part 2 chapter

34

b y walking beside the scorched wood ties and twisted iron rails west from the city

limits, we found rockfish gap turnpike, the route we sought over afton mountain. having

gobbled the federal handouts of cornbread and swallowed all the water in our federal-issue

canteens on the overnight trip from richmond, we now had nothing to eat or drink. the june

sun was merciless, and we wouldn’t feel relief until early evening when we reached the

mountain’s higher altitude. after several hours of tripping over ruts and ignoring complaining

stomachs and parched throats, blue, who was yards ahead of beards and me, spotted a tree with

a small strip of wood nailed to it. he brushed away a crust of dirt and peered at the faint letters

scrawled across it.

“there’s water through these woods off to the right,” he called. “i can hear it. it must be

lickinghole creek, like the sign says.” he disappeared down a slope through the pines and wild

wineberry bushes. rippling over rocks, the stream had plenty of icy water for rolling up our

pants legs and wading, filling our canteens, and splashing our reeking clothes and sweating

foreheads. beards sank down in a rock depression and let the creek cascade over his body up to

his neck. blue and i found our own rock hollows and joined him. then i lay back in sopping

clothes on the cool ferns and poured water into my mouth until i thought it might seep from my

ears. now, if we just had something to eat. my eyes drifted to the cloudless sky above our heads.

beyond the treetops, smoke threaded faintly off to the west.

“do you see what i see?” i leaped up in my excitement. “maybe that’s a hunter with deer or

bear meat to share.”

“forget it. i want to get home. as long as there’s water, i can go without food for a day or

so,” beards said.

“well, i can’t,” blue responded. “i need something to eat, or i won’t make it much farther.”

“i’m with blue,” i said. “this may be our last chance for a while. that smoke isn’t far away,

and if there’s someone else on this mountain, they’re bound to have more to eat than we do.”

“i guess i wouldn’t mind some food,” beards said. he stood up and brushed twigs and fern

fronds from his wet pants.

we followed along the bank of the stream until a footpath meandered upward through tall

oaks and maples. the smoke came from that direction. after a hike of about a mile, a sunny

clearing opened before us. a one-room wooden house stood in the center and its stone chimney

spouted smoke. “wait here,” blue said as we stopped at the forest edge. “is anyone home?” he

called out, but there was no answer. “maybe they just stepped out.”

“i don’t know. it seems strange someone would go out and leave the door wide open like

that. who knows what critters might take advantage? seems fishy to me,” i said.

beards tilted his head back and sniffed. “i smell something cooking, so i say we should go

in.”

slowly i crossed the clearing, still convinced this was unwise. the smell of food grew

stronger. “who in their right mind would go off and leave vittles cooking?” i said. we crossed

the board porch and peered into the shaded interior.

“look at that,” beards said. strips of meat still smoked over coals in the large stone fireplace.

potatoes boiled in a pot of water suspended by an iron rod over the heat. my warning had no

effect on blue and beards, who stepped through the door and approached the fire. the hairs on

the back of my neck prickled, but i followed.

the house was tidy but sparsely furnished. a table and two chairs were pushed against one

wall, and there was a bed with missing legs against the other. within the frame lay a bear hide

with green pine boughs poking out from beneath. a brightly colored quilt was folded neatly at

the end. through a small window, i saw two graves. one was freshly dug, and both were

marked with crosses of vine- bound branches. that’s when i detected a flash of movement

headed in our direction across the yard.

“watch out!” i yelled as a black boy burst in the door like lightening and threw himself upon

beards. they tumbled to the floor, and in the tussle, i saw that beards’s attacker clasped a large

hunting knife. “help me grab him!” i yelled at blue. when the boy managed to roll on top of

beards, jim blue and i seized him by the upper arms and peeled him off. we set him down in

one of the two chairs and stood over him. but not before i firmly held his wrist and opened

fingers clutching the knife. the antler-handled weapon clattered to the floor.

“goddam it. get your hands off me!” the boy hollered. “i’m not going. no matter what you

say or do! i’ll kill all three of you before you can take me away!” he spat in our direction. his

arms trembled, and he looked to be about twelve years old. beards had gotten to his feet and

stepped forward with his palms raised.

“we mean no harm,” he said. “we’re only trying to get home across the mountain. we saw

your smoke and hoped you might have some vittles to share. we’ve had nothing but cornbread

in the past several days, and prison rations before that.”

“you ain’t going to take me away like you took my cousin ellis. i’m not fighting for anyone,

especially not you people,” the boy said.

beards was silent, trying to understand the meaning of the boy’s words. then he said, “the

war’s over. you’re free. and anyway, we aren’t here for that reason.”

“i’ve always been free, mister,” he spat out. “my granny, and the rest of my family too. but

white soldiers like you found their way up here this past spring and took my cousin ellis off at

gunpoint to fight in the war. it didn’t matter a whit that he was a free man.” he glared at us

again. “you better not be trickin’ me, or you’ll regret it.”

the memory of what i’d seen at gettysburg came roaring back. “i’ve known too much of that

kind of thing,” i said. “it’s despicable. we’d never do that to you, or anyone else, for that

matter.” the tension left his thin shoulders and his hostile expression partially melted. i said,

“tell us more about what happened to your cousin.”

he haltingly explained that ellis had been into town one day in late winter for supplies and

had seen hundreds of slaves lined up on the courthouse steps. confederate soldiers held them

there, threatening them with weapons. he said his cousin then noticed a flyer posted on a tree

that ordered all slaves to gather that day at the albemarle courthouse before 10:00 a.m. owners

not willing to give up their male slaves would have them seized by the army at gunpoint.

instantly, ellis forgot his errand and slipped back up the mountain. “but they found him

anyway,” the boy told us. “people in town knew that freed people live up here. when i heard

someone thrashing up the hill, i hid in the hollow of a big log, just like today. didn’t come out

until the soldiers were gone.” he said ellis’s wife and baby took off the next day for her family

who live near waynesboro. she had tried to talk him into going, but he wouldn’t. “who’d be

here when ellis comes back? i wish i could have saved him from goin’ off, but there were too

many of you people,” he said. “at least i can wait for him. he taught himself to scribe, but i’ve

heard nary a word.”

“where is your granny? are you alone now?” i asked.

“granny passed on in february from consumption. she raised me after momma died birthing

me. ellis and i dug granny’s grave right next to momma’s over by the woods. but from the

time i was little, granny taught me how to trap critters and grow plants. we had some laying

hens, but the soldiers took them too.”

beards looked thoughtful. then he said, “you haven’t told us your name.”

“lewis. lewis hornsby.”

“don’t you get lonely up here in this cabin by yourself?”

lewis glowered at him. “i can take care of myself. anyway, granny’s watchin’ over me.

and i couldn’t leave her alone on the mountain either.”

we were silent for a moment. then the smell of the food and the cramps in my stomach

reminded me why we were there. “we don’t have anything to offer you, lewis. not one thing

except conversation, and you may not have a need for such. but is there any way you could see

fit to share some of these vittles with us?”

lewis looked us up and down one more time. there was still a flicker of fear in his eyes, and

it was clear he suspected we’d simply seize his food if he didn’t agree. or worse, might kill him

for it. finally, he turned toward the fireplace and said over his shoulder, “i expect i have enough

smoked rabbit here to share, and i could split the potatoes four ways, if you care for some.”

it was late afternoon by the time we finished eating and telling him what little we had learned

about the end of the war. lewis had boiled two more potatoes. he knocked dirt from carrots

pulled from his garden and offered them to us. those, with the potatoes, would last until we

reached home.

“you were mighty generous to share your vittles with us. thank you. now we can make it

home.”

lewis wouldn’t meet my eyes but waved his hand in dismissal. we bade him farewell and

returned to the mountain road the way we’d come.

jim blue suggested we walk as far as we could that night. we all wanted to make up the time

lost on the side trip to lewis’s cabin. the moon was full behind us, making the trek easier, and

long moon shadows fell in front of our feet as the road ascended. silently, we climbed, but my

mind was anything but quiet. as the hours had lengthened, i couldn’t shed the image of lewis

with his defiant loneliness. i moved from concern about him to wondering if i, too, might find

myself alone, uncertain where my family was. i puzzled again over why no one was at the

richmond dock to meet us. had my family fled augusta to avoid harm from yankee troops, and

was now too far away? had the house been burned? anything could have happened. in this

disturbed state of mind, i flinched with every screech owl and wild animal cry. each twig

crackle made me jump.

we plodded on in glum silence, ascending more slowly toward the top of afton mountain

until exhaustion forced us to lay our haversacks down out of sight of the road and rest our heads

upon them.