Jim gnawed a chicken leg and looked their truck over. “How old is that thing, anyway?”
“It’s a 1916 model. It’s about seventeen year old, now.”
“Fords last forever, seems like. Hope mine goes that long. Or at least long enough to use the new road.”
“What new road?” asked Hugh.
“You know Hell’s Half Acre?”
They nodded.
“And you know where the road bends with the creek coming toward my house? Well, they plan to bridge the creek there and send a macadam road straight to Sal’s Patch.”
“Jim, that’s steeper’n a mule’s face. Nothing but a bear ever goes there.”
“They say they’re going to do it anyhow. Since Congress passed the Civilian Conservation Corps, they’ve been talking about having a camp full of those men in Catalooch. Already got a bunch working at Sugarlands. Trails, roads, the works.”
“Roosevelt’s doing good for a Yankee,” said Levi Marion. “Folks pay attention to him.”
“You bet.” Jim picked up a thigh and walked to the old truck. “What you hauling?”
“Hay for folks to set on.” Levi Marion’s heart raced.
“She’s going to drown!” shrieked Nell.
Rass and George and Mack had rolled up britches legs and waded in to look for crawdads. Little Elizabeth had decided to follow but had stumbled into the deepest bend, where her dress tail had caught on a rock. The water was nearly over her head, but the boys fished her out quickly. When Jim and Levi Marion rushed up, she was crying, but safe. While she swaddled the crying girl in a blanket, Nell fussed at Jim for not paying attention.
On the way to the creek Levi Marion left his limp behind, but still held his makeshift cane. He had forgotten which ankle he’d said he’d hurt. “I believe that scared the hurting out of it,” he said.
Valerie had brought extra clothes, so Little Elizabeth soon wore a pair of trousers with the legs rolled up and a blue gingham shirt. “That’s my Lizzie,” Jim said, swinging her as she giggled. “You look great.”
“She’s a pretty one, all right,” said Levi Marion. “Like her mother.”
“Can you stay the night?” asked Jim. “Gets lonesome here. We could play and sing a little.”
“Thanks, but we need to get back,” said Levi Marion. “And I promised George he could fish that hole by the bend in the road before we leave.”
“Suit yourself. But promise you’ll bring this gang back. Make a week of it. Nell would love the company.”
“Sure thing,” said Levi Marion. “The women can arrange it.”
After Jim left, they took Nell and her children back home. The Carters stopped on the way out to let George fish. “That was close,” said Levi Marion. “I thought sure we was cotched.”
Valerie hugged him. “You know, I doubt he’d have said a word. And I bet he’ll look in the house before dark, just out of curiosity.”
“We’ll be long gone by then,” said Levi Marion. “What’s wrong? You look like something’s on your mind.”
“I’m worried about Jim and Nell.”
“How come?”
“You didn’t notice?”
“What?”
“You men wouldn’t notice some things if they walked up and said hello. It’s plain as day they ain’t getting along.”
“I ain’t surprised.”
“Why not?”
“First time I heard Jim Hawkins married a town gal, I thought to myself he might as well kiss Cataloochee good-bye. Stay in town with her and get civilized. When we heard she was moving over here with him, didn’t I say it wouldn’t last?”
“Not that I remember,” she said with a grin.
“Well, I at least thought it.”
“You were right. But the big question is about you. You feel all right about this load we’re taking back?”
“Can’t hurt. Thank you for thinking this up.”
“It was Hugh’s idea.”
“I’ll not hug him, but I’ll give you one.” As he held her, he looked over her shoulder at the contraband and wondered what the world was coming to. He didn’t much like the direction it was going, but had to admit he felt some better.
BOOK 4
The Hardest Part
August 1933–August 1934
CHAPTER 28
Emergencies
One night, after they put the children to bed, Jim laid out a section of newspaper on the kitchen table. On it he set a bottle of Hoppe’s number nine, three rags, and a short dogwood rod worn as smooth as soapstone. He unholstered his revolver and laid it on the table.
Nell, sitting opposite, glared at her husband. “Do you have to do that in the house?”
“It’s windy out.” He picked up the weapon and spun the cylinder.
“What if it goes off, Jim?”
He smiled, ejected the bullets, and held it toward her. “See, it’s unloaded. Relax, okay? You know as much about a gun as I do by now.” He poured solvent on a strip of cloth and guided it into the barrel with the dogwood. An odor as distinctive as the flash of a cardinal in a cedar lingered over the table.
“I know. I’m just nervous tonight. A little stir-crazy, I think.” She twisted a lock of hair with her right hand. “What was in that package in today’s mail?”
“Word from headquarters. Evans sent a bunch of draft regulations to look over, sketches for a campground, that kind of thing. He wants me there next Wednesday.”
“How do you plan to go?”
“I’ll drive the car, unless you have another idea.”
“Couldn’t we go home first?”
He began cleaning the cylinder, pushing the extractor in and out and anointing it with solvent. “I thought this was home.”
“You know what I mean. I haven’t seen Mother and Father in a month. And they haven’t seen the children.”
“Ain’t that kind of out of the way? I mean, really out of the way?”
“Not to me. You know I hate it here by myself. We could make it a family outing. We’ll stay with my parents, you can drive to headquarters from there—and we’ll return Sunday after church.”
He wiped the weapon with a clean rag, then began to oil its mechanism. “I’ll ride, then. You’re talking a good four-hour drive from Asheville.” The little chip of diamond on her hand glinted in the lamplight. “Besides, we’d have to leave Tuesday. That’d mean I’d be AWOL nearly a week.”
“Take a little vacation, honey. You haven’t had one since you started.”
As he reloaded the revolver, he frowned as if in great pain. “Nell, after I see Evans, he’ll want me back immediately. I can’t take that kind of time.”
“Do you mind if I go to Asheville anyway?”
“Suit yourself. Sounds like we’ll be going in opposite directions.” He reholstered the pistol and began to clean the table. While he worked, she thumbed through a Good Housekeeping, pausing at an ad for a Sunbeam toaster. He stood behind her chair and began to rub her shoulders. “When we get electricity, you can have one if you like.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked, patting his left hand with her right.
“One of these days.”
“Can’t be too soon for me.”
“Let’s go to bed,” he said, and slipped a hand into her blouse.
“Wash those hands first,” she said, and squeezed his other hand.
• • •
A hard day’s ride brought Jim over Balsam Mountain to the Cherokee nation, and from Smokemont a long, fairly straight haul to what seemed the crest of the world at Newfound Gap. He rested and ate, peering over thousands of acres of cut-over mountain range pointing skyward through clouds, like promises that God would one day heal the land. He figured to be five thousand feet above sea level, or more, and wondered if these ground squirrels were the same species as ones in the valley. After dinner he rode down to a brand-new campground on the Little Pigeon River, where he spent the night.
He walked into the park off
ice promptly at eight Wednesday morning. Ray Bradley, hunched over a typewriter and frazzled like he had been working all night, jumped up and grinned. “Morning, Warden. Hope all is well with you.”
They shook hands. “I’m fine, Ray. Just a little saddle-sore.”
“You rode over here?”
“Nell took the auto to Asheville.”
“I believe I’d have gone with her. Then you could have driven over.”
“But I’d have had to stay with my in-laws.”
“Point. You want coffee?”
“Sure.”
“How do you take it?”
“Like I like my women. Hot and strong.”
“Coming right up.”
Two cubes of sugar made the coffee palatable. Jim headed toward Evans’s office with a cup. “Boss in a good humor today?” he asked.
“Reasonable. Just don’t say anything about the game.”
“Wasn’t that Saturday?”
“His Wildcats lost. He won’t get over it until they win again.”
Evans sat behind his desk looking out a picture window at a pair of squirrels tearing through the hemlocks. When Ray knocked, Evans swiveled and motioned them inside. “Morning, Hawkins. Have a seat. Ray, is that report ready?”
“No, sir.”
“Damn it all, then, what are you doing in here? I need that report by ten.”
“Yes, sir.” Bradley closed the door as he left.
Evans’s desk was clean of everything except a miniature brass top hat, upside down and full of paper clips, a brass nameplate, and his riding crop. He gave Jim a pointed once-over. “Well, Hawkins, I see you have not polished your boots.”
“Sir, I forgot to pack my kit.”
“Where did you stay last night?”
“At the campground.”
“That would explain the lack of crease in your trousers. Why would you bunk there?”
“Anymore they don’t appreciate a horse at a hotel, sir.”
“I suppose not.” He tapped the desktop with the crop. “It’s a new era, Hawkins. Within a generation there won’t be one person in a hundred who will know which is the business end of a horse. How does it feel to be part of a dying breed?”
Jim smiled. “Not bad. Give me a minute, though, and I might could feel sorry for folks who don’t know a good horse.”
Evans’s eyebrows arched. “What are you implying, Hawkins?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Hawkins, you’re a study. Are you as transparent as you seem?”
“Transparent, sir?”
Evans stood and looked out the window. “Guileless. There’s a certain veneer of innocence about you that I don’t know whether to trust or not.”
“You know you can trust me, sir.”
“I wouldn’t have kept you otherwise. Tell me about your post. Are things going well?”
“Yes, sir. The leaseholders aren’t giving me any trouble. Got into a brawl last weekend with a visitor, though.”
“Describe the situation.”
“I was patrolling Mount Sterling. Found a car with a couple in the backseat going at it like a house afire.”
Evans’s grin threatened to burst his face. “Did you try to arrest them? Or, better still, ask for sloppy seconds?” He tapped his leg with the crop.
“Sir, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of any law against open-air sex, except the Mann Act, but the car had North Carolina plates, and, if the woman was a minor, she sure had a lot of experience. Then I noticed a couple of buckets and a shovel next to the front bumper.”
“Neither a poacher nor a pussy-hound be, the Bard almost said.” Evans’s crop switched an insistent rhythm on his thigh.
“Yes, sir. I waited to show myself until they had smoked a cigarette. When I made it clear I was going to charge them, he pulled a gun on me, but I wrestled it out of his hand. Ended up citing them for possession of a firearm and two flame azaleas.”
“Amazing, isn’t it—people all over think public land belongs to them, enough so to pull a weapon on a uniformed officer.”
“Yes, sir.” Jim shifted in his chair. “Actually, the woman was a classmate of mine. She was just lonesome for flowers that used to grow at the homeplace.”
“Sentiment is no excuse for stealing. Tell me about your fire situation.”
“About the same, sir. Sporadic small fires. I can’t quite figure it out.”
Evans turned to face Jim. “It’s a combination of things. Some folks are angry because they think the government stole their land. So they say, ‘If I can’t own it anymore, I’ll just burn it down.’ Then you have folks who start fires, then show up hoping we’ll hire them—pay them actual cash money—to help put them out. Damnedest thing I ever heard. And then there’s your common firebug, who simply likes to watch stuff burn.”
“I expect I’ve got some of all of them, sir.”
“Any suspects?”
“One. A man named McPeters. He’s a strange one.”
“How so?”
“He ain’t right. Never has been. My daddy said he used to set fires when he was not much more than a baby. Like you said, he enjoys watching things burn.”
“If you catch him starting a fire, we will prosecute him to the fullest.”
“Sir, I hope not to get that close to him. He’d just as soon shoot me as look at me.”
“Then shoot him first.”
“For no particular reason?”
“Self-defense is always justified, Hawkins. If you cross paths with a homicidal firebug, and always carry your weapon, sooner or later you can kill him with impunity. Enough of that. What did you think of the campground plans?”
“It’s laid out nicely, sir. But there’s one problem.”
“And what would that be?”
“It’s too close to the creek. What if it were to flood?”
“Damn, Hawkins, haven’t you noticed that people want to get close to water? Hear it, see it, touch it. Folks would sleep in the damn creeks if they could figure out how. No, that campground will be at the water’s brink. If it floods, they’ll either get wet or be swept away, depending on the severity. How’s the house we put you into?”
“Fine, sir.”
“And your wife—Nell, isn’t it?—by the way, a very good-looking piece, you lucky dog. Does she like her situation any better?”
“Can’t say she does, sir.”
“Is there anything we can provide that will help?”
“She sure would like to use the telephone.”
“Impossible. I have told you, that is for emergency communications only.”
“I know, sir. It’s just that in the house she can’t help but look at it every day. It’d be better if I put it in the barn.”
“Then put it there, as long as you can figure out how to hear it ring.” He sat at his desk and eyed Jim. “Hawkins, does your wife go to church?”
“Yes, sir. It’s about all there is to do besides stay home and work.”
“Do you?”
“Not always.”
Evans laid down the crop and folded his hands under his chin as if in prayer. “Hawkins, you need to get your ass in church with that young woman. For two reasons. One, she’s liable to meet some man.”
Jim opened his mouth, but Evans shushed him quickly. “Listen, and that’s an order. Even if she didn’t meet a man, you need to be there to make sure she hears Jesus telling her to be content with her lot. It’s God’s will that she stand with you. And how in the hell is she going to hear that if you’re not sitting beside her, you nincompoop?”
“I guess you have a point,” said Jim.
“Of course. Now, look here. I want your opinion of these proposed trails.”
Two hours later Jim was on his way home. He felt as if he’d given Evans a week’s worth of entertainment and maybe even earned himself a raise.
On the late afternoon when Nell returned to Cataloochee, she met two cars on the way in. She refused to budge for the
first, which finally reversed to let her by. The second driver would have none of that, so Nell backed into a tree, which shook her and the children but, upon reflection, was much preferable to tumbling off the mountain. The driver squeezed by her, at first lifting hand and finger signals, then spewing advice not to get out again until she learned some manners. To top things off, she had also spent much of the trip yelling at two children full of grandparental indulgence and a substantial amount of sugar.
When she pulled into the yard, stopped the Ford, and laid her forehead on the steering wheel, the children piled out and ran around the maple like wild Indians. Nell could neither control them nor nap, so collapsed in the bedroom, cool washcloth over her eyes, oblivious to the golden dying sunlight.
When Jim arrived, Mack had a bellyache, and Little Elizabeth’s forehead was seriously warm.
Jim had put up vegetable soup—beef stock, plus tomatoes and beans and okra and potatoes and carrots and whatever had been left over after his kitchen garden had rioted with abundance. He heated a quart and found no one wanted to share. He ate quickly, sopped his bowl with bread, and then began to tend his invalids.
He fixed Nell a dollop of peanut butter on toast and a glass of sweet milk and took it to the bedroom. Mack had gone to bed, too, but when Jim checked, he said he was hungry. Jim scrambled two eggs with ham and ensconced his son at the kitchen table with milk. “I’ll be right back, buddy. I want to see your sister.”
Little Elizabeth lay outside quilt and sheet, knees drawn up, hair pasted to her pillow. Jim put a finger to her forehead. “Wow,” he whispered. When he turned up the wick, he saw a red-faced girl dredging oxygen in shallow, rapid breaths.
When he smoothed her hair, she turned, moaning. “Darling, do you want some water?” he whispered. Eyes shut tightly, she frowned.
He carried a wet washrag and a glass of water when he returned. He held her upright, but she barely opened her mouth. Her dress was wet with sweat. He laid her bed gown on the back of a chair and turned her to unbutton her dress and peel it from her feverish, red-splotched body. He pulled her gown over her head and laid the washrag over her forehead, covering her lightly with a sheet.
Requiem by Fire Page 26
