The Hinterlands

by Robert Morgan

Genres: Humor & Satire; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

This is the story of a family who found, marked, and paved their way into America's eastern frontier. Unfolding in the voices of three generations of mountaineer storytellers specializing in keeping listeners on the edges of their seats, this is fiction that plunks us down right into the thick of pioneer life. Using his own family stories as his inspiration, Robert Morgan has crafted a riveting folk history alive with adventure. Morgan's three gifted storytellers tell it like it was--with a vengeance.

Release date: September 15, 2012

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

 

The first time I seen your Grandpa? Why, it was the year everybody was talking about going to Watauga and the Holsten. Then every young girl dreamed of running off to the West. They thought if they could just get there and start over, everything would be perfect, or near about. That’s the way girls dream. It was the wilderness of the West they was studying on.

It’s natural for a body to think if you could begin over, your life would be better. You would do it different from any of the people or places where you’d already failed or proved to be just ordinary. Every girl has a dream of being carried off to some better place, by a big handsome feller.

It’s the appeal of being saved, of being born again, as the preachers say. To start a new life and shed the rags of this old one. Of course, you could change yourself right where you are through hard work and determination. But they ain’t much romance in hard work and determination. It’s over the horizon, in back of beyond, where things will be different, and better.

That’s why the old don’t like to pick up and move on. Some of them come across the water when they was young, and cleared up a new place, and even learned a new tongue. You could say they don’t have the will anymore, or you could say they know better.

Children, I’m telling you—the day your Grandpa walked into the Mountain Creek settlement, a wagon train was leaving for the Holsten. Since they had hacked a road across the mountains and through the gaps people had been leaving in little bunches, their things loaded up on carts and wagons, on pack horses. The Shimer Road wasn’t nothing but a track, marked by blazes on trees, but I reckon it was wide enough for a wagon to pass. It run from Mountain Creek all the way to the blue mountains of Watauga.

They was leaving by twos and tens. And we’d get word back some stopped on the way, but most headed right on through the gaps into the land of Watauga and the Holsten.

They was lining up in the road, and folks was hugging and kissing their cousins and trading presents. It was a day at the end of winter and the mountains was still bare, though you could see a little green down by the creek. People figured if they left early enough they might get to the West in time to put in a crop.

The women standing by the wagons had tears of joy, some of them, and others tears of grief. I’ve heard it said men like to up and move on and women want to nest and stay. But I’ve never noticed it was so. I’ve seen just as many women with a hanker to move on, to light out and try a new place. Couldn’t have been so many people settled here if the women didn’t want to come too.

My Daddy worked as a blacksmith, and he was fitting a tire on one of the wagons. That’s what they was waiting for, for him to slip the hot iron rim on the wheel and let it cool into a fit before they screwed the wheel back on. Your Great-granddaddy could make anything. He had worked with metal since arriving in the mountains from Pennsylvania. He could shoe horses and oxen, and make any kind of tool you wanted. One of the things he hammered most was the big grubbing hoes we used in them days to chop roots and dig out rocks in the new ground. A heavy hoe sharpened like a razor would cut wood.

Another thing your Great-granddaddy done best was making bells. Mostly cowbells and sheep bells. He had learned it in Philadelphia when he was apprenticed. Though he didn’t have no equipment for casting church bells or dinner bells, he could hammer out little bells with the prettiest tone you ever heard. And every bell he made sounded different. The best bells he made for our own cows. They was one bell he put on our lead milker, Old Bess, that truly had the sweetest tone you ever heard. It was made of some kind of brass or bronze, and its tinkle just seemed to fit the cove where we pastured our cows. Its one note was like something in the branch, or coming out of the sky, and it always told us where the cows was at milking time.

I thought at first your Grandpa belonged to the wagon train, ’cause I hadn’t seen him before. He was standing by one of the wagons talking to the driver. They’s a look real men have, even as young men. It’s not so much their size, or height, though they’re usually tall, taller than a woman anyway. And their shoulders are broad, it’s true. But you see it most in their chest and waist, and the power in their upper legs showing right through the cloth or buckskin.

I saw him standing there and I said to myself, it sure is a shame he’s going off to the Holsten and not taking me, ’cause I like the look of that man. And here he’s leaving just as soon as I catch sight of him. Ain’t fair at all.

Now I had plenty of beaux in my time. I was a popular girl in the valley. And many a boy wanted to walk me home from meeting, I guess. And when there was an infare, somebody always asked me to dance. But your Grandpa was a different sort. You could tell that. He had on this red hunting shirt, the kind you didn’t see much back then. It was bright red wool. He must have bought it off a French trader somewhere over the mountains. The thing about wool is how it will shine in the sun. He was wearing buckskin pants like everybody else. Except it was the kind of softened buckskin that only Indians made. The Indian women do it by chewing the skin for days and days and soaking the hide in water with hickory ashes. I remember thinking when I saw him, does he have an Indian wife somewhere back in the mountains?

A lot of men did in those times, especially the traders and hunters. They might have a Christian wife in the settlements, to look after the children and grow crops and keep hearth and chicken roost. And back in the woods, in Tennessee or Georgia, they had an Indian woman raising some of their half-breeds and giving them the kinship with the tribe that guaranteed hunting rights and trading rights in the area. Men always did have it figured out.

Your Grandpa turns around to me as the wagons begun to move off up the road in the early light. He turns to me and says just like that, “Marry me and I’ll take you to the West.”

I said the first thing that come to mind.

“I don’t marry no redcoats,” I said. “Unless they have a university education.”

That took him back a little. That wasn’t what he was used to hearing from the girls he sparked. And I didn’t hardly know what it meant myself. He started to answer and then stopped. He looked at me and rared back his head and laughed. His face got red as his shirt. I always did like a man that colored up. It shows their liveliness and their sensitiveness. A big old feller blushing like a kid always moved my heart.

“I’m Realus Richards,” he said. “And I’m going back to the Holsten soon as I get me some tools. And this time I’m taking a wife.”

“I hear brag bigger than brawn,” I said.

“That’s as maybe,” he said. He tipped his hat and headed toward the shed where my Daddy had his forge and anvil. I watched him walk away thinking what a nervy body he was, all proud of his red shirt and his big wide shoulders. I wondered if he’d ever seen the Holsten, or if he was one of them boys from the Morgan District that come up there to hunt and amuse theirselves. We was the last settlement before you crossed the mountains to Indian land, and sometimes boys would steal horses and bring them up from Charlotte to sell.

I clutched my shawl and stepped back to the house. Our place was maybe two hundred yards from the road, and my feet was a little wet with dew by the time I got back inside.

“Who was that boy you talked to?” Mama said soon as I got inside.

“Just some windbag said he was going to the Holsten,” I said, taking off the shawl and bending to put another stick on the fire. But I couldn’t fool Mama. She could read me like a book, always could.

“He’s a smart-looking feller,” she said.

“Not as smart looking as he thinks,” I said. Mama eyed me and grinned. It always irritated me how smug she was, like she could look into my heart whenever she wanted to.

“Daddy won’t hear of no girl of his riding off to the West,” Mama said.

“He won’t never have occasion to hear,” I said.

The day before I’d sprinkled some branch sand on the floor. It had been walked on enough to polish the puncheons and clean off the tobacco juice and grease stains. I took the broom and swept out the house, working hard enough to raise a sweat. I dug with the straws down into the cracks, and when I finished, the puncheons sparkled in the firelight like they had been waxed.

“You’re going to wear your hands out,” Mama said. “You expecting company?” It was midmorning. That was the time she liked to set in the corner and knit. She liked me to set by her and talk. Or if her friend Florrie Cullen come by, they’d knit, or stitch quilt pieces for an hour and gossip. But that morning I didn’t want to talk to Mama no more. I wanted to keep my thoughts to myself. You could hear the hens outside, cackling the way they do middle of the morning after laying.

I cleaned the house and carried the ashes out to the hopper in the back. It was almost soap-making time, and Mama had saved a lot of ashes and fat over the winter. But the harder I worked, the less it seemed to accomplish. I had the idea, even then, that we’re always looking for excuses not to do what we’re supposed to. Even hard work can be an excuse for putting off the real work we’re meant to do. Couldn’t have explained it then, but I knowed I’d sweated myself all morning for nothing.

Along about dinner time, when Mama and me had fixed bread and creesie greens pulled on the branch, along come Daddy home with your Grandpa in his bright red shirt.

“This here is Mr. Richards,” Daddy said to Mama.

He didn’t say nothing to me and I busied myself in front of the hearth taking the cobbler off the fire. Last thing I’d done that morning was stew the peaches for the cobbler. We kept our dried peaches in bags up along the roof. You wouldn’t believe the peaches we growed then. And along in August we dried them on cloths on the roof of the house and shed.

Daddy had already built up a rush in his talking. He liked to talk more than anything, and he didn’t see too many strangers to tell his stories to. Sounded like he had been jawing all morning while he worked.

“I seen two fellers fight once,” my Daddy was saying as they set down in front of the fire. You could smell the smoke of the forge on him. “We was coming back from the war in Pennsylvania, walking all the way back from Duquesne. Colonel Washington asked the English to give us a few provisions from their stores, and we hoofed it down into Virginia and east Carolina and headed west. Long the way these two got to arguing. Everytime one said one thing the other would dispute him. One was a swarthy little corporal named Ward and the other was a red-headed giant of a feller named Lloyd. Lloyd must have been bigger than you, stouter anyway.”

While they talked, your Grandpa didn’t hardly notice me. I put the cobbler on the table and some pewter and wooden bowls. I didn’t go to notice him either.

“Corporal Ward said that the Indians would join the colonies now the French was whipped. He said they had no choice but to be loyal to the Crown. Lloyd took strong exception. He said he hadn’t heard of Indians loyal to anything except stealing. He said he didn’t have no hope for peace with Indians.

“It was the way Lloyd twisted things that made the corporal so mad. Ward had not meant to say he was certain the Indians would be loyal to the Crown. He was just hopeful. He stopped right there in the road and hollered in Lloyd’s face, ‘Why do you dispute everything I say?’

“All the men in the band stopped to watch. Lloyd reached over and put his big hand on Ward’s face like he was snuffing a candle. Ward whirled around and kicked Lloyd on the leg, tearing his stocking. Them boys went after each other like wildcats.”

“Dinner’s ready,” Mama said to Daddy. But Daddy didn’t even stop talking. Him and your Grandpa pulled their chairs to the table and lit into the cornbread and buttermilk and creesie greens. Daddy talked while he chewed, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“‘I can tell he’s a traitor by his long red beard,’ Ward screamed, and drove his hand into Lloyd’s face. I don’t know if he meant to, but somehow his finger went right into Lloyd’s eye, and behind the eyeball. Just like you’d root out a tater his hand come up with that eyeball and bloody strings hanging to it.”

“What a pretty story to tell at dinner time,” Mama said. She always said that when Daddy finished the story.

“Ever after that they called Lloyd ‘The Polyphemus of the Yadkin Valley,’” Daddy said.

“Polly what?” your Grandpa said.

“Polyphemus is back yonder in the Bible,” Daddy said. “A school teacher said he was a giant with just one eye and liked to eat people.”

“Wonder if he ever got that one eye crossed?” your Grandpa said. And we all laughed, including me and little Henry.

I poured your Grandpa a second cup of tea when he had about finished his dinner. Him and my Daddy pulled back their chairs from the table to relax. Your Grandpa had not took off his red shirt and his face was flushed a little from the heat and from eating hot bread and greens.

“How long you been in the West?” my Daddy said.

“Been there twice,” Realus said. “Went first with some long hunters when I was just a boy. We stayed nigh two years gathering hides and fur and exploring all around the mountains.”

“I hear it’s limestone country,” Daddy said.

“It’s more than half mountains,” Realus said.

Me and Henry was listening. Some people have a genius that can’t be explained. You take a thousand people and they’ll be one of them that plays a fiddle best of all, and one that can survey land, and others that’s mighty good shots and storytellers. Your Grandpa’s talent was for charming people. It come natural to him.

“They’s meadows in the West blue as the blue of the mountains,” he said.

“Are they blue as the sky?” Henry said.

“Not bright blue, but blue like the ridge yonder.” Your Grandpa sipped his tea and ignored me. But I could tell he knowed I was listening.

“And the game’s plenty?” my Daddy said.

“I seen glades in the woods with so many deer grazing you had trouble picking out one to kill,” your Grandpa said. “And besides deer there’s buffalo in the open country. I’ve seen valleys full of them. And they’s turkeys in the woods like here. And bear all over the mountains. Now the mountains are not tall as they are here. But they go on and on like tater hills one after another, wooly with trees. That’s why it takes so long to cross over into the Holsten. The little valleys are crazy and go off every which way. You can’t travel long in the same direction till you hit another ridge.

“But the biggest thing I ever seen in the West, bigger than the bears, and the ugly old hog sturgeon in the river, and the buffaloes in the valleys to the west, was the pigeon swarms. Anybody that’s been there will tell you the pigeons come over twice a year in flocks so long it takes days for them to pass. I’ve seen them break down a whole forest where they lit in the trees for the night. And they paint the ground white with their droppings. They’ll eat anything that happens to be in their way.”

“How come they don’t starve?” I heard myself saying.

“’Cause the land is covered with chestnuts and huckleberries and elderberries, and when they eat out one place, they just move on.”

Your Grandpa turned his chair and looked into the fire. “It’s near planting time in the West,” he said.

“Can’t plant corn till the oak leaves is big as a squirrel’s ear,” my Daddy said.

Your Grandpa glanced at me but didn’t say nothing for a minute. Finally he said, “It gets warm sooner over the mountains. The farther inland you go the earlier spring comes. Already it’s budding out there, and the grass is green.”

“You got some land there already?” my Daddy said.

“I got a place picked out not too far from the river. It’s got a spring runs right out from under a poplar tree. And a cove that’s covered with pennyroyal along the creek. I’ve done built a cabin there, but come fall I mean to have a house grooved together. It’s the prettiest ground you ever seen. And the soil along the creek is black as the bottom of a skillet.”

“And you ain’t seen no Indians?” Mama said.

“I’ve seen Indians pass through in little bands,” your Grandpa said. “But most of the Indians has gone on toward Kentucky, and beyond that into Ohio territory. The Holsten was always a kind of in-between land, claimed partly by Cherokees and partly by others. That’s why they fit so much over it.”

I went on about the business of cleaning up the table and scrubbing dishes in the tub. But I listened to every word your Grandpa said. He leaned back in his chair like he was at home, and him and my Daddy smoked their pipes.

“To go off into the West a man needs a good gun and ax,” my Daddy said.

“And a good heavy grubhoe and seeds,” your Grandpa said.

“Everything else he can make or raise,” my Daddy said.

“Except for a woman,” your Grandpa said. “He can’t make or raise no woman. He’s got to take her with him.”

I seen him glance at me quick and return to his smoking.

“I’d be afraid of painters and bears that far back in the wilderness,” Mama said. She always did think of the worst things.

“They’s bears and painters aplenty,” your Grandpa said. “But a man with a good dog and a good gun needn’t have no fear. When I first went to the Holsten, I lived in a lean-to of brush and bark. It was plenty comfortable. But late in the winter the wolves found out my little place. I heard howling on the ridge at night, getting closer. You hear wolves in the wilderness any time, so I paid it no mind till one night I was sitting before the fire and looked out in the dark and seen the flash of a pair of eyes.

“I thought of painters, and I thought of deer eyes. But them eyes flashed and moved. And strain though I might looking away from the fire, I couldn’t see nothing else. It was a dark night. They was just the firelight reflected from the buckeye trees. You know how high trees look with fire under them, like something steep as the sky falling away in pieces and spots.

“The eyes flashed again, and then again. And it come to me that these was wolves, black wolves, of the kind they have in the West. As my eyes adjusted I could see more of them, coming in close and backing away. ‘Yaaaah,’ I hollered, and throwed a burning limb at them.

“You could hear them jump away in the undergrowth. But by and by I seen the eyes flash again. It was like the devil out there, multiplied by ten to twenty. I thought, was they like mad dogs, or just starving for game? It come to me they smelled the venison I had hung up beside the lean-to, on a limb too high for any varmint to reach.

“It come to me I could be at my end there in the wilderness by Shooting Branch and nobody would ever know the difference. I was alone in the world. First time I ever felt alone in the woods.

“I got my gun from back of the lean-to, all loaded and primed, and I tried to sight in on one of the devils. But it was so dark their black bodies slipped in and out of sight like fish in a deep pool. I didn’t have no powder and lead to waste. I was two hundred miles from any new supply.”

“So what did you do?” Henry said.

“I seen how hard it was going to be and how I was almost certain to miss in the dark,” your Grandpa said. “So I figured I’d aim at a spot of light falling on a bush, and when one moved in front of it, I’d fire. It took several minutes of waiting. Finally, a form passed in front of the spot and I squeezed the trigger. For a second you couldn’t tell what happened because the sound ricocheted off the walls of the draw. But then I heard a snarling and tearing, and a terrible commotion in the dark. Them devils was eating their brother. I reloaded and set by the fire, hoping I wouldn’t run out of wood. Finally, when I got down to my last stick, it was daylight. And they was nothing but some bones and a little fur out beside the bushes.”

“Why would a woman want to go off to such a place?” Mama said. She usually didn’t interrupt my Daddy or a visitor. But if she had a feeling for something, she’d speak out, no matter who was there. I’d seen her argue with a preacher when he spoke against women.

“What for would a woman want to go off into the wilderness away from her kin?” Mama said. “A woman needs her friends and community. She don’t want to raise her younguns so far out she can’t see smoke from another chimney.”

“They’ll be other folks in the West,” your Grandpa said. “Folks is going there every day, like you seen this morning.”

All the time I was finishing up the dishes, I was thinking how pretty it would be to live off in the promised land of the Holsten. The thing I liked best about living off in your own cabin was it was so romantic. You was there with your loved ones and your spring, and the dogwoods bloomed as you put in corn. When the white storms come in winter you stayed by the fire and sewed quilts and taught your younguns their letters. And your man brought home a wild turkey or deer, and fur to make you a coat.

It seemed a pleasure to escape the jealousy, and feuding over boundary lines, and how property is divided up. We know so little of our connection, anyway, as people marry and move on and you don’t never hear from them again. It’s like in all our blood ties of cousins and aunts and uncles and ancestors and descendants we don’t see but those near us. Why children, your children will have children I will never know, and their children’s children will never have heard of me. No use to deny it. Looking backwards I don’t know more than my Grandmammy and Granddaddy on either side, and all the rest is just a name here, a fact there, a rumor. All the people stretching back two or three generations to Pennsylvania and Wales, and back to Adam, are just lost in the fog and dust. We are isolated in the little clearing of now, and all the rest is tangled woods and thickets nobody much remembers. I always said it’s how you enjoy that little opening in the wilderness that counts. That’s all you have a chance to do. That’s why I’m telling you this story.

Children, I’m sounding like an orator in my old age.

But it was clear Mama seen what was going on. She could read me like a schoolhouse slate. The truth is, I don’t think Mama wanted me to ever get married. I was already eighteen, which was old for a girl in those days. You reached twenty and you had a good chance of being an old maid. Maybe it was because she had had so much trouble having her own children out in Mountain Creek that she feared for me. Or maybe it was her own grief of being brought down here from Virginny away from her kin that made her hold to me. Every time the subject come up Mama sulked and got silent. When Mama wouldn’t talk to me, I felt the world had turned against me.

“What use has a woman got for the back-breaking burden of clearing land and raising up a cabin back of beyond?” Mama said. “A woman that has to do the work of a house and work of the field and woods won’t live to be gray. Rearing children alone will bring her down, much less the chopping and sawing, the snakes and painters.”

Mama had got riled more than she intended, I think. Your Grandpa looked at his pipe, and looked at my Daddy, and looked at the fire. He couldn’t say no more about moving to the West and be polite. He was embarrassed to argue with his hostess. Your Grandpa was a big rough feller in them days, but he never could stand no impoliteness. He looked like he wanted to change the subject, but that would be impolite too. He glanced at me and looked back at the fire.

“Nothing ever turns out the way people expect,” my Daddy finally said. “Even if you plan for perfection you’ll end up doing mostly what you never planned. The thing about new country is it gives a man another start.”

“And a woman another burden,” Mama said.

My Daddy looked into the fire for a few moments also. He didn’t want words with Mama when she was riled up. The fire fluttered a little in the March wind coming down the chimney. “Time to heat up the iron,” he said. “Mr. Richards needs him an ax and a grubbing hoe, and a garden hoe, and a spade.”

“And I need to look for some seed,” your Grandpa said.

“We can let you have some beans,” my Daddy said. “But we ain’t got hardly enough corn to last ourselves. You can try Wesleys’ over in the cove. They might have corn to sell.”

Your Grandpa got up and took his hat from the peg by the door. “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said to Mama.

“You come back and see us,” Mama said.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” your Grandpa said to my Daddy, “I’d like the first letters of my name cut in all my tools, a double R. Realus Richards.”

“Re-alus,” my Daddy repeated to himself.

When the men was gone, I thought how strange a name that was. It was one I’d never heard before. While I worked, I said it over to myself. When I went out to throw scraps to the hog in the pen by the branch, I said it for the strange flavor it had on the tongue. It was good to get out of the house and in the sunshine. They was a light wind, warm and chilly by turns.

“Realus,” I said again, and the wind seemed to magnify the sound. The name seemed to make things realer.

The old sow—we called her Sally—had laid down in the corner of the pen where the sun reached. I could hear her grunting with satisfaction all the way down the trail. Ain’t nothing more easy than a sow laying in the sun with her pigs suckling at every tit. It’s like a sound coming out of the dirt. I could smell the new grass crushed by my steps, and the creesie greens growing down by the branch.

Then I heard a louder grunt from old Sally, and a squeal from one of the pigs like something had disturbed it. Sometimes pigs will fight over a tit and I didn’t think anything about it, until another squeal come louder and they was a snort from the sow, like she was disturbed and trying to get up with the little pigs holding onto her.

The pen was about four feet high, made of chestnut poles. The pigs was squealing louder. At first I didn’t see nothing, and then this man stands up with a pig under his arm. I didn’t recognize him at first, ’cause he had this old cap sideways on his head.

“Hey you,” I said.

He looked at me in astonishment and started trying to climb over the fence. It was higher than his straddle and he had trouble getting over still holding onto the pig.

I seen it was the son of that jackleg preacher that lived up the holler, the one named Roopy that didn’t have hardly no sense but was caught looking in people’s windows. He had a beard down to his chest.

“Hey you!” I hollered again. It looked like he was going to get across the fence and run. He didn’t go to drop the pig. I don’t know what come over me, for I had no thought of danger. I had the bucket of scraps and slop in my hand and I just slung it around to hit him. He was halfway across the fence and I swung to hit him on the shoulder to make him drop the pig. But he reached out his elbow to stop the bucket and the slop flew out all down his arm and across his face. You never seen such a look of surprise. His face was covered with crumbs of bread and bits of creesie greens, pot likker, and beet juice. He looked like somebody drunk that fell in his own puke.

He turned away and I hit him on the back with the bucket, and more of the slop splashed on his cap and run down his collar. He was in such a hurry of surprise to get away, he forgot to put down the pig. It squeezed out of his arm and fell back in the pen. I reckon he thought I was going to kill him with the bucket. I don’t know what I was trying to do.

“I was just going to look,” he said over his shoulder. But I slung again and more slop hit him up side of the face. He lit out running through the cobs and manure that slipped out the lower side of the pen. I watched him jump the branch and keep hoofing it, wiping his eyes and face, till he reached the woods.

There I stood trembling with madness and excitement, and most of my slop was gone.

The next Sunday was the foot washing at the church. It was too cold in the middle of winter to have any foot washing at the meetinghouse ’cause they was no heat at all. When enough people got in the building, and Preacher Reece or another circuit-riding minister got to preaching, the little room would warm up fair enough. And in summer it was too hot, even with the door and windows open.

But along in spring, usually around Easter, when the weather opened up, they’d get water from the spring and fill a barrel by the church house. And from the barrel the deacons and deaconesses would fill their pans. After a long winter the grudges had built up in the community and in the congregation. A church is like a family and sometimes worser, with everybody arguing against everybody for leadership and authority. And the women like to pick at each other, always snipping and gossiping, and hurting each other’s feelings.

Come spring it’s time to wash it all away and start over. I think that’s where they g