The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts

by Robert Morgan

  Suddenly somebody else was standing over the old woman. I didn’t recognize the face at first. “Hishnagawi,” the face seemed to be saying. The old woman stopped and looked up at her accuser.

  “Hishnagawi,” the face said again. The old woman pulled away and I seen it was the tall girl. She had her clothes on now. All the other girls turned me loose. My mouth was full of blood and I could feel the needle against my teeth.

  “Hishnagawi,” the tall girl said again. She bent over me and pulled the needle out of my lip. She handed the string back to the old woman. My lip bled like it had been sliced.

  She helped me to my feet and handed me my clothes. I pulled my pants up and buttoned my suspenders. She must be some kind of princess or priestess I thought, if she could order the old woman that way. But once she handed me my hatchet, I didn’t stop to inquire or even thank her, for she pointed to the woods. I didn’t even finish with buttoning my shirt, but took the hatchet and started limping toward the trees fast as I could.

  I don’t know how the tall girl was able to free me. Maybe she had some special power. Or maybe they was one favor she could ask and they had to oblige her. Or maybe she was a priestess of their religion. She led me a few yards from the circle of girls and pointed toward the trees. She was taller than I was and her black hair sparkled in the sun.

  When I was about halfway to the trees, I stopped and slipped my boots on. My socks had holes wore in them and my feet was blistered, but I tried to walk without limping. My boots was wet from sweat and the creek water at the falls, and they pinched and bound my feet in the sore places.

  Back then we went barefoot in the summer. But I wore boots out in snaky woods, and when I worked with a shovel. You can’t push a shovel with a bare foot. But for hoeing corn and working on the place I didn’t wear no shoes from May till October. My feet was tough, but they had swole up.

  My lip hurt like it was on fire. I wiped the blood off my chin several times with my arm. My wrist and forearm was covered with drying blood. I held the back of my hand over my lip to stop the bleeding, and smelled the pig smell on my palm. But I knowed my lip would be a lot worse if they had pulled that string of glass slivers through it. It would have tore my lip half off.

  Sue is probably halfway to Cedar Mountain by now, I thought. This mission was ill-starred from the first. Maybe I would try again when the leaves was gone, and I would get somebody to go with me. Or maybe I would just give it up. Maybe the mountains was never meant to have a road built into them. If the good Lord had wanted a road here, he would have built it hisself. But then I thought, maybe the Lord does want a road into the Blue Ridge and I am his chosen instrument.

  Once I got into the woods and found a spring I’d wash the blood off my face and hands. I would feel better if I was cleaned up a little. And then I’d find my way as best I could to Cedar Mountain. I didn’t know where I was, but surely I couldn’t be more than eight or ten miles off the track.

  If I had strength, I would climb a tree to get my bearings. That’s what explorers and hunters used to do. They’d pick the tallest pine or poplar and climb up to the tip to survey the valley. But I was too tired and too weak to do any climbing.

  I seen a flash of white go bobbing out through the trees. It was a deer. I watched it go, and seen the head going up and down as it run. That meant it was a doe. A buck runs with his head held erect. The doe must have been grazing at the edge of the meadow even with all the girls frolicking there.

  Soon as I got into the bushes at the edge of the clearing I looked back to align my sight with the way I had come. But the girls had gone. They must have disappeared into the tents because the meadow was all bare. And I couldn’t hardly see the pond either. They was just the meadow and the mountains beyond. The mountains looked like the South Carolina mountains all right. I tried to judge which was the last gap I had come through.

  The sun was about in the middle of the sky, and it was so hot it made me shiver. Or maybe I was so weak I shuddered. Every bit of shade felt good. I figured I was going generally north and all I had to do was keep walking. If I come to a holler, I could look for moss on the north side of stumps. And when it got past dinner time, I could tell by the sun which way to go. In the meantime I had to get as far as I could from them Melungeon girls and that old woman. I wouldn’t mind putting miles between us in ever-what direction.

  I picked my way through the undergrowth watching every step. Copperheads like to lay under bushes. Without Sue in front of me I felt naked. At the edge of a little draw I heard something in the leaves below. It sounded like a bear wallering or a dog fighting with a coon. I stood still and listened. Leaves was being kicked up and they was all kinds of grunts and panting.

  I thought of turning aside and walking along the rim of the draw to avoid whatever trouble it was. I was too weak to fight my way through any more obstacles. Whatever it was I didn’t want to bother with it.

  Then I heard a squeal, and another. It was a hog all right. Maybe it was a wild hog. I listened again. It sounded so much like Sue I couldn’t go on without looking. The banks of the draw was covered with laurels and sweet shrub. I couldn’t see a thing as I picked my way down the side. The fussing and grunting continued. I was too stiff to go fast among the bushes. Besides being sore and stiff I had that hollered-out and dried feeling you get when you’re really tired. You feel like something has sucked the marrow out of your bones, and you have gone brittle in your legs and belly.

  I slowed down to a tiptoe on the floor of the draw and parted the limbs of a laurel to see what the commotion was. Sure enough, it was Sue, and she had this big copperhead in her mouth and was flinging the snake around all over the place.

  It filled my heart with a great big barrel of honey just to see that razorback. Never thought I’d be so happy to see a hog. She was turning and thrashing to bite through that snake and bash its head against a tree. It was the biggest pilot I ever seen.

  When I grabbed hold of her tail, I don’t think she ever knowed it. She kept slinging around and smacking that snake against the ground and on saplings as it tried to bite her. A hog’s skin around the shoulders is almost too thick for a snake to bite through. I don’t know if it struck her or not. They say hogs is almost immune to copperhead bites, though I never seen it proved.

  I held her tail and moved to her side as best I could with all the brush around. Several times I swung at the snake’s head with the hatchet and missed. I was afraid I would cut the sow. She flung her head this way and that way and the pilot curled and thrashed. I couldn’t hit the snake without hitting her snout.

  To tell the truth, I didn’t mind standing there a minute while she worried with the copperhead. My lip was still bleeding and sweat was getting into the wound. My whole chin hurt and stung.

  They was blood on the hog’s chin also. She was biting through the snake as she shook and banged it on the ground. She was chewing the body through and the snake’s twisting and writhing probably helped her bite through the scaley back and bones.

  Suddenly the half of the snake with the head flew off into the leaves and Sue gobbled up the half still in her mouth. A hog will eat faster than anything you ever seen and it wasn’t half a minute till she swallowed. I looked around for the head but couldn’t find it. A copperhead is so close to the color of old leaves and sticks and trash anyway you can’t see them most of the time. Sue looked for the rest of her dinner and couldn’t see it any more than I could. I figured her nose would find the snake.

  Instead she looked back and seen me holding onto her tail. And it was like she all at once remembered where we was headed. She seemed to forget the rest of the snake. Maybe snake heads ain’t tasty compared to bellies and tails. Maybe the poison in a snake’s head don’t taste good, even if it don’t hurt a hog.

  She looked at me for an instant, then lunged forward. It was like everything that happened before was just a pause, a little interruption, and she stepped over the obstacle and hurried to make up for lost time. She
was like a human in the way she recalled what her purpose was. We was starting all over again.

  Sue went right up the other side of the draw. I had to duck limbs and crawl under laurels. I wasn’t going to let go again. I wasn’t going to let sore legs and bleeding lip slow me down.

  Where we come out of the gully, they was a little open patch and I seen my shadow falling on the hog in front of me. That meant we was still heading north, if it was noon, or just after noon. We might have got a little off track, but Sue seemed to know exactly where she was pointed. Though she must have run fifteen miles already that day, she didn’t seem a bit slower. To my tired legs and back she seemed to be going faster. I starting marking trees again every thirty steps. It hurt my sore arm to raise the hatchet, but I was pleased to be at my work again.

  The woods was almost level for the better part of a mile, which was lucky, because I don’t think I could have done no climbing till I regained my strength. The big, dark ridge was looming ahead. It looked like a wall of black smoke hanging up there. I thought it must be Caesar’s Head, but couldn’t tell for sure through the summer trees. It seemed impossible we could bust through such a ridge, much less build a road through it. No wonder nobody had done it before.

  The sow dropped out of the undergrowth onto a trail. It must be one of the old trader paths from South Carolina into the mountains, I thought. All the trader trails follered Indian trails, war trails for reaching the Low Country. And the Indian paths follered the traces made by buffaloes in even earlier times. Maybe this trace would take us right up toward the gap.

  Or maybe we had wandered onto the old Estatoe Trail that led through Oconee and up toward the Little Tennessee. If so we had wandered far off our way. But it was certainly easier going on the old trail without limbs hitting me in the face every other step. The sow trotted faster. It was all I could do to stretch out and mark the trees from time to time, though I guess it didn’t matter much since we was just follering the path.

  I didn’t see the man dressed all in black until we was almost at him. He stood in the bushes off to one side of the trail and wore a wide black hat. He clutched a big Bible in his hands.

  “Hold on there,” the stranger said as the hog approached him.

  “She’s got her head and I can’t stop her,” I called.

  The man pulled back into the bushes as though afraid of being touched by dripping sweat and blood. I nodded in greeting.

  “Only the prodigal would follow a swine,” the man said.

  “I’m surveying a road,” I answered. “Across the Blue Ridge to Cedar Mountain.”

  “Maybe the Lord don’t want a road,” the man said as we stumbled past. “A road is a channel for the Devil to bring in more wickedness to the settlements.”

  Now son, I was never disrespectful to a preacher. I’ve always tried to be courteous to a man of the cloth. I’ve done some bad things, and I ain’t always been the man I ought to be, but I never give preachers no trouble like some boys did. But it always made me mad when preachers talked against things, like they didn’t want nothing new or good to happen. Like they didn’t want nobody doing anything except them. Nothing makes you feel bad like a preacher talking against you. It’s like they just want mournfulness and misery. That’s how they keep their power over people, through unhappiness and sickness. It’s worries and troubles keeps preachers in business. If people was happy they might not need so many preachers and revival meetings.

  “If the Lord wanted a road he would have made it hisself,” the preacher said.

  “So we shouldn’t wear clothes, ’cause if the Lord wanted us to he’d have made us with pants on?” I said over my shoulder as we went past. Sue hadn’t slowed down at all.

  “The Devil works through sarcasm and a hard tongue.”

  “You see the Devil in everything but yourself,” I hollered back. I was surprised to hear myself argue with a preacher. It was just something that come out. Must have been the state I was in, dizzy with exertion and the hurt in my lip.

  “The Devil is the prince of this world,” the preacher called. He fell in behind me and follered, like he was already going that way. But I figured he needed somebody to talk to. Preachers would be out of work if they couldn’t find people to shame.

  “People need a road,” I hollered back at him. “I’m Solomon Richards and I’m going to make one.”

  “I’m the Reverend Billy Taylor,” the man called. “And I foller the call of the spirit, not the guidance of a hog.”

  I was too out of breath to want to answer, but my blood was up from all the running and straining. Things kept crowding into my head that I had to say.

  “Are you looking for misery?” I hollered.

  “You look like a man in misery,” he called.

  “I’m making a good road for people to use,” I said.

  “You look like a man that’s suffering the degradations of the flesh,” he said. “I never seen a man that looked worser.”

  I knowed I looked bad, but it was because I had been working. I had been trying to carry through my plan. Instead of helping he wanted to make me feel ashamed.

  “All you want is misery wrapped up in shit,” I hollered.

  “Profanity is a sign of a weak and troubled mind,” he said.

  “Profanity is a sign of disgust,” I said.

  But suddenly I didn’t want to argue anymore. It don’t do no good to argue. Nobody ever changed somebody’s opinion with a fuss. Preachers think they’ve got all the wisdom. And I didn’t need to argue with him. I had to argue with the hollers and steep mountain, and the thickets ahead of me. But the preacher wasn’t tired of talking. He was just getting warmed up.

  “It’s not roads people need,” he shouted. “It’s the blood of redemption they need. And the blood is the new testament.”

  I didn’t answer him no more.

  “I can bring the word on foot or on horseback, or on my knees if I have to,” the preacher said. The preacher had got started and I seen he was going to preach to me. As long as he follered, I was his congregation. But my resentment was all gone. He could have his say and it didn’t bother me no more.

  “I carry the witness of song,” he said. “Music will soften the heart of the sinner. You start singing and first thing you know the sinner’s whistling along, and then he’s humming. And next thing you know he’s singing hisself. That’s why I teach singing schools. That’s why I carry the sacred harp to the hinterlands and far settlements. The buckwheat notes are like seeds sown over the coves and ridges, planting the words in people’s hearts.”

  I was beginning to listen to the preacher’s voice with interest. All us Richardses loves music, and I liked his idea that the pleasure of music could help lead people right. That seemed a better message than grief and condemnation.

  Suddenly Sue turned off the path and run right up the ridge through a stand of chestnut trees. The leaves was so deep we made a racket through them. It sounded like the preacher was calling after us, but it might have been the rattling of the leaves. I was too busy dodging limbs and looking for trees to blaze to look back, and when I did get a chance, they was no sign of the preacher behind. But when we got to the top, I heard a voice singing far below. It was a slow, sad hymn, and I knowed it was the preacher going along the trail practicing his psalmody.

  It seemed I could hear the preacher’s voice for several minutes beyond the noise of the leaves and our panting, and the snap and shudder of limbs. The voice seemed in tune with the sounds we made, and with the breeze on top of the ridge. And it was like I could hear the voice long after we had crossed the ridge and the preacher must have been two valleys away.

  Son, there is always somebody inside us saying we can’t accomplish anything, that all our ambitions is nothing but vanity and pride, that our determination is just the love of vainglory, that we might as well lay down and die and get it over with. But the only real argument is hard work, to foller out our idea and plan as far as we can go.

 
Beyond the chestnut woods they was a rock flat in the ground so long and wide it made a clearing. It was so long it looked like a city street, except for the humps and ripples in the surface and pools of rainwater standing in pockets. Sue run right out onto the rock and across it the long way. The pools was green in places and had little snails in them.

  The edge of the rock was lined with huckleberry bushes. I could smell the ripe berries in the sun. If I’d had time I would like to have picked a mouthful. Maybe I’d come back with a basket sometime. There ain’t nothing in the woods smells better than ripe huckleberries in the sun mixed with scent of pine resin.

  Something whirled in the bushes ahead. I couldn’t see a thing but trembling limbs and swaying tops of saplings. Whatever it was made an awful fuss. If I could have stopped Sue, I would have. I didn’t want to run into any more Melungeons or blockaders. The day was more than half over, and I was far from Cedar Mountain.

  I seen something black in the shaking limbs, but couldn’t tell if it was shadows between the bushes, or something doing the shaking. I was going to holler at Sue, but any racket I made would only attract the attention of whatever it was. “Whoa,” I said under my breath. Whoa, I whispered to myself. But the hog kept running. Her hooves clicked on the rock. Her feet had been polished in the leaves and they shined like ivory. Whoa, I whispered, but she didn’t pay no attention.

  The limbs of a bush parted and I seen a paw poke through. It had a lot of fingers ending in claws. It was a bear reaching through the bushes. I would have stopped if I could, but it wasn’t no use. Sue hadn’t seen nothing, or smelled nothing, and she kept click-click-clicking right along the rock. If the bear attacked, it would attack Sue.

  I seen another paw reach up and pull down a limb. That bear was eating highbush huckleberries. It hadn’t seemed to notice us. But I didn’t see how we could go clicking across the rock and not disturb it. I knowed bears was real near-sighted and depended mostly on scent. It would smell us, if nothing else. No telling how bad I smelled myself, of sweat and dirt, and blood. And I had the stink of strain and worry, and the raw smell of fear on me.