The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  I tried to let Muir know every way I could I was going with other boys. I invited a boy named Mike Caldwell from Travelers’ Rest down in South Carolina to come to church in his fine new car. I rode out on Sunday afternoons with Mike on double dates with Lorrie and her boyfriend. I always let Fay know what boys I was dating, hoping she would tell Muir. I wanted Muir to know I never fancied myself a preacher’s wife. And never would be engaged to somebody that was crazy enough to build a church on the top of a mountain that nobody wanted and he couldn’t afford, when he wasn’t even an ordained minister yet.

  After Preacher Liner told him off Muir didn’t come back to church services for a long time. His mama come and his sister come, but he never did show up at Sunday school or preaching. I don’t know what he done on Sundays. Maybe he stayed home and polished his riding boots or went for long walks in the woods. Maybe he went to church somewhere else, though I never did hear about that. But I do know that when Papa got another paying job down at the lake, and Muir run out of money for more lumber, and a tree fell on his half-built church in a windstorm, Muir told everybody he was going to go to Canada to be a trapper. I heard he loaded all his guns and traps in the Model T Ford and headed north.

  I don’t know what all happened to Muir on that trip to Canada. He never would talk about it much. He did say he went up Highway 25 all the way through Tennessee and Virginia to Cumberland Gap and on into Kentucky. And he crossed the big bridge to Cincinnati and drove through the fine farm country of Ohio where they was doing the fall plowing with their big Percheron horses. He said the country beyond that was flat as a tabletop. Finally at a place called Toledo he turned around and come back home.

  There was rumors that Muir had been scared by bootleggers or gangsters somewhere in Ohio. They’d flagged him down because they thought he was going to Canada to buy a load of liquor. Whatever they said to him scared him so bad he turned around at Toledo and started back to North Carolina. All I knowed was we didn’t see him for a while, and then he was back, looking like he’d lost weight, like he might have been sick.

  Some people said that after he got back from Ohio he’d gone straight to the eastern part of North Carolina to trap muskrats on the Tar River. It was a lot warmer there than in Canada. He’d bought a boat to travel on the river and almost got drowned in a flood they had. He lost the boat and all his traps and equipment. I reckon the story must have been true for Muir acted different after he come back. Didn’t seem like nothing that he done worked out for him.

  One day while he was gone I walked up on the mountain with Fay to see the church he’d abandoned there. The road had partly washed away in a big rain and me and Fay had to jump over logs that had fell across the ruts. There was something spooky about that place on top of the mountain. I shivered as we got close to it.

  “Only Jasper would think of building such a foolish thing as this,” Fay said when we got to the top of the mountain. Sometimes Fay called Muir “Jasper” after a figure in the funny papers. I reckon it was a joke between them. I agreed with her of course but resented the way she said it. I was surprised that it bothered me when she made fun of her brother. I remembered what Papa had said when people criticized Muir: “At least he tries to do something.”

  “At least he tried to do something,” I said to Fay.

  “And everything he does turns into a mess.”

  After Papa went back to work around the lake Muir had got the roof, or part of the roof, of the church finished. Boards had been nailed to make walls, but the rocks had not been put on the walls. The piles of rocks around the clearing had weeds growing around them. As I looked at them a black snake slipped under one of the heaps. Stacks of boards was turning gray in the weather. Odds and ends of lumber was scattered all around the clearing. A joe-pye weed growed by the steps at the door.

  Part of the roof had caved in where the big oak tree fell on it. Through the opening rain had got in and mold and leaves covered part of the floor. It was such a sad mess I shuddered.

  “Let’s go back down the mountain,” I said to Fay.

  It wasn’t long after Muir come back that we heard Moody had been killed. Some people said he’d been shot way back in the Flat Woods by rival bootleggers. Others said he’d got in a fight when he was drunk at Chestnut Springs down in South Carolina. Moody had been in a lot of fights, and he’d cut people with his knife. Once he’d cut a man’s face and neck in South Carolina so bad he’d almost bled to death.

  And then we heard that Preacher Liner didn’t want them to have Moody’s funeral at the church because Moody had never joined, and one time when he was mad Moody had broke every window and every lantern in the church and never paid for it. Papa said Preacher Liner couldn’t do that, because Ginny and the rest of the family was members. And the land for the church had been give by Ginny’s papa, Mr. Peace.

  After Moody died it was like Muir come back alive. He walked around to every house in the valley and told people he was going to have Moody’s funeral in the half-finished church on the mountaintop, and he was going to conduct it hisself. It was like Moody’s death had let loose a shock and a determination in Muir. I was scared for him, for I remembered what had happened when he tried to preach all them years ago. To make it even worse he asked Mama and me to sing at the funeral. He said we had the prettiest voices he’d ever heard and he’d be grateful if we could sing.

  Mama told him we would sing and I had no choice but to agree too. It’s hard to say no when somebody wants you to sing at a funeral, and what Preacher Liner had done made us ashamed for Ginny and the Powell family.

  “What do you want us to sing?” Mama said to Muir.

  “Whatever you want to,” Muir said. “Whatever seems right for Moody’s service.”

  Mama and me looked through the hymnbook. We thought of “Shall We Gather at the River” and “Battle Hymn” and “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder.” But Mama said the best thing would be “How Beautiful Heaven Must Be.” It was a simple song and it wasn’t too sad.

  For the service in the unfinished church Muir made benches out of planks, but there wasn’t a pulpit or even a table at the front. People kept arriving that afternoon, mostly climbing the mountain on foot, and soon the room was packed. Luckily the weather was good. I guess some people come out of curiosity just to see the church Muir had started. But most come out of respect for Ginny.

  When Muir stood up and said me and Mama would sing, I was afraid I couldn’t open my mouth. But I seen I was more scared for Muir than for myself. I hated to think of him having to preach his own brother’s funeral. And when Mama and me sung it went better than I expected. We always did sing good together. It was like our voices depended on each other.

  I was so worried for Muir my knees trembled after we sung and he stood up. I was afraid something awful was about to happen, that he would be tongue tied or say the wrong thing. Everybody got so quiet you could hear the breeze in the trees outside. I jerked I was so nervous, and felt like I was going to pop out of my skin.

  But when Muir started talking I seen how much he’d changed. It was still his voice, but it was like he was a different person too. He didn’t seem like the boy I’d always knowed. For one thing, he spoke slow, like he was thinking about what he was going to say next, like he was saying just what he felt. It was the honesty and plainness of his talk that surprised me. I’d never heard a preacher at a funeral talk like that. I think everybody was as surprised as me.

  There in that half-finished church on top of the mountain Muir talked about Moody’s troubled life and how only God could look into the heart of a person. He talked about how we don’t know about the pain others are suffering and how we’re all sinners. And he read from scripture the prettiest passages. He read from Revelation about the Alpha and Omega and about a new heaven and a new earth coming down to replace the old one. “The tabernacle is with men . . . former things are passed away.” “I am the root and offspring of David . . . I am the bright and morning star . . . The spiri
t and the bride say come . . . let whosoever will take the water of life freely.” It was the best sermon I ever heard, and it was preached by Muir there on the mountaintop.

  After Moody’s funeral Muir begun to preach at other places too. He preached at Mount Olivet and Mountain Valley. He conducted services at Refuge and way off at Fruitland. He’d always studied the Bible, and he’d always wanted to be a minister. And now in his midtwenties he discovered that he could preach after all. But he never did go back to building the church on top of the mountain. He seemed to lose interest in that once he started preaching.

  When Muir tried to go with me again it surprised me that I still didn’t want to date him. He’d growed up and he was a preacher, and I had to admit he was a good one. But when he stopped by the house and asked me to ride with him to Berea Church where he was conducting a service I told him no. It surprised me a little that I said no. But I didn’t want to be no preacher’s wife. That wasn’t what I had in mind at all.

  All my life I’d seen how preachers’ wives had to go to church and set quiet while their husbands preached. They had to smile at everybody and be friendly. But nobody paid much attention to them. They had to dress well but not too well. They had to eat dinner at other people’s houses and compliment the cooks. Most had to work to support their husbands cause the churches paid them so little. Most preachers’ wives was gray and mousy. That kind of life was not for me.

  I was going out with lots of boys. I sometimes went out with Mike Caldwell in his fine car. I was working in the dime store and didn’t want to get married anyway, unless I could go away to a different kind of life. I thought about becoming an actress or a model. And everybody said there was going to be another war.

  Nine

  When Effie come from Flat Rock with her husband, Alvin, the day after we got the telegram the first thing she done was bust out crying as soon as she walked through the door. It was always her way to cry when she was embarrassed or disappointed. But I thought what had happened to Troy was too awful for crying. Crying was what you done when you got your feelings hurt, when a friend was mean to you. I’d cried when Old Pat was killed on the Fourth of July before Troy left to go overseas. But when the worst thing you could think of happens crying is too easy. Maybe I was wrong to feel that way, but I was bothered by Effie’s tears, a whole day after we got the news. Mama hadn’t cried at all. Alvin stood by the door holding his hat and said nothing.

  About the time the war had started Alvin had got a job as caretaker at one of the big houses at Flat Rock. He’d never liked to farm, and he’d never become a carpenter the way Papa did after the well was dug. Alvin moved slow and didn’t talk much. But when he did say something it was usually funny. When Bill Durham was running for sheriff Alvin quipped, “Some people say they won’t vote for Bill Durham because they don’t know him. I won’t vote for him because I do.” Alvin had worked as a laborer for the Durham construction crew, digging footings and mixing “mud” for the masons.

  Caretaking for the rich in Flat Rock seemed to suit Alvin and Effie just fine. Effie did housekeeping and Alvin mowed grass, trimmed shrubbery, and did minor repairs to the house and outbuildings. They had a small house back of the big house, and Alvin drove a 1932 Buick with yellow fog lights and shiny chrome headlights.

  Effie stood in the kitchen bawling like a baby, but Mama didn’t go to her to hug her. Mama set at the table peeling taters for dinner, and she kept peeling taters. I was mixing up batter for corn bread and didn’t put down the spoon or the bowl. For some reason in our family it was awkward to hug each other anyway. Papa stood in the door from the living room looking at Effie and Alvin like he wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Will Velmer be coming home?” Effie gulped.

  “He’s already home,” I said. “He come home for the weekend.”

  Just after the war broke out Velmer had studied to be a barber. He said you could make five dollars a day and it was light work, compared to farming or carpentry. He’d never been too strong after the typhoid. But by taking care of hisself he could work like anybody else, avoiding heavy jobs when he could.

  Now the saddest thing about Velmer was that after he married Aleen their baby was born with a bad heart. It was what they call a blue baby and that must have damaged its heart. For no matter how much the doctor done for the baby it never got no better. It’s name was Ronald and he was as pretty a baby as you ever saw. A long baby too, with red hair. But the bad heart kept him from growing right. They took him to doctors in Asheville and even to Charlotte. But along about six months later he got weaker and weaker. Aleen was just a young girl and she would hold the baby all night, afraid to put him down in the crib. Like she was trying to make his heart keep moving with her own strength.

  When baby Ronald finally died it broke my heart to watch her. I never seen a woman go to pieces any worse. She screamed and would not be comforted. She cried herself to sleep. And then she got sullen and wouldn’t talk to nobody. She’d go through the motions of work, kind of. I could tell Velmer didn’t know what to do. He’d finished the barber training and needed to go off to the army base at Columbia, South Carolina, to cut the hair of soldiers. The draft board told him he was too old to join the army, but he could cut the hair of servicemen.

  Aleen had took a course in typing and one in bookkeeping in high school. And when she announced she was going off to Washington, D.C., with her younger sister to work for the government in one of the offices there, it was a kind of relief. For nobody knowed what to do to cheer her up. She wouldn’t talk to nobody, and Velmer had to leave to go to Columbia. Her and her sister took the bus to Washington, and she’d only come back home once, and that was last Christmas. Velmer come home about once a month from his job at the army base.

  “This is a pretty come-off, if you ask me,” Effie said when she finally stopped crying. “A boy volunteers to serve his country and then just gets killed.”

  “It’s a war,” Alvin said. He opened the back door and spit tobacco juice into the yard.

  “How come he was killed in a plane crash when he was just a mechanic?” Effie said.

  “Maybe he’d worked on the plane and was trying it out,” Papa said. We’d read in the papers that bombers that flew out to Germany come back, the ones that made it back, all shot up, sometimes with pieces of the wings gone, and had to be fixed during the night so they could fly out again next morning. Sometimes planes lost motors or landing gear and had to crash land.

  “What did the telegram say caused the crash?” Effie said.

  “It didn’t,” I said.

  Mama had finished peeling the taters and she just set in the corner looking at her lap.

  “Was the body recovered?” Effie said. “Sometimes in an airplane crash everybody is burned up. When they ship the body home there’s nothing in the casket except a bone or a little bit of uniform.”

  “That’s enough of that kind of talk,” I said, and nodded toward Mama.

  Effie looked at me over her glasses. She ever did have a quick temper when I disagreed with her. “I’ll say what I want to say,” she said. “Who are you to tell me what to talk about?”

  “Talk like that don’t do no good,” I said. I took the pan of peeled taters from the table in front of Mama and poured them into the saucepan of heating water.

  “Are you the boss who tells everybody what they can say and can’t?” Effie said.

  “At least I have sense enough to try to help people and not rub their faces in shit,” I said. But even as I said it I was sorry I had.

  Now the thing about Effie was she’d get mad and say something hateful, but she couldn’t argue. As soon as you answered her she’d get her feelings hurt and start to cry. We’d been quarreling since I was a little girl, and I learned to get the best of her by plunging ahead in an argument. She’d snap at you once or twice and then she couldn’t think of nothing else to say. Effie’s lip begun to tremble and she started to cry again.

  “We don’t know a thing
about Troy’s death,” I said. “What’s the use of imagining terrible things?”

  Effie walked toward Alvin and said, “Let’s go.”

  “We just got here,” Alvin said. When other people got upset Alvin always acted calm and skeptical.

  But I wasn’t finished. “Just because something’s terrible don’t mean you have to talk about it,” I said. “Just because something hurts don’t mean you have to drag it through the mud.” When I got mad, words come pouring out of my mouth, sharp hurtful words. I didn’t want to stop. It’s a bad habit I have.

  “I’m going home,” Effie muttered.

  “You come here and make Mama upset and then you run away, like always,” I said.

  Mama stood up and walked into the dining room. I seen I’d gone too far, and I was ashamed of myself. I followed Mama into the dining room where it was cold as ice. She stood by the window looking out into the backyard where it was starting to get dark already.

  “You’ll freeze here,” I said. I hoped Mama would say something. I hoped she’d tell me I’d been mean to Effie. But she didn’t. She just looked past the cherry tree toward the orchard on the hillside.

  “Come back where it’s warm,”I said.

  “What does it matter?” Mama said.

  “It’ll matter if you take pneumonia,” I said, trying to sound strict, like I was her parent.

  “Can’t see it would make much difference,” Mama said. In the gloom I couldn’t hardly see her face as she turned and started back toward the kitchen, and I followed her.