7 Two Jesse. That’s what they named me, those folks up there where I was born, on Black Hawk Ridge, at the head of Turkey Creek, in Wayne County, West Virginia; those folks who had lived on those ridges and in those hollers and on those creeks since just after the Revolutionary War, some of whom left that country only to fight in wars they didn’t start and didn’t understand and then came home to fight wars they did start, tight little wars of their very own. Others had never been out of the county, never been off the ridge, never knew where Turkey Creek came out or where it went when it did and would never go looking for the end of it. But I would. If you go far enough into any piece of woods, you come out the other side; eventually, there has to be an end to it. But not Turkey Creek. They used to say Turkey Creek was so far back into the mountains that there was no other side, that things just ended there, stopped, died. They said that Turkey Creek began as a trickle of sweet water coming out of a tiny spring at the foot of dark trees at the edge of the world and as long as it ran our people would be there and way down there in some other county where the creek ended up was no good place for any of us. We knew where we belonged. And Black Hawk Ridge was farther back than Turkey Creek. If you hiked a mile or so toward the far end of Black Hawk you could find the ridge’s highest point. The holler below the ridge widened , gradually unfolding into a lush, shaded valley that stretched down and away, only to be lost again among the tangle of other hollers , other ridges that rolled far and forever across the Appalachians, 8 a hopeless tangle of changing heights, dim shapes, knurled wood and broken stone that might have been dropped by God on a bad day during the creation of the world. At the side of the high point a shelf of rock jutted out over the valley, one of the few places on the ridge where the view was not cut off by the thick stands of hardwood trees. The view went out in all directions, the heavy green ridges rolling up through the thin mists of the valleys and standing in the twisted formations of thousands of years, all the ridges exactly like the one I stood on. And all the ridges different. On good days when I stood on the weathered rock I could see the bright green patches where the men of the ridge had cleared small hard fields to grow hay for the plow horses or corn to be stored in the cribs and fed, hard and dry, to the pigs that rooted continuously against the sides of hills. Now and then dancing plumes of smoke rose from the trees and twisted away across the valley, smoke that came from stone chimneys leaning against the sides of cabins and small clapboard houses. Our houses. Our smoke. Everything on the ridge was ours. We were all a family there, one way or another. But even then, even on Black Hawk Ridge, I knew there was something beyond those ridges, something that waited out there, something that pulled me. Somewhere, the ridges stopped. I was sure. Just below the weathered rock is where Long Neck hid his moonshine still. I used to follow him up there, high on the ridge, hiding in the bushes and peeking through the dense thickets, all the time trying to find out what Long Neck did there. I always hid in the same spot, watching silently. He always knew I was there. He never chased me away, but he never let me come near the moonshine still. The still was his, only his, and I never got near it. Not really. [44.210.107.64] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:57 GMT) 9 He would sit and tend his still and read the tattered books that he always seemed to produce from the deep pockets of his overalls. And then one day I found one of the books in my hiding place, lying there on a small stump. I turned the book over in my hands, trying to figure out what Uncle Long Neck wanted, then realizing that all...