Old Wounds (50 page)
Authors: Vicki Lane
L
YDY
G
OFORTH AND THE
D
ROVERS’
R
OAD
1860
I
When first I seen Belle Caulwell she was standin in the midst of a great drive of hogs, her dark green skirts not swayed a lick as the flood of swine, all a-slaver at the smell of the corn wagons, parted and passed by to either side of her, like as a rushin creek will divide at a tall rock. She stood there not payin the brutes no mind a-tall and just a-starin at me, them dark eyes of hern like fire-coals burnin their way right into my breast.
The lanky youth fell silent. He laid one bony hand over his heart and stared up at the tiny patch of sky just visible through the high barred window, his gaze as intent as if he could see the burning eyes watching him still.
The Professor shifted on the planks of his bunk, picked a bug from the ragged gray blanket that was the whole of his bedding, and cracked it against the wall where a scattering of red dots told the tally of his kills.
Circe, he pronounced, shaking his head. Circe and John Keats’ merciless
dame,
the two subsumed into one. He scratched at an odiferous armpit. Boy, I begin to see why it is you find yourself in such a dire predicament. But, like the blind singer Homer, you have initiated your narrative
in media res
. Perhaps you would indulge my curiosity and begin at the beginning. I take it that these mountains are your native heath?
The young man frowned and shook his head as if reluctantly returning from a happier world to the chilly reality of the Marshall County jail. He shot a suspicious glance at his cellmate.
The Professor, a man in his mid-thirties, wore a black frock coat. His once-white shirt was adorned by the tattered remnants of a dark blue cravat—the garments of a man with some pretensions to gentility. With a soft exhalation, he settled himself more comfortably on the narrow bunk, his head cocked expectantly, awaiting an answer to his question.
The young man, whose homespun shirt and threadbare jeans trousers were faded to a muddy gray-brown, lowered himself to the uneven bricks of the floor, casting a last, longing glance at the little window before replying.
Well, I see why it is they call you the Professor—all them fine words just a-spewin out yore mouth. Now I don’t know nare singer called Homer, nor do I understand the half of yore fancy talk. But I reckon you kin tell me first who it is you are and how come you to be here afore I unburden myself to you. Hit’ll do to while away the time. And my name hain’t Boy, hit’s Lydy Goforth.
The Professor rose and made a little bow in the direction of his companion. My most humble apologies, Mr. Goforth. Allow me to introduce myself—Thomas Walter Blake, the second of that name, native of Charleston, South Carolina, late of Harvard University, and completely at your service. In view of our enforced intimacy, may I suggest that we dispense with formalities hereafter. If it meets with your approval, I shall call you Lydy and I beg that you will make use of my own praenomen, my familiar appellation, my given name…in short, please call me Tom.
Lydy’s eyes narrowed. Reckon I’ll stick with Professor, iffen you don’t keer. Hit don’t seem fitten fer a body with so many big words in his craw to be called by a name any common he-cat might carry.
The Professor shrugged and sank back to his bunk. As you will, my young friend, as you will. He leaned back and crossed one black-trousered leg over the other, assuming the air of a gentleman at his club, about to embark on a leisurely narrative.
You may ask how it is that I, scion of a distinguished Charlestonian family and graduate of Harvard University, how it is that I find myself in this verminous cell, in this backwater of civilization
—
Shitfire, Professor! Lydy broke into the flow of words. I be damned iffen I know what it is you’re talking about. What I asked is how come you to be in jail?
Aah. You prefer a concise account. Very well. It appears that I am being held for carnal knowledge of a minor. The professor straightened his cravat. Or breach of promise. The father of the damsel in question has not yet made up his applejack-befuddled mind.
Lydy dragged the rough homespun of his shirtsleeve across his eyes. Law, Professor, looks like hit’s the love of woman that’s overthrowed the both of us. Hit’s a fearsome, powerful thing, that kind of love is. I’ve studied on hit but be damned iffen I can make it out.
He looked down at his big, rough hands and slowly turned them, palms up and then down. His face wore a puzzled frown, as if the hands were strangers to him. After a moment’s study he wrapped his arms around himself to hide the hands in his armpits. His voice trailed into a dreaming whisper.
You know, some of the time hit seems like a hundred years ago and other times I’d swear hit was only yesterday that I was back at my uncle’s place, way up there on Bear Tree Creek.
Lydy leaned his head against the wall, once again fixing his eyes on the little window.
What brung me here…I’d have to say it started back there, back on this one day when I was huntin a little spotted heifer what had come in season and had took a notion to travel. Well sir, I followed her trace clear to the top of Old Baldy. When at last the heifer come into view, I seen that she had found what she was atter. Hit was a red and white bull what I hadn’t never seed before and he was a-ridin her like one thing. I seen there weren’t no way of turnin her back down the mountain till they was done so I set down there in the grass to wait.
Hit was late spring of last year—eighteen and fifty nine—and the day was one of them bright clear ones with all the world looking like hit had been washed clean. Old Baldy’s the highest peak on Bear Tree and with the sky so close hit seemed like hit wouldn’t be no trouble atall to reach out and maybe grab God’s shirttail.
The bull got done at last but I just set there, thinking how I had spent all of my life down in the holler, a-clearin my uncle’s ground, bustin his wood and choppin his corn, with my eyes looking at the dirt till it grew too dark to see. Then hit would be back to my pallet in the loft and up before first light to begin all over again.
Off in the far distance I could see the mountain humps a-stretchin out in blue rows till they kindly melted into the sky. And then it come to me as how I’d like to travel beyond them mountains some day, maybe see the great ocean that my kin had crossed, back when they first come to this land. I stared off into that blue far-away and, like I had heard the preacher say one time, my spirit took wing.
The young man was on his feet now, still gazing up at the little window and the darkening sky beyond.
And then, all to once, there’s my uncle, a-standin over me afore ever I heared his step. He had come a-lookin fer the heifer too; and when he saw her and the bull croppin grass and me just a-settin there not doin nothing, why he commenced to whup on me with his ole walkin stick. Called me a worthless, loaferin woods-colt and said though he’d kept me on like his sister had begged on her death bed, now I had plagued him a time too many. I thought to fight him but he was a stout, full-growed man and I feared I’d be beaten bad.
I left him there, a-shoutin vile curses at me whilst I lit out down the mountain. Weren’t none of the others to the house so I took the blanket offen my pallet and rolled my good shirt in hit, along with my few other bits of plunder. I took cornbread from the safe and put hit in my pocket and then I took my papaw’s long rifle and set out down the creek.
Hit was late evening when I come to the river and the old man with the ferry had just set down Silas Gentry and his wagon. I didn’t have no money but bein as the ferry had to go back fer a man and a mule what was waitin on the far bank, the old man agreed to put me across iffen I did the haulin.
I’ll ride like a gentleman for once, says he, and set hisself upon an empty nail keg. That ole man grinned like a fool whilst I hauled his flat bottom raft across the fast runnin waters of the French Broad. Hit was a stout rope he had strung over the water and hard though my hands were with the use of the axe and hoe, by the time the far shore was nigh, I had raised me a blister or two.
But I paid no mind to the burning of my hands for there on the slope above the turnpike was the place I’d been making for—the inn on the drovers’ road. I looked up at that fine big place with its porches and galleries and its two stone chimeys reaching up so tall and hit seemed to me that Gudger’s Stand had been a-waitin fer me all the years of my life.
OLD WOUNDS
A Dell Book / July 2007
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Vicki Lane.
Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33702-7
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