This Rock by Robert Morgan Page B

You’re as bad as Moody to fly off. You’ll need all your strength for the day ahead. The miles of trail and the steep mountain slopes can use up all the anger you’ve got to give.
    As I come out along the pasture fence I could see the valley under the stars, the wide bottomland running down to the river, the stars sharp and bright over the pines on the ridge above. The breeze was colder there in the open. I shivered and felt my way along the path. My feet would find the path if I walked without trying to look at the dark ground. I hurried along the fence down to the bank of the river.
    In the dark, water whispered and slurped and sparkled under starlight. Around rocks you could hear the spill and splash. I breathedin deep the mud smell, the scent of soaked and rotting leaves. The trail run under the pines along the bank for maybe half a mile to the mouth of Cabin Creek.
    When I got to the other side I climbed the sandy bank into my cousin Willie’s field. There was a light on in the house above the road and I could smell fresh coffee and bacon frying. The smell made me wish I’d brought something to eat for dinner. Arguing with Mama had made me forget I’d be hungry by the middle of the day.
    There was cornstalks in Willie’s field, and I hit them with my elbows and the tip of the gun barrel. A rabbit skipped away in the dry weeds. I stepped careful on the sandy soil but still rattled the dry stalks and nettle vines. A real woodsman goes without making any noise. Only clumsy people crash into things.
    It was maybe five miles up the valley to the head of the river. There was lights in most of the houses I passed. Beyond Willie’s field I walked the road which run alongside the river. A dog barked at me from the Bane place and then run out to the road and followed me. At the Ward place I seen a lantern in the barn where somebody was milking. A lantern hanging in a stable with the yellow light on straw always makes me think of the manger scene in a Christmas pageant.
    The farther you went up the river the farther it was between houses. The fields and pastures in the valley got narrower and finally the river itself was just a little creek between steep ridges, splitting off into branches and running back to spring hollers. I followed the biggest branch about to its head and started climbing the ridge to the lip of the watershed. By the time I got halfway I was in stride. When I found my stride I could walk all day without getting tired. I could walk without thinking. As I climbed it got lighter and I could see more and more the trees and rocks along the trail. And by the time I got to the comb of the ridge the woods looked orange in the sun, just showing itself over the rim of the Saluda mountains.
    My first trap was a fox set on a trail at the edge of the Flat Woods. I approached it hoping to see a tail or red fur in the early light and streaks of shadow. My breath come short as it always did when I approached a trap. You never know what you’re liable to find. Might be a ten-dollar pelt or a groundhog, or a missing trap. Far back in thewoods there’s nothing to stop somebody from stealing your steel traps if they find your line.
    As I got close I seen stirred-up leaves where I’d buried and covered the trap. And I seen the chain of the trap stretched into the brush. My heart kicked with excitement. But then I seen there was nothing in the trap. I run forward and found not even a foot in the clamped jaws. Whatever had sprung the trap had jerked it out of the leaves. That was a fox all right. Must have smelled something on the leaves, or on the chain, and just for devilment had sprung the trap and tore it out of the ground.
    I laid my shotgun on the ground. I’d hoped to be killing a fox with it. Instead, the fox was laughing at me somewhere in the woods. That fox stood grinning with satisfaction at what he’d done. I’d walked ten miles to find my trap sprung, and likely