She said, “Someone I used to know. I’ll tell you and Jeremiah about him one day.” She handed the envelope to their father and said, “We can put it aside for the boys’ schooling.”
They said their goodbyes to Mr. Crandall and Mr. Cobb and went back to the big farmhouse on the Cape Fear River, where the boys immediately ran upstairs to put on their swim trunks. Back outside they dashed along the embankment, racing to their rope swing. Young Delwood reached it first, grabbed on, and swung out over the water, and for a few seconds, he was suspended in the heavens. He dropped into the river and bobbed up like a cork. Jeremiah came next, and they did this over and over, each time looking toward the edge of sloping hillside to see their mother and father watching over them. Beebee zipped in and out between them on the grass, and their father ran after her, grabbed her, and swung her around, mirroring their soaring play. Their mother held Joshua, the one everyone said resembled her most.
The family stayed on the river bank all afternoon, and the boys laughed as they played with a joy that was untroubled and carefree. They were contented, happy. Time and again, they were told how much they were loved, but they already knew this implicitly in their hearts. A while back, their father had taught them about longleaf pine roots. He’d said the main one, called the tap root, was as wide as the tree and went underground a long way, up to fifteen feet. He’d told them the trees could live five hundred years, and to them, that was forever. They paused in their play now and again to watch their parents, and what they saw were two people whose love was as deep and as solid as the tap root of their beloved longleaf, and the boys were certain their love was forever.
Author’s Note I was plundering the Internet looking for my next story idea when I ran across the term naval stores. If it sounds strange to you, you’re not alone. These two seemingly mismatched words are like pairing a tennis shoe with a dress shoe, and I got my share of quizzical looks when I first mentioned them. I knew nothing of this industry that existed hundreds of years ago, when ships were wooden and powered by wind through tall sails. From Colonial times into the last quarter of the twentieth century, naval stores were an integral and necessary part of the South’s economy, and the region was renowned worldwide for the products. Today, there remain a few spots in the southeastern United States that still rely on these goods as a main part of their livelihood. So what the heck is it? Naval stores make perfect sense once you understand it’s rosin, tar, pitch, and turpentine, which are produced from oleoresin, or pine gum. Tar and pitch were used to waterproof wooden ships, sails, masts, and rope. As use of these vessels declined, the trade kept going strong because rosin and turpentine remained in high demand. These are used in common household products like soap, paper, paint, and varnish.
Next came my understanding a particular pine tree, the longleaf, was most desirable for its high production of gum. A slash pine comes in a close second. Here I was, thinking the longleaf was just another type of pine tree like the loblolly, pond, Eastern white, and others located throughout the South. Sadly, millions of acres of longleaf have been greatly diminished given the process of harvesting gum for naval stores. Long ago, from Virginia to Texas, ninety million acres of forests were filled with these trees. Today, only three million acres of what is called “virgin” or “old growth” timber exists. Conservation efforts are in place, and this includes the special periodic burning of the area around the trees to encourage seedlings to root and grow. That’s right, fire encourages longleaf growth and restores the unique grassland ecosystem known as a pine forest savanna. About an hour from my home (and elsewhere) exist patches of old growth timber, a rarity. The one near me is in an aptly named location, Southern Pines. There is mention of this area toward the end of the book and a bit of the history of how it came to be.
Who extracted the pine gum? Small landowners hired a few laborers to do the work, while labor camps were often used by large landowners. In the early twentieth century, the famous writer Zora Neale Hurston spent time in Florida documenting what it was like to work in such a camp. Her interviews became part of the anthropological work Mules and Men. Camps used a debt peonage system, ensuring workers were always at a financial disadvantage. Add in the woods riders (camp bosses specific to turpentine) and the forms of punishment to address issues, and many compared the camps to a form of slavery. Still, workers enjoyed an uncommon peace and solitude in the forests, and came to labor in them for that very reason.
North Carolina was at one time the top producer of naval stores in the world. Those from here who did this work came to be known as “tar heels,” because pine gum stuck to the soles of their bare feet. The name used to be an insult, but, as history tells it, it was flipped into an accolade during the Civil War when soldiers from North Carolina were said to have stayed in the battle, as if they had tar on their heels. Today it is a well-known nickname for the sports teams associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and of course we’re known as the Tar Heel State.
The discovery of this bygone history was one of those lightning strike moments authors sometimes have. For me as a writer, it was time for something a little bit different, and this book is the result of that effort. Even while applying a fictional narrative, I hope I have in some small way honored the Southern states that were part of this history and, more important, offered a tribute to the original tar heels who lived and toiled in the deep piney woods of the South.