The Hinterlands (16 page)

“Are we going to Calinny?” Lewis said.

“This is Carolina,” I said.

“This ain't Calinny,” Wallace said.

Willa was so tired from walking, I picked her up and toted her down into the valley. They was more clearings on the head-branches than before, and more new ground cleared everywhere you looked. I seen at least ten more houses in plain view when we come out onto the bank of the branch above the church. I could hear guinea fowl pottaracking in several parts of the valley. People was gathering corn in the fields and dogs barked at us. I said “how do” to everybody we passed, but they didn't seem to recognize me, and some of them I couldn't place, neither. An old woman set in a chair by a fire shucking corn, and I thought she must be Aunt Mary Lindsay, but I couldn't be sure.

When we got to the house we seen this big strapping feller chopping wood in the yard. It was Henry.

“Don't you recognize me?” I said to him.

“Seems like I do,” he said.

“You ought to,” I said. “I'm your sister Petal.”

I introduced him to the younguns, and while we was talking, Mama come out the front door. She must have been making biscuits or a pie, for she was wiping flour on her apron. I seen how much older she looked, and shorter. It was like the years had pulled her down an inch or two, drawing wrinkles down her face.

“The Lord be praised,” she said, and grabbed hold of me. I don't know if I growed after I left home or not, but she seemed like a little person in my arms.

“I never figured on seeing my grand-younguns,” she said, and stooped over to look at Wallace and Lewis and Willa.

Henry went off to fetch my Daddy at the blacksmith shop.

It was all happening so fast, I couldn't believe where I was. Everything around the house and valley looked small. It was my memory that played tricks on me, for I hadn't growed none since leaving home, and the house and barn hadn't shrunk.

When my Daddy come from the shop, he had tears in his eyes. I never hardly did see him cry, and he didn't cry then. But his eyes was wet. I don't know if he was sorry he had made such a fuss about me going off with Realus, or he was just purely glad to see me. He was stooped a little now, from bending over his forge. But otherwise he was still a powerful-looking man.

“Ain't this a wondrous sight,” he said, looking at the children. He still had his hammer in his hand, he had come so quick. He dropped it on the ground and shook hands with Wallace and Lewis. “Ain't she an angel from heaven,” he said, patting Willa's head with his blackened hand.

We stood in the yard talking and didn't even think of going inside. I could see I was going to have to tell my story. They was no other way to explain what we was doing there. Confused as I was, I didn't want to justify my Daddy's low opinion of Realus. But they didn't seem no choice but to tell the facts.

“How did you walk all the way from the Holsten?” Henry said. So I told them what happened that day, without mentioning Realus. I told them about following the river, and hearing the cowbell and fearing it was Indians.

“Indians has been raiding the settlements,” my Daddy said. “They've killed people in several valleys.”

And I told them about finally recognizing the shape of the mountain after Wallace told me he seen the settlement.

“Things is always a mystery, one way or another,” Daddy said.

We finally went into the house, and Mama returned to the pie
making. But she couldn't hardly work for looking at the younguns. Any grandma is crazy about her grand-younguns. But to discover that she had them and see them for the first time all at once must have been almost too much. She would roll a little dough, then turn to talk.

“You mean all this time you've just been living over the mountain?” she said.

“It appears that way,” I said. “It appears I was tricked into thinking we was in the West.”

Neither Henry nor my Daddy said nothing. They looked away from me. Mama was bending over her stew pot on the fire. “Let me help you with that,” I said.

“It's just a squirrel stew,” she said. “Henry killed a mess of squirrels this morning. I'm making some dumplings to put in.”

“We ought to get started for home,” I said to Mama. All of a sudden, I wanted to get back and tell your Grandpa what I had found out, just to see the look on his face.

“You can't go back this late in the day,” Mama said. “It's too far, and besides the Indians is attacking settlers.”

“I want to get home and set this straight,” I said. I never was one to put off an argument when I was mad.

“Tomorrow will be just as good,” Mama said. “And you'll have more time to think about it. You can't settle eight years' worth of difference in one day.”

I seen she was right, but my blood was up and I was stubborn. I wanted to get home and have things out.

“You can't go wandering off in the dark with little children,” Mama said. “I won't let you. You and Mr. Richards can settle your argument tomorrow.”

When she said “Mr. Richards” I thought of your Grandpa by hisself back at the house, with nobody but Trail for company. I
hated for him to worry, and yet I knowed he deserved to worry. He'd think the Indians had got us.

Once I made up my mind to stay the night, Mama and me started talking about all the things that had happened since I left. I told her about the gold diggings, and she said she had heard about us being there. My Daddy went looking for me, and got there the day after we had left. The preacher told him Realus had stole a lot of gold dust before we slipped away.

“That's a lie,” I said. “We just got a few nuggets for all the work Realus had done.”

I told her about the cabin by the creek, and the painter that come the night Wallace was borned. How I done everything myself.

“And Mr. Richards never did bring a doctor or midwife?”

“He went looking for one.”

“And you never suspected you wasn't in the West?”

“I thought it was mysterious we never seen any other settlers except that one time.”

I told Mama about the long night when Eller was sick, and how we tried to give her honey and whiskey. “It didn't seem to do no good,” I said. “No matter how much we poured in her.”

“Ain't nothing can stop the milksick, once it gets to the fever stage,” Mama said. “You done all you could.”

It's silly how people will talk when they're grieved. Far into the night, after we eat, I told her and Daddy about Little Eller burning up. And about the passenger pigeon that come to the door. I remembered the crows at her burial. I told them about the new ground, and the footlog Realus had put across the creek. I told them they should see the flowers I had in front of the cabin.

“Now we can visit,” Mama said.

“If I go back home,” I said.

All that night I kept thinking what I was going to do to pay your Grandpa back for deceiving me. What could I do that would be equal to the wrong he had done? What could I say that would show him how I felt? If I just stayed at the settlement with Mama and Daddy, he would figure it out and come looking for us. Then I would tell him me and the younguns was not coming back to the cabin with such a lying polecat as him.

That was a troubled night, I'm telling you. I was thrilled to see my Mama and Daddy and the old place again. I didn't think they would ever get to see Wallace and Lewis and Willa in their lifetime. We set and talked during supper and afterwards, and I had the sweet feeling of being forgiven, even while I was mad in my mind at Realus. I'd be thinking what I was going to say to him next day while Mama was talking about who had married who and who had died. Many had gone off to fight in the war against the king and some had not come back.

“Henry went to fight in Virginia, but got fever so bad they sent him home,” Mama said. “Otherwise he would still be gone.”

“This war ain't never going to end,” Daddy said. “When the Lord comes again we'll still be fighting the Crown.”

“They won't never let us go. Every time we kill a redcoat they send two more,” Mama said.

“They's a fight going on south of here now,” Henry said. “Bunch of men marched through here the other day on their way to fight Ferguson.”

It was strange to think of all the goings on while I had been living on the creek. Stuff I didn't know nothing about was happening all around. I'd just heard a few rumors from your Grandpa after he visited the settlement. It didn't seem hardly possible. It was like I had woke up from more than eight years, and my life with your Grandpa had been a dream.

Mama's friend Florrie Cullen had died of dropsy, and Preacher Reece had a fit while he was up preaching at a revival meeting two Augusts ago. “The preacher didn't even know what hit him,” Mama said. “He was up waving his arms and talking about the bounties of the good place, and when his voice stopped his arm just kept waving a second or two until he fell over.”

They was families had been run out of town for being Tories. The McBains was one of them. The McBains had been tarred and feathered and carried out of town on poles. But even while they was carrying him Old Man McBain hollered, “Long live the king!”

“Them McBains always was stubborn,” Henry said.

“They're living way back to the West,” Mama said.

“I've heard tell they're living with Cherokees, “Daddy said.

“Them Cherokees is going to be taught a lesson,” Henry said.

By the time I went to bed in my old loft with the boys on a pallet on the floor and Willa beside me, my head was swimming with all the news of war and Indians and General Washington and people that had died. I knowed I was too tired to sleep. I would lay there all night picking foxgrapes and rushing further up the river, listening to the cowbell, the way you do when you're overwrought and overworked. Everytime I closed my eyes, I seen those buckets and baskets of foxgrapes we left along the trail and I kept hearing that cowbell and looking out for Indians.

But when I come back to consciousness a little more, I thought of your Grandpa and what I was going to tell him. As I studied it over in the dark, I thought I had three choices. I could refuse to go back to the cabin, and stay with the younguns at the settlement. That would teach him a lesson, if he had to live on the creek all by hisself and look after the place. Of course, we would have to live all crowded up in my Daddy's house and be dependent on Mama
and Daddy. I would be called a grass widow, and everybody would say my man had left me.

Or I could stay with Mama and Daddy a while, say four months, until your Grandpa had learned his lesson. Then I would go back and start where we left off. But the danger of that plan was it would be hard to take up again, after a long spell. People change and ain't never the same.

Of course, I could go back the next day and tell him off and take it from there. What could he say for hisself, when confronted by my news? What kind of excuse could he make for deceiving me?

I must have dropped off to sleep, thinking about the choices, for when I woke in the night, I wondered where I was. First thing I noticed was you couldn't hear the sound of the creek, and that your Grandpa wasn't beside me. And the attic smelled different from the cabin. Then I remembered where I was and what had happened. Suddenly I felt this homesickness for my cabin and for your Grandpa. It come to me he told the lie about the Holsten because he wanted so bad for me to marry him. He was afraid I wouldn't come with him otherwise. Knowing I was a young girl with romantic dreams of the West, he told me what he knowed I wanted to hear. And the truth was I had been happy there on the creek all them years. It had been a good life, even if I didn't have no friends to visit with. I loved the place, and all my flowers and the garden. That was when I knowed I was going back in the morning. I slept a little bit after I had made up my mind.

When we left in the morning, Mama give us a quilt. She always give her guests something when they left, a jar of jelly, a fresh loaf of bread. And she packed some biscuits and jelly and shoulder meat in a lard bucket for our dinner on the way.

“We'll be back at Christmas time,” I said.

My Daddy give me a set of tongs for the fireplace. “You see any redcoats you bang them over the head with these,” he said.

“Nolachucky Jack and Joe MacDowell and their men will take care of the redcoats,” Henry said.

“It's redskins I'd be worried about,” Mama said.

I let Wallace carry the dinner bucket and Lewis carry the tongs. I carried the quilt and I knowed I'd have to tote Willa on the steep parts.

They had been a touch of frost overnight, and the valley looked so peaceful, I felt a pang of affection for it. The sun was just turning the fields and trees copper, and smoke lifted from every house. They was shocks of corn in the fields, and a trace of whiteness could be seen in every shadow.

I was sore from the long walk the day before, and stiff from tossing all night wondering what to do. We started out slow and followed the path by the church and up the Shimer Road.

“Why is they a bell on the church?” Wallace said.

“To call people to worship,” I said.

“What does worship mean?” Lewis said.

“It means to show respect and honor for God,” I said. “Like when your Pa reads from the Bible on Sunday mornings.”

“But why does everybody get together?” Wallace said.

“To show they're a community,” I said.

We had come to the edge of the woods by then, and when we started climbing, I didn't have no breath for talk. I worked to stretch my sore legs and make them climb. I could work the soreness out, but it might take an hour of climbing and sweating.

When we got almost to the gap, to an open place, we stopped to rest and look back at the valley. The sun was in our eyes and reflecting from the creek. The settlement looked so peaceful, cradled
in the valley, the houses all together in a kind of nest of mountains, a few places set back in the mouths of hollers.