The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts

by Robert Morgan

  I tried to think of some way to get my bearings. The sun was off to my left, but I only seen it when we come to an opening and light laid a floor of gold between the shadows. It was too dark to notice moss on the sides of trees. I tried to remember if they was some rule about where the moon would be in the sky. It depended on the time of year, but I couldn’t think clear about it. Everything was running together in my head.

  The woods was darker and stranger than ever. It seemed like they was a black wall ahead of us; a few more hundred feet and we wouldn’t be able to go no further. I couldn’t tell if it was a ridge or a line of trees. But it seemed like we had come to a wall and they was nothing beyond it.

  I didn’t even care if we had to stop. If we come to a final barrier, we could just sink down and rest in the leaves. I would lay down and sleep all night and then find my way in the morning. Nothing seemed as sweet as just to settle into the leaves and earth. To give up the sweating and panting, seemed the best thought I could dream of.

  But Sue didn’t slow down. If they was a wall ahead, she didn’t seem to know it. She run on and on and the wall seemed to retreat, keeping its distance as we run toward it. Was it a cloud? Was it a further range of mountains?

  Then suddenly we come out of the hardwoods into a line of white pines. The brittle lower limbs looked impossible to get through, but Sue plunged right between them and let me prick and lash myself on the stiff twigs. You don’t see a grove of white pines generally out in the mountains. They grow in stands where a field has been cleared and then growed up. In the deep woods you’ll see a white pine here and there, but not a great grove of them. Pines can’t spread like that in a standing oak woods.

  Sue jerked me into the musky bristling dark. It was shadowy as night under the great trees. I could just barely see the trunks ahead, but the sow darted among them like she had cat eyes. The trees was so tall and dark it seemed like running through caverns under the earth, or mines held up by posts. I could hear wind sighing in the limbs above.

  Son, it’s mostly our fancies that keep us going. We have to believe we can do great things even to accomplish little things. But in them pine woods I couldn’t recall clearly what my fancy was, or why I thought I could build a road. Neither the impulse nor the image would come back to me. I couldn’t remember who I thought I was to do such a thing. They had always been a voice in my head telling me what I could do, but I couldn’t hear it no more. The sow was grunting, and they was my own grunts, and the moaning in the trees overhead. It was like I was under an ocean.

  I was so lost in my thoughts and my desire to quit and rest, I didn’t even notice we had come to the end of the pine woods until Sue burst out of the shadows into a little clearing. It looked like a field that had been mowed and was growing up again in a second cover of hay, a rowen some people call it.

  Somebody hollered at us across the opening. A girl was running at us across the grass. “Help,” she hollered, out of breath. She was barefoot and running with her arms full of weeds, and her fiery red hair flew in all directions.

  “He’s been snakebit,” she panted, running up to me.

  “Who’s snakebit?” I said. She run alongside of me.

  “It’s my brother,” she said. “He got bit.”

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “Over yonder with Sallie,” she said and pointed toward the end of the field. “He’s with my sister Sallie.” I seen another girl way over there bent above somebody sitting on the ground. Sue’s path was in that direction but off to the side.

  “Did you cut the bite?” I said.

  “We ain’t got no knife,” she said. “We was gathering simples today. Mama sent us out to get some yarrow. Sam was pulling up yarrows in the weeds and the snake bit him.”

  “What kind of snake?”

  “A rattler. Sam didn’t hear it I reckon, ’cause he’s deaf.”

  “How long ago did he get bit?” I said, trying to make up my mind what to do. I didn’t have a knife neither. All I had was the hatchet.

  “Just a few minutes,” she said. “Please help Sam.”

  Sue was tending to the right of the figures in the field. If she kept going straight, we would miss them by a hundred feet.

  “Please help,” the girl said. She had her arms full of yarrow which people then gathered and sold to medicine companies. She held onto the bundle of weeds like it was a baby.

  “See if you can stop Sue,” I said.

  “Stop who?”

  “See if you can stop the hog,” I said.

  I seen that girl hesitate for a second, and then she throwed down the yarrow and run in front of Sue. But the sow darted to one side. The girl run alongside and grabbed Sue’s ear. I pulled on the tail, and thought for an instant it was going to work.

  But Sue jerked her head and flung the girl off. The girl tripped on her own feet and went rolling in the grass, her skirt getting tangled up around her waist and hips.

  I had to decide quick. A few minutes before, I had been thinking of quitting all together, of just sinking down to rest and letting the hog go on. But now that somebody was demanding I stop, it was hard to let Sue go. After all I had gone through, it seemed impossible I couldn’t finish the survey, or at least try to finish it, before sundown. They might be another hour of light.

  The girl gathered herself up from the grass and run after me again. “Could you let me borrow your knife?” she said.

  “Ain’t got a knife,” I said.

  “Then let me borrow your hatchet,” she said. When I started out that morning the hatchet had been sharp enough to shave with. But after slashing at bark all day and hitting into the dirt and rocks I doubted it would slice skin over a snake bite. We was getting toward the closest point I would to the other girl and the snakebit boy. I thought about my road and my plans and I seen they wouldn’t be worth nothing if I couldn’t stop and help somebody bit by a rattler. They wasn’t no road that important.

  And it come to me in that instant that Mary wouldn’t marry me just because I surveyed and built a road. That was a young boy’s fantasy. That was the way we think in daydreams. If she married me, it would be because she wanted me. What woman would marry a man just because he built a road? I seen that building the road was my condition, on myself. Even Professor MacPherson wouldn’t much care whether I built the road or not. And didn’t matter if he did. People that pegged their approval on whether you done this or that didn’t matter either. If the road was meant to be built, it would be, and if Mary meant to be my wife, she would be. I let loose of Sue’s tail and run over to the boy in the grass.

  His hair was red as his sister’s, and it fell all over the place in curls. But his face was white as a saucer, and sweat stood out on his forehead big as blisters.

  “Where is the bite?” I said, looking at his bare feet.

  He held out his arm and I seen the two fang marks on the back of his hand. His wrist had turned red and was beginning to swell.

  “I’m gonna die,” he said.

  “You ain’t going to die,” I said. “The bite is far from your heart and far from your head.”

  “Are you a doctor?” Sallie said.

  “No, I ain’t a doctor,” I said. “But I’m a Richards, and Richardses all have medicine in their blood.” I wiped the hatchet on my shirt and felt along the blade. The steel had been dulled and dented. They was only one place, right at the bottom corner, that was still sharp. I didn’t know if it was sharp enough to cut the boy’s skin, but I didn’t have time to hesitate.

  It’s harder to cut right into human flesh than it seems. If you think about it, you can’t do it. It must take doctors and surgeons a long time to learn to slice somebody’s flesh without trembling. I took the boy’s hand and pushed down hard with the corner of the blade. He screamed and tried to jerk his hand away.

  “Hold him down,” I said to his sisters. Their yarrows was scattered all around, and they stood watching me. They bent down and held him, one on each shoulder. My arm was
trembling it was so tired and sore with rheumatism.

  “Hold him down hard,” I said. “Hold tight to both his shoulders and arms. Don’t let him jerk.”

  I pushed the corner of the blade down on Sam’s hand and this time the skin broke. Quick, I made three more cuts, a little deeper than scratches. Blood begun to darken the marks and ooze out. I had to decide if I was going to suck the wound or not. If you don’t have a sore in your mouth and you spit the blood out, it won’t hurt to suck a snakebite. But if you have a sore, it will poison you, same as the person bit. I had the hole in my lip but I thought I could cover it with my tongue and spit quick. I put my mouth to the back of Sam’s hand and sucked till I tasted blood. Then I spit in the grass. I sucked two more times.

  The hand was red and swole up even bigger, but it looked white around where I had sucked. Blood kept oozing out of the cuts.

  “I can tear a rag off my dress and tie it around his hand,” the older sister said. All the children was red-haired. They had hair of the darkest copper.

  “No, let it bleed,” I said, “to rid of more poison.”

  But some of the venom must have already got into the rest of Sam’s body for he said he felt numb and cold.

  “Don’t you go to sleep,” I said. I could see that his eyes was closing a little. But he couldn’t hear nothing you said.

  “I feel sleepy all over,” he said, and shivered. He felt hot, like he had took a fever. Maybe that’s what poison does to a body, gives you a fever like any infection does, the way pain makes you feel hot.

  “Stay awake,” I said. “You’ve got to stay awake.”

  “What we need is some liquor,” I said to the sisters.

  “I can run to get some,” the younger sister said.

  “Don’t we want some snakeroot?” the older sister said.

  “You have to make tea from it,” I said.

  “Mama will boil some tea,” the younger sister said.

  And it come to me, what the old-timers talked about for rattlesnake bite. It was tincture of lobelia. That’s what they give people, lobelia leaves soaked in whiskey. Everybody kept a bottle. Lobelia cut the fever and the swelling.

  “Run get some tincture of lobelia,” I said.

  “Tincture of what?”

  “Of lobelia. Just ask for lobelia.”

  The younger sister run off across the meadow the way Sue had gone. She had forgot her yarrows, and run as only a kid can run, like she could reach the ends of the earth in a few minutes.

  “Let’s get him up,” I said. I tried to lift Sam, and seen how weak I was. It was like my muscles had been glued stiff.

  “You get his other arm,” I said. With great effort we lifted him. It’s always shocking just how heavy a body is.

  “Can you stand up?” I said loud in Sam’s ear. But he seemed groggier than ever. “You help us to walk,” I said.

  With me practically carrying him on one side and the older sister on the other we started across the field a step at a time. Sam was almost asleep on his feet. “Keep walking,” I said. “You’re doing good.”

  I assumed we wanted to go the same way the younger sister had run, and we started off in that direction moving a few inches at a time. I left the hatchet in the grass with their piles of yarrow. I needed both my hands to hold up Sam.

  “Where did he get bit?” I said.

  “Right over there by the woods,” the older sister said. “Where we was pulling up yarrows. He was so scared he run out here.”

  “And Sam don’t hear good?” I said, gasping with the strain.

  “He don’t hear at all in his left ear. Ever since he had the fever, he’s been half deef. He had the fever same time Pa did, except it killed Pa.”

  “Who was your Pa?”

  “He was Ewell Maybin, the song leader. After he died, Mama and us started gathering simples. It was something us younguns could do besides hoe corn. At first we gathered stuff that wasn’t worth nothing. Then we learned the shape of leaves. We get weeds and roots and dry them and Mama sells them to a man from Asheville.”

  Sam was getting heavier with each step, and the woods at the end of the field didn’t seem much closer.

  “Does anybody have a wagon?” I said. I couldn’t carry Sam much further. He was near asleep and leaning his head on my shoulder.

  “Mama don’t have no wagon,” the sister said. “We don’t even have a horse no more. We borrow a horse to break the ground and then we make a crop with the hoe. And we get in simples.”

  We stopped to rest for a little. “Stay awake, Sam,” I said. “Sam, can you hear?” His head lolled over on my shoulder.

  “How far is it to your house?” I said.

  “It ain’t too far, after we get to the end of the Blue Field.”

  “The Blue Field?” I looked around the meadow and I seen it really was the Blue Field. I hadn’t recognized the place before. That showed how tired and dull I was. And then, I had never come at the Blue Field from the south. It looked strange in the late sun. But sure enough, it was the Blue Field, now that I noticed it. It was about a mile below Douthat’s Gap. It was the last clearing before the wilderness of upper South Carolina.

  They called it the Blue Field because somebody had once growed indigo there, way back in the time of the first settlements. I still remember some of the blue pots they used to boil the stuff down. They was big washpots. Along in late summer, about this time of year, they would cut the stalks and boil them in these pots. What they had left, after they took the fiber out, was this black-looking water. When they boiled the water down, it left nothing but powder hardening to bricks. All you had to carry out to market was those black bricks. Indigo was black as soot in its boiled-down form. But one of those bricks would dye hundreds of yards of material. When I was a boy I used to think the blue of the indigo come from the mountains. These was called the Blue Ridge, and I figured the roots of indigo went down into the soil and sucked up the ink that give the mountains their color.

  Since I knowed now where we was, it was just a matter of going for help. But the Blue Field is on the other side of the gap from Cedar Mountain. If somebody closer didn’t have no tincture of lobelia, it might take an hour to run down to the settlement and back. It was a long, uphill walk to the Maybin house.

  Sam had quit walking and was dragging his feet. His head leaned all its weight on my shoulder. “Sam,” I said. “You got to stay awake.” I shook him and he opened his eyes a little.

  “Want to sleep,” he said.

  We stopped a minute to rest ourselves. If I had not been so tired, I would have carried him up the hill.

  “Why is he so sleepy?” his sister asked.

  “It’s like he’s had a lot of bee stings,” I said. “You’ve heard how somebody stung by a swarm of bees will sleep thirty hours. It’s the poison I guess.” I didn’t say they often go to sleep and don’t wake up.

  The sun was getting so low, the weeds and grass seemed lit from underneath. It was like we was walking on a field of light. I shook Sam again. “Look at the grass,” I said.

  He rolled his eyes and muttered.

  We got slower and slower, but finally come to the edge of the field. It was all in shadows, and I couldn’t see after having the sun in my face. “Where’s the trail?” I said.

  “It’s right up here, sir,” the sister said. They was a rut through the weeds and underbrush into the woods. I didn’t see how we could walk one on each side of Sam, the trail was so narrow.

  “We’re liable to get bit by a copperhead,” I said. “They’re crawling blind this time of year.”

  I tried to think of some other way to carry him. I wondered if I could walk in front and hold his arms over my shoulders while he leaned on my back. Maybe she could hold him up from behind. “Let me get in front,” I said. “You hold him from the back.”

  But he was leaning so limp I had to bend forward and pull him onto my back like he was a sack of cornmeal. I leaned over and carried him a ways, but they wasn’t m
uch the sister could do to help. I seen I couldn’t go far that way. I was too sore and wore out myself, and the rheumatism in my shoulder hurt too much. I was straining my blood and marrow for strength I didn’t have. I went a few more steps and stopped, off balance and about to fall.

  “I have to rest,” I said. “See if you can keep him from falling.”

  She caught Sam under his shoulders and we just managed to lay him down on the trail without falling ourselves. “Wake up, Sam,” I said, and shook him. Just then we heard steps on the trail ahead and here comes the younger sister with a jar in her hand.

  “All Mama’s got is this liquor,” she said. “She sent to see if Old Man Stamey had any of that other stuff.”

  “Give me the jar,” I said.

  I unscrewed the lid and held the jar to Sam’s lips. He had gone back to sleep soon as we laid him on the trail. “Wake up, wake up,” I said. “You’ve got to drink this.” I held his head up with my left hand and tipped the jar to his lips. It was corn liquor and had an oily look, like they was things coiling around in it. But they wasn’t much of a bead on the liquid when I shook it. Somebody had sold Mrs. Maybin weak liquor.

  “Take a sip of peartening juice,” I said. Some of the liquor slopped into Sam’s mouth and his eyes popped open. I guess the whiskey burned his mouth and throat.

  “Drink all you can,” I said. “It will make you feel better.”

  “Is he drinking any?” the younger sister said. She was bent over with her hands on her knees trying to catch her breath. Sam started coughing. Maybe he got some of the liquor in his wind pipe, or maybe the liquor made his throat raw. His whole body stiffened with the effort of coughing and his face turned red.

  “Don’t let him get strangled,” the older sister said.

  “At least the coughing will help wake him up,” I said. I looked up and the woods had got darker. The only light was in the tops of the trees. Dew was forming on the weeds and grass.

  “Maybe all three of us can carry him,” I said. “You both can take his feet and I’ll carry his head and shoulders.”