Welcome the Little Children

by Lynda McDaniel

  It took several long moments for what she had just told me to register. When I fully grasped it, I felt such rage, my fists clenched, wrinkling the pages of the book. I forced myself to relax, which sent the book tumbling to the floor. My hands now free, I imagined grabbing Mildred’s pillow and smothering her. In all honesty, that was the least of the things I wanted to do to her.

  She broke through my wicked thoughts. “Now, don’t ever tell our boy about this.”

  My heart clenched at the words our boy, though I figured she’d meant hers and Vester’s. But I couldn’t let it rest. “Whose boy?”

  “Ours, your’un and mine. Abit, Vester Junior,” looking at me as though I were the one losing her grip on life. I could only nod, grateful I didn’t have to speak. “Vester never touched me that way again, but I watched as he took it out on that poor boy.”

  I was amazed she was that insightful about Vester’s behavior toward his son, but she was still awash in denial. Who was she kidding? She could have done so much more to help Abit. Later on, she did seem proud of him. Even Vester started to show his appreciation of Abit’s woodworking—and Fiona and his grandson. But that was after three decades of ridicule and neglect.

  But never against Conor. She and Vester loved him, and what wasn’t to love about that little one? He was happy and playful and bright, as if his birth had vanquished all the sorrows and wants of generations before him.

  The doctor told me Mildred had another month to live, but I knew she wouldn’t last that long. (And not because of my thoughts of helping her along.) The next evening after Mildred made her confession, she seemed at peace and passed away.

  That left me the one carrying an unbearable weight.

  A darkness hung over me after her death, so pronounced that people asked about it. I made out that I was struggling with Mildred’s passing—and troubles of my own. I would honor Mildred’s wish; I’d never lay the burden of that truth on Abit. But I felt sick from so many secrets that colored our lives. Like the way Abit and Fiona, loving parents, were not planning on a larger family, all because of a lie.

  Thoughts of how much pain had been inflicted by Vester’s fists one day in 1969—and how he’d fostered even more pain over the next thirty years—made me recoil from the world. As I lay in my bed, day after day, I endured the darkest thoughts. I tried not to think them, but they came unbidden. I imagined digging up Vester and Mildred and stuffing them in my Jeep so I could drive them to the dump to lie among the detritus of life. No consecrated ground for them. Yank them out of those ridiculously expensive coffins they chose for themselves and throw them on the trash heap they deserved. And while I was at it, I’d round up those church members who’d made Abit’s life so difficult and make them watch, tell them their high and mighty Mildred and her heathen husband had ruined that boy’s life, until he went deep within and found the strength to make his life a wonder.

  Eventually, I came to appreciate that my vile fantasies weren’t all bad. As they played out, they burned through the painful story Mildred had thrust on me, and slowly I began to heal.

  I moldered inside my apartment for a couple more days until I finally got sick of myself. I heard my own words one day at a time ring in my ears. I got up, showered, dressed, and made some toast and tea. I knew I had choices. Whether or not to be angry. Whether or not to ruin any given day.

  I heard laughter outside and walked over to my bedroom window. Down in the meadow, Conor and Fiona, Abit and Mollie played with a joy they’d earned a hundred times over. Abit picked up Conor and did that raspberry thing that turned children into a bundle of giggles. I recalled how Jake and Abit had loved to romp around back there, and for just a moment, while I watched them play, memories of Jake melded with Abit’s family now. Damn it was good to see that dog again. Then just as quickly, he was gone, but my heart felt fuller than it had in days.

  As I watched Conor running around like a healthy seven year old, I felt relief knowing they wouldn’t be moving into that house next door. The circle had been broken. Mollie began chasing Conor, and when he squealed with delight, I saw a look of love pass between his parents so strong I could feel it where I stood.

  The words “indomitable human spirit” sprang to mind from somewhere bigger than me. At that moment, something washed over me that could only be called a blessing. I sensed how lucky I was to witness such strength and courage to live fully, whatever the odds. I knew all we really had was one another, and I wanted to be with them, the people I loved. I hurried to finish dressing.

  When I opened my front door, I heard a familiar sound—Alex’s noisy car approaching, which that day sounded as beautiful as a mockingbird’s song. As I headed down the stairs, I quickened my pace, eager to join my family.

  Discover how Della and Abit’s saga started!

  Excerpt from

  Book One in the Appalachian Mountain

  Mysteries Trilogy: A Life for a Life

  Prologue

  September 2004

  My life was saved by a murder. At the time, of course, I didn’t understand that. I just knew I was having the best year of my life. Given all the terrible things that happened, I should be ashamed to say it, but that year was a blessing for me.

  I’d just turned fifteen when Della Kincaid bought Daddy’s store. At first nothing much changed. Daddy was still round a lot, getting odd jobs as a handyman and farming enough to sell what Mama couldn’t put by. And we still lived in the house next door, though Mama banned me from going inside the store. She said she didn’t want me to be a nuisance, but I think she was jealous of “that woman from Washington, D.C.”

  So I just sat out front like I always did when Daddy owned it, killing time, chatting with a few friendly customers or other bench-sitters like me. I never wanted to go inside while Daddy had the store, not because he might have asked me to help, but because he thought I couldn’t help. Oh sure, I’d go in for a Coca-Cola or Dr. Pepper, but, for the most part, I just sat there, reared back with my chair resting against the outside wall, my legs dangling. Just like my life.

  I’ve never forgotten how crazy it all played out. I had forgotten about the two diaries I’d kept that year. I discovered them while cleaning out our home after Mama died in April. (Daddy had passed two years earlier, to the day.) They weren’t like a girl’s diary (at least that’s what I told myself, when I worried about such things). They were notes I’d imagined a reporter like Della or her ex-husband would make, capturing the times.

  I’d already cleaned out most of the house, saving my room for last. I boxed up my hubcaps, picking out my favorites from the ones still hanging on my bedroom walls. (We’d long ago sold the collection in the barn.) I tackled the shelves with all my odd keepsakes: a deer jaw, two dusty geodes, other rocks I’d found that caught my eye, like the heart-shaped reddish one—too good not to keep. When I gathered a shelf full of books in my arms, I saw the battered shoebox where I’d stashed those diaries behind the books. I sat on my old bed, the plaid spread dusty and faded, and started to read. The pages had yellowed, but they stirred up fresh memories, all the same. That’s when I called Della (I still looked for any excuse to talk with her), and we arranged a couple of afternoons to go over the diaries together.

  We sat at her kitchen table and talked. And talked. After a time or two recollecting over the diaries, I told Della I wanted to write a book about that year. She agreed. We were both a little surprised that, even after all these years, we didn’t have any trouble recalling that spring.

  April 1985

  1 Abit

  Four cop cars blocked our driveway.

  I thought I might’ve dreamed it, since I’d fallen asleep on the couch, watching TV. But after I rubbed my eyes, all four cars was still there. Seeing four black-and-whites in a town with only one could throw you.

  All I could think was what did I do wrong? I ran through my day real quick-like, and I couldn’t come up with anything that would get me more than a backhand from Daddy.

 
I watched a cop walking in front of the store next door, which we shared a driveway with. As long as I could remember, that store hadn’t never had four cars out front at the same time, let alone four cop cars. I stepped outside, quietly closing our front door. The sun was getting low, and I hoped Mama wudn’t about to call me in to supper.

  I headed down our stone steps to see for myself. Our house sat on a hill above the store, which made it close enough that Daddy, when he still owned the store, could run down the steps (twenty of ‘em, mossy and slick after a rain) if, say, a customer drove up while he was home having his midday dinner. But of an evening, those same steps seemed to keep people from pestering him to open up, as Daddy put it, “to sell some fool thing they could live without ‘til the next morning.”

  I was just about halfway down when the cop looked my way. “Don’t trouble yourself over this, Abit. Nothing to see here.” That was Lonnie Parker, the county’s deputy sheriff.

  “What do you mean nothing to see here? I ain’t seen four cop cars all in one place in my whole life.”

  “You don’t need to worry about this.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said. “I’m curious.”

  “You’re curious all right.” He turned and spat something dark onto the dirt drive, a mix of tobacco and hate.

  That’s how it always went. People talked to me like I was an idiot. Okay, I knew I wudn’t as smart as others. Something happened when Mama had me (she was pretty old by then), and I had trouble making my words just right sometimes. But inside, I worked better than most people thought. I used to go to school, but I had trouble keeping up, and that made Daddy feel bad. I wudn’t sure if he felt bad for me or him. Anyways, they took me out of school when I was twelve, which meant I spent my days watching TV and hanging out. And being bored. I could read, but it took me a while. The bookmobile swung by every few weeks, and I’d get a new book each time. And I watched the news and stuff like that to try to learn.

  I was named after Daddy – Vester Bradshaw Jr. – but everyone called me Abit. I heard the name Abbott mentioned on the TV and asked Mama if that was the same as mine. She said it were different but pronounced about the same. She wouldn’t call me that, but Daddy were fine with it. A few year ago, I overheard him explaining how I came by it.

  “I didn’t want him called the same as me,” Daddy told a group of men killing time outside the store. He was a good storyteller, and he was enjoying the attention. “He’s a retard. When he come home from the hospital, and people asked how he was doin’, I’d tell ‘em,‘he’s a bit slow.’ I wanted to just say it outright to cut out all the gossip. I told that story enough that someone started calling him Abit, and it stuck.”

  Some jerk then asked if my middle name were “Slow,” and everybody laughed. That hurt me at the time, but with the choice between Abit and Vester, I reckoned my name wudn’t so bad, after all. Daddy could have his stupid name.

  Anyways, I wudn’t going to have Lonnie Parker run me off my own property (or nearabouts my property), so I folded my arms and leaned against the rock wall.

  I grabbed a long blade of grass and chewed. While I waited, I checked out the hubcaps on the cars—nothing exciting, just the routine sort of government caps. Too bad, ‘cause a black-and-white would’ve looked really cool with Mercury chrome hubcaps. I had one in my collection in the barn back of the house, so I knew what I was talkin’ about.

  I heard some loud voices coming from upstairs, the apartment above the store, where Della lived with Jake, some kind of mixed hound that came to live with her when she lived in Washington, D.C. I couldn’t imagine what Della’d done wrong. She was about the nicest person I’d ever met. I loved Mama, but Della was easier to be round. She just let me be.

  Ever since Daddy sold the store, Mama wouldn’t let me go inside it anymore. I knew she was jealous of Della. To be honest, I thought a lot of people were jealous a lot of the time and that was why they did so many stupid things. I saw it all the time. Sitting out front of the store most days, I’d hear them gossiping or even making stuff up about people. I bet they said things about me, too, when I wudn’t there, off having my dinner or taking a nap.

  But lately, something else was going on with Mama. Oncet I turned fifteen year old, she started snooping and worrying. I’d seen something about that on TV, so I knew it were true: People thought that any guy who was kinda slow was a sex maniac. They figured since we weren’t one-hundred percent “normal,” we walked round with boners all the time and couldn’t control ourselves. I couldn’t speak for others, but that just weren’t true for me. I remembered the first one I got, and it sure surprised me. But I’d done my experimenting, and I knew it wouldn’t lead to no harm. Mama had nothin’ to worry about, but still, she kept a close eye on me.

  Of course, it was true that Della was real nice looking—tall and thin, but not skinny. She had a way about her—smart, but not stuck up. And her hair was real pretty—kinda curly and reddish gold, cut just below her ears. But she coulda been my mother, for heaven’s sake.

  After a while, Gregg from the Forest Service and the sheriff, along with some other cops, started making their way down Della’s steps to their cars.

  “Abit, you get on home, son,” Sheriff Brower said. “Don’t go bothering Ms. Kincaid right now.”

  “Go to hell, Brower. I don’t need your stupid advice.” Okay, that was just what I wanted to say. What I really said was, “I don’t plan on bothering Della.” I used her first name to piss him off; young people were supposed to use grownups’ last names, but she’d asked me to call her Della. Then I added, “And I don’t bother her. She likes me.”

  But he was already churning dust in the driveway, speeding onto the road.

  2 Della

  I heard Jake whimpering as I sank into the couch. I’d closed him in the bedroom while the sheriff and his gang of four were here. Jake kept bringing toys over for them to throw, and I could see how irritated they were getting. I didn’t want to give them reason to be even more unpleasant.

  “Hi there, boy,” I said as I opened the door. “Sorry about that, buddy.” He sprang from the room and grabbed his stuffed rabbit. I scratched his ears and threw the toy, then reclaimed the couch. “Why didn’t we stay in today, like I wanted?”

  Earlier, I’d thought about skipping our usual hike. It was my only day off, and I wanted to read last Sunday’s Washington Post. (I was always a week behind since I had to have the papers mailed to me.) But Jake sat by the door and whined softly, and I sensed how cooped up he’d been with all the early spring rains.

  Besides, those walks did me more good than Jake. When I first moved to Laurel Falls, the natural world frightened me. Growing up in Washington, D.C. hadn’t prepared me for that kind of wild. But gradually, I got more comfortable and started to recognize some of the birds and trees. And wildflowers. Something about their delicate beauty made the woods more welcoming. Trilliums, pink lady’s slippers, and fringed phacelia beckoned, encouraging me to venture deeper.

  Of course, it didn’t help that my neighbors and customers carried on about the perils of taking long hikes by myself. “You could be murdered,” they cried. “At the very least you could be raped,” warned Abit’s mother, Mildred Bradshaw, normally a quiet, prim woman. “And what about perverts?” she’d add, exasperated that I wasn’t listening to her.

  Sometimes Mildred’s chant “You’re so alone out there” nagged at me in a reactive loop as Jake and I walked in the woods. But that was one of the reasons I’d moved here. I wanted to be alone. I longed to get away from deadlines and noise and people. And memories. Besides, I argued with myself, hadn’t I lived safely in D.C. for years? I’d walked dark streets, sat face-to-face with felons, been robbed at gunpoint, but I still went out whenever I wanted, at least before midnight. You couldn’t live there and worry too much about crime, be it violent, white-collar, or political; that city would grind to a halt if people thought that way.

  As Jake and I wound our way, the bright gre
en tree buds and wildflowers soothed my dark thoughts. I breathed in that intoxicating smell of spring: not one thing in particular, but a mix of fragrances floating on soft breezes, signaling winter’s retreat. The birds were louder too, chittering and chattering in the warmer temperatures. I was lost in my reverie when Jake stopped so fast I almost tripped over him. He stood still, ears alert.

  “What is it, boy?” He looked up at me, then resumed his exploration of rotten squirrels and decaying stumps.

  I didn’t just love that dog, I admired him. He was unafraid of his surroundings, plowing through tall fields of hay or dense forests without any idea where he was headed, not the least bit perturbed by bugs flying into his eyes or seeds up his nose. He’d just sneeze and keep going.

  We walked a while longer and came to a favorite lunch spot. I nestled against a broad beech tree, its smooth bark gentler against my back than the alligator bark of red oak or locust. Jake fixated on a line of ants carrying off remnants from a picnic earlier that day, rooting under leaves and exploring new smells since his last visit. But mostly he slept. He found a sunspot and made a nest thick with leaves, turning round and round until everything was just right.

  Jake came to live with me a year and a half ago when a neighbor committed suicide, a few months before I moved south. We both struggled at first, but when we settled here, the past for him seemed forgotten. Sure, he still ran in circles when I brushed against his old leash hanging in the coat closet, but otherwise he was officially a mountain dog. I was the one still working on leaving the past behind.