This Rock (19 page)

I drove on, as far as it was from Green River to Tompkinsville, without seeing anything but mills and warehouses, elevators and gantry cranes. Where did all the people live? There was switching yards that glistened like new-plowed fields. How many people had it took to make all this? And how many did it take to keep it all going?

The city of Toledo itself, when I finally reached it, was disappointing. It was just like the other cities I'd drove through, maybe a little bigger than some. I'd planned to stop, but instead I just kept going with the traffic. I stopped at red lights with all the other cars and trucks and buses, and then rushed forward with the stream like water breaking from a dam. I felt like I couldn't pull over if I wanted to. I told myself there was no place to park. I knowed that if I did stop I would turn back and the trip would be over. Something pulled me on to keep going with the roar of the traffic. The most important thing was not to have a flat tire out in the river of traffic, for then I would drown. I looked out for the lights at the corners and for policemen giving directions. I wanted to look just like everybody else.

Nobody had told me a city was so loud. With so many horns blaring and brakes screeching and sirens, I didn't feel at myself. I couldn't remember what I wanted to do. A truck pulled in front of me, and I couldn't see where I wanted to go or needed to turn. A trolley rung its bell and just missed my fender. Even if I had wanted to stop, I couldn't have. The air smelled like rotten eggs and burned motor oil. There was a stench of melted rubber. A woman dashed in front of the Model T chasing a child, and I just barely missed her. Two soldiers was fighting in front of a café.

After what seemed like twenty-five miles I found myself driving
through factories and railroad yards again. There was long warehouses and big storage bins. There was mountains of coal and gravel with loaders reaching like goosenecks to the tops of the piles. I was near the lakefront, for on my left I could see piers and wide ships and gantries and loading cranes. It was the Great Lakes. I'd reached the Great Lakes and wanted to stop and have a look. But there was no place to pull off the highway and look. Many of the yards and docks had fences along the highway.

Traffic got faster than it had been in the city and I had to keep moving with it. The road swung back to the northwest, away from the harbor, and there was only one more warehouse and beyond that was marshland. I could smell mud and foul water. I wanted to look at the lake, so I turned quick into the loading area beside the long building. A platform run along the side of the warehouse out into the water. There was piles of rope and spools of cable heaped on the platform.

“Hey mister,” somebody called.

I looked around to see who was hollering. A man stood at the door of the building with a clipboard in his hand. “What can I do for you?” he said.

“I just wanted to look at the docks,” I said.

“What do you mean, ‘look at the docks'?”

“I just wanted to have a look,” I said.

“Then I suggest you look someplace else,” the man said.

“I just wanted to look,” I said. I couldn't think of nothing else to say.

“Keep moving, buddy,” the man said. “Get out of here.”

I felt like he'd knocked the breath out of me. My gun was in the back under all the gear. I wished I had it out to pull on the Yankee smart-talker. I stood by the car several seconds trying to think what to say. The wind off the lake was deadly cold and made me shiver. It was right out of Canada, I thought. If I kill a Yankee I'll never see Green River again. I won't see the graveyard where Grandpa and Daddy is buried, or the south side of the pasture hill on a warm winter day. My knees shook a little.

“You ain't got no right to talk to me that way,” I said.

“What way?” the man with the clipboard said. He stepped off the
platform and come closer to me. He looked at the tag on the Model T. “You tell Metcalf he better send somebody smarter if he wants to spy on us,” he said.

“I just wanted to look at the lake,” I said.

The man with the clipboard kicked the tire of the Model T. And then he looked at me like I was a hobo. “Maybe you
are
as dumb as you look,” he said.

“Listen here, mister,” I said.

“You better get in that flivver and beat it,” he said, “if you ever want to see Carolina again.”

A boat was pulling into the dock. It was bigger than a speedboat. I guess it was a cabin cruiser.

“Get out of here!” the man hollered.

I got into the car and shifted into low. The man leaned in the window and yelled right in my ear, “You tell Metcalf he can kiss my ass!”

My hands shook as I turned left onto the highway. I had to drive all the way back through the miles of warehouses and salvage yards and braiding tracks. There was smokestacks giving off yellow smoke that burned my skin. A gray-and-purple haze hung over the highway.

Now where are you going? I said to myself. The traffic churned around me, and horns blared and
oogah-oogah
ed. I drove without looking back, into the city and through the city. I gripped the wheel and watched out for red lights. I kept thinking of stopping and going back to shoot the man with the clipboard, or at least hitting him upside of the head. He'd insulted and humiliated me. I owed it to myself to shoot him.

And then it come to me that the boat arriving at the dock must have been coming from Canada, carrying liquor from Canada. That's why he'd wanted me out of the way so quick, why he had got so mad. He was afraid I'd see what they was doing. He thought I was a spy for another bootlegger named Metcalf. Metcalf was a competitor, or even a revenue agent for all I knowed. I kept driving without hardly thinking where I was going. The stench of car exhaust and smoke from the factories filled the Model T and made my head feel light.

I knowed there was other people, regular people, in the North, but they was hid away behind walls and I couldn't get to them. There must be churchgoing people, decent people, in the cities and small towns, preachers and builders, teachers and architects, but I didn't know where to find them.

Now, I had been cramped up in the car for the past two days and hadn't took a good shit. I was used to working and walking miles every day. And I was used to eating more than I had in the little diners and restaurants I'd stopped at. Getting mad at the man with the clipboard must have stirred something inside me, for I felt a pain and a dull restlessness in my guts.

But I was in the middle of traffic in Toledo, Ohio, and there was no place to stop and no place to pull off. I tried to think where people would go when they traveled through a city. Some filling stations had toilets behind them, but I didn't see any filling stations. In the country, churches had toilets behind them, but in the city I didn't see any toilets near the churches.

I crossed the Maumee River and there was more factories and brick buildings beyond. I tried to remember how far it was to open country south of the river. I'd been so excited driving toward Toledo that I hadn't noticed the miles as the countryside had give way to the outskirts of the city.

My compass laid on the seat behind me. I'd planned to use it in the woods of the Far North. Its blue needle quivered and pointed away from where I was going. The blue sliver trembled like my hands on the steering wheel. I wished I could just pull over and empty myself.

In the woods you don't have to worry about looking for a toilet. In the woods you can just go behind a tree and find comfort. Out on the highway I didn't even know where I could stop and park. There was stores and houses everywhere. I could be arrested just for stopping.

The pain wrenched inside me, a dull sad pain that felt like grief. And then it got sharper, and I gripped the wheel like it was pulling me on. I drove faster and sweat dampened my temples. It seemed like the buildings and stores and offices would never end. Finally I seen a clump of pine woods ahead. It wasn't more than an acre of trees, bigger than a clump, but not a real woods. But it was big enough and
there wasn't any houses close to it. I pulled off on the shoulder of the road and into a haul road. Soon as I stopped the car I jumped out and run into the thicket. And soon as I was out of sight of the road I dropped my pants and squatted.

It was like there was an explosion inside me. A thunderstorm boomed and tore open in my guts and everything busted loose. I felt like everything I'd ever eat rushed out of me. It felt so good it hurt. I was sweating I was so weak, and I held on to a little pine bush. Just having a quiet place to shit was heavenly.

I'd left the world of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where a toilet was wherever you needed it, and where you could stop and look as long as you wanted to.

My insides was inflamed with release. They hummed with relief and freedom so intense I felt a little numb. And I felt like I'd been reborn.

Ginny

I
ALWAYS HOPED
something would come of Muir's talk of building a house or even a castle. I knowed he wasn't going to build a castle, but if everybody's home is his castle, then Muir might build a home. From the time he was a little boy he had studied Pa's old architecture book. It was a book Pa had bought a long time ago on one of his trips down to Greenville, and it had pictures of churches and other fancy buildings in London. From the time he was a boy Muir had copied floor plans and drawings of churches from it.

Muir would take a pencil and any old piece of paper, the back of an envelope or a scrap of a paper bag, and scratch out the lines of a house or bridge, a tower or a steeple. He liked to draw castle walls, and he drawed straight lines with a length of lath took from the shed. He measured and he erased. He would get mad and throw the page away. And the next thing you know he'd be scratching on a paper again.

I knowed Muir would always have trouble working with other people. Maybe he took it after Tom a little bit. And maybe he took it after me. Tom never did like to take orders, and he always wanted to be working at his own plans and projects, on his own land. From the time Muir was a little boy he liked to work, but only at something he had
dreamed up. He wanted to work in his own way, at his own grand schemes. If I put him and Moody to gathering corn or fixing a fence, they might gee-haw for a little while, but next thing you knowed, Muir would have lost his temper because Moody was bossing him around and teasing him. Muir never would do what nobody told him to do.

I wanted Muir to find his life's work, but I knowed it wouldn't do any good to push him in any one direction. He was stubborn and contrary if he thought you was telling him what to do. I had wanted him to be a preacher. I thought he had a natural gift to be a preacher, that he was born to be a preacher. And look what come of that. I had always wanted him and Moody to work together, and they had fought worse than ever. Only thing they had done together was go down to Gap Creek for a load of liquor in the Model T. Muir was ashamed of that and didn't think I knowed about it. I knowed he wasn't going to become a bootlegger like Moody, but I worried about his guilt and confusion.

So when Muir packed up the Model T and headed for Canada, I told myself it might be for the best. Of course I was scared, with him leaving home and him so young and uncertain. And going off in that car he could have a wreck or be robbed by gangsters. Canada was a long way off, and people froze to death there. I had read Jack London and remembered “To Build a Fire.”

When Muir started loading up the car to go north, my heart felt trapped in ice. I seen there was no way I could stop him. He was so unhappy and desperate to strike out on his own. He was so sick of hisself and ashamed of hisself. A mama can't do much with a son that is drove by demons.

A man has to find his work in his own way. Tom had taught me that. All I could do was look on and pray that Muir would be safe, and that he would return to us.

The morning after Muir left for Canada, the house felt empty, even though Fay and Moody was still there. It was early fall and I went out and gathered eggs and milked the cows. As I strained the milk I thought, Everything on the place feels loose and distant. I was used to having Muir there going about his work. I was used to complaining to him. He was the child I had put my hopes in. He was the
son that give a shape to the things I had wanted and the things I had expected when I was young.

“Who is going to dig the taters?” I said to Fay and Moody.

“Muir will dig the taters like he always does,” Moody said.

“How will Muir dig the taters while he is in Canada?” Fay said.

“Because he will be back before his tracks are gone from the yard,” Moody said. “He'll run out of money and come straight back home,” Moody said.

I wanted to take up for Muir. I wanted to say he could make it on his own and find his way to Canada, if that's what he wanted. Much as I hated to see him go, and much as I wanted him to come back, I didn't want to think Muir would come home out of failure and weak nerve. I didn't want to think he'd be defeated again. A mama is divided that way. I didn't want Muir to fail in his ambitions, and I didn't want to lose him either. I was pained and tore both ways.

“Who is going to churn today?” I said. The crock of clabber set by the hearth was ready to be stirred and brought off.

“I'll churn if I can set on the porch and sleep while I'm doing it,” Moody said. Moody had already had a drink that morning; I could smell it on him. He surprised me by volunteering.

“The crock is ready to turn,” I said.

It warmed my heart to think that Moody was so accommodating. Was it because he was glad to have Muir away? Or was it because he missed Muir already? I was old enough to know a person can feel two or three ways at the same time. But whatever the reason, it was a pleasure to see Moody willing to help out.

That day and the day following, Moody done more work on the place than he had in years. He picked enough fox grapes in the trees by the river for me to make twelve pints of jelly. He fixed the gate to the pasture so it didn't creak and scrape the ground when it opened. He even hitched up the wagon and helped me carry the tops Muir had cut from the cornfield to the stack behind the barn.