The Daisy Ducks (20 page)

We finished the coffee, hit the head, and mounted up.
We rode off into a sunset that was drowning itself in a magnificent
gap in the far mountains, a huge V of red and gold. My God, it was
lovely. Beethoven's Fifth in color. Our engines hummed and thrummed
under us, and we made wide, leaning sweeps through the curves,
heading for it.

I was tingling with excitement, glad I'd come along.
 
 

14

WE RODE ALONG I-4O WEST together until we got to
Asheville forty minutes later. Asheville sits on a high plateau
between two mountain ranges. It was getting dark and the temperature
was falling. We parked our bikes and sat in what was left of the sun
in a parking lot that belonged to the phone company. From where we
sat, I could see the far ring of mountains all around. My new friends
pointed out the sights. There were fine old buildings below us, a
big, neoclassical courthouse right next to an art deco building that
they said was the town hall. Pete took out a can of Skoal and shoved
a pinch down behind his lower lip. Then he lighted a Winston. He
gestured at my bike.

"Massachusetts, eh? You a long way from home,
seems like."

"Uh-huh. I'm taking a week off for a private
vacation. How far is a town called Robbinsville?"

"Robbinsville? Two hours. Pretty ride, too. Real
doggone pretty, eh Jimmy?"

"Yep. She's right on the Tennessee line, you
know. They hunt boar and bear there a lot."

"I especially want to find someone who lives
there. A friend of an friend of mine. Ever hear of a family named
Royce?"

They shook their heads, and a long silence followed.
Jimmy worked his lips around, savoring the sting and buzz of the wet
snuff oozing nicotine into the tiny blood vessels of his mouth. I
decided not to tell him about my several encounters with the effects
of wet snuff on the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth. I did
know, having tried leaf tobacco a few times on fishing trips, of the
tremendous wallop it gives the user—more powerful than two big
Jamaican cigars.

"What you want to find them Royces for anyhow?"
Jimmy asked finally. The tone of his voice was friendly, but I sensed
the faint beginnings of distrust and suspicion. I stretched out my
legs, appearing as nonchalant as possible, and said that a friend of
mine in trouble was seeking help from an old army buddy. He was too
injured to travel, so I was helping him out.

"Well, that's good. A Christian thing to do. But
don't you move too fast on 'em. We mountain folks, we're nice as pie
most of the time. But outsiders should be careful, too, especially if
they're from up north a good ways. We don't rile easy. But when we
do, we're like a nest of copperheads. What'd you say your name was
again?"

"Charles Adams. Call me Doc."

"Are you a doctor?"

"Yes, a surgeon. I operate on people's jaws and
teeth."

"Well I never! A biker-doctor. But like I was
sayin', Doc, if you want to get along, just be easy."

Jimmy settled back against a young locust tree and
chuckled softly to himself. Meanwhile, Pete went over to his bike and
took a steel thermos of coffee from his saddlecase. We passed around
the cup and talked. Pete looked at his watch.

"We're a hour from home, Doc. I like to get home
before five on a Sunday. The missus likes that. Even we tough road
hogs got to foller the rules."

He winked at Jimmy, who chuckled again. I debated
whether to push on or spend the night in Asheville. It was the
biggest city in the western part of the state and seemed pretty and
pleasant. But then they asked me to ride along with them as far as
Sylva and have supper, so off we went, down through town and back
onto the highway. We purred into Sylva as night was settling down
over the place like an old down comforter. It was brisk out but not
cold. I heard the far-off murmur of waterfalls and the whisper of
wind in the trees. We wound up a road that was really a wide path in
the mountains until we stopped in front of a clapboard house dug into
the cliffside. It was faded white, with a gingerbread porch on two
sides, facing down a valley. Pete led us up onto the porch and
pointed across the valley at a mobile home set on cinder blocks.
Lights twinkled around it; vines grew around the carport and the tiny
attached porch.

"That's Jimmy's place yonder. He lives alone
since his wife died, but spends a lot of time over here. Let's set
out here a spell."

We sat while Pete left and reappeared with a plastic
gallon milk jug half full of water. His wife, Liz, followed and
welcomed me warmly, without hesitation or surprise. In the
near-darkness I could see her glasses and brown hair done up in a
bun. She said we would have roast pork, potatoes, and leather
breeches for supper, with biscuits and cold buttermilk afterward. She
went into the house. I asked what leather breeches were, and was told
I would find out. Pete poured the water into three jelly glasses. It
was water, all right: firewater. I added some branch water to mine to
smooth it out a bit. It wasn't bad. It wasn't good particularly, but
it wasn't bad. And it packed enough of a punch to warm me up after
the ride. We drank and talked and watched the last bluish light
disappear from the valley. Pete pointed up the valley to where it
seemed to end in a solid green mountain wall.

"See that, Doc? This here's called a cove. Lots
of coves here-abouts. A cove is a valley that's sealed up at one end
by a mountain. What it is, really, is a big gully carved by a
mountain stream, you see. Where the stream begins, up in the mountain
yonder, that's where the cove ends. Open only at this end. Coves is
right private places. Only one road in, one road out. Families own
their own coves, mostly. This here is called Sluder's Cove, named
after us. Only way in here is the little road we was just on.
Everbody else stays out. Yep, coves is private."

Alter forty minutes or so of chitchat and illicit
whiskey, we went inside and sat down around a table covered with blue
gingham-patterned oilcloth. Pete said grace, being sure to thank the
Almighty for each and every thing we were about to eat . . . and all
the people involved, too, including me. It took a while. I liked it.
And I was beginning to like these people a whole lot, too. Everything
was terrific, except perhaps the leather breeches, which were dried
beans in their pods, soaked up and boiled in pork broth. Must be an
acquired taste. After supper we sat and drank coffee. I lighted a
pipe and asked if there was a motel nearby. But Pete and Liz Sluder
wouldn't hear of it. They showed me a cot in the sleeping porch. The
screens were covered with plastic, which cut the chill a bit. I
brought my bags inside and settled in. Liz knocked at the door and
waltzed in with two enormous quilts—comforters, really. The quilt
designs on them were beautiful. She caught me looking at them.

"You like these, Doc? This here's called the
Double Irish Chain. Idn't it pretty? And this one's what we call a
story quilt. That scene in the middle. Took me three months to
finish."

I looked more closely. The central picture was of a
young blond man under a fallen tree. A double-bitted ax lay nearby.

"That's Bill. My only nephew. We never had any
young 'uns of our own. Bill was kilt by a falling tree out in the
Snowbird Mountains when he was logging there fifteen years ago."

"I'm really sorry."

"No need, Doc. He's in heaven now. A right
pleasin' young man. I made this story quilt so we'd always remember
him. Goodnight now."

She left the room. I
turned out the light and climbed into bed. The mattress was too soft,
but the covers weighed a ton and the night was really cold now. The
plastic wrap on the windows sucked in and out and flapped against the
screens. Outside was the sighing and hissing of the strong wind
through the pines. I heard the distant rush of falling water and the
hooting of nightbirds down the valley. I could have been ten thousand
miles from Concord, Mass. And perhaps sixty years away, too. I
snuggled down in the comforters and was gone.

* * *

I was up before dawn again. What was wrong with me? I
slipped out of bed, dressed, and carried my saddlecases out to the
bike and attached them. I wanted to leave behind a gift of some kind,
but I didn't have anything. I wanted to slip away without
inconveniencing the Sluders further, although I wanted to say
good-bye as well.

"Where you think you're goin'?" said a
gruff voice behind me. I turned to see Pete Sluder on the porch.

"I thought I'd just mosey on without bothering
you any further."

"Well, not before you eat you ain't. Lizzie's
gettin' a big breakfast going."

So I stayed for that, too. Sausage, eggs, biscuits,
country ham, and grits with red-eye gravy. Red-eye gravy may not
sound appetizing, but served over hot grits it was the finest
surprise I got in the South. With all this we were served cider and
percolator coffee that was prescription strength. I rolled out of
there at sunup. As I purred down the gravel lane, Pete caught up with
me.

"There's several Royces in Robbinsville. I think
the one you want is north of town. There's a widder lady there with a
son living with her."

"When did you find this out? I thought you
didn't know about the Royces."

"Oh, we knew a little bit. We just didn't want
to say nothing until we figured you was all right. Good-bye, Doc.
Stop back here on your way back home and we'll do some ridin'. Good
luck. Be careful out there. Look sharp."

We shook hands. I yelled good-bye to Liz and was off.
The scenery along the road to Robbinsville put everything else I'd
seen in the shade. Sometimes the valleys were so narrow and steep
that I had a sense of claustrophobia, which was understandable
perhaps for someone raised in the Hat cornbelt. But in these narrow
valleys the high rocky walls of the nearby mountains were so close
and steep that they seemed to loom up around you, almost blocking the
sun. The valleys were very sparsely settled; those with people living
in them had only one or two shacks hanging from the cliffsides. How
their residents got their pickups up there and down again sure had me
puzzled. In rugged mountains like these a neighbor who lived half a
mile distant might be an hour's trek by steep footpaths. This was the
reason for the legendary clannishness of the mountain people, and
perhaps, too, for their violent reaction to much of the outside
world. The land had imposed a Dark Ages isolation on the hillfolk.
They were, for all practical purposes, a thousand miles distant, a
hundred years behind the times.

I rolled into Robbinsville a little after eight and
had the whole day to find Bill Royce, or his homestead. Robbinsville
was not a wealthy town, but it was getting by in a frontier sort of
way. I cruised around town first, giving it the once-over. There was
a huge furniture factory on one side of town, with a never-ending
lumberyard and log depot attached. It reminded me of the lumber and
paper mills in interior Maine. From this, and from reading the
bulletin boards and the local paper, I assumed that lumber and
hunting were the two primary revenue getters. There were a lot of
advertisements for bear and boar outfitters. I ordered coffee at a
diner and looked through the phone book. Six Royces. I wrote down all
the address and phone numbers. Most of the Royces were on Royce Cove
Road. I knew what that meant: they were all snuggled up together in
one of those box canyons with only one way in, one way out.

I found the dime store and bought a town map. It was
really a hunting map prepared by the North Carolina Fish and Game
Department, showing hunters where to find big game in the mountains.
The map was bordered by photos of trophy black bear and Russian boar.
The specimens were huge and nasty, even in death. Wild country, no
doubt about it. Royce Cove Road was indeed north of town, and it
wound around the mountains for a goodly distance. It paralleled a
small branch stream on the map with the unlikely—not to say
ominous—name of Hanging Dog Creek. I tucked the map into my breast
pocket and cruised out of town until I picked up the road. It was a
single-lane dirt path, and I wound my way up the foothills slowly,
keeping an eye on the mailboxes. I passed four boxes with Royce
painted on them and went all the way to the end of the road, which
terminated in a steep path up the side of the mountain. The path was
dark; I couldn't see up it farther than about twenty feet. In the
distance I heard the plashing of a waterfall. I turned the bike
around on the narrow road. I would work my way back down the cove and
out. So I stopped at the first mailbox, the one farthest in. The lady
who answered the door was friendly and said she was the widow Royce.
Her son, Edward, was an electrician who was working on a big job at a
nearby sawmill. When I asked her about Bill Royce, she fell silent
for a few seconds and asked who I was and what I wanted. I explained
I was a friend of a friend and wanted to see him. Squinting at me,
she finally asked if I knew what had happened to him overseas.

"Yes. I was sorry to hear that he's been . . .
not well. I hope he's better now."

"Well," she answered, massaging her lower
lip with a thin gray hand, "it's just hard to say right yet how
he'll turn out. He seems a'mighty glad to be home here in the
mountains. I think that helps a body more than anything else . . .
being home, that is."