The man with the clipboard kicked the tire of the Model T. And then he looked at me like I was a hobo. “Maybe you are as dumb as you look,” he said.
“Listen here, mister,” I said.
“You better get in that flivver and beat it,” he said, “if you ever want to see Carolina again.”
A boat was pulling into the dock. It was bigger than a speedboat. I guess it was a cabin cruiser.
“Get out of here!” the man hollered.
I got into the car and shifted into low. The man leaned in the window and yelled right in my ear, “You tell Metcalf he can kiss my ass!”
My hands shook as I turned left onto the highway. I had to drive all the way back through the miles of warehouses and salvage yards and braiding tracks. There was smokestacks giving off yellow smoke that burned my skin. A gray-and-purple haze hung over the highway.
Now where are you going? I said to myself. The traffic churned around me, and horns blared and oogah-oogahed. I drove without looking back, into the city and through the city. I gripped the wheel and watched out for red lights. I kept thinking of stopping and going back to shoot the man with the clipboard, or at least hitting him upside of the head. He’d insulted and humiliated me. I owed it to myself to shoot him.
And then it come to me that the boat arriving at the dock must have been coming from Canada, carrying liquor from Canada. That’s why he’d wanted me out of the way so quick, why he had got so mad. He was afraid I’d see what they was doing. He thought I was a spy for another bootlegger named Metcalf. Metcalf was a competitor, or even a revenue agent for all I knowed. I kept driving without hardly thinking where I was going. The stench of car exhaust and smoke from the factories filled the Model T and made my head feel light.
I knowed there was other people, regular people, in the North, but they was hid away behind walls and I couldn’t get to them. There must be churchgoing people, decent people, in the cities and small towns, preachers and builders, teachers and architects, but I didn’t know where to find them.
Now, I had been cramped up in the car for the past two days and hadn’t took a good shit. I was used to working and walking miles every day. And I was used to eating more than I had in the little diners and restaurants I’d stopped at. Getting mad at the man with the clipboard must have stirred something inside me, for I felt a pain and a dull restlessness in my guts.
But I was in the middle of traffic in Toledo, Ohio, and there was no place to stop and no place to pull off. I tried to think where people would go when they traveled through a city. Some filling stations had toilets behind them, but I didn’t see any filling stations. In the country, churches had toilets behind them, but in the city I didn’t see any toilets near the churches.
I crossed the Maumee River and there was more factories and brick buildings beyond. I tried to remember how far it was to open country south of the river. I’d been so excited driving toward Toledo that I hadn’t noticed the miles as the countryside had give way to the outskirts of the city.
My compass laid on the seat behind me. I’d planned to use it in the woods of the Far North. Its blue needle quivered and pointed away from where I was going. The blue sliver trembled like my hands on the steering wheel. I wished I could just pull over and empty myself.
In the woods you don’t have to worry about looking for a toilet. In the woods you can just go behind a tree and find comfort. Out on the highway I didn’t even know where I could stop and park. There was stores and houses everywhere. I could be arrested just for stopping.
The pain wrenched inside me, a dull sad pain that felt like grief. And then it got sharper, and I gripped the wheel like it was pulling me on. I drove faster and sweat dampened my temples. It seemed like the buildings and stores and offices would never end. Finally I seen a clump of pine woods ahead. It wasn’t more than an acre of trees, bigger than a clump, but not a real woods. But it was big enough and there wasn’t any houses close to it. I pulled off on the shoulder of the road and into a haul road. Soon as I stopped the car I jumped out and run into the thicket. And soon as I was out of sight of the road I dropped my pants and squatted.
It was like there was an explosion inside me. A thunderstorm boomed and tore open in my guts and everything busted loose. I felt like everything I’d ever eat rushed out of me. It felt so good it hurt. I was sweating I was so weak, and I held on to a little pine bush. Just having a quiet place to shit was heavenly.
I’d left the world of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where a toilet was wherever you needed it, and where you could stop and look as long as you wanted to.
My insides was inflamed with release. They hummed with relief and freedom so intense I felt a little numb. And I felt like I’d been reborn.
Twelve
Ginny
I ALWAYS HOPED something would come of Muir’s talk of building a house or even a castle. I knowed he wasn’t going to build a castle, but if everybody’s home is his castle, then Muir might build a home. From the time he was a little boy he had studied Pa’s old architecture book. It was a book Pa had bought a long time ago on one of his trips down to Greenville, and it had pictures of churches and other fancy buildings in London. From the time he was a boy Muir had copied floor plans and drawings of churches from it.
Muir would take a pencil and any old piece of paper, the back of an envelope or a scrap of a paper bag, and scratch out the lines of a house or bridge, a tower or a steeple. He liked to draw castle walls, and he drawed straight lines with a length of lath took from the shed. He measured and he erased. He would get mad and throw the page away. And the next thing you know he’d be scratching on a paper again.
I knowed Muir would always have trouble working with other people. Maybe he took it after Tom a little bit. And maybe he took it after me. Tom never did like to take orders, and he always wanted to be working at his own plans and projects, on his own land. From the time Muir was a little boy he liked to work, but only at something he had dreamed up. He wanted to work in his own way, at his own grand schemes. If I put him and Moody to gathering corn or fixing a fence, they might gee-haw for a little while, but next thing you knowed, Muir would have lost his temper because Moody was bossing him around and teasing him. Muir never would do what nobody told him to do.
I wanted Muir to find his life’s work, but I knowed it wouldn’t do any good to push him in any one direction. He was stubborn and contrary if he thought you was telling him what to do. I had wanted him to be a preacher. I thought he had a natural gift to be a preacher, that he was born to be a preacher. And look what come of that. I had always wanted him and Moody to work together, and they had fought worse than ever. Only thing they had done together was go down to Gap Creek for a load of liquor in the Model T. Muir was ashamed of that and didn’t think I knowed about it. I knowed he wasn’t going to become a bootlegger like Moody, but I worried about his guilt and confusion.
So when Muir packed up the Model T and headed for Canada, I told myself it might be for the best. Of course I was scared, with him leaving home and him so young and uncertain. And going off in that car he could have a wreck or be robbed by gangsters. Canada was a long way off, and people froze to death there. I had read Jack London and remembered “To Build a Fire.”
When Muir started loading up the car to go north, my heart felt trapped in ice. I seen there was no way I could stop him. He was so unhappy and desperate to strike out on his own. He was so sick of hisself and ashamed of hisself. A mama can’t do much with a son that is drove by demons.
A man has to find his work in his own way. Tom had taught me that. All I could do was look on and pray that Muir would be safe, and that he would return to us.
The morning after Muir left for Canada, the house felt empty, even though Fay and Moody was still there. It was early fall and I went out and gathered eggs and milked the cows. As I strained the milk I thought, Everything on the place feels loose and distant. I was used to having Muir there going about his work. I was used to complaining to him. He
was the child I had put my hopes in. He was the son that give a shape to the things I had wanted and the things I had expected when I was young.
“Who is going to dig the taters?” I said to Fay and Moody.
“Muir will dig the taters like he always does,” Moody said.
“How will Muir dig the taters while he is in Canada?” Fay said.
“Because he will be back before his tracks are gone from the yard,” Moody said. “He’ll run out of money and come straight back home,” Moody said.
I wanted to take up for Muir. I wanted to say he could make it on his own and find his way to Canada, if that’s what he wanted. Much as I hated to see him go, and much as I wanted him to come back, I didn’t want to think Muir would come home out of failure and weak nerve. I didn’t want to think he’d be defeated again. A mama is divided that way. I didn’t want Muir to fail in his ambitions, and I didn’t want to lose him either. I was pained and tore both ways.
“Who is going to churn today?” I said. The crock of clabber set by the hearth was ready to be stirred and brought off.
“I’ll churn if I can set on the porch and sleep while I’m doing it,” Moody said. Moody had already had a drink that morning; I could smell it on him. He surprised me by volunteering.
“The crock is ready to turn,” I said.
It warmed my heart to think that Moody was so accommodating. Was it because he was glad to have Muir away? Or was it because he missed Muir already? I was old enough to know a person can feel two or three ways at the same time. But whatever the reason, it was a pleasure to see Moody willing to help out.
That day and the day following, Moody done more work on the place than he had in years. He picked enough fox grapes in the trees by the river for me to make twelve pints of jelly. He fixed the gate to the pasture so it didn’t creak and scrape the ground when it opened. He even hitched up the wagon and helped me carry the tops Muir had cut from the cornfield to the stack behind the barn.
I seen Moody had been so contrary because Muir argued with him. And he was ashamed, now Muir had gone, maybe for good, and was trying to make up for it. Muir and Moody had brought out the worst in each other all these years.
I had always showed Muir favor, and I reckon that had kept Moody riled up and lashing out. I had favored Muir in my heart. Moody was feeling more at home and at ease with his younger brother gone. I was the guilty one. I was glad for his help and for his change of heart, but I felt guilty too.
Moody helped me pick up apples in the orchard to make cider. We gathered all the apples that had fell in the grass and washed them in a tub by the springhouse, then crushed them in the cider mill. The air was filled with the scent of ripe and busted apples. Moody sweated and the smell of liquor on his breath mixed with the scent of ripe apples.
“Where do you reckon Muir is by now?” I said. It was the third day since Muir had left.
“He’s probably holding to the North Pole by now and trying to kiss a polar bear,” Moody said.
“I hope the car don’t break down,” I said.
“The Model T is so simple you can fix it with chewing gum and a tin can,” Moody said.
“He will need heavy clothes in the North,” I said. As I turned the screw on the press, golden juice foamed out through the cracks and gathered in the groove and run to the spout. Fresh cider has the most mellow smell.
“Muir can kill a polar bear and sleep under its hide,” Moody said. He was in a jolly mood, and the more he worked the more cheerful he got. I’d never seen him work so long and steady.
“I hope Muir will go to church in the North,” I said. Juice bubbled and seethed out of the cracks in the press and run to the bucket beneath the spout. Flies and yellow jackets buzzed around us.
“Maybe he can preach to the wolverines,” Moody said as he dumped more apples in the grinder.
“It broke his heart that his preaching failed,” I said.
“Maybe he will be a preacher yet,” Moody said.
I thought how Muir was really just a boy still.
THAT NIGHT I had a dream about Muir. He was faraway but I seen him pushing the Model T, like it had run out of gas or broke down. He was pushing the car down the road in flat country with briars and bushes on either side. And then I seen it wasn’t a road but a river he was pushing the car in. He was wading in water up to his knees and pushing the Model T. It was a muddy river and the current was fast, and I heard a roar of shoals or a waterfall ahead. But he was so busy pushing he didn’t hear the noise. Watch out, I hollered, and tried to touch him. But he couldn’t hear me, and he just kept struggling through the muddy water. I reached out again but couldn’t touch him. And I seen there wasn’t any wheels on the Model T. And then I woke up and heard the crickets on the pasture hill.
Thirteen
Muir
I PULLED INTO a diner between Dayton and Cincinnati. It was near dark and the light inside was so bright I blinked as I set down on a stool. I ordered coffee and two hotdogs all the way. I was hungry for onions and chili on the weenies.
A salesman in a shiny striped suit set down beside me and laid his soft gray hat on the counter. “How you doing, buddy?” he said. I nodded and kept eating. I didn’t want to have nothing else to do with strangers, but he sounded like he was from down home. He leaned over and asked me where I was headed.
“North Carolina,” I said and kept chewing.
“That’s where I’m from,” he said. He told me he was from Raleigh and that he sold advertising for Mail Pouch tobacco. It was good to hear a friendly voice.
“What you doing way off up here?” he said and winked. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
I told him that I had planned to trap in Canada but changed my mind.
“Why would you freeze your butt in Canada when we have the most fur in North America right in North Carolina?” he said.
“Where?” I said.
“Why, on the Tar River, east of Raleigh,” he said. “I come from that area, and where the river runs from Rocky Mount to Tarboro and then to Greenville, there is so many muskrats they’re a nuisance to farmers.”
“Don’t nobody trap them?” I said.
“Sure, people trap them,” he said. “But there’s so many it don’t make no difference.”
He described the pine woods along the Tar River, and the muskrat tunnels in the banks of the stream. He said the winters was mild down there, and I’d be a fool to go to Canada when the Old North State had more fur than anybody could catch in a hundred lifetimes. When I got up to leave he give me his card.
I got back in the Model T, and as I drove toward Cincinnati I kept thinking about the muskrats on the Tar River, and about the level pine woods in eastern North Carolina. I thought about the mild winters there, and the hundreds of dollars worth of fur I could catch in one season. Everything Mr. MacFarland had said had took me by surprise. I stopped for the night in a little tourist court just north of Cincinnati. All night I dreamed about hundreds of muskrats with glistening fur.
I reached Green River in the middle of the next night. It was two o’clock in the morning as I turned onto the Green River Road. The dirt road was rough and rocky and jolted me awake. A possum run across the ruts in front of me. When I seen that grizzly possum I knowed I couldn’t go back to the house. It hit me that sudden. If I went back to the house Mama and Moody and everybody else in the community would see I was defeated. I was defeated again. I had failed as a preacher, and I had failed as a trapper in the North. I had drove bootleg whiskey for Moody. I couldn’t go back to face U. G. knowing I still owed him money.
What I did was stop the Model T at the gate to the pasture. I turned the motor off and the lights off and set there in the dark. The motor creaked and ticked as it cooled. Katydids and crickets was loud in the pasture and in the trees above the road. In Toledo I had wanted more than anything else to be home. I had wanted to set my feet on the ground of Green River. But now that I was there I couldn’t bear to face Mama. I couldn’t face
myself either if I just drove up into the yard and admitted I had been defeated. I was still ashamed of myself.
I wanted to be a trapper, and I wanted the freedom of the woods and creek banks. I could not be satisfied with just working around the place knowing I was a failure and a coward. I set in the dark and listened to the blood behind my ears.
A plan started taking shape in my head as I set there in the car. Instead of going back to the house in disgrace, I would head down to the Tar River to trap that winter. I could make hundreds of dollars in a few months catching muskrats. The winter was mild there and I could camp out in the pine woods by the river. I could live on rabbits and squirrels and save my money, and see a part of the state I’d never seen. And when I come back I would not look as foolish as I did now. Maybe I could respect myself.
I set in the dark and shivered, thinking what a good plan it was. I still had forty dollars left, enough for a train ticket to get me down there. I wouldn’t take the Model T but would leave it for Moody and Mama to use. I’d have to carry my traps and things to the train depot and leave them to be shipped to Rocky Mount on the Tar River. And then I would leave the car by the gate with a note and walk back to the depot.
I got my map of North Carolina out and studied it by match light. The Tar River run through Rocky Mount and Tarboro and Greenville. I could take the train and be there in a day. I could camp out and catch hundreds of muskrats. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I knowed everything about catching muskrats. The Lord was showing me how to get away from Green River, and how not to be such a failure.
I would be living in the woods, and I would need a boat to trap on the river. But I could buy the boat once I got down there. I already had my traps and scent bottles, mackinaw coat and boots. I would pack them all up in a box to ship to Rocky Mount. I would leave a note in the car at the gate saying I was trapping on the Tar River and would be back in the spring. I was so tickled at the plan I grinned in the dark.
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