Finally the old clock struck, and I got my bundles from under the quilt and tiptoed to the ladder. They was a glow from the fireplace, and more light come through the window and laid like a sheet on the floor. I climbed down silent as I could, though the rungs creaked and my bundles rubbed together. When I finally got to the floor I stood for a few seconds listening, and then eased a tiny step at a time toward the door. I just hoped nobody had left a pan or dipper in the way. I could hear my Daddy snoring.
They was a wooden latch and I lifted it gentle as I could. The wood groaned a little. But I got it open and eased through the door. And I was almost outside when somebody touched me on the shoulder. I near jumped out of my hide.
“Shhhh,” Mama said, and followed me out into the yard.
“I want you to take this,” she said, and pushed a quilt against me. From the cold satiny feeling I could tell it was her best.
“Mama …,” I started to say, but couldn’t go on.
“You’ll be happy,” she said. “I pray that you’ll be happy.” Then she was gone back into the house. I stood there listening to her close the door. She didn’t bolt it from inside though, so Daddy couldn’t blame her for letting me go. Or maybe she thought I might change my mind and want to come back in.
It was a coon-hunting night, with the moon bright as the light in a dream. I stumbled down the path with my bundles and the quilt. Your Grandpa and the horse stood like shadows beside the branch.
You want to know what it was like the night we run away? Besides the moonlight, which made the mountains look like some place on the moon, in another world, I don’t remember much but the excitement.
Your Grandpa took me in his arms when I got to the branch. “This is the start of a long way,” he said. I could smell some likker on his breath. He’d had a drink at the tavern to warm him up. Your Grandpa always liked a drink at Christmas and on special occasions, though he wasn’t in general a drinking man.
I thought, the Holsten sure is a long way, but he meant the long path we’d go together, all through our lives. The drink had made him think those big thoughts. And he was right, it was the start of a long way.
We didn’t use no lantern as we picked our way up the trail by the branch. I thought it was because the moon was so bright. But when we got to the woods your Grandpa still didn’t light no lantern, and I realized he hadn’t brought one. With all the seeds and tools and salt on that horse he didn’t have room for no lantern. We’d have to do without, or make one when we got there. That was my first inkling of what I was in for, learning to make, or make do without.
I found my way trembling along the Shimer Road to the head of the branch and we climbed between the pastures to the start of the next creek valley. I’d been that way to pick huckleberries, but it looked different in the dark. I was already lost when Realus said, “Let’s turn aside here.”
“Why we turning?”
“To go to the Holsten,” he said. “You want to go there don’t you?”
“Reckon I do,” I said. It didn’t seem like we was following the right road.
“Let’s be gone,” Realus said.
We descended into the next valley and I could smell a creek nearby, and hear shoalwater. They was a damp mossy smell and the thrill of water pouring. Then I heard a mill turning, one that had been disconnected from its stones and was turning fast.
“Is that the Shimer mill?” I said. I’d heard the Shimer Road went to a mill way over the mountains.
“You’re all mixed up,” Realus said. “We’re already on the road to the West, and you’re still thinking of places back there.”
That was when I come closest to losing my nerve. It was like Realus had accused me of looking back, the way Lot’s wife did in the Bible. For a minute I was sad, and my eyes moistened. But Realus couldn’t see those tears in the moonlight. I wiped them away and set my face forward. They was going to be no looking back. I would foller my man to the West, as I had promised to do.
Realus was up ahead leading the horse and I walked behind smelling that old horse’s smell. When they stopped, I near run into the back of that animal. I stood and listened, and heard first a loud holler, then another. It was like somebody was hurt or in trouble. And then another beller come and we recognized it was hounds. They was after a coon or possum. Or maybe it was a fox hunt. If it was fox they was after, there wouldn’t be men with the dogs. The men would be somewhere by a camp fire listening. I could feel Realus stiffen in the dark. He didn’t want to meet up with anybody, until we was more distant from the settlement.
“Shhhh,” he said back over his shoulder.
But the dogs kept coming on and getting louder. You would have thought the valley was full of dogs, the way their yelps and bellers echoed around. I was getting scared. Maybe Daddy had found me gone and put the dogs after us. But my Daddy didn’t have any hound dogs. He’d have to borrow them from the Whitakers or the Jeters.
I walked up and stood beside Realus. “Just stay still,” he said. “They may run right by us.”
We kept quiet, Realus holding the horse by the bridle. I felt a sickness in my belly as the dogs got closer. I took your Grandpa by the hand, and found he already had his gun out. He must have took it from the horse’s pack soon as he heard the hounds.
It was terrible, feeling the dogs coming at you. The air was filled with their yelping and hollering. Men is supposed to enjoy hound music. They become experts at knowing hounds by voice and interpreting the message of the baying. But I took no pleasure in the howls getting closer.
Once the sounds seemed to fade, and I thought the dogs might have turned aside or gone off on another scent. But it was only a pause, like they had lost the trail for a while and found it again. It’s hard to judge the distance of hounds in the dark, but you could tell they wasn’t far away.
Just the sound of the hounds coming at us made me feel like I’d done something terrible. And it’s true I was running away. But just being chased makes you feel criminal. You can imagine how a slave feels with dogs on his tracks.
Realus put his arm around me. “We won’t go back,” he said. “No matter what.” But it was partly like a question.
“I won’t go back,” I said.
The dogs busted out on the path ahead, and they was lanterns behind them. In no time the dogs was bellering around our feet. One hound sounded like a bull choking. The horse pulled back and your Grandpa had to hold him with both hands. He was afraid the packs would slide off if the horse rared up. Your Grandpa whistled a little to show the dogs we was friendly. But they kept hollering. We had crossed their trail and throwed them off the scent of the coon.
Somebody come running up with a lantern. I couldn’t see nothing but a light, and a hand holding it high.
“Who’s messing with my dogs?” he called.
“We’re not messing with anything,” Realus said.
“Identify yourself or I’ll shoot,” the man said.
I held to Realus’s arm while he held onto the horse. Other men was stumbling out of the woods with lanterns.
“I’m Realus Richards, and this is my wife Petal, and we’re on our way to the Holsten,” your Grandpa said, firm-like, but at the same time friendly.
The men gathered around us with their lanterns and you never seen such wild-looking creatures. They was sweating and panting from running through the woods and their hats looked like dead birds perched on their heads. Three-cornered hats always looked awful when they got old.
“You all confused my dogs,” the leader said. The hounds kept circling and barking at us. It was like we was in the middle of a whirlpool of dogs.
“We was just going along the road,” Realus said. “We didn’t aim to confuse nothing.”
“Where you folks going?” the leader said.
“We’re on the way to the West,” your Grandpa said.
“In the middle of the night you’re going to the West?” The man looked us up and down like we was thieves. He looked at me especially
.
“We wanted to travel by moonlight to make better time,” your Grandpa said. “Long as we could see the road.”
“You must have crossed the trail of that coon,” the man said.
“We didn’t see no coon,” Realus said.
“I told you that dog was lying,” one of the other men said. He was taller than the leader.
“Preacher don’t lie,” the leader said. He turned to his companion with a look of hatred.
“Maybe he was just exaggerating,” another man said. “They was a coon, but now he’s gone.”
“Any man says my dog’s lying is a cock-eyed liar hisself,” the leader said.
The hounds was milling around and bellering and the men got to arguing and it looked like it was coming to fists. They blocked our path ahead, and Realus and me looked at each other wondering what to do. The moon was getting low in the west.
Suddenly Realus pointed to a pine tree just ahead. “There’s the coon,” he said. Nobody heard him in all the confusion.
“There’s your coon,” he said, pointing. “I seen the flash of his eyes.” The leader watched him point and looked toward the pine. He must have glimpsed the coon’s eyes too, for he run that way and the others followed. And your Grandpa and me moved on.
We hadn’t gone more than a mile before your Grandpa said, “Here’s where we turn off the road and find a place to sleep.”
I was getting tired by then and was glad to hear him mention sleep. I could tell your Grandpa was tense, and I was excited too. Ducking under limbs and pushing brush aside he led us out through the woods. It felt like a poplar thicket. The limbs was wet with dew and cold. We stumbled deeper into the thicket.
Finally we got to a place where the ground was level and smooth, but with a kind of steep bank behind it. I could hear water somewhere close. “This is a good spot,” Realus said.
“It feels surrounded,” I said.
We spread blankets on the ground, and your Grandpa tied the horse to a poplar tree. We didn’t even build a fire it was such a mild night. The moon was gone in the west by then.
We spent our wedding night there under the poplars. I hung my clothes on a limb and got under the blanket and quilt. I remember thinking as we got under the covers that this was the best way to start married life, without even a roof over your head and flat on the ground.
Realus used to say loving is the Lord’s gift to us, to allow us to share the joy in creation. And I reckon that is so. But it’s the surprise that is best. Studying on it too much can make it wrong. But after a day’s work of duty, love’s an added blessing.
I woke cold, and all the gladness of the night was gone. We had walked so far in the dark in our excitement, and now I was stiff and sore. And the damp had settled right into my bones. That’s the way it goes, grandchildren. You do things in the rush of newness and surprise, and in the gray morning you have to pick up and start all over again. It took will, even at the most joyous time of my life, to sit up and look around.
Realus had already struck his flint and got a fire going. I’d heard my Daddy say how a hunter can take the flint from his rifle and strike a spark from it. If it is a wet day, he can sprinkle a little gunpowder on the tinder to make sure the fire catches. Your Grandpa had put two rocks alongside the little fire and had a pot boiling there, and a pan with some bacon frying.
“I always needed a man to wait on me,” I said, crouching to the flames. My hair was tangled from the night.
“I always needed a woman to wait on me,” he said.
I set down beside him. That was our first hearth I reckon, two rocks by the fire on the little creek bank. I didn’t even know what creek it was. We was twenty miles from the settlement by then, and I’d never been that far to the west. And I thought, from these two rocks and this fire, and these two people and the work of their hands, and the loving of their bodies, we’ll build a family. We have everything we need.
Your Grandpa poured some tea from a can and soaked it in the boiling pot. Then he poured us each a tin cup full. Children, I never tasted anything as good as that hot tea. I was cold and shivering and sore and stiff. Realus pulled a dead log up to the fire and we set on that and eat bacon and hoecakes and sipped the burning hot tea. We didn’t have no cream but I didn’t mind.
When good tea goes into your belly and spreads through your veins and fibers it’s like lights are turned up. Everything gets sharp and clear. And things seem open and possible.
“Well, old gal,” Realus said. “Do you think we’re going to make it?”
“We better make it,” I said. “’Cause I can’t go back now.”
I could have set there for hours, but it was time to stir. That was the first time I ever washed pots with sand. We didn’t have no soap to waste, and I was in too big a hurry to fill up a pan to wash anyway. I took the pot and skillet down to the creek and scrubbed the grease off with white sand and rinsed them good. White sand will get a pan gleaming in no time, though it will scratch a mug or plate.
I had the things nigh washed when I noticed the creek was getting muddy. I had stirred up the water a little scrubbing the things, but not near enough to make the whole creek cloudy.
“Look here,” I said to your Grandpa, who was loading things back on the horse.
“What do you see?” he said.
The creek had started getting dingy, a dishwater tinge, like after a light shower. And then it turned brown, and reddish-brown, like somebody had dropped a bucket of dirt in above.
“Looky there,” I said.
“They must have had a gullywasher upstream,” Realus said. “But I ain’t seen no cloud or heard no thunder.”
“That much mud wouldn’t wash out of the woods no way, unless they was cleared fields,” I said.
We stood there puzzled by the dirty water.
“Could it be one of them siphon springs you hear about?” I said. “The kind that dribbles out and then gushes, almost dries up and then spates?”
“Never heard of a siphon spring being muddy,” your Grandpa said. “Besides, this is a creek, not a spring branch.”
We loaded up the horse and got ready to move on.
“We’re going up that way, anyway,” he said. “We’ll see what is making such a mess.”
You want to know what a siphon spring is? I never really understood it myself. But I’ve been told they’re springs that ebb and flow. They have a big room inside a mountain that fills up and spills through an outlet that tilts up and then down. That outlet acts like a siphon when it starts draining and empties all the water pooled up. Then the hole starts filling up again and nothing runs out till it’s full.
We followed the creek up the valley through the poplars. It seemed the stream got muddier the further we went. The water looked bright red in the bare woods. It was like the earth was bleeding toward the head of the valley. It even crossed my mind they might be a battle with Indians, or a slaughter of cattle up there, though I knowed the creek was really colored with mud.
We had gone maybe two miles when we heard voices and banging ahead. I was getting scared and held back. Your Grandpa stopped the horse and we listened. They was banging and ringing.
“Could be somebody making a mill,” Realus said. “And they’re sharpening a pair of millstones.”
“But why would they build a mill where there ain’t no fields?” I said.
“Maybe they’s settlements nearby we ain’t seen,” he said.
I could tell Realus was thinking of going around whatever was up there. We was heading for the Holsten and didn’t need to be stopped by any devilment going on in the woods. But I think his curiosity wouldn’t let him leave without seeing what it was.
We continued up the creek, which got muddier and muddier. Then we seen a clearing ahead, and the flash of bodies working along the creek. I was startled by the sight of bare flesh.
“What kind of heathens are them?” I said. “Are they Indians?”
“No, they’re white people,” your
Grandpa said.
I might have held back from the clearing of half-naked men, but we had been seen. A big man with a black hat and no shirt on stopped shoveling and grabbed a rifle-gun. He run toward us, his hat flapping. “What you’uns doing here?” he said.
“We’re on our way to the West,” Realus said.
“This ain’t no way West,” the man said. Others had stopped work and was watching us. The clearing was maybe a hundred yards long, and all churned up with dirt and mud and piles of rocks.
“We may have got a little lost,” your Grandpa said.
“Who told you to come here?” the man said.
“Nobody told us to come here.”
“You heard about us and you thought you’d come dig some for yourself,” the man said. “Next thing there’ll be hordes descending out of the woods like buzzards to pick us clean.”
“Ain’t nobody else coming,” your Grandpa said.
“You’re the first one to bring a woman here,” the man said, eyeing me.
“We was just passing on,” I said.
The half-naked man stood on the pile of dirt and rocks and looked at us. The other men in the clearing was watching us too.
“Can your woman cook?” he said.
“Sure she can cook,” Realus said.
“Then if she cooks some for us, we will cut you in,” he said.
“Cut me in what?”
“Don’t act so ignorant you don’t know we found gold here last week,” the man said. Realus looked at me.
“I ain’t no prospector,” your Grandpa said. “We was just passing through.”
“I ain’t no prospector either,” the man said. “I’m Jones the Preacher. And that over there’s Owens the Peddler. And when we get the gold out of this mud we can all go back to being whatever we was. Except we’ll be richer.”
Me and Realus was caught. If we tried to leave, they might shoot us to keep us from telling other people what they was doing. If they was gold, we could get a little to take to the West. All around it seemed better to stay and take a cut. At least, that’s the way it looked then.
The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Page 4