December 21, 1945
The rain was as unrelenting as the snow two days before. At the barn, Fran had to step with care to keep her boots from being sucked off in the mud.
Jeralene had gone home the day before and not shown up that morning. The creek was out of its banks and swallowing the paths the girl would have to walk to the center. So Fran milked Bella and hauled in coal for the fires.
She had people she needed to see. Becca and her baby were on the top of that list. And Granny Em. Then Jackson Perry might need a new round of pills if his pneumonia hadn’t gotten better since she saw him last week. Fran walked down to the water’s edge.
Sarge drooped along behind her, not nearly as excited by the rain as he’d been about the snow. Fran understood. Rain pounding down didn’t have the same beauty. And now the creek, fed by that rain, was turning into a raging adversary.
There’s beauty in everything if a person takes the time to look. Her grandmother’s words. Fran couldn’t remember what they’d been looking at then. Probably a garden spider and its web that Grandma Howard always admired and that gave Fran the shivers.
She did see beauty in the mad rush of the water chasing out to join up with the Middle Fork River. The river took longer to rise, so the Christmas celebrations at Wendover might still be happening. If so, they would happen without Fran. Better to stay put until the creeks stopped rising.
She looked across the rushing water up the hill toward Ben Locke’s house. It wasn’t just Becca and her baby girl she needed to see.
She blew out a long breath of air and turned back toward the center. Maybe she should just do as Seth said. Pack her bags and go home. She had loved Seth once. Had imagined having a family with him. Yesterday was not a good time to judge him. He was out of place here in the mountains.
The thing was, she wasn’t. Out of place. She raised her head to look up at the mountains and then had to close her eyes to keep out the rain. But she didn’t need to see. She knew what was there. Beauty. Raw, dangerous beauty. Rocks ready to slide down the hills. Snakes ready to slither out from under those rocks in the summertime. Snow and rain hiding the trails.
Still, she had told Seth she would think about his offer. He’d held her hands and looked sincere. But calling her Frannie? He hadn’t done that since they were in elementary school.
So different from the way Ben Locke said Francine. And the way he let his eyes rest on her. But he never once tried to take her hands. He never once said anything about love. Never once. And even if he did, could she live in these mountains forever? Then again, could she ever leave them?
Sarge ran ahead of her up on the porch and shook the water off his fur. Fran climbed the porch steps behind him. “Don’t act like you don’t like the water. I’ve seen you in the creek.”
The dog bared his teeth in his doggie grin. Wonder how Seth would like a house dog. But of course, if she went back to the city, the kindest thing would be to leave Sarge here for the next nurse. The very thought hurt Fran’s heart, but a woman couldn’t decide her future because of a dog. But then, perhaps when Ben Locke had brought her Sarge, that had set her feet on the path to her future.
Her mother’s words echoed in her head. Surely you have more sense than to fall for any of those hillbillies. Yesterday with both Ben and Seth standing in her house, she knew which one her heart leaned toward. But was loving Ben the dangerous path while going back to the city and settling down with Seth the more sensible way? She’d always been sensible.
Fran shook her head. Ben had yet to ask her to step on that more dangerous path. She might be simply imagining his interest when it was nothing more than kindness.
She reached out and stroked Sarge. “Sensible or not, I’m not going anywhere right now. I’m here until May for sure.”
That was in the agreement she had with the Frontier Nursing Service. She had to work that long in return for her training. That thought lifted her spirits, even with the rain still pounding down and the thought of January snows to come. She could handle it. In her sensible way.
Her hand was on the doorknob when she heard a faint voice over the sound of the rain.
“Hallooo.”
“Oh well, Sarge, no drying off by the fire for us.”
Fran turned to wait for whoever was hailing her. She couldn’t think of anybody with an immediate need, but as she’d told Jeralene yesterday, something was always happening.
A boy on a mule came up from the creek. He wore a slouch hat and a plastic slicker. She thought she knew everybody in the Beech Fork area, but she didn’t recognize the boy even after he got close enough for her to see his face. He was probably around Woody’s age but bigger, and he looked in a panic.
“You got to come, Nurse. My pa’s been killed.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything for him if he’s dead.” She tried to say the words as kindly as possible.
“I didn’t say he’d been killed dead. He’s still got breath in him.”
“Right.” Fran remembered the mountain way of saying somebody had been hurt. “What happened?”
“He got shot.”
“Then it could be you should carry him to the hospital.”
“Can’t do that. He’d end up in the hoosegow for sure. You got to come and fix him up.”
She didn’t like to think about what the man might have done that would land him in jail, but that wasn’t her business. Treating his wound was. “I can come, but I may still insist he go to the hospital.” Fran made her voice firm.
“You can do your insistin’, but Pa won’t go.”
No need arguing about it. “I’ll get my saddlebag and my horse.”
The boy got down off his mule and handed her the reins. “Best take my mule. Safer across the tides. I’ll bring your horse on behind you.”
“I wouldn’t know where to go.” Fran gave the mule a sideways look. There wasn’t even a saddle.
“The mule does. Jest give him his head. He’ll take you straight to the house.”
“What house? Who are you?”
“Coy Caudill. The one what everybody thought shot Woody Locke, but I wouldn’t a never done that. Woody was always nice to me. Ma says he’s probably gonna make a preacher like his pa sometimes was.” The boy wiped the rain off his face. “We, me and Ma, was right glad Woody didn’t die.”
“Then who did shoot him if you didn’t?”
The boy slid his eyes away from hers. “Can’t say that I know. ’Tweren’t Pa. I was with him. Coulda been Paps. He was a mean one. Put him in the ground last week so don’t reckon we’ll ever know.” The boy looked back at her. “That keep you from coming to see about Pa?”
“No. I’ll get my saddlebag, but I can’t ride your mule without a saddle.”
“Sure you can. Like sitting in a rockin’ chair. Just grab hold of his neck when he’s swimming the creek.” The panicked look came on the boy’s face again. “But you gotta hurry. Pa’s killed bad.”
She couldn’t believe she was agreeing to the boy’s plan, but she ran into the house to grab her saddlebag.
When Sarge followed her back out, Coy said, “Best leave your dog here. We’ve got some mean ones ready to fight most any other dog that comes around. Pa kin make ’em back off, but not me, and Pa ain’t up to yellin’ ’em down.”
She took Sarge’s collar and pulled him back in the house. He gave her a look as though she were betraying him before she shut the door. A niggling worry woke inside her of whether she’d ever see the dog or this place again. Going off on a mule to who knows where to treat a moonshiner.
Sarge barked and scratched the door, but Fran ignored him as she let the boy give her a leg up on the mule.
“You’ll have to make him go into the creek, but once he gets out on the other side, he’ll head straight for home.”
The mule did balk at the creek, but she dug her toes into his side to make him step into the water. Once in, he swam across with stoic determination and only drifted a little way downstream. Fran was already soaked from the rain, so the creek soaking didn’t make much difference. On the other side, the mule took off up the hillside in a trot just like the boy said he would.
Fran hung on and hoped the boy would catch up with her, because if he was wrong about the mule knowing its way, she’d be lost for sure.
She thought of the day Ben found her in a thunderstorm last summer and wished he was with her now. Then a new worry woke inside her. Had Ben taken justice into his own hands with the Caudills?
“You’re a nurse. Not a lawman.” She said the words out loud. She wasn’t the one to dig into what happened. She just needed to treat the wound. But she did hope Ben Locke wasn’t involved. Desperately.
She heard the dogs before she saw any sign of a house or barn. She had to be higher on the mountain than even Granny Em’s place, and nothing looked familiar. She must have gone out of her territory into the Possum Bend district. Not that it mattered. The nurses went wherever they were called.
The cabin was perched on the hillside with pines thick around it. A person could ride past and never see it if the dogs didn’t give it away. The mule went straight to the barn’s breezeway. Fran slid off the animal, draped her saddlebag over her shoulder, and gave the dogs the eye as she headed for the cabin.
The dogs slinked along behind her, but none of them bit her. At the cabin, a woman with worried brown eyes surrounded by weather-hardened wrinkles opened the door.
Without waiting for Fran to speak, she pulled the door open wide and yelled over her shoulder. “The nurse is here, Homer. I told you she’d come.” The woman turned back to Fran. “We done heard how you go all over the hills. Getting lost some too, but we knew old Pat would get you here. That ol’ mule likes to be in his own barn lot more’n most.”
“Don’t talk her ear off, woman.” The man’s voice sounded fairly strong, so maybe he wasn’t hurt as badly as the boy had feared.
“I need to wash my hands and we might need some hot water.”
“I ain’t having a baby. I took a bullet.” The man groaned.
Fran looked over at the man on a cot in front of the fireplace. “We need hot water for cleaning the wound, Mr. Caudill.” She moved over to the wash pan the woman pointed out. The room was dark with the windows boarded over to keep out the cold. “Can you light a lamp?”
“Ain’t got no lamps.” The woman twisted her apron in a knot. “We go to bed come dark. I can hunt a candle, I reckon.” She glanced around as though she didn’t know where to look first.
“That’s all right. I have a flashlight.” Fran hoped the batteries hadn’t gotten wet. She looked around as the woman handed her a towel. No children peeked out around the doors or from the loft.
“Is Coy your only child, Mrs. Caudill?” Fran hoped talking family might put the woman more at ease.
“Onliest one left to home. Others is some scattered.”
“Ain’t nothing to you where our boys is at,” the man said. “Git on over here and see to my leg.”
Fran approached the cot with some trepidation, but Homer Caudill wasn’t the first contrary patient she’d treated here in the hills. His pants leg was cut open at the seam and laid back. He held a blood-soaked towel down on the wound.
“What happened?”
“Don’t see how that makes any matterance to you. Jest fix it. I’m bleeding like a stuck pig.” His scowl grew fiercer. “The old woman said you kept that Locke boy from bleeding out after he was shot, so you could do the same for me.”
“He went to the hospital, where the doctor treated his wound.”
“I ain’t goin’ to no hospital.” The man raised up off the pillow and glared at Fran a few seconds before he grimaced and fell back. “You’re gonna fix me right here.”
“I’ll have to probe for the bullet. It will be painful.”
“Jest get on with it. The boy kin hold my leg to keep it from jerking if’n that’s what has you in a stir.”
Right on cue, the door opened and the boy came in, bringing the damp smell of the rain with him. “Rain’s lettin’ up, but fog’s a-rising.”
Fran looked out before Coy shut the door. Outside the light was dim as though toward night. She squinted down at her watch. Barely past noon. Maybe the skies would clear a little before she had to find her way back to the center. No time to worry about that now. She had a gunshot wound to treat. Whether or not she liked the patient had no bearing on the treatment.
Fran laid out the instruments she might need and, with a last glance at the man’s stony face, began. He was as tough as he claimed, and though the boy did keep a firm grasp on his foot, it wouldn’t have been necessary. The man flinched, but he didn’t jerk away as she extracted the bullet and cleansed the wound.
“An unusual wound,” she said as she stitched it up.
“That’s ’cause he went and tripped on a root and shot hisself,” Coy spoke up.
Relief rushed through Fran that Ben had nothing to do with the man getting shot.
“You talk too much, boy.” The man’s voice was weaker now. “It ain’t like I done it a purpose. Leastways it wasn’t a gut shot. If’n it had been, you might be putting me in the ground beside Pap.”
“You’re right. That would have been much worse.” Fran packed up her saddlebag. “Leave the bandage on and keep it dry. I’ll come check on it in a couple of days.”
“Best you not come around agin.” The man fixed his stare on her. “I knows where you’re at if’n it don’t heal up.”
She hoped that wasn’t a threat. “Then you need to watch it for signs of infections. Red streaks out from the wound or pus. Plus you’ll need the stitches out in a few weeks.”
“I got a knife.”
Fran didn’t argue. She was just glad to walk out of the house into the foggy afternoon.
Coy followed her to get her horse out of the barn. He had brought Moses and not Jasmine. He pointed down the hill. “Head toward the holler. The fog might not be so thick lower down.”
Fran looked around. She should wait until the fog lifted, but she couldn’t bear the thought of going back in the cabin with Homer Caudill. Coy was right. If she headed down and found a creek, she could follow it and get somewhere she knew.
“I’d guide you off the hill, but I got to stay here to tend to Pa. He’s mean as a half-starved wildcat, but he’s still my pa.”
“I understand.” Fran put her hand on his arm. “You’re a good boy. You don’t have to end up like him.”
“Ma tells me the same. On the sly. Says the Feds are bound to get Pa sooner or later, and she don’t want me to land in jail with him. I’d head off to the mines, but I don’t want to leave Ma up here by her lonesome if’n Pa did come to bad. He don’t let me help him at the still. Him and Pap used to do it all so’s I could stay out of trouble. He ain’t all bad.”
“That’s good to know.” Fran positioned her saddlebag on Moses and then mounted up. She looked down at Coy. “Is Granny Em’s place near here?”
“Not so far. West a couple of miles as the crow flies, but that would be rough goin’. Ain’t sure how far if’n you stick to trails. A good piece. In this soupy air, you’d be better served headin’ down the hill. I hear tell you ain’t good with directions, but up and down is easy enough.”
“You’re right. Down.”
She started Moses down the trail. When she looked back, Coy was gone. Swallowed up by the fog. Ahead, she could make out a faint path. Nothing for it but to keep going and hope the fog lifted.
She was going to get so lost. She was already lost. If only Sarge were with her.