The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek Read online

  Angeline picked up a stick. “I know’d its name I’m giving it. Want to see?”

  Surprised and curious she’d already given thought to the baby’s name, I sputtered out yes.

  She crouched down with her stick and scrawled carefully in the dirt, working each letter on her lips, scratching out two, and then trying again. Satisfied, she stood and pointed. “HONEY.” She poked her stick at the name. “I know’d it when I made myself a tea and read the leaves, and they said it’d be a girl. I want her to be real sweet like that.” She rubbed her tiny belly.

  “Honey. That’s a fine name,” I said, because it reminded me of Angeline’s sweet nature.

  “Willie don’t. He said it was a colored’s name, and he won’t have it.” Angeline swiped her hand down her dusty skirts and looked off like she was counting the sunsets until she gave birth. Tiredness and disappointment spread across her face. “Here Willie’d promised to take me to the summer hootenanny to hear the men with the fiddles. Don’t reckon there’ll be any dancing now.”

  I studied on the baby-care pamphlets back at the library that the health department had dropped off and reminded myself to bring one to her.

  Angeline shook her skirts and placed a hand over her belly. “Here I’m already sixteen, knocked up and about to get withered from the seed, and hain’t even danced myself a proper jig.” She rubbed a bony fist over her eyes.

  I lifted an arm. “I reckon you don’t need a hootenanny to have dancing. Or a fancy fiddle even. It’s free as rain and here for the taking.”

  Angeline brightened at that. “I know’d lots of songs, and I can dance some.” She sang an old, lively ballad, twirled around once, twice, until she was laughing, her sweet musical voice filling the air.

  “You have a fine voice,” I said.

  “I got lots more, Bluet.” The girl sang another cheerful one and spun again. She glimpsed my feet tapping the ground, my hand bouncing off the side of my skirts. It was as if they had a mind of their own, and I stopped at once, fearing I’d made a spectacle of myself.

  When Angeline finished her tune, she said, “Be sure an’ tell Doc them seeds are from Minnie’s lot. God rest her. An’ her corn… Well, it’s worth twice his fee if a man could pay in money. Three times, even.”

  She looked proud, like she had given something as big as the moon and worth all the heavens.

  I dropped them into my pocket. “I’ll be going to town in May, and I’ll make sure he gets them.”

  “You can give ’em to Jackson.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  “Jackson Lovett,” she said. “Hain’t seen him yet, but he’s come home now. He settled in the ol’ Gentry homestead an’ Willie said he’s always running to town for supplies. Hain’t he on your route?”

  “Mr. Lovett?” I touched the saddlebag, suddenly remembering there was a new stop today, though I hadn’t heard who it was and only that it was a man Eula Foster had told me about, and that there would be another added to my already long route. “Yes, I think he is.” I mounted Junia.

  “He went and built a dam out west for the president, I heard.” Angeline squinted up at me.

  “Hoover Dam,” I marveled, recalling the wonder I’d read about in magazines.

  “D-A-M,” Angeline spelled. “You ride her home safe, Junia.” Angeline scratched the mule’s ears, sneaking glimpses of me, and then said quietly, “I heard. Heard about that book woman, Agnes, losing her horse trying to cross Hell-fer-Sartin Creek. Heard the way it up and laid down in the snow and… Well, it passing on her like that was real bad.”

  I wondered how she’d found out about Agnes’s accident, then realized I’d seen Mr. Moffit outside the Center in December. Or maybe the news came with the mail delivery that traveled the hills every two weeks. Though I never recalled seeing any mail in their home. Weren’t no other visitors but me and the mail courier in these hills, except for Doc, when a fellar couldn’t right himself with his own homemade tonic and could afford the physician’s services.

  “Willie used to have hisself kin planted up there in Hell-fer-Sartin. I did too,” Angeline said. “Hain’t never met any of ’em, though.”

  The small town of Hell-for-Certain—uttered and spelled as Hell-fer-Sartin, what an old preacher called it when asked about his visit there decades ago and what stuck to folks’ tongues ever since—sat two counties over. Steep rocky inclines, twisty devil land, and one of the most difficult book routes a Pack Horse librarian could have.

  Agnes’s old rented horse, Johnny Moses, snapped a leg at the mouth of Hell-fer-Sartin Creek. Agnes pulled off Johnny Moses’s fat pannier and packed all the reading supplies onto her back, leaving the dying animal in the snow. She stopped at the Baxter cabin and sent the man off to end the poor beast’s suffering. Ol’ Mr. Baxter was bound to make good use of every ounce of that rented meat and every inch of its hide until the owner came and fetched whatever was left.

  Agnes had journeyed onward a good sixteen miles on foot, up and down ravines, coves, and passes, along the dangerous trails, missing not one patron on her book drop, somehow making it home with nary a scratch to show for her two long, troublesome days.

  Angeline continued, “Never been to Hell-fer-Sartin neither. Most of my folk come from Cowcreek, where I was born. Where my Willie first met me.” She shot me a soft smile. “But Mamaw always said some of our kin stayed put in them ol’ hills of Hell.”

  We talked a few more minutes until Junia sounded a warning, shaking off my worrisome hand combing through her mane.

  “See you Monday,” Angeline said.

  “Ghee up, ol’ girl.” I waved goodbye.

  Angeline picked up her stick and dragged it through the muck, a lost lullaby spilling, calling up the long day. She paused. “Hear that?”

  I strained my ears. Somewhere, a rain crow rolled out its gravelly whine. The bird sang again, and once more, this time longer, and I searched the skies for storm clouds. Bright blue.

  “That’s three times now,” Angeline fretted.

  Mountaineers thought the crow’s calling came as a death warning. Angeline’s eyes sought mine, and I saw the fear in them that the bird had sung it for her. Again the bird stuttered its mournful song.

  Five

  I rode to my next book drop, leaving the rain crow’s warbles on the mud path, thinking about Mr. Moffit’s wound and the baby coming.

  It could’ve been me with child, and I shuddered to think how close I’d come to it, possibly birthing another Blue—and with Frazier’s dirty seed at that, and during these hard times too.

  I pulled in my shoulders, kneed Junia onward, and picked up a lively whistle to take leave of the dark thoughts, ignoring the dismay I’d pocketed at the Moffits’.

  At the mouth of the woodlands, Junia rooted herself to a halt and perked her ears. After a bit of coaxing, I urged her on into the belly of the woods. Inside, dark earth, leaves, rotting logs, and crawling moss rose among the pine saplings, cottonwoods, and honey locusts and canopied the beaten path, pulling me deeper into my thoughts. Halfway through, a twig snapped and Junia stopped, swished her tail, and heaved, stirring me from my contemplations.

  “Ghee on, girl, ghee.” I rubbed Junia’s briary mane and stroked her enormous floppy ears.

  To our right, I caught a glimpse of what looked to be a haint, then blinked and saw the trick that had caused it.

  Weren’t no such spirit, just a man sly-eyeing me. He didn’t fool me none with his pasty-white face. Darkly he was, filled to the brim with the blackness inside. And he weren’t really hiding, more like in waiting, slumped against the bark, a boot propped up on a knobby root, not bothered by who saw him, I reckoned, and making sure I did, I know’d.

  It was preacher man Vester Frazier, my dead husband’s cousin. I’d seen him poking around the woods a week ago when I inspected my trails, and in town at the Center loitering
near Junia. He’d been coming for me a good while, and more boldly since I’d been left widowed.

  He’d done the same to others like me: Michael McKinney, the three-nippled midget who rode his goat cart bare-chested across the hills, a boy with pink eyes and skin and hair the color of a white lamb, the seven-year-old Melungeon girl who had fits that tonic and herbs couldn’t quiet, and the Goodwin woman whose triplets Vester Frazier set his sights on, declaring It ain’t fitting for a Godly woman to birth more than one young’un, only beasts, and it is surely Satan’s doings to plant multiple seeds in a female like that. And there were the godless, those who’d never found a church, and a few ungodly others Vester Frazier and his followers thought the devil had given those peculiarities to. The odd markings with no names.

  When Vester Frazier and his First Mountain Truth of Christ congregation tried to chase the devils out by baptizing those sinners down in the cold, fast waters of Troublesome Creek, the seven-year-old fell into a coma and perished, two of the triplet babies drowned, the paper-white boy was left a mute, and Michael McKinney suffered a broken limb and busted collarbone before escaping, never to be seen again.

  Pa had done his best to keep me from Frazier’s christening. When I was born, Pa said he’d chased the preacher off our land with a gun, picking the Bible right out of his hands with a single shot. When I turned six and once more when I struck twelve, Pa had to run him off again. Then Pa had Sheriff talk to him and thought he was rid of him for good.

  That Frazier was on my route, way up here, terrified me. He had to be hunting me. I searched for his mount and saw that he’d hidden it and had lain in wait.

  My breath came short and fast, and a pounding in my temples seized hold.

  Alarmed, Junia backstepped. I jerked on the reins, kicking her flanks, urging her on past. But the mule wouldn’t obey. Instead, she struck her ears forward, bawled loudly, and swung her head sideways, readying to battle Frazier.

  I slid down off her, groping wildly for the straps, trying to latch on and lead her past the preacher man.

  Frazier stepped out onto the path, and Junia blew her hot horsey breath in his face. He caught Junia’s bit, yanking hard, cutting her mouth. She reared to get away, and he kicked her hind leg, sending her tumbling backward onto the dirt, a scream strangled in her chest.

  “Junia!” I reached for her. “Please don’t harm her.”

  The old mule tried to rise and shake him off, but Frazier had her locked down by his grip on the bit in her soft gums and a boot on her neck.

  “You wouldn’t be spreading the word of Satan on this fine day, now would you, Widow Frazier?” Preacher asked.

  “Let her go. I’m on library duty, Pastor. Give us safe passage.”

  “On a sinner’s path,” he snarled. “God will surely cast you down unto the chains of darkness for your wickedness unless you seek salvation through baptism.”

  “It’s for the WPA program. I’m on government business.”

  “Another sorry lot of devils. Let me give you Jesus, Widow Frazier. Help pull you through the fires so you can get forgiveness and bask in His salvation.”

  He bent over and slapped at his pant leg wet from Junia’s slobber, keeping an eye locked my way.

  The pastor half-bent like that reminded me of Charlie Frazier, and I shrank back. The same dirty hair, scraggly beard, and rotting-bark-brown teeth, him leering and looking like he wanted to give me a different salvation from Jesus’s.

  Junia’s flesh quivered, and she fought to free herself from his grasp. Frazier jerked harder on her leathers, the mule’s wild eyes swelling, pooling in a darkness from fear, maybe from a recognition of his horrid kin who’d hurt her before. Then she went still except for her heaving rib cage.

  “You’re hurting her. Stop!” I tried to pry off his hands. Junia’s tongue hung limp out the side, her mouth slathered in froth, her bulging dark eyes ringed with a white terror.

  “P-please, Pastor Frazier, let us go—”

  His eyes flashed, and then he loosened his hold, swung out a lazy kick to Junia’s soft gray muzzle, startling and sending her up and flying in a panicked scramble of twigs and dust.

  “Junia, whoa, whoa,” I yelled after her.

  Frazier snatched my arm, jerked me back. “Anywhere you’re tramping off to can’t be good.” His breath blew rancid in my face.

  I turned my head. “I’m working, sir. I have to get to my next stop.” I felt the color blazing across my skin, my hands needling a blackish blue. “Please…please let me pass, Pastor.”

  “Doing the devil’s work by carrying sinful books to good and Godly folks. You’re unclean, born of sin. In need of church.”

  “They…they’s clean books, and my mama taught me the Lord’s Word.”

  “You’re a heathen!” He poked the words onto my chest.

  “I know’d the Lord Jesus. Let me go now.” I said this like a truth, although weakly with little might since we both know’d the Blues didn’t have a church—I’d never been in one, or even been invited inside the smallest holler chapel. Home was church.

  “She was soiled,” he hissed, “godless, and is surely burning in hell for laying her sins, you, in Godly land.”

  “I ain’t no such, Pastor! I ain’t a sin.” I tried to wiggle free from his bruising hold. “My folks said God’s not just in your church. Mama know’d the Lord and read her Scripture daily. Weren’t soiled—”

  “She was the beast’s slittail. And the only pure word is His written word from the church and what He directs me to give to you. You’re a devil, girl, who’s done her evil on Charlie, and sorely in need of that direction.”

  “Please, Pastor—”

  “I can save you. God can cure you of that devil color.” He gripped my arm harder. “It’s my calling to bring home the lost, my duty to save my kin. Come with me now.”

  I looked around, seeing nothing but forest and nowhere to escape, the terror pummeling inside me.

  There’d been stories from time to time. Whispers about women who’d been dropped right in their paths, taken viciously on the forest floor, ravaged by vile men. And I know’d Vester Frazier was a vile one.

  When the Pack Horse program started, a librarian was accosted by a drunken bootlegger on her route, and her mount was stolen. Furious, the sheriff sent out a posse to find him. The lawman was fond of the library program and admired the services of the Pack Horse librarians. Pa said they’d found the drunk and brought him into town, publicly whipped him outside the Library Center, and then dragged his half-dead body back up into the hills by the very same packhorse he’d stolen. The offender had been left next to a pile of bear scat.

  Sheriff said it was important to have the librarians in our area where there weren’t any, and with only one school with old textbooks to read from at that. He declared whoever harmed a librarian, or dishonored or disgraced the Pack Horse women and their service, would meet harsh consequences. Then he nailed his warning inside the post office, and folks had cheered.

  It made our jobs safer. And with Junia, I’d felt even more protected. I searched the trees for her, but she was nowhere in sight.

  “Leave me be. Leave me, or the sheriff will bring down the law on you,” I threatened.

  “Law.” His lips flattened. “I don’t give three shits about man’s laws, or diddly-squat about that ol’ stupid relation of mine.”

  Although the sheriff had married into the pastor’s family, I’d heard he’d squabbled with Frazier over a track of land long ago, and there had been bad blood between them ever since.

  “My pa’ll”—my mouth grew hot and dusty—“my pa’ll sic the law on you.” The scratched words slipped through my teeth, weakening.

  “You listen up, girl. There is only His law in this land.” The preacher pulled me closer and rasped, “There’s a stream just beyond the thicket. I can give you a baptism there
, cleanse you good—and give you a salvation you never know’d the likes of and what poor ol’ Charlie couldn’t.”

  He would have his way with me, then drown me, I was certain.

  He tightened his hold. “It was true that ol’ boy could never hold on to his land or his whores. What is peculiar is that you’d be the last. You use your witching ways to do him in, maybe use some of that hot blue slittail of yours?” He rubbed himself against me and slid busy hands over my bottom and to my breasts, digging in his bony fingers to feel me.

  I jerked hard, tried to break free, but he had a muscled grip. “Let go—”

  “Come with me now.” He held tight, moving his mouth to my ear. “I’ll put a hot-white fire inside of you that’ll burn out them blue demons for good.”

  Frazier wrapped his hands around my neck, yanked me to him, and soaked my lips with an ugly rough kiss.

  With the back of my hand, I swiped my mouth, spit, and saw a trickle of blood where his teeth had scraped my flesh. He latched his lips onto mine again. I struggled against him, fighting a sickness rising from my belly, remembering the blood that had stickied my thighs when Charlie Frazier had rolled off me—the month I’d spent scrubbing between my legs, rawing, bloodying my flesh to rid myself of his stain.

  Behind the pastor, I caught the long shadow of something, someone, then heard a loud thump and a startled braying.

  Junia screamed and trampled toward us, kicking up a squall of black earth and rot.

  “Blue Witch.” Frazier’s voice burned. He shoved me to the ground and ran off into the woods with Junia thundering after him and chomping hard teeth, her maddening cries skinning the bark of pines.

  Six

  Junia returned from the woods alone. Shaken, I stood beside her and said a prayer. But as always, without a church, there was a falseness in my pleas, a disbelief in my folks’ claim that God was everywhere, and soon a shamefulness took hold as I realized I was a sinner. No matter how much or how hard I prayed, I was still unchurched—left with a nothingness and belonging nowhere. And I know’d the Lord Jesus would surely see fit to stick me with more of nothing for the rest of my days.