by Jan Watson
Will felt himself floating above the riverbank, as if he could look down and observe himself, a stranger. Surely that was not him clutching a baby and screaming his wife’s name while his heart splintered in his chest.
He could hear himself shouting for help . . . feel his hand caught tight in Samson’s bridle as the horse galloped through the night. But it couldn’t be real . . . for he was warm and safe at home with Julie. This was only a dream, a nightmare! He would scare himself awake soon. He watched the man with the baby slide from the horse, scramble—staggering—onto the porch of Daniel’s cabin, and pound on the door.
Granny, still wrapped in the quilt, opened the door to the frantic knocking. Will burst in and thrust the baby into her arms. Nearly incoherent, he babbled about the creek, the storm . . . Julie! Julie!
Looking startled, Daniel stumbled from the small back bedroom, Emilee close behind, and stepped into Will’s nightmare. Will stood just inside the door. Water streaming from his clothes formed dirty puddles on the floor. Granny held Laura Grace, the infant nearly smothered in Will’s coat. Then Will sprang forward and grabbed Daniel’s arm, as if clutching a lifeline, while relating his desperate plight.
Emilee rushed to get Daniel’s boots while he pulled pants on over his nightshirt. Shoving his arms into his jacket, he took the slicker from Granny as she unwrapped the baby.
“No time! No time for that!” Will cried out as Daniel placed the garment around his shoulders. He would have them both run naked into the night in his panic to find Julie.
“We’ll find her, buddy,” Daniel consoled. “Just give me a minute. Emilee, light the lantern.”
Will followed as Daniel led Samson to the barn, where they quickly saddled riding horses. Mounting, they rode off into the night. The storm had abated. The torrential rain was now a steady cold drizzle. Daniel took the lead. Holding the lantern high, he guided his horse toward the roiling, muddy water of Troublesome.
Inside the cabin, Emilee rocked the newborn girl, wrapped in Granny’s quilt, still warm from the fire. Granny steeped a pot of chamomile tea for Emilee to sip while she nursed poor Julie’s wee one. Chamomile would keep the baby from getting colic caused by being so cold and wet. She drifted off to sleep, her tiny hand, fingers splayed, resting on Emilee’s arm.
Granny pulled a straight-back chair close to the rocker. She and Emilee clasped hands while they prayed for Julie. Tears flowed from Emilee’s eyes as she prayed that Daniel and Will would find her precious friend. She cried to Granny that she couldn’t bear to think of Julie afraid and cold, out in the night alone.
Granny prayed for Julie’s soul and for the peace that passes understanding. In the morning she would boil some dried asparagus root and make a potion for Emilee to drink to keep her milk up. . . . Now she’d be nursing two, her own John and Will’s motherless daughter.
Emilee wouldn’t go back to bed. She dragged her quilt and bolster across the floor and slept at Granny’s feet, baby John nestled in the crook of her arm. Granny held the infant Laura Grace and settled in for a long night in the rocking chair. There wasn’t anything quite as sweet as rocking a baby. Granny’s fingers found the long-mended scar on her face and traced it over and over. Traced the history it told; traced it from eyebrow to upper lip. She let her mind wander to earlier times, to a baby of her own. One she’d lost many years before. . . .
She was a young woman with two little boys and a headstrong husband when first she came to Kentucky. Oh, it was a wild and beautiful place back then. The mountains shot up around the little lean-to they’d scurried to build that first fall before the freezing rains of winter set in. They’d played house is what they’d done. Finally off to themselves with their love and their babies. The winter was so cold she’d barely gone outside for weeks. Ben took care of them. He brought in sides of deer meat to roast in the fireplace that seemed to take up half the little shack, and the cornmeal and taters they’d carried from Virginia finished out their meals.
Two years they’d lived there on that willful creek in that place of peace and beauty. She’d carried her daughter that second summer. The Spicers were their neighbors on the ridge over yonder, and sometimes Millie Spicer would visit with her children, or Granny and Ben would go over to the Spicer place on a Sunday afternoon. Both little families would have church together, and sometimes another couple or two would join them. Jack Spicer was a good hand at preaching. Millie had been the one to help her birth Leah. She was a kind and gentle woman.
Then came that dreadful day when she and Ben had seen the flames shoot up and smelled the smoke that drifted through the trees. She’d started to run in that direction, baby Leah in her arms. But Ben had stopped her, made her go back inside the sturdy cabin Jack Spicer had helped him build. He’d pushed her and the children in, then closed the door and bid her to stay inside. She remembered his warning as if it were yesterday. It still chilled her blood. She sat against the inside of the door all afternoon—her little boys close beside, baby Leah in her arms—and waited for the whooping sound of Indians that never came. Not to her door anyway. But her friend was dead. Scalped. And Jack, the good preacher, had an arrow through his heart.
Ben found one of Millie’s children hidden in the rain barrel. He was half drowned. It was solace to Granny’s soul to have Millie’s boy to raise.
Granny had prepared to leave then. She was packing up her bedding and her pots, but Ben wouldn’t go. “It will be all right,” he’d said. “Chances are they won’t be back.”
And so she’d stayed. She loved Ben, didn’t she? There wasn’t anything else she could do, was there?
It was nearly a year later before the Indians came again. She’d set little Leah under the clothesline, a rock on the tail of her gown to keep her from crawling off. Her two boys and Millie’s one were off with Ben hunting game for supper.
She had turned her back for less than a minute. Just long enough to walk to the porch for more wet laundry. The baby’s scream froze her in her tracks. She couldn’t turn around at first, but when she did, a half-naked red man had her baby, her little Leah, by the heels. She rushed at him, hit at him with something—the laundry paddle? a handful of clothespins? One swipe at her with his hatchet and she was down, her baby’s fractured skull a puddle of loss she saw with her one good eye.
Ben would have taken her back to Virginia then—she and her two boys and Millie’s one. But he loved it here on that Troublesome Creek, loved the little plot of ground that was their own. And so she stayed. She loved Ben, didn’t she?
Granny laid Julie’s little one on the quilt beside baby John and went to stir the fire. She settled a hickory log on the embers and swung the teakettle over the hot coals. Her scar flared as sharp as a toothache, as if it had happened yesterday. And the eyes that were too old for tears spilled over, as wild as the water that washed Julie down Troublesome Creek.
It was late the next morning before Daniel returned to find Emilee pacing up and down the narrow split-rail porch that ran the length of their cabin.
He shook his head as he dismounted and joined Emilee on the porch. “Nothing. We found nothing but the busted-up buggy.” He folded her into his arms. “And Will is a crazy man. I couldn’t get him to come with me. I brought his horse and left him there on the creek bank. At least he stopped yelling her name.” He patted Emilee’s back and then released her. “I’ve been by Nathan’s. He’s going to send his boys around to rally a search party.”
Daniel took off his old felt hat and slapped it against the porch rail, then splashed his face with a dipper of cold water from the bucket on the wash shelf. “Emilee, you won’t believe the creek this morning. It’s back down, but there’re brush and tree limbs all over the place. It was a flash flood that caught Will unawares. She could be miles down the bed. . . .” He faltered, seeing Emilee flinch. “I know, honey. We’ve got to pray to God for a miracle, or we’ll have to bury Will alongside her.” Daniel stepped inside for dry clothes and for some of the breakfast Granny had wai
ting for him. He could not rest until Julie was found.
Emilee pestered him with her fears and her prayers. “Miracles happen,” she kept saying. “Miracles happen.”
And he reckoned she could be right. A mother would fight to stay alive for her young’un.
Granny stuck a sack of fried ham and biscuits in Daniel’s pocket as he got up from the table, then handed him a jar of black coffee. “See if ye can get Will to eat a bite,” she called as he left, this time on foot, carrying Granny’s walking stick, his hound trotting along by his side.
Daniel aimed to traverse the twisting hollows that issued off Troublesome like limbs from a gnarled tree and filled with floodwater whenever the creek overflowed its banks. A man on foot could climb the cliffs, which were tangled with briars and vines—Devil’s Shoestring—so thick a horse couldn’t put a hoof down. And he was the man for the job, for he knew its paths as dead sure as he knew Emilee’s face. Scarcely a day passed that he and Old Blue didn’t hunt for their supper in that wild place, and on nights when the moon was full they tracked possum there just for fun. He wished with all his might that he and his dog were setting out on such a jaunt now.
Daniel picked up his pace. He needed to find Julie soon.
Several men on horseback and more on foot spent the long spring day, dawn to dusk, searching for Julie Brown without result. They assembled in the early evening at the site of her disappearance, the banks of Troublesome Creek, only a few feet below where the footbridge—now splintered into kindling—just yesterday had straddled the water. They stood or squatted stoically, looking sideways at Will without so much as moving their heads, as if seeing his grief full on might blind them.
The men shared this tragedy as they had shared others, accepting God’s will. For as much as they revered their mountain home, they were well aware that it was often at great cost that they dwelt in such a beauteous place. Occasionally, one or another would break the silence to point out, yet again, the stump charred by lightning, the deep gouges in the earth caused by Samson’s struggle, the huge limb from the cottonwood that lay half in, half out of the now gently flowing stream. It was as if they needed evidence that the calamity had actually occurred, for it was difficult to take in, impossible to believe that Will’s young wife could disappear without a trace.
Will stood apart from the others, exhausted and in shock. He appeared emotionless. There were no tears, no further shouts of rage or terror. He was spent.
Daniel dispersed the men. They would meet again at first light, but for now they needed food and rest, and Daniel was certain in his heart that there was no longer a need for haste in the hunt for Julie. Will stumbled numbly when Daniel took his arm and led him away. Will stopped only once for a long searching look at Troublesome Creek, then turned and followed his friend.
While his family slept and Will lay bedded on a pallet in front of the fireplace, poleaxed from one of Granny’s potions, Daniel sat on the porch and contemplated the events of the past twenty-four hours. He was keyed up with a kind of angry energy that made it impossible to rest. He had lain with Emilee while she cried herself to sleep, and then, easing his bulky body from the bed, he dressed in silence and sought the solace of the night and a pipe of tobacco.
Old Blue crept on padded feet, quiet as a rabbit in its lair, to the chair and dropped his head to Daniel’s lap. Absentmindedly, Daniel stroked the dog’s silky ears and scratched his bony back. A soft woof and a cock of his head informed Daniel that the dog was not ready to give up the hunt. “All right, Old Blue.” He stood and knocked his pipe against the porch rail, spilling hot ash on the ground. Master and dog set off to search for Julie.
The night sky was mostly clear, and Daniel’s hunter’s eyes adjusted quickly, making the footpath easy to follow. They forded the creek and reached Will’s cabin minutes later. Daniel bade the dog to stay while he entered the empty house.
It was odd to be in Will’s house alone. For a second he fancied he heard Julie’s voice. His heart leaped with joy, and he turned quickly in the direction of the bed, where he’d last seen her wrapped up in a quilt with her new baby. He knew there was no one here, but the sound was as real to him as the empty chair that sat in a little square of moonlight near the cold fireplace. It seemed she called out for him to find her.
He searched for an article of clothing that held her scent. No easy task, for while the men of the community were hunting for her, he knew the women had been busy as well, scrubbing and washing everything they could lay their hands on, preparing the dwelling for Julie’s return. Groping in the darkness, Daniel felt the brim of a bonnet hanging from a peg inside the door. This is good, he thought as he stepped outside and held the bonnet under Blue’s nose. The dog could track a rabbit or a possum for miles by following its scent; Daniel hoped he could do the same with Julie’s.
He led the dog to the far bank where he figured Julie might have been. He knew that Blue couldn’t trace a body in water, but if she had washed up somewhere along the way, his keen sense of smell might alert him to it.
They had traveled several miles—the dog snuffling along the ground, sometimes whining and running ahead only to return and push his long nose into the bonnet in Daniel’s hand—when suddenly Blue froze in his tracks. Ears up and nose sniffing the cold night air, the dog pulled away from his master and broke into a run.
Daniel let him take the lead and watched as the night swallowed Blue. A cloud obscured the moon. It was as dark as the inside of a cave. The skittering sound of a small varmint running away caught him off guard, and the once-familiar landscape now seemed threatening. Huge twisted grapevines hanging from towering oaks and water maples caught at his clothing like monstrous arms. The soft whoo-whoo of an owl was interrupted when he stepped on a loose rock and fell heavily, sliding down a steep incline and nearly rolling into the creek before he caught himself. Daniel stood, brushed at his clothing, released a shaky laugh, and shook his head to clear his mind. The familiarity of the place restored, he proceeded with caution.
He had just about decided to call the dog back in when an eerie bay in the distance caused the hair on the back of his neck to rise. He had never heard such a mournful sound. Rushing to see what Blue had found and wishing at the same time that he would never have to see it, he approached the scene with dread. He closed his eyes tightly, not trusting his own vision, when moonlight glinted as if reflected from marble and revealed a small white arm lying before him on the bank of Troublesome Creek. Tasting bile, his legs buckling, Daniel sank to his knees before the object of his quest.
The hunt was over.
Julie’s body floated serenely in a deep, dark pool, her left arm tangled in a blackberry bramble, her long blonde hair streaming out around her still face, her green eyes staring into eternity. The full moon reflected the perfect backdrop, as if she swam upon its golden surface.
As carefully as if she could feel his ministration, Daniel loosened her arm from the thorns and pulled her body, cold and slick as glass, from the frigid water. He dried her as best he could before wrapping her in his own long, homespun shirt. Kneeling there, he thought of Will and the heartbreak this find would bring. The whimpering of the dog mingled with the common sounds of a forest at night: animals seeking refuge or comfort or food, water tumbling over rock, pines sighing lonesome songs in the breeze.
Daniel stood, hearing none of it, and cradled the lifeless form in his arms. “Come, Blue,” he commanded, as once again that long night they began a journey that could only end in sorrow.
CHAPTER 5
A pickax grated against rock and disturbed the early morning hush in the old cemetery. Daniel leaned on the handle of his shovel and watched Nathan’s youngest son flail about with the ax. Isaac was not strong enough to break rock, but he’d wanted to help, so Daniel had brought him and his brother Jeremiah up the mountain to the boneyard near daybreak. A flock of doves, startled into flight, sought new shelter in a wild cherry tree. They fretted and cooed and looked down on the graved
iggers with beady, frightened eyes. Isaac swung the pickax so hard sparks flew off the rock.
“Easy, boy,” Daniel said. “You’ll break the handle off that way. Here, let me show you.”
Daniel took the tool and tap, tap, tapped against the rock before he gave it a solid hit. The rock broke into several small pieces.
Isaac flung the pieces into a pile of brush, then grabbed the shovel and started digging. His thin shoulders shook with the effort.
He’ll have to be a preacher like his pa, Daniel thought. He’s too puny for real work. Not that Daniel had anything against preachers, especially Brother Nathan—that man could talk the stink off a skunk—but they weren’t much hand at anything but preaching and eating, as far as Daniel could see. Isaac was built like his father, not much bigger than a banty rooster and him nearly fourteen. Now Jeremiah, on the other hand, was already big as a man.
“Let me have that shovel,” Jeremiah said. “You ain’t even made a dent in the ground.”
“Leave me be,” Isaac replied. “I want to do this for Julie.” Daniel knew that Isaac had a strong attachment to Will’s wife, like everyone else on Troublesome Creek. Isaac was attracted to her easy familiarity and teasing ways. He often showed up at the bank where Daniel and Will mined coal. He’d scurry back into the holes and retrieve slivers of coal that broke off when they chunked out the big lumps. He’d gather a gunnysack full to take home to his mother. Will’s house was closest to the coal bank, and so at noon they’d take dinner there. While they ate, Julie read stories from the newspapers her sister sent from Lexington. She read of bank robberies, house fires, weddings, births and deaths, funny things and sad things. And things they’d never heard of, like the brightly painted circus train with animals from India and Africa: monkeys with curled tails, striped cats as big as a calf, and a huge animal with floppy ears and a short tail who carried its own trunk.