Read Online Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Least Heat-Moon
Ads: Link
described the outcome of foolhardy activity. I could hear her: R EMAINS OF L ONE H IKER F OUND . She would give details from the story: “… only the canteen was not eaten.”
Common sense said to turn back, but the old sense in the blood was stronger. I compromised: one more cove. It wasn’t there. On the ridge above the last cove I went sprawling over something hard. Concrete. Had the grave been open, I’d have fallen into it.
A brass plate indicated that the original grave lay just beyond the shoreline. “Who knows the fate of his bones?” Sir Thomas Browne asked. Whatever was left of the old miller, whatever the red soil and grave robbers and town commissioners had missed, was now under ten feet of Sandy Creek. Even this far back in the fastness, the twentieth century had found him out. Now, the citizens drank from his grave.
I sat so long, the sky cleared and showed all of the moonrise. I tried to imagine the incident here, tried to see the seditious old miller as he lay bleeding to death on the white Piedmont flint, and I wondered whether he knew he was dying for something greater than himself.
The smooth, dark water reflected stars as brilliant points of light—a mirror couldn’t have shown a crisper image. I went down to it and washed away the thicket and sweaty dust. In my splashing, I broke the starlight. And then I too drank from the grave.
4
I SAW better under the moonlight, and the passage back seemed as long but not so hard. Big grunts from bullfrogs directed me along the shore until I came out of the dark trees to Ghost Dancing. I drove to a clearing by the dam. Ten-thirty. I hadn’t eaten, and now I was too tired to do anything but crawl into the sleeping bag.
At the moment of sleep, I heard something, something moving in the near woods, then into the clearing toward the truck. A slow stepping. I couldn’t remember whether I’d locked all the doors. But it wasn’t the steps that bothered me; it was the slowness of them, the deliberate coming. It came on. Then it started to lurk.
I lay perfectly still, wondering whether I’d set the emergency brake and hoping Ford Motor Company hadn’t skimped on a millimeter of steel wall. I had the sense that something was crouching outside, near my head. A soft brushing along the truck—a hand, a body—then an impacted silence. It moved again, and I tried to tell how many legs were stepping away.
There was a rational explanation for whatever it was, but I didn’t have the nerve to find it. Instead, I started thinking about a hanged woman with a sheet around her neck who goes looking for her dead baby. I imagined a bleeding miller hunting the men who put a musket ball in him or the ones who drowned his grave.
There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won’t. Midnight. I forced myself out of the ball I’d curled into, afraid as I did my toes would touch something that didn’t belong inside. The bullfrogs, squatting in the cold water, went at it again. It sounded as though they were talking about the good old days of the swift, shallow creek. They said, “How deep?” “Knee deep.” “How deep?” Again and again.
At three o’clock I sat bolt upright. I had no idea where I was, but I had just heard a yelp, and the walls of the Ghost pulsed blood red. I looked out the back window into a pair of ruby, oscillating eyes. Someone yelled. I clambered out barefoot, wearing only skivvies, and hobbled gingerly to the squadcar. “What’s wrong?”
In a Carolina cadence, the deputy said, “Ain’t no sleepin’ up here.”
“That’s what I’m finding out.”
A fleck of yellow paint from a pencil stub stuck to his lip and bobbed up and down as he talked. “We close the dam area at sundown.”
“I’ll be gone in the morning.” He stared at me. “I guess I could get dressed and leave now.” He said nothing. “Just drove in from Missouri, though, and this bad leg I
Common sense said to turn back, but the old sense in the blood was stronger. I compromised: one more cove. It wasn’t there. On the ridge above the last cove I went sprawling over something hard. Concrete. Had the grave been open, I’d have fallen into it.
A brass plate indicated that the original grave lay just beyond the shoreline. “Who knows the fate of his bones?” Sir Thomas Browne asked. Whatever was left of the old miller, whatever the red soil and grave robbers and town commissioners had missed, was now under ten feet of Sandy Creek. Even this far back in the fastness, the twentieth century had found him out. Now, the citizens drank from his grave.
I sat so long, the sky cleared and showed all of the moonrise. I tried to imagine the incident here, tried to see the seditious old miller as he lay bleeding to death on the white Piedmont flint, and I wondered whether he knew he was dying for something greater than himself.
The smooth, dark water reflected stars as brilliant points of light—a mirror couldn’t have shown a crisper image. I went down to it and washed away the thicket and sweaty dust. In my splashing, I broke the starlight. And then I too drank from the grave.
4
I SAW better under the moonlight, and the passage back seemed as long but not so hard. Big grunts from bullfrogs directed me along the shore until I came out of the dark trees to Ghost Dancing. I drove to a clearing by the dam. Ten-thirty. I hadn’t eaten, and now I was too tired to do anything but crawl into the sleeping bag.
At the moment of sleep, I heard something, something moving in the near woods, then into the clearing toward the truck. A slow stepping. I couldn’t remember whether I’d locked all the doors. But it wasn’t the steps that bothered me; it was the slowness of them, the deliberate coming. It came on. Then it started to lurk.
I lay perfectly still, wondering whether I’d set the emergency brake and hoping Ford Motor Company hadn’t skimped on a millimeter of steel wall. I had the sense that something was crouching outside, near my head. A soft brushing along the truck—a hand, a body—then an impacted silence. It moved again, and I tried to tell how many legs were stepping away.
There was a rational explanation for whatever it was, but I didn’t have the nerve to find it. Instead, I started thinking about a hanged woman with a sheet around her neck who goes looking for her dead baby. I imagined a bleeding miller hunting the men who put a musket ball in him or the ones who drowned his grave.
There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won’t. Midnight. I forced myself out of the ball I’d curled into, afraid as I did my toes would touch something that didn’t belong inside. The bullfrogs, squatting in the cold water, went at it again. It sounded as though they were talking about the good old days of the swift, shallow creek. They said, “How deep?” “Knee deep.” “How deep?” Again and again.
At three o’clock I sat bolt upright. I had no idea where I was, but I had just heard a yelp, and the walls of the Ghost pulsed blood red. I looked out the back window into a pair of ruby, oscillating eyes. Someone yelled. I clambered out barefoot, wearing only skivvies, and hobbled gingerly to the squadcar. “What’s wrong?”
In a Carolina cadence, the deputy said, “Ain’t no sleepin’ up here.”
“That’s what I’m finding out.”
A fleck of yellow paint from a pencil stub stuck to his lip and bobbed up and down as he talked. “We close the dam area at sundown.”
“I’ll be gone in the morning.” He stared at me. “I guess I could get dressed and leave now.” He said nothing. “Just drove in from Missouri, though, and this bad leg I
Similar Books
