The dust and rocks from the dig had spilled into the forest, creating a collar around the mine that was caught somewhere between death and verdant life. We walked along the edge of the clearing, trying to scout the trail, trees and undergrowth yellow and dying as if a cancer was trying to invade the forest.
Pops paused at the edge of the Sadler Mountain remains. “I’ve been in these mountains for sixty years, and it’s all a foreign country to me now. I don’t recognize any of this anymore. I’m guessing we go in here.” He pushed off the edge of the plateau, down a steep gravel embankment to the beginning of the forest. First the yellow-and-gray-dusted mountain laurel toiling through the overburden, then a few dying pines, a line of oaks and poplars, stripped of leaves. Farther in, the gravel gave way to the forest floor, but the undergrowth was still yellowed and dying. We hiked through the stand of struggling trees, deeper into the forest until we crossed the old road that had once led up to the top of Sadler Mountain.
Up ahead was a cemetery of twenty or so headstones. The marble and sandstone markers were fairly new, but all of the lettering had been etched away. It looked like a tombstone store had set out samples for prospective diers. I paused and stood in front of the stones. Buzzy came up next to me. “Is that creepy or what… bunch a tombstones with no writin on em. It’s like the family never even existed or nuthin.”
Pops had kept walking but turned and noticed us looking over the stones. He walked back and stood with us. “This is the Prettyman family plot.”
“How come none of the headstones have writing on them? It just seems really weird.”
“Coal dust has a high sulfur content. When they blast up the mountain, it all settles on everything. Then it rains and becomes sulfuric acid and erodes things like headstones.”
Pops and Buzzy moved on ahead, but I stood there for a few moments more, looking over the blank headstones and thinking of the Jukes Hollow markers, which carried my history on them; thinking of the people and the place that was being systematically dug up, hauled off, eroded away. It was as if Bubba Boyd had taken the mountains and now he wanted to take all the memories.
Chapter 26
NIGHT VISITOR
I caught up with Pops and Buzzy just as they found the old trail down the side of Sadler Mountain into Prettyman Hollow. We followed the trail for about a mile, then took a right at what Pops said used to be a rushing creek. It was now a trickle of fetid brown metallic sludge, discoloring the rocks like a giant swath of burnt sienna paint. The trail crossed what was left of the creek and followed a shoulder that ran away from the broken earth. Pops paused at a large rock on the side of the trail. “This marks the entrance to Old Blue National Forest… one of the last truly wild places east of the Mississippi.”
“I’m glad we’re away from there,” I said to no one in particular. “They’ve ruined everything.”
“I thought it was important for you boys to see that,” Pops replied and started up the trail. The land before us was lush again, with hills that pushed up from green valleys, some with immense rock cliffs, some with granite knobs dotting the foliage. “We follow this trail up to Irish Ridge, stay on the ridge for about eight miles, and camp up there tonight. There’s a nice protected spot in the rocks. It’s my usual stopping point for the Tramp.”
The afternoon was getting on, so we picked up the pace. We hiked for an hour down another hollow, then up to Irish Ridge. The ridge ran southeast to northwest into the heart of the national forest. Occasionally we broke out onto a treeless patch with views that went into forever. The far mountains faded to a deeper green all the way to the horizon, which merged with one of the bluest skies I had ever seen. Finally, up ahead in the sweep of evening, we saw a formation of car-size boulders strewn in a semicircle. Smaller rocks formed a fire pit in the middle. We took our packs off and leaned them against the big rocks. Next to the fire circle was a neatly stacked pile of wood for a fire.
“Someone left us some wood.”
“It’s a courtesy pile,” Pops said and passed me his canteen. “One of the unwritten laws of the mountain. Every time you break camp, leave a woodpile for the next guy. If you’ve ever come into a camp in the cold dark, it’s a welcome thing.”
“But what if other people don’t do that? It’s not really fair unless everybody is doing a courtesy pile.”
“Well, somebody’s gotta be first, don’t you think? Just imagine what would happen if we all left a place a little better than we found it?”
“My grandaddy says that too,” Buzzy piped up.
“Your grandfather has the right perspective on life, Buzzy. You boys go on and set up the tent while I get a fire going.”
We laid the tent out on the only piece of flat, clear ground. At Buzzy’s suggestion we piled up pine needles for bedding and staked the tent on top of them. The fire was crackling to life and Pops began unpacking utensils and food for dinner.
“Man, I’m beat,” I whispered to Buzzy. “I’ve never hiked like that in my life.”
“Your Pops goes at it. I think he wanted to show us up.”
“It wasn’t hard,” I said and laughed.
The camp was on the highest part of the ridge, rocky and thin of trees as exposure over time had worn away the dirt and most of the vegetation. What remained were weathered white pines, gnarled and twisted, clinging to the stony soil with determination.
The hot August sun was making its way to the far west; Buzzy and I climbed up the largest of the boulders so we could look out over the mountains. We picked up some broken rock pieces and threw them one by one as far as we could down the ridge side, listening to the sound they made as they pinged off trees or flushed last fall’s leaves.
I turned to him. “You know what we should do for the next two weeks?”
“What?”
“Just live.”
He looked at me, interested but skeptical. “I ain’t plannin on dyin up here.”
“Yeah, but you are planning on thinking. Let’s just live without thinking about anything. Put all this bullshit with Cleo and Josh out of our minds.”
Buzzy looked back out to the sun-basted mountains. We were silent for a time. Finally he said, “You can see a little piece a Glaston Lake from here.” He pointed to a sliver of blue in the shadows between two mountaintops. It looked far.
Before I could answer, the smell of cooking hamburgers hit us both. The dull hunger we had been feeling flared on the aroma of the grilled meat. We looked at each other, smiled, and raced back to camp.
Pops had three huge hamburgers sizzling on a griddle next to a pot of Audy Rae’s special molasses beans. “Thought you boys got et by a bear.” He flipped a burger to the sound of popping and spitting grease. We sat on rocks around the fire eating the burgers and beans with no ketchup or mustard. I never knew that a simple hamburger could taste so good.
We cleaned up from dinner, washing pots and dishes in a spring a few hundred feet down the ridge side. Pops tied our food bag to a rope and slung it over a branch outside the rock circle. We turned in soon after sunset, and within minutes Pops was snoring lightly. Buzzy and I lay on our sleeping bags, staring at the tent ceiling and listening to the syncopation of Pops’ breathing and matching it to our own.
I bolted awake instantly on the sound. Heavy footsteps and the sharp snap of a twig. Buzzy was upright next to me, eyes white and wide. We both looked over at Pops, who was snoring contentedly.
“What was that?” he hissed. I shook my head. More footsteps. Buzzy reached under his sleeping bag and pulled out the crossbow pistol, already loaded and cocked. The steps came closer. I nudged Pops, but he just grunted and rolled on his side. Two more steps toward the tent, another twig snap. A three-quarter moon was washing the inside of the tent with diffused light, and as the intruder came closer, his bulk obscured the moon and cast a shadow over us. Buzzy clicked the safety off the crossbow and raised it to the tent door, hand shaking. I nudged Pops’ shoulder to roust him awake, but all I got was sleep talk. The shadow lingered for a moment, then moved swiftly away, making no attempt at stealth.
We stayed upright, motionless, listening to the sound of retreating footsteps bothering the night. Soon it was quiet again except for a few crickets and Pops’ light breathing.
“What the fuck was that?” I hissed. “Was it a bear?”
“Warn’t no bear,” Buzzy replied.
“How do you know?
“I don’t know. But I don’t think those were bear footsteps. Sounded like boots to me.”
“Who would be up here this time of night? Maybe a hiker or somebody.”
Buzzy kept looking at the zippered flap of the tent. “Maybe.”
We sat up for another hour not saying a word, just listening to the night sounds in the woods—the hooting of an owl, the hissing of a distant cougar, crickets. After a while we lay back on top of our sleeping bags and eventually found restless sleep.