The old turnpike had been graded up the side of the mountain, but was too steep for all but the lighter wagons and coaches. Most people had to get out and walk at the worst places. And every time it come a bad rain, the road washed away a little more. Runoff would cut across the turns and leave ditches and rocks exposed. The curves had never been drained right, and in the low spots the road was a swamp in rainy weather and a trough of dust and manure in dry times.
I got out my dial and leveler and tromped across the gap. I done some measuring and some figuring, and I seen what we was up against. I worked it out on paper and showed the numbers to Mr. Lance. “Best way to make the grade is to swing around between Corbin and Painter Mountain,” I said.
“How much longer will that make the road?” he said.
“About three miles,” I said.
“That’s too expensive,” he said.
I should have pulled out of the project right there, but I was too young and ignorant to know it. Lance didn’t care about nothing but money. His face glistened with sweat as he tapped his finger on my page of figures. “Build it shorter,” he said. “It ain’t that far to Greenville.” He was worried about paying for right-of-ways.
“Only way to make it shorter is to cut away half the mountain,” I said.
“Then cut it away,” Lance said. “The convicts will do the digging anyway.”
“We’ll have to move a whole lot of dirt,” I said.
“Then move it, son,” he said, like he didn’t have time for the likes of me.
“Yes, sir,” I said. And felt silly for agreeing. I should have quit right there, except I wanted to start that big job for Pa, so he could build the road for Mama’s sake. It was my first contract, and if Pa didn’t get well enough to make the road, I would never have that good a chance to show what I could do myself. Some things seem meant to be, no matter how hard or painful they are. It was like I had to build that cut through the gap; I didn’t even choose to do it. From the time I heard about the new turnpike, it was like that mountain chose me. We don’t understand most of the things that happen. They come at us, and we handle them the best we can. I knowed Mr. Lance and his contract was going to be trouble, but I couldn’t back down. It was like this job and grief had been give to me, and it was my job and my grief. Honey, that’s what makes the difference. It’s like having children; you’ll do anything to protect them and raise them, because they’re yourn. A task is the same way. If we see a labor has to be ourn, we’ll do it, no matter how hard or dangerous. I think that must be what a soldier feels when the bullets start flying, that they’s nobody else there to do what he has to do.
All along I kept Pa up to date about the job and about the survey I had done. Of course he knowed how steep the gap was. He knowed all the mountain gaps by heart. “I hope you have to cut through rock,” he said. Right then I knowed he wasn’t going to do this job.
“Thanks for your good wishes,” I said. I was mad enough to hit him, except he was a sick old man. He had been running things so long, he was bitter because he knowed, better than me, he couldn’t do the job, because he knowed he had to set in his chair and let me do it.
We didn’t have nothing but black powder to blast with back then, and it took two men a day to drill a hole for one charge, one turning the drill and the other swinging the hammer. Up on the gap it was too high to get water for heating and dousing to break the rock, unless you carried it up in buckets. Until the road was built they wasn’t no way to carry it up. Blasting through rock was the hardest work to be found, and the most dangerous. Somebody was always being killed by a short fuse or a flying rock. Pa seemed to wish me misery and failure. “Thanks for your help,” I said, and stomped out of the house.
It’s one thing to brag what you will do, and another to get out and do it. A mountainside ain’t nothing but trees and rocks and thickets, and you have to figure where a road has to be. You have to have what carpenters call “the idea,” to see the road as it will be, when leaves and logs and briars are out of the way. The mountain at the gap is so steep, you have to dig your heels in the leaves to keep from falling.
I took my leveler and my compass and my ax, and me and my younger brother, John, and my cousin Noble—we always worked together—started hacking out a right-of-way. Other crews working from South Carolina had already laid out the turnpike from the foothills to the bottom of the mountain. And they was coming right along with the building. We could look down the mountain and see the gangs hammering little bridges over creeks and laying down logs in the low spots and nailing boards on them for the plank road. The convicts sung as they worked, and their voices echoed off the hollers below. The old turnpike had been built by slaves, but these was a gang of white convicts and a small gang of black convicts Mr. Howard was in charge of. The gangs worked on the same roads, but they lived in separate prisons and they worked apart. Back then, the warden of a prison didn’t get no pay. He took what he could collect for the labor of his prisoners. In South Carolina the gangs built railroads as well as roads, and they even worked on farms, and digging sewers in Greenville.
It didn’t seem possible to grade the road gentle enough from where they worked to where we stood. If the grade was steeper than eight feet to the hundred, a heavy wagon couldn’t be pulled up it with a team. If we couldn’t get an easy pitch it wouldn’t be no better than the old road.
“Comes a rain, we could use the slope as a muskrat slide,” Noble said. We was always joking while we worked, but I didn’t feel like laughing that morning. I stood right on the South Carolina line and it come to me why Mr. Lance had hired me. He didn’t care if the turnpike was a good road or not. He just wanted it built quick and cheap. He figured I was so young and ignorant I’d do whatever he said.
Ain’t nothing on a mountain straight or regular. That’s one thing I knowed about laying it off. You draw a straight line, or a smooth curve, right through the roughness and roll of a ridge. You cut a road out where it needs to be, not where it’s easiest to make. You shovel ditches and lead water where you want it to go. You take out trees and rocks and shape the dirt like you think it should be shaped. The Bible says man was give dominion over the earth. But you have to work with the soil and rock and slope you find. If a mountain is in the way, you bust through it. You make the lay of the land fit your idea and purpose. But you also make your idea fit the place you’re working on.
“Drive a stake here, and here,” I hollered to Noble and John. Holding onto trees and bushes they drove stakes and tied white rags where the road was to be cut. I made the right-of-way extra wide, knowing the cut would be deep at the top. “There, and there,” I shouted, aiming my leveler to get the right pitch. It didn’t seem possible they could be a roadbed under us, deep in the mountain. But I knowed it could be done. They was a perfect grade inside that ridge and I was going to reach it. “Yonder, and yonder,” I said, pointing to places for John and Noble to make ax marks on trees and drive more stakes. I slashed laurel bushes aside to see where I needed to go. This mountain ain’t been fit for nothing but ginseng and blockade liquor, I said, and I’m going to make a way here. As I worked up a sweat I felt like tearing the mountain apart with my hands. Saluda Gap had stood in the way long enough. I wanted to sweep away the trees and laurel slicks and rocks and rake out a road the way a youngun makes things in sand. I looked at the trees like a farmer looks at weeds. I’m going to improve this ridge a little, I said.
I knocked away spider webs to get my sightings. Once I seen a copperhead in the leaves and kicked it with my boot halfway down the mountain. We come on a hornet’s nest in a chestnut bush and I broke off the limb it hung from and throwed the whole thing down the ridge, and only got one sting. When I come to a rock or boulder I rolled it out of the way. “There,” I hollered, “and there,” pointing to places for them to drive more stakes.
“Is this the place?” John said, standing by a flame azalea in bloom.
“It’s the only place,” I said.
The
mountainside in spring was still a tender green. Some laurels was blooming yet and the azaleas was busting out. We broke limbs of flowers out of our line of sight and chopped down saplings. Twice I got out my compass to make sure of the angle I had figured. In the heat of work it seemed strange to be checking our direction with the North Pole so far away. But we was right on course. I knowed we had to come into the gap at an angle of twelve degrees off the straight north, or almost north-northeast, as it’s called. I was going to hit it exactly. All the brush and trees on the ridge was trying to get in my way, but the compass could see right through them. “There, and there,” I hollered to John and Noble.
By dinnertime we had marked out near quarter of a mile. “I ain’t never been so rushed,” Noble said, when we set down on a log and opened our dinner buckets.
“You ain’t never had such a big job,” I said.
“Hurry won’t make it easier,” John said. “Pa always said hurry’s sign of being scared.”
“You ain’t working for Pa no more,” I said. I don’t know what come over me. I guess I was afraid that if I didn’t get the survey and the job done quick I would lose my chance. I was scared maybe Mr. Lance would give the contract to somebody else, or that the government would decide not to build the new turnpike. I don’t know what I was afraid of. I had to prove I could do the job, and if things went wrong I didn’t want nobody to blame me.
“I ain’t busting a gut for nobody,” John said.
“This is my job and you’ll do what I say,” I said.
“I ain’t working for you,” John said. He picked up his dinner bucket and ax and started climbing back up the way we had come.
“You walk off now, you can’t come back!” I hollered after him. “I don’t pay no quitters.” But he didn’t answer. He just kept on walking till he got out of sight over the lip of the gap. I felt even worser then, for I had never done a job without John. We had always worked together for Pa. But I didn’t call to him or run after him to bring him back.
With nobody but me and Noble working, the job went slower that evening. We slapped at flies and brushed mosquitoes out of our eyes. Limbs whipped back and stung me in the face, and I smacked them out of my way. One time the leveler fell over and slid down the mountain till it lodged against an oak. I had to climb down to get it. We was getting closer to the work gangs, and their singing and hollering made me nervous, I guess. It seemed like I could smell the sweat of the convicts below.
As soon as we finished marking the right-of-way, they would start sawing down the trees and clearing it. And then we would begin digging the cut. I wasn’t used to bossing over men, except for John and Noble. Mr. Lance said the convicts had their own guards and warden. “Just tell them where to dig and drill,” he said, “and Mr. Howard will make sure they do it right.”
It was almost dark when me and Noble got to the place where the highway from the foothills stopped, down close to Chestnut Springs. The convicts had already quit work and gone to their camp. We could hear them hollering and banging pots, and smell their cooking. It was dark in the holler, though the trees up on the ridge was still lit. A shot was fired and a bullet sung through the air like a sick banjo string. Me and Noble started back up the mountain.
It was too far to walk from Cedar Mountain every day, and me and Noble and John had took a room at the Lewis house just north of the state line. The Lewises had a big house with porches on both stories, and they kept boarders from the Low Country in summer and stock drovers and any other travelers too. Captain Lewis had several thousand acres there on the line, and he owned property in South Carolina also. They had slaves that worked around the house and served at the table.
Soon as I seen your Grandma, I was attracted to her. She was the oldest daughter of the Lewises and helped her Ma run the place. I flirted with all the girls back then. I seen her in her long, white, summer dress going around to make sure everything was ready for supper, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I talked to her a few times, like the young will if they get a chance. But I didn’t really fall in love until we sung together. Us Richardses always could raise a song, in church and at home, at infares, and even by ourselves out in the woods. Somebody said music is the food of love, and I believe it.
They was a big parlor in the front of the house with a fireplace at both ends, and they was a little organ against the wall away from the window. Evenings they lit the lamps above the organ and I would play it after I washed up and had supper. After the rough work of surveying and digging, it was a pleasure to work the white keys, and pump the peddles like I was dancing or marching somewhere. One night the second week I stayed there, the guests was gathered in that big room. Some was reading the papers, and some was smoking their pipes, and some was arguing about the president and all the crooks and thieves in Washington, and whether we ought to go to war with Mexico. It was a cool evening, and the flames in the fireplaces looked red as roosters that stretched and crowed on the logs.
“Can you play this?” Miss Lewis said, and handed me a song-book.
“I’ll try my best,” I said. I had always loved the old songs from Scotland. They are sweet and pure in their sadness. I begun peddling and playing the first chords and Miss Lewis started to sing the first line. By the time she reached the second line I knowed I was in love. Her chin and throat looked so white and perfect in the lamplight I couldn’t quit looking at them. And her voice touched me in a way I had never been moved before. They is a point before which you can resist love and think you are just being playful. But after that point is reached, they is no turning back. I felt the pain and thrill and jolt that instant.
That evening we read through most of the numbers in the songbook. The light from the lamps seemed bright as a sunrise. I forgot about the time and the other guests and the worry of road building. Noble was off smoking his pipe by hisself, I reckon. I watched Miss Lewis’s eyes and lips while she sung. When our eyes met it was as though the light was coming from her.
I had sparked a number of girls back in Cedar Mountain, both while I was in school and after. But I was too busy working with Pa on roads and walking my trap line to ever really fall for one. Now Miss Lewis had a lot of beaux among the local boys. They was boys from South Carolina that come up to see her, and boys from town too. If I had any advantage it was because I was working on the turnpike that went by her house, and because we sung together.
While I stayed at the Lewises, I went to church more than I ever had before. I walked with Miss Lewis to the regular services, and to a singing school at Crossroads. Nothing softens your outlook like love. I felt like I had discovered music and Miss Lewis and goodness at the same time. Everything that summer seemed to have the face and voice of love, Miss Lewis, the hymns and songs, the words we said, every cricket chirp and sunset. Even the hard work on the cut, the harshness of the mud and cussing and sweat of the convicts, seemed part of the new plan of things. Every evening I walked the trail from the gap and washed up on the back porch and put on my clean clothes. “Ain’t never seen you so primpy before,” Noble said as I splashed cologne on my neck and cheeks.
“I ain’t never heard such jealousy,” I said.
Miss Lewis and me took walks in the evening, when it was still light. We walked past the big cribs where they stored grain to sell to the drovers in the fall. We walked past the distillery and the indigo vats. Katydids was already singing in trees. They was crickets in the grass and a jarfly somewhere in the orchard. We walked down the trail that was the shortcut to the gap.
“Everything is making music,” I said. The evening star had come out and was sparkling like the note of the crickets. Far off we heard a church bell and the sound of a waterfall. When you can hear a waterfall like that, it is a sign of rain.
“We’re making the best music,” Miss Lewis said, “just us together.”
After me and Noble marked out the right-of-way, the chaingangs cut down all the trees to the top. They used crosscuts and axes and buck saws. When a tree was
felled, they rolled the logs off down the mountainside. “Don’t you want to save the wood?” I said to the warden.
“Got no use for more logs,” he said. They had already finished the plank road to the bottom of the mountain. The big logs knocked down little trees and piled up against each other all down the mountainside. It looked like somebody had poured scalding water on a bank of lush weeds. You never seen such a mess of laps and broke-down poplars and timber going every which way like logjams high in the air. The dead oaks soured and the broke limbs wilted.
“We could saw up the logs and pile them to cure,” I said to Mr. Howard.
“Ain’t got time,” he said. I think he resented that Mr. Lance had put me in charge of the cut, and him so much older than me. He showed me quick he wasn’t taking no orders from me. Mr. Howard carried a gun on the job, like the guards and foremen. And he told everybody what to do. He was used to building roads in the piedmont and flat country. He talked like a flatlander, and he hadn’t especially wanted to come up here and dig a road out of the belly of the mountain.
“My men ain’t used to climbing rock cliffs,” he said, and spit.
“A road has to be built right,” I said.
“Any way you can build a road is right,” he said. He leaned down toward my face. “Ain’t that right?” he said.
“I guess it is,” I said. I didn’t have no choice but to work with him, Mr. Lance had said. Just tell them where to dig and where to drill and where to stop.
The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Page 32