"Did you ask that timber boss about me a job?" I said to Dad and Reek when they come down from the gap.

"I’ve told you fifty times, logging out-fits won’t hire nobody under fourteen," Dad said. "You’re barely eleven and don’t look more’n eight."

"Tell’um I’m fourteen," I said. "I've got to get me enough money to buy a pair of them A A Cutter boots before winter."

"Shaw," Reek said as he spit snuff between his black logging boots. "You ain’t big as a bar of soap after a week’s washin."

"That may be. But I got to figure me out some way to come up with a pair of them boots."

Dad and Reek hurried off down the trail, like they had to put out a fire. They didn’t want to hear no more, I reckon.

"Cain’t ever get me sixty dollars hoeing corn for Seth Vest for twenty-five cents a day!" I said as they rounded the first bend ahead of me.

I went back in the house where my sisters were stringing beans. "Dad and Reek just told me I ain’t tall enough to get no job."

"Hang by your hands from that apple tree limb." My oldest sister pointed toward the spring. "It’ll make you taller, works every time." It was at least the tenth time she had said that this week.

"You wouldn’t know a hawk from a handsaw!" I spit back.

I hung there all summer. The only difference between now and then, I can hang there a lot longer now. If I’ve stretched out one bit, it wern’t enough for me to tell.

"Got you a job," Dad said one evening while he and Reek sat on the front porch, jawing.

"Shaw yes--you be the swamper. We surely do need us a swamper."

"What do a swamper do? I thought I knew about all the jobs in a logging camp, but I ain't never heard tell of a swamper"

"Shaw, he cleans the cook car and cuts the stove wood and all sech as that." Reek said. "You be the lobby hog, too."

"What’s a lobby hog?"

"He cleans the bunk cars."

"Hot dang; now I got two jobs!"

"I mean to take you, but let me talk to your mother first," Dad said. "She’ll bring up your Grandpa, again. And tell about how his sides were all scarred up from the ice floating down the river, back when they done log drives on the French Broad River."

This didn’t sound good. Still, I’ve got to get them boots. I’d do about anything for them boots; done and looked at them at the Commissary, almost rubbed the black off, feeling of them. Anyway, if she let me go, by the time school started I’d have enough money to buy them. Might even take them to town and have hob nails put in the soles, like Reek’s. I’d have to be quiet about this.

"Shaw," Reek said, every time he took off his boots to come in our house. "I take’um off to keep from a wearin out the hobs on the hard floor."

I knew it had to do with the morning Mama gave him mortal hell when he walked into the kitchen with his hob nail boots on. " Bleach this floor ever week with lye soap and ashes to keep it white. Sure don't mean to have it full of nail holes."

From then on Reek got earnest about wearing out his hob nails. I would do the same, I decided that night, as I lay in the loft thinking about them boots.

Come Sunday, Mama packed me up some things, along with Dad’s. She sat them on the porch; never said one word about me going off to work.

The log train went back up in the mountains Sunday evening. Every house on some of the creeks sold whiskey and if the men walked; they’ed be drunk as a skunk. Some wouldn’t show up till late in the week or not at all. The only liquor you could have in a logging camp was what you had already drunk, before you got there. The H. D. Lanier Lumber Company was willing to feed loggers one more night in order to have them sober Monday morning.

Everybody signed on to stay two weeks. "Shaw," Reek said. "If we had to stay any longer a body be dead, any shorter and we wouldn’t make enough to keep us in snuff."

Dad and I stood down by the spring, until Reek came down the cove. I felt big as I walked with him and Dad over the ridge toward the big river. I would be getting me a paycheck. Maybe have enough to buy Mama something for letting me go out to work.

The logging camp was way up on the Eagle Fork of the Nantahala River, just below Standing Indian Bald. No one lived within fifty miles of the place. We had been there hunting and it took two weeks to tramp in and out. Living off rainbow trout and gray squirrels, we all lost weight. It made Mama mad as fire.

"What if the train don’t stop for us?" I asked Reek. "What if we don’t hear it coming?"

"Shaw, shaw. Don’t you fret and fume."

We walked up the track to where the trestle crossed Polecat Branch. I started to worry. Dad and Reek sat on an old chestnut log, as cool as a cucumber.

Then I heard the train toot at the last house on Junaluska Creek. A little while later the noise grew so loud a person couldn’t hear themself think. I had seen the train down in the valley around the switchyard; even stood and watched, them move cars around. The passenger train coming and going didn’t raise an eye lid. This is a whole new sound. The mountains shook and my head throbbed with every lick of the piston. There is no sound like a logging train as it climbs up a steep mountain grade.

"Shaw. Shaw." Reek pointed toward the big column of black smoke snaking its way up the deep gorge. "She’s a blowing and a goin."

To judge by the sound of the giant engine, it was traveling very fast. A little while later I felt the rails start to shake, even though the train had not come into sight. Each cough of the engine sounded like a bomb.

"Shaw. She’s a comin now, "Reek allowed as the black nose of the engine came around the point of the ridge, traveling about as fast as a body can walk. The trainman's head stuck out the small window on the side; his face covered with smut under his railroad cap.

The trestle shook and swayed as the engine crossed. I knew the thing was going to fall into the creek. I jumped down off the cross ties, really scared by now. The train didn’t slow down as it reached us. The train man reached down, took my free hand, and lifted me into the cab. I let loose of my haversack as I swung in the air, but he just grinned and caught it in his other arm. Then he reached behind him for a greasy red bandanna. "Let me fix this on you," he shouted, as he wrapped it around my neck. "Keep the sparks from a going down your collar."

He wiped the smut off his face on the back of his striped railroad cap. The small cabin was full of cinders and ashes. Coal dust covered everything. Coal smoke, like burning sulfur, filled our lungs and burned our eyes. That and the heat from the boiler, forced us to stand in the doorway to catch our breath. Then we dodged tree limbs and laurel bushes as they raked along the engine. "Slide your feet, when you move about," he said, "or else you might step on a hot coal."

"Whew," I said.

"Ole number seven, she be a Shay engine," the engineer shouted in my direction. "Sidewinder type. Made for pullin, not for speed. Pull the handle out of a white-oak maul, she will, but she travels slower than good news."