The Hinterlands (37 page)

“Maybe the sun's in his eyes,” the older boy said.

“Hush up,” the man said. “We've got to watch close.”

The bee swung to the left and to the right, and I seen a daytime moon behind it. The moon looked like a piece of ice floating under water way up there. It made me shiver in my sweat.

“There he goes,” the man hollered. He pointed to the trees and up the ridge. “You foller him,” he said to the taller boy. “You foller him past that poplar yonder on the ridge.”

“You want me to let aloose the hog?” the older boy said.

“Forget the hog,” the man shouted.

The boy lit out across the meadow the way his grandpappy pointed. The man started gathering up the honey bowl and sheet and the ax that laid in the weeds. “Here, help me,” he said.

The younger boy turned loose of Sue's ear. She hesitated a moment, not realizing she was free.

“You get that hog away from here,” the old man said.

“I don't want to bother you all,” I said. “I'm busting out a way for a road.”

“You look like you been busted out yourself,” the man said. He
reached into one of the buckets and handed me a piece of honeycomb. The comb was dripping with golden honey. I took the piece in my hatchet hand. “I thank you,” I said.

“Ain't nothing but clover honey,” the boy said.

I licked the comb and sucked off as much honey as I could. The honey was so sweet it burned my mouth. Maybe the ginseng had left my mouth a little raw, and my lip was sorer than ever. The honey tasted so good it hurt. The spit in my mouth ached.

Just then Sue realized she was free and jumped ahead, jerking me along. I smeared honey in my beard but I didn't drop the comb and I didn't stumble. I had to skip a few times to keep up.

The man and boy headed across the pennyroyal meadow with their buckets and cloth to take aim from another corner.

“I thank you,” I said again, as Sue started running for the woods. I found myself stepping as though by habit. The ginseng had took away some of the pain and soreness. But I felt like I was a puppet and my legs was pulled by strings. I could run but I was no longer in control of my running. I could only foller the habit we had set. Sue trotted straight for the woods, right of the place the taller boy had gone.

I wished I had asked the bee hunters where we had come to. That showed how tired I was. I wasn't hardly at myself anymore. Here I was, completely lost, and I hadn't thought to ask the way to Cedar Mountain. Maybe I was afraid they'd say I was close to the Georgia line, or that they never heard of Cedar Mountain. But we was already headed into the woods and it was too late.

My feet was sore and I wondered if the skin had been rubbed off by all my walking and running. It felt like my socks was just
shreds. My boots had been wet all day, and grit had got in them when I rolled into the muddy pit. Sand was cutting into the balls of my feet, but they wasn't a thing I could do about it.

I put the rest of the honeycomb in my mouth and sucked the marrow from the cells. Honey run down my chin, and I licked my lips, tasting the salt of sweat and dried blood. But the honey was so sweet and powerful I could feel it working inside me. It was like I had swallowed a light, and could feel the shine going through me, follering the ginseng. I was so empty my body had nothing to go on. The honey lit its way right through my belly and chest, and out into my legs and arms and fingertips.

The belly feels good if it has timber to warm it, something to work on. I don't think I had a peppercorn of energy left when I eat that honey. Even after the honey was sucked out, I kept chewing the comb.

“Where you going, old girl?” I said to Sue. She was running a little sideways again. I wondered if one of her hooves was cracked. She seemed to be favoring her right front foot. But she was trotting so fast I couldn't see nothing. I fancied I seen blood on her hoof, but it could have been my imagination, or my tired eyes. I didn't trust my eyes anymore.

“You done got us lost,” I said to the sow. I was talking to myself, like you do when you're real tired, or half asleep. “You've done got us lost and the day is almost over.”

I tried to think of some way to get my bearings. The sun was off to my left, but I only seen it when we come to an opening and light laid a floor of gold between the shadows. It was too dark to notice moss on the sides of trees. I tried to remember if they was some rule about where the moon would be in the sky. It depended on the time of year, but I couldn't think clear about it. Everything was running together in my head.

The woods was darker and stranger than ever. It seemed like they was a black wall ahead of us; a few more hundred feet and we wouldn't be able to go no further. I couldn't tell if it was a ridge or a line of trees. But it seemed like we had come to a wall and they was nothing beyond it.

I didn't even care if we had to stop. If we come to a final barrier, we could just sink down and rest in the leaves. I would lay down and sleep all night and then find my way in the morning. Nothing seemed as sweet as just to settle into the leaves and earth. To give up the sweating and panting, seemed the best thought I could dream of.

But Sue didn't slow down. If they was a wall ahead, she didn't seem to know it. She run on and on and the wall seemed to retreat, keeping its distance as we run toward it. Was it a cloud? Was it a further range of mountains?

Then suddenly we come out of the hardwoods into a line of white pines. The brittle lower limbs looked impossible to get through, but Sue plunged right between them and let me prick and lash myself on the stiff twigs. You don't see a grove of white pines generally out in the mountains. They grow in stands where a field has been cleared and then growed up. In the deep woods you'll see a white pine here and there, but not a great grove of them. Pines can't spread like that in a standing oak woods.

Sue jerked me into the musky bristling dark. It was shadowy as night under the great trees. I could just barely see the trunks ahead, but the sow darted among them like she had cat eyes. The trees was so tall and dark it seemed like running through caverns under the earth, or mines held up by posts. I could hear wind sighing in the limbs above.

Son, it's mostly our fancies that keep us going. We have to believe we can do great things even to accomplish little things.
But in them pine woods I couldn't recall clearly what my fancy was, or why I thought I could build a road. Neither the impulse nor the image would come back to me. I couldn't remember who I thought I was to do such a thing. They had always been a voice in my head telling me what I could do, but I couldn't hear it no more. The sow was grunting, and they was my own grunts, and the moaning in the trees overhead. It was like I was under an ocean.

I was so lost in my thoughts and my desire to quit and rest, I didn't even notice we had come to the end of the pine woods until Sue burst out of the shadows into a little clearing. It looked like a field that had been mowed and was growing up again in a second cover of hay, a rowen some people call it.

Somebody hollered at us across the opening. A girl was running at us across the grass. “Help,” she hollered, out of breath. She was barefoot and running with her arms full of weeds, and her fiery red hair flew in all directions.

“He's been snakebit,” she panted, running up to me.

“Who's snakebit?” I said. She run alongside of me.

“It's my brother,” she said. “He got bit.”

“Where is he?” I said.

“Over yonder with Sallie,” she said and pointed toward the end of the field. “He's with my sister Sallie.” I seen another girl way over there bent above somebody sitting on the ground. Sue's path was in that direction but off to the side.

“Did you cut the bite?” I said.

“We ain't got no knife,” she said. “We was gathering simples today. Mama sent us out to get some yarrow. Sam was pulling up yarrows in the weeds and the snake bit him.”

“What kind of snake?”

“A rattler. Sam didn't hear it I reckon, 'cause he's deaf.”

“How long ago did he get bit?” I said, trying to make up my mind what to do. I didn't have a knife neither. All I had was the hatchet.

“Just a few minutes,” she said. “Please help Sam.”

Sue was tending to the right of the figures in the field. If she kept going straight, we would miss them by a hundred feet.

“Please help,” the girl said. She had her arms full of yarrow which people then gathered and sold to medicine companies. She held onto the bundle of weeds like it was a baby.

“See if you can stop Sue,” I said.

“Stop who?”

“See if you can stop the hog,” I said.

I seen that girl hesitate for a second, and then she throwed down the yarrow and run in front of Sue. But the sow darted to one side. The girl run alongside and grabbed Sue's ear. I pulled on the tail, and thought for an instant it was going to work.

But Sue jerked her head and flung the girl off. The girl tripped on her own feet and went rolling in the grass, her skirt getting tangled up around her waist and hips.

I had to decide quick. A few minutes before, I had been thinking of quitting all together, of just sinking down to rest and letting the hog go on. But now that somebody was demanding I stop, it was hard to let Sue go. After all I had gone through, it seemed impossible I couldn't finish the survey, or at least try to finish it, before sundown. They might be another hour of light.

The girl gathered herself up from the grass and run after me again. “Could you let me borrow your knife?” she said.

“Ain't got a knife,” I said.

“Then let me borrow your hatchet,” she said. When I started out that morning the hatchet had been sharp enough to shave with. But after slashing at bark all day and hitting into the dirt and
rocks I doubted it would slice skin over a snake bite. We was getting toward the closest point I would to the other girl and the snakebit boy. I thought about my road and my plans and I seen they wouldn't be worth nothing if I couldn't stop and help somebody bit by a rattler. They wasn't no road that important.

And it come to me in that instant that Mary wouldn't marry me just because I surveyed and built a road. That was a young boy's fantasy. That was the way we think in daydreams. If she married me, it would be because she wanted me. What woman would marry a man just because he built a road? I seen that building the road was my condition, on myself. Even Professor MacPherson wouldn't much care whether I built the road or not. And didn't matter if he did. People that pegged their approval on whether you done this or that didn't matter either. If the road was meant to be built, it would be, and if Mary meant to be my wife, she would be. I let loose of Sue's tail and run over to the boy in the grass.

His hair was red as his sister's, and it fell all over the place in curls. But his face was white as a saucer, and sweat stood out on his forehead big as blisters.

“Where is the bite?” I said, looking at his bare feet.

He held out his arm and I seen the two fang marks on the back of his hand. His wrist had turned red and was beginning to swell.

“I'm gonna die,” he said.

“You ain't going to die,” I said. “The bite is far from your heart and far from your head.”

“Are you a doctor?” Sallie said.

“No, I ain't a doctor,” I said. “But I'm a Richards, and Richardses all have medicine in their blood.” I wiped the hatchet on my shirt and felt along the blade. The steel had been dulled and dented. They was only one place, right at the bottom corner, that was still
sharp. I didn't know if it was sharp enough to cut the boy's skin, but I didn't have time to hesitate.

It's harder to cut right into human flesh than it seems. If you think about it, you can't do it. It must take doctors and surgeons a long time to learn to slice somebody's flesh without trembling. I took the boy's hand and pushed down hard with the corner of the blade. He screamed and tried to jerk his hand away.

“Hold him down,” I said to his sisters. Their yarrows was scattered all around, and they stood watching me. They bent down and held him, one on each shoulder. My arm was trembling it was so tired and sore with rheumatism.

“Hold him down hard,” I said. “Hold tight to both his shoulders and arms. Don't let him jerk.”

I pushed the corner of the blade down on Sam's hand and this time the skin broke. Quick, I made three more cuts, a little deeper than scratches. Blood begun to darken the marks and ooze out. I had to decide if I was going to suck the wound or not. If you don't have a sore in your mouth and you spit the blood out, it won't hurt to suck a snakebite. But if you have a sore, it will poison you, same as the person bit. I had the hole in my lip but I thought I could cover it with my tongue and spit quick. I put my mouth to the back of Sam's hand and sucked till I tasted blood. Then I spit in the grass. I sucked two more times.

The hand was red and swole up even bigger, but it looked white around where I had sucked. Blood kept oozing out of the cuts.

“I can tear a rag off my dress and tie it around his hand,” the older sister said. All the children was red-haired. They had hair of the darkest copper.

“No, let it bleed,” I said, “to rid of more poison.”

But some of the venom must have already got into the rest of Sam's body for he said he felt numb and cold.

“Don't you go to sleep,” I said. I could see that his eyes was closing a little. But he couldn't hear nothing you said.

“I feel sleepy all over,” he said, and shivered. He felt hot, like he had took a fever. Maybe that's what poison does to a body, gives you a fever like any infection does, the way pain makes you feel hot.

“Stay awake,” I said. “You've got to stay awake.”

“What we need is some liquor,” I said to the sisters.

“I can run to get some,” the younger sister said.