Fleetie's Crossing

by K. Bruce Florence

  After a while, Burl skewered a minnow and flipped his line near some reeds. Daddy watched the float on the water, waiting for an early strike.

  “A man oughta fish early,” he said. “It catches ’em off guard.”

  Burl pulled out his sack of makings and curled a tobacco paper around his finger and sprinkled in some shreds. “They’s watching steady,” said Burl. “Don’t pay to get too sure.”

  I could see Daddy nod and stretch his legs past the minnow bucket. “Some say you can outsmart yourself,” he said. “A man outa think what the fish thinks.”

  “Hell, Ed. The fish don’t think. No matter what a man oughta, some fish will up-stream you no matter what you’re figuring.”

  “Lot of thinkin’ going on these days, fish or not,” Daddy answered. “Courthouse is hot with it, and a man oughta pay it some mind.”

  “Got to think about having a little money ahead before he can get upstream, just like that fish gotta spend his energy pushing agin’ the current,” Burl answered.

  Daddy reached out into the water to unsnag his line. “I’ve been thinking on getting a piece of rental property,” he said. “Lawyering has some lean days, and rent dollars coming in is good tiding over money.”

  Burl’s fishing rod nearly jumped out of his hands, and I could see him pull hard to set the hook. “By damn, it’s that big old trout. Look at that thing fly,” Burl yelled.

  “Hang on to him. It’ll make a fine supper. Fleetie’s not going to take it too easy about that fine house, but you can tell her I’ll hold on to it. It’ll always be there when she wants to come back.”

  “Don’t worry none, Ed. Fleet don’t take on too long. The kids will sulk and beller over it longer. They don’t know from nothing about all this yet.”

  I watched the men as Burl wrestled with the fish. The way it fought way longer than usual, it was bound to be a great big catch. Burl was a good hand with his fishing gear, and he handled that big old boy slick as a two-penny gambler.

  Burl let Daddy swoop him up and into the boat. “Wish all our troubles could be handled with some hard work like this trout,” said Daddy.

  “Don’t worry none, Ed. We’ve wrestled over this as long as we can. Time I made the last move.”

  I looked over at Leatha to see if she had heard what Burl just said, but she was set on getting the minnow bucket top back on it hinges and wasn’t paying her daddy any mind right then. It was a good thing. My brain was in a whirl. What was Fleetie going to take on about, and what were the kids going to start crying about? I picked up the paddle to see if I could get us closer, but Daddy started to reel in his line.

  He looked over at Burl. “I’d better be gettin’ on home since you’ve had all the luck today. Supper will be ready, and I’ve not no fish to bribe my way in.”

  “It’ll be soon, Ed. No use waitin’ around for that bunch to put in a trot line to snag us on our way out.”

  Daddy stood up in the boat. He was silent as he attached his sinker and empty hook to the rod before he took a long, almost jumping step from the boat to the bank. “Soon is good. Quick’ll be safer, but the women and kids will—”

  “Follow where they have to. Ain’t no remedy for it.”

  Daddy and I walked up the grade and over the crossing and began the climb up our long hill. He paused about ten seconds in front of the Sargeants’ new house. The dread of what I had only half-heard on the river was beginning to grow in my chest. I kept quiet too afraid to ask any questions because of what the answers might be.

  For days, I had heard Daddy telling Mother that he had not come up with any solutions that would really settle things in Burl’s favor. The miners, the operators, the murder, the fires—all of it had piled up deep trouble, and try as he would, he couldn’t seem to dig deep enough to get under it all.

  Hobe’s burial had been six weeks ago, and he was mourned over by so few; only the barest handful attended his funeral. Dorotha’s scrapes and cuts had scabbed over, but Mother told Aunt Roberta that more than likely, those scabs only trapped a fear sunk so deep, she might never be truly free of it again. Burl’s best intentions of staying out of the mines forever had helped bring him to a place even more bitter than those long years spent working underground.

  I thought of Pappy and what these mountains had meant to him. It left a heavy place way down inside of me to realize what was facing the Sargeants. It was beginning to look like Burl and all his family might be forever shut away from our valley. This was their place of safety, their home, the one place above all places that stuck down somewhere deep in their gut, so strong that nothing can ever grub it out.

  I grabbed on to a frail hope that Daddy would find a way to save them. Fleetie losing her home and me losing Leatha would be as hard a thing as losing Pappy. Daddy took my string of cat fish. I had managed to get several fish as well as a bellyful of knots and lurches. We walked up the hill in silence.

  Chapter 45

  THE CROSSING

  For near on to a month, it seemed that the dire warnings that had been churning inside me about the possibility of Leatha and her family leaving George’s County were false alarms. There was no talk at the dinner table about Burl or Hobe or even Dorotha. School for Leatha and me was both exciting and dull at the same time. We spent lots of afternoons doing homework and talking about boys. The little kids took advantage of the early fall days and played nonstop. The rope swing was about worn through, but it still held and probably would until a couple of freezes finished it off.

  Last Friday afternoon, I was trying to hurry my homework so Leatha and I would have the whole weekend for fun. After work, Daddy stepped out of the car and walked to the house using the sidewalk from the turnaround. I knew from the slump of his shoulders and the expression on his face that something bad was coming. I held the screen door open for him, and he handed me the Courier, an automatic response. I took his briefcase too, but he seemed not to notice it was gone.

  When he stepped across the threshold into the kitchen, he whispered, “Burl has a week to leave.”

  “Oh no, Daddy. Not gone, not all of them gone.”

  “If he doesn’t go, he will be arrested and eventually tried for Hobe’s murder. There’s not much evidence there, and it’s shaky enough for the commonwealth attorney to look the other way for a spell and give them time to pack up and leave the state.” His graveled voice betrayed the tears he was trying to choke back.

  Mother came into the kitchen and took one look at him and gathered him in her arms as if he were one of us kids. They stood there, holding each other for a long minute. With all the accusations around about Hobe’s death and the fires in the valley, I knew that in spite of my desperate hope, Burl was going to take his family and leave.

  My first thought was that l was going to lose Leatha, Fleetie, and the girls. For all my life, I had had two lives to live—the life up here on this mountain with Mother and Daddy and the life at the base of the mountain with my other family. I had two sets of knowing, two languages, two cultures. Being free to move between both sides of me gave me strong legs, a firm will, and enduring safety. Losing Leatha and all we were together was as empty and cold as losing Pappy. The difference though was there was no place now to be the other half of who I was.

  I knew there were other losses besides mine. The aunts and uncles, the cousins, the grandparents, and a whole valley of friends would lose a part of themselves. Families as tight as ours don’t suffer the loss of one another easily or ever think of that loss as being a natural course of things

  As I stood there in the kitchen with Daddy now leaning on Mother’s strength instead of the other way around, I could feel that he was as hurt as I was. He and Burl had run these hills as children. They had grown strong together on their way to manhood. In the fraternity of boys to men, only the rare few see their friendship grow stronger with the years.

  Now here they were
with forty years of sharing their lives about over, and there was nothing either one of them could do to stop it from happening. Even the fact that Burl had to go to save himself and his family was not enough to prevent the pain. This was a loss that would remain forever in their minds and memories. Both men had this place dug so deep in their middle that only the grave would get them shut of it.

  Mother spoke in a low voice to Daddy, “Neither Burl or Fleetie has ever lived out of this county.”

  “Katie, there is more of this going on here in this part of Kentucky than we know about. Mine work is all there is here, and it is unpredictable and dangerous. Since the war, more and more women are demanding that their men get out of the pits.”

  “Do you mean right here in George’s County?”

  “You would be surprised at how many houses in the camps are empty. Even in good times, big-machine mining is starting to cut down the number of miners that will be needed.”

  “How will they live? What will happen to them? Where are they going?”

  Daddy paused before he answered, “Indiana. Larry Windham has kin up there who will hire Burl to work on one of their farms.”

  “Larry Windham? Oh my lord, Ed, what kind of promise did you have to make to get that done?”

  “Don’t worry about it. You’re right, he’ll come knocking soon enough, but I’ll have to handle Larry later. This is the only chance Burl’s got to stay free. All the attorneys here together can’t beat the operators once they make up their minds to win. He’ll never be able to set foot back here again, but it’s better than what he would suffer behind bars for the rest of his life—that is, if somebody didn’t kill him first.”

  “Have you told them yet?”

  “No, I’ll go down directly. Burl has been expecting it, and I’d rather cut off my right arm, but there’s nothing else for it, I reckon. They are going to need as much time as we can give them to get things together and get moved.”

  In just the time it took Daddy to tell us that Leatha was leaving, my world stopped. The clocks were still ticking, and dinner was still bubbling on the stove, but after those words fell into the room, nothing I knew would ever be the same. Fleetie once said to Leatha and me, “Kids need to play. Once a young’un steps over that creek, the trail back to childhood disappears forever.” Right here in this kitchen, right now, was the creek, and I had no choice but to step over it. Neither Leatha or I could ever go back.

  “Daddy, did you try everything? Is there no hope at all?”

  “No, punkin. Burl has a new job. They all have to move to Indiana in a few days.”

  “Why? Why can’t something be done? Why can’t you do something? You always know what to do.”

  Mother stopped me. “Rachel Ramsey. How many times have you been with your Daddy and seen with your own eyes how dangerous it is when you rile up the operators and the union? Daddy has not slept for weeks worrying about this. He has tried everything human. Don’t you know how much he hates to see Burl and his family empty out that little house?”

  Daddy looked down at me and watched as tears raced down my face.

  “No, Daddy! They can’t go away. They have the new house. Who will take care of the garden and raise the corn, pick the grapes, and can the beans? Leatha is my very best friend in this whole world. Daddy, please, why are you sending them away? You can’t, you can’t!”

  “Rachel, the kids don’t know it yet, and I’m going down after supper. I ’spect Fleetie will be getting all of them ready to move real soon. Won’t you go with me?”

  Daddy waited, while I tuned up. He knew that my right foot was just before stomping. My body had gone rigid. Anger and loss fueled me, and I wanted to run and scream at a pain that hurt as much as losing Pappy.

  “Rachel, stop this right now. Daddy has done everything he could do to help Burl stay here, but it can’t happen, and you have to be strong enough not to make it harder. We are all heartbroken to see them go, but that is the way it is. It is not going to change, and crying and stomping and throwing yourself into a temper will not make it go away.”

  I turned my back on her and stormed out of the kitchen and into my bedroom. I slammed the door with all the force I could put into it. I stood against it and waited for the inevitable door-slamming punishment, but it did not come. Instead, I could hear Mother putting dinner on the table—dinner that she, Daddy, and I would mostly ignore. I took a deep breath and stepped across the threshold and back into the kitchen.

  The days that followed saw a constant parade of shocked relatives making their way to the Sargeant house. In that time and place, not many folks left the safety of the mountains and their kin. Several times, Daddy had shared with me his prediction that in not too many years, the underground mines would begin to close, and out-migration would be a familiar pattern. But today, there were only raw, painful tears.

  Both sides, those going and those staying, made promises to visit, remember, and return. But somehow, even though those were good words to hear, they had a hollow ring like the promise of a bike for Christmas that never happened.

  Early Saturday morning, Daddy woke me, and when I came to the kitchen, without a word, he poured me a once-forbidden cup of coffee. I sat at the kitchen table with him, while he counted the money he had borrowed from the bank early in the week. Larry Windham again. It seemed funny to me how Larry managed to be a part of all that happened about Burl. First, the job, and now here was the money to buy the house, borrowed from his bank. Daddy slipped the bills into the wallet I had given him for Christmas. I watched as Mother finished filling a picnic basket and covered the food with a white embroidered napkin, one of Grandmother Bertha’s that she always kept back for holidays.

  She handed me a guitar case to carry, and even though I wondered, I didn’t ask about it. Talking was hard. Silence was safer. Daddy led the way, and we went out the back door, stepped off the porch, and walked down the side path. There was an early morning fog enclosing us as we cut across the yard. I remembered the morning we found Dorotha out here. It seemed such a short time ago, but so much had happened since then.

  We made our way through the early morning dark and down the road to the Sargeant house. Burl was tying the last of Fleetie’s things onto the truck. The children were huddled on the front steps, nearly hidden by the morning shadows and fog. I could see Fleetie through the screen door, cleaning her kitchen window. She was leaving no smeared glass to shame her. Clifford and Nessa would stay in the house and bring the rest of their belongings just as soon as Clifford finished out the month at work.

  Leatha walked up the hill toward me with just as many tears running down her face as were on mine. We stood together and watched as the children began to move as silent as the stones on the mountain behind them into their places in the back of the truck. Mother took the guitar case from me, and I put my arms around Leatha. We were crying too hard to talk, and anyway, there weren’t any words that could make this better.

  Without a word, Daddy handed Burl the wallet and raised his fist in the air, and then he turned and walked up the hill.

  Mother slipped her arms around Fleetie’s strong body and held her long enough to clear her eyes of the tears she had promised not to shed. “There’s some sandwiches, fried pies, and pears in the basket. They’ll be better than the cardboard stuff they sell along the road.”

  “Law’ me, Kathleen. All that trouble. Here I am, leavin’ beholden to you again. Can’t never seem to get even.”

  Mother reached down and picked up the black case and placed it in Fleetie’s arms. Choking back the pain I knew was tearing at her throat, Mother whispered, “Ed found a luthier over on Pine Mountain who put it back together, good as new.”

  Fleetie opened the case and stroked her hand down the strings of the rosewood guitar, listening to their soft hum. Fleetie did not raise her head at first. She just stood there with her hand on the strings. There were
no notes, just silence.

  “Oh, Fleetie, how I wish you did not have to leave us.”

  “Well, Kathleen, it’s best. It’s been a right wearying spell around here. This’ll be better for Burl.”

  “I want it better for you too. Promise to take care of yourself and write me?”

  Fleetie nodded. She probably didn’t trust herself to speak again.

  I walked with Leatha to the back of the truck and helped her up. She put her hands on the side of the truck bed and I put mine on top of them. I didn’t really understand what might happen to Burl if they stayed. I only knew that when the truck rolled down the hill, the best of my childhood would roll with them.

  Fleetie closed the guitar case, walked around to the back of the truck, put it beside Dorotha, and then climbed back into the front seat. Dorotha wrapped her arms around the case as Burl released the brake. I felt Leatha’s hands slip away as the tires moved a little faster, and the truck rolled beyond me.

  The porch light was on at Hobe’s, and I could see Mary standing on the front porch as the truck rolled past. Her arms were crossed, and her white apron was wrapped around them. As the truck made the turn at the foot of the hill, the Willises were there in the headlights. They stood very still on their steps. Helen waved, but the children were motionless.

  When the truck faded into the dark morning, I heard the bump of tires as it hit the steel rails and, for the last time, rolled over the crossing. The porch light went dark, and Mother turned and disappeared into the mist at the top of the hill. She mourned like the biblical Rachel keening for the children of Israel until way up in the morning.