“THERE,” I AY, flopping into the seat of the Bel Air, a weight lifting with Kelly back in her dorm.
“She going to be all right?” Peck asks.
“Yes, just fine,” I say. “I talked to Coach Lambert and he said they would start games this afternoon if the weather holds. She's missed a lot, so she won't start, but she'll get to pitch.”
“That'll piss her off,” Peck says, his attention turned to starting the car. “Teach her not to run away.”
“I don't think she'll do that again, do you?” I ask.
“She's got her own mind now, Cassie. She sees things.”
Peck rolls the car away from the curb and I think maybe it's time. He knows what's going on, I can tell. “I was thinking about going into Sylva,” I say. “I need to go to the courthouse. It's open until noon on Saturdays, so if we hurry, I think we'll make it.” Peck laughs at that, just a little under his breath, but I hear him do it. “What?” I say.
“What what?”
“You want to let me in on the joke I just made?” I ask.
“There's no joke that I can see,” he says. He's looking both ways like he's not paying any attention to what I'm talking about, but I know he's pissed off. A few trucks come and go, but the roads are mostly clear; no need to squeal tires the way he does when we leave the campus. He rolls his window down, stays quiet then, and that's what always angers me about Peck. He keeps everything inside, never talks without a fight first. I don't want to fight today, so I keep steady, let Momma's story occupy our conversation.
“I need to go to the courthouse to look up Momma's land,” I say.
“What's wrong with her land?” he asks.
“John Boyd came over and told me it wasn't hers.”
Peck's eyes cut over briefly before going back to the road. “She told me about that this morning,” he says. “Said you think this guy's bad.”
“I think so, but I don't know. I need to look at the land deed, see what it says. I have to go to Sylva to do that, so I thought since they're opened till noon, we could start by driving over there. That's all I meant.”
The curves to Sylva are easier, two narrow lanes widening out to four. Peck looks at me again, longer this time with some kind of a shit- eating grin on his face. “What?” I ask.
“What what?” he says, really pissing me off this time.
“Dammit, Peck, don't do that to me.”
But of course, he does. He smiles that grin again, says, “Want to renew our vows while we're there?”
“You think that might help?” I say, looking out the window. The land out here is more open, not as severe as the road in from Cashiers.
“I don't know,” he says, “you tell me.”
“I don't have an opinion about that,” I say. “You're the one who brought it up—”
“No, you did,” he interrupts. “You're the one who brought up the courthouse.”
It's like we're teenagers again, a tit- for- tat fight over silly notions, emotions out of control. I try to let it go, ignore his taunting.
“Let's just look at the deed first,” I say. “One mess at a time.”
He laughs again, a pissed- off kind of thing. “Mess, that's a fine word for this,” he says, “a goddamn mess.”
I look at him hard. For the first time, I don't feel threatened. I feel I can stand up to Peck on my own. Maybe it's because we're here in the mountains, my turf, not his, maybe it's the distance the days have put between us. I don't know, but I'm not going back to the way I used to be. “Don't start with me,” I say. And he seems to listen, shuts up. I pop the glove box, remembering my cigarettes, pull out a half- smoked pack of Winston's, offer one to Peck first while I push in the lighter.
Coming up Main, the courthouse looms high above the town. The big white building sits perched on a hill like the law is looking down on anyone who comes to Sylva. Today, the steps in front seem nearly impossible, so many and so steep. One hundred and seven, a climb I have not forgotten in fifteen years. When we came here to get married in 1954, we parked on the street below and walked up. Today we drive a road that wraps around the hill, rising quickly to a parking lot. We are in a hurry. It's late, almost noon when Peck turns off the engine.
The courthouse shadows our car, and I begin to feel nervous. Police cars are parked out front, along with an ambulance and, believe it or not, two horses tied up alongside the building. “You need help with this?” he asks.
“I've never looked for a deed before, have you?”
“Nope,” he says. “But it's all public record. Can't be that hard, can it?”
“I guess not,” I say when I open the door. “I'll be back, don't leave me.”
“Where would I go?” he says. Then, as soon as I close the door, I hear Peck's open.
“I can look over your shoulder,” he says. “Two sets of eyes look twice as hard.” He walks ahead of me to the door, opens it when a woman gets confused, pulling at it rather than pushing. She's disheveled, her dress worn and faded, an oversize army fatigue coat draping her body, unlaced boots scuffing the ground. “Here you go, ma'am,” he says. “Looks like they forgot which way a door's supposed to open.” The little woman doesn't even smile, just shoots inside, climbing stairs toward the courtroom.
“That's probably her horse out there,” I say, and we both have a good laugh.
Inside, I feel the history, the day returning to me from memory fifteen years old. The magistrate who performed the ceremony wasn't friendly at all. I think he figured out what was going on and disapproved as much as my father. Momma paid for the license, gave Peck money to pay for that horrible motel room. She stole food money from the jar kept in the kitchen cabinet, money my father gave her once a month for seasonal canning. When my father found out, he refused to give her more to make up for the loss. Folks from the church helped her fill out the shelves in the kitchen that winter. It's confusing standing here now, looking for directions, feeling emotions I haven't felt in years.
Peck finds a security guard who points us in the right direction, and we head downstairs where land records are kept in the Public Registry. Through double doors we enter a dark room that takes up most of the basement. It feels more like a musty library than the place where all the land transactions in Jackson County are carried out. I feel intimidated, walking into the room ready to search legal documents, surveyed boundary lines that, when found here today, will help to decide Momma's fate.
Inside, Peck gets the attention of the clerk, a man in suspenders, a tie loose at his neck. He still wears a tweed coat though the weather has warmed. The man looks at the clock, perturbed for having to work right up to closing. Peck tells him why we are here and he leads us farther back into a small room to a table and chairs. Windows near the top of the ceiling filter in light from ground level, soft beams hitting against white walls, fluorescents humming above us. I'm given a piece of paper, a request form to write down the address to Momma's house in Whiteside Cove. The man smiles when he sees my request. “Lots of people interested in this tract lately,” he says, but I let that go. Peck nudges me to ask who might be nosing around, but I don't say. I'm not here to accuse. I just want to see where Momma stands.
It takes no time for the book to be located, the tract to be found, the description of the land described in Deed Book 387, page 239. Numbers of longitude and latitude, compass directions and natural markers I recognize on the land. The “double oak at the curve of Whiteside Cove Road” where the old church property ends and Momma's begins, and on the other side “the existing cornerstone intersecting Whiteside Cove Road and Garnett Hill Lane.” It's an old Cherokee marker that has been there for as long as I can remember. The base of Whiteside is mentioned as a plot point east and west, the distance my father used to walk daily for his meditations and prayers, land included that John Boyd said was never part of the deed. “This is a lot of land,” Peck says.
“More than I thought,” I say. “It goes all the way to Whiteside. John Boyd told me it was only to the ridge where the tree line begins.”
“John Boyd's a liar,” Peck says.
“I guess so,” I say, and then scan the page to find out who owns the tract, the legalese like a foreign language. When I see it, my heart jumps. On the deed is John Boyd Carter's name, but how could that be?
“So John Boyd owns the land, then,” Peck says. “Not the church.”
“No he doesn't,” I say. “Momma owns it.”
“Well, this says John Boyd Carter owns it,” he says while pointing down at the page.
I look at Peck and he raises his hands, surrendering. “All right, all right,” he says. “How can this be, then? I thought it was church property.” He points to the page again like it's convicting evidence.
“I don't know,” I say. “I need help here.”
The man in suspenders and tweed comes over to hear my story. It shocks him. He looks doubtfully at the book, his mouth puckered up as if he's waiting for me to finish so he can kick us out. It flusters him more when I tell him that my mother has owned the land for ten years and that his book is wrong.
“No,” he says out loud, his voice stronger than it needs to be. We are right across the table from him. “The books are right,” he continues. “In fact, this parcel was recorded sixty- five years ago, and it's never been changed. The Carter family has owned this property since 1905. I understand some surveys are being conducted right now out that way, but this,” and he looks into the book to get the name correct, “this John Boyd Carter has held the deed since it was transferred over in 1935.”
“Is it possible this is a mistake?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Such a mistake or failure to report a transfer or sale would be illegal, fraudulent even. You can check with the tax assessor to see who paid taxes all this time, but that will have to happen on Monday. It's noon, closing time.” He smiles then like he's proud of himself, an office well kept, his duty done, time to go home.
Then there's a second where he seems intrigued by the possibility of something more. “Now if,” he says, and then pauses to think it out clearly before giving anything sinister a life. “If there is another deed that was never posted, then you might have something here. If a deed was signed, but never delivered, then it could be owned by someone else, but it means a fraud's been committed. But of course you would have to find the second deed and bring it in.”
I look at Peck. “Why would he do that?”
“Who?” he asks.
“John Boyd. Why would he lie about who owns the land?”
“I don't know that he has, Cassie.”
“Momma said the other night that there was a deed, that my father brought it home to show her.”
“The original?”
“No, a copy, I believe.”
“If it was a copy” the man says, “it would have to have all signatures and the county seal to be valid.” He is impatient with the information now, the clock showing minutes past closing.
“I think it did,” I say looking at Peck, his face doubting the possibility. “I think she said it was signed, maybe it was the original.”
“Cassie, look,” Peck says, “your mother never dealt with any of this stuff. Parker did it all for her and then, I guess John Boyd's been doing it ever since Parker died. I don't see how you're going to get anything more than this.”
“The deacons deeded the land, Peck. I remember that. I remember Momma talking about it after he died.”
“Well they didn't, if John Boyd owned the land. Maybe Parker misunderstood what John Boyd and the deacons did.”
“No,” I say, my voice rising this time. “That can't be true. That's not it at all.”
“All right then,” Peck says. He looks to the clerk, smiles, closes the book in front of me. “I think we've done all we can here, right?”
The man smiles in agreement with Peck. It pisses me off that he would just close the book and try to take over like this. “Find the deed,” the man says. “We reopen for business on Monday, eight A.M. sharp.”
“I will,” I say, pushing the book hard across the table. It slides into the clerks chest, catching him off guard, the shock on his face showing his disapproval. I'm out the door, climbing the stairs two at a time while Peck tries to catch up.
“Hey” he says, “wait up.”
We're outside when I swing around, stopping him with a hand on his chest. People leaving the courthouse are watching us, but I don't care. “If you can't help, don't talk,” I say.
“What did I do?” he asks, arms spread out like he might just try and fly.
“Nothing, Peck. You didn't do a thing.”
“Then why are you all pissed off at me?”
“Because, Peck, you didn't do anything that helped. You made that little shit look like he knew what he was talking about.”
“He did, Cassie. He was right. You have to have a deed.”
“I have a deed,” I say.
“Well, where is it?”
“I don't know,” I scream.
“Then you don't have one, Cassie.”
“Not yet,” I say, and then I stomp back toward the car.
Peck trails behind, yelling at me like it's my fault he's such an asshole. “Okay not yet. But don't get all bent out of shape at me because of this. It's not me who wanted to come up here in the first place.”
I turn and face him again, try to measure my words. “Then next time, don't close the book in my face.”
“The courthouse was closing down,” he says. “You ran out of time.”
“I was inside, Peck. They can't lock the door if I'm still inside.” I'm seething over this when I open the car door, the driver's side car door.
“You driving then, I guess?”
“If you think I can, Peck.”
“Jesus, Cassie.” He tosses the keys into my hands.
We get into the car, both doors slamming shut, rattling windows. There is no more talk as we drive down the hill and onto Main, then back out Highway 107. I want to say I'm sorry, but Peck is looking out the window, his whole body turned away from me.
There are more questions about the deed I want to talk over with him, but he has checked out, given up on me, probably on us by now. I don't blame him. I've given Peck good enough cause to never speak to me again. None of this is easy. I drive on, pushing up the mountain, wondering why it has to be so hard between us, hoping I won't get sick again, hoping I won't have to stop and finally tell Peck that I am pregnant.
BY THE TIME we are back in Cashiers, the wind has cleared the air, and I have turned onto Highway 64, Peck sitting up in his seat now as we climb toward Highlands. It feels like the first time we drove along these very roads trying to decide what we were going to do—two lost teenagers. I don't bring this up. I'm afraid it might confirm the suspicions I know he has about me, so I point out the window to our left, the looming cliffs of Whiteside rising through the trees. “Maybe we should take a hike,” I say. But Peck remains silent. He's hurt by the way I behaved in Sylva. “You feel like a hike?” I ask, a question this time. He looks out at Whiteside flickering at us through leafed branches, his hair mussed up by the flurry of a strong breeze pushing through the car from windows rolled down.
“You're wearing flip- flops,” he says. “You can't hike in flip- flops.”
I run into slow traffic moving along Highway 64, a flatbed truck carrying large earthmoving equipment up toward Highlands. The going is tedious, stopping and starting, a line of cars snaking behind the truck, inching along. “We have to walk the old road, anyway,” I say. “The trail's been gone since they tore up Wildcat Cliffs.”
When I was a child, my father held Easter Sunrise Service on Whiteside. He would invite his congregation to meet on top of the mountain, to hike in from the campground while he took the old Kelsey Trail alone from Highlands. It was his way to get right with God, I think, just like his daily prayers at the base of the mountain.
The Easter that I was nine, he let me go with him, Momma's prodding getting the best of his solemn nature for once. At first, I don't think he minded the idea, but the five- mile trail was cold and icy, extremely long for a young girl. That early April morning, I struggled to keep up, his pace brisk and direct. My father could walk the trail in the dark because he knew it so well. I did not, and when the slope began to rise, when I had to navigate rocks and steep inclines, I slowed him down. He became impatient as if I was somehow interfering with God.
When we passed Highland Falls, I wanted to go down to it, to feel the spray of water dampening the air. The trail led us through primeval forest, trees that seemed to hold up the sky, red maples and tulip, yellow birch. Hemlocks were giants among the rest, so big around that together my father and I could not have held hands and circled the tree with our arms, even if he'd been willing to try. We passed landmarks that my father would call out, not to let me know where we were, but to tell himself how much farther he had to go. The falls, Wildcat Cliffs, Garnet Rock meant nothing to me, but with each point made, he would increase his pace and put more distance between us. The trail ended at an old campground, a quarter mile from the summit. There was light in the sky by the time we arrived.
We joined a small group from the church that had ridden in wagons to the campgrounds. They were ready to hike the final distance, but my father was visibly upset that we were late, that others had gone on ahead and were already on top. When the service was over, he asked Momma to take me down with her; he would walk back to Highlands alone for the car. I took this as a rebuke, that I had somehow failed him at his most important moment, the high mark of the church calendar, the resurrection.
From that moment on, his disapproval extended to every aspect of my life, and I began to feel like a second- class citizen. I remember thinking then how I would hate to be my mother and have to live with this man for the rest of my life.
It was only a few months later in 1946 that logging began around Whiteside and the trail we had followed was gone forever. My father joined with others in trying to stop the destruction of the old- growth forest. The logging broke the quiet, filled the Cul-lasaja River with silt, and browned Mirror Lake for what seemed like forever at the time. It angered him to see God's good earth destroyed, tractor skid trails and logging roads scarring the very land he had walked while carrying on his lifelong conversations with God.
When the logging was exhausted, the giant hemlocks and the backside trail forever gone, my father refused to go to the summit of Whiteside again. Even after a road was cut through to bring tourists to the top, a road that would have made the service more agreeable to his congregation, he never went back. He remained faithful to his walks to the southern base of Whiteside, but once the logging began, he refused to go on top and have to look down at the mutilation that was taking place along the northern slope.
Traffic gets the better of Peck and he agrees to a hike when we see the turnoff to Whiteside Mountain. I park the car in a small lot that is left over from the days of the tourist trade. It is rutted and muddied from the rain. “The road will be better,” I say, looking at my feet, the rubber flip- flops already covered in muck. Peck is in boots. Except when he surfs, he is always in boots. He comes around to my side of the car. Peck Johnson, always the gentleman, lifts me up, carries me to the remnants of the old road, the ground there no better than the parking lot.
“This isn't going to work,” he says.
“Sure it will,” I say. I have him put me down along the edge where wild grass and moss cling to the ground. I am able to walk along this sedge, the north slope drop- off pitching steeply as we ascend. Up here the air is crisp with the wind blowing in against the trees. The smell of fresh earth, the sweetness of Catawba rhododendron and flame azaleas, bush honeysuckle after the rain, is like God's candy to the mountains. It lifts my spirits, even as luck runs out and the mud thickens along the road. When I run out of anything to walk on, lose a flip- flop, I look at Peck nervously, afraid he might end this hike before we get to solid ground. But instead, he picks me up again, surprises me with a back ride as we climb the rest of the road together. The silence between us is still there, though I can feel it loosen as we make the old parking area near the summit. There the earth is drier, with wild grass and shrubbery thick along the bluffs of the northeastern face. The view is toward the headwaters of the Chattooga River watershed and all the land beyond.
Because of the storms, we are alone on Whiteside today, no one else attempting the muddy climb. The wind is fierce, gusts pushing at us as we climb toward the summit past Devil's Courthouse and the old tower overlooking Fool's Rock. We hike the final distance along a narrow pathway, ascending eventually to a slab that is carved with Whiteside's altitude. The roughly etched numbers set the elevation at four thousand nine hundred and thirty feet, “above sea level,” Peck says as he looks down into the cove. From here we are protected against the harshest gusts of wind, the sky above us the deepest blue I have ever seen. Giant puffy clouds push fast across us almost at a height that I think I can touch, if I would just reach out and try. We sit on ancient limestone rock along the Eastern Continental Divide, riding the backbone of the Smoky and Blue Ridge mountain ranges. Whiteside Cove spreads out before us some two thousand feet below.
“I can see Mavis's house from here,” Peck says. In all the years we have been married, he has never been to the summit of White-side until today.
“You can see everything from here,” I tell him. “I can't believe you've never been up here until now.” It feels good to be the one showing something to Peck rather than the other way around. He stands and walks to the edge, a rail preventing him from going too far.
“Parker walked down there, through those fields,” he says.
“Yes he did, every day” I say. I rise and join him at the edge. Below us a hawk rides the air currents like a curving mountain road. It dips and turns, rises and falls until it is near enough that we can see its eyes scanning the clumps of rhododendron clutching the mountain face. I point downward to the fields below. “There's Momma's house, then the fields,” I say. “You see where the line of woods starts?”
Peck nods, points himself. “There?”
“Yes,” I say. “Follow the line of woods to the left and then look out into that field. Can you see it?” Below my finger, the distance through air to earth, I can see a faint vein cutting into the green patch. “I think that's it,” I say.
“What?” he asks.
“I think that's the old trail my father walked to Whiteside.”
Peck's eyes try to focus on what I think is there, but he doesn't see it. You have to grow up in the mountains to understand where and how to look for things. Peck is a low country boy the geography of this place too different from the land of his own life. I can feel his uncertainty, confusion over why he is here, why I'm here in a way that doesn't include him. It's how I felt for fifteen years living in the low country, so I guess now it's his turn. “Do you understand me now?” I ask. But this just confuses him more.
“How is that?” he says.
“You don't like this place any more than I liked Garden City Beach.”
“That's foolish, Cassie.”
“No it's not, Peck. How often have you been here since we got married?”
“You know I can't make every trip,” he says.
“Four times, Peck. You've been here four times. I could understand it when my father was alive, but he's been dead for ten years. Ten, Peck, and you've been back up here only four times.”
“Well, I don't count like that,” he says.
“Look, you know why I don't come,” he says. “I know how much you want to be up here. I let you come to give you room.”
“Peck, you can't stand this place any more than I can stand the mud in the marsh. What if I said you had to move up here if we were to stay together?”
It takes him a minute to answer this. His eyes focused somewhere off into the empty air. “I'd say tell Kelly first,” he says. “She's the one I'd worry about.”
“No you wouldn't,” I say. “Kelly's young. She wouldn't know the difference in a year or two.”
“Cassie, in a couple of years, she'll be a senior. She'd be devastated to leave her friends and the beach.”
“No, Peck, I think you'd be devastated.” I watch his jaw clinch, his hands tighten on the railing.
“Look,” he says, “I know you need time. I want to give you that. I don't need to be up here because I'm just in the way. I'm in the way right now.” He leaves me then, walking farther up the trail. That's the way it is with Peck. I challenge him and he walks away. I have things to tell him, things he needs to hear, so I follow him until he stops at another overlook. It reaches out to reveal the curvature of the mountain, a rough- hewn semicircle of rock that looks like ancient cathedral walls descending below us.
“We need to talk,” I say.
“Then talk.” Peck sits down on a small outcropping where the sun is warm, the wind quiet. I join him there, letting the silence of this place wash over me as I try to decide what he needs to hear. What I want him to know.
“I don't know what I'm going to do,” I say finally. “I know that doesn't help, but that's as far as I've gotten. I haven't been here long enough to decide anything else.”
“I can understand that,” he says. “I wasn't planning on visiting you.”
“Momma's said I can stay with her as long as I need to. And with all this going on with her land, it seems the right thing to do.”
“Have you thought about Kelly?” he asks. “Have you asked her about any of this?”
“No, and if I did, she'd say she wants to go home. That's obvious.”
“She won't do that again,” he promises. “She'll stay put.”
“She can spend a week here with Momma after camp, and then I'll put her on a bus or something. She can go back to the beach and have her summer like you want her to. Besides, she doesn't need to be in the middle of all of this. I was stupid to do that to her.”
He laughs a little under his breath. “Kelly would hate it up here if you tried to pull her out of school.”
“I know that,” I say. “She's more you than me anymore.”
This brings a smile to his face. “She's hardheaded, if that's what you mean,” Peck says.
We sit in silence once more, high clouds beginning to dull the sun. It feels like rain might be coming in again. “What about Clay?” he asks.
“I don't know about Clay,” I say. “He's in Walhalla.”
“He needs to step up here, don't you think?” Peck says. “Does he know about the baby?” His eyes search mine, waiting. I'm shocked to hear the words come from him, but then after this morning, after what we have just said to each other, why should there be any doubt?
“No,” I say. “I don't think it's his.”
Peck stands up like it's my answer that pushes him off the rock. “Goddamn it,” he says. “Goddammit.”
At first I don't understand, stupid me. Then I realize what has just happened. He didn't know. He was fishing for something. He didn't know I was pregnant, and I just gave it to him, just like that. I'm mad at him for doing this, testing me, playing his little game. I'm mad at myself for not seeing it coming. “That's not fair, Peck,” I say, staying put. “Stop manipulating me like that.”
He turns around at the rail, all of Whiteside Cove below him. “You tell me to stop manipulating you, and here you are saying you don't know whose child you're carrying. One thing we know for certain here is that it might be someone's other than mine. It might be Clay Taylor's.”
I hide my face, start to cry at his words. It's not so much the cruelty of them as it is the truth. “Stop it,” I say. Out before us, clouds build near Chimney Top and Rocky Mountain. “I don't know what to do,” I say. “I don't know what I can do. I didn't come up here because I was pregnant. I came up here to get away, Peck, to see what it might be like to not be Peck Johnson's wife anymore, or Kelly Johnson's mother for that matter. I wanted to just be me again, me, Peck. Fifteen years ago, I put me in a drawer when I packed away all my plans for college and whatever I would have done with that. Well, fifteen years is a long time, and I think I'm due. I didn't want to get pregnant, I just wanted to get away.”
I watch Peck from where I sit, the wind shifting, picking up around us. He turns to face me, his eyes sad this time. His hands rub against his unshaven face, pull through tangled hair while he remains exposed on the edge of the mountain. “Well, what the hell are we going to do then?”
In all our arguing, we have failed to notice the storm. It's odd when one blows onto Whiteside and you're still on top. It can come up and over or stay below and leave you alone. This one hasn't made up its mind where it will land yet. We watch as towering thunderheads climb along the cliffs, push upward on the draft of wind. It's like being in an airplane watching lightning ignite and run throughout the dark clouds below, no doubt pushing powerful bolts toward ground we cannot see.
The storm silences our differences and we move hurriedly back along the trail, expecting the worst to push up and over the walls of Whiteside. Peck pulls me into an old run-down structure off of the parking area. The makeshift shelter is a small building with fading words painted on its side claiming it's the world's smallest post office, remnants of when the top of Whiteside was a tourist trap. We climb over debris, pushing aside rotted boards to huddle in the small space, waiting for the storm that never comes. To the north, the air is clear, above us the sky blue. It's the southern face that is taking all the beating. “We need to leave,” I say. “Momma is in all of this.”
“Let's wait it out,” Peck says quietly, his arm hovering above me holding on to the small roof we squat beneath. “It'll be over soon enough.” I'm drawn to think about any other time that this might have occurred. Peck would have held me. But in the close quarters of this shelter, I sense he is holding back, keeping his distance as we wait for the storm to clear.
When it is over, we walk back to the car, slipping and sliding, my feet thick with mud and Peck not offering me his back this time. I let him drive us home in silence and do not offer anything more. There is nothing that I can say.
On Whiteside Cove Road, it is apparent the storm has caused damage. Downed trees and a few electric lines straddle the road. Men are already out with chain saws and axes clearing the fallen timber. We turn off pavement to find the road to Momma's house rutted and soft, Peck slipping and sliding when traction falters. He guides us past the earthmovers that have gone silent, the land lying in huge heaps and piles where the earth has been cleared away. We pass John Boyd's house, a few trucks sitting in his yard, a station wagon there with some realty company's sign painted on its side.
“I've got to find that deed,” I say, but Peck is not listening to me. When I look at him, he is just watching the road, and I feel distinctly that he has already left, gone back to the low country where his world is flat and understandable to him. “When are you leaving?” I ask.
“Soon,” he says. “Tonight.”
Before us, Momma's house comes into view. There is a tree down in the front yard, a large one that has come up by its roots. Momma is walking out of the house. “It would be nice if you could stay long enough to make sure she's all right,” I say, but Peck is silent.
I look out the window to Whiteside Mountain, the face dark gray now that the sun is moving behind its peak. It stands there like it always has, a sentinel, angry and hostile one moment, forgiving and soft the next. Its paradox is as ancient as its beauty. I look at Peck and ache for him. I want it all to be different, but it can't be anything more than it is. I know that.
When I get out of the car, Momma is already in the yard surveying the damage. I can tell she is glad to see us, glad that Peck is here to take care of things, to take care of both of us. And for the moment, at least, I am happy about this too.
Before we can join her at the downed tree, John Boyd is turning into our drive. There are several other men in the car with him, and though I could be wrong, I don't believe they are coming here to help with the tree. Peck walks up beside me, looks out at the drive. “You know these guys?” he asks.
“It's John Boyd Carter,” I say.
The car pulls up behind Peck's truck, doors opening before the wheels have even settled. John Boyd gets out, waves, a friendly smile on his face that makes me think he's going to try and sell us something. The other men wait by the car. They are talking among themselves, lighting cigarettes. One man has a large roll of paper under his arm, blueprints for Arnold Palmer's golf course, no doubt. They are all dressed in suits but wear boots like they might be planning a little walk around Momma's land.
“Mavis, you all right?” John Boyd asks, his smile drawn down into concern. He stands in front of her, ignoring me and Peck for the moment.
“I'm fine,” she says. “I was all right the whole time, John Boyd.”
“That storm sure hugged onto the mountain,” he says. “It just hit it straight on and stayed there. Haven't seen one like that in quite a while.” He looks at me then, keeps the charade of concern going. “I wanted to come on up here in the middle of it to check on her, but it was just too bad,” he says. “Martha wouldn't let me near the door. But I'm glad you were here for her. I'm sure that helped.”
“I wish we would've been here,” I say, looking at Peck. “We were up on top. It never came over, just wind and sunshine up there. We came down here as soon as it passed.” I hear thunder rolling along some distant ridge, too early to know if there will be more for the cove. “John Boyd, I don't know if you remember my husband, Peck.”
He looks to Peck finally, smiles. “I do,” he says, “but it's been a while.”
Peck reaches out to shake his hand. “Time slips,” he says. “Hard to get away from work.”
“I know that,” John Boyd says, looking back to the men standing around his car. “How long you going to be up?”
“Not long,” Peck says, turning his eyes on me. “Maybe until tomorrow now, until I can help get this out of here.”
Peck's words draw John Boyd's attention to the fallen tree. “Mavis, you just lost a red oak here.”
“Is that a red oak?” Momma asks. A worried look shadows her face as if she has just been told of the death of a good friend.
“I'm afraid so,” he says. “This'll take some time to cut apart, Peck. I can have some men over here this evening, if you need the help.”
“I think I'll be all right,” Peck says.
“There's a bow saw around here somewhere, but you'll need a chain saw to cut it up. I can help out there.” John Boyd looks back to the men standing by his car, then up to Whiteside, the shadows darkening, painting the air deep blue. “You ain't getting this cut up tonight though,” he says. “I'll bring the saw by first thing in the morning.”
Peck looks at me then. “You want me to stay and cut this?” he asks.
I watch his eyes. He's not going to do it if I don't want him to. He'd leave if I said go. “If you got the time, it would be helpful,” I say.
Peck looks back to John Boyd. “I'll find the bow saw and start cutting these limbs back tonight, look for the chain saw tomorrow.”
“Bright and early,” he says before glancing at Momma. “Now Mavis, I'll drop that saw off before dawn tomorrow, so don't go shooting me full of rock salt, you hear?” He laughs at his joke, but Momma is more confused than anything else. She has lost a red oak, part of herself here on this land.
“I don't own a gun, John Boyd.” She turns in a huff to go back inside.
“Momma, he was joking,” I say.
“I know he was,” she says, her back to us. “I don't want to look at it no more, just makes me sick.” She turns at the top of the steps like she's forgotten to tell us something, points out to John Boyd's car where the men wait smoking their cigarettes. “These men want to walk the land,” Momma says. “I thought that would be all right.”
I glance toward the men, who have not moved from the car, and then back at John Boyd. It's hard to hold back anger, not tell him I've seen the deed. “I hope Martha doesn't mind you staying out after dark,” I say.
He smiles, but it's not all that friendly this time. “She'll hold dinner for us. But thanks for asking.” He winks at Peck like he's in on the joke, reaches out to shake his hand again. “Peck, it was good to see you. I'll have that saw here in the morning.”
We stand by the fallen tree watching John Boyd walk away. Thunder is getting closer, though the sky above us is azure blue, nightfall approaching. The men gather at the car, huddle momentarily, and then traipse off through the opening in the fence, walking briskly like they have an intended direction.
“What was that all about?” Peck asks.
“He's an asshole, that's all,” I say.
“Think you can find the deed?” he asks.
“I don't know if there's time,” I say. “I looked some, but no luck. I just have no idea where it could be.”
Peck turns to me then, the fading light finding its way into the blue of his eyes so they shine. “Try again, Cassie, you find that deed,” he says. He walks off then, heading toward the outbuilding behind Momma's house to find the bow saw.
I stay and watch John Boyd lead the men out into the fields. Just off the fence line, the men flush a covey of quail, the sudden explosion of wings startling the men. At first they seemed stunned, but then raise arms like young boys carrying invisible guns. The man with the rolled- up paper aims it at the lifting birds, pretending to fire. They laugh, pat each other on the back, and move on, John Boyd leading the way, pointing off in the distance toward the line of trees. Someone in the group says, “This is incredible land.”
“Of course it is,” John Boyd says. The laughter that follows feels poisonous to me. It hovers, abrasive, refusing to leave even as the men become silhouettes against the dying light.