Free Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier Page B

be touchy and distant, largely unreadable. They often acted as if they had been insulted, though neither Ada nor Monroe could say how. Many homesteads operated as if embattled. Only men would come out onto the porch to meet them as they came visiting, and sometimes Monroe and Ada would be invited in and sometimes not. And often it was worse to be asked in than to be left standing awkwardly out in the yard, for Ada found such visits frightening.
    The houses were dark inside, even on a bright day. Those with shutters kept them pulled to. Those with curtains kept them drawn. The houses smelled strangely, though not uncleanly, of cooking and animals and of people who worked. Rifles stood in the corners and hung on pegs above mantels and doors. Monroe would rattle on at great length, introducing himself and explaining his view of the church's mission and talking theology and urging attendance at prayer meetings and services. All the while the men would sit in straight chairs looking at the fire. Many of them went unshod and they stuck their feet out before them with no shame whatsoever. For all you could tell by their bearing, they might have been alone. They looked at the fire and said not a word and moved not one muscle in their faces as response to anything Monroe said. When he pressed them with a direct question they file://H:\Ebook\Charles%20Frazier%20-%20Cold%20Mountain%20(v1.0)%20[...

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    sat and thought about it for a long time, and sometimes they answered in brief vague phrases and more often they just looked sharply at him as if that in itself conveyed all the message they cared to pass. There were hidden people in the houses. Ada could hear them knocking about in other rooms, but they would not come forth. She supposed them to be women, children, and old people. It was as if they found the world beyond their cove so terrible that they might be fouled by any contact with outlanders and that all but kith and kin were best counted as enemy.
    After such visits, Ada and Monroe always left at a brisk clip, and as they spun down the road in the cabriolet, he talked of ignorance and devised strategies for its defeat. Ada just felt the whirl of the wheels, the speed of their retreat, and a vague envy of people who seemed to care nothing at all for the things she and Monroe knew. They had evidently come to entirely different conclusions about life and lived utterly by their own light.
    Monroe's greatest debacle as missionary had come later 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 so black 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