Spencer's Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page B

performing a wedding for a couple down in the hills whose oldest child might be two or three years old. Sometimes they would hear of the outside world from a passing peddler who had lost his way. The peddler would sleep in the barn and go on his way quickly, knowing he was among frugal people who felt no need for his bright tin pans or gaily patterned dress fabrics. Elizabeth used the iron skillets her mother had given her when she was married, and her dresses she made from wool she carded herself.
    So it was that when a stranger came into the mountains he told his stories to a polite audience. And Zebulon and Elizabeth in those early times, when they heard of the death of kings, the rise and fall of some country across the sea, victories in war, discoveries in medicine, the election of presidents, received these tidings the way they had as children listened to stories told by the old, only half believing and not caring in the least.
    They lived in a small pocket of civilization. Time flowed by them and made little difference to them. Zebulon raised his own corn and sweet potatoes, onions and turnips, and supplemented them with game. He made his own whiskey, and Elizabeth brought forth her young with the help of a sister who had come to be with her or a hastily summoned neighbor from down in the hills if Zebulon could find one in time.
    On a morning before the century had turned, a stranger made his way up the mountain and spoke of a curious kind of stone Zebulon had noticed all through the mountain and down in the hills.
    â€œIt’s called soapstone,” the stranger had said. “It’s impervious to acid, which simply means that acid can’t eat through it. That makes it ideal for laboratory sinks, kitchen and laundry sinks. It can also be used architecturally as flagstone or even in the construction of buildings. We plan to quarry the stuff and came to see if you would sell your land.”
    Zebulon had refused to sell the mountain even though his neighbors down in the hills sold their farms one after the other. The people were promised that once the company could get them built they would move into fine new homes, at only token rents where they could enjoy—many of them for the first time in their lives—such conveniences as plaster walls, central heating and indoor plumbing.
    Eventually Spencer’s Mountain became an island of privately owned land surrounded completely by company land. In the shadow of the mountain a stone quarry was opened and the settlement which grew up around it was given the name New Dominion.
    Then the people who had sold their land came down from the surrounding hills. First came the lean tall men, their worn overalls faded a light blue from many washings in strong homemade soap. Then came their women, stringy, silent and reserved, cautious in their speech, bringing with them flocks of children, shy at first, clinging to their mothers’ dresses, but curiosity winning over their reserve.
    All around them were the nail-and-hammer sounds of building, the smell of fresh lumber, the churning of mud as more horses came into the busy area. Sometimes a lone horse carried a woman and three or four children while the husband walked alongside. Others pulled buggies or, more frequently, wagons laden down with entire families and with their possessions.
    The little village took shape according to no organized plan. The houses were built on company land as the land was acquired and any cleared space served as a homesite.Each of the houses was uniformly ugly, three rooms downstairs and three rooms upstairs. Their roofs were covered with galvanized tin, and while every room of each house received one coat of white paint the outsides of the houses were left natural raw clapboard which over the years turned a soft worn gray that was oddly beautiful and warm.
    With the company commissary as its nucleus a small business community began to develop—a livery stable, a barber shop; a