Cold Mountain Part 27

Inman took a step to the side and the bear rushed by him and plunged over the high ledge that she never saw in the gloom. He could smell her strong as she went by. Wet dog, black dirt.

He looked over and saw her break open on the rocks far below like a great red blossom in the dawn light. Black pelt sc.r.a.ps littering the rocks.

s.h.i.+t, he thought. Even my best intentions come to naught, and hope itself is but an obstacle.

The cub in the fir bawled out in its anguish. It was not even yet a weanling and would wither and die without a mother. It would wail away for days until it starved or was eaten by wolf or panther.

Inman walked to the tree and looked into the little bear's face. It blinked its black eyes at him and opened its mouth and cried like a human baby.

To his credit, Inman could imagine reaching up and grabbing the cub by the scruff of its neck and saying, We're kin. Then taking his knapsack off and thrusting the cub in with only its head sticking out. Then putting the pack back on and walking away, the bear looking about from this new perspective as bright-eyed as a papoose. Give it to Ada as a pet. Or if she turned him away, he might raise it to be a part-tame bear, and when full grown it might stop by his hermit cabin on Cold Mountain now and again for company. Bring its wife and children so that in years to come Inman could have an animal family if no other. That would be one way this dead bear calamity might be rectified.

What Inman did, though, was all he could do. He picked up the LeMat's and shot the cub in the head and watched it pause as its grip on the tree failed and it fell to ground.

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So as not to waste the meat, Inman built a fire and skinned out the cub and cut it in pieces and parboiled it. He laid the black pelt out on a rock and it was no bigger than a c.o.o.n's. While the bear cooked he sat and waited at the scarp as morning came on. The mists broke and he could see mountains and rivers ranked to the earth's far verge. Shadows slid down the slopes of the nearest line of ridges, falling into the valley as if draining into a vast pool of dark under the ground. Rags of cloud hung in the valleys below Inman's feet, but in all that vista there was not a rooftop or plume of smoke or cleared field to mark a place where man had settled. You could look out across that folded landscape and every sense you had told only that this was all the world there was.

The wind sweeping up the mountain carried away the smell of the bear boiling and left only the odor of wet stone. Inman could see west for scores of miles. Crest and scarp and crag, stacked and grey, to the long horizon. Cataloochee, the Cherokee word was. Meaning waves of mountains in fading rows.

And this day the waves could hardly be differed from the raw winter sky. Both were barred and marbled with the same shades of grey only, so the outlook stretched high and low like a great slab of streaked meat. Inman himself could not have been better dressed to conceal himself amid this world, for all he wore was grey and black and dirty white.

Bleak as the scene was, though, there was growingjoy in Inman's heart. He was nearing home; he could feel it in the touch of thin air on skin, in his longing to see the leap of hearth smoke from the houses of people he had known all his life. People he would not be called upon to hate or fear. He rose and took a wide stance on the rock and stood and pinched down his eyes to sharpen the view across the vast prospect to one far mountain. It stood apart from the sky only as the stroke of a poorly inked pen, a line thin and quick and gestural. But the shape slowly grew plain and unmistakable. It was to Cold Mountain he looked. He had achieved a vista of what for him was homeland.

As he studied on it, he recognized the line of every far ridge and valley to be more than remembered.

They seemed long ago scribed indelible on his corneas with a sharp instrument. He looked out at this highland and knew the names of places and things. He said them aloud: Little Beartail Ridge, Wagon Road Gap, Rips.h.i.+n, Hunger Creek, Clawhammer k.n.o.b, Rocky Face. Not a mountain or watercourse lacked denomination. Not bird or bush anonymous. His place.

He rocked his head from side to side, and it felt balanced anew on his neck stem. He entertained the notion that he stood unfamiliarly plumb to the horizon. For a moment it seemed thinkable that he might not always feel cored out. Surely off in that knotty country there was room for a man to vanish. He could walk and the wind would blow the yellow leaves across his footsteps and he would be hid and safe from the wolfish gaze of the world at large.

Inman sat and admired his country until the bear pieces were cooked, and then he dredged them in flour and fried them up in the last lard from the twisted paper the woman had given him days before.

He ate sitting at the cliff top. He had not eaten bear of such youth before, and though the meat was less black and greasy than that of older bear, it still tasted nevertheless like sin. He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret.

naught and grief If the lobe of mountain they climbed had a name, Stobrod did not know it. He and his two companions walked humped up, their down-turned faces clenched against the cold, hat brims raked near to their noses, hands pulled up into coat sleeves. Their shadows blew out long before them so that they trod on their resemblances. The woods pa.s.sed unremarked around them. Bare sticks of buckeye, silver bell, tulip tree, and ba.s.swood waved in the breeze. Many wet millennia of leaves underfoot muted their steps.

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The Pangle boy trod close upon Stobrod's heels. The third figure followed six paces back. Stobrod carried his fiddle in its sack clamped under his arm, and Pangle had his banjo thonged neck down over his shoulder. The third man had no music device but toted all the party's meager goods in a knapsack. He had enshrouded himself in a moth-riddled b.u.t.ternut blanket that trailed on the ground, dragging a wake in the leaves.

Their bowels were all a-clamor from the previous night's supper, which they'd made from a doe they'd found dead on the ground, frozen to it. In their meat hunger, they'd chosen to ignore signs of how long the thing had been there or how it might have died. They'd built a smoky little fire of wet poplar and cooked up its haunch until it was not much more than thawed out. They ate it in some quant.i.ty, and now they regretted it. They did not talk. Now and again one of them flared off into a laurel thicket and caught back up later.

No wind hissed nor bird called. The only sound fine needles falling when they pa.s.sed beneath stands of hemlock. Vestiges of dawn yet fanned out ocher in the east, and thin clouds scudded fast across the brittle sun. The twined dark limbs of hardwoods stood etched against the weak light. For some time there was no color to anything earthly other than somber tones of brown and grey. Then they pa.s.sed an icy rock ledge and saw growing on it some flabby yellow sect of wort or lichen, so bright it hurt the eyes. Pangle reached out and broke off a scalloped leathern flap and ate it speculatively and with great attentiveness. He neither spit it out nor pulled off more, so his judgment on the taste was hard to call. Afterward, though, he walked along bright in his perceptions, alert for other such gifts the world might give.

In time they ascended to a piece of flat ground where three pa.s.sways came together: the one they had arrived by falling, two yet fainter climbing on. The greater of the forks had begun life as a buffalo trail and then an Indian path, and it remained still too tight in its pa.s.sage between trees to make even a wagon road. Hunters had camped here and left a well-used fire ring and had cut trees for firewood and the woods were thin some fifty paces back from where the ways Y'd off. An immense poplar, though, stood in the forks of the rising tracks. It had not been spared cutting out of any homage to its beauty or its girth or its age. There was just not a crosscut saw in any near settlement long enough to span it. Its trunk was big around as a corncrib where it entered the ground.

Stobrod, thinking he dimly remembered the place, stopped to survey it, and when he did Pangle trod on his boot heel. Stobrod's foot came out entire, and he stood sock-footed on frozen leaf mold. He turned and put a hard finger to the boy's breastbone and pushed him a step away and then stooped and put his fiddle sack on the ground and reshod himself.

The men stood together blowing from the climb and looking at the two paths ahead of them. Their breaths hovered about them as if in concern, and then the vague shapes lost interest and vanished.

There was a creek tumbling somewhere nearby within earshot, and it provided all the sound there was to the place.

-It's cold, the third man said.

Stobrod looked at him and then cleared his throat and spit in commentary on the bleakness of the scene and the depthlessness of the observation.

Pangle reached a hand out of his sleeve and turned it palm up to the elements and then fisted it and drew it back in as a turtle its head.

-Ah, G.o.d, shrivel you cullions up in you belly, he said.

-What I mean, the third man said.

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They had acquired the man at the outlier's cave. He had not offered a name nor did Stobrod care to know it. He was a Georgia boy of no more than seventeen years, black-headed, brown-skinned, little fine wisps of chin whiskers, but smooth-cheeked as a maid. Some Cherokee blood, or maybe Creek.

Like everybody else, he had a war tale. He and his cousin had been pitiful little conscriptees, and they had been put into the troops in sixty-three. They had fought out a year of war in the same regiment, though there was not much they could contribute since their rifle muskets stood higher than their hat crowns. They'd slept every night under the same blanket, and they had deserted together. Their reasoning was that no war lasts forever, and though man was born to die, it would be foolish to do so on the eve of peace. So they left. But the walk home was long and confusing, and they had not reckoned on quite so much landscape pa.s.sing under their feet. It had taken them three months to reach Cold Mountain, and they did not even know what state it was in. They'd become profoundly lost, and the cousin had died in a grim cove, feverish and wracked with coughs from some wet lung disorder.

The boy had been found by one of the cavers some days later, wandering aimless. He had been given over to Stobrod and Pangle, who were setting off to found their own community of two somewhere up near the s.h.i.+ning Rocks. Even though Georgia was a state Stobrod held in low regard, he had agreed to point it out to the boy when they reached a height where they had a great southern vista.

First, however, they had descended from the cave to a hiding place for food, telling the boy along the way about Ada and how she had eventually led Ruby toward benevolence. Ruby had laid down conditions for her charity, though. She and Ada were themselves working on tight margins for the winter and could give only a little, not enough for the two men to live on entirely. And she thought it risky for Stobrod and Pangle to visit. She did not want to see so much as their shadows about the farm again. The food would have to be left somewhere safe and hidden, and she had suggested a place up along the ridge that she had discovered in her rambles as a child. A round flat stone marked from rim to rim with all manner of odd scripture. And further, she did not want to be tied down to any schedule. She'd take food there when she felt like it and not take it when she didn't. It was up to Stobrod to check.

When the men had gotten to the place, Stobrod cast his eyes about and then knelt and felt around with his hands under the leaves. Then he started raking with the edge of his boot and soon he had uncovered a round flat stone set in the ground. It was about the size of the mouth of a washtub, and the markings showed not any feature of the Cherokee style. They were too abrupt and strict in the angles of their characters, which jittered across the stone as a spider on a skillet. It might have come from some race prior to man. Under the edge of the rock they found a tin box of cornmeal, some dried apples twisted up in a piece of newspaper, a few shavings of side meat, an earthen crock of pickled beans. These they had added to their own provisions of liquor and smoking tobacco and chewing tobacco.

-Reckon which trail we want? the Georgia boy now said to Stobrod. The blanket b.u.mped out where his elbow gestured toward the trail forks and made folds to the ground like drapery in carved stone.

Stobrod looked as directed, but he was not at all sure where they were nor which way they were going. He just knew higher, more remote. It was a big mountain. Walk a circuit around what might rightly be called the base of it and you'd walk not far short of a hundred mile. There's a right smart of range encompa.s.sed therein, even if it were flat as a plat map rather than rared up into the sky and folded into every kind of cove and hollow and vale. As well, Stobrod's previous experience of Cold Mountain had been, whenever possible, as a drunk. So in his mind, the trails tangled together and could lead anywhither.

Pangle watched Stobrod's confused study of the landscape. And then finally, with a halting preamble of apology for knowing more that his mentor, he said he knew exactly where he was and knew that 2004-3-6.

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the right-hand fork soon grew faint but worked its way on and on across the mountain, leading farther than he had ever cared to follow, going wherever it was the Indians went. The left fork was broader at first but just wandered around and petered out shortly near a dank pool of water.

-We'll cook us a meal and head on, then, Stobrod said.

The men drew together wood and struck a reluctant blaze in the old black ring of stones. They put some cornmeal mush to boiling in creek water, supposing that its blandness might settle their moiled stomachs. They pulled up sitting logs and lit clay pipes and puffed and crowded as near to the faint flames as they could without setting their clothes and their boot soles afire. They pa.s.sed the liquor bottle and took long swigs. The keen weather had seeped into their bones and jelled their marrow hard as cold lard. They sat quiet waiting for the warmth of fire and liquor to loosen them up.

After a time, Stobrod became deeply engaged in probing his knife blade into the crock of pickled beans he held before him. He nibbled one bean at a time from the end of the knife and between each one wiped the vinegar off the blade against his pant leg. Pangle ate a little withered ring of dried apple, first rubbing it out flat between his palms and holding it up to his eye as if its core hole served as spygla.s.s to give new perspective on the things of the world. The Georgia boy sat humped forward, hands to the fire. His blanket was cowled over his head, and it left his visage all shadowed but for the firelight striking off his black eyes. He put a hand to his belly and stiffened up as if someone had run a pointed stick through his vitals.

-If I'd known I'd have the scours this bad I'd not have eat one mouthful of that venison, he said.

He stood and walked slowly and with some delicacy off into the rhododendron thicket beyond the clearing. Stobrod watched him go.

-I feel sorry for that boy, he said. He's wis.h.i.+ng he'd never left home, but he's not even got sense to know what kind of vile state he's from. If I had a brother in jail and one in Georgia, I'd try to bust the one out of Georgia first.

-I never been so far as Georgia, Pangle said.

-I went just the one time, Stobrod said. Not but a little piece into it. Just until I could see what poor stuff it was made of, and then I turned back.

The fire flared up from a puff of wind, and the men put their hands out to warm. Stobrod dozed off.

His head nodded until his chin was at his chest. When it jerked back up, he was looking at mounted men in the trail, just cresting the brow of the hill. A little bunch of sorry-looking scouts led by a dandyman and a slight boy. But the men had sabers and pistols and rifles, several of which were pointed at Stobrod. The Guard rode bundled in heavy coats and wrapped in blankets and the horses steamed in the cold air and puffed out plumes from their pooched nostrils. There was a skin of ice in the roadway, and when they stepped forward their hooves gritted in it like pestle against mortar.

The Guard came on up the trail and into the clearing until they loomed over the men and threw their shadows on them. Stobrod made to rise and Teague said, Sit still. He sat loose in the saddle and he held a short-barreled Spencer carbine with the in-curved b.u.t.t plate of it fit against the swell of his thigh. He had on wool gloves, the thumb and forefinger cut off the right hand so he could pull back a hammer and trip a trigger unhindered. Plaited reins held finely between the covered finger and thumb of his other hand.

He studied the pair of men before him for some time. Their skin was grey and their eyes looked raw as holes burnt in a quilt top. The fat boy's hair stood in greasy brown peaks like meringue on one side of his head and lay matted to the skull on the other. The skin of Stobrod's balding pate was 2004-3-6.

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grainy and dull, slack-looking over the bone, altogether lacking in the tight sheen common to the hairless. His face looked to have collapsed all around the point of his nose so that he resembled a funnel.

Teague said, I'm not even going to ask if you've got papers. I've heard every falsehood there is to tell in that regard. We're after a bunch of outliers said to live in a cave. They've been robbing folks. If a man knew where that cave bores into the mountain, it might be in his favor to tell it.

-I don't exactly know, Stobrod said. His voice was real quick and bright, though inside he was gloomy, figuring that within a month he would be back in b.l.o.o.d.y Virginia working a ramrod into a musket. I'd say if I did, he said. I've just heard talk of such a thing. Some say it's way over on the backside of the mountain, close on Bearpen Branch or s.h.i.+ning Creek or some like place.

Pangle looked funny at Stobrod. Puzzlement dark on his face as a shadow.

-What's your word on this? Teague said to Pangle.

The boy sat with his torso canted back, his weight settled on the platform of his wide hipbones. A hand shaded his eyes from the hazed sun that stood behind the shoulders of the hors.e.m.e.n grouped before him. He peered from his little-sized eyes in some confusion. He wondered how best to answer the question that had been put to him. All manner of thoughts crossing his soft face.

-Why that's not even close to it, Pangle finally said, looking to Stobrod. It's this side. You know.

Over on Big Stomp. Not three mile up Nick Creek. You get where it turkey-foots out and there's a stand of hickory trees growing up on the right-hand slope. A sight of squirrels works the ground under them in the fall. Squirrels thick on the ground. You can kill them with rocks. You climb straight up a ways through them hickories to a rock fall, and then at the top of it there you are.

There's a hollow in the clift there big as a great barn loft.

-Much obliged, Teague said. He turned to two big dark hors.e.m.e.n and twisted up a slight shade of meaning with one corner of his mouth. He put his weight in his stirrups and his leathers squeaked and he swung a leg over and dismounted.

The other men followed.

-We'll join you at your fire if you don't mind, Teague said to Stobrod. Take some breakfast with you. Cook and eat. And then in a little bit we'll hear you boys pick some. See if you're any account.

They built up the fire and sat around it as if they were all fellowmen. The Guard had a great quant.i.ty of sausage tied up in casings, and when they pulled it out of their saddlebags it was frozen hard and coiled like the bowels of something. They had to cut it in cooking pieces with a little hand axe. They put the cut pieces on flat stones at the edge of the fire to thaw enough to run sharpened sticks through them and hold them out to roast.

The fire was soon tall flame and red coal and a bed of white ash, and it threw enough heat that Pangle unb.u.t.toned his jacket and then his s.h.i.+rt and put out a strip of his pale chest and belly to it and became all at ease. He had no sense that there was anything to the moment but warmth and comrades.h.i.+p and the smell of food cooking. He studied his banjo a minute, seeming to admire its form and the Tightness of its materials as if he had never seen it before. As though he liked studying its geometry nearly as much as he did playing it. Soon his eyes fogged over and closed and he sat slumped, all the weight of him collapsed through his trunk onto the broad base of his a.s.s, so that the front of him was a cascade of white flesh rolls. He was a sculpture carved in the medium of lard.

-Gone from the world, Stobrod said. Wore out.

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Teague took a bottle of liquor from his coat pocket and held it out to Stobrod.

-Not too early for you, is it? he said.

-I commenced some time ago, Stobrod said. When you've not slept but a s.n.a.t.c.h or two in days it's hard to say what's too early.

He took the offered bottle and drew the cork and tipped it to his mouth, and though it was only of mediocre quality he was polite in his estimation of it. He smacked his lips and blew out his breath and nodded at the taste.

-Why have you not slept? Teague said.

Stobrod explained that they had been picking music and gambling for a few days and nights with some sharps, though he neglected to say that it had been at the outliers' cave. Cards, chicken fights, dog fights, dice. Any contest they could think up to lay bets on. Big gamblers hot to wager. Some in such a fever they would win the hat off your head and then oddman for your hair. Lacking anything more striking, they'd put money on which of a gathering of birds would fly off a limb first. Stobrod bragged that he had broken even, which in such company was a thing to marvel at.

Teague put the knuckles of his fingers together and made a motion like thumbing cards off a deck.

-Sportsmen, he said.

The sausages swelled, oozed fat, squealed faintly in their casings, made spitting sounds when they dripped in the coals. Eventually they were brown. All the men but Pangle, who yet slept, ate them off the points of the cooking sticks. And when they had eaten until the meat was gone, Teague looked at the fiddle and banjo and said, Can you play those things?

-Some, Stobrod said.

-Pick me something then, Teague said.

Stobrod did not much want to. He was tired. And he figured his audience had no thought of music, lacked entirely what was needed to love it. But he took up his fiddle anyway and just brushed the dry skin of his palm across the strings and knew from their whisper what keys to twist.

-What do you want to hear? he said.

-No matter. You call it.

Stobrod reached over and prodded Pangle in the shoulder. The boy came to, his little eyes just slitted.

With evident effort he pulled his thoughts together so that they trained up to some purpose.

-They want to hear us pick a tune, Stobrod said.

Pangle said nothing, but worked his finger joints awhile in the heat of the fire. He picked up his banjo and twiddled with the pegs and then, without waiting for Stobrod, began knocking out a few notes to Backstep Cindy. As he picked, the rolled fat of his front jiggled in time with the frailing, but when he got to where the tune was ready to come around again, the notes scrambled all together and he bogged down and halted.

-That'un's come to naught and grief, he said to Stobrod. If you was to pitch in we might get 2004-3-6.

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