Hardcastle (4 page)

Beyond the schoolhouse there was a lot, cluttered with timbers and rife with weeds. Then a small grimy depot, once painted mustard yellow. The railroad crossed the river upon a wooden trestle, ran beside the depot’s empty platform, and then crossed back again. Above the depot there was a boarded-up movie house; something neither Shulls Mills nor any of the other farming communities around it ever had. Between the double doors and the ticket window there was a faded poster which advertised
Rio Rita
in “Marvelous Photourama.”

Across the highway the small company houses were made of rough, unpainted lumber; and perched on short wooden posts above the hardscrabble earth, they looked as much alike as blackbirds on a fence. As he passed them by, he could smell the odor of side meat frying in skillets; the sulfurous odor of burning coal; and from outhouses over pits too shallow or too seldom limed, the rank odor of human dung. The stink of it made his stomach roll, but it seemed to bother no one else. Here and there he could see shadowy figures at ease upon the porches; and as though nothing at all tainted the air she breathed, an old woman came toward him down the opposite side of the road, a peck bucket full of water hanging from each gnarled hand. She made slow, shuffling progress, listed heavily with every step she took, but not a drop of water licked over the brims. On his right two miners leaned back in split-bottom chairs upon the gallery of the commissary and, with eyes ghostly white in their black faces, watched him pass. The peace of evening seemed to be upon them too, what with the sky yet a light, mother-of-pearl grey, and, all about, the earth dark-toned and slipping toward dusk. Music nodded to them, said, “Howdee,” and they nodded and spoke in return.

He kept his pace up the road. Across the river and the railroad tracks, there were two coal cars painted the color of rust parked on the siding, a mountain of two or three hundred tons of nut and slack coal just behind them. A sign on the huge, blackened tipple said:
HARDCASTLE COAL CO
. Smoke rose from the burning gob pile, smoke and steam from the power plant; but with every step he took away from Elkin, the stink of the coal camp diminished and the subtler odors of the earth returned: the faint mustiness of dying leaves and grasses, the glass-clear odor of the river, and, from high up on the hogbacks and ridges, the faraway breath of pines. All at once he could tell from the sweet, sharp kiss of the air upon his face and hands that it would likely frost and be achingly cold before morning. He saw no reason to try to make Valle Crucis if he could find something to eat, some reasonable shelter before he got there. He was either going to have to find shelter or sit by a fire and tend it all night. The second possibility made him remember the whiskey inside his sack; and although he knew he should have no more just then, he stopped and got it out. He took only one swallow, but it warmed him at once. He held the bottle against the sky and saw that it was still half full. Hellkatoot, he thought, if I need to, I can sip on this and walk till morning.

3

REGUS PATOFF BONE

THE SHACK SAGGING into the mountain had a tin roof and an open dogtrot down the center, with what looked like two rooms opening off either side. A small barn and a corncrib rose behind it, and down in front and to the north there was a low structure not much bigger than six feet square that appeared to be a springhouse. But what interested him most was a saddle of land southwest of the barn, where he was certain he could see the ghost of a kitchen garden, the standing up of cabbage stalks, the withered vines of pole beans clinging to stakes. Behind that, where the land was steeper, three widely spaced haystacks loomed darkly against the side of the mountain. Even if the garden ain’t got nothing in it, he thought, I can dig me out a place in that far haystack and sleep like a babe.

He stepped off the road in the near darkness, watched awhile, and listened. There was no movement anywhere around the homestead, and he heard nothing. There was no light in the rooms off the north side of the breezeway and none in the front room off the south side, but the air and earth around the left rear corner of the house were polished a faint yellow. Music suspected the kitchen occupied that corner. Those who lived there might have settled themselves down to eat; still, he thought, someone might yet be in the barn, milking, say, or doing some other chore.

Although the springhouse was no more than twenty-five yards from the front porch, he decided to take a look at it first, if a springhouse it was; and as quietly as he could, he covered about half the distance from the highway to the house, walking, not upon the wagon road, but to one side of it for fear of stirring gravel or stones. He stopped again to listen, cocking his head, scarcely breathing; and below the surface quiet, he did hear sounds, very faint but there: the squeak of an oven door, the rattle of a pan, then the squeak of the oven door shutting. At last the receptacle of his ear grew so crowded with the underpinnings of silence, he was unable to sort them out. He heard water trickling somewhere and another sound he took to be from the barn—the rhythmic whisper of milk spewing into a pail, he thought, but he discovered it was only the stirring of his own clothing as he breathed. He went on toward the small, low structure until he found that it was, indeed, a springhouse; but just as he was lifting the latch of its door, a dog barked. He nearly bolted, but on a sudden impulse let himself inside. The dog seemed to pause and listen before he bayed with more authority. “Hush up,” he heard someone tell it, a woman’s voice, he thought. The dog made one or two more croupy, grumbling barks and ceased.

Inside, the springhouse was totally dark and full of the liquid comment of water running through it. “Hellkatoot,” Music whispered to himself, and all of a sudden reeling drunk, he sank down on his haunches and did not move for minutes, waiting for his dizziness to pass. Excitement seemed to have pumped him so full of alcohol that, even when he did begin to inch about on hands and knees, his dizziness came back and he nearly fell sideways. It’s only that I can’t see nothing, he thought, and allowed himself to rest again. At last, feeling about in the dark, he discovered the edge of the cooling trough and what seemed a large crock covered with a rag, and beside that, a gallon mason jar. Carefully he lifted the mason jar from the trough and unscrewed the lid. It was heavy and therefore full of something, but it was more faith than the nearly nonexistent sweet, chalky odor that told him it was milk. He drank until his stomach stretched and the mason jar grew lighter. “I thank you,” he whispered. He felt around for the lid, put it on again, and set the jar back in the trough. He rested again. “That’s better,” he said. He felt for his paper parcel and, as quietly as he could, opened the door.

Although he expected it, the dog made no comment. Outside in the lesser dark, he closed the door carefully. It made no sound he could hear, for it was hung from leather hinges, and he realized only his carelessness with the latch had caused his trouble getting in. He began to sneak back down the hill, thinking it best to go down to the highway and make a big loop around from the south, rather than risk crossing directly in front of the shack. Even so, the dog began to bark before he’d gone two steps; but it was, he realized all at once, inside the shack, and he went on.

In the moony darkness he searched the garden end to end, finding only two turnips, one of them no larger than a crab apple, and a handful of beans with hulls as tough as leather. He took his coat out of the paper bag and put what he had gathered inside with the hope that tomorrow, on the way to Valle Crucis, he might be able to add enough to it to make himself a stew.

He was cold and almost put on his coat, but thought better of it. It would be best to save its warmth until he settled down for the night; digging out a place for himself in the haystack, like walking, would warm him. In any case, he was only cold on the surface—his skin merely a size or so too small—not bone-cold.

On the south side of the haystack most distant from the house he began to dig. About a foot above the ground, he burrowed into the faint warmth of it, into the slow, sweet fire of its rot and fermentation. When at last he was done, he turned around, eased himself in feetfirst, and covered his lower body with hay. He spread his coat over him and heaped as much hay as he could upon it, and at last drew the paper sack under his head and rested the base of his skull on the bottom of the cooking pot inside it. “Ahh,” he said and wished only, and belatedly, for another taste of the moonshine tucked away inside the sack and for a smoke, but he made no move to get them. He looked straight up at the stars and the pale moon, which, as it rode in the cold night sky, seemed to smoke faintly around its rim. Wrapped in the warm, musty sweetness of hay, he was drifting toward sleep when some rattletrap of a car or truck passed on the highway below him. He listened as it went on toward Valle Crucis. No, it had paused to idle where the wagon road from the shack emptied into the highway. No, he heard a grench of gears and the slower growling of the motor. The goddamned thing was climbing the wagon road toward the shack. He could hear the gravel crunch, the jolting as it negotiated the ruts. The motor idled, shuddered, stopped. He heard the thump of a clutch pedal released from the pressure of a foot, a metal door squawk open and slam shut. Why didn’t that knothead of a dog bark? he wondered, and knew at once it was because the dog recognized who had arrived. Hellkatoot, he thought, and looked wildly about, taking stock of the pasture, the uneven line of woods a few hundred yards above him, the ghostly remains of the garden below. None of it seemed to offer any real cover. He felt ridiculously trapped, as though someone had dropped a haystack on him and pinned him on his back, but then the steps and breezeway of the house grumbled woodenly underfoot, and at last a door opened and closed. He sighed, realized he had been holding his breath. “Shitass,” he said and squeezed his crotch. If it hadn’t been for the icy air upon his face, he would have gotten up and scouted out the shack, but he was warm and his eyes were grainy with fatigue. All right, he thought, what the hell, so someone came in behind me.

His nose was cold and drained a thin, watery liquid upon his upper lip. He sniffed. What’s the man gonna do, he asked himself reasonably, come out and check his haystacks? Why, hell no, he thought, and carefully, moving one part of his body at a time, he turned on his side without loosing his covering of hay. Still, in some corner of his mind, he was bothered that the place was not so settled in for the night as he had thought, although it did not keep the warmth from soothing him or the whiskey and milk from working on him like a potion.

Nevertheless, he did not know he’d been asleep when, some time later, he became aware of two things simultaneously: a cold wet spot on his forehead and an intense pain in his ear where the weight of his head seemed to mash his ear against the tin pot as cruelly as between the jaws of pliers. The moon, too, seemed excessively bright even through the slits of his eyes. Slowly, more asleep than awake, he began to turn to his other side, realizing as he did that something had touched his forehead moments before, that it was standing now at his back, that indeed there were two figures behind him where there had been none.

He leapt broad awake and bolt upright, flinging off both coat and hay in a sudden eruption. The dog sprang back. The man said, “Easy, cousin,” and pointed a pistol exactly where the dog’s nose had touched his forehead. Music could see very little of the man’s face because of the carbide lamp on his head, but he could see that the man carried not only a pistol, but a sack and a rifle in his other hand.

“What in hell you think you’re doin?” Music asked him.

“Ye got that on the wrong foot, ain’tcha?” the man said. “You the one holed up in my haystack like a rat in a corncrib.” He let the hammer down on his pistol and slipped it into a shoulder holster underneath his jumper, apparently satisfied that Music was not dangerous, sitting as he was with his hands flat against the ground behind him; at least not so dangerous that the little falling-block, single-shot, .22 rifle couldn’t deal with him, for he changed it to his right hand, thumb on the hammer. The man turned his head slightly to nod at the dog, and Music glimpsed a bit of the man’s nose, cheekbone, and chin until the light struck him again full in the face. “I reckon ole Fetlock was tryin to tell me ye bin in my springhouse too. Ain’t much coon dog,” he said; “don’t never know what he’s gonna tree.”

“I owe you a bellyful of milk,” Music said.

The light bobbed slowly in acknowledgement. “And the better part of a haystack,” the man said. “Git up.”

Music got up and bent to retrieve his coat and his sack.

“Nope,” the man said. “Stand about five feet yonder way if ye will.” He waved Music back with the rifle barrel, knelt and patted Music’s coat around the pockets, picked it up, and seemed to weigh it in his hand. He picked up the paper sack too, felt it, weighed it. “What’s in here?” he asked.

“A soda bottle with a little liquor in it and a cooking pot.”

The light bobbed. “Step on out toward the house,” the man said.

“Can I have my coat?” Music said. “It’s chilly if you ain’t under a haystack.” The coat came flying at him, and he caught it and put it on.

“Step on out,” the man said, and Music started for the house. The dog, nose to the ground, quartered ahead of him, and the man walked a few paces behind.

The window at the rear corner of the house was still lit, and as they drew closer, Music could see a woman moving about inside. They ducked under a clothesline with a ragged shirt and a flour-sack towel hanging from it, passed a black iron washpot, and stepped up on the breezeway of the house. There was stovewood stacked along one wall of the breezeway and a galvanized washtub, a lantern, and various tools hanging from spikes along the other. Music turned to look at the man, who waved with the barrel of the rifle and said, “Right in there, cousin.” Music lifted the latch, and the hound slinked past him as he stepped into a kitchen, mellow with lamplight and smotheringly warm from the cookstove.