Free The Hinterlands by Robert Morgan Page B

the grubbing hoe, the ax, the adz, the saw. And then he rubbed grease on the metal.
    He was afraid that all the rain, and the heat of the horse, had made some of his seed start sprouting. We opened the bags and picked through the grains one by one. Sure enough, some of the corn and beans had started to swell and crack. We picked out all the cracked ones and set them aside. Maybe we could plant them first and they would still come up, if we could get to the place and clear some ground quick enough.
    We stretched a cloth on four sticks and put the rest of the seeds on that, hoping to dry them enough so they would stay tight and hard. The danger was the fire would warm them and they’d start to swell even more. Didn’t seem like nothing was going right. It was a good thing we was young and in love because older people couldn’t have put up with so much. Every day we waited for the sun to appear, but it kept raining.
    â€œThis is Noah’s flood again,” I said to Realus. “It’s going to last forty days and forty nights and we’re going to be drowned if we don’t climb a tree.”
    â€œMaybe it’s the end of the world,” your Grandpa said, trying to joke but sounding sadder than he intended. The truth was, we had started to feel it was the end of the world. It didn’t seem the sun would ever show again, or that we would get out of that dark,musty cave. That night I cried. I just couldn’t help myself. I’m not the crying sort of woman, but the bottom seemed to drop out of everything. Something just went inside me, and I found myself sobbing. I was ashamed of it, and that made me cry worser.
    â€œNow, now,” Realus said. But he didn’t know what else to say.
    I cried myself to sleep thinking I had run away from home with a man that didn’t know what to say to me. We was lost in the wilderness. It was like the Lord had forsook us in that damp cave. I thought I would die of consumption if we stayed there.
    When I woke that next morning, the first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. It was like a noise, but the noise was silence, and birds was out in the woods. The light coming into the cave was blinding. We hadn’t seen the sun in many days.
    â€œRealus?” I said. But they was no answer. I got up stiff from lack of sleep and crying, and stumbled toward the mouth of the cave where I heard a crackling. Outside, your Grandpa had a little fire going, and tea boiling in the kittle.
    â€œHow about some hot tea?” he said.
    As I set there on a rock with my hair damp and dirty, sipping from the mug your Grandpa handed me, it seemed like I was being raised from the dead. Children, it’s the best advice I can give you, that if you just keep going things will get better. It may take a long time, and seem like they’s never going to be no improvement. But I’ve seen it happen many a time. A few hours before I thought we was going to die in that smelly cave. And here the sun was out and the woods fresh as the day of creation.
    Soon as we drunk the tea and eat some corn cakes, Realus said he was going to catch fish for dinner. “It’s too wet to travel right now,” he said. “Fresh fish will give us strength.”
    â€œThen I’m going to wash my hair,” I said. I knowed it would make me feel better if my hair was clean. It hadn’t been touched since I left home.
    I went to the bags we had piled in the cave to find the gourd of soap. The bags had never dried out completely, and smelled a little sour. I had to dig through all kinds of odds and ends to find the gourd. And when I did find the soap I suddenly thought of Mama. Me and her had made it from lye water and beef fat. We made it on the full of the moon like you’re supposed to if the soap’s going to be pure white.
    I took the gourd down to the creek and knelt on a rock and washed all the smoke and grease out of my hair. As I worked the soap into my