Robert Morgan is one of America’s greatest living poets and writers of prose fiction and biography. We were privileged to publish new poems by him for the premiere of Appalachian Places in 2021. It is delightfully fitting, and our great honor, that our first short-story installment is contributed also by this celebrated author called “the poet laureate of Appalachia.” Morgan is a native of Zirconia, North Carolina, just outside Hendersonville. He is the Kappa Alpha Professor of English Emeritus at Cornell University, where he taught from 1971 to 2022.
By Robert Morgan
The police quit looking for me. They gave up and pretended I was no longer hiding on the island. It was about a year after Martha’s death, and the lake was almost filled, when they brought in dogs to track me down like an escaped convict on my own land. One thing cops can’t abide is defiance, for most of what they depend on is authority, shown by uniform, badge, and gun. Take away that, and they’re just as uncertain and vulnerable as the rest of us. Refusing their orders makes them dangerous.
After the lake filled it wasn’t obvious whose job it was to track down and evict me from the hill. The lake lies in both Green and Hampton counties, but which had jurisdiction over the island in the lake? And the lake was a federal project, so was it a problem for a US Marshal, or the FBI? Or was it a responsibility for Tennessee state troopers, since other authorities could be contested? Maybe that’s why they finally gave up the search.
But that one time, about a year after I buried Martha, was a close call because they brought the hounds. I could hide like a fox, while they ransacked thickets with their guns. I had a cave in a gully with brush over the mouth, and I could climb a pine tree so high they wouldn’t see me from the ground. And I could circle the island – it was just a mile across – staying back of them. They could no more find me than they could corner a mink, or a gust of wind.
But the pack of dogs, including a bloodhound, was about too much for me. Except I’d foreseen they’d bring dogs, and planned for it. Several branches ran from springs on either side of the hill, and even a bloodhound can’t follow tracks in water. Where my trail led to a stream and didn’t continue on the other side they’d guess I’d gone down the brooklet, for that way was faster. But since that was obvious, they’d assume I’d turned uphill, then dashed to the other side of the island.
When they landed in a police boat and unloaded dogs, and hounds started bellowing, I was prepared. I rushed to a branch and jumped in and stepped over rocks and riffles all the way down to the edge of the lake. Then, keeping close to shore, I splashed to where another streamlet emptied into the lake, and fought my way up that rill through brush and briars almost to the top of the hill. From there I sprinted to the gully and dove into the cave and pulled brush in after me. For most of the day I listened to the hound chorus. At last they gave up and returned to the police catamaran. They must have reported I’d abandoned Timrod Hill, for I never saw them again. Nobody believed I would survive, on an island more than a mile from the lake’s edge on either side, with no boat, or electricity, no new clothes. They may have decided I’d died of exposure, a burst appendix, or stroke, and my bones were blanching somewhere on the hill where my ancestors settled centuries ago.
Survival in the modern world without electric power, phone, money, nearby stores, a warm house, is unthinkable. A Robinson Crusoe life may be romantic in a book, but not to imitate. When the deputies ordered me to leave, after I refused to sell my land, and the dammed lake inched up the slopes, claiming former pastures and fields, rising over barns and houses, churches and graveyards, I lived pretty well in the woods at first, digging potatoes and carrots from the garden, cooking over a small fire on the gully floor where smoke was lost among the pines above. I caught rabbits in boxes, squirrels and possums. I ate healthy enough as my beard and hair grew thick.
Nothing seems more natural than growing hair and beard. You wonder why you ever shaved or had your hair cut every month. Trimming’s just a habit, as most things we take for granted are. Both beard and hair were intended to protect you from cold and wind.
As nights cooled, I returned to the old barn loft after dark, and burrowed in hay. There was nobody to bother me. Livestock were gone, but there was corn in the crib to be ground in the coffee mill, or boiled to make hominy. As winter progressed, I fixed a bed of pine limbs in the cave and wrapped myself in a quilt left in the barn, and warmed my feet at a fire near the entrance. With a net made from bean strings I snared ducks and geese, and roasted them.
My clothes I preserved as best I could, but soon they wore ragged and thin, too fragile to stand washing. As it turned out, I worried about clothes as much as grub. Though there was no one to impress, and I’d never been especially vain, I hated to look like a beggar, or inmate in an asylum. It surprised me how much I cared about appearance. If someone saw me I would be ashamed, for self-respect depends in part on how we view ourselves.
By the second summer there were motorboats as well as canoes and fishing boats landing on the island. Skiers threw wings of spray from their feet as they chased speedboats. Families with picnic baskets arrived, and spread feasts in the yard of the old house place. Young lovers rowed to the island to find privacy. I stayed hidden, neither spying nor ignoring them.
The day my wife died of cancer in the county hospice, I received a letter informing me again that if I didn’t agree to sell the property on Timrod Hill, the land would be condemned and I’d be forced to accept whatever price the assessor declared. The flood control and electrical power lake would fill regardless of my response. The region needed power, and protection from devastating storms that scoured houses, roads, and bridges away. The project would be completed, and my hill would become an island, whatever I did or didn’t do.
Martha had been diagnosed a year before, about the time the first agent from the government appeared to inform us of the dam construction and necessity for selling. The news shocked us. Treatments hadn’t helped Martha, and when the pain was so intense even morphine couldn’t suppress it, I drove her to the hospice.
In the days after the funeral I tried to work, trimming brush along the edges of the fields. If not cut back, woods will retake a clearing in a few years. My ancestor had bought the land on Timrod Hill many years before. It was cheap then because the soil was not as rich as the bottomland, but fields on the very top were fertile enough, if protected from erosion with cover crops and terraces. The hill was higher than the surface of the future lake, and the farm would have no access except by boat or helicopter. If I didn’t leave, I’d be evicted, livestock hauled away, pickup and tractor towed, electricity cut, house burned. My square mile of land would be above water, but too isolated to be of practical use. The lake was already rising.
When officers came to take my pickup and tractor, and confiscate the cattle, horse, and pigs and chickens, I hid in pines at the lower end of the pasture. Since the death of Martha, it all seemed like a troubled dream. Events unfolded over which I had no say, distorted, but inevitable, one thing blending with another. My animals were loaded into a truck, hens crammed into crates.
A deputy, badge flashing, walked to the black walnut at the edge of the yard, and called, as if he knew just where I hid.
“Harold Timrod, if you don’t come out we’ll search the woods and arrest you!” He waited a few seconds and yelled again. “The house will be burned, you’ll have no shelter!”
After a few minutes the deputy returned to the truck and they banged away. Police never like to enter woods. Two weeks later the road to my property on the hill was under water, pasture empty, chicken yard deserted; the house looked violated, no longer mine, waiting to be burned. Corn filled the corn crib, but there was nothing to feed it to. That night I filled a tow sack with family pictures, boxes of kitchen matches, a wallet of savings, pepper, jug of vinegar, and a few other odds and ends. Last, I poured oil from an old lamp on the living room floor and tossed a match. Before I reached the barn, flames already leapt from windows. By the time I entered the woods fire lit up the hill.
It took an hour for the sheriff’s helicopter to appear, hovering, shining a light around the fire. A deputy called my name from a loudspeaker. Blinded by the flames they couldn’t see much. I watched, as tears soaked the sides of my nose.
Martha and I married just after I returned from Afghanistan. It was a rocky time, and though she supported me, I couldn’t decide anything. I wanted to leave the farm, and I wanted to stay. Day after day I sat, or wandered off to town in the pickup. VA therapists didn’t help. I was numb and couldn’t seem to make any choice.
Farm work saved me. Martha said, “Do you want to rot here, or do you want to live?” I stomped out and started the tractor and began plowing. The smell of fresh dirt calmed me, as if some vapor rose from the soil to clear my head.
In those days Martha canned peaches and cornfield beans. The cellar was filled with potatoes, sweet and Irish. Sometimes I killed a buck on the hill and we feasted on venison. Martha had been told she would never have children, and she mothered chickens, the cat, the kitchen. She was mama to the garden, to cleaning and polishing the kitchen stove, to scrubbing floors, washing the yard. She worked with purpose. In winter she sat by the fireplace knitting to ease her pain, and on the porch in summer, absorbing the sun.
Everything changed for me one summer day when I was looking for strawberries in a clearing just above the lake, hidden by sumac bushes. Stepping into the open, eyes on the ground, I was startled to see bare legs on a blanket. When I looked up I discovered a woman on her belly wearing nothing. She had copper-colored hair and had been reading a book. She raised up with her breasts hanging over the pages. Instead of covering herself , she smiled and said hello.
I stammered and apologized, explaining I didn’t know she was there.
“I’m the one who should apologize,” she said. “After all, this is your island.”
I backed away. My hair and beard and ragged clothes made me want to run. Yet I paused.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” the woman said. “I just came over for a little sun and solitude.” She didn’t seem in the least surprised or flustered, and made no attempt to cover herself.
I retreated, forehead sweaty.
“Stay,” she said.
She explained that her name was Caroline, and she worked as a nurse at the local hospital. There was a dread disease called Covid 19, and because of Covid she’d been taking extra shifts, with only one day off in fourteen. She explained the infection had killed hundreds of thousands. She’d borrowed a canoe and paddled to the island, to find isolation, far from the pandemic and intensive care ward. She’d heard about me, a wild man, some said, who haunted Timrod Hill. They said I was a ghost; others claimed I was only a rumor. She’d hoped she might see the elusive fugitive or phantom. It would make her one-day escape from the hospital more rewarding. She preferred to be nude. It was more relaxing. She called herself a naturist. She’d brought a picnic and was happy to share the lunch with me.
I know this sounds unlikely, but it’s true. We talked until her nakedness no longer seemed unusual. She questioned me about life on the hill, what I found to eat, where I slept in winter, why I stayed when I could have sold the farm and gone elsewhere. She was especially interested in family history: why did my ancestors settle here? Where did they go to school? to church? Did I plan to stay here always? She asked if I would show her places on the island, next time she came. She’d brought lemonade, ham sandwiches, coffee. I told her I’d welcome a chance to guide her around the hill, and begged her not to tell anyone she’d seen me. She volunteered to bring me clothes when she returned. I offered money, but she refused.
After Caroline dressed and stroked away in the canoe, and I made my way back up the hill, it seemed her visit had been fantasy. I’d lived alone so long I’d just imagined a naked woman in sunlight in the strawberry meadow. Maybe I was wrong in the head from isolation. For such a woman could not appear on the island, bare as Eve in paradise, and offer lunch and coffee. Yet, I could feel the effects of the coffee in my veins, making daylight stronger, trees and birdsong vivid. In my rags and beard I must appear a wretch, a lost Adam, with no Eve.
Whether it was a figment or not, I waited for her return. She’d said she worked long shifts six days a week, because of the terrible pandemic. She hoped I wouldn’t catch the awful virus from her. She’d tested negative before paddling to the island. I waited seven days and kept watch from a little clearing above the shore. Whenever I spotted a canoe my breath caught and my heart thumped, and I ran to the hidden meadow. But no canoe landed, and Caroline didn’t appear. I reminded myself that it had all been a daydream. What did I expect?
Two weeks later I kept the vigil again. Picnickers stepped ashore and claimed the yard around the old house place. Young couples made love in pine thickets. Two men in a speedboat landed and carried an iron box ashore and buried it among sweet shrubs on the east side of the hill. After they left I exhumed the box. It was heavy and locked with a padlock. I had no way of opening it, and knew it must be contraband, maybe drugs, or jewels. I reburied it, and in a few days they returned for the box.
It was two more weeks, after I’d lost hope, when Caroline reappeared, on a cloudy, windy day. She wore pants and a blue blouse, and lugged two large bags up the hill to the pocket meadow. It was a relief to know I hadn’t imagined her. I stepped out of the trees and called. She explained this was the first day she’d been able to leave the hospital. Every day patients died of the virus. She’d brought a needle and shot of vaccine for me. Even though I lived cut off, it was possible for picnickers, or herself, to bring the Covid. I let her stab my shoulder.
In the bags she carried another picnic, scissors and a razor, mirror, underwear, soap, jeans and two shirts, a Bible, flashlight, watch, paring knife, oatmeal and a saucepan, a copy of Reader’s Digest. I offered to pay, but again she refused. I did show her around the hill, after the picnickers left, and answered her questions. We visited the cemetery where I pointed out graves of great-grandparents, my parents, Martha. I led her to the cave in the gully, my home in winter. She had endless questions. She wanted to know how I caught rabbits and squirrels, and why deer were gone before the lake rose. She asked if I fished, and did I eat possums. Did I consume grasshoppers or crickets, like John the Baptist?
I showed her the barn and hayloft. Most of the hay was now moldy, and rats had eaten much of the corn in the crib. She asked if I studied the stars at night. She wanted to know why Martha and I had had no children. She was curious about my schooling, religious beliefs, political opinions. She wrote down some of my answers in a little notebook. Finally, she returned to a question she’d asked before: Why did I refuse to sell the hill and then hid out on the island? Since the lake would rise anyway, what was the point of refusing? I told her I didn’t really know the answers. After Martha’s death I just couldn’t leave.
Caroline had brought a camera, and asked if she could take pictures of the island. It was a kind of mobile phone that made no sound when she clicked. She made several shots of me, close up, and farther back, then showed me the results. I hated that I looked so bad.
When we reached the mossy beds under the oaks on the east side of the hill, she offered to take off her clothes and let me make love to her. But I was too nervous to accept, and thanked her and told her it had been so long since Martha died I’d lost the urge. She promised me she understood and buttoned her blouse.
From then on Caroline appeared at irregular intervals. She brought blankets and a heavy coat, matches, magazines, an axe, flashlight batteries, a gasoline stove, a saw, fishing line, bug repellant, a frying pan. Again she offered to slip off her clothes and let me love her, but I was so out of practice I don’t think it went well. After cold weather arrived she didn’t return. The wind on the lake was too strong and dangerous for a canoe. It seemed likely I’d never see her again.
Two summers later I sawed several poplar logs into six-feet lengths and lashed them together for a raft. Early mornings I’d pole myself out on the lake before anyone else appeared on the water, to fish for bass or view the hill from a distance. Sometimes I even slept on the raft, for it was cooler there than on the island. And I found that looking down through water I could spot things buried by the lake, the road to town, old school house where I’d learned arithmetic and reading. I recognized fields where corn had been grown and harvested. I imagined I could identify John Pettigrew dropping potatoes in spring and smell vapors from a new-plowed field. And I noticed a church steeple far down, and the crossroads store where old farts sat on a bench chewing tobacco, spitting, and telling lies.
From time to time, I poled out on the lake to study sunken places. I carved a paddle out of pine wood so I could push faster and farther. Early in the morning and late in the evening I’d find myself on the water staring down, concentrating on former days in the community, gazing back in time. One day I heard the school teacher’s bell as she called kids from recess, and thought I saw Walter Gibbs running and falling and breaking his arm.
Always I waited for Caroline’s return.
Another time when searching the water below I heard church bells’ call to service, and when I looked closer I recognized it was a wedding. The bell sang out and people cheered a bride and groom stepping from the sanctuary. People lined both sides of the steps and flung flowers and rice over the newly-weds. A veil covered the bride’s face, but the man wore a familiar uniform. I bent closer, and when the groom looked up I understood, with a jolt, it was me, those years before.
After Caroline quit coming, I pondered what had happened. Had she succumbed to Covid, after nursing so many sick? Had she been killed in a wreck? Had she grown tired of seeing me, of spending on gifts for me? Had she been disappointed in me as a lover? Had I said or done something to offend her? I was a ragged beggar to whom she had offered herself. Had she just grown tired of crossing the lake?
For the first time since the lake filled, I wanted to paddle to the mainland, search for her, and have a look around. It had been years since I’d left the island. I shuddered to think of leaving my retreat, and wasn’t sure I knew how to talk to anyone except Caroline. Would somebody recognize me? Would they arrest me for vagrancy? For defying authorities?
After trimming hair and shaving, I put on the cleanest clothes I had, jeans and corduroy shirt, and boots Caroline had brought, plus a baseball cap. I had no idea where Caroline lived, but it might be near the hospital. Even if I couldn’t find her, I needed to see what had changed since Martha died, since I hid away on Timrod Hill.
Starting in the dark, I paddled the raft toward woods on the far side. All I had to guide me was a light on a distant hill, an outdoor light, I guessed, at an all-night filling station. Since I couldn’t reach to both sides of the raft with the paddle, I struggled to control the direction of the clumsy craft, stroking only on the right. It took all my strength to move straight ahead.
Dawn revealed the distance I still had to go. I dug deep into the water, and reached the far trees just as sun flared across the lake. Pulling the raft onto mud, I climbed into brush to rest, before making a way through woods. My plan was to find the old Sand-pump Road and follow it to the outskirts of Bradleyville. Once in town, I’d locate the hospital and hospice where Martha had died.
But where a field had been, there was a shopping center, a row of stores, parking lot, two filling stations, along a four-lane street. A car hissed by, but it looked like nothing I’d seen before, a little station wagon, but shorter, like it had been sawed off at the back. Pickup trucks were bigger, but most cars smaller than I recalled. There was no sidewalk along the street. I stumbled on the shoulder as cars whooshed by.
The first place I meant to go was Griffin Feed and Seed. That’s where farmers used to park to talk while their wives shopped in the middle of town. Though I’d been away for years, I knew about where Griffin’s was on the south end of Main Street. Wind from passing cars stifled me with exhaust, a stench I’d forgotten. But some cars that passed were so quiet I just heard their tires crackle on the pavement, like they had no engines at all.
When I reached the corner of Main and Court Streets there was only a TR Bank with cars lined up at a window. Every building along the street was different from what I remembered. There were no awnings. Walls were made of glass. There were few people on the street, and none I recognized. All wore masks. I hurried down Main to find the courthouse. The brick building with a silver dome still stood, but the sign in front read “Timrod Lake Condominiums.” The courthouse business must have been moved elsewhere.
I walked the length of Main to where it was lined with shopping malls and car dealerships. Then I crossed the street at a light to hurry back the way I’d come. A car slammed past and someone yelled, “Can’t you read, asshole?” I’d thought I was crossing with the green light, but must have made a mistake. People I passed didn’t notice me. They held portable phones to their ears, or studied screens in their hands. Most wore masks, like they were going to rob banks. One man who did notice me shouted, “Hey, buddy, where’s your mask?”
I saw wieners broiling in the window of a diner, and the sight of the glistening hotdogs made me hungry. But a sign in the window said “Masks required.” I lurched on down the street. At the corner of Second Avenue a policeman stood in front of a sporting goods store. I stopped and began to turn back, but the cop had already seen me. “Where’s your mask?” he barked, and stared, like he almost recognized me.
“Forgot,” I stammered. “I’ll get it now,” and dashed away.
When I turned the corner to Sand-pump Road, I noticed a sign that said “Shirley’s Books.” Expensive stationary and books in shiny covers filled the window. What caught my eye was a photograph on one cover of a man with beard and wild hair. I stooped for a closer look. There was something odd about the face, especially the eyes. The title of the book was Hermit on the Hill and the author’s name was Caroline Reynolds. The subtitle was A study in isolation. It was only then that I recognized myself. It was a picture Caroline had taken on her second visit, before I shaved the beard and trimmed my hair. Slowly an explanation sank in: she’d asked me a thousand questions and written them down for a book. Maybe she wasn’t a nurse at all. Maybe she came from a university, or city faraway. No wonder she’d not returned.
I needed to look closer at the book, but when I opened the door, the clerk saw I was unmasked and waved me out.
As I wandered back along the shopping centers and fast food joints, hardly aware of the traffic, someone called, “Where’s your mask, idiot?” I wished I’d not crossed the lake. I wished I’d not glanced into the bookstore window. I’d been a subject for a writer, like a savage, or chimpanzee. People everywhere must be reading about me and laughing. At the same time, people in town didn’t even recognize me. She must have changed my name, and the name of the island. I smelled hamburgers and frying bacon in he diners, but I was no longer hungry. All I wanted was to hurry back to my haven on the hill.
The sun was disappearing by the time I reached the raft. The lake blazed like broken glass, and my island was burnished at the western end. It would take hours to reach home. I pushed off, and by the time I’d gone a quarter of a mile the lake was dark. Several times I stopped to rest. The paddling and walking and surprise had worn me out. I looked into the depths and saw people gathering. There was my cousin Joe, and Martha when she was a teenager, also my Uncle Matthew, and Mama and Daddy. They were meeting for an ice cream social. Men took turns cranking the churn, pouring salt in the water, turning the shaft. Soon there would be white vanilla ice cream.
I leaned over the edge of the raft. If I dropped into the lake I could join them. It was warm down there and the ice cream was cold. Men and women drank coffee, and kids had Cokes or Dr. Peppers. Boys and girls played hide-and-seek in the dark and put hands on each other when they declared “You’re it!” All I had to do was tip over to meet them. I needed to be a part of that community again.
But I didn’t jump off the raft. Instead I looked at the fading light in the west and began paddling, and reached the island just before midnight, to find my way to the sleeping bag. Even as I slept, I kept seeing the picture of myself in the window. Caroline had taken advantage, deceived me. She’d heaped gifts on me for sure. Without her I might have died of exposure or some infection. Because of her I’d survived. And whatever she’d done, it was out there and didn’t affect me on the hill. Since no police or unusual visitors had arrived on the island, it was likely she’d disguised me and my location. Yet, she’d tricked me, done me wrong.
Summer was over and hardwoods flung leaves into the lake when a breeze stirred them. I’d grown potatoes and corn in a hidden patch away from the house site. For winter the fare would be mostly potatoes with rabbit and possum, now and then, and apples stored in the gully cave. Unless I broke a hip or contracted pneumonia, I could make it through another winter.
By mid-October picnickers no longer visited. I could wander about the hill again. I was fishing for bass in a partly hidden cove when I noticed a canoe approaching. It was half a mile away, and I couldn’t distinguish the paddler, who wore sunglasses and a wide hat. I pulled my line out of the water and withdrew to a clump of sweet shrub.
As the canoe neared I saw it was a different color than the one Caroline had brought. The face was covered by glasses and shadow and the shoulders draped in a cape. I stopped breathing, then backed away. But as the bottom of the craft scraped over shore rocks, I paused and looked closer. The paddler got out and began transferring bags to the bank, as Caroline had done many times. I still couldn’t see the face, but the person was about Caroline’s height and moved much as she did. I stepped out of the brush and walked toward her.
Surprised, she removed the dark glasses.
“I’ve brought you a few things,” she said.
“You tricked me.”
“Help me carry these bags,” she said, her copper hair blowing around her face. One of the bags held notebooks, a camera, and a recording machine. There was also a new sleeping bag.
“I don’t need a new sleeping bag.”
“I’ll be staying for a while,” she said.
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