THE SEVEN SUSPICIONS
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NE Saturday in May I was hurrying from mountainous North Carolina intomountainous Tennessee. Because of my speed and air of alarm, I wasfollowed by the Seven Suspicions. I was either a revenue detective inpursuit of moonshiners, or a moonshiner pursued by revenue detectives,or a thief hurrying out of hot territory, or a deputy sheriff pursuinga thief, or a pretended non-combatant hurrying toward a Tennessee feud,actually an armed recruit, or I had just killed my family’s hereditaryenemy and was eluding his avengers, or I had bought some moonshinewhisky and was trying to get out of a bad region before nightfall.These suspicions implied that the inhabitants admired me. Yet I hurried. I came upon one article of my creed, the very next day, Sunday. ButSaturday was a season of panic, preparation, and trial. The article of my creed that I won as my reward might be stated in thisfashion: “_Peace is to be found, even in a red and bleeding rose._” I was accustomed to the feudist and the assassin. Such people had beengood to me, and I had walked calmly through their haunts. But now thesmothering landscape seemed to double every natural fear. The hillswere so steep and so close together that only the indomitable corn andrye climbed to the top to see the sun. The road was in the bed of ascolding rivulet. People in general travelled horseback. Cross-logs forthose afoot bridged high above the streams every half mile. There wasa primeval something about the heavy chains of the cross-logs, bindingthem to the trees, that suggested the forgotten beginning of an ironpeople, some harsh iron-willed Sparta. This impression was strengthenedby the unpainted dwellings, hunched close to the path, with thick wallsto resist siege. What first fixed these outlaws here, as in a nest, with a ring ofhouseless open country round them? A traveller was more shut from thehorizon than in the slums of Chicago. The road climbed no summits. Itwrithed like a snake. And there were snakes sunning themselves on everyother cross-log. _And there was never a flower to be seen._ An old woman, kindly enough, gave this beggar a noon-meal for theasking, but the landscape had struck into me so I almost feared to eatthe bread. For this fear I sternly blamed my perverse imagination.Refreshed in body only, I crept like a fascinated fly, dragged byoccult force toward a spider’s den. I felt as though I had reached thevery heart of the trap when I stepped into the streets of the profanevillage of Flagpond, Tennessee. It was early in the afternoon. The feudal warriors had come to theplace on horseback, dressed in poverty-stricken Saturday finery:clothes tight and ill-dyed, with black felt hats that should haveslouched, but did not. The immaculate rims stood out in queerprecision. The wearers sat in front of the three main stores, lookingacross the street at one another. Since there was no woman in sight,every one knew that the shooting might begin at any time. The silencewas deadly as the silence of a plague. I checked my pace. I ambled ina leisurely way from store to store, inquiring the road to CumberlandGap, the distance to Greenville, and the like. I was on the otherside of the circle of dwellings pretty soon, followed by the SevenSuspicions, shot from about seventy-five lean countenances, which makesabout five hundred and twenty-five suspicions. One of the most indescribable and haunting things of that region wasthat all the women and children were dressed in a certain dead-bonegray. About four o’clock I had made good my escape. I had begun to mountrolling, uninhabited hills. At twilight I entered a plain, and felta new kind of civilization round me. It would have been shabby inIndiana. Here it was glorious. They had whitewashed fences, andwhite-painted cottages, glimmering kindly through the dusk. Some farmmachinery was rusting in the open. I climbed a last year’s straw-stack,and slept, with acres of stars pouring down peace.
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