[Creative Nonfiction] The Blue Folks of Troublesome Creek
Read the third-place entry for our week of November 10, 2024 prompt, Folk Legend.
The Blue Folks of Troublesome Creek
by CD Collins
A Frenchman named Fugate and Luna his bride,
On Troublesome creek on the northernmost side.
She bore seven children, all of them true,
Three pink as blossoms and four of them blue.
Blue Fugates of Troublesome Blue Anze and Blue Ruth,
Skin the horizon on the dark side of dawn.
Farmers in drought times and likewise in flood,
Spy them on the hillside see straight to their blood.
Chorus
Some people want their name known,
But there’s those who don’t,
Blue folks of troublesome bide in peace,
Bide in peace, bide on their own.
Ruth arrived faint at the clinic one morn,
Had ne’er seen a doctor ‘ere the day she was born.
Nails of cornflower, lips hue of a plum,
Laid her out on cold marble and said all should come.
Chorus
This part of the mountains heeds the cry of rain crow,
Blood on coal, strange cures and sweet marrow.
Hazard Kentucky, River Styx on each side,
You must drink from its waters ‘ere you sink ‘ere you fly.
In the early 1800’s, a man from France arrived in the mountains around Troublesome Creek in eastern Kentucky and married a local woman. Together they had seven children; three with white skin, four with blue skin. The odds are incalculable that two people carrying this rare recessive gene would find each other, yet they did, though the cause of their blue skin was a mystery.
This family, the Fugates, lived in a remote area with few families around, so the gene proliferated among the Combs, Ritchies, and Stacys in the creek side settlements. Some say that the blue-hued folks believed their skin tone signified something wrong with them, so they kept to themselves. One morning, a researcher and nurse, Ruth Pendergrast, and hematologist, Madison Caewin III, were inside the Hazard clinic when Patrick and Rachel Ritchie walked in for a blood test, both of them blue as morning glories. Pendergrast and Caewin examined the Ritchies, and once the doctors had gained their trust, began to chart the family.
The blue people were very healthy, living up into their 80’s and 90’s and having dozens of children. Caewin established that these people had a mild form of methemoglobinemia. They were missing the enzyme diaphorase, which changes blood color back to bright red once it flows through the heart and lungs. With this missing enzyme, the blue folks’ blood remained dark, and that dark blood showed blue through the skin.
The researchers remember the pain that showed on the Ritchie’s faces. He said that they were embarrassed about being blue, that Patrick was all hunched down in the hall, Rachel leaning against the wall. They wouldn't come into the waiting room. They bore a suffering not detectable in lab tests, but of separation—the blue folks of Troublesome Creek, the smallest minority in the world. (Gathered from research, testimony, and lore.) The song is a tribute to these remarkable people.
About CD Collins
CD Collins is the author of Blue Land, a collection of short stories (First Trade Edition, Polyho Press); a poetry collection, Self-Portrait with Severed Head (Ibbetson Street Press); and the novel Afterheat (Empty City Press). Collins has published short fiction in numerous literary magazines, including StoryQuarterly, Salamander, The Louisville Review, and Pennsylvania Review.
This piece was written in response to the prompt Folk Legend.