II

I stood on the doorstep one morning, balancing destiny. Should I take

the downward road to the post-office, and thereby connect with the

distant maelstrom called progress, or should I choose the upward trail

to the still crests of content?

Serena, happening designedly by, saved me the wrench of decision.

“If you want any strawberries this year,” she said, “you’d better go

before the Mossy Creek folks have rumpaged over Old Cloud field. They

slip up from the west side an’ don’t leave a berry for manners. I’m

goin’ now. I always go once.”

I provided buckets and cups, as expected, and we started. The high

ridge field where the berries rambled had its name from an Indian, Old

Cloud, who, it was said, had lived there behind the cloud that always

rested on the ridge before so many of the peaks had been stripped of

their pine and poplar and balsam that had held the clouds entangled

and the sky so close. After it had passed to the settlers it had taken

forty years of ignorant and monotonous tillage to reduce the rich soil

to a half-wild pasture enjoying the freedom of exhaustion.

I had been under roof for three days, and the spring air produced the

usual inebriation. Several times I left Serena far behind, but she

always caught up, and we reached the top of the ridge together. Here,

panting, I dropped to a bed of cinquefoil, while Serena stood unheated

and smiling.

“Did you ever run, Serena?” I asked.

“I always take the gait I can keep,” she said, her glance already

roving the ground for berries. “The other side o’ that gully’s red with

’em. We’ve got ahead o’ Mossy Creek this time.”

I was looking at the world which the lifted horizon had given me. North

by east the Great Smokies drew their lilac-blue veil over impenetrable

wildernesses of laurel. I could see the round dome of Clingman, and

turned quickly from the onslaught of a remembered day when my body

was wrapped in the odor of its fir-trees and its heathery mosses

cooled my feet. South lay the Nantahalas, source of clear waters.

West--but what were names before that array of peaks like characters

in creation’s alphabet, whose key was kept in another star? They rose

in every form, curved, swaying, rounded, a loaf, a spear, shadowed and

unshadowed, their splotches of green, gold, and hemlock-black flowing

into blue, where distance balked the eyes and imagination stepped the

crests alone. It seemed easier to follow than to stay behind with feet

clinging to earth. Affinity lay with the sky.

Serena was steadily picking berries.

“But, Serena,” I called, “just see!”

“I come here once a year,” she said, standing up, “an’ I never take my

look till I’ve filled my bucket.” And she was on her knees again.

Rebuke number two, I thought, and set to work. Avoiding Serena’s

discovered province, I crossed to the next dip of the slope, and there

the field was covered with morning-glories, still radiantly open. All

hues were there, from the purple of night to snow without tint, and

the clusters of berries under them seemed in sanctuary. I plucked them

away, feeling like a ravager of shrines. A breeze flowed over the

field, and every color quivered dazzlingly. It was plainly a protest.

I gave up my robberies and passed to another part of the field, where

rapine seemed legitimate. Here the rank grass of yesteryears was deeply

rooted and matted, and I sank adventurously in the tripping tangles.

The slope was steeper, too, and I slipped, slid, and stumbled from

patch to patch before theft was well begun, losing half my captures in

the struggle. It was tinglingly arduous, however, and I continued a

happy game of profit and loss until I scrambled from a gully into whose

depths I had followed my rolling bucket, and confronted Serena. She

looked as if she had coolly swum the lake of color behind us; but her

fresh apron was unstained, while mine was a splash of coral. I advised

her to return. The picking was better above.

“I know it is,” she answered, “but them mornin’-glories keep me

fluttery, lookin’ at me all the time. I got to fill my bucket _first_.

I promised Len all he could eat in a pie, an’ it takes a big one fer

ten of us. Granpap’s stayin’ at our house now. But we’d better move

furder over, out o’ this soddy grass. They’s rattlers here.”

With her word we saw him. He was partly coiled not more than three

feet from Serena’s undulating gingham. The black diamonds shining on

his amber skin assured me of his variety--the kind that, as natives

tell me, Indians will not kill because “he gives a man a chance.”

Certainly he was giving us a chance. His eyes seemed half-shut,

but not sleepy, as if he did not need his full power of vision to

comprehend our insignificant world. His poised head was motionless.

Only his tail quivered, not yet erected for his gentlemanly warning.

He glistened with newness, and was evidently a youngish snake, with

dreams of knighthood still unbattered. His parents had bequeathed him

none of the hatred that belongs to a defeated race. Serena seemed as

motionless as he. I took her hand, drawing her a few paces back, and

we stood watching. Sir Rattle slowly uncoiled, quivered throughout his

variegated length, and moved indifferently from us, disappearing in the

clumps of grass.

“Well,” said a pale Serena, “I feel like I did after I was baptized.

The preacher, he was old man Diller, put his hand on my shoulder

an’ said, ‘Love the Lord, my sister’; but I was so full o’ lovin’

everything and everybody I couldn’t think about the Lord. Do you

reckon snakes have brothers and sisters that they know about? Think o’

that feller throwin’ away sech a chance to git even!” She could not

stop talking any more than I could begin. “Let’s get to the top o’ the

field where it’s cooler. It’s got so hot I’m afeard a shower’s comin’.”

By the time we reached the top we knew that the shower was to be a

heavy one. There was a cave over the ridge on the Mossy Creek side,

where we could take shelter. But we would wait a little for what

the heavens could show us. The doors of the sky were to be thrown

open. There would be no reservation of magic. Earth knew it by the

quick wind that pressed every grass-blade to the ground and made the

strawberry-blossoms look like little white, whipped flags; and by the

grove of tall, young poplars that bent like maidens, their interlaced

branches resting, a silver roof, on their curved shoulders. The

lightning rippled, and earth was a golden rose spreading her mountain

petals. It was the signal for the assembling of the dragons. They came

swelling from the west, pulling one great paw after another from behind

the walls of distance and puffing black breath half across the sky.

The lightning again, and this time earth was a golden butterfly under

the paws of the dragons. Then the conflict began, the beasts mingled,

and the sound of their bones massively breaking struck and shook the

ground under our feet. A gray sea rose vertically on the horizon and

marched upon us. We fled, blinded, to the cave, tearing off our aprons

to protect our buckets.

Even here Serena did not pant or gasp.

“How dry it is!” she said, examining the berries. “They’re not hurt.

My, you didn’t cap yourn!”

“But I’d never fill my bucket if I stopped to cap them.”

“You don’t stop. You leave the cap on the vine. It’s as quick done as

not. Now it’ll take you longer to cap than it did to pick. O’ course

you didn’t know. Some folks knows one thing and some another,” she

added kindly. “Ain’t it a thick rain? But we got a good place. Some say

this cave’s ha’nted, an’ won’t come anigh it. Uncle Sim Goforth died

here, but he was a good man an’ wouldn’t harm nobody if he did come

back.”

“How did he happen to die here?”

“They killed him. It was in time o’ the war way back. Folks are better

now. They say they’re doin’ awful over the sea, but they’d never be so

mean as they were to Uncle Sim. He hid here, an’ brought his wife an’

childern. But they found him.”

“Was he a Unionist or Confederate?”

“I never could make out ’tween ’em. The Unionists, they wanted to free

the black people, but the Unionists here in the mountains didn’t favor

’em. So I never could git it clear. Anyway, Uncle Sim was a good man.

I’ve heard granpap tell about him many a night. The men, when they

found him, cut down a tree an’ hewed out some puncheons fer a coffin,

an’ made Uncle Sim sit on it an’ play his fiddle. He could play the

best that ever was, an’ they say he played up fine that night. They

kept him playin’ till near daylight; then they shot him, an’ his wife

an’ childern lookin’ right on. I used to cry, hearin’ granpap tell it,

out in Madison, but it don’t make me feel bad now, ’cause I know folks

are better than what they were them days.”

Such naïveté was possible in the period of our national innocence,

before “the boys” began to drift back home with certain truths on their

tongue.

“Looky! the rain’s stopped quicker’n it come. We can go right back, fer

the ridge dreens off soon as the water strikes it. Ain’t it cool, an’

the air like gold!”

She tried to catch a handful of it to show me its quality. We went

back, and in a minute, as she said, our buckets were full, though we

lost a few seconds while I learned of Serena how to cap and pick at

the same time. Then we started along the ridge to the gap where we had

entered the field. Walking back, I lingered to pluck a giant white

trillium that shone from the fringe of wood. No loss to the forest;

there were thousands more lighting up the cove farther down. As I came

out of the wood, the air over the field seemed visibly to precipitate

some of its gold. A swarm--no, the word is too heavy for anything so

delicately bodied--a band of butterflies, moving in a slow wave over

the ridge, had at that moment broken into myriads of distinct flakes--a

shattered blaze. Nearer, their gold became tinily specked, and showed

flashes and fringes of pearl; the silver-bordered fritillaries,

perhaps, or some kin of theirs. I started to call Serena, but paused

softly, for she was gazing over the mountains, having her “look.” I

was left to the butterflies. Were they as unconscious of their grubby

origin as they seemed, holding no memory of a life bounded by a

sassafras twig, or of the cove behind us where a violet leaf may have

been both food and heaven?

The butterfly ought to be the symbol on every Christian’s flag. It is

the perfect pietist. Its confidence in the Infinite is as patent as its

wings. Serena, amid that airy fluttering, seemed, in her own shining

way, the sovereign of the band. Deep as piety was her trust in the

morrow. Food would come to her, raiment would be found.

The butterflies floated past, becoming a dim, coppery tremble in the

shade of the valley. Serena was still gazing in the distance. At last I

said that we must be going; Len was expecting his pie.

“These berries ain’t goin’ into a pie,” she answered. “They’re worth

more than a pie’ll come to. They’re goin’ into jam.”

Was Serena taking forethought? No; I could trust her lighted face and

wet eyes. She was still piously improvident.