"Over what?" Morgan said.
"Nomenclature."
Morgan stared at the talking tortoise.
"That's correct," it said. "Specifically, what to name the town, Mason or Dixon. They argued over the matter for more than forty years. During that time no one knew what to call the place, so they referred to it as Mason Or Dixon. Finally old man Mason Alexander, who was upward of ninety, walked up to his tottering brother and shot him down in the street to settle the dispute once and for all. That very evening Dixon's oldest boy, Dixon Junior, who was seventy-three, gunned down his uncle Mason. From there it was off to the races. It was pure war, Morgan, with one Alexander shooting or stabbing another one every few years on down through four generations. All over nomenclature. I shan't trouble you with the grim particulars. In time the clans shot each other out, and by then it wasn't safe for anyone else to live in this town either. Mason Or Dixon has stood empty these last ten years."
"Why didn't they compromise back before their feud began? Call the town Alexandria?"
"Why not indeed?"
"Couldn't the war between them have somehow been avoided?"
"One would have thought."
The fever was coming over Morgan again. He needed to find a cold brook or at least a pump that pumped water instead of sand. He needed to stop this charade, talking to a reptile in an abandoned town with an outlandish name. He said to the tortoise, "Is there a moral to your fable?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know much, do you, for such a talkative fella?"
"I know you should inquire for your brother from the pretty girl at the sign of Gebo," the tortoise said. "And I know I'd like a ripe red strawberry."
With that the animal continued across the street, disappearing in the Johnson grass outside the old Mason Alexander place. Morgan walked on toward the soaring front of the mountains. That night his fever broke, and the next morning he wondered if he had imagined the pumpkin freshet, the town of Mason Or Dixon, and the talking tortoise named Pilgrim, with his tantalizing hints about pretty girls and runic signs.
Morgan ascended into the mountains through folds and creases bright with blossoming rhododenrons and azaleas. At close range the metallic colors of the azaleas made his head spin. What was the point of all this riot of color? Since leaving Vermont he had seen nothing but devastation and misery. The splendors of spring in the Blue Ridge seemed a bitter and ironic mockery of all human endeavor, including this monumental nonsense of walking the world looking for someone who might well no longer be part of it. God could mock him all he wished--that seemed the way of creation. Morgan did not have to add his own scorn and self-loathing to God's torments by continuing to prosecute a fool's errand beyond the endurance of mind and body. He was free to turn around and go home at any time. Surely he had fulfilled his duty to Pilgrim at Gettysburg, where he had discovered exactly nothing. As for Gebo, designated on Jesse's stone with the symbol and the strange drawing of the entrance of a cave, Morgan had no reason to believe that he could find the place, much less learn anything of his brother there. He resolved to continue his search to the height of land atop the Blue Ridge, and then, if he had not learned anything more of Pilgrim, he'd go not one step farther.
At the summit of the peak he was climbing he happened upon a seep trickling out from under a boulder. A gnarled beech tree grew in the humus on top of the rock, its exposed roots reaching down the sides of the boulder to the water. He cleared away last year's pointed beech leaves, and the spring quickly filled the small cavity at the foot of the rock. He dipped up a cupful of icy water in the carved cedar drinking cup Auguste Choteau had given him. The tea-colored water tasted faintly of beechnuts and was so cold it made his forehead ache. While he waited for the scooped-out depression to fill again, he noticed where black bears had rooted in the leaves of the forest floor for last year's beech mast. Here in the mountains Morgan felt something like his old self for the first time since that twilit afternoon when he had followed the moose down the far side of his mountain at home and his troubles had begun.
The mountains stretching off to the south were as azure as their name. Vermont mountains, rarely blue, were never this shade. The closest they came was on hazy fall afternoons when they were tinted the slate blue of Morgan's eyes. Just down the slope the seep gathered itself into a tiny rill, which vanished in a bright palette of azaleas. Far below, ten miles and more, off at the western foot of the range, Morgan could see the glint of a winding river, which he judged to be the Shenandoah.
Then he heard the dogs. They were still some miles away, coming up from the south, the way he was headed. He checked his rifle to make sure it was in good order and started along the spine of the mountains. He walked in the seep toward the barking dogs, well aware that he was still heading south, not north, and no more able to resist whatever pull in his heart made him do so than he could have resisted gravity itself. So much for reason and resolve, he thought. Let the gods laugh at him. His feet had a will of their own.
He had not proceeded far when he heard a jingling like sleigh bells coming his way. He stepped behind a large tree of a kind that didn't grow in Kingdom County and waited to see what would happen.
A figure was coming toward him up the mountain. It was a girl, a willowy slip of a girl with long slim legs the rich color of the inside of a split cherry log. She was running in quick, lithe strides, the bells on a collar around her neck jingling as she loped along. Twice Morgan saw her look over her shoulder in the direction of the baying hounds. She wore a shortish dress as yellow as a buttercup, and her shoulder-length hair glinted chestnut in the sun. She looked to be about his age. She entered the azalea thicket, and yes, she was pretty--more than pretty, lovely against the pink, deep gold, molten orange, and rich salmon of the blossoms. Then, like the rill Morgan was following, she vanished.
The thicket was as dense as a wild rose brake. At close range the colors not only made Morgan slightly dizzy, they seemed to produce a harsh coppery taste in his mouth. He had to get down on his hands and knees and crawl to follow the rill through the flowering bushes, which ripped at him like claws. He hoped he wouldn't meet a bear with cubs to protect; in such close quarters she would tear a man limb from limb. In the midst of the thicket of color he felt a powerful draft of dank air. It was like a glace du bois at home, a cold pocket in the woods, usually under a stand of gloomy hemlocks beside a brook, often where something bad had once happened, a massacre or a blood killing. Just ahead, the little stream passed out of sight under an overhanging ledge of limestone. A steady breath of frigid air was issuing from the fissure where the brook had disappeared. Morgan realized that he had found a sinkhole, a natural chimney in the ground.
Vermont had few caves. The granite bedrock was too hard for the water to hollow out--stubborn and resistant like Vermonters themselves, Professor Agassiz had joshed Pilgrim. As Morgan followed the rill down into the chimney on his hands and backside, the cave smelled cold, like his father's icehouse at home. "Hello," he called out. "My name is Morgan Kinneson from Kingdom County, Vermont. I mean you no harm. Will you answer?"
"Hello, hello, hello," his voice echoed. "Will you answer, answer, answer?" As he leaned forward to listen for a response, he lost his purchase on the rubble. The stones rolled out from under him, and Morgan bounced down into the darkness below.
"H OO, BOY! What kind of soldier are you, Morgan Kinneson from King County? Can't even stay upright down a little hill?"
In the flickering torchlight the girl with chestnut hair was grinning down at him. She seemed highly amused by his mishap. The bell collar around her neck jingled softly when she bent over to check his eyes.
"My guns!"
"Don't worry, your guns are fine. You fetched yourself a knock on the head, child."
The girl gave him a drink of water out of a tin cup, holding his throbbing head while he drank. He was going to have a good knot on the back of his head.
"You aren't supposed to be down here, Morgan Kin
neson from King County. Only black folks are supposed to know about the Mind of God."
Morgan drank a little more water. "What's your name?"
"Old John Brown, ask me again I'll knock you down. Except you're down to start off with. Slidell is my name. Slidell Collateral Dinwiddie, on account of my grandmammy was from Slidell, Louisiana."
"I know who you are, Slidell. I read about you in a newspaper."
"Go long!"
"It's true, I did. In a notice offering five hundred dollars for your return to Tennessee. Is your name really Slidell? I never knew anyone named Slidell. That's a good name."
"It's a foolish name. Naming a fine young gal after a town, of all things. How would you like be named King County? Have to say, 'My name is King County, from King County, Vermont.' My second name is worse yet. Collateral. Collateral brought up the rear of the line when names got parceled out."
"What did you call this cave? The Mind of God?"
"You ask a heap of questions, Morgan Kinneson. Didn't your mama teach you it was rude to ask so many questions?"
The girl looked at him goodnaturedly. "Here," she said, "sit up. Taste Slidell's fish. Catsfish, only down in this cave they're as white as cotton and blind as bats. This flying squirrel? I have a sling made from a boot cord, see? See this little pouch? I put a stone in here, smooth and round from the brook, twirl it round my head like little David and look out, Mr. Flying Squirrel. Fly plumb into Slidell's fry pan. Now. This is the hind leg off a she-possum, boy. She-possom is the best eating there is. Fried up in her own nice grease, she-possom is a right smart of eating."
"What's this?" Morgan said. "Chicken?"
"Chicken? Wherever would Slidell find a chicken down this forlorn hole in the ground? That's rattling snake, child. Makes you crafty and cunning like the old serpent."
He took a bite of the snake meat. It was all right. Slidell smelled like the evergreens on the mountain at home after a fresh spring rain. Like the sweet ferns he put in his fish basket to keep his trout fresh.
Morgan examined Lady Justice. The butt of the stock was scratched a little, but otherwise it seemed undamaged. He stood up too fast and his head felt as though it might explode like Joseph Findletter's orange pumpkin. Standing, he was surprised to see how tall the girl was, only two or three inches shorter than him, and he believed that he had grown a good inch and maybe more since leaving home.
"I need to get on, Slidell."
Slidell shook her head. "Didn't you hear those dogs, boy? We need to get deeper into the cavern before they get here."
They made their way along a ledge above the stream, Slidell's pine-knot torch illuminating many a fantastical pattern on the damp walls of the passageway. They emerged into a vast chamber, where she lit other torches affixed to the walls. He was amazed by the dimensions of the underground gallery. Ten of his father's hay barns would have fit inside it with room to spare.
"Behold, child," Slidell said in a hushed voice. "The Mind of God. Gebo. Some six thousand years ago, when old God was fixing to make the stars and the sea and all things that creep on the earth and fly above it, He came here first and tried out His hand. See? He made an image of everything. This big chamber is His synagogue. That block of stone there? Shaped like a chest? That's the Ark of the Covenant. No! Don't you touch it. Fry you right up like a cats-fish."
In the torchlight the Ark of the Covenant was tinted all the rich colors of the earth--tan, ferrous red, ocher, amber. On its side was inscribed the symbol . Gebo. Slidell lifted her torch over her head. "Speaking of fish," she said, "look here."
On the cave wall above them was an orange-colored stain shaped like a primitive fish. "First fish," Slidell said. "All the other fish were patterned after him."
"What kind of fish is it?" Morgan asked.
"God's Fish," Slidell said solemnly.
"What's that?" Morgan pointed at a tall stalagmite, white as snow and resembling a woman looking back over her shoulder at them.
"Lot's Wife," Slidell said. "My granddaddy found this old cave, him, fifty years ago. Named it Gebo, the Mind of God. Named the Ark, God's Fish, Lot's Wife too, my granddaddy did."
Beyond Lot's Wife the stream emptied into a small lake. A shelf of rock hung out over the water forming a low ceiling. Below the surface of the lake lay a wondrous city of soaring stone towers and parapets, battlements, fortifications, bejeweled avenues, cathedral spires hundreds of feet tall and colored ruby red, cobalt blue, gold, and emerald. Slidell laughed and pointed at the stone ceiling. In the torchlight Morgan saw that the stately underwater city was the reflection of the myriad multicolored stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
"Liberty Bell there ahead. See him?"
Beside the lake sat a rock as large as the Kingdom Mountain church belfry, shaped like a flanged bell with one side collapsed. "That's the crack in the bell. I imagine this bell rang so hard the day old Father Abraham freed us it split right down the side. Only bells Slidell Collateral Dinwiddie heard at the time, the bells on this slave collar."
"What's a slave collar, Slidell?"
"Why, boy, a slave collar jingles so if the slave runs away the slave catchers can hear her and fetch her back. I ran away three times before, and after the third time master collared me. I swore a great oath never to take off this collar for the rest of my life. Never forget for one minute what being free means."
Morgan was examining the Liberty Bell. Scratched into its side, near the long crack, was what looked like a rune, but not one that he recalled from Jesse's stone or from the great Balancing Boulder: .
He traced the symbol with his forefinger. "What does this mean, Slidell?"
"Means you ask too many questions, boy."
He looked at her.
"Means they're coming, is what it means. Now you come along. Hurry."
They coming. Jesse, too, had said They coming. Who was coming? Morgan wanted to ask, but Slidell was suspicious enough of him already.
They ventured deeper into the cavern. If Slidell's torch went out, Morgan figured they could retrace their steps by following the stream, now tumbling over a natural stone stairway. They climbed down the graduated falls. Slidell watched closely to see if he needed help, but he seemed recovered from his fall. "Look there, boy. Where the water drops over those columns. Hear the music? Like wind in a cypress tree at night? I call that God's Pipe Organ. Pretty, too."
Slidell pointed. "Look over yonder. Where the stream narrows down and the walls close in tight. See old Golia?"
They were wading knee-deep through a narrow defile behind God's Pipe Organ, the walls of the cave touching Morgan's shoulders so that he had to edge forward sideways. Depending from the lofty ceiling just ahead was a column in the form of a gigantic warrior. "Look, Morgan Kinneson. There's Golia's breastplate. See? There's his great throwing spear."
The stream flowed through Goliath's legs, spread wide like those of the Colossus at Rhodes in Morgan's illustrated Wonders of the Ancient World at home. Goliath hung over them from the spiked top of his helmet. Ever so cautiously they proceeded under him and came out on yet another underground lake. They sat on a bar of gravel washed down over the ages and looked back up at the looming giant. While they rested, Morgan told Slidell some of his story. He told her about his long walk south in search of his brother. He described his encounter with Sabbati Zebi and the Caliph of Baghdad, recounted his adventures on the Great Western Canal, how he'd met Big Eva and the president and Birdcall.
"How old was this vile young wretch?" Slidell demanded. "This Birdcall?"
Morgan suspected that she was jealous of the girl. "Oh, about three and twenty and very beautiful."
"I misdoubt she was either. About fourteen and skinny as a post and randy as a bearded billy goat. Probably got some terrible pox from her." She pretended to shudder.
"She was a little girl," Morgan said. "I left her with a woman who lived in a tree."
"You never! Now Slidell's heard it all."
The cave fugitives ben
t their dark and light heads together in the torchlight as Slidell told him about the remote and mysterious River of Grace, flowing into the Tennessee, where she and her little brother, Solomon Dinwiddie, had been raised on Grace Plantation, and about her escape route up through the mountains to Virginia and Gebo, the Mind of God. Morgan related how he had skirmished with Steptoe and Prophet and received his first battle wound. He set Lady Justice on his lap pointed away from Slidell and told her how, under the tutelage of Joseph Findletter, he had fashioned the rifle from his grandfather's old musket and a few simple farm tools. How he and Joseph had made the minie bullets and formed them by dropping hot lead slaked with silver off the soaring stone bridge called Jacob's Ladder and then felt for them with his toes in the green pool far below with Gretel. He told her about Jesse Moses without mentioning the old slave's name, and how he had laid an ambuscade for Ludi and later, at Gettysburg, had impaled Steptoe on the blasted peach tree. Finally he told her how, with the Caliph's help, he had destroyed the evil Doctor Surgeon.
"A very pretty story," Slidell said angrily when Morgan finished his tale. "Breaking all ten commandments, killing people right and left, poking all the helpless young gals. You'll have a powerful lot of explaining to do to Saint Peter, Yankee boy. Setting elephants on folks. Walking the land ravishing babies on the canal and school-teaching gals in black bonnets. King David all over again, off to the races with long-legged Bathshe."
"Slidell, I didn't ravish anyone. Listen. I want to tell you something. Something important. When you get to Canada, go straight to Montreal and look up Auguste Choteau. Tell him Morgan Kinneson sent you. He'll help you. You should leave immediately."
Slidell frowned as if torn between two opposing thoughts. She got out a mouth harp and played "St. Anne's Reel," "The Church at Bayou Teche," "Evangeline's Waltz." She played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," which she'd heard as she came north on the Path of the Water Gourd. God's Pipe Organ gave back the melodies like ten thousand lyres and tabors and clavichords, echoing and reechoing through the massive galleries of the cavern long after Slidell had stopped playing. The lovely notes rising and falling mesmerized the two explorers. Suddenly Slidell seized Morgan's arm. As the echoing music subsided, he heard again the baying of dogs.
Walking to Gatlinburg: A Novel Page 15
