Hardcastle (14 page)

“I don’t know as I’ve learned airey thing but this,” he said. “One miner by hisself might have a little sense, but two together has got half as much sense as one, and three has got less sense than two, and any more than three in one bunch has got no sense at all. That there is the trouble with unions.” He swapped his quid from one cheek to the other and spat. “Hit never seemed to me to cause the operator no trouble to find one poor man who would fight another for the same no-account job.” Regus chewed thoughtfully and shook his head. “Hit don’t matter, near as I can make out, which side you and me is on,” he said.

For a long moment neither of them spoke; then Regus made a short sound like laughing. “Can ye strap that on, Bill Music?” he said. “Aire ye happy now?”

“Nope,” Music said.

Regus laughed. “I reckon,” he said. “I reckon so.”

“I’ll have to settle for drunk,” Music said and fished the mason jar out of his pocket, but somewhere above and ahead of them, Fetlock struck up.

“Lord,” Regus said. “Listen! Listen at him sing!”

“He musta run smack over somethin!” Music said. He spun the lid down on the jar and dropped it in his pocket, and both of them scrambled at once over the blowdown. Unlike Regus, Music had no lamp on his head, so he ran into things and fell many times, but he kept up; and all the while Fetlock’s croupy, baying voice rang in the dappled woods, telling them: “He came this way, passed over this ledge, skirted these briars, crossed this log,” and they thrashed after it. By the time they had covered three or four hundred yards, Fetlock had gone into full cry, a beautiful chop-mouth yammer which seemed to leave the hound no space for breathing.

“Hallelujah!” Regus said in a winded, ragged voice, “listen at him sing.”

All at once the hound’s belling changed again, no less constant, but somehow easier, satisfied, a sound almost like yodeling.

“By God,” Music said, “I bleve he’s treed a’ready.”

The two of them thrashed through blowdowns and scrub until, fighting out of a net of grapevine, they came in sight of him standing on his hind feet, his forepaws up on a sweet birch, and his big-eared, slender head raised to the sky, talking out of the front of his mouth to what was in the topmost branches.

Regus tried to lean against a spindly white pine no taller than he was and nearly fell when the rubbery trunk bent to one side. “Ain’t that,” he gasped, “handsome?”

“Mercy,” Music wheezed and dropped to his knees and then pitched forward on his hands. After a moment he felt for the mason jar in his pocket and found it whole. “Mercy,” he said again and lay down on his back. Regus came over and sat down beside him, and they passed the jar back and forth while Fetlock bayed and bounced on his hind feet as though he thought, if he just got started right, he could climb the tree.

Finally, in a voice still a little breathless, Regus said, “I don’t see airey thing up in that tree.”

“It’s there,” Music said. “Fetlock says it is.”

“I don’t see airey damn thing,” Regus insisted.

The two of them struggled to their feet and began to walk around and around the tree; and indeed, its slender, leafless branches, outlined against the sky, seemed to contain nothing at all. Regus’s carbide lamp did not help them much, but still, Music thought, they should have been able to see eyes glowing with the reflected light the lamp cast. When he was young and hunted alone or with his brothers or father, they had built fires beneath the trees, and the coon’s eyes would glow when it looked at the fire. Still, on bright moonlit nights such as this one, the animal would often look at the moon instead. But at last Music spotted a thickness about one of the topmost branches that had no business being there.

“I see him,” Music said.

“Where?” Regus said.

“Yonder,” Music said, “on the south side, bout four foot out from the trunk. Ain’t a coon, I think. Too small. It’s a possum.”

“Can you shoot it?” Regus asked.

“Sure,” Music said, “but we never did shoot possum. They’d be all right, I guess, but possums ain’t too careful about what they eat. We always used to pen em up for a week or so and feed em a little buttermilk and cornbread. They’re fine eatin then.”

“All right,” Regus said.

“Why don’t you tie ole Fetlock up so he don’t kill it, and I’ll climb the tree and shake him out,” Music said.

“All right,” Regus said.

“Get a stick to hit him with when I shake him out. Don’t kill him. Just give him a swat to make him sull, and then catch him by the neck and drop him in the sack.”

“All right,” Regus said. He took hold of Fetlock and petted him and crooned to him and bragged on him, but Fetlock was for talking to the opossum and didn’t want to be led away. Regus had to loop his belt around Fetlock’s neck again, but even so, he lunged for the sweet birch on his hind legs, his forefeet pawing the air, and Regus had to let him come back to the tree while he got out his pocketknife and took the belt off and made another hole in it to fit Fetlock’s neck so that the belt could be buckled and the hound could be led away without strangling himself. Finally Regus was able to tie him to the little white pine, having bragged on him and petted him until he seemed to get it through his head that Regus was proud of him, and so, settled down a little, although he still danced and bayed.

Regus began to whittle on the limb of a maple at the edge of the clearing until Music stopped him. “That’s a club. You’ll kill him with that,” Music said and cut a limb himself, a little bigger around than his thumb. “Smack him with this,” he said.

“All right,” Regus said.

Music took three or four deep breaths and began to climb the birch, but halfway up he ran out of strength and had to hang on. The tree had no limbs until very near the crown, and Music, a little dizzy from the whiskey, and his arms and legs trembling with fatigue, began to wonder if he was going to make it.

“How come yer a-stoppin?” Regus said from below.

“Cause I’m bout to fall out on my goddam head,” Music said, surprised that even his voice sounded weak and shaky.

“Well,” Regus said, “so long as nobody don’t tell the possum. He might take a notion to shake the tree.”

Instantly Music could imagine, somewhere above him, the opossum gritting its teeth, wrapping its tail around the limb, and getting ready to shake him out. The vision made him slip about six inches down the trunk before he got himself in hand and, with the last of his strength, struggled upward until he could catch a limb big enough to support his weight. “Mercy,” he said in a hoarse whisper. He hung on until his strength returned and then climbed far enough into the crown to be able to set his foot on a limb half the size of his wrist. He was soaked with sweat and shaky. “You ready, damn you,” he called down.

“Sure,” Regus said and laughed, “I’ll swat whatever hits the ground, be hit man or beast.”

Music leaned far out from the trunk, took hold of the opossum’s limb, and began to shake it. Almost at once the opossum flopped loose and fell. Regus kicked it over the instant it hit the ground and struck it with the stick too; but Music didn’t get to see what happened next, for he realized suddenly that the whole tree had started over. “Shitfire,” he said, “look out!” He held on with his hands and swung his feet out, but when the tree had dipped its top halfway to the ground, it broke suddenly at its butt end and came down hard. The top of it brushed Regus, who jumped clear, but it gave Fetlock an awful swat, and he thrashed about in its small, topmost branches. Music himself was soundly jarred and stunned.

Regus spat and ran a finger back and forth under his nose. “Wouldn’t think a man would want to ride a tree over like that when the sap’s down,” he said.

“It wasn’t my intention,” Music said, sitting spraddle-legged where he had fallen. “Where’s the dog?” Music said, looking around. “Did I kill it?”

Fetlock crouched shivering, blinking, and chastened among the small limbs of the crown.

“Nope,” Regus said, “don’t appear you kilt nor lamed nobody.”

Music felt suddenly for the mason jar and found it miraculously whole. “Mercy,” he said.

“Prime, fat possum,” Regus said, holding it out by the scruff of the neck for Music to see. The opossum’s eyes were half closed and its lips were drawn back in a death grin. Its mouth, a little open, exposed its pale, lolling tongue, sickly pink gums, and sharp teeth—an excellent death act but for the rim of iris and pupil, which never quite disappeared above the eyelid and so allowed the opossum to keep keen track of things, dead as it looked. Regus took the opossum over to Fetlock and let him have a smell and told him he was a fine hound dog, but Fetlock seemed as wary as he was pleased, since Music had just dropped a tree on him and he wasn’t sure how that fitted in with the rest.

While Regus got the sack and dropped the opossum in it, Music let the fierce impact of his fall drain out of his feet and butt, had himself a drink, and considered the sweet birch. It had been nothing more than a large sucker growing out of a stump rotted off almost even with the ground; there were other suckers there too, eighteen or twenty inches up. Now, why didn’t you notice that before? he asked himself. He sat where he was and took another drink while Regus untied Fetlock. Immediately the hound started back the way he had come.

“I wonder if he aims to run that possum back into yesterday,” Regus said.

“I don’t know,” Music said. “Maybe he’s goin home. Hell, he found us a possum and we hit him with a tree. Maybe he’s thinkin, if that’s the way it’s done, he ain’t so sure he likes it.” Groaning, Music rose and brushed at the seat of his pants. “Cain’t say I blame him,” he said.

But Fetlock came back through the tangle of grapevines and trailed the opossum to the base of the sweet birch, circled to the sack Regus held, and then gave the whole length of the tree such investigation as he dared, approaching it and springing back, or sneaking up on it, tight as a fiddle string, legs bent, muzzle to the ground, watching the birch out of the top of his head as though he thought it just might make a jump and land on him again. Music watched Fetlock circle and work until he came back to the sack Regus held, where, at last, he seemed to get it all sorted out and went off across the ridge to the southwest, hunting something else. “He’s a damned fine hound,” Music said, “and he’s got a forgiving nature too. Now,” he said, “we’ve greased the skillet. Do you still have the itch for coon?”

“I do, Bill Music,” Regus said, “if you’d just as lief?”

Music smacked his lips tentatively. The soles of his feet had quit stinging and the numbness had gone out of his spine. He passed the jar to Regus. “Have a drink,” he said.

While Regus tucked his quid into his cheek, spat two or three times, and drank, Music rotated his pelvis in a gentle circle, trying to straighten the kinks in his backbone. “The next tree is yours to climb,” he said.

Regus shook himself all over like a wet dog, shuddered, and handed the jar back to Music. “Sure,” he said.

Music dropped the jar again in his pocket. “Lead on,” he said. “Lead on.”

“Now, you take them niggers down in Mink Slide, as a fer instance,” Regus said, as though what he had been saying before Fetlock struck across the opossum’s trail had been in perfect suspension, as though no more than an instant had passed, “they come in on transportation when the folks down to Hardcastle went on strike.”

So, Music thought, the alcohol in him making him feel particularly canny and wise; so, Mr. Regus Patoff Bone ain’t completely satisfied with himself, now, is he?

Regus swung the sack with the opossum in it across his shoulder and began to walk. “Ole Too Sweet told me once that he’d rather be one-eyed and broke back in Alabama than be in Mink Slide with fifty dollars in his pocket. I’ll bet you couldn’t find one white miner at Hardcastle that wouldn’t like to lick his calf over again either. “Hell,” Regus said, “Hardcastle shut the mine down the selfsame hour they struck, and sent him a recruiter off to Alabama to fetch him some strong buck niggers. Sure, that recruiter went down offerin five dollars a man, new overalls, and transportation to Switch County to any darky that wanted to dig coal. Give em a big sell about how much money they’d make, how they’d be their own bosses, how the company would provide houses for them to live in. Sure they come, you bet,” Regus said, and turning toward Music, he walked squarely into a dogwood tree and struggled with it for a moment before he fended it off and went on; and Music, as though from a position of lucid sobriety, thought to himself, Hellkatoot, he’s drunk as a snake. “Course the recruiter never told them poor niggers they was going to have to work out the five dollars, the damned overhalls, and even the goddamned ride to Switch County,” Regus said and giggled. “Never told them they was a-comin as scabs and would likely get kilt, nor that Kenton Hardcastle planned to marry them off the selfsame moment they stepped down from the goddamned cattle cars onto Hardcastle property.”

“What?” Music said.

“Sure,” Regus said, “you betcha.” He turned around, and the soft explosion of his laughter boiled like smoke in the light of the carbide lamp. “That goddamned Hardcastle had recruited black women from the whorehouses in Louisville, and when his bucks pulled onto the siding, he let them women pick whosomever they fancied and married them on the spot.”

“Hell,” Music said, “is he a justice of the peace too?”

“Nawh,” Regus said, “ain’t nothin of the sort, but them niggers didn’t know that. Ole Kenton Hardcastle was ever a man to profit by another’s mistakes,” he said, and went on to explain that other coal operators always had trouble with black scabs because they would not stay in a place where there weren’t any women for them; and where there were women, the bucks would fight over them and there would be knifings and shootings and trouble, so Hardcastle had figured a way to get around both difficulties at the same time. It even worked to his advantage that the striking miners had heard about the trainload of scabs coming and had ambushed the train a few miles away at Theta Gap, where it was moving slowly up the steep grade. They had shot up the cattle cars with the colored scabs in them, and three or four of the poor niggers had been killed and a half dozen others wounded. And a bunch of the miners had come back into Elkin with their rifles and shotguns to finish what they’d started at Theta Gap, but they were held off by the sheriff and a bunch of deputies and mine guards. Still, the poor black fellows climbing down from riddled cattle cars into such a situation were in no position to make a fuss over a little thing like being married off to women they had never seen before. They had already been shot to pieces coming through the gap, and across thirty yards of cinders and gumbo was a bunch of ragged, angry men who wanted to start in again and do a better job. So it was, in a hell of a tight and scared, they listened to Kenton Hardcastle marry them to strange women. Straightaway after that, they were marched off under guard to the shacks that had been flung up in Mink Slide, where, for nearly a month, guards had to be posted in order to keep the striking miners from killing them and in order to keep them from sneaking off and beating it back to Alabama.