Other Voices, Other Towns: The Traveler's Story. Caleb Pirtle III
“Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose.
“It flies away from him, perhaps in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us, may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads.
“The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer.
“He will lick the wounds and sores that come when his master encounters the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.
“If fortune drives the master forth as an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies.
And when the last scène of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.”
Silence gripped the courtroom as Senator George Graham Vest quietly sat down. The silence lingered.
Unexpectedly, a wild storm of applause erupted in the courtroom. Not even the good judge could gavel it away.
He tried.
Once.
Then again.
He hammered the gavel with supreme authority.
No one heard. If they heard, no one paid any attention.
People cheered. And people wept.
The jury reached a decision quickly, and it was unanimous. George Graham Vest, like no other, had defended the dignity, the honor, the loyalty of a dog.
Charles Burden had lost a dog.
Leonides Hornsby must pay.
Legally, he might be justified, but he had to pay.
He had taken the life of a good and faithful dog.
The jury would have been more lenient if he had taken the life of Charles Burden.
Moon Shot
Somewhere on the outskirts of
Chatsworth, Georgia
Pop: 3,531
The Scene: The high, rugged mountain terrain of northwest Georgia is haunted by the mysteries of the unexplained. The Indians came first to find a refuge, then a home, in the highland wilderness. Their ancient Etowah Mounds, near Cartersville, are the sacred reminders of a thriving center for political and religious life which spanned five centuries in the little river valley. A museum illustrates the history of the village, and clay ramps lead to the top of the mounds, where the temples of chieftains and priests once stood. Their time on earth is a puzzle yet to be solved.
The Sights: Neither can anyone explain a puzzling fortification that rises in ruin upon Fort Mountain near Chatsworth. No record has ever been found of the men who piled those rocks together for protection against an unknown foe. The curious wall rises as high as six feet in places, and spans the mountainside for eight hundred and fifty-five feet. Its builders could have been the Indians, or Conquistadors searching for gold, maybe twelfth century Welsh adventurers led by Prince Madoc, or even the strange “moon-eyed people,” who once roamed the woodlands. All vanished without a trace. Their time on earth, too, has been lost with the ages.
The Story: The man down the road at the second service station on the left said it was a beer joint. The sign out front said it was a café, although the sign was too old to be believed, no self-respecting egg had been singed by bacon grease in a long time, and the barbecue was neither pulled, nor was it pork.
A vegetable plate consisted of either rye, barley, or hops, and mostly they came from a bottle. It was pretty much what could be expected in a little hamlet that had spent a good deal of its early years without a name.
Then, said the man down the road at the second service station on the left, a wooden sign fell from the flat car of a passing freight train in the dead of a summer night. Somebody came along and hammered it in the ground. On the whitewashed board was painted a single word: Chatsworth. Nobody ever called the little hamlet anything else.
The beer joint looked pretty much the way it was supposed to in the middle of a hot, muggy, and thirsty afternoon. Dark. A naked light bulb hung from the ceiling. Another one above the bar. Sawdust on the floor. It had not been swept out in a while. Maybe never. Keep it dark. Can’t see the dirt. Dust in your throat? Wash it down with another beer.
A jukebox sat in the corner. It was dark as well. Hadn’t played a lick, if you believe the man wearing a stained white apron behind the bar, and I did, since Hank Williams had his last confrontation with a cheating heart.
Those lovesick blues could ruin a man and a jukebox both. Such were the cold, hard facts of life.
I asked for a menu. The man wearing the stained white apron pointed to a shelf behind the bar. “Take your pick,” he said.
It was the usual. Bourbon. Beer. Gin. Rum. And a little vodka. It did not look as if the Scotch had been opened in a long time.
“It comes either warm or cold,” he said.
I nodded.
“Breakfast ain’t no different from dinner,” he said.
I pondered.
“I can splash it with water. I can serve it straight,” he said.
“Beer cold?”
“It is if you’re hot.”
The room was crowded and far too quiet. Men were hunkered over their tables, leaning on their elbows, their hats pushed back on their eyes, their eyes staring, without blinking, at the old black and white television stuck on the back wall above the bar.
The picture was blurry.
No one cared.
They were watching the once and glorious achievement of a lifetime.
None had believed it possible. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, maybe, but no one else.
A lunar module had landed on the surface of the moon, someplace called, if the man on the tee-vee could be believed, Tranquility Base, and they had seen it with their own eyes, which called for another beer.
They had feared a crash. They were afraid they would be watching good men die a long way from home. A devout feeling of hope and pride had been dimmed by the shadow of impending doom. Their breaths came in short bursts. Their pulse quickened. Their nerves fluttered. Their shoulders were rock solid tense. But there it was.
The Eagle had landed, which called for another beer.
They had heard a voice in the manned spacecraft control center say, “Tranquility, we copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
Mostly, the words were stubbornly working their way through