Judge Sends Aunt Hetty Into Exile

Mountain Woman Climbs Highest Peak to Peer Into Her Beloved Virginia She's Barred From By Her Given Promise

By Randolph S. Hancock

The incidents in this story might have happened at any county seat in Southwest Virginia years ago.
But they will never happen again!

It was Monday, the first court week in Rocky Mount. Back lots of the town's stores were full of carts, surreys, covered wagons and buggies. Camp fires smoldered here and there in these lots, for it was yet early in the morning. Some few of the campers were still frying meat in iron skillets on these fires, while others were putting away their cooking utensils. The courthouse square was alive with folks.

Aunt Hetty was there to attend court. She had been summoned from her cabin home in Hemlock Dell for "blockadin'." Her tall, picturesque figure was striking even in this unusual assembly. Her top piece was a bonnet, the bill of which protruded some few inches over her forehead. Her dress, of pin stripe red calico, was bedecked with a tan apron tightly tied about her waist. About her shoulders she wore a grey shawl. She had taken up her post at the main entrance to the old brick courthouse. Her blue-black eyes moved incessantly over the shifting throng. "hoss traders" led their wares through the congested crowd. Near by an itinerant medicine peddler hawked his wares to the tunes strummed from a banjo played by an assistant. This attraction drew very little attention from Aunt Hetty.

Her crowd was late. They should have been there hours ago. Finally they appeared; four tall, rangy men of the same swarthy breed as herself. Their size and mannerism proclaimed their ancestry as loudly as did their determined sense of the right of the individual. The five formed an impressive, compact, isolated group. An interesting contrast to the group was a short, fat man who spoke with a slight wheeze between sentences as he talked with these "hill billies."

They were all deep in a low-voiced conversation when a little boy made his way up the courthouse steps. Fear and eager fascination gripped him as he heard Aunt Hetty make this statement to her attorney:

"God is my witness that I hain't made nary drop of likker since I was here last year."

The boy, in startled terror, turned to look at the blue mountain sky. Nowhere in sight was there an avenging diety en route to proclaim Aunt Hetty's innocence. Reassured, but still cold with fear, he went on. Returning with a protecting parent a few moments later, the scene had shifted to the town pump where Aunt Hetty was drinking water from a tin cup.

"Daddy," the child whispered, "who is that woman?"

"The shrewdest person in Franklin County, he answered.

"Don't let them put her in jail," the boy pleaded. "She has God as her witness in her case that she hasn't made any liquor."

The hearty laugh with which his father greeted this remark puzzled the boy for a long time.

*          *          *

Sixteen years passed before I saw Aunt Hetty again. It was on the Hemlock Dell Road one hot, dry July day. Two young men and a girl were with her. The girl carried a baby in her arms. Aunt Hetty, contrary to all precedent in the Blue Ridge Mountains, walked along ahead with the men folk, while the girl brought up the rear.

Aunt Hetty had aged incredibly in the length of time, but so striking was the impression she had made that day on the courthouse steps, I was quick to recognize her. A wagon, heavily loaded, to which was hitched a team of mules, approached the group. The driver stopped to talk. Their conversation over, came on my way.

"Isn't that Aunt Hetty?" I asked when he approached me.

"Yes, he replied, "she's just returning home. You know the judge sentenced her to the leave the State many years ago. The Governor has jist let her come home. I'm glad fur it purty nigh killed the old soul. Her lawyer has been a workin' on this here new Governor and he's jist consented fur her to come home. Sixteen years is a purty long time for an old woman to stay away from a home she loves so well. she's most grieved her life away fur she's the homiest body you ever seed any how."

"Where has she been?" I asked, watching the lean body of the old woman as she made her way along the mountain road.

"Fur over in the next State," he replied melancholically. "She says she used to climb the highest peaks of the mountains in the fur away State and look over into her native land and jest lonesome for home. Hit shore was a hard dost fur her to take."

"It's a wonder she didn't slip back home," I replied.

"No'sre hit ain't. When Aunt Hetty give the judge her word she meant jest what she said. She's a plumb fool about keepin' her word. Hits a good thing they let her come home fur she'd plumb mourned her life away purty soon."

"Do you think she will stop making whisky now?"

"No sir'ee. Not while her head is hot. But I'll bet they never catch her again. From now on she'll pick her crowd with better jedgement."

*           *          *

Aunt Hetty's next appearance in her county's courthouse was as a defense witness in a whisky case.

The prosecuting attorney, with the stinging sarcasm of which he was a past master, was subjecting her to a merciless cross-examination. In the course of which he referred, with telling effect, to each and every case, in which she had been defendant. She parried these trusts with a scornful skill and witfully equal his own. Her lean figure was proudly erect. Her old slat bonnet lay neatly folded across her lap and the fires of her indomitable spirit flashed in her sinister blue-black eyes. Finally he referred to her exile.

It was a dramatic moment. Spectators in the little courtroom wince, for all of them knew the price this old woman had paid for this exile. Their deepest sympathy went out to her in this suffering, for no one understands the pangs of homesickness as the mountaineer does. A devotion to the particular cove in which his cabin stands is one of his dominating passions.

During the examination, the solicitor had called Aunt Hetty "a menace to the peace of this great Commonwealth." The words went home like an arrow in the breast of a bird. She asked the judge:

"Air ye a trying me?"

The lawyer for the defense grinned. The Commonwealth Attorney blushed. A juror hid a smile behind his hand.

"No, you are not on trial, His Honor replied kindly.

"Then they hain't nary bit o' use of that thar upstart a rakin' up everything I was ever accused of doin' and a blame sight I hain't done, and a tryin' to shame me into sayin' I lied about this hear case. I don't lie. That thar old devil right down thar," she pointed a long finger at one of Southwest Virginia's most distinguished attorneys, "Has spoke agin me in four trials, but he knows I tell the truth. Don't ye?" The tone of her voice was a challenge. The attorney nodded his head in the affirmative.

"Thar," she continued, "I never axed to come here today. I hain't even suspicioned of 'no crime agin this here Commonwealth." Her use of the solicitor's pet phrase provoked a wave of laughter in the courtroom.

"I come here cayse ye made me, to help you and them thar juries find out the truth in this hear case. Then he puts me on trial and tries to make me lie. Young man, you air a wastin' your time. Smarter lawyers than you air hain't been able to make me lie. Have they?" Again she pointed her finger at the lawyer, who had vindicated her previous statement, for confirmation of her statement.

This time he only smiled. "Go ahead," Aunt Hetty continued, "and finish your patchin'." The judge intervened, and the Commonwealth Attorney excused the witness.

Aunt Hetty sought out the attorney, at a recess in the court's procedure, who had testified to her integrity.

"I'm much obleedged to ye," said she. "You air the last person on Gawd's green earth I'd a 'spected to say a good word fur me."

"Why, Aunt Hetty," said he, taken aback, "I don't bear any malice toward you. It was only my duty to appear against you. I never enjoyed it."

"Yes, you did," declared the old woman of the hills, with a flash of whimsical amusement in her eyes. "you like a good fight as well as I do. Air ye a runnin' fur anythin' this year?"

"I am not," said the barrister stiffly.

"Well, ye needn't get your tail on ye shoulder over me a axin' ye. "Ef you ever run agin,' let me know and I'll vote my whole durn crowd fur ye. Thaey hain't nary nurther durn lawyer in Virginia got as much sense as you have."

*           *          *

The last time I saw Aunt Hetty was at her home, a little cabin at the base of a mountain, in Hemlock Dell. The autumn day was as beautiful and as still as the day when the footsteps of God hollowed out the beautiful valley and bulged up the majestic mountain. The winding trail down the mountain side followed near a clear cold stream that plunged down the mountain from waterfall to pool, and from pool to waterfall. The patch wound in and out, now by the stream, now back into the silence of the forest, now making its difficult way through the thicket so dense that the ground had not known the warmth of the sunlight for years. There were a few short-cuts along its dizzy windings, where the initiate "cooned" logs, swung from limb to limb on the great trees, or climbed a stairway of jutting rock.

Aunt Hetty's cabin was near the last leap the little stream makes in its hazardous journey down the mountain. The lacework of the water on the sheer granite cliff was visible from her door. The cabin, nestling against the mighty forest, fitted into the surroundings as no other type of dwelling could. Aunt Hetty, shading her rapidly dimming eyes with a gaunt hand, watched our approach.

___________

"Virginians spent not less than $500,000 on their Christmas liquor," reads a recent news story.

Aunt Hetty and her kind have passed into oblivion.