Cataloochee Read online

  No one knew where Ezra got the stake to buy the farm outright from the owner. There was talk of a poker game. But by 1877, Ezra owned two barns, horses, an outsized apple house and orchards, a fairly prosperous farm worked mostly by tenants. He kept to himself except Sundays, when he rode a buggy to the Baptist church. He courted no women. He was tight with a nickel and lent money on strict terms to his sharecroppers. He made their children split firewood for him, promised them a little something, then neglected to pay.

  He had never forgotten his first view of Cataloochee, and meant someday to live there. One of his wartime compatriots, a Haywood County Sutton, showed up at Ezra's farm every spring to tell a year's worth of stories and try to learn something about Ezra to tell the next place he lit. In 1879 Sutton told of Jonathan Wright, who farmed the last place on Big Cataloochee Creek, just under Big Fork Ridge. Wright had a pretty, marriageable daughter and a lot of land. Sutton also told of Will Carter, the largest landowner on Little Cataloochee Creek, also with plenty of land and a daughter of about fifteen. He depicted Will as fond of both politics and whiskey, but he didn't blame him for the latter, having to live with a wife, five daughters, and a sickly boy.

  Early in 1880 a peach and pecan farmer north of Spartanburg named Dodd, tired of the hot summers down there, offered to buy Ezra's farm, and Ezra figured cash money would go a long way with either Cataloochan. He wrote letters to Jonathan Wright and Will Carter in January and both replied for him to come talk. So Ezra turned his face toward Cataloochee.

  THE ENORMOUS IRON BEAST

  ilas Wright and Hiram Carter rode like old men, creaky as their saddles though neither was yet twenty-three. A knowing observer would peg them for men used to working horses but seldom riding for pleasure. Mule and wagon better suited them for such distances as Cataloochee to Waynesville, some thirty miles as the crow flies, a trip they made every six months.

  The Haywood County township, Cataloochee, bordered Tennessee on the northeast, the eastern Cherokees on the southwest, and was called “the back of beyond” even in Haywood County. In Waynesville, the county seat, folks fancied themselves too sophisticated ever to have been connected to such a backwater. One county east, in Asheville, residents regarded Waynesville as an outpost only to be visited on a mission of mercy or to uproot some dug-in criminal. Folks downstate in Raleigh smugly claimed to have no truck with the mountains. Such was society in Reconstruction North Carolina.

  Silas and Hiram had been born late in 1850, so were too young to seek what adventures might have befallen them had they enlisted in the Civil War. Their fathers were too old for the army, so the boys spent the war farming with them. In 1861 Silas's father had moved the Wrights from Spring Creek to the final section of flat land in Cataloochee, two miles past Hiram's father's farm, just before the road turned into a trail to the top of Spruce Mountain.

  Silas was eleven when they moved. His father, Jonathan, and his mother, Velma, had packed a beat-up wagon, then hitched a mule to the front and tied a milk cow to the rear. They roped the chickens’ legs together and laid them complaining in the back. The journey wasn't fifty miles but took the better part of two weeks. Up and down mountainsides they walked and rode, teetering on primitive roads, prying boulders, dodging rattlesnakes.

  At Rush Fork Gap, Silas could have looked west three ridges and said, “So that's where we're going. Seven miles as the crow flies. More like thirty by road.” But the right-hand wheels suddenly chunked in a rut as mule sawed left and wagon went right, sending boxes and bags, chickens and children overboard. If the wagon had turned over completely the whole kit and bilin’ would have plunged five hundred feet down the mountain. That afternoon they searched through poison oak and catbriers for his mother's wooden butter print. His father kept saying he'd carve her another when they got to Cataloochee. She would not budge. After an eternity they found it and she said they could go on.

  One ridge west they'd have been too high for poison oak but at Rush Fork it was abundant and potent. Silas's eyes swelled shut two days later and he feared he might lose his right arm, pocked with weepy blisters. After he recovered he made two vows: he would never again let himself get poison oak, nor would he ever move.

  Both young men were fascinated by the great trains of the East. They talked about a locomotive's strength but disagreed whether a train could outrun a good horse. Silas said nothing able to pull such loads could possibly go fast, as elephants are not noted for swiftness. Hiram, thinking of large jungle cats, bet a nickel it could. Hiram's mother, Lib, and Silas's father, Jonathan, regarded the argument as pointless, but gave them leave after the first hay crop to ride to Old Fort, terminus of the Western North Carolina Railroad.

  The first day they climbed the old switchback road, ascending twenty-five hundred feet to Cove Creek Gap, then down to Cove Creek itself, and up Jonathan's Creek to Dellwood. By dark they made the Shook place at Clyde, where the asthmatic old Francis Asbury, proclaimed bishop of the American Methodists by John Wesley, had preached more than sixty years before, and where camp meetings were held until the war stopped such religious extravagance. The Shooks were happy to lodge honest vagabonds, so the boys spent the night in the barn loft, resting but excited, wakeful.

  When crickets hushed and the sky grayed, they gave up on sleep, descended, saddled their horses, and made for Buncombe. By sunup they were nearly to Turnpike. Closer to Asheville they met no drovers but steady traffic, single riders and teamsters, some hauling firewood pulled by oxen with backbones jagged as the saws that cut their burdens. They passed frame houses, some with banks of yellow and purple irises beside inviting porches, others facing away from the road like misanthropes.

  Clouds of pigeons occasionally obscured the sun but neither young man paid much attention. Atop the next hill sat a town five times Waynesville's size and twice as ugly, Hiram thought. Two-story brick structures lorded it over rickety wooden buildings facing streets clotted with mud. An east-west road met a north-south thoroughfare at the public square but otherwise roads ran in directions that led Silas to think they were laid out by a drunken man on a mule. In a half hour they surveyed the sights: courthouse, the cemetery beside the Presbyterian church, several liveries down Water Street, and stores and hotels on North and South Main. Well-dressed pedestrians stared at them disdainfully but toward the end of South Main they hailed an ancient man with a gray waist-length beard for directions east. He scratched an armpit and told them to keep south to the Swannanoa River, then follow it east to Black Mountain, then over the ridge. He'd heard talk of a train down that way.

  Ten miles east they passed Alexander's Inn, a rambling structure blessed with a deep and wide porch full of rockers and hanging flower baskets. They made camp a mile distant along the river, then caught a few fish but threw them back, for Hiram mistrusted eating creatures choosing to inhabit murky water.

  Sunset was red and long-lived. Silas inhaled the aroma of frying pork. “You know, back in Catalooch, with them high mountains, the sun sets between three and four. This broad valley lets daylight stay longer.”

  Hiram poked the curling pork with his knife. “Yep, a man could get used to such a sunset. But, all in all, I can't say I care for this country. I'm trepidatious to bed down here, there ain't nothing to hide behind. If it wasn't for getting my nickel, I'd think about going back home.”

  Silas sighed. “It's mynickel, neighbor. But I'm with you. This here country is too you might say changeful to suit me. All them people running around back yonder in Asheville. I don't know where they all come from, and I bet half of them don't know where they're going. I'm glad I live where things are quiet.”

  After supper they laid out bedrolls, smoked, and listened to night sounds, frogs both large and tiny, zinging small insects, a lead gander honking to his fellows, saying, See, here is water. Some unseen thing knocked in no discernible pattern against a rock in the river. Hundreds of dragonflies swarmed the hull of a dead birch leaning over the river, then disappeared after a bat devoured one of their comrades. In a while the men slept soundly, rocked by the rhythm of the river.

  They woke to the creak of departing geese and watched a lone heron, thin to disappearing when it faced them, stab prey in the shallows. Whitetail deer faded into the woods across the river. The young men's breakfast was cold and hurried, for they meant on this third day to see a train.

  They headed out of Buncombe County toward the gaps at Coleman and Graphite in bright sunshine, fanning insects from their faces. Along the roadside grew yellow sundrops and five-pointed red flowers with ends that appeared pinked with shears. Hiram was glad the clean bright glint of a blacksnake did not spook his mount. They rested at the gap, then twisted down the mountain into McDowell County.

  Halfway down they met gangs of men. Some were white, grading roadbed with mules and drag pans. Others were black, wearing striped uniforms and slouch hats, chained together, pitting picks and shovels against the mountain, overseen by grim white men with shotguns. Hiram and Silas passed them in silence, not knowing if it were proper to acknowledge such men with a nod.

  Farther down they passed a hand-lettered sign:

  Mr Wm Thompson & Wife

  General Mdse & Board

  Tourists Welcome

  The new sign was driven into the ground some hundred yards before an old store building. Beside it was a frequently visited spring. The boys stopped to water their horses. Thompson, who with his wife had moved to North Carolina from Wyoming, greeted them. “Boys,” he said, “what do you think? I'm going to make a geyser out of this spring here. It won't beat those in the new national parks in the West, but it'll do for here.”

  “What good's a geyser?” asked Hiram.

  “Why, son, it'll attract tourists like nothing else.”

  “
What's a tourist, sir?”

  “Somebody that tours the country, son, somebody who comes in and leaves money with them that's smart enough to get it.”

  Silas and Hiram thanked him and headed down the mountain without conveying their doubts about his enterprise or buying sweet milk or pie from Mrs. Thompson.

  They wound downward until the road flattened near the Catawba River and the settlement called Old Fort. A station newly hewn from chestnut and oak had not yet benefited from paint. Beside it parallel steel ribbons lay spiked on logs perpendicular to rails laddering eastward.

  Hiram and Silas hitched their horses. They saw a town small enough to fit in the Cataloochee valley, even if here the post office was separate from the general store.

  On the plank sidewalk beside the station sat a bench holding up the backsides of a trio of whittling men. Silas caught the eye of one, about sixty, wearing flannel despite the warm weather. “Howdy, mister. I'm Silas Wright. This here's Hiram Carter. When you reckon the train'll get here?”

  The man shrugged and poked his neighbor's ribs. “I'm Tom Peek, son. Train's been by not long ago.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Can't you see its tracks?”

  The men chuckled, then slapped knees and wheezed with laughter. A red-faced Hiram grinned, took off his hat, and mopped his brow. “That's a good one, Mr. Peek. Now then. We came from Catalooch to see this train. Will it come again today?”

  Peek looked them over. “Where'd you say you hail from?”

  “Catalooch. In Haywood, forty mile west of Asheville. Prettiest country you ever seen. Not near as hot as here.”

  “I wondered where such wild-looking critters as you might come from.” He opened a pocket watch with his thumb. “The train'll be here at four thirty-eight. Five minutes.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Peek. Mind if I take a look at that?” asked Silas.

  “My watch? Don't you have timepieces in—what'd you call it? Catty-loose?”

  “Catalooch. No, sir. There's a case clock at the post office but no-body's got a pocket clock.” The man opened and gave the watch to Silas. An Elgin with regular hands plus a small dial with an arrow to mark seconds, it had appreciable heft.

  Silas handed it to Hiram. “It's pretty,” he said. “Sounds nice, too.” He handed it back to Peek. “But I wouldn't have much use for it.”

  “Truth to tell, son, I never needed one till the train came. Now I don't hardly know it's dinnertime without it. You fellows might want to move them horses before the train shows up.”

  They led their mounts to the edge of town and tied them to saplings. Soon they heard a distant metallic rumble. After the train pulled the grade east of town and chuffed by the Padgett place, they saw a pillar of smoke pulsating toward town amid a growing roar.

  When the locomotive started to brake for the station Silas and Hiram gentled the horses best they could. Dirty woodsmoke and sparks flew from a beveled smokestack big as the Cataloochee grist mill's forebay. A Cyclopean lantern hung on the locomotive's face, and behind the smokestack two humps bristled in front of a cagelike box in which a man peered forward through smoky chaos. The enormous iron beast stormed and clanked and whistled as wheels shrilled on the tracks.

  They gawked at the train, bound back for Morganton by dark, taking on water and wood. A few tired passengers with bags emerged, dusting their clothing. Two black men unloaded crates of vegetables and a sack of mail. More swarmed over the locomotive like ants holding oil cans.

  As it whistled again Hiram and Silas mounted and steadied their horses. Past the town the track looped to head the train east and as the machine turned, the boys began to race with it. The locomotive gained speed as it neared the station. Silas and Hiram kept up with it for a quarter of a mile past the structure but the monster quickly pulled away as they slowed their winded mounts.

  “You owe me a nickel,” said Hiram. “I told you they don't call it an iron horse for nothing.”

  “You'll get it, friend. I just need a blow. That thing is amazing.”

  “Double or nothing I can beat you back to town.”

  Silas patted his horse. “Better give them a breather, too. We can race up the mountain in the morning if you want.”

  As they neared the station Peek motioned to them. “Did you boys really think to outrun a train?”

  “We just wanted to see how fast it would go,” said Hiram.

  “Son, you got a lot of catching up to do. One of these days a man will be able to go from Carolina to California without putting a foot on the ground. It's progress.”

  Hiram smiled. “You think that thing will really go up the mountain?”

  “You bet. If they get it to Asheville, they can put it into Catty Loose, too.”

  “They do that, we'd have to move to Montana for peace and quiet,” said Silas. “How do you put up with the racket? I think it'd make me sick.”

  “You know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like money. A man can live with that easy enough. You boys got anything against money?”

  “How come you think that sounds like money?” asked Silas.

  Peek looked at him like he might be from some strange planet. “Look around you, boy. Twenty years ago there wasn't none of this. This place wasn't even a place, it was just nowhere. Now we got a hotel and everything. Trains bring money, son. You'll see. You boys heading east?”

  “No, sir,” said Hiram, “we're heading home tomorrow.”

  “I got shelter for horses if you want to stay tonight with me and the old woman. We'll open a keg of nails and bite their heads off.” Peek peered at his watch.

  “You sure we wouldn't be in the way?” asked Hiram.

  “Lord, son, it ain't but me and her now. We'd be proud to feed some young folks for a change. Might teach you a little about this modern world, too. We're down this road, turn in at the gate with the upsidedown horseshoe. I'll be along directly.”

  A DECENT ENOUGH ROSEBUD

  ike most of his kin, Hiram Carter liked to dwell on family history. If he didn't know a detail he'd make it up. Countless times he told how the Carters came to Cataloochee.

  The telling varied somewhat, but always began with his grandfather, called “Old Jimmie” Carter because in his thirties his hair turned solid white. Two years before President Jackson ran the Cherokees off to Oklahoma, in 1836, Old Jimmie and his sons—Levi, Hiram's father; and Levi's brothers, William, Lafayette, whom they called Uncle Fate, and Andy—stood at Cove Creek Gap, peering into Cataloochee like Moses looking at the Promised Land, except they got to go in. They had come from Spring Creek, then in Buncombe County, which Old Jimmie said was getting too populous for him. “It's getting so people live right on top of you,” he'd say. “It ain't natural.”

  So he bought a hundred acres from Colonel Love the land speculator in a region the Cherokees called “Gadalutsi,” which meant something like “standing in rows.” By the time Love got through with the name, all any white person knew to call it was Cataloochee, and in another generation most had shortened that to Catalooch. When the Carters spied out the land, they found nobody there, so they cleared the footpath Love had the brass to call a turnpike enough to drag a mule-drawn sled without it skittering off the mountainside. They went back to Buncombe, loaded up their families, piled sleds high with cookpots and chicken coops, tethered milk cows behind, and journeyed four days to Jonathan's Creek. Then they held on for dear life up seven miles of corkscrew road from Cove Creek, and then the same from the gap down into Big Cataloochee.

  It was mostly wilderness then, trout the size of handsaws, poplars big as silos, poison oak vines thick as a man's leg. They built a cabin by the creek, and at night the big cats they called painters screamed at them, some nights from the roof peak, sounding for the world like women being beaten. Old Jimmie hurt his back badly and moved back to Buncombe after the first winter. But Hiram's father, Levi, took root, and he and his wife, Lib, made a good farm. Next year a family of Howells settled down the creek from them, and they all built a Methodist church.