This Rock (38 page)

“Was you authorized by the board of deacons?” Riley said.

“No, sir.”

“Did you ask the board of deacons for authorization?” Riley said.

“No, sir.”

“Then you're building it for another congregation?” Riley said.

“No, sir,” I said. “I'll give the new church to this congregation.”

“But this congregation has not been consulted,” Riley said. “The thing you're doing is outside the bylaws of the church and contrary to church discipline. It has nothing to do with this church.”

“It's for this church,” I said.

“You have broke the discipline and bylaws of the church,” Riley said. “By a vote of the congregation you can be dropped from the rolls of the church.”

“You didn't build
this
church!” I hollered at Riley. “My grandpa built this church when he come back from the Confederate War.”

U. G. raised his hand.

“Brother Latham,” Riley said.

“We're only meeting today to ask questions,” U. G. said. “We didn't meet here to threaten or throw Brother Muir out of the church.”

“Hear, hear,” Hank said.

“I'll build the church whether you authorize it or not,” I said.

“Why would you do that?” Preacher Liner said. “Why would you go against Baptist discipline?”

“Because I'd never get you all's approval,” I said.

“That's right,” Riley said. “We'd never approve such a foolish scheme.”

“I'm building for the future,” I said. “In a hundred years people will worship on the mountaintop. And a hundred years after that too.”

“Are you doing this work out of pride?” Preacher Liner said.

I told them I had tried to conquer my pride, but Riley warned me the devil works in mysterious ways. I said I wanted to build an altar on the mountain where everybody could see it. Riley said then it must be for my own greater glory. But I told them the church was not for me but for them, and for their children and grandchildren.

“Do you have the funds sufficient for such a building?” Preacher Liner said. “Do you have the permission of your mama to build on her land?”

“It's not any of your business,” I said. “But she does want me to build the new church. And she's helping me.” Anger rose like little bubbles in my blood. My bones was feeling light. I knowed that getting mad was the worst thing I could do. But I couldn't help myself.

“You think building a new church is none of our business?” Riley said.

“Whether Mama approves or not is none of your business,” I said.

“You mama is a member of this church,” Riley said.

“And you throwed her out too, her and Grandpa,” I said. I told him I hadn't asked for their help and I didn't need their help.

“Is that the Christian spirit?” Riley said.

I stood up. I wasn't going to be talked to like a little schoolboy they could scold. I was going to get out of there.

“Set back down,” U. G. said to me. I waited for a second and then I set back down in the chair. “Everybody knows you're trying to help the church and the community,” U. G. said. “You're not doing this for your personal gain. It's just that most people don't see the need for a new church. This is a country congregation, and we don't need some big church house on the mountaintop.”

“I think we should hear Brother Muir out,” Hank Richards said. It was the first time he had spoke, but nobody paid him any attention. He was the newest member of the board of deacons.

“It's good to have big plans,” the preacher said, “as long as they don't divide the church.”

“I can see you all are against me,” I said.

“Let's hear more about your plans,” Hank said.

“A church is made up of its members,” Preacher Liner said. “In a Baptist church all authority is vested in the congregation. Nobody,
not the deacons, not even the pastor, has any more say-so than the rest.”

My blood was humming behind my ears. There was sweat on my forehead and around my temples. “If people choose to be stupid, what's the point of getting together with them?” I said.

“The church is the Lord's institution in this world,” Preacher Liner said.

“This community does need a new church,” Hank said. “I move we put it to a vote of the congregation.”

“We get strength from fellowship and working with each other,” the preacher said.

“I would rather set out in the woods and listen to the birds sing,” I said.

“Brother Muir, we want you to be a part of us,” U. G. said. “But we want you to be reasonable.”

“Reasonable means doing nothing,” I said.

“We appreciate your zeal,” Preacher Liner said. “We only wish your ambition could be channeled to more practical goals.”

It was no use to talk to them. I stood up again. “You can kick me out of the church if you want to,” I said, “like you kicked out Mama and Grandpa.”

“That was a long time ago,” Riley said.

I walked out of there with all of them staring at me. My humiliation and my defeat was so complete I felt almost triumphant. They had destroyed everything I'd tried to do. Or I had destroyed everything. I didn't know which it was. Moody was running from the law because of my church. The community and the preacher and the deacons and the forces of nature was against my work. The law of gravity was against my work. And the rain and freeze and thaw was against my work. Only Mama, and maybe Hank Richards, didn't seem opposed to what I was doing.

My defeat was so total I felt freed by it as I stepped down the aisle toward the back of the church, opened the door, and slammed it behind me. I felt bathed with anger. I was stripped to the bone and humiliated and there was nothing to do but start over again. Anger and defeat made me feel light as I walked down the steps and across the
churchyard. I hoofed it down the road by the spring feeling naked as a baby.

I decided to go look for Moody. He was in trouble and I should go find him and help him. He was my brother, and I should offer my help whether he wanted it or not.

At the house I loaded my packsack with cornmeal and bacon, with shoulder meat and a box of raisins. I put in matches and extra socks and a pair of gloves.

“Where are you going?” Mama said.

“You will lead the deputies right to Moody,” Fay said.

I done the milking and I eat supper. I waited until it was good dark before heading out. Mama handed me a ten-dollar bill to give to Moody. When I left the house I went east, like I was walking toward the highway. I stopped and listened to see if anybody was following me. In the pines I turned to the river and followed the river, as I'd done so many times in the dark, all the way to its head at the edge of the Flat Woods.

By the time I got to Pinnacle it was way past midnight. I knowed Moody could be anywhere, even over in South Carolina toward Caesar's Head, or in the Long Holler beyond the Sal Raeburn Gap. But I tried to think where I would go if I was Moody. And I kept thinking of the cave on the other side of Ann Mountain, beyond Pinnacle. It was a cave where outliers and deserters had stayed during the Confederate War. It was a cave far under the mountain with a rock crevice above it that reached up hundreds of feet and served as a kind of chimney.

I felt my way in the dark through the trees around the side of Pinnacle. There was no trail, and limbs scratched across my face. I walked sideways with my arm outstretched, and stepped in branches and sinkholes from time to time. When I thought I was lost, I stopped and listened to the wind on the high ridge to my right.

The woods was just beginning to get gray when I reached the foot of Ann Mountain. It had been years since I'd visited the cave. It would take a little poking around to find it. I crossed the branch where rocks had spilled down the mountain, and started climbing. Something stung the air like a mouth organ or hornet above my
head. I ducked and then heard the crack of a rifle. I dropped to my knees and listened. There was bootleggers in the Flat Woods, but I didn't think there was any still on the side of Ann Mountain. I hadn't seen any fire up there.

If it was Moody shooting at me, how could I call him? What if some deputy had followed me in the dark, like Fay had said they would?

I crawled toward the biggest rock nearby. Another bullet sung through the air with a sick twang. “It's Muir!” I hollered. And rolled behind the rock. I listened for a voice or movement farther up the mountain.

“I have brought you something!” I shouted. Pulling the packsack off, I held it up above the rock. A bullet whined like a banjo string had broke, and knocked the pack out of my hands. A hole the size of a fifty-cent piece was tore in the flap.

I set there trying to think what to do. I am my brother's keeper, I said to myself over and over. I must do what I can. It could be anybody shooting at me. But I knowed it was Moody. Moody was mad because he had told me not to come looking for him. I wanted to tell him I had come to help him any way I could. I was sure nobody had followed me in the dark.

“I want to talk to you!” I yelled.

I expected another shot to sing through the air and crack a tree nearby, but none come. I waited and listened for a shout, but the woods only dripped their morning dew. The branch below murmured through its rocks, and a hawk whistled somewhere way up on the mountaintop.

“Won't you talk to me?” I hollered.

There was some kind of movement farther up the ridge, and I strained my eyes to see better. It was getting daylight by then, and the woods was gray and brown.

“I come to help you!” I hollered up the mountainside, and there was an echo from the ridge beyond the branch:
help you, help you
. But that was all. The woods and the mountainside was quiet.

“I will leave the pack here,” I yelled.

• • •

W
HILE
I
WAS
walking down toward the head of the river, I thought somebody was watching me or following me. It was an itchy, prickly feeling. I spun around and seen somebody way back behind me. They jumped quick into the laurel bushes, but I got a good look and seen it was one of the Willards; Sam or Stinky it was, I think.

“What do you want?” I hollered. But they never stepped out from behind the laurels.

“Do you want to shoot me?” I yelled. But the woods was dead silent.

When I walked on I looked back from time to time, but I never seen them again.

T
HE NEXT
M
ONDAY
I was hammering the old mortar off a rock when a voice behind me said, “You have your work cut out for you.” I turned and seen Hank Richards. He had on his carpenter's overalls and he was carrying a toolbox.

“They didn't leave me much to go back to,” I said.

Hank set the toolbox down. “That was some Christmas present,” he said.

“I reckon they wanted to give, in the spirit of the holiday,” I said.

“I have come to help you,” Hank said.

“You have?” I said, not sure I heard him right. “I am obliged,” I said. The stiffness in my throat kept me from saying more.

“When I was your age I had big plans,” Hank said. “I wish somebody had encouraged me.”

I told him Moody said the Willard brothers broke up my foundation.

“I heard that,” Hank said. “And I heard about Moody shooting one of them.”

“It was an accident,” I said.

Hank said he had had his own troubles with the Willard brothers, back when he was courting Mrs. Richards.

Hank had built so many houses and barns, he knowed just what to do. “The most important thing is to get your foundation right,” he said. He looked at the ruins of the west wall where the door of the church was to be.

“It may be just as well they knocked that down,” he said. “The footing needs to be poured again.”

I didn't argue with him, though that was my first impulse. I was embarrassed for him to see the mistakes I'd made. I got a mattock and he took a shovel, and we broke away the ruined work and dug the trench deeper. Hank was so strong he worked like a machine. We redug the ditch in no time, it seemed. I told him I couldn't believe he was helping me.

“I wouldn't mind giving Preacher Liner a surprise,” Hank said.

Hank took his hammer and some nails from his toolbox and repaired the mortar box better. He hammered slow, but the wood fell into place for him. It was a pleasure to watch how sure he was with a hammer and saw. He used the tools so they seemed a part of his hands.

“I'm not much used to laying rock,” Hank said. But he seemed to know just exactly what to do next, better than I did. He seemed to understand my idea for the plan of the church already.

“Have you got a blueprint?” Hank said as he laid his level on top of the new west wall.

I admitted I had only a rough drawing and showed him the sketch I carried in my pocket. It was creased and smudged. I told him I would make a better drawing that night.

As Hank worked he made building appear to be the most natural thing. He didn't waste a single move. Every time he reached or turned he got something done.

“You hadn't ought to have give up preaching,” Hank said as we laid the next level of rock on the foundation that afternoon.

“I just made a fool of myself,” I said.

“Everybody makes a fool of theirself at first,” Hank said. He marked off the space for the door on the left side. With his help I had almost brought the wall back to where it was before Christmas Eve. Us two working together got four times as much done as me working alone.

“Not such a fool as I was,” I said.

“I made a worser fool of myself at your age,” Hank said. Hank said that when him and Mrs. Richards first got married and moved
down to Gap Creek, there come a flood at Christmastime. The flood was so bad they had to escape from the house in the middle of the night. In the dark, in the rushing water, he had let go of Julie's hand and found the way to the barn by hisself. He was ashamed of hisself.