Down in the hollow, fog was drifting through dark tree trunks, but when the sun lifted above the ridge, the fog would fade, and they’d have a good day for the meeting. She looked up at her blue and white wall clock, then shut her eyes again, thinking she should pray for the valley. Even before words could form, ringing music from Handel’s Messiah boomed into her head:
“Every valley shall be exalted.”
Exalted, yes, but how could they keep it safe?
Her lower lip pushed out. It wasn’t a pout—far from it. She’d begun using the gesture as her own small act of defiance years ago, when her parents insisted that their only child must eat liver. In protest against what she saw then (and, even now) as incomprehensible adult behavior, she’d stuck out her lower lip.
It did no good. Her parents ignored the gesture. By the time she was in first grade, she’d given up on even that protest and it was eventually forgotten. Now, seated in her blue and white kitchen, Carrie remembered, pushed out the defiant lip, and felt much better.
When you came right down to it, blowing up the valley was yet another adult action that Carrie Culpeper McCrite found incomprehensible.
“Can’t stop progress,” the County Judge had told her only yesterday. “Road department needs stone, needs a quarry nearby. Save tax money. You folks that pay taxes oughta be glad, not doin’ complainin’ about one valley bein’ messed up a bit. That’s progress.
“Now, there, Mrs. um, MacWhite, you go on back home and enjoy your bird watchin’. I’ll run the county in a proper manner, do what’s best for all you folks.”
He had squeaked forward in his chair and smiled up at her. “Can’t stop progress, now, can we?”
Progress! Well, it depended on how you defined the word. At that moment, Carrie McCrite almost forgot herself. She’d wanted to reach across the desk and shake the man. If only she’d had the courage. Remembering, she smiled at the thought of it and wondered what that big man would have done if a pudgy, five-foot-two, grey-haired female grabbed his fleshy shoulders and shook him ‘til his head bobbed.
He’d see. He was young. He didn’t understand anything about tough women. He didn’t know JoAnne Harrington or... or... the rest of them.
That County Judge had something to learn.
Carrie shoved her chair back with a bang, went to spoon more instant coffee into her mug, poured hot water, then returned to her place at the kitchen table. She leaned forward and stared out the window again, trying to re-capture the feeling of peace and well-being that early morning in Blackberry Hollow brought to her.
Day came late to the hollow, especially when there was fog. Sun was just now edging down through the trees, but her bird feeders had been busy for some time. Cardinals, indigo buntings, woodpeckers, chickadees—a colorful bunch. The “tink tink” of the cardinals always cheered her.
Even if the stone quarry came, she’d still have her own twenty-five acres of protected forest. But every time she drove down to the Booths’ farm, she’d see not a valley but rock piles, dust, blasting, heavy machinery, and an army of growling trucks.
Thinking about it, Carrie, who never swore, murmured, “Just like hell,” into her coffee mug.
A sharp crack from over the hill punctuated the words, and she winced.
Deer rifle! Close. Too close.
It was like this every November.
CRACK.
Sounds were funny in the woods. Maybe it wasn’t that close after all.
Carrie knew hunting thinned out a deer population that could be too plentiful, but during hunting season her woods were a new and dangerous world. Posting didn’t always stop those who came into the area with guns; some hunters ignored the markings.
When she walked through the forest during hunting season, she wore her old orange ski jacket and a hunter’s hat and sometimes even sang aloud or carried her portable radio tuned to a music station. But why should she have to be afraid on her own land any time of year?
Because she knew all too well how far a shot from a deer rifle could carry. One had carried far enough to kill Amos.
She’d found the bloody remains of a butchered deer in the woods last November and, for a time, that brought back the nightmares.
Now they were out there again, hidden among the trees, shooting.
Until that awful November five years ago, the woods had always been a sanctuary for her—a cozy, welcoming place.
Amos, on the other hand, had loved these rocky, tree-covered hills because they made him feel masculine and strong. He’d never said anything to her, but she’d understood. She’d known exactly why he was planning to move here when he retired from his law practice in Tulsa, and why he agreed so quickly when she urged him to buy this land early so they could visit it on weekends. She’d won him over completely when she mentioned, very casually, that he could cut their firewood here, and, in November, he could hunt.
If only she hadn’t mentioned hunting.
Amos had almost swaggered that morning as he and his friend, Evan Walters, headed out to harvest deer. The two men had talked about the opening weekend of hunting season for months. They’d built the deer stand in late summer and begun putting out dried corn in the fall.
Since the weather that weekend was warm for November, Carrie offered to come along and serve a picnic. She didn’t mind waiting, sitting in a lawn chair reading or poking about in the woods near the road.
But, only minutes after they left her, there had been a shot, a cry from Evan. She could still hear that cry.
Then he had crashed back wildly, faced her, and...
It all felt like a bad dream now. It was as if, over the last five years, she had become disconnected from the real event, the horrible thing that was “only an accident.”
Now, for her, the horror usually stayed in its own dim shadow, hidden away, and the friendliness of the woods had returned. But Evan couldn’t seem to forget that day, even after five years—even after he’d been cleared of any homicidal intent by the courts. Thank goodness she no longer needed to see the man.
You couldn’t change the past, so why didn’t he just get on with his life? After all, she had! She’d been on her own for a long time when, at age twenty-nine, she married Amos McCrite. Their marriage had never been more than a friendship, so now, well, being alone was just fine, and she was proving she could cope, no matter what her age. No matter what, period!
It took her a moment to come back to the present and realize the phone was ringing. She looked at the clock again. Still early. It would be JoAnne.
Carrie had never decided if JoAnne didn’t understand how she valued her early morning quiet time or understood completely and didn’t care. One thing for sure, JoAnne herself didn’t spend much time being quiet. JoAnne was a lot like Amos.
But it wasn’t JoAnne, not at all. Henry’s rumbling voice apologized for disturbing her.
“Is JoAnne there?” he asked. “She wanted help organizing the notes from her meeting with the Environmental Commission and asked me to come by this morning, but when I got there, she didn’t answer the door. The cat came to the window and yowled at me, that’s all. Did she forget?”
Carrie wasn’t surprised. JoAnne was always going off on spur-of-the-moment quests. She had simply found something she considered more interesting or important than a meeting with her neighbor, Henry King. Still, it was odd that, given her opinion of all men, she’d invited Henry’s help in the first place, instead of asking Carrie herself to come.
Not only was Henry male, he’d been a cop. To JoAnne—who had pushed against lines of uniformed men during the war in Vietnam, had marched for civil rights, the ERA, and even chained herself to a log skidder in the Ozark National Forest—being in any kind of law enforcement was about as low as a man could go. Nothing Carrie could say softened JoAnne’s opinion about that.
She wondered if JoAnne had ever faced off against a woman law officer. She must remember to ask.
Once more Carrie checked the clock. Wherever she w
as now, JoAnne would be back for the Walden Valley Committee meeting in an hour and a half. After all, having the meeting was her idea in the first place.
A rumble coming from the phone broke into her thoughts. “Carrie, hello, are you there?”
“Oh, sorry, Henry, I was thinking about JoAnne. No, she’s not here, and I haven’t heard from her this morning. I have no idea where she might be. She’s usually up and busy quite early. She may have gotten into some new project hours ago and just plain forgot you were coming, or she could be out wandering the valley again, or maybe she’s just gone to town for cat food... or milk... or something.”
She knew she was babbling, but couldn’t think what else to say. Evidently it didn’t matter, because when Henry spoke again, he changed the subject.
“Cara, maybe we could go for a walk in the valley after the meeting, just the two of us, then drive into town for lunch?”
His use of the nickname, as well as his invitation, made her feel strangely warm, and she wondered—as she had more than once before—if Henry wanted a closer friendship. Some types of friendship could intrude on her independence if she let them. She was aware of that, even without JoAnne’s constant reminders.
But Henry was such a comfortable person to be with, and he’d never said or done anything that wasn’t suitable. It wasn’t a male-female thing at all.
She said, “Sorry, but I can’t. I’m baking caramel rolls, sort of a brunch. Everyone is invited to stay for rolls and coffee after the meeting, and then I need to work on the new brochures for our racks at the tourist center. I’ve got boxes of them to go over before Monday. Don’t worry about JoAnne. I’m sure she’ll be back in time. She’ll just have to make do without your organizing help.”
His voice was suddenly sharp. “She’d better get back, it’s her meeting.”
He paused, then said, more gently, “Will you be through with your work by supper time?”
She almost laughed at this follow-up, but stopped the laugh and was quiet for a moment. There could be nothing wrong in going to supper together. She would enjoy it, and he always treated her like an intelligent fellow human. How else should she expect him to act, at their age?
In this case, JoAnne just didn’t know what she was talking about. There was no harm in going out with Henry. He wasn’t going to make holes in her independence. He probably wanted to discuss plans for the valley protest, that was all.
So she said, “If that’s an invitation, may I call you about 3:30? I’ll know by then how my work’s going. I would enjoy eating out.” She bit off saying “thank you,” hearing JoAnne’s voice warning her that thanking a man for something you wouldn’t thank a woman for was subservient.
Instead, she finished, “See you at the meeting,” put the phone down, and went to sit in her chair again. Henry didn’t know JoAnne well enough to understand her odd ways, but Carrie sure understood why he was interested in what the State Environmental Commission in Little Rock had to say on Thursday.
She frowned as her thoughts went back to the quarry. Though everyone on the committee but Roger and Shirley Booth lived in the hills around Walden Valley, they had all come to feel the entire area—hills, bluffs, the Booths’ pastures and carefully tended dairy herd, even Walden Creek itself—belonged to each of them. It had been quiet countryside for so long.
Too bad none of them had paid attention to the abandoned farm next to Roger and Shirley. Even that was picturesque, with its collapsing barn and the pink brick chimney that stood tall, years after the home it had once warmed burned to the ground. No one had wondered what might happen to that old farm. Now they knew too well. Quarry operators had bought it.
Well, all right. Her lip went out again. They would win this fight! Surely there were other places less valuable that a quarry could go if, indeed, the county really needed another quarry.
The blue and white clock reminded her it was time to get ready for the meeting, and she went to set out plates and cups. One of these days she’d better buy some kind of coffee maker. Guests probably thought instant coffee was pretty tacky. Well, they probably thought any ready-prepared food was tacky. Who cared? Hospitality was about feelings, not food.
She opened the refrigerator, took out three pop-open packages of breakfast rolls, got her cookie sheets, then turned on the oven. Maybe she’d heat some of those cute little frozen sausages too. It was chilly, folks would be hungry.
As she worked, Carrie began humming a song she’d invented for Rob’s bath time when he was a toddler. He’d reminded her of it last summer, saying he still couldn’t keep from chanting it to himself in the shower, though its original purpose had been to make a game out of cleaning his ears—as well as under arms and between toes, where he was ticklish.
“Down in the valleys, under arms and toes.
Make the valleys clean where the washcloth goes.
Valleys are (whish and sw-o-o-p) CLEAN!”
Another rifle shot cracked. It sounded very close, and she flinched, imagining a bullet whistling by her house.
She wondered if JoAnne had heard the shots, wherever she was. JoAnne didn’t like hunters on her land. JoAnne didn’t like hunters, period.
Well, nothing she could do about it now.
Carrie looked around her kitchen, then nodded to herself. It would be all right. This was her sanctuary, her home. No one would intrude on that.
She was singing Rob’s valley song loudly enough to drown out any whistling bullets when she left the kitchen and went to finish getting dressed for the meeting.
CHAPTER II
Roger and Shirley arrived first. When Carrie opened the door, Roger pointed to his truck, which he’d squeezed in a space between two trees that was only inches wider than the truck’s fenders. “Okay to leave ’er there?”
“Sure.” Carrie looked around the clearing, suddenly seeing it through Roger’s pale, grey-blue eyes and supposing he wondered why on earth she didn’t make more space.
“I know I should cut some trees,” she said, thinking he could never understand how she felt about the trees. “I’m sorry for drivers of delivery trucks, but I can’t decide what to cut, so I just don’t, and the trees keep growing.”
“Well, trees’re better fer your health than trucks,” said Roger, punctuating his words with eye twinkles and adding a grin when he noticed Carrie’s surprise.
Both Roger and Shirley Booth were lean Ozarks natives who towered over her. She had once been sure no Ozarks native was concerned about protecting the environment, especially if doing so involved some kind of regulation. Roger and Shirley, however, were proving her wrong.
In fact, Roger had been the first one to warn people along Walden Road about the quarry. He’d begun contacting his neighbors after he heard a few rumors and decided to go over to the county seat to “see ’bout an abandoned farm I just might think of makin’ an offer fer,” as he said he’d told the nice clerk at the court house in Bonny.
“Happens,” he explained to Carrie when he called her, “that some fella from over the border has spoke fer that land. I asked my cousin who lives that-a-way to check up the name fer me. He says the fella runs an old used-up quarry near Martinville. Hank also says the place is a mess. Some heifers got sick when they drank the crick water last year.”
Carrie had translated to herself while Roger talked. The quarry in question must be in Missouri, and it must have somehow polluted the creek near Martinville. Roger was concerned about his own herd of Holsteins. Those cows were so carefully babied Carrie was sure Roger and Shirley would buy bottled water for the stock tank if they had to, but none the less, there it was—a call to action by the most laid-back hillbilly on Walden Road.
And as far as the Martinville cousin was concerned, Carrie was enough of an Ozarker now to know that “cousin” could mean any degree of relationship at all, but also might really be a cousin. She was beyond surprise when learning about intertwined family relationships throughout these hills and hollows. In fact, Roger had once to
ld her, “Only reason we’re glad Yankees come here is ‘cause now we don’t always have to marry our cousins!”
Roger and Shirley accepted cups of instant coffee without commenting about the method of making them and eased down on the big couch in the cabin’s main room. They had never been inside her home before, and their eyes roamed over the walls covered with bookshelves. “Just like a library,” Shirley said finally. “You like to read!”
“Many of the books are about Arkansas and the Ozarks,” Carrie replied as she enjoyed the warmth of the smile on Shirley’s thin face. She returned the smile with real pleasure and a sudden feeling of companionship and shared... what? She had thought she had little in common with this woman, though they must be about the same age. “I do quite a bit of research in my work for the Department of Parks and Tourism. But, yes, I like to read.”
Shirley set her coffee cup aside carefully and got up to inspect the books, touching a few with her fingertips as she walked along the shelves. “I didn’t learn to read much ‘til after the kids went to school,” she said. “Just hadn’t been interested. Figured I didn’t need to read books to them when they were little—I could think up plenty of stories in my head, and I knew Bible stories by heart. Then the oldest started school, and I was ’shamed when she brought stuff home and saw I didn’t know what it said. So I studied with the literacy folks in town. Now I’m pretty good at reading.” She looked over her shoulder at Carrie, and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened in another smile. “I read my own Bible now, and other books too.”
Carrie started to reply, thinking that there must be books on her shelves that Shirley would enjoy borrowing. Just as she was puzzling about what to offer, the knocker interrupted, and she went to open the door for Jason Stack and Mag Bruner.
Jason’s Buick was parked in front of Carrie’s garage, but Mag had walked from her house at the head of the road. She liked being outdoors as much as Carrie did and never minded walking a few miles if the weather wasn’t too bad and the roads were passable.
A Valley to Die For Page 2