When I was a little boy, my mama told me a story that she had remembered when she was around my age. Between ten and eleven. When she was growing up, they lived in old houses way out in the country in the middle of nowhere. The nearest house was miles way down the road. My grandma had a big car but they only drove that to Church on Sundays. Any other time they road the horse and buggy. She told me there was a lady down the road who was a firetalker. She knew this for a fact because when people, especially children, would get burned real bad from workin' or play. People would call her.

My family had a lot of horses and they used those horses for working the fields, hunting, and getting down the road a piece when they needed to go to the store and buy things. They couldn't drive back then, but they could ride the horses to get whatever grandma or granddaddy told them to go get. Mama said one year when the weather was really warming up. Granddaddy was mad because the lady down the road, who was a firetalker, was running his horses at night and that's why they'd be so tired and sweating in the morning and weren't no good for the field. Grandma didn't say nothing because she knew what the lady was and her husband attended their Church and was a good Christian man. And if i read in good here with grandma, mama had been burned really bad when she was a little girl. She had been running with a blanket over her head and ran straight into a fire. Grandma and another Church lady pulled her out but her legs where burned real bad. So, just maybe grandma didn't speak against the lady down the road because she had talked the fire out of my mamas legs and healed her.

So as the story goes, after a week or so of this, granddaddy got fed up and took his rifle out ignoring grandma's words to keep the peace. He went out with one of my uncles that night to take watch outside the fence and sure enough, there she came and changed into a big rabbit. Granddaddy waited for her to run the horses a good while so she knew what was coming to her was just and right and shot her in her hind parts. The next day, at breakfast, granddaddy came in, sat down, and told them he'd shot her as a rabbit. Nothing more was said about it according to mama, but come that Sunday morning in Church. The firetalker's husband made a request and asked for prayer for his wife because she'd been shot in the leg accidentally. No details were given on how she'd been shot and if the Preachers went to her house for prayer that day, mama didn't know. But she did say she heard grandma later on telling that she and some others had gone to carry food and visit a spell and sure enough, there she was laying up in the bed with a shot leg.

Mama said "back in those days with so little people around. Everybody knew something about everybody, and most everybody knew about Brother so-in-so's wife and her ability to talk fire out of anyone".