by Tommy Hays
They had left I-26 and now drove down into a brown rolling valley and passed through a collection of drugstores, fast-food places, convenience stores and grocery stores that made up the edge of Burnsville. They left all that behind and headed east toward Spruce Pine. Grover noticed orderly rows of miniature green triangles that seemed to march over the wintry brown mountainsides.
“They call the Fraser fir the Cadillac of Christmas trees,” Jessie said, looking up at the mountainsides. “Christmas tree farming is backbreaking work in the summers—trimming, keeping the weeds down and doing all that while making sure you don’t step on a snake.”
“Do the snakes ever get up into the trees?” Grover asked.
“They’re mostly hibernating in the ground by the time they cut the trees, but one warm winter there was an article in the Asheville Citizen-Times about a family finding a copperhead curled up among the presents on Christmas morning.”
Sudie just stared out the window.
Grover pressed his hand against the window. It was always colder up here.
“There!” Sudie slapped the window, pointing at a hand-painted sign.
GUDGER’S CHRISTMAS TREES
Two Miles Ahead on the Left
(You pick. We cut.)
They pulled into the long drive that led up to a little brick ranch house above a steep hillside of Christmas trees. When they reached the top and got out of the car, they were met by a young man, maybe twenty years old, who sat on a four-wheeler.
“Where’s Mr. Gudger?” their father asked.
“Pappap died in August,” the young man said, then spit off to the side. “Had a good life. Most people had no idea the man was ninety-two years old.”
“Ninety-two?” their father said. Grover remembered how Mr. Gudger scrambled around the hillsides, cutting trees or climbing onto cars, tying trees.
“When you find one,” the young man said, “give a holler.” There was a quiet friendliness in the way he talked that reminded Grover of Mr. Gudger.
As the four of them walked down into the fir trees, Sudie frowned and said in a shaky voice, “That’s sad about Mr. Gudger.”
They heard a chain saw start up on the other side of the hill.
“Mr. Gudger had a good life,” Sudie said, the frown fading. She said it like enough was enough, and she’d decided not to feel sad about Mr. Gudger. The four of them walked down the hillside, wandering off between the trees. After a while Grover heard Sudie call, “This is it!”
He found her standing in front of a tremendous, bushy tree.
“Lord have mercy,” Jessie said, coming up to them.
“Y’all can’t be serious,” their father said. He walked around the tree. “I’m not even sure that’ll fit in the house.”
Sudie took Grover’s arm. “We like it.”
Their father looked at Jessie. “Can you talk some sense into these two?”
“Y’all do have high ceilings, and if need be I can trim the bottom with my chain saw.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” Sudie said, hugging their father.
“Thanks a lot,” their father said to Jessie.
“We better check it for copperheads, though,” Sudie said.
“Too cold of a winter for ’em,” Jessie said.
The tree was so big it covered up the four-wheeler. From where Grover and Sudie stood, it looked like the tree was rolling up the hill under its own power. The grandson spent another half hour tying the tree to their car. “You don’t want this baby rolling off on the highway.”
While Mr. Gudger’s grandson secured it to the car, Mrs. Gudger invited them into her kitchen for hot chocolate and homemade cookies. She had them sit at her table while she served them. Grover worried she’d say something about their mother not being there, but, even after all these years of them coming here, it didn’t seem she remembered them exactly.
While they sipped their hot chocolate, Jessie started telling a story about working at a Christmas tree farm and coming across a moonshine still. Their father went over to Mrs. Gudger, who stood at the stove, and told her he was sorry to hear about her husband.
“Married sixty-seven years,” she said, stirring a pot of hot chocolate. “Losing Henry took the fun out of it.” Then she lowered her voice. “But you, you’re a young fellow and need to get right back on that horse.”
“Ma’am?” their father said.
“I read about your wife in the paper last spring,” the old woman said. “I’m real sorry.” Then she said, “But those kids need a mama.”
Their father looked shaken when he came back to the table, but Sudie was caught up in Jessie’s story.
“The moonshiner gave me two quarts of moonshine to keep quiet,” Jessie said.
“Did you drink it?” Sudie asked.
Jessie looked at their father. “Me and your parents.”
“I’ve never had such a headache,” their father said.
“I was sick for two days,” Jessie said.
“It didn’t faze Caroline,” their father added.
“She sure could hold her liquor,” Jessie said.
When they left, Mrs. Gudger came from behind the stove and gave Grover and Sudie big hugs, and Grover knew she’d remembered them down to their very core.
“You come back next year,” she said. “I plan to be around a while longer. Figure I’d let Henry fend for himself up in Paradise. Man can’t even scramble an egg. He’ll appreciate me all over again when I do finally show.”
“Aren’t we headed the wrong way?” Sudie asked.
They’d turned east toward Spruce Pine rather than west back toward Asheville.
“I thought we’d have lunch at that little diner,” their father said.
Their father drove slow. Even on its side the tree added four feet of height to the car. Jessie said it was a good thing it wasn’t a windy day or it’d blow the car right over. A long line of cars and trucks had bunched up behind them, stretching as far back as they could see.
On the edge of Spruce Pine, they passed a turnoff and a sign said Spruce Pine Hospital. “Isn’t that where Leila used to work?” their father asked Jessie.
Their father kept his eye on the hospital as they passed. Grover wondered if Leila being up here had played a part in him deciding to come up here to get a tree. Maybe this trip hadn’t been as much for Sudie and him as he’d thought.
They passed the one grocery store in town, crossing over an old stone bridge that looked to Grover like something Druids might have built.
“That’s the Toe River,” Jessie said as they crossed the bridge. “Named after an Indian princess who drowned. They say she was fleeing her angry father.”
“Why was her father so mad?” Sudie asked.
“She had a boyfriend he wasn’t all that crazy about,” Jessie said.
Their father drove them around downtown Spruce Pine. A couple of blocks of old rock-faced buildings. Baker’s Motel and Restaurant, a motel with a blinking vacancy sign. Spruce Pine had two main streets, and because it was situated on the side of a mountain, one street, the one that ran beside the railroad tracks, was a lot lower than the other. The street signs said Spruce Street and Locust Street, but Jessie said people called them Upper Street and Lower Street.
They passed a few clothing shops, a rock and gem shop, a drugstore, a music store and a Hallmark Cards store. It wasn’t downtown Asheville but even so, there were a good many people walking around. Several of them stopped and watched when they drove by.
“Seems the Sequoia we have strapped to our roof is attracting some attention,” their father said.
At the Upper Street Café, they all ordered BLTs and iced tea, except Jessie got coffee. Every time the waitress, a girl Grover guessed to be in high school, opened her mouth she sounded like Emma Lee.
“Can I bring you anything else?” she’d asked when they were done. She put the check beside their father’s plate and as she turned she winked at Grover. He was still blushing when they got out to the car
.
“That’s some tree,” a boy said, who was standing outside a women’s clothing store, holding the leash of a black furry dog. “My mama’s in there, shopping.” The boy sounded exactly like Clay. Everybody up here sounded like a Roundtree.
Sudie bent down and petted the dog.
“The vet says he’s part chow and part anybody’s guess,” the boy said.
“Do you know Clay Roundtree?” Sudie asked.
“Me and Clay were in the same grade at Bakersville Elementary till he moved. Good soccer player. They just moved back. Reckon he’ll be starting back to school. They live up on the Roan with Mrs. Sparks.”
Back in the car, their father began to veer back over the stone bridge that led to the highway, but the light turned red. Grover looked at his father staring up at the traffic light. “Wonder how the Roundtrees are doing?” Grover said, looking out his window.
“Me too,” Sudie said.
“Bakersville isn’t far,” Jessie said. “And the Roan is just beyond it.”
“If y’all want to visit them that bad,” their father said, trying to sound casual, “we have a little time.” The light turned green, and instead of going over the bridge, he turned right onto a road with a sign that said Hwy 226 and another sign that said Bakersville nine miles.
Bakersville was smaller and lonelier than Spruce Pine.
“There’s one problem,” their father said as they passed an old building Jessie said used to be the courthouse. “We don’t know where they live.”
“They live on Roan Mountain,” Sudie said.
“The Roan is a very big mountain,” Jessie said.
“Clay said they live exactly eight miles from his school,” Sudie said.
“Where’s Bakersville Elementary?” Grover asked.
Their father drove a little bit farther through town.
“There.” Sudie pointed to a low brick building on the side of a hill.
His father pushed the odometer. They drove through Bakersville and started up Roan Mountain. Neat cabins and well-kept trailers were set back from the road. The higher they drove, the fewer houses they saw and the more they passed through dark sections of evergreen trees—spruce and fir and hemlock—shading patches of snow. Grover couldn’t help thinking that if he lived up here there’d be no shortage of limbs to weave. In the shadowed sides of the mountain, icicles clung to the rocks.
As the road steepened, the car’s engine whined, also the wind picked up and the Christmas tree shifted on the roof. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea,” their father said. He pulled off to the side of the road and Jessie got out, tugging on the twine and checking the knots.
“That boy must’ve been an Eagle Scout,” Jessie said, getting back in the car. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such sturdy knots.”
The car climbed on up the mountain, the engine whining louder.
“Clay said Roan Mountain is the second-highest mountain east of the Mississippi,” Sudie said.
“The vegetation is similar to Canada’s,” Jessie said, looking at the plants and trees along the roadside. Just as the odometer read eight miles, a dirt road appeared.
“Turn down there,” Sudie said.
“You sure?” their father asked.
They bumped along the dirt road for about a quarter of a mile, their father’s eyes going to the roof of the car. Finally they pulled in front of a small cabin with smoke curling out of its chimney. The cabin sat on the edge of a big meadow with wisps of clouds and a few stunted pine and spruce trees that looked like the bonsai trees Grover’d seen on a class trip to the North Carolina Arboretum.
“This is it,” Sudie said.
“How do you know?” their father asked.
“I don’t see their van,” Grover said. All they saw was a green rusted Subaru parked in a shed around the side of the house. This cabin looked too small to hold Leila and Emma Lee and Clay too.
“We better turn around,” their father said. “Some old boy might shoot us for trespassing.” His father had started backing out when a golden retriever and a black lab tore around from the back of the house, barking fiercely, and circling the car.
“No, wait!” Sudie said. “Those are their grandmother’s dogs Clay told me about. Benjamin and Midnight.” Sudie started to get out.
“Hold on,” their father said. “Those dogs look like they mean business.”
Before he could stop her, Sudie was out of the car and calling to the dogs.
“Sudie,” their father said, jumping out of the car.
The dogs came up wagging their whole hind ends. Sudie bent down, petting them. They licked her face. “They’re sweethearts,” Sudie said as Grover and Jessie got out too.
As Grover petted the dogs, he realized how much colder it was up here. The air was lighter up here and richer somehow. Occasionally there’d be a break in the clouds. They could see that the cabin was perched on the side of the mountain. They could see valleys and waves of mountains in the distance.
“Leave those folks alone.” A woman stood in the cabin doorway, talking to the dogs. She was dark and tall and had long black hair like Emma Lee except hers was pulled back in braids. She wore a flannel shirt, blue jeans and hiking boots. Grover didn’t remember Emma Lee mentioning an aunt.
“Mrs. Sparks?” their father said.
“Yes?” she said.
This was Emma Lee’s grandmother? Whenever Emma Lee or Clay had talked about their fierce mountain grandma, Grover’d pictured some toothless hag who walked around with a shotgun over her shoulder and a wad of tobacco bulging in her cheek. This woman was the youngest, prettiest grandmother Grover’d ever met. She could’ve been Leila’s older sister.
“We’re the Johnstons,” their father said.
“You live across from my daughter,” she said, walking down to them.
“And I’m Jessie,” he said, stepping up and shaking her hand.
“I know,” Mrs. Sparks said.
“I’m sorry for descending on you like this,” their father said. “We just happened to be up this way.”
“Just happened to be in the middle of nowhere?” Mrs. Sparks didn’t smile. She did smile when she saw the tree tied on their car. The tree covered up the whole roof of the car. Some limbs had come loose and hung down the sides. A Christmas tree on wheels.
“We went to Mr. Gudger’s tree farm,” Sudie said. “It’s where we always go.”
“Henry Gudger passed this summer,” Mrs. Sparks said, “but Irene’ll keep the farm running. That grandson of hers is a hard worker.” It hadn’t occurred to Grover that the Gudgers might actually know the Roundtrees.
She turned to Grover. “You’re the boy who saved my granddaughter’s life.”
Grover looked at the ground. “I just happened to be there.”
“Just happened to pull my granddaughter from a burning house. Just happened to drive a good fifteen miles out of the way. You Johnstons are big on just happening.” Mrs. Sparks looked at their father. “Leila and them have gone over to Elizabethton to visit a sick cousin. Not sure when they’ll be back.”
“Elizabethton?” Grover asked.
“That’s in Tennessee,” Jessie said.
“We’re only a mile from the Tennessee border,” Mrs. Sparks said. “Roan straddles both states.”
Grover felt his heart sink, and from the look on their father’s face, Grover guessed his heart had sunk too.
“Come in and have some tea.”
“No, thanks,” their father said, “but please tell them we came by.”
“You went nearly an hour out of your way,” she said. “The least you can do is let me give you some tea.”
“We better get on down the mountain,” their father said. “No telling how long it might take us with that tree.” He sounded defeated.
“They’ll be sorry they missed you,” Mrs. Sparks said.
They started back to the car.
“Could I see your weavings?” Grover asked Mrs. Sparks, who was
halfway up her walk.
“Why, sure,” she said.
“Maybe another time,” their father said to Grover.
“When?” Grover asked. “When will we ever be up here again?”
“Maybe this spring?” their father said.
“We’ll never come back here,” Grover said, “and you know it!” Grover was surprised at his anger.
“I’d like to see her weavings too,” Sudie said.
“Me too,” Jessie said.
Their father sighed. “We should only stay a few minutes.”
The front room was toasty from the woodstove that roared in one corner.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” Mrs. Sparks said.
“Don’t bother,” their father said.
“It’s no bother,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen.
Bookshelves sagging with books crowded the walls. Emma Lee had said her grandmother drove the county bookmobile. Woven mountain scenes occupied wall space that wasn’t taken up by bookshelves, like the weavings Grover’d seen in the Roundtrees’ house. Mountain scenes: sheep grazing in a meadow; a man holding the reins of a mule plowing his field; a dark-haired girl, who looked a lot like Emma Lee, milking a cow; two boys, one who looked like Clay, fishing in a stream. Woven scenes hung everywhere. They looked like paintings from a distance, but the closer you got to them, the more you saw the individual strands.
Their father was more interested in her books. “She’s got a first edition of Look Homeward, Angel. And another one of You Can’t Go Home Again.”
“You run the Wolfe house,” said Mrs. Sparks, coming in from the kitchen.
“He’s the executive director,” Sudie said.
A gust of wind whistled down the chimney, making a fluttering noise in the stove.
“Where’s this one?” Jessie pointed to a weaving of a little cemetery overlooking a long view of the valley below and the mountains beyond.
“I can take you to see it after we have tea.”
“Do we have time?” Jessie glanced toward their father.