Copper Kettle

by Frederick Ramsay

  Jesse sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Some of it, yes. Look, I wasn’t no Sergeant York, okay. Sometimes, Serena, you get to doing something and it just sort of swallows you up. I went to scout, it was dark, and I got lost, and fell in the damned—excuse me…fell in that old trench. The Germans were as bowled over as me. Then, it was me taking care of them or them doing me in. The rest just sort of happened. In any case, it ain’t something we generally talk about. Most bravery is accidental.”

  “I don’t believe that for a minute. So, you’ll take the job, won’t you?”

  “I’d be crazy as a June bug if I didn’t. But I do have a serious question. All of the good timber on this mountain, well most of it anyway, was stripped off forty years and more ago. What’s left is new growth and mostly not yet big enough or worth anything as timber. I reckon the poplars might be worth something, but who builds with them? What’s he sawing that lets him buy a new car and hire on more hands?”

  “There you go. You are a foreman. Smart is what you need to be. You’re right. The building trade timber, pine and so on, is gone. In twenty or thirty years we might could timber the mountain again. What’s left are the old hardwoods. R.G. got himself a contract to provide walnut, black cherry, and so on, to furniture makers up there in New England and some new ones south. He can afford to cut individual trees if he can buy them cheap enough, and folks on the mountain are happy to see a five-dollar bill for doing nothing. Then, the chestnut blight popped up and is killing off trees all over the place. The trees are dead from the roots going rotten, but the wood up top is good. He aims to cash in on what he is calling a ‘botanical disaster.’ Also, he’s cutting thin for veneers and that newfangled thing they’re calling plywood. That means running the eight-foot blade and cutting big sheets. He’s busy, Jesse. He needs you.”

  “He might be blind as a bat, like you say, but he ain’t stupid.”

  They walked the limits of the sawmill operation. He checked the sheds, the planers, steam engines, and the new tractors being installed to replace some of the older steam equipment. He chatted with the men, some he knew, some knew him. What he’d done as a teenager came back to him. Nineteen fifteen had been a hard summer. Money was near non-existent and he’d worked at the mill for fifty cents a day. He’d been put on every dangerous piece of equipment on the lot and nearly lost a couple of fingers on the V-track when the carriage carrying a log at least three feet in diameter rolled forward to the blade before he expected it.

  They turned the corner of the office building and Serena made a move toward the door.

  “Serena, listen, can you give me a couple of minutes? I need to talk about something and it’s not sawing logs.”

  “Well, R.G. didn’t say how long this tour needs to be, so why not? Let’s go over to the new log stack. There’s some shade and privacy there. You do need privacy, right?”

  “It would be a big help, yeah.”

  He filled her in on Solomon’s shooting and how the entire west side of the mountain had its blood up to take out revenge on the Lebruns in general.

  “Without proof?”

  “The McAdoos been fussing with the Lebruns for over a hundred years, Serena. It’s in the blood, I guess. Nobody’s looking for proof.”

  “And you agree?”

  “Not with shooting them on a ‘maybe,’ no, but as a general rule, probably.”

  “Then you’d have to start with me.”

  “No, you ain’t one of them.”

  “Jesse, you know how this all works. If you’re related, you’re one of them. Look at you. Your name is Sutherlin, but you’re a McAdoo. Your Uncle Bob Knox married a Finch,who is Big Tom’s sister’s girl and that makes him a McAdoo. So, my older brother married Sally Stinchcomb whose folks don’t even live here, but her brother married Elva Lebrun. They moved to Picketsville two years ago but that don’t matter and because of that, it makes me and Jake, my younger brother, a Lebrun. If my mother and father had outrun the Spanish flu, they’d be Lebruns, too. It’s silly and stupid, but it is the way we do things here. Everybody has got to be one of them, or one of us. You see how this whole family business goes? So, Jesse Sutherlin McAdoo, are you fixing to shoot me?”

  “Course not. You’ve pegged it and I want this ‘we hate them Lebruns’ thing to go away. How can I do that if I can’t sit down face-to-face and talk it out?”

  “You can start by taking to me.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Here’s the part I don’t understand, Jesse. History or not, what keeps the hatred between the two clans alive? I can understand if one person hurts another and it doesn’t get sorted, folks would have a problem that might hang on for a while, but after a time, it should go away. This division between us, like you say, is historic and mostly lost in time. Does anybody remember how it started or why? And another thing, why is it anyone else’s business?”

  “How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…”

  “That’s not how it goes.”

  “Not how what goes?”

  “The poem. It’s ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’ It’s one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems.”

  “I had no notion it was a poem. Is it really? What I heard was this big man from out in Illinois or Indiana someplace reciting it while he groused about his situation. He spent a year or two as a college man so maybe he knew that poem, I don’t know, only he’d say something like, ‘Sergeants,’ or ‘Trenches,’ or ‘Germans,’ and then go on with, ‘How do I hate thee, let me count the ways’ and he’d start numbering all the things that was wrong about whatever it was he had in mind. We all thought it was funny at first and we’d chime in with our contributions to the list. After a while, though, it got to be a mite tiresome and toward the end, there, when he’d start in on his “How do I hate thee?’ we’d tell him using words I can’t rightly repeat here, to hush up or someone would throw something at him.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, it’s a mighty pretty poem and I hate to hear it fooled with like that.”

  “So, how does it go?”

  Serena reached into her pocket and removed a slim book. “Mister Conklin gave me this book when I graduated ninth grade. He said I should stay in school. He said, “Serena, you are too bright to be submerged”…that’s how he put it, ‘submerged…into the mountain.’ Ain’t that something? He gave me this collection of her poems. I carry it around and read at it from time to time. Don’t look at me that way. It’s a woman thing. They’re called, Sonnets to the Portuguese and that one is number forty-three.” She turned the pages and read.

  How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

  My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

  For the ends of being and ideal grace.

  I love thee to the level of every day’s

  Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

  I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

  I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

  I love thee with the passion put to use

  In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

  With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

  Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

  I shall but love thee better after death.

  “And that was a poem this woman wrote to a Portuguese feller?”

  “No, I think it was a love poem she wrote to her husband, only before they were married, or something.”

  “Why’d she say it was to the Portuguese?”

  “No idea, Jesse. Poets are peculiar people, I guess.”

  “Portuguese need all the help they can get, I reckon. They were on the line and they run out of reserves. Their government must have not been so committed to the war so they left them up there f
or like a long time. Some of them people were at the front for months. Everyone else rotated, you know?”

  “I have no idea what you are going on about. So what is it you need to do to stop an all-out war on the mountain?”

  “I need to find out who shot Solomon and get him in front of the sheriff before someone on our side does something really stupid against someone on your side. I need to have a face-to-face with someone over on the east side of the mountain who feels the same as me and will help settle this.”

  “In front of the sheriff? You have a problem right from the git-go.”

  “Which is?”

  “Nobody on the mountain is going to call a police. You know as well as I do that they hate them as much as they hate each other.”

  “Maybe so, but…you could ask around.”

  “Me? Jesse, you are sometimes the smartest man out here and then you say something that makes me believe you are thick as oak. Me? You heard R.G. back there. I am not Miss Barker. I am not Serena. At work or back home, I am ‘Missy’ or, ‘you, girl,’ or just, ‘woman.’ Nobody is going to listen to me.”

  “That ain’t right.”

  “It’s what it is. Jesse, it was only this past August women got the right to vote. Where you been all your life?”

  “Except for a little visit to the mud of France, right here on this very same mountain, Serena. So, what am I going to do? In four days, if I don’t come up with something, there’s going to be shooting. People are going to be hurt, people are going to die. And some of the shooters are going to be happy for the mess they create. The worst of it is that the person who actually shot Solomon probably won’t be the one killed.”

  “Won’t? Why not?”

  “What’re the chances he’s still here? If I was him, I would be halfway to Tennessee by now.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh is right, and anybody with a brain big as a black-eyed pea could figure that out, but that won’t stop some hothead from trying to settle the score by perforating the next best thing, which would be the first Lebrun who crossed his path. Then there’d be no stopping it ’til we’re all dead or in jail.”

  “I could talk to my brother. He’ll listen to me, and maybe you and him could work this out. It’s worth a try.”

  “That’d be great. Can you do that? Meantime, I will get back to the creek and poke around some more. Maybe I can find something better than footprints that’ll tell me the who or the why of the shooting.”

  “You found footprints? Anything special about them?”

  “Just a funny toe on one set. Oh, and they’re smallish.”

  “My feet are smallish. Maybe I did the shooting.”

  “Let me see your hands.”

  “My hands? Not my feet? Why?”

  “Hold them out.” Serena did as he asked. He took them in his, turned them over and then, before she could stop him, he held them to his face.

  “What are you doing, Jesse Sutherlin? You’re getting mighty familiar.” She gave him a look and jerked her hands away.

  “You didn’t shoot anybody recently, Serena. You are officially off the list of suspects.”

  “Well, thank you for that. You haven’t answered my question. What was that all about?”

  “Gunpowder leaves a coating on your hands when you shoot. These old guns we got back here in the mountains is famous for smoke and dirt. Ain’t you ever noticed? Anyway, your hands are clean and I can’t smell any gun smoke on them. That’s what I was doing, sniffing your hands. They smell mighty nice, by the way.”

  Serena took a swing at him. He ducked and laughed. “No need to get all worked up. It was your idea.”

  She shook her head and settled her hat back on her head. “I reckon we’ll be needing to get back. You have a paper to sign and I got work to do.”

  They made their way back toward the office.

  “So, you really carry that poetry book with you all over the place?”

  “I do. Is that a problem for you, Mister Sutherlin?”

  “Nope, just different.”

  “Different how?’

  “Most of what I expect to find in a pocket is some coins, a chew, or a six-shooter.”

  “Women don’t go in for any of those things except maybe the coins. We’d rather have a pocket square, a book, or a sprig of mint.”

  “And they give y’all the vote. Lord have mercy.”

  Chapter Nine

  It took longer to travel to Jesse’s house by road than if he elected the shortcut. A path cut straight through the woods to the cabin his great grandfather had built and in which he, his mother, and brother lived. Jesse’s father and a companion had ventured to Norfolk the previous year and in that strange urban mix, had contracted the Spanish influenza that had killed off hundreds of thousands around the world. The influenza pandemic had waned considerably by then. Indeed, Norfolk officialdom had declared that for all practical purposes, it was over, except for one very vulnerable stranger from the wilds of the Blue Ridge. His friend returned alone with the news of the death and the worse news that he had not had the fifty dollars the undertaker wanted to ship the body home. Jesse’s father occupied an anonymous grave in Norfolk. Addie had never had the time or resources to visit it. One or two others on the mountain had succumbed as well, but the mountain’s relative isolation had spared it from the worst of the global epidemic.

  The path climbed straight up the mountain and could be accessed by a man on foot or on a horse or mule, but the angle of incline made wagon and, nowadays, car traffic, next to impossible. The road wandered around the side of the mountain for a mile or so and circled past the house. Jesse steered the T-Model carefully off the road and around Blue, the coon hound, sleeping in the middle of the yard and jerked to a halt. Abel, who’d been watching his approach, scrambled off the porch and ran to greet him

  “Whoo-ee, what are you doing in that automobile? Is that Mister Anderson’s? Why are you driving it? Jesse, how’d you come by that? Holy cow.”

  “That is a bucket full of questions, Abel. So, here is how it happened. You remember I went to the mill to get a job? Well, I went back there this afternoon and Mister R.G. Anderson made me foreman. It pays twice what I would have made doing the heavy work. Then he says, ‘Jesse, I want you to be mobile.’ That’s how he put it, ‘mobile.’ Then he says, ‘Here’s what we can do. I will sell you my old Ford for twenty-five dollars.’ I say, ‘R.G., I ain’t got twenty-five dollars.’ He says, ‘I’ll keep back two dollars a week from your pay ’til it’s paid off.’ So here I am. I have me a good-paying job, an automobile, and here’s the best part. He’s replacing some of the old steam tractors that power the mills with those big Allis-Chalmers 6/12 gasoline tractors. He even had a big tank to hold gasoline set up on the property for his trucks and the new tractors and says I can fill up this old flivver from it and it won’t cost me a red cent.”

  “He made you a foreman?”

  “He did.”

  “And sold you his old car?”

  “Yep.”

  “Golly. Kin I drive it?”

  “Nope. Maybe someday. You are a mite too short on years, I think. When you’re sixteen next December, you can. You’ll have to learn the pedals and such. It ain’t as easy as it looks.”

  “You can do it.”

  “Yes, I can on account I learned how to in the Army. They used big old Mack trucks on the base and made everybody learn how to drive them. I reckon they thought we’d have them in France. The Brits had a bunch, I heard, and some other units had them and even tried out their armored car, but they never got to us. Anyhow, if you can drive one of those monsters, you can drive damned near anything.”

  Addie Sutherlin stepped out of the house and surveyed the boys and sniffed at the car. “Supper’s on,” she said and turned on her heel.

  “Ma don’t seem impressed.”

&
nbsp; “Nope. She is having a hard time fitting in to this new world we got ourselves.”

  They entered the house and sat.

  “It ain’t much,” his mother said. “Greens and pone, and a scrap of fatback. So, you bought yourself a motor car.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I did and that ain’t all. Starting tomorrow, I am full-time working at the mill. It will pay me good money and so, you need to write me up a list of things you need, Ma. You know, flour, butter, sugar, things like that.”

  “You thinking I’m going to bake a cake? We have all we need right here on the place.”

  “Ma, we have enough. We aren’t going to starve, but there’re things that can make life easier. Maybe we can get the roof fixed up. Me and Abel can do it, but how about some real shingles instead of tar paper and tin? Maybe a real bed for you or one of them iceboxes. Ma, I’m working and that means we have us some breathing room when it comes to money.”

  Addie Sutherlin had lived her entire life on the mountain. Scratching out an existence from the unforgiving earth was all she knew. The idea she might have something more struck her as incomprehensible. Jesse might as well have been speaking Greek.

  “Humph,” was all she would say.

  “What did you learn about Solomon’s killer?” Abel said.

  “I been chatting with Serena Barker and she said she’d try to set me up with some of the folks on the other side. I think we need to talk before we jump. I’m meeting her later this evening.”

  “Serena Barker is a Lebrun,” Addie said. “Can’t trust any of them.”

  “She’s a Lebrun the way your cousin who lives over in Danville and never once set foot on the mountain is a McAdoo. Come on, Ma. Do we really want to start a war like the Hatfields did over in West Virginia?”

  “I’m just saying for your own good. Ain’t nothing good ever come from—”

  “Nazareth, I know. It’s in the Bible.”