by Inez Kelley
“Then wait for me to go with you.”
“You, pretty lady, have put things on hold for me all week. You have pumpkins to can. I can do this alone. I’m a big boy, you know?”
Her finger whipped up and pointed in his face. “If you’re not back in two hours, I’m coming to get you.” He caught her finger between his teeth. The playful move cooled her irritation and her eyes rolled. “I’m being a nag, aren’t I?”
Like he was going to answer that truthfully. “I just want to make sure everything is set for tomorrow. Webb and Jonah’ll be here about eight.”
The generators and water tank instillation wouldn’t take long, but she also needed firewood cut to season before sugar time. As soon as he’d mentioned that, his friends jumped down his throat for doing too much only five days after playing chicken with a five-thousand-pound log. They’d volunteered to help and he’d accepted. If things worked out like he hoped, he’d be spending a lot of time at the sugarhouse with Kayla, maybe for many years to come. But before that, he had some things to face.
Kayla waved from her porch as he keyed the four-wheeler. Giving her a salute, he took off, headed across the backyard and into the mountains. She was worried, though she tried to hide it. He hated that she’d seen him at his weakest. She babied him and it grated on his nerves. Oh, she meant it in the best way, he knew that, but it was a blow to his pride.
The rain had recharged the land and fall leaves perked and plumped, filling the breeze with a scent no air freshener could copy. It seeped into his sore muscles and soothed him, bleeding tension out of his stiff frame. Fallen leaves swirled from his path and crunched beneath his tires as he climbed the mountainside. He didn’t think, simply letting the land and his memory lead him back to a small stone building that had held so many crushed dreams.
He stopped at the top of the ridge, looking down like a god from Olympus. The logging crew had extended the dirt road to the building, which was a blessing. Access would be so much easier. Around the sugarhouse the grass needed to be cut, but for now it swayed in the wind like a gray-green sea. The outside firepit was blackened once again from where Kayla had burned the trash she’d cleaned from inside.
Was there anything left of his father in those bags she’d set fire to? Had she found Matt’s old history notes? He’d studied for a test on World War I while watching syrup darken and bubble that last time.
His descent was slow, a crawl nearly, but the memories came fast. There, where that flat stump was, that had been an old oak that lightning had struck. They’d chopped at it for two days in the chilly early spring. The pine cluster to the left had served as their outhouse. Now a chemical toilet stood at the corner of the building. A bittersweet smile rose as he remembered the icy burn of snow on his ass. Doing his business outside was something he wouldn’t miss.
He left the sugarhouse door open, using the natural light to illuminate the inside to a dull gloom. Kayla had worked hard. The floor shone, the evaporator pan gleamed and no cobweb dared grace the corners. Shiny brass floats waited in the pan and she’d replaced all the siphons. A few new firebricks stood fresh on top of ones darkened with use, and the cast-iron pit door was new.
The old double bed, now hidden behind a curtain, boasted new box springs and a mattress still wrapped in plastic. Along the east wall, she’d bought and hung new thermometers, tubes, gauges and funnels. Four cardboard boxes were piled beside the sink. He opened one and lifted out an empty half-gallon plastic jug. Stacked beside the boxes was a crate with labels waiting to be affixed to finished containers.
Mountain Specialty Syrups. His eyes saw it but his mind looked back, to ones saying Shaw’s Sugarhouse.
Plastic crinkled as he sat on the bed, staring at how much had changed and how much had stayed the same. Four seasons. He’d spent four seasons working in this place, lifting, dumping, stirring and draining. His father had spent more but Matt had been too young to help then. He closed his eyes and the rich taste of maple exploded on his tongue, trapped forever in his memory. His dad would fry potatoes and ham slices over the fire, adding other scents to the maple. His belly growled in recollection.
Looking back with an adult’s perception, he could see how crude things had been, how they’d scrimped and made do. But as a kid, this place had been magic. He’d become a man inside these walls in more than one way. He’d tasted his first beer here, said his first curse word, gave his virginity and his heart to the same girl. His dad treated him differently here, more as a friend than a son. They talked about life and girls, how to fix a carburetor and make a woman smile.
“Three generations, Matty-boy. Your great-grandfather, your granddad and me. You’re the fourth. Lived through the Depression and the World Wars, the droughts and the wildfires. We’ll make it through this. This mountain made us strong. We take care of her and she takes care of us. Wood for our house, coal for our furnace, meat for our table and sap for our syrup.”
The syrup dripped from the paddle like liquid gold. Matt watched as his father tested the temperature then stirred with a long wooden pole. The new evaporator pan was the size of a twin bed, and it bubbled with reducing sap like a wizard’s cauldron. “Can I try it?”
“Come here.”
Matt scrambled to the pan, taking the stirrer from his father’s hand as if accepting a sword. Heat stung his face, and snaps and crackles filled the small cabin.
“Mix it slow, pull the cooler edges into the middle. That’s it, real easy. Like you’re petting your girl.”
“Dad.” The heat on Matt’s face suddenly had nothing to do with the fire.
Carl chucked him on the shoulder. “You think I haven’t been there? You and Jenny are getting tight. You just remember, any dog will scratch an itch. But you have to treat a lady like you treat the land. You love her, protect her and respect her, then she’ll love you forever.”
“You were wrong,” Matt whispered into the horizon visible through the door. The peaks and valleys were silent, hushed with the lethargy of afternoon. Memories so painful he’d locked then deep inside his soul burst out, stealing his breath.
The calls that never stopped, incessantly screaming from the phone until it, too, fell silent from nonpayment. His mother working extra shifts at the hardware store just to put food on the table. Himself quitting football and track to take a better-paying part-time job at Granger’s Feed and Supply. His father looking everywhere, anywhere, for work to support a family. But there were hundreds of men looking and only a handful of spots. Many men left, pulling up stakes and cutting ties, moving to more urban cities and states to look for work. His father wouldn’t leave the mountainside.
Not until the bank and the sheriff made him. Matt knew it wasn’t his doing, but recalling that sheriff’s face burned through his gut with sour hatred. Until that day, he’d believed his father would pull off some last-minute save, some miracle that would make everything better.
The first month had been the hardest. He’d watch his sister sleeping on the truck seat and ignore the soft tears his mother cried around their small fire made illegally in the National Forest. His father simply stared into the flames, aging right before Matt’s eyes. The only spark of life he’d shown was two weeks into their homelessness when Matt said he was dropping out of school.
“Over my dead fucking body!”
“Carl,” his mother shushed, looking pointedly at the truck where Abby slept.
“Dad, Granger said if I wanted more hours, he’d give them to me. I’m underage so he doesn’t have to pay me benefits and—”
“No. You keep your ass in school. It’s my job to provide for this family and, goddamn it, I’ll do it.” The anger couldn’t hide the fear on his father’s face. He stomped around the fire, grabbed his hunting rifle from the truck bed and filled his pockets with shells. The heavy-duty flashlight was a poor substitute for a halogen spotlight but would work
for momentarily freezing smaller game. “I’m going to go get something for morning. Deb, you talk to this boy, get it through his thick skull. He’s better’an me, can be better.”
“Dad.”
Carl Shaw ignored him, stalking into the darkness without another word. His mom wrapped her arms around him. “Let it go, baby. He’s hurting and embarrassed and feeling like less than a man right now. He’ll figure it out. Just trust him.”
Matt had trusted him. And that trust had crumbled like a house of cards. With help from the church, they’d moved into a two-bedroom trailer on the south side of town. It was cramped and old, but the luxury of running water and electric lights made it seem better than it was. Even sleeping on the donated lumpy couch was preferable to sleeping on the lumpy ground with winter approaching.
“Matty, come on, we’ll be late for school.” Abby whacked his head with his pillow. He cracked open crusted eyes, wishing he could slip back into the dream about Jenny and that little pink bathing suit she’d worn last year. In his dreams, he was still good enough for her and she still loved him.
He stumbled to the lone bathroom, splashed water on his face and took a leak. He had a chemistry test he was trying not to fail. So much had happened that studying was next to the bottom of his list but he’d crammed last night. His mom squeezed by him into the bathroom and he went to Abby’s tiny room to get dressed. When he came out, Abby was on their father’s lap.
Matt stopped. Dad had stopped letting her do that two years ago, said she was too big. But now he cradled her like a baby.
“You be a good girl, smidgeon.”He smacked a kiss on her forehead and held her tight.
His mom rushed out of the bathroom, herding them toward the door. Carl caught her around the waist and kissed her. Matt looked for his textbook, avoiding watching them. Through the paper-thin trailer walls, he’d heard them making love last night and, ew, no kid should hear that.
“You’re the finest woman God ever created. Love ya, darlin’.”
His mom touched his dad’s cheek. “What are you going to do today?”
“Heard the charcoal plant up in Elkins is hiring. Thought I’d go give it a try.”
She wished him luck, told Matt to hurry and bolted out the trailer door. Matt jammed his shoes on, not bothering with the laces. He grabbed a piece of cold toast off the counter and headed for the door. Carl snagged his arm.
“Things have been bad lately, I know that. But they’ll get better, promise.”
“I know, Dad.”
Carl studied him, then nodded. “You stepped up, acted like a real man. You’re not a boy anymore. I’m proud of you.”
Toast stuck in his throat. “Good luck today.”
The hand that squeezed his neck was huge, warm and rough. “Everything’s gonna be all right.”
“You were wrong.” Matt’s whisper went unheard except for the trees. “Things weren’t all right. You weren’t there. I needed my dad way more than I needed a bedroom or a pair of jeans. Abby needed you when that jackass knocked her up. Mom needed you when her medical tests came back weird. We needed you.”
Somehow he’d moved, left the bed and now stood beside the syrup drains. The finishing pan, a smaller heavier stainless steel box, was cool under his shaking hands. Everything rushed back—the tears, the shock, the anger. He gripped the pan until his hands ached and his chest burned.
“You son of a bitch, you left us.”
He tore from the sugarhouse, fire pumping from his marrow and clogging his throat, charging into the open glen with a speed that throbbed in his sore legs. The mountains looked down at him with silent eyes. His entire life, he’d been surrounded by those summits and dales and found nothing but peace. Today, there was no peace. They were still here and his father wasn’t.
“Why did you take so much from him? He should have lived for us, damn it!”
A hawk cried in the blue distance, too far away to see but her voice carried on the wind. The leaves rustled. The mountains were sentinels with an unimpeded view into their lives but, for all their longevity, they were helpless to change anything. Just as he’d been, standing at the open grave, watching that gleaming box lower into the ground.
His gritty eyes closed, cheeks lined with tears he didn’t remember letting spill. He squatted, rubbing at his face. The harsh truth was his father had faced all he could and then he’d broken. Crumbled like shale under a hammer.
Hard lines bit into his sore thigh and he stood, pulling at whatever poked at him. His pocketknife. He flipped the blade open and stared. Sunlight danced along the short steel. It was scratched and nicked from years of use. His thumb brushed the cutting edge. He needed to sharpen it soon.
His eyes drifted up to the ridge. His whetstone was slate. Slate that had once been brittle shale. But time, pressure and heat had changed the fragile shale to hardened slate, which honed a dull edge to razor sharpness. Slate that smoothed away the nicks and polished it to a glossy finish.
He wasn’t shale. He was slate. The land had broken his father but it hadn’t broken him, wouldn’t break him. He’d become a forester and protected the mountains as they hadn’t protected him. For every tree he cut, he was cultivating the land, letting the natural reforestation thrive. He’d learned to coax growth out of near-dead stumps, how to cut away the decay and let the life flourish, how to thin the oldest so the weakest could grow.
Thin the oldest so the weakest could grow.
His head hung back. Mountain wind raked through his hair, cooled his face and teased his nose. Exhaustion drained the anger from his blood. Damn, this place dredged up so much, both the bitter and the sweet. He licked his lips, the phantom flavor of maple syrup thick on his tongue.
This place hadn’t changed, not at its heart. It still needed people to work the land, to draw the thin sap from the wood and turn into syrup. Kayla had spun magic of hard work and sweat inside that room. She’d resurrected a ghost, given it flesh and breathed life into it.
But it wasn’t the ghost of his past. It was the ghost of the mountains. That was what called him, had always called him and would always call him. It was what drew her to this place. Not this piece of land but the peace of the land. It took Kayla coming here to make him realize it. He belonged to the mountains, all of them, not just this small section.
This was hers. And so was he.
“I miss you, Dad. But I’m okay. Even if this isn’t ours anymore, I’ll never leave home.”
* * *
Webb and Jonah refused to let him help unload the truck, wrangling the heavy generators and water tank off the bed themselves. They commented on the varying colors of his bruises while installing the generators on the concrete platform.
“Somebody needs to tell Shaw the expression is redneck, not black-and-blue neck.”
Matt threw a screwdriver but Webb ducked.
“He just wanted an excuse for Kayla to fawn all over him.” Jonah copped a falsetto tone. “Please, baby, it hurts. Just rub it a little.”
“Sad case when you have to get nailed by an oak to get nailed by a woman.” Webb shook his head.
Knowing he’d be cracking the same jokes had the situation been reverse, Matt just snorted. “At least I’m getting some.”
Jonah’s dark head popped up over the generator. “Hey, speaking of getting some, did I tell you I scored with Amy Blackwell last week?”
Webb’s barking laugh scared the wrens from the trees. “Everybody scores with Easy Blackwell.”
“And her sister?”
The wrench halted in Webb’s hands. “Together?”
Jonah’s eyebrows bobbed up and down. “And I didn’t have to play chicken with a log, either.”
The teasing continued as they hooked up the tank inside the sugarhouse. With that done, they set out to restock the firewood supply for sugar se
ason. Webb checked his chainsaw while Jonah retrieved two axes from the truck bed.
“Jesus, it’s hot for October,” Jonah complained.
Webb tossed his sweatshirt onto the truck seat. “Indian summer’s fighting to hold on but winter’s gonna hit hard and fast. It’ll be a bitch.”
Matt merely shucked his flannel shirt and smiled. Colder winters meant sweeter sap and more of it. He’d take it.
Webb revved the saw and downed several smaller trees along the new dirt road. He wore safety glasses, more to keep the sawdust from his glass eye than anything. Jonah and Matt cut the logs into huge chunks, tossing them in the back of Webb’s truck for transport back to the sugarhouse.
Two hours later, sweat ran in rivulets down his back. Matt pulled off his T-shirt, wiped his face with it then tossed it aside. Webb and Jonah soon followed. The rhythm of their falling axes echoed through the trees without pause. Chopping wood drove home how sore he really was but he’d never let his buddies know it. They knew, or they wouldn’t be here, helping out.
“Here we have three prime examples of the Common American Redneck in their native setting.” Molly’s narrating voice teased from the road, where she and Kayla leaned on her car, fanning their faces exaggeratedly. “You can see why the subspecies name is Hottie Americanus. Note the typical dirty jeans drawing attention to the tight posterior, the lack of shirts to flaunt the rigid abdominals and the casual display of muscular brute force.”
“I do see,” Kayla said in a bland tone that didn’t match her sparkling eyes. “I bring to your attention the example on the left. Although he’s supremely suited to the environment, his coloring is off, showing a marked battle with the forces of nature. That he remains standing is a true testament to his stubborn temperament.”
Molly’s lip quivered but she kept her voice cool. “Noted. If these animals remain true to form, now that a female member of the species has been spotted, a display of prowess should follow.”