WHISTLING WOMAN
CC TILLERY
Spring Creek Press
Copyright 2011 by CC Tillery
Smashwords Edition
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This novel is a work of fiction based on fact and family stories. Though it contains incidental references to actual people and places, these references are, in most cases, merely to lend the fiction a realistic setting. All other names, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
To our dad, Raymond Earl “John” Tillery, for entertaining us with stories from his childhood and for reminding us every time we talk to him how important family is. Also, for the beautiful painting that graces the cover of this book. We love you very much, Daddy. This book would never have existed if it weren’t for you!
And to our great-aunt Bessie, the woman behind it all. Thank you for sitting at our shoulder while we wrote your story and for being a ‘Whistling Woman” who lived a life that’s fascinated us from the time we were small children.
Chapter One
Fall 1895
A whistling woman and a crowing hen never come to a very good end.
Death first touched my life on an early fall night in 1895 when Papa came home carrying a dead man in his arms. I had fourteen years behind me and a good many more to go, though I didn’t know that at the time. Something else I didn’t know, and in the long run this one affected my life as much as, if not more than, living to an advanced age: Death would take two of my loved ones not long after it first showed up in my life. According to my Cherokee great-grandmother Elisi, that was the way it usually happened. “Death always comes in threes,” she claimed. I didn’t think much about it at the time because Elisi was as stuffed full of adages and little bits of wisdom as a tick on a hound dog’s back is filled with blood.
Mayhap if I’d been in the kitchen when Papa came in, I would have caught a glimpse of Death slipping in behind him, as if a member of the funeral procession. But then, probably not. The sight didn’t come clearly to me until I was older and even then the visions were more of an ethereal knowledge, things I knew but couldn’t see or touch. I could hear them on occasion but it was sometimes hard to put a picture with them.
This uninvited guest stayed with us for almost five years and finally went away in the summer of 1900, proving Elisi wrong. Death doesn’t always come in threes. That time it came in fours and for all I know the number might have been higher if Death hadn’t decided to go off in search of more fruitful killing fields. Perhaps It found them in China where the Boxer Rebellion was winding down or maybe It went off to Italy to help with the assassination of King Umberto. It might even have gone off to Texas to prepare for the bountiful harvest that was to come Its way in September when a hurricane and tidal wave struck in Galveston, killing 6,000 poor souls. No matter, it seemed like there was always a war or some natural disaster somewhere and Death wasn’t hurting for business back then, just as It isn’t now.
The oldest of five children, I often felt more like an adult than a child, but then, according to Mama, I’d been born old. Perhaps that was why she named me Vashti Lee—Vashti after Queen Vashti from the book of Esther in the Bible and Lee after Papa’s mother. I didn’t think either name suited me at all. Vashti, to me, being Biblical, implied a meekness of spirit or a good girl, one who follows all the rules. And Lee was just dull and ordinary. Women destined to live life on their own terms, as I felt I was, had light, carefree names like Bessie, which my little sister called me when she first learned to talk, or firm, no-nonsense ones like Bess, which Papa took to calling me when he tried to curtail my often inappropriate behavior. Bessie or Bess, both of them fit me like one of my proper Aunt Belle’s kidskin gloves.
Of course, if I’d known the kind of woman the original Vashti had been, that she had defied a king and stood up for her rights as a woman, I might have kept the name and been happy with it. As it was, I didn’t learn her full story until later in life and by then everyone, with the exception of Mama and Aunt Belle, called me Bessie.
In 1889, at the age of eight, I told everyone I knew to call me Bessie and refused to answer to Vashti by my friends or brother and sister. I even informed the teachers at school my name was now Bessie and signed all my papers that way. Once when my third grade teacher wrote Vashti on the chalkboard and told me to stand in the corner for sassing her, I calmly walked to the board, erased the offending name and replaced it with Bessie before I did as told. When I announced it at the supper table at home, Papa laughed but he listened and never called me that ill-fitting name again. But Mama, well, Mama, like me, had a mind of her own. She liked Vashti and, though that was how she usually referred to me, she did slip up sometimes and call me Bessie. When she did, I took this as a sign she might someday accept me for the person I was.
Because of Mama’s delicate health, I was often left with the responsibility of looking after my younger brothers and sister. A daunting chore at times but Mama had never been very strong, and after the birth of my youngest brother, the spirit and fire which Papa said first drew him to her, a fire I’d seen plenty of before Thee’s birth, seemed to dampen down and sputter out like a flame left unattended through a long, winter’s night.
On that night when Death came for an extended visit, Papa stepped inside with the dead man in his arms, walked over to the large wooden table in our kitchen and laid the body out there, arranging his arms and legs just so. I stifled a nervous laugh. His actions put me in mind of Mama fussing over the arrangement of her good silver and china when the preacher came for Sunday dinner.
Tall and lanky, the man stretched from one end of the table to the other. His scuffed boots hung over the far edge, dangling in the air above Mama’s chair, and his head, with the neat bullet-hole dead center of his forehead, rested at the other end where Papa sat when home at mealtime. As if we were all sitting there waiting to eat, Papa bowed his head and, his hand resting on the man’s shoulder, mumbled something I couldn’t catch—a quick prayer, an apology or admonition, I didn’t know what. Papa wasn’t the most religious of men but insisted on saying grace before each and every meal.
As Papa muttered over the man’s body, I suppressed another laugh. The whole scene, while strange and unusual to me, seemed to mock our everyday life.
“John? Is that you?” Mama’s voice, wispy and soft as the finest goose down, called from the parlor where she’d been giving my sister Loney a piano lesson.
I stood on the bottom step of the back stairway, peeking around the door jamb. From the window of my bedroom, I’d tracked Papa as he walked down the street to the house. I’d been banished there earlier that afternoon for bloodying my brother’s lip—a punch Roy richly deserved, though Mama didn’t see it that way. Mama, as usual, didn’t bother to listen to me and ordered me straight to my room. I’d spent the time in exile preparing my defense, hoping I could catch Papa before Mama did.
At Mama’s voice, he sighed, taking off his hat and hooking it on the back of one of the chairs. I pressed back against the wall of the stairwell, hidden but stationed where I could hear and get a quick glimpse of the show if I wanted. This was bound to be good. Mama would probably succumb to a fit of the vapors at the very least. At the most, she’d pitch a hissy fit that would have all the neighbors within shouting distance whispering behind their hands for days.
William Fore—I found out his name later that night from Papa—rested on the table, hands crossed over his chest, eyes closed, face serene, appearing to be taking an afternoon nap. Papa squeezed Mr. Fore’s shoulder as if in silent apology then turned his back on him, facing the door to the dining room. He leaned his hip against the table and crossed his arms over his chest, the Silver Star pinned to his coat glinting briefly in the light from the oil lamps as the material bunched up over his arms.
“It’s me, Cindy.” He sounded tired and I could tell he wasn’t looking forward to Mama’s reaction.
Mama bustled into the kitchen from the dining room. The baby rested against her shoulder and Green held one of her apron strings in his chubby toddler fist as he staggered behind her in that flat-footed walk all babies have when they first take to their feet.
“John, you need to talk to Vashti Lee. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the girl, she—”
I hunched my shoulders but, other than that one defensive move, remained perfectly still. Papa hadn’t been home two minutes and already Mama was launching into a conniption fit about my behavior that day. She would, I knew from experience, lecture him for at least fifteen minutes about my actions, subtly suggesting it was his fault I acted the way I did, and then tell him he needed to punish me for hitting Roy.
Not that I minded her leaving the discipline to Papa because he would take the time to listen to me. He understood me far better than Mama ever would and we often ended up laughing about what I’d done to incur Mama’s wrath. Papa, in my eyes, was the best part of my life. I cared much more about pleasing him than I ever would about minding my manners or acting like a proper lady as Mama always said I must.
Mama gasped as she came into the kitchen, her hand flying to her chest, and I edged back a little further on the step. She’d surely squeal like a stuck pig if she saw me standing there. As it was, Papa and the dead man on the table held her attention.
“John Daniels!”
“Now, Cindy…”
The baby, reacting to Mama’s distress, opened his mouth, burbled and let out an ear-shattering cry. In an automatic maternal gesture, Mama jiggled him and swayed, something that usually ended the tantrum before it got started. Theodore Norton, or Thee as we called him, snuffled and quieted as Mama continued to bounce him up and down.
Green tottered over to Papa and held his arms in the air. Papa crouched a little and picked him up, tossing him over his shoulder and patting him on the bottom. Green giggled.
Mama stared at the dead man and inched her way back to the dining room doorway. Her mouth pursed and she shuddered before squaring her shoulders. She bounced Thee a couple more times and let her other hand fall from her breast. It came to rest on her hip, her right eyebrow arching as she looked at Papa and waited for an explanation.
I clamped my mouth shut over the giggle bubbling in my throat. Oh, good, it looked like the neighbors would have a lot to talk about in the next few days.
Or so I thought until Mama surprised me by saying in a low voice, “Come into the dining room, please, John. I can’t talk in here with that…that.” She pointed at the table.
Propping Green on his hip, Papa looked at him and shrugged before following Mama out of the kitchen.
“You can’t leave a dead man on my kitchen table, John.” Mama’s voice, low and strained, held a touch of horrified disbelief that Papa would even consider doing such a thing.
In the parlor, Loney picked out the opening notes of some happy tune on the piano. I covered my mouth with my hand when I realized she was trying to play “Seven Drunken Nights.” Mama would surely throw a dying duck fit if she recognized the song. It wasn’t one she considered proper for a young lady since it was about a man coming home “as drunk as” he could be. It also didn’t sit well with her because Papa had been known to spend a few drunken nights of his own at the local saloon. I sighed, knowing I would be the one to pay the price for teaching it to Loney. Leave it to my sister to play Papa’s favorite song. She was forever trying to find a way to get Papa to pay attention to her.
I looked over at the dead man. I didn’t know him but figured he might object to having that particular song as his funeral dirge. Or maybe not; for all I knew, it was a fitting sendoff for him.
“Aw, now, Cindy, I couldn’t leave him at the jail. Norton’s got Hankins and Shepherd in the cell and you know how those two are, they fight over which direction the wind’s blowing. My deputy has enough on his hands without having to stand guard over a dead man. ’Sides, Fore there ain’t hurtin’ anything. He’s dead.” Papa, of course, didn’t see the need for making a fuss over such a simple thing as using our kitchen table as a makeshift coroner’s slab.
“I know he’s dead, John Warren Daniels. That’s precisely why you can’t leave him there.”
“It’s only for tonight. Norton and I cleaned him up a bit before I brought him home and I have some canvas in the barn that Roy can help me spread under him. I’ll take him to the courthouse in Marshall first thing tomorrow.”
“The courthouse? You mean to tell me he’s a…a…criminal?” The last word whispered as if Mama didn’t want the dead man to hear her less-than-complimentary description.
“Why else would I shoot a man? It’s my job to protect the citizens of the town, ain’t it?”
I stepped off the bottom step, checking to see if the coast was clear. The voices came from the dining room, Papa’s cajoling, Mama’s higher and a little desperate. Hiking up my nightgown, I tiptoed on bare feet into the kitchen. The argument might keep them busy long enough to let me explore the curiosity of having a dead man in the house. A dead man! Shivering with excitement, or more than likely fear, I held my breath and approached the old, scarred wooden table. Coming to a stop beside it, I stared. My eyes moved slowly from the tips of the man’s scuffed boots, up his legs and torso, and didn’t stop until they encountered the neat, circular hole in his forehead.
Papa shot a man in the head and killed him. This was another curiosity to be taken out and explored later. As Constable of Hot Springs, it was his job to shoot people if they needed to be shot just like it was his job to collect taxes from the people who lived there. As far as I knew, he’d never shot anyone before and he sure hadn’t ever brought a dead man home and stretched him out on our kitchen table like he was running a backroom funeral parlor.
I snickered then shook off the thought. Right now, I wanted to investigate the results of Papa’s action, examine the gruesome reality of death.
Holding tight to the edge of the table with one hand, I reached out with the other and poked at his arm. It felt like any old arm, maybe a little colder than most, but since he wore a long-sleeved coat and it was a chilly night outside, I couldn’t really tell. I trailed my fingers down to his hand but ran out of courage before I actually touched that dead flesh. I yanked my hand away and the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding rushed out of my lungs with a whoosh. I stilled, took a cautious glance over my shoulder just in case Mama heard, then focused on the hole in his forehead again.
Round and small, the skin puckered around it as if the man’s brain had swallowed a sour lemon instead of a bullet. The hole looked to be about the same size around as my index finger and what little blood had leaked out had already dried to a rusty red-brown color. I leaned down, studying it closely. To me, that little hole didn’t seem to be enough to kill anyone, but I guessed it was since this man was lying on Mama’s kitchen table, his face pasty gray and most undeniably dead.
Still, just to be sure, I placed my hand on his chest, feeling for a heartbeat or the rise and fall of air going in and out of his lungs. I couldn’t find any sign of life, nothing at all. As I stood there, I wondered if he’d felt the pain of the bullet and how long he’d continued breathing after that tiny piece of lead invaded his brain.
My eyes moved up to his forehead again and I stared in fascination at the little round hole. Had Papa aimed for that spot or just plugged him dead center of the forehead by accident? Leaning down, I studied the bullet hole closer and marveled at its perfect roundness. What would happen if I stuck my finger in there? I reached out but drew my hand back when I heard Roy clomping down the back stairs
Perfect! Maybe I could get Roy to put his finger in there and tell me what it felt like. Two years younger than me, Roy liked to pretend he was all grown up, a man instead of a boy. I walked over to the stairs and grabbed his arm to keep him from jumping off the bottom step as was customary for him. With his big feet, there was no way Mama wouldn’t hear that. I pulled him into the kitchen, clamping my hand over his mouth.
“Be quiet,” I hissed.
His eyes widened but he nodded and I withdrew my hand. That was the best thing about Roy: he made a fine collaborator most of the time.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
I leaned in close to his ear. “Papa shot a man in the head and killed him and,” I paused and lowered my voice even more, “he brought him home and put him over there on the table.” I pulled Roy over so he could see. “Mama and Papa are in the dining room and Mama isn’t very happy with Papa right now. She doesn’t think it’s proper to have a dead man on the table.”
Loney hit a sour note in the parlor and stopped playing for a moment. Seconds later, she resumed, starting at the beginning of “Seven Drunken Nights” again. The giggles came back and I slapped my hand over my mouth.
Roy bent over the table and looked at the dead man, much as I had a few minutes before, taking him in from the toes of his scraped work boots all the way up to the hole in the center of his forehead. He swallowed hard, threw a glance over his shoulder, turned back and reached out a hand to the man’s face. Also like me, he jerked back before he could touch that cold, dead flesh.
“Go ahead,” I whispered. “Touch him.”
“Uh-uh.”
I ran my finger down his spine and brought it forward, studied it before wiping it on his sleeve. “Your yellow streak’s showing. Go on, chicken, put your finger in there. I want to know what it feels like.”
He shook his head. “Nope. You want to know, you do it.” He looked me in the eye. “I dare you.”
I hated to back down from a dare, especially when it came from my younger brother, so I shoved him aside and moved closer to the table. Wiping my damp hand on my nightgown, I balled it into a fist with only the index finger sticking out and touched the man’s cheek. It was slightly rough, his whiskers stiff and bristly beneath my finger. I traced a path up the side of his face, across his forehead, skirting around the hole then moved my finger down the other side.
“Buk, buk, buk,” Roy taunted. “Go on, Bessie, do it.”
“Shh. I will.”
Moving my finger back up to his forehead, I approached the hole, stopped and prodded the flesh around it.
“His skin’s cold,” I said.
Roy nudged me with his shoulder. “You’re just stalling. Go on, chicken, stick your finger in there.”
Suddenly, this didn’t seem like such a good idea, but if I didn’t do it, Roy would never let me forget and would tell all our friends I’d backed off from a dare. It would be years before I lived it down.
Raising my chin, I moved my finger closer and touched the puckered edges of the hole. Roy leaned down, crowding me, and I jabbed an elbow in his stomach to get him to move back. He giggled before slapping both hands over his mouth.
It was that slightly frightened giggle that did it. I lifted my hand and slowly lowered my finger to the hole. The skin, when I finally touched it, felt rubbery, and as I pressed down into the hole, it seemed to close around me as if greedy for live flesh. I almost lost my nerve until Roy gasped out another nervous giggle and I shoved in deeper. I could feel the bone now, rough with jagged edges where the bullet had torn through to the brain beneath. There was a slight resistance before my finger sank into something that felt like cool jelly.
“Oh my goodness, Vashti Lee Daniels, get away from there! John, get her away from there!” Mama’s shocked voice rang out and I snatched my hand back. Without thinking, I wiped my bloody finger on my nightgown.
“Oh, Vashti.” Mama sounded like she was going to swoon.
I looked down at the streak of red running along the white skirt of my nightgown. Darn, I was probably going to have to pay for that by doing a plentitude of boring chores around the house for the next month.
Standing beside Mama, Papa put his arm around her shoulders, keeping her upright as he peered at me. His handlebar moustache twitched before he firmed his lips in a straight line.
“Damn, Bess, you can’t be playing around with a dead man.” He tried to sound stern for Mama’s benefit but I could see the amusement dancing in his eyes, even though he narrowed them in an attempt to hide it. Papa might pretend that some of the things I did annoyed and flummoxed him, as they usually did Mama, but I knew the truth. More often than not, he enjoyed my scandalous behavior. Not that he’d ever let Mama see it.
I ducked my head to hide the grin. One of my greatest pleasures in life came whenever Papa looked at me like that and said, “Damn, Bess,” in that exasperated tone of voice. It was his favorite saying when it came to me and my improper behavior. As a deterrent or reprimand, it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, it sometimes goaded me on. I loved to hear those two words come out of Papa’s mouth.
Every time I heard them, they reinforced my desire to be my own person though I didn’t have the words to describe my independent nature until Elisi gave them to me a couple of years after that night. We were foraging in the woods for wild herbs and talking about the goings on of a particular woman in our small town. Elisi, who swore she didn’t like gossip but was always willing to listen and offer the occasional comment, laughed and told me Miss Cordy was a whistling woman and didn’t care who knew it. When I asked her what that meant, she said, “A whistling woman and a crowing hen never come to a very good end, or so they say. Now, Miss Cordy spends a great deal of her time whistling and I’d say she’ll go on whistling until the day she dies, no matter what the outcome or what people think of her.”
I thought about it as we grubbed in the dirt for ʼsang, and by the time we headed back to the house, I knew a whistling woman was exactly what I wanted to be. A woman who lived her life the way she wanted no matter what other people said or thought about her. Lord knows, I’d already bucked so many of Mama’s prim and proper rules of etiquette where a young lady was concerned, and though I didn’t like doing so many extra chores to pay for my indiscretions, I dearly loved it when Papa looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Damn, Bess.” I cared much more about pleasing Papa than I did Mama—or society in general.
Chapter Two
Fall 1895
She’s enough to make a preacher cuss.
Early the next morning, Mr. Fore still rested on our kitchen table, swaddled in the paint-splattered canvas Papa and Roy brought in from the barn. Mama wouldn’t go near him and, in fact, stayed in the dining room to nurse Thee instead of her usual place in the rocking chair which sat in one corner of the kitchen by the warm stove specifically for that purpose. When she did finally come into the kitchen, she skirted around the table as far away as she could get, as if death might be contagious. Or maybe she feared Mr. Fore would grab her hand and drag her along with him on his ascension into Heaven or his descent into Hell, whichever the case might be.
I packed a lunch for Papa and when he and Roy were ready to take Mr. Fore’s body outside held the door open for them. Under its shroud, Mr. Fore’s body didn’t appear to bend at all and I wondered how he would feel if I poked at him then as I had the night before. Papa and Roy carried their stiff burden to the waiting wagon and eased him into the bed. When they finished, Roy hightailed it off to the barn to get started on his morning chores. I handed Papa his lunch and went up on my toes to kiss him goodbye.
“You be a good girl while I’m gone, Bess, mind your mama,” he said as he climbed into the wagon.
I couldn’t help myself. I begged one more time to go with him.
“No, Bessie, girl, not this time. Stay here with your mama.” He looked up at the sky. “Probably get some rain later and that’ll slow me down some, but I’ll be back by nightfall if I can.”
My shoulders slumped but I plastered a smile on my face. I wanted Papa to know someone would miss him while he was gone since Mama hadn’t even come to the door to wave him off. I didn’t know what they said to each other after I’d gone to bed the night before but I’d heard them arguing and it was all too apparent to me that Mama hadn’t forgiven Papa after a night of sleep.
“Tell you what, Bess, the next time I have to go somewhere on business, I’ll take you with me. That make you smile for me like you really mean it?”
Papa always knew when I was disappointed even when I tried my best to hide it.
“Oh, yes, Papa. When can we go?”
He laughed. “I’ll let you know as soon as I do. Now, go on back inside and help your mama with breakfast. I’ll see you when I get back.” He clucked to the horses and slapped the reins to get them started. “Be good, Bessie.”
I waved and called after him, “Safe trip, Papa.”
He turned and grinned at me over his shoulder. I watched until the road curved and he disappeared from my sight.
When I went back into the kitchen, Mama stood over a pot of boiling water on the stove. Thee rested against her shoulder, smiling his foolish baby’s grin. He raised a chubby fist and waved it at me. I tiptoed over, grabbed his hand and nibbled on his knuckles.
He burbled out a giggle and Mama jumped. Her hand flew to her heart as she dropped the long-handled spoon and whirled around. I sighed. I swear, sometimes Mama’s skittishness irritated the fire out of me.
“My stars and garters, Vashti, you like to scared me into an early—never mind, we need to scrub that table down before we set it for breakfast. I won’t have the children eating on the same table where a dead man spent the night.”
I don’t know if Mama resisted saying the word grave because she thought it would be bad luck or if she was already forming her opinion Papa had brought Death into the house and at least two of us would pay for his foolishness. Probably the latter, although to be fair, she would defend Papa’s unseemly behavior later that same day when her sister Elizabeth, or Belle as she was known in the family, came over for afternoon tea.
It was my job to watch the children during those meetings and keep them quiet so Mama and Aunt Belle wouldn’t be disturbed. Mama said it was the only time during the day when she could catch her breath and just sit for a few minutes, though I knew that wasn’t true. After all, she almost always put the bulk of the household chores on my shoulders, leaving her with plenty of time to sit in the front parlor doing needlework or gossiping with her lady friends.
That morning after we’d eaten breakfast, Mama said her nerves wouldn’t settle so she decided to make jelly with the elderberries Roy and I had picked the day before. She said they were the last of the season and there was no need to let them go to waste. An hour or so after lunch, we were waiting for the last of the juice to drain when Aunt Belle popped her head in the kitchen door with her customary trill of “Yoo-hoo, Lucinda, you home?”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Aunt Belle liked to think of herself as the fashion-fly of Hot Springs and today she had outdone herself. Dressed as if she had an audience with the Queen of England, her skirt cascaded from the broad sash around her tightly corseted waist, flowing smoothly over her ample hips and flaring out at the bottom. She had recently given up wearing a bustle—one of the last ladies in Hot Springs to do so—but she must have had on six petticoats, all starched within an inch of their life, to achieve that upside-down tulip effect. Her prim white blouse strained across her ample bosom, the leg of mutton sleeves almost touched the doorframe, and the brooch set dead-center of the collar sparkled in the sunlight when she swayed from side to side; her version of preening. She wore a hat with a brim so wide I swear she had to cock her head sideways until her cheek touched her shoulder just to get in the door. Flowers crowded around the crown and brilliant blue ribbons cascaded down behind, fluttering madly in the breeze. On her hands, she wore immaculate white gloves, something she said a “proper lady” never left home without.
Aunt Belle’s nickname fit her like one of those gloves. She was the perfect southern Belle in my eyes.
Mama wiped her hands on her apron then ran them over her hair as she smiled at her sister. She reached for the tea kettle on the back of the stove and filled it with water from the jug. “Hello, Elizabeth. Bessie, you can finish this up, can’t you, so your Aunt Belle and I can visit for a few minutes?”
Mama and Aunt Belle’s “few minutes” would more than likely stretch into a couple of hours and I wondered what she would do if I said no. Maybe I would have if she hadn’t called me by my right and proper name, so I only nodded and turned back to the elderberries slowly bleeding their dark purple blood from the muslin jelly bag suspended over a big bowl. Besides, I figured I was in enough trouble and didn’t need to add disrespecting my elders to the mix.
“Yes, Mama,” I said as meekly as I could and made the mistake of squeezing the jelly bag.
Mama slapped my hand. “Vashti, don’t squeeze the berries. You know it turns the jelly cloudy.”
Well, so much for being in Mama’s good graces. I should have sassed her after all.
She bustled around the kitchen, chatting with Aunt Belle as she placed cups and a plate of the molasses cookies she’d made a day or two ago on a tray. When the water boiled, she poured it over the tea in her good china teapot, set the teapot on the tray and she and Aunt Belle left for the parlor, their delicate voices flowing behind them like the train of an elegant party dress.
As soon as I judged it safe, I reached out and gave the bag another squeeze. I might as well since I would be blamed when the jelly came out cloudy as it did every summer when Mama canned.
A couple of hours later, I placed the jars on a rack to cool. I washed and dried the dishes, put everything away in its proper place, and gave the counter a halfhearted swipe as I peeked out the window at Roy and the younger children. Mama had declared this year that Roy was old enough to take care of our younger brothers and sister. I thought this a good thing at the time because it would free me up to pursue my own interests. It didn’t work out that way, though. Mama still wanted me to watch over the watcher, so to speak, and so I ended up with the burden of three children and one half-grown man more often than not.
I watched them for a minute, noting Roy had remembered to settle the baby and Green before going off to play a game with Loney. He’d laid Thee on a blanket under the big elm tree and Green sat beside the blanket, happily digging in the dirt with a stick as Thee napped. Roy and Loney were nearby, tossing a baseball back and forth. Roy wound up like a pitcher and hurled the ball at Loney, almost hitting her in the head. She ducked then stood up and slammed her hands on her hips.
“I’m not playing with you no more!”
“Aw, come on, Loney, I didn’t mean it. I won’t do it again, I promise.” Roy loved baseball and had visions of becoming a professional pitcher when he got older. But his failure to make the ball go where he aimed it most of the time would soon put that dream to rest.
Loney stomped over to the blanket and sat down beside Thee, rubbing her hand gently over his back. Thee stirred and Loney started singing softly to him. She dreamed of becoming a concert pianist on most days, of being a mother of a large brood of children on others—something I never understood the appeal of, but then I wasn’t anywhere near ready to marry and have a family. Loney would, in time, attain one of those dreams on a limited scale, and in reaching it, she promptly forgot about the other one.
“Hey, Green,” Roy called, “you wanna play some ball? Come on, buddy, I’ll teach you how to catch.” Green, his face covered with dirt, grinned at Roy and held out his hands. “Nah, I can’t throw it to you over there. If you don’t catch it and it hits sissy-pants in the head, she’ll tell Mama on us.” He squatted down and motioned for Green to come to him. “Come over here and we’ll play.” Green got up and tottered over to him. Roy caught him and swung him around then set him on his feet. “You stay right there and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
Green held up his arms. “More, more.”
Roy shook his head. “We’re gonna play ball, Greenie.”
He tossed the ball gently to him. Green watched it drop to the ground at his feet then picked it up and took off in the other direction. Although he had not found his balance yet, he loved to try to run even though he usually ended up falling down. But that didn’t seem to bother him. He’d just pick himself up and take off again.
Roy made a show of chasing after him, getting close, and when Green screamed, he’d drop back and let him go. Some days, it seemed they could keep that game up forever, Green screaming and laughing in delight, Roy pretending to be unable to catch him.
It always made me smile.
When Green was born, Papa said he was a gift from God. He’d thought Loney would be his last child, especially since it had been almost ten years since she’d been born.
And so Papa named Green after another gift he’d been given way back when he was a boy during the Civil War. When the Yankees came, bringing devastation with them, Papa’s mama lost their farm. Her husband was off somewhere fighting the war and since she didn’t have any family nearby she had to go to a women’s home in Greenville, South Carolina, the biggest town near Cowden, where Papa was born. The shelter would only allow her to take her youngest child, my Aunt Beth Anne, with her. They wouldn’t take Papa because they didn’t allow men, not even boys who hadn’t had time to reach their full growth yet. Granny Daniels hadn’t had any choice but to apprentice Papa out to someone. Mr. Green, the local blacksmith, took him in as a striker, and by the time the war ended, Papa was well on his way to becoming an expert blacksmith. Mr. Green was also a builder and Papa learned that trade, too. After the war, he continued to work with Mr. Green until the old man died, after which, Papa packed up his bags and went off to explore the world. He barely made it over the border of North Carolina before he met Mama in Brevard, fell in love, and got married. Papa continued blacksmithing and building, working at odd jobs here and there while Mama had three children in six years. When she miscarried for the second time after having Loney, Papa decided it was time for a new start. He packed us up and moved us to Hot Springs in 1887 when I was six years old.
Since we’d moved, we’d lived in four different places although our first wasn’t really a house but a large building with a store-like front located in the middle of town where the bridge crossed Spring Creek. Mr. Newt Lance sold goods in the front and we occupied the upstairs and back. Our next house was a pretty cottage Papa built. It stood just behind Dorland School and had a porch all trimmed with jig-saw stars I’d watched Papa cut himself. There was a big apple tree in the front yard with a swing hanging from a sturdy branch. Lining one side of the garden was a row of gooseberry bushes from which Mama cut switches to use as a threat when we misbehaved. I don’t recollect her ever using them on us but just seeing her holding one of those thin, supple branches in her hand was enough to make us behave.
After Papa sold that house, our next home was in front of the Baptist Church on Bridge Street, the main road through town. It, too, was a sweet little cottage all prettied up with scroll work, courtesy of Papa’s skilled hands. Papa gave fifty dollars for the land, which was a good-sized lot with a barn in the back where he kept a wagon and two horses, one, a big red mare that for some unknown reason he called Bob. And of course, it wasn’t long before we had other animals, a cat, a dog, and some chickens, sharing the barn with the horses.
Because teams of horses with big wagons sometimes ran away down the street, Mama was afraid one of us children would get run over, and when Papa had the house ready to be sold, she convinced him to swap with Newt Lance for a house over on Spring Street. It was a big two-story house with a well in the center of the front yard and a paling fence with a gate near the well. It also had a barn in back, so when we moved, we took the animals with us.
It wasn’t long after that move that Papa was offered a job as town constable of Hot Springs. He accepted the position, perhaps remembering Mr. Green who had also been in politics, but continued to build houses and blacksmith in his spare time.
Outside, Green shrieked, bringing my attention back to him. I watched Roy grab Green, pick him up and swing him around before he took him back and sat him down by the blanket again. Green picked up his stick and went back to playing in the dirt as Roy stretched out beside Loney and Thee on the blanket. He stacked his hands behind his head and gazed up at the sky.
Peace looked to be the order of the day, at least for now, so I turned and tiptoed out of the kitchen to go see what Mama and Aunt Belle were talking about. If I stood in just the right spot in the hall, the mirror on the coat rack beside the outside door gave me a clear picture of the two of them sitting on the small sofa in the parlor.
“Lucinda,” Aunt Belle’s voice rang with urgency, “you need to have Miss Cordy come in and cleanse this house.”
Mama tittered, waving that away with a flutter of her hand. “Pish-posh, Belle. Why in the world would I want to do that?”
“Because John’s brought death to this house and you know Elisi says death always works in threes.”
“John’s done no such—”
“Listen to me,” Aunt Belle’s voice lowered to a whisper. I moved forward a few inches so I could hear her better. “You should never have allowed John to come into this house with that dead man, because when he did, he brought death in with him.”
“Don’t be silly, Belle. Death isn’t something that comes for a visit, and besides the man didn’t die in this house, he died out on the street. John brought him here because he had nowhere else to take him.”
“It doesn’t matter in the least where he died. What matters is John brought him here and death walked right in the door behind him as if it was an invited guest.”
Aunt Belle’s words echoed my thoughts of the night before, and I shivered. Was it possible Death was a tangible being and Its spirit now haunted our house?
“Lucinda.” Aunt Belle took Mama’s hand. “I can feel it in this house. Death never takes one that it doesn’t take two others. You know that. The only way you can get rid of it is to have this house cleansed before someone else dies. Miss Cordy can do that or tell you how to do it. We’ll go see her right now.”
Aunt Belle stood up and I took a few careful steps back. Mama would pitch a fit if she found me eavesdropping, something she’d chastised me for in the past. Young ladies didn’t gossip and they didn’t listen in on conversations not meant for them to hear. I didn’t have time to make it back to the kitchen, so I painted a smile on my face and reversed direction, as if coming to join her and Aunt Belle.
“Mama, I was just coming to see if you and Aunt Belle needed more tea.”
Aunt Belle pinned me with her evil eye and I knew she didn’t believe me but I ignored her and kept talking to Mama. “More cookies, Mama? I’ll be glad to fetch them for you.”
“Oh, Vashti, no, no, we don’t need anything, but would you watch the children for a few minutes while we take a walk?”
I folded my hands at my waist. “Of course I will, Mama. Would you like me to get your shawl?”
“Heavens, child,” Aunt Belle said. “It’s warm enough out there today to scald a pig, why would she need a shawl?”
I shrugged, something Mama would usually reprimand me for, but her eyes were all for Aunt Belle and she said nothing. Aunt Belle, however, with her rigid code of behavior for young ladies, didn’t let me down.
“Don’t shrug your shoulders like that. You look like a common ni—field worker. And stand up straight. I swan, girl, you’re going to be carrying around a hump on your back before you even get out of school.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I straightened my shoulders, though I wanted to hunch them even more than they were already. I’d learned a long time ago, the best way to deal with Aunt Belle when she went off on one of her “prim and proper Southern lady” tirades was just to agree with her. If I bothered to protest or tried to defend myself, she’d keep talking until I suffocated from all the hot air flowing out of her impressive bosom.
Satisfied, she turned back to Mama. “Come with me, Lucinda. You need some air. We won’t be gone long, Vashti. You make sure the children behave.”
The old bat tugged on her gloves, grabbed Mama’s hat from the hat rack and breezed out the door, dragging Mama with her.
I raced into the parlor and looked out the front window. Miss Cordy, a widow-woman and the town midwife, as well as a soothsayer—though some called her a witch—lived with her no-account son on the outskirts of town, halfway up a mountain, in a run-down, shabby house all the town children avoided like the plague. Her yard overflowed with weeds that grew high enough to hide a wildcat—or the Melungeon boogie-man Mama often warned me would take me from my bed one night if I didn’t behave.
Mama and Aunt Belle turned to the left and I admit to feeling a tug of fear for Mama but not for Aunt Belle. I didn’t believe in monsters, but why take chances by walking up that pitted walk to that crooked door and waking some unknown creature by knocking on it? I didn’t want Mama to get hurt but Aunt Belle, well, that was another matter altogether. If the Melungeon boogie-man got her, it would at least put a stop to all her negativity where Papa was concerned and her lectures about being a proper young lady.
Of course, if the monster did get her, he’d probably bring her back after spending five minutes listening to her harangue him about how he should bathe more often, cut his hair, shave his beard, and dress in proper clothes.
Aunt Belle, as Papa said, was enough to make a preacher cuss at the best of times, and at her worst, she could depress the devil.
Too bad Mama balked at the last minute and refused to set one foot on the weed-strewn path leading up to Miss Cordy’s front door. If she hadn’t insisted on turning around and coming back home, the Melungeon boogie-man may have grabbed Aunt Belle and I wouldn’t have had to suffer her presence in my life for the next seven years.
Chapter Three
Spring 1896
Chugged full.
Our lives quickly got back to normal after that. The winter that year was a mild one with hardly any snow to speak of, and on a bright, sunshine-filled Saturday the next spring, Papa made good on his promise to take me with him when he went out of town on business. He planned to go to Paint Rock to talk to a man about doing some repair work on a house and he told me I could accompany him. Needless to say, I was overjoyed at getting away from home and spending the entire day with him all to myself.
After I packed a picnic lunch with thick slices of ham and fresh biscuits, I put on the new red dress I pestered Loney into finishing the night before. Mama, her feathers ruffled about me going, spent the days leading up to our trip in a pout. That morning when I came downstairs, she frowned and muttered something about putting on airs. I pretty much ignored her. I was as happy as a dead pig in sunshine and refused to let her spoil my day.
Papa hitched up the horses while I tucked our lunch under the seat then waited impatiently to leave. When he was ready, I climbed in the wagon without his help. My eagerness to be gone had me practically leaping up and grabbing the reins. It wouldn’t take us very long to get to Paint Rock since it wasn’t that far away and I planned to savor every single minute of the trip. After we passed out of town and wouldn’t be bothered anymore with greeting friends and neighbors as we went, we settled into an easy rhythm, talking about this, that and anything else that crossed our minds.
I could always talk to Papa, and when he started telling me stories about being a boy during the Civil War, the trip seemed to fly by. A natural-born storyteller, he could spin a yarn better than anyone I ever heard before or since.
We stopped outside the town to eat lunch in a pretty clearing by the French Broad River. I had to go into the woods and walking back to the wagon, I heard a rustling sound behind me. Since I’d overheard Mama threatening Green with the Melungeon boogie-man the night before, that was the first thing that came to mind. I lit out of there like a scalded cat and almost knocked Papa down when I got back to him.
“Law, girl, you look like you just saw a ghost. Something scare you?”
Of course, being close to Papa settled my nerves and I laughed to cover my embarrassment. I had turned 15 in January and was too old to be jumping at noises and running to the safety of my papa’s arms. Still, I knew Papa would understand. “I heard a noise and the first thing that popped into my head was Mama’s Melungeon boogie-man.”
“Pshaw, Bess, ain’t no such thing as a boogie-man, Melungeon or not. The Melungeons are people just like you and me. Hell, we probably even have some kinfolk in common. You shouldn’t be scared of people just because they’re different. There are plenty of scarier things in this world.”
“What do you mean, Papa?”
We sat on the ground to eat and he told me about the Shelton Laurel Massacre that happened back in the Civil War. He began the telling in the same way he always did, “Well, if I recall rightly…”
To me, those words were better and more exciting than “Once upon a time.”
“…this happened along about 1863, right in the middle of some of the fiercest fighting of the war. ’Twas January and some say the winter that year was the coldest ever known. All I know is it was as cold as a well digger’s backside down in South Carolina, and if it was cold down there, you can bet it was colder here.”
I laughed, delighted that Papa used a phrase I knew he’d never dream of uttering in the presence of a proper lady like Mama. Having no use for propriety or people who put on airs was just one more thing that made me feel closer to him than I ever could to Mama.
“Back then, Shelton Laurel was known to the Confederates as a Unionist hotbed. Suppose it would be more proper to say the whole of Madison County since a lot of deserters, both from the Confederacy and the Union, came over here when the war started, although most of the folks who already lived here didn’t really care one way or the other which side won. Since the biggest part of the people in the county didn’t have slaves, they figured they didn’t have a dog in that particular fight and paid no nevermind to who was winning or losing. But quite a few of them leaned toward the Union side of things, probably because the soldiers around these parts were mostly Confederate and it seemed like they were always doing something to get the people in an uproar, whether it was rationing food or strutting around like they were the cock of the walk just because they wore a uniform.
“Anyhow, when food got scant, the bushwhackers and Tories started raiding both here and over in Tennessee. That’s when the higher-ups over in Knoxville decided to put the North Carolina 64th in charge of keeping the peace here in the county. The man in charge of the 64th, a Colonel by the name of…” he stroked his handlebar moustache as he thought “…Keith. J. A. Keith, that was his name, and he was meaner than a striped-eyed snake, meaner than any Melungeon boogie-man could ever be. A body heard tell of torture, whippings, beatings, and Keith wasn’t one to spare the womenfolk or the children, either, for that matter. Folks say he had a heavy hand with a whip and a partiality for stringing people up but not enough to kill them. He’d tie them by the neck to a tree and just leave them hanging there until they were more dead than alive.” Papa shook his head. “Don’t rightly understand what kind of man would do a thing like that to a woman or a child but Keith doesn’t really qualify as a man, if you ask me.”
Papa adjusted his gun belt, stretched his legs out, and leaned back on his elbows. “One of the things hardest to come by during the war was salt, and when it got scarce as hen’s teeth, there was a particularly bad raid on some of the stores in Marshall. Keith got word that it had been a group of men from up Shelton Laurel way and he had his men comb the area up there, looking for the ones who’d done it. Problem was, the bushwhackers went into hiding and all Keith’s men could find was old men and young boys, and most of ’em weren’t strong enough to have done any sort of raiding. But that didn’t matter to Keith. He had his men round ’em all up and locked them in the jail in Marshall, telling them they’d be held until they could be taken to Knoxville and turned over to the authorities there.
“Well, it seemed that trip was doomed from the start. First it got put off because of a spell of bad weather, and before it warmed up enough to travel, a couple of the prisoners escaped, which only made Colonel Keith madder and meaner.
“When the weather finally cleared, they set out early one morning in February, and only a few miles down the Knoxville road in a clearing beside the creek, Keith called his men and the prisoners to a halt. He picked five of the prisoners and told them to kneel beside the creek. I can’t imagine what they were thinking, they must’ve been scared out of their wits, but I’m pretty sure I know what Keith was thinking.”
“What, Papa?”
“Oh, it’s a bad thing when a man gets to feeling like he’s God and has the power to say who lives and dies. That’s something that quite a few lawmen have fallen prey to and I think that’s what Colonel Keith gave in to that day.”
“What did he do?”
“Well, he ordered some of his men to form a firing squad. The prisoners begged for their lives but Keith wouldn’t listen, even when the men he’d chosen to do the firing refused to shoot. He threatened them with the same fate if they didn’t.” Papa shook his head. “He didn’t give them a choice, just like he didn’t give the prisoners a choice. The soldiers did as ordered and shot those poor people, killing four of them outright and wounding another in the gut. In an act of mercy that probably went against Keith’s grain, one of the soldiers on the firing squad shot that prisoner in the head to end his misery. Then Keith told five more to kneel and ordered his men to shoot them, too. One of those five was a young boy, only fifteen years old. Not even old enough to enlist but old enough to die and die he did. He pleaded with them not to shoot him in the face like they did his father and the men on the firing squad must’ve listened because he ended up gut-shot, too. Still alive, the poor boy begged to go home to his mother and sister, but they shot him again and killed him that time. Then Keith did the same thing with the last three. Thirteen people died that day, Bessie, all at the hand of one evil man. Keith may not have pulled the trigger on all those shots, but he ordered them and threatened more if his men didn’t do as he wanted.”