1
50
1
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/b9484da73d45d64cb32ff9c7e40d289c.pdf
1787c859ddd1b135b89c9e9a5072c68e
PDF Text
Text
�THE APPALACHIAN CONSORTIUM
The Appalachian Consortium is a non-profit educational
organization comprised of institutions and agencies located in
the Southern Highlands. Our members are volunteers who
plan and execute projects which serve 156 mountain counties
in seven states. Among our goals are:
Preserving the cultural heritage of Southern Appalachia
Protecting the mountain environment
Improving the educational opportunities for area students and teachers
Conducting scientific, social and economic research
Promoting a positive image of Appalachia
Encouraging regional cooperation
THE MEMBER INSTITUTIONS OF THE APPALACHIAN
CONSORTIUM ARE:
Appalachian State University
Blue Ridge Parkway
East Tennessee State University
Gardner-Webb College
Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association
John C. Campbell Folk School
Lees-McRae College
Mars Hill College
Mayland Community College
North Carolina Division of Archives and History
Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy
Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild
U.S. Forest Service
Warren Wilson College
Western Carolina University
Western North Carolina Historical Society
�The Summer People
�Winner of the First
Appalachian Consortium Fiction Award
Other Books by John Foster West
up ego!
TIME WAS
THE BALLAD OF TOM DULA
APPALACHIAN DAWN
THIS PROUD LAND
WRY WINE
�THE SUMMER PEOPLE
by
John Foster West
Appalachian Consortium Press
Boone, North Carolina 28608
�The Appalachian Consortium was a non-profit educational organization
composed of institutions and agencies located in Southern Appalachia. From
1973 to 2004^ its members published pioneering works in Appalachian studies
documenting the history and cultural heritage of the region. The Appalachian
Consortium Press was the first publisher devoted solely to the region and many of
the works it published remain seminal in the field to this day.
With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National
Endowment for the Humanities through the Humanities Open Book Program,
Appalachian State University has published new paperback and open access
digital editions of works from the Appalachian Consortium Press.
www.collections.library.appstate.edu/appconsortiumbooks
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. To view a
copy of the license^ visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses.
Original copyright © 1989 by the Appalachian Consortium Press.
ISBN (pbk.: alk. Paper): 978-1-4696-4207-9
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-4696-4209-3
Distributed by the University of North Carolina Press
www.uncpress.org
�In the beginning there was Lana—
And then there was Anna DeVoss
�This page intentionally left blank
�SUMMER, 1974
�This page intentionally left blank
�Chapter I
How could two or three weeks with an old
woman in a place called Holy Rood Valley cure
more than six years of pain and frustration? It was
too much to expect or even to hope for. The hell
with it! She shook her head and concentrated on
the climbing road.
After the van ahead had crossed the narrow
bridge and crept into the right lane of the four-lane
segment of highway, Anna DeVoss shifted to third
and stamped down on the accelerator, her long
legs working in unison with her arms. The red
Porsche shot ahead into the left lane, throwing
Anna's head back against the headrest. She glanced
toward her mother-in-law to see if she had been
inconvenienced. Mrs. DeVoss stared straight
ahead, a troubled look narrowing her eyes. Anna
knew she was worrying about an older sister in a
Jacksonville hospital.
Once past the van, she cut back into the right
lane and slowed, climbing the eastern slope of the
Appalachians at a more leisurely pace. Suddenly
there was a tightness in her ears and she swallowed,
clearing them. She turned her head occasionally,
1
�2
The Summer People
gazing through the huge bug-eyed sun shades at
the green knolls and ridges as they swelled skyward
to her right or dropped away to her left. Approaching three thousand feet, she could feel a change in
the air, an unfamiliar coolness as the backwash
swept past her left arm resting on the door.
Just before they climbed the final grade, before
they ducked beneath the stone bridge of the Parkway and crossed the spine of the Blue Ridge at
Deep Gap, Anna looked back to her left. The Appalachians rolled away toward the Piedmont to the
south-east, blue and misty, ridge beyond ridge,
mountain dome after mountain dome, fading out
in haze along the horizon. The farthest range she
could discern appeared higher than the Blue
Ridge, but she knew it was an illusion. The mountains were actually stepping downward toward the
foothills, toward the rolling landscape of the western North Carolina Piedmont and the flatlands beyond. From the highway east of Wilkesboro, the
range she now crossed had climbed toward the sky,
blue and hazy. But now, spreading around her, the
slopes wore the brilliant green of early June. She
and Pete had once driven along Skyline Drive, in
western Virginia's modest contribution to the Appalachian range, but she had never been in mountains this rugged before. They subdued her. She
had an urge to steer onto the right shoulder and
hug the bank, away from the dropoff to her left.
Yet there was a tranquility in being here that as-
�John Foster West
3
suaged ever so slightly the old sadness hovering
about the edges of her awareness. Beyond the Blue
Ridge, the sensation of being in the mountains diminished, as she drove through rolling hills and
farmlands and passed small roadside businesses.
The town of Boone, dominated by the highrise
dormitories of Appalachian State University, lay
along a narrow valley, spilling over hills and ridges
to the east and west. They stopped at a huge old
building of faded weatherboarding and ate lunch,
served from dishes placed on their table, family
style. Mrs. DeVoss nibbled at her food, her mind
far away, but Anna ate with relish. The vegetables
and stewed apples were especially delicious, probably because they had been seasoned with pork.
Between bites, Anna would glance occasionally toward the stranger who was her mother-in-law, sympathizing with her, yet feeling inadequate because
she knew of nothing she could say that would ease
the worry of her companion. Maud DeVoss was a
tall, slender woman with a gaunt but handsome
face. Her nose was straight as a rifle barrel, the
kind of nose her son had had. Anna had discovered
in the last four days that the older woman could
be talkative and pleasant company occasionally, but
not today.
They left town, heading southwestward past
green slopes with red wounds in them where bulldozers had gouged out bays for tourist shops and
apartment houses. The highway was a two-lane
�4
The Summer People
strip of asphalt which climbed a gradual rise and
then dropped steeply for a mile, passing chalets,
an asphalt plant, and a campground, as it blacksnaked its way downward into a meandering valley.
Anna's gaze kept straying from the road, picking
out rock formations, cone-shaped hills, and narrow
valleys wandering away to the left and right. The
Appalachians here were not blue, a darkling land,
as the Cherokees had called them, but flaming
green, an overwhelming green which soothed her
and shut her away from the rush of the world she
had left that morning.
She was startled when Mrs. DeVoss spoke.
"You turn right just beyond that bridge ahead."
But she had already moved her foot to brake.
She had known where to turn. Pete had brought
her along this route more than once, in their conversations, although they had never found time to
come here together. Never would find— She cut
the thought short, like slicing a taut cord.
They followed the left bank of a swift little river
for about two miles, most of the time beneath a
dense canopy of trees. The narrow, winding strip
of asphalt probably followed an old wagon road,
which followed an older Indian trail, which in turn
followed an even older buffalo trail. Pete had once
told her that many of the mountain roads followed
old animal trails, with the original curves and
stream crossings still in them.
�John Foster West
5
Mrs. DeVoss spoke again after they left the tunnel of trees and approached a huge, two-story
building on the right, dark with age. There was a
narrow little porch, two rusting gas pumps like two
strangers standing close together for companionship, and a dilapidated farm wagon to one side, the
mules hitched to it testing the sound of the approaching car with long ears swinging from side to
side like hairy antennae. Anna could see faded
signs on the side of the building: Peach Snuff,
Rumford Baking Powder, B. C. Headache Powders, and Nehi Grape.
"That's Sparr's Store," Maud DeVoss said.
"That's where the community trade and get their
mail."
Anna glanced at her. The sadness had left her
face briefly and was replaced by a pensive tranquility. She turned her head to study the old building
as they moved past it. Anna wondered whether she
was remembering the many times she had visited
the store with her late husband or if she was recalling some specific occasion that had remained a
pleasant memory.
Half a mile beyond the store, she veered to the
left onto a dirt road, crossed a narrow, low-water
bridge spanning the river, an iron grill cattle bridge
beyond, and shifted to third, climbing at an angle
to the right, the spur of the ridge. A one-strand
electric fence ran along the base of the slope, which
�6
The Summer People
had been stamped into countless parallel terraces
by the feet of generations of grazing cattle.
"That stream is the Watauga River," Mrs. DeVoss muttered, almost to herself, it seemed. "It
empties indirectly into the Gulf of Mexico."
Anna glanced toward her again but said nothing. She followed a sharp curve back to the left,
then turned to the right, climbing the gently rising
slope. To her left, fifty yards away, a forest began
in a straight line and stretched away toward the
base of the ridge, to rise again in the distance, covering a higher knoll. Up ahead, the black shingled
roof of a farmhouse came into view, beyond which
she could see the tin roof of a barn and other outbuildings. Several Black Angus and white-faced
cattle grazed off to her right, two of them raising
their heads to stare indifferently at the approaching car, chewing slowly.
"That's the Webber place," Mrs. DeVoss said,
pointing. "They own all the land around here." She
paused, thoughtful. "Except, of course, the lots for
the three summer places back in the woods."
A road branched off to the left, straight into the
forest, and Anna could see the roof of an A-frame
cabin with a glass front, partly concealed by trees.
A short distance beyond, she turned left into a second road. She could not see the DeVoss chalet until
she had passed a stand of young white pines and
was suddenly in the yard, if the place could be said
to have a yard. The drive ended in a loop circling
�John Foster West
7
tall oaks and poplars near the front door, four
short parking bays perpendicular to the house
front. Anna pulled into the one nearest the front
steps and switched off the engine.
For several seconds she and the older woman
sat in silence, as Anna studied the building. It was
built of hewn logs, black with age, logs, Pete had
once told her, that Dr. DeVoss had obtained from
an old barn some native had sold him. The architecture was rectangular, the steep roof covered
with cedar shakes, the eaves at right angles to the
driveway. A stone chimney was built against the
near side of the cabin, a door to the right of it and
a window to the left. Even the cement chinking
between the logs seemed darkened by time, with
here and there patches of moss or lichen splotching
it like creeping blight.
"Well, this is Greenworld." Mrs. DeVoss looked
at her and smiled. "How do you like it?"
Anna stared straight ahead. She tried to visualize a young Pete DeVoss, barefoot and in shorts,
brown as an Indian, shinnying up the trees or scurrying away among them. "It's lovely," she said
softly. "It's—it's out of my world. It's wonderful."
When Mrs. DeVoss reached for the handle of
the door, Anna opened her own. She unfolded
from the deep bucket seat and towered above the
top of the Porsche. Her knees cracked, loud in the
silent forest. There was a catch in her back. She
braced her hand against the top of the car, her
�8
The Summer People
balance awry. The long ride had molded her into
one position too long. A moment later, she hurried
around the car. She opened the other door and
grasped Mrs. DeVoss's hand, helping her out and
to her feet. The older woman tottered a moment,
but quickly adjusted to standing.
Anna followed her up the hewn-log steps onto
the deck of the chalet. By the time they had
reached the door, Mrs. DeVoss had a bunch of
keys in her hand and unlocked the door. Despite
the light from several windows, Anna had to peer
and blink rapidly, coming from the bright outer
light into the gloom. She removed her sunglasses
and looked about her. There was a slight taint of
mustiness in the air, a closeness resulting from the
fact that the cabin had been shut up for several
months without ventilation, but the odor was not
unpleasant. It gave her a feeling of nostalgia, a
sense of old things long unused, which results in a
gentle sadness.
On her left, dominating the front of the cabin,
was a large stone fireplace with raised hearth and
a stone mantel. Above it hung a painting framed
with wormy chestnut. She studied it briefly. Several
little men and women dressed like Pilgrims frolicked in a wood, one of their children riding a reddish-brown squirrel along a rotting log. Comfortable looking leather-padded chairs sat tranquilly
in front of the fireplace, four of them, once black
but now scarred and faded. They reminded Anna
�John Foster West
9
of old men drawn together for a quiet conversation, but momentarily silent. A black bearskin rug
sprawled between the chairs and the hearth, the
head snarling toward some unseen enemy across
the room.
The right end of the cabin consisted of two bedrooms, a bathroom separating them. The rest of
the interior was cathedral, including the fireplace
and living area and the kitchen-dining area. The
left end of the building contained a sink beneath
double windows. There were an electric stove, a
refrigerator, and a lazy-Susan table, with ladderback chairs marshaled around it. Between the living area and the far wall was a reading area,
crowded bookcases lining the wall and rearing ceilingward between two windows. There was no radio, no television, not even a telephone that Anna
could see.
"The master bedroom is the farther one there,"
Mrs. DeVoss explained, as they crossed the oak
floor. "You take it, since you'll probably be here
longer than I will. It's larger than the other, and
the double bed will give you sprawling room."
Anna stopped in front of the bathroom door.
"No! No, don't let's do that. I don't want to deprive
you of comfort. I can switch rooms if you have to
leave earlier."
Mrs. DeVoss touched her lightly on the shoulder, smiling tiredly. "Don't argue with me, child. I
know what's been going on inside you since we left
�10
The Summer People
Arlington. At least I think I do. The room is yours.
That settles it."
Anna hesitated, but could think of no further
argument. "All right, then." She turned to the left,
toward her bedroom. "You're the boss."
Inside, she stared about her. A huge fourposter bed sat in the far corner to her right, a
patchwork quilt serving as a spread. Matching the
bed, an antique dresser of red cherry stood against
the wall close by to her left, and a matching chest
of drawers reared upward on her right, beside the
door. A Boston rocker with splint-bottom and back
waited in the corner farther to her right, a reading
lamp peering over the left shoulder of whatever
ghost occupied it at the moment. At the right end
of the cabin, double windows permitted a view of
the gently rising slope of the ridge. A single window beside the bed looked out onto the back deck
of the cabin.
She crossed the oval hooked rug, placed her
right knee on the window seat, and raised the window beside the bed. Immediately, the room was
filled with a lulling, liquid murmur from down the
slope and to the right. She had known the waterfall
would be there, but it caught her by surprise when
it asserted itself on the silence. The window opened
onto the screened sleeping deck, and beyond it, the
slope fell gently through a maze of columns whose
green tops reared from sight somewhere above the
roof. Below the intrusion of the waterfall, Anna
�John Foster West
11
could vaguely hear the flutter of a stream over and
around rocks somewhere in the woods farther
down the slope.
"Besides, you can hear the falls better from this
room."
Anna whirled. Mrs. DeVoss stood just inside
the door, a hand braced against the door facing.
"I was already alone in a strange world," Anna
laughed. "You startled me."
"The waterfall is an added blessing," the older
woman said. "It is a balm for sadness, although
there's something—something sad about the sound
of it. You will go to sleep hearing it, and you will
wake up hearing it, and it will be a calm voice assuring you everything will be all right." Mrs. DeVoss
was not looking at Anna. She was staring above the
bed at a large photograph of a young man and
woman in wedding clothing. "We spent every summer in this room for thirty-nine years," she continued, "except part of one in Austria. I have been
here forty-one—since the summer of 1933."
"It—it's a peaceful room," Anna said, not
knowing what else to say. "I'm sure I'll enjoy it."
Mrs. DeVoss turned and left the room quickly.
Anna heard the bathroom door close, and she was
left alone.
After Anna had carried their bags in, placing
them in the respective bedrooms, Mrs. DeVoss still
had not left the bathroom. Once Anna started to
knock on the door, hesitated, then let her arm
�12
The Summer People
drop. Without any clear direction, she went out
onto the back deck. She crossed it, thrust open the
screen door and descended the steps. The straight
boles of yellow pines and poplars towered upward,
blotting out the sky, except for a swatch of blue
here and there. A path led down the side of the
ridge, but away from it the forest was almost clear
of undergrowth. She could hear the gush of the
waterfall even more clearly outside here, and the
cool of the forest settled about her, denying the
existence of an afternoon sun.
As she descended the meandering path, her
sandals made soft swishing sounds now and then
to break the silence of the forest. Ferns grew in
isolated beds on both sides of the trail. A mossy
boulder reared up suddenly in front of her.
Rounding it, she reached the banks of the rushing
stream ten feet beyond. The path crossed the creek
on two stepping-stones and continued onward, but
a tributary path traced the left bank, upstream. She
followed it, her eyes on the splashing water, and
reached the flowers before she knew they were
there. When she raised her eyes suddenly, she
stopped, her lips parted in surprise. A jungle of
Rosebay rhododendron stretched away from the
right bank, their long, leathery leaves gleaming like
metal in the forest twilight. But they were overshadowed by thousands of pink flowers, round
clumps of them, reaching out of sight and covering
the surface of the shrubbery like a brilliant froth.
�John Foster West
13
Anna had never seen rhododendron in bloom before. She stood there staring, a little-girl look of
delight and surprise softening the fatigue about
her mouth and eyes. Back of her seeing was a symphony of odors, none of which she could identify
other than to suspect that they were a blend of gifts
from the forest, just as was the gush of the waterfall, somewhere close by.
Anna was startled back to awareness when
some kind of bird, perhaps a woodpecker, leaped
from a tree behind her, its wings drumming the air
as it darted off into the forest, uttering shrill cries.
She turned and looked after it, then followed the
path farther upstream, the waterfall growing
louder with each step. The stream and path looped
back to the left around a peninsula of rhododendron. She rounded it and suddenly there it was.
The brook leaped over the brim of a low granite escarpment and arched out, then plunged into
a deep pool beneath, foaming like champagne. The
drop was not more than ten or twelve feet, but the
flashing white scimitar of water gave Anna the impression of a greater distance. The pool was surrounded by a flat crescent of granite which on her
side slid gradually beneath the pool, climbing to a
garden of moss adjacent to the woods.
Kicking off her sandals, she waded into the
pool, but stopped ankle deep, at the utter coldness
of the water. She squatted and ruffled her fingers
along the surface, then stopped again to let it calm.
�14
The Summer People
She studied her reflection, almost as clear as a mirror. Her face in the water was bracketed by her
knees. She brought her knees together and tugged
at the hem of her short skirt, a mother-induced
gesture of modesty. A sudden flicker of motion
caught her attention. Three feet away, two fish,
probably brook trout, darted away from her, the
shadow of one chasing the shadow of the other
along the pebbled bottom.
Walking backward onto the rock, Anna sat
down beside her sandals. The sun-warmed rock
added a comfortable glow to her buttocks through
her skirt. At that moment she noticed the butterflies—black and gold, yellow, pale blue and orange—hanging close to the falling water, rising and
drifting downward on beating wings as though
drinking the mist that hovered just above the falls.
Butterfly Falls, that was what Pete had called them.
Now she could see why. She lay back, her hands
clasped beneath her head, and stared upward at
the splotches of sky showing through the canopy
of pines and spruce towering over her. She relaxed
against the warm granite, her breathing long and
slow. For the first time that day she was aware of
how weary she really was.
Day before yesterday at Arlington Cemetery—
today, seven long hours from Norfolk to Greenworld in Watauga County. She closed her eyes. Far
away, her memory echoed rifle shots in unison and
the mournful sound of TAPS. A flag was folded
�John Foster West
15
expertly, revealing the utilitarian shape of the vault
it had covered. A colorful triangle of fabric was
thrust into the hands of the young woman in the
dark suit, shattering her brown study. She stared
from the flag to the officer as though wondering
what to do with it. Then the scene shuttled forward
like a silent movie skipping frames, and the couple,
the young woman and her older companion, were
wading through the forest of white crosses, leaving
the metal cubicle behind—the cubicle she was expected to believe held the decayed remains of the
young buck she had once held in her arms. She had
looked back once and had felt nothing, no rapport
with broken bones and fabric. Although the military was sure—the identification was beyond
doubt—Anna DeVoss had not felt that the remains
of her mate were stored in that metal cubicle. Her
mind had known and had accepted the obvious,
but her heart could not believe. She herself had
not seen the bones of Pete DeVoss. His boyish grin,
his muscular body, after six years, were still too
real for her to let go. The last notes of TAPS faded,
faded, and the two women merged into the green
hillside, disappearing.
Anna awakened suddenly, shivering. A chilly
breeze swept across her, fluffing the hem of her
skirt. In the distance she heard the roar of the
plane hurtling earthward. She sprang to a seated
position, staring about her. It was only the roar of
the waterfall. Her heartbeat slowed. She could see
�16
The Summer People
little flecks of the sun through the pines to the west.
She checked her wristwatch. It was after six. Buckling on her sandals, she got to her feet and returned down the stream, along the rocky path.
Once, she glimpsed a little man in dark knickers
and silver buckles on his shoes and wearing a Pilgrim hat, as he sat on a rock stroking a squirrel
almost as large as himself. But when she squinted
to get a better look, only the squirrel was visible.
Or had it been the ghost that lived in her brain
that had seen it, the ghost that sometimes talked
to her?
Mrs. DeVoss, busy in the kitchen, looked at her
curiously when she entered the cabin, but said
nothing. Anna entered her room, removed her
robe and mules from one of the open bags, and
went into the bathroom. She took off her halter,
skirt, and half-slip and was ready to shower. She
stood for a long time letting the fine jets of water
pepper her shoulders, back, and breasts. It felt so
soothing, she almost went to sleep, standing with
her hands braced against the shower walls. After a
while she slid back the shower panel and began to
towel herself, rubbing until the flesh of her arms
and torso turned a healthy red. She stepped out
onto the bath mat to dry her legs and was startled
when she caught a sudden movement out of the
sides of her eyes.
Anna whirled, towel covering her lower body,
�John Foster West
17
and had to laugh when she saw the tall young
woman staring at her with open mouth, out of the
full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom
door. She stopped, finishing up first one foot, then
the other, as she watched her movements in the
mirror. She walked to within a couple of feet of the
door and studied her reflection critically. At five
feet, nine, she appeared taller than she actually was
because she was so slender. But her hips were feminine and the slight dome of her belly did not require a girdle. There was no sign she had ever
worn a bathing suit. She did not tan easily and had
never been a fanatic about the fad, although she
had spent countless sunny days at Virginia Beach
over the years. She looked at her breasts, cupping
her right hand to lift the right one slightly and feel
it for any suspicious lump. They were not overly
large and were as white as her belly.
Anna studied her face. At twenty-four, it was
still young and pretty, except for dark shadows under the light blue eyes—under the gray eyes. At the
moment they were gray, reflecting the moroseness
that had lived inside her for the last several days.
When she smiled suddenly—Pete had always accused her of grinning like a school kid—her eyes
turned light blue. Her brown hair, with highlights
of gold, was cut in a shag, and her nose was small
and neat. She had learned long ago that it was her
mouth that men noticed first. Her lips were full
�18
The Summer People
and sensuous, her lower lip slightly fuller than her
upper. Her thick black brows seemed devised to
steal the attention from her mouth.
Donning the robe and mules, she joined Mrs.
DeVoss at the lazy-Susan table where they ate a
dinner her mother-in-law had prepared from cans.
The meal passed mostly in silence, and Anna
washed the dishes afterwards while Mrs. DeVoss
bathed. It was still light outside when Anna told
her companion good night and entered her bedroom, closing the door. She sat for a while, trying
to read a short story from a collection she had
taken from the bookcase, but the words kept blurring and running across the page like speckled
amoebae under a microscope. Above the muted
buzz and tinkle of nocturnal insects, the quiet roar
of the waterfall intruded on her awareness.
Twilight had just begun to sift down through
the canopy of foliage sheltering the cabin when
Anna drew back the covers, removed her robe, and
stretched out on the bed. She could smell the faint
mustiness of the bed covers, unused for a year, and
could feel a gentle wave of air enter the open window and sweep across her body, stirring her hair,
cooling her. God, but she was weary! She let her
muscles relax and collapsed inward into herself,
breathing evenly. The firm mattress was comfortable, sustaining her weight with authority. Her
chest rose and fell. Her mind was a huge house
with many lighted windows. Someone was running
�John Foster West
19
through the house from room to room switching
off the lights. Finally, only two lights were left, then
one. She did not know when that light was turned
off. The house remained dark, but some area of
her mind was aware that she became chilly during
the night, arousing her defenses enough so that she
covered herself with a sheet and blanket, leaving
the patchwork quilt thrown aside.
�Chapter II
She was back at UNC, and a neighbor was calling her, waking her for her first class. Bess must
be outside the apartment calling me through the
window, her mind reasoned, because her voice is
muted. No, it could not be Bess. It's a man's voice.
It's Pete calling me. He's back from a flight, back
from Vietnam, back from—No! Not that word. But
it had to be Pete. What other man would call her
from her sleep?
Anna sat up in bed, her hands leaping to cover
her ears, her eyes wide with fear. Then she calmed,
orienting herself. She tilted her head to listen.
There came another series of loud knocks on the
front door, followed by silence. Then a man's voice,
muffled by the intervening doors and walls, called
again. "Maud! Maud! Hey, Maud, wake up, please
ma'am!"
Slipping to the floor, Anna seized her robe,
flung it around her, tying the sash with fingers still
half asleep, and opened her bedroom door. She
paused in the doorway, uncertain, then hurried
across the cabin on her bare feet toward the front
of the house.
20
�John Foster West
21
She opened the front door and stared at Jesus
Christ, Superstar, who stood two feet away, fist
raised to knock again. The first object to catch her
attention was the mop of golden kinky hair and the
next was the cropped, kinky beard, parted at the
center of the chin like a Spartan warrior's. The
surprised eyes stared back at her, a flecked amber.
The narrow mask of face between the mustache
and hair was peppered with freckles, as were the
upraised fist and forearm.
Why she should have been surprised at the appearance of a stranger she could not say, but surprise was chiefly what she felt at the moment. "Yes,
what could I do for you?" she demanded.
For a few seconds longer he stared at her face,
then let his eyes shift to include the rest of her. "I
need to see Maud," he said. "I have a message for
her."
"Maud?" Anna stared at him, her mind blank.
"Oh, yes, you mean Mrs. DeVoss," she said, suddenly understanding.
For a moment the man appeared flustered.
"Yes, Mrs. DeVoss." His shallow little laugh might
have been a slight apology or a punctuation sound.
"I've always called her Maud. Known her since I
was a kid."
Anna could not have guessed his age with a gun
to her head. He wore faded, patched jeans, the
kind a beatnik might wear—or a farmer—a faded
plaid shirt, and ragged sneakers without socks.
�22
The Summer People
They eyed each other a moment longer in silence.
Then the young man took a step backward, retreating.
"I'm Jay Webber," he explained, his solemn
frown proof of identification. "We own the farm."
He waved his arms to include the surrounding
world, then abandoned it, letting it fall.
"Oh, yes!" she said. "Maud—Mrs. DeVoss is still
asleep. Ill get her."
She left him standing on the deck and hurried
toward Mrs. DeVoss's bedroom door. But before
she reached it, Maud DeVoss appeared, a pink
robe about her.
Anna stopped. "There's a young man here,"
she said. "He says his name is Webber. Says he has
a message for you."
"Yes, that'll be Jay Webber." Mrs. DeVoss was
looking beyond her, blinking sleepily. "JaY> do
come in!" she called as she approached the front
door. "Don't stand out there like you were a
stranger."
Anna turned to watch Jay Webber enter the
cabin and meet Mrs. DeVoss, hug her. "When did
you grow that beard?" she asked. "I swear, it's hard
to tell what you'll do next. I bet your daddy would
have made you shave it off."
His laugh was casual. "Just got tired of shaving," he said. "Don't think about it much anymore
unless somebody mentions it."
�John Foster West
23
He had a slow, folksy drawl, a manner of speaking Pete had sometimes imitated when teasing
Anna.
"This is my daughter-in-law, Anna, Jay." Mrs.
DeVoss nodded toward her. "Jay is our neighbor
and handy man—looks after the cabin when we're
away and keeps everything working when we're
here."
"Howdy, ma'am." Jay Webber bowed ever so
slightly. Anna had a feeling the gesture was exaggerated.
"Good to meet you," she said. "Please excuse
me." She returned to her bedroom, closing the
door after her.
When she re-appeared later, dressed in yellow
shorts and a white blouse, she found Mrs. DeVoss
seated by the fireplace, sobbing silently. Anna approached her, hesitated, then placed a hand on the
other woman's shoulder. "Do you want to talk to
me about it?" she asked softly.
Mrs. DeVoss sat up straight, wiping at her eyes
with her fingers. Without glasses on, her eyes were
pits of blue wrinkles. "It was a call from Cousin
Dinnah," she said. "Mable is worse—critical. I—I
must go to her. Would you please drive me to the
Greensboro Airport?"
"I'm so sorry," Anna said. "Certainly. We'll get
you packed, and I'll have you there in no time."
Maud DeVoss was quiet all the way down and
�24
The Summer People
out of the mountains, staring ahead through her
heavy lenses, her mind apparently already in
Jacksonville. After they had passed Wilkesboro and
were tracing the rolling hills of the Piedmont, she
said, "Stay in the cabin as long as you like, Anna.
All summer, if it suits you. The mountains will calm
you after those long years of—of waiting, not
knowing for sure whether Pete—It's strange what
a healthy perspective the mountains can give one
who is used to living in hellish traffic and hubbub.
After a while up there alone, you can see what has
happened to you in a different light. You can—can
come to accept things as they are."
For a moment Anna was embarrassed. Although Maud DeVoss had not turned to look at
her, she felt trapped by her scrutiny, as though her
companion had been reading her mind for the last
three days. She had never discussed how she felt
about Pete, missing in action, with her mother-inlaw or anyone else because her feelings were so
confused and personal she could not have analyzed
them abstractly, let alone put them into words.
They had hardly discussed husband and son at all
on the way to and from the military funeral, both
of them skirting the subject as though it were something obscene and unmentionable.
"Thank you, Maud," she said. "I'll stay awhile.
It is peaceful at Greenworld." She paused. "I do
hope your sister improves."
�John Foster West
25
"It's not likely. It's terminal cancer. It's just a
matter of enduring it to the end."
As they approached Friendship Airport, Anna
felt a loss, regret that she had never got to know
her mother-in-law any better than she had. The
short military life she had spent with Pete had not
permitted it, and after his carrier had sailed for
Vietnam, after he had gone down on his second
mission, she had been too busy losing herself in
school to join her in-laws at Greenworld or to visit
them in Jacksonville. Once, she and Pete had spent
three days with them. Then, when Dr. DeVoss had
died, she remained four days with her mother-inlaw, but it was hardly a time to get well acquainted.
Now, she felt as though she were losing an old
friend—an old friend she never got to know at all,
never would know.
When they embraced just before Maud DeVoss
boarded her plane, the two women wept briefly
and quietly, but for different reasons. Maud DeVoss, Anna guessed, for her dying sister, because
she had long ago accommodated herself to the loss
of her son and husband. But Anna DeVoss wept
because she was losing someone she never had, the
mother of her husband, a woman she might have
grown to love and confide in, but never would
know, now. Somehow, she was certain of that. If,
or whenever they met again, it would be under
different emotional circumstances, a young and an
�26
The Summer People
old woman passing in the daytime, pausing to exchange platitudes.
When Anna returned to Holy Rood Valley,
around 2:00 P.M., she pulled into the graveled
parking area in front of Sparr's Store. She was dying of thirst, but more importantly, she needed to
buy a few things. Climbing the steps to the tune of
creaks, she opened the rusty screen door and entered a cavernous room as gloomy as a barn loft.
Huge windows at either end of the long building
were glazed by decades of dust which daylight
penetrated grudgingly. Her nose was assailed by
many odors, some of them familiar, some of them,
but not all, pleasant in a nostalgic way—new leather,
ground coffee, raw plug tobacco. She was stopped
by the sudden silence. Three old men sat around
the huge round stove which dominated the center
of the store like a totem, as though they had been
left over from last winter, still talking about the old
times. They had hushed when she came in, mouths
half open, staring at her with friendly curiosity.
Anna stood a moment longer, blinking through
her huge octagonal sun glasses as her eyes adjusted
to the gloom. Finally, she removed them and
dropped them into her handbag. As she paced forward slowly, stalking her audience, uncertain as to
how to break the silence, one of them braced his
hands against his knees and got slowly to his feet.
Unlike the other two men, he wore khaki pants,
�John Foster West
27
with a white shirt and blue polkadot bowtie. He
was a little man, hardly as tall as Anna, with a shining, florid face and a wing of graying brown hair
combed across his pate. He grinned, showing a
gold canine tooth, and nodded rapidly, then shuffled forward with outstretched hand.
"You must be Mrs. DeVoss, young Pete's widder," he beamed, pronouncing the Mrs. as Mizeries.
"I'm Henry Sparr."
Anna stared at him in surprise, then took the
cool, dry little hand. "Yes, I'm Anna DeVoss," she
said. "But how did you know?"
Henry Sparr laughed a cackling laugh. "I'm the
local know-it-all," he grinned. "I know everything
that goes on in Holy Rood Valley, like my pa and
my grandpa before me." He paused to study her
reaction, apparently. When she did not respond,
he continued, "No, I'll tell you the truth, Annar.
Jay Webber come by today and mentioned that you
and Maud was at the DeVoss cabin. The way he
described you, I couldn't a-missed. That boy's got
a sharp eye for things is purty."
For a moment Anna felt a surge of resentment
toward one Jay Webber, hillbilly Paul Revere, then
forgot him. She was a little surprised at how quickly
the old man had seized her first name as a familiar
tool. But she supposed it was a mountain custom
which allowed a young Jay Webber to call her
mother-in-law Maud, instead of Mrs.
�28
The Summer People
"Annar, this here is Grove Miller," Henry Sparr
said, as one of the other two men, tall and angular,
stood and extended his hand. He wore a blue
denim shirt under his overalls and a battered black
felt hat.
"Proud to make your acquaintance, Annar,"
Grove Miller said. "Pete DeVoss was a fine young
feller, and Dr. DeVoss was a angel." He pronounced it DE-voss.
His hand was calloused and rough as torn sandpaper to Anna's touch. "How do you do, Mr.
Miller?" she said.
"And this here'n is Lem Perkins."
The third man reminded Anna a lot of Grove
Miller, except for his straw field hat. "Howdy," he
nodded and smiled, then sat back down. Anna was
aware that he was trying not to look directly at her
legs, below her shorts, but he yielded to temptation
at the last moment, before tilting his head and staring at the dark rafters.
"Would you like to see my store?" the storekeeper asked. "Folks has come here from Canady
all the way to Cubie and bought stuff. Been here
on this spot for eighty-nine year."
Anna looked about her again. It was straight
out of the nineteenth century, except for the lights
dangling on long, black wires from the rafters and
an ancient frigidaire behind the counter, in the far
corner. Even the cash register was antique. A glass
�John Foster West
29
showcase stretched along one wall close by. Boxes
of buttons, spools of thread, pocket knives, and
boxes of striped stick candy could be seen through
the scratched glass.
"This room ain't all of it," Henry Sparr explained, when she hesitated. "This here is jest the
main part."
"Why—why, I would like to see it, Mr. Sparr,"
she said. "It's an interesting place."
She followed him through a gap between the
wooden and glass counters and up some steps into
a wing of the huge old building. They passed a
stairway on the right leading up higher and entered another room, darker than the main store.
Farm tools were scattered about the room, cluttering the floor and leaning against the walls. Anna
recognized hoes, shovels, and pitchforks. Three or
four kinds of plows were sitting here and there.
Henry Sparr grasped the handle of one of them
and turned toward her, grinning.
"I bet you a purty you don't know what this
here is."
"It's a—a plow." She wondered if he really
thought she was too stupid to know.
"Yeah, it's a plow, all right. But what manner
of plow?" His grin broadened.
"I don't know. I grew up on a dairy farm, but
I didn't plow much."
"It's a 13 Oliver-Chill. Best two-hoss plow in
�30
The Summer People
these parts. Made right over the mountains there,
in Chattanoogie, Tennessee."
Anna hesitated, wondering what the catch was.
"Yeah," she nodded finally, "it's a fine looking
plow, all right."
"I bet you don't know what them things is."
He was peering upward. She tilted her head
and saw several old horse collars hanging from
nails driven into the overhead beams. "They look
like horse collars," she said.
"They are. They are," he affirmed. "They truly
are. I bet you can't guess what I'm doing with used
hoss collars."
"I can't imagine," she said, hesitating. "Unless
you put them on used horses."
He laughed, throwing back his head, then
slapped her on the back, staggering her. Briefly,
she felt a surge of resentment at his familiarity.
"That's funny. Used hosses. Nope, they's another
reason. Them Floridy tourist folks buy'em and put
looking-glasses in'em."
"Put what in them?"
"Looking-glasses!" He stared at her in puzzlement. "You know, mirrors."
"Oh, mirrors. You mean they really put mirrors
inside used horse collars?"
"That they do." He rubbed his hands together,
chuckling. "That makes them antiques. Anything
that's a antique, they can hang on their parlor wall,
even if it's a used hoss collar with a looking-glass in it."
�John Foster West
31
Anna laughed, amused at the old storekeeper's
sense of humor. And she was flattered in a way.
Obviously, he considered her a flatlander too smart
to hang horse collar mirrors on her parlor wall,
just as he considered the DeVoss family separate
from the typical tourists.
"Come on." He took her by the arm and escorted her back toward the door through which
they had entered. "You ain't seen everything yet
by a long shot. My grandpa built this store back
around 1885. Runned it all his life. My pa runned
it all his life, post office, too. I've worked it bout all
my life, and you want to know somethin'? I got a
boy that's a lawyer, and he ain't inter-rested in runnin' it. Reckon I'll jest have to get shet of it, when
I run down."
They climbed the shadowy steps higher and entered a great sprawling room beneath the eaves.
She stifled a cough, assailed by the tight dustiness
of the air, air flavored by spicy smells she could not
identify. The four small windows about the walls
supplied more light than the larger windows downstairs. Around the perimeter of the floor, close to
the sloping roof, lay piles of dark roots and what
appeared to Anna to be chips of decaying bark.
The center of the room was occupied with at least
two dozen hand-made, split-bottomed chairs, both
ladderback dining chairs and Boston rockers. In
the far corner to her left sat a long, dark box that
looked like a casket.
�32
The Summer People
"I bet you a purty you don't know what that
stuff is." Henry Sparr pointed to the dark piles
along the edge of the room.
"It looks to me like roots and bark," she said.
He squinted at her. "Now how did a young lady
like you figure that out?"
"Well," she was puzzled at his surprise, "that's
just what it looks like."
"And that's precisely what it is. We used to take
in roots and herbs. Up here's where we stored'em
at. That stuff there was left over after we stopped
shipping them out. It's jest laid there year after
year not botherin nothin, and I've let it be."
"And I suppose," Anna laughed, "you're going
to tell me that thing over there—" She pointed,
"—is a coffin."
"That hit is!" Henry Sparr chuckled. "Grandpa
sold everything from baby cradles to coffins.
That'un is the only one we got left. Still belongs to
old Sandy MacTavish. Belongs to his heirs, I
reckon. But they ain't never spoke for it."
"Why didn't Mr. MacTavish use it?"
"Now that's a long story. He did use it, but not
in the usual manner." Henry Sparr studied her solemnly, but there was a twinkle in his eyes. "Old
Sandy studied dyin about all his livelong life, nearabouts. He had that coffin made out of black locust
planks cause that wood don't never hardly rot in
the ground. Black locust trees don't grow too big
around, but Sandy had him some little planks
�John Foster West
33
sawed out anyways, even if they was narrer. He had
Grandpa's coffin maker, Jed Hackett, to make the
coffin to Sandy's measure, which was purty big.
Sandy used to come up here onct or twict a month
and lay back in his coffin and sing 'When the Roll
Is Called up Yander.' Folks never knowed was he
drunk, crazy, or what. You ask me why he didn't
use it finally at last. That's the strangest part of all.
Old Sandy was drowned in the 1916 fresh, and his
body wasn't never found."
Anna's first impulse was to laugh at Sandy MacTavish's frustrated plans for eternity. An image of
the pomp and circumstances in Arlington Cemetery crossed her mind, and it was no longer funny.
She was suddenly sad for old Sandy.
"Let's go back downstairs," she said. "It's
spooky up here."
Henry Sparr stopped behind the old cash register, stooped, and lifted a small door in the floor
under the counter. He looked at Anna and
grinned. "I bet you a purty you can't guess what
this here door was used for."
Anna shook her head. "No. I can't guess. Did
you drop trash through, beneath the house?"
"Nope, but you're a gettin warm. We used to
take chickens in trade from folks hereabouts. Pa
built a fence around the store outside and used the
underneath space for a chicken lot. One day he
decided it would be easier and save time if he cut
him a hole in the floor, here, and dropped the
�34
The Summer People
chickens through instead of totin'em outside and
around to the door of the lot."
"Sheer genius," Anna laughed. "Your pa was a
smart man."
She turned to watch Grove Miller behind the
wooden counter. He had taken a roll of bologna
and a huge wedge of cheese from the refrigerator
and was making a sandwich, cutting thick slices of
bread from what looked like a homemade loaf. He
smeared the bread with mayonnaise and placed a
slice of the meat and a slice of the cheese between
the bread. Anna's mouth was suddenly full of saliva. Her stomach was a void demanding attention.
She remembered she had had neither breakfast
nor lunch. As she swallowed, she was convinced
that nothing in the world could satisfy her hunger
but a sandwich exactly like the one Grove Miller
was just biting into.
She turned to the storekeeper. "Mr. Sparr,
could I please, please make me a sandwich like
that?"
"Hep yourself. Hep yourself," he grinned. "Jest
a quarter. My old womern baked the bread jest
yesterdy."
Anna sat in a chair by the cold iron stove and
ate the best sandwich she had ever put in her
mouth, drinking a cold orange drink between bites.
Henry Sparr and Grove Miller sat facing her, grinning. Lem Perkins had left while she and the storekeeper were upstairs.
�John Foster West
35
"Yep, the DeVosses was the first summer people to build in the valley," Henry Sparr stated.
"Summer folks had been comin to Blowing Rock
and Linville for years on end. Course, Linville is
not in this county. We was let purty much alone
out here, raisin our own corn and cabbages and
Burley tobacker and stuff. One day Dr. DeVoss
and Maud comes through in their Lasalle. That
was before young Pete was borned. They stopped
here and set in to talkin to J.W. Webber, happened
to be at the store. I never seen two grown men take
to each other so quick-like. Dr. DeVoss, a rich surgeon from Jacksonville, Floridy, and J.W., a mountain tobacker farmer didn't finish the fifth grade.
Before the doctor had left, J.W. had sold him a
acre of land for a summer house right up there in
the woods nearabouts at Butterfly Falls. Sold it to
him for chickenfeed, nearabouts. Dr. DeVoss had
the log house built that same fall. Must a been
1931-32."
Grove Miller swallowed the bite he was chewing, almost choking on it. "It was 1932, Henry. I
recollect it was the year before Roosevelt tuck
over."
"Yeah. I believe you're right. I believe it was
1932." He looked at Anna. "Say you was brung up
on a dairy farm?"
Caught between bites, she was not able to answer at once. "Yes, Princess Anne County, in Virginia. Between Norfolk and what was then Virginia
�36
The Summer People
Beach. It's part of the City of Virginia Beach now.
My father kept his farm going after almost all those
around him had sold theirs for housing developments."
"I can understand that." The storekeeper
shook his head. "A feller does the same thing all
of his life, he dreads to give it up for new ways."
"Never will forget the time Dr. DeVoss operated on J.W. with a straight razor," Grove Miller
said, looking at the stove. "Wasn't there my
ownself, but everbody heard tell of it. After a thunderstorm the lights was out and the river was up.
J.W. picked sech a time to have a pendicitis attack.
He might nigh died, it was so sudden. Onliest thing
saved him was Dr. DeVoss operated on him with a
straight razor on the kitchen table underneath a
lamp and a lantern light. Dr. DeVoss and J.W.
sucked through the same quill from then on."
"Yeah," the storekeeper agreed, "the DeVosses
tuck the time to stop and go easy and live slow, like
us folks that growed up here. Nowadays, summer
folks has got to have two or three big, fancy cars
amongst a family and drive from here to yander
lookin for entertainment—auctions of junk and
tourist show places and eatin at them little old hamburger stands with red roofs scattered along the
roads, set back in red clay notches gouged in the
green hillsides, so much alike, a big old hen might
as well a-laid them all. And lots of them want to
buy all the land right out from underneath every-
�John Foster West
37
body. They can't take pleasure in lookin at the
mountains and the rocks and the trees. They've got
to own them. I recollect how well the DeVoss family
fitted into the community back yander and how
most of the folks hereabouts liked them and never
thought about them being big, rich folks from way
down there in Flordy."
Anna took her last bite, chewing slowly, relishing it while regretting it was all she wanted. She
swallowed the remainder from her drink bottle,
studying the old men beneath lowered lashes. She
wondered if they were telling her all this because
they wanted her to know it or if her presence was
just an excuse for them to reminisce.
"Old J.W. caught on fast," Grove Miller said.
"He sold two more lots on each side of the DeVoss
place, but them folks never turned out too good.
J.W. wouldn't talk about sellin any more land for
summer places, after that. And he had it fixed in
his will, they say, so's the farm can't be broke up
into sections."
"Yeah, that's what they say J.W. done," the
storekeeper nodded. "He caught on to them other
kinds of summer people quicker'n anybody else,
and acted accordingly."
Anna wondered what had disturbed J.W.
Webber about the people who had bought the
other lots, but she did not ask. It could have been,
she thought, that they could not measure up to the
DeVoss family. She bought a pound of fresh but-
�38
The Summer People
ter, eggs, coffee, and milk and drove back to the
cabin. She was surprised to discover how relaxed
she was. Even talking to two old men had quelled
some of her loneliness.
�Chapter III
Anna had stopped in Winston-Salem on her
way back from the airport long enough to purchase
a small portable radio. She hooked it up beside her
bed and fiddled with the tuning knobs until she
found an f.m. station broadcasting soft music with
little chatter, out of Charlotte. She tuned it low
enough to create a tranquil background of music
which did not drown out the sound of Butterfly
Falls. She finished unpacking, placing a towelwrapped photograph of Pete in the bottom of the
dresser drawer, under her underclothing. She had
not looked at it in more than a year and dreaded
experimenting with her reaction to it. When she
had finished, she stood near the bed looking about
her, wondering what to do with herself next. She
felt entirely alone in a world of forest that reached
to the farthest edges of the world. But at the moment she was not lonely. She had a feeling of visiting with herself in privacy so that she could think
clearly, a time when she could pick her own mind
in an effort to determine where she would go from
here. Now that she had helped bury Pete, now that
she knew beyond doubt that he was really dead—
39
�40
The Summer People
gone forever (of course she did not know it at all,
inside her flesh, inside her heart)—now that she
had confronted the evidence, though circumstantial, the ceremony of a military farewell, had received the folded flag, she could not play her sad
waiting game much longer and still be honest with
herself. There was really no one to wait for. She
had to move forward in some direction or suffocate.
She flung herself backward onto the bed and
stared at the knotty-pine ceiling. She had not
woven a winding sheet by day and unraveled it by
night to put off impatient suitors. She was no
Penelope. She had gone to school and had made
herself useful to herself and to society as a social
worker. And she had thwarted her potential suitors
by flashing her wedding ring for most of the six
years waiting. Even the chauvinist who had
brought her news that Pete was missing in action
had managed to touch her intimately while she
wept briefly in his arms. But he had been dismissed, as were the others who had come after him.
She had lain awake many nights alone and lonely
aching for Pete. She dismissed thoughts of others.
"Anna! Anna! You've got to face the facts,
damn it," Joe Suggs, Pete's wingman, had argued.
"I saw it. I flew over the spot at five hundred feet
three times, with those gooks shooting whole
junkyards at me. There was no parachute. His ship
did not burn, but it tore all to hell. Pancaked across
�John Foster West
41
a paddy and plunged into some woods. He couldn't
have survived. No way! He could not! Accept that
fact, baby."
But why could he not have survived? Miracles
happen. Even the remains beneath his cross in Arlington might be, could possibly be someone else.
She shook her head, then closed her eyes, relaxing. She listened to the soft rendition of "Star
Dust," violins and saxophones predominating. She
tried to put everything out of her mind for the
moment except the music, and succeeded. Soon
she was asleep, fully dressed, her feet on the floor.
She awakened an hour later rested and restless.
She glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes of
four, and the splotches of sunlight amid the trees
outside her window seemed to promise a day that
would last another week. She went into the kitchen
area of the cabin and found the liquor cache in an
overhead cabinet. Mixing herself a gin and tonic,
she returned to the bedroom and sat down in the
rocker, sipping the bittersweet drink. She was
thirsty, and the drink tasted good. She rocked a few
inches each way while she stared at the photograph
of Dr. DeVoss and his wife in their wedding garments, above the bed. Dr. DeVoss appeared to
have been in his mid-twenties. He stared straight
at her, a solemn grimace warping his wide mouth,
but there was a twinkle in his eyes as he tried to
present a bearing distinguished enough to suit posterity. If his hair had been crewcut instead of pom-
�42
The Summer People
padoured, she thought, if he had on a uniform or
jumpsuit—
A slight alcoholic haze settled across her mind,
relaxing her. She stared at the picture, then smiled
and winked. She could have sworn the tension
around the mouth of the man in the photograph
relaxed ever so slightly and that Pete DeVoss's
mouth came through. She placed her drink on the
floor and crossed the room to the dresser. Opening
the bottom drawer, she groped beneath her clothing and found the photograph of Pete, removing
it. She unwrapped it slowly, dropped the towel
back into the drawer, and with the glass-covered
face pressed against her breasts, she returned to
the rocker.
She sat back down, took a long drink, set her
glass back on the floor, then tilted the frame until
she was once more face to face with her husband.
Pete DeVoss grinned at her, a sandy Clark Gable
mustache paralleling his thin upper lip. His chin
was square and stubborn, his eyes bluer than a
Carolina October sky, and his nose, high and sharp
enough to cut a path through a squad of linemen
and linebackers. His sandy hair stood straight up,
about an inch long. ("Who gives a crap about how
it looks? I got to get a helmet on over it.") Pete
DeVoss had never known a country filled with his
peers wearing long hair, Fu Manchu mustaches,
and long sideburns. He had bowed out before the
style reached the bank vice-presidents and insur-
�John Foster West
43
ance salesmen. Besides, he had been gung ho military—the Spartan, the Roman centurion, specifically, the Navy attack pilot wearing his Skyhawk
like a sword and shield. Anna felt a sudden ache
in her chest. Her eyes moistened and she inhaled
deeply, preparing herself for a sob, but nothing
happened. The ache about her heart could not
even be absorbed. It remained like a cold, heavy
rock while she breathed rapidly. Then it began to
conceal its presence, leaving a vacuum.
Holding the photograph to her bosom, she lay
back, rocking slowly, remembering Pete DeVoss.
She had worked that summer at Virginia Beach
as a waitress in a family restaurant specializing in
seafood. Her parents would not hear of her working at the beach under any other circumstances.
Virginia Beach was buzzing with potential evil, and
the devil "could trap the soul and virtue of a seventeen-year-old in a split second." Yes, she could go
if she roomed with Sally Whitelaw. They had
known Sally all her life. Her father was a deacon,
she was a good girl, and being older than Anna,
Sally could guide her. What Anna's parents did not
suspect was that Sally was a "fast" girl. But this did
not bother Anna. She liked Sally for herself and
had no intentions of following her example.
It was inevitable that Sally would choose a job
as a waitress in a beer lounge. Anna wondered if it
were also inevitable that she agreed to work for
Sally one evening out of all time, when Sally was ill.
�44
The Summer People
It had happened. Anna had not dared work there
more than once for fear her parents would learn
of it and take her back home. Pete had told her
later that it was the first time he had ever visited
that place and would probably have been his last.
The Jet Pilot Lounge was a busy place, frequented mostly by pilots from nearby Oceana Navy
Air Base. At first Anna (wearing a long, sunburned
ponytail and a short green uniform) had been
shocked by the uninhibited language and brazen
propositions the pilots had bombarded her with
whenever she served them or passed close to their
tables. But after the first hour, she relaxed, realizing that most of them were kidding and did not
expect her to take them up on their offers. She was
beginning to enjoy her work as her apron pockets
filled up with bills, many of them fives and tens,
and she envied Sally her lucrative job night after
night.
Around midnight the crowd had begun to thin
out, the next day being a flying day. Anna was
standing near an empty booth staring out at Atlantic Avenue, where a sailor was talking to a girl in
white shorts, when someone came up behind her,
stood close, and kissed her on top of the head. She
gasped, went rigid, and whirled, staring up into
Pete DeVoss's grinning face.
"I've been watching you," he said softly. "I'd
love to make out with you."
�John Foster West
45
Her mouth dropped open, and she stared at
him in embarrassment. While she was still motionless, before she could react further, could even
think, could do anything but stare into his laughing
blue eyes, he leaned forward and kissed her, barely
touching her lips. "Good night, sweet baby," he
grinned. "I'll see you later."
He had turned and walked casually toward the
door, his cap on at a jaunty angle. And as she
watched him go, staring at his broad shoulders,
narrow waist, and the tight muscular shifting of his
buttocks, she felt a warm glow deep inside, a fear
and an excitement.
The next evening he appeared at the restaurant where she worked and sat alone at a back table. Sally had directed him there, Anna learned
later. He could not have been more courteous. In
fact, he was almost formal, he was so polite, and
gave the impression he had never set eyes on her
before in his life. But he could not conceal the
merry twinkle in his eyes, indicating how much he
enjoyed the little game he played. She was so nervous around him at first, her fingers were all
thumbs. She dropped the bread basket into his
salad and almost spilled coffee in his lap. But by the
time he had drunk his second cup of coffee, he had
put her at ease, and she was disappointed when he
left without saying more than a casual "Good
night," although he did leave a ten dollar tip.
�46
The Summer People
But when he returned on Thursday evening to
eat alone, Anna relaxed. She knew he was playing
with her, and she decided to wait him out. Anna
had never dated anyone alone other than a schoolmate, mainly because her dates had to pass her
parents' approval, and the prospect of going out
with a Navy pilot somewhat older than she both
terrified her and burned inside her with excitement. That night he walked her back to her apartment, taking a roundabout stroll beneath a fishing
pier, and he kissed her. There was nothing passionate about it—a brief, sweet kiss of affection which
had thrilled but had hardly aroused her. She wondered as they walked to her apartment, hand in
hand as she had walked with her high school dates,
if his behavior on Tuesday night might have been
a bluff to conceal the modesty and shyness that
seemed to be a part of his personality. It was only
later that she realized there was nothing shy about
him and that his caution had been a well-planned
strategy, his moves coordinated to win her trust
and affection quickly yet completely. He had
learned from Sally who she was, what her background was, and he had courted her accordingly.
She understood what he was up to without rationalizing about it, and it put her on guard at first. But
realizing the compliment he was paying her, a
young seventeen, when he could have swept any
of fifty girls off their feet, including Sally, she accepted his old-fashioned courtship without shame.
�John Foster West
47
Things happened fast after the walk on the
beach. He saw her every night for a week, joining
her in passionate embraces yet never going too far.
Then he was gone for a week, on a flight to the
west coast, and her world became empty and sterile. When he returned, they eloped in Pete's
Porsche and were married in Charleston, South
Carolina. They honeymooned in the upstairs bedroom of an old mansion owned by Pete's division
commander—in the same room his great-grandmother had spent her honeymoon at sixteen, with
her groom, a Confederate colonel in his late forties.
When Anna was not with Pete, she could see Fort
Sumter Island from her bedroom window.
Anna had approached the great climax of her
life with foreboding. But Pete was so experienced
and so considerate, she had no problem at all. He
continued to court her, even after two days of marriage, as though they were teenage lovers with the
whole world and time before them. But their marriage together was to be brief, although they did
not know it at the time.
She was amazed when the honeymoon ended,
so amazed and so happy that her parents had
hardly crossed her mind during their week in
Charleston. But when it ended, she began to worry,
dreading to return to Virginia Beach and her confrontation with them. Pete found a nice apartment
near the beach, and Sally solved her problem by
reporting her marriage to her parents. They were
�48
The Summer People
so shocked and hurt at her betrayal, they would
not call her or come about her until after Pete had
left for Vietnam. They finally accepted her marriage enough to visit her. Although her mother had
never completely forgiven her, she was relieved
that God had at least been notified of the union
when Anna and Pete were married in a Christian
chapel, even if it had been Episcopalian, and a lateral branch of Protestantism.
The six months that had followed their honeymoon had been good, a lifetime of marriage, as
much of a lifetime as she would ever have with
Lieutenant Pete DeVoss. They had flown to
Jacksonville and visited for three days with his parents, who were friendly enough in a formal way,
as they had tried to adjust to the idea of a seventeen-year-old daughter-in-law.
It was at the parties with Pete's fellow officers
and their wives that Anna got to know what he was
like outside his professional life. Pete was respected
as a superior pilot, but he brought none of that to
the parties with him. His fellow officers, dressed
in sports clothes, looked more like clerks in a shoe
store on a holiday than attack pilots, and Anna
found that to be a strange contradiction. She had
expected to find them all like Pete, who looked the
part he lived. Rarely did the pilots talk flying when
drinking. Anna decided that was because the parties were their main escape from the threat of in-
�John Foster West
49
stant death that hovered over the Navy pilot more
than any other combat man when not at war.
Pete, thoroughly intoxicated on Martinis made
of Beefeater's gin or Oso Negro, was usually the
center of what was going on at a party, regardless
of where it was taking place. He was boisterous, a
bit too loud at times, but always friendly. He loved
his comrades, most of them, and he loved parties.
Once after he had been unusually loud telling
a joke, Anna had found Pete in one of the dark
bedrooms staring out a window at the night sky.
She had switched on the light before she knew he
was there. When he whirled, she saw tears in his
eyes. She took him into her arms and he wept softly
for a few minutes, then stopped abruptly as though
a fuse had blown and was his old, carefree self
again. But he told her later in bed that a friend
that he had gone through flight training with had
creamed into a Colorado mountain the day before,
and he had just learned of it that night. There were
other times when he would cry out in his sleep or
wake up trembling, and she would hold him close,
stroking his back until he relaxed, often going back
to sleep in that position.
The friendship between the military couples
was wonderful. The older wives were especially solicitous of Anna because of her age, and the pilots,
learning of her squeamishness about obscenity,
teased her a great deal at first. But it was the mili-
�50
The Summer People
tary politics that made her sick. For one thing, the
"ring knockers," graduates of Annapolis, were promoted first, assisted by golf games with commanding officers and dutiful wives kowtowing to superiors' wives—(superior in that their husbands were
officers of rank and command.) Anna drew the line
there, absolutely, refusing to kiss any hausfrau's
rear because her husband had position. Pete
backed her. He was a graduate of Georgia Tech
and resented the unwritten laws of promotion and
the pecking order among wives. The wife of the
C.O., of course, was the chief hen, who used the
under-ranking wives at her whim. Anna and a few
other wives resisted and were ostracized for it, but
could not have cared less.
Once when the squadron had gone on a week
of sea maneuvers off Puerto Rico, the commanding
officer's wife had thought up the hilarious project
of supplying each husband with a D-cup brassiere
stuffed with cotton, for a head rest in his plane.
Anna had thought the idea was stupid and had
refused to cooperate. Soon after the planes had
landed at Oceana Naval Base, his skipper had
called Pete into his office and started to chew him
out because of Anna's behavior.
After three sentences, Pete interrupted. "You
mean, sir, you ordered me in here to dress me
down because my wife refused to supply me with
a head rest made from a stuffed brassiere?" Pete
asked politely.
�John Foster West
51
"Dammit, it's not that simple, Lieutenant DeVoss," the C.O. said. "We are a close organization,
and our wives—"
"My wife, sir, is not in the Navy," Pete said
firmly. "My wife does not do anything she does not
want to do, where the Navy is concerned. Your
wife outweighs my wife, sir, but she does not outrank her."
The officer had reddened. "Are you defying
me, Lieutenant?"
"No sir! I am a pilot. I'd follow you to hell and
you know it—or fly there alone if you ordered me
to. But stuffed brassieres for military head rests—"
He stopped, feigning a loss for words.
"It was just a bit of wifely humor," his C.O.
argued. "I resent the fact that you—"
"Sir," Pete had said quietly, "I have a family
acquaintance in the Pentagon. If you like, I'll call
or write and get the Pentagon's opinion concerning
the practicality of stuffed brassieres for head rests
in Skyhawks and Intruders."
The officer turned white, his flexing fingers
breaking the pencil in his hands. "Lieutenant, you
are dismissed!" he said quietly. Pete had saluted,
he had told Anna later, done a smart about-face,
and followed his grin out of the skipper's office.
Anna laughed hilariously when told of the event.
It was this self-respect and individuality he was
able to retain in a military world that increased
Anna's respect for him, and increased pride in the
�52
The Summer People
husband she had chosen. She realized early that
he had little ambition for rank, as such. It was flying he was interested in, and the salary that went
with it. He could live better with a higher rank.
He had elaborate plans for buying a farm someday
in Watauga County and returning there to raise
cattle, horses, and children. He wanted four children, he told her, two boys and two girls. He
wanted to become a sturdy old grandfather to sixteen grandchildren and tell them tales of the days
when he rode his thundering steed across the sky—
always recounted with a grin, but she understood
how very serious he was.
She remembered now, in a flash, the day she
stood on an apron at Oceana Naval Base and held
him in her arms, kissing him for the last time. She
watched him, heavy with gear, waddle toward the
humpbacked little Skyhawk, his orange jumpsuit
and helmet giving him the appearance of a creature from outer space. A few minutes later she
blinked as she stared at the hole in the sky where
his plane had disappeared. And that was the end.
Anna sighed, stood up, and carried the photograph back to the dresser, placing it at an angle so
she could see it from her bed. Lieutenant Commander Pete DeVoss would never know one child,
let alone sixteen grandchildren. Instead of a
stuffed brassiere, the spinning earth had become
his head rest.
�Chapter IV
After three days at the cabin, Anna could tell
neither the day of the week nor the date, unless she
stopped to think about it—that is, the day of the
week. As for the date, she knew it was early June,
and that was enough. Twice, she did not bother to
put her watch back on after a shower. The hands
continued to carry out their appointed function.
Blossoms had begun to fade and drop from the
rhododendron thicket, but a flame azalea she
found near Butterfly Falls lit up the oak and pine
thicket around it with orange brilliance. She knew
what it was because she had found a paperback
book on mountain wildflowers in one of the bookcases in the cabin and carried it with her into the
forest when she became restless and felt like taking
a hike. It got to be a mild adventure with her, finding plants and flowers she had never seen before
and identifying them. She found a clump of lady'sslippers with three wilting blossoms which had lost
their pink hue. She picked some brilliant fire-pink,
sweet shrub (aromatic as an exotic perfume), and
black-eyed Susans and mixed them with the polished green leaves she plucked from a carpet of
53
�54
The Summer People
galax, making a centerpiece for the lamp stand in
the center of the lazy-Susan table. She was surprised to find black-eyed Susans blooming so early.
Another time she came upon a dwarf magnolia tree
in full bloom in the middle of the forest and was
puzzled until she looked it up and saw that it was a
mountain cousin of the "southern-belle" lawn variety, called Eraser Magnolia, named for a botanist,
James Eraser, who first discovered the tree in the
Appalachians.
On Friday—at least she thought it was Friday—
she put on her last year's bathing suit, took a blanket from the window box, and headed for Butterfly
Falls. She took along the radio. She spread the
blanket on a flat area of the rock beside the pool,
turned on the radio to a low murmur a bit louder
than the gush of the falls, and lay down on her
stomach. Ragged splotches of sunshine dappled
the trees and the bank across the stream, although
she lay in the shade. A morning coolness enveloped
her side of the stream, but it was a comfortable
cool. She turned onto her back and watched a small
heart-shaped cloud as it crossed the patch of sky
directly overhead.
The sun spilled over the brim of the oak and
pine limbs high overhead, washing her in pools of
warmth. She tugged at the leg of her trunks, the
hem of which was cutting her. She squirmed to a
new position, but moments later, in exasperation,
�John Foster West
55
she sat up, removed the narrow black bottom, then
the halter, and lay back on the blanket nude, enjoying the probing warm sunlight. Several minutes
later she began to wonder if the sunshine here,
high in the mountains, would burn her as quickly
as at the beach. But she felt free and unencumbered, naked in the middle of a forest with nothing
but butterflies and birds to see her.
But suppose there really were such things as
satyrs, and one of them watched from the woods.
Or suppose Pan, with his goat rear, was ready to
spring at her? Or suppose that there really was a
Zeus and he watched her, ready to turn himself
into a swan or a bull—She giggled aloud, then
rolled her head to one side and stared out into the
trees. She could see only the chest, shoulders, and
part of his curly head with horns, and she smiled
back, then tilted her head back to watch the clouds.
Was it the ghost of her imagination?
She had just finished drying herself after a long
shower when someone knocked with authority on
the front door. She knew it was going to be a man
as she crossed the cabin, fighting her arms into the
faded blue robe. The tableau was repeated. She
opened the door just as Jay Webber raised his
freckled fist to knock again. So far as she could tell,
he even had on the same jeans and shirt he had
worn last time. And she certainly had on the same
old dilapidated robe.
�56
The Summer People
He looked her up and down, his face without
expression. "Ain't you got no clothes but that,
lady?" he asked solemnly.
Her first impulse was to burst out laughing.
But looking at him more closely, she decided he
was serious. If there was one thing she did not
need, it was a smartaleck peckerwood. "Yes, what
of it?" she demanded, more brusquely than she
really intended.
"Oh, yes, it just occurred to me that I ought to
point out a couple of places you might have trouble." He hesitated, ran his fingers through his
kinky hair, looking uncertainly from her towards
the woods. "Could—could I come in?"
"Surely, Mr. Webber. Do come in."
He entered and she closed the door, turned
toward him. "Do you mind waiting a few minutes
till I get something else on? I do feel out of uniform
with nothing on but this old robe. Take a chair
there." She motioned toward the chairs by the fireplace.
He nodded solemnly and sat down. She returned to her bedroom and dressed in a plaid pantsuit and sandals. When she re-entered the living
area, Jay Webber was standing by the sink looking
out the window. As she approached, he leaned
across and raised the window sash a few inches.
Immediately, Anna heard a weird barking sound
out in the woods. She could not tell whether it was
�John Foster West
57
an animal or a bird, but she had never heard anything like it before.
"Come here a minute," he commanded softly,
summoning her with a curl of a finger over his
shoulder.
She approached, stood beside him. "Look
there!" He pointed. "See that little reddish lump
on that limb there?"
She leaned forward across the sink, staring, and
her shoulder touched his. She drew back quickly.
She was almost sure she could smell an astringent
odor about him, not old sweat, but new, as though
he had been working hard recently. The nails on
his pointing hand needed cleaning. There was
what looked like blue dirt beneath them.
"What is it?" she asked. "It—it looks like a little
squirrel."
"It is a kind of squirrel. It's called a boomer.
I've not seen one around here in years."
"Noisy little beggar," Anna laughed. "What
happened to them?"
"They're about extinct in this region of the Appalachians." He turned to face her. "Soon they'll
join the buffalo, elk, and the passenger pigeons.
Used to be so common, they named a post office
after them over near Wilkesboro. It's still there, I
reckon."
"You mean there's a place called Boomer,
N.C.?" She smiled. "Doesn't sound too romantic."
�58
The Summer People
"There was. I reckon it serves the needs of the
folks who live there." He turned away. "Dr. DeVoss
had the fuse box replaced with circuit breakers
about four years ago." He reached up and opened
the cabinet door to the right of the sink. On the
wall at the back was a metal door. He opened it and
revealed double rows of switches. Each switch had
a piece of kitchen equipment or an area of the
house printed on a piece of tape beside it. Jay
Webber placed a finger on the switch marked stove.
"If your stove won't turn on, it will be this breaker.
It cuts off from time to time. No reason I can find.
Just switch it back on."
"Well, thank you. That's important to know—I
suppose."
"One other thing. Your water may stop on you
sometime. Would you come with me, please."
His voice sounded more like a command than
a request or suggestion, and she felt like telling him
to bug off, then thought better. If he could save
her trouble later on, why not? He had not tried to
get familiar with her, and as long as he behaved
himself, he might be useful occasionally.
She followed him out of the house and walked
beside him as he climbed the slope of the ridge
above the cabin. The boomer had fled, along with
his raucous bark, into the past. There was little
undergrowth, making the climb fairly easy, although Anna could feel in her legs a pulling at
�John Foster West
59
muscles she did not know she had. They came
upon a huge gray rock and circled it. A spring as
large as a child's wading pool sparkled in the shadows beneath the edge of the boulder, the spring
tail trickling off down the hill toward the brook
above Butterfly Falls.
"This is the sweetest spring water you'll ever
taste," Jay Webber said. Anna detected pride in his
voice, as though he had dug the spring with his
bare hands. "See that pipe jutting out there, about
a foot from the bank, on your left?"
She braced her hands on her knees, leaned forward, and peered deep into the clear water. She
could make out a section of pipe extending into the
spring, about two feet down. Light refraction distorted it, causing it to appear crooked. There was
a cap of screen wire over the end of it.
"On rare occasions a leaf or two will sink down
and be drawn over the end of the pipe. That's your
water supply, down there. It's gravity-fed. If your
water should happen to stop flowing or slow to a
trickle, it'll probably be because of a leaf. Just come
out here and uncover the end, and you'll be okay
again. But you rarely have any trouble during the
summer."
"That makes sense," she said. "Yes, I can understand that." She tried to think of something else
she could say to the young mountain farmer, something bright and feminine, but she could not. She
�60
The Summer People
considered saying something about the cattle she
had seen in the pasture on the ridge, or asking him
what kinds of crops he grew. She certainly knew
about cattle and feed. But she rejected the idea.
She did not feel like being a hypocrite with him,
and she really was not interested in establishing a
relationship, even a casual one. As close as he lived
to her cabin, he could become a pest, and she
needed to be alone for a while. But he was company.
They walked back down the ridge, mostly in
silence. Once, he stopped to point to a weird little
flower growing in a mulchy area beside a white
rock. There was a deep bell-like throat with what
looked like a single petal looped up and over, to
form a canopy above its mouth, out of which projected a tapered pistil. Because of the flower's
greenish hue, it was camouflaged against its own
leaves.
"That's a Jack-in-the-pulpit," he said. "Some
folks call it Indian turnip. The roots are edible if
you can stand the taste."
"Good. If I ever get lost in the woods, I won't
starve."
He turned his head and looked into her eyes
with narrowed amber ones, so intently she had to
look away from them, watching his mouth. "You
might," he said, the trace of a smile arching his lips
�John Foster West
61
between mustache and beard. "They aren't that
easy to find, unless you know where to look."
When they reached the front steps, he stopped
and she climbed to the deck, then turned to look
down at him. "Well, thanks a lot. I ought to be
pretty secure now."
He braced his right hand against the trunk of
a small hickory and squinted up at her, a light in
his eyes she had not seen there before, something
between amusement and resentment. "You're welcome, Mrs. DeVoss." He pronounced the Mrs. the
way Henry Sparr had, and it sounded so natural
she could not tell whether he was needling her or
serious.
She turned away, then turned back. "I'm curious about one thing. It's not important. I just wondered."
"Yes, ma'am? What can I tell you?"
"You called Mrs. DeVoss Maud, and she's much
older than I am. I wondered why you did that and
call me Mrs."
He laughed, looked down and scuffed one battered shoe against the ground, then looked up into
her face, his head cocked to one side. "Well, now,
I've known Maud since I was a boy. Long time ago
we worked out what we'd call each other. You
called me Mr. Webber a little while back. I figured
that was how you wanted it, ma'am."
�62
The Summer People
"Oh!" She stared at him. It was true. "Oh, yes.
I'd forgotten. Well, thanks again."
She entered the cabin. As she was closing the
door, he called her again. She thrust her head outside, past the door. "You wanted something else?"
"Not really. There is one other thing you might
want to hear about."
"What is it?" She moved into the doorway,
watching him climb the steps to the deck.
When he reached her, she backed to one side,
allowing him to enter the house. She watched him
closely, feeling insecure with him confronting her
now. And that annoyed her. She did not like to
feel insecure. It weakened her defenses, making
her vulnerable. She was not used to that.
"Could we go into your bedroom, ma'am. Used
to be where the DeVosses slept." A half smile flickered across his mouth.
She was startled. She looked from his large,
freckled arms below the sleeves of his shirt toward
the open bedroom door, then back at him. "Is—is
it important?"
"Well, not to me, ma'am. Not really." He
turned back toward the open door. "I was just
thinking of you."
"Well—very well." She laughed a strained little
laugh. "Let's see what it is."
He followed her into the bedroom, and when
she stopped near the dresser, he crossed the floor
and dropped to one knee beside the window seat.
�John Foster West
63
He raised the lid. "Would you please come over
here for a moment, ma'am?"
She crossed to where she could see into the
shadowy interior of the box. On the end panel,
nearest the bed, was what looked like an electric
button, two small wires leading from it downward
toward the floor.
"That's an alarm button. It rings a bell in our
house. Mrs. DeVoss—Maud had me put it in two
years ago, after the doctor died. She never has used
it, but she said she always felt better knowing it was
there." He closed the lid and stood up.
"You mean those wires reach all the way to your
house?" she demanded. "Why, that's half a mile."
"No, just to the nearest electric fence, back in
the woods there, a ways."
He moved toward the door, pausing to look at
Pete's photograph, on the dresser. Then he crossed
the living room in silence, turning at the front
door.
"If you should get scared—like if a satyr threatens you—you just give me a ring. I'll come a-running."
For a few seconds she studied his head, thinking how much he himself looked like the picture
of a satyr she had seen somewhere. "Thank you
very much. I do feel safer. But don't stay awake for
my signal. I'm not your timid kid. My husband
taught me to defend myself."
He threw her a little wave of his hand that
�64
The Summer People
could have meant anything and opened the door,
started to close it after him.
"Hey!" she called.
He paused, looked back.
"Thanks for the information—Jay."
His kinky gold beard and mustache parted in a
grin. He nodded and closed the door after him.
She heard him chuckle on the deck.
Later that same day Anna was rummaging
through some papers and letters in the top dresser
drawer when she ran across the DeVoss membership card in the Grayhound Lodge and Country
Club, "including members of the family and
guests." She tossed it back, thinking no more about
it until the next afternoon, which was a Saturday.
Around five o'clock she became suddenly hungry
for a good meal, something like steak or lobster,
which she was in no mood to prepare for herself.
Besides, she was tired of eating her own piddling
meals of easy-fixit hamburger combinations and
cold plates. She walked around the living area of
the cabin looking for the telephone, intending to
call the Grayhound Lodge and find out what was
on the menu for the day that she would be interested in. When she remembered there was no telephone, something she had known since arriving,
she sat down in a chair in the reading area and
stared out the window into the woods. She felt suddenly stupid. Or did that explain her sudden lapse
of memory? Was she becoming eccentric so soon,
�John Foster West
65
all alone here in an Appalachian forest with no one
to talk with? She considered packing and heading
back toward Norfolk and civilization, but immediately canceled the idea. A cool breath of mountain
air billowed through the window, and she compared it, below the level of conscious consideration,
with the humid steam bath of a coastal June.
She sat there so long the forest began to
darken, and she realized the sun was going down
behind Beech Mountain, ushering in the long,
tranquil period of mountain twilight—twilight outside the forest. Here beneath the trees, darkness
would come swiftly. Her stomach burbled hungrily,
the sound startling her in the quiet cabin. Without
conscious decision, she got to her feet and crossed
to her bedroom, where she began to dress for dinner at the Grayhound Lodge, or elsewhere if she
did not like the menu there.
She dressed in a white blouse and a pale blue,
ankle-length skirt, as usual not bothering with
makeup. It was 8:45 when she drove out of the
woods and onto the Ridge Road, but there was a
sky full of daylight left to spend. She swung down
the spur of the ridge, crossed the river, and
speeded up on the stretch of asphalt beyond. When
she saw a man in coveralls by a gasoline truck
parked in front of Sparr's Store, she hit the brakes
and swung into the parking area, stopping close to
the truck. The man whirled, then grinned at her,
touching his cap visor with the tips of his fingers.
�66
The Summer People
"Yes, ma'am, I know where the Grayhound Lodge
is at. You jest drive on down the road there till you
come to the main highway, then you turn right,
and about a half a mile furder on, you can see a
sign on the left and a road leading off beside it.
You can:t hardly miss it, less'n you was blind. Yes,
ma'am, you shore are most welcome." As she drove
away, Anna was smiling to herself, not in derision,
but at the music of the man's dialect.
She got up to forty at times, swinging around
the curves which paralleled the river. She switched
on her headlights in the gloom beneath the arch
of overlapping trees. Back in daylight on the highway, she found the sign indicating the turnoff to
the lodge easily enough. After following another
segment of the river for a quarter of a mile, she
turned left across a pool-table green of a golf
course, toward a mountain which reared up a short
distance ahead, or at least what had once been a
mountain. It was now the foundation or backdrop
for scores of chalets of every shape and size, from
A-frame to toadstool construction. They were scattered without pattern across the green mountainside, their order apparently determined by the
shape and location of the lot on which each stood.
Lights were already on in some of those lower
down. Those toward the top of the mountain were
washed in a wan yellow glow from the light of overhead clouds still fingered by rays of the sinking
sun, below the mountain horizon.
�John Foster West
67
The road swung left off the golf course at a
small sentinel kiosk, which was empty. A hundred
yards farther along the base of the mountain, Grayhound Lodge sprawled along the edge of the golf
course, a rambling structure built of native stone
and rough, brown-stained timber. A small red flag
with a black Grayhound's head on it fluttered from
a staff above the cedar shake roof.
The receptionist, a comely lady in her forties,
sat behind a small service window in the wall, to the
right of the entrance hallway, several coat racks in
the room behind her. She watched Anna curiously
as she entered and approached her.
"Good evening," Anna greeted. She presented
the DeVoss membership card.
The woman glanced at it, then smiled brightly.
"Oh, yes, the DeVoss family. And you are—"
"I'm the daughter-in-law. I'm—was Pete's
wife."
The woman's face lost its smile. "Yes, Pete! We
were terribly sorry to hear about him. He was well
liked." Then the smile returned. "I'm Betty. I'm
pleased to meet you, Mrs. DeVoss." She paused.
"Were you planning to have dinner?"
"I wanted to, if possible," she said. "I'm famished."
"Did—did you have a reservation?"
"No. You see, there's no phone at the DeVoss
cabin, and I decided on the spur of the moment to
come."
�68
The Summer People
"I remember, the DeVoss family never had a
telephone." The receptionist looked serious for a
moment. "Let me see." She picked up the phone
and dialed three numbers, spoke briefly to someone in the dining room.
Placing the phone back, she smiled. "No problem tonight, fortunately. There had been a cancellation. You just go into the dining room and
George will seat you."
"Thank you." Anna smiled and turned quickly
away, making her way down the hallway before
some special catastrophe could cheat her of the
dinner she craved so much.
She sat at a table for two in the far corner of the
dim-lit dining room. A third of the tables were
empty, but they all had RESERVED cards on them.
The others were filled with patrons, from two to
eight in the party. Several diners had looked at her
curiously as she followed the head waiter alone
across the floor. Three tables away, to her right,
two men and a woman dined, the husband or date
of the woman, obviously, with his back to Anna.
She caught the extra man watching her two or
three times, and once she was sure he had said
something about her to the woman, who looked
Anna's way. He was a dark executive type, around
thirty-five, dressed in a white dinner jacket.
She forgot her neighbors when her waiter approached and handed her a wine list. "I'm not in
�John Foster West
69
the mood for wine," she told him. "Could I have a
cocktail of some kind?"
"Do you have a locker, ma'am?" The waiter
leaned stiffly toward her. "I mean, in this state,
ma'am, they don't have open bars yet. You have to
furnish your own liquor."
"Yes, I see," Anna nodded. "I had forgotten.
I'm on the DeVoss card. I'm sure the DeVosses
must have a locker."
"I'll check, ma'am." He bowed slightly and
turned away, almost performing an about-face, returning to the bar, out of sight beyond the other
end of the dining room. In a few minutes he was
back. "Yes, there is a DeVoss locker, ma'am." He
smiled, extending a small slip of paper with printing on it, along with a pen. "You'll have to sign this.
It gives the bartender permission to open the
locker, if you don't mind." Then he added, "Of
course, if you'd rather do it yourself—"
"That's fine." She tried to read the print on the
slip, but the candlelight was too dim. She gave up
and signed it, handing it back to the waiter. "I'd
like something light, please," she said. "Like a whiskey sour."
"Very good. A whiskey sour, ma'am."
The salad was delicious, the baked potato
smothered in sour cream was fattening but worth
every calorie, and the prime rib, medium rare, was
exactly what she had needed. Anna ate slowly, feel-
�70
The Summer People
ing her hunger gradually dwindle and disappear.
It was 10:30 before she had finished the meal. She
suspected without making an issue of it that she
was prolonging her visit here among people she
could relate to, delaying her return to the lonely
cabin. Yet she had no desire to meet any of the
members of the lodge—not tonight anyway. Her
coffee and dessert—cheese cake two inches thick—
lasted another half-hour.
When the waiter brought Anna her check, she
asked if she might visit the bar for a while and pay
for the meal and drink at the same time. He assured her she could and left with the check, heading back toward the bar. She left a tip and followed
the waiter. She felt content and was satisfied with
the service.
The tables in the narrow little lounge were all
filled, but the bar stools were empty except for the
one at the near end, occupied by a bald man in a
dark suit, who looked as though he might be some
kind of manager. Anna made her way down the
narrow passage among the tables, aware of several
curious glances from the summer people, who
probably knew each other, and selected the stool
on the far end of the bar from the other occupant.
The bartender, a heavy, sandy-haired young
man in a red livery jacket, came over to where she
sat. His white jowls jiggled in rhythm to the shaker
in his hands. "Evening, Mrs. Devoss." He smiled,
�John Foster West
71
his teeth as broad as white grains of corn. "I'm
Tony. What could I serve you?"
"I'd like a brandy, Tony, if we have any in the
locker."
He frowned, his round face going sad. "I'm afraid
there's no brandy of any kind in your locker,
ma'am. Perhaps I could find a remnant someone
left—"
"Was—is there any Jack Daniels?"
His face brightened like the full moon appearing from behind a cloud. "Yes, ma'am. There's at
least half a fifth. Black label."
"Then give me Jack Daniels and branch water,
Tony. Okay?"
"Okay, ma'am. Coming right up."
Anna sipped at her drink and studied the bottles on the shelves back of the bar. She tried to see
how many labels she could read without squinting.
She did not pay any attention to the man who sat
down on the second stool away until he spoke to
her.
"All alone tonight," he said or asked, she could
not tell which.
She lowered the glass and turned to look at
him. It was the same man she had noticed in the
dining room. Italian derivative, she thought, or
something like that. Maybe central Europe ancestors, not that it mattered in the melting pot that
was America. His nose was Romanesque, project-
�72
The Summer People
ing from between heavy brows as thick as hedge
rows. He would have had a cold, commanding face
had it not been for his eyes. They were brown and
gentle as a beagle pup's, she thought. Anna flashed
him a stiff smile. "Just me and Harvey, here." She
embraced a huge, invisible figure on the stool to
her left.
For a moment, he stared quizzically at her.
Then he grinned. "It was a rather naive gambit,
wasn't it?"
"I thought so," Anna replied, and took another
sip of her drink.
Tony approached, polishing a glass and smiling. "Mrs. DeVoss, this is Mr. Grunwald," he said.
Anna cut at the bartender with a narrow look.
She could have kicked his legs from beneath him.
"How do you do, Mrs. DeVoss," the man said.
"As Tony gratuitously stated, I am Mrs. DeVoss."
He looked at her in puzzlement. Then he
leaned toward her. "I'm a direct man, Mrs. DeVoss.
Let me explain. I'm not trying to pick you up. This
is not some big city bar. We are a rather close group
here. About everyone knows everyone else. I realized you were a stranger and thought I'd drop by
the bar and say howdy."
Anna set her glass down and turned farther
toward him. "I'm sorry. I guess it's my old defense
mechanism. I didn't particularly feel like conversation
tonight, and I really was trying to discourage you."
"I understand how you feel," he nodded. His
�John Foster West
73
voice was deep and resonant. Tony brought him a
drink and he took it, sipped. "I wondered about
the Mrs., though, since you wear no rings."
Anna resented the implied question but let it
pass. "I'm a widow," she said.
"Oh, I'm sorry." He stared into his glass a moment, then said, "You going to be around here
long?"
"I have no idea."
"I'm unattached, myself," Mark Grunwald
stated. "Could I call you sometime?"
"Would you believe I don't have a telephone
where I'm staying?" She smiled an especially sweet
smile.
He studied her, his brown eyes sadder than
ever. "No, I wouldn't." he said. "That would be
hard to believe." He got up and left the bar, leaving
his drink almost untouched.
Anna felt a little bit of a bitch in a way, although
she was pleased too. And she had told him the
truth about the telephone. Her rejection could not
have been more civilized or more effective.
Pete would chuckle when she told him—She
cut the thought short, startled. She had not
thought about Pete in that way in a long time. She
wondered whether she was too intoxicated to drive
back to the cabin.
�Chapter V
Around eleven on Sunday morning, Anna left
the cabin, intending to cruise around and see a few
of the tourist attractions in the area. Thunder
clouds sputtered and rumbled around the horizon,
especially to the west, although the sky overhead
was clear, except for haycock clouds tumbling east
and switching the sunlight off and on. She drove
west (or was it southwest?) past the turnoff to Grayhound Lodge, climbing the long grade into Avery
County. Grandfather Mountain jutted skyward,
across the valley to her left, its rocky Scot profile
etched against the sky. She could make out the
mile-high bridge swinging between what she took
to be the lip and chin and decided she would drive
up there for a look-see. In the beautiful little vacation village of Linville a man in new overalls leaning against the wall of a closed service station told
her she could take U.S. 221 towards Blowing Rock,
drive about two and a half miles, and come to the
ticket gate and roadway leading to the top of
Grandfather, on her left.
But by the time she climbed the slope of the
Blue Ridge and reached the gate, she had changed
74
�John Foster West
75
her mind and continued along the winding little
highway. A short distance beyond, she came to a
construction area. Engineers were in the process
of building the last link of the Blue Ridge Parkway
along the eastern flank of Grandfather, a link
which had waited for almost fifty years. But today,
Sunday, everything was quiet. On impulse, Anna
turned right onto the southern end of the Parkway.
For a hundred yards or so she drove cautiously
over the rough roadbed, newly constructed, until
she came to the old paved road. Then she continued at the posted speed of 45.
The cool mountain air stirred her short hair,
cooling her face and arms, and the sun was a warm
infrared bulb just above her head. Wildflowers
flanked the right-of-way in gaudy profusion, oxeye
daisies, queen Anne's lace, and clumps of what
looked to her like goldenrod. Occasionally, she
passed grassy pastures and bordering meadows
filled with such a variety of flowers it was hard to
distinguish one of them from another.
Suddenly, bone-gray rail fences lined the Parkway and funneled off into a side road to the left.
A sign indicated that Linville Falls Camp Ground
and Linville Falls were in that direction. With no
traffic to interfere, she made an impulsive turn to
the left on squealing tires. She passed the campground on the right and about a mile farther came
to a dead end in a parking area. Several vehicles
were already parked there—an orange Volks-
�76
The Summer People
wagen bug, two camping vans, a pickup camper
from Canada, a pickup, several American gas guzzlers, and a ranger's car. A family of six children
and their parents was eating lunch out of the back
of the green Ford pickup, carefully disposing of
their refuse in a large paper bag a little girl had
assumed custody of. The vehicle carried an Oregon
license plate.
Anna parked and walked toward the footbridge which spanned the rush of Linville River at
that point. She wondered if the stream was polluted or just murky from recent rains. A young
ranger stood on the bridge, his hands braced on
the railing, and stared down into the stream. He
was so damned good looking in his uniform, so
boyishly masculine, Anna felt a sudden response
deep inside and was startled by it. She stopped near
him.
"Hi!" she said.
He was already smiling as he turned his head,
and she was aware, resenting the fact, that she was
probably only the latest of many pretty women who
had approached him that day. He was a Boy Scout
who had been touched by his fairy godmother's
wand and turned into a ranger in a flash.
"How far do you have to walk to reach the
falls?" she asked.
The ranger touched the brim of his hat. "All
the way, lady," he said solemnly. Then he laughed.
"I'm sorry. I've been asked that five times since I've
�John Foster West
77
been standing here on this bridge. I've been saving
that answer for someone special."
"Why didn't you save it till next season?" Anna
smiled, feeling a bit put down and stupid because
his answer had bothered her.
"I apologize, really. It's a half mile walk,
maybe." His eyes flickered toward her legs, below
her red, white, and blue striped skirt and back to
her face so fast she hardly caught the movement.
"You'll enjoy it. Families with small children walk
it all the time. It's a beautiful trail. Rough in places,
though. Watch your step."
"Thank you. You've probably talked me into
walking my legs off, but here goes."
"Ma'am," he said, "that would be a pity."
His voice was so solemn, Anna had to laugh.
"Aw, go—catch a crippled fish!" she retorted, and
passed him. Somehow, she felt better, not so alone
as before. She glanced at the light ring of flesh
around her finger where her engagement and
wedding rings had been. It was beginning to
darken and disappear.
It was indeed a pleasant walk, at least the first
three-fourths of it, along a trail wide enough for a
truck. Most of the trees were of medium height and
of such a variety Anna could not begin to identify
more than the most common ones, such as oak and
pine. But here and there among them, giant oaks,
white pines, and poplars towered toward the sky,
along with another kind she believed to be hem-
�78
The Summer People
lock, taller than the cedars, with a mass of branches
curving downward and out, supporting green
fronds which turned the day into twilight beneath
them. Tall enough for a mast on Noah's ark, she
thought. They were the remnants of a virgin forest,
she guessed, and what a sad remainder. The forest
here in pioneer days must have been something to
behold. Shaggy carpets of fern grew on either side
of the wide trail, nice gardens for the wee folk Pete
had told her about. There was a scattering of wildflowers, visited tentatively by a few yellow and black
butterflies.
About two-thirds of the way to the falls, the trail
curled to the right, spreading into a small clearing
in which a water fountain and a comfort station
were located. Dropping away to the left, almost incidentally, a narrow, damp, and rocky foot trail
etched its way along the slope of the ridge, leading
gradually downward toward an ever-increasing
roar of water. Here, the air was heavy with a cool
dampness, as though Anna walked the corridor of
a cave. Narrow stone steps led downward to a chaos
of stone split asunder by roaring water.
Upstream, a segment of Linville Falls spilled
over a low stone bluff in twin fans of foaming
water, an island of rock between them, and filled a
quiet pool some fifty feet across. From there, the
stream funneled into a narrow flume cut through
bleached, stratified stone—she could see the layers
clearly—and circled to the right, falling swiftly in a
�John Foster West
79
white skein of foam and water. It made another
turn to the left, completing the S-conformation, to
disappear beneath the lip of a massive peninsula
thrust out above it toward the cliff on her right.
From beyond the last turn, Anna could hear a
deeper roar as the water churned downward
through the trough of Linville Gorge, the right
hand cliff of which towered above the 3,000 foot
elevation where she stood (a plaque by the stone
steps had indicated the altitude). Linville Gorge,
Pete had once told her, was the most rugged slice
of wilderness left in eastern America. He had backpacked in there once and felt as though he had
gone backward two hundred years.
Ten or twelve tourists, from an old couple to
toddling babes, were working their way about the
rocky platform above the rapids like ants on bread
crumbs, doing tourist things like taking pictures,
talking, and risking their lives by leaning out too
far above the water. A young woman in green
shorts was telling the old lady that a nine-year-old
boy had fallen into the rapids a few months back
and his body had not been found for several days.
While she was talking, the five-year-old boy, whose
hand she had just released, leaned far out over the
stream to get a better look. Bracing her hands
against the same parapet, Anna leaned out and
stared downward into the moiling water. She shuddered. She tried to imagine the terror of the little
boy as he shot downward, hurled from rock wall
�80
The Summer People
to rock wall until he lost consciousness. It was beyond her imagination. A whirling green landscape,
seen through a plane's canopy, came rushing at
her, and she covered her eyes, wiping it out.
When Anna returned to the parking area and
was about to get into her car, she saw the ranger
she had encountered earlier. He was talking with
a big woman with dyed red hair, but excused himself when he saw Anna and hurried toward her,
smiling brightly.
"How did you like it?" He stood with feet apart,
hands clasped behind him, like a soldier at ease.
"It really was a beautiful walk," she said. "And
the falls are really—terrifying and beautiful."
He looked thoughtful. "I've never heard them
described like that before. But I know what you
mean. You're from Virginia, I see."
Anna smiled her tight defensive smile. "At least
my car is, isn't it?"
"Come on, now," the ranger laughed. "I told
you I was sorry. After all, I did save my smart comment especially for you."
"I was kidding. Yes, I'm from Norfolk." She
slammed the door and started the engine. "Where
does the name Linville come from?"
"A man named Linville and his son were attacked and left for dead by local Indians back
around 1776. They survived by eating blackberries
and holding onto an old nag the Indians had left
behind."
�John Foster West
81
Anna frowned and shuddered. "What a way to
become immortal!"
He laughed. "Where are you staying? Close
by?"
She looked upward into his tilted face.
"Watauga County," she stated. She slipped into reverse.
His face became a mask of seriousness. "Well,
have a good day, ma'am." He touched the brim of
his hat. "You ought to try the Mineral Museum and
Crabtree Falls, farther south."
"Thank you, but some other day." She backed
out and left him staring after her, the rearview
mirror catching the puzzled frown on his handsome face. Anna laughed softly, feeling suddenly
good.
The following Monday night was so cool, Anna
built a small fire in the fireplace, from wood she
had found piled behind the cabin, and sat on the
black bearskin rug before it, with the lights out,
sipping brandy and listening to soft music from the
radio. She wore only a thin mint-colored shortie
gown and her panties, but she was quite comfortable near the fire. She was fascinated by the patterns forming and shifting in the flames and stared
at them a long time, her mind in neutral, only her
senses of sight, taste, and sound emphasized (her
sense of touch, too, of course, her buttocks and
feet in contact with the hairy rug)—hearing, because the cabin and the forest around it were abso-
�82
The Summer People
lutely quiet, except for the soft whisper and crackle
of the flames and the music: taste, the bite of her
drink; sight, the flames. She might have been on a
small island isolated from the planet earth, so far
as her senses were concerned. Once she tugged at
the hem of her gown, glancing toward the slateblack surface of a window, then forgot the gesture.
She thought of the young ranger (had he been
a park or a forest ranger?) and laughed in a sudden
swell of merriment that stopped abruptly. She was
surprised at the loudness of her voice in the almost
silent cabin, and it startled her momentarily. But
she continued to smile at the flickering flames. She
thought of Mark Grunwald, wearing coat and tie—
she could not imagine him in work clothes—and
in a brief flash she remembered Jay Webber in his
country garb leaning with his hand braced against
a tree in the yard, squinting up at her on the deck.
This memory was followed by a rapid train of men
she had known casually and had looked at more
than twice in the last two years, their faces flashing
by her as their heads rode an invisible assembly
belt out of the darkness and back into darkness: a
male colleague back in Norfolk, the manager of the
club she sometimes frequented, her sister's husband, one of Pete's old friends who dropped by her
apartment occasionally, the young druggist who
dispensed her pills, a state congressman who lived
on her hall—on and on until they dwindled into
blank faces like flesh-colored balloons.
�John Foster West
83
Her situation was ideal for a romantic interlude
here tonight—the sequestered cabin, good brandy,
music, a fire in the fireplace, a pretty woman (she
knew she was pretty). Then why was she so damned
content, so satisfied with herself under those conditions, all alone? She was content. She wore a cloak
of tranquility she had not known for a long time.
She was completely content to sit there sipping
brandy, listening, and watching the fire. At the moment, she did not want to be with anyone else or
to be anywhere else. Maybe being alone so much
was getting to be an unchangeable routine. Maybe
these mountains were working a spell on her. Then
she thought of the handsome ranger and of Mark
Grunwald, and she swallowed a bitter little lump
that formed in her throat.
When the fire died down to embers, she returned to her bedroom and switched on the light.
For an instant she stared at the face of the strange
young man who watched her from the photograph
frame on her dresser. Where had she known him
before, her groggy mind asked.
After preparing to retire, she raised the window beside her bed as high as it would go, removed
her gown, and slept in a cocoon of warmth beneath
a blanket and the patchwork quilt, with summer
colors in its design.
Thursday was more like April than June, the
sky a Duke University blue, almost violet. The
slight stirring of a breeze was refreshingly cool
�84
The Summer People
when Anna encountered it in the sunshine, almost
chilly when it caressed her in the shade. For breakfast, she fried country sausage spiced with red pepper and ate the patties between canned biscuits,
drinking coffee so hot it almost scorched her
tongue. While she was eating, it occurred to her
that she ought to run over and visit Mrs. Webber.
The old lady might expect it, and she did not want
to seem like a cityfied snob, even if they had never
met. Besides, the walk would do her good.
She dressed in blue jeans and a khaki sleeveless
shirt, then selected a putter from the golf bag she
had found in a storage closet. The club was an
afterthought. Most country folk, she knew, had one
or more dogs, and she did not want to look stupid
by backing against a tree with her hands up in surrender while some asinine dog barked at her. She
had no use for the putter except as a weapon. Long
ago, she had become convinced that no one honestly liked T.S. Eliot, Scotch whiskey, or golf. Pete
had once announced that he could not understand
how a big, mature man could swing one time at a
little white ball and then have to walk or ride a mile
before he got to hit it again.
Anna strolled along the Ridge Road looking
about her. Far to the west and north, a rim of bluegreen hills spanned an arc of Holy Rood Valley.
Beyond them were higher, bluer mountains, and
somewhere beyond them, she knew, lay Tennessee.
The ridge sloped off at first gradually to the north,
�John Foster West
85
then more steeply, ending in a hedge of forest she
assumed paralleled Watauga River. Farther downstream, the trees puddled into a circular woods,
through whose foliage she could discern a cleared
space and what looked like the dark roof of a large
house. Closer to her, cattle grazed, the cows with
udders so small she knew they were for beef. In the
near distance, two horses grazed, one red and the
other a darker brown. They looked like Tennessee
walkers, but they were so far away, she could not
be sure.
The Webber farmhouse was an elongated
structure, one end nestled into the slope with a
stone foundation, the other end projecting out
over the incline, below which had been built what
looked like a stone basement, except most of it was
above ground. The uphill section of the farmhouse
was two stories high and looked to be decades older
than the downhill addition. Beyond the house,
Anna could see a barn and several other outbuildings. She gripped the putter a bit more firmly as
she approached, but the beautiful Irish setter that
appeared from around the house trotted toward
her with tongue lolling and tail wagging. He
sniffed at Anna's knees, and she stopped to ruffle
the hair of his head.
When Anna was within fifty feet of the steps,
which climbed the slope toward the front door, she
stopped. A white hen came into view around the
end of the house, clucking and strutting, followed
�86
The Summer People
by a dozen yellow "biddies." The last chicks were
followed immediately by a girl of ten with long red
hair, who would squat to inspect them, then leap
to her feet and follow them, laughing, when they
ran to catch up with the rest of the brood.
As Anna walked quickly toward the girl, the
mother hen threw up her head to see if she were a
hawk, then went on about her business of feeding
the chicks. "Good morning," Anna called as she
approached.
The girl turned and studied Anna without interest for a moment, holding her right hand over
her eyes to shade them. She wore a thin print dress
and was barefooted.
"Is your mother home?" Anna asked.
"Whereabouts else would she a-went to?" the
girl asked solemnly.
At first Anna was offended, thinking the child
was being smart with her. Then she realized it was
a simple and adequate answer to her question. "Is
your mother in the house?"
"No'm." The little girl shook her head. "She's
in the garden dustin her mater plants." She turned
and pointed toward the barn.
Anna found the garden on the ridge above the
barn, with a weathered white-oak paling fence
around it. Mrs. Webber was a large woman in a
faded cotton dress, wearing an old-fashioned sun
bonnet. She walked from one tomato plant to the
next shaking a canister above them. Dust sifted
�John Foster West
87
down and settled on the leaves of the plants like
gray ashes. Anna could see rows of onions, garden
peas, and corn crossing the garden, none of the
plants large, here in the mountains, for June 11.
Obviously, the growing season ran much later here
above 3000 feet than in Princess Anne County, now
Virginia Beach, the bedroom of the Norfolk area.
Mrs. Webber, glancing up, discovered Anna before
she reached the garden. She set her dusting can
on the ground, stripped off her work gloves,
dropped them beside it, and strode toward the garden gate, smiling.
She met Anna with outstretched hand and
pumped Anna's as energetically as a man might
have. Despite her bonnet and its deep visor, the
older woman's face looked like kid leather which
had been seasoned and tanned countless summers.
Neat brown wrinkles circled her eyes and extended
down her cheeks like contour furrows plowed by a
careful farmer. Her eyes were dark blue and sparkled with good humor.
"Well, howdy!" she said, shaking Anna's hand.
"You must be Annar, Pete's widder. We all have
mortally loved the DeVosses. They was fine folks,
fine neighbors. I regret I didn't get to visit Maud
before she had to hurry back to her ailing sis."
"It's good to meet you, Mrs. Webber," Anna
said. "You—you've got a pretty garden there."
"Well, yes, but it's a mite late this year. March
and May swapped places, near about. March was a
�88
The Summer People
pleasure, warm as could be, but May turned out to
be cold and frosty. Had to keep my mater plants
in the pots the longest time, this year." She looked
Anna up and down. "I vow, Jay give you a good
description. You are a mighty purty young
woman."
Anna was suddenly embarrassed, even more
than if a strange man had complimented her.
"Well, thank you," she stammered, feeling a bit silly
for it. "I—I don't work at it very hard."
"They's the purtiest kind, them that's naturally
purty. Pete was a fine young'un." She paused and
looked past Anna at the distant hills. U A fine young
man. We grieved to hear about him. Looks like the
Good Lord takes the wheat sometimes and leaves
the tares."
"Yeah," Anna nodded, "Pete was a fine man.
He talked about you-all often, with—" (She did not
want to sound corny) "—with affection."
"Well, you know he practically growed up hereabouts in the summer-time. He's walked and dumb
all over these hills and rid our hosses from here to
yander. Him and Jay was like brothers."
"Yeah, he told me how much he loved Holy
Rood Valley."
"I ain't being neighborly a-tall," the older
woman affirmed. "Won't you come into the house
and set a spell? I got some good ice tea in the frigerator."
"Thank you, Mrs. Webber, but I'll take a rain
�John Foster West
89
check on it. I was out walking and just thought I'd
drop by and chat a moment. You finish your work
while you're at it, and I'll visit another time."
"Well, all right. But you jest wait till my maters
are ripe. You still here, I'll let you have a passel."
"Thanks, I'll like that."
"Annar, do you ride hossback?"
"Yes, ma'am," Anna nodded, puzzled. "I grew
up on a dairy farm. I had a pony when I was ten."
"Well, I told Jay you was lonely most like, over
at that cabin by yourself, day in day out. I told him
to stop messin around and take you for a hossback
ride one of these purty days. He didn't say so, but
he lets on that he would like to accommodate you."
"That would be nice," Anna said. "I would really enjoy that. Well, it was good to meet you."
Mrs. Webber seized her hand again and shook
it. "You jest come on back any old time you get
lonesome. I know what it's like to lose your man.
World's all of a sudden twice as big and emptier'n
a martin gourd. You come back, and I'll stop and
set with you, even if the house is on fire." (She
pronounced it far).
"Thank you, Mrs. Webber—"
"Lordy, jest call me Marthie. We don't stand
on no ceremony up here in these mountains."
"Well, bye, Mrs.—Martha."
"You come back, now. If Hilder sets out to foller you, don't mind. Jest shoo her on back. She's a
accident of my late years. She's a mite liking, some-
�90
The Summer People
times, but she minds good. Jest telPer I'm a-calling
her, and she'll come a-runnin."
Anna's brow furrowed. Then she decided that
Mrs. Webber had meant lacking when she said liking and that she was talking about the girl Anna
had seen playing with the chicks. "All right," Anna
agreed. "I'll tell her. Bye, now."
When she passed the house, the girl Mrs.
Webber had called Hilder —meaning Hilda, probably—stood on the steps watching her pass, her
face reflecting wonderment. Anna did not speak
to her for fear the girl would follow her, and she
would have to go through the ceremony of lying
to her. Anna resented having to tell even a little lie
for a good reason.
When she heard the loud knock on the door
Wednesday morning, while she was drinking her
second cup of coffee, she knew Jay Webber would
be standing there with a freckled fist raised to
knock again, as she opened the door. She put down
the cup, crossed the floor, and opened the door.
The pattern had ended. Jay lounged on the edge
of the deck stroking the muzzle of the darker of the
two horses that stood in the yard.
He looked from her jeans to her face and
grinned. "What happened to your granny's bathrobe?"
"I slept with my clothes on last night. What're
you doing up so bright and early?"
�John Foster West
91
"It's 9:30."
"I repeat, so bright and early?"
"Thought I'd go for a little ride," he said. "A
morning horseback ride whets the appetite."
"You ride one and take the other along as a
spare?" She leaned against the door facing, her ankles crossed.
He did not respond to her kidding but looked
into the woods beyond the cabin, then at the wall
above her head. "I thought maybe you—It occurred to me—Well, hell," he frowned. "Mamma
suggested—"
"That I was lonely and might like to go riding?"
"Yes," he nodded too many times. "That's the
gospel truth. She told me to, and no excuses. I just
didn't feel like telling you Mamma sent me."
"That's great! Don't sweat it. If you have the
hay to mow, just show me which horse is mine.
We'll get along."
"Oh, no! I mean no. You might—What I mean
is, I'm free this morning. I'd be glad to go along,
show you some places, if you don't mind."
"That would be fine, Jay. Wait on me for a few
minutes, will you?"
Later, she came out of the house and closed the
door as he led the horses to the steps. The darker
mount had a blaze face and was a gelding. The red
one was a mare.
"Can I help you—"
"No, thanks. I can mount," she said quickly.
�92
The Summer People
Jay swung into the saddle and watched Anna
mount. "Mine is named Donner," he explained.
"Yours is Blitzen."
Anna laughed. "I'm afraid to ask."
He chuckled. "No, we sold Rudolph." He was
quiet a moment. "Seriously, Hilda named them,
and we didn't have the heart to change them."
They turned up the driveway toward the Ridge
Road. "They look a little bit like Tennessee walkers," she ventured.
"They have Tennessee blood," he agreed. "But
don't let them know. I like the way they canter."
�Chapter VI
They crossed the side of the ridge, well below
the Webber house, and came to the bottom of the
slope where woods began. Here, the pasture fence
consisted of rusty barbed wire, with bars made of
rails, allowing an exit into a grassy wagon road beyond. Jay Webber swung down from his saddle, let
one end of the bars down, and led his mount
through. Anna followed, and the bars were replaced.
"This used to be a cornfield years ago." Jay,
back on his mount, gestured to indicate the surrounding woods. "When we stopped tending it,
trees began to take back the land. Do you notice
anything unusual about them—the trees?"
Anna looked about her, a puzzled frown on her
face. "Yes, most of them are the same kind. I mean,
I see a few maples and sassafras, but most of them
are those trees with little oval leaves growing on
stems. I believe they're called pinnate leaves, in botany."
"Give the lady a gold-plated maple leaf," Jay
called. "Those are black locusts. Hundreds of fields
and pastures have returned to forest in the moun93
�94
The Summer People
tain counties. Most of the time you can tell them
in this county from the other trees. Black locust
trees are hardy and so damned prolific they don't
give other trees much of a chance. Sometimes I get
aggravated at 'em and saw down a section of them
with a chain saw and start oaks and poplars and
maples and such like in the clearing."
"You sound like a horticulturist," Anna said.
"I am. Also a geologist, a bugologist, what have
you. You can't grow up on a farm with your eyes
open and not know a lot about a lot of things. It's
a special education."
"Yes, I know." They were riding flank to flank
down the wagon road. Now and then one or the
other leaned to the side to avoid a limb thrust farther out into the road than the others. "I grew up
on a farm. I suppose I've forgotten a great deal of
what I learned."
"You would." He turned his head and looked
at her. "You've got to keep one foot on the land."
He was silent a moment, then added, "And be half
in love with it."
"I remember black locust was what Sandy MacTavish's coffin is made of," Anna said suddenly.
Jay Webber laughed. "Did old man Sparr tell
you that story? Yeah, farmers make posts out of
black locust because a post will stay in the ground
for years without rotting."
They rode in silence for several minutes. Anna
was puzzled. Jay Webber did not talk like his
�John Foster West
95
mother and the other mountain farmers she had
heard. He was probably a product of television
English, but that did not account for the way he
thought. She shrugged and let the subject drop, as
she reined into a bridle path leading away from the
wagon road to the right. They passed from the
thickety jungle of black locust trees into an older
forest, large oaks, hickories, and poplars towering
above the sourwood and dogwood saplings, like
adults above children. Sunlight hardly penetrated
here at all. There was an almost chilly dampness,
as though the forest season did not include a June
summer. The horses' hooves were muffled by a
carpet of dead leaves. Anna rode behind Jay now,
neither of them speaking. She watched his shoulders and erect head as they moved only slightly, in
rhythm with his mount's movements, like an appendage of the animal's back.
After a quarter of a mile, the trunks of the trees
seemed to dwindle in size, and their crests huddled
ground ward. The skeleton-white and gray trunks
of birches began to assert themselves, with here
and there a larger sycamore, none of which were
thick or limby with age. The terrain had leveled
out, too. Instinctively, Anna had known the river
would be close ahead, before she heard the gushing
water. Near the river bank, the trail forked, one
branch turning left, downstream, the other, upstream. Without comment, Jay Webber turned in
that direction, Anna close behind.
�96
The Summer People
They came out of the woods and into sunlight
abruptly. The bridle path bisected a three-acre
field, part of which was a garden green with onions, tomato plants, corn, and other vegetables. But
Anna hardly noticed the growing things. She
stared ahead at the huge two-story mansion standing on a weed-choked lawn.
The building had been painted white once, but
was now gray. The roof had originally been red
tile, but the color had darkened, patches of graygreen lichen and moss scabbing it here and there,
a blight of old age. The architecture was box-like
and simple here in the rear, enclosed between double chimneys like bookends. Although the house
gave the impression of long duration, the windows
were unbroken and the shutters hung straight on
their hinges. Out to the right, near the forest edge,
stood an ancient log barn. Near it, the smaller outbuildings had collapsed into a black mass of rotting
timber, vines and weeds growing out of them. Jay
Webber rode straight across the field. All Anna
could see from her saddle was the horse's rump
and Jay's back. Jay projected upward like the fore
part of the same animal, the sun making a halo
about his golden hair.
Near the house, Jay reined toward the barn,
Anna following, but he stopped beneath an ancient
pear tree, one fork of which was dead, and dismounted. He tied the reins of his mount loosely
about a limb. Anna swung from the saddle and
�John Foster West
97
collapsed into his arms. Jay reacted swiftly as he
caught her. She was on her feet instantly and
looked at him defensively.
"Damn, I haven't ridden in years," she muttered. "I'm completely out of shape."
He took the reins of the mare and tied them
about another limb. "That'll happen," he said.
"You'll probably be sore tomorrow."
Suddenly, the world was filled with music.
Anna stepped backward and looked upward. A
mockingbird sat on the topmost twig in the green
half of the pear tree, his head back, using every
bird sound in his repertoire. A cardinal flickered
from one branch to another, lower down. Anna
lowered her head. It was as though some impulse
had turned up the volume of the receiver in her
head. The fields and trees around the old house
were filled with birds singing. From the apple tree
near the farthest edge of the lawn, from the ragged
grape arbor toward the river, from the shaggy boxwood clumps arose a variety of bird voices, and
below it all, in a miniature bass background, a myriad of honeybees droned about the red clover, brilliant blue chicory blossoms, and dandelions growing wild in last year's dead broomsedge, covering
what had once been a landscaped lawn. And the air
was filled with a sweet perfume. She knew the honeysuckle vines embracing one of the decaying outbuildings would be there before she turned to look
at them.
�98
The Summer People
The mansion faced upriver, up the wagon road
cut through the fallow field between the river and
the base of the ridge. Six massive wooden columns
reared upward from the narrow front porch to
support an extension of the roof, high above.
Heavy double doors were set in the middle of the
house, windows on either side and above. Even
from where she stood, Anna could see the brick
steps from the porch to a walk, which disappeared
into the jungle of dead and green broomsedge and
weeds, halfway across the lawn.
Jay Webber had not spoken for several minutes. Anna guessed he was waiting to see what effect the place had on her. She turned, sucking in a
gasp of air when a quail leaped from the grass and
darted away, its wings drumming the air.
"Well, what do you think of Riverglade?" he
asked, finally.
"I don't think anything," she said. "I might tell
you part of what I feel."
"Then tell me."
"I feel nostalgia for a past I was no part of. I
feel sad because it's dead. But I'm also a little annoyed. I resent the owner of this place, whoever
he is, leaving it in this condition. Damnit, it's—obscene. It's like leaving a corpse to rot in the sun.
Corpses ought to be cremated, or they ought to be
buried with loving care."
He turned his head to look at her, his eyes nar-
�John Foster West
99
rowed thoughtfully. "What would you want him to
do—the owner?"
"Either burn the place down," she said emphatically, "or fix it the hell up. I know fifty families that would grab the opportunity to live in one
or two of its rooms."
Jay Webber chuckled. "You have very strong
opinions, don't you, ma'am?"
"I despise waste," Anna said. "And I abhor
wasted beauty." She started to put it in words that
he would understand, but he interrupted.
"You think the old place is really beautiful?"
"Yes," she nodded. "Because of what it used to
be and could be again."
They reached the house, and she stood on the
bottom step facing him. As he stood on the walk,
their eyes were almost level. "There could be a
good reason for the neglect," he argued.
"I can't imagine what."
"Suppose, for example, it has been tied up in
litigation, between two branches of a family, and
neither was allowed to touch it."
"That would explain it," Anna agreed. "But
what a stupid way to treat it! It's like King Solomon
dividing the baby, in a way."
Jay opened one of the double doors and let her
enter in front of him. She stopped so suddenly,
staring about her, that Jay collided with her. They
were in a rectangular foyer as neat as the outside
�100
The Summer People
was ragged. Directly across from the doors, ten feet
of wall separated two enclosed stairways, which led
upward, directly away from her. A tall grandfather
clock, polished but silent, stood against the wall between the stairways. The oak floor had been waxed
recently. Arched doorways led from the foyer into
the left and right areas of the house.
Taking her by the elbow, Jay escorted Anna
across the floor, stopping in front of the grandfather clock. "What do you notice about it?" he asked.
"It's run by weights," she said. "But it's not running. The weight reached the bottom on the left
chain and was never transferred to the right-hand
one." She smiled. "I know how the old fellow feels
sometime."
"Right. Look at his face."
"It not only tells time, but the date."
"Notice the date?"
"It stopped on January 10, 1919, at 4:34 a.m.
or p.m. That must have been the precise second
the weight touched bottom."
"You're a bright little detective." He rested his
hand briefly on her shoulder.
She turned toward him. "I'm more curious
about the inside of the building," she said. "I mean,
the condition compared to the lawn. It looks as
though someone is still living here, taking care of
the interior."
"There is." He grinned. "Ghosts!"
"Aw, come on!" Anna laughed, then shud-
�John Foster West
101
dered. "Ghosts don't wax floors and polish grandfather clocks."
With a slight touch of his fingers, he steered
her toward the arched entrance to the left of the
front door. They entered a large dining room, furnished with an elongated oval dining table in the
center of the room, mahogany, she was sure. There
was a china cabinet, ladderback chairs, and a huge
fireplace, with an iron crane for fireplace cooking.
A stack of firewood lay against the wall to one side.
The kitchen and pantry were back of the dining
room, a large wood-burning range dominating the
kitchen. Back in the dining room, Anna noticed
two kerosene lamps, one on the hewn log mantel
and one in the middle of the dining table. Above
the mantel was a weird painting. Anna stared at it.
In brilliant colors, birds with small human heads
sat in the green half of a tree, a huge black vulture
looking down at them from its perch high in the
dead half, gnarled human hands clutching its
perch. A brilliant sun with teeth like a buzzsaw shot
across the dark blue sky, a comet tail behind it. She
turned to ask Jay about it, but he had returned to
the foyer.
When she joined him there, he said, "I'll bet
you can't figure out why they built two stairways
leading upstairs so close together."
"I can't imagine." She shook her head, then
turned to him with a smile. "Unless upstairs is a
duplex."
�102
The Summer People
He grimaced. "Damn, you're uncanny. The two
halves of the house upstairs are completely separated. You have to come down here from one half
to enter the other half. What I mean is, why would
a sane human being divide his house like that?"
"You've got me." She shrugged. "Unless the
right half didn't know what the left half was doing."
"My grandfather Lance Webber had five
daughters and four sons. He was a hell-and-damnation, self-ordained part-time preacher. Even
while his sons and daughters were still children,
around 1905, he had the old family house remodeled. The left wing of the upstairs became the boy's
quarters and right wing, the girl's quarters. The old
bastard didn't trust them sleeping on the same hall.
He even tore the story of Lot and his daughters
out of the family Bible."
"Even my parents were never that evilminded," Anna said, "and I thought they were bad
enough."
"Well, Grandpappy had got him a spawn of
three with neighbors' daughters when he wasn't
any more than sixteen. So he knew the temptations
of the flesh."
"Those poor children!" Anna sighed. "I can't
imagine what their lives must have been like."
"Come on, let me show you something."
She followed him up the right-hand stairway.
At the top, it doubled back into a landing, from
which a hallway extended, dividing the house from
�John Foster West
103
there to an end window. Four closed doors faced
each other, two on either side of the hallway. Jay
stopped at the first door and tapped it lightly with
his knuckles. "This was the master bedroom. The
parents slept in this wing with the daughters,
Guardians of Virtue."
He moved to the next one, on the same side,
and opened the door. Anna followed him into a
neat bedroom with chintzy curtains, floral wallpaper, and a colorful hooked rug. In the far corner
stood a double bed, its gingham canopy trimmed
with lacy frills.
"I'd say this is—was definitely a room for girls,"
Anna stated. "A bit gaudy but feminine."
"This was the bedroom of Alace and Susan,"
Jay explained, "the two oldest daughters."
"If I ever have children—" she started to say.
Turning her head, she could glimpse Jay Webber's
face in the gloom. There was an expression on his
face she would have recognized, even if she had
never seen it on a man's face before. "Remember, you
promised to wait until I return," the ghost in her brain
whispered. She swallowed. Clinching her fists, she
turned away from him and hurried through the
doorway and down the hall. Jay followed her, saying nothing.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he
stopped. "About the clock," he said.
She turned, touched his arm, then let her hand
fall. "Yes, what about the clock?"
�104
The Summer People
"Grandpa Lance's family was stricken by influenza in January, 1919. There was an epidemic
throughout these mountains, few people well
enough to help anyone else. The whole Webber
family died except for my father, who was sixteen,
and one of Lance's daughters, one of those he sired
with a neighbor's daughter. I forgot to tell you,
when Grandpa admitted his parentage, my greatgrandfather made him rear all three of them."
"You mean the woods colts?"
"If you like folk terms. Anyway, she and my
dad were raised by my grandmother's family, the
MacTavishes. The old house remained empty for
years, at first haunted, according to local superstition. Later, tied up in litigation between Sarah, the
love child, and Dad. Dad finally won."
"You mean your family owns Riverglade now?"
"I own it!" he stated. "It was all I wanted. Dad
willed it and eighty acres across the river to me. I've
been working on the house, inside, when I could
find time, but I haven't had a chance to clean up
outside yet, except for the garden."
"Look, Jay, I'm sorry about what I said. I mean
about whoever owned the place. I didn't know—"
"Oh, that's okay." He laughed and turned toward the front door. "You were right, of course,
without the facts." Suddenly he whirled on her,
concern on his face. "For God's sake, don't tell my
mother—don't tell anyone what I said about
grandpa and his daughters. My mother doesn't
�John Foster West
105
want it talked about. You know how proud mountain people are. I don't know what made me do it.
I know better."
"The devil made you do it," Anna said, but he
did not seem amused.
When they were halfway across the lawn, he
stopped and pointed. "See those two flowers
there?"
She looked at the tall stalks, each topped by a
circular pattern of white flowers made up of countless smaller blooms.
"Do they look alike to you?"
"Yes. They look like Queen Anne's lace to me."
"Look again."
She studied them. "No, the one on the right has
a smoother pattern. It looks like a neat lace doily.
The other one is ragged in outline. There's a small
black flower—"
"Purple," Jay said.
"There's a small purple blossom precisely in the
center of the nearer one."
"Very good, Mrs. DeVoss," he said solemnly.
"That's Queen Anne's lace. The other flower is
common yarrow. It has a shallow root structure."
He stepped forward, stooped, and pulled up the
Queen Anne's lace, holding it toward her. The
green stem ended in a small, elongated tuber.
"Queen Anne's lace is also called wild carrot."
"Well, thank you, Professor, for today's lesson
in botany."
�106
The Summer People
"If you ever have to run for it," he said, "you
can eat them—the wild carrots."
"Thanks, but I'll take along fried chicken."
A short distance beyond the lawn, as they rode
upriver, Jay reined into a well-worn path that led
toward the base of the ridge. Anna followed. The
little cemetery, enclosed by a zigzag rail fence black
with age, was clean and well kept, although the
graves, all except one, were obviously old. Some of
the marble tombstones were discolored near their
bases by moss. The new grave, perhaps a year or
two old, had a double monument with the vital
statistics of J.W. Webber on it. The other half contained the name Martha MacTavish Webber b.
1910 d.—
"There are many family cemeteries in Watauga
County," Jay explained. "West of Boone, along
Highway 421, you'll see them crowning beautiful
little knolls, with fences around them."
"I wonder why," Anna mused aloud.
"Perhaps because folks used to die in the home,
and it was simpler to bury them nearby." Jay spoke
thoughtfully. "Then again, families used to be
closer than nowadays. They couldn't let their loved
ones go entirely, even after they had died."
"I like that explanation better," she said.
�Chapter VII
Anna DeVoss was reminded of Jay Webber for
the next three days because of her sore behind, but
she did not see him for the rest of that week. He
crossed her mind now and then, usually in relation
to the old mansion, River glade. There were some
things she was still curious about, some questions
unanswered, but they did not stimulate her curiosity enough to goad her to any action. When the
escapade of Lance Webber, his grandfather, and
the neighbors' girls slipped into her mind from
some vague association, she would deliberately
shuttle it aside, except for the irony of it, which
amused her. But she felt more secure not thinking
about it at all.
Around noon on Friday, a thunderstorm hove
into view from Tennessee, the southern perimeter
passing over Holy Rood Valley. There was a great
deal of thunder and lightning, but not much rain.
When it had passed, sputtering and grumbling like
a man splashed by a passing car, Anna drove to
Sparr's Store for some sugar, milk, and a small bag
of meal. She sat with Henry Sparr and a tobacco
farmer named Simon Tull for over an hour listen107
�108
The Summer People
ing to them talk about the old days in Watauga
County, asking an occasional question. She was fascinated by the story of the narrow-gauge railroad
and the little train called Tweetsie, which had once
run from east Tennessee to Boone. The 1940 flood
had washed away miles of track and much of the
roadbed, terminating the train's career. It ended
up as a tourist ride on Highway 321 near Blowing
Rock. Anna tried to imagine a time when the roads
were narrow and muddy and only Model-T Fords
were around to use them—a time when a young
man from the tobacco factory in Winston-Salem
had driven his Ford two miles up the bed of Cove
Creek to visit his girl friend because there was no
road to her father's house, a time when the main
street in Boone was so deep in mud a chicken trying to cross it got mired and had to be rescued.
There was an earlier time, Simon Tull told her,
when a stagecoach ran from Blowing Rock to Linville, in Avery County, along the old Yonahlossee
Trail, now Highway 221, hauling wealthy summer
people to their summer places or to the lodges then
in existence.
As she was leaving the store, a black and
chrome Mercedes-Benz, shining like a polished
hearse, stopped beside the car. She had looked
away from it as she descended the steps, when a
man called to her.
u
Hey, there, Mrs. DeVoss—Anna!"
Reaching the ground, she looked up. Mark
�John Foster West
109
Grunwald, dressed in white shirt, tie, blue linen
coat, and white trousers, stood beside the black car,
his hand on top of the open door. Christ on Monday! she thought. I knew he would be driving a
twenty thousand dollar Mercedes.
"Hi," she said, as she approached her car.
"What brings you out into the boondocks?"
He closed the door and hurried around the
front of his car, meeting her close to her own vehicle. "I want to apologize," he said. "Betty—you
know, the receptionist at Gray hound—she told me
you really did not have a telephone. I thought you
were just—-just cutting me off."
And that's how you salved your wounded male
ego, she thought. Women just don't cut Mark
Grunwald off like that. "No need to apologize," she
said. "It's not important."
"It's important to me. I was just stopping here
to get directions to your chalet."
"You mean you drove all the way out here just
to apologize for not believing me?"
His dark eyes flickered away toward the roof
of the old store, then back to her face. "Well, yes,
that and—I had another, better reason."
"Which is?"
"I wanted to invite you to dinner at the lodge
Saturday evening, and to the dance afterwards. I
realize it's not exactly traditional to wait until Friday to ask for a Saturday evening date, but I talked
to Betty just this morning."
�110
The Summer People
"Who worries about traditions this late in the
century?" Anna remarked. She was thoughtful a
moment. "I had planned to—" Actually, she had
no plan at all. She was not particularly ecstatic
about going out with this formal tycoon. On the
other hand, a male companion for a change, a safe
male companion and an evening out were better
than doing nothing. The silent cabin was beginning
to depress her just a little.
Apparently to influence what he took to be indecision on her part, Mark Grunwald said, "If I
said please, if I promised you a good time—"
Anna laughed. "Not really, if I had other plans
I couldn't break. But I haven't. Okay, I'll go."
"How about eight o'clock?" He grasped her left
arm eagerly, then released it and thrust his offending hand into his coat pocket. "I mean, could I pick
you up around eight?"
"That would be fine. I'll expect you at eight
tomorrow evening, right?"
After she had explained to him how to find the
DeVoss cabin, she drove back with diverse emotions troubling her. The fact that she wanted to be
alone, did not want to go out with Mark Grunwald,
so evenly balanced a need to escape the lonely
cabin for an evening that she could not have explained why she agreed to go. In fact, at the moment, she wished she had not agreed, but it was too
late to change her mind. She did not see any easy
way out of the date. Oh, why not? she thought. It'll
�John Foster West
111
be more interesting than listening to stories about
Jay Webber and his weird ancestors, even if he decided to come by, and he probably would not.
All day Saturday the sky was obliterated by the
gray wool of fog, now and then great skeins of it
breaking loose, to fall away and be blown northeast
as it coiled and writhed like steam from a boiling
cauldron. From time to time sunlight would break*
through as a bright surprise, before the hole in the
sky was quickly plugged. Anna tried to hurry time
by reading at Butterfly Falls, but it was cool in the
forest, and the weather depressed her. Now, she
found herself actually looking forward to the evening out, even if Mark Grunwald did not exactly
stimulate her to excitement.
He drove into one of the parking bays at precisely eight o'clock, as she had known he would.
She had been ready for half an hour, but to prevent the wrong impression, she left him in a chair
by the fireplace while she sat on the closed commode lid fiddling with her nails. Finally, she was
ready. Mark Grunwald leaped to his feet when she
re-entered the living room. He was being very conservative with her this evening, wearing a dark suit
rather than a bright jacket, as she had seen him
dressed before.
"My, but you look pretty tonight, Anna," he
said. "You'll turn heads at the lodge."
"Thank you." She smiled, glancing down at
herself. She had to admit she really did look good,
�112
The Summer People
dressed for the first date after—after burying the
past. The flimsy little cocktail dress with its short
skirt revealed as much of her body and legs as good
taste allowed—did not so much reveal as presented.
The white cleavage swelled into the V-neckline,
and her long, round calves were contoured by the
silver-flecked stockings. Pete would have loved the
way she was dressed tonight. She smiled whimsically. He would have slipped up behind her, embraced her, and waltzed her around the room on
her tiptoes, while she tried to slap at him with both
hands. They always arrived at a party late. She
looked up into the face of her escort, and the memory of Pete DeVoss slowly faded.
Their conversation was desultory on the way
to the lodge. Mark Grunwald played his cards with
tact, taking his stance somewhere between not quite
formal and almost familiar. The lobster, flown in
to the golf course runway from Maine, was delicious, better than any she had ever eaten in Norfolk. The dining room was almost full. She supposed it was because of the dance after dinner.
A woman in her early thirties stopped by their
table once, towing her heavy husband like a motorboat pulling a barge.
"Oh, Mark, it's so good to run into you again.
You're as handsome as ever. When did you come
up? Are you—"
Mark Grunwald stood, waiting for her to run
down before he spoke. "It's good to see you,
�John Foster West
113
Beatrice. Hello, George." He shook hands quickly
with the husband. "Beatrice and George Wayne,
I'd like you to meet Anna DeVoss."
"How do you do." Anna's smile flickered on
and off.
"Oh, Anna, I bet you're Pete's wid—widow. I
did so want to meet you. We have the A-frame
below the DeVoss cabin. I wanted you over sometime for bridge."
"I'm sorry, I play only poker," Anna said. "Pete
was a military man."
But Beatrice Wayne was not a woman to wait
for explanations. "We were so sorry to hear about
poor Pete, weren't we, Honey?" She nudged
George with her elbow, and he nodded in agreement. "That was such a nasty war. Only the best
and bravest, you know. I haven't seen—hadn't seen
Pete since we were both quite young, but we were
very close. Mom and Dad loved him dearly."
Anna's smile had come back and stretched
across her teeth like rubber bands. She tried to
imagine Pete involved with this woman, even ten
or fifteen years earlier, but could not visualize it.
Beatrice was just not Pete DeVoss's type.
"It was good of you to drop by our table," Mark
Grunwald said. "We'll have to get together later
and bring things up to date."
Beatrice Wayne blinked up at him a moment,
then said, "Indeed, we will. Great to have met you,
Anna. You'll hear from me later." She hurried
�114
The Summer People
away, escorting George by the arms as though he
were under arrest.
Mark sat back down, shaking his head. "God,
I'm sorry. Looks like I got you into something."
"It wasn't your fault. Besides, I can take care
of the world's Beatrice Waynes."
"I bet you can," he laughed, and for a moment
Anna saw a relaxed side of him she liked.
The dance floor was too small and too crowded,
the combo was too fast for the clientele, and Mark
Grunwald danced as though he wore golf shoes.
Anna counteracted her disappointment by drinking too much Jack Daniels and branch water. She
was quite tipsy by eleven thirty. She was introduced
to several couples who lived in chalets about the
mountain side, but she remembered none of the
names. She was so miserable trying to follow the
big, awkward buckdancer she was actually relieved
when he suggested that they go to his place for
conversation and a nightcap. By now, she was in a
tranquil stupor and ready to do almost anything
but try to dance.
The Grunwald chalet was only a few hundred
yards up the side of the mountain, anchored to the
top of a massive rock. While Anna stood on the
deck, her hands braced on the railing, and looked
down across the dark roofs below her toward the
club house and the golf course beyond, her host
was busy lighting a fire to wood already laid in the
fireplace. He joined her a little later carrying two
�John Foster West
115
tall, cool glasses, handing one to her. "This is the
Grunwald special," he laughed, "Guaranteed to
make you happier."
"But I'm always happy," Anna protested.
"Can't you tell?"
"This'll make you happier than you always are."
"Okay, we'll just see about that." She sipped the
drink, rolling it about with her tongue. It had a
minty flavor and was light and bubbly, like champagne. "Hey! it really is good." She took another
longer gulp, savored it a moment, then swallowed
it. And then another.
They returned to the den and sat on the fluffy
rug before the flickering little fire. Mark Grunwald
had turned the lights out, and the stereo speakers
emitted soft music from somewhere in the darkness on either side of them. It was a very peaceful
setting, and Anna felt suddenly secure, although a
latent understanding told her to be alert. Alcohol
had subdued, for the time being, the old sadness
and had rendered her guard impotent. She even
forgot what a miserable dancer Mark Grunwald
had been because it was so far in the past it no
longer mattered.
"Feel good, Anna?" he asked softly.
"Very good, thank you. Most excellent."
"What do you do when you are working? I can
usually guess, but you puzzle me."
Anna turned her head to look at him, but he
was serious. The firelight splashing against his dark
�116
The Summer People
profile gave him a handsome, exotic appearance,
as though he were some Bohemian prince, she
thought dreamily, who had escaped to America to
become a commoner.
"I was a social worker. Am, because I have a
leave of absence. I majored in English, though.
Specifically, I work with abused children."
"That fits." He snapped his fingers. "There's a
kind of compassion deep in your eyes. Why didn't
I think of that before?"
"Because," Anna laughed, "you are a Bohemian prince who escaped to America."
"What?" He stared at her. "Oh, now I get it."
"Just a peasant joke." She threw back her head
and laughed a strangled little laugh, the skin tight
across her throat. "I've got a weird sense of humor,
Mark, and I don't share it with anyone else. You'll
just have to forgive me." She was silent a moment,
"And what do you do, Sir Prince, when you're
working—IF you work."
"I'm manager of a line of knitting mills." He
paused, apparently for her reaction, then continued when she did not speak. "And first vice-president."
"Well, good." Anna yawned. "I've gone and
caught me an executive type."
She looked up into his face. He was studying
her, his brow furrowed. "Don't you like executive
types?"
"I like men," she said. "But I like men of action,
�John Foster West
117
most. Were you always a tall, dark, and handsome
bachelor?" She took three rapid swallows of her
drink, emptying the glass.
"Do you mean, am I or was I ever married?"
He sounded peeved. "The answer is yes. I'm divorced. My ex-wife lives in Alabama with our
daughter."
"I don't have a daughter," Anna said softly. "All
I have is a photograph. My children are still crosswise in my heart and can't ever, ever escape."
"What do you like to do most?" he asked quietly.
"I love to sit before a fire drinking with a tall,
dark, and handsome Bohemian prince," she murmured, "and forget about my children who never
got born."
He took the empty glass from her hand and set
it aside, then placed his own with it. When he put
his arms about her and forced her slowly, slowly
backward onto the rug, she did not resist. When
he kissed her, she responded, though with little
passion.
"Wait for me until I return" the ghost voice whispered.
Her mind came flashing back from outer space,
cold and alert. She whirled away from him and was
on her hands and knees facing him before he could
make a movement to retreat. He was sitting up and
staring at her in bewilderment. "What did I do
wrong?" he stammered.
�118
The Summer People
For a moment she was angry, but mostly with
herself. Then it left her as she looked into his dark
face splotched by firelight and understood him.
"Nothing, Mark," she said quietly. "You did everything right—the drinks, the music, the fire. It's me.
I'm just not ready yet. I don't know why. It's probably stupid, but I'm not ready."
"I wouldn't have offended you for—"
She put her hand over his mouth. They stood
together. She hugged him and kissed him on the
cheek. "It's not you. Don't feel disappointed in
yourself. It's me. I'm just—I don't know what's
wrong with me. Would you be a good guy and take
me home?"
"Sure, Anna, anything you say." Her explanation seemed to satisfy him. "I—I think I understand."
"If you do, I wish to God you'd explain it to
me."
They rode back to Holy Rood Valley mostly in
silence. The alcohol had fled Anna's brain, leaving
it as clear as a winter night. When she turned at the
cabin door, he was staring down at her like a lost
little boy.
"Can I see you again?" he asked.
"We'll see," she smiled. "When you think it
over, you may not want to see me again."
Reaching up, she pulled his head down and
kissed him lightly, then turned and entered the
cabin, closing the door behind her. Moving over to
�John Foster West
119
the window beside the fireplace, she stood in the
darkness and watched his taillights disappear
through the trees. "Thus endeth the chapter entitled 'Mark Grunwald, Bohemian Prince, who Escaped to America and Became Vice-President of a
Chain of Knitting Mills'," she muttered.
In her bedroom, she picked up the photograph
of Pete and studied it a long time. She felt good
because she was almost sure he smiled his approval
of her escape and winked. But when she thought
it over, in bed alone, she realized that Lieutenant
Pete DeVoss did not or would not have thought
like that.
�Chapter VIII
When Anna woke up on Monday morning with
a pain in her back and her abdomen seething, she
knew what had happened. Her mother had called
it "the Condition." Was it just yesterday? Could it
have been over six years ago, really? Anna would
say, "I'm sorry, Sweet," and she would kiss Pete.
"But no trespassing. I'm sorry."
And he would say, "Damn that Eric the Red.
How I'd love to get him in my bombsight!"
By the time she drank her third cup of coffee,
her head had begun to ache. She took two aspirins
to relieve it, but the nagging pain in her back persisted. She had just cleaned her teeth and washed
her hands when Jay Webber knocked on the cabin
door. She knew it was Jay from the rhythm and
from the number of knocks, which she did not
count but tabulated subconsciously. He was standing there in the same faded jeans and shirt (or did
he have a wardrobe of them?) holding in his hands,
cradled against his side, a large paper bag half full
of something she could not see because of the bag's
crumpled top.
120
�John Foster West
121
"Well, good morning, Jay," she smiled. "Are
you delivering groceries these days?" She was not
particularly exuberant to see him or anyone else,
with her nagging back pain.
For the briefest of moments his eyes narrowed.
Then he smiled. "No, I have a surprise for you—if
you're willing to be surprised."
"I like nice surprises. Come on in."
He entered and she closed the door while he
carried the bag over to the sink. "You know what
this brown thing is I'm totin?" he called over his
shoulder.
"It's a paper bag of surprises." She followed
him and stopped near the lazy-Susan.
"No. Hit hain't." He set the bag down on the
counter beside the sink and turned, grinning.
"Hit's a paper poke, in Holy Rood Valley."
"I thought that word went out with Hoover."
"Well, smartie, I have to admit it's not used as
much as it used to be." He looked a bit crestfallen.
She shrugged. "What's the surprise?"
"Not till later. Do you have anything planned
this morning?"
"Not the teeniest. Are we going back to the ancestral manor and hear sad stories of the deaths of
Webbers?"
He searched her face, his amber eyes wide and
vulnerable. When she smiled to prove she was only
kidding, his grin filled the space between beard
�122
The Summer People
and mustache, spilling into the funnels of his eyes.
"No, I want to show you something else. But we'll
have to go out to Butterfly Falls. Do you mind?"
"Not at all. I like it there. It's a last wilderness-like."
"Abe MacTavish came into Holy Rood Valley
before the Civil War," Jay said, as they followed the
path out to the creek. "He bought thousands of
acres of land at a dollar or so an acre. He hewed
logs with a broadax and built a house. Then he
went over into Kentucky to the cabin of Big Bear
Bowman, who had ten daughters, and told him and
his wife he wanted to pick him a steady wife. He
meant sturdy. Said he would pay five hundred dollars for the right one. Big Bear took the money and
told Abe to take his pick. In spite of the wife's fussing, Abe MacTavish made the girls strip down to
the buff, and he proceeded to select his wife. He
squeezed their thighs, measured them from hip to
hip, checked their pelvic area—and chose Essie,
next to the youngest, who was sixteen. They were
married by a circuit preacher under a blooming
service berry tree, and Abe brought Essie back to
his house. It stood just about where Riverglade
stands. Essie had her first child in nine months and
two days after marriage and Abe delivered it himself."
"She had thirteen more, nine girls and five
boys. Abe MacTavish rode a mule when he was
eighty-two, crisscrossing his land and divided it up
into sections, blazing trees with a hatchet to mark
boundaries. He gave one section to each of his chil-
�John Foster West
123
dren. The girls married into other families, taking
their portion of land with them. Two of the boys
were killed in the Civil War, one with the South and
one, in Tennessee, with the North. Great Uncle Sandy
MacTavish never married. Great-grandmother
Selina MacTavish married Great-grandfather Roan
Webber. That's where our land came from."
Anna stopped abruptly, seizing Jay's arm and
dragging him to a halt. "Are you kidding me?" she
demanded.
He stared at her, on guard. "What do you
mean?"
"I mean about Abe MacTavish feeling and
groping those poor girls like he was buying a mule,
to choose a wife. Because if you are kidding, just
because I'm from outside, I resent it."
"Aw, come on, Anna!" He took her arm and
escorted her several steps along the trail. "Why
would I do that?" A few strides later, he laughed
suddenly. "I figure trying to fool you would be a
waste of time. Do I really look stupid enough to
try?"
"I have no idea what you would try to do," she
said. "I hardly know you at all."
"Don't blame me for that." He paused. "You're
the one who likes to be alone."
"Did he, sure enough, though?" she asked,
looking up into his face as they walked. "Did Abe
really choose his wife like that? Why didn't he just
look at their teeth?"
�124
The Summer People
"Great-grandmother Selina told Grandpa it was
like that. Nobody would dispute her word. Besides,
it wasn't teeth old Abe was interested in. It was an
incubator."
"You mean a young woman's child-bearing
ability?"
"Yes, that's true."
"The old chauvinist bastard must have been
thirty years older than that poor little girl. That's
what happens living in an age when men are supreme and women are only chattel."
"She wasn't any weakling," Jay Webber argued.
"Fourteen children in twenty-two years."
"Sixteen and twenty-two's only thirty-eight.
Why did she stop having children? I bet it wasn't
old Abe's idea."
"I'm afraid to tell you." He grinned.
She halted beside the creek, dragging him to a
stop. "Why? I've got to know."
"You would swear I was pulling your leg, sure
enough."
"Come on, now. Why? We'll stand here all day."
"Old Abe came down with the mumps while
he was on a hunting trip."
"You mean—"
"They fell on him, as the folks say. He became
sterile."
"You're right about one thing."
"What?"
"You really are pulling my leg."
�John Foster West
125
"I swear by Holy Rood Rock."
Anna DeVoss threw back her head, her laughter rushing toward the treetops. "Boy, if that isn't
poetic justice! If it hadn't been for the mumps,
everyone in this county would have been named
MacTavish." She stopped laughing and faced him.
"You're not kidding me, Jay Webber? Not really?"
Jay held up his hands, palms up. "So help me,
John the Baptist!"
"Man, you really have a heritage, don't you?
Between Great-grandpa Abe MacTavish and
Grandpa Lance Webber, I don't see how they can
afford to let you run loose."
"I'm very normal, Anna," he said quickly. "I
live one day at a time, and I have no enemies."
She stared at him quizzically, started to say
something else, but could think of no response.
When they reached the pool beneath the trees,
Jay walked over to the edge of the woods and
picked up what looked to Anna like two switches.
But when he returned and held them out to her,
she could see they were small limbs from a thorn
bush. They had been trimmed down smooth, except at the base of each, two thorns were left, forming hooks when he held them by their small ends.
The bark on the limbs was still green and moist
where torn. They had obviously been cut recently
and left near the pool that morning.
"I know what they are, but what are they for?"
she asked.
�126
The Summer People
"What do you think they are?"
"Thorn limbs," she said, "with thorns left on
them."
"No ma'am. You lose. They are Cherokee fishhooks."
"Fishhooks? No smart fish would bite one of
those things."
"They don't work like that. You just sit here
on the rock, be as quiet as a baby quail, and watch
Big Chief Webber catch heap big fish, maybe two,
for our dinner."
"Why don't you just use a hook and fly?"
"No sport in that. Besides, after the Big Boom,
there won't be any more hooks and flies. Just
thorns."
She started to needle him further about the
thorns, but he had moved away. She sat down on
the sloping rock and watched him tiptoe toward the
embankment adjacent to the waterfall. Only a foot
above the pool, a shelf of rock began and slanted
upward away from its surface. Jay Webber lay
down on the rock, placing one of the thorn limbs
aside and keeping the other. He lay with his chest
against the rock, only his head and hand projecting
out over the water. With his right hand, he held
onto the the small end of the limb and extended it
with the thorns on it below the surface of the pool.
Then he lay quietly, an extension of the stone on
which he reclined. Anna squinted through her sun-
�John Foster West
127
glasses trying to see into the water where the thorns
waited, but she could discern nothing.
Jay Webber waited and Anna waited. She did
not know how long. Little numb disks began to
form where her backsides flattened against the
rock. She squirmed, walking forward a few inches
with her buttocks. She gasped suddenly, one hand
flying upward to trap the sound inside of her
mouth. Jay had moved so fast the action was over
before she could focus on him. His right arm rose
in the air, and the twin thorns had hooked a trout
under its mouth. In one smooth motion, the fish
sailed over Jay's shoulder, hurled by the thorn
limb, and fell halfway up the rock, where it now lay
flopping and beating with a wet fish sound. Jay got
up, walked to it, and with the side of his foot, flung
the speckled trout farther away from the pool,
where it could exhaust its panic with little chance
of escaping back into the water.
Anna got up and walked over to Jay. "How in
the world did you do that? I've never heard of that
kind of fishing before."
When she met his eyes, Anna glimpsed a boyish
pleasure. (Look, little girl, see how far I can jump.)
"It's a matter of timing and patience," he explained. "You hold the thorns beneath the surface
until a trout swims nearby. Then you ease it into
position, yank upward and flip at the same time,
and behold! you have part of a meal."
�128
The Summer People
"Well, I must say, it's a clever idea." She stood
with her right hip outthrust, her hand on it. "But
I don't know many people who could lie still that
long."
"There aren't many anymore," Jay said. "There
used to be many tribes of them."
"Who ever heard of a red-haired, kinky-headed Indian?"
Jay grinned. "I'm the last of the Peckerwood
Tribe. Now get back over there in your place,
squaw woman, so I can catch another."
When Jay had caught four trout, weighing over
a pound each, he strung three of them on one of
the thorn hooks and stored the other in the crotch
of a sourwood tree. Then they returned to the
cabin with the catch, after Jay had cleaned them
on a stump beside the creek, throwing the scraps
into the water for other fish to eat.
While Anna hovered just out of reach, feeling
unnecessary and a little stupid, Jay Webber fried
the trout, rolled in corn meal, and made slaw from
a cabbage head he had brought in the paper bag.
While the fish were frying, he had a small iron
skillet on a back burner, baking cornbread.
Anna said very little during the meal because
she ate ravenously. She had little patience for
empty words at mealtime. Part of it was that she
was hungry. Part of it was that any meal she did
not have to prepare herself was usually good. But
this food was special. She had grown up near the
�John Foster West
129
beach, where seafood was commonplace. However,
there was a special savor about mountain trout
caught with primitive skill, fried in corn meal, and
served with fresh slaw and cornbread. Jay did not
attempt to start a conversation. He was busy eating
himself. But she caught him watching her eat, now
and then, and there was a pleased look about his
eyes. When they were through, Anna served the
coffee, which had been perking while they ate.
They went outside and sat on the deck, their feet
on the log steps, while they drank it.
"How'd you like that?" Jay asked, finally, across
his cup.
"How'd I like what?"
"Come on! You know."
"You mean the coffee?"
"Yeah, the coffee, ma'am. This is my third cup."
Anna laughed at him. "If you expect me to
compliment you on that meal, forget it. I don't
have the words to describe it."
"You really liked it, then?"
"Come on, Jay! You know how good it was. You
watched me making a pig of myself."
Jay laughed, a deep, comfortable laugh, setting
his cup down with a bang. "You're one hell of a
flatland broad. I bet you punched your mother's
breast while you were nursing."
Anna felt a small flush of resentment at his
remark, but let it pass. At the moment she was too
content to be bothered by anything very long. Her
�130
The Summer People
stomach was pleasantly gorged, and she felt a
drowsy euphoria despite the coffee. "What gave
you the idea I had a mother?"
He laughed a scoffing little laugh. "Even Anna
DeVoss couldn't bear herself."
She looked at him closely, but his face was relaxed, without malice. There was a distant look in
his eyes, as though he too were drowsy, and she
felt herself doubting that he even realized what he
had said.
"Jay," she said quietly, "how well did you know
Pete?"
He stared at her, his face taut, on guard. She
had the feeling he was trying to judge how much
to say, whether or not she would burst out bawling
like some broken-hearted widow. "Pretty well," he
said, finally. "He was older than me. We rode
horseback together, fished together, once we
even—Oh, hell, I can't tell you that."
"Can't tell me what? I insist."
"Way back when we were kids, Dad and Dr.
DeVoss would set up a pot in the woods and cook
brunswick stew. Squirrel, rabbit, quail, chicken,
beef, pork, vegetables—Lord, it was good! I can
taste it now. The DeVosses were the only summer
people in the valley then. Some of the neighbors
would come over. We would eat until the food ran
out our ears. The grown-ups would drink homebrew or white lightning and get happy as chickens
on a Junebug farm. No foolishness, though. No
�John Foster West
131
one ever got mad. Just good old fashioned drinking and picking and singing. Old hymns and old
ballads." He stopped and stared for several moments out through the trees. "Boy, Dad missed
those days toward the end. He had a stroke and
was bedridden for a while before he died. He used
to laugh out of one side of his mouth and talk about
the good old days when he and Dr. DeVoss drank
together and made brunswick stew and all that.
He died fretting because the modern summer people thought of him as just a grit, a peckerwood
tobacco farmer not worth talking to."
"Did you like Pete?" Anna asked.
Jay Webber studied her with a peculiar slanting
look. "How could I not like him? How could anyone not like him? There wasn't a malicious bone
in his body. Christ, he loved life and living things.
He would think up new things to do that would
never cross my mind." He paused. "You know, I
could never put him and a military plane together,
in my mind."
"Jay, tell me something." Anna caught his eyes
and held them.
"Sure thing. What?"
"What did you start to say a few minutes ago,
then changed the subject? You said, 'Once we
even—' then stopped. What were you going to
say?"
"I'd better not tell you. It might embarrass
you."
�132
The Summer People
"I'm hard to embarrass, Jay. Nothing about my
husband would embarrass me."
"Damn, you're a tough female to deal with."
"Come on, tell me. What do you think I am, a
Girl Scout? That man was my first and only lover.
He would have been the father of my children, if
that asinine brawl in Vietnam hadn't—had not
taken him. I want to know everything about him I
can find out."
Jay lowered his head, scuffing his ragged
sneakers against the step. "It wasn't much, really.
When we were about fourteen, he gave Beatrice
Paulson—she's Beatrice Wayne now—ten dollars to
strip in front of him and me at Butterfly Falls. Gad,
I feel like a pervert now."
"Come on, Jay. You were only children."
Jay laughed. "Pete got cheated. It wasn't worth
any ten dollars, I'll tell you that."
Anna threw back her head and laughed, her
voice gushing toward the tree tops, too high on the
scale for humor alone. "That's old Pete. That's my
man. He always got to the point—wasted no time."
She calmed abruptly, her voice lower. "And I agree
with you. I'm sure ten dollars was too much.
Ninety-eight cents probably was."
Jay grinned. "You know Beatrice?"
"I met her Saturday night. She doesn't look like
much of a catch, even at thirty-three, or whatever
she is."
"She had enough to catch old George Wayne."
�John Foster West
133
"She could have done that with a forked limb."
Anna stretched and yawned. "Jay, I hate to do this,
but I'm going to have to take a nap."
He looked at her covertly, but she caught his
eyes. "You don't need company, I don't reckon."
She smiled at him, stood up. "You're welcome
to the other bedroom."
He got to his feet, too. "You wouldn't mind? I
mean, me in the next room, sleeping?"
"Why should I?" She studied him intently. "I
don't mind and the trees don't mind. What could
it hurt?"
"Very likely, not a damned thing," he said. "I'd
just as soon go on back to the house and get to
work."
"Suit yourself, Jay-boy." Reaching over, she
ruffled his kinky hair with her right hand. "I do
appreciate the meal, and it was delicious. You're a
real neighbor. If the Big Bang ever does come,
thanks to you I can catch trout with a Cherokee
fishhook."
"See you later, neighbor." He threw her a quick
salute and descended the steps. She watched him
for half a minute, as he headed up the driveway
through the woods, never looking back. Then she
entered the cabin and closed the door.
�Chapter IX
Anna had read about the annual "Singing on
the Mountain" in the Watauga Democrat, the county
newspaper, during the week and thought it might
be interesting to attend it. Pete had once told her
that it was a descendant of the old camp meetings
and singings, a real folk artifact. She awakened
around six-thirty on Sunday and dressed rapidly,
hoping to beat most of the heavy traffic expected
on the fiftieth anniversary of the occasion. A local
man had organized the first Singing with the
motto: "Whoever would may come." The invitation
had been taken literally. Over the years the number
attending the Singing, in McRae Meadows, near the
western base of Grandfather Mountain, had gradually increased, as governors and other public figures
were added to the program, until now thousands
made the June pilgrimage each year.
Anna's reason for attending was to get a taste
of the old fashioned religious folk singing, a way
of worshipping—in her imagination—as native to
the mountains as the rugged individuals who participated. Her first mistake, she decided later, was
attending at all, especially the fiftieth anniversary.
134
�John Foster West
135
Her second was not leaving the cabin an hour earlier than she did. She was caught in a traffic jam a
mile long and ended up parking in the Town of
Linville, near the highway which led to the Singing.
Cars were lined up bumper to bumper in three
directions, reaching out of sight. As it was, she had
to walk about two miles to McRae Meadows, but
fortunately had worn a pair of sneakers. It was
worse than Saturday afternoon at a Carolina football game, she decided. But she was not alone. She
was swept along in a river of pilgrims, from the
ancient to babes in arms, and all ages between,
from all levels of society. They moved with one
purpose, laughing, joking, singing, bitching about
the long hike, but none of them with the remotest
intention of turning back.
The young redheaded teenager in front of her
sang in a sweet soprano:
Who will shoe your little feet,
and who will glove your hand;
who will kiss your rosy red cheek
when I'm in a far-off land?
The storms blow over the ocean,
the heavenly peace would be;
the world would lose its motion, dear,
if I prove false to thee.
The leaders of the Singing occupied two platforms on two huge rocks uphill from where the
�136
The Summer People
audience (or congregation) stood, sat, or sprawled
in lawn chairs or on blankets, coats, or pieces of
newspapers. Anna sat on the corner of a patchwork
quilt occupied by a young couple and their little
boy. She stared curiously about her, her ears attuned to the patterns of speech, from mountain
dialect to sophisticated Yankee English. There
were two other giant boulders, one beside those
holding the platforms and one behind them. God
had prepared a convenient stage for the service, at
the beginning of the world, Anna mused. A zigzag
rail fence surrounded most of the tilted meadow.
Over to her left was an open shed with a sign which
read: AVERY COUNTY RESCUE SQUAD. Looking back to her right, she studied Grandfather, or
what was seen as Grandfather Mountain from
other perspectives. The old man of the mountains
had disappeared. Here, close below his chin, he
had become three massive peaks, chin, nose, and
forehead, without pattern, jutting up into the swollen bellies of passing clouds.
Because of the size of the congregation and the
traffic problem, the program did not get underway
until around noon. Earlier, the sky had been clear,
although the persistent breeze was cool. But by
eleven, clouds were tumbling out of the west, each
rank larger and darker than the last, so that the sky
was cloudy by twelve. Anna kept glancing upward
distrustfully. It would just be her luck to get her
tail soaked while caught in a stampede of human
�John Foster West
137
buffalos as far as she could see, over forty thousand, she heard one old timer estimate.
She sat through the performance of a string
band from Charlotte, the short speech of General
Westmoreland (candidate for governor of South
Carolina), and the cliches of Bob—"Singing on the
Mountain"—Hope. By the time the governor of
North Carolina began to preach his sermonette
condemning "mere Sunday Christians," she had
made up her mind to get the hell out before the
rain started. She already knew more than enough
about folk singing on the mountain. Johnny Cash
settled it, although she could see from the rapt
faces of those around her that he was what they
had come to see and hear—not folk hymns nor
ex-generals nor governors nor perennial comedians, but Johnny Cash.
She thanked the couple, got to her feet, and
walked a crooked path among the spectators, the
flat tones of "Will the Circle be Unbroken," magnified many times and rolling across the throng, to
collide with Grandfather's rugged chin, now
wrapped in a wreath of torn clouds. Anna was disgusted with herself and disappointed with the
whole day. Somewhere over the years, the "Singing
on the Mountains" had lost its native purpose, she
sensed, and had gone tourist. She could see with a
sweep of her eyes as she walked among them that
most of the spectators (not congregation) here were
either summer people or city folk who had driven
�138
The Summer People
into the mountains for this special occasion, all of
them famished for any publicized entertainment.
The backdrop of Grandfather and the green forests of the Blue Ridge, for the throng, could as
easily have been painted on a piece of canvas
stretched across a stage as a background for
Johnny Cash, the center of "worship."
She had almost reached the outer fringes of the
massed audience when Anna felt a strange flutter
at the base of her throat. Off to her left, with a
pretty redhead, Jay Webber sat on a blanket, his
eyes on the distant platform and the high priest in
a black smock. Anna had not recognized him at
first, although her eyes had, because he was
dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers. She
would have known him without a second glance,
in his usual farm clothing. Her first impulse was to
go over and talk to him for a few minutes. But a
second look at his companion, who clutched his
arm as though she thought he would escape,
changed her mind. She continued to wade through
sprawling bodies and outflung legs.
It was almost two-thirty when she reached her
car. She had just moved out onto the highway,
heading toward Boone, when the sky unzipped to
baptize the green world and her vehicle in a shower
of cold rain. Jehovah, on his day, had not dealt
kindly with the outdoor singing. The world Dr.
DeVoss had loved, that Pete had hurried through
as a child, was dying. She found herself wondering
�John Foster West
139
how long it would take for the old folkways of this
region to become plastic imitations for the summer
people.
On the following Wednesday, Anna was rummaging beneath some blankets and quilts in the
window seat and found a photo album wrapped in
an old newspaper. She took it out and carried it
over to the rocker, where she sat down, opening it.
The first three pages were filled with black and
white photographs of Dr. and Mrs. DeVoss as
young people, with a Florida background, alternating with other scenery, some of it apparently in the
Alps. On page five a child appeared, first held by
a nurse, its hands closed into fists. It had to be Pete.
She wondered why this album had been kept here
at Greenworld and was suddenly surprised, realizing she had never before seen photographs of Pete
as a young boy growing up. Of course six months
of marriage together is not very long. Only a limited number of things could be done. And with
Pete flying most of the time, the bed was the most
important furniture when he was home. Still, it
seemed a bit strange, in retrospect.
She turned the two-dimensional time machine
and studied Pete taking his first steps, Pete on his
first tricycle, Pete going off to school, and Pete on
a bicycle, always grinning—always looking into the
camera, that half serious, half teasing look in his
eyes as though he knew some joke on the world no
one else was aware of. The photographs ran out
�140
The Summer People
when he was around fourteen. In the last one, he
was wearing lederhosen, his arm in a sling. Some
of the muscles she had felt against her softer flesh
could already be seen. His blond hair spilled over
the edge of his eyebrows, and he looked directly
into the camera, directly into her eyes with a persistent stare, the old grin gone, as though the broken
arm, the fall from an Austrian mountain side, had
somehow revealed to him the fact that he had only
eighteen more years to walk the green earth.
Anna turned the last page and stared curiously
at the large photograph which had been taped
faced-down to the inside surface of the album
cover. Several small pieces of Scotch tape held it in
place. She wondered what could possibly be in the
photo. Whatever it was, Mrs. DeVoss had not
wanted it seen by a casual observer, yet had not
wished to destroy it. Using her fingernails, she
peeled very slowly at the tape until it came loose
without tearing the surface to which it adhered.
Then she stopped, feeling guilty. But she knew that
was not going to discourage her, and she knew that
soon, in the next few minutes or half hour, she
would have overcome it. Oh, hell, she thought, why
put it off? She worked more rapidly with the strips
of tape, still succeeding in removing them intact.
She turned the photograph over and stared at it.
It was a color print of Maud DeVoss as a young
woman—Maud DeVoss gloriously naked.
And she was beautiful. Long auburn hair
�John Foster West
141
flowed down across her shoulders and down her
back, out of sight, to her waist. Her face was without blemish, the wrinkles of age concealed far below the surface of the creamy white skin. There
was a provocative, daring look about her halfclosed eyes and open lips, as though she invited all
the men in the world to visit her. Anna thought she
had seen that expression on the face of Jean Harlow, in an old movie magazine she had thumbed
through somewhere. But the love goddess in this
photograph did not recline. She stood with her
back to Butterfly Falls, her right knee crooked, her
arms hanging loosely. In the background, Butterfly
Falls was suspended in time, silent forever, holding
still with the eternal state of the beautiful woman.
Anna tried to visualize Dr. DeVoss holding the
camera and imagine what he was thinking as he
laughed at his seductive wife. She wondered if perhaps in a glimmer of perception, he had looked
beneath that white skin and that flowing hair to
glimpse the wrinkles shining against the bones beneath.
Suddenly she was very sad. She looked down
at her own white arm and shuddered. Carefully,
she taped the photograph back in place, rewrapped the album, and returned it to its place beneath
the blankets. Afterwards, she took off her clothes
and entered the bathroom, closing the door. She
posed before the full-length mirror. Her body was
as it had been the last time she looked. The fine
�142
The Summer People
flesh, all of her was the same. She really was pretty!
She could see no shadow lines of age, no ugly shadows against her white bones. She leaned closer and
examined her face, stretching the skin with her fingertips. It was still young and unblemished. She
inhabited the same world as the photograph of
Maud DeVoss, but her world was ticking toward
the world Mrs. DeVoss now occupied. She suddenly felt time pressing on her like a stream of
invisible sand pouring down on her from above.
She sighed and returned to her bedroom, dressing
again.
The next Saturday was cold and cloudy, a cold
breeze tousling the leaves outside the cabin. During
the morning, dressed in a cardigan sweater and
slacks, Anna drove to Boone to shop at a supermarket. It was not good weather for mountain tourism.
Nevertheless, the narrow roads were as busy as a
line of ants with lowlanders coming up for the
weekend. Most of the license plates were local, although there were a few from adjacent states and
an occasional one from farther away. Few of them
were from Florida, she noted. Most of the Florida
summer citizens had already begun their seasonal
sojourn, and it was a bit early in the morning and
much too cool for them to be abroad.
On the way home, Anna stopped at Sparr's
Store for some needles and thread, which took only
a few minutes. While she was waiting for the storekeeper to get the purchase from the ancient show-
�John Foster West
143
case, she listened to the two old-timers who were
huddled close to the cold stove.
"Yep, hit's snowed in this county in ever month
but July," one of them stated.
"Yeah," the other agreed, "we's bound to have
a frost this year in August. You mark my word and
set it down. The signs is right."
"Hit wouldn't s'prise me a-tall," the first agreed.
As Anna drove away from the store, she tried
to conceive of snow in June and frost in August. It
taxed her imagination. She shivered and laughed,
wondering whether she could endure one cold winter up here above three thousand feet, when the
chill factor was sometimes twenty below. Winter
was not for her. Summer was beautiful here, but
winter at some lower, warmer altitude was her idea
of living sanely.
In the early afternoon there was a knock at the
cabin door. Anna crossed the floor, a bit relieved
because she expected it to be Jay Webber. She had
seen him only once since her quick look at him at
the Singing. He had come by briefly on Tuesday
to deliver a letter from Maud DeVoss. (Her sister
was resting easier, but she had decided not to return to the mountains just now.) The truth was,
Anna was a little lonely and eager to see Jay. Perhaps they could go on a short horseback ride or
something. The trouble was that it was Saturday,
and she knew it. She had always been loneliest on
Saturdays during her six years alone because it had
�144
The Summer People
been on the weekends that she was able to spend
the most time with Pete, and they usually went out
on Saturday nights.
She opened the door, smiling, but felt the elastic of her facial tissue slip back into neutral, which
must have registered her disappointment. Anyway,
the bright smile on Beatrice Wayne's face faded.
"Hi!" she said brightly. "Remember me?"
"Sure. Mrs. Wayne—Beatrice. Do come in."
Beatrice Wayne entered, and Anna closed the
door. "It's a bit chilly today," her visitor said.
"Yes. If it keeps on with this rain and cold,
they'll probably have frost here in August."
Beatrice laughed. "You're kidding. It's not possible."
"Oh, its quite possible," Anna argued. "Have a
seat." She took one of the stuffed chairs near the
fireplace and Beatrice Wayne sat in another.
"I'll tell you one thing," Beatrice asserted, hugging herself and pretending to shiver, "it frosts up
here two nights in a row, and the Wayne family is
heading back for sunny Florida."
"Could I get you a drink?" Anna asked. "Or
perhaps some hot tea?"
"Hot tea would hit the spot, thanks."
Anna got up and went over to put water on a
burner, then prepared tea cups. Beatrice Wayne
told her she had walked all the way from her house
through the woods, and she complained about the
distance. "If you just had a telephone, I could have
�John Foster West
145
called you," she continued. "I just could not live
without a telephone. Of course, I've been planning
to visit you. I would have driven over if I had remembered how darn far it was."
"Didn't you ever walk over when the DeVosses
were here?"
"Oh, many times. But I was a kid then, mostly.
I had good wind. Besides—"
She stopped there. Anna wondered if the besides had anything to do with Pete. She carried the
cups of tea back to her guest, who took one of
them. Anna sat back down, then sipped the hot,
lemony brew.
"Well, now, how did you like Mark Grunwald?"
Beatrice asked, looking into her tea.
Anna stopped, her cup halfway to her mouth. She
would have bet her old pantyhose that was the reason for the visit. For a moment she resented it, then
thought, who cares? It was not that important. "Oh,
okay, I guess. He's a real gentleman of the world."
"He's considered quite a catch by the summer
people." Beatrice caught her eyes briefly, then
looked away.
"For whom?"
"For whom!" Anna's guest laughed. "For any
single woman that can get him." She hesitated. "Or
any woman, for that matter. It's not a complicated
matter anymore to become single."
"No," Anna agreed. "All a woman has to do is
to have a husband who gets killed."
�146
The Summer People
"Oh, honey, I'm sorry." She reached over and
patted Anna's arm, spilling some of her tea. "I
didn't intend to bring back memories. I was just
kidding, naturally."
"No offense. I just stated it as a fact."
"Did—did you get along with Mark all right?
He wouldn't talk about it to me."
"Why should he?" Anna had not meant to
sound so firm.
"Oh, don't misunderstand me." She reached
out to pat Anna's arm again, but she moved it before Beatrice could slop any of her tea onto her
knees. "I was talking with him, and he brought the
subject up himself. He just said how very pretty you
are and how he wished he could see more of you.
I mean be with you more."
"That was sweet of him."
"Did you-all have fun?" Beatrice Wayne hesitated. "I mean—"
"Do you mean, did we go to bed?" Anna asked
politely. "If so, the answer is no, we didn't."
"Oh, Anna, you know I didn't mean that, really," she protested. "You know I wouldn't ask you
anything like that."
"Well, just in case you are curious, we didn't."
"Oh, I could have guessed that." Beatrice
reached out to touch her again, then withdrew her
hand. "What I really came over here for—I mean
aside from a neighborly visit—was to ask you over
to play bridge tonight. My husband's brother is up
�John Foster West
147
from Orlando for a week, and we—George and
I—thought it might be good for both of you to
socialize a little. I mean you and Phil, my brotherin-law."
"I would be glad to come over. But bridge—
don't you remember when I met you at the lodge,
I told you I don't play bridge?"
"Oh, dear!" Beatrice Wayne looked incredulous. "Don't play bridge! Well, I declare. Well, what
do you play?"
Anna managed a narrow little smile. "I'm a
fairly good poker player."
"Poker! I mean poker?" Anna's guest nodded,
her face twisted in puzzlement.
"My husband was a Navy jet pilot. He thought
bridge was a game to keep the hands busy while
women gossiped."
"Yes. Well, I suppose we could play a little
poker. That would be fun, I suppose."
"It's settled then. What time should I come
over?"
"Oh, I'll send Phil after you. We're invited to a
little reception at the lodge earlier in the evening.
How would eight-thirtyish be?"
"Eight-thirtyish will suit me fine," Anna said.
"But I insist, I'll just come on over. I can't stay late,
though. This mountain air gets to me. I usually
retire early."
"That'll be fine, then." Beatrice Wayne stood
up. "We'll be expecting you around eight-thirty."
�148
The Summer People
Anna started to offer her a ride back to her
cabin, but changed her mind. "See you then," she
said, as she moved to open the door.
Some little niggling quirk at the back of her
mind insisted that Anna walk to the Wayne cabin
rather than drive. Although twilight beneath the
forest roof preceded the setting of the sun, the old
path between the summer homes was easy to follow. Anna wondered how many times young Pete
DeVoss had walked this way to play with prissy little
Beatrice Paulson, and felt a sharp little pingl of
jealousy explode somewhere in the uncharted regions of her mind. Once, she stopped to watch five
or six wee folk doing a square dance circle in the
gloom beneath a holly tree, but when she blinked,
they had vanished. She frowned in disappointment
and continued her walk, her red pantsuit a shadow
among shadows. Fireflies began exploding among
the trees like the birth and death of distant stars.
"Oh, you walked!" Beatrice Wayne commented, when she opened the door.
"Yes," Anna said. "It was not all that far. Only
a few hundred yards."
Phil Wayne was a big, blond man, perhaps
twenty-five. Within two minutes after the game
had started, Anna was made aware of the fact that
he was a vice-president of one of the five Wayne
banks in central and north Florida. Anna did not
ask, but she was certain the banks were family enterprises, probably established by Father or Grand-
�John Foster West
149
father Wayne. How else could a man not long out
of college become the vice-president of a bank? He
wore a white sport shirt open almost to his navel,
displaying his deeply tanned,, almost hairless chest.
He wore a smile as white as his shirt, and his hair,
almost to his collar, any female would have envied.
He was not feminine, though. He was quick to let
her know he had been a linebacker at Florida State
and a letterman in tennis. Did she play tennis? Did
she play golf? He had another week's vacation. He
would have to try her out next week if her calendar
was not too full. Perhaps they could borrow the
Webbers' horses and go for a ride. He knew some
bridle paths leading to beautiful scenery—like Holy
Rood Rock—since he had ridden with that local
fellow (What was his name? Oh, yes, Jay—Jay
Webber) last summer. A peckerwood, but a darn
considerate chap. Anna felt her nape bristling and
started to retort, then dropped it. After all, who
was this Florida cracker? Jay did not need her to
defend him.
Although her drinks had relaxed her and subdued her impatience, Anna was restless. The game,
draw poker, was mostly slipshod and quiet except
for the occasional chatter from Beatrice or the recreational autobiography of Phil, who drove a Corvette, flew the bank's Beechcraft, owned a twinengine cabin cruiser, water skied, snow skied, piloted a racing boat, and was taking lessons to fly the
company helicopter. Anna found herself wonder-
�150
The Summer People
ing when in hell he found the time to play vicepresident of a bank. She wondered how he and
silent George could have come from the same tree,
unless their mother had only one tongue to go
around and Phil inherited it. Beatrice had to interpret George's silence and occasional grunts for
Anna. Phil apparently knew the language.
"Summer is nothing up here for sports," Phil
was saying. "You ought to come up here in the
winter. They've got six or seven ski resorts around
here. A couple of them have runs that are fairly
challenging. Have you ever skied, Anna?"
Anna nodded, studying her hand. "On the
Chesapeake Bay."
"No! I mean real skiing—snow skiing." He
leaned toward her, smiling.
"The deepest snow I ever saw was about three
inches," she said. "It closed Norfolk down for three
days."
"Well, you ought to come back up here in January and February." Phil leaned forward against the
table, plunging down a slope into the cold wind.
"You'd love to ski. I could teach you in no time. I
belong to the Ski Patrol."
"I just knew you did," Anna nodded solemnly.
"I would have bet you were a Ski Patrolman."
"Draw, again," Beatrice announced. It was
dealer's choice. "Deuces and one-eyed Jacks are
wild."
�John Foster West
151
"Jesus, Sis," Phil complained, "why don't you
just make the whole deck wild?"
"Are you kidding?" Beatrice argued. "That
would take all chance out of the game."
Anna had to admit that Phil Wayne was a bright
kid, even when talking. As the evening progressed,
more and more of the coins accumulated in front
of him. By eleven, Anna was out of chips, including
two dollars extra she had brought along, a total of
five dollars and twenty cents. But of more importance to her, she was weary of the game, weary of
the Waynes, and under the influence of the cool
mountain air, was too sleepy to pretend any longer.
She wanted to be alone.
The second after she excused herself for the
evening, Anna realized where she had made her
mistake—by walking to the Wayne cabin instead
of driving. Phil Wayne had the answer. "Oh, I'll
drive you home. It's too far to walk in the dark. I
must. I insist." Anna knew he would. She was a bit
tipsy from the drinks, and anyway, she did not feel
like arguing. Anna was afraid for a moment he
would insist on carrying her to his car.
He almost lifted her into the bucket seat of the
low-swung vehicle, then vaulted the hood toward
the driver's side. In a moment they were out of the
yard and heading up the Ridge Road, Phil Wayne
talking, talking, talking. What a way to spend a
Saturday evening, she thought. Way ahead, the
�152
The Summer People
Webber farmhouse was a dark, rectangular mass
against a lighter sky. She wondered if Jay were
asleep or somewhere with the redhead she had
seen him with at the Singing. She felt a little lurch
of regret at the possibility, but it passed quickly.
Phil Wayne did not touch her except to help
her out of the car. When she stumbled on the front
steps, he grabbed her left arm, steadying her, then
let her go. Damn, but she was tight, tighter than
she realized or had intended, probably because she
had eaten very little all day. She groped for the
keyhole, found it, inserted the key, and the door
swung inward.
It was at that moment Phil Wayne touched her.
He seized her in his arms, drew her to him, and
found her mouth with his. Anna started to shove
him away, then thought better. Perhaps a quick
kiss would satisfy him and send him home more
quickly. But he had other ideas. For a moment
Anna's mind whirled away toward alcoholic indiscretion.
He removed his mouth from hers. "I just knew
you would be like this," he panted. "Yes. Yes. I
knew you would."
Promise you'll wait till I return.
Anna went tense. "Like what?"
"Warm," he whispered. "Exciting!"
"I'm not like that at all," she stated, pushing at
him. "Knock it off! That's enough, buster."
But she could not budge his bulk. She braced a
�John Foster West
153
forearm against his chest and shoved, but it only
moved her backward tighter against the wall,
where he trapped her. All of a sudden his closeness
repelled her. She did not want him close to her.
The cracker called Jay a peckerwood. Wish he were
here. Let him go back to the Sunshine State and
brag to his friends at the bank—
"Come on, beautiful," he crooned in her ear.
"You know you don't want to fight me."
With her right hand, Anna tried to reach his
face with her fingernails, but he caught her wrist
with his left hand. Her left hand was trapped behind her against the wall.
Relax a moment, the ghost voice whispered deep
in her brain. Remember what I taught you. Relax, then
when he relaxes, you know what to do.
The short hair bristled on the nape of her neck.
She could feel the blood draining from her face,
but briefly she felt more secure with the living flesh
of Phil Wayne close to her. But for only a moment.
Then she relaxed and Phil Wayne placed his arms
back around her. She pushed him gently, and he
moved backward just enough.
Abruptly, her right knee flashed upward and
caught him in the crotch. He bellowed a hoarse,
coughing groan and doubled over, clutching himself with both hands. She slipped from between
him and the wall, darted through the doorway, and
shoved the cabin door closed. She stood there in
the dark panting, terrified that he would be intoxi-
�154
The Summer People
cated enough and stupid enough to break into the
cabin and attack her again. She remembered Pete's
advice clearly now. "Women have no pain equivalent," he had laughed.
Her breathing had slowed to normal, and her
heart had quieted when she heard the engine of
the Corvette come to life. She smiled a tight smile
of relief and crossed the cabin to her bedroom,
turning on the light.
Afterwards, she stood under a hot shower for
half an hour, almost scalding herself clean.
�Chapter X
She sat on a mossy rock somewhere in the forest
watching the wee folk square-dancing. She did not
see any musicians, but the little people, in their
white and black pilgrim clothes, danced wildly, like
Breughel's peasants, their heads thrown back, silent laughter ringing toward the sky. Suddenly the
dancing stopped and the wee folk whirled to face
her, looking beyond her, their faces warped by
fear. Only a moment they stood frozen in their
tracks. Then they whirled and fled beneath some
healalls.
Anna started to turn and look behind her, but
she was too late. A powerful hand seized her right
arm, whirled her onto her back. She felt a hairy
chest flatten her and coarse hair cutting into her
skin like steel wool. Both her wrists were grasped
now. She tried to rear up, but was pressed back.
She could think of no defense that Pete had taught
her. She was half terrified and half fascinated. She
opened her eyes and stared upward. The face was
indistinct, but the kinky hair and beard were in
vague silhouette against the starry sky and seemed
familiar. The thick neck which came down to press
155
�156
The Summer People
against her face had a familiar smell, one remembered from a long time ago. She opened her mouth
to plead, but could not speak.
Her eyes were open now, and she was staring
at the shadowy ceiling above the bed. The weight
was gone from her chest, but she thought she could
still smell a faint musk in the room. She tossed her
head to the side. The window was open, but the
screen was closed and latched.
She heard a noise at the window. Tilting her
head again, she stared in that direction. She
thought she saw a shadowy silhouette against the
outer darkness. She whirled to the edge of the bed,
lifting the lid of the window seat and groping
downward inside it. She found the button that rang
the bell in the Webber house. Her hand relaxed
and she stared back at the window, squinting.
There was nothing there. Of course there was not.
She started to withdraw her hand, hesitated.
All she had to do was press the button. Her finger
stiffened on it. In ten minutes or less, perhaps only
five, Jay would be there inside the house. Why had
she not been tempted before? Was it because fantasies seemed more possible, more acceptable in the
middle of the night, when she usually slept? Anyway, she was unafraid for the present.
She removed her hand from inside the box and
let the lid fall. Suddenly she was chilly. Reaching
down, she pulled the sheet and blanket over her-
�John Foster West
157
self, curled into a tight spiral, and smiled in comfort. She felt good through and through. Gad, but
the bed was comfortable. She went back to sleep,
still smiling.
Anna DeVoss sat at the large oval table in the
Webber combination kitchen-dining room, a room
large enough to hold a dance in, she thought.
Around ten o'clock that morning she had heard the
roar of Jay's Scout outside the cabin. He had come
with the invitation from his mother to a Fourth of
July dinner (a noon meal to Mrs. Webber), and
Anna had been happy to accept. Independence
Day was warm and hazy, but not muggy here in the
mountains. Jay had shown her about the farm, the
granary, the small greenhouse, the smokehouse,
and the stone basement beneath the kitchen area,
where Burley tobacco was cured.
Now, the four of them ate—Jay, Anna, Hilda,
and Mrs. Webber, who did most of the talking. It
was as though she had saved her word-hoard during the quiet days of the working week, Anna
thought, and spent it on whoever there was to listen
on weekends and holidays. Her reddish graystreaked hair was combed back and wound into a
tight bun at the nape of her neck. Wearing her
navy-blue Sunday dress, Mrs. Webber did not appear to Anna to be a hard working farm woman
until she looked at the older woman's hands,
�158
The Summer People
cracked and calloused as any man's who has spent
a lifetime in the fields.
Anna's glance flickered to Hilda, beside her
mother. She sat in her chair as prim as a first-year
student in a boarding school. Her red dress, patterned with white daisies, was neatly laundered,
and her long hair swept down her back, held in
order behind, Anna had noticed earlier, by a silver
barrette. Her whole attention was on her food and
the ritual of eating it, lifting each forkful slowly and
placing it in her mouth as carefully as though she
expected it to burn her. She glanced at Anna now
and then, but mostly, she practiced a pantomime
she had been carefully rehearsed in for a long time.
Wearing what seemed to be the same faded jeans
and sleeveless blue sports shirt, Jay sat across from
Anna. Now and then their eyes would meet, like a
tentative fingertip-to-fingertip touch by two people
in a dark room. At those times, a ripple of laugh
wrinkles would appear about his eyes, hedged in
by hairline and beard, but Anna could not tell
whether they were from amusement or pleasure.
He ate methodically as though counting the calories, pausing now and then to stare through the
window beyond Anna, his mind apparently far
away.
"I got seven younguns," Mrs. Webber was saying. "There's Hilder and Jay, my youngst'uns.
Then there's Goldie and Ruth and Maybell, living
�John Foster West
159
here and yander." She grinned. "Already fetched
me eight grandchildrens. Then I got two older
boys, Abe and Sandy. They's both off yander in
Dee-troit and Denver. Couldn't neither of 'em
abide working on the farm. That's why Jay's got to
manage things—"
"Mamma!" Jay protested.
Martha Webber laughed. "Jay don't take to me
talkin about him to nobody. He's my youngun
that's most inside hisself. He's my brightest 'un,
too." She chuckled. "Although he don't behave like
it most of the time."
Jay Webber grinned and caught Anna's eye.
"Mamma thinks I'm bright because I get things
done without killing myself working at it."
"No, I don't think no sech a thing," his mother
argued. "That's the part I think is lazy. Hard work
is good for soul and body."
"Mamma, may I be excused to go to the bathroom, please?" Hilda Webber asked.
"Sure, honey. Be careful to flush the toilet,
now, and wash your hands before you come back
to the table."
"Yes, Mamma." The girl left, disappearing
through the doorway to Anna's left, leading to the
main part of the house.
The food was delicious. The main dish was
fried chicken, but the vegetables appealed to
Anna's taste the most. There were string beans sea-
�160
The Summer People
soned with pork, and mashed potatoes. There was
also a dish she had never tasted before, leaf lettuce
covered with sliced spring onions, wilted by pouring some hot bacon grease over them. This early
in the summer, leaf lettuce and spring onions were
about the only vegetables the garden produced
here in the mountains, Mrs. Webber had told her
earlier, especially if the season is late. There were
sliced tomatoes, tasty and tart, not like the plastic*
blobs she was able to buy in the supermarket,
picked and shipped green. Anna loved homegrown, vine-ripened tomatoes.
"I didn't think tomatoes were ripe up here in
the mountains yet," she said. "They are delicious."
"That's one of the reasons I think Jay's smart,"
Martha Webber grinned. "He tuck over one of my
greenhouses I use for flowers (she pronounced it
flairs) and growed some early tomatoes in there.
Uses jest manure and woods mulch to feed'em.
They are good, aint't they?"
"It was a simple job," Jay said. "That's the way
I'm raising everything in the garden down at Riverglade."
"Now, honey, you know better'n that," Mrs.
Webber said firmly. "Get back to your room and
get your dress back on."
Anna turned her head. Hilda stood in the doorway, naked except for her panties. "But, Mamma,
I wet my dress."
�John Foster West
161
Anna's eyes shifted to Jay, as he turned to look
at his sister. "Hilda, baby, we have company," he
said. "Please! Go back and put a dress on."
"Get you another clean frock out of your
dresser drawer," Martha Webber said. "Now you
know you mustn't come in here like that."
"All right, Mamma." The girl turned around
and disappeared back through the doorway. Anna
studied Martha Webber covertly and envied her
children their mother.
"Jay will excuse me if I tell you he don't like
running the farm much," Mrs. Webber said. "After
J.W. passed on, they wasn't nobody else to manage.
I couldn't. We let the backer allotment out to a
tenant farmer, but we got a share. Mack Jones is
honest enough, but Burley backer needs to be tuck
care of like a sick baby. Jay knows how it's got to
be done, and so he manages it. If he had his druthers, he'd druther not do much of anything but raise
a garden and a few acres of other stuff."
"After a man has worked himself to death," Jay
protested, "all he's got to show for it is a hole in the
ground and property left for his kin to fight over."
"They won't be no fightin over this here farm,"
his mother argued.
"That's because Dad was smarter than most
farmers. He made plans for his land."
"Mountain lands is breakin up," Martha
Webber explained to Anna. "This generation cares
�162
The Summer People
but little or nothin about real farmin. Most of 'em
are leaving home for factories and professions,
them that ain't already left. They was a time when
everbody that could manage it, around here, sent
their girls to Appalachian State Teachers College—
it's a university now, but it was a fine teachers college for year upon year. Then the girls would
marry some local boy, and they'd farm and have a
good income from her a-teachin in a nearby school
and her man a-runnin the farm. But things has
changed. Boys and girls both are a-goin to the university, here and way off yander, some'ers, and the
land is gettin broke apart into sections and lots for
them rich lowlanders to invest in or so's they can
spend the summers up here where it's cool at. And
they ain't no more plan to the developin and
buildin than a house on fire. Big old mansions and
scabby trailers are a settin next door to one another
like a frog in a flower garden."
"Yet there's no other place worth living, at least
for me," Jay said. "You couldn't pay me to leave
these mountains anymore."
"But don't you get bored up here sometimes?"
Anna was arguing with him. She felt it was a point
she needed to make. "I mean, this summer so far
has been wonderful for me, different. But isn't that
because it's a new experience? Deep down, I feel
restless, quite often, as though—" She was thoughtful for a few seconds—"as though I wanted to go
home and couldn't remember where home is."
�John Foster West
163
"You're becoming one of us," Jay laughed. "If
you weren't, you'd remember where your home is."
Anna opened her mouth to deny what he had
said, then thought better. After all, there was nothing to protest against, even though she was sure
what he had said was untrue.
�Chapter XI
Jay Webber had invited Anna to attend the
nineteenth annual Highland Games and Gathering
of the Scottish Clans, on Saturday, July 13, at
McRae Meadows, under Grandfather Mountain,
where she had attended alone the "Singing on the
Mountain." The event was to last two days, Saturday and Sunday, but Jay was chiefly interested in
the track and field competition, which took place
on Saturday. He asked her to be ready by 6:00
A.M. so they could escape the frustrating traffic,
and Anna, remembering her experience at the
Singing, agreed. It was already daylight as they
sped along the winding highway toward Linville in
Jay's Scout, but a sky full of woolly fog hung a few
hundred feet above the treetops, canceling out
sunrise or any other means of telling direction.
Grandfather Mountain was buried from below his
chin upward, including Galloway Peak, his nose,
the highest elevation in the Blue Ridge Chain.
Jay's concession to family tradition and the
MacTavish Clan (actually a family of the Campbell
Clan) was a pair of trousers made of MacTavish
tartan—a plaid with a red background, lines of
164
�John Foster West
165
light blue and black running through it. His shirt
was a non-symbolic light blue pullover. Anna wore
a Campbell tartan scarf about her head, which Mrs.
Webber had supplied. Jay had not attended the
gathering in more than five years, he told her. In
his late teens and early twenties he had worn the
whole regalia: kilt, sporran, tarn, everything; but
he had lost interest in any kind of group identity,
Anna gathered from what he did not say. She also
sensed that his main reason for attending today
was that he thought she might find it interesting.
"The guest of honor this year is from Clan Malcolm, Argyll, Scotland," Jay explained, as he made
the last turn at the Linville traffic light and headed
toward Grandfather Mountain on 221. "The chief
of a clan is invited from Scotland each year to renew the kinship between American and native
clansmen. Some of the games are traditional Scottish contests, and some, like the track and jumping
events, are universal. It was a good idea to start
with, a real celebration of tradition, but I'm afraid
it's getting too polluted by tourists."
"Why is the gathering here?" Anna asked. "I
mean, why not somewhere else?"
"The Carolina mountains are full of descendants of Scottish immigrants." They were climbing
now under a canopy of green foliage, swinging
from curve to curve with the rhythm of a roller
coaster, up the west side of the Blue Ridge. "Many
refugees of the Jacobean troubles ended up here,
�166
The Summer People
because it was so much like the highlands, I'm sure.
Some of the most common names are McRae,
McNeal, McGee, McLeod, MacTavish, Scott, Ross,
MacLeon, Davidson, Hay, Witherspoon (originally
Wotherspoon), and so on. It's ironic that many of
them are really humble farmers or low-income
families who ignore their heritage and would never
consider going to the trouble of coming to one of
these gatherings, up here. Yet most of them I'm
talking about have a greater family right to wear
the tartan than most of those who will be here today, pretenders who are only indirectly connected
to a Scottish clan."
"I suppose it's like you said earlier: some people
feel a need to belong somewhere special. Perhaps
they are ordinary, which I don't mean to be a criticism, and any kind of relationship to a proud heritage like the Scots have gives them a feeling of
importance."
Jay nodded his head thoughtfully, but Anna
was not sure whether he actually heard what she
had said. He was once again off in his own little
universe, leaving his flesh beside her.
They encountered no other vehicle on the
climb to McRae Meadows, but when they arrived,
they discovered a small city had preceded them.
The grassy area on the right side of the highway
was filled with campers, trailers, and cars around
its margin, people who had arrived the day before.
On the left side of the road, campers and cars
�John Foster West
167
stretched from sight in the cleared areas beneath
the trees and in the grass along the edge of the vast
upland meadow. Jay pulled into the entrance to the
grounds, backed around, and parked on the grassy
shoulder of the highway, with a light pole a few
feet behind him, giving him enough space to back
up and escape if someone should park too close to
his front bumper. They sat in the car for a while
drinking coffee from a thermos bottle Jay had
brought, listening to a radio station in Morganton,
hardly hearing it and saying very little.
Shortly after they parked, other vehicles began
to arrive but they were infrequent, this early, and
had little trouble finding a parking place. Most of
them drove directly up the lane, directed by an
attendant with a walkie-talkie, and into the lower
area of McRae Meadows, where they would be
stuck without escape until the day's activities were
over and they had to creep in line out of the area.
At eight o'clock, Anna and Jay left the Scout. Jay
bought tickets at three dollars each for the first
day, and they walked up the forest lane towards the
meadow. Anna noted as they passed them, cars and
campers from many states, several from as far away
as Michigan and Canada.
Already, tourists and fourth and fifth-generation American Scotsmen were beginning to wander
about the huge field. A stocky couple in kilts, hose,
and tarns waddled past Anna and Jay, holding
hands. Both had long hair and both had a sturdy
�168
The Summer People
walk, making it difficult to tell which was the male
and which the female. Jay argued that the man was
on the right because the rear of the other one rotated a bit farther with each step. They got scrambled eggs, ham, biscuits and coffee in cardboard
containers at a stand and sat down on a rock to eat.
Anna's eyelids were heavy and grainy. She felt like
stretching out on the grass and going back to sleep.
At nine, the sun broke through the rising fog
as though a clock had been set for that moment.
Tourists were beginning to pour into the lower half
of the meadow now, streaming down the lanes between parked vehicles. Canvas kiosks were opening
up, stretched along the middle of the meadow, offering everything for sale Scottish and a great deal
that was not. They moved from stand to stand,
examining the goods and their prices. Clan tartan
kilts, little more than wraparounds, sold for $45 to
$60. Tartan ties were $5 to $10, depending on their
width. There was a variety of caps, tarns, scarfs,
sporrans, belts, socks, and other clothing. There
was bolt upon bolt of tartan fabric. One could buy
clan books, clan maps, family crests, ashtrays, cups,
plates, banners, and badges which read "Kiss me,
I'm Scottish" or "Scotland Forever." There were
also expensive jewelry and junk jewelry—the sort
that tourists revel in. One kiosk specialized in Scottish food, including short bread and haggis—lamb,
seasoning, and oatmeal stuffed into a lamb's stomach.
They stopped to watch an old white-haired
�John Foster West
169
gentleman hobble by dressed in expensive Scottish
attire, sporran hair dangling far down between his
bowed legs. He walked painfully by using one of
those S-curved, knotty "hoot mon" canes Anna had
seen in pictures.
"Old Great-grandpa Abe MacTavish would
kick these stands down, if he could see them," Jay
muttered. "Money changers in the temple of tradition."
"But the goods are authentic, aren't they?"
"Yes, a hell of a lot more authentic than the
Cherokee tomahawks and headdresses made in
Formosia you'll find in the southwestern part of the
state, around Cherokee. At least it was like that a
few years ago." He stopped suddenly and turned,
waving with the back of his hand toward the milling, elbowing throng around them, as if attempting
to part the Red Sea with a gesture. "But these people, eighty percent of them, are descendants of immigrants from everywhere but Scotland. There's
something phony about selling ancestral symbols
to aliens, if I can use that word. And even I've got
to go back three generations to find pure Scot
blood."
"It's the publicity," Anna said. "I bet you could
have a gathering of orangutangs and write it up in
papers or put it on TV, and you would have thousands of summer tourists who would come, claiming a distant ancestor was an orangutang chief."
Jay Webber stared at her, a strange look in his
�170
The Summer People
eyes, his mouth grim. Suddenly he burst out laughing and whacked her on her arm, stinging her.
"You know, I think there's hope for you yet."
Anna resented the pain briefly, but let it pass.
She remembered Pete had said once that if you had
a brown-nosing contest, and advertised it, you
would get a stadium full of long noses from everywhere. She started to tell Jay, but thought better.
That was something that belonged to her and her
husband.
Jay escorted her through the gate between the
lines of kiosks and out into the upper half of the
meadow, the center of which was dominated by an
official quarter-mile oval track around a grassy
field, where high-jump, broad-jump, pole vault,
and shot-put areas could be seen. The hillside to
the left was terraced and offered tiers on which
spectators had already gathered, sitting in folding
chairs or on spread blankets. Jay and Anna sat in
the grass on the upper tier to the right of the reviewing stand, a platform with a canvas roof, the
microphone already manned by someone who
called himself the Field Marshal.
"Traffic is backed up all the way to Linville, two
miles," the Field Marshal announced. Anna looked
at her watch. It was 9:45. He had said it as though
it were some kind of record, perhaps better than
last season, when the traffic did not reach that
mark until later in the day.
She started to call Jay's attention to the time,
�John Foster West
171
when the microphone came alive again. "Will the
owner of the Buick station wagon blocking the
driveway into the field please move it?" the voice
requested. "Otherwise, it will be towed away at your
expense."
"I be damned! Would you believe that?" Jay
commented.
"He wanted to park close," Anna replied. "The
driveway was obviously the only space in three
miles of here he could get his little old Buick wagon
in. He's a citizen. He's got rights."
Jay laughed. "You wouldn't believe that anyone, I mean anyone, would be that stupid, would
you? Now he, or she, is going to lose twice as much
time moving as he would have lost parking sensibly
in the first place."
"That's democracy, Jay. You are free to be
bright, mediocre, or stupid. Everyone can't be
bright."
On two platforms down on the athletic field,
children were doing the Highland Fling. They appeared to be all girls, but a boy would have been
hard to spot from that distance, in a kilt and wearing long hair. The strident skirl of a bagpipe filled
the air like the protest of a giant insect caught in a
web, as bonnie lassies, from four feet to five feet,
ten inches tall did their Scottish ballet, most of the
motion vertical. Although there was a monotony
to the repetition of the steps, Anna could see a wild
grace in the dance and felt her nape prickle at the
�172
The Summer People
music. For a brief few seconds, she understood how
warriors in kilts, their bottoms bare, could follow
that music into battle, called by the enemy the Ladies from Hell.
"Did you know," Jay asked, "that the typical
mountain fiddle music was originally an attempt
to imitate the sound of the bagpipe?"
"No, I didn't know that," Anna said. "Did you
know it?"
Jay chuckled. "You blase smarty! No, I didn't
know it, but I have been told that the Scottish immigrants to these mountains invented mountain fiddling because they missed bagpipe music. I was not
told why they didn't bring bagpipes with them."
"You anticipated my question."
"I'm getting to know you," he sang off key.
They ate a production-line lunch and watched
athletic competition in the afternoon. By one
o'clock the grounds surrounding the field were so
thick with spectators it was difficult to walk in any
direction. The huge boulders along the upper edge
of the meadows were so crowded, Anna was reminded of sunning seals on a rocky shore. The
track and field events were sanctioned by the AAU,
Jay explained, and any record set would be an official one. But as it turned out, only local track
records were broken. Anna was not impressed, nor
was Jay. Had it not been for the atmosphere and
the setting, she would just as soon have been back
at the cabin reading a book. The mile and two-mile
�John Foster West
173
runs were very slow, compared to world records.
The hundred-yard dash was exciting only because
it was explosive.
Anna found the caber toss the most interesting
event because it was the most alien to her experience. The caber was a twenty-foot log which
weighed from a hundred to a hundred forty
pounds. The contestant picked it up from the
ground, keeping it as vertical as possible, lifting it
with both hands beneath the small end, rushed forward and hurled it top end first. The point was to
toss it end over end so that it fell in line with the
run, and not the distance thrown. The sport originated from a method of building bridges in a
hurry, Jay told her. The sheaf toss and the toss of
the clach—stone strength—a large, smooth stone
which weighed about fourteen pounds, were also
interesting.
They missed the most unusual happening of
the day when a man with a hang glider sailed from
the chin of Grandfather Mountain, fifteen hundred feet to a golf course at the foot of the mountain. Someone told them about it later. Anna tried
to relate the glider flight to the Highland Games,
but somewhere there was a contradiction.
Late in the afternoon, before the masses of
tourists got the same idea, Anna and Jay walked
among the sprawling, standing, milling spectators,
returning to the highway and Jay's Scout. As they
drove back toward Linville, traffic was no problem,
�174
The Summer People
but the shoulder of the road on the right was a
continuous line of parked vehicles.
"Can you imagine what it will be like when all
those cars and campers start leaving McRae Meadows?" Anna asked, out of a long silence.
"Yes, I can." He looked at her, then back at the
road. "That's why we're leaving now. These roads
are not capable of handling this kind of traffic.
Only four-lane roads could do it."
Imagine what four lanes would do to these
mountains."
"That's our dilemma," he nodded.
�Chapter XII
The week following the Highland Games, Jay
Webber started coming by Anna's cabin almost
every day, suggesting some activity. On Monday
he drove her several miles the other side of Boone,
to the old Winebarger mill. His stated reason for
making the trip was to buy some fresh-ground
buckwheat flour, but she was sure the real reason
was to show her the old water mill. A faded, dark
structure of weatherboarding and shingles, it towered beside a small stream whose water ran eternally down the flume and overshot the rusty waterwheel, turning it, unless a trap was opened, allowing the water to fall short, splashing on the rocks
below. The mill was over eighty years old and now
run by the grandson of the first miller.
Inside, the building was close and filled with a
"mealy fragrance of the past," Anna thought. Always, with the wheel turning, the floor vibrated
beneath her feet and the low rumble, along with
the grating of meshing steel cogs, reminded her of
an approaching avalanche of stones. All over the
walls and beams, the names and addresses of customers from as far away as California and Maine
175
�176
The Summer People
were written in square script, along with the
amount of meal or buckwheat flour to be mailed
and the intervals at which orders were to be sent.
Some of them were dated 1887, 1900, and 1906.
Anna had the weird feeling that she would walk
back out through the door she used earlier, when
she entered the old mill, step up into a buggy, and
ride off at a fast trot. And to her surprise she almost wished she could.
That night, Jay drove Anna out to Wisemans
View, off Highway 181, and they sat for four hours
staring at the dark bulk of Brown Mountain, trying
to catch a glimmer of the ghostly Brown Mountain
Lights, but all they saw were fireflies.
On Tuesday, Jay came by her cabin with the
horses and a picnic lunch his mother had packed,
suggesting that they ride up to Holy Rood Rock.
They passed by the dark green lake of growing
tobacco, through which a man, a woman, and several teenagers waded slowly, at work. Jay told her
about Burley 21, suckering, cutworms, and aphids,
but she did not follow it too well. Raising tobacco
seemed like more trouble than running a dairy.
"That weed is a royal pain in the ankle," Jay
swore. "And I'm getting fed up with it. It's like
bottle-feeding a rattlesnake. It doesn't contribute a
damn thing to mankind but trouble. I sometimes
try to imagine the kind of vegetables you could
grow with the same pampering."
Anna looked at him curiously. "What's the oc-
�John Foster West
177
casion for this sermon? I don't smoke, and I haven't seen you smoking."
Jay laughed brusquely. "I'm sorry. One of my
sore points. As far as I personally am concerned,
raising tobacco is immoral. Yet I'm trapped, at least
for this year. I have to manage it for Mamma and
Hilda. But Mom doesn't really need the money
anymore."
They climbed halfway up Golgotha Mountain,
following a winding bridle trail beneath tall oaks
and poplars. Holy Rood Rock was far from symmetrical, but it was massive and intimidating. Anna
stood beside her mount and stared up at it, subdued to silence, momentarily. Both vertical shaft
and cross bar were of sedimentary rock, with strata
easily visible in different shades of limestone and
large fragments of quartz. The shaft, more than
sixty feet tall, listed to the left. The right arm of the
horizontal beam was shorter than the left, and the
whole formation was tilted slightly from horizontal.
Sometime in the dark geological past, Anna surmised, the two layers of rock had collided during
earthquakes, had become fused, and millions of
years of erosion had done the rest. It was the kind
of cross a blind giant might have chiseled out, and
for a moment a dark stone Christ three stories tall
shimmered against it, before disappearing. A
spring bubbled from the base of the cliff behind
the cross and rushed down to the stone foundation,
sweeping around both sides of the vertical shaft.
�178
The Summer People
"Whoever drinks of that spring," Jay said quietly, "will live in extremely good health."
The spell was broken. Anna turned on him.
"Aw, come on," she scoffed. "You don't really believe that crap!"
"That's the tradition," he said. "The Indians
believed it. There's a Cherokee myth that de Soto
worshipped here on his way through the Appalachians to the Mississippi and that he took some of
the water with him.'
"If he did, the water didn't save him, did it?"
She was thoughtful a moment. "Old Cortez would
have crucified an Indian or two on it."
"The Cherokees called it Equa-nvya-asgaya,
Big Rock Man." He hesitated. "There's a better tradition than the one about the water, though."
"Whoever eats a rock from beneath it will never
have diarrhea?" Anna asked, smiling.
"No, smarty. Whoever is married beneath Holy
Rood Rock will never separate."
Anna turned to look at him, another smart remark on the tip of her tongue. But Jay Webber was
staring upward at the cross. And she did not want
to change the expression on his face. "Are many
couples married here?" she asked quietly.
"Not any more." He lowered his head and
stared back across Holy Rood Valley, which lay below in haze like a land beneath a translucent lake.
A generation ago they did. My parents were married here. Our generation doesn't believe in such
�John Foster West
179
magic. Besides, you can't get up here unless you
walk or ride horseback. And I don't think many of
the backpackers from outside even know about it."
"You know what's going to happen, don't you?"
"What?" He studied her face, eyes narrowed.
"One day soon, they'll build a road up here.
Hamburger stands will spring up. There'll be a picnic ground. The tourists will come with their candy
wrappers, paper plates, cans, and bottles, and there
will be mass weddings under the cross, televised.
And little plastic Holy Rood Rocks will sell at five
dollars each. And the bride and groom who kiss the
longest will get a gold-filled dishwasher."
Jay Webber laughed a scoffing little laugh.
"You're a sardonic broad."
"I'm not a broad, Jay. I'm Anna. Remember?"
Reaching out, he took hold of her left arm,
squeezing it, then let it go. "I'm sorry, Anna. I was
kidding. But you're wrong about one thing—the
tourists coming like that. This is one natural wonder that will never be corrupted."
"Why not? Have you ever seen the mess left
behind in the stadium, after the lions have eaten
the Christians?"
"Because of two unique men, Anna. My father
and Dr. DeVoss bought over three hundred acres
around the rock back when land was cheap. It belongs to Holy Rood Rock in perpetuity. No road
can be built up here, not ever, unless America becomes a dictatorship."
�180
The Summer People
"Well I'll be—I'll be—damned."
"Surprising, isn't it?" He took her by the arm
and turned her to face him. "But don't be damned.
Live in good health, my friend. Come on, let's
drink."
On the way back from the rock, Jay took her
over a three-mile loop, far to the southeast of the
Webber farmhouse, through woods and fallow
fields rich with wildflowers. Wherever it was possible, especially in fallow fields, he rode beside her
and pointed out numerous flowers, describing
them to her, especially those medicinal or edible.
Some of them she had already looked up in the
book back at the cabin, but she did not tell him.
He explained that the purple-tufted healall, a mint,
was once used in folk medicine for throat ailments.
He pointed to the scarlet flame of oswego tea, or
bee-balm, which lit up the corner of an old rail
fence like a flame. Horse mint, he told her, was
important for its leaves and not for its purple flowers. The leaves were used as a medicine for colic,
and the mint oil was distilled from them for flavoring. There was something quietly frantic about Jay
Webber's instructions. He reminded Anna of a
professor trying to cover the last chapter of a textbook on the last day of the semester. She kept
studying him covertly, but he hardly looked away
from the plants he was describing.
The woolly-leaved mullen, or flannel-leaf,
topped by a long, flowering stem, was used to make
�John Foster West
181
cough medicine, he told her. In a fallow meadow
he said his father had once mowed for its wild hay,
he pointed to a tall, leafy cluster of plants with
frosty-pink crown flowers. "That's queen-of-themeadow," he told Anna. "It's also called Joe-pye
weed. People used to make a tonic of its roots for
diarrhea." In a dark glade, they came upon an old
stone chimney, a monument to some long-gone
family, but grass and wildflowers and briars had
covered any other signs that sorrow and laughter
had once sat before the open fireplace. Nearby
were several tall, thin plants with flowers so brilliantly blue they seemed to glow in the shadows of
the briars and ragweeds. "Have you ever seen
packages of coffee with chicory added printed on
them?" Jay asked.
"I used to have a girl friend whose parents used
it," she replied. "That coffee was cheaper than
most, she told me."
"That's chicory." He pointed to the blue flowers. "That plant has a deep taproot, and it's dried
up and ground, then mixed with coffee. It's supposed to make the coffee flavor better."
He pointed out to her Turk's cap, which reminded her of tiger lilies with a strong wind blowing the petals back; yellow clustered primrose; and
acres of asters, whose blue or white blossoms reminded her of tiny daisies. Once, as they rode beside a mass of granite beneath bush-topped field
pines, Jay dismounted and pulled a handful of
�182
The Summer People
glossy leaves from a mass of herbs growing along
the edges of the rock. Small urn-shaped pinkish
flowers dotted the bed of leaves. Jay thrust some
of the leaves into his mouth and began to chew
them, handing a cluster up to her. She hesitated,
then followed his example. The flavor was strong
and unmistakably wintergreen, like her favorite
mint.
"That was teaberry plants," he said. "They're
also called wintergreen by outsiders, for obvious
reasons."
When they finally reached the DeVoss cabin,
Anna dismounted and leaned for a moment
against Blitzen. She was exhausted. Jay Webber was
slumped in his saddle staring at his hands, which
held the reins loosely. Anna walked in front of the
mare and handed her reins up to him. He glanced
down at her, took them, then stared across the top
of Anna's head, out into the woods.
"Thanks for a nice day," she said. "I really enjoyed it."
Looking back down at her, he smiled. She had
the impression he had talked so much about plants,
he was too tired to respond. She started to turn
away, then turned back, squinting up at him
through her huge sunglasses. "And thanks for the
informative botany lecture, Professor."
As he looked down at her, his mouth became
narrow and straight between mustache and beard.
His eyes narrowed. "I'd hoped you would get more
�John Foster West
183
out of it than information," he stated. He did not
wait for her to answer but wheeled his mount and
rode off up the driveway through the woods, leading Blitzen.
"Well, darn my hide!" Anna muttered, using a
nicer version of an old Pete DeVoss expression. "I
didn't aim to go and step on your bottom lip, neighbor."
Jay did not come by on Wednesday. When he
drove up in his scout around 10:00 A.M. on Thursday, he gave no explanation of his activities the day
before. And, as a matter of fact, there was no reason he should have, Anna reasoned. Hearing the
engine, she hurried out onto the front deck as he
parked in the bay beside her car. He got out,
stretched, and grinned.
"Got any plans for today, tenderfoot?"
"I had intended to write a book and a couple
of songs," Anna said. "But I can do that any time.
What did you have in mind, big, white hunter?"
"I thought I'd take you up on the highest
mountain in the promised land and show you all
the kingdoms of the world."
"Your cluttered metaphor eludes me. Specifically, what is your proposition, expressed in basic
English?"
"Would you, Anna DeVoss, like to go for a ride?"
"Let's go." She slammed the cabin door and ran
down the steps, vaulting into the passenger side of
the front seat.
�184
The Summer People
Leaving the Holy Rood Valley, Jay turned left
at the highway and headed toward Boone. He did
not say much at first, but he glanced occasionally
at her as though he wanted her to start a conversation. When he braked to a stop at the traffic light
in Boone, at the intersection with U.S. 321, he
leaned back and prodded her shoulder with an index finger.
"Five or six years ago," he said, "this was still a
peaceful little mountain town, an ideal spot for the
university here. Now, it's getting to be a tourist
Mecca, in the worst sense of the term, at least from
my viewpoint. The traffic problem is atrocious in
the summer, and every ski season it's getting worse
in the winter. Would you believe that people by the
score come up here to ski without either snow tires
or chains? You can see their cars strung out along
the shoulders and in the ditches when they get
caught by a sudden snowstorm. They even try to
climb the mountain on worn tires in falling snow."
"Yes, I'd believe that," she said carefully. "It
sounds like about par to me." She wondered if this
was going to be another anti-tourist lecture and
hoped there would be more to the ride than that.
With no traffic interfering, Jay turned right on
the red light and headed south on 321. They were
on a four-lane stretch, paralleled by shopping centers and both old and new businesses.
"Not long ago, say four years," Jay continued,
"a long, grassy ridge lay to the left there, tapering
�John Foster West
185
to end at Boone Creek—see the bank growth? Look
how flat it is now, from that clay bluff to the creek.
Perfect terrain for that shopping center. In an
amazingly short time bulldozers and backhoes dug
that ridge away, rocks and all, and trucks hauled it
across the highway and dumped it into the low area
on our right. Now we have a flat plain bisected by
the creek, which will soon be going into a culvert,
underground. One of these days they're going to
have the damndest flood here you ever saw.
"I miss the green ridge, but that doesn't bother
me as much as the other digging still going on.
What really bothers me is digging back into hillsides and ridges along the streets and roads, carving out notches to build in, leaving the clay banks
and blasted rocks to distort the landscape. Many
of those little old chain diners and dinky gift shops
are built like that."
"If there's demand for such food and such
dowdy doodads, what do you object to?" Anna
asked. She understood what he was getting at, but
thought a devil's advocate might create a dialogue
instead of a monologue of just bitching.
"I object mostly because it's brash, two-bit,
chrome-and-neon Americana. I simply object to
that at its face value. If such building is permitted,
then the builders should be forced to landscape the
excavations—slant the banks and plant grass and
shrubbery. The ticky-tacky tourist traps wouldn't
look so atrocious with a bit of green around them."
�186
The Summer People
"Whoa, man!" Anna held up her hand. "You're
getting emotional. Keep it rational or I can't follow
you."
Jay Webber laughed and dug her lightly in the
side with his elbow. "You're my audience, baby.
Ain't nobody else ever going to listen to me."
The four lanes ran out, between tourist courts,
and they followed the meandering course of U.S.
321 southward as it cut across ridges and traced a
stream valley—past a bucolic meadow filled with
trailers, past craft shops, past a summertime carnival, past another trailer court, past service stations
and a package store. Once they met a long line of
traffic backed up behind a gold Cadillac traveling
at thirty miles an hour, the elderly passengers staring at the passing scenery. But they were lucky.
The south lane remained empty in front of them,
and they made good time. Passing the Town of
Blowing Rock on the bypass, Jay maneuvered
along the right shoulder of the Blue Ridge, following sharp curves along a sheer drop into a valley
far below.
Just as they started down the other side of the
Blue Ridge, Jay cut suddenly into a little side street
which shunted them off to the right. A short distance beyond, they reached a dead end in a large
parking circle adjacent to a building that looked to
Anna like just another craft shop. She could see
they had stopped on the south slope of a steep
section of the Blue Ridge because nothing but
�John Foster West
187
space could be seen through the small trees and
shrubbery at the ends of the building.
Jay turned to her. "I'm going to show you one
of nature's curiosities, Blowing Rock," he said. "It's
been a landmark and a scenic attraction for generations. Back decades ago, it was free. Couples would
drive up here from the Piedmont on Sundays in
the '20's and '30's, even earlier in buggies. They
would bring picnic lunches and spend a good part
of the day courting. Now, of course, it's fenced in
or fenced out, and a fee charged to visit the rock."
"What makes it so special? I mean for couples
to make an all-day excursion up here. The roads
must have been rather difficult back then."
"Wait until we get out on it. I mean the rock. I
can show-and-tell at the same time."
They entered the gift and craft shop. Jay paid
for their admission, fifty cents each, and they exited through the west end of the building. She
could see immediately that the formation was not
an isolated rock at all but a rock cliff, with one long
spear of stone projecting at an angle higher than
the bluff line and creating a center of interest. As
they walked southward along the rim, she could see
that the cliff face dropped only a short distance,
ending on the slope of the mountain, dense with
small trees and undergrowth. But the mountain
itself dropped off so precipitously into the misty
valley, it gave the impression of standing on the
edge of a perpendicular cliff.
�188
The Summer People
Just below the lip of stone was a narrow path
with a railing paralleling it, making a walk along it
as safe as a stroll through a meadow. At the south
end of the formation a gazebo had been built on
stilts out past the bluff and towered high above the
tree tops on the mountain slope. A narrow walkway
curved out to it.
As she stood on this observation tower and
gazed almost straight down into the distant valley,
then far away, along the deep gorge and across the
rolling blue mountains to the west and southwest,
Anna was amazed at her lack of fear. Three
months ago she would have clutched the railing
and closed her eyes or, more probably, would have
refused to get within ten feet of the bluff rim. An
almost continuous breeze swept up from below,
ruffling her hair. Now and then a stronger zephyr
would tug playfully at her clothes and cool her upper legs.
"That's Johns River Gorge down yonder." Jay
pointed down the long valley. "Our elevation up
here is a bit over four thousand feet, a good deal
higher than the river. You notice the gorge bends
to the right at the base of this promontory. It acts
as a flume. A wind blows down it almost continuously. When it reaches the base of this mountain,
instead of veering to the right, much of it is deflected upward past the rocks here. You can throw
an object off, like a paper plate, and then it will be
wafted back to you. Dad told me that fellows used
�John Foster West
189
to throw their Panama hats off and they would
come back. You can stand here in the winter and
watch the snow falling upward, out of the valley.
That's why it's called THE Blowing Rock."
"It's fascinating," Anna said softly. "And you
want to know what I wish?"
"What? I can allow you only one wish today."
He turned to face her, leaning back against the
railing.
"I wish I could come up here in a Model-A
Ford like they did in the '30's, before the craft shop
was built, and have a picnic with someone I cared
for and we could throw paper plates off the rock
and catch them when they blew back to us."
"Someone you cared for, Anna?"
"Yeah, like Pete."
He turned his back to her. "Way off yonder is
Table Rock. You see it? Looks like a typical western
mesa. Jules Verne used it in a science fiction novel,
I think. That point beyond it is called Hawksbill.
Of course that's Grandfather Mountain there to
your right. You'll notice his profile is more symmetrical from an eastern view. And way, way yonder in the hazy distance—do you see that mountain
peak a bit higher than the others along the skyline?"
Anna squinted. "Where? I'm not sure."
Jay placed his right arm around her neck, his
forearm across her right shoulder, and pointed.
"Look down my wrist and finger. See it?"
�190
The Summer People
"Oh, yes. I see it now." She moved from beneath his arm.
"That's Mount Mitchell. It's the highest peak
in eastern America."
"You know, I never realized that mountains
this high and as numerous as these existed so close
to Norfolk," she said. "I mean I knew hardly anything
about the Appalachians. I never visualized so much
wilderness, so much unsettled forest rolling on and
on to the edge of the world. It used to surprise me
when flying, to look down and see so many trees
and so much empty land, after three hundred years
of civilization in this country. But I never even
dreamed of forests and mountains like these."
"Give us a little more time," Jay scoffed. "We
the people will use it up soon enough."
Leaving the Town of Blowing Rock, they drove
west on U.S. 221, following kinky curves around
spurs, over ridges, and around the heads of hollows, much of the time through a tunnel of trees.
Frequently, they passed jerrybuilt stands with apple or cherry cider for sale, along with honey,
mountain sorghums, and other local products.
"I don't know whether it has been recorded or
not," Jay Webber said out of a long silence, "but I
would bet this is the crookedest highway, not just
in the U.S., but on the planet earth. If follows an
old Indian trail, the Yonahlossee. I've often wondered why the hell the Indians didn't take a few
short cuts."
�John Foster West
191
Anna laughed. "They were in no hurry, I suppose. They knew that wherever they were going
would still be there unchanged, a week or a year
later."
Jay shook his head. "I don't know! Somehow
that doesn't explain a road this crooked to my satisfaction. Dad said the Indians followed old buffalo
trails."
He was so solemn, Anna burst out laughing and
laid her head against his shoulder. When he
reached up with his right hand and ran his fingers
through her shaggy hair, she sat up higher in her
seat.
They traced a blacksnake course along the eastern base of Grandfather Mountain. At one place a
sheer cliff of ancient stone reared above them. "I
don't know if you are interested or not, but Grandfather and Table Rock are two of the oldest rock
formations on the surface of the earth. They are
quartzite, close to a billion years old. About three
hundred million years ago, the day before yesterday earth time, a fantastic geological upheaval
thrust them through the overlying Appalachian
strata. Today, they are windows into an older,
deeper layer of earth than their surface we tread
upon. And, my pretty student, it is your pleasure
to become acquainted with them on this bright
day."
"And to pay a nominal fee for the pleasure?"
Anna asked.
�192
The Summer People
"Yes, inevitably, to pay a nominal fee for the
pleasure."
The climb up Grandfather Mountain did not
bother Anna at first. When they made the last turn
to the left and started up the steepest ascent, with
no trees to soften the view of the drop-off behind
them, she had a terrifying feeling the the Scout was
going to tip over backwards and go tumbling end
over end down the slope and into the valley far
below. Then she had the more plausible thought:
what if the brakes should fail and the driveshaft
should break. They would go careening backward,
faster and faster, until Jay lost steering control and
they started tumbling. She closed her eyes and
clutched her hands between her knees, hoping Jay
would not see her concern.
"You know, I always think, what if the brakes
should give way and the driveshaft break, while
climbing this slope," Jay Webber said casually. "It
doesn't make any difference how often I make this
climb up here—" He glanced at her. "But I ought
not to scare you with your phobias."
"What? What did you say?" She stared straight
ahead. "I must have been thinking of something
else."
"Nothing," Jay said. "Just jabbering."
The recreational area of Grandfather lay
around the "mouth and chin" area. The nose still
towered high above and could be reached by climbing a ladder by those who dared the climb. There
�John Foster West
193
was a large parking area. Included at the visitors
center was a gift shop, snack bar, museum exhibit,
and an assembly hall. They walked across the
"mile-high" bridge swinging above a crevasse and
stood on Grandfather's chin. Jay pointed out landmarks far below. The whole world as far as Anna
could see (over a hundred miles on a clear day, Jay
told her) appeared to be forest-covered mountains.
The more distant villages and towns and highways
looked to her like grains of sand clinging to cobwebs. Only the closest places like Linville and the
condominiums along the western base of the
mountain were conspicuously man-made and civilized territory. From her viewpoint, the world was
almost a wilderness. Anna was sure that a myopic
Indian from the eighteenth century could stand
there and never realize what the Paleface had done
to his land only a few miles below.
Jay pointed out peaks in the great Smoky
Mountains far, far to the west, on the tilting rim of
the world. He showed her the Black Mountains and
the Craggies. Closer by, he pointed out Brown
Mountain from a different perspective. And he
showed her the approximate location of some of
the Piedmont cities and towns, lost in blue haze.
On the way home, they stopped at a little
mountain restaurant in Linville and had a sandwich and coffee. Both were quiet. Anna had been
somewhat subdued by the views from Blowing
Rock and Grandfather and by height and size and
�194
The Summer People
concept of millennia. For some reason it made her
sad. But it was not a personal sadness. It was more
like the feeling she got when looking at pictures of
ancient ruins and knowing that young men and
women had once laughed and sung and made love
there and were now nobody, nothing, particles of
the elements—as though they had never been.
�Chapter XIII
After the trip to Blowing Rock and Grandfather Mountain, Anna hardly saw Jay Webber for
several days. He came by twice late in the afternoon, sweaty and dirty, and had a gin and tonic
with her, but he did not talk much. He said something about helping out in the tobacco and if it
were up to him, he would plow the damned stuff
under and grow tomatoes. Anna did not question
him and said little herself. She was beginning to
resonate to his moods and felt she was not completely alone in the world when he was present,
even if silent. Apparently, she filled some need of
his at such times, she reasoned.
Then one day he showed up before lunch with
Donner and Blitzen. She did not ask where they
were going but rode beside him, down the spur of
the ridge toward the Watauga River, speaking only
occasionally. At the foot of the ridge, they cut back
to the left, following the old road downriver toward
Riverglade. A mass of clouds was boiling upward
above the Blue Ridge, to the east behind them, and
already towered from horizon to horizon almost to
the zenith. It stood above the mountains like a
195
�196
The Summer People
dark, stratified Alpine cliff above the narrow valley
through which they rode, threatening to tumble
forward and bury them and all of Holy Rood Valley. A firey stitchwork of lightning appeared
against the blackness and disappeared, followed by
thunder.
Anna kept glancing back over her shoulder,
feeling threatened. "Shouldn't we go back?" she
asked. "I mean that storm looks ferocious."
Jay turned in his saddle and squinted skyward.
"We have very few storms here from that direction.
Most of ours are out of the west." He was silent a
moment. "The cloud is so immense now, I can't tell
what direction it's going. But if it comes this way,
we can put the horses in the old barn and duck in
at River glade."
She studied the cloud again, dubiously. "Okay,
you're the weatherman. But it looks scary to me."
A short distance from the lawn at Riverglade,
Jay reined his mount to the right, toward a gap in
the elders, sycamores, and birch trees bordering
each side of the river. Anna followed him down
an old farm road to the shallows. Here, the river
spread out over a wide bed of gravel and sand,
forming a ford no more than two inches deep.
They crossed the river, climbed the incline beyond,
and left the bank growth, entering a vast alluvial
bottomland, which stretched away to the foot of
distant hills. Some of it was tilled, and the rest was
a shimmering lake of wildflowers riding the surface
�John Foster West
197
of grass and weeds. The corn in a field a hundred
yards away, to her left, was rich green and as tall
as Anna's shoulders. Far off, to her right, a rectangular field of grain—wheat, she thought—was beginning to turn the color of Jay Webber's beard.
As she looked, the tops of the grain suddenly
bowed toward her as though in greeting. The next
moment, a fist of wind struck her, swaying her in
the saddle. Jay's mount danced sideways before the
pressure. In ten seconds the wind had passed,
plowing huge furrows through the wildflowers and
nearby corn.
Jay looked uneasily toward the cloud, then at
Anna. "There are over four hundred acres in this
meadow," he said. "Eighty acres are already mine.
An old lady, my father's first cousin, owns the rest.
She's close to ninety now, and said I could buy her
section at very reasonable terms." They were still
headed straight across the fallow field, their
mounts wading through Queen Anne's lace, daisies, wild asters, and ragweed. "If I could just get
this land, or even half of it, I would be satisfied for
life. I could raise all I would ever need for me or a
family."
"Are you sure?"
He pivoted in his saddle to look at her. "What
do you mean?"
"Did you ever read the Tolstoy story about the
man who was promised all the land he could walk
around in a day? He made his circle so wide, he ran
�198
The Summer People
himself to death trying to get back to his starting
point before sunset."
He studied her curiously. "Do you think I'm
like that, Anna?"
"Aw, silly," she laughed. "I was just teasing
you."
"All I want, Anna, is enough land to grow a
living on. No more. I want to live at Riverglade,
marry, have a couple of kids, and live comfortably
with as little work as possible for the rest of my life.
Someday, I'd like to play with my grandchildren
on the lawn there."
"You aren't very ambitious, are you?"
He glanced back toward the storm as another
burst of wind struck them, ruffling his hair and
beard. "I'm ambitious for peace and quiet and time
to do the things I want to do and to spend with the
ones I will love," he stated. "To me, that's the greatest of ambitions. Few millionaires are ever able to
buy it."
"And you would really be content to stay in this
valley and live in that old house from now on?"
"I'd prefer to live with someone I—I cared
for—loved." He looked toward her again, then
ahead. "And you remember this: that old house
was built with loving care by those who came before
me. It's comfortable and it will last."
Suddenly the sun went out as though a switch
had been flipped. Jay tugged his horse to a halt and
headed him toward the storm. Anna did likewise.
�John Foster West
199
Overhead, the edge of the cloud had rolled past
the sun, consuming it. Lightning thrust in three
directions as a clap of thunder shook the world.
Another wall of wind collided with them, and they
were absorbed by it. Half a mile away, upstream,
forest-crowned hills suddenly disappeared as a curtain of rain fell between Jay and Anna and where
they sat their mounts.
"We'd better ride for it!" Jay yelled, above the
wind. He wheeled his horse back toward the river
and dug his heels into its sides. Anna followed him.
"I didn't think about it!" he called back over his
shoulder. "The way it's raining up beyond the valley, the river'll be rising right away. We'd better
hurry."
Jay's horse broke into a gallop. Anna had no
trouble getting Blitzen to follow. As they dashed
across the field, the rising wind swept about them,
tousling her hair and billowing her blouse. They
plunged down the incline and into the river, already muddy and two feet deep. Although the
horses were slowed by the water, they churned
across, spray flying from their hooves, which beat
against the gravel and rock. They climbed the
grade beyond and charged into the wall of rain, as
thunder bellowed close overhead. One moment
Anna was dry. The next, she was wet, as though
she had ridden through a waterfall.
She could see little farther than Jay and his
horse, directly in front of her, and he apparently
�200
The Summer People
was guided by instinct. The rain gushed about her
as they slowed to a trot, then to a walk. They rode
out of it and beneath the shelter of the barn, before
she knew they had reached its safety.
Jay swung from his saddle. "We'll turn the
horses into the stables and get to the house where
it's more comfortable," he called, his voice louder
than necessary, now that they were out of the rain.
He opened the door to a stable and turned Donner
into it, closing the door.
Anna dismounted. Her wet yellow blouse clung
to her body, almost transparent. Her jeans clung
to her legs and were wet and sloppy, inhibiting her
movement. Jay took the reins and turned Blitzen
into another stall. Holding Anna by the hand, he
towed her back into the storm, as they ran almost
blindly toward the old mansion. Then huge hailstones were bombarding them, bounding from
Anna's head and back. She covered her head with
a hand in a gesture of protection.
They dashed up the steps and beneath the
porch roof just as a bolt of lightning struck a tree
down by the river. Anna was looking that way when
a long squiggle of fire traced a path from the invisible cloud down through the rain, groping for a
target. The bellow of thunder was almost deafening, rattling windows nearby. Jay opened the door,
shoved her inside, and followed her. He slammed
it, isolating them in a quieter refuge. Beyond the
doors and walls of the house, the storm sounded
�John Foster West
201
farther away. Anna looked down. A puddle was
forming about her feet.
"I have an idea," Jay said. "You go up to the
bedroom I showed you and look in the closet.
There are dresses there. Take off those wet clothes
and put on a dress. I'll build a fire and dry your
jeans and blouse. Now hurry up. You'll catch cold,
if you don't."
"Okay, Abe MacTavish. You're the boss of River glade."
He smacked her on her shoulder with a loud,
wet smack. "Cut the crap. It's not all that funny."
Anna hurried up the stairway and into the bedroom which once belonged to Alice and Susan
Webber. Only five dresses were hanging in the
huge closet. Either the wardrobe belonging to the
girls had been taken after their deaths or it had
been pitifully small to start with. She selected a
green and red checked gingham dress and carried
it over to the bed. Then she removed her wet
clothes. Water traced rivulets down her naked
body, especially her back, as her hair released its
stored rain. She hung her panties and bra on a
clothes hanger and left them in the closet. She
found a terrytowel robe in the closet and used it to
dry herself thoroughly. Her hair was a raggedyann mop, but by squeezing and toweling she managed to get most of the water out of it.
When she came back downstairs, Jay had a fire
blazing in the dining room fireplace. His shoes and
�202
The Summer People
socks and shirt were off, but he still wore his wet
trousers. He had hung the shirt over the back of a
chair, near the fire, and his socks were draped
across the soggy sneakers, set to one side. Steam
was already curling upward from the wet socks.
Anna had never seen any of his body unclothed
before. His torso was as white as hers except for the
constellation of russet freckles covering him and
the sparse field of kinky gold hair reaching from
neck to belt.
When he looked at her in the ankle-length
dress, Anna saw his face soften and a pleased expression about his eyes. "You'd have made a lovely
old-fashioned girl," he said. "You'd have looked
even prettier in a hoopskirt."
"You just remember I've got a late twentieth
century body under this old-fashioned dress," she
laughed. "And I don't even have an old-fashioned
brain in my head."
His face was suddenly serious. "I'll try to remember." He approached her and took her wet
clothes. "Let me take these out on the porch and
wring them out. They'll dry faster."
Anna was standing inside the warm radiance
near the fire when Jay returned. He placed two
more chairs near the fire and spread her jeans over
the back of one, her blouse over the other. She
noticed his trousers. They were still soaking wet,
clinging to his legs.
"Can't you take your pants off and dry them
�John Foster West
203
too?" she asked. "They look awfully uncomfortable
on you."
He looked at her, then down at himself. "Well,
no. I guess not. They're not all that wet, anyway."
"They're wet as water," she argued. "Look, Jay,
when I—Don't worry about me. If you need to take
your pants off and dry them, then do it."
He frowned at her. "Anna, why don't you just
let me be miserable if I want to be a stupid martyr
for the sake of modesty?"
She laughed and turned her back to the fire,
holding her hands backward to the warmth. "It's
your rear that's drowned," she retorted. "I'm warm
and dry."
She heard him sigh, perhaps in exasperation,
and move away toward the kitchen. Turning back,
she began to watch the flames, her mind vacant.
After a few minutes, she turned her back to the fire
again, lifted the long skirt, and exposed the backs
of her legs to the warmth the way Pete had once
told her mountain women did. It felt good. She
stared toward the window to her right, beyond
which she could see only the white baptism of the
cleansing rain as it swept past the house.
She dropped her dress hem when Jay returned,
carrying a tray holding cheese, crackers, two wine
glasses, and a bottle of red wine. "I thought a little
snack would be in order while the storm wears itself
thin," he said, his voice as cheerful as any perfect
host's.
�204
The Summer People
"Hey, that's splendid. When did you stash it
here?" Anna seated herself on the floor, the fire
on her left. She drew her heels in close to her body,
and spread the long dress over her knees.
Jay sat facing her and placed the tray on the
floor in front of him. He poured both glasses full
of wine and handed Anna the cheese knife. She
sliced off a piece of the cheese, placed it on a
cracker, and nibbled at it. It was cheddar, as sharp
as a tack, the way she loved it. The wine was dry
and room temperature. She frowned but took another sip. She preferred her wine chilled just a
mite, regardless of superficial rules. She glanced
at Jay, but his eyes were on the cheese, which he
was cutting. She moved her left leg because it was
threatening to cramp, then realized she had exposed too much of her thigh. If Jay noticed he did
not reflect it by motion or change of expression.
She ignored him after that, eating in silence and
sipping the wine, her mind turning to Norfolk and
her job. She was accomplishing nothing here in the
mountains now and found herself becoming lazy
and satisfied with the slow pace of daily life.
Then she suddenly became alert. A strange sound
had intruded on her thoughts. She listened. No, it
was not a sound, but lack of one. The rain outside
the house, the pelting against the windows and
walls, had stopped as abruptly as though the faucet
that controlled it had been turned off. She looked
at Jay. His head was poised in a listening attitude.
�John Foster West
205
"The storm's passed us," he said. "We got only
the end of it, and it's moved on."
"Boy, that was quick."
"Yeah. If it had gone over us more directly, it
would have dwindled out."
She listened as thunder rumbled and roared in
the direction of the Blue Ridge, to the northeast.
Then she became aware of another sound, a
steady, muted roar much closer than the thunder.
She looked at Jay.
"The river's out," he explained. "Most of the
storm hit upriver, and we'll probably have a real
flood." He hushed, listening. "But it probably won't
last too long. After short, heavy storms like that,
the water usually runs off rather quick."
"Let's go look at the river," Anna suggested. "I
bet horses and cows and things will be floating
down it."
Jay laughed. "Not likely. Sometimes a dead pig
or chicken comes along, unless it's as bad as the one
back in 1940. Mostly, it will be dead trees and brush
and junk someone has left behind at a picnic."
Anna got to her feet and started toward the
door. "Boy, it sounds like the Niagara Falls."
"It's still wet out there," Jay said. "I wouldn't
want to interfere with your project. But if your
clothes are dry, I'd put them back on if I were you."
Anna resented the suggestion for a moment,
then realized the good sense in what he had said.
She returned to the fireplace and checked her
�206
The Summer People
clothes. They were dry except for the heavy seams
of her jeans. Gathering them in a bundle, she
crossed the foyer to the right hand stairway and
climbed the steps, returning to the room upstairs
where she had found the dress. She removed it and
put her clothes back on. She replaced the dress in
the closet, then returned to the floor below.
Jay had dressed and waited for her in the foyer.
His jeans were mottled with patches of dry and wet
fabric. When he opened the front door, Anna
could hear the muffled roar of the river, out of its
banks, over a hundred yards away. They stepped
out onto the porch. Water still ran in streams from
the edge of the roof and a larger stream from each
gutter where porch and house roof merged. She
could glimpse swatches of muddy water at a distance through the bank growth, but the river had
not risen enough to reach outside the trees.
She walked beside Jay down the steps and out
the brick walk, beneath a damp blue sky. A scarf
of clouds was whisked from over the sun, like a
magician's trick, and the whole wet world was suddenly washed by sunlight. Millions of water drops
sparkled like jewels, decorating wildflowers, weeds,
and boxwood. What little hail had fallen was uncut
diamonds refracting sunshine as far as Anna could
see. In the northeast, the storm cloud still towered
toward the dome of the sky, a genie loose from its
bottle, patterns of lightning flickering across its
face, followed by thunder overlapping thunder. A
�John Foster West
207
barely discernible rainbow glimmered against the
storm, the nearer end disappearing in the trees
along the river. The air she breathed and walked
through was cool and humid, giving the sensation
of having been cleansed and freshened—purified
especially for her. The storm cloud ahead, the
bright blue sky, and the blazing sun above and behind her lent a supernatural aspect to the world of
Holy Rood Valley, as though Anna had gone for a
walk at midnight and the sun had appeared suddenly in the sky. She looked about her in wonder
and started to mention the eerie atmosphere to Jay,
then thought better.
"God," Jay murmured, "it's like rising from
death and finding a new world made over just for
you."
"That's a weird way to put it," she said, "but it
is strange—beautiful and scary."
As they came to the edge of the lawn, the roar
of the river grew louder. They walked through the
grass and weeds, their shoes and trouser legs saturated again almost immediately. Jay led her toward
the break in the bank growth through which they
had forded the stream earlier on horseback. Already, Anna could see the edge of the muddy river
as it created a bay, extending an inlet up the slope
past the trees and into the sunshine. The leaves of
trees above the water sparkled when she moved as
though made of glass.
They reached the edge of the water. Anna
�208
The Summer People
could see through the tunnel of trees the crest of
the main stream as the water rushed past. Logs,
trash, and pieces of timber flashed by her circle of
vision like frames of a film past a projector lens.
The muddy water boiled and seethed, its deep liquid roar as much a part of the total atmosphere
here as the sunshine itself. Poles, trash, and scraps
of paper, bobbing and turning slowly, approached
Anna and Jay, moved almost imperceptibly by
some hidden relationship of rushing water to the
still bay beneath the tunnel of trees. During the
several minutes they had stood there, Anna's attention had shifted from the flotsam to the distant
stream.
"What's that?" Jay Webber asked suddenly, his
voice strangely tense.
The instant Anna set eyes on the object, she
knew what it was, and some part of her was aware
that Jay also knew. A hundred feet away, a brown
oval object bobbed slowly shoreward at right angles
to the rush of the river beyond. The back of the
wet khaki shirt was formed into a bubble by the air
trapped inside. It and the brown, saturated hair
and the khaki trousers served to camouflage the
corpse, floating face down toward them as though
seeking their company.
"Damn!" Anna murmured.
And that was all that was said for several minutes as they stood side by side, watching the inexorable approach of the corpse. Anna's mind was
�John Foster West
209
blank except for one thought that kept circling
round and round: how did it find me here?
"I wonder," Jay said quietly, "how it happened
to wash ashore here where we are."
She looked at him but did not answer. When
he started wading into the water, abruptly, without
comment, she went with him. The cold water
climbed past her knees as they approached the
body. Jay reached down, hesitated, then grasped
the upper right arm, which floated loosely. Anna
took hold of the left arm. The feel of the fabric and
soft, relaxed muscle beneath caused her to shudder, but she did not relax her hold. Turning as Jay
turned, she walked slowly back through the chilly
brown water, towing the floating corpse toward
shore.
When the body began to drag against the bottom, without discussion they grasped the arms
more firmly and dragged it from the water, up
onto the grassy slope. It was not an easy task because the corpse weighed more than a hundred
eighty pounds, exactly Pete's size, she thought
fleetingly. They released the arms simultaneously
and stood erect. Anna stared down at the broad
shoulders and long brown hair, now lying in wet
ropy strands and covering the exposed side of the
face, the left side pillowed on the wet sod. Although the man had been tall, at least six feet, there
was a massiveness about his legs and arms that was
not concealed by sleeves and trouser legs, a sugges-
�210
The Summer People
tion of great strength. The long, delicate fingers
were a stark contrast to that power.
Anna watched Jay bend slowly as though moving under water, watched him grasp the right arm
of the prone figure and brace his legs, heave slowly,
and turn the corpse slowly, slowly onto its left side,
then suddenly onto its back. The hair fell away
from the face, the handsome, ruddy face of a man
who had reached the age of perhaps twenty-four.
The blue eyes were the same color as the stormwashed sky, and as empty. Anna studied the thin
nose and full lips, the narrow forehead. There was
something weirdly familiar about the face. Her
brow furrowed in puzzlement.
"Those hiking shoes are new and expensive,"
Jay said. "Poor fool, he was probably an amateur
backpacker. His hands are as soft as yours."
"What do you suppose happened, Jay?"
"He probably got caught in the storm and
slipped from a bluff or some bank, into the river.
He could have gone over Dutch Creek Falls. That's
happened before. He might have hit his head on a
rock, but there's no sign of it."
"Poor kid," Anna sighed. "Poor young man.
Somewhere, someone thinks he's alive and well."
"We've got to call the sheriff," Jay said. "He'll
bring an ambulance, or call one—and the coroner,
of course."
"We shouldn't leave him alone," Anna protested. "It would be a pity to leave him alone."
�John Foster West
211
"Then you go. I'll stay here. The river should
go down in a couple of hours, and they can cross
the low-water bridge."
"No, Jay!" Anna stated emphatically. "No, you
go. I want to stay with him." She felt an overpowering duty to remain with the corpse, to protect it and
give it company. It was a need without reason, a
duty without logic.
Jay studied her in puzzlement. "Are you sure,
Anna? Do you want to be left alone with—"
Her laugh was hesitant. "This is the twentieth
century, Jay. I'm not afraid of a corpse, for God's
sake."
"No offense. I was just concerned for you."
"I'm sorry. I'll be fine. You go on."
He left her then and headed back toward the
house.
Anna turned her back on the body, staring
through the trees toward the rushing river. Looking down, she noticed a muddy little beach a foot
wide, between where the water had been and
where it was now and realized the river had begun
to drop. The rise had been fast during the storm,
at the river's head, and she supposed the fall would
be even faster, with the rain over.
"You'll be okay now?"
Anna turned. Jay Webber sat on Donner
twenty feet away. The horse's hooves had been
muffled on the wet sod.
"Thank you, Jay. I'll be fine. Really!"
�212
The Summer People
"All right. But I don't like leaving you alone
here."
She smiled at him briefly, feeling a softness at
the base of her throat. "You're sweet."
His eyes narrowed. He threw her a little wave
of the hand, then kneed his mount forward. Donner broke into a trot, then a gallop, heading upstream.
Anna turned back, facing the inlet and the river
ford, watching the water ebb and flow, swirl and
eddy, carrying leaves and twigs in what looked like
aimless meanderings but always, inexorably from
sight among the trees, downstream, toward the far,
far away Gulf of Mexico. She picked out a green
sycamore leaf, called it Anna DeVoss, and watched
it move first one way, then another. It looked as
though it would stay in the eddy where it swirled,
nothing happening to it but the same old turning
and turning. But suddenly some force below the
surface grasped it and whirled it away, out of sight
behind a birch tree. She was so curious about what
had happened to the leaf, where it was going, she
almost waded back into the water in an attempt to
catch sight of it.
It was at the moment she gave the leaf up to its
fate that she felt the uncontrollable need to turn.
She had to turn, look at the corpse. There was no
escaping the command. But when she did and
looked at the sprawled body, nothing had changed.
It was in precisely the same position as before, the
�John Foster West
213
blue eyes staring back at the empty sky. Or had
something changed? Something about it seemed
different, as though an arm had moved slightly,
or a leg, or the head had tilted a bit one way or the
other.
She walked slowly to the body. Slowly, she sank
to her knees in the wet grass. She studied the tranquil face, the face that would never grow older.
The blue eyes were not looking at the sky, but at
her. She saw far beneath the surface, within the
narrow, dark wells of the pupils, a being, an entity
receding into vast distances of space and time. She
felt an urge to dive into those deep pupils, to stop
the being, to call it back, to plead that it return.
At that moment something inside Anna DeVoss
gave way. A dam broke. Great black waves of grief
and frustration came pouring into her mind, into
the void around her heart. Despair, locked so long
behind stoic walls of routine, followed. All reason
fled, leaving her a creature solely of emotion. She
flung herself onto the wet chest of the dead
stranger. Her arms like calipers of flesh and bone
forced her hands beneath his head, forced themselves around the neck. And Anna wept. Anna
wept great racking sobs which shook her body as
her grief spent itself and exhausted her. She rolled
her face in the curve between the jawline and neck,
and her voice was the only sound on the stormcleansed earth except for the liquid rush of the
river toward the distant Gulf.
�214
The Summer People
She could measure the length of her weeping
only by her exhaustion. She sobbed slowly and methodically now, a quiet, controlled release of what
residual grief remained in dark corners or her being. Already, the weight was missing from about
her heart, which beat with a steady, normal
rhythm. When she felt the arms of the corpse embrace her, she hugged the neck more firmly in return, holding her breath, her eyes tightly closed.
She should have been terrified, but instead found
she was at peace.
But the hand on her arm was no corpse's. It
was alive and firm. It was strong. It drew her upward away from the dead body. Two hands drew
her close, in an upright position. Two arms were
embracing her, as Jay Webber held her close.
"Weep, my Anna," he whispered. "Get rid of it.
Let it all out. It's the only way you can be free."
But her grief was mostly spent. She clung to
him, not out of need, but to accommodate his kindness, and sobbed intermittently while he stroked
her hair. When she thought she had cried enough
to appease his concern, she withdrew from him and
stepped back. Jay watched her, his eyes narrow and
moist.
"Are you okay now, Anna?"
"Fine, thanks. I'm fine." She sniffled, wiped at
her eyes with her fingertips. "I'll be fine now,
thanks."
"I called the sheriffs office," he said. "They'll
�John Foster West
215
be out here as soon as the river drops. I'll go up to
the house and get a sheet to cover him—it."
"No!" Anna shook her head emphatically. "No,
Jay, don't. Let the sun shine on him as long as
possible. He will be in darkness long enough."
"All right, Anna." He studied her for a moment. "If that's what you want."
The sun stood just above Beech Mountain
when a deputy sheriff arrived, driving down the
old wagon road beside the river, followed by a rescue-squad ambulance. Anna did not feel like talking and so stood to one side, letting Jay explain to
the lanky official what had happened. She watched
the deputy go through the corpse's pockets and
find nothing. She watched the attendants from the
ambulance place it on a stretcher, carry it to the
ambulance, and wheel it into the rear of the orange
vehicle. She stood with Jay, quiet, watching the car
and the ambulance disappear up the grassy lane.
"Let's go home," Jay said.
She let him take her by the hand and lead her
back to the old barn. They mounted in silence and
rode in silence up the lane and up the ridge to the
DeVoss cabin. Anna dismounted and handed Blitzen's reins up to him.
"Thanks, Jay," she said. "I enjoyed the ride."
"What?"
She turned to look up at him. He was staring
at her in puzzlement. "I said thanks—" She was
blank for a moment, trying to think. She was sud-
�216
The Summer People
denly exhausted. Her mind was blank. Drained.
"I—I'll see you tomorrow."
"Okay, Anna. If you need me—"
"I'll ring the bell," she said.
�Chapter XIV
"They sent his—the body to the pathologist at
the University of North Carolina," Jay explained.
"The autopsy revealed a blow to the head, but
death was from drowning."
Anna stood on the deck, leaning her shoulder
against a post, talking with Jay Webber, who sat
on Donner in the yard. "What'll happen to—to the
body now? But of course, it goes to the relatives."
"That's the strangest thing, Anna. There was
no identification in his clothing. And there were
no records of his fingerprints. Not even the military had records of them."
"But how could that be?" She stared at him.
"He was about the right age for the tail end of the
Vietnam War. He must have been subject to the
draft, at least."
Jay shook his head. "Maybe he ran away to Canada and came back. Maybe he had a physical defect, a bad heart. Maybe—Who knows? There
could be all kinds of reasons why there is no fingerprint record of him."
"But he looked well-to-do. Those expensive
217
�218
The Summer People
shoes. He must have had a family of some means.
They wouldn't just lose him."
"I don't understand it either," Jay said. "He
could have been reared by some relatives who died.
Or he could have grown up in some small orphanage, as far away as the West Coast. In a country
this big, anything is possible. The facts are that he
is dead and he is unidentified."
"Jay, what will happen to him—the body? Will
they turn it over to the medical school at U.N.C.?
Use it in a laboratory? I wouldn't want that. I wish
we could—"
"I started to tell you," he broke in. "The
damndest thing happened. The medical examiner
returned the body to the sheriffs custody here. It's
at the mortuary and has been embalmed. I just
talked to the director this morning. He wanted me
to tell him what to do with the corpse."
"That's a bit unorthodox, isn't it?" She searched
his bearded face, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
"I mean, why would they do that, return it here?"
"Search me." He shrugged, staring through the
trees. "Anna, I think we ought to—"
"Jay!" she interrupted eagerly, "let's give him a
decent funeral. Would your mother object if we
buried him in your family cemetery?"
"I'll be darned," he chuckled. "I was just going
to suggest the same thing to you. No, I'm sure Mom
would not mind. She's not like that."
"That's wonderful," Anna felt suddenly clean
�John Foster West
219
inside. She felt the release of a pressure she did
not know she had had a moment before. "What
do we do first?"
"It's simple. I'll tell the director at the mortuary. There will be some cost. I could take care of
that—casket, embalming, transportation to the
cemetery."
"Jay, I want to pay half of it." She watched him
eagerly for an expression of consent. "May I
please?"
"Sure, Anna. That would be good of you. No
problem. Together we'll give the stranger a nice
funeral and a grave in the mountains where he
came to die. He must have loved the mountains,
to hike them alone, though probably without experience."
"I'm sure he did. How could he not love them?
Jay! Jay, I have another idea. It may sound crazy
to you."
"No, it won't sound crazy, Anna," he said quietly. "Nothing you say sounds crazy to me. It's a
good idea. We'll bury him in Sandy MacTavish's
casket. I think it's waited long enough."
She stared at him in surprise, then accepted
their rapport without question. "Yes, that's what I
was going to suggest. And I think old Sandy would
approve, if he could."
"I think so too," Jay nodded. "We'll have a simple service. We'll keep it as quiet as possible so a
bunch of morbid gapers don't come cluttering up
�220
The Summer People
the scene, out of curiosity. Mom will insist on her
minister, but I'll make him keep it brief, cut out
most of the hereafter stuff. Maybe you and I could
say a word or two, so he will have friends at his—his
taking off."
"I agree." She paused. "I think that's the way
to handle it, Jay."
It was the last Sunday in July, clear except for
scattered cumulus clouds and haze in the east, stagnant pollution above the Piedmont cities. The sun
stood above the green eastern hills of Holy Rood
Valley, huge and orange, like the planet Jupiter
seen in astronomy textbooks. In the MacTavishWebber cemetery, a red clay hole lay open to the
sky, a mound of fresh earth beside it. At the bottom
of the grave, Sandy MacTavish's locust coffin
rested, polished and new-looking in spite of its long
years waiting in the attic of Sparr's Store. Anna
DeVoss and Jay Webber had insisted that no artificial grass be spread over the mound of earth or
around the grave. It was to be an honest funeral:
a dead man was being interred forever in the
bosom of the earth, and no pleasant euphemisms
would be used. The only hitch was that Mack Jones
and his boys, eager to finish the job, had lowered
the coffin into the grave before the funeral ceremony.
Anna smelled the coppery fresh earth, and it
stirred briefly an old sadness. Closing her eyes, she
could visualize her father's broad back and the trac-
�John Foster West
221
tor he sat on as he plowed a field, several red and
white chickens following in the furrow gobbling up
the earthworms. She opened her eyes and was back
in the cemetery.
Martha Webber, wearing a navy-blue dress and
hat, stood near one end of the grave, holding
Hilda's hand. Henry Sparr stood beside Mrs.
Webber, dressed in a baggy wool suit which had
fitted him before age had pared his flesh closer to
the bones. The Reverend Joshua Larson stood next
to Hilda, dressed in a white linen suit, holding a
straw hat in one hand and a Bible in the other. He
was a tall, lanky man, his bald head white as a
boiled egg, his eyebrows, the only hair in sight, like
albino caterpillars curled above his deep-set eyes.
Anna, wearing the black suit she had worn at Pete's
funeral, was next in line, and Jay stood to her right.
He had conformed to the occasion to the extent
that he wore dark trousers and a white shirt, open
at the collar.
Beyond the mound of earth, several spectators
gathered in a huddle for mutual security, strangers
to Anna and, most of them, to each other. Some
of them were dressed in neat, expensive sports
clothes—summer people seeking unique entertainment. The others were dressed mostly in cheap
Sunday clothes, mountain folk who lived with more
important problems than what they wore. They
had all merged, united by morbid curiosity. They
had heard about the funeral of the drowned
�222
The Summer People
stranger and had come to see what would happen,
to see if it would be different from other funerals
they had attended. Off to one side, Mack Jones, the
Webber's tenant, and two of his sons leaned on
shovels, disassociating themselves from everything
related to the "quare burryin," except the labor.
Reverend Larson was finishing his sermon.
"We who are the quick have no way of knowing,
but we pray that this young stranger was saved and
that his soul will rest in the lap of our Father who
art in heaven forever. Amen."
Jay Webber stepped forward. He held in his
hand fertile soil Anna had seen him take from his
garden, behind River glade. He stood close to the
grave. "Although we do not know your name, you
are not a stranger to Anna and me," he said quietly.
"We found you and claimed you as our friend who
also loved the mountains. Rest in peace, friend,
here in the Appalachians, the oldest mountains on
earth." He extended his hand and crumpled the
dirt, letting it whisper downward. Anna could hear
the soft patter against the lid of the casket. "May
the rich soil of Holy Rood Valley rest with you in
the peace you have found."
Anna was impressed by the simple ritual and
surprised at this new side of Jay Webber. She
moved forward to his side. She was confused. She
wanted to say something only for the corpse, but
the staring spectators beyond the grave intimidated
her. She felt as though she was staging a false show
�John Foster West
223
just for them. Her mind cleared suddenly, and she
put everything else out of her thoughts. "Young
mountain walker," she said so softly only Jay could
have heard her, "Rest with my husband and be
remembered with equal love."
That was all. Reverend Larson turned and
started shaking hands because that was all he knew
to do at the end of a sermon. Mack Jones and his
sons shuffled forward several feet, ready to start
the task of shoveling the red clay back into the
grave, so they could hurry home and get their Sunday rest. The spectators milled uncertainly, looking
at each other, then back at the grave, as though
expecting a Choragos to step forward and utter an
epilogue; otherwise the show was hardly worth the
admission—getting up early on Sunday and driving to this godforsaken cow pasture. Anna stared
at them with resentment, then turned away and
grasped Jay Webber's arm.
�Chapter XV
Anna awakened at dawn for no reason that she
was aware of. She stretched and yawned. God, but
she felt good. She felt seventeen and queen of the
world. And she was hungry and thirsty. She could
have polished off a Roman banquet table all by
herself. Dawn filtered through the windows, like
square portholes in a sunken ship. She was more
than hungry. Her body was famished. She kicked
off the sheet and stretched her legs, her toes
pointed, until her joints cracked, sounding like
dead twigs broken in a silent forest. She stretched
her legs far out and ran her hands along the corrugation of muscles across her stomach. "Ohoo-oooo!" she groaned. She hooked her right foot behind her left ankle and clamped down, muscle
against muscle, with all the power she could exert,
breathing hard.
She probed inside her mind. There was nothing there to disturb her. It was as clear as the spring
water above the Butterfly Falls. All her needs were
physical. She threw the extra pillow across the
room. It landed on top of the dresser, where Pete's
photograph had sat yesterday. Whose photograph?
224
�John Foster West
225
That beautiful young stranger she had once slept
with for ninety nights out of an allotted one hundred eighty-three.
She bounded to the floor, pulled her pajama
top over her head, and hurried to the bathroom.
Afterwards, she prepared for breakfast. Some remote segment of her mind kept listening for a
knock on the door, but it never came. She ate ravenously, scrambled eggs with hot-peppered sausage mixed with them, buttered biscuits, sliced tomatoes, all with hot coffee. All three eggs would
not have been enough if she had not eaten three
additional biscuits, peach preserves spread between them.
After breakfast she went for a long walk out
past Butterfly Falls, but the farther she got from
the cabin, the more frustrated she became. The sun
broke through the foliage, promising a good day,
but her excursion seemed like wasted time to her.
Whatever she was looking for was not out in these
woods.
A new circuit came alive in her mind. She
whirled in the trail and hurried back to the house.
She herself had no plan, but she suspected that her
body did. She dressed carefully in the prettiest
white blouse and shorts she could find. After that,
she applied makeup carefully, for the first time
since she came to the mountains, including a greentinted eye shadow, and fussed with her hair longer
than she wanted to spend on it.
�226
The Summer People
Finally, she hurried from the cabin and toward
her car. The low-heeled sandals made her legs appear even longer than they were. The huge bugeyed sunglasses gave her a sophisticated touch she
believed would have turned any male's head on
Granby Street in Norfolk. She drove as fast as she
could take the curves up the river out of Holy Rood
Valley and turned right onto the highway.
When she pulled into the parking area in front
of Mark Grunwald's chalet, she stared for a moment at the white Mercedes. The night he had
dated her, he had driven a black one. She wondered why he had traded, then shrugged the problem aside. When you get tired of your Mercedes,
what kind of change can you make when you have
everything? You trade for a Mercedes of a different color, obviously.
She got out of the car and climbed the steps to
the deck. Choosing a stance she thought would
look seductive, she composed her face in a whimsical little smile and rang the bell.
Nothing happened.
She rang again.
She waited a long minute.
The door whipped inward suddenly.
"Hi, Mark, I—" She shut up.
The blowsy looking dyed blonde who stood in
the doorway holding a Martini in her hand was
everything Mark Grunwald was not, or vice versa,
she thought. The woman smiled a crooked little
�John Foster West
227
smile, the gin film over her eyes as bleary looking
as cataracts. She thrust her head forward like a
curious hen examining a new kind of bug she was
about to eat and blinked at Anna.
"Mark is not heah, deah," she muttered. "I have
the chalet in August. I'm the late, late Mrs. Grunwald. Are you his latest stuff?"
Anna was so startled by the question she retreated a step.
"I—I'm sorry to disturb you," Anna babbled.
"I just wanted to—"
"It's all right, deah. Mark's free to mess with
whomsoever he pleases. Or pleases him." She
paused, turning her head to the side. "Come here,
Bertha!" she called back over her shoulder.
A moment later a skinny girl of fifteen or so
appeared from out of the shadows and stopped
behind the blonde. She stared at Anna with large,
bewildered eyes through her granny glasses. Her
feet kept moving as if they wanted to rescue her,
carry her somewhere away from the scene.
"Look at what your father's messin with, Bertha." The woman then laughed a guttural laugh.
"Isn't she a loser compared to your mamma?"
The pain that crossed the little girl's face reflected agony and shame. Her eyes begged Anna's
forgiveness.
"It's all right, Bertha," Anna said gently. "Your
mother's just ill. Why don't you go on back to
where you were?"
�228
The Summer People
Bertha Grunwald wheeled and disappeared as
quickly as she had appeared.
"Mark means nothing to me," Anna told the
blonde. "But he's a gentleman. You, madam, are a
shameless lush. The child should be taken from
your custody, and I have a good mind to do it. I
am familiar with the legal steps necessary."
The woman's face changed suddenly. Tears
welled into her eyes. She thrust her hand out toward Anna. "Wait! Wait a minute, please, let me
'splain—"
Anna turned away and hurried to her car. As
she was backing around to leave, she glanced back
toward the front of the chalet. Mark Grunwald's
ex-wife stood on the deck watching her, and she
was crying.
Anna spent the rest of the day driving about
the countryside. She returned to the little parking
area near Linville Falls and sat for an hour listening
to radio music and watching tourists come and go.
She drove to Blowing Rock by way of Boone and
had a Reuben sandwich and a mug of beer at Hemlock Tavern. Only tourist families came in to eat
while she was there. Later, she drove about the
campus at the state university in Boone and was
amazed to discover that male students looked so
young. She ended up at an afternoon movie, but
left in the middle of it and returned to her cabin.
After a supper of tunafish salad and crackers,
she got high on Martinis, the first she had had since
�John Foster West
229
Pete once mixed them of Oso Negro gin, and went
to bed around ten o'clock. Before the bedroom ceiling could make a tenth revolution, she was asleep,
breathing softly.
She awakened abruptly and, miraculously,
without a hangover. The windows were slate black.
She looked at the irradiant dial on her watch. It
was ten after four. Her body was a great hungry
void that needed to be filled. Yet she was not hungry. She stared at the ceiling, trying to hold her
mind blank. But as she stared and as she thought
nothing, her left hand moved from beneath the
sheet, reached out to the lid of the window seat,
lifted the lid, crept stealthily down the inside of it.
Her middle finger found the button of the alarm
bell. She touched it gently, caressing it. She flexed
her wrist to withdraw her hand, but before she
could move, her finger stiffened, thrust, depressing the button once, as far as it would go. Then she
snatched her hand back, letting the seat lid slam
shut.
For five minutes she lay there, hardly breathing, listening, as though she expected to hear Jay
Webber leaping to the floor and struggling into his
clothing, way across the field. Finally, she reached
out and turned on the bedside light. She removed
her pajama top and crossed the room to the closet;
she removed the old robe from a hanger and put
it on, clutching it closed in front of her.
Then came the muted roar of an engine as it
�230
The Summer People
approached the cabin, followed by a silence, then
a loud knock on the door, the wrong rhythm. Anna
hurried across the shadowy living room, dully illuminated from the bedroom light, and turned on
the porch light. She opened the door.
"What on earth is the matter, Annar?" Martha
Webber demanded. "Are you a-being bothered by
somebidy?"
Anna stared at her. She stood on the deck just
beyond the door, wearing a quilted robe so old it
had lost all its color except a dingy gray. Her red
and gray hair reached to her waist, down her back
and across her shoulders. Her eyes were wide with
excitement or concern, Anna could not tell which.
"Well, child, speak up! What's wrong?"
"Oh, I'm so sorry. I really am sorry," Anna
stammered. "I thought I heard a noise at the door.
But it was just a dog, I guess."
"Are you shore you're all right? I got to get
back to Hilder. I can't leave her long by herself."
Anna looked from her to the old pickup truck
in the yard. "Where's—where's Jay?"
"Lord a mercy!" She laughed, too loud for so
early in the morning, Anna thought. "He done
moved lock, stock, and barrel to that big old house
down yander on the river three days ago. Didn't
he tell you?"
"No!" Anna shook her head. "He hasn't said a
word to me about moving. But I've seen him only
once since the funeral."
�John Foster West
231
"Well, he ort to a-told you. I got to get on back
to Hilder, if you're shore you're all right."
"I'm fine. Mrs. Web—Martha," Anna said.
"Thanks for coming to my rescue."
She watched the woman let herself down the
steps, one slow tread at a time, as though she half
expected them to break under her weight. When
she heaved herself up and behind the wheel of the
pickup, Anna closed the door. Hurrying back to
her bedroom, she flung herself onto the bed and
seized her pillow, hugging it close to her breast.
"Stupid! Stupid!" she muttered.
By the afternoon of the same day, Anna decided she was going to get out of the mountains
and back to where she belonged. She spent two
hours packing, getting everything in greater order
than necessary. By the time she had the trunk of
the car loaded and the last bag buckled to the carrier rack at the rear, it was late afternoon. She reasoned that it was better to spend another night in
the cabin and leave the next day. She was so tired
she prepared canned soup for supper and went to
bed early. But she could not sleep. She rolled
and tossed for more than two hours before giving up.
She got up, finally, and mixed her a tall bloody
Mary, using V-8 juice and vodka. Each time she
looked at her watch, she was convinced the hands
had frozen in place and could not move. At 11:00
p.m. she pulled on her jeans and a T-shirt and
�232
The Summer People
blundered out of the house. She got into the car,
backed around, and kicked up dirt and gravel as
she tore off up the driveway. She almost left the
road taking the curves down the end of the ridge,
then slowed, slightly sobered.
When she braked to a stop at Riverglade, she
could see one dim light beyond the dining room
window. Jay, barefooted and shirtless, met her at
the door. He stared at her.
"Why the devil didn't you tell me you were
moving down here?" Anna demanded.
"Well, I didn't think you cared. I've talked my
head off trying to get you interested in the mountains, but you—"
"When I ring for your help at four—damn—
o'clock in the morning and your mother shows up,
I'm sure as heck interested." She pushed him aside
and entered the foyer, slamming the door.
"I'm sorry, Anna. I thought it was a little cute,
not telling you."
"You're about as cute as a redheaded woodpecker with a beard," she grumbled. She peered
into the dining room, where a cheerful little fire
burned in the fireplace. "Looks like you're having
a cozy evening."
"Won't you come in and join me, your Ladyship?"
"I just felt like a little company tonight," she
said. "You haven't been around lately, and I don't
know anyone else."
�John Foster West
233
As she approached the fireplace, Anna saw that
he had spread a blanket before the fire, a pillow at
one end of it. He had apparently been lying on the
blanket, relaxing. How long he had intended to
remain there, only he could say, if he knew himself.
The blanket and pillow looked comfortable. She
had a perverse urge to steal it from him, to stretch
out herself and watch the fire's changing patterns.
She did not admit to any right of occupation. She
dropped down onto the blanket and faced the fire,
her heels drawn up, hugging her knees. Jay stood
and watched her for several seconds, then carried
one of the ladder-backed chairs from those around
the dining table over near the blanket, sitting down
in it, saying nothing.
"I did not intend to run you out of your den,"
she said, yawning.
"No problem," he replied. "I've been using it
for quite a while. I needed a change."
"Why did you decide all of a sudden to move
down here?"
"Actually, it was not all of a sudden. I had intended to do it sometime ago. Then you came
along, and I wanted to educate you in the importance of these mountains."
Anna laughed. "You mean indoctrinate, don't
you? You ought to be a tobacco auctioneer. Or a
patent medicine salesman."
He looked at her coolly. "Is that a compliment?
If so, I don't really appreciate it."
�234
The Summer People
"No offense." She sighed, stretched out on her
back, her head on the pillow, as she watched the
shadows cast by the fire dancing on the ceiling.
"You were so passionate protecting the mountains
from outsiders, like they were your private property."
"I was passionate, Anna. And I am. Most natives feel the same way, except the greedy ones.
Do you appreciate the scenery here?"
"That's a meaningless question. Of course I do.
I think things here are magnificent. I have had the
most peace here I have had in the six years since
Pete was listed as missing in action."
"Then visualize this, lady." He leaned forward,
thrusting his head closer to her. "Visualize gaudy
motels on skylines around here. Imagine the area
around Boone, even here in the valley, ten years
after they have four-lane highways running into
them. I realize I can't change what will be. What
I'm bitching about is, there's no control. Zoning is
slipshod. There need to be controls. There need
to be skyline laws to keep obscene commercial
buildings from destroying the skylines. At the rate
it's going, this country up here is going to be a red
clay crater filled with tickytacky buildings instead
of green mountains with a limited number of buildings. Sweet Jesus, lady, we're heading for disaster.
Where will we go next when these valleys are
trashed?"
Anna heard him from far away. Her mind was
�John Foster West
235
shutting down. Some deep neurons were vaguely
aware that he had asked her a question, but she did
not know the answer yet.
"ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, ANNA?"
At the loudness of his voice, Anna sat upright,
then collapsed back onto the pillow. Then from
some remote corner of her brain came the answer.
"Another valley like these, until it's raped and commercialized too."
"Give the lady a silver apple!" Jay paused. "Go
ahead and rest, sleep, my pretty outlander. You're
already back in Norfolk. You're not interested in
what I'm saying. You're still searching for Pete."
�Chapter XVI
Anna awakened with a start. For a moment she
was disoriented. The strange arm across her waist
frightened her. Then she felt a heavy torso against
her and she had a momentary need to cuddle up
to it. Carefully, she moved the arm, let it slide down
her front and rest on the blanket. Jay Webber's
breathing changed for a moment, becoming intermittent, then long and even again.
She eased herself quietly away from him. Jay
murmured. She paused, then moved again, farther
backward. Finally, she stood, looking down at him.
He slept peacefully. His face was relaxed and boyish despite his beard. She smiled at the spray of
tiny russet freckles covering his nose. Leaning
down, she kissed him lightly on the lips, their first
and last kiss, she realized. She felt the silken brush
of his mustache on her upper lip, the hot jet of his
breath on her cheek. Straightening up, she tiptoed
from the house. Her engine started quickly, and
she drove up the grassy lane, away from Riverglade. She watched the massive old building dwindle into the night, in her rearview mirror, and felt
236
�John Foster West
237
a sadness she would not have suspected possible
until this moment.
Back at the cabin, she went to bed, but could
not sleep. For hours she tossed and rolled. The
freedom she had experienced following the funeral had been compromised, but she did not understand how. Only one thing she was sure of at
the moment: she had to return to Virginia Beach
and to Norfolk. She got up, dressed, and finished
packing a few odds and ends. The glow of false
dawn was flushing the eastern rim of Holy Rood
Valley when she had everything in the car. She
wrote a brief note for Jay and left it beside the sink,
then returned to the Porsche and started it. She sat
there for several minutes listening to the smooth
mutter of the engine. Abruptly, she switched it off
and ran back into the cabin. She retrieved the note
and carried it into the bathroom, flushing it down
the commode.
Anna left the valley behind her headlights,
winding her way up the river road. Dawn was a
mother-of-pearl fan flecked with pink over the
Piedmont, as she swung down out of the mountains, rolling from curve to curve on squealing
tires. She looked forward to the comfortable apartment, to the familiar routine she had deserted
weeks before. But a sadness weighed on her also.
It had nothing to do with Pete DeVoss. He was
dead and buried. Leaving the mountains was a spe-
�238
The Summer People
cial agony that startled her. Once or twice she felt
a great urge to make a U-turn and head back.
She bypassed Wilkesboro in misty daylight, the
coat on her tongue thick and bitter. The highway
was the left lane of a planned four-lane road and
was well engineered, and she encountered little
traffic. The Piedmont hills unrolled beneath the
Porsche's wheels like waves beneath a fast boat, as
the speedometer needle crept up to eighty, then
to eighty-five, before she was aware of what she
was doing and let up on the accelerator.
When she saw the truck-stop ahead, she realized suddenly what she needed more than anything else—food and coffee. She slowed and
whipped into the parking area, coming to a stop
between a camper and a panel truck. She started
to get out, then remembered the emergency toothbrush and toothpaste in the glove compartment.
When the lid came open, she saw at once the neatly
folded sheet of paper, one corner thrust into the
slit of the small box of Kleenex. One word, Anna,
was written on the side of the folded sheet.
Forgetting the toothbrush and toothpaste, she
removed the paper from the Kleenex box and unfolded it.
Dear Mrs. Anna DeVoss:
I really liked you, to put it modestly. I
"courted" you all those weeks in vain. I pretended
to myself I was teaching you about the mountains,
�John Foster West
239
but deep down I knew I was doing it just to be with
you. For a while I did hope you and I might "join
forces." The episode at Riverglade during the
storm and the burial of the stranger enforced my
hope. But I realize now that your emotions were
not concerned with me. You are too full of yourself, your grief, and your martyrdom.
I want you to understand that you are not the
only one who suffered because of the Vietnam
War. And your perverse martyrdom is a waste of
intelligence and a waste of your potential. It is a
blasphemy.
It never occurred to you to ask me anything
about myself, and therefore you know nothing
about me. Let me give you a few facts, my lady. I
have a B.S. in Art from A.S.U. I have studied art
in Italy and among the mountain Indians of Mexico. The paintings in the DeVoss cabin and the one
at Riverglade are mine.
I too was in Vietnam, but I did not die quickly,
without pain. Even now I won't run over a caterpillar crossing the road if I see it, yet I was compelled to cut the throats of two Vietnam soldiers
while they slept to save two wounded G.I.'s. I was
a medic. It took more than two years in a Veteran's
hospital for me to get well enough to survive. That,
and the return to the mountains. But you learned
nothing about all that. Martyrs are too deep in their
own grief.
I'm moving down to Riverglade. I probably
�240
The Summer People
won't see you again. But I'll tell you, lady, you won't
find Pete DeVoss at Virginia Beach nor at Oceana
Naval Base. There's more of old Pete right here in
this valley than anywhere else on earth.
So good-bye, my intelligent friend. I wish you
only the best and the brightest of futures.
Jay
Anna wadded the letter into a ball and hurled
it to the floor. Her eyes were filled with tears, but
they were not tears of grief. She had never been
so furious in her life. The smart aleck thought he
knew her. She was sobbing as she started the engine. Her wheels dug in throwing gravel up under
her car as she roared backward toward the asphalt
highway. But at the last moment she hit her brakes
and skidded to a halt. She eased backward into the
highway and headed eastward at forty-five.
"The bastard," she sobbed. She dabbed at first
one eye and then the other, with her fingertips.
"The redheaded peckerwood! I'd like to scratch his
eyes out. I'd—I'd—"
Far away, to her left, she could see the hazy
bulwark of the Blue Ridge. The sun, orange and
cool, stood above a line of trees in front of her.
"Pete and I never did really get beyond our honeymoon!" The thought flashed across her mind like
a new element through a fog chamber, startling
her. "No, damn it, no! Our lives were perfect together. Our love was everything. No, you're wrong,
�John Foster West
241
Jay Webber. I will have no doubts, no regrets concerning my marriage."
The green waves of the western Piedmont hills
rolled beneath her at a leisurely pace. Now and
then the road blurred out as though she had hit a
sudden shower with the windshield wipers off. She
had to blink her way back to clear visibility. "But
we never went anywhere except that time to Skyline Drive and those three days with his parents in
Jacksonville. Aside from that, Pete was flying, or
we were at a party. No. No. Our marriage was short
but sweet. If Pete had lived, if he had not been a
military pilot, if we could have spent more time
together—" What? What would have happened?
How would it have been?
"Damn you, Jay Webber, you and your flowers
and trees. I know what it was like with Pete. I was
there. Me!"
She slowed to thirty-five. Wooded hills swelled
into the ancient ridges of a small mountain chain
to her right, a narrow creek valley to her left. The
leaves, the weeds, the whole world around her, in
front of her, gleamed and scintillated with the
green life of earth in its early-morning robe. Clusters of blackeyed Susans and daisies decorated the
grassy banks and fields around her. She saw a little
island of white, where a clump of Queen Anne's
lace held a family conference. Beyond them, disorganized and scattered, the tousled heads of common yarrow asserted their individualism. Yarrow
�242
The Summer People
has a shallow root structure, she thought. Queen
Anne's lace is wild carrot. The tuber root is edible.
"Good grief, what has that kinky-headed sonof-a-gun done to me?" she muttered. "Who cares
whether you can eat wild roots or not? Who really
cares about the mountains and clouds and rock formations and trees? Life is back in Norfolk, where
they need me."
Suddenly, she whipped into a parking area beside a faded green picnic table and braked to a halt.
She threw the shift to neutral and yanked up on
the emergency brake, then sat staring ahead, into
the morning sunlight. Poor Pete, what an awful
price to pay for the love of flying! Miles of Blue
Ridge formed a miniature skyline framed by her
rearview mirror. "Poor Pete!" She sighed, but it
caught in her throat, choking her. "And you, Jay
Webber—yes, you, you, very you! What shall I do
about you?"
When she braked to a stop in front of the old
mansion, Jay Webber opened the door and strolled
nonchalantly toward her. She got out of the car and
watched him. He came within three feet of her,
stopped, and she studied his face uncertainly.
"How far did you get?" he asked casually.
"How far did I—" A surge of resentment swept
over her. "What do you mean, how far did I get?"
A grin divided his red beard. "I knew I would
�John Foster West
243
make you angry enough with my letter to make you
challenge me, but I wasn't sure just how angry."
"Oh, so now you're a psychologist?"
"Strictly amateur, my lady."
They came together sedately, like two pawns
in a foregone conclusion. He was warm and firm
in her arms. She looked beyond his head, but the
sky was as blue and empty as it had been that day
at Oceana Naval Base when Pete's A-6 had flickered and disappeared, to rendezvous with his carrier, somewhere on the ocean beyond her vision.
�was
in
on Dec. 10,
He
he
the
Air Corp. When
in 1945; West
to
at UNC at
he
a B. A. in 1947
M.A. in
He
his Ph.D.
the
He
at
Old
He
ASU in
He is the
of Time Wasf
Dawnf
This
Land, He
on
2,
the age
the
an
of
at
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Consortium Press Publications
Description
An account of the resource
This collection contains digitized monographs and collections from the Appalachian Consortium Press.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Appalachian Consortium Press
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Appalachian Consortium Press
Date Issued
Date of formal issuance (e.g., publication) of the resource.
June 1, 2017
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
<a title="Digital Scholarship and Initiatives" href="http://library.appstate.edu/services/digital-scholarship-and-initiatives" target="_blank">Digital Scholarship and Initiatives</a>
Publication
Digital Publisher
Digital Republication
Appalachian State University
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Summer People
Description
An account of the resource
<span>In the summer of 1974, twenty-four year old Anna DeVoss finds herself widowed and alone in the unfamiliar country of the North Carolina mountains. The body of her husband, a navy pilot missing in action for six years, has just been returned home from Vietnam. Following his funeral her mother in law persuades her to spend some time alone at the family’s summer home in Watauga County, North Carolina, in what becomes a summer of discovery for Anna.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Hb3067mJVocyA5IMb4iY-our4Tgqe8aG" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download EPub<br /><br /></a><a title="UNC Press Link" href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469642079/the-summer-people" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNC Press Print on Demand</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Watauga County (N.C.)--Fiction
Mountain life--Fiction
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1989
Language
A language of the resource
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
West, John Foster
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Appalachian Consortium Press
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
PDF
E-books
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed</a>
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
https://www.geonames.org/4497707/watauga-county.html
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> UA 76 Appalachian Consortium records </a>
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a title="Appalachian Consortium Press Publications" href="https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/collections/show/82" target="_blank"> Appalachian Consortium Press Publications</a>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
||||osm
Watauga County (N.C.)
fiction
locals
summer residents
Vietnam
wealthy