“Certainly.”
“How many years do I have left?”
Bennett laughed. “Last year, I saw no reason you couldn’t be kicking around another twenty years. Maybe more. That’s not to say you might have an aneurism tomorrow. One never knows. But, God willing, you’ll live a good while.”
Manson and Thomas, cleaning their hands with a piece of towel, joined them. “Boys, I was just telling your mother she might have twenty or more years left in her.”
“That’s mighty good, Mama,” said Thomas.
“Don’t know so well about that,” she said. “It’s getting too hard to live here, and I don’t know if I want to keep it up.”
“Mama, are you talking about dying, or moving?” asked Manson.
“Sometimes I wonder what’s the difference. You stay here, it just gets harder and harder, and lonesomer and lonesomer. You move, you have to start all the hardships again. I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that.”
Silas had been talking to the Johnsons and Howells, who in a group were now holding to each other, trying not to fall down the hillside. He approached Mary about the same time as Jim and Nell did. “Somebody say something about moving?” Silas asked.
Mary took Silas by the arm. “My Hiram’s best friend,” she said. “Did you tell those nice people to stop for dinner at our house?”
“I did.” They watched the town folks in their slick-soled shoes inch down the mountain. “If they don’t break their necks first.”
“Silas, we were just saying how hard it’s getting to live here anymore.”
“Tell me about it,” said Nell under her breath. Jim put his arm around her, but she did not respond to his hug.
Silas cocked his head toward the couple, then embraced Aunt Mary. “Well, you got a point, Mary. You know, I was thinking, looking at that pitiful crowd, twenty years ago the postmaster’s death would have drawn hundreds. Now Cataloochee’s near about in the history books. Jim and Nell and these young’uns are the first new blood in years. But you know what I saw the other day? Two of them big old woodpeckers working dinner out of that old maple by the barn. Hollering, knocking on them old limbs, having a big time. As long as I can see such as that, I’m not going anywhere. And when it’s over for me, they can lay me right here.”
“You’d spend now till the last trump close to Hiram,” said Mary.
“My body would. Like Nelse here. But I’d see Hiram in heaven.”
“You really think that’s where he is, Silas?”
“I don’t think it, Mary, I know it.”
“I wish I could be that certain.”
“Don’t give it no more consideration. He’s in heaven, period.”
“Thanks, Silas. Mama needed to hear that,” said Manson.
Mary bristled at her son. “Young man, I’ll judge what I need to hear and what I don’t.”
Manson led the mule down the mountain. Thomas took his mother’s left arm and Silas her right as they eased down the mountain, talking of weather and anything besides death, burial, and resurrection. Jim and his family followed a dozen paces behind, too far to hear the details but close enough to know it was small talk. Jim held Little Elizabeth’s hand with his left and kept the right steadily behind Mack. Nell focused on the ground, wondering if they closed the post office how she would get her mail orders.
CHAPTER 22
All by Himself
Willie McPeters owned no toothbrush, nor would have known what to do with one save perhaps to dip it in coal oil before scrubbing rust off an ax head. A bearlike omnivore, he paid little attention to what he ate. The only thing that kept teeth in his head was eating lots of raw apples—peel, core, seeds, and all.
He set the Big Creek fire in the summer of 1931 just to watch it burn. He brought with him his Marlin model 94, and a tow sack, in which lay two boxes of kitchen matches, half a pair of binoculars, a box of ammunition, and two Prince Albert tins. He added a dozen apples from an abandoned orchard halfway to the top of Mount Sterling. He set the fire with no particular haste, using the large lens to focus sunlight on leaf piles. Then he climbed to the summit of Old Sterling, stretched his legs in front of him, and munched an apple. The fire smoldered for a while, then caught in earnest on a crosswind, and he grinned as with one hand he glassed the ridge for spreading smoke and flame and with the other pulled at himself like a deranged pirate spotting a boatload of whores.
McPeters watched for the better part of two days, content with fire, self-abuse, and apples. He moved occasionally to crush an ant or spider unlucky enough to venture onto his leg but otherwise watched the fire line devour the remnant of woods. The timber companies had left slash where it had fallen, fine kindling to light stunted trees for which they’d had no use.
It was a fine, clear night. Save for bowels and bladder he did not move off the peak. It was fascinating to watch the fire at night as it crept toward the creek from several directions. He rose the second afternoon and headed back, after ratting through an old shack, the remains of a camp used by men checking their summer pastures. He found nothing worth keeping among the bones of small creatures, nut hulls, and mica-flecked pebbles. Strangely, he did not torch it.
He met no one between Sterling’s top and Long Bunk, a descent of a thousand feet, and saw few animals—a wormy-looking rabbit that bounded across the road too quickly for him to shoot, a squirrel he briefly regarded as food until he thought what his rifle would do to such a rodent. No songbirds greeted him. He spooked a pair of pileated woodpeckers, which undulated deeper into the woods. He’d never heard of eating a woodpecker, but those would be big enough if a man were careful to get a shot at the shy varmints.
He walked into the deserted settlement at Ola at suppertime like a silent movie villain, rifle on right shoulder, arm over the stock as counterbalance, left hand holding the sack, eyes shifting to see neither opposition nor greeting. At the creek behind the post office he set the Marlin against a rock. After opening one tobacco tin, he rolled and lit a cigarette, then removed fish line and hook from the other tin. He turned over rocks beside the creek until he found a hellgrammite with a nearly devilish design on its carapace. He hooked it and threw it downstream. On his third cast he landed a pretty trout, gutted it, and spitted it on a wild cherry limb.
McPeters built a fire beside a lean-to shed attached to the post office, cooked the fish, and ate it slowly, staring into the flames. Picking his teeth with one of the ribs, he threw the rest of the bones into the fire, which hissed and smoked far out of proportion to their size. He ate an apple. Not bothering to put the fire out, he resacked his belongings, picked up the rifle, and ambled toward the top of the next rise, where the Baptist church perched over the valley like a sentinel.
He’d never entered such a building, but this one seemed unthreatening as to either hellfire or salvation. The door opened easily to a pitch-dark interior. He lit a match that revealed a coal oil lantern in a windowsill. It held a little fuel yet so he lit it, trimmed the wick, and looked around.
In the center of the room stood a cast-iron heater, stovepipe vented straight through the ceiling. He cracked the legs off a broken-down chair and laid them inside. Then he scratched himself and shook his head. Going outside, he found small sticks for kindling. He relaid the fire, and pissed in the back corner. Gathering more firewood against impending chill, he noticed smoke and flames coming from Ola. “Aaaa,” he said.
Running down the mountain, he arrived in time to see the post office roof collapse and send thousands of sparks into the night sky. He masturbated to the rhythm of the fire, then walked back up to the church, lit the fire, lay down on an adjacent pew, and immediately slept.
Next morning he woke to the shrill chatter of a house wren, which wanted him gone from her territory. He had one stick of firewood left, which he flung at the bird left-handed. It was wide of the bird and broke a window. She continued to protest until he gathered his truck and left.
It took him most of the day to get back t
o Nellie, where he sidled behind the post office and banged on the clapboard with his rifle butt, then quickly went around front. Hub Carter, who had driven mail in and out of Cataloochee for years, had acquired Nelse Howell’s job by default. When he went out back to see who had disturbed his nap, McPeters quickly lifted two tins of potted meat and a bottle of Coke, and ran into the woods. He emerged past the church, eating and drinking as he went, like a pilgrim bound for glory. He threw the bottle into the creek, where it shattered into bright pieces. A meat tin he crushed with his boot and put in his shirt pocket for no other reason than he liked the picture of the devil on the label.
He was resting in Henry Sutton’s barn, eating the other tin’s worth, when Jim Hawkins rode into the yard. Jim was the first human he had seen in three days, and McPeters did not care to be found. He pointed the rifle toward Jim and mouthed an explosion. Grinning, he saw Jim lead his horse toward the back porch, so he headed for the woods behind the barn. He squatted fifty yards in and watched the warden eat dinner and talk to his horse.
When McPeters moved, the horse spooked. He watched Jim steady the horse, draw his weapon, and slowly walk to the barn. When he heard Jim say “Who’s in there?” McPeters could easily have put a slug through the man’s forehead. Instead he mouthed another explosion as if to remember this face for later. Following Deadfall Branch a ways, he then sidetracked to the main road and silently headed southeast, over the mountain into Carter Fork.
In less than a half mile he peered down toward his homeplace, a sprawling structure covered by a roof that was some places sheet metal, others wooden shakes, tarpaper, thatch. Some surfaces had no covering, the rafters bleached chicken-bone white.
Something didn’t smell right. The sun came briefly from behind a cloud, and a winged shadow the size of a bushel basket skimmed the ground. He looked up at two soaring turkey buzzards.
He threw the rifle’s safety off and walked into the yard. Neither chickens nor dogs milled to greet or warn him. The barn was empty, the ancient milk cow having been butchered at the beginning of the past winter, and the mule having wandered off the summer before. He found no small mammals or reptiles that could cause such a stink. On the porch his father’s empty chair sat in front of a wide-open front door. He grunted, but no one answered. The front room was empty.
A pot sat on the kitchen stove. He picked it up as though it might be the source of the stench, but after sniffing it, he propped the rifle against the wall, raked some of the contents onto his finger, and ate. It had been peas or beans a week or more ago. McPeters did not notice the mold. He ate until the pot was clean as it ever would be, chewing slowly, without enthusiasm, swallowing without water.
He retrieved his Marlin and looked through the first story, empty of life, or, for that matter, death. Whatever the source of the odor, it was upstairs, underneath, or outside. Stairs squeaked as he mounted. Halfway up, his shoulder brushed by a silver star pinned to a tacked-up squirrel hide. He searched the three rooms in that wing and found a dead mouse in the corner of the last bedroom, but it was too dry to stink, and anyway too small to cause the present trouble.
Something scraped and popped sheet metal not attached to the main structure. He looked out the glassless window at a buzzard atop the outhouse, with an awkward purchase on the front roof edge, trying to stick its red head in the door below, like an outsize parakeet beginning a somersault.
On the back porch he rubbed his eyes against the sharp odor. He walked down the steps and flapped his arms at the vulture. “Haaah,” he yelled, but the bird only kept at the door. Another lit in the yard twenty feet from the privy. McPeters yelled “Yaaah” but neither bird moved.
He threw a stick of firewood at the one on the ground. Raising its wings, it began to run, whether to build momentum for takeoff, or to attack, McPeters did not know. He shot it head-on, at which noise the privy-perching buzzard righted itself, flapped twice, and headed for the barn roof, where it folded its wings, waiting for McPeters to leave. After McPeters shot it, the bird rolled off the barn and hit the yard like a sack of soft potatoes. McPeters walked over and touched it with his boot toe. He had shot its head clean off. He grunted.
At the outhouse door he knew he was at the source of the trouble. He went to the creek, taking off his shirt on the way. It was a question whether odor from the shirt or the outhouse was worse. The garment ripped halfway up the back, but he dipped it into the creek and tied it around his face like a bandit’s mask. At the outhouse door he took a breath, then pulled.
The door did not yield immediately, so he yanked it harder. It creaked and popped as he pushed it wide open. Inside sat his father. His overalls were below his knees, and he looked like he had leaned against the back wall for one final push to empty his ancient, costive bowels, or perhaps had simply gone to sleep. His skin sagged and his color was as putrid as the smell. He hosted a multitude of ants, flies, and beetles, and even McPeters had no desire to see what feasted on his father from below.
McPeters went to the shed for a sledge, a tool they had used so seldom that it still boasted the handle the blacksmith had mated to it a generation ago. It was a nine-pound hammer, and the jakes was a two-hole affair. McPeters began busting the bench beside his father, and at a particularly hard stroke the old man’s body moved enough to begin to fall sideways. McPeters heard and saw a cloud of gases erupt from the body before the reek hit his nose. By the time he had destroyed the bench, his father’s body rested in three feet of sludge and splinters. The stench made McPeters reel for a couple of seconds, but he did not throw up. Instead he staggered to the shed for a can of coal oil.
After hammering the door into splinters, he threw them into the hole, doused the pit with kerosene, and threw a lit match with no more ceremony or regret than he would have used drowning a sack of kittens. When the building caught, he threw in the avian corpses. The huge birds nearly put the fire out, but he got it roaring again with barn hay and the remains of the chicken house. McPeters’s fire sent a smell heavenward composed of death rot, shit from various species, feathers, flesh, and whatever else had ever been tossed into the outhouse. The afternoon was humid and the aroma commanded Jim Hawkins’s attention in Big Cataloochee when it settled later that evening.
When the fire died, McPeters headed for the porch and sat heavily in his father’s rocker. He had masturbated only once around the old man, who had enjoyed such things himself but who had been particularly disgusted by such behavior in others, and had nearly knocked his son’s head off. But now McPeters could do what he damn well pleased. He built another small fire in the yard, took down his overalls, and had a big time all by himself.
CHAPTER 23
Uncle Silas
Silas Wright’s first morning labor, after scratching himself as he took a sup of whiskey, was to start a fire in the Home Comfort, a fancy contraption, heavy, decorated with lacy cast iron, a thermometer in the oven door. On its right stood a water jacket and atop sat a dual-compartment warmer.
Rhetta had regarded its best feature to be the iron gingerbread on the front, but Silas admired its efficiency and output. Only in coldest weather did he have to build a morning fire from scratch—riddling the grates nearly always exposed enough embers to start a fire.
When he meditated about change—lately, in the spring of 1932, a frequent activity—he wondered why people were in a sweat for electricity. His niece, for example, told him of the great boon of moving out of Cataloochee—power, run from a roadside pole to his new house. “You’ll turn a dial, and it’ll perk coffee in less than a minute. Think about that.” He did, and wondered why such an arrangement might be of any appreciable benefit.
He enjoyed building fires: first laying tinder on coals, then kindling, splits, and what he called “tree wood”—unsplit limb rounds—as well as cutting, splitting, stacking, and carrying firewood. He even liked to clean out ashes, nutrients for the kitchen garden. And electric ranges gave no aromatic nose of cast iron and smoke.
Besides,
power cost money. They sent you a bill every month. They can call me old-fashioned as long as I can bootleg enough firewood to keep warm, cook, and keep healthy.
A fire made the Home Comfort pop and expand with the rising sun. At the kitchen window Silas watched the barn emerge from the mists of dawn. That’s it. Same as preferring a horse over an automobile. Both get you where you want to go. But there’s no satisfaction to this modern tomfoolery. It’s no better—-just faster. I like to see, feel, and smell where I’m going, which you can’t do in a car. And a pot of soup beans and ham hocks cooked on an electric range can’t have but a hint of flavor. Half the satisfaction of eating is smelling it simmer slow on the woodstove. I remember when I was a young’un sniffing dinner—we didn’t have no kitchen then, but we’d stick our heads in the cabin and smell that stuff cooking, almost as good as the eating itself. Still love it, old as I am.
You know, that’s what’s wrong with this country. We want everything, and now. Especially young people. Won’t wait to build a fire, they got to have an electric stove. Won’t wait for beans to grow in the garden, they got to buy them in a tin can that sucks flavor right out of them. Won’t enjoy a journey, they got to be there today. Next thing you know they’ll come up with something that’ll get you there day before yesterday. And anymore the there they’re getting to is a damn national park.
He walked into the front room. On the hearth sat a fire screen. He bent to pluck a piece of straw from its wire mesh. That’s more’n half the problem with Jim Hawkins and that wife of his. Jim’s like me—rather ride than drive. She was born to run, and you can’t run in Cataloochee.
It ain’t any of my business, but if I was him, I’d lay down the law. Listen here, this is where my job is, and you belong with me. Period.
Silas laughed and shook his head. Yeah, sure, just like I put my foot down when Rhetta had to have that buggy. “You don’t need that a bit more’n I need another hole in my head,” I said. Lot of difference it made. She ran it so much there ain’t an original part left on it. A wonder I ever done any farming, just keeping her on the road. But a man’s a fool over a woman more times than not. I know I was.
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