“First thing we knew, here come a boar with dogs hanging on it like they was stitched to its neck. Your daddy fired at that hog. I thought he’d hit it between the eyes, but it kept coming. For a better shot, he dropped to one knee, but the damn thing run him over and liked to have ripped his jaw off. The second it was far enough away that I could shoot without killing your daddy, it fell dead. I expect after that your daddy quit hunting.”
“Actually, after he retired, he journeyed West again, several times. Hung several trophies on the wall. He always spoke fondly of you.”
“I’m glad. He could have figured me for the cause of that scar.”
“He wore it proudly. Like a schmiss on a German officer. Now, Mr. Wright, how can I help you?”
“I’m thinking about suing the government.”
“I take it over the national park?”
“Yep. I figure I’m about to be took advantage of.”
Smathers opened a window to let out the tobacco smoke. “Do you have the papers they gave you?”
Silas twisted a piece of paper from his inside pocket. “No, but I wrote the money down, and here’s the deeds. Three hundred acres. They’re offering twenty thousand five hundred dollars. Less than seventy dollars an acre.”
Smathers took the deeds and with raised eyebrows smoked and read. “How many total acres according to Mr. Wakefield’s survey?”
Silas snorted. “Two hundred and four.”
“Mr. Wright, I have to say Mr. Wakefield is likely right. Many metes and bounds are ancient and unfindable. I have gone to trial with Mr. Wakefield on my side, and implicitly trust his work. So I doubt you have a case based on these deeds. I’m sorry. Let me return these before they get lost on my desk.”
“Then I’ve made a trip for nothing?”
“I didn’t say that. Let’s see—two hundred four acres for twenty thousand five hundred dollars amounts to about a hundred dollars an acre. I take it, Mr. Wright, your acreage is mostly level—or as level as it gets over there?”
“Yes, sir. I run as pretty a farm as you’d want to see.”
“Unfortunately, pretty has nothing to do with it. But I recently completed a sale comparable to your acreage for twice that money per acre. I would be happy to represent you.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. What is your fee?”
“In land matters, thirty percent.”
Silas laughed. “Good one, Mr. Smathers. Real good. Now, let’s be serious.”
“Sir, I am quite serious.”
Silas rested his hands on his knees. “Mr. Smathers, I’m a poor old man, never been a thing but a dirt farmer. I came here because I thought you would treat me fair. Even a cussed miller don’t get but a sixteenth.”
“Mr. Wright, land cases take considerable preparation. The percentage is calculated to make sure that over the long haul this office makes money. It is, after all, possible that the state will win, in which case this office would receive nothing.”
Silas stood and fingered his hat brim. “Is that thirty percent of all of it, or just of anything over their offer?”
“Thirty percent of whatever additional settlement we receive. You get twenty thousand five hundred regardless. I think a jury would easily award you twice that.”
“What’s thirty percent amount to if we got that much?”
Smathers scribbled on the back of an envelope. “Six thousand one hundred and fifty.”
“Son, rich folks might afford to pay that kind of money, but I can’t. On the other hand, I know you need to get paid, like anybody that works for a living. Why not work by the hour?”
“Mr. Wright, I admire your determination. How about we agree to twenty-five percent?”
Silas sat and put his hat on his knee. “Make it ten and it’s a deal.”
In a few minutes they settled for twenty. “I’ll need to think about this,” Silas said, rising from his chair. “How about I let you know next week?”
“That will be fine, Mr. Wright. By the way, there’s something else.” Silas stared at Smathers, saying nothing. The lawyer scratched his arm absently. “Say we win. Or, say we lose. Either way, there will be tax consequences.”
“What does that mean?”
“The government will assess capital gains taxes on your profit.”
“Pardon my French, Mr. Smathers, but just how damn much taxes?”
“Federal capital gains amount to twelve and a half percent. How did you come about this land, Mr. Wright?”
“Inherited most of it.”
“So you purchased some of it?”
“I bought out my sisters. Didn’t have to give them too much.”
“Okay, Mr. Wright. The worst they can do is twelve and a half percent of your whole settlement. That would be a little over five thousand dollars if we win our case. I can probably reduce that substantially if we can prove how much you paid for the portion you purchased.”
“Mr. Smathers, it’ll be a cold day in hell before I’ll give the bloodsuckers that kind of money.”
“Mr. Wright, please think about it before you dismiss it out of hand. You would still have a lot of money. You could buy a nice farm, or travel, or… ”
Silas jammed his hat onto his head. “Mr. Smathers, my daddy told me there was hardly nothing lower than a lawyer. I’m starting to think he was right. You’re in cahoots with the damn government.”
Smathers put out his hands. “Mr. Wright, I assure you that is not the case. I’m merely trying to keep your eyes open, so, whether you sue or not, you will not go afoul of the law.”
“Wait a minute. Do you mean even if I don’t sue I’ll have to pay them taxes—what’d you call them? Capital gains?”
“Yes. I could help minimize them, of course, but you would have gains. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“Then I’ll go home, Mr. Smathers. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing, sir. I simply ask you to think about this. I could see that you end up with more money than if you do nothing.”
“What I think right now is you and the government ain’t getting ten thousand or more of my money. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”
Silas left the lawyer with a handshake, and the outer office with a glance of appreciation at the receptionist.
He had plenty of time coming home to mull over Smathers’s offer. He retrieved Maude at Barberville and made his way to Cove Creek, where he sat on the same rock wall where, years ago, his best friend, Hiram, had met Mary. He cracked his other tin of sardines and chewed meditatively. If that boy gets me double the state’s figure, he’d pocket over four thousand of my dollars. That’s sure better than sixty-one hundred and fifty, but, God, I hate to think about a damn lawyer skimming that cream.
Oh, I’d still have plenty of money. Least I’d have it if he wasn’t just blowing his horn. My daddy said never trust a lawyer or a preacher. There’s the God’s truth in that.
So the rub is whether I trust this boy—the son of a man didn’t have no better sense than to drop to one knee in front of a charging boar hog—to get me a better settlement. Who knows if he was playacting me?
Then he thinks I’d pay five thousand, maybe more, to the goddamn same government fixing to steal my land in the first goddamn place. I ain’t going to do it, I’ll say that. I can be mighty stubborn. I’ve outlasted most everything. Maybe this park thing, too. Craziest mess I ever heard about.
So, do I sue or not? Bird in the hand, a bird in the hand. Plus if I was to get the extra I’d have to give part of it to the government. I ain’t going to do that. I just ain’t.
He stomped the tin and filed it beside the other in his saddlebag. A glance at the sky told him it would be way past dark before they arrived home. “Get up, gal. We’ll sleep in our own stalls tonight,” he said, and clucked the horse up the mountain.
CHAPTER 9
All Manner of Flowers
Reverend Grady Noland led his horse, Priscilla, into Little Cataloochee one November afternoo
n because she threw a shoe atop Cove Creek Gap, exactly where Bishop Francis Asbury, his Methodist forerunner, had crossed a hundred and eighteen years before. Noland, Baptist to his toenails, knew nothing of that, nor would he have cared had he known. He often declared that when God Almighty created the world, there were two things He never made nor intended to be—mules and Methodists.
One of the last circuit preachers to ride a horse, Noland said motor vehicles were the devil’s handiwork. “Is ‘automobile’ in the Book?’ he would ask, wrinkling his forehead. “In the last days, the prophet says, God will take the ‘round tires like the moon’ from the whoring daughters of Zion. Besides, did Jesus ever ride in anything but a boat? And he didn’t even need that!”
Except for white shirts, all his clothes were black. He wore a broad-brimmed hat in all weather to protect his scalp, no longer adequately shaded by thinning reddish-white hair. Although he had preached nearly every month at Ola Baptist Church in Little Cataloochee for four decades, old members such as Polly Rogers still sometimes referred to him as “the new preacher.” In 1888, at nineteen, he had replaced William Goff, a saturnine stump of a man who’d affected a white neck ruff, for what reason no one ever knew. He had been quick to scare hell out of anyone. “Will you spend eternity in the smoking car?” was a sermon Polly heard as a girl, and four decades later she was still scared to set foot in a train.
Noland never wrote out a sermon, but meditated for hours on a text, pulled from neither psalter nor lectionary but his own head, a vessel filled with the Bible. That afternoon at the gap he should have heard the steady clink from Priscilla’s off front hoof, but he’d been thinking about Moses striking the rock in Horeb, Exodus seventeen, verse six. The prophet’s staff reminded him of the spear that pierced Jesus’ side. Water poured forth from the wilderness rock. From Jesus’ side came water and blood, John nineteen, verse thirty-four. God yanked a rib from a dead-asleep Adam to form Eve in the second chapter of Genesis, verses twenty-one and-two. Just so did God pull the water of baptism and the blood of the Lord’s supper from Jesus. That was ready to lead to a diatribe against sin in general when Priscilla laid her ears back, raised her head, and snorted.
He dismounted, examined her hoof, and patted her neck. Prowling in his saddlebag, he shook his head. “Sister Priscilla, I left my shoeing kit at home.” Backtracking a short distance, he found no shoe. “Sister, I’ll lead you the rest of the way. It’s only six or seven miles. We’ll have a little talk with Jesus on the way.” The horse seemed indifferent to that prospect but on that switchback journey heard Noland practice his Sunday sermon twice.
He stopped at the store, where Jake Carter whittled on the porch. Jake could carve an old man’s face from a peach pit in nothing flat. His round-lensed black-rimmed eyeglasses put Noland in mind of an owl.
“Preacher, how in the world are you?” asked Jake. “You and Priscilla decide to be yoke-fellows?”
Noland beat road dust from his coat and smiled. “That’s a good way to put it, Brother Jake. We’ve been that for a long time. She threw a shoe at the gap.”
“I’ll take care of that,” said Cash Davis, Jake’s whittling companion. He put his knife away and led the horse up the lane. Despite the imminent national park, and the preference lately for horsepower derived from gasoline instead of oats, Cash’s cousin Lonnie still kept a forge.
The screen door screaked open to reveal Velda Parham in a gingham apron. Noland doffed his hat and grinned. “Sister Velda, what a pleasure. I do believe you’ve grown prettier.”
She fairly hopped down the steps and hugged the preacher. “Reverend Noland, guess what?” She held up her left hand.
“Oh, my, a diamond, I believe. Who is the lucky man?”
“Oliver Babcock, Reverend. Will you marry us tomorrow?”
“That lawyer fellow?”
She nodded eagerly.
“Pretty sudden, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Reverend, it’s only been a month, but it feels like we’ve loved each other all our lives.”
“Well, child, sure I’ll marry you. I can tell you think this is the berries. You’re glowing like a lightning bug. What does your mama think?”
Velda’s hazel eyes danced. “Reverend Noland, she thinks it’s fine. When Oliver said he’d take me to Raleigh, I said he could, if he’d marry me, and Mama comes with us. Scared me to put it that way, ’cause what if he’d have said no? But two days later he had this ring. We’re going to be a family, the three of us.”
“Then it’s settled. Where and when?”
“Right before dinner, at Jake and Rachel’s place.”
Noland enjoyed his calling immensely. Aside from works of the spirit, he loved tasty food he did not have to cook, and the privilege of touching females with impunity. He hugged Velda and patted her back. “Child, are you packed for a honeymoon?”
“Yes, sir. We’re leaving Sunday.”
• • •
None of Velda’s father’s siblings were still alive, and their progeny shied from ceremonies, so none had been invited. Various other relatives, however, Suttons and Cagles and Browns, had taken up residence in local homes for the weekend, eagerly anticipating a ceremony bringing an honest-to-God lawyer into the fold. Oliver’s family, thin and scattered, would have disapproved of his marrying a mountain woman, so none knew of the impending marriage.
Saturday morning broke bright and clear, a November Indian summer day, when a fellow could almost think cold weather would not return. Rachel had forced jonquils for Velda’s bouquet, and earthen pots of yellow and white chrysanthemums carefully hidden from frost sat on the porch rails. Jake had garlanded the front porch with spruce boughs. Rachel caused cakes and pies to go in one direction, chicken and ham in another. They brought the last of their ice from the barn to help make ice cream. She herded musicians to the north corner of the porch, where they uncased guitars, a banjo, and an upright bass. Cash Davis brought a mandolin he used to play before “Old Arthur-itis” set in, figuring some youngster would pick it.
Jake put chairs in the yard for old people, and chastened three children who wanted to play lion tamer with one. Jake’s nephew was in charge of parking, but in spite of his efforts, wagons and automobiles sat snaggletoothed. Children ran, played hide-and-seek, and threw balls down the hill for dogs to fetch. Chickens not yet stewed or fried hid in odd corners.
The musicians warmed up with “Wayfaring Stranger,” then tried “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” and moved smoothly into a chorus or two of “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks,” which Preacher Noland appreciated because the line “I am bound for the promised land” afforded him a chance to kid Oliver about his wedding night. When the band grew silent, Rachel cued Noland and Oliver to walk from behind the house. Oliver sported a dark brown worsted suit with a hint of green. A silk handkerchief the color of well-creamed coffee puffed in his jacket pocket. Women smiled, while men searched Oliver’s face for signs of panic. A mockingbird landed in Jake’s yard maple, trilled like a warbler, yelled “thief” like a jaybird, then left in a gray and white flash.
After some argument the band had settled on bass and mandolin as suitable to play the Wagnerian march, which they started while Rachel held the screen door open. Velda’s older brother Samuel readied his arm for her. She emerged beaming in a white wool outfit from the mail order. It showed entirely too much of her to suit the older women, although it was only a peek of calf and a hint of shoulder. Men old and young nodded approval. Her hair was secured in the back with her grandmother Cagle’s mother-of-pearl pin and a dangling yellow ribbon.
Samuel and Velda walked slowly down the steps. “Who giveth this woman?” asked Noland, to which Samuel replied, “Her brother,” and handed her to Oliver, whose grin said he was enjoying this even more than his victory at Zeb’s trial.
Bride and groom vowed with clear voices, but by the time Preacher Noland pronounced them man and wife, Velda had practically destroyed her bouquet from sheer nervousness. Reaching to kiss her n
ew husband, she scattered white and yellow petals on his shoes. The band broke into a reel as the crowd huzzahed and clapped, and folks started lining up—women to congratulate the couple, men to eat.
Loads of lemonade, milk, and, for those close to the Banks family, elderberry wine that Hannah served discreetly in teacups, washed down great quantities of food. Men visited their cars through the afternoon for a pull or two. The younger men would have chased a native bridegroom into the barn to pull down his pants and paint his privates with gentian violet, but they spared Oliver, outsider and Zeb’s savior, that indignity. They were content to cuff him on the head and joke leeringly.
As dark crept down the mountain, the musicians packed instruments and folks pretended to leave. Anxiety began to gnaw at Oliver. Velda’s mother’s house was very small—three rooms, kitchen in the rear, front room, and small bedroom—and he wondered if he and his bride might have to wait until Raleigh to consummate their marriage.
But Billie insisted the newlyweds take the bedroom, while she would sleep on the front room sofa. A joyful Oliver went to the bedroom and stripped to his skivvies. He shivered, whether from the growing chill or anticipation he could not tell.
Suddenly a commotion from gunshots, dozens of cowbells, and dishpans beaten by wooden spoons practically lifted him from the floor. Upward of fifty folks swarmed into the living room. The men yelled “Where’s he at?” Velda grinned and pointed to the bedroom.
They found him struggling to get his trousers back on, hooted, and carried him outside. Borne by half-drunken and more than mildly obscene enthusiasm, Oliver was carried around the yard fast enough to dizzy him. When they deposited him back in the front room, the table was laden with presents, and women were saying good-bye. As the party left, men fired weapons and yelled for Oliver not to do anything they wouldn’t.
“What in the world?” he asked.
“Shivaree,” giggled Velda. “Happens to newlyweds hereabouts.”
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