Chaneysville Incident (50 page)

“Local…you mean here?”

“That’s right. He was a Democrat, and his idea of journalism was to print darky jokes and run accounts of slaves slaughtering white people and then eating them, so Buchanan made him the public printer in Washington, and after four years Bowman ended up with a hundred thousand dollars, which wasn’t bad for those days. Of course, others did even better. Buchanan had another buddy, a Virginian named John Buchanan Floyd—I never could find out if they were related—who started out as a cotton planter in Arkansas and went broke, but he helped Buchanan get nominated, so Buchanan made him secretary of war and he managed to ‘lose’ $870,000. Those guys did okay, but everybody else was going broke; there was an economic panic so bad that the farmers in Illinois decided it was cheaper to burn their corn than to send it to market. Buchanan didn’t do much about that; he was too busy trying to make his Southern buddies happy by getting Kansas admitted to the Union with a constitution that would have made it more of a slave state than Alabama, a thing called the Lecompton Constitution. The Kansans were against it about four or five to one, but Buchanan arranged it that when they went to vote, the only choices they had about slavery were limited slavery or unlimited slavery, so the people who were against slavery didn’t vote. Buchanan brought it up before Congress, but the deal stank so bad that even guys like Stephen Douglas, who wasn’t exactly what you could call an enemy of the South, couldn’t stomach it. And that set the stage for the Civil War, because the Southerners were mad at Douglas, so when he was nominated in 1860 they bolted the Democratic party and nominated Breckinridge and split the vote, and Lincoln sneaked in between. So Buchanan ended up destroying his own party; the Democrats didn’t elect a President again for twenty-four years. But that wasn’t enough for Buchanan. By 1860 everybody knew there was going to be war—William H. Seward had been talking about the ‘irrepressible conflict’ for two whole years—so Buchanan let his Southern buddy Secretary Floyd send a hundred and fifteen stands of arms to Southern arsenals for safekeeping, and order Anderson not to defend Fort Sumter….”

“John,” she said, “will you please tell me what this has to do with that lovely old hotel?”

“That was the bastard’s headquarters. After he was elected he made it the Summer White House, but he’d been coming here for years, long enough to have kids named after him and make twenty-buck contributions to the local Episcopal church. He would hang out down there, being the big man with his local lackeys, like Bowman and a man from the West County, a guy named Jeremiah S. Black, who was smart enough to get to the State Supreme Court but not smart enough not to become Buchanan’s attorney general and end up getting blamed for mismanaging the South Carolina secession. But I guess it was a thrill for a lowly state judge to hang out with Buchanan’s other buddies, that compromising idiot Henry Clay and that damned sellout Daniel Webster and Associate Justice Robert Grier, who was a Polk appointee, even though he was from Pennsylvania. Of course, he wasn’t the only Supreme Court Justice down there. They were all down there. They spent the summers down there. That’s where they hatched out the dirty deal over the Dred Scott Decision. Buchanan didn’t make a single campaign trip, but he came here to talk with his buddies, Mr. Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, from Maryland, and Mr. Associate Justice James Wayne Moore from Georgia, and Mr. Associate Justice Peter Vivian Daniel from Virginia…”

“John…”

“…sitting down there with their own personal slaves waiting on them hand and foot, just like back home, bringing magnesia water to cure old Massa’s rheumatism, and then they’d send the niggers out to the quarters, just like they did back home in Dixie, and they’d switch over to iron water and go to work deciding exactly when they were going to tell the poor dumb darkies that they weren’t citizens, and weren’t ever going to be citizens, even if they managed to get free, and that they didn’t have any right to property, or to appeal in a court of law, and that the ‘status of slavery is perpetual and self-perpetuating,’ so they couldn’t be free and their kids couldn’t be free…”

I realized that my voice was too loud, that my fingers were aching from gripping the steering wheel, that my foot had somehow come to press the accelerator nearly to the floor, that we were flying over the highway at nearly sixty miles an hour. I felt a flush of adrenaline in my belly, and eased off on the accelerator gently, feeling sweat running down my spine. I let the car roll to a stop and sat there in my sweat. I took my hands off the wheel but I couldn’t hold them up; they were shaking. I put them in my lap, and felt them trembling on my legs. When my hands had stopped shaking enough I reached into my coat pocket and got out the flask. I took only a small sip, but I took it slowly, and I knew Judith was watching me. When I was finished I took the flask away from my mouth and put the top back on and got the car going.

From there it was easy. The road went downhill fairly steeply, but my guess had been right: the western slope of the mountain was free of drifts. Down in Cumberland Valley the wind was throwing up minor tornadoes of snow, but the plows had been through recently, to clear the drifts from the road. I knew the road well—I hated the valley, but I knew it—and I put the speed up to forty-five and we made good time, rolling south through Burning Bush and on into Patience. The climb to the top of Evitts Mountain was quick and easy; they had plowed the back roads too, for some reason.

At the top of the mountain I let the car roll to a stop and looked over at Judith. She had said nothing at all during the long, easy run, and I thought maybe she was asleep, but she wasn’t; I could see her eyes glinting in the light from the instrument panel. I started to call her name but changed my mind. I just took a sip from the flask and sat for a minute, looking down into the valley. I reached out to adjust the heater, but it was on full. “Must be windy up here,” I said.

She didn’t say anything. I shrugged and got us moving again, down into the valley towards Rainsburg. The road was clear; it was going to be easy. I risked taking my hands off the wheel, one at a time, and blowing on them. Judith looked at me. “Are you cold?” she said.

“Just my hands,” I said.

“It feels warm to me,” she said. “It’s the whiskey that’s making you feel cold.”

“The whiskey’s the only thing making me feel warm,” I said.

We came to the bottom of the mountain then, and I dropped down into second gear to negotiate a long curve. Then we were on the valley floor, rolling easily into Rainsburg. The road was still clear; we were still in the lee of a mountain, and the wind wasn’t pushing the snow across the road at all. But there was wind; I could feel it.

Rainsburg was asleep, the few houses and the store dark, but the road as bright as daylight in the unearthly glow of the vapor lamps. I turned right and moved slowly south, towards the bulk of the mountain. At the lower end of town, where the road turned east and began to climb, I let the car come to a stop and killed the engine. I felt for my gloves and hat, found them, and then found the flask. I took a good pull this time, and capped it, and then started to pull on the gloves.

“Are we there?” she said.

“Not yet,” I said. “Stay here.” I took the keys and got out, closing the door reluctantly, huddling for a minute beside the car. Then I straightened up, expecting to take the wind full on my face. But there was no wind. The air was calm and still. But cold.

I went around and opened the trunk. I unearthed the jack, and the chains. I worked quickly, jacking the car and slipping the chains on without trouble. I put the jack in the trunk and got back in the car. My hands were shaking, and I had trouble getting the key into the ignition. When I had the engine running I took out the flask again. I needed a toddy, but cold whiskey was better than nothing.

“I want to know where we’re going,” she said.

“Maybe no place,” I said. “It depends on what the wind has done to the road up here. It won’t be plowed, but we ought to do all right with the chains, providing the snow hasn’t drifted. And once we get to the top we should be able to get down into the cove on the other side.”

“What’s there?”

“Chaneysville,” I said.

“John, what’s in Chaneysville?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I put the car in gear and took us out of Rainsburg, working the speed up as high as I dared, looking for the place where the surface changed from macadam to gravel. It was about there that they would probably have stopped the plow, there that the hard going would begin. But I never saw the surface change, because they had stopped plowing before then, and the road had vanished into just a swath of white. Then I felt the increase in traction as the chains started to bite through snow into loose stone, digging deep, and I shifted down into second and settled back for the climb.

The first mile or so was easy; the mountain had killed the force of the wind. But then we came around the shoulder of the hill and the drifts were there. Light at first, and at an angle to the road—I had enough speed to slide through them—but they would get worse. I started to speak to Judith; then I realized that the slow speed had lulled her—she was asleep. It was just as well. The mountain was looming on our right side, and to the left the land fell away in a sheer drop of about fifty feet into a creekbed lined with rocks and fallen trees, and hitting one good drift at the wrong angle would have us over there, and if we went it would be better if she was relaxed. That wasn’t likely—the chains were biting well—and I began to think we were going to make it without any problem. But then there was a turn and I had to let the speed drop off, and then there was a hill and I went into the climb with too little speed. I didn’t dare give it gas; that would break the rear wheels loose. All I could do was keep one eye on the steadily falling speedometer and watch the road, hoping that the grade would lessen. It didn’t. It got steeper. The speed fell off. A quarter mile into it, with no end in sight, I knew I wasn’t going to make it anyway, and the speed was so low it hardly mattered, and I risked giving it gas, slowly, just a little. The speedometer leaped to the left as the wheels spun, and I was about to ease off, but the chains dug through to gravel and got an instant’s traction, and then we were skidding, the rear end going off to the left, swinging towards the drop. It happened quickly, but it went almost in slow motion, and I eased the wheel around and killed the skid in what seemed to me to be no time. But when I looked in the side mirror I saw the tail end hanging over nothing. It took all the will power I had not to spin the wheel to the right, but I held it and got lined up and fed in the gas, and the car straightened out, still moving at maybe ten miles an hour. But little by little the speed dropped off, and there wasn’t enough traction to get it up again, and then the road disappeared. I could see where it had to be, because there was mountain on one side and drop on the other and the trees formed an avenue, but I couldn’t see road, or hint of road. There was nothing but snow. I stopped the car, killed the engine and the headlights, and sat there, looking out at the snow and listening to the wind howling and the faint ticking of the engine as it cooled. Judith stirred beside me, twisting into a more comfortable position. I got out the flask and sipped at it while I looked out at the snow and thought about what to do. The situation didn’t really merit much consideration, but I made the thinking last as long as possible, and then, when I had reasoned everything through far more than was reasonable, I put my hat and gloves on and got out to go and make camp.

I had slept. I had slept and while I had slept the wind had died and the moon had gone down, leaving the woods black and still.

The fire was glowing happily now, the wood hissing gently, the coals throwing out good heat, enough, almost, to warm me. I checked the kettle; the snow had melted, making enough water for maybe two toddies, and it was hot. The coffeepot had more water in it; I had kept adding snow as what was there had melted. I rummaged around in the pack and found the coffee and dumped some in the pot and set it back over the fire.

It had been a long time since I had made a winter camp; fifteen years, at least. It felt good to do it again. I thought about plans. My watch read 4
A.M.
; daylight in three hours. No new snow had fallen; we should be able to get across the rest of the mountain on foot in an hour, and then another hour in the valley. We would be there by nine o’clock.

For the moment I was content to lie there, wrapped in blankets, by the fire, with Judith beside me; for a while I was relaxed and happy. But my mind does not turn off; it never has. Bit by bit the thoughts came slipping in, the facts and the calculations, the dates and the suspicions. There was no pattern to them, nothing I could grab on to; it was just random cerebration; a mind chuckling to itself. But it brought me out of my stupor, made me feel uneasy, made me remember where I was and where I was going. The wind kicked up then, chilling me. I straightened up and reached for the bottle. Judith stirred.

“John?”

“Here.”

“Whereat?”

“Right here.”

“No, wherewe?”

“The same place we were when you went to sleep: halfway up the side of a mountain.”

“Coffee?”

The pot was humming gently and the smell of the coffee was on the air, but she liked it strong. “Be ready in a minute,” I said.

She hauled herself ungracefully into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes. A gust of wind came whipping over the top of the windbreak and chilled us to the bone. “Jesus,” she said.

“He had enough sense to get born in a warm climate,” I said.

She stretched her arms out wide, then leaned over and wrapped them around me and hugged me. “This is fun,” she said.

“Some fun,” I said.

“You’re right,” she said. “Fun isn’t the right word. I was so tired last night I thought I was going to die, and then I thought I wasn’t going to have the chance because from what I could see we’re so stuck we’ll probably die up here, but what matters to me is that you brought me. I don’t know if that means anything, but it means something to me, and I don’t care if we do die of starvation—”