The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  To avoid the law again Woodrow drove us home the back way, going all the way up the mountain to Cedar Mountain, and then turning onto the dirt road that comes by Blue Ridge Church and all the way down the river by the Abe Jones Flats and the Brack Shipman cabin and then the Cedar Springs community. The road was so rough we bounced and jerked so bad it like to have broke my tailbone.

  When Papa heard what had happened he said I wasn’t never going out with no Moody Powell again. He said I was never going out with no boy again till I was twenty years old. He said he didn’t care if I lived to be an old maid, I’d never go out like that again. I thought he was going to whip me he was so mad. Papa almost never did whip me when I was little. It was Mama that switched my legs with a hickory when I sassed her or done something bad.

  Now when they come and arrested Muir for driving under the influence because Moody had give the patrolman Muir’s drivers’ license, Muir had a terrible time. He had to get witnesses to prove he wasn’t even driving the car that Sunday afternoon. He’d gone to the baptizing at Mount Olivet. He got witnesses, including the preacher at Mount Olivet, to swear he was with them and he did eventually get off.

  But the thing was that after that for more than a year, if that patrolman seen me in a car he’d stop it and ask to see the license of the driver. I don’t know if he ever figured out what had happened. I was near about afraid to ride on the highway. But after a while he must have give up or been moved to another part of the state, for after that I didn’t see him no more.

  WHEN I WAS a senior in high school me and Lorrie left school at lunchtime and went down to the store for a candy bar. Lorrie always had a dime and bought two candy bars, one for each of us. Her daddy had a job as a mail carrier and they had money during the Depression when nobody else did. There was this boy that was the nephew of Mr. Fletcher that run the store and filling station. His name was Glenn and he worked at the jewelry store in town. And for some reason he was always at his uncle’s store when we come down at lunchtime. I thought maybe he was on his lunch break from the jewelry store then.

  Glenn had a kind of limp. I don’t know if he’d had polio or had hurt his leg somehow. But you could see him lurch a little when he walked, like he was struggling to keep in balance. He had a nice car so he must have made good money at the jewelry store. I don’t know at what point I noticed he was always looking at me. He’d be talking to his uncle but be looking toward Lorrie and me. And he’d come over and ask how I was and how school was going. He wore one of these tweed cloth caps and he’d take the cap off when he greeted me.

  “I bet school ain’t hard for a smart girl like you,” he said.

  “Ain’t too hard,” I said.

  “You’re too pretty to work hard,” he said.

  “I don’t work too hard,” I said.

  “I bet you got lots of boyfriends,” he said.

  “Ain’t got a boyfriend,” I said.

  “Sure you do.” He grinned like he knowed a secret.

  “I wouldn’t go out with a boy unless he had a college education,” I said. I don’t know why I said that.

  “Whoa now; hold on,” he said, and laughed. “I’ve been to jewelry school; I guess that’s a kind of college.”

  Most every time Lorrie and me went down to the store Glenn was there. It didn’t occur to me for a while that he was there to see me. But then one day he told me to come to his car; he had something to show me.

  “I ain’t going to your car,” I said.

  “Don’t you want to see what I got?”

  “I have to go back to school,” I said.

  “Then you just come here to the door and wait,” he said.

  I stood at the back door to the store while he went out to his car and come back with something held in his two hands. He smiled like somebody about to tell a big secret, then opened his hands and there was a little velvet-covered box, the kind a ring or piece of jewelry would come in. He handed the box to me, but I couldn’t open it.

  “Here,” he said, and opened the box like a mouth. Inside was white silk and what looked at first like a bracelet. And then I seen it was a watch, the prettiest watch I’d ever laid eyes on.

  “Well, put it on,” he said.

  The watch was stretched around a silk-covered stump. It was white gold and gleamed with little diamonds around the face. The band shined and the tiny face was magnified by the thick crystal. I was almost afraid to touch it. But I took it out of the case and slipped it on my wrist and it was cold on my skin but fit just perfect.

  “This ain’t for me,” I said.

  “Ain’t for nobody else,” Glenn said.

  The watch looked like something a princess or movie star might wear.

  “I can’t take this,” I said. I didn’t know what to say because it didn’t seem possible he was giving it to me.

  “Oh yes you can,” he said. “I work in the jewelry store and I got it for you.”

  “For me?” I said.

  “Just for you and nobody else.”

  As we walked back to the school Lorrie kept oohing and aahing over the watch. She said, “That means he wants to marry you.”

  “It don’t mean no such a thing,” I said.

  “Else why would he give you such an expensive watch?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess he likes me.”

  “I never seen such a fine watch,” Lorrie said. I could see how jealous she was. She kept looking at the watch on my arm even after we went back to geometry class.

  Now I was afraid to show the watch to Papa because I knowed he’d have questions about it. I didn’t know myself what the watch meant or what it was for. I just knowed it was about the prettiest thing I’d even seen. When Mama seen it on my wrist she gasped, “Where did you get that?” I reckon it flashed through her mind it might have been stole.

  “Somebody give it to me.”

  “Who would have give you that?”

  There was no way I could lie to Mama. I told her about Glenn that worked in the jewelry store in town.

  “That must be a fake,” Velmer said. “I bet it ain’t real gold.”

  “Why would he give you such a present?” Mama said.

  “I guess he must like me.”

  “You’re too young to get a present like that,” Mama said.

  When Papa got home Troy told him I’d got a new watch. I’d took it off and laid it on the counter beside the stove while I helped Mama peel taters. I tried not to look at Papa when he come into the kitchen. He picked up the watch and looked at it. I wished I’d kept the watch a secret and not told nobody.

  “Who is this boy?” Papa said.

  I told him his name was Glenn and he worked in the jewelry store in town. He was the nephew of Mr. Fletcher that run the store beside the school.

  “You don’t know a thing about him,” Papa said.

  “He’s a nice boy,” I said.

  “How do you know that? You don’t know nothing about him.”

  I understood Papa was right, but the watch had been give to me and it was my watch. Papa didn’t want me to have such a fine thing, finer than anything he could afford. I knowed before he said it what he was going to say.

  “You give that watch back to him,” Papa said.

  “How can I give it back to him?”

  “When he comes to the store you hand it back to him.”

  “Why can’t I have something of my own?” I said.

  “Don’t you sass me,” Papa said. “That boy is a stranger and has no business giving you such a present. And for all you know he stole it from the store.”

  I stood there looking at the wet taters and the knife in my hand. A tear fell into the pan. The watch was the most precious thing I’d ever owned. It broke my heart to think of giving it back. I wondered if I could secretly keep the watch and not let nobody see it. But I seen that was impossible. If you couldn’t wear the watch, it wouldn’t be no good to own it. And I couldn’t just flat-out disobey Papa, howeve
r much I wanted to. He wanted to show me again how he was in charge of everything till I was all growed up. I had no choice but to do what he said.

  When I took the watch back to the store the next day I hoped Glenn wouldn’t be there and I could keep it for another day. But he was there. When I handed the little velvet box to him he said, “No, it’s yours.”

  “Can’t keep it,” I said.

  “Sure you can; it’s all yours.”

  “Papa said I have to give it back.” I shoved the box into his hands and walked away. He come running after me and said he didn’t want it back.

  “I bought it for you,” Glenn said.

  “I don’t want it,” I said, not telling the truth.

  What Glenn done then shocked me. Tears come into his eyes and he looked at me and sobbed. “I love you,” he said. “And I want to marry you.” I couldn’t think of nothing to say and I started to walk away.

  “I know I’m not nothing special,” he said, like he was choking.

  “I got to go back to school,” I said.

  That was the first time I seen how a man could make it up in his mind about being in love with a girl that didn’t even know about it. A man could plan it all out in his mind without a girl being hardly aware of him. I don’t know what he done with that watch. He probably sold it back to the jewelry store. But I do know that love gifts look awful sad and silly when the love is over. Love gifts remind you of how foolish people in love can be and how much that kind of love is an illusion. The gifts, even expensive gifts, seem cheap afterward, and tainted by the ridiculous. It near killed me to have to give that watch back, but I bet it broke Glenn’s heart to have to look at that watch later and see how his love had all been made up in his mind.

  IN HIGH SCHOOL they started putting on school plays every year, one in the fall and one in the spring before commencement. I’d been in church plays before at Christmastime and found how much I loved to go up on a stage and pretend to be somebody else from a different time and place, in different clothes. I always thought it was odd that I liked to take part in plays and act a part since I was too shy to ever get up in front of an audience, even a small group, and give a speech. Even the thought of having to give a talk made me so nervous my breath got short. If I had to give a report in class I worried about it so much I couldn’t sleep at night. Just the thought of having to speak in front of people made my back ache and my stomach churn and my knees weak.

  But starting with the Christmas pageant at church I found that if I put on a costume and become somebody else it wasn’t hard at all to get up on a stage with people looking at me. In fact I enjoyed it. And I was always able to memorize things. I could memorize anything: poems to recite in class, a passage from the Bible, and the lines of talk in a play.

  So when Mr. Oswald that taught English announced he was going to direct a play for the school and asked who would like to take part I volunteered. He said it was going to be a play about a girl that breaks every boy’s heart until one day she meets a boy that she falls in love with and he breaks her heart. I went to the school library and got a copy of the book and memorized a whole long scene. When I went to see Mr. Oswald in his office he asked if I would read a few lines. Instead I recited the whole scene, where the girl brags about how much fun it is stealing other girls’ boyfriends and then dumping them when they get stuck on her. I made her seem mean and shallow, just like the part was wrote. Mr. Oswald was so surprised he didn’t say nothing at first, and then he exclaimed, “By golly, you are Priscilla. The part is yours.”

  Most of the students in high school was from around town, and they looked down on us kids from the country, way out in the river valley. So it give me a special thrill to get the lead part in such a romantic and sad play. I read all through the play and found Priscilla dies at the end with a broke heart after she learns what it means to be truly in love and is sorry for all the people she has hurt. It was an ending that would bring tears to anybody’s eyes and teach them how important love is.

  I learned all the part and we rehearsed every afternoon, first in the classroom and then on the stage in the auditorium. Since I knowed my part from the first it bothered me it took so long for others to memorize theirs. Mr. Oswald would stand there with a copy of the play and remind them of the lines they’d forgot or correct them when they remembered them wrong. Jason Gooch that played the lead boy’s part, the one Priscilla finally fell in love with, kept forgetting his lines in the middle of one of the most important scenes. We’d have to keep stopping and starting over.

  Now I’d never been on a stage in front of so many people before, and I admit I felt a little nervous as the big night approached. I knowed nearly the whole school and families and people from the community would come. Papa would drive us to the school in his new Model A truck, with Mama and me in the front and the boys riding in the back. When I got to school and went back stage to put on my dress I could hear the crowd on the other side of the curtain and my hands trembled a little. My costume was a kind of sundress with low shoulders and a short skirt, almost short as shorts. I swallowed and suddenly felt so scared I wanted to tell Mr. Oswald I was sick or just run away into the night.

  But other kids in the play started coming in and putting on their costumes and it was too late. I prayed that if I could get through the play without making a complete fool of myself I’d never act again. Some people said the theater was a sin and maybe I was being punished for taking part. Before the curtain went up I was trembling, and it felt like my feet had turned to ice.

  But as the curtain lifted and the lights hit my face, it was like a weight was lifted off me. I opened my mouth to say the first lines and stepped forward into my part. Nobody in the audience could see me. All they could see was Priscilla. It was like I stepped through some kind of wall and was in contact with the people out there in the dark. I said my lines with all the feeling and meaning I could give them.

  From the first, the audience hung on every word and every move I made. Jason forgot his lines once and Mr. Oswald prompted him from behind the drapery, but it didn’t make no difference. The audience laughed at things that was funny and kept quiet most of the time. There wasn’t even much coughing.

  In the last scene, after I’d died of a broke heart, Jason was supposed to carry me off stage. I told him at every rehearsal to carry me with my head toward the audience, for if I was turned the other way wearing the short skirt the people could see all the way up to my bloomers. Well, we got through the play and the audience liked us and even clapped sometimes after a scene they liked special. So when I died Jason picked me up, but I reckon he was nervous and forgot and held me so my legs was toward the audience and my skirt was pulled up even higher. Even though I was supposed to be dead, I reached out and pushed my skirt down as far as I could. And the audience started laughing and then they roared. Maybe they thought that was in the play, for they started clapping like they would beat their hands to rags and bones. Mr. Oswald was beaming as we come off the stage. Now Mr. Oswald was a very shy man. He’d blush even talking to a class. But I reckon he was so thrilled to have the play over and to have such a big crowd and such applause, he wasn’t hardly at hisself. As soon as Jason put me down Mr. Oswald run over and hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. There was tears in his eyes and he said, “You’re wonderful, wonderful.” But the clapping continued and we had to go out on the stage and take a bow.

  After that I had a part in every school play, and I thought of being an actress. I knowed I could be an actress, for I felt more like myself when I was playing a part than I ever did when I was just being me. I never was sure who myself was. But if there was a part that had been wrote, then I knowed how to play that part. And I could learn any lines that anybody wrote.

  But to be an actress I had to go off to New York or Hollywood, a long way from home where I didn’t know nobody. I’d have to leave home and go there as my nervous self. I didn’t know how to play the part of somebody that is going off to study to be an
actress. And I didn’t have the money to go somewhere like that. The Depression had come, and there was no money for groceries, much less for traveling to some far-off place that would be expensive once you got there. I thought and thought about going away to be an actress, but I never did. The only part I would play would be myself, and that wasn’t wrote too good.

  One time after I got the job working in the dime store a man seen me and asked if I wanted to be a model. I was working at the candy counter and he come up and said I looked perfect to be a model. I was just a slim little thing then. He said he was a talent scout for some agency in New York and he looked for girls that wanted to be models. He give me his card and said he was giving interviews with people at the Skyland Hotel. Them that was chose for training would be sent to New York. He said I was a natural; I wouldn’t need much training.

  I looked at the card that evening after work. It would be wonderful to be paid for modeling clothes in a big city like New York, to be photographed wearing fancy rags. But I’d heard stories about men that lured girls by promising them a chance to be a model. When I got back to the boardinghouse where I was staying I looked at the card and thought about it. Even if the man was telling the truth, I couldn’t go off and leave Mama and Papa. I couldn’t leave Mama to do all the work by herself. The next day I throwed the card away.

  THE ONE TIME I was glad Papa was strict and determined where I was concerned with boys was when the Henderson boy got interested in me. He belonged to the family of Hendersons over near the South Carolina line, and I never would have gone out with him in a thousand years in any case. He’d dropped out of school when he was about fourteen and he was knowed to be a heavy drinker. I don’t know when he got so interested in me. He was about four or five years older than me. But one time we was having a revival meeting at church. You know, the meeting they have after the corn is laid by and before it’s time to pull fodder and cut tops, in the heat of the summer, when it feels good to get out at night after the heat of the day goes away.

  His name was Gus and he come up to me on the steps of the church like the other boys done. His face was red and I could smell aftershave and then I realized it was the scent of corn liquor that I smelled. “Miss Annie, I come to walk you home,” he said, and kind of bowed.