I walked not in the way of righteousness - part three

It is about time for a disclaimer. Most of my family’s story is oral history. I have tried to get at least two accounts of incidents. Things I could not confirm by a second witness I regard as lore and have not included it. Besides, could you make some of this stuff up?

My Grandfather, Hiram, is the only Grandparent I met. I saw him twice. The first time he didn’t acknowledge me; the second time he looked at me and said, “Who the h*ll are you?” Daddy proudly claimed me as his son. To which Hiram said, “Just so long as he isn’t mine.” Hiram died in 1965.
My Grandmother on my Daddy’s side was known to the world as ‘Aunt Betty’. Even Daddy called her Aunt Betty. ‘Aunt’ Betty Hamilton loved people and people loved her back; she was everybody’s favorite Aunt. She was older than Hiram when they married. Nobody is sure why she married him, guess it goes back to that old adage - good girls love bad boys! Betty and Hiram had three children: Hogan, the oldest (he died in a coal mine accident when he was 20); a daughter, Melvina and Press, the youngest. After they divorced Aunt Betty married again, but it didn’t last because of her daughter’s resentment toward her new step-father. Betty died in 1943.
All I know about my other Grandmother is that her name was Mary Blankenship Mathews, and she was bi-racial. Her Daddy was a freed slave and her Momma was Cherokee Indian. I would overhear my Mom and her sisters talking about her, but Momma nor my Aunts and Uncle would say anything more than that she was a good, brave lady. She and George Mathews had 5 children (4 daughters and a son): Maud, Beulah (Bootsy), Joe, Myrtle (Momma) and Leo (yes Aunt Leo was a girl). She left George and the children after the KKK burned a cross in their yard. Though she loved her family she didn’t want them hurt, so she left. She never married again and died in the late 1930’s.
George Mathews was a short angry man. He was a doctor, more precisely, a circuit riding doctor. He tended to the coal camps and villages in mountainous Eastern Kentucky. Though he had no formal education, he understood the human body, was a sure hand in surgery and had a very good working knowledge of Homeopathic medicine. All Momma would ever say about his death was that the KKK had shot and killed him.
One day, my Aunt Bootsy went into greater detail, which Momma would confirm before she died. It was one of those hot, sticky Southern Ohio evenings. We had spent the day cutting and hanging the last of the tobacco crop. I was exhausted, we all were exhausted. Dougy had stood in the bed of the trailer handing the sticks filled with tobacco stalks to Kathy. She was standing on a platform of hay about six feet off the ground. She would hand those to Daddy who was standing on a 4 inch pole approx. 10 feet off the ground. He would hold on to the pole above him, reach down, take the stick from her and hand it up to me. I was standing on the 4 inch pole Daddy was holding onto. I would take it from him and hang it between two poles about four feet above my head. Some of these sticks could weigh up to 200 lbs. Like I said we were all exhausted.
Bootsy was staying with us on the farm and had cooked a good ol’ hillbilly meal (let the reader understand this to mean everything was fried in lard until crispy), which, when done right, is absolutely Yum-o (↤ look a Rachel Ray reference!) As Bootsy finished up the dishes, Daddy and Momma were in the living room, a Cincinnati Reds game was on TV; Dougy was sitting in the kitchen watching his TV and Kat and I were sitting at the dining room table talking. Bootsy came in and sat down to join our conversation. At some point she said something about her Daddy. When I told her that I didn’t know much about him, she told me to ask anything I wanted to ask about him and she would do her best to answer it. She didn’t sound surprised that Momma never talked about him. I told her that I wanted to know how he died. Bootsy took a deep breath; it was obvious she felt a little uncomfortable. This is the story she relayed.
She said that it was lunch time, Aunt Maud had just been married a couple of months. She had married a Greek national who had been recruited from Greece to work on the Panama Canal. After it was done he had been recruited again, this time by a mining company to dig coal in Kentucky. They had known each other for a year, but Aunt Maud had to wait until George Mathews had remarried before she could wed. She was 18 years old. The rest of the family was seated around the table eating, when they heard a voice from the yard calling my Grandfather out. Seems the KKK was upset over the fact that he had given a black man a small piece of property. This man worked in a shoe shine shop my Grandfather owned. George gave it to him for his “birthday”. This former slave was the first black to own property in Pike County Kentucky.
Granddad walked across the cabin, picked up his double-barreled shotgun next to the door and stepped out on the porch. Bootsy 17; Joe 16; Momma 14 and Leo 12 went to the windows to watch the confrontation. As George stepped off the porch into the red-dog clay yard, it all broke loose.
The man in the yard fired, missed Granddad and hit the house just above the window where Bootsy and Aunt Leo was standing. There were men in the trees on each side of the yard and one on the roof of the house. This shot seemed more of a signal for the others to start shooting because they did. When Granddad was shot in the back by the man on the house, Uncle Joe and Momma charged from the house; Aunt Bootsy held Aunt Leo and their step-mother back from the door. Uncle Joe, who had a pistol, ran straight to his Daddy and threw himself on top of him to protect him from anymore wounds; it would prove to be too late. Momma jumped on Granddad’s shotgun and unloaded both barrels at the man on top of the house, Bootsy heard the man hit the roof and roll off, then saw him hit the ground - dead. Momma jumped up and ran to were her Daddy had dropped the pouch of shells for the shot gum. She hit the ground, hard, having been shot in the hip with buck shot. She loaded the gun and started looking in the trees for someone to kill. Uncle Joe, who had been shot in the back had unloaded his pistol into the man in the yard, reloaded and was searching the trees also.
When they saw no further movement in the trees, Uncle Joe called for Bootsy and his step-mother. Their step-mom rolled Uncle Joe off of Granddad, and started checking his wounds, Bootsy was trying to check out Momma but she would have nothing of it. She crawled over to her daddy, rolled him over, checked his eyes and slid her lap under his head. By this time Aunt Leo had drawn a bucket of water and lugged it out to Bootsy.
Momma tore a piece off of the bottom of her dress and getting it wet, started wiping the blood and dirt off of her Daddy’s face. He pretty much bled out there in the yard. Bootsy said that he had been hit about 6 times. They were able to get Granddad into the house but he died before 1 o’clock. * * * * *
At this point my Daddy sat straight up in his chair and hollered for Bootsy and Kat. We all ran into the Living room, Bootsy was asking Momma what was wrong. There were tears running down the side of Mommas face.
Bootsy, Kathy and I were there because the doctors had sent Momma home to die. She had one whole lung removed and 2/3’s of the other because of cancer. The chemo had given her another four months but the cancer had become aggressive again. The doctors kept her pretty much sedated. She had not said anything to anybody except Kathy, in the two months she had been home. Through the fog of her pain, drugs and depression she had heard Bootsy’s retelling of the day they lost their dad. The memory of that pain and heartbreak permeated the fog and she was that little girl again, painfully sitting on that hard red-dog clay with the head of her Daddy in her lap, watching him die.
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The night before Momma died, she and I had a great conversation. She had come to herself at about 2 AM. She wanted to know why she was in the hospital (pneumonia), and what had been going on. I caught her up on everything. She was truly embarrassed that she had not known any of us, except Kathy.
I asked her about the story Aunt Bootsy had told us. She verified it and added that their step-mother moved out that evening and married the brother of the man that was killed on the roof of the house that day, three days later. She then said they both disappeared two weeks after that and no one ever saw them again. She got a sly look on her face and commented that the “hills hold alot of secrets”. I asked her what she meant by that, she said she would tell me that night when I came back. Momma died around at 4 that afternoon. The hills still hold that secret!!!