Standing on the bank, I felt sick at my stomach. I never had liked heights. There had been that time on the railroad trestle two hundred feet above the French Broad River when some friends and I were coming back from a picnic. It would not have been so bad except for the wide open spaces between the trestles. And when I had looked down, well—many times since then I had dreamed of it. And now here was my old nightmare come horribly true.
I heard Mr. Pentland’s voice above the roar of the water. “Stomp your feet now. Get ’em warm. Then come on—but first scrape your boots, then hoist your skirts.”
Mechanically I did as he was directing me, then took a deep breath and put one foot on the log. It swayed a little and my boot sent a piece of bark flying into the water. I took a few steps, shut my eyes, then opened them again. Another step. Perhaps if I kept looking at Mr. Pentland waiting for me on the other bank—step—or kept my eyes on my valise—step—and did not once look below me—the sound of the water became a roar in my ears. That meant I must be about halfway now.
I heard Mr. Pentland’s voice. “You’re doin’ fine. Keep a-comin’. Not far now.”
Again the logs swayed. Each time I came to one of the cross-pieces, I was forced to look at my feet lest I trip over the edge of the board, and then in spite of myself I saw the water too. The logs were swaying, tilting . . . I dropped to my knees and began crawling. I hadn’t thought it would be this bad! Dizzy . . . I felt dizzy. Mr. Pentland was shouting at me. Dimly his voice penetrated, “Only a few more steps. Stand up now. I’ll catch you.”
Unsteadily I stood up again. The valise, keep my eyes on the valise . . . Step—getting closer now, only a few more feet.
Then at last I saw Mr. Pentland’s grinning face below me. “Guess you ain’t crossed the likes of that before.” He held out a gnarled hand and almost lifted me off the end of the log.
Yet another hour of steady walking brought us to a second mountain. Once again with the mailman in front, we were climbing upwards on a narrow trail.
Here the path had been sliced out of the side of the mountain at our right. Sometimes the trail jutted sharply to get around an outcropping of rock. At our left, the ledge appeared to drop off into space. Before long it was five hundred feet to the valley floor below; somewhere down there I could hear a cowbell tinkling.
“This here’s Lonesome Pine Ridge,” Mr. Pentland called to me. “There’s another way that’s shorter. But that way is so up-tilted, you could stand straight up and bite the ground.”
I wondered as I panted after him if any piece of land could be more up-tilted than this. There was a sudden gust of wind. The higher we climbed, the stronger the gale that blew from the north. Near the top, the bank to our right was not high enough to give much protection. There were moments when I was sure we were about to be blown over the cliff. Yet the man walking in front gave no indication that he even noticed the buffeting of the wind.
Mr. Pentland must have sensed that I was afraid because he turned his head away from the wind and called back over his shoulder, “Not much farther to the Spencers’ now. They live just the other side, near the top of the ridge. Guess we could stop and set a spell by their fire and let you warm yourself. Maybe even have a bite to eat thar.”
I yelled back into the teeth of the wind. “I’d like that.” Then I braced myself to concentrate on getting one foot in front of the other. I was beginning to understand why the mailman had not wanted to bring me. This morning seemed like days and days ago.
Mr. Pentland looked back at me solicitously. “You must be bodaciously tired out. Buck up. Hit ain’t so far. Just a step or two.”
But now I knew that this mountain man thought of a step or two as I would think of a city block or two. There seemed to be no end to his vitality. What seemed like half a mile farther on Mr. Pentland commented, “We’ll have to get shet of Jeb Spencer’s hound dogs afore goin’ into his yard. Jeb’s an awful hand to hunt. There ’tis. There’s the Spencer place. I don’t have no letter for them but we’ll stop onyways.”
The cabin toward which we were going was made of rough-hewn logs chinked with mud, set just on the other side of the backbone of the mountain. In such a crude setting I was surprised to see several clumps of English boxwood almost buried under the snow. In the cleared place inside the split-rail fence was an immense black pot, a tall pile of logs for firewood, and some gawky, squawking chickens pecking in the snow. Near the fence was a crude sled. A man wearing overalls and a large black felt hat appeared on the porch and called out, “Howdy.” Hounds raced towards us, yapping.
Mr. Pentland called, “Howdy. How you doin’?”
“ ’Bout like common.”
“Well, call off yer dogs. We ain’t a-feelin’ to make no dog meat out of ourselves this time a day.”
As we got closer I saw that the man had not shaved in a couple of days and his beard was growing out red-blond. His eyes were blue, set deep in their sockets like Mr. Pentland’s. In spite of his shabby clothing, there was something debonair about him. Perhaps it was the front of his hat pinned up with a long thorn, and a sprig of balsam—like a feather—stuck jauntily into the hatband. “Git out of the way till you git more sense,” he called to the dogs. “Git now. Git!” Immediately the hounds slunk out of sight around the corner of the cabin.
“Jeb Spencer, this here’s Miz Huddleston. New teacher from Asheville-way.”
“Howdy do, ma’am.” There was dignity and restraint about the man’s greeting. It was almost courtly.
As he led us through the doorway into semidarkness, it took a moment for my eyes to get accustomed to the gloom. At first I could see nothing but the ruddy glow of firelight. Then I saw that there were several beds piled high with quilts and in the shadows to one side, a tall woman and an assortment of children, all of them towheaded.
The man made no move to take off his hat. He said to the group in the shadows, “C’mon and see the stranger. I don’t know as I can handle her name. This here’s my woman. And that there’s John. And this un’s Zady. And that’s Clara. And that’s Lulu.” Then his voice took on more warmth. “And that thar’s the Least’un—” and he pointed to a tiny boy.
I wondered if these were going to be some of the children I would teach to read. I smiled at them and held out my hand to Mrs. Spencer. But the woman wasn’t quite sure what to do with the proffered hand. She touched my fingers shyly and said to hide her confusion, “Would you like to rest your wrap and set a spell?” She indicated a straight split-bottom chair. Her voice was low-toned and pitched in a musical minor key. I could scarcely take my eyes off her, for she was beautiful in her plain, artless way. Still a young woman, in her early thirties, I guessed, yet with all these children . . . She was wearing only a calico dress and was barefooted in this cold. But the Spencers were looking at me just as closely. All eyes in the room watched as I took off my coat. The children seemed to be fascinated with the red sweater underneath.
Mr. Pentland handed the woman the lunch Mrs. Tatum had given us.
While I held my cold hands close to the fire, I had a better chance to look around the cabin. There was only one regular window in the room plus an odd slit of a window high in the wall to the right of the fireplace. There seemed to be two rooms side by side with one fireplace flue to serve both. Judging by the number of beds in the room, I knew that this room was both living and sleeping quarters. The smaller lean-to must be the kitchen, I concluded. A narrow ladder led to a hole in the ceiling, probably a loft.
There was a rough puncheon floor with no rugs. On pegs protruding from the walls hung skirts and garments of various kinds and a worn saddle. A long-barreled rifle was laid across an elk-horn rack. There was only one picture, a picture with a rococo frame of an austere-looking woman, her straight hair parted in the middle. Some flatirons were lined up on the hearth near an ancient cradle. Strings of dried onions and red peppers hung from the rafters, and some gourds.
The children’s bright eyes were still watching me.
The littlest girl, the one named Lulu, had the high rounded forehead and the fat-cheeked cherub look of a bisque doll. The tiny toddler—the one his father had called “the Least-un”—came up and touched shy fingers to my red sweater. I was just beginning to make friends with the children and to ask them about whether or not they went to school when Mrs. Spencer called us to dinner.
Without ceremony everyone gathered around a plank table set in a corner closest to the kitchen. No mention was made of washing hands or of the bathroom. I took the chair they pulled out for me, then noticed that no such courtesy was being given Mrs. Spencer or the oldest girl. They were standing to one side as if they were not going to join the rest of us at the table. I was about to protest this when suddenly Mr. Spencer began asking the blessing in a loud, sonorous voice: “Thank Thee, Lord, for providin’ this bounty. Bless us and bind us. Amen.” And out of the corner of one eye I saw a small gray pig come through the open door.
The “Amen” had no sooner been said than the girl Clara spoke up eagerly, “That thar’s Belinda, our pet pig—all our’n.” And she picked up the pig and put him in her lap.
It was apparent that this was a very typical pig even though he was a pet. I tried not to show surprise or distaste. Probably, I reflected, a smelly pig at the table would be the least I’d have to get accustomed to in these mountains, and mother had always insisted that a lady must be perfectly poised under all circumstances. If only my mother could see—and smell—these circumstances.
Mrs. Tatum’s poke dinner had been placed in a tin plate in the middle of the table beside a big black pot of steaming cabbage. For the moment the children were ignoring the pot, fascinated with the strange food in the plate. I hated the idea of parting with all of my lunch since I knew that Mrs. Tatum’s food was clean, whereas this . . . Nevertheless when I asked the little girl across the table if she would like one of my ham sandwiches, all of the children nodded eagerly, and soon my food was gone.
“Can I give you some pot likker?” Mrs. Spencer asked over my shoulder. Then without waiting for an answer, she ladled some onto the wooden plate in front of me. Mr. Spencer and John had already broken out pieces from a huge chunk of cornbread and were using it to sop up the cabbage mixture. The only other thing on the table was a bowl of sauerkraut which looked anything but appetizing.
My eyes kept going back to the barefooted woman who moved so quietly and with such grace to and from the kitchen bringing the family hot corn pone and coffee. Her features were delicate: nose turned up at the end ever so slightly, which gave her a piquant look. Delicately shaped lips. Hair parted in the middle, drawn back into a bun, much like that woman in the rococo frame. But the eyes of the living woman . . . what was it about her eyes? Wistful, that was it.
The oldest girl looked like her mother except that she was a bit round-shouldered, as if already she was carrying burdens too heavy for her. She had her mother’s low-pitched voice with that melancholy note in it.
I found myself thinking that these were the faces of pioneers. Looking at them I had a curious sensation. It was as if a group of faded tintypes from some family album had come to life before me: all of the women with that austere hairstyle; the faces sensitive but grave, a certain strength and spartan quality to them all.
I had always supposed that faces in old photographs were grave because the subjects had not thought it proper to smile for a picture. Yet here was the same look in these living faces. The look was there even at moments when a certain dry humor was flowing, as when Mr. Spencer commented about a widow-woman down the Cove who thought herself extra pious, “ ’Course she ain’t much of a hand to housekeep: dust bunnies all over the place. When yer mind is that fixated on things above, the dirt’s bound to settle below.”
Well, certainly it had taken strength and courage to journey hundreds of miles through wilderness such as we had walked that morning. It had taken resoluteness to know that the low whistles of a quail in the woods might not be a quail at all—but the signal for an Indian attack. It would take fortitude to live and try to keep house in a cabin like this one.
Sitting there, I had a strange otherworldly feeling. It was as if, in crossing the mountains with Mr. Pentland, I had crossed into another time, another century, back to the days of the American frontier. Was I still Christy Rudd Huddleston from Asheville, North Carolina—or was this somebody else? It was as if the pages of my history book had opened and by some magic, Daniel Boone might walk into this cabin any moment—or Davy Crockett—or John Sevier. But this was no storybook, this was real. My mind kept trying to grasp it.
Ours was the century of progress, everyone said—electric lights and telephones and steam locomotives and automobiles. Yet in this cabin it was still the eighteenth century. I wondered if all the homes in the Cove were as primitive as this one.
My thoughts were shattered by a man rushing into the cabin. He leaned against the chimney, out of breath. “An accident,” he gasped. “It’s Bob Allen. Hurt bad!”
Everyone was asking questions at once, trying to get details. “It was a fallin’ tree. Hit him on the head. They’re carryin’ him here. He was a-comin’ to El Pano to fetch on the new teacher. That’s when the acci-dent happened.”
A young man limp and unconscious, his head bloody, was carried into the Spencer cabin on a makeshift stretcher of branches and laid on one of the beds. Mrs. Spencer removed the man’s heavy shoes and covered him with a quilt. I stood stunned, the words whirling in my head, “coming to fetch on the new teacher” . . . That was me. Because of me this had happened.
“Who is he?” I managed to whisper at last to Mrs. Spencer. “That be Bob Allen.” Her voice was gentle, as if she sensed how I felt. “Ever since it weathered-up to snow, Miz Henderson’s been a-pesterin’ Bob to favor her by carryin’ word to you. I’ve a mind that it were snowin’ too heavy on Sunday for him to journey. Guess he thought the snow had you all gaumed up in El Pano too.”
“Whatn’all happened?” I heard Mr. Pentland ask.
The stretcher-bearers appeared to be father and son. The older man answered, “Bob, he’d put out as early as he could. Was cuttin’ through the nigh way acrost Pebble Mountain. Solid woods there. High wind come up. In a deadnin’, a big tulip-poplar tree got wind-throwed. Fumped him right on the head.”
“How’d you find him?”
“Huntin’ squirrels. Had old hound-dog, Bait-em, swingin’ along with us. Bait-em bayed him. Nosed him out. Bob had fell in the bresh. Tree still on him.”
Mrs. Spencer asked anxiously, “Doc a-comin’?”
“Aye. Ought to be pretty nigh here.”
Within what seemed like minutes, the strangest group of people I had ever seen began crowding into the Spencer cabin—neighbors, I took it, and Mr. Allen’s relatives. I was never to fathom how news traveled so fast in those mountains without telephones or any obvious ways of sending messages, but travel the news always did. Some of the first arrivals noticed my presence . . . “Howdy do, stranger” . . . “Be ye from the level lands?” . . . “Proud to know you.” But then in the excitement of the doctor’s arrival, I was soon forgotten.
Outside there was the stomping of feet, the whinny of a horse; then the door opened and Dr. Neil MacNeill strode in. He appeared to be a man in his thirties, big-boned, a large frame even for a man. He had a shock of reddish hair, unkempt, looking as if it had not been cut in a long time, tousled and curly. His features were rugged with deeply etched lines. Or was it the shadows cast by the kerosene lamp, throwing into relief every plane of his face, that made it seem so craggy?
The figure lying on the old post-and-spindle bed had not moved. The pale face on the pillow was lighted by a kerosene lamp being held close by Mrs. Spencer while the doctor made his examination.
Although it was early afternoon, the cabin was so dark inside that the lamplight gave an eerie quality to the room. Giant shadows on the walls moved, danced like monsters ready to spring. I watched the bobbing circle of light on the ceiling cast by t
he opening at the top of the lamp chimney, my eyes drawn to it with almost hypnotic fascination. Only the hard solid wood of the wall against which I was leaning and the draft of cold air seeping through a crack at my back told me that this was real, that it was all actually happening.
The doctor had taken off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves. I noticed his arms, so muscular, the hair on those arms blond-red.
A voice at my side whispered, “Doc MacNeill’s the only doctor in the Cove.” It was Mr. Pentland who had made his way through the crowd to my side. I nodded and smiled up at him, wishing that I could let him know how glad I was for one friend in this awful situation. Already, after our trek over the mountain together, Mr. Pentland seemed like an old friend. But I dared not talk because a strained unnatural silence had fallen on the room; all eyes were watching the doctor.
His fingers kept sliding over the man’s head on the pillow—feeling, probing. Something about the fingers reminded me of my father’s hands, only these were rough and work-worn.
The doctor would not be hurried. He took the patient’s pulse, then forced his mouth open and looked at the tongue. He checked the pulse again; opened the eyelids and looked intently into the eyes; took the lamp and moved it closer to the still face. Then almost absently, he handed the lamp back to Mrs. Spencer and began checking reflexes of the arms, pulled back the covers to check leg reflexes. Finally when he straightened up, resolution was written on his face.
“Mary Allen, I’m needing to talk to you and to Bob’s brothers and sisters. Come closer, please.”
There was a rustling among the crowd. So many pushed forward toward the bed that it seemed as if most of the people there must be relatives of Bob Allen’s. In the forefront was a distraught woman, and beside her, a man with a heavy black beard. Mr. Pentland had remained at my side. I whispered, “Who’s the man, the one in front?”