The tall one with the Adam’s apple asked him what a Yankee dime might be.
“It’s what Mama used to call a quick peck on the cheek.”
“Sir, I don’t understand.”
“Where are you from?”
“New Jersey.”
“No wonder. Let’s get on with it.”
They started small, successively burning the corncrib, hog pen, outhouse, springhouse. The barn had not held hay in years but contained plenty of tinder and fuel. They doused the interior supports with coal oil, lit them, and ran outside. Once established, the fire chimneyed through a hole in the roof, which cracked like cannon fire. The building turned upon itself, a mass of yellow and orange and red with dark spaces representing the chestnut framing. The building threatened to smoke for days, and Jim wondered if Evans, the prick, would smell it in Sugarlands in a day or two. One of the points they sold this damn park with was that it would “save the American public’s heritage.” Bull feathers. Here I am burning my own.
Jim had so far helped light all the structures but handed off to Thad when it was the house’s turn. Jim walked fifty yards down the lane, listening intently but not daring to look. When he heard the building catch, he looked toward the heavens, then turned. The CCC had stationed themselves on the perimeter like sentinels. Fire raged like the blood in Jim’s temples, and he stood with tears streaming. Witnessing a vile sacrilege.
Destroying the place where as a baby he had padded in knitted booties. The place he’d learned fire burns and ice is cold, and that nothing is better for the sniffles than a mother’s love and warm VapoRub. The place he’d broken windows with homemade baseballs. The place that had kept him dry during storms and wet in the tub on Saturday nights. The place where his father had read the Bible out loud every night, and where Jim had learned about alcohol when he was caught sneaking from Mack’s jug, and where his punishment had been to keep drinking until he retched. His place.
Two boxwoods beside the front porch exploded into flame and almost as quickly turned into skinny fire bushes. As Jim wiped his eyes, the yard maple too caught fire. Jim hoped it would survive. His childhood friend. He’d used its keys for helicopters and its dead branches for kindling, watched many an ant on its errands up and down the gray bark, learned during rainstorms that tree bark is designed to nudge water to go where it is needed.
By three the CCC patrolled each site, raking ashes to make sure they would be dead by dark. A desultory drizzle started, raindrops sibilant when they hit hot ash. Water from the creek created smoke and steam in short gray columns, hissing like miscreant snakes. Jim hoped his hands would stop shaking.
Two chimneys seemed to rise phoenix-like, bracketing the ashes on the east and west sides. Two river rock columns, four hearthstones never again to know warmth. If he kept this up, there would be hundreds of these snaggletoothed monuments to progress. But he also knew Evans would never let them stand, for such a thing could kill a tourist stupid enough to try to climb one of them.
Slow hoofbeats announced Silas Wright heading toward the scene like some ancient bearer of bad news. He pulled up and sat his black mare, packed his pipe, and lit it to augment what was lifting toward heaven. Raising a batwing from his coat, he drank, dismounted, and slowly walked to Jim’s side.
The men stood there for ten minutes, the old man seeming to stoop with age as he watched, the young man holding himself as if he might pop. Silas finally put a hand on Jim’s shoulder. “Mean sumbitch, ain’t it?”
Jim drew in about a gallon of air. “Silas, this hurts like hell. Worse than Nell leaving.”
“I smelled it all the way over the mountain. Didn’t smell right. A brush fire’s a clean smell, but this had the devil in it. Had to see what you were up to.”
“I wouldn’t be doing this except my job kind of depends on it. Like I said, it hurts, but you know what’s the hardest part?”
“What?”
“Today I realized it’s all going to be gone. My homeplace is gone. My wife is gone. My children. Soon everybody’ll be gone. And the hard thing is, I’ll stay, and survive, damn it to hell.”
“Same way I felt when Rhetta died, son. And, by the way, I ain’t going nowhere.”
“You mean you aren’t going to die?”
“No time soon. Want a drink?”
“Silas, if I took one, I’d not quit until I killed myself.”
“I’ll have yours, then.” He turned up the bottle. “Who in hell is that? He don’t look right.”
“He ain’t. That’s Thad Carter.”
“Jacob’s boy?”
Jim nodded.
“Ain’t seen him in forever. Didn’t he burn a barn one time?”
“I don’t know. When?”
“Eight, ten years ago. He’d been up north. Best I remember he showed up in Waynesville, kind of down and out. He took up with that son of Bill Howell’s. You remember him, a fat man named Jesse. He’d been feuding with his cousin Joe, lived down the creek from me. You likely don’t remember it because you was in school. Anyhow, Jesse and Thad showed up one day. Next thing you knowed, Joe Howell’s barn was a pile of cinders. I heard whoever done it done it with gasoline. Throwed it on two mules and a cow that had the bad luck to be in the way, too. And come to find that Thad soon got considerably better off, enough to go plumb to Asheville and get hisself thrown in the drunk tank.”
“Evans sent him. To help destroy structures.”
Silas drew on his pipe and nodded. “So now the government’s paying him to burn houses down. I’m beginning to think the damn government has good sense every now and then.”
“Why?”
“At least they’ve hired somebody with experience. I wouldn’t let that boy out of my sight. You know what? I believe I’d just as soon have McPeters running around loose.”
Jim was silent.
“What happened to him, anyhow?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Let’s just say I’m not worried about him anymore.”
“I’d sure as hell put this Carter in his place. Andy Carter’s spinning in his grave, that’s for sure. If he’d known a grandson of his was burning houses in Cataloochee, he’d jump up and kill him his own self. A Carter that would burn down a house is lower than a snake’s belly.” Silas stretched and looked around. “Now, then. Here’s a question.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you going to be all right?”
“I hope so, Silas.”
“Good. Because it’s plumb stupid for two growed men to stand in the damn rain and watch folks spread ashes around. If you won’t have a drink with me, I’m going home. But if you need anything, let me know.”
“Thanks for showing up, Silas.”
“Keep that damn firebug away from my end of the valley, hear?”
Silas unhitched his horse and led her down the lane as if he were walking his sweetheart home from school. Jim did not guess that Silas no longer cared for people to watch him mount a horse. Jim just knew he finally appreciated hell out of this old man, his neighbor.
CHAPTER 35
No Farming
Silas woke to rain’s rhythm on the shake roof and a steady southern breeze through his open window. He turned from back to side and closed his eyes but within a minute raised up like Lazarus. “Who in hell was Miss Agnes?”
He had dreamed about his brother, dead sixty or more years from a gunshot through the head. What they never knew was who pulled the trigger or why. A right-handed man, Paul had lain dead on the bedroom floor with a Forehand .32 pistol in his left. His wife and mother-in-law had both been in the building but neither had admitted to having seen a thing. Silas had been at the barn when he’d heard the shot. When he’d torn into the front room, Paul’s wife had knelt beside the body, cradling her husband’s right arm in her lap and wailing. Her mother had stood in the front doorway, arms akimbo, expressionless. Coroner’s inquest had ruled a suicide, but they never knew what r
eally had happened.
Paul had been a happy-go-lucky man who could double you over in laughter with a particular turn of phrase. Whenever he’d heard something extraordinary, he’d whistle and say, in a high-pitched, nasal voice, “Well, kiss my ass, Miss Agnes,” with a strong iambic beat.
Silas sat on the edge of the bed and shook the cobwebs from his head. “Well, kiss my ass, Miss Agnes,” he said, and smiled. How long had it been since he had heard that? I was barely twenty when they found Paul, over sixty years ago. I’m eighty-four. Nearly sixty-five years. I’ll be damned. I’m about to get old.
He lit the lamp and dressed by its flickering light. He almost never looked in the mirror over the washstand but this morning lingered at a scarecrow of a man, lined like a bad road. If he thought of himself at all, it was as a man of thirty, a full head of brown hair, ears unlike an elephant. He shook his head as he raked a wet comb through his hair, covering bald patches as big as tomatoes. “Some old son of a bitch the government’s about to evict,” he said, frowning.
In the kitchen he lit lamps, built a fire, and checked on a funnel spider beside the wood box. “I won’t kick you out, old man,” he said, peering into a silken cone in which legs were poised to grab breakfast. “If they send me out, I’ll take you with me.”
He sighed, poured a drink, and sat at the table, upon which lay a letter.
August 25, 1934
Mr. Silas Wright
Cataloochee, NC
Dear Mr. Wright:
Replying to your letter of the 22nd, I regret to advise you that all lease fees both state and federal are cash in advance and I cannot make exceptions to this rule. Indeed, I might add, no farming will be permitted until the fees have been paid.
Regretting my inability to give you more time on this, and, trusting that you will give the matter your prompt attention, I am,
Yours very truly,
J. R. Evans, Supt.
The letter Silas had written that had occasioned this reply had asked for leniency. He had mentioned the hard times and had asked permission to make his annual lease payment, sixty dollars, in September, after he sold his cattle. Until then he did not expect to lay hands on two bit’s worth of cash. He had posted the letter with some optimism. Where that had found a source, he could not now say.
He put on a pot of coffee. He’d seen worse times, during the war, when neither salt nor coffee were to be had. This depression, as folks were calling it, hurt everyone, but he had plenty to eat and drink, unlike back then, when a month’s rations might have been a peck of potatoes. Folks now were hollering, but mostly because they weren’t old enough to know real deprivation. Salt and coffee and meat and potatoes were still for sale. Only trouble was, people now thought good times should go on forever, and had not squirreled away even a buffalo nickel.
Silas’s father, Jonathan, had always said a man needed to keep a little something put by, the whereabouts of which were known only to himself and God. Jonathan had followed his own advice but had had the bad judgment to salt bills away in a pasteboard box. During the depression of the 1880s he’d discovered that mice and mold had spent it long before he’d unearthed it.
Silas kept a few hundred dollars in a mason jar under a bedroom floorboard. He counted it every now and then, pleased by the ring of coin in glass and the musty smell of wrinkled dollars. He could pay the government—but it was the principle of the thing. He had asked nicely, without sarcasm or bad humor. Evans’s reply had been curt and officious, and to Silas’s mind, deserved a reprimand.
He looked out the kitchen window. Rain echoed his mood as he scratched his chin. Hair falls out like October leaves, but this damn beard won’t quit growing. After Rhetta had died, he had briefly let it sprout, but his whiskers came in as white as a dogwood flower. This morning he said, “To hell with it. If folks think I’m old as Methusalem, that’s their problem.” He did not reach for razor and strop.
Over coffee he decided to talk to somebody about the letter, but who? Harrogate had slipped away again amidst talk that a woman might have finally latched on to him. His closest neighbor, Mary Carter, had been gone quite awhile. Really, the only person left with any sense was Jim Hawkins, who worked for the service. But maybe that was exactly why he needed to talk to him.
Perhaps a half dozen families still lived between his place and Jim’s. When a thousand or more people had lived in Cataloochee, Silas could have wished them all gone. No longer.
He saw nothing amiss in the mile between his house and Uncle Andy’s place. No poison oak to speak of, the creek making music by the roadside, an occasional bird flitting in the rain. The ruins of Uncle Andy’s place, overgrown with grass and scrub trees, showed what the valley was becoming.
Aunt Mary’s porch was empty except for a forlorn rag hanging on a clothesline like some orphan had left it behind. At the church house he dismounted. Somehow he needed to see the door shut against the dampness. He stumbled at the steps and caught himself on the railing. “Damned if I don’t hate getting old,” he muttered, and sat on the step. Wonder where Harrogate’s got off to. I first saw him right here, when—sixteen, eighteen years ago. Wonder if there’s any truth to that rumor he’s got caught by a woman.
Rain settled into something like mist. It’s how I see things anymore. Through a cloud. At Nellie he saw no one awake or, for that matter, alive, although by the footprints, folks had come through recently. As he rounded the turn into Lucky Bottom, the horse snorted and flicked her ears. Wood smoke curled a yard off the ground like a blue-white snake. Silas would not have been more surprised to see a gypsy caravan.
Three tents had sprouted in the field like mushrooms. Two men tended a campfire before the largest tent. One of the smaller tents bulged occasionally as if someone inside were trying to subdue a small animal. Whoever had left boots outside the third tent would have sodden feet that day.
Silas sat the horse and stared at the vagabonds, who apparently had not heard his approach. Either they were trying to cook with green wood or everything in reach was too wet to burn. The men, determined to make coffee if nothing else, fanned the meager fire with floppy hats.
When Silas urged his horse close, one of the men stood and waved. Silas nodded. They looked friendly but wore enough clothes to stuff a freight car. He dismounted and greeted them.
The two were maybe thirty, and had not seen soap in a while. Stale armpits, wet wool, cigarette smoke. Silas held out his hand. “Morning, stranger.”
“Good morning, sir,” said the balder of the two. Gangly, an inch over six feet, with an engaging grin. “I’m Spee.” He shook Silas’s hand.
“If you don’t care,” Silas said, “tell me what kind of name that might be.”
The man laughed. “A nickname, sir. My name’s James Pettigrew. Folks started calling me S.P. in college, I guess because of the s and p together. It stuck.”
“Okay, Mr. Spee, I’m Silas Wright. Where you boys from?”
One of the tents opened suddenly, as if birthing two men in succession, brothers by their looks, dressed in as much weather gear as they could extract from their knapsacks.
“We’re from the central part of the state,” said Spee. “I’m from Davidson County. This is Robert. These that just got up are Wendell and his brother George. There’s two more in that other tent, I guess they’re getting some beauty sleep.”
“Some of us need more of that than others. What brings you to Catalooch?”
“We’re hiking the Smokies,” said Spee.
“Why?”
Spee looked at the old man curiously. “Just because,” he said. “It’s beautiful here—and we mean to see as much of it as we can this vacation. Started at Soco. We thought we were heading to Clingmans Dome but were sidetracked. Hope to end up in Cades Cove.”
“At this rate you’ll be there in about two years. So you’re on vacation. What from?”
“A furniture plant,” said Spee.
“I thought you said you was a college man.”
<
br /> “I am—or was. We’re management. I’m a designer. They’re bookkeepers, idea men, owners.”
“Do tell. I take it you ain’t too inconvenienced by this Wall Street panic we’ve had?”
“We have some savings, and closed the plant for a month. We’ll see what happens.”
“Well, son, I’d say everybody will pretty well stay home until this is over. Which means they’ll wear out their furniture. If you can make it until better times, you’ll do well.”
“That’s what we figure.”
Two more emerged, one with spiky hair and the other wearing a clipped mustache and long sideburns. “Mr. Wright, this is Bob and Joe. Sir, can I ask you a question?”
Silas nodded.
“Do you actually live here?”
Silas wasn’t sure whether to laugh or hit the boy. “About two mile up the road. In an actual house. With a roof. I slept dry last night.”
“Remarkable, just remarkable. How many people live here?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A few dozen in Big Catalooch. Don’t think anybody’s left on Little Catalooch.”
“May I ask if you plan to stay?”
“You’re right nosy.”
“Sorry, Mr. Wright. It’s just that we’ve not talked to a real mountaineer before. Except the warden, I guess.”
“Do I measure up to what you was expecting?”
“Yes, sir, I believe you do.”
“Then keep very still. I’m a-going to kill you.”
The boys stared at one another. “Excuse me?” said Spee.
“Hain’t you heered? We et flatlanders for breakfast yere, and I ain’t had me none this morning.”
Joe looked for a weapon, but all he saw were trout rods. Bob turned as if to bolt.
Silas laughed. “Ain’t you boys got enough sense to know a joke? Oh. I forgot. You slept out in the rain.”
Spee reached into the corner of his tent for a black box. “Mr. Wright, do you mind if I snap your picture?”
Silas noticed the boy was missing a thumb tip. “Do I look like a critter in a zoo?”
“No, sir. I didn’t mean to offend. I’d just like to remember you.”
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