Seated in the Notchey Creek Public Library, Harley thought about death and about ghosts, two phenomena she hadn’t given much consideration until recently. Beyond the quiet warmth of the library, the autumn wind howled through the trees, smacking their limbs against the window panes, the leaves clawing at small cracks in the sills. She sat at a long mahogany table and, the microfiche being out of operation, she was reduced to combing through a disorganized mess of newspapers, written accounts, and diary entries dating back more than a century.
Over the last two hours, she had managed to litter the table with swaths of archaic texts, some handwritten in the embellished style of old, and some typed on old-fashioned typewriters with a letter or two of text missing.
Those documents were part of Notchey Creek’s oral history, having been spun for generations by the region’s old timers before being put to paper. Those old timers must have taken great delight in rehashing the town’s many tragic events from the comfort of their rocking chairs, their stories embellished with each curl of wood that fell from their whittled cedar sticks. Harley imagined their wives, seated in straight chairs beneath neighboring shade trees, smiling into their needlework as their husbands, once again, recounted those stories to anyone who cared to listen.
And when the old timers were done with their part, the stories rose with the smoke of campfires on dark, sprawling farms, igniting the imaginations of teenagers, who years later would tell the stories to their own children, tucked into beds on screened-in back porches, the crickets humming moonlit symphonies among tall strands of Johnson grass, the fireflies floating in dappled sparks among garden hedges.
Nonetheless, for Harley’s purposes, it was hard to separate the weeds from the chaff in the paper melee.
With a yawn, she pulled her long dark hair into a loose ponytail and massaged the back of her neck, sore from the hours of crouching and reading. At twenty-six it seemed as if she had been reading longer than she had been walking, but her body still ached from hours of research underneath the library’s bright fluorescent lights. But she loved the comfort of the library, its familiar aromas, its polished wood tables, its worn leather chairs, the endless rows of dusty hardbacks. They brought back lingering spells of childhood nostalgia, of when she would make daily pilgrimages to the library after school.
In neighboring chairs, senior patrons staved off post-breakfast naps with steaming mugs of coffee and large-print editions of commercial spy thrillers. Mornings in the library were generally quiet, the peacefulness permeated only by the snores from her neighboring patrons or from the sound of Hettie Winecoop’s wayward library cart as it groaned its way down the aisles.
Hettie rolled the rusty book cart past numerous tables, collecting stacks of old books and returning them to even older shelves. Everything in the library was old, it seemed. A century ago, the red brick structure was the philanthropic dream of Augustus Sutcliffe, a timber baron whose name was forged on most of the town’s important buildings.
Architecturally inspired by a visit to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Augustus Sutcliffe had commissioned a domed skylight for the library, one that afforded a beautiful view of the morning sun, sending prisms of light through the overarching maples.
Hettie Winecoop leaned past Harley and removed a stack of books from the table. Though Harley had added to the librarian’s workload significantly that morning, Hettie was always pleasant, even eager to inquire about how she was doing.
“How’s the research going, sweetie?” she asked.
Harley rested her glasses on the table, the rims spread across the pages of an open book. “It seems like I’m finding everything but what I’m looking for. And I’ve certainly read enough tales about all the people who’ve died in the creek over the years. Goodness. I didn’t realize there were so many.”
“It’s true.” Hettie gave half a laugh, but there was no humor behind it. “I guess there have been an awful lot over the years. Of course, there’s tragedy in any town’s history, but it’s been a bit heavy-handed in Notchey Creek. But that creek’s awfully old, Harley. Older than the dinosaurs. As old as the Smokies themselves.”
And from the Smoky Mountains the creek had been born, flowing from a vein of the Tennessee River, furrowing through the verdant fields of Knox County, and treading south for ten miles into the rolling pastures of the Tennessee Valley. When Notchey Creek, at last, reached the small town bearing its name, it dwindled to a five-mile stretch of babbling stream rich with crawfish and minnows, framed by overhangs of weeping willows and pebble-laden banks.
“Yes,” Hettie said, shaking her head, “there’s been a bunch of those stories told around town over the years. Let’s see, there was that one about the two bootleggers back during Prohibition. Remember them? The two who shot each other in that moonlit brawl beside the creek one night. Then, to beat all, the Notchey Creek Decency League fished out all the change that’d fallen from their pockets—donated it to The Temperance League.”
She released a raspy laugh, and a tuft of her shaggy white bangs stood on end, causing her to head to resemble a dandelion caught by a spring breeze. Harley watched as the strands came alive, moving with Hettie’s words.
“And what about Miles Pruitt?” she asked. “You remember him? He was the one who ruined that local girl back in the forties. What was her name?”
“Bessie Winfield, I think.”
“Yes, Bessie Winfield!”
Harley could tell that Hettie, like the old timers, found her own delight in rehashing the creek’s many tragic events.
“And then when he refused to marry poor old Bessie, her father shot him. Just like that. Didn’t think twice about it either. And did you know that Bessie’s father was the town’s dentist?”
Harley feigned ignorance and Hettie said, “He sure was. Now, isn’t that something?” She tucked her hands into her book apron. “Anyway, they found Miles’s body floating in the creek the next morning. Doc Winfield’s spent shotgun shells were bobbing in the current beside him.”
“And didn’t Bessie die in the creek, too?” Harley asked.
She nodded. “Of a broken heart, if you ask me. They found her some weeks after Miles had died. She killed herself, apparently. Witnesses said that her hair was floating like palm fronds on the creek’s surface, and her body was surrounded by wells of bobbing cattails. Looked like she’d been laid to rest in some kind of watery tomb.”
Harley organized the various papers into piles, and Hettie said, “I do apologize again for the disorganization. When they converted everything digitally, I guess they didn’t take the time to reorganize it. I’ve been meaning to get to it myself, but we’re understaffed right now, and I just haven’t had the time.”
“It’s okay,” Harley said. “And you’re sure there wouldn’t be any old newspapers anywhere else? Some place we haven’t considered?”
Hettie leaned against her book cart and put the question to thought. “Wait a minute …” She locked the wheels on the cart and motioned for Harley to follow her. “In one of the study rooms. Where Patrick Middleton used to work.”
Harley followed Hettie to the back of the library to a long row of study rooms, the glass windows dark, the doors closed.
“Patrick’s the only one who ever really used these.” She drew her keys from her library apron. “And I bet all of his materials are still here.”
And so they were. Like gifts on Christmas morning, the newspapers, dated for the exact year she needed, were stacked in chronological order on the table.
“This is it,” she said. “This is what I’ve been looking for.”
“So glad. And you let me know if you need anything else.”
She closed the study room door behind Harley and disappeared among the stacks.
Like a mental feast, Harley dug into the newspapers, spreading them across the table and paging through each one. She recalled the newspaper Patrick had taken from Hazel’s house, dated for the week of July fourth, thirty-three years ago, then to Opha Mae’s assertion that Susan Thompson had died on Halloween night the following year.
Thanks to Patrick’s meticulous organization, the two dates were easy to find, and she separated them from the rest. Focused on the July fifth issue, she ran her finger down the front page, the stories dealing primarily with the Independence Day celebrations. Photo after photo depicted shots of the parade on Main Street, some of the attendees and others of the individual floats.
She turned to the next page, and finding nothing of relevance there, moved on to the third. About halfway down the page, she paused and stared at a photograph.
Patrick had been entranced by the photo, so entranced that he had stolen it from Hazel’s house.
And no wonder.