Requiem by Fire

by Wayne Caldwell

  “Honey, you just need a good night’s sleep. You want a dram before bed?”

  “You know I don’t drink that stuff.”

  “I don’t either unless I have a cold or can’t get to sleep. You sure?”

  She stood. “I’m going to sit on the porch a minute before bed. Think about what I said.”

  He kissed her on the forehead. “I will, honey. But think about what I said, too.”

  She put on a sweater and went to the porch. Leaning against the column, she looked past the top of the mountain to a clear northwest sky. She made a wish on the first bright object she saw, although she neither knew its name nor cared to learn it. “Lord, I must get out of here somehow,” she said softly. She heard Jim come out the back door on his way to the outhouse. When he returned and she no longer heard footsteps, she came into the kitchen for her stationery box.

  After filling the Sheaffer black and pearl fountain pen her mother had given her the previous Christmas, she removed a sheet of stationery. The fires Jim had banked for the night popped gently. She bent to answer her mother’s letter.

  November 20, 1929

  Dear Mother,

  Yrs of the 17th in hand, many thanks. I’m glad to hear you are keeping up with the Queen family. As Papa says, they put their pants on the same way we do. Real estate has made them rich, but they must not get the big head.

  Mack is doing well, and Little Elizabeth is a good baby. I, too, hope they will live in West Asheville (where we belong). But it will not be soon, for this is Jim’s dream job, and he means to impress the superintendent. I will do what I can short of leaving him, a thing I am not willing to contemplate. Your suggestion put ideas in my head to be sure. I will let you know what happens.

  Today, of all things, there was a flying squirrel in the house! In the house, my shelter from all this national park! I thought it was a rat. Jim, thank heavens, took it outside. Sometimes I don’t know about him. He let it go, to come back another day. Entirely too much country living for me!

  There are more people here than I realized at first glance. You ride through and think no one much lives here, but on Sundays they come out of the woodwork for church, the one social event I have to look forward to. I think there were seventy-five in worship this week.

  Rest assured, dear mother, that I will do what I can to get us back to civilization.

  Your loving daughter, Nell

  CHAPTER 12

  Fish for Breakfast

  A crisp October Monday morning in 1930 made Silas Wright feel kindly toward both the world and his boarder, Bud Harrogate. Silas woke as usual at five, stared at the ceiling awhile, then got up and dressed. He padded to the cabinet for a swig of whiskey—and, instead of waking Bud, lit a lamp and read the Bible for an hour. Then he rapped on the ceiling with a broom handle.

  Harrogate’s feet usually hit the floor seconds after such racket, but this morning, nothing. Silas knocked harder, dislodging a rain of floor-bound particles. Damn, he thought, climbing the stairs, brushing debris from his thin crop of hair. Hope he ain’t died on me like Cousin Lucius. He passed in his sleep. Didn’t smoke, drink, or cuss—one of them Christians that God can’t stand. Papa figured him for a woods colt, said there never was a clean-mouthed male Wright.

  Topping the steps, Silas stopped. Silence. Harrogate snored with the best, so he was either dead and gone or simply gone. Harrogate’s door opened to a made bed, shut window, clean floor. Silas held a note— penned on a page torn from a yellowed Sunday school quarterly—at arm’s length. “Visiting Sis. Back before Christmas. Don’t take no wooden nickels. Bud.”

  These times, I’d take any kind of nickel. Silas absently scratched his left ear. Just like him. Ever now and again it’s not “see you” or “kiss my ass,” just gone. Says he gets to craving excitement. Hmp. What’s better’n a cabbage harvest? I better get moving. Ethel and Carl’s gone over the mountain, and work won’t do itself.

  Silas fed livestock, milked, and fixed breakfast—three eggs, fried in the previous night’s pork grease, a dish of applesauce, and a cup of coffee. He ate in silence, then carried a second cup to the porch. Poplar leaves, tree-bound and bright yellow a week before, lay like brown afterthoughts on the dirt yard. Ridgetop maples and sourwoods still sported yellows and reds, and oaks were beginning to show scarlet, yellow, or brown.

  Silas sipped coffee, inhaled the autumn air, and lit his pipe. When I was young, coffee and a smoke would trot me to the outhouse. Anymore, a shit hobbles along when it gets around to it, late, like a mail-order package.

  Hell to get old. Eighty. Aches and pains in places I didn’t even know I had two year ago. Orta set and stare at the mountains till dinnertime.

  I miss the chestnuts. Their yellow was prettier than maples or tulip trees. And big, Lordy. Them was trees, trees God was proud of. A man could build anything out of them. Now they’re gone.

  Used to see them yellow-headed parakeets. Gone. Pigeons? Flocks used to hide the sun. Gone. Me, too, soon enough. Wonder how gone’ll feel? He leaned against the rail and shut his eyes.

  Five minutes later he jerked awake. What in hell am I doing? Only a Rockefeller can afford to nap away a morning.

  Harrogate had dug a trench beside the house, in which they meant to store cabbages. Silas grabbed a potato digger and loosened the trench bottom, tossing stray redworms into a mason jar. He spent the morning filling the trench with cabbages and covering them. He saved several to make a run of kraut.

  His dinner was simple—bread and butter and a tin of sardines. He ate them with relish. Good as these are, it makes me want fresh fish for supper. Rhetta was here, she’d say not to have fish twice a day, but, hell, when I was a pup, we ate fish for breakfast. I’ve eat it three times a day many a time.

  Later that afternoon he rode to Nellie to find no mail, which lately suited him—no meddling government that day. He took his time returning, sitting the horse halfway home to watch yellow jackets line into the roadside. He dismounted and, tiptoeing, tied a piece of shirttail to the overarching doghobble to help him find the nest hole toward dark. Wonder if I need one of them permits to burn these things out. Damn government. The way we’re headed, Warshington’ll take a notion to breed the damn things. The tourists’ll get stung so bad, some peckerhead bureaucrat’ll say that was so good, let’s restock rattlesnakes. Next thing you know they’ll bring in packs of wolves. Hell, I remember my daddy talking about getting a ten-dollar bounty for a wolf pelt. They’ll end up bringing back beavers. Elk. I’d not be surprised by it.

  Silas cocked his head toward a keening hawk, but the bird had out-raced his hearing. His eyes lit on a crow preening on a sourwood limb, backlit by the setting sun. He tipped his hat to the bird, clucked at the mare, and headed slowly homeward.

  The creek beside the road was barely six feet wide. He stopped often to read its rushing water. I was a boy, I used to catch specks barehanded, dots and lines on their sides like God’s handwriting, long as your forearm, holding in pools, waiting for whatever darted by. Rising mayflies. Falling ants. Bees. Crickets. I’ve found half-digested mice in their stomachs. Kinder like a bear, they’ll eat about anything.

  Ain’t seen such trout in years. They was fished out of this stretch of creek by the turn of the century. Now it’s hatchery fish, rainbows, browns, easy catches. They think when a man shows up, food falls from the sky.

  The Hawkins boy said we can’t fish with worms. Hellfire. Cart me to the clink if they like. I want trout for supper.

  Between house and barn Silas spied a peck-size wad of feathers pulsating in the shade. He finally focused on a hawk munching one of his pullets. It tore flesh from the fowl and glared at Silas. Look at that. That ain’t a threat. He’s just saying, “What’ll you do about it?”

  Silas dismounted, close enough to hear the beak rip feathers and flesh. No other creature showed itself—dog, barn cat, chicken. Damn it all. Ain’t got my rifle. But, come to think of it, here’s another critter the government wants to mollyco
ddle, so pretty soon a man won’t be able to have eggs or fried chicken neither. The redtail finished, looked at Silas again, and lifted with a wide sweep of wings. I could have swore that bird sneered at me. Reckon he thinks he’s in one of them newfangled bird sanctuaries?

  He fed and watered the horse and figured the time to be five o’clock, time to catch and fix supper, eat, and clean the kitchen before dark. Fetching pole and jar, he headed creekside. After cutting a forked stick into a Y, he threw a number four hook baited with two redworms into a pocket of water. His third cast raised half a supper’s worth of rainbow. He slipped the long end of the stick through its gill slit and out its mouth, and laid it into the water.

  When Jim Hawkins stopped his horse eighty yards downstream, Silas, facing upstream, neither heard nor saw him. Jim had thought simply to visit, so whistled as if to say, “Oh, brother, I need to go,” and began to turn his horse. After Silas enjoyed another strike, he nestled pole under armpit while unhooking the fish. As he reached for his stringer, he saw motion downstream.

  A horse and rider. No mistaking the uniform hat. Well, if he wants me, I’m cotched. He can leave without messing with me, which means he likely never will. If he comes on, then I’ll likely get my ticket punched. Silas Wright, gone as a goose, over a damn fish supper. Hell, he’s coming. Blame it all.

  Jim rode toward Silas at a funereal pace. He touched his hat brim, hitched his mount, and strode toward the creek. “Son, how in the world are you?” asked Silas.

  “Fine, Mr. Wright.”

  “It’s Silas.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How’s the family?”

  “Nell’s fine, I suppose. Little Elizabeth’s had the croup, but she’ll be okay. All I can say about Mack is, he’s all boy.”

  “That’s good.”

  Jim removed his Stetson and examined the inside closely, like he might find a nest of cooties. “You haven’t seen anything suspicious around lately, have you?”

  Silas shook his head. “What makes you ask that?”

  “Outbuilding burned back at the Howell place. I’d suspect Willie McPeters but couldn’t find that boot print of his.”

  “Been dry lately. I ain’t seen that odd bird in years.”

  “Well, if you do, let me know.” Jim put his hat back on. “I figured if I was this far up the valley, I’d come by to say howdy.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Only trouble is, I’m on duty, and you’re fishing.”

  Silas’s eyes rounded and he nodded slowly. “Wouldn’t dispute neither point.”

  Jim eyed the mason jar. “Bait?”

  “See any on this here hook?”

  “No, sir.”

  He held up the stringer, on which two trout gasped for water. “Ain’t these pretty? If you want to stay for supper, I’ll catch two more. Unless that puts me over the limit.”

  “Thanks, Silas, limit’s seven. But I need to get to the house.”

  Jim stooped and poured the jar’s contents onto the ground. If he saw more living creatures than a couple of stray sow bugs, he didn’t let on.

  Silas glanced from jar to Jim and grinned. “If you’d found something, would you have give me a ticket?” Jim nodded. “Guess you didn’t find no evidence today. But if you had, I’d claim it to be what you call circumstantial. These trout just thought this hook was so pretty they jumped on it. No law I know of prohibits that.”

  Jim smiled. “Maybe the law of nature. Don’t let me catch you again, hear? I’d hate to have to write you up, long as I’ve known you.”

  Silas put a fishy hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Son, this old man ain’t going to quit fishing because you wear that uniform. If you don’t want to write me up, don’t come here. ’cause if it ain’t fishing, it’ll be hunting. If it ain’t that, it’ll be some other chickenshit rule. I ain’t fighting the park, nor you neither. I just ain’t paying no attention to it. Understand?”

  Jim nodded. “Let’s leave it at that, Silas. Fair enough?”

  They shook hands. “Fair enough, young man. You sure you won’t take supper?”

  “I better get back. Nell’s been hollering because I’m gone so much.”

  “Does she think you’re going to take care of half a million acres by sitting in the house? By the way, how’s the Howell place holding up?”

  Jim looked toward the ridge. “Aw, it’s all growed up, like everything else.”

  Silas gestured toward his house and barn. “What do you think ten more years will do to this place?”

  “You tell me, Silas.”

  “If I get Harrogate back—by the way, he left last night—and if I live that long, it’ll be the same. Until I get down in my back or lose my mind, I’m going to work God’s green earth. This farm’ll be an island in the middle of pure-tee chaos. The rest of Cataloochee’ll look like we give it back to the Indians. I take that back. Indians care for the land. It’ll be a downright Borneo jungle.”

  Jim chose not to remark a solitary redworm wriggling at his foot. “Well, take it easy, Silas. I better get back down the creek.”

  “Much obliged for the visit. Now go home. You got to keep a young wife happy.”

  “That’s easier said than done—anymore, I stay in the doghouse.”

  “I remember days when Rhetta thought I was the cause of everything bad from Noah’s flood to prohibition. But a man’s got to keep peace.”

  “How long were you all married?”

  “Nigh on sixty years. We had our differences, but we did all right. You know the secret?”

  “Lord, Silas, spit it out.”

  “Talk. Don’t sull up like an old sow possum because she’s mad and clammed up her own self. Keep talking. In time things right themselves and you go on. But if you get to where you all don’t say three words in two days, you might as well go live in that doghouse permanent-like.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, neighbor. Sounds like wisdom.”

  They shook hands. “Experience, at least. Come again, when you ain’t carrying your ticket book.”

  Silas pulled the fish from the creek as Jim rode away. “Suppertime, gals. I’ll introduce you to some bacon grease and cornmeal.” He slit their bellies and raked out innards like hollowing a ripe cantaloupe. He cut off fins, heads, and tails, then headed for the house. Sure will be good eating. After supper I’ll burn some bees, and try not to set the woods on fire. Boy’s got enough on his mind without a plumb conflagration.

  CHAPTER 13

  Word from Raleigh

  Cataloochee life for Mary Carter and her sons was mostly quiet. Thomas Carter and his brother, Manson, swung in contrary rhythms, counterbalanced by devotion to their mother. Thomas rose early, sometimes before four, fixing coffee, rushing daylight, thin brown hair skewing from under an olive-colored felt hat. Manson hated opening his eyes before daylight because he kept owl hours, reading almanac or Bible, or sketching out the upcoming season’s kitchen garden, scratching his bald head with a pencil end. Thomas cooked breakfast, hot cereal, sausage, eggs, and biscuits—some said his biscuits were better than his mother’s, but never to her face. When breakfast was cleared, she began to prepare the noon meal, chicken and dumplings with butter beans and cabbage, or ham with green beans and tomatoes and corn, or, in the fall, beef with turnips and kale. Manson warmed leftovers for supper, soon after which Thomas made for bed.

  After lunch Mary’s custom was to nap, then read her mail. Her sons alternated days walking to the post office. Having no word from the outside world made her fuss and fidget—abundant mail days made her as happy as a pig in mud.

  It seemed to Thomas, returning from the post office on an exceptionally warm day in October 1930, that lately their box’s contents had dwindled in both number and importance. Still, he dreaded seeing a park service envelope, which meant not greetings but the salutation of a lost lease. They were not brazen violators, but all Carters figured rules were made if not to be broken at least to be bent until they screeched. It was a matter
of time, he figured.

  He laid the mail on the wicker table beside his mother’s porch rocker. Aunt Mary picked up her glasses, fanned through the pile, and picked out a letter postmarked Raleigh. “Oh, goody. It’s from Velda.” She found no sharp instrument in her apron pockets so reached to the bottom shelf for a blunt-ended kitchen knife, a nineteenth-century relic Hiram had rehandled when they’d moved into their new frame house. She slit the envelope and shook out a dozen folded sheets of pale blue paper. “Yep, it’s her handwriting,” she said. “Fancier since she left. Oliver sent her to one of those colleges down there, you know, to finish her education. And here’s a picture!”

  Thomas brought his mother a glass of tea. “Who’s that?”

  “Little Mary Babcock, thank you very much.” Mary beamed. “Ain’t she the cutest thing? I wish they’d bring her up here. One year old and I’ve never laid eyes on her. Look at that hair, would you?”

  He held the photo to the light as if it were a negative. “Wonder if they have one of them Brownies? Takes a good picture, don’t it?” He handed the photo back. “We could go see her if you wanted to.”

  “Pshaw, Son. It ain’t that easy. That’s three hundred miles.”

  “Trains run that far.”

  She fanned herself with the envelope. “Don’t think I could stand such a trip, Son. Maybe this’ll say they’re coming.” She drank some tea. “That hits the spot. Listen, Son. There’s lots of news, so why don’t you and Manson see if anybody wants word from Raleigh. I could read this out loud for everybody.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  By four the porch was crowded. Levi Marion and Valerie, who held little Ned, sat on the steps. Their children Ada, George, Ruth Elizabeth, and Little Mary, ranging from eleven to five, sat on the railing swinging legs, the sound like washing hung in a brisk wind. Manson slouched against the column while his brother paced, porch to kitchen, offering tea, cake, and cookies. Thomas had enticed Silas Wright from his place up the valley, and he and Carl and Ethel rocked opposite Aunt Mary, who noticed Ethel had grown broader across the beam than a single ax handle could accurately measure.