The Journey Begins
The mountain begins the day with fog, and Mama begins it with tears. She wipes them on her apron and cries new ones.
When David and Johnny emerge from the fog like apparitions, Aunt Freddie flings questions at them about their daddy. She vows to look in on him and the other young’uns at first chance.
Grandpa shushes her and loads both boys with bundles of pelts. General, our younger hound, senses he’s coming with us and wags his tail in eagerness.
Mama clings to Daddy as she watches us walk into the thinning fog. The going is slow on account of Stonewall being weighed down with pelts. The suitcase hangs heavy in my hand, but I dare not let Mama know how heavy. I turn to wave and smile, hiding a small ache in my heart at her sadness. She forces a smile to her lips, but I’m not fooled.
I reckoned we’d head south past Nellie Finch’s to Skitter Falls. I expected to watch Grandpa haggle with Mr. Pender while David, Johnny, and I sucked butterscotch drops or chewed licorice sticks. My mouth was primed for it.
But Grandpa leads Stonewall north along the edge of the cemetery. Grandpa knows his way around the mountains like the sun knows where to come up, so David, Johnny, and I follow like ducklings, crossing the branch at a shallow ford to head east.
When I ask, Grandpa says, “Them pelts’ll fetch a better price somewhere other’n Pender’s.”
“But the trail starts at Nellie’s.”
“Nothin’ happens betwixt our house and hers that Nellie don’t find out about. I don’t need her tellin’ Hap Pender I’m doin’ business elsewhere. We ain’t goin’ nowhere near Nellie Finch’s pryin’ eyes.”
“But if we’re going to the flatlands, how come we’re heading up the mountain?”
“Up and over.” He makes the motion with his hand. “And down t’other side.” His smile goes up as his hand goes down. “Down in the valley apiece, we’ll pick up an old Shawnee trail. Smooth goin’ there.”
So far the going is anything but smooth. The trail is overgrown with every kind of green thing that sprouts on this mountain. Vines trip me, briars catch my hem, and small saplings spring up right in front of me.
Grandpa stops. The trail we’re fixing to climb winds around the mountain like ivy up a tree trunk. But he isn’t looking at the trail. He peels off his pack and roots through underbrush. He pushes old, dead leaves off a stump. The biggest stump I ever saw! And crawling with wood beetles.
A moldy smell rises from the overturned leaves. Grandpa pulls me off the trail, climbs atop that stump, and hauls me up beside him. He points down the mountainside. “See there.”
All I see is mountainside.
“Find the dark thread’a the branch and trace it with your eyes.”
I squint. A flash of sunlight glints off the water. I follow it with my eyes like Grandpa said.
The shimmer of Rebecca’s Branch flows beneath green-blue trees, fog still clinging to stretches of it. Beside it, a speck of roof is our house. Grandpa’s log house hides in the trees.
Grandpa taps his foot on the stump. “This were a white ash. Were still a-standin’ when your pa was a boy. He helped me cut it down when it got too dead ta stay upright. Stood here since Rebecca’s day and bore the mark of a tomahawk.”
A tomahawk? So that’s why Grandpa wanted to find this beetle-infested stump. It’s a boundary marker, where Edwin and the Shawnee marked it more than a hundred-and-fifty years ago.
“Everthin’ betwixt this stump and the south tip’a the ridge b’longs ta us.” Grandpa’s eye candles glisten. “Been handed down from ancestor ta ancestor, and one day it’ll be yours—yours and your young’uns after ya.”
My young’uns. Not something I often think on. I reckon I want babies someday—so long as they don’t die like Mama’s did.
Walking up that trail is different now, harder. I can’t truly explain it. It’s as if the ridge hangs onto my skirt, trying to pull me back. It hinders my walking more than all the vines, briars, and overgrowth did.
