Read Online Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1952 by Wild Dogs of Drowning Creek (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page B

end than set flatwise. But it was
high living, any way you want to use those words. Why!” Tasman’s sinewy hands
gestured eloquently. “Standing up there on a tall point of those mountains, and
looking northward toward Asheville, you can see the peaks of the Balsams, so
far away it makes you dizzy to think of the distance; and farther still, the
Black Mountains, all covered with trees, and Mount Mitchell poking highest. And
westward, you see the Smokies, and nearer in around you the peaks like Pisgah
and Hogback and Whiteside, with rivers and lakes kind of caught in among them,
like little trickles and puddles in the hands of giants. You boys go there some
day, and see the beauty I can’t tell you.”
                 “You
know the truth?” said Jebs. “I’ve never really been to the mountains, except
Chimney Rock and Bat Cave . I’ve lived all my life in North Carolina , and I’m ashamed to say I never got up
there.”
                 “And
the big things aren’t any better than the little ones,” went on Tasman, swiftly
and eagerly. “I used to watch the birds—the little Carolina wren, and the cardinals, and the
woodpeckers and the mountain ravens . I’ve stood where
I thought I was about as high as a man could get, and I’ve seen a hawk sliding
back and forth above me, so far up there that by comparison I might as well
have been in a hole at the bottom of a valley. And the animals, too—wildcats,
bears, foxes, and squirrels and rabbits and deer, just like the beginning of
time. And flowers more than any tongue could tell.”
                 “You
make me wish I could see them,” said Randy. “The people,
too.”
                 “The
people!” echoed Tasman. “Mountain folks are fine folks. They live simply, but
they’re happy. They work hard and they play hard. The play-parties I’ve been
too, and the square dances—with fiddle and guitar and accordion all playing the
old songs! Of course, I had to work my farm, but I liked that. It was a sort of
three-story farm.”
                 “Three-story
farm?” said Jebs after him. “How do you mean?”
                 “I
had corn patches, on three terraced places on the side of a slope. I’d get up
there and chop weeds, cultivate, see the corn ripen, and harvest it. It took
two mules to haul a wagon up from one patch to another, and those mules needed
all eight of their feet for brakes on the way down. Past my place ran a stream,
from way up the mountain—one little cascade after another, maybe a hundred in
all. I called it Hundred Falls . Here and there it made quiet pools, and
there were trout in there. I used to fish for them. Trout’s wonderful for
breakfast. I reckoned to live my whole life up there, happy every day till my
last one. But now—” His hands rose to his somber face.
                 “But
the lights started to get dim. Then they got gloomy. A doctor told me I was
going blind, and when he told me that I was so scared and sick that I broke him
off in the middle of what he was saying. I called him names and walked out of
his office. But he’d said the truth. And I had to give up my farm.” “You had to
sell it?” suggested Jebs, his own face tragic.
                 “No,
I couldn’t stand to do that. I rented it to a man I knew, and dragged myself
back home to make pottery for a living. The darker things got, the more I
learned to depend on my fingers and ears. But my folks—my uncles and
cousins—seemed to think that this bad luck served me right. They hadn’t liked
my quitting the family business to be a farmer. They let me come back and work
with them, but I didn’t need eyes to know they were sneering. And anyway, the
mountains aren’t for a blind man.”
                 “I
think I know what you mean,” said Randy.
                 “Do
you? Do you know what it means to be afraid to take a step outdoors