Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories by Sharyn McCrumb Page B

back, but kept watching. Dad wouldn’t be doing any storytelling now—too busy. Once he got the stove wood chopped, they’d have to go in and eat, and by then it might be too late for him to be allowed outside. Sam thought about this stay of execution for his wooden elephant. He almost had the story down by heart, anyway. He decided to go back to the twig and do it from memory. He could always ask Dad later if he forgot any of the parts to the story.
    Sam walked over to the hedge and took the string and the carving out of his pocket, and lay down in the grass beside the gallows-twig. He wrapped the twine once around the tiny elephant’s neck, and began to experiment with different ways of wrapping the end to make a knot. As he worked, he thought the story to himself in the words Dad always used.
    “Her name was Murderous Mary—leastways that’s what they called her after Kingsport. She was a performing elephant with one of them little traveling circuses, and they were doing a show in Kingsport. Some figure she had a new trainer; boy didn’t seem to know much about the beasts, seems like. He was a-setting on her head and parading all them circus elephants to a water hole, when Mary spied a watermelon rind by the side of the road and she went for it. Well, when she veered out of line, that feller on her head, he jerked at her hard with a spear-tipped stick that they have, but he musta done it too hard because Mary threw back her head and let out a bellow.Then before he knowed what was a-happening, she reached around with her trunk and snatched him off her back and threw him at a lemonade stand.
    “He probably coulda lived through that, but Mary wasn’t about to let him. She went over to him and stepped on his head, and that was all she wrote. That was one dead trainer. The blacksmith run out of his shop right then with a 32-20 pistol and put a couple of shots into her, but it didn’t do no good. They say she didn’t even act like she felt it. I wasn’t there when it happened. That was in Kingsport. They got her on back to the circus with the rest of ’em and she was in the show that same evening.
    “By morning, though, people had been a-studying about it and decided that if she’d gone and killed a man, she’d best be made to pay the price. They couldn’t do the job in Kingsport, though. Warn’t no gun around that could put her down. I’ve heerd they tried to electrocute her, but that didn’t do no good. Said she just danced a little, that’s all.
    “Then somebody took a notion they ought to hang her, and the circus came on over to Erwin. It mighta been acoming here anyway. Mary was still a-working. Wasn’t no place to lock her up. They used her to push the wagons off’n the freight cars and set the tent poles up, and that afternoon, when the show was over, they took her down to the railroad yards, where they kept the big derrick—”
    “
Get in the house!
” The voice in Sam’s head was drowned out by the same voice from behind him, the quiet kind of yelling that really meant business.
    Sam looked up at his father. For a moment he thought that Dad was angry about his elephant game, but then he saw that he wasn’t even looking at Sam. He kept glancing toward the backyard. Before Sam could get to his feet, Dad jerked him up by the scruff of his trousers, and gave him a swat on the bottom.
    “I said:
git!
”
    Sam got.
    He ran for the house without a word, because he could tell from Dad’s voice and the look on his face that something was up. Dad was still standing there in the yard. Sam glanced over at the woodpile beside the car shed. The ax was stuck in a log, just where Dad had left it. He took the steps two at a time and slammed the front door behind him.
    In the small parlor, Sam looked around. Mom was still in the kitchen, seeing to the biscuits, or maybe she was in their room feeding Frances Lee. Anyhow, she hadn’t seen him come in. He hoped she hadn’t heard the door. Walking as quiet as