Raven's Peak: Cold Hard Bitch

by Cole Savage

  “Boys, you know the routine. Sponge off by the well and brush your teeth. Tomorrow I’m goin’ to town to get provisions, I expect you’ll behave? Don’t mistake my good will for weakness. You step out of line one inch— I ’ll beat you with a pine switch till you bleed.”

  After dinner, T.D lit a campfire inside a rim of rocks he had collected years ago, and talked to the boys while they ate their spoils. After dinner the boys milled around the fire, throwing stones at designated targets.

  “Get cleaned up, boys.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They sponged off by the well, brushed their teeth and headed back to the campfire where they sat on a live edge log across from T.D. He shared mountain lore with Tyler and Cole, who had never experienced a day like this.

  It was apparent that T.D was getting tired, so he shared one last thought before he laid down for the night.

  “Boys, the best days an Angler spends on a river are those he recollects because they didn’t go well. Not the perty days when the sun was shinin’, the ugly ones where the snow is blowin’ sideways and the edge of the river is frozen. The days when the wintry weather lashes at the land without guilt. Days when you’re shivering so bad you think you can’t make it back to the cabin without losin’ a foot to the blistering’ cold that prevails in these here mountains, no matter how strong you will it or fight it. Not like those snug-warm days, when tyin’ new patterns of dry-fly’s is simple cause you ain’t shiverin’, and far from the memory of leaf-dapple on the cool clear waters, and the play of light from the dances of cowslip and Buttercup in the chalk-stream.

  Tyler and Cole stayed out late, sitting on a log by the fire. T.D retired for the night, and Cole flipped a twig into the fire and watched, fascinated with its fate, and theirs, while Tyler poked the fire with a thin tree branch. The sky was black as oil smoke, and the boys could see and hear explosions of lightning inside the canyon, that were deafening. The boys couldn’t say what time it was, since T.D didn’t possess a clock or a watch, but it was early in the morning when they retired to the loft, where they fell in a deep slumber. No doubt from the days exhausting events.

  Before the sun sprayed its rays over the eastern flank of the Appalachians, and only after a few hours of sleep, T.D shook the boys awake, and something was wrong in the way he looked at them. His lips were pulled tightly, so hard they were turning white as he smothered the flames engulfing the garments resting next to the boys on the floor, where the lamp had spilled over. Tyler woke up coughing and hacking. He grabbed Cole by the nape of the shirt and helped him move away from the burning mattress, holding the bottom of his shirt over his mouth, trying to escape the toxic smoke. Using a blanket, T.D snuffed the flames out quickly, then went downstairs to open the windows to ventilate the house. After a quick clean-up, T.D opened the front door and called the boys back inside. The boys came in the door wearing tighty whites, soiled t-shirts, their heads down. Tyler looked up at T.D crying, and said through blubbering,

  “Were sorry, mister. We forgot to turn the lamp off. Please don’t hurt us. It won’t happen again.” Cole was whimpering silently, looking down, T.D next to them wiping his singed hands with a wet towel— teeth clenched, fire in his eyes.

  “Get the rest of the mess cleaned up. There’s clean sheets in the pantry. Make your beds. We’ll talk about this at daylight.” That night, coming from the loft, T.D heard a sound, somewhere between a low rhythmic moaning and sighs of unbearable pain. It was Cole.

  Morning came fast, and to Tyler’s surprise, T.D hadn’t woken them. He looked down and saw the sun's bright rays coming through the two front windows, infusing the common area with the sun's early light. He woke Cole, but Cole resisted. He pushed Tyler’s arms away and rolled over to resume his sleep.

  “Cole, get up. Get up.” Tyler went downstairs to see where T. D was, and Cole came to the edge of the loft. Tyler looked at him when he realized T. D’s truck wasn’t there.

  “Cole, he’s gone.” Cole heard the words, they scampered down the ladder, and stood by the window looking at the spot where T. D’s truck was parked last night.

  “He said he had to go to the store… What do you want to do, Cole?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “We can run and try to find someone to help us.”

  “Ty, did you hear what he said?”

  “I know, little brother. He said we’re far from everything, and if we try to run he’ll beat us with a switch.”

  “Ty, I remember when Momma hit us— it hurt real bad. T.D has real big arms. I think if he beats us with a switch, it’s gonna hurt a bunch more than when Momma hits us.”

  “We can’t just do nothing, Cole,” he said with his palms up, watching a dust trail behind trees.

  “Hurry, Cole. Get dressed. We don’t want him to know we just woke up.” They ran up that ladder and quickly remembered that their pants had burned last night.

  “Crap, Cole. The only pants we got are hanging outside.”

  But it was too late, T.D was getting out of the truck carrying two brown sacks.

  “Tyler, Cole. Run out here and help.” T.D walked past them on the front porch, headed for the kitchen, and Tyler whispered to Cole.

  “He didn’t say anything about still being in underwear.”

  “Boys bring the bags and sit down.”

  The boys made two trips to the truck for groceries, then retreated to the hearth and stood next to each other, heads down.

  “Sit down, boys.”

  “Mister, we’re sorry about last night.”

  CHAPTER 24

  T.D was ferocious in the way he lived his life in the mountains of Appalachia, but he did it prudently and reverently, in full recognition of the mysteries veiled in its canyons, ravines, valleys, gulches, and rivers. For T.D, this place answered his imaginative need to escape the grind of the concrete jungle, and he found powerful solace here. Mountains, like all wildernesses, challenged complacent convictions that were easy to lapse into, because the world outside of Appalachia was made for humans by humans, arranged and controlled by humans, to ease the burdens of humans.

  He was unflinching and never forgot that environments like Raven’s Peak did not respond to the flip of a switch, turn of a key, or tapping of a faucet. Raven’s Peak refuted people’s faith and trust in man-made groves of glass, concrete and steel. They posed questions about people’s durability and the importance of a master plan for happiness, that for most, could not exist where machinations rule the days. Raven’s Peak induces a modesty in all who flee that which is savage and misunderstood. Life here is blue-printed, not for everyone. The truth of existence here is a happiness separated from the quasi-happy easy life, in a world filled with chaos, where few experience true contentment and enlightenment. There’s a music in the forest, a clean air where T.D is unheard when he breathes the filtered air of the gods.

  People who don't know the forest well, imagine it as a kind of undifferentiated mass of greenery, a transient place, an endless continuation of trees lining roads that take the populace anywhere but here. People speed by the forest at seventy miles an hour, on roads meant to distract them from one of God’s greatest wonders, and still, they wonder how forest and mountains can hold anyone's interest for more than a minute because it all looks the same at seventy miles an hour. Bogs, ponds they’ve never seen, hot springs invisible from the road, sunsets that take your breath away, and rainstorms so cool, so clean, you’d swear God was dropping rain from the heavens by the bucket full.

  T.D was fully aware that his health and survival depended on other forms of life up here, so he never dismissed their interests in whatever he did. As a wilderness advocate, he treaded lightly, far from the beaten paths of metropolis, and he respected and nurtured the soil of his multi-million-acre back yard. Wildness he had found, that resided not only out there in the expanse of those ranges, but right here, in and around his cabin, even inside himself.

  For him, Raven’s Peak was more a quality of life
than an actual place, and though humans can't produce it in an assembly line, they can still nourish it and love it like T.D— if they gave it a chance. It had something to do with how he felt being in the wild. What it was like to walk for miles through untapped trails with no other reason than to witness what most have failed to see—copses of trees, meadows, milk-laden peaks, streams and rivers, grasses, sunrises and sunsets, and rock formations so beautiful, it should be a crime that few have witnessed them. And let’s not forget the animals that provided his sustenance.

  His experience here was powerful and fundamental, he couldn’t imagine living any other way, and as long as Raven’s Peak existed, this is how T.D wanted to feel—not like a human in the wild, but the wild living inside the human. Any other way would lead to the death of his soul.

  The new school of thought would have most believe that you take on nature by loading your family with every conceivable measure of shelter, bedding, defense, and comfort under the sun. But that isn't what being in the mountains was all about for people like T.D. It was about feeling free, unbound, dropping the distractions and barriers of crowded cities, not bringing the city to the mountains. Sure, T.D was disillusioned in some aspects of his decision making, but he believed deep down to his core, that kids who get to see Brown Bears, Eagles, Coyotes, Deer, Moose, Grouse, and other similar backdrops, who also got to go fishing and hunting, that each morning would have a certain kind of fundamental foundation, far from the blitzkrieg for kids living in big cities occupied with video games and a litany of material wants. For anyone who was lucky to experience the mountains, the daily backdrop of the natural wonders was a kind of edification, a cultivation of logic, an affirmation that cannot be duplicated in any other place— unique and significant still, in a world moving at the speed of sound. The nature and quality of life out here was increasingly rare, and investment and providence cherished far into the future, and into adulthood. If T.D ever had his own children, this is how he would want them to live. He would want his kids to believe that the beauty up here, though not quite witnessed on any given day by most, in any given moment, around any bend or hill, the uncivilized world of Appalachia had a beautiful order and pattern, even a logic, something he’d like to mimic in his kids, in all seasons, and all things.”

  *****************

  T.D was on the sofa, a flint in his hand, looking at the boys, sharpening the ax he had flung into the wood shed two days ago; the boys sitting on the hearth next to each other. Tyler holding Cole’s hand, waiting for T. D’s reprisal after nearly burning the cabin down. T. D’s legs were spread, he was wearing overalls and a plaid shirt with his suspenders around his waist.

  “Mister, we’re sorry about last night. We promise it won’t happen again.”

  T.D quit sharpening the ax for a moment and looked at them.

  “What part would that be? The part where the two of you just about burned my cabin down— that part?”

  “Yes, sir. It won’t happen again.” Tyler said, Cole shaking, so Tyler put his arm around him.

  “You boys know why I’m sharpening this axe.

  “No, sir.” T.D put the head of the axe on the bear rug and looked at the boys, elbows on his thighs.

  “I’m sharpening this ax because you can’t cut firewood with a dull blade. Same as you can’t drive a truck with no oil, or go hunting with a rusty rifle. I do these things to survive. I ain’t got no nanny runnin’ round, pickin’ my garments off the floor and throwing them in one of those fancy lectric washers. I ain’t got a Betty sweeping floors behind me and cookin’ supper night after night… The point is— I wake up every mornin’, and every mornin’ I have to decide if I want to eat.” T.D paused and leaned back on the sofa.

  “Now, if I want to eat, that requires I have to hunt or fish. I don’t suspect some pizza place two hours away is gonna bring a hot pizza to my door, even if I wanted to pay for it. My pappy died when I was a rug rat, and my Momma, bless her soul, did the best she could.”

  “But, sir, we don’t have a dad, not one that showed us these things.”

  “Don’t interrupt me, youngsters. I heard you when you told me your daddy wasn’t around the first time. Let me speak my peace. I made a choice early on that I wasn’t gonna live like that. Having to depend on somebody else to feed me, hold me, and wash my garments. I want to have supper every night, not just on the night’s Momma had a job... Boys, you know what I hate more than anything in this world?” T.D said, leaning forward, looking them in the eye.

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you, Cole?”

  “No, sir.” T.D picked the axe off the floor and held it across his knees.

  “You boys ever heard the expression, drainer or slacker?

  “Yes, sir. Our grandma used to call our dad that whenever she was fightin’ with mom.” T.D chuckled. “Okay. So, I reckon you know what it means?

  “Well, sir. I guess it means a daddy that isn’t around anymore.”

  T.D smiled. “Not exactly, Tyler. What it means is a man won’t get off his ass to do the work required.”

  “Mister are you talking about pretty boys?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Tyler?”

  “Well, Momma— that’s our grandma, always says to Mom—Why can’t that pretty boy get a job. Is he too sappy to work? That sum-bitch. I don’t know what sappy is, sir, but it sounds like what you’re talking about.” T.D chuckled.

  “That’s exactly right, Tyler. Look at me, boys, and heed my word. Ain’t nobody in this world gonna take care of you when your momma’s gone. Everything I taught myself gave me the wherewithal to lift my middle finger to the world.”

  “What’s that mean, Mister?”

  “What I mean, Tyler, is, there ain’t nobody out there tellin’ me what time to wake up, what time to go to work, and what time to go to the outhouse. That’s why I live alone and do my own thing. If a man don’t have a beef with the world, the world can’t mess him up if he’s livin’ in harmony with it…Outside the mountains, people like your mother, your grandmother and father, allow the world to use them because they have no power there, and once they except that they’ve made a choice, and the only way out is to use your head and the physical strength that God gave you— make the choice early that no one will ever use you to wipe their shoes on, and depend on no one.

  “Why is that, mister?” asked Cole.

  “Well, Cole. Everything I need is out here. There ain’t nothin’ I can’t catch, build or fix. On most nights I eat better than most folks.”

  “Is that why those boys are buried out there, sir, because they didn’t help.” Caught off-guard by the question, T.D said, “huh”. Chuckling, he looked at Tyler.

  “That’s exactly right, Tyler. Those saddle bums couldn’t carry their own weight. There’s no room in my life for youngins’ who want to spend their days playing electronics— loafin’ around their steads, watching their mom’s do the work. My world requires I work hard, and If I work hard I don’t need to depend on nobody. I control my own destiny and I never have to call someone to help cause I’ve fallen on hard times. Look at me, boys.”

  T.D placed the axe on the floor, leaned forward, his hands on his knees and said, “If I don’t make a plug nickel from today until the next day— it don’t matter. Everything I need is up here. It ain’t about the greenbacks, neither— it’s about survival.”

  “Mister, why haven’t you yelled at us about spilling the lamp?” said Tyler.

  “Let me ask you somethin’?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Tyler.

  “Did you do it on purpose?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you do it because you were slothful?”

  “We don’t know what that means.”

  “We’re you bein’ lazy?” The boys jumped up simultaneously and said, “no, sir.”

  “Tyler were you tryin’ to kill your brother?”

  “No, sir. I love Cole. We’re brothers for life.

  “Here’s how
I see it, boys. It was an accident, pure and simple. You boys ain’t had enough training for anyone to hold you accountable. That’s why you need to remember what I tell you, and do as I say. I’m willin’ to bet that from now on, you boys will turn that lamp off before you do anything else, because you both understand what could have happened if I hadn’t been able to put the fire out.”

  T.D picked the axe up, put it over his shoulder, leaned back on the sofa, and said an octave lower, “Some things don’t need to be repeated… Now, I’m spitballin’ here, but I’ll bet that fire taught you boys a very important lesson.

  “Yes, sir.” Tyler said.

  “Sir are we ever going to see our mom again?” asked Cole. T.D shifted on the sofa, uncomfortable with the question.

  “That’s a good question, Cole. And I ain’t lyin’ when I tell you I ain’t never let anyone I’ve taken, go. But if you boys behave— work hard— I reckon I’m willin’ to think about it… That’s the best I can do.” Cole whimpered.

  “Mister, what are you going to do with us? Why are you keeping us here?” asked Tyler.

  “It’s real simple, Tyler. I want you boys to be the sons I never had. But I promise I won’t hurt you if you do what I tell you. Is that Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cole is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  CHAPTER 25

  The next morning the sun was nothing more than a spark among the mountains, the sky a chemical green when T.D returned from town.

  “Tyler, in those sacks there’s new trousers and shirts for you and your brother,” T.D said, pointing at the bags. “Try the waders I bought you, on, and you’ll find caps in there to keep your lures on.” T.D pulled a new sharpening stone out of a brown sack and threw it at Tyler. “Share this with Cole and don’t lose it. When we get back I’m gonna show you buckaroos how to sharpen knives and axes.”