The Hinterlands (34 page)

“Whoa there,” I said. “Whoa there.”

But the widening shadows must have made her think of feeding time. As she approached the day-down, she thought of the end of her ordeal. The thought of rest and a trough full of slop made her run in spite of herself. But I wondered if she knowed where she was going anymore. I couldn't see nothing ahead when they was a break in the trees. I couldn't imagine where the mountains had gone. Mountains don't just up and melt away.

Then I thought maybe we had turned and was headed a different direction. Sue had swerved and lost the trail. I glanced around to see through the trees, and sure enough, it seemed like they was mountains off to my left. They looked further away than before. They had that misty look of faraway mountains. The ridge must have swung to the right as we was follering it.

“Whoa there,” I said. But it didn't do no good. Sue was splitting through the trees faster than ever. Her legs was a blur as she found the quickest way through brush and around a big tree. Her hooves hit sure places in the leaves and found just the right paths between rocks and wind-throws.

Tracker Thomas had said he wanted me to get lost. It was like his suggestion put a spell on me. Because he said it, it was bound to happen. He didn't want no road across the gap, and he was still the ruling spirit of these woods. Had he give me the coin to confuse me, to distract me? The big coin shined in my hand like the reddest, newest gold.

Don't talk foolishness, I said to myself. If you got lost, you done it on your own. Had nothing to do with the old man or anything he said. But if we was lost, Sue didn't seem to realize it. She had her head and seemed to know know where she wanted
to go. I couldn't hold her back now, any more than I could before.

We went under a big white pine where it was already dark. I felt something touch the back of my hand and thought it must be a pine needle or a cobweb. But when we come out in the light again I seen it was a black spider. It had a red spot on its belly like a black widow. I was going to fling my hand to throw it off, but seen it was gripping the hair on my skin. I was afraid if I shook it, it would bite me. Black widows can jump three or four feet and I was afraid it might hop right into my face. Didn't seem nothing to do but hold my hand out like I needed it for balance. I couldn't afford to rile the spider. A black widow bite won't kill you unless you're already sick or weak. Except the bite will kill a youngun or an old person. I was so tired I didn't know what the bite would do to me. I couldn't fling it off and I couldn't brush it off on a tree without getting bit.

We had come out on some kind of shelf-land, a level place that run out along the mountain above any creek or branch. I couldn't recognize a single landmark. I could see the ridge, but it didn't look familiar. I didn't see a thing I'd noticed before, back before I seen Tracker Thomas and his dog. It was like somebody had turned the country around and rearranged the slopes and trees. Either that, or my eyes was playing tricks. Or my memory was all twisted by the excitements and strain of the day.

“Where are you going?” I hollered at Sue.

But the woods soaked up my voice, and the hog sure didn't answer. She didn't slow down a bit. The fat coin burned in my hand against the hatchet, and I couldn't hack trees for a swing would make the spider bite. I thought of running my hand under leaves to knock it off, but it could bite the instant something touched it. It clung to the hair on the back of my hand.

I'd have to remember where we was going, since I couldn't make any blazes. Sue was pulling me rod after rod and chain after chain, and I couldn't mark the way. If I lived through this day, I would have to come back and mark that stretch better.

But I was lost, and I was tired. They was nothing I could do with the spider except not disturb it, and hold my hand far from my face as possible.

I begun to think strange thoughts. It seemed I couldn't tell uphill from down, and that I might be running to South Carolina, not up into the mountains. I imagined somebody was running under me, upside down, like a reflection, and every time my boots touched ground, they touched his boots. The earth was thin as the surface of water, and he was running on the underside.

And I thought of strange contraptions, of wagons that moved under sail like ships. And these wind wagons got all tangled up in the woods because they was good only in open country. And I seen a plow that was pulled by sails. It was a big turning plow, bigger than any I had ever seen. It turned over the dirt a foot down, twisting up a shiny belly of soil. And the plow was pulled by a thing on wheels, like a wagon, with a big sail on it that could be adjusted this way and that. A man rode in the wagon adjusting the canvas and guiding the big plow.

Then I thought of a gun that could be played like a trumpet. And the barrel could be filled up with whiskey and corked for a long trip. In my fatigue I seemed to remember it was the blockaders that caught me beside the pond and tried to torture me. And it was the Melungeon girls that was making whiskey and throwing out the mash that Sue drunk. It seemed like it was the old Melungeon woman that put the spider on my hand.

I blinked to wake up. The spider wasn't no dream at all. It was right there on the back of my hand, and it hadn't moved. I had to
clear my head. I needed a dash of cold water in my face, but they wasn't any water and I couldn't reach my hand to it even if they was. I needed a cup of coffee and a hot biscuit. I needed some salve on my lip. I needed to sit down and rest and sleep. I could feel the sleep wanting to rise in me, like some kind of powders through my blood. The sleep was rising like a flood that wanted to float me away.

The spider looked like a shiny black jewel set on the back of my hand, spotted with red enamel. And it clung there as an extra big tick or flea would. But out of the corner of my eye it seemed like a drop of blood, a clot that had hardened and blackened.

Sue kept running along the shelf-land. She turned beyond a clump of laurels, and cut through an open space below some oak trees. Sometimes it seemed we was going in a northeast direction, and sometimes in a northwest. I tried to examine the shadows behind trees, but I couldn't stop, and couldn't look away from the spider on my hand for more than an instant. We seemed to be lost and getting loster.

But the black widow didn't move at all. I wasn't sure I could feel it. But I seen it there like a black eye surrounded by lashes. I tried to remember about black widows. Was they attracted to heat, the way rattlesnakes are? Did they like wet places, or dry places? Maybe it was the smell of exhaustion that attracted the spider. Maybe a spider can smell when a body is about to die. Like buzzards, they're drawed to a body near the breaking point. It's the same instinct that pulls a wolf to a sick buffalo or deer. Maybe the spider thought if it stuck to my hand a few minutes more it could feed to its heart's content.

I wondered if insects was attracted to the smell of metal. Was they a perfume coming off the coin that drawed the spider? Was my sweat mixing with the gold to make an aroma? Maybe the
brightness of the coin fascinated the spider. But it didn't make any move to touch the gold. It stayed still on the back of my hand. I wondered if I flicked my wrist it would just drop off.

Just then the spider started crawling. It felt like a drop of water running on the back of my hand. The skin itched where the little feet moved. It walked out to the knuckles and around like it was looking for something. A spider moves not like it is rowing on its long legs, but like it is being poled by one leg after another, fast and separate. The black widow circled back and rested just below the wrist. I thought it was maybe going to jump. But I couldn't focus on it long because we had reached the end of open oak woods and was entering brush and weaving our way between saplings and sassafras bushes.

“Whoa there,” I said in a low voice. But Sue didn't pay me no mind more than she ever had. I didn't want to holler loud because I thought it might upset the black widow.

It seemed like we was heading east now. I couldn't see anything ahead but deeper woods. I couldn't see how we was going to get through. The spider started crawling up my wrist. I wondered if it would crawl inside or outside my sleeve. If it crawled outside I could slap it off. If it crawled under the cloth I didn't know what I would do. I'd have to turn loose of Sue's tail. People get bit if a spider goes under their clothes. Just the binding of the cloth will make the spider bite.

In my confusion I stumbled against a chinquapin bush and those flame-shaped leaves must have been loaded with rain for they sent a shower down like somebody had throwed a bucket of water. When I looked I seen the spider had been washed off, but I couldn't see where it had gone. Had it jumped somewhere else on me? Sue kept right on going, and I didn't have time to stop and look.

I thought I seen that spider on my pants leg. Maybe it was just another drop of rain, but it shined like the drop at a thermometer's bottom. Then it was gone and I had to keep going. Every chance I got I looked down at my britches, but it was gone. Had it bit me and in the rush I had not felt the sting? I was already numb with fatigue. The rheumatism didn't feel as sore. Maybe the poison was spreading and I didn't even know it.

You're wondering why I kept going? It seemed like I had been running for a year. It seemed like I couldn't remember a time I hadn't been running. I wondered why I had ever even thought of building a road. I couldn't remember why it had seemed so important. They comes a point when ambition just seems to wash out of a man. It's like something changes in you and instead of looking ahead and bracing for projects and enterprise you see the sweetness of rest and modesty. You are ashamed or at least amused by your grand ambitions. You want to grow a quiet garden. You want to sit on the porch and talk to neighbors. You want to savor the minutes and hours, and protect yourself against age and weather. It's like they's some change deep in your makeup and a stream has been diverted way back up the valley.

But once I got rid of the black widow spider it wasn't just fatigue and loss of ambition that troubled me. It wasn't even shame at the foolishness of my scheme. The day was almost over. It was near four or five o'clock, and we was lost. We was loster than we had been all day. I didn't have no sense of direction anymore and Sue seemed to be going this way and that. When I got a chance to look for the sun, it was first over one shoulder and then over the other. I couldn't recognize anything, and the woods ahead just went on and on and got deeper and deeper.

“Where you going?” I said to Sue. But she didn't slow down. She was running on habit now. She had been running so long she
couldn't stop. It was like she still had speed and it carried her forward. She run like it was easier to go forward than to quit. She run like she didn't care where she was going, like a dog that's been hunting all night and keeps trotting along because it's so far from home.

Everybody's life is hard. You show me somebody whose life ain't hard and I'll show you a dead man. The only thing that can get you through so much messiness and grief is a plan. Only trashy people just drift, and though they's a certain wisdom in drifting I don't see how they can stand it. How can anybody just loll around all day, with nothing to look forward to?

But I was so tired, I wasn't hardly at myself. The woods went on forever, with more trees, more thickets. The shelf-land was endless, and the mountains went on and on.

Boom! boom! boom! I heard off to my left. It sounded like a drum. I wondered if it was far-off thunder. Maybe they was going to be another storm. But Sue didn't seem to hear nothing, and she didn't slow down.

I heard it again, boom! boom! boom!, slow like somebody shooting pistols, a second or two between shots. It was like somebody had a dozen pistols, and was shooting them one after another. The sounds stopped and I wasn't sure I had heard them.

The leaves was drying out and rattling a little, covering up any sound in the distance. I couldn't see any clouds that would indicate another storm. And the air didn't feel like it was going to rain. In fact, the sky had cleared completely, and the air was getting warm again. I hit a laurel bush with my shoulder and it rattled and did not wet me.

The boom-boom-boom come again from the distance. It really sounded like a drum. But who would be beating a drum this far back in the mountains? The blows sounded like echoes, but timed
so even it was hard to imagine thunder or even pistols making the noise. Could the Cherokee have come back and be having a war dance? a corn dance? Could they be having a rally for an attack?

Boom-boom-boom-boom, the sound come again. It was so regular it was scary. It was timed exactly to the blood beating in my ears. Could I be imagining the sound? Could it be a stroke coming on, or might it be a sound in the mountain? I'd heard of mountains that made noises, that groaned and knocked at certain times like they was having bad dreams. Singing mountains they was called. People thought they had caverns and waterfalls inside, or rocks that shifted around with the phases of the moon.

Boom-boom-boom-boom come over the horizon again, and then a couple of echoes follered up. Could they be an army marching through the mountains? I tried to think of the last militia that had been mustered. Not since the Battle of New Orleans had local folks marched under colors. The sound was ghostly. It was like something knocking against the sky. But I didn't believe no ghost army could be marching through the coves and hollers.

It come to me why the sound was so spooky. It was like somebody knocking at a door or gatepost. You hear knocking and you have to go see what it is. If somebody is rapping, you can't ignore it. But this was a big hitting, like something inside the mountain or inside the earth. And the sound filled the sky, running from one horizon to the other.

“Whoa,” I said to Sue, because I wanted to stop and listen. “Slow down, old girl,” I said. If I could stop and quiet my heart and the thumping in my ears I might be able to figure out the racket. I might make sense of it.