THE GNOME
Letus now recall a certain adventure among the moonshiners.
When I walked north from Atlanta Easter morning, on Peachtree road, orchards were flowering everywhere. Resurrection songs flew across the road from humble blunt steeples.
Stony Mountain, miles to the east, Kenesaw on the western edge of things, and all the rest of the rolling land made the beginning of a gradual ascent by which I was to climb the Blue Ridge. The road mounted the watershed between the Atlantic and the gulf.
An old man took me into his wagon for a mile. I asked what sort of people I would meet on the Blue Ridge. He answered, “They make blockade whisky up there. But if you don’t go around hunting stills by the creeks, or in the woods away from the road, they’ll be awful glad to see you. They are all moonshiners, but if they likes a man they loves him,and they’re as likely to get to lovin’ you as not.”
When I was truly in the mountains, six days north of Atlanta, a day’s journey from the last struggling railway, the road wound into a certain high, uninhabited valley. Two days back, at a village I entered just after I had enjoyed the falls of Tallulah, I had found a letter from my new friend John Collier whom I had met in Macon and Atlanta. It contained a little money, which he insisted I should take, to make easier my way. I was inconsistent enough to spend some of it, instead of returning it or giving it “to the poor.”
I invested seventy-five cents in brogans made of the thickest leather. I had thought they were conquered the first day. But now one of them bit a piece out of my heel. John Collier has done noble things since. On my behalf, for instance, he climbed Mount Mitchell with me, and showed me half the glory of the South. Then and after, he has helped my soul with counsel and teaching. But he should not have corrupted a near-Franciscan with money for hoodoo brogans. Though it was fairly warm weather, if ever I rested fiveminutes, the heavy things stiffened like cooling metal.
The little streams I crossed scarcely afforded me a drink. Their dried borders had the foot-prints of swine on them.
Lameness affects one’s vision. The thick woods were the dregs of the landscape, fit haunt for the acorn-grubbing sow. The road following the ridges was a monster’s spine.
Those wicked brogans led me where they should not. Or maybe it was just my destiny to find what I found.
About four o’clock in the afternoon, after exploring many roads that led to futile nothing, I was on what seemed the main highway, and dragged myself into the sight of the first mortal since daybreak. He seemed like a gnome as he watched me across the furrows. And so he was, despite his red-ripe cheeks. The virginal mountain apple-tree, blossoming overhead, half covering the toad-like cabin, was out of place. It should have been some fabulous, man-devouring devil-bush from the tropics, some monstrous work of the enemies of God.
The child, just in her teens, helping the Gnome to plant sweet potatoes, had in herlife planted many, and eaten few. Or so it appeared. She was a crouching lump of earth. Her father dug the furrow. She did the planting, shovelling the dirt with her hands. Her face was sodden as any in the slums of Chicago. She ran to the house a ragged girl, and came back a homespun girl, a quick change. It must not be counted against her that she did not wash her face.
The Gnome talked to me meanwhile. He had made up his mind about me. “I guess you want to stay all night?”
“Yes.”
“The next house is fifteen miles away. You are welcome if what we have is good enough for you. My wife is sick, but she will not let you be any bother.”
I wanted to be noble and walk on. But I persuaded myself my feet were as sick as the woman. I accepted the Gnome’s invitation.
Let the readers with a detective instinct note that his hoe-handle was two feet short, and had been whittled a little around the top to make it usable. It was at best an awkward instrument. (The mystery will soon be solved.)
We were met at the door by one my hostcalled Brother Joseph—a towering shape with an upper lip like a walrus, for it was armed with tusk-like mustaches. He was silent as King Log.
But the Gnome said, “I have saved up a month of talk since the last stranger came through.” With ease, with simplicity of word, with I know not how much of guile, he gave fragments of his life: how he had lived in this log house always, how his first wife died, how her children were raised by this second wife and married off, how they now enjoyed this second family.
He showed me the other fragment of the hoe-handle. “I broke that over a horse’s head the last time I was drunk. I always get crazy. When I come to, I do not remember anything about it. The last time I fought with my cousin. When I knocked down his horse he drew his knife. I drewthisknife. My wife said I fought like a wild hog. I sliced my cousin pretty bad. He skipped the country, for he cut out one of my lungs and two of my ribs. I lost two buckets of blood. It took the doctor a long time to put my insides back.”
From this hour forward he struggled between the luxury of being even more confidential, and the luxury of being cautious like a lynx. I squirmed. Despite his abandon, he was watching me.
I put one hand in my pocket. I found a diversion, a pair of eyeglasses. I had chanced on them in the bushes at Tallulah. The droop of his eyelids as he put them on was exquisite. He paced the floor. I had a review of his appearance. He was like a thin twist of tobacco. He had been burned out by too-sharp whisky. The babies clapped their hands as he strutted. He was like a third-rate Sunday-school teacher in a frock coat in the presence of the infant class. He was glad to keep the glasses, yet asked questions with a double meaning, implying I had stolen them in Atlanta, and fled these one hundred miles. We were gay rogues, and we knew it.
“Get up! Make some coffee and supper!” he shouted to the figure on the bed in the black corner of the cabin. He kept his jaw tight on his pipe, speaking to her in the gnome language. She replied in kind, snorting and muffling her words, without moving lips ortongue, and keeping her teeth on her snuff-stick. She stumbled up, groaning, with both hands on her head. She had once been a woman. She had lived with this thing too long. All the trappings that make for home had grown stale and weird about her. The scraps of rag-carpet on the floor were rat eaten. The red calico window curtains were vilely dirty from the years of dust and the leak of many rains. The benches were battered, unsteady. The door-latch was gone. The door was held in place by a stone. She stood before me, her hair hanging straight across her face or down her collar, or flying about or tied behind in a dreadful knot. She stood before me, but as long as I was in that house she did not look at me, she did not speak to me.
There was no stove. The Gnome said: “Wife don’t like a stove. She had rather cook the way she learned.” We rolled in the back-log for her and coaxed up the embers. We sat at one side of the hearth. We exchanged boastful adventures. She crawled into the fireplace to nurse the corn-bread and coffee and pork to perfection and place the Dutch oven right.
Have you heard your grandmother speak of the Dutch oven? It is a squat kettle which is set in the embers. When it is hot, the biscuit dough is put in and the lid replaced. Slowly the biscuits become ambrosia. Slowly the watching cook is baked.
The Devil was in my host. By his coaxing hospitality he made it seem natural that a woman deadly sick should serve us. The rest of the family could wait. It did not matter if the tiny one cried and pulled the mother’s skirt. She smote it into silence and fear, then carried it to the black corner where the potato planter herded the rest of the babies, helped by King Log, the walrus-headed.
The Gnome said, “I quit drinking ever since I had that fight I told you about. I don’t dare drink. So I take coffee.”
You should have seen him flooding himself with black coffee, drinking from a yellow bowl. I said to myself: “He will surely turn to the consolation of liquor anon. He will beat his wife again. He will drive his children into the woods. This woman must fight the battle for her offspring till her black-snake hair is white. Or maybe that insane knife will gosuddenly into her throat. She may die soon with her hair black,—and red.”
We ate with manly leisure. We were sated. The mother prepared the second meal, and called the group from the black corner. She made ready her own supper. I see her by the fire, the heavy arm shielding her face, the hunched figure a knot of roots,—a palpable mystery about her, making her worthy of a portrait by some new Rembrandt. It is the tragic mystery born of the isolation of the Blue Ridge and the juice of the Indian corn. Let us not forget the weapon with which she fights the flame, the quaint long shovel.
Let us watch her at the table, breaking her corn-bread alone, her puffy eyelids closed, her cheek-bones seeming to cut through the skin. There is something of the eagle in her aspect because of her Roman nose, and her hands moving like talons. It is not corn-bread that she tears and devours. She is consuming her enemies, which are Weariness, Squalor, Flat and Unprofitable Memory, Spiritual Death. She is seeking to forget that the light of the hearthstone that falls on her dirty but beautiful babies is kindled in hell.
The Gnome spoke of his hogs. A Middle West farmer can talk hogs, and the world will admire him the more. But a mediæval swine-herd dare not. It is self-betrayal.
My host grew affectionate, grandfatherly. He told of a solid acre of mica on top of a mountain. He speculated that it was a mile deep. He put a chunk into my pocket for me to carry to Asheville to interest great capitalists. He offered me fifty per cent on the profits. I took out a copy of theTree of Laughing Bellsfrom my pocket. I reviewed the tale contained in the book, in words I thought the Gnome would understand. Then he read it for himself with the “specs.” He was proud of having learned to read out of the Bible, with no schooling.
He seemed particularly impressed with the length of the journey of the hero of the poem, who flew “to the farthest star of all.” He looked at me with conceited shrewdness. “I played hookey myself, when I was a kid. I rode and walked forty-five miles that day. I was mighty glad to get back to my mammy the day after. I never wanted to run away again.” He shook his pipe at me. “Youare just a runaway boy, that’s what you are.”
He said something favorable about me to his wife, in the gnome language. She stood up. She shrilled back a caution. She showed her dirty teeth at him. But there was something he was bursting to tell me. He was essentially too reckless to conceal a secret long, even a life-and-death secret. He began: “I still raise a little corn.”
The Walrus gave a sort of watch-dog bark. The Gnome reluctantly accepted the caution. He pointed sharply to the bed farthest from the black corner of the room.
“That’s for you.”
“Isn’t there a shed or a corn-crib where I can sleep?”
“No, you don’t get out of this house to-night. There aren’t any sheds or cribs.”
I looked helplessly around that single-roomed cabin. Not fear, but modesty, overcame me. I was expected to retire first. But King Log, the Walrus, perceiving my diffidence, set me an example. He rapidly hauled a couch off the porch and tumbled into it, first undressing as far as his underwear. With a quilt almostto his chin, and covering his pretty pink feet, he was a decent spectacle.
Happily I also wore underwear, and was soon under my quilt. I stole a look at the potato planter. I realized that she was the maiden present. Be pleased, O brothers, to observe that she has been aware of her age and state. She has huddled up to the fire, with her back to us; she has hidden her face on her knees. At last she piles ashes on the embers and finds a place in the black corner in the cot full of children. Her father and mother take the cot between.
Next morning was Sunday, a week since Easter. Only when a man has sadly mangled feet, and blood heated by many weeks of adventure, can he find luxury such as I found in the icy stream next morning. The divine rivulet on the far side of the field had been misnamed “Mud Creek.” It was clear as a diamond.
Always carrying a piece of soap in my hip pocket, I was able to take a complete scour. Not content with this (pardon me), I did scrub shirt, socks, underwear, and bandanna. I hung them on the bushes, thanking God for the wind. Taking my before-mentioned credentials frommy pocket, I made myself into a gentleman. When I dressed at last, my clothes were a little damp, but I knew that an hour’s walking would put all to rights. As I held the bushes aside I saw a crib-like structure that made me shake more than the damp clothes. Was it a still, or was it not a still?
In my innocence I could not tell. But I remembered the warning, “Don’t go pokin’ round huntin’ stills by the creeks.”
As I hurried to the house my host carelessly appeared from the region of my bathing-place. He was whittling with his historic knife. I suppose he had noted my actions enough to restore his confidence. Anyway, the shame of being unwashed was his only visible emotion. He said, “I always bathe in hot water.”
“So do I, when I am not on the road.”
Still he was abashed. He took an enormous chew of tobacco to vindicate himself.
After breakfast the wife helped the Walrus to drag the cot out of doors. When she was alone on the porch I told her how sorry I was she had been obliged to cook for me. I thanked her for her toil. But she hurried away, without a pause or a glance. She kissed one of thosemiry faced babies. She walked into the house, leaving me smirking at the hills. She growled something at the host. He came forth. He pointed out the road, over the mountains and far away. He broke off a blossoming apple-sprig and whittled it.
“So you’ve been to Atlanta?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I was there once. What hotel did you use?”
“The Salvation Army.”
“I was in the United States Hotel.”
Still I was stupid. He continued:
“I was there two years.”
He put on his glasses. He threw down the apple-sprig, and, looking over the glasses, he made unhappy each blossom in his own peculiar way. He continued: “I was in the United States Hotel, for making blockade whisky. I don’t make it any more.” He spat again. “I don’t even go fishin’ on Sunday unless—”
He had made up his mind that I was a customer, not a detective.
“Unless what?”
“Unless a visitor wants a mess of fish.”
But I did not want a mess of fish. Repeatedly I offered money for my night’s lodging.This he declined with real pride.He maintained his one virtue intact.And so I thought of him, just as I left, as a man who kept his code.
The John Collier brogans were easier that morning, partly because I had something new on my mind, no doubt.
I thought of the Gnome a long time. I thought of the wife, and wondered at her as a unique illustration of the tragic mysteries of the human race. If she screams when seven devils enter into the Gnome, no one outside the house will hear but the apple-tree. If she weeps, only the wind in the chimney will understand. If she seeks justice and the law, King Log, the Walrus, is her uncertain refuge. If she desires mercy, the emperor of that valley, the king above King Log, is a venomous serpent, even the Worm of the Still.
But now the road unwound in glory. I walked away from those serpent-bitten dominions for that time. I was one with the air of the sweet heavens, the light of the ever-enduring sun, the abounding stillness of the forest, and the inscrutable Majesty, brooding on the mountains, the Majesty whom ignorantly we worship.