And that red dog road would lead me to every place I would ever go in my lifetime.
25
The Mountain Fell Away
Flapjack plodded around the circle, lifting his tail from time to time to spew a stream of steamy gas and partially digested cane into the air. It was my job to fill the wheelbarrow with sawdust and dump a shovelful on the piles and puddles that fell on the old mule’s path. Every time he passed he gave me the evil eye, like I was the one that stunk worse than a polecat. I held my nose with one hand and tried to shovel with the other. I didn’t last long on the job.
Grandma and Mother and I were at my Uncle Vertis’s place in Daniels, a town no more than a wide place in the road, and we’d brought Sissy along. We were going to make molasses. We were promised a picnic supper at the pines after the work was done. It was a magical place, a forest where long-needled pines soared so high they sometimes pierced the pale underbelly of the clouds. Years of fallen needles squelched the life out of most of the saplings and undergrowth that tried to take hold, but wood ferns grew in places, and chartreuse and lavender lichens spread lacy doilies over the trunks of fallen trees. Something drew me to that place. Maybe it was the quiet, which was so deep I felt angels hovering nearby, or fairies. Uncle Vertis said he’d put a swing up there, but that was a couple summers ago and I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of one yet.
The molasses making was set up in the front yard, where Flapjack was harnessed to a contraption Uncle Vertis had put together to feed the sorghum cane through. It was attached to a wooden trough that angled into a kettle to catch the squeezings, a thin trickle of juice we boiled down to make molasses.
Uncle Vertis kept the fire going and fed the stalks of cane into the machine, while the women took turns gathering the frothy green scum from the syrup with a long skimmer paddle. The skimmings would go into the hog slop that evening. Once the syrup boiled down, it was cooled and poured into mason jars and sealed. If you boiled the squeezings three times, you got blackstrap, which was darker and not so sweet as the first boilings. Blackstrap was Grandpa’s favorite. I pretended I liked it best.
When Uncle Vertis took his shirt off, he exposed a barrel chest furred over with springy black hair. He got that from Grandpa’s side, but his hawk nose and high cheekbones made a strong showing of the bronzed Cherokee blood carried from a few generations back on Grandma’s side of the family. Put a feather headdress on him and he could have posed as an Indian chief. Uncle Vertis, who knew lots of stuff about West Virginia history, said the Cherokee were all over the mountains around Beckley in years past.
Aunt Nalda said for Uncle Vertis to get a shirt on in front of his mother for goodness’ sake, he was raised to know better than going around half naked. He answered, something I didn’t quite catch, but he pulled his shirt back on, leaving it partway unbuttoned in protest.
“You better watch your mouth in front of these children or I’ll wash it out with soap,” Grandma scolded, so she must have heard him cuss, but her words to him never had teeth. I didn’t see why, but there was no getting around it. It was the boys in the family Grandma doted on.
When Uncle Vertis walked into the room, her eyes lit up. “Excuse my French,” he’d say, but it wouldn’t be long before he’d let another cussword rip. Grandma would light into him for taking the Lord’s name in vain and he’d say he was sorry and try to be better for a while, but not for long. Vonnie and I called him Uncle Dirty. Grandma didn’t like that, but she hoped it would shame him into changing his ways.
I thought he was perfect.
Boo Boudreaux drove into Uncle Vertis’s yard, bringing his car and our molasses making to a stop. Uncle Vertis walked over to talk to him out of earshot of Grandma. Slick as quicksilver, Boo slid through the window feet first and loped the few steps back to open the trunk. He wore his black hair tied with a bandana, his pencil mustache and goatee not hiding a thin scar that hooked from the top of his ear through his upper lip. One of the neighbors told Aunt Nalda he was a Cajun from Louisiana, and his given name was Champagne or maybe Champlain. Some thought that was too hifalutin’ for a moonshiner, so they’d started calling him Boo. A licorice whip of a man, he didn’t seem to be much given to idle talk or foolishness.
Digging under a hodgepodge of newspapers, tools, a dirty doll baby, and a pile of hunting clothes, he unearthed a paper sack with the top twisted closed.
“Get caught up with what I owe you next time,” Uncle Vertis said, taking the sack.
“Ain’t gonna be no next time until you do,” Boo told him, nodding his respect to the women in the yard as he swung back through the car window.
Boo jammed the gearshift into reverse and stomped on the gas. The tires dug deep into the soft ground before the wheels caught and the car backed out, taking off like it was running from the law.
It probably was.
Uncle Vertis whistled under his breath as Boo fishtailed down the road. “That boy’s got hisself on the growling end,” he said to nobody in particular. “Looks like he’s not scared of it neither.”
He watched Boo disappear in a cloud of dust and smoke.
Although Uncle Vertis was one of the smartest people I knew, he never seemed to get ahead. He
