Hid Wounded Reb

by J. L. Salter

  Kelly wondered, but had no way of knowing. Everybody’s attention was on the dead Reb — not likely named Johnny, of course — the first cemetery resident, the forefather of these three-hundred-seventy-five underground citizens. All the focus was on him. But whatever became of his companion? In all the stories Pop had recounted — as well as the ones Kelly had heard from others — the companion, when mentioned at all, was merely a footnote. He left the next day and gave the dead man’s horse to the Butlers.

  What was the story on the other guy? The one who might have gotten away… the one who possibly lived through the war. “What’s his story?” Kelly pondered. There could be all sorts of mysteries. Maybe the companion was really the dead Reb’s wife, dressed up as a soldier. She’d read documented cases of women on Civil War battlefields in men’s uniform. Or, perhaps the companion switched identities with the dead man and started a brand new life somewhere different than what, and whomever, he’d left behind before going to war.

  Hmm. I’m a wounded Confederate, hiding out in a cabin. I’ve just seen my companion buried, and Union patrols are out hunting for stragglers from the battle. He’d take the better of the two horses, because he’d need the stronger mount to make it home. If he even lasted that long without being captured, or killed, or dying later from wounds he probably already had.

  On her way out of the old part, Kelly paused where the list indicated merely “unknown infant,” marked simply by a rock. She imagined the grief-stricken family burying the tiny body, probably digging the shallow hole themselves, and only able to mark it with a homely rock. What a terrible, grief-filled day it must have been for them. Kelly was distinctly saddened to picture it and wished she knew the infant’s name.

  Chapter Seven

  Wednesday, April 18

  Sometimes fresh eyes — especially Mitch’s — could make things seem clearer, even different. After staring at her material for nearly two hours, Kelly needed Mitch and his eyes. She phoned to see where he was with Wednesday’s lake interview, learned Mitch was on his way home, so Kelly checked on the animals, collected her research, and jumped into her Jeep.

  Two generations before, the heart of the community was still Somerset’s original downtown. Currently, however, the heart would most likely be the array of large retail outlets and restaurants between lights four and nineteen along Highway 27.

  After the TVA impounded the region, the federal government constructed one of the largest dams in the U.S. and flooded the designated area at the end of 1950, resulting in one of the largest lakes east of the Mississippi. For the estimated seven years needed to fix the Wolf Creek Dam, the upstream level of Lake Cumberland would be about forty feet lower than normal, which significantly impacted what was typically some $175 million in annual tourist dollars to the area.

  ****

  When Mitch returned to Somerset, after being gone for nearly two months at the end of last year, he had to find his own lodgings, since Kelly made it clear they were not launching a sexual relationship… yet. The place he currently rented was high on an east bluff above Fishing Creek. To the older locals, Fishing Creek was its own body of water, but to the Ohio Navy — a local name for the boating visitors — it was just one of many long, gnarly fingers of the lake. Most boaters knew it as the area above Lee’s Ford Dock.

  Its bluff was steep and covered with rocks and trees. If one could navigate those impediments and the incline, he’d still face brush, briars, thorns, poison ivy, and likely snakes. Mitch didn’t feel any need to tackle descents to the lowered water level, but it was beautiful to view when he could see through the lush growth of early Kentucky spring.

  It was a little past 4 p.m. when Kelly arrived after her phone call. The day had been clear and sunny; presently it was in the low seventies, but would cool off in a few hours.

  Mitch was waiting on his porch — smaller than the one at Kelly’s cabin, but nice in a rustic, hand-built way. He hugged Kelly like he hadn’t seen her for weeks, though it had been only about six days since they’d shared pizza with the Suttons. But they’d eaten a restaurant supper during the cold weekend, met briefly at the library one morning, and spoken on the phone at least once a day. They hadn’t exactly been out of touch, but both were busy, which was good… and bad.

  His embrace caused some papers to drop, but Kelly let them fall. Evidently she had also missed his strong arms. She stood on her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Hi, stranger.”

  Mitch squeezed her again tightly as he breathed deeply with his face in her hair. “Hey, gorgeous. What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

  “I’m kind of stuck on some of this research. I’ve picked out some of the key pieces — at least I think they are. Want to get a quick read from you to see if I’m on the right track.”

  His rented cabin had been built in the thirties. Mitch once met a son of the man who bought it after World War II, then added a bedroom and porch. The walls inside the main room were covered with panels from counters of an old dime store. As children, the son and his siblings had spent hours extracting staples and tacks from each panel before their dad mounted the sections to the cabin wall.

  Mitch spent about fifteen minutes reading through Kelly’s notes and then placed them on his cluttered coffee table. “What do you figure Pop’s Aunt Belva was like?”

  “Not really sure. I’ve been crawling around in her head for two full weeks now. But clearly a very private person. She was the eldest of William Butler’s second family. I figure she was very close to her mom, who was probably less than twenty years older. Her dad was in his eighties when he died in the middle of the war. I suspect she felt distant from him.”

  “Age mainly?”

  “Yeah, plus the eight half-siblings from his first marriage. Belva likely had interaction with them… at least when she was a child, if not also later. And I’m guessing they treated her mother poorly.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Well, I don’t mean they necessarily singled out Mary Turner. But I’m thinking they resented their dad’s new wife, who was probably younger than all of them.”

  Mitch nodded. “Didn’t think of that.”

  “So if they resented young Mary, surely they’d resent her first little baby, Belva. I’m guessing Mary and Belva had a difficult time coping with the step-family, for however much contact they had. Since William was a lonely widower in his late sixties when he remarried, likely the kids from his first wife were grown and married off by then.”

  “So he’s late sixties and Mary’s maybe late teens, if that.”

  “December and May.” Kelly sighed. “I wonder if Mary was in love with him or if one of the Turner family just set up this marriage, thinking it’d be a good situation for her.”

  “He had land, a cabin, and likely some animals.” Mitch shrugged. “I gather that was a lot more than most folks had in the 1840s.”

  Kelly closed her eyes briefly. “She could’ve been in love with old William. I mean he had four more kids with her. At least they had sex, anyway.”

  “Randy old goat, fathering babies in his seventies.”

  “Of course, Mary might have viewed sex with him as her wifely duty, rather than anything to do with love.”

  “You’re determined it was a loveless marriage?”

  “No, just pursuing an angle. I’m thinking Mary might have felt alienated in her marriage to this old man, especially if it had been arranged by her family.”

  “Theory only…”

  “Right, but it might explain why Belva never married. Why she spent her prime years looking after her widowed mom. Why Belva presumably kept secrets that seem to have worried folks in her extended family, even after her death. I don’t think she felt connected.”

  “Okay, I’m with you.” Mitch scratched the back of his head. “But have you found any facts, from Pop or anybody else, we could test against your theory?”

  Kelly shook her head. “Pop hinted there’s probably something out there,
among his many cousins or their offspring.”

  “But no idea what…”

  “No idea, just the notion he should allow for it.” Kelly leafed through her papers and showed Mitch the chart of the cemetery’s old part. “See all that open grassy area?”

  “It’s just blank here, but I know what you mean.”

  “Well, those are presumed graves, according to Pop. Tradition said from each generation to the next that graves were there, even though all traces of mounds, outlines, markers of any kind, had vanished long ago. Nobody would even consider cutting into that ground because they allowed for graves that oral history said were probably there.”

  “You lost me again, Kelly.”

  “Pop’s generation has continued to preserve and protect those open grassy areas because the generations before them said graves were there. Nobody was certain who was buried, or when, or even exactly where. They only said it because they were told so by the folks before them.” Kelly looked down at the papers and then back at Mitch. “That’s like this family secret of Belva’s. It’s in the generational blood that a secret exists — a presumed secret, like those presumed graves. Apparently nobody now living knows the what, who, where, when — or even why — of the presumed secret. They just have a strong historical notion it exists.”

  “I follow you. But you’d know if you dug into a grave because you’d find bones or whatever’s left after a hundred-plus years. Digging into this presumed family secret, you might never know if you hit it or not.” Mitch studied her face to see if his point got across.

  “True, it probably won’t be anything you’d necessarily expect to find, like bones. But it certainly could be tangible. It’ll likely be unpredictable, like a stack of poems or something.”

  “Poems?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I know… far-fetched. I had a flash the other day, maybe Belva was a closet poet like Emily Dickinson. It was one of the few tangible things I could think of that Belva would want to keep secret.”

  “Why would somebody keep poems secret?”

  “Well, some poetry expresses things which are so far inside us we can hardly bear for anyone to see them.”

  “Okay, maybe poems could be a possible tangible secret. But what about intangibles? Also possible.”

  Kelly’s eyes lit up. “Could be, yeah. But what kinds of intangible things survive only as secrets?”

  “Information, knowledge…”

  “But about what?” Kelly seemed to be bursting to say it herself, but it appeared she needed to hear it first so she’d know whether she was on the right track.

  “Something done or something said, which you don’t want anyone to know about… ever.”

  “Right! The essence of an intangible secret is a dirty deed done by you, or you know who did one.” Kelly was smiling, despite the dirty topic.

  “Or you know something terrible took place, even if you don’t know who did it.” Mitch squinted. “Did that make sense?”

  “Yeah. There could be minor variations, but essentially it’s something you did or something you know… and it has enough significance or importance that you tuck it away and protect it maybe for the rest of your life.”

  “You said protect it. But if it’s such a dire secret, why not just destroy it?”

  Kelly thought for a while, then shook her head. “Not sure, not yet anyway. But I have a feeling if I spend a couple more weeks in Belva’s head, she’ll give me some more clues.”

  Mitch laughed softly. “Okay, enough of this psychoanalysis. Let’s see if I can find something here to eat.”

  Chapter Eight

  Kelly was underwhelmed by supper — Mitch’s something was a frozen pouch of chicken and linguini which promised it needed only ten minutes in a covered skillet. It actually required nearly double the time, plus a lot more stirring than the directions indicated. One couldn’t really say it was tasty, but it was filling… more or less. Mitch located two lite beers in his fridge.

  “Oh, wanted to tell you something I heard from Diane.” Kelly sipped her beer. “She spotted what she thought was a human prowler around the farm house.”

  “I liked it better when we both figured your dog was barking at animals.”

  “Me, too.” She shuddered briefly.

  Mitch’s deep breath bowed out his chest. “You want me to stay over a couple of nights… you know, just to have an extra live body around?”

  After a long pause, Kelly replied, “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to use this prowler to your own advantage?”

  Mitch obviously tried for his expression of total innocence, but failed.

  “Well, thanks for the offer, but I’m thinking about consulting Fred Lee Means.”

  “The big galoot State Trooper?” As Mitch sputtered, his jealousy was clear. “Why is Means the only guy you’ll trust with your safety?”

  She rehearsed the words before she spoke. “He’s a decorated professional, knows the area and its people, and he’s a dear old friend.”

  “I can’t stand it when you hook up with dear old friends who are big young guys.”

  “Mitch, it’s only a phone call. I’m not inviting him to camp out here.”

  What had begun as an informational bulletin had degenerated into the start of an argument, so both sipped their beers quietly. Kelly took her mostly empty plate to the kitchen and returned to her seat on the couch. A new topic was needed. “Pop arranged a meeting with one of his first cousin’s sons to help me get the lowdown on the Battle at Dutton’s Hill. But in the meantime, I’ve managed to collect some interesting stuff about Somerset in Civil War times.” As they sampled semi-stale peanuts, Kelly briefed Mitch on what she’d recently researched. “Many historians say Kentucky was a key border state so Lincoln placed a lot of importance on keeping it in the Union.” Kelly cracked another peanut shell then quickly resumed leafing through her notes. “Kentucky first officially declared itself neutral, but by September of 1861, the new state government formally declared its allegiance to the Union.”

  “Did you find much on Pulaski County in particular?”

  “Unfortunately, no.” Kelly flipped forward several pages. “During the War, Pulaski’s government openly supported the Union… as did the majority of its population. A lot of residents were sympathetic to the South, but they had to keep pretty low. This whole area was under Union occupation for most of the war.” She swept her hand vaguely southeast. “The Yankees even had a garrison in Somerset at one point. Imagine a town with less than seven hundred residents being swamped with three thousand soldiers, mostly quartered in the downtown area. It was pretty oppressive for anybody who preferred gray over blue.”

  Mitch sighed. “But it’d be difficult to be much of a cheerleader for the Confederacy anyway, since they kept sending raids into Kentucky to get food, supplies, animals, and such.”

  “Very true. But most historians write about Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan and his Rebel raids like he was a dashing hero to Kentuckians.”

  “He wasn’t from here, was he?”

  “No, he was a Hoosier.” Kelly picked up a page. “According to one author, despite all of the destruction from those raids, Morgan supposedly never harmed women or children.”

  Mitch coughed. “Maybe it was Morgan’s moral code which endeared him to everybody.”

  “Could be. But if I was living then, and somebody stole my stock, burned my barn, and whatever, I don’t think I’d be a big fan.”

  Mitch pointed to her papers. “How many Morgan raids were there?”

  “He made at least five raids into Kentucky. All that destruction has to have affected civilian lives, commerce, and transportation — not just inconvenienced the Yankee Army. Plus, who do you think lost property in raids by Morgan and the others?” Kelly pointed her pen for emphasis.

  “Never thought about it. Yankee soldiers, I guess.”

  “Some of it may have been theirs. But the Union troops stationed here didn’t really own much themselves. Mo
st of what they consumed came from the civilians in the countryside they marched through. Likewise for whatever was captured by Morgan and other Confederate raiders — most was taken from civilians. Even what the Rebels captured from the Yankees had likely been obtained, in the first place, from the people living here.”

  “So it’s like Billy Yank steals or commandeers from homefolks, then Johnny Reb swipes it from the Yankees. But it’s still lost to the civilians.” Mitch scratched his head. “So your stock and food might be confiscated by whichever force currently occupied the area. It’s a real motivation to lay low and keep things hidden.”

  “You know, Mitch, it’s hard for me to imagine what it was like for our country to go to war against itself. To ride through a city, a town, a farm — and just burn it to the ground. Steal, rape, kill… then destroy what’s left. You do this to citizens of your own country, maybe even your own state. It just blows me away.”

  “And it was by both sides,” Mitch added. “Not just Sherman’s Yankees.”

  “Right, both sides. Whoever had the upper hand at the moment took what they needed and did whatever they felt like.”

  Mitch apparently still had an appetite, even after linguini and peanuts, so he rose to check in the kitchen for edibles. “But that kind of thing didn’t happen here, did it? I mean in Pulaski?”

  “That’s a gap in my research right now. I’ve got a sense Pulaski fared moderately well compared to, say, places like Atlanta. There must have been a degree of stability being occupied by Yankees for most of the war. Especially for those sympathetic to the North. Plus, the Union had federal money backed by a real treasury, not the worthless paper printed by Jeff Davis. So if a Yankee garrison major gave you scrip for your crop or cattle, you stood a pretty good chance of collecting… at least partial value.”