Vester Frazier Character Analysis

Weren’t no such spirit, just a man sly-eyeing me. He didn’t fool me none with his pasty-white face. Darkly he was, filled to the brim with the blackness inside…

It was preacher man Vester Frazier, my dead husband’s cousin … He’d been coming for me a good while, and more boldly since I’d been left widowed.

He’d done the same to others like me: Michael McKinney, the three-nippled midget who rode his goat cart bare-chested across the hills, a boy with pink eyes and hair the color of a white lamb, the seven-year-old Melungeon girl who had fit that tonic and herbs couldn’t quiet…And there were the godless, those who’d never found a church, and a few ungodly others Vester Frazier and his followers thought the devil had given those peculiarities to. The odd markings with no names.

Lovett’s Ridge was a spectacle, and soon I relaxed a little and soaked it up. Layers of dark-blue mountains stacked in the distance, at every turn their cuts rolling, deepening, then lightening to shades of blue-greens from the day’s passing clouds. The air blew fresh and breezy. Scents of apple blossoms lifted from a nearby tree, and honeysuckle clung to a crumbling split-rail fence as swallowtails and fat-legged bees flitted above the old timbers and dipped for nectar.

The Companion was a popular request. Mountain women were snatching up new cures and remedies from the magazine, abandoning their old ways of healing.

[…]

“Be obliged to git one. Nester Rylie’s been reading it and she told me in passing last year, she ain’t rubbed groundhog brains on her babies’ sore teeth or needed to use the hen innards on the gums of her teething ones since. And after she’d read about a good paste recipe that cured thrush, Nester said, none of her nine youn’uns ain’t ever had to drink water from a stranger’s shoe again to get the healing.”

I held the library book a moment and then said, “Miss Loretta, this is a Doctor Dolittle book, and I think you might like it some—”

Loretta held up a shushing hand and shook her head.

“Nonsense, child. And what I done told you before: I ain’t letting you read me them government books.”

“But—”

“Them’s books about rubbish and devilish deeds. Foolishness. Take it on back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, wishing she’d let me read her one from the library once in a while instead of her Bible.

Every time I brought one I thought she might take a liking to, she’d sour and rile on. “Them city books ain’t fitting for my kind—ain’t got a lick of sense in them pages for us hillfolk. Nothing but foolish babble an’ prattle.”

For a minute I envied her, wanted to send Junia home, unlace my heavy, tight shoes, and run free with her to escape Frazier, the doc and his medical tests, and everything damning to me—to hunt and fish in the woods like I’d done as a child. To be wilded. Have a wilded heart in this black-treed land full of wilded creatures. There were notches in these hills where a stranger wouldn’t tread, dared not venture—the needle-eyed coves and skinny blinds behind rocks, the strangling parts of the blackened-green hills—but Angeline and hillfolk here were wilded and not afraid. And I longed to lift bare feet onto ancient paths and be wilded once again.

I’d been foolish. Reached the worse. The drug had not redeemed me. I didn’t belong at this bright, happy gathering with these lively folks and bubbly chatter. I belonged in darker places where darker thoughts kept me put, where sunlight, a cheerful voice, or a warm touch never reached me. Weren’t no pill ever going to change that.

I threw the cake into a bush and mounted Junia, glancing once more at the crowd. Across the street, Jackson talked to a group of smiling men and women. He lifted his head my way, raised a hand, and called out, “Cussy Mary…”

I couldn’t bear for him to see my disgrace, see me for who I really was—who I’d become in their eyes. “Ghee!” I kneed the mule hard, and she raced off toward our dark, dead holler.

“Where’s my manners? I hope you get to feeling pert soon, ma’am. I miss seeing my bonny Picasso.” He grinned.

I stared at him blankly, and he added, “Picasso’s painting of the pretty blue lady, the Woman with a Helmet of Hair that I’d seen in one of the magazines you brought us? You remind me of her. Your fine color. My woman always said God saved that best color for His home.” He pointed a finger up to a patch of blue sky parting the gray clouds. “Guess He must’ve had Himself a little bit left over.”

Astonished, I could feel my face warm. No one, not a soul, ever said that my old color was fine. The best.

Weren’t no such spirit, just a man sly-eyeing me. He didn’t fool me none with his pasty-white face. Darkly he was, filled to the brim with the blackness inside…

It was preacher man Vester Frazier, my dead husband’s cousin … He’d been coming for me a good while, and more boldly since I’d been left widowed.

He’d done the same to others like me: Michael McKinney, the three-nippled midget who rode his goat cart bare-chested across the hills, a boy with pink eyes and hair the color of a white lamb, the seven-year-old Melungeon girl who had fit that tonic and herbs couldn’t quiet…And there were the godless, those who’d never found a church, and a few ungodly others Vester Frazier and his followers thought the devil had given those peculiarities to. The odd markings with no names.

Lovett’s Ridge was a spectacle, and soon I relaxed a little and soaked it up. Layers of dark-blue mountains stacked in the distance, at every turn their cuts rolling, deepening, then lightening to shades of blue-greens from the day’s passing clouds. The air blew fresh and breezy. Scents of apple blossoms lifted from a nearby tree, and honeysuckle clung to a crumbling split-rail fence as swallowtails and fat-legged bees flitted above the old timbers and dipped for nectar.

The Companion was a popular request. Mountain women were snatching up new cures and remedies from the magazine, abandoning their old ways of healing.

[…]

“Be obliged to git one. Nester Rylie’s been reading it and she told me in passing last year, she ain’t rubbed groundhog brains on her babies’ sore teeth or needed to use the hen innards on the gums of her teething ones since. And after she’d read about a good paste recipe that cured thrush, Nester said, none of her nine youn’uns ain’t ever had to drink water from a stranger’s shoe again to get the healing.”

I held the library book a moment and then said, “Miss Loretta, this is a Doctor Dolittle book, and I think you might like it some—”

Loretta held up a shushing hand and shook her head.

“Nonsense, child. And what I done told you before: I ain’t letting you read me them government books.”

“But—”

“Them’s books about rubbish and devilish deeds. Foolishness. Take it on back.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, wishing she’d let me read her one from the library once in a while instead of her Bible.

Every time I brought one I thought she might take a liking to, she’d sour and rile on. “Them city books ain’t fitting for my kind—ain’t got a lick of sense in them pages for us hillfolk. Nothing but foolish babble an’ prattle.”

For a minute I envied her, wanted to send Junia home, unlace my heavy, tight shoes, and run free with her to escape Frazier, the doc and his medical tests, and everything damning to me—to hunt and fish in the woods like I’d done as a child. To be wilded. Have a wilded heart in this black-treed land full of wilded creatures. There were notches in these hills where a stranger wouldn’t tread, dared not venture—the needle-eyed coves and skinny blinds behind rocks, the strangling parts of the blackened-green hills—but Angeline and hillfolk here were wilded and not afraid. And I longed to lift bare feet onto ancient paths and be wilded once again.

I’d been foolish. Reached the worse. The drug had not redeemed me. I didn’t belong at this bright, happy gathering with these lively folks and bubbly chatter. I belonged in darker places where darker thoughts kept me put, where sunlight, a cheerful voice, or a warm touch never reached me. Weren’t no pill ever going to change that.

I threw the cake into a bush and mounted Junia, glancing once more at the crowd. Across the street, Jackson talked to a group of smiling men and women. He lifted his head my way, raised a hand, and called out, “Cussy Mary…”

I couldn’t bear for him to see my disgrace, see me for who I really was—who I’d become in their eyes. “Ghee!” I kneed the mule hard, and she raced off toward our dark, dead holler.

“Where’s my manners? I hope you get to feeling pert soon, ma’am. I miss seeing my bonny Picasso.” He grinned.

I stared at him blankly, and he added, “Picasso’s painting of the pretty blue lady, the Woman with a Helmet of Hair that I’d seen in one of the magazines you brought us? You remind me of her. Your fine color. My woman always said God saved that best color for His home.” He pointed a finger up to a patch of blue sky parting the gray clouds. “Guess He must’ve had Himself a little bit left over.”

Astonished, I could feel my face warm. No one, not a soul, ever said that my old color was fine. The best.