Free This Rock by Robert Morgan Page A

can tell you,” the girl said, and started running back up the trail. I wanted to holler after her, but we was too close to Peg Early’s for me to holler, and I knowed she wouldn’t come back. She disappeared into the woods.
    â€œWhat spring is she talking about?” I said.
    Me and U. G. got back in the truck and he put the key in its slot. U. G. looked puzzled and worried.
    â€œWho is Josie?” I said.
    U. G. shook his head and started the motor. “Only spring I can think of is the one in Possum Holler,” he said.
    All my life I’d heard about Possum Holler, but I never had stopped there. We drove by it going to Greenville and going to see the Indian doctor when I was seventeen. It was a deep dark cove at the edge of Dark Corner, which is what they called the wildest section of upper South Carolina. U. G. drove out of the flats of Chestnut Springs and started winding up the curves to the steep part of the mountain. Trees hung over the road and smothered it with shade. In the bend of a curve there was a little haul road I hadn’t noticed coming down. It was almost covered with limbs and brush and vines, and when U. G. turned into the track, branches scratched on the windshield and sides of the truck. I blinked as limbs slapped on the glass in front of me. The truck rocked and bounced on the ruts so bad my head hit the ceiling. The road wound around the side of the holler.
    U. G. stopped when he seen a girl setting on a rock ahead. Her long blond hair was all tangled up and there was blood on her dress. The cloth was tore around her chest. Her face was puffed with bruises. She set beside a rippling spring, and there was cans and bottles scattered around her.
    When we got out of the truck and hurried to her, I seen her face was swole up worse than it looked at first. Her lip was swole sideways. Her eye was puffed out big as a blue Easter egg.
    â€œAre you Josie?” I said.
    â€œWhat if I am?” she said.
    â€œWe’re looking for Moody,” I said.
    â€œWho are you all?” Josie said.
    â€œI’m his mama,” I said, “and this is his cousin.”
    â€œHave you got a cigarette?” the girl said.
    U. G. patted his pockets and then said all he had was a pipe.
    â€œFigures,” the girl said. She talked out of the side of her mouth. There was cuts and whelks on her arm.
    â€œWhere is Moody?” I said.
    â€œPeg Early beat us up,” the girl said, and her voice caught in her throat.
    I heard a groan and looked up the side of the mountain. A man’s boot stuck out from under a laurel bush. I started climbing up there, and when I reached the bush I parted the limbs and seen Moody laying in the leaves, pushed up against a rock.
    â€œLeave me alone,” Moody said. His shirt was ripped and there was blood on his side. His cheek was swole so it punched out in a rotten bruise.
    â€œWhat happened?” I said.
    â€œLet me be,” Moody said.
    U. G. had followed me up the hill, and Josie stumbled along behind him.
    â€œPeg found out Moody was cutting the liquor,” Josie said. “He brought it up here to mix with springwater. People complained because Peg was already cutting it herself.”
    Moody rolled over so he wouldn’t have to look at us. He was like a dog that has been hurt and just wants to hide in a thicket.
    â€œPeg found out I was helping Moody and she whipped us both,” the girl said. “She had Glover tie us to a tree and she whipped us with a razor strop until Moody shit all over hisself.”
    â€œGo away!” Moody cried, like he couldn’t stand for us to see him. He rolled over again, and that’s when I seen the stain in the straddle of his overalls, and it made me shudder. It was a brown-and-red stain, like it was mixed with blood.
    â€œJust go away!” Moody screamed. I bent over and put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted to hug him to my chest.
    â€œPeg caught me and Moody in