Harp on the Willow

by BJ Hoff

  Only then did Daniel release the breath he had been holding to draw a sigh of relief.

  For the next three hours, he saw one patient after another, which was the way he liked his mornings to go. When the office finally emptied out, the gnawing in his stomach reminded him that it was almost noon.

  He felt more than ready for some of Helen Platt’s chicken stew and dumplings, regular Monday fare. There was a time when he would have preferred a lighter spread on such a blistering day, but Helen’s Mountain Inn didn’t cater to the individual tastes of Mount Laurel’s residents. Certainly not to “city folks” like himself.

  In truth, he was no longer “city folks,” having made his home here for more than three years now. To the natives, however, Daniel suspected he would always be that “young doc from New York City.”

  In any case, he had eventually adapted to the local custom of hot and heavy meals in all kinds of weather, as had Sarge, who would eat just about anything that didn’t talk back as it went down.

  “Let’s go, you great oaf,” he said, going to the front door and waiting for the Newfie to follow. “If you promise not to drool all over me, I’ll order a plate for you.”

  TWO

  WALKING THROUGH MOUNT LAUREL

  This is my Father’s world

  He abides in all that’s fair…

  MALTBIE D. BABCOCK

  As he stepped outside, Daniel caught his breath. Surely this was the hottest and most humid day of summer so far. The heat was palpable, thick, and rising in ripples off the street. The weak shower that had fallen in the early hours before daylight had scarcely wet the dust and only added to the humidity.

  He fell into rhythm with the big Newfoundland’s ponderous gait. They met only half a dozen or so other pedestrians, but there were more carriages than usual this time of day. It seemed that everyone had either stayed indoors or sought refuge from the sun in their buggies.

  As they started down tree-lined Tygart Street, a farm wagon rattled by at a treacherously high speed, a cloud of dust spraying the lathered horses. The children in back seemed to be having a heated quarrel. One was crying, the others yelling.

  Daniel stopped a moment to watch, frowning at the perspiration-drenched driver who was half standing, slapping the reins and shouting at the horses.

  He started walking again, taking in his surroundings as he went. Mount Laurel was, for the most part, a relatively prosperous farm community, engulfed by the Allegheny Mountains. Resting in the foothills, the town resembled an egg-shaped bowl plopped down in the middle of some giant loaves of bread.

  Small but thriving farms dotted the countryside, which was lush and dense with great forests. Numerous species of wildlife, including black bears, wild turkeys, bobcats, and white-tailed deer roamed the hills. Rhododendron, or “great laurel,” could be found just about everywhere, and according to the locals, six major river systems were located in the area, along with the best trout streams in the state. It was, pure and simple, a place of rare and spectacular beauty.

  He believed himself fortunate indeed to live among such grandeur and richness of the earth. He had loved the town almost from the first time he’d seen it, after the war. On most days he took at least a brief time to simply pause and look out on the valley and let its lavish splendor fill his heart.

  Today, however, should he allow it, could all too easily be dimmed by the shadows that sometimes swallowed up his hard-won contentment. Whether it was the oppressive heat, the ache from the old wound in his back, or a combination of the two, he found it difficult to escape the memory of another hot July day, in another scenic little town. Indeed, a town much like Mount Laurel, though not quite as large.

  A town called Gettysburg.

  He forced himself to dismiss the unwelcome memory, unwilling to give any quarter to the back pain, the wilting heat, or to what his friend Stephen Holliday sometimes called his “Irish gloom.” Instead, he picked up his pace and began to whistle. At his side, the Newfie puffed a little as he kept stride with him.

  His office was on the “high end,” as the locals called it, of Tygart Street, the main thoroughfare. He was somewhat removed from the business section, but only by a few buildings. From his office, the town sloped gently downward. On the way to the inn, they passed the large sand-colored building that housed the Mount Laurel Historical Society and Museum, which served mainly as a depository for displays of local rock samples and military artifacts. A few doors down, the Methodist church, a clapboard building with the same kind of parched grounds and wilting flowers that could be seen all over town, rested snugly behind the privet hedges that always seemed to flourish, regardless of the heat.

  Directly across the street, the Presbyterians worshiped in a moderate-size brownstone with a stately glass window at the front. To its left lay the town square, which was really more a diamond than a square. A few children were playing tag around the tarnished statue of a Shawnee Indian maiden who had supposedly, at much risk to herself, shown kindness to some of the early settlers.

  Daniel could never quite shake the feeling that the “maiden” more aptly resembled a warrior, but in these matters, as in a number of others, he kept his opinion to himself.

  A few of the children’s mothers rested on benches nearby, fanning themselves as they watched their young ones play. The oldtimers who usually congregated in the area were nowhere to be seen today. A good thing, to Daniel’s way of thinking. This kind of heat could not only spell bad news for the elderly but would likely create a more crowded waiting room at his office.

  Next came the bank, and then J.D. Broomhall’s dry goods store, which also housed the post office. Farther on, just after Canaan Street intersected, they met up with Bernard Cottle, who was standing out front of his Good Sole Shoe store, leaning up against the front of the building as if he had nothing else to do.

  “Not much going on today, Bernie?”

  The tall, balding bachelor—one of the few in Mount Laurel—shook his head with a mournful look. “Might as well be a Sunday for all the business I’ve had this morning, Doc. Not that I blame folks for staying in on a day like this. Expect the heat doesn’t slow things down much for you, though, does it?”

  “Not today, it hasn’t.”

  Daniel went on, with Sarge pulling slightly ahead. No doubt that supersensitive nose could already smell Helen’s chicken stew on the air. On the other side of the street was the office of Mount Laurel’s weekly newspaper, the Public Sentinel. Lawrence Hill, owner and editor, saw Daniel from his desk at the big front window and waved. Daniel waved back but didn’t cross to chat. He would see Lawrence tonight at the planning meeting for the new schoolhouse.

  The slope now leveled off, just before reaching the inn. From here he could see the river and the small log school building this side of it. Directly across from the schoolhouse stood a structure that had long been a favorite with Mount Laurel’s children—and the subject of endless speculation and gossip for the adults: Willmar’s Carousel.

  The carousel was, at least in Daniel’s estimation, quite a work of art. Painstakingly handcrafted by an early settler—a German fellow named Friedrich Willmar—the apparatus never failed to stop traffic. Even those who had lived within view of it for years could scarcely pass by without slowing to admire the detail of its workmanship: the intricately painted panels and cornices, each bearing a different scene from Willmar’s home country of Germany; the flamboyant gondolas; and the fanciful, vividly colored animals—horses and unicorns, gazelles, and even a zebra—all of which appeared to be in flight.

  Daniel stopped for a moment. Jamie MacPhee, who managed the carousel and saw to its maintenance, was nowhere in sight, as rides were available only on the weekend.

  Willmar’s story was a terrible tragedy. It was also a favorite subject of gossip, especially among those older residents bent on shocking the occasional newcomer.

  Willmar, an unmarried carpenter from Germany, had arrived in Mount Laurel in the late eighteenth century,
before the town was even incorporated. A taciturn, private man who apparently had never revealed his reasons for leaving his native land, Willmar reputedly earned a good living almost from the beginning building houses and furniture and doing odd jobs throughout the county. He also wasted no time in building himself a sizable frame house with a vast upstairs and an intricate, hand-carved stairway.

  He remained a bachelor for several years after his arrival but eventually took a wife from one of the hill families, a girl years younger than Willmar himself. The couple kept almost entirely to themselves, limiting their social involvements to church attendance and marketing.

  The carousel, according to local historians, had been a labor of love, begun right after the birth of the Willmar’s first child, and continued throughout the years as other children were added to the family—six in all, nine if you counted the miscarriages. Supposedly, Willmar completed the final work on his objet d’art the very day his sixth child, a son, was born.

  Late one winter’s night, Friedrich Willmar returned from a two-week job in the northern panhandle to find his house an inferno, with the townspeople gathered in a furious—and futile—attempt to save his wife and children from the blaze.

  The poor man lost his entire family that night, all except for the youngest boy, still a toddler in didies. He buried them the next day and, with his surviving child, departed Mount Laurel.

  He never returned, but to this day the carousel stood, a weathered but undeniably magnificent piece of artistry. The youth of the town never seemed to tire of it, but to some of their parents it represented an almost macabre reminder of those long-ago children who had not lived to enjoy their father’s handiwork.

  Some years past, an ugly rumor had begun to circulate that Willmar’s wife had in fact set the fire herself. Speculation had it that she might have been a bit mad, that she had been so miserable with her austere, older husband that, rather than go on living with him and having his children, she decided to take the lives of them all.

  Daniel paid the tale little heed, having neither seen nor heard any evidence whatsoever to support it. Besides, rumors about one thing or another were fairly common in a small town. But not long after he arrived in Mount Laurel, a number of local families had made a short-lived effort to have the carousel removed. The instigators cast all manner of aspersions on the fixture, declaring it to be a kind of idol, a bearer of ill fortune, even a work of the devil.

  Their efforts had been quickly defeated, and the furor had eventually subsided. But there were still occasional murmurings about the carousel and its history.

  Ah, well. He supposed there would always be those who loved a scandalous story.

  At the front door of the inn, Daniel stopped, looking toward the river that divided Mount Laurel from the mining town of Owenduffy, which folks around here referred to as a “camp.”

  Owenduffy meant, literally, “black river.” Although the river that separated the two communities wasn’t actually black, the mining town itself was, or at least appeared to be. A company-owned town perched against a large seam of bituminous coal—“soft coal,” it was called hereabouts—Owenduffy was little more than a dismal warren of gray, unpainted row houses, a cluttered company store, and a few other equally dingy buildings in addition to the coal mine itself.

  Populated almost entirely by immigrants—mostly Irish, with some Welsh and Italians—Owenduffy was within shouting distance of Mount Laurel, with only the river between them. Had they not been so startlingly different in appearance, they might have even been called sister cities because of their close proximity.

  In reality, however, Daniel knew that far more than the river separated the two towns. As he stood looking out over the valley, it occurred to him, not for the first time, that another kind of river ran between Mount Laurel and the neighboring Owenduffy: a river of social, religious, and economic differences as dark and as bitter as the relentless black dust that fell over the mining town and sifted out over the water, creating yet another source of contention between the residents of the two communities.

  There was an ugliness on this land that belied its beauty, and even in the short time since he’d settled here, Daniel had sensed that the blight was spreading, eating away more and more of the charm and goodness that had first attracted him to the quiet, appealing countryside. He could only hope that the ugliness wouldn’t eventually contaminate all that was good and lovely here—or even consume it and destroy it altogether.

  The Newfoundland interrupted his musings with a well-timed whimper of complaint and a doleful look. Daniel nodded. “I hear you, old boy. Guess you’ve had enough of my lollygagging for one day. Well, come on, then, let’s go stuff ourselves, why don’t we?”

  The Newfie gave a shake of his head as if to indicate it was about time and then claimed his place in front of the inn, where he would wait for his owner to serve up his first course.

  THREE

  A HOLLIDAY MEAL

  Better than grandeur, better than gold,

  Than rank and titles a thousandfold,

  Is a healthy body and a mind at ease,

  And simple pleasures that always please.

  ABRAM J. RYAN

  Daniel could think of few things he enjoyed more than a meal at Esther Holliday’s table.

  He made it a point never to be late. Not for anything would he miss out on the jumbo glass of sweet lemon tea Esther always served him before supper.

  She met him at the door promptly at six thirty. “Where’s Sarge?”

  “I left him at home. He’s feeling the heat.”

  “Aren’t we all? Well, I hope you brought your appetite.”

  “My appetite—and a basket of flowers for the hostess,” said Daniel, kissing her lightly on the cheek as he handed her the flowers.

  Predictably, she blushed. Esther blushed often and easily, but especially when pleased, outraged, or embarrassed.

  “Well, come in, come in!” she fussed, patting the neat roll of hair at the back of her neck. “It’s a good thing you’re on time. I was just pouring your tea.”

  Daniel followed her to the kitchen, grinning with satisfaction as she went to the sideboard and added an extra slice of lemon to his tumbler before handing it to him.

  “Strong and sweet,” she said.

  “I was looking forward to this all the way out here.”

  A man did enjoy being taken care of every now and then. Being a bachelor had its distinct disadvantages.

  Daniel was the first to push back from the table a little, feeling the need to rest his stomach before dessert.

  He smiled as he sat watching the others. Supper at the Hollidays’ was a noisy event. Everyone talked at once, and talked loud and fast.

  There was no keeping track of how many times Esther asked Stephen, her husband, if he wanted another helping of a particular dish and then proceeded to pass it to him without waiting for his reply. Stephen was waving his fork around, no doubt to his wife’s despair, as he decried the foolishness of the latest folks who had moved away to seek their fortune out west.

  Stephen Holliday was fiercely loyal to his God, his family, and his hometown, in that order. He tended to take defections as a personal betrayal.

  Miss Ruth Ann all of a sudden observed that she had not seen Labonah Vance at the cakewalk and wondered if she and that boy from Keyser were still keeping company and if they might not get married soon.

  “Labonah and Charley Henderson have been married going on ten years now, Mama,” Esther replied matter-of-factly as she urged some more potatoes on her husband.

  Stephen’s elderly mother frequently added a somewhat startling and completely irrelevant remark to the mix. Miss Ruth Ann suffered from a pitiless kind of dementia that Daniel had seen before in persons of her advanced years. She was also extremely hard of hearing, and that, combined with the ongoing attacks of confusion, tended to bring some surprising twists to any family discussion.

  Daniel noticed that only Clay was uncommonl
y quiet this evening, saying little, but glaring at his father when he wasn’t stabbing his roast beef with a certain ferocity. Obviously, there had been a tiff between the two before supper.

  Not an unusual event, that. At twenty-two, Clay Holliday had seemingly adopted the attitude that his father was unreasonable, uncompromising, and just plain mule-headed. Stephen, for his part, was quick these days to declare his son willful, wayward, and wild.

  Knowing them both fairly well by now, Daniel would have to say that at least some of their charges against each other were justified. Even so, he was more than a little troubled by the growing tension between father and son. He knew that while Stephen also despaired of the problem, he was just stubborn enough that it was questionable whether he would ever take steps to heal the rift. Meanwhile, Clay seemed to have dug himself deep into a den of self-righteousness, convinced that his father was under some sort of misguided conception that he had the right to wield authority over a son who was no longer a child.

  They were at a stalemate that seemed to be forcing them further and further apart.

  Ever since Daniel had arrived in Mount Laurel to deliver Ben Holliday’s personal effects after his death, Ben’s family had taken him in and treated him as a second son. He suspected his friendship with Ben would have ensured approval from the Hollidays in any event, but the fact that he had been with their older son when he died in a Gettysburg field hospital had been the final stitch in the fabric of their acceptance.

  For his part, Daniel had come to care deeply for the entire family, and consequently, when he saw trouble in the making for any one of them, his inclination was to try to help. Unfortunately, this thing between Stephen and Clay seemed to be rapidly approaching the point where help might not be possible.

  He sensed a storm brewing—a storm with the potential of becoming a full-blown tempest unless something happened soon to take the energy out of it. The ordinary, everyday tensions between a father and a grown son who lived together and worked together had escalated drastically over the past several months, until by now they seemed to have reached a total impasse. But surely those minor fires might have been put out without too much damage had it not been for a much bigger blaze that showed no signs of being extinguished any time soon.