The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek Read online

  The lawman planted a boot on the boy’s chest. “You assault me ever again, fire boy, and you’ll be sitting in a prison cell if I don’t stomp you down into the fires of hell first.”

  R.C. knocked his leg away, rolled over, and rose. “You—you keep your stinkin’ hands off Book Woman!”

  Ruth cried out for R.C., rushed up, and dragged him away.

  “Bluet,” Sheriff said, “you go on, girl. Take that colored babe of yours back to your holler ’fore I arrest you, or worse.”

  The sky seemed to tilt, and the earth moved as I squeezed my burning eyes and looked up at him. Worse. Pa’s words struck like a cold steel blade. Blues, many a colored have been hanged for less.

  “Someone fetch my bag,” Doc hollered, as he folded his coat under Jackson’s head and worried his healing hands over Jackson’s busted bones.

  A wail struck high, pierced and melded into old Kentucky winds, sweeping it into the pines, rattling me. I came to my senses and recognized Honey’s cries.

  “I’ve got him, Bluet. Give me room,” Doc said.

  I rose, my legs near folding, my arms reaching to the wagon for support.

  I looked back at my battered husband and my heart ached, weighed heavy like stone.

  Sheriff moved closer to Jackson and nodded to his deputy. “Let’s get him up an’ over to the jail. Doc can tend to him there.”

  The deputy motioned to two men. They lifted Jackson up and carried him across the street to jail, Doc fussing and following closely behind them.

  Sheriff rubbed his hurting jaw, lightly touched his crooked nose. He winced, then spoke low, “I’m letting you go, Bluet, because of Elijah and the sacrifices he made for the good miners here. And I know how easily Lovett could’ve tricked a simple-minded Blue.”

  I stared at the sheriff, stunned. Honey’s whimpers turned into a mournful wail, and I heard my family’s burdens, their struggles, and the unspeakable horrors they had bore in the child’s heartbreaking cries. A blinding fury balled into angry fists, and I drew a fire from it and raised a darkening hand.

  “Pa was your miner’s sacrifice, your mule,” I said, locking eyes with the lawman, “and my good pa and many a good Blue made sacrifices so you and your kin wouldn’t have to.” I looked out into the crowd. “So you and your white families would be safe—have the protection, the life we never had, the life you take for granted.” The disgust rose high in my voice, straining ugly and thin.

  Murmurs rose from the hillfolk, and I saw the truth of my words reflected in solemn faces.

  Sheriff cast his eyes downward, nudged the marriage license with his toe, then brought his heel down, ripping it in half. “The law says we’re done. Now don’t let me catch you loitering around here again unless you’re on book business.”

  Our marriage had been halved as easily as an apple, and the split cast an unbearable grief across my heart.

  “Get on, Bluet, ’fore I arrest you an’ send that afflicted babe over to Frankfort to the Home of the Idiots,” Sheriff said with a finality that hung in the air.

  “My baby,” I said in a voice so small it was lost to the wind. Shaken, I gripped the wagon rail and glanced inside at the teary-eyed child lying on the planks. Honey stretched out her arms for me, hiccupping between whimpers.

  He would do it, send her to the old asylum for feeble-minded and idiot children—the horrid place for the demented or different young’uns nobody wanted.

  I felt my knees sag. Fear punched at my insides, twisted, leaving me weak and sickened.

  Devil John brushed angrily past the sheriff to my side. “The election’s just three weeks away, Davies Kimbo, and I’ll sure enough enjoy spending my time seeing you ousted. The town will have your badge for this. Your livelihood.”

  Chants rumbled from the crowd and turned into a roar. “Take his badge. TAKE HIS BADGE!”

  Hearing the protests, Harriett spun on her heels and fled over to the Center. Eula burst out the door and blocked Harriett. The head librarian’s face writhed with rage, her words and talking hands flying hot and fast at her simpering assistant.

  “BADGE, BADGE,” the crowd thundered, their chants pounding down the dusty street, rising up into Troublesome’s ageless tree-thick crags.

  Sheriff stepped backward and placed a curling palm over his holstered gun. “Get on home, folks, ’fore I throw the lot of you in jail.”

  The deputy edged closer to him and gripped his gun, his eyes nervously darting around. “You heard him. Move along. Now!”

  Folks quieted and slowly parted.

  “I can tote you and the babe safely home, Book Woman,” Devil John offered.

  I shook my head and grabbed the wagon seat.

  Sheriff turned his back to me, signaled for the deputy to unfetter our horse from its post. “Get on back to where you belong, girl.” He raised his hand and flicked a dismissal. “Where the law and God sees it fit for your kind.”

  I glanced down at the tattered, bloodstained marriage license. Numb, I pulled myself atop the wagon. There was nothing more to be said. The sheriff, God, and Kentucky had said it for me.

  It had been foolish to dream.

  I snapped the reins.

  Dreams were for books.

  Forty-Seven

  November 27, 1940

  Dear Queenie,

  Thank you for the books. My patrons were thrilled to receive them. I was pleased to learn of your grand news that the education in librarianship is nearing completion and your graduation is almost here. Librarian! It seems only yesterday when you left Troublesome. I am happy your family is well, and pleased to inform you we are fit too.

  I’m much obliged for the new book you sent Honey for her fourth birthday. It’s one of her favorites. She demands I read it to her at first light and every night, and insists I call her Mei Li.

  Yesterday, my daughter declared she will be a librarian, and I dream it for her.

  The new library building is coming along, and soon Troublesome will open its first borrowing branch. Last month, I received an invitation from the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs in Louisville, and was given an award for outstanding service and dedication to the Pack Horse project.

  Much to my surprise and Harriett’s loud protests, when I returned to the Center, Eula quietly took down the ‘No Coloreds’ sign and tossed it out into the trash.

  Jackson is doing well, though I fear he still suffers from the beatings and hasn’t fully healed since his release from prison. He has been looking for a place for us up north near Meigs Creek in Ohio. He learned the community is also in dire need of the Pack Horse librarian services.

  Mr. Dalton has been most generous. Since one of the conditions of Jackson’s release was that he cannot reenter Kentucky for 25 years, he has been helping us out and was finally able to privately sell the last tract on Lovett Mountain. Though Davies Kimbo was voted out and never reelected, I’ve been told he watches around town for Jackson’s return and has made it his moral duty to keep him banned.

  We pray that the laws of the land will change to favor all unions, all folks one day. I remain hopeful for our safety and our future.

  I must close for now and pass this to Mr. Taft so that he can post it safely over in Warbranch for me tomorrow. Give my best to Willow and the boys. Write to me soon.

  Your friend,

  Cussy Mary

  “Mama, I wanna read the book Miss ’Retta gave me,” Honey called out.

  I raised the tip of the pencil and paused at my signature and pulled my gaze up from the letter, the brown parchment buckling, rippling under my hand.

  Honey held up the colorful storybook, The ABC Bunny. A crooked smile sat soft on her pale-blue face, brightening the shadow-darkened cove and warming our cabin that Pa’d built for me and Mama long ago.

  “I read you happy story, Mama.” Honey hoisted the book
higher. “’Bout Bunny makin’ different friends. ’Bout Kitten, Funny Frog, an’…oh! Porcupine!” She marched over to me. “Books’ll learn you, Mama. I’m Book Woman, an’ I read you this one.”

  “Come on, li’l Book Woman, let’s read on the porch while your mama finishes her letter,” Jackson said to Honey, and lightly squeezed my shoulder.

  He’d be gone back to the Tennessee hills before sunrise but couldn’t get enough of Honey—or me of him—on these precious secret visits.

  I tilted my chin up to meet his eyes.

  “I want to hear our happy story.” Jackson’s gaze lingered briefly on mine, and then he scooped up a squealing Honey and carried her outside. “Read to me, li’l Book Woman,” he sang out. “Read your papa the happy story.”

  My heart lifted, and I smoothed down the thick paper with my palm and penned Lovett to my signature with a hope-filled prayer.

  Author’s Note

  Inspired by the true and gentle historical blue-skinned people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse librarians born of Roosevelt’s New Deal Acts, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek showcases a fascinating and important footnote of history.

  In writing the novel, my hope was to humanize and bring understanding to the gracious blue-skinned people of Kentucky, to pay tribute to the fearsome Pack Horse librarians—and to write a human story set in a unique landscape.

  Methemoglobinemia is the extremely rare disease that causes skin to be blue. In the United States, it was first found in the Fugates of Troublesome Creek in eastern Kentucky.

  In 1820, Martin Fugate, a French orphan, came to Kentucky to claim a land grant on the banks of Troublesome Creek in Kentucky’s isolated wilderness. Martin married a full-blooded, red-headed, white-skinned Kentuckian named Elizabeth Smith. Martin and Elizabeth had no idea what awaited them. They had seven children, and out of those, four were blue.

  It was against all odds that, oceans away, Martin would find a bride who carried the same blue-blood recessive gene.

  Methemoglobinemia is most commonly acquired from heart disease, or airway obstruction, or taking too much of certain drugs. When acquired, it can be life-threatening.

  The Fugates’ methemoglobinemia, however, was congenital. Most of the Fugates lived a very long life, into their eighties and nineties and without serious illnesses related to their blue skin.

  Congenital methemoglobinemia is due to an enzyme deficiency, leading to higher-than-normal levels of methemoglobin in the blood—a form of hemoglobin—that overwhelms the normal hemoglobin, which reduces oxygen capacity. Less oxygen in the blood makes it a chocolate-brown color instead of red, causing the skin to appear blue instead of white. Doctors can diagnose congenital methemoglobinemia because the color of the blood provides the clue. The mutation is hereditary and carried in a recessive gene.

  I’ve modified one historical date in the story so I could include relevant information about medical aspects and discoveries. Instead of the 1930s, as is the book’s era, it was actually in the 1960s when Madison Cawein, MD, a Kentucky hematologist heard about the blue-skinned people and set out to find them. In the 1940s, a doctor in Ireland made similar discoveries among his people.

  Dr. Cawein found the Fugates tucked in isolated hollers, in the thick-treed hills of Appalachia near Ball Creek and Troublesome Creek in Kentucky. The doctor convinced them to let him draw blood, then tested, analyzed, and drew more blood. The Fugates were gracious and kind people, according to Dr. Cawein’s reports. After testing and research, he discovered the Fugates had congenital methemoglobinemia.

  Cawein first treated the Fugates with methylene blue injections that instantly turned their skin white. But the drug was only a temporary fix. Methylene blue, first used to treat cyanide and carbon monoxide poisoning, generally is secreted in the urine within twenty-four hours and can cause unpleasant side effects in the interim. The doctor left the Fugates a generous supply of oral methylene blue tablets to be taken daily. Cawein also became a protector of the Fugates, and when news media and Hollywood came to Kentucky to see the rare people, he refused to disclose their whereabouts.

  With the help of the elder Fugates, their Bible notations, and their recollections, Dr. Cawein charted the family and traced their ancestry back to Martin Fugate.

  In 1943, Kentucky banned first-cousin marriages, and the ban continues there and in most other states today. This prohibition in Kentucky was not only to prevent birth defects; it was sought for other reasons, as well. The Ku Klux Klan lobbied for the ban early and fought vigorously for the bill’s passage to keep white supremacy pure, while others wanted it to keep feuding mountain clans strong, which prevented young lovers from marrying enemy cousins and turning disloyal and increasing a clan’s numbers. Anti-miscegenation laws in Kentucky were in effect from 1866 until 1967. For anyone convicted, the penalty was a fine or imprisonment, or both.

  From what we know, the Fugates originated from France and were descendants of French Huguenots. Could the Fugates’ medical anomaly mean they were true “blue bloods” descended from European royals? The Fugates were linked only to inbreeding instead of being embraced for their very uniqueness. Even when first-cousin marriages were legal across the United States, the Fugates were shunned and shamed, suffering in isolation because of their skin color and inherited genes.

  * * *

  In 1913, the Kentucky Federation of Women’s Clubs convinced a local coal baron, John C. Mayo, to subsidize a mounted library service to reach people in poor and remote areas. But a year later, the program expired when Mayo died. It would be almost twenty years until the service was revived.

  The Pack Horse Library Project was established in 1935 and ran until 1943. The service was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) and an effort to create jobs for women and bring books and reading material into Appalachia, into the poorest and most isolated areas in eastern Kentucky that had few schools, no libraries, and inaccessible roads.

  The librarians were known as “book women,” though there were a very small number of men among their ranks. These fearsome Kentucky librarians traveled by horse, mule, and sometimes foot and even rowboat to reach the remotest areas, in creeks and up crags, into coves, disconnected pockets, and black forests, and to towns named Hell-fer-Sartin, Troublesome, and Cut Shin, sometimes traveling as much as one hundred or more miles a week in rain, sleet, or snow.

  Pack Horse librarians were paid twenty-eight dollars a month and had to provide their own mounts. Books and reading materials and places for storing and sorting the material were all donated and not supplied by the WPA’s payroll.

  With few resources and little financial help, the Pack Horse librarians collected donated books and reading materials from the Boy Scouts, PTAs, women’s clubs, churches, and the state health department. The librarians came up with ingenious ways to provide more reading resources, such as making scrapbooks with collected recipes and housecleaning tips that the mountain people passed on to them in gratitude for their service. The book women colored pictures to make children’s picture books, journals, and more, all the while vigorously seeking donations.

  Despite the financial obstacles, the harshness of the land, and the sometimes fierce mistrust of the people during the most violent era of eastern Kentucky’s history, the Pack Horse service was accepted and became dearly embraced. These clever librarians turned their traveling library program into a tremendous success.

  In the years of its service, more than one thousand women served in the Pack Horse Library Project, and it was reported that nearly 600,000 residents in thirty eastern Kentucky counties considered “pauper counties” were served by them. During those years, the beloved program left a powerful legacy and enriched countless lives.

  * * *

  Finally, courting candles. The spiral design of courting candles over a hundred years ago was likely created to keep
the melting candle in place and from slipping—a mere practicality, more folklore than fact—though they certainly could have been used later by a patriarch to teach a daughter to respect his judgment and as a way to screen for potential suitors.

  Still, I found it a commanding and curious induction of courtship. How powerful that the candle could be the source of someone’s lifelong misery or joy, and passed on in different generations. How wonderful the conversations that must have taken place around and over it.

  * * *

  A Final Note. Dearest Reader, this is one of the most important books I’ve written to date. Dear in all ways, loved in a million more. I have tried to present the novel with precise historical backdrops, which involved in-depth research; interviews; meetings with hematologists, doctors, firewatchers, and others; studying Roosevelt’s WPA programs; and living in Appalachia. If anything is omitted, or befuddles, it is strictly unintended and the fault of me, the author.

  Images from the Pack Horse Library Project

  A special thank-you to Lisa Thompson, Librarian II Archival Services Branch, Archives and Records Management Division, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives.

  Unless otherwise noted, photos are used courtesy of the Pack Horse Librarian Photo Collection, Archives and Records Management Division—Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives.

  Book carriers ready to take the trail from Hindman, Kentucky. Known to the mountaineers as “book women,” their arrival was always a welcome sight to the mountain-dwelling folk.

  Sometimes the short way across was the hard way for a horse and rider, but schedules had to be maintained if readers were not to be disappointed. Then, too, after highways were left, there was little choice of roads.

  The interior of a Pack Horse Library Center at Wooton, Kentucky. Main libraries were located in county seats, but attractive centers supplied outlying communities with reading materials.