The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek Read online

  Why, for all Pa cared, it could be the beastly troll in “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” who wanted my hand. Lately, he’d been setting the timekeeping candle uncomfortably long for whoever was keen on calling.

  But I couldn’t risk it. The WPA regulations said females with an employable husband wouldn’t be eligible for a job because the husband is the logical head of the family.

  Logical. I liked my sensibility just fine. I liked my freedom a lot—loved the solitude these last seven months had given me—and I lived for the joy of bringing books and reading materials to the hillfolk who were desperate for my visits, the printed word that brought a hopeful world into their dreary lives and dark hollers. It was necessary.

  And for the first time in my life, I felt necessary.

  * * *

  “Right there’ll do it.” Pa fussed one last time with the slide on the courting candle, then finally placed the timekeeper on the table in front of my rocker and the empty seat beside me. He grabbed his carbide-lamp helmet off a peg and looked out to the dark woods across the creek that passed through our property.

  The snow picked up, dropping fat flakes. “Reckon he’ll be showing up any minute, Daughter.”

  Sometimes the suitor didn’t. I hoped this would be one of those times.

  “I’ll be off.” He dropped a matchbook into the timekeeper’s drip tray, eyeing the candle one final time.

  Frantic, I grabbed his sleeve and whispered, “Please, Pa, I don’t want to marry.”

  “What’s wrong with you, Daughter? It ain’t natural to defy the Lord’s natural order.”

  I took his palm in mine and pressed the silent plea into it.

  Pa looked at my coloring hand and pulled his away. “I gave up my sleep to ride over to his holler and arrange this.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he held up a shushing hand.

  “This harsh land ain’t for a woman to bear alone. It’s cruel enough on a man.” Pa reached for his hand-carved bear poker with the razor-sharp arrowhead tip. “I’ve been digging my grave since the first day I dug coal. I’ll not dig two.” He tapped the poker against the boards. “You will take a husband so you’ll have someone to care for you when I no longer can.”

  He buttoned his coat and grabbed his tin lunch bucket off the porch boards, ambling off to his night shift down at the coal mine.

  Hearing a horse’s strangled whinny, I turned toward a rustling in the trees, straining to listen above the prattling song of creek waters. The courter would be here shortly.

  I leaned over the wood railing and peered out. When I could no longer see the flicker of Pa’s miner’s lamp and was sure he’d disappeared into the woods, I reached over, adjusted the wooden slide on the timekeeping candle, and lowered the taper to where the wax would touch the old spiral holder’s lip within a few minutes of being burnt—a signal to this latest suitor that a prompt and swift departure was in mind.

  Raising my hands, I watched them quiet to a duck-egg blue.

  Two

  Barely another gray week had passed when Pa sent a new suitor to our porch. Gradually, the man got down off his mount and tied it to a tree. He was just one more hungry troll out there hunting, and one more I needed to run off.

  Racing a thumb across my fingers, I ticked off the number of courters who had come calling. It had to be over a dozen, maybe higher, closer to two dozen if I counted the ones who’d never showed, who’d turned back at the mouth of our woods.

  I watched the man lumber up the steps, eager for him to take his spot so I could burn the courting candle and be rid of him.

  Fumbling, I picked up the box of matches and pulled one out. This particular chore of lighting the wick was always mine after Pa’s hopeful intended arrived, and was done as soon as the suitor sat.

  Hewitt Hartman plopped heavily into the rocker, nearly busting the planked seating as I lit the short taper. He hunched over a ripe belly, twiddling his hat, working his coated tongue around a big chaw before sputtering a greeting I couldn’t understand. Looking down at his knees, he asked to see the land deed.

  Silently, I went inside and brought it out, placing the paper beside the courting candle. I caught a whiff of shine from Mr. Hartman and moved over to the rail, laced my hands behind my back, watching the flame quiver, the wax melt ever so slow.

  The man grunted several times while reading the deed. The ten-acre dowry was more than generous. The land could be cleared for farming or timber, or even sold if a man wanted. Pa never wanted neighbors, never had those means, that mindset, or the money to do anything. But as his illness set in and his determination to see me wedded persisted, his thoughts had latched on to other ways.

  Mr. Hartman leaned in toward the taper and studied the deed over the yellow light, a greed flickering in his dull eyes. Squinting, he snatched a glance at my face, then another back to the paper, and once more at me. Snapping the old document, he took a dirt-stained finger, running it down the page, his lips chewing over the fancy script. Again, he pinched off a flurry of peeks at me.

  Finally, he cleared his throat, stood, and spit a wad of tobacco over the rail, the brown spittle painting his bottom lip and a few droplets speckling his chin.

  Hartman picked up the courting candle, shoved it toward my face. Cringing, he dropped the deed and, in one weighty puff, blew out the flame.

  “Not even for all of Kentucky.” His old, rotted breath whisked through black smoke, taking mine.

  * * *

  Weren’t a week later, Pa set back out my timekeeping candle, raising the taper to its longest burn. By the end of January and three courters later, he’d made sure he wouldn’t have to again.

  The man showed up in the early afternoon wearing a worn hat. He took his time reading the deed, then sat tight-lipped, raking his fingers through his thinning hair, snatching glances at the courting candle’s flame. Several times he shifted, smacked his limp hat against stained britches, each move sparking a new plume of rancid odor. After two porch visits with the suitor, Pa gave his blessing the last week of January and signed over the deed, snuffing out my last courting candle. The old squire shot up from his seat and grabbed the document. Avoiding my face, he leered at my body, his eyes lingering on my breasts, taking stock of his new possession.

  I clung to Pa on our porch. “I don’t want to marry,” I’d said, afraid. “I don’t want to leave you.” My eyes flitted to the old man waiting out in the yard beside his mule. He stared back, tapped his leg with the hat, each smack growing louder and more impatient.

  “Daughter,” Pa said, cupping my chin in his calloused hand, “you must take a man and live your life. Be safe.” He turned away, took a ragged breath, and coughed several times. “You must. I have to make sure you won’t be alone when I’m gone—keep my promise to your mama.” His tired lungs wheezed and he coughed again, the coal mine thieving his time.

  “I have my books!”

  “It is a foolishness you have, Daughter.” A sorrow clung to his stick-throated voice.

  “I’ll lose my route, my patrons. Please, I can’t lose them.” I gripped his sleeve and shook. “Please, not him.”

  “You’ll have yourself a big family. The Fraziers are an old clan with kinfolk all over these hills.”

  “But he’s kin to Pastor Vester Frazier.” I pressed a palm to my galloping heart thinking about him, his hunt-hungry congregation, and their deadly baptismal waters down at the creek. “Pa, you know what the preacher does to folks like us, what he’s done—”

  Pa laid a hand on my shoulder and shook his head. “He doesn’t associate with the likes of the preacher man, and he gave me his word that he’ll protect you. It’s growing late, Daughter. I must get ready. The Company has several cars they’re expecting me to load today, or I’ll lose my job. Get on now to your new family,” he gently urged.

  I’d looked at the man in the yard twisti
ng the floppy cake-like hat in his hand, coiling our old Carter land deed, nervously shifting to one short muscly leg and then the other, small eyes darting between us and his bone-ribbed mule, anxious to leave. Gusts of wintry air tore across the brow of the woods, shaking branches and whipping his stringy gray-flecked hair.

  “But, Pa, please, I’m…I’m frightened of him.” I searched for my hankie, gave up, and wiped my runny nose on a coat sleeve.

  “Mr. Frazier will give you his name and see that you have a roof over your head and food in your belly.”

  “I have a name, the only name I want! Book Woman.”

  Pa’s eyes filled with turmoil. His face crumpled. I was sure he didn’t want me to go, but he was more afraid not to let me. I was just as frightened to leave him, and more, for the likes of that out there in the yard.

  “Please, Pa, you know’d how Mama loved the books and wanted them for me.” Mama. Her absence ached in my heart, and I was desperate for her comforting arms.

  “Your mama wanted you safe, Daughter.”

  Frazier moved closer to the mule, drawing in his shoulders, bracing against the bitter cold.

  “He don’t look safe, and he scares me something awful.” The old cabin creaked, moaned like it were true, like it was trying to keep him away. “And he don’t bathe… Why, his britches are strong enough to stand themselves up in a corner. I-I don’t want to marry. Pa, please, I don’t want to go anywhere alone with him, I—”

  “Daughter, I would see you knotted right and give you a proper send-off if I could, but the Company ain’t allowing nary a second off in a whole month for the likes of us miners—unless it comes with a gravedigger’s notice or boss man’s pink slip. In the morning, I’ll rent Mr. Murphy’s ol’ horse, Bib, and bring your trunk on over to him. Make sure you’re settled in. Go on, Daughter. He’ll take you to the officiant, and you’ll be Mrs. Charlie Frazier by tonight. Get on to your man. Go on, it’s getting late.” He flicked his hand. “Don’t keep your man waiting.”

  His words landed like rocks on my chest.

  Pa fished into his pants pocket and pulled out a clean handkerchief I’d just washed for him this morning, passing it to me.

  I balled it up in a damp, trembling fist, unrolling, squeezing, rolling.

  Pa’s shoulders drooped as he turned to go inside. Gripping the latch, he paused at the threshold. “You belong to Charlie Frazier now.”

  “I belong here with my job! Don’t take my books away like this. Please…Pa, no, don’t let him take me away.” I sank to my knees and raised begging hands. “Let me stay,” I whispered hoarsely. “Please, Pa? Pa? Almighty Lord, please—”

  The door shut tight, swallowing my prayer, taking my light with it. I wanted to run, to fold myself into the dark, rotted land, disappear under the cold Kentucky ground.

  I raised the twisted handkerchief to my mouth and pressed, watching my hand grieve to a dark azure blue.

  * * *

  Radish red, he was.

  What he did was worse than a rattler’s bite, or what I imagined the snake’s strike to be when my sixty-two-year-old husband, Charlie Frazier, first tried to plant his fiery seed inside me. Bucking, I knocked off the pillow he’d cloaked over my face.

  “Be still,” he hissed. “Still, you blue devil. Ain’t gonna suffer the sight of your dead face.” He pressed his other hand over my mouth and eyes, shielding himself, pumping inside me.

  I wriggled free from his grip, bit and clawed at him, choking on my fear and fury, struggling for air.

  He pummeled my stomach, pinched my breasts, and punched at my head until a blackness took hold.

  The second time he poked me, a gray leeched into his dog-pecker-pink face.

  When I came to, I was lying on a cold dirt floor. A voice floated above, and I tried to speak but nothing came out. Someone placed a cover over me, and I fell back into a shifting darkness until another voice roused me once more.

  I struggled to lift my lids, but could only open one eye partway, barely making out Pa’s face.

  “Pa-ah.” The word broke in my throat. I stretched out a hand. A deep pain struck and I cried out, cradling my swollen arm.

  “Daughter, don’t try an’ move.” He lifted my head and brought a mug to my mouth. “Just sip this.” Part of my lip had swelled to my nose, and the liquid dribbled out, down onto my chin. Pa dried my wet skin with his coat sleeve, tilted the cup, and tried again to give me a drink. I tasted the shine and spit and coughed, the liquid setting me on fire, burning my tender gums and split lips.

  A different ache lit, hot and knifelike, and I sucked in a breath, pushed Pa away, clamping a hand to my ear, only to jerk it back and see the sticky blood that had leaked out the eardrum and covered my palm.

  Pa dug out his handkerchief and pressed it against my ear. “You hold it there a minute.” He placed my hand over the hankie and held up the mug. “Try and get all this down now.” Pa raised the liquor back to my mouth, and I took a bigger gulp.

  “That’s it. Have just a little more, Cussy. It’ll help some.” When I finished, Pa set down the mug, folded me carefully in his arms, and stroked my hair.

  “Mama,” I whimpered and slipped my hand between his shoulder and my ear, pressing, trying to stop the stabbing pains. “I want my mama.”

  “Shh, I’ve got you, Daughter.” He rocked. “Doc’s here now, and we’re gonna get you home and rested.”

  I squinted at the man standing beside the bedpost. “Doc?”

  “You’ll be fine, but his ticker done broke, Bluet,” the mountain doc said over the sagging marriage bed, covering Frazier with a thin flannel sheet before tending to my broken bones.

  Pa buried him out in the yard under a tall pine along with my courting candle.

  Three

  Somewhere between that first poke and the unfolding of spring, my bones mended, and I got three things: my old job with the Pack Horse librarians, an old mule I named Junia, and sign of Charlie Frazier’s seed. Weren’t but a few days later, I pulled up Frazier’s devil-rooting with a tansy tea I’d brewed from the dried herbs Mama’d kept in the cellar.

  The brisk morning nipped at my face, and I buried my chin deeper into Pa’s oilskin coat and nudged the mule ahead to the home of our first library patron. We crossed over into the fog-soaked creek before sunrise, the dark waters biting at the beast’s ankles, a willingness to hurry pricking Junia’s long ears forward. Late April winds tangled into the sharp, leafy teeth of sourwoods, teasing, combing her short gray mane. Beyond the creek, hills unfolded, and tender green buds of heart-shaped beetleweed and running ivy pushed up from rotted forest graves and ancient knobby roots, climbed through the cider-brown patches of winter leaves, spilling forth from fertile earth.

  Hearing a splash, Junia paused in the middle of the waters and gave a half-whinnying bray. “Ghee up, girl,” I said, spotting the frog. “Ghee.” I rubbed the mule’s crest. “Ghee up now.”

  The beast flicked her tail, still unsure, looking over into the trees toward the trail that led to Frazier’s place. “Ghee, Junia. C’mon, we’re on our book route.” I pulled the reins to the left, tugging her head so she wouldn’t look—wouldn’t have to remember him too.

  The mule was my inheritance, the only thing Frazier had owned, that and three dollars, some loose change, a tar-blackened spittoon, and his name. Before Frazier married me, I’d rented my mount for fifty cents a week from Mr. Murphy’s stable, same as most other librarians. I had been satisfied riding his horse or small donkey for my book routes, but I just couldn’t leave the poor animal tied to Frazier’s tree to die.

  The mule’s coat had been blood-matted, and her open wounds oozed out of flesh that sagged toward the cold winter ground. But one look at the beast told me she had a will to live, could fight with a fierce kick and big bite. And I’d seen something in her big brown eyes that told me she thought we could do it
all together.

  Pa’d said, “It’s trouble. Sell it! Ain’t worth two hoots—a horse or donkey would serve you better, Daughter. You tell a horse and ask a donkey. Yessir, horses will gladly do your bidding, but a mule, well hell, that beast is just an argument, and with that one”—he shot a finger to Junia—“you’re gonna find yourself wrestling a good deal of just that, negotiating with the obstinate creature.” Then Pa’d turned away, grumbling, “That mule’s only fit for a miner’s sacrifice.”

  I’d balked loudly at that. If a mine was shut down overnight, a miner’s sacrifice had to be made. Mules were sent in at daybreak before the shaft opened because of the fear of gas buildup overnight. The men would strap a lit candle or carbide lamp onto the beast and send it in alone. If they didn’t hear an explosion, or see a smoking, flaming mule hightail it out of the shaft, only then did the miners know it was safe to go in and start the day’s work.

  Reluctantly, Pa let me bring her back home. I bought a bottle of horse liniment, a used saddle, and soft horse blankets for the old mule. It had taken a month for me to nurse the starved, beaten beast back to health. Another month to stop her from kicking and biting me. Not Pa, nor any man, dared stand beside her still, or else the ol’ mule would sneak out a leg and sidekick them, stretch her jaw and take a hard nip of skin. But despite her temper with the men, I’d ridden her into town and marveled at how gentle and agreeable she was around the young’uns and womenfolk.

  Junia lifted her muzzle, and once more I followed her stare, bent my good ear to the breeze, stroking my lobe. Doc said the other ear might never heal, and so far he’d been right. The muddle stayed put when I tried to test it by closing a palm over the good one.

  Across the creek, a rafter of turkeys and their poults scratched for food. “He can’t hurt us no more, ol’ girl,” I soothed the mule, patted her withers. “C’mon now, we’re on official duty for the Pack Horse.” Junia prodded the breeze with her nose. Quietly, I waited, letting her decide it was safe to journey on to our book route.