Once I began to tell the story in Annie’s voice I knew I’d made the right choice. Rather than going back, I was moving forward, from a new point of view, seeing Hank and Julie and their world from an intimate but different angle. The events of their move to Green River, the typhoid epidemic, the life of the beloved German shepherd Old Pat, the anguish of the Great Depression, the death of their son Troy in a plane crash in World War II, unfolded with mounting intensity. The Road from Gap Creek became a story not so much of looking back to Gap Creek and those trials but of looking ahead to the uncertainties of the future, the struggle to define one’s self, and, beyond all the grief and unforeseen losses, the discovery of enduring love.
Robert Morgan
One
The thing about Mama was she’d never tell you how she felt. When she was feeling bad she’d just go on with her work, washing dishes or peeling taters or mopping the floor. I’d know she was feeling pretty low, but she wouldn’t say nothing. Work was what she done, what she’d done her whole life since she was a little girl up on Mount Olivet, and she’d keep on scrubbing the dishes and cups with a rag in soapy water and rinse them in cold water and dry them with a linen towel.
It would make Papa mad that Mama wouldn’t say nothing when her feelings was hurt or she had the blues. It was a difference between them that went all the way back to the beginning of their marriage, back to the days on Gap Creek. Papa would argue and say she’d spent too much money on flower seeds or a shrub for the yard. He never could see wasting money on beautifying flowers, while Mama was crazy about flowers and liked nothing better than a rose of Sharon bush blooming in the yard and attracting bees and hummingbirds, or colorful geraniums in pots along the edge of the porch. She once said that it was a sign that God loved us that He put such colors in the world as you seen in the red of geraniums or the pink of dahlias or the dark purple of ironweeds along the road.
“Julie, you’re going to break us up,” Papa would say if she paid a peddler a dollar for some bulbs to hide in the ground. Mama wouldn’t say nothing back. She’d just go on with whatever she was doing or maybe start something harder, like washing the chicken piles off the porch or sweeping the backyard. I never saw nobody take more pride in keeping the porch clean than Mama did. Chickens would get up on the porch looking for something to peck and leave their piles like big melted coins on the boards. If the piles got baked in the sun they’d be hard to get off, set hard as cement or glue in the cracks of the wood. So almost every day Mama would heat a bucket of water on the kitchen stove till it was near boiling. Holding the bucket with a towel or the tail of her apron she’d splash tongues of smoking water on the planks that made them steam like they was burning. And then with the broom she’d scour the chicken piles off, flirting the dirty water into the yard. She’d splash and sweep until the porch was clean as the kitchen table drying in the sun.
About once a week Mama done the same thing to the yard, splashing and sweeping, running away the chickens, sweeping again, sometimes sprinkling white sand she got from Kimble Branch, till the yard looked smooth as a piece of white twill cloth that had been washed and ironed.
That day when the black car stopped in front of the house and the two men in uniforms got out, my heart sunk right to the soles of my feet. It was November of 1943, and you didn’t see many cars then because of the gas rationing, even on the big road, and on our little gravel road you could go half a day and not see a vehicle pass except for the school bus. That car could not mean any good as it stopped there on Mama’s swept yard, beside the boxwoods.
Those two men walked across the ground she’d swept so careful, and I wished I could close my eyes and make them disappear. We’d read in the paper about two men coming to deliver bad news from the war. It made me cold in the belly to see them, and then it made me mad. I wanted to fling open the kitchen door, and tell them to go away. They had no business coming on us all of a sudden like this. I wanted to tell them to get back in their black car and drive back to town or some army base or Washington, D.C., or wherever they’d come from.
They knocked on the kitchen door, and when I opened it the taller one said, “Is Mr. Hank Richards here?”
“No he ain’t,” I said. The truth was Papa was out cutting firewood on the Squirrel Hill with my brother Velmer.
“Is Mrs. Richards here?” the second man said. He took off his army cap and put it under his arm.
“No … I’ll see,” I said, trying to think of some way to keep Mama from having to see them. But the other man took off his cap and looked past me. I turned and seen Mama standing right behind me, in the light from the door.
“Ma’am, I’m awfully sorry to be the one to bring you this news,” he said and handed Mama a tan envelope. Mama held the folded paper a minute without opening it, then handed it to me. As I ripped open the paper and looked at the telegram I told myself this was a mistake. We’d read in the paper about men reported killed who later turned up wounded in a hospital or lost from their unit.
The telegram was words printed on paper ribbons pasted to the page. “Dear Mr. & Mrs. Richards, it is with profound regret I report your son Troy Richards, Serial No. 34119284, lost in the crash of a B-17 heavy bomber on Nov. 10, 1943, near the village of Eye in East Anglia. Stop. A grateful nation mourns the loss of your son whose sacrifice for his country will never be forgotten.”
I read the words glued to the page to Mama, and she just stared at the door like she didn’t see nothing.
“Ma’am, if there’s anything we can do for you just let us know,” the tall man said. But Mama had already turned away from him. I thought she was going back to the fire in the living room, but she didn’t. Instead she walked to the far side of the kitchen and set down in the chair by the bread safe. The two men said more things. They talked real gentle, like they was truly sad, and asked again if there was anything they could do. I reckon it was what they done every day, going around and delivering those telegrams and telling people how sorry they was. Finally they said a letter would be coming in the mail, along with a box of Troy’s personal effects. And then they put on their caps and walked slow back to the car and drove away.
“Mama, you go back to the fire. You’ll get cold setting in here,” I said. But she didn’t answer. She just set in that chair by the bread safe looking down at her hands clasped on her apron. I still held the telegram, and didn’t know where to throw it down on the floor or fold it back up in the envelope it come in.
“Go tell Hank,” Mama said.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I said. Mama’s face looked gray, the way somebody with a bad heart looks.
“I can make you some coffee,” I said.
“You go on,” Mama said. “I’ll be fine.” She waved me away.
I put on a jacket and tied a scarf around my hair. Clutching the envelope, I stepped out into the chilly breeze. Chickens scratched around the edges of the yard. The cotton mill whistle sounded three miles away. It was the end of the first shift. I wished Muir was there so I could tell him. He couldn’t tell me what to do, but just knowing that he knowed would help. That’s what a husband was for. When something bad happened he was supposed to be there, not off building army barracks at Holly Ridge or Wilmington or preaching at a church down there. It would be comforting to just let him know. Papa had come home for a long weekend, and Velmer had come from Columbia, South Carolina, but Muir had stayed in Holly Ridge to preach at a little church near there.
To get to the Squirrel Hill I had to cross the road and then the cornfield. The corn had been gathered and the stalks leaned this way and that. We’d cut the tops and pulled the fodder back in August, and the stalks was mostly bare and broke. The field looked bad as I felt. I stepped around briars, going real slow. Every second I delayed give Papa a little more time of peacefulness. I wished I could just turn around and go back to the house.
It took me a minute to find Papa and Velmer in the woods. The Squirrel Hill was hit by lightning more than any place I ever
heard of. Some said there was iron in the ground under the hill and that’s why lightning always come down there. Every time there was a big thunderstorm a bolt hit an oak tree and split it down the middle, flinging splinters and limbs all over the woods. There was dead wood all around the hill to cut up. It was also a place the squirrels loved because of the acorns and hickory nuts, which was how it got its name.
Papa and Velmer was using the crosscut saw. It took a man at either end to pull the saw back and forth. They was cutting up a big limb that had been blasted off that summer by lightning. Papa seen me coming and he must have thought I brought bad news because he turned away like he hadn’t even seen me. My breath was short from walking.
“Two men come to the house and brought this,” I said and held out the envelope. Papa looked at the telegram and sighed and put down his end of the saw. Fishing his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket he slid them on and read the words pasted to the page, then let the telegram drop to the leaves.
“Poor boy,” was all he said.
“What is it?” Velmer said. I picked up the paper and handed it to him. Velmer read it and shook his head. I was going to say Papa should go back to the house, but he’d already started. His head was down and he stumbled against a bush, and that was how I knowed he was crying. It was the only time in my whole life I’d ever seen him cry. He never cried when his mama died that I could remember. And he never cried when his oldest boy nearly died of typhoid. I followed him as he lurched between the trees and fallen limbs toward the house.
Now when we got to the house, Papa walked straight to Mama where she set by the bread safe. He put his hand on her shoulder but she didn’t even look up at him. I’d seen her do that before. She couldn’t stand to be comforted, or show affection in front of anybody. He’d touch her, try to put his arm around her, and she’d just pay him no heed. I thought she was too shy to show her feelings when another person was looking. Maybe she thought her and Papa was too old to act intimate. But when she just set there paying no attention to Papa reaching out to her at that awful moment, I seen it was something else. She’d give her life to working for other people and caring for other people. She’d put up with Papa’s whims and rages, and all it had led to was this. She’d lived on grits and molasses when they was young down on Gap Creek. She’d give everything to raise her children, and she had lost her favorite child. She didn’t want to show no emotion anymore.
“Julie …” Papa said as he squeezed her shoulder, but his voice broke and when he seen she wasn’t going to answer he turned away and shuffled into the living room and set down by the fire.
“Mama, let me make you some coffee,” I said.
“Too late in the day for coffee,” Mama said. “I’d never sleep tonight if I had coffee now.”
“You could drink just a little; that wouldn’t hurt you.”
Mama set there, and I wondered if she was going to stay in the chair all evening. It bothered me the way she wouldn’t say nothing. Ever since I was a little girl it made me afraid when Mama was unhappy or disapproving. I guess that’s the way girls feel about their mamas, much more than boys do. A girl has to be close to her mama, and the bottom falls out of the world when your mama is mad at you. Nothing can go right if your mama is angry. Even though I was a married woman it still seemed everything depended on how Mama felt. There was a big cold empty place in my chest as I watched Mama just set there like she wasn’t noticing anything.
And then she looked up like she’d come back to life. “It’s time to fix supper,” she said. “Look how late it is.”
“I’ll fix supper,” I said. “You just need to rest.”
Mama ignored me and stood up, looking around the kitchen like she couldn’t decide what to do first.
“You go on into the living room and rest by the fireplace,” I said.
Are you giving the orders here?” Mama said. A pain shot through me. Mama hadn’t spoke to me in that tone of voice for a long time.
“I just thought you should rest,” I said.
Mama wiped her hands on her apron like she was drying them, though her hands, like her eyes, was perfectly dry. “This is my kitchen,” she said in a short voice like she almost never used.
“I just want to help,” I said and felt my eyes getting wet.
“Then you go down to the basement and get some beans and beets and a pan of sweet taters,” Mama said, like she was all business now and time was running out.
I got the saucepan for the taters and stepped out into the gray air. By mid-November it was already getting dark around five. The door to the cellar was at the front of the house. You had to stoop under the front porch to reach the cellar door. When Locke Peace had made the house a long time ago that’s the way he’d fixed the basement. There was always cobwebs over the door and I brushed them aside. As I stepped into the dark cellar I remembered what I’d forgot, the flashlight. There was just enough light so I could see the shelves of can stuff. Since I knowed where the beans and beets was I got the jars and set them at the door. But the tater bin was at the back of the basement, and I had to feel my way there, trying not to stumble over any box or keg left on the floor.
When I was a little girl and had to go down there to get something, I always imagined snakes was watching me from the walls and shelves, big snakes with gleaming eyes. There was a smell in the cellar, the smell of old dirt and mold, of wrinkled or rotten taters, of dust and mildew, which I thought of as a snake smell. I shivered in the cold, sniffing the scent, and reached into the bin of sweet taters. Something scurried away, and I jumped back and listened. All I could hear was pots banging in the kitchen above. My breath was short.
And then I remembered what had happened that afternoon and felt silly to be afraid of snakes or mice. Besides, it was almost wintertime and snakes was asleep deep in the ground.
“Troy is dead,” I said, not sure who I was speaking to. It just come out, “Troy is dead.” I said it to the dark in the back of the bin, to the smell of old dirt and mildew, to the dust. Troy had come down there as many times as I had to bring jars still warm from the canner or to get spuds for baking. He’d never come again for a can of peaches at grave level. “Troy is dead,” I said again and grabbed enough sweet taters to fill the pan.
When I got back to the kitchen Mama already had water boiling for rice. She’d made a cob fire in the cook stove and the kitchen was warming up. “You wash the taters and put them in the oven and I’ll go milk,” she said.
“No, you can fix supper and I’ll go milk,” I said.
Mama give me this hard look and I seen it was no time to argue with her. Papa still set by the fire, and Velmer had gone out to bring the horse from the pasture. There was nothing to do but humor Mama and try to help her. I run some water in the sink and started to scrub the taters with a brush. Mama poured some rice into the saucepan of steaming water.
The kitchen door opened and there was Aunt Daisy holding a bowl covered with dishcloth. Mama had lit the lamp on the table and the light reflected off of Daisy’s glasses. She was married to Papa’s brother Russ, and they lived just on the other side of the Squirrel Hill.
“Julie, I’m so sorry,” Daisy said. She handed me the bowl and I set it down on the table. “It’s just some soup beans,” she said. The bowl was warm and I could smell the sweet beans in their broth.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I just heard the news from Velmer, and I’m so sorry,” Daisy said.
“Won’t you set down,” I said. I glanced at Mama and at the milk bucket on the shelf. It was past time for milking.
“I’ll go get the cow in,” I said and grabbed the milk bucket and flashlight. I still had on my scarf and jacket.
“Troy was an awful sweet boy,” Daisy said, and set down at the table. “I always said he was the best this family has seen.”
I slipped out into the twilight with the milk bucket. Velmer had gone to the pasture for the horse, but the cow was still at the milkgap, waiting for me.
I put the rope around her horns and led her along the road to the barn. The cow was named Alice and she was a Jersey and the best milker we ever had. She had a tendency to get mastitis after she freshened and was nursing a calf. But otherwise she was a perfect cow. Jersey milk is richer in cream than any other kind of cow’s milk.
Once I got Alice to her stall I mixed crushing and dairy feed and cottonseed meal in her feed box. The smell of molasses in the dairy feed was so strong it seemed to light up the dim stall. I got a bucket of water for Alice, too. Careful to avoid any fresh manure, I got the milking stool and set the bucket down under her bag.
Alice was nervous because she was used to Mama milking her and because I was late bringing her from the pasture. At first she didn’t let down her milk easy, but as she begun to eat from the box and I leaned my head against the side of her belly and talked to her, she relaxed. A milk cow likes to hear her name said, and I said it again and again. And I told her Troy was dead and wouldn’t be coming to the barn ever again. I told her she was the best cow and give the best milk we ever had, sweet golden milk with an inch of cream on top of every quart. The secret of milking is you don’t squeeze the teat you pull down. I talked to her and she give down her milk so fast it shot into the bucket with every pull and foamed and filled the air with the scent of sweet warm milk.
“That’s a good cow,” I said.
“Who’re you talking to?” somebody said in the barn hallway. It was Velmer.
The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Page 35