This Rock

by Robert Morgan

  I’D NEVER TOOK a long train trip before. I’d been to Tompkinsville and Spartanburg and Asheville. I’d never seen the eastern part of the state, but I’d seen pictures of the flat fields and lazy swamp-lined rivers, the wide pine forests of the coastal plain. I kept thinking about Annie as I rode the train to Asheville, about how she’d look when she was growed up a little bit more. I was still mad at her for flirting with so many boys.

  I had to make that journey. I was thrilled and sad at the same time. You have to go far away before you can return and start again, I said to myself. You have to go east to go west. It sounded like something I’d read in a book about Columbus.

  I looked out the train window at the trees on the mountainside, the yellow poplars and gold hickories, the red and orange maples. The world through the window looked like a painted picture. I wished I could draw a mountainside of colorful fall trees. I patted the bills in my pocket. The crisp money felt alive.

  THERE WAS A two-hour layover in Asheville. My suitcase and shotgun and coat had to be carried into the station. The big box of equipment was being sent on as freight. I set in the station surrounded by my gear and looked around the crowd in the station for faces that I knowed. Everybody that I seen was a stranger. Everywhere I went I’d be looking for faces that I knowed, like I was still on Green River.

  The train east finally left around ten o’clock. I wrestled my stuff on board and settled in a seat. This is a long trip away that will give you months of freedom, I said to myself as I watched Asheville drift away. After swinging around the end of Beaucatcher Mountain, past the many summer hotels and cottages, past the TB sanitarium at Oteen, the train begun the long climb up the Swannanoa River to the crest of the Blue Ridge.

  There was brief stops at Swannanoa and Black Mountain before we slipped through the nick of the mountain wall and begun winding down into the Piedmont. A tunnel passed us under a ridge. I have read that building the railroad into the mountains was one of the most spectacular construction jobs east of the Rockies. The state of North Carolina started the railroad several times before the Confederate War and tried for ten years after the war to complete the line. But the grade was too steep and a lot of the ridge was solid granite under a thin covering of soil and trees. Twice, the money was raised and then embezzled by officers of the railroad company. Finally the road was built with convict labor. The state was too poor to afford blasting powder, so they heated the rock face with giant log fires and then doused the spot with floods of cold creek water. That cracked the granite and they was able to pry and hammer a few feet loose at a time. There was riots and knifings in the convict camp, and a lot of prisoners died while building the high trestles. Finally in 1879 the rails from Morganton and the east connected in the middle of the tunnel with the tracks coming down from Asheville.

  As we come out of the tunnel I could see the engine puffing in a curve far below. The tracks coiled down the mountain through eight or ten curves. Ahead I could see out fifty miles or more over the foothills and the autumn woods to where fields of shocked corn and red clay gullies disappeared into the haze. It was like I’d passed through a barrier and there was a new world ahead, at my feet. I felt joy mixing with the sadness as we turned and twisted down the mountainside and roared through smaller tunnels. I seen the great fountain at Old Fort raising its sheaf of feathery water against the breeze in the station yard. I watched a river winding as it descended and split apart over a rocky bed.

  All day long, as we stopped in Hickory, Statesville, Winston-Salem, and then Durham and Raleigh, I kept thinking what a big wonderful state this was. The towns was almost like northern cities I’d seen. There was tall buildings in the centers of the towns, and big shining cars around the stations. And there was many warehouses and tobacco-scented districts of factories and storage buildings. The smell of tobacco hung over the towns like clear smoke.

  It was between Burlington and Durham, late that afternoon, that I set behind a group of college boys. From their talk I understood they’d been to a debate at Davidson College and was returning to Trinity College. They must have won, for they sounded loud and full of theirselves. All wore blue jackets and little white-and-blue caps. When the conductor was not around they passed a thin flask among theirselves. I couldn’t tell from the talk what the debate had been about.

  “I could have died with pleasure when he said, ‘It’s part of the modern consciness to be concerned about the poor.’ I couldn’t believe my sweet ears. I wondered if he was confusing consciousness with conscience.”

  “That was choice,” another boy said.

  “Then after he said it once he couldn’t seem to stop repeating it. He must have said it ten times.”

  “Oh, that was rich, really rich,” another boy said.

  “No, that was choice; let’s say really choice.”

  “If you must say so.”

  “I once had a science teacher,” the first boy said, “who couldn’t say the word oxygen. It seemed impossible for him. Something like okigen was the best he could manage. He would avoid saying oxygen as long as he could, referring to ‘element number sixteen’ or ‘O2’ and ‘the element we breathe.’ But since it was a science class he eventually had to say the word again, and it always came out okigen.”

  “Oh, that’s rich.”

  “No, choice, my boy, choice.”

  “Oh, you’re drunk. Be careful or we’ll get thrown off the train.”

  “And this same science teacher couldn’t say debris either. He always pronounced it derbis.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re giving lying a bad name.”

  The conductor eyed the boys as he passed through the car, but he didn’t say nothing. I reckon I’m as smart as any of them, I said to myself as I listened to them giggle.

  IT WAS NIGHT before the train reached Raleigh. There was another two-hour layover there before I could catch the train going further east. I checked my suitcase and shotgun into a big locker and walked out to look at the state capitol. I wanted to see the monument I’d read so much about. I wanted to see the capitol building itself. But when I found the building I was a little disappointed. The dome looked like something unfinished, no bigger than many courthouse domes. I was in a kind of stupor from the long day of travel. I walked over to the Confederate monument and read the inscription below the marble statue: FIRST AT BETHEL, FARTHEST AT GETTYSBURG AND CHICKAMAUGA, LAST AT APPOMATTOX. It was after midnight, and I studied those words in the floodlights and thought of Grandpa at Petersburg and Chickamauga.

  I GOT OFF the train at Rocky Mount between three and four in the morning. There was a few lighted streetlamps, but everything was closed up. I hoped there’d be somebody to give me directions. According to my map the river run right through town. And since the town wasn’t all that big I figured I couldn’t be more than half a mile from the river. But I didn’t know which way to go. I took out the map and tried to study it under a streetlight but couldn’t read the fine detail. There was no point in hunting around in the dark anyway. I wanted to get out in the country as soon as possible, but I’d need help carrying the box of traps and supplies. And I wanted to get something to eat before I left for the river also.

  In the early morning damp I walked back and forth on the station platform to keep warm. It was damp and bone chilling. My suitcase and shotgun was stacked on the cardboard box by the station door and I stood by them shivering before I started walking again. My clothes didn’t seem to give any protection against the chill. I looked at the clock above the station door and seen it was almost five.

  There was a stink I’d been smelling without noticing it, a muddy and rotten smell like old rags that had got wet and soured. And there was another smell, not so much of fish as of earthworms, and maybe rotten eggs. It must have been the river and the smell of the toilets behind the shacks along the river. And there was a smell of wet ashes and of rancid bones washed by rain.

  I stood on the platform and stomped my feet and beat my hands together. So thi
s is what you have come to, I said, freezing to death and starving in a strange place at five o’clock in the morning? And all to trap muskrats, to make money, to keep away from Green River. It was hard to follow the reason of it all as I shivered with the dampness.

  Around five-fifteen a mail wagon drove up and a man in uniform got out, lifting a sack down from the paneled van. When he seen me he said, “Yes sir, are you waiting for the train?”

  “I got off the train,” I said, my teeth chattering, “more than an hour ago.”

  “Do you need help with anything?” he said.

  “Need help carrying my stuff to the river,” I said. “I’m going to camp by the river.”

  “In this weather?” the man said.

  “I’ll be trapping muskrats,” I said. “Maybe some mink too.”

  “Not much fur in these parts, boy. You have come to the wrong place.”

  “Not according to the reports,” I said.

  “What reports?” the man said. But before I could tell him what the salesman had said, he climbed into the wagon and drove away. I felt tireder and colder than ever as he rattled out of sight. What did he mean, there wasn’t any fur here? Would the salesman have lied? Most likely the man was a trapper hisself and wanted to keep others away from the river. Or maybe he had friends and relatives that was trappers. Or maybe he was just an unfriendly person. Some people hate for trappers to come into their territory.

  A café down the street opened at five-forty-five, but I was afraid to leave my gear on the platform. It was too heavy for me to carry all of it to the café. The mailman had made me feel uneasy. I wanted to get out on the river as soon as I could.

  Just then an old black man drove by in a wagon pulled by a mule. He had several sacks stacked in the wagon bed, like he was going to mill. I run down the steps and called to him.

  “Whoa now,” the old man said as he reined up the mule. He looked surprised to see me.

  “I’ll give you a dollar to drive me and my equipment out into the country,” I said.

  “Where out in the country?” the old man said. “I was on my way to mill.”

  “Give you two dollars to drive me out to a good camping spot on the river,” I said.

  The old man backed the wagon up to the platform, and him and me loaded the box and suitcase and shotgun beside the meal sacks. Then I climbed up on the seat beside him. “Powell’s my name,” I said and held out my hand.

  “So’s I,” the old man said and flicked the reins.

  “You mean your name is Powell?” I said.

  “Sho is,” the old man said.

  We drove out of town just as there was beginning to be light in the east. I seen the town was street after street of small houses, most with a tree or two in the yard. The streets run out on very flat bottomland. Just at the edge of town we passed a little store and I asked the driver to stop. The store was just opening, and I run in and bought several cans of pork and beans, a bag of rice, coffee, and sugar. That would get me started, until I had time to shoot a squirrel or catch some fish.

  “How you gone trap on the river?” the old man said after we got started again.

  “Have to get a boat,” I said.

  “Where you gone get a boat?” the driver said.

  “Do you know anybody that builds boats?” I said.

  “Trammel build boats,” the old man said.

  “Where does Trammel live?” I said.

  “Two, three miles up the river. I show you.”

  “Has he built many boats?” I said.

  “Oh, Trammel, he build boats all his life,” the old man said. “Five, ten dollar he build a right good boat.”

  After buying the train ticket, I had twenty-six dollars left. I patted the money in my pocket. We rattled past a tobacco warehouse and a tanning yard. After that we was in open country. The road turned down along the river and I got my first glance of the Tar. The river rushed fast as a flame below the weedy bank. I hadn’t expected such flow in the flat country. There was no rocks above the surface or on the bank, like there was in mountain streams. The whole body of the river seemed to roll and splash in one solid rush of flow. There was houses in sight and it was too close to town for me to camp.

  “Where you want to go?” the old man said.

  “Need a place in the woods to camp,” I said.

  The road swung back away from the river and didn’t get close to the bank again. I could tell the driver didn’t want to go much farther. I guess he needed to get his corn to mill.

  “That Trammel’s house,” he said and pointed to a place far across the fields toward the river.

  The wagon creaked and rolled on and I seen some swampy-looking woods ahead. The river must have been about a quarter of a mile away. “You can let me out here,” I said when we got to the pine woods. The ground was low, but at least there was some cover from the wind. The old man and me unloaded the box and carried it into the brush.

  “Is there any muskrats here?” I said as I give him two dollars.

  “You find muskrats anywhere they plenty of mud,” the old man said.

  “This looks muddy enough,” I said.

  The old man folded the bills and slid them in his bib pocket, then climbed onto the wagon. He slapped the reins on the mule’s back and drove away with his sacks of corn.

  HAD TO MAKE several trips into the woods, carrying first my suitcase and shotgun, then half the contents of the big box, then the box itself. I had to find a place to camp, and it didn’t take me long to see it would have to be back a ways from the muddy stream. Creek banks in the mountains was firm and rocky. The banks here was low and mushy ground.

  Took me half an hour to find a fairly dry spot, two or three hundred yards from the river. I wished I’d asked the old man where the nearest spring was, for without clear water I couldn’t make coffee. I was tired and needed some sleep. I got a fire going and warmed a can of pork and beans. After eating the whole can I unrolled the blanket and laid down. I was so tired I felt sore all over. Even my joints was sore from the long train ride.

  As I laid there I heard a crow somewhere off in the woods. Crows sounded the same everywhere. A wagon creaked by on the road a few hundred yards away, but I didn’t bother to raise my head to look at it. I hoped they couldn’t see my camp from the road. And then I heard a train whistle not too far away, going west toward the mountains.

  When I woke it was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was warm in the thicket. The air felt like August instead of early fall. With weather that warm the fur would be thin. And thin fur brought a lower price. I would have to catch more muskrats to make up for the thinness.

  I was stiff from sleeping on the ground and still sore from the night on the train. And it was like my head was numb from being in a strange place and waking up at that time of day. I figured it would take me a few days to scout the river and to get a boat built. I might as well take my time. It was too warm to feel like trapping season. Maybe it would turn cold soon. I hoped it would be a cold winter, even though I’d be camping outdoors.

  After eating another can of pork and beans, I gathered up my stuff as best I could and heaped it together. And I sprinkled leaves over everything so it wouldn’t be noticed in the undergrowth. Then I took my canvas bucket to look for water. I had to have water. That was the first thing to find.

  I figured the Trammel house was about a mile away, and I decided to look there. I crossed the scrubland to a ditch, and beyond the ditch was a field. And beyond the field was another field. Instead of a mile it was more like two or even three. But finally I saw a weathered clapboard house across the stubble of a cornfield.

  As I got closer, more than a dozen hounds come out from under the porch. They begun a symphony of barks and bellows as I got near. By the time I reached the yard they had sung all the parts and traded tunes and sung them again. An old black man and two younger black women, and a number of children, come out on the porch and stood there watching me walk up.

  �
��Shut up,” the man said to one of the hounds and kicked at it. The dog easily dodged his foot.

  I asked him if I could fill my bucket at the well.

  “Why, help yourself, sir, just help yourself,” the old man said.

  The well was at the side of the house, and the dogs nosed around my feet as I approached it. I drawed up the wooden bucket and filled the canvas pail. Holding the water high so the hounds couldn’t lick it, I returned to the front of the house. The whole family was still standing on the steps and in the yard.

  “I understand you build boats,” I said to the man.

  “Nah, too old to build no boats,” the old man said.

  “I heard different,” I said. “I need a boat for trapping on the river this winter.” One of the bigger dogs jumped up and put its paws on my chest.

  “Get down there, Luther,” one of the women said. “You get down.” She picked up a hoe handle from the porch and hit the dog. “I teach you jump on folks,” she said. The whipped dog yelped and slunk away to the side of the house.

  “How much did you charge when you did build boats?” I said.

  “In the old days about six dollars,” the old man said. “But I got rheumatism in my shoulder now, make it hard to hammer and saw.”

  “I’ll give you seven dollars for a johnboat,” I said, “if you make it quick before trapping season.”

  Trammel kicked at the dirt in front of him. He was stooped and his neck wrinkled. But you could tell he’d been a strong man in his time. One eye was swole almost shut. His overalls was faded but had creases ironed in the legs. “Couldn’t vex this shoulder for less than ten,” he said.

  The hounds sniffed their way around me, and chickens pecked here and there in the yard. The yard had been swept clean with a besom. You could see the marks the switches had made in the sand.

  “I’ll give you eight,” I said. “How soon can you do it?”

  “Gots to have at least nine,” Trammel said.

  “How soon can you have it ready?” I said.

  The old man studied for a while and spit on the ground. The chickens rushed to the gob. “Can’t work on Sunday,” he said. “Maybe a week, five or six days. Nigh onto a week.”