The fish gets the worm, and then it gets the hook (Fiction)

"Copperhead Cove" is on the east side of the Cumberland Plateau which is deeply dissected by "hollows" or valleys. The elevation drops 1000 feet in two miles as one heads east toward the Tennessee River.

 

“Come with me” Sig said to Blain without preamble as Blain was wiping the last smear of blackberry jam off of his plate with the last bite of cornmeal pancakes.

Blain licked his fingers and followed without comment, pulling his knit cap out of his pocket and pulling it over his head. The mornings were cold and misty in late-November at 1800 feet of elevation.

Sig set a rapid walking pace as they headed north, away from the cluster of buildings.

“Yer probably wondering why we let you join us. Yer probably figuring you going to have to earn your keep. If you were, yer right” Sig said even as Blain tried to keep up with him.

“It did cross my mind” Blain allowed.

Sig stopped where the picked cornfield ended. “Field” is probably too ambitious of a word. Each household was allocated a truncated wedge of land to garden. The wedges were shaped much like canned, chunks of pineapple. The point of the wedge usually, but not always, was near where the gardeners lived. Without a frame-of-reference, Blain had a hard time guestimating how large each parcel was but if he had to guess, he would have estimated them to be about half the size of a typical city-block.
 

Blain had learned from Lliam that it was up to each household to “manage” their parcel.

Outward from the relatively level (though rolling) gardens the slope of the ground broke and rapidly became more sloping. That land was in coarse pasture grasses. A stone’s throw away from them a cow was tethered to short picket line and she was contentedly grazing. A fifteen-foot long lead led from the picket line to the collar of the cow. The distance between the stakes was about thirty feet.

“Things are getting crazy out there” Sig said.

Blain nodded in agreement.

“That means that everybody and their dog will be showing up on our doorstep expecting us to take them in” Sig said. He didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in his voice.

“Most of them, we will turn away. This is a hard land and it is grudging in what it yields” Sig continued.

To Blain, it sounded as if this was something that Sig had personally experienced.

“Hard land makes for hard men” Sig said.

“But some we cannot turn away. Family. People who stood by us when things were difficult” Sig said. “We might be poor but we have honor.”

Blain was silent. He knew that Sig was going somewhere with this.

“In a year, there will be twice as many people living here as there are now. None of them will be slackers, but the point is that they cannot plant gardens in the middle of the woods.” Sig said.

“First, you will work with us cutting down the trees. But then you will be working alone; dragging branches and staking them into gullies so they don’t wash away. Burning brush and stumps. Collecting manure and spreading it” Sig said.

Sig shot Blain a sidelong glance.

“Will I have equipment or will I be doing this all by-hand?” Blain asked.

“I ain’t gonna candy-coat it. It will be by-hand” Sig said. “Sun-up to sun-down, six days a week.”

“You are going to learn how to stabilize gullies by working for Sally for three days. He knows his business. Pay attention because that is what you are going to do when you get back here” Sig said.

“Will I get paid?” Blain asked, referring to the work he was going to be doing for Sally.

“You already did. He brought your stuff up here, didn’t he?” Sig pointed out.

Blain was on the verge of arguing when he realized it would have taken him three days to lug all of his stuff up here and he would have been on miserable roads with no shoulders. Besides, Sally was a colorful character and working for him was likely to be more enjoyable than working for Sig.

Sig was sure Blain was going to bail out. He was clearly a city-kid and 60 hour work-weeks in return for a place to sleep was pretty poor wages.

“I got a few questions” Blain said.

“What?” Sig said.

“Are meals included or will I have to do my own cooking?” Blain asked.

“Meals included. Sarah, Lliam’s mother agreed to feed you. This is her plot we are standing on now and this is where you will start working” Sig said.

Blain realized that Sarah must have been the woman who had served the pancakes and was the author of the delicious, blackberry jam.

When Blain had started eating the pancakes, he had covered each of the cakes in the stack with a lavishly thick layer of jam. As he was wolfing them down, he heard Lliam sternly directing his younger sister to not be a pig.

The young girl had accurately mimicked the amount of jam Blain had spread on is flap-jacks. Looking over at Lliam’s plate, he saw that Lliam had spooned out a meager portion onto his plate and was dabbing the bottoms of the cut pieces of pancake in the jam...barely moistening them with jam where they would touch his tongue.

When in Rome… The second hot stack of pancakes Blain got saw Blain carefully following Lliam’s example.

Try as he might, Blain could not pull up a mental picture of what Sarah looked like. He could hear the swish of her skirts and the sound of her footsteps on the wooden floor. He had the impression that she was tall...perhaps even as tall as he was. But her face was so plain and forgettable that she would have become invisible in a crowd of three women.

Blain looked at the plot of land with renewed interest. It didn’t matter if Sarah was plain and tall, she was the boss along with Sig. She was his meal-ticket.

He could see the start of at least one wash-out.

Following his gaze, Sig said “The last hurricane dropped six inches of water in 8 hours.”

Blain could see why addressing the gullies were such urgent business. If untended, and if the coming spring was wet, then it would cut deeply into Sarah’s garden.

“What were your other questions?” Sig asked.

“Is there any reason I couldn’t bring the cow out? I have worked with cows before and it wouldn’t be a big deal” Blain asked. “Whoever owns the cow can milk it in the morning before I take it out and milk it when I bring it back.”