Junia carried us home through the fog-drenched forest, not breaking until she saw the smoke curling from our chimney.
“You’re running late again,” Pa said as I came through the door.
“Sorry, Pa, folks are excited to have the library service back.”
“You read to ol’ Loretta?”
“Yes, sir, I read a good twenty minutes, then helped her to bed.” I slipped out of my coat and hooked it on the peg beside the door.
“Good,” he grunted as he bent over to roll up the socks under his pant legs. Pa know’d Loretta only allowed the Bible, and he had a soft heart for the old woman.
“I thought it was your night off. Where are you off to? Pa, you going out?”
“Yup. Last night, Lee Sturgil’s woman took to the bed, and I promised to work his shift for him tonight so he wouldn’t have a rock dropped on his pay.”
“The sheriff’s daughter is ailing?”
“Birthing bed,” Pa mumbled, looking away.
Some of the coal miners had been calling on Pa a lot lately to work their shifts to avoid fines, keep them out of trouble with the Company bosses.
Remembering Loretta’s tea, I dug out the root from my coat. “Miss Loretta gave us this. Let me brew you a cup of sassafras before you go.”
“Another night, Daughter. I can’t be late. Get yourself some supper and rest up. Doc came by and left one of his baskets.” He crammed a foot into his work boot.
The old doc was the only one who did call beside the courters Pa had sent. More than once, the doctor had dropped off small gifts of apples, a jar of jam, or biscuits, all the while with whittling pleas to draw our blood, scrape our skin, or let him take us to the medical clinic in Lexington. Pa never answered the door and made him leave any gifts on the porch.
Appreciative, I plucked up an apple and lightly bounced it from one hand to the other. “Pa, I heard some stirring out there a while back.” I pulled back the curtain and stared out the window into the fog, seeing nothing.
“I’ve seen a bobcat on the trail, and I thought I saw it over by the thorny locust when I came in this morning.” He gestured to the door.
“Bobcat? I’m not sure it’s creatures, Pa. I—”
“I need to get going so the sheriff’s daughter can be taken care of. I’ll have a look in the morning. Keep your eyes peeled.”
“Yes, sir.” I sighed that I had to, that there was one more thing out there hunting me. Maybe if I told Pa about the preacher, he’d stay home and we would both be safe.
I dropped the curtain and turned. “Pa, a few weeks back, the preach—”
But he was out the door before I could finish. I stepped onto the porch and watched his ghostly lamp slash into mists until I could no longer see him.
Frowning, I went back inside and rooted through Doc’s basket. I found jam and bread and spread the preserves on several slices for my supper.
In the lantern light, I hurried and did my chores, stopping to build another fire in the stove with some birch bark and pine kindling from the porch. Carefully, I placed a tinder of curling birch on the stove’s cast-iron floor, lit the nest, and stacked the pine splits atop the small flames. Fragrances of woods and resin filled the cabin.
Hours later, I fetched Henry’s present from my coat and climbed the loft ladder. I dropped the Life Saver onto the table beside the cotton mattress Pa insisted on getting me when he brought me home from Charlie Frazier’s. I’d always slept just fine on a pallet of quilts, but Pa believed the mattress advertisement that promised to soothe hurt bones and give better rest would help me heal faster. Pa had credit to spend at the Company store that he used for the purchase, saying he’d had a little extra that month.
But Pa didn’t have as much as two nickels to rub together, and I know’d he worked eighteen-hour days for two weeks straight for that little extra. The Company didn’t like for the Kentucky man to feel a dollar in his pocket, and they’d pay the miners mostly in Company scrip—credit that could only be used at the Company store—to make sure of just that. If a fellar balked at having to spend his pay there, he’d be dismissed right quick. The Company also let workers draw on their earnings before payday, happy to give out scrip as loans with interest to keep the families good ’n’ indebted to them, insisting to any who might raise a brow, It serves to smarten the miners, gives the coal man a vicissitude from improper business standards, and educates them on sound business practices, on acquiring sound credit.
I changed into my nightgown, turned back the covers, and snuggled under the quilt. My thoughts pulled back to Henry’s precious gift, the hunger he suffered.
Pa and I had seen our share of hunger. We only had the berries, morels, squirrels, rabbits, and other life we’d pinched from the forest. Sometimes Pa’d trade miners his kills for other foods we couldn’t get, like eggs, corn, and fruit. Rarely could we afford the expensive staples at the Company store. The Company scrip and my paycheck helped us to stay afloat a little, despite Pa using most of it to buy up the store medicines rather than a doctor’s stronger ones to fight his lung illness. Still, he stayed in debt purchasing newfangled medicines, the next sure-fix potion that the store would bring in. Like a small bandage, the store-bought medicine would hide his sickness for a little bit, so that he could go back down into the mine and make more money for newer cures the Company kept stocking and pushing on the miners.
Weren’t but two of us to fend for. The three hundred or so scattered folks who populated our area lived in the woodlands and alongside creek beds, up slopes, and the few in town and out in the mine camp were mostly large families with many children.
That there was a medicine for Henry and all the Henrys out there, for the hunger and hungry, didn’t seem right. Not much of the pox or influenza sickness in Kentucky as much as there was the hunger disease right now. That there were stores full of the cure for hunger kept me awake with that special kind of anger that comes from helplessness.
I picked up the Life Saver and pressed it to my lips, inhaling the tempting scent of the sugary hard candy. “And don’t you open it none until you’re good an’ hungry,” he’d warned.
I reached over, slipped Henry’s gift into my tin box of keepsakes on the night table. “I’m not good an’ hungry yet.” I blew out the candle and said a prayer for Pa’s safety, then Henry, and all the other Henrys in this land, though it wouldn’t help any more than casting a wish on a shooting star.
Still, I stacked more prayers atop, begging the Lord to keep us and the young’uns safe, and cast a fevered one for a merciful Heavenly home for Caroline Barnes who’d walked the nine deadly miles to feed her starving babies—nine miles in the cold, harsh-driven Kaintuck hills. Nine miles of dying each lonely step in her own cold embrace.
I balled the anguish in my fist, and a gut-wrenching sound whisked passed my teeth. A whip-poor-will answered back, and I buried my face into the soft blue pillow and swallowed the sadness knocking against my throat, the horrors I felt coming.