The Hinterlands (24 page)

All my plans seemed to be collapsing around those infernal beagles.

Suddenly Sue wheeled around, flinging me against a poplar. I hadn't marked a tree in a quarter mile. She bared her tushes and faced the beagles. They was took by surprise and pulled back. They circled and barked as Sue lunged at one and knocked it yelping away. She wheeled and leaped at another. The others pulled out of range.

The beagles acted utterly shocked. They hadn't expected to fight. They had been running for the thrill of chasing an animal that seemed to be fleeing.

Sue lunged again, then stood back to face her attackers. The beagles yelped and crossed in front of each other at a safe distance. Gradually the dogs quieted as we stood and watched them. Now we seemed entirely different. They couldn't bear to look at us with their wet, sad eyes. After a few awkward minutes they shivered nervously, sniffing the air, and slipped away one by one into the trees.

Sue watched in triumph as the beagles retreated and vanished. She looked at the bushes to see if the dogs would come back. We was still in pretty level country and you could hear things moving in the undergrowth. She raised her ears and listened, still panting. Now everybody knows a hog sweats through its nose. Her nose was covered with drops big as dew on a fall morning. I never knowed how the drops on a hog's nose could be so big and still hold together. They stood out round as marbles. Sue snorted and sweat flung off in all directions.

She had to make up her mind to keep going. They was no way I could prod her. I was tired already, and I figured she was tired. They was a little whisper in my ear that said to call it off and try again another day. Wait until the leaves has fell off and you can see further. Wait until the weather is cooler and the climb up the ridge will be easy. They hasn't been a road up the Blue Ridge all these thousands of years, it said. It wouldn't hurt to wait a couple more months. They's no shame in turning back if you know you'll try again in a few weeks.

If I turned back, I could be at Uncle Rufus's in time for dinner. We'd set down to some new corn and new potatoes. It would feel good just to sit down. I felt like I'd spent a hard morning in the field, bent over to pull weeds or thin out hills of corn.

Sue looked from side to side of the little clearing we stood in. Things scratched in the leaves and rustled in the brush. It could be ground squirrels or birds, or the beagles still circling around us. Sue could smell what was out there if the air was moving. I was soaked with sweat, and sweat dripped in my eyes. When you stop running you always feel hotter than when you're moving. It's like the heat builds and catches up with you once you stop. It's like the heat raises through your guts and bones into your head. I was boiling inside.

Sue looked to the left, and to the right. Then it was like she
remembered in a flash what she had been doing. She wheeled around, jerking me behind her. I almost lost my hold. Maybe she satisfied herself the dogs was finally gone. Or maybe she remembered her pen on Cedar Mountain and the trough of cornmeal and slop.

She swung around and it looked like she had forgot the direction up the mountain. I couldn't remember which way we was supposed to go without looking at the sun and looking through the trees for landmarks. The woods seemed the same on all sides. But after a couple of turns Sue straightened out and kept going. It was like it all come back to her, where she had been heading when the beagles appeared. She picked up speed and I followed, slashing a poplar with the hatchet as I run past. My tiredness and sweatiness seemed to fall away. It was like a headache had disappeared in a cool breeze. The woods stretched out toward home, and Sue seemed to know exactly where she was going.

The Bible says man was give dominion over the things of the earth, and I reckon that includes the soil itself. Even red clay can be carved and shifted around. Since I was a boy I had loved to make terraces in the field, to level out a band around the hill by cutting into the steepness and piling the dirt on the down side. We plowed a deep furrow and then plowed it again. And you had something level and regular in the uneven spill of the terrain. I love that look of something flat where everything else is rough and changing with the lay of the land.

A road is just a terrace across a slope, or across a swamp. It has to be wide enough and level enough for wagon wheels, and the grade has to be gentle enough for horses to pull big loads up, and hold back going down. A road is a kind of lever for moving a mountain, I used to say to myself. With the right grade the tallest
mountain can be conquered. By swinging around and back the heaviest load can be pulled right to the sky itself and brought down on the other side.

A good road is so tender, it seems to hurt as it reaches into the night or the shade of woods. I had seen the old Pike where it goes down through Saluda Gap and the Winding Stairs, and I had seen the road from Old Fort up to Asheville, and it thrilled me to think I could make something that useful.

When I think of new roads, I think of some preacher riding along them and building new churches and congregations on the way. I see young people going to singings and baptizings and dinner on the grounds. The young folks meet each other and fall in love and unite families scattered in the coves and hollers. Roads is like fresh water on dry ground. Along them people arrive, ground is cleared and towns get started in the valleys.

I had a feeling I could make a road anywhere, from any place on the face of the earth to another. All I needed was to level dirt a foot at a time, a step at a time. The soil will take you to the highest peak or the furthest point of the continent. The method is to haul dirt from the high places and put it in the low places, with spade and mattock, pick and shovel, dragpan and plow, with powder and fire-and-dowsing. All rocks can be broke or pried and rolled out of the way. It's a matter of pitch or connection. All paths and little roads tap into a turnpike like feeder streams fill and draw off a canal.

I didn't think I could hold on much longer. My left hand was already stiff from gripping the sow's tail, the way it gets from holding an ax handle for hours. My palm was sore and sweating. I wanted to change hands, but even if I could have, it would
be awkward to blaze the trees with my left. Maybe Sue would stop for a rest when we started climbing.

We had come to steeper ground. In South Carolina the hills start rolling higher as you approach the mountains. But the hills don't rise gradually toward the mountains; they canter along and hit the wall of the ridge head-on. It was in the steep country I really needed the sow. Anybody can lay off a road in flat country, in gentle hills. But how do you find the best grade for going around mountain flanks and crossing coves and winding up to a gap? Is it better to go across a ridge or around it?

Sue seemed to speed up as we started climbing. A hog climbs not in jumps and humps but in little steps running like a spider. A hog moves its big weight a little bit at a time.

The grits felt uneasy in my stomach. Having to run bent over was the worst. Several times the brash come up in my throat and I tasted the sour butter and coffee. I swallowed hard to sweeten the taste with spit. I hoped I didn't get sick at my stomach. If I got to throwing up, I'd have to let go of Sue. They's no worse feeling than that. A man will wish he is dead if he gets sick enough at his stomach. Bending over was putting pressure on my belly. And getting hot will make you sick too. I was used to heavy work, but the running was worser than anything I'd done.

The sow turned up the slope at a steeper angle than I would have took. We had come around a hill right to the foot of the mountain. I wondered why she was going to the top of the rise. She trotted, stirring up the dry leaves. I felt itchy with sweat and scratchy with spiders and gnats. But I could not scratch with the hatchet in my right hand.

It was only when we reached the top of the rise and walked panting through the thinner trees that I saw the reason she had come that way. The creek below was lined with big boulders. It
would take months, even years, to bust up the rocks to make a way through there. Sue had took the only route that bypassed the boulders. How had she knowed they was there? For the second time that day I felt a thrill of satisfaction and confidence in what I was doing. What the boy at Kuykendall's store said about a hog's instinct was turning out to be true.

My left hand felt like it was bleeding, but I could not release my hold to look at it. If the sow ever tired and stopped, I'd change hands and wrap my palm with a rag tore off my shirt.

But in the open woods on top of the rise she trotted even faster. I run beside her to stay upright, and that rested my back some. But to run beside her I had to go faster, and that made her increase her speed again. She seemed to have demons in her. I thought of the swine the demons was cast into and how they plunged into the sea. I was glad they was no ocean nearby.

It wasn't till we come down off the rise further on that I seen why she had been hurrying so. They was a ford across the creek. The creek up there was getting small and poured right through the leaves under the laurels. It was shallow with a rocky bottom. Sue stopped right in the middle. The current was so cold it burned my sweaty feet and legs but it felt good. She's giving me a rest, I thought.

And then I seen why she really stopped. It wasn't just that she wanted a drink. They was a kind of pulpy paste washed up on the rocks and she begun licking it like it was the finest slop. It looked and smelled like something rotten, something soured or vomited up. At first I couldn't see what it was. I bent closer and got a good whiff, and then I recognized the scent.

That pulp smelled like apples under a tree after they've been frostbit and thawed a few times. It was a sweet-sour smell. Somebody up the creek was making liquor, and they had throwed out
the mash after the beer was done. They was probably boiling the beer at that moment, while the mess washed downstream. I knowed they was nothing a hog loved better than half-rotten mash.

What is mash? Why, mash is what you have left after you get the juice out of fermented malt. What is malt? That's sprouted corn you've kept warm and wet and then ground up to ferment.

No, I've never made liquor. That is, I never made it to sell. But I've seen it made. I've even helped make a little in my time, for my own use. For medicine, you might say. Everybody used to make a little whiskey back then. It was necessary to have alcohol for tinctures and medicines. Everybody kept a jug or a keg. We didn't figure it was the giverment's business, what we done with our corn and peaches and apples. The giverment was after the revenue. They wanted us to make the liquor and pay taxes and then buy it back from them.

South Carolina even then was full of blockaders that made hundreds and thousands of gallons to sell in the flat country. Dark Corner was wild as anybody could want. It was full of Howards and Gosnells, Revises and Morgans, people that was always fussing and feuding. My Pa always said, “Stay away from the blockaders in Dark Corner. In a fight they'll cut a man from head to belly before he can wink.”

“Get out of there, go on!” I shouted to Sue, and shoved her flanks. But she only stepped forward to gobble another cake of mash stuck on the bank. That was like both wine and dessert to a hog, I reckon. The blockaders often fed their mash to hogs, if they was close enough to the pen. And their hogs stayed drunk half the time, grunting happy and fat.

The sow eat all the mash in sight and then scrambled up into
the laurels. I hoped she wouldn't head upstream. The still must be somewhere up there, probably not too far away. Some blockaders guard their works and shoot anybody that comes in sight. Others just hide if they hear somebody coming. Since it was day, I thought they might have throwed out the mash and gone home with the night's work. But what would they think of a man that come running along holding a hog's tail? How could I explain myself and Sue to men with guns pointed at me?

The sow turned and followed the bank of the stream, probably smelling more mash further up. That was one thing I had not planned for the day. I had feared that we might run into blockaders, but I hadn't thought Sue would seek them out in the holler, and I hadn't considered the sow might get drunk.

I couldn't see a thing through the laurels. They growed right down to the bank of the stream. We ducked around the bushes and under them. In such a cover a man could be bushwhacked and never know what hit him. I didn't have time to look around. I was too busy dodging limbs and holding on to Sue with my left hand. Everywhere I looked it seemed somebody was watching us behind the thickets. A chill went through my guts and bones.

I thought again of letting go, of giving up the survey, of coming back in the fall like Uncle Rufus suggested. It wouldn't be no good if I was shot dead trying to find a road.

I could let Sue go and she'd wander back on her own. She would fatten up on the mast and I would catch her at hog-killing time. They was other roads I could build, other jobs, and even other occupations. I was young enough to foller any trade I chose. I could be a carpenter, learn masonry. It would take a while to get started and build up a business. Even Professor MacPherson couldn't object to a change of trade. He would probably welcome something more practical than the dream of building turnpikes.

My grand design for the road seemed ludicrous there in the laurel thicket with blockaders lurking in the shadows. How had I come to that hideous situation? Streaming with sweat and covered with bark soot and gnats, my hand gripping a hog's rear end? I could smell myself in the close air; I smelled raw and afraid, running scared.

I would have turned back then, except for the thought that it was probably too late. The trees above leaned over as though threatening to smother me. The sky and sun was hid away. The laurel bushes poked at me and twigs stabbed at my eyes as I run past. They was already watching me, most like, and I couldn't get away. I smelled like sweat and hog farts. I couldn't see no way out of the trap I'd come to.