Wish You Well(12)

slantwise in front of the buildings.

There were general stores, restaurants, and an open-door warehouse with box towers of

Domino sugar and Quick napkins, Post Toasties and Quaker Oats visible inside. There

was an automobile dealership with shiny cars in the window, and next to that an Esso gas

station sporting twin pumps with bubble tops and a uniformed man with a big smile

filling up the tank of a dented La Salle sedan, with a dusty Nash two-door waiting behind

it. A big Coca-Cola soda cap was hanging in front of one cafe, and an Eveready Battery

sign was bolted to the wall of a hardware shop. Telephone and electrical poles of poplar

ran down one side of the street, black cables snaking out from them to each of the

structures. Another shop announced the sale of pianos and organs for cash at good prices.

A movie theater was on one corner, a laundry on another. Gas street lamps ran down both

sides of the road, like big, lit matchsticks.

The sidewalks were crowded with folks. They ranged from well-dressed women with

stylish hairdos topped by modest hats, to bent, grimy men who, Lou thought, probably

toiled here in the coal mines she had read about.

As they passed through, the last building of significance was also the grandest. It was red

brick with an elegant two-story pediment portico, supported by paired Greek Ionic

columns, and had a steeply pitched, hammered tin roof painted black, with a brick clock

tower top-hatting it. The Virginia and American flags snapped out front in the fine

breeze. The elegant red brick, however, sat on a foundation of ugly, scored concrete. This

curious pairing struck Lou as akin to fine pants over filthy boots. The carved words above

the columns simply read: "Court House." And then they left the finite sprawl of Dickens

behind.

Lou sat back puzzled. Her father's stories had been filled with tales of the brutish

mountains, and the primitive life there, where hunters squatted near campfires of hickory

sticks and cooked their kill and drank their bitter coffee; where farmers rose before the

sun and worked the land till they collapsed; where miners dug into the earth, filling their

lungs with black that would eventually kill them; and where lumberjacks swept virgin

forests clean with the measured strokes of ax and saw. Quick wits, a sound knowledge of

the land, and a strong back were essential up here. Danger roamed the steep slopes and

loamy valleys, and the magisterial high rock presided over both men and beasts, sharply

defining the limits of their ambition, of their lives. A place like Dickens, with its paved

roads, hotel, Coca-Cola signs, and pianos for cash at good prices, had no right to be here.

Yet Lou suddenly realized that the time period her father had written about had been well

over twenty years ago.

She sighed. Everything, even the mountains and its people, apparently, changed. Now

Lou assumed her great-grandmother probably lived in a quite ordinary neighborhood

with quite ordinary neighbors. Perhaps she had a cat and went to have her hair done every

Saturday at a shop that smelled of chemicals and cigarette smoke. Lou and Oz would

drink orange soda pop on the front porch and go to church on Sunday and wave to people

as they passed in their cars, and life would not be all that much different than it had been

in New York. And while there was absolutely nothing wrong with that, it was not the

dense, breathtaking wilderness Lou had been expecting. It was not the life her father had

experienced and then written about, and Lou was clearly disappointed.

The car passed through more miles of trees, soaring rock and dipping valleys, and then

Lou saw another sign. This town was named Tremont. This was probably it, she thought.

Tremont appeared roughly one-third the size of Dickens. About fifteen cars were slantparked in front of shops similar to those in the larger town, only there was no high-rise

building, no courthouse, and the asphalt road had given way to macadam and gravel. Lou

also spotted the occasional horse rider, and then Tremont was behind them, and the

ground moved higher still. Her great-grandmother, Lou surmised, must live on the

outskirts of Tremont.

The next place they passed had no sign naming its location, and the scant number of

buildings and few people they saw didn't seem enough to justify a name. The road was

now dirt, and the Hudson swayed from side to side over this humble pack of shifting

earth. Lou saw a shallow post office building, and next to that was a leaning pile of

boards with no sign out front, and steps that had the rot. And finally there was a goodsized general store with the name "McKenzie's" on the wall; crates of sugar, flour, salt,

and pepper were piled high outside. In one window of McKenzie's hung a pair of blue

overalls, harnesses, and a kerosene lamp. And that was about all there was of the