Fleetie's Crossing

by K. Bruce Florence

  Dolly got quiet and looked away. It was almost as if we were not right there in front of her. Then in a soft voice, she added, “It makes me shudder to think on what might happen. This strike has proved it could turn violent at any time, and now, with Hershel gone, who is going to protect our men? It surely doesn’t look good.”

  Dolly went on. “When Pap pulled into the curb, we climbed the flight of steps leading to the front door of that old soot-stained hospital. Inside the front door, we found Fred sitting on a wooden bench, looking lost as a sheared lamb. Henry sat down beside him and waited for Fred to speak. Fleetie came out of one of the rooms and walked toward us. I don’t think she even knew we were there. She looked straight at Fred.

  “‘Hit’s bad, Fred. Geneva is asking for you to come in there with her. They got the baby in an oxygen tent, but he don’t know where he is.’

  “Fred stood up, and you could see he had to almost force himself to walk down the hall. You could just tell he was fighting every cell of his body to keep from running out the front door. Fred faced Japs on Iwo Jima, but today was more than a man should have to stand.

  “When Fleetie sat down by the two of us without saying hello, I asked her, ‘What do you think, Fleetie? Is the little’un going to make it?’

  “She didn’t and couldn’t answer, and her silence told it all.

  “‘Oh lordy, Fleet. That pore little thing. He’s never had a half a chance.’

  “Fleetie stared at the floor. She twisted her white handkerchief, smoothed and folded it and twisted it again. ‘I helped birth him, Dolly. He done so good to hang on during all that flood with Geneva not able to get him born. It took something out of that baby. He ain’t really caught up yet. Now…’ Fleetie stared at her hands, seeing the handkerchief for the first time. She rolled it up and folded it into the cuff of her sleeve.

  “We sat there all night. It didn’t seem right for Fleetie to have to be alone. It was as hard a time as I have ever lived. Waiting for the bad news about that baby, I tell you. It will stay with me as long as I am on this earth.” Dolly fell silent as if the telling had hurt her all over again.

  Silence fell on all of us standing there in a yard now filled with damaged things from the burned house. We began to move back to the work at hand. This was something we could do in a world left very empty of things that would help Geneva and Fred.

  As the day wore late, Mother walked down the hill with the little kids following her. She was pulling the red wagon loaded with a laundry basket full of food, canned goods, and fresh-baked bread. I gathered up the little kids, and Leatha and I were about to walk them to their yards when Daddy drove up with Fleetie. She got out of the front seat and stood by the car and shook her head. Without a word, Mother moved to wrap her arms around Fleetie. Words were useless, but soft moans from both women floated above them and faded into the leaves screening the mourning dove perched on the branch not far above their heads.

  Chapter 29

  TWO FUNERALS

  When I was little, a funeral seemed to me to be a time when the grown-ups were sad, all the women carried food to the hurting family, and even little kids wore black clothes. Beyond that, I didn’t understand much about what was going on, but losing the baby gave me an understanding of the pain and misery of a funeral. In fact, having two funerals in one day was rare even in our rowdy county, and this was not about people from far away.

  I knew both of them. Both the baby and Hershel were far too young to die, and neither deserved to have their life taken away from them. Hershel had been at my house many times, drinking coffee with Daddy and talking man talk about what was going on in the county. He teased Logan and called him Short Stuff, and when he laughed, you could hear him all the way out in the yard. I was in the room when little Freddie was born. He seemed a part of my family, more like a little brother who just happened to live down the hill with the Clems.

  Both funerals were held on the same day, but there were no other similarities. Dignitaries from three counties and as far away as Frankfort followed Hershel’s black hearse. Even Time magazine detailed the life of this fallen hero, and the funeral was attended by hundreds of people.

  At Ross’s Point, a few dozen relatives and friends carried Freddie’s casket up the steep mountain path to the Clem family graveyard. Marion Howard, Burl’s first cousin, had carved and crafted the miniature coffin from his store of aged poplar. I am sure Marion never shed a tear; instead, he let the carved pictures created by his hands say his goodbye. The casket was sprinkled with carved images of baby toys, flowers, and a winding vine that wrapped completely around the middle of the tiny coffin.

  The day before, Leatha and I found the yellow baby gown and quilt Mother had taken to Geneva’s shower. It hurt to remember that Mother had told Geneva it was all right to save it back if she wanted to. It was wrapped and stored in the cedar chest, so it was protected from the smoke and soot damage that ruined many of Freddie’s baby clothes. Fleetie sent Dorotha and Nessa across the river in Burl’s boat to deliver the quilt to Marion. Without Fleetie telling us, we knew it was to line the casket. I handed Fleetie the tiny gown so she could take it to Geneva. When Fleetie opened the screen door and stepped out on the porch, we could hear Geneva crying all the way from the porch swing.

  “I never put this on him, even one time. What in God’s name was I saving it for? Why was I such a fool to think I should save a gown when I couldn’t even save him?”

  Painful, racking sobs slapped my ears. I remembered the same sounds when Pappy died.

  Fleetie didn’t say a word. I ached for her, for Fred, and for all of us. But as Fleetie told us so often, there was nothing to do but suffer what came. It seemed so cruel to me that Geneva would have to work through the pain pretty much in her own time and in her own way. When I lost Pappy, I found out that grief couldn’t be diluted or comforted. The only cure for that much loss was to let it die out on its own, and nothing but the passing of time would do that.

  The service for the baby was to be at the graveside. At least Geneva and Fred would be spared having to endure the church preaching before the burial. As we all walked up the steep mountain to the family cemetery, you could see that Geneva and Fred were moving in a haze of pain. They carried their twin toddlers and refused when others offered to help. I guess that they didn’t even feel their aching arms. The toddlers were heavy, but those two were the only babies they had left.

  Preacher Marsh held a service of prayer, scripture, and careful words of comfort. Fleetie and her girls, standing a few paces from the group, sang a soft chorus of “Amazing Grace.” George Willis and Henry Sargeant lowered the tiny coffin deep into the rocky ground, and each person filed by and dropped an offering of flowers, soil, or green leaves down into the shadowed grave.

  As a clan, Fleetie and Burl’s people never showed a whole lot of what they were feeling. Granny Sary said often, “The swings of hardship have splintered seats.” They had, for generations, taught themselves to expect the pain of loss, hard work, short lives, and little promise. They laughed and sang and loved in huge gulps, but they didn’t whine in public.

  Mother was the only outlander on the mountain that morning, and she and I witnessed an outpouring of grief so profound, Mother said she feared for the health of several of them. I had never witnessed keening and had no idea how intense the suffering could be. I knew that for the rest of my life, the memory of those sounds would stay with me. I had heard the Bible story of Rachel weeping for her children. I wondered that day if she felt as sad as Geneva and her kin as they stood high on that mountain by Freddie’s tiny grave.

  As the last flower was dropped into the grave, Geneva, Fleetie, and the two grandmothers went rigid, arms up, eyes shut, and from the depths of their inner souls, rolled moans of agony and mourning. It was intense; it seemed to imprint the very boulders surrounding the small graveyard. They were tended by the second circle of women, all near re
latives, crying aloud as they helped Geneva and Fleetie, protecting them from falling or other injuries. The third circle included the older female children and close neighbors. They served as a wall of privacy for the inner circles’ grief in case one of the stricken women tore at her clothes.

  The grieving men, heads bowed, did not even allow themselves tears, a custom that struck me as a cruelty as terrible to bear as the keening. Almost as if they had heard a clock strike, the men began to move into the inner circle and, one by one, took the hand or arm of one of the grieving women and began the walk back down the mountain.

  Fred bent over and picked up the shovel. He worked alone and, shovelful after shovelful, filled the small grave. Geneva sat slumped up against her grandmother’s stone in a misery as complete as a human being can suffer. Mother, Leatha, and I waited for them under the big oak tree near the path, close enough if they needed us and far away enough to keep out of their sight. Some things hurt so bad, you don’t want a soul around you.

  After a while, Daddy took Mother’s arm, and I followed as we moved to make our way down the path. At the foot of the hill, Daddy walked over to Burl, and while I could not hear him, I could well imagine that Daddy’s voice was as gentle as the cooing of a mother pigeon. In a very few minutes, he opened the door for Mother, and we drove to Baxter.

  We parked at the Coal Monument in the middle of the crossroads and waited to join the end of Hershel’s funeral procession on its way to the cemetery. As the procession passed, Judge Harrison spotted us, and he slowed his car and let Daddy in the line. We were only about a mile from the cemetery, but somehow, it seemed to take a very long time to get there. As we came nearer the gate, we could see the people lined up on both sides of the road. All the faces were grim. No one waved or even acknowledged seeing the cars move by.

  The mass of mourners, shoulder to shoulder, filled all the open space in the hilly cemetery. Uniformed officers formed an honor guard of about a hundred men, fifty on each side. They stood from the cemetery gate up the steep hill to the Garber lot. Hershel’s widow walked beside Buford, Hershel’s brother. She, along with her two grown children, led the rest of the large family through the guard and up the hill. Muffled drums beat a slow cadence as Hershel’s deputies lifted the flag-draped casket and carried it through the aisle of honor guards. As the men carried the heavy casket up the hill, one by one, they were replaced by uniformed men who stepped from the honor guard and shouldered the burden. At the brow of the hill, a mound of flowers had been arranged to form a bower, and the silver gray casket was lowered by slow inches to rest there.

  A parade of men rose to speak of Hershel’s bravery, his service to his country, his love of family, and his deep concern for the safety and well-being of the citizens of his county. The honey tones of a contralto threw out somber notes of “Wayfaring Stranger.” The song seemed caught in the streams of afternoon sun as it echoed off the mountain. The notes of “Taps” choked everyone but the bugler. Precise folds, snapped to a silent beat, reduced the flag to a frozen tri-corner, never again to fly against a sunlit sky or catch a trailing breeze. Faces were frozen, breathing was shallow, and human sound was trapped under the weight of ceremony and sadness. The price we would all pay for life laid itself anew on each shoulder that day. Some deaths were that hard, while others seemed to slip by with the evening hush.

  Daddy told us he knew the price the county would have to pay for this murder would be heavy. Hershel was not the saint his eulogizers made him out to be, but Daddy knew without Hershel, both he and the rest of the county would feel the void.

  Hershel and Daddy had paired up long ago, each feeding a mutual need in the other. Hershel owned a small taxi service and had learned long ago that a taxi could move up and down the hollers and creeks unnoticed. Daddy, as lawyer and peace maker, and Hershel, as law enforcer, kept a finger on the pulse of the county. It was on one of their forays deep into moonshine country that Daddy convinced Hershel to run for sheriff.

  Hershel was naturally shy, and it made electioneering hard for him, but Daddy, who never had a shy minute in his life, ran the campaign, and the combination of the two personalities proved to be unbeatable. Daddy had not foreseen Hershel’s total dedication to the job. Enforcing the law came as natural for Hershel as reading it did for Daddy. He soon began to take every broken law as a personal affront and every law breaker as a personal enemy threatening the peace and safety of his people.

  Not even a year into Hershel’s first term, Daddy began to warn him to watch his back. Hershel had made himself a target and was not in the least shy about presenting it in defiance against any side of an argument that was likely to break the law. He was no less threatening to union men as he was to operators, bootleggers to ’shiners, or thieves to murders. He had decided he wanted a clean county, and there would be hell to pay if he found someone on the outside of that.

  Both deaths weighed on Daddy’s conscience—Hershel’s, a result of his elected position, and Fred’s baby, victim to a strike Daddy had not been able to defang. Standing in the second hillside cemetery, shaded against the August sun, his mood more matched the widow’s weeds than the summer day.

  In a time and place where sudden death is no stranger, hardship a constant visitor, and violence a near cousin, the deaths of Hershel and Freddie might have seemed unfortunate but not that remarkable. And that was true, except for the unexpected glare of publicity focusing on the county. No one outside the mountain community had paid any attention to the strike until someone killed Hershel. Suddenly, reporters flooded the county, and newspapers and radios began to tell the story of the brave sheriff and his martyr’s death.

  The truth of the story evaporated with the need to get copywritten and distributed on a deadline. Accusations flew as free as locust leaves in August. The union leaders and the operators pushed the other to a quick settlement. Enough blood had been spilled to scare both sides into temporary sanity. Months of stalemate were swept away as quickly as a mountain tide falls back into its banks.

  With the shaky agreements signed, an uneasy peace settled into the valley. Hershel’s brother Buford was appointed sheriff until the next election. Sweetheart deal was whispered. Collusion was hinted in the barber shops and the commissary, but no one was of a mind to go stirring the pot. The mines were going to be running, and most of the valley figured that ought to be enough. It might have been enough too, except for ancient traditions that had settled in the vein and sinew of the people who trusted clan more than law and who were bound to exact a price in their own way and in their own time.

  Chapter 30

  BOATS ON THE RIVER

  Ever since the flood, none of us had seen much of Hobe. He walked the picket line with the others, but he stayed away from Coburn’s store, and he stopped leaning on Burl’s gate with his fishing pole in hand, dropping a broad hint to use Burl’s boat.

  On the first Sunday morning after the baby was buried, the small group of adults and kids from our side of the river gathered for the two-mile walk up the railroad to Sunday school and church at Poor Fork Church of Christ, Noninstrumental. While we waited for everyone to gather before we started, Hobe walked down the steep path in front of his wife Mary and her sister Ginny as they corralled their houseful of children. As soon as they reached the group, he left the railroad track and made his way down to the riverbank. When Dorotha saw him, she turned her back and stood behind Nessa and Leatha. She had not returned to Hobe’s since the night of the flood, and she had never said a word about what had driven her across the hill in the driving rain the night of the flood. If anybody else had been paying attention to her, they would have seen the deep frown and frightened look flash across her face same as I did.

  Mary and Ginny were the last to join us, and I had stood around about as long as I could stand it, so I hurried the kids along, and soon, we were way out ahead of the women. Fleetie and Geneva did not go that morning. As we made our way through the vall
ey, other women and children joined us. Sunday school was promised for this particular Sunday, and since we did not always have that treat, the kids were more excited than usual. It was a lot more fun for the kids when there were papers to color, a craft to make, and a Bible story. Preacher Marsh had a circuit. If his schedule placed him at Ross’s Station early on Sunday morning, there was only time for preaching, but if he was going to be delayed, then Sunday school was planned to fill the time until he arrived. The winter circuit was less dependable, with services held only once a month at best. Snow and ice could close the doors for weeks on end.

  Summer was the best time for the congregation to gather, and Sunday school was one of the favorite highlights. A baptizing service in the river came in late August following the seven-night preaching revival. Some of the families brought picnic baskets and stayed after the baptizing, and the end of the summer meant it was time for the all-day meeting with dinner on the ground. Today, some of the women were meeting during Sunday school to plan the meal and recreation for the all-day event. It was the best attended service of the year. Few men attended church service with any regularity, but hold a “dinner on the ground,” and you could count on every man in valley from sixteen to eighty showing up. It was also the day Preacher Marsh set aside for deacons’ and elders’ meetings.

  All the work necessary to keep the church going fell to the women, yet only the men were allowed to make policy and delegate authority. No one seemed to mind. It had always been that way, and no one saw any reason to change it—no one besides my Mother. She totally refused to go with us, even though you couldn’t beat her for Bible reading and praying.