These Healing Hills Read online

  “Woody!” Mrs. Locke came to the door. “Stop talking poor Nurse Howard’s ear off and go fetch some water from the spring.”

  “Yes’m.” Woody picked up a couple of buckets and headed away from the house.

  “Don’t concern yourself, Mrs. Locke. I’m always glad to have Woody catch me up with what’s happening.” Fran climbed up on the porch steps. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine enough.” She lowered her voice. “It’s Sadie that’s fretting me.”

  Ruthena Locke was tall and bone thin, but there was a strength about her that went deeper than muscles to her very core. She would do whatever had to be done for her family. No doubt had done as much all her life. Things were hard for her without a husband, but somehow with Woody’s help she kept things going. She couldn’t be much past fifty, but deep lines creased her face. They weren’t smile wrinkles. Shadows under her faded blue eyes indicated the woman hadn’t been sleeping well.

  “Is she eating better?” Fran picked up the saddlebag Woody had laid on the porch. Her routine nurse equipment filled one side of the saddlebag and the midwifery supplies the other.

  “She ain’t an easy child to feed.” Mrs. Locke let out a sigh. “She can mess with a spoon of beans till she nigh on wears them out.”

  Fran looked past Mrs. Locke to where Sadie played with a rag doll on the porch. “Maybe with the vegetables coming on in your garden, she’ll have more of an appetite.”

  “She does favor sweet potatoes and corn.” Mrs. Locke looked out toward her garden. “We’ve been putting rain in our prayers at the church. And we’ve been praying for you too, Nurse Howard.”

  “For me?” Fran was surprised. She didn’t know anyone knew she was in need of prayer. After all, she hadn’t shared her grief over Seth’s betrayal with anyone.

  “Yes’m. We pray for all the nurses what come up here to Leslie County. We know mountain life ain’t all that easy for folks what weren’t raised here. It’s hard enough for those of us born to it.”

  “I like the mountains.” Fran gazed toward the hills rising up beyond the garden patch.

  “I can see that.” Mrs. Locke smiled. “Our petitions to the Lord are working. Our prayers will surely help my Sadie too. I know they will. I’ve done been promised it wasn’t the tuberculosis and she had a shot for some other worries.” Her smile disappeared.

  “The vaccinations help.” Fran looked past Mrs. Locke toward the open door. “Woody says I might need to see your other daughter too.”

  “I did think Becca might be here today, but she ain’t showed up yet. She and her man must have decided to stay another day or two with his folks ’fore he brings her over here. His people live a good piece across the mountain.”

  “Send word when she gets here and we’ll come back. Woody says she’s not far along.”

  “She’s got a good climb yet ahead of her for sure before she gets her baby here, but come along and see what you think of Sadie. I’ve done had you standing on the steps past time.” Mrs. Locke stepped back and lowered her voice to a near whisper. “The child grieves after her pa. She ain’t never been a young’un to clean her plate, but it weren’t till Woodrow passed on that things got worse for her. She was her pa’s little girl more’n any of the others.”

  The girl didn’t show any sign of hearing her mother, but Fran thought maybe she had from the way she hugged her doll close when Fran stepped across the porch to squat down beside her. The child was fair of skin and her hair was more white than blonde. She didn’t favor Woody all that much, except for eyes the color of a summer sky.

  Most of the mountain children they treated were all arms and legs, but Sadie took slender to a different level. She looked almost fragile. She didn’t seem to have the energy or the will to run, wade in the creek, or climb trees. When Fran and Betty came to check on her, she was generally on the porch or on the floor in the front room, playing with her doll or helping her mother fold towels or break beans.

  “Are you drinking your milk like Nurse Dawson told you?” Fran asked.

  “As much as I can.” Sadie peeked up at Fran, then stared back at her doll.

  “I imagine a glass of milk will taste good with whatever your mother is baking.” Fran smiled up at Mrs. Locke.

  “I do have pies in the oven. I’d best go check on them.” Mrs. Locke glanced back at Fran as she started toward the door. “You will share a slice with us, won’t you, Nurse Howard? Woody come across some windfall apples yesterday.”

  “That sounds delicious.” Maybe she could get Mrs. Locke to wrap it up to take with her. She still had to check on Granny Em before she headed to the Nolans’.

  After Mrs. Locke went inside, Fran put her hand on Sadie’s forehead. Even though the child didn’t feel feverish, she reached into her bag for her thermometer.

  “I helped Ma wash the apples, but Woody says he did the hard part, fighting off the waspers for the apples and getting stung for his trouble.” Sadie shivered a little. “I don’t like waspers and bees. Ma said he should have shooed them off the apples before he picked them up. She says Woody always goes at everything full tilt and that some of these days he’s liable to fall clear off the mountain in his hurry. I hope not, don’t you? I wouldn’t want to lose Woody.”

  “Nor would I.” Fran shook down the thermometer with a couple of quick flicks. “Did the sting get all right?”

  “Ma made a paste of baking soda and water. Says that takes out the swelling.”

  “Your ma knows.” She put the thermometer in Sadie’s mouth. “Now keep that under your tongue and let’s see who can win the quiet contest.”

  Fran held the child’s wrist and counted her pulse. Then she checked her fingernails. Pink, as they should be. Her eyes were clear. No sign of nits in her hair. Betty had already given Sadie medicine for worms. She peered in Sadie’s ears with a scope. A little red. The girl had chronic earaches that Betty said were probably due to her tendency to croup or perhaps some sort of allergy. Plenty of plants blooming all the time to make that a probability.

  Fran took the thermometer out of Sadie’s mouth. She had a slightly elevated temperature.

  “I won, didn’t I?” Sadie said.

  “I don’t know. I think maybe your doll was quieter.”

  Sadie giggled. “It’s hard to win against Priscilla. She’s always real quiet. Even when she’s talking to me, can’t nobody else hear her.”

  “What does she say?”

  “All sort of things.” Sadie held the doll close. “Secret things.”

  “Oh, then I’ll just have to wait until she tells me herself. But has she been feeling bad? Does she have any pains anywhere?” Fran put her stethoscope on the doll’s chest and then on Sadie’s chest and back. No congestion.

  “Let me ask her.” Sadie whispered into one of the doll’s black embroidered ears. Then she held the red embroidered mouth close to her ear. “She says her ear hurts a little and sometimes her stomach feels funny.”

  “Funny? How funny?”

  “Like she can’t drink any more of that milk less’n she has cornbread with it.”

  “Or pie?”

  “Or pie.”

  “Then I think we’re in luck. Here, let me fix her ear.” Fran started to pretend to put a drop in the doll’s ear, but then stopped. “But maybe first, you can show her how to tilt your head to let the drop go down the right way to help.”

  Sadie held her head to the side to let Fran put in the drops and then held up her doll for the pretend drops.

  Fran smiled and started packing up her nurse’s bag. “I think you’re both going to be just fine. If you drink your milk.”

  Sadie looked around as though to be sure nobody else was close enough to hear. “Priscilla wants to know something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s one of those secret things so’s you can’t tell. Not even Ma.” Sadie’s eyes shifted to the side again.

  “All right.” Fran hoped that was a promise she could keep.r />
  “Does everybody die and go to heaven?” Sadie fastened her gaze on Fran. “Even if they don’t want to?”

  Fran knew Sadie wasn’t asking just about heaven. “Is Priscilla worried about somebody dying?”

  “Pa did already, and Ma says everybody dies.” A tear slid out of Sadie’s eye and down her cheek. “She says Pa is happy in heaven. I want Ma to be happy, but I don’t want her to go up there with Pa. Is that bad?”

  Fran laid her hand on Sadie’s cheek. “No, honey, that’s not bad. And your ma may want to go to heaven someday to be with your pa, but she’s not wanting to go right now. She wants to stay here with you for a long time yet.”

  “Are you sure?” Sadie clutched Fran’s arm. “Priscilla says you’re a nurse so you should know ’bout these kinds of things.”

  “I’m sure.” Again she hoped her words would stay true for this mountain family. “You can tell Priscilla that.” Fran softly poked the doll’s chest. “Now, let’s go eat some of that pie.”

  Sadie ran on into the house while Fran packed up the rest of her instruments.

  “It ain’t good to make promises you can’t keep.”

  Fran looked up. Granny Em was at the corner of the porch.

  10

  “I didn’t exactly promise,” Fran said.

  “Sounded like a promise.” Granny Em stepped closer and stared up at Fran. She was so short her shoulders were barely higher than the porch floor. “To her.”

  “What would you have had me say instead?” Fran sat back on her heels. The old woman looked a bit pale and her cheeks were hollowed out, as though she hadn’t eaten well for a few days. But those odd golden-colored eyes had plenty of snap.

  “Best tell the truth as how the world is a hard place. Leastways up here in the hills.” Granny Em’s glare got fiercer. “You need to learn that if’n you’re gonna be any count to us here.”

  “I do want to be a help.” Fran didn’t shy from the old woman’s stare. “But I don’t think it would be helpful to Sadie to paint a dark picture of her future. It’s not unrealistic to think her mother will be here to take care of her for years to come.”

  Granny Em made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sound of disgust. “I’m reckoning you still believe in fairy tales. And true love. All that nonsense.”

  Fran wondered if she should answer at all as she considered her words. She didn’t believe in fairy tales and she knew that love could end up far from true. “I don’t think the love of a mother for her child is nonsense. A mother’s love can be considered pure love. Like that the Lord has for us.” Too late Fran remembered Mrs. Breckinridge’s instructions to not talk religion, politics, or moonshine with the mountain people.

  “More nonsense.” Granny Em slapped her hand down on the porch. “Don’t need you preaching at me.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” Fran turned back to packing her instruments. The contents of the saddlebag had to be evenly weighted in both sides to keep from breaking down her horse.

  Granny Em watched her a moment. “Surprised you, didn’t I? You was thinking I’d be the one shouting hallelujah at every camp meeting. Maybe handling snakes.”

  “No, no. I hadn’t thought about that at all.” Fran tried to turn the conversation. “Are you feeling well? We hadn’t seen you for a while, so Nurse Dawson worried you might be feeling poorly.”

  “Then why ain’t she the one here checking on my well-being?”

  “She had to attend a more urgent call.”

  “The Nolan girl is having her baby, I reckon. I knew that girl lost her notching stick.”

  “Notching stick?”

  “What she used to count up the months.” Granny Em laughed. “Or could be you nurses is the ones what counted up wrong.”

  “Babies sometimes come early.”

  “That they do. And sometimes old folks like me don’t buy into the nonsense preachers talk down.”

  Fran knew she should be quiet, but she couldn’t seem to stop the words as she looked at Granny Em. “Are you saying you don’t believe in God?”

  “Never said no such thing. Fact is, me and the good Lord come to a fine understanding up here on this mountain more years ago than I can remember.” Granny Em laughed. A rusty sound. “Guess I lost my notching stick to count up my years.”

  “You don’t know how old you are?”

  “Oh, I know within a year or two. Ev’rything weren’t writ down back when I was born, like as how it is these days with your certificate papers. Folks might scribble a name down in the Bible if’n they could write or knowed what year it was. But my folks’ house burned down and they couldn’t rightly remember what date they wrote down. Calendars never meant a lot to us. We lived by the seasons. I was born around corn-planting time. That was good enough.”

  “I suppose so.” Fran stood up and towered over Granny Em on the ground. She felt like she should bend back down, but she needed to get moving.

  “You staying for pie?” Granny Em headed for the porch steps. “Ruthena makes a fine apple pie. Better’n most.”

  When Fran hesitated, Granny Em went on. “If you’re wonderin’ how I knowed Ruthena had a pie, that ain’t no mystery. I got a nose. Yours must not work too good if’n you can’t smell a pie fresh out of the oven. And if you’re thinkin’ you need to move on to see to little Lurene Nolan, I figure you’ve got plenty of time for a slice of pie. First babies take a while. ’Course you might get lost. Seeing as how you get some confused even on trails that are plain as day.”

  “I’m not good with directions,” Fran admitted.

  “You jest need to learn the mountains. Remember that rhythm I told you about some time back when you was stuck on that swinging bridge.”

  “I don’t see how a trail could have a rhythm.” Fran placed her saddlebag on a straight chair on the porch and followed Granny Em inside. The apple pie did smell delicious.

  Granny Em looked around at her with a shake of the head. “Guess you need to learn to use your ears too. Ev’rything has music. Horse hooves. Wind in the trees. Water in the crick. That’s rhythm.”

  “Given by the Lord.” Again the words were out before she could bite them back. Maybe she was preaching at the old woman.

  “I ain’t denying that.” Granny Em almost smiled. “Not at all.”

  After she ate Mrs. Locke’s pie that was as good as Granny Em said and drank some of the cool springwater Woody brought to the house, she gave Mrs. Locke more drops for Sadie’s ears and headed out over the mountain toward the Nolans’. She guided Jasmine along the ridge Woody pointed her toward and listened to the horse’s hooves on the hard ground. She could hear that rhythm and the one in the light breeze tickling through the leaves overhead. But she couldn’t see how any of that could help her find her way.

  As if to prove her right, the faint trail was suddenly swallowed by a patch of blackberry vines. She reined Jasmine in and pulled the map out of her saddlebag. She stared at the lines and markings and then looked around. Nothing seemed to match. She folded the paper and stuck it back in the bag. Better to just keep heading west. She could watch shadows to figure that out. But first she’d have to get past the briars.

  She turned Jasmine down the hill and let her have her head as they maneuvered through some rhododendron bushes. At least they weren’t briars. Fran tried to be thankful for that as she dodged and ducked away from the branches that snatched at her hair and arms. Jasmine wasn’t any happier and stopped in her tracks. Fran could almost hear the horse wondering what Fran had gotten her into, as she twitched her ears and swished her tail at a horsefly that was tormenting both of them. Fran smacked at the bug and knocked it into the bushes.

  “Just a little farther, Jasmine.” Fran stroked the horse’s neck. When that wasn’t enough encouragement, she flicked the reins and prodded the horse with the toes of her boots. Not something Jasmine appreciated. She moved but headed directly toward a tree, where Fran barely ducked under a low-hanging limb.

  But they d
id make it to the other side of the bramble thicket. Except there were more thickets ahead and no sign of a trail. None. Jasmine nibbled at a clump of grass and Fran didn’t try to stop her. She could hear the horse chewing the grass and remembered Granny Em’s rhythm, but chewing rhythm was no help.

  She held her breath and listened for running water. If she could find a creek, that might pinpoint where she was on the map. Except that part about all the creeks looking alike. And that she couldn’t hear a thing except a woodpecker working on a tree. A definite tapping rhythm there. She shook her head to forget Granny Em’s rhythms. Fran didn’t care about rhythms. She cared about finding the trail to the Nolans’ cabin.

  A crow cawed almost directly overhead. If Fran didn’t know better, she’d think that old crow was laughing at her. Maybe the whole woods was. The whole mountain. Maybe that was Granny Em’s music.

  She couldn’t hear a creek, but somebody might hear her. She called out a loud hello. Nothing but silence answered her. Why weren’t there any mountain people around? There were always mountain people around. Except they probably had more sense than to end up in the middle of briars and brambles.

  “Well, Jasmine, it’s up to you and me to figure out which way to go. West. That’s what we want. And surely there are ways around the brambles.” Fran pulled up the horse’s head. “You’re a smart girl. Pick an easy path.”

  Fran could almost hear her grandmother’s voice in her ear advising the easy path wasn’t always the best and that when in doubt it was good to ask the Lord’s guidance.

  Grandma Howard prayed regular as clockwork. It didn’t matter if she was having easy times or hard times. In all things be thankful. Fran did some regular praying. She whispered thanks over her food and most days expressed gratitude to the Lord for each new morning, but she wasn’t praying the way her grandmother did. Not soul-stirring, stopping-and-listening-for-answers-back kind of praying. She didn’t have time during the day with all her tasks, and at night she was asleep the minute her head hit the pillow.