Outcast In Gray

by M. Glenn Graves

“She’s smart.”

  I nodded without saying anything.

  “So how did you get away with raising her since she obviously is not your child or grandchild?” Rosey said.

  “You mean, how did I manage to dodge the authorities of that era?” she said and smiled.

  “That would be the question,” he said.

  “The authorities weren’t too swift in those days. She was known as K.C. Starling for most of her school career. I simply lied about her being my niece, a child of my brother who had come to live with me after her parents went through a frightful divorce. Easy story to make up, unfortunately.”

  “So it was her idea to take the name of Higgins?” I said.

  “Well, she asked me to do some checking regarding her heritage. I discovered that her mother was a Kew Higgins who came to our county from Burnsville. She met and married a man named Jeremiah Gosnell from Spill Corn. Less than a year after they were married, Kew gave birth to twins. The boy she named Dochau Cerniw. He was also called Docel, and sometimes Dewey; the girl child she named Kew Ciwa. The little boy died when he was a small child. I think it was around the age of two or three when he got pneumonia and died. Apparently, the little girl was much stronger than the little boy.”

  It did not escape my attention that K.C. had named those pets I had encountered after her mother and herself. Neither had it escaped me that K.C. preferred the surname Higgins to Starling.

  “So this girl-child Kew you renamed Kewtie, then K.C. Starling, once she came to live with you,” I said more to clarify.

  “That is correct. Do you like this tea?” Aunt Jo said, interrupting the flow of our question and answer session.

  “It is quite good,” I said, and it was. “Okay, back to the ruse … K.C. Starling became your erstwhile brother’s child who had come to live with you during those formal school years.”

  “I like the way your mind works, Clancy Evans. You seldom take things at face value, and yet you have the knack of understanding what is happening around you or what is being said to you despite any intended subterfuge.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment without fully understanding what you just said to me.”

  Aunt Jo laughed and sipped her tea. “You are a delight, Clancy. More tea?”

  I nodded and she filled my cup once again.

  “When did she change from Starling to Higgins as her surname?” I asked.

  “She wanted to use her mother’s maiden name. She was a senior in high school when she wanted to change it. I told her it would be best to change it after graduation. Not officially, mind you. Less poking around by the sheriff and other county folk, I believed. Easy enough to say you moved to another county, got married, and then the guy ran off and left you. That’s how your name became Higgins.”

  “So, she graduated from high school as K.C. Starling and then became K.C. Higgins by the time she went off to the technical school in South Carolina?”

  “That would be the idea. Why are you so interested in K.C.? Is she a suspect in your investigation?” she asked.

  “She’s a curiosity. She’s an unusual woman with some rather unusual dogs.”

  “Do you mean the English Sheepdogs she breeds with that coyote she found?”

  “Well, I suppose, for starters, that would be a possible line to chase,” I said.

  “You suspect something else,” Aunt Jo said.

  I decided there would be no use in denying my interest in K.C. Higgins since I was, after all, talking with Josephine Starling.

  “I think she has more than a breed of dog that’s a cross between English Sheepdogs and a coyote.”

  “You’ve seen something?”

  “Maybe, but hard to say.”

  “Was it just a large dog?” Aunt Jo said.

  “I saw a couple of her animals. Have you ever seen her dogs?”

  “I’m aware of the animals which she breeds to sell.”

  “I encountered her one day on a hike and she had two large dogs accompanying her. They could’ve been part of her breeding group; however, she had named them Kew and Cornwall. Both were fairly large animals. I suspect that they were more like pets for her than animals she intended to sell.”

  “I’ve never seen any large dog that she called her pet. The dogs she sells are large, Clancy. They weigh somewhere around one hundred pounds. That’s a good-sized animal.”

  “It is, but the animals I saw with her the first time I met her were well over a hundred pounds. More like a hundred twenty-five each, if not more.”

  “So what makes you so suspicious of K.C. and her pets?”

  “My nature to be suspicious, as you know. Bound up in my genes. Just can’t help myself, I suppose.”

  “Obviously something does not fit for you,” she said.

  “True. Haven’t been able to put my finger on it just yet.”

  “Any more questions about K.C.?”

  “Her given names. Where’d they come from?”

  “Ah, that. Well, that’s an interesting story. Perhaps we can eat some lunch and you can quiz me along those lines after we fill our bellies with a bit of food. Interested in staying around with an old woman and talking some more after I throw something together for the three of us?”

  “I’m in for that,” Rosey said as he moved swiftly to the front door, opened it and used an exaggerated sweeping of his left hand to allow Josephine Starling to enter ahead of us.

  “You two like possum?” she said as she passed Rosey.

  I rolled my eyes and grabbed my throat as if I were choking. Possum. I don’t think so. I didn’t say a word, but then, I was with Aunt Jo. I didn’t need to say anything.

  Forty-two

  Aunt Jo served us a venison roast she had in her freezer along with some potatoes, carrots, and kale. The kale was fresh from her early garden, but the other items were from last year’s production. She was quite the cook and we dined sumptuously on all that she put before us. Her cornbread was out of this world.

  “Would you give me the recipe for your cornbread?” I said.

  “You cook, Clancy?” she said.

  “She does not cook,” Rosey said before I could answer.

  “So the recipe request is simply a polite gesture on your part to compliment my cooking?”

  “No, I had in mind to give it to Starnes, who does cook. She makes a good cornbread, but I suspect that even she would like yours and would want to try it. Thus, the request.”

  “Here,” she took a handwritten note card from her apron pocket and handed it to me as if she had been prepared for my request.

  I glanced at Rosey with a look of surprise and he shrugged. He didn’t know what to make of this interesting woman. Join the club.

  There was no dessert for our lunch, but we did enjoy a freshly made strawberry tea blended with apples. It was great. I was sipping my hot, delicious strawberry-apple tea when Aunt Jo sat down and began talking again about K.C. Higgins without my prodding.

  “I found K.C., the child, in the woods,” she began.

  “Scared to death, I would imagine,” I said.

  “Not at all. I had no idea how long she had been in the woods by the time I discovered her. She could talk a little, but didn’t talk much. She understood a lot, and that surprised me.”

  “So, she was, say, five or six years old when you found her,” Rosey offered.

  “Something like that, but that’s only a guess. I had no way of knowing. She was not very tall for her age when we met. She grew at lot around the age of nine, maybe ten, but I am guessing here as you might well imagine. Overnight, she shot up and was taller than I was. I was amazed with her growth spurt. What I do recall is that this first growth spurt in height took place during the summer between her fifth and sixth grades. Over that summer she grew taller than everybody in her class, boys included. And she took no prisoners. She was a fighter. I was called to the school several times that sixth grade year. We finally had a frank conversation in which I told her she had to change he
r style of disagreements with the other kids, and she stopped fighting. Fast study, she was.”

  “You mean obedient,” I said.

  “Well, you could call it that, but it wasn’t that she decided to obey me. I had to reason with her. I had to convince her that there was no future in physical violence just to win an argument or prove a point. She was unusual as a child in that she was extremely logical in her ability to function in society after I would talk with her. There were other moments when the two of us would have frank conversations about life, about people, about what to avoid and what to accept.”

  “Let’s go back to something… about the woods. How long was she living in the woods before you found her?” Rosey said.

  “I have no idea.”

  “How did she survive?”

  “This is the part of her story that is hard to comprehend,” Aunt Jo said. “Even for someone like me.”

  “We’re listening,” I said.

  “When I first saw her she was with two coyotes,” Aunt Jo said.

  “With,” I repeated.

  “Yes. She was running with them.”

  “As in chasing or following them perhaps?” I said.

  “No, she was running alongside of them. At least as fast as they were running.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Rosey said.

  “It was for me as well, but I saw her. It was no vision. It was real.”

  “How did you finally encounter her so as to speak with her, or get her to trust you?”

  “I brought food back to the spot where I had seen her with the coyotes. It took several times of bringing food to get her to trust me.”

  “And she ate your food, of course,” Rosey said.

  “Not at first. But once she saw that I meant her and her friends no harm, she began to nibble a little. She always shared with her companions. I need some more tea. Refills for either of you?”

  “I’m good,” I said.

  “Likewise,” Rosey said.

  We watched her pour another cupful for herself.

  “Technical question for you,” Rosey said. “Were her companions always the same two coyotes?”

  “That’s hard for me to answer, as you might expect. I’m no expert on coyotes, but they did seem to be the same two each time we met. They hovered around her and it appeared to me that they were protecting her. I was very cautious so as not to cause them to think I was a threat. I was only interested in helping the human child.”

  “And you finally were able to get her away from the two coyotes,” I said.

  “Not really. One day she showed up at our spot without her friends. That was the day she came home with me.”

  “And she stayed with you after that?” Rosey said.

  “She did. Now and then she would leave the house and go into the woods. She would take food with her and I guessed that she was feeding her companions. She did that for several years. Then one day she stopped doing that.”

  “Did she tell you why she stopped?” I said.

  “When I asked her about that, she merely said that they were gone. She gave me no other explanation.”

  “She stop going into the woods after that?” I said.

  “Oh, no. I suspected that she lived in the woods for a long time before she met me, maybe for a few years. That’s a guess on my part. The woods were a part of who she was, I think. So, she would go into the woods often, anytime of the year. She always came back home.”

  “And after she was old enough to inquire about her heritage, you did some checking as to her parents and you discovered her name through your research?” I said.

  “Only partially. When she finally did speak to me, after several meetings, several months of meeting her and her companions, I naturally asked her what her name was. She answered with the word Kew. It was later that I discovered her other name.”

  “Higgins,” Rosey said.

  “No, I was referring to Ciwa,” Aunt Jo said. “Wait here and I’ll show you.”

  She left us sitting at the kitchen table practically spellbound. I had heard some far out stories in my life. I had been a part of some of those strange tales. This one was by far the most difficult tale to believe. Josephine Starling had stretched both of us with her yarn. We waited in silence. I had nothing to say. Apparently Rosey was as speechless and spellbound as I was.

  She returned with a nearly shredded baby’s blanket that had once upon a time been some shade of red. It could have been a dark pink. All the corners were badly frayed. One section of it was completely missing. She folded it to a spot where we could see that someone had embroidered a name on it. It was an unusual name. Kew Ciwa. The letters were barely discernible, but legible still after so many years.

  “Your research informed you that Kew was her mother’s name. You know anything more about that name?” I said to her.

  “I’ve done a good amount of checking, as you would have done.”

  “And will do,” I said.

  “I figured that much. St. Kew, also known as St. Ciwa, was a Welsh saint believed to have lived in the 6th century. The legend has it that St. Kew or St. Ciwa was raised by wolves. The legend suggests that the wolves nursed and nurtured her into adulthood. She is known in Welsh mythology as the Wolf Girl. There’s more to her story, but that’s what I discovered during those early years when K.C. came to live with me. I didn’t do any further research after I found the names of the people who were the likely parents.”

  “Likely,” I repeated.

  “Little in life is proof positive. I believe I did in fact discover the names of her parents and the story of their early marriage and the births of the twins. I believe what I found was factual. I don’t know anymore to tell you about the parents.”

  “So you did the revising and altered Kew Ciwa into what became Kewtie Cecilia as the end product,” I said. “Very clever of you.”

  “My job was to help her survive in school and in society. She wanted to retain the character of her name, so it was the best I could come up with. It was hard enough back during the eighties. But she made it. She was strong. And, I remind you that it would seem that the end product, as you call it, was K.C. and not Kewtie Cecilia.”

  “Perhaps goes to personality,” Rosey said. “She seems to be a real fighter.”

  “Yeah, fighter indeed. I was never able to completely remove that fighting spirit. It was and is, I suspect, a surviving instinct for her. I doubt if anyone will ever change her basic personality.”

  “And the twin brother, you ever learn anything about how he died?” I asked merely as a follow up to my inquiry about K.C. Higgins.

  “Just a rumor and a strange piece in the newspaper I came across in the late seventies,” Aunt Jo said. “I couldn’t connect the two in any way that I thought might help K.C., so I stopped looking for information about him.”

  “She ever mention having a twin brother?” I said.

  “No.”

  We ended our session with Aunt Jo. She was tired. A full day of Rosey and Clancy was enough to set most people back on their haunches.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Rosey said some fifteen minutes away from Josephine Starling’s place. I was focused on finding our way out of that section of the county and back to Starnes’ house.

  “My thoughts are worth a sight more than a penny.”

  “Okay, how about a silver dollar?”

  “That’s more like it. I was wondering if Kewtie Cecilia Higgins has any killing instincts that the educational system of McAdams County failed to domesticate.”

  “That’s asking a lot of education,” he said.

  “Yeah. Maybe too much.”

  “Well, guess what, Sherlock … I think we have a bonafide lead for this murdering mess.”

  “Wow. Be still my heart. If we’re onto something, Watson, the game’s truly afoot.”

  42

  We were late getting back to Starnes’ place. She was mad because supper was cold and she was tired. We ate a cold supper ju
st to humor her. It didn’t really change her mood.

  “So tell us about your fun day,” I said to Starnes when we had cleaned up the kitchen and had settled into the more comfortable chairs of the small living room. The dogs were already asleep in the middle of the floor.

  “Not much to tell.”

  “Asheville lab help us any?” I said.

  “Yeah. Said it was most likely the same animal, or the same size animal. Matched the teeth marks and distance between, as in the jaw. Identical, or so Mandy said.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think she’s dead-on right. We’re looking for one large vicious animal.”

  “We think we have a bonafide lead as well,” Rosey said.

  “You’re starting to talk like an investigator, Washington. You might take care before you walk down that dark alley with the likes of us.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  “And your gun loaded,” she smiled for the first time since we had arrived late for her supper.

  After a few minutes of silence, Starnes returned from the kitchen with a glass full of ice and something dark. She flopped down in her easy chair.

  “So, tell me about this lead.”

  “K.C. Higgins was raised by Josephine Starling from the time K.C. was five or six years old,” I began.

  “I think we knew most of that, not the age thing, but the fact that Aunt Jo was the guardian,” Starnes said and then took a deep drink of her dark liquid.

  “Aunt Jo was the unofficial guardian. She raised her without the consent of the local or state authorities over such matters.”

  “How’d she do that?” Starnes said.

  “She’s kin to the Artful Dodger. Really don’t know how she pulled it off, but she did tell us that she found K.C. in the woods and eventually took her home and cared for her.”

  “Found her,” Starnes said in her over-the-top incredulous voice.

  “That’s what she told us,” Rosey said.

  “This little kid was roaming around the woods, lost, and Aunt Jo just swept her up and took her home. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Not quite like that. And I don’t think she was lost. Just living in the woods,” I said.