by Ron Rash
“You all take your time,” Slidell said as they got off the buckboard. “After I get my trading done, I’ll be at the Turkey Trot. Just come get me when you’re ready.”
“What do you need to buy, sister?” Hank asked after Slidell left.
“Just knitting and sewing doings, and maybe look at some cloth.”
“Dawdle awhile if you got a mind to,” Hank said as they stepped onto the boardwalk. “After I get my wire and staples I’m going to talk to Neil Lingefelt about that pulley.”
A farm woman in a flour-cloth dress came up the boardwalk. When she stepped into the street so as not to pass near them, Hank’s face tightened.
“I need to go,” he said.
“I’ll help you carry stuff to the wagon,” Laurel said, “before I go to the cloth shop.”
“No,” Hank said quickly. “Erwin’s boy will help me.”
She watched Hank walk up the boardwalk. He paused to shake hands with Marvin Alexander and was greeted with a nod and smile by a passing couple. In those two years they’d been in school together, it had been hard for both of them but worse for Laurel because of the birthmark. Yet she and Hank had never allowed any difference. At school, he’d fight boys older and bigger because of remarks just aimed at Laurel. Once something started, she’d done the same for him, clawing and biting anyone who took on Hank. Then Ellie Anthony, who sat near them, came down with polio. Her parents claimed Laurel and Hank the cause. Other parents vowed to keep their children out of school until Laurel and Hank were gone.
On trips to town after that, they’d been treated even worse. Besides the snubs and glares they’d grown used to, some people spat as she and Hank went by. A man threatened to horsewhip Slidell if he kept bringing them to town and one Saturday she and Hank had been hit by rotten eggs. Bad as it was, they’d at least endured it together, but since Hank’s return from Europe, most of the meanness had been directed only at Laurel. More than a hand had been left behind in Europe, people seemed to believe.
Laurel walked across the street to the cloth shop. The bell above the door jingled as Laurel entered. Becky Dobbins’s mother, Cordelia, raised her eyes and frowned before turning back to writing in a ledger. Laurel picked up a buying basket and put in three spools of sewing thread and a pack of fish-eye buttons. The muslin she wanted to price was next to the counter, but Laurel slowly made her way amid the various bolts of cloth, the reds and blues and yellows and colors mixed and between, a whole school globe’s worth of color. Laurel thought of the stranger’s shabby clothes and paused before a thick bolt of denim. She wondered if he was playing the silver flute right now.
Laurel went over to the window where dress cloth hung from wood rods like bright flags. She lingered among the linen and serge, the tussah silk that was always cool to the touch. She raised cloth ends to better see the prettiness of the checks and stripes and solids.
“Appreciate it if you don’t handle that cloth,” Mrs. Dobbins said, “unless you’re of a mind to buy it.”
Laurel paid for the thread and buttons and went back outside, her eyes blinking as they adjusted to the light. Hank had loaded the last of the thorny wheels of barbed wire in the wagon and was in front of the barbershop talking to Ben Lusk. All the times Laurel had been in town, the barber had never acknowledged her with a word or even a nod. Ben laughed at something Hank said and playfully slapped him on the shoulder. She stepped onto the boardwalk and caught Hank’s eye.
“What is it?” Hank asked, coming over to her.
“There’s something I’ve been needing to tell you,” Laurel said.
“Why in hell didn’t you tell me this before?” Hank seethed when she’d finished.
Laurel didn’t answer, just watched as Hank’s face seemed to waver between anger and resignation. Slidell came up the boardwalk with a tote sack in his hand. He was about to set it in the wagon when he saw Hank’s face.
“What’s the matter?” Slidell asked, but Hank was already stepping off the boardwalk and headed toward Parton’s Outdoor Goods.
Slidell looked at Laurel.
“What is it?”
“There’s going to be a fight,” Laurel said.
“I need to stop this,” Slidell said, but it was too late.
Jubel came reeling out of the store’s front door, Hank right behind. The men clinched and hit the boardwalk together and rolled over twice. Hank came up on top and drove a fist into Jubel’s face. Blood spouted from Jubel’s nose as Hank cocked his elbow to swing again, but bystanders were already untangling them, ensuring the men were well apart before helping each to his feet. Jubel wiped a forearm over his nose and upper lip, gauged the blood on his shirt.
“I reckon it’s still worth a gold quarter eagle,” he said.
Hank broke free and swung again, nicking Jubel’s chin. Slidell and Tillman Estep pulled Hank away and Chauncey Feith stepped between the two combatants.
“We can’t be tussling amongst ourselves when we have Huns to fight,” Chauncey admonished.
“What would you know about fighting Huns, Feith?” Hank answered.
Chauncey Feith raised a hand and ever so slowly adjusted the bill of his army cap, but it did not hide his flushed face as the boardwalk filled with more gawkers. A woman Laurel did not know gave Jubel a damp handkerchief.
“You want me to send someone for Doctor Carter?” Feith asked.
“Hell, no,” Jubel replied, nodding at his sleeve. “This ain’t nothing.”
“Okay then,” Chauncey Feith said, and turned to the gawkers. “We’ve got this settled so let’s all be about our business.”
Jubel was escorted back into the store.
“Time for us to go,” Slidell said.
She and Hank followed Slidell across the street to the wagon. As they passed back through town, a man in overalls muttered at Laurel and spat.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Hank asked once they were past the college.
“I was shameful of it,” Laurel said.
“Yeah, I guess you would be,” Hank said, no warmth in his voice. “You know about this, Slidell?”
“No.”
Slidell lifted a rein to wipe a dribble of tobacco off his mouth, looking straight ahead as he spoke.
“But it’s something you’ll have to get past, the both of you.”
“I’m tired of having to get past stuff,” Hank answered. “I’ve been doing that all my life.”
“But you ain’t the only one who’s had to,” Slidell said.
“I ain’t forgot what happened to you,” Hank said.
“I wasn’t talking about me,” Slidell answered.
For a few moments the only sounds were the squeak of the springs and axle, the soft clap of iron horseshoes on dirt.
“I know that too,” Hank said, not looking at Laurel or Slidell but straight ahead.
Chapter Three
Every evening for a week the old man had walked down the path to the river. A tin bait bucket swayed in his hand and a stringer was tied loosely around his neck. The rest of his gear lay hidden in the high grass a few yards from the wooden rowboat. He would set the oars in the bow, then place the lantern and hooks and ball of string on the boat’s planking and push off. Once in the river, the old man checked lines he had hung from willow branches. Hand over fist, he pulled straight up as if drawing water from a well. Sometimes trout and carp thrashed to the surface, but more often what emerged were blunt-headed fish whose dark bodies tapered like comets. The fisherman sewed the stringer through a gill and pulled the loop tight before dropping his catch back in the river. He would rebait the hooks and paddle to the next line. This evening, as was his habit, the old man was back ashore by dusk. He trudged up the path, his body keeled rightward by the stringer’s heft, fishtails thickening with dust.
Walter watched until the fisherman passed the guard tower, then
turned from the fence and went inside the barracks, making his way past men playing cards and pinochle, others smoking or writing letters. He lay on his bunk and waited, remembering what the guards had said—that the easy part would be getting over the fence. Finding the way out of these wild mountains would be the challenge. But with the fisherman’s boat, he would not be wandering dense forests but following a current that went exactly where he needed to go, and with no trail for dogs to follow.
It was after midnight when Walter stepped out of the barracks’ door. In his right hand was a haversack that held the case and flute, a box of matches, the medallion and chain. Tucked in his pocket, the note and the money. Floodlights cast a thick white light over the stockade but no face peered from the guard tower. He waited in the barracks’ shadow until the outside guard passed, then scurried to the mesh-wire fence and began to climb. At the top barbed wire snared his pants. He ripped the cloth free and jumped, hit the ground and dared not look back. As the stockade’s lights shallowed behind him, the moon and stars revealed the boat. He shoved off and rowed as fast as he could toward the river’s center.
Once in the main current, he pointed the bow downstream toward a place called Asheville. The biggest town in the region, the guards claimed. He would steal some clothes and then find the depot and buy his ticket. Two nights from now he could be back in New York.
Walter rowed rapidly until the stockade lights faded into darkness. Heavy armed and gasping, he eased his pace, allowed himself to savor the river’s vastness after so long in confinement. The river made a leisurely curve, then became wider, shallower, rocks sprouting midriver. The dark water gurgled, slapped softly against the largest obstructions. Then the banks tucked themselves closer together and the river deepened. For a while there was no light except what leaked from the sky, then a square of yellow from a farmhouse window, farther on a fisherman’s lantern tingeing the shallows. A dog barked. He passed other habitations whose occupants slept, houses unseen though he drifted only a few oar lengths from their doors.
Rested, he began rowing harder. The river widened and then narrowed again. A black panel slid over the sky, locked into place a moment, then slid back, the moon and stars above once more. He turned and saw a bridge’s silhouette, high and solid as a ship’s hull. The river ran straight for a long while and no lanterns glowed from shore or window, the world absent but for water. He was near exhaustion but did not slacken his pace. The river shallowed, more scrapes and grabs against the planks. He struggled free from the obstructions, angled the bow into seams and squeezed through, bumping and swaying. When he finally came to deeper water, he let go of the oars and leaned forward, head on folded arms and knees. Just for a moment.
Willow branches brushed him awake, the boat’s stern shoaled on the bank. The branches were damp with dew, the stars paling and the moon already gone. He rowed back into the current with quick slapping strokes. The river curved and he passed under another bridge, in the distance the flicker of lights. Silhouettes emerged on the shore—outlines of trees, bulky squares of buildings and houses. He passed a brick edifice with an electric light illuminating the words MARSHALL COAL COMPANY. The water’s purling music dimmed amid the crow of a rooster, the cough of an automobile engine. Dawnlight unshackled high branches from the dark.
Walter scanned the bank for a white bedsheet semaphoring a clothesline, saw one, and beached the boat. Mostly children’s clothes dangled from the wooden pins, but he found a man’s cotton shirt and pair of corduroy pants. Just as he finished changing, a dog began barking inside the house. Lights came on and a face appeared in the window. If Walter could have spoken, he would have offered to pay for the clothes, but because that was not possible, he scrambled down to the water, was adrift before a man wielding a shotgun appeared on the bank. Gray smoke blossomed from the gun barrel. Walter ducked and a hail of pellets landed in the boat’s wake. The river curved and he lost sight of the man, for good he thought, but the river straightened. An iron railroad trestle appeared and the man with the shotgun was on it. Walter veered the boat toward the far bank as another downpour of lead hit close by.
He beached the boat and grabbed his haversack, but the bank was nothing but a slant of slick mud. By the time he’d climbed it, the man was thrashing through the undergrowth. A hefty piece of driftwood lay on the bank and Walter picked it up, hit the man flush in the chest when he emerged. The man staggered leftward and slid down the bank and into the river. There was a narrow river trail, but Walter picked up the haversack and plunged through a tangle of briars before making his way across a ridge.
All day he wandered without once hearing or seeing anything human. Rain fell that afternoon and fog rolled over the ground like cold smoke. The trees thickened and the woods became as forlorn as those in a sinister fairy tale, a place where the guards claimed lions and bears and wolves roamed. All manner of poisonous serpents and plants thrived here and no step was safe. Immense watery caverns lay just beneath seemingly firm ground. They could give way and a man fall a hundred feet and then into water so utterly dark that the trout living in it were sightless. Walter wasted three matches trying to light the soggy wood, drank water from puddles but was afraid to eat what berries and mushrooms he saw. Night came and he shivered beneath a rock ledge.
The next afternoon Walter came to a brook and followed it. By then he had begun to feel feverish. A music he’d never heard before rose from the stream. The notes had colors as well as sounds, bright threads woven into the water’s flow. Some of that bright water splashed up on the bank. It was green and shimmering and he scooped it up into his palm and it became a feather. Wind rustled the branches and he imagined an armada of zeppelins rubbing the treetops.
He heard a dog bark and thought it might be yet another hallucination, but he staggered up to a ridge crest to be sure. On one side was a farmhouse surrounded by fields and an orchard. On the other, no angled rise but a gray wall suspended over a cove like an iceberg, the cliff’s looming presence muting the afternoon sunlight. In the cove’s deepest section, directly under the cliff face, a purl of smoke drifted above the trees, but that was at least a furlong away. A dreary place, but a fire couldn’t be smelled or seen. He stayed three days and three nights, each dawn stealing apples and corn from the farm, gaining his strength back and allowing his blistered feet to heal. On the fourth morning he decided to leave after breakfast, but as he searched for tinder he slipped on the slantland and tumbled. Black and yellow insects boiled out of the ground. Only when he reached the ridge crest was he free of the swarm.
He lay on his leaf pallet but the ground fell away and he was adrift. A ship came toward him, one he had seen before. The woman in the green dress stood at the railing, looking out expectantly. She was searching for him.
Chapter Four
He’s probably gone on, Laurel thought.
She had been at the creek for hours without a single note drifting down from the ridge. Hank’s shirt and overalls and her muslin work dress and step-ins had dried. Laurel put them in the basket but didn’t leave. She sat and watched the water. Bright yellow mayflies hatched where the current slowed, the insects blooming on the surface, struggling a few moments, then aloft. They rose and fell, dapping the surface to lay their eggs. One landed on Laurel’s arm, and she studied the fragile body, the wings clear and thin as mica flakes. Late in the year for them, but pretty to see. She watched the mayfly drift upward like a spark, fall slowly back to light on the water.
Laurel wished she’d gotten to the outcrop in the morning, but not long after Hank left for the Weatherbees’, Slidell had shown up with milk and some creasy greens and stayed for noon-dinner. With each additional minute of silence, the ragged man with the silver flute seemed more impossible. She checked the sky and guessed four o’clock. Hank would be back soon, maybe already was. I’ve got to touch where that fire was, Laurel thought. If ash rubs black on my hand, at least I’ll know he was real, not something my lonesomeness
imagined.
She made her way up the creek and into the rhododendron thicket, crouched and lifted a branch. The man lay shivering on the pallet of leaves, his face bright as fireweed. He hardly looked the same person. But he was, the scraggly beard and lank blond hair, the same blue shirt. Laurel moved nearer, close enough to see individual welts amid the swelling. Yellowjacket or hornet stings, more than she’d ever seen on anyone. Too sick to vex me even if he had a mind to, she told herself, so stepped into the clearing and stood above him.
“We need to get you to the cabin,” Laurel said. “If I help get you up, can you walk?”
The man opened his eyes as much as the swelling allowed. He looked as if about to speak, but he only nodded. The man grimaced and tried to clench his teeth, but the shivering caused them to tap together.
“Okay, then,” Laurel said.
She got him to a sitting position, paused to catch her breath, and helped the stranger to his feet. The man nodded at his haversack.
“I’ll get it later. Hoisting you back is chore enough.”
They followed the creek down to the path, her hand firm on his elbow, sidling slightly ahead to better prop him up. Laurel remembered the washed clothes but like the haversack they could wait. The man still didn’t speak and she wondered if even the inside of his mouth was swollen. He leaned more of his weight into her, his skin and clothes reeking.
“It ain’t far now,” she told him as the cabin finally came into sight.
Laurel shouted Hank’s name in hopes he was back. A few moments later he came from the barn. He walked rapidly at first, then came running.
“What the hell?” Hank said when he got to them.
“Help me get him to the cabin,” Laurel said.
Hank studied the man, not the swollen face but the tattered shirt and pants.
“He looks to be nothing but a tramp come to steal something.”
