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The Two Women's Bet · Backward Mutters Poetry Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: You are listening to the Backward Mutters Poetry Podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Please visit online at backwardmutters.substack.com.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: There you can subscribe via your favorite podcast player and read the newsletter.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Randy Edwards.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: This week's poem is a reworking of an Appalachian folk tale which I first heard as
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  SPEAKER_00: a youth from my pastor,
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  SPEAKER_00: a Methodist minister named Joe Irvin.
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  SPEAKER_00: Preacher Joe introduced me and dozens of others to Richard Chase's collection of
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  SPEAKER_00: mountain tales titled Grandfather Tales as he read them to us
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  SPEAKER_00: as campers sitting around a campfire during summer trips to a U.S.
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  SPEAKER_00: forestry campground called Carolina Hemlock,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is on North Carolina 80 and runs alongside the South Toe River near Busick,
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  SPEAKER_00: North Carolina.
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  SPEAKER_00: Preacher Joe grew up in the area near Mount Cedlo,
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  SPEAKER_00: North Carolina,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is just between Busick and Burnsville.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Busick has been in the news lately because the largest rainfall totals in North
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  SPEAKER_00: Carolina were recorded there over the course of days between September 24th and 28th.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those storms and Hurricane Helene dropped 30 and 78 hundredths inches of rain in the area.
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  SPEAKER_00: Back in the 80s, my first real job was working as a middle school creative theater resource teacher.
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  SPEAKER_00: And as a resource teacher,
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  SPEAKER_00: I worked with 8th grade English and North Carolina history teachers in classes and
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  SPEAKER_00: teaching a series of lessons based on Appalachian folk tales.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was teaching those stories to students in two schools over several years that I
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  SPEAKER_00: came to love these stories even more.
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  SPEAKER_00: In response to the recent destruction caused in the Appalachian Mountains,
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  SPEAKER_00: writer Rebecca Reynolds and Sky Turtle Press have begun a project to collect
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  SPEAKER_00: mountain stories and folk tales into a book in order to raise funds on behalf of
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  SPEAKER_00: relief efforts to support those living in areas impacted by Hurricane Helene.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Contact info is included in this episode's notes, so please take a look.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, I've taken a story I memorized and taught as a teacher and worked it into verse.
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  SPEAKER_00: I offer it today in love for the mountain communities and culture that are so special to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Here is my version of The Two Women's Bet.
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  SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time,
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  SPEAKER_00: there's two old women who commence to telling stories,
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  SPEAKER_00: then arguing about which of their husbands was a bigger fool.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they come to wager, a sort of duel.
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  SPEAKER_00: But neither got the prize, and I'll tell you why.
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  SPEAKER_00: The whole settlement laughed till they liked to cry.
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  SPEAKER_00: What happened was this.
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  SPEAKER_00: The first one went home, started studying her husband.
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  SPEAKER_00: Got out his comb, straightened his hair, asks, You feel all right?
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  SPEAKER_00: You look sort of pale, sort of puny-like.
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  SPEAKER_00: He says, I feel fine, maybe just tired.
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  SPEAKER_00: Come over here, she says.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sit by the fire.
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  SPEAKER_00: Next day, she comes around to ask what's become of her thermometer.
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  SPEAKER_00: Man, let's see your tongue.
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  SPEAKER_00: She touches his forehead with the back of her hand,
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  SPEAKER_00: then goes to her dresser and gets out her fan,
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  SPEAKER_00: comes back a-fanning like he was too hot.
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  SPEAKER_00: then goes to the spring house and fills up a pot,
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  SPEAKER_00: commence to make an unction like her mama made when ere she's a sick make her fever
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  SPEAKER_00: go away.
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  SPEAKER_00: She tells her old husband, you best not go in to work by the looks of how you're a feeling.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he did what she asked, didn't pay her no mind, cause she's pampering him and he's feeling fine.
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  SPEAKER_00: One day she comes in to where he's in the bed, says, I'll miss you when you're gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: Gently kisses his head.
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  SPEAKER_00: I called the undertaker.
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  SPEAKER_00: He'll be over today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Make you the last board on which your bones ever lay.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he did.
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  SPEAKER_00: He built it right in the front room.
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  SPEAKER_00: Had that old man thinking he'd be going off soon.
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  SPEAKER_00: A few days later, sniffling, she comes in wiping eyes, talks to her old man like he already died.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
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  SPEAKER_00: She did.
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  SPEAKER_00: She had him a-thinking that he was deader than a preacher caught drinking.
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  SPEAKER_00: She dressed him in the grave clothes,
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  SPEAKER_00: the ones he'd picked out,
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  SPEAKER_00: and she for sure thought she'd won this fool's bout.
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  SPEAKER_00: about that same time the other one was beginning pulled out her traddy commenced to
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  SPEAKER_00: spinning some thread on her wheel but the thing you see she had no wool her hands
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  SPEAKER_00: was empty she worked on to dusk a spin in that spool and put them in her basket
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  SPEAKER_00: just like each is full late one afternoon her old man come in and didn't pair no
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  SPEAKER_00: mind like he always did
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  SPEAKER_00: He sat on the porch and piddled in the yard, come inside blowing like he'd been at it hard.
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  SPEAKER_00: I reckon he was specking something to eat.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's when he found her spinning at her seat.
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  SPEAKER_00: Surprised, he looked twice.
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  SPEAKER_00: He didn't see no thread.
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  SPEAKER_00: But there she's a-spinning, like to wear out the tread.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wound up his gumption and he said to her, "'What in tarnation are you doing, old girl?'
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  SPEAKER_00: He could see there weren't no thread on the spool, and here she commenced to make him look the fool.
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  SPEAKER_00: The woman said, spinning, why don't you see?
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  SPEAKER_00: Hits the finest thread, wool from virgin sheep.
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  SPEAKER_00: They tell me if a man's been telling lies,
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  SPEAKER_00: especially to his wife,
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  SPEAKER_00: why his wicked eyes can't see this beautiful,
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  SPEAKER_00: pure,
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  SPEAKER_00: special thread.
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  SPEAKER_00: And knowing he told them, he thought he was dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: He gathered his wits.
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  SPEAKER_00: In a snuff tin you could hold them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thought if you tell a lie, make it a boldin'.
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  SPEAKER_00: He come over close and bent down to see.
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  SPEAKER_00: Said, I declare.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the finest there be.
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  SPEAKER_00: I rise and bless you.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're the best spinster ever.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thought his little joke made him sound clever.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then sometime after, she got out her loom.
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  SPEAKER_00: not like in barnin's,
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  SPEAKER_00: it still filled the room,
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  SPEAKER_00: and later when her man come home through the door,
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  SPEAKER_00: he tripped over the bench,
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  SPEAKER_00: hit the paw,
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  SPEAKER_00: then the floor,
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  SPEAKER_00: and afore he could scream,
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  SPEAKER_00: she commenced to splainin',
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  SPEAKER_00: just warped it off,
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  SPEAKER_00: be weavin' sun or rainin'.
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  SPEAKER_00: And there every day, he'd come in from the nettles, she pulling that beater, stepping the treadle.
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  SPEAKER_00: She worked night and day happy as a lark and hit empty.
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  SPEAKER_00: She'd do it in the dark.
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  SPEAKER_00: He paid her no mind, just let her do her thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: She could work up to Easter on in through the spring.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now one evening, the nodding there in his chair,
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  SPEAKER_00: The woman starts up, says, done.
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  SPEAKER_00: She's all there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pokes her husband, says, ain't no time for dreams.
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  SPEAKER_00: Come here and help me get her off the beam.
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  SPEAKER_00: Come over, he did, all sheepish with dread.
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  SPEAKER_00: Have to play her good or it'd be his head.
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  SPEAKER_00: they unwound the beam there is always more she scolded him about it dragging the
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  SPEAKER_00: floor led him to the table all careful like says set her here where i can work in
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  SPEAKER_00: the light then comes with a tape from her sewing kit says got to measure you right
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  SPEAKER_00: be sure it'll fit
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  SPEAKER_00: She measured his chest,
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  SPEAKER_00: down his arm,
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  SPEAKER_00: to his wrist,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I guess by now you're getting the gist,
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  SPEAKER_00: but that old man,
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  SPEAKER_00: he kept playing along,
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  SPEAKER_00: thought he'd fooled her good by singing his song.
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  SPEAKER_00: He went to his work shed, mostly just fiddling, and she got out her scissors and started a-snipping.
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  SPEAKER_00: Next day, she pushed needle and thread,
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  SPEAKER_00: He'd see her in the evening, getting out the bed, and she'd study him good.
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  SPEAKER_00: He thought she's a flirtin',
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  SPEAKER_00: but she played it cool,
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  SPEAKER_00: made him think for certain that he was the catbird,
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  SPEAKER_00: that he'd fooled her right,
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  SPEAKER_00: that he was the smarter and she the dimmer light.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, he couldn't stand it no more.
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  SPEAKER_00: He come in from the yard,
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  SPEAKER_00: looks o'er her shoulders,
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  SPEAKER_00: studyin' hard,
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  SPEAKER_00: asks again,
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  SPEAKER_00: "'What you makin' there,
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  SPEAKER_00: see?'
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  SPEAKER_00: And she says, "'A suit, the finest there be.
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  SPEAKER_00: Come Easter, you'll be the best dressed in town.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why, I bet you'll be the talk for miles around.'"
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  SPEAKER_00: It don't happen often, but sometimes it does.
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  SPEAKER_00: A funeral comes at Easter,
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  SPEAKER_00: just because the laird of the land sees fit that-a-way to make hope and sorrow
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  SPEAKER_00: fuller on that day.
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  SPEAKER_00: At the meeting-house lay that man in his box, and up from the road comes the other'n in his socks.
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  SPEAKER_00: Church is reverent.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes a preaching keeps the people quiet, most solemn and thinking.
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  SPEAKER_00: But when this man come nigh to the door,
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  SPEAKER_00: a smiling proud,
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  SPEAKER_00: only wearing his drawers,
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  SPEAKER_00: the people was scared like no one said a thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dumbstruck at their friend walking in like a king.
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  SPEAKER_00: Grown-ups, being polite, pretend they don't see the thing for their noses, the stark reality.
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  SPEAKER_00: They'll look round, shuffle feet, look away, but the young'uns ain't like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why, they'll up and say the simple truth like a clear bell's ring.
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  SPEAKER_00: And one little young'un did that very thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mama, why I got to wear this shirt button-tight?
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  SPEAKER_00: I had to get dressed afore it come light.
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  SPEAKER_00: That man over there's barely wearing more than the suit he's a-wearing on the day he was born.
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  SPEAKER_00: And all them young'uns, they all snickered.
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  SPEAKER_00: And to tell you the truth, the preacher bowed his head because he is a-snickering too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Young man, hush your mouth, I heard his mama say.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus rose from the grave.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's his Easter day.
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  SPEAKER_00: That man come here may be hoped to be dressed in new creation or clothed in victory.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, the congregation laughed because she weren't wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's why they'd come to rejoice and sing psalms.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a good laugh they had.
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  SPEAKER_00: Till that man on the board raised up and looked to see what they's all laughing for.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, that laughter stopped quick.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some dropped to the floor while the others jumped up,
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  SPEAKER_00: running for the door,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that young'un who spoke was here to say,
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  SPEAKER_00: what else y'all expect on a Easter day?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well,
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  SPEAKER_00: when things settle down and the people come back,
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  SPEAKER_00: the old man in his coffin was laughing at his friend in his long john,
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  SPEAKER_00: still showing off his duds and bragging that his suit was the finest ever was.
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  SPEAKER_00: And, well, those women got to arguing who'd won the bet.
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  SPEAKER_00: Expect they're still arguing now and still ain't cited yet about which of them won that old woman's bet.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: But another has taken my cabin and left me so lonely and blue.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the Backward Mutters Poetry Podcast.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Randy Edwards.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.