“Sorry you went through that, Andrew,” Lloyd said.
“Eh, everyone has their burden to bear. I figured out early on that it wasn’t my doing and I wasn’t carrying it with me. I can’t pay for other men’s mistakes. I put it behind me and moved on. Lived a good life and I still am, right up to and including this very moment.”
“I’ve been known to make a spontaneous decision or two in my life,” Jim offered. “I’m kind of paying for that right now. I reckon there’s others been paying for it too.”
“Is it too personal to ask the nature of your problem?” Andrew asked. “I ain’t trying to be nosy but I’ve got a few miles on me. I know I’m a crusty old bastard but I have the occasional insight. I’m smarter than I look.”
Jim had to agree with that. The old man was indeed sharper than he looked. He had a way of tying the little things in life to the bigger things in life, which was much the way Jim saw things. He recognized patterns and took lessons where he found them. He was almost tempted to spill his whole story. Almost.
“We can’t talk about it,” Lloyd said. “I was warned to keep my big trap shut.”
Andrew winked. “Top secret stuff, huh?”
“Probably stuff you’re better off not knowing and we’re better off not talking about,” Jim said. “I just saw something in the world that really bothered me and I couldn’t live with it. I acted on impulse and set my world on fire as a result.”
Andrew narrowed his eyes. “You’re contradicting yourself there, son. Doesn’t sound like you acted on impulse. Sounds like you acted on principles. That’s two different things. I see impulse as a poorly thought out and spontaneous action, a man acting without regard for consequence. Did you consider the consequences before you acted?”
“I did. I knew it would get bad, but I still did it.”
“Then you got nothing to feel bad about,” Andrew said. “Would you do the same thing over again?”
“Probably.”
“He’s a slow learner,” Lloyd commented.
“Or maybe he was right in what he did,” Andrew countered.
Lloyd buried his head in his hands. “Lord, don’t encourage him. That’s the last thing we need.”
“I ain’t encouraging nothing,” said Andrew. “I’m just saying that maybe he was right in what he done, whatever it was. He thought it out and acted on principle. That’s all a man’s got to go on in this world. Until the good Lord gives us clairvoyance, the ability to see the outcome of things before they happen, we have to go with our gut and our reason. Your buddy did that. He ain’t got nothing to feel bad about.”
“It’s something I’m still coming to terms with,” Jim said. “Just being away from home and getting my head clear is doing wonders. Constant worry eats at you. Makes it hard to process things.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Andrew said. “I stay pretty relaxed up here.”
“I wouldn’t know about that either,” Lloyd chimed in. “I tend to avoid stress as much as possible.”
Jim raised an eyebrow at his buddy. “I’ve noticed—stress, work, sentry duty, sobriety—all things you tend to avoid.”
“Your buddy here can’t help it,” Andrew said, interceding on Lloyd’s behalf. “Musicians are of a certain cut. He can’t help how he is any more than you can. I’ve known a musician or two over the years. Growing up, we used to go to these square dances all the time. Seemed like there was one every weekend. I was drinking with fiddlers and banjo players before I was old enough to drive.”
“I’ve played a few square dances over the years,” Lloyd said. “Used to do a lot of them. I think they’ve about died out now. Only place I ever play them anymore is at that young musician’s camp over in Bland County.”
Andrew furrowed his brow. “Never heard tell of such a place.”
“There’s a summer camp over there. It’s out in the boonies on this big old family farm. Guy that owns it is a friend of mine, a decent bluegrass player. He wanted to carry on the tradition of kids learning to play Appalachian music so he started this camp. People come from all over the country to take lessons there. They have adult sessions too. It’s a nice place. I love playing out there. Been around for nearly fifty years.”
“Sounds like a worthwhile thing to do,” Andrew said. “Passing on what you know to the younger generations.”
“I never knew you did that Lloyd,” Jim said with surprise. “How come you never mentioned it?”
Lloyd frowned. “I probably did mention it and you just weren’t paying any attention.”
Jim held up a hand. “I do listen but you play a lot of places. They all run together.”
“Well, this ain’t like any other place I play. I play square dances but I also teach sessions out there. Speaking of which, I wonder how the owner is getting along. He’s a good guy but he’s old as dirt.”
“Excuse me but I’m offended by that,” Andrew said.
Lloyd looked at him apologetically and mumbled, “Sorry.”
Andrew grinned. “Just messing with you. I’m proud to be old as dirt, but still on this side of it.”
“We could go check in on him if you wanted,” Jim offered. “Bland County isn’t that far. We’re probably halfway there already.”
“I’ll think on it,” Lloyd said.
Jim winked at Andrew. “You catch that? He mispronounced drink.”
22
Oliver’s House
Sharon sat at the foot of the bed staring at Oliver’s body for a long time. While her thoughts weren’t exactly racing, there was a steady and continual stream of disjointed thinking, pouring through her mind like muddy water through a ditch. There were immediate concerns, like preparing the body for burial and getting it up to the camp to bury, assuming they were even able to dig a proper grave. There was also the matter of getting the word out. Oliver had people he was in contact with in the community and on the surrounding farms. His family had been in this valley so long they had deep roots. People checked in on the old man and they cared about him, just as she and her campers did.
How did she get word to them? Should she send Nathan or try to go herself? Oliver’s house wasn’t too far from the main road. Maybe another half mile. Could she do it with Honey pulling her?
From those more immediate and pressing concerns, her mind wandered to the long-term issues they’d face because of his death. Over the past year, Oliver had invited them numerous times to come live with him in the big house, but she’d always declined. They’d been able to keep themselves comfortable and warm at the camp. They had the garden, and the setting was familiar to them. Oliver had insisted they’d be no bother, but she didn’t feel right about invading his space like that. He was an old man with a lot of memories in this house. Despite his assurances to the contrary, she worried they’d make him uncomfortable in his own house and she didn’t want that.
That would no longer be an issue. She’d seen his will with her own eyes. Upon his death, the house and farm went to the camp. There was to be a board of trustees, local folks, who’d help decide how to best utilize the land so they could maintain enough income to run the camp. Sharon had also sworn to him that she’d move the children into the house if anything happened to him. She would honor that promise but there’d be a lot of work involved in making that happen. They had things they’d need to bring from the camp, lots of them, and she had no idea how they’d do it.
Overwhelmed by her rushing thoughts, Sharon decided she had to do something. She kissed Oliver’s forehead and gently pulled the blankets over his face. “I hope you’re at peace now, old friend.”
She left the room, closing the door behind her. The stark hallway looked different now as she imagined seeing it every day as a resident of the house. For a while, perhaps for the life she had remaining, this would be her home. Hers and the children’s. If the country never recovered, she too might die in that bed where Oliver had just passed away.
Sharon went to the kitchen, opened the door, and ro
lled out onto the back porch. She moved into the yard where she sat surrounded by the tall grass. An overgrown rose bush grew against the fence, long, thorny branches hanging dense with lush red blossoms. It was the kind of rose bush you only saw at old country homes, the kind that had grown undisturbed for more than a century, roots as deep as those of the people that lived there.
The sun beat down on her and sweat trickled down her back. She took a deep breath, aware now of how claustrophobic she’d felt in the house, overwhelmed by the responsibility thrust upon her. The humid air hanging in the fertile valley felt like warm water sucked into her lungs. There were so many things to do and she had no idea where to start, but she needed to do something. Only physical activity would calm her mind. She understood that about herself.
The yard wasn’t easy to navigate in a wheelchair. There was nothing uniform about it at all. It was irregular and rutted with paths cut by one hundred and fifty years of people walking to the same places every day—the outhouse, the barn, the back gate, or the springhouse. The house was built at a time when people didn’t meticulously grade and excavate their yards with powerful machinery. Sharon was strong from regular use of the chair under tough conditions. She wrestled the awkward terrain until she was alongside her pony. “Honey, we’re going for a ride.”
Although she didn’t require Nathan’s help to harness herself to the pony, it was easier when he was there to lend a hand. Yet she managed, straightening the leads and clipping the carabiners to the anchor points on her chair. When she had the pony pointed in the right direction and her chair oriented so the pony wouldn’t pull her over sideways, she clucked her tongue and snapped the reins. Despite the instability of having the horse pull her wheelchair, it was engaging on all levels. It left her no brain space for worry about the future. She was more concerned with keeping herself upright and not getting hurt.
The house had a rutted gravel drive that led from the farm road to the backyard. It was always how she approached the house since the back entrance had a ramp for her. When she reached the bottom of Oliver’s drive, the pony attempted to turn left, toward the camp, out of habit. She reined the gentle animal to the right and it balked, stopping in the road.
“It’s okay, Honey. We’re going the other way this time.”
The pony cocked an ear like it couldn’t believe what it was hearing. Horses could operate with reasonable autonomy as long as they were kept to their routine, but throw in something new and they acted like you’d lost your mind. Sharon tugged on the reins again, firmer this time, and the horse conceded.
Sharon hadn’t been past Oliver’s house in a year now. Much like the rest of the road, it was suffering from a lack of maintenance. Besides the weeds popping up in the center of the road, numerous branches were laying in her path. Most were small enough she could go around them. Not far from the house Sharon encountered a massive oak that had dropped a limb across her path.
The branch was attached to the oak, but stretched across the road at an angle and extended a short distance into the weedy shoulder on the opposite side. Sharon considered turning around at this point, but the prospect of returning to Oliver’s house was overwhelming at the moment. She couldn’t face it right now. She needed to be out of the house and doing something to occupy herself. It was how she processed things and restored her equilibrium.
“We can make it,” she assured the uncertain pony, flicking the reins against its back and urging it onward.
The deep weeds on the shoulder hid the terrain. As the chair began to lean precariously, Sharon second-guessed her decision to keep going but it was too late. The shoulder sloped down to a woven wire fence and Sharon saw no way to turn around in the narrow space between the fence and the branch. She was committed now. Moving forward was her only option.
She weighed urging the horse on faster against slowing down, but both moves had their risks. She opted to continue forward at the same steady pace. She held her breath and shifted her body, leaning uphill like a motorcyclist in a tight corner. Then the chair lurched, the downhill wheel dropping into a rut, and Sharon knew she was going over.
She released the reins and flailed her arms, but there was nothing to grab onto. Dumping on the steep slope, she was slammed to the ground, landing on her shoulder and back. She cried out, small rocks and sticks poking at her, jabbing, tearing. She rolled twice before being caught by the mesh of the rusty old fence. Despite the possibility of broken bones and torn muscles, her first thoughts were of poison ivy and snakes.
“Damn it!” She’d nearly broken herself of cursing in a year of constantly being around children but some situations warranted it. This was one of them.
She was wedged awkwardly between the fence and the steep bank. It reminded her of rolling out of bed as a child, getting stuck in the narrow gap between the bed and the wall. Except her bedroom didn’t have snakes and poison ivy. The fact wasn’t lost on her that she’d once seen the largest rattlesnake of her life less than a half-mile from here. She watched the big timber rattler crossing the road near Oliver’s house, its body as thick as her thigh.
She twisted and wrestled her arms out from beneath her, then grabbed the fence. She pulled until she was sitting upright. The angle was so steep, her body positioned so awkwardly, that she wasn’t able to keep herself in that position without the support of the fence. She looked for her pony and was pleased to see that Honey had stopped when Sharon toppled over.
“That’s a good girl,” Sharon gasped, her breathing labored by the exertion of holding herself up.
She quickly assessed her situation and determined that she needed to get her body oriented into a better position before she tried getting herself up the bank. This required her to pull herself up the woven squares of fencing like it was a ladder while twisting and pulling at her lower body. In the heat and humidity, the effort was exhausting. When she was finally in a comfortable position, she sagged back against the fence to catch her breath.
She could see now that she had eight feet of bank to climb before she’d be back on the road. Both the slope and the distance were manageable, but the bank was strewn with sharp stones. Smooth vines of poison ivy wove across it and occasional shards of old broken glass glinted in the sunlight. Even scarier, she imagined snakes were lining up in the grass, just waiting for the opportunity to sink their fangs into her.
She released a long exhalation and pushed herself over until she was face down on the bank. She figured the longer she laid there, the more opportunity she gave the snakes to organize against her. She needed to get moving. She reached for a sapling the thickness of her thumb and grasped onto it. She pulled herself up onto her elbows and started climbing.
The surface of the embankment was a mix of thick weeds and patches of bare soil. The weeded areas were not too bad but the bare sections ground at the flesh of her elbows and forearms. Several times she had to stop and peel embedded stones from her skin. Gradually she made progress, getting nearly halfway to the top before she had to stop and rest for the first time.
She dropped her face onto her forearm, the sweaty surface slick with mud and streaks of blood. Her heart pounded in her chest and her biceps trembled from the exertion.
“I’ll be there in a second, Honey,” she whispered. “Don’t you go anywhere. You just stand there and wait for me, okay?”
The pony shifted at the mention of its name, shuffling a foot and cocking an ear toward Sharon. She hoped she didn’t startle the animal into wandering off. She started climbing again, wrapping her cramping fingers around clumps of grass, exposed roots, and saplings. Soaked in sweat, her shirt didn’t offer much in the way of protection, and the ground clawed at her belly. She expected she’d be in rough shape tomorrow, sore and scratched, but this was far from the worst she’d ever endured.
Inch by inch she gained ground, eventually cresting the shoulder like a haggard mountaineer summiting Everest. Her legs dangling down the bank, she rested her head on her forearms again, studying the situati
on with her horse and chair. The chair had rolled down the embankment too but the harness had caught it. The tangled mess hung about six feet away from her, still tethered to Honey.
Sharon forced herself over the edge and moved toward her horse. There was less grass here on the gravel farm road and it was like climbing over coarse sandpaper. Since the road was relatively flat, she didn’t allow herself to pause there, pushing on until she reached the single rein that lay nearest her. She clutched it like a lifeline, wrapping it around her hand several times since she didn’t trust her ability to hold onto it.
When she’d recovered sufficiently to sit upright, she knew there was no way she was hauling the heavy chair up to road level. She had nothing left after the exhausting climb. She was drenched in sweat from head to toe and her muscles were spent to the point of failure. She would have to rely on Honey, hoping she could coax the animal into cooperating.
She crawled up alongside the pony and sat there for a moment, patting and soothing it. When the pony seemed calm she pushed past it, getting as far ahead of Honey as the reins would allow.
“I’m going to need you to walk to me,” she explained, as if the pony was waiting for her instructions. “We need to get my chair up here so I can turn it over.”
Honey shook her furry head, her tack rattling with the movement. Sharon hoped that wasn’t an indication that it wasn’t going to cooperate.
“Come on now,” she urged, tugging the reins.
Honey took a tentative step toward her, pausing as she encountered the tension on the harness. The chair might have been snagged or it could have been friction from how it hung over the bank. Either way, it was going to take some pulling to get it back up. Sharon hoped the effort didn’t break the harness. If it did, she faced a long haul back to Oliver’s house.
“Pull!” she urged the pony, tugging harder on the reins.
The Borrowed World Series | Book 8 | Blood & Banjos Page 14