A Tale from the Hills (2 page)

His speech was slurred.

“Don’t worry about the baby.” Nell said. “I’ll take care of him. Do you have diapers?”

“They’re over there in the cupboard with his other stuff. I don’t want to see him now.” he snapped.

Nell gathered up the supplies and left the apartment as quickly as she could. William eventually fell asleep but resumed drinking again as soon as he awoke. The more beer that he drank on that day after Lola’s death, the angrier that he became. His anger at the baby was irrational and unjustified. If only he could rid himself of the bastard child, then maybe his Lola would come back to him. In his drunken stupor he realized that he was lost without her. He decided something else too. He was going to kill that goddamned baby, and the old lady too, if she got in his way.

Under the sink was a box that contained the tools that were necessary to maintain their outdated apartment. William snatched the largest tool, a pipe wrench, from the tool box, and staggered toward the door. For the first time since he came back from the war, he wished that he still had a gun.

Nell Higgins heard William thrashing and cursing in his apartment and she was scared. She feared for the baby’s life. How could an innocent child bring out so much anger in a man? Although she had spent several hours praying for Lola the night before, she had never been a particularly religious woman. Regardless of that fact, for a split second she thought about the baby Jesus. She also thought about calling the police but she knew that by the time that they arrived, it might be too late. She remembered that her late husband kept an old gun in the nightstand , and she rummaged around until she found it.

BAM! BAM! BAM! William’s fist slammed at her door.

“Let me in old lady!” he screamed. “I want thebaby!”

Nell stood there like a statue in an earthquake. She was trembling so badly that she almost dropped the gun.

“No.” she cried softly.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

“Let me in you bitch!”

“No!” she cried louder this time. “Get away from mydoor!”

The words hardly left her trembling throat when William burst through the door. The nine mm. bullet passed through his chest and lodged into the wall behind him.

Nell Higgins walked slowly into her bedroom. She sat down in the rocker beside of the baby’s makeshift bed, took a deep breath, and died instantly of a massive heart attack.

The commotion in Nell’s apartment and the explosion of the nine mm. bullet woke the baby. He started to cry. The innocent child less than a week old had become an orphan and a ward of the state.

A social worker with a poetic nature would describe him as, “A tiny seedling in the garden of society”.

What would become of him? Would he grow up to know the sacrifice of his mother and Nell Higgins? Would he ever discover the truth about his psychotic, sadistic father? Would he become his father’s son? Does the proverbial apple fall far from the family tree? There were so many questions, and few, if any answers. Right now he could not even focus his tiny blue eyes, or realize any of the events that had taken place around him.

Someone in another apartment called the police. They arrived to find a grisly scene. The nine mm. bullet splattered pieces of William Hill’s evil heart on the ceiling and the wall behind him. He died with murderous thoughts and evil intentions. A look of surprise was in his wide open eyes. A blue tinge was forming in the corners of his mouth and around his nose.

Nell Higgins looked as if she was taking a nap, except a military looking pistol was dangling from her right hand. Her index finger clinched the trigger in the grip of death. The undertaker would have to break her finger to release the gun from her hand.

The noble murder that she committed would go with no rewards in this world. The baby was crying. The look of confusion that all babies have, seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

End of Part One

Part Two
 

Chapter one
 

Twenty-five years earlier, William Robert Hill was born in a two room shack on Jewel Ridge Mountain, in Washington County, Virginia. The Virginia Creeper Railroad track almost touched the front porch steps, except the steps had rotted away long before the Hills moved there. William was the youngest child of Tom and Mary Hill. He had three older brothers, and one sister who was eleven months old when William was born.

William was the last child born to Mary Hill because she died when he was only six months old. More than likely, she was pregnant at the time. By the time that she was twenty years old, Mary was the mother of five children. She should not have borne even one. Pale Mary, as her mother called, contracted leukemia when she was just a little girl. She was never diagnosed because she never went to the doctor a single time in her entire life.

Mary married Tom Hill just before her fifteenth birthday. She did not tell her daddy that she was pregnant at the time, not that it would have really mattered to him. He would have one less mouth to feed after she was gone.

Mary, who was too proud to let her parents find out about her pregnancy, pleaded with her new husband to leave the area where she grew up. They moved from just across the North Carolina line to Jewel Ridge Mountain, less than thirty miles away. But that was far enough for Mary, because she never saw her parents again. Five kids and seven months after her twentieth birthday, she was dead. No one was called, the authorities were never notified. It was as if she never existed, except she had brought five new souls into the world. Tom buried Mary under the oak tree that she liked to sit under at night to gaze at the stars.

Tom provided for his family at night. He never showed his face in public in the daytime because he feared that someone might recognize him. The chance of that everhappening was minute. Soon after he and Mary moved from North Carolina, Tom devised a means of obtaining food for free. The railroad company maintained a supply house about a mile down the line from the Hill shack. Tom dug a shallow trench along the back side of the supply house that was just deep enough for his skinny body to crawl underneath the wall. He loosened a board in the floor and wiggled inside the storage compartment. He skimmed only enough food from the supply bags to feed his family for a day or two each time. He would leave the supply house the same way that he came. He continued that practice for years and he was never caught.

Tom mixed a grain mixture and a powered milk product with creek water to feed the babies. He and the older children ate a baked bread from the same recipe. Occasionally he would snare a rabbit or opossum in his homemade trap. The family ate as well as, or even better than, most of the residents of Jewel Ridge Mountain.

*********

Strangers came to the Hill’s home when William was about five years old. Officials were conducting a census for tax and school purposes. A tiny puff of smoke was curling its way out of the Hill’s chimney and into the clear mountain sky. Otherwise the strangers would have never suspected that anyone could be living in such adverse conditions. One of the officials carefully made his way up the rickety makeshift steps to the front door. The official knocked briskly at the door but there was no response. He suspected that whoever was inside had chosen not to answer the door for one reason or another. The officials left the shack without incident. The Hill children could hear whispering outside but they dared not peep through the window for fear of being seen.

Exactly one week later the strangers returned. The county sheriff was with them this time. There was no response when the sheriff knocked at the weather beaten door. After his third try to stir the inhabitants of the tinyshack, the sheriff unlatched the door and proceeded inside.

Conditions inside the shack were even more deplorable than on the outside. Old newspapers with tiny holes torn in them covered the windows. The only piece of furniture in the front room was an ancient iron bed. Straw was spread over the rusty springs and an old patchwork quilt covered the straw. The stains on the quilt made it impossible to determine its original colors.

The three older boys were cowering in the corner near the backroom. The two younger children were sitting on the bed. There were no adults in the tiny room.

“Who are you kids?” queried the sheriff.

“We be Hills.” one of the older boys said.

“Where are your parents?” the sheriff asked.

The other officials were still waiting outside. They had learned from experience that too many strangers can often spook mountain folk. It would be better to let the sheriff handle the situation.

“We got a pa… that’s all.” another of the boysreplied.

“Ma’s dead.” said the oldest child.

“Where’s your pa?” asked the sheriff. “I need to seehim.”

Moving slowly and suspiciously, Tom Hill walked out of the backroom. Even though he had been extremely careful going to and returning from the supply house, he figured that someone must have seen him, or tracked him back to the shack.

“We have come to take the census.” stated thesheriff.

In a whispering voice Tom replied, “I don’t think we got one, but you can take whatever you want. “

Tom breathed a low sigh of relief.

Upon hearing the ignorant man’s reply, another county official climbed the rickety steps into the shack.

“It isn’t a thing sir, its a count for the government.” the official said.

The other officials then proceed to enter the tiny house. One of them said later that she had never seen such a deplorable house.

Another of the officials was the county nurse. After examining each of the Hill children and determining that they were healthy, she made it perfectly clear to Tom Hill that his children would have to go to school. The school was located about two miles up the creek from their house. The children could follow the railroad tracks most of the way, however, at the long trestle they must leave the tracks. They could cross the creek at the footbridge, and proceed to the school along a pathway. The officials stressed over and over to the children that the trestle was very dangerous. If a train were to approach, anyone caught on the trestle would have to jump or risk being run over by the train. Either action would mean certain death. The trestle crossed a deep ravine with jagged rocks and a shallow creek at the bottom.

The Hill children were about to leave the only world that they had ever known. Sometimes the older boys followed their daddy at night, but never as far as the railroad supply house. Their own home was barely out of sight and the adventure took only a few minutes, but their little hearts would pound with excitement. The children pretended to be asleep upon his return with the supplies in his sack. They never realized until they were much older that their daddy was stealing the supplies for their survival.

The Hill children maintained a degree of innocence and naivete far longer than most children. The ten year old scampered around the house as freely as little William, who was only five. They were happy. They never realized that they were dirt poor, or deprived, or in need of an education. Their lives would change as they entered the world outside the tiny house on Jewel Ridge Mountain.

Chapter Two
 

The school term was well underway when the Hill children were finally inducted. The family took a giant step on Sunday before they were to start school on Monday morning. Tom and all of the children walked the entire route to the school. The children were full of anticipation at what lay around each turn of the railroad track. Tom taught them how to put an ear on the track to feel for the vibration of an approaching train. Since they were raised practically on top of the track, they were well aware of the dangers. The children had see the remains of deer and raccoons that were struck by trains. They ate well for a week one Autumn when a deer was killed in front of their modest home.

The trip on Sunday to the school took them about two hours. They walked slowly and talked along the way. The children thought that their daddy was the smartest man alive. His third grade education was more than enough for them. In fact, they marveled at his knowledge. By the time that they arrived back home, they were so hungry that the baked bread tasted almost like manna from heaven. The kids remembered that word ‘manna’, because Tom read the Bible to them each year on the anniversary of their mother’s death. He read to them about Jesus, and Moses, and the beautiful angels. He told the kids that their mother was a beautiful angel now, living in the warm glow of God’s heavenly light. The old family Bible was the most precious possession of the Hills. It was kept in a shiny silver colored box under the bed.

Tom set the rarely if ever used wind up clock to make sure that the children were up and ready for school on Monday morning. He set the clock by the midday sun on Sunday. The morning ritual was not complicated. The children wet their hair and splashed very little water on their dingy faces, before eating a piece of bread that was baked the night before. Each of them would have another chunk of the bread wrapped in a piece of torn paper bag, and an apple for lunch.

When the room got suddenly quiet, the tick tock sound of the old clock reminded the family that it was 7:30 am., and time to leave for school. Each child hugged and kissed their daddy goodbye. As the children were walking up the track toward the school, their daddy thought that they looked like tiny stair steps all in a row. He waved at them but they dared not look back to avoid tears. They had hardly gotten out of his sight when two of them had to stop and pee, one on the track and another in the bushes.

The Hill children arrived at the school about thirty minutes later. When they crossed the footbridge at the railroad trestle, a train was crossing above their heads. They stopped to watch the train and listen to the popping and cracking of the old wooden trestle. The rest of the way to school they walked a little faster to make up for time lost at the trestle. At the school children were milling about because studies did not officially start until 8:15. The principal of the three room school knew all of the students at least by their faces, so she recognized the five new students immediately. The school board had already informed her that five members of the same family would be coming in on Monday morning. She greeted the new students at the door.