“That’s different. A body could need that soon enough.”
So they stopped arguing about what and began to plan how. Thomas and Manson wrote to Hugh Carter, Levi Marion’s oldest boy, to see if he and his brother Rass might help.
Thomas and Manson and Mary boxed and bagged and otherwise corralled their stuff. Mary had wanted to learn piano not long after they’d built the big house, so Hiram had traded for one in Georgia. How a Yankee piano by Hallett & Davis had made its way to Elberton, Georgia, was beyond him, but he traded right for it. Now, under the square grand with rosewood top and ebony legs, sat boxes stacked with sheet music, more or less arranged by genre—at least they had attempted to put Saturday night in one place and Sunday morning in another.
Mary’s two large quilting frames and many embroidery hoops and a collection of all colors of thread had to be moved. Bags of rags to make hooked rugs, stashes of scraps and batting for quilts. Dyestuff. Pictures of Jesus. Jellies and preserves, pickles and chowchow, beans and corn. A smokehouse full of hams.
She saved calendars for reasons known only to herself, but if anyone happened to wonder exactly when the blizzard of ’03 had started, she could show them. Only trouble, they now came to be packed away, and she forgot which quadrant of which room of which building they were in. Boxes of The Progressive Farmer and Good Housekeeping and The Saturday Evening Post, what Sears catalogs they had not consigned to the outhouse, and newspapers. Boxes of home remedies and patent medicine. Sunday school quarterlies. And a file of obituaries clipped from newspapers going back to the last century, as if to prove to Saint Peter she had outlived everyone. She had kept every letter or postcard anyone had written to her, and store circulars if she thought she might be interested in ordering something in the future. “Mama, why don’t we burn all this?” asked Manson. “Paper adds up. Gets heavy on you.”
“One day I’ll be old,” she said. “And these will be a comfort. I’ll read them and remember where I was when they came.”
“You was mostly in the front room, weren’t you?” he said, and it was true enough. Hiram had been a wanderer, but Mary had rarely left Cataloochee.
“You know what I mean,” she said. “This is my life.”
Manson and Thomas could not part with tools or fasteners, whether rusted, worn out, or new. A shed held everything from buggy springs to a posthole digger with only one blade. Baskets were crammed with grease fittings, plow points, and rings from long since dry-rotted harnesses. Thomas found a bucket of balls, four or five round creek rocks wrapped with string and black tape—their childhood baseballs. They debated whether to keep or toss, and finally decided it stayed with the shed. The new farm had no spacious outbuilding except the barn, and Manson figured they might dismantle the shed, in which case they would move it, balls and all.
Had they stopped to think, they would have walked away with only the clothes on their backs and begun anew (for they had at least three cents of every nickel Hiram had ever made), or killed themselves on the spot rather than attempt such a Herculean task. But they unreflectively sorted and piled stuff in corners. After a few weeks, though, they debated whether to leave a few things behind, or at least give them away. Jim Hawkins turned down such offers as a scythe with half a blade, and a broken grindstone.
A cattleman came in a stake-bed truck for their last eleven head of livestock. He gave them two dollars apiece, figuring to resell them in Asheville for four. The next day Hugh Carter showed up in a faded green Studebaker ton-and-a-half. Four boys rode in the cab—Hugh, Rass, and two of Rass’s dorm rat friends. Rass had just finished his freshman year at Chapel Hill, and his eastern North Carolina buddies thought it a lark to come to the mountains, help the hillbillies, and maybe catch a trout while they were at it.
Hugh emerged and lit a Camel. “Boys, looks like we got a job of work,” he said, eyeing what he feared was only the beginning of an avalanche of stuff. Thomas and Manson came to the porch. “You boys make yourselves at home,” Manson yelled. “We’ll get you some water.”
By dinnertime Silas and Jim had shown up. “By God, that’s a stout truck,” Silas said. “Hugh, is it yours?”
“Nah, I borrowed it from the man who owns it. I put a new Bendix on it at the garage I work at, and he said if I’d not charge him labor, he’d let me borrow it two or three days.”
“Them high round fenders put me in mind of a big old praying mantis.”
Mary rang the dinner bell. She put a feast on the table—ham and fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, soup beans, turnip greens, and biscuits. They washed it down with plenty of iced tea and sweet milk. Dessert was hot apple pie.
“You expect us to work after that dinner?” asked Jim.
“Can’t take a nap,” said Thomas. “Except for Mama’s bedstead, they’re all apart. Rest of us’ll sleep on a cot or the floor till we get moved.”
“Jim, lead us off,” said Manson. “You got experience.”
“Take the heaviest first. That’d be the cookstove.”
“You hadn’t had such a good dinner, it’d be cold enough to move by now. It’ll have to go in the next truck,” said Mary.
“Then let’s clear this table and take it apart. Here. You boys get a pair of pliers from my toolbox. Come on, college boy, it won’t hurt,” Jim said to Rass with a grin. “I’ll be in back of the truck when you get it outside.”
So they loaded the truck. Mostly furniture—tables and beds and chairs, and Mary’s fancy davenport, and the black walnut corner china Hiram had made. Trunks full of quilts and blankets. Into each hollow Jim directed something be jammed—a towel, or a runner, or a basket. He pointed and they lifted and grunted, and by mid-afternoon their burden was secure.
Jim figured to give them this one day, then back to his job. Thomas and Manson were tired, but willing to head to Saunook. Hugh and Rass were sweaty but figured they might as well get it over with. Rass’s buddies looked half-dead. “How can three people have so much stuff?” one asked.
“It’s not the quantity,” Rass said. “It’s the quality. All this furniture was built to last, not like they make it now.”
Hugh laughed. “Listen to my twerpy kid brother, will you? An expert on everything.”
“I know more’n you, big man.”
“Maybe about some things. I know more’n you about how to keep this old baby running.”
“Let’s go,” said Manson. “Quicker we get going, the quicker we get back.”
So they piled in and headed to Saunook, a journey that took nearly till dark. They unloaded, set up beds, ate a snack, and spent the night in deep, dreamless sleep.
They were up well before daylight and back to Cataloochee by nine. Two loads that day, two the next. Hugh had to have the Studebaker back in Waynesville the next afternoon, so they returned for one last fling. The rest could be moved with pickup and team and wagon.
This time they loaded the cookstove, Aunt Mary having cooked her last meal at the homeplace. It had not been moved in thirty years. Several hundred pounds of ornate porcelain enameled steel and cast iron, it had cooked countless bushels of beans and had fried enough chickens to overpopulate poultry heaven. Jim swore it had taken root, but they finally budged it. The warmers were off, the eyes and grates out, and the oven and ash and fire doors removed, but it still weighed more than a thing that size had any right to.
They saved two pieces of furniture to ride behind the stove. One was an upholstered chair perfect for Aunt Mary to ride in. The other was the hall clock, which, after they padded it, reminded Rass of a coffin. He thought it wise not to say that out loud.
Mary emerged from the house, head held as high as she could manage on that cloudy morning. She wore the black dress and veiled hat she had worn to church since her husband had died in 1926. Her right hand held an ash bucket containing coals from their last fire, covered with a metal lid.
“Mama, what’s that?” Thomas asked.
She looked at him with the tenderness a mother reserves for
a sweet but dumb child. “Why, Thomas, that’s right, you never moved before.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, this is what the old people did. When they got married, they built a fire and never let it go out. When they moved, they took coals to start a fire in the new place. Me and Hiram moved this fire from the old cabin. I reckon his daddy and mama did, too. No telling how old it is.”
“What if it sets your chair on fire?”
“It’ll ride in the cab with you all. If anybody don’t care to set with it, they can come back with me. Or walk. But hit’s a-going.”
Thomas and Manson tenderly helped their mother into the back of the truck, where she looked around as if momentarily confused, then smiled. “There you be,” she said, to no one seen by anyone else. She sat primly in the easy chair and leaned to touch the clock strapped beside her.
Hugh started the truck after the rest found their places. Rass climbed aboard beside his great-aunt, who, when they began to roll out, took what she feared was her last look at the house where she and Hiram had spent so long together. Something caught in her throat, and she bit the back of her hand to keep from crying out. Rass balanced himself on the chair and put his arm around her shoulders. The last thing anyone saw of them was Rass handing a white handkerchief to Aunt Mary, who by then bawled like a baby.
CHAPTER 26
Real Mountaineers
The Cataloochans who had moved to Saunook—Jake and Rachel, Mattie and Zeb—were tired of farming. Seemed the ground there wasn’t as fertile, and, besides, they were getting to an age where they wanted to sit instead of work. They approached the owner of a defunct Pure Oil station to see if he would lease it to them. “I’m not getting a thing now,” he said, “so if we, say, rent on tenths, a tenth of something’s better’n a tenth of nothing.”
So M&R Pure Mountain Mercantile opened, rushing the spring of 1931 with two dozen quilts Mattie had made, a similar number of Rachel’s paintings, a scattering of tablecloths and pillowcases and other embroidered goods, a collection of peach-pit figurines Jake had carved, and miscellaneous items from the stockholders’ homes. They opened of a morning, built a fire, and looked at one another until dinner. After eating, they watched no one enter the little gravel parking lot until they locked up and went home. After a week or two they posted a sign telling customers how to find them, but no one did until the first of March. They reopened on a daily basis on April first, and by summer were actually selling a few things.
Over the winter they held on, and by the beginning of tourist season had recruited other craftspeople. The 1932 season added canned food, along with baskets and bedspreads, jams and jellies, slingshots and carved fish, bittersweet wreaths and dried corn arrangements, wooden back scratchers and birdhouses.
One day Mattie found one of Hannah’s old bonnets, and thought it might be fun to wear it to the store. A tourist from South Carolina that day bought five dollars’ worth of goods. The man tried his best to buy the bonnet for his wife, but Mattie—not having learned that when a customer offers cash money for something not actually nailed to the building, you sell it—refused to part with something that had belonged to her mother-in-law.
That evening Zeb suggested she wear full regalia—bonnet, one of Hannah’s old dresses, an apron, old-timey shoes—and maybe even affect a cob pipe. “Bet you’ll be our top salesman,” he said.
Before the next day was over she had sold fifty dollars’ worth and would have been ecstatic had not the shoes rubbed blisters on her left heel. A particularly loud individual from the north took Jake aside as he and his family were leaving. “You know why I bought all this here? You’re the real thing. I can find a salesgirl in a skirt and blouse anywhere. You’re real mountaineers.”
“I think we’ve struck oil,” said Jake. “If they want real mountaineers, we’ll give it to them.”
“Yeah,” said Mattie. “Remember when Lige and Penny put a spinning wheel at their boardinghouse? Nary a one of them remembered how to run it, but it brought in the business.” Next day they moved Hannah’s old spinning wheel into the entryway. “Anybody know how to work this thing?” asked Mattie. Before dinnertime Mattie, dressed in one of Hannah’s old outfits, made a passable run at carding and spinning flax. Rachel sketched her profile in silhouette for a series of roadside signs to plant in both directions. The cash register was noisy.
Jake proved a hit with customers, sitting in a rocker beside the fireplace, carving and telling stories. His more outlandish yarns came to be known as Jake Tales, and one day a newfangled folklorist showed up with a tape recorder.
Drummers stood in line to try to sell them salves and yardsticks, souvenirs and flyswatters, patent medicine and yard ornaments. The cracker companies also noticed, and soon M&R Pure Mountain Mercantile sold Nabs, and soft drinks from a cooler on the back wall. Penny candy and hoop cheese followed like inevitabilities.
One morning a man entered the store. His face was square, like in the Can You Draw This? ads in Grit and The Saturday Evening Post. Pleasant enough smile to go with bushy eyebrows and horn-rimmed glasses. A flattop haircut finished the cube that was his head. He smelled of pomade and toilet water.
His suit showed every wrinkle known to mankind, and was the luster and color of his face. His carrying case bulged as if it were about to explode.
Mattie removed her corncob pipe from her mouth. “Kin I hep ye?”
“Just looking at your wares,” the man said, putting down his case. “Here’s my card.” Raised print announced that Preston G. Offhaus represented the Galax Import Company. He walked the three aisles, occasionally stopping to pick up an item.
“Howdy, stranger,” said Jake from the rocker near the potbellied stove, although it held no fire, and outside was hot for April. “Nice we’re having weather.”
“Yes,” said the man, after a moment’s hesitation. He shook Jake’s hand. “You work here?”
Jake’s overalls bore multicolored patches, and he had cut the brim of his straw hat with a coffee can to look like a mule had bitten a hunk from it. “I’d not call this working. I just set here and talk and every now and again carve me up a bird or something.”
“But you are connected with the business?”
“I’m one of the stockholders.”
“Do you do any buying?” He produced another card.
“You walked past our head buyer, Mr. Offhaus. That a German name?”
“Yes, originally.”
“Where are you from?”
“Near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”
“That so. What do you sell?”
“Imported goods of all sorts. Great prices. High quality. You can make a killing on it.”
“You could talk to Mattie. Me, I think we should only stock mountain goods.”
“Come hear about a golden opportunity.”
They gathered around the sales counter with coffee. His valise contained several catalogs—baskets, hooked rugs, pieces of small furniture, ironware, stoneware, lamps, and light fixtures. He even carried hearth brooms. All made overseas.
“Mr. Offhaus, we sell a lot of this already,” Mattie said.
“I saw that,” he said. “But let me show you prices. That three-legged stool you stock has a six-dollar price tag. The same identical item I will sell you for two. You can retail it for four, doubling your money. Or for the six it’s selling for now, triple it. Your stack of rugs over there? You retail that little one for eight. I’ll sell you one for three.”
Mattie scratched her head. “How can you do that?”
“Quantity, madam. Plus cheap labor.”
“Are they as sturdy as what we carry?”
“Absolutely. I’d pit my merchandise against anything in the country. How many of those stools will you sell in a season?”
“I’d guess two dozen,” Mattie said.
“So—follow me—you’re currently grossing a hundred forty-four dollars on that item. I’m guessing you pay three for it.”
“Fo
ur,” said Jake.
“Hm. So that’s ninety-six dollars cost of goods—leaving you forty-eight dollars in profit. Sir and madam, I suggest that’s not enough. Price my stool at five instead of six, gross a hundred and twenty dollars, net seventy-two. You have made twenty-four extra dollars while lowering the retail price, which will increase your volume. Or you could sell it for six like you’re doing now, and pocket ninety-six dollars. You can’t lose!”
The odor of hair oil and stale Luckies was getting to Jake. “What about what I said before, Mr. Offhaus?”
“You mean about mountain merchandise, Mr. Carter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There are mountains in Japan, Mr. Carter.”
Jake finished his coffee and turned to the salesman. “Sir, am I to understand that you would propose that we pass this off as real North Carolina merchandise?”
“Why not?”
“Well, in the first place, it’s not.”
“Virtually indistinguishable, I assure you.”
“Mr. Offhaus, I’ve never lied to a customer—at least not about what they’re buying. I might tell a stretcher every now and then, but I won’t tell a man a stool’s made over the mountain when it comes from Japan.”
“Jake, we could sample some of these,” said Mattie. “Maybe a dozen hooked rugs. Put up a sign saying they’re imports. See what happens.”
“There’s the ticket,” said Offhaus, producing an order book from an inner pocket. “I’m ready.”
“Hold on, Mattie,” said Jake. “Looks like we need to have a meeting of the minds.”
“If I might interject,” said Offhaus, “you also need to know that your competitors buy these items like hotcakes. You don’t want to be left behind in the profit race.”
“Are they selling them as mountain-made?” asked Mattie.
“You betcha.”
Jake took Offhaus by his arm. “Sir, you best let us hash this out. Come back in a few days.”
The salesman repacked his bag. “Let me leave you a few matches. I’ll call on you again the next time through—about a month.”
Requiem by Fire Page 24
