Everybody that dug ginseng kept a little for theirselves. It was supposed to be a general tonic. It was supposed to pick you up. And some people said the Chinese took it to make them sexually powerful. That’s why it was shaped like a man’s private parts, to show what it was good for.
I knocked the roots aside to look into the shed, and one of the roots come off in my hand. But I didn’t even think about it. I was too busy looking for a musket or rifle. They was clothes and a coffee pot, tow sacks and knives scattered. They was even a coffee mill. The tall man wasn’t more than ten steps behind me.
Sure enough, they was a gun leaning in the corner and a powder horn and shot bag beside it. I grabbed the gun and pointed it at the blond man. I seen from his face it was loaded. Don’t nobody keep a gun in the woods that ain’t loaded.
“Chief, it wouldn’t do no good to shoot me,” he said, out of breath. “You would never get out of this hole alive.”
“And neither would you.” I had him there. I knowed he didn’t care what happened to me if he was going to be dead first.
“Might as well talk,” he said.
I aimed the gun low down, like it was pointed right at his naked crotch. I knowed that would make him more willing to talk. The Indians held Sue by the ears back at the bottom of the bank.
“We’ll give you a share,” the naked man said.
“Don’t want no share,” I said.
“Put down the gun and we’ll just let you go, you and your hog,” he said.
“No, you wouldn’t,” I said. My hands was so trembly I couldn’t hardly hold the gun steady. “You got to make a better deal than that,” I said. “You let my hog go and then we’ll talk.”
“We’ll buy your hog,” he said. “We’s nigh starved here.”
“Hog ain’t for sale,” I said.
I couldn’t hardly hold the gun up no longer, but I hoped he didn’t see my hands shaking. The musket was long and heavy.
“You let the hog go or I shoot,” I said.
This was a mean feller, but he was worked down and stupid with hunger hisself. He wasn’t in much better shape than I was.
“Let the dang hawg go,” he hollered. The two Indians didn’t do anything for a few seconds. They wanted the hog bad as he did.
“Let the hawg go,” he hollered again, between hammer booms.
The Indians let Sue loose and she run right toward the woods upstream. She was headed toward the furnace and didn’t know it.
“You stay right here,” I hollered to the blond man. I wanted to catch up with Sue and grab her tail. But I had to hold the hatchet and the gun to cover myself. And I still had the piece of ginseng in my left hand. “You stay right there,” I shouted.
“Ain’t going nowhere, chief,” he said. “And you ain’t neither.”
I run sideways, pointing the gun back at the tall man. He stood there dressed only in filth and watched Sue vanish into the trees like it was his last chance. He was saying something else, but I couldn’t hear with the noise of the hammer. I noticed the two Indians had started edging around the clearing toward the woods. I guess they wanted to reach the trees before I did and cut me off. Or maybe they wanted to get up to the furnace and warn the man there. For all I knowed, he had a gun too.
Those men didn’t have no privy down in the clearing and they had been using the edge of the woods. Everywhere I stepped was more filth. My feet couldn’t avoid their dirt. I wanted to keep Sue in sight, but I had to keep the gun pointed at the tall man too. I walked as fast as I could and still keep him covered. The pounding of the hammer made my ears and head ache.
When I glanced ahead, I seen the fires of the furnace deep in the holler. It looked like an eye of light in the side of the mountain, two hundred yards up the stream. I could smell the smoke and the stench of fumes from the melting ore. A shadow passed in front of the fire.
The blond man was follering me into the woods. I hollered to him to stay back, but my voice was buried by the crash of the hammer. And I was too weak to gesture with the long musket. It was all I could do to hold the gun out level and not stumble.
As I got closer to the furnace, the flames was blinding. I seen figures running around, and it appeared the two Indians was trying to head off Sue. The place was such a mess it was hard to tell what was going on. They was piles of wood, and mounds of dirt where they had been making charcoal. It was charcoal they used in the furnace because the fire burned blue and white-hot.
The furnace was just a pit lined with rock, with a kind of shelf above where they loaded the ore. The fire was so hot it was like you could see ghosts in it. I thought of the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace. The heat pulsed and swelled and flowed like a stream over the coals out of some distant place.
They had made their equipment out of what appeared to be mud and clay. It was the crudest outfit you could imagine. They had molded a cauldron and spillway through which the melted metal run. It was a little stream of light pouring down a clay trough to the forms, also made out of mud. The furnace was going full blast, and the liquid fire flowed fast down to the molds in the dirt where they made bricks of silver and lead.
The three men had caught Sue and was holding her in the trees by the pile of wood. The tall man was still follering me. I was in a worse situation than I was before, ’cause now they was four of them. If I shot the blond man the others would still come after me. Or one would come after me, while the others held Sue. If I shot one of those holding the sow, I would still have to fight off the blond man. I was half-blinded by the furnace, and half-deafened by the hammer, and wasn’t even sure what I was seeing.
As the tall man got closer I had to think quick. The heat from the furnace dazed me. The creek sparkled below the furnace and I wondered if I should dash across it and leave Sue to be eat by the miners. It was so dark in the woods beyond the creek, I might get away. It seemed like a laurel slick.
But I seen something below the furnace and beside the creek. It was a pile of shiny bricks. It must have been eighteen inches square and a foot high. It was the silver they had melted and molded. The molds was just above the pile, and the creek below.
The blond man was no more than twenty feet away. He seen the fix I was in and he must have knowed I didn’t want to shoot nobody. “Give me that gun!” he shouted.
“Stand back,” I said.
“Give me that gun,” he ordered. “You can’t get out of here.”
I didn’t have no idea what to do. I was blinded by the glare of the furnace and blistered by the heat from the charcoal. Without really thinking I swung the musket and aimed at the trough where the glowing metal was rushing into the molds. When I pulled the trigger, the spillway cracked and the fiery soup splashed out of the groove and spread on the ground. The hot ore run right to the stack of bullion and set leaves and sticks on fire wherever it touched. Surrounding the stack of bricks, it dashed on to the creek and exploded. The hot metal hitting the water turned to steam and spit scalding drops and beads of redhot silver every direction. I felt a pin or two of fire hit me and shielded my eyes.
The blond man run toward his pile of bullion and then hit the ground. I don’t know if he was stung by flying metal or overcome with scalding steam. I didn’t wait to see but dropped the gun and run around the charcoal pile and straight toward the dark woods. I didn’t notice what had happened to Sue, but seen the three other men had dropped to the ground too. The air was full of flying drops as more metal poured into the creek.
I splashed across the stream above the furnace and tore my way into the laurels. My head hit limbs and I tore my pants but I kept running. I didn’t know if they was coming after me, or if they was any way out of the draw, but I figured the more distance I put behind me the better it was.
Gradually my eyes adjusted to the dark thicket, and I could see to avoid brush and branches. With the hatchet in one hand and the piece of ginseng still in the other, I knocked limbs out of the way and ducked between big bushes. As the ground got steeper I fou
nd footholds on rocks and hooked my arm around saplings to pull up on. I used strength I didn’t have to climb up out of that holler. I wormed under the worst bushes, and pulled myself up sideways in places. When I finally got to the top, I paused to listen. At first I couldn’t hear anything but my breathing, and the boom of the hammer below. Then I heard a grunting and scratching in the leaves about a hundred feet below me.
The laurels was so thick I couldn’t see a thing. But the scratching and growling continued. I was so tired from the climb it felt like my body was glowing. You know that feeling you get when you’ve strained, like all your muscles are humming and hot, and would shine in the dark like hot iron. I wasn’t sure I could make my legs do what I wanted them to anymore.
The root of dried ginseng was still in my left hand. It had got dirt on it when I had grabbed hold of the ridge to pull myself up. All my life I’d heard how sang would give you energy, how it would make the old feel young again, how it acted like a stimulant and tonic. I was hungry enough to eat anything. I rubbed the dirt off with my sleeve and bit into it. I expected it to taste like it looked, like a dried sweet tater. But the taste was at once sharper and milder. It was a mixture of tastes and smells. The flesh was dry and tough, but it made my tongue and jaws feel better, once the fiber mixed with spit. I tore off a little with my teeth and chewed it like birch bark. It occurred to me I was eating a dollar’s worth of sang root.
The scratching and grunting got closer, and sure enough Sue come heaving out of the laurels. I was so glad to see her tears come. “You couldn’t leave old Solomon to go home by hisself,” I said. “No sir, you couldn’t let me do it by myself.” But I knowed she was just trying to get out of that pit, same as I was.
When Sue got close, I put the sang root in my mouth like it was a cigar and grabbed her tail with my left hand. We was near the top of the ridge. I thought she might stop at the ridge comb in confusion, but she didn’t even pause. She turned to the right just like she was on a familiar path, and we was off again.
When I started walking, I felt the awful soreness and stiffness in my knees. But it was like a fact that didn’t matter no more. A warmth and lightness spread through me right to the tips of my toes and fingertips. I knowed it must be the sang. It was not a feeling of intoxication. It was more like a good meal after you’re tired and hungry. I could feel my strength coming back.
As I run behind Sue I chewed on the piece of ginseng, holding it in my lips and teeth. I would suck spit through the end. That spit tasted at once like pepper and musk and ginger. Every time I swallered I felt the heat flowing out through me. The strength spread to my arms and legs. I starting blazing trees again. I wished I could give Sue a bite of the sang, but they wasn’t no way. She seemed to be getting a second wind herself, and picking up speed as we run along the top of the ridge.
“That’s a girl, that’s a girl,” I said as we run. I chewed and sucked the end of the root like it was a sugartit, like it held mother’s milk. The more I sucked the better I felt. Maybe the Chinamen know what they’re talking about, I thought. It come to me that there was wisdom in the East. They knowed about ginseng like the Arabs knowed about coffee. I thought, you could learn a little bit on your own, but you could learn the most from other people, if you listened to what they told you. Everybody together knowed more than any one person could.
We come down out of the woods into a pennyroyal meadow. Upper end of the clearing was what is called a ramp cove, and I could smell the wild onions as our feet crushed the tops. People like to climb up into ramp coves and dig them in the spring, though I always thought they was too strong for my taste.
Around the edges of the clearing was wild peavines. Used to be whole mountainsides was covered with wild peas. You couldn’t get through them in the spring, so many bees was on the blooms. I don’t know what happened to all them vines, unless where they growed over was the first places cleared up. The earliest settlers must have set fire to the dried vines in the winter and had a ready-cleared field. I think the vines growed up where the Indians had burned over the woods doing their firehunting. Where the ground was cleared, I guess the peavines just took over.
They was a little group of people out in the middle of the meadow. I didn’t see them at first in the thickening shadows. The sun was near the top of the ridge to the northwest and much of the opening was in shadow. They was three people in the group, an older man and two boys. They stood around a cloth laid on the pennyroyal, and they was so intent on something on the cloth they didn’t notice me and Sue coming. The sow headed right toward them and of course they wasn’t nothing I could do to stop her.
“Whoa,” I said, to give them warning when we was about seventy-five feet away. “Whoa, old girl.”
The boys and man spun around like they expected Indians. Sue run right to them, going toward the cloth. She must have thought they had a picnic spread there. I wondered if they was having some kind of ceremony. Something attracted Sue’s nose.
“Stop that hog,” the man said.
“She ain’t going to hurt nothing,” I hollered.
“Stop that hog,” he said again.
The two boys grabbed Sue, one on each ear, just as she reached the cloth.
“She wants to get the honey,” the man said.
Sure enough, they was a little bowl of honey on the cloth. These was bee hunters, trying to corner bees.
“Do you see it?” the old man said.
“Yeah, I see it,” the older boy said.
They was a bee flying up over the bowl of honey. You could see it clear against the white cloth. It danced around in the light.
“Watch him now,” the old man said.
After the bee rose away from the sheet it was harder to see. But once the bee got up into the late sunlight it looked like a black and gold bullet. It turned this way and that, its wings blurring like little puffs of breath.
“There, he’s going,” the younger boy said.
“No, he ain’t,” the old man said. “He ain’t ready yet.” The bee flew in half circles, stabbing one direction then the other.
“Maybe the sun’s in his eyes,” the older boy said.
“Hush up,” the man said. “We’ve got to watch close.”
The bee swung to the left and to the right, and I seen a daytime moon behind it. The moon looked like a piece of ice floating under water way up there. It made me shiver in my sweat.
“There he goes,” the man hollered. He pointed to the trees and up the ridge. “You foller him,” he said to the taller boy. “You foller him past that poplar yonder on the ridge.”
“You want me to let aloose the hog?” the older boy said.
“Forget the hog,” the man shouted.
The boy lit out across the meadow the way his grandpappy pointed. The man started gathering up the honey bowl and sheet and the ax that laid in the weeds. “Here, help me,” he said.
The younger boy turned loose of Sue’s ear. She hesitated a moment, not realizing she was free.
“You get that hog away from here,” the old man said.
“I don’t want to bother you all,” I said. “I’m busting out a way for a road.”
“You look like you been busted out yourself,” the man said. He reached into one of the buckets and handed me a piece of honeycomb. The comb was dripping with golden honey. I took the piece in my hatchet hand. “I thank you,” I said.
“Ain’t nothing but clover honey,” the boy said.
I licked the comb and sucked off as much honey as I could. The honey was so sweet it burned my mouth. Maybe the ginseng had left my mouth a little raw, and my lip was sorer than ever. The honey tasted so good it hurt. The spit in my mouth ached.
Just then Sue realized she was free and jumped ahead, jerking me along. I smeared honey in my beard but I didn’t drop the comb and I didn’t stumble. I had to skip a few times to keep up.
The man and boy headed across the pennyroyal meadow with their buckets and cloth to take aim from another corne
r.
“I thank you,” I said again, as Sue started running for the woods. I found myself stepping as though by habit. The ginseng had took away some of the pain and soreness. But I felt like I was a puppet and my legs was pulled by strings. I could run but I was no longer in control of my running. I could only foller the habit we had set. Sue trotted straight for the woods, right of the place the taller boy had gone.
I wished I had asked the bee hunters where we had come to. That showed how tired I was. I wasn’t hardly at myself anymore. Here I was, completely lost, and I hadn’t thought to ask the way to Cedar Mountain. Maybe I was afraid they’d say I was close to the Georgia line, or that they never heard of Cedar Mountain. But we was already headed into the woods and it was too late.
My feet was sore and I wondered if the skin had been rubbed off by all my walking and running. It felt like my socks was just shreds. My boots had been wet all day, and grit had got in them when I rolled into the muddy pit. Sand was cutting into the balls of my feet, but they wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
I put the rest of the honeycomb in my mouth and sucked the marrow from the cells. Honey run down my chin, and I licked my lips, tasting the salt of sweat and dried blood. But the honey was so sweet and powerful I could feel it working inside me. It was like I had swallowed a light, and could feel the shine going through me, follering the ginseng. I was so empty my body had nothing to go on. The honey lit its way right through my belly and chest, and out into my legs and arms and fingertips.
The belly feels good if it has timber to warm it, something to work on. I don’t think I had a peppercorn of energy left when I eat that honey. Even after the honey was sucked out, I kept chewing the comb.
“Where you going, old girl?” I said to Sue. She was running a little sideways again. I wondered if one of her hooves was cracked. She seemed to be favoring her right front foot. But she was trotting so fast I couldn’t see nothing. I fancied I seen blood on her hoof, but it could have been my imagination, or my tired eyes. I didn’t trust my eyes anymore.
“You done got us lost,” I said to the sow. I was talking to myself, like you do when you’re real tired, or half asleep. “You’ve done got us lost and the day is almost over.”
The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Page 28