We was within twenty yards of the shaking bushes and still the bear hadn’t noticed us. It was so busy eating berries, I hoped it would not sniff the air. And maybe the noise of the leaves was so loud close to its ear it wouldn’t hear Sue trotting on the rock.
I found myself actually tiptoeing as I run, but Sue didn’t hesitate. She just kept clopping along, happy to have open space and a level path in front of her. I hoped maybe the bear would not notice us at all, if we just kept going at a steady pace.
They was marks all over the rock where hunters had carved their initials, and they was picture-like marks that must have been made by Indians. Nobody knowed how to read such signs, but they looked like they was meant to say something. A lot of marks had been rubbed off by weather and passing feet, and lichens and moss had growed over some. Here and there hunters had built fires on the rock and they was charred logs and ashes scattered around. People coming up there to pick berries had cooked their dinner too, and left corn shucks and chicken bones on the rock.
They ain’t no end to my troubles, I thought. First you run into a preacher in black, and then a black bear. It was one bad omen after another. I don’t know how much I believed in luck, but I thought maybe if I had all my bad luck on the survey I’d have good luck building the road. I had forgot my buckeye. Feller carried a buckeye in his pocket back then both for luck and to keep away rheumatism. I wasn’t worried about rheumatism at that age, but I could have used some luck.
I didn’t believe much in luck then. But now I’m not so sure. Some things you can’t explain except by good luck or bad. Everything just seems a chain of happens. Take meeting your Grandma. I never would have seen her if I hadn’t gone to that funeral. I never would have gone to the funeral if I hadn’t seen Staton the day before at the mill. And I wouldn’t have gone to mill that day except we give some extra meal to the Short family that was sick. And I never would have heard about using a hog to survey a road if I hadn’t gone to Kuykendall’s store that day before Christmas. It goes on and on, one thing leading to another. One thing happens because something else has. You can die for the merest twist of bad luck, or live to be ninety.
As we got closer to the bear, I tried to make a plan. I figured if he smelt us or seen us it would take him a minute to decide what to do. Bears don’t think fast. And then if he started to come at us, he most like would attack Sue. Bears prefer not to attack people, unless it’s an ill sow with cubs to protect. It’s the fact that people stand upright that seems to scare them. Bears is like hogs; they’ll do things the easy way if they can.
If the bear come at Sue, I’d hit it with the hatchet. A bear has such a little head and such thick fur it’s hard to hurt one with something little like a hatchet. But a bear has a low forehead and a pretty soft skull, and I thought, if I hit it with the hatchet just behind the eyes, it will go down. The problem would be to land a lick there if the bear was rassling with Sue and jerking around.
The closer we got, the busier the bear seemed with the berries. It must have been a hungry bear. Them big paws was twisting and knocking around the bushes every which way. Of course a bear can’t pick them little berries. It don’t have nothing but claws on its hands. It pulls the limbs to its mouth and eats the berries right off the bushes, biting leaves and twigs too.
Because I was watching the brute, I didn’t see the big puddle of rainwater catched on the rock with sticks and leaves floating in it. You couldn’t tell how deep it was, ’cause sunlight was reflected off the skin. Sue darted to the right to surround the water, toward the bear. I was jerked along and before I knowed it we was headed at the bushes.
I don’t know exactly when Sue seen the bear or the bear seen us. We come stumbling and clicking over the rock. It all happened so fast. By the time we got to the side of the puddle we couldn’t have been more than six feet from the bushes. Sue swerved again through the edge of the water. And I think it was the splash that caught the bear’s attention. Water sprayed out from our feet into the bushes.
I looked right into that bear’s face as it was gobbling berries, and it seen me. We often think animals are like people and make up silly things about their feelings. But I’d swear that bear was caught by surprise with its mouth full of berries. I could tell the instant it seen me, a man with hair going every which way and blood down my chin, looking him in the eye.
It was close enough to reach out and slap me with a big paw. I could have spit in his face. It had a look of panic, and confusion, trying to make up its mind whether to attack or run. I raised the hatchet, assuming it was going to jump at me.
But the bear turned loose of the bushes and dropped to its feet. I twisted to see where Sue was heading, so as not to stumble, and when I looked back the bear was still standing there, trying to make up its mind. That bear had the look of a man caught with his pants down.
I thought maybe if I hollered at the bear I could scare it. Sometimes if you surprise a wild animal, it will turn tail before it has time to get mad and think. Bears is naturally shy and will run, soon as they get wind of people coming. You’ll find their warm bed and the leaves all kicked up where they run away.
Close up, that bear looked more brown or red than black. I’d noticed that before, when a bear was killed, its face and hair had some gold and red in it. Its eyes was kind of yellow. A bear has little old eyes. You can tell it can’t see nothing.
“Hie!” I hollered at the bear after we had passed. “Hie!” I figured we could be no worse off than we was. “Hie!” I said again. That bear backed like I’d hit him on the nose, tearing down some of the bushes he had been holding.
“Hie!” I hollered again. He started forward and then backed up like he had made a mistake and couldn’t remember which way he wanted to go. That bear was embarrassed to be caught that way, and he was plumb rattled. But I knowed a bear that mixed-up could soon get riled, and then he would be more dangerous than ever.
For once I wouldn’t have cared if Sue had speeded up. She had been surprised by the bear too and was running a little sideways, glancing back to see what the bear was doing. Hogs like to look out for theirselves. They don’t want to be attacked from behind. She run sideways for several hundred yards.
I know that bear scared her worse than anything else had because it released her bowels. Suddenly I was having to look back at the bear and at the same time trying to dodge the filth Sue was dropping just under my hand.
“Hie!” I yelled at the bear again. It looked at me through the bushes for an instant, and then, pretending to be bored with the whole business, it turned around and headed back into the trees. It was like that bear made a decision to recover its dignity in the face of absurdity and insult. It turned at exactly the speed that told me it was not hurrying. It would not be rushed by no foolishness. The bear lumbered off into the shadows, swinging his big belly full of huckleberries from side to side, like it was going into the woods for a noon nap. If bears could whistle, it would have been whistling.
I was only too glad to get on down that rock myself. The stink of the bear and the stink of the sow’s mess was something to leave behind. Sue’s hooves clicked and she trotted back into the middle of the long rock. The rock altogether was about half a mile long, and we was halfway across it.
When we was out there in the open, I tried to judge the time again by the height of the sun. My sense of time had been ruined by all the strain and exertion. My shadow fell a little bit further over Sue, but I couldn’t tell how much it had advanced. It could have been one o’clock, or two o’clock, or even three o’clock, for all I knowed. It was much hotter in the open sun. The rock sent up heat like a stove. The puddles felt scalding when I stepped in them. When I glanced back I thought I seen a thunderhead low on the southern horizon.
Suddenly it come to me how hungry I was. I hadn’t eat a thing since the grits at dawn and I had been running on an empty stomach for hours. Now what I thought of was gritted bread. You know what gritted bread is, boy? People don’t fix it much anym
ore. But back in the old days in mid- to late summer, that’s what you had. When the corn was in its milk you had creamed corn and regular roastnears. But after the corn got too hard and tough to eat off the cob you picked it and grated it. Just a grater made by driving nails through a piece of tin. The kernels was still a little soft, and not hard enough to grind up as meal. They wasn’t many mills back then anyway. And even if we had cornmeal it was gone by July and August. Long as the corn was in its milk we had it fresh every day. Ain’t nothing better than new taters and beans and fresh corn.
But once you gritted the hardening corn and mixed it with buttermilk and salt, you put the batter in a skillet and baked it over the fireplace like regular bread. When it got all brown on the outside, you had something special.
I looked back over my shoulder at the thundercloud. It was looming higher, even while we was still on the long rock. The thunderhead sparkled on top like a snowy woods where the sun touched it. But underneath, the cloud was sooty and ink black. It was coming up fast. I could feel the change in the air, the closeness. Sweat drops clung to me like little snails.
I tried to brush the sweat out of my eyes with my sleeve. How much sweat could there be in me, for I hadn’t had a drink since the coffee at Aunt Willa’s? My sleeve was all brown from dried blood. Every time I wiped away the sweat it seemed to start my lip bleeding again. And the sweat stung the wound.
At the far end of the rock they was even more ashes and burned sticks scattered where bonfires had been. As we run the last hundred yards I thought how hard it would be to smooth a road on the wavy surface. The road would have to go around the edges, unless we wanted to spend a year cutting through the uneven dips and rises. Moving rock is the hardest part of road making, even if it’s just little loaf-bread size rocks that have to be dug and carried away. But if you have boulders to shove around, it means every kind of shoveling and straining and prying.
But the worst is where you have a dyke of solid rock. Back then we didn’t have nothing but black powder for blasting. And most of the time we couldn’t afford black powder for road building. But if you did have powder, it took a whole day just to drill a hole for it. Took two men to drill, one hammering and one turning. And they had to keep washing the dust and grit out of the hole. If you had a rock of any size, it could take weeks to bust a way through.
Don’t tell me you’ve heard all this before? It gets on my mind how we used to do things, and I want to tell you. An old man likes to talk. It relieves his mind, especially when he can’t get out and work no more. And I’m telling you about the old days so you will know. Soon they won’t be nobody who remembers those times.
They was a trail in the bushes at the north end of the rock leading straight down the slope. It must have been a hunter’s trail, or the berry-pickers trail. Sue turned right onto the path and I was relieved not to have to fight through the zone of bushes. The track was well used, and I wondered who would come this far to pick berries. We must be ten miles from anywhere. And then I smelled smoke.
The smell got stronger. It was like we was follering a trail of smoke. It was like the smoke was crawling along the path, or something going ahead was leaving the smoke. And the further we went, the stronger the smell got. They was people at the source of that smoke, for it didn’t smell like no leaf fire or grass fire burning on its own.
The first thing I seen ahead was clothes spread on bushes. They was linens and scarves, britches and stockings laid over bushes by the trail. They looked like tents or kites fell in the woods. I hoped it wasn’t no more Melungeons, but I couldn’t even slow Sue down. Then I seen the washpot over the fire in the clearing. A woman wearing nothing but rags was bent over a tub. Her hair fell in tangles all over her shoulders and face as she scrubbed clothes on a washboard. The woman seen Sue and me coming and stood up by the tub, her hands dripping. Except for the rags hanging around her gaunt frame she was practically naked.
As Sue run by the washpot I seen the children. They emerged from beside bushes and posts and logs like little partridges. None had on a shred of clothes. I guess she was washing whatever clothes they had. They watched me like I was a ghost dropped from thin air. Thunder cracked in the sky. The clearing smelled like smoke and ashes, and the heavy soap the woman was using.
“Howdy,” I hollered, and waved my hand with the hatchet in it.
Then I seen the house at the same time I seen the man. The building was made of poles and was low as a stable. The reason I knowed it was a house was it had a stick and clay chimney at one end. At the other end was a pen of palings, and chickens was pecking in the dirt there. But they was chickens all around the yard and guineas too. The guineas started hollering when they seen me, and it was like ten saws was sawing on nails.
“Howdy,” I said to the man. He was red-headed and terrible fat. He set on a stump in front of the building whittling a stick. His knife stopped in a curl of wood when he seen me and Sue coming around the washpot. I don’t know if he hollered to the children, or if the woman did. But all of a sudden those naked little younguns was running along side and around me. They must have been five or six of them, and they run right past me yelling “Soooy, soooy,” and “Get back, get back, old hog.”
I couldn’t tell what they was doing at first, and then it come to me the man had told them to catch Sue. He must have thought she was run away and I was trying to catch her. Every time one of the kids got close to Sue and tried to grab her she jerked to the other side and pulled me with her.
“Stand back,” I said. “Just let her go.” But they just ignored me. Maybe they thought if they could catch the hog they could claim her. One of the boys tried to grab Sue’s ear, but he fell down. I hoped he didn’t get hurt, for they would blame me.
Two of the children got in front and headed Sue off again, this time closer to the shackly cabin. Chickens squawked out of the way and the guineas kept up their pottaracking. I didn’t see how I was going to get through with the paling fence on one side and the children crowding on the other.
The dirty little younguns closed in and Sue either had to knock down the fence palings or come to a halt. “Get back, hog, get back, hog!” the children shouted.
“We don’t want to stop; we’re surveying a road,” I said. But again they didn’t seem to hear me. Thunder cracked in the sky behind and above me.
“Stand back,” I said. “We want to go before the storm breaks.” But the kids watched the hog like it was a prize they had chased down in the woods. Sue turned this way and that, looking for an opening. The wind had pulled the smoke around our way and I could smell the ashes and steam off the dirty clothes. I wondered if the family had itch was why they was boiling their clothes. The woman called something but I couldn’t tell what it was above the racket. The whole clearing smelled like chickens and rancid fat.
The sow wheeled around to lunge sideways, but the fat redheaded man was blocking her way. He had his knife in one hand and a stick in the other. He moved slow, but his vast bulk shut off our way of escape. He wore a rough kind of overalls and no shirt and seemed almost as naked as the kids. The red hair on his chest looked stiff as wires. None of them seemed like they had left the clearing in a long time or seen anybody.
“We are surveying a road,” I said to the man. But he just watched me without speaking. I wondered if he and all of them might be deaf. I knowed I looked a sight, with my hair and beard flying every which way and blood all over my chin and shirt, and dried on my wrist and sleeve.
“We just want to go on,” I said. “I’m going to build a road through to Douthat’s Gap so you all will have a way to market.”
“Don’t want no market,” the man said. “We just want this hog that’s invaded our yard.”
The man’s eyes was green as the slime in a ditch. He didn’t smile and he didn’t blink when he talked. He reached out to prod Sue with the stick.
I didn’t have no proof of who I was or what I was doing. I was twenty miles from any law or help. And I was tired. If
they wanted to take Sue, I reckoned they could. I wasn’t going to hit naked children with no hatchet. They pressed around the sow.
“You’ll get paid for the right-of-way,” I said. “When the road is built and tolls are charged.”
They was a blast of thunder above all the hollering, and the air was now cool. It was the damp air of a storm. I wanted to get out of the yard before the rain hit.
Sue turned to run through the fat man’s legs, but he caught her with his stick. He was quick as a hog hisself, at least with his hands. He pressed closer and reached into his hip pocket for a string. “Tie that hog’s legs with this,” he said to the bigger boy. The man was sweating and panting, and his face was the color of pokeberry juice.
It looked like Sue was done for. The woman had come up behind me and closed off any retreat that way. She held her long troubling stick pointed at my back, its end bleached by soap and hot water. They was nothing to do but give in. Them people seemed hungry enough to eat me. I figured I’d be lucky if they let me go and just kept Sue. I could come back with the sheriff some day and charge them, but it wouldn’t help me survey the road.
The boy made a loop in the twine and bent over to put it on Sue’s front foot.
“You’re making a mistake,” I said. But the man looked at me with those green eyes and didn’t answer. You could hear a wheeze in his lungs. Thunder broke out again in the air straight above.
As the boy knelt to put the twine on her hoof, Sue seen the opening in the circle and jumped through it. She brushed two of the children aside and shot forward like from a cannon. I jerked after her and felt the children clawing at me. The man whacked my back with his stick. I felt the end of the woman’s troubling stick as she swung at my head but hit my shoulder instead.
The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Page 23