The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  After the dishes was done Mama took a chair in the corner of the living room and didn’t say nothing. I stood by the fire and said it had been a long day for everybody.

  “I’m not sleepy,” Sharon said. “I guess I’m too sad to be sleepy.”

  “I’m plumb wore out,” Velmer said.

  I knowed Muir had carried his toolbox all the way from the highway. After riding all day from Holly Ridge he must be a little tired.

  “I just keep thinking about Troy and wondering what kind of funeral he’d have wanted,” Sharon said. “That’s one thing we never discussed.”

  “We can’t have a funeral unless the body is brought back,” Effie said.

  “After an airplane explosion there may not be any body to bring back,” Alvin said, and spit tobacco juice into the fire.

  “We’ll find out about that later,” I said.

  “There could be a memorial service, even without a body,” Sharon said.

  Papa looked at Mama and said, “Julie, it’s time for bed.”

  “We’ve got to light a rag out of here,” Alvin said. It was what he always said when he was ready to leave. I never understood what he meant unless the rag was the wick of a lantern.

  As Effie and Alvin got up to leave I was still hoping Sharon would volunteer to sleep on the couch. But she was asking Muir how he got back all the way from Holly Ridge. He told her he rode in the back of a lumber truck to Raleigh, and then took a bus from Raleigh. He walked from the store on the highway to the house.

  “Well, Sharon, you can sleep in the bedroom,” I said. “Velmer can sleep on the couch here, and Muir and me will sleep on a pallet in the dining room.”

  “Whatever is best for you all,” Sharon said.

  I got quilts and blankets and pillows and put them on the floor of the dining room, between the table and the china closet. Muir stepped outside to pee while I got undressed and Sharon went into the bedroom. While the house got quiet I slipped under the covers and felt the hard floor under me. You don’t appreciate a mattress until you don’t have one. Every time Muir was away I worried about us getting together again. As silly as it may sound, I was afraid we’d be strangers when he come back and we got in bed again. I guess people, no matter how long they’ve lived together, are a little bit strangers. Intimacy seems like something that might disappear and never come back after people have been apart.

  And I wondered what was proper given the sadness of the time, the grief we was all suffering. Would it be too unfeeling to love as usual at a time like this? When Muir come back in he brought a flashlight that must have been in his toolbox. He walked quiet to the pallet between the table and china closet and switched the light off to get undressed. His knee knocked the table and I said, “Shhhh.”

  I was so worried I felt prickly when he got under the quilt. We held each other and I was glad we was laying on the floor and not in a creaky bed. In a house full of people you had to be careful at night not to make too much noise, for everybody could hear and know what you was doing. You had to wait until deep in the night when everybody was asleep. But on the floor you could be very quiet.

  Muir reached under my gown and touched me between my legs and shifted his weight, and the floor creaked a little, but just a little. “Shhhh,” I said, and we both giggled.

  What surprised me, as it always did, was how good it felt for Muir to touch me. For I was worried, and it was the saddest time of my life. I wasn’t even sure it was the right thing to do, to be loving when things was serious and awful. But Muir rubbed between my legs and I didn’t want him to stop. All I could think of to say was “Shhh,” and we giggled again.

  Because it was dark and we was on the floor, I kept thinking we was in some kind of basement, or maybe it was a tent. As Muir and me moved slow to make no noise, I thought of different kinds of cloth in a store basement, hundreds of kinds of fabric, red silks and blue watered silks, black velvet, gray flannel and herringbone, taffeta, green and red and yellow plaids, and a blue-and-red tartan, and the white on white of fine blouses. And I kept thinking of the names of cloth, of chambray and denim, seersucker, calico, poplin, oxford cloth and broadcloth, chenille, and whipcord. I don’t know why. I seen chiffon and corduroy, and different shades of tan and brown, khaki and silver gray.

  And then I thought of the pallet as a magic carpet like they talked about in the stories. Instead of laying on the cold floor in the dining room, me and Muir was flying faraway over the mountain and sunset all the way to dawn. The clouds was all shiny fabrics, sateen and knitted wool. Gabardine and yellow linen, which was my favorite.

  Ten

  By the time Troy started high school he was already nearly six feet tall. Working in the fields and with Papa and Velmer building houses on the lake had made him strong, and he could move quicker and run faster than anybody I ever seen. As soon as he started freshman year the coach asked him to play basketball. Troy stayed after school to practice with the team and caught a ride home however he could if the coach couldn’t drive him.

  Troy had never played basketball before, and I don’t reckon he’d ever seen a basketball goal. But once he started playing he learned fast. He didn’t have no place to practice except the gym at school, but that was too far to go on Saturdays and Sundays when other members that lived closer got together. Troy decided to build his own place where he could practice.

  To practice for the team he needed a basketball, a hoop and backboard, and a level place to run and dribble and shoot. There was no place around the house that was right for that. But Troy found a stretch at the lower side of the orchard, the ground between two apple trees, that was almost level. He cut off the weeds and took a shovel and rake and leveled it as smooth as he could to make half a court. Then he dug a hole and put in a pole about ten feet high. For a backboard he got four planks and nailed them together on the pole.

  “What are you going to use for a net?” I said.

  “Don’t need a net,” Troy said. “All I need is a hoop.”

  What he done was take the wooden band off an old bean hamper and wrap wire around it to make it strong, and he nailed that to the backboard at just the right height. It was not strong as a steel hoop, and it drooped a little. But it was something to throw a ball through.

  Troy didn’t have enough money to buy a basketball, but the coach found an old one that was scratched and had been used for practice, and he let Troy take that home. Playing basketball and having that goal and ball at home started a whole new life for Troy. Velmer had never been any athlete, and Papa hadn’t either. We lived too far from town for them to take part in any team sport. But the high school coach had asked Troy to play on the team and give him a locker in the gym in which to keep his uniform and shoes.

  Whenever Troy was home and not doing some job for Mama or Papa, he was up there in the orchard practicing with the basketball. He dribbled and shot, dribbled and shot. We could hear the ball slam on the backboard and rattle on the rim. The bouncing ball echoed off the house and the noise excited Old Pat. She whimpered and yelped as Troy bounced the ball, and she tried to run around him and play with the ball. She’d never seen anybody play basketball, and the sound of the ball disturbed her.

  Troy would have to stop dribbling and order her to set. And then she’d get excited again and run around him, yelping and snapping at the ball, until he ordered her to go set again. But after about a week Old Pat did get used to seeing Troy play with the ball and toss it through the hoop. She’d run up to the orchard when he took the ball out of the house, and when he started practice she’d run around a while and then calm down. She’d watch him play until a rabbit or mouse or bird got her attention, and then she’d run away, chasing through the weeds.

  The ground around the basketball goal got packed down from all the walking and dribbling. Soon it was wore bare and packed down hard as the road, until a rainy spell come and the ground turned muddy. Troy carried gravel from the road and put it there, but the gravel didn’t do much good. The peb
bles just got packed down in the mud. The basketball got dirty and he had to wash it off after every practice.

  In dry weather the ground around the pole turned to dust, and the ball and Troy’s sweaty hands and feet got covered with dust. After every practice Troy would wash off at a pan on the back porch. We didn’t have no shower bath or bathroom. All we had was water from the pump, unless we heated a kettle on the stove. But he washed often and kept hisself clean and always neat.

  Playing basketball made Troy grow up faster. He’d always been serious and well behaved compared to other boys his age. At fifteen he was tall as a man and near strong as a man. But after the coach asked him to join the team you could tell a difference. I reckon being on the team give him a new confidence and a new ambition. Nobody in our family and few in the community had ever played on the team and got to go to games around the county and in town and sometimes even in other counties. Troy acted more growed up and he kept up with his homework and his drawing too. But he done that at night, after it was dark, when he couldn’t practice basketball no more.

  Even though he was a freshman the coach let Troy play on the team in almost every game. He learned fast how to be a guard or forward, how to pass off, do a jump shot, a hook shot, a layup. I got to see some of the games and I seen how good he could play. He wasn’t the best player yet because he was new to the game. Sometimes if I had a date we’d wait until Troy changed and then drive him home. He would smell fresh from the shower and be tired from all the running and jumping.

  Papa was proud of Troy for being on the team, but he kept warning him about getting injured. “People that play sports always get hurt,” Papa said. “They do things to theirselves that they never get over. Usually to their knees or hips or ankles.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Troy promised.

  “Somebody could hit you and break your leg,” Papa said. “Being careful won’t be enough.”

  “I’ve heard that people who play sports die young,”Velmer said. “They wear their heart out.”

  “Everybody lives their allotted time,” Mama said.

  Troy played in almost every game his sophomore year, and people said that by the next year he would be the star of the team. He’d be the player the school depended on. It got up late in the season and our team had had a good year. It looked like they’d get in the play-offs and maybe play another county. I was at the game with the team from town, and I seen Troy jump high above a guard to shoot. When he come down there was a pop and he crumpled right to the floor. They had to stop the game and help him off the court. From the sound of the pop I thought Troy must have broke his leg. But when the doctor examined him he said no bones had been broke. It was only a bad sprain. Troy would have to walk with crutches and he wouldn’t play no more basketball that season.

  Troy’s foot swelled up and turned dark blue or black. It must have been awful painful, for they give him some pain pills to take. He had to hop around from table to chair in the house and use the crutches if he went outside. You could tell how much it hurt him from the way his lips tightened when he moved. But I think the worst pain was not being able to play basketball, missing those last games leading to the play-offs. For a year and a half Troy had built his life around playing basketball. Everything had changed, everything centered around being on the team. And now all he could do was limp around and watch.

  Troy was so used to moving and exercising he couldn’t set still even with the sprained ankle. He had to be doing something. On the Sunday evening after he got hurt he took the crutches and walked out on the porch. He took the basketball from the shelf and dribbled it on the porch a few times.

  “You’re not going to try to play on crutches?” I said.

  “I don’t know; I just might.”

  He asked me to hold the ball while he made his way down the steps, working sideways one step at a time to the yard. Then he called to Old Pat and handed me the crutches and took the basketball. Standing on one leg he slapped his knee and motioned for Old Pat to push up beside him. Resting the knee of his hurt leg on her shoulder he held the ball in his left hand and gripped her collar with the right. Then he took a step and she moved forward. I thought he was going to fall, and he did fall, but then got back up and tried it again.

  “Here, old girl,” he said to Old Pat. She was patient and careful and let him rest the weight of his leg on her shoulder. They started walking again, and he was just barely able to keep his balance. He hopped and held on to Pat’s collar and they made it up to the orchard. Standing in front of the basketball goal Troy throwed the ball through the hoop and caught it bouncing back. Resting his knee on Old Pat’s shoulder he could just barely keep his balance, but he throwed the ball through the ring again and again. I never seen anything like it.

  Old Pat was as patient and careful as if she’d been a guide dog for a blind man. When Troy needed to move to retrieve the ball she would move. She followed the ball as it arced through the air and fell and bounced, and was ready to move in the direction it fell. I watched them for a while. They must have stayed up there an hour, while Troy practiced throwing the ball and getting it back, leaning on his dog. How many dogs would have done that?

  The summer before Troy was a senior in high school him and Papa and Velmer worked on a house down on the lake owned by a Mr. Huger. They didn’t actually build the house but just added a porch out over the lake that served as a kind of boathouse where the Hugers could keep their boats under the deck. Mr. Huger took a liking to Troy, as people always did, and at the end of the summer he told Troy he could borrow his canoe and keep it over the winter. He would take the speedboat back to Charleston.

  So along in late September Troy paddled the canoe across the lake and up the river. It must have been a mile up the river to our field. At the Jim Lee Shoals he had to pull the canoe over the rocks because the water was too fast to paddle up the chute. And then he left the canoe on the bank at the end of our field cause it was too heavy to carry all by hisself up the road to the barn. Later Velmer and me helped him tote the canoe all the way to the barn and put it under the shed where the wagon stayed. That canoe was heavy and it took all three of us to carry it, Troy at one end and me and Velmer at the other.

  “Maybe I could use this this winter for trapping,” Velmer said.

  “Help yourself,” Troy said.

  The canoe was one of the prettiest things I’d ever seen. The inside was made of cedar, the curved ribs smooth and fragrant. The boards fit perfect together in the rounded and tapered shape. The two seats was made of white oak or ash wood with a kind of wicker webbing. The ends was sharp in just the right way to cut through the water.

  The outside of the canoe was stretched with canvas that was painted green. The canvas had been fixed to the wood so it was perfectly smooth. The canoe seemed like a work of art. Everything about it was firm and streamlined as a fish.

  “Just make sure it don’t get stole or damaged,” Papa said. “You couldn’t afford to pay Huger for it.”

  “Nobody’s going to steal it,” Troy said. “It’s too heavy.”

  Troy said when he had a free day he’d take me riding in the canoe. “We’ll go for a picnic on the river,” he said. But that fall he was the captain of the basketball team and had to spend every free minute practicing basketball. And besides that he was drawing pictures for an art show they was having in town. He’d made dozens of pictures of Old Pat, and of the horse Old Nell, and one of an eagle flying. He’d painted a portrait of Uncle Russ, and one of Papa. He wanted to paint my picture too, but I was already working in town at the dime store and come home only on weekends.

  There was a girl that lived up the river named Amy Finch. She was a little younger than me but she was a friend. She had a terrible crush on Troy, and he was nice to her but really wasn’t interested in her as a girlfriend. She was a big girl, almost six feet tall, not fat, but not willowy either. Like a lot of tall girls she was a little shy and liked to act like a little girl. One Sunday in late Octobe
r she come home with us from church for Sunday dinner. We was good friends, but I knowed she was mostly keen just to be around where Troy was. Like any girl in love she just wanted to give the boy a chance to fall in love with her. She was wearing a pink dress that had bows and ribbons on the shoulders.

  It was just about the prettiest fall day you ever seen. After dinner and after me and Amy washed the dishes and dried them, I said to Troy, “How about taking us for a ride on the river?” I was sure he’d say he had to practice basketball or do homework or draw pictures for the art show, but he didn’t. “Do you want to go for a canoe ride?” he said to Amy.

  “Oh yes,” she said, like she was ten years old, and blushed.

  Even though Amy was wearing her pink Sunday dress and was too tall to fit any of my clothes, she helped carry the canoe down to the river anyway. She didn’t mind that her white Sunday shoes got in the dust. Old Pat run alongside of us, excited there was an extra person and we was going to the river.

  My arms was wore out by the time we got down to the sandbar opposite the Lemmons Hole and set the canoe down. Troy said he’d ride in back and paddle and I could set in the front and paddle and Amy would set in the middle with Old Pat. The dog whimpered she was so thrilled. We got in our places and Troy slid us into the water and jumped into the back. It was a wonderful feeling to be gliding out above the water. It was like being weightless or something. Leaves was floating on the river and more leaves was falling from the river birches and maples.

  “Turn it with your paddle,” Troy called. But it was almost too late. We come close to hitting the far bank. I’d never paddled a canoe before and it took me a minute to figure out how to push to the left or the right. I pushed to the left and we got turned right and headed down the winding river, toward the Bee Gum Hole. Troy done most of the guiding, I’m afraid. But I slowly learned to turn the paddle a little as I made a stroke to keep the front of the canoe pointed straight.