It was midmorning before we reached the top. I was out of breath from climbing and from excitement. All the way up I had wondered what we would do if the Johnsons was up there. But I saw no sign of them around the orchard. A breeze over the top from the north made me shiver. The orchard was deserted except for bluejays and other birds pecking rotten apples.
Pa showed us where the corner was beyond the east end of the orchard, and Tom drove a pipe there. He hammered the pipe until it was just under the leaves. “If Johnson pulls this up I’ll dig a hole and bury the next pipe in cement,” Tom said. “We’ll see how fast he digs that up.” I put the corner in the notebook.
From the orchard we could look down on the church and school and whole river valley. Some people had done their winter plowing and the fields sparkled red. Broomsedge shined on hillsides. I could see the roof of our house by the hemlocks. From up there it looked as if the house was right by the river. The mountain beyond was brown and gray at the foot, then lavender further up. The distant mountains was blue and smoky. The MacBanes up the river was killing hogs. I could see the smoke of their scalding fire and the bright carcasses hauled up on a pole.
If only we could get over this quarrel and return to everyday life, I thought. Nothing is as sweet as ordinary work and freedom from worry. The fuss had poisoned everything, including sleep and worship and trust of neighbors. It was normal peacefulness that was most beautiful. I wouldn’t mind work dirty as rendering lard if I could do it without strife. Time free of anger and fear was the dearest thing I could think of.
A bullet stung the air nearby and a shot rung in the woods.
“Who is there?” Pa called. The woods echoed his words.
We looked toward the oaks at the end of the orchard, but nobody was in sight. There was a clump of shoemake bushes where Tom had piled stumps, and something moved a branch. “There,” I said and pointed. But it was only a bird pecking the red seeds.
“Hey!” I called to the woods. But there was just the breeze.
“Maybe it was somebody squirrel hunting,” Tom said.
“We didn’t even bring a gun,” Pa said.
“Hey!” I hollered again. There was no answer from the woods.
“Never thought Thurman would shoot unarmed people,” Pa said.
“He was an outlier,” I said. “No telling what he or one of his boys is liable to do.”
The breeze stiffened the orchard grass and jays quarreled and pecked among the spoiled apples. It was the most beautiful orchard I had ever seen. I understood why Tom had spent so much time up there against the blue sky, pruning and mowing, plowing around the trees and setting out more peaches and apples. It had to be the best view in the whole valley. There was two or three white clouds hanging to the east. If we got the dispute settled I planned to spend more time up there working with the trees.
A boom washed out through the trees, but it was from way down the ridge. Somebody was hunting beyond Cabin Creek.
“We might as well move on,” Tom said.
“Hey!” I called again to the woods, but the only answer was an echo from the big oaks.
Tom drove a stake by the orchard where Pa showed him. Beyond the peach trees I saw the stumps and laps where the Johnsons had cut timber. It made my throat hurt to look at the piled brush and clutter of limbs. We walked through the mess to the corner. The ground felt hot, as though I was trespassing. There was sawdust souring in the leaves and more than two dozen stumps. I expected to see a Johnson appear from behind every bush.
“I don’t think they’ve cut any more trees,” Tom said.
“Maybe not,” Pa said, “but it’s hard to tell. I didn’t count the stumps careful before.”
There was something red laying in the leaves. When I got closer I saw it was a bandanna, tore and stained with something dark. I didn’t pick it up. There was stains in the leaves. Perhaps a squirrel had been shot there, or maybe a deer.
“The corner is right over yonder,” Pa said and pointed down the ridge. “It is in that clump of laurel bushes.”
Tom and me crawled into the rhododendrons and found where the pin had been pulled out. Thurman had not even filled the hole. Tom drove a pipe into the hole so deep only half an inch stuck above ground. I wrote a sentence describing the laurel bushes.
I could tell Pa was getting tired. He leaned on his walking stick and was short of breath.
“Here, I’ll take the ax,” I said.
“It’s all downhill from here,” Tom said.
“Climbing down is harder than climbing up,” Pa said.
I went slow down to Buzzard Rock and walked out on the cliff. The holler below was so deep I felt I was soaring up just by looking into it.
“That’s where I killed my first deer,” Pa said, and pointed to a spring holler. “It was a cold January day and the buck must have come down for a drink.”
“When was that?” I said.
“Oh that was before the war,” Pa said. “I must have been twelve or thirteen.”
Going down we passed several more pits Locke and Joe had dug. They had hoped to find zircons to sell to Thomas Edison. Dr. Johns had opened a mine above the depot and sold several tons to the inventor to make filaments, and got in a terrible dispute with Lawyer Gibbs’s father who claimed the mineral rights to the mountain. Locke and Joe must have dug a hundred holes on our property hoping to get rich. But far as I know they never found a single zircon, and before Dr. Johns and Gibbs settled their conflict Edison quit using zircons to make filaments.
The roughest going was through the swamps by Cabin Creek. There was places I had never seen. Tom had to chop limbs and brush just to get through. “Watch out for poison oak,” he said.
Many poplars and sweet gums was wound with fuzzy cables of poison oak. There was sinkholes and puddles. The leaves and sticks smelled musty. Logs glowed green with moss. I avoided anything spotted like poison ash.
“This is the way the whole bottom looked before it was cleared and drained,” Pa said.
We had to stoop under vines and low limbs. It was dark in the thicket. Everything I touched left soot on my hand. There was groundhog holes and snake holes. I don’t know how Pa and Tom kept to a straight line. But Tom drove stakes and cut limbs right through the swamp, and slashed maples and birch trees. At the mouth of Cabin Creek he drove a pipe deep into the sandy bank.
The new ground Tom had cleared along the river was so open the light hurt my eyes after the dark swamp. I could see all the way to the barn and the hemlocks around the house. Smoke jumped from the chimney in spurts. Chickens pecked the bank below the chickenhouse, but none of the children was outside.
“That is the prettiest place in the whole valley,” I said.
The house above the fields looked peaceful and timeless. Never had freedom from conflict and hate seemed so precious. When we got to the house I picked up Muir and hugged him. And I pulled Moody to my apron. The children had been playing by the fire and left spools and sticks and newspapers scattered. But for once I didn’t scold them. I didn’t want to feel any more anger.
Our work marking the boundary may have been useless in a legal sense, but it did make us feel better. There was nothing to keep Johnson and his boys from pulling up the stakes and pipes, but he would have to go to the trouble. At least we had done something. And I had wrote down Pa’s directions and the location of the lines. It was satisfying just to walk the boundaries all around the place, and now Tom and me knowed better where they was.
But nothing turns out the way you expect. Just when I had made up my mind to fight the Johnsons to the end and pay Lawyer Gibbs whatever it took, the whole situation changed. Three days after we walked the boundaries with Pa and marked the corners we heard from Joe that Thurman Johnson had died.
“H-h-he had a stroke,” Joe said.
“When?” Pa said.
“H-h-he had a stroke last Monday,” Joe said.
“Where?” I said.
“He was ch-ch-chopping and fell on his
ax. He c-c-cut hisself, but it was that stroke and then another one yesterday that killed him.” I remembered the stained bandanna on the mountaintop.
“Now what do we do?” Tom said.
“We don’t do nothing,” Pa said. “We wait and see what Thurman’s boys do.”
“It was them that cut the trees,” I said. “They may be just as mean and crazy as their daddy.”
“We’ll wait and see,” Pa said.
The day after Thurman’s funeral we got a note from Morris Johnson. It was left in our mailbox up at the river road. It was made in pencil on a scrap of lined school paper. It said:
Now that pappy is gone we don’t wont no argment and no trouble with nobody. They must be some land on that mountain that don’t rightly belong to anybody. But we don’t care atall. We wont to do the christin thing and we wont to live in piece.
When I read that note to Pa and Tom I felt the weight of time and the sorrows of the world had been lifted from my back. Our land was free and clear again for us to work on. I felt as if I could hardly keep my feet on the ground. I guess I was shouting.
“It’s just a smudged little note,” Jewel said.
I was so happy I hugged Jewel before she could back away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Baby Fay was born in October. She was the littlest of my younguns, dark skinned like the Peaces. “Small as a cricket,” Tom said when he saw her. And that was what he called her, his little cricket. Crickets was out then. As I laid in bed I could hear them in the grass outside, and when the baby was sleeping I had nothing to do but listen to night sounds. For some reason I couldn’t hear katydids, and thought maybe a early frost had killed them. I hadn’t heard anything about a frost, but then I had been busy with the baby.
As I laid in bed I knowed Fay would be my last baby. It wasn’t only that I was almost forty, and it wasn’t just that there didn’t seem any way Tom and me could patch up our quarrel this time. I felt different after he had got the gun and shot it in anger. And he acted different too. I think he was afraid of hisself. I think he was worried what he might do next time he got riled. But beyond any of those reasons I just felt Fay was to be my last. As I held her and nursed her and washed her in the dishpan, I thought, This is the last time I will do these things. And I thought, I had better do a good job. This is my final chance to raise a youngun right. And I thought how I would teach her to read before she went to school, and I would take her to church and meetings with me. And we would pack a picnic in the egg basket and take it down to the rocks on the river.
It appeared to me I had not been a very good mama. All my worry and thinking about the services when there was a meeting had tired me out. It didn’t seem possible two good things could get in each other’s way, but I saw they had. I made up my mind I was going to work harder raising Fay, no matter what happened.
Listening to the sounds of night I could hear a fox bark on the hill. And the waterfall at the mill rung like a bell that held minute after minute. But there was something else I heard through the open window, like a squawk that turned into a laugh. It come from the pines by the pasture, and went off into the dark like somebody chuckling. I thought, Was it an owl? But no, it didn’t sound like a screech owl. And it didn’t really sound like a squirrel. It was something laughing in the dark. It was laughing at me because I was awake to hear it. And it was laughing at the whole world. That moment I saw it was right. We was all foolish and making a spectacle of ourselves. Wasn’t anything to do but laugh with whatever it was. I found myself chuckling, until I stopped for fear the baby would wake up.
It was the driest fall anybody had ever seen. After the big snows of the winter, and the rains of early summer, the streams had been full and the ground wet. But then it didn’t rain any more. All the water was used up. I had seen falls foggy and rainy and so wet leaves never got their color but just turned brown and fell. But this Indian summer was perfect weather, sunny and warm. I set on the porch rocking Fay in the afternoon sun. It seemed everything was turning gold under a perfect sky.
The summer couldn’t seem to stop, but went on and on. I thought maybe there wasn’t going to be a winter. Pumpkins shined bright in the fields. I thought, If it never rains the mountains will turn to deserts. Instead of trees there will be ridges of dust and sand. I tried to think what the slopes would look like all brown and blowing dirt every time a breeze stirred.
One day Tom come running into the house after dinner. “The pasture is on fire,” he hollered.
“How did it catch?” I said.
“A spark from the furnace,” he said. Him and Pa had been making a last run of molasses. I had never seen him so frantic. I reckon he was not only mad the fire had got out, but that he had, in effect, started it hisself.
Tom grabbed up mattocks and axes and shovels from the shed and started up the hill.
“Where’s Pa?” I hollered. But Tom had already run beyond the junipers. I knowed Pa must be up in the pasture. But he was too old to fight fire.
I could see smoke on the hill, between the pines and the hickories. The smoke looked like the mane of a horse streaming to the clear sky. The smoke was too far away to smell, but I could hear crackling flames in brush. The broomsedge and scrub was dry as paper in an attic.
“You hold the baby,” I said to Jewel. Her and Moody was playing in the sand in front of the steps with Muir.
“I want to come,” Jewel said.
“I want to come too,” Moody said.
“You stay here,” I shouted. I handed Fay to Jewel.
“She’ll get me dirty,” Jewel said. Jewel was the neatest, primmest child I ever saw. Even when she played in sand she kept her hands clean and dress unwrinkled. And Fay needed changing. I had been meaning to change her when Tom run to the house. But I had to go help fight the fire. And I had to go look after Pa. He would get too excited if he tried to beat out the flames.
“I want to help,” Jewel said.
“Did outlaws set the fire?” Moody said. “I’ll go shoot them.”
“You stay here. I mean it,” I hollered back as I took out up the hill. I had fought fire when I was a girl and fire got out on the mountain. I wondered if I should carry a bucket of water up to the pasture. But I didn’t reckon one bucket would do much good, not if the whole pasture was burning. I tried to think how you could put out a fire in a dry pasture. In the woods we had cut pine limbs and beat the flames. Would you try to shovel dirt on a grass fire, or cut a ditch in front to stop it?
“Pa,” I hollered, after I crawled between the strands of the fence. My apron caught on a barb and tore a gash in the cloth, but I didn’t pay it any mind. I saw Pa up the hill with a pine limb beating at the smoke. It appeared the fire was rolling across the pasture. The flames at the bottom of the smoke turned like bright wheels. But mostly you saw the tower of smoke rippling and boiling. There wasn’t much wind, but the smoke leaned up the hill so thick you couldn’t see a thing beyond it.
“Pa,” I said, “you better not get too hot.”
His face was red and sweat streamed down his temples. His sleeves was rolled up. Where he beat at the flames the fire disappeared, then sprung up again after he lifted the pine limb.
“Where is Tom?” I said.
“Over yonder,” Pa said, and pointed right into the smoke. I figured Tom had gone to the upper side and was throwing dirt on the blaze as it climbed the hill.
“You go back to the house,” I said to Pa. But he ignored me. He kept beating at the fire like he was swatting flies. “It come from the furnace,” he said, as though he was taking the blame.
That’s when I saw the way the wind was stirring. It was not pushing up the hill but swirling around it. The blaze had swung across the slope from the lower pasture toward the hickories and oaks. I figured Tom was trying to keep fire from reaching the woods. The fire moved sideways and uphill at the same time.
I needed to go help Tom, and I needed to look after Pa. I didn’t know which one to do. “You’ll get too
hot,” I hollered to Pa. It was like the heat from the fire was reflected and doubled by the hillside. In the bright sunlight you could hardly see the flames, but you felt the heat on your face.
“You go back to the house,” I shouted, but Pa didn’t answer. He acted like he didn’t hear and kept swinging at the flames.
Where are the cows? I thought. I hoped they was in the lower pasture. If they had stayed in the upper pasture they might be drove by fire to the yon fence and trapped. “Have you seen the stock?” I hollered to Pa. I knowed the bull, Bill-Joe, was in the barn because they was going to breed the Waters’s cow that evening. I tried to think where the cows would be. Would they be standing in the shade switching flies and waiting for the cool of the day? Or would they be at the branch getting a drink? I hoped they was down toward the river. If they got scared by the fire they wouldn’t give any milk for days.
The fire had a mind of its own. I watched it burn this way and that, swirling around and backing. It didn’t always answer the breeze. Sometimes it would pause on the stalk of an indigo bush and run high, then leap to the next tuft of broomsedge. Then it would stop and go down to the roots. A piece of the fire started burning backwards in a patch of dried crabgrass and come almost to my feet. I kicked dirt on the flames and they smoldered out.
“Go back to the house,” I yelled to Pa. I had to run to the left, to the end of the fire, and see what Tom was doing. But just then I looked down the hill in the blinding sunlight and there was Jewel holding the baby and Moody leading little Muir. They had come to the fence and stood watching us. Jewel held the baby like she was one of her dolls. Moody was aiming his finger like a pistol and making Muir fall down in the grass.
“Stay back,” I hollered. But Jewel didn’t answer. She was as stubborn and sullen as Tom when she wanted to be. “Stay out of the pasture,” I yelled.
The Truest Pleasure Page 24
