'Anyways, you was asking how long I've been working here, and the answer to that is 'Always.' I was born here, in a little cabin just over the orchards. Place called Beechy Gap. Same cabin my grandpaw was born in, and my daddy, too. Cabin's still standing.'
'They all worked here?'
'Yep. Grandpaw held deed to the north part, way back when Korban started buying up property around here. Grandpaw sold out and got a job thrown in as part of the deal. I guess us Streaters always been tied to the land, one way or another. Family history has it that my great-back-to-however-many-greats-grandpaw Jeremiah Streater was one of the first settlers in this part of the country. Came up with Daniel Boone, they say.'
'Did Boone live here, too?'
'Well, he tried to. Kept a hunting cabin down around the foot of the mountain. But they took his land. They always take your land, see?'
Ransom didn't sound bitter. He said it as if it were a universal truth, something you could count on no matter what. The sun comes up, the rooster crows, the dew dries, they take your land.
'Toolshed's over yonder,' Ransom said, heading for a clearing in a stand of poplars. He continued with his storytelling, the rhythm of his words matching the stride of his thin legs.
'Grandpaw went to work right away for Korban, clearing orchard land and cutting the roads. Him and two of my uncles. They leveled with shovels and stumped with iron bars and a team of mules. Korban was crazy about firewood right from the start. Had them saw up the trees with big old cross-saws and pile the logs up beside the road.
'And Korban had a landscape scheme all laid out. People thought he was a little touched in the head, wanting to turn this scrubby old mountain into some kind of king's place. But the money was green enough. Korban paid a dollar a day, which was unheard of at the time. He was big in textiles.'
'I've worked in textiles myself,' Mason said. 'Can't say I ever got too big in it, though. I mostly just swapped out spindles for minimum wage.'
'No need to be ashamed of honest work.' Ransom paused and looked in the direction of a crow's call. The smell of moist leaves and forest rot filled Mason's nostrils. He noticed himself breathing harder than the old man, who was nearly three times his age. Ransom began walking again and continued with his story.
'When they got the road gouged out, they set to work on the bridge. In the old days, the only way to get up here was a trail that wound up the south face of those cliffs. You seen that drop-off driving up here.'
'Yeah. Down to the bottom of the world.' Mason's stomach fluttered at the remembered majesty and terror of the view. He was embarrassed by his shortness of breath and tried to hide it.
'That trail was how the early pioneers, Boone and Jeremiah and a handful of others, made it up in the first place. They say the Cherokee and Catawba used it before that, communal hunting grounds. The whites brought livestock up here, fighting and pushing the animals along the cliffs. But Korban wanted a bridge. And what Korban wanted, Korban always got.'
'Kind of what I figured.' A duck-planked building stood ahead of mem, tucked under the branches of a jack pine. Its shake roof was littered with brown pine needles. Ransom led Mason toward it.
'They was about eight families mat owned this piece of mountaintop. Korban bought mem all out and put mem to work building the house and garnering field stones for me foundation. He hired me womenfolk to set out apple seedlings and weed me gardens. Even me kids helped out, at a quarter a day plus keep.'
'Didn't anybody notice that they were doing the same work, only now they had a master?'
The trail had widened out and wagon ruts led into the heart of the forest from the other side of the clearing. Ransom stepped onto the warped stairs leading into the shed and paused. Mason was glad that the uphill walk had finally tapped the old man's stamina.
'You ain't from money, are you?' Ransom asked, raising a white eyebrow.
'Well, not really. Both my parents had to work all week to get by.' Mason didn't mention that his dad worked only two days a week and drank four and a half. Dad faithfully took off every Sunday morning to give thanks for the evening's pint. No other prayers ever passed his lips that didn't reek of bourbon. Except maybe from his hospital bed, when cirrhosis escorted him to the self-destruction he'd spent a lifetime toasting.
'People around here, they fell all over themselves to get Korban's money. They was scrub poor, these people. The only cash they ever saw was once or twice a year when they loaded some handmade quilts or goods on the back of a mule and took down to Black Rock to trade. So when Korban come in with his offers, nobody blamed them for selling out.'
'I guess I would sell out, too, if I got the chance,' Mason said. He was thinking of Diluvium, his first commissioned piece and the worst thing he'd ever fabricated. Also the most successful.
Ransom fumbled in his overalls pocket and again pulled out the feathery rag ball. He waved it in the strange genuflection before lifting the cast-iron latch on the shed door.
'Um-what's that feather for?' Mason asked.
'Warding off,' Ransom said, as if everybody carried such a charm. He pushed the door open. Before entering, he kicked the doorjamb so hard that his overalls quivered around his bony frame. 'Yep, still sturdy.'
Mason wanted to ask what Ransom thought he was warding off, but didn't know what words to use. He chalked it up as one more of the manor's oddities. Compared with ghost stories, Korban's ever-watchful portraits, the jittery maid, and hearth fires burning in the heat of day, what was one old man's eccentricities? Next to Anna, Ransom was practically a model of sanity and reason.
They went into the small shed, Ransom peering up at the rafters. Light spilled from the two single-paned windows set in the south wall. Workbenches lined the back room, piled high with broken harness and rusting plows, millwork and buckets of cut nails. Worn-handled shovels, picks, and axes leaned near the door. A long cross-saw dangled from wooden pegs, a few of its jagged teeth missing. The corner was a mess of wooden planes, hammers, and block-and-tackle tangled in yellowed hemp rope. The room smelled of iron and old leather.
'Don't have to lock up tools,' Ransom said. 'What would a thief want with a tool? Then he'd have to work.'
Mason began picking out the equipment they might need. If he was lucky, they would find a chunk of walnut or maybe a maple stump. More likely, they would have to hack a piece out of a fallen tree. He was checking the heft of a hatchet when he noticed Ransom studying the dark ceiling again. 'Sky's not about to fall, is it?'
'Never know.'
'What are we, about four thousand feet above sea level? A lot less sky to fall on us up here.'
Ransom didn't even smile, just scratched at one weathered cheek. Maybe Mason had misjudged the old man. Those sparkling and tireless eyes suggested Ransom was no stranger to humor. But maybe the man had his own reasons for becoming solemn.
'Found what you need?' Ransom asked, waiting near the door.
'Sure. You mind grabbing that maul over to your left? We might need to do some heavy hitting.'
When they were back outside, they stood in the clearing and arranged the tools for easier carrying. Ransom wore an expression that Mason could only call 'relieved.'
'What's the matter?' Mason asked.
'Man's got a right to be scared, ain't he?'
What was there to be scared of out here? Did wild predators still stalk these woods? 'Scared of what?'
'Miss Mamie said not to tell.' Ransom sounded almost like a child. Mason wondered what kind of hold the woman had over Ransom. The man even said her name with a kind of frightened reverence, his hand moving up his overalls bib toward the pocket that held the rag-ball charm.
'Look, if there's some kind of danger, you owe it to your guests to warn them. Plus, I thought we were friends.'
Ransom looked off toward the trees at the sun that was starting its downward slide to the west. 'I reckon. Don't ever let on to Miss Mamie, though.'
'Of course not.'
Ransom exhaled slowly. 'You know we have four gatherings of guests each year. We take a month between each batch to get things fixed up, 'cause we're too busy when the guests are here to do repairs. Somebody has to go around and check on all the little outbuildings and cabins, original homesteads that can't be torn down. Korban set it in his will that everything stay like it was.
'Three of us was keeping up the grounds. We always switched off, one keeping up the livestock, one tending
