Kinfolks by Lisa Alther Page A

Melungeons are enjoying in death some of the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen.
    I drive into Sneedville, park, and stroll around the streets past the usual feed store, drugstore, grocery store, hardware store, and funeral home found in any rural county seat. In the eighteenth century, this spot was a favorite meeting place for trappers and hunters, who called it Greasy Rock. The few people I pass look just like the farmers who used to gather on Broad Street in Kingsport on Saturday mornings. I don’t see a single extra finger.
    I phone a woman with a Melungeon last name, a friend of a friend. She lives close by and comes down to meet me on the main street. An attractive woman in a tailored suit, she looks like an escapee from the Virginia Club. We sit down over coffee in a small restaurant and discuss the weather and our mutual friends. Eventually I tell her about my proposed article, asking her if she’s Melungeon and whether I could interview her.
    She gives me a look that would wilt a stalk of celery. Too late I remember how to operate in the South: you must never ask a direct question. Most southerners have plenty to hide, but they consider it rude to refuse a request. Therefore, as in China, good manners here consist of never putting another in the position of having to say no.
    â€œMy family is descended from de Soto’s exploring party in the sixteenth century,” she replies icily and with finality.
    As I drive back to Kingsport with no material for my article, I remember too late having been warned that calling someone a Melungeon in Sneedville is like calling a black person a nigger. I’ve been impersonating a Yankee for so long that I’ve forgotten the southern codes, which have remained remarkably intact, like insects in amber, despite the widely bruited homogenization of America. In New York, a murderer will walk right up and shoot you. In the South, he’ll bring you casseroles until he gets to know you, and then he’ll shoot you.
    Shaking off my chagrin, I review the more exotic Melungeon origin myths — shipwrecked Portuguese sailors, de Soto’s deserters, survivors of the Lost Colony. I conclude that life on the isolated farms of Appalachia is stultifying and that romantic tales about one’s glamorous forebears make it less dreary.
    When I’m trying to write fiction, I prefer to lock myself in a small room without a view. I turn off the phone and unplug the TV. If I can bear the wait, characters eventually emerge to relieve my boredom, like a child’s imaginary playmates. No doubt a similar process of sensory deprivation has produced these unlikely Melungeon myths.
    After my arrival this trip, I rode around Food City with my father in a motorized cart, to spare his bad back. Grocery shopping can take him several hours because many store employees and customers are his patients, and they all want to regale him with tales of their latest ailments.
    He introduced me to an old woman with no teeth, who was stocking a shelf in the pasta aisle. He told her I was a writer in town to research some magazine articles.
    She said companionably, “Well, I reckon readin’s good, ain’t it?”
    Because many Appalachians have been, and are, illiterate, a rich oral culture has evolved. The International Storytelling Center is only a few miles from our farm, and their festivals draw thousands. People need their stories, true or not, and the Melun-geons are no exception.
    As I drive back to my parents’ house, I run a gauntlet of churches in competition over which can post the most clever sayings on its illuminated signboard out front.
    Today the Bethel Presbyterian sign reads
    A SHARP TONGUE CAN CUT YOUR OWN THROAT .
    Across the highway I pass the Belvue Christian church, whose message is
    IF GOD FILED A 1040, COULD HE CLAIM YOU AS A DEPENDENT?
    As I ponder this question, I study the marquee at St. Luke’s Methodist next door:
    TODAY IS A GIFT.