Wonderland Creek

by Lynn Austin

  “One of the reasons is because the company usually runs union organizers like Hank out of town. Instead, they put him in charge.”

  “What’s it like inside the mine? Is it just one long tunnel going straight in? Or do you have to go down in an elevator or something?”

  “The Acorn Mine is pretty new, so it’s just a tunnel into the mountain. You can walk straight in. There are a couple of side tunnels off the main one.”

  “Did you ever worry about cave-ins or explosions, like the one that killed Hank?”

  “You can’t think about it. You just have to go in and do your job.” Ike’s habitual grin had changed to a frown. He looked down at his feet, not at me. I had never seen such a serious expression on his face before. He held my hand in his, squeezing it gently as he talked.

  “Were you in the mine the day that Hank died?”

  “Yeah, but the cave-in that killed him wasn’t close to where we were working. They’d just found a new vein of coal in a side shaft, and Hank was supposed to set the charges. They went off too soon, before he was out.”

  “So you heard the explosion?”

  Ike nodded. He still wouldn’t look up. “Felt it, too. It was a horrible day for all of us. Makes you realize that it could happen to you, and no one wants to be reminded of that. It was hard to go back the next day. Everybody was jumpy. And you make mistakes when you’re jumpy.”

  The conversation was upsetting him. I could tell he didn’t like to talk about it. I no longer cared about Mack and his spying mission. I didn’t want to make Ike remember any more.

  “I hope you never have to return to the mines again.” I gave him a hug, then looked up at him. “Will you come and see me when you get back from your tour?”

  His smile returned. “Count on it.”

  I woke up on Thursday morning to rain pattering on the roof above my head. The rain would be good for my garden but not so good for riding a horse up the creek through the woods. I asked the other librarians about venturing out in the storm, and Cora seemed offended by my suggestion that we should stay home. “Of course we ride, rain or shine. It’s our job.”

  “We’ve been out in the snow, too,” Faye said. “Last winter we rode in a blizzard.”

  “A little rain never hurt anyone,” Alma added.

  I wasn’t so sure. Didn’t people in novels catch pneumonia and die from a chill? I was unable to convince the others, so I plopped a straw hat on my head, saddled Belle, and headed upstream in a miserable drizzle. I planned to stop and see Mack on the way home that afternoon and tell him what I’d learned from Ike about the mineshaft. I hoped the information would be helpful and that Mack wouldn’t need to return to the mine. Ever since he’d told me that he would be killed if he were caught, I’d been afraid for him. There had to be a better way for Mack to solve Hank’s death than by putting himself in danger.

  I rode past his cabin and was nearly to the ford that led to June Ann’s cabin when I heard a grumble of thunder. The clouds had lowered like a thick gray sweater that seemed to be tangled in the treetops. The drizzle changed to raindrops the size of dimes. Any minute the gray sweater would tear and the rain would start to pour.

  It thundered again, making Belle jittery. I nudged her to go faster, hoping we could get to June Ann’s before the storm hit. I rode with my chin down to keep the rain off my face, but when I glanced up to see if we’d reached the ford, I saw a shadowy figure standing in our path. My heart leaped in fear. We were too far from Mack’s cabin for it to be him. In all of my travels, I had never encountered anyone else out on the trail before. I was about to pull back on the reins when a flash of lightning lit up the woods and I recognized June Ann. I reined Belle to a halt beside her.

  “June Ann! What are you doing way out here? There’s a storm coming. I was on my way to your house to wait until it blows over.”

  “Here! Take this, Allie. Bring this to Miss Lillie for me.” She was holding a plump bundle in her arms, wrapped in a feed sack and tied with twine. She thrust it up at me and I bent over in the saddle to take it.

  “To Miss Lillie? What is it?” But the moment I had the bundle in my hands, I knew by its soft, warm weight that it was the baby. “June Ann, wait! I can’t take her!”

  She was already gone, disappearing into the woods. She wasn’t following any path, and I quickly lost sight of her in the underbrush. How could she run like that? The baby moved in my arms and whimpered. Dread welled up inside me. I didn’t know what to do.

  “June Ann! Come back!” My voice echoed through the woods before being drowned out by a clap of thunder. Belle stomped her feet and flattened her ears as the rumble bounced off the surrounding hills like a dozen timpani drums. Before I could decide what to do, Belle decided for me, turning in a circle and heading downstream toward home. The rain was soaking me now, and I knew I needed help. Even if I went to June Ann’s house, how could I dismount with a baby in my arms?

  Thunder and lightning flashed and boomed as the storm intensified. Belle moved faster. She wanted to gallop, but I reined her in, knowing I couldn’t stay in the saddle if she did. It was hard to control the reins and hang on tightly to the baby at the same time. I decided to head for Mack’s cabin. It was only a mile or so down the mountain and much closer than going all the way back to Miss Lillie’s house. I prayed he would be there so he could help me dismount. My hat was limp and dripping, the rain seeping through it. I was getting drenched. I unbuttoned my jacket and tucked the baby inside it. She was crying loudly now, and I didn’t blame her.

  Belle had the same idea that I did, and climbed the rise to Mack’s cabin, coming to a halt near his porch. He came to the doorway before I had a chance to call out to him. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Can you help me down? I need you to take this baby.”

  “Baby? Did you say baby?”

  “Yes. Please come here and get her.” He walked out onto the porch, and I handed Feather down to him. He carried her inside while I dismounted. The storm was directly overhead now, and when thunder struck at the same moment that the lightning flashed, it startled both Belle and me. “Whoa. Steady, Belle,” I soothed. I led her onto the porch where she would stay fairly dry, but she wasn’t content with that. She pushed past me, pulling the slippery reins from my hands, and followed Mack into the house before I could stop her.

  “Belle, wait! You can’t go inside. Come back!”

  “It’s okay, Alice,” Mack said. “I don’t blame her for wanting to get in out of the rain, do you?”

  The four of us—Mack, the baby, the horse, and I—all crowded into the tiny one-room cabin. Water plopped onto the floor from several leaks in the roof, and the wind blew more rain inside through the missing windowpanes.

  “The driest spot is over here in this corner,” Mack said. He slid to the floor and sat cross-legged, still holding the crying baby. I sat down beside him, expecting him to toss Feather back into my arms the first chance he got, but he surprised me. He had loosened the twine to unwrap her, and now he held her close to his heart, rocking and soothing her as though he knew exactly what to do. “Where in the world did this baby come from?” he asked above the sound of her cries.

  “She’s Wayne and June Ann Larkin’s little girl. June Ann has been so depressed lately, and the baby is very colicky, crying all the time for no reason. June Ann waylaid me when I came up the trail today and she practically threw the baby into my arms, begging me to take her to Miss Lillie. I had no idea that she was handing me the baby, wrapped up like that.”

  “Where’s her husband?”

  “He finished planting all the crops weeks ago and went out looking for work. Mack, I didn’t even have time to get down off the horse. June Ann just pushed the baby into my arms and ran off into the woods. I knew I could never dismount with a baby in my arms, so I came here.”

  “You don’t think June Ann will hurt herself, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to think. Lillie’s potion didn’t seem to
cure her baby blues. June Ann told me that she sometimes has terrible thoughts about drowning the baby in the creek whenever she won’t stop crying. June Ann is up all night and she’s exhausted. She told me to give her to Miss Lillie, but when the thunderstorm came up, Belle decided to come here.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “June Ann calls her Feather.”

  I realized that she had stopped crying. Mack had calmed her, somehow. He was surprisingly tender, gazing down at her, his dark eyes soft. Then he started singing. “Hush little baby don’t you cry . . .” He had a fine baritone voice.

  I couldn’t help noticing the contrast between Mack’s strong, muscular arms and the baby’s tender, pink flesh; between his thick dark hair and Feather’s wispy red hair. She seemed out of place in his sturdy arms, yet completely comfortable with him, and he with her. Mack seemed to have forgotten that I was there as he continued humming the melody after running out of words. The storm raged outside the wrecked cabin, but inside, the tiny infant slept peacefully in his arms. He unwrapped more layers, and we saw that June Ann had packed a few articles of clothing and extra diaper cloths inside the bundle, as if she wasn’t planning to return for Feather anytime soon. But how could we feed a baby?

  When Mack finally looked up at me, his faint smile turned to a frown. “You’re soaked, Alice. Look at you, you’re shivering. Here, you hold her while I make a fire.”

  He handed the baby to me, and as he laid her in my arms, I was aware that I held her more awkwardly than he had. “Wait. What if someone sees the smoke?”

  “I’ll climb out through the window if anyone comes, and you can pretend that you made the fire. But I don’t think anyone will be out chasing smoke signals in this weather, do you?”

  He ducked out through the rear door and returned a minute later with an armload of wood. Within minutes he had a fire blazing. I moved closer to the hearth, careful not to wake the baby.

  Belle inched closer, too, to be near Mack. “You’d better hold the baby until my clothes dry,” I told him, “or I’m going to get her all wet.” I handed the sleeping baby back to him.

  “Move closer to the fire, Alice.” I sat on the hearthstone, running my fingers through my hair to dry it and control the curls. “How is Lillie?” he asked, watching me.

  “She was fine when I left this morning. Speaking of Lillie, do you think there’s such a thing as a love potion?”

  Mack smiled. “Why? Has she been concocting one?”

  I hesitated, then decided to tell him the truth—at least part of it. “Lillie said she fed a love potion to Belle so she would behave for you.”

  The words weren’t even out of my mouth when Belle lowered her head and rubbed her muzzle against Mack’s shoulder. He laughed out loud, and continued laughing for a good long time. His joy was contagious, and soon I was chuckling, too.

  “That’s fantastic!” he said, wiping his eye. “Now, if only I can figure out how to bottle her formula, I’ll be a very rich man.”

  “So you don’t believe it’s true?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’ve learned never to underestimate Lillie.”

  “So you do believe in a love potion?”

  “Don’t you?” Belle nudged him again.

  I was getting nowhere. “Mack, why did you come back to Acorn and try to make things better at the mine? Why not stay up north and forget the past?” I had heard Lillie’s version of the story, but I was curious to hear his.

  He began with a sigh. “When I left Acorn, I thought it was for good. I’d had a very long wrestling match with God that lasted for a couple of years. My father died in the mines and my mother died giving birth to me . . .”

  “Someone told me you were born backwards.”

  “So I’ve heard. Anyway, Lillie raised me in the Christian faith and dragged me to church, but I didn’t want much to do with God.”

  “Where did you and Lillie go to church? I’ve never seen any churches in Acorn.”

  “There used to be a nice one in town when I was a boy. But as the feud heated up and started tearing the town apart, we couldn’t get any ministers to stay. The church building is abandoned now and practically falling down.”

  The baby sighed in her sleep, and Mack looked down at her again, stroking her soft hair. I loved listening to the slow, leisurely way he talked, pronouncing I like ah, and my like mah. He didn’t have Ike’s mountain twang or speak with poor grammar the way other folks in Acorn did.

  “Anyway,” Mack continued, “I studied at Berea, a Christian college, and that’s where God started wooing me back. He said instead of being mad about the way things were, why not do something about them? I started investigating mine safety because of my father’s death and decided to write my novel. I also decided to open the library so other kids could have a chance for a better life like I’d had. Or even if they stayed here, their life would be richer with books.”

  He was quiet for a long moment as he studied little Feather, then he looked up at me. “What about you, Alice?”

  “What about me?”

  “You never told me your story.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. I grew up in Illinois, became a librarian, lost my job because of cutbacks, and then came down here.”

  “So your story is just beginning.”

  “I guess you could say that.

  “Well, that’s exciting. Think of all the possible directions you could go.”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t think of any possibilities at all. How had Mack and Maggie and Ike figured out where they were supposed to go and what they should do once they got there? All my life other people had been making decisions for me. My parents had decided I should go to Cook County Normal School, and my instructors had decided I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. Even the decision to end our relationship had been Gordon’s, not mine. One of the few decisions I had ever made on my own was to collect books for Kentucky and deliver them myself, and look how that had turned out! I would like to be more decisive in the future, but how? Especially when—as Mack had pointed out—there were so many possible directions in which to go.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Mack said when I didn’t reply. I needed to change the subject.

  “What are your plans after you get justice for Hank and your book gets published?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write another book.” He turned his attention back to the baby, lifting her tiny hand with one finger and smiling when she curled her fist around it. I wanted to ask where his experience with babies had come from, but I was afraid to. Every time I had asked an innocent question in Acorn, it seemed as though it led to another tragic story.

  “Do you think you’ll ever move up north again, Mack?”

  “I don’t know that answer, either. For now, my home is here with Lillie. I need to stay and take care of her and run the library.”

  “You know what I don’t understand? Why don’t the people in town ever come in to check out books? Faye’s boys, Mamaw, and Ike are the only patrons we’ve ever had—besides the people we deliver to on our routes, of course.”

  “A lot of it has to do with the fact that the house belonged to the Larkins. But even the Larkins are reluctant to patronize it because they don’t know what to do after they walk through the door. Most people are much more comfortable having books brought to their homes. That’s why I want to expand the routes and get books out to more areas. And you’d be surprised how many people don’t know how to read but won’t admit it.”

  Eventually the storm blew over and the rain slowed to a trickle. Most of the water pattering on the roof and dripping through the leaks was falling from the trees. I had added a few more pieces of wood to the fire, but it would soon burn out.

  “I talked to Ike about the mine,” I said as I added the last few sticks of wood. “He says the mine is a straight tunnel that you can walk into, and there are a few shafts off to the sides. He was in the mine on the day Hank died and heard the explosion, but Hank was i
n a different place, where they supposedly found a new vein of coal. Does that help you at all?”

  “Maybe. It would be better if I could send the mining bureau a sketch of the layout. I’ve been organizing the information to get it ready to send.”

  “Well, Ike is going out of town to play on a road tour with a new band. I don’t know if I’ll be able to ask him for a sketch until he returns, or even how I’d go about asking him to draw it.”

  The baby had begun to stir as we’d talked. Now her blue eyes blinked open and she gazed up at Mack curiously. “Hey there, little girl. Welcome to my cabin,” he murmured. He looked so starry-eyed as he fussed over her that I began to wonder if he’d sipped some of Lillie’s love potion, too.

  “She’s going to get hungry,” I said. “How will we feed her?”

  “We need to find June Ann and make sure she’s all right. Maybe you should take the baby back home to her cabin.”

  “June Ann won’t come out. Even if I did go back to her house, she’ll hide. She’s done it before. I think I’d better take her to Miss Lillie like she asked me to. But I’ll have to walk home. Otherwise, I don’t know how I’ll ever dismount without help. Lillie is much too tiny to reach that far, and Feather probably weighs as much as Lillie does.”

  Mack shook his head. “Lillie doesn’t have a cow, and this baby is too young to eat real food. I think you’d better take her up to Maggie’s place. She has a cow and a few goats, too. At least the baby will get milk up there. Besides, Maggie will know how to take care of her.”

  “Won’t it be hard for her—painful, I mean—after losing her own baby?”

  “Yeah. She might refuse. But I think it’s the best thing to do. Maggie knows more about babies than we do.”

  I looked at Feather, content in his arms, and smiled. “You’re doing just fine, Mack.”

  “Thanks. But like you said, she’s going to get hungry pretty soon. And when June Ann finally does show up, she can go up to Maggie’s to get her baby back. She knows where Maggie lives.”