Copper Kettle

by Frederick Ramsay

  Jesse and Big Tom sat on the porch. The other four said they’d pray for Abel and drifted off. Jesse thanked them for their help.

  “Family is family,” Hoke said.

  “Now you tell me something, Jesse, who did this?”

  “I know what you want to believe, Grandpa. You could be right, but there is a niggling around in the back of my mind and it tells me something just ain’t right about this whole damned business.”

  “By Gadfrey, something’s not right and you know what it is.”

  “No, that’s the point. I do not know who, or what it is. Look at what we do know, Grandpa. Put your lifelong hatred for Lebruns and their kin to one side for a minute and listen. First, Solomon is shot in the back while working on your still. The Lebrun people may know you have one, but what are the chances they know where it’s at?”

  “Any fool can find out if they want to.”

  “Maybe they can and maybe not. You are pretty tight about where you put it. Ain’t but a half dozen people know. That’s not the point, anyway. The first thing you gotta ask is why? I said it before and I say it again. They may be as rotten bad as Judas hisself, but they are not stupid. If they wanted to kill one of us, they’d fix up a reason and then do it. They are not blockheaded enough to sneak over from the other side, kill Solomon, and rabbit back home. Also, Albert swore it wasn’t any of them and he had no reason to lie. For that matter, to even to come and talk to me. It just don’t make any sense.”

  “Jesse, you have been away. You has forgot what it’s like here.”

  “No, not so. Listen to me. Why was Albert Lebrun killed? Nobody over here claims they did it. That’s the second thing. As much as you and the others might want to believe it, I didn’t kill him. So who did and why? It’s the why in all of this that I don’t get. And now Abel is knocked into next week, stabbed, but not deep, and tossed over the bluff. A little farther out or facedown and he’s dead.”

  “Jesse, you don’t know—”

  Addie stepped out on the porch. “You two need to shut your clap traps for a minute and tell me what this means. We found it in Abel’s pocket.”

  She handed Jesse a slip of paper which had only managed to survive ten hours of creek water because Abel had put in his top pocket of his overalls.

  “What’s it say?”

  “Give me a second, Grandpa.” Jesse squinted at the paper. He rummaged around in his shirt and found the glasses Nicholas Bradford had given him. He perched them on his nose and read. “It says, ‘Jesse,’ That’s me. Hmm. ‘If you want to know who really killed Albert Lebrun. Meet me on the path to the Walker place at seven tonight.’ The words are sorta scrambled and, I ain’t no expert, but not much on their spelling either, but that’s the drift.”

  “When did you start wearing specs?” Addie asked.

  “Pretty recent, actually. Lawyer Bradford gave them to me. All them years of being yelled at by schoolteachers and told I was a lunkhead and turns out all I needed was to see better.”

  Big Tom stamped his foot. “Never mind all that, what about the note?”

  “You didn’t ever get that note did you?”

  “No, Ma, I didn’t. It looks like Abel searched and couldn’t find me and figured it was so important, he’d go to the meeting himself. It was me who was supposed to be at the bottom of that little cliff. He musta stood there waiting wearing my coat and some skunk came up behind him. Stuck him in the back. That old Army coat don’t look like much, but it is pretty thick wool. You’d need a sharp knife and some pushing to do any real damage. It looks like whoever had the knife found out it wasn’t working and bounced a rock off his head. Be nice to know if he got a lick in hisself ’fore he tumbled over. Anyhow, that’s how come we found him out there.”

  “You’re saying he’s in that bed in a bad way because you was high-stepping off to Floyd?”

  “Sorry, but it appears so.”

  “Sweet Jesus.”

  “Sorry, Ma, you know Abel. He’s always wanted to be a help.”

  “He looks up to you, Jesse. If you told him to eat a live copper head snake, he’d do it.”

  “I would never ask him to do anything that would put him in harm’s way. You all know that.”

  Addie’s gaze had shifted to the woods across the dirt road that passed by her house. She turned and faced the two men in her life she loved most. In the half light her face looked like it had been carved from quartz. “It ain’t right, you hear me? All this killing and fussing over who is what. This is not the way the good Lord laid it out for his children. Buffalo Mountain ain’t no Eden, but it ain’t supposed to be hell, either. Why did you men let that happen? What is it with you?”

  “Ma, I’m trying.”

  “And not succeeding, and Pa, you ain’t doing much to help.”

  “What are you on about, girl?”

  “I ain’t no girl anymore, am I? Pa, Jesse, I can’t tell you two what to do. Pa, ’cause it’s not my place, and Jesse, because you’re a grown-up man now, but I am begging the both of you. You got to put and end to this. You two are the only ones on this here mountain with enough sense and grit to get it done. So, you all stop your fussing at each other and go do it.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Addie huffed back into the house. The front door slammed behind her. The two men stared at each other for a minute. Finally, Big Tom spoke.

  “So, what do you make of that there screeching?”

  “Grandpa, that weren’t screeching, that was the sweet voice of reason.”

  “What?”

  “She’s right. If there is ever going to be a change come to this damned mountain, you’re going to have to be a part of making it happen.”

  “Me? I ain’t going to change a gol’durned thing and you watch your language. I know you been over the ocean and rubbing elbows with soldiers of all sorts, but that don’t give you no leave to use the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Sorry. You’re right. At the same time, it’s because I have rubbed elbows with other people not from the mountain that I have a view of what’s going on here that is different, and I am telling you straight out, this way of living ain’t going to last. It can’t. The world has been stood on its ear ever since President Wilson sent us over there to fight the Germans. Don’t you understand? The world has got smaller and us feuding with the Lebruns is like from another century.”

  “What in tarnation do you mean, smaller? It ain’t shrunk one inch that I can see.”

  “Not that way. I mean…look, when I was in school, there was this map up on the wall. You could see all the countries in the whole world. There was like fifty-some of them. If I remember rightly, Germany was green, England was sort of red, France was another color. And that’s all we knowed about any of them. They were far away. They talked funny and ate frogs legs and such. They were just damned foreigners and didn’t mean nothing to us. That is not true anymore. England is a country which, from the peek I got of it from the troop ship, looked pretty much like the U.S. of A. And you know what? So did France. The people, too. If you met them on the street of Roanoke and you didn’t hear them talk them languages they do, you couldn’t tell them from us. They could as easy be McAdoos, or Lebruns, or Knoxes, or Barkers. When the influenza hit, it got near everybody. Them over there and us over here. We were lucky. Us being on this here mountain sort of protected us, you know. Did you hear that in New York City alone there was in a six-week stretch something like thirty thousand folks died? Maybe a whole lot of millions all over the world in the time ’til it run its course. They didn’t just kill off the Germans or the folks in New England. Everybody, my Pa included, got struck down. It was a worldwide thing, see? That’s what I mean.”

  “Jesse—”

  “No, let me finish. I know this mountain means the world to you, but it ain’t the world and the piddly little set-to’s we have up here don’t a
mount to a pile of horse manure in the big scheme of things. What’s a half dozen of us dead and cold against thirty thousand? When you all talk about the Lebruns, you make the same damned mistake as all the dopes, and politicians, newspaper writers, and big shots up in New York City. You see differences instead of likes.”

  “Wait just a dang minute.”

  “No, I’m done waiting. I seen what hatred that is ponied up by people who plan on profiting from other people’s misery does. There’s too many men my age pushing up daisies over there in France because the people who could have sat down and settled the mess thought their puffed up pride was more important than the lives of a couple million men. No, sir, I will not wait. If you haven’t got the sense God give you to see the light, then I’ll do this thing by myself.”

  “Just you wait a minute. Who do you think you’re talking to? What gives you the Almighty right to call down this life as dead? It ain’t dead, you hear me? We been on this mountain—”

  “Since Hector was a pup. Yeah, I know. And ain’t nobody going to push you off. I know that, too. At the same time, except nowadays there is telephones, pictures that move and they say they’ll talk someday. There’s talk of paved roads, and hospitals, folks on the east talking on the radio and them on the west listening, everybody chugging around in automobiles and…Don’t you see? You can have this life, but there’s more. More, Grandpa. You don’t have to lose anything. What you have can just get bigger. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Bigger?”

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “And what does all this ‘bigger’ cost? You know there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. What’s the cost?”

  “You have to give to get, right? ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom.’ That’d be Luke talking.”

  “I heard that somewhere. What do I give?”

  “You’d have heard it in church one of the times you actually went, which, as everybody knows, ain’t often. So, you give up the notion that the east side of the mountain and the west side are somehow, some way always going to be enemies. That if a person happens to be named Lebrun it don’t automatically mean he’s fixing to do you harm. It means you take a breath afore you pop off about what you know when you don’t know nothing. That’s for starters.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that.”

  “I can and I am. Listen to me, Grandpa, I been where they done killing wholesale, where boys were dropping like mayflies. You ever see a man hanging on barbed wire calling for his momma and you know he’s gut shot and won’t ever see morning? It ain’t pretty. Then I get back, safe and sound from that madness and what do I find? My own grandpa is playing like he’s the damn King of England and Garland Lebrun is the Kaiser. The killing over here is just the same as over there. I don’t know why the rest of them folks and you are fixing to fight and none of you have a notion of why, but you are. It’s just like the Mister Wilson’s war.”

  Big Tom sat quietly for a moment. He pulled a crusted old pipe from his bib overall pocket and stuffed a wad of Bull Durham in the bowl.

  “You got a match?”

  Jesse flicked the phosphorous head of a strike anywhere and held it out for the old man. Big Tom tilted his head and drew in the flame. The tobacco lit and he puffed for a few minutes. Jesse waited and then sat back.

  “By golly, Jesse Sutherlin, that’s more words out of your mouth than you’ve spoke in a month.”

  “Yeah, well…Ma said it was up to you and me to make that go away…you and me. I’m willing. Are you?”

  “What the hell can I do?”

  “Make people talk to me. Somebody stabbed Albert Lebrun. I told you it wasn’t me. Who done it? Ask around and find out who was where when Solomon was killed, when Albert was stabbed. People know things. They’ll talk to you.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll find a way back to the other side and ask the same things. It won’t be easy. Albert was ready to help me and then he’s killed. I got to find me another person who’ll help.”

  “Your Ma said you was sparking that Barker girl. Maybe she’ll talk, ask your questions for you.”

  “We ain’t sparking. If we was, we ain’t now and sure, maybe someday folks will take women seriously. Maybe now they will, since they got the vote and all, but not on this mountain and not today. She’s got a brother, though. I can talk to him. He’s already sent me a warning. So, that’s something.”

  “That’s the boy you rescued from Anse and broke his wrist doing it? What kind of warning?”

  “That’s him and the warning can wait.”

  “Hmmm…Anse is a proper jackass, no doubt about that. You shouldn’t have broke his wrist, though.”

  “Grandpa, he was fixing to stick me with a knife. My other choice was to cut his damn throat.”

  “Language Jesse, language. What else?”

  “Am I going to do? Come Saturday noon, if I have no good answers, I will fight John Henry Lebrun, that’s what.”

  Big Tom tapped out his pipe and stood. “You get on inside and see to your brother. I’ll walk around tomorrow and ask a question or two. You be careful, son. We don’t want to lose you now you come back. Your Ma near to died every time she seen anything that looked like a telegram truck. Good night.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Jesse reentered the cabin. He avoided his mother’s eyes. Abel lay half dead because he, Jesse, had been off the mountain at Floyd trying to get rich instead of being where he should have been.

  “It ain’t your fault, Jesse.”

  “But it is. I wasn’t here for him and he went off half-cocked like he does. He got himself in this pickle ’cause of me and that’s the bare-faced truth.”

  “The trouble with young’uns these days, Sister Addie,” Granny Parkins said, “is they don’t have no perspective.”

  “What in the name of Goodbye Bill does that mean?”

  “It means, if you live long enough, you will soon or late learn something. What you, young man, needs to learn is that there is some things you can’t see coming and even if you do, you can’t do nothing to stop’em. Your brother was going to get hisself into a scrape over you ’fore the year was out. You could bet money on it. It were his nature, Jesse Sutherlin, and that’s what I mean. It just happened that yesterday was the day he done it. So, you just pull yourself together and do what you need to do to make sure he didn’t get his head busted for nothing.”

  “That there is your perspective on the matter?”

  “It is. Now, Sister Addie, you keep your Abel quiet and comfortable. He got himself a fierce whack on his head, but he ain’t going to die. He’ll sleep that way for a while…a week maybe two, maybe not so long, and then he will come around and want a stack of flapjacks a foot high.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “As sure as I can be. And you, Jesse Sutherlin, you git out the door and do what you have to do.”

  “Yessum.”

  Addie stepped toward him and looked him square in the eye. “It ain’t your fault.”

  “You said so.”

  “It is so.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t want to lose you, Jesse. I done lost your Pa, come close with Abel. So…” She handed him his pistol. “You put this away when you come in. I want you to keep it with you from now on, you hear?”

  “I will, but my insides is telling me I won’t need it.”

  “Well you can listen to them all you want, but your Ma is telling you to be on the safe side and carry that shooting pistol.”

  Jesse left. The chill air nearly knocked him back indoors. The temperature seemed like it had dropped ten degrees in the last hour.

  “It’s surely the start of a mountain winter.” Granny Parkins had followed him out. “You been away
for a while. You forgot.”

  “Everybody keeps saying that. Granny, I been back on the mountain near a year. I didn’t leave any memories back in France. I ain’t forgot a thing. Why does everyone think I have?”

  “I reckon it’s ’cause you have changed. I will tell you one thing you for sure have forgot.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You done forgot who you used to be. You come back a changed man. War will do that to you. You go off a boy and come home a man. You used to be full of piss and vinegar, you and you brother, both. There weren’t a scrape bit of tomfoolery that didn’t include you. You was a wild one, you was. Now, you are somebody new. I’ll say a good new, but different. See how that works? Because you don’t act like you done in the past, folks naturally think you done forgot everything, but you didn’t. No sir, it’s all stuck up in your head there somewhere. Only now, you look at it different. You have got yourself some perspective and it’s making folks nervous, that’s all.”

  “Abel said something like that the day Solomon get himself killed.”

  “Sister Sutherlin didn’t raise up no dunces.”

  “Right. So, that’s it? Just what do I do with this perspective business?”

  “Put it to use. Go find out who done all these bad things lately. Everybody who’s here only has one view. You are fitted up better than that.”

  “I’m sorry, Granny, but I ain’t getting this.”

  “Jesse Sutherlin, what you need to find out is the why. Ain’t that what’s been bothering you here lately? All this killing and banging people in the head don’t make no sense. Them that has never left these parts naturally jump to the same old conclusions they always do and they get into the same old trouble they always did. These men never talk out a trouble. Just yank out your pistol and convince the other feller of your rightness by putting a hole in him. You? Well, you don’t see it that way no more because you got—”