Part 19

The mountaineers had brought their entire families, and during the service the smaller children would fall asleep, to awaken with a cry at the changing vibrations. Up and down the sounding, carpetless aisles the parents would pass, carrying out some child to comfort it.

But the incidents were unnoticed by the minister, nor did they break the chant of amens or the growing number of repetitions of the minister's words by the devout worshipers. When the eyes of the auditors were turned from the evangelist they reverently sought the face of some expected convert. In the service, in the feelings of the people there was real religion.

Sundays pass when there is no preaching in the church. Pastor Pile, the local minister, has several charges and can conduct the services at Pall Mall but once a month. But each Sunday morning there is Sunday School, and in the afternoon a singing-class. Some one of the York boys leads the unaccompanied songs, and Alvin's leadership and interest in these services caused the catchy phrase, "a singing Elder," to be a part of nearly every newspaper story of him that went over the country.

The singing-class draws to the church on Sunday afternoon the younger element of the community. When the service is over, some go for a swim in the Wolf River which runs along the foot of the grove, or on a grassless space under a giant oak on the schoolhouse-yard there will be a game of marbles. It is the old-fashioned "ring men" that they play, where five large marbles are placed in a small square marked in the dust, one marble on each corner and one in the middle.

Over in France when the officers of Sergeant York's regiment were trying to obtain all the facts of his wonderful exploit, they asked him what he did with the German officers he had captured when he started to bring in his line of prisoners. His reply was a simile from his boyhood in the mountains:

"I jes made a middler out of myself."

Among all the American officers present there was but one who recognized his reference to the old marble game.

The death of his father when Alvin was twenty-one, relaxed a hand that had protected and guided him more than he realized. His two older brothers were married and he became the head of the family of ten that remained. He left to his younger brothers the care of the crops upon the farm and he hired out on any job that brought an extra revenue. In summer he worked on neighboring farms, and in winter hauled staves and merchandise when the roads could be traveled, or logged in the lumber camps.

He formed new associates and under the new influences began to drink and gamble. With his companions on Saturday and Sunday he would "go to the Kentucky line."

Through the mountains along the state-line between Tennessee and Kentucky there were road-houses, or saloons, that were so built that one-half of the house would be in Kentucky and one-half in Tennessee. The keeper paid his federal license and was free from the clutches of the United States Government. But he avoided the licenses of the states by carrying a customer from Tennessee into the Kentucky side of the house for the business transaction, and the Kentuckian was invited into Tennessee. No customer of the state-line saloons could swear before a grand jury that he had violated the liquor laws of his state, and he was not subject to a summons at his home by the grand jury of the county or state in which he made his purchase. Upon receipt of a "grapevine" signal that officers were approaching, the entire stock of liquids would disappear and when the officers arrived the saloonkeeper would be at work in the fields of his farm.

The nearest state-line saloon to Pall Mall was seven miles by the road and but little over half the distance by paths on the mountains.

This was the only period of Alvin's life when the wishes of his mother did not control him. These week-end sprees were relaxation and fun, and he worked steadily the remainder of the week. In them he grew jovial and the friends he drew around him were fun, not trouble, makers. His physical strength and the influence of his personality were quickly used to check in incipiency any evidence of approaching disorder.

His "shooting-up" consisted of pumping lead from an old revolver he owned into the spots on beech trees as he and his friends galloped along the road. And he became so expert that he would pass the revolver from hand to hand and empty it against a tree as he went by. When the eight Germans charged him in the fight in the Argonne, he never raised his automatic pistol higher than his cartridge-belt.

His mother knew the latent determination of her boy and she was ever in dread that there might arise some trouble among the men when he was away on these drinking trips.

"Alvin is jes like his father," she said. "They were both slow to start trouble, but ef either one would git into hit, they'd go through with the job and there'd be a-hurtin'."

But since the fist fights of boyhood Alvin York has never had a personal encounter. His intents and deeds do not lead him into difficulties, and in his eye there is a calm blue light that steadies the impulses of men given to explosions of passion and anger.

At a basket-dinner where he and his friends were drinking he took his last drink. To these outings the girls bring, in a woven, hickory basket, a dinner for two. The baskets are auctioned, the proceeds are given to some church charity, and the purchaser and the girl have dinner together. They are often expensive parties to a serious-minded mountain swain who can not surrender the day's privileges to a rival or will not yield his dignity and rights to fun-makers who enliven the biddings by making the basket, brought by "his girl," cost at least as much as a marriage license.

Alvin's mother had often pleaded with her boy that he was not his real self--not his better self--while drinking. Something happened at a basket-party in 1914 that caused the full meaning of his mother's solicitude to come to him. He left, declaring he would never take another drink, and his drinking and gambling days ended together.

Late in the afternoons in the fall months, when the squirrels are out [so the story runs in the valley, but without confirmation from the Sergeant], Alvin would be seen leaving home with his gun. He would cut across the fields to the west and pass along the outskirts of the farm of Squire F. A. Williams. Those who saw him wondered why he should take this long course to the woods, while on the mountain above his home the oak and beech masts were plentiful and other hunters were going there for the squirrels.

About this same time, the wife of Squire Williams noted with pleasure that Gracie, her youngest daughter--a girl of sixteen with golden hair and eyes that mirror the blue of the sky--went willingly to the woodlots for the cows. When she returned with them she was singing, and this, too, pleased Mrs. Williams.

The road from Squire Williams' home to the church passes the York home; and, after the service, as far as his gate, Alvin would often walk with them. As Gracie was silent and timid when any stranger was near, so diffident that when on their way home from church she walked far away from Alvin, the neighbors for a long while had no explanation for Alvin's squirrel-hunts along the base of the mountain instead of up toward the top of it; and Mrs. Williams, at her home, heard so many gunshots off in the woods in the course of a day that she attached no significance to them.

But Alvin's and Gracie's meetings along the shaded roadway that leads to the Williams home were discovered, and Mrs. Williams put a ban upon them--for Gracie was too young, she maintained, to have thoughts of marriage.

The real facts in that mountain courtship are known to but two, and even now are as carefully guarded as tho the romance had not become a reality and culminated happily.

But the neighbors have fragments out of which they build a story, and it varies with the imagination of the relator. The big Sergeant's confirmation or denial is a smile and a playful, taunting silence that leaves conclusion in doubt.

There is a path that leads from the store around the side of the mountain that edges a shoulder between the store and the Williams home. A little off this path is a large flat rock. Around it massive beech trees grow and their boughs arch into a dome above the rock. There are carvings on the trunks of those trees that were not found until the rock was selected as the altar for a woodland wedding at which the Governor of Tennessee officiated.

When Gracie would come to the store she passed the York home on her way. Often, when alone, she would return by the mountain path. It was longer than by the road, but it was shaded by trees, and as it bends around the mountain glimpses of the valley could be seen. The rock ledge among the beech trees was not half way to her home, but it was a picturesque place to rest, and down below was the roof of the York home and the spring-branch, as it wound its way to the Wolf River. It was their favorite meeting-place.

When the war broke in Europe, those who lived in the valley gave little heed to it. When there was talk of the United States' entry, there was deep opposition. They were opposed to any war. The wounds of the Civil War had healed, but the scars it left were deep. The thought of another armed conflict meant more to the old people than it did to the younger generation.

"I did not know," Alvin said of himself, "why we were going to war. We never had any speakings in here, and I did not read the papers closely, and did not know the objects of the war. I did not feel I wanted to go."