Behind The Pines

by Lauren Brown

  The frozen tips of grass crunch beneath my heavy bag. I take a moment to look at the sky that has come to life with the new May sun. A blue jay sings her tune atop the moldering monument of General Sherman. The field, surprisingly, has been well kept and rangers have reopened the main entrance. A new manmade trail emerges in the distance. The blue jay puffs out her chest, filling the air with the peaceful sounds I remember so well.

  I feel in my back pocket for the map. My shoulders, unaccustomed to the heavy bag I carry, are raw already. I free them and read the map. The new trail will merge in roughly two miles with the trails I often saw on the back of the mountain as a kid. According to my map, these Appalachian trails will take me all the way to Canada, and, if my pace is right, I will arrive there in about one year’s time. I’m not concerned about timing though, or even making it to Canada, I’m just ready to walk.

  I had a lot of time to think about what I would do when I got out of federal prison. I awoke in the hospital a day after the Park Pines shooting, recovering from a bullet wound to the left side of my abdomen. It had missed my descending aorta by a fraction of an inch. It wasn’t long before the police were in my room questioning me. Sarah had stopped by intermittently between interviews to fill me in on the situation at Park Pines. There is a subtle disconnect between us now, but I still find her visits comforting. She told me how Beatrice had quit shortly thereafter, how most of the residents couldn’t even remember what had happened.

  “How is Hue?” I asked her as I adjusted my aching body in my hospital bed.

  She chuckled. “He’s Hue. Still a multitude of colors.”

  I had kept up with the news for the two weeks I was in the hospital and then for several months thereafter as the trial took place. I watched from my hospital bed and then my Johnson City prison cell as Mayor Ringgold was thrown in the back of a state trooper’s car as he attempted to flee the state. His wife, secretary at the Johnson City police department, had been found sleeping with a cop in exchange for opioids from the evidence room. And the Bear’s wife had spoken through tears, across the nation, about how the death of her husband was ultimately a blessing as she was “free from the pain of an abusive husband.” Rick died from his cancer mid-trial.

  Roger Howl, hot in the face and nervous, had taken the stand three weeks later claiming, with his right hand on the Bible that he “was unaware of the entire situation, but yes, the rumors were true, he had been having an affair with Beatrice for several years.” He’d slipped in his confession when asked how it was that I managed to escape that night to Chattanooga. He had given too much information, and although it played no substantial part in the verdict, it was still comical seeing him fluster at the stand.

  Payne Pharmaceutical managers and their CEO had accidentally found Allyn Copperfield, their top ranking medical sales rep, carrying boxes of dated pills out of the warehouse facility after hours while going through security footage when one hundred computers were stolen. He had confessed, lost his job, and been sentenced to six months in prison just as I began my time at Park Pines. They had called him onto the stand where he swore he had no connection to Richard Lyons or Mayor Ringgold. The entire town of Johnson City seemed to turn upside down in those three months.

  As for me, there was no turning upside down. I had come to terms with my situation. I lost my medical license, was arrested, and spent a year in federal prison for over-prescribing and stealing pain medication along with failure to report the murder of Martin Murray. I didn’t put up a fight because, ultimately, there was no point.

  Hue wrote me once while I served my time. He jokingly told me I would have been a lousy ground soldier since I got myself imprisoned, but that, in the end, I would have made an awesome bomber pilot since I bombed all of Johnson City in a matter of ten minutes. Beau had sent me a few romance novels to pass the time. Hope’s parents had even visited once. Her mother hadn’t wanted to come. She sat withdrawn from the glass window with her lips pursed and arms folded close to her chest. I couldn’t blame her. Hope’s father had brought me a stack of pictures of Hope and I that they had taken on family outings. The pictures were the first time I had seen Hope’s face in two years.

  But, in the end, federal prison marked the conclusion of my dark days. The suffocating thickness that encompassed my memories of Park Pines, our burning house in Johnson City, the lecture room in medical school, the house I grew up in as a child, began to slowly fade. To my relief, that year in prison was the last of my prison days.

  I decided, sitting on the cot in my cell, that I would, ironically, do what Richard Lyons said I had been doing for the previous year. I would hike my way through the mountains on the Appalachian Trail. I decided this about a month into my prison term and had spent the rest of my days planning the trip. I checked out books from the prison library, requested Hue send me a list of things I might need to pack for a long excursion, and taught a general science class to inmates to save money for my trek. In the beginning, I wondered if my idea was far-fetched, a way to deal with the boredom of my prison days. But at the end of March, as I carried the few belongings I had out of prison, I knew I was really going to hike the trail. I stayed with my uncle on the mountain until May when I planned to begin my trip north.

  I fold the map and return it to my back pocket. I unzip my pack and retrieve a familiar small orange bottle, unscrewing the white cap in one fluid motion. I took the pain pill bottle from my uncle’s bathroom, of course, this time without the medication. I stoop down and dig a small hole in the earth with my fingers. The grass is cold. I take a few clumps of moist soil and pack them into the bottle, one of many bottles I plan to fill on my northbound trip. I cross out HYDROCODONE and write DAY 1 on the label. I roll the bottle a few times in my hand, then slide it back in with its relatives in the front of my pack.

  The blue jay flies away, signaling my time to begin. I close my eyes, take in a deep breath of mountain air, pick up my bags, and make my way to the trail.

  Then, with one foot in front of the other and God on my side, I am floating. Floating as I did on those fall days in this field, away from the ground and up from the mountain. I can feel the bitter coldness envelope then release me to the freeing, burning sun above. The energy slowly warms me from the inside out, breaking free the hard encasing. The forest opens and, behind the flickering light I see her. I see my Hope. I grip the straps on my pack and begin full speed towards her, flying effortlessly and peacefully from behind to above the pines.

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not be in your hands if it had not been for my husband, Conner. To my best friend, thank you for believing in my ability to write this story before it even came to my mind. Without your love and support, I would never have had the courage to step away from medical school and write Behind the Pines. You also gave me our firstborn son, Bartlett, and made us a family, which will inspire me to write for the rest of my life.

  Thank you to my dear editor Faith Ross for taking on the scary drafts in the book’s dingy beginnings and helping me create a piece worth reading. You have an eye for detail and a heart for literature and without you this book would not be the piece that it is today.

  To the talented Cinyee Chiu whose creativity brought the words to life. From the cover design to the entire interior, you helped shape my book into a work of art and make it a joy to look at—thank you!

  Thank you to my English teachers from sixth grade at GPS to my senior year at UTC: Mrs. Rice, Mrs. McKenna, Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Wyatt, Coach Gaither, Mr. Wells, Mrs. Pharr, Mrs. Coffman, Mrs. Lundgrin, and Mrs. Whorton. Your red ink pens did not go to waste.

  To my family and friends who all held their breaths as I resigned from William Carey to take on this challenge, you can now exhale. Thank you for believing in me and lending a helping hand along the way.

  And most importantly, thank you to my loving and gracious savior Jesus who sacrificed His life and rose again so that I could write this novel and who never lowers His arms each time
I come running back.

  About the Author

  Lauren is a graduate of Girls Preparatory School and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. After earning a B.S. in Biology Pre-Professional, she attended William Carey College of Osteopathic Medicine for one semester before withdrawing to pursue her passion to complete Behind the Pines. She now writes for the Lookout Mountain and Signal Mountain Mirror and lives with her husband and high school sweetheart, Conner, their precious son, Bartlett, and their pets Mitzy, Banjo, and Zeus.