One Shenandoah Winter

by Davis Bunn

  “Owns nigh on seventeen hundred acres. It’s mostly rock and scrub and land too steep for anybody but mountain goats and deer. But it’s our land. Anybody who’s spent ten days in these hills knows Poppa Joe would never cross into national parkland after a deer. Why? Because he doesn’t need to.”

  She knew her accent was thickening and couldn’t have cared less. “This land’s been in our family since before the Revolutionary War. Is this getting through that thick wad of cotton wool you’re wearing under your hat? We were here a hundred years before they ever even thought of making a park service so’s to give you wide-eyed innocents something to do with our tax dollars.”

  It cost him, she could see it in his eyes, but he managed to hold his ground. “Ma’am, if your uncle doesn’t stop hunting out of season, I’m going to have to arrest him.”

  As swiftly as the anger had risen, it evaporated. It often happened that way, and when it left her, it left her empty. Connie said, “Poppa Joe Wilkes is the last of a dying breed. He’s forgotten more about these hills than you’ll ever learn.”

  “Even so—”

  “Look here. Before you do something rash, why don’t you go talk to some of the people down in Hillsboro. Or better still, see if you can find a ranger who’s been around a while. Ask them how you’ll seem, trying to lock this old man up.”

  She could see him falter, realizing he had opened a can of worms, and she felt awash in shame for her own anger. “I buy a hunting license for Poppa Joe every year. He just refuses to carry it.” Again there was no reaction from the young man, but she pressed on. “Tell you what. Why don’t you step inside, talk to my uncle about the hills. You’d be amazed what you can learn from him. His great-granddaddy even hunted these parts with Daniel Boone, did you know that?”

  “No, ma’am.” He remained stiff and unbending. “I didn’t, and it doesn’t matter.”

  “Better still, come have a plate with us.” She tried for a smile. “Bet you’ve never had smoked venison with grits and collards.”

  “I’ll be going now, ma’am.” He touched the rim of his hat a second time. “Somebody’ll be coming by with a truck this evening to collect the evidence.”

  She stood and watched him march back into the woods. There was a ranger trail about a quarter-mile further up the ridge where he’d probably parked his truck. And a well-worn path down to Poppa Joe’s. Some rangers came to arrest him, others came to learn. But sooner or later, they all came. She had a feeling about this one, though. He would go back and make his report and feel shamed by the older officers laughing at him. And he would never come back, leaving both him and the old man poorer from his absence. All because she could not hold fast to her temper.

  When the ranger had vanished inside the trees and their lengthening shadows, Connie sighed herself around and started toward the cabin.

  Five

  Connie climbed the front steps, crossed the porch, and pushed open the door on its creaky leather hinges. She stared at the tall old man in the far corner and declared, “I just went and wasted a perfectly good mad on that poor boy, when I should have come in here and used it on you.”

  “Had me a hankering for deer.” But Poppa Joe’s familiar bluster wasn’t there. “Not a thing in the world the matter with wanting some fresh game.”

  “There is too and you know it.” Connie watched as he carried his metal plate over to the deep granite sink. The old man’s movements had become so shaky that the fork and knife clattered on the edge. The sound was a chattering worry to her heart. “They’re gonna put you in jail if you don’t stop.”

  “Every single thing I shoot I eat. That oughtta count for something in this mixed-up world.” His hand shook so hard he had to brush his fingers across the pump handle before getting a grip and beginning to heave up and down. Water spouted and poured into the sink. “Any of you ladies like a cup of cold well-water?”

  “I would, Poppa Joe.” Dawn walked over and took a metal cup off its hook on the wall. With her other hand she offered him a slender package. “I brought you something.”

  “Girl, you shouldn’t oughtta done that.” He filled her cup, stopped pumping, and accepted the packet of five cigars. “White Owls. Nice how you remember them’s my favorites.”

  “But a deer, Poppa Joe.” Connie’s protest grew feebler as she watched him cross the cabin in hesitant steps. “You know how these new rangers are about deer out of season.”

  “All I know is, the foals is dropped, the antlers is high, and the weather’s turning. That makes it deer season in my book.”

  Poppa Joe stepped onto the porch, unwrapped one of the cigars and said to Dawn, “Light me a taper, honey.”

  “Here.” Hattie Campbell entered the golden light of dusk carrying a twig lit from the stove. “Connie’s right, you know. They really will put you in jail.”

  He took his time getting the cigar lit and drawing well, then lowered himself into the rocker. “I just wanted me one last deer. And that’s all the truth there is to tell.”

  Connie eased herself down on the top step and leaned against the railing. The words left her heart chilled, as though they contained a warning she was not yet ready to decipher.

  Sunsets were much longer affairs than in the valley below. The saddle-back faced a low-slung pass, one which caught and nestled the sun for hours on hot summer evenings. The cabin was built up snug to the saddle-back’s steep northern rise, protected from stiff winter winds. The meadow stretched out before her like a soft golden sea.

  The last of autumn thistle floated in the breathless air, and the smell of late wildflowers and honeysuckle and sweet untilled earth filled Connie’s senses. Seated on the top step and leaning on the railing had been her favorite spot since she was little. Connie sat and listened as Hattie and Dawn talked about the new doctor, and felt overwhelmed with worry about a world without Poppa Joe.

  She was finally drawn around by her uncle leaning down and saying, “I don’t hold with folks ignoring me on my front porch, daughter.”

  “And I don’t hold with having to bail you out of trouble every time I come up here.” But the response lacked the snap to work through his thick skin.

  “I was telling you to invite the doctor up here for a visit.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Look here, daughter. You want the doctor fellow to stay, now, don’t you?”

  “Yes, and that’s exactly—”

  “Well, it ain’t gonna be the town that’ll keep him here.” Poppa Joe sat and puffed on his cigar, the cigar smoke ringing his head like a gray wreath. “Now you just think on that for a country minute.”

  Six

  The Reverend Brian Blackstone found it hard to climb the clinic steps. Which was strange, seeing as how he and his wife had done so every third day for the previous six weeks. But this visit was different. This time he was coming as a pastor and not as a patient. And he found himself fearing the man inside.

  Doctor Nathan Reynolds was gaining himself quite a reputation. First of all, he refused all social contact. Entirely. He had not even attended the Elks banquet held in his honor. The previous week, when the mayor had tried to have him sit at the podium table so the town could publicly thank him on Founder’s Day, Nathan Reynolds had refused point-blank. When the embarrassed mayor had tried to insist, the doctor had threatened to pack up and depart.

  He had also succeeded in driving off Ida May, his nurse and receptionist, after just one morning of working together. He would have been utterly alone in the clinic, had Hattie Campbell not offered to help out. Hattie had trained as a nurse but never worked as one, having joined her husband in the grocery right after school. According to patients who had spoken about it to Brian, Hattie’s lack of experience was a constant source of outbursts.

  According to rumor, Connie Wilkes had also come by twice to extend an invitation to visit Poppa Joe up on Wilkes Mountain, a proposal that would have had anybody else in the valley jumping for their hat. But
Nathan Reynolds had blasted Connie out the door both times.

  He refused to say how long he was staying. If he met a patient on the street, he simply turned away.

  Nathan Reynolds was rude and sharp and perpetually angry. He viewed the world through a bitter squint. He was acrid in his tone and nasty in his speech. He did everything possible to push people away. No doubt about it, Doctor Nathan Reynolds was one severely cantankerous individual.

  As Brian Blackstone entered the clinic’s waiting room, he reflected that he had never seen the makings of a more lonely man.

  Hattie smiled as he pushed through the door. “Brian, hello, don’t tell me the baby’s acting up again.”

  “The baby’s fine.” He nodded to the people crowding the room’s tattered furniture. The place had a musty, faded air. The only bright spot was the smile on Hattie’s face. Brian seated himself on the little chair by her desk and asked quietly, “How are you holding out?”

  “All right.” But the smile was forced, the tone quieter. The other people pretended not to listen. “Since it’s you who’s asking, I’ll admit to the fact that the man in there scares me silly.”

  “Should we try to find somebody to replace you?”

  “No, no, it’d probably be some near child who’s never had to deal with an angry customer. At least that’s one lesson I’ve gotten down pat.” She cast a swift glance back toward the closed door. “Ten minutes with him on a bad day, and you’d be out looking for another assistant.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Besides, you know how quiet it is around the grocery this time of year. We could use the extra income.”

  Brian glanced behind him. There was not a free seat. And two men stood in the far corners, talking in low tones to their seated wives. “Certainly does look busy.”

  “A lot of these folks have been storing up their ailments for quite a while. Since nobody knows how long he’s here for, they’re getting in while the getting’s good.” Hattie rose to her feet. “Let me go see if Doctor Reynolds’ll take a couple of minutes and speak with you.”

  Brian made his way around the room, greeting each person in turn. He had long since come to know most of the residents in the Hillsboro region, even those traveling in from neighboring valleys and distant highland farms. He talked weather and crops and relatives, just letting them know he was there and caring.

  “Brian?” When he turned, he found Hattie’s smile had become even more forced. “He’ll see you now.”

  When he passed her, she pointed to the far corner door and murmured, “You might want to make it brief.”

  Brian followed her directions, knocked on the open door, and said, “Afternoon, Nathan.”

  The doctor did not look up from his desk. He snapped at the paper he was writing on. “I can’t believe I’m expected to write out my own records. Haven’t you people ever heard of electric typewriters and secretaries who take shorthand?”

  “Yes.” Brian walked over and seated himself. And waited. He was good at that. He had met and disarmed a lot of anger simply by accepting whatever came.

  Finally the doctor raised his gaze. “You feeling ill?”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Sadie all right? The baby?”

  “They’re both doing well. I can’t thank you enough—”

  “Then don’t even start.” Nathan Reynolds bent back over his desk, his face hidden behind strands of dark hair going prematurely gray.

  Brian sat where he was. There were a few moments in his life when he felt the Spirit move in a most intimate fashion. There was no sense of voices or words or a hand guiding him. Instead there sometimes came a silent sensation of a door opening, an unseen opportunity. A tiny crack through which he could insert a word. If only he were very careful, very watchful, very alert.

  So he sat where he was, and he examined this antagonistic man before him. And he waited.

  Eventually the pen stopped scratching, and the eyes peered in hostile closure. “You still here?”

  “Yes. Still right here.” That was another fact of such times. Nothing said or done could faze him. Perhaps it was because he was too concerned with hearing what was inaudible, just beyond his earthly reach. “I was just wondering . . .”

  “I’ve got a thousand things more important than your wonderings.” The voice was flat, final. “Stop wasting my time.”

  “Don’t you ever need anybody?” Brian had no idea where the words came from. But he couldn’t take them back, so there was no need to try. “Don’t you ever—”

  “Look.” Angrily the doctor slapped the file closed. “I know where this is headed, and it’s not going to work.”

  Amazing. The miracle was happening again. “Where am I headed, Nathan?”

  “To God. Am I right? You’re going to sit there and you’re going to lay the God jabber on me.”

  “Only if you want me to.”

  “Well, I don’t.” The doctor slammed another file open before him. “So back off.”

  The barrier against Nathan’s ire remained complete. “What’s got you so angry?”

  “Death.” The word was a bark. The sound punched out. “That clear enough for you?”

  “Yes. I hate it too.”

  “Fine. So the subject is closed, all right?” The head dropped back down again. But not before Brian saw Nathan’s face age to a mask of ancient fatigue. The man carried a burden that made Brian’s heart ache and his mind wonder.

  The pen scratched, the silence lingered, until the muttered words emerged, “You’re just waiting to pounce, aren’t you? Trying to find some way of telling me that everything’s just fine. That there’s nothing wrong with death since we’re all headed for heaven or glory or some utter nonsense.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything like that.”

  He might as well not have spoken. “Let me ask you one thing, preacher man. What would you say if it wasn’t some stranger off the street who was doing the dying, but your own little girl? You think you could sit there and be so rational, tell me how great it is because she’s not suffering any more?”

  “No.” Brian did not feel the anger, nor the attack, nor the stabbing fury behind the words. The same words that left the doctor’s hand shaking so hard he held the pen poised over the file, unable to write any longer. Here at this moment he was even protected from the keening memory of their first stillborn baby. His voice laced with a calm not his own, Brian said, “No, I wouldn’t think that at all.”

  “What do you know. An honest preacher.” The words were laced with bitter ridicule. “Wish you’d been around where I used to work.”

  “Tell me about your work, Nathan.”

  “No.” Another bark. The pen was tossed aside. “This isn’t one of your confessional hours. I didn’t sign on for counseling.”

  “All right.” Brian rose to his feet. Strange how he could feel satisfied when he had accomplished nothing but to irritate the man who was saving his daughter’s life. “You know, I’d be honored to talk with you sometime. It isn’t often I have the chance to lock horns with a man of your intelligence.”

  The face lifted once more. The voice remained bitter, but Nathan’s gaze took on a look of wounded ire. “Yeah? Think some of your fancy words might change my mind about death?”

  “No, I wasn’t going to talk about death at all.” He smiled down at the man, knowing the love he was feeling was not his own. “I was thinking maybe you might like to talk about life.”

  Nathan Reynolds stormed through the remainder of his day, vowing that it would be his last in this forsaken hole of a town. Yet the faces and the unspoken pleas refused to let his heart agree with what his mind kept repeating.

  He left the clinic and walked back to the house given to him by the town. On the way, he started a mental list of everything he needed to do to get himself ready to return to the city and his work. Real work.

  All afternoon he had struggled to hold on to the ire raised by the pastor.
Anger was the perfect fuel to get him out of town. Rage had been his best defense against the assaults of the past two years. When all else had deserted him—friends and energy and time and reason—his fury had still been there. He had fought his way through the pain and the misery, and he had survived. But now, in the face of these strange people and their even stranger ways, his anger was somehow not working as it should. He could not even stay irritated at the pastor. And that rankled most of all.

  Nathan’s heart and half his mind remained held by the faces of the patients he had seen that day. Their quiet acceptance of pains and illnesses baffled him. And their gratitude, that was another mystery. He found himself searching for a way to describe the manner with which they met his ire and his harshness. When he fastened upon the word, it stopped him there in the middle of the street. They treated him with homage. They honored him.

  He forced his feet to move on. The Shenandoah River ran alongside the road he walked back to his home. His temporary home, he corrected himself, as he tried to shake off the thoughts and focus on getting ready to leave. But the river seemed to be chuckling at him and his attempts to stay angry. Mocking him and his plans and his rage.

  Just as he started down his drive, the sound of a roaring engine and squealing tires brought him back around. A truck took the turning into River Road on two wheels. He could see the driver scramble the wheel around and aim straight for where Nathan was standing.

  The truck skidded to a halt. Through the windshield Nathan spotted two smaller figures seated beside the driver. Both of the children were wailing.

  Nathan was about to shout at the driver for having scared the children with his driving, when the man leaped clear of the truck and called hoarsely, “You the doc?”

  “Nathan Reynolds. What—”

  “Praise the Lord.” The man scrambled around the truck on worn rubber galoshes. He looked like a scrawny throwback to frontier days, with a long dark beard and hair tumbling all over his shoulders. Yet this particular man wore a sopping wet nightshirt and a torn hunting jacket. As he drew closer Nathan realized the man still had soap suds in his hair. “Name’s Will Green. I farm a piece over Humbolt Mountain way.”