Fleetie's Crossing

by K. Bruce Florence

  “He is a good man, Rachel, and he is going to want something done to stop the killing.”

  Daddy was always right in the middle of stuff. He took the cake, as Pappy would always say. All the miners liked him, operators paid him for their legal work, preachers trusted him, kids ran after him, and old ladies spoiled him. Any kind of trouble, and before long, somebody would drive up the hill, and pots of coffee would perk, and every bit of cake in the house would disappear.

  Humph! In my opinion, it was well and good for the judge to sit back and expect Daddy to pull a miracle out of a hat. It would be something else if the judge had to face all his friends with Hershel lying dead. I felt so sorry for Daddy, I wanted to cry myself, not that anybody would take the slightest bit of notice if I cried a bucketful.

  After he walked down the front steps and to the end of the sidewalk, he opened the car door and stood there, looking out across the valley. I started to go after him, but Mother grabbed my arm and held on hard.

  “Grown men are not little babies, Rachel. You have to let him face this his own way.”

  Leaving him alone, just standing there, seemed mean to me. When Pappy died, everyone hugged everyone who came close. I pulled my arm away to go on in spite of the warning, but Daddy was already in the car. I watched as the car drove to the turnaround and waved at him as he passed us.

  “You just will not leave it alone, will you, Rachel?”

  I glared at her, but she turned away and picked up a broom leaning on the wall by the front screen. She started sweeping the front steps as if the leaves and dirt were her personal enemies. I knew her next move would be to hand me the broom, and before that could happen, I stomped across the porch and slammed the screen door hard. But I was wrong that time about what she was planning. She was restless and didn’t seem to be interested in doing any of the day’s work or, better yet, getting me involved in it. She came back into the kitchen, poured a cup of tea, and sat down at the table with Janey, who was playing with the dry cereal in her bowl. The kitchen was quiet, and Janey watched us with wide eyes, and why not? You could almost feel misery in the air, and Jane was wary.

  “Jane,” Mother said, “would you like to have a Polly Pigtails meeting?”

  A few weeks earlier, Mother had gathered all the little girls in the neighborhood for an afternoon of refreshments and embroidery. She called the gathering the Polly Pigtails Club after a favorite storybook, popular with the girls. Almost all the girls in the little group wore their hair in braids, so the name stuck. The hit of the afternoon was a dress-up and makeup with “high” tea. Leatha and I were the eldest, and Mother used us to help her serve and be the guinea pigs for the makeup sessions. Mother gave everyone manners lessons, and they caused ripples of giggles with exaggerated curtsies and bows and “proper” talking. Leatha and I would give an example, and the rest would follow us.

  Mother taught us how to do easy embroidery stitches on some tea towel fabric that she had in her sewing basket. At the very proper time of three o’clock in the afternoon, Mother announced it was time for tea. She brought out her Brown Betty teapot, a yellow sugar bowl, and a tiny flower-covered cream pitcher. On the tray were seven of her delicate teacups from the precious collection that had once belonged to her mother. She passed out the demitasse cups and saucers filled with milk tea. Fingers were crooked up, and sips were taken, and we ate cookies in dainty nibbles. It was just as much fun to laugh at one another as it was to play at being ladies. No one was ready for the fun to end, but when the cast of the sun warned it was time to think about evening chores, Mother promised we would have another meeting of the Polly Pigtails Club, and while it did not seem to fit, today must have been the day to call everyone together again.

  “Let me take the note to the mothers, please, please?” Jane said. For the first meeting, Mother had written a note of invitation to each of the mothers, explaining that she was in charge and would take care of everyone. Mary Middleton, Helen Willis, and Fleetie would never allow their kids to come up the hill to our house without a direct invitation from Mother or Daddy. As free as we kids were, we could not go inside the yards of any neighbor without a definite purpose or invitation. The mountain was a different matter. We could and did roam every inch, every trail, rock overhang, and cliff. Yards were off-limits, but wild streams, rivers, and deep gullies were free for the taking.

  Mother nodded. “And what time do we want to start the meeting?” She was already writing the notes.

  “Right now,” I said. “Then we can have lunch. Let’s have a picnic and cook over a fire. We could call it hobo food.”

  Jane interrupted that notion. “We are Polly Pigtails girls, not hobos.”

  “When I finish the notes, Janey can deliver them. Rachel, you get the kindling together for a fire outside. We’ll cook tin can potatoes, and we can add some dainty sandwiches. We don’t have to be hobos to enjoy outdoor cooking. Ms. Sary Sargeant is a Cherokee, and she has cooked outdoors lots of times. No one would ever say she was a hobo.”

  Jane took the notes and folded them small enough to fit in the pocket of her pinafore. Then with her blond curls bouncing with every step, she began the long walk to invite the Polly Pigtails Club members for an afternoon of fun. She was in luck that day. The mothers said yes, and as Jane hurried to come back up the hill, she suddenly began to shriek and point.

  I was standing at the top of the drive, watching her, when she started running. I looked back down the hill and immediately saw what had scared her. Black smoke rolled out of the back of the Clement house. Geneva and the twins were in the side garden, digging potatoes, and her view of the back of the house was blocked by the poplar trees growing between the garden and the side of the house.

  Nothing in Jane’s six years had given her a warning of the danger of smoke rolling out from under the eaves of a house. Later on, as far as anybody could recollect, Janey had never seen a house fire in her life. In spite of that, the sight had sent her shrieking up the hill. She screamed for Mother all the way, and by the time she got to me, she was almost past speaking.

  She pointed down the road and pulled my hand. “Smoke, smoke. Black. Big. Smoke, smoke!”

  When Mother got to us, she swept Janey up, and for just a few seconds, we stood and looked in astonishment at the clouds of smoke coughing out of the Clements’ cabin.

  Immediately, Mother ordered me back to the house to get Logan. “Girls, sit right here and watch for me. I’ll come right back up here and get you. Do you understand me? Go now, Rachel, and get Logan.”

  I ran back toward the house as Mother tore down the hill, shrieking like a banshee. Everybody within a mile must have heard her. Geneva looked up and saw Mother tearing down the hill, but she couldn’t make out what she was saying. A sudden popping sound must have caused Geneva to jerk around toward the house. I could hear her screaming.

  “Oh god, my baby, my baby. Oh god, help me. Help me,” she screamed over and over as she tore through the front door and plunged into the blackness beyond the doorstep.

  Freddie’s crib was in the bedroom, just to the right of the front door, and Geneva ran into swirls of smoke that shrouded her as she disappeared. She must have had to feel her way to his crib. We saw them as she tore out the door and into the yard. Mother and Fleetie got there just as Geneva sailed off the front step with Freddie in her arms. Helen Willis and her four children came across the tracks and began running in and out the front door, carrying out what they could grab from the ink-black darkness.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer and ordered Logan and Jane to stay put while I ran down the long hill. I could see that Mary Middleton and her children were pumping water from the well house in the side yard. I jumped in their bucket line and helped pass full water buckets to the back door. Since I was the tallest, I went to the front of the line. Roger, the eldest Willis boy, had pushed himself inside the back screen after he had soaked the floorboards ar
ound the door, enough to let him step inside to throw buckets of water into the fiery kitchen. The floor was burning in a circle of flame, and he tried to aim the buckets of water at the base of the ring.

  Fleetie sent her girls around to our side of the house to start another line of buckets, and Nessa pushed herself inside the door with Roger. With two sets of buckets coming at them, they were able to make more headway against the fire. Huge waves of black smoke rolled out the front windows and door, and that provided enough of a wind tunnel to make it possible for Roger and Nessa to keep working in the burning kitchen.

  Geneva, Fleetie, and Mother were on the ground with the baby. As he struggled for every breath, the rush of fresh air mixed with the smoke in his lungs brought on convulsive coughing and vomiting. The two women worked with him to clear his air passages, and Fleetie picked him up and began turning herself in circles, swinging the baby in a circle to force more air into his nose and mouth.

  Mother looked back up the hill to see about Jane and Logan, but they were gone. They had run back to the house to ring the black dinner bell hanging in the turnaround. Mother brought the bell with her from Bluegrass country, and Daddy had done nothing but tease her about putting it up. With no crops worked by field hands or no lumberjacks bringing down trees, it had been hard to justify the digging and post mounting it took to secure the bell. But Mother would have it no other way. The bell was from her grandmother’s farm in Madison County, and she said seeing it hang there made her feel safer.

  Later on, we would talk about how hard it must have been for Jane to pull the rope free from the half hitch, but she did it, and with the racket she made, every person in the settlement could hear it, but they didn’t understand what it meant.

  Coburn Howard told us when he heard the bell, he came out on the porch of the store and looked across the valley. That’s when he spotted the smoke roiling up in black clouds. With one jump, he was across the porch and into his old truck. He tore up the road to the bend in the river. Cora, his wife, saw him go, but she was way too late to catch him. It only took him five minutes to cross the high bridge and go the two miles down the county road to the cluster of houses at the foot of Burl’s crossing. Jane finally stopped ringing and ran with Logan all the way down our hill to stand on the crossing. They didn’t try to cross over. Instead, they sat down on the crossties and watched us.

  Coburn pulled the truck off the road and was about to climb out when Fleetie and Geneva swooped down on him with the baby.

  “Coburn, Coburn, the baby can’t breathe. We’ve got to get him to the doctor.”

  The two women were in the truck, and Coburn had it rolling almost before the words were out of Fleetie’s mouth. Mother was moving water faster than seemed possible. Susanna and Henry were the next to arrive with almost a dozen good-sized kids in the back of Henry’s truck. With the extra hands, we were able to bring water up from the river as well as from the pump, and in less than thirty minutes, the worst of the fire was doused. Some charred embers still glowed red, and from that point, each bucket of water put the rest of the house out of jeopardy. The kitchen was destroyed, and the back bedroom was badly damaged, and everything in the cabin smelled of smoke and burning wood. Later on, people would say that Roger’s discovery of the burning ring and his hard work, in spite of the heat, saved the house.

  Henry walked around to the back steps and checked them out before he stepped inside the door of the burned-out kitchen. He called, “Roger, come around here and look at this. I want to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

  Roger was tall for his fourteen years, but every inch of him was slumped down under the shade of the poplar trees with Nessa and me. He had drained every drop of energy out of his lanky body, but with a huge effort, he pulled himself up to answer Henry. “Whatcha see, Mr. Henry?”

  “You tell me, Roj. What is in the floor there?”

  “That’s where the fire was the hottest. That’s where Nessa and me poured the most water at first. It was burning in a big ring,” said Roger.

  “What did you smell?”

  “I smelled fire, Mr. Henry, smoke and fire. It smelled like I smell now, and I expect Nessa smells the same as I do. It’s not too pretty either. She’s probably in the river a’ready trying to wash it off. She don’t take to being dirty, Nessa don’t.”

  “Well, don’t be washing it off. It smells of kerosene. I just imagine the sheriff will want to take a look at this and smell it, too.”

  “Mr. Henry, why would Geneva pour kerosene on the floor? She ought to a-knowed it would start a fire.”

  “Never you mind, Roger. Just wait around until Coburn gets back. He can use his telephone over at the store to call the sheriff. He’s going to ask you some questions about what you saw.”

  “I don’t think I want to talk to the sheriff if it’s just the same. He ain’t too friendly.”

  Henry shrugged. “It don’t matter what you think, Roger. The sheriff will get in on this. What I can’t figure is why anybody would want to burn Fred’s house, and why didn’t Geneva see whoever it was?”

  Mother came around the corner of the house, leading some of the children, and when she found me, she explained her plan to me and anyone else who might be listening. “I don’t know when Fleetie will be back, and since I have already promised the girls a club meeting, I am taking all of them up the hill.” She continued gathering up kids and was soon on her way over the crossing with all of them in tow. Logan and Jane were going to have playmates after all.

  Pretty soon, when the smoke cleared, there would be work for everyone. The cabin would have to be repaired and scrubbed from top to bottom. Helen and Mary had already begun pulling together the pieces of Geneva’s belongings scattered around the yard. Everything left in the house was smoke stained and layered with soot. The next morning, all the women in the neighborhood would build fires under a series of wash kettles and fill every clothesline in the yards up and down the road. But for now, the job was sorting and stacking and worrying about the baby.

  Chapter 28

  THE HOSPITAL

  Henry pulled himself into his truck, and Dolly climbed in on the other side. He took off down the county road to the mine to find Fred and take him to town.

  We watched them drive away, and Mother said, “Henry is a good man. I know Geneva is going to be beside herself. Fleetie will have her hands full for sure, but I suspect Henry is mostly going to see to it that Dr. Parks gets paid today. He saves every penny he can, and men who do that hate to be in debt to anyone.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “Sounds backward to me. Looks like if you are tight as Henry, you’d hold on to every penny no matter who you owe.”

  “That is a very good example of why you should spend your time trying to listen and learn instead of forming silly opinions.”

  I turned and started up the hill. I couldn’t win a battle with her if my life depended on it, and right now was not a good day to try.

  The next day, as expected, many helpers, both neighbors and those from the settlement, showed up to help Geneva and Fred deal with the results of the fire. Most of us were gathered in the front yard when Henry drove up and parked just outside the gate. Dolly stepped down from the truck and walked through the gate.

  Fleetie took her hand, and Dolly pulled her closer and wrapped her arms around her.

  Fleetie spoke almost in a whisper. “What is it, Dolly? You look like you might never smile again.”

  “On the way to town, Deputy Jackson waved us down. Just ahead, through black smoke, we could see a mine ambulance and a half-dozen men crowded around the base of the old sycamore in the dip of the road. Carl walked to the truck as Daddy stepped off the running board, and he asked Carl what was going on. Carl didn’t say anything at first as if he was having a hard time getting the words to flow around his Adam’s apple. Ay god, Henry, Hershel hit that big old sycamore, and he
is pure burned up.”

  Dolly stopped there and took a long breath before she went on. It seemed she wanted to get the telling done but dreaded doing it too. Finally, she went on.

  “Henry looked over at me and shook his head before he told Deputy Jackson about Fred Clem’s fire and the baby getting too much smoke about a half hour ago. Then Carl told Daddy and me that when Coburn drove up and couldn’t get by, the men on the picket line was already moving down the hill after they heard Hershel’s car blow. They was all here, and some of them boys pushed the truck up the bank and down the railroad to get past Hershel’s car.

  “Jackson told Daddy that Fred went with them to take the baby to town. He said the baby looked awful bad. Then those two got to talking about Hershel. Pap told Carl, ‘Me and Dolly is going to backtrack and cross over to the highway. I’ve got to get on to town. The rest of them back home will be crazy to know what’s happening with that baby. It’s a damn shame about Hershel. He’s one that’ll be missed for sure. He stood up to anybody he thought was working agin’ the law. Not many’ll do that nowadays.’

  “I saw Carl shake his head so hard, he looked like a woodpecker before he told Pap, ‘Hershel sure went up on the wrong side of somebody. They’s more’n one or two he made mad ’cause he wouldn’t never look the other way over nothing. They’s some who expects to get away with a little bootlegging and stuff now and then without no trouble. But trouble was ole Hershel’s middle name, but I’m shore gonna miss him.’”

  Dolly kept on telling us, “By the time Pap and me got to town, the ambulance driver carrying Hershel had already rolled down Main Street and turned up Central to the funeral home. We drove up Mound Street to the hospital to find Fred and Fleetie. All along the streets, there were clusters of people talking—the word traveled fast about Hershel.”

  Dolly got her breath and continued, “You can just imagine what they were saying. Around here, death is no stranger. The mines chop up men almost as fast as they can ride the mantrip, but somehow, this is different. We all pretty well knew that Hershel was a tough man in a tough time and, as Pap said, that the county depended on that straight-arrow honesty of his.”