The Run for the Elbertas (12 page)

Father set up his trap line along the branch and then started a search for sugar trees and game. Straightway he had to yield in one particular. There was scarcely a hard maple on the tract. “Sweetening rots teeth anyhow,” he told us. “What sugar we need we can buy later.” Hunting and trapping kept him gone daylight to dark and he explained, “It takes hustling at the outset. But after things get rolling, Granny Nature will pull the main haul. I'll have my barrel of resting.”

When Father caught nothing in his traps two weeks running he made excuse, “You can't fool a mink or a muskrat the first crack. The newness will have to wear off the iron.” And for all the hunting, my head went begging a cap. Rabbits alone stirred. Tight Hollow turned out pesky with rabbits. “It's the weather that has the squirrels holed,” he said. “It would bluff doorknobs.”

“Maybe there's a lack of mast trees too,” Mother said. “Critters have sense enough to live where there's food to be got. More than can be said for some people I know.”

Holly said, “I bet it's warm at the camp.”

“It's blizzardy the hills over,” Father chuffed edgily. “I don't recollect the beat.”

Mother said, “Not a marvel the hollow is cold as a froe, enjoying sunlight just three hours a day. For all the world like living in a hole.”

“At Tullock's Camp,” Holly said, “you could see the sun-ball any old time.”

“And the houses were weather-boarded,” Mother joined in. “And my cookstove didn't sit like a picture.”

“Now, yes,” chimed Holly.

Father squirmed. “Have a grain of patience,” he ordered. And to stop the talk he said, “Fetch the baby to us. I want to start buddying with the little master.”

During March Dan and I nearly drove Mother distracted. We made the bunkhouse thunder; we went clumping in the castaway boots. The stave mill beckoned but the air was too keen, and we dared not venture much beyond the threshold.
Often we peered through cracks to see if Old Jack Somebody were about, and at night I tied my big toe to Dan's so should either of us be snatched in sleep the other would wake.

In a month we used more than half of the corn meal and most of the lard. The salt meat shrank. The potatoes left were spared for seed. When the coffee gave out Father posed, “Now, what would Old Dan'l Boone have done in such a pickle?” He bade Mother roast pintos and brew them. But he couldn't help twisting his mouth every swallow. Rabbits and beans we had in plenty and Father assured, “They'll feed us until the garden sass crosses the table.” Holly grew thin as a sawhorse. She claimed beans stuck in her throat, professed to despise rabbit. She lived on broth.

The traps stayed empty and Father said, “Fooling a mink is ticklish business. The idea is to rid the suspicion and set a strong temptation.” He baited with meat skins, rancid grease, and rabbit ears; he boiled the traps, smoked them, even buried them a while. “I'll pinch toes yet,” he vowed, “doubt you not.”

“The shape your feet are in,” Mother remarked, “the quicker the better.”

“We're not entirely beholden to pelts,” Father hedged. “Even if I had the bad luck to catch nothing the herbs are ahead of us—ginseng at thirteen dollars a pound.”

“I doubt your shoes will hold out to tread grass,” said Mother.

Coming in with naught to show was awkward for Father and he teased or complained to cover his embarrassment. One day he saw me wearing a stocking cap Mother had made and he laughed fit to choke. He warned, “Shun wood choppers, little man, or your noggin might be mistaken for a knot on a log.” Again, spying Holly stitching a tiny garment, he appealed to Mother, “Upon my deed! Eleven years old and pranking with dolls. I recollect when girls her age were fair on to becoming young women.”

“Away from other girls,” Mother asked, “how can she occupy herself?”

“Stir about,” said Father, “not mope.”

Holly said, “I'm scared to go outside. Every night I hear a booger.”

“So that's it,” Father scoffed.

“The plime-blank truth, now.”

Mother abetted Holly, “Something waked me an evening or so ago. A rambling noise, a walking sound.”

“My opinion,” Father said, “you heard a tree frog or a hooty-owl. Leave it to women to build a haystack of a straw.”

Mother saw my mouth gape and Dan's eyes round. Without more ado she changed the subject. She prompted Father, “Why don't you go visit the Grassy Creek people? Let them know we're here, and begin to act neighbors.”

“They knew we were coming,” Father reminded. And he said, “When I have hides for Kilgore post office I might speak howdy in passing.”

“The fashion varmints are shying your traps,” Mother said, “That'll be domesday.”

Father looked scalded. He eyed the door as if on the verge of stalking out. He said, “Stuff your ears nights, you two, and you'll sleep better.”

The cold slackened early in April. It rained a week. The spears of ice along the cliffs plunged to earth and the branch flooded. The waters covered the stave mill, lapped under the bunkhouse floor, filled the hollow wall to wall. They swept away Father's traps. When the skies cleared, the solitary trap he found near the mouth of the hollow he left lying.

“Never you fret,” Father promised Mother, “herbs will provide. I've heard speak of families of ginseng diggers roaming the hills, free as the birds. They made a life of it.”

“I'd put small dependence in such tales,” Mother said.

The woods hurried into leaf. The cowcumber trees broke blossoms the size of plates. Dogwood and service whitened the ridges, and wheedle-dees called in the laurel. And one morning Mother showed Father strange tracks by the door.
Father stood in the tracks and they were larger than his shoes. His shoes had lasted by dint of regular mending. He wagged his head. He could only droll, “It would profit any jasper wearing leather to steer clear of me. I'm apt to compel a trade.”

“My judgment,” Mother said, “we're wanted begone. They're out to be rid of us. They'll hound us off the tract.”

“I'm the appointed caretaker of this scope of land,” Father replied testily, “and I'll not leave till I get my ready on.”

Wild greens spelled the pintos and rabbit. We ate branch lettuce and ragged breeches and bird's-toe and swamp mustard. And again the beans and rabbit when the plants toughened. By late April the salt meat was down to rind, the meal sack more poke than bread, the lard scanty. Father hewed out a garden patch and then left the seeding and tilling to Mother. He took up ginseng hunting altogether. He came in too weary to pick at us and he rarely saw the baby awake. Dan began to look askance at him. As for his shoes, he was patching the patches.

Dan and I gradually forgot Old Jack. We waded in the branch and played at the stave mill. We pretended to work for Cass Tullock, feeding mock logs to saws, buzzing to match steel eating timber. And we chased cowbirds and rabbits in the garden. Rich as the land was, the seeds sprouted tardily, for the sun warmed the valley floor only at the height of the day. Mother fixed a scarecrow and dressed it in Father's clothes. We would hold the baby high and say, “Yonder's Pap! Pap-o!” The baby would stare as at a stranger.

Father happened upon the first ginseng in May and bore it home proudly. We crowded to see it—even Holly. Three of the roots were forked and wrinkled, with arms and legs and a knot of a head. One had the shape of a spindle. Tired though he was, Father boasted, “The easiest licks a man ever struck. Four digs, four roots.”

“Dried they'll weigh like cork,” Mother pronounced; and she asked, “Why didn't you hit more taps, making the tramping worth the leather?”

His ears reddening, Father stammered, “The stalks are barely breaking dirt. Hold your horses. You can't push nature.”

Mother said, “I believe to my soul your skull is as hard as a ball-peen hammer.”

Father glanced about for the baby, thinking to skip an argument. The baby was asleep. He complained, “Is the chub going to slumber its life away?” He eyed Dan leaning against Mother and said, “That kid used to be a daddy's boy, used to keep my knees rubbed sore.” And he took a square look at Holly and inquired, “What ails her? I want to know. She's bony as a garfish.”

“You're the shikepoke,” Mother replied. “You've walked yourself to a blade.” And she said, “Did you come home early as at Tullock's Camp you would find the baby wide-eyed.”

Holly snatched the ginseng and fondled it. “Gee-o,” she breathed in delight.

Father caught the baby awake the day he got up with the squirrels. He arrived in the middle of the afternoon swinging two critters by their tails, and he came grinning in spite of having found no ginseng. He crowed, “We'll allow the beans and bunnies a vacation. We'll feast on squirrel gravy.” He jiggled them to make the baby flick its eyes. After skinning the squirrels, he stretched the hides across boards and hung them to cure.

The gravy turned out weak and tasteless. Lacking flour and milk there was no help for it. Yet Father smacked his lips. He offered the baby a spoonful and it shrank away. He ladled Dan a serving and Dan refused it. Tempting Holly he urged, “Try a sop and mind you don't swallow your tongue.” Holly wrinkled her nose. “Take nourishment, my lady,” he cajoled, “or you'll fair dry up and blow away.”

“Humph,” Holly scoffed, leaving the table.

Father's patience shortened. “Can't you make the young'un eat?” he demanded of Mother. “She's wasting to a skeleton.”

“We'll all lose flesh directly,” Mother said.

Holly said, “Was I at Tullock's Camp, I'd eat a bushel.”

Father opened his mouth to speak but caught himself. He couldn't outtalk the both. He gritted his teeth and hushed.

When ginseng proved scarce and golden seal and seneca thinly scattered, Father dug five-cent dock and twenty-cent wild ginger. He dug cohosh and crane's bill and bluing weed and snakeroot. He worked like a whitehead. Mornings he left so early he carried a lantern to light his path and he returned after we children had dozed off. Still the bulk of the herbs drying on the hearth hardly seemed to increase from day to day. Again Mother reported strange tracks but Father shrugged. “It's not the footprints that plague me,” he said, “it's the puzzle.”

The garden failed. The corn dwarfed in the shade, the tomatoes blighted. The potato vines were pale as though grown under thatch. We ate the last of the bread and then we knew beans and rabbit plain. Father hammered together box traps and baited for groundhogs. A covey of whitebacks sprung the stick triggers and we had a supper of them. Dry eating they made, aye-o! The groundhogs were too wise.

Awaking one evening as Father trudged in, I heard Mother say direfully, “We'll have to flee this hollow, no two ways talking. They'll halt at nothing to be rid of us.”

“What now?” Father asked wearily.

“Next they'll burn us out,” Mother said, displaying a bunch of charred sticks. “Under the house I found these. By a mercy the fire perished before the planks took spark.”

“May have been there twenty years,” Father discounted. “Who knows how long?”

“Fresh as yesterday,” Mother insisted. “Smell them.”

“To my thinking,” Father ridiculed, “scorched sticks and big tracks are awful weak antics. The prank of some witty, some dumbhead.”

“We can't risk guessing,” Mother begged. “For the sake of the children—”

“Women can read a message in a chicken feather,” Father declared. “They can spin riddles of rocks. For my part, I have to see something I can understand. A knife brandished, say. Or a gun pointing in my direction.”

Mother threw up her hands. “You're as stubborn as Old Billy Devil!” she cried.

Father yawned. He was too exhausted to wrangle.

The day came when Father's shoes wore out completely. He hobbled home at dusk and told Mother, “Roust the old boots. My shoes have done all they came here to do.”

“They'll swallow your feet,” Mother objected. “They'll punish.” She was close to tears.

“It's a force-put,” Father said. “I'll have to use the pair do they cost me a yard of skin.”

Reluctantly Mother brought the boots and Father stuffed the toes with rags and drew them on. They were sizes too large and rattled as he walked. Noticing how gravely we children watched, he pranced to get a rise out of us. Our faces remained solemn.

“I'll suffer these till I can arrange otherwise,” he said, “and that I aim to do shortly. I'll fetch the herbs to the Kilgore post office tomorrow.”

“They may bring in enough to shod you,” Mother said, “if you'll trade with a cheap-John.” She dabbed her eyes. “A season's work not worth a good pair of shoes!”

His face reddening, Father began sorting the herbs. But he couldn't find the ginseng. He searched the fireplace, the floor. He looked here and yon. He scattered the heaps. Then he spied Holly's dolls. The forked ginseng roots were clothed in tiny breeches, the spindle-shaped ones tricked in wee skirts. They were dressed like people. “Upon my deed!” he sputtered.

Father paced the bunkhouse, the boots creaking. He glared at Holly and she threw her neck haughtily. He neared Dan and Dan sheltered behind Mother. He reached to gather
up the baby and it primped its face to cry. “Upon my word and deed and honor!” he blurted ill-humoredly and grabbed his hat and lantern. “Even the Grassy folks wouldn't plumb cold-shoulder me. I'm of a notion to spend a night with them.” He was across the threshold before Mother could speak to halt him.

Father was gone two days and Mother was distraught. She scrubbed the bunkhouse end to end; she mended garments and sewed on buttons; she slew every weed in the puny garden. And there being nothing more to do she gathered up the squirrel skins and patterned caps.