Gap Creek (43 page)
Now I kept thinking about what I’d seen in the vision or whatever it was. Maybe it
was
a kind of dream. In the Bible it said young men will see visions and old men will dream dreams. Didn’t say nothing about girls or women. What bothered me most was how worried Troy looked bent over that way, like he was waiting for something. Couldn’t see where he was, but the awful blast and flash of light just seemed to come out of nowhere. And then as I played it over in my mind I remembered there was something else, something I’d forgot. After the flash and just before it all disappeared there was a smell for an instant, a smell like burnt paint or some burnt chemical. It was a terrible smell, like leather had been scorched, and maybe hair, like when a cat gets too close to a hot stove. That smell come back to me and it made me a little sick.
“How come you know everything?” I said to Muir, but he just laughed and shook his head, like he usually does when I get mad, acting like I’m not worth arguing with, just being an emotional woman. I’ve seen him do it a hundred times, backing out of an argument and shaking his head and chuckling, like he couldn’t make sense of what I said anyway. And that always makes me madder still.
When I got back to the house, Aunt Daisy had left and Mama was warming up the soup beans and the rice was about ready and the sweet taters smelled almost baked. I strained the milk into pitchers and
put it into the icebox. Mama placed bowls and spoons on the table while I washed out the straining cloth and the milk bucket. When I put the rice and taters on the table I called for Papa to come.
“Don’t feel like eating,” he called back.
“You come on,” I said. “You’ve got to eat something.”
Papa shuffled in and set down at the head of the table while I poured each a glass of cold milk. Velmer was still outside, but I knowed he’d come in when we set down. Papa said a short blessing and helped hisself to the soup beans but didn’t start eating. “I told that boy to stay away from old airplanes,” he said.
Mama set with her bowl empty. “Let me give you some rice,” I said.
“He never paid no mind to what I said,” Papa said.
“Best not to talk about it,” I said. “Won’t do no good.”
Velmer come in through the kitchen door and set down at the table. I passed him the bowl of soup beans. Just then the front door opened and somebody walked into the living room. “Come on into the kitchen,” I called. I looked through the door and there was Preacher Rice.
“If you folks are eating, I’ll just stay here by the fire,” the preacher said.
“Come on in and set down and we’ll find you a plate,” Papa said.
The preacher stepped into the kitchen but didn’t set down. “I just come to say how awful sorry I am,” he said, holding his hat in front of him.
“Won’t you have a sweet tater?” I said. Last thing I wanted to do was discuss Troy’s death with the preacher. And I guess Mama and Papa felt the same way. For when a preacher comes to comfort you it always makes you feel worser. I don’t know why that is, but a preacher’s kind words make you feel more miserable. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, being married to a preacher. But a preacher’s words always seem far away. You know what he is going to say and what he has to say. And somehow the fact that he goes ahead and says them makes you even
sadder. For the preacher will say God’s ways are mysterious and beyond our understanding. What seems unbearable to humans must be part of a plan. If something bad is an accident, it’s bad, but if it’s part of a plan, that’s much worse. I’ve never understood why preachers think that is comforting. They make you feel so hopeless and stupid. For they remind you there’s nothing you can do. Your suffering is all part of God’s plan. You don’t have control over nothing, no matter what you do. It makes you feel weak and sick in your bones, the way a bad fever does.
“The Lord is looking down in His infinite mercy,” the preacher said, “but with our limited understanding we can’t always understand.”
“That’s right, Brother Rice,” Papa said and took another spoonful of soup beans. Mama didn’t say nothing, and she still hadn’t touched her plate. I eat some sweet tater just to be polite.
“The Lord tries us as he tried Job,” Preacher Rice said, “because he loves us he tries us.”
Somebody else opened the front door and walked into the living room. I called out that we was in the kitchen. Helen Ballard stepped into the firelight holding a plate, and her husband Hilliard was just behind her.
“I have brought a chocolate cake,” she said.
“Your chocolate cake is my favorite,” I said.
“Come, pull up a chair,” Papa said.
“We’ll just stay here by the fire,” Helen called. “We was awful sorry to hear about Troy.”
I got up and took the cake from her and put it on the counter.
Robert Morgan is the author of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including the critically acclaimed novel
The Truest Pleasure
and the national bestseller
Boone
, his biography of Daniel Boone. The recipient of an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, he was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2010. He lives in Ithaca, New York.
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Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 1999 by Robert Morgan. All rights reserved.
First Algonquin paperback, August 2012.
First paperback edition, Touchstone Books, 2000.
Originally published in hardcover by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 1999.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Anne Winslow.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morgan, Robert, [date]
Gap Creek : a novel / Robert Morgan.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56512-242-0 (HC)
I. Title.
PS3563.087147G36 1999
813’.54—dc21 99-34995
CIP
eISBN 9781616201784
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