Sharyn McCrumb - Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

“I’ll be fine, darling. I jog, don’t I?”

The path up the mountain to the cabin was not so much a trail as an absence of underbrush in a wavy line weaving its way upward. Fallen trees obstructed the way, and outgrowths from nearby bramble bushes slowed them down. Carl went first, stopping to untangle Elissa from the briars or to lift her over a tree trunk. She had not spoken since they began the climb; he could hear her breath coming in labored gasps. Every twenty feet or so they stopped to rest, until her breathing was normal again, before resuming their climb.

“Jogging on flat land is a lot different from mountain climbing,” he said gently. “You just tell me when you want to rest again.”

“No. No. I’m fine, but this boot heel is coming loose.” She took a deep breath. “You don’t think I’m going to let a man twelve years older than I am beat me up a mountain, do you?”

Carl smiled. “You’re doing fine.” He slowed his step a little and began to talk, to take her mind off the climbing. “You know, that branch back there put me in mind of my uncle Mose. He used to come here bee-tracking in the summertime. Of course, bees need water in the hot summer to make honey and to cool the hive, so they fly to the nearest stream to get it. Well, my old uncle Mose would locate a bee watering place, and he’d sit down nearby, and just watch those bees leave with a stomachful of water. He’d follow their flight with just his eyes for as far as he could see them. Past that sumac bush or that service tree. After a while he’d move to that tree and sit and watch several more bees go by, and note the next place he lost sight of them. After a couple of short hops like that, he’d finally get to the hollow tree they were headed for. He’d mark the tree so he could find it again, and go on home.”

He glanced back at Elissa. She seemed to be concentrating on the path. Her face glowed from exertion, and she pushed at her wet bangs with the wrist of one glove. Impulsively, he took the makeup case from her and tucked it under his arm. She did not look up.

“Course now, the reason Uncle Mose would mark that tree would be so that he could find it again come fall,” Carl went on. “Long about late October, he’d come back down the mountain with a zinc washtub, ax, rope, and a little box, and he’d set to work. He’d split that hollow tree open, catch the queen in a box, scoop all the honey out into the washtub, and carry it home. The bees would usually swarm on a branch, so he’d cut down the branch and take it home, where he’d built some hives in the back garden. Then he’d let the queen bee out of the box, and put the branch down beside the homemade hive, which had some of the honey put in it for the bees to winter on. The rest of the honey went into pint jars for the family. It took patience, but the results were worth it.” He turned to look at her.

Elissa regarded him steadily. “I loathe bees.”

They stood on the mountaintop, a narrow ridge of sturdy pines, and looked down at the little meadow cupped in a hollow below the summit. The land had been cleared and cultivated years before, and the little cabin, which sat in a puddle of sunlight at the edge of the garden furrows, seemed sturdy for its age. Brown winter grass stretched away to the forest which encircled it, and aluminum pie tins, strung from branches to keep the birds from the garden, twirled soundlessly in the wind. The stillness was so absolute that it might have been a sepia photograph from Carl’s family album, or a dream in which time elapses in slow motion. Carl tried to remember times he had been at the cabin, when the old folks still lived there, as though calling them to memory might make them come alive in the barren landscape. The rotting wooden boxes near the woods would be painted white and set upright. Uncle Mose would be moving among them in his coveralls and veil, bees hovering at his side. Grandfather would be sitting on the porch steps, soaping the sidesaddle Grandmother used when they rode to church. Without wanting to, Carl turned and looked at the gray headstones beneath the cedar trees.

“Carl! I’m freezing! Are you going to stand up here all day?”

He looked at her for a moment before he realized what she had said. Then he nodded and helped her down the embankment toward the meadow.

Elissa wrinkled her nose at the sight of the cabin. “I don’t suppose there’s any heat,” she said flatly.

“Just a fireplace. Whilden left us some wood.” He had known where to look for it-stacked in a pile by the kindling stump.

As they walked through the garden plot, Elissa stopped to look at a child’s plastic rocking horse, set up as a yard ornament under a leafless dogwood.

“How tacky!” she sighed.

He helped her up the flat rock steps to the porch, and set the suitcases down by Granddad’s whittling bench. “Do you want me to carry you over the threshold?” he asked Elissa as he pushed open the door.

She peered into the darkness and shuddered. “Are there snakes in there?”

“No. If you’ll wait out here, I’ll light the oil lamp so you can see.”

“Oh, all right. Just hurry up!”

He could hear her pacing outside as he fumbled with the chimney of the oil lamp Whilden had left on the table. Finally he succeeded in putting the match to the lamp wick, and the small room glowed in lamplight. He saw that it had been freshly swept-although the window was still streaked with dirt-and a brace of logs had been carefully arranged in the fireplace. A clean quilt in a churn-dasher pattern covered the few shreds of upholstery left on the old sofa. On the table near the woodstove, Whilden had left a jar of coffee, a box of cornflakes, some evaporated milk, and-for decoration-red-berried pyracantha branches in a Mason jar.

“You’d think somebody would have cleaned this place up,” snapped Elissa in the doorway. She turned her head slowly to study the room, her eyebrows raised.

Carl brought in the suitcases from the front porch. “The bedroom is in there,” he said, leading the way. “I can heat you some well water on the stove if you’d like to wash. First, though, I’m going to get this fire going in the fireplace.”

Elissa sat down on the couch to watch. Carl knelt on the stone hearth, rearranging some of the smaller sticks. “See if you can find some newspapers,” he told her.

“Newspapers?”

“Yes. Or leaves. Anything I can use to get this fire started.”

Elissa began to wander around, looking behind the couch and poking in drawers in the kitchen part of the room. “How about this old calendar on the wall?” she called.

Carl turned to look at the wall decoration: a 1945 calendar with a drawing of a Hying Fortress against an unfurled flag. “No,” he said. “Not that.”

With a sigh of exasperation, Elissa continued to search. “Well, it certainly wasn’t one of your ancestors who discovered fire, Carl! Why don’t you just strike a match and let the logs burn?”

He put a match to one of the smaller sticks, holding it there until it burned his finger, but although the stick glowed tentatively for a few moments, it faded to darkness again. He reached in his pocket for another box of matches.

“Carl, I found some little pieces of cloth. Will they do?”

Elissa held up four short strips of black crêpe. “Are these from a quilt?” she asked.

“Bring them here.” He took them from her outstretched hand. “I haven’t seen these since Grandma died. They’re crêpe for the beehives.”

“The beehives?”

“Yes. For mourning. You have to tell the bees when there has been a death in the family, or else they’ll leave the hive and start one somewhere else. When Grandma died, Uncle Mose hung these black streamers on each beehive when he told the bees.”