Dark on the Mountain

By Henry Mitchell

Some things are so wide and deep they can only be told in a story. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a story is worth a thousand pictures. Birth, death, resurrection, loss and love cannot be described or explained. We know them by touch. Stories invite touch. Most of these have been read aloud by the author to friends and strangers at his own table, on mountaintops, in neighborhood pubs, even in church. They are collected here in hope readers might want to read one aloud sometimes. It can get dark on the mountain, but...

There is no night that is so dark
That it can quell the slightest spark;
The faintest light, as dim and far
As from a solitary star,
Will shore the heart and stay the mind
And show the way the soul must find.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alfie Dog Limited
• Release date: Nov 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311086617

Henry Mitchell

Henry Mitchell, who died in November 1993, was one of America's most beloved garden writers. He was especially famous for his weekly "Earthman" columns in the Washington Post.

Book preview

Dark on the Mountain

A

collection

of

short stories

By

Henry Mitchell

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015 Henry Mitchell

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. Any unauthorised broadcasting, public performance, copying or recording will constitute an infringement of copyright. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United Kingdom

First Printing, 2015 Alfie Dog Limited

The author can be found at: [e-mail]

Cover image: Henry Mitchell

Published by

Alfie Dog Limited

Rose Bank, Norton Lindsey,

Warwickshire, CV35 8JQ

Tel: [phone]

Dedication

To Jane Ella, who heard them all.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my loyal and longsuffering editor, Rosemary J. Kind, who has saved me from my words and saved my words from me on countless occasions. Thanks also to Jimmy Vaughn in the Mountain Bridge, Merrily Teasley and her fine staff at Balsam Mountain Inn, Karen and Pete Nagle in Hot Springs, Callie and Dave Wellendorf on their high ridge above Big Laurel Creek, and especially John Paul Krol, winter caretaker at LeConte Lodge, whose bountiful hospitality manifest in shelter, sustenance and good company while I gleaned their mountains for stories. Unpayable debt to all my family and friends who have forgiven my neglect of them while I pursued my obsession for narrative. Grateful acknowledgement to my publisher, Alfie Dog Fiction, for reaching out across deep water to rescue these tales from complete oblivion.

Contents

Foreword

About the Author

Introduction

Oren

Last Call

Maggie and the Witch

Found Objects

Seed Money

Adumbrant

Brown-Eyed Doe

Hawk’s Eye

Whiskey Nancy

Wilderness Way

Last Christmas

Stone Man

Also by Henry Mitchell

Foreword

Blue? Their skin was…blue?

Blue, he stated matter-of-factly. Apparently, he continued, "the tribe's diet consisted, almost exclusively, of berries…indigo berries."

I was spellbound and a little naive, Really?

Instead of reassuring me, again, he continued his story. The explorer and his crew had happened upon the remote island serendipitously. He was shocked at the natives deep cerulean shade of melanin but his inner-capitalist quickly gathered his wits about him. When the ship left the island it was loaded to the gills with crates upon crates of the berries. The explorers name…?

He paused dramatically. With my eyes, I urged him on.

Strauss. Levi Strauss.

Aw, Henry. You had me. That isn't true.

Isn't it?

#

We met, Henry and I, years ago while working long hours in a dusty woodworking shop located in the upstate of South Carolina. He, a gifted sculptor, supporting his art habit; I, a lanky, awkward teenager learning, honing and loving my craft…trying to figure out who I was. I suppose I still am. At first blush I thought Henry ancient. Brogans, frayed khakis, a squirrel hunting shirt complemented by a shock of disheveled white hair and a wild, unkempt beard to match. He looked every bit the weathered hermit, come down from the mount. If he appeared older than he was (he was only in his early 40's) his countenance told a different tale. There was something...magical about him. Those sparkling, twinkling eyes, flashing with the color of the cerulean tribesmen, belied the soul of a mischievous child. A gnome, I thought. He looks like a gnome. 30 years of friendship, countless hours of wandering these hinterlands of ours, summer nights spent sleeping beneath the stars, meals shared, pints tipped, more stories than years left to write them down and I have to say…he might just be...a gnome, that is. If not a gnome then some other mythical creature sprung from the dark, hardscrabble soil of the Blue Ridge Escarpment. I know what you're thinking. Aw, David. That isn't true.

Isn't it?

The world is full of magic things waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

Yeats, at least, seems to think it a possibility.

It took many years of wandering to sharpen my senses. Once awakened, however, the world is a different place…magical, even. Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God. The quote belongs to Ms. Browning; Henry teaches us to take off our shoes. Nothing wrong with picking a few blackberries while we're at it, either.

The stories found within these pages are, like their author (and blackberries, for that matter) sprung from these hills; born here, rooted in these Southern Appalachians. Sometimes dark, they provide shadow that puts the Light on display. They're mythic…in the truest sense of the word. Within them lies some great Truth deeper than fact. Henry refers to his novels as fairy tales for grown-ups. A great descriptor for these tales as well.

I am concerned, Chesterton said with a certain way of looking at life which was created in me by the fairy tales but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.

The ancient Celts were, gratefully, not hampered with our modern Western mindset that categorizes and dismisses what cannot be empirically proven. They realized (as theoretical quantum research is, ironically, shedding light on) that oftentimes multiple worlds exist within the same geographic space. That thin places exist where the veil between the worlds has grown gossamer. Just around the next bend of a mundane walk through your neighborhood could lie another dimension, a new story, a fresh adventure. This world we live in is shot through with miracles and mystery; the commonplace radiates with glory, if only we have eyes to see. These tales will pull you in, disturb you, open your eyes and sharpen your senses. You'll wonder if they're true. You may, at once, pray they are and hope they aren't. Chances are you won't walk by a blackberry bush without at least a second glance. Take off your shoes, pick a few. You may just discover, like Chesterton, a new way of life. John Muir did. He said that, Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.

Next time Henry and I are wandering the hills looking for those two pines, traveling to new worlds, maybe we'll run into each other. The world is full of magic things…

Aw, that's not true.

Isn't it?

David Longley

April 2015

About the Author

Henry Mitchell is the author of two novels, The Summer Boy and the sequel, Between Times. His novels and short stories have all been published in the United Kingdom by Alfie Dog Fiction. Dark on the Mountain is his first published collection of stories.

Henry lives with his wife, Jane Ella Matthews and their spiritual guide, Simon in Greenville, South Carolina.

Introduction

The stories in this collection are fiction. That isn’t to say they are not real. The characters are all made-up, although there have been people in the author’s life who resemble some of them. The place settings are also fictional, the geography re-arranged for a tale’s comfort. However, if you ever go to Asheville, North Carolina, you will recognize Asheton, a town that shows up in several stories. Saluda, North Carolina is about as close to Drovers Gap, where Oren fell off the train, as one can get without inhabiting a book. Have breakfast there at Ward’s Grill and you will be watching for Jackson Wardlow to take your check. The name Saluda is a transliteration of the Cherokee word tsaludiyi which translates roughly as the green corn place.

Pearis Falls looks a lot like Greenville South Carolina, where Richard Pearis built his store beside the Reedy Falls around 1770. The large natural waterfall is a centerpiece of present-day Greenville’s central business district. When South Carolina courts ruled that Pearis had no legal title to the land he claimed had been ceded to him by the Cherokee, he became a Tory and served with Loyalist forces during the American Revolution. He was captured, escaped, and spent his post-war years as a planter in the Bahamas.

Sorrow Cove will seem familiar to anyone who has traversed the Mountain Bridge Wilderness around Jones Gap and Caesar’s Head in western South Carolina. The High Balsams could easily pass for the Richland and Plott Balsam mountains near Waynesville in North Carolina. Spring Creek where Simon Ryder bought a cup of coffee and left his exorbitant tip would be recognizable to anyone in Hot Springs, in Madison County, North Carolina.

Several prominent land features in these stories are thinly disguised replicas of landmarks in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. The Cherokee called these mountains Shaconage, the place of blue smokes. Some of us who habitually wander here would delight to see the old place names restored one day.

You’ll read about dreams and ghosts in these stories, and if you abide long in the real-life landscapes, you will regularly encounter them there. The past is always waiting just beneath the surface here among our mountains. There are many who have come to the Appalachians to change them for a profit, and there are some few who come here for the same reason that others have stayed for generations, to be changed by this up-and-down country of sacred lights and shadowed holies, where life is as deep as it is wide.

Stay awhile and you begin to feel that you are not quite in the same world as you thought you knew before you arrived. Appalachian is from the Creek word for the people of the other side.

Henry Mitchell

30 April 2015

Pearis Falls

Oren

Oren never meant to hurt anyone. He figured stealing was as bad as he would ever get. It was all that farmer’s fault for pointing the shotgun at him and then getting distracted and looking away long enough for Oren to hit him with the rusty shovel.

Oren didn’t hit him that hard, but the farmer slipped in the wet and went down. His shotgun blasted the ground close enough to Oren’s toes to splash mud all over his legs. That much might have been something to laugh about later, but on the way to the ground the farmer cracked his head against the corner of a concrete watering trough, and the farmer didn’t move at all after that.

Oren knelt down in the muck, would have helped him if he could, but there was no breath. Oren put his ear to the man’s chest but only heard the ticking of the big gold watch tucked into the bib of the farmer’s overalls. A leather wallet, worn and fat, shared the pocket with the watch. Oren took them both. He reckoned he wouldn’t get hung any lower on the tree if he got caught without them.

#

Oren ran a long time through the woods. That night he slept on the bare ground beside a pond. It rained on him a little during the night, but not much. Just enough to wet him through before light.

When Oren could see his feet, he walked away from the pond. He felt too weak and sore and hungry to run any more. About half way through that second day he heard dogs far away behind. They might have been hunting anything, but Oren guessed they were baying after him.

He came to a railroad where a freight train waited on a siding while a passenger express roared down the mountain in the opposite direction. A door on one of the boxcars wasn’t closed all the way. He slid it open a little more and was trying to haul himself inside when a gnarled hand reached out to help him. When his eyes accustomed to the dark, Oren saw there were two men in there with him, one named Bill and another who said he was Wilko. Bill and Wilko had some food that looked and smelled like they had got it from a dumpster, but they gave Oren some of it and his belly didn’t