Walking to Gatlinburg: A Novel

by Howard Frank Mosher

  "Well, I'm down here, General, in part because a devil named Arthur Dinwiddie sent another devil up there"--pointing north--"and killed a man I was responsible for."

  "Son, I beg you, if you feel you must persist, to confine your imperatives to locating your brother."

  Morgan said, "I thank you for the safe passage. And for the compass."

  The general offered his hand. They shook solemnly, and Morgan touched his forefinger to the brim of his slouch hat. Then he and Slidell started up along the river toward the bridge to the south side.

  "Son."

  Morgan stopped, half turned.

  "Son, I will say this much. I would not care to be a transgressor in your eyes and you to be pursuing me."

  For the slightest moment Morgan hesitated. Then he said gravely, "No, sir. You would not."

  EIGHT

  ANSUZ

  U p in the Cumberland it was high summer and raining a warm summer rain. Morgan and Slidell were overtaken by black night at a graveyard where, according to an old man they had met that afternoon, early on in the war two skirmishing patrols had been picked off by mountain people, stripped of all their possessions, and buried willy-nilly in shallow graves on the hillside where they fell. At the bottom of the slope was a pine marker with the message STAY A WAY scratched onto it. A little stream already coloring up in the torrential rain rushed along the bottom of the slope. Here, with Morgan's blanket over their heads and shoulders and their backs against the marker bearing the warning, the pair bivouacked for the night.

  Slidell insisted that the place was haunted and seemed delighted by the notion. With uncanny exactitude she mimicked the general--"Boy, you should go into the law"--and Man Mountain Mann: "I'll fight ye for it, catch as catch can." She told Morgan, whose face was still badly swollen and bruised, that he cut a grand handsome figure, and he wondered how, in her female scheme of things, it was acceptable for her to hooraw his appearance when he was not allowed to poke innocent fun at hers. He wanted to make love to her again, but he was as wet as a soaked codfish and as sore from the beating by the Man Mountain as if he'd been trampled by an entire marching regiment and so tired that he slept like a dead man straight through until dawn.

  They woke in a mizzling fog that quickly turned back to driving curtains of rain. As they started up the hill, they could see a blue-coated arm jutting through the red clay hillside and more graves spilling out their contents. "What I tell you, boy?" Slidell said. "The day of reckoning has arrived. Angel Gabriel wants a word with you, Morgan Kinneson from Kingdom County."

  Corpses clad in gray and corpses clad in blue, mortal enemies in life, boon companions in death, tumbled down the slope in moribund embrace only to be swept away by the freshet at the foot of the hill. Morgan could not think what to do. Maybe drag some of the disturbed dead to high ground, but fearing disease, he stood transfixed as whole sections of hillside calved away, spewing out more of the dead. The bones danced a macabre supine dance and clicked together like hand-held spoons at a hoedown. Some of the deceased seemed to be racing each other down the hillside. One poor soldier, mere rags on bone, was hung up in a pawpaw tree whose roots had pulled out of the bank. A skull came bowling down the slope, greenish white in the liquescent light. It clacked off another skull like a billiard ball, took a merry skip, and landed at their feet. Slidell screamed. Without thinking, Morgan gave the thing a boot, and it arced high and came down in the stream.

  Before long the rain stopped and the sun emerged. In the middle of the morning they smelled smoke. "Somebody has a whiskey still nearby," Slidell whispered. Shortly they caught sight of a boy of fourteen or fifteen, dressed in men's overalls worn backward. He seemed to be floating through the laurel, keeping pace with Slidell and Morgan.

  Presently the boy emerged onto the narrow sled path they were following. He was riding a pig, a big, dark, razorbacked tusker with fiery little pig eyes that fixed themselves on Morgan as though the animal longed to devour him.

  "Who you?" the boy said. "You the debil?"

  Slidell grinned from under her straw hat. "You got that right," she said.

  Morgan said, "I'm Morgan Kinneson from Kingdom County, Vermont. I'm looking for my brother, Pilgrim."

  "Abide," the boy said. Abruptly, he steered his mount back into the laurel by its ears. Morgan and Slidell sat down on a bluish rock beside the path to wait. They could still smell smoke.

  "That pig-riding boy a specter," Slidell said. "I tell you these mountains are haunted, Morgan."

  She pronounced his name as if it were two words, Mor Gan, and again he wanted her so badly that he did not trust himself to speak. He was quite sure that she knew it and took delight in his anguish.

  Some time passed, perhaps half an hour. Soundlessly, the boy reappeared out of the laurel. This time he was afoot. He beckoned to them. "Foller."

  They pushed their way through the undergrowth to a step-across-in-one-step brook, which they traced up the mountainside. They came into a clearing where a man stood in a tin washtub wedged between two boulders. A pile of green juniper brush smoldered under the tub, on whose side the sign , Ansuz, had been painted in bright ocher. The man, stark naked except for a slouch hat, was carving a walking stick into the shape of two intertwined serpents. His arms and legs were as scarlet as a fall maple leaf, and he looked unhappy.

  "Two Snake got into the pisen trefoil plant with the shiny shiny leaves up Waycross," the boy explained. "Now he's obliged to smoke the pisen outen himself."

  "'Tis true, 'tis true," Two Snake said. "Green juniper burned very slow will generally draw it out. See how it's ruddied me up already. By 'n by I'll come good as new with the pisen all gone. Juniper brush smoked green will kill pisen ivy dead as a hammer."

  "How did you contract it?" Morgan said.

  "Oh, a-fishing around in the laurel up Waycross looking for a rattlesnake den. Before I knowed it I was into the stuff in earnest."

  "What do you want with rattlesnakes?"

  "Why, I sell 'em. What else would you want with them? Just yesterday I sold a dozen walloping big snakes to a serpent preacher with a wagon pulled by a red mule. He said he wanted to set up a hollering church in Haint Holler and shoo out the haints. Good luck, says I. Haints are a sight harder to get shut of than that."

  Slidell gave Morgan a look full of meaning.

  "Well, how do you get shut of them?" Morgan said.

  "Up Haint Holler? You don't. That's they stomping ground. What else besides me do ye think's in the tub? A-simmering in the hot water?

  "Peanuts," Two Snake said before Morgan could reply. "Raintree Pettibone, my third cousin twice removed down in the lowlands, grows them. I boil them. I boil 'em sunup to sundown. Then they done. They good."

  He nodded to the boy, who ladled out a handful of peanuts in the shell with a homemade wooden spoon and dumped them steaming hot into Morgan's hands. Then he gave Slidell a handful. Morgan popped one in his mouth and started to crunch it.

  Slidell whooped.

  "Jesus to Jesus and seven hands around, man," Two Snake said. "You must shuck them out first. The meat's inside. Sit ye, sit ye, strangers, and enjoy them."

  Keeping an eye on the wild pig, which he did not at all trust, Morgan sat on a chestnut log in the swept clay clearing and munched peanuts. Slidell stood nearby eating peanuts. They tasted salty and a little like the corn his mother popped in a wire basket over a fire on winter evenings when the wind came howling down the mountain out of Canada. He nodded his appreciation at the red man smoking himself.

  "Where hail ye from?" Two Snake said, turning himself slowly to get the full benefit of the steam.

  "Vermont."

  "Vermont," he said. "I never studied no Vermont."

  Morgan pointed north. He was thinking of popcorn white as snow. Thinking of new snow on the mountain at home.

  The boy said, "Two Snake says it's a bad day when he don't sell a walking stick."

  "Two Snake has many a bad day," the smoking man acknowledged. />
  "Did you sell one to a tall doctor from up north?" Morgan said.

  "Doctor man?" Two Snake said.

  Morgan nodded. He could feel his heart beating fast.

  "Tall. Taller than you by a widow's mite?"

  Morgan nodded.

  "Inquiring sort of fella? All full of questions about medicine?"

  "Yes."

  "Yankee, you say. Talked through his nose like you. Dark hair and dark eyes?"

  Morgan nodded again.

  Two Snake shook his head. "No such a body in these parts."

  "No such," the boy agreed.

  "Bide here with us for a few days, friends, and I'll show you what I know," Two Snake said.

  "What do you know?" Slidell said.

  "Why, I know how to bathe a pneumonia patient in mountain liquor to draw the infection from the lungs. I know all the old plant cures under the healing sign of Ansuz. I know snake doctoring. Powdered-up rattlesnake rattles to ease a hard birthing. Copperhead venom and gunpowder to drive out dropsy. Moccasin pisen's sovereign powerful for heart trouble. For strong diseases you generally need strong medicine. Why come is the snake the animal of Aesculapius? Because it's the cunningest critter there be, if we but know how to use its canny wisdom. Rattlesnake bite will cure the melancholic brown studies. Despair hath no show agin it. Nor does heartbreak."

  Nor would the desperate or heartbroken patient, Morgan thought, judging from the size of some of the snakes he and Slidell had encountered earlier that morning basking on ledges beside the sled trail. He could only agree with Two Snake that the ministrations of one such gentleman would cure any human malady and permanently at that.

  "Where then do you apply the bite?"

  "On the outer ankle as a rule. That way they mought lose the foot but generally not the entire limb. All thought of the lost lover or despair dissipates during the crisis."

  "I should think it might. What other cures do you know?"

  "I know green juniper smoke will draw out pisen ivy. Slippery elm bark boiled in a tea cureth the dysentery. And fifteen pounds of coarse white salt will bile fifty pounds of peanuts. I know where to cotch serpents. You'd be surprised how many folks have a call for them. They's one crawling over your left boot this minute."

  Morgan looked down. A yellowish brown snake of a variety unknown on Kingdom Mountain was slowly progressing over his boot. It stopped, raised its head, looked up at Morgan, and flicked out its split tongue.

  "That's my big yalla breeding copperhead, Harley Thigpen," Two Snake said. "Old Harley's a corker. He has enough pisen stored up in him to fell a full-growed ox. Don't you move a muscle now, boy. Harley don't take much to Yankees. No, he do not."

  With great deliberation, Harley Thigpen snaked on over Morgan's boot, watching him narrowly the while. Harley did, indeed, look as though he did not take to Yankees.

  "Toss me that stick you're carving," Slidell said to Two Snake. "Mr. Harley about to meet his Waterloo."

  "I'll whistle up the hog," the boy said. "Old Garadene'll eat him in a trice."

  "No. Harley's my best breeder. Don't you twitch an eyelash, Yankee boy. The moment you stir, Brother Harlan will cut one of his capers."

  "What should I do?"

  "I'm studying onto it."

  Brother Harlan laid his small, deadly head atop his brown-and-cream-colored coils to watch Morgan the steadier. Morgan looked at Slidell. "What should I do?" he mouthed.

  "Can you roll?" she said.

  "What?"

  "Can you tumble backward ass over teakettle and come up onto your feet?"

  "I reckon."

  "Do it then. Quick as ever you moved in all your life."

  Morgan tumbled backward, heels over head, and came up onto his feet. "Jubilo!" the pig-riding boy whooped. He reached out with a stick and swooped Harley Thigpen high into the air, caught him on the way down in his croker sack, and tied off the mouth. Altogether, it was a very hideous performance.

  The boy grinned at Morgan. "You want to ride my pig? Go ahead. Try him out."

  "Go on ahead," Two Snake said. "It ain't ever' man in this world can say he's rid a pig name of Garadene."

  Morgan approached the razorback. Gingerly, he put a leg over its back and seated himself, and the pig set off around the clearing at a stately pace. Morgan held his long legs out away from its sides so as not to drag his feet. They went around the clearing twice. Morgan could not have imagined when he woke that morning that he would witness the resurrection of a company of skeletal soldiers and ride a wild boar. Then Slidell rode the animal.

  "That's a good pig," she told the boy afterward. "I thank you for the ride."

  "Yes, sir," the boy said. "He an easy mount and he'll draw a sled. I wouldn't butcher him for no amount of lucre."

  "Cobbler Tom at the sign of Kano said you'd give me a message," Morgan said to the smoking Two Snake. "He said Ansuz means messenger."

  "Brush Arbor Holiness," Two Snake said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "You'll find your serpent preacher at Brush Arbor Holiness Church. He knows you're a-coming. He said to tell you he knows what you want to know. You must go through Haint Holler to get there. Foller the brook. One thing more."

  "What's that?" Morgan said.

  "Up Haint Holler you'll come to Dagaz, the domain of the Melungeons. They's a grist mill with a windmill and a waterwheel in a place of high white cliffs. The miller and his woman and their green-eyed gal will be pale as flour. They will ask you to stop and bide the night. But you must not eat of their bread. Not so much as one crumb, no matter how keenly you hunger. And you must not accept the favors of the miller's daughter, entice you though she will."

  Morgan touched his hat to Two Snake and the boy. Slidell scratched Garadene's bristly head. Then they walked on up the brook.

  N EVER BEFORE HAD MORGAN SEEN a stream increase in size as he traced it upward. As they walked higher, the stream grew deeper but did not appear to narrow. Near Two Snake's it was up to their ankles. Then it rose to their calves, then their knees. Also, it seemed to become much colder, as did the hollow it flowed through. High in the narrow glen beneath soaring white cliffs they came to a stone grist mill with a penstock and a waterwheel, not presently turning. Two millstones as large as the wheels of a giant's wagon could be seen inside the mill. Nearby was a house shingled with cedar shakes, and beside the grist mill stood a windmill with motionless wooden sails. On the stone base of the windmill someone had carved the sign .

  "Hello, the mill," Morgan called.

  The miller appeared in the doorway of the cedar-shake house, dusted white with powdered flour, and in a creaky voice he invited them inside.

  Slidell pointed her finger at Morgan. "Don't you step across that threshold," she said.

  Morgan studied the miller. Under the flour his skin seemed olive-colored. His dark curly hair powdered with flour looked like a wig. The miller beckoned to him again to come inside, and he did. The house, which was ice-cold despite the cherry-red blaze in the fireplace, was sparsely furnished with a deal table and two crude benches. A crooked ladder led up to a sleeping loft. The miller's wife and daughter were both olive-skinned and green-eyed, and their hands, arms, and countenances were well powdered with flour. A sprinkling of flour covered the table and benches and the puncheon floor. Bread was baking in an oven built into the side of the fireplace. It smelled delicious.

  "Slidell's waiting out here, boy," Slidell called from the dooryard. "Don't you lay a lip over that bread. Stay away from that green-eyed gal."

  Morgan backed up to the hearth. Though the flames danced madly up through the logs laid on the andirons, the fire gave scant heat. When the woman opened the oven and brought out the bread on a long wooden paddle, it gave off a heavenly scent. As he gazed longingly at the fragrant golden loaves, the girl gazed at him with eyes more longing still.

  "Come," said the miller, beckoning again. It was an odd, slow stiff-armed motion as if he were drawing Morgan to him by some ancient trick of ne
cromancy. Morgan sat at the table but put the yeasty-smelling loaf the miller's wife set in front of him in his haversack.

  "I don't wish to pry, sir," he said, "but I couldn't help noticing that you have both a waterwheel and a windmill. I should have thought that one or the other would be sufficient to drive your grinding stones."

  "Well, friend," said the miller in his rusty voice, "in drought-time when the water does not flow, the wind might blow. Or the doldrums might settle in and kill all breath of wind. Then the brook might run."

  "I noticed that the stream seemed to grow fuller as I climbed up along it."

  "Aye," said the miller.

  A rain of blows fell on the door. "Morgan," Slidell shouted. "You come on out of there. Before they witch you. Keep your hands off that gal."

  The miller's wife looked at him with beseeching eyes and inclined her head toward the door. The girl gazed upon him and licked her lips. "Take some bread, the staff of life," she said, cutting into a loaf. The honey-colored crust cleaving away released a fragrance so intoxicating it was all Morgan could do to resist. Suddenly overcome by weariness, he got quickly to his feet and allowed the girl to lead him to the mill, where she made him up a luxurious bed of sleeping robes. She held out her ice-cold hand like a princess. When he took it, she gripped his hand fiercely and looked deep into his eyes, then ghosted silently across the stone floor and out the door.

  A moment later Slidell appeared. "Come on," she said in an urgent voice. "We have to leave this place."

  Morgan could not rid himself of the sense that Pilgrim had been here, perhaps recently. From his haversack came the delicious scent of bread, but Two Snake had warned him to eat not of the bread nor accept the favors of the girl. Morgan began to pace around the room past the looming walking beams and axles that powered the grindstones. A sick weariness came upon him. He stepped outside to splash cold brook-water on his face and saw in the penstock the green-eyed girl bathing naked in the wan moonlight. Although this Belle Dame Sans Merci was immersed entirely in the water, her face and hands were as white as the chalk cliffs above the brook. She beckoned for Morgan to join her with the same slow circular motion of the hand and arm her father had made. He retreated back into the mill and resumed walking around and around the grindstones. Slidell, now overpowered by weariness herself, lay down on the robes and fell into a deep enchanted sleep.