More from Grady Creek Holler

The Child Who Saw Jesus

Old man Grisham had a daughter that was seldom seen, but often talked about in the hollers round about. She was a fair girl and pleasant by nature. There was some kind of glow about her; almost like after a lightnin' bug lights up and then goes out. But her glow stayed, both day and night. It was hard to explain and had to be seen first-hand to believe.

It's told that when she was about nine years old she was sent out to fetch water from a rock-crevice spring that ran cold with pure water that had come from the mountain. Seems that the passin' through the mountain made the water as pure and clear as could be and folks used it for special purposes, like washing babies and mixing medicine teas.

She took her pail and put it under the stream of the cold water and sat down on a rock to wait for the pail to fill. She got to looking around and saw a man sitting on another rock not 30 paces distant from herself. This man was different from any she had ever seen before and he wore clothes like none she had seen round about. Clothes like what she heard about and saw in a picture book once of foreigners leading them humpity camels along.

Now although he was in the shade, all about him had a lit-up look. There was no darkness around him, no shadow. She saw this as more of a puzzlement than a strange happenin'. He was lookin' right at her. He smiled. She smiled. She felt good inside just knowin' he was there.

She felt called to go and sit by the man. No words were spoke, she just had a feelin'. They sat together and looked around at the woods and the water and the dogwoods that were just starting to bloom. Pretty little yellow flowers were all about and he reached down, picked one and handed it to her. She reached out and took it from him and at that same moment felt all safe and warm inside and out.

Next thing she knew she was back home with the pail of pure water and explaining to her Ma why it had took her so long to get water. About which her mother had many a question. She wasn't too fond of the notion that Bessie May just went over to a stranger and took up with him. That's against all she had been taught. Bordered on foolish.

She pressed Bessie May for more details. What did she and the stranger talk about?

" We didn't talk about nothin' " insisted Bessie May. "Weren't neither one of us talking, but I knew and he knew what the other was a thinkin'. I knew what was his meaning and he knew what was mine. Me and him didn't need to talk; like me and you. It was just a feelin' of knowin'." And Bessie May had no doubts about it.

Now when old man Grisham's wife told him about the incident, he first wanted to play it off as the girl just makin' things up. Like all them kids do with imaginary friends and such. But the wife was worked up over it, kept makin' a big fuss about it and watchin' Bessie May like a hawk. Mrs. Grisham even walked up to the rock-crevice spring to take a look around. She looked for signs of somebpdy being up there, but there were no footprints, other than Bessie May's, where the ground was damp from the moss around the spring.

And Bessie May didn't seem to make much of it. A couple of days passed and Bessie May began to smile a lot and to sing softly while playing with little yellow wildflowers she had picked. She would hold them up to the sun and then twirl with them in her outstretched hands, all the while just singing softly and smiling; innocent, like a baby. She had a jar of that spring water that she drank from and didn't drink no water from the regular old well behind the house.

That could have all been passed off as kid stuff combined with a worrying mother's imagination until Bessie May began takin' on that glow around her. I tell ya it was like that lightnin' bugs glow after it quits a lightin' and that glow lingers after it on a dark night. Somewhere between a yellow and a pale green hue to the light.

If you ever seen foxfire a glowin' in the night, then you'll know what I'm talkin' about. And even them old hard-bark coon hunters walk a way around that foxfire in the night. Gives a feller the shivers and befuddles him to where he near-bout gets lost in the woods, or falls down into a holler. Little Bessie May didn't light up like the foxfire. She just had a glow round about her that made a person think about lightnin' bugs and foxfire and such.

Well, don't ya know that got old man Grisham's attention and sent the Mrs. to wringin' her hands and prayin' night and day. Prayin' about what to do for the girl, although Bessie May seemed just fine other than all that glowin'. Bessie May didn't seem to notice it herself; or at least never made no mention of it. They did notice that the cats were kind of standoffish around her.

The Grishams decided that they would keep Bessie May away from the pryin' eyes of anybody who came around. Just sort of have her go on in the house when they saw somebody a comin'. Bessie May didn't mind. She was as happy as she had ever been.

Wonderin' what was a comin' next, Mrs. Grisham decided to learn more from Bessie May about the man at the rock-crevice spring. " Bessie May, what else did you feel from that man up there by the spring?"

"Oh, lots a things, Ma. Like the feelin' that them little flowers and me was the same. That they was the same as me and that they got a life, just like I got a life. And like the way you and me and Daddy all love one another, that's how we should feel about everybody on the mountain. And the way we feed them cats and dogs when we think they will be hungry, we ought to tend to our neighbors the same way. And the way Daddy took the coal over to poor Widow Crenshaw's house when it was so cold and she didn't have none of her own to burn and he just put that sack of coal on her front steps and left. ( That way she wouldn't feel beholdin' and not think she'd have to pay us back. ) That's the way folks round about should be a treatin' each other all the time."

"I had them thoughts when we was a sittin' up there. I knowed where them thoughts was comin' from. They was comin' from him. And I could tell that he knowed that I knowed and we kind of just smiled at each other about that."

Right then Mrs. Grisham decided that it was Jesus, hisself, that Bessie May had seen up there by the spring. He was the only one could of give her them thoughts; young as she was and all. It was a puzzlement for sure. And she told Old Man Grisham what she had decided and made him promise that he wouldn't be tellin' it around. That wouldn't do no good for him to be yappin about it and besides, people would treat Bessie May different from the others.

Them two would have to come up with a story to cover the glowin' part. I'll tell you about that batch of plans another time.