Walking to Gatlinburg: A Novel
Page 28
A TOP THE PINNACLE, which they had been the last hour climbing, Morgan and Pilgrim looked across the suspension bridge at Polyphemus's Pupil and the rock parapet. The cave in the cliff was more than five hundred feet away, and they could not see Ludi or Manon behind the rampart wall.
Morgan stood on a narrow ledge, steadying himself, with the lower barrel of Lady Justice across Pilgrim's shoulder and the rifle sights trained on the parapet. The suspension bridge, swaying beyond his sights, was distracting. Morgan made himself stand stock still, but the wound in his side had reopened. The gun barrel on Pilgrim's shoulder wavered.
"Give me the rifle," Pilgrim said.
"S ING YOUR 'Sir Hugh' again," Manon said. "Before you blind me."
Ludi chuckled. He picked up his dulcimer hammer and began the old ballad, the notes falling on the valley below like the cascade of water now stained bloodred by the sunset.
She took Hugh by his hammer hand
And drug him to the wall.
She drug him to a great, deep well
Where none could hear his call.
She placed a penknife to his heart
The red blood it did fall.
On the last quavering note, Manon sprang at the monster and drove Pilgrim's veining fleam up to its handle in the side of his bull neck. He screamed, and she withdrew it and drove it home again. He rolled onto the cooking fire, lurched to his feet with the fleam jutting out of his left ear, blood from his neck and ear spurting onto the stone rampart. He started toward her with his Arkansas toothpick on high.
Manon, dressed in the bearskin, picked up a cannonball and clambered awkwardly onto the parapet. Ludi, in his blue-and-gray-pied garb, pulled himself onto the parapet.
"Shoot, for God's sake, shoot him," Morgan cried. He could feel Pilgrim's uncertainty, moving the rifle braced on Morgan's shoulder from the figure in the bearskin to the bloodied one.
"The bear-man, for the sake of Jesus," Morgan cried. "Shoot the bear."
The muzzle of the gun moved from one to the other. Ludi dropped the dagger and picked up the rifle and trained it on them. Morgan was no longer sure which figure was Ludi. Frantically, he sighted the old Melungeon telescope in on them. "It's the one with the gun!" he said. "Shoot the one with the gun."
In Morgan's ear, a shattering detonation. A new red patch bloomed on Ludi's bicolored smock, just to the right of his heart. From the parapet where Ludi, wounded, still stood firm, sighting over the rifle barrel, came another shot, a faint pop in Morgan's ringing ears. At the same time Manon, in the bearskin, lifted the sixteen-pound cannonball over her head and brought it smashing down on Ludi's bald pate, and he fell back onto the parapet.
* * *
M ANON WAS MAKING her way toward them across the bridge, which was swinging wildly from side to side in the gusting wind. She grasped the hand rope with her right hand, her left hand over her stomach as if to protect the unborn baby. Morgan was running toward her. Twice he came close to pitching over the side of the bridge. Midway across he reached her and encircled her with one arm, holding fast to the hand rope with his other hand, and helped her back across the chasm. Then he was delivering Manon to Pilgrim, who sat atop the pinnacle with his hand pressed to his chest, blood seeping out from between his fingers and running down his side in a small unstoppable river. Manon screamed. She leaped the last foot from the rope bridge to the rock tower. She held Pilgrim in her arms as she said his name over and over and over.
"Pilgrim!" Morgan shouted.
Pilgrim shook his head. "No more, brother."
"Pilgrim!"
Pilgrim settled into Manon's arms. "No more," he repeated. Then he was gone.
"No!" Morgan shouted. "No no no!" Weeping, shrieking with grief and rage, Morgan turned and started back toward the far side of the swinging bridge. From the rampart, blood pouring out of his chest onto his blue and gray shirt and down his ruined skull onto his massive neck, came Ludi Too, Pilgrim's surgical fleam still jutting out of his ear.
"Where is your black bride-to-be?" Ludi said. "That caused all this fuss to begin with?"
"Where you'll never find her," Morgan said.
"Ah," Ludi said, "my hunting days are over, friend Morgan, that's true enough. This time you did me proper. You finally did do for me proper." He stretched out his bloody paw. "Here, lad. I offer you my hand in congratulations. At least we'll part friends."
The wind had dropped, and in the fast-falling dusk, clinging to the rope with his left hand in the middle of the bridge, high above the empty gulf, Morgan leveled the twin barrels of the scattershot at Ludi's head. "Why?" he said. "Why didn't you come for me? Why did you come here instead?"
"First you must pledge me a pledge, Morgan Kinneson. 'Oh, the swain pledged his troth to his Marion fair ...' I can't sing no more, Mr. Morgan. My music's all gone away. Swear that you'll pledge me a pledge and I'll tell you why I comed here to these mountains."
"I swear I'll blast your head from your shoulders if you don't tell me this moment."
"Morgan, you're like a son to me. I couldn't love you no more was you my seventh son. 'For it's very true that Ludi Too was son of a seventh son. And he and his son Morgan lived by the law of the smoking gun.' Pledge, lad."
"What is it you wish me to pledge?"
"Pledge that you'll kill me if I tell you whyfor I comed here." Ludi stood swaying on the bridge no more than four feet away from him.
No more, brother. No more.
"You're going to die anyway and soon," Morgan said.
"I wishes to die at your hand. Pledge that you'll kill me and I'll give you your why."
No more.
"My killing days are done," Morgan said.
"Don't you see, dear son," Ludi said. "You are the only one worthy to kill me. You alone can understand. You have give yourself over to the same quest for revenge and retribution I have pursued. Oh, Morgan," he cried in a high keening voice, though still with that hideous undertone of irony. "You must not forsake me in my hour of need because you are me."
"No!"
"Tell me then wherein lies the difference? You can't. You are me."
No more. Morgan turned away and started back across the bridge.
"I comed here because I knowed this was your destination, Morgan Kinneson. And had great faith that you would arrive."
Morgan spun back toward Ludi, who chuckled and said, "And I wanted to do for your brother before your eyes. In order to deprive you and the gal of him. There now's your why."
Profiled against the far peaks in the blue twilight, Morgan clicked back the hammers of the scattershot. Then he flung it as far out into the dusk as he could fling it, turned, and headed back toward Manon as Ludi, uttering one last cry, plunged over the side and, like some great, mortally wounded blue and gray bird, plummeted to the valley below.
T HE WEATHER HAD TURNED sharply cooler, though Manon said there would still be some good Cherokee summer remaining, as the mountaineers called the stretch of warm clear autumn days that often followed the first deep frost. For the funeral she wore a blue dress she had taken out in the midriff. Morgan wore Pilgrim's one dark suit, too big for him in the shoulders, the trouser legs too long by an inch.
The coffin sat on two wooden carpenter's horses by the open grave that Morgan had dug the day before. Manon stood beside it holding the baby. The air was fall-quiet. The singing black crickets and red-legged grasshoppers had been knocked down by the frost, and the birds were gone or silent. It was a windless afternoon. The dwindled brook at the bottom of the pasturage was too far away to hear. Even Manon's sheep were silent, standing atop one of the outcroppings around which the new daffodils would blossom in the spring. The bellwether ram watched the proceedings with his yellow eyes. Morgan doubted that the bellwether sensed Pilgrim's absence, though you never knew.
Morgan stood by the grave, in his hands the book he'd quarreled with for years. It was still closed, since mourners were continuing to arrive, some wearing their own burial clothing because they h
ad no other suitable garb. Word of Pilgrim's death had traveled like wildfire, and scores of people had come, more than one would have guessed lived within thirty or forty miles of Great Grandmother. They were Pilgrim's patients, whom he had befriended and healed or whose children and old people he'd doctored. Men, women, children, stood grave and silent on the mountainside like that throng whose savior had long ago preached from on high.
"We will have no ranting at Pilgrim's funeral, Morgan," Manon had said the night before. She had begun saying "we" instead of "I" since the baby had come. Now she made it plain that she and her son, Morgan, would have decorum at the funeral. There would be no recriminations with a harsh and recondite god, no screeds on universal injustice, no references to the damnable war or to human iniquity. Morgan had looked at her for a moment and then nodded.
The sheep pasture was filling with mountaineers, the few surviving Allens and Sheltons standing opposite one another, Unionists and some Secesh, some families from as far away as the Sugarlands and Gatlinburg. By the edge of the woods, though no one had seen them emerge, stood half a dozen gray-clad Cherokees, men from Will Thomas's unit. For some reason, Morgan thought of Ludi's grave, thirty miles to the east. He had left it unmarked, burying the stone devil's head from the grave of Fair Susan's lover with the devilish creature himself.
Morgan began to speak. His voice was sharp, like a searching fall wind, carrying into every corner of the pasture. "Pilgrim Kinneson loved these mountains," he said. "He loved the seasons and the tall woods, the small brooks, the birds and all the animals of the Shaconage. He loved the people he doctored, and most of all he loved his family. His wife, Manon Kinneson, will stay on among you and carry on his work. You will cherish her and her child as you did him."
Morgan looked around at the listening people. "Pilgrim was not a believer in the ordinary sense. He was a Vermont freethinker and to the very end true to himself. But of all the words in all the books he had read, he loved these best." He opened Manon's Bible and read aloud from it. "'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek ... Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God,'" Morgan concluded, and with his lips silently formed the word "Amen." Through her tears Manon nodded back to him. No more.
No one else spoke. No one pledged peace or offered to shake hands with friend or foe. Such was not the way of these people. But one by one they filed past Pilgrim's closed wooden coffin. Some reached out and touched it. Some touched Manon or her newborn Morgan. Then they melted into their mountains. Manon and the baby had some time alone with Pilgrim, after which Morgan lowered the coffin and filled in the grave.
There was more food than any ten people could eat. Ham and bacon, berry pies, cornbread and more cornbread, a firkin of wild honey, even a few loaves of white bread, and jug upon jug of whiskey. After supper Morgan and Manon talked in the crofter's cabin. Morgan had built a fire in the hearth to take the chill off the air. As he had told the mourners, Manon would stay on in the Shaconage. She could already do much of what Pilgrim had been able to do for his patients, and she would learn, from his medical texts, most of the rest.
On they spoke, Manon cradling her newborn in her arms. She spoke of herself and Pilgrim, their early walks over Kingdom Mountain, their faithfulness to each other while Pilgrim was studying at Harvard and abroad in Scotland. She told of their shock over the families' opposition to their marriage and how, after Pilgrim had been wounded and walked away from the war, he had come up with the bold scheme to reunite and go south. The baby made a mewing sound in his sleep. "Hush, Morgan," Manon said, swaddling him closer.
Morgan chunked another split of hickory on the hearth irons. Manon told him that she had packed Blackstone's Commentaries in his haversack and that he should not neglect any opportunity to study it. Soon the baby roared to be fed, and Morgan carried his blanket up the hillside to sit beside his brother's last resting place.
* * *
D AWN ON GREAT GRANDMOTHER. The purple mountains rose from the fog as Morgan headed down the path toward the foot of the pasture. The yellow-eyed ram watched from a rock. Standing on the log stoop, Manon held up the baby. On the edge of the woods, Morgan turned and touched his finger to his hat. Then he walked into the trees, heading north.
EPILOGUE
I n the Kingdom County courthouse, a curious relic sits under a glass case on a stand just inside the courtroom door. It is an ancient stone covered with drawings and odd symbols. Below it a brass plaque reads:
JESSE'S STONE
PRESENTED TO THE CITIZENS OF KINGDOM COUNTY
AND VERMONT
BY
CHIEF JUSTICE MORGAN KINNESON
UPON HIS RETIREMENT FROM
THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
IN MEMORY OF HIS BELOVED BROTHER PILGRIM,
MRS. SLIDELL COLLATERAL CHOTEAU OF MONTREAL, CANADA,
AND JESSE MOSES AND THE UNDERGROUND PASSENGERS
HE HELPED TO FREEDOM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HOWARD FRANK MOSHER is the author of ten novels and a travel memoir.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2010 by Howard Frank Mosher
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. [http://www.crownpublishing.com] www.crownpublishing.com
Shaye Areheart Books with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mosher, Howard Frank.
Walking to Gatlinburg: a novel / Howard Frank Mosher.--1st ed.
p. cm.
1. United States--History--1849-1877--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.O8844W36 2010
813?.54--dc22 2009030441
eISBN: 978-0-307-45094-4
v3.0
Table of Contents
Other Books by this Author
Dedication
Map
Chapter One - Thurisaz
Chapter Two - Raido
Chapter Three - Mannaz
Chapter Four - Perth
Chapter Five - Algiz
Chapter Six - Gebo
Chapter Seven - Kano
Chapter Eight - Ansuz
Chapter Nine - Berkana
Chapter Ten - Isa
Chapter Eleven - Othila
Chapter Twelve - Nauthiz
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright