Gap Creek

by Robert Morgan

  I seen how he felt and tried to soothe him. “It was me that was fooled by them first,” I said. I wanted to make it sound like I was taking part of the blame.

  “You should have seen them for what they was,” Hank said.

  “I know I should have,” I said.

  “Any fool could have seen through them,” Hank said.

  “I should have knowed better when Caroline didn’t remember what Mr. Pendergast kept his money in,” I said. If I let Hank criticize me it would make him feel better and then he wouldn’t be so mad at hisself. Nobody likes to be criticized, and I hated to be criticized, but I seen it was easier to let him blame me than to live with a man who was enraged at hisself. And once he got over his anger I hoped he would be fair to me again. When Hank pouted like a little boy the best thing was to treat him like a little boy.

  “You should have threatened to call the law,” Hank said.

  “Except I didn’t know any law to call,” I said.

  “They’ll never be caught,” Hank said. He was feeling so bad he talked in a low voice, almost a mutter.

  “If we tell the sheriff what they took, they might be caught selling the clock or silverware, the cream pitcher. That would prove we didn’t take them.”

  “I ain’t going to the sheriff,” Hank said.

  “What if we get accused of selling off Mr. Pendergast’s things?” I said.

  “Nobody knows what was in this house,” Hank said.

  “It would be better if we made a list of what they took,” I said. “That way if the real heirs turn up, we’ll have something to show them.”

  “Are you telling me what to do?” Hank shouted. He looked at me hard, like I had insulted him.

  “I’m just saying it might pay us to make a record of what happened, and let the sheriff know,” I said.

  “I’ll decide when it’s time to tell the sheriff,” Hank said.

  “I know you will,” I said.

  “What does that mean?” Hank said.

  “That you will tell the sheriff when you want to,” I said.

  Hank was ready to answer like I was arguing with him. But there was nothing to argue with in what I had said. He opened his mouth and then turned away. He picked up the sugar bowl and throwed it at the stove, and sugar scattered all over the stove and floor like snow.

  “It don’t matter,” I said. But he didn’t answer. He was already out the back door, and I didn’t see him again till after dark.

  MOST TIMES WE stayed away from the store, because we didn’t have any money to trade there. A store is a sociable place in a valley like Gap Creek. But after losing our money to Caroline Glascock we didn’t feel like seeing anybody. And women don’t hang around a store that much anyway, not the way men do. Some men seem to slouch around the store every day, setting by the stove in winter spitting tobacco juice in a bucket and playing checkers, or setting on the bench out front in the summer. They keep up on the gossip, I reckon, though most of the time you don’t hear them say much. It’s one thing for a woman to go to the store when she has money to spend. But I didn’t have money, and I stayed away from the store at the crossroads.

  But along in December we run completely out of coffee, and then we got so low on sugar I done without it in everything but the rare cake for Sunday dinner. Now you can live without coffee, though it don’t hardly feel like living when you get up in the morning and have nothing to go with your grits but water. And you can use honey or molasses if you have them, instead of sugar. But nobody would do without either if they had any choice.

  I tried to think of something to trade at the store for coffee and sugar. We didn’t gather enough eggs to have one a day for ourselves, so it would take weeks to save up two or three dozen, even if we didn’t use none. I didn’t have enough butter to sell.

  But sometimes the Lord puts a thought in your mind at the right time. I recalled that people had said Mr. Pendergast had been a digger of ginseng roots. Several had mentioned that to me, and I had seen a little sang hoe on the back porch. But I hadn’t seen any roots around the place. He must have been too feeble lately to climb up on the ridge looking for ginseng, which was usually found far back on the ridges. Then it occurred to me I had seen some roots hanging from a rafter in the attic when I climbed up to the loft to get the single bed for Ma Richards. I had noticed the roots up there and then forgot all about them.

  I dropped what I was doing and run right up the stairs and climbed the ladder to the attic. I’d not been up there since we first come to Gap Creek. There was light from the two windows in the loft, and I was struck by the powerful smell of smoke and old wood. I hadn’t stopped to bring a lamp, so I had to let my eyes get used to the dim light. There was chairs and old trunks, dirty fruit jars, coils of rope and rusty steel traps. Some leaves of bleached-out tobacco hung from nails in a rafter, with hammocks of spiderwebs between them. It was warm by the chimney.

  And then I seen the roots, hanging on a piece of twine not far from the chimney. Mr. Pendergast must have hung them there and then forgot them. There must have been thirty roots, all covered with cobwebs. Some looked like dried sweet taters and some like shriveled figures of people, and some like the private parts of a man. I felt one and found it dry and scaly. Was it too dried up to sell? I untied the roots from the string and gathered them in my apron. If there was a pound of them they could be worth two or three dollars, maybe more. But I didn’t think they amounted to a pound, they was so dry and brittle. Holding the closed apron in my left hand I climbed back down the ladder.

  Hank had gone out in the woods looking for another turkey, I reckon. He had been feeling so bad lately I didn’t want to ask him too many questions. And I didn’t want to wait for him to come back to take the ginseng to Poole’s store. I got a paper bag to carry the roots in and put on my coat. It was a sunny day, and the road was a little muddy from thaw.

  The crossroads was only a mile and a half away. When I reached the store I seen George Poole setting by the stove playing checkers with a man named Slim Rankin. And Pug Little was watching them play. I had met them before at Mr. Pendergast’s funeral. George looked surprised to see me, because I almost never come to the store. “Hey, Miss Julie,” he said. He always called me Miss Julie, never just Julie.

  “Howdy,” I said and nodded to him and Slim and Pug.

  “To what do we owe the honor of your visit?” George said. He turned his eyes back to the checkerboard.

  “I have brought some roots,” I said, and placed the bag on the counter.

  “What kind of roots?” George said.

  “Sang roots,” I said.

  George made a move on the checkerboard. “It’s mighty late in the season to be digging sang roots,” he said.

  “These was dug last year,” I said, “and have been drying ever since.”

  All the men looked at me, for they must have guessed the roots was Mr. Pendergast’s. George stood up and walked around to the other side of the counter. He emptied the poke I had brought on the counter. The roots looked littler than they had in the attic.

  “You ain’t been digging sang roots, have you?” Slim Rankin said.

  “I didn’t know Hank was a sang digger,” Pug Little said and grinned at Slim.

  “Mr. Pendergast left them in the attic,” I said.

  “Pendergast wasn’t able to go digging for the past year,” Slim said.

  “I don’t know when they was dug,” I said. All the cans on the shelves behind George looked like roosting birds staring at me. The store smelled of harness leather and coffee and wood smoke.

  “These is awful dry,” George said. He took a pan off his balance scale and heaped the roots in the pan. Then he placed the pan on one side of the scale and added little weights to the other side.

  “Preacher Gibbs used to dig ginseng,” Slim said.

  “Everybody used to dig sang,” Pug said, “back when there was still some to dig.”

  “There ain’t but three quarters of a pound here,” Geo
rge said.

  “Is that all?” I said.

  “And these is so dry and old I don’t know if the man in Greenville will take them,” George said.

  “He just sells it to the Chinese, and the Chinese will buy any kind of ginseng,” Slim said.

  “Being dry don’t hurt sang,” Pug said.

  “The price is down for roots anyway,” George said. I figured George was going to tell me he couldn’t buy the roots, that I had wasted my time taking them down there. I wondered if he thought the roots wasn’t mine to sell.

  “Whatever you give me I’ll later give to Mr. Pendergast’s heirs,” I said. “When they can be found.” I was glad nobody knowed about us giving the things to Caroline Glascock.

  George worked with a pencil on a sheet of brown wrapping paper on the counter. “At two dollars and seventy-five cents a pound I can pay you two dollars and six cents,” he said.

  “You mean you’ll pay me two dollars?” I said.

  “And six cents,” George said.

  “Make sure he gives you the six cents,” Slim said.

  “You have to watch old George,” Pug said.

  I had not seen that much money since Hank give his five dollars to Caroline Glascock or whoever the woman was.

  “Honey, I wish it could be more,” George said. I guess he seen the astonishment on my face.

  “George is a terrible skinflint,” Slim said.

  “I would hate to see George try to go through the eye of a needle into heaven,” Pug said.

  I decided not to ask any more questions. I wanted to take my coffee and sugar and get out of there. I wanted to tell Hank about our good fortune. Maybe it would cheer him up. “Can I get five pounds of sugar and five pounds of coffee beans?” I said.

  “If you can carry that much,” George said. He scooped out the beans and sugar into paper bags and tied them with string. I took a bag on either arm like twin babies.

  “You have twenty-seven cents left over,” George said. I put the bags back on the counter and took the coins.

  “Thank you, George,” I said.

  “I almost forgot: you have a letter,” George said. He stepped over to the pigeonholes that was the post office at the far end of the counter and brought back an envelope with pencil writing on the front. I put the letter in my pocket because I didn’t want to read it in front of George and Slim and Pug.

  As I walked up the road with the bags in the crooks of my arms and the envelope in my pocket, I kept thinking of the letter. From the handwriting I could tell it was from Mama. Was she writing to say that somebody was sick, or a relative had died? Was she asking how I felt? Was she coming down for a visit?

  There was a big white pine by the road about halfway back to Mr. Pendergast’s house. When I got to the big tree I told myself I needed a rest. I was breathing for two and didn’t want to hurry. And I couldn’t wait no longer to see what was in the letter. I climbed the bank and set down in the needles under the tall tree.

  The letter was wrote on two sheets of lined tablet paper in Mama’s neat hand. “I hope you are well, we are well. I hope everything is allrite with the baby,” Mama wrote. “There is no news here accept that Lou and Garland is getting married and they are coming down to Gap Creek for a visit afterward.”

  I turned over the page and read the back, as the breeze fluttered the papers in my hand. “And Carolyn is coming with them,” Mama said. “Carolyn is going to stay a few days with you and Hank while Lou and Garland goes on to Greenville.”

  My hands was shaking with the news. It would be so wonderful to see Lou. Except I hated for her and Garland to see how poor we was. I turned to the last page to see when they was supposed to arrive.

  “They will come down to Gap Creek next Wednesday,” Mama said. I tried to recall what day of the week it was. It was already Wednesday, because it had been four days since Hank went hunting for turkeys on Saturday. They was coming today. They might already be there. I stuffed the letter in my coat pocket and gathered up the two paper bags. I hoped they hadn’t arrived at the house while I was away and seen my dirty dishes, and the bedroom where nothing had been picked up.

  • • •

  YOU KNOW HOW it is when you’re trying to hurry. You stretch your legs but your feet stick to the ground. The road ahead grows longer and longer. I hurried toward the house, and finally when I come around the bend I seen Daddy’s old wagon parked in the yard with Sally still hitched between the shafts. Lou and Garland and Carolyn was already there. They had seen my dirty house. I slowed down and caught my breath. My belly felt uneasy, and I stopped to rest a little before climbing the steps. There was voices in the living room. Hank’s gun was leaning by the front door, but I didn’t see no sign of a turkey.

  “Well look what the cat drug in,” Lou said as I come through the door.

  “And look what washed down off the mountain,” I said. Lou shrieked and run to me for a hug. I hadn’t seen her in nearly three months.

  “Don’t want to press you too hard,” she said and patted my belly. It felt so good to see Lou.

  “You’re looking mighty pert,” I said, and set the paper bags on the sofa.

  “I said to Garland when he asked me to get hitched,” Lou said, “I said, I’ll marry you if you’ll take me down to Greenville so we can stop and see Julie and Hank on the way.”

  Garland stood by the fireplace and tipped his hat to me. “Take off your coats and stay awhile,” I said. I wondered why Lou had decided to take Garland back. I figured she would tell me when we was alone.

  “And welcome, Carolyn,” I said.

  Carolyn was talking to Hank in the doorway to the kitchen and I patted her on the shoulder.

  “Mama sent you some things,” Carolyn said and pointed to a box on a chair. There was a ham wrapped up in brown paper and several jars of jelly and jam.

  “Why don’t we all set down,” I said. “And I’ll take these things to the kitchen.”

  “We’ll help you out,” Lou said, and picked up the bags from the couch.

  “I can do it,” I said.

  “You ought to be careful,” Lou said. “Grab that box,” she said to Carolyn.

  “Expecting a baby is not a sickness,” I said.

  “Didn’t say it was,” Lou said.

  “I was going to clean this house up,” I said, “but I had to go to the store.”

  “We can help you,” Lou said. “Can’t we, Carolyn.”

  “Hank said he would show me the barn and the springhouse,” Carolyn said.

  “You can do that later,” Lou said, sounding just like Mama. I had forgot how much Lou’s voice was like Mama’s.

  “I wish Mama could have come,” I said.

  “Mama won’t never leave the place anymore, except to go to church,” Lou said. “I think she’s got arthritis in her back, because she walks stooped over.”

  “I wish I could see her,” I said.

  Carolyn walked around the kitchen looking into pots and boxes and inspecting cans and bottles on the shelves. She opened the sugar canister and seen it was empty. “Where is your sugar?” she said.

  “I got some today at the store,” I said. “And some fresh coffee beans.”

  “You don’t need to fix anything special for us,” Lou said.

  “It’s your honeymoon,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Lou said and hugged me again. I’d never seen her so happy.

  “I want to go to Florida when I have a honeymoon,” Carolyn said.

  “You will, darling, you will,” I said. Carolyn had never had to work like the rest of us, and she was the most romantic of all us sisters.

  “I sure don’t want to go to Greenville on my honeymoon, or Gap Creek,” Carolyn said.

  Lou and me looked at each other and grinned.

  “Honey, whoever you marry will have some say about where you go,” Lou said.

  “I want to marry somebody that likes to travel,” Carolyn said.

  “Well, I hope you do,” I said.

/>   Carolyn drifted back into the living room, and Hank took her and Garland out to the barn to unhitch Sally and look around at the outbuildings. Lou and me lit in to clean up the kitchen and get some supper started. I poured the coffee and sugar into their cans and ground some fresh coffee beans.

  “Fresh coffee always reminds me of Rosie,” I said.

  “Don’t nobody love coffee like Rosie,” Lou said.

  “She likes her coffee and baking better than she’ll ever like any man,” I said.

  “She may be right about that,” Lou said and laughed. I looked at her and broke out laughing myself. It was like old times, when we talked about boys and made light of boys, and girls that was in love with boys. Now we was both married, but it was fun to be like our old selves.

  “If boys is so bad why did we both get married?” I said.

  “’Cause it’s the bad in boys we like,” Lou said, and we laughed again.

  I swept the kitchen and Lou got a bucket and the mop and mopped the kitchen and living room floor. Then we attacked the bedroom and picked up everything and made the bed in Mr. Pendergast’s room. Hank and me would sleep there while Lou and Garland was visiting.

  When we finished downstairs we climbed up to the bedroom Hank and me had been using. “Only problem with this bed is it falls apart when it gets shook,” I said.