The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts

by Robert Morgan

  After they got through clearing the right-of-way, it looked like a storm had hit the mountain and broke off all the trees. I had heard of blow-downs, where one big tree fell in wind and all the little trees would go down too, in a line up the mountain, because they had no protection once the opening was made. That’s what it looked like, except the trees spilled below was all crisscrossed and twisted up. And the ground looked ugly as the mange where it was exposed.

  Once the trees was down, that left the stumps, all through the gap and down the mountain. Howard’s gangs had a stump puller they could use on flat ground. But the gap was too steep for it. You never heard of a stump puller? Why honey, it’s on wheels like a big cart, wheels higher than a man’s head. And it has a chain wrapped around a big spool. You hook the chain to a stump and pull the whole thing with ten or twelve oxen. The spool turns and jerks the stump out of the ground.

  Ain’t nothing harder than working stumps out. You take a shovel and mattock and dig out around them and then chop the roots. But every stump is different. Some you can split down the middle and pull out. And some has a taproot like a big carrot that goes straight down and you have to dig the whole thing out to get to it. Pine stumps is easy, but hickory and oak and sometimes chestnut is nigh impossible to dig loose.

  Howard put the convicts to working and they chopped and heaved and rolled stumps off down the mountain. The stumps with all their roots looked like big ticks pulled out of skin. The convicts sweated and shined in the sun. They hollered and cussed as they strained. But they didn’t sing much while they was pulling up stumps, neither the black chaingang or the white chaingang. They always worked about half a mile apart.

  “Boss, this is bad work,” one said.

  “These stumps don’t never give up.”

  “These stumps was put here at creation, and they’ll be here till Doomsday,” another said.

  The biggest stumps Howard blasted out with black powder. Every time a stump blowed up in pieces and sailed down the mountainside all the convicts cheered.

  The third stump they blowed must have had a bad fuse, for the convict that lit it didn’t have time to get away. I guess the spark jumped the fuse, for he hadn’t run more than twenty feet before the stump exploded. A piece hit him in the back, and down he went in the leaves. Howard took a dipper of water from the bucket and throwed it on the man’s face. “Carry him over to the shade,” the warden said.

  “Maybe his back is broke,” I said.

  “He’ll be all right,” Howard said.

  Where I got real sick of Howard was when two convicts started to fight. I don’t know what they quarreled about, but they got to kicking and hitting with their chains. One knocked the other down and was kicking him in the head. Howard had the winner tied over a log and his clothes pulled off. “Boss, don’t whip me,” the man said. But Howard cut a hickory withe about six feet long and stripped the leaves off. He whipped the man on his back and on his white butt while he screamed. He beat the convict till his back was bloody and he messed all over hisself. And after the man passed out, Howard left him laying there in the sun, with flies buzzing in the blood on his back and where it had run down in his hair. I wanted the job to be over with right then. I didn’t want to have no more to do with Howard and his chaingangs.

  Where the stumps had come out the red dirt showed through the leaves and trash and topsoil. The dirt was so red the holes looked like sores, and when it rained they started bleeding down the mountain.

  When the gangs started digging the cut I got a shovel and helped them. I never could stand to see people work in dirt without pitching in. Why is moving dirt around so thrilling? To carve and shape a mountainside makes you feel good, and to open a ridge for a road makes you feel worth something. Just by shoveling dirt in the right places you let light into hidden coves and farback hollers, like sunlight touching raw dirt that’s been hid for thousands of years. It was almost painful to do.

  “You don’t need to work with prisoners,” Noble said.

  But I couldn’t stop myself. I stood around with my compass and chain and leveler for a while, like I was inspecting the gangs’ work as they started loosening the right-of-way with picks and mattocks. But I seen how rough they was cutting along the upper line we had laid off.

  “Let’s make a clean cut,” I said to Howard.

  “Won’t make no difference how clean it is to start with,” he said, and spit ambeer.

  “People work better if they’re doing it right,” I said.

  I got a shovel and dug along the upper boundary to make a neat cut. The woods dirt broke easy until you hit a root. Then you had to chop the root with an ax or mattock, or big grub hoe. Roots streamed with sap when they was sliced, and they smelled like seeds or sour fruit. I dug through leaves and rot and black dirt, and in a few inches turned up yellow and red subsoil. The black dirt on mountaintops is never thick. I dug the line across the top straight as a rifle shot to show the convicts how to do it. I wanted them to take pride in their work.

  The gangs labored without shirts, and they was dirty and shiny with sweat. Their backs glistened as they swung the picks. Looking down from the top, it was like watching a crowd of locusts and grub worms attack the ridge and eat down into the red quick. They hollered and cussed, and Howard’s slave boy carried water among them. “Hey, Henry,” they called to him. And when he come they drunk from the dipper and ruffled his hair and slapped him on the backside. “Hey, Henry,” they called, “bring us some of that sweet water.”

  One of the pleasures of opening dirt is it’s different in every place, and it keeps changing. Every shovelful has different grains and smell. Some deep dirt is gritty as sugar and sparkles in the sun like little mirrors. Some is dull as rotten rocks way down in the ground. Some dirt is gray and some yellow and some orange. Soon as you get away from topsoil you don’t find no black dirt, or even brown dirt. The soil you move out of a mountain is always red or light-colored. And it has a smell when it’s exposed to air, sometimes like liquor or camphor, sometimes like water that ain’t seen light in a long time and blinks. When you dig, every shovelful seems to touch a secret, like they’s treasure, or a big snake, or passage down there. You get down to grave level and spring level, and feel the mystery of deep soil. And when you bring it up into light it’s already starting to dry and go stale. In a day or two dirt starts to form a crust.

  I have dug into soil that was like bread, and dirt stiff as the meat of a chestnut. And sometimes you reach into mealy dirt that is almost green and has specks of mica in it like little fish scales. And sometimes you touch into clay pure as butter. When I dig, I am curious to see what the next shovelful will show.

  “I hope we don’t hit no big rocks,” I said to Noble as we dug the upper edge of the cut. I didn’t want to slow down to drill and blast, or to carry water for fire and dousing. But all along the cut my shovel never hit a rock bigger than a mushmelon.

  When the gangs got the surface of the right-of-way loosened up with picks they brought the barrows and sleds and started shoveling out the spoil. I figured they was maybe five hundred tons of dirt to be moved, and that they would carry it down to be used as fill in the low places. But they dumped the spoil right over the side of the mountain.

  “Ain’t you going to use the dirt as fill?” I said to Howard.

  “Too far to carry,” he said.

  “You’ll kill the trees below,” I said. They was dumping the dirt on the great mess and tangle of trees and stumps already spilled down the mountainside.

  “Ain’t got time to carry dirt halfway to Greenville,” Howard said. “What do you want to build, a flower garden?”

  “I’ll tell Mr. Lance to put a stop to it,” I said.

  “Tell Lance what you please,” Howard said.

  But Mr. Lance was way off in Asheville that day, and by the time I seen him it was too late. Tons of spoil had been dumped over the side of the mountain, smothering bushes and bending saplings, covering a lot of the stumps and log
s down there. The whole mountain begun to look like it had been hit by a landslide or flood.

  Because we found no rocks to speak of, and because they didn’t have to carry dirt but to the lower side of the cut, the work went faster than I expected. By early July the gangs had shoveled down twenty-five or thirty feet into the gap. Most of the dirt was bright red, but deep down it got yellow, and in the saddle of the gap itself it was gold. It looked like we had shoveled out half the mountain and throwed it on the trees below.

  “You throwed a lot of North Carolina into South Carolina,” Lance said when he seen what we had done. “Maybe we should charge the Sandlappers.”

  He was sweating from having to walk up to the cut from his buggy. He leaned on his cane and wiped his face with a silk handkerchief. “Richards,” he said, “you’ve done good.”

  “I didn’t mean for them to throw the dirt down on the trees,” I said.

  “Won’t hurt nothing,” he said. “Trees will always grow back.”

  “Mr. Lance,” I said. “When will I get my pay?” I was staying at the Lewis house and I had not paid them any board. And I was courting your Grandma and wanted some good clothes. And I hadn’t paid Noble a cent neither.

  “When you finish the job, Richards,” Mr. Lance said. “You have a contract, boy. You’re not working for wages anymore.”

  That burned me up, that we would have to work all summer and not get a cent. And what would I say to Noble, that he had to sweat till Dog Days with no wages? Mr. Lance could say I had a contract, but I had never seen no piece of paper. We had just shook hands and agreed that I would lay out the cut.

  “Of course, I can lend you some money if you’re short,” Mr. Lance said, wiping his face again with the shiny handkerchief. I had heard Lance made a lot of his money by loaning to poor people at high interest. Rumor was he had took land from people that couldn’t pay him back.

  “I can get by,” I heard myself say, though I didn’t know how I would do it, unless I borrowed some from Pa.

  “You’ll be finished by the end of Dog Days,” Mr. Lance said.

  “If all goes well and we don’t hit no rocks,” I said.

  The deeper we dug, the more I expected to find rock. I had thought all mountains was rock inside, that that was what made them stand up and last. I thought if you raked the dirt and trees off any mountain you would find the soil was just the rotted and crumbled outside of the rock. The rock was the bones of the mountain that give it its shape. But in the gap we dug down twenty-five, thirty feet, and except for a few boulders and veins of loosened quartz they was nothing but more dirt. It looked like we would finish early. By August I would have my money, and I wouldn’t have to work with Howard and his convicts no more. I could talk to Miss Lewis about getting married.

  People come from all around to inspect the cut, and said it was the biggest thing ever built in the mountains. The upper bank was almost forty feet high, and I had sloped it back to the trees on the lip of the cut. I knowed that when it rained the bank would wash a little. But they was a ditch on the inside to carry away runoff. The bank would grow up in weeds when another summer come. I thought about setting out little white pines there once the hot weather was over.

  One Friday evening, right at the beginning of Dog Days, it commenced to rain. We’d had showers and thunderstorms all summer. You know how clouds coming in from South Carolina hit the Blue Ridge and dump their water on a hot evening. But the ground would dry out in the sun by the next day. Sometimes we worked right through the rain. When you’re sweaty and dirty the rain feels good on your back. The drops run like cold little feet on your neck. A summer rain is clean as a bath if they ain’t no lightning. But when it thundered on a hot day, we got away from the gap. Every tree on the ridge had been striped down its bark by a lightning hit. Lightning started walking around up there, we got away in a hurry.

  At the beginning of Dog Days it come this slow, steady rain that went on all night, a she-rain people called it then. It’s the long soft rain that soaks the ground, that don’t run off but sinks in and melts the dirt. Every day I expected it to stop, but it rained again. When they was a break, me and Noble walked the trail over to the cut and tried to work a little, but it was like shoveling cream and mush. The gangs stayed in their camp at the foot of the mountain. We was digging the highest, deepest part of the cut. Even though they was a break in the clouds when we started, it was raining again before I had filled a wheelbarr. The clouds moved in from the south and hung there like ghosts around the gap. Me and Noble walked back to the Lewis house.

  You know how it gets in a wet summer. Soon they was mushrooms in the pastures and orchards. The roads was nothing but mire and water stood in every low place. The creek was a dirty spate. The woods smelled like mold and mildew. It seemed the ground was rotting and the woods was in darkness. It didn’t look like the sun would ever shine again.

  “We might as well go home,” Noble said when it kept raining the second week.

  “The minute we get back to Cedar Mountain it will clear up,” I said. Of course, I spent every minute I could with Miss Lewis. When she wasn’t helping her Ma run the place I set with her in the parlor while she sewed. And sometimes we set on the porch and eat watermelon while we watched it rain. Every time we went for a walk we got wet, but we didn’t care. Her Ma scolded her for getting her shawl wet. Young people in love don’t care what they do to pass the time. All they want is to be together. We sung at the organ at night. We could stand out in the rain and kiss and not ever notice the dampness. Tell the truth, I didn’t mind not working them first days.

  But Noble didn’t have nothing to occupy him. “It ain’t never going to stop,” he said.

  “Let it rain,” I said.

  Near the end of the second week I seen Mr. Howard come riding into the yard. I was setting on the porch with Miss Lewis drinking tea when he rode up all covered with a big black coat. I couldn’t even tell who he was till he reached the hitching rail.

  “Have you been to the cut?” he said.

  “Not today I haven’t,” I said.

  “It might pay you to go look,” he said.

  I got my coat and hat and me and Noble took the trail over to the gap. At first I couldn’t tell what had happened. It was like the cut we had dug had disappeared. In its place was a pile of dirt and trees and roots. Muddy water was streaming out of the mess. The roadway was gone.

  The high bank above the road had caved off in a slide. The mountain had melted and run like it was candle wax. It was like the dirt we had cut through bulged out and ruptured. The mountain had pulled away from itself in clots and gouts. Trees leaned over from the top, their roots sticking out in air. Wet weather springs had opened in the side of the spill and poured down on the soupy mush. All our summer’s work was covered up.

  And it come to me what Pa had said, about hoping we would hit some rock in the gap. They wasn’t nothing to hold the mountain back when it got soaked. They wasn’t no firmness, no strength inside the mountain, once rain started pouring on it. The raw dirt had turned to jelly, and then syrup.

  “This mountain don’t want no road across it,” Noble said. And I felt it was true. Here, at the highest point on the turnpike, it was like the mountain had decided to stop us. It was like the guts of the mountain had voided theirselves on our roadway. It seemed the mountain was cussing me for cutting through it. It had put a hex on the project, and was fouling over my work.

  It did finally stop raining the next week, and Mr. Howard brought his gangs back up the mountain and we waded into the edge of the slide. First the stumps and trees had to be chopped out of the mud. And then we started shoveling and carrying the muck out of the way. Soon we was all covered with the paint and paste of the red mush. Only clean place was out in the woods, away from the road. My clothes and my boots and hands got caked with the batter.

  “If I had knowed this, I’d have let Lance build his own road,” Mr. Howard said.

  Mr. Lance come to inspect the l
andslide. He huffed and puffed up the hill from his buggy. “Richards,” he said, “you could have avoided this.”

  “I can’t stop the rain,” I said.

  “You must have built it wrong,” he said. That made me so mad I couldn’t get my breath for a few seconds. For he was right, something had been done wrong. All our work that summer had been wasted. I was so blind with anger I couldn’t think of nothing to say.

  “You ain’t paid me a cent,” I said, as though I meant the bad luck happened because he hadn’t paid me.

  “And you won’t get a cent until this mess is cleaned up and the road finished,” he said.

  He walked off like I wasn’t worth arguing with. He limped down the hill with his cane, swinging his fat frame from side to side. I was so mad I was shaking. I thought of pushing his face down in the mud and drowning him. I thought of him coughing and choking on mud and manure in the road. I seen myself pushing his face deeper in the manure and letting him smother on gobs of muck.

  I couldn’t work no more. I had to get away, and I walked above the road and climbed into the wet woods. My boots was all caked with red clay that scraped off like turds on the leaves. I walked out through the wet underbrush, smearing and tracking the woods floor. Never had the green leaves looked so clean, and the bark of trees was pure as spice. The sticks and leaves on the ground looked scrubbed and polished. Water standing on leaves was clear as magnifying glasses.

  When I turned back toward the road I climbed to the top of the high bank and looked down on the roadway. Shelves would have to be dug in the mountain above the cut. A steep bank would just slide away again when it rained. We would have to dig steps back into the mountain to make terraces.

  The convicts worked like maggots in a carcass. They was dumping load after load over the edge of the cut and it spilled like pus down the mountainside. Everything was smeared and tore up. It seemed impossible this was the beautiful gap where we had started working a few months before. The whole mountain was filth and waste, like a wound festering and running its corruption down the slope. It made me mad all over again just to look at what we had done.