LET us now recall a certain adventure among the moonshiners.
When I walked north from Atlanta Easter morning, on Peachtree road,
orchards were flowering everywhere. Resurrection songs flew across the
road from humble blunt steeples.
Stony Mountain, miles to the east, Kenesaw on the western edge of
things, and all the rest of the rolling land made the beginning of a
gradual ascent by which I was to climb the Blue Ridge. The road mounted
the watershed between the Atlantic and the gulf.
An old man took me into his wagon for a mile. I asked what sort of
people I would meet on the Blue Ridge. He answered, “They make blockade
whisky up there. But if you don’t go around hunting stills by the
creeks, or in the woods away from the road, they’ll be awful glad to
see you. They are all moonshiners, but if they likes a man they loves
him, and they’re as likely to get to lovin’ you as not.”
When I was truly in the mountains, six days north of Atlanta, a day’s
journey from the last struggling railway, the road wound into a certain
high, uninhabited valley. Two days back, at a village I entered just
after I had enjoyed the falls of Tallulah, I had found a letter from
my new friend John Collier whom I had met in Macon and Atlanta. It
contained a little money, which he insisted I should take, to make
easier my way. I was inconsistent enough to spend some of it, instead
of returning it or giving it “to the poor.”
I invested seventy-five cents in brogans made of the thickest leather.
I had thought they were conquered the first day. But now one of them
bit a piece out of my heel. John Collier has done noble things since.
On my behalf, for instance, he climbed Mount Mitchell with me, and
showed me half the glory of the South. Then and after, he has helped
my soul with counsel and teaching. But he should not have corrupted a
near-Franciscan with money for hoodoo brogans. Though it was fairly
warm weather, if ever I rested five minutes, the heavy things
stiffened like cooling metal.
The little streams I crossed scarcely afforded me a drink. Their dried
borders had the foot-prints of swine on them.
Lameness affects one’s vision. The thick woods were the dregs of the
landscape, fit haunt for the acorn-grubbing sow. The road following the
ridges was a monster’s spine.
Those wicked brogans led me where they should not. Or maybe it was just
my destiny to find what I found.
About four o’clock in the afternoon, after exploring many roads that
led to futile nothing, I was on what seemed the main highway, and
dragged myself into the sight of the first mortal since daybreak. He
seemed like a gnome as he watched me across the furrows. And so he
was, despite his red-ripe cheeks. The virginal mountain apple-tree,
blossoming overhead, half covering the toad-like cabin, was out of
place. It should have been some fabulous, man-devouring devil-bush from
the tropics, some monstrous work of the enemies of God.
The child, just in her teens, helping the Gnome to plant sweet
potatoes, had in her life planted many, and eaten few. Or so it
appeared. She was a crouching lump of earth. Her father dug the furrow.
She did the planting, shovelling the dirt with her hands. Her face was
sodden as any in the slums of Chicago. She ran to the house a ragged
girl, and came back a homespun girl, a quick change. It must not be
counted against her that she did not wash her face.
The Gnome talked to me meanwhile. He had made up his mind about me. “I
guess you want to stay all night?”
“Yes.”
“The next house is fifteen miles away. You are welcome if what we have
is good enough for you. My wife is sick, but she will not let you be
any bother.”
I wanted to be noble and walk on. But I persuaded myself my feet were
as sick as the woman. I accepted the Gnome’s invitation.
Let the readers with a detective instinct note that his hoe-handle was
two feet short, and had been whittled a little around the top to make
it usable. It was at best an awkward instrument. (The mystery will soon
be solved.)
We were met at the door by one my host called Brother Joseph--a
towering shape with an upper lip like a walrus, for it was armed with
tusk-like mustaches. He was silent as King Log.
But the Gnome said, “I have saved up a month of talk since the last
stranger came through.” With ease, with simplicity of word, with I know
not how much of guile, he gave fragments of his life: how he had lived
in this log house always, how his first wife died, how her children
were raised by this second wife and married off, how they now enjoyed
this second family.
He showed me the other fragment of the hoe-handle. “I broke that over a
horse’s head the last time I was drunk. I always get crazy. When I come
to, I do not remember anything about it. The last time I fought with my
cousin. When I knocked down his horse he drew his knife. I drew _this_
knife. My wife said I fought like a wild hog. I sliced my cousin pretty
bad. He skipped the country, for he cut out one of my lungs and two of
my ribs. I lost two buckets of blood. It took the doctor a long time to
put my insides back.”
From this hour forward he struggled between the luxury of being even
more confidential, and the luxury of being cautious like a lynx. I
squirmed. Despite his abandon, he was watching me.
I put one hand in my pocket. I found a diversion, a pair of eyeglasses.
I had chanced on them in the bushes at Tallulah. The droop of his
eyelids as he put them on was exquisite. He paced the floor. I had a
review of his appearance. He was like a thin twist of tobacco. He had
been burned out by too-sharp whisky. The babies clapped their hands
as he strutted. He was like a third-rate Sunday-school teacher in a
frock coat in the presence of the infant class. He was glad to keep
the glasses, yet asked questions with a double meaning, implying I had
stolen them in Atlanta, and fled these one hundred miles. We were gay
rogues, and we knew it.
“Get up! Make some coffee and supper!” he shouted to the figure on
the bed in the black corner of the cabin. He kept his jaw tight on
his pipe, speaking to her in the gnome language. She replied in kind,
snorting and muffling her words, without moving lips or tongue, and
keeping her teeth on her snuff-stick. She stumbled up, groaning, with
both hands on her head. She had once been a woman. She had lived with
this thing too long. All the trappings that make for home had grown
stale and weird about her. The scraps of rag-carpet on the floor were
rat eaten. The red calico window curtains were vilely dirty from the
years of dust and the leak of many rains. The benches were battered,
unsteady. The door-latch was gone. The door was held in place by a
stone. She stood before me, her hair hanging straight across her face
or down her collar, or flying about or tied behind in a dreadful knot.
She stood before me, but as long as I was in that house she did not
look at me, she did not speak to me.
There was no stove. The Gnome said: “Wife don’t like a stove. She had
rather cook the way she learned.” We rolled in the back-log for her and
coaxed up the embers. We sat at one side of the hearth. We exchanged
boastful adventures. She crawled into the fireplace to nurse the
corn-bread and coffee and pork to perfection and place the Dutch oven
right.
Have you heard your grandmother speak of the Dutch oven? It is a squat
kettle which is set in the embers. When it is hot, the biscuit dough
is put in and the lid replaced. Slowly the biscuits become ambrosia.
Slowly the watching cook is baked.
The Devil was in my host. By his coaxing hospitality he made it seem
natural that a woman deadly sick should serve us. The rest of the
family could wait. It did not matter if the tiny one cried and pulled
the mother’s skirt. She smote it into silence and fear, then carried
it to the black corner where the potato planter herded the rest of the
babies, helped by King Log, the walrus-headed.
The Gnome said, “I quit drinking ever since I had that fight I told you
about. I don’t dare drink. So I take coffee.”
You should have seen him flooding himself with black coffee, drinking
from a yellow bowl. I said to myself: “He will surely turn to the
consolation of liquor anon. He will beat his wife again. He will drive
his children into the woods. This woman must fight the battle for her
offspring till her black-snake hair is white. Or maybe that insane
knife will go suddenly into her throat. She may die soon with her hair
black,--and red.”
We ate with manly leisure. We were sated. The mother prepared the
second meal, and called the group from the black corner. She made ready
her own supper. I see her by the fire, the heavy arm shielding her
face, the hunched figure a knot of roots,--a palpable mystery about
her, making her worthy of a portrait by some new Rembrandt. It is the
tragic mystery born of the isolation of the Blue Ridge and the juice of
the Indian corn. Let us not forget the weapon with which she fights the
flame, the quaint long shovel.
Let us watch her at the table, breaking her corn-bread alone, her puffy
eyelids closed, her cheek-bones seeming to cut through the skin. There
is something of the eagle in her aspect because of her Roman nose, and
her hands moving like talons. It is not corn-bread that she tears and
devours. She is consuming her enemies, which are Weariness, Squalor,
Flat and Unprofitable Memory, Spiritual Death. She is seeking to forget
that the light of the hearthstone that falls on her dirty but beautiful
babies is kindled in hell.
The Gnome spoke of his hogs. A Middle West farmer can talk hogs, and
the world will admire him the more. But a mediæval swine-herd dare not.
It is self-betrayal.
My host grew affectionate, grandfatherly. He told of a solid acre of
mica on top of a mountain. He speculated that it was a mile deep. He
put a chunk into my pocket for me to carry to Asheville to interest
great capitalists. He offered me fifty per cent on the profits. I took
out a copy of the _Tree of Laughing Bells_ from my pocket. I reviewed
the tale contained in the book, in words I thought the Gnome would
understand. Then he read it for himself with the “specs.” He was proud
of having learned to read out of the Bible, with no schooling.
He seemed particularly impressed with the length of the journey of the
hero of the poem, who flew “to the farthest star of all.” He looked at
me with conceited shrewdness. “I played hookey myself, when I was a
kid. I rode and walked forty-five miles that day. I was mighty glad to
get back to my mammy the day after. I never wanted to run away again.”
He shook his pipe at me. “You are just a runaway boy, that’s what you
are.”
He said something favorable about me to his wife, in the gnome
language. She stood up. She shrilled back a caution. She showed her
dirty teeth at him. But there was something he was bursting to tell
me. He was essentially too reckless to conceal a secret long, even a
life-and-death secret. He began: “I still raise a little corn.”
The Walrus gave a sort of watch-dog bark. The Gnome reluctantly
accepted the caution. He pointed sharply to the bed farthest from the
black corner of the room.
“That’s for you.”
“Isn’t there a shed or a corn-crib where I can sleep?”
“No, you don’t get out of this house to-night. There aren’t any sheds
or cribs.”
I looked helplessly around that single-roomed cabin. Not fear, but
modesty, overcame me. I was expected to retire first. But King Log, the
Walrus, perceiving my diffidence, set me an example. He rapidly hauled
a couch off the porch and tumbled into it, first undressing as far
as his underwear. With a quilt almost to his chin, and covering his
pretty pink feet, he was a decent spectacle.
Happily I also wore underwear, and was soon under my quilt. I stole a
look at the potato planter. I realized that she was the maiden present.
Be pleased, O brothers, to observe that she has been aware of her age
and state. She has huddled up to the fire, with her back to us; she has
hidden her face on her knees. At last she piles ashes on the embers
and finds a place in the black corner in the cot full of children. Her
father and mother take the cot between.
Next morning was Sunday, a week since Easter. Only when a man has sadly
mangled feet, and blood heated by many weeks of adventure, can he find
luxury such as I found in the icy stream next morning. The divine
rivulet on the far side of the field had been misnamed “Mud Creek.” It
was clear as a diamond.
Always carrying a piece of soap in my hip pocket, I was able to take a
complete scour. Not content with this (pardon me), I did scrub shirt,
socks, underwear, and bandanna. I hung them on the bushes, thanking God
for the wind. Taking my before-mentioned credentials from my pocket, I
made myself into a gentleman. When I dressed at last, my clothes were a
little damp, but I knew that an hour’s walking would put all to rights.
As I held the bushes aside I saw a crib-like structure that made me
shake more than the damp clothes. Was it a still, or was it not a still?
In my innocence I could not tell. But I remembered the warning, “Don’t
go pokin’ round huntin’ stills by the creeks.”
As I hurried to the house my host carelessly appeared from the region
of my bathing-place. He was whittling with his historic knife. I
suppose he had noted my actions enough to restore his confidence.
Anyway, the shame of being unwashed was his only visible emotion. He
said, “I always bathe in hot water.”
“So do I, when I am not on the road.”
Still he was abashed. He took an enormous chew of tobacco to vindicate
himself.
After breakfast the wife helped the Walrus to drag the cot out of
doors. When she was alone on the porch I told her how sorry I was she
had been obliged to cook for me. I thanked her for her toil. But she
hurried away, without a pause or a glance. She kissed one of those
miry faced babies. She walked into the house, leaving me smirking
at the hills. She growled something at the host. He came forth. He
pointed out the road, over the mountains and far away. He broke off a
blossoming apple-sprig and whittled it.
“So you’ve been to Atlanta?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I was there once. What hotel did you use?”
“The Salvation Army.”
“I was in the United States Hotel.”
Still I was stupid. He continued:
“I was there two years.”
He put on his glasses. He threw down the apple-sprig, and, looking over
the glasses, he made unhappy each blossom in his own peculiar way.
He continued: “I was in the United States Hotel, for making blockade
whisky. I don’t make it any more.” He spat again. “I don’t even go
fishin’ on Sunday unless--”
He had made up his mind that I was a customer, not a detective.
“Unless what?”
“Unless a visitor wants a mess of fish.”
But I did not want a mess of fish. Repeatedly I offered money for my
night’s lodging. This he declined with real pride. _He maintained his
one virtue intact._ And so I thought of him, just as I left, as a man
who kept his code.
The John Collier brogans were easier that morning, partly because I had
something new on my mind, no doubt.
I thought of the Gnome a long time. I thought of the wife, and wondered
at her as a unique illustration of the tragic mysteries of the human
race. If she screams when seven devils enter into the Gnome, no one
outside the house will hear but the apple-tree. If she weeps, only the
wind in the chimney will understand. If she seeks justice and the law,
King Log, the Walrus, is her uncertain refuge. If she desires mercy,
the emperor of that valley, the king above King Log, is a venomous
serpent, even the Worm of the Still.
But now the road unwound in glory. I walked away from those
serpent-bitten dominions for that time. I was one with the air of
the sweet heavens, the light of the ever-enduring sun, the abounding
stillness of the forest, and the inscrutable Majesty, brooding on the
mountains, the Majesty whom ignorantly we worship.