III
Night comes sifting through the trees, the clouds, the sweet sad music of April in the woods. Looks like rain again and we’re glad to take shelter in a tarpaper shack at the side of a shutdown strip mine. I let the dog out of the bag and she curls up on the boards behind a potbellied stove. Might build a fire in that thing before the night is over. There’s a chill in the wind suggesting sleet. Even snow. Would not be the first time I’ve seen a snowstorm in April in these Allegheny Mountains.
I sit against the wall for a time, then untie my bundle and take out my precious pills, two for the nausea and two for the pain. That should get me through till midnight. I put on the jacket and rest. Getting dark. I force myself to rise and step outside until I find some dead sticks, old boards, a few chunks of soft coal. I peel the Playboy pictures from the wall and set a fire in the stove, ready for the match.
Feeling slightly better, I sit on the doorstep and stare across the railroad to the lights of a fair-size town on the far side of the creek. Where am I? What town is that? And do I care?
I believe I’ve been walking for two full days now. Maybe three. Let’s see: first night under the covered bridge abutment. Second night inside the cab of that burned-out dragline rig above the tracks. Hail came down that night. Third night here. Three days. If I walked say fifteen miles each day I’m nearly home. Maybe I’ve done better, walked farther.
What is that town beyond the river? Could that be—Shawnee? I’m not sure. I slide into my bag and wait for the Demerol to do its work. When it does I sleep.
Late in the night I rise, free of all pain, all melancholy, put on jacket and cap and step outside, closing the door on my comatose dog. A dark, starless night. Stick in hand, revolver in my belt, I walk down the muddy road to the tracks and the river, cross over by a familiar iron truss bridge and enter the town.
Lamps burn above an empty street paved in red brick, warm and mellow. Not a soul in sight. It must be very late. There is no traffic nor any vehicles parked at the curb.
Yes, I know this street. I’ve seen these elm and maple trees before, those square frame houses painted white, these small shops close to the sidewalk. Of course. I stop in front of Marla’s Beauty Salon and read the labels in her display window:
ZS Zoto’s Texture Care
Ion Hair Spray
Thermal Styling Lotion
Gentle Surgi-Cream
Nucleic “A” Body Plus Styling Mousse
Nexus Humectress: A Polymerized Electrolytic
Moisture Potion for the Hair
Triple Lanolin Aloe Vera Lotion
Nothing new there. Same as before. I was amazed by those names when I was a boy. I walk on, cut across an intersection—no traffic light—and stop in front of Elliot’s Cut-Rate Drug Store. Lights burn inside but nobody sits at the stools along the marbletop soda fountain or in the high-backed cream-colored wooden booths lining the wall. As always, two green milkshake mixers stand at the far end of the back counter and the gorgeous oversize illustrations of strawberry sundaes, banana splits, root-beer floats, chocolate sodas hang on the wall. But where are the pretty girls I used to love—Betsy, Donna, Wilma, Sybil, Helen, Mary?
I cross the Old Turnpike Road and walk over the cool grass of Courthouse Park. By streetlight I read the remembered names on the Revolutionary War Monument:
Boggs
Gatlin
Dobbins
Holyoak
Fisher
Shields
And on the World War I monument:
Adams
Hunter
Boggs
Keith
Bishop
Knight
Buckner
Lightcap
Carr
Martin
Criss
Singleton
Fetterman
Tait
Fisher
Tanner
Gatlin
Taylor
Ginter
Weaver
Goley
White
Hacker
Woods
Hamric
Young
We don’t commemorate the Civil War around these parts. Too many families on the wrong side. As for the names of those who died in World War II and the Korean War and the Vietnam War—they are too many to remember, too many to weep for. Paul Lightcap alone was far too many, too much.
I read the bronze plaque on the granite obelisk that rises between two rust-green field artillery pieces (Spanish-American War):
Shawnee, West Virginia. County seat of Shawnee County. Named for former prevalence of indigenous tribesmen. Founded and settled by Jeremiah & Benjamin Shields in 1784, both later killed by Indians. Town burned by Confederate troops in 1861. Birthplace of Henry H. Lightcap.
Not strictly true of course. I went to high school here but I was actually born on the farm in Honey Hollow near Stump Creek eight miles to the northeast. I stroll around the domed courthouse building, looking at the enclosed walkway two stories up that leads—like a bridge of sighs—from the county courtroom to the county jail. Dim lights glow behind the barred windows but no shadows move across them. Not tonight. Lights burn in the police station below, the steel entrance door stands wide open but there’s nobody inside, neither prisoners nor police. The clock on the wall behind the booking desk says two forty-five. The police parking lot is empty.
Returning to Main Street—devoid as before of any traffic, any life—I walk past Waxler’s Department Store, the Dairy Dell (another ice cream parlor), the Criterion Movie Theater (showing a double feature Saturday matinee tomorrow: Buck Jones in Guns on the Pecos and Ken Maynard in Outlaw Creek). I’d be interested but I’ve seen those picture shows twice each already. They’re good but not as good as Hopalong Cassidy. Next door beyond the theater is the cement stairway leading down to Nick’s Shoeshine Parlor and Pool Hall. Light slants from the open doorway; I hear the crash of cueball breaking a rack. Who could be playing pool this time of night? The courthouse clock reads three ten. One car waits in the alley, the only automobile I’ve seen in the entire town—a 1935 Hudson Terraplane with foxtail on the aerial and a classy necker’s knob of red agate clamped to the steering wheel. I descend the greasy steps of the pool hall and look inside: nobody there but Will and our little brother Paul shooting a game of eight ball. Paul chalks his stick; he looks pale and skinny as always but gives me a friendly smile. I nod; we watch Will sink three in a row then miss an easy corner shot. He straightens up, gives me a wink and backs into the shadows beyond the hooded table light. I see his big hand reach for thé chalk hanging by a string from the ceiling. Paul bends at the rail, cuestick sliding slowly back and forth between forefinger and thumb of his right hand as he takes aim on the four ball. He’s a lefty. A southpaw. No wonder he’s always had trouble. I say nothing, give them both a wave and climb the steps to the street. I know where Will hides the extra key to his car, taped inside the chrome-plated grille. But the Terraplane is gone.
Very well, I’ll walk. I take the shortcut out of town, the cinder road past the flaming coke ovens at Blacklick, then the dirt lane over the hill at Gatlin’s farm. This brings me to Jefferson Church, lit up like a theater despite the lateness of the hour. I stop for a glance through the open double doors and see Mother in there, who else, pumping on the broad pedals of the organ. I know that tune: “Bringing in the Sheaves.” She’s alone, except for Marcie and Baby Jim arranging flowers at the rail before the pulpit. Must be something special happening tomorrow. Easter, could be. Smell of violets and iris. I wave at them but no one notices. I leap off the porch of the church, spring over the hedge at the corner, and glide through the dark, without effort, past Trimble’s and Fetterman’s up the red-slag road, under the nave of sugar maple trees that leads to our place. I overtake my father on the way: he’s tramping home with his ax in his right hand, the limber shining crosscut saw over his left shoulder. He whistles a march tune. He laughs as I pass him, calling my name—Henry? that
you Henry?—and keeps on whistling as he walks. I know as he fades behind me that I will not see him again.
I never reach the house. A baby wails among the trees below the road, down in the dark of the woods, the sound of an infant baby that is hurt, alone, frightened, a dreadful dirge a terrifying cry prolonged forever. I pause, peering into the dark, straining to perceive a child’s form in the chaos of shattered space and night.
Something huge, black, grasping, looming above the trees, blotting out the few dim stars, shambles toward me from the forest. Watching that shadow come I feel gathering within me the power of an ancient rage, the strength of a never-forgiving hate. I draw the gun from my belt, tighten my grip on my stick and advance with joy, in an ecstasy of anger, to meet the shapeless thing as it reaches forth to embrace me.
Henry, it says, Henry my friend my very best friend, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere….
26
Coming Home
He walked the railway mile by mile. Stick and bindle over right shoulder, dragging the duffel bag with his left hand. The bag bumped over the ties, lumpy and inert, stinking to heaven. One Gulf-Coast Appalachian vulture soared above, quartering downwind, patient but hopeful, hopeful but proud. There are no strangers here, only friends we haven’t met.
He wore the beak of his cap pulled low to the right, shading his eyes. After four days and nights of mostly rain the sun was shining.
A coal train thundered toward him, air horns bellowing. He stepped aside off the roadbed hauling the duffel bag, and waited. The train swept by in a blast of iron and sparks and swirling gray coal dust, followed by the silence, the amazing sudden grace. The robins began to bleat again. The man shambled back to the roadbed and shuffled on, northeast by east, into the morning sun.
The railway wound through another half-deserted village. He passed the backside of the Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. Slabwood shanties lined the road, each with swing on front porch, washing machine on back porch, and the remnants of Detroit automobiles in yard and alley. Barefoot children stared at the tramp. He looked sick but tall and hairy, thin but strange. Pregnant women watched him shuffle by, their eyes soft and curious. He was nearly beyond the village when two little boys came running after him, a pair of snot-nosed towheaded brothers in bleached-out overalls. The older boy held a small package wrapped in a page of the Shawnee Morning Gazette.
“Hey mister,” the boy called, “wait up a minute.”
The man stopped, looking at the boys. Their mother watched from the next-to-last shack in the town. The taller boy offered the little package. “Here mister.”
He took it, unwrapped it. Inside was a hard boiled egg and two sandwiches of clean white Holsum bread and bright yellow USDA surplus commodity cheese.
“Thank you, boys. Much obliged.” They stared up at him, shifting their bare feet on the warm cinders, flexing their ankles. “You tell your maw I am much obliged.”
“Whatcha got in the big bag, mister?”
He looked down at the slack, half-filled duffel bag. “Christ if I know,” he mumbled. “I forget.” The boys seemed disappointed. “But look here,” the man said. He fumbled through the pockets of his filthy jeans, found his jackknife, a few coins and three small polished stones. He gave two stones to the older boy and one to the younger. “Chert,” he said. “Agatized rainbow. See the colors? Genuine petrified wood from the Painted Desert, Arizona. Give one to your mama. Okay?”
The older boy nodded, turned and ran off. The little brother gaped at his stone for a moment, then scampered after him.
The man sat on a rail and cracked the egg. He peeled the shell and slowly ate the bluish-white albumen, the firm orange-tinted yolk. The egg stayed down. He considered the two cheese sandwiches. They looked less palatable. He shoved one inside the opening of the duffel bag—Have a sandwich, kid—and raised the other to his mouth. The cheese had a dyed appearance, the pale bread was smeared with mayonnaise. Not much nutriment, he thought, even for a hungry hobo. Chewing carefully, he noticed the colored illustration, torn from a magazine, that lay on the sheet of newspaper. He picked it up. The picture showed a court jester in cap and bells contemplating a doughnut. A poem served as explanatory caption:
As you travel on through life, brother
Whatever be your goal;
Keep your eye upon the doughnut,
And not upon the hole.
By God, he thought. By God there’s wisdom, of a sort, in them simple lines. Fuck Plato. Epictetus also. He looked back down the converging rails toward the hamlet in the hills, the peaked-roof shacks and clotheslines and floating haze of woodsmoke, the glints of glass and aluminum and plastic scattered about on roadway, yard and hillside. He saw the form of a woman, short but large, leaning with folded arms against the jamb of an open door. He waved, blew her a kiss. No response. Wrong woman. Where is that open door?
He ate half the sandwich, rewrapped the remainder in the sheet of newspaper—that might come in handy—and stowed the package in his bindle. He got up from his rail, not easily, helping himself with the stick. He tossed another salute toward his observers and resumed his march up the tracks, dragging the duffel bag over the square-cornered sleepers.
Warm today. Humid. The sun beamed down through a fleece of drifting clouds. The man paused to remove his greasy flannel shirt, tying it around his waist by the arms. He tramped on. His long-sleeved thermal undershirt, originally white, was now a blended gray of sweat, dust, grease, floodwater, sulfur and coal smoke. The smell surrounded him like an aura, real but transparent, visible to enlightened eyes. April magic.
He tramped on.
He was aware of birdsong. He heard the robins, certainly, but also the mating calls of woodthrush, crow, woodpecker, marsh hawk, bobwhite, bobolink, phoebe, red-winged blackbird, cardinal and dove. And the unknown bird that nests in cast-off empty engine blocks.
The trees, some beginning to leaf out, others still in bud, lined his way. The dogwood and red maple were in full flower; the fragrance of the dogwood reminded him of orange blossoms, of cliff rose, of a certain perfume in a golden vial on the dressing table of a long-gone princess. The red maple made him think of blooming redbud in the canyons of the Rainbow Trail, under Navajo Mountain, out there in the enchanted wilderness of stone.
The man was tempted to sing. He did sing. His voice seemed weak, harsh, a dismal croak even in his own ears but he sang.
Eyes like the morning star
Lips like the rose
Claire she was a pretty girl
Lord almighty knows…
He passed another village a half mile on his left, two rows of white houses shaded by trees, united by a blacktop road. A lazy winding creek flowed through a bog of stumps, bending around the outfield of a forgotten baseball park. Mustard weed spread its yellow glow from deep left across center to far right; traces of the infield lay under a lake of rusty floodwater two inches deep. Junked cars rusted within a jungle of blackberry vines and dead goldenrod where home base and the backstop must once have been. The man hardly glanced at the ruins. He trudged heavily on, sack bumping over the ties, and did not rest again until he reached the place where the railway bridged a stream and side road leading up into a small hollow between the hills.
The valley appeared, from his point of view, to be filled with trees, a mass of silent transpiring forest budding into a promise of green. The narrow road was unpaved, ungraded, no more than parallel tire tracks beaten down on red slag. Fresh green grass—with dandelions—grew in the dirt between the tracks. The little stream flowed clear and bright, dropping over ledges of bedrock sandstone.
He noted the hobo signs carved by knifeblade in the wooden stringers of the bridge, decades old but still legible. The plain “X” meant handout available at nearest house; the “X” underlined signified dogs but friendly dogs. The pointing finger with thumb erect indicated direction—up the road beside the stream.
The man sat on the edge of the bridge for a long time,
watching the road and the stream and the woods. Finally he stirred himself and started down the embankment toward the trees. He stumbled in the loose cinders, fell, rolled twice but never let go of bindlestick or duffel bag. He reached bottom, got to his feet, slapped dust from his clothes and staggered a short distance up the road. When the farmhouse appeared, beyond the archway of maple trees, he stopped. An old pickup truck stood parked on the ramp of the barn. Smoke rose from the house chimney, floating toward him. A dog began to bark. He gazed up the road at the farm, hesitating, then labored to his right over a split-rail fence into the woods.
He abandoned the duffel bag at the fence, weary of it at last, and limped through the shade of the trees, his boots making no sound in the damp leaves. One heel missing. He crossed the stream and angled upward on the farther hillside until he came to a weed-grown wagon track. He followed it toward the crest of the hill.
Below, far behind, the slumped duffel bag lay inside the fence. The buzzard floated on the thermal currents a thousand feet overhead, patient but not indifferent. The duffel bag waited below, becoming animated after a time, twitching in the sunlight. New folds and rumples formed themselves in the gray-green fabric, the mouth of the bag was enlarged from within and the black dog crept out. Nose in the weeds and leaves, she picked up the man’s trail and crawled into the woods, ears flopping, tail drooping, eyes nearly sealed by rheum.
Henry squatted by the spring, laboring for breath, sick in the stomach again, unclear in the head. No more goddamn hills, he thought. Hain’t gonna climb no more goddamn hills today. He lifted the jar from the stub branch, dipped it in the water, drank. That water’s as good as ever. He popped four pills, Lomotil and Dilaudid, and washed them down with another draft of the oak-root-flavored water. Below stood the board-and-batten cabin. Beyond, through the tall trunks of the oaks, he could see the farmhouse, the barn, the array of smaller buildings. The coon dogs barked under the back porch, noses in the air. Will came out the kitchen door with a coffee mug in hand, hushed the dogs and looked around, up and down the road, across the pasture and over the hillside. After a moment he went back into the kitchen. Henry stayed as he was, on his heels, breathing hard, sheltered and concealed by the sumac and willow surrounding the spring and by the screen of trees.