A Tale from the Hills

by Terry Hayden

  “Its nice to meet you William.”

  “Thank you Samantha.”

  “You can call me Sam too if you like.”

  “Ok.”

  “Lets get you cleaned up. Ernie take his dirty clothes. I’ll heat some water for him to take a bath.”

  Eunice showed the boy to the washhouse which was located behind the kitchen. There was a bath size washing tub in there, and clean clothes stacked in the corner.

  “I saved my family’s clothes after they died. I’m sure that something in here will fit you.”

  “Thank you.” was all that he could say.

  **********

  Samantha poured scalding hot water into the washing tub while Eunice poured cold. When there was sufficient water for his bath, both women left the room so that William could have some privacy.

  “Yell when you are finished and I will help you with the clothes.” Eunice said.

  “Ok.” he replied.

  She had already seen him at his worst, so he did not really mind if she saw him at that moment either. He stepped into the water and eased his naked body down into it. The water was hot but it felt wonderful. He felt so relaxed that he closed his eyes. Eunice came through the door with a bar of handmade soap.

  “Oops, I forgot to give you this.” she said.

  “Thanks again.” he replied.

  He scrubbed and then soaked and then stood up and then scrubbed again. He sat back down and the color of the water changed from clear to cloudy gray and dingy. There were three days worth of dirt and grime showing or floating in the water. The smell of something that had to be delicious was permeating from the kitchen. He was lost in the warmth of the water and the aroma of the food. Eunice came into the washhouse to ask him if he was ready to get out of the water. Reluctantly he said yes and started to stand up. She covered her eyes and scurried from the room like an innocent school girl. He had not known her but a couple of hours but he knew that she was a good person. He suspected that Samantha was too.

  The clothing that Eunice brought to him might very well have once been his daddy’s. They were slightly larger than he actually needed, but he enjoyed wearing something that was fresh and clean. The clothes were comfortable and fresh smelling. He dressed and crossed the back porch to the kitchen door. Samantha motioned for him to come on in.

  He ate like he had not eaten for days. Samantha had prepared a country style breakfast of biscuits and ham, and eggs and grits. He had never eaten grits before and he was hesitant about trying them. Eunice fixed him a bowl exactly the same way that she liked them, with milk and sugar, and he naturally loved them.

  After they ate, William began clearing the table and preparing to wash the dishes. The two women were a bit surprised to see him so ambitious. But he was grateful for their kindness and he wanted to be able to show it. The three of them worked in unison to get the job done.

  “What happens to you now William?” Eunice asked as he washed and she dried.

  “I guess that I will get back on the tracks and keepgoing.”

  “You are more than welcome to keep those clothes, and if you wait until we can wash your other clothes, you will have spares of everything.”

  “I probably should go on. I need to cover a lot of ground today.”

  “Why today?” she asked.

  He did not tell her that he wanted to get as far away from the men at the river as he could. He simply shrugged his shoulders as a means of answering the question. The two women left the room for a few minutes and returned with smiles on their faces.

  “We have talked it over and we would like for you to stay with us for a while. There are plenty of things to do around the farm and we will give you a place to stay and we will feed you well. We can’t pay you very much, but you will be safe and sound.”

  William thought deeply about their proposition. Even though Eunice did not know it, he was a part of her family, and she was a part of his. If he decided to stay for a while, he might even get around to telling her. She and Samantha had been very kind to him and he liked the security of being with others. He could do much worse than stay. He could even run into those men again. Or he could get sick like last night and be all alone in some remote place. Or he couldrun out of money, or even get hit by the train. He was practically at the mercy of everything that surrounded him. He decided that staying might not be such a bad idea.

  “Ok.” he said while smiling back at them.

  ***********

  The End of Part Three

  Part Four

  Chapter One

  The days and weeks and months passed quickly for William on the farm with Eunice and Samantha. The three of them celebrated birthdays and holidays just like a close knit family. They shared a bond that was as natural to William as the relationships that he had on Jewel Ridge Mountain. There were a few surprises for him at first, however. He would have to reevaluate the meaning of what constituted a family before too many days had passed with the two women.

  When he first arrived on the farm, Eunice informed him that her had a helper. Samantha was then introduced to him as that helper. He found out soon after his arrival that she was much more than that to Eunice. The two women shared everything. They worked together, played together, ate together, and as he found out quite by accident on his second night in the house, they slept together.

  The old farm house had five rooms downstairs and four rooms upstairs. The rooms upstairs were larger than the rooms downstairs because they were used as bedrooms for the Hill children growing up. The children would have been William’s daddy and his aunts and uncles. The parent’s bedroom was off of the dining room and that was Eunice’s bedroom now.

  The first night that William was on the farm he went to bed earlier than the two women. Eunice prepared a roomfor him at the top of the stairs. It could very well have been his daddy’s former room. She told him that there had once been ten children living in that house. She used the upstairs now for storage. She told him that there were a lot of memories stored behind those closed doors, but she did not go into any kind of detail.

  William was so tired on that first night that he slept in a real bed, that he hardly disturbed the covers. He did not wake up a single time all night. The smell of baking bread and coffee brewing woke him bright and early the next morning. He and Eunice worked the farm all day that second day. He enjoyed working and being with her. He enjoyed the closeness of being with his only aunt. Samantha had supper ready when they came back to the house in the evening. They sat on the front porch and Samantha strummed an old guitar until almost bedtime.

  He went to bed first again. He was tired and like the night before, he went to sleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. A disturbing dream with hobos chasing him across a long trestle woke him not long after he fell asleep. When he realized that it was still quite early, he decided to visit the outhouse, because he did not think that he could wait until morning. He eased down the stairs as quietly as he could because he did not want to wake up Eunice. He thought that Samantha was in the room next to his upstairs. He noticed that a light was still burning inside Eunice’s room and he also thought that he heard voices. He tiptoed over to her door and he heard the two women talking about their plans for the next day.

  “I am going to take William into town tomorrow to buy some wire for the fence. Do you want to go with us?”

  “No.” Samantha answered. “I will stay here so that lunch will be ready when you get back. Besides, I don’t like the way that the people at the hardware store look at us.”

  “To Hell with them.” Eunice declared.

  “Oh, I know, but sometimes it bothers me.”

  “I understand. Let’s get some sleep. I love you Sam.”

  “And I love you Ernie.”

  They both said goodnight at the same time.


  William knew just then what the old busy body at the trading post was whispering to her husband about. Eunice and Samantha were together as a couple. It had never occurred to him that two women could be together that way as a couple. But they seemed to be very happy.

  He wondered if they would be comfortable with him knowing what was going on. He decided not to let the cat out of the bag until an appropriate time. After all, he had his secrets too. When and if the time was right, maybe they could all share a secret or two with each other.

  He almost gave himself away the next morning at breakfast.

  “What time are we going to the hardware store?” heasked.

  “What?” Eunice said.

  He realized immediately just what he had done.

  “When we were checking fences yesterday, you said that we needed to go to the hardware store to get wire.” he lied.

  “Oh yes, maybe today.” she replied.

  When it became obvious that William was comfortable with their relationship, the two women were not as secretive anymore. Although they did not show outward affection for each other in front of him, they acted very similar to a married couple. He could see that they made decisions and shared responsibility together. His time with them would have been ideal if it were not for the nightmares.

  Not long after he moved upstairs in the old farm house that was filled with family memories and secrets, his nightmares returned. At first they were vague and lacking in detail. Many of them did not even make any sense to him. They were about hobos, hateful men with shotguns, and men in white robes and hooded faces. As the bad dreams progressed however, a pattern seemed to be forming. There seemed to be a definite relationship forming between William, the old man, Alice, and even their dead mother. Inpast dreams the old man hinted to William that he would find out in time exactly what the dreams meant.

  The first series of recurring dreams went back to the time when Alice disappeared. She was the same age as when she died but William was his age now. She left for school just like that fateful Monday morning. She ran ahead of her brothers and off in the distance William could see the old man peeping out from behind a tree. William was the only one who could see the old man. The old man stayed out of sight but he moved almost along side of little Alice. When she got to the footbridge she saw that the water was deep and very treacherous, so she stopped running. The old man came out from behind a tree and pushed her screaming into the raging water. All the time the old man was looking at William and smiling.

  The same dream occurred over and over with only slight variations. Sometimes the old man would trip her and she would fall into the water. Sometimes he would come up out of the water and grab her, and sometimes he would throw a rock at her and smash her little head. Then she would disappear over the edge of the bridge. Other times he would come out from under the old footbridge and grab her by the foot. The old man was always the reason why she disappeared, and he always taunted William with that fact. It was the common thread that tied all of the dreams together.

  The old man seemed to be saying, “Stop me if you can.” to William.

  The murderous dreams eventually led the way to another series of dreams that showed only little Alice. She always had a terrified look upon her face and her mouth moved, but no sounds would ever come out.

  Sometimes he would read her lips enough to understand “Help me brother!”, but other times she would form words that he could not understand.

  The two women began to notice a change in William. They would talk to him at breakfast and he would not respond. The would ask him a question and he would not have a logical answer for it. He had a glazed look in his eyes and he did not pay attention to his duties. Finally at lunch one day they confronted him about the situation. He told them that he was having bad dreams almost every night, and his lack of restful sleep was beginning to take a toll on his waking hours. He did not give them any details about the dreams because he did not want them to find out about little Alice. Eunice and Samantha decided that he was probably afraid to sleep upstairs by himself in the old house.

  Eunice thought that a solution to his obvious problem might be to bring him downstairs to sleep. They set up his bed in the dining room, because they never really used it anyway. It was the room that was closest to their own and she figured that she could keep an eye on him. The bad dreams stopped. It was the strangest thing that they had ever seen, besides the dreams that is. He slept like a baby every night, and he was back to being the old William again in no time. If moving him downstairs would solve his sleeping problem, they decided to make it a permanent arrangement.

  William began to enjoy life again. The two women could see that he was growing like a weed in the garden. Eunice realized that it would not be too much longer before she would have to find him bigger clothes in her brother’s trunks upstairs. Once her brother’s clothes were too worn or too small for the growing boy, the only clothes that she had left for him to wear, were her father’s, but she seriously doubted if the day would ever come that she would be able to dig through her father’s possessions.

  Her parent’s possessions were stored in the room at the far end of the upstairs hallway. She never went into that room because it brought back too many bad memories. She wished many times that she had destroyed all of her father’s things after he died, but times were hard and she could not make herself throw away anything that might have a useful purpose at some time or another. Her mother’s things were a different story. She loved her motherand treasured the things that her mother owned, as few things as there were. She knew that her mother’s life had been pure Hell with her father.

  Bob Hill treated his whole family like slaves. They were his possessions to do with as he pleased, at least he thought so. Eunice used to hear the way that he talked to her poor mother, and how he intimidated her in front of everyone, even his own family. She was afraid to ask her mother why she let him treat her so badly, but she could see the hurt in her mother’s eyes everyday.

  When Eunice’s brothers went to war, the remaining family members had to make up for their absence. They worked from before daylight until well after dark to make sure that everything was done to suit the tyrannical Bob Hill. Eunice had the greatest respect for her brother Tom who left home when he was so young. She understood very well why the family never heard from him again. She blamed her father for the deaths of her brothers and sisters and dear mother from the flu epidemic. If they had not been so exhausted and rundown, their resistance might have been stronger to the deadly strain.

  Eunice watched all of the members of her family die, one by one. Her only consolation after her mother died was that her father suffered for days before he finally died. He was covered in his own blood and snot and vomit when he wheezed his last breath. She dragged his dead body onto the front porch so that she did not have to look at him while she waited for the death wagon to pick up his carcass. She covered him in a soiled sheet as a final insult for the miserable life that he gave his family. She eventually buried all of her family in a beautiful section of the farm, all except her father that is. She buried him in an unmarked grave next to those aggravating railroad tracks.

  Eunice took care of the farm as best as she could after her family died, but it was a much bigger job than she could handle on her own. The farm was going downhill fast when she met Samantha.

  Samantha was a farm girl too. She and Eunice hadbeen acquaintances since childhood, but neither of them realized that they had so much in common until they met later in life. They met at the hardware store in Sparta and when Eunice told Samantha the sad story of what had happened to her family, Samantha offered to help her on the farm. One thing led to another and the rest of the story was happening on a day to day basis. Now of course they were an inseparable team. William was happy that they were together. He hoped that someday he would be ashappy as they obviously were.

  ****
******

  Chapter Two

  Three years passed quickly for William while he was living with Eunice and Samantha. For the most part he was very happy living with them. Sometimes he felt guilty for not writing to his family to tell them how he was doing and where he was living. He also felt guilty about not telling the two women that he had become so attached to, that his real name was Hill, too. He could have possibly opened up a line of communication between a brother and a sister. It would have been a positive revelation for both of them, but he chose not to tell Eunice that he was her nephew. For reasons that only he was able to justify to himself, he wanted to keep the different stages of his life separated from each other.

  Even though Eunice and Samantha had always been aware of his nightmares, William never told them that his mother, his dear sister Alice, and an old man long dead were the main characters in those horrible dreams. They never knew that his mother died soon after he was born. He used to blame himself for her death too. They never knew how attached he was to little Alice, and how devastated he was when she disappeared. He still blamed himself for her tragic death. He never described the old man who terrified him down to his soul either. Eunice might just have recognized that old man if she had heard about him. All that William could say was thank God that the dreams were not a regular occurrence anymore.

  If he kept himself occupied during the day, and if he ate well, and if he avoided becoming upset, William usually slept like a baby at night. But if things went wrong, or if someone upset him, the nightmares would return like clockwork. They always showed up to add to his misery and pull him further down into the depths of desperation. As long as he stayed on the farm and saw only Eunice and Samantha, he was quite fine. Changes in routine were definitely not good for him.

  Eunice needed to pick up supplies in Sparta about once a month. She liked to take either Samantha or William with her, so that she would have someone to talk to along the way. Samantha would go on rare occasions but usually it was William who made the four hour round trip. On one of Eunice and William’s trips they talked about the future. Eunice asked William if he had plans to settle down and raise a family someday.