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Authors: Jan Watson

BOOK: [Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek
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Will stood apart from the others, exhausted and in shock. He appeared emotionless. There were no tears, no further shouts of rage or terror. He was spent.
 
Daniel dispersed the men. They would meet again at first light, but for now they needed food and rest, and Daniel was certain in his heart that there was no longer a need for haste in the hunt for Julie. Will stumbled numbly when Daniel took his arm and led him away. Will stopped only once for a long searching look at Troublesome Creek, then turned and followed his friend.
 
While his family slept and Will lay bedded on a pallet in front of the fireplace, poleaxed from one of Granny’s potions, Daniel sat on the porch and contemplated the events of the past twenty-four hours. He was keyed up with a kind of angry energy that made it impossible to rest. He had lain with Emilee while she cried herself to sleep, and then, easing his bulky body from the bed, he dressed in silence and sought the solace of the night and a pipe of tobacco.
Old Blue crept on padded feet, quiet as a rabbit in its lair, to the chair and dropped his head to Daniel’s lap. Absentmindedly, Daniel stroked the dog’s silky ears and scratched his bony back. A soft woof and a cock of his head informed Daniel that the dog was not ready to give up the hunt. “All right, Old Blue.” He stood and knocked his pipe against the porch rail, spilling hot ash on the ground. Master and dog set off to search for Julie.
The night sky was mostly clear, and Daniel’s hunter’s eyes adjusted quickly, making the footpath easy to follow. They forded the creek and reached Will’s cabin minutes later. Daniel bade the dog to stay while he entered the empty house.
It was odd to be in Will’s house alone. For a second he fancied he heard Julie’s voice. His heart leaped with joy, and he turned quickly in the direction of the bed, where he’d last seen her wrapped up in a quilt with her new baby. He knew there was no one here, but the sound was as real to him as the empty chair that sat in a little square of moonlight near the cold fireplace. It seemed she called out for him to find her.
He searched for an article of clothing that held her scent. No easy task, for while the men of the community were hunting for her, he knew the women had been busy as well, scrubbing and washing everything they could lay their hands on, preparing the dwelling for Julie’s return. Groping in the darkness, Daniel felt the brim of a bonnet hanging from a peg inside the door.
This is good,
he thought as he stepped outside and held the bonnet under Blue’s nose. The dog could track a rabbit or a possum for miles by following its scent; Daniel hoped he could do the same with Julie’s.
He led the dog to the far bank where he figured Julie might have been. He knew that Blue couldn’t trace a body in water, but if she had washed up somewhere along the way, his keen sense of smell might alert him to it.
They had traveled several miles—the dog snuffling along the ground, sometimes whining and running ahead only to return and push his long nose into the bonnet in Daniel’s hand—when suddenly Blue froze in his tracks. Ears up and nose sniffing the cold night air, the dog pulled away from his master and broke into a run.
Daniel let him take the lead and watched as the night swallowed Blue. A cloud obscured the moon. It was as dark as the inside of a cave. The skittering sound of a small varmint running away caught him off guard, and the once-familiar landscape now seemed threatening. Huge twisted grapevines hanging from towering oaks and water maples caught at his clothing like monstrous arms. The soft
whoo-whoo
of an owl was interrupted when he stepped on a loose rock and fell heavily, sliding down a steep incline and nearly rolling into the creek before he caught himself. Daniel stood, brushed at his clothing, released a shaky laugh, and shook his head to clear his mind. The familiarity of the place restored, he proceeded with caution.
He had just about decided to call the dog back in when an eerie bay in the distance caused the hair on the back of his neck to rise. He had never heard such a mournful sound. Rushing to see what Blue had found and wishing at the same time that he would never have to see it, he approached the scene with dread. He closed his eyes tightly, not trusting his own vision, when moonlight glinted as if reflected from marble and revealed a small white arm lying before him on the bank of Troublesome Creek. Tasting bile, his legs buckling, Daniel sank to his knees before the object of his quest.
The hunt was over.
Julie’s body floated serenely in a deep, dark pool, her left arm tangled in a blackberry bramble, her long blonde hair streaming out around her still face, her green eyes staring into eternity. The full moon reflected the perfect backdrop, as if she swam upon its golden surface.
As carefully as if she could feel his ministration, Daniel loosened her arm from the thorns and pulled her body, cold and slick as glass, from the frigid water. He dried her as best he could before wrapping her in his own long, homespun shirt. Kneeling there, he thought of Will and the heartbreak this find would bring. The whimpering of the dog mingled with the common sounds of a forest at night: animals seeking refuge or comfort or food, water tumbling over rock, pines sighing lonesome songs in the breeze.
Daniel stood, hearing none of it, and cradled the lifeless form in his arms. “Come, Blue,” he commanded, as once again that long night they began a journey that could only end in sorrow.
CHAPTER 5
 
A pickax grated against rock and disturbed the early morning hush in the old cemetery. Daniel leaned on the handle of his shovel and watched Nathan’s youngest son flail about with the ax. Isaac was not strong enough to break rock, but he’d wanted to help, so Daniel had brought him and his brother Jeremiah up the mountain to the boneyard near daybreak. A flock of doves, startled into flight, sought new shelter in a wild cherry tree. They fretted and cooed and looked down on the gravediggers with beady, frightened eyes. Isaac swung the pickax so hard sparks flew off the rock.
“Easy, boy,” Daniel said. “You’ll break the handle off that way. Here, let me show you.”
Daniel took the tool and
tap, tap, tapp
ed against the rock before he gave it a solid hit. The rock broke into several small pieces.
Isaac flung the pieces into a pile of brush, then grabbed the shovel and started digging. His thin shoulders shook with the effort.
He’ll have to be a preacher like his pa,
Daniel thought.
He’s too puny for real work.
Not that Daniel had anything against preachers, especially Brother Nathan—that man could talk the stink off a skunk—but they weren’t much hand at anything but preaching and eating, as far as Daniel could see. Isaac was built like his father, not much bigger than a banty rooster and him nearly fourteen. Now Jeremiah, on the other hand, was already big as a man.
“Let me have that shovel,” Jeremiah said. “You ain’t even made a dent in the ground.”
“Leave me be,” Isaac replied. “I want to do this for Julie.” Daniel knew that Isaac had a strong attachment to Will’s wife, like everyone else on Troublesome Creek. Isaac was attracted to her easy familiarity and teasing ways. He often showed up at the bank where Daniel and Will mined coal. He’d scurry back into the holes and retrieve slivers of coal that broke off when they chunked out the big lumps. He’d gather a gunnysack full to take home to his mother. Will’s house was closest to the coal bank, and so at noon they’d take dinner there. While they ate, Julie read stories from the newspapers her sister sent from Lexington. She read of bank robberies, house fires, weddings, births and deaths, funny things and sad things. And things they’d never heard of, like the brightly painted circus train with animals from India and Africa: monkeys with curled tails, striped cats as big as a calf, and a huge animal with floppy ears and a short tail who carried its own trunk.
Isaac would sit, forgetting to eat, listening to her read those papers. Many days when they went back to work, he’d stay at Julie’s kitchen table, struggling to write his name on a piece of lined paper with a fat red pencil.
One day he’d come to the bank with a Bible in his hand. He’d run all the way from Will’s house. “Listen,” he’d said to Daniel and Will, and then, just like that, he read: “‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’”
In the fall, Isaac would be leaving the confines of his mountain home. Julie had arranged through her sister for him to attend boarding school in Lexington. He hoped to get his teaching certificate and then return to Troublesome Creek and share the gift Julie had given to him.
Daniel’s thoughts returned to the job at hand. Before too long, they had a good-size hole dug. They’d fallen into a pattern. Daniel slung the pickax to break the ledge rock, Jeremiah hauled it out, and Isaac shoveled the dirt. They dug the grave in three vaults, the first two feet wider than the next two, and the last one just wide enough to hold a casket. They smoothed the sides of the grave with a broadax and the last vault in the six-foot hole was lined with wooden planks.
It was well past noon when they finished their task. They sat around the opening with their feet hanging in. They passed around a jar of cold springwater and spoke of the next day’s burying, knowing that the grave they dug would be admired by the men of the community as a job well done.
Daniel was the first to stand. He gathered the shovels, the axes, the maul, and the hammer. “You done her proud, boys.” He gripped Isaac’s shoulder. “We’ll come back in the morning to get things ready for the mourners.”
Halfway down the mountain, Jeremiah stopped to remove his boots. Tying the laces together, he slung them over his shoulder. “Nothing feels better than green grass between your toes after a cold winter.”
Daniel looked back at the graveyard, a dark foreboding place, deep in the shadow of overgrown trees and vines.
Isaac turned also. “I’m going to bring a hatchet up here soon. I’m going to clean out the hyacinth bean vine and the thistle weed and chop down that raggedy cedar that blocks the sun. Then I’ll plant some day-eye blossoms so she’ll have something warm and pretty to keep her company.” He choked up and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt.
“That would make her happy, boy,” Daniel replied, feeling a little sting in his own eyes. “Julie liked purty things.”
 
Emilee stood, hand on her hip, in the doorway. She had just finished nursing her baby and was resting. She sipped asparagus-root tea Granny had fixed for her. She shuddered. “It’s bitter, Granny.”
Granny dipped a spoon into the jar of molasses on the kitchen table and stirred some sweetness into the potion. “Ye need to drink it straight down. Nursing two babies and crying all night has got ye all dried up.”
“I want to go with you to dress Julie’s body.” Emilee took off her apron and hung it behind the door. “Brother Nathan’s wife can watch the babies.”
“She can sit with you whilst Ellen Combs and I ready the body. Her two girls’ll be there to help out, I reckon.”
“Please, Granny?” Emilee pleaded.
“Yore place is here with these young’uns,” Granny told her. “Ye got to build up yore milk.” She tucked her sparse hair up under her old bonnet.
Emilee sobbed anew.
Granny gathered the grieving young woman in her arms. “Honey,” she consoled, “I know that Julie named you her closest friend, and I know how ye ache to do for her, but don’t ye reckon that nursing her wee one is the thing that would mean the most? There’s nary another person that kin do that for her but you, Emilee, nary a soul but you.”

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