Jim the Boy

by Tony Earley

  “Jimmy,” she said. “You just have to promise me you’ll come back.”

  Embarrassed, Jim blushed and squirmed and freed himself.

  “I’ll come back,” he mumbled.

  Mama smiled and stepped back off of the running board.

  “Here we go, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said. “You ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Wave at your mama.”

  “All right.”

  The power lines along the state highway rose and dipped in rhythmic, swooping loops. Young corn waved from the bottoms along the river. Milk cows grazed in the rich June pastures while new calves butted and tugged at their teats. When Uncle Zeno veered off of the highway onto the Lynn’s Mountain road, a cloud of red dust bloomed beneath the truck and floated back the way they had come. They rolled past the turnoff to Uncle Zeno’s mill and rattled over Painter Creek on the wooden bridge. Jim had never crossed the bridge before, even though it wasn’t far from home; until today he had never had reason to travel through the country on the other side.

  They drove through a thicket of scrubby locust trees draped with fragrant honeysuckle, and up a mild grade toward the rounded top of a ridge. When they crested the rise, the road fell away into rolling country. In the near distance Lynn’s Mountain rose up, its shoulders turned slightly from the way Jim saw them every day from Aliceville, almost as if it were moving toward them as they moved toward it.

  “There she is, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said.

  “Yes, sir,” said Jim.

  “That’s where Penn lives. That’s where your daddy came from.”

  Jim nodded.

  “When he left old Amos’s house after his mama’s funeral, he walked the whole way to Aliceville. Took him all day.”

  Jim nodded again.

  “You never saw anybody as hungry-looking as he was that first night.”

  “Did y’all give him something to eat?”

  Uncle Zeno snorted. “Did we give him something to eat. He liked to ate us out of house and home, just like you.”

  The road wandered down into a shallow ravine, into the green shade along Painter Creek. The mountain disappeared until they drove back into the sun. “Since your daddy came from up there, I guess that makes you half mountain man, doesn’t it, Doc?”

  “I ain’t a mountain man,” Jim said.

  “I see,” said Uncle Zeno.

  Jim hadn’t meant to speak harshly. He looked at Uncle Zeno and tried to smile, but instead felt his face crumpling into something wrinkled and unrecognizable.

  “Everything’s going to turn out all right,” Uncle Zeno said.

  “Do we have to go see my granddaddy?” Jim asked.

  “We don’t have to, but if we don’t, someday you’ll wish we had. You’ll just have to take my word on that.”

  Jim stared out the windshield at the mountain turning slowly away from them as the road moved momentarily to the east.

  “What do I say to Penn?” he asked.

  “He’s your friend,” Uncle Zeno said. “You’ll know what to say when the time comes.”

  “I hope so,” Jim said.

  The closer they drew to the mountain, the more uneven the land became. White outcroppings of quartz began to spill from the red banks along the side of the road. The road pitched up and down over short, steep hills, on the sides of which clung upland farms. Corn and sweet potatoes and small, cash patches of tobacco and cotton grew in terraced fields that carefully followed the contours of the hills. On one farm a small, rocky pasture fell almost precipitously away from the barn lot. A single white cow gazed at them peacefully from a serpentine trail that switchbacked through the closely cropped grass. At the next house, an old woman hung out a Saturday wash of overalls and work shirts, printed dresses, and wide, white drawers. A pack of mottled blue and white hounds rolled out from underneath the porch and loped after the truck, baying mournfully.

  “Your daddy loved to coon hunt,” Uncle Zeno said. “And he didn’t like to just sit around the fire and listen to the dogs, either. He liked to get out in the woods and run after them. You could see his lantern bobbing out in the dark, and you could hear him hollering. Me and Corrie and Al, we always sat by the fire and waited for the dogs to tree, because that’s what our daddy had always done. But your daddy, he ran with the dogs. He always got to the tree not long after they did.”

  “So my daddy was a good coon hunter?”

  “He was,” Uncle Zeno said. “Your daddy was good in the woods, he surely was. Of course, he said coon hunting down where we live was nothing like coon hunting up where he came from. He said up on the mountain you had to watch out for panthers. He said panthers lived all over those ridges back then. That’s why they call the creek that comes down off of it Painter Creek.”

  “Did you ever see a panther?” Jim asked.

  “No, I never did. But your daddy said he saw one.”

  “My daddy saw a panther?”

  “That’s what he said. A panther or something else.”

  Jim felt something cold scurry down his backbone.

  “What do you mean, ‘something else?’”

  “Well, your daddy wasn’t sure what it was. He said it might have been a panther and it might have been a haint.”

  “A haint?”

  “That’s what he said, Doc. A haint. He said he wasn’t much older than you are right now, probably twelve or so, when this happened. Amos wasn’t back from prison yet, but your daddy was old enough to be out in the woods at night. Anyway, he and one of his Gentine cousins went coon hunting. It was a cloudy night, and still, no moon, but a good night to hunt. Your daddy and this other boy had no sooner got their fire built than the dogs came back. And the dogs all had their tails stuck between their legs. They slunk into the firelight and wouldn’t go back out no matter how much your daddy and the Gentine boy got after them. Which was unusual, because there ain’t nothing a hound dog likes better than to hunt on a damp, still night.

  “Your daddy said that he and his cousin were kicking the dogs, trying to make them go back out, when the panther screamed. It was close by, just outside the firelight. And he said its screaming sounded like a woman. He said he’d never heard anything like it in his life, and never wanted to again.”

  “What’d they do?”

  “Well, the first time it screamed, whatever it was, the Gentine boy accidentally kicked over the lantern and broke it. So they backed up as close to that fire as they could get. Then they saw its green eyes moving around out there in the edge of the dark. One minute they could see them, and the next minute they couldn’t, but then there they’d be again, behind them this time, or over there. Now, they weren’t carrying a gun because when the dogs treed, they were just going to shake whatever it was out of the tree and catch it and put it in a sack and carry it home. Mountain boys like your daddy ain’t scared of nothing, Doc. Except maybe panthers. So there they were. They didn’t have a gun and the lantern was broke. They didn’t have enough pine knots to keep the fire burning all night, and there was a panther stalking them, just waiting for that fire to die out. And the dogs—and these were dogs that would run a bear to ground—were crawling around their ankles, whimpering, scared to death.”

  “What did my daddy do then?”

  “Well, just as the fire was about to die out, the panther screamed a second time. And it was closer. This time it sounded like it was right there in the light where they were. And then it spoke.”

  “It spoke?”

  “It spoke. It said, in a woman’s voice, ‘Help me, for I am killed.’”

  “What happened?” Jim asked. “What happened then?”

  “Well, what do you think happened then, Doc? Them boys sold the farm. Your daddy, his cousin, the dogs, everybody, lit out for home in a pile. Your daddy said they were running through the laurel, the limbs grabbing at them and hitting them in the face, and they were tripping and falling down and getting up and scratching and kicking and climbing all over each other in the da
rk, trying to get away. And your daddy said they could hear whatever it was chasing them, running through the leaves right behind them, panting. Every twenty steps or so it screamed. And every time it screamed, your daddy said he just knew that whatever it was, panther or haint, was going to light right in the middle of his back, and that would be that, he would never live to see another morning.”

  “Did it get anybody?”

  “No, it didn’t. Your daddy said that when they ran out into the clearing at home, whatever it was stopped just in the edge of the woods and wouldn’t come any further. And he said that the next night, Robley Gentine rounded up all the men and boys and dogs and guns he could find on that mountain, and they tramped around all over those woods, and the dogs cast around all over where the panther had been, but they never struck up a trail, and nobody never heard it scream again, and nobody ever saw it.”

  Jim stared up at Uncle Zeno. He tried to laugh, but found that he couldn’t make a satisfactory noise.

  “Did you make that up?” he asked.

  Uncle Zeno shook his head.

  “No, Jim, I didn’t. Me and Corrie and Al got after your daddy every time he told that story. We tried to get him to come off of it, but he never would. Your daddy swore up and down it was the truth, and he was never one to lie about anything.”

  “How come you never told me that story before?”

  “Your mama said she would skin me alive if I did. She said it was too scary.”

  Jim didn’t say anything.

  “And Al, he doesn’t like it much, either. At least not much since your daddy died.”

  “How come?”

  Uncle Zeno swallowed.

  “Well, you know how Allie is, Doc. He’s a little superstitious. The way he’s got it figured, something bad was after your daddy up on the mountain that night. And he thinks that whatever it was stayed after him and finally tracked him down and got him that day in the cotton field.”

  Jim didn’t know what he was supposed to say. The world suddenly seemed a fearful place.

  “But that’s just Allie,” Uncle Zeno said. “You know how he is. Everything is a sign and a wonder to Allie.”

  “Why’d you tell me?”

  Uncle Zeno shrugged.

  “I guess I just figured that if you were man enough to go up the mountain and face Amos Glass, you were man enough to hear about the night the panther talked.”

  They were close enough to the mountain now that its green flanks filled the windshield. Jim leaned forward until he could see the ridge line again, the familiar blue sky dropping behind it. The mountain seemed to him a live, sleeping thing, lying on its side in the sun.

  They crossed Painter Creek on a narrow bridge and entered a long, green valley that ran parallel to the base of the mountain. The valley was checkered by fields and pastures and farmsteads that stretched away into the distance. The creek ran along one side of the valley, its course marked by a ribbon of alder and bamboo and laurel. On the other side of the valley, the mountain reared up out of the lush, tilled bottoms. Jim had never considered before that it was possible to see the exact place where a valley stopped and a mountain began. He studied the line of trees that marked the place the two came together.

  Near the head of the valley, the creek sidled closer and closer to the road before turning sharply toward the mountain; the road doglegged and followed the creek. Ahead of the truck, the road vanished into what appeared to be a vertical wall of trees. Jim leaned forward and twisted his head but could not see the ridge line through the windshield. Uncle Zeno looked at Jim and grinned as they rolled into the shade of the woods.

  Much to Jim’s surprise, the road curved gracefully into the cool, green forest, and remained level for as far as he could see. The broad trunks of the trees rose like columns from a mossy bed of ferns; they did not sprout limbs until far above the ground. To the left of the road, Painter Creek chattered busily over a bed of small, smooth stones. A blue jay flashed brightly in front of the truck, complaining loudly, and was gone as quickly as he had come.

  “Did my daddy walk down this road?” Jim asked.

  “This is the only way down this side of the mountain,” Uncle Zeno said. “This is the way your daddy went to Aliceville.”

  The road separated itself from the creek and meandered into the forest, rising only slightly.

  “He loved this country,” said Uncle Zeno. “I don’t think he ever got over having to leave. He only left because he had to.”

  Jim leaned forward, eager to see sights his father had seen. He thought, My daddy walked under these trees. And he thought, I bet my daddy sat on that rock and rested. Each time they rounded a curve, he imagined meeting his young father marching through the woods, his few belongings stuffed into the feed sack slung over his shoulder. Jim Glass, Sr., lived only six years after he made the trip. He died when he was twenty-three years old.

  “Do you think it was a haint?” Jim asked. “Do you think something bad was after my daddy?”

  Uncle Zeno’s lips pursed and his brow furrowed.

  “No,” he said, finally. “I don’t think anything bad was after your daddy. I think your daddy had a bad heart. I think your daddy’s heart stopped beating and he died. That’s all I think. And that’s all I care to think.”

  The road began to buck and heave; it pitched upward and turned back on itself. The switchbacks rolled at them one after another, each more violent than the one before; the road between the curves climbed at a desperate clip. Uncle Zeno downshifted into the truck’s lowest gear. Uncle Coran and Uncle Al slid out of their chairs and sat down in the bed. Jim felt a little sick at his stomach.

  The ferns from which the trees grew had been replaced by thick walls of laurel and rhododendron whose dark leaves hissed in echo as the truck passed. Around one curve a tiny creek spilled onto the road; it laughed and disappeared into the laurel on the other side as they splashed through it. After a while Jim began to sense that part of the sky was now below them, although the thick undergrowth kept him from seeing into the distance off the side of the mountain.

  “Are we up in the air?” he asked.

  “We’re getting there,” Uncle Zeno said.

  Finally they climbed around a last snaking curve and drove out into an alpine valley that lay between the peak of Lynn’s Mountain on one side and a low ridge on the other. Painter Creek wound its way between the peak and the ridge, as if running across the face of a mountain was a normal thing for a creek to do. High up above the valley, rhododendron and laurel bloomed against the shining green of the trees. The mountainside and the ridge top were dappled with lavender and white. Uncle Zeno slowed and pointed out a wild cherry tree blooming against the side of the ridge. From down below the outline of the ridge disappeared against the greater shape of the mountain; the valley through which they drove lay hidden from view. On the mountain it was still late spring; back home in Aliceville it was already full summer.

  Steep-sided hollows separated by spiny ridges dropped down the mountainside and opened into the valley. Out of each hollow flowed a tiny stream seeking the larger creek; up each hollow ran a narrow dirt track. Jim stared up each track as far as he could see. The first house he spotted was a log cabin whose swept yard was enclosed by a split rail fence. A woman stood in the doorway holding a child. In the field beside the house a tall man cultivated young corn behind a yoke of oxen. Jim leaned out the window and stared backward.

  At the head of the valley, beyond the end of the ridge, a bald opened up on the side of the mountain below the road. Jim leaned over Uncle Zeno to look out at the world, but the road turned away from the sky and climbed again toward the summit before he saw very much.

  “Can we stop there on the way home?” he asked.

  “We’ll see,” said Uncle Zeno.

  They passed a store, a church, a small post office, and the one-room school the mountain boys had attended before it closed. A mile beyond the school they rounded a curve and came upon a sawmill. Uncle Ze
no pulled off the road and stopped. Hardwood logs were piled on one side of the saw shed and freshly cut lumber was stacked on the other. From inside the shed came the roar of an unmuffled gasoline engine and the high keening of a saw blade biting through wood. Mr. Carson stepped out of the shadows and strode toward them across the muddy, rutted yard. He wore dungarees and a faded canvas shirt. The legs of his dungarees disappeared into high, mud-clumped, lace-up lumberjack boots.

  “That’s Penn’s daddy,” Jim said.

  “This is his sawmill,” said Uncle Zeno.

  Mr. Carson strode up to the truck, spoke to Uncle Coran and Uncle Al, and looked in Jim’s window. Wood chips hung like ornaments in his long, black beard; he smelled of gasoline and sweat and fragrant sap.

  “Zeno,” he said.

  “Radford,” said Uncle Zeno.

  Mr. Carson grabbed Jim’s hand and squeezed it what Jim considered a little too hard.

  “Hey, Mr. Carson,” Jim said, trying not to wince.

  “Thanks for coming to see Penn,” said Mr. Carson, staring, with what resembled a scowl, straight into Jim’s face.

  While Jim stared back in disbelief, tears rose in Mr. Carson’s eyes and spilled over. They raced down his cheeks and disappeared into his beard as if something were chasing them. Inside the black beard, his red lower lip began to tremble.

  “My boy …,” he began. “Penn …” He turned and faced away from the truck. “… thinks the world of you.”

  He removed a red bandanna from his back pocket and blew his nose loudly. Jim looked up at Uncle Zeno. Uncle Zeno held a finger to his lips. Mr. Carson turned again toward the truck and shook his head.

  “Doggone it,” he said. “Ever since Penn got sick, I ain’t been worth killing.”

  “It’s a terrible thing, what happened to Penn,” Uncle Zeno said.

  “It ain’t nothing you can fight,” said Mr. Carson. “That’s what I hate about it. It ain’t a thing you can shoot with a gun.”

  Mr. Carson stepped onto the running board of the truck and rapped the door with a knuckle.