Good Heavens by Margaret A. Graham Page B

talking, so I commenced by saying we’d have to pray the Lord would lead us to where we could find a tractor and a man to drive it. “You ever drove a tractor?” I asked.
    â€œNary a one,” she answered, staring straight ahead. “Tractors ain’t for hollers.”
    Whatever does she mean by that? But I wasn’t about to let on that I didn’t know. “You got any idea where we might find what we’re looking for?” I asked.
    â€œFollow the sun. It’ll lead you to a valley.”
    That didn’t make an ounce of sense either, but curious to find out, I took a chance. “A valley?” I repeated.
    â€œValleys is for big planting. Tractors come with big planting.”
    Now that made sense.
    As we drove along we came to a break in the trees where a clearing stretched down a hillside. I didn’t see any tractor, but a flock of wild turkeys was feeding along the edge. I stopped the car and eased out my door to watch. The turkeys had their heads held high and theirfeathers drawn in close, and even I could see they were on the alert. I counted an even dozen before a wild gobbler took off in flight forty feet above the ground, flying over our heads, going a good sixty miles an hour. With his head stretched forward, his feet stretched behind, he hardly flapped his wings. Gliding higher and higher, his bronze feathers shone in the sun until I lost him beyond the trees.
    When I turned around to see where the flock was, they were out of sight.
    Climbing back in the car, I said to Dora, “That was a sight to behold,” and figuring wild turkeys were nothing new to her, I asked why that gobbler didn’t flap his wings.
    â€œHe depends on his legs more’n his wings to fly,” she told me.
    â€œI guess people hunt wild turkeys?”
    â€œThere’s coon hunters and people too lazy to work lays in the woods a-shootin’ turkeys, pheasants, rabbits, squirrels, ground hogs, and the like. They’ll skin a ground hog and make strings for their boots of its hide.”
    We rounded a curve and were in the deep woods again. It was chilly and dark enough for headlights. Dora mumbled, “There’s woods spirits along about here.”
    I slowed down to a snail’s pace. “Woods spirits?”
    â€œLike as not.”
    Neither of us said anything, but my mind was running wild trying to imagine what she meant by woods spirits. I don’t mind telling you, that road did look spooky. “What can they do to us?”
    She was slow to answer, so I repeated the question.
    Her voice was as raspy as a dying man’s. “They’ve been known to send a pickup over a cliff.”
    I thought I better not press my luck by asking more questions, but I tell you right now, I was glad when we broke out of that overhanging thicket and saw sunlight again.
    We had not gone far when Dora leaned over the dash and looked up at something. “See, lookit yonder atop that rise.”
    I looked but all I saw was a chimney where a house had been. “You mean that chimney?”
    â€œSee them trees all black and burnt? That house burnt to the ground, all right. . . . Fire be the devil’s work. Where he burns he leaves his spirits to guard the place.”
    â€œThat so?”
    â€œThem what has sense about woods spirits don’t go near a burnt-out place. Afore I had good sense, I oncet dared it by myself. Had to find out for myself if what they say be true.”
    She stopped, and I wanted her to go on talking. “And?” I asked.
    â€œIt was Widder MacIntosh’s place burnt to the ground afore I was borned. What’s left of the old place is the chimbley a-standin’ stout against the gales for so many years nobody knows the count. I spent all the daylight hours up there a-roamin’ ’round among them charred timbers black as Satan’s soul. The widder ain’t yet done with her place—her lilies be still