The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover

by Robert Morgan

  “You get away,” I said. “You get away from here.” I was afraid Old Pat would break loose and I gripped her collar as hard as I could. If the collar broke, or she took a leap away, there was nothing I could do.

  As we got closer to the barn I seen what was going to be my biggest trouble. I could lead her into the dark feed room, but how was I going to let go of her and get out and latch the door before Old Pat jumped back out? Mama must have seen that was the danger too, for she followed us out to the barn. “You take her inside and I’ll latch the door behind you,” she said.

  “How will I get out?” I called over my shoulder.

  “I’ll go back to the house and get her water pan and something to eat,” Mama said. “Then while she’s eating you can slip out.”

  It always did surprise me how clear Mama could think when there was an emergency. When other people got excited she stayed cool as silver in a drawer. I’d heard Papa tell of the flood on Gap Creek when they both almost drowned. Papa said Mama never lost her nerve or good sense.

  I opened the feed room door with my left hand, but Old Pat hesitated. “Come on, old girl,” I said, trying to sound playful. Finally she stepped across the threshold, and Mama latched the door behind us. It was dark in the feed room, but streaks of light come through the cracks like pinstripes on a dark suit. The bins of crushing, shorts, cottonseed meal, oats, dairy feed, and sweet feed filled the air with their aromas. The strongest smell was the molasses in the dairy feed. Some of Velmer’s steel traps hung on the wall, among the dusty old harness that was no longer used.

  Old Pat whined and whimpered and the dogs outside barked and growled. One scratched on the door, and one pawed the logs at the base of the wall. The hound dog howled. I patted Old Pat on the head and tried to calm her down. I’d never seen her so restless. She yelped and walked under the ladder to the loft above where Troy’s canoe was, then come back and pushed against the door.

  When Mama returned she said she’d hand the dish of bread and streaked bacon through the space at the top of the door, then while Old Pat was eating she’d open the door and hand me the water dish. She was afraid the water would spill if she handed it over the door. I set the dish of bread and bacon as far as I could from the door and then took the water from Mama and placed it beside the bowl of food. Old Pat looked back at me before I slipped out, but I guess she couldn’t resist the bacon.

  When I got outside I tried to shoo the dogs away, but no matter what I done they come back. The big collie had found the toolshed beside the barn and clawed at the wall behind the feed room. I chased it out of the toolshed and closed the sliding door.

  By then more dogs had showed up. There was a coal black dog that I hadn’t seen before and a tall dog with curly hair that must have been an Airedale. I tried to run them off, but it didn’t do no good. There was nothing to do but hope Old Pat wouldn’t get out of the feed room, and the other dogs couldn’t get in. I hurried to the milk gap to get the cow so Mama could milk. The dogs made the cow nervous, so Alice didn’t let down her milk at first, but finally Mama got the milking done and put her in her stall.

  It was later, just before dark, after I gathered the eggs in the henhouse, when I seen the pack of dogs gathered at the end of the barn yapping and snarling at each other. They kept looking up and it took me a second to see what they was looking at. It was Old Pat standing in the door of the barn loft. I thought at first she was going to jump out and maybe kill herself. But she didn’t. It was just too far down and she had too much sense to try it. She stood there in the door whimpering and yelping, and the dogs below snapped at each other and whined and barked.

  Later the next day when I got home from the cotton mill the dogs seemed to be gone. I could see the scratch marks they’d made on the door of the feed room. I opened the door but Old Pat wasn’t there. I was so afraid she’d got out my chest felt sore. I climbed up to the loft and at first I didn’t see nothing in the gloom there. And then a tail moved and I seen her laying on the floor beside Troy’s canoe.

  WHILE HE WAS working at the army base at Fort Bragg Troy had met a man who bred dogs and trained dogs for the army. I’d never heard of the army keeping dogs before, but Troy said they used them for guard dogs and to sniff out buried explosives and things like that. Troy visited the kennels at Fort Bragg and got to know the man in charge of the dogs. They talked about police dogs, and Troy told the officer about his dog Old Pat back in the mountains. The officer said he wanted to breed Old Pat to one of his finest German shepherds and raise the pups for the army. There was going to be a war soon and he needed all the bright German shepherds he could get. And he needed new blood for his kennel.

  When Troy come back home the next weekend, not long after Ginny’s death, he said he was taking Old Pat with him to Fort Bragg. It surprised me how much his announcement riled me.

  “You can’t just take her and give her to the army,” I said.

  “I’m not giving her to the army.”

  “She’ll be killed when the war comes,” I said.

  Sharon was visiting that weekend. She patted Old Pat’s head and stroked her neck. “She knows you’re talking about her,” she said.

  “She’ll just be used to breed more pups,” Troy said. “The army needs more really smart dogs.”

  “How do you know what the army needs?” I said.

  “Because I know the officer in charge. He wants to breed the most intelligent dogs he can find. When I told him about Old Pat he said they’d give anything to be able to breed her.”

  “Is he giving you anything?” I said.

  “No, it’s my contribution to the country.”

  Knowing that Old Pat was going to Fort Bragg with Papa and Muir and Troy put a chill on the weekend. We done some of the usual things. We drove up town for ice cream, and went to an all-day singing at Mountain Valley church. But all the time I kept thinking about Old Pat and how dangerous it was that she was going to the army base. We walked down to the river and Troy throwed sticks into the water for Old Pat to swim out and bring back.

  “How long will she stay with the army?” I said.

  “Until she has her pups and they’re weaned.”

  “That will be months and months.”

  “They’ll take good care of her. They know just what to feed her,” Troy said.

  “Don’t you think Troy knows what he’s doing?” Sharon said. “After all, it’s his dog.”

  I was so surprised my breath got short. It was the first time Sharon had sided with Troy against me. After all I’d done for her, letting her come down to the house for weekends, being her friend when Troy was away. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” I said to Troy, ignoring Sharon, and then I didn’t say no more.

  Late Sunday evening they left for Fort Bragg. Troy tied a rope to Old Pat’s collar and tied the other end to the sideboards of the truck bed so whatever happened she could not be throwed out or jump out of the truck. Me and Mama stood in the yard and watched them go. Troy was driving and him and Muir waved to me as they drove out past the barn.

  When Papa and Troy and Muir was gone away it seemed mighty lonesome around the house. It’s the people that make a place seem like home, not the house and yard and land around it. Now with Old Pat gone too the place seemed even more deserted. The chickens still pecked in the yard and the hog grunted in his pen. The cow and the horse was still in the pasture. But the place seemed awful quiet, like it was empty. I’d moved back home to keep Mama company, but now she was the one who tried to cheer me up.

  “They’ll be back before long,” Mama said as we looked down the road where the truck had gone.

  “Not if the war comes,” I said. “If a war comes, they’ll draft Troy and Velmer and probably keep Old Pat.”

  “Maybe there won’t be a war,” Mama said. “Roosevelt said on the radio he didn’t want war.”

  WITH EVERYBODY GONE all week except me and Mama I took to listening to Papa’s radio. I’d never paid much attention to the news b
efore, but every evening if there was time I’d listen to the news at six o’clock. I’d switch on the radio in its wooden cabinet and roll the needle in the lighted window to find a station in Greenville that was telling the news. It was terrible news. They spoke about Germans bombing London and other cities in England, about people being blowed up and burned. They told about the German army invading Russia. You never heard such awful stories, about whole cities burning up, people shot by the thousands. Every day I told myself I wouldn’t listen to more news. But the next evening at six if I was near the radio I’d turn it on again. I couldn’t help myself. I had to hear the news.

  “Annie, you better turn that stuff off,” Mama said. “It’ll just make you sad.”

  “But what if we was to get into the war?” I said. “You know Velmer and Troy and Muir might all have to go.”

  “We’re not in the war,” Mama said. “Velmer and Troy and Muir are safe.”

  It come to me I should be comforting Mama, not the other way around. Mama was as worried as me, but she never said nothing. She just tried to help others. I felt guilty for making it worse for her. But I didn’t stop listening to the news.

  And then in August we got a terrible shock. It was on a Friday, the day Sharon come for a weekend visit. It was a little card, the size of a business card, and it come in the mail. It had print on the back and the name Troy Richards was filled in with ink.

  “This is to inform you that Troy Richards has joined the United States Army Air Corps at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.” I was so surprised I thought it must be a joke. When I showed it to Mama she turned away and went and set in her chair by the door to the dining room.

  “It must be a mistake,” I said. “Or somebody is playing a trick on us.”

  Sharon took the card from me and looked at it. “This is no mistake,” she said. “This is an official card. There is no postage stamp on the front. He has done this without telling me.” She was so mad she slammed the card against her hip.

  “Didn’t he mention this to you?” I said.

  “All he said was he was thinking about it,” Sharon said. “I begged him not to and he said he would think about it.”

  “Why would he go now?” I said.

  “He said that with war coming anyway it was better to get ahead of the game, to get a better deal. And it would be much safer to be in the Air Corps than in the infantry.”

  “At least he told you he was thinking about it,” I said.

  “I begged him not to.”

  When Papa and Muir and Velmer got home that night they said Troy had joined the Air Corps at the office in Fayetteville and rode with other recruits to Fort Jackson. The Air Corps had promised that he could go to mechanics school, and if he did well he’d be trained to work on airplane motors. It was the promise of work on airplanes that made him decide to go. Troy said that after the war, or if there was no war, he could work for an airline as a mechanic.

  “I told him airplanes was dangerous things,” Velmer said. “Stay away from airplanes. But he said that was true only if you flew in them. A fighter plane or a bomber might be dangerous but not to them that worked on the ground.”

  That weekend it seemed like the world had been twisted out of shape to some crazy angle. With Troy gone into the service it was like some terrible change had come over everything. The country was not at war, but everybody believed the war was coming.

  “Where is Old Pat?” I said to Papa.

  “They’re keeping her at the kennel until she has her pups,” Papa said. “After that I’ll bring her home.”

  It was no fun to have Sharon at the house that weekend. I felt bad and I know Mama felt bad, but Sharon was more mad than anything else. She acted like Troy had joined the Air Corps just to spite her, like he’d slapped her face. Nothing I said seemed to cheer her up the least bit. We walked out to the milk gap to get the cow and I said Troy must have done what he thought was the right thing for his country.

  “I told him that if he was going to join up we should get married first,” Sharon said.

  “Maybe he didn’t think that would be fair,” I said. “To marry you and then go away.”

  “It seemed fair to me. It was what I wanted.”

  I told her that Troy would write a letter soon explaining his plans. Now he was too busy to write.

  “A soldier’s wife gets special benefits,” Sharon said. “But you have to be married to be eligible for them.”

  AFTER TROY FINISHED basic training at Fort Jackson he was home for a few days. Sharon come down to stay with us and I don’t think she ever left Troy’s side. She was determined they’d get married either on this leave or when he had his next furlough. I don’t know what all she said to him, but I’m sure she kept telling him one way or another that she wanted to get married now. Once I heard her say to him, “What if you was to meet some other girl way off from here?”

  “Now you know that won’t happen,” Troy said.

  Everywhere they went Troy asked me to go along. It was like he wanted me there to help him or protect him. It surprised me a little that he resisted getting married the way he did. Most boys going away in the army want to marry the girl they love. And Troy showed every sign of loving Sharon. He’d wrote letters to her from the Air Corps and he went to get her in town in Papa’s Model A truck. He liked to spend time with her and Lord knows she was crazy about him, as most girls was. And Sharon’s claim that she would get benefits if she was an army wife was all too true. And though nobody mentioned it, she would get insurance and maybe a pension in case of his death.

  But something held Troy back. Nice and easygoing as he was, he could be firm when he wanted to be. I thought maybe he didn’t want to start on a marriage and then have to leave. No telling where he might be sent or what might happen to him if a war come. He liked to finish the things that he started. He may have thought it was unfair to Sharon, as much as she wanted it, to marry her and then leave for who knows how long, maybe forever.

  They was a good-looking couple together, her dark skinned and petite, him tall and broad shouldered with fair skin and wavy red hair. The army had made him more muscular, harder, more mature looking. He must have been the handsomest soldier in his unit.

  But I wondered if he was really as attracted to Sharon as he seemed. Troy was the kind of person that had liked to spend hour after hour working at paintings, doing things like exploring the river in the canoe. He was curious about everything and liked to meet different kinds of people. He may have held back from marrying Sharon because he wasn’t sure it was what he wanted. Deep down he may have sensed that she just wasn’t right. That’s what I decided later, when I seen how she acted. As much as she clung to him he may have seen that she was kind of spoiled.

  Sharon certainly sulked after he was gone. She wouldn’t hardly speak to me and Mama after Troy left on the bus to go all the way to Biloxi, Mississippi. I know she was terribly disappointed. I could understand that. She had her heart set on being an army wife and now she was left behind with nothing but a promise for a later time. I was glad when she was gone. We didn’t see her again for many weeks.

  What Troy was doing in Biloxi was studying mechanics. He was learning about airplane engines and all about airplanes, how to fix them and keep them running, how to load ammunition and bombs in them. From time to time we got a letter from him wrote with a pencil on tablet paper. He said he was having a good time learning about those big airplanes, bomber planes, and that much of the time it was raining there on the Gulf of Mexico. I think he loved what he was doing for he loved mechanical things.

  I’ll never forget the first Sunday in December of that year. It was the weekend Papa and Velmer and Muir brought Old Pat back from Fort Bragg. She’d had her pups and they’d been weaned. The army would raise them to train for guard dogs. Old Pat was so happy to be home and to see me she jumped right up on me, putting a paw on either shoulder. She like to knocked me down.

  “Don’t do that,” I said, and give her a
hug and pushed her away. I’d forgot how big she was. Maybe she’d growed a little bit while the army was keeping her. It was like having a member of the family back at home. I run my hand through her fur. We missed Troy, but it helped to have his dog back at the house.

  After we got home from church that Sunday Mama and me put on our aprons and fixed dinner. We had fried chicken and rice as usual, and green beans and canned peaches. And Mama had made one of her special coconut cakes. When Papa and Velmer and Muir was home Mama liked to put on the best meal that she could.

  Just as we set it all on the table Papa said he was going to turn on the radio to get the news. He’d got in the habit of checking the war news the same as me. There was always bad news from Europe and Russia and North Africa. I reckon he was getting more and more worried because Troy was in the Air Corps.

  “We’re about to eat,” Mama said. “Let’s not ruin dinner listening to bad news.” So Papa didn’t turn on the radio then, and we set down and he said the blessing. It felt good to have Muir and Papa and Velmer with us.

  “How much longer are you going to work at Fort Bragg?” I said to Papa when we was eating the cake. Mama had made a fresh pot of coffee to go with the cake.

  “As long as they keep building barracks,” Papa said. “There’s no work around here.”

  “A thousand recruits a week arrive at Fort Bragg,” Muir said. “They have to have some place to put them.”

  “What are they going to do with all them soldiers?” Mama said.

  “They’re getting ready for war,” Papa said.

  “Who is getting ready?” I said.

  “The army is getting ready. The president is getting ready,” Muir said.

  “The president don’t want war,” I said. “That’s what he told us.”

  Papa took his coffee into the living room and turned on the radio. I was clearing dishes from the table when I heard him call out, “Listen to this!” I stepped to the door to the living room and heard an announcer all excited and talking about ships burning.