Time Is a River

by Mary Alice Monroe

  “Again,” Phyllis replied with a hint of a teacher in her voice. “These documents have great historical value. You saw how much of the documentation was what was considered women’s work. In those records we can mine so much rich cultural information. The library was most fortunate that the Watkins family donated their collection to us.”

  “I now know how much they paid for a slave. But I still don’t know anything more about Kate. Not even a photograph of her.”

  Phyllis sighed deeply and her face relaxed. “Ah yes, Kate…”

  Mia’s attention sharpened at the change in Phyllis’s tone. “Did you know her?”

  “Me? Heavens no. I’m not that old. But, my father has told me so many stories about her. They were friends, you know. Oh, what a time it must have been when they were young. This area was a Mecca for the la-di-da types. The trains brought the glamorous outside world into our sleepy hollow. In fact, it was the trains that changed this town. Even before my father’s time, my grandfather told us the whole town used to sigh with relief each time they heard the train whistle blowing, because that signaled the train made it up the steep incline to town. They’d all come running to see what celebrity stepped off the train.”

  “What brought them here?”

  She leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers under her chin. “At the turn of the century thousands of people came for the curative powers of the spring water. To take the waters was how they phrased it. A lot of them came from Charleston. But then the railroad came, and by the twenties folks came from all around seeking more than wellness. They came to breathe the fresh mountain air, to fish in our rivers, and to escape the miasma of city air in the summer. Fancy hotels sprang up everywhere. And along with them the businesses that cater to the tourists. The mill wasn’t important in Watkins Mill anymore.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “The same thing that happened to the sanitariums. It closed its doors as businesses often do.”

  “What happened to Walter and Kate if the mill closed?”

  “Walter Watkins was a minister. That was a proper profession for an educated man of a certain wealth in those days. He had enough money to maintain a secure but perhaps more modest lifestyle for himself and his daughter. He kept the estate as best he could. Though the property did fall into some disrepair over the years.”

  “What became of Mrs. Watkins, Kate’s mother?”

  “Isobel Watkins? She died in childbirth. I thought that would have been in the records.”

  Mia shook her head. “So Kate was raised by Mrs. Hodges.”

  “How did you know about Mrs. Hodges?”

  Mia fumbled for an answer that would not give away the diaries. “I must have heard her name from someone.”

  Phyllis mulled that over, looking doubtful. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name. Helena Hodges.” Then she snickered like a child. “My father used to call her Hellsafire Hodges.”

  Mia chuckled, thinking Kate no doubt cast that line many times as well. She leaned forward on the wood table, cupping her chin in her palm. “What else did your father tell you about Kate?”

  Phyllis’s eyes kindled. “Oh, there are lots of stories about Kate Watkins. Most everyone has one. I haven’t thought about them for years, though. Kate Watkins, Lord, Lord, Lord…She was something. To be honest, I always wished I’d known her. She wasn’t like most women of her time. I guess you could say she was a tomboy as a child and never changed. I’ll tell you this. She loved to fish, that’s for sure, and she didn’t care one whit if the men around these parts liked it or not. And a lot of them did not, let me tell you. They considered it an affront that a woman would despoil their waters.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “That she would stand in the face of male opposition and follow her own call was a spirit I always found inspiring.”

  Phyllis Pace blinked, then, catching herself, smiled tightly. “But she was a Watkins and could do about anything she wanted and no one would dare speak up to her. Not to her face, anyway. She had her admirers, too. Scores of them.”

  “Can you tell me one of your father’s stories?”

  Phyllis steepled her fingers and deliberated. Then she placed her palms on the table and rose from her chair. “I have a better idea.” She picked up the two boxes. “Come along. I always say a good researcher goes to the original source. My father’s in the next room. He’s in his nineties but fit as a fiddle. I bring him here once or twice a week, mostly for a change of scenery. He’d love nothing better than to tell you one of his stories.” She led Mia from the room, muttering softly, “God knows, I’ve heard them enough.”

  Mia couldn’t believe her good fortune. She quickly scooped up her notebook and pens, grabbed her purse, and followed Phyllis to the comfortable seating area she had admired earlier. Sitting in a cushy armchair under a large window was an elderly man slumped slightly in the shoulders, bent over a book. When they approached he lifted his eyes from the page. They were a very pale blue, almost opaque.

  “Hello, Daddy,” Phyllis said in a voice more tender than Mia would have thought possible from the stern woman. “I’d like you to meet someone.” She turned and waved Mia closer. “Speak loudly,” she said in a whisper. “He’s hard of hearing and never wears his darn hearing aid.” Turning back to her father she said with respect, “Mia, this is my father, Phillip Pace. Daddy, this is Mia. She wants to hear stories about your old friend Kate Watkins.”

  At the name of Kate Watkins, the old man’s rheumy eyes sharpened. “Kate Watkins, eh?” he said after they’d shook hands and Mia took a seat beside him. “I won’t be talking ill about her,” he said in warning. “Nor about that damn nonsense about the investigation neither. Let it lie, I tell you. You won’t hear a peep from me about that.” His face grew stern and Mia saw immediately the family resemblance to Phyllis.

  “No, sir,” she quickly assured him. She made mental note of the word investigation. She’d not heard that mentioned before. “I’m more interested in the young Kate. Phyllis tells me that you were a friend of hers?”

  His face relaxed with memory. Seeing him settle in, Phyllis gave a quick wave of her hand and hurried back to her desk, where a patron was waiting.

  “I was that,” Phillip said with a slow nod.

  He looked out the window for a moment and went very still. Mia thought for a moment that she’d lost him. But he turned his head back and his eyes had a new clarity of vision.

  “It was a long time ago,” he began. “The summer of nineteen sixteen, if memory serves. I was younger than Kate by some years. More a tag-along friend, if you will. It was my older brother, Eddie, who was part of the gang. But she was good-natured about it. They all were. We fished together, you know. Me and Eddie, Kate, Henry Harrison, and Lowrance Davidson. Didn’t matter if she was a girl. Hell’s bells, she could outfish all of us. ’Cept maybe Lowrance.” He rubbed his jaw, smiling to himself at some memory. “Nobody in the county could outfish or outshoot Low.”

  Mia seized on this, remembering Kate’s diary. Lowrance knows the names of all the plants, of course. But he’s older than me.

  “I heard that name before, Lowrance. Who was he?”

  “Low was her cousin!” he snapped, surprised she didn’t know such a basic fact. “Everybody knows that. Low and Kate, they were like two peas in a pod. Always jotting notes down in their journals. Always with their heads together over something. Low, he had a microscope and sat bent over that thing for hours on end. He said how he was going to be a…what’s the word? A botanist, that’s it. Those two went collecting leaves and critters and you name it. She liked the critters, especially. Said it helped her be a better fisherman. I never got into that. I mean, I know how to read the water just fine without having to draw some critter in a book! Pshaw…” He worked his jaw like he tasted something unpleasant.

  “I reckon I was just a mite jealous of Low getting so much of Kate’s time. Lowrance, you see, he was more than just her cousin. He looked out for h
er, same as Eddie did for me. I guess you could say he was her best friend. We all knew none of us had a chance with her. By the time she grew up, just about every man in the land of sky was in love with her. Yes, me too. Even though I was wet behind the ears. But that Lowrance,” he said more loudly, jabbing a digit into the armrest of the chair to make his point. “That’s a man that well and truly loved Kate. And I daresay she loved him, too.” He shook his head with sorrow. “It’s a damn shame how it all ended. Things would’ve turned out different for our Kate if he lived, that’s for sure.”

  “Tell me about him,” Mia said, and moved to the edge of her chair.

  Phillip Pace sat clutching the armrests, lost in his memories. Then, gradually, his face eased and he loosened his grip on the chair. The leather creaked as he leaned back against the cushion.

  “Ah, Kate,” he said in a faraway voice. “I was just a kid. Hardly big enough to tag along with the boys—but I did. I don’t remember much, but I remember Kate. Did you hear the story about how she used her dancing lessons to help her cast?”

  Summer 1916

  War was on everyone’s mind that summer. In the barbershop the men talked about nothing else ’cept the battles and death tolls in the trenches. The wives and mothers in town were worried sick about conscription. They spoke of little else in the beauty salon. My mother didn’t allow war talk at the dinner table, though. She said it upset the digestion and from what my friends told me, their mothers banned the topic, too. Maybe mothers throughout the county—maybe even the nation—laid down the same law. We boys used to laugh that our mamas thought war talk would give us mustard gas.

  On one hot summer afternoon, we fellas were playing soldier in the woods. We were marching in single file like a troop, using our fishing rods as guns, that sort of thing. Just fooling around. But in our hearts, we were ready to sign up and go to war. We thought it would be an adventure and we could fire real guns and be heroes, like in the movies.

  We’d been waiting on Kate to meet us. She had dance class every Thursday, which never sat well with her. Her Aunt Grace and Mrs. Hodges had ganged up on the Reverend and told him in no uncertain terms that Kate needed to learn to be a lady. I guess they thought dance lessons were part of feminine schooling. That summer she’d turned sixteen, almost full grown. For years she’d taken dance lessons and for years we’d waited for her.

  Anyway, we were out playing soldier when all of a sudden we see this rock come flying at us and hear a voice calling, “Bombs away!” First we ducked, then we swung our heads around, fists at the ready.

  Kate was standing on a rise a few yards back with her hands on her hips and her face red and scowling.

  “You boys quit playing soldiers, hear?” she called out. “You’re not going to some stupid ol’ war. President Wilson said so. Not ever!”

  Lowrance straightened and began walking toward her. He was the undeclared leader of our troop. He was also the tallest, which gave him the edge. And the oldest. But mostly, he had this even-tempered way about him that made folks want to listen to what he had to say. His thick hair was the color of sand but he had the dark brown eyes of the Watkins line.

  “Kate! You’re late,” Low called out.

  Low was the only one who could talk to Kate that way. She just smiled in a sly way that made my heart do a little leap whenever I saw it. I knew Low felt the same, too, ’cause I could see it in his face. It’d always been that way between them. Like they had some secret that only they shared. Then Kate sat on the ground and pulled off her stockings. This wasn’t anything unusual. She liked being barelegged in the summer.

  Mrs. Hodges told Kate she was prone to what she called “moments of excess exuberance.” But sometimes Kate just liked to show off. Kate came running and when she got near the small creek that separated us she went and hitched up her skirt and cried, “Look at me! I’m a ballerina!” She leaped across the creek, throwing one leg ahead and the other behind, stretching them far out and flinging her arms out to the side. We all watched agog and damn if she wasn’t just like a dancer I’ve seen in some magazine.

  She landed on the other side of the creek, laughing and catching her breath. Low’s face had grown still and his smile was gone. He leaned close when she came up and put his lips near her ear.

  “You ought not to be flinging your dress up like that, showing your bare legs. Not in front of the boys.”

  Kate looked over at us. Henry and Eddie ducked their heads and kicked their feet in the dirt, embarrassed. I started looking at anything I could as long as it wasn’t at her bare legs.

  “Aw, Low, you know I hate it when my stockings pick up beggar’s-lice from the prickly weeds. Besides, they’re not boys. They’re just Phil, Henry, and Eddie.”

  Eddie looked stricken but Henry snickered and said, “Why are you taking those stupid dancing classes anyway?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. His ears were as red as his hair. My brother was seven years older than me. I was the youngest of eight Pace children and each of us a redhead. Yet I was only the second son. With six sisters, was it any wonder I clung to my older brother like a kudzu vine? So if Eddie took a side, I did, too.

  “Why’re you doing that?” I asked Kate. “Dancing is for girls.”

  The boys flicked their eyes at Kate before they threw back their heads and commenced hooting and hollering. Most girls would’ve glared at them, but Kate tossed her head back and laughed as hard as the rest of them. Then she came up and ruffled my hair. I was only a boy, but I felt special being singled out by Kate like that.

  “I am a girl,” she told me like it was an admission. “But I’m not like any girl you’ve ever met or are likely to meet.”

  “She’s one of a kind, our Kate,” Eddie said. We all knew he was head over heels in love with her.

  “But she still is a girl,” Henry said. “And silly girls have to do things like learn to dance and cook and play the piano so they can catch a husband. We all know girls aren’t supposed to go catching fish. So maybe you better dance on back home, little girl, and let us men go on to our fishing.”

  Now Henry was nice enough, but we knew he was the type that liked to egg someone on. He had shrewd little eyes and when he taunted someone, he always made me think of a snake.

  Kate spun around to face him, her face coloring. “At least I don’t go marching around playing soldier like you boys. I saw you poking and jabbing in the air.” She crossed her arms and said in a haughty tone, “I might be a girl but I know the difference between a rod and a gun.”

  “We weren’t playing, we were practicing, just so you know,” Henry said, coloring. His small eyes got smaller. “There’s a war going on and we’re going to be fighting soon. Not play fighting, either, but real combat. With real guns. And you won’t be able to come. Do you know why? Because you’re a girl, that’s why.”

  “Well,” she sputtered, balling her hands in fists at her sides. She looked ready to fight us all to stop us from leaving Watkins Mill and going off to war. “I may be a girl. But do you know what you are, Henry Harrison? You’re a boy. Not a man. A boy! And everybody knows you have to be eighteen to join the army.”

  She lifted her chin high and looked at the other boys, her eyes blazing, daring them to challenge her. Henry’s face turned beet red because he couldn’t refute that he was only sixteen and all his bluster wouldn’t make any difference because we all knew he would have to wait until he turned eighteen before he—or any of the other boys—could enlist.

  “Besides,” she said, twisting the dagger. “That ol’ war will be over by the time you’re old enough.”

  “It will not!” Henry fired back.

  “Henry,” Lowrance said in a warning tone. “You’re talking crazy. We should all pray that the war is over soon.”

  Eddie nodded his head in agreement. I took a step closer to my brother and leaned against his leg.

  “I’m not talking crazy,” Henry shouted. “They say the war is going to sweep across Europe like wildfir
e.”

  “Fine. Then go on and fight fires in Europe,” she said, exasperated with the whole conversation. “I’m going fishing.”

  “She’s right,” Eddie said, picking up his gear. “The fish will be biting.”

  “I don’t know if I want to fish anymore with a girl,” Henry said.

  We all knew he was a sore loser, but Low puffed up his chest and told Henry to take it back. Things got a little tense then on account of Henry was a big fella, even as a boy, with a quick temper. Low was slow to rise, but when he did, look out. So if they fought they were evenly matched. It was going to be a whopping.

  Kate would have none of it. She stepped smack between those two roosters. She was a fearless creature to behold, standing there with her long, dark hair blowing in the breeze and her eyes blazing. She was almost eye to eye with Henry but as lean as a reed. Kate gave Henry a cocky glare and said she was a better fly fisher than he was.

  Henry snorted and said something stupid, like “Let’s have a match right now.”

  Kate put her hands on her hips and told him she would meet him at the Fly-Fishing Tournament being held the next week in Asheville. She was fixing on competing in the distance category. She figured that would shut up not only Henry but all the men who looked at her funny each time she cast a fly in local water.

  Phillip chortled then and slapped his knee. Mia laughed a bit herself, enjoying the memory as much. Mr. Pace was a natural storyteller and had her wrapped around each syllable.

  “So what happened at the tournament?” she asked.

  “What do you think happened?” he asked, astonished. “She won, of course. Just like we all knew she would. Tradition being what it was back then, the angling clubs were for men only. They didn’t even allow women in their building for meetings. Her daddy, the Reverend Watkins, was so well respected a fisherman in these parts that they let his daughter enter the fly casting distance competition on his behalf. More a courtesy. Land alive, were they surprised when she beat them all!”