Morgan James - Promise McNeal 02 - Quiet Killing (10 page)

“But you know, it’s January McNeal who disturbs me, not Reba and her side of the family. His behavior seems so bizarre.” I let my remarks hang in the air and watched Susan’s face for a reaction. I wanted to tell her about January and my dreams, but felt I’d already risked a lot by sharing with Mrs. Allen. I didn’t want Susan to think me as bizarre as January.

Susan was nodding her head. I took that as affirmation she understood what I was saying, and didn’t think me callous about Reba. “It does make me sad to know that Reba’s father felt he couldn’t raise her. Of course, considering the times, I don’t blame him for wanting her to be a white Connell and not a Beauchamp. He probably knew firsthand the kind of discrimination Reba would endure in Baltimore. It was all so wrong. Reba never had a chance to know her father.”

“Oh Lordy, I wouldn’t want to even think about how my life would be if I didn’t have my daddy. The rest of the world might sell me out in a heartbeat, but my daddy would always be there to buy me back. From what you told me about the letter, it sounds like Mr. Beauchamp was a good man. Any man with the
heart to cry when he hears his love has passed away has got to be good.”

I agreed with her about Aiken Beauchamp, but wasn’t sure about my great grandfather. “I don’t know what to think about January though. Was he a good man? What kind of loony-tune person would exhume his wife and child because of an idea that Jesus was coming to lift them all up into heaven? And once he dug them up, where would he take them?”

“Shoot, Miz P. you know where he’d take them. Any mountain man worth his salt would take his woman and child to the home place.”

The realization flooded over me. Susan was right. Home would be where January would go. Home to the cabin on Fire Mountain. Up that logging road, in a creaking wagon…

Susan poured me another cup of coffee and smirked. “Loony-tune? Is that an official diagnosis?”

“Well, yeah. When it comes to my own family, I guess I’m entitled to say that.” I was trying to make light of January’s mental state, but all the while, what I’d learned about my great grandfather and great grandmother was nudging me toward a closed room in my mind, a room where sober voices stirred and shadows moved. Even as I stood in Granny’s Store and chatted with Susan, I could feel January pulling me down a hallway to that room where the voices lived. He had something to say, and he wanted to whisper it in my ear. To warm my suddenly chilly arms, I took my coffee and walked over to the front window to stand in a shard of sunlight settling on the wide plank floorboards.

There was a message from Daniel on my home answering machine. I played it through twice. “Hey Babe,” followed by a few seconds of silence. “I don’t like to fight with you. I didn’t set out to make you mad last night. I just worry about you.” Another silence. Then. “Look, I been thinking, if you aren’t wanting to get married, that’s okay.” More silence. “I’ll take whatever you want to give. Just don’t shut me out.” Short silence. Then: “Thought I’d let you know. Time I drive home from the meeting; it’ll be pretty late tonight. I’ll call you in the morning.” More silence. “Or, you could call me. That’d be all right with me. No matter what time.”

Cat and Junior’s food bowl was empty, and I’d left dirty dishes in the sink earlier. Time to think about Daniel’s message as I ran hot water in the sink and gave it a squirt of dishwashing soap. Was he saying he would leave me alone about getting married? Or, was he just smoothing things over to do battle another day? And why was marriage so scary for me anyway? I loved Daniel, and getting married wouldn’t really change our relationship, would it? Who was I kidding? Of course marriage would change things. I’d be risking hanging my heart out there again and…I didn’t want to finish my sentence.

Tears threatened. I washed my face at the kitchen sink, dried it with a paper towel, and grabbed my corduroy jacket from the utility room coat rack. A long walk is always good medicine.

When I had left the house that morning, I put Alfie in the fenced off garden plot, beside the goat pasture— fenced off because without a barrier the deer will eat
every last vegetable leaf I manage to grow. Alfie was relegated to a separate area from the goats because Fletcher maintains goats and dogs are sworn enemies. Dogs are close relatives of wolves and coyotes. That association, according to Fletcher, tells dogs that goats are prey and tells goats they could be tonight’s supper. At the moment, Minnie, Pearl, and Alfie were napping in the afternoon sun along the common fence line within three feet of each other. Hard to imagine them as enemies, but to be on the safe side, I left Alfie snoring in the garden, and headed for the abandoned logging road climbing Fire Mountain. If Fletcher wanted to get me arrested for trespassing, then so be it. I needed to find January’s cabin, the waterfall, and the cave.

9

Our light morning frost morphed into a glorious, almost warm, afternoon. Was winter truly in retreat? Green was returning to every sunny patch of ground. A determined but hopeful breeze blew from the southwest.
A birthing wind
, I’d heard MaMa Allen call it. I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant but it sounded like spring to me, and blessed assurance that we’d made it through another winter. Perhaps leaving my beloved Atlanta for the Western North Carolina Mountains had been a stellar decision after all.

Following rain washed ruts, sparkling with mica shavings, I trekked higher up the mountain until I passed a familiar ochre and gray striated outcrop of rocks— wheelbarrow sized boulders protruding from the uphill side of the road as thought hurled there by some long-ago giant. This is where I would usually end my hike. Still within the boundaries of my own land, I’d pause, climb atop one of the rocks, turn to look down on my house, goats, and pasture and then return
home with gratitude. Today I walked on, crossing an unmarked line onto Fletcher’s land.

Six hundred feet or so ahead, the road made a wide right curve. I was surprised to find it petering out onto a small grassy plateau no bigger than my driveway turnaround. No more road— only a hillside climbing in a tangle of house high, green, waxy laurels. My legs pulsated from the climb— a good time to sit in the shade and rest. I brushed off a spot under one of the bushes and sat facing the plateau, thinking about how this mountain must have changed since January McNeal’s time. Maybe, in the early 1900s, the road continued up the mountain. I surveyed behind me and decided a road could be lost, swallowed by green, but it would be a steep road; I doubted a wagon could make it up the incline. Maybe January left his wagon here on the flat spot and walked the horse and supplies the rest of the way to the cabin. That would mean everything to build the cabin, and everything it took to live there, would journey the final distance on horseback, or on human back. I couldn’t even imagine how difficult everyday life would be, if I couldn’t drive up to my kitchen door with everything loaded in my Subaru.

I stood, took a few steps into the flat area, and turned around to study the entwined bramble of laurel. It was easy to decide the bushes were taller than my porch roof; not so easy to decide how far the sea of green reached as it pillowed up the mountainside. Was it three hundred feet, or a three thousand? I had the sensation that if I could only lift myself atop the bushes, I could swim to the outer edge. Other than
several small, powder gray birds flitting between branches calling
cheep-cheep-till
to each other, nothing moved in the thicket. Was it too early for snakes to be moving about? I could only hope.

I’d planned to search for January’s cabin from the surety of an old road, not from this shadowy, stunted, laurel tangle. Still, hadn’t Fletcher said the cabin was located near a stand of laurels? I couldn’t ignore the possibility that just beyond the laurels was January’s home place. Another clue I couldn’t ignore came from the library person who helped me with my census research. She remembered hiking Fire Mountain as a child, following a waterfall, and finding the remains of a burned out cabin. I knew from reading my gardening books that laurels thrive near water. So, perhaps if I followed the laurel along the slope to my right, I’d intersect the waterfall.

I hadn’t thought to bring a compass, but I wasn’t really worried. I have always had an excellent sense of direction and prided myself in believing you could drop me just about anywhere, and I’d find my way home. But then, that confidence came from a time when home was Atlanta, and Peachtree Road stretched north and south, marking the direction like an asphalt blaze on the landscape. I registered the afternoon sun to my left, west, and stepped uneasily into the heavy curtain of green.

Deciding to hike with the curve of the ridge in what I calculated was an easterly direction, I climbed gingerly over heavily leafed laurel limbs lying along the ground like gnarled elbows, and at times had to lift the stout branches out of my way, just to move a foot or
two forward. Overhead, scraps of sky came and went in the canopy; but in front of me, there were only laurels waiting to slap me and last year’s brown, crumbled leaves strewn on the loamy floor.

Slow progress gave me time to think. Had my handsome father— the here today, gone by Thursday, the next poker game is the big one—James McNeal Jr., known January’s story? What sort of parent was my grandfather James to produce my irresponsible father? Would he have reacted to January’s fundamentalist attitudes by being a casual, spare the discipline, parent? It certainly seemed that way considering how my father turned out. A smile eased across my face as I envisioned my poker playing, Irish whiskey drinking father meeting head on with January McNeal. What a battle of wills that would have been. Now that would have been a show worth the price of a ticket.

After what seemed like hours of threading myself through a hobble of laurels, I stopped to rest and listen, hoping for the sound of a waterfall. Nothing. Not even the wind could find where I sat. I cursed myself for not bringing a bottle of water. What was I thinking? Did I expect the cabin to be located at the end of a yellow brick road?

Quiet expanded in the small space. Thick skewed limbs prodded my arms and face. Without warning, the emptiness rose up behind me—a great arching thing—swelling like a night shadow, taller and taller, covering me and sucking up the air until I had to stand up, push the laurel arms away from me, and draw deep gasps of air into my lungs. Unbuttoning my jacket, I concentrated on breathing deeply and focused
uphill on a tall white pine towering above the thicket, its feathery needles waving in the wind. I wanted to be that wind, free in an infinity of sky. Forget stumbling along this ridge searching for a waterfall that I wasn’t sure existed. I had to get out into the open, out of the smothering green closing in around me.

I pushed the panic away and turned uphill to take the steeper slope. I used the laurel branches to pull me forward and, branch-to-branch, I climbed upward, my knees and hands scraping the ground when I stumbled. As soon as I heard the welcome sound of an animal, maybe a squirrel, scratching in the dry ground leaves, my breathing slowed and my panic subsided. I was not alone in the emptiness. Every muscle in my body was straining against the incline. My jacket was torn in several places, but I was moving, moving up the mountainside. Then, as I was learning the rhythm of climbing, the laurel forest abruptly ended as though shaved clean across the face of the mountain. There was open blue sky above and a meadow topped with tall grass ahead.

A trio of crows cawed a welcome overhead. Always the crows—as constant as the cold waters of Fells Creek out my door. Good company, my crows. I looked skyward at the bickering birds, then heard another sound coming from the far side of the clearing, a child’s voice, chanting:
Ring around the roses, pocket full of posies, upstairs, downstairs, we all fall down
. Then laughter, tinkling like kitten bells, sailed off with the breeze.