The Silver Star(14)

Uncle Tinsley finally agreed to let us throw out some of the old newspapers and magazines and carry up to the attic and down to the basement boxes of mineral samples, spools of thread from the mill, and Confederate paper money. We washed windows, aired out rooms, scrubbed floors and counters, and vacuumed the rugs and curtains with this old Hoover from the 1950s that reminded me of a little spaceship.

By the end of the week, the house looked a lot better. Still, it didn’t meet most people’s definition of neat and tidy, and you had to accept the fact that you weren’t living in a regular house but a place more like a junk shop crammed with all kinds of fascinating stuff—if you had the brains to see its value.


Venison stew and eggs were the staples of Uncle Tinsley’s diet. He didn’t shoot big bucks for trophies, he explained, but if he bagged two or three does during deer season, had the meat processed and double-wrapped, then stored it in the basement freezer, he had enough to last the entire year. So most nights we had venison stew with things like carrots, onions, tomatoes, and potatoes and barley mixed in. The meat was a lot tougher than the chicken in potpies, and sometimes you really had to work your jaws before you could swallow it, but it was also spicier and tastier.

Thanks to Mr. Muncie, the eighty-seven-year-old neighbor who hayed the big pasture, Uncle Tinsley didn’t have to buy eggs and vegetables, and he made hot cereal from rolled oats he got at the feed store. But he decided growing girls needed milk and cheese, plus we were short on staples such as salt, so at the end of our first week, Uncle Tinsley declared it was time for a grocery run. We all climbed into the station wagon with the wood panels, which Uncle Tinsley called the Woody. We hadn’t left Mayfield since the day we arrived, and I was itching to check out the area.

We drove past the white church and the cluster of houses, then along the winding road that led through farmland, with cornrows and grazing cattle, on the way to Byler. I was looking out the window as we passed a big fenced-in field, and I suddenly saw these two huge birdlike creatures. “Liz!” I shouted. “Look at those crazy birds!”

They reminded me of chickens, only they were the size of ponies, with long necks and legs and dark brown feathers. Their heads bobbed as they moved along with big careful steps.

“What the heck are they?” I asked.

Uncle Tinsley gave that little chuckle of his. “Scruggs’s emus.”

“Like ostriches, right?” Liz said.

“Near enough.”

“Are they pets?” I asked.

“They weren’t supposed to be. Scruggs thought he could make some money off them but never figured out how. So they’re the world’s ugliest lawn ornaments.”

“They’re not ugly,” Liz said.

“Take a look at them up close sometime.”


Once we got to Byler, Uncle Tinsley gave us what he called the nickel tour. The main street, lined with big green trees, was Holladay Avenue. The buildings were old-fashioned, made of brick and stone. Some had pillars and carvings, one had a big round clock with Roman numerals, and you got the feeling that Byler once was a bustling and prosperous place, though it looked like nothing new had been built in the town for fifty years. More than a few of the storefronts were vacant and had masking tape crisscrossing the glass. A sign on one door said BACK IN HALF AN HOUR, as if the shopkeeper had intended to return but never did.

Maybe it was because of the humid air, but Byler struck me as very sleepy. People seemed to move slowly, and a lot of them were hardly moving at all, just sitting in chairs under store awnings, some of the men in overalls, talking, whittling, or leaning back, chewing tobacco and reading newspapers.

“What year are we in here?” Liz joked.

“The sixties never happened in this town,” Uncle Tinsley said, “and people like it that way.”

He stopped the Woody at a red light. An older black man wearing a fedora started across the street in front of us. When he got to the middle of the intersection, he looked at us, smiled, and touched his hat. Uncle Tinsley waved.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“Don’t know him,” Uncle Tinsley said.

“But you waved at him.”

“You only wave at people you know? You must be from California.” He burst out laughing.

The mill stood at the end of Holladay Avenue, right on the river. It was made of dark red brick laid in patterns of arches and diamonds, and it covered an entire block. The windows were two stories high, and smoke poured out of a pair of soaring chimneys. A sign in front said HOLLADAY TEXTILES.

“Charlotte tell you much of the family history?” Uncle Tinsley asked.