The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Read online

  I seen him glance at me quick and return to his smoking.

  “I’d be afraid of painters and bears that far back in the wilderness,” Mama said. She always did think of the worst things.

  “They’s bears and painters aplenty,” your Grandpa said. “But a man with a good dog and a good gun needn’t have no fear. When I first went to the Holsten, I lived in a lean-to of brush and bark. It was plenty comfortable. But late in the winter the wolves found out my little place. I heard howling on the ridge at night, getting closer. You hear wolves in the wilderness any time, so I paid it no mind till one night I was sitting before the fire and looked out in the dark and seen the flash of a pair of eyes.

  “I thought of painters, and I thought of deer eyes. But them eyes flashed and moved. And strain though I might looking away from the fire, I couldn’t see nothing else. It was a dark night. They was just the firelight reflected from the buckeye trees. You know how high trees look with fire under them, like something steep as the sky falling away in pieces and spots.

  “The eyes flashed again, and then again. And it come to me that these was wolves, black wolves, of the kind they have in the West. As my eyes adjusted I could see more of them, coming in close and backing away. ‘Yaaaah,’ I hollered, and throwed a burning limb at them.

  “You could hear them jump away in the undergrowth. But by and by I seen the eyes flash again. It was like the devil out there, multiplied by ten to twenty. I thought, was they like mad dogs, or just starving for game? It come to me they smelled the venison I had hung up beside the lean-to, on a limb too high for any varmint to reach.

  “It come to me I could be at my end there in the wilderness by Shooting Branch and nobody would ever know the difference. I was alone in the world. First time I ever felt alone in the woods.

  “I got my gun from back of the lean-to, all loaded and primed, and I tried to sight in on one of the devils. But it was so dark their black bodies slipped in and out of sight like fish in a deep pool. I didn’t have no powder and lead to waste. I was two hundred miles from any new supply.”

  “So what did you do?” Henry said.

  “I seen how hard it was going to be and how I was almost certain to miss in the dark,” your Grandpa said. “So I figured I’d aim at a spot of light falling on a bush, and when one moved in front of it, I’d fire. It took several minutes of waiting. Finally, a form passed in front of the spot and I squeezed the trigger. For a second you couldn’t tell what happened because the sound ricocheted off the walls of the draw. But then I heard a snarling and tearing, and a terrible commotion in the dark. Them devils was eating their brother. I reloaded and set by the fire, hoping I wouldn’t run out of wood. Finally, when I got down to my last stick, it was daylight. And they was nothing but some bones and a little fur out beside the bushes.”

  “Why would a woman want to go off to such a place?” Mama said. She usually didn’t interrupt my Daddy or a visitor. But if she had a feeling for something, she’d speak out, no matter who was there. I’d seen her argue with a preacher when he spoke against women.

  “What for would a woman want to go off into the wilderness away from her kin?” Mama said. “A woman needs her friends and community. She don’t want to raise her younguns so far out she can’t see smoke from another chimney.”

  “They’ll be other folks in the West,” your Grandpa said. “Folks is going there every day, like you seen this morning.”

  All the time I was finishing up the dishes, I was thinking how pretty it would be to live off in the promised land of the Holsten. The thing I liked best about living off in your own cabin was it was so romantic. You was there with your loved ones and your spring, and the dogwoods bloomed as you put in corn. When the white storms come in winter you stayed by the fire and sewed quilts and taught your younguns their letters. And your man brought home a wild turkey or deer, and fur to make you a coat.

  It seemed a pleasure to escape the jealousy, and feuding over boundary lines, and how property is divided up. We know so little of our connection, anyway, as people marry and move on and you don’t never hear from them again. It’s like in all our blood ties of cousins and aunts and uncles and ancestors and descendants we don’t see but those near us. Why children, your children will have children I will never know, and their children’s children will never have heard of me. No use to deny it. Looking backwards I don’t know more than my Grandmammy and Granddaddy on either side, and all the rest is just a name here, a fact there, a rumor. All the people stretching back two or three generations to Pennsylvania and Wales, and back to Adam, are just lost in the fog and dust. We are isolated in the little clearing of now, and all the rest is tangled woods and thickets nobody much remembers. I always said it’s how you enjoy that little opening in the wilderness that counts. That’s all you have a chance to do. That’s why I’m telling you this story.

  Children, I’m sounding like an orator in my old age.

  But it was clear Mama seen what was going on. She could read me like a schoolhouse slate. The truth is, I don’t think Mama wanted me to ever get married. I was already eighteen, which was old for a girl in those days. You reached twenty and you had a good chance of being an old maid. Maybe it was because she had had so much trouble having her own children out in Mountain Creek that she feared for me. Or maybe it was her own grief of being brought down here from Virginny away from her kin that made her hold to me. Every time the subject come up Mama sulked and got silent. When Mama wouldn’t talk to me, I felt the world had turned against me.

  “What use has a woman got for the back-breaking burden of clearing land and raising up a cabin back of beyond?” Mama said. “A woman that has to do the work of a house and work of the field and woods won’t live to be gray. Rearing children alone will bring her down, much less the chopping and sawing, the snakes and painters.”

  Mama had got riled more than she intended, I think. Your Grandpa looked at his pipe, and looked at my Daddy, and looked at the fire. He couldn’t say no more about moving to the West and be polite. He was embarrassed to argue with his hostess. Your Grandpa was a big rough feller in them days, but he never could stand no impoliteness. He looked like he wanted to change the subject, but that would be impolite too. He glanced at me and looked back at the fire.

  “Nothing ever turns out the way people expect,” my Daddy finally said. “Even if you plan for perfection you’ll end up doing mostly what you never planned. The thing about new country is it gives a man another start.”

  “And a woman another burden,” Mama said.

  My Daddy looked into the fire for a few moments also. He didn’t want words with Mama when she was riled up. The fire fluttered a little in the March wind coming down the chimney. “Time to heat up the iron,” he said. “Mr. Richards needs him an ax and a grubbing hoe, and a garden hoe, and a spade.”

  “And I need to look for some seed,” your Grandpa said.

  “We can let you have some beans,” my Daddy said. “But we ain’t got hardly enough corn to last ourselves. You can try Wesleys’ over in the cove. They might have corn to sell.”

  Your Grandpa got up and took his hat from the peg by the door. “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said to Mama.

  “You come back and see us,” Mama said.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” your Grandpa said to my Daddy, “I’d like the first letters of my name cut in all my tools, a double R. Realus Richards.”

  “Re-alus,” my Daddy repeated to himself.

  When the men was gone, I thought how strange a name that was. It was one I’d never heard before. While I worked, I said it over to myself. When I went out to throw scraps to the hog in the pen by the branch, I said it for the strange flavor it had on the tongue. It was good to get out of the house and in the sunshine. They was a light wind, warm and chilly by turns.

  “Realus,” I said again, and the wind seemed to magnify the sound. The name seemed to make things realer.

  The old sow—we called her Sally—had l
aid down in the corner of the pen where the sun reached. I could hear her grunting with satisfaction all the way down the trail. Ain’t nothing more easy than a sow laying in the sun with her pigs suckling at every tit. It’s like a sound coming out of the dirt. I could smell the new grass crushed by my steps, and the creesie greens growing down by the branch.

  Then I heard a louder grunt from old Sally, and a squeal from one of the pigs like something had disturbed it. Sometimes pigs will fight over a tit and I didn’t think anything about it, until another squeal come louder and they was a snort from the sow, like she was disturbed and trying to get up with the little pigs holding onto her.

  The pen was about four feet high, made of chestnut poles. The pigs was squealing louder. At first I didn’t see nothing, and then this man stands up with a pig under his arm. I didn’t recognize him at first, ’cause he had this old cap sideways on his head.

  “Hey you,” I said.

  He looked at me in astonishment and started trying to climb over the fence. It was higher than his straddle and he had trouble getting over still holding onto the pig.

  I seen it was the son of that jackleg preacher that lived up the holler, the one named Roopy that didn’t have hardly no sense but was caught looking in people’s windows. He had a beard down to his chest.

  “Hey you!” I hollered again. It looked like he was going to get across the fence and run. He didn’t go to drop the pig. I don’t know what come over me, for I had no thought of danger. I had the bucket of scraps and slop in my hand and I just slung it around to hit him. He was halfway across the fence and I swung to hit him on the shoulder to make him drop the pig. But he reached out his elbow to stop the bucket and the slop flew out all down his arm and across his face. You never seen such a look of surprise. His face was covered with crumbs of bread and bits of creesie greens, pot likker, and beet juice. He looked like somebody drunk that fell in his own puke.

  He turned away and I hit him on the back with the bucket, and more of the slop splashed on his cap and run down his collar. He was in such a hurry of surprise to get away, he forgot to put down the pig. It squeezed out of his arm and fell back in the pen. I reckon he thought I was going to kill him with the bucket. I don’t know what I was trying to do.

  “I was just going to look,” he said over his shoulder. But I slung again and more slop hit him up side of the face. He lit out running through the cobs and manure that slipped out the lower side of the pen. I watched him jump the branch and keep hoofing it, wiping his eyes and face, till he reached the woods.

  There I stood trembling with madness and excitement, and most of my slop was gone.

  The next Sunday was the foot washing at the church. It was too cold in the middle of winter to have any foot washing at the meetinghouse ’cause they was no heat at all. When enough people got in the building, and Preacher Reece or another circuit-riding minister got to preaching, the little room would warm up fair enough. And in summer it was too hot, even with the door and windows open.

  But along in spring, usually around Easter, when the weather opened up, they’d get water from the spring and fill a barrel by the church house. And from the barrel the deacons and deaconesses would fill their pans. After a long winter the grudges had built up in the community and in the congregation. A church is like a family and sometimes worser, with everybody arguing against everybody for leadership and authority. And the women like to pick at each other, always snipping and gossiping, and hurting each other’s feelings.

  Come spring it’s time to wash it all away and start over. I think that’s where they got the idea of a foot-washing service. That, and from the Bible where Mary washed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair. And it’s a way of showing respect for your brothers and sisters in the fellowship, and humbling yourself. Of course, children, we know people can take pride in their humility.

  I never was that religious, but I always went to service when the preacher come through. It was the only time everybody got together. I wondered if Realus would show up on a Sunday. He’d been staying at the tavern down the creek, and my Daddy almost had his tools made.

  People had heard of me hitting Roopy up side of the head with the slop bucket. Some kind of grinned when they seen me at the store or along the road. The girls liked to giggle. Margie Travers said she heared I had a new boy friend, said better watch out, hanging around the hogpen with the likes of Roopy. The men didn’t say nothing, but they give me curious looks, like they wondered was I a dangerous woman. Everybody seemed to think they was more to the story than just pig stealing.

  But I seen Realus twice near my Daddy’s smithy. “I’m going to be careful not to steal any pigs,” he said to me and grinned. And I found myself blushing as red as his shirt. He was standing at the door watching Daddy hammer. He was so tall he had to stoop.

  “Pardon me, sir,” I said and slipped past him into the shop.

  Women are not supposed to like the place a blacksmith works. But I always enjoyed going down there. If it was a cold day you could feel the glow from the forge, and the warmth of the work being done. The noise of the hammer ached in my head, but I liked the smell of the hot struck metal. Daddy had set up a water trompe to blow air into the forge, and you could hear water pouring down the shaft from the trough, and the hiss of air running out of the pipe to the fire. I never did understand how it worked, but Daddy said it was like a suction of water pulling air down after it.

  “It’s too dirty here for a lady,” Realus said.

  “Women has to work in all kinds of dirt,” I said. “Men just want them to look pretty and clean, like they don’t spend their time scrubbing and washing diapers.” I was talking to cover my embarrassment. I didn’t have no plan for what I said.

  “It’ll be the day when you’re seen changing diapers,” Realus said.

  I give my Daddy the knife Mama had sent for him to sharpen. “You coming to meeting?” I said to Realus on my way out. I didn’t much care what I said.

  “They wouldn’t let me in no meetinghouse,” he said. “Take me a week to get cleaned up enough to go.”

  “They’ll let anybody into the meetinghouse,” I said. He had followed me a few steps beyond the door of the shed.

  “Will you promise not to bring your slop bucket?” he said and laughed. He looked so proud of hisself I hauled off and kicked his leg. I ever did have a quick temper.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” he said, hopping on one foot and exaggerating like I’d half killed him. My Daddy was watching from the door.

  “You’re a dangerous woman,” Realus said. “Was you to go to the West, the Indians would all run.”

  I walked on back to the house. I didn’t want to say nothing else to him.

  But your Grandpa come to the meeting on Sunday. He stood outside with the other big boys talking until service started. Then he come in and set on the back bench with the backsliders.

  The foot-washing service ain’t like nothing else. They’s a solemnity and dignity to it. The preacher and the deacons and the deaconesses put white towels over their shoulders, and they fill pans from the barrel of spring water that has been warming outside church. Sometimes they’ll build a fire to heat water in a cauldron on a chilly day. Nobody wants their feet washed in cold water, except on a hot day.

  It was dark in the meetinghouse, with only two windows and the door, and it took my eyes a few minutes to get used to the gloom. Something about the shadows makes the church seem more sacred. But us kids had always used the cover of the dark to punch and kick and tickle each other while prayer was going on. I don’t suppose you grandchildren ever did nothing like that when you was in church? No, I thought not.

  Once I got seated by Mama, I didn’t turn around to look, but I knowed Realus was watching me. It made my skin prickle all over me, under my dress and down to my ankles. I told myself it was the excitement of the service, but I knowed better.

  I set there trying to work out the truth of what my Daddy had said before we come to meeting. �
��An early Easter makes a late spring,” he said when we come out into the chilly air. I’d heard him say it a dozen times, a hundred times. But I’d never paid it no attention before. To keep my mind off your Grandpa I wondered what the saying could mean. How could the time of Easter have anything to do with the weather? Easter, I heard a preacher say once, was based on the Old Testament calendar, on the Passover, which was based on the waxing of the moon.

  I could see how something as powerful and heavenly as Easter could have a great effect. But I didn’t see how an early Easter would make a late spring, unless spring just seemed later because Easter had come and gone.

  I couldn’t puzzle it out. Maybe my mind was too much on your Grandpa, anyway. But some things you can’t never study out. They remain a mystery, like things of the heart.

  The deacons and deaconesses was bringing in the pans of water mixed from the cauldron and the barrel. Everybody on the front two benches took off their shoes. It was customary for the children to sit middle and back of the meetinghouse at foot-washing service. The elders of the congregation only washed the feet of adults. They was no law about it, but it wouldn’t look right for men to wash women’s feet and for a graybeard deacon to wash the feet of some snot-nose boy.

  For the first time I realized what I had done. Thinking too much about your Grandpa and love things, I had set down on the second bench with Mama. And Mama hadn’t reminded me. She must have thought I had decided to be one of the adults. Or maybe Mama, who could always read my mind, had decided to let me make a fool of myself. In any case, she give me no warning, and then it was too late. The house was packed full as a box of prunes, and they was no place to move to. I could either stay where I was or get up and leave. Either way was embarrassing.

  I glanced back at Realus and he was looking straight at me. I blushed then brighter than I had before. I must have lit up the little church.

  The women all around me took off their shoes without raising their skirts or petticoats, and put their feet on the cold pine floor. Mama didn’t give me no help; she took off her shoes like all the rest. I had to make up my mind quick. Maybe if I just left my shoes on the deaconesses would pass me by. Or they might order me to take off my shoes in front of the whole church.