Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees

by Janie DeVos

  I didn’t know if one thing was really connected to another, but I did know that Big Grandma held a lot of people’s secrets, and they were as closely guarded as the ancient secret of how the healing of a wart actually took place. People respected Big Grandma’s ability to hold that knowledge close to her, and so they entrusted more knowledge, of the personal kind, to her care. Far more than she probably wanted, needed, or knew what to do with. Simply because she held the enigmatic title of Wart Buyer, she had a certain aura of mystique and power, and was set on a level that was higher and demanded more respect than your every day, run-of-the-mill mountain folks.

  Anyone that knew something that others did not was placed on a pedestal built on the foundation of folklore, myths, superstition, and magic. The Wart Buyer was highly revered. In people’s minds, she had done something worthy of being given that role. The million-dollar question, though, was what? What had the Wart Buyer done to be set so far apart from the rest? The answer never came, of course. But, regardless, people treated all Wart Buyers with great reverence, and entrusted their greatest secrets, hopes, and dreams to them.

  There could only be one person in the family who bought warts. And, until she (for it was usually a woman in the role) figured it was time to pass the secret knowledge of wart buying down, that person would remain the sole purchaser. The only way this ancient practice could be accomplished, Big Grandma explained to me (while carefully keeping from me the secret of how it actually worked), was that the one with the wart had to agree to sell the wart. Only then would the process work. If the seller was a non-believer, or joked about the reality of such a remedy working, then there could be no deal made. But, once the deal was agreed upon, then Big Grandma would take a penny out of a mason jar filled with them, and rub the wart gently but thoroughly with it. Then she gave the seller the penny and he or she was instructed to never, ever spend it, but to tuck it safely away instead. If the penny was used or lost, the wart would return. And that was true. I saw it happen, just as I saw warts miraculously disappear a few days after the ritual was performed. Since there could only be one wart buyer in a family, when the torch would be passed down was a decision only the present buyer could make. It was usually near the end of the buyer’s life, though. Then, the newly designated Wart Buyer kept the secret to herself until it was time for that buyer to pass it on to the next one selected.

  Grandma Willa was called into Big Grandma’s room three weeks before she passed. “Close the door, darlin’,” the dying woman rasped. I wanted to go in, too. I wanted to know what seriousness was being discussed, but I knew I wasn’t allowed. I pressed my ear to the door but could only make out the words “knowed,” “rubbed,” and “copper.” Mama came up the porch steps with Doc Pardie, who, as usual, looked like he’d spent the night out in the pasture with the goats, and I quickly sat back down in my rocker, appearing to be thoroughly engrossed in my ABCs primer book. Grandma came out of the bedroom then and quietly closed the door. I could tell she’d been crying, which was a rare thing for her to do. Quickly, she brushed away the remaining wetness, nodded curtly at Pardie, and mumbled something to the effect that “there wasn’t much he could do, so just let her be.” Then Grandma brusquely announced that she had to snap the beans or supper wouldn’t get on the table until midnight. I called after her to see if I could help, but my mother told me to stay put; then she and the doctor went in to see Big Grandma. I looked back at the kitchen door but realized, even at that young age, that Grandma needed to be alone. And I realized something else then, too; that something large had shifted in those fifteen minutes behind closed doors. There’d been a passing of the torch, and my Grandma Willa was now the Wart Buyer.

  CHAPTER 4

  A Slow Unveiling

  There were two reasons that I always opened Christmas presents slowly. The first reason was because we received only a couple; usually one from my parents, and another small something from Grandma. Without fail, I’d sit on the floor by Grandma’s rocker and observe everyone’s joy, or lack thereof, in what my parents had given to each of us. I watched their faces closely, trying to measure their expressions as being sincerely happy, or just a polite show of approval. On the one hand, we were glad we had anything to open. But, as we lay awake the night before, the hope was still out there that the gifts awaiting us under the tree would be the ones each of us had dreamed of. When Mama would ask us what we wanted for Christmas, we knew in our hearts that it was a ritual for her to do the asking, but the getting was a whole different story.

  A bigger mill had opened up in the town of Flat Top, in the next county over, and though that would seem far enough away not to bother Papa’s business, it wasn’t. It was just the other side of the mountain—the mountain we were on—and Flat Top was the closest town to Howling Cut. The Hollis family ran the mill there, and they built up their business through whatever means were necessary; whether it be through the use of bribery, blackmail, or bullying. One way or another, they “won” the business, and the end result was that our mill lost most of our long-time customers, including two furniture stores. The changes that hit us were never more apparent than they were on Christmas morning, when a sparse number of gifts awaited their unveiling beneath our garland-draped tree. So, I opened the present from my parents slowly, to savor it, to keep hoping for those last few remaining seconds before the brown paper was finally pulled off . . . Yes! Hallelujah! Indeed it was what I’d been hoping and praying for (and bargaining with God over), for the weeks leading up to the day! But that whispering voice inside, the one that makes us face the truth for what it is, told me that a Christmas present of my heart’s desire was a thing of the past, a luxury only for those who still had two furniture stores as customers.

  And the second reason that I opened my gifts slowly was because of what faced us afterward. I knew that once the paper was off, flattened out and put away to be used again on someone else’s package next year, and the last of the Christmas fruit cake had been eaten, we would be forced to look into the eyes of the bleakest, blackest, wickedest thing that always came this time every year. And that wicked thing had a name: Winter.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Killing Time

  When I was almost nine, Mama gave birth to twin boys. When they were finally pushed out into this world, the quietness that filled the room was deafening. It took a few good slaps to get Albert breathing, and though it took less to get Walter to suck his first lungful of air, his breathing was never very ambitious. They were scrawny and sickly from the get-go, and Grandma figured they wouldn’t make it to winter. They both did, however, but by the time the wind whipped and bit its way into the middle of January, bringing the worst case of influenza with it, the twins just didn’t have enough strength to see it through. Albert went first; then Walter followed four days later.

  Because the ground was frozen, we had to put the poor little things into Old Man Tyne’s root cellar. He had been the undertaker for longer than anyone could remember, so it just seemed like the logical thing to do. Papa quietly carried each one over to Tyne’s place in the back of the wagon, while Mama rested after sleepless nights of poultice making, praying, and carrying each baby, hoping that keeping them upright might help to drain the fluid out of their rattling lungs. Once, when she had been awake for more than two days straight, trying to will the life into her dying sons, I saw her desperately shaking Albert, demanding that the fluid drain out of his wheezing lungs. Grandma gently, but firmly, took the baby from her, telling her she’d shake the child to death before the sickness had a hand in it. Mama didn’t say anything. With the most frighteningly vacant look in her eyes, she walked out into a freezing rain. I stood at the window and watched her go into the barn. She didn’t come out for hours. Papa finally went out to get her, to let her know that Albert had flown off with the angels, and a keening, howling sound issued forth from that old barn the likes of which I hoped I’d never hear again. Only I did. Four days later, Mama’s howling accompanied the screeching wind
in a macabre January song.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Darkest Night

  Several weeks after the twins passed, Mama woke Prescott, Merry Beth, and me in the middle of a bitterly cold night. “C’mon,” she whispered. “Get dressed, and be quiet about it!” Her long, thick, dark hair hung down like wild ropes about her face. Not only had it not been pinned up into a loose bun on the top of her head, which was her usual style, but it hadn’t been brushed either. Her eyes looked like a horse’s at branding time, which made her appear like some wild specter, invading the gentle dreams of unsuspecting children.

  “Where we goin’, Mama?” Prescott asked in a thick, sleepy voice.

  “You’ll knows when we get there. It’s a surprise,” she said, though not in that liltingly light tone that announced a happy event to come.

  “Can’t it wait ‘til mornin’?” I asked, not convinced that it would really be any better when morning came, but by then Grandma and Papa would be awake, and if things were amiss, which I definitely felt they were, then perhaps they’d intervene.

  “Hush, now!” Mama warned. And no one asked another question. We just stuffed our feet into our shoes, grabbed our coats, and climbed down the ladder from our loft, leaving both Papa and Grandma asleep, snoring and unknowing in their bedrooms.

  Mama ushered us into the barn, where, apparently, she had already made the preparations for a trip; for Natty, our mare, was hitched up to the wagon, and a battered suitcase rested in the back corner of it.

  “Where’re we goin’, Mama? I’m cold!” Merry Beth cried, pressing herself into a corner of the barn in an effort to stay out of whatever was about to take place—an event that she just knew, even at the age of six, could have no good attached to it.

  “Get in,” Mama ordered. And Merry Beth did. We all did. “Now, no one say a word. Do ya hear me? Not a sound!”

  We sat huddled together, shaking more out of fear than from the cold as Mama quietly led the horse out of the barn, talking in whispers to keep it quiet and calm as we walked by the chicken coop, then the withered and empty vegetable patch, and finally past our house’s front door. When we reached the halfway point on our dirt driveway, she quickly climbed up onto the driver’s seat, and with a soft slap of the reins, guided the wagon down to the sawmill road below our house, then took a right, off into the night.

  “Where we goin’?” Merry whispered.

  “I don’t know. But someplace long enough to need a suitcase,” I whispered back. “Where ya think, Pres?” I inquired of our brother, who was the only one of us peering over the side of the wagon, while Merry and I stayed down and tucked up against its side, and each other’s.

  Prescott didn’t answer. He just stood, gripping the side of the wagon and looking out, while his dark blond hair whipped in the wind like a strange banner. Finally, he gave up trying to figure it out. The cold won, and fear won, and he lined himself up by us in the bottom of the wagon.

  We traveled quite a few miles, and had dozed off and on, but we were jarred fully awake when Natty finally stopped. “C’mon,” Mama said, jumping down from her seat and knocking on the side of the wagon where we were huddled. We poked our sleepy heads up over the side like baby birds surveying a new world around us. And we were amazed to find that we were in the front yard of Alice Gentry’s house.

  Alice Gentry had been Mama’s Sunday school teacher when Mama was a young girl living in Marion, a town down the mountain to the south. She had two grown children; a daughter, Polly, and a son, Herbert, both of whom were married and lived in parts unknown to me. Mrs. Gentry had lost her husband of forty-one years to “poor blood” the summer before last and we’d come to her house for his wake. She now lived alone, except for a fat black-and-white cat named Elsa.

  “What’re we doin’ here?” Prescott cried.

  Mama didn’t answer. She just stood at the back of the wagon and waited for us to climb out. There wasn’t a sign of life in Mrs. Gentry’s house, but it was the middle of the night, so that didn’t seem out of place, although we did. Mama turned and marched up to the front door, and told us to follow her. Then she gave three sharp raps on the faded blue frame of the screened door. After a few seconds, she repeated this again, and by the time she’d begun the third sequence of knocking, a pinpoint of light could be seen in the far left window and then footsteps sounded.

  “Who’s there?” asked a sleep-fuzzy but frightened voice.

  “It’s Anna Guinn, Miz Gentry, and my young’uns.”

  “Who . . . what?! Anna?! What in the world . . .” Mrs. Gentry opened her wooden front door but not the screened door. “What in heaven’s name are y’all doin’ out this time of night? And here!” She held up her lamp to examine the scene more fully and I was able to see her vaguely familiar, bent, gray-haired form, as well.

  “I need to leave ’em with you, Miz Gentry. I need to leave ’em for a while,” Mama said in an urgent and unusually high-pitched voice. It was a desperate voice. One none of us recognized. Prescott and I exchanged startled looks and I heard a frightened whimper sneak out of Merry Beth’s throat.

  “Get in here where it’s warm.” Mrs. Gentry held open the screened door and looked at Mama questioningly but said nothing. Instead, she walked over to her sideboard and lit a second oil lamp, then handed it to Prescott. “Go on into the kitchen, children,” she directed. “There’s part of a sweet potato pie on the table.”

  We were glad for the warm, lamp lit house and our escape—if only for a few minutes—from Mama’s company. But, most of all, we were very grateful for the reassuring, even solidness of Mrs. Gentry.

  The pie was left untouched as the three of us pressed our ears against the heavy kitchen door. “Anna, sit down,” we heard Mrs. Gentry say. There was a thick silence as we waited for Mama to sit down.

  “Anna, tell me what’s happened, child?” Mrs. Gentry probed. Her voice soothed like a cool cloth on a fevered forehead.

  “There’s something in the house killin’ ’em, Miz Gentry,” Mama whispered. “I just know that come spring there won’t be a one of ’em left, if they stays there.” She half cried, and we heard her move in the room.

  “Lord a-mercy, Anna,” Mrs. Gentry replied softly. We heard footsteps again, and the creaking of a cabinet door opening, then the clinking of glasses. “Sit down and drink this,” she instructed.

  “I don’t drink spirits!” Mama protested.

  “You do tonight,” Mrs. Gentry responded.

  A moment later Mama coughed. There were several minutes of absolute quiet then. It was almost like Mrs. Gentry was waiting for Mama’s thinking to shift, to calm, to clear.

  “Anna, you can’t possibly believe that any of your children died because of something in that cabin. It’s just a part of God’s plan, honey—” she continued, but Mama broke her off.

  “Miz Gentry, the devil’s disciples do terrible deeds on this Earth. I knows,” she said, in a low, frightening sounding voice, “there’s somethin’ evil in that house, and in me! Can’t be no other explainin’ it.”

  “Lord, child! Surely you can’t believe that was any of your doin’. If you think you’re partnerin’ up with the devil on this, then so’s the whole town. They’s all the devil’s minions. Shoot, Anna, there’s been more of our young’uns—and old’uns, too, for that matter—killed by the grippe than killed in all the wars we’ve been in. Lord, child! I can’t believe what I’m hearin’!”

  Mama rose and swayed as she eased her way toward the door. “I got to leave ’em,” she whispered. “I got no other choice.”

  “What about Willa and Calvin, Anna? Why in the world can’t they take care of ’em while you go visitin’ somewheres for a time? It’d be good for you, honey. Good for you and the young’uns, alike.”

  “It ain’t just me, Miz Gentry. It’s the house, too. I don’t know which infected the other; the house titched me, or I titched the house. Either way, it ain’t good inside of there. It ain’t good inside of me!”

  With
those last words, we heard the heavy front door creak open, followed by the screen. We heard Mrs. Gentry’s voice fading as she followed Mama out the door, “Anna, for heaven’s sake. Calvin won’t . . .”

  For several minutes there was absolute silence in the kitchen with the exception of our heavy breathing. It was as though we’d been holding our breath and now we were breathing hard in an attempt to make up for lost time.

  Finally, we heard one set of footsteps approaching the kitchen door. We scrambled backward and quickly found seats at the table. The untouched pie was a clear sign that no eating had taken place.

  “Children,” Mrs. Gentry began as she sat down in the vacant chair at the table. “I know you heard what we’ve been sayin’. I know it’s hard to understand, but I think your Mama is plum wore out. Just crazy tired and sad. Sorrow can do funny things to the mind, and sometimes it just makes clear thinkin’ an impossible thing to do. What’s say y’all spend a couple of days here and let her rest a spell?”

  We nodded but no one said a word. The words Mrs. Gentry spoke, however, were both comforting and reassuring, and they were all we had at this moment. We had nothing else to hang on to, for everything in our lives had just shifted. The frigid wind rattled the windows as violently as Mama had just rattled our world.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Wait

  The snow came so hard and so fast the next day that Mrs. Gentry worried about us all being buried alive. We knew she didn’t really mean it, although several years before, all the chickens in the coop at the Baxters’ had, indeed, been buried alive when the roof caved in after the record snowfall of nineteen inches in a day’s time. We felt like those chickens must have, though, when the old roof on Mrs. Gentry’s house creaked and groaned in protest at the increasing weight. I envisioned Papa finding us in the spring as they pulled up the splintered boards of the roof only to discover all of us underneath just as flat as my paper dolls.