Starlin pulled that heavy silver turnip of a 1913 stopwatch out’n his waistcoat pocket, snapping the lid back with a click that made his big bay horse, Red, flick an ear. Click-tick, click-tick. The watch was the only thing on the whole stretch of Dal Road that knowed how to mind its own business and keep steady.
Starlin sat high in the saddle, spitting a stream of dark tobacco juice over the ridge side. At forty years old, Starlin Bunch was a man hewed straight out’n the mountain limestone. His face looked like it’d been split with a broadaxe and left to cure in the frost, and his eyes stayed quiet, like a deep pool in a shaded creek bed. Down in the holler, the valley was tearing itself apart with the roar of his daddy’s business—the sharp, iron clink-clink of coal picks biting deep into the drift mines, the sulfur smell of raw slate, and the thick black smoke belching out’n the stack of their own private short-line steam engine as it rattled coal cars down the steel tracks they’d laid themselves.
This dirt under Red’s hooves had been Bunch ground since 1820. That was the year old Solomon Bunch walked clean out of North Carolina, through the Virginia timber, and claimed this mountain ridge. Solomon had the blood of the first people in him, and he didn’t give a cuss about the law down in the flatlands. That same stubbornness ran thick as molasses in Starlin. Being George Washington Bunch Jr.’s oldest boy, it fell on Starlin to ride these ridges, fetch the rent money from the cousins living in the log shacks up the creeks, and pack the government mail up from the Williamsburg depot.
He was a bachelor man, set hard in his ways, and he liked the quiet. Or he did, anyways, till he rode down to the state line three weeks back.
He’d crossed paths with Lola Smith over to the border store. She wasn’t but twenty, a girl from the rich bottomland farms down in Oneida, Tennessee. Her folks had money, but Lola had a wild streak in her a mile wide—her mama was Elmira Carson, kin to old Kit Carson, and Lola carried that pioneer fire right in her look. She’d looked up from the store porch straight into Starlin’s face, and it didn’t take but a second for him to realize she was trouble to a bachelor man’s peace.
But this mountain was tangled up in old grudges.
“Starlin!”
A voice come tearing up the path. Starlin turned Red around as his cousin Silas come busting through the laurel, his face plumb white under the coal dust, his chest heaving like a wind-broke mule.
“Starlin, you better git down to the branch line,” Silas panted, pointing a shaking finger toward the lower property markers where the Bunch rails cut nigh the Lawson holler. “Them damn Lawsons are down yonder. They’ve done a mean thing, Starlin. Plumb mean.”
Starlin didn’t ask no questions. He dug his heels into Red, and that bay horse went flying down the mountain, throwing slate gravel like birdshot.
When he hit the bottom where the iron tracks met the timber line, the steam engine was sitting there, hissing and blowing white smoke into the damp air. A whole crowd of Bunch cousins was standing in a huddle by the creek bank, their faces dark as winter thunder.
Starlin swung down out’n the saddle, his heavy brogans crushing the coal cinders. He shoved his way through the kinfolk.
There in the ferns, just an inch off’n the steel rail, lay his old hunting hound, Blue. The dog was stone dead, a single rifle ball put clean through his ribs.
“It was that youngest Lawson boy,” Silas spat, his hand white on the stock of his Winchester. “Rode right up to the marker, shot your hound dead just to spit in your daddy’s eye. George Jr. is up at the house right now cleaning his gun. He’s fixin’ to start a war over this, Starlin.”
Starlin didn’t say a word. He knelt down in the dirt, his big, scarred hand smoothing over the hound’s cold fur. The mad inside him didn’t explode; it went cold and heavy, like an iron anvil. The Lawsons weren’t just rowdying over timber rights no more. They knowed Starlin had been hanging around the state line, looking at Lola Smith. And the Lawsons had a slick valley ally named Miller they wanted to marry Lola off to, just to get a hand into the Smith family’s wealth.
Starlin stood up, towering over the whole bunch of his cousins. His voice come out low, like stones rattling in a bucket. “Tell my daddy to keep his shirt on and leave his rifle on the wall. I’m riding south.”
“To the Lawson house?” Silas asked, his eyes big as saucers.
“Further than that,” Starlin said, throwing his leg back over Red. “I’m going to fetch what’s mine before the shooting starts.”
***
Down in Oneida, the Smith farm looked like a picture out of a catalog. White fences, big barns, and acres of corn growing tall in the rich dirt. But inside the main house, Lola Smith felt like she was sitting in a boarded-up well.
She sat at her mama’s polished cherry table, her hand hidden in the pockets of her gingham skirt, her fingers gripped tight around the ivory handle of her granddaddy’s skinning knife. It was the only thing that made her feel like she had any Carson blood left in her.
Across the table, Elmira Carson Smith was smoothing out a piece of white wedding lace, her face set like a Sunday preacher.
“The Lawson wagons’ll be here come morning, Lola,” Elmira said, her voice smooth but hard as an iron kettle. “Your daddy and old man Lawson have already shook hands on the land deeds. This marriage is going to put our bottomlands right against their timber ridges. It’s a good match for a girl.”
“It’s a mule trade,” Lola spat, her chin going up. “You’re trading me off to that slick Miller boy so Daddy can have more trees to cut.”
“You hush that mouth, Lola,” Elmira said. “You’re twenty years old and it’s time you settled down. The Lawsons are powerful people in these parts.”
Lola didn’t say nothing back. She turned her head and looked out the window, past the clean yards of her daddy’s wealthy farm, looking straight at the high, dark ridges of the Kentucky line. Her mind wasn’t on the wedding dress or the fine things her daddy bought.
She was thinking about Starlin Bunch.
She could still feel the sheer weight of him when he stood over her at the store three weeks back. He didn’t talk smooth like the valley boys. He smelled of woodsmoke, coal dust, and horses, and his voice was a deep, low mountain drawl that made her pulse race like a startled deer. He’d slipped a piece of paper into her hand when no one was looking, written in a heavy, slow hand: The mountain is waiting, little hawk. You tell me when.
Right then, a bunch of horses come galloping into the yard, their hooves tearing up the gravel. Lola stood up, her hand clamping tight on the knife in her pocket.
Through the glass, she saw three of the Lawson boys riding in, their horses lathered up with sweat. At the front was Miller, the slick ally her daddy wanted her to marry. He had a mean, ugly grin on his face.
Lola stepped out onto the porch just as her daddy, George Smith, came out to see what the ruckus was.
“George!” Miller yelled from his saddle, laughing loud. “Tell your girl she can stop looking at the hills. We just put a bullet through Starlin Bunch’s favorite hound dog right on the Dal Road line. The old man George Jr. is fit to be tied, and Starlin’s holed up on his mountain like a scared rabbit. Them Bunches ain’t nothing but talk.”
Lola felt the blood go plumb cold in her veins. She looked at Miller’s ugly face, then at her daddy, who just nodded like he was proud of the meanness.
Right then, she knowed what kind of life was waiting for her if she stayed. She’d heard the whispers about how the Lawsons treated their womenfolk down in the holler. Everyone knowed about the Lawson cousin who’d take his own wife and tie her tight to an oak tree with a plow line whenever she had her “spells,” leaving her to shriek and carry on about terrors in the dark while the family just et their supper and ignored her.
Lola squeezed the knife in her pocket until her knuckles ached. My kin is Kit Carson, she thought. We don’t take no handling.
She looked back up at the high Kentucky peaks where the storm clouds were rolling in thick. You come on, Starlin, she prayed into the wind. You come on tonight.
***
The storm hit the ridges just after midnight, raining pitchforks and anvil-heads. The thunder cracked so loud it shook the joists in the Smith manor house, and the wind was howling through the oaks like a lost soul.
Lola stood by her dark bedroom window, wrapped deep in a heavy wool shawl. Her bundle of clothes was tied tight at her waist, and her granddaddy’s knife was shoved down into her leather boot.
Splush-crack.
It wasn’t a tree limb breaking. It was the heavy sound of horse hooves in the mud below. Lola pressed her face to the cold glass.
Out of the black mountain night come Red, his bay coat soaked dark as charcoal. And sitting high in the saddle, his big canvas coat dripping wet, his hat pulled low against the blowing rain, was Starlin.
Lola didn’t look back at the white silk veil or the rich house. She slipped out her door, her bare feet hitting the floorboards without a sound, and crept down the back stairs and out the kitchen door.
The minute she stepped onto the porch, the freezing rain bit her face, but she didn’t care. Starlin pulled Red right up to the steps. His dark eyes caught hers through the dark, burning hot and steady.
He didn’t say a whole word. He just reached down with an arm like a white-oak log, caught her by her waist, and swung her up into the saddle in front of him like she didn’t weigh nothing at all. Lola tucked her legs under, her back pressing hard against his big chest.
Starlin kicked Red, and that horse spun around in the mud, tearing out of the yard and heading straight back for the hills before the farm hands even knowed they was gone.
They rode up the mountain trail in the pitch black, the wind screaming through the pines. Starlin held the reins tight in one hand, and his other arm was locked around Lola’s waist, holding her so close she could feel the heavy, slow thud of his heart through his wet coat. It was freezing cold, but where their bodies met, it was hotter than a stove hearth.
When they crossed the line onto Bunch land, they hit the high ridge of Dal Road. Through the driving rain, Lola could see the yellow lantern light flickering in the windows of the cousins’ cabins. The kinfolk were sitting up with their rifles, waiting to see if the Lawsons were going to retaliate for the dog.
Starlin didn’t stop at his daddy’s house. He rode right past it, higher up the ridge, till they hit a hidden clearing on the steep side of the mountain where the land looked straight down onto the Cumberland River.
There, sitting in the timber, was a brand-new log house. The wood was fresh-cut, the stone chimney was hand-laid, and it sat there solid against the storm. It was the house Starlin had been building on old Solomon’s land.
Starlin pulled Red up, jumped down into the mud, and took Lola in his arms. He carried her right through the door and kicked it shut behind them, locking out the storm, the lawing, and the whole feuding mountain.
Inside, the only light was the orange glow of the logs dying down in the fireplace. The air smelled of fresh pine shavings, wet wool, and leather.
Starlin set Lola down by the fire. The silence between them was heavy, filled up with forty years of him being alone and twenty years of her waiting to break out of her cage.
Starlin reached into his vest, his big hand shaking just a bit, and pulled out that 1913 stopwatch. He popped the lid, and that old click-tick, click-tick filled up the room.
He held it out, his voice coming out deep and rough. “You hear that, Lola? That’s time.”
Lola dropped her wet shawl to the floor. She stepped right into his space, her small hand reaching out to cover his big fingers, stopping the watch from ticking. She looked straight up into his chiseled face, her eyes flashing with that Carson fire.
“I don’t give a cuss about time, Starlin,” she whispered, her breath hot against his chin. “Not no more.”
Starlin’s eyes went dark as coal. “You’re a rich man’s girl, Lola,” he growled, his big thumb brushing the rain off her jaw, sending a heat straight through her bones. “Your daddy wanted you in silk. Up here, all I got is a bunch of coal mines, a short-line railroad, and a dad-blamed blood feud that’s fixin’ to last a hundred years. If you stay past dawn, you’re an outlaw to your kin.”
“Let the valley rot,” Lola said. She took that stopwatch right out of his hand and slammed it down on the mantelpiece, stopping the time for good.
She reached up, grabbing the collar of his wet shirt, pulling him down to her.
Every bit of Starlin’s bachelor patience went up like dry pine needles in a brush fire. He let out a low growl, catching her by the hips and lifting her clean off the floorboards. Lola wrapped her legs around him, her mouth hitting his in a hard, desperate kiss that tasted of mountain rain and sweet moonshine.
He carried her across the room to the big feather bed by the hearth. They come together rough and urgent, like a landslide coming off the ridge. Starlin’s big hands stripped away her wet gingham traveling dress, his touch rough but careful, mapping out every inch of her by the firelight. Lola arched up into him, her fingers digging deep into his heavy shoulders, her teeth biting his neck as he buried his face in her dark hair. Up on that ridge, with the storm dying down outside, they didn’t care about the land deeds or the Lawsons. They were just two wild things holding onto each other in the dark.
Come morning, the rain had cleared out, leaving the mountain air crisp and smelling of pine.
Lola lay curled up against Starlin’s chest under a heavy wool quilt. Her head was resting right over his heart, listening to it beat steady as a steam engine. Starlin’s big hand was tracing slow circles on her bare shoulder.
“My great-grandpa Solomon walked this ridge back in 1820,” Starlin murmured, his voice deep and warm against her hair. “He came out of North Carolina with nothing but a gun and his own name. He picked this mountain because no man could tell him how to live. I brought you here for that same reason, Lola.”
Lola turned her face up, her fingers smoothing over his rough jaw. “Then let them talk down in Oneida,” she whispered, pulling him down for another kiss. “Up here on Dal Road, Starlin… we’re plumb untouchable.”
***
By the time the late 1930s come creeping into the holler, that old mountain was starting to look tired. The rich black coal seams inside the drift mines was thinning out, spitting more slate than fire-rock, and the private short-line steam engines didn’t do much but sit on the spurs and hiss like dying copperheads. The big money on Dal Road had run its course, but that didn’t mean a cuss to Starlin and Lola. The mountain had done its job—it’d kept ’em safe from the lawing and the killing till their roots was set too deep for any man to tear up.
That little log house Starlin built on old Solomon’s ground was plumb busting at the joists by then. The Lord had blessed ’em with three big, thick-haired mountain boys: Sterling, Clyde, and little George Anderson.
Of an evening, after the wood-fire had died down to grease-chunks and ash, Starlin would sit by the stone hearth with his three young’uns huddled round his brogans. He’d pull that heavy silver 1913 stopwatch out’n his waistcoat and hold it to little Clyde’s ear.
“You hear that click-tick, boy?” Starlin would drawl, his voice deep as a dry well. “That watch don’t never skip a lick, rain or shine. That’s how a man’s word ought to be.”
Lola would be sitting across the room by the yellow lantern light, patchin’ the knees of George Anderson’s overalls with a bone needle. She was a grown woman now, but she hadn’t lost one ounce of that sharp Kit Carson look. She’d look over at Starlin, and a grin would catch the corners of her mouth—just a quiet, knowing look that said they was still as crazy about one another as the night they stole away in the cloudburst. They’d survived her daddy’s money, the Lawson Winchester rifles, and the whole feuding mountain, and they hadn’t never looked back.
“Starlin,” Lola said one night, after the boys had climbed the ladder to the loft and laid down in the corn-shuck mattresses. “The coal is plumb dried up in the hills. The cousins are talking about heading down into the flatwoods to farm, but I ain’t got no mind to go back toward that Oneida valley. Too many old ghosts down yonder.”
Starlin snapped the lid of his stopwatch shut with a loud clack. “I know it, honey. Silas come up from the depot today saying they’re hiring men up north in Michigan. Putting up big automobile factories. They’re paying good silver money, and a man can have a brick chimney and a school for the boys without having to pack a gun every time he goes to the spring.”
Lola stood up, smoothing her apron down, and walked over to where Starlin sat. She didn’t say nothing at first; she just sat right down on his knee, her arms looping around his thick neck, her dark hair smelling of pine smoke.
“Then let’s pull up stakes, Starlin,” she whispered, her look burning hot as the hearth coals. “I don’t give a cuss about Dal Road if the timber’s dead. Long as I’m sleeping next to you, Michigan’s as good a country as any.”
It didn’t take ’em but a week to settle their business. Starlin give up his mail bag and told his daddy, George Jr., that the Bunches was going to have to find another man to collect the rent money. They packed their trunks tight—Lola tucking her granddaddy’s ivory skinning knife down into the bottom of the cedar chest, and Starlin keeping that 1913 watch right in his pocket where it belonged.
They gathered up Sterling, Clyde, and George Anderson, boarded the iron horse at Williamsburg, and watched them Kentucky ridges melt away into the grey northern sky.
Michigan was flat as a skillet and cold enough in the winter to freeze the water right in the bucket, and the air didn’t smell like nothing but hot grease and iron factory smoke. But inside the house Starlin bought for ’em, it was still Dal Road. Starlin worked them factory lines hard, a big, quiet mountain man that wouldn’t take no sass from no foreman, and Lola raised them three boys with a switch in one hand and a Bible in the other, making sure they didn’t never forget the blood they carried.
They truly loved one another, every day the Lord give ’em on this earth. Whenever the northern wind would start howling off them Great Lakes, making the windows rattle like a ghost trying to get in, Starlin would catch Lola right by the waist in the middle of the kitchen. He’d pull her up against his big canvas shirt, and she’d lay her ear right against his chest, listening to his heart beat slow and heavy, just like the old Shay engine used to chug up the side of the mountain. The Lawson feud was a thousand miles away in the weeds, and old Solomon’s cabin was rotting back into the dirt, but their love was a living thing that didn’t know how to quit.
Forty-six years later, the iron rails down in the holler were rusted over, and the old drift mines were sleeping under the mountain laurel. Starlin and Lola lived out their long days in that house on the ridge, raising their young’uns on old Solomon’s ground. Starlin lived to be 86, and Lola kept that frontier fire until she was 89, and neither one of ’em ever looked back at the valley.
The silence between the Bunches and the Lawsons lasted a hundred years over that shot hound and that stolen bride. But generations later, a forty-six-year-old grandson of Starlin and Lola stood on that same property line on Dal Road. Across the old stone marker stood a Lawson cousin.
The old man’s 1913 watch was ticking in the grandson’s pocket. The grandson looked at the Lawson, stepped across the old line, and laid an old iron hatchet down in the dirt, throwing a shovel of mountain soil right over it until it was plumb buried. The Lawson cousin nodded, shaking his hand in the quiet woods. The feud was done, but up on the ridge, where the old logs of the cabin still stand against the winter frost, the story of Starlin and Lola stays fixed forever.
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