Jake picked up an embossed matchbook. “These made overseas, too?”
“Heavens, no. Those are the world’s best. Made in Pennsylvania.”
Jake smiled like he had just laid a straight over two pairs.
That night the stockholders met, and did not take long to decide not to order from Offhaus. “You know,” said Rachel, “if we bought that imported stuff, it would take money out of a local man’s hand. I bet Galax Imports doesn’t pay those Japanese or whoever more’n a nickel for something they sell for two dollars. That isn’t Christian.”
“Well, ordering from this company might be good business,” Mattie said. “But I’ll bow to you men on that.”
Zeb scratched his ear and stretched. “The man made a good argument about profit, but Rachel’s right. If we do right by our suppliers and customers, we aren’t going out of business. Even if we did, we could still hold our heads up.”
Jake smiled. “Going out of business wouldn’t be the worst thing by far. We’ve all been run out of our homes. That’s a sight worse.”
So they agreed to reconcentrate on cider and honey, blankets and bedspreads, back scratchers and walking sticks. Local stuff. They added craftsmen and-women to their stable of suppliers. M&R Pure Mountain Mercantile seemed on its way, if not to prosperity, at least to stability. As Jake said, “It keeps beans on the table.”
It was warm for the first of June. Aunt Mary Carter stood on the porch of their new house—new to them, anyway—and listened to the Studebaker’s transmission whine down the mountain like it was holding back a landslide. She pulled a wisp of hair from the back of her neck and fanned herself. “Where in the world are we going to put all this?”
They had moved everything from the big house in the valley. Boxes and barrels and crates full of more than fifty years of married life cluttered the hallway. Every porch was laden. The hall clock could barely be heard for the piles of stuff. The barn loft was full. Manson had even parked boxes in the outhouse, a two-holer with room on either side.
Mary unpiled a chair and plumped down. “Lord have mercy, Hiram, what will we do?”
“You’ll think of something,” he said, leaning against a stack of boxes and tamping his pipe with a nail head. “I have an idea things will work out.” He blew smoke toward the ceiling. “They always do. Who’s that coming?”
Mary stood and saw a woman walking purposefully down the road. She wore a gingham shirt and dungarees with rolled cuffs. A straw hat with a red feather in its band angled toward the back of her head. She waved. “Good day, Aunt Mary.”
“Lord, it’s Mattie Banks,” Mary said to Hiram, who disappeared with his pipe smoke. The women embraced in the yard.
“Child, how are you? It’s been a coon’s age.”
“I’m happy as if I had good sense,” said Mattie. “You look well.”
“I’m tuckered out. Too old to move.”
Mattie looked around. “Aunt Mary, you do have a God’s plenty. I know what to do with a lot of this stuff.”
“Lord, child, I’d be tickled to hear what.”
“You know me and Zeb and Jake and Rachel opened a store?”
“I’ve heard that.”
“We’re trying to stock mountain-made goods. Quilts, bedspreads, doilies, that kind of thing. Honest mountain products. So the money will stay here instead of going off.”
“Sounds like a good idea. How are you doing with it?”
“Very well, Aunt Mary, but we need something extra. I think you might be that something.”
“What in the world do you mean?”
“Look at you. The essence of a mountain woman—stout, straight, determined. Rachel couldn’t paint a better picture than you in the flesh. You know how to spin and embroider and quilt and I don’t know what all. Churn, can, weave. And look at all this stuff you have brought! Quilts, hooked rugs, furniture, geegaws of all kinds. It’s perfect. Tourists will buy anything.”
“Child, I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Aunt Mary, don’t you see? You come to the store whenever you want to—every day if you do, every now and then if you don’t. Just be yourself. Talk to the customers, do a little embroidery, quilt a little, just be everybody’s favorite aunt. Zeb and Jake’ll help sort all this stuff out for you. Keep what’s really valuable for yourself. Sell the rest at the store. It’ll boost us up and give you something to do. Make you a little money. You can be a stockholder. What do you say?”
“Child, I don’t know nothing about business.”
“What makes you think any of the rest of us do? Or did, until we started in? Oh, Aunt Mary, it’s perfect. All this stuff, and you’re the real thing.”
“I’ve never had a job.”
Mattie took Mary’s hands in hers. “Look at these. How old are you, Aunt Mary?”
“I’ll be seventy-one this fall, if the Lord lets me live.”
“Have these hands ever been idle in those seventy-one years?”
“I’d have to say not much, that’s a fact.”
“Then it’s not a job. What would you do if you were here? You’d be working at something. Even if you were sitting, you’d be embroidering or something. Do it at the store is the only difference. Just because you call it a job doesn’t mean it’s drudgery.”
“I’ll have to talk about it.”
“To Manson and Thomas? Well, of course. They could help, too.”
“Oh. Them. Yes. Of course.”
“It’ll be great fun. I’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll talk it over some more.”
“If I can find my kitchen stuff, I’ll bake us a cake.”
“Oh, see—we could sell that, too. You bake as good a pound cake as there is in creation. I bet we could get a nickel a slice for it.”
“Pshaw, child. Who’s going to pay that kind of money for an old woman’s cake?”
“You’ll see, Aunt Mary. You’ll see.”
By summer Mary Carter came to the store every day. She found enough bonnets and Mother Hubbards and button-up shoes to outfit Mattie and Rachel for long careers, and Zeb and Jake enjoyed wearing Hiram’s old-fashioned suits every now and then. Mary was well on her way to becoming everyone’s favorite Haywood County aunt. And Hiram smiled at her from behind Jake’s rocker, as if the whole thing had been his idea.
CHAPTER 27
Hearthstones
Levi Marion spent the winter of 1932 as busy as any farmer in the county. He sharpened his edged tools, restrung straps, oiled, polished, and greased. New ground, new beginning. He might have lost his money, and he might be living off the charity of relatives—he and his brood lived in a tenant house on Zeb Banks’s land—but he would prove he was still able to farm.
But his soil wasn’t fertile, at least not to his standards, and spring was late, unpredictable. His father, Levi, had always planted beans on Good Friday, and in 1933, April the fourteenth seemed late enough to be safe. A May frost, however, dogwood winter, forced him to replant. Radishes and greens delighted the whistlepigs, which gathered in numbers sufficient to nibble every green shoot. Blackberry winter bit his apple trees. He took to his bed after another influx of groundhogs ate what little corn the crows hadn’t stolen. It wasn’t even the middle of June.
His oldest son, Hugh, visited often, and one weekday afternoon found his father in bed. He tried to talk him into getting up, but Levi Marion shrugged. “I ain’t worth nothing,” he said.
The rest of the family was out back stringing a pan of beans Mattie had brought. Hugh walked outside and sat beside Valerie. “Mama, we got to do something,” he said, picking up a handful of beans. Ada was fourteen and as freckledy as a redhead despite her dark hair. She kicked George after he poked her in the ribs. “Quit that,” said Hugh. “Papa’s sick.”
“Get a doctor,” said Ruth Elizabeth, a ten-year-old with pigtails. Her mischievous smile usually brightened the gloomiest days, but today her lip stuck out.
“Honey,” said her mother, “it isn’t the kind of s
ick a doctor can help.”
“What kind is it, Mama?” asked Mary, three years younger, a gingham ribbon in her hair.
“Homesick. He misses Catalooch real bad.”
“So do we, Mama.”
“We can’t live there again,” Valerie said, with a drawn-out sigh.
Hugh threw a handful of broken beans into the pan. “Here’s an idea. Remember when we moved, you and Papa brought a bucket of coals from the old hearth?”
“I sure do. I was never so sad as when we found them dead and cold.”
“Papa said that was a bad omen. Remember, he leaned on the mantel and cried.”
Ada looked at her brother like he could barely remember to come in out of the rain. “What kind of idea is that?”
“That’s not my idea, Miss Priss. Here it is. Why don’t we steal our old hearthstones? And get some genuine Cataloochee firewood?”
Valerie’s eyes brightened.
“Stealing’s against the law,” said Ruth Elizabeth.
“Ruth Elizabeth Carter, who laid those stones?” asked Valerie.
“Papa?”
“No, it was his papa, your grandpa.”
“The one the tree killed?”
“That’s right. Marion Carter.”
“So those stones were his?”
“First his, then ours. But then the park came.”
“We can’t steal from the park.”
Valerie brushed bean strings from her lap and stood. “I want you’uns to hear something. There’s different kinds of stealing. The kind the Bible talks about, when you take something somebody needs. Like food, or cattle. That’s stealing, and you’ll go to hell for it sure as I’m standing here. But what Hugh’s talking about is what you might call resurrecting hearthstones taken from folks that needed them—us—by something—the park—that don’t have a bit of use for them. In fact, we might as well lift them before they burn down the house.”
Hugh smiled at his mother. “When does Rass get home?”
“Thursday.”
“Okay, here’s the plan. Mama, make us a picnic. First thing Saturday we’ll go to Catalooch. We’ll take the truck, and stow our tools under a tarp. We’ll let the fish poles show. If Hawkins is off somewhere, we’ll—what was your word, Mama?—resurrect the hearthstones. If he’s around, some of us can divert him so me and Rass and George can lay them in the truck.”
Ruth Elizabeth frowned. “If we get caught, do we go to jail?”
Hugh grinned at her. “We ain’t going to get caught, Miss Worrywart.”
Little Mary put up her hand. “I want to go to jail.”
“Why, child?” asked her mother.
“They feed you light bread with ketchup.”
Hugh rubbed his knuckles on her forehead. “Then I hope you get to go.”
Rass arrived Thursday afternoon with a load of books in his cardboard suitcase and clothes in a duffel bag. Finished with sophomore year at Chapel Hill, all of seventeen years old in a month, still lost in the wonder of what to a Harvard man was a backwoods academy but to Rass was Greece and Rome and Renaissance all at once. He wanted to be a writer.
All crowded to see his books. A Latin primer. A dog-eared English grammar. A Complete Works of Shakespeare. The College Book of Prose, its cover decorated with Pan piping atop an Ionic column. A red-bound algebra text. H. Rider Haggard’s Swallow. A well-worn Camping and Woodcraft to show his father what Horace Kephart did for a living.
Kep, as his friends called him, had boarded at Silas’s house, and had impressed most of the Cataloochans except his host. “You can’t tell he’s a writer to listen to him,” Levi Marion said. He opened the book to “Camp Making,” read for a minute, and laid it back on the table. “Don’t know why a body would need a book for that. I’ve known you need water and firewood and a level place to lay a bedroll since forever. But, you know, son, if he can make a living writing about building a dern fire, you can, too.”
Hugh arrived Friday afternoon, and the family shifted into high gear. He gave their old pickup the once-over and pronounced it ready for the trip. Valerie and the girls killed, plucked, scalded, cut up, and fried chickens. They boiled eggs and potatoes and cut up onions for potato salad and deviled eggs. They made a gallon of tea and packed a basket with sweet pickles, blackberry jelly, apple butter, and chowchow. In the morning they planned to pack another with butter and cheese and sweet milk from the springhouse. By dinnertime the house smelled like Christmas.
They all slept like it was Christmas Eve that night, wakeful and anxious. On the road by five-thirty, crowded into the Model T, they made way slowly toward Cove Creek. Levi Marion stretched out in the truck bed with his brood, watching receding stars and wondering what the day would bring.
At the gap Hugh passed the new sign for the park and let the truck freewheel down the mountain long enough for his mother to scream, then shoved it into second gear. They had not seen this road in nearly a year, and no one said a word as they looked at abandoned houses, poison oak, thistles, tulip saplings, sumac. Future wilderness.
At Jim and Nell’s place Hugh cut the motor and blew the horn. Mary scurried from Levi Marion’s lap as he looked at the house like it was the prettiest thing he’d seen in a while.
Nell came out on the dogtrot, Little Elizabeth shyly holding her leg. Mack came running from the barn. “What are you all doing here?” Nell asked. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Nell, we’re here for a picnic, just like tourists,” said Valerie. “We’d love for you and the family to come, too. We’ve enough food for Pharaoh’s army.”
“Jim’s off at Mount Sterling, but we’d love to join you.”
The male Carters met in front of the truck. “Hear that?” asked Hugh. “Hawkins is off at Sterling, so we’ll have time.”
Levi Marion wrung his hands. “We need to be careful. We get caught…”
“Papa, let us worry about that. If we spread out by the creek for a picnic, we need an excuse to get the truck to the house. How about you hurt your foot a week or two ago?”
Levi Marion grabbed a snake stick. “Here’s my cane. I can limp with the best of them.”
Nell dressed Little Elizabeth in a yellow Sunday frock. She had given up on dressing Mack in anything but denim and flannel. He bounded out proudly wearing his duckbill cap. Nell carried a basket with bread and a jar of peaches. Everyone piled into and onto the truck and headed up the road.
At the corner of Lucky Bottom the road bent west with the creek. The motor was too loud for all to hear the collective gasp when they spied the homeplace crowded against the mountain two hundred yards away. It was intact, but that was about the only good anyone could say. Levi Marion had never let grass grow in the yard, but vegetation threatened to hide the porch. Someone had nailed a strip of siding across the front door, and windowpanes were broken. The building looked like an injured man with a bandage across his mouth.
The creek had not changed, making a sudden right bend by some huge rocks, creating a perfect wading and swimming hole. Years ago Levi Marion had terraced the bank with rocks so small feet might easily reach water. The group stopped and laid out a tarpaulin beside the bank and secured it with baskets. The women sat on its edge with the little ones.
“Mr. Carter, is your foot giving you trouble?” asked Nell.
“I just turned my ankle,” Levi Marion said, winking at Valerie. “You ladies mind if we drive to the house? I oughtn’t to be putting weight on it.”
Valerie beamed at her husband. “Go ahead. We’ll play with the young’uns until dinner.”
A game of hide-and-seek broke out among the girls. Levi Marion, Hugh, Rass, and George headed to the house and backed the truck to the porch. “Here goes, boys,” said Hugh, fetching tools from under the tarp. Rass removed the batten with a claw hammer and let his suddenly lame father enter first.
Their shoes shuffled on the pine floors thick with dust, ashes, bits of straw, nut hulls, droppings. At the doorsill into the kitchen, where t
hey had measured the offspring every Christmas day, marking their heights with initials and year, Levi Marion rubbed the pencil marks with his stubby fingers, biting the inside of his cheek.
They turned to the fireplace. Marion had laid the hearth—three flat, beveled river stones three inches thick and not quite two feet wide. On either side rested brick pilasters. “Okay, let’s work,” said Hugh. “George, keep a lookout for Hawkins. Rass and me will knock out these bricks.”
They made considerable racket with sledgehammer and pry bar, but the women at the creek did not seem to hear. Two people could not pick up one stone, but three could turn it over, and four could set it on the tarp and slide it to the truck.
The women were nowhere to be seen. “Two to go,” said Levi Marion.
When they emerged with the third, the women sat on the creek bank while Ada, Ruth Elizabeth, and Little Mary headed their way, skipping like storybook girls. Ada turned her nose up at Rass. “You’re sweaty. Shoo.”
“You’d been working like this, you’d sweat, too.”
“Girls perspire.”
“Bull hockey.”
“Get to work,” said Hugh. “We got to cover this.”
They stowed tools beside the rocks and covered it all. Levi Marion decided it looked suspicious, so he sent Rass to the barn for straw. Levi Marion went inside with the claw hammer and came out with the family doorsill. Rass returned with straw, and news that firewood aplenty lay in the shed. When all was loaded and covered, one might have guessed any number of things were underneath the tarp besides hearthstones.
At the creek, if Nell noticed anything strange, she offered no comment. All the children milled about, hungry, boys skipping rocks in the creek, girls picking flowers for the picnic.
When dinner was laid out, Levi Marion blessed it as they held hands. Then they fell to eating. Nothing but teeth and elbows for a quarter hour. Nell heard Jim’s horse before the rest. “He’ll want some dinner,” she said, standing. Levi Marion prayed that he wouldn’t examine their load.
Jim let the mare drink, then tied her. He hugged Valerie and shook hands with Levi Marion and the boys. Nell gave a slight smile to his glance at her, so he put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek. “Mind if I take a bite of nourishment with you all?” he asked.
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