get Pearl and tell her to bring the shoe.”
While I scampered toward the back porch, my mother and grandmother came around from the front of the house to greet Uncle Everett. Pearl had already overheard Uncle Everett and was halfway out the screen door. “Where’s the dogs?” she asked. “I heard what he said.”
We hurried together to the truck.
“Don’t let them smell it yet,” warned Uncle Everett. “I want to saddle up Sally, or old Fred, then turn them loose on her trail. Mama, Shaula, what happened?”
“They found the cat’s tracks up in the orchard,” my mother pointed. “The men either lost the trail, or the dogs never got the scent.”
“I couldn’t tell them a thing,” my grandmother protested. “Just hardheaded tenants,” she shook her head with sadness. “The poor little darling! Probably never had a chance.”
I weaseled in as close to Uncle Everett as I could. “Not this time, boy,” he smiled. “But you can hop in and ride up to the barn.”
“Don’t you let him go!” my grandmother pointed her finger at her son. “Don’t you dare let him on your horse.”
“I won’t, Mama! I’ve got more sense than that. But the boy loves adventure, and he needs to be free of your skirts far more than you let him.”
“Well, not this time! One missing child is enough. Anything could happen. Tommy, you hear that, don’t you? You come back as soon as Everett saddles up and releases those dogs. I’ll not permit a second of perfidy!”
“Yes, ma’am! I’ll come right back.”
“Pearl, you go with him and drag him back if you have to, but he’s not, I repeat, ‘not going.’ And that’s final.”
“Mama, nothing’s ever final, except death,” said Uncle Everett. I climbed up in the bed and peered in at his huge hounds. They whined and wanted to lick my fingers, but I knew I couldn’t let them, without spoiling their scent for Ouida.
At the barn, I remained in the truck until Uncle Everett had saddled up Fred—an old but sure-footed horse. Pearl handed him Ouida’s little shoe, as he led the horse by its bridle around the truck. He held the little shoe in front of the caged dogs. They yelped and bayed with excitement. “OK,” he said. “Go find her!” With that, he released their kennel doors and out they burst.
Off they lunged, sniffing the air and weaving in circles. Suddenly, Roy, the larger of the two, stopped, sniffed something ominous in the wind, and, letting out a loud bark, began whining and running toward the orchard. Dixie, his sister, picked up the scent, and off she raced, yelping and whining to keep up.
“Adios, amigos!” Uncle Everett called. He swung into his saddle, and Fred trotted down the road.
“Wait!” I shouted. I ran behind him. “The gate! Let me get the gate!” I ran ahead of the horse, as Uncle Everett slowed its pace. I opened the orchard gate and looked up at him.
He smiled as he passed through. “Now get on back! A promise is a promise. I promised your mother and grandmother. There’ll be other times for us. Now run on. If I find her, I’ll take you there someday and show you myself.”
“Yes, sir!” I groaned, as I stepped up and closed the gate and watched him gallop off, after the dogs.
He did not return until late that evening. Across the saddle, a tiny body lay draped against his waist and legs. He had covered it with a burlap sack. The dogs panted beside him, their tongues long and distended. They all but jumped into the horses’ trough for water. Froth and lather dripped from old Fred. Uncle Everett handed the body to Pearl. A fetid stench accompanied the transfer. She clutched the sack in both hands and wept. Once Earl’s brother and sister-in law came down, they wept, too. Leena, Ouida’s mother, moaned and pulled at her hair. Jessie just stood there, looking down at his feet. His overalls were stained with mud and chaff; his beard was black and grizzly. He took the bundle in his arms. As he cradled the child, he too let out a whimper, like the sound of a sob under a pillow. He and Leena walked off together toward their cabin. I helped Uncle Everett re-kennel his dogs. Without smiling, or saying anything, he climbed in his truck and drove away.
No one ever found the cat, or the panther. “It probably ran off across the Holston,” Uncle Everett surmised. “One day we’ll get it, Tommy. By jingles, next year, I’m taking you with me—promise or no promise—and will get the so and so! Whatta you say?”
“Yes, sir! We’ll get the son-of-a bitch!”
“Whoa, Lord! Watch that tongue, or we’ll both be in trouble!” he feigned a frightful grimace.
I understood what he meant.
Chapter Five
One afternoon in early May, while I was playing in the loft of the old slave quarters, I thought I saw a movement near the apple house. I peered out the side window of the log building for a better view. The apple house was constructed of the same stone as Quilly Hall. It had a deep basement, walled with wooden racks for storing apples and pears. Shelves lined its walls, each laden with heavy blue gallon-sized jars, stuffed with sausages, pork loin, corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, and whole berries, including cherries, blackberries and strawberries. As late as the 1940s, my grandmother’s farm was still a subsistence operation, although it turned a profit in terms of wheat, corn, hams, wool, and tobacco. No farmhands went hungry, but all bordered on poverty.
As I peered out the window, a man appeared briefly at its door. A cigarette glowed in his hands. Suddenly, he slipped away and disappeared under the limbs of a weeping willow, near the creek that flowed from the cold spring that gushed from under our springhouse. Later he crossed a fence, before dropping out of sight. Just then, Pearl emerged from the building. Disheveled hair hung in her face. She brushed off the front of her dress and wrapped her apron about her waist. She adjusted her hair, in an effort to restore her pigtail, and headed back for the house. My curiosity drifted toward other attractions in the loft.
A large, cast iron safe rested against the cabin’s wall, near the loft’s rock chimney. Neither a fireplace, nor a hearth, existed in the loft, although a mantle ran part way across the chimney. The absence of a fireplace made it frigid in the winter, but cool and damp in the spring and oppressively hot in the summer. The safe set on four, squat, rusting claw feet, with its heavy door open and two shelves visible. Its only content consisted of a broken cigar box, loose at one end, with its lid missing.
“Money, sweetheart. Money! It used to be lined with money. Big bills. Wads of them. All Confederate,” Grandmother said. “Your great-grandfather,” she’d nod toward the hallway, “the venerable Capt. Nathan, never got over the loss. He converted close to a half million dollars of silver certificates into Confederate currency. We would be millionaires, if that War hadn’t occurred.”
“Where’s all that money now?” I asked.
“In a box at your Uncle Everett’s. Your grandfather willed it to him before he died.”
But now the safe belonged to me. I used it to store my secret valuables: a shiny rock from under the bridge near the springhouse, a flattened dime I had picked up beside the railroad tracks in town, and a rusted nail I found near the horse barn. The nail had oxidized to the point that it had turned into a long, flaky, dark red spine. I had heard tales of De Soto’s expedition into Tennessee, and I visualized
