Fleetie moved like she had a fist in the middle of her back, and she wasn’t really talking to us. It was more that she was talking to Dorotha, who was somewhere on this mountain, and Fleetie wanted her back and safe at home now.
“Dork, Dork, even if you’re my worrisome girl, I still can’t bear you being gone. None of my kids are lazy, but Dork, you can outwork all of them, and you’re the only one of the kids who can understand and is good to your daddy. Dork, you have always been plumb skittery, but since the flood, you never seem to have a good day. Is what’s eatin’ at you, driven you right up this mountain? I’m coming. Wait for Mommy. We’ll be there.”
Fleetie pushed away the low-hanging poplar branches that covered the path into the old still site, and as she did, we heard a soft whimper, much like a hurt kitten. Right in front of us, Fleetie pointed out where someone had broken through the tangled brush cover. She stepped around a huge silver maple that blocked her view, and then she stopped.
I saw Leatha try to scream, but no sound would come out of her mouth. I could not breathe or move or think. Nothing in the grisly scene in front of me would come into focus. There was no beginning, no place in my head for seeing a dead neighbor and a broken Dorotha, who was maybe dead too.
Fleetie grabbed Leatha’s arm, and Leatha grabbed me as we stood, unable to move for the first few seconds. Fleetie began a low dirge that came from somewhere deep, deep inside her. “Lord God, no, no, no. Let me help her. Don’t take her, Lord. No, no, no.”
Over and over, she repeated the same words. She pulled away and took the first slow steps to Dorotha. My insides shook, and it hurt to look, yet I couldn’t bear to look away. If Dorotha was alive, only the barest thread was holding her on this side of death. Fleetie backed into the maple tree and slammed her open palms again the rough bark and rubbed them hard up and down. She created enough pain to startle her mind and body back so she could think again. She shook her head viciously, and then we could see her eyes clear away the last of the shadows hiding the truth from her.
A dead Hobe was of no concern to Fleetie. She did not even look in his direction. A living Dorotha, injured and bleeding, was all she had room for at the moment. She stepped over Hobe and knelt beside Dorotha. I couldn’t bring myself to step over him, and Leatha and I walked around the outside of the fire ring and came up on the other side of Dorotha, lying there as still as I had ever seen her.
“Can you hear me, Dork? It’s Mommy. You’ve done gone and broke your arm. I got to wrap a limb to it so I can get you down off’en this mountain. It’ll hurt bad when I move it. You hearin’ me, Dork?”
There was no movement or sound from her, and Fleetie looked around. “Leatha, Rachel, see that rotten barrel on its side? You two pull me some staves from that ring. Maybe they’re not all too rotted. I need something to use as a splint to move this here broken arm.”
As we jumped to grab the staves, Fleetie sat down and braced her feet against Hobe’s side and rolled him over. She jerked his shirt up from the belt and grabbed the side seam and ripped out the back of his shirt and tore it into strips. She slipped her fingers under the broken arm and lifted it just enough to push the stave under it. As she wrapped the shirt strips to secure the arm, Dorotha began to moan soft, mewing sounds just loud enough to hear. Her weak response frightened us even more, and Leatha and I sat on the ground beside Dorotha and began rubbing her feet and legs. Leatha had tears streaming down her face. Dorotha must have been feeling tremendous pain with the wrapping and securing work that Fleetie was doing, but she seemed barely aware of it.
“Oh, Lord, Lord. She’s near gone. Help me, oh, Lord, help me hold on to her. Dorotha, Dorotha, listen to me. Open them eyes now, girl. You hear me? Open them eyes. Talk to me, Dorotha, or I swear I’ll whoop you clear to Sunday. Dorotha . . .”
Fleetie’s cries echoed down the mountain. Fred was circling back to the old still, and he hurled himself through the underbrush and raced around the giant maple.
“Oh my god, Fleetie. She’s alive?”
“Fred, where’d you come from? Hobe is long gone. Dorotha has been beat near to death. We’ve got to pack her down the mountain.”
“Burl and them others is trailing up Gaton Creek. I’ll cut across up here and get ’em to help us. We need something to lift her on so we can carry her flat down to my truck. Here’s my knife. While I’m gone, cut some of them saplings. We can tie them together with some vines when I get back.”
He handed her his bowie knife, and without looking at Hobe’s body, he made his way around the maple and began to cross the ridge just above the still site.
Fleetie moved to the edge of the clearing and bent a slender birch to the ground. Leatha and I held it, while she slashed it across the middle of the bend. She cut five more of them, and each one snapped apart with a loud crack. Cutting and pulling, we trimmed each sapling of its branches. Fleetie spotted a dead maple limb low enough for her to cut off the tree and stout enough to hold some weight.
She laid the branch over a rock jutting out of the ground, and using the rock as a fulcrum, we held down one end, and she stepped on the other. It broke cleanly, and we gathered all the trimmed wood and took it back to the fire ring to lay out a small litter next to Dorotha’s still form. Fleetie took what was left of Hobe’s shirt and tore it into strips and lashed each of the saplings to the two pieces of maple, weaving a makeshift stretcher together. When she finished, she placed it beside Dorotha just as we heard voices filtering through the trees.
Burl was in front of the group and pushed his way past the underbrush and low-hanging branches. He stepped from behind the huge maple and stopped dead still. He seemed as shocked at the sight in front of him as we had been.
“Ay god! We got us a real crazy roaming this here mountain. Why’d he try to kill Dork? Hobe’s been needin’ killing, but looks like we got us a baby killer too.”
“We got to get her down to the house, Burl. She’s real bad off. She hain’t hardly breathing. Send one of them boys running ahead to Ed’s so some of them can call Dr. Parks. Her head is bad hurt, and she’s hardly stirred since I found her,” said Fleetie.
Roger Willis, standing just inside the clearing, said, “I’ll go to Ed’s, Fleetie. I’m gone.” He disappeared into the overgrowth. We could hear his feet bounding down the rocky hillside as he zigzagged his way past trees, brush, and boulders.
Fred and Burl went to their knees and slipped their hands under Dorotha’s limp body and lifted her enough to allow Fleetie to slide the makeshift stretcher under her. Speaking more to himself than any of us, he said, “I’m telling you, Fred. Someone’s going to pay hell for this one. Ain’t nobody safe when somebody takes after them that’s no more than babies. God, what a mess.”
Fred and Roger took one end of the makeshift stretcher and Burl and Fleetie the other. Leatha and I followed. It’s not often that you go down a mountain as slowly as you climb up, but today, progress down was as slow and as careful as the carriers could make it. But no matter how easy they tried to make their way, Dorotha never once stopped her soft moaning. In a way, it was comfort to hear her because we knew she was still alive as we made slow progress down the side of that mountain.
Fleetie wouldn’t let Dr. Parks take Dorotha to the hospital. Everybody around the valley was suspicious of the hospital. Coal operators financed it, and miners were seldom admitted, but Mother listened to every word Dr. Parks said and carried out his orders. In spite of all the careful nursing, Dorotha was unconscious for two weeks. Her face and head were so swollen, she was almost unrecognizable. Fleetie, Geneva, and Mother took turns sitting at her bedside, and except for an occasional soft moan, there was almost no response from her. I would relieve Mother so she could go home for a while to see about Jane and Logan. Leatha and I would sit there, watching Dorotha and listening to the talk in the living room.
For the next two days, several groups of serious-faced men u
p traveled and down the same steep path, searching for clues that would identify the man who had attacked Hobe and Dorotha. Hobe’s body was wrapped in an old mine tarp and carried down the mountain on the back of one of his mules.
Currents of suspicion and blame swirled up and down the valley. Rumors and downright lies grew as thick as wild onions. Tale after tale was told by people who did not know what they were talking about, and the sheriff seemed like he was haunting the place. I kept my mouth shut, which was amazing. It was the biggest story I had ever lived through, but Dorotha’s injuries squelched any desire to draw attention my way.
It was a long two weeks, and all the strangeness was beginning to feel almost normal. The sheriff’s car made countless trips up and down the county road as he questioned, examined, and, for long periods of time, just parked below the point, where he could get a full view of the river. No one could figure out what he was doing there, but no one was about to ask either.
On the fourteenth morning after we found Dorotha, Geneva was asleep in the high-backed rocker where she spent the long night keeping watch. As she told us later, daylight fell across the room from the small window above the bed, and Dorotha opened her eyes and pulled up on her elbow.
She gave Geneva a long puzzled look. “Gen, whatcha doing here?”
At first, Geneva did not answer. Her hands moved down the arms of the rocker as she struggled to shake off the deep sleep.
“Gen, what’s wrong? Whatcha doin’ here? Where’s Fred and them twins?”
Then she caught a glimpse of her battered arm and pulled up the sleeve of her gown and then stared at the heavy cast holding the other.
Shaking off the end of sleep, Geneva jumped up. “Fleetie, come quick. Oh lordy, Fleetie. She’s awake. She’s plumb awake.”
Chapter 43
FRED’S VISIT
About a week later at dinner, Mother complained to Daddy about the sheriff’s badgering Dorotha day after day. She got on a good head of steam and was preaching a strong sermon to Daddy about how ridiculous it was for a grown man to keep bothering that child. Right in the middle of her argument, Fred and Burl walked up on the back porch.
As far as I could remember, Fred had never been to our house. A worry line nudged its way across Mother’s forehead. Daddy walked out on the porch, and after a few words, the three men walked across the backyard and turned to the small orchard at the side of the house.
I got up from the table, ignoring Mother, who mumbled something about aching to be excused, and went to my room. I wasn’t about to miss out on what in the world brought Fred over the crossing and all the way up the hill to our house. My bedroom was on the orchard side of the house, and as soon as they passed my window, I pushed it open. There, hidden behind the white organdy curtain, I could hear them as clear as a rain crow.
“Ed, buddy, Coburn come to the house tonight and said he’s heard tell at the store that the sheriff is about to arrest Burl for Hobe’s killing. You know Burl ain’t never killed nobody, but according to Coburn, they found evidence up there that makes it look like Burl was there. They tell they found his hat and that old brown jacket he used to wear huntin’.”
“Hell, Fred, if that’s all they’ve got, you got nothing to worry about,” said Daddy. “Everybody around here knows that Dorotha wore that stuff ever’ chance she got. What else are they basing this on? Or do you know?”
“Some of them union boys is telling that Hobe was working for the operators,” said Fred, “trying to break the strike. The story they tell is that Burl found out and killed Hobe for going agin’ his own in the strike.”
“That’s not going to stand up either, Fred. Every union man in the county would have the same motive. If this is all they’ve got, we can give them a good run for their money,” said Daddy.
“They’s more,” said Burl. “We know who killed him, and before the law gets wind of it, it’s just as well they think it was me. You said they didn’t have enough anyhow. Shouldn’t be much of a trick for you to get me cleared. By that time, they’ll be something else holdin’ their interest.”
“Whoa, buddy, listen to me. If you really do know who did this, you can’t tell me. I’m a sworn officer of the court. I could lose my license to practice law if I obstruct justice by letting them try an innocent man. Besides that, damn it, you are taking a terrible chance with this. Trials can be unpredictable. Just because a man is innocent doesn’t always mean the jury will see it that way. With this one, the jury could be packed against you. The operators are a powerful bunch, and money talks big. Juries have been bought before, and you could be hauled off to Eddyville for life. Think, man, what would happen to Fleetie and the kids? You’ve seen how pitiful the miners’ widows are. It’d kill you to see them suffering for something this empty.”
“I have to fight it out, Ed,” said Burl. “There ain’t nothing else for it. For what Hobe done, dying was too good for him. They’s more tales bein’ told about what happened up on that mountain than a conjure woman could ravel out. But I’m here to tell you Hobe beat Dork near to death. She don’t know what happened, but by god, I know she’d be dead if somebody had not went at him like they did. Let ’em all think what they want to think. People is going to get hurt a sight more than me and Fleet if this comes down agin’ ’em. ’Sides, Ed, I never seen nothing you couldn’t wrestle to suit you when you got your back up. It’s bad, but that’s the way of it.”
Daddy didn’t say anything for the longest time. I looked out the window, thinking they had walked away, when Daddy said, “Fred?”
“Leave him be, Ed. He don’t know nothin’. If you push him, he’ll just lie. Fred don’t have a honest bone in his body. Just let it lay right here.”
Fred dropped his head and never looked up, even when Daddy was talking to him.
“The operators are afraid of you, Burl. They know every miner in these parts would walk into black damp if you asked them to. The operators to a man all think that job at Windham’s is just a cover for what you are really doing. Whoever heard of a man making a living farming in coal country? They are afraid of what you can do, and if they want to get rid of you bad enough, I might be able to make a deal with them to put the pressure on the commonwealth attorney to drop the case. But they won’t do it cheap. It’ll mean they’ll force you to pack out of here for good. This is home, Burl, and you’ve never been far away from your kin. During the war, I wanted to be back here a whole lot worse than I wanted to kill Germans. I’m telling you it’s a heavy price.”
“They ain’t nothin’ here, Ed. The mines is a mess. If they don’t kill you right out, you die a slow death by just breathing all that dust and watching your young’uns grow up with nothing. If I have to go, I can probably stay about half drunk enough not to miss my people and ground that don’t go straight up. They’s nothing else for it. Make your deal if you can. Fleetie and I will just have to strap it on. This trouble ain’t gonna get no better,” said Burl.
“Ah lordy, boys. I’ll be going to town in the morning, but I tell you now, we’ve come to a place a man would hope never to be. Hobe is dead, and there’s no way this is going to end good. I’ll see some people, but somehow, it has to be squared out, and we’re all going to feel it sure as we’re standing here.”
The three men fell silent in the orchard, and all I could hear was the soft hum of bees working the fallen apples. Fred and Burl turned and walked through the orchard to the road just as a whip-poor-will started his song. Daddy didn’t move.
“I’ve heard you singing on this mountain all my life, but I’ve never seen you yet. I think you’re nothing but a ghost bird,” Daddy said to no one, unless you count the shadowy bird. He stooped down and picked up a speckled winesap apple and rubbed it hard against his thigh. He stared at it for a long time and finally dropped it in his pocket and turned to walk back to the house.
Chapter 44
GONE FISHING
A week after Fred and Burl’s visit, Leatha and I were seining for minnows by the riverbank when Daddy and Burl walked down the bank to push off Burl’s rowboat. Daddy waved at us, and with his rod and reel proper on his shoulder, he stepped over the bow.
“Going fishing, Daddy?” Of course, it didn’t look like he was about to drive off to work, but sometimes, you have to ask a dumb question before you can jump right in and ask an even dumber one. Since Leatha and I had enough minnows to bait our cane poles, all we needed was permission to take Burl’s new skiff out. We were forbidden to go fishing unless we asked an adult.
“Do you reckon Leatha and I can fish out of the skiff if we stay in eyeshot, while you and Burl are fishing?” I knew the answer would be no, but sometimes, you have to ask anyway, just in case.
“I ’spect you can. But mind to stay close to the bank. Don’t go near that good trout rock. There’s no catfish over there anyway. Don’t be making a commotion squealing and giggling. Burl and I have business to discuss. Hear me?”
Leatha punched me. Neither one of us could believe our luck.
“Answer him before he changes his mind,” said Leatha.
“We are looking for sunk logs. We couldn’t hook a trout if we wanted to, which we don’t.”
The men pushed off, and Leatha and I put the minnow bucket and the poles in the skiff. She climbed in, and I gave the little boat a hard push and jumped hard to land in the boat and not the water. It set up a rocking motion because of my not-so-graceful leap, and Leatha had to catch the minnow bucket, or we would have had minnows flopping all over the bottom of the skiff.
There was enough current to move us along slow enough to let us troll the bank for hidden catfish. In about an hour, we had caught two nice fish, enough for one family. If we didn’t catch any more, we would draw straws, but since the fish were biting pretty good, we weren’t worried about straws. Since we had to stay where the men could see us, we could hear most of what they said. Water carries sound, real especially in our creek with the overhanging trees spreading so wide, they almost make a tunnel over the water.
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