Cold Mountain (30 page)

2004-3-6

页码，126/232

imported hats would figure small. The braid was finished, and she looked on it with disappointment.

As with all her efforts toward art, it did not match up with her imagining of it. She thought it looked like a hemp lanyard twisted together by a mad or drunken sailor.

Ada and Ruby stood up from the steps and took turns touching each other's braids to smooth down stray hairs and tuck in loose pieces. They went to Ada's bedroom and backed up to the large mirror over the commode table and took a silver hand mirror and paired up the images. Ada's plait was simple and tight, and when she put her fingers to it she thought it felt like touching a chestnut limb.

You could work all day and it would not spring loose.

When it came Ruby's turn, she took a long time looking. She had never seen the back of her head before. She put her hand to her hair and touched it flat-palmed, patting it over and over. She declared it perfect and would hear of nothing but that Ada be judged victor.

They went back to the porch and Ruby went on into the yard, ready to get on with the night work.

But she stopped and stood looking around and then up at the sky. She touched the hair at her neck and at the crown of her head. Out from under the shade of the porch she could see that there was yet light enough to read a few pages from
Midsummer Night's Dream,
and she said as much. So they sat back on the steps and Ada read, glossing as she went, and when she got to a line of Robin's—where he says, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn —Ruby was immensely amused and said the words over and over as if they held a great deal of meaning and delight just in themselves.

The light soon fell too grey to read. A pair of bobwhites called their identical three-word messages back and forth from the field to the woods. Ruby rose and said, I better get on.

—Check our trap, Ada said.

—No point. You don't catch anything by day, Ruby said, before walking away.

Ada closed the book and plucked a boxwood leaf as page marker. She took Inman's letter from her skirt pocket and tipped the face of it to the west to gather what light remained there. She had read the utterly vague announcement of his wound and his planned return five times that afternoon. She could make no more of it after the fifth reading than she had from the first, which was that Inman seemed to have reached some firm conclusion about the state of feeling existing between them, though Ada could not herself put a name to how she thought things stood. She had not seen him in almost four years, and it had been more than four months since she had last heard from him. Just a brief dashed note from Petersburg, its tone impersonal as something one would write to a distant relation, though that was not unusual, for early on Inman had asked that they never speculate on what might happen between them after the war. Nobody could say how things would be then, and imagining the various possibilities—either pleasant or grim—only cast a shadow over his thoughts. Their correspondence through the war had been irregular. Flurries of letters, and then stretches of silence. This last stretch, though, was a long one even by their standards.

The letter Ada now held was without date, nor did it contain any mention of recent events or even weather by which it could be dated. It could have been written the week past, or it might be three months old. The letter's battered condition argued for a date nearer the latter, but there was no way to know. And she was unclear about his coming home. Did he mean now or at the end of the war? If he meant now, there was no telling whether he was long overdue to return or just setting out on his journey. Ada thought of the story she and Ruby had heard the captive tell from the barred window of the courthouse. She feared every county would have its Teague.

She squinted at the paper. Inman's hand being somewhat cramped and minute, all Ada could make clear in the dark was this brief paragraph:

file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...

2004-3-6

页码，127/232

Should you still possess the likeness I sent four years ago, I ask you, please, do not look at it. I currently bear it no resemblance in either form or spirit.

Ada of course went immediately to her bedroom and lit a lamp and opened drawers until she found the portrait. She had put it away because she never thought it looked much like him to begin with.

When it arrived, she showed it to Monroe, who held a dim view toward photography and had never been photographed and never intended to be, though he had twice in his younger years sat for painters. He had examined Inman's countenance with some interest and then snapped the case shut.

He went to the shelves and pulled out a volume and read from Emerson on the experience of being daguerreotyped, saying these words: And in your zeal not to blur the image, did you keep every finger in its place with such energy that your hands became clenched as for fight or despair, and in your resolution to keep your face still, did you feel every moment more rigid; the brows contracted into a Tartarean frown, and the eyes fixed as they are fixed in a fit, in madness, or in death?

And though that was not precisely the effect of Inman's picture, Ada had been forced to admit that it was not far off the mark either. So she had put it away in order not to have her memory of Inman blurred by it.

Such little mechanical portraits as Ada now held in her hand were not rare. She had seen any number of them. Nearly every family in the settlement with a son or husband off fighting had one, even if only cased in tin. Displayed on mantel or table with the Bible, a taper, sprigs of galax, so that the effect was altarlike. In sixty-one, any soldier with a dollar and seventy-five cents could have his aspect recorded in the form of ambrotype, tintype, calotype, or daguerreotype. In those early days of war, Ada had found most of the ones she had seen comic. Later she found them depressing in their depictions of men now dead. One after the other, they had sat bristling with weaponry before the portraitist for the long exposure. They held pistols crossed at their breasts or bayoneted rifles at their sides. Shiny new bowie knives brandished for the camera. Forage caps set at swank angles on their heads. Farm boys more bright in their moods than on hog-killing days. Their costumes were various.

Men wore every kind of thing to fight in, from clothes you might put on for plowing to actual uniforms, to garbs of such immense ridiculousness that even in peacetime someone might take a shot at you for wearing them.

Inman's portrait differed from most in that he had spent more money on the case than was usual. It was a beautiful little filigreed silver thing and Ada rubbed it, front and back, against the skirt at her hip to polish away the dusty tarnish. She opened it and held it to the lamp. The image was like oil on water. She had to tip it in her hand, making fine adjustments to get the light to make sense of it.

Inman's regiment had been casual about uniform, having agreed with their captain that nothing in the killing of Federals required an alteration of one's ordinary attire. In accordance with that belief, Inman wore a loosely constructed tweed jacket, collarless shirt, and soft slouch hat, the brim of which drooped to his brow. He had then affected a little pointed goatee and appeared less a soldier than a gentleman vagabond. He had a Colt's Navy at his hip, but his jacket covered all but the grip of it. He did not touch it. His hands were open, resting on the tops of his legs. He had tried to fix his eyes on a spot some twenty degrees to the side of the lens, but sometime during the exposure he had moved them and they were blurred and strange. His expression was intent and stern so that he seemed to be staring hard at nothing identifiable, interested in something other than the camera or the act of portraiture or indeed even in the viewer's opinion of him in this static form.

Saying he no longer matched that image didn't tell Ada much. It didn't in any regard capture her recollection of him on the last day she saw him before he left, and that could not have been more than a matter of weeks before the picture was made. He had come by the house to say goodbye. He was, at the time, still living in a room at the county seat but would be leaving in two days, three at the most. Monroe had been reading by the fire in the parlor and had not bothered to come out to speak. Ada and Inman had walked together down to the creek. Ada could not remember a thing of file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...

2004-3-6

页码，128/232

Inman's attire but his slouch hat—the same as in the picture—and that his boots were newly made. It was a damp, chill morning following a day of rain, and the sky was still half filled with high thin clouds. The cow pasture by the creek was turning pale green with new shoots rising through the grey stubble of the previous year. It was sodden from the rain so that the two had to pick their way through it to keep from miring shin-deep. Along the creek and up the hillside, blossoms on redbud and dogwood shone out against the grey trees, their limbs frosted green with the first thin edges of leaf growth.

They walked down the creek bank beyond the pasture and then stopped in a mixed stand of oak and tulip trees. As they talked, Inman seemed alternately cheerful and solemn, and at one point he took off his hat, which Ada understood to be in preparation for a kiss. He reached out to pluck away a pale green dogwood petal that was tangled in her hair and then his hand dropped to caress her shoulder and to draw her to him, but in doing so he brushed an onyx-and-pearl brooch at her collar.

The pin snapped open and the brooch fell, bouncing off a rock and into the creek.

Inman put his hat back on and splashed in the water and scrabbled about the mossy rocks for some time until he came up with the brooch. He repinned it to her collar, but it was wet and his hands were wet and her dress was smeared dark at the neck. He stepped back from her. His pant cuffs dripped.

He raised one of his new boots and let the water fall off of it. He seemed saddened that the tender moment had been lost and he could find no way to bring it back.

Ada found herself wondering, What if he is killed? But she could not, of course, voice the thought.

She did not have to, though, for Inman at that instant said, If I am shot to death, in five years you'll hardly remember my name.

She had not been sure if he was teasing or testing her or simply saying what he thought was the truth.

—You know it's not that way, she said.

In her heart, though, she wondered, Is anything remembered forever?

Inman looked off and seemed to be made shy by what he had said.

—Look there, he said. He tipped his head back to take in Cold Mountain, where all was yet wintery and drab as a slate shingle. Inman stood looking up at the mountain and told her a story about it. He had heard it as a child from an old Cherokee woman who had successfully hidden from the army when they scoured the mountains, gathering the Indians in preparation for driving them out on the Trail of Tears. The woman had frightened him. She claimed to be a hundred and thirty-five years old and to remember a time before any white man had yet come to this territory. She spoke in a voice that conveyed all her disgust with the time between then and now. Her face was seamed and gnarled.

One eye entirely lacked color and was set in her head as slick and white as a boiled bird egg with the shell off. Her face was tattooed with two snakes, their bodies stretching in wavery lines to where their tails coiled into the hair at her temples. Their heads were opposite each other at the corners of her mouth so that when she spoke the snakes opened their mouths too, and seemed to share in telling the tale. It was about a village called Kanuga that many years ago stood at the fork of the Pigeon River. It is long since gone and no trace remains other than potsherds that people sometimes find, looking for stickbait at the river edge.

One day a man looking like any other man came into this Kanuga. He appeared to be an outlander, but the people greeted him and fed him. That was their custom toward any with an open hand. As he ate, they asked him if he came from far away in the western settlements.

—No, he said. I live in a town nearby. We are all, in fact, relatives of yours.

file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...

2004-3-6

页码，129/232

They were puzzled. Any kinsmen living nearby would be known.

—What town is it that you come from? they asked.

—Oh, you have never seen it, he said, even though it is just there. And he pointed south in the direction of Datsunalasgunyi, which the snake woman said was the name they had for Cold Mountain and did not signify either cold or mountain at all but something else entirely.

—There is no village up there, the people said.

—Oh, yes, the stranger said. The Shining Rocks are the gateposts to our country.

—But I have been to the Shining Rocks many times and have seen no such country, said one. And others agreed, for they knew the place he spoke of well.

—You must fast, the stranger said; otherwise we see you but you do not see us. Our land is not altogether like yours. Here is constant fighting, sickness, foes wherever you turn. And soon a stronger enemy than you have yet faced will come and take your country away from you and leave you exiles. But there we have peace. And though we die as all men do and must struggle for our food, we need not think of danger. Our minds are not filled with fear. We do not endlessly contend with each other. I come to invite you to live with us. Your place is ready. There is room for all of you. But if you are to come, everyone must first go into the town house and fast seven days and never leave during that time and never raise the war cry. When that is done, climb to the Shining Rocks and they will open as a door and you may enter our country and live with us.

Having said this, the stranger went away. The people watched him go and then began arguing the merits of his invitation. Some thought he was a savior and some thought a liar. At length, though, they decided to accept. They went into the town house, and for seven days they all remained there fasting, drinking only a sip or two of water each day. All but one man, who slipped away every night when the others were asleep. He went to his house and ate smoked deer meat and then returned before dawn.

On the morning of the seventh day the people began climbing Datsunalasgunyi toward the Shining Rocks. They arrived just at sunset. The rocks were white as a snowdrift, and when the people stood before them, a cave opened like a door, and it ran to the heart of the mountain. But inside was light rather than dark. In the distance, inside the mountain, they could see an open country. A river. Rich bottomland. Broad fields of corn. A valley town, the houses in long rows, a town house atop a pyramidal mount, people in the square-ground dancing. The faint sound of drums.

Then there was thunder. Great claps and peals that seemed to be drawing near. The sky turned black and lightning fell around the people outside the cave. They all trembled, but only the man who had eaten the deer meat lost his senses from fear. He ran to the mouth of the cave and shouted the war cry, and when he did the lightning ceased and the thunder began to fade into the distance and soon it was gone, moving off to the west. The people turned to watch it go. When they looked back to the rocks, they saw no cave but only the solid face of white rock, shining in the last light of the sun.

They went back to Kanuga, walking down the dark path as if in mourning, and every mind was fixed on the vision they had seen within the mountain. Soon, what the stranger had forevisioned came about. Their land was taken from them, and they were driven away into exile, except for the few who fought and hid among the crags, living frightened and hunted like animals.

When Inman was finished Ada did not know what to say, so she said, Well, that was certainly folkloric.

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