The Story Keeper (4 page)

“Git on your saddle horse, boy. We’re leavin’ out.” Ira cast an impatient nod over his shoulder.

“Leaving?” Puddinhead, the mount Rand had purchased after disembarking the new rail line in Murphy, was tied behind the wagon, walleyed at the end of the lead line, as usual. Puddinhead’s name was as much an incongruity as the Murphy liveryman’s assurance that the gelding was a competent mountain horse. In reality, the animal feared most of what he saw and intensely disliked the rest. “I thought we’d planned to camp overnight nearby Drigger’s outpost.” Not that Rand was looking forward to more time in the company of Brown Horne Drigger and Pegleg Molly, but he had intended to study the surrounding area thoroughly while he waited.

“They’s bad business afoot here. Don’t need none of it.” Ira was nervous
 
—more so than Rand had ever seen him. “Man’s gonna survive in hither parts, he’s gotta know when to git his mud hooks a-movin’. Gotta know not to wander off too. You’s s’posed to be down to the crick crossin’. Lucky you ain’t been left fer bear bait. I ain’t yer nursemaid, boy.”

The crack of a rifle shot echoed from the direction of Brown Drigger’s cabin, the sound rushing through the trees and startling birds to flight. Rand whirled toward the noise as Ira stood against the reins, holding the mules from bolting. Behind the wagon, Puddinhead scrambled up the hillside, staggering over loose rock and sapling hickories.

“Never mind the horse. He’s tied on good.” Ira swiveled, casting a wide-eyed look. “Clamber on up in the wagon, boy. Less’n you’re a-gonna stay here. Take yer choice. This rig and me are leavin’ out. Now!”

In two quick steps, Rand grabbed the side rail, planted a boot on the wheel, and swung himself upward. The rim rolled before his foot left it, and he landed in a tangle, bouncing upside down and sideways on the canvas that covered Ira’s trade goods.

The wagon was splashing through the creek by the time Rand had righted himself and crawled to the seat. Behind, Puddinhead rose on hind legs, testing the lead, blowing and snorting as if he fully expected the water to rise up and swallow him whole. The gelding jumped, stiff kneed, landed in the stream, and jumped again, raising an infernal ruckus as he went.

“Git’up, Curly! Git’up, Luke!” Ira laid the whip hard on the team as they struggled to tug through a bog along the opposite bank.

“Give them time, man,” Rand protested. He’d never found it tolerable to watch the abuse of something helpless. The beasts were doing all they could.

“We ain’t
got
time. That horse a yourn don’t stop pullin’ on my rig,
I’ll shoot ’im and cut ’im loose. Had my fill a that critter. He’s draggin’ my mules down. Git on up, Luke! Git on, Curly. Git! Git! Git!” The wagon rolled backward into the mud, and Ira went harder with the black snake, snapping it against sweat-slickened hides, drawing blood.

Rand reached for it, the action almost an involuntary response. “There’s no need of
 
—”

An elbow caught him hard in the ribs, stealing his breath and rolling him sideways on the seat so that he hung bent over the edge and clinging on, the mud oozing against the wheel beneath him.

“You’ll stay ’ere, ya know what’s good fer ya. Git on, Luke! Git on, Curly!”

The wagon lurched, the mud releasing with a great sucking sound, and then they were rolling up the hill, Rand grimacing as he righted himself. At six foot four and consistently taller than his contemporaries, he’d always thought of himself as competent in physical combat. But the truth was, because of his height and the fact that he’d grown up among youths who were raised to become gentlemen, physical combat had never become necessary for him, other than the harmless play of boys.

But this world, this mountain kingdom of questionable men and unforgiving landscape, was ruled by the play of life and death. A completely different game.

He pondered this as he caught his breath. Beside him, Ira pushed the team hard for quite some distance before allowing them to settle, puffing and foaming, into a somewhat-slower pace. The white specks on the mules’ backs were pinked with blood.

Rand didn’t apologize for going after the whip. “What was the trouble back there?”

“Doin’s come ugly in the card game after while.” The old man’s eyes narrowed beneath a split leather hat that had seen better days. “The other fella won that pallermina stud horse Brown Horne’s so proud’a.”

Rand quickly formed an image of the confrontation. “That’s a fine animal.” Actually, there had been three good horses in Brown Drigger’s corral. Rand had been tempted to try a trade for Puddinhead. “So they went to gunplay over it?”

“Nosir. Fella swapped the horse back to Brown Horne fer the girl. But when Pegleg Molly hist out to git ’er, she’d done scat off. Gone. Fella figured Brown Horne’s at some trick. Says if’n Drigger don’t find the girl, he’s takin’ the stud horse and stringin’ Drigger up next’a them hogs. Right ’bout then, I got my wagon and got gone while they’s lookin’ fer her.”

Rand’s impressions grew dark and murky. “What girl?”

“The one was back by the smokehouse when we rolled in. Skinny, but a looksome thing. Black hair, blue eyes. Worth more’n that pallermina stud, if’n a fella don’ mind what she is. You didn’t git a look at ’er?”

If’n a fella don’ mind what she is.
What could possibly be the meaning of that? “But this . . . this is practically the dawn of the new century. Women can’t be . . . traded for horseflesh.” Morality aside, such things were not legal and had not been since the ending of the War of Secession, some eight years before Rand’s birth.

“Not much but a girl, truth be tolt. Fifteen, sixteen, might be.”

A queasiness awoke in Rand’s stomach, tasting of acid. Lucinda, the eldest of his three sisters, was just fifteen, preparing to make her debut into Charleston society. Her face appeared in his mind, and he swiveled in the seat. “We must go back, then.” But miles had been covered in their wild flight, and darkness had begun to descend. In truth, it was surprising that Ira hadn’t stopped to make camp. He was pushing hard to gain distance tonight.

The muleteer cast a look Rand’s way, and before Rand could react, a pistol had been drawn from Ira’s boot and laid across the man’s lap, aimed in Rand’s general direction. “You sit right there, boy, and thank ol’ Ira fer savin’ yer life this day. Don’t be gettin’ no wild ideas. Ain’t havin’ you bring them men down on me. Don’t want no part of it.”

Rand’s mind bolted ahead. “The law. How far to an authority of some kind who could . . . ?”

“Ain’t none a that sort up here. You oughta figured that out b’now. And if’n they was, wouldn’t be nothin’ done ’bout one like her.”

“She’s a
human being
, for heaven’s sake. Decency aside, she has rights under the law.”

Ira shook his head, kept the pistol aimed, but relaxed his finger and laid it over the trigger guard. “You got a hankerin’ t’know ’bout the mountains, young’un, they’s things you gotta learn. That girl ain’t got no rights. She’s a Melung.”

“A what?”

“A
Melungeon
. She ain’t white, she ain’t colored, she ain’t Injun. Ain’t any one a them three kinds would claim her. Ain’t just any fool’d
take a chance on her, neither. Them Melungeons been hidin’ up in these mountains long’s anyone can remember. Got a certain look to ’em, like her
 
—dark skin, but not red like a Injun. Black hair, and them cold blue eyes. Them eyes bewitch a man, send ’im to his grave. ‘Cut yer throat and breathe the ghost wind into ya while yer sleepin’,’ my mama used’a say. Got six fingers on each hand. Take out a man’s heart while it’s still beatin’, and do the bad magic with it. A Melungeon’s meaner than a timber rattler and wickeder by twicet. Got the devil in ’em. Call up the wind and the weather and the walkin’ trees and the haints from they restin’ places. Send ’em agin ya.”

A chill teased Rand’s skin, and he slid a hand over his throat, felt the fine growth of a day’s beard that needed shaving. His gaze drifted again over his shoulder. In his mind now, the girl took life, even though he had not laid eyes upon her. Never before, in fact, had he seen a Melungeon in the flesh. He’d doubted their very existence, categorized them in the make-believe realm of fairies, moon men, and Rougarou
 
—the beast rumored to haunt the sloughs and bayous of Louisiana.

To his mind, Melungeons were a figment used to frighten children from going into the forest alone.
Don’t wander off afield. The Melungeons’ll git ya.
Old Hast, the downstairs maid of his growing-up years, had threatened this fate quite often. She had little patience with the folly and pranks of children. His own grandfather had teased him thusly of the Melungeons during hunting trips when he was young. He’d fallen asleep many a night with the bedroll pulled over his head, just in case it should be so, but in all reality, he’d never believed there were such people.

Until this very moment.

“Don’t do nothin’ foolish,” Ira warned again.

Rand felt the weight of the pistol, its muzzle eyeing him. Who or what was the creature back there? The one he’d passed by without noticing as he’d observed the nature of the land and the interplay of the men? Surely not ghost or haint or wood fairy, for he knew there were no such things. No creature existed in this world but by the grace and hand of the Almighty.

The girl was flesh and bone. Real enough.

And now, with a pistol trained his way, all he could do was pray that the Almighty would watch over the poor wretch, as he watched over each of his children.

Chapter 4

T
he knock at my office door seemed distant at first, as if it were slipping through the trees, echoing along the hollow, following ragged rock curves and edges as mountain sounds did, the origins hidden in the mist.

The door handle jiggled, and I jerked to attention, slapped the folder shut, and looked up as Roger poked his nose in. “E-mail system’s down. Editorial team powwow at eleven thirty to line up the nonfiction attack for pub board Monday, just in case you didn’t get the message.”

“Thanks, I didn’t.” The words were slightly breathless. I felt strangely out of body, not at all myself. My heart hammered against my chest, caught in the instinctive flight response that an uncertain upbringing leaves behind. I felt like Sarra, crouched beneath the cabin floor, afraid I’d be beaten if caught.

Roger cast a quizzical glance toward my laptop case, the
computer still tucked inside. Pretty obvious that no e-mail had been checked this morning. “Dark in here. Grabbing a nap?”

“Got caught up in something.”
Caught up
was a mild description. In reality, I was dying to open the folder again, read the rest, find out if Sarra escaped Brown Drigger and his dogs.

“Anything good?” Roger pushed the door open wider and advanced a half step into my office.

“Oh, who knows.” The folder suddenly felt like a bomb again. I slid my hands over it almost unconsciously, felt the ticking beneath my fingers.
Tick, tick, tick.
“Overhead light wouldn’t come on when I got here. But I kind of like using the gooseneck lamp, anyway. It gives the place an authentic feel.”

“You always were an old-fashioned type.”

“Compared to you, everyone’s old-fashioned.” I rolled my eyes, trying to let the comments slide off. Roger considered anyone with morals, sexual or otherwise, old-fashioned. It still amazed me that he didn’t find life under George Vida’s old-school system way too confining. I’d always had the impression of George Vida as a highly moral man, principled in the way of 1950s print journalism, but then again, I only knew his public image.

Maybe there were reasons why Roger was so comfortable here, but I hoped not.

A smooth grin answered. “Don’t miss Mitch’s meeting. She doesn’t like it when people miss her meetings.”

Despite the source, I didn’t doubt the validity of the advice. The head of our nonfiction editorial team, Mitchell Lee, was a matter-of-fact woman with little tolerance for incompetents or slough-offs. The fiction team, under Chris Singer, was a looser group. They went out for drinks, attended book launch parties if the venue and the schmoozing were good, and sometimes even
vacationed together. I’d been invited to tag along last night but hadn’t gone. I didn’t want to give Mitch the impression that I was sniffing after other opportunities. For now, I needed to concentrate my efforts where I was.

Looking back at the folder on my desk, I considered its possible origins. It was fiction, but something about it felt so very real. The description of Brown Horne Drigger’s home, the details of butchering hogs and making sausage by hand, the mention of Sarra’s Melungeon ancestry, even her use of
Aginisi
, a Cherokee word for
grandmother
, brought Rand and Sarra to life. Eerily so. There was a familiarity to the piece, and I couldn’t decide if it was just that the subject matter scratched old memories or if something in the author’s voice or style strummed a tune I’d heard before. I wanted to put a finger on it, and it seemed that I should be able to, yet I couldn’t. That taunted me almost as much as the mystery of the manuscript itself. No author’s name, no header or footer on the pages, the return address torn from the envelope, the postmark faded almost beyond reading. No submission letter. If there had been one, it’d long since been lost.

What
was
this thing?

The questions played a tantalizing game, like voices calling from behind moss-covered rocks and deep mountain hollows, as ours once had when we slipped away to play games of fox and hen or anty over around the old barn.

Anty.

Over
.

Over she comes . . .

The calls of my sisters whispered now, their high-pitched laughter painting a mist of light and dark, the murky shades of regret.

The whispering stopped as I put the envelope in my desk
drawer, a decision made. I could’ve slipped it into my pile of in-process manuscripts and summaries for the editorial team meeting, could’ve been the first one to arrive, surreptitiously dropping the package onto Slush Mountain, then walking away. Even if George Vida noticed that it was out of place, no one would know I was responsible.

No one . . . except the person who had anonymously left it on my desk. And how could anybody reveal that without being in as much trouble as I would be in for having it?

Scratching a fingernail across the aging brass pull, I contemplated my own foolishness. The manuscript was over twenty years old, a relic from well before my time. By now, it had either been published, left for dead in some writer’s closet, or trashed. Maybe this stray fifty-page partial was all that remained of the effort.

Forgetting it made sense. Putting it back without burning up the time to read the rest made sense. In fact, it was the
only
thing that made sense.

But the meeting wasn’t for a few more hours. Enough time to think about it, maybe talk some sense into myself.

Or not.

As I worked through the morning, sifting through summaries of nonfiction projects that would be presented at the pub board next Monday, Rand and Sarra remained where they were. When I gathered my things to leave, the contraband stayed behind. Snatching the key from beneath my in-box, I locked the desk before heading for the war room.

Slush Mountain loomed larger than before when I arrived at the team meeting. Basking in the sunlight of a beautiful autumn morning, it seemed to watch me accusingly as I took a seat
 
—purposely at the other end of the table. I wanted to search the uneven
surface for the faded outline of a nine-by-twelve envelope. But I didn’t. Just in case someone was watching. If the guilty party was nearby, let him or her think I hadn’t even noticed the surprise on my desk or that I hadn’t opened it. If this was a joke, two could play that game.

Five minutes into Mitch’s meeting, I figured out that, while distracting myself with
The Story Keeper
earlier, I had screwed up. Royally. Via e-mail that morning Mitch had sent around material for a submission she wanted to push through the upcoming pub board meeting. We’d been given summary, proposal material, and sample chapters via attachment. Since I hadn’t checked e-mail before the system went down, and the system still wasn’t working, I’d missed the memo.

It was clear enough that Mitch’s project was the intended primary topic of today’s session. She wanted each of us to be familiar with the story
 
—the memoir of a World War II soldier who had fallen in love with a Japanese girl behind enemy lines. We were here to brainstorm sales points and build a united front for pub board, where sales, marketing, and other departments would be invited to throw any and all possible darts at our presentation. I was clueless. Unlike everyone else on the team, I didn’t even have Mitch’s material with me. Consequently, I felt like an idiot and knew that, soon enough, I was bound to look like one too.

It wasn’t long before Mitch noted the lack of her last-minute material in the stack I’d brought with me. “Didn’t get the e-mail?” She was somewhere between surprised and peeved. Probably more toward the second option.

“No, sorry. I got caught up in something this morning and hadn’t checked before my in-box went down. I’ll read the material as soon as the system’s back up and be ready for pub board on Monday, I promise.” What else was there to say, really?

Mitch’s lips pressed together in a thin line intended to remind everyone
whose
interests came first. I’d just stumbled dangerously close to making myself look too mercenary
 
—caring only about finding and acquiring my own projects, rather than supporting the projects of others,
especially
others higher up the ladder than me. On the other hand, Mitch was aware of the hours I’d been putting in the past week. She knew I was dedicated.

“All right. Here’s the situation.” She eyeballed the group from behind unfashionably thick glasses with heavy black frames. “I
want
this one, and I want it
bad
. I don’t just want on the short list this week. I want on
the
list. I want agreement on a potential marketing plan, an advance in the low sixes, and some viable thoughts on packaging and placement that I can take to the author’s agent.”

Across the table, Roger leaned back, angled his body away slightly, hooked an arm over the back of his chair. He wasn’t sure of this acquisition, and it showed. Interesting.

Mitch didn’t look his way but instead centered her pitch on the three female editors clustered at the end of the table. Also interesting. “I realize at the outset that this one sounds like material that’s been done before
 
—soldier meets war bride, love triumphs against all odds. But this story is unique, and we are
not
the only house pursuing it. I have it from the agent that she’s expecting other offers to come in over the next few weeks. Our advantage to the author, as I see it, is that we’re smaller, faster, nimbler. We can put this thing out in nine months and manage a first-rate job of it. What we have to do now is convince George Vida that this one is worth going after, and going after big.”

“Jump on the bandwagon for whatever project his niece brings to the table next week,” Roger advised casually. “Throw her a little love. He can never resist that. She has him wrapped around her little finger.” Was it my imagination, or did Roger’s
lip curl a bit on that last one? It was no secret that George Vida was smitten by the talents of his niece and hoped to one day relinquish Vida House into her hands.

“I disagree. I think we just go right out with it,” Hillary Vecchio offered matter-of-factly, her words as crisp and slick as her appearance
 
—hair neatly flat-ironed, lipstick perfect, figure a size two, if that. We’d chatted by the coffee credenza a couple times. I liked her. “It’s a good proposal. It’s everything you said it was and more. Nonfiction, but it reads like fiction. I say we bring it up alongside books like
Seabiscuit
or
Truman
. If we can convince him that this book has the same potential, he won’t be able to stand
not
going for it.” She punctuated with a nod, pleased with herself.

The remaining three members of the team chimed in with ideas, which left me the one voiceless body at the table.

Of course, Mitch turned my way next. I was hoping she wouldn’t, but it didn’t surprise me. “Ideas? You’ve undoubtedly run into situations like this in the past, given your years in publishing, at much
larger
houses.” It was hard to say what the emphasis meant
 
—whether Mitch was trying to espouse my qualifications or backhandedly swat at the fact that I’d missed the memo, despite having cut my teeth at big conglomerates.

I shifted forward in my seat. “I think there’s a point to be made in the lasting social value of the piece
 
—the fact that it is not just the story of one man and one woman falling in love; it’s the story of a historical period, an hour of American triumph. A time of sacrifice for the greater good. Yet even amid the nobility of the cause, there are still the smaller human struggles
 
—love and hate, jealousy and altruism. It wasn’t an easy life for these couples if they chose to marry against Army regulations and cultural prejudices. They faced all sorts of difficulties, even if they did finally make it to the States together.”

A correlation formed in my mind. The personal side of history had drawn me toward memoirs long before my first editing job. “I remember interviewing a woman from Kobe, Japan, years ago for a journalism class. She married an American soldier after the war and came to Georgia. She’d just found out she was pregnant when she happened to visit a dentist to have a tooth fixed. The dentist told her she should end the pregnancy because the mixing of the races would cause genetic problems. Her child would never be born normal. And this was a
medical
professional
 
—can you imagine?”

Across the table, Hillary widened her eyes and shook her head, clearly horrified but fascinated at the same time, her reaction much like mine had been the first time I heard the story.

“The doctor offered to connect her with someone who could do the procedure. She got as far as arranging a ride to some back-alley clinic before she broke down and told the whole story to an Atlanta socialite she cleaned house for. The woman was so mad, she drove to the dentist’s office and ended up slugging the man in the nose, then writing a letter to the editor of the city paper. The society ladies tried to run her out of town. She became an activist after that.”

Across the table, Roger was scratching his head. “And your point is? Not that it’s not a great story but . . .” He wheeled a hand as in,
Get to the meat of it, Jen.

“My point is, that story about the dentist might have taken a minute or two to tell, but everyone leaned in and listened. Nobody interrupted me.” Which didn’t happen all that often in editorial meetings, where the conversational floor was more like a pinball trapped in an electrical surge. “Chances are, each one of us can relate to that story in some way. We all care about the human element, the part that’s timeless. But we also care about
those turning points in history, those social mores that we can’t believe were accepted just a generation ago. We want to believe we would never have stood for it ourselves, had we been there. The generation that
lived
the stories of that time is dying out. And they’re dying with their stories untold. There’s a media hook in that, and media sells books. There’s nothing better than a story that would be unbelievable if you read it as fiction, but you
have
to believe it because it’s true.”