“Promise?” Mack blubbered into his father’s shoulder.
“Promise.”
Jim spent that day’s remaining light searching for McPeters, who had quit the barn by the side opposite the house. Instead of following the road, he had ascended the mountain northward, taking a rest at the cemetery. The boot heel had paused beside each marked stone as if the wearer were taking inventory. McPeters seemed not to have paid attention to unlettered fieldstones marking infant graves. It was almost as if he could read.
The tracks headed east from the cemetery. Jim wanted to find them wandering away from his home, but soon they began to descend on a trail made by small night-journeying animals. Possums, coons maybe. If this trail leads straight down, it’ll come out at our springhouse.
Years before, Lige Howell had figured he’d not haul drinking water from a spring halfway up the mountain. He built a reservoir of some hundred gallons and connected it to the springhouse first with poplar pipe, then with cedar to sweeten the water. What liquid they did not drink cooled butter and perishable foodstuffs. Lige used to sell water by the quart to fishermen, claiming it cured anything from the addle-pate to the epizootic.
McPeters had stopped at the spring to drink. An orange salamander with a back that looked to have been peppered liberally scuttled away from Jim. I hope you’ll be alive tomorrow. That man’d evil up water just by breathing beside it, much less dipping hands in it. Nell’ll need to boil water for a few days.
McPeters kept to that elevation until he was even with the new CCC camp, where Jim lost the trail. No one seemed to have seen, or smelled, an interloper, but there were only a dozen men in camp, the rest out planting pines or cutting trails. Jim figured the twelve had been left so they couldn’t interfere with real work.
After three circles of the camp, each one fifty or so yards farther out, he picked up McPeters’s trail, heading toward the Bennett place. He followed until he found on the roadside what, were he tracking a bear, he’d call “sign.” Copious amounts of shit, bloody, with remnants of things man was never meant to eat. Damn, that must have hurt. Reckon they call this the bloody flux? Maybe I won’t have to kill him after all.
The Bennett place had been boarded up since the CCC had begun to build their camp. Jim knew the place well, both from stories of the night the Yankees had burned it and from spending long Sunday afternoons there when Old Man Bennett junior, who had rebuilt the structure, had held open house.
It was a two-story frame house of unremarkable architecture except for the upper story on the north side. Old Man Bennett had died regretting he hadn’t seen the federals coming—said he would have killed them one by one if he’d had the foresight and time. So junior, a devoted reader of Walter Scott, and who remained convinced until his death that the Yankees would return, had built a small platform and parapet in front of the north window, complete with crenels and merlons, behind which a man could hide and spy and shoot. He had finally left Cataloochee valley in a straitjacket a couple of years ago.
Jim rounded the last bend and immediately dove behind a roadside tree. A glance had shown him the boards were off the front door and north window. He unholstered his revolver and wished for binoculars. Nothing showed in the window. He was pretty sure all had been secure the last time he had ridden this direction. How much hot water am I in right now?
If McPeters were in the house, Jim would be a fool to rush forward like Tom Mix. He could not turn right or left without revealing himself. But giving up and going home didn’t feel right, either. Somehow knowing McPeters was over in Little Cataloochee or even up Carter Fork was enough distance for him to sleep at night. But this was another thing entirely.
He peered around the tree again. A wisp of smoke rose tentatively, like it wasn’t sure where to go, from the north chimney. What in hell is he doing in there? Not cooking, at least not in the kitchen. Upstairs fireplace or down? Is he living here now? Can’t have that.
He decided to get out of sight of the house and figure what to do. Pistol in hand, he stood and walked slowly backward until he tripped on a rock and fell on his butt. His Stetson fell to the ground. As he scrambled, a bullet pierced the hat and zinged off the ground behind. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Jim yelled, and ran for the bend in the road.
When he stopped running, he realized if McPeters had wanted to kill him, he would be as dead as a doornail. Just a warning. Keep the hell away. Denned in there like a critter of some kind. How to roust him out. How to roust him out.
CHAPTER 30
The Afterward of Love
Jim Hawkins often said a man couldn’t think straight unless he was fishing, and he did not mean in a creek. He referred rather to lying on a lake bank in the shade. Or, better still, in a boat, where, as Jesus knew, or at least hoped, the chances of anyone bothering you for a light or a spare worm were slim to none.
Some twenty-five years before, God had led the Methodists to build a conference center halfway between Clyde and Waynesville. That would have been of no interest to Jim, except they had dammed Richland Creek, creating a nearly two-hundred-acre lake, called Junaluska after a Cherokee chief. With this grand gesture they’d outdone every cold-water Baptist in the region.
God had also told them to build a boat, which they called the Oonagusta. It carried conferees and sightseers from the train station on the south shore to the inn. When after a dozen seasons it wore out, they called its successor Cherokee. Despite this distraction, Jim adopted Junaluska as home water.
He had fished there when debating whether to attend college or work at the paper mill. A glorious afternoon catching bluegills after his first year at Cullowhee had helped him decide to stay in school. And after Nell told him she was pregnant, he had caught catfish all weekend, wondering what manner of mess he was stepping into.
He hadn’t been lake fishing since Little Elizabeth had been born, but on a fine September day in 1933—he was reasonably certain McPeters had vacated the Bennett house for Carter Fork—he found himself shelling out a quarter to rent a jon boat constructed of well-oiled maple and birch. He left the dock with two paddles, a paper bag full of lunch and fishbait, a thermos, and a rod and reel. No creel, for he hoped not to return with fish.
He dug into the lake’s placid surface and paddled to the far side. After dropping anchor, he shook a wasp nest from his sack, baited with a grub, and cast the line.
A beautiful late morning sun reflected like a spray of jewels, and he smiled at three mallards paddling over to check the human for signs of generosity. “You can have a crust in a while,” he said. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a tin of potted meat, and a pack of crackers lay in the brown paper bag. The line jerked, rod tip dancing toward the transom. “Here goes,” he said, and reeled in a bluegill blazing silver, green, and yellow. “Hey, little fellow. You’re lucky. I’m not taking prisoners.” He backed the hook out and laid the fish just under the surface, where it zipped into the dull green depths.
He rinsed and sniffed his hands. “Well, at least something’s still right with the world. Fish still smell fishy.” He baited again and within twenty seconds hooked another. “Damn it all. I don’t have time for this.” After releasing it, he flung a bare hook. “Now, then. I have to think.”
He laid the pole over the forward bench, settled his hat against the sunshine, put his elbows on his thighs, and stared at the floor. A former occupant had crammed a yellow Mary Jane wrapper underneath the seat. Who had eaten the candy? Did he have a troubled mind? Was his girl too refined to throw it into the lake? Where had they been going?
For that matter, where am I going? Likely up Shit Creek without a paddle. The big problem’s my woman. The hardest damn dilemma I’ve ever faced. Now, it isn’t that I don’t love Nell. Hell, she still doubles me over with the lovesick. I love making spoons with her early of a cold morning. She used to make me feel on top of the world. But lately…
When did the slide start? We got along fine in Scratch Ankle, me working and her having Mack.
I reckon it was when I landed the Cataloochee job. No, that wasn’t it, because she was hot to go. “Jim, honey, living anywhere with you would be keen, and Cataloochee will be an adventure. I can’t wait.” I think she really meant it.
Of course, she hadn’t actually seen our house yet. I told many times of the groaning tables and lively dances and long Sunday afternoons visiting neighbors, all true enough. When I was coming up, we ate well, and we worked and played hard.
Can’t remember if I told her about waking in winter to snow on the quilts. And I expect I never let on how much time and work it takes to keep warm. You hang blankets on the windows so it’s dark as the inside of a coal mine all winter. Nell hates dark as much as cold. She’d love to live in Florida.
But I got to admit, she’s done well, for a girl raised in a house with central heat and a grocery nearby.
He nodded at the bottom of the boat. It was that first night here. Damn in-laws. I thought Elizabeth Johnson was going to die before Henry put her in the truck and headed home. That woman can purr, and bark, and for damn sure roar. That night her voice was something between a cat in heat and a screech owl, and I was afraid Nell would head home with her, if nothing else but to keep her from exploding.
But she stood by me. Cleaving to her husband, like God said to do. I was mighty thankful. We put the young’uns down, slid the beds together, and did some cleaving of our own. We could have won a prize.
The afterward of love puts me to sleep, so I turned over, thinking, What could be wrong with loving a pretty woman, living half a hundred miles from her parents, and sleeping in the valley I was born in?
Later I reached for her, but her place was cold, and I heard her in the front room, crying.
I really do think men and women are about as similar as goats and chickens. They think different. I didn’t have sense enough to get up and lay my hand on Nell’s shoulder, like, really, any woman would have done. “There’s something wrong,” a woman would say. “Let’s make it right, and now’s as good a time as any.”
Like a dumb son of a bitch, I turned over, pulled up the covers, and figured things would look better in the morning. I mean, loving was so good three hours before, why should I worry?
He gazed toward the assembly grounds, where conventioneers swarmed. Halfway across the lake the Cherokee’s passengers broke out with “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” but by the time it reached his ears, the last phrase sounded like they were “lost in thunder, guns, and haze.” Then silence, and the hollow knock of water from their wake.
Wonder how many of these good Christians have marriage problems. You know, Christ said a passel of fine things, but, hell, He wasn’t married. Can you imagine if He was? She’d up and say, “Jesus, Nazareth’s the world’s armpit. I’m going home to Mama.” What in hell would He say to that? “I am the bread of life”?
A green dragonfly perched on the end of his rod. A snake feeder’s supposed to be good luck when it visits your tackle. I could use some. But maybe that’s just fishing luck. What to do?
My mama would have said, “Read the Bible and pray about this mess.” But what was Jesus’ word about family? Something like you had to love Him more than mother or brothers and sisters. I take that to mean wife and children, too. Somewhere else He outright said to leave family and follow Him. Now, I know Nell would raise holy hell if I said, “I love Jesus more than you.” And she might want out of Cataloochee, but she’d not stand for me becoming a preacher.
Maybe it all comes down to what, or who, you love. And you go with who you love the most.
Here’s the rub, though. I might not love Jesus more’n Nell. In fact, I don’t love Jesus half as much—excuse me, Lord, but it’s the truth. But—and here’s the big question—do I love Cataloochee more than her?
He unwrapped wax paper from his sandwich. As he ate and drank coffee, his mind raced. No question. I love home. I was born there, and I hope to die there. And I’m getting paid cash money to live there. And lately, I love my work more than being at home. Her moods make it hard to come home evenings. She won’t want to hear about my day, and I don’t want to listen about hers, so we don’t talk, and I go to bed with supper still in the pit of my stomach. Yeah, there are times I don’t love being with Nell anymore. When she’s silent, or when she bitches instead of talking.
The rope squeaked when a bit of breeze blew the boat slowly toward the north end of the anchor. A water snake, looking like a copperhead except for its sharp nose, swam lazily toward shore. Jim picked up his rod and cast toward it. “Here, old devil, try this for size,” he muttered. It swam with no more regard for Jim’s hook than the man in the moon.
We’ve been happy. Least I have. But something’s got to give. I thought I’d double over with pain the other night. She might as well have told me she was seeing somebody else. Hell, that would have been better. I could just shoot the son of a bitch and be done with it. This other, though, it’s eating at me like acid on glass.
She’s leaving if I mean to stay in Cataloochee. I could have died when she said that. The part about me not knowing her, not being sensitive to her needs, being selfish, that’s my mother-in-law talking. But the leaving? Is that Elizabeth, or Nell?
She said she’ll never adjust, nor learn to like it one little bit. When I ask her to try, she says she’s sick of it. What’s scary is, she’s stubborn, and if she makes up her mind to go—or if her damn mother makes it up for her—only way she’ll stay is if I bury her here.
When Cherokee was out of sight, he stood, unzipped his pants, and pissed over the side of the boat, scattering a half dozen hopeful ducks. The boat tried to rock, but he corrected his stance mid-piss.
He zipped, sat, and took up the rod and tackle. God, there it is. I have to decide. Stay with Nell, leave the service. Stay in Cataloochee, lose Nell and the young’uns. About simple as that.
He swore aloud. “God damn. Does she have the right to paint me into that kind of corner?” He threw his hat onto the floor of the boat. “To think—she’s going to make me decide. So whatever happens will be my damn fault. My God-damned fault. I can’t win.”
That evening he pulled up beside the house, cut the motor, and stepped into the yard. Mack jumped off the dogtrot, his index finger crossing his lips. “Mommy’s got a sick headache,” he whispered. “She’s in the bed.”
“How about your sister?”
“She’s asleep with her. I’m bored.”
“Well, let’s think up something to do.”
“We could cook your fish, Daddy.”
“Didn’t bring any.”
“Why not?”
“I was catching bigger things than fish, Son. Let’s play in the woodpile, what do you say?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
They spent nearly an hour sorting and stacking firewood, Jim slamming billets around with some vigor and Mack gathering kindling chips into a basket, and stacking his father’s splits when he took a break. Jim did not know whether he wanted to face Nell or not. Maybe not just yet. But she woke and came outside, hugging a shawl around her shoulders and shaking her head.
“Where’s your fish?” she asked in a sleepy voice.
“Didn’t bring any,” Jim said.
“Good. I don’t like fish very much.”
“What’s for supper?”
She smiled. “Whatever you want to fix,” she said. “I’m not over this headache yet.”
“Then, little man,” he said to Mack, “let’s raid the springhouse. If there’s nothing there, I’ll bake cornbread for crumble-in.”
After the children were asleep, Nell began to prepare for bed. Brushing her hair, she looked in the mirror at her husband, staring into the fireplace. “Penny for your thoughts,” she said quietly.
He put his hands on her shoulders. “My head’s empty as a tin barn,” he said.
“I thought you went fishing.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t bring back fish, so you must have occupied yourself so
mehow.”
“Just sat in the boat and thought.”
“About us?”
“Some.” As he rubbed her shoulders, she leaned up to him like a cat.
“That feels good. Did you make any progress?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you make up your mind about us?”
“No.”
She stopped his hands and turned toward him. “Until you decide, you best not touch me.”
The feel of her flesh and the sight of shadows playing on her face had been nearly enough to make him promise her anything, but her voice unmanned him suddenly, like a candle snuffed by a sharp wind. “You don’t want me anymore?”
“Not until I know about our future.”
“Then I’m going to take a walk.”
He banged the screen door and kicked violently at the ground, but went no farther than the side yard. Beside the outhouse he looked at the sky for sign of encouragement or guidance but found none. He swayed a little, not having lost his sea legs. He went inside the outhouse but left the door open.
While he was in there, she set a piece of luggage on the bed. She opened it slowly, then turned to the chest of drawers. She took out a slip and laid it inside the suitcase, then brought the back of her hand to her mouth in an attempt not to cry. She stamped her foot, then sat on the bed and cried, hard, for a good three minutes.
When Jim emerged from the jakes, he looked toward the house. He had missed his wife’s sorrow. All he saw was Nell, blotting her eyes with a handkerchief, looking blankly out the window. He waved before he realized she did not see him. When she turned, he saw the suitcase. He had forgotten they owned such baggage. His chest tightened when she threw the contents of the top drawer into the case, closed and stowed it, and stomped out of the room.
He stood numbly long enough for her to return and stare out the window. She seemed not to be looking for anything in particular. She ain’t looking for me. Best I can tell she’s set her face in a direction from which it won’t be turned. She blew out the lantern.
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