Requiem by Fire Page 2

  “I still wasn’t convinced he was serious, so I told him to sleep on it, talk to John, and we’d palaver the next day. He and John come back and we shook on it. I asked if we ought to cut our fingers like we made blood brothers as young’uns, but they figured folks our age shouldn’t mess with that.

  “The next time the commissioners was to meet, we woke about three that morning and headed out of the valley. Spent the day laying up under a big poplar past the gap, counting squirrels, listening to the Lord God birds drum, drinking a little liquor. Come back at dark and did it.”

  “Silas, how did folks take it?” asked Carl.

  “Well, I’ll never forget the look on that twerpy teacher’s face. See, he didn’t know the desks were safe—he had a box, too, with knives and slingshots he’d confiscated and papers that looked a mite personal—and he seemed like he’d bust out crying if you said ‘boo.’ I took him aside and told him to show up for school at Hiram’s place in the morning.

  “Everybody was wringing their hands, ’cause once it started, that little old building went pretty quick, and them that brought buckets didn’t have nothing to do except turn them upside down and set on them.

  “But old Hiram, I had to hand it to him, he quieted everybody down, put his hat in his hands, and gave a speech. I still remember his forehead shining in the light of them embers. He got all solemn, told how we’d been to the meeting. Said the county allowed as how we weren’t worth a school building over here, that they laughed at us. We were on our way home, he told it, trying to figure how to break the news to our neighbors and friends, when God Hisself—that’s exactly the way he put it, ‘God Hisself’—struck that little building so the boys and girls of Cataloochee could have a new school. It was a mighty fine oration.”

  Carl peered at his wife’s uncle. “But you said you hadn’t been to no meeting.”

  Silas looked at Carl, not for the first time, like the boy should either clean out his ears or apply for a new brain. “We hadn’t. But they didn’t know that, and after such a speech I wasn’t about to say different. Somebody asked what next, and Hiram put his hat back on and said we’d have school in his old cabin until the commissioners built a new one. Somebody asked about desks and such, and Hiram didn’t miss a beat. ‘God will provide,’ he said, ‘just like He provided this here fire. Mark my words.’ And he got a huzzah, and a few amens. Next morning, Hiram said he’d had a dream about them desks, and took that crowd there like Moses leading the children of Israel. By that afternoon they’d cleaned up that old cabin and was having school.” He knocked his pipe into the yard. “And, boys, that’s the truth.”

  Carl slid off the railing. “How long did it take to build the new one?”

  Silas chuckled. “Took forever, it seemed like. Hiram didn’t get them kids out of his cabin for two or three years.”

  “Anybody ever suspect you?” asked Harrogate.

  “If they did, they didn’t say. I expect them commissioners scratched their heads a little, but there wasn’t no investigation.”

  “You couldn’t get away with it now, I bet,” said Carl.

  “Times was different then,” Silas said. “When something needed doing, it got done—one way or another.” He scratched his chin. “Even government was different. You didn’t have an inquisition ever time somebody farted like they do now. They mostly let you alone except when they wanted your vote. Now it’s the damnedest mess you ever seen. And look what they want to do now—take your land for some cockeyed national park. Old Hiram would spin in his grave.”

  Silas stood as if to dismiss their meeting. “Boys, park or no park, we got a farm to tend to. Let’s start by cleaning that cockeyed kitchen up.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Pea Soup

  A fly half as big as a bumblebee droned from one side of the bedroom to the other as the sun rose. A young man lay atop the bedcovers, in suit trousers, suspenders, and a white shirt. The only indications he was other than a corpse ready to view were an open mouth and half-mast necktie. Oliver W. Babcock, Jr., attorney at law, at six forty-five A.M. on Wednesday, October 10, 1928, in Ola, North Carolina, did not quite know it yet, but he was victim of a king-hell hangover.

  He lay like a dead man, light dancing a tarantella on his head and providing appreciable lift to the fly, which buzzed his head like a dirigible. He opened his eyes. No memory of going to bed. His stomach tightened as he rose slowly and put head in hands. When he closed his eyes, something behind and between them spun like a top. His eyelids sprang open like roller shades. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he muttered.

  Oliver had graduated from law school at Chapel Hill the previous spring. He knew nothing of the mountains but had applied for a position with the North Carolina Park Commission because its chairman, Senator Mark Squires, could further Oliver’s political ambitions, which included the governor’s mansion. Squires had recommended him to Red Pendleton, soon to be head of the Waynesville office, who’d hired Oliver sight unseen, along with a young man from South Carolina, to negotiate with landowners, to search titles, and to draw deeds.

  Oliver had grown up in Currituck County, a flat, windy land of tides and crab pots, oyster tongs and marsh grass, country that could hardly be more different from the high peaks and spruce forests of Haywood County. Since moving, he had had to master a mess of things, including a new dialect. In Cataloochee, “far” was something kept in a fireplace behind a hearth. “Sprang” could be a season, the past tense of a verb, a metal coil, or a source of drinking water. Oliver’s sandlapper brogue was equally exotic to Cataloochans. When they first asked where he hailed from, he said “Sput,” meaning Spot, the settlement he called home. They smiled as if he were a none-too-bright cousin. Then he tried “Moyock,” the only nearby town, which came out “Muck.” So he came to say “from the coast,” and that sufficed, even if “coast” sounded like the past tense of “cuss.”

  He had to learn a whole new vocabulary. Groundhogs became whistle-pigs. Trumpet vine became cow-itch. Strawberry bushes were hearts-a’-busting. A saddleback caterpillar was a packsaddle in Cataloochee, and was equally to be avoided. And about the only similarity between speckled trout in Currituck and in Haywood was that both fish were scaleless.

  It helped to have a sense of humor and the born politician’s gift of never knowingly offending anyone. Oliver might show up to appraise a farm, dressed in a good suit, wearing a pocket handkerchief and shiny shoes, and the owner, sporting a slouch hat and an innocent smile, would say they had to walk every square inch. Before Oliver knew it, he’d be shoe-mouth deep in a hog pen. Despite this he did not complain. Oliver was tolerated by most, praised by some, and tittered about by girls, who thought him dashing.

  Then came the killing. On the first of October 1928, Zeb Banks, eldest son of the largest landowner in Little Cataloochee, was mending a fence behind his house with his wife, Mattie. His father, Ezra, rode onto his property, drunk, angry, and dangerous. Zeb shooed Mattie inside and walked into the front yard. With no hesitation, Ezra shot Zeb’s hat from his head with his owlhead pistol. As they struggled, more shots were fired. Zeb ended up charged with murder.

  Oliver asked Pendleton for time off. “What in the world for?” Red said.

  “If I can represent Mr. Banks successfully, we will have no trouble negotiating. An acquittal would be a big ‘feather in our cap,’ as you like to say.”

  So Pendleton grudgingly gave Oliver leave, with warning he’d better have his sorry ass at work the morning after the verdict or he’d be fired. The trial began Monday, October 8. The state presented a weak case, and Oliver moved for dismissal Tuesday morning. The judge granted his motion.

  All Cataloochee turned out for the party at Jake and Rachel Carter’s place. That night Jake, an oval-faced man with round spectacles—and the younger brother of Ezra’s widow, Hannah—kept everyone’s glasses full. Oliver knew he needed to be in Waynesville at nine the next morning, but Cataloochans toasted him repeatedly, and the postmistress, Velda Parham,
fresh-faced, fetching, and single, was happy to dance with him when he wasn’t being lauded.

  Toward midnight Oliver said he didn’t feel a bit drunk, and started telling Velda about playing in a three-week bridge game at his fraternity. Halfway through the tale he stood, limber-legged, and asked how many windows were in the kitchen. Velda giggled, there being only one. He stumbled, caught the table with his free hand, and raised his glass with the other. “There’s a Carolina man for you,” he said. “Didn’t spill a drop.”

  Now, in a guest bedroom at six forty-five A.M., he tottered to the chair, dusted his shoes, and slapped at the fly with his socks. The previous night’s hearth fire was dead. In the mirror over the nightstand his eyes looked like a road map of hell, and his hair belonged atop a character in “Maud the Mule.” He dipped his comb into the pitcher, parted his hair exactly in the middle, and smoothed his long sideburns. Rubbing his teeth with a wet finger until they squeaked, he figured his boss was likely on his way to the office, grinning like Simon Legree.

  In the kitchen, Rachel stirred a pot of applesauce and tended a skillet of bacon. A bowl of eggs sat on the counter, and Oliver smelled biscuits in the oven. In place of last night’s whiskey jar was a salt and pepper set and a sugar bowl. Jake grinned. “Honey, get this poor man some coffee but don’t make much racket. Mr. Counselor, you don’t look too peart.”

  Rachel brought him a cup. “I don’t know, Jake. He doesn’t look too awful bad for a man who thought we had four or five windows in here last night.”

  Oliver’s coffee was as black and oily as the lower Pigeon River. “Got any sugar?”

  Jake pushed the bowl toward Oliver. “You want your eggs fried or scrambled?”

  “Just coffee, thanks. I couldn’t eat a thing.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Rachel. “In this house, I cook and folks eat. Jake, maybe he needs a hangover tonic.”

  Oliver looked dully at Jake, who said, “Something my daddy swore by. Morning after the night before, you got to do either the hair of the dog, or tomato juice with raw egg.”

  “I’ll try the latter, without the egg.”

  Jake came back from the can shed shaking a quart of red fluid. “Here’s the heat of summer in a jar. It’ll do you right.”

  Rachel served eggs, bacon, and biscuits as Oliver guzzled juice.

  “Want some aspirin?” asked Rachel.

  Oliver nodded as vigorously as he dared. Rachel popped the back corner of a tin of Bayer’s and shook out two tablets beside Oliver’s plate.

  By seven-thirty he was on his way, belly full. He drove by the clapboard church where raw dirt arched over Ezra’s grave, then down through Ola, happy to see no sign of Velda. He didn’t want her to see him unshaven, and he couldn’t remember what he might have said late last night. He drove out of Little Cataloochee onto the main road, the car twisting and turning with the switchbacks, rocking him like a county fair ride.

  Halfway up, he threw the car out of gear, ratcheted the brake lever, jumped out, and vomited in the huckleberry bushes. Leaning over the ditch, he retched until tears streamed his cheeks. He slowly unbent until he could breathe. A squirrel on a sourwood limb seemed the only witness. Oliver wiped his mouth and forehead. A quarter to nine. He would be lucky to arrive by early afternoon. Pendleton would cashier him for sure.

  The auto made it up the grade to Turkey Cove, mountain fast to his left, curves too narrow to meet more than a mule’s width of traffic. This high up, sourwood leaves were scarlet, and yellows showed in the tulip trees. At Cove Creek Gap sat a wagon, the teamster in the bushes for a morning errand. Oliver slowed so as not to spook the man’s mules, then shoved the Ford into second. Now he had mountain on the right, bathed in sunshine, and a perfect view of Utah Mountain, past which rows of peaks stood bathed in blue mist.

  Each mile increased both hunger and anxiety. Red Pendleton usually meant what he said, except when he didn’t. A tall, fussy man of fifty-five, he was quickly losing the reason for his nickname. Before Pendleton’s employment with the park commission, he’d been a local manager for a Pennsylvania lumber company. But as early as 1924 a Knoxville paper reported that, while Pendleton’s firm had offered to sell eighty thousand acres of virgin Tennessee timberland to the park, it kept slashing the tract’s lumber as fast as a Duesenberg at Indianapolis, thereby profiting twice, not to mention defrauding the government. Pendleton resigned soon after, moved to North Carolina, and changed from buying timberland for scandalous profits to acquiring farmland to make a national park. Oliver doubted that altruism had been Pendleton’s motive.

  Nor did Pendleton endear himself to Horace Wakefield. A trim, freckle-faced man of forty, Wakefield was a South Carolinian who had fallen in love with the mountains as a youth on a camping adventure. After a surveyor’s apprenticeship, he’d started a land office in Waynesville. The park commission’s Asheville headquarters had hired him to survey in Cataloochee, which he had done for some months on pretense of county business—and when they’d found they needed a Haywood County branch, they’d used Horace as interim manager.

  Cataloochee landowners by and large trusted Horace, and their young sons clamored to help him find calls, carry chains, and hold rods. He had not liked the idea of the park at first, but had slowly come to think it would protect the area from rapacious timber operations.

  The commission’s three small offices and reception area took up a back corner of the first story of the county courthouse. The morning Pendleton first showed up, Horace had been going over some papers with Mae Shook, their secretary. Pendleton walked in like a big dog, Horace later told Oliver, and looked things over like he was deciding whether the place was worthy of his attention. Pendleton let the door slam, announced his name, and produced a letter from Senator Squires. Horace introduced himself and Mae, and read the letter. Pendleton said, “By the way, Mr. Wakefield, I have hired two field agents. I’m not sure there’s room for them here.”

  Wakefield gave Pendleton a wry smile. “Mr. Pendleton,” he said, as smooth as butter, “if Senator Squires wants you here, it’s fine with me. And if you and he want to hire so-called field agents, that’s peachy. But I’ll have no one undermine the confidence I have built in Cataloochee. Who have you all hired?”

  “Two young men, one an Oliver Babcock from the coast, and the other a South Carolinian named Ashley Cooper Blackwell, both highly recommended by Senator Squires.”

  “Does either know mountain people?”

  “Mr. Wakefield, people are people.”

  “I don’t know so well about that, Mr. Pendleton. These highlanders are spooky. Make them mad, and we might have to condemn their land. Eminent domain would be a nightmare.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Mr. Pendleton, Governors Peay and Horton in Tennessee have spent a lot of political capital assuring citizens there will be no eminent domain. So has Governor McLean. To condemn hundreds of parcels would be a scandal. We’d never put the land together. I hope for the park’s sake that you and Mr. Squires have hired well.”

  So Pendleton ran the office—at least Mae let him think he did—while Wakefield continued to survey and advise. Oliver avoided Pendleton as best he could but really liked Wakefield. At their first meeting, Oliver asked, “Do you have a sport?”

  Wakefield turned. “It used to be baseball, young man. Third base. The hot corner. If I do say so, I was a fair fielder and not a bad hitter.”

  “Where’d you play?”

  “In high school, in Greenville. Then two seasons at Carolina until I had to tend to my sick father. Could have played in the big time, I think, if I’d been a little faster.”

  “When were you at Chapel Hill?”

  Wakefield threw back his head and laughed. “Good Lord, son, are you another benighted devil who thinks ‘Carolina’ is North Carolina? Will we ever have fun working together!” He slapped Oliver on the back. “I was at Columbia in ’06 and ’07. After my father died, I played for Greenville one season—then tore my knee up
.”

  “Golly. Did you know Shoeless Joe?”

  “We were together the year before he went to Philly. I never saw a soul better at hitting, as good a base runner as Cobb but not nearly as nasty. As modest a man as you could find.”

  “Then you don’t think he threw the Series?”

  Wakefield snorted. “Anyone who’s around Joe Jackson ten seconds knows he didn’t. Judge Landis is a pure-tee fool.”

  So Oliver got along with Horace from the first. His other colleague, Ashley Cooper Blackwell, started with three strikes against him. In the first place, he used all three names. Moreover, he was a tall, flat-faced boy with a stiff neck, which made him appear to look down on most folks. And he said he was from Charleston, although when he walked to town on Saturday it was merely to Wando. Blackwell had worked two days when Pendleton’s phone rang.

  “Mr. Pendleton?” scratched a reedy voice.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “This here’s Hub Carter. The Cataloochee mailman. You working a tall old boy with three names?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Well, sir, you know what I seen at the post office?”

  Pendleton leaned close to the Bakelite mouthpiece. “Mr. Carter, I’m a busy man. Get to the point.”

  “Well, sir, this beanpole had been to see Silas Wright about his property. Now, if I was you, I wouldn’t have sent such a scarecrow to see Silas. You know him, Mr. Pendleton?”

  “Of course. I hired him.”

  “No, I mean Silas Wright.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, he’s as stubborn a man as I ever knowed, unless you count Moses arguing with the Lord Jehovah. You know them big old wooden barrels they ship flour in?” Pendleton said nothing. “You there, sir?”