by John Ehle
Mooney stumbled over a piece of a sapling log and fell heavily to the ground. He got up, feeling of his shin, which was paining. Far off he heard his dog, baying.
He limped back to the house. “Where’s the gun?”
Lorry handed it to him and he loaded it. “You stay here,” he said to the boys, and turned and ran up through the clearing. Verlin moved to the door, but Lorry caught hold of him and held him. “You do what he told you,” she ordered.
Verlin pulled free of her. “I’m going,” he said, and fleet as a small animal, he dashed away.
Way off they heard the dog and moved toward it, seeking to stay on the trail in the darkness. “That bear’ll tear my dog up,” Mooney said.
Verlin was huffing for breath. “Will he kill her?”
“If she’s got no better sense than she’s shown so far, he will. I didn’t know she would go chasing after a bear. She’s not even of full size yet.”
“I tried to hold her.”
“A female’s not usually so prompt to fight.”
The path was steep. He moved with heavy breathing. Prickly limbs of bushes slashed at him, but that only made him more determined.
High on the mountain he stopped at the laurel slicks, a matted jungle of rhododendron bushes. The bear had gone into it.
He looked off to the right, up above the slick, toward where the dog was still baying. “I’m going through it,” he said. “You want to come?”
“I think so,” Verlin said.
“Stay close then.”
The trails twisted and turned, and all he could see were the tall, stiff bushes around him, closing in even the sky above him, closing out the moon and stars. Now he was in the world of mountain secrets, of lost ways and weasels.
The dog’s voice came from uphill, so he went that way. He reached the end of a path, had to back up and find another way. “Get in these hells and can’t get out,” he said. “Can’t see a speck of light even.”
Verlin was holding to his shirt now, for he couldn’t see to follow. Mooney was stumbling over bush roots and sticks, and the loose rocks slipped under his feet sometimes.
He walked until he had little strength left. His breathing was coming hard, for he was tense as well as weary, and he was angry at all that was wrong. “You ever want to kill something, boy?” he said.
The boy’s teeth were chattering from fear and the cold.
“I’d kill these bushes. They’re pretty when they bloom, but they’re hells all year along. What’s pretty is not allus safe, I tell you.”
“Are we going on?”
“Yes. I’m just listening. That dog has moved, ain’t she?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we moved.”
“But that dog moved across the ridge there, didn’t she?”
“I don’t know.”
“She must have, for she’s not within sound of us now.”
The wind felt noisily of the rocks, but in the limbs of the bushes not even a whisper was made. “There’s a big open space at the top of this slick,” he said.
“The mountaintop, it’s clear.”
“Uh huh,” Mooney said. “I’m going on up there.”
He pushed his way along the narrowing path, moving until the bushes stopped him. He braced himself and pushed hard and the bushes let him advance a short way. He moved on, but the bushes began to come lower over his head, so that they had to bend to get through. He fell to his hands and knees and, pushing his gun ahead of him, began to crawl. “Don’t you ever come alone in one of these, you hear me?”
“Yes,” Verlin said breathlessly.
“Come in here and not be able to get out by yourself.” The bushes began to close tighter around him. Branches poked at his face and eyes and throat. His body was aching. “We’re almost to the top of it.”
“How you know?”
“I know when I get to the top of a laurel slick, don’t you worry about that.” He rubbed his torn skin with his fingers. “Huh,” he said, grunting. “I’ll tan that dog’s hide if I ever catch her.”
He crawled until the bush limbs pressed down so tightly he had to lie on his belly. He slithered through, pushing the gun ahead, pulling himself forward by grasping at bush trunks. He tried to get back on his hands and knees, but the limbs wouldn’t let him.
He stopped. He lay there on his belly on the ground, panting for breath. He wanted to start fighting the slicks, try to break through, but he knew that wouldn’t do any good.
Something moved in the bushes. It went away, breaking through the bushes. Some beast or other.
“We’re about at the top,” he said to the boy. “Not far to go.” He began creeping forward, pulling at the bushes. He grasped at a bush, and something damp moved from his fingers, went away, and he froze on the ground. A small beast he guessed. A rat, maybe.
He forced himself to reach for the bush trunk once more. He pulled himself forward. He tried to push himself to his hands and knees but couldn’t. He reached out and grasped a trunk and pulled himself forward. He forced himself to grasp another trunk, and another, until he stopped thinking about it, and he went on until there was no trunk to grab hold of.
His mind returned to thought and he asked himself what had happened. He lay there wondering. He reached out, feeling, seeking. There was no bush to grasp. He turned his head, looked up and saw the stars near where the mountain stopped.
“I told you we was near the top,” he said.
They lay there side by side until they had their breath. The boy got up slowly. “I lost my shirt,” he said.
“Huh?” Mooney said. He sniffed the chilly air. “Law, that was something.”
“I’m bleeding some.”
“Don’t never go into one of those slicks,” he said. Painfully he took a few steps toward the gap.
They were on a rock shelf and there was light now, drifting down from the moon. The rock shelf was near the mountaintop, which was a deer and elk pasture; the moonlight reflected on the rock and the pasture. Being here was like being small in a great land. Here a man was no bigger than a gnat on the belly of a horse, he thought.
They came to the balsam woods and stopped, awed by the utter darkness before them. They moved into them slowly. The wind whined; the trees moaned and solemnly honed their limbs.
He heard the dog again, far off. The hound note held, then shifted in a changing breeze.
“She’s some’ers on beyond the mountain.”
He backed away from the great trees and moved into the open once again. Clouds were racing by, not far above their heads.
Verlin was close enough to brush against him. Mooney put his hand on the boy’s head. A boy was like a pup, he thought, a friendly pup and it whining. “Your mama’s down there worried about us. We go tearing off like crazy men, chasing a bear. Look a there, you tore your shirt off your back, Verlin.”
“I told you I done it.”
“Look at you. You got no pants on, either. Verlin, you ain’t got a stitch left on yer back.”
Verlin looked solemn. He had been scared nigh to death in that slick, and there was no humor in any of it to him.
“Your mama’s going to skin you alive. My Lord in Heaven, boy.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Verlin said grumpily.
“Well, we’ve going to get you out of the cold.” He found a crevice which he poked about in for snakes; he crept into it and Verlin followed. Mooney gave him his hunting shirt to put on. “Verlin, don’t you tell your mama we went in a laurel slick, you hear?” he said.
“What am I going to say?”
“You think of a way to explain it. Look a there,” he said, pointing toward the top of the mountain where now white clouds were passing. “Huh,” he said. He huddled against the rock. “You see the settlement? See down there. One cabin is sending up sparks. Might be Paul Larkins’, or maybe the German’s.” He rubbed his arms to warm them. “We’ll stay here safe,” he said, “until we warm; then we’ll go find the dog.”
They
moved along the side of the mountain, high up near the peak. They followed the sound, hurrying, slapping into tree limbs, moving fast. They came to another, smaller laurel slick and stopped, then sighed, moved on, seeking an opening. He found one and went into it, holding the rifle before him.
He crashed his way along, the boy behind him. The barking had a closer sound to it now.
They came to the end of the slick, and before them was a great rock. He climbed the slope of it, tapping the gun stock against it to warn the snakes. He got to the top, the boy following, and stopped to rest. The barking was close by.
They moved quickly and quietly until they saw the dog sitting near the trunk of a hickory tree. She saw him approach, but no change came into her howl. Like music, it was very much like music, he thought.
He crept close. He saw nothing above; then abruptly high up he saw two eyes sparkle as the bear looked down. He aimed and fired.
There was a grunt. Nothing more.
He took out tow, took off the ramrod and was ramming home the shot when there came a sound of cracking limbs above. The bear was coming down. The bear fell, fell on his stomach and didn’t move.
The dog came over to the mound of fur, her tongue hanging out. She sat down near the bear’s head and considered it speculatively. She stretched out on her stomach, so tired she could scarcely move, and with a lazy, weary motion, fastened her mouth to the bear’s neck.
“I’ll tell you this,” Mooney said quietly to Verlin, “we’ve got us a good dog there.”
* * *
Small pieces of pigskin, fat and cracklin’s, which had been put back, Lorry boiled outdoors in the pot, then left to cool. By evening there was a layer of white grease on the top of the pot, and she ladled that off to keep.
She emptied the pot and put lye water in it, water which she had let soak through hickory ashes overnight. She boiled the lye water until it would float an egg. She put the grease into it and stirred it with a sassafras stick.
When the bark on the stick began to get stringy, she set the grease to cool.
Mooney put the boys to work on a log, scooping it out. He and the boys lifted it onto the pile of wood next to the door of the cabin. That done, he went over to where she was. “I’ll say this,” he said, “you stay with your work.”
“I do no mor’n I have to.”
“You don’t lose a day, and act like every one is a race to sunset,” he said.
“I don’t know why you tell me that,” she said, pleased.
She helped Mooney on another day tan the leather he had made. The tanning trough was where oak bark had been soaked in water for most of the year, the bark being changed from time to time. On the tanning day she brought ashes from the hearth, dumped them into it for lye, and stirred the mixture.
He fetched the pigskins and the bear hide, and two deerskins. He left them in the trough until the hair would slip, then laid them over a barked log and worked them until they were pliable. “I’m going to cut new harness from the best of this bearskin,” he told her. “I’ll need new harness if I’m to clear more land this winter.”
“You need you a good pair of boots,” she told him.
“I’d like to have a pair of boots,” he admitted.
“Verlin is still nigh about naked,” she said.
He glanced at her to see how angry she was with him. “We can cut him a pair of pants out of a deerskin.”
“If you cut one boy’s pants, you’ve got to cut the other’n a pair.”
He thought about that. He needed leather; he needed twangs and slings, harness and shoes.
“I can make them a linen shirt apiece this winter,” she said, “or one of linsey, if we use part of the wool.”
“We’ll get them clothed,” he said. “Cut each boy deerskin pants, and we’ll use the hogskins for a shirt apiece. Maybe we can split them.”
“What about yourself?” she said. “You need a shirt.”
“I’ll kill a deer or two when I can.”
It would be well to shear the lambs, yes, and shear the ewes again, Lorry thought. She had put off mentioning it earlier. Her mother had told her that no lamb’s fleece should be cut without the woman saying what the fleece would be used for. Lorry was waiting, hoping she could have a baby started in her womb before lamb-shearing had to be done.
There was herb-gathering yet to do, too, even though late fall was not as good a time as spring for it. Any number of illnesses and afflictions might strike them during the winter, however, and they needed to do what they could to prepare. She had learned from her mother how to cure the agues, which chill and fever a body, the cahexia, diarrhea, dysentery; she knew how to tonic a colic or a cholera morbus, how to stop convulsions or web-treat a wound; she knew the symptoms of ringworm and whooping cough; she had cures for rashes, prickly heats and the itch. Her mind was busy with information about cures, spells, roots and bark. “We’ve got herbs to gather soon,” she had said many a night since summer, but there had always been something else Mooney wanted to do first. “We ought to get the herbs afore all the leaves fall,” she told him many times. He would nod and promise her a day, but it all went by somehow. Then one night she said they must gather the herbs next morning if they planned to do so at all, and Mooney didn’t say any different.
So she brought baskets from the loft and shook them out. She got gourds ready, too. She came to the fire and sat down, and quietly but firmly said, “Verlin, you stay here tomorrow; Fate, you come with us.”
Mooney looked up sharply, startled by her interference, but she returned his gaze firmly. After all, herb-gathering was a woman’s task and she should be able to choose the child she wanted to help her.
Mooney turned from her. He studied the birch flames on the hearth, aware that both boys were waiting for his view. “Verlin, tomorrow while you’re stock-watching, you can weave me a trap for coons,” he said. “Get some canes and split them into twos and fours.”
Boneset they found in the valley near the roots of a chestnut tree. Boneset tea was good for colds. Lorry told Mooney they needed tar of the pine, ooze of the sweet gum, and spirit of the beech, so he tapped three trees and fastened half-gourds to their bark. Pennyroyal, the best thing in the world for pneumonia, they found in plenty. They came upon a bed of galax and Fate bundled a hundred waxen leaves with honeysuckle vine. Mooney noticed a stand of ginseng and Lorry dug them up carefully so as not to break the roots.
They looked for pokeroot, which was needed for the itch, and red alder, which could be made into a tea for hives. They gathered dock leaves, which would make a poultice to draw the soreness out of boils.
She needed belladonna for lessening pain, so they sought the deadly night-shade plant. She needed leopard’s bane. She needed acid from the prickly ash and the roots of the blackberry brier.
They walked on up the mountain, gathering and discussing and thinking about where they might eat the lunch Lorry had brought. Now and then they would stop to rest, or to gather a kind of leaf or bark. “I declare, I thought I saw a flash of cloth through the woods over there,” Lorry said at one point, looking off toward a stand of tulip trees.
Mooney looked in that direction. So did Fate. “What do you suppose it might be, Fate?” he asked him.
The boy’s big dark eyes turned up to him questioningly.
“Looked like a swish of colored cloth,” Lorry said.
It might be Mina, Mooney thought. “Mina, you over there?” he called. There was no answer. “She’s probably hiding out from us,” he said.
They cut a length of wild-cherry bark and wound it into a roll. They climbed higher on the mountain, cutting a patch of seneca along the way. They stopped to rest near the balsam grove high up. Balsam was the best herb for kidney ailments, he knew, and he cut bark from a tree on the edge of the woods. He didn’t want to go into the woods, if he could help it, for such places were houses of spirits and the devil. Only a few shafts of light filtered through the heavy branches. On the floor were no bushes o
r shrubs, only moss and ferns, which had moisture clinging to them. A balsam woods was a coffin, he thought; there was no way for a beast to live in there, or even for a flower to bloom. It was the place old beasts most likely went to die, when they had lorded over the wilderness as long as they cared to and were weary of warding off death, when they were ready to find death and say to him: Do what you have in mind to do. Then the moss would cushion them on itself. Perhaps a buzzard would find a way down along one of the shafts of light to tear away the flesh. The moss someday would cover the bones.
There was a ledge nearby with a path leading up to it. As they climbed the path, they caught glimpses of the valley below them. Past limbs of beech trees, they saw the Harrison clearing, a patch of brown in a thickly green sea. Mooney saw his own smaller place, with a smoky chimney, a shed, a lambing pen, and below the house the pigpens. He could see Verlin and the dog walking across the lower part of the clearing. From the last bend on the path, he could see the German’s clearing.
Still looking and talking, they went on up the little path, and from the top of the ledge they could see it all, see every clearing, see the river, see the trail in the valley and decide where the trail must be that went along the mountainside, and where the valley trail, which was becoming a road, it was used so often. He was caught up in wondering at the sights, in marveling at the sense of accomplishment it gave him, when he noticed Fate’s eyes widen with surprise. Mooney turned, and there, sitting at the back of the ledge, was Mina Plover, a big smile on her face. She began to giggle at the looks on the faces of the three people who were so startled to see her.
She walked home with them, and helped them cut aspen bark, for it would relieve muscle pain. They cut a root from an elm tree and peeled off the bark. The bark could be beaten into a pulp and dried in the cabin chimney; it would heal wounds, Lorry said.