The Hinterlands (27 page)

Just then an old woman run shouting out of the trees. She wore a bandana around her hair and she pointed a finger at me. I seen her over my shoulder as we trotted on. She was screaming at me but I couldn't understand what she was saying.

“Harashawi!” she seemed to be shouting.

All the girls was watching Sue and me run along the grass. I couldn't stop even if I wanted to. I figured that old woman was the person in charge of all them young girls, maybe some kind of teacher or guardian. I knowed the Melungeons lived off by theirselves in the high mountains, but nobody knowed much about them. They was just the lost tribe, and nobody knowed about their religion or private ways. They was tales about them mingling with the Cherokee. These people looked like whites, except for the color of their skin.

“Harashawi!” the old woman hollered. She run right up to me and shook her finger in my face. Then she pointed back to all the naked girls in the water. It was clear what she was saying. She was
shaming me for surprising the girls during their swim. Whatever kind of people they was, men wasn't supposed to bother the girls while they was bathing. It struck me how much people was alike everywhere, even the strangest people.

“Harashawi,” the old woman said, and crossed her arms and uncrossed them. I guess everybody in the world has the same gestures for saying something is forbidden.

She run in front of me and Sue and the sow stopped, turned to go around. But the old woman headed us off again. She was faster than you would expect an old woman to be. She was not going to let us get away until she had had her say.

“Harashawi,” she kept saying, like shame on you, shame on you. Sue and me backed around, but the girls had come up behind us. The sow turned in confusion, looking for a way to escape from the closing circle. Now the old woman begun hollering at the girls. Some was holding clothes up to their chests and some others had slipped their skirts on. But the tall girl stood back at the edge of the water and watched. The girls was all dripping wet and their skin shined in the sunlight.

The old woman kept screaming at them, and one by one they slipped back to where their clothes was piled in the grass. The dresses had big stripes and all kinds of colors. I had never seen clothes like that, even in pictures.

The girls put the many-colored dresses over their heads and slipped them on their wet bodies. The last to put on clothes was the tall girl, who never had come close. When she stood out of the water, you could see how strong she was in her legs and hips.

“Harashawi!” the old woman shouted. The tall girl waited a few moments before going to get her dress. She was older than the others, and must have been some kind of assistant teacher or
leader. I could see she was not afraid of the old woman as the others were. She slipped into her dress slow and deliberate.

“We was just passing through,” I said to the old woman, and to the girls. “We are surveying a way for a turnpike across the mountain.” It sounded foolish, explaining to them what I was doing, all sweaty and tired, following a sow through the woods. But it was even stranger because I could see they didn't understand. They only knowed their own tongue apparently, and I had no way of showing them what I meant. I held up my hatchet and they backed away, then crowded in closer to look at the pig. I let the hatchet drop down to my side to show them how harmless I was. They seemed curious to get a closer look at us. Hemmed in like that, they wasn't nowhere me and Sue could go.

But the old woman wasn't mollified a bit. She kept hollering and pushing her finger in my face. It was clear I had committed a sin in their society. Or maybe it was the sow that upset her. Maybe they had a law against hogs or pork. She come up close and I seen my reflection in her black eyes. She smelled like garlic or some other strong seasoning and she looked right in my face.

Before I knowed it, she had slapped me right in the straddle on my privates. It didn't hurt too much, but I was took by surprise. It was like a warning slap. I'd heard stories of boys being attacked by women in houses of ill repute down in Columbia or Augusta when they forgot or refused to pay. This old woman slapped me like she was making a threat.

“Hold on there!” I hollered. Sue was twisting around nervously looking for a way out. The circle of half-clothed wet girls seemed to tighten. I couldn't tell if they was just curious, or trying to keep me from running away. They was something ridiculous about my situation, but nothing ridiculous about the old woman. She was still pointing her finger and hollering at me.

“I'm just surveying a road,” I said. “I'm just passing through, not bothering nobody.”

I wondered if she thought I owned the land and was going to run them off. And it occurred to me she thought I had used the sow as an excuse to spy on the girls.

“What kind of people are you?” I said. But she didn't understand. The old woman just kept hollering. I looked around at the girls, and they wasn't laughing anymore. They watched me and Sue with fear and fascination. I had the hatchet in my hand and the old woman was pointing at that. I raised my hand to show her it was just an ordinary kindling splitter and she jerked away. And the girls backed away too. Sue turned in the open space.

The old woman pointed to the hatchet and then to herself. She meant me to give it to her. She was going to take away my hatchet. She wanted to believe I was dangerous.

“I need this for marking trees,” I said. “I'm just blazing out a way for a road. I want to split the Blue Ridge with a road.” But it wasn't no use. She didn't understand a thing I said, and she didn't want to understand. Every time I raised the hatchet to explain or gesture, they backed away, then moved in closer. I tried to think of a way to show them what I was trying to do.

The old woman was telling them to do something. I didn't like the changed look on their faces. They was afraid of me now and getting scareder. Things can get dangerous, when somebody is afraid of you.

“I'll just be on my way,” I said, and pointed toward the mountains where I was headed. I thought I could see Caesar's Head up there in the haze. I wouldn't mind the heat and strain if I could just get away, get back to work. My hard journey seemed sweet and certain compared to what I had got myself into.

The old woman screamed when I raised the hatchet to point, like I had tried to hit her.

“I just want to get going,” I said. “Don't want to hurt nobody.”

And just then I seen where the girls had come from. They had some tents in the trees at the edge of the meadow. The tents was red and blue and not shaped like any tents I had ever seen. They had rounded tops, like the cloth was stretched on hoops of a covered wagon. They was all bright colors. I didn't see no menfolks, and I didn't see no horses. I couldn't imagine where the men of their tribe had gone.

“Where you all from?” I said to the old woman. “How did you bring these tents up here?” But she didn't pay no attention to me. She was still haranguing the girls and hollering at me by turns. It was beginning to look bad.

The girls would step in closer, then move away when I turned, like I was some kind of animal they was afraid of. Some had their clothes only half on.

“Just let me go,” I said. “I don't mean to bother nobody.”

The old woman had found a stick somewhere. It was like a walking stick but heavier. It looked like something that might be used for troubling clothes in a washpot. I didn't like the way she looked at me, like she was trying to figure out how to finish off a treed bear or painter.

“We wasn't trying to hurt nobody,” I said.

But the old woman wasn't listening and she didn't see no fun in anything. She was giving orders to the girls, but of course I couldn't understand them. I guess she was telling each to grab hold of me somewhere so I couldn't hit them with the hatchet.

Sue was squealing with nervousness. She was still panting from the run and slobber was hanging from her jaws and nose. She was squealing and grunting with panic, the way I felt like doing.

“Just let us go and we'll be on our way,” I said, and pointed toward the mountains yonder. The old woman swung the stick at me and I jerked my arm back.

You say, what did they want with me? I didn't know what they wanted or what they intended, and I still don't. I knowed the old woman was mad because I had seen her girls naked, and I guessed she wanted to punish me. But I couldn't be sure of anything. For all I knowed, them girls was princesses and any man that seen them bathing would be put to death. Maybe they was part of a harem. They was no telling what I had run into.

“I never meant to harm nobody,” I said again. As I turned with the sow in the tightening circle, I knowed I was most vulnerable from behind. I turned with Sue to face my accusers and attackers, but I couldn't cover my back. And sure enough, the first hands that touched me grabbed from behind. They was soft girl hands, but they was so many they gripped my arms fast. I thrashed to break free. It's a reflex: somebody grabs you and you jerk to get loose.

Even as I thrashed I made sure I didn't hit nobody with the hatchet. Scared as I was, I seen my only hope was not to hurt anybody.

I held onto Sue's tail, and I held onto the hatchet, and I tried to knock them away with my elbows. I lunged back and suddenly found myself off balance. They was grabbing my feet and I was lifted up and turned away. It didn't seem possible delicate young girls could have such strength. It was like the sky whirled around as they lifted me. I floated in a pool of hands.

Before I knowed it, the pig's tail was twisted out of my grasp, and fingernails was biting into my right hand to free it from the hatchet. I held the handle hard as I could but it was twisted from my grip. I don't know how so many of them could have grabbed
my wrist and fingers. The hatchet come loose and a dozen hands was holding my right arm.

“You let me go,” I hollered. “I ain't done no harm.” I couldn't see where we was going. They didn't carry me on their shoulders, and I was surrounded by scared and curious girls. Each of them had a hand on me, on my arms and back, in my hair.

“Put me down and I'll go on,” I said.

They seemed to be carrying me toward the tents in the trees. I wondered if they was cannibals, or performed human sacrifices. I'd heard Melungeons had their own religion and didn't practice any of our beliefs. I didn't know when the lost tribe give up its practices of the Bible of Israel.

“I'll forget I ever seen any of you,” I said.

Some of the girls started giggling in their nervousness, and then all of them begun giggling. They poked and pinched me as they carried me. I didn't make any sound like I was hurt, for I figured that would make them prod and pinch more. I didn't want to make them think it would be easy to torture me.

The old woman screamed at them for laughing. I guess she wanted to make it a solemn ceremony of sacrifice or execution. But once they started giggling, they couldn't seem to stop.

One girl pointed to my belly button where my shirt had tore open, and they all laughed. A lot of dust and bits of bark had stuck to the sweat there and my navel was black. Another one pinched me on the nipple, and they all laughed again. The old woman shouted something and they got quiet.

“People will come looking for me,” I said. “If anything happens they will be a search party.” I said it but they didn't understand, and I didn't even believe it. I didn't know where I was or who they was, and it all seemed like a dream. I wondered if I'd had a heat stroke and died along the trail, and this was the hereafter. The
secret of death might be that it was hard to tell where life ended and death started.

Whack! Something hit me on the side of the head and my ears rung and fire shot under my eyelids. It was the old woman's stick. The spot she hit was numb for an instant and then begun to burn. It felt like it might be bleeding, but I couldn't tell.

I didn't even know they was lowering me until I felt the ground at my head. I expected them to leave me there and stand back, but they all knelt around me. They was just young girls, scared of what they was doing, but even more scared of the old woman. They held me down and the old woman stood at my feet. She spoke to one of the girls who then run to the tents and come back with something she handed to the old woman. It was little and I couldn't tell what it was. The old woman held up a string that had glittering things on it. I couldn't make any sense of it. It was a fine string of silk or flax with bits of broken glass wove or tied into it. I wondered if it was some kind of necklace.

Then the old woman handed her stick to one of the girls and took something out of her dress. It looked like a big needle or an awl. It was sharp as a needle but fat at the back like it was used for punching holes. The old woman held up the awl and string of slivered glass in the sun. Suddenly it come to me what she was about. She was going to punch a hole through me, through my hand or skin or tongue, or some other place, and pull the string of broken glass through the hole. It was their kind of torture.

“No!” I hollered. The girls held me tighter as they slipped my shirt off. I had always heard how Indians stripped their victims before they tortured them. And when a woman was humiliated and run out of town they always stripped her and shaved her head. And people to be tarred and feathered was stripped naked.

“No!” I hollered again. I seen they was going to make me naked
like I had seen them. But they had ceremonies and punishments I didn't know nothing about. The old woman held the big needle and the sparkling string up to the sun for me to see.

“I am a United States citizen,” I said, thinking they must belong to some foreign nation. Maybe they was Spaniards or Frenchies. I'd heard they was still traders and settlers speaking foreign tongues in the Southwest. Maybe they had wandered into the mountains by mistake.

“They's laws in this country,” I said. “People will look for me.” It added to the horror that they was such pretty girls holding me down, pinching and squeezing me. They had to do whatever the old woman told them, but they had their own curiosity too.