember, and I might ramble, but darlings, my memory rambles these days, so it is what it is.
Doogaloos
Now this one isn’t like others. It’s not something that I keep displayed for folks to ask me about. These little coins make me feel downright conflicted, guilty even. Guilt is a tricky emotion - it don’t let go, even after all these years and all the good deeds and good memories I’ve piled on top of it. Don’t look like much, and I’ve kept ‘em tucked away in my sock drawer for decades, same way I kept them tucked away inside me. I tell myself all the time that I didn’t do anything wrong, and I really, truly don’t think I did, not really. But anyhow, my meddlin’ led to some disastrous consequences and a dead man that meant a lot to a lot of folks. These coins are doogaloos, and they only ever mattered at the Henry River Mill Village over in the eastern part of the county. You know the place? Little village, built up around a cotton mill down by the river? It’s been abandoned for a long time now, though they’ve been fixing it up lately. Bout 30 houses or so, plus a little store. When you worked at that mill, your life was that mill. They paid you with these coins, and you’d use them to pay your rent and buy your food. Life was hard in that village. A lot for a girl to get used to.
The Spring after my Mama died, I spent as much time away from home as I could. I wasn’t ready for my remembrances back then, not yet. I got invited to play softball with my friend from school, Anita. She was a mill girl if ever there was one. She was born there and so was her Daddy. If I remember correctly, he was the last person to move out of the village, but I’m off track. She invited me to play softball and I was saying “yes” to just about anything that Spring. I’m terrible at softball… never liked it and that day I didn’t hit a single ball.
Wasn’t a total strike out though, because I met my Earl. It wasn’t love at first site, not like you read in the movies. It was more of a slow burn. He was nice to me, really nice, and even made me feel a little tickly in a way I wasn’t familiar with yet. We went together my last year of school…he was already graduated and working at the mill. Right after graduation, he asked me to marry him, right there in the parking lot. We got married one month later at my little Baptist Church, and that was that. Earl had moved to the Henry River Mill Village with his parents, when he was only two. That qualified him as being From Here, and I tell you what, them that were From Here - they stuck together. They stuck together like they were an actual clan. I think maybe my biggest mistake was not realizing quite how deep that loyalty to each other was, but I’ll get back around to that.
We lived together, Earl and me, in relative peace and happiness. Four years passed, and our only real hardship was that I hadn’t fallen pregnant, despite lots of trying. At least the trying was fun.
Honestly, though, living in that village was kind of a hardship all on its own. Our house was very small, but that was OK since it was just Earl and me. Most of the houses were split in two and held two families. It had electricity by the time we lived there, but no running water. Even my old mountain house had running water by then, and it was hard to get used to going outside to do your business, and carrying in all that water just to take a bath. It was 1961 when I moved in, but it felt like stepping back in time 50 years or so.
But I’m not sure that was such a bad thing for me back then. I really enjoyed the slower pace. I didn’t work in the mill - just my Earl did. So, I had lots of time to keep the house and make friends. My favorite friend was Mary. When we first moved in, she and her folks lived in the other side of our house. She was older than me, almost 40, and she lived with her mom and dad. The first year I lived there, her mom died. The second, her dad spent ailing. It took him almost two years for him to die, but Mary was From Here, her dad had worked the mill near 50 years, and no one wanted to kick her out of the house she’d lived in for her whole life, not yet at least.
So Mary and I found ourselves spending our days together, often on our shared front porch. We got real tight-thick as thieves they say. I’d just lost my Mama pretty recently, and I remembered how white-hot the pain is, and I didn’t mind when she needed to cry, or even the days where she didn’t talk much. And I tell you, after about a year, her smile started coming back. First she only showed it to me, but then she started flashing it around the village, and when Mary was happy, she was beautiful. She told me every bit of gossip she’d ever heard about anyone, and I was starting to feel like I was From Here too.
I taught her how to knit and how to stitch. I really wasn’t that good at stitching, hadn’t had much practice, but I taught her what I knew. She taught me to quilt, and I helped her with a square she was working on. Lord knows I don’t have the patience for quilting, but it was fun to make something with someone again. Once a week, we’d walk to the store together to get a bag of peanuts to share and two cokes. Folks around there called them “dope”. Those walks were some of my favorite times in the village.
Mary was the best friend I ever had. I was real happy for her when she started going with a new mill worker, a fellow named Boyce. He wasn’t From Here - he’d moved to the village to work with his brother just a year before. I’d heard some whispers that he drank a lot, but I figured - hey - just near every man I knew drank sometimes. Every warm evening the air was positively filled with sounds of the men laughing and drinking down by the river. The river was good for three things, so far as I could tell: powering the village, cooter hunting, and providing the perfect drinking spot. Heck, even my own Daddy had a still, although it got busted up about a year after I moved out. In fact, it was busted up by the very person this story is about.
So, we knew he liked to drink, but we didn’t think it as much of a problem. He was also a good bit older than her. I never asked but he seemed as old as my daddy at least. But, Mary was lonely. Also, it was only a matter of time before she had to move-mill houses were for mill workers and their families. Eventually it was time for her to move out, and he asked her to come live with him. Said he’d marry her, but just wasn’t quite ready for all that. And she was getting ready to be homeless, so she jumped at the chance. We didn’t see each other quite as much when that happened, but most days, I still walked over to her place while our men were working.
One day, I knocked on the door but no one answered. That was real strange because I knew she’d be home. I put my ear to the door and I heard that man of hers screaming that she was stupid, and a whore, and a bunch of other nasty things that make me blush even now. I could hear her crying, and then a big crash, and then she didn’t cry anymore. Now I was crying too, and I didn’t know what to do. I waited across the way, eyes trained on their door, and after about an hour he left. I ran to the door and knocked. I could hear Mary whimpering, but she wouldn’t let me in.
Said through the door, “Everything’s fine, Rose love. I’ll see you tomorrow.” But the next day she didn’t open the door again. And the next day, she opened it just a little, enough for me to see a nasty black eye. She looked so sad, and told me we could chat the next day. So I took an action that caused a lot of heartache. The action that makes me keep these Doogaloos in my night stand. The one that still wakes me up at night, more than half a century later.
I told my husband. Earl is a good man. A hard man. Earl never saw much gray-everything was stark black and white for him, and this, well this was black. And that loyalty! That loyalty covered him like some sort of righteous armor and he burned, positively burned, to protect his clan.
It’s the first time I saw that part of him; a bright and gorgeous glimpse of something truly exceptional. I saw it again several times in our life together, but only when our kids or I were threatened. It was fierce, wild, beautiful.
He left in a rush to find his friend Robert. I saw them walking back up the trail together. Saw them walk right past our house, and it looked like they were blowing glowing with embers inside them. They banged on the door. Mary told me that Earl said, “Mary, go to my house right now. Rose is waiting for you,” and she could tell she better skedaddle. They wouldn’t tell us just what they said, or did. But they seemed to think it worked.
They were at his house about 30 minutes before they came back. Said he’d be moving on and Mary could stay with us a few days. We went to sleep, a little later than usual, convinced that the men had fixed the problem. We laughed like our old selves.
But, we were woken in the morning by that old devil bangin’ on our door, drunk as Cooter Brown. Screaming bout how he was gonna kill us all, especially Earl and Robert. Said some right nasty things. Madder than a wet hen, he was.
Well, the village is small, and as you can imagine, this caused a bit of a ruckus around our little house. When people came around to run him off, he’d leave for a bit. Earl came out once and had words with him. Big, deep, mean soundin’ words. He left again, and we relaxed. That is, until he was banging on the door again with his pistol. It was a little easier to believe he’d kill us when he was banging on our door with a gun.
Short of shooting him ourselves, we thought calling the law was the best solution. Earl argued it a bit, saying we didn’t need law men out at the village, but it didn’t take long for him to realize that we did, in fact, need law men.
So while that devil was busy banging on our door, and Mary and I were hiding out upstairs, Earl slipped out the back door, ran to the store and called the police. And we waited. Lord knows we were nervous that he’d get in and shoot us before the police made it there. We were barely breathin’ till we heard those sirens coming down the road.
Mary and I snuck to a window and cracked it-we couldn’t see anything, but we could hear pretty good. It was late summer, and we’d had those windows closed for safety while he was out there screamin’, so opening it let a beautiful breeze in the room, and the whole world seemed like it was going to be OK.
The devil ran to his house, which was 3 houses down from ours, and shut himself up in there. It wasn’t OK. It only took that devil about 3 minutes before he went and shot the deputy. Ended up being just a flesh wound, and that deputy lived to a ripe ol’ age, but we didn’t know that at the time.
We heard the deputy, Burns was his name, call for backup, and the Sheriff, on the radio, told him “Stand down and wait for me.”
He wasn’t close by, and the situation was tense. Now you’d think they’d keep an eye on that rascal. I mean, I would. I expected them to. But they didn’t, I guess cause the deputy being shot caused a bit of a ruckus. Wasn’t long before we caught sight of him running off, out his back door and through the woods. He saw us see him, and he trained that gun of his right on my head.
We gasped, ducked down, and cried. What we didn’t know was that he’d jammed his gun up good when he was shooting the deputy-that’s why he only got one shot in. That devil took advantage of how slow news traveled, and turns out he was walkin’ around the village, chatting up the people out on their porches, trying to get some help unjamming his gun. No one could help him, so he walked right up the road to the first store that wasn’t owned by his bosses and he asked for help.
That clerk - he was a friend to all of us, and he didn’t have any idea what was going on. I bet the guilt he carries is heavier than mine. That’s a mighty sad thing to me. But, he fixed that gun right up, and ol’ Boyce was able to slip back into his house before Sheriff Oaks got there from his cottage on Jonas Ridge.
He barricaded himself in there real good. When the Sheriff finally arrived, there was a lot of yelling, and then they threw some sort of gas bomb into the house. I heard when the law men entered the house, the devil was laying on the floor trying to breathe through a little hole (not the best time to say this, but those houses were plum full of holes.
We joked sometimes that we had swiss cheese walls and floors). Well, that devil seemed to know he was caught and shouted, “I give up.” I couldn’t hear that part, but the papers say it happened, and I mostly believe the papers. We heard the Sheriff shout, and I’ll never forget the way he sounded, so commanding, “Come on out with your hands up and nobody will hurt you.” Another Deputy, Gassman was his name, was standing in front of the Sheriff, but the Sheriff was a mountain of a man, tall and broad.
That devil came out, alright, but he came out shooting. The deputy must have been covered in divine protection that night…maybe somebody prayed real hard for him every day, I don’t know, but the bullets wizzed right past him and they hit that Sheriff, three times!
All the parts of him that were bigger than the deputy in front of him were in danger, it seems, and he was hit in the throat, chest and arm. They got that giant of a man in a car and started rushing him to a hospital, but he died before they even made it three miles.
Such a sad thing-that Sheriff Oaks was liked by everyone, even them that lost their stills to him. He had a right good reputation, and it put a black veil over our county for a long time.
That Boyce devil went on the run that very second, and those other deputies hunted him down on the spot. He tried to get away, but you can’t get away from that many folks aimin’ to catch you. They caught him, sent him to a mental hospital for two months, then put him on trial. He was found guilty and was told he’d serve life in prison. Thousands of people showed up for Sheriff Oaks’ funeral.
Mary moved away after that. Then, so did we. Everywhere I looked I just saw death. And when I turned up pregnant, finally, I told my Earl that there just no way on earth I’d be living there. He’s a good man, and he started looking for a new job right away, and he left that mill clan of his.
The baby was a little girl. I named her Mary. Everyone assumes she’s named after me, Rosemary, but it isn’t so. She’s named for my good friend Mary who didn’t deserve any of this. And my Mary grew up strong and independent and my friend would have been proud.
And even though I carry this guilt my whole life, and that clerk too, and my Earl, and Mary…they let Boyce out of prison 17 years later, even though he’d broken out of prison once and certainly wasn’t a good prisoner.
He died five years later in a nursing home. I’d like to think he died carrying more guilt than a person could bare.
I’d like to thing it was that guilt that made his heart stop beating.
I’m sorry. I hope that’s enough. I know my meddlin’ led to that Sheriff’s death but I know in my heart - Mary needed help and helping each other is what friends do.
Notes: This is a work of creative fiction. While Rosemary wasn't an actual person, all of the historical events described in her stories actually happened.
In this case, Sheriff Oaks was a lovely man, and the community was devastated when he died. He even inspired a bluegrass song by the Burke County Ramblers called "Sheriff Oaks."
Henry River Mill Village is a real place, full of history, and it was also one of the locations in the first Hunger Games. You'll find Katniss' house right there on the property. You can find out more about it at their site. Also check out The Art of Abandonment for some more info and photography.
