I got out some of my pots and pans and built up a fire at the edge of the clearing, a ways back from the mud and pits. They had set up screens for sifting the dirt. And everybody that had a pan was out in the creek scooping and sloshing. They’d shake the pan a little and look, pick something out and shake the pan again. From time to time one of the men would look at me and make me uncomfortable. Somebody had shot a mess of squirrels for dinner.
Realus got his shovel and tied the horse to a poplar. The man called Jones the Preacher told him to start shoveling in the bank. While I was heating the water I tried to make sense of what everybody was doing. They was men going this way and that, some carrying buckets and boxes and dumping the dirt. It was like watching trout circle in a pool, the way they heaved and hurried, then hunkered over a pan or pile of mud.
Finally I seen the pattern of their work. Some of the men, like your Grandpa, was digging into the banks to loosen the dirt. Then they carried it to the screen and separated the big rocks out. Then in the pans they washed and shook the load until the dirt melted and drained away and only pebbles and sand was left. The pebbles and sand they washed still more, to sort out the nuggets and gold dust from the rest.
I wondered how much gold dust they had found. No doubt Preacher Jones kept it all hid where only he knowed. He seemed like the kind of feller who would look out for hisself.
“I want to show you something,” the preacher said behind me. He liked to have scared me where I bent over the fire. I turned around and thought he was taking his pants off. He unbuttoned the top button, and pushing a gallus aside, reached down inside his straddle. Then he pulled out something fat and yellow. I took a step back, and saw it was a deerskin pouch.
“Looky there,” he said, grinning at my surprise.
But I didn’t reach out and take the dirty poke.
“Don’t you want to see?” he said. “Here, let me show you.” And he opened the little sack and poured out in his hand what looked like bright sand with little rocks.
“Looky there,” he said, and stared into my eyes. “They’s enough here for a man and young woman to go wherever they wanted to and live like quality.”
He leaned closer to me, looking into my eyes. His beard was black but had streaks of gray. “You and me could go anywhere we wanted,” he said and smiled at the pile of gold in his hand. I took another step back.
“Don’t you want to come?” he said, and reached to touch me.
“We’re going to the Holsten,” I said.
“What’s on the Holsten?” he said. “Besides snakes and wildcats and hard work?”
“We’re just married,” I said.
“The Lord can marry and unmarry,” he said and grinned.
I backed halfway into the poplar brush to get away from him.
“Just give me a little kiss,” he said. “And I will give you this poke. Just a little kiss to try me out.”
He was pushing me back against the poplars. “You’ll have to ask my husband,” I blurted out. It was a silly thing to say, but it was what come to mind. The preacher looked at me for a second, then he busted out laughing. You could hear him laugh all across the clearing. I seen your Grandpa look toward us as the preacher stepped back. I bent over the fire, stirring the stew.
It seemed like each man in the clearing was looking at me every chance they got. I must have been the only woman they had seen in weeks. It made me kind of shivery to know all their eyes was on me. I was making hoecakes on a spade I had washed in the creek above the digging, and I was making stew from the squirrels they had already killed. A breeze had come up and besides the ring and grind of the shovels, and the rattle and slosh of the pans, they was tall poplars rubbing in the woods behind me. You could hear them rubbing their necks and groaning. It was a sound like nails pulling out of planks.
A little feller with a red face and a red beard come up to my fire. He was streaming sweat and he had freckles all over his shoulders and chest. “Name’s Jenkins,” he said.
“How do,” I said.
“You need salt,” he said. “I got a gourd over here in my bag.”
“I got some salt,” I said.
He couldn’t take his eyes off my skirt. He couldn’t help hisself, though his face was getting even redder than before. I felt sorry for him. He must not have seen a woman in months.
“I ain’t got no pepper,” he said. “I wish I had some pepper to offer you.”
“We can do without,” I said.
He just stood there, like he didn’t know what to say. His pants was covered with mud, and he was dripping with sweat. He must not have been more than eighteen.
“You go back to work,” I said. “And we’ll have dinner ready before too long.”
“You let me know if I can help,” he said, and turned to walk back to the pits.
The men worked like Trojans in the gravel and dirt. It always amazed me how men like to move around earth. They like to cut up the dirt and shift it around and reshape it.
But it seemed to me, as I watched them sweat and strain with the heavy loads, digging and carrying, that they was no longer quite human. They had become a power, working beyond will and choice. They could have been a force of the elements, breaking apart and sorting, taking and rejecting. At the very least they seemed like animals working there, doing things they did not understand.
It come to me the piles and puddles resembled a dung heap. They worked like flies on a manure pile, their skin white as maggots bending and twisting. You wouldn’t even want to describe the mess that fouled the creek, that touched into the woods and stained every bit of grass and every stick the men had touched. It was like they had turned the woods into a pit of filth. It sickened me as I turned back to the dinner I was fixing.
When I banged on the pot with my spoon all the men come running except Realus. They didn’t even wash their hands or put on their shirts. They come dirty and sweaty to the stew pot and dipped squirrel meat and taters onto their hoecakes and eat them like they was tarts. Their faces was dirty and they eat like hogs come to a trough.
I looked back to the creek and your Grandpa was still shoveling mud out of the bank. He had took off his red shirt and his white skin glowed in the sun. I dipped some stew onto a hoecake and carried it to him.
“How come you didn’t eat?” I said. He was up to his ankles in the mud and his boots and pants was smeared with the dirty water.
“’Cause I want to get into this vein,” he said.
“We want to go on to the West,” I said. “Don’t we?”
“We can go on to the Holsten with some gold to buy things,” he said, out of breath as he scooped up the wet sand.
“Realus, I’m getting scared,” I said. “Them fellers look at me funny.”
“Ain’t nobody going to bother you,” he said. He looked at me like I was pestering him. He stopped for a second and took my arm. “We get a poke of gold,” he said, “you can buy everwhat you want.”
“I don’t want nothing but to go to the Holsten,” I said.
But he was like a different Realus. He was changed from the man who arrived at the clearing that morning. You could see in his eyes he had a new vision of how we was to live. He was not thinking of getting to the Holsten and starting our crops.
“Ho!” somebody hollered from the edge of the clearing. They was four men leading horses out of the woods.
“What you’uns want?” the preacher said.
“We’ve come to help you out,” one of the new men said.
“We don’t need no help,” the preacher said.
“They’s a whole mountain here,” the newcomer said. He tied his horse to a poplar not far from our horse. “You’re going to need help to dig out the whole thing.”
The preacher talked to the new men. I just heard him say, “Who told you about this place?” They talked in low voices for a long time. I wondered if they was going to fight. As they talked they kept shifting positions, circling each other. The preacher’s face was re
d as wine, and when he took off his black hat the bald spot on top of his head was red also.
But they must have come to some kind of agreement, for the new men tied up their horses and took picks and shovels and pans off their saddles. One man had a kind of pie pan he must have took from his wife’s cupboard, and another had a garden spade that wouldn’t do much with the sand and gravel. They had grabbed whatever was at hand when they heard about the gold. They was nobody I recognized from the settlement.
The men eat every bit of stew and every bite of the hoecakes.
“That were a mighty feast,” the preacher said.
“That were a lavish of victuals,” another said.
The preacher come over and stood beside me. He smelled sweatier than a field hand. “You’re the kind of woman could make a man happy,” he said. “You’re pretty enough to be the preacher’s wife.” I started to move away from him.
“The Lord wants his own to be happy, to have the best,” the preacher said.
“I’m sure that’s true,” I said. “If they are his own.”
I turned away to carry my dirty pots and pans up the creek above the diggings and scrubbed them with sand and rinsed them in the clear water. My clothes was getting dirty from walking around in the mud. I thought, how am I going to get Realus away from here before something awful happens? How would I remember to him that we was just married and on our way to our own place in the West? I prayed a little, for the first time since we’d left home. Before that I hadn’t felt justified to pray. Not because I had done nothing wrong, but because we didn’t seem to be doing anything God would be interested in. I felt like he might not want to look while we was getting away. Then he would be proud of us once we was well married and had younguns.
After that I felt a little better, and gathered up my pots and pans to take back to camp. When I turned around this big feller was standing there watching me. His name was Cyrus and everybody called him Sarse. He was looking at me with this strange look in his eyes. He didn’t say nothing.
I thought it better to act cheerful and unafraid. “Evening,” I said and started to walk past him. He put out an arm and pulled me around.
“Pardon me,” I said, still trying to sound friendly.
But whatever had come over him was too strong for him to stop hisself. He was a big meaty man with hair on his chest, and he gripped my arm to pull me toward the bushes.
“No,” I said and tried to twist free. His teeth was clenched with determination. We was about a hundred feet from the clearing and the sound of the digging and the creek made it hard to be heard unless you hollered. I still thought I could get loose and run. It scared me to think how busy Realus was with the digging and not paying no attention to me.
I backed and turned away, and my pots and pans fell crashing in the leaves, banging on each other. But Sarse didn’t seem to notice. He took both my shoulders and pushed me toward the laurels. He was trying to grab hold of the collar of my dress and tear it. I must have hollered out finally, or maybe I just made up my mind to. But next thing I remember was your Grandpa appeared just as I fell. He knocked Sarse up the side of his head, and the big man went reeling into the brush.
Realus reached to pull me up from the ground, and then I seen that Sarse had picked up a stick and was coming toward Realus. I must have screamed, for your Grandpa turned just in time to duck Sarse’s swing and hit him in the belly with his shoulder.
I’m telling you what’s the truth. You never seen such a fight. Both of them was big fellers, sweaty and muddy from the digging. They grabbed hold of each other and rolled on the ground, getting leaves and sticks stuck to their backs. They pulled each other’s galluses and slapped and kicked. They kneed each other and bloodied their noses. I was horrified, and set like a fool in the leaves where I had fell.
It turned more of a rassling match than a hitting kind of fight. Sarse tried to grab Realus by the neck and run the top of his head into an oak tree. Realus tripped him up and they both fell down and rolled around kicking up the dirt.
The preacher stood holding his gun and watching. He hadn’t said a thing, though the other men kept hollering, “That’s it, Sarse,” or “Twist his arm, Sarse.” It didn’t look too good for your Grandpa with all the men pulling for Sarse.
But suddenly Realus got Sarse’s head in his arms and swung him around. He slung him against a tree, then he backed up and rammed Sarse’s head right into that oak. Sarse staggered all over trying to stand, but he stumbled backward into a laurel bush and looked like the breath had been knocked out of him.
Realus stood trying to get his breath and I run to him. The other men stood looking at us. “Anybody else want to try me,” your Grandpa said. His blood was up and he wouldn’t have cared who took his challenge. Several of the men stepped closer. I stayed by his side to keep him from fighting anymore.
“That’s enough,” the preacher snapped. “It was a fair fight.” He was looking at me. “Fair enough, leastways.”
Sarse rolled over and tried to stand up, but he couldn’t. They was blood on the top of his head. He crawled through the laurel bushes till he was out of sight. Several of the men barked after him like he was a coon or possum.
“We got work to do,” the preacher said.
I picked up my pots and pans and followed Realus back to the clearing. Two more men had arrived on foot, with shovels strapped to their backs. They was talking to the preacher. When I come back to the fire and put my pots and pans down, one said, “You must be the couple that eloped from the settlement.”
“Did they elope?” the preacher said. “Then they ain’t married.”
“Her Daddy’s looking for her,” the new man said.
“Your Daddy’s looking for you,” the preacher said. He stood over me like a slavemaster over a field hand.
“That man could be lying,” I said. Realus had gone back to digging in the bank. He was out of earshot.
“You didn’t say he was lying,” the preacher said.
“It’s not polite to accuse people of lying,” I said.
The preacher bent close to me. “If you ain’t married you’re living in sin,” he said.
“We are married,” I said. “I’m a married woman.”
“If you ain’t married then you’re free to marry me,” he said. “I got all the gold we could need. And the Lord will forgive you for your sins. The Lord forgives all who believe on him. You think about what I said. You think real good.”
He went back to the diggings and I felt worser than ever. I knowed we had to get away from there, whether Realus knowed it or not. I had to talk to Realus, so I took a gourd for a dipper and started off to get water. On the way back I stopped in the mud and give Realus a drink. While he was drinking I said to him in a low voice, “We got to get away before night.”
I smiled and looked past him so the men wouldn’t think I was saying nothing. “I’ll lead the horse up the creek and tie him,” I said. “And while the men are eating I’ll slip away like I was going for water, and we’ll run.”
Realus didn’t look at me and I wasn’t sure he heard me. But I had to believe he understood and would go through with the plan.
That evening I worked hard as ever I had to make a meal beside that mud hole. The dirt and standing water had been tramped through and spit in so much it stunk. It turns my stomach just to think of the smell of all those sweating bodies, and the mud and rotten things, and manure where the horses stood.
But I washed my hands and stewed some coon meat the men had brung in, and I roasted sweet taters in the fire. I even took some of our flour and made biscuits. I wished they was some sourwood honey. My plan was to keep them all busy eating for as long as possible, so I used a good bit of the flour and lots of sugar and salt. Hungry men are not going to go chasing through the woods as long as they have good hot food.
I led the horse way up the creek beyond where I had washed the pans. The packs was still on the poor animal. That showed how busy and beside hisself
Realus was. He had left the horse standing with his burden. Realus was always good to beasts.
The horse was stiff from all the standing, and I knowed he was thirsty. His name was Dan, our first horse. I let him have a long drink from the creek and I tied him to a tree.
When I got back to the clearing it was only shadows on the heaps of mud. The men come running when I hollered it was supper time. I was happy to see Realus slipped away into the woods.
“I’m so hungry my backbone’s rubbing a blister on my ribs,” one of the new men said. They grabbed the stewed coon meat in anything they had, a plate, a cup, between two biscuits. The sweet taters was so hot they could just barely hold them to eat.
“Now all we need is tea,” the preacher said.
“I’ll go get some water to make some,” I said.
“No, you wait a minute and serve us some more biscuits,” he said. I served the rest of what I’d made. My dress was so muddy I was ashamed to be seen in it. They didn’t seem to notice that Realus hadn’t come to eat.
As they continued eating they got to laughing, as men will. “Hey preacher,” one called from where he set on the ground. “How we going to divide up the gold?”
“Everybody gets a share for every day he’s worked,” the preacher said.
“Who’s counting?” another man said.
“I’m counting,” the preacher said.
“How much do you get for half a day’s work?” one of the new men said.
“Half a share,” the preacher said.
“Then how do you know how big a share is?” the new man said.
“You add up all the gold at the end and you divide by the number of men and days they worked.”
The men set around the fire in the early dark. Their eyes glistened. They wrapped shirts and blankets around their dirty shoulders as the air got chilly.
“Show us the gold,” one of the new men said.
The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Page 5
