The Hinterlands (26 page)

Where we come out on top of the ridge the waterfall was just a whisper far below. I could tell from the angle of the sun falling on the poplars it was late morning. Jarflies sung in the trees, or maybe it was rattlers. With the blood thumping in my ears I could not be sure.

Sweat was pouring into my eyes and I couldn't blink it away. I tried to wipe my forehead with my sleeve, but my shirt was wet and stuck with bits of dirt and leaves. I must have got a piece of trash in my eye, because suddenly it hurt like somebody had jabbed a stick in it. It was my right eye, and whatever had stuck in it lodged like a briar or piece of glass.

“Whoa,” I said to Sue. But she didn't pay no attention to me. She didn't even pause. I blinked my eye quick as I could, but it didn't do no good. Tears practically squirted out of my eye, it hurt so much. I couldn't let go, and I couldn't drop the hatchet. The hurt stabbed through my eyeball and through my head.

I tried to roll my eyeball, because that worked sometimes to dislodge things. But it was hard to roll my eyes and see where I was going at the same time. You have to roll both your eyes and
Sue was running right through the poplars. If I didn't look, I could crash into a tree or limb and gouge my eye out, as Aunt Willa had warned me. My eye hurt so bad, I couldn't hardly stand it. Whatever it was, was turned wrong under my eyelid. With all the tears and sweat I couldn't see that well anyway.

“Whoa,” I said again to the sow. But I didn't expect her to slow down. I was talking to soothe myself. I was close to panicking, son. A man can't stand something cutting into his eye. It will terrify him that he can't see, that the world is crashing in on him, and he must get the hurting thing out of his eye.

Sometimes when you have a great pain and you can't do nothing about it, you try to think of something else. You try to forget the pain into control. I tried to think of the path ahead, and the road we would build, but it didn't do no good. I tried to think of the blockaders we had passed and what they was doing that very minute, whether they was already moving their still.

I tried to think of Mary and what she was doing. I figured she was sitting on a cool porch somewhere in town, teaching little children to draw. She knowed I was going to make the survey that day, but I told her she might as well stay in town. Later she might go to her room and write a letter, and have lemonade before lunch. She would be cool and calm, and she would be appalled at the sweaty, bloody, bruised condition I was in. I tried to imagine how she would look in her summer dress. But it wasn't no good. The pain in my eye was too bad. I couldn't think of anything but the hurting. If I didn't do something quick, I would have to let Sue go and call the whole thing off.

I tried to look down while holding my head up, and at the same time look out for limbs and trees. But my eye stung so bad it kept blinking and my face winced. I couldn't look long in any one direction. I kept turning my head like that would sling the piece
out of my eye. The turning seemed to help the pain a little. The more I turned my head the less the eye seemed to hurt.

The problem was I couldn't keep my eye on where we was going. Sue brushed me past a black oak tree and the bark raked my shoulder and cheek like a rasp. More soot was sticking to my sweaty skin. I stumbled across my own feet a couple of times. The pain in my eye made me reckless, and it made me lose my balance.

What happened next I don't know. But I figured later my head must have hit a big limb, because they was a knot on my forehead big as a guinea egg. But I seen stars flung every which way, and it was like the air turned to flame and then dark, flame and then dark. It was like I heard echoes off the mountains and rumbles in the ground under my feet.

But the oddest thing was, I must have kept walking right along after the sow. I guess I had been walking so long my legs just kept going while the whole night sky was shooting around in my head, and the Milky Way run through my mind like a rag pulled through a wringer. I just kept hoofing as before.

When I opened my eyes again, the vision in my right eye was foggy, the way it is after you rub your eye a long time, or when you have a fever in it. It was like they was a veil on the light, or I was looking through waxed paper or a piece of onionskin. But whatever had caught in my eye was gone. It had been knocked out, or washed out, by the lick on my forehead. I later found something black and round in the corner of my eye. It looked like a hard beetle that had been smashed. I guess what hurt so much was its shell that had broke, or maybe its sharp claws. My eye was sore as if it had been stuck with a briar. And it felt like it had grown a scum over it.

When I opened my eyes, I seen somebody standing on the rise
above me. I just caught him out of the corner of my left eye. It was an Indian dressed in homespun pants and a buckskin shirt. The Indian's long hair was tied to a feather at the back. He looked like a Cherokee, but I didn't really have a chance to examine him. He stood there without making a gesture or offering a greeting. I wasn't even sure I seen him, because the sow didn't seem to take notice. Maybe it was a trick of the sweat, or the tears drying in my eye. Or maybe the hit on my head, or the pain in my eye, that made me a little beside myself.

When I turned to glance back where he had stood, they was trees in the way and I couldn't see nobody at all. Maybe it was just a dream. But the figure had been as real as daylight. The Indian stood there watching us go past. He didn't threaten or make any sign he had seen us. I would have liked to look back to see where he went but I couldn't stop Sue. I wondered if they was some trick to his disappearance, a hole he had dropped in, or a bush he hid behind. But Sue kept running and I couldn't even turn around, much less search for him. I was beginning to wonder if the heat had got to my brain.

My homespun shirt and pants was so wet with sweat they weighed like iron. Where the cloth pulled tight I wanted to shift it around to prevent binding, but my hands wasn't free. Holding the hatchet, I could only make clumsy attempts to straighten my trousers and suspenders.

How far had I come? So much had happened already to take my mind off the survey that I had no way of knowing if we was still headed toward Cedar Mountain. It seemed like we was still in the right direction, but I couldn't be sure. The truth was we could have been halfway to Wall Holler, or walking in a curve back
toward Pumpkintown. The sun was close enough to the middle of the sky that I knowed it was near dinner time. But I couldn't tell what was north and south, much less east and west, we had made so many turns and switchbacks. The sun still seemed a little bit behind me, but I couldn't tell for sure.

If they had been a trail before, we had lost it. It seemed like we was high up on a mountain in some flat woods. It seemed like we was approaching the end of the world. I could see nothing behind the trees but sky. I was always confused by a place so flat you couldn't tell which way the water runs. Where runoff can't make up its mind which way to go, how can people? Was we on top of the highest ridge? At Cedar Mountain we should be able to see the Pisgah mountains to the north, blue and hazy ahead.

My vision was so clouded from the hurt eye and sweat I couldn't trust it. But it looked like they was some kind of lake ahead, or maybe just a zone of fog around the edge of the mountain. You don't usually see fog on the mountains on a summer day with the sun shining. But that was what it seemed like through the trees, except for a sparkle here and there like water. If I could have stopped and looked better I might have figured it out. But stumbling and panting, trying to mark a tree every hundred feet, I could only glance ahead. Sometimes it looked like the sky coming to meet us, like we was going to run out on the sky. And sometimes the view would be lost behind laurels and it didn't seem like they was nothing ahead at all.

I even thought I could smell water, but when you're panting and streaming sweat and follering a hog you can't be certain of your sense of smell either.

We come to an open place in the trees, and sure enough, they was water ahead of us. It looked like a stream, or a pond with tall pines on the far side. It was the prettiest little pool you ever seen,
with trees right at the edge and a meadow on the near side. I'd never heard of any pond near Cedar Mountain. It was like some place you would dream about. I knowed I was lost.

Sue did not slow down, but headed straight toward the meadow and the sheet of water. A breeze was coming off the pond. Maybe we could at least cool off, whatever kind of apparition this was.

I had once heard Old Man Jarvis tell about a Cherokee story of a lake on a mountaintop. But Jarvis said the lake was supposed to be on top of the Smokies or the Plott Balsams. Anyway they was supposed to be a lake on top of the mountain that nobody could see normally. But if a man was in pain, or had been wounded, he could find that lake and be healed in its water. The lake would be revealed to him but nobody else. And after he was cured by its water the lake would disappear and he couldn't remember where it was. It was just a tale Old Man Jarvis told, about the ancient bear that lived by the lake, and the spirits of ancestors that guarded the healing waters. Jarvis was always talking on about ghosts and such, and I never believed any of his stories, but the pond reminded me of what he had said.

I thought I heard voices, and somebody screaming, but Sue kept running and I couldn't be sure. It seemed like they was high pitches and shrieks. Maybe it was birds. Sue come around a clump of shumake bushes and there was this meadow. And beyond the meadow was a group of girls playing in the water. Somebody had dammed up the creek with mud and brush, and these girls without a stitch of clothes was playing in the water. They was dark skinned like Indians, and you never seen such a pretty sight.

I felt even shorter of breath than before, and would have pulled back and stopped but Sue kept right on going. They's nothing startles or scares a man much as the sight of a naked woman when
he don't expect it. A woman without her clothes will stop you in your tracks every time.

But I couldn't stop. The sow paid no attention to the bathing girls at all. I knowed it was rude to rush up to them with no warning, but they was nothing else I could do. Sue would not even slow down, and we come stumbling across the meadow.

The girls was so busy splashing the creek water, chasing each other and screaming they didn't even see us. Their hair was black and glistened in the sun. Some was so young, they didn't even have hair down at their crotch, but others was older and mature. I remember thinking in my rush how big their legs was at their thighs. The dammed water was strange, like a beaver pond, but the girls playing there was even stranger. They shrieked and pushed each other into the water. Others run along the grass and jumped into the shallows. A few laid in the grass sunning theirselves.

I don't know which one seen us first. Sue come trotting along straight at them, and it flashed in my mind how I must look, a crazed man in sweat and filth running at them swinging a hatchet. But they was no way I could pause and reassure them.

“Eeeeee!” one screamed. The others thought she was still playing.

Now it was an even prettier sight. They was the golden color of gypsies, and not a one had a thread of clothes on. Some just had little breasts that was beginning to swell, but the older girls had big round breasts with nipples the color of coffee. I'd never seen but one naked woman in my life, and I'd never seen a naked Indian girl. They was laughing and splashing and their titties was bouncing and swinging around. I couldn't look right at them, and I couldn't keep from looking.

They was one in particular that was taller than the rest. She was tall and slim and had this long black hair that went down over her
shoulder. She was not playing with the others but seemed to be looking at something in the shallows near shore. Maybe she was searching for some kind of shells or rocks, or watching minnows. Her hair fell down around her face as she bent over. She had the most perfect large breasts I ever seen till this day.

Some things you carry with you all your life, and I tell you the sight of that girl is something I never forgot. Some sights make life worth living. They give you a lift every time you recall them. They are things you remember when everything else goes wrong.

She looked up and seen me just as the other girl screamed. But the tall woman didn't seem startled or scared at all. She didn't even seem embarrassed. In fact, she smiled at me—I must have been a sight—like she was pleased that I seen her there in the water, happy that I seen how beautiful she looked. It seemed so natural, the way she looked at me.

It seemed like she was going to step forward and say hello to me, come wading to the bank and shake my hand. Her hips was narrow and rounded perfectly to her thighs. It was like I had walked into another world. All the running and straining, the sweating and dirtiness seemed fell away. For once Sue slowed, maybe in astonishment at the sight of all them golden bodies, maybe because she was considering plunging into the water too.

In the instant as the tall girl smiled at me and the first girl screamed, a breeze seemed to dry the sweat on my forehead and clear my sight. The rocks in the shallows of the creek shined like nuggets and nuts of metal. The grass by the water was purple branch grass.

The girl that screamed first screamed again, and pointed at Sue and me. Everybody stopped and stood in the water watching us. It felt like the sun got dark that instant. There I was, walking along the bank with my hand on a sow's tail in front of thirty
naked girls. I tried to wave with the hatchet, but it was an odd gesture. I tried to smile and say hello, as I had just smiled at the tall girl a second before. I wanted to turn my head and keep walking to show them I hadn't meant to surprise them, to spy on them. But I didn't know how to say that to them.

In that moment when everybody froze, I noticed something even more astonishing about the girls. They did not have Indian features. They had skins dark as Indians or mulattoes, but their features was neither black nor Indian. They had white features, with dark skin and straight black hair. And it come to me they was Melungeons. They was the lost tribe of Israel I'd always heard about. They was supposed to live in the mountains toward Tennessee, but I'd never seen any. They lived like gypsies in the remote coves, and the preachers said they was the lost tribe.