The Hills Remember

by James Still

  “I never saw boots have such sharpening toes,” Father said. “You could nigh pick a splinter out o’ yore finger with them.” He thrust his own boots forth to show the bluntness of the shoecaps. “But cattlemen allus crave leather with trimmings.”

  Our cats leapt upon my knees. They watched Aaron, twitching their whiskers, tensing their spines; they held crafty oblong eyes upon him. I thought, “I’m liable to be a cattleman when I’m grown up, and go traveling far. Yet it’d take a spell to get used to thorny boots. I’d be ashamed to wear ’em.”

  Aaron finished eating, wiped his chin with the hairy back of a hand, and walked his chair nearer the fire. Father offered him a twist of home-raised tobacco. He bit a chew, stretching the poles of his legs to the hearth, saying, “I’d take a shortcut to Quicksand if I didn’t have these yearlings on my neck. Maybe I’d get thar before Crate Thompson buys every last steer.” He rubbed his chin stubble; he frowned till his face wadded to wrinkles. “Reckon your eldest boy could round them calves to Mayho town for me? A whole day would be saved.”

  I raised off my chair, hoping. I was nine years old, old enough to go traipsing, to look abroad upon the world.

  “Ho, ho,” Father chuckled, big to tease, “you wouldn’t call that turkey track of a forked road a town. Now, Hazard or Jackson—” he hesitated, seeing Mother’s eyes upon him. The posts of his chair sunk level with the floor. “That’s a good-sized piece for a boy to walk alone. Thirteen miles, roundy ’bout.”

  “I’ll pay a dollar,” Aaron said. “A whole silver dollar. Silas McJunkins’s boy will be at my house with the money when they’re penned. Silas’s boy is driving two cows down from Augland in the morning.”

  “I saw Mayho on a post-office map once,” Father said. “Hit looked to me like a place where three roads butt heads. But if this town soaks hits elbows in Troublesome Creek, hit’s bound to be a good ’un.”

  Mother sent Fern, Zard, and Lark to bed. Before going herself she brought in a washpan and a ball of soap. Father poured hot water from the kettle, and Aaron washed his face and hands, then pulled off his boots and soaked his feet. His feet were blue veined and white, and his heels bore no sign of rust.

  “You’ve got townfolks’ feet, all right,” Father said. He picked up Aaron’s boots, matching them with his own. “They’re the difference betwixt a razor and a froe.” He grunted in awe. “Man! These boots are bound to make a pinch-knot out o’ the frog o’ yore foot.”

  Aaron champed his tobacco cud. “They’re right good wearing,” he said.

  “When I thresh my oats,” Father spoke, grinning, “I’m a-liable to buy me a pair.”

  I set off behind the yearlings with daylight breaking, and before the sun-ball rose I had reached the mouth of Shoal Creek and turned down Troublesome. The yearlings pitted the mud banks with their hoofs, and I sank to the tongues of my brogans. My coffee-sack leggings were splattered; my feet got stone cold. A wintry draft blew, smelling of sap.

  The sun-ball rolled up a hill, warming the air, loosening the mud. The yearlings nearly ran my leg bones off. I cut switches keen to whistling; I hollered and hollered, and I stung their behinds. I herded the day long, knowing then how it was to be a cattleman.

  Chimney sweeps were funneling the sky when I rounded the yearlings into Aaron Splicer’s barn lot. Dark crept into Mayho by three roads, coming to sit among the sixteen homeseats crowding the creek or hanging off the hillsides. I saw Ark, Silas McJunkins’s boy, atop a fence post, eating a straw. Though a boy, he was man-tall. His hair shagged over his collar and hid his ears. And he was as muddy as I.

  Ark helped pen the calves, and I got a whole look at Mayho town before night blacked everything. A clever place I found it, with Easter flowers blooming on leafless stems in yards, and bare trees growing in rows. One house stood yellow as capping corn, and new-painted. “If I lived in a town,” I told Ark, “I’d choose here.”

  “Mayho’s a wart on a hog’s nose,” Ark said.

  “Trees yonder lined up a-purpose. Easter flowers a-blooming the winter.”

  “I choose woods God planted,” Ark said. He raised his arm. “Hit’s growing spring. Thar’s chimley sweeps raising spit to glue their nests.”

  We beat on Splicer’s kitchen door. Aaron’s woman opened it a crack, but we didn’t cross the sill, for she saw our muddy clothes and told us to sleep in the barn. She handed us a plate of cold hand-pies, and a rag bag of a quilt. We ate the pies in the barn-loft; we burrowed into the hay, leaving only our heads sticking out.

  “A mouse wouldn’t raise young ’uns in that trampy quilt,” Ark said.

  I wondered about my silver dollar. Before going to sleep I asked Ark for it.

  Ark swore, “Aaron Splicer never give me a bit o’ money. He aims for us to drive steers on Quicksand, and said we’re to catch a wagon going that way tomorrow. Claimed he’d pay then, and pay double. Two dollars apiece.”

  “My poppy’d be scared, me not coming straight home,” I complained. “I hain’t never been on Quicksand. I oughtn’t to go.” I felt a grain hurt. “Aaron said he’d send me a dollar. A silver dollar.”

  “He’s not paid me neither,” Ark said. “He’s got us in a bull hole. I’ve heered he’d shuck a flea for hits hide and tallow, but he’ll bile owl grease ere he pinches a nickel off me.”

  “I ought to be lighting a rag home,” I said.

  We came on Aaron Splicer a quarter-mile up Quicksand at Tom Zeek Duffey’s place. He was waiting for us, and had already rounded four prime steers into Tom Zeek’s lot.

  “I hain’t located Crate Thompson,” Aaron said, “but I’ve diskivered thar’s big beef on this creek, head to the mouth. I’m aiming to get it bought and driv to the railroad siding at Jackson in four days. A four-day round up.” And Aaron lifted a foot, pointing at his steers. He kicked the board fence, trying the lot’s tightness. “I figure I’ve put the cat on Crate. These brutes guarantee grease in my skillet.” He walked the lot, admiring his cattle.

  We looked at Aaron’s boots. Tom Zeek and Ark laughed a little. Ark said, “Was he to fall down, he’s a-liable to stick one o’ them toe p’ints in himself. I’d a’soon wear pitchforks.”

  “I allow they’re tighter than a doorjamb,” Tom Zeek chuckled.

  “Hain’t tighter’n the drawstrings on his money bag,” Ark said. “I know that for a fact.”

  “Dude’s his nickname,” Tom Zeek told us, “and hit’s earnt.”

  Tom Zeek’s woman called us to supper. Not a bite we’d had since the day before, except for a robbing of chestnuts from a squirrel’s nest. The table held fourteen kinds of victuals, and Ark and I ate a sight. We drank buttermilk a duck couldn’t have paddled, so thick and good it was. We stayed the night, sleeping deep in a feather tick.

  The next morning Aaron rousted us before daylight. Tom Zeek Duffey’s woman fed us slabs of ham, scrambled guinea eggs, and flour biscuits the size of saucers. We set off, with Aaron ahead. Though willows were reddening and sugar trees swollen with sap, a frozen skim lay on Quicksand Creek and rock ledges were bearded with ice. The sun-ball lifted its great yellow eye, warming and thawing, and by midday a living look had come upon the hills where neither bud nor leaf grew. Icicles plunged from the cliffs. Redbirds whistled for mates.

  Aaron bargained and bought the day long. We slept on the puncheon floor of a sawmill near Handshoe that night. For supper and breakfast we ate little fishes out of flat cans Aaron got at a storehouse. We started downcreek again, and where it had taken one day to go up, we spent two gathering the cattle and herding them to Tom Zeek’s place. We ran hollering and whooping in the spring air.

  We rounded eighteen steers and seven heifers into Tom Zeek Duffey’s lot. Tom Zeek told us Crate Thompson had come into Quicksand country and was putting up at John Adair’s, a mile over the ridge. “Hit might’ nigh cankered his liver when he heard Aaron had beat him to the taw,” Tom Zeek said. “Oh I reckon he started soon enough, but he hain’t got a pair o’ seven-mile boots like
Aaron’s.” He winked dryly at me and Ark.

  Tom Zeek Duffey’s lot was packed with steers and heifers, being littler than most folks’ lots. Aaron drove extra nails in the board fence; he stretched a barbed wire along the posttops; and he sent for Tom Zeek’s son-in-law to come and help him drive the herd into Jackson the next morning. “I wouldn’t trust this pen more’n one night,” Aaron said. “Hit’s too small and rimwrecked.”

  “Why’n’t you take these boys on to Jackson?” Tom Zeek asked. “They’ll want to spend the money they’ve earnt.”

  I said, “They’s something I’m half a-mind to buy.” Yet I knew two dollars wouldn’t be enough; and I knew I ought to be heading home.

  “The Devil, no,” Aaron grumbled. “I don’t trust fences nor chaps. These boys’d scare worse’n muleycows at the sight o’ a train engine. Why, if Ark walked the Jackson streets with that shaggy head, they’d muzzle him for a shep dog.”

  “I jist like to see boys right-treated,” Tom Zeek said.

  Ark said, “My hair hain’t so long yit you kin step on it with them finicky boots. Anyhow, I reckon hit’s pay-time. You promised two dollars apiece.”

  “I’m a bit short on change,” Aaron said, embarrassed for having to speak his stinginess before Tom Zeek. “Cash on the line had to be paid for them cattle.”

  “I’m a-drawing me a line. Lay them two dollars down.”

  “I’m broke tee-total,” Aaron said. “Won’t have money for settling till them steers are sold. Why, boys, I figgered you’d be tickled and satisfied with a small heifer for pay. I’ll pick you one—one betwixt the two of you.”

  “You’d pick a runt. Anyhow, a heifer wouldn’t rattle in my pocket.”

  “Hit’s yearlings or nary a thing.”

  “God-dog!” Ark swore angrily. “I hope yore whole gang dies o’ the holler tail.”

  Tom Zeek said, “I allus like to see boys right-treated.”

  Ark walked sullenly behind the barn, and I tagged along. We sat among dead jimson weeds. Ark chewed a tobacco leaf and spat black on the dry stalks. “I’m one feller Aaron Splicer hain’t going to skin. I’m a hicker-nut hard to crack. Some witties he might fleece, but not Old Silas McJunkins’s boy Arkles.”

  “He put the cat on Crate Thompson,” I said. “He’ll brag now he’s sicked one on us.”

  Ark brightened, opening his mouth. The tobacco wad lay dark on his tongue.

  “Now, I’m a-mind to go talk to Crate. I bet he could trap Aaron. Hit’s said Crate Thompson’s a sharp ’un.” He grinned, blowing the wad against the barn wall hard enough to make it stick; he strode into the barn and fetched out a pair of mule shears.

  I cut Ark’s hair. I cut the hairs bunched on his neck, the thick brush hiding his ears, the nest of growth on top of his head; I clipped and gaped and banged his head over.

  “I feel most nigh naked,” Ark said when I’d finished. “Wisht I had me a looking-glass to see.”

  We went to the spring behind Tom Zeek’s house. Ark stared at himself in the water between the butter jars and churns. “Looks to me my fodder’s been gathered,” he said. He lifted a demijohn of buttermilk and drank it down. I raked a tad of butter from a bowl with my thumb and ate it.

  After night fell we climbed the ridge to John Adair’s homeplace. John and his woman were gone, late-feeding their stock. Crate Thompson sat before a shovel of fire, driving sprigs into a shoe sole. The shoe was a common old anybody’s shoe, and not a cattleman’s boot. And Crate was hefty as any of Aaron’s steers.

  “Draw up a chair and squat,” Crate said, speaking with tight lips so as not to swallow the sprigs in his mouth. His eyes were intent on Ark’s cropped head. Ark sat down, but I remained standing, awkward and restive.

  Ark told Crate our trouble. Crate dropped the shoe, listening with a stub finger sunk into the bag of his chin.

  “Where’s Dude Aaron got them cattle penned?” Crate asked, his words whistling between the sprigs.

  “In Tom Zeek Duffey’s lot.”

  Crate spat the sprigs into his hand. Through his gray eyes a body could almost see ideas working in his head. “Well, now,” he said slowly, “I can’t think o’ nothing but a dumb-bull to cuore Dude Aaron.”

  “Dumb-bull!” Ark cried in awe.

  Crate’s great chin quivered merrily. “Strip o’ cowhide and a holler log and a rosined string’s all it takes. But I’ll have no hand in it.”

  “I’ll play my own bull-fiddle,” Ark bragged happily. “I know how they’re made.”

  “Hit’s agin’ the law,” Crate warned.

  “Boodle zack!”

  “They’s fellers roosting in jailhouses for less.”

  “I’m not aiming to be skint.”

  “Ah!” Crate sighed, eying Ark’s head. “A rare scalping you’ve had already.”

  Ark grinned.

  “Ah, well,” Crate said, breathing satisfaction, “John ought to have an old hide strip hereabouts.” He shuffled away to find one.

  “I’m scared to do it,” I told Ark. “I’m scared to tick-tack.”

  “We’ll have Dude Aaron calling on his Maker,” Ark promised.

  “I ought to be a-going home,” I said.

  We searched the pitch dark on the ridge above Tom Zeek Duffey’s barn. Ark tapped fallen trees with a stick until he found a hollow log, a log empty as an old goods box, and with a narrow crack in its upper side. A winged thing fluttered out, beating the cold air, lifting. It complained overhead, asking, “Ou? Ou?”

  “Scritch owl,” Ark named.

  Ark set to work on the dumb-bull. He drove twentypenny nails at the ends of the crack in the log; he cut notch-holes in the tips of the hide string and stretched it taut over the nailheads. He worked by feel, dark being mighty thick under the roof of tree limbs. Ark had me resin the hide string while he fashioned a bow of a hickory sprout and a twine cord. The dumb-bull was finished.

  We perched on the log, waiting for the cattle to settle. We could hear them moving restlessly in the packed lot, though all were swallowed in blackness. We only knew the direction of the house and barn by the noise of the steers.

  Ark said, “Aaron’s dropped his boots ere now, and I bet the toes stuck up in the floor like jackknives.”

  A bird chirped sleepily near us.

  “I’m getting chilly,” I said. Anxiety burnt cold inside me, cold as foxfire. “We ought to light a smudge.”

  “No,” Ark said. “They’d spot a blaze. I’m jist waiting till them brutes halt their tromp. Hit’s best to catch ’em in a nap.”

  I made talk, hungry for speech. I asked, “What are them towns o’ Jackson and Hazard like?” My teeth chattered.

  Ark chewed a pinch of bark. “Folks thar a-wearing Sunday breeches on weeky days,” he explained. “Folks living so close together they kin shake hands out o’ windows if they’re of a mind. Humans a-running up and down like anty mars.”

  “I aim to see them towns some day,” I said. “I aim to. Now, I’ve lived in Houndshell mine camp, yit it wasn’t a town for sartin, just houses pitched in a holler.”

  “I’ve traveled a sight,” Ark bragged. “I reckon I’ve been nigh to the earth’s end. I been to Whitesburg and Campton and Pikeville. I been to Wheelwright and Hyden. Once I went to Glamorgan, in Old Virginia. Hain’t that going some’ere?”

  I nodded in the dark, thinking of Mayho, thinking of chimney sweeps riding the sky. I thought, “I’ve already seen Mayho, and I’ve been on Quicksand Creek. That’s far-away traveling.” Then we were quiet a long time. I dozed.

  A rooster crowed midnight. Ark jumped to his feet. “Hit’s time to witch them steers,” he said, awaking me. I trembled with dread and cold. I longed to be at home. Ark dragged the hickory bow lightly across the dumb-bull’s string, and the sound jumped me full awake. It was like a wildcat’s scream, long and blood-clotting and deafening. But that wasn’t a circumstance to when Ark bore down. Then it wasn’t one lonesome critter; it was a woodsful, tearing each others’ eyeballs o
ut. I reckon that squall hustled three miles.

  Ark paused. The timber was alive with varmints. A squirrel tore through the trees squacking. Wings flapped and paws rattled brush heaps. Below, in the lot, the steers bellowed. We could hear them charging the board fence, crazy with fear. They butted their heads in anguish, and the ground rang with the thud of hoofs. Yearlings bawled like lost chaps.

  “We’re not right-treating Tom Zeek Duffey,” I said. “We oughtn’t to destroy his fence. Now, his woman fed us good.”

  “A favor we’re doing Tom Zeek,” Ark said. “He’s needed that old rotten-posted lot cleared. He needs a new ’un.” And he sawed the hide string again, cutting it rusty. Goose bumps raised on me. A scream came from that log like something fleeing Torment. We heard the fence give way, the boards trampled, posts broken off. The steers lit out, bellowing and running, upcreek and down, awaking the country.

  Lamplight sprang into the windows of Tom Zeek Duffey’s house, and a door swung wide and the shape of a man bearing a rifle-gun printed the light. The gun was lifted, steadied, and a spurt of flame leapt thundering. Birdshot rattled winter leaves far below us, spent with distance.

  “Aaron Splicer’ll shoot a lead mine ere he hits me,” Ark said, and he dropped the bow and ran. He melted into the dark.

  I ran too, trying to follow; I ran plumb into a tree, and fell stunned upon the ground. My head rang, and sparks leapt before my eyes like lightning bugs. When I got up at last, Ark was out of hearing, and there was no sound anywhere. I crept on my hands and knees for a spell. I walked to the ridgetop, skirting around Tom Zeek Duffey’s place, coming down to the creek on the lower side. I crept and walked for hours.

  Daylight broke as I reached the creek road. Spring birds were cutting up jack, and the hills were the color of greenback money. And there in the road I found a fat heifer. She made a glad moo and trotted after me. I let her get ahead; I drove her Shoal Creek way. She looked to be sugar in my gourd, and a pair of thorn-toed boots on my feet, just like Aaron’s.