The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  Papa went around looking for work, asking about jobs, but after a few weeks he quit doing that. He said it was just a waste of gasoline. He didn’t have money for gasoline. We kept walking to the store to sell our eggs and butter. Lots of people that had been driving started walking again, or riding their horses, because they couldn’t afford gas or new tires or everwhat they needed for their cars and trucks.

  At home we eat mostly things Mama had canned the summer before. There was old cans of beans and things that had been down in the cellar for years and we eat them. Mama had dried apples hanging in sacks in the attic and we made pies out of them. When the hog meat run out we done without meat except sometimes we had fried chicken for Sunday dinner. We sold our eggs except for the ones we used once in a while to make a cake if the preacher was coming for dinner. Corn bread and milk was all we had for supper most of the time.

  Now it hurts for a woman to have to cut back and live without money, and keep wearing the same clothes month after month until the cloth gets frayed and threadbare. A woman worries about what she’s going to put on the table the next day, and what she’ll wear to church or graduation, or to a funeral. But a man that can’t find work and don’t have money to buy groceries or put in the collection plate at church or buy gas for his truck is humbled and ashamed. I seen Papa come home after he looked for work and he looked gray. You could see the ton of worry and doubt he carried on his shoulders. It was a blessing that the land had finally been paid for.

  A man that don’t have a job or no money won’t look you in the eye. He looks at the yard or off to the side. A man that can’t find work stays away from the house. He can’t set on the porch resting as usual. He tries to look busy, cutting weeds around the barn or hog pen, patching up harness, oiling his plows, sharpening his tools. As the conditions got worse Papa took to hunting squirrels in season and fishing for trout in the river. Velmer kept setting traps for muskrats, mink, or fox. Fur still paid a good price and he set traps along the river and up the creeks that run into the river. A muskrat brought a dollar or a dollar and a half, a mink between ten and fifteen dollars. But he didn’t catch but one mink in a whole year. Velmer had always liked to trap, and most days he was away from the house, tramping along trails all the way to the head of the river and into the Flat Woods and over to Big Springs in South Carolina.

  Papa went about fixing the pasture fence, but he couldn’t afford new wire, so he patched up what he had, tightening the steeples on the fence posts, putting in new posts, making a new gate at the milk gap. He didn’t even have money for new nails, so he took all the old nails he could find, pulling them out of old boards and posts with a crowbar and straightening them so he could use them again.

  I was in the school play in the spring. I learned my part in a few days and had a wonderful time staying after school for rehearsals. One of the boys that had a car would drive me home. And once Mr. Oswald drove me home just in time for supper. It was like jumping between different worlds to spend a day at school, and then rehearse the play, and then go home to shell corn for the chickens and gather eggs in the gloom of the henhouse. Moving between those worlds made me a little confused sometimes. But on the night of the play the audience loved me.

  “Did you ever think of being a actress?” Mr. Oswald said.

  “How does anybody become an actress?” I said.

  “You have to go somewhere and study,” Mr. Oswald said. He said I should go to college to study speech and dramatics. He said I could be a teacher while I worked at becoming an actress. I would have to go somewhere there was a theater to act in. But even as he said it I knowed I wouldn’t leave home. I didn’t have enough money for new shoes for graduation, much less enough money to go to college.

  WHEN THINGS FIRST got really bad and Papa couldn’t find any work, and nobody could find any work, there was a rumor there was plenty of jobs in Florida. There was jobs building houses on the east coast around Daytona. And there was work picking oranges and grapefruit in central Florida. Papa and Uncle Russ decided they might as well drive down to Florida to find work, for there was nothing at home.

  Between them I don’t think Papa and Uncle Russ had more than twenty dollars when they started out. Mama packed bread and canned things for them to eat on the trip. It was just after the first of the year. Papa and Uncle Russ took their toolboxes and overalls and work boots.

  “If we find work, we’ll be back in the spring,” Papa said.

  With Papa gone me and Velmer did most of the outside work, milking the cow, watering the horse, splitting kindling and firewood. The house seemed mighty quiet. It was about four days after Papa left when somebody banged on the door in the middle of the night. I jumped up and throwed on a housecoat. Velmer and Troy and Effie got up too. When we reached the front room Mama had already lit a lamp. Her hair was down over her shoulders. The loud knocks come again.

  “Who’s there?” Mama called.

  “It’s Lum,” they called on the other side of the door. Lum owned one of the stores down on the highway. Mama unlocked the door and Lum stepped into the lamplight.

  “I got a phone call from Hank,” Lum said. Lum told us Papa had a wreck in Florida, but neither him nor Uncle Russ had been hurt. But there was some damage to the truck. Mama had to wire him ten dollars for repairs so he could come home.

  “Could you tell if he was hurt?” Mama said.

  “He said he wasn’t,” Lum said.

  “Can you wire the money for me?” Mama said. Lum said he would.

  Mama went to the drawer at the bottom of the china closet where she kept her egg and butter money. She counted what she had, but it was only six dollars and eighty-three cents. She asked Velmer and Effie and me if we had any money. Just after Christmas Velmer had caught two muskrats and sold their skins for a dollar each. He got his two dollars from the bedroom. I had saved seventy-five cents to buy a hand mirror I’d seen at the store. I give that to Mama. Finally Effie went to the bedroom and come back with a fifty-cent piece she’d been saving.

  “There’ll be a fee for sending the money,” Lum said. Troy handed him a silver dollar, which Papa had give him for Christmas.

  “I sure do thank you,” Mama said to Lum.

  I don’t reckon any of us slept much for the rest of the night. And we worried the next day, and the next, waiting for Papa to come back. Had he been hurt bad, in spite of what he told Lum? Was the truck bad damaged? Had we knowed what really happened we’d have been even more worried. For when Papa come back after three days looking wore out and unshaved, he told us an awful story.

  Papa and Uncle Russ had got to Florida, but they couldn’t find any work. The rumors had not been true. There was no more jobs there than in North Carolina. The roads was teeming with people willing to pick fruit for almost nothing, for a place to sleep and a crust of bread. Papa had started driving farther south, hoping they might find a job around Miami. But near Daytona a farmer in a Model T truck pulled out in front of them. Papa could not avoid slamming into him.

  The radiator of the Model T busted and scalded the farmer to death and burned his wife some too. Papa said he’d never forget the screams of the dying farmer.

  At that time Florida was having a lot of trouble with hobos and transients and thousands of people looking for work. The police arrested some people and drove the rest out of town. They arrested outside agitators and labor organizers and beat them up. Because the farmer had been killed and Papa was from out of state and had almost no money, the sheriff arrested him and Uncle Russ and said Papa would have to stand trial for manslaughter. An angry crowd gathered outside the jail of Volusia County. Papa said he’d never been in such an ugly situation.

  What saved him was the farmer’s wife who come forward and swore to the police the wreck had been her husband’s fault: he’d drove right out in front of Papa’s truck. She said it wouldn’t do no good to blame Papa because he couldn’t help it.

  The sheriff told Papa that if he would leave Florida they’d let him
go. But he had to have enough money to fix a tire and pay for gas. And he had to pay a five-dollar fine. That’s why Papa had to have the ten dollars wired to him. When Lum sent the money the sheriff held Papa and Uncle Russ until three in the morning after the angry crowd had left, and then he told them to get out of town and out of Florida.

  When Papa got back to Green River he had only thirty-seven cents left, but he was mighty relieved to be home. And I was thrilled to see him. The Model A had a bent fender but otherwise looked the same.

  About this time we begun to see more hoboes on the road. I reckon it was the worst of the Depression then. The fact there was no job anywhere, and no money anywhere, made men and boys, sometimes women too, wander the roads going this way and that way. You heard about them riding on the boxcars and hiding in boxcars, and walking along the railroad tracks all day and along the main highways. There was hobo camps along the highways and outside the towns. But there was plenty of hoboes walking the little roads out in the country and way back in the mountains too. People didn’t know where to go; they went in all directions looking for work, something to eat, a place to sleep.

  People passed our house dressed in rags and layers of old coats and any kind of old hat. Some stumbled along with a walking stick or with a bundle over their shoulder. Old Pat watched them from the porch or from the yard. She growled when they called from the edge of the yard asking for a drink of water or a piece of bread. Mama never could turn nobody away that asked for something to eat. She’d bring a dipper of water out to them and a hunk of corn bread, or even a baked sweet tater or Irish tater. In the middle of summer she even had roastnears to give them, and big ripe tomatoes, and later, peaches and apples out of the orchard.

  One Sunday when I was home an old man stopped in the yard and hollered out he needed a drink of water. He was all bent over, leaning on a cane, and his overalls was patched and ragged. Old Pat stood in front of him growling. Mama took a dipper out to him and she seen he was so weak and tired he couldn’t hardly stand up. She was afraid he might fall down and die right there.

  “Thank you kindly,” he said after he drunk the water. “Can I just rest a spell? I’m wore out.” Mama took him by the arm and led him to the steps, and he set down there. Papa and me come out to see who she was talking to and we seen how weak the old man was.

  “Would you like something to eat?” Mama said.

  “I thank you kindly,” he answered.

  We’d already had Sunday dinner and washed the dishes. But there was some leftovers. Mama brought out a biscuit and drumstick and ear of corn on a plate. The old man set on the steps and eat like he’d been starved for a week. When he was near finished Papa asked him where he was going to.

  “Going to see my daughter north of Asheville,” he said. He said he’d worked at a cotton mill in Pelzer, South Carolina, until it closed, and then he’d lived as long as he could doing janitor’s work at a school until he was let go. He’d mowed lawns and cleaned yards. He’d held out as long as he could, but now he had no choice but to go live with his daughter.

  “Why are you walking the back roads?” Papa said.

  “Big highways are too dangerous,” the man said. I don’t know if he was afraid of being hit by a car or truck, or being hit over the head by another hobo, or maybe beat up by the police that drove hoboes away from towns. We heard of transients getting run off from any place they stopped.

  While the man talked I noticed his shoes. They’d once been fine dress shoes, but they had broke in places and was dirty, tied with rough binder’s twine. They was two or three sizes too big for his feet. The cracks in the shoes looked wet, and then I realized it was blood seeping out. The man had walked so far his feet was bleeding. It must have been painful to walk the gravel roads in shoes that was too big and had blistered his feet.

  As the man was eating, two other hoboes passed. They didn’t stop. One carried a pack on his back and the other led a scruffy-looking dog on a leash. Old Pat growled and trotted out closer to watch them go by.

  “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” the old man said, and then lurched to his feet.

  “You take care,” Papa said. We watched him limp out to the road and start north again. I shivered, thinking of his bloody feet in them old shoes, knowing how many miles he still had to go.

  But the saddest people I ever saw passing on the road was about a month after that. It was a Sunday morning and we noticed this group of folks coming up the road from the river. It was unusual to see that many people together on the road. But as they got closer I seen it was a family. There was five younguns and a mama and daddy and a grandma. The man carried a big pack on his back that had pots and pans tied to it. And the woman pushed a kind of cart loaded with dishes and blankets and things. The grandma carried a baby, and the four other kids, all ragged and dirty, walked along behind, each carrying something, a lamp, a bucket, a candlestick. It was the sorriest bunch of people you ever saw. They looked wore out and poor as whippoorwills. Old Pat stood on the bank watching them, but she didn’t even growl.

  I was afraid they’d come to the house, but they didn’t. But as they passed the June apple tree one of the younguns yelled, “Apples!” and the other kids climbed the bank and started gathering up all the apples they could find. Mama had come out on the porch to watch them. She rubbed her hands on her apron as she often did when worried. But she didn’t say a thing about them taking June Apples. That family looked so bad I reckon she was willing to let them take all the apples they could carry. They must have loaded a peck of apples in the cart and another in the bucket before they went on. As Mama watched them grabbing apples I knowed just what she was thinking. As we’d come up the road from Gap Creek years before we must have looked a little like that to folks that seen us. And if we’d had the bad luck to lose our house, we could still end up on the road like these people. It was a thought that give me a shudder.

  It was only later that afternoon when I went to gather eggs in the henhouse that I found all the eggs had been took. While that family was gathering June apples in plain sight and we was watching them they must have sent one of the younguns to rob the chicken house. I thought how clever that was: to be seen stealing one thing in the open while taking something of greater value unnoticed. But that family looked so bad I don’t reckon Mama begrudged the eggs they’d took. At least they hadn’t stole no chickens.

  There seemed no end to people on the road in those days. I thought of the word pilgrim, but that meant somebody going to a holy place, hoping for a blessing. As far as I could tell, a lot of these people didn’t have nowhere to go. They was just looking for something, anything. Or running from something so bad they had to escape. And some probably didn’t know what they was looking for.

  One Sunday near the end of the year Old Pat come to the house and yelped, then run a little ways and turned, and yelped again. I knowed that meant she wanted me to see something. It was the way she acted when something important had been found. I got my coat and tied a scarf around my head.

  From the way Old Pat acted I thought she must have seen something on the road out toward the church. I was near about afraid of what I might find. But as soon as we got beyond the bend in the road she turned down through the sweet tater patch and into the pasture. “Where you going, Old Pat?” I called. But she trotted on ahead of me, turning back to growl and yelp from time to time.

  The winter grass in the pasture had been eat down, but the stalks of indigo weeds was scattered all over the pasture. Old Pat led me around the rim of the gully and down toward the branch and then she turned into the mouth of the gully. The gully was so old it had pine trees growing on its floor, and high walls of yellow clay that made it look like a canyon out west. We throwed trash in the upper end, and Velmer and Troy had dug caves in the walls of the gully when they was boys.

  Old Pat stepped between the pine trees and yelped. I seen what appeared to be a gray cloth, and when I got closer I seen it was a piece of ragged canvas hung on a rope betwee
n two trees. There was a circle of rocks on the ground with ashes and burned sticks, and tin cans around it. And then I seen the shoes sticking out from under the canvas, and the legs in dirty gray pants. Oh my God, I said. For this was some kind of hobo camp in the gully in our pasture. I wanted to run away, but it was too late to run away.

  “Who is there?” I said, trying to make my voice sound strong. But there was no answer. I waited a while and then said, “What you doing here?” Still there was no answer.

  The silence and stillness of the place give me a sick feeling. I thought the man under the canvas must be asleep. I waited another minute and thought about running back to the house to get Papa. Wind sighed in the trees on the rim of the gully, but there was no wind on the gully floor.

  “Are you awake?” I said. But there was no answer. I stepped closer and stooped down to look under the canvas. The man laying there was so poor he was just skin and bones inside his ragged clothes. He laid perfectly still and his hands and face had turned dark as a bruise. His eyes was open, staring at the makeshift tent above. I knowed then he was dead, and I smelled this sickening stink, like when a dead snake is rotting. He was surrounded by a few cans and ragged paper bags. Looked to me like he’d been staying there a while before he died. I seen an ant crawling on his eye, and I jumped up and run back to the house. Papa would have to call the law to take the body away.

  Seven

  Mama always said that dog days is when you’re liable to see mad dogs. She never did explain why; but it’s true that every time we did see a mad dog it seemed to be dog days, that time in late July and August when the heat just sets down on top of us and stays, even after it gets dark, and the haze hangs over the mountains, so you can’t hardly see Chimney Top up the river or the tip of the Cicero Mountain or Pinnacle. To the west there is the mountains called the Smoky Mountains, but even here in the Blue Ridge Mountains the haze in dog days gets so thick the sun seems to be hiding and it looks like smoke from a big fire covers everything.