The Road From Gap Creek: A Novel Hardcover Read online

  Muir stumbled around a little more, and then Mack the song leader stood up and said we’d sing “Just As I Am.” We rose and sung. Mama had the prettiest voice in the church and she sung above all the others, but nobody sung with their heart in the song. They just wanted to get it over with. It wasn’t just that Muir had failed to preach most of his sermon. We felt sympathy for him. But the laughter and the giant fart had made a mockery of the whole thing.

  When the last hymn was over usually the preacher stood at the door of the church and greeted everybody and shook hands as they went outside. Muir walked down the aisle with his Bible and I expected him to be at the door when we got there. But he wasn’t. He’d walked right out of the church and disappeared. I seen Moody and he was walking across the churchyard with a kind of swagger. He almost never come to church and he’d come that day just to embarrass his brother.

  I don’t know if there was a fight between Moody and Muir after the service. People said they was almost always fighting. I do recall that after that we didn’t see much of Muir for a long time. He didn’t come around the house for a while. Papa said he seen him way back in the Flat Woods that winter. Muir had sprained his ankle on his trapline and Papa give him a ride in the wagon. Papa was driving a wagonload of tanbark.

  Now I wonder how much feeling sorry for somebody has to do with loving them. You might think that pity and sympathy are different from love. But I think they must be close together, especially for a woman. I don’t know how to explain it, but I know that to feel really sorry for somebody is almost to love them already. That is different from a crush or a fascination. To really care for somebody is partly to pity them.

  I was just a little girl, but always when I looked back on that Sunday and remembered Muir up at the pulpit turning pages of the Bible and trying to recall what he wanted to say, it cut through me somewhere deep in my guts. And when I remembered the awful poot and the laughter it felt like a red-hot knife cut through my chest. I didn’t know what it meant then, nor for a long time afterward, but I know now that was love. I didn’t understand that for years, and I treated Muir bad from time to time. But I never forgot him. I always compared other boys to him. No other boy I’d ever seen had read as much or thought as much or had such wild dreams. He was always up to something, making plans. He’d talk about things other people had never heard of, in history or in the Bible, or scientific things. Some boys made fun of him because he used big words. I remember I laughed at him sometimes too, but it hurt me to know that other people laughed at him. He read the newspaper every day and he subscribed to magazines and ordered books in the mail. That’s how he knowed all these things to talk about. And he had a big dictionary too. When I was visiting Fay I seen it on the floor of the living room by the chair where he set to read early in the morning before anybody else got up.

  The next time I seen Muir was down at U. G.’s store on the highway. Mama and me had carried a basket of eggs and butter to trade for coffee. When you come into the store out of the bright sun you couldn’t hardly see nothing, but as my eyes adjusted I realized it was Muir standing behind the counter. I reckon he was shy when he seen me, but he smiled and took the basket and begun to count the eggs. I studied the trout flies and fishing lines, the rifle cartridges and shotgun shells, in the glass case under the counter. I didn’t want to look at Muir, remembering the awful Sunday the year before. I studied the candy bars in the other display case and the loaves of bread on the shelves behind.

  But Muir didn’t seem embarrassed after all. He talked to Mama and counted up how much he owed her. He looked at me and said I got prettier every day. I was nine years old and skinny as a cornstalk. I didn’t want to look him in the face.

  “Would you like a Co-Cola?” Mama said.

  I could only answer in a whisper that I would. And when Muir handed me the foamy bottle with the cap off I turned away to drink it, staring at the paint cans on the shelf.

  Four

  This is a story I seem to remember like it was yesterday. But the truth is, what I remember is partly what has been told to me by Papa and Mama and Effie and Velmer. It has been told so many times I seem to remember it all, though what I really remember is what has been so often repeated.

  The day we moved to Green River, the road from Gap Creek was froze stiff as chalk. I wasn’t even five, but I remember that morning was cold. We got up in the dark and Papa built a big fire in the fireplace, burning up the things we didn’t need. Velmer was ten then and he helped Papa carry out the stuff we had, including the organ Papa had bought from a peddler for a wagonload of sweet taters. All the stuff we had would fit in that one wagon, or it had to be left behind. Mama made a pot of grits and scrambled a bunch of eggs.

  I must have been half asleep as I ate the grits, for I kept thinking that I’d never go to sleep again in this house, which was so close to the creek you could hear the water mumbling when you woke up in the night. Troy was just a baby then and he cried all the time we was eating. I held Troy and tried to keep him quiet.

  I thought Velmer and my older sister, Effie, and me was going to ride on the wagon too, but Papa said there wasn’t no room. We’d have to walk. Besides, Velmer had to lead the cow by the rope around her horns. It was still dark as midnight when we started out. Papa climbed up on the wagon seat beside Mama, who was holding Troy, and said Giddyup and the wagon started creaking on the gravel of the road. Me and Effie followed the sound of the wagon which we couldn’t see at first.

  We passed the Poole house where there was a light in the window and smoke leaning from the chimney. You could smell coffee boiling and bacon frying. As we walked on I found I could see the trees on both sides of the road. The sky was just one big shadow and after we passed the Poole house there wasn’t no light at all. The road from Gap Creek run right along the creek, but then the road turned away and swung up the steep mountain toward North Carolina, and I was already tired and my side hurt a little like it always did when I walked a long way.

  It wasn’t too long after we crossed a branch that I could see pretty good in the gray light. The sky was gray and the woods was gray. And I knowed I had to pee. At first it was a vague pressure, a tightness under my belly. I told Mama I had to pee.

  “Go to the side of the road,” Mama called. I stopped and was looking for a place by the road when Velmer run into me. Maybe I stepped in front of him, or maybe he didn’t see me. When he hit me I fell and when I fell and hit the rocks it was like all the strength I had holding back give way and I felt the pee hot on my drawers and on my legs. The pee felt warm and good and it was such a pleasure to let go I just laid there on the cold ground and rocks as Velmer went by and the cow went by. And then I felt the wet in my bloomers get cold at the edges, and the wet on my legs got cold. I pushed myself up.

  “You smell like pee,” Effie said. “Little baby pee in her pants.”

  It was harder to walk in my wet drawers, but the pain inside, and the tight soreness, was gone. Papa said we was in North Carolina. I lifted one foot and then another. My bloomers was cold and my legs was cold. Don’t seem no different here, I thought. But when I looked around I wasn’t so sure. For in the better light the colors seemed a little brighter.

  Papa said we would stop at Cousin Johnny’s. I noticed that my nose had been running, and I wiped it on my sleeve.

  Papa turned the horse into a little rutted road and I seen the house off in a branch holler. It was weathered like the house on Gap Creek and looked like it never had been painted. Smoke from the chimney trailed sideways down the holler. A dog come out from under the porch and barked and a man wearing overalls and no shoes stepped out the door.

  “Y’all come on in and warm yourselves,” the man said. I figured he must be Cousin Johnny.

  It was so dark in the house I couldn’t see nothing at first but the fire in the fireplace. And then I seen the cat by the hearth and a girl about my size looking at me. A woman come out of the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron and said we must be froze.
Troy started to cry and Mama took him into a back room to change him.

  I hadn’t knowed how cold I was till I stood in front of the fire and my hands started to hurt at the fingertips as they warmed up. And my toes begun to ache. And I could smell myself. The little girl by the hearth was still looking at me. “You smell bad,” she said.

  I looked at the fire and felt my face get hot. I didn’t look at the girl again because I knowed she was right: I did stink. When Mama come out of the back room with Troy she told Effie to go to the wagon and get some clean clothes for me.

  When Effie come back Mama handed Troy to her and took the clean clothes and took me by the hand and led me into the back room. She washed me with warm water and dried me with a towel and slipped on the clean bloomers. My fingers and toes had quit hurting, but they felt itchy and tingly.

  “Now you take these out to the wagon,” Mama said, and handed me the dirty drawers and stockings.

  When I got back in the house everybody had moved to the big table in the kitchen and the whole house smelled like fresh biscuits. Now I was hungry, or I thought I was hungry. I set down and took a biscuit off the big platter and put it on my plate. But where my fingers touched the biscuit it felt greasy.

  I got a spoonful of jelly from the jar, hoping sweetness would make the biscuit OK. It was pale orange jelly, June apple jelly. I expected jelly to hold together, quivery but whole. But this jelly fell apart on the spoon, dripping off the spoon, it was so runny. I got a little jelly on the biscuit and put it in my mouth and the jelly tasted slimy, cold and slimy, on the greasy biscuit. I put it back on the table and just set there.

  The woman Mama called Feelie looked at me and said maybe I didn’t feel good.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Mama said. “Maybe you got a chill.”

  The woman poured a cup from the pot on the stove and brought it to me. The black coffee was so hot it smoked. I was so eager to get the taste of the biscuit out of my mouth I put my lips to the rim of the cup. By just touching the edge of the steaming coffee and sipping a little I could taste the blackness and it didn’t burn me. Mixing the coffee with spit I took little sips.

  The more coffee I sipped the better I felt. I wasn’t used to drinking coffee, except at special times. When we got up from the table the little girl whose name was Lissa handed me a button. It was a button with pearl on one side and blue on the other, the size of a nickel. “You keep it,” she said. I put the button in my coat pocket.

  Outside the air was brighter than ever, though the sky was still all clouds. And everything, even the distant mountains, had a sharp edge on it.

  “How far is it?” Effie said to Papa as he got up on the wagon seat beside Mama and Troy.

  “Oh, about fifty miles,” Papa said, and laughed.

  The road went through a holler between thickets of laurel bushes deeper and deeper and I heard the roar of water. The noise of a waterfall is like a warning. It makes you shudder.

  The road come out of the laurels beside a pool, and above the pool a long gray beard of water fell off the lip of rock and tumbled down a slope rough as a washboard. The roar by itself made you think it was something terrible, like the end of the world.

  Beyond the falls the road wound on around the hill and plunged down again so steep Papa had to pull on the wagon brake and you could hear the wheel scrubbing on the wood of the brake. My knees got sore from going down the steep hill.

  Finally we come to a field and the road run along the edge of the field and dropped into the river. Papa stopped the horse right at the bank. He told Velmer to tie the cow’s rope to the back of the wagon. Then he pointed up the river to a foot log and told us to cross there.

  Now I’d crossed little foot logs over Gap Creek that bounced and swayed but wasn’t too long. But this was a big foot log high up over the river. There was a handrail to hold on to, but I stepped up on the end of the log and stopped. The swirl of water far below made me dizzy.

  I watched Effie walk across the swaying log and my knees felt weak. Leaves floated by on the water below. Birch trees and maple trees leaned out over the river. I thought of getting down and crawling across the log. Papa had already drove the wagon across the ford and stopped on the other side.

  I closed my eyes and then opened them. I looked across to where the log ended, taking little steps and holding my breath, and holding on to the rail with my fingernails. The water whispered and mumbled below me, but I didn’t look down. Taking tiny steps I kept right on going till the log ended and I stepped on sandy dirt.

  The foot log scared me so bad my knees wobbled and I had to make myself walk up the steep road from the river. As we come out of the trees I seen the river valley. It stretched between mountains way into the west. There was a house close by the side of the hill and a light broke through the clouds and shined on it. The house had hedges around it and shrubbery and a log barn off to the side.

  “That’s the Powell house,” Papa said, and pointed. The light from the clouds seemed to shine on the place like a spotlight.

  The road turned around a bend and I seen a little gray house at the foot of a sharp hill. There was no smoke coming from its chimney. Papa drove the wagon right up into the yard. The windows was dark and leaves had blowed up against the door like nobody had been there in a long time. Papa got down off the wagon and lifted a flowerpot on the porch. There was a key under the pot. Papa helped Mama down from the wagon and then he opened the front door.

  The house was so dark it was scary and I shivered when I stepped inside. It felt colder inside than outside and soot had blowed out over the hearth and floor from the fireplace.

  There was one old cot in the corner of the front room and a little table in the back room. But otherwise the house was empty and the walls bare. I thought of the warm house on Gap Creek, of the fireplace there and the hot kitchen stove.

  Troy started crying and Mama rocked him in her arms.

  “Go find some wood and kindling,” Papa said to Velmer and me. “I’ll bring in the cradle.”

  When we had got the kindling from under a hemlock tree he sent Velmer to the spring across the field to get two buckets of water.

  As soon as Papa had the fire going and Velmer brought the water, Mama give Troy to Effie and started making a pot of grits. I brought her broom from the wagon and she swept all around the hearth and pushed the soot and dust into the fireplace with the ashes.

  Papa carried in some old chairs and a bench from the back porch and we set down around the fireplace. The flames made the whole room a mellow orange. Velmer went out to bring a lamp from the wagon and when that was lit and set on the mantel the house looked like a different place.

  I reckon the grits was about done when we heard this thud and crack in the ceiling above us. It flew through my mind that the house was haunted. I remembered hearing Locke Peace’s wife had died in that house. I shivered and looked at the ceiling and thought I seen dust fall from the boards.

  “Who’s up there?” Papa called. The footsteps stopped and we waited and listened. Troy whimpered and the fire fluttered, but Mama had quit stirring the pot of grits. My toes felt cold as icicles. There was another step, and then another, going from the living room ceiling to the front room.

  Papa took the lamp from the mantel and carried it into the front room and we followed him. We didn’t even know where the stairs was, but when Papa held the lamp up in the front room we seen a door that must lead to the attic. Papa held the lamp up high, but he didn’t go no closer to the door.

  I hoped maybe we’d imagined the steps on the ceiling above, but then they started again. The weight of the steps made nails in boards above us groan and shriek.

  “Where is my gun?” Papa said, loud enough so whoever was up there could hear him. But he knowed if it was a ghost a gun wouldn’t do no good, for bullets would go right through it and touch nothing. We all stood behind Papa, hoping everwhat it was would stay in the attic, and not start down the stairs.

  The steps
stopped and we waited. Even Troy was quiet. And then the steps started down the stairs. First one board squeaked and then another, each time lower. Still holding the lamp high, Papa stood back from the door and we all shifted back.

  There was not enough light to see the knob on the door turn, but you could hear it work as the bolt was pulled back, and the hinges must have been rusty, for they screamed out and the bottom of the door groaned as it rubbed across the floor. The door opened, but all we could see was a hand and a sleeve, for the stair well was all dark.

  “What do you want?” Papa said.

  There was no answer, but a man wearing a thick gray coat stepped out into the lamplight. He had a beard and long silver hair like Santa Claus. The coat was ragged and tore in places. He looked almost like a wild thing that had been woke up.

  “What’re you doing here?” Papa said.

  But the man with the long beard and tattered coat didn’t answer. He looked at Papa and then at the rest of us one at a time. There was dirt and cobwebs stuck to the wool of his big coat. He looked at us and he didn’t smile or frown neither. He seemed like something out of a storybook, a hermit of the hills, a Rip Van Winkle that had woke up after twenty years.

  When he walked toward Papa we all stepped back and let him move toward the front door. I thought he smelled like something old, old leather and old wool, or the tarnish on metal.

  “We bought this house,” Papa said, but the man didn’t answer. He opened the door and stepped out into the night and closed the door behind him. Still holding the lamp high, Papa opened the door and followed him out on the porch. “Don’t you come back,” Papa called. But the man had disappeared into the dark.

  “Who in the world was that?” Mama said.

  “Just some hobo,” Papa said. “I guess we surprised him and he run upstairs. When he seen we was going to stay he had to get out.”