by Gary Barnes
*
Nestled deep in the woods, secluded by the thick forest that engulfed the entire area, was an incredibly deep, turquoise-blue spring. It flowed from the base of a one hundred foot high bluff and formed a lagoon nearly seventy-five feet across. A small wooden platform, barely protruding above the surface of the water, extended three feet into the spring.
Valoura Sutton, who had just turned fifteen, knelt on the platform filling a wooden bucket with water. There had been talk of digging a well closer to the cabin but the spring was only one hundred yards away and it provided a chore that even the youngest of the girls could do. Chores were always divided according to gender. As destitute as they were, Valoura’s father, Otho, would never consider allowing the girls to help with the heavy farm chores. Like all the dry farmers up and down the river he still used a mule to pull the plow because he could not afford a tractor. Yet even if he had a tractor, the hard, stone infested, red clay soil produced such a poor crop yield that he would never be able to grow more than what was needed to provide for his growing family. His was a life of hard work from dawn to dusk, but he prided himself in working hard to provide for his family, even if it was only a meager subsistence.
Valoura stood, hefted the heavy water-bucket, then slowly started up the dirt path toward the rickety old cabin at the crest of the tree covered hill before her. The young girl was barefoot, wearing tattered bib overalls and an oversized flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her pregnancy was just beginning to show. The laborious pace she took made her appear unusually tired. After only a few steps she saw her sister Ellen, two years her senior, running down the path toward her. Ellen had always looked out for Valoura, taking her under her wing since their mother was always busy with the eight younger children.
Ellen slowed her gait to a brisk walk and approached with a worried expression. She stopped just a few feet from her younger sister where she hesitated a second. As Valoura took the final step to close the gap between them, Ellen reached out and grasped her sister’s free hand. “Doc’s here,” she said with grave concern.
Valoura stopped suddenly, frozen in fear. She dropped the water bucket with a crash, spilling the cool water onto the narrow dusty path. Her lower lip began to quiver. “They can’t do this to me. Papa has to understand! Help me make him understand!”
“But Valoura, don’t ya see, it’s the only way,” Ellen tried to explain.
But Valoura didn’t hear the words. Her eyes began to fill with tears as she briskly walked past Ellen, then began to run up the path that led to the house.
*
Otho and Doc stood beside the DeSoto talking in the front yard of the ram-shackled, run-down Ozark cabin that looked like a good sneeze would destroy. Thirty years earlier the farmhouse, bunkhouse, garage and barn had been built by the land owner as a hunting lodge. He had hoped to make his fortune by luring duck hunters and fishermen from the big cities. But his dreams had never materialized. The Great Depression affected not only Wall Street and Main Street but even backwoods hunting and fishing guides. Finally he abandoned the project. Fifteen years earlier he had leased the land and buildings to Otho on a year-to-year basis.
Valoura’s mother, Armenda, reluctantly stood in the doorway of the screened-in porch, propping the screen open with her elbow as she observed Doc and her husband. She desperately wanted to hear what was said and to be part of the important discussion underway. Nevertheless, she knew her place and resigned herself to defer such talk to the menfolk.
Otho reached into his hip pocket and took out a plug of tobacco. With his pocket knife he cut off a chunk, stuffed it into his mouth and slowly began to chew. Chewing tobacco was his only vice, but one which thoroughly disgusted his wife.
Chickens scratched in the dirt nearby as several young children ran wildly through the yard, rolling an old car tire with a toddler spinning inside. They were headed to the edge of the hill, just past the out-house, to roll their younger sibling down the gentle slope into the meadow where the cows grazed. Funny thing about young children, no matter how poor they were, they never knew it.
At the far corner of the yard, near the screened-in porch where Armenda stood, Otho’s oldest son, Lee Roy, was swinging a heavy sledge. It took several cords of wood to get them through the winter. The head of the wedge he used to split the tough oak logs was flared and splayed by the many poundings it had received at Lee Roy’s hand. Stacked against the side of the cabin was a large pile of already split wood, but this was kitchen-stove wood. Wood for the fireplace and the heating stove was stacked at the back of the cabin.
“Any idea who the father is?” asked Doc.
“Nah. She just said he was the son of some slickers down here on vacation,” answered Otho.
“Sorry to hear that. City types have no respect for our way of life. I ought to know, I used to be one. The family I found is a good one though, Otho. I can’t tell you who they are, of course, but I can assure you that they’ll do well by the child.”
At that moment Valoura breathlessly ran around the corner of the cabin. She stopped for a moment to size up the situation. Then she cautiously approached the two men. She knew that this was man-talk. It was best to not barge in on their conversation.
“Then it’s settled. The child goes to them!” Otho stated emphatically, spitting tobacco juice onto the ground as if that finalized his decision.
“Papa no!” shouted Valoura, unable to restrain herself any longer in this tense situation. “Ya can’t give my baby away like a sack of flour.”
“Now Valoura Sutton!” Otho sternly reprimanded. “Yer just a child yerself . . . barely fifteen. Ya know we can’t afford to feed another mouth.”
“But Papa, it’s my baby. I’ll find a way to feed it.” Valoura begged.
“Listen here now girl! We ain’t got much, but we got our pride. Yer with child and ya got no man to support ya. Doc here’s found a good home for the young’un and that’s whar he’s a goin’!”
Knowing from past experience that arguing with her father would be futile, Valoura burst into tears, turned, and briskly ran back down the path to the deep blue spring.
*
The limestone bluff majestically rose a hundred feet above the water in the spring at its base. Above the bluff the tree-covered mountain top opened into a lush meadow. The area around the bluff was shaded by a thick forest. Valoura loved the blue spring. Ordinarily she would spend several hours a day there, thinking, dreaming, wishing, dangling her bare feet off the edge of the wooden platform into the cool water that flowed from the spring’s exit branch. Not this day, however.
She breathlessly ran along the dirt path past the spring and then veered to the left as the path descended into the depths of the dense forest. The path wound through the trees then curved to the right and looped up the back side of the bluff. She ran up the hill, oblivious to the pain in her side and the heaving of her chest as she gasped for air.
The trail suddenly broke out of the woods about halfway up the bluff and knifed its way across a narrow ledge traversing the bluff’s rocky face. One false step and she would plunge over the edge into the spring fifty feet below. Yet she did not slow her pace. She knew this trail well and easily crossed the bluff. On the far side the trail was again lost in the dense forest. Here, Valoura slowed her pace. The trail before her began to drop very steeply as it twisted back and forth in sharp switchbacks down the mountainside toward the spring at its base.
Reaching the bottom of the bluff, the trail doubled back sharply to the right squeezing between the bluff wall and the water’s edge. Twenty feet ahead, a large, nearly pyramid-shaped boulder had fallen from a cleft at the base of the bluff in long forgotten eons past. The boulder had landed on its side, partially shielding the hole that it had created.
The missing boulder left the bluff wall scarred by a gaping triangular hole forming a grotto nearly twelve feet high and extending into the bluff for about ten feet. Near the apex of the opening, the rock strata of the bluff
face contained two thin horizontal veins of white limestone which subtly contrasted the surrounding greyer limestone of the bluff.
Valoura stood panting for a moment to catch her breath outside the entrance to her place of personal refuge. She glanced across the spring at the wooden platform from which she had previously filled the water bucket. Then she entered the mini-cavern of the partially concealed grotto. In the privacy of her sanctuary she sat upon the grassy dirt floor and began to pout.
“I’m not a child anymore,” she blurted out. “Who does Papa think he is, trying to control my life like that?” She reached her right hand into her hip pocket, pulled out a red and white plaid bandana and blew her nose. Then she drew both of her knees up and wrapped her arms about them. She lowered her head and gently bounced it several times upon her knees. “It’s my baby. He doesn’t have the right to give it away. How can he be so mean and selfish?” She then flung herself upon the grotto’s grassy floor and began to sob uncontrollably.
*
Doc slowly turned the DeSoto around and began to drive back down the dirt road. Armenda stepped from the screen door, letting it bang shut behind her. She slowly crossed the dusty yard to her husband. There she stood a moment, turning her head to follow the DeSoto as it lumbered along the twisty road until it was finally blocked from view by the ocean of trees at their property line.
Pregnancy was one of the most common reasons for marriage in the Ozark backwoods. The tradition of Shotgun Weddings originated there. It was a family required, socially acceptable solution for young girls in that situation. Armenda herself hadn’t been much older than Valoura, and was already five months pregnant when she had married Otho. But this was different. The father of Valoura’s child was unknown, so no wedding could be arranged, or enforced. Armenda wanted something better for her daughter than the scorn that her current situation would surely bring once word got out.
Gazing into Otho’s face she pleadingly asked, “Do we have to do it that way? We could just keep the child and raise it ourselves. It’ll only be two years younger than our youngest. It’d fit right in with the rest of ‘em, age-wise. That way, no one would ever know.”
Otho was a man of few words but he loved his daughter profoundly. He also had a great understanding of the complexities and realities of the backwoods world in which they lived. From that perspective he had no other alternative. He raised his hands and gently clasped Armenda’s cheeks, tenderly looking directly into her eyes.
“Some secrets can never be kept, no matter how tight the lips,” he said in response to her question. “If she keeps the child people will always talk. Wherever she goes the gossips will chatter behind her back. She’ll always be looked down upon and never be accepted.” He then frowned as he glanced away, unable to continue looking Armenda in the eye. “Then there’s the other issue . . .”
He referred, of course, to the unwritten backwoods mores which insured that the little bastard would continually have to fight the bullies. He would be taunted mercilessly about his heritage, and never be given opportunities to grow out of the role into which their unforgiving society would place him.
Otho placed his arms around Armenda’s waist, sighed deeply, then tenderly pulled her toward him. He hugged her for a moment, resting her head upon his shoulder as he gently stroked her hair.
“No,” he said with a tone that bespoke wisdom far beyond his education. “There is no other way.”
Otho knew that his daughter was still a child who only thought she was a woman. She still had much growing to do. It was specifically because of his love for both her and her unborn child that he must make this difficult and unpopular decision. Though he lacked the words to express it, he instinctively understood that with time, the reality of out of sight, out of mind would allow the community to forget her current predicament, and eventually his daughter could get on with her life in a socially acceptable and normal manner.
To aid in that endeavor they would keep Valoura sequestered on the farm so that as few people as possible would know of her condition. When guests came, which wasn’t frequent, Valoura would be confined to her room.
*
Farm life had never been glamorous, but to those buried in the depths of the Ozark backwoods in the 1950s the monotonous tedium of existence slowed time to a crawl. To Valoura however, time seemed to stand still, knowing full well that at the end of her travail she would never see her child again.
Five months later, greatly swollen as she neared the end of her pregnancy, Valoura lay awake late into the night talking with her sister Ellen. They shared the same bed, as did two younger sisters who were snuggled asleep in another bed barely an arm’s length away.
The winter had been cold, and there was no fireplace in their room to keep them warm. Heavy homemade down quilts, held together with bits and pieces of cloth scavenged from every fabric source available, made the long nights bearable. But spring had finally arrived, and though the room was not exactly warm, snuggling beneath the heavy quilts made the girls quite comfortable.
The room was extremely small and crowded. A dim kerosene hurricane lamp flickered in the window sill casting eerie shadows on the walls of the cramped quarters.
“What’s it like?” asked Ellen.
“Pretty uncomfortable mostly, but when it kicks I get the most amazin’ feelin’. Here, gimme yer hand.”
Ellen brought her hand forward. Valoura grasped it with both of hers and placed it upon her stomach, patting it softly. Ellen’s eyes suddenly opened wide as she grinned a wide smile of amazement. “I felt it! I felt the baby kick!” she exclaimed.
“It’s a wonderful feelin’ . . . to know there’s life in me and that in a week or so it’ll be livin’ on its own.” Then Valoura’s gleeful demeanor suddenly changed to one of profound seriousness. “Ellen, make me a promise.”
“Anything!”
“Doc says he’s takin’ my baby to that family in St. Louis as soon as it’s born. I may not even get to see it. I can’t stand the thought of not seein’ my own baby.” Valoura glanced away and wiped a tear. “I’ve been savin’ my egg money and I bought somethin’ I want my baby to have.”
Valoura reached over the side of the bed and pulled a cigar box from under it. Opening the box she extracted a small envelope and handed it to Ellen.
“No matter what happens, I want ya to promise that this goes with my baby when Doc takes it,” her eyes pleaded.
The two girls stared at each other in the almost dark room as the meaning of Valoura’s request sunk in. Then Ellen slowly nodded her head in agreement.
=/=
CHAPTER TWO
Birth
Nighttime thunderstorms were common during the Ozark spring months, but this one was what the locals called a frog strangler. A sudden flash of lightning lit up the countryside while the explosive clap of thunder reverberated off the hills and progressively rolled down through the valley, only to be immediately followed by another similar display of brilliantly blinding light and deafening, thunderous roar.
The deluge of rain that poured from the sky washed out many of the backwoods dirt roads and flooded the fields along the stony but fertile river-bottom valleys. The intensity of the spring-time storm broke all previously set records.
Doc’s green DeSoto slipped and slid while struggling up the muddy road toward the Sutton’s cabin. He trailed behind a youthful bare-back rider on a galloping chestnut mare. Torrential rain battered the DeSoto. Its vacuum-powered windshield wipers did little good at maintaining visibility or at clearing the water that cascaded down from the roof of the car.
I hope the river doesn’t rise so much that I can’t get back across on the ferry, Doc thought. Yet he knew that the river had already risen six feet, so his was probably the last car to make the crossing that night. Storms like this often caused the river to rise as much as thirty-five feet. With deepening resignation, he reluctantly accepted the fact that he’d have to take the southern route back to Ellington, going throu
gh Winona and Van Buren. That would add another hour and a half to his return drive time. Unfortunately, that route provided the closest bridge over the Current River.
Arriving at the Suttons the DeSoto pulled to a stop by the front porch screen door. The horse and rider continued past the house, galloping up the hill headed for the barn.
Clutching his black instrument satchel Doc stepped out of the DeSoto into the rain and dashed toward the home. Armenda held the screen door for him as he entered the semi-protection of the screened-in porch. From there she escorted him into the dimly lit living room that also served as a part-time kitchen, dining room, family room and guest room. A welcoming fire roared in the fireplace. Several pots of water were already boiling on the wood-burning stove in preparation for the ordeal about to begin.
Doc’s entrance was met by the expressionless stares of Otho and the younger children as they curiously watched him. For the first time Doc began to feel uncomfortable in the home of these backwoods people he had grown to love.
“Doc.” Otho simply said while slightly dipping his head toward him in a welcoming gesture.
“Otho.” Doc nodded a greeting in return.
Armenda motioned to a pitcher of water and a wash basin setting on a pedestal against the wall by the wood-burning stove. Obediently Doc set down his satchel and began to wash up with the bar of mildly caustic, but vary abrasive, homemade lye soap. It certainly wasn’t what he was used to scrubbing with in his hospital days in St. Louis, but he knew that there wasn’t much in the way of bacteria that survived a good scrubbing with lye soap. He was grateful to have it.
This completed, Armenda led Doc from the room through a side door that opened out onto a covered porch. At either end of the porch, large wooden rain barrels collected runoff water from the rusty corrugated tin roof. The rain had been so heavy that both barrels were overflowing and disgorged their excess into a lake forming in the front yard.