I had long practice at getting dressed in the dark. I tried not to wake Moody, who was snoring on the other side of the double bed. I liked Moody best when he was asleep. I slipped on my shirt and overalls by going slow. If you hurry in the dark you’ll lose your balance and knock into something. The secret is to go slow and remember where everything is. I found my boots and a pair of socks and tiptoed out of the bedroom on the cold floor.
Soon as I stepped into the hall I seen a light in the kitchen. Somebody was up, because I could smell coffee. I tiptoed down the hall and seen Mama setting at the kitchen table reading her Bible. When she couldn’t sleep she liked to get up early and sip coffee while she read Revelation or Acts.
“Morning,” I said, like I expected to see her there.
“Morning,” she said, not looking up from the table. Mama loved to read more than anybody I ever seen, and she hated to be bothered. I set down at the table and started to lace my boots. They was almost new boots I’d ordered from the W. C. Russell Moccasin Company in Berlin, Wisconsin, with some of my molasses money. Mama had not approved of me buying such expensive boots.
She looked up from the Bible. I noticed the wrinkles around her eyes and the lines around her mouth. “We old folks can just barely cover our feet,” she said. “But the young wear leather to the knees.” It was something she liked to say. It was something Daddy used to say. Mama had learned to be thrifty after Daddy died. People said she had learned it from him. I was going to say something about needing boots to walk through briars and brush but didn’t. I didn’t want to argue that early in the morning. I just wanted to get out to my traps.
“You remind me of your daddy,” Mama said. She looked up from her Bible again. “He would rather die than ask anybody for help. He was stubborn as an old jackass.”
“He worked harder than I do,” I said. It was a conversation we’d had many times.
“But he worked at what he wanted to do, and nobody could tell him nothing,” Mama said. “Didn’t do no good to try.”
“I just barely remember him,” I said, which wasn’t really true, for I was seven when Daddy died, and I could remember him pretty well. But it made Mama talk more if I couldn’t remember much.
“He got sick after fighting fire,” Mama said. “But he done everything like he was fighting fire. He didn’t waste his time hunting and trapping.” Mama looked at the Bible like she was remembering things. Sometimes when Mama got to thinking about Daddy’s death she would stop talking and not act like herself.
“Can I fix you some grits?” Mama said.
Truth was I was hungry for hot grits, but if I set down and eat, Mama would start telling me all the things that needed to be done on the place. She couldn’t help herself even if she wanted to. Though I done most of the work and Moody didn’t do hardly any, she still couldn’t stand to see me heading off into the mountains, no matter what the weather was.
“I’ll just have a biscuit and coffee,” I said. Soon as I laced up my boots and tied them I took a cup from the shelf and poured some coffee. Mama made strong coffee in the morning. I needed about two cups before I started out.
“Who’s going to do the milking?” Mama said. She turned a page of her Bible, then rubbed her hands together like she was scrubbing them with air. Her hair had gray in it and was held in place by combs. “You’ll never make anything out of trapping,” Mama said. “Your daddy never wasted his time tramping the woods.”
I drunk the coffee so fast it near scalded my throat.
“The road needs fixing up above the spring,” Mama said. “Every time you drive on it just makes it worse.”
“Moody is not helpless,” I said. I grabbed a biscuit and chewed it up and washed it down with coffee. The hot coffee smarted the tip of my tongue and burned a little as I swallowed. I had to get out in the open air and be on my way.
“The gate up by the road needs to be fixed,” Mama said. “Tom always kept it tight and greased.”
I was going to say why couldn’t Moody fix the gate. But it wouldn’t do no good to argue any more. Mama would just say Moody was not as handy with tools as me. She would say Moody had to take the Model T and drive her to town or deliver eggs to the store. There was no use to argue. Nobody ever won an argument with Mama.
“I pray about you,” Mama said.
I took my shotgun from the corner and slipped out the door fast as I could. When Mama talked about praying for me it was time to go. For next I’d say I would pray for her, and then I’d be ashamed I’d said it. Better not to mix up praying with our quarrels. Mama and Daddy had fought over religion, and she was ashamed of that. It was what pained her the most when she remembered Daddy, how they had fussed and argued about her going to the Holiness revivals. But it was the memory of what a fool I’d made of myself trying to preach that pained me the most.
I drove my feet onto the ground like I was driving nails with each step. As I passed the corner of the chicken house the tip of my shotgun hit the slabs, and the hens fluttered and squawked inside. Calm down, I said to myself, at least till you get out of the yard. You’re as bad as Moody to fly off. You’ll need all your strength for the day ahead. The miles of trail and the steep mountain slopes can use up all the anger you’ve got to give.
As I come out along the pasture fence I could see the valley under the stars, the wide bottomland running down to the river, the stars sharp and bright over the pines on the ridge above. The breeze was colder there in the open. I shivered and felt my way along the path. My feet would find the path if I walked without trying to look at the dark ground. I hurried along the fence down to the bank of the river.
In the dark, water whispered and slurped and sparkled under starlight. Around rocks you could hear the spill and splash. I breathed in deep the mud smell, the scent of soaked and rotting leaves. The trail run under the pines along the bank for maybe half a mile to the mouth of Cabin Creek.
When I got to the other side I climbed the sandy bank into my cousin Willie’s field. There was a light on in the house above the road and I could smell fresh coffee and bacon frying. The smell made me wish I’d brought something to eat for dinner. Arguing with Mama had made me forget I’d be hungry by the middle of the day.
There was cornstalks in Willie’s field, and I hit them with my elbows and the tip of the gun barrel. A rabbit skipped away in the dry weeds. I stepped careful on the sandy soil but still rattled the dry stalks and nettle vines. A real woodsman goes without making any noise. Only clumsy people crash into things.
It was maybe five miles up the valley to the head of the river. There was lights in most of the houses I passed. Beyond Willie’s field I walked the road which run alongside the river. A dog barked at me from the Bane place and then run out to the road and followed me. At the Ward place I seen a lantern in the barn where somebody was milking. A lantern hanging in a stable with the yellow light on straw always makes me think of the manger scene in a Christmas pageant.
The farther you went up the river the farther it was between houses. The fields and pastures in the valley got narrower and finally the river itself was just a little creek between steep ridges, splitting off into branches and running back to spring hollers. I followed the biggest branch about to its head and started climbing the ridge to the lip of the watershed. By the time I got halfway I was in stride. When I found my stride I could walk all day without getting tired. I could walk without thinking. As I climbed it got lighter and I could see more and more the trees and rocks along the trail. And by the time I got to the comb of the ridge the woods looked orange in the sun, just showing itself over the rim of the Saluda mountains.
My first trap was a fox set on a trail at the edge of the Flat Woods. I approached it hoping to see a tail or red fur in the early light and streaks of shadow. My breath come short as it always did when I approached a trap. You never know what you’re liable to find. Might be a ten-dollar pelt or a groundhog, or a missing trap. Far back in the woods there’s nothing to stop somebody from st
ealing your steel traps if they find your line.
As I got close I seen stirred-up leaves where I’d buried and covered the trap. And I seen the chain of the trap stretched into the brush. My heart kicked with excitement. But then I seen there was nothing in the trap. I run forward and found not even a foot in the clamped jaws. Whatever had sprung the trap had jerked it out of the leaves. That was a fox all right. Must have smelled something on the leaves, or on the chain, and just for devilment had sprung the trap and tore it out of the ground.
I laid my shotgun on the ground. I’d hoped to be killing a fox with it. Instead, the fox was laughing at me somewhere in the woods. That fox stood grinning with satisfaction at what he’d done. I’d walked ten miles to find my trap sprung, and likely he’d peed on the ground just to spite me or done his business nearby to mock me. I thought of ripping the trap off its stake and flinging it into the brush, but I stopped myself. Nobody ever did beat a fox by getting mad.
I took out my gloves from the mackinaw pocket, the gloves I’d boiled to kill any scent. Sweeping the leaves and trash out of the way, I put the trap back into the low place in the trail. Spreading the jaws wide I set the trigger and sprinkled leaves over it. And from a bottle I carried in my pocket I sprinkled drops of scent around the spot. A fox sniffing the scent would not be looking for the trap. Last, I smoothed leaves and twigs over the place. I’ll get your hide yet, I thought, and stretch it on a board to hang with the muskrats and mink and coons.
MOST OF MY mink and muskrat traps was along the banks of Grassy Creek. I had a number two trap at the bottom of nearly every muskrat slide and I had traps under overhanging rocks where mink liked to hide and watch for trout. The thing about a trap in water is it has to be in deep enough to drown a mink or muskrat. Otherwise they’ll just gnaw off their foot and run, leaving you nothing but a bloody foot clamped in the jaws. But if the trap is too deep, especially in fast water, the rat or mink will swim right over it. So the trap has to be at just the right depth.
Because of the rains the creek had been high, so I might have mostly empty traps. Soon as I got to the creek I seen my first set was empty. I couldn’t see the trap itself, but the chain stretched from the bush it was wired to right into the flush creek and there was no ripple or bump on the water to show anything was caught. I had to get closer to see if the trap had been sprung. It’s hard to look through rippling water, especially if the sun glimmers on it. I had to get to the edge of the water and hunker down for a closer look. A shadow that must have been a trout flashed away in the pool. But the jaws of the trap was still open.
Had I walked all that way just to find empty traps? A crow mocked me from further up the ridge. I kicked the leaves under a dogwood. The shotgun shells in the pocket of my mackinaw weighed against my side. I could remember what I was thinking when I passed that way a week before: You couldn’t know what would be in the next trap.
I rounded the bend in the creek and come to a lip of shoals where I’d put a trap between two rocks. I thought muskrats come down to the creek and entered the water between those two rocks. First thing I seen was that the chain was stretched out in the wrong direction. At the end of the chain was a lump in the water that looked like a big bubble. My breath caught in my throat. It was either a mink or a muskrat.
Problem was, the trap had swung out into deeper water. I stepped into the edge of the creek and seen it was a muskrat in the trap. I pulled the chain in and picked up the rat like a great dripping gob of fur, then turned to step on a rock back to the bank. But the rock turned under my foot like a greased ball bearing.
Something popped and went numb in my foot, and as I stepped out on the bank the foot went wrong and I stumbled. “Now you’ve done it,” I said. I limped up into the bushes, and just then the pain hit me. You wouldn’t think a foot could hurt so bad if it wasn’t cut or stabbed. The foot in my boot was untouched, except it had twisted was all. It’d turned a little and something inside stretched or broke. The pain was sick heat coming up my leg. The pain turned my stomach and I thought I was going to throw up.
What have you done? I said to myself, and dropped the muskrat at the edge of the water. I had to walk my trapline that day. After a week of rain it had to be done. There was a cold wind coming down the slope, but the pain flashed through me so hard I couldn’t hardly feel the wind.
After I set on the leaves, the pain didn’t go away. Whether I put weight on my foot or not didn’t seem to make any difference. I started unlacing my boot to see how the ankle looked, and got it unlaced almost all the way down when I thought better of it. If the foot started swelling I’d never get the boot back on. And I couldn’t walk all the way home without a boot on. Best to keep the boot laced up like a bandage, like a cast, until I got back to the house. I’d heard of doing that with a broke bone, walking on it with a boot laced tight. Should work just as well with a sprain.
I thought I would continue on the trapline like nothing had happened. I couldn’t let a sprained ankle get in my way. Mama would nod her head and say she’d told me so when I got back. Might as well have some pelts to show for my pain. I crawled over to the wet muskrat and put my knee on the spring of the trap. Wasn’t hard to open the trap far enough to pull the cold foot out. But when I tried to open the jaws again to reset the trap, I seen how much the pain had weakened me. My knee trembled and my whole body trembled when I bent the hurt ankle a little. I got the jaws about half open and then had to let them snap shut again.
It was worse than I’d thought. Not only would I not be able to finish walking the trapline, I wasn’t certain I could walk across the mountain and down the river home. Just taking a step was hard enough, much less walking a hundred yards, or half a mile, or ten miles.
The shotgun wouldn’t serve as a crutch or even a walking stick. I seen an oak sapling further up the slope. About five feet above the ground it come to a fork. I didn’t have nothing bigger than a hunting knife to cut with, but I limped and staggered up the slope, pulling myself from tree to tree. Took me several minutes to hack through the oak with my hunting knife. But when it was done I had a stick about five feet long with a fork at the end. It was just long enough for me to lean on, stooping over a little.
I reached over and got the muskrat and stuffed it in the pocket of my mackinaw coat. I wasn’t going to lose my one muskrat after all the trouble. My teeth chattered and my bones jerked with pain.
I’D WALKED TO the edge of the Flat Woods by sunup. But I seen it would take me all day to hobble back home. The wind was icy and hard along the ridge when I finally made it to the top. But I was soaked with sweat under my mackinaw coat, and my armpit against the crutch was getting sore. When I stopped, my foot hurt even worser than it did when I was moving. It was a black, sick pain coming up the side of my leg, a tearing pain like a bone was being scraped with a hacksaw.
“Ha-ha,” somebody hollered at me. I looked around to see who could be laughing at my clumsy efforts to walk. But if there was anybody, they was hiding behind a tree. And wind made it hard to hear anybody moving.
“Ha-ha,” they called again. I looked around the woods, and I twisted and looked back up the ridge. Was somebody following me and hiding from tree to tree? The pain was so harsh it made the air seem full of shadows.
“Who is there?” I hollered, and sweat dripped into my eyes. “Who is following me?”
Wind tickled through the leaves on the mountainside and rattled the laurel bushes. “Ha-ha,” the voice called again. I looked up to see a crow flap out of an oak tree behind me. The bird was black as the devil hisself. “Ha-ha,” it called when it lit in another oak further up the ridge, like it was the woods theirselves that was mocking me.
“Please, Lord,” I said, “let me get back to the house.” I hadn’t prayed in a long time. I hadn’t prayed since I’d tried to preach at church and made a fool of myself. Thought I had give up praying, but the words just come without me thinking. I was in such pain I wasn’t able to think anyway. It was like the prayer was o
n my tongue without me knowing it.
“Ha-ha,” something called again. I looked around for the teasing crow but seen instead a horse’s head come through the laurel bushes. “Ha-ha,” a voice called. The horse pulled to the left and I seen Hank Richards setting up on a wagon. “Ha-ha,” he called.
I pushed myself back away from the trail and raised the crutch so he could see me. “Whoa!” he called. “Whoa there.”
I tried to stand up but was too weak and trembly to make it. Hank jumped down off the wagon and spit out his tobacco. He was wearing a red wool mackinaw coat. “What are you doing here?” he said.
“Turned my ankle,” I said, “back on Grassy Creek.”
“What was you doing on Grassy Creek?”
“Going to my traps,” I said.
“That’s a right smart distance,” Hank said. He helped me to climb up on the wagon seat. I ignored the pain, now there was somebody watching. Hank put the shotgun and crutch in the back of the wagon, where there was four dead turkeys. He had been hunting beyond Long Rock.
“Giddyup,” Hank hollered. The trail was so narrow we had to lean under the limbs of laurels and birch trees. The turkey heads was ugly as the pain in my ankle.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” I said.
“It’s just a chance I come this way,” Hank said.
“It’s a piece of luck you did,” I said.
“Usually go by Pinnacle or Poplar Springs,” Hank said. “But something whispered to me I ought to go down by the trail to the river.”
“Whispered to you?” I said.
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