The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover
Page 32
After she was asleep I stopped and looked across the pasture to Meetinghouse Mountain. What I seen give me a shock, for a sharp thin blade rose high above the tops of the trees on the mountaintop, pointing right at the center of the sky, like a rocket or an unknown space machine from science fiction. And then I laughed at myself, for it was a steeple and I could see the rock tower it stood on. While I’d been laying in bed before Angela was born, and then all fall and winter while I stayed inside taking care of her, Muir had been building the steeple of his church. He’d mentioned it from time to time, but I’d been too busy to pay much attention.
The several-tiered tower rose over the trees, and the spire shot up far above the trees. It was the most beautiful thing, that steeple pointing straight to heaven. It made the mountain and the valley and the whole community seem to reach up to that point of hope, far above the sinkholes and mud and confusion of the everyday things. All these years that was what Muir had seen in his mind, the “idea” of the building, the spire, the inspiration. And nobody, except maybe Papa, had understood it. The stone church, the steeple, would be there for years and years, long after Muir and me and even Angela was dead, and Muir had built it with his sweat, his own rocks and wood, his own dimes and quarters, his own vision, with some help from Papa. As I looked I wondered how he’d made the steeple so high and sharp. It looked impossible to get up on something that steep. What kind of scaffold had he used, I’d have to ask him.
By the time Angela was a year old she delighted everybody with her laugh, with the way she clapped her hands when she was excited, with the way she seemed to notice everything. Her blond curls and fair skin made her shine out in the sun. Women on the street would stop to tell me what a beautiful baby I had. When she cried at church while Muir was preaching I had to carry her outside. But some other woman would usually come out to help me hold her.
One summer day when Angela was almost a year old, I decided I’d done enough work. I’d been breaking and canning beans for a week. The kitchen was hot and the house was clammy from the steam from the canner. Bean strings was scattered on the floor. I finally loaded the last rack of jars in the canner, then swept the floor. Angela was asleep in her crib, but I knowed she’d wake up soon and want some dinner.
I washed my face and arms at the pan on the back porch to cool off and thought of the rocks by the shoals on the river. A cool breeze always come up the valley there. Instead of fixing dinner in the hot kitchen I thought it would be good to take a picnic down to the shoals and relax by the rushing water. The sound of the river always soothed me and cooled me off. The summer before I’d just laid in bed in the awful heat and waited for Angela to come. Now she was a bright happy child and it would be nice to have a picnic at an unexpected time on a work day.
While Angela was still asleep I made some tomato sandwiches with bacon left over from breakfast and boiled three eggs. I made a jar of lemonade too and packed it in the egg basket with a tablecloth, glasses, salt and pepper shakers, and napkins. The stove was starting to cool and I just left the cans of beans in the canner. When Angela woke up I changed her and then started toward the river with her in the crook of my right arm and the basket in my left hand.
It was the brightest summer day I can ever remember; there’d been a rain and the air was washed clean. I knowed Muir was working in the bottom field by the river, stretching wire for the pole beans. He’d put in more crops this year because he needed extra money to pay for benches for the church on the mountaintop. When we come down the pasture hill by the old molasses furnace to where he was working he said, “Where are you going?”
“To a picnic,” I said.
“Where?”
“By the shoals.” I told him I had his dinner and lemonade in the basket. He was took by surprise but then wiped his hands on his overalls and took the basket from me. We followed the path under the birch trees along the river bank down to the Bee Gum Hole and then the shoals. It was cool in the shade along the river. Spotlights of sun fell through the trees onto the trail.
When we come out to the open place where the big rocks was I told Muir to spread the blanket on the flattest rock. I put Angela on her blanket there. The river was clear except for froth around the rocks. Two lavender butterflies circled each other above the water in a kind of dance over the chute where Troy had made his great leap. The roar of the shoals made the rest of the world seem faraway.
“Everybody will think it’s funny to have a picnic on a workday,” Muir said.
“We have to eat lunch somewhere,” I said. “Might as well be by the river.”
Angela started to cry with the sun in her eyes and I moved her to my side so she set in my shadow. The warm sunlight near the splashing water made me feel so easy I thought I could set there forever.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First I want to acknowledge my mother, Fannie F. Morgan (1912 – 2010) whose gifted storytelling inspires much of my fiction, including Gap Creek and this sequel.
I am extremely grateful to my agent, Liz Darhansoff, whose enthusiastic support contributed so much to the completion of this book. Also I want to thank my longtime editor, Shannon Ravenel, for once again guiding me through the complex process of editing and finishing this story. Her excitement about good writing is contagious and sustaining. I am indebted to Jude Grant for her unique and priceless skills as copy editor. Also I want to thank Peter Workman, Elisabeth Scharlatt, Chuck Adams, and the staff at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill for making this publication possible, especially Anne Winslow for her superb designs, and Brunson Hoole, managing editor, for his exemplary coordination of all our efforts.
A Shannon Ravenel Book
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2013 by Robert Morgan.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
eISBN 978-1-61620-342-9