The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  “No, thank you,” I said, and turned away from him. I took Mama’s arm and walked down the steps and out of the churchyard, without looking at any of the other boys standing there. I wouldn’t be seen dead walking home with the Henderson boy.

  But after the revival meeting come the baptizing and that was the summer I got saved and joined the church. I didn’t have a special dress for the baptizing and just wore an old gray frock I had. The baptizing was down at the river, at the sandbar across from the Lemmons Hole. The river was just a little cloudy, for it had rained the night before.

  Now baptizing is a kind of shock when they plunge you down into the water over your head and then raise you up streaming into the light. Some people scream because of the cold water, but I gasped and called out to Mama and everybody on the bank laughed. But I stumbled to the bank wiping the water out of my eyes, and first thing I seen was Gus Henderson standing on the bank above the others looking at me. It was the kind of stare that was scary, like somebody that ain’t at theirself. I shivered with the cold water dripping off me and looked away. Mama handed me a towel and I dried my face and waited at the edge of the water with the others for the singing to be over. But every time I turned I seen Gus still looking at me. I stayed close to Mama when we walked home, and Troy walked with us. It was a relief to change my clothes in the bedroom.

  What happened after that was every time Gus got drunk he’d come to the house to try to see me. He didn’t have the nerve to come when he was sober. But on the weekends when he’d had a drink or two here he’d come, sometimes pretending like he come to see Velmer or was on his way to the store. But he’d hang around waiting for a chance to ask me to go out with him. There was always something a little thrilling about a drunk man, because he was out of control and you didn’t know what he might do. He didn’t know hisself. It was the thrill of danger. But really Gus was pitiful, always a little drunk, stumbling around, hoping maybe I’d go out with him.

  And then one night he come over and knocked on the front door. He called out and he sounded different. He sounded like he was mad or determined to get an answer. Maybe he thought he was trick-or-treating. Papa went to the front door and told him to go on home. I looked out the window and seen Gus was carrying a big old lantern.

  “Mr. Richards, ain’t got no call to run me off,” he said.

  “Don’t come around here no more when you’re drunk,” Papa said.

  “Didn’t come to see you,” Gus said. “Come to see Annie.”

  “Annie don’t want to see you,” Papa said. “Nobody wants to see you when you’re drunk.”

  Gus took a step like he was coming into the house anyway. Papa shoved him back and Gus staggered, almost falling down the steps. He swung the lantern like he meant to hit Papa with it. Next thing Papa done was grab a rocking chair that set on the porch and push it out in front of him. It was the way a trainer in the circus might push a lion away with a chair.

  “Don’t you come around here no more,” Papa said.

  “You ain’t got no right to treat me thisaway,” Gus said.

  But Papa held the chair out and pushed him back a little at a time until Gus was standing on the top step. I thought he was going to fall backward down the steps and drop the lantern. Instead he pitched the lantern onto the porch where it broke and spilled kerosene that flared up. I guess he run away after that, but I didn’t pay no attention to him with the flames leaping on the boards of the porch. I run to the kitchen and got the water bucket. Papa took the bucket from me and splashed it on the kerosene and broke glass. There was just barely enough water to put the flames out.

  “He’s worse than Timmy Gosnell,” Mama said. Timmy Gosnell was a drunk man on Gap Creek that used to come and bother Mama and Papa when they first got married.

  But after he throwed the lantern and set the porch on fire Gus Henderson never did come back to the house. Or if he did he slipped around in the dark and nobody seen him. That was about the time Troy got Old Pat, and if he’d come around then, Old Pat would have let us know.

  Fourteen

  I never did plan to start going out with Muir again. Sometimes I think it was just a happen. I tried to fall in love with boys one after another. But every time I dated a boy, the longer I went out with him the less I liked him. Sometimes I wondered if I liked boys at all. I wanted to be in love, and I tried to be. I kissed boys and let them hug me. I let them give me presents and drive me to the picture show. But every time I got tired of them. I told myself it was because I wanted to move on. I wanted something more than just settling down to raise babies and keep house and go to church on Sundays. I wanted to make something of myself. I had to go somewhere else and meet other people. But I didn’t know how I was going to do that.

  Muir lost the Model T, which he co-owned with Moody when Moody died and it was found out he owed a bunch of money to his buddies Wheeler and Drayton. Muir didn’t have no money, so he had to sell the car to pay Moody’s debts. Without the car he had to walk or hitch a ride to a church where he was going to preach. Sometimes when Effie and Alvin drove him to Tracy Grove or Saluda I’d go along with them. Wherever Muir preached they’d take up a collection and Muir would give Alvin a dollar for driving him. I told myself I was just going along to be sociable.

  One night in the fall of 1939 after Muir had preached at Double Springs and we was driving back toward home Muir told Alvin to let us out at the highway and we’d walk up the Green River Road to the house. I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk that far, but I didn’t say nothing. We got out and Alvin and Effie drove on toward Flat Rock.

  It was a night with a full moon and the road run along the sparkling river. There was just the faintest chill in the air that made things seem more alive. Muir put his arm around me and that felt good. He was warm and strong. The mountains rose like shadows up into the moonlit sky. The light on the road made everything almost clear as day. The valley in moonlight seemed not only like another world but also a different time, either long ago, or maybe in the future.

  We come to the bend in the river where the road climbed up high above the water. The moon was reflected in the big pool there, and seemed bright as footlights on a stage. Muir had said little, which was unusual for him. I wondered if the preaching had wore him out. We stopped and looked down at the river.

  “I won’t ever ask you again,” he said.

  “Ask what?”

  “You know what.”

  I thought at first he meant ask me to go out with him. But then I seen he meant asking me to marry him. Twice he’d asked me before, when I was just fourteen, and then after I graduated from high school.

  “I’ve always loved you since you was a little girl,” he said. “And I always will love you. But if you say no now, I’ll leave you alone and never bother you again.”

  I didn’t know what to answer. His proposal was not a complete surprise, but I was not expecting it at that time. I thought of all my dreams of going away and doing something with myself. I thought of having my own business or living in some city, of being my own boss.

  “I think the Lord meant for us to be together,” Muir said.

  That seemed unfair to me, to make the proposal a religious thing. How did he know what the Lord wanted? I couldn’t see any way the Lord would care one way or another. But on the other hand, I couldn’t be sure. Maybe there was something I just didn’t understand.

  “This is the last time,” Muir said. “You are twenty-seven and I’m thirty-four. I won’t try again.”

  As I stood there in his arms I wasn’t confused. I could think clear, and the thing I thought about was why I hadn’t married none of the other boys that had asked me. I could have married any of them, but I hadn’t. I’d got rid of every one of them when they got more serious. I’d done that in each case.

  And why had I not gone off to the city and got a job as a model or an actress? Why had I not gone out to Asheville or Charlotte and got a job? Surely I could have done it, if I’d really wanted to. But I
hadn’t. Something had held me back. The question was: What had held me back? Was I just too scared to go off and trust myself in another place? Was I that timid?

  And then I wondered if I’d not gone away because I secretly wanted to marry Muir Powell and refused to admit it. Suddenly I seen that must be the case. I seen that I’d always come back to Muir and that if I didn’t marry Muir, I’d never marry anybody else. I would always reject other boys. None of them seemed right to me. If I didn’t marry Muir, I’d be an old maid. Maybe the Lord did intend for me to marry him. I’d been in love with Muir all along, but didn’t understand what love was. I’d thought love was something way off yonder, something in a storybook, but I seen it was right here. It was what had been already in me all along.

  And I seen also how he needed me. Muir couldn’t help hisself. He couldn’t stay away from me. He couldn’t manage his life without me. He’d never been able to handle his money. People had made fun of him for his preaching and for his church on the mountaintop. His own family had made fun of him for reading books and tramping in the woods and never making no money. He needed somebody to look after him and take care of him. He had no head for business at all. I’d thought I wanted to marry a businessman, but I didn’t. I was the one who was good at business.

  “What do you say, Annie?” he said. “If you say no, you’ll never hear from me again.”

  “Yes,” I said almost in a whisper.

  “What did you say?”

  “Yes,” I said, and seen my whole life take firm shape before me. Before, my future had been murky as dishwater; now it come into solid, sharp focus. And I saw how hard it would be, and I didn’t care.

  He kissed me on the lips and I enjoyed the kiss. But when he pulled away I said, “But let’s not tell nobody yet.”

  “What do you mean not tell anybody?”

  “Let’s just keep it to ourselves, for a while.”

  “How is that possible?” Muir said.

  “We’ll get married and not tell nobody. I’ll live at home and you’ll live at home as before.” I don’t know why I said that. Maybe it was because I couldn’t bear to tell Mama I was getting married. She didn’t want to hear of me getting married. She had had such a hard life and worked so hard she needed me to stay home and help her. She was afraid for me to get married.

  I guess I was afraid of marriage too. I never wanted a man to handle me and force his way with me. I never wanted to be under the will of a man. I wasn’t going to be the play toy of no man. So even though to my surprise I was willing to marry Muir, I wasn’t willing to live with him just yet.

  “If you will marry me, that’s a start,” Muir said. He was surprised I’d agreed and surprised that I wanted it to be a secret. But mostly he was relieved that I’d agreed.

  It was just before Thanksgiving when Muir got the license. I told Mama I was staying with Effie and Alvin on Thanksgiving night. It had turned awful cold and Alvin’s Buick didn’t have a good heater. Me and Muir set in the backseat all bundled up in our overcoats and with a blanket over our laps. There was a new preacher at church named Preacher Rice, and he’d agreed to marry us and keep it a secret for a while. He lived all the way up at Brevard in Transylvania County.

  We waited till after supper to go, and Alvin decided to take the little road all the way up Green River to the Blue Ridge Church and Cedar Mountain. It was the roughest road you ever seen. We bounced over rocks and ruts till our behinds was sore, and we laughed and laughed. We woke the preacher up and he performed the ceremony right there in his living room. I was surprised how quick it was over. Mrs. Rice served as witness. Muir give the preacher a five-dollar bill and then it was done. Before I knowed it we was in the car and headed back the same way we’d come.

  “You all are welcome to stay the night with us,” Effie said.

  “Muir is going back home,” I said.

  Effie turned and looked at me, and I looked at Muir, and he said to Alvin, “Yeah, take me back home.”

  “Well, I never heard of such a thing,” Effie said. She was like Papa. She always said what was on her mind. I thought I could see a grin on Alvin’s face in the rearview mirror.

  “We want to keep it a secret for a while,” I said. “So please don’t tell nobody.”

  “How can you keep it a secret?” Effie said.

  “Just for a while,” I said. “I want to wait a while to tell Mama.”

  I never felt more nervous in my life than in the weeks after me and Muir got married but didn’t live together and didn’t tell nobody. I couldn’t bear to tell Mama I was married, and I couldn’t bear to leave and go to live in the Powell house. I told myself that I didn’t want to upset Mama, and I wanted to find the perfect time to tell her I’d be leaving home. She’d come to depend on me as the years passed, not only on the money I brought home every week from my job and the work I helped her with when I was home. It was more than that. Later in her life she was less sure of herself. She’d always been sure and determined, but as she got older she got scared. Partly it was the talk of war and fear that Velmer and Troy might have to go off to war. As she got older she was afraid she wasn’t attractive no more to Papa. I think that was a part of it.

  When Mama had to make a decision she wanted my support. Even if it was something as little as choosing the color of curtains or buying a new shrub to set in the yard. It was almost like I’d become the parent. She wanted my approval for ordering Christmas cards, and she wanted me to be there to help when the preacher come to Sunday dinner. I liked it that she needed my help, and maybe I didn’t want to give that up.

  But the truth was I’d always been afraid of marriage. Even I could see that. I’d never wanted to be in the power of no man. I didn’t much want to be bothered by a man running his hands over me and having his way with me. Other girls said it didn’t hurt and besides it was fun and some said loving was the most wonderful thing they’d ever done. And I was curious and attracted as any girl is. But I felt a dread also of laying night after night with a man and letting him do whatever he wanted to with me. I couldn’t admit it even to myself that I was that timid. But the fact is I was. Nothing in the world scared me as much as the idea of having sex, unless it was the fear of having to make a speech in public.

  But as I’d agreed to marry Muir and had gone through the ceremony in front of Preacher Rice, I knowed that according to the law I had to live with my husband. And besides, Effie and Alvin knowed. I was living on borrowed time. While I was working every day, and while I was laying in bed at night, I thought about when I was going to tell Mama. And I thought about how I was going to tell Mama. Would I make like it was a joke and didn’t matter, like it was just a matter-of-fact small thing? Or would I break down and cry and beg Mama not to be mad and even give me her blessing? Or would I talk firm and businesslike and tell Mama it was my business and not hers? I was old enough to know what I was doing.

  As it turned out Muir give me a deadline. He said we had to announce our marriage by Christmas. War had started overseas in September and things was moving in a dark direction. And we had to act like responsible grown-ups. He made me feel a little ashamed and a little silly. So I waited till everybody had gathered at the house to open presents by the fireplace on Christmas. Effie and Alvin was there, and Troy and Sharon was there. Velmer was there. I had got Mama a pretty lavender shawl at the best store in town. When she opened the box and held the shawl up in the light to see the sparkling colors, I said, quick before I lost my nerve, “Me and Muir has got married.”

  I didn’t think Mama heard me because she kept admiring the shawl.

  “Me and Muir got married back in November,” I said.

  “Well, it’s about time,” Papa said.

  “That’s wonderful,” Troy said, and jumped up and hugged me. Sharon hugged me too and kissed me.

  “So that’s the Christmas surprise,” Sharon said.

  Mama folded the shawl and put it back in the box. She laid the box on the floor, stood up, and walked i
nto the kitchen. I run after her and found she’d gone on into the dining room.

  “Mama, I had to tell you some time,” I said.

  She opened the closet where the towels and best dishes was kept and took out several towels and dishes and set them on the table. And then she opened the drawer where the silver was.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “If you start keeping house, you’ll need some dishes and silverware and towels,” Mama said.

  “There is dishes and silverware at the Powell house,” I said.

  “But you’ll need some of your own. A woman needs to start housekeeping with her own stuff.”

  “We can worry about that later,” I said. “It’s Christmas. We need to finish opening presents.”

  “You’ll need to take a frying pan,” Mama said. “And some of the apples we dried.”

  It was Mama’s way of not talking about my marriage. She was not going to approve or disapprove. Instead she went right to work, doing what was practical, as she always done. When she was hurt or confused or surprised she just kept on working. She worked until she had got a box of things packed and a bunch of my clothes folded in a brown paper bag. She done everything that she could to make it easier for me.

  When Muir arrived at the house a little later Papa stood up and shook hands with him, and Troy shook hands with him, and Sharon run and give him a big hug. I waited to see what Mama would say, because she’d avoided talking to me, except about the things I’d need to carry with me to the Powell house. She was never one to say much about how she felt anyway. But after all the handshaking and hugging she stood on the other side of the fireplace from Muir and said, “I hate to see Annie get married and leave us, but if she has to I’d rather it was you than anybody else.” That’s when Muir stepped over and hugged Mama and she didn’t back away from him.