This Rock (34 page)

“Yes,” I said, “and they'll be grateful you've looked after things.” I put my hand in the bag, took out two candy bars, and handed one to the old man. He tore off the wrapper like a little kid opening a Christmas present. Then he eat the candy slow, savoring every crumb of chocolate and caramel, every peanut and chewy clot.

“You're not a preacher?” the old man said.

“No, I ain't a preacher,” I said.

“We already got a preacher,” he said. “My daddy's a minister of the gospel.”

“I've got to get going,” I said. I reached for the packsack and the .22 rifle in the leaves. The old man picked up the pistol and aimed it at me. I reached out to brush it aside but realized he was handing it to me.

“It's a Colt forty-five, like cowboys carry,” he said.

The revolver was heavy and dirty. It was so old the edges of the cylinder was rounded. I spun the cylinder and seen all the chambers was empty. I pulled back the hammer and seen the spring was broke. From the dirt caked in the action and in the barrel, it was clear the pistol had not been fired for years. “That's a real Colt,” I said and handed the gun back.

“Got to finish my patrol,” the old man said. He licked the chocolate off his fingers. “Every week I go from the mouth of the river to the highest spring up yon side of Looking Glass Rock. Do you know where the Pink Beds is?”

“I've heard of them.”

“I look after the Pink Beds too,” the old man said, “where people used to camp out in summer with their wagons and tents, and even their cows and chickens, among the pink flowers. People from Asheville and down in South Carolina.”

I stood up and put on the packsack with the blanket roll tied over it. I cradled the rifle under my arm. “My name is Powell,” I said.

“My name is Pyle,” the old man said. He watched me walk away. When I'd gone maybe a dozen rods he called out, “Watch out for painters in the Balsams.” I walked another few paces, then turned to wave at him, but he was nowhere in sight. He'd vanished into the brush along the river.

I
FOLLOWED A
wagon road along the river past several old homesteads with standing chimneys and cellar holes full of leaves. There was a few log buildings sunk in like they'd been pushed down. I seen patches of periwinkles and old boxwoods in the yards, set out by women long ago. I passed a mill and seen a millstone laying in the leaves like the wheel of a stone cart. There was a log church at the forks with its steeple wrecked by a blowed-down tree.

Where are these families now? I thought. The old man is patrolling this ghost community day after day and decade after decade. I passed an old schoolhouse where a rusty bell still rested on its post, ready to ring children in from recess. It looked like everybody had been snatched away, the way the Bible said the saved would be took at the Rapture, when beds and graves would be emptied.

Where the road turned up one of the tributary creeks, I seen a little patch of tombstones in the woods. They was hand carved, with rough letters, and some had leaned so far they'd toppled over. Catbriars covered some of the stones. I could see the name
JONES
on one and
IN GLORY
scratched on another. Broke jars was scattered in the leaves where flowers had been brought years ago.

I thought I was past the old community when I come to one last cabin in the woods. The house looked so little I thought at first it must be a shed or cow stall, maybe a lean-to hunters used. But there was an old window cut in its gable where a loft had been and where children must have slept on pallets. Vines growed out of the windows.

The door of the weathered cabin was gone, but I could see the rags of leather hinges that once held it in place. And then I noticed something else on the doorpost. There was a rag tied all the way around the post like a bandanna. It was faded and dirty with mold. Stepping closer, I lifted the edge of the cloth and it tore in my hand. But I could see it had once been red, a kind of red scarf knotted around the wood. I remembered that when there was smallpox or typhoid in a house in the old days they tied a red cloth on the door to warn those passing to stay away. If there was an epidemic, a red cloth would be tied to a tree by the road to warn travelers not to stop. I jerked my fingers away from the rag and rubbed them on a nearby tree. I knowed germs wouldn't last on a rag all those years, but even so, I brushed my hand on the bark.

F
OLLOWING THE WAGON
road up the narrow creek valley, I seen the sheer face of Looking Glass Rock ahead. It was a mountain of solid granite with a great bald dome and half a scalp of trees on its top. The mountain rose straight up for a thousand feet before curving back to a brow. I'd never seen anything as steep or as big. Who needs to build a church when a rock that big is already set in the wilderness? I thought. And then I thought, No, what is in nature is not the same as what is made by hands. The fact that something is made with human design gives it a special kind of beauty and meaning.

The road run right up under the foot of Looking Glass Rock, and I seen straight above me little streams that run through grooves down the solid rock. Names was carved at the bottom, and pictures that looked like signs from an unknown language. Fires had blacked the base in places. Bushes growed out of cracks in the big rock. Everything was on such a grand scale. The rock was bigger than any
cathedral. Hemlocks growing out of the wet soil at its foot was eight or ten feet in diameter. The laurel bushes rose high as trees out of the rotten leaves beneath the rock.

Looking at my contour map, I seen I'd need to leave the road just beyond Looking Glass Rock. Got out my compass and found roughly what direction I needed to go in. The peak of Big Pisgah was to the right, steep and pointed as a fodder stack across the distance of clear air. I needed to go west along the chain of ridges. I was looking across the valley of the Pink Beds to the shoulder of Clawhammer Mountain. A trail bent off to the left and I followed it.

There is something comforting and thrilling about walking toward the west. I had always wanted to see Black Balsam and the higher mountains to the west. The west is like a magnet that pulls you toward something big and new.

Climbing with the pack and rifle slowed me down pretty quick. As I climbed I felt the power go out of my chest. Long before my legs was tired I felt tired in my chest and throat. The blood knows when you're tired, I thought. As I climbed I thought how time was like the force of gravity, pulling you down, dragging you down, wearing you out. Preacher Liner and the board of deacons, Moody with his sarcasm, Annie, they all wore me down.

Climbing is so simple it's hard to understand why it's so tiring. You just lift one foot ahead of the other and step a little higher. The muscles behind the knees raise you an inch at a time, half an inch. One little step at a time and you raise yourself out of the creek valley and into the sky. It's the leverage done with your feet on the great wedge of the mountain.

I slowed down and plunged my toes into the leaves step after step. I walked sideways, zigzagging up the steepest places. My boots sunk in the soft dirt under the leaves, making toeholds there.

Finally I come around the end of the ridge and seen a cliff far above me. It was a vast rock that jutted out in layers like a face, with chin and lips, nose and eyebrows. In the late sun the face looked coppery and shiny. Reminded me of pictures of the Sphinx. The cliff hung high as a cloud, dark and threatening.

I got out my map and searched the lines and names. Where I
thought I was, was the name Devil's Courthouse and the elevation 5,740 feet. The only other name along the ridge was Black Balsam. I was looking right up at Devil's Courthouse. I knowed the place had been named by the Cherokees, but the cliff didn't look much like a courthouse. It resembled an ugly face sticking out of the mountain.

The valley was almost dark. I took off the pack and looked for a level place in the leaves. I found a kind of shelf and made a fire and then cut some pine boughs for my bed. Instead of cooking anything I decided to eat more of the sardines and crackers. But I boiled some water for coffee. It was already cold in the valley under the cliff, and I could see ice on the rock high above me. Soon as I eat I washed my hands in a branch and wrapped the blanket around me. Then I set by the fire sipping coffee till I was too sleepy to hold my eyes open.

Once in the night I heard a boom like a shotgun or a cannon. There was an echoing chain of booms like a train makes in a freight yard. But I didn't hear it again and wasn't sure but what I dreamed it. All night the cold air from the cliff slid down and gathered close around me.

N
EXT MORNING THERE
was ice along the branch and in my canteen. Even wrapped in the blanket and in my mackinaw coat I was cold in my bones. The fire had burned out and I had to scratch in the leaves for twigs and sticks to start it again. My hands trembled when I struck a match, but I kept them cupped around the flame till it caught on one little sliver and then another, lighting the shadowy woods floor.

I'd ground my coffee at home and put it in a waterproof can. I set a pan of water beside the coffeepot to boil for grits, then gathered more sticks to make the fire bright. Nothing'll make you appreciate houses like camping out in cold weather, I thought. The most common things like tables and stoves suddenly become valuable and wonderful.

As I eat steaming grits from the pan, I begun to wake up and gather strength. The soreness in my back and legs from the day before was still there but mellowed by a night's sleep. I put on clean socks and laced up my boots. The cliff above, facing west, was still
dark. I could barely see its features. I kicked the remains of the fire out, rolled up the blanket, and strapped on the packsack. I took one short step, and then another and another. A deer bounded away, flashing its tail like a lantern.

By the time I'd climbed halfway up the ridge I was sweating and out of breath. I stopped to rest and seen a tree beside me that was not a white pine or a hemlock. Its needles was short and glittered like blue crystals. The tree was almost black. That was a balsam, the first balsam I'd ever seen in the wild. I touched the sharp stiff spines. The bark was scaly and covered with lichens and moss. I looked out along the ridge and seen others pointed like steeples. They was trees out of the North. I'd read they'd been stranded on the peaks here since the last Ice Age.

I broke off a twig and sniffed the incense of the sap. It smelled sweeter than a white pine and reminded me of Christmas and the Wise Men's frankincense and myrrh. The black trees was scattered on the slope above, getting thicker and thicker, until at the top the ridge was covered with them.

It was hard to push through the balsams, they was so stiff and scratchy. I picked my way from open space to open space. Limbs broke and stung my hands like released springs. Litter sifted down my collar. Needles raked my cheeks.

When I got to the top of the ridge I couldn't see a thing. The spruce and firs was so thick I couldn't even be sure I was on top. Wind hummed in the trees above me, and I heard a distant roar on the other side, far below. Could it be wind in the gap? And then I heard a
hoof-hoof-hoof
sound, and a boom like two buildings had crashed together. Was the mountain making noise inside? I'd heard of mountains that groaned and roared and boomed in their guts. Was that the reason the Cherokees had been afraid of this ridge and thought it was haunted by the devil?

I tore my way left through the terrible thicket. Finally I saw sunlight ahead and pushed out into the open. It was a clearing with weeds and mountain ash and sumac. I shaded my eyes against the rising sun and looked far down the mountainside. At first I just seen smoke and couldn't tell what I was looking at.
Hoof-hoof-hoof
,
come the sound from below. Then I seen the train engine puffing up the valley. Hadn't seen a railroad on the topographical map.

All at once I seen the valley below clearer, and I smelled the scent of timber on the wind coming up the ridge. And I smelled smoke and seen all the hollers and slopes below had been stripped of trees. There was tangles of logs and stacks of logs and piles of burning brush. I seen steam shovels spurting smoke, and trucks and cranes on the slope. The mountainside had been slashed and looked ugly as a mangy dog. There was rough bridges on stilts across branches, and roads cut into the slopes. There was so much litter of logs and brush, the mountainside looked chewed up and spit out.

“Hey, bud, what are you doing here?” somebody yelled.

I turned and seen a man in uniform pointing a gun at me. He wore a hat like an army sergeant's, with a wide flat brim. “What are you doing here, buddy?” he said, stepping closer.

He had a thin mustache and a fat gold ring with a white stone on the hand that held the rifle. “This land was leased by the Sunburst Lumber Company,” he said. “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”

“I'm just hiking to Black Balsam,” I said. I hated to be questioned. He had took me by surprise.

“You just hike right on,” the man said. “Where you from?”

“Where are you from?” I said, suddenly angry.

The man stepped back and cocked the .30-30, aiming the deer rifle at my chest. “I'm from the other end of this rifle. Now get!” he said. He pushed the tip of the rifle at my belly and I backed away. He pushed it again and I stepped further back into the little clearing.

“Go back where you come from, bud,” he said.

I hated to have a rifle pulled on me that way. I felt helpless as a child threatened by a hickory switch. Tears come to my eyes as I turned and walked toward the thicket of balsams. My will had been bent in the most unexpected way in the most unexpected place. At the edge of the trees I turned to face the man in uniform.

“Get on away from here!” he yelled. “Are you too dumb to understand English?”

As I plunged into the thicket, tears broke from my eyes. I pushed aside limbs and was knocked sideways by the heavy pack. Briars and
twigs clawed at my clothes. A needle hit me in the right eye. When I'd gone about a hundred yards down the slope I stopped. Bits of bark and twigs stuck to the tears on my cheeks. I wiped my eyes with the back of my left hand.