This Rock (31 page)

When you're looking for rocks to build a wall, you search for pieces of a puzzle that ain't even made yet. Maybe that's not the way you think of it, but that's what you're doing, figuring how round rocks and three-cornered rocks, square rocks and long rocks, flat rocks and bulging rocks, can be fitted together. Mostly you're looking for the right thickness, for you'll have to worry later about how the shapes will fit. Anything can be fitted together with mortar and a little hammering to the edges.

When you pry out rocks from their sockets in mud or a riverbed, you can try to roll them to the bank or slide them over other rocks. But if a rock ain't too big, you just pick it up and carry it to the shore. You wrestle a rock out and hold it on your lap streaming water on your knees and stagger to the bank and toss it on a pile in the weeds. I got out three-cornered rocks and five-cornered rocks and rocks so irregular you couldn't name what their shape was. I got out granite and flint and milk quartz. I even got out some orange quartz and rock that looked like it had flashing garnets and isinglass in it.

I
N ABOUT A
week I heaved out several piles of rocks on the riverbank, and I toted out several more on the bank of the creek, working my hands raw and water-sobbed in the river. And I was cold and wet every day when I got back to the house. I'd set by the fire, but it took hours for the chill in my bones to melt away. The coldness seemed to get into my blood and stay there.

“I don't think the Lord expects you to build a rock church with your bare hands,” Mama said.

“What else is worth doing?” I said.

“Nothing is more important,” Mama said. “But you could build us a new barn if you wanted to get some practice.”

“I'll build the barn after I build the church,” I said.

“Building a barn is as worthy as building a church,” Mama said, “if it's done in the right spirit. The best work is to do what's needed.”

“People won't know they need a new church until they have it,” I said.

T
ALKING WITH
M
AMA
reminded me I couldn't go no further until I had a way to carry the rocks and other materials up the mountain. I had to open up a road before anything else got done. I didn't have much money, and I didn't have any tools except a shovel and pick and mattock. I had several piles of rocks by the river and by the creek, but they was a long way from the top of the mountain.

“Maybe you could pray the rocks to the top of the mountain,” Moody said.

“I'm going to pray that you'll help me,” I said.

“I'll help you roll them off, once you carry them up there,” Moody said. He slouched against the doorpost, swaggering the way he always done when he'd had a drink and was beginning to feel better.

“How big a church are you going to build?” Fay said.

“Big as I can,” I said.

“As tall as a town church?” Fay said.

“Taller,” I said.

“Be careful you don't punch a hole in the sky,” Moody said. He drove his finger up into the air.

I
TRIED TO
think how I would build a road up the mountainside. How would I start it? Where would I put it? The road couldn't be too steep, or the horse couldn't pull a wagon up it, or the wagon would run away going down. I would have to swing the road around at a gentle grade but make it as cheap and fast as I could. I didn't want to tear up any more of the ridge than I had to, or cut down any more trees than I had to, or move any more rocks than I had to.

I didn't have a transit or surveying equipment. I just had a tape measure and an axe. I knowed the road had to go up from the parking lot of the church, and I knowed how steep the pitch could be. So what I did was just walk up through the woods marking trees out along the slope at an easy grade. After about a hundred yards I turned at a switchback and started up higher. It took four switchbacks to get to the top. But by the end of the day I had a reasonable route. And for the most part I went around and between the big trees so there wouldn't be too much felling to do.

“Muir Powell the Roadmaker,” Moody said when he come up to see the route I'd marked out. He couldn't seem to stay away from where I was working, but he wouldn't help out.

“Wish I had a sow like old Solomon Richards did,” I said.

“This road ain't wide enough for a sow,” Moody said.

“It can be widened and improved later,” I said.

“Do you figure to build a road to heaven?” Moody said.

“That's the road we all want to build,” I said. My plan to build the church had snagged Moody's interest. Even though he ragged me, he kept mentioning the church, and he come to see what I was doing. I think he was tired of just laying out with Drayton and Wheeler. He was getting older, and the new church was such a good idea even Moody seen it was interesting.

I had a plan for the ditching and the rounding of the switchbacks. I would have to use a pick and shovel. But for most of the roadway I was going to use the light turning plow, not the big turning plow for deep plowing, but the little one we used for the tater patch and the hillside garden.

Soon as I'd cleared brush from the right of way and cut down the trees that had to be felled, I hitched up Old Fan to the plow and drove her up to the churchyard. Annie's papa, Hank, was working in the field beyond the church when I got there. It was one of the rare times he wasn't away on a construction job. “What are you going to turn?” he hollered at me.

“The mountain,” I hollered back, and Hank chuckled.

“Then you must have a lot of faith,” he hollered.

“I'm going to plow me a road,” I said.

“Watch out for roots,” Hank called back. It was well known that plowing new ground, many a man had near about castrated their-selves when the plow hit a root or buried rock.

Old Fan was confused when I guided her into the woods and started bearing down on the handles of the plow. The blade cut into the leaves and into the leaf rot underneath and started rolling over black dirt. But I hadn't gone ten yards when the plow point snagged on a root and the handles jolted out of my grip. And after another twenty yards the plow snagged again and a handle rammed into my belly. I recalled the story of Bowen Ward up the river that had hurt hisself so bad with a plow he died of the bleeding in his belly.

Go slow, I said to myself. “Whoa,” I called to Old Fan. “Whoa there.” I held the plow at arm's length and when the point hit a big root, I stopped and backed up and went over it. The roots could be cut later with the axe. Silly as it looked, I plowed a rough furrow from the bottom of the mountain to the top. And then I turned the blade over and started back down. On the way down I seen my plan was going to work. The thing was to loosen as much dirt as I could and later level it with the shovel. Going down, the plow went deeper. All the plow did was move dirt out of the hill and shift it over a little bit. But that's what building a road was, digging dirt out of the slope and setting it aside on the shoulder. If I plowed the furrow again and again, I'd have a road.

As we plowed back up the ridge I seen we'd already made a trail. With four or five more sweeps I would have a narrow road. With a dozen or twenty trips to the top and back I'd have a rough wagon track.

It's a pleasure to tear into a mountainside and shape it to your will. I tore deeper and deeper with the plow, opening the fresh dirt, the red clay under the topsoil, the mealy soil. I chopped out roots wet with sap as ripe fruit, and I tore rocks out of their sockets. Some of the rocks I set aside to carry later to the top. The biggest rocks I just pushed aside.

I'll tame this mountain a foot at a time, I said to myself. Old Fan and me are conquering the height an inch and a shovelful of dirt at
a time. I stopped the horse and chopped away roots and saplings. There was a seep spring halfway up the mountain, and I cut a little ditch for it to run along the side of the road to the switchback. The raw dirt gleamed in the woods like it was red-hot. The new dirt smelled like perfume and ether from a long time ago, like fumes buried deep in the ground.

The switchbacks are levers, I said to myself. They are wedges with which I'll raise tons of rocks to the edge of the sky. The switchbacks will raise the weight of a church a rock at a time until it touches the stars. If I'd had the money I would have hired help and machines. But this way I knowed every foot of the road, as I knowed every rock I'd got out of the river. And I'd know every nail and every board and pane of glass I would put in the church later.

“Lord, this mountaintop is your altar,” I said as I worked.

For three days me and Old Fan plowed open the road on the mountainside. We went up and then down. We plowed deeper and deeper into the ridge until the bank was a yard high. I jerked out rocks and ripped out roots white as grubworms. The furrows begun to look like a road. The way was wide enough and level enough for a wagon to make it to the top with a load of rocks.

After I finished the road I laid out the foundation. I stretched my tape measure over the ground to mark the size of the church, and I drove stakes at the corners and tied strings to show where the trenches should be dug. It made the church seem more possible, to see where the foundation was to be, what the shape was going to be.

Digging out the foundation was both rough and delicate. It was hard work, digging through roots and rocks into the subsoil of the mountaintop. But the trenches had to be exactly twelve inches wide, and level. I didn't have a transit or leveler. I just had my carpenter's level. I shoveled out the floor of the trench and laid my level on the dirt. This is where my church will be joined to the earth. This will be the hidden seal between the church and the mountain, I thought.

And then I thought how I was opening the earth to plant a seed. The church was the seed of all the worship and all the sermons and songs, and of all the inspiration that would happen there. I was a farmer planting a great seed in the soil of the mountaintop. I dug out
the design of the trenches as exact as I could in the uneven dirt, following the plan I had drawed.

E
VERY DAY HAS
its own flavor, I thought. Every morning when you get up is different, and the curve and feel of every day is different. You look forward because you're curious and because you hope for a surprise, for firmness, an easy glide.

But the day I started hauling rocks up the mountain it felt like nothing would go right. I hitched up the wagon, but Old Fan didn't seem eager to work that morning. She seemed to know what we was going to do, the way horses sometimes guess what you need them for. I think they can sense the worry in people, and that makes them anxious too. She stalled when I tried to back her between the shafts. “Whoa, there,” I said. “Back, back.”

“That horse don't want to carry the riverbed to the top of the mountain,” Moody said. He had got up early and was patching a tire on the Model T. I hoped he would help me, once he seen I had got the road plowed up the mountain.

“How would you know?” I said.

“Have you got a hair in your ass?” Moody said.

“Thought you might be going to help me,” I said.

“Never told you that,” Moody said.

“I thought this would be a family project,” I said. “A gift to the community, like the first church.”

“What has the community give to me,” Moody said, “except a kick in the butt?”

“We only get back what we give, like Mama says,” I said.

“Then I should kick the whole community,” Moody said.

When I finally got Old Fan hitched to the wagon, I drove her down to the river. The piles of rocks looked heavy and clumsy. I couldn't believe I'd pried and wrestled that many rocks out of the riverbed. The wagon suddenly looked awful flimsy, fragile and weak. I lugged a cold rock over and laid it in the bed. If I put more than ten in at once, the wagon would be too heavy for Old Fan to pull up the mountain. It would take a lot of trips to move the rocks to the mountaintop.

I had over four hundred rocks in my piles by the river and creek. If
I carried only ten at a time that would be forty trips. And if I made five trips a day that would take eight days just to move the rocks. It would be getting up toward Christmas before the job was done.

We started up the road and Old Fan worked fine, pulling the wagon up the hill and around the foot of the mountain to the church. She was a horse that was always willing, to be fair, even when she was worried or didn't feel like working. She was a horse that would do her part, as long as she wasn't too tired.

But when we turned into the road we'd made up the mountain behind the church, and when the grade started getting steeper, I seen her slow down. For one thing, the dirt in the road was still soft and the wagon wheels sunk down, making the wagon harder to pull. But on the incline the pile of rocks in the wagon bed looked heavy enough to break the planks.

“Giddyup,” I hollered to Fan. “Giddyup!”

The mare kept going but she got slower and slower. It was like time slowed down as I watched her. Now, a wagon gets harder to pull in rough ground the slower it goes. The more speed you have the easier it is to pull over roots and rocks. I'd tried to make the road all at the same pitch, but there was a place after the second switchback that was steeper than the rest. I guess I'd got in a hurry when I laid that off, or I'd lost my sense of the grade. As we come through the second turn and started up again I seen the wagon get slower still. Fan's flanks trembled and her feet was unsteady and danced a little bit sideways.

“Giddyup!” I hollered. “Now giddyup.”

But the little horse's flanks shivered like she had the chills. If she stopped it would be harder to get going again. If I had to throw on the brake I didn't know how we'd start up again without rolling back.

“Giddyup!” I hollered, and put my hand on the right front wheel and pushed. I shoved hard and thought of the way people talked about putting your shoulder to the wheel. Old Fan pooted with the strain and snorted and kept going. I kept pushing but the wagon got slower again. My eyes burned I was heaving so hard. There was about twenty more feet of the steepest part and then the grade gentled off again.