On top of my mountain, in the warmth of my cabin, I removed the last burr from Old Mongrel’s coat and brushed him smooth in the soft warmth of the fire. Outside, the wind was pummelin’ the little cabin like it was angry, tryin’ to scare me out of my contentment. With the dog snorin’, put to sleep by my brushin’, I stood up to reheat some beans on the stove, rustlin’ in the tin canister for yesterday’s leftover cornbread. I wasn’t hungry but I needed to eat. Skippin’ through meals up on them mountains meant certain weakness, not a chance I was willin’ to take, particularly in the cold of winter, and like the animals had warned me, this winter was already shapin’ up to be a hard one.
While the beans was heatin’, I went over to the little table beside my bed and picked up that book. Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I didn’t have no idea what it was about, but I liked the slim, cool feel of it in my hands. I had not held a book in a long, long time. I lit the bedside lamp by an ember from the stove, and settlin’ myself into the only upholstered chair I had, opened the cover and began to read.
I, of course, hadn’t never seen the sea. I hadn’t never seen anythin’ beyond a few miles outside of Cedar Hollow. A small sadness landed on my chest for a minute, but then I let it go. I continued with my readin’, forgettin’ about them beans until the scorched smell brought me back to my senses. I stood and removed the pot from the hot stove, dumped a dipperful of beans into a bowl on top of a slab of stale cornbread, and went back to my readin’, enjoyin’ the tale of that little seagull. Outside, the blizzard was just a-howlin’.
Down in the valley, Corinne finally fell into an exhausted and bitter sleep. John Paul, still puzzled and concerned, washed up in the bathroom, and climbing into the single guestroom bed, prayed his wife would be back to herself in the morning.
Across town, Gerald Smith sat alone in his apartment above the general store, quiet if not content in the dark, gazing into the fire and smoking his pipe as he had done for the twenty-odd years since his wife had passed on. He missed her still, and thanked God for every day he had been blessed to have her.
Restless, he stood and pulled back the curtain. The storm was moving fast over the mountains; the snow coming down hard. Mr. Smith watched the night and thought of Billy May on her mountain, surrounded by the blizzard. He thought often of Billy May and Corinne, not the women of the present, the silent, stoic woman he had seen a few weeks ago and the sad, weeping one he had seen the other day, but of the girls they once had been.
His wife had loved those girls dearly. She loved all the children of the town, but Billy May and Corinne had held a special place in the hearts of nearly all the residents of Cedar Hollow, not only because they had lost their fathers in such a terrible way, but also because in spite of the loss, they were happy children; it was impossible not to love them. His wife had agonized over her inability to bear children, and spoiling the girls with treats had helped to fill the void. Mr. Smith didn’t know exactly what had happened between them, but he did know that whatever it was, overnight they had changed from fresh faced little girls to broken women.
On this frigid West Virginia night, he looked out the window, up towards the mountain, smoking his ancient pipe and reminiscing. In some small way, after the loss of their fathers he had felt a responsibility to look after them, especially since he had no children of his own. Somehow, he had failed them; he had not protected them. That knowledge hurt him to the core. Silly old man, he berated himself. Blubbering like a senile old fool. He wished more than anything at that moment that his wife were there beside him. She had always loved the cozy warmth of a fire on a snowy night.
Farther down Main Street, Miss Valerie Burnett, the town’s temporary librarian, tiptoed barefoot across the freezing hall in the boarding home to wash her face before bed. She didn’t mind the inconvenience of this arrangement, because in just a few months, her internship complete, she would graduate from Marshall University with her degree in literature and then, as soon as Thomas was honorably discharged from the service, she would be Mrs. Thomas Poindexter the third, living far away from this coal mining town. Thomas had made it safely through Vietnam, thank the Lord; now it was just a matter of time before they could be together. For the time being, though, she was fascinated with the life of the locals. Just a couple of weeks ago, Billy May Platte, local legend, recluse, and mountain woman extraordinaire, had shown up at the library. Where else but here could a girl have an exciting experience like that?
Some folks around town said Billy May was really a man in disguise (and some said much worse than that, but Miss Burnett wouldn’t stoop to repeating those things). But Mr. Smith had told her that Billy May had at one time been the prettiest girl in town. Besides, Miss Burnett could tell Billy May was no man. She was too slender, her bone structure too delicate, and up close as she had seen her, Miss Burnett had been surprised to see that in spite of her crop of unruly black hair and her weather-worn face, Billy May still had some of the prettiness that must have been evident in her youth.
The town was small, but it did have its fair share of excitement. Miss Burnett had hardly been able to stand waiting through the dreary afternoon until the library closed. She had rushed home as soon as possible to sit at the tiny wooden desk in her rented room and write Thomas about her meeting with the reclusive mountain woman, relishing the juicy details of the gossip of the townsfolk. Just imagining his response made her smile in anticipation. Climbing into bed, she drifted serenely off to sleep, thoughts of Thomas causing an involuntary little gasp of pleasure as she did so.
Still farther along down Main Street, Jimmy Williamson stirred and finally sat up, wet and frozen and covered with snow, in the gutter into which he had fallen and passed out after one too many drinks of old man Pritchett’s nonexistent moonshine, the family business now run by the sons. He wondered, grasping for any memory whatsoever of the game, whether he had won or lost at poker. No matter, he thought now, broke was broke, so what the hell difference did it make? Besides, the poker game had only been preliminary entertainment. The main event, he remembered quite well. Stumbling to his feet, inadvertently passing wind and pissing himself in the process, he lurched his way towards the shack he called home, urine steaming in the frosty air, cursing and mumbling under his fetid breath as he limped his lopsided way down Main Street.
And just off the main road, down across the tracks, in the shack for which Jimmy was now headed, Sue Ann sat quietly, staring into the darkness, trying to remember what decisions she had made that had led her to this point. Was it, she wondered, one big decision? One single moment, one option, that had she simply chosen differently would have led to a different life? Or was it a series of small decisions, each unto itself unimportant and forgettable, that, when combined with the rest, resulted in this life? Which ill-fated choices had led her to this? She no longer knew.
What she did know, when she allowed herself to think of such things, was that never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined herself here, in this town, in this shack. True, she had grown up in Cedar Hollow, but she had grown up the privileged daughter of the town’s only doctor. Dr. Leary had been respected and loved by nearly everyone in the town. His only daughter had been sought after, with never a shortage of dates and invitations and plenty of suitors from which to choose, not only from Cedar Hollow but from miles around.
And she had married well the first time—very well, actually—perhaps most well because she had truly loved the man she had married. She had moved from Cedar Hollow to live near her husband’s family in Memphis while her husband served his country during World War II, but he had never made it home. In a wicked twist of fate her first husband had died in the war, at the very end, just before the damned thing was declared over, struck down not by a German bullet but by his own when he tripped over a pile of rubble on a cobbled street in Paris and misfired his own gun. She had received word of his death nine days after Allied forces declared victory over Germany and Japan.
For reasons she could no longer remember (perhaps she had simply had nowhere else to go?), she had eventually returned to Cedar Hollow. Now here she was, in this hellhole of a house, in this hellhole of a town, barely able to take care of one son and unable to bear more, thanks to the monster of a man she had last married. Sue Ann rocked in her chair in front of the empty fireplace, never even noticing the cold.
At first I was confused, thinkin’ the poundin’ was that of Jonathan, that spunky little seagull, beatin’ his wings and tryin’ to soar above the earth at seventy miles an hour. Finally, though, the sheer desperation of the knockin’ roused me from my sleep. The old mongrel was makin’ a noise low in his throat, not a growl so much as a keenin’ sound, an anxious whine. His eyes was fastened to that plank door, and his paws was scrabblin’ against the wooden floor at its base.
My very first feelin’ was panic. No one came to my cabin. No one. That was the way I had planned it, and it was the way I had lived for all them years. Standin’, confused at first, rubbin’ the sleep out of my eyes, I hesitated for just an instant and then grabbed my rifle from the rack above the bed. Slowly, keepin’ quiet, I approached the door. Cockin’ the rifle and proppin’ it against my shoulder, I hollered out, “Who’s there?” Silence. And then...was it my imagination? A thin cry, lost in the howl of the blizzard.
It was then that I knew, and my blood froze with the knowin’. I fumbled in my hurry, finally throwin’ open the latch. I yanked the door open, momentarily losin’ my breath in that frigid wind. The girl fell forward, crumplin’ into a heap on the plank floor, her dark hair covered in snow, her eyelids flutterin’, purple with the cold. Actin’ fast, I grabbed the girl under her arms and dragged her into the warm cabin, slammin’ and latchin’ the door behind me.