These Healing Hills Read online

  But she hadn’t forgotten her grandmother’s teachings about the Lord. How he was a ready help in times of trouble. And wasn’t she in trouble? Lost here on the side of a mountain in the middle of a blackberry patch.

  “Let me see a trail, Lord. To the other side of the mountain. I did promise Lurene I’d be there to help her.” Fran softly spoke the prayer aloud. Seemed to make it more real, even though she knew the Lord could hear unspoken prayers. “So if you could just give me a sign about which way to try?”

  As if Jasmine understood Fran’s prayer and was ready to be that sign, she raised her head away from the grass and began moving down the hill and then zigzagging back up to get past the brambles. And there on the far side of a huge rock was a bare trace of a trail. The ground was packed hard, but a few hoof tracks were still visible from the last time the trail had been muddy. That proved people, not just raccoons and foxes, used the trail. The path twisted around through more boulders, but it appeared to be generally westward. Fran breathed out a long breath of relief and looked up toward heaven with a whispered thanks.

  A rattle jerked her attention back to the trail at the same instant Jasmine reared at the sight of the coiled snake in front of them. Fran kept her seat, but there was no holding the horse as she veered away from the snake into the bushes again. Fran pulled on the reins, but Jasmine jerked her head and kept going. They slid down a steep incline through brush. Jasmine was practically on her side and Fran’s leg banged against the rocky cliff.

  “Whoa, girl!” It was no use. In her panic, the horse couldn’t get her footing.

  Before the horse slipped and perhaps rolled on Fran, she slid out of the saddle. She couldn’t stop Jasmine. Better to fall where she didn’t see any rocks. And the snake was up on the trail. She wouldn’t think about it having a friend down in the brambles. That was another thing her grandmother used to say. When you saw one snake, be assured there were two.

  With Fran no longer yanking on the reins, Jasmine recovered her balance enough to scramble to her feet. Fran whistled, but the horse showed no sign of hearing as she took off across the hillside at a good clip. Fran whistled again, but the snake rattle was still echoing in the horse’s ears. She didn’t stop. At least the horse seemed no worse for the fall. Not if the way she was speeding out of sight was any indication.

  Fran ran her hand down her legs. She too appeared to be all in one piece. Nothing bent or broken. Just a nasty bump where her shin banged against a rock. A scrubbed place stung on her arm, but everything was in working condition. She stood up and brushed off her pants, thankful her hands had escaped injury. A midwife had to protect her hands and not get scratches or cuts that might transfer an infection to the patient. That was one of the first things Mrs. Breckinridge had told her.

  Fran ran her fingers through her hair to rake out a few twigs and leaves. Nothing for it except to walk. She could hope Jasmine would be waiting over the ridge, but she couldn’t depend on it. The mare would either make her way back to the center or somebody would find her and bring her back. Mountain people knew their horses and everybody else’s too. Fran’s biggest worry was her saddlebag falling off into a briar patch. In case that happened, Fran started across the ridge the way Jasmine ran away to watch for it.

  Her leg ached and she must have tweaked her ankle. Sweat dripped down her face, and when she wiped it away, her handkerchief showed traces of blood. She dabbed at a scratch on her cheek. She must look like she’d been fighting wildcats. But at least she didn’t hear any more warning rattles or spot any snakes.

  If only she could see Jasmine up ahead, nibbling on grass and waiting for her. But all she saw were more bushes. A mosquito buzzed in her ear. She swatted at it and then at a fly on her cheek.

  Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, thunder sounded in the distance. She peered up through the trees at dark clouds sweeping in from the west, bringing a wind with them to ruffle the leaves over her head. Surely after being dry for weeks, the drought wouldn’t pick now to end.

  It did no good to stand there wishing for a horse or a mountain man to appear out of nowhere to point the way. Rain or shine, she had no choice except to hoof it. She ignored the pain in her ankle as she headed across the ridge.

  It was going to be a long, hard walk. She hadn’t gone far when the clouds pushed all the way across the sky to cover the sun. Now she didn’t even have shadows to point out the way west. But what could she do except keep walking? Lurene Nolan was counting on her.

  11

  A week ago, when Ben stepped off the ship back on American soil, he didn’t kiss the ground, but he felt the joy of it all the way from his toes to the top of his head. Plenty of times he’d feared he might die on foreign ground, but he’d made it through the war.

  He had to smile at the irony of his arm in a cast and his head still aching at times from the concussion. Who’d have thought he would make it unscathed through battle after battle only to get a stint in the infirmary for being KO’d by an overgrown, shell-shocked grunt. But the injury had put him on a faster track for home.

  Home. That word had echoed in his mind for years. If only he could breathe the mountain air once more. He wanted to see his mother push the hair back from her face and give him that smile he’d sometimes earned as a boy when he’d done her proud.

  He wouldn’t see his father’s smile or feel his work-roughened hand clamp down on his shoulder. The truth of that was a pain that got sharper with every mile closer to home.

  For a while, he might need to step into his father’s shoes to help his mother carry the load of trying to feed the family on their hillside farm. But he couldn’t imagine continuing forever in that role. Barely scraping a living out of the hard ground. With few prospects for finding any paying jobs except in the mines. And yet the mountains called to him.

  How could he want to be in a place and at the same time want to leave it behind? That question had trailed him all the way across the country after he got his discharge. His gun was gone, leaving his shoulder strangely light. He still wore his uniform, but he was no longer in the army. He was simply Ben Locke, ex-soldier without a job.

  But he was alive and this day he wouldn’t worry about the future. Not while he was getting off a train in Harlan to climb on the bus for Hyden. Almost home. That was what he needed to think about. Already home with the hills rising up around him. With people clapping him on the back and welcoming him back to the mountain fold. Glad he made it home. Thinking he was the same wet-behind-the-ears kid he’d been when he boarded that train in 1942 to go off to the army. A lifetime ago.

  But none of them were the same. Not those who went or those who stayed at home. The war left its mark on a person. On a country. Now he simply wanted to shrug off the last four years like taking off a coat that had gotten too heavy. It wouldn’t be that easy. But today with his feet touching home ground, he’d push aside all the bad he’d seen. He wouldn’t think about what he’d do in the days ahead. He would simply soak in each moment.

  He leaned back in the bus seat and let the voices of the other passengers swirl around him. Easy conversations about how they needed rain. Sad talk about a mine cave-in. Behind him, a grandmother sang softly to the young boy in her lap. Not a song Ben had ever heard. The woman was probably making it up as she went along, but the rhythm of her words wound through his head and made him remember being that child in his granny’s lap, hearing a song about the mountains.

  He shut his eyes and took in the sounds and the smells. Some not so pleasant, as the man across the aisle obviously didn’t see the need in wasting soap. But Ben was used to that. And the air coming in the bus windows brought the scent of trees and animals. Home.

  When he climbed down off the bus in Hyden and looked around, not much had changed in the years he was gone. More cars and trucks. Fewer horses. Some people on the street he didn’t recognize. Or that didn’t seem to recognize him but noted his uniform and gave him a nod anyhow. Plenty of others he did know.
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  In the general store, Mr. Saunders looked the same behind the counter as he had the last time Ben lifted a soft drink out of his cooler. Only this time he wouldn’t take the coins Ben pulled out of his pocket.

  “No sir. That army money’s no good here today.” The man smiled so big Ben could see where he’d lost a tooth. He came out from behind the counter to pump Ben’s good hand up and down. “Mighty fine to see you back home, Ben. All in one piece. Heard you got wounded, but bones knit good as new. Fell out of a tree and broke mine when I was a boy. Works fine.” He flexed his arm. “Better than having your arm shot off.”

  “Can’t argue that.” Ben had seen too much of that.

  “Grab you a candy bar there to go with that drink.” Mr. Saunders pointed to a rack of candy. “Least I can do for a returning soldier.”

  Ben took him up on the offer.

  “Guess you’re heading up to the homeplace.” Mr. Saunders’s smile faded. “Sorry about your pa. That was a real shock. He was a fine man.”

  “Yes.” Sadness stabbed through Ben. His father being gone wasn’t new. He’d known about it for months, but being back in the mountains made the pain fresh again. To give himself a minute to get his emotions under control, he popped off the bottle cap with the metal opener on the side of the cooler and took a long drink before he said, “Yes, he was.”

  “You hang around, somebody’ll be coming by to give you a lift up toward your place. A few folks has got hold of some trucks that can make it over rough ground. ’Specially when it’s dry like this. That Mrs. Breckinridge got her nurses a couple of them army jeeps. Guess you know how they can go.”

  “Been in a few of them.” Ben took another drink.

  “Good for the nurses to make their rounds.”

  “No nurses on horseback anymore?”

  “Still those too. Nurse Dawson out your way goes on horseback. Can’t remember if she was the nurse at Beech Fork before you went to the service or not.” Mr. Saunders leaned back against the counter and twisted his mouth to the side as he tried to remember. “You recall?”

  “Been too long ago. Most all of them were from England back then.”

  “That’s right. Mrs. B got her midwife training overseas. She claimed there weren’t any like schools here, but now she’s started her a midwifery school up there at the hospital. Had to, she said, seeing as how the English nurses mostly headed home to help their own people with the war going on.” The storekeeper nodded toward Thousandstick Mountain. “Girls is coming in from different parts of America these days to go to her school. Still brought-in, but not clear from way across the sea.”

  “Woody wrote me about some of them.”

  “That Woody.” Mr. Saunders laughed. “He knows everybody. If you ask me, the boy’s got a future in politics. He can glad-hand with the best of them. You’re gonna be in for a surprise when you see how he’s done about growed up. And little Sadie isn’t a baby no more. I did hear she was feeling poorly.” The man reached into a jar of penny candy and scooped some out into a paper bag. “Here. Take this for her. She’s partial to peppermint.”

  When Ben started to reach into his pocket, Mr. Saunders held up his hand.

  “I done told you your money’s no good here today. My treat.”

  “Thank you.” Ben set his soda bottle down to put the candy in his duffel bag. He already had a doll stuck in there for Sadie and scarves from France for his mother and Becca. He’d snagged a surplus flashlight for Woody.

  “Don’t worry. Come tomorrow you come on back down and I’ll be more than happy to let you spend some of that army coin burning a hole in your pocket.”

  “Guess I’m through collecting from the army,” Ben said.

  “Don’t be so sure ’bout that, son. Old FDR fixed you up pretty good with the GI Bill before the Lord called him home. With that, you can go on back up to Richmond and finish out your schooling. Wasn’t nothing like that for them boys in World War I, that’s for sure. But we didn’t have Franklin Delano then either.”

  “Did you serve in the army?” Ben finished off the drink and racked the bottle in the return box.

  “Naw. I slipped through both times. A hair too young then. A hair too old this time.” Mr. Saunders shook his head. “Didn’t grieve none about that. Never had no hankering to go to war like some. Happy as a bug in a rug right here selling folks stuff.”

  “Or giving it away.” Ben held up the candy bar.

  “Only on days of note.” The man laughed. “You sit a spell here, and if nobody else comes along, I’ll run you partway up the hill after I close down the store.”

  “I appreciate the offer, sir, but I’ll just head on shanks’ mare and see if I remember the trail home.” Ben smiled, a little surprised that “shanks’ mare,” the mountain lingo for walking instead of riding a horse, had risen so easily to his tongue. It was as if he’d reached inside his head and flipped a switch. Back to his mountain upbringing after being gone so long.

  He hadn’t lost who he was in the army, but he’d learned to talk like everybody else there. Soldiers needed to understand one another. Especially when it was his job to bind their wounds and keep them breathing. Best not use confusing words at times like that. But here now, he could settle back into his home skin at least for a little while.

  The mountain trail felt good under his boots. Different from the places he’d been. Places he could never have even imagined when he last walked down this mountain. Not that things were exactly the same as he headed up into the hills. A tree down here. More bushes there. A spring flood had pushed out a new gully down the hillside. A rock slide in a different place. But the ancient rocks and dirt underfoot were the same. The squirrel chattering at him from the treetop might be a few generations removed from the one that had fussed at him when he was leaving, but the chatter sounded the same. Now he was coming. Coming home.

  He stripped off his jacket. He might like the feel of the mountain under his feet, but that didn’t make the air any cooler. When a rumble sounded in the distance, Ben peered up through the trees at the sky. The sun was still shining but clouds were spreading up from the west. He hoped he didn’t get caught in a gully washer, but if he did, so be it. He’d just keep going, even if he did turn out to be sorry for not waiting for that ride up the mountain in one of those trucks. Even a horse might make the trip faster.

  Woody had been wishing for a horse, but if a man could find a wide enough swath of cleared ground, a motor car would be better. Ben liked driving the trucks in the army when the occasion arose. Going home didn’t mean he had to go back in time. He could bring a little of the modern world with him, along with that horse for Woody. A boy needed a horse. And a dog of his own. Rufus, his pa’s coonhound, had to be way past young if he was still living. Ten anyway. Only good for sleeping on the porch these days. Not a boy’s dog.

  Ben made a list in his head of things he could do when he got home. A horse. A motor car. A dog for Woody. A puppy for Sadie if his ma didn’t fuss.

  The rumble of thunder edged nearer. Ben figured he was still a good hour’s walk from home. Maybe he should have shopped for a horse in Hyden before he started up the mountain. That would have made Woody even happier to see him.

  Then as if his thoughts had summoned it, a horse came crashing through the underbrush. Foam flicked back from the horse’s mouth to spot its neck. Reins hung loose and the saddle was empty.

  The horse skidded to a stop as it eyed this obstruction in his path.

  Ben put his hand out to the animal’s nose. “Easy, girl.”

  The dark brown mare seemed ready enough to be captured. A pretty little horse.

  “Where’s your rider?” Ben took the reins and stroked the mare’s neck. The saddlebag looked familiar even if the horse didn’t. A frontier nurse horse. “Think we’d better go find her?”

  Ben looked around. Hard to know for sure where the mare had come from. Up or down. Maybe across the hill. He tried to think what house the nurse might have been comin
g from or going to. Could be his mother’s house. The storekeeper had mentioned Sadie wasn’t feeling pert.

  The poor woman might be lying somewhere hurt. He shouted out a hello, but the only answer was a blue jay’s surprised squawk.

  Ben threw his duffel bag across the horse’s saddle and led it back the way it had come. The mare came calmly enough. If he remembered right, and he was sure he did, a spring bubbled up out of the hill not too far away. As a boy he’d roamed all over this hillside and knew every rock and crevice. Back then the spring never failed to have a little pool in front of it even in the driest seasons. The mare could use a drink and so could he. The nurse, if she hadn’t already made her way to a house somewhere, could be that direction the same as any.

  12

  Fran fought her way through yet another thicket of rhododendrons. As beautiful as they were when they bloomed, right now she wished they weren’t quite so prolific on this hillside. Each time she had to plunge through one of the thickets, she shook the branches and stepped gingerly. It was too easy to imagine more snakes hiding under the bushes. Actually she was sure her imagination was more than right about plenty of things scurrying around near her feet that she didn’t want to know about. Thank goodness for boots. But she couldn’t see any way around some of the thickets without a long walk uphill, and maybe not then. She did manage to ease past the blackberry brambles.

  She paused in the deep shade of an oak tree. Plenty of acorns adorned its branches. A sign of a bad winter on the way, according to Grandma Howard. She should ask Granny Em if she believed the same. If she ever saw Granny Em again. If she ever saw anyone again. Could be she might wander around on this hill forever and die of thirst.

  She was thirsty. And completely and thoroughly lost. Where were the mountain people when she needed one of them to point the way? She didn’t care if they did laugh at her for being such a tenderfoot that she let her horse get away from her. Not that most of them would laugh at her out loud. They’d keep their faces straight while laughter built up in their eyes. No telling how many stories they were already telling on this inept brought-in nurse.