The Hinterlands (15 page)

One day in October, more than two years after Little Eller died, we decided to go looking for foxgrapes. I wanted to make some jelly, and I knowed they was ripe, for I could smell them in the evening after the sun was gone. In the breeze by the creek, you could smell the grapes ripening and starting to ferment.

We took our buckets and baskets and headed out after breakfast. Realus had built a footlog across the creek just above the bend, and we crossed there and climbed the other ridge. Realus had picked foxgrapes along the river over there before, and I knowed they must be a heavy growth that year. It was a warm day with the leaves drifting off the poplars and maples, a few at a time.

As we climbed up the slope, we could hear the cowbell Realus had got in the settlement and put on Old Daisy. It tinkled up the holler. Since the cows usually stayed together in the woods, he only put a bell on the oldest milker. It was a peaceful sound, but we couldn't hear it anymore after we crossed the ridge.

The foxgrapes was as thick along the river bank as I had hoped they would be. The biggest problem was getting to them. Sometimes I let Wallace shinny up a birch tree and pick some high grapes. But his arms was too short to reach far. And I didn't like him to be high over the water.

A few times I had to step out in the stream to reach a limb. One time I stood on some brush that give way, and I ended up in the
water halfway to my knees. The younguns laughed at me. Lewis said, “Mama got her stockings wet, Mama got her stockings wet.” But we was having a good time. We had brought along some biscuits and honey and biscuits and ham for our dinner.

As it turned out, we didn't need to worry about reaching the grapes in hard places, because the further up the river we went, the more foxgrapes we found. The air was full of that sweet grape smell where the sun was hitting the ripe bunches. Every grape you touched was tight and full of juice.

“Mama, here's another vine,” Wallace called, and we'd follow another hundred yards up the stream to the next lavish of grapes hanging in easy reach. By the time we had picked most of those, he would already have found another tree up ahead.

It was thrilling, but scary, because we didn't look for snakes as careful as we should. And I kept hollering for Lewis to stay out of the branch, and for Willa to keep up, and keep away from brush where they might be a rattler. When you're looking after children and working at the same time, you're split in two.

We kept going further and further up that river. Miles I reckon. And the further we went, the faster we seemed to work. We filled a bucket and left it setting by the stream to pick up on the way back. It looked like we was going to fill every single bucket and basket we had. It would take days to cook down that many grapes into juice and then make jelly. But the grapes was so big and ripe, I didn't want to go back without our buckets full.

“Look, here's a fire,” Lewis called.

“What kind of fire?” I said, trying to reach the higher branches above a sandbar in the curve of the stream.

“It's still warm,” Lewis said.

I put my bucket down and run over to where he was. They was a clearing above the river, covered with peavines and big weeds.
At first I didn't see Lewis. It was like he had disappeared. The vines was so thick, I was afraid of a snake. I called to Lewis and he answered, not more than a hundred feet away.

Sure enough, he had found what was left of a campfire. Some of the sticks still smoldered a little, so we knowed it had been left that morning. But I couldn't tell if it was Indians or not. They wasn't no parched corn or broke arrows. The vines and weeds had been knocked down where they slept around the fire, but that didn't tell nothing. I reckon both Indians and whites sleep the same way, stretched out in their blankets. And we couldn't tell which way they went neither, or the way they had come.

I called Wallace back and told him to stay close.

“But I'm the scout,” he said. “I have to go ahead and find more vines.”

“We can find them together,” I said. What I didn't say was we had already gone further than your Grandpa wanted us to. I didn't really know how far we had gone, but three forks had split off the river. It was just a creek now you could almost step over.

We crossed in a shallow place and walked a little way up the other side. When we come to a big rock, I suggested we eat our dinner on it. While we was eating, I noticed we was so high up most of the leaves had fell. The poplars was bare, and most of the maples. We was way up on the mountain. A yellow leaf floated onto the rock, and then a yellowjacket appeared, attracted to the honey on our biscuits. I turned away from the jacket, hoping it would go away. That's when I noticed the top of the mountain above. The peak looked like a forehead, and the shape seemed awful familiar. I didn't know where I had seen it before, but I had. Maybe we had passed this way when we come to the cabin years before. They was a lot I didn't remember about that trip. I kept turning away from the yellowjacket and wondering about the knob on the mountain.

And then we heard a cowbell. I didn't know they was any cows that high in the woods. We was far away from our own cows. And they was something familiar about that bell. I had heard it before. It wasn't one of our cows. I wondered if it might be some trick of the Indians.

I'd heard of Indians killing a settler's cow and carrying the bell as they approached the house. That way nobody got suspicious and the sound of their steps was covered by the tinkling. The Indians moved slow through the woods like a cow grazing there.

“Come here,” I whispered to Lewis and Willa. I had stood up when I heard that cowbell, and I realized how exposed we was on that rock.

“Come here,” I said, and lifted them down to the ground. Wallace had gone off into the woods as soon as he eat his biscuits. He said he was going to get a drink from the stream, but I knowed he was looking for more grapes. We had all we could carry home, but he wanted to look for more. He was all enthused about the search, and his success, and didn't want to stop.

I couldn't holler for him, and tell the Indians, if they was Indians, where we was. Wallace was out of sight, and I couldn't leave Lewis and Willa to go look for him.

“What's wrong, Mama?” Lewis said. I pulled them with me and we crouched out of sight.

“Are we playing hide-and-seek?” Willa said. “Are we hiding from Wallace?” She giggled, thinking it was a game.

“Wallace!” I said, just loud enough so I hoped it would not be heard up on the ridge where the bell sounded.

“Mama, are we going to scare Wallace?” Willa said.

I had left the cloth and the remains of our dinner on top of the rock. I run back and pulled them off as quick and quiet as I could. The thing about Indians is they always see you before you see
them. They're like owls that way. Whoever seen an owl that wasn't already watching them?

“I'll go find Wallace,” Lewis said.

“No, stay here!” I said. I thought of all the times Realus had warned me not to go too far from the clearing, and not to cross the river. If we ever got back, I would heed his warning.

I could tell by the sun it was getting late in the evening. It wouldn't be long till Realus come back from the field for his supper. He was gathering corn and hauling it on his sled. Soon as the corn was in he'd begin hauling wood for the winter. I wished we could start on back with the grapes. I wished we was already home and I was putting water on to boil and taters in the ashes to bake. It was getting chilly that high up on the mountain.

“Wall-ace,” I called again. But we didn't have no choice but to wait for him. If I went looking, it would only attract more attention. When he seen we hadn't followed, he'd come back to tell us what he had found. I was afraid he would holler out.

Then I heard that cowbell again. It was like something I knowed but just couldn't name. It was the sweetest, clearest note. Was it something I had dreamed about? It was like a taste in the air that tingled memory. That made it even more scary, to think some Indian might be tinkling that bell to fool us.

We heard something in the leaves about a hundred feet away. I made the children crouch down even lower, and we listened. Something was stirring in the brush. It would make a noise and then stop. I thought it must be Wallace playing in the leaves. Maybe he was looking for us. I raised up slowly to look out.

At first I didn't see nothing. Then a limb shook and some red sourwood leaves fell. I seen this ugly head poke through, and a turkey come out, scratching and looking around. I was relieved,
but disappointed it wasn't Wallace. Made me mad to think he had just wandered off. If I caught him I was going to switch him.

“You stay right here,” I said to Willa and Lewis. “I'm going to look for Wallace.”

“Can't we come?” Lewis said.

“You stay right here with your sister,” I said. “If you move, I'll whip you.”

I stood up and eased around the big rock, trying not to disturb even the turkey. But standing up made me dizzy. For a few seconds the world around me seemed bleached and I couldn't remember in what direction the branch was. I couldn't tell much about direction from the woods. Then I seen the peak through the trees and remembered the river was down behind me.

I picked my way through the brush toward the mountain. So many leaves had fell, they was no way to be quiet. I went slow and listened. What I heard was my heart, and the pulse by my ears. Then I heard the cowbell, not more than a hundred feet away.

They was nothing to hide behind but an oak tree, and I stepped back of that. If the Indians had already seen me, it wouldn't do no good to hide anyway. The bell come closer and limbs was being knocked aside. Whatever it was, was coming straight toward me. I thought if the Indians found me, maybe they wouldn't catch the children. Wallace and Lewis and Willa could work their way back down the branch and find their way home.

Something walked right out into the open, ringing the bell. I glanced around the tree thinking I was caught for sure. But it wasn't nothing but a big old Jersey cow looking at me. And it come to me all at once why the cowbell was so familiar. That was my Daddy's favorite cowbell, and that was his old cow Bess. The surprise took my breath away, what I had left. For how could his cow be there in the mountains of the West?

There was the bell my Daddy was so proud of, with its one note clear as an icicle. He would stop what he was doing sometimes and listen to that tinkle off in the woods, the way a foxhunter will listen to his favorite hound. All kinds of things flew through my mind. That the bell had been sold and brought to the Holsten. Or it had been stole. Maybe my Daddy made another bell with the same tone and sold it to a passing settler. But that was Bess I used to drive to the gap and milk every evening. He might have sold the cow, too. Or had her stole and brought over the mountains.

I was puzzling over these mysteries at the same time I was relieved it wasn't Indians hunting us. Something almost come clear in my mind, and then didn't. “Here Bess, here Bess,” I said. “Soo cow, soo cow.” Of course, it had been years since I left home, and Bess was a young cow then, freshened not more than twice. I tore off some grass and held it out to her. She took the grass in her lips and teeth, just like I was an old friend.

I heard running steps and turned around, still expecting Indians. It was Wallace, dashing around brush and between trees.

“You come back here,” I said to him. “I never give you leave to run off up the mountain.”

“Mama,” he said, out of breath from running. “Mama, they's houses over there.”

“Over where?” I said. “I don't see no houses.”

“Just over there across the mountain,” he said.

“How many houses?” I said.

“A whole bunch of houses.” That was when the thing stalled at the edge of my mind begun to come clear, raising into view like the shadow of an outline.

“Is they a church over there?” I said.

“They's a house with a bell on top,” he said.

Then I knowed why the shape of the mountain seemed so
familiar. It was the knob at the upper end of the valley where I growed up. And that's why my Daddy's favorite cowbell was here on his favorite cow. We was on the mountain just west of the valley.

“Let's go back and get Willa and Lewis,” I said.

“Where is Lewis and Willa?”

“They're hiding back beyond the picnic rock,” I said.

I got the children together and we climbed toward the gap. Old Bess followed, and some of the other cows, too. They had been grazing around the huckleberry bushes and rocks of the bald. The cows had all kinds of trails between the laurel bushes and the rock cliffs up there. I had picked berries there many a time.

So much had happened, none of it seemed real. First we had followed the river valley all the way up, picking the foxgrapes, and always finding more further on. One place led to another, to the remains of the fire, and then we crossed the stream and heard the cowbell. We was disobeying your Grandpa more and more. And I seen why he didn't want us to go far from the clearing. I was beginning to see more than I could take in all at once.

By the time we got to the top of the ridge, we was on the Shimer Road. This was the way Realus and me had come when we left that night, and I hadn't even recognized it. It sure looked different from the other direction. It was like the whole world had been turned around.

“Where is this, Mama?” Wallace said. “Where are we going?”

I wasn't ready yet to explain where we was. I was hardly ready to explain it to myself. And how could they understand? Old Bess followed along behind us to the gap, thinking she was going to be fed and milked.

“We're going to see your Grandpa and Grandma,” I said, trying not to sound as excited and afraid as I felt.

“We ain't got no Grandpa and Grandma, except way off in Calinny,” Wallace said.