Pendleton sighed. “Yes, Mr. Carter, go on.”
“Well, one of them barrels was setting outside the post office. No idea what it was doing over here to start with. Maybe somebody brung it from one of the town ho-tels to catch rainwater in. Anyhow, it had a bright yellow label stuck on it that said ‘National Park, Warshington, D.C.’ And you know what? Your boy Blackwell was stuffed in there like a plumb sardine. Somebody’d bored air holes and give him a paper poke with a hunk of cornbread and half a sweet tater and a little bitty jug of water. Postmaster Nelse said they was regulations against mailing people but, on the other hand, he couldn’t open nobody else’s mail, so he let the barrel set in the sun and holler awhile. Me and Nelse talked it over considerable. We finally figured since it didn’t have no stamps, and it wasn’t in the door yet, it wasn’t active mail, so we let him out.”
Blackwell knew better than to show back up to give Pendleton the satisfaction of firing him. That preyed on Oliver’s mind shortly after noon on the day after Zeb Banks’s trial, as he crossed the Richland Creek bridge and headed through Frog Level. The roadster chugged by the depot and up the hill. He parked in the gravel lot behind the courthouse, disturbing a yellow tomcat.
Oliver entered the basement and walked deliberately to the first floor. Echoing footfalls reminded him of the climb at the redbrick Corolla lighthouse. He stopped at the commission office, straightened his tie, and turned the doorknob.
“Well, if it isn’t the triumphant counselor.” The secretary beamed. “Welcome back.”
All the office doors were shut. “Thanks, Mae. Where’s Mr. Pendleton?”
“Mr. Wakefield and he had a conference, then went to the café.” She glanced at the wall clock. “They’ve only been gone ten minutes. You want to meet them there?”
“No, no. But I’m hungry as a springtime bear. You have anything to eat?”
She fetched three winesaps and a shaker of salt from her desk drawer. Oliver thanked her and picked two apples. He understood salting tomatoes and melons, but not apples. He started peeling one with his pocketknife. “Am I about to get canned?”
“I would have said so first thing, but they’ve had word from Mr. Squires that seemed more important than you, if you’ll pardon that way of putting it.”
Oliver finished the first apple, dropped its core into the trash can, and peeled the second. “You’re a lifesaver. I got drunk last night and then sick coming up the mountain. About Dellwood I was hungry. Almost stopped at the Railroad Café but figured Mr. Pendleton’d be mad as hops.”
“I knew you hadn’t attended a Sunday school picnic. Wash up good.”
Oliver closed his door and finished the second apple. Wishing for a razor, he washed his hands and face. Straightening trouser creases and adjusting his collar, he waited.
Two sets of footsteps echoed in the hallway. Oliver cleared his throat and smoothed his tie. Horace opened Oliver’s door. “Good day, Counselor. Congratulations. Come to Red’s office right away.”
Behind Wakefield’s greeting Pendleton walked briskly, a clicking thumbtack lodged in his left heel. “Thanks,” said Oliver. “Someday I’ll tell you about the trial.”
“Certainly. But this afternoon we three need to put our heads together.” They pulled chairs close to Pendleton’s desk. At first Pendleton paid no more attention to Oliver than he would the spots on a ladybug.
“Gentlemen, we need to agree on things this afternoon,” Pendleton began. “First, Senator Squires perceives we lag behind our Tennessee counterparts. That is a black eye. He wants us wrapped up by spring, if not sooner. There are about a hundred parcels. That would average five per week. Ten a week would finish it by Christmas. That would be a feather in our cap.”
Oliver and Horace nodded. “I see no reason we can’t meet that goal,” Horace said.
“Good. Now, second, people are given a choice: sell outright for a certain sum and move immediately, or sell at a reduced price, reserving a lifetime lease, and stay.” He plucked a cigar from his pocket. “Gentlemen, we need to carefully soft-pedal this life lease business.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Pendleton?” asked Oliver.
Pendleton fished for a knife, cut the end of his cigar, and reached for the lighter on his desk. Blue-white smoke soon clouded the room. “There will be no lifetime leases.”
Oliver looked ready to throw up again. “Mr. Pendleton, we have told people they can stay the remainder of their lives. It’s the only reason we haven’t been strung up by our heels. Is the commission going back on its word?”
“Of course not, you simpleton.” Pendleton exhaled toward the ceiling. “What I mean is, we need to be careful with our terminology. We will still call these arrangements lifetime leases. But in legal fact, they will be one-year leases with option to renew for another year—as long as restrictions are not violated.”
Wakefield frowned through the haze. “These restrictions—why don’t we go over them? Not to harm the land is one. What else?”
Pendleton blew four concentric circles toward the ceiling. “They may not cut trees.”
Oliver grinned until he realized Pendleton was serious. “Mr. Pendleton, please explain how a man can heat his home without firewood.”
“He will pick up deadfall, or he can fell dead trees with a Park Service Special Use Permit. There’s coal. But no more green timber will be cut. We mean for this to be wilderness.”
“Sir,” Oliver said, “I don’t mean to be argumentative, but how—and where—can someone who uses ten or twenty cords a winter find that much deadfall?”
Pendleton shaped the cigar ash on the side of the ashtray. “That is not our concern.”
Wakefield shifted in his chair, then stood and opened the window. “Mr. Pendleton, these people will not take kindly to that. What about fishing and hunting?”
“There will be seasons and limits, as on all public game lands.”
“So you expect us to tell a man he can hunt squirrels, say, only a month a year? Or use only artificial bait for trout, that sort of thing?”
Pendleton waved the question away. “Listen, gentlemen. Our job is not to explain, wheedle, or cajole. It is to sell. Whatever it takes to get these yokels to sign on the dotted line is fine. If not mentioning specific restrictions helps the process, so much the better.”
Wakefield sat and scratched his head. “Mr. Pendleton, how would you like it if I knew it would be impossible for you to pasture your cattle on the balds—by the way, Mr. Babcock, another restriction—but I didn’t tell you. You sell your land, then discover you cannot pasture your cattle there. How angry would you be with me? Or say you don’t know, take your cattle up, and lose your lease? Would you not be ready to kill me?”
Pendleton fiddled with his cigar. “Mr. Wakefield, you have read Mr. Squires’s letter. Ethical niceties are past. If we produce no results, he will find someone else who will.”
Wakefield sat back down. “Let me take a new tack. How does the park service mean to police these restrictions? How many wardens for Cataloochee, for example?”
“No more than two or three, I would expect.”
“Aha, a game! That’s it. You see, it would take an extraordinary man to be in fifty-leven places at once. Because that’s where he would have to be to police each mile of stream, count all the downed limbs, and, while he’s at it, squirrels and fish. Mr. Pendleton, these yokels, as you call them, know the service won’t be able to catch them any easier than revenue officers can find their stills. In fact, many will enjoy the challenge. So I don’t know that we need to soft-pedal restrictions. Unless some are really outrageous.”
“The service wants this land to revert to wilderness, so they could not break new ground. They couldn’t build new buildings without a Park Service Special Use Permit. No hunting and fishing except in season. They couldn’t make or possess liquor, which we know will be honored only in the breach. I would expect more trouble over one PSSUP”—Pendleton pronounced it “pea soup”—“condition
than these you have mentioned. One would have to obtain a PSSUP to bury one’s family in the park.”
Horace nodded. “Would such a request ever be denied?”
“I can’t see why. Who would deny access to a family cemetery?”
They nodded in silence. Pendleton spoke first. “That’s about it, gentlemen. I want you men in Big Cataloochee tonight. I’ll tend to Little Cataloochee. Remember that feather in our cap.”
Wakefield looked at him. “Mr. Pendleton, a dollar to a donut says Oliver and I can close them more quickly. Use your administrative skills here.”
Pendleton eyed Horace. “Are you telling me I don’t know my job?”
“Not at all. But Oliver here has built trust, as I have. And the people over there who know you—well, I don’t know how to say it except bluntly—they don’t care for you.”
“Maybe you have a point. I would have to establish myself.”
Pendleton and Wakefield shook hands, but when Oliver put his out, he received only a glare from his boss. “That will be all, Mr. Babcock. There will be a next time.”
CHAPTER 3
Blood and Flesh and Bone
The Wednesday when Oliver and Horace started to Cataloochee, exhaust from Horace’s green Chevrolet hung in the air like cigar smoke. Horace meant to leave Oliver at Zeb Banks’s place in Little Cataloochee, then pick him up Friday evening to return to Waynesville. Horace, meantime, would visit Big Cataloochee. The sooner they wrapped up the commission’s business, he figured, the sooner they removed Red Pendleton from their hair.
North of Waynesville, misty wood smoke lay in people’s front yards. “See that?” Horace asked. “A sure sign of falling weather.”
“You know,” Oliver said, “I can’t remember noticing that as a boy. First time I remember smoke lying like this was at the university. The sward between South Building and that library they’re constructing looked covered with cotton batting a yard thick. Two days later came a foot of snow. Cry mercy, I’m glad I brought an umbrella.”
Oliver wore a black chesterfield coat over his suit, and had swapped his long-cuffed driving gloves for a short kidskin pair. His hat, of silk-lined beaver felt, perched rakishly on his head. Horace wore army duck trousers, a denim jacket over a flannel shirt, and a striped cotton cap such as railroad men wear. “I think you’re the only person I know who owns an umbrella,” Horace said, and laughed.
Gabbing starlings festooned power lines, and waxwings and robins migrating from northern haunts tore berries from bittersweet vines and scattered orange droppings behind. Hay shocks stood in the middle of cut fields to feed what cattle had not been sold or beefed. Dogwood berries shone red ripe, roadside asters winked blue, and spiny sweet gum balls littered the road. Oliver smiled. “You know, I love the change of seasons. Almost makes you want to get your luggage and follow the birds, doesn’t it?”
“Cataloochee folks will love being migratory, won’t they?” said Horace. “They might as well. The surveys are finished, they all know the park is coming, and we’re about to close this out.”
“Actually, people in Little Cataloochee are mostly ready to move. They figure they can’t fight it. Jake Carter, for example, is angry about the park but figures what can he do? And the sooner he leaves, the sooner his hurting will heal. Will lots of people in Big Cataloochee stay?”
“You couldn’t move Silas Wright with dynamite. Most of the Carters will stay. I just hope there aren’t many soreheads. That McPeters bunch was downright nasty at the community meeting.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them to kill over this,” said Oliver. “The way I heard it, the old man—Rafe—was threatening to shoot any government employee who sets foot on his land.”
“Did you hear about the revenue man?”
“No, what about him?”
“A man named Moody came into Cataloochee a dozen years ago looking for whiskey stills. Worked for the T-men, as they say in the moving pictures. The first day he made some folks mad. The second, he disappeared. Nobody found even a whisker.”
“Was McPeters a suspect?”
“Not the old man. It’s hard to prove murder without a body. But revenue men carry folding money to reward ‘tips,’ and Willie McPeters bought himself a nice rifle that winter—with cash.”
Oliver nodded. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Is Willie still around?”
“He’s a strange one. I’ve only seen him once, and when he realized I’d spotted him, he faded into the woods like an old bear. They say he never speaks. Kind of a wild man, famous in this country for setting fires. Yes, I’d say he’s around, but you likely won’t see him.”
Horace left Oliver at Zeb and Mattie Banks’s place and headed to Big Cataloochee. Oliver carried an overnight bag in his left hand, sandwiched a briefcase under that arm, and twirled a Chaplinesque umbrella with his right as Jake greeted him.
“Afternoon, Counselor. You look a sight better’n you did this morning.”
They shook hands after rearranging Oliver’s baggage. “Much improved, thank you.”
“Come in the house. We’ll have everybody gather here tomorrow, so you won’t have to do this sixty times. Rachel and Mattie’ll fix dinner.”
Next day, at least two dozen people milled in Zeb’s front room. Zeb’s mother, Hannah, occupied the upholstered chair, her clustered grandchildren reminding Oliver of a picture of Queen Victoria’s family. She wore a black dress with a silver brooch pinning a foam-green kerchief. Oliver took Hannah’s outstretched hand.
“Mrs. Banks, how perfectly delightful.”
Hannah beamed at him. “Young man, you are a sight for sore eyes yourself. Tell me, do you have a steady?”
Oliver smiled as his eyes met Velda Parham’s. “No, ma’am. Not enough time.” He bowed slightly in Velda’s direction.
“You should make time,” said Hannah, as Jake picked up a stick of kindling and rapped on the mantel. “Neighbors,” he said, “Oliver Babcock is back, this time on official business. Oliver, how long do you expect to take?”
“It depends on the number of questions—no more than an hour, I would guess.”
“How hungry are you?”
“I can always eat.”
“Then let’s put on the feed bag, if dinner’s ready.” He lifted eyebrows to his wife, Rachel, who nodded. “Let’s bless it. Everybody stand and hold hands.”
The line of people snaked from the front room into the kitchen and back. Most were related, but even the hands of such outsiders as Neil LeClerc, a Canadian logging foreman working over the mountain at Crestmont, made a link in the family chain. Children looked up at parents, who gestured for them to close their eyes. Jake waited for dead quiet. “Lord, look down on us poor people. Jesus said whenever two or three are gathered in His name, He’d be there. We need a lot of Jesus in this hour. Bless us with His presence, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies, and bless the hands that prepared it. Forgive us our many sins. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
They ate wherever they could find a place to set a plate or sit with dish on knee. The kitchen table held great quantities of pork and, it being fall, roasted beef and stewed beef, along with several kinds of beans, corn, potatoes—mashed, fried, and scalloped—deviled eggs, and cornbread. Mattie opened a jar of her special okra pickles, seasoned with cayenne peppers, which men sampled but women and children carefully passed to their neighbors. Oliver sat beside Velda, eschewing onions but otherwise spooning out great helpings. Dessert was apple stack cake and green Jell-O with fruit cocktail.
After dinner Oliver stacked papers on the mantel in the front room. After taking off his jacket, he fingered his paisley suspenders and gathered his audience. He carefully explained the alternatives—a landowner could sell and leave at one price, or sell and stay at another. Despite Oliver’s oratory, Cash Davis soon snored softly.
Staying meant changing habits, Oliver explained. “There will be restrictions. For example, one could not break new ground. One would have to abide
by hunting and fishing regulations. Seasons, bag limits, bait restrictions, that kind of thing. One—Why are you laughing, Jake?”
“Tell me who’s going to enforce this—pardon my French—bull feathers?”
“There will be wardens, Jake, but no one knows how many.”
“Derned if I don’t think I’ll stay. I’d love to match wits with some tin-pot warden.”
Rachel elbowed his ribs. “Let the poor man finish, Jake.”
Oliver ran his finger between collar and neck and straightened his tie. “Where were we? Oh, yes, one could not possess, make, or sell alcoholic beverages.”
Cash Davis stopped snoring and looked around. “They God, I never heard such mutton-headed rot in my life. Now I know I’m leaving.”
All laughed, some more nervously than others. “Uncle Cash, the whole country’s been dry for years, and that’s never put a crimp in your style,” said Zeb.
Cash stretched and looked at Zeb squarely with his right eye. The other seemed to focus about ten feet away. “Son, that’s true enough. But I’m too old to risk getting put out of my home because of it.” He looked at Oliver. “Ain’t that right, young man? They’d kick me out?”
“Yes, Mr. Davis, you would lose your lease, plus incur any legal penalties appertaining to the case.”
“Ain’t going to chance it, then,” Cash said, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m leaving.”
“Other restrictions,” Oliver went on, “include a prohibition on cutting live trees, whether for fence posts or firewood.”
“How in tarnation are we supposed to heat our houses?” yelled George Banks, Zeb’s younger brother, a man whose normal expression was as happy as a mole in daylight.
“The simple answer is—the best way you can. Collect deadfall. Switch to coal. Truck in firewood. But the park service will not sanction harvesting live trees. It’s the same principle as that against breaking new ground. They mean for the land to return to wilderness.” Oliver looked outside, where sunshine promised a dry end to the day. “There are two more restrictions. One, you may no longer range cattle on the balds.”
Requiem by Fire Page 3