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“OH THREATS OF HELL
AND HOPES OF PARADISE”
Just as soon as I discovered that dilapidated shoebox with its shocking secret, I faked nonchalance, tucked the thing under my arm and headed back up the stairs to my office. A quick glance at the contents of the box had rattled my otherwise complacent brain into overdrive. I was oblivious to the throng of folks who normally crowd the halls of the county courthouse on weekday mornings. I flung open the door to my office, then hesitated and looked about the room. I had the same uneasiness I used to get when I robbed the hen’s nests so I could trade the eggs for penny candy.
Sprawling heavily into the squeaky wooden recliner, I recklessly brushed aside the half-finished report I had been working on earlier and placed the box directly in front of me on the desk. Slowly, almost surgically, I removed the dusty lid. I felt my face becoming crimson and my blood pressure rise. A great sadness gripped my very soul as I meticulously handled and scrutinized each individual item. Collectively they represented a lifetime of material gain for one simple soul, and the possibility of a one- way ticket to Hell for another. The fact of man’s inhumanity to man, and the possibility of good and evil existing apart from human thought momentarily flooded my mind. The sad part, I realized, was that there was no conceivable way to rectify the situation. What was done was done and I was the only living soul this side of hell who knew the truth.
I poured myself a cup of stale coffee. It would have to do. I did not feel like making a fresh pot. I retrieved a pack of camels from the desk drawer and lit one. Yeah, I had resolved to quit yesterday but my present state of my mind would not allow me to go a minute longer without a smoke. I thought about taking the box back to where I had found it and just forgetting the whole thing but I knew I would never be at peace with myself if I did. The gravity of the situation was too great. I had to get my thoughts together- confused though they were. I was fearful that someone would burst into my office with some irrelevant problem so I eased over and locked the door. I plopped again into my chair, lit another smoke, and began to relax a bit. Slowly my memory drifted back to the events surrounding that ominous day some five years past.
It all happened on Wednesday, the fourth of September, 1942. I remember distinctly since it was my eighteenth birthday. The day began with Harley thundering into my room about 3:00 A.M. and shaking me out of a sound sleep. He had been anxious to get an early start on the day, and informed me of a million things we had to accomplish by nightfall. I tiptoed into the kitchen so as not to wake my folks and splashed a little cold water on my face. I then grabbed a couple of stale biscuits and a couple slices of bacon from the pantry and went outside where I waited for Harley near the water well. He quickly showed up carrying a pickaxe and a shovel. He handed me the shovel as he swung the pick over his shoulder and we set out down the path that led across the mountain toward Eli Hurst’s farm.
There was a full moon; not a cloud in the sky. The moonlight helped tremendously and took a lot of the guesswork out of dodging the rocks and deep chug holes that littered the path. The grass on either side of the path sparkled in the moonlight from the heavy dew and I would drag my feet through the higher clumps in an attempt to remove the caked mud of the day before from my old brogan work shoes.
Harley and I had been sharecropping Eli’s tobacco crop for the past couple of years. Both of us were accustomed to that type of hard work and the extra money sure came in handy, especially while I was still in school. I thanked God that we were almost finished for the year. We would have finished the week before if Harley had not accidentally killed that mule. We were on our way to bury the mule again. Yeh, this made the second time we had interred that animal. The first time, we dug the hole too close to the creek and a flash flood came and floated the corpse up out of the grave a few days later. Eli sent word by the mail carrier concerning what had happened, so we were now on our way to take care of the grizzly task. We had resolved to dig the grave on higher ground this time however!
We accomplished the two-mile trek in record time and had finished digging the five or six foot deep hole in the sandy soil before the first light of day. Things were going pretty well until we attempted to hook Eli’s other mule to the rotting corpse. The mule balked and ran off. Eli finally caught him and put a set of blinders on the animals bridle. This seemed to settle the mule down a little so we hooked on, snaked the dead mule up to the hole and rolled him in without further incident. The sun was just beginning to peep over the black mountain as we flung the last shovels of dirt on the stinking carrion. I felt like I would die from thirst and we stopped at Eli’s spring before setting out for home. The water was cool and sweet but the stench of the maggot-infested flesh was still in my nostrils and I had to choke the first couple of swallows down. We bid goodbye to Eli but he did not seem to be as friendly as usual.
Eli was pretty aggravated with Harley over killing his mule, and actually, I could not blame him. Harley had just let his temper get the best of him again. The incident had taken place a week ago the previous Saturday morning. We were hauling the last wagon load of tobacco from the field and had just headed down the hill toward the barn when Eli called our attention to a few of the skewered stalks on the very top of the mountain we had missed. Harley was driving the team and Eli told him we would have to turn the wagon around and go back and collect what we had missed rather than make another trip since time was money. I noticed Harley's face turning more red than it already was from the heat as he began to mumble “sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus.” This had always been Harley’s favorite expression when perplexed about something. He mopped the sweat from his face on the back of his hand and abruptly turned the team straight up the hill. Harley was expecting to finish before noon as he had planned a trip into town later on that day. Those mules generally worked pretty well together as a team. There was a gray mule and a black mule. They were perfectly matched in size and strength, but Harley said they had different dispositions. The gray animal would try to slack off in a hard pull leaving the black one in a terrible strain. About half way up the hill the gray began to fall behind a bit and Harley snatched up a pitchfork and began to jab the animal with it. I noticed blood spurt from the mule’s hindquarters each time it was jabbed and Eli saw it too but he did not say anything to Harley. He knew Harley was already mad and did not want to make matters worse. Of course, the mule did begin to pull its share of the load and we got the tobacco in the barn without further incident. Harley and I were both surprised when we got word three or four days later that the mule had taken sick and died of the lockjaw.
The sun was fully up when we headed for home. The humidity was throttling and sweat had glued my denim shirt to my back. I trudged pantingly along behind Harley up the narrow and winding path leading to the swayback in the crest of the ridge overlooking Big Richland creek. Harley had reached the top and was leaning with his back against that gigantic white oak tree which served as the official North and East boundary marker of our farm. This was one of my favorite spots in the world; you could see for a mile in any direction. This is where I generally brought my coonhounds to turn them loose when I went coon hunting. I would sometimes spend the night there listening to the mournful sounds of those dogs on the hunt. The part of coon hunting which I did not particularly enjoy was the task of getting to the dogs after they treed. If I did not go and shake the coon out of the tree, or shoot it out for them, they would stay there and bark for a week.
I was pleased that Harley had decided to stop and rest for a while before beginning the arduous descent to the foot-log, which served as an improvised bridge across the narrow creek five or six hundred feet below. There was a fine breeze sweeping along the ridge. I turned one way and then the other allowing the wind to pass through my sweat soaked shirt as it cooled my baking body. Harley dragged a sack of "Old North State" smoking tobacco from his shirt pocket and commenced to roll a cigarette. It was blazing hot by then and I was already growing weary from the fast pace set by my big brother. “Thank yi’ Jesus,” Harley mumbled as he meticulously wrapped the paper around the golden flakes of tobacco. He twisted and smoothed the professional looking creation with his fingers and then put it to his mouth and licked it all along one side in order to bind the thing together. “Thank ’yi Jesus,” he muttered again. He sucked hard on the fat cigarette and then slowly exhaled a long stream of gray smoke while simultaneously commenting something about the peace and serenity he felt in that spot. I muttered some halfhearted affirmative to his comment since I was too hot and thirsty to be thankful for anything at that point.
Harley was a religious man. He prayed a lot. He prayed over his food, he prayed over the crops, he prayed over the preacher, the church, and just about everything and everybody. “A man needs to walk with God,” he would say. “A man needs to go a praying. A man cain’t make it without God. However, if you always seek God and his will you cain’t go wrong. Talk to ’im, walk with ’im, praise ’im and everything will be okay.”
From this vantage point, we could see our home place about a quarter mile distant, situated in a clearing a hundred yards or so off the Knox Fork road. It was a pretty place. There was a neat six-room weather boarded house painted white and trimmed in black, and a large barn and a log corncrib nearby. Three big sycamore trees placed at just the right distance from the dwelling provided us with plenty of shade in the summer, and a tree- studded ridge to the North end of the clearing served as a shield from the coldest winds of winter. My daddy had built the house along about the time I was born. I had heard him brag many a time that he had “drove every nail and hewed every joist and rafter by hand.” The family was proud of the place and we all did our best to keep it in good repair. This was home, and at this point in my life, I could not imagine living anywhere else.
Our farm of about sixty acres was located along a section of the original Wilderness Road. Daniel Boone, Dr. Thomas Walker, and subsequent early travelers to the Western United States had immortalized this road. There is a good deal of history connected with this region and I often tingled with pride when I considered the possibility that I was, more than likely, a descendent of one of those intrepid long-hunters who had journeyed over the Appalachians and on through the Cumberland Gap. These early settlers traveled along this very road in search of new hunting grounds and a way to insure their continued independence and freedom.
Appalachia is a beautiful place but at the same time, it can be an unforgiving place. It is rocky and ridged with only a few tillable acres. Most of the bottomland is perpetually flooded three or four times a year with backwater from the Cumberland River. Consequently, a good deal of the crops must be grown on small patches of flat land just slightly above the flood plain or on the lower slopes of these Western Appalachian foothills. Nevertheless, as I had often heard my daddy say, “This country is not meant to be farmed in a big way. This land was meant to bring a man peace of mind and serenity-not a pocket full of money.
When a man can sleep soundly all night without being awakened by a fire engine or a police siren he is blessed! When he can walk out onto his back porch in the early morning and frighten the deer out of his backyard he again is blessed. When he can drink in his fill of unpolluted air, witness the majesty and beauty of rolling hills of lush green in summer or sparkling snow in winter, he is unspeakably blessed- whether he realizes it or not."
It was several years before I really understood what he was talking about. However, no matter how you try to justify attempting to make a living from a rocky hillside farm, you can never overemphasize the backbreaking drudgery involved. Only after I became physically strong enough to assist with some of the chores could I appreciate what Harley had done for the family since my father’s accident. All I had to do in order to understand that whipped look of futility I often saw in Harleys eyes was to take hold of the handles of a hillside turning plow pulled by two obstinate mules and begin breaking the sod of a rocky, hilly, five acre new ground.