Pickett's Gap

by Homer Greene

The two men shook hands warmly and passed out with the crowd. Charlie Pickett went to his hotel, but not to rest. He could not brush from his mental sight the vision of his son’s pale face and anxious eyes. He heard always in his ears the boy’s pathetic voice as he lay exhausted on the bench in the jury room and pleaded that he might go with his father.

When morning came, the vision was still before him, the voice was still in his ears. He paid little heed to the remaining witnesses who testified in the case, and when, after fixing a day for argument, court finally adjourned, he went back to his hotel with his mind in a tumult of anxiety and desire; anxiety lest the great physical and mental strain which the boy had undergone might bring on some sudden and severe illness; desire that he might be with him, might look at him, might talk to him, might hear his voice and press his hands. Nor is it strange that his brief interview should have inspired such tender and tumultuous thoughts. Charlie Pickett’s mother had died in his childhood. His wife had yielded up her life for her son. His father had driven him from home. This boy was the only one in all the world to whom he was united in the bonds of blood and of undisguised, untrammelled, unsatisfied affection. The more he thought about it the more he wondered why he had, on the previous day, so readily yielded to his father’s stern ultimatum. The more he considered it, the more the unreasonableness of it, the injustice of it, the downright cruelty of it impressed itself upon his mind. The restriction under which he had placed himself chafed and galled him beyond endurance. At last, unable longer to withstand the imperious demand of parental passion, he buttoned his great-coat about him, pulled his cap over his eyes, and set his face toward Pickett’s Gap, intent on doing something, anything, to relieve the unbearable situation in which he found himself. A train on the Mooreville branch was just leaving for Port Lenox. He boarded it hastily, and contained himself as best he could while the wheezing engine puffed its slow way between banks of shovelled snow so high that half the time they hid the surrounding country from the sight of those in the cars.

At Port Lenox he waited an hour for the down train on the main line, striding up and down the platform like a caged animal. When he left the car at Fisher’s Eddy, the short winter day was already at its close, and the summit of the hill range, through which the gap wound its sinuous way, was already all but indistinguishable against the western sky. He started across the street toward a livery stable to get a horse and sleigh, but, changing his mind suddenly, he struck out along the middle of the roadway toward the hillside. The thought of waiting for a team to be ready, of forcing a tired horse up the hill through the heavy snow, was too much for his nearly exhausted patience.

Many and many a time, in other days, he had walked the road from Fisher’s Eddy to the Pickett’s Gap homestead in time that would have done credit to the best horse in Meredith County. He felt that he could do it to-night. Moreover he knew that he needed the exercise in order to work off, if possible, some of the surplus energy with which his veins and muscles were charged. Perhaps, when he arrived at his destination, he might not be so impetuous, he might be more considerate, more gentle, more patient under the provocation which was sure to come, more cautiously firm in his just demands.

When he reached the place where his survey terminated, on that eventful September night, he stopped for a moment and looked down through the darkness to the twinkling lights of Fisher’s Eddy as he had looked that night. Then, pushing on through the snow-burdened glen, he recalled, as he walked, every word and tone and look of the boy who was his unwilling companion on that former journey; how they noted the location of the curve; how they halted at the graveyard; how they said good-by at the gate.

Here he was now, again at the gate, almost within sight, within hearing, within touch of his boy. The thought of it brought a sudden weakness to his limbs, and he stopped and leaned heavily against the post on which Dannie had sat one happy morning and bade his grandfather good-by. Here he was. What was he to do? What was he to say? How should he enter the house? How introduce the object of his mission? Abner Pickett had forbidden him to return; how would he greet him to-night? In his unreasoning impetuosity he had thought of none of these things until this moment. Now they presented themselves to him with perplexing persistency. Not that he was weakening in his purpose, he would not admit that; but how could he best accomplish the object he had in view? That was the question. He moved slowly up the path, turning these things over in his mind, until he reached the front porch. At the side of the porch there was a window opening from the sitting room. The curtain had not been drawn, and he could see in. The impulse to look before he entered came upon him, and he pushed his way through a huge bank of loose snow, close to the window ledge, and fastened his eyes upon the occupants of the room.

A table was drawn up in front of a great wood fire, for it was a bitter cold night, and Abner Pickett was sitting by it reading his paper. In his face was still the hard, stern, uncompromising look with which he had greeted Charlie in the jury room the day before. There was scant encouragement in that face, indeed! Aunt Martha was sitting in her accustomed chair by the fire, busy with her knitting; and Dannie, on a stool by her side, with his head resting in her lap, gazed at the crackling logs and the leaping flames, looking up now and then to answer some question that she asked him. His face was turned so that Charlie could see it plainly. It had in it a look of weariness, indeed, but of content—of absolute content. It was a quiet, peaceful, pleasant scene; but in another moment he, Charlie Pickett, was to break in upon it, to destroy it, to set a gentle woman’s heart throbbing with apprehension and fear, to arouse the unconquerable passion of a stern old man, to plunge a weary, peaceful, contented boy into a new turmoil of trouble and of grief. And to what end? Simply to satisfy his own selfish desire. A revulsion of feeling came over him as he looked. The old man moved uneasily in his chair, laid down his paper, and turned toward Dannie. He appeared to be saying something to him, and as he talked, the sternness, the hardness, the coldness vanished from his rugged features, and his gray eyes, piercing when he was in anger, softened now with the mild glow of tenderness and affection. Charlie saw it all by the bright light of the fire, understood it all, felt it all, and, waiting no longer, he turned away. With his face to the thick darkness he struggled out to the path, down through the gate, and on into the middle of the road. He thrust behind him his own desire, his own disappointment and sorrow and loneliness, and once again, like the man that he was, he thought only of his father’s comfort and the happiness of his son.

A figure loomed up out of the darkness before him and stood still.

“Who goes thar?” came the challenge.

“It is I, Gabriel, Charlie Pickett.”