Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees (14 page)

“One last thing, Sheriff; who was just buried out back today?”

“Why, your murdered husband, ma'am,” he answered, surprise lacing his voice, as though it was only logical she would have figured that one out. “It seemed a shame not to use one perfectly good brand new grave. And seein' as how his family didn't care to come get the poor fella, the grave your ‘friend' should have filled was the perfect answer. You know, ma'am, we could have tossed him in the river, but we're God-fearin' around these parts. God-fearing!” he reemphasized, again smiling viciously as he did so. And with that, he slammed his office door in Willa's face.

Frozen with anger and fear, Willa stared at the door for a moment. Knowing there was nothing more that she could do—at this time, anyway—she returned to the mule, secured her bag to the saddle and mounted. She'd worry about purchasing a wagon in the next town she came to; she needed to be gone from this malignant place as fast as possible. As she rode past the graveyard, with the newly turned earth marking the resting place of a husband she could only think of with loathing and disgust, she gently but firmly bumped her heels against the mule's sides and turned her back forever on the town of Bolsey River.

 

G
randma and I took our time on the way home from Sam's as she continued telling me more about our family's history, and answering my many questions. Grandma had said I was old enough to not only hear about it but understand it, and the fact that she felt that way made me sit up a little taller in the seat beside her and attempt to weigh the newfound information from a more mature point of view. I knew that her story would be replayed in my mind over and over again until I could digest it to the point that it became part of the fabric of my life. I wanted it to feel comfortable and familiar. Mama, however, had never been able to do that—to accept the fact that the father she'd never known had been a man whose sole purpose in life, it seemed, was to bring pain to everyone who had the misfortune of meeting up with him. Even his own family had disowned him by the time he was in his late teens.

The Holton clan had been a family with a fair amount of wealth, and an even greater amount of respect in their community, the burgeoning town of Gastonia, North Carolina. Malcolm's father, Davis, had been a highly regarded lawyer. Davis's father, Beaumont, was an attorney as well, but had climbed the ladder of success to even greater heights by winning the seat of mayor of their town, and had even bigger political aspirations in mind. Malcolm, however, had been a blemish on the family's otherwise sterling name. A black sheep almost from the beginning, he'd been in trouble from the time he was big enough to put a crate below a neighbor's open window, hoist himself through it, and steal nineteen dollars in cash, a red coral cameo brooch, and a pair of emerald and diamond cufflinks. He sold the goods to some older teenage thieves, who, in turn, took them to the next town over and sold them for an even greater amount. But the event that put an unbridgeable distance between the boy Malcolm and his family was the death of Malcolm's younger brother Benjamin.

The two had gone with some other boys over to Blue Lake one hot June morning. The friends had fished for wide-mouth bass, followed by diving from a rock outcropping into the deepest and coolest part of the lake. Eventually, the two other boys with the Holtons decided to try another, less-frequented part of the lake, so grabbing their poles, they headed over to a cove on the lake's southeast side. Malcolm, who was sixteen at the time, stayed behind with fifteen-year-old Benny, drying off and dozing in the sun on the lush grass of the lake's bank. At one point, as they lay there in that soft and fuzzy state of half-wakefulness, Benny mentioned that he planned on asking Ruthie Jemmison to the upcoming Fourth of July dance on the town's square. Benny had an aching crush on Ruthie, and Malcolm knew it. However, out of meanness, or maybe a secret shared passion for the little blond-haired, green-eyed beauty, Malcolm had beat Benny to it and had asked Ruthie just the day before. The girl had accepted. Malcolm, who had been waiting for just the right time to inform his brother of the news, smiled with cruel delight as he watched a bevy of emotions wash over his usually passive and quiet brother's face. After a stunned moment, Benny jumped up and challenged his far bigger brother, and the two came to blows. As they fought, Malcolm intentionally drove Benny closer to the edge of the rock outcropping, and finally, with one right-fisted blasting blow, he shattered Benny's nose and sent him over the side into the darkening lake below.

The two friends heard Malcolm yelling for their help, and running back as hard as they could, they found him in a nearly hysterical state. They finally made out enough to get some idea of what had happened: Malcolm claimed they'd been having some fun, just wrestling with each other, when Benny had slipped off the outcropping, hitting his head as he did, and falling into the lake. Malcolm told them he'd immediately jumped in after him but had been unable to find the boy in the deep, murky water, and that it had been a good ten minutes or so since his fall. As plausible as his story sounded, there was one fact that seemed to tell a far different version of it; and that one fact was that Malcolm's hair was dripping wet, while his clothes were only slightly damp. There was just something off, and the boys knew it. Not wanting to waste precious time, however, they did not question him. Instead, the older of the two friends jumped in to see if he could spot Benny in the depths below. But after several futile minutes, he climbed out and all three went for help.

The lake swarmed with dozens of people who joined in the search. But, it wasn't until three days later, when a bloated and blue Benjamin Wayne Holton resurfaced on Blue Lake, that the final chapter of the boy's short life was closed. Though no charges were ever brought against Malcolm, and it was written in the books that accidental drowning was the cause of Benny's death, the boys who had accompanied the Holton brothers to the lake that awful day were more than willing to tell their side of the story to willing listeners. Unsurprisingly, a great cloud of suspicion followed Malcolm thereafter. And no one was more suspicious of the troubled boy's part in Benny's death than his own family. Finally, less than a year later, with pockets filled with money made from selling off quite a bit of expensive jewelry he'd taken from the Widow Waltrap's home, Malcolm headed toward Asheville to begin his professional life—one befitting his nature and his need for dangerous escapades, as well as dangerous company. Malcolm became a professional gambler.

As it happened, one of the games Malcolm joined in with was in a little saloon called The Painted Horse, in a town named Spring Creek, just outside of Howling Cut. The saloon owner was none other than Willa's own father, Earl Cooper, and it just so happened that on that fateful afternoon, Willa had stopped by on instructions from her mother to ask Earl for a dollar with which to get some black thread and cornmeal. Once in town, Willa had headed directly over to her father's saloon to retrieve the money, and it was then that she met the tall, darkly handsome stranger. Malcolm was taking a break from his eight game losing streak of seven-card stud, and was standing at the bar downing his second whiskey of the afternoon, when the raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty came hurrying in, waiting for her father to finish helping another of his customers.

Willa stood there awkwardly as Malcolm gave her a good looking-over. Although very aware of the stranger's perusal, she pretended not to notice, which made it all the more obvious that she did. Finally, amused by her attempt to ignore him, he moved closer to her, introduced himself and made small talk about how windy a day it had been, how nice the town's people seemed. Hoping to evoke some pity, Malcolm mentioned being new to town and knowing no one. Looking into the stranger's dark gray eyes and feeling compassion for this person who was so alone, Willa was easily hooked.

A two-week period of whirlwind courting followed, but was cut short because Malcolm's money was running out. He knew that in order to keep Willa, he'd better wed her quick before the truth was found out about his “temporary state of financial instability,” which was how he referred to his ever-increasing debt to an ever-increasing number of people in various places. Naive, young, restless, and in love, Willa accepted his proposal immediately, and they married the following weekend in the Baptist church she'd been raised in. The simple, homespun wedding was followed by a honeymoon in Asheville.

But the honeymoon ended almost immediately when Malcolm's money ran out, and Willa was forced to take in laundry while her husband took his anger and frustration out on her. As Willa was quick to learn, Malcolm lost far more than he won. They left Asheville in the middle of the night a couple of months later, owing more money than they'd ever be able to repay, and headed toward Upper Bolsey River. There, Malcolm built a small cabin on a piece of land which his father had given to him soon before he'd left Gastonia. The land had been part of a larger parcel of unused land that had been in the family for many years. No one in the family had ever had any use for it, until Malcolm became a problem and an embarrassment to them. The vacant land seemed to offer the perfect solution to the Holtons; Malcolm would have land of his own and be far enough away to keep him out of their lives. Upon handing Malcolm the quitclaim deed, his father had informed him that should he ever come back to Gastonia, he would delve more deeply into the events surrounding the death of his beloved son, Benjamin. The threat worked, as did the “gift” of land, and the family was rid of the thorn in its side. Malcolm, in turn, had the perfect place to build a new life with his bride, for it was isolated enough to hide from those he owed money. And it was also far enough off the beaten path that few were likely to see the telltale signs of the beatings his new bride had to bear.

So, as life would have it, the good and kind Samuel Harold ended up spending twenty-one years in Salisbury Prison for the slaying of the vicious and cruel Malcolm Holton. And those years had been spent at hard labor and enduring endless abuse. There were days he wished to God that some angel from above would come down with that hangman's noose, after all, just to free him from the hell he'd been sentenced to. Constant beatings, little to no food, a cell that was either as hot as a coal furnace or as cold as an ice cave eventually wore Sam down to the point of fracturing. He'd been able to hold it together longer than most, but was nearly driven past the breaking point of both life and sanity the day he'd been beaten about the head and body with a lead pipe for helping a man whose legs had turned to mush from working a twelve-hour day laying railroad ties in ninety-seven-degree weather. The man had been sixty-one years old, and suffered from poor health as it was. But there was little medical help for convicts, and even less compassion, so many of those sentenced to hard labor—which was the majority of them—died from being worked to death. The state turned a blind eye to the mistreatment for there were plenty of others to fill the bunks of those that had departed for their heavenly reward, or, as most believed, to begin serving a far harsher eternal sentence in a place that made Salisbury, North Carolina in July feel like Fargo, North Dakota in January.

The only things that brought comfort to the man who had saved my grandmother's life were the letters they wrote to each other. Those had been his saving grace. And though it might have been less torturous to just move on since the pain of knowing that he would never have her cut like a knife, there was nothing for him to move on to. The road ahead looked as endlessly bleak and desolate as the train tracks, he thought, as he gazed down the steel and wood path, while eating his noontime ration of deer jerky and hardtack. Though he knew the tracks led to many wonderful
somewheres
, they never would for him, at least not until he was old and gray. And that terrible realization broke his spirit down as thoroughly and painfully as the prison guards' beatings broke down his body.

Finally, after twenty-one years, two months, and seventeen days, Sam was awakened by one of the less malicious guards who told him the state parole board had figured his sentence had been justifiably served. Sam was handed the clothing he had been brought in wearing (which was now about four sizes too big), a brand new silver dollar, and the door to freedom. And even though it was a door he'd been longing for, he wasn't quite sure what he'd find on the other side of it. Fortunately for him, he found his cabin still standing, though many new tenants of the furry and venomous sort had long since taken up residence. But after some serious cleaning and repairing, Sam settled back into his old home place and returned to his old way of life of hunting, trapping, and mining.

All had been going along fairly peacefully, until one particularly dark night, when there was absolutely no moon, and he'd gone out to see why his mule, horse, and cow were making such a ruckus in the barn. As he'd hurried across the yard, he saw the soft white outline of a free-floating . . .
something
. His head told him it couldn't be a man, but the shape of it told his eyes different. And to make things worse—much, much worse—his eyes told him that the white, gliding shape looked eerily like Malcolm Holton. As much as he wanted to forget the man, his image would stay forever burned into his memory. He figured it had something to do with the fact that he'd killed him, for that, in and of itself, still haunted the gentle Samuel Harold. It mattered not that the man had left Sam little choice, that Malcolm would have killed Willa that day by the river. No matter how justifiable Sam's actions had been, he'd paid a dear price for them, and continued to do so, for there was no harsher judge and jury for his actions than Sam, himself.

Grandma had asked repeatedly why Sam hung crescent moons in his trees, and Sam had repeatedly refused to tell her, until the time Grandma swore she wouldn't come back to see him unless he did. That greatest of all threats finally broke Sam's resolve never to tell her, so he finally admitted to seeing Malcolm numerous times; adding that it only seemed to happen when there was no moon. So Sam began to make and hang moons. And he noticed that the occurrences became less and less frequent as his trees became fuller and fuller of the bizarre lunar works of art. I asked Grandma if she believed Sam's crazy-sounding tale, and she said that it really didn't matter what
she
believed; Sam believed it and that was all that mattered. “Could be,” she'd continued, “that guilt haunts him more than any spirit does.” I asked her if his guilt was why the two of them had never gotten together—never married and started anew. She'd said it was, but Sam also felt that being married to a convict was almost as bad, if not actually worse, than being a convict.

Another hurdle was the fact that my mother hated Sam. She hated the man who had killed the father she'd never known. It didn't matter that Grandma tried explaining how cruel and brutal Malcolm had been, or that if she'd been raised by Malcolm, chances were that she would have suffered the same abuse as Grandma. Nothing she said made a difference in Mama's stubborn opinion. She'd convinced herself that if her father had had the chance to know his daughter, he'd have been a changed man. After repeated attempts to make Mama understand the painful truth of the situation, Grandma gave up. And by doing so, she knew that she was also giving up any chance at a future with Sam. However, it wasn't just a matter of changing Mama's mind; it was also a matter of changing Sam's. And after years of trying unsuccessfully to do so, she'd given up and let things be.