Shoes: Tails from the post

by R. A. Comunale M. D.

  Our car passed an all-too-familiar classroom building with blacked out windows on an upper level room. Kristin didn’t notice it, and I said nothing as we drove on.

  The snare drum beat a farewell tattoo that only I could hear.

  Chestnuts

  October, 1891

  “Are you still having the bad dream, Edwin?”

  “Yes, Lillian That little coffin in that black wagon … I can’t stop it. The blackness, the overwhelming blackness and cold!”

  November 9, 1891

  “Ottie, would you like to go with the other boys and gather some wood for the stove?”

  “Oh, yes, Miss Gilbert!”

  The potbellied stove in the one-room school was turning cold as the wood fire within burned to a cinder.

  “Now, be careful. Put your shoes and coat on. It’s cold outside. And here are three chestnuts to eat.”

  “Thank you, Miss Gilbert.”

  “Listen to the older boys, Ottie.”

  “Hey, guys, a penny fer the one with the biggest stick!”

  “Can I play, too?”

  “Naw, yer too little. G’wan over there.”

  “Why can’t I play, Marty?”

  “Git, runt!”

  “I’ll show you! Just wait.”

  He knew where there was a really big stick. He had seen it while riding on his papa’s shoulders the day they visited the mountaintop.

  “Papa, what’s that over there?”

  “Never mind, boy, we’ve got more important things to do than worry about an old chestnut branch. Now, hold on, tight, son.”

  It couldn’t be too far. It had to be over that way. Or was it over there?

  “Where’s Ottie, Martin?”

  “Uh, I dunno, Miss Gilbert. He didn’ wanna stay with us.”

  “Ottie … Ottie … come on back to school!”

  She rang the hand-held brass and wood handled bell ubiquitous among schoolmarms.

  “Ottie, where are you?”

  The Present

  “Dad, what are all those dead trees on the mountains?”

  My daughter had never seen American chestnut trees. Most people haven’t. At one time there were great forests across our country. The chestnut provided edible nuts and beautifully grained wood.

  Then, like me, a blight hit in the early twentieth century and the trees died by the millions.

  Occasionally a sucker would grow from a dead tree’s roots, but after seeming to survive for a number of years, it, too, died.

  “These were once magnificent American chestnut trees, Krissie. They died a long time ago.”

  Bluff Mountain

  “Dad, slow down!”

  Kristin and I had just belched our way through some fast food in Lexington and I was anxious to move on. So much to do and so little time: I had to double-time march through what life I had left.

  “Wait, Dad. Let me get a souvenir. Look at that little antique shop over there!”

  I pulled the car to the curb. Kristin got out, almost running to the old store window. She peered at the jewelry displayed on faded black velvet—mostly junk.

  “Dad, look at the oval gold locket in the little window case.”

  “Hmpff, probably the only decent thing in the shop,” I snorted.

  I have to admit, it was pretty. About two inches by one inch, with flower-covered tree branches engraving along both sides, it reminded me of my mother’s keepsake locket that held my Dad’s and my pictures in it.

  I didn’t recognize the flowers.

  “I’m going to buy it, okay?”

  Translation: buy it for me.

  That surprised me. My Kristin was not the type of girl who went gaga over jewelry. A new hockey stick or a pair of riding boots—in a heartbeat. But bling-bling? Nah.

  “What’s so special about it, Krissie?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. It just seems to want me.”

  I’d heard that before, too. Cats, dogs, even birds and frogs seemed to “want” my daughter. When she was little, she used to say that her “friend,” the one only she could see, wanted her to have them.

  What the hell, why not? I’d already spent a wad on the camping gear. Besides, what good was money going to do me?

  I had gone to the lawyer. Everything was set up. What was left when I was … well … gone? Kristin would be taken care of. My ex could live off the guy she was hanging around with at the moment.

  The door chimed as we entered the hole-in-the-wall shop that should probably have called itself junk instead of antique.

  “May I help you folks?”

  The woman sitting on the chair was elderly but could still see well enough to wonder if I was some old goat hitting on a young chippy. I could see her hazel eyes constrict as she looked, first at Kristin and then at me.

  Kristin was bubbling over. “May I see the locket in the window, the little oval one engraved with flowers?”

  The old woman hesitated then smiled, as she rose slowly from a bentwood rocker and took a key from her gray blouse pocket. She went to the window case, unlocked it, picked up the locket and set it on a black rubber mat.

  “It’s beautiful. Ma’am, what type of flowers are these?”

  “Chestnut catkins.”

  “Oh, Dad, I really want it.”

  I did my best not to smirk, as the old woman’s face relaxed.

  “Your daughter?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Uh … how much for the locket?”

  “It’s gold, you know. Should be three-fifty, but the catch seems to be broken. Can’t open it, so … one-seventy-five?”

  I gulped silently then took out my wallet. You get used to that with kids, especially daughters. I gave her my credit card. Ten seconds later I was signing a charge slip.

  The shopkeeper smiled and looked at Kristin “You at W and L?”

  She meant Washington and Lee, the other school at the top of the hill where VMI and its predecessor arsenal had stood for almost two hundred years.

  “Oh, no, ma’am, I’m at William and Mary. My dad and I are just revisiting his old alma mater.”

  Her eyes narrowed again. “VMI?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I thought she was going to spit on me.

  “Had a nephew there. Got expelled his last year under their so-called Honor Code, supposedly fer cheatin’. He always said he didn’t do it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am, but the Honor Code is pretty specific. A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do so.”

  “Donnie Ashburn were his name. Boy killed hisself the next day. My sister went to her grave ’cause of it.”

  A snare drum resounded in my head.

  “Kristin, I think we’d better leave.”

  “Uh … okay, Dad. Thanks for the locket.”

  I almost ran out the door, my daughter trying to keep up with me.

  “What’s wrong? Is it something I said?”

  “No … no, not at all. I guess that woman doesn’t have much use for VMI and I could feel it.”

  “Dad, come on, it’s more than that. What’s going on?”

  I couldn’t tell her. Not yet–but when? How does one tell his daughter, “Kristin, I was on the jury that convicted that old woman’s nephew.”

  Did I just blurt that out? I looked at my daughter and saw the light of understanding in her eyes

  “Krissie, it’s true.”

  I got back in the SUV I had rented. My old Toyota wouldn’t have been able to go where I was headed next. Kristin sat next to me in the front seat, not replying to my stilted banter. She kept rubbing the little locket as if it was Aladdin’s lamp.

  “Dad, about that old woman, was her nephew really guilty?”

  “Krissie, you have to know what an Honor Court is and how it’s run. All of us serve and try our best not to convict, but sometimes the evidence leaves us no choice.”

  She nodded then fell silent again.

  I kept the windows closed as we rolled through the
countryside. It was still warm down in the valley, but I felt a chill course through me as I thought of that day twenty five years ago, when I sat on a jury with…

  “Look at that! There are initials engraved on the back: L.C.P. Wonder who she was.”

  The case gleamed in the sunlight piercing the coated windows of the car. She kept rubbing it, and suddenly it split like two halves of a walnut hinged together. Inside was a tiny lock of chestnut brown hair, the fine hair that only a child possesses.

  “What’s that?”

  Kristin was startled.

  I pulled the SUV to the side and took the locket from her.

  I knew, but wondered if I should tell her.

  “Kristin, it’s a memento mori locket. Back in the days when people died young and suddenly, the family would take a lock of the dead person’s hair and keep it as a reminder of that person. Children died early from all sorts of infections we can deal with today. It was not uncommon for a mother to keep a lock of her dead child’s hair.”

  She closed the locket then shut her eyes, the golden shell held tightly in her hand.

  We drove in silence along Route 60 until I found the ramp to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I could feel my ears popping a bit as we drove up along the mountain road. Then I pulled over.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “Take a look, Kristin. Isn’t that an amazing view?”

  I had stopped at a familiar spot. It was a scenic overlook of the valley. The sign read: BLUFF MOUNTAIN ALTITUDE 3300 FEET.

  “Look. Over there’s Lexington. And that way is Buena Vista. Can you make out the school from here?”

  Gus, look, did you ever see anything so beautiful?

  No, Lauren.

  How many times had we held hands, staring down from that very spot?

  The remnants of dead tree trunks lay scattered on the slope.

  “Okay, back in the car, Krissie. It’s not far now.”

  “Where are we headed?”

  “Mother Nature’s Motel.”

  There it was, unchanged in twenty-five years. I pulled off the paved highway onto a graveled dirt road fit only for four-wheel drive and forced the SUV even higher. Finally we came to a cast iron post in the middle of the old fire road.

  “That’s a strange place to put a pole.”

  She was miffed at the sudden obstruction in our upward flight. My daughter was never one to let obstacles stand in her way. Even as a baby, she could climb out of childproof cribs and weasel her way past gates meant to keep her safe from stairs.

  “I guess the park rangers don’t want people trying to drive to the summit in their Cadillacs. Can you imagine trying to tow one of those out of here?

  Okay, it’s shank’s mare from here, daughter. We’re about two-thirds up Bluff Mountain. Come on, let’s grab our gear. Wait’ll you see the camp site.”

  It was mid-fall. Down in the valley, grass lawns dotted with impatiens and pansies gloried in the midday sun. It was balmy despite the cross-breezes off the surrounding peaks. But up here, almost at the summit, the chill of fall and a winter yet to come were evident. Mountain flora were still peeking up from the rocky soil, but the mountain laurel and stunted wild rhododendrons were turning brown-flecked from the nighttime cold. The Jackson oaks and chestnut suckers that sprouted from the blight-plagued stumps of once glorious American chestnut trees were displaying their reds, ochres and browns, while the valley trees still kept their chlorophyll greens.

  It always amazed me how trees dead before the Great War still tried a hopeless resurrection.

  I was surprised how heavy my pack felt as I shifted it onto my back. Kristin easily flipped hers up and over and I snugged the straps for her. There was a time when I could carry both packs: mine and Lauren’s.

  We followed the jeep-rutted fire trail up about three hundred yards, until we hit the fork. Straight ahead, maybe another five hundred yards, was the summit. To our left was an open field.

  “It may be a bit wet, so follow in my footsteps.”

  We trudged to the left across fall-dying haygrass and arrived at a copse of scrub trees. To the right was an outhouse.

  “There it is: the Punch Bowl!”

  The small pond lay shimmering in the reflected sunlight. No birds now, but it served as a way station for migratory birds and a watering trough for the indigenous white-tail deer. Both would avoid the times when humans invaded their haunts.

  It was also a great place for college-age kids to look at the moon and … well, you know. I still remembered the last time I was here, Lauren riding behind me on a borrowed motorbike as we snuck off-post that late Saturday for an overnight campout.

  Behind the copse was a three-sided hiker’s shelter.

  “Mother Nature’s Motel—free room, no board.”

  Kristin hugged me. “I love it already!”

  Then she turned. “Do kids play up here?”

  “Don’t think so. Why?”

  “I thought I saw a little boy running over that way. Must be the tree shadows.”

  I stared at her as she turned and headed for the shelter. Was it happening again?

  Sometimes both my ex and I were unnerved by our little girl, as she sat and talked for hours to no one in particular. The shrinks said it was normal for kids to have an invisible playmate at some point in their young lives. So we laughed and smiled and pretended to talk to her “friends.”

  Then, one day, it stopped. We asked our little girl what had happened to them, and she just smiled and said they had gone somewhere else.

  I followed her. I couldn’t keep her pace so I called out, “hey, slow down!”

  Kristin turned and smiled as I huffed and puffed up to her.

  “Let’s put our gear in the shelter. Then I want to show you something.”

  The unspoken law of hikers: No one steals another person’s gear. It’s the Honor Code of the mountain.

  Suddenly I felt totally drained.

  “Kris, let’s go rest in the shelter a bit then maybe we’ll head up to the summit. It’s quite a view.”

  She gave me the look. It wasn’t her mother’s look; Kristin’s showed concern, worry, not the cynicism in my ex’s eyes.

  “Sure you don’t want to lie down in the SUV, Dad?”

  “Daughter, do you know what I slept on for four years at VMI?”

  She giggled. “Girls?”

  I know, I know, she’s all grown up. But fathers still look at their daughters and see the five-year-old who climbed up on their shoulders and caused heart attacks by hanging upside down from tree limbs.

  I blushed and harrumphed.

  “I’ll have you know we slept on our hay, girl; hard, uncomfortable mats right on the floor. We didn’t have namby-pamby foam mattresses like the kids at W and L, or William and Mary, for that matter.”

  “Yes, sir, Cap’n sir.”

  She did a half-assed salute and we both laughed until I started to choke.

  By three o’clock the air was slightly warmer as the direct sun’s rays through the half-bare trees had heated things up. I had rebounded from my enervation and wanted to show Kristin the summit. I also wanted to surprise her.

  “Feel up to being a mountain goat, girl?”

  “Only if the older goat goes first!”

  She truly was my daughter.

  Once more, we left the shelter and our gear and headed back to the fork in the road. I had to force myself but I walked up the ever-increasing grade of the fire road. I was covered in sweat as we hit the top.

  Back after World War I, the government built a fire tower for the rangers to observe the surrounding forests. Long gone now, only the concrete pylons remained. But there was something else up there that I hadn’t told Kristin about.

  “What’s that over there?”

  We approached the little concrete marker with its bronze plaque inscription.

  Kristin stared at it then began to read out loud:

  “This is the exact spot on which Ottie Cline Powell’s body was
found April 5, 1891 after straying away from Tower Hill School House Nov. 9. A distance of 7 miles. Age 4 years, 11 months.”

  She dropped to her knees and moved her hands over the inscription. She was crying.

  “What happened to him, Dad?”

  I helped her up. We walked over to one of the decaying concrete fire tower pylons and sat down.

  “The dates on the marker are wrong but there really was a little boy named Ottie. He wasn’t quite five years old that November 9th, 1891.”

  Papa, papa, can I stay home and help you with the corn shucking?

  “Little Ottie was the sixth of what would ultimate be eight children from Edwin and Lillian Cline Powell. His father was a farmer and a minister of the Dunkard religion.

  “From what was recorded later, Edwin admitted that he had forcibly told the boy to go to school, something for which, the neighbors said, his wife never forgave him. He never forgave himself, either.

  “Ottie was probably the youngest boy in the little one-room Tower Hill School House run by Nannie Gilbert.

  “That day Nannie sent the boys out at recess to gather kindling wood for the wood-burning stove. Ottie went with them. But when the boys returned, he was not among them. When the teacher finally realized that one of her charges was missing she sent the boys out again to look for him and to summon help.

  “They found the twelve-foot-long chestnut tree branch that Ottie had tried to drag back to the school but, despite hundreds of searchers, never found him.

  “That night it rained and turned to ice up on the mountain.

  “Now, here’s the strange thing: The following April, at this very spot on top of Bluff Mountain, four young hunters found little Ottie’s body. Except for the feet being eaten, probably by wild animals, the boy did not seem to be harmed.

  “A local doctor did what was considered an autopsy and found three undigested chestnuts in the boy’s stomach. He declared that little Ottie had died of exposure that first day he went missing.

  “What’s wrong with that picture, Kristin?”

  “How did he get up here?”

  “That’s right! The town folk felt that the boy, in panic and terror, ran and ran until he reached the top of the mountain, then lay down, exhausted, and fell asleep. He never woke up.