The Beyonders (4 page)

"Not always." Gander Eye sipped again and set down the jar. Duffy clutched at it as at an anchor in a reeling world. He drank noisily.

"You never been like me thisaway," he said as he came up from the drink. "Loving a girl and she won't no more than look at you like as if you was a lost soul. You know how I been about Slowly, year in, year out."

"I know," said Gander Eye, wondering how often Duffy had told him.

"Lately I thought I might could have a chance. But then this Jim Crispin comes, and he's got her."

"I never reckoned nobody'd got her," Gander Eye said.

Yet again Duffy took a deep drink. "They went home together, didn't they? I don't fault Jim, I like him. But he's got Slowly, and that's the end of things for me. The pure down dead end of things. What I got to live for?"

If he had meant the question rhetorically, Gander Eye did not choose to take it so. "There's always another drink to live for," he said.

"And that's about all." Duffy drank and set down the jar. "Now I've done took it, and that's all she wrote."

"All who wrote?" inquired Gander Eye, from deep inside where he was enjoying himself to the full.

"That's all there is," said Duffy, a laborious word at a time. "My heart's broke, and I'm a-going to kill myself."

Fumblingly he opened a drawer in the table and groped inside. His broad hand brought out a revolver, a blue .38 police special. "Going to shoot myself, and you tell Slowly it was for her."

Slowly, unsurely, he lifted the pistol toward his temple.

"Now hold on," said Gander Eye, speaking sharply at last.

"Ain't no way you can stop me," Duffy assured him thickly. "Ain't nobody can stop me."

"You're doing stupid," Gander Eye snapped. "That's the worst thing you can do."

Duffy lowered the pistol a trifle. His other hand lifted the jar and he drank from it and set it down again, almost overturning it.

"It's the best thing I can do," he mumbled doggedly. "Take myself out of her way. Put that on my grave, I took myself out of Slowly's way."

"You don't understand," said Gander Eye.

"I understand right well." The pistol wavered upward again.

"That's the unpardonable sin, Duffy, a-killing yourself."

The pistol came all the way down. Duffy crumpled his brow in thought. "I always heard tell the unpardonable sin's playing with yourself. "

"If that's so, this here world's full up of unpardonable sinners." Stoically, Gander Eye held back a laugh. "No, Duffy, suicide's the unpardonable sin. Look at it thisaway, whatever other sin you do, you can pray it out. Be saved."

"Saved," Duffy half crooned, as though it were the first word of a song.

"You kill yourself, you ain't got time for prayer," Gander Eye elaborated. "You've done it, you're dead and gone to hell. Can't pray it out, can't ask to be forgiven."

Duffy had laid the pistol on the table, but kept his hand on it.

"What happens, then?" he appealed. "How do we know about sin and hell and all like that? The Kimbers give up on the church long ago. Maybe they know what the score is."

"Maybe nobody knows, maybe we got it all to find out," said Gander Eye. "But 1 wouldn't die with no unpardonable sin on me." He held out his hand. "Let me have that there gun."

"No, you don't." Duffy quickly pointed it. "You make an awkward move, I'll give you the part of it you don't want. What you aim to do?"

"Maybe do you a favor," said Gander Eye easily. "Why don't I do the thing for you? Shoot you dead."

Duffy's eyes closed all the way, and only one of them opened. He moaned in his throat.

"If I done that," went on Gander Eye. "I'd be just a murderer. I could pray it out. You wouldn't have shot yourself, you'd come clear."

"And you'd be flung under the jail for murder."

"No, I'd put the gun in your hand and folks would think you'd done it. Slowly would mourn because you'd died for her." Again he held out his hand. "Give it here."

"You hold your tater," said Duffy, flourishing the pistol. "If you killed me and I let it happen, that'd still be suicide."

"Not if you shut your eyes tight," said Gander Eye. "Then you wouldn't see it coming. It would be a surprise for you."

"And you'd do this thing for me?"

"Yes," said Gander Eye. "We been choice friends this long time, and I know you'd do it for me. " He watched Duffy. "When you're in your coffin, I'll come pick my banjo and sing you a song." He thought a moment. "I'll sing 'Bury Me on the Side of the Mountain.' "

"Do that," said Duffy. "Sing that one."

He shoved the pistol across the table and Gander Eye picked it up. He flipped open the cylinder. Five cartridges were in the chambers, and the sixth was empty for the hammer to come down on it.

"Easy," warned Duffy. "That there trigger is hair-set."

"I've shot with this gun." Gander Eye pushed the cylinder back. "Now stand over yonder beside the door and look thisaway."

"You said close my eyes." Duffy got up unsteadily and shuffled across the room. "Said not to watch, not know when it happens."

"That's right, close your eyes."

Duffy closed them, set his feet apart. "Ready," he breathed.

Sitting squarely, Gander Eye set his right elbow on the table and steadied his right wrist with his left hand, mountain marksman fashion. He caught and held half a breath of air and thumbed back the hammer. Closing his left eye, he sighted expertly and touched the trigger.

The gun went off ringingly. Duffy reeled halfway around, eyes staring. On the left side of his head, just above the ear, blood sprang brightly from the gash Gander Eye had contrived to make there.

"Stand still," Gander Eye said happily. "I'll try it again."

Duffy snatched the knob, tore the door open, and rushed out. His wild scream winged up to the moon high above him. Crookedly he ran out on Main Street, stopped, and screamed more loudly still.

Startled voices rose in the dark here and there. From Longcohr's house Peggy came running. She wore purple-and-pink pajamas. The jacket front was open, and her naked breasts surged and tossed like billows.

"Duffy!" she shrilled out, and hurried close to him. "Whatever in the name of gracious happened to you?"

"I near about got myself killed," he gurgled.

She flung her arms around him and plastered herself to him. It was in that posture that William Longcohr found them when he emerged from the house in trousers and T-shirt with a shotgun in his ready hands.

"Papa," cried Peggy, "Duffy's in a fix. He barely got away with his life."

"He ain't away with it yet," said Longcohr, surveying the considerable disarray of his daughter. "Not without he tells me when you two is to be a-getting married. "

Duffy was holding Peggy, too, shoved up against her.

"I see what you mean," he said, not really plaintively.

"I hoped you would," nodded Longcohr above the shotgun. "You get back in the house, Peggy. Now," he beckoned Duffy with his gun muzzle, "you and me's got about ten or twelve words to say to one another, and tomorrow we'll all go to the license bureau at the county seat."

Gander Eye had followed Duffy no farther into the open than he had needed to see what happened. Now he walked back inside. Picking up the jar of blockade whiskey, he took his biggest drink of the evening and grinned to himself and at everything. His plan to banish the notion of suicide from Duffy's mind had worked, had worked far better and more intricately than he had dreamed.

Sitting down in the chair Duffy had quitted, Gander Eye searched the drawer and found a ramrod, some gun oil, half a dozen patches. He opened the cylinder of the revolver, shook out the cartridges, and stowed them in the drawer. Then he set himself to swabbing out the barrel. The way Duffy was fixed, it might be days before he got around to any gun-cleaning himself.

IV

Longcohr purposefully escorted Peggy and Duffy to Doc Hannum's next morning, just as Doc and Slowly were finishing a breakfast of bacon and eggs and grits. At Longcohr's bleak request, Doc did blood tests of Peggy and Duffy in the little back room he called his laboratory, tests which both passed with flying colors. Armed with signed statements to that effect, the party drove to the county seat, where Duffy secured a marriage license at the courthouse, then all sought the Methodist parsonage where Duffy and Peggy were married. It was all achieved well before noon, while the people at Sky Notch were telling each other what was happening.

There was some talk on Main Street about a shiveree when the newlyweds came back. Gander Eye, usually eager to participate in such things, decided to do something else instead, something he had planned for weeks. One of his pleasures was collecting the eggs of wild birds, carefully piercing and blowing them, and setting them in a nest of cotton on a table in his front room. On one of his ramblings he had spotted a tall poplar, dead and hollow at the top. He was sure that he had seen an ivory-billed woodpecker fluttering around a dark opening in the uppermost branch. One of that rare bird's small, pale eggs would be a graceful addition to his display.

He dragged a pair of climbing irons from a closet, dropped them into an old meal bag, and trudged away on the road that led to the highway. For a mile or so he followed the chipped pavement, then struck off across what once had been a field before its cultivators had left their home for nobody remembered where. It was another mile and a half, most of the way through scrubby second-growth timber, before he found what he was looking for.

In the broad clearing rose the dead poplar, like the mainmast of a ship. But the brush had been hacked away from around it, and somebody toiled there with a grubbing hoe, striking into the ground with practiced skill. Gander Eye knew that old man. It was Cliff Pelton, hump-shouldered but still a good worker, only a trifle bucked at the knees. Cliff Pelton wore bib overalls and a hickory shirt and a scallop-brimmed old felt hat that must date back almost to the Harding administration. On his pug nose rode cheap spectacles of the sort that some people fit to their own blurred eyes in a Woolworth store. He clutched the hoe with hands that were broad and lump-jointed and wise from more than half a century of farm labor.

"How you come on, Uncle Cliff?" inquired Gander Eye, sauntering close.

"Expect to die any minute, howking out these here old roots," squeaked Pelton cheerfully. "Got this here land when it was sold up for taxes. I hope to grow something. What you doing out here, so far from where you got business?"

"Got business right here," said Gander Eye.

He sat down on the bulged root of the poplar and shook the climbing irons from the bag. Carefully he strapped the bar of one to his right foot and shin, then untangled the other and fitted it to his left. Pelton paused at his root-grubbing to watch.

"Them looks mean," he ventured solemnly.

Gander Eye studied his irons. Now that Pelton had said so, the jutting spikes at the insides of the ankles did have a raffish, dangerous look.

"I reckon you might could say that," he said, adjusting a buckle.

"Looks to me like as if a fellow could get hurt tooling round them there," elaborated Pelton, drawing his old face into a baffled frown. "What you figure you'll be going to do with such like a rig as that, Gander Eye?"

Immediate inspiration flowed happily into Gander Eye's soul. He stretched a dangerous grin on his face, all the way across. His teeth shone like a fox's outside a henhouse.

"Tell you what these here are for, Uncle Cliff," he said, rising to his feet. "Down yonder in Asheville, the town boys use these to rooster-fight one another. And I got hold of me a pair, and today I just decided I'd come out here, away from anybody stopping us, and rooster-fight you."

With that he shuffled forward, spraddle-legged and menacing, his head craned on his neck like a gamecock's.

"Now you hold on away from me!" Pelton retreated half a dozen steps. "I ain't never done nothing to you. I ain't got nothing against you, Gander Eye."

"This here is how them town fellows play." Gander Eye circled dangerously, then closed in with a buck-dancing step. The spikes of the climbing irons glinted in the sun.

"I tell you to stay clear of me!" Pelton lifted the heavy grubbing hoe in his capable old hands. "You might could hang one of them spurs up in a man and purely shed out his guts."

"Oh, no," promised Gander Eye genially. "I'll just spur you in the legs, Uncle Cliff."

"I'll dig you."

The broad blade of the hoe lifted like the blade of an axe. Gander Eye danced nimbly away and out of reach.

"Tell you I'll dig you—"

The hoe swung. Gander Eye scurried clear away as it cut the air near him. He began to laugh. He had to.

"Lord almighty, Uncle Cliff, I was just funning."

"I wasn't," Pelton informed him balefully, the hoe still poised.

Gander Eye relaxed, still laughing. "Shucks, these here is just climbing irons. I come out here to shinny up that old poplar to where that there woodpecker's got its nest."

Slowly Pelton lowered his hoe and leaned on it. He peered up, squinting behind his glasses.

"Why, hell fire, Gander Eye," he drawled out. "You shouldn't ought to try to do that. That there tree's hollow. It'll break off with you."

"No, it's only hollow up yonder at the top," said Gander Eye confidently. He put his hand on the trunk and shoved. It swayed only slightly. Lifting a foot, he jammed the spur into the bark. "See there, Uncle Cliff, it's solid as a rock."

"You go climbing up there and it'll break with you," insisted Pelton. "You'll find out."

"If it starts to break off, I'll just yank out these here spikes and slide down."

Gander Eye caught the trunk in his strong arms, lifted himself, and jammed in the point on his other foot.

"Now you just hold your tater a damn second." Pelton came hurrying to the tree and caught Gander Eye by the back of the shirt. "Look at the thing thisaway. Suppose you was to fall out of the top of that there tree and kill yourself."

"Then all my troubles would be over," declared Gander Eye cheerfully, and he climbed another foot upward. "My poor, sad heart would be at rest."

"But mine wouldn't be." Pelton tugged at him. "If you was to come a-falling down and kill yourself, what would I have to do? I'd have to drag you better than a mile out to the road so I could wave down a car to carry you home."

Again Gander Eye burst out in roars of laughter. He freed the spikes from the poplar, sat down on the root again, and began to unstrap his irons.

"Now you got some sense into you," scolded Pelton. "I done saved your life. I want you to swear to me you won't do no such a crazy thing no more.

"No," Gander Eye chuckled. "I won't swear no promise I don't aim to keep."

He put the irons back into the bag and stood up. "You keep on working, Uncle Cliff, I won't pester you no more today. I'll come back and swarve up that poplar one of these days when you ain't round here to save me."

"I never seen a man so foolish for the lack of sense.

"Goodbye, Uncle Cliff."

"Goodbye."

Gander Eye hiked on back home, laughing again and again.

Duffy and Peggy and the Longcohrs had returned to Sky Notch. Peggy looked triumphant, Duffy looked subdued, Longcohr looked relaxed. That night, Longcohr and his wife set out a huge wedding supper on tables in front of their house. They produced a gigantic boiled ham, crocks of boiled cabbage and white potatoes, and slices of jelly roll from the bakery counter of the store. Forty people or so came to eat there, and virtually everyone in Sky Notch stopped by to congratulate the radiant Peggy and the abashed-seeming Duffy, whose hand trembled as he distributed cheap cigars to his friends. He found a moment apart with Doc, Bo, and Gander Eye.

"I done vowed up and down to Peggy and Bill Longcohr I'd stop selling blockade," he informed them in a stealthy undertone. "I ain't selling blockade no more, nor either will I be drinking any. So tomorrow, the three of you come to my place and I'll let you take whatever you want of it before I pour out the rest."

"Pour out that good Kimber blockade?" cried Doc, aghast. "See here, Duffy, we'll take all there is. Pouring it out would be a major blasphemy. The angels in heaven would weep."

"Let me take over the most part and pay you something for it," offered Bo. "Then I'll sell it here and yonder to the same folks you did, and make it up with Captain Kimber so I can buy more from time to time. And if ever you might could want a nip, come over down into my cellar and—"

"Nosiree Bob," Duffy cut in, almost fiercely. "Close as liquor come to getting me killed last night, I'm never a-going to touch any of it again, long as I live. Well, maybe if I'm sick some day. Maybe then."

"Come to me whenever you feel sick and I'll give you a drink," promised Doc.

Before dawn of the following day, all of them met at the door of Duffy's shed behind his station. Bo drove his car across Main Street. He loaded the trunk and back seat with fruit jars of clear, heady liquid, and then drove back with it to store it in recesses of his cellar. Doc and Gander Eye filled suitcases with what Duffy gave them and carried the burdens to their respective homes. At noon of the day after, Gander Eye joined Doc and Crispin in Doc's cottage. All three of them sipped appreciatively and ate tuna sandwiches made for them by Slowly.

"And tonight," said Crispin to Slowly, "you and I visit the Kimbers. What time do we go?"

"The full moon is going to come up right soon after sundown," she said, beginning to gather up the glasses and dishes. "Best we start out early. If you've got you a flashlight, bring it along. The trail's right rough here and there."

"Both here and there and in between," said Doc dryly.

"That there Kimber baptizing should ought to be a thing to see," ventured Gander Eye, but Slowly only looked at him and did not speak.

"Is it at their settlement?" asked Crispin.

"No, sir, I've been to the settlement now and then," said Gander Eye. "They baptize somewheres else, I don't know where. Ain't never had no reason to go there, nor no invitation."

Crispin and Slowly started out in the last deep gray of twilight. Crispin wore a plaid shirt and khaki pants, Slowly had on jeans and a dark pullover. Doc and Gander Eye watched them walk together along Main Street to a turn at the ruined gravel road that went to the side just short of the old abandoned school building.

"You maybe kind of wish you could go up there and see that baptizing, Doc?" Gander Eye asked.

"That's just exactly what I wish."

Gander Eye gazed after the pair of walkers until they vanished from his sight. "Well," he said at last, "see you tomorrow, probably. I'll sure enough love to hear Jim Crispin tell what went on with them."

Slowly he walked home.

The moon was up and giving light on the gravel road as Crispin and Slowly left behind them the glow from the windows of houses in Sky Notch. The gravel topping ceased, too. Trees stood hushed on either side of the way.

"It's beautiful out here tonight," said Crispin. "The moon, the stars, seem closer down to you here than in low country."

"Is that a fact? I've never been to any place but right here."

"I'm beginning to think that right here is the best place anyone could be, Slowly."

The way underfoot grew rough. It mounted steeply upward, climbing the mountain. At the right rose the lace of a height shaggy with dark trees, while at the left it dropped down to where water murmured softly. "That's Bull Creek down yonder," Slowly told Crispin. "It comes on down from the Kimber settlement to Sky Notch, all the way down Dogged Mountain."

Crispin walked in one deep, jagged rut of the road, Slowly in the other. The moonlight, soaking down through the branches of the trees, showed them great pebbles and scraps of stone.

"This looks almost impossible for a car to travel," said Crispin.

"It's right hard to drive on except if you're a Kimber," said Slowly. "I don't reckon Gander Eye drives it at better than eight or ten miles an hour when he comes to talk about the land he rents the Kimbers, nor either Doc when there's some Kimber he's got to give medicine to."

"But Gander Eye and Doc both come up here."

"Only when they've got business to tend to. Not even the lumber company cut more than halfway up here. Too steep to snake out the logs."

Steadily they mounted higher and higher, past the groves of trees that the lumber company had never thought profitable to seek out and cut. Those trees jutted branches from each side of the road, in an overhead tangle that shut out the rays of the moon. Crispin used his flashlight, but Slowly's feet seemed to know their own way. At last they paused at a point where the miserable road wound around a great swell of the mountain, far above where Bull Creek flowed. Crispin felt glad for a chance to draw deep breaths, though Slowly seemed fresh and vigorous.

"How much farther?" asked Crispin.

"Oh," said Slowly, "we've been a-coming along two miles and the most part of another. It's near about five miles the whole way. But from here on we don't have to climb so steep, it'll be easier. You all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine," said Crispin. "I'm about as all right as I could possibly be. I feel very happy to be walking out here with you, Slowly—Celola. That's a beautiful name you have. It sounds as if it might be an Indian name."

"It might could be Indian, at that. I don't know. There's Indian blood here and there amongst us mountain folks. Gander Eye's eighth part Cherokee, I think, or anyway a sixteenth."

"I'm not surprised to hear that about him."

They resumed their tramp, their feet cautious on the narrow shelf of the roadway with the height to one side, the steep descent on the other. Crispin pulled out a handkerchief to mop his brow. The moon climbed and climbed into the star-strewn sky above the dark clusters of leaves.

Now the road sloped slightly downward, and they could hear the voice of the creek again. The trees crowded back from right and left. Crispin was glad to have the beam of his flashlight.