“Little Brushy Mountain ain’t right,” old Cal used to say, spitting tobacco into the dust by his boots. “Never has been. Ridge like that, it keeps what it takes. You walk up there, best remember to mind your manners.”

He’d lean forward then, voice dropping low. “You heard about Audie Murphy, ain’t you? War hero, made it through more firefights than you got fingers, walked away from hell in Europe without so much as a limp. They say the man had death’s own handshake but never let it stick. Then in seventy-one, him and a few others was flying over, and that mountain pulled ‘em down. Fog come sudden, thicker’n buttermilk, and the next thing, metal screaming and fire blooming. Folks said you could smell the smoke all the way in Catawba. Not a one survived. That’s the way Little Brushy wanted it.”

Old timers claim the fog that day wasn’t weather at all. “That was the mountain drawing breath,” Cal would say, eyes narrowing at the tree line. “Pulling the plane into its lungs.”

And then he’d rattle off the stories. A hunter hearing an engine sputtering overhead on a still night, nothing in the sky. A woman walking the trail and seeing soldiers in the mist, marching slow, their boots never touching the ground, fading right into the brush. Kids daring each other to sleep by the monument but running home before dusk because the woods were too quiet, too thick.

Cal always spat again after telling that. “There’s a sayin’ here. Sudden death makes a shadow that never fades. Brush Mountain’s belly’s full of ‘em. And Murphy’s shadow, it’s the heaviest.”

I asked him once why folks left coins and trinkets by the stone. He tapped the brim of his hat like it was obvious. “You don’t bring the mountain a gift, the mountain might take somethin’ else. Could be your luck, could be your way back down. Folks don’t play dice with ridges that’ve tasted blood.”

I went up there myself, once, just to see. Walked the trail till the stone rose out the clearing, bronze glinting dull in the evening light. Left a coin at the base, though my hand shook when I did it. The woods pressed close, thick and watching. Air heavy as iron in my mouth. For a moment I swear I saw a figure by the trees, cap pulled low, one hand resting on the stone. Then the wind groaned through the branches and he was gone, or maybe just deeper in.

Cal had one more thing he’d say before he’d rock back and light his pipe. “That ridge don’t forget. Don’t forgive neither. You go up there, remember, the mountain is awake. What it takes, it never gives back.”

And the lantern light would flicker, and the night insects would start up again, and you’d know he wasn’t just telling tales. Not all the way.

Lil Brushy draft 3

They’ll tell you Little Brushy Mountain don’t sleep. Never has. You can hear it in the way the trees shift when the air is still, and in the way the ground feels soft underfoot where it ought to be solid. Old folks say mountains got bellies same as any living thing, and when they feed, they keep what they’ve taken. Blood, fire, sorrow. Nothing goes back.

When that plane came down in ’71, some say the fog wasn’t weather at all but the mountain drawing breath. Pulled the craft low, cracked its wings, swallowed the men whole. Audie Murphy among them, a man who’d walked out of battlefields bristling with iron and lead but couldn’t walk out of the ridge’s hunger. The stone they set up there is just a marker. The true memorial is the hush that comes over the clearing.

Holler folk whisper different pieces of it. One tale says a hunter heard the sputter of a plane when no sky was moving, then saw sparks drift through the trees though the night was clear. Another claims a woman saw soldiers in the fog, marching single file across the slope, vanishing where the brush grew thick. Children dared each other to spend a night up by the stone, but none ever did. They say the ground up there is too restless to sleep on.

There’s an old saying in these parts: “A sudden death makes a shadow that never fades.” Little Brushy Mountain has more than one, and Murphy’s is the heaviest. Some hikers leave coins, some leave toys, some whisper a prayer. It ain’t for him so much as for themselves, a bargain to pass through without stirring whatever watches.

I set my coin at the base of the granite, the way you might set bread at the door for a wandering spirit, and turned back before night proper came on. I did not hear footsteps, but I felt them. I did not see soldiers, but I walked as though I were being counted among them. Down in the valley, porch lights glowed like watchfires. Up on the ridge, the mountain had its dead, and the mountain kept its feast.

Little Brushy Mountain is not merely a rise of stone and tree, but a thing alive and watching. The Audie Murphy Memorial rests upon its ridge like a wound stitched shut but never healed. The plaque tells the story of a soldier who walked through fire in Europe, lived to carry medals heavy as curses, then fell from the sky in 1971 when his plane struck the ridge in fog and flame. None left that day but smoke, and the mountain drank it all.

The old people say mountains remember. Some claim they are older than time, older than the rivers they cradle, and that when blood or fire touches their skin, they keep it forever. Brush Mountain is one of those. The air near the monument is heavy, thick as molasses, and the silence comes sudden and sharp, the way it does before a storm. Birds fall quiet, cicadas hush, even the trees seem to stop their creak. It is then the mountain listens.

Hikers tell of bootsteps pacing just behind them, though the trail lies empty. A figure in uniform sometimes appears at the treeline, cap low, face unreadable. Others whisper of the sound of an engine coughing above the canopy, followed by a splintering crash that never comes, the moment of death repeating again and again as the mountain replays what it swallowed.

I stood by the stone at dusk, and the woods pressed in. The leaves rattled though there was no wind, and the taste of iron filled my mouth. For a moment I thought I saw him—no, not him exactly, but a shadow of him—resting one hand on the granite, eyes distant as if peering through me. The mountain shifted then, a long groan from its roots, and he was gone.

It is said in the hollers that when a man dies violent, his spirit does not pass on quick. It sinks down into the soil, joining the memory of the place that claimed him. Brush Mountain has its share of such ghosts, and now it holds Murphy too, not as a man, but as a story it tells when the air grows still.

I left a coin at the base of the marker, the way you do when you bargain with the hills, and I turned back down the trail. Even then, I knew the mountain was awake behind me, watching with the eyes of all it has kept, whispering that what it takes, it never gives back.