Appalachian Heritage

A Long Rest Catherine Morgan My sister's pregnant and James Harold Jennings is dead and I'm starting to feel tired. Fundamentally tired. The world with all of its various machines is pitching itself with awful speed into the next millennium, and I just want to sleep for a time. James Harold Jennings shot himself last April, but I didn't hear about it until November when I happened to see his obituary in an issue of the Appalachian Journal. He was a folk artist from Virginia, and I think he'd lived in Virginia all of his life, never achieving much fame, however. Serious collectors probably knew of him, as well as people in the region. Apparently, later in life he became something of a recluse, and he built a compound for himself consisting of three rotting school buses and a trailer without heat or running water. He stayed on his property in the small town of Pinnacle and refused to see anyone except his sister, who continued to sell his work. She says he suffered from mental illness and experienced uncontrollable fears concerning the millennium, that a major disaster would occur with the new year. He finally gave up, aimed a loaded shotgun at his head, and pulled the trigger. Jennings left a lifetime of art behind him, remarkable in its whimsy—whirligigs of various heights—scores of them massed together, colorful crowns and paintings, doll-like figures. His work made it into a couple of traveling shows sponsored by government .fe'·'*5? ,F fttuuu?:n ti!&4jMffttft« *MMM¡?" 32 grants. They called him, with all the mighty presumptions with which they name them, a southern visionary and lumped him into an exhibit of the same name which showcased southern talent. "A southern visionary." I guess the assumption here is that he could see something the rest of us couldn't. I know he ended up seeing the wrong end of a shotgun on a warm spring day. And I say that with a little irony, but not much. I think Jennings probably saw a lot of things most of us never will. He saw sheets of new metal grown up to be whirligigs, saw them turn circles and cast shadows and mature into rusty ancients that squealed in the wind. He was lucky—he got to see his own hands covered in paint long after most of us have forgotten how that looks, how the paint settles in the grooves of skin and the folds of the knuckles, leaving a sheer wash on the planes of the hands. He got to see the seasons live and die in his hometown for sixty-eight years. He got to see time grow up around the little compound he built for himself. But he also saw the millennium bearing down on him with the dreadful speed of some nightmarish locomotive—and he chose to step out of its path. The rest of us are left standing with wide eyes, wondering if we really are going to be run over or if it's all some sort of metaphysical bluff. My sister has always lied a lot. I was always stunned as a child to hear her lie bald-faced, without blinking. Even when I was punished for her transgressions, I was always more stunned than angry. Her lies disturbed my sense of fairness, that childish belief that in the end the right thing is always done. I couldn't understand her. I was nearly an adult when I realized she couldn't help it. My sister has mental problems that have gone undiagnosed into her adulthood. She vacillates wildly between flashes of normalcy and long stretches of disturbed behavior. Sometimes she lives in the basement of my parents' house, staying out all night, coming home drunk, refusing to speak or having flashes of violent anger. She switches between mild, unfocused affection for someone in the family, and then hate. She disappears for periods of time, and for the last nine months no one has known where she was or with whom she was living. Sometimes my parents know she has been in the house because they can smell her...