“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.
“Where have you been?” I said.
“I had to see a man about a dog.” It was what Velmer liked to say when he’d been out in the woods to do his business.
“Well you’d better water the horse,” I said.
“Thanks for reminding me,” Velmer said.
Two weeks before, I’d had a dream about Troy. Maybe not really a dream, more like a vision. It was a still night at the end of October and the crickets was loud, a weekend when Muir was home from Holly Ridge and we was staying in the Powell house down by the river bottoms. I was about ready to go to bed and had turned off the lamp, and Muir was already asleep.
It was the kind of night when there was just enough light to see by, though the moon hadn’t come up yet. I was thinking about the war and all the bad news we’d heard about the Air Corps in England where Troy was stationed, how many planes we lost every day, though men sometimes got fished out of the channel or North Sea before they froze to death.
Troy had joined up in the summer of ’41 when he was working at Fort Bragg with Papa and Velmer and Muir, building barracks. It was mighty hot there in August, and he watched the soldiers training, the paratroopers climbing ropes and crawling through mud while sergeants yelled at them, jumping off platforms and towers. Everybody knowed the war was coming. The war had been going on for two years overseas. Because he’d been in the CCC and studied welding and learned to use dynamite when they was blasting rocks on the Blue Ridge Parkway—they called him a powder man—maybe they offered him a special deal when he went to talk to the recruiter of the Army Air Corps. Anyway, the next thing we heard was we got this card in the mail addressed to Mama saying her son Troy had volunteered for the Air Corps and was training at the base in Georgia. Though she didn’t say nothing I could tell it made Mama sick to get that little yellow card. She put it on the mantelpiece above the fireplace where it was still gathering dust.
After Troy was sent to England in 1942 we just got these little letters that had been photographed with half the words blacked out. When I seen Troy’s girlfriend, Sharon, she’d say there was nothing in Troy’s letters and rather than get such empty messages about nothing but weather and mud she’d sooner get no letters at all. That showed how she didn’t think about nobody but herself. She didn’t worry about all Troy was going through day after day. All we knowed was what they said in the papers about airplanes catching fire or getting shot down. But we’d get a card saying Troy had been promoted to sergeant with four stripes. And then one saying he had been raised to a master sergeant.
Troy sent me money to get Sharon a Christmas present. He sent ten dollars to buy her something nice, because he had no way of giving her something from way overseas. I went to the best store in Asheville, riding on the bus with all the soldiers, standing room only, and I bought the prettiest comb and brush and mirror set you ever saw. It was amber and brown and gold, the finest vanity set you could get. Because of the war, stores didn’t have as much stuff as they used to, so I was lucky to find it. Would you believe Sharon didn’t even like it? She said if Troy wanted to get her a present he should get it hisself. Just sending money and letting somebody else buy it wasn’t the same. I was ashamed for her, to think that she didn’t care what he was going through in those dark days over there.
In his letters that summer of ’43 Troy told us he’d been moved to a new unit and a new job. But he couldn’t tell us a thing about it, not even where he was exactly. He just said it rained all the time and the place was an ocean of mud. He was going to be promoted again, but he didn’t say what there was above a master sergeant with six stripes. Troy was smart and worked hard, and I guess they was going to make him an officer.
That night two weeks before as I set by the window before going to bed, looking across the branch toward Chinquapin Hill, which is in the pasture to the west of the Squirrel Hill and makes a kind of bluff above the bottom land, I could see the trees clear against the sky. The moon wasn’t up yet, but you could see there was light back there, like the light of a distant town or the light of a fairground. Stars seemed stuck in the limbs of trees like tiny Christmas lights. Maybe it was dew sparkling on the trees and in the pasture, beyond the springhouse and smokehouse and the old molasses furnace above the branch.
Suddenly I didn’t see none of that. It was like a light had gone out and instead of the window I saw Troy, and he was almost close enough to touch. He was setting with his head down and he looked worried. I was so surprised I didn’t think to say nothing. He just looked down at something and he seemed terrible sad. And he looked older. His hair was still light red and curly like it had always been. Whatever he was thinking about it was bad, and a weight seemed to be crushing down on his shoulders.
“Troy,” I wanted to say, but my tongue was set like it was froze, the way your throat and voice are in a dream. I couldn’t reach out to him, and I couldn’t say nothing, not even his name.
And then he looked at me. It was like he seen me there, so close to him. He turned and it was like he was going to say something, though his expression was awful sad. I thought he was going to tell me where he was and what he was doing. He just wore these drab work clothes, like a mechanic would, not a uniform. He looked like he’d been working a long time without sleep.
But suddenly there was this roar, as if a thousand shotguns had gone off at once. And a whoosh of flame that covered everything fast as lightning. It was a many-colored flame with purple and green but mostly white that flooded out unfurling like a big cloth and burned up everything. And then it was all gone. I wanted to see what happened. I wanted to reach out and save Troy, but there was nothing but the window and Chinquapin Hill and the sound of crickets. And I heard the roar of Johnson Shoals over on the creek.
When I told Muir the next morning about what I’d seen he didn’t hardly seem to listen. Muir sometimes preached at different churches, though he wasn’t a pastor yet. He didn’t like
people to talk about superstitions. He said superstition showed a lack of faith. He was making coffee when I told him what I’d seen.
“You must’ve had a bad dream,” he said.
“How could I have dreamed when I was awake before it started and awake when it was over? I was looking out the window toward Chinquapin Hill, and I was awake as I am now.”
“You just dreamed you was awake. Looking out the window and across the branch was part of the dream.”
Nobody can make me mad the way Muir can. I guess it’s them that you love that can rile you the most. I reckon a difference with somebody you love scares you cause you expect them to be of one mind and one feeling with you.
“How do you know if you didn’t see it?” I snapped.
“Ain’t saying you’re lying,” Muir said. “I just think you forgot you was dreaming.” He dippered water from the bucket on the counter into the coffee pot before lowering the holder with the coffee in. Ginny, his mama, had never got running water into the Powell house and we had to carry water from the spring house out near the pasture fence. The spring itself was way around the pasture hill, beyond the molasses furnace, but Muir’s grandpa Peace had piped it all the way down to the springhouse. Muir had got electricity run to the house but had not put in plumbing.
“No one can tell you nothing,” I said, and put on water to make grits. The way Muir acted when I told him I’d seen Troy as close as on the other side of the window made me decide not to tell another soul. Everybody was worried about the war and about getting gasoline and tires and sugar because of the rationing. You had to have stamps to buy almost anything, coffee or meat or tea. Mr. Sharp that was the principal of the school give out ration books and he’d signed some for me. You took the ration books with you to the store, and when you bought sugar or coffee you had to give a stamp with your money. The stamps didn’t make nothing cheaper.
Now I kept thinking about what I’d seen in the vision or whatever it was. Maybe it was a kind of dream. In the Bible it said young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams. Didn’t say nothing about girls or women. What bothered me most was how worried Troy looked bent over that way, like he was waiting for something. Couldn’t see where he was, but the awful blast and flash of light just seemed to come out of nowhere. And then as I played it over in my mind I remembered there was something else, something I’d forgot. After the flash and just before it all disappeared there was a smell for an instant, a smell like burnt paint or some burnt chemical. It was a terrible smell, like leather had been scorched, and maybe hair, like when a cat gets too close to a hot stove. That smell come back to me and it made me a little sick.
“How come you know everything?” I said to Muir, but he just laughed and shook his head, like he usually does when I get mad, acting like I’m not worth arguing with, just being an emotional woman. I’ve seen him do it a hundred times, backing out of an argument and shaking his head and chuckling, like he couldn’t make sense of what I said anyway. And that always makes me madder still.
When I got back to the house, Aunt Daisy had left and Mama was warming up the soup beans and the rice was about ready and the sweet taters smelled almost baked. I strained the milk into pitchers and put it into the icebox. Mama placed bowls and spoons on the table while I washed out the straining cloth and the milk bucket. When I put the rice and taters on the table I called for Papa to come.
“Don’t feel like eating,” he called back.
“You come on,” I said. “You’ve got to eat something.”
Papa shuffled in and set down at the head of the table while I poured each a glass of cold milk. Velmer was still outside, but I knowed he’d come in when we set down. Papa said a short blessing and helped hisself to the soup beans but didn’t start eating. “I told that boy to stay away from old airplanes,” he said.
Mama set with her bowl empty. “Let me give you some rice,” I said.
“He never paid no mind to what I said,” Papa said.
“Best not to talk about it,” I said. “Won’t do no good.”
Velmer come in through the kitchen door and set down at the table. I passed him the bowl of soup beans. Just then the front door opened and somebody walked into the living room. “Come on into the kitchen,” I called. I looked through the door and there was Preacher Rice.
“If you folks are eating, I’ll just stay here by the fire,” the preacher said.
“Come on in and set down and we’ll find you a plate,” Papa said.
The preacher stepped into the kitchen but didn’t set down. “I just come to say how awful sorry I am,” he said, holding his hat in front of him.
“Won’t you have a sweet tater?” I said. Last thing I wanted to do was discuss Troy’s death with the preacher. And I guess Mama and Papa felt the same way. For when a preacher comes to comfort you it always makes you feel worser. I don’t know why that is, but a preacher’s kind words make you feel more miserable. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, being married to a preacher. But a preacher’s words always seem far away. You know what he is going to say and what he has to say. And somehow the fact that he goes ahead and says them makes you even sadder. For the preacher will say God’s ways are mysterious and beyond our understanding. What seems unbearable to humans must be part of a plan. If something bad is an accident, it’s bad, but if it’s part of a plan, that’s much worse. I’ve never understood why preachers think that is comforting. They make you feel so hopeless and stupid. For they remind you there’s nothing you can do. Your suffering is all part of God’s plan. You don’t have control over nothing, no matter what you do. It makes you feel weak and sick in your bones, the way a bad fever does.
“The Lord is looking down in His infinite mercy,” the preacher said, “but with our limited understanding we can’t always understand.”
“That’s right, Brother Rice,” Papa said and took another spoonful of soup beans. Mama didn’t say nothing, and she still hadn’t touched her plate. I eat some sweet tater just to be polite.
“The Lord tries us as he tried Job,” Preacher Rice said, “because he loves us he tries us.”
Somebody else opened the front door and walked into the living room. I called out that we was in the kitchen. Helen Ballard stepped into the firelight holding a plate, and her husband Hilliard was just behind her.
“I have brought a chocolate cake,” she said.
“Your chocolate cake is my favorite,” I said.
“Come, pull up a chair,” Papa said.
“We’ll just stay here by the fire,” Helen called. “We was awful sorry to hear about Troy.”
I got up and took the cake from her and put it on the counter.
THE ROAD FROM GAP CREEK
——
A NOVEL BY
ROBERT MORGAN
© Copyright by Robert Morgan. All rights reserved.
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