by Ninie Hammon
The phone jangled.
That’s what had awakened him. Carter sat up and swung his legs off the bed to the floor and shook his head, trying to get his breathing under control so he could talk. Trying to get the face of his raging father out of his head!
But the image stubbornly refused to fade. The fire-breathing giant in the pulpit had focused those flaming eyes on him, seated alone in the front pew of that church in Stinkin’ Creek Hollow, where his father had pulled a snake out of a basket during a service for the first time. And where he did the same thing years later—for the last time. The church had burned to the ground, struck by lightning three days after his father’s funeral. For a long time, Carter’d believed his father had sent the lightning bolt to reduce the church where he died to ashes. Sometimes, he still believed it.
The phone rang again and Carter snatched the receiver and barked, “What!”
“Sounds like I woke you up.”
“Ya think!”
“It ain’t that early! You city boys may get to sleep all day, but I couldn’t wait till noon to call or I wouldn’t have the phone to myself.” The only pay phone in Sadlerton was on the outside wall next to the front door of Bennett’s Five and Dime. The man on the other end of the line lowered his voice. “We got trouble. Campbell trouble.”
Carter ran his left hand through his close-cropped blond hair in an unconscious gesture everyone who knew him would have recognized. It was Carter’s frustration gesture. His annoyance gesture. His brow furrowed, and twin pleats appeared at the bridge of his nose between his eyebrows, making his thin, angular face seem care-worn and severe.
Carter Addington had cold, sculptured, patrician good looks. His eyes were dark blue and seemed to change color with his mood. His face, long and lean, had a strong jaw and perfectly shaped nose. It had been perfectly shaped, that is, until it came into close personal contact with Riley Campbell’s fist the day Riley’s gang of thugs beat him almost to death for crossing clan lines—a McCullough daring to take up with a Campbell girl. Dating Piper had landed Carter in the hospital for three days. But it’d been worth it. Oh, my yes, it’d been worth it, all right! The broken nose had healed, leaving only a slight twist as a reminder. But the broken heart had never healed. The wound was as raw now as it’d been eleven years ago when she’d broken up with him.
“What kind of Campbell trouble?”
“I been hearing for a right smart while that the Campbells was gonna try their hand at the shine bidness.”
“What?” Carter was incredulous.
“I seen Zeke ever’ day for a week up Blood Creek.”
Jesse had Carter’s attention now. Jesse was his cousin and was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was dependable and loyal. And he knew how to keep his mouth shut about his partnership with Carter in their joint moonshine operation.
“You think he knows?” Carter asked.
“That we got a still hid up there? Naw. What I think’s he’s decided to set up one of his own.”
It made perfect sense. The springs in that hollow ran cold and pure, which is why Carter had put one of his own stills there three years ago.
“If’n he don’t know we got business up there, it ain’t gonna be long ’fore he trips over it looking for his own spot. I figure he needs to be discouraged from poking around.”
“Give me a couple of days to think about it, and I’ll get back to you,” Carter said.
“Don’t take too long a’ponderin’ ’bout it. That boy’s meddlin’ could bring a world of hurt down on our heads.”
“I said I’ll handle it!”
Carter hung up without bothering to say goodbye. What a way to start the day. He stood up and stretched. Tall and slender, Carter’d been called graceful by sports writers who could find no other word to describe the effortlessness with which the six-foot, six-inch point guard maneuvered a basketball down a court, dodging defenders without breaking a sweat before he pulled up short and nailed a perfect jump shot. He’d been All-American at Duke his senior year—they’d called him the Demon Hillbilly, and he’d pretended then like he’d been pretending his whole life that it didn’t offend him to be referred to as a hillbilly.
Carter stepped to the window that displayed the city stretched out below his tenth-floor apartment and considered his options. His shine business was small—by design. When Jesse’d approached him about forming a partnership, Carter saw the opportunity to make serious money with minimal risk, and the risk would remain minimal as long as his operation wasn’t perceived as competition by the bootleggers in Franklin. Those boys played hardball. Franklin County, Virginia, just over the state line, was the acknowledged moonshine capital of the world and produced more liquor than many legal distilleries. He’d read in the paper only last week that the feds had busted a feed store in the tiny town of Rocky Mount that was the single largest distributor of sugar on the East Coast! Carter had better sense than to take on big guns like that! But he couldn’t afford competition right under his nose, couldn’t allow his operation to be undercut by the Campbells! Zeke and Riley Campbell. Piper’s brothers.
Her face formed on top of his own reflection in the windowpane, with the high cheekbones she got from her Cherokee grandmother but no smile on the plump lips men went all stupid over. And those chocolate-brown eyes—welled with tears. That’s how her face would look if there came a knock at her door one day and soldiers were standing on the porch, looking solemn.
Oh, how Carter wished he could be there if that happened, to hold her and comfort her, to care for her as she grieved. And to be there for her when her broken heart was mended. Grayson had taken Piper from him. All Carter needed was a little luck—bad luck for Grayson—and he would be able to return the favor.
Carter was instantly ashamed. He didn’t want his brother dead. Just out of the picture. And if things continued to move along according to Carter’s plan, by the time Grayson got home from Vietnam in October, that’s exactly what he would be.
Carter glanced at the clock beside the bed and groaned. He was going to be late for work.
Chapter 5
Piper had gotten the little girl called Maggie a glass of water and had finally persuaded her to sit down on the couch while she drank it. The child sat prim as a piano student on a bench, knees together, back straight, on the edge of the cushion, as if at the slightest provocation, she would bolt toward the door and be out it and away in an instant.
“Sure I can’t get you something else to d-d-drink, lass?” Marian asked and Piper smiled at the faint echo of the brogue the McCullough family’d brought to the New World from Scotland generations ago. The mountains of West Virginia had been settled by the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh with names like Gilfillin, Mawhinney, McCullough and O’Riley. They came to mine coal as they’d done in the old country, bringing with them a lilting speech that became mountain dialect, traditional dances that morphed into clogging and the toe-tapping fiddle and banjo ballads that were transformed into Bluegrass music.
“I got lemonade. It’s fresh made this morning. Not tart, g-g-got lots of sugar.”
“No, thank you, ma’am. The water’s fine.”
Maggie reached down and ruffled Sadie’s golden curls. Sadie was seated on the floor at her feet but scooted up to the couch so she was snuggled against the older child’s legs. She had leaned her head over on Maggie and was holding one of her feet, the way you’d hold someone’s hand so you wouldn’t get separated in a crowd.
Piper shook her head. There was nowhere in her that could even begin to explain Sadie’s response to the little girl with red braids.
Sadie’s ears had perked up at the mention of lemonade.
“Sabie want lem-nade,” she said. Sadie had recently taken to speaking of herself in third person. “Sabie thirssy.”
“What do you say?” Piper intoned automatically.
“Sabie hab lem-nade, pease?”
Piper rose to get it.
“Well, if the little pretty
one’s having some…I guess I wouldn’t mind a mite myself, if it’s no trouble.” Maggie said.
“I’ll only be a minute,” Piper said.
“I’ll help,” Marian said.
“Oh, I can manage, I don’t need…” Her voice trailed off when Marian gave her a knowing look. “Well, maybe you could whip up some fried bread for tomato preserves.”
The two women disappeared into the kitchen. Piper was the first to whisper as soon as they were safely out of earshot.
“I’ll wager that child’s from—”
“Whoopie Country,” Marian finished her sentence. “I s’pect her people’s so far back in them hills the s-s-sun don’t shine on ’em but one day a week.”
In the deep, secluded hollows and inaccessible coves of the mountains beyond them to the north was a land West Virginians called Whoopie Country (pronounced with no “w” sound). The people who lived there were a race apart. Isolated and fiercely clannish, they lived by their own rules, which sometimes didn’t line up with the rest of the world’s rules. Usually didn’t.
“She looks like she’s been on the r-r-run a right smart while,” Marian said. “You see the dirt in her hair where she’s been a-sleepin’ on the g-g-ground.”
“What are we going to do with her?” Piper asked.
“Well, the first thing is get some food in her belly and get her cleaned up.”
“And after that?”
“We’ll figure out ‘after that’ soon’s ‘after that’ gets here. She could wear one of your n-n-nightgowns while I get that dress and—”
“You’re not going to do anything but get yourself into bed for a rest before lunchtime,” Piper said.
“Stop yer fussin’, Missy,” Marian said. “I’m—” She blanched, took a single step and sank down on the potato bin. If it hadn’t been there, she’d surely have collapsed in a heap on the floor. “Guess I d-do need to lie d-down for a bit,” she said, her voice airless with pain.
Piper forgot about the two children in the parlor and concentrated on the pale, trembling woman in front of her. She crossed to Marian and reached out both hands.
“Try to stand. I’ll hold your weight and you pull up.”
Marian wordlessly reached out trembling hands to Piper.
“Only a little bitty step. Hold on to me; we’ll take it real slow.”
Marian put one foot in front of the other, shifted her weight, winced and put out her other foot. One after the other, six inch-steps, Piper helped her out of the kitchen into the parlor, where two girls who were expecting glasses of lemonade would just have to wait.
Sadie had climbed up onto the couch—or had been picked up and set there—and was on her knees beside Maggie. As she plucked pieces of twigs and leaves out of Maggie’s braids, she babbled joyously, giggling, her words almost a song.
“…draw a picture of birdies fly hiiiigh in da sky, pretty colors, red and blue and lello…”
When Maggie saw Piper helping Marian, she jumped off the couch like it was on fire and rushed to Piper’s side.
“You can rest your weight on my shoulders, Nan Marian,” she said. At a fuzz under six feet, Piper towered over Marian, who’d been five feet five as a young woman and probably wasn’t five-three now, bent over as she was with the beginnings of a dowager’s hump. Maggie was shorter than Marian, more comfortable to lean on, and Marian wrapped her arm around the little girl’s shoulder without hesitation.
Sadie arrived one step behind Maggie.
“Sabie help Mabie,” she said, looking up at Maggie.
Sabie and Mabie.
Piper scooped Sadie off the floor so she wouldn’t inadvertently trip her grandmother. “Let’s go fluff Nana’s pillows,” she said.
Maggie and Marian shuffled down the hallway into Marian’s room, then Maggie turned the old woman so she faced away from the bed.
“I’ll lean over and you hold on till your backside hits that nice, soft mattress,” Maggie said.
Marian eased herself down onto the bed and let out a sigh. Maggie knelt and slipped off the old woman’s shoes. Then Piper gently eased Marian’s shoulders down against the pile of pillows as Maggie guided her legs up onto the bed and covered them with the quilt.
Piper glanced at her watch, reached over to the table beside the bed for the brown prescription bottle and poured two small white capsules into her hand.
“Time for your medicine,” she said. It wasn’t time. It was at least forty-five minutes before she was supposed to give Marian any more pain medication.
Maggie picked up the pitcher of water sitting beside the pill bottle and poured a glass for Marian, like she’d been taking care of the old woman all her life.
Marian said nothing. Probably couldn’t. She took the pills from Piper and the water from Maggie, turned the glass up and washed the pills down.
“You rest now and I’ll—” Piper began.
“I’ll sit with her,” Maggie said
“I sit wif Nana, too,” Sadie said.
Maggie sank down into the chair beside the old woman’s bed, and Sadie plopped on the floor at her feet.
“Like music, do you?” Maggie asked. “I know a fair number of songs I used to sing before—” she stopped, looked confused.
“I’ve got a better plan,” Piper said, taking charge. “You”—she pointed to Marian—“close your eyes and rest a bit. And you two”—she pointed to Maggie and Sadie—“come into the kitchen and have some lemonade and some bread and jam.”
Maggie looked like she was about to protest. Marian did, too, in fact, but Piper set her “no arguing” look on her face, and the protests died on both their lips.
“I’ll sing for you later,” Maggie said.
“You d-do that, sweetheart,” Marian said, her voice weak.
Piper felt for a moment like she’d wandered into somebody’s dream. The little girl had shown up on the front porch surely it wasn’t even ten minutes ago, and now she seemed as comfortably at home as if she lived here.
“Come along, little pretty.” Maggie lifted Sadie up into her arms and balanced her on her hip, like she’d been hoisting a toddler around her whole life. And maybe she had. Maybe she’d left a little sister or brother behind in the hills when she…
Don’t go there now. Get her fed, get her cleaned up. Worry about “after that” when “after that” gets here.
* * *
Sweat streamed out from under Gray’s helmet into his eyes. The salt stung. Smoke from the burning village made him squint, too, but even squinting, he could see the little girl in the sack dress edging slowly across the road toward him and the rest of the squad was terrified.
“Take me America with you,” she pleaded, her voice hollow, like a robot. She had said that same thing—and meant it—so many times that the words were now haunting.
“Take me America with you,” Nguyen says, “and I not talk English, I talk pig Latin.”
She pulls the wrapper off the candy bar as if the foil itself is made of gold. She folds it carefully into a square, then into smaller and smaller squares until it’s the size of a dime, and she drops it into her pocket
“Most Americans can probably speak pig Latin,” Grayson says, “but nobody actually uses it to communicate”—he sees her brow wrinkle—“to talk to each other.”
“You teach me. I want learn. I want say what Cong can’t say.”
Grayson takes a deep breath.
“Okay…” How do you explain about changing syllables to somebody who doesn’t know what a syllable is? “Well, you take a word, like pig. You drop the ‘puh’ sound on the front of the word and put it on the back of the word and then add…” He sees the confused look on her face and his voice trails off. “I don’t think I can teach you, Nguyen.”
“Yes, you can. You try; I learn. Show me.”
And so he does. He no longer attempts to explain the process, just speaks the language and asks her to translate. By the end of the day, half the platoon is speaking pig Latin to the other
half.
“What’s my name?” he says.
“You Grape.”
“No, in pig Latin.”
“You…grape-ray?”
“No, ape-gray. Keep trying; you’ll get it.”
“I learn pig Latin, you take me America, Grape, see Disneyland?”
“You take me America, Grape, see Disneyland,” she said. Somewhere, she’d come by a Mickey Mouse coloring book, and she constantly begged him to tell stories about the characters. Today was different, though. Today, Nguyen was the one telling the story—with their special language.
“I want see Goofy and Minnie Mouse,” she said. She took another step toward him. “You take me…om-bay…with you.”
Om-bay. Bomb.
Nguyen was wired!
And when the Cong detonated the bomb, the little girl would become red mist. Grayson had seen it happen once. Bill Hawkins had taken a direct hit from an 80-millimeter mortar, and it vaporized him, spewed out a red fog of the minute particles of his humanity.
Nguyen continued to walk toward him and the rest of the squad, agonizingly slowly.
“You take urn-bay ing-lay see Mickey Mouse?”
Urn-Bay ing-lay. Burn Ling! The village. The Cong had strapped a bomb on Nguyen, and if she warned the Americans, they’d burn her village—the way they always burned villages, with the villagers inside the huts.
Chapter 6
Carter Addington stepped out of the elevator on the top floor of the Northfield Coal Building and nodded at the cheery receptionist.
“Good morning, Mr. Addington!”
He started down the hall toward his office.
When he passed by the desk of the secretary in the vestibule outside company president Nelson Warren’s office, Stella was talking on the phone. But as soon as she saw him, she lifted one finger off the receiver in a “wait” gesture, then interrupted the person on the other end of the line.
“Sir, excuse me, but he just came in.” She paused. “Yes, sir.”
She hung up.