The Hinterlands (21 page)

But it's the hard work that pleases. The kind of work you dread until you start doing, like clearing up new ground or digging a ditch, or trying to figure out how to do something. The figuring may be the hardest of all, studying out a plan, getting the idea to make something. I've seen men break their backs with labor to avoid thinking about how they should do a job. Five minutes of study would have saved them days of sweat.

But son, what I was going to tell you about was how I found another kind of building. I had done some digging before. My Pa would give me a spade and say, “Dig out that tater hole,” or “Fill in the gully.” And once I helped dig Old Man Cephas Powell's grave on the hill. And I found it was work I could put my hand to, carving the very flesh of earth. Every bit of ground is different in
grain and color. Part of the pleasure is cutting into something new, something never before exposed to sun.

One day when I must have been around fifteen, my Pa said, “Solomon, I want you to level out a path from the back yard to the spring.” You remember how steep the hill is back of the old place. In wet weather the spring hill got slick and Mama had to carry all her water up the trail on wash day. Pa was afraid she'd slip on the mud and break her leg.

So I started digging. It was about a hundred fifty yards to the spring. You had to go past the woodpile and the washpot and through the steep woods. I had to cut out the brush to make a way for a decent path. The old trail just kind of wound through the trees and didn't go with any plan. It had been there since the place was settled by my Grandpa, Realus.

I'd seen surveyors work, running out a boundary with their rod and chain, and their sighting instruments. Land was being sold off by the speculators back then, and somebody was always running a line and hacking out a right-of-way. I seen I was going to have to figure where my path was going.

The thing about surveying that was interesting was how they set everything to the compass. I didn't have no dial, and I didn't know exactly how it was done. But I knowed they set their compass to the North Pole and sometimes even to the North Star. That was a thrilling thing, to run a line through mud and brush and up a bank and across a ridge even, an unseen line that was set by degrees to something as far away as the North Pole, or a star. I wished I knowed how it was done, but I didn't have no equipment, and nobody to teach me.

When I scoped out the way to the spring I seen in my mind how the trail would go. But soon as I started chopping trees and grubbing up roots, I found how hard it would be to keep going
where I wanted to. That was the first time I used an idea about building. I got a spool of red thread from Mama's sewing box—didn't ask her, just took it—and I strung it out through the trees where I wanted the path to go. First thing I learned was you had to line up everything by sight, and to do that you had to cut away brush and limbs to see to the curve in the hill.

You never seen such chopping and grubbing as I did once that string was stretched around the slope. I measured out a zone six feet wide that I cleared, and once I pulled out the roots and dug up the stumps, I started leveling. Of course, I avoided all the stumps and big trees I could.

That's when I discovered the pleasure of hard work, son. I don't mean just that intoxicated feeling when you work up a sweat and have the blood roaring in your ears, though that is one little part of what I am talking about. But I never believed in breaking my back just for the sake of doing it. No, I'm talking about the satisfaction of getting the hard job done right, of accomplishing something. That's the deep-down pleasure of a man's days. To see an idea take form in soil or wood or stone and know that hundreds of people will use your work down the years.

As I was ready to level out the path, Pa come by and said, “Solomon, we don't want no turnpike to the spring. A trail will do.”

That made me so mad, I didn't say nothing. Pa always had a way like that to hurt your feelings, just when you was proud of what you had done. He'd say something and just walk away like he hadn't done nothing, didn't mean nothing. That made me madder still. I thought of bashing him over the head with my shovel. That was the bad streak in me, always thinking of revenge. He knowed how to rile me, just as I was getting on with a job.

I watched Pa walk away and thought of burying the shovel in his brain, for an instant, and then I spun back to work, and swung
harder and dug deeper. That was the moment the work come to me so bright and clear. I seen what I could do, and what I was going to do. Because I was angry, and because I was guilty of bad thoughts, I seen everything shining and sharp. I seen my path swing out around the hill for the stream of feet. And I seen I would carve the earth for the use of the family, so not only Mama but generations would have the way to the spring.

I cut into that hillside to level out the trail like I was eating the earth with the shovel. The humus under the leaves and roots weaving under the humus and the gritty clay underneath got shifted around by my hands. I felt like the shovel blade was an extension of my arms and every move I made hit its target, like I was finding gold. And I was finding the gold of use, of rightness. Every lick went true.

But I want mostly to tell you about the gap road, and how me and your Grandma got together.

For years they was talk about building a road into the mountains. The state of North Carolina did some surveys, and the state of South Carolina did some. People in Tennessee even promoted the idea of a road across the mountains for driving their stock to Augusta and Columbia. The old settlers of the coves wanted a way out to trade their produce and productions for cash money, and the Low Country people wanted a way into the cool mountains for summer vacations. Everybody that did a study concluded it was too expensive, even too dangerous. They knowed how it could be done, but without the business already to pay for construction, they was no way to finance such a project.

Oh, we had our wagon tracks and cartways even then. Not in these hollers, but further down along the creeks and rivers. They was a kind of slip-and-slide trail down the mountain to Gap
Creek, but it took four oxen to pull an empty wagon back up that way. Anybody carried something in, they packed it on horseback.

After I built that trail to the spring and seen how wide and gentle it was, and how it eased the burden of carrying water back to the washpot, I commenced to study on the problem of a road up the mountain. I was a lad with ideas. I dreamed big dreams. I thought of myself like some boy in the Bible chosen to free his nation. These mountains bound us in, and I was going to split the ridge to let in the light of trade and travel. I didn't know how I would do it. But I guaranteed to myself it would happen.

Now the funny thing was how the vision of building the road become joined with romance in my mind. They got so tangled up I couldn't think of one without the other. No sir, building the road was the same as winning Mary. Marrying your Grandma was the same as finding a roadway into the mountains. This is how it happened.

I went to a funeral over at the meetinghouse in Cedar Mountain. It was not a service for any relative or close acquaintance. Those days we young folks went to every funeral around, not because we had so much reverence for the dead as because they wasn't no better way to meet each other. A funeral brought together the community. They was something thrilling about the occasion. Preachers done their best preaching at funerals. And everybody was there. The dignity of the service was part of the pleasure. You got dressed up, and somebody was being consigned to eternity, honored by kith and kin. It didn't matter if it was a deacon or a drunk, pillar of the community or blackguard. The girls wore their prettiest clothes, and everybody felt raised up a little out of the slowness of their lives.

Me and my brother Charlie had walked up there. We lived about a mile below Cedar Mountain then. It was a Sunday in late
summer. The cornfields we passed smelled sweet as milk and the corn was ripe for top cutting and fodder pulling. After the sermon in the little church we walked out to the graveyard. It wasn't nothing but a little clearing with a few rocks and boards over the dozen graves. It had been warm in the meetinghouse and the open air felt good. And then I seen this girl walking with the family up to the grave. She was near tall as me and had this curly brown hair that shined in the sun. And she had red cheeks and brown eyes, like some Irish girls do.

I was going to ask Mike Staton who that was, but the preacher had started praying and I took off my hat and bowed my head. Every time I glanced up during the long prayer I looked at her. And she didn't have her eyes closed either. She was staring down at the grave like she was thinking of something and not listening. The preacher prayed on and on, and virtually preached his sermon all over again as we stood there by the grave. The breeze fumbled with the ribbons and ruffles on her dress but she didn't seem to notice. I seen she had a slim waist and graceful hips. For a tall slim girl she had a generous bosom.

The prayer stretched on and on, and I was burning to ask Charlie and Mike who that was. I stood on one foot and then the other like a little boy. The instant the prayer stopped and they started throwing dirt on the grave Staton said, “You know they made a survey up through the gap?”

“What gap?” I said.

“Douthat's Gap, the gap right here.”

“Who made the survey?” I said.

“Some company from Columbia and Augusta. They want to reach Asheville through Douthat's Gap.”

“They've made a lot of surveys,” I said.

“But this time they run a line with chain and compass.”

“Ain't nobody going to build a road through Douthat's Gap,” I said.

The girl had moved away from the grave and walked back toward the meetinghouse. Her back was straight as a chair's.

“I'm going to do it,” I said.

“You're going to what?” Charlie said.

“I'm going to marry that girl,” I said.

“I thought you meant to build a road through the gap,” Staton said.

“I mean to do that too.” And soon as I got home I told Mama I had seen the girl I was going to marry.

“Who is she?” Mama said.

“I don't know yet, but I seen her today.”

I asked around about the girl, and I found her name was Mary MacPherson, and her Daddy was a teacher at the college in town who had come over from Dublin, Ireland, when he was a young man. But he was from Scotland first. I always read every book I could get my hands on, but I never had any formal schooling except for a few weeks at our country school. A few weeks in winter, and a few weeks in summer before fodder-pulling time was all we had.

The MacPhersons had family in Cedar Mountain. That's why they was at the funeral. But they lived in town right near the grounds of the college. I found out where they lived all right, and I studied how to meet that girl. I wasn't no lady's man to speak of. That fall when I was out squirrel hunting, I'd sit and think about my two plans while the gold hickory leaves fell around me. Sometimes I even forgot to look for squirrels, I was thinking so hard. I thought of a hundred plans. I thought of going up to the MacPhersons' door and knocking, saying I was peddling honey or firewood. I thought of trying to enroll in the college as a student,
studying for the ministry. I thought of attending the First Baptist Church in town just to get a glimpse of her.

Oddly, the solution to my two problems come at almost the same time. It was almost Christmas, and I read in the paper about a Christmas pageant being put on at the church in town. Among those in the program it listed Mary MacPherson and her sister, Elizabeth. I got me a new pair of boots and a new hat and I planned to go to that service. It would take me half a day to walk to town, and half the night to walk back, but that didn't bother me none.

On Christmas Eve I got to town just after dinner, and went right to Kuykendall's store. I knowed the program at the church started around three. I bought me some pickled sardines and a box of soda crackers. All kinds of people was standing around the store. That's where everybody gathered in town, at Kuykendall's. They had all come to get Christmas presents. The railing in front must have had twenty horses tied to it, and the lot behind the store was full of wagons. The air smelled with horses' breath.

I took care not to get any sardine juice on my clothes or hands. It's a terrible smell to get rid of. I didn't want to stink when I finally got to meet Miss MacPherson. It was crowded around the big pot-bellied stove and I leaned against one end of the long counter. My face was burning from the long walk in the cold, and the excitement of the occasion.

I spoke to a boy from up on the mountain, named Camp. I just knowed him slightly. He was talking to a feller I didn't know at all that still had on his army uniform, like he hadn't changed clothes since he got back from New Orleans with General Jackson.

“They say animals is smarter than people,” Camp was saying. “They say buffaloes always found the lowest gaps through the mountains. That's why Indian trails follered buffalo trails.”

“A dog will find his way home from a hundred miles away,” the other man said. “I had a dog in the army that got lost while we was marching. I figure it was stole. But it found us two hundred miles away, where we had come to camp.”

“A cow ain't got no sense,” Camp said.

“But a horse has. And a hog is the smartest of all. I've heard that overseas they use hogs to find roots and spot quicksand. And a hog knows an earthquake is coming. You watch a hog hunker down and spread its legs and you know a shaker is going to hit.”

“Hogs is quick,” Camp said.

“A hog will always find the best way to get to its trough,” the other man said. “It will find the shortest way every time.”

I don't even know if I finished my sardines in that crowded store. The whole place smelled like leather and tobacco and the Christmas oranges Kuykendall had got in. I must have just stood there and stared at the stove while the crowd milled around me. They is nobody stupid as a really happy person, and I must have looked stupid. Somebody spoke to me and I nodded. And I seen my cousin James out of the corner of my eye. “Merry Christmas, Sol,” he said, and showed me a bottle under his coat. I may even have stepped outside and had a swaller of his peartening juice. I can't remember. All I was thinking about was how I was going to bust those South Carolina mountains wide open. I was going to let a little light into Dark Corner, and that's a fact.