Brent brought a few things with him for this climb. In the small backpack on his shoulders was a half-gallon jug of ice water, a PBJ sandwich, a pad of paper and a pen, his Bible, and the letter inked in his grandfather’s hand of his own treks up this side of the mountain to talk with God. He wasn’t sure why he’d brought the Bible. He certainly wasn’t wanting to read anything that He wrote. Not right now, anyway.
He stopped and grabbed a bandana that was tucked into the front left pocket of his jeans. He wiped his face and slipped the backpack off his shoulders and onto the ground. He took the jug of ice water out and took several long draughts. He squinted his eyes in pain as the cold water began to produce a “brain freeze.”
I hate that!
Putting the jug back in the pack, he noticed his arms. Because he was wearing a t-shirt, he was gifting himself a multitude of scratches. There were a lot of thorny bushes. The benefit of some of them was the wild raspberries and blackberries contained within. He certainly wouldn’t have gone hungry during his “walk” had he not brought something to eat with him.
He put the backpack back on and pressed ahead.
Just how far up did you walk to talk with God, Papaw?
After an hour and forty-five minutes of climbing, he found out. The so-called path finally opened up to a wide, grassy ridge. There was a smallish white boulder toward the center of it. How it got there was anyone’s guess, but it certainly seemed out of place. To his left, behind the boulder, was the continuation of the trees he’d worked his way through to get there. It appeared that the mountain’s summit was another hundred feet up or so. To his right was the edge of the ridge. Between the trees and the edge must have been about twelve or thirteen feet of space. The ridge itself was a good twenty-five feet long or more.
He walked up to the large rock and dropped the backpack next to it. He took a few steps toward the ridge’s edge and looked down. He wasn’t looking down upon what he’d expected, his mamaw’s house. Instead he looked down into an untouched valley. Not much of a valley, really, since it was just the area where the bases of two mountains touched. But it was extremely beautiful.
Breathtaking.
He could smell a bold combination of scents. The peat from the forest floor, the smell of wildflowers that he couldn’t identify, and somehow, the smell of apples.
All Brent could do for several minutes was gaze. There was nothing but lush green, and soft, blue sky…and peace.
I get it now, Papaw. “Wow,” he whispered.
Brent tore himself from the landscape and walked back to the boulder. The top surface was polished smooth. You sat here, didn’t you? “This is where you talked with God,” he said quietly.
Now that he was there, after all of the years of wondering what the place looked like, he didn’t know what to do. He walked the length of the ridge a couple of times. An apple tree finally caught his attention at the far end. Papaw, did you plant this? You probably did, didn’t you? You planted all of those next to the house. Several apples begged to be picked and tasted, but they weren’t quite ripe and many were already showing signs of being invaded by apple fly worms.
Brent was sweaty and hot. He returned to where he had left his backpack and took out the water jug. The water was nearly half gone now. He allowed himself a few large swallows before stowing it for the trip back down.
His thoughts returned to why his grandfather had trekked up there so often.
God.
Brent knew that finding this secret place had needed to happen, but he didn’t want…
I don’t want what? Conversation? To feel His presence?
He sat down on the smooth boulder and rubbed his hands across the surface of the stone on either side. There must have been a lot of sitting and standing to make it this smooth.
His mind traveled back down to the old farmhouse again. That place of loneliness. But it hadn’t always been. Not for his mamaw and papaw. So many amazing events had taken place in that old home, some of them almost too astounding to believe.
One event in particular invaded Brent’s mind at that moment. He suddenly remembered that he had nearly lost his grandmother long before his mom and dad had even met.
Is this why you never took me up to your papaw’s secret place?” asked Tara. “You pointed the path out to me several times when we’d vacation down there.”
I shrugged. I don’t know why I shrugged. I certainly knew the answer. “I guess I thought that it would trigger all these memories.”
“I know you better than that, Brent. Especially now that you’re telling me the story. These memories have never been far from your mind. Have they?”
I had to smile. See how she knows me? At least it’s not an annoying attribute tonight. Not yet anyway.
“No. In fact, every time that we’ve been there I’ve relived parts of these events in my mind. Taking you up there would have just taken me too close to the emotional edge and got you asking questions.”
“Well, speaking of being on the edge... I need to use the bathroom.”
She always has a way of using my words as a segue into other things. I like that about her, too.
“Go take care of things and I’ll dish us out some of that fruit salad you made.”
I watched Tara round the corner out of our dining room, and I went to the refrigerator. Getting something to eat was really just a way to distract myself from the next part of the story I was about to dive into. I knew that I was going to get emotional. Honest-to-goodness miracles tend to have that effect on me.
When Tara returned, we sat back down, she with a fork in her hand and me with a set of pursed lips on my face.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“This is the way I was told all of this played out, by Mom, and later by my mamaw, herself. The year was 1959…”
“I’M SORRY, JOHN. I don’t know what you expect me to do!”
“I expect you to heal my wife!”
John Moore was a desperate man. A man who was struggling to keep emotions in check.
The doctor looked at him with an expression of pity in his eyes, and at this specific moment John wanted to strike the man to rid him of it.
“Give me some sort of medicine ‘scription for her!”
“John, if I knew of a prescription that would work, I’d write one. But we’ve already tried all the medicines that I know.”
Hannah was in their bedroom in what the doctor seemed to be indicating would soon be her death bed. And this wasn’t the first time he’d heard this. In fact, this was the third different doctor that he’d had in his home over the past several weeks.
Several weeks! His woman had been hanging onto life by a thread for several weeks! She wavered between short periods of lucidity and loss of consciousness. She would periodically suffer fits of shivering and then profuse sweating. He had to continually have the sheets changed.
Doctor Newsome placed a strong hand on John’s right shoulder and gave it a squeeze. John’s six-foot, muscular frame tensed and he stepped back.
“Doc, you don’t want to be a’touchin’ me right now. I think you’d best be leavin’.”
The doctor dropped his gaze, gave a couple of abbreviated nods of his head, then turned around. John held the door open barely long enough for the doctor to make it out onto the front porch before slamming it closed.
What’em I supposed to do? He turned from the door and walked into the living room. Walking up to his favorite picture of Hannah and him together, he stared. The woman in the bed barely resembled the one he looked at now. His breathing began to intensify, his pulse gaining speed. He wanted to slam his fist into something, tear something apart.
The adrenaline raging through him in that moment demanded an outlet, but he reined it in. It was something that he’d had to learn to do in the close-quarters of the hole in which he conducted his job. His ability to keep himself calm is what had kept him alive.
/> John had escaped so many close calls in the coal mine that he nearly thought his life was being protected by someone watching out for him. Nearly. He’d never had any use for God or any other type of spiritual nonsense.
That wasn’t the case with his Hannah, though. The woman based just about everything she did on trying to honor her God. Regardless of his own opinions, John did respect her. After all, it wasn’t like believing in the Bible was going to turn her into a bad person.
Though he was often frustrated with her uncompromising positions on certain things that he would have liked for the two of them to go out and do, he found he couldn’t love her any less for being unmovable regarding things she called sin.
He shook his head. Woman, how is it I fell in love with you? I ain’t never quite figured you out. He sighed. Wanted what you wouldn’t give me, I reckon. Ended up wanting you more than anyone else I’d ever known. Now I’m quite fearful of losin’ you.
He turned away from the photograph on the wall and saw his wife’s “family” Bible on the coffee table. A lot of good believin’ in that God of yours is doin’ you right now.
John walked out of the living room and down the hall toward their bedroom. He walked in through the door at the foot of the bed. A second door, near the head of the bed, was kept closed to shield his wife from any prying eyes that might come to the side door of the house.
Word was out throughout the mountain hollow that Hannah Moore was dying. That made him angry; people showing up with those sorrowful looks in their eyes. Was he the only one who refused to believe that she couldn’t be saved? The adrenaline was starting to spike again.
He walked up beside where she lay. Her long, coal-black hair had lost its luster. It was showing signs of having not been washed for several days. He’d have to take care of that for her soon. He put a hand on her forehead. It was cool now. Her skin was a bland, pasty-looking pallor.
Looking at her, he realized that he no longer got emotional about how sick she looked. It used to be that he’d walk into the room and have a lot of trouble keeping the tears back. But now…
Was he getting used to it? Was he shutting off his emotions? Did that mean that in the back of his mind he was expecting her to die?
Adrenaline spike.
John needed to get out of the house. He opened the door at the head of the bed and pulled it closed behind him. He opened the side door and walked out into a cloudless afternoon, immediately feeling the sunlight start to warm his thick, dark hair.
There he saw David and Sharon sitting on the grass. They looked up at him as he pulled the door closed.
David and Sharon were just old enough to take off into the world on their own. David was nineteen and Sharon, eighteen.
David was struggling with the idea of leaving the hollow and finding a job. He’d argued with his father more than once that he could handle working the mines. But John was having none of that. He wasn’t going to let his son spend his best days breathing coal dust and risking his life.
Sharon? He didn’t know what he was going to do with her. His darling little girl was a bit too independent for her own good. Seems she has it in mind to turn down any young man who comes a’callin’ on her. The right man better show up soon.
“Daddy? What’d the doctor say?” asked David.
John put his hands on his hips and squinted into the sky.
Sharon answered the question for him. “Said the same as the others, didn’t he?”
He looked back down into his daughter’s eyes and simply nodded.
“Becky Donnelly’s daddy asked if he could come by,” she said.
“Don’t need some smooth-talkin’ faith healer in my house.”
TARA INTERRUPTED MY story. “Wait. That’s, like, four times in this story that you’ve made it sound like your papaw was an atheist.”
“Yep. A pretty cranky atheist, so I’ve been told. As Mom tells it, the only one who could get away with talking about God around him was my mamaw.”
“Just one more reason I wish I could have known her.”
I smiled and took one of her hands in my own.
“Well, it was an interesting few days after that third doctor left. Mom decided that she was going to go find Becky Donnelly’s father regardless of what her dad had said. The man showed up, knocked on the door, and waited for it to be opened for him. It wasn’t. Apparently my grandfather had caught sight of him walking toward the house. But Mr. Donnelly decided that he wasn’t going to leave and sat in a wooden chair on the front porch until Papaw finally relented. I don’t know what was said between the two of them, but eventually Papaw let the man in to pray for his wife.”
Tara leaned toward me a little more. “And?”
“And…nothing.”
The anticipation of hearing good stuff drained from Tara’s face right away. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Again, I’m not sure what was said between the two in the house, during or after the man’s prayers for my mamaw, but something apparently clicked. I’m told that my mamaw was having one of her conscious and lucid moments when Mr. Donnelly visited and actually smiled at him while he prayed. Mom thinks that because Papaw was willing to bring a man of faith into the house for her, and because he saw his wife’s happiness for having allowed it, that he went out on his own to find another faith healer to come in and lay hands on her.”
“Wow. From disgruntled atheist to a searcher for men of God.”
“Yeah, well…don’t get too excited. He was doing it to make her happy, not because he believed anything would actually work.”
“So, was there a second man who visited and prayed for your mamaw?”
“Yes. Same result. Again, I don’t know any details of what happened. I don’t even know if she was aware of the second man’s visit.”
“Okay, I want to get the timing in my head right. How long between faith healer one and faith healer two?”
“Three days. And it was another three days later when things took a horrible turn.”
I looked at my wife. I could read the look of concern in her face. Tara was living a moment with me that happened a half-century in the past.
This woman’s empathy for others… Listen, she was once a hard-hearted, Christian-hating witch! Literally! Now she’s got one of the softest hearts I’ve ever encountered. She’s like steel when she needs to be, but in most circumstances she is a fountain of compassion. Have I said anything yet about how much I adore her?
I continued with the story.
“Papaw was in the kitchen preparing dinner for the six kids and himself when he heard a whimper come from the bedroom.”
JOHN DROPPED THE knife he’d been using to butter the bread. He walked quickly into their bedroom across the hall. His wife lay in the bed, looking as though she’d been splashed with a bucket of water. And she was convulsing.
“Hannah! Hannah!” John was beside himself with panic. His loud voice attracted the attention of his children, all of whom rushed into the bedroom to see what was happening.
Sarah, the fifteen-year-old, screamed as trails of blood began to leave her mom’s lips and spill to either side of her face. The children started to move forward.
John’s lips separated as he stared at the horrifying scene before him. He had enough presence of mind, however, to see his children moving toward him. Without a word he put up his right hand to stop them. It had the desired effect.
“Sharon, fetch me a clean wet rag!”
Hannah’s body started to relax, but she started coughing with the buildup of blood in her mouth. Quickly, John reached over his wife’s body and grabbed her left shoulder. It didn’t take much effort to roll her light body onto its side. The blood drained from her mouth and onto the pillow. It wasn’t a lot, but it was still too much. There had never been blood before.
What’s goin’ on? What’s happenin’ to her?
“Carson, go get Virgie! Tell her to get over here
quick!”
Virgie Hamilton was the woman who would spend time with Hannah when John either had to work or needed to be away from the house for any amount of time. John knew that she wasn’t going to be able to do much, but he needed someone…someone who could do anything.
Hannah was breathing easy again now that the blood had been evacuated.
At least she weren’t awake for that, thought John. He glanced back over at his kids as Sharon approached him with the rag. Taking it, he cleaned her cheeks and lips.
Turning back to his children, he said, “All right, now. Emergency’s over. Go’n get back to the table. Sarah, you and Sissy finish makin’ the food.”
Reluctantly, they all left the room.
When they were gone, John leaned over his wife, lifted her, and moved her a little bit further from the edge of the bed so that she’d be clear of the blood that was now soaking into her pillow.
“What’s happenin’ in you?” he asked, tears beginning to fall down his cheeks. “Don’t do this. Hannah, you hearin’ me? Stay with me.”
After a few minutes John could hear the front door open and close.
Two sets of feet walked down the hallway toward the bedroom and Virgie rounded the corner.
“John?”
“Virgie, she’s—” He noticed Carson come into the room behind her.
“Carson, go’n wash up. Get back to the table.”
Carson looked at him, then to his momma, and back again. After a moment he said, “Yes, sir,” and walked from the room.
“Virgie, she’s bad. Something bad’s happened.”
Honey, you’re starting to hurt my hand,” I said with a smirk.
Tara, whose eyes were fixed on my own, blinked. She looked down at her hand holding mine and I felt the tension release from her fingers.
“Sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile. “The story’s getting to me.”
“You think this part of the story’s emotional? Wait ‘til I get to the part where I always start…umm…” I thought for a moment, choosing my masculine words carefully. “…where I start showing how strong I can be.”
Behind the Darkness Page 3