The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  “Will you have a funeral?” Effie was asking Papa. She’d not left after all.

  “We’ll have to wait and see what the Air Corps says,” Papa said. “A funeral may have to wait until the war is over.”

  THAT EVENING SHARON come from Saluda. Her daddy drove her in his pickup truck from their orchard farm. She brought her suitcase like she meant to stay a few days. She was my friend and I had to be friendly. It was me that introduced her to Troy when we both worked in the dime store. But when I seen her come through the door with her suitcase I remembered I didn’t want her there. I thought she’d just upset Mama. But to tell you the truth I wasn’t sure why I disliked her so much at that moment. I thought it was because she was selfish and didn’t appreciate the presents Troy had give her and the little letters he sent her from England. Or maybe it was because she’d tried to rope him into marrying him before he left to go across the water. She was no great beauty, but she did have a dark look, like she might be part Indian or something. She was slim and petite with no great figure.

  As I said, when Sharon walked through the door with the suitcase it surprised me how much I didn’t want her to be there. She had no right to be there since she was not married to Troy. I reckon I was afraid she’d claim rights she didn’t have. She dropped the suitcase on the kitchen floor and run to me and hugged me and I hugged her back. It was not a time to be cold or start another quarrel. I felt guilty for quarreling with Effie. Most of the time you can’t show how you really feel about people anyway. If we always spoke our minds we wouldn’t have no friends at all, and no love, and the human race would die out.

  When Sharon finally let go and stepped back she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “What kind of a god would let Troy be killed?”

  “We can’t understand these things,” Effie said.

  “I understand what a good person Troy was,” Sharon said. “He didn’t deserve to die.”

  It was only then that she seemed to notice Mama setting at the far end of the table. She run to Mama and bent over and hugged her. I felt she had no right to do that because Mama had not said a word to her and Mama wasn’t the hugging kind. Sharon got down on her knees and looked right into Mama’s face and said, “I am so sorry, Mrs. Richards. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’m sorry for you too,” Mama said. As bad as Mama felt she was always polite, especially to Sharon. She’d always tried to be more than kind to the woman Troy was supposed to marry.

  Then Sharon got up and went into the living room where Papa set by the fire. She bent over and hugged him too. He patted her on the back and said, “Yes, we have lost a great friend.” There was tears in Papa’s eyes. He’d always liked Sharon better than me and Mama had. She had always kind of flirted with him. But then a man can never see through a woman the way another woman can. When we was growing up Effie would say, “Girls are smarter than boys.” I guess I would say girls are smarter than boys about some things. Girls understand people better than boys do.

  About machines and things boys are real smart. And they don’t get lost as easy as girls do when they’re driving and trying to find a place. But girls are willing to ask directions, and boys ain’t, and they usually get there sooner than boys. When men like Muir read books they remember everything they’ve read. Even though he is just a farmer and housepainter and preacher, he has read every book and magazine he can find. The thing about Muir is that he has in his mind all the things he has read and all the things he has thought about. But he never could see through Sharon the way I could. He thought Sharon was pretty in her dark Indian way, and it didn’t bother him that she was trying to rope Troy into marriage. He could remember who was president a hundred years ago, but he couldn’t see how selfish Sharon Peace was. He thought she was a cousin because Ginny’s maiden name was Peace too.

  When Sharon come back into the kitchen she said, “Mrs. Richards, I want something to remember Troy by. I don’t have a thing except my engagement ring. Could I have some of his arrowheads and some of his paintings?”

  I was about to say, “No, they should stay here with his family,” but before I could speak Mama said, “Why, of course, honey. I know he’d want you to have them.”

  “I expect Velmer will want some of the arrowheads,” I said. Velmer and Troy had hunted arrowheads together in the bottom fields after the spring plowing. One of Troy’s many talents was for finding arrowheads. He could spot them where others had looked and found nothing. His eyes was sharp, but it wasn’t just his sharp eyes. He seemed to know where to look. Sometimes I thought the arrowheads found him instead of the other way round.

  Back in the Depression there was nothing for boys to do on Sunday afternoons, when there was no singing at church or Homecoming picnic. Sometimes they got together and walked down to the bridge on the highway to watch the cars pass, hoping to see a Packard or Pierce-Arrow. They didn’t have no money to spend at the store. Other times they climbed up on the mountain above the church and rolled rocks down into the holler. They had contests to see who could pick up the biggest rock and hold it above his head. While a boy was straining to lift a rock another might pee on his leg for a joke. Sometimes they got in rassling matches or fights.

  But after the fields was plowed in early spring Troy and his friends would walk over the turned and harrowed dirt and look for arrow points and pieces of Indian pottery. They found gray flint and black flint, milk quartz and orange quartz points. They found spearheads and tomahawk heads, and pieces of pottery with marks of the basket in which the pot had been molded and fired. Troy would come home with his pockets full of arrowheads. He filled boxes and boxes with them. He sorted out the broke ones from the perfect ones. When he left to go to the war he put his arrowheads in boxes in the attic.

  “The arrowheads and paintings are upstairs,” Mama said to Sharon. “You go look at them and see which ones you want.”

  “It’s cold in the attic,” I said. “You’ll need your coat. I’ll come with you.”

  I wanted to keep an eye on Sharon to see what she took. She had no right to take Troy’s arrowheads and pictures. But Mama had told her to pick what she wanted. There was no way to stop her.

  There was one lightbulb hanging in the attic and the arrowhead boxes was stacked by the chimney. One little cigar box had black “bird” points and another had white quartz arrowheads. Troy liked to explain that different shaped arrowheads belonged to different tribes from different times. Only the most recent arrowheads had been made and used by the Cherokees. There was bigger boxes of broke arrowheads and pieces of pottery. There was only one small pot that had not been broke and Sharon took that and the cigar boxes of black, white, gray, and orange perfect points. There was one tomahawk that didn’t have a scratch or a chip on it and she took that. There was a stone that had two holes in it, and Troy had guessed it was used as a button. Sharon took that and two spearheads.

  Troy’s paintings and drawings leaned against an old bedstead near the chimney. Some had been put in frames, but mostly the canvases had not been framed. Many of the drawings was rolled up like scrolls. The paintings on Masonite was wrapped in brown paper. Sharon held up a water color of an eagle in flight. “Oh, that’s so pretty,” she said. “He was so gifted.” She broke into tears. I touched her on the shoulder.

  “It’s cold up here,” I said. My teeth chattered a little. I hoped that if we went back downstairs to warm up Sharon would forget about the pictures. But she would not be distracted. She wiped her eyes and uncovered another picture and another.

  One of the paintings on Masonite looked dark in the dim light of the attic. “What is that?” Sharon said. I knowed it was a picture of moonlight on the river, looking upstream from the bridge, but I didn’t say so. It was one of Troy’s best paintings. Sharon put it aside and reached for another.

  What she uncovered next was a watercolor of Old Pat. The picture made her look like a happy dog. “I want this one,” Sharon said, and placed it with the soaring eagle.

/>   “Mama will want to keep some of the pictures,” I said, and shivered.

  “Oh, I just want a few,” Sharon said.

  She pushed aside a portrait of Uncle Russ and one of Uncle Zeke that lived in Asheville. Troy had drawed with charcoal a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, like the one on the penny, and she placed that with the eagle and Old Pat. It occurred to me she was looking to see if Troy had painted a picture of her. As far as I knowed he hadn’t.

  There was a picture of a rainbow trout leaping out of the water, but she didn’t take that. Another watercolor showed a barn with a horse cropping grass beside it, and Sharon picked that one. There was a picture of the river valley with the mountains lavender and then blue in the distance where the ridges touched the sky. If you looked close there was an Indian at the bottom of the picture, almost hid by underbrush, but I don’t think Sharon seen it. I was relieved when she moved on to the next picture.

  In the CCC camp Troy had painted the trucks and tractors they used. One oil painting showed the rock side of a mountain exploding with dynamite. The rocks looked like smoke blowed out of a hole in the mountain. The woods below was colored with fall colors. “I’ll take that one too,” she said.

  Troy had done drawings of hammers and rakes, shovels and picks, drill bits and transits, but Sharon didn’t seem interested in those. I think she was disappointed as she looked through drawing after drawing. And then suddenly there was a picture of a naked woman. And it wasn’t just a nude woman, but a woman leaning back on a couch or chair with her legs spread and you could see everything. Sharon gasped and then laughed. “Now who is that?” she said. The face looked like her, but I didn’t say so.

  “Shame on him,” she said. “Who in the world did he get to pose like that?”

  Sharon added that drawing to the others she was taking, and I had the feeling that was the one she’d been looking for. I decided I’d say nothing about it and helped her carry the boxes of arrowheads downstairs where it was warm.

  I’D TOOK OFF my coat and was warming by the fire when somebody opened the front door. Into the living room walked Velmer looking cold and pale. I reckon he’d been walking in the woods or maybe along the river. “You must be froze,” I said.

  I hoped Velmer wouldn’t mention Troy until somebody else did. The death of Troy was the great fact hovering over us, too big and too awful to discuss. Because it was so overwhelming it must be sidestepped with small talk and everyday details.

  “Mama, would you like some coffee?” I asked when the coffee was done.

  “Not just now.”

  I offered Sharon some coffee, but she said coffee this late in the day would keep her awake all night. I brought coffee for Papa and Velmer.

  “You’re lucky to still get coffee,” Velmer said.

  “It’s half chicory,” I said, “and we can only get a pound a week.”

  “When will this awful war be over?” Sharon said. “You can’t even get clothes anymore.”

  “I’m afraid the war is just getting started,” Velmer said.

  “Don’t say that,” I said.

  “Velmer is still clipping hair,” Papa said.

  “That’s my weapon of choice,” Velmer said. “A pair of hair clippers and a comb.”

  “Lucky they didn’t draft you,” Alvin said.

  “Right now they need barbers more than riflemen,” Velmer said. “My war is with fast-growing hair.”

  “At least nobody is shooting at you,” Effie said.

  “Some of them officers might threaten to shoot you if you cut their hair wrong,” Velmer said. I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. Instead he shook his head like he was remembering something he’d just as soon forget.

  “You can’t cut a head of hair to please them officers,” he went on. “No matter what you do they ain’t satisfied.”

  “At least you don’t have to crawl through mud or climb ropes,” Papa said, and spit tobacco juice into the fire.

  “I have to hold my temper when them officers cuss me,” Velmer said.

  “Since you ain’t no soldier, you don’t have to take their cussing,” Papa said. “Boss man treats you bad, bash him over the head with a shovel if you have to.”

  “Don’t have no shovel in the barber shop,” Velmer said, “only a straight razor.”

  “That ought to scare them,” Papa said.

  Mama got up from her chair and said it was time to milk before it got dark.

  “You stay by the fire and I’ll go milk,” Velmer said.

  “Milking is my job and I’ll do it,” Mama said, like that was the last word, and she wouldn’t hear any more argument. It seemed a shame to let Mama go out in the cold and set in the stinking cow stall to milk when she was so sad. But she meant to do it. And I thought it might be better for her, to go on doing the work she was used to doing. Milking the cow was better than just setting in the corner grieving and saying nothing. Maybe going on with her work was the only thing that would help her.

  “I’ll shell corn for the chickens and gather eggs,” I said.

  “When is Muir coming home?” Velmer said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe whenever he can get a ride from Holly Ridge,” I said. I wondered if Muir had got the telegram I sent him from the cotton-mill store. I wanted to get out of the house same as Mama did. I needed some cold fresh air.

  I helped Mama feed and water the cow, and while she was milking I climbed up in the barn loft and shelled corn for the chickens. It was a relief to be out among ordinary things, doing ordinary jobs. I tried not to look at Troy’s canoe laying by the heap of unshucked corn. After I scattered corn in the chicken yard I gathered eggs and carried them to the house and come back to help Mama carry the milk to the kitchen. After she strained the milk into pitchers I washed the straining cloth, which was just a piece of flour sack, and hung it by the stove to dry.

  All the time I was thinking about where everybody would sleep. Effie and Alvin could drive back to their house in Flat Rock. Sharon and me could sleep in the back bedroom, and Velmer could sleep on the couch in the living room. I didn’t think he would want to sleep in the same room with me and Sharon. If he didn’t like the couch he could make a pallet on the floor. People used to sleep all in the same room in little cabins in the mountains, but that was a long time ago.

  After the milk was put in the icebox I helped Mama put on a supper of leftovers but made a new cake of corn bread. While I was at the barn Aunt Daisy had brought a bowl of boiled cabbage. Hot corn bread and milk with all the leftovers of chicken and green beans people had brought earlier would have to do for company.

  Since we’d got the telegram it had seemed the strangest time. I knowed it was the saddest time in our lives and I should set down and think about it, and think what it meant, the way Mama was doing. But I didn’t. One thing after another kept happening. People come and brought things to eat and stayed to talk. The preacher come and prayed. Effie and Alvin come, and then Sharon come. The most awful thing we’d ever knowed had happened and yet time went on and ordinary things followed one after another.

  I felt like I should go out and talk to the chickens, and to the cow, to the road and field, to the walnut tree and the spruce pine tree, to the oaks and hickories on the Squirrel Hill. I should tell them that Troy was dead and never coming back. I should scream it at the church and at the sky and at the side of the mountain. I should holler it down to the bottom of the well. But at the same time I seen that was silly. People had to keep doing what they always done. You couldn’t stop time or make the world quit turning. There was no way to make people do different. I’d fix supper and wash dishes and mop the floor and fix my hair as usual. I’d expected it would be different. But things was just what they was. And people was just what they was. Everything just went on as always. And I guessed that far away the war went on as usual too.

  We’d just started eating when the kitchen door opened. I looked up to see who it was this time and there was Muir in the doorway. Never had I been one
to run and hug nobody, but this time I got up and just held him around the waist and put my head on his shoulder.

  “You’re just in time; go get a chair,” Papa said.

  “Yes indeed,” Muir said. And I seen how uncertain he was because he hadn’t knowed what he would find here. With such terrible news he wasn’t sure what to expect.

  “Take off your coat,” I said. Muir was carrying his toolbox and he set it down by the kitchen stove.

  “How is work at Holly Ridge?” Papa said.

  “The barracks are about finished,” Muir said. “I reckon they’ll be painted by soldiers, not outside contractors.”

  “Soldiers will do a rough job,” Papa said.

  “Anything done by the government is a rough job,” Muir said.

  “At least you don’t have to cut hair to please officers,” Velmer said.

  Muir was a bigger man than Velmer and Alvin. He was taller than Papa. Him and Troy was about the same height and build, though I reckon Muir’s shoulders was wider. As Muir took off his coat and set down at the table it give me a shiver of pleasure to see how strong he looked in his khaki shirt and overalls. I knowed I was supposed to feel sad and not think of such things, but I couldn’t help myself. As Muir set at the table eating corn bread and milk I just wanted to reach out and touch him. But I didn’t.

  And then while Mama was washing dishes and I was drying them, and everybody else was setting in the living room by the fire and talking, I started to think again about where we would all sleep. Muir and me could walk across the pasture in the dark to our cold house by the river. It had been Ginny’s house before she died. But I couldn’t leave Mama at this time. I was worried about her and knowed she needed me to stay close by. As much as I wanted to go away with Muir I knowed I couldn’t.

  One solution would be if Sharon volunteered to sleep on a pallet in the dining room or on the couch in the living room, while Velmer took the other option and Muir and me took the back bedroom. But since Sharon was the guest I couldn’t suggest she take the couch or pallet. Surely she’d see that Muir had been away almost three weeks and we needed to be together. You’d think any woman would understand that and sympathize.