ONCE
UPON
A MISTY
BLUEGRASS
HILL
Author Rebecca Bernadette Mance
Copyright October 7, 2011 (All rights reserved by the author)
Published by Rebecca Bernadette Mance at Finnegan's Run, LLC.
Notes about the book: Thank you to my Dearest friends and editors, Nancy, Debbie and Liz for your help.
Take me home country road....Dedicated to my Granny, Mary Margarette Donnelley Hill (in her 90's and has outlived all her children but one), My mother Margaret Phyllis Hale (deceased at the age of 42), my sisters Debbie, Teri, Melinda, my niece Taylor Renee' and my Aunt Betty Ann...all who carry the tenacity and amazing gifts of the Appalachian "Mountain Mammas" with their mix of Cherokee and Scot-Irish ancestors. They are survivors of hardships and unimaginable pain. They are the keepers of a special brand of American heritage. They are women of fierce pride, unmatched work ethic, gifted intelligence and loads of "Mountain Mamma magic." They are also each the most stubborn women I know...besides me, but that is what it takes to survive.
This book is also dedicated to all the immigrants, especially the Irish, who have graced our great nation with their hard work, golden hearts and gifted abilities to help build us to what we are today.
**********
Once upon a time, on the misty bluegrass hills of Kentucky lived a beautiful little Appalachian girl named Jolene May McKnight. Jolene boasted hair the color of a shiny copper penny and more than a few freckles were sprinkled lightly over her nose like fairy dust.
Jolene was a happy child because she had the most wonderful mamma and daddy who loved her very much. They all lived in a pretty little white house surrounded by flowers. Wisteria, lots of roses, sunflowers and endless vines of morning glories grew all over the fence.
Out in back Jolene's mother kept a huge vegetable garden in the summertime. There was summer squash, green beans, tomatoes, even tobacco for her father and pumpkins for later that year. The horses liked the pumpkins a whole lot.
Jolene's father raised horses for racing and he taught Jolene everything he knew about horses. He even taught her to ride like a jockey. He said he never heard of a girl jockey, but Jolene vowed she would be one someday and she would ride a horse from their farm in the Kentucky Derby.
Oh how Jolene loved the spring. She would run so fast over the soft green grass on bare feet and her toes turned emerald green. She would fly into her father's arms and he would swing her around like the merry-go-round at the Bourbon County Fair.
Every April Jolene rode with her father to the two-year-olds-in-training sale at Keeneland.
Jolene always knew when it was close to the time to sell the two-year-olds even when she was too young to count months and days. The birds with the funny twitter came around and the Bobwhite would call from the budding wood-line. The big gold and black robins would start making their nests on the low branch of the tree outside her window.
Jolene would ride next to her father in his big old blue Ford truck with the wind blowing her red curls all around her face. They would fly by the dancing daffodils that grew all along the road on the white fence line with the fresh spring air breezing through the open windows.
She would wait for her father to sell the two year olds at the spring sale while enjoying endless ice cream cones and popcorn.
In the summer it was so hot that Jolene got to wear shorts and jump through the water sprinkler. Jolene loved to go to the fair in the summer. They took vegetables and her mother's blackberry jam to sell at the Bourbon County Fair. There were contests and everyone brought food, crafts and even livestock for competition.
Later in the year, in September, they went to the yearling sale. The air was crisp and cool and a mist would rise and linger along the bottle-green hills clinging to the final memories of summer. The leaves on the trees that lined the roads were fired amber and gold like the ripened pumpkins at Halloween. The yearlings would ride in their big trailer with big curious brown eyes peeking out to take in the sights as they rode. At the sale there was warm apple cider and pumpkin bread.
No matter which sale it was, her father was very particular about who purchased the horses. He said that they were his responsibility and he had to make sure they went to a home where they would be happy and well taken care of.
Jolene was not sad when the young horses left because she knew they would live in a good place. Her father promised her it was so. And Jolene just knew that her father was the most wonderful man in all the world. He was so strong and handsome and kind to the horses.
Her father always told the new owners they could give the horse back if they didn't want it anymore. And sometimes a horse would come back and Jolene's daddy did take care of it. That is how they got back Dancer's Dream. Only Dancer's Dream came back very sick. But Jolene's daddy took good care of Dancer's Dream and it wasn't long before she was as good as new. Dancer's Dream even had a colt. But the colt was born just a few weeks before something very unspeakable happened. So, Jolene and her daddy had not yet even thought of a name for the colt. Her daddy said they had to think of a really great name because one day that colt would run in the Kentucky Derby.
One day, the summer before Jolene turned 16 a terrible, big storm came. The storm was so terrible that Jolene's mamma and daddy ran into the storm to gather up the horses and put them into the big barn. They made Jolene stay in the house with her collies Oliver and Finnegan. Jolene was going to go to prom that next year and she thought she was old enough to help out. But her father would not allow her to help and got real angry when she wouldn't listen to him fast enough. His face was so worried. Jolene was so frightened of the black sky that closed in so quickly. She watched out of the window even though her daddy told her to go down to the basement.
Before Jolene's mother and daddy could get all the horses into the barn a dreadful twisting wind came. The tempest pulled the boards from the barn tossing them into the air like toothpicks. The wind kicked up faster and twisted with increasing fierceness until the barn collapsed on Jolene's mamma and daddy and all of the horses.
Because her daddy had been unable to get him to go into the barn, only Dancer's Dream's colt stood outside prancing and screaming for his mother. The colt ran in circles around the fallen barn. Jolene ran from the house her heart pounding and wails from her heart piercing the air. She tried with all her might to pull the wood and debris off of her mamma and daddy, but she was not strong enough. The rain came in sheets, hitting her like thousands of cold needles. Jolene cried and cried. She did not know how long the storm lasted. Her screams and the rain became an endless chorus in her head. She remembered waking up soaking wet on top of the barn debris with the colt nuzzling her shoulder as a weak sun pierced through the clouds.
People came from all over Bourbon County to help Jolene dig out her parents. The police and firemen came to help too, but it was already too late. They didn't let her see her mamma and daddy when they were finally uncovered. Jolene could not remember much else about those days that followed except that she cried and cried. She had lost everything except her dogs and the little newborn colt that Jolene secretly named Storm.
But Storm was sold along with her parents' farm.
After her parents died, Jolene went to live with her father's sister, Paula, who lived a few miles away from where Jolene lived with her parents. Jolene's aunt drank and smoked a funny pipe all the time and was hard hearted to Jolene. It was Aunt Paula who sold the horse farm; she even sold Storm, the little colt. Jolene was shattered. Beyond grief-stricken, she took to walking almost every day to see her family's home and Storm.
The new owner kept
Storm and made an even bigger house on the farm only six months later. Her family home was kept up nice, but no flowers grew there anymore. And there was no garden in the back.
Jolene went to see Storm early in the mornings when the mist rose off of the green, green grass that looked blue. When Jolene visited Storm she gave him treats.
Jolene vowed with all of her heart that she would one day get her family farm back. She would live in her family home again and she would never sell Storm.
For certainly Storm would be a Derby winner just like her daddy planned.
And Jolene would ride him.
Together they would regain all that was lost.
Chapter 1
With regard to being an Appalachian Mountain Mamma. There are many pictures and many faces of this woman. Many were Cherokee-Appalachian woman, many were Scotch-Irish women who were the wives of coal miners or farmers. They embodied strength and fortitude that is unmatched and has left a heritage of what the United States is all about. The Appalachian were tough and relentless
Appalachian women have endured hardships with a smile and an unbelievable faith that the things that matter are truth, hard work and being a good person. They have suffered and have overcome. My Grandmother is one of those women and I am very proud of her.
She was running out of time.
He was closing in on her.
So she had to be super-quiet lest she rouse him for a lecherous opportunity that he pressed more frequently of late.
He pressed his satyriasis activities early morning and late at night.
He tried the bathroom door when Aunt Paula was drunk. Or high.
Aunt Paula's weird boyfriend Travis, who always carried a sharp underarm smell that was not even cushioned by a cotton t-shirt, had become her persistent lewd silent stalker. Already an unpleasant man with a rough beard and yellowed teeth from his tobacco chewing, he had become even more repulsive as he found more creative ways to be alone with her.
And push his stinking body close while attempting to molest her.
If he wore a shirt at all the sleeves were gone leaving his bushy underarm hair to send out the stinky unwashed waves like radio signals that took Jolene's breath away.
She was running out of time and ways to escape him.
What was she going to do?
Finnegan, one of her two collie dogs, whined for food. "Shush." Jolene patted him.
She carefully pulled open the fast food bag sitting on the leaning kitchen table that had lost its leg when Aunt Paula's two boyfriends met for the first time by accident and had a terrible fight. The winning boyfriend, Travis, had perched a 2"x 4" under the table as a replacement leg, but it was just a bit too short.
Jolene pulled out the uneaten burgers and put them in the dogs' bowls. Aunt Paula always left more than half of her three fast food hamburgers uneaten. Which was really weird because she refused to share with Jolene. It didn't matter. Jolene didn't want the day old burgers and Finnegan and Oliver loved fast food.
She went to the back of the cupboard and tugged out the big dog food bag and scooped the food out to go with the hamburgers. She broke up the burgers and mixed them up with dry dog food that she got from the Super Farm store if she did the mopping for them at night.
She put the bowls out and patted her pups as they dove into the bowls. Finnegan and Oliver were brothers even though they didn't have the same coloring. They had the typical long narrow nose and fluffy chest hair of a collie. While Oliver was gold and white with big peanut colored eyes, Finnegan was a white merle with blue eyes and a bit of gold touched into his thick white fur. Aunt Paula often said he looked like a wolf. Of course this might have been because Aunt Paula didn't like when they growled at her when she talked too sharply to Jolene.
Jolene watched the pups lick the last of the mixed meal from their bowls. They looked up and tilted their heads waiting for whatever was next. She was thankful she could earn that bit of money by mopping at night at the Super Farm Store. Mopping at night was one thing she could do without a hitch in her day, which she did whenever she could to avoid Aunt Paula's parties and to pay for the dog food for Finnegan and Oliver.
Oliver ran to his tattered dog bed and rolled on it making his happy cries. "Hush now Ollie."
Jolene gazed out of the cracked window into the sunrise. She could not believe she had already lived here nearly two years. She never did go to the prom that year after her parents died when she turned sixteen. Aunt Paula had said it was a waste of time and money. Aunt Paula even threw away the pattern Jolene and her mother had picked out to make the dress after she sold the sewing machine. Two years here seemed a lifetime now.
The pure white cool mist rose up over the blue-green hill. It was a blessed Saturday and Aunt Paula was still sleeping off the effects of last night's party. Jolene prepared to go, as she did most Saturdays, to visit Storm at the farm and bring him an apple.
Unfortunately, it would be an apple she procured as an ill gotten gain. But since they fell from the tree by the road at old man Jenkins's place, it wasn't really stealing when you thought about it very far down the road. Unless you considered such a thing as stealing. The apples would only be for the bees that might swarm around flattened apples in the road…or the raccoons that might otherwise partake of the apples late into the night. Nobody liked bees or raccoons. Better that the apples were given to Storm.
She went to the bathroom, scrubbed her face with an energetic rub of a soap-filled rag and tied her unruly red hair that fell just past her shoulders into a pony tail.
Strands of fire.
That is what her father called her hair when she was a little girl.
She donned her hole-in-the-knees jeans that had nothing to do with a designer label and an old plaid shirt that belonged to her father. Her "Superman Shirt" was one her father had worn countless times in her childhood. It was one of the few things she was able to save from Aunt Paula's big yard sale. Now she believed it held magic powers.
No one would ever catch her visiting Storm when she wore this shirt. In daddy's shirt she was brave and powerful like the special ops women she read about in a book about women in wars.
Pausing at the screen door she tried to make a quick repair one side of the screen that had come out from underneath the rubber.
No wonder the house was crawling with flies hanging over old bottles and Aunt Paula's food like landing Schnook Helicopters that flew overhead.
Jolene had not cleaned up last night after Aunt Paula's party because she had fallen asleep in bed with her algebra book. There was a huge test Monday. If she could make an A she didn't have to take the final.
Less risk of failure.
One more grade for her college resume.
She had to make good grades in her final semester if she was to get that scholarship and go to college. She only had another year and the only thing that was going to get her into school was better grades than someone else. Someone else whose father knew somebody.
Not to worry about the mess right now. She would clean up as soon as she got home. And she would figure out something cheap for dinner…maybe even use an internet recipe. Now that Aunt Paula liked to advertise herself on the internet Jolene could look up a lot of cool stuff. But right now she had to escape without waking up Aunt Paula. Goodness knows you didn't want to wake Aunt Paula after a party night.
But she especially had to avoid waking up Travis. He had even hit her several times lately for contrived reasons. Jolene shivered and pressed the screen under the rubber holder.
Pleased with her ability to temporarily reset the screen, Jolene carefully pushed the screen door open for her dogs to race out quietly with their own apparent ability to understand hiding from Aunt Paula. Jolene held the door to a gentle close once she was on the other side.
What was the point of her taking precious time to fix a screen that had so many darned holes anyway? She wished she could ask her friend Flint to come over with his tool box. They would have gone to the ju
nk yard and found some new screen. She knew how to use his tools better than him but she never did say so.
She was grateful she had never said that to him now that he was dead at 19 years old. He had killed himself when his girlfriend wrote him a "Dear Flint" letter while he was in Afghanistan. The last time he was home he had helped her fix the dog houses so that she could hide money from Aunt Paula in mason jars and bury them under the houses.
He had seemed to have such purpose that last day she saw him. He had told her a story about Afghanistan and the 'hour of the lamps'....he told her how beautiful it was to see all the lamps lighting along the hillsides when it grew dark.
Two weeks later, he was dead. The beauty of the hour of the lamps was not enough to keep him going when his girlfriend dumped him. If only Jolene had known he was that fragile....she might have said something. Written him more often.
But it was too late.
His mother had given her his tools. She would put the screen right again.
Even though nothing would ever be quite the same without her best friend Flint.
But she could not let herself hurt right now. She could not afford sadness lest she drown.
Down the paint-flaking steps she went on the heels of her dogs, to break into a run when she hit the cool wet green grass. Her lungs instantly filled with freedom and fresh fall air. The pups nipped at her flapping shirt laughing up at her.
Mission accomplished.
If Jolene was gone by the time Aunt Paula got up to stop her to complain and grouch, she would be safe for those few hours.
On freedom's feet, she passed by the smattering of houses that sprinkled the countryside. Most of the houses sported pots filled with early spring flowers.
At Old Man Jenkins' place Jolene picked up a few apples from the road and stuffed them into her pockets.
She nearly ran the whole mile and a quarter to her family farm. She was not sure how she could survive Aunt Paula and Travis without her visits home to see Storm. She surely would have run away by now except that it would likely put her too far away from her family farm and Storm.
Once Upon a Misty Bluegrass Hill Page 1