Free Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier Page B

that summer and involved Sally and Esco. A Mies man in the congregation had told Monroe that the Swangers were stunning in their ignorance. Esco, according to Mies, could scarcely read, in fact had never advanced in his understanding of history beyond the earliest doings of the Deity in Genesis. The creation of light was about the last thing he had a firm grasp of. Sally Swanger, Mies had said, was somewhat less informed. They both saw the Bible only as a magic book and used it like a gypsy hand reader. They held it and let it fall open and then stabbed a finger at the page and tried to puzzle out the meaning of the word so indicated. It was deemed oracular, and they acted upon it as instructions straight from God’s mind. If God said go, they went. He said abide, they stayed put. He said slay, Esco got the hatchet and went looking for a pullet. They were, despite their ignorance, unavoidably prosperous since their farm occupied a wide piece of cove bottom with dirt soblack and rich it would raise sweet potatoes as long as your arm with only the least efforts toward keeping the weeds shaved back. They would make valuable members of the congregation if Monroe could only bring them up-to-date.
    So Monroe had gone visiting, Ada at his side. They’d sat together in the parlor, Esco humped forward as Monroe tried to engage him in a discussion of faith. But Esco gave up little of himself and his beliefs. Monroe found no evidence of religion other than a worship of animals and trees and rocks and weather. Esco was some old relic Celt was what Monroe concluded; what few thoughts Esco might have would more than likely be in Gaelic.
    Seizing such a unique opportunity, Monroe attempted to explain the high points of true religion. When they got to the holy trinity Esco had perked up and said, Three into one. Like a turkey foot.
    Then in awhile, convinced that Esco had indeed not yet got report of his culture’s central narrative, Monroe told the story of Christ from divine birth to bloody crucifixion. He included all the famous details and, while keeping it simple, he summoned all the eloquence he could. When he’d finished, he sat back waiting for a reaction.
    Esco said, And you say this took place some time ago?
    Monroe said, Two thousand years, if you consider that some time ago.
    —Oh, I’d call that a stretch all right, Esco said. He looked at his hands where they hung from the wrists. He flexed the fingers and looked at them critically as if trying the fittings of a new implement. He thought on the story awhile and then said, And what this fellow come down for was to save us?
    —Yes, Monroe said.
    —From our own bad natures and the like?
    —Yes.
    —And they still done him like they did? Spiked him up and knifed him and all?
    —Yes indeed, Monroe said.
    —But you say this story’s been passed around some hundred-score years? Esco said.
    —Nearly.
    —So to say, a long time.
    —A very long time.
    Esco grinned as if he had solved a puzzle and stood up and slapped Monroe on the shoulder and said, Well, about all we can do is hope it ain’t so.
    At home that night, Monroe had drawn up plans as to how he might best instruct Esco in proper doctrine and so save him from heathenism. It never entered Monroe’s mind that he had been made a butt of humor and that his quest for ignorance had been so apparent from the moment he had entered Esco’s gate as to give grave offense. Nor, of course, did he suppose that—instead of shutting the door in his face or pitching a pan of grey footwash water at him or showing him the bore to his shotgun as some so insulted would have done—Esco, a gentle soul, had simply taken pleasure in giving Monroe great quantities of the ignorance he came seeking.
    Esco bragged to no one about what he had done. In fact, he seemed not to care in the least whether or not Monroe ever knew the truth of the matter, which was that he and his wife were dipped Baptists. It was Monroe that spread the tale by