The Truest Pleasure (30 page)

“Do you have a deed?” Lawyer Gibbs said.

“We sure do,” I said. I got the paper from my purse. I had took it from Pa's trunk that morning. It was yellow with age.

“This is not a deed,” Gibbs said as he turned the document over and read it on both sides. “This is just a bill of sale.”

“It specifies where the land is,” I said, and how much there is. It has always served as a deed before.”

“This is not a legal document,” Gibbs said.

“It says the tract corners at the mouth of Cabin Creek and at the mouth of Schoolhouse Branch,” I said. “And it runs straight to the top of Olivet Ridge. It has the compass readings on it.”

“Readings that old don't mean a thing,” the lawyer said.

“What are you saying?” Pa said.

“I'm saying it don't look like you have a valid documentation of boundaries,” Gibbs said.

“This land has been in the family almost a century,” I said. I felt my face getting hot. “And it's registered in the courthouse. And besides, everybody knows where our land is.”

“Except Johnson?” Gibbs said.

“Johnson knows too,” Pa said. “He's trying to get back at me.”

“For what?” Lawyer Gibbs said.

“Don't know,” Pa said. “I just know he wants to get back at me.”

“So you're not going to help us?” I said. A flock of pigeons flew by the windows. They looked like flakes of paint that had peeled off the gray sky.

“It's hard to make a case without a valid deed,” Gibbs said.

“Our deed has always been valid before,” I said. I wanted to
get up and leave that office. And I wanted to get away from town. But if I up and left our trip would be wasted.

“Times are different now,” Gibbs said. “The courts have got tougher and the laws are tighter.”

“We can pay you,” I said, and lifted the purse from my lap.

Gibbs paused, then turned toward Pa, like he wasn't talking to me. “I'd like to help you, Ben. Maybe if I check to see what they have at the courthouse I can have a deed made as the basis of a suit. At least you would have a valid document then.”

“I'd be mighty obliged,” Pa said.

“Of course that won't solve your problem with Johnson,” Gibbs said. “After getting a solid deed you will have to charge him with trespass and ask the court for an injunction against him. The court would then authorize a survey before it would listen to arguments or go to trial. That could take months, even longer.”

“I know that,” Pa said.

“Is there no way to hurry it up?” I said. “Johnson has cut a lot of timber on us.”

“No legal way,” Gibbs said.

“Johnson has to be stopped,” I said.

“I will need a retaining fee for my services,” Gibbs said.

“How much?” I said.

“Say a hundred dollars,” Gibbs said. “But it may require more as the case proceeds. This kind of suit can take time.”

“I have only fifty,” I said.

“I have fifty,” Pa said.

We counted out the money in gold pieces and silver dollars. It was more than I had ever paid for anything. “Ain't there nothing we can do now to stop Johnson?” I said.

“I can send him a letter saying proceedings will be instituted against him unless he desists,” Gibbs said. “Sometimes such a letter will have the desired effect.”

“Then please send it,” I said.

By the time we left Gibbs's office I was exhausted. The air outside was cold but refreshing. I wanted to hurry out of town.

“Do you need to do some shopping?” Pa said.

“I have spent all my money except for change,” I said. “Let's buy something for the kids and go back to the depot.”

It was exactly a week later that we got the letter from Johnson's lawyer, answering the one Gibbs had sent to Johnson. It was a long letter on crisp paper and Pa read it on the way back from the mailbox. He handed it to me without saying a thing. I wiped my hands and set down to skim the shiny pages.

Insofar as you have trespassed for decades on Johnson land and had the use of the mountaintop property where the peach and apple orchard is located, and have cut firewood and timber inside the said Johnson boundary, you are hereby asked to cease and desist from further intrusion. Unless my clients are satisfied your trespass and usurpation are at an end they will have no recourse but to institute proceedings in court to restrain and punish the infringement.

“What does it really mean?” I said.

“It means Thurman is answering Gibbs's letter with his own threatening letter,” Pa said.

“That's all it is?” I said.

“Just a bluff,” Pa said. “I've gone through this before.”

The letter made me feel dirty. I went to wash my hands. It was a terrible thing to touch, some lawyer's fancy words of warning about our own property. We almost never got an official type letter. The talk of lawyers was calculated to make you feel stupid and guilty. Just reading those sentences made you feel hopeless. The letter laid on the table like a sentence of doom.

When Tom come back to the house for supper I read the letter to him. He listened with his head down looking at the floor. It was the way he always set when he was worried. His cheeks reddened as I quoted the lawyer's bleak words. Once he started to slam the table with his fist, but stopped hisself.

“Ain't this a pretty come-off?” Pa said. “After all the work you've done to improve that orchard.”

“Are you going to shoot Johnson?” Moody said.

“Be quiet,” I said.

Tom studied for a while without touching his supper. “I don't even know where the lines are myself,” he said. “The first thing to do is find all the boundary lines and mark them again.”

“Nobody but Pa knows where all the lines are,” I said.

“Then we'll walk the lines and mark them,” Tom said. “It's the first thing to do.”

I couldn't see that just walking the boundaries and driving stakes and trimming brush would solve the dispute with Johnson, but at least it was something to do. If Pa showed where the lines was we could mark them for the future. Tom
and me needed to know. Iron pins would have to be drove into the corners again.

“Can I come?” Moody said.

“Me too,” Muir said.

“You will stay here with Jewel,” I said.

“Oh goody,” Jewel said.

Next morning was clear and cool. I put on a coat and scarf. Tom got an ax and four pipes from the shed. He cut stakes from sourwood saplings. Pa carried an ax also, and his walking stick.

I took my little notebook and a pencil from the mantel. I wanted to record all the boundaries Pa showed us. Putting it down in writing would make the effort more worthwhile.

“What are you going to do with that?” Tom said.

“I'm going to write down everything Pa points out,” I said. “That way we will have a document of what he knows.”

We walked through the cornfield down to the river. Tom had already picked the corn, and stalks rattled their dry leaves.

“The river is high,” Pa said. Rains had kept the water murky and sloshing into the bushes on the bank. The current was faster than I expected, as though hurried by the sunlight and wind.

“There goes a muskrat,” Pa said.

A whiskered head swum and disappeared under the far bank.

“There'll be no traps set in water this high,” Pa said.

We crossed the pasture branch on the foot log. Minnows playing in the shallows shined like seeds. Sand had pushed up in cushions and fans where the branch entered the river. We had not tended all the lower bottom that year and goldenrod
there was singed by frost and smoked thistledown across the blackened weeds.

“I cleared up this land when I married your mama,” Pa said. “It was nothing but a maple swamp, and still floods in a wet year.” Big puddles stretched under the weeds in places. The water was stained by leaves and dead stalks. A rabbit darted through the briars. It was an ugliness I loved.

When we reached the mouth of Schoolhouse Branch I saw the water was high over the foot log. Or maybe the foot log had been washed away. “Where does the marker go?” I asked Pa.

“The deed says the corner is the mouth of the branch,” Pa said. “But the branch has moved downriver a little in the past sixty years. The pin Johnson removed was right here.”

There was no dent where the pin had stuck for so long. Whoever pulled it out had smoothed the place over and piled leaves and trash on it. Tom drove a pipe so deep you wouldn't notice unless you was looking for it. I wrote a sentence about the place in the notebook. It was odd to be writing outdoors, to put the mouth of the branch and the sand and trees into sentences.

As I watched Tom work I thought how the place meant more to me because it meant so much to him. I wished I could write down how I felt about him in the notebook, just like I was describing the corners and boundaries. I wished I could put down once and for all how he really was.

“If we had a compass we could run the line from here just by sighting to the top of the mountain,” Pa said.

“But we don't have a compass,” I said.

“It's best to set a transit by the North Star,” Tom said.

“That's true,” Pa said. “But it's daytime, and we don't have a transit.” He chuckled, but I knowed he was as worried as I was.

The woods across the branch had overgrowed the bank. There was hazelnuts and shoemake bushes crowding there too.

“The line runs up this side of the bank,” Pa said, “right to the ridge yonder.” He pointed to the mountain with his cane. It was easy to look up there, but between the river and the corner on the ridge we had a mile of muddy branch and sinkholes, thickets and barbed wire, briar and rocks to get through.

“Can you walk that far?” I said to Pa.

“Huh!” he said with a snort. “I've walked fifty miles a day in my time, with a full pack on my back and a rifle in my hand.”

As we worked our way up the branch through pines Tom drove stakes and blazed trees. We passed a pit where Joe and Locke had dug for zircons years ago, filled with leaves and sticks. Pa showed us a rock below the schoolhouse two feet from the line. Florrie and me had played house there as girls. I hadn't seen it for years. The rock was hid by ivies and there was still broke cups and saucers in leaves. The rock was white quartz with moss on its sides. Florrie and me had called it the Ice Cream Rock.

Children was playing in the yard of the school, even though the new term hadn't started. “Hey, what are you doing?” one of the Waters boys called.

“We're looking for something,” I called back.

The new session wouldn't begin till after Christmas. I reckon the kids had just met there to play.

“Are you going to fight the Johnsons?” the Waters boy called.

“Nobody is going to fight,” I shouted back.

As we started climbing we slowed down for Pa's sake. He showed us where the line crossed the road and run right up the holler adjoining the Jenkins yard. There was a pin on the roadbank under brush that Johnson had missed. It was right where Pa said the line was. I wrote down the place by the road.

I stayed with Pa on the higher ground while Tom went through the holler blazing trees and driving a stake every few yards. The trees there was strung with grapevines that looked like big cobwebs. It was a good place to pick foxgrapes in September. Pa used to gather enough there for Mama to make fifty jars of jelly.

It was midmorning before we reached the top. I was out of breath from climbing and from excitement. All the way up I had wondered what we would do if the Johnsons was up there. But I saw no sign of them around the orchard. A breeze over the top from the north made me shiver. The orchard was deserted except for bluejays and other birds pecking rotten apples.

Pa showed us where the corner was beyond the east end of the orchard, and Tom drove a pipe there. He hammered the pipe until it was just under the leaves. “If Johnson pulls this up I'll dig a hole and bury the next pipe in cement,” Tom said. “We'll see how fast he digs that up.” I put the corner in the notebook.

From the orchard we could look down on the church and school and whole river valley. Some people had done their winter plowing and the fields sparkled red. Broomsedge shined on hillsides. I could see the roof of our house by the hemlocks. From up there it looked as if the house was right by
the river. The mountain beyond was brown and gray at the foot, then lavender further up. The distant mountains was blue and smoky. The MacBanes up the river was killing hogs. I could see the smoke of their scalding fire and the bright carcasses hauled up on a pole.

If only we could get over this quarrel and return to everyday life, I thought. Nothing is as sweet as ordinary work and freedom from worry. The fuss had poisoned everything, including sleep and worship and trust of neighbors. It was normal peacefulness that was most beautiful. I wouldn't mind work dirty as rendering lard if I could do it without strife. Time free of anger and fear was the dearest thing I could think of.

A bullet stung the air nearby and a shot rung in the woods.

“Who is there?” Pa called. The woods echoed his words.

We looked toward the oaks at the end of the orchard, but nobody was in sight. There was a clump of shoemake bushes where Tom had piled stumps, and something moved a branch. “There,” I said and pointed. But it was only a bird pecking the red seeds.

“Hey!” I called to the woods. But there was just the breeze.

“Maybe it was somebody squirrel hunting,” Tom said.

“We didn't even bring a gun,” Pa said.

“Hey!” I hollered again. There was no answer from the woods.

“Never thought Thurman would shoot unarmed people,” Pa said.

“He was an outlier,” I said. “No telling what he or one of his boys is liable to do.”

The breeze stiffened the orchard grass and jays quarreled and pecked among the spoiled apples. It was the most beautiful
orchard I had ever seen. I understood why Tom had spent so much time up there against the blue sky, pruning and mowing, plowing around the trees and setting out more peaches and apples. It had to be the best view in the whole valley. There was two or three white clouds hanging to the east. If we got the dispute settled I planned to spend more time up there working with the trees.