Wonderland Creek Part 6

Faye laughed again. "Sure. But if you don't mind me being nosy, do you have a pile of servants back home to do all this work for you?"

"No, but things are easier in the city. We have an electric refrigerator and a coal furnace and a stove that runs on gas. You just light a match to it and the oven stays hot until you turn it off again."

"I seen those things in magazines."

Faye showed me how to light and stoke the fire, adding coal from the bin to keep it burning longer. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down everything. "Okay?" she asked when she finished. "I got to get on home, Allie. My kids will be wanting their dinner."

"You have children?" She didn't look any older than I was.

"Yep, four little rascals. All boys."

"Four! How old are you?" I knew it was a nosy question but I couldn't help asking.

"Twenty-three. How old are you?"

"I'm twenty-two."

"And you ain't even married yet? Gosh, folks would call you an old maid around here. I married Lloyd when I was sixteen and we had Lloyd Junior ten months later. Then Bobby, Clyde, and little Roger, all in a row."

"It must be hard to leave them every day to go to work."

"Their mamaw watches them. She lives with us. I thank the Good Lord every day that Mack set up this library and got the WPA to hire us. Otherwise, I don't know how we would get by. Lloyd ain't had work since the mine shut down . . . Poor Mack. We need him around here. He and Miss Lillie hold this whole town together."

"Did Mack grow up here?"

"The Good Lord sent him back to us just in time, and I sure hope He don't take him away yet."

"Sent him from where?"

Faye didn't reply. I had noticed that people around here ignored any question they didn't want to answer.

"I got to go. See you tomorrow, Allie."

When a curtain of shadows settled over the valley, I knew it was time to put the horse back into the shed for the night. But Lillie's horse hated me, I could tell. Every time I got close to the animal, it rolled its eyes and snorted like a dragon as it sidled away from me. I admit that I was scared to death of it. It was so big! My head barely reached its back. We danced around the yard for a while as I tried to get behind it and shoo it inside, but I finally gave up and decided to try my luck with the chickens.

Feathers everywhere! I never knew that chickens would shed feathers like a snowstorm when they were upset. You would think from the way they squawked and flapped around their yard that I was trying to catch one of them for the stewpot, not put them to bed. Every time I got three of them inside the coop, one would fly out again. And the rooster was as mean as a buzzard, flapping his wings at me as if he wanted to peck out my eyes. I was about to give up. If the foxes wanted to eat these ornery birds, they were welcome to them. Then I heard a shout.

"Hey there!"

I turned around. Lillie stood in the kitchen doorway with her hands on her hips. How she had managed to walk that far by herself was a mystery, but I left the chickens to fend for themselves and ran up to the house, praying that Mack hadn't died.

"What's wrong? What happened?" I asked breathlessly.

"That's what I want to know. I hear my hens cackling and carrying on like there's a fox in the coop. Turns out it's you."

"I'm trying to get them inside for the night."

"You're gonna scramble them eggs before they're laid, that's what you're gonna do."

"I'm sorry, but I don't know anything about chickens."

"Leave them alone, for heaven's sake. They go inside on their own when it gets dark."

That was a relief. "What about the horse? I can't get him to go back inside, either."

"Belle's a mare, not a 'him.' Can't you see the difference?" I shook my head. My cheeks felt as warm as the fire Faye had helped me kindle. "Well, just pour a little feed in her bucket and give it a shake. Should be a bag of feed in the shed."

Could it be that easy? Sure enough, I filled the bucket and rattled it, and the stupid horse walked right into the shed all by itself.

We done all we can for Mack," Lillie told me later that night. "You go on to bed now, honey. I'll keep the death watch tonight."

"Is he . . . do you think he's going to die?" I whispered the question even though Mack was asleep and probably couldn't hear me. It seemed like tempting fate to ask out loud. Considering all of the ridiculous things we had poured in him and on him today, I didn't see how he could possibly live. The man had a bullet hole that went straight in one side of him and out the other! I shuddered at the memory of all that blood gus.h.i.+ng out.

Lillie patted my arm as if to comfort me. "Only the Good Lord knows if he's gonna live or die."

What worried me the most were the secret gulps of moons.h.i.+ne I had given Mack to drink. I had shown him Cora's Mason jar when Lillie wasn't around and asked if he wanted some.

"Depends . . . Who made it?" he'd breathed.

"Who made it? I don't remember . . . One of the packhorse ladies, the tall one with the broad shoulders, told me that her brother made it. What difference does it make?"

"Cora's brother, Clint?"

"I think so."

"Okay, give me some." The liquor had made Mack cough and choke, and his face turned very red. Then he'd fallen into a deep sleep. He still hadn't awakened. Guilt plagued me for interfering with Lillie's crazy remedies.

"Run up and get me a blanket from off my bed," Lillie said, interrupting my thoughts. "And you better get me some extra bullets for this gun. Mack keeps them in his dresser drawer."

I didn't want to ask why she needed a loaded gun. I did as I was told, then went upstairs to sleep in Mack's room for the second night. Was it really only yesterday that my aunt and uncle had dropped me off? They planned to be at the spa for two weeks-fourteen long, excruciating days. If someone had tried to murder the town librarian on my first full day here, what might I expect tomorrow?

My shoulders ached from pumping water and hauling coal and firewood. This rustic life left me so exhausted that I expected to fall asleep as soon as I lay down on top of the box springs in Mack's bedroom-he was using the mattress downstairs. For the first time in my life I didn't feel like reading a book before bedtime. How could I concentrate on a made-up story after plunging into such an unbelievable real-life drama?

I tried to get comfortable without being poked by an errant bedspring and listened to the rush of the creek outside and the incessant croak of frogs. They were singing a round like a choir of hoa.r.s.e old men, taking up the refrain where the first frog left off, echoing back and forth. Instead of counting sheep, I decided to compile a mental list of all the comforts and conveniences that I took for granted back home. If that didn't work, I would try to come up with a plan for what I would do with my life after I returned to Blue Island.

I had my eyes closed, imagining Mrs. Beasley's retirement and being named head librarian in her place when something whirred past my face. I opened my eyes and saw a dark shape fluttering around my room. Was it a bird? How had a bird gotten into the house? It flew past again, swooping and dipping erratically as if it had been sipping from Mack's jar of moons.h.i.+ne. Wait! It wasn't a drunken bird, it was a bat! I grabbed my pillow to s.h.i.+eld my head and ran downstairs, whimpering as I tried very hard not to scream. Lillie sat bolt upright in her chair when I stumbled into the foyer, her eyes wide.

"Who's there?" She reached for Mack's gun.

"It's me, Lillie. Alice Ripley. Th-there's a bat flying around my room!"

She sighed and leaned back, closing her eyes. "Goodness' sakes, girl, I thought you were the angel of death, coming for Mack and me."

"Sorry . . . sorry . . . but there's a bat in my room!"

"They're creatures of the night, honey. They always come out after dark."

"Yes. Yes, I know they do."

"Well then . . . ?" She wrapped the blanket around herself and curled up in her armchair as if no further explanation was needed.

"Lillie, how am I supposed to sleep with a bat flying around the room all night?"

"Same way he sleeps during the day with you flying all around the room. Just tuck your head under your wing and close your eyes."

"But-"

"He won't hurt you none. Get some sleep, honey. We got a lot to do tomorrow."

I crept back upstairs with the pillow over my head. I lifted the covers and checked every inch of my bed thoroughly before climbing in. As I lay there trying in vain to sleep, I wasn't sure if it would be better to actually see the bat flying around again and know for certain where it was, or not to see it and wonder.

I didn't want to cry. Tears wouldn't accomplish anything and would only make my pillow soggy. I decided to recite the Lord's Prayer and any other Bible verses I could remember. I drifted off to sleep somewhere in the middle of the Twenty-third Psalm and the valley of the shadow of death.

The room was still dark when the rooster woke me up in the morning. He probably needed to be fed or let out of his coop or something, but I didn't want to move from beneath the warm covers. I had worked harder yesterday than I'd ever worked in my life, cooking all the meals, was.h.i.+ng the blood out of our clothes, cleaning the kitchen, feeding the chickens, taking care of the dumb horse-not to mention cooking up crazy teas and potions for Lillie and tending the library for Mack. Books went in and out at a steady rate with four packhorse librarians making deliveries every day, but not a soul in Acorn, Kentucky, seemed capable of walking into the library and checking out a book for himself.

I could tell that Lillie was much weaker than she let on and probably needed my help as much as Mack did. She'd had an initial burst of strength right after Mack had been shot, but had barely moved from her chair since then. She didn't eat enough to keep a chicken alive. I hoped it wasn't my cooking. She had poured what little energy she did have into saving Mack's life. All day yesterday, she had told me which herbs and roots to gather or boil or grind, then she had fallen asleep in her chair while I tried to follow her instructions. What if I went downstairs this morning and found both of them dead in the middle of the library floor?

I lay in bed a while longer, considering my options and fighting the need to use the outhouse. I finally came to the unhappy conclusion that all three of us would die of hunger if I didn't get my sorry self out of bed and make breakfast. I put on my clothes-shaking them vigorously to make sure that the bat hadn't made a nest inside them-then crept downstairs.

I peeked into the library first. Both Mack and Lillie were alive and asleep. Good. I went outside through the back door to use the outhouse and remembered to let the horse out of the shed. The spring morning was misty and cold, the surrounding hills sleeping beneath a gray blanket of clouds. The creek sounded louder than it had yesterday as it rushed through the backyard and into the woods on the edge of the property. I wondered what the name of it was. By the time I had faced down the chickens and managed to gather a few eggs, my shoes and socks were soaked from walking through the wet gra.s.s. The eggs weren't nearly as clean as the ones Mother bought in the store.

Back in the kitchen, I consulted Faye's list of instructions on how to build a fire in the stove and I managed to keep it hot enough to scramble a frying pan full of eggs. By the time they were cooked, my two patients had awakened and we ate the eggs and the last of the bread for our breakfast. I dreaded the thought of having to bake more. The only thing I knew about bread was that it came from a bakery. Sliced.

Before long, the packhorse librarians trooped in. Marjorie handed me a loaf of bread wrapped in a dish towel. It was still warm. "This is for Mack and Miss Lillie. I heard theirs got all eaten up and that you didn't know how to make more." Her tone was filled with wonder, as if I had two perfectly good legs but didn't know how to walk on them. I accepted gratefully, not caring if I had been insulted.

The women commiserated with Lillie over Mack's condition, then decided to drag Mack and his mattress out of the foyer and into the non-fiction section-formerly the dining room-to get him out of the way. "Now he'll have a nice, quiet place to either die or get well," Cora whispered to me. They visited with Mack for a while, then filled their sacks and saddlebags with books and rode off, following the creek up into the misty hills.

"We got some hard work to do," Lillie informed me after they were gone. And for the rest of the morning she had me collecting pine knots out of the woodpile so we could extract the pitch, then boiling the sticky sap with water in the black iron cauldron. My blond hair frizzed and curled in the steamy kitchen until I looked like a character from a silent horror movie. The kitchen smelled like Christmas trees.

"Lord musta known Mack and me would need some help," Lillie told me when she came out to the kitchen to check my progress. "That's why He sent you to us."

I was skeptical. I had come to Kentucky to deliver books and help catalogue them, not to boil pitch and grind leaves like a sorcerer's apprentice. Besides, I didn't believe the Almighty moved people around like pieces on a chessboard. "If G.o.d could make people do whatever He wanted them to," I asked her, "why didn't He warn Mack not to go outside yesterday? Then he never would have gotten shot in the first place."

Lillie took the wooden spoon from my hand, shaking her head, and stirred the mixture herself, watching the liquid stream off the spoon. "The Good Lord works in mysterious ways, honey."

I had heard this plat.i.tude all my life, so I decided to change the subject. "Is it ready yet? Can we stop boiling it?"

"Not quite. It needs to get thicker and gla.s.sy-looking."

I shoved more coal into the fire and took back the spoon, continuing to stir. "What are we going to do with this goo when it's done?"

"We gonna mix it with some lard to make a poultice."

"And put it on an open wound?" The thought made me cringe.

While we were waiting for the mixture to finish cooking, Lillie told me to take out another pot and pour in a couple of canning jars of tomatoes and green beans from the bas.e.m.e.nt, along with carrots, potatoes, and onions from the root cellar. "What are we making this time?" I asked as I pared the vegetables and collected the peelings in a pan for the chickens.

Lillie grinned at me as if I was the village idiot. "Lunch, honey. This here's gonna be our lunch."

The sticky concoction of pine pitch and lard was still warm when Lillie removed Mack's bandages and laid the first poultice on his chest wound. Mack cried out in agony. "Arghh! What are you doing, Lillie? Trying to kill me? That burns like h.e.l.lfire!"

"Shh . . . shh . . . don't rile yourself, honey. Only make things worse."

"They can't possibly get any worse!"

I tried to back quietly out of the room as she got ready to put another wad of goop on his shoulder, but she motioned me forward. "Go ahead and give him some of that moons.h.i.+ne, honey." I stared at her. "Come on, I know you have it and I know you been sneaking him some. This old body of mine might be breaking down, but my nose still works good as new."

I sat down beside the mattress and held the cup to Mack's lips. He guzzled it greedily. It made him cough and sputter, but eventually his breathing slowed and he drifted to sleep. "Do you think Mack's going to live?" I asked Lillie again. If it wasn't for the slow rising and falling of his chest, I would have thought he was already dead.

"Hard to say. It's up to the Good Lord." I wished she would stop telling me that. She sank back in her chair with a sigh. Her brown skin looked pale, like coffee with a lot of cream in it. Her lined face sagged with exhaustion.

"What about you, Lillie? Are you feeling okay? Is there something we can cook up to give you more strength?"

"Honey, if I knew a secret to give a hundred-year-old woman more strength, I'd be the richest woman in Kentucky."

"You're one hundred years old?"

She smiled her gap-toothed grin. "I'll be a hundred and one this Fourth of July."

That meant she must have been born in 1835. Had she been a slave? She would have been a grown woman in 1865 when the War Between the States ended and the slaves were emanc.i.p.ated. I had read the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which told about the horrors of slavery. I wondered if Lillie had lived through some of those horrors. I wasn't supposed to ask nosy questions, but I wanted to know what her long life had been like.

"Were you born here in Kentucky, Lillie?"

"Nope, across the state line in Virginia."

"Were you ever a slave?"

"I've been many, many things in this sorry life of mine, and a slave is just one of them."

"It must have been a terrible life."

"Lord knows it was."

"Did you live on a plantation?"

She nodded slowly. "My mama and me were field hands. Don't know anything about my daddy. But there was an old granny on the plantation who delivered all the babies and knew all kinds of tonics and potions to help people. She decided one day that she's gonna pa.s.s her knowing on to me. That's how I learnt. Pretty soon we was in big demand all over the county. Anybody got a sick slave or a baby doesn't want to be born, they send for us. Ma.s.sa make a lot of money off us."

"What happened when the war started? Were you near any of the battles?"

"Talk about battles-I seen more suffering than I ever hope to see again. Too much for one lifetime. They send me out after the fighting's over to help patch those poor boys up again. They didn't use nice little bullets either, like the one that went through Mack. No sir. They had great big b.a.l.l.s of metal that tear up your arm or leg when they hit you. Umm, umm, them's bad times. But even worse than them broken bodies were the broken hearts."

"What do you mean?"

"Folks get set on having their own way, and they end up with their hearts broken when it don't happen. G.o.d's the one who's deciding what's going to be and what ain't. He knows what's best even if we're too stubborn to realize it sometimes. We're like little kids fighting over the wishbone, squabbling about who's gonna get his wish. Bible says that even though we make lots of plans, it's the Lord who's gonna have His way."

She closed her eyes, and I thought she might be falling asleep. But then she opened them again and said, "What's your story, honey?"

"My story? I don't have one."