The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  Cause Papa and Velmer was still working at the lake and jobs was so scarce, Mama and me and Troy had to cut the tops and pull the fodder and carry it to the barn. I said I’d never heard of a woman cutting tops before, but Mama said she’d been doing men’s work all her life, all the way back to Gap Creek and Mount Olivet before that and that a woman could cut tops as well as any man if she put her mind to it. Instead of pocketknives we’d sharpen butcher knives to cut the stalks.

  We went out early in the morning to start, but the field was already hot and dusty. The thing about a dry cornstalk is when you touch it dust and pieces of dried tassel fall down and stick in your hair and clothes and down your neck. A straw hat helps some, but you still get itchy tassel all over you. Worst is the pack-saddle worm that has stingers like thorns all down its back. You touch one and it’s like you got a dozen hornet stings. Besides that, you got to look out for briars and yellow jackets, sweat bees, and a snake in the weeds growed up in the rows.

  Mama and me cut the tops and tied them loosely in bundles and Troy carried the bundles to stack in shocks. Like any job it ain’t so bad once you make up your mind to get into the heart of the work and sweat and just do it. Dreading it’s worse than doing it. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and cut a stalk and moved on to the next one. “I hope nobody sees me doing this,” I said.

  “When my papa was sick, me and Lou cut tops on the mountain,” Mama said.

  “What if a boy was to see me cutting tops?” I said.

  “If he was the right boy, he’d admire you for doing it. A smart man wants a wife he can depend on.”

  I wanted to say no right boy would want to see a girl all covered with sweat and dust and dead tassels, but I didn’t. There was nothing to do but keep on slicing off the corn tops and tying them together. I didn’t have the strength to argue.

  It was near the middle of the morning and I was already wore out when Old Pat come out in the field and started whimpering and whining. She yelped and dashed back toward the house, then come back and yelped again.

  “What’s worrying that dog?” I said.

  “Maybe she seen a snake,” Mama said.

  “Something has excited her,” I said.

  When Troy come back to get the bundle I was tying he said Old Pat must want us to see something. “Ain’t got time to see something,” I said. I was still a little mad for having to cut tops in such hot weather. Old Pat run up to me and whined and grabbed the hem of my dress in her teeth and pulled.

  “Don’t do that,” I said. I was wearing an old dress, but I still didn’t want to get it tore.

  “She wants you to follow her,” Troy said. It seemed odd she was whimpering and bothering me instead of him.

  “I think she has gone crazy,” I said.

  “She’s scared or worried,” Mama said.

  “What is wrong with you?” I said to Old Pat. She looked right into my eyes and yelped and backed away. She dashed across the field, then turned to see if I was following her. Then she come back and grabbed my apron in her teeth.

  “Quit that,” I said.

  But I seen as I was going to have to follow her, to see what was bothering her. “This is a pretty come-off,” I said, and started across the field carrying the butcher knife. Old Pat run on ahead and Troy followed me. At least I can get a drink of water at the house, I thought. And I’ll bring a jar of water from the house for Mama.

  I don’t know where I was when I first smelled it, but by the time I reached the road there was a scent of smoke in the air. Old Pat run on ahead, and then come back, jumping and yelping. And I seen the smoke raising up above the end of the house, but I couldn’t tell if it was coming from inside the house or outside.

  “They’s a fire!” I yelled back to Troy and Mama.

  “Where?” Mama hollered back.

  “At the house!” I yelled, and started running. I was tired and covered in dust and my hand was blistered from holding the butcher knife, but I run as hard as I could into the yard, and Old Pat run with me. I run around the house and seen smoke and flames coming out of the back window of the kitchen. The flames was reaching about tall as a man.

  The water bucket was on the porch and I grabbed that and run to the back and throwed the water through the window. But a lot of the water hit the wall and didn’t reach the fire.

  “Pump more water,” I said to Troy, and handed him the bucket. It was a good thing the pump was so close to the kitchen. I run to the porch and got another bucket, the one I used to carry water to the chickens. Troy pumped as fast as he could and water heaved out into the bucket. As soon as it was full I throwed the water through the window again.

  “You’ll have to reach the fire from inside,” Mama said when she got to the pump all out of breath.

  I took the next bucket and run to the kitchen door. As soon as I opened the door smoke pushed out and I couldn’t hardly see. I stooped down low under the smoke and seen fire on the floor by the window. Holding my breath, I run inside and dashed water on the floor. Mama was right behind me with the other bucket and she dumped that on the fire too.

  The curtains by the window was burning and Mama pulled the curtains down into the wet mess below the window. But the flames from the curtains had set the ceiling on fire. I tried to think of something I could smother the flames with. A wet tow sack might do it, but I didn’t have a tow sack closer than the barn, and besides it was too high to reach. My eyes burned with smoke and I couldn’t hardly see or breathe. I grabbed a bucket and run back out to fill it. Troy had found the canner on the back porch, which he was pumping full of water. But the canner was too heavy to pick up. I dipped a bucketful out of the canner and run back into the kitchen. Swinging the bucket up as high as I could I splashed water on the ceiling, but most of the water fell right back in my face. Mama took the bucket from me and throwed the rest of the water on the ceiling.

  It took me and Mama several trips to the pump to put out all the smoldering places on the floor and ceiling. The kitchen was full of smoke and there was water on everything. The floor and window sill and ceiling was partly burned. A pile of dishrags and towels by the stove had caught fire too. We opened all the windows and doors in the house to air it out.

  Mama was puzzled about how the fire could have got started. She’d left coals in the stove to keep a pot of beans simmering while we worked in the field. It was such hot weather all you needed was a few hot coals to keep a pot warm. But the stove was all closed in and it didn’t seem possible a spark had escaped to start the fire. We looked around the wall behind the stove, and that’s when I seen the mouse with scorched fur beside the burned-up matchbox.

  “A mouse got into the matchbox and gnawed a match,” Mama said. “That’s what started the fire.” It seemed hard to believe but must have been true. One match had set all the matches on fire, which set the rags on fire and then caught the curtains. The whole house could have burned if Old Pat hadn’t warned us.

  I stepped out to the back porch where Old Pat laid panting in the heat. My eyes watered from the smoke, but I give her a big hug.

  Eight

  Now the most embarrassed I ever was in my life was when Papa was mad and said I never could go out with boys again. It was way back in 1927 and I was nearly fifteen years old and I wanted to go places where other young people was. I wanted to go to ice-cream socials and to the picture show. But I could only go if Velmer was going. It didn’t count that one of my girlfriends like Fay or Lorrie was going.

  Lewis Shipman was still taking kids on trips in his truck from time to time. It was something he liked to do. He’d took kids to the Smokies and to Maggie Valley, and I heard he was going to leave early on Saturday to drive all the way to Mount Mitchell, right to the top of the mountain where you could look out on all creation. I’d never been to Mount Mitchell but had heard all my life it was the highest mountain there was east of the Mississippi River.

  I wanted to go so bad it just made me sick to think of being left out. All my life I�
��d been afraid of being left out of things. All the young people I knowed was going. But Velmer was going out in the mountains to look for sang that Saturday. He was always crazy about digging ginseng, for it was worth a lot of money if you could find some. He said early fall was the best time to dig it.

  So I determined I’d go to Mount Mitchell no matter what. It was wrong of me to disobey Papa, but it was like I couldn’t hardly help myself. I just had to go. I had a little old coat that I knowed would be needed since the wind would be cold in the truck and on top of the mountain. But if Mama seen me wearing the coat she’d know I was going somewhere. So I dropped the old coat out the bedroom window and then pretended like I was going to the outhouse.

  To stay out of sight I walked along the edge of the orchard and through the woods, past the old schoolhouse, to the church parking lot where Lewis Shipman’s truck was waiting. Everybody was already there, and I climbed up on the bed and tried to get behind the others where nobody could see me. But when I glanced back down the road I seen Papa coming. I wished Lewis would get in the cab and start going. But he was helping girls up into the truck bed and talking about how fine the weather was for a trip. I stomped my foot I was so anxious to go. But kids kept arriving and Papa got closer.

  When Papa reached the parking lot he said hello to Lewis and said it was a fine thing to be taking younguns on an outing to Mount Mitchell. Papa handed Lewis a dollar bill he said to help with the gas. And then he said, “Annie, you get down. You’ve got to help us strip cane.” I’d never been so ashamed in my life. Everybody on the truck was looking at me. And them still on the ground was looking at me. Lewis Shipman looked down at the ground like he was embarrassed too.

  Papa stood right there at the back of the truck and glared at me and there was nothing I could do but climb down with my cheeks red, trying not to look at anybody in the face. I was being treated like a little girl. I had to walk down the road with Papa, and I seen he didn’t want me to go out with nobody.

  “You don’t want me to have any fun,” I said.

  But Papa didn’t answer; he just walked along aside of me like he didn’t want to say nothing or couldn’t think of nothing. There was a shy side of Papa and I reckon he was a little embarrassed too. For all his bad temper he’d be at a loss for words at times. I was too mad to be shy, except I remembered I’d have to face Mama when I got to the house, and she’d know I’d slipped away from her. My face got hotter still, and it was not just from anger. I hated for Mama to know I’d deceived her.

  After Muir bought the Model T with his brother, Moody, I rode with him and Fay to see the circus parade in town. I’d never seen a circus or a circus parade before. That was when we seen the elephant that killed a man. And the next day we went to the fairgrounds to see the elephant hanged. It was the awfullest thing I’d ever seen, and I wished I hadn’t gone.

  After seeing the elephant die I didn’t ever want to go nowhere with Muir again. Just thinking of riding in his Model T made me sick. There was a thousand boys besides Muir in the world, and I would go with one of them after church or to homecoming picnics. I’d find somebody with a good job and a good car and escape from Green River.

  Watching the elephant hang must have had some kind of effect on Muir too, for the next thing I heard was that he told people he was going to build a church on top of Meetinghouse Mountain. And he was going to build it out of rock, rocks he got out of the river. It was Velmer who heard the story first, down at the store.

  “That’s plumb crazy,” I said.

  “All I know is what I heard,” Velmer said.

  “You can’t even get to the top of the mountain with a wagon,” I said. “Much less carry rocks all the way to the top to make anything.” It give me a bad feeling to think Muir might not be at hisself and to know that people was laughing at him. They’d laughed at him when he tried to preach, and now they was telling rumors about his big plans to build a church on top of the mountain.

  “Who would go to such a church?” I said to Papa a few weeks later, after he seen Muir cutting trees and starting to make a road up the mountain with his horse, Old Fan.

  “I reckon he wants to move the church from the foot of the mountain to the top,” Papa said.

  “Ain’t none of his business to move the church,” I said. “He ain’t the pastor or even a deacon. He don’t even own the land.”

  “His mama, Ginny, owns the land,” Papa said. It surprised me that Papa liked the idea of building a church on the mountaintop. I expected him to say how foolish it was of a young boy to build a church all by hisself on top of a ridge. In fact Papa seemed to admire Muir’s plan.

  “At least Muir wants to do something,” Papa said. “That’s more than you can say for most people around here.”

  I don’t know why the news of Muir planning to build a church made me cringe. After all, I’d washed my hands of Muir. It was none of my business. If his mama would let him try such a fool thing, well, just let him. It hurt me to even think about it, like I was afraid people would be laughing at me. I promised myself to stay away from where he was cutting a road up the mountain and making a fool of hisself. I didn’t even want to see it.

  But as I walked home with other boys and went out driving with other boys, and acted in plays in school, I couldn’t help but hear talk of what Muir was doing. People talked about him like he was a lunatic, and that embarrassed me and made me mad. They said he’d cleared a spot right on top of the mountain and made a level place with a pick and shovel. It was a place where you could look out across the whole valley.

  I don’t know where Muir got any money except from selling muskrat hides and sometimes a mink. Maybe because he done all the work hisself he didn’t need much money. Or maybe his mama give him some money. Everybody knowed Ginny wanted him to be a preacher. I was sure his brother, Moody, didn’t give him no money, for everybody said Moody made fun of Muir all the time.

  Muir got down in the river and carried out rocks and stacked them on the bank. It took him months in all kinds of weather to gather enough rocks for the building he planned. Papa said Muir had made a drawing with a pencil of the church he wanted to build. The drawing seemed to please and impress Papa.

  “Everybody is laughing at Muir,” I said.

  “What difference does that make?” Papa said. “If we waited for people to approve, we’d never get nothing done.”

  “That church ain’t built yet,” Velmer said. “I don’t think it’ll ever get off the ground.”

  Next Muir loaded the piles of rock on his wagon and carried them to the top of the mountain. The road was so steep he could only carry a few rocks at a time. He worked day after day and week after week, and people shook their heads and said he was out of his mind, and I wondered if they might be right. I heard that after he got the foundation laid somebody took a sledge hammer and busted it apart. He thought Moody had done it, and they got in a awful fight.

  After the Depression come nobody was building houses at the lake no more, and Papa couldn’t find work that paid a wage. One day he carried his toolbox to the top of the mountain and offered to help Muir build the joists and sills, the beams and flooring. From the beginning Papa had took a special interest in Muir’s church. When people criticized Muir’s big plans Papa never argued with them. He just smiled like he didn’t care what they said. It didn’t matter to him what they said. Since he couldn’t find work anyway, he might as well give Muir a hand with the church.

  “Nothing ever gets done unless somebody has the idea and the will to do it,” Papa said. Papa always said a good builder had to have an “idea,” that is, he had to be able to see what a building would look like even before he started making it.

  We heard Preacher Liner climbed up the mountain and give Muir a piece of his mind, but Muir didn’t pay him no heed.

  One Saturday Mama sent me to carry dinner to Papa when he was working on the mountaintop. She put enough biscuits and sausage in the bucket for Muir’s dinner too. It surprised me how
much both Mama and Papa liked Muir and thought his big plans for a rock church on top of the mountain made sense. I hoped nobody would connect me with such shenanigans.

  Muir was embarrassed to see me come with the dinner bucket. I guess I was embarrassed too and tried not to look at him. I was took aback by how much work him and Papa had done. There was big piles of rocks and piles of lumber among the trees at the edge of the clearing. The floor had been made and two-by-fours that would hold the wall stood in place. Papa and Muir was hammering the rafters that would hold the roof up.

  I don’t know where Muir got the money for the lumber or how he got the trees sawed up for planks. I know Papa didn’t have no money to give him. But I could see how Papa and him had become a team. They’d learned to work together, one handing a board up to the other or driving nails at the other end of plank. Papa was cutting the pitch on rafters at a mortar box and handing the long pieces up to Muir on the roof. It embarrassed me to see what friends they’d become. It was like Muir was winning his way into the family in spite of me. I was more determined than ever to not go out with him again.

  Everything about Muir riled me, even his looks, his good features and black hair, his height and broad shoulders, his big strong hands. He’d made enough money before the Depression started to buy a fine blue serge suit in Asheville. And he also had an outfit with a tweed jacket, white riding pants, and shiny riding boots that he wore sometimes. He thought it made him look like a movie star, or somebody that owned a yacht.

  It bothered me that he liked to talk about all the things he’d read in history books and newspapers. You would have thought he was some kind of professor. I reckon he thought sometimes he was some kind of professor. He was just a Green River boy like everybody else, but he would talk like he’d been off to college.

  It made me mad just to think about how he’d tried to go with me since I was a little girl, the way he kept coming back, the way he kept watching me. It made me mad the way he’d become friends with Papa. Papa was a man of good sense, yet he seemed took in by Muir’s scheme. And Mama liked Muir too and made lemonade and carried it herself to the top of the mountain to give to Papa and Muir when I wasn’t at home. It seemed sneaky of Muir to have become such good friends with my parents. When I went up there I heard him and Papa talking about religion and politics and history and hunting. Papa loved to talk about politics and never got tired of running down Democrats.