Makin' Miracles

by Lin Stepp

  Zeke pricked up his ears and looked at Spencer, waiting for him to give the signal that meant he could enter the hut. Spencer nodded, and the shepherd galloped gladly into the structure, nosing around and sniffing the corners for the scents of animals that might have come before them.

  Spencer settled down in an old rocker he’d bought at a woodcraft shop. He’d added two rockers to the hut’s motley collection of furnishings, since most of the other chairs could hardly support his large frame or that of a visiting friend. Spencer grinned as he settled into the rocker and propped one foot up on the wall. He’d talked the store owner into selling him two used rockers from the shop’s front porch since it had seemed wrong somehow to add new chairs to the worn and weathered furnishings already here.

  The rustic hut was a soothing place. Spencer couldn’t say why it seemed so, but he came here often. Tonight he rocked quietly in the dark and gazed out over the mountains, trying to regain his peace after a stressful evening. Soon, Zeke came to settle down at Spencer’s feet. The two enjoyed the night sounds of insects and frogs, and the occasional hooting of an owl. A soft wind rustled the needles of the pine trees nearby, and the moon drifted lazily in and out of the dark clouds.

  Spencer sighed, realizing he felt more upset from talking to his brother again than from nearly being robbed by Leena Evanston. He shook his head at the idea. Some pains just never seemed to go away—no matter how much life moved on.

  CHAPTER 3

  Zola slept late the next morning. By habit, she awoke at her usual time, but it was an indulgent pleasure not to get up then, to snuggle back under the covers instead. Her cat, Posey, after snubbing her for a day for leaving her for so many weeks, had finally come around. She slept curled up against Zola’s side now, purring contently. Zola’s hand drifted lazily over her soft fur every few minutes.

  She’d enjoyed hearing all the farm sounds earlier as the day began—a rooster crowing to announce the new day, the distant sound of cows mooing and of a tractor starting up. It was good to be home. Zola had lived more of her life here in the rural mountains of Tennessee than in the South Pacific, where she was born. And her roots lay here.

  “We’ll have to go over for a visit with Nana Etta after we get up,” Zola told the cat. “She’ll be watching for us. I told her I’d come. But I needed this sleepin to catch up from the last of the jet lag. That long flight and the time zone changes always take a toll on my system.”

  Zola stretched and looked around the room. “This is the same bedroom I’ve slept in ever since I was a little girl,” she told Posey. “I still remember when Daddy and Mother remodeled the house. Before that we always stayed at Papa and Nana Devon’s place.”

  She laughed. “This house was always called ‘Hill House’ or ‘Old Farm,’ and my grandparents’ house was called ‘New Farm.’ But their house, nearly fifty years old, is hardly new now.”

  Zola’s grandparents’ place, a rambling white farmhouse, lay about a mile away—across the creek and down the Devon Farm Road. Zola’s house, which had been her great-grandparents’ place, was much older. A marking in an old slab of concrete in the foundations of the house read 1902.

  “When Daddy was given the land here as his part of the farm, everyone assumed he’d come and tear down my great-grandparents’, Wayland and Retha Devon’s, old house. But Daddy turned sentimental, and even Mother thought the old place should be preserved. Papa Vern sputtered over the money Daddy spent fixing up the house, but he and Nana felt secretly pleased that he did.”

  The cat meowed politely in comment.

  Zola scratched her neck. “This upstairs room was always mine.”

  She looked around fondly. She still slept in the same twin bed that had always been her favorite; it was placed beside the window, looking up to the mountain.

  “Maybe I love this house so much because the only time I got to stay here was when my parents visited from Mooréa for summer vacations or at Christmas.” Zola stretched lazily. “When they weren’t in the States, I lived at Papa Vern and Nana Etta’s. I was too young to stay here alone. But after I came back from college, Daddy said I could live here—and fix up the house however I wanted.”

  Despite the offer, Zola had made few changes to the house since she moved in. The place felt right, somehow, decorated in its mix of American and Tahitian colors and décor.

  “It’s kind of like me,” she said with a smile. “A mix of Mooréa island native and Tennessee mountain girl.”

  Zola got up and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. The cat followed, leaping up onto the commode top to watch her.

  As if reminded of the need to wash up, Posey began to carefully lick one white paw. She was a long-haired white cat with decorative markings of caramel-yellow.

  “You know, you shouldn’t snub me when I need to go away for a while.” Zola popped her toothbrush back into its holder. “After all, you owe me. I saved you from being drowned in a gunnysack when you were only a tiny kitten.”

  Zola frowned remembering that. “They wanted to drown you simply because you had one blue eye and one brown eye. One of the farmer’s best milk cows died unexpectedly and he and his wife got the notion you were bad luck with your mismatched eyes. Silly, superstitious people! You’ve turned out to be a treasure and one of the smartest cats I’ve ever had.” She scratched Posey’s neck and then went into her bedroom to search for something to wear.

  A short time later, dressed in a favorite pair of overalls, a white T-shirt, and a plaid-lined denim jacket, Zola, along with the cat, set out to Papa and Nana’s house. Posey knew the way through the woods and across the creek to the Devon homeplace as well as Zola did. Taking the lead, the cat pranced down the well-worn path and raced agilely across the split-log bridge over Buckner Branch. In a half mile, the two had cut through the last of the woods, crossed a mowed field, and were heading down the Devon Farm Road. It was a mile walk between the two houses, but a comfortably familiar one on a well-worn trail.

  Zola could see smoke curling out of the old farmhouse chimney this morning and knew Papa Vern had made a fire to take the chill off the cool February morning. In the summer, Zola would have found Nana waiting for her out on the porch, but today she found her inside, settled in her favorite chair by the fire, piecing a new quilt. She laid down the quilt to rise and give Zola a hug.

  “Did you rest well, child?”

  Zola nodded.

  Nana started toward the kitchen. “I’ve saved you biscuits from breakfast and Papa put you out a jar of his fresh honey he took from one of the hives. He said you could take it home with you.”

  Zola didn’t need to ask how her grandmother knew she hadn’t eaten breakfast. A smattering of the same gifting Zola possessed dwelt in Nana Etta. It simply served a more practical nature in Nana and was seldom remarked on.

  As the two walked into the homey kitchen of the old Devon homeplace, Zola heaved a sigh. A wash of memories flooded over her from a lifetime of meals in this welcoming, sunny room.

  Zola settled down at the table, knowing her grandmother would fuss if she tried to help with the breakfast fixings. Nana was eager to express her love by cooking and feeding her this morning.

  In her seventies now, Nana Etta moved more slowly around the kitchen. But her hair was still black, like Zola’s, with only a threading of gray. She’d let her daughter, Becky Rae, start putting a little color on it a few years ago. It was becoming to her.

  Zola watched Nana slip an old print apron over her neck and tie it at her waist. For as long as Zola could remember, Nana always wore an apron in the kitchen. Most of the bib aprons she made herself or they were given to her as gifts.

  As the years passed, Nana had grown a little stockier in build—but not much so. In her fifties, she’d added glasses to her familiar look, and in her sixties, she finally conceded to wear pants around the house instead of dresses. Zola had been a young teen then. The latter transition had not been accomplished without a lot of grumbling over
the changing fashions of the time.

  Zola smiled at her. “You look good, Nana.”

  Nana snorted softly. “You’re looking with eyes of love, then, child.”

  “That’s true,” Zola admitted, playing with the chicken-and-rooster salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table. “But you do look good. Really. Is that a new pants set?”

  Nana nodded while she placed the fresh egg she’d scrambled onto a plate and pulled a biscuit and a strip of bacon out of the oven to add to it. “Becky Rae took me down to the outlet mall last week to shop in the sales. They hold good sales in late February, you know. I got this outfit for seventy-five percent off.”

  “It’s nice, and blue favors you.” Zola received the breakfast plate from Nana with pleasure and began to spread butter and honey on her biscuit.

  “The coffee from breakfast is gone, but I heated some water for tea. I hope you don’t mind tea bags. I’ve still got some of those fancy ones from Christmas someone gave me.” She got the decorative tin down from the shelf. “I think it was Judy Ann and K. T. Upton who gave these to me.”

  She put the box on the table and sat down. Zola sorted through the selection and picked a cranberry zinger flavor. The smell wafted into the air as the tea bag hit the hot water.

  “That smells good.” Nana sniffed appreciatively and then began to sort through the teas herself. “Tell me which one that is. I think I’ll try one, too.”

  Zola paused with a bite of egg on her fork. “How come you haven’t opened these teas before today?”

  Nana shrugged. “Oh, they seemed too fancy for everyday. I thought I’d save them for company some time.”

  Zola laughed. “And since when have I become company?”

  “Well, you feel a bit like company when you’ve been away so long.” She settled into the kitchen chair across from Zola’s. The cat jumped up on her lap, and she petted it idly. “Even the cat’s started to feel too much at home with me.”

  “Thank you for taking care of her, Nana.”

  Her grandmother smiled. “I’ve always liked a cat around. Besides, she caught two rats while she stayed here that I was right glad to be rid of. I praised her real nice for those.”

  “Tell me all the family news,” Zola said between bites of biscuit.

  “Well, let’s see.” Nana Etta looked thoughtful for a moment. “Your Uncle Gene and Aunt Becky Rae’s girl, Doreen, turned fifteen and is wanting her learner’s permit. Gene’s been trying to teach her to drive on the farm road.” She stopped to chuckle to herself. “Doreen mowed down about a whole row of fencing last week when she stomped her foot on the accelerator instead of the brake.”

  Zola laughed.

  Nana Etta continued on with her news. “Your Uncle Ray’s put a nice, new neon sign up at Ray’s Place on the highway. The other one kept shorting out. This new one looks real fine.” She took a sip of her tea. “That’s where Papa is today, helping out at the store. One of the clerks is sick.”

  Ray Devon, the oldest of Nana and Papa’s three children, ran a filling station, small grocery, and deli on the parkway going into Gatlinburg. His son, Wayne, worked with him there—as did his daughter, Stacy. Ray had a home only a mile and a half up the Devon Farm Road from Zola’s grandparents. Stacy still lived at home, while Wayne had married and built a house practically next door.

  Even Becky Rae, Nana and Papa’s only daughter, lived on land that had once been a part of the Devon Farm. The more modern house that she and her husband, Gene Gibson, built lay about three miles up Jonas Creek Road, the main road that ran through the Devon farmland. Becky Rae married into money when she married into the Gibson clan, and their fine home looked a little more palatial than most of the Devon farmhouses.

  Zola tuned her thoughts back in as Nana continued her stories.

  “Wayne’s children, Hilda and Ronnie, are doing a 4-H project of raising some goats. As if all them sheep their Grandma Augusta brought into the farm for her knitting wool ain’t enough critters for them to look after.” Nana snorted and shook her head. “Those kids, Hilda and Ronnie, keep letting them little goats out and they eat just about anything they can get their teeth into. They chewed up all my purple clematis vines growing on the back fence.”

  Zola’s face fell. “Oh, no, Nana. Will they grow back?” Zola loved those clematis flowers.

  “They will, but those goats didn’t do them much good, and that’s a fact.” She shook her finger. “I’ve warned those kids, and Ray and Augusta, too, that I better not see those goats over here eating my flowers again. You know, goats will eat the clothes right off your clothesline if they take a notion. Haven’t got a lick of sense sometimes.”

  Nana Etta had started sorting through a pile of clipped coupons while she talked. She could never stand to have idle hands for long.

  “Are the goats cute?” Zola couldn’t resist asking.

  “Well, sure, they always are when they’re little. Hilda’s goat is white and brown, and Ronnie’s is gray and already has two little horns sprouting on its head. You’ll have to go over and see them.”

  “I will,” Zola promised. She polished off the last of her biscuit and licked the honey off her fingers. “Is there anything else I need to know about?”

  Her grandmother paused. “Well, yeah. But I’ve hated to tell you.”

  Zola looked up in alarm. “Has anyone in the family died?”

  “No, and that’s a blessing.” She got up to put Zola’s dishes in the sink. “But I reckon this will upset you about as much. Someone’s bought all the land up at Raven’s Den and built a house on it.”

  Zola dropped the cup that held her tea, sloshing it onto the table. “Oh, Nana, not Raven’s Den!”

  Her grandmother nodded, coming over with a cloth to mop up the tea spill. “Yeah. I guess we all thought it was such rough land up there that no one would ever want it. But it sold last fall. We didn’t any of us hear about it or know about it until the house was up. Then Papa saw smoke up there one day and sent Wayne hiking up the mountain to have a look. We got worried it might have been a brush fire getting started.”

  Nana tidied up the kitchen while she talked. “Wayne said someone’s built a big log house right there on that flat stretch on the hillside. They wound themselves a road down to it from off one of them roads up above Gatlinburg. Wayne’s guess is they’d need to get to the place by going up Ski Mountain Road across from where your shop is on the parkway, climb up the hill, twist around a street or two, and then branch down the mountainside. As you well know, there’s no road to Raven’s Den from down here. I doubt you could build a road up there from this side of the mountain with the steep drop-off slopes and the rocks. Plus there’s the creek running down between the ridgetop and our farm. Floods right often.”

  Zola listened to her, trying not to cry.

  “I’m sorry, child.” Her grandmother came over to give her a hug. “I know that was a real special place to you ever since you were only a mite. You used to go up there to think and dream and look out over the world. I remember I used to do the same myself a long time ago when I was a young’un. None of us are happy to think that land is sold. It seems like more and more tourists are invading and buying up the land that once was wild around here. It don’t seem right somehow, but there’s nothing much we can do about it.”

  She sat back down across from Zola. “I figured it was better I told you than to let you go up there and come across it on your own with no warning.”

  “Do you know who lives there?” Zola bit her lip anxiously.

  Nana shook her head. “No. There wasn’t anyone there the day Wayne hiked up, and when he got too close to the house, a dog set up to barking. So, he came on back down here. But he did say they’ve not torn the land up real bad. Tried to keep things more natural-like, he said. That’s a blessing, I suppose.”

  Zola had trouble concentrating on the rest of the conversation she shared with her grandmother before she finally left to walk back to her own place. She kept t
hinking about Raven’s Den. And, admittedly, grieving about Raven’s Den being sold. It was her special place, and she never imagined anyone would buy it.

  As she walked back home, with Posey tagging along behind her, she kept looking up toward the mountain that stretched high above the Devon Farm. Like many farms in this part of the country, the Devon Farm lay in a valley laced with creeks. The farmland spread between mountain ridges on both sides.

  Jonas Creek Road, which ran alongside Jonas Creek, was the main road that cut through the valley. The two-lane road wound its way from a larger street off the parkway behind Gatlinburg to snake through the rural countryside behind Piney Butt and Cove Mountain until it drew close to the side boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Over the years, as the Smokies became a well-loved recreational area, more and more roads began to climb up Cove Mountain from Gatlinburg until they reached the higher ridgetops. Chalets and vacation homes now dotted the landscape on the Gatlinburg side of the mountain, but Zola had never imagined they’d begin to creep down the north side of the mountain toward their farm. The terrain was so rugged and rocky there. So steep.

  “Let’s be honest, Zola,” she said out loud. “Because you laid claim to Raven’s Den as a child, and because you could see it from your bedroom window and hiked up to that rocky point so many times, you just thought of the place as your own.”

  She kicked at a pinecone in the pathway in front of her. “I really hate whoever built there, Posey. It’s such a beautiful, natural place. They should have left it that way.”

  Coming out of the woods behind her house, she glanced up the mountain once again. She couldn’t see the new house from down here. But she could feel it there now that she knew about it.

  “I’ll have to go up,” she told Posey. “I’ll have to go see what they’ve done to it.”

  She felt a shiver go up her spine. “And I’ll have to see if they’ve torn down my place.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The morning after the episode with Leena Evanston, Spencer was up—and out of doors—early with his camera. Early morning and evening were the best times for professional photography. He took pictures of trees today, still stark from the winter but beginning to bud, and he snapped frequent shots of birds. They seemed especially joyous to see a warm day and signs of spring after the long winter. Spencer had slept fitfully last night, but being out of doors on this brisk, sunny morning soon brightened his spirits. Nature always spoke to him and soothed his soul.