New Covenant Bound

Sunday Outings

25 Sunday Outings Beyond backwash and slackwater west out of Union Hill driving the old ferry road creek willows sheltering the Cumberland calm here in its broad bed below the dam all sinking away behind with late summer’s dry dust as I make for the Dover Trail a bank of low hills folding down into turkey meadows and spring rills Holly Cove to Fairdealing where I branch off on the hard road the Trail drawing me down a quarter mile of maplewood spread south to the lakes thin shawl of white clouds feathering off blue morning opening its hand to me — places I could never find again roads I could never retrace . . . We walked the broken trail of the logging road reclaimed by burdock and blackthorn coming to a stand * * * 26 of river birch hard by the shore my father moving down the bank to cast a few my brother and I not fishing yet scratching around instead in the shallow pit grown over with poke and ironweed pulling vines away to look for foundation stones racing to stand together on the mossed over brick steps leading down into the water . . . A hewn log saddle back cabin a woman in dark homespun a kettle boiling in the woodyard smoke of her fire * * * 27 sifting up into the noonlight. Behind her an empty tobacco barn a mule penned in the shade. Before her a man with a camera lining them up with the sign that says — Homestead 1870 An Exhibit of Living History . . . Snow’s thin hands sift down among the ancient hickories and broken headstones filling in the beveled Chinese inscriptions — laborers brought here in the 1850s to work the iron furnace at Little Cypress. Spirits cannot cross water * * * 28 so they wander and return to a foreign land no home in this world or the next. A breeze lifts and we hear them — a few locust pods dried hard to their branches clacking dully together — shards of temple bells. 29 " Grandma Woodford said, “I guess anything would seem like a letdown after a wedding trip to Cerulean Springs. But I had no idea Mr. Woodford had bought the sorriest piece of land between the rivers to move us on and try to farm.” They couldn’t afford much. Couldn’t afford bottom land. Parts of the home place were so steep you could just about stand it on edge and plow both sides. Parts were just scalds and gullies, even back then, where they’d dug out the hematite banks long years before. Back when the iron bloomeries were still running. But they managed to somehow squeeze a living out of it. And Mother and Papa squeezed a living out of it. And me and your grandfather were doing our best with it before we lost it. Though by then, a little corn and sorghum cane was about all it would give us. But that was a good, strong house Grandpa Woodford built. Good enough to raise three generations in. And start on a fourth. Your father was the last child born in that house. ...