The Beyonders (2 page)

II

Doc's house had been built decades earlier, as living quarters for a foreman of the lumber company. It was squarely made, of massive perpendicular planks that were virtually timbers, with small windows on all sides. Doc had covered the roof with aluminum and had painted the sides a boxcar red. Now he walked with Crispin across the bridge, and Slowly Kimber opened the door for them.

"Miss Kimber, this is Mr. James Crispin," Doc introduced his companion. "He's going to be a neighbor of ours, and I've invited him to have a bite with us."

"How do you do?" said Crispin, his eyes relishing Slowly's tall proud figure.

"It's only beef and beans today, Doc," said Slowly.

"Excellent." Doc turned to where Gander Eye paused at the edge of the yard. "You'd better have some with us."

"Thanks, I took a deer steak out of my freezer early this morning," said Gander Eye. "I'd better go cook that."

"Well, another time, then."

Doc and Crispin followed Slowly indoors. Gander Eye walked along Main Street toward his own house. Deep within himself, he began to make up a song:

Yonder comes that Slowly girl,

How do you think I know?

I know her by the way she walks,

Strong and sweet and slow.

Unlike Duffy Parr, Gandy Eye had never told Slowly how he felt about her.

Slowly, yonder Slowly comes,

Strong and slow and sweet,

There ain't a man in this world of men

Is fit to kiss her feet.

Maybe he'd write it down when he got to his house. Just for himself, and keep it where nobody would ever see it.

I'm a man in this world of men,

A many bold deed I've dared,

But when I meet Slowly face to face,

I stand there a-feeling scared.

Under his breath he hummed a tune, one of his own tunes, that would match it.

His house was as small as the one Crispin had rented, with the green-painted clapboards. Going in, he picked up the deer steak from his kitchen counter and admired the contrast of white fat and mahogany lean. Into the skillet he put it, and set the skillet on the electric stove. Maybe tomorrow he'd take out a couple more steaks and invite Crispin to eat with him, the way Doc had done.

At Doc's, Crispin stood in the wide front room that was a good half of the house, staring at shelves of books that went all the way around, up to the ceiling. "You must have thousands of volumes here, Doctor," he said after a moment.

"Four thousand, more or less," said Doc. "Maybe two thousand are worth rereading, once a year. Care to wash up? The bathroom's in yonder."

Slowly set a big china dish, heaped with red-brown stew, on the stout square table. Knives and forks and paper napkins were there already. Crispin returned from washing his hands and Doc motioned him to a chair. They helped themselves from the dish and from a plate of hot corn bread cut into squares. Crispin poured wine from the bottle he had brought.

"This Burgundy is good," said Doc, tasting his glassful.

"So is our dinner," said Crispin. "I wonder how it's made."

"Slowly knows that."

"Chopped meat, " she said, "and a can of baked beans, and tomatoes and onions and green peppers and seasonings. Doc always likes it."

"So do I like it, and always will when I'm lucky enough to have some." Crispin took another forkful. "I never had it before."

"The formula is Slowly's," said Doc, buttering a morsel of bread. "I don't know in what order the elements go in. I only know she'll use one certain brand of beans, and when the Longcohrs don't have them, she cooks something else."

"It's a banquet," vowed Crispin. "You see, I paint, and usually I don't stop work at noon. I take something to munch while I keep on painting. I'm already anxious to get at some studies hereabouts."

"I liked your picture I saw," said Doc, "and 1 want to see more."

Crispin smiled. "Let me say, I'm no great thundering master. I've had a few shows and have sold pictures now and then. Otherwise, I've some money to live on, and I'd rather paint than anything else. I saw photographs of this country up in New York and came down on impulse. That's more or less my life story, Doctor and Miss—is it Slowly?"

"Celola," she said gently. "Folks call me Slowly. I reckon that comes easier."

"My own life story isn't intricate, either," said Doc, sipping wine. "When I was young, I ran a dispensary and infirmary for lumberjacks. I went away to work out a career in medicine, and I had sense enough to come back here where I'd been happy." He sipped. "I'm still happy."

"So shall I be." Crispin gazed at the clifflike shelves of books. "What particular interests do you have, here in your library?"

"Well, I read history and literature that's been long enough around to prove it's good; medicine and general science, and quite a few works on folklore."

"Doc lets me read in his books when I have time," said Slowly as she began to gather up the dishes.

"Folklore." Crispin seemed interested. "There must be a treasure of that in a place like this."

"Most of the folks have tried to outgrow it," said Doc, smiling above his glass. "They don't even talk about it much. Some of it might be staying with the Kimber settlement, up on Dogged Mountain from here."

"Miss Slowly's folks," said Crispin, looking at her.

"I was an adopted Kimber," Slowly informed him, turning at the kitchen door. "I came to Sky Notch when I was fourteen. I was going to school, and Miss Barnett—she was teaching—had me to live with her in the little teacherage. She's gone, but I still stay there."

"Living with a teacher was good for Slowly," said Doc. "She got mathematical enough to be the Sky Notch town clerk. "

Slowly went into the kitchen.

"Folklore interests me," said Crispin, "and all the science it seems to fit into."

"Like witchcraft," supplied Doc. "Like interpreting dreams. Maybe like unidentified flying objects."

Crispin blinked. "You believe in those? Have you read about them?"

"I have some books. About believing, let me just say I suspend judgment, on those and other things. I'm perfectly willing to be convinced, by a satisfactory firsthand experience. "

"What if one flew down into your yard?"

"Then it would be an identified flying object. I'd believe it, in spite of the skeptics."

"The skeptics who laughed at beliefs in flying dragons," offered Crispin. "But they proved to be true when they dug up pterodactyls."

"That was a big one they dug up in Texas, wasn't it?" asked Doc. "Pterosaur, though, they call it instead of a dragon. Big enough to carry off a sheep or a man even, if there'd been any in Texas sixty million years ago."

"About the Kimbers," said Crispin, looking at the table. "I had heard the name, and asked about them at the county seat. Nobody seemed to be able to tell me anything about them." He glanced up, his blue eyes half plaintive. "As if they didn't want to tell me."

"The Kimbers have a grand gift of keeping to themselves," Doc told him. "They come here sometimes to buy things, and once in a while I give one of them some pills, or vaccinate their children. I'd say their most interesting contribution is refusal to join any church. They argue that churches teach false things and are full of hypocrites."

"But then they must have a substitute religion," suggested Crispin. "Religion is more or less a universal impulse."

"They do have their own worship. Do their own preaching and baptizing. They get married by the judge at the county seat. By all reports, their baptism is at night, by the full moon."

"I'd like to see that," said Crispin eagerly.

Doc studied him. "Might I ask, are you single?"

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"Then marry a Kimber girl—and some of them are highly attractive. Then you'd be baptized yourself, under the full moon."

"You hurry me too fast," said Crispin, smiling again. "So far I haven't even bought things I need to be moved in."

"If you're finished here, suppose I just walk you to Longcohr's and see what you can get there." Doc raised his voice. "Slowly, what are you laying out for supper?"

"I thought I'd stuff some eggs," she called back from the kitchen.

"Splendid." Doc shoved his chair back. "Will you come and share those, Mr. Crispin?"

"You'll have me outwearing my welcome. Let's see if there's something at the store that can be my share."

They walked out in the pleasant brightness of early afternoon. Crispin gazed in all directions at once. "It's a beautiful place," he said. "The houses are fine, the colors are fine."

"I always thought so, but I envy you the artist's eye," said Doc.

As they walked, Doc told about Sky Notch. A population of perhaps two hundred and fifty, much fallen away since lumbering times, but still happy. Some of the residents drove to jobs in Asheville or across the Tennessee line, thirty miles or so, and others worked land here and there within easier reach. Just then, shortly after noon, there was little stir. In the evenings, people visited back and forth, on good terms. No trouble anywhere in Sky Notch, said Doc, and he was glad. That made things easier for the town board, Mayor Ballinger and the three commissioners, Bo Fletcher and Bill Longcohr and Doc himself. Most town meeting nights at the store building people dropped in for company's sake. Sometimes Gander Eye Gentry came and picked his banjo.

"We're not big nor terribly lively, but we're not new, either," Doc summed up. "Sky Notch was here a generation before the Civil War."

Crispin gazed appreciatively down Main Street at the empty school building and at the water tower beyond. "When did those Kimber people come?" he inquired.

"Nobody knows. Long before Sky Notch was founded. They must have been here from the beginning, about the time the Indians left, and that was at the close of the Revolution."

"All you say about them interests me." Duffy Parr sat in front of his station, eating a big sandwich and drinking from a bottle that maybe had blockade in it. He lifted his bottle to them. Crispin waved back as Doc led him into Longcohr's store.

It was a low, broad cave of a place, the floor crowded with counters, the walks lined with shelves. There were stacks of canned and packaged foods, plastic containers of cleaning materials, sheafs and strewings of jeans pants, work shirts, house dresses and aprons, leather and canvas shoes. Displays included flashlights, cosmetics, cheap dishes, glass jars of pickles, hammers and saws and bags of nails. Goods of a hundred kinds heaped the shelves, leaned in corners, hung from hooks.

"How you come on, Doc?" called William Longcohr from beside the frozen foods counter. He was softly plump, with a heavy, secret face and glasses fitted snug to his pouched eyes. His buxom, good-humored wife Martha smiled from behind the desk where the Sky Notch post office did business. Their blond daughter Peggy, eighteen years old and looking an abundant twenty-four, raised a hand as she sat against a rear shelf, studying an old motion picture magazine.

"Folks, this is Mr. James Crispin, who's moving in here," said Doc. "Mr. Crispin, these are Mr. and Mrs. Longcohr and their daughter Peggy yonder. I told him he could probably buy what he wants right here, to start his housekeeping."

"If we ain't got it for you, maybe we can get it fetched in," said Longcohr, walking toward them.

"I'll start in with a few supplies for the next day or so, to eat," said Crispin. He searched out a package of bacon, a box of crackers, a can of coffee, a carton with a dozen eggs. "Doctor, can't I contribute this to tonight's supper?"

He held up a tall can of asparagus. "I can fix it with cream sauce," he said. "Or if you don't like it, we'll find something else."

"Asparagus always agrees with me." said Doc.

Crispin found a half-gallon jug of milk, a pound of butter, a loaf of rye bread. Longcohr slashed off a pound of cheese from a wheel and wrapped it for him. Crispin carefully chose a head of lettuce and bought salad oil and pasteboard shakers of salt and pepper. "I brought wine vinegar with me," he said.

"You're an epicure," said Doc with relish.

Longcohr put the purchases in two paper sacks. Crispin found a galvanized iron pail on a counter shelf.

"I'm bound to need this, with more things with it," he said. "I'll leave it and be back later, to buy what I've forgotten now. Maybe a broom and detergents and so on."

"Get them now and I'll help you," offered Doc.

"No, I want to come back a second time," smiled Crispin. "To get acquainted with the way from my place, and with these people."

"Where you located, Mr. Crispin?" asked Martha Longcohr.

"The Hyson cabin, across the creek."

"That's good built," said Longcohr. "Not many pole cabins get put up that good no more. I hope you're comfortable, Mr. Crispin."

"I hope so." Crispin gathered up the sacks. "I'll be back again. Ladies," and he bowed. "Mr. Longcohr."

He and Doc went out.

"So he's the one Duffy Parr was mentioning," said Longcohr.

"He's a nice sort of man," said Martha Longcohr.

"He's so good-looking, it stinks," spoke up Peggy.

"What kind of talk is that?" said her mother.

"He's so good-looking, it stinks," repeated Peggy, savoring it. "He's the most out-of-this-world man to come to Sky Notch in I don't know when."

"Don't go getting crazy about him, girl," warned Longcohr. "Good looks ain't everything. A man needs more than that."

"Like Duffy Parr," said Peggy. "I like him. Always have."

"Duffy?" Martha Longcohr almost squealed. "He's near about twice your age."

"Not that much, Mamma."

"And Duffy' sells that blockade whiskey he gets from the Kimbers," added Longcohr, acting as if he didn't know about it at first hand. "And drinks it."

"Men have been known to stop drinking when a woman wants it," said Peggy.

"Hush that talk, girl, and let's straighten up these counters."

Crispin paused at Doc's door. "What time shall I come over? Six o'clock? I'll cream the asparagus on my hot plate and fetch it along. Now I'll stow these things and go back for the rest."