The deep hollers in Dark Corner was full of stills and hideouts for them running from the law. The dives and taverns along the road in Chestnut Springs was full of gambling and bad women. There was people killed all the time in Dark Corner, killed in knife fights, shot in ambush on the trails. Rumor was the law was afraid to come into Chestnut Springs except in the daytime. The sheriff in Greenville didn’t interfere with what went on there. I reckon all the deputies was in the pay of Peg Early.
Even though it was a bright day, I felt we was descending into the depths of some hell. The dark of the hollers looked evil. You felt you was being watched. The rocks on Corbin Mountain above looked ugly as gargoyles. The trees appeared stunted and deformed. The red clay in ditches looked tainted and sour.
“Are we going to Peg Early’s?” I said, and my teeth chattered I was so nervous.
“We’ll have to,” U. G. said.
Peg Early’s house was the biggest place in Chestnut Springs. It was two stories with long porches set back high above the highway. The house was painted blue. Water from one of the springs on the mountain was piped into a trough in the yard. I’d heard that when somebody got cut in a knife fight they would wash them off in the trough.
I looked around at the little valley across the road. Without all the houses and taverns along the highway it would be a peaceful valley. There was sycamores along the creek, and a grassy meadow running back to the woods. If it wasn’t for the people it would have been a beautiful place.
Peg Early’s house had a tavern on the first floor. A motorcycle with purple saddlebags on it, and strings hanging from the grips of the handlebars, was parked near the door. The motorcycle leaned like it was about to fall over. Some kind of music come from inside. I couldn’t tell if it was a Victrola, or somebody picking a banjo.
“You stay here,” U. G. said. “I’ll go in and ask about Moody.”
After U. G. disappeared inside the tavern I looked up at the porch on the second story. A girl in a silky robe was leaning on the bannister smoking a cigarette. She didn’t look more than fifteen, and her robe was unbuttoned, showing her bosoms. Her hair was curly but uncombed, like she had just woke up. I nodded to her and said howdy, but she just knocked the ash off her cigarette so it fell onto the ground beside the pickup.
A truck passed on the highway and left its smell of oil and exhaust. I heard a woman laughing but couldn’t tell if it come from the first or second story. I looked down the road at the other houses, hoping to catch sight of Moody. I wondered if Wheeler and Drayton had come down here with him.
I waited for a few minutes, but it seemed like an hour. I fidgeted around in the truck seat. I was Moody’s mama and it was my job to find him. If he was in trouble it was my fault. I turned on the seat and looked across the road. Two men was helping a third into a car over there. I couldn’t tell if the man was sick or drunk or had been hurt.
I wished U. G. would come back and say what had happened. I rubbed my hands together and gripped the edges of the seat. I looked at the sycamore trees by the branch across the road, and I watched the tongue of water from the pipe tickling the water in the trough and making it shiver. A yellow jacket buzzed by the window of the truck.
“Where is Moody?” I said between clenched teeth. “Where is that boy that is my most troubled youngun?” I tried to see into the door of the tavern, but it was dark in there. The bright sunlight made it impossible to see inside.
I scooted myself around in the seat, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to go in and find out about Moody. I opened the door and stepped out onto the ground. I tightened my fists and made up my mind to get to the bottom of this. I had gone too far to stop now.
As I stepped through the door into the dark, I couldn’t see nothing at first. The place smelled of sawdust and pepper and the sweet fruity fumes of liquor.
“Howdy, ma’am,” a man said.
In the gloom I seen a man standing behind a linoleum-covered counter. There was tables around the room, and a billiard table at the far end.
“I’m looking for Moody Powell,” I said.
“Ain’t no Moody here,” the man behind the counter said. He wore an apron like U. G. wore in his store.
“Where did U. G. go?” I said.
There was other men setting around some of the tables, but in the dark I couldn’t hardly see them. Somebody was talking in the room behind the counter.
“U. G.!” I hollered.
U. G. come out from a door at the end of the counter and I run to him. “Where is Moody?” I said.
U. G. shook his head, and a woman appeared in the doorway behind him. I couldn’t see her well at first. I don’t know how I expected Peg Early to look. I reckon I thought she’d be a heavy woman wearing a man’s hat and man’s clothes. As she stepped closer I seen she was wearing some kind of shiny slacks, and she was slim as a rail. She had short gray hair and there was a pistol strapped around her waist, and she was holding a cigarette between her fingers.
“Honey, I wish I could help you,” she said. “Moody was here last night, but he left.”
“When?” I said.
Some of the men around the table behind me had stood up. I felt like everybody was looking at me.
“Sugar, Moody had a little too much and got handy with his knife. I had to ask him to leave,” Peg said. She blowed smoke out the side of her mouth. Her face was wrinkled as an old corn shuck, and her lips was painted red.
“Did he get hurt?” I said. “I’m his mama.”
“Not while he was here,” Peg said. Her smile was easy as a sneer.
“When did Moody leave?” U. G. said.
“How should I know?” Peg said. “It was a busy night.” She drawed on her cigarette. “I’d like to help, but I can’t keep track of every Dick and Harry that comes in here.”
The man at the counter said, “Can I get you all something?” and the way he said it meant it was time for us to leave.
It smelled like chicken was being cooked in one of the back rooms, chicken with some kind of pepper sauce, and the smell nigh made me sick. U. G. took my arm and we started toward the door. I didn’t want to leave until I found out something about my boy.
“You all come back and see us,” Peg said. Her voice was hoarse as a growl.
I seen I wasn’t going to find out nothing from her. Whatever had happened to Moody she wasn’t going to tell us. I let U. G. lead me out into the sunlight. I felt bleached and wrung out, like I hadn’t slept in a week. I climbed back into the truck sad and slow.
U. G. started the pickup and was about to back into the highway when I looked up at the second-story porch and seen a girl gesturing to us. It was not the same girl I’d seen there before. This girl had short black hair and was wearing a pink blouse. She waved her hand quick and then pointed up the highway.
“What does she want?” I said.
U. G. opened his door and started to say something, but the girl shook her head and put her finger to her lips. She shook her head like she was scared, then she pointed up the highway again.
“What does she mean?” U. G. said.
I watched her point, and the only thing I could think of was that she wanted us to go on up the highway. Did she just want us to leave? She pointed up the road, and then she pointed at her chest.
“She wants us to meet her up the road,” I said.
U. G. put the truck in gear and backed around. The girl on the balcony had disappeared.
“Where?” U. G. said.
“Somewhere out of sight,” I said.
Two men stood in the door of the tavern and watched us drive away. On the pavement U. G. went slow, looking for either the girl or a place to pull off. Just around the bend there was another spring, smaller than the one at Peg Early’s. It was almost hid by hemlock trees, and U. G. turned in beside it. A trail come down the side of the mountain to the spring.
We set in the truck for about a minute, and then I seen the girl in the pink blouse beckoning to us from
the shadows of the hemlocks. We got out and followed her into the brush farther up the ridge. The girl was out of breath from running all the way from Peg Early’s.
“Peg would kill me if she knowed,” the girl gasped. “But look for Moody at the spring halfway up the mountain.”
“What happened?” I said.
“What spring?” U. G. said.
“Him and Josie got caught,” the girl said in a rush.
“What spring are you talking about?” U. G. said.
“What did they get caught doing?” I said.
“That’s all I can tell you,” the girl said, and started running back up the trail. I wanted to holler after her, but we was too close to Peg Early’s for me to holler, and I knowed she wouldn’t come back. She disappeared into the woods.
“What spring is she talking about?” I said.
Me and U. G. got back in the truck and he put the key in its slot. U. G. looked puzzled and worried.
“Who is Josie?” I said.
U. G. shook his head and started the motor. “Only spring I can think of is the one in Possum Holler,” he said.
All my life I’d heard about Possum Holler, but I never had stopped there. We drove by it going to Greenville and going to see the Indian doctor when I was seventeen. It was a deep dark cove at the edge of Dark Corner, which is what they called the wildest section of upper South Carolina. U. G. drove out of the flats of Chestnut Springs and started winding up the curves to the steep part of the mountain. Trees hung over the road and smothered it with shade. In the bend of a curve there was a little haul road I hadn’t noticed coming down. It was almost covered with limbs and brush and vines, and when U. G. turned into the track, branches scratched on the windshield and sides of the truck. I blinked as limbs slapped on the glass in front of me. The truck rocked and bounced on the ruts so bad my head hit the ceiling. The road wound around the side of the holler.
U. G. stopped when he seen a girl setting on a rock ahead. Her long blond hair was all tangled up and there was blood on her dress. The cloth was tore around her chest. Her face was puffed with bruises. She set beside a rippling spring, and there was cans and bottles scattered around her.
When we got out of the truck and hurried to her, I seen her face was swole up worse than it looked at first. Her lip was swole sideways. Her eye was puffed out big as a blue Easter egg.
“Are you Josie?” I said.
“What if I am?” she said.
“We’re looking for Moody,” I said.
“Who are you all?” Josie said.
“I’m his mama,” I said, “and this is his cousin.”
“Have you got a cigarette?” the girl said.
U. G. patted his pockets and then said all he had was a pipe.
“Figures,” the girl said. She talked out of the side of her mouth. There was cuts and whelks on her arm.
“Where is Moody?” I said.
“Peg Early beat us up,” the girl said, and her voice caught in her throat.
I heard a groan and looked up the side of the mountain. A man’s boot stuck out from under a laurel bush. I started climbing up there, and when I reached the bush I parted the limbs and seen Moody laying in the leaves, pushed up against a rock.
“Leave me alone,” Moody said. His shirt was ripped and there was blood on his side. His cheek was swole so it punched out in a rotten bruise.
“What happened?” I said.
“Let me be,” Moody said.
U. G. had followed me up the hill, and Josie stumbled along behind him.
“Peg found out Moody was cutting the liquor,” Josie said. “He brought it up here to mix with springwater. People complained because Peg was already cutting it herself.”
Moody rolled over so he wouldn’t have to look at us. He was like a dog that has been hurt and just wants to hide in a thicket.
“Peg found out I was helping Moody and she whipped us both,” the girl said. “She had Glover tie us to a tree and she whipped us with a razor strop until Moody shit all over hisself.”
“Go away!” Moody cried, like he couldn’t stand for us to see him. He rolled over again, and that’s when I seen the stain in the straddle of his overalls, and it made me shudder. It was a brown-and-red stain, like it was mixed with blood.
“Just go away!” Moody screamed. I bent over and put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted to hug him to my chest.
“Peg caught me and Moody in bed,” Josie said. “I had been letting Moody have it cause I liked him. And I helped him carry liquor too.”
I tried to brush the hair off Moody’s brow, but he flung my hand away. “Are you hurt bad?” I said. Moody laid there like he was too ashamed to speak. And he closed his eyes, like he couldn’t stand to see nobody.
“Who done it?” U. G. said.
“Peg done it,” Josie said. “She had that big Glover hold us and tie us down.” She busted out crying.
I wished I had a clean washrag to wipe the blood off Moody’s face and neck. I was heartbroke just to look at him. “We ought to call the law,” I said.
“No!” Moody hollered and rolled to his other side.
I told him Peg Early had to be arrested for beating up two young people that way, that she ought to be put in jail for nine hundred years.
“No cop in Greenville County will arrest Peg Early,” Josie said. “She pays them off.”
U. G. said that was so. If Peg could get away with bootlegging and whores and gambling it wasn’t likely they would arrest her for whipping two young people caught stealing from her.
“Then I’ll go to the North Carolina police,” I said.
But U. G. told me they would say they had no jurisdiction over what happened in South Carolina. North Carolina and South Carolina sheriffs didn’t interfere with each other’s counties.
“Then I will call the federal police,” I said.
“No,” Moody said.
“The feds would arrest Moody for carrying blockade across the state line,” U. G. said.
I was so mad I turned around like I was going to stomp off down the mountain. I stomped the ground and tightened my fists. But I seen that getting mad was just selfish. Getting mad wouldn’t help Moody or punish Peg Early. The thing to do was take care of Moody. Getting mad was just vanity when my boy needed help so bad.
I tore off a piece of my skirt and wet it in the spring. I found an empty fruit jar, dipped water, and carried it up to Moody. “What you need is a doctor,” I said.
“Leave me alone,” Moody said.
When I tried to wash his face he pushed my hand away. I seen his hands was swole where they had been hit with a stick or crushed between boards. “This is what the devil has brought you to,” I said.
I told U. G. we had to get Moody to the truck and take him home.
“Don’t want to go home,” Moody said.
“You can’t lay out here in the woods for the bears and painters to eat,” I said.
I noticed Josie had stepped away to the other side of the spring. I had forgot about her. She was bad hurt too. I asked if she wanted me to wash off her face and bruised arms. She shook her head and wiped the snot off her upper lip. I never saw anybody that looked more pitiful. Her dress was near tore off her.
“Can we drive you home?” I said.
“No,” she said and shook her head.
“You got to go someplace,” I said.
I would take her to the house if there was no other place to take her.
“Reckon I’ll go back to Peg’s,” Josie said.
“You can’t do that,” I said. I couldn’t believe she meant what she said.
“I better go back,” she said.
“You can go home with us,” I said. But she started walking into the woods. Her blond hair was tangled and hanging in all directions. As she walked she tried to smooth it out. She limped and stumbled as she tried to pick her way through the leaves and undergrowth down the mountainside.
“Stop her,” I said to U. G. I was going to run af
ter the girl, but he put a hand on my shoulder.
“She don’t know what else to do,” U. G. said.
“You don’t have to go back there!” I hollered, but Josie kept on walking until she was hid by the laurel bushes.
MOODY TRIED TO push us away, but I took him under one shoulder and U. G. took him by the other, and we lifted him up. He groaned and cried in spite of hisself, and he was too stiff and sore to walk except in little steps.
“Lean your weight on us,” I said. The steps he took was little jerks. It was hard going down the side of the mountain. I expected us all to lose our balance. U. G. and me had to walk sideways to hold Moody up on the steep ground.
“You’ll feel better when you get home,” I said.
“Don’t want to go home,” Moody said.
His shirt looked like it had been tore by a saw. He looked like he had been clawed all over.
Five
Muir
I NEVER COULD understand why sometimes me and Mama got on each other’s nerves so bad. Some said it was because we was so much alike. I was her boy and I was raised in her house and she was the only mama I’d ever had. But my brother, Moody, was raised in the same house, and he was as different from me as midday from midnight. Other people said the problem between Mama and me was that we was so different. Mama liked meetings and singings and getting together with other people, while I just liked to be off working by myself in the orchard or tramping the woods with a gun, walking my trapline.
“Trappers are as no-count as fiddlers,” my aunt Florrie liked to say. But she said it in fun, while other people said it to be mean.
I liked to get up early and leave the house before Moody and Fay and Mama was awake. It was a good feeling to be up while the house was quiet. I could make coffee and grits for myself while it was still dark outside. It was so good not to see my family, I sometimes skipped the grits and coffee just to get my mackinaw coat and gun and slip out into the dark. That way I could be halfway to the head of the river before dawn made the sky look like a stained-glass window.
That’s what I wanted to do one day in January, the year after I preached. I knowed I’d have fur in my traps all through the Flat Woods and over on Grassy Creek and beyond the Sal Raeburn Gap. It’d rained for almost a week and I hadn’t gone to the traps. Moody and me had fixed the roof of the barn, and I’d split a pile of wood to stack on the porch. Now the rain had stopped and it’d blowed off cold. I knowed there would be mink and muskrats, even foxes and coons in the traps all along the line. Fur was the true gold and treasure of the mountains, and I believed I had a packsack full of it waiting.
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