The Story Keeper (12 page)

Chapter 13

The Story Keeper

CHAPTER FIVE

Rand rolled over slowly, his head throbbing as he struggled to part his eyelids and take in the day. The pain was intense. He pushed upright and tried to bring his mind to full reason. It was later than he’d anticipated, the sun pressing past the rock dome overhead and reaching toward their camp.

How odd that Ira hadn’t roused him yet. Typically they departed at dawn each morning, eating only leftover corn pone or hardtack beef as their early meal.

He was cold . . . and sore . . .

A sweet scent cloyed him as a bit of loose cloth tumbled away from his face. He picked it up, smelled it, identified the odor immediately. Ether frolics were all the rage among the young set in Charleston. The scent of the substance was like nothing else. There was no mistaking it.

Memories rushed upon him, the previous day dashing through his mind, breakneck
 
—Brown Drigger’s cabin, the sudden and hasty departure, the pistol aimed his way on Ira’s lap. Jep, Revi the boy, the other men, the girl in chains, her strange blue eyes, Grandfather’s cross, the altercation, the flight from that place while there was moonlight enough . . .

Ira carried ether for sale, as did many merchants.

Rand staggered to his feet, stumbled in a circle, taking in what had been their encampment. The wagon space lay empty.

“No!” His voice was guttural, rage-filled. Furious, he kicked his sleeping pallet, swept it into the air. “You . . . you worthless old goat!”

He thought of the girl then, and fear struck him. Whirling unsteadily, he found her place empty, her woven blanket gone, along with the covering he’d given her. Only an imprint in the pine straw testified to the fact that she’d existed at all. Scanning the trees, he discovered her atop a boulder nearby, her skirt tucked up to allow her to bolt, her lean, narrow legs tightly coiled like a cat’s.

She did not move but watched him carefully, her eyes seeming to glow against her olive skin. The swollen cheek had abated somewhat, so she studied him through both eyes now.

His first impulse on seeing her was anger. In less than a day since crossing his path, she’d caused his world to collapse, left him in ruin. Now here he stood in foreign country, dangerous country, on foot, alone, with pursuers perhaps trailing him already.

“The scurvy old lout has gone off!” Rand’s head spun, still ether-laden, prompting him to trip over the blankets and fall. Scrambling
forward on feet and palms, he labored toward the ridge. If he could just gain a glimpse of the wagon, he could run cross-country and chase it down. “Bristle-faced, foul-mouthed old . . . When I get my hands on you, I’ll break your worthless neck. I’ll yank off your ears and feed them to the vermin. I’ll . . .”

Sarra couldn’t hear the rest . . . only his voice rumblin’ off the mountain’s face and shakin’ loose the winter birds from their hidin’ places. She didn’t follow as he staggered off up the hill, but she didn’t leave, neither. Hard to say why she hadn’t run earlier on, when she’d woke and saw the muleteer makin’ ready to light off.

Her mind was slow to ken it all at first
 
—why the muleteer was up movin’ about by hisself in the early morn. She’d spied him through a gap in her blanket, watched him wet the rag from a brown bottle, then lay the rag over Rand’s face and sprinkle a fair bit on the bedroll before he corked the bottle again.

The old man looked her way then. “Jus’ stay where you is, gal. Don’t be movin’ nary a twitch. Gimme trouble, and you’ll be left here, dead.”

She didn’t stir. Just waited. She’d got everything she needed while both men slept, and she’d a’ready hid it in the brush. She was just waitin’ for first light, herself. She hadn’t meant to sink off to sleep again, but sleep had come and got her anyhow. Now the muleteer had beat her to it and he meant to take ever’thing. He’d even throwed the saddle up in the wagon and tied the horse on. The only thing he hadn’t got was the saddle pokes Rand had kept tucked up next to him while he slept. Sarra had got those herself.

Soon enough, the wagon and the mules rattled over the hill and
down the holler, the horse tuggin’ the bridle rein. She was free to go then. But somethin’ wouldn’t let her just scat off and leave Rand there laid out on the ground not knowin’ nary a thing. Instead, she’d waited, guardin’ over him with the pistol she’d stole and tucked up in her skirt pocket.

Go,
a voice inside her was whisperin’ now that he’d come full awake.
Run.
But instead, of all the strange and wondersome things, it was a smile tickled her lips as he stopped on the ridge, lifted a boot, slammed it to the ground, then hopped round in a circle fisting the air.

He was more boy than man. Never in her life had she seen somethin’ so powerful act such a fool. Never in her life had she seen a Jasper come to the mountain understandin’ so little of it, or with so little knowin’ of how a body could survive agin it.

This part-man-part-boy with his beardless face and his gold hair was like none she’d ever come across before.

Rand felt his spirits fall into his boots as he gazed over the endless patchwork of tree-clad peaks and naked rock faces. No sign of Ira, the mule wagon, or the horse anywhere
 
—just layer upon layer of folded earth, clothed in mist and stone and trees. The old man was long gone. Undoubtedly he’d been plotting this since last night.

“You ignoramus!” he cursed himself, punching one hand into the other, then shaking both because, in the cold, it hurt. He should’ve known better than to assume that Ira would aid that piteous creature in escaping her pursuers.

A man who took things for granted here was a fool, and fools died young.

And he was far too young to die.

It was a hard lesson, but one he would not again forget.
“Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.”
The verse from Ecclesiastes, uttered to him so many times by his grandfather, came again. Closing his eyes, he took the crisp, morning air in long drafts, turned his face toward heaven, felt fragile pinpoints of ice as they fell cool against his rage. An autumn snow had begun to sprinkle the peak. He was only now noticing it.

Could God hear him in this place, far from any proper house of worship, far from any ordained member of the clergy? Never before had he suffered trial in the wilderness without his grandfather or father nearby, without their faith to carry his own. But now he was separated from all of this. Even his Bible was gone, apparently. When he had stirred the blankets with his foot, neither the pack nor his pistol had been unearthed.

Ira had left him with nothing. As good as dead. And the girl along with him.

Slowly, he turned and walked back to camp. He expected the girl to have fled but instead found her standing in the space where the pine straw had been swept away for the lantern. Her hand was folded, the knuckles pressed to her lips, the wrist scabbed and swollen this morning. The expression in her eyes perplexed him. He could not read it. What must she think of him?

Wordlessly, he turned away from her, tasting a sour stew of anger and humiliation spiced with fear. What he needed to do was calmly assess the situation and draft a plan of action. What he wanted to do was grab something, anything, and tear it to ribbons.

He settled for an intermediate course. He was not calm, but he did not destroy what little they had, which amounted to a few blankets and the clothing they wore. Bracing his fingers on his belt and drumming the tips, he considered the way forward. So this was the sum total of the assets in their favor
 
—this, and a morning that sprinkled snow.

Buck up, sonny boy,
Father whispered in his mind.
The Lord has afforded breath for another day. The situation could be worse.

They’d only come a certain distance from Brown Drigger’s store. There would be a solid chance of making the trek back to that place, but to what ends? With his saddle pack gone, he had no money to purchase supplies there, and no certainty that Brown Drigger wouldn’t attempt to imprison the girl again. Aside from that, there remained the danger that Jep and his men would regain their freedom and travel in that direction.

There were supplies to be had at Jep’s camp, and perhaps horses to be found somewhere nearby. Rand and Ira had scattered their mounts into the night before leaving the camp. But the plan was not without great risk. A trip into the lion’s den might well reveal that the lion was now loosed and on the prowl. Rand would need to circle around carefully . . .

“Can you bring us back to the camp where we left Jep and his men last night?” He cleared his throat and stood a bit taller to brace his wounded pride. He loathed the idea of her knowing how completely taken by surprise he was. Perhaps, if he seemed calm, he could win her cooperation rather than inciting her to panic.

Her chin lifted and her eyes widened. She shook her head quite vehemently.

He’d frightened her further, and the last thing he needed was a hysterical woman in his charge.

“No.” The word, her first spoken, caught him aback. “Be a town two days yander, mayhap three. I can find us the way. Ain’t safe round here. Brown Drigger gits them dogs after us, won’t be no hidin’.”

“A settlement so close? Are you certain?” He had doubt of it. During the trip in, Ira had complained vehemently of the remoteness of the Drigger outpost.

“Two days . . . if’n you ain’t real slow.” Sidestepping toward the woods, she indicated that he should momentarily remain where he was.

Waiting for her to return, he thanked God for his good fortune. The girl was not mute in terms of English language, she knew the way to a settlement, and she seemed to be possessed of normal mental faculties. Last night’s talk of witches and spells had unsettled him to a greater degree than he cared to admit. She was just a woman. Flesh and blood. Little more than a child, really, fallen into the hands of dangerous men. Helpless.

He heard her rustling in the underbrush, first to one side of the small clearing, then another. When she returned, her slim, brown fingers held a cache of wild persimmons and hickory nuts. The vividness of the colors struck him momentarily, a still life somehow mesmerizing. She’d drawn near to him before he noticed something familiar slung over her shoulder. His saddle pack.

“My things.” He reached more quickly than he should have, and
she drew away, startled, the persimmons and hickories spilling to the ground, the bags landing between them. He took up the packs, looked first in one and then in the other, found hardtack and bread that had not been there the day before. A bit of jerked meat, as well, and his pistol. There was also spare ammunition, something that had been carried in his valise in the wagon bed, not in the saddlebags, and a new hunting knife of the sort Ira kept in a crate for sale.

He glanced at her in confusion, looked into the packs again, then down at her as she regathered the bright-crimson fruit and basketed it in her skirt. A dawning understanding came upon him.

“You stole my pack,” he blurted. “And my pistol.” She’d pillaged the camp while they slept. She’d been prepared to . . . to leave alone?

She paused to look his way. “The muleteer would’a looked after you.”

He searched through to the bottom of the satchel, found his grandfather’s Bible there, as well as his field-study glass, which could be useful later for starting fires, assuming enough sun presented itself. The leather-wrapped bundle that contained his journals had been removed, along with his nib pens and ink. She must have hidden them somewhere near camp as she resupplied with goods from the wagon. “My books are gone. Where are my books and my pens?”

She stood up, examined a persimmon as though she intended to make a meal of it, then and there. “Can’t eat no book full’a leaves. Most’a them you got ain’t even good for doctorin’.” Shrugging, she bit into the persimmon, wincing as the juice touched her split lip. “Oughta
be shuckin’ off now. More snow comin’, and Jep and them men too. They go to Brown Drigger over it, he’ll git them dogs after us.”

“I’ll
have
my books back.” He stretched out a palm expectantly, towering a foot over her, at least.

“Was the dogs found me out, first time I run off.”

“I
said
, I’ll have my books returned. . . .”

The phone sounded inside the cabin. It was on its third ring by the time I realized what it was. On the opposite side of the porch, Friday turned an ear back and forth, bewildered by the sound. He’d never heard a landline let out its warbling, mechanical ring.

Setting the last of the pages down unread, I ran inside with Friday battling to beat me through the door.

I caught the phone on the fifth ring, answered it breathless.

“Your cell phone number wasn’t handy, so I just called this one.” Helen Hall didn’t bother to introduce herself, but her voice was hard to mistake, and aside from that, I’d been hoping against hope all afternoon and evening that she would call. “Hello? Are you there?” she asked.

“Yes, yes, I am. Sorry. The dog and I just tripped over each other.” I scooched Friday aside with my foot, and he attacked my shoe with vigor.
I’ll let Horatio make a meal out of you,
I wanted to tell him, but of course I couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Helen. What did you say?” Pressing the receiver close and plugging my other ear, I sifted her voice from the static and Friday’s racket.

The trailing end of the sentence came through: “. . . meet me at the pharmacy tomorrow after lunch? I have an idea for you.”

Chapter 14

I
left Friday in the cabin with food, water, and a stern talking-to, then departed for the pharmacy early. A mixture of curiosity and anticipation had every nerve in my body vibrating like a live electrical wire. The possibility that, this very afternoon, I might have my questions answered about Evan Hall and
The Story Keeper
was as intoxicating as the ether that had overtaken Rand as Ira ran away. Helen Hall’s idea, the one she’d called about yesterday, was that I accompany her up the mountain to see her sister-in-law. Up the mountain to Evan Hall’s well-protected compound on the ancestral family land, where his grandmother, Violet Hall, still lived.

I’d spent the evening and most of the morning reading and rereading what I had of
The Story Keeper
. After two days’ travel on foot, Rand and Sarra were still nowhere near civilization. They’d seen no sign of Jep and his men but had, on occasion, heard the
far-off baying of hounds. By now they were undoubtedly being followed. To say I was obsessed at this point would’ve been a massive understatement.

Still, niggling at the back of my mind was Coral Rebecca’s second letter. I’d finally opened it last night as I lay in the loft bed listening to Friday snore on the sofa downstairs. Inside was an explanation of my father’s accident and a plea for money, with Coral Rebecca acting as the family emissary, as usual. The roof on the old farmhouse was disintegrating and the ancient wiring, not replaced since long before our time, was outdated. It had sparked a small fire in the bedroom where my youngest sister, Lily Clarette, still lived.

There was no money for repairs, so they’d cut the electricity to Lily Clarette’s room. For now, she was getting by without lights. Marah Diane and her husband, living down the hill in a trailer with their kids, were behind on their payments because they’d helped Daddy out with his medical bills. The church had gathered clothes for Marah Diane’s twins to start the new school year, but even the church was struggling these days. The congregation of Lane’s Hill Brethren Saints had dwindled after the closing of the moldings mill and then the garment factory in Towash. Brethren members had moved away looking for work like everyone else. My second-to-youngest sister, Evie Christine, was expecting another baby. She and Marah Diane were excited that the baby would be within two years of Marah Diane’s littlest. Playmates . . .

The endlessness of my family’s situation, the weight of it, was staggering. What could I do that would make any difference? What had I done so far? Nothing. Nothing but throw temporary patches on a dam that was crumbling. Behind it, the water kept building, swirling, swelling. All I’d managed to do, while digging
myself into a credit card nightmare, was prolong a situation in which young marriages were encouraged and pregnancies were heralded as accomplishments, whether there was money to provide for the babies or not.

My stomach churned as I wound along the mountain road toward town, passing the brightly colored melee of the Warrior Week encampment. Did those people have any idea? I wondered. Did the tourists have any understanding of the real lives being scratched from these mountains? There was no need for time portals here. There were still places in Appalachia where people lived in them. Lost in time, captives of the beauty and the ugliness that entailed. The majesty of the mountains. The ugliness of poverty, lack of education, hunger, kids with teeth rotted out because they were raised on baby bottles filled with soda pop and sugar water.

I can’t stand this. I can’t.
I didn’t know who I was talking to. God, I supposed, though we didn’t really speak these days. God, and the ragged white church on Lane’s Hill, and fear, and pain, and punishment, and shame, and guilt were so inexorably linked within me. It was too hard to sort out what was true, to figure out who God might be apart from the doctrines designed to keep the people of Lane’s Hill
on
Lane’s Hill. It had always been easier to sweep the whole bundle aside and leave it in a tangle, forgotten.

But this trip was already tugging at the strings, its strange chain of connections suggesting that my coming here couldn’t be the result of random coincidences. Events like these hinted, sometimes even shouted, that the God of my childhood and Lane’s Hill, the threatening figure who scorned and despised me because of my mother’s sinful nature, might instead be a God of both purpose and provision. That he might have been looking after me all these years, laying down a path while I worked to convince myself that I was going my own way.

There was a part of me that knew I’d been brought back here for a purpose.

A reckoning was coming, and in some sense I’d always known that freedom lay on the other side of it. Freedom lay in unraveling lies from truth
 
—about myself, about my family, and about God.

There was no way to walk through that reckoning without returning to the place where all the things I’d been hiding from were now screaming for attention. I wasn’t sure of the timing yet, but before this trip was over, I’d go back to Lane’s Hill. I’d known it since reading Coral Rebecca’s letter.

Ahead, the town of Looking Glass Gap was so different from the places I’d grown up. Perched on a hillside like a postcard image, it was peaceful and serene, a beautiful distraction. The buildings had been nicely restored and the streets bustled with vibrant activity. Evan Hall’s money and fame had elevated this town, turned it into a tourist destination similar to Highlands and Asheville.

I parked near the pharmacy, even though it was still too early to meet Helen. Midmorning had barely passed, and she’d told me to come after lunch, so I strolled down the street, taking in the bizarre combinations of Time Shifters memorabilia, reproduction clothing and weaponry, movie posters, local handicrafts, and antique treasures.

In the corner of the ice cream store, I watched customers posing with a life-size cutout of Evan Hall. The cardboard image sported a black peasant-style shirt, black breeches, and over-the-knee boots like pirates wore. The bit part Evan Hall had played in the first Time Shifters movie was a YouTube favorite that had gathered several million fan hits. Enthusiasts knew exactly where to spot him among the crew of a storm-damaged Portuguese galleon, where a rebel group of Time Shifters aided the sailors
in reaching North Carolina’s Outer Banks. There, the survivors would limp into the village of Sir Walter Raleigh’s mysterious Lost Colonists, who had long since given up their original settlement on Roanoke Island and intermingled with native populations farther south on Hatteras.

In Evan Hall’s version of history, the
Melingee
, an isolative and mysterious race, lived in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina and Tennessee. They were descendants of the Time Shifters whose portal had malfunctioned, leaving them unable to reenter the intergalactic byways. Instead, they were trapped on Earth, in the New World with the Lost Colonists and the native tribes, twenty years before the arrival of the Pilgrims. After intermarrying and producing halfling children, many wanted to stay. By the third book, they’d managed to travel through time on Earth as a means of escaping pursuit, but without being able to predict where the portals would deposit them each time.

I didn’t know why I hadn’t connected the dots before now. Evan Hall’s Melingee represented the Melungeons. Dark hair, olive skin, startlingly bright blue or silver eyes. Just as with the Melungeons, his Melingee predated other European settlers. The rumors and legends later historically attributed to Melungeons
 
—that they were a strange race of blue-eyed devils and tricksters who practiced magic
 
—were, in the fictional version, really the result of the supernatural abilities of the alien Time Shifters.

Could Evan Hall’s interest in the hidden people of the mountains have begun with the story of Rand and Sarra? Could they have been the basis for Nathaniel and Anna, whose time-spanning, forbidden love captivated the imaginations of readers from eleven to eighty-one and sold millions of books, not to mention the movie tickets and attractively packaged DVD sets?

Hard to say. Hard to know where to place the dividing line
between fantasy and history in Evan Hall’s work. There was just enough truth to create the illusion that all of it was real. The Time Shifters books made use of Blue Ridge legends, ghost stories, and oddities like the Stumphouse Tunnel
 
—a railroad passageway abandoned mid-construction during the Civil War. In the Time Shifters version, this eerie tunnel to nowhere was actually the location of a portal that had been taken over by the Dark Ones, then fused into rock during a great battle.

Those who seemed bent on making a lifestyle out of Time Shifters took regular pilgrimages to Stumphouse and to Issaqueena Falls, where Anna and Nathaniel used a secret portal to evade pursuit.

At a corner table in the ice cream shop, a couple of guys in hooded capes were having a technical discussion about the physics of Stumphouse and time travel.

I was so caught up in eavesdropping, I didn’t realize I was late until the appointment calendar on my phone beeped.

Leaving the scientists to battle it out, I hurried down to the pharmacy and met Helen Hall, then offered to drive us up the mountain.

“That would be lovely.” She slipped into a canvas jacket as she followed me out. “We’ll be a bit rushed, I’m afraid. My sister-in-law has a doctor’s appointment over in Charlotte late this afternoon.”

“I really appreciate your help in this.” While a quick trip might not be the ideal circumstance, I couldn’t risk the opportunity evaporating altogether. I still wasn’t exactly certain what Helen had in mind today, but at this point I was game for anything that brought me closer to Evan Hall.

“Well, if there’s anyone who’ll know whether my nephew had something to do with the manuscript you’re wondering about, it
would be Violet. She raised him and his little brother after their parents passed.”

“I’d love to meet her.” I knew about Evan Hall’s tragic history. The entire family had been trapped in a fire at a vacation cabin. Only Evan and his younger brother, Jake, had managed to escape. His parents and older sister had perished in the fire.

“Thank you for driving,” Helen said as we started out of town. “My son doesn’t like it when I drive myself up the mountain these days. It’s an odd thing when your children start telling you what to do.”

“I guess it would be.” I flashed over the news of my father and thought about my sisters. It was impossible to imagine that they would be taking charge. Daddy’s word had always been law. “This is a beautiful drive. I can see why you wouldn’t want to give it up. I think that’s why I admired the art in the cabin so much. It captures all the seasons here.”

The comment drew a soulful sigh. “Those were some of my favorite works. They’re years old now, of course. I taught community college for quite a while. But when my husband had his stroke, I was faced with either keeping the pharmacy open or teaching. The town needs a pharmacy, so instructing the art classes had to go by the way. The store, and taking care of my husband, the grandkids, and now Violet, gives me about all I can handle.” The struggle showed in her expression, the quiet festering of a dream given up in exchange for difficult realities. “But I enjoyed the teaching years. It was a chance to encourage some talented young people. Not many around here manage to escape all the way to Clemson, but community college is a start, at least.”

“It’s a good start.” I’d so wanted Coral Rebecca to go to college. I’d tried to talk her into it, but after I left, Daddy had been even more determined that no one else would break away.

“I knew Wilda Culp,” Helen offered, and I glanced her direction, but her face was hidden in shadow as the road slipped under an outcropping of rock. “Not well, but we worked together on a few fund-raisers for an aid society. She wanted to start something to serve the women of the area, especially the young ones. Oh . . . I guess that’s thirteen or fourteen years ago now.”

Thirteen or fourteen years . . .
I was just leaving for Clemson. Wilda had big plans for the future, apparently. “She never told me about that.”

“Well, I don’t think she got very far with it before they diagnosed the lung cancer. And I’m sure nothing much happened on the project after that. She was the one to do it. The one with connections outside the community.”

“It sounds like her.” I had always hoped that after I left, my sisters might find the same shelter at Wilda’s house that I’d found, but everything about Wilda was disapproved of at home. My father only allowed me to go there because the more I came to look like my mother, the less he and Momaw Leena wanted me around. Once Marah Diane was old enough to look after the littler kids, the family seemed just as happy to have me out earning a paycheck, and Wilda paid well.

“I would’ve enjoyed knowing her better, I think,” Helen said.

We talked about the scenery then, chatting aimlessly about the dwindling of small-town economies and the areas where vacation cabins were taking over what had once been farmland.

“Won’t be long until the snow comes and things go quiet for the winter,” Helen commented finally. “Just the skiers and waterfowl hunters passing through.”

“I noticed the chill this morning.” I thought of Sarra, my mind hopscotching and landing squarely in the story. She’d felt winter coming too. There was something in the air when the
seasons shifted, and if you knew this place, your bones told you weather was coming. Bodies quickened, woodpiles were stocked, local folks ran to grocery stores and laid in supplies. The roads could be impassable and the power could go out for weeks on some of the rural routes, but not this early in the season.

We rounded a curve, and the smattering of rusty roadside barbed wire and pine-rail fences gave way to an expanse of seemingly endless twelve-foot chain link, the kind intended to keep deer in or people out, or both. Every twenty feet or so, No Trespassing signs made the intent clear.

I had a feeling we’d reached the fringes of Evan Hall’s domain. The fences stretched for miles, stark, imposing, out of place with the landscape. For generations, these forests had been separated by little more than geography and aging livestock wire or split-rail fences on the valley land. There was nothing that couldn’t be shinnied through or hopped over. Other than the occasional mantrap set near some moonshiner’s still or marijuana patch
 
—and you learned to avoid those
 
—the land and the fading remnants of old homesteads and graveyards were open to whoever wanted to pass by.