“No!” said the stationmaster, almost yelping. “Youcan’t— I mean— It’sa long walk, particularly in the dark. Let me see if I can find someone going that direction.”
“That really isn’t necessary.”
“Believe me,” he said, “it is.”
Torn between gratitude and embarrassment, I sat down on the single bench outside the office while he hurried down the platform to the men unloading. I smoothed down my skirt. It was late April, and not as punishingly hot as it might be later in the year, but I already missed the sea breezes of Wilmington.
A few minutes later, the stationmaster returned and beckoned to me. “Phelps will take you,” he said. “He’s going more or less that way.”
“More or less?” I asked wryly.
“More or less.” And then, dropping his voice, “Phelps won’t give you any trouble either.”
“Thank you,” I said gravely. My face and figure were not thesort generally held to incite lust—a scarecrow was among the kinder comparisons I’d heard—but a certain type of man requires only that a woman be in their power. It was kind of the stationmaster to be concerned, since the only weapons I possessed were a hatpin and a palette knife, and I would have had to dig through my suitcase for the palette knife.
The man I was to ride with was tall, gaunt, and looked as if he had last smiled sometime before the war. If I had known then what kind of role he would play in my life, wild horses could not have dragged me onto that wagon, but I suppose that’s hindsight for you. At the time, I was simply grateful that I wouldn’t have to drag a suitcase ten miles in the dark.
Possibly there’s a moral here somewhere, but if so, it’s buried deep.
The man nodded to me as I climbed up beside him on his wagon, introduced himself as Asa Phelps, then clucked his tongue at the horses and proceeded to say nothing at all for the next few miles.
The road was rough, and as far as the wagon was concerned, most expense had been spared. It was probably just as well that my backside was already numb from the long train ride, because otherwise rattling on the wooden seat would have been agonizing instead of merely horrific. We passed several fields where tobacco was just beginning to come up, then entered the woods I had seen from the station platform. Pine, sweetgum, and hickory dominated the edges, but as we went deeper in, oak and stately chestnut began to spread their branches overhead.
When the silence had grown so excruciating that I had to break it, I said, “I appreciate you giving me a ride. I know this is somewhat out of your way.”
“It is my Christian duty,” he said.
It is extremely difficult to make conversation with someone who uses the phrase “Christian duty” with utter sincerity. I lapsed back into silence, watching the trees on either side ofthe road. The leaves were the hot green of new growth and the redbuds were blazing pink, even in the fading light.
Hooker’s green,I thought, studying the trees.Sap green too. Flicks of gamboge yellow for the light, and a wash of Prussian blue through the shadows. But mostly green, in all the shades that I can mix. Though I’d have to do something to keep the pink for the redbuds from mixing in with the rest.The usual way to separate a color out that sharply is to use frisket on the paper to cover all the spots you want to keep unpainted, but that requires a great many extra steps and the watercolor must be absolutely bone-dry before you try to peel up the frisket. It’s much easier to ruin a painting than to save one with the stuff.
Dr. Halder probably wouldn’t have me painting redbuds. He studied insects. I’d painted insects before, usually in proximity to the flowers they haunted, but I couldn’t say that I had a great deal of experience with them.
(he’ll see your work and turn you off immediately you’ll have to go back to the school with your tail between your legs it was foolish to think you could ever do this)
Stop that.
“The woods are beautiful this time of year,” I offered, trying to drown out the voice of my anxiety.
“Do not be fooled,” Phelps said, to my surprise.
“Beg pardon?”
He glanced over at me, his jaw working like a horse with a bit in its mouth. “The Devil walks these woods, Miss Wilson.”
My eyebrows shot up. Well, really, what are you supposed to say to a thing like that? I wracked my brain for anything that might live in the woods that would merit such a description. There were no longer any pumas in this part of the state, and indeed, there were those who said they had been wiped out completely. The Klan had similarly been stamped out a decade prior, though God knows hatred is more resilient than wildlife. “Are you… ah… speaking metaphorically, sir?”
“I am not.” Phelps worked his jaw again, then lifted an arm and pointed past me. The shadow of his beard made a Payne’s gray wash across his cheeks. “We’re only a mile or two from the Devil’s Tramping Ground. Are you familiar with it?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a bare circle of ground on which no grass will grow. It’s said that the Devil walks there at night, plotting wickedness. Do you believe in the Devil, Miss Wilson?”
This was a difficult question to answer, since the truth might get me thrown off the wagon, and I wasn’t certain how much farther we had to go to Halder’s. “I don’tdisbelieve,” I said cautiously. “Though most wickedness I have seen has come from men.”
“Mmm.” Thankfully Phelps showed no sign of stopping the wagon to make me walk.
Emboldened, I added, “I don’t know that I believe that the Devil has a physical body, or that that body is in North Carolina though.”
