Fleetie's Crossing Page 9

  Chapter 11

  THE AFTERMATH

  Mother, Daddy, and I slipped out the Willises’ front door and headed home. I hurried on ahead of them so I could see the damage from the top of the hill, where I had a long view all the way up and down the valley. At the brow of the hill, I stopped where the hillside cut flattened out and the road went level. There below me was the whole flood tide sweeping its way to the Mississippi.

  Most of the time, this headwater of the Cumberland River was little more than a meandering stream, but now it was ravenous as it swamped all the low valley. The yards of the Ross’s Point community had gone missing, and the water ran straight through the front doors and out the back. Some of the lucky houses were set farther away from the river, and for these, the water climbed up the steps but seemed to stop just as it nudged the front door.

  Overnight, hundred-foot poplars and sycamores seemed to be shoulder deep in the racing river. The branches, caught by the tidal wind, rose and fell and rose again above the swollen river. The lower branches were draped with debris that left them looking like they were covered with rags and tatters. I shivered at the scavenger birds as they teetered on the black water-slick limbs. The birds flew from tree to tree and cut deep outlines against the gray sky, and below them passed a veritable parade of flood-captured discards. The current had to be much stronger than it appeared because all manner of possessions bobbed and swirled past right below them.

  Even cars, stoves, roof trees, baby dolls, empty bottles, spinning tires, chairs, couches, cots, stoves, oil drums, and small, nearly intact buildings rode the waves in a rampage down the valley.

  As I was standing there, it struck me that all these things had been snatched from people’s houses, people with kids and old people who, like the Sargeants, had little enough to begin with and now had even less. I wanted to feel lucky because my clothes were safe, my bed dry, and the smokehouse still in place, but no good feelings would come. Instead, I felt only an ache. I hurt inside for all those people who, like our neighbors, faced another uphill struggle. For some, their lives would never be the same.

  Across the valley, I heard the cry of a bird dog. It echoed through the unnatural hush and rose from the muffled moan of the flood tide. I could only guess what misery he was reporting with his deep baying. For an animal who lived by what his nose told him, the watery world around him today must have had him bewildered and maybe even lost.

  The water’s relative quiet almost hurt my ears. It would have been more tolerable if all this destruction had come with explosions and crashing. But no, the flood somehow seemed more ominous because of the sweeping quiet of the swollen river. I fear snakes more than attacking dogs. It’s the snakes’ slinking silence that gets me. Today, I felt the same snake dread with the silent waters tearing at my valley all around me.

  Mother and Daddy reached the top of the hill behind me. Mother looked out over the valley, and tears trickled down her face. She had shown almost no emotion through the long night. But the sight of the havoc below us had released all the tension and fear of the long hard night.

  Daddy wrapped his arms around Mother and let her cry it out. No words, no platitudes, no whispers of consolation. If needed, he could talk a whip-poor-will out of its song, but today, he just held her, while the tears did their work. He was a man, and he felt compelled to protect his delicate creatures, two daughters, a baby son, and his wife. We let him. His protection gave us a comfortable place to live.

  I was perfectly willing to let Daddy take charge, so I turned and looked back down the valley, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Daddy, look, coming down the railroad.”

  Daddy looked too and whispered to Mother, “Katie, look! I stopped over at the settlement on my way to town and told Coburn how bad it was over here. Looks like he got the word out in a hurry.”

  Along the railbed below us, a dozen men and women with tools or bundles had walked around the river bend. It was at least two miles before they could reach the railroad right of way. But there they were, almost to Burl’s crossing.

  “They’re headed for Burl’s to help. I’ll go back down the hill directly and get the car to make a run to town for groceries. Flood work will have everybody starving before long.”

  “Would you stop by and see if Aunt Roberta will come out today?” said Mother. “She can stay with the children so I can help with the cleanup.”

  “Katie, don’t you go down there and slog through that flood filth. You’ll help just as much if you stay up here and keep the washer running all day. Every stitch they own will be soaked with mud. The kids can use their wagons to pack the dirty clothes up the hill and help hang out the laundry.”

  “I’d like to help keep the misery from the little ones.”

  “It’s their misery, Katie. They survive by learning how to work hard and by learning it early. Don’t get into it. It’s the way it is, the way it has to be. Leave it alone.”

  Mother froze where she stood, and Daddy and I braced for the argument that usually followed his “living in the mountains” lectures. But Mother looked past both of us. Something had alerted her. Not a movement, not exactly a sound, but something. That’s the thing about Mother—she just knew things. It was a part of her, like having ten fingers and brown hair.

  “Ed, something is . . .”

  “What? Katie, where are—”

  In a jerk, she stepped from the edge of the road, took one long stride across the road, and scrambled up the bank of the steep cut that ran along the fence line. She ran past a large boulder at the end of our small orchard and then slipped out of sight. Daddy followed her up the cut. His feet threw rock and gravel as the retaining bank began to collapse with his weight. I had to scramble up behind him with the dirt, mud, gravel, and rocks cascading around me in a small avalanche. He grabbed me and the trailing branch of a small persimmon tree and flung himself over the edge of the retaining wall. I held on for dear life as the dirt under my feet kept sliding away.

  “Damn it, woman!” he called to Mother. “Slow down, you can about near fly.” He gave me one more hard jerk over the wall and pulled me around the moss-covered boulder.

  Just ahead, Mother was on her knees, resting beside the bunched-up figure of Dorotha. She must have curled herself under the rock overhang that jutted from under the roots of an ancient apple tree and fallen asleep.

  “Dorotha!” he whispered. “What the hell . . .?”

  Mother slipped an arm around as much of her as she could reach and patted her face. She whispered, “Wake up, honey, let’s go to the house with Ed and get something to eat.”

  Dorotha jerked awake and flailed her legs and arms about as if she was going to take off running down the hill, but then she realized who we were and stopped struggling to get away. Mother helped pull her to her feet. She teetered a little before she got her feet under her.

  Daddy broke in. “What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you in the house with the other kids? What the devil is going on? Kathleen, I thought you had all the kids in the house with Nessa.”

  “Ed, it ain’t Miz Hill. I went to Hobe’s, but I…” Dorotha’s voice trailed off.

  “Ed, for pity’s sake, you can cross-examine her after she has some warm food and dry clothes. She just wanted to come on over from Hobe’s. Nobody in their right mind wants to stay up there. She cut across the hill instead of going back down the road. Isn’t that what happened, sweetheart? You got lost in the dark in all that rain?”

  Dorotha nodded. It was pretty thin stuff. Her being lost anywhere up this holler was not likely, and Daddy had to know it, but the story did stop him from yelling loud enough to raise the dead. To be as smart as I knew he was, I thought it was peculiar that his first inclination with something that flustered him with kids was to yell. Mother took Dorotha’s hand, and I saw scratches scraped deep in it and her arm.I took her other hand, and we walked with her as we turned to
walk through the orchard and across the side yard of the house and onto the back porch.

  I caught the look that Mother threw Daddy. She probably thought I wouldn’t notice. Parents! They hadn’t caught on yet. I noticed everything around me that held even the mildest promise of excitement. Living life on a mountain had given me more than a touch of curiosity and sense enough to sit back and watch. What I didn’t find out by just observing, I would fill in by using my imagination to create a likely story. Whatever had happened to Dorotha could turn out to be quite a story, one that Mother might not guess at. Hobe was mean and unpredictable. No telling what had happened to Dorotha.

  Dorotha and I were slipping our feet out of muddy shoes when Aunt Roberta opened the kitchen door, every inch of her considerable height towering over us in what looked to me like alarm and irritation all mixed up.

  “Roberta, how did you get here?” asked Mother.

  As usual, Roberta gave no explanation. That was Roberta. She never offered to explain or ask or tell. I didn’t think anything of it. Kids had it straight. We just knew that adults did not have to justify. It was as simple as milk and cookies or Kool-Aid on a hot day.

  “Mercy! Look at you all, creeping up on this clean porch! Looks like you all need some warm food and a hot bath. There’s fresh coffee on the stove. Let me see to this child.”

  Roberta and Mother exchanged a long look over Dorotha’s tangled head. There it was again. I guess they thought I was totally blind to long looks and pauses. We followed Aunt Roberta and Dorotha across the kitchen to the tiny warm bathroom.

  Whatever may have happened at Hobe’s that night was not going to become a part of the flood’s gossip. Aunt Roberta and Mother formed an alliance of silence that not even helpless Dorotha dared test with the truth. Daddy seemed convinced that Hobe had driven her out into the spring storm. I really wanted to know what damage Hobe inflicted on her to make her desperate enough to run into the black night and driving rain. But I was going to have to wait. Right now, the secret was buried in the bathroom with two mighty lionesses protecting a helpless cub.

  “I’m really hungry,” I announced to nobody. I could have peed on the floor, and no one would have even noticed. But I didn’t. I could fix my own breakfast, and right then, it looked like if I wanted to eat, I was it.

  Chapter 12

  THE DUST FLIES

  I grabbed some cornbread out of the warmer, poured cold buttermilk into a pint jar, capped it, and went out the screen door, planning to make my way back down the hill. I was careful not to announce where I was going. If Aunt Roberta saw me, she might decide I was too dirty to live and throw a monkey wrench in my plans.

  Leatha was right outside the door, sitting on the porch, looking about as lost as Dorotha.

  “Hi, Leathie. Want some cornbread?”

  She shook her head without looking at me. “I want to see the baby.”

  “That’s where I’m headed. When I came up the hill, I saw a big bunch coming over from the settlement. I bet they’re already taking turns holding him.”

  It only took one nod before we took a long stride off the porch. We ran through the orchard that spread itself up the hill from the road cut. It made good cover from the house windows. Aunt Roberta had eyes everywhere, so it wasn’t the best protection, but we made it to the top of the hill without being stopped, and we ran all the way down the hill.

  Just as we got to the creek, a small army of cousins, other kin, and friends stepped off the tracks and walked through the Willis yard and up the rickety steps.

  George swung open the door. “Come on in, boys. Looks like we’ve got a mess, ain’t we?”

  This was the first time I had ever seen some of these men and women near his place. Helen’s sorry, wild wandering and the kids’ thieving isolated them from neighbor and kin. It was pretty clear the Clement baby, swaddled in the Willis kitchen, and the flood destruction across the road had drawn them to the Willis doorstep. Since Helen had turned so peculiar and George’s mining accident had crippled and slowed him down, he had been deprived of the pleasure of good visits and local gossip. He didn’t even try to hide his excitement.

  The men were discussing the damage spread throughout the valley and Burl’s place in particular. The women, who knew the damage meant nothing so much as more hard work for them, ignored the men and slipped inside the house to see the baby. Susanna and the rest stopped dead still at the kitchen door, barely willing to breathe as Fleetie rose and carried the baby to them.

  “Here he is, the image of Geneva. Isn’t he pretty?”

  He was too. Most babies were fairly sad little creatures with red faces and funny-shaped heads, but this one was fair and delicate. As pretty as he was, he gave you the feeling that he was not tied to us good and hard. It was a look the women all knew and dreaded. Not a family in the valley had been spared the grief of losing an infant child despite their desperate will to save each one. I got some of the same sick feeling looking at him. Somehow, I just knew he was in for a struggle he might not win. He seemed so very fragile. There was nothing robust or noisy about him. Newborns should be able to raise a ruckus when they want to. It protected them and warned everyone to pay attention to their needs. This baby was so quiet, it scared me.

  “Fleetie, what did the doctor say about moving Geneva? Can we take her in Ed’s car to my house?” asked Susanna.

  “Dr. Parks said not to move her until he got back around to check on them both. She had a right bad time. I guess we’re here for a while anyway,” said Fleetie. She dropped her head, and I could almost feel her wishing she could just walk her two patients right out the door.

  Susanna spoke. “We talked about it when we were walking over, and that’s about what we figured. Parks don’t like a lot of sashaying around when you’re down. Dr. Begley’s not a whole lot better. We all made it up that we could give Helen a hand with all this company.”

  Leatha poked me in the ribs, and I grinned. We knew all the polite talk really meant Helen’s house was in for the cleaning of its life. They were not about to let one of their babies die because of Helen’s dirty house. They must have decided on the walk across the valley to scrub, dust, mop, and scour until the place was, at the very least, half decent again. So to make it all right, they were going to pretend to one another and to Helen that they were helping her.

  They told Helen it was so good of her to open her house during the flood, to give her ground enough to save her dignity, but dignity or not they were going to clean the house. No one was about to stop the plan and especially not the outnumbered Helen. Not only was she from across the mountain, but she also had not a single relative in a twenty-mile stretch to stand up for her.

  I figured Helen knew this. She also knew well enough not to cross any of them. There had never been a time in her marriage when any of them had accepted her. She was from the first about three steps behind the pack. They had all commented at one time or another that Helen was a Webb and that “all them Webbs was strange by nature.” The Webbs lived across the mountain in Leslie County. They ’stilled good moonshine, but customers were hard won. A man never knew whether he might have to face more lead than liquor going up the holler to their place.

  George Willis was one of the rare people who had faced them down at their game of bluff and black powder. He had seen Helen downtown in Hyden and was fascinated by her from the first. I guess he didn’t care if she was a Webb or not. He moved on his intention, and he did not intend to be driven away.

  Like most bullies, the Webbs had more bluster than fight, and George and Helen were soon left alone to their courting. George’s family, on the other hand, took an immediate and permanent dislike to the peculiar girl with her head in the clouds and her shoes tied over her shoulder. They took great pride in their fine two-story house perched high above the meandering Poor Fork branch of the Cumberland River. They owned and farmed wide fields in the narrow valley, wh
ere such land was scarce. George was brought up better. Why he ever fancied such a worthless girl was more irritation than mystery. His kin all admitted that Helen was a pretty little thing, but they predicted a poor end.

  It was clear to both Leatha and me that before the day was over, the women intended to remove years of neglect and dirt. And since we were determined to hang around, we soon found ourselves right in the middle of it. The women about ran our legs off. I liked it, being such a good cause and all, and besides, I wanted to see the house fixed up. I loved to take something old and battered and make it look new again. Something about restoring things gave me the same good feeling as reading a really long hard book. With this many of us working, I didn’t think there would be anything that wouldn’t shine, gleam, or sparkle.

  Later in the day, we even corralled the children and, in spite of their protests, dunked them in the double-zinc tub sitting on the back porch. The water was warm and sudsy, and after a little while, the children seemed to like it so much, they didn’t want to get out. After the bath, Leatha and I braided the girls’ hair and dressed them in spotless if slightly damp overalls. There was no way we could get the clothes completely dry with all the dampness surrounding us.

  Susanna divided up the labor—Mary’s group organized washing the curtains and throw rugs, Naomi and her daughters attacked all the scrubbing work, and Dolly’s trio was assigned to the kitchen. Leatha and I followed Dolly. Once the women commenced their work, no corner, no child, and no man was safe.

  George built a wash fire in the backyard, and Helen’s ancient cast-iron kettle was filled with lye soap and buckets of water. The cauldron served to boil clean every garment and piece of fabric wrested from its usual place in the house. The heat that rose up from the big fire also helped dry the things hanging on the line just a little ways up the grade. Susanna appointed “pot watchers” who stirred and pummeled in turn. Even Leatha and I got to do some of that.