A short man in a gray suit and fedora walked up the sidewalk, smiling, key in his right hand and bag of lunch in his left. “Top of the morning, gentlemen,” he lilted. “Sir, you wouldn’t ever have that foot problem if you owned one of my chairs. Just the ticket for people with circulatory problems.” He put the key into his pocket, pulled out a card, and handed it to Zeb. “Chas. L. Sluder & Co.,” it read. “Dealer in Round Oak Ranges, Dutch Kitchenettes, Brunswick Phonographs, 22 Broadway, phone 1509.” Zeb had no idea what a “Dutch Kitchenette” might be. He tried to hand the card back, but the man refused. “Let me open up, gentlemen. Then you must try out a chair. Sluder’s the name, Charlie Sluder.”
“Thank you kindly, sir, but we live in Haywood.”
“No barrier to commerce, sir. I can put it in your fine auto, or I can ship it by train.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sluder, but we have business this morning.”
Sluder brightened. “When you come back for your auto, I’ll show you the most comfortable chair you ever sat in. A steal at forty dollars.”
Jake and Zeb ambled up the street. “Forty dern dollars for a chair? Don’t he know they got a depression?” Several drummers stood in the door of the Langren, ready to convince shopkeepers to stock their wares. At College Street, Jake gave a boy a nickel for a newspaper and they lit on a bench. Zeb took a deep breath. “Can’t figure out why a man would want to live in a city. Air stinks, nothing but racket.”
Jake chuckled. “This ain’t so bad. Look at these headlines. They had thirteen killed in Oklahoma and Kansas by a tornado yesterday. More’n five hundred stranded on an ocean liner, but they were rescued. Oh, here’s a good one. This was in California. Listen. ‘Mr. & Mrs. Joe Davis were happily married today after an engagement of forty-two years. Joe popped the question in 1888 but Miss Virlinda Seaward’s parents objected. Neither Joe nor Virlinda wanted to antagonize the parents so they waited. Recently the parents died. So last night Joe and Virlinda were married.’”
“I’d a run off, myself. What kind of fool would do without for forty-two years?”
“Ain’t that the truth? They’d be my age, and that’s nearly too damn old for it. I’ll be sixty my next birthday.”
“I heard you say ‘nearly,’” Zeb said with a grin.
“Mind your own business,” Jake said, and laughed. “Says here George Iseley was elected Raleigh mayor. I guess old Oliver Babcock will have to try again.”
“That’s a shame. What’s that headline there?”
“‘Smoky Park Will Draw Crowds, Hotel Man Says.’” Jake rustled the paper. “‘When Horace M. Albright, director of the National Parks, announced in Asheville recently that the number of motor roads into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park would be restricted and decided preference given to the use of saddle horses, he created in New York City and other sections of the country a greater interest in the vast outdoor playground in Southern Appalachia, according to Walter Baker, prominent hotel man of New York, Los Angeles, and Palm Springs, who arrived here yesterday on a brief business trip.’ Did you know we used to live in a vast outdoor playground?”
“Could have fooled me. Looked more like a section of farms about to go all to hell. Them first folks that left wasn’t gone three weeks before pigweed started taking over.”
“Man says that with the economic times, not as many folks is traveling to the Mediterranean as usual. You know where he says they’ll come to? Right here.”
“God, Jake, maybe it’s best we left after all. A Yankee with more money than sense is something I don’t care to look at or listen to. Hey, look yonder.” Zeb pointed to an older man dressed in black except for a white shirt and panama hat. His string tie blew in the breeze. He wielded a large walking stick, with which he tapped his way up the south side of the square, heading toward the courthouse. “Blind, ain’t he?” asked Zeb.
Jake nodded. “Reckon so. I’d hate to have to make my way blinder’n a bat in these crowds. Wonder somebody don’t trip and rob him.”
They stood and stretched. The wide vista to the west was of the mountains from which they had journeyed that morning. They walked downstairs to the public toilet behind the monument, then headed east toward the new municipal buildings.
To the south two new skinny buildings shot skyward, one with candy cane columns upstairs, the other a Gothic creation of a dozen stories, with gargoyles and a penthouse. “Wasn’t there a monument shop there?” asked Zeb.
“Yeah, he had an angel in the window.”
The City Building, of pink marble and brick and topped with a bell tower and pink and green tile, sat beside a gray, sober-looking new courthouse. “How did they think they were going to pay for all this?” asked Zeb.
Jake shook his head. “They’ll end up chicken houses. Damned expensive poultry palaces.”
Zeb pointed to the frieze, undecorated except for chiseled letters: CITY BVILDING OF ASHEVILLE. “You’d think with all the money they spent, they could have spelled it right.”
Jake tucked his newspaper under his arm as they walked through the revolving door and removed their hats. A smiling black woman stood outside the elevator. “What floor, gentlemen?”
“Third,” said Zeb. “Just show us where the steps is at and we won’t trouble you.”
“Y’all come in and I’ll take you right up. Watch your step.”
As she folded the round seat against the wall, Zeb hesitated, but Jake pushed him inside. She closed the exterior door, then the brass cage, and pushed the handle to the rear. The car bounced slightly when they stopped. “When you ready, push the button and I’ll come for you, hear?”
Zeb barged out first. “Much obliged, ma’am,” he said. “They’s got to be steps somewhere,” he said to Jake.
“Rather walk than ride?”
“Jake, I been in jail. Damn right I’m finding steps when we get through.”
When they entered, Horace Wakefield was rooting through the top drawer of a file cabinet. “Well, look what the cat drug in,” he said, and left off his search. “How are you two?”
“Fair to middling,” said Jake. They shook hands. “I came for my money.”
“Of course. Come on back. Sorry it couldn’t be more, but they wouldn’t let me count your springwater.”
They caught up over cups of bitter coffee. Horace told of closing the Haywood office, and Jake and Zeb related family news.
“What ever happened to that other man—what was his name? Pendleton?” asked Zeb.
“Nothing good,” said Wakefield. “He died, you know.”
“Yeah, we heard, but there’s different stories of how. Did he nasty away?”
“Not in so many words. He was up at Sunburst, where they were still logging. Somehow, something slipped. Coroner ruled it an accident, but they say there was bad blood between him and one of the skidders. Anyway, he was crushed between two logs. Said there wasn’t hardly enough of him left to bury.”
“Damn,” said Jake. “I didn’t like him, but I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”
“Well, you might say he kind of died like he lived, I guess,” said Wakefield.
“So you’re the head snake now?” asked Zeb.
“I’d hardly say that. I’m chief until they close it, which won’t be far in the future. Maybe a year. Then I’ll be back in the business, if there’s any more call for surveyors.”
“What about that museum you were talking up?”
Wakefield stood, rammed his hands into his pockets, and stared out the window. “I’m growing less and less optimistic. For starters, there’s no money. And it looks like the government is determined to get rid of all structures except those housing wardens. I’m very disappointed.” He turned from the window. “I have written everyone from the president on down about it, but no one seems interested. It wouldn’t be the case if you had been easterners.”
“Mr. Wakefield, if we was easterners, they’d have left us alone,” said Zeb.
“That’s a fact. Here, Jake,
is your check. Bank it today. Anymore you don’t know.”
They found the staircase. When they walked by the elevator on the ground floor, they tipped their hats to the operator, who nodded, then grinned as they went outside.
“Ready to go home?” asked Jake. “Or you want to try that Tingle place?”
Zeb shrugged. “I’d just as soon go home,” he said, and led off toward the monument. They were about to turn down Broadway when Jake stopped his nephew. “Zeb, I wonder what’s wrong.”
Crammed between the Legal Building and the Pack Library, the Central Bank and Trust Company boasted a fancy door in the chamfer under a blue awning. It was shut. A crowd milled. Folks emerged from streetcars, hesitated, and then ran toward the bank. Three or four hundred people stood in clumps, gesturing with hats and newspapers. Zeb and Jake made their way closer, among snatches of conversation. “Can’t believe it… I knew it… God, we’re rurint.” A hastily written sign on the bank’s door: CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS FOR LIQUIDATION AND CONSERVATION OF ASSETS FOR PROTECTION OF THE DEPOSITORS.
“Son, let’s get back to Haywood before something else happens,” said Jake. “This keeps up, nobody’ll be cooking anyhow. Wait. Ain’t this where Levi Marion put his settlement money?” They looked at each other.
“I think it was. God, I hope he moved it. Let’s go,” said Zeb.
At the edge of the square the white-haired man brandished his cane at the bank. “Bastards,” he yelled. “Bastards, I told you!” He repeated it with a ghoulish smile. A man next to Jake laughed.
“What’s so funny, brother?” asked Jake.
“He’s perdicted this crash for years. I reckon now he’ll say he told us so the rest of our lives.”
“Who is he?”
“Judge Bland. A lawyer. The syph made him blind.”
On their way to the car Mr. Sluder stood outside the A&P with his nephew and Gay Green, a partner in the Langren. Sluder broke away and hurried to Zeb and Jake. “Gentlemen, can I interest you in a chair before you return to Haywood County? I could sell it on time.” He rocked on his heels and fingered his suspenders.
“No, Mr. Sluder, we need to get back. Besides, after this morning, nobody’s got cash money. I reckon you heard about the bank.”
“We will weather this storm, gentlemen. We must hold a steady course, not lose our heads. Next Thursday will be Thanksgiving. I truly hope we all will have something to give thanks about, and over. Have a good day.”
When Hannah gave Jake the Model T, her younger sons refused to visit with or speak to her. That suited Zeb and Mattie fine, and, after a short time of feeling sorry for herself, Hannah had to admit life rolled more sweetly without that bunch of arguing rascals. She lived two Christmases after Zeb’s trial, and, as Mattie said, “wore the spots off” several decks of cards. She died in her sleep, and Zeb applied for a “pea soup” to bury her in the Carter family cemetery, about as far from Ezra’s grave as a body could get and still be in Cataloochee.
Mattie met Zeb with a kiss and hug that knocked his hat off. “Jake get his money?”
“He did, but I was mighty worried about it. Central Bank crashed this morning like that New York panic. We stopped at First National in Waynesville. They didn’t much want to cash it, but he gave me my part and it’s in the bank.”
“Didn’t Levi Marion have his money in Central?”
“Jake asked me that. We thought it might have been.”
“God, that’ll kill him for sure. Want a glass of cider?”
“No, thanks. What’s this?” He lifted an envelope, addressed to his mother in Oliver Babcock’s flourishing hand.
“He sent a Christmas letter every year. We didn’t think to tell him she died.”
“She sure liked him. One of us ought to write.”
“I will after supper.”
Zeb had offered to buy Mattie an electric range, but she’d said no, so the children came in from their chores carrying armloads of stove wood. After supper they all either drew pictures or wrote notes to Oliver and Velda.
When the children were upstairs, Zeb and Mattie put on jackets and went outside. Warm for November. Sitting on the porch edge, they listened to late crickets, smelled wood smoke, saw stars. A truck shifted into a lower gear to make the Balsam Mountain grade.
“Sure is noisy here,” Mattie said.
“You’ll get used to it. It don’t keep me up of a night anymore.”
Mattie gave a little shudder and grabbed her husband’s arm.
“You all right, honey?”
She nodded and leaned her head to his shoulder. He smelled the sweet smoke of apple wood in her hair. A screech owl started up across the road. “Hear that?” she asked. “When I was a young’un, I thought they was haints.”
“Ain’t no such thing.”
“I don’t know about that. You know them nightmares I used to have after your daddy died? I had one last night. We’d moved back home to Catalooch. We was setting up a bed and I looked out the window. Know what I saw?”
“A warthog?”
“A warthog from hell, maybe. Your daddy, standing at the barn, holding a pitchfork, saying ‘Now, it’s mine’ over and over. I was scared to death.”
“Honey, we covered his sorry carcass in the churchyard. He won’t ever bother us again.”
“Can we go back to Catalooch, maybe next spring? I’d like to see Mama’s yellow bells blooming. Maybe root some of it.”
“They won’t let you.”
“My mama’s mama planted them. I’ll get some if I want to.”
“We’ll see. I wouldn’t mind some fishing. If we find Jim Hawkins’s back turned, we could get a few plants. Let’s go in. I bet the fire needs another stick of wood.”
After they made love, Zeb went straight to sleep. Mattie lay on her back awhile, thinking about heaven, and how much it would look like the Cataloochee she had known as a girl.
CHAPTER 15
This Time It’ll Be Done Right
The first time J. Harold Evans sat in a saddle, he was eight. It was strapped onto his neighbor’s Shetland pony, an ill-tempered beast with no particular affection for humans. But Evans wanted to ride, and its owner pledged to keep a close eye on the equine, a known biter.
When Evans mounted, the pony promptly bucked, the distracted owner dropped the reins, and the pony galloped away, hell-bent to use the fence to dislodge its burden. Evans slid smoothly from the saddle on the other side, however, and would not have been hurt except that his right foot hung in the stirrup. After what seemed hours to the screaming upside-down child, the pony tired of dragging him around the lot, stopped, and began to kick. Evans vowed never to find himself on horseback again.
At fifty, he had fulfilled that promise, despite working for the park service. Most service employees and all backcountry wardens rode horses. Their high boots and bloused trousers proclaimed descent from horse cavalry. Evans proudly wore the uniform, despite his nearly lifelong equinophobia.
His wife had presented him with the perfect accessory: an antique English riding crop with a silver top shaped like a fox’s head. Why such a thing had been in Helena, Montana—his former duty post had been Glacier National Park—was anybody’s guess, but after his fortieth birthday, the crop rarely left his hand. Some underlings whispered he bathed with it, and others sniggered, suggesting he might never go near a horse but rode his wife with vigor.
Evans had been a halfback—he’d gone out for fullback but the staff had said five feet five was too small—at Northwestern, and might have made All-American but for an injury prior to his junior season. The day publicity photos were shot, he ran, cradling pigskin in his right arm, stiff-arming with the left, planting his right foot before the camera for an abrupt turn. The fierce grimace in the photo meant his knee had given way. He never played again.
He loved a good cigar, but was known to whop employees for spitting in the grass, and if he caught a smoker tossing a butt, he made the poor soul police a square m
ile. The other weakness he admitted to was gin, which he enjoyed, two drinks with tonic water, just before bed. “Can’t be too careful about malaria.” Good gin was abundant at Glacier, next door to Canada. In the winter of 1930–31 he crated many gallons to move to Tennessee. Until they arrived intact, in January, he was as nervous as a cat birthing kittens with barbwire tails.
Ray Bradley, an east Tennesseean, was hired as much for polishing his boss’s brass and leather as for his talents at filing and typing. He had played basketball at Tusculum College. Never in danger of becoming an All-American, he nonetheless had enjoyed the game enough to consider a coaching career. He was a head and a half taller than his boss, so when Evans whacked him with the crop, it hit belt buckle, if Ray was lucky.
In their new building at Sugarlands, Ray worked in a spacious anteroom with a window overlooking the hemlock-ringed parking lot. One passed through it into Evans’s generous office, which featured a large picture window oriented toward Gatlinburg. On a March Monday in 1931 Ray fed a triplicate report into his black Remington, typed the date, and heard Evans call. When he walked into the office, the boss was staring out the window, absently tapping his leg. “Yes, sir?”
Evans turned with a self-satisfied smile. “I’ve decided to visit the people.” A lit Henry Clay lay in the crystal ashtray on his otherwise uncluttered desk.
Ray cocked his head wryly. “Yes, sir. Incognito?”
“What in hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, sir. Your language reminded me of a folktale.”
“Now you really need to explain yourself.” He slapped his palm with the crop’s cane.
“Kings used to go disguised among their subjects, to find out what they really thought.”
“That’s damned medieval, Bradley, not to mention risky. I’m going because they want to meet their new landlord, so to speak.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’ll leave after lunch.”
“Very good, sir. You have cleared this with Mrs. Evans?”
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