A good road is so tender, it seems to hurt as it reaches into the night or the shade of woods. I had seen the old Pike where it goes down through Saluda Gap and the Winding Stairs, and I had seen the road from Old Fort up to Asheville, and it thrilled me to think I could make something that useful.
When I think of new roads, I think of some preacher riding along them and building new churches and congregations on the way. I see young people going to singings and baptizings and dinner on the grounds. The young folks meet each other and fall in love and unite families scattered in the coves and hollers. Roads is like fresh water on dry ground. Along them people arrive, ground is cleared and towns get started in the valleys.
I had a feeling I could make a road anywhere, from any place on the face of the earth to another. All I needed was to level dirt a foot at a time, a step at a time. The soil will take you to the highest peak or the furthest point of the continent. The method is to haul dirt from the high places and put it in the low places, with spade and mattock, pick and shovel, dragpan and plow, with powder and fire-and-dowsing. All rocks can be broke or pried and rolled out of the way. It’s a matter of pitch or connection. All paths and little roads tap into a turnpike like feeder streams fill and draw off a canal.
I didn’t think I could hold on much longer. My left hand was already stiff from gripping the sow’s tail, the way it gets from holding an ax handle for hours. My palm was sore and sweating. I wanted to change hands, but even if I could have, it would be awkward to blaze the trees with my left. Maybe Sue would stop for a rest when we started climbing.
We had come to steeper ground. In South Carolina the hills start rolling higher as you approach the mountains. But the hills don’t rise gradually toward the mountains; they canter along and hit the wall of the ridge head-on. It was in the steep country I really needed the sow. Anybody can lay off a road in flat country, in gentle hills. But how do you find the best grade for going around mountain flanks and crossing coves and winding up to a gap? Is it better to go across a ridge or around it?
Sue seemed to speed up as we started climbing. A hog climbs not in jumps and humps but in little steps running like a spider. A hog moves its big weight a little bit at a time.
The grits felt uneasy in my stomach. Having to run bent over was the worst. Several times the brash come up in my throat and I tasted the sour butter and coffee. I swallowed hard to sweeten the taste with spit. I hoped I didn’t get sick at my stomach. If I got to throwing up, I’d have to let go of Sue. They’s no worse feeling than that. A man will wish he is dead if he gets sick enough at his stomach. Bending over was putting pressure on my belly. And getting hot will make you sick too. I was used to heavy work, but the running was worser than anything I’d done.
The sow turned up the slope at a steeper angle than I would have took. We had come around a hill right to the foot of the mountain. I wondered why she was going to the top of the rise. She trotted, stirring up the dry leaves. I felt itchy with sweat and scratchy with spiders and gnats. But I could not scratch with the hatchet in my right hand.
It was only when we reached the top of the rise and walked panting through the thinner trees that I saw the reason she had come that way. The creek below was lined with big boulders. It would take months, even years, to bust up the rocks to make a way through there. Sue had took the only route that bypassed the boulders. How had she knowed they was there? For the second time that day I felt a thrill of satisfaction and confidence in what I was doing. What the boy at Kuykendall’s store said about a hog’s instinct was turning out to be true.
My left hand felt like it was bleeding, but I could not release my hold to look at it. If the sow ever tired and stopped, I’d change hands and wrap my palm with a rag tore off my shirt.
But in the open woods on top of the rise she trotted even faster. I run beside her to stay upright, and that rested my back some. But to run beside her I had to go faster, and that made her increase her speed again. She seemed to have demons in her. I thought of the swine the demons was cast into and how they plunged into the sea. I was glad they was no ocean nearby.
It wasn’t till we come down off the rise further on that I seen why she had been hurrying so. They was a ford across the creek. The creek up there was getting small and poured right through the leaves under the laurels. It was shallow with a rocky bottom. Sue stopped right in the middle. The current was so cold it burned my sweaty feet and legs but it felt good. She’s giving me a rest, I thought.
And then I seen why she really stopped. It wasn’t just that she wanted a drink. They was a kind of pulpy paste washed up on the rocks and she begun licking it like it was the finest slop. It looked and smelled like something rotten, something soured or vomited up. At first I couldn’t see what it was. I bent closer and got a good whiff, and then I recognized the scent.
That pulp smelled like apples under a tree after they’ve been frostbit and thawed a few times. It was a sweet-sour smell. Somebody up the creek was making liquor, and they had throwed out the mash after the beer was done. They was probably boiling the beer at that moment, while the mess washed downstream. I knowed they was nothing a hog loved better than half-rotten mash.
What is mash? Why, mash is what you have left after you get the juice out of fermented malt. What is malt? That’s sprouted corn you’ve kept warm and wet and then ground up to ferment.
No, I’ve never made liquor. That is, I never made it to sell. But I’ve seen it made. I’ve even helped make a little in my time, for my own use. For medicine, you might say. Everybody used to make a little whiskey back then. It was necessary to have alcohol for tinctures and medicines. Everybody kept a jug or a keg. We didn’t figure it was the giverment’s business, what we done with our corn and peaches and apples. The giverment was after the revenue. They wanted us to make the liquor and pay taxes and then buy it back from them.
South Carolina even then was full of blockaders that made hundreds and thousands of gallons to sell in the flat country. Dark Corner was wild as anybody could want. It was full of Howards and Gosnells, Revises and Morgans, people that was always fussing and feuding. My Pa always said, “Stay away from the blockaders in Dark Corner. In a fight they’ll cut a man from head to belly before he can wink.”
“Get out of there, go on!” I shouted to Sue, and shoved her flanks. But she only stepped forward to gobble another cake of mash stuck on the bank. That was like both wine and dessert to a hog, I reckon. The blockaders often fed their mash to hogs, if they was close enough to the pen. And their hogs stayed drunk half the time, grunting happy and fat.
The sow eat all the mash in sight and then scrambled up into the laurels. I hoped she wouldn’t head upstream. The still must be somewhere up there, probably not too far away. Some blockaders guard their works and shoot anybody that comes in sight. Others just hide if they hear somebody coming. Since it was day, I thought they might have throwed out the mash and gone home with the night’s work. But what would they think of a man that come running along holding a hog’s tail? How could I explain myself and Sue to men with guns pointed at me?
The sow turned and followed the bank of the stream, probably smelling more mash further up. That was one thing I had not planned for the day. I had feared that we might run into blockaders, but I hadn’t thought Sue would seek them out in the holler, and I hadn’t considered the sow might get drunk.
I couldn’t see a thing through the laurels. They growed right down to the bank of the stream. We ducked around the bushes and under them. In such a cover a man could be bushwhacked and never know what hit him. I didn’t have time to look around. I was too busy dodging limbs and holding on to Sue with my left hand. Everywhere I looked it seemed somebody was watching us behind the thickets. A chill went through my guts and bones.
I thought again of letting go, of giving up the survey, of coming back in the fall like Uncle Rufus suggested. It wouldn’t be no good if I was shot dead trying to find a road.
I could let Sue go and she’d wa
nder back on her own. She would fatten up on the mast and I would catch her at hog-killing time. They was other roads I could build, other jobs, and even other occupations. I was young enough to foller any trade I chose. I could be a carpenter, learn masonry. It would take a while to get started and build up a business. Even Professor MacPherson couldn’t object to a change of trade. He would probably welcome something more practical than the dream of building turnpikes.
My grand design for the road seemed ludicrous there in the laurel thicket with blockaders lurking in the shadows. How had I come to that hideous situation? Streaming with sweat and covered with bark soot and gnats, my hand gripping a hog’s rear end? I could smell myself in the close air; I smelled raw and afraid, running scared.
I would have turned back then, except for the thought that it was probably too late. The trees above leaned over as though threatening to smother me. The sky and sun was hid away. The laurel bushes poked at me and twigs stabbed at my eyes as I run past. They was already watching me, most like, and I couldn’t get away. I smelled like sweat and hog farts. I couldn’t see no way out of the trap I’d come to.
I would have let go and run off into the thickets and hid, except for the thought I’d have nothing if I chickened out. I wouldn’t have no job, and I wouldn’t have no Mary. And I wouldn’t have no confidence in myself. A man has got to have confidence, or he is lost. And to have confidence, you’ve got to have a plan.
The survey was my main plan, my only plan. All the obstacles didn’t change that. Obstacles could be crawled over and around and pushed out of the way.
Sue paused long enough to swill a gob of mash lodged against a laurel root. She was beginning to swing her head and step different, like the mash was affecting her. It’s hard to say how a hog shows the signs of drunkenness. But you could tell she wasn’t herself exactly. Not that she staggered. They was a new looseness in her steps. She turned a little slower, and grunted easier. It was her pace and manner, though you couldn’t have pointed to one thing and said, “There, only a drunk hog would have done that.”
“Hey there!” somebody hollered ahead. A man stood by the bank with a rifle in the crook of his arm. They was a fire going somewhere behind him because I could see smoke swaying out into the trees. I didn’t know how long he had been watching us.
“Whoa there,” I said and pulled back on Sue’s tail. But that seemed to make her mad and she speeded up, jerking me after her. As we approached the man he raised his rifle, but Sue veered around him, like he was just another tree.
“Whoa there!” I hollered again, trying to show the stranger I meant to cooperate, that it wasn’t me wanted to barge into his camp. They was nothing I could do. The man looked in wonder at me as we run past. I reckon he would have shot a man alone already, but a man pulled by a sow so astonished him, he just watched.
As we swung around him I seen a tent strung between two oak trees. It was a ragged, faded tent that blended so well with the shadows you didn’t notice it at first. It was held down by stakes and twine. Sue must not have seen the cords for she headed right at them. As she tripped on the strings, the stobs pulled out of the ground. She fell on the tent and I stumbled on top of her. As I rolled off one of the stakes punched me in the side. Sue squealed like her throat was being cut. The tent come wilting down as canvas will when its lines break.
“Hey there, hey there!” the man with the gun hollered. He come running after me, his gun aimed first at Sue, then at me.
As the tent sagged two men jumped out of it. They must have been sleeping, for their hair was wild and their galluses was down. They must have worked all night making liquor and was taking a rest before they worked again. They likely had been sound asleep, for their eyes looked swole up and they blinked in the morning light.
“Where the hell?” one man said. “Where the hell you going?” I never felt so foolish. My side was bleeding where I had hit the tent stob, and I still gripped the hatchet in my right hand as I scrambled to grab Sue’s tail again.
Sue rolled over on the tent and the rest of it come down with a kind of whoosh that sent dust and leaves boiling up. They was a wild look in her eyes as she squealed with confusion. If she hadn’t been partly drunk she would have got away. But I lunged for her tail and grabbed it firm just as she got to her feet.
“You stop right there,” the man with the gun called. But I couldn’t look back. A bullet whizzed over my shoulder like a mad honey bee.
Sue clambered right through the middle of the fallen tent and I followed, knocking my shins on pots and things under the canvas. She didn’t see the shelf loaded with pans and buckets and kittles until she hit it with her shoulder. Pots come banging and ringing down on top of me. I felt like I was being hit from every side. They was such a racket, I couldn’t tell what nobody was saying. They might have been another shot fired, for all I know. I held onto her tail, and let everything bang and roll behind me.
When everything’s happening at once, it’s like you’re both aware of it and not. I knowed the men was hollering at me and follering and threatening to kill me, but I knowed I had to hold on to Sue or all would be lost. If I stopped to explain, I’d just get killed and nothing would be accomplished. If I kept going, I might get away.
They was a tub full of mash and a dozen or so jugs near to the fire. Sue skirted the jugs with a delicacy that seemed impossible in the situation and stuck her snout in the tub to gulp some mash. But it must have been hot for she squealed and shook her head, pulp streaming from her jaws, and run on.
I looked back over my shoulder, in that pause. The three men was watching us with a mixture of awe and confusion. They had never seen anything as crazy as a man holding a sow’s tail. The fact that I seemed crazy was my best protection.
“I’m going to build a road,” I hollered back at them. “We’re surveying out a right-of-way.”
“This ain’t no right-of-way,” the man with the rifle called. “This is the wrong way.”
They had the biggest doubler I had ever seen. It must have been a hundred-gallon still, maybe two-hundred, of shining copper, like it was new made. They had the fire going under it. And even as I run past in all that panic and confusion, I seen the clear liquor dripping from the eye of the worm in shining drops.
Another bullet sung by me as we run out past the woodpile. But I figured if they was going to shoot me, they already would have. I figured they was obliged to do something, so they fired them shots to scare me.
What’s that? How could we build a road right through the still? I was pretty sure when we come through again that still would have moved. The blockaders would take their outfit to another holler after they had been found. Since I hadn’t been killed and since I had seen their operation, they would just take everything to another branch.
As we passed the fire, the heat almost blistered me. No wonder them fellers was sleepy, after working in that blaze all night. Maybe the fumes had got to me, for the whole place seemed to spin around, the big barrel with its slop of mash, and the copper worm like a big tendril of a grapevine with the jug at the end of it catching lit tears of liquor. And we had passed a pile of wood that seems in memory to be higher than my head. It must have been a month’s supply of split oak. And they was a quilt hanging somewhere among the saplings, but I didn’t know what it was for. Maybe it wasn’t even there; maybe I imagined the quilt.
I expected any second for a bullet to hiss by my ear. I stayed bent over as I run. My best hope was just to keep going. Like, if you seem to know where you’re going, people will hesitate to bother you. But over the sound of Sue’s grunting and panting, and my own short breath, I could hear the sounds of birds, and dogs barking. But the strangest thing was, it sounded like men making them noises. As we slipped into the laurels, I glanced back just once, and those three fellers was running after us. They follered us baying like dogs, and calling between their hands like birds, and making every kind of sound you could think of.
That was the most unsettling thin
g that had happened to me. It was like them fellers decided they couldn’t shoot me ’cause I was crazy. But they wanted to scare me and make me never come back, and they had found just the right thing to do.
I kept hearing their calls and painter screams after we got deep in the laurels. But with us shaking the bushes and kicking up the leaves, I wasn’t sure when I quit hearing their whistles and woofs and just thought I did. They seemed to be halloos and growls in the air, but I couldn’t be sure.
Among the rattle of the leaves and the shivering of the bushes, I soon heard another noise. They was a kind of hum ahead. It was like I could place the sound but couldn’t name it. It was a buzz like a fire or a swarm of bees, and we was running directly toward it. I knowed what the sound was but couldn’t think of it. It was a roar like a fireplace will make when you get a big fire going with hickory and the draft gets stronger and stronger.
I couldn’t hear the cries of the whiskey men behind, but ahead was this roar. And then I knowed it must be a waterfall on the creek, for I could smell mist in the air. Sue was staggering a little from all the mash she had eat, and she seemed to be losing her sense of direction. We plunged deeper into the holler, right toward the sound. If they was a waterfall, it looked like we would be blocked and have to go back toward the still.
I started to feel the mist in the air like a cool breath. It felt good, like I was changing from one to another season in just a few minutes. I was soaked with sweat already, and cobwebs stuck to my clothes. For some reason the spray made me feel the scratches and bits of bark and cobwebs on my skin worse than the heat did. Big drops clung to webs strung between laurels. A drop hit me in the eye like a soft egg busting. The drops running down my neck and back felt like spiders.
Maybe it was the roar of the waterfall that made me itchy and nervous. I was sure we’d have to turn back, yet Sue kept trotting further and further. The sound of falling water got louder. The leaves and rocks dripped with mist. Maybe the hog was so drunk she did not even notice the roar and crashing. At least when we reached the dead end I could catch my breath.
The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Page 19