They was all kinds of tales about Thomas and another trapper named Muskrat Maybin. They was stories about how they was rivals over an Indian girl, and about how they seen who could trap the most furs, and who got the most would win the girl. Muskrat caught five hundred muskrats and thought he had won for sure, but Tracker showed up with fifty mink pelts worth more than all the rat hides put together.
People like to make things up, if they can find a hero, a name to pin their stories on. Some names just seem to stir the imagination and attract liars. We want to believe they done extraordinary things. It’s like we need people to act out our lies. Ginseng hunters and trappers in the mountains beyond Brevard said for years they seen Tracker Thomas there. Others claimed to have spotted him in the Long Holler and near the Sal Raeburn Gap. But I never had believed such tales. If Tracker Thomas was still alive, he’d be eighty-five years old. What eighty-five-year-old could live on his own in the mountains? Nobody could live in the wilderness like they done in the old days anyway.
“Did you notice the orchard around you?” the stranger said.
“This is wilderness,” I said. “I don’t see no orchard.”
The old man pointed to his left, and then to the right, and for the first time I seen the apple trees. They was little trees, spread out like wild apples will. Their bark was blacker than other trees. Whoever had planted the orchard had left it, and the other trees had grown between the fruit trees, above them. The orchard was buried in shadows, but each tree had apples on it. Some was gold and some was streaked and some was turning bright red.
“Who could have planted these trees?” I said. “Never heard of Indians growing apples.”
“They’s more things we don’t know than we do,” the man said.
“These trees look old as the Garden of Eden,” I said.
The old man’s eyes glittered with the pleasure of showing me the apple trees. It was like when he pointed them out, they just appeared, for I hadn’t seen them before. Of course I hadn’t been looking there either, what with trying to foller Sue and see where the barking dog was.
The little dog kept jumping sideways in front of Sue as she turned to face it. But she didn’t go on. She would swing her head at the dog and it would step out of the way and then hop closer again. I think she needed a rest as bad as I did.
Seemed like it had turned to autumn around the stranger. It was the oddest thing, but I had the impression of yellow leaves on some trees, and red leaves on the shumake bush. Maybe it was just the colors of the apples and the dapple of spotlights from the sun. But it seemed the woods was full of fall colors and the air was thinner and cooler.
“How come these apple trees are here?” I said. “Ain’t nobody been here to set them out?”
“How do you know who has been here and who ain’t?” the old man said.
“Wasn’t nobody in the mountains but the Cherokee,” I said.
“But who was here before the Cherokee?” he said, smiling and leaning on his rifle.
“Don’t rightly know,” I said. “But I’ve heard of the lost tribe of Israel, and I seen some Melungeons back down the trail.”
“Friend, we are all the lost tribe of Israel,” the old man said. “And we don’t know what all has been here since creation.”
He took pleasure in telling me, and in surprising me. We old fellers always like to tell the young things they couldn’t have dreamed of. It’s one of the pleasures of being old.
“For all we know, this was the Garden of Eden,” he said. “It looks kindly like paradise, don’t it?” He looked both young and old at the same time. And he seemed to think he might be in paradise. A yellow leaf floated to rest on his hat and another rested on his shoulder. He smiled at me out of the shadows.
“How do you live in the woods and not get lonesome?” I said. “This is far back in the mountains.”
“The trees are my company,” he said. “And the change of seasons. I have the fellowship of time.”
I wanted to ask if he was Tracker Thomas. But I couldn’t bring myself to out and say it. He seemed so peaceful and happy, and I didn’t want to offend him. If he didn’t want to tell me he was Tracker Thomas, I couldn’t ask him.
“I’ve never been lonely but once,” he said. “That was when I took a load of furs to Charleston. In the town and taverns I begun to feel awful lonesome. My ears felt like they was going to burst in the Low Country. Once we started back through the pine woods and got to Fort Ninety-Six, I begun to feel better. And the closer we got to the mountains, the better I felt. And when I seen the ridges again, I thought I was going to jump out of my skin with joy. These blue slopes looked like the ramparts of heaven itself.”
He ignored his little terrier that kept Sue at bay. She stood still, like she was unaware of the tormenter. But I knowed she was stiff with fatigue like I was. We was soaking up the moments of rest like a thirsty man would cold spring water.
“Sometimes I just sing to myself and Powder,” the old man said, and pointed to the dog. “I sing the old hymns and tavern songs for the joy of it. And the mountains echo the song back to me. A rock cliff will answer you word for word.”
“Is Cedar Mountain straight head?” I said after a pause. It was past the middle of the afternoon. The shadows was bigger and reaching to join over the laurel bushes and trees.
“Some say it is,” the old man said, like he had said at first.
“I don’t want to get lost,” I said. “Not this late in the day, after coming this far.”
“I want you to get lost,” the stranger said. “Can’t really see where we are till we get lost.”
“I’ve got to get home, and I’ve got to build a road.”
“You don’t have to do a thing,” he said. “You’re free to go where you please.”
“I have promised to build a road across Douthat’s Gap.”
“You don’t have to build a road,” he said. “Of course, somebody will eventually. And next thing we’ll have is wagons and dust, peddlers, new ground cleared and gullies washing every holler. The game will be gone, like the Indians is gone.”
“It’s just a matter of time,” I said. “Somebody will build a road.”
“I hope it’s more time than I have,” he said. But he didn’t sound mad. He sounded peaceful and sad. It was like he was already grieving over the wilderness that would be gone.
Sue begun to lunge at the dog again. She side-stepped and suddenly darted around the terrier, like she had rested and got her spirit back. I just had time to grab her tail.
“Here, have this,” the old man said. He held out a thick gold coin, which I took in my hatchet hand. It was the fattest, brightest gold you ever seen, thick as a biscuit.
“I found it,” the stranger called as we was leaving. “It might be some use to you.”
That gold piece felt heavy and soft as clay. I looked at it the best I could while running and dodging limbs. They was a picture of a king on one side and some foreign writing. But I couldn’t look no more for I had to mark trees. The little dog was barking after us, but then dropped back. When I glanced back the stranger seemed to have gone.
“Much obliged,” I hollered back.
The heavy gold coin warmed my hand as I swung the hatchet again and again, marking pines and poplars, cucumber trees and white oaks. The sun got hot again as we left the deep woods and run out the slope. The shadows was stretching on the open places. The big coin felt like it had a fire in it.
I glanced through the trees to see the mountains ahead. I had thought I had seen Caesar’s Head way up there. But now they wasn’t a thing familiar. It didn’t seem like we had gone down hill. We was running out the same ridge. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to the mountains there.
But Sue didn’t seem confused at all. It was like she had got a second wind after breaking away from the terrier called Powder. She trotted fast as she had that morning. She darted around trees and stepped aside to miss a rock or stump. She run like she had had a ni
ght’s rest, or like she’d had a lot of syrup and coffee.
“Slow down, old girl,” I said.
But my voice seemed to spur her on, like I’d said “giddup,” or “hie.” I wondered if she would outrun me yet, if after all the way we’d come I’d have to give up and let go near at the end. It made me mad just to think of it, how people would laugh at me if the pig showed up in Cedar Mountain by herself and I had to come stumbling in the next day with my hatchet and my torn clothes.
“Whoa there,” I said. “Whoa there.”
But the widening shadows must have made her think of feeding time. As she approached the day-down, she thought of the end of her ordeal. The thought of rest and a trough full of slop made her run in spite of herself. But I wondered if she knowed where she was going anymore. I couldn’t see nothing ahead when they was a break in the trees. I couldn’t imagine where the mountains had gone. Mountains don’t just up and melt away.
Then I thought maybe we had turned and was headed a different direction. Sue had swerved and lost the trail. I glanced around to see through the trees, and sure enough, it seemed like they was mountains off to my left. They looked further away than before. They had that misty look of faraway mountains. The ridge must have swung to the right as we was follering it.
“Whoa there,” I said. But it didn’t do no good. Sue was splitting through the trees faster than ever. Her legs was a blur as she found the quickest way through brush and around a big tree. Her hooves hit sure places in the leaves and found just the right paths between rocks and wind-throws.
Tracker Thomas had said he wanted me to get lost. It was like his suggestion put a spell on me. Because he said it, it was bound to happen. He didn’t want no road across the gap, and he was still the ruling spirit of these woods. Had he give me the coin to confuse me, to distract me? The big coin shined in my hand like the reddest, newest gold.
Don’t talk foolishness, I said to myself. If you got lost, you done it on your own. Had nothing to do with the old man or anything he said. But if we was lost, Sue didn’t seem to realize it. She had her head and seemed to know know where she wanted to go. I couldn’t hold her back now, any more than I could before.
We went under a big white pine where it was already dark. I felt something touch the back of my hand and thought it must be a pine needle or a cobweb. But when we come out in the light again I seen it was a black spider. It had a red spot on its belly like a black widow. I was going to fling my hand to throw it off, but seen it was gripping the hair on my skin. I was afraid if I shook it, it would bite me. Black widows can jump three or four feet and I was afraid it might hop right into my face. Didn’t seem nothing to do but hold my hand out like I needed it for balance. I couldn’t afford to rile the spider. A black widow bite won’t kill you unless you’re already sick or weak. Except the bite will kill a youngun or an old person. I was so tired I didn’t know what the bite would do to me. I couldn’t fling it off and I couldn’t brush it off on a tree without getting bit.
We had come out on some kind of shelf-land, a level place that run out along the mountain above any creek or branch. I couldn’t recognize a single landmark. I could see the ridge, but it didn’t look familiar. I didn’t see a thing I’d noticed before, back before I seen Tracker Thomas and his dog. It was like somebody had turned the country around and rearranged the slopes and trees. Either that, or my eyes was playing tricks. Or my memory was all twisted by the excitements and strain of the day.
“Where are you going?” I hollered at Sue.
But the woods soaked up my voice, and the hog sure didn’t answer. She didn’t slow down a bit. The fat coin burned in my hand against the hatchet, and I couldn’t hack trees for a swing would make the spider bite. I thought of running my hand under leaves to knock it off, but it could bite the instant something touched it. It clung to the hair on the back of my hand.
I’d have to remember where we was going, since I couldn’t make any blazes. Sue was pulling me rod after rod and chain after chain, and I couldn’t mark the way. If I lived through this day, I would have to come back and mark that stretch better.
But I was lost, and I was tired. They was nothing I could do with the spider except not disturb it, and hold my hand far from my face as possible.
I begun to think strange thoughts. It seemed I couldn’t tell uphill from down, and that I might be running to South Carolina, not up into the mountains. I imagined somebody was running under me, upside down, like a reflection, and every time my boots touched ground, they touched his boots. The earth was thin as the surface of water, and he was running on the underside.
And I thought of strange contraptions, of wagons that moved under sail like ships. And these wind wagons got all tangled up in the woods because they was good only in open country. And I seen a plow that was pulled by sails. It was a big turning plow, bigger than any I had ever seen. It turned over the dirt a foot down, twisting up a shiny belly of soil. And the plow was pulled by a thing on wheels, like a wagon, with a big sail on it that could be adjusted this way and that. A man rode in the wagon adjusting the canvas and guiding the big plow.
Then I thought of a gun that could be played like a trumpet. And the barrel could be filled up with whiskey and corked for a long trip. In my fatigue I seemed to remember it was the blockaders that caught me beside the pond and tried to torture me. And it was the Melungeon girls that was making whiskey and throwing out the mash that Sue drunk. It seemed like it was the old Melungeon woman that put the spider on my hand.
I blinked to wake up. The spider wasn’t no dream at all. It was right there on the back of my hand, and it hadn’t moved. I had to clear my head. I needed a dash of cold water in my face, but they wasn’t any water and I couldn’t reach my hand to it even if they was. I needed a cup of coffee and a hot biscuit. I needed some salve on my lip. I needed to sit down and rest and sleep. I could feel the sleep wanting to rise in me, like some kind of powders through my blood. The sleep was rising like a flood that wanted to float me away.
The spider looked like a shiny black jewel set on the back of my hand, spotted with red enamel. And it clung there as an extra big tick or flea would. But out of the corner of my eye it seemed like a drop of blood, a clot that had hardened and blackened.
Sue kept running along the shelf-land. She turned beyond a clump of laurels, and cut through an open space below some oak trees. Sometimes it seemed we was going in a northeast direction, and sometimes in a northwest. I tried to examine the shadows behind trees, but I couldn’t stop, and couldn’t look away from the spider on my hand for more than an instant. We seemed to be lost and getting loster.
But the black widow didn’t move at all. I wasn’t sure I could feel it. But I seen it there like a black eye surrounded by lashes. I tried to remember about black widows. Was they attracted to heat, the way rattlesnakes are? Did they like wet places, or dry places? Maybe it was the smell of exhaustion that attracted the spider. Maybe a spider can smell when a body is about to die. Like buzzards, they’re drawed to a body near the breaking point. It’s the same instinct that pulls a wolf to a sick buffalo or deer. Maybe the spider thought if it stuck to my hand a few minutes more it could feed to its heart’s content.
I wondered if insects was attracted to the smell of metal. Was they a perfume coming off the coin that drawed the spider? Was my sweat mixing with the gold to make an aroma? Maybe the brightness of the coin fascinated the spider. But it didn’t make any move to touch the gold. It stayed still on the back of my hand. I wondered if I flicked my wrist it would just drop off.
Just then the spider started crawling. It felt like a drop of water running on the back of my hand. The skin itched where the little feet moved. It walked out to the knuckles and around like it was looking for something. A spider moves not like it is rowing on its long legs, but like it is being poled by one leg after another, fast and separate. The black widow circled back and rested just below the wrist. I thought it was maybe going to jump. But I couldn’t focus o
n it long because we had reached the end of open oak woods and was entering brush and weaving our way between saplings and sassafras bushes.
“Whoa there,” I said in a low voice. But Sue didn’t pay me no mind more than she ever had. I didn’t want to holler loud because I thought it might upset the black widow.
It seemed like we was heading east now. I couldn’t see anything ahead but deeper woods. I couldn’t see how we was going to get through. The spider started crawling up my wrist. I wondered if it would crawl inside or outside my sleeve. If it crawled outside I could slap it off. If it crawled under the cloth I didn’t know what I would do. I’d have to turn loose of Sue’s tail. People get bit if a spider goes under their clothes. Just the binding of the cloth will make the spider bite.
In my confusion I stumbled against a chinquapin bush and those flame-shaped leaves must have been loaded with rain for they sent a shower down like somebody had throwed a bucket of water. When I looked I seen the spider had been washed off, but I couldn’t see where it had gone. Had it jumped somewhere else on me? Sue kept right on going, and I didn’t have time to stop and look.
I thought I seen that spider on my pants leg. Maybe it was just another drop of rain, but it shined like the drop at a thermometer’s bottom. Then it was gone and I had to keep going. Every chance I got I looked down at my britches, but it was gone. Had it bit me and in the rush I had not felt the sting? I was already numb with fatigue. The rheumatism didn’t feel as sore. Maybe the poison was spreading and I didn’t even know it.
You’re wondering why I kept going? It seemed like I had been running for a year. It seemed like I couldn’t remember a time I hadn’t been running. I wondered why I had ever even thought of building a road. I couldn’t remember why it had seemed so important. They comes a point when ambition just seems to wash out of a man. It’s like something changes in you and instead of looking ahead and bracing for projects and enterprise you see the sweetness of rest and modesty. You are ashamed or at least amused by your grand ambitions. You want to grow a quiet garden. You want to sit on the porch and talk to neighbors. You want to savor the minutes and hours, and protect yourself against age and weather. It’s like they’s some change deep in your makeup and a stream has been diverted way back up the valley.
The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Page 26
