The Rosewood Casket (8 page)

Their husbands, Professor This or Doctor That, would talk about land as a good investment, and mumble about wanting to do a little gardening. A subdivision did not fit their self-image: it diminished their status, lumped them into the herd of overachievers. They really wanted a fiefdom, a country estate that would proclaim their success by its very exclusiveness. Whitescarver would solemnly agree with all this piffle, and ferry them down muddy roads to a selection of brambled sites, overgrown with scrub pines because the mountain’s valuable timber was always harvested for the thousands of dollars profit it would bring before the land was put up for sale. The prospective pioneers would wonder why the woods looked so meager, but they wouldn’t ask the realtor, and he never told them.

As the city couple hiked through underbrush in search of the elusive view from the top—of more scrub pines—Whitescarver would affect his most genial country-boy drawl, while he advised his clients of the cost of running a paved road up the mountain so that one could get to work in winter. “Reckon you’ll need a four-wheel like mine,” he’d say with a chuckle. By the time he moved on to the hazards of well drilling, the expense of obtaining a power line, and the impossibility of getting cable television, the couple’s L.L. Bean topsiders were caked with brown mud, and they had ceased to enthuse about the glories of country life, and they directed most of their attention to the ground, watching for the rattlesnakes Frank had casually mentioned.

Frank Whitescarver was an expert in gauging the exact psychological moment when the city couple had seen enough scrub land. Then they were ready to be taken to Boone’s Mountain, an upscale subdivision of brick homes in styles ranging from Tudor to contemporary, all situated on carefully landscaped five-acre lots, with views, city water and power, paved streets, and cable—all for a mere $250,000 and up. Twenty-seven houses artfully arranged on one mountaintop—owned and developed by Frank Whitescarver himself. There were no lovely mountaintops to be had for a thousand dollars an acre, because when such land went up for sale, Frank bought it himself, carved it up into five-acre lots, selling for thirty thousand dollars apiece, and had his construction firm put up two dozen houses. For an outlay of a hundred thousand dollars, he could expect a profit of close to a million.

The would-be country gentry almost always found a house they liked at Boone’s Mountain or Deer Meadow or one of his other planned communities. Here were people like themselves, who drove the right cars and played golf and had upscale careers of their own—and they weren’t
too
close—five acres is a comfortable amount of living space between neighbors. By the time the husband said, “I suppose it isn’t a subdivision really,” it was time to produce the offer-to-purchase forms. The final deal clincher was Frank’s casual remark as he handed over his ballpoint pen, “And, one thing about living here, folks, nobody’s going to put a trailer up near your beautiful new home.” Frank knew that
trailer park
was Yuppie-speak for leper colony. The gambit seldom failed him.

He parked his Jeep close to the ditch on an old logging trail, and got out to inspect the land. He saw a flock of Canada geese winging their way past the treetops, a sure sign of spring. The migrations had begun. Soon the subdivision people would catch a whiff of spring and begin their own migrations, and he would be ready.

He had lived in east Tennessee all his life, so he knew most of the old families: who was likely to sell, and who might be forced to sell by the death of a parent or because of financial hardship. He kept a close eye on the courthouse records, too. You never knew what might turn up. He would be needing some new land soon. It was time for the old pioneers to move on and make way for the new.

*   *   *

“You’ve never talked much about your family,” said Kelley.

Charles Martin Stargill shrugged. “I wouldn’t call us close,” he said. He flipped off the radio, much to Kelley’s relief. He always tuned it to a country station, and if they didn’t play his record within a half hour, or if they played certain other people’s records, Charles Martin would begin to tense up, and he’d frown, and sometimes forget to answer her when she asked him something. Sometimes, too, he drove to the tempo of the music, which terrified her, but she never complained about it, and she knew he wouldn’t let her drive. The sudden silence made her unclench her fists and take a deep breath. It was better to talk.

They had decided that leaving at rush hour would have slowed them more than it was worth, and then Charles Martin got busy making phone calls, and rearranging things, so that it was past nine o’clock before he could approve Kelley’s packing. By then he was tired, so they went to bed, then got up at five so that they could get through Nashville before the morning commute got in gear.

Kayla was asleep in the backseat, wrapped in an old quilt, and hugging Sally, the stuffed Steiff camel Charles Martin had brought her from a concert tour in Germany. She had fallen asleep just as they got on I-40 east in Nashville, lulled by the predawn darkness and the soft hum of the Lexus’s engine. Now the ride would be a peaceful one, and Kelley didn’t even want to stop for coffee for fear of waking the child.

Kelley cast about for something else to say before Charles Martin noticed the silence and turned the radio back on. “But you got the guitar from your family.”

He nodded. “The rosewood prewar Martin. I swear I think I was named for it.”

The guitar was in its case in the backseat, on the floor behind the driver’s seat. Charles Martin always put it there, and he always warned Kayla not even to touch the case. Kelley didn’t like to touch it, either. She knew that the guitar was worth thousands of dollars, and that it had been in the Stargill family for more than fifty years, but that wasn’t what made her leery of the instrument. That guitar was like a part of Charles Martin, as if they were connected somehow, the way she’d heard that twins sometimes share feelings between them. He always knew where it was, and sometimes he’d take it out and rub the strings with a chamois cloth, as he was talking or watching television, stroking it as if it were a dog. She wasn’t surprised that Charles Martin had brought the guitar with him, even if he had ho intention of playing a note while he was at the homeplace. If he left Nashville for more than a day, the rosewood Martin went with him. Nobody else was even allowed to touch the case.

“Was it your father’s guitar?” she asked.

“My grandmother’s. His mother. They say it skips a generation. People used to say that I got my musical ability from her. Daddy said that she knew all the old ballads, and that she could play just about any instrument she picked up, without ever having a music lesson, or knowing how to read a note.”

“Was she a country singer, too?”

“No. The Carter family was a rarity back then. Mountain women generally didn’t get careers in show business. The story is that she had a homemade guitar that sounded like two cats in heat, and my grandaddy gave her the Martin for a Christmas present one year, with money he earned on his logging job in Carter County. Or maybe he won it at poker in the logging camp. She gave it to me when I was four, because I was the only one of the younguns that could carry a tune. And she never did sing any more by then. Daddy said she quit a long time before I was born.”

“You’ve had that guitar since you were four?” There wasn’t a scratch on the gleaming rosewood, and the fretwork looked new.

“Not to play,” he said. “Mommy put it up for me until I got older, for which I am eternally grateful to her, though they tell me I pitched a fit about it at the time. Thank goodness she didn’t take the strings off, or put it in a trunk in the attic. She didn’t even know it was worth anything, but she took care of it because it was a family treasure. Isn’t it funny? I bet that guitar is worth more than Daddy’s farm.”

*   *   *

Clayt spent the night up at the farm, sleeping in his clothes on the sofa because he didn’t have the energy to clean up an upstairs bedroom. It was probably knee deep in dust up there. Besides, he thought that one of his brothers would arrive any minute, and he wanted to be sure he heard their knocking so he could let them in. He half expected the hospital to call with news of his father’s passing, but when he opened his eyes to the gray light of early morning, all was still quiet.

He put on a pot of coffee, hurrying to the front window every time he heard a car go by, but he ended up drinking three cups by himself, and pouring the rest down the sink. They hadn’t tried to drive straight through, then. He took a shower before he remembered that he had brought no clean clothes to change into. His father’s clothes were too small for him, but he took a clean pair of socks, and left his dirty ones in the hamper. He would have to go back to Jonesborough anyhow, though, because he had a school program that afternoon, and he needed his costume. He called the hospital, and was told that there was no change in Randall Stargill’s condition.

“I’ll be by later in the morning,” Clayt told the nurse.

When Robert and Lilah reached the house at eleven, they found a note taped to the front door.
“Come on in,”
it said.
“Daddy is in the hospital, and I’ve gone to do a school program on Daniel Boone. Be back as soon as I can.—Clayt.”

*   *   *

A semicircle of third graders looked up at the frontiersman with expressions that ranged from wariness to open delight. Hands waved in the air before he even began to speak, but their pretty young teacher shushed them and said that the visitor would answer questions when he finished.

“Hello, I’m Daniel Boone,” said Clayt, leaning down to shake hands with a boy and a girl in the front row. “You’re probably wondering how come I’m not wearing a coonskin cap, like you’ve seen in the movies. Well, the fact is, I never did wear one of those things. I considered myself a frontier gentleman. This hat I’m wearing is a Quaker-style beaver hat, like the kind folks wore when I was growing up—in Quaker Pennsylvania. This buckskin shirt and the leggings and moccasins are my frontier outfit, good clothes to hunt in. I usually carry a big knife in my belt, but Mrs. Sampson here didn’t think the principal would care too much for that.” He made a sad face. “She wouldn’t let me bring my long rifle, either.”

There was a ripple of laughter from the nine-year-olds, and he knew that they would listen now. The lesson could begin. A straight-backed wooden chair had been provided for him, but Clayt knew better than to sit down while trying to hold the attention of a room full of kids. He rested one foot on the seat of the chair and leaned forward, relaxed, as if he were telling tales at a campfire. He had to transport them back to frontier Tennessee, make them forget that they were sitting in a glass and cinder-block classroom with computers on the tables behind them.

“Bet you thought I was born in a log cabin in Kentucky, but I wasn’t. I was born in a proper wooden house in eastern Pennsylvania in the year 1734. America was still a colony of Great Britain in those days, and my father had come over from England as a young man about twenty years before I was born, hoping to make his fortune in the new world. My parents were Quakers, and, like most everybody else in the community, they were farmers. I didn’t want to be a farmer, though.” He grinned at them. “I didn’t like school too much, either. Schooling and farming interfered with my hunting. But I sure did love to read. I used to take a book with me to the woods on my long hunts. I went on my first one when I was sixteen. We left eastern Pennsylvania, which was downright civilized in 1750, and we headed for the back country, where it was wi-ild!” He roared the last word and stooped down to give his audience a mock grimace. “Where it was primitive! Where it was downright dan-ger-ous!”

He waited a moment while they shivered in anticipation.

“Where do you-uns think I went?”

Nobody ventured a guess.

“Why, right here!” he roared at them.

He let the shock sink in for five heartbeats before he continued.

“Right here in east Tennessee! I didn’t get here right away, of course. Place as dangerous as this, you have to work up to it. First place the Boone clan settled was in Bedford County, Virginia, which is about the anklebone of the Blue Ridge, and then we went on to a farm near the Yadkin River in North Carolina. From there I hunted all the way into Tennessee, stayed gone months at a time. There were a lot of deer in these mountains then. And elk. And bear. And buffalo.” He peered down at the pinkest blond girl. “You ever eat buffalo?”

She gaped at him for a moment, then slowly shook her head.

“Well, you ought’a try it. It’s better for you than cow’s meat. Lean. Yes, there was a lot of game in these mountains. It was the common hunting ground of the Cherokee, the Shawnee, and the Catawba, and they didn’t take too kindly to outsiders coming in and shooting their game. I figured there was enough for everybody, though, so I camped up in the mountains, sometimes near what folks now call Boone, North Carolina, and I hunted all winter. A time or two I’d meet up with Cherokee or Shawnee, but they never hurt me. They’d just take my pelts, and let me go.”

He grew solemn. “That’s not to say it wasn’t perilous to wander these mountains. One of the great sorrows of my life happened right near here, in the Powell Valley, close to where Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina all come together.

“It was 1773, after I had married Rebecca Bryan, and some of our children were most nigh grown. We were headed out to Kentucky with a group of pioneers to found a settlement, a whole caravan of loaded packhorses and livestock, and women and children—families going to Kentucky to start a new life. It wasn’t a wagon train, mind you, like you see in the western movies. The trail to Kentucky was just a one-man trail over the mountains and through deep woods—we’d have to go single file a good part of the way. So we put our goods in hickory baskets slung over a packsaddle—and younguns littler than you folks would ride in one, too—and we aimed to walk all the way to Kentucky—going slow and noisy—through Indian country.