ONE Saturday in May I was hurrying from mountainous North Carolina into
mountainous Tennessee. Because of my speed and air of alarm, I was
followed by the Seven Suspicions. I was either a revenue detective in
pursuit of moonshiners, or a moonshiner pursued by revenue detectives,
or a thief hurrying out of hot territory, or a deputy sheriff pursuing
a thief, or a pretended non-combatant hurrying toward a Tennessee feud,
actually an armed recruit, or I had just killed my family’s hereditary
enemy and was eluding his avengers, or I had bought some moonshine
whisky and was trying to get out of a bad region before nightfall.
These suspicions implied that the inhabitants admired me. Yet I hurried.
I came upon one article of my creed, the very next day, Sunday. But
Saturday was a season of panic, preparation, and trial.
The article of my creed that I won as my reward might be stated in this
fashion: “_Peace is to be found, even in a red and bleeding rose._”
I was accustomed to the feudist and the assassin. Such people had been
good to me, and I had walked calmly through their haunts. But now the
smothering landscape seemed to double every natural fear. The hills
were so steep and so close together that only the indomitable corn and
rye climbed to the top to see the sun. The road was in the bed of a
scolding rivulet. People in general travelled horseback. Cross-logs for
those afoot bridged high above the streams every half mile. There was
a primeval something about the heavy chains of the cross-logs, binding
them to the trees, that suggested the forgotten beginning of an iron
people, some harsh iron-willed Sparta. This impression was strengthened
by the unpainted dwellings, hunched close to the path, with thick walls
to resist siege.
What first fixed these outlaws here, as in a nest, with a ring of
houseless open country round them? A traveller was more shut from the
horizon than in the slums of Chicago. The road climbed no summits. It
writhed like a snake. And there were snakes sunning themselves on every
other cross-log. _And there was never a flower to be seen._
An old woman, kindly enough, gave this beggar a noon-meal for the
asking, but the landscape had struck into me so I almost feared to eat
the bread. For this fear I sternly blamed my perverse imagination.
Refreshed in body only, I crept like a fascinated fly, dragged by
occult force toward a spider’s den. I felt as though I had reached the
very heart of the trap when I stepped into the streets of the profane
village of Flagpond, Tennessee.
It was early in the afternoon. The feudal warriors had come to the
place on horseback, dressed in poverty-stricken Saturday finery:
clothes tight and ill-dyed, with black felt hats that should have
slouched, but did not. The immaculate rims stood out in queer
precision. The wearers sat in front of the three main stores, looking
across the street at one another. Since there was no woman in sight,
every one knew that the shooting might begin at any time. The silence
was deadly as the silence of a plague. I checked my pace. I ambled in
a leisurely way from store to store, inquiring the road to Cumberland
Gap, the distance to Greenville, and the like. I was on the other
side of the circle of dwellings pretty soon, followed by the Seven
Suspicions, shot from about seventy-five lean countenances, which makes
about five hundred and twenty-five suspicions.
One of the most indescribable and haunting things of that region was
that all the women and children were dressed in a certain dead-bone
gray.
About four o’clock I had made good my escape. I had begun to mount
rolling, uninhabited hills. At twilight I entered a plain, and felt
a new kind of civilization round me. It would have been shabby in
Indiana. Here it was glorious. They had whitewashed fences, and
white-painted cottages, glimmering kindly through the dusk. Some farm
machinery was rusting in the open. I climbed a last year’s straw-stack,
and slept, with acres of stars pouring down peace.