Blackman's Coffin (3 page)

The Journal of Henderson Youngblood

I was born in the year 1907, in the city of Asheville, of a good family, and given the Christian name Henderson, the surname of my mother’s relatives in the neighboring county which also bears that name.

My father is Travis Scott Youngblood, a native of Asheville and Buncombe County, and the owner of Youngblood Funeral Services. My mother is Rachel Henderson Youngblood and I am an only child.

On Saturday, June 28, 1919, my teacher, Miss Nettles, gave me this leather-bound volume of blank parchment and the assignment to fill it with daily entries. She also presented me with a copy of a diary written by a man named Samuel Pepys. Actually it wasn’t the whole diary. The title was “Selections from the Diary of Mr. Samuel Pepys Suitable for Young Readers.” Mr. Pepys lived hundreds of years ago in London, England, and must have had little to do but scribble in his book, ride in his carriage, and go to bed.

Miss Nettles told me that I should be honest in what I write for what good is a man who would lie to himself. To that I would add what good is a man who would bore himself. Therefore, I prefer to label this volume not a daily diary but “The Journal of Henderson Youngblood,” and though every word will be true and writ with my own hand, I will only record those events which will prove interesting enough for a second reading. Instead of Mr. Pepys, Mr. Robinson Crusoe shall be my inspiration, for his journal spoke of high adventure and dangerous encounters with cannibals. And I will try and recount what transpired in the words spoken by the participants, myself included, so that the reader may make of them what he will.

Although Miss Nettles might not approve, my first entry relates an event that occurred two months in the past. I think it merits inclusion since it is the reason Miss Nettles has given me these blank pages.

Friday, April 25th: I turned twelve and my mother packed a box of molasses cookies for me to share with my classmates. In our school, Miss Nettles teaches the room of 6th and 7th graders, and although I was recorded as a 6th grader, she had me read and write with the older children.

Our room totaled eighteen students, ten 6th graders and eight 7th graders. Some of the older boys had dropped out and gone to work, especially those whose brothers were serving in the Great War. There were only three 7th grade boys and all of them feared the armistice would hold and deny them their chance to battle the Hun. Father says we see enough death in this country without seeking opportunities for more on foreign soil.

My mother made enough cookies for each of us to have two, including Miss Nettles. The teachers don’t make a big fuss over older birthdays like they do with the younger children, but Miss Nettles did select me to be the daily reader, and I picked a story from the Citizen newspaper on the possibility of the city building a memorial in Pack Square to Kiffin Rockwell. Mr. Rockwell was Asheville’s most famous war hero, joining the French Foreign Legion before America even joined the conflict and becoming the first American to shoot down an enemy plane.

That night for supper my mother fixed roasted chicken and smashed potatoes. We had an apple pie made from the best of the fruit stored in the cellar from last fall’s harvest. When the plates had been cleared from the table, my father brought out a long package wrapped in butcher’s paper. My heart jumped because I knew it was the squirrel rifle he had promised to give me when I was old enough to clean and care for it myself. I expected it to be the one he had as a boy, but as I ripped away the wrapping, I saw fresh bluing on the barrel. I stared in amazement at a new Winchester bolt-action twenty-two.

“For me?” I stammered.

My father laughed. “If you take my gun, what am I supposed to hunt with? We’ll sight it in tomorrow morning.”

But around nine that night, Mr. Lucas Jefferson came by with word that his mother had passed and asked my father to tend to her burial preparation. Over my mother’s objection, my father gave his blessing to my taking the Winchester into the woods alone.

Saturday, April 26th: I was up before the rooster behind Mr. Galloway’s nearby farm crowed the sunrise. The chill in the April air meant my mother wouldn’t let me out of the house without my corduroy jacket. She had already hung it on the back door latch, anticipating my early departure.

We live on the south side of Asheville, not too far from the village Mr. Vanderbilt built.

NOTE: That sentence sounds like a stutter, but that’s what he did—Vanderbilt built his own village for the people who came to work on the big house he called Biltmore. That’s a good name. By the time he died back in 1914, Mr. Vanderbilt built more than anybody else around these parts.

Mother says the south side of Asheville once had all the saloons, but the same year I was born, the town voted out the “demon rum” as she calls all whiskey. She says that was a good omen for me to be born in a town freed of the curse of drink. But I’ve heard my father tell Mr. Galloway that some people have died so pickled he was wasting embalming fluid on them. From drinking moonshine as folks call it, or white lightning. My father’s warned me about walking up on somebody’s corn squeezin’s in the woods. Even with carrying my own gun, I know I’ve got to be careful.

I don’t have a dog, though I’d sure like one. The motorcars are bad to run them down. But I do have a pony. Old Brownie had been my mother’s since she was twelve. He’s over twenty and gone gray enough that we ought to change his name, but he still gets around and likes to go trailing where the ground’s not too steep. Brownie stays in the barn on Mr. Galloway’s land. Mr. Galloway boards a few horses along with his milk cows. He’s got the first good pasture land at the edge of town.

I left a note for my parents telling them I was riding Brownie into the forest by myself. I knew they wouldn’t want me to have a gang of boys around my new rifle and I couldn’t go firing off a gun in town anyway. Then I stuffed a couple of apples in my jacket pocket along with a box of shells, tucked the Winchester up on my shoulder like an infantryman, and marched the half mile to Mr. Galloway’s.

He was in the barn, finishing his milking. He held my rifle as I saddled and bridled Brownie.

“This is quite a gun,” he said. “And you’re only eleven.”

“Twelve yesterday, sir.” I led Brownie out of his stall.

“I didn’t give my Jamie his first gun till he was fourteen.” Mr. Galloway patted the wooden stock with his big hand. “Should have done it sooner.”

I didn’t say anything. Mr. Galloway’s son Jamie had died in France last year. The army said an artillery shell hit his trench and there wasn’t enough of a body to send home for my father and Mr. Galloway to bury.

I swung up on Brownie and Mr. Galloway handed me the rifle.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

“Think I’ll go out along the French Broad where the land’s flatter and I can sight targets in the water.”

He nodded. “Stay off the Biltmore Estate. The widow Vanderbilt’s got the groundskeepers patrolling for poachers. Hate to see your pa have to come bail you out of the pokey.” He laughed and slapped Brownie on the rump.

The pony jumped forward and then trotted into the morning light. We stayed along the pasture edge until we reached the trail to the Swannanoa. Brownie headed down the path without a guiding tug on the reins. We’d taken it every day last summer after I’d been given permission to fish the Swannanoa River alone. But today we’d ride farther away from any chance meeting with the other boys from school, to a spot upstream along the French Broad before it merged with the Swannanoa and flowed west of town.

Brownie struggled against me as I forced him onto the left fork off the trail to our fishing hole. Maybe he didn’t like a path still hidden in shadows. Maybe he knew I was ignoring Mr. Galloway’s warning and taking a shortcut across the Biltmore Estate.

We climbed a gentle ridge of white pines. A hawk shrieked overhead, followed by a chorus of crows. The black birds sounded their alarm until the hawk flew on to somewhere he could hunt in peace.

The white pines thinned and the crest of the ridge opened to laurel and scrub saplings. Timber clearing had left a patchwork of stumps, some with shoots sprouting from exposed roots. I knew I hadn’t crossed onto the Vanderbilt property because old Mr. Vanderbilt was known for his forestry methods. Even though he’d been dead four years, no one cut timber on his land or the land his wife had sold to the government for Pisgah National Forest without planting seedlings afterward. My father told me Mr. Vanderbilt had hired a man whose only job was to manage the forest. That man must have worked hard. All I could see from the clearing were trees and more trees.

Brownie and I started down the other side of the ridge, entering a narrow trail marked by a freshly painted sign: PRIVATE PROPERTY—KEEP OUT! I’d be keeping out as soon as I could cross to the river, and I nudged Brownie with my heels to urge him forward.

The path brightened as more sunlight penetrated the new spring leaves of the hardwoods. We’d probably followed the trail for thirty minutes when I saw mist suspended like a white band halfway up the tree trunks. The French Broad lay close by and the warming air lifted the fog in the shape of the winding river itself.

The westerly breeze that carried the river’s ghost toward us also brought a scent that stopped Brownie in his tracks. He whinnied and tossed back his head, his eyes rolling wide. I grabbed onto his mane with one hand and clutched my new rifle with the other.

“Easy, boy. Easy.” My words had no effect on the pony.

Brownie reared back on his haunches so quickly I lost my grip and tumbled to the ground. He bolted over me, kicking my shoulder as he retreated up the ridge. I lay on my side and watched him disappear into the trees.

Then I heard a growl.

I rolled over and saw a large black bear appear on the path no more than twenty yards away. He sat on his haunches, his back to me, and sniffed the breeze with loud, wet snorts. If he turned up the trail, he’d see me for sure. I reached for my rifle lying beside me. If the bear had encountered hunters before, maybe the sight of the gun would scare him off. If it didn’t, the unloaded twenty-two would offer no defense.

He growled again, a gurgling menace of a sound, and he cocked his head so I could see his snout in profile. Foam lathered his jaws and an icy chill ran through me. I’d seen that foam on a mongrel dog shot down behind our house. Rabies.

I could have had a cannon and the rabid bear would still attack. My best hope lay in scurrying off the trail where I’d be out of sight in a second. I was downwind, and something on the breeze kept his attention. Even if he heard me, he might not follow. He hadn’t connected Brownie’s hoof beats with the right direction on the path.

I scrambled to my feet and tore through the underbrush, hoping to loop onto the trail beyond the bear’s line of sight. The crackle of dry leaves sounded like firecrackers under my feet. From behind me, a growl rose sharply. I had no doubt the bear lumbered after me. Low branches whipped across my face and chest. I risked a glance over my shoulder and saw only trees behind me. Maybe I would make it.

Teeth crushed down on my ankle and pain surged up my leg like someone had slashed me with a fiery saber. I tumbled through the air and then felt something snatch me in mid-flight. I dropped to the ground so hard the air was knocked from my chest. Without breath, I couldn’t even scream.

The right leg of my dungarees turned dark with blood. The teeth tearing into them weren’t those of the bear, but a bear trap anchored by a chain looped around the base of an oak tree. I crawled back to put some slack in the chain. Beneath the blood shone the shiny steel, new and strong. I tried to squeeze the jaws apart, but I only made the pain worse.

A rustle from the underbrush caught my ear. The bear had followed me. I looked around for my rifle and found it lying on a pile of sticky, rotten apples. Bait. I had stumbled into the honey-laced lure meant for the bear.

I fumbled through my jacket pocket for the box of shells. They spilled out onto the leaves. I slid back the bolt and dropped a bullet into the chamber. One shot. I would get one shot.

The bear emerged and reared on his hind legs. I tried to kneel but my wounded leg collapsed under me. I flopped forward, bringing the rifle up with my elbow bracing the barrel. If he charged, I’d wait till the very last second before firing.

The wind shifted and the bear turned toward me. The smell of my fear must have hit his nose like a freight train. He growled louder, dropped to all fours, and came at me.

I aimed between his eyes and when I could hold off no longer, squeezed the trigger.

The roar of the gun startled me. The bear jerked in the air and sprawled to my right. A double echo of gunshots resounded through the hills.

“Don’t touch him,” a voice shouted.

I looked up the slope. A Negro wearing a brown canvas jacket and mud-stained pants slowly sidestepped through the trees. He kept a rifle that dwarfed my twenty-two pointed at the bear. “His spittle got the disease. Get it on you and you go crazy too.”

He gave the motionless animal a wide berth till he stood at the head. In one motion, he shouldered the rifle and fired again. “That do him.”

The man walked over and looked at my leg. “Gotta carry you to a doctor.” He pulled a key from his pocket and opened a padlock linking two ends of the chain.

“Get my leg out,” I cried.

“That leg bleed more when I free the trap. I want to have you where I can tie it off.” He slipped the chain free of the trap. “I’ll try not to hurt you, but you gonna have to go up on my shoulder.” He squatted down and looked me in the eye. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Henderson. Henderson Youngblood.”

“The buryin’ man’s son?”

“Yes.”

He grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me up, careful to keep my weight off the leg. Even as careful as he was, the pain forced me to cry out.

“That’s all right,” he said. “You holler all you want. Don’t have to prove nothing to me. That bear has a hole in his eye and it didn’t come from my gun.”

“But your shot knocked him over,” I said. “Stopped him from giving me rabies.”

“Maybe,” he said. “We’ll talk about that later.”

He stood with me slung over his back like a sack of feed.

My head started spinning. “What’s your name?” I mumbled.

“Elijah.”

He took a first step. I don’t remember the second one.

The next thing I heard was the gurgle of water. A cold wetness soaked my pants and I opened my eyes to see blue sky and the face of Elijah above me.

The intensity of the pain in my right leg made breathing difficult and I gasped for air.

“Lay easy,” Elijah said. “The water will clean the wound and the chill numbs the pain.”

I propped myself up on an elbow and looked around. We were on a flat mossy rock by a bold stream. Both of my feet dangled in the swift white water. “Where are we?”

“Never you mind. It’s a place you ain’t supposed to be, like where you were when that bear lit after you.”

“Biltmore. But you ain’t supposed to be here either.”

He shook his head. “I work the grounds and I’ve been tracking that bear ever since he started killing the livestock.”

The bear almost killed me, I thought. My twenty-two might have blinded one eye, but if the bear hadn’t mauled me to death, his rabies would have got me for sure. Elijah had saved my life. The vision of the charging bear swept over me like a black cloud. Again I fainted.

When I came to, I heard my father’s voice calling me. I found myself propped against Elijah on a mule. Then I saw my father and Mr. Galloway running across the timber clear cut at the Biltmore boundary.

Elijah dismounted and let my father take his place. Then he led the mule behind Mr. Galloway and told them the story. I buried my face in my father’s shoulder and sobbed.