The Story Keeper (18 page)

“Har now! Har now, ya sorry snake!” Revi scolded the animal, slashing the loose rein against its flank.

A gunshot rang out someplace back toward the cabin where they’d met the woman and little girls. A second shot answered. Revi wheeled his mount and clattered off down the trail bent low to his saddle, lookin’ here and yon over his shoulders, wonderin’ after the sound.

Sarra couldn’t make herself move. Her body quaked and air burned her lungs as she dragged in breath. Her stomach boiled up her throat and tears stung, sourish and hot.

“Sarra.” She heard his whisper before his hand caught her arm and pulled her from the brush. “Are you hurt?”

She couldn’t answer but to shake her head.

“We must move,” Rand whispered. “Sarra, we must leave. Do you hear me? We can’t stay here.”

He led her like a child, took her a short ways to where he’d dropped a blanket and his poke. Slingin’ them on his back, he grabbed up her hand again, and they ran blind and careless, fear nippin’ at their legs.

Tears stung her eyes, streamin’ warm, then cold, over her skin. She couldn’t keep them back, and she couldn’t let them take holt, neither. Her and Rand made the river and crossed over and stayed ’long its shore where the shelter of the bank had held off the snow and their feet wouldn’t leave tracks. There was no thought in her mind but to run far and fast as her body’d take her. Only when legs and lungs give out did they stop for breath.

His cheeks were red and hot as he faced her, the tails of his hair stringed with ice. “Have you gone daft, leaving while I was asleep yet? When I looked and you weren’t there . . .” His hand caught her arm again. “It’s only luck that I woke. That I came searching for you. That I spotted Revi before he found me out.”

“I w-went wood gatherin’.” Her voice shook with the tears.

“With no gun? For the love of heaven, I was beset by a bear here yesterday. And we heard the hounds.” His mouth hung slack, then snapped together. “We knew they could have homed in on the shot yesterday.”

Her mind run like a mouse huntin’ a hole to scramble in. She couldn’t fess up to what was true
 
—that she’d sat long and watched
him sleep, takin’ the chance to look without him looking back. She’d studied the line of his chin, the thin sprouts of pale beard, the hay-colored curls that fell over his forehead, the curve of his mouth, the way his lips twitched like he was talkin’ to someone in his dream. She remembered the smile there as he’d boasted of the bear, and then she was smilin’ herself while she watched him sleep.

Then come a yearning, a strange feel she couldn’t place, and it troubled her some and drove her to the wood fetchin’ alone. She’d hoped to clear her mind in the early-morning cold.

“I was listenin’ out for hounds and watchin’ for bear scat.” She stopped her chin tremblin’ and lifted it instead. Truth told, she should’ve been listenin’ better, but her mind was pondering that thing she’d felt while watchin’ him asleep beside the fire. “Been livin’ with bear all my born days.”

She didn’t wait for his answer but turned off and started into the woods. The storm was closing again, the wind cuttin’ straight to her bones and the snow fallin’ thick. It’d cover their tracks and their scent, but they’d never make it ten mile downwater before they froze solid. She’d have to hunt them a place to den up and cover theirselves over good with pine straw and leaves to keep warm.

With only two blankets tween them now, it’d be a long, bitter wait for the snow to stop and the sun to poke through. She prayed it’d happen before another night passed, and then she believed it would. Father God was one for listenin’ and answerin’ them who asked of him and believed on him.

He was close by, even in the storm.

~

A smile parted the man’s thick gray beard, and he waved a hand toward Rand. “Relax, friend, I ain’t gonna bite’cha. Fella don’t git many chances to visit with his own kinda folk round here. We got to help each other where we can. I been watchin’ you since you come stumbling into Three Forks yesterdey. Mind if’n I sit?”

Rand motioned the man in. He couldn’t see the harm in it, though he leaned back in his chair and slipped a hand into his pack, touching both the pistol and his grandfather’s Bible. He and Sarra had attracted no small bit of attention, dragging in on foot yesterday as they had, weather-beaten and nearing exhaustion after walking downriver to Three Forks when the storm finally broke. It was a measure of good fortune that the day had warmed considerably, the sun quickly beginning to melt the snow. They’d made their way along the water’s edge, skirting occasional habitations to avoid witnesses to their passing wherever possible.

Rand had managed to secure accommodations in Three Forks, but the reception had been an uneasy one, and it had left him with the conclusion that he could not arrange a safe place for Sarra here and travel on alone, as he had planned.

In fact, the sooner they were away from this place, the better. He was eager to purchase mounts from the string of stock due in town within a day or two, and then leave the Trask Rooming House behind. They’d been relegated to a space off the stable, Sarra being unwelcome in the rudely appointed addition that offered dining and several boarding rooms. The lean-to where she slept yet this morning
seemed more fit for sheltering animals than humankind, but in truth they were both greatly relieved to have come through their ordeal in the wilderness and finally found shelter, as well as a warm fire.

The stranger set his coffee on the slab-wood table between them, then leaned forward and rubbed his weather-raw hands together. “Snowmelt’s gonna make the road wet ’n’ slow.”

“Yes, I imagine it will.”

“Headin’ out soon, are ya?”

Rand’s back stiffened. He’d been unprepared, he supposed, for the reception here thus far. He had always been accustomed to receiving the respect given the Champlain name, and if the name did not speak, his money typically did.

“Yes, we’ll be leaving as soon as I’m able to purchase mounts. I’m told there’s not one to be had in the village until a new stock string arrives in a day or two.”

He caught something in the man’s expression, a slight narrowing behind the smudged spectacles, a twitch of the cheek. “That stock string’d be mine, and it’s due here this mornin’
 
—mules and draft animals to take up the valley to Soldier’s Rock. Got me the contract to put in a timber and sash mill there.”

In another circumstance, Rand would have questioned the man about his work, and taken in the details with great interest. Instead, he said, “I’ve been promised that another string is to be delivered any day now. Saddle stock.”

The man removed his eyeglasses then, introduced himself as Hudson Johns, to which Rand replied with his own name.

Hudson twisted the glasses between his fingers, leaning close. “Son, supposin’ you tell me how you and yer Melungeon woman come to walk in here without a pot ’n’ spoon between ya?”

Rand stalled for time by taking a sip of his coffee. Did he dare be honest with this man? Who could say what sort of reward might have been placed on Sarra’s return by now? Or on his own head?

“Y’ain’t been up here long, have ya? I ain’t seen ya round ner heard of ya.”

A hint of relief caused Rand to loosen his fingers on the pistol. If Hudson had not heard of him, then most likely the story, as well as Jep and Brown Drigger, had not traveled here. Three Forks would be a safe enough place to wait for available saddle horses. “No. I haven’t been in the area long. I came just weeks ago from Charleston to winter in the mountains. I’m afraid I fell into some difficulty before the storm and lost my mount along with the bulk of my provisions.”

“Get youself robbed, did ya?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“You get your little Melungeon woman somewhere in that fracas?” Hudson chuckled. Coffee sloshed over his sleeve and he seemed untroubled by the stain. Indeed, the garment appeared to have seen similar treatment since its last washing.

His assumption disturbed Rand, as did the laughter and the odd regard from the widow Trask behind the cookstove. “She isn’t my . . . woman.” He was uncomfortable even speaking the word, as it suggested an unholy arrangement of a sort he would never have considered.

Hudson stroked the thick, frost-colored beard that hung low
over his woolen vest. “Can’t recall when I ever seen a Melungeon gal fetchin’ as that one. I’m figurin’ it could be the losin’ of the horse had somethin’ to do with the takin’ of the gal.” Raising a palm, he added, “Now don’t go spitish on me, young feller. I understand it. Got me a little Cherokee wife, myself. Bonnie. She’s a good sort. Fine a woman as ever there was. Some folk don’t understand it, but a man can’t do his decidin’ by what other folks thinks.”

Rand drew himself taller, angling away from the idea and all that it implied. “I’m only up for the winter. I plan to travel west from here, and when the year is up, I’ll return to Charleston. I have commitments there.”

“Not wantin’ to leave no tangles behind here when ya go?” Hudson interpreted.

“Yes . . . I suppose you could put it that way.”

Hudson tossed back his head and gave a belly laugh that again attracted the widow Trask’s attention. “Might be you ain’t realized it yet, but you’re tangled up a’ready. Any man comes here and survives for more’n a month is tangled, and ’sides that, I seen how you’s lookin’ at that girl yesterdey.”

Rand shrugged off the assertion, though those selfsame thoughts had perturbed him before. Only this morning, he’d risen from his pallet and thought first of Sarra, asleep just on the other side of the curtain. “I’ll be returning home at summer’s end.”

“Could be ya will.” There was a knowing twinkle in Hudson’s eye as he brought himself close again to restrict their conversation from the widow Trask’s ears. “I ain’t tryin’ to rile ya, son. Just tryin’ to get an
understandin’ of how much trouble you’re like to be. I’m leavin’ out this mornin’, and I still got need for good, strong men. The girl could help my Bonnie tend after the food and the washin’. If you can cipher numbers, read, and write, I’ll pay a third-again more’n my hired men get. Back-east investors want this mill sawin’ lumber by spring. Ain’t gonna be an easy job in this weather, but old Hudson’s built up many a mill, and I ain’t never missed deliverin’ on time yet. Won’t be lettin’ it happen this time, neither. Been some diphtheria goin’ round this winter. I’ve had me a hard time puttin’ on a full crew.”

Rand considered the idea warily. He had no way of knowing whether the offer could be trusted. On the other hand, if Hudson were a decent sort of fellow, perhaps he and his Cherokee wife could be persuaded to keep Sarra in their employ and look after her beyond the building of the mill. “I haven’t been in search of a position, however . . .”

The intensity of Hudson’s gaze bisected Rand’s sentence, leaving him gaping at the man, mute.

“Son, before you say no, you better listen at me a minute. The only stock string comin’ into Three Forks anytime soon’s the one that’ll be goin’ up the mountain to my mill site. There ain’t any more arrivin’, and if somebody told ya there was, that’d be because somebody’s tryin’ to
keep
you in Three Forks for a
reason
. If you’re wise, you’ll say, ‘Yes sir, Mr. Johns,’ real nice-like, and then you’ll git your gal and scamper off to my mule wagon out back and wait up under the canvas till I leave out. Somethin’ bad’s afoot here, and I been feelin’ it ever since you two come stumblin’ up that trail.”

Chapter 17

T
he sound was barely audible over the rush of water in the old wall sink. Turning off the tap, I listened. Someone was knocking, the noise insistent, demanding.

I looked in the mirror, had the moment of panic that comes from uncertainty combined with lack of makeup and wet hair.

The knock outside grew louder and more rapid.

“Just a minute.” Scuttling into shoes and finger-combing my hair, I hurried to the door.

When I opened it, standing on the other side was none other than Evan Hall. Not. Looking. Happy.

His arms were crossed over his chest, his chin set, his lips clenched in a thin line. They parted only enough to admit three gruff words. “You’re still here.” His languid Southern drawl stretched the sentence, made it sound almost polite in a strange sort of way.

“Yes, I am.” This was the last, last, last thing I needed this morning. After the showdown at Evan Hall’s estate yesterday, and then finding more
Story Keeper
chapters, I’d almost put Coral Rebecca and the family problems out of my mind, but today there wasn’t much choice. I had to drive over to Lane’s Hill and confront the latest crisis in person, while I still could. I was a basket case already, and I hadn’t even left the cabin yet.

“And why is that?” He scratched an index finger alongside his lip, let it hang there a moment. His gaze took me in
 
—dark, icy, but probing also, as if he were trying to figure out whether I believed him, whether I felt sufficiently threatened.

“‘Stay on the trail until you get answers.’ They taught us that in journalism class at Clemson.” Nobody, but
nobody
, had treated me with this much disdain since I’d left Lane’s Hill behind. Suddenly my hackles were standing at full attention.

Friday must have sensed the escalating hostilities. He circumvented my feet, nudged past the screen door, and moved onto the porch, taking up a position between the intruder and me.

“Clemson,” Evan Hall repeated, his lips forming a rueful twist. “Clever of your publisher to send someone with local ties. Sort of a stealth attack. I have to give them credit. No one has tried exactly that before.”

“Purely an accident. The manuscript that brought me here just
happened
to end up on my desk. I didn’t ask for it.” Somewhere beyond the irritation, a tiny caution flag struggled for attention.
Be careful what you reveal,
it warned. If the manuscript was his, and someone was delivering pieces of it to the cabin without his knowledge, he could stop further chapters from showing up.

A harsh, sardonic laugh answered. “I haven’t sent a manuscript out on a cold call in twenty years.”

I met his gaze, the pent-up tension of the morning spurring
me forward when I probably should have been pulling on the reins. “This thing is twenty years old. It came from some ancient slush, but there was no cover letter and no return address.”

That set him back a moment, brought a slight pause, a split-second regrouping. Just as quickly, the surprised look was gone. “It isn’t mine.”

“Then we have nothing to talk about, do we?” What was wrong with me? I was supposed to be negotiating with this man, not widening the gulf. I never let my emotions get in the way of business. Growing up, I’d learned to keep anger, outrage, pain, and all other reactions locked inside. Girls who didn’t keep pleasant were sharply reminded why they should.

But right now, I wanted to strike back, and Evan Hall was within reach.

His eyes flared. “You expect me to believe that malarkey about some manuscript from a twenty-year-old slush pile? My aunt and my grandmother may have swallowed that line, but
 
—”

“Look it up. Vida House Publishing. George Vida. Yes, we still shuffle paper, and we still have an actual slush pile. There’s been more than one article written about it.”

His fingers twitched, rattling the car keys. I’d stumped him temporarily. It felt good. “Do we have an understanding?”

“About what?”

“About your
leaving
. I’d rather not have to take out yet another restraining order.”

In retrospect, it seemed impossible that this lout could have so tenderly encapsulated the mind of a sixteen-year-old girl trapped by prejudice and dangerous men, or the gentle stirrings of an impossible love between young people from two different worlds.

What if Evan Hall wasn’t the one I was chasing at all? What if I really was completely off base?

“Stay away from my aunt . . . and my grandmother . . . and my house.”

“I was invited there.”

“They’re old. They’re vulnerable. It’s bad enough that my family has to live with the crazies sneaking onto the property, the lurkers at the gate, and all the rest of it. I’m not having some rabid opportunist take advantage of them. Or Hannah. I’d rather not take legal action.”

Flames wicked off my skin and singed the hairs standing on the back of my neck. “You know what, I’ve been editing nonfiction for
ten years
, including enough true crime to choke a horse. I’ve read so much legal mumbo jumbo I could practically
be
a lawyer by now. Your aunt owns a store, and the store is open to the public. I’ve rented a cabin that belongs to her and your grandmother. I was asked to come along on the trip up the mountain yesterday. That is so far from stalking that you can’t even throw a rock and
hit
stalking from there.” My voice echoed through the trees and onto the lake, startling a flock of mallards along the shore. Friday turned to watch their flight, while Evan Hall and I stood locked in a combat of wills and secondhand legal knowledge.

He trained the key-jangling finger my way and took a step closer. Friday, God bless him, bristled the hair on his pudgy little back and went into attack mode, trying to take down the great Time Shifters mastermind boot toe first. It was the only time Friday had ever been good for something other than wet-mopping floors and consuming unwanted leftovers.

Evan Hall’s chin jutted out as he nudged the dog away. “There! Your mutt bit me. You know what the number one civil lawsuit is? Dog bites.”

The rage in me shattered like glass, and a laugh punched
through. I swallowed it. “Oh,
puh
-lease. I’ll go to the press and tell them you went
legal
because you were attacked by a
Chihuahua
.” The screen door slammed behind me as I stepped out to capture Friday. “If you really didn’t have anything to do with the
Story Keeper
manuscript, then just leave me alone before . . . before I . . . sic my dog on you again.”

His lips actually twitched at one corner, even though he was trying to fight it.

I remembered, in an inconvenient way, what a nice smile he had before the brooding celebrity persona came out.

“Well now,
there’s
a threat.”

“It’s not a threat. It’s a promise. Go ahead, make my day.” I shook Friday at him, and Friday bit air in a wild semicircle, effectively turning himself into a canine buzz saw.

Evan coughed in his throat, but the hint of mirth quickly faded into a weary smirk.

I football-tucked Friday against my hip. “Listen, I’m not trying to hurt anybody. I’m just trying to do my job.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, held mine. Something electric and dangerous crackled between us, the jolt momentarily stunning me. “Keep away from my mountain, Ms. Gibbs. Whether you’re invited or not. And stay away from Hannah. She’s got enough issues in her life. She misses her mother, and she doesn’t need someone pretending to be her friend.”

I grabbed the screen door, opened it, said, “I have the cabin rented for a week. I intend to stay.” Actually, the cabin only rented by the week. Hollis hadn’t expected me to need that many days when she’d booked the place.

I’d led George Vida to believe I’d have this mystery sorted out quickly. The thought made me ill. I was like a gambler pushing all my chips toward the pot and slowly drawing one losing card
after another. These mountains, with their legacy of painful ties and jagged memories, were the worst place for me to be risking everything. The dangers here weren’t just professional, they were personal.

Evan Hall’s footsteps faded as I slammed the door behind me. Leaning against it, I let my eyes fall closed and sank to the welcome mat as the tears pressed through. I didn’t even know all the places they came from. Now, yesterday, years ago.

A hundred torn places left ragged for want of a mending thread.

Friday, pinned against my legs, wiggled around and licked the salt from my skin.

I gave in and let the tears happen.
A good rain smooths out the soil,
Wilda Culp used to say. I needed a good rain.

When I rose from the floor, I felt logy and numb, more in tune with a nap than a confrontation with my family. I finished dressing, then readied Friday to go along on the journey because, in reality, I didn’t want to do it alone. Friday, at least, was glad to be getting out of the cabin after being left behind yesterday. He stretched his chin upward again, lifting his neck folds off the collar so I could clip the leash.

When we stepped off the porch, Horatio was waiting near the corner of the yard, ready to stage an ambush. He raised his head and lifted his wings, and Friday tried to climb me like a tree.

“Stop!” I yelled, pointing a murderous finger at the goose. “I am
not
in the mood.”

Horatio, either offended or surprised, froze where he was and just stood displaying his wingspan as Friday and I got in the car, then circled the yard and began to crawl up the driveway, the wheels spinning and grinding on washouts and loose rocks.

Friday threatened Horatio through the rear window, then
moved enthusiastically from seat to seat, taking in the view as we hit the open road. He barked at the Warrior Week encampment, yipped at yard dogs, and slathered up the glass while taking on a pair of pit bulls in a passing pickup truck.

Finally the passenger seat and a nap called him home, and I took advantage of the quiet, rolling down the window and letting the cool autumn air swirl over me as I drove through Looking Glass Gap. The streets were unusually quiet, and it was only after I passed a tall, white-clapboard church that I realized why.

No wonder I hadn’t heard from Helen this morning. This was Sunday.

I wasn’t even certain why I kept driving. My entire family would be in church for a couple hours yet. It was the perfect excuse to turn around and go back to the cabin, but if I did, it was entirely possible that I’d never have the courage to make this trip again.

Something heavy began to settle on me
 
—an inconvenient realization. At home, Sunday was usually just another workday. One in which I didn’t have to get up and go into the office, but I still devoted my hours to my job. Somehow I’d always told myself that was fine, but now I felt guilty. Maybe it was the stark beauty of the mountain autumn, the flash of maples and sweet gums clad in incredible color, the deep-green steeple of pines stretching toward the sky, but my thoughts turned upward. I imagined Sarra and her prayers, her belief that God was vibrant and ever present.

I imagined Rand and his fear that, in the wilderness, God could not hear him at all.

The truth was, I yearned, in a soul-deep way, to be Sarra. To
feel
that God was so very close, so very concerned with my particular life, so very ready to protect and to love. Always nearby. Always listening. Always leading.

But I simply didn’t know how to get from here to there
 
—how to finally disconnect the ties of the Brethren Saints and step into a faith that exchanged bondage for freedom. The old threads were still there, hidden beneath the surface.

Turning off the highway, I wandered along a winding country road, contemplating, killing time, letting the passing miles settle my thoughts. The pavement ended as the road wound farther down the hollow. Overhead, the trees closed in and the land grew more hardscrabble. Ragtag homes patched with tar paper and decaying trailer houses leaned against the wind and squatted in the shelter of trees. Mailboxes yawned on crooked posts, their domes bashed by teenagers enjoying midnight drive-by sprees with baseball bats. Dogs barked, straining against chains. Skinny, weary-looking horses, mules, and milk cows ignored my passing, intent on the search for food among bare dirt and rocks.

On the porch of a trailer house, a toddler in saggy, dirt-gray underwear wandered with a baby bottle dangling in one hand, seemingly mindless of the cooler weather this morning. In the ditch out front, a pair of boys in grungy jeans squatted beside a puddle, a rusted coffee can waiting between them. Not far down the road, a teenage girl in black cowboy boots twisted around and around on a tire swing, her head tipped back, blonde hair flying. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. There was a dirty playpen in the yard with a baby trying to climb from it.

The girl stopped swinging and looked hopefully past the fence as my car rattled by.

I wondered if the baby was hers.

She yelled something, pointed at the road. I just kept driving until she finally faded out of sight.

Near a slant-sided log house that looked like it could’ve been there since the days of Brown Drigger, a woman was digging with
a small hand hoe alongside a creek. Harvesting leeks, I realized. This was the season for it. Time to string them together and hang them in the root cellar for later use.

“We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick,”
Wilda Culp said in my mind.
Numbers 11:5.

See, I am not the heathen they tell you I am, Jennia Beth Gibbs. But there are many who quote the Bible yet understand not a word. God is the great mystery, and we must each delve into mystery. No one else can know him for you. That, my girl, is truth.

Yes, ma’am,
I’d responded blandly. When she said things like that, it scared me. It was so far from what I’d been taught. I already had my mama’s impure blood to make up for, and I didn’t want to end up in the fiery pit. For the most part I tried not to listen when Wilda Culp strayed into the realms of religion.