The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts

by Robert Morgan

  I called Wallace back and told him to stay close.

  “But I’m the scout,” he said. “I have to go ahead and find more vines.”

  “We can find them together,” I said. What I didn’t say was we had already gone further than your Grandpa wanted us to. I didn’t really know how far we had gone, but three forks had split off the river. It was just a creek now you could almost step over.

  We crossed in a shallow place and walked a little way up the other side. When we come to a big rock, I suggested we eat our dinner on it. While we was eating, I noticed we was so high up most of the leaves had fell. The poplars was bare, and most of the maples. We was way up on the mountain. A yellow leaf floated onto the rock, and then a yellowjacket appeared, attracted to the honey on our biscuits. I turned away from the jacket, hoping it would go away. That’s when I noticed the top of the mountain above. The peak looked like a forehead, and the shape seemed awful familiar. I didn’t know where I had seen it before, but I had. Maybe we had passed this way when we come to the cabin years before. They was a lot I didn’t remember about that trip. I kept turning away from the yellowjacket and wondering about the knob on the mountain.

  And then we heard a cowbell. I didn’t know they was any cows that high in the woods. We was far away from our own cows. And they was something familiar about that bell. I had heard it before. It wasn’t one of our cows. I wondered if it might be some trick of the Indians.

  I’d heard of Indians killing a settler’s cow and carrying the bell as they approached the house. That way nobody got suspicious and the sound of their steps was covered by the tinkling. The Indians moved slow through the woods like a cow grazing there.

  “Come here,” I whispered to Lewis and Willa. I had stood up when I heard that cowbell, and I realized how exposed we was on that rock.

  “Come here,” I said, and lifted them down to the ground. Wallace had gone off into the woods as soon as he eat his biscuits. He said he was going to get a drink from the stream, but I knowed he was looking for more grapes. We had all we could carry home, but he wanted to look for more. He was all enthused about the search, and his success, and didn’t want to stop.

  I couldn’t holler for him, and tell the Indians, if they was Indians, where we was. Wallace was out of sight, and I couldn’t leave Lewis and Willa to go look for him.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” Lewis said. I pulled them with me and we crouched out of sight.

  “Are we playing hide-and-seek?” Willa said. “Are we hiding from Wallace?” She giggled, thinking it was a game.

  “Wallace!” I said, just loud enough so I hoped it would not be heard up on the ridge where the bell sounded.

  “Mama, are we going to scare Wallace?” Willa said.

  I had left the cloth and the remains of our dinner on top of the rock. I run back and pulled them off as quick and quiet as I could. The thing about Indians is they always see you before you see them. They’re like owls that way. Whoever seen an owl that wasn’t already watching them?

  “I’ll go find Wallace,” Lewis said.

  “No, stay here!” I said. I thought of all the times Realus had warned me not to go too far from the clearing, and not to cross the river. If we ever got back, I would heed his warning.

  I could tell by the sun it was getting late in the evening. It wouldn’t be long till Realus come back from the field for his supper. He was gathering corn and hauling it on his sled. Soon as the corn was in he’d begin hauling wood for the winter. I wished we could start on back with the grapes. I wished we was already home and I was putting water on to boil and taters in the ashes to bake. It was getting chilly that high up on the mountain.

  “Wall-ace,” I called again. But we didn’t have no choice but to wait for him. If I went looking, it would only attract more attention. When he seen we hadn’t followed, he’d come back to tell us what he had found. I was afraid he would holler out.

  Then I heard that cowbell again. It was like something I knowed but just couldn’t name. It was the sweetest, clearest note. Was it something I had dreamed about? It was like a taste in the air that tingled memory. That made it even more scary, to think some Indian might be tinkling that bell to fool us.

  We heard something in the leaves about a hundred feet away. I made the children crouch down even lower, and we listened. Something was stirring in the brush. It would make a noise and then stop. I thought it must be Wallace playing in the leaves. Maybe he was looking for us. I raised up slowly to look out.

  At first I didn’t see nothing. Then a limb shook and some red sourwood leaves fell. I seen this ugly head poke through, and a turkey come out, scratching and looking around. I was relieved, but disappointed it wasn’t Wallace. Made me mad to think he had just wandered off. If I caught him I was going to switch him.

  “You stay right here,” I said to Willa and Lewis. “I’m going to look for Wallace.”

  “Can’t we come?” Lewis said.

  “You stay right here with your sister,” I said. “If you move, I’ll whip you.”

  I stood up and eased around the big rock, trying not to disturb even the turkey. But standing up made me dizzy. For a few seconds the world around me seemed bleached and I couldn’t remember in what direction the branch was. I couldn’t tell much about direction from the woods. Then I seen the peak through the trees and remembered the river was down behind me.

  I picked my way through the brush toward the mountain. So many leaves had fell, they was no way to be quiet. I went slow and listened. What I heard was my heart, and the pulse by my ears. Then I heard the cowbell, not more than a hundred feet away.

  They was nothing to hide behind but an oak tree, and I stepped back of that. If the Indians had already seen me, it wouldn’t do no good to hide anyway. The bell come closer and limbs was being knocked aside. Whatever it was, was coming straight toward me. I thought if the Indians found me, maybe they wouldn’t catch the children. Wallace and Lewis and Willa could work their way back down the branch and find their way home.

  Something walked right out into the open, ringing the bell. I glanced around the tree thinking I was caught for sure. But it wasn’t nothing but a big old Jersey cow looking at me. And it come to me all at once why the cowbell was so familiar. That was my Daddy’s favorite cowbell, and that was his old cow Bess. The surprise took my breath away, what I had left. For how could his cow be there in the mountains of the West?

  There was the bell my Daddy was so proud of, with its one note clear as an icicle. He would stop what he was doing sometimes and listen to that tinkle off in the woods, the way a foxhunter will listen to his favorite hound. All kinds of things flew through my mind. That the bell had been sold and brought to the Holsten. Or it had been stole. Maybe my Daddy made another bell with the same tone and sold it to a passing settler. But that was Bess I used to drive to the gap and milk every evening. He might have sold the cow, too. Or had her stole and brought over the mountains.

  I was puzzling over these mysteries at the same time I was relieved it wasn’t Indians hunting us. Something almost come clear in my mind, and then didn’t. “Here Bess, here Bess,” I said. “Soo cow, soo cow.” Of course, it had been years since I left home, and Bess was a young cow then, freshened not more than twice. I tore off some grass and held it out to her. She took the grass in her lips and teeth, just like I was an old friend.

  I heard running steps and turned around, still expecting Indians. It was Wallace, dashing around brush and between trees.

  “You come back here,” I said to him. “I never give you leave to run off up the mountain.”

  “Mama,” he said, out of breath from running. “Mama, they’s houses over there.”

  “Over where?” I said. “I don’t see no houses.”

  “Just over there across the mountain,” he said.

  “How many houses?” I said.

  “A whole bunch of houses.” That was when the thing stalled at the edge of my mind begun to come clear, raising into view like th
e shadow of an outline.

  “Is they a church over there?” I said.

  “They’s a house with a bell on top,” he said.

  Then I knowed why the shape of the mountain seemed so familiar. It was the knob at the upper end of the valley where I growed up. And that’s why my Daddy’s favorite cowbell was here on his favorite cow. We was on the mountain just west of the valley.

  “Let’s go back and get Willa and Lewis,” I said.

  “Where is Lewis and Willa?”

  “They’re hiding back beyond the picnic rock,” I said.

  I got the children together and we climbed toward the gap. Old Bess followed, and some of the other cows, too. They had been grazing around the huckleberry bushes and rocks of the bald. The cows had all kinds of trails between the laurel bushes and the rock cliffs up there. I had picked berries there many a time.

  So much had happened, none of it seemed real. First we had followed the river valley all the way up, picking the foxgrapes, and always finding more further on. One place led to another, to the remains of the fire, and then we crossed the stream and heard the cowbell. We was disobeying your Grandpa more and more. And I seen why he didn’t want us to go far from the clearing. I was beginning to see more than I could take in all at once.

  By the time we got to the top of the ridge, we was on the Shimer Road. This was the way Realus and me had come when we left that night, and I hadn’t even recognized it. It sure looked different from the other direction. It was like the whole world had been turned around.

  “Where is this, Mama?” Wallace said. “Where are we going?”

  I wasn’t ready yet to explain where we was. I was hardly ready to explain it to myself. And how could they understand? Old Bess followed along behind us to the gap, thinking she was going to be fed and milked.

  “We’re going to see your Grandpa and Grandma,” I said, trying not to sound as excited and afraid as I felt.

  “We ain’t got no Grandpa and Grandma, except way off in Calinny,” Wallace said.

  “Are we going to Calinny?” Lewis said.

  “This is Carolina,” I said.

  “This ain’t Calinny,” Wallace said.

  Willa was so tired from walking, I picked her up and toted her down into the valley. They was more clearings on the head-branches than before, and more new ground cleared everywhere you looked. I seen at least ten more houses in plain view when we come out onto the bank of the branch above the church. I could hear guinea fowl pottaracking in several parts of the valley. People was gathering corn in the fields and dogs barked at us. I said “how do” to everybody we passed, but they didn’t seem to recognize me, and some of them I couldn’t place, neither. An old woman set in a chair by a fire shucking corn, and I thought she must be Aunt Mary Lindsay, but I couldn’t be sure.

  When we got to the house we seen this big strapping feller chopping wood in the yard. It was Henry.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” I said to him.

  “Seems like I do,” he said.

  “You ought to,” I said. “I’m your sister Petal.”

  I introduced him to the younguns, and while we was talking, Mama come out the front door. She must have been making biscuits or a pie, for she was wiping flour on her apron. I seen how much older she looked, and shorter. It was like the years had pulled her down an inch or two, drawing wrinkles down her face.

  “The Lord be praised,” she said, and grabbed hold of me. I don’t know if I growed after I left home or not, but she seemed like a little person in my arms.

  “I never figured on seeing my grand-younguns,” she said, and stooped over to look at Wallace and Lewis and Willa.

  Henry went off to fetch my Daddy at the blacksmith shop.

  It was all happening so fast, I couldn’t believe where I was. Everything around the house and valley looked small. It was my memory that played tricks on me, for I hadn’t growed none since leaving home, and the house and barn hadn’t shrunk.

  When my Daddy come from the shop, he had tears in his eyes. I never hardly did see him cry, and he didn’t cry then. But his eyes was wet. I don’t know if he was sorry he had made such a fuss about me going off with Realus, or he was just purely glad to see me. He was stooped a little now, from bending over his forge. But otherwise he was still a powerful-looking man.

  “Ain’t this a wondrous sight,” he said, looking at the children. He still had his hammer in his hand, he had come so quick. He dropped it on the ground and shook hands with Wallace and Lewis. “Ain’t she an angel from heaven,” he said, patting Willa’s head with his blackened hand.

  We stood in the yard talking and didn’t even think of going inside. I could see I was going to have to tell my story. They was no other way to explain what we was doing there. Confused as I was, I didn’t want to justify my Daddy’s low opinion of Realus. But they didn’t seem no choice but to tell the facts.

  “How did you walk all the way from the Holsten?” Henry said. So I told them what happened that day, without mentioning Realus. I told them about following the river, and hearing the cowbell and fearing it was Indians.

  “Indians has been raiding the settlements,” my Daddy said. “They’ve killed people in several valleys.”

  And I told them about finally recognizing the shape of the mountain after Wallace told me he seen the settlement.

  “Things is always a mystery, one way or another,” Daddy said.

  We finally went into the house, and Mama returned to the pie making. But she couldn’t hardly work for looking at the younguns. Any grandma is crazy about her grand-younguns. But to discover that she had them and see them for the first time all at once must have been almost too much. She would roll a little dough, then turn to talk.

  “You mean all this time you’ve just been living over the mountain?” she said.

  “It appears that way,” I said. “It appears I was tricked into thinking we was in the West.”

  Neither Henry nor my Daddy said nothing. They looked away from me. Mama was bending over her stew pot on the fire. “Let me help you with that,” I said.

  “It’s just a squirrel stew,” she said. “Henry killed a mess of squirrels this morning. I’m making some dumplings to put in.”

  “We ought to get started for home,” I said to Mama. All of a sudden, I wanted to get back and tell your Grandpa what I had found out, just to see the look on his face.

  “You can’t go back this late in the day,” Mama said. “It’s too far, and besides the Indians is attacking settlers.”

  “I want to get home and set this straight,” I said. I never was one to put off an argument when I was mad.

  “Tomorrow will be just as good,” Mama said. “And you’ll have more time to think about it. You can’t settle eight years’ worth of difference in one day.”

  I seen she was right, but my blood was up and I was stubborn. I wanted to get home and have things out.

  “You can’t go wandering off in the dark with little children,” Mama said. “I won’t let you. You and Mr. Richards can settle your argument tomorrow.”

  When she said “Mr. Richards” I thought of your Grandpa by hisself back at the house, with nobody but Trail for company. I hated for him to worry, and yet I knowed he deserved to worry. He’d think the Indians had got us.

  Once I made up my mind to stay the night, Mama and me started talking about all the things that had happened since I left. I told her about the gold diggings, and she said she had heard about us being there. My Daddy went looking for me, and got there the day after we had left. The preacher told him Realus had stole a lot of gold dust before we slipped away.

  “That’s a lie,” I said. “We just got a few nuggets for all the work Realus had done.”

  I told her about the cabin by the creek, and the painter that come the night Wallace was borned. How I done everything myself.

  “And Mr. Richards never did bring a doctor or midwife?”

  “He went looking for one.”

  “An
d you never suspected you wasn’t in the West?”

  “I thought it was mysterious we never seen any other settlers except that one time.”

  I told Mama about the long night when Eller was sick, and how we tried to give her honey and whiskey. “It didn’t seem to do no good,” I said. “No matter how much we poured in her.”

  “Ain’t nothing can stop the milksick, once it gets to the fever stage,” Mama said. “You done all you could.”

  It’s silly how people will talk when they’re grieved. Far into the night, after we eat, I told her and Daddy about Little Eller burning up. And about the passenger pigeon that come to the door. I remembered the crows at her burial. I told them about the new ground, and the footlog Realus had put across the creek. I told them they should see the flowers I had in front of the cabin.

  “Now we can visit,” Mama said.

  “If I go back home,” I said.

  All that night I kept thinking what I was going to do to pay your Grandpa back for deceiving me. What could I do that would be equal to the wrong he had done? What could I say that would show him how I felt? If I just stayed at the settlement with Mama and Daddy, he would figure it out and come looking for us. Then I would tell him me and the younguns was not coming back to the cabin with such a lying polecat as him.

  That was a troubled night, I’m telling you. I was thrilled to see my Mama and Daddy and the old place again. I didn’t think they would ever get to see Wallace and Lewis and Willa in their lifetime. We set and talked during supper and afterwards, and I had the sweet feeling of being forgiven, even while I was mad in my mind at Realus. I’d be thinking what I was going to say to him next day while Mama was talking about who had married who and who had died. Many had gone off to fight in the war against the king and some had not come back.

  “Henry went to fight in Virginia, but got fever so bad they sent him home,” Mama said. “Otherwise he would still be gone.”