The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  “We offer all our sympathy, our prayers, and our help to the Richards family that has suffered such a tragic loss,” the preacher said. “We all loved Troy and will always remember him. He was among the finest this church and this community has to offer. He served his country in the Civilian Conservation Corps, and he served it again in the Army Air Corps. He gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country and for freedom around the world.”

  “Preacher,” somebody called from the back of the church. Everybody turned to see who’d yelled out. Somebody had stood up near the back of the church. At first I didn’t recognize him, and then I seen it was that half-wit Edward Peace. Edward wasn’t exactly a half-wit. He could work, and he could read and write his name, but everybody that knowed him knowed he wasn’t right in the head. And strangest of all, he wanted to be a preacher.

  “I have something to say,” Edward said. He swayed back and forth holding on to the bench in front of him. You could tell how surprised the preacher was, and he waited a few seconds before answering. Finally Preacher Rice said, “Tell us, Brother Edward, what it is you have to say.”

  “The Lord has sent me a vision and told me to be a witness,” Edward said. His voice trembled as it always did when he spoke in church. But the shaky voice never stopped him. If a preacher made a mistake and asked him to pray, Edward might pray in that trembly voice for ten or fifteen minutes, or even more.

  “What was your vision?” the preacher said.

  “It come to me while I was awake and standing out by the barn,” Edward said. “The Lord said come with me, and he took me to a place high on Mount Olivet, above the Mareslide, where I could look down on the whole valley. ‘Edward,’ he said, ‘there is one family in the valley that has sinned and gone against my commandments. That is the family of Hank Richards. You must go to them and warn them that my patience is wearing thin. I will send a terrible plague on them, and I’ll send you to explain it to them. The death of Troy is my warning to Hank Richards to get out of this church and out of this community before more terrible wrath is visited on his family.’ ”

  “Thank you,” the preacher said. “And now we’ll all rise to sing.”

  But Edward wasn’t finished. “I come only as the spokesman,” he said. “I fear the wrath of God. When the vision was over there I was standing by the barn again.”

  “We’ll sing ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arm,’ ” the preacher called out. We all stood up and the preacher led in the singing. I couldn’t tell if Edward had continued talking or not. If he did, his words was drowned out by the singing.

  Since they was boys Edward had fought with Velmer, and he’d picked on Troy. When Troy was little Edward would catch him in the churchyard and hold him up by the heels and shake him. Him and Velmer would fight and roll on the ground and bloody each other’s noses again and again. As far as I knowed Edward hated Papa because he thought Papa had opposed him being ordained as a Baptist minister. Papa was a deacon of the church, and the board of deacons had decided that Edward was not mentally fit to be ordained. They’d knowed him all his life and knowed how crazy he could act and what kind of silly things he could imagine. The whole board had voted against ordaining him, but for some reason Edward blamed only Papa.

  I was afraid Edward would try to interrupt the preacher when he started his sermon, but he didn’t. It would have been a terrible embarrassment if he had. The preacher took his text from Psalm 103. “As for man, his days are as grass. As a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more.” As the preacher talked about how we would all die and be forgot, unless we repented and got saved and went to heaven, I kept waiting for Edward’s trembly voice to call out from the back of the church. You could tell that Edward’s outburst had put a chill on the preacher’s sermon because he seemed to preach faster than usual. He said the words you’d expect, but you could see his mind wasn’t completely on what he was saying. You could hear it by the way he didn’t pause at the right places, and then, after he hesitated, he said some sentences too fast.

  When the service was over and the invitational hymn was sung, nobody come forward to the altar to be saved. It was not a day for people to get saved. The mood and the spirit was not there. “Let whosoever will come and take the water of life freely,” the preacher said. But not one single soul come forward. While we sung “Just As I Am” the preacher walked down the aisle to the door of the church, and he prayed the final prayer standing at the door. From there he’d be ready to shake hands with everybody as they walked out of the church.

  I introduced the preacher to Sharon when we reached the door and he said, “Bless you, sister. The Lord sees us and loves us in the time of our sorrow. He has sent the Comforter to be with us.”

  “Thank you,” Sharon said.

  When we got outside and walked down the steps the sunlight was almost blinding. It was not a sunny day, but the light in the clouds was glaring. It seemed almost strange to me to come out of the church and see the trees and feel the wind. I was almost surprised to see the road and the fields, the parked cars and cattle in the pasture, and the gray and blue mountains, and everything going on about its business, like nothing had happened in the church, nothing had been said. There seemed little connection between the words inside the church and what went on outside. But the strangeness was not bad. In fact it was comforting, to see the peacefulness of the shrubbery and parking lot, going on in time as always. It was both good and scary to see that time didn’t stop for nothing. We might all be getting older, and a dear one was gone, but life and time went on, no matter about the talk of hell and heaven, sin and getting saved.

  I seen Edward standing to the side near the bottom of the steps. I turned my head to Sharon and walked on by like I didn’t see him. He’d tried to date me when I was about seventeen, and I’d always been a little afraid of him. We walked on down to the parking lot below the row of junipers and turned to wait for Papa and Velmer. I seen Velmer over by the corner of the church talking to one of the Beddingfield boys that wore an army uniform.

  Then I seen Papa at the top of the steps shaking hands with the preacher. Papa was smiling and saying something, probably trying to cheer the preacher up. The preacher was younger than him and Papa was the oldest of the deacons. Then as Papa started walking down the steps Edward pushed through other people toward him. My mouth felt dry as the scales on a snake’s belly as I watched him move toward Papa. I wished there was something I could do. Muir was still in the church, probably talking to somebody. Surely the preacher or Velmer or somebody could tell Edward to go away.

  “Hank, you’ve had your warning,” Edward said.

  “Yes, Edward, we heard,” Papa said. He looked Edward in the eyes, then turned and walked toward us. But Edward stepped after him.

  “The Lord has made it clear that you have to leave this church and this community,” Edward said, loud enough so everybody could hear. Papa stopped and faced Edward. Papa was a little taller, and he looked down on the excited man. “If the Lord had a message for me, don’t you think he would have told me hisself?” Papa said.

  “I’ve been burdened with a message and a vision,” Edward said.

  Just then Muir come out of the church and seen what was happening. He hurried down the steps and put his hand on Edward’s shoulder. “Edward, I think you should go on home,” he said

  “Maybe your message is from the devil,” Papa said. “Did you ever think of that?” Papa took a cake of tobacco from his pocket, opened his knife, and cut off a slice and put it in his mouth.

  “I know the voice of the Lord when I hear it,” Edward said.

  “You go on home now,” Muir said to Edward.

  Papa chewed on the tobacco and turned and walked down the road and me and Sharon joined him. “I know you stopped me from being ordained,” Edward called after him. “And you talked to the draft board and told them not to let me join as a chaplain.”

  I looked
back and seen Muir put his hands on Edward’s shoulder and guide him toward his pickup truck. People stood in the parking lot watching them. I don’t know what Muir said to Edward, but the crazy man finally got in his truck and drove away. Muir hurried to catch up with us.

  “The army rejected Edward and he has to blame somebody,” Muir said.

  “Too bad they didn’t take him,” Papa said.

  I was glad Mama hadn’t come to church. It would have killed her to hear Edward’s ranting in front of everybody. She’d have been embarrassed and ashamed, even though she knowed as well as anybody that Edward was touched, especially about religion and our family. From all the stories Mama told about the early years of her marriage and the time on Gap Creek, it was clear she was the strong one then. Papa had been excited and lost control when the flood come, when Ma Richards come to visit, and when he lost his job at the cotton mill. Mama was the one who stayed calm and got them through the terrible times.

  But over the years Papa had got stronger and calmer. Usually when he was really worried he just laughed about something. From Mama’s stories it was obvious he’d growed up a lot since those days. He still had a temper, but when things was really bad he could not be riled. Over time Mama had got wore down. Maybe it was working so hard over the years. Maybe it was having children and raising children. Maybe it was the typhoid, and the quarrels in the church, and the quarrels with Papa over spending money on flowers and such.

  But it puzzled me how Papa had become more confident and Mama less certain, like the wind had been knocked out of her. Maybe that’s what happened to women. The world wasn’t fair to women and always wore them down. It made me shiver to think that. And now Troy’s death had put a crushing weight on Mama’s mind and spirit. I wondered if it could ever be lifted.

  “Somebody needs to knock some sense into Edward,” Velmer said.

  “Wouldn’t do no good,” Papa said. “He can’t tell sense from nonsense.”

  “Why do they let him go to church?” Sharon said. I noticed her fine shoes had got dusty on the road.

  “You can’t stop people from going to church,” Muir said, “not that I ever heard of, any more than you can make them go if they don’t want to.”

  WHILE WE WAS gone Mama had been fixing Sunday dinner. I reckon she’d been working all the time we was away. She’d caught two hens and chopped their heads off, placed them in boiling water and then pulled out the feathers, and singed away the pinfeathers with a burning newspaper. She’d gutted them and cut off the feet, sliced them up into drumsicks, thighs, breasts, back and neck, with liver and gizzard. All had been rolled in flour and fried. She’d cooked rice and green beans, opened a can of peaches, and made a coconut cake. I guess she’d been saving the coconut for weeks. And she had a pot of coffee perking on the stove.

  As soon as I got home I put an apron over my Sunday dress and started setting the big table in the dining room. It was cold in there, but I figured if we left the door from the kitchen open it would get warmer. With hot food and people setting around the table it would warm up more.

  “How was church?” Mama said.

  “About as usual,” I said. I didn’t want her to know about Edward. There was no reason for her to know what he’d said and done. She was sure to hear about it later from somebody, but by then it wouldn’t matter as much. But just then Papa walked into the kitchen and said, “That idiot Edward has made a fool of hisself again.” I wished I could stop him, but he went on ahead and told Mama what Edward had said, every word of it. She didn’t seem to pay no attention, just went on stirring flour into gravy. She made the best gravy I ever tasted, with juicy crumbs from the frying pan where the chicken was cooked.

  “No use to pay attention to a fool,” I said. We all set down at the table and Papa said the blessing. Mama stood by her chair like she was waiting to serve us.

  “Come on and set down, Mama,” I said when the grace was over.

  “I’ll set down later,” she said. She brought a plate of biscuits that had been keeping warm in the oven.

  “Edward thinks he’s a prophet out of the Old Testament,” Muir said, and laughed. “He sees portents and messages everywhere.”

  “Somebody ought to shut him up,” Velmer said. “Somebody ought to cut off his tail right behind the ears.” It was an old saying, usually about a dog or cat.

  “Let’s forget about Edward,” I said. “He ain’t worth thinking about.”

  “I’ll say amen to that,” Sharon said.

  “Can I bring somebody more milk or coffee?” Mama said.

  “Why don’t you set down,” Papa said.

  Just then I heard a car drive up and stop. Mama stepped back into the kitchen and looked out the window. “Who is it, Mama?” I said.

  “It’s the Asheville cousins,” Mama said.

  Oh my God, I thought, and looked around the table. There was hardly room for any more. The Asheville cousins was the children of Papa’s older brothers, Zeke and Dave, who had moved to Asheville many years before. They drove down to see us about twice a year. Uncle Dave had spent time in prison for embezzlement, framed, he said, by crooks in the Buncombe County Highway Department who stole funds and made it appear he’d took them. On his deathbed Uncle Dave had swore his innocence.

  Papa stood up to greet the cousins. I was relieved to see there was only five of them.

  “I was so sorry to hear about Troy,” the one called Ancell said.

  “It breaks my heart,” his wife, Gladys, said, and give Papa a hug, and then Mama.

  “My heart goes out to you,” said Cousin Helen.

  “You all are just in time for dinner,” I said.

  “We don’t want to be no trouble,” Clarence said.

  “We’ve got enough chicken here for an army,” Papa said.

  Muir went into the front room and got two more chairs and Velmer brought two chairs from the living room. I took a chair from the back bedroom. The air in the bedroom smelled like frying chicken. It always surprised me how smells would linger at the back of the house, long after they was gone in the kitchen or rooms where people was talking and breathing. I helped Mama bring extra plates and silverware, and when we all got seated Ancell said, “Hank, how have you been?”

  “Same old sixes and sevens,” Papa said, and chuckled. It was what he always said, meaning everything was out of whack and nothing fit or matched.

  “At least there is jobs,” Ancell said, “not like in the Depression. I got on at the chemical plant in Enka.”

  “What do they make there?” Muir said.

  “Oh, some kind of chemical for the army. We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

  “The war has been good for business,” Clarence said.

  “Shame on you,” his wife, Olivia, said and looked around the table.

  “I only mean people has jobs,” Clarence said. “The store does four times the business now that it did in 1940.” Clarence worked in a hardware store on the west side of Asheville. Or maybe it was a feed and seed store; I have forgot which. I know it sold tools, like rakes and shovels, and equipment, like plows and mowing machines.

  “As long as there is war, business will be good, for the government is buying everything people can grow or make,” Ancell said.

  “Buying it all with borrowed money,” Muir said.

  “What if the Depression comes back after the war?” Velmer said. “I don’t see that there’s anything to stop it.”

  “There won’t be another Depression,” Clarence said. “All the businesses started by the war will continue. There’ll be prosperity.”

  “I just want this war to be over,” Gladys said.

  “This war ain’t even half over,” Muir said. “It won’t be over till we land an army in Europe and drive the Germans back.”

  “Not to mention the Japanese all over the Pacific and the Philippines,” Clarence said.

  “It’s a wonder the Japs never landed in California,” Ancell said.

  “They might yet,
” Clarence said. “This war is just beginning in the Pacific.”

  “I hate to think that,” Sharon said. “I’m tired of this awful war.”

  Nobody said anything for a minute, but kept on eating. Then Clarence said, “Do you know exactly where Troy died?”

  “It was in a place called East Anglia,” Papa said.

  “Do you know where that is?”

  “The man that come here said it was in a place called Suffolk, near a village named, of all things, Eye,” I said.

  “Spelled the way you spell ‘eye’?” Ancell said.

  “I reckon that’s the way it’s spelled,” I said.

  “That is in the eastern part of England,” Muir said. “As I recall it’s northeast of London. The air bases are put there to be as close as possible to France and Germany.” Muir always did love geography. He subscribed to the National Geographic and would spend hours studying maps.

  “Close to the Channel?” Olivia said.

  “To the North Sea, to Holland,” Muir said.

  “Why was Troy on the plane?”Gladys said.

  “We don’t know that,” Papa said.

  “Maybe he was testing it out, after it was fixed,” Clarence said.

  “Could be,” Papa said.

  “I’ve seen pictures of the bombers, the Flying Fortresses, coming back from a raid,” Clarence said. “They come back with parts of the wings shot off, or a motor gone. Some have to crash land and some have to ditch in the ocean. I heard one come back and landed with most of the nose gone.”

  “Now they have the Liberator, the B-24,” Ancell said. “It’s an even bigger plane.”

  “Not as pretty as the B-17,” Muir said.

  “I hate to think what a crash would look like, with a plane exploded by bombs,” Clarence said.

  Mama had not said nothing. She stood behind Papa’s chair holding a dishcloth. She’d brought a pitcher of milk from the icebox and refilled everybody’s glass. I wished I could turn the conversation to something else. But once men start talking about war it’s hard to get them to think of anything else. Their eyes light up and their faces glow when they talk about airplanes and guns and fighting.