Requiem by Fire

by Wayne Caldwell

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Pretty much what I said, sir.”

  Ray peered under the hood. Silas bent toward the passenger side. Evans’s sleeve displayed three embroidered gold service stars like spring dandelions. “Mr. Superintendent, I got a spare horse.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Evans pointed to Ray, who disappeared with a wrench beneath the running board. “My man will take care of it.”

  “Wouldn’t have one of these infernal things,” Silas said, refilling his pipe. “A man ought to get where he needs to go on foot or atop a horse. You got one at home, Mr. Superintendent?”

  Evans pursed his lips, shook his head, and listened to Ray bang hell out of something.

  “That’s a shame. People say dogs is your best friend, but mine’s Maude. She ain’t never refused to take me anywhere, and ain’t left me in strange country, like this seems to want to do.”

  Ray popped into the seat. “Had to get underneath far enough to whack the starter. Let’s see if it works.” The automobile cranked like it was on the showroom floor.

  “Home, Bradley. Good day, Mr. Wright,” said Evans, his riding crop tapping the door. “I hope to see you soon.”

  Silas watched them drive away. “I’ll bet you do, you sawed-off banty rooster. I’ll bet you do.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Scrap Iron

  Bud Harrogate acted like he had no cares at all, whistling, kicking leaves, fooling around under the beech grove near the new schoolhouse. On a sunny March day in 1931 his plaid flannel shirt, by female standards a rag, felt smooth and as warm as aged bourbon. At a distance he appeared a schoolboy, but closer, forty-three years showed like rust on a weathered trawler.

  He had left Cataloochee when the leaves had turned the previous fall, and had shown back up like a stray cat this dogwood winter, just in time to help Silas plant the kitchen garden.

  That morning he had walked to Nellie for a cold cola dope and a Moon Pie, as much to aggravate Silas as to enjoy food “with some damn taste to it.” On the way back he had succumbed to a fit of what his aunt used to call “pure trifling.”

  But his dance stopped as his foot struck an intractable object. “What the hell?” He knelt beside an ornate cast-iron piece about three feet long, half-buried beside an emergent root. He pulled it from the ground, knocked dirt from its interstices, and wiped rust and soil with his bandana. As he rubbed, “Peabody Desk Works” slowly appeared in a central medallion.

  Harrogate studied it like it might be an artifact from ancient Troy. He’d seen such things, but long ago, far away. He stared at it from every angle, then nodded. Oh. Sure. It’s one side of a school desk. Wonder where the rest of it’s at. There’d be another side and a stretcher or two. Plus a wooden top that’s rotted away, I reckon.

  He made several turns, each wider, sliding boots over dry grass but finding nothing save pebbles and beechnut hulls. The maker had striven for a lacy look, but the piece felt as heavy as a yearling sheep. Ain’t no way I’ll carry this bastard a mile and a half. He replaced and re-covered it for safekeeping.

  The rest of the way he tossed rocks into the creek and lit cigarettes one off another. A couple of puny gray squirrels eating nuts on a pine branch seemed the only furry creatures besides cattle left in Cataloochee. Songbirds twittered, but he didn’t try to spot them. Never was good at birds. If they’re littler than a jaybird, I can’t much tell one from another. The old women, though, can tell them apart, even perdict weather by them. My aunt, though, she never said a word about them.

  Harrogate was country born—two miles from Providence, in Blount County, Tennessee—but wasn’t raised listening to birdcalls. His father, who turned over new leaves more often than a maple, had found work at the Knoxville Woolen Mills when Bud was two and his sister Doll was nine, of six children the survivors.

  They found a room in a Mule Hollow warren, two miles across the river. To and from work Bud’s old man passed plenty of taverns and breweries, so kept his high-paying job only a fortnight before waking inside a big city drunk tank.

  He found work in a tanyard. About four in the morning after his first payday, he dragged in, cursing, overturning furniture. A bloody left ear dangled and flapped. When his wife shushed him, he yelled he’d do what he goddamn pleased in his own goddamn house. The children hunkered behind the kitchen table.

  After teetering over a splayfooted chair, he caught himself on the mantel, found the poker, and lunged at their mother, barely missing her chin, knocking a hole in the wall. Doll dashed for the broom and whacked her father on the back of the head. Her mother grabbed the shotgun. Doll swept little Bud up and ran outside, screaming. The gun went off. The double snick of breakdown and reload. A bright flash in the doorway, almost simultaneous with another blast.

  Their mother hollered to get packing. Soon they headed to Providence, jumping over a dead man. No one had paid a bit of attention to their arrival in Knoxville—nor did anyone remark their departure.

  Their mother died of pneumonia when Doll was sixteen and Bud was barely nine. His aunt, a fat sourpuss of a Mule Hollow Holiness woman, took him in. She preached on occasion, and was fiercely partial to church, food, and family. Her husband raised beans, squash, corn, and tomatoes beside the Holston, up toward Mascot. He sold produce, along with fish, mussels, turtle meat, and whatever he yanked from the river—tires, saw logs, pieces of houses. Bud blended with their six children like a red drop helps a pint of white paint.

  Harrogate rounded the last bend of roadbed to see Silas splitting stove wood. When Bud appeared in the woodlot, Silas stopped to wipe his forehead. “About time you got back,” he said. “Thought you went clean to Waynesville to get that mess.”

  “I took my time. Here.” He handed Silas a tin of sardines. The label pictured a sailboat heading toward a full moon.

  “Thanks, Bud. I love these things.” He set it on the smokehouse porch. “Think we can work up this stove wood before supper?” He nodded at a pile of billets.

  “Take a rest. I’ll bust these up.”

  Harrogate picked up the hatchet. “Silas, I found a humdinger next to the schoolhouse.”

  “What, son?”

  “Part of a desk, half-buried in leaves. Real fancy, cast iron, all ropy looking. Couldn’t find the rest of it.”

  Silas chuckled. “We must’ve missed it after we burned the schoolhouse. I don’t know what a man does with half a desk.”

  “Oh, it’s worth something.”

  “How so?”

  “Scrap iron. My uncle paid for many a thing with it. Had him an old barrel sawed in half lengthwise, so it made two what you might call tubs, sectioned off for brass, iron, tin, steel, what have you. Kept a magnet hanging next to it. Tanned me good if he caught me fooling with it.”

  Harrogate had settled into a rhythm that littered splits to the right of the chopping block. Between whacks Silas bent to pick up stove wood. “Who’d he sell it to?”

  “Oh, any number of scrap mongers worked in Knoxville. The big yards took metal, cloth, paper. Sold it to Yankees. They’d stack bales of rags at the train yard like cotton back in slave days.”

  Silas carried the wood inside while Harrogate fetched more. Silas returned, brushing splinters from his overalls. “You know, Bud, I never thought I’d hear of folks selling scrap. I keep my stuff till I wear it slap out, and so does everybody I know.”

  Harrogate started another pile. “It’s a different world, Silas. You know, I been thinking.”

  “Never a good sign.”

  Bud never paid attention to sarcasm. “You know folks is moving out….

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

  “Well, there’s not a one of them but abandons metal—a bucket with a hole in it, if nothing else. A man could follow and glean some money.”

  “They don’t miss nothing big enough to mess with.”

  “Don’t be too sure. I heard them Hoglens up Carter Fork left a broke-down mowing machine. Didn’t have room
, nor want to make an extra trip. That’s a start, and there’s any number of fence steeples and tin cans and old nails laying around—they add up. A man could sell a bunch of scrap.”

  “Where at?”

  “Folks along the French Broad in Asheville trade in it. I can ask Sis. Likely Jews.”

  “Why Jews?”

  “In Europe, what a body does is handed from father to son. Jews do most everything, including doctoring and lawyering, but almost all scrap men are Jews. They keep at it over here. Good people, honest, hard workers. I’m ever on trial for something I didn’t do, I’d rather have a twelve-Jew jury than a key to the jailhouse.”

  “To be devil’s advocate, the Bible’s pretty hard on them.”

  “You’re right, at least about that bunch Moses put up with. I’d been him, I’d left them wandering till they rotted.”

  “Kluxers say they killed Jesus.”

  “Never knew a Kluxer smart enough to pour piss out of a boot in the direction of the heel.”

  Silas lit his pipe. “You saying you don’t believe the Bible?”

  Harrogate fished a Camel from his shirt pocket. “I believe what I need to. I’m not like my aunt. She thought them floating ax heads was just as true as the Resurrection. She said Jesus would be back—before she died, mind you—to snatch folks to heaven.” He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Are you about finished meddling?”

  “Nearly. Did them Holiness baptize you?”

  “Yeah. I was twelve. I’d a been fourteen, they wouldn’t have caught me. You wondering if I’ve been saved?”

  “Well, you never go to church.”

  Bud dropped the hatchet and gathered an armload of wood. “Silas, church people do mighty low-down things. If that’s ‘saved,’ they can keep it. I enjoy a good sunset, a pretty woman, and a stiff drink, and if that means I’ll fry in hell, so be it. Wouldn’t want to fly around forever with a damn harp anyhow. Now quit worrying about my soul and tell me when we can filch that mowing machine.”

  Next morning they hitched mule to wagon and headed toward the settlement. Nelse Howell emerged to sweep the little porch as they stopped. “Morning, gents. You’uns all right?” he asked.

  “Fair to middling, Nelse,” said Silas. “Any mail?”

  “Yep. Bud, how about another Moon Pie?”

  “Yes, sir, and a grape drink.”

  Nelse lumbered inside, handed Silas an automobile circular, and Harrogate his sweet confection. Bud laid a dime on the counter and fished in the drink box for a grape soda. Body and blood for Harrogate. Silas eyeballed the little store, the shelves of which were more than half empty. He was about to comment on that when he noticed the storekeeper’s face. “Nelse, did a haint drag you around half the night? Your eyes look red as a fox’s ass in a pokeberry patch.”

  “Ain’t sleeping good,” he admitted. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, neighbor. Everybody leaves, I’d be so worthless I might as well shoot myself.”

  “I’d not give that any consideration,” said Silas. “You could storekeep somewhere else.”

  “Might have to. Shoot, I’d retire, but I can’t afford to. Where you’uns off to?”

  “Going on a little scrap drive.”

  Nelse laughed. “If you get active cash money, spend it here. Where do you plan to sell it?”

  “Bud knows some people, don’t you?”

  Harrogate nodded, his mouth full.

  “Nelse, would you take a gander at this? I’d not put that in my body,” said Silas. “Anything looks that awful can’t be food.”

  “Neighbor, let him alone. That might be the only dime I take in today.”

  The road into Carter Fork was as rough as a cob, so Silas had to leave off smoking for fear a bounce might cause him to break his pipe stem or bite his tongue in two. They lurched and swayed for a mile and a half. They tied their cloth tool bag to a strut to keep it in the wagon bed, so pry bar, hammer, and pliers made a first-class racket. Silas’s full bladder and aching head made him contemplate walking back.

  Harrogate grinned like a Chessy cat eating gravel when he spied the weed-choked turnoff. Beside the barn sat a mowing machine. The Hoglens had raptured seat and sickle, grinder and teeth, but had left behind wheels, axle, levers, and frame. Iron and steel in pounds, not ounces.

  Harrogate braked the wagon and found an oat bag for the mule while Silas relieved himself. The Hoglen house had never been a palace, but three months’ absence had not helped. Part of the front porch had been pried up for kindling, and no pane of glass survived intact. The front door was locked, but the back door splayed from rusty hinges. In the kitchen they found liquor bottles scattered on the floor and stove neck-first into the wallboard. “Lordy,” said Silas. “Looks like they had a go-away party. At least they thought they was having a good time.”

  “Yeah, but they’re long gone. Mice done ate the candle wax out of this slut.”

  In the west bedroom a coil spring covered with a rotten safety-pinned sheet sat catercorner beside a rusty metal colander. “Looky, Silas. More loot.”

  They surveyed the rest of the house, noting locks, the possibility of cast-iron sash weights, a soap dish, some ratty kitchen utensils, a dozen or more brass .22 casings. “Silas, there’s a little money here. You know, I just remembered something one of them scrap men said when I was a lad. Stuck with me better’n most stuff I had in school.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He said we’ve been making metal since time began, and all of it is still here, just in a different something or another. This shell casing might have been part of an Egyptian spear.”

  “How do you reckon it got to Cataloochee? No, I don’t have time for you to answer that. I got another question. Exactly who does this belong to?”

  Harrogate turned, surprised. “The government grabbed it, right?”

  Silas nodded and lit his pipe.

  “And America’s a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, right?”

  Silas grinned. “Yep.”

  Harrogate lit a Camel. “And we’re Americans, right? So it belongs to us. Fair and square.”

  “I hope nobody argues that point.”

  “You don’t need to worry, Silas. What’ll they do with this stuff anyhow? Put it in a museum?”

  By dinner they had untwisted honeysuckle and bittersweet from the mower and loaded the machine, and harvested metal from the house and miscellaneous stuff from the barn: a broken bale hook, a rusted chick brooder, a snaggletoothed currycomb, broken plow points. They ripped galvanized roofs from corncrib and outhouse. A half-covered pile beside the corncrib yielded flattened cans that once had held anything from peaches to sardines.

  Near the chicken house Harrogate spotted large square nail heads in a six-foot poplar bole on the ground. “Wonder if we can get them big nails. Why are they there, anyhow?”

  Silas knelt. “Learn something. This is a mink trap. Drill you a hole in the side of the log a little bigger than the critter’s head, then sharpen hell out of some nails, drive them in at an angle. He can stick his head in, but can’t pull it out without killing hisself.”

  “What do you bait it with?”

  “Anything that stinks to high heaven. Pop used to leave fish guts in a bottle on the windowsill. After it ages, it just takes a drop or two. Soak a dough ball with it for catfish bait.”

  They stood and stretched. “Silas,” said Harrogate, “you wouldn’t let me tell you how that brass came here from Egypt, so here’s another deep thought. There ain’t no more mink. Otters is gone. So’s elk, buffalo, pigeons, wolves. Foxes ate the rabbits and moved on. Ain’t but a handful of deer. We’ve about killed out the turkeys, and I can’t remember when I saw an eagle. And soon people will be gone. You want to make a bet?”

  “On what?”

  “The government being right about something?”

  “What in hell might that be?”

  “When people leave, they’ll all come back.”

  “
What, all the critters?”

  “Think about it. Who killed off the pigeons and elk? And, for that matter, who killed enough rabbits that the foxes could eat the rest? Take out people, you’ll leave a few bear, and little bastards—squirrels, mice, moles, tweety birds—but pretty soon here’ll come rabbits and foxes and so on until it’s back like God made it to be.”

  “You’re addled, son. We hadn’t killed them rabbits, we wouldn’t have raised a single vegetable. And you know what was first in the Bible—a garden tended by man.”

  “Yeah, and look how quick we messed that up.”

  “Hell, a man can’t argue with you a-tall. Let’s get out of here.”

  So they secured the load and headed back. Silas and Bud sat in front of a bizarre mixture of castoffs, at the apex of which the bar of the mower swayed like a schooner’s mast in a summer squall. They had to stop every few hundred feet to throw something back in, and the load creaked and clanked like a muffled cowbell.

  Nelse heard them five minutes before they arrived at the settlement. In his apron, he emerged waving from the post office. Silas, however, had another headache and stared straight ahead, his hat jammed onto his forehead. Harrogate whistled and headed down the road, determined to add to their collection. Had they been in a cartoon, his eyeballs would have been dollar signs.

  They turned beside the schoolhouse and parked. Harrogate ran to the desk side and wrestled it upright. “Ain’t it a beaut?”

  Having lit his pipe, Silas ambled over. “Yep. Wonder where in the world the other piece is. I don’t remember any missing desks.”

  Harrogate hefted it with both hands, bringing it about three inches off the ground. “Move over, Silas,” he grunted. “Here it comes.” He waddled it to the back of the wagon and rested the weight on the ground. “I might need a little help with this,” he panted.

  “Maybe this here warden can help,” said Silas.

  Harrogate had not heard Jim’s horse, upon which he sat, grinning. “You look like castaways from Don Quixote. Where do you think you’re going?”