Outside the leaves were falling.
JORDAN’S END
At the fork of the road there was the dead tree where buzzards were roosting, and through its boughs I saw the last flare of the sunset. On either side the November woods were flung in broken masses against the sky. When I stopped they appeared to move closer and surround me with vague, glimmering shapes. It seemed to me that I had been driving for hours; yet the ancient negro who brought the message had told me to follow the Old Stage Road till I came to Buzzard’s Tree at the fork. “F’om dar on hit’s moughty nigh ter Marse Jur’dn’s place,” the old man had assured me, adding tremulously, “en young Miss she sez you mus’ come jes’ ez quick ez you kin.” I was young then (that was more than thirty years ago), and I was just beginning the practice of medicine in one of the more remote counties of Virginia.
My mare stopped, and leaning out, I gazed down each winding road, where it branched off, under half bared boughs, into the autumnal haze of the distance. In a little while the red would fade from the sky, and the chill night would find me still hesitating between those dubious ways which seemed to stretch into an immense solitude. While I waited uncertainly there was a stir in the boughs overhead, and a buzzard’s feather floated down and settled slowly on the robe over my knees. In the effort to drive off depression, I laughed aloud and addressed my mare in a jocular tone:
“We’ll choose the most God-forsaken of the two, and see where it leads us.”
To my surprise the words brought an answer from the trees at my back. “If you’re goin’ to Isham’s store, keep on the Old Stage Road,” piped a voice from the underbrush.
Turning quickly, I saw the dwarfed figure of a very old man, with a hunched back, who was dragging a load of pine knots out of the woods. Though he was so stooped that his head reached scarcely higher than my wheel, he appeared to possess unusual vigour for one of his age and infirmities. He was dressed in a rough overcoat of some wood brown shade, beneath which I could see his overalls of blue jeans. Under a thatch of grizzled hair his shrewd little eyes twinkled cunningly, and his bristly chin jutted so far forward that it barely escaped the descending curve of his nose. I remember thinking that he could not be far from a hundred; his skin was so wrinkled and weather-beaten that, at a distance, I had mistaken him for a negro.
I bowed politely. “Thank you, but I am going to Jordan’s End,” I replied.
He cackled softly. “Then you take the bad road. Thar’s Jur’dn’s turnout.” He pointed to the sunken trail, deep in mud, on the right. “An’ if you ain’t objectin’ to a little comp’ny, I’d be obleeged if you’d give me a lift. I’m bound thar on my own o’ count, an’ it’s a long ways to tote these here lightwood knots.”
While I drew back my robe and made room for him, I watched him heave the load of resinous pine into the buggy, and then scramble with agility to his place at my side.