This Rock (33 page)

Mama had left a lamp burning in the kitchen for me. Otherwise the house was dark and quiet. I was going right to the bedroom to find Moody. I was going to let him know I'd seen his Christmas present to me.

But there was still a little fire in the fireplace. Some logs had burned down to glowing coals. I seen a boot in front of the fire, and then I seen a leg in the boot. I looked closer and seen Moody laying on the floor in front of the fireplace.

“Get up, you son of a bitch,” I said. I was so mad the words almost stuck in my throat. When I got closer I smelled liquor like
toilet water on him. He must have come in from celebrating with his buddies and passed out in front of the fire.

“Wake up,” I said, and prodded him with my boot.

“What hell?” Moody said and rolled over. “What the hell?”

“Merry Christmas,” I said and kicked him in the hip.

“What hell?” he said again and set up.

“I seen what you done,” I said and pulled him to his feet. He still had his coat on. “You bastard,” I said and smacked his cheek.

Moody raised his knee and hit me in the side. I think he was aiming for my crotch and missed.

“You blackguard trash!” I said and shoved him against the mantel. A flower vase fell in the dark and broke on the hearth.

“I've put up with your doings before,” I said. “But not this time.” I hit Moody in the face and he slid down the wall beside the fireplace. There was something sticky on my hand. He held up his elbow to protect his face and I hit him on top of the head and on the chin.

“Crazy fool,” he said and spit.

“You ruined my work,” I said and hit him on the side of the head. My hand was numb and bloody.

Mama come into the living room with a lamp. Her hair was in a braid. It looked grayer in a braid than it did loose.

“He's drunk,” Mama said. “He don't know what he's doing.”

“Drunk ain't no excuse,” I said.

Fay come out of the dark hallway with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

“You've got to do the Christian thing,” Mama said.

“I ain't done nothing,” Moody said, and wiped the blood from his mouth. “But I might know who did.”

I asked Mama what was the Christian thing to do. I was so riled I couldn't hardly feel my feet on the floor.

“To forgive seven times seventy,” Mama said.

“I have forgive Moody a thousand times,” I said.

Moody had already set back down on the floor. He patted his lip and looked at the blood on his hand. He was awful quiet, like he was studying on something that puzzled him, unable to see it clear.

• • •

O
N
C
HRISTMAS
D
AY
I walked along the river and stayed away from the house. I was embarrassed, and I felt guilty. Since my own brother had tore up the work on the church, it was almost the same as if I'd done it myself. I can't explain it, but that's the way I started to feel. Like I'd almost done it myself. And I felt guilty for hitting Moody when he was drunk. But mostly I felt guilty for losing my temper. Every time you get angry and hurt somebody you feel bad about it, no matter what they've done. Mama was right: it was the Christian thing to forgive seven times seventy. I had failed Mama and I had failed myself. I thought how my good intentions and my grand ambitions had caused only trouble. I wondered if I should quit working on the church. I wondered if I should just give up and leave Green River for good, as I'd planned so many times.

In the bright sun of that Christmas Day I walked along the river and heard beagles bellering in the fields above the Bane place. Somebody was rabbit hunting on Christmas, enjoying theirselves the way they was supposed to. The boom of a shotgun echoed off the mountain above the river. Somebody was enjoying Christmas as a holiday.

When I got to the forks where Rock Creek comes into the river I stopped and stood in the pines. I didn't want to go no farther. The beagles was yipping and yelping way up on the ridge, sounding like a flock of geese up there. Their noise rose above the noise of the creek. I dropped down on my knees in the pine needles.

I listened to the wind in the pine trees that sounded like an ocean a long time ago, and the mumbling of the creek water, and the beagles inflaming the air with their yaps. Who was I to impose myself on the world? Who was I to make requests of the Lord? What right did I have to take up space and air and water from other people? Who was I to demand an answer to my prayers?

My defeat was so total I felt cleansed by it when I stood up. As I stepped down the trail I felt baptized with shame. I was stripped to the bone and humiliated and there was nothing to do but start over again. I was as free as if I had been born again. Anger and defeat had cleaned me out and made me feel light as I walked down the trail and across the creek. I walked by the river feeling naked as a baby. I could go anywhere I wanted to. I could escape from Green River.

As soon as I reached the house I got my packsack. I stuffed socks and underwear, an extra shirt and pair of pants, in it. I throwed in some ammunition and matches. I went to the kitchen and put some cornmeal in a paper bag and packed it with my cooking kit. From the closet I got my .22 rifle, and I took four dollars from the box I kept on the beam above the closet door.

“Where are you going?” Mama said.

“Into the wilderness,” I said.

Muir

I
HEADED TOWARD
the west, for that seemed to be the direction of freedom. To start all over again you went to the west.

The woods smelled of wet leaves rotting in the middle of winter, and mud along the river give off a musky scent. It was a smell of sinkholes and swamps. By nightfall I'd be on much higher ground. I stomped the ground I was so glad to be on the trail.

By dark I reached the Flat Woods and camped there. It was my old trapping ground. The trees was familiar as friends. It felt good to sleep there by a fire under the stars, except the night was so cold I had to keep getting up for firewood. I dreamed about walking all the way to Black Balsam and maybe beyond, toward the Smokies and the blue wilderness to the west where ridge rose beyond ridge and peak above peak. The ground I laid on could take me anywhere I wanted to go, to the Rocky Mountains if I wanted to walk that far.

Whoa there, I said to myself in my half-sleep. Easy does it, Muir, old boy. Don't go flying off like you done before. For a long journey it's better to go slow at first. Take one step at a time, and travel one day at a time. If you hurry you'll find nothing at the end but wore-out legs. All roads lead to the same end, so what's the use of hurrying? Slow down and be peaceable in the peaceable kingdom.

I
GOT UP
before daylight, and by the time the sun rose over Chimney Top I was already in Transylvania County. I stayed away from the big creeks and roads and cut straight across the mountains toward Brevard. By the middle of the day I reached the village of Brevard and stopped at a store to buy four cans of sardines, a box of soda crackers, and some candy bars. No need to use my camping supplies before I had to. But I kept walking. I didn't stop till I reached the Davidson River that come tumbling and foaming clean and singing out of the high hollers below Pisgah. On the bank of the stream I set down to open a can of sardines.

The key fitted over the tongue of tin and I rolled back the metal top to reveal the tray of oily fish. Wished I had the fork out of my packsack, but I didn't want to take the trouble. I could eat with my fingers and then scrub them with sand and river water.

I'd almost finished the sardines when I seen this old man watching me. He was hid by some sweet-shrub bushes along the river and dressed in a rough gray coat and crushed hat. He peeked around a tree not more than fifty feet away.

“Howdy,” I said, like the old man was not hiding or spying on me. I acted like he was in the open and I'd just seen him.

The man pushed his gray head around the trunk and peered like he wasn't sure he'd heard me.

“How do?” I said.

The old man stepped out quick from behind the bushes and come closer. All his clothes was ragged and he carried a pistol in his belt. “Are you fit?” he said.

I wasn't sure that's what he said, but I couldn't make any other sense out of the old man's words. “Fit as I'll ever be, I guess,” I said. I wished the man didn't have the pistol in his belt.

“Having a picnic, eh?” the old man said. He looked hard at the sardine can in my hand.

“Would you like some sardines?” I said. I could smell the old man. He smelled like rags that had laid in an attic for years.

“Don't look like you've got none to share,” the old man said. He put his hands in his pockets.

“Got plenty,” I said and pulled a can of sardines out of the paper bag. “Here.”

It took the old man several tries to get the key fitted on the lip of tin. But once he did he soon rolled back the top and begun eating sardines with his fingers. He set down on the bank beside me and I passed him the box of soda crackers.

“Much obliged, young sir,” the old man said. He eat like he hadn't had a bite for days. Suddenly he wiped his right hand on his pants and took the pistol out of his belt and laid it on the ground at his side.

“You ain't planning on settling here?” he said and looked hard at me. Drops of oil and cracker crumbs had caught in his beard.

“Just stopped for a bite,” I said.

The old man looked at the packsack on the ground, at my .22 rifle and blanket roll. “I couldn't let you do that,” he said. “I wouldn't let you settle here.”

“Who are you?” I said.

“I look after this settlement,” the old fellow said.

“What settlement is that?” I said.

“The river, Davidson River.” He gestured toward the woods upstream and the woods downstream. I looked around expecting to see a house or clearing I'd missed before. There was nothing but trees.

“They're all gone now, but they'll be back,” the old man said. “I'm what you might call a caretaker, looking after the place till they come back.”

“Where did they go?” I said.

“Some went to Texas, and some went west to Ar-kansas, and some moved all the way to Montana, I reckon. The Whites moved to Asheville, but they'll be back.”

I looked around again, like I was trying to find something in the woods along the river I'd missed before.

“Couldn't let you settle here,” the old man said. “It's my job to look after things.”

“I see,” I said. The old man picked up the pistol but didn't point it at me. He held it straight out in front of him.

“Do you see, boy?” he said.

“So you're the caretaker?” I said.

“My daddy was the preacher, Charlie Pyle,” the old man said. “When they left to go to Ar-kansas I stayed here.”

“Why did you stay?” I said.

“Stayed back here to hunt and fish, I thought. And then after they was all gone it come to me little by little over the years what my job was. That's the way it comes to a man, to see his purpose little by little. I seen I was left here not just to hunt and fish and trap muskrats out of the mountains. I was chose to stay behind and look after things till they all come back. Right over yonder is where the school was.” He pointed through the sycamores along the riverbank. But I didn't see nothing except more trees in the flats.

“When are they coming back?” I said, keeping my eye on the tip of the pistol. It was an old cavalry .45 model, scratched and dirty. I couldn't tell if it was actually loaded.

“They're coming back anytime,” the old man said with a challenge in his voice like he thought I might not believe him. “The Partridge house was right over there below the spring. I was sweet on Mary Alice Partridge. Me and her will marry when they come back.”

The old man turned and looked me hard in the eye. “You can't settle here, boy,” he said.

“Just passing through,” I said, “on my way to Black Balsam.”

“This land is took,” the old man said.

“I can see that,” I said.

“Me and Mary Alice used to play by the spring,” he said. “Do you know what an ebbing and flowing spring is?”

“Can't say I do,” I said.

“It's a spring that'll gush out all at once like it's in spate and then after a few minutes goes dry, or nearly dry. And then after a while it'll start gushing again.”

“Why does it do that?” I said. The pistol on the old man's lap was aimed almost straight at me.

“Mr. Bailey that used to teach school here said it was some kind of siphon,” the old man said.

“A siphon?”

“Like a holler place in the mountain that'll fill up, and when it's full a drain at the lip that acts like a siphon will empty it.” The old man finished his sardines and throwed the can into the bushes. He wiped his hands on leaves and then on his pants.

“Let me see your pistol,” I said.

“Couldn't let you settle here,” he said, “even though I can tell you're neighborly. No spare land here to settle.”

“Just passing through,” I said.

“Couldn't let you do that, if you tried to claim and clear a place,” the old man said. “Much as I'd admire to have your company.”

“I'm on my way to Black Balsam,” I said. “But it's a good thing you're looking after the place.”

“You're welcome to camp here,” the old man said. “I'm staying here myself till my folks come back.”

“Have you heard from them?” I said.

“Not in the last few days,” the old man said. He looked at his hands like he was trying to remember.

“Maybe they'll write soon,” I said.

“They'll come back,” the old man snapped, like I had disputed him.