Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing

by Morgan James

  9

  Our light morning frost morphed into a glorious, almost warm, afternoon. Was winter truly in retreat? Green was returning to every sunny patch of ground. A determined but hopeful breeze blew from the southwest. A birthing wind, I’d heard MaMa Allen call it. I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant but it sounded like spring to me, and blessed assurance that we’d made it through another winter. Perhaps leaving my beloved Atlanta for the Western North Carolina Mountains had been a stellar decision after all.

  Following rain washed ruts, sparkling with mica shavings, I trekked higher up the mountain until I passed a familiar ochre and gray striated outcrop of rocks— wheelbarrow sized boulders protruding from the uphill side of the road as thought hurled there by some long-ago giant. This is where I would usually end my hike. Still within the boundaries of my own land, I’d pause, climb atop one of the rocks, turn to look down on my house, goats, and pasture and then return home with gratitude. Today I walked on, crossing an unmarked line onto Fletcher’s land.

  Six hundred feet or so ahead, the road made a wide right curve. I was surprised to find it petering out onto a small grassy plateau no bigger than my driveway turnaround. No more road— only a hillside climbing in a tangle of house high, green, waxy laurels. My legs pulsated from the climb— a good time to sit in the shade and rest. I brushed off a spot under one of the bushes and sat facing the plateau, thinking about how this mountain must have changed since January McNeal’s time. Maybe, in the early 1900s, the road continued up the mountain. I surveyed behind me and decided a road could be lost, swallowed by green, but it would be a steep road; I doubted a wagon could make it up the incline. Maybe January left his wagon here on the flat spot and walked the horse and supplies the rest of the way to the cabin. That would mean everything to build the cabin, and everything it took to live there, would journey the final distance on horseback, or on human back. I couldn’t even imagine how difficult everyday life would be, if I couldn’t drive up to my kitchen door with everything loaded in my Subaru.

  I stood, took a few steps into the flat area, and turned around to study the entwined bramble of laurel. It was easy to decide the bushes were taller than my porch roof; not so easy to decide how far the sea of green reached as it pillowed up the mountainside. Was it three hundred feet, or a three thousand? I had the sensation that if I could only lift myself atop the bushes, I could swim to the outer edge. Other than several small, powder gray birds flitting between branches calling cheep-cheep-till to each other, nothing moved in the thicket. Was it too early for snakes to be moving about? I could only hope.

  I’d planned to search for January’s cabin from the surety of an old road, not from this shadowy, stunted, laurel tangle. Still, hadn’t Fletcher said the cabin was located near a stand of laurels? I couldn’t ignore the possibility that just beyond the laurels was January’s home place. Another clue I couldn’t ignore came from the library person who helped me with my census research. She remembered hiking Fire Mountain as a child, following a waterfall, and finding the remains of a burned out cabin. I knew from reading my gardening books that laurels thrive near water. So, perhaps if I followed the laurel along the slope to my right, I’d intersect the waterfall.

  I hadn’t thought to bring a compass, but I wasn’t really worried. I have always had an excellent sense of direction and prided myself in believing you could drop me just about anywhere, and I’d find my way home. But then, that confidence came from a time when home was Atlanta, and Peachtree Road stretched north and south, marking the direction like an asphalt blaze on the landscape. I registered the afternoon sun to my left, west, and stepped uneasily into the heavy curtain of green.

  Deciding to hike with the curve of the ridge in what I calculated was an easterly direction, I climbed gingerly over heavily leafed laurel limbs lying along the ground like gnarled elbows, and at times had to lift the stout branches out of my way, just to move a foot or two forward. Overhead, scraps of sky came and went in the canopy; but in front of me, there were only laurels waiting to slap me and last year’s brown, crumbled leaves strewn on the loamy floor.

  Slow progress gave me time to think. Had my handsome father— the here today, gone by Thursday, the next poker game is the big one—James McNeal Jr., known January’s story? What sort of parent was my grandfather James to produce my irresponsible father? Would he have reacted to January’s fundamentalist attitudes by being a casual, spare the discipline, parent? It certainly seemed that way considering how my father turned out. A smile eased across my face as I envisioned my poker playing, Irish whiskey drinking father meeting head on with January McNeal. What a battle of wills that would have been. Now that would have been a show worth the price of a ticket.

  After what seemed like hours of threading myself through a hobble of laurels, I stopped to rest and listen, hoping for the sound of a waterfall. Nothing. Not even the wind could find where I sat. I cursed myself for not bringing a bottle of water. What was I thinking? Did I expect the cabin to be located at the end of a yellow brick road?

  Quiet expanded in the small space. Thick skewed limbs prodded my arms and face. Without warning, the emptiness rose up behind me—a great arching thing—swelling like a night shadow, taller and taller, covering me and sucking up the air until I had to stand up, push the laurel arms away from me, and draw deep gasps of air into my lungs. Unbuttoning my jacket, I concentrated on breathing deeply and focused uphill on a tall white pine towering above the thicket, its feathery needles waving in the wind. I wanted to be that wind, free in an infinity of sky. Forget stumbling along this ridge searching for a waterfall that I wasn’t sure existed. I had to get out into the open, out of the smothering green closing in around me.

  I pushed the panic away and turned uphill to take the steeper slope. I used the laurel branches to pull me forward and, branch-to-branch, I climbed upward, my knees and hands scraping the ground when I stumbled. As soon as I heard the welcome sound of an animal, maybe a squirrel, scratching in the dry ground leaves, my breathing slowed and my panic subsided. I was not alone in the emptiness. Every muscle in my body was straining against the incline. My jacket was torn in several places, but I was moving, moving up the mountainside. Then, as I was learning the rhythm of climbing, the laurel forest abruptly ended as though shaved clean across the face of the mountain. There was open blue sky above and a meadow topped with tall grass ahead.

  A trio of crows cawed a welcome overhead. Always the crows—as constant as the cold waters of Fells Creek out my door. Good company, my crows. I looked skyward at the bickering birds, then heard another sound coming from the far side of the clearing, a child’s voice, chanting: Ring around the roses, pocket full of posies, upstairs, downstairs, we all fall down. Then laughter, tinkling like kitten bells, sailed off with the breeze.

  I stopped mid-step, scanned the grassy knoll before me, and saw nothing. Deciding the singing was only memory on the wind, I stepped out of the laurel’s dappled shade to stand in the afternoon light on Fire Mountain. The plateau I’d reached stretched maybe three hundred feet side to side then slanted upward into the mountain perhaps half that depth. From where I stood, I couldn’t see my house and barn in the valley below, nor could I see the very top of the mountain. That meant the inhabitants of the meadow were safely out of sight from below and above. Seemed like a good location for a family cabin.

  My legs ached and I was winded from the climb. Somewhere to sit and rest for a minute would be a good thing. A few feet from me, a gray object, flattened on top, protruded above wheaten stalks of last year’s grass. I moved to what I assumed was a rock. Not a rock. It was the half carcass of a rusted out washtub, big enough for a Saturday bath. I bent to test whether it would hold my weight, and heard the child’s voice again, singing behind me. Up stairs, down stairs. We all fall down. Fear held me for several pounding heartbeats, telling me it was unlikely any human child was on this mountain. As I willed myself to turn around and face the singing, I think I saw a flit of pink at the edge
of my vision. Though I can’t be sure of what I saw and heard, because the color and the song evaporated along an arc of shimmering dust motes spilling into a brilliant yellow forsythia bush.

  I waited for the singing to return. When it didn’t, I walked over to touch the first yellow blooms of spring, and that was when I saw the remains of January’s cabin. A stillerect stone chimney and the uprights of a rough-hewn doorframe—charred and pointing skyward like burned finger bones— stood alone. Around those two sentinels, calf-deep rotting wood and rubble lay partially concealed by wild blackberries. Why I hadn’t seen it immediately, I don’t know. Except that now the ruins reminded me of an optical illusion drawing from a child’s coloring book—you know, find the monkey hidden in the trees. Once you see his grinning face you can’t imagine not seeing it.

  Had I actually found January’s cabin? Time slowed as I covered the short distance to the cabin and placed my hands against the doorframe. Where the lintel should have been was open sky, the wood support lying on the ground between the frames.

  Months ago, I’d had a dream. Or was it a day vision? The cabin fire—a hollow thudding sound of the lintel falling, exploding red sparks and a cloud of soot as it landed across the doorway, the smell of smoke and the sting of ashes blowing into my eyes. And then, two nights ago, January McNeal filled my dreams with cries of anguish. “Run for the cave,” he’d told Reba, “run for the cave.”

  Why now January? Why are you traveling the currents of my dreams? What do you want from me?

  I looked around half hoping to see a cave cut into the hill behind the cabin. But no, I’d hiked my adopted mountains of Western North Carolina enough times to know cave openings don’t usually appear in the side of a mountain, unless they are remnants of some abandoned mining operation. Mica perhaps, from the days Perry County men tunneled to extract the mineral for the manufacture of isinglass windows for the fledging automobile industry, or, after the advent of electricity, for electrical insulators. More likely, if there were a cave on January’s mountain it would be made by upheavals of rock heaved to the surface as the Appalachian Mountains grew up from the earth’s core, and its entrance would not be obvious.

  I walked the perimeter of the cabin through snares of blackberry spines pricking at my pants and hooking their claws into my corduroy jacket sleeves, to the chimney. There I touched stones cut and chiseled by my great grandfather’s hands. As I moved around the chimney, something blue in the grass beyond the cabin caught my eye. Bright blue, and familiar. Leaving the shadow of the cabin for open space, I bent over to pick up the stuffed elephant I’d seen in Mrs. Allen’s kitchen. It was soft and velvety, and warm from the sun. How would the mysterious little Missy’s toy get up here on Fire Mountain? Was Missy the singing child?

  My questions went answered. The next thing I remember was hearing what sounded like someone thumping a pumpkin for ripeness and the simultaneous blinding pain in my head as I hit the ground.

  10

  I don’t think I actually passed out, though I’m sure I held onto consciousness by a single thread. The side of my face pressed into the grass, and I could feel the outline of a rock biting against my temple. Nausea waved up and I tried desperately not to throw up. I remember hearing the crows again and focusing off in the distance toward the laurels I’d come from earlier. Through the blur, I thought I saw Mrs. Allen standing among the laurel limbs, a finger to her lips as though to shush me. A waif of a child, pale skin and fairy small, crouched beside her, wispy blond hair blowing about her face. Then, my field of vision was filled with a pair of black dusty boots attached to dirty blue work pants. One of the boots kicked me hard in the shoulder. That was when I passed out.

  When I came to, I was sitting up. Dried blood was caked on the left side of my face, and my hands and feet were tied together in front, with red and white, striped, rope.

  “You a cop?” asked the skinny, greasy haired man wearing the black boots.

  When I didn’t answer right away, he kicked me again, this time in the upper leg.

  “You better answer me, bitch. Don’t you see I got this here gutting knife?”

  Yeah, I saw the knife all right. He was brandishing it in front of my face close enough for me to read the manufacturer’s mark on the blade. Made in China. “Not a cop,” I slurred.

  “Then what the hell you doing up here?” He poked the knife into my left nostril and pricked. Blood coursed down my upper lip and into my mouth.

  “I was hiking, just hiking.”

  He backed away from me, stamping around in a circle, and making flapping noises as he slapped at the sides of his leather jacket…a leather jacket with the Roadrunner stitched on the back. I leaned into my bound hands and wiped the blood away from my mouth.

  His voice was low and desperate. “Don’t hand me that shit. This is the goddamn middle of nowhere. Nothing but trees and snagley bushes. I ain’t seen nothing like a hiking trail, or a hiker, since I came up on that peckerwood yesterday, and he sure as hell wasn’t talking. That’s how I know you ain’t just Sunday walking way up here for fun.” He squatted in front of me, the acrid stink of days of sweat and fear filling my throat. “Now lady, I ain’t ate nothing but one of them crappy granola bars since day before yesterday and need a beer in the worst way. I ain’t got no patience left, so I’m only gonna ask you once. How come you’re up here and how do I get to a fucking road that’ll get me the hell out of here?”

  Oh my God. The man was lost.

  He stood up, waving the knife skyward. “I can kill you, or not. It’s up to you.”

  The report of the rifle popped like a balloon behind me. His whole body jerked and he looked in disbelief at the blood gushing down his leg onto the ground. He turned and staggered toward the laurel thicket, dropping the knife in the leaves. Then he managed to drag himself back. “Help me,” he whined as he stumbled to his knees and fell across me.

  I guess I’m not a very nice person. I think I said aloud: I can’t help you, you prick, you tied my hands. All I could think about was rolling him off me so I could breathe, and the sick sensation of his blood soaking my jeans and wetting my legs. As I wriggled under the weight of what I felt by now was surely a dead man, I rolled over on my side and inched my body forward in the dirt. After several kicking and crawling maneuvers, my shoulders were free; I could breath. The unconscious man lay across my lower body. Only a couple more kicks forward and I’d be out from under him.

  “Be still woman; I’ll move the bastard,” ordered a voice from over my right shoulder.

  The last time I can remember feeling such relief was years ago when I heard a nurse say, “It’s over now, Promise. You have a beautiful baby boy.”

  “Fletcher? What are you doing here?”

  “That’s one of the problems with you womenfolk,” Fletcher pronounced.

  One, of the problems— I was thinking he must have a long list.

  “You always want to know more than you need to, can’t never just follow directions, let things be.”

  As if women are supposed to be good dogs. Sit when told. My good neighbor rolled the man over and pulled me free. After he cut the ropes with his pocketknife, I shifted my weight to my knees and tried to stand up. Not a good idea—too dizzy. Sat back down hard. Held my head to prevent it from flying off into the sky. I noticed Fletcher was looking through a backpack tossed on the ground near me.

  “Is he dead? I guess you felt for a pulse?”

  “No pulse. I must’ve hit the femoral artery. He’s as dead as anybody ever was. Even my wife was like that. And she was pretty much a saint.”

  What was he talking about? “Your wife was like what?”

  “Like you. Always asking questions. Even right there at the last when she was near to passing with the cancer.” He retrieved a foot-long flashlight from the pack, held it out— as though studying the how and why of it—then shoved it back inside.

  Some piece of information about a flashlight tried to surface from the back of my mind bu
t was lost in the swirling headache gyrating behind my eyeballs.

  “All those years she complained I didn’t say I loved her. Then, at the last, when I told her time and again that I loved her, she wanted to know why. What kind of crazy question is that? Why? Lord God a-Mighty, stay with a woman over fifty years, and she wants to know why I love her?”

  In another place and time, I would have been happy to explore poor Mrs. Enloe’s reasons for needing to know why Fletcher loved her before she passed from this world to the next, but not today. Today, I was wet with the blood of a man I didn’t know and having difficulty pushing back the waves of hysteria and nausea flooding over me. “Fletcher, you didn’t answer my question. What are you doing up here?”

  He squatted down in front me and answered through gritted teeth. “Cause I told you not to come up here, I figured you would. And cause I heard on the scanner Sheriff Mac has his boys out looking for some low life escaped convict what robbed a Minit-Mart over in Georgia. Say he shot and killed the clerk. Seems his stolen car was spotted broke down yonder about ten miles.”

  “Sheriff Mac has you out looking for the man?”

  Fletcher made a disgusted harrumph noise. “Christ no. I ain’t no gol-dang deputy. I called the sheriff’s dispatch and told them I was coming up here cause I went to your house and that fool dog was barking his head off in the garden. Done dug a hole under the fence big enough to put my tractor in. Your door’s unlocked, your car in the drive. It didn’t take no genius to figure you were up here looking for January’s cabin. You’re a fool, girl. You know that? A pure fool, walking around out here like it was a fancy shopping mall down in Atlanta. You don’t know the half of what trouble you could find.”