These Healing Hills Read online

  “If it’s all right with you, I’ll just go on home and see about it.”

  She laughed as she got him up on his feet. “This may be your ticket home, but we better work on you here. Are you sure you even have doctors back in the hills where you’re from?”

  “Doctors are kind of rare, but we have nurses. Frontier nurses. They ride horses to your house.” Ben bumped against the bed. Everything was spinning again.

  “Horses, huh?” She guided him past the beds. “Maybe you can go home and be one of those nurses.”

  “No, that won’t work. They’re all women and right now I don’t think I could stay on a horse.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d been into that moonshine they say you have in the hills.”

  Ben tried to shake his head, but that made the room spin more. He shut his eyes and stayed still a second until the nurse eased him forward. “Nope. My pa never had a still. Never made any moonshine. Didn’t believe in it.”

  “I see. And what do you believe in, Soldier?”

  Her question circled in his head, spinning like the tent was spinning. He wasn’t sure what to answer. He wasn’t sure she even expected an answer. “The Lord” would have been the answer his father could have given without thinking twice. Ben could echo his pa, but shouldn’t a man have his own words?

  “Home,” he finally said, barely above a whisper. “The hills of home.”

  7

  August 28, 1945

  Fran shot Woody a hard look after he let out a laugh when the cow at the Beech Fork Center swished her tail right in Fran’s face and then tried to step into the milk pail. Fran managed to grab Bella’s foot and save the milk. Milking wasn’t as easy as Mrs. Breckinridge had made it sound or as Fran’s grandmother had made it look.

  “I’m sorry, Nurse Howard.” Woody managed to gasp the words between his guffaws. “But watching you milk is a belly jerker.”

  “I’m glad I’m giving you such amusement.” Fran wasn’t a bit amused. As much as she liked Woody, she didn’t need his appraisal of her milking ability. She was actually proud she’d figured out how to strip milk from Bella’s teats. Unfortunately, Bella wasn’t the most docile cow. At times, Fran was sure the cow was laughing at her, just like Woody.

  Woody’s house was up on the mountain in their district. To help pay for his family’s yearly subscription fee for treatment, he came by a couple of times a week to bring them coal for the cookstove and to keep the weeds back from their cabin, but he claimed milking was women’s work.

  “Didn’t you have no cow where you come from?” Woody asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s the wondering thing for me.” He stepped over and stroked Bella’s neck.

  That distracted the cow enough that she stood still so Fran could finish milking.

  “What’s that?” Fran glanced up at Woody. She liked hearing the boy’s wondering. Sometimes it led down some interesting paths to start her own wondering.

  “How folks can live in places where there ain’t no cows or chickens. Ma says that everything there in the city has to be store bought. Even potatoes and other sass.”

  Fran still didn’t know why the mountain people called gardens “sass patches,” but every family had one. They had one at the center too. Beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and more. Raising your own produce was necessary here in the mountains where stores were scarce and money scarcer. But Fran hadn’t expected harvesting and canning vegetables to be part of her nursing duties.

  “It’s a different world in the city.” Fran stood up and whisked the milk bucket out of the way before she smacked Bella’s rump and let her head back out in the pen. “There’s no room for farming, although some people did plant victory gardens during the war.”

  “It’s a fine thing the war is done with, ain’t it?” Woody plucked a grass stem and chewed on the end of it. “All the way done with. Ma and me danced around the cabin last night after one of the neighbors brung the news. ’Course we already knew Ben was on the way home. Had you heard about that? Got his arm broke and wasn’t much use to the army over there. Leastways that’s what he said in his letter.”

  “When do you expect him?” Fran headed toward the house to strain the milk through cheesecloth. Betty needed some to make potato soup. Then Fran would take the rest to the springhouse behind the cabin. That water coming out of the heart of the mountain kept things cool.

  Woody trailed after her. “Hard to say. He said traveling army schedule is a mite uncertain. You’ll like Ben.”

  Fran looked over her shoulder at Woody. “If he’s anything like his brother, I’m sure I will.”

  “He ain’t nothing like me. He don’t say anything unless he’s really got something to say. Sort of like Pa was. And you know Ma. She’s like that too. Don’t know what happened with me. Could be one of you nurses brung me out to the house in your saddlebag.”

  “I think your mother would know about that.” Fran laughed. She’d heard about mountain children believing babies came in the saddlebags, since sometimes the nurses carried the babies to or from the hospital that way if the little ones needed extra care.

  “She gives me that ‘Ma’ look when I say things like that. What she claims happened was that she went to a camp meeting over in the next county the week before birthing me. Said all those preaching words must have turned me into a jabber jay.”

  “Maybe you’ll make a preacher someday.”

  “Ma used to say I might, but Pa said a man had to be called to preaching and then let the Lord put the words in his mouth. Not just jabber on like me.”

  Betty Dawson heard Woody’s last words and looked around from the stove when they came in the door. “Your father was a wise man, Woody. Now, did you have a reason for coming down to see us?”

  She didn’t smile. Betty was a short, spare woman who rarely saw the humor in any situation. She kept separate from any of the mountain ways and advised Fran to do the same.

  “I can admire their fortitude and love of family,” Betty had told Fran when she first moved into the district cabin to finish her training under Betty’s supervision. “But that doesn’t mean I have to approve of their ways. Nor should you. Our job is not to pass judgment but to try to educate them in better hygiene.”

  Now her words stopped Woody at the door. He looked down at his feet as if realizing he was barefoot and mountain while they were shod and city. Fran wanted to take him by the hand and invite him in to share their supper, but it was Betty’s center. Not hers.

  “Yes’m. I do have purpose in my trip down here. Ma’s jarring up some pickles and wanted to know if you’d like some.”

  “Thank her for us,” Betty said. “Your mother makes fine pickles, but tell her not to short herself.”

  “Yes’m. I’ll tell her.”

  When Woody still hesitated in the doorway, Betty raised her eyebrows. “Anything else?”

  “Well, she was thinking if you were up our way making your rounds and wanted those pickles that you might come by to check on Sadie.”

  Fran felt a pang. She should have already asked Woody about Sadie. They’d been treating the little girl for a bad summer cold that was settling in her ears. “I can come up and see her right now if she’s sick.”

  “Ma said tomorrow would do. She thinks Becca might show up tonight and that way you can give Becca a once-over too.”

  “Becca?” Betty frowned a little. “Your sister?”

  “She’s moving back home for a spell. You heard about that mine cave-in over in Harlan, didn’t you? Killed three men stone dead.”

  “We got the news,” Betty said.

  “A terrible thing. Was your sister’s husband one of them?” Fran had heard some of the mountain men talk about being down in the mines. Their very words about blasting into the mountains for coal and making their ways through dark tunnels far underground made her shiver. Even worse than the sight of the green snakes that liked to sun on their porch steps.

  “Car
l was one of the last ones out. Said he could hear the tunnel crashing in behind him when he run out. The other miners in his crew went back to working, but Carl couldn’t make hisself go back down in there. Just couldn’t do it.”

  “So they’re moving in with your mother?” Betty asked.

  “Just Becca. Carl is heading up to Ohio to find work. But Becca wants to stay close to Ma until the baby comes.”

  “Then we do need to see her. Is she well along?” Betty said.

  “Hardly worth speaking about yet. Ma says it could be a Christmas baby, but Ma says you nurses like to get an early start watching out for the babies.”

  “Tell your mother we’ll be up that way in the morning. Now you’d better go on before dark catches you.” She stared at Woody until he gave a halfhearted wave and, with a “yes’m,” backed out of the door.

  “That boy would spend the night if you gave him a minute’s encouragement,” Betty muttered before she turned her disapproval on Fran. “And it could be you encourage him too much. You need to keep a professional distance to do your job properly.”

  Fran barely stopped herself from saying “yes’m” like Woody. “He’s a big help around here.”

  “True.” Betty blew out a breath with the word, as though she hated to admit it. “Best get that milk strained. And what about the horses? Did you give them their feed and pick their hooves? You know they have to be ready in case somebody comes for us.”

  “I took care of them and fed the chickens and picked some beans. Looks like the beets could be ready.” Fran carefully attached the cheesecloth to the side of the crock with clothespins and slowly poured the milk through.

  “Beets. I don’t know why I let Em talk me into planting them. I don’t even like beets. Do you?” Betty was the only person Fran ever heard call Granny Em by her name without the granny title.

  “They’re not my favorite, but I can eat them.”

  “Good. Then I won’t have to. Have you seen Em lately?”

  “Not this week, but the courier here last week . . . what was her name?”

  “Hilda. Or maybe Wilma.”

  “No, Hilda is right. Anyway, she saw her down at the river. Said she was turning over rocks.”

  “Probably hunting something vile to put in her concoctions. She no doubt drank some of it and had to take to her bed.” Betty shook some salt into the pan with the potatoes and set it on the stove. “We best go by and see about her tomorrow after we check on Sadie. Make sure she hasn’t poisoned herself.” A frown furrowed Betty’s brow. “But Sadie. That child worries me. Maybe we should go over our notes about her after we eat. You best light the lamps.”

  Being out on district was totally different from working in the hospital. There the patients came to them and they contained them in beds all close together. Here they went to their patients, with nothing close about any of it. At the hospital, other nurses were around. Willie. Bucket. Rocky. Although Hilda had reported that Rocky was being assigned to the new Possum Center soon. She’d have a good time with the nurse-midwife there, Edie Marston. Fran had rarely seen Edie when she wasn’t smiling.

  Smiles didn’t come as easy to Betty. But smiles weren’t why Fran was there. Betty knew her business when it came to babies, and even if she could be a little prickly, she made sure their patients got good care.

  But the biggest difference was how here at the center, something always, always needed to be done. No courier girls here to help care for the horses or run errands. They came by now and again with messages and supplies, the way Hilda had last week. Sometimes they slept on the couch if it was the edge of dark. Dark was what the mountain people sometimes called night.

  In the mountains, dark could fall quickly like a woolen blanket dropped over the hills. Other times, night slipped in and settled down over the trees and houses like a mother gently tucking a cover around a sleeping child.

  Hilda hadn’t spent the night. She headed back to Wendover without the first worry of twilight catching her. She’d brought them the news about the terrible bombs dropped on the Japanese cities that ended the war. Atomic bombs. Some means of destruction never used before. Hilda claimed the bombs wiped out whole cities and killed over a hundred thousand people.

  After she left, Fran and Betty couldn’t believe Hilda had her story straight. No one bombing raid could kill that many. But when they turned their battery radio on before they went to bed, the story of the bombs and the Japanese surrender came through the airwaves.

  The news flashed through the hills. Men shot guns up in the air and the children banged sticks on kettles and fences. The end of the war called for noise and celebrations. Woody and his mother weren’t the only ones dancing for joy.

  The people needed good news after the mine tragedy in neighboring Harlan County. No mines were dug into the hillsides in Leslie County, but Betty said it was only a matter of time until train tracks were laid to Hyden. With a way to haul out the coal, the mine companies would follow.

  But now no noise of trains or mines disturbed the peace of the countryside. Fran liked stepping out into the twilight and hearing the night creatures. The whippoorwills. The frogs in the nearby creek. An owl. A chorus of dogs barking back and forth between the cabins in the hills. Sometimes she could hear a mother calling in a child from play. Good sounds and so different from what she might be hearing if she was in Cincinnati.

  This night as she carried the milk out to the springhouse, she couldn’t keep from thinking about Seth and how she had expected to be welcoming him home after the war. She’d often imagined them setting up housekeeping somewhere near his parents and her mother. She would still work as a nurse, but only until the babies came.

  She looked up toward the stars beginning to show in the darkening sky and thought about how she used to wish on a star when she stayed at her grandmother’s farm. I wish I may. I wish I might. First star I see tonight.

  The stars had seemed brighter there on the farm, the same as here. No streetlights to dim their glitter. She couldn’t remember what childish wishes she might have made then. She made no wishes now, even though she felt a stab of sorrow for what might never be. A baby of her own.

  But she’d heard over and over how nobody came to the Frontier Nursing Service by accident. The Lord wasn’t in the wishing business. He answered prayers. Sometimes in ways a person couldn’t imagine. Perhaps the Lord had put her right where she was supposed to be.

  8

  August 29, 1945

  The next morning, Fran was up before the sun to get what the mountain people called a soon start on their nursing rounds. But first she had to milk Bella again. That had to be done twice a day. Morning and night. But at least this time she didn’t have an audience, although she could never be sure of that here at the center. People came seeking help at all hours.

  Fran only lacked ten deliveries having the required amount for her training. Most of the deliveries in their district in the last couple of months had been routine. Only two women had been carried out to the hospital. Routine was good. That’s how births were supposed to be, but they were never ordinary. Each time Fran helped a baby come into the world it was a marvel. A miracle of life.

  But being a nurse-midwife here in the mountains was much more than delivering babies. Willie was right about the things she would see and treat. A bean up a child’s nose. A broken bone. Gunshot wounds. A chopped toe. Lung ailments. Worms. Stomach problems. Anemia. Bee stings. Sometimes it made Fran’s head spin.

  It was hard to imagine one person being able to handle everything at one of the centers by herself, but Betty said that if Fran stayed on in the mountains once she received her certification, she might be assigned to a center alone.

  If she stayed on. Fran hadn’t thought about that. She simply thought about each day that came. Could she meet the challenges of whatever happened? A new infection to treat. The proper medicine to ask the doctors to prescribe. A chicken to pluck for their dinner. Lamps to fill with oil. Pills to count and keep
in their pharmacy cabinet. Mice to keep out of their supplies. Records to keep on each patient.

  Betty was even more inept than Fran with the housekeeping and stock tending. Before Fran moved in to the center to take the extra bed, a neighborhood girl stayed at the center to tend to the cooking, the garden, and the livestock. Betty made no secret of the fact that Fran’s abilities fell far short of the mountain girl’s.

  But she was learning. Betty might not hand out many compliments, but she rarely found reason to fault Fran either. Except in the way Fran wanted to learn more about the mountain people.

  As they saddled their horses to head up to the Locke house, Betty once again took the opportunity to lecture Fran against embracing mountain ways.

  “You have to remember you’re a nurse. An educated nurse-midwife.” Betty looked over at Fran as she mounted her horse, Moses.

  Fran led her horse, Jasmine, in a circle to calm her. Jasmine was a tough little mustang, but headstrong. Fran stroked the horse’s dark brown neck and whispered some nonsense words.

  “Don’t take all day with that horse. You need to let her know who’s boss.” Betty frowned at Fran and continued her lecture. “The same as you have to let the people know you’re the one with the medical expertise. Not them. You have to remember your training and not listen to the people here. They’re a superstitious lot who depend on old wives’ tales for cures. Last winter one of the men told me he’d cured the cramps in his feet by putting his shoes upside down under the bed.” Betty made a sound of disgust.

  “What could it hurt if it worked?” Fran swung up into the saddle and patted Jasmine’s neck when she danced to the side. Finally, the horse settled.

  Betty clicked her horse forward, then turned to give Fran a hard look. “See, there’s your problem. It didn’t work. The only thing that could do is keep mice from nesting in his shoes. The cramps in his feet went away because I told him to drink more water and eat some pickles.”