Blessings of Mossy Creek

by Debra Dixon

  “It’s so danged hot you could fry an egg on the cement,” Mama said. On the front porch, she loaded the metal tub full of tomatoes and dumped steaming water on them to soak. “Makes ’em easier to peel,” she explained. “Then we’ll can ’em for soup for the winter.”

  Being the oldest, I’d have the miserable job of peeling and canning, while my little sister, Annie Mae, waved away the flies that swarmed to suck on the tomato juice we splattered all over ourselves. She got paid a penny for every fly she killed and had almost a dollar saved in a mayonnaise jar. I got the same amount for every ten tomatoes I peeled. That didn’t seem fair.

  Anyway, Annie Mae and I were playing out beneath the shade of a big old cherry tree. Granny’s heart couldn’t take the heat, so she hovered inside by the trailer’s window air conditioner, sipping sweet iced tea and watching her soaps on a little TV. I poured water into the dirt pile Annie Mae and I had dug with our hands. Annie Mae stirred the mess with a stick to make it thick for mud pies.

  “Mama, why’d you tie those handkerchiefs in the cherry tree?” I asked. They waved at me from above like white flags floating against the blue sky.

  “To scare off the blackbirds,” Mama said. She wrapped a scarf around her head and gathered a bucket. “They’ll make us a good cherry pie one day.”

  Annie Mae added dried berries to the mud, humming a nursery rhyme. “Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie.”

  Billy Paul, who’d just joined the terrible-two crowd, screamed from the inside. Mama sighed, looking weary. “I do wish that baby boy would take a nap. I’ve got to go pick some peas for supper.” The screened door slapped as she went inside. Mama lugged him out, propped on her hip, and sat him on the ground next to me. She put a bowl full of crushed vanilla wafers soaked in milk in front of him.

  “Shirley, watch him long enough for me to go to the pea patch, will you?”

  “But me and Annie Mae’s busy.”

  “You’re just making mud pies, child. Your granny can’t keep up with him inside. I won’t be gone more than a few minutes.” She pointed to the old well house.

  “Just make sure none of you young’uns go near the well,” Mama warned. “Else Soap Sally will get you.”

  “I know. I know.” I shivered as I imagined what Soap Sally must look like. I’d had nightmares ever since Granny had first told me about the old witch who lived in the well, dragging herself back and forth, hiding in the dark crevices. I could see long bony tendrils growing from her webbed fingers. She’d latch them just below the well edge, ready to grab us kids and drag us down to feast on for supper. I could hear her screeching, her cries like birds pecking the dead, and see her craggy mean face in my sleep, eyes hollow, fire seeping from her nose. She was as ancient as the hills and had been around since Cherokee times, Granny said. Her skin was wrinkly, her long scraggly hair filled with bugs, and her face was snow white from never seein’ the light of day. And her rotten teeth were jagged from chewing children’s bones.

  I waited until Mama had yanked on gardening gloves and headed to the pea patch before I said anything. Then I shook a finger at Billy Paul. “You just better mind me, little brother, or I’ll get a limb from the cherry tree and blister you.”

  It was the same threat Mama used on me and Annie Mae. Annie Mae’s eyes bugged out but Billy Paul simply giggled. I was beginning to think he was an idgit baby. Nothing scared him. He was such a daredevil he’d climb on a table and walk right off. And even though he’d turned two, he wasn’t talking much.

  He stuck his chubby hands in the vanilla wafer soup, scooped up a fistful, then jammed it in his mouth like a greedy pig. No wonder he couldn’t talk, he was too busy eatin’ to learn.

  Granny hollered from the inside.

  “Heavens to Betsy, it must be time to change the channel for Days.” Granny’s crooked fingers had trouble with the buttons on the TV remote, and since her eyes had turned bad, she couldn’t read the numbers.

  “Don’t move.” I wagged that finger at Billy Paul and Annie Mae again. “I’ll be right back.”

  I ran up the porch steps and hurried inside. Granny would be chomping her dentures if she missed even a minute. But I had to wash the mud off before I touched the TV. Then Granny needed her spit can for her daily dip of snuff. I grabbed it from the kitchen, and carried it to her.

  “Thanks, child,” Granny said. “You want to keep me company?”

  I hated for Granny to sit by her lonesome, but I’d get the blisterin’ of a lifetime if I left Billy Paul and Annie Mae out there alone. “Maybe when Mama gets back from pea pickin’.”

  The music for Days of Our Lives began and Granny dipped her snuff, then turned to watch. I hurried to the screen door, then froze in horror. Billy Paul’s chubby little body was climbing up on the well.

  “No!” I tore down the steps. Annie Mae was so busy patting mud she’d been payin’ no mind. Billy Paul grabbed the flat part of the well top and dragged his body up. He had always been a climber.

  “Stop it right now!” I shouted. “Get down, Billy Paul!”

  Annie Mae turned, her brown eyes shinin’ like copper pennies through her mud-covered face, and screamed like a banshee. I was running so fast I tripped down the steps and fell flat on the ground. My knees burned, gravel dug into my hands, and I tasted blood and dust. I looked up and saw Billy Paul on top of the well house, sprawled on his stomach. His butt was poked up in the air as he wiggled his legs. He was inching toward the hole, jiggling the rope that held the bucket, clanging it back and forth.

  “Nooooo!” I jumped up and ran toward the well. My heart was pounding so loud I thought there might be a train coming through the mountain.

  Just as I reached the well, I grabbed Billy Paul’s holey tennis shoe, but it slid off in my hand and he toppled inside. The rope and bucket clattered, Billy Paul screeched, and then there was nothing.

  * * * *

  The next few hours were a blur of screaming and crying. Me. Mama. Granny. Annie Mae. I even threw up twice.

  The only one who was quiet was Billy Paul.

  Deathly, deathly quiet.

  “Lord help, lord help,” Mama chanted. “My baby has got to be all right.”

  Sirens roared and Chief Royden arrived, catching Mama’s hands between his to calm her. She was squalling so much she could barely squeak out the story. Smokey Lincoln, the forest ranger, arrived, then the mayor, Ida Hamilton Walker, zipped up in her sports car, her face worried. Granny rolled her chair to the trailer’s front porch to stand guard. She gave me a lowdown on who everybody was and where they fit into Mossy Creek as they made an appearance.

  The fire engine carrying the volunteer firefighters barreled up the graveled drive, spraying dirt and rocks, with more volunteers behind them. The WMOS Media van pulled up with fancy letters on the side, and Mr. Lyman jumped out with a video camera.

  “Gracious, Bert Lyman’s puttin’ us on the cable TV,” Granny whispered.

  Chaos erupted as everyone raced to hear the story. I had never seen so many people in all my life. Soon the whole world would all know that it was my fault my brother was at the bottom of the well.

  I hugged my bloody knees to myself, wanting to die. Did Soap Sally have Billy Paul? Had she already sunk her claws into his chubby baby skin and finished him off? Would she eat him alive or did she have some cast iron oven down there to bake her catches?

  The grown-ups congregated to access the situation, hovering to discuss the best possible way to rescue Billy Paul. They would need to send someone down inside the well, but the blustery men couldn’t fit through the hole. A few minutes later, the Bigelow paramedics arrived with all kinds of equipment in case Billy Paul was still alive.

  I threw up again, barely missing Granny’s feet and hittin’ the boxwoods instead.

  “Let’s just think positive,” Granny said as I scrooched up beside her chair. She’d clutched Annie Mae in her lap and had a death grip on her, while I had a death grip on Granny’s wheelchair. The soap opera
had been long forgotten, and now Judge Judy was blaring to the trailer’s empty kitchen. A cold wave of shock washed over me. Poor Billy Paul. He was just a little bitty thing; he didn’t have a chance against the monsters in the dark well. And if Soap Sally hadn’t got to him, there were snakes and rats and spiders and god knows what else. Trolls maybe . . .

  Even more Creekites rolled up the drive. Some blue-haired ladies bringing casseroles and pies. The bakery lady, Ingrid Beechum, toted boxes of donuts into the house. A young woman named Jayne, who’d opened The Naked Bean coffee shop the fall before, brought tea and coffee and shortbread and set it up on our Shaker wood table. “People need caffeine and sugar,” she said, “After all, this might take a while.”

  The sea of people was endless. Rainey Cecil, looking like a young, red-haired Dolly Parton, roared up in her pink late-model pick-up truck with the Goldilocks Hair, Nail and Tanning Salon sign on the driver’s door. Pearl Quinlan brought a sack of Bibles from her bookstore and passed them amongst the growing crowd. And of course Officer Crane, Chief Royden’s right-hand woman, was running around relaying Chief Royden’s orders to everybody in sight, and adding a few of her own — especially to Officer Mutt Bottoms, her brother. Besides the police, the firemen, and Mayor Walker, there was Mossy Creek councilman Egg Egbert on a cell phone calling for more help. One of the young firemen, Nail Delgado, came over and hunkered down in front of me and asked me in his New York Yankee accent if I was okay. Nail looked like Justin Timberlake. I had the biggest crush on him. I could only nod.

  A bulldozer arrived on the back of a big flatbed. Wolfman Washington climbed down from the cab. I felt a momentary surge of comfort. Mr. Washington looked like a cross between James Earl Jones and God, if God wore overalls and a Braves cap. “What do you think, Ida, Amos?” he said to the mayor and police chief. “My advice is to board up the top of the well so when we yank off the concrete supports, dirt and debris won’t fall down on the baby.”

  Everyone agreed, and got to work. Within a half hour our well house sat ten feet above the earth, cupped in the scoop of Mr. Washington’s giant bulldozer. Then everyone stared down at the naked hole, frowning. An old, hand-dug well is wide enough for a grown man to fit inside. But our well had dried up a few years before, so Mama scraped up the money to have it drilled deeper. The well-digging company fitted the re-built shaft with concrete pipe. So now, instead of the wide, shallow well shaft they’d expected, the rescuers were dealing with a concrete-lined hole no more than eighteen inches across.

  Billy Paul’s soft, scared mewls echoed up from the depths. Mama covered her face and sobbed. At least he was alive.

  “All right,” Chief Royden announced. “Let’s get some more equipment in here and start digging a parallel shaft. We’ll have to go down and tunnel across to the shaft.”

  I imagined the only ounce of light Billy Paul had being snuffed out, his air cut off. He must be so scared . . .

  I ran to the chief. “Let me do it, I’ll fit down the hole. You can drop me down there and I can grab Billy Paul.”

  “Shirley,” Chief Royden said in a soft voice, “that’s awfully brave, but it’s too dangerous. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  But I wasn’t brave, I was the cause of all this. “Please,” I begged. “Then leastways Billy Paul won’t be alone till you can figure somethin’ out.” And maybe I could fight off Soap Sally. I was bigger. I had more meat on my bones. Maybe she’d eat me in place of Billy Paul.

  “Get back and stay out of the way,” Mama snapped.

  You have done enough damage.

  She didn’t say it, but I heard the words anyway and knew it was true. It was my fault Billy Paul had fallen in that dark hole. My fault he might die. My fault if Soap Sally ate him.

  It should have been me down there instead.

  * * * *

  Governor Ham Bigelow was in the midst of a closed door meeting to discuss the possibility of his presidential candidacy when the telephone rang. He ignored it, letting his assistant take the call, but seconds later, the door opened.

  “Excuse me, sir, it’s your mother. Line one.”

  Ham glanced up and shrugged. “Unless it’s an emergency, tell her I’ll call her back.”

  “Err, it is sort of an emergency.” The woman hesitated, shifting back and forth. “She said you should turn on the TV. Said something’s going on in Mossy Creek that you need to know about.”

  Oh, good Lord, what now? Was Aunt Ida shooting more official highway signs or staging yet another attempt to defame her own nephew in public? Ham gestured wildly toward his team of advisors. One of them grabbed a remote and punched up the volume on a large television encased in the office’s elegantly paneled wall.

  “This late breaking story, happening as we speak,” Bert Lyman intoned. “A two-year-old child is trapped in an old well north of Mossy Creek. The mother is distraught, as you can see.” The camera swung to a shot of a woman in jeans and a sweat-stained T-shirt, sobbing. “The local police department and fire department are doing everything they can to rescue the child. Local citizens have turned out in droves to offer support and help with efforts. Mayor! Mayor Walker! Have you got any comment?”

  Ham’s extremely charismatic Aunt Ida, looking slim and tanned in a sleeveless linen blouse and snug summer skirt, stepped into view. Ham groaned silently. If anybody ever started a magazine called Hot Baby Boomer Babes, Ida could be a cover model. Why couldn’t she look dowdy and inconsequential, like a normal fifty-year-old? She leveled long-lashed green eyes at the camera, directing a laser beam of accusation right at Ham. “We’re going to save this child,” she said in a steely voice. “But I’d just like to point out that this child would be back in his mother’s arms by now if we had better equipment for our local rescue unit. We don’t have that equipment because Governor Bigelow vetoed the legislation to provide grants for rural volunteer fire departments. Of course, there’d be plenty of money for those grants if the governor hadn’t pushed tax cuts that benefit only the corporate interests that donate money to his campaigns.”

  “Thank you, Mayor Walker.” Bert Lyman, her sly conspirator, faced the camera. “We’ll continue to bring you live coverage of this tragic drama in the mountain town where Governor Ham Bigelow’s mother grew up —”

  Ham drowned out the words with a stream of invectives that sent his staff scurrying to close the office doors. He got up and paced, invoking his aunt’s name in unpleasant ways along with the reputation of every Hamilton relative of his in Mossy Creek, the outlying communities, and the entire length of Bigelow County.

  The phone rang again. “Your mother again,” a staffer whispered. Ham sighed and took the phone. Ardaleen Hamilton Bigelow’s elegantly Southern, elegantly furious voice curled into his ear. “You cannot allow my sister to eviscerate you again in front of the voters. Do something.”

  “Just what do you have in mind, Mother?”

  “Get yourself up there to those white-trash hinterlands my sister loves so much and rescue that child and get yourself on camera. Show people that you’re in charge of this situation, not my sister!””

  “I’ll take care of it, Mother.” He gestured toward his staff. “Get me a helicopter.”

  “Good. I’ll see that our family in Bigelow is aware of the situation and gets involved. No righteous bunch of Creekites are going to upstage us.”

  “Mother? You were sixteen years old when Aunt Ida was born. Couldn’t you have dropped her down a well?”

  His mother hissed. “I wish I had.”

  * * * *

  While men, women, and equipment worked feverishly to dig my brother out of the well, Chief Royden jogged up the trailer’s steps, grabbed a glass of tea from the tray the women kept refilling, leaned down and smiled at me. “It’s gonna be all right, Shirley. We’ll get your brother out of there.” He was tall and handsome and reassuring. If Nail Delgado was Justin Timberlake, Chief Royden was George Clooney with dark hair. I had a crush on him, too.

&n
bsp; Again, I could only nod.

  Mr. Lincoln, the forest ranger, squatted down so I could see in his eyes. “I rescue kids all the time. Few weeks ago, I pulled some kid from a cave. Smelled like a skunk, but he was all right.”

  He tweaked my cheek and I tried for a smile but failed. My stomach had jumped up in my throat again. By now Soap Sally might be sharpening her fangs or finishing off the last of Billy Paul. What if they found him and there wasn’t nothin’ left?

  In the yard, a truck pulled up and a man with a camera jumped out carrying a reporter’s notepad and a camera bag.

  “That’s Jess Crane, from the Gazette,” Granny said. “That’s Sandy’s husband.”

  A big van pulled up the drive. Dr. Blackshear, the veterinarian, helped his wife maneuver her wheelchair down a ramp. Then a bunch of girls unfolded from the seats and ran toward the porch, their matching purple shirts bobbing like a pack of grape popsicles.

  Casey Blackshear rolled herself up to the edge of our porch along with them, and smiled at me. “Shirley, I think you can use some company. These are a few of the Lady Mustangs, the Mossy Creek champion softball team. Meet Rabbit, Boom Boom, Slick, and Killer.”

  Killer? I frowned. That ought to be my name.

  Granny thanked Casey, then nodded to me to do the same. Even in crisis we had to mind our manners. I murmured, “Thank you, Miz Blackshear.”

  “Tell me something about yourself.”

  I went blank. After gulping for a minute I could only say, “Mama named me after Shirley Temple. Because I had curly hair when I was a baby.”

  “That’s great,” Casey said with a smile. “She was an old-time movie star and she grew up to be a foreign diplomat. You’ll be someone important some day, too.”

  I hung my head in shame. Yeah, I’d be famous, I could see the headlines in the paper — Jailbird’s daughter, Shirley Stancil, the girl from Mossy Creek, who let her own little brother fall down a well and get eaten by a witch.