The party left quilts and pillowcases, jars of honey and beans and sausage, multitudes of dried fruits, bags of nuts and flour and cornmeal. There was a cross-stitched sampler reading “God Bless Our Home” in pink and blue. Oliver discreetly picked up a quart of straw-colored whiskey to take to the bedroom for a swig. Mother and daughter admired the gifts, then Billie patted Velda’s shoulder. “Honey, it’s time we were asleep.” They hugged, and Velda came to the bedroom and shut the door.
Oliver cut a fine figure as an attorney and a dancer, but his sexual experiences were limited to dates with his hand—he joked about squiring Minnie Fingers—plus one Saturday night in a Durham hotel where women of indeterminable ages serviced soldiers, college boys, and other strays for money. So he stood before his wife wearing shorts and a countenance fluttering somewhere between joy and trepidation.
Velda smiled. “It’s cold, dear. I’m going to slip into bed.”
He watched her remove dress and slip, then unpin her hair. She shook it loose, turned to him, and stretched her arms over her head, a pose that liked to have killed him. She blew out the lamp, shucked in under the covers, and purred, “Get under here and hold me, Oliver.”
She was altogether soft and warm and smelled like all manner of flowers. He looked at the bottom of the door to make sure her mother’s light had been extinguished, then laid hands on his bride to begin as discreet a frenzy as they could manage. They enjoyed it so much they dared try it again after a short respite.
Next morning Velda woke, dressed, and left the bedroom. Oliver listened to the women awhile, wondered why all the laughter, and got up to the smell of perking coffee and frying pork.
Oliver really wanted to get on the road, and Velda had made an argument for leaving at dawn. It was at best a two-day journey to Raleigh, and four, more likely, because tire troubles were certain, but Billie made them wait. “I’m plenty ready to find out what this new life will be,” she said, “but I’m not leaving anywhere until I worship the Lord. Why tempt fate?” So they dressed, ate breakfast, and walked to the clapboard sanctuary.
Preacher Noland shifted his text to the second chapter of Genesis, verse twenty-four: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Considerable throat clearing and shuffling of feet commenced when he threatened to talk in detail about cleaving, but soon he wandered three verses prior, where God caused a deep sleep to come upon Adam, and before long the sermon led to Moses striking the rock at Horeb, the soldier’s spear and Jesus’ side, and blood and water. He ended, as always, by calling for sinners to repair to the foot of the cross, where there is always plenty of room.
That was certainly not the case with Oliver’s Ford. It was a young man’s car, a brand-new Model A roadster, marriage and mother-in-law having been far from his mind when he bought it. Nor had he thought of fall and winter driving, for its only glass to speak of was a windshield. Dark green with black fenders, it was so shiny a man could have safely shaved in its reflection. He didn’t seem to care that some wags had tied old shoes and tin cans to his bumper.
A fair-size trunk was strapped to the rear platform—Jake would ship the rest by rail. Inside was a tin tobacco container with charcoal from Billie’s fireplace, to help start their first fire in their new home. He said good-byes and ushered his mother-in-law into the passenger side. Velda meant to ride in the rumble seat, at least until they were out of sight. After seeing how much of the seat Billie required, he wondered if he would have room to change gears when Velda squeezed in. “I’m ready, Son. Take us to Raleigh,” Billie said proudly.
Velda hugged the preacher one more time. “Reverend Noland, we appreciate you marrying us. If you ever get down east, come visit,” she said.
He smiled. “Child, I’ll never get that far from the house. But thanks. Here’s a little something for you.” He handed her a daintily filigreed pin.
“Reverend Noland, it’s beautiful.”
“It belonged to my wife. It’s laid in my saddlebag ever since she died. I reckon I kept it for good luck, or to give to a pretty gal like you.”
“I couldn’t, Reverend Noland. What about your family?” Velda dabbed at her eyes with a white handkerchief.
“We never had girls, and this is too old-fashioned to suit my daughters-in-law. Take this before you make an old man mad.”
They hugged, and Velda handed the pin to her mother. Oliver helped his wife into the rumble seat, an operation more to be contemplated than done with grace and ease. Once seated against the rolled leather, Velda waved like she was on a parade float. Oliver shut the door, stepped on the starter, put the car in gear, and headed off, shoes and cans bouncing and clattering. Cataloochans and wedding guests waved them out of sight, wondering if they would see them again.
BOOK 2
Thy Feet upon the Mountains
December 1928–March 1931
CHAPTER 10
Greenland’s Icy Mountains
Nell Hawkins had been nauseated mornings for a couple of weeks, and although sunny days usually made her bouncy, this one in December of 1928 sapped her energy. Tying her blue terry cloth robe closed, she shuffled from the bedroom to find Jim reading a letter. “What now?” she asked, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
Jim sat at the kitchen table drinking from a mug of coffee. “It’s from Red Pendleton. Says to see him Monday week before we head for Cataloochee.”
She sat across the table twisting a strand of hair around her middle finger. “Darling, don’t slurp so loudly. Would you serve me a cup, the way I like it? Where is he, anyway?”
Jim poured a mug half full, then stirred in two lumps of sugar and a lot of cream. He loved the smell of black coffee, and always grimaced at how Nell took hers. “He’s still at the Asheville office. I won’t have to go to Haywood.”
“You said Monday?”
“Yep.”
“How are you going to get there?” Their recently purchased secondhand Ford was in the shop.
“Reckon I’ll borrow Wolf’s car. Or I’ll hitch a ride.”
“Daddy always says walking isn’t crowded.”
“He’s right about that.” He saw Nell shudder and shake her head slightly. “What’s the matter, honey?”
She sipped, hugged herself, and looked out the window. “I’m feeling like I could just die.”
“Honey, I’m sorry. Anything I can do?”
“Jim, I think I might be—you know—going to have another baby.”
“Really? That’s wonderful.” He held out his hand. “Care to dance?”
She looked at him like he was insane. “I’d throw up on you.”
He took his fiddle down and, playing “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss,” danced around the kitchen, grinning. “Maybe this’n’ll be a girl. Sweet thing like her momma.”
She shrugged. “Right now I don’t feel sweet.”
“I’ll have to bring my girls a present.” He stood behind her chair and rubbed her shoulders. “We’ll be fine, honey. I’ll find you a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.”
“That only happens in fairy tales, Jim.”
“It’s our story, honey. It’s better’n a fairy tale. You’ll see.”
Jim stood in Pendleton’s office Monday morning, hat in hands. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
Pendleton rummaged in his desk drawer for a package of cigarettes. “Care for a smoke, Hawkins?”
“No, sir. I never took it up.”
Pendleton lit it with a thin brass lighter and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “Have a seat, Hawkins. I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you to come here today.”
Jim sat on a wooden bench that didn’t sit square with the desk. “Yes, sir, it had occurred to me.”
“I wanted a look at you. Since you applied, there have been more people interested. I want to make sure I’m hiring the right person.”
“Yes, sir. What can I tell you?”
“I’ll get to the heart
of this, Mr. Hawkins. We need an interim warden until the park service formally assumes jurisdiction. Maybe a year from now, maybe longer. Meantime someone will have to keep order over there.” Pendleton stood, walked to the front of his desk, and looked down at Jim. “To be perfectly honest, Hawkins, I sent that letter based solely on you being familiar with the territory. No consideration of education, training, that kind of thing. Now I have applicants who look better than you on paper. You only went to a normal school, did not take a degree, and that is suspect, in my book.”
“Mr. Pendleton, if I may ask, what does a degree have to do with this job?”
Pendleton half sat on the desk and flicked at his glass ashtray. “Everything, Mr. Hawkins. A degree from a well-connected university means everything.”
“Will it help you find your way from Deadfall to Long Bunk?”
“It will help you read a map.”
“I’ve never seen a map of Cataloochee, sir, but I know the place like the back of my hand. I was born there, and I’d love to die there. And work in between. I’m your man.”
“I’m not so certain. It seems to me a man who shirks his requirements—your transcript indicates you failed English—might also shirk his duties in the field.”
Jim smiled. “You have a recommendation from my forest service supervisor?”
Pendleton nodded.
“Does it say I’m a goldbrick?”
“No. In fact, it says you’re quite a good worker.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I am, sir, quite a judge of character. People will, despite glowing recommendations, occasionally want to get rid of an employee badly enough to lie about them. So I thought it best to interview you personally.”
“Fair enough, sir. Just tell me what you want to know.”
“I want you to talk about something that’s dear to your heart.”
“Person? Place? Thing?”
“Your choice, Mr. Hawkins.”
“Then I’ll talk about a place. Cataloochee. I love it. I was born there, back when it was what they call a thriving community. I know it’s not that way now, and the plans are for it to change into wilderness. But as long as I live, I’ll remember where people used to live, where the cemeteries are, where the springs are, where a man can find anything from healing herbs to snakes. I’ll be able to tell people about that. When folks come back after they move away—or their children come years from now—I can show them where they came from. I’ll remember.
“Part of my heart is there, Mr. Pendleton. It always will be. That’s not anything a man can take from me. And I would hope that part of this job is to protect it. To keep it safe. I would consider that an honor.”
Pendleton stubbed his cigarette. “Very impressive, Mr. Hawkins.” He turned and looked at Jim. “Are you really as big a sap as that answer would indicate?”
“I meant it, sir.”
Pendleton seemed to consider this with high seriousness. “Hawkins, you’re not even close to the kind of man I would hire for this job if I had my way. But I don’t, and I have to consider the fact that we could not get a candidate with a better knowledge of the terrain. So I think we’ll get along fine. Are you ready to take the oath?”
Jim straightened his hair with his right hand. “Yes, sir. But let me make sure about what you said in your letter. I get a horse and a place to stay, right?”
“You will live in the Elijah Howell house. You know it, I assume.”
“Yes, sir, that’s a fine house, right big for my little family.”
“Well, fill it up, then. Keep her barefoot and pregnant, eh, heh-heh?”
Jim made a halfhearted smile. “When do I report for duty?”
“Can you be in Cataloochee tomorrow?”
“I can move in Friday week.” Jim stood and breathed deeply. “I’m ready for that oath.”
Pendleton fetched a Bible from his desk drawer. “Place your right hand on the book and raise your left hand. Repeat after me: ‘I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God.’ Welcome aboard, Hawkins. You are a park commission employee. There will be a uniform and manual ready here in a day or two. I assume you own a sidearm?”
Jim nodded.
“Then I wish you the best of luck.”
In the fall of 1928 a Dutch corporation, doing business as American Enka, had begun to build a sprawling redbrick rayon plant on two thousand acres of bottomland adjacent to Scratch Ankle. Anyone nearby with extra land built as large a boardinghouse as possible, anticipating thousands of workers. Jim and Nell soon became the only folks in their boardinghouse having nothing to do with the plant. And they were leaving.
The morning they moved to Cataloochee a low gray sky threatened snow. They had the yard and house mostly to themselves. Henry Johnson, wearing a brand-new pair of denim jeans with a matching jacket, had borrowed a black beat-up half-ton Chevrolet truck. The back left corner of the bed looked like rusty lace, but the vehicle had a solid-sounding drive train. Elizabeth wore a wool frock with a tailored rose on the left shoulder. It came in two colors, ashes of roses and cocoa brown, and she had finally decided that matching her brown eyes was just as important as picking a conservative winter color. Her felt hat had almost a masculine look to the brim, which, she had been assured at Bon Marché, was perfect for travel.
At first Nell and Elizabeth supervised Henry and Jim’s packing, but Henry soon joined the women while Jim both toted and arranged. It wasn’t all that much to reckon with. A kitchen table with a white baked enamel top and three chairs. Two beds and mattresses. A washstand, bowl, and pitcher. Two rocking chairs, one with a split cane seat and the other with wood. Boxes of dishes and kitchen utensils. A crib. A box of towels, dishrags, and diapers. Three cardboard suitcases full of Nell’s clothes and a duffel bag for Jim’s. A churn, a washtub, a board. An ironing board and flatiron. Jim’s toolbox and shotgun. Odds and ends collected since they’d married in 1926.
When Jim brought out a wooden box holding bits of pipe, old nails, half a pair of pliers, a maple bobbin from the rayon plant, a half skein of pink yarn, two rusty mousetraps, dull scissors, and a screwdriver without a handle, Nell frowned, but Jim grinned. “You never know when you’ll need something, honey.” Jim filled spaces in the load with firewood and two bags of Kentucky anthracite.
Jim thought they were finished about nine, and stood in the yard wondering where everyone would ride. His mother-in-law emerged from the entrance holding a wooden box big enough to contain a large medicine ball. “Dear, you need to make room for this,” she trilled.
“What is it, Mother?” asked Jim.
“A housewarming gift, silly boy. For entertaining.”
The box held a green pressed glass punch bowl and a dozen cups. “Thanks, Mother.” Jim tried to remember who was left in Cataloochee. Maybe, he thought, Aunt Mary and Nell could host a soirée. “Just the ticket,” he said.
“Pack it safe and snug,” Elizabeth said.
Jim nestled it between a box of towels and a suitcase.
Henry drove the Chevrolet, Elizabeth in the middle, Nell and the baby next to the door. “Thank God this thing has a decent heater,” Henry said, and lit a King Edward cigar. Nell cracked the wing window a half inch to let out the smoke. Jim led in the Ford, the dog his happy companion.
For the first part of the journey, through Canton, Clyde, and Waynesville, Henry flashed his headlights often so Jim would stop for the women to stretch their legs. They shared a lunch of cold ham, cheese, and sliced bread inside the general store at Frog Level. The proprietor wanted them to eat on the porch, but Elizabeth charmed him with a promise Henry would buy sodas. “Jim, where in the world are you taking us?” asked Elizabeth. “I had no idea such a place exis
ted.”
“This is Waynesville, Mother. It’s civilization, and I don’t have a lot of use for it. Wait until you see the valley. It’s the prettiest place in the world.” His mother-in-law rolled her eyes at her husband.
Halfway toward Cove Creek Gap any appreciable width of road was eaten by serious switchbacks. Jim was glad not to be in the Chevrolet. He got along with his in-laws, but he preferred small doses and could barely stomach his father-in-law’s cigars. This way he enjoyed the sights. A gray snow patch beside a laurel thicket. A hint of winter warbler in the periphery. A branch freshly broken from a huge hemlock, white wood dangling over the road like a sword. A stalk of Joe Pye weed bent but unbroken by wind and weather. Brown oak leaves clattering in the breeze, refusing to fall. A buzzard soaring in lazy arcs above the valley.
The Chevrolet flashed its lights and stopped suddenly. Nell and Mack stumbled out, followed hurriedly by Elizabeth, overcome with motion sickness. Jim chose not to embarrass his mother-in-law by watching her retch into the roadside bushes. “How’s little Mack?” he asked, but Nell simply gave Jim the boy’s hand and walked down the road.
“Honey, what’s the matter?” Jim yelled.
She turned, pouting. “Where in creation are you taking us?”
He looked at Mack, who grinned at his father. “Home,” Jim said.
Henry dipped a sizeable handkerchief in a roadside spring and handed it to his wife. “This is the worst road I have ever tried to drive.”
“Least there isn’t much traffic,” Jim said, as all clustered around him.
Elizabeth, as pale as dried pine rosin, looked up at her son-in-law. “Are you sure there are houses there?”
“Trust me, Mother. We didn’t grow up in mud huts. You’ll love it.”
Elizabeth straightened her hat, found a compact, and refreshed her lipstick. She took Mack by the hand. “Well, we simply have to make the best of it, don’t we?” she said, and piled them back into the cab.
They crossed the gap and started down by the deserted Sutton farm at Turkey Cove. Black silhouettes of thistles thrust three feet high in their pasture. Poison oak, honeysuckle, and bittersweet grew on fence posts. A crow perched on the point of the barn roof like a weathervane.
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