The Art of Breathing

by Janie DeVos

  He rested his forearms on the table, too, and leaned in. “Try me.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the bill was paid, and Philip and I were on our way to Cabot to meet with George Eisenhower.

  EPILOGUE

  Howling Cut, NC

  June 1955

  “I know darn well they’re gonna do it,” I said over my shoulder as I stood at the second-story bedroom window of Grandma Willa’s first home in Howling Cut, which was now my own. “Shoot, I know how they’ll do it, too.” I continued to suspiciously scan the dark yard below and the road beyond, watching for any pinpricks of light that were moving and out of place. “And I know exactly who’ll be leading the pack!”

  “So let ’em come, Kate, and you come back to bed.” Philip chuckled.

  “That’s exactly where they want to find us!” I laughed, but the temptation of loving my new husband again was too great, so double-checking that the two buckets next to the window were full of water, I went back to him. He lifted the covers for me and I slid in by him, resting my chin on his chest. Slowly, sensuously, I felt his large, strong hand slide up the back of my thigh and beneath my nightgown, rubbing and stroking me as we lay in wait for the midnight shivaree to commence. I had no doubt that Daddy and Ditty would be out in front of the makeshift parade, with Donnie riding high on the shoulders of one of them.

  “I can’t believe you were almost late to the wedding,” I said, lifting my head and gazing at the man I loved so deeply.

  “You were the one who said we had to stay out of the way all day. You said I wasn’t allowed to see you in your wedding dress beforehand, and you wanted us to keep Donnie occupied. So really, it’s your fault,” he teased, lightly slapping my bottom.

  “But you could have come in a little earlier, you know.”

  “Well, first we had to stop by the school. Some of the science books arrived today, and I needed to make sure that the teachers will have what they need when school starts next week.” Philip was thrilled to be head of the high school math and science departments, and George and I were just as excited. It had also been suggested that upon George’s retirement in just several more years, Philip would be the ideal candidate to take over as the director of the Howling Cut branch of the school. Having a doctorate, he was more than qualified.

  “Then we went fishing,” Philip continued, “and they started biting just when we were packing up to leave. First one bass hit, and then another. It became a feeding frenzy! Donnie was thrilled, especially since he caught the biggest one of all.”

  “I have one question: Did you cringe when you had to put the worms on the hook?” I laughed.

  “What? Uh . . . no,” he answered, confused by the question. “How else you gonna catch a fish?”

  “There’s another reason Donnie loves you. He does, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. I kind of like the little guy, too.” Philip chuckled, pulling me up toward him and kissing my lips, gently at first, then far more deeply as I responded.

  “Wasn’t the wedding beautiful, Philip?” I sighed, laying my head down in the crook of his neck, but immediately lifting it again as another thought struck me. “I can’t get over Annabelle and Marsha showing up! I was standing out in the alcove, ready to come down the aisle, when the two of them walked in. I started to cry but held back as best I could ’cause I didn’t want to mess up my makeup. They said they almost missed the wedding after getting lost on one of the back roads. Lord, it was good seeing them again. They look so well! Thank you, sweet Jesus,” I added as I laid my head back down.

  “The only thing that would have made it perfect was having Aunt Merry Beth there, too, but Dr. Sandell said she’s just not able to leave Pelham yet. And like he told Mama a while ago, she probably never will be. I hate that for her—and I hate it for Mama, too.”

  “But at least your aunt is safe there, Kate. She doesn’t have a husband pounding on her, and she’s not cold and starving out on the street somewhere. Did they ever find out where her husband ended up?”

  “No, unfortunately not. Honestly, I wish we’d heard he was dead and gone. God forgive me for saying that, but it’s the truth. Hey,” I said, changing the subject, “wasn’t that something, seeing Dr. Ludlow escorting Aunt Harriet to the wedding! I thought something was up when she brought him here for Christmas dinner. She said that he just didn’t have any family around anymore since his mother died right before Thanksgiving, but I kind of thought there was more to it than that. Strange the way life goes, isn’t it?” I said softly. But Philip barely managed an “uh-huh” as he began to drift off to sleep.

  Lifting my head, I studied his face again. I would never tire of looking at Philip, or tire of loving him. I sighed with deep contentment and laid my head back down on his chest as I waited for the night to erupt into fireworks; first, the shivaree kind, and after that, our own loving kind. As I lay there, I was lulled into a half sleep listening to the strong beating of his heart, and the gentle, life-giving rhythm of his breathing.

  Don’t miss Janie DeVos’ haunting novel BENEATH A THOUSAND APPLE TREES, available to order now!

  As the 20th century dawns, the world is transformed in dizzying ways. But nestled in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains is a place, and a family, out of time—where one young girl will grow to face the challenges of each generation before her—and discover whether she has the strength to overcome them . . .

  The eldest surviving daughter of Anna Guinn, Rachel rarely ventures far from her home in the Appalachians, aside from an occasional trip into town to trade a penny for a peppermint stick. Sometimes she yearns for more, but as much as she fears her mother’s unstable mind, she is anchored by the strength of her grandmother, Willa. Freed from an abusive marriage, Willa holds the family together through hardship, all the while fulfilling her role as keeper of her neighbors’ carefully guarded secrets—the most painful of which may be her own.

  In this isolated, eccentric world where people depend on moonshine to put food on the table, hang talismans to chase away ghosts—and tragedy can strike as suddenly as a coiled copperhead—Rachel wonders what life has in store. Most of all, she worries whether she and her sister have inherited the darkness that lurks inside their mother. Her one respite is the town’s apple orchard, the ally she finds there—and the revelation that she can take her destiny into her own hands, decide what to leave behind—and what is truly worth carrying into the future . . .

  CHAPTER 1

  1916, Howling Cut, NC

  I wasn’t born with a bad right foot. Instead, I’d been dealt a bad hand when an accident at Papa’s timber mill crippled me. The man known as the off-bearer was busy stacking boards that had just been cut by the spinning, sharp-toothed saw and didn’t see me walk up beside him. With his mind a million miles away, he was simply repeating the tedious pulling-off-and-stacking motion of yet another board when he turned and dropped it on my foot.

  It seemed to happen in slow motion. The off-bearer, who was a stoic Irishman named Rusty Flaherty, saw me standing there just a fraction of a second after he’d let the board go, and the look of horror on his face was one I would never forget, and which froze me in place. I was lucky, they said, because it had narrowly missed my head. But I wasn’t lucky enough, for even though Papa immediately threw me in the wagon and hauled me over to Doc Pardie’s house, my foot had never healed right.

  The doctor wouldn’t operate because I was only four and “still had growin’ to do, and there ain’t any use but to wait ’til she’s done a-doin’ it,” he’d told my father. I heard Papa tell Mama later that he wouldn’t have let Doc do it anyway, since he smelled like he’d “dived into a bottle of one hundred proof. Maybe it’ll just straighten out on its own,” he’d said, without too much conviction in his voice. And it had healed, just not straight enough or strong enough, and there’d never been enough money to do anything to correct it.

  I walked with a pronounced limp, and the fact that I was short and small-boned only helped to acce
ntuate it. I’d been given the offensive name of Laggin’ Leg early on, and each time I was called by it, I wished the darn pine had, indeed, clobbered me in the head. But, as Grandma was quick to remind me when I came home in tears, I must have been saved from certain death for a reason, and “that which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” she’d point out, while pointing at me to emphasize her point.

  That’s all well and good, I thought, but I just wish the good Lord had warned me to stand on the other side of Mr. Flaherty, and found someone else to make a point with.

  The first time someone referred to me as Laggin’ Leg was when I was six. It was during Sunday school class as I walked back to my seat after reciting the first five verses of John. I’d proudly made it through my recital without omitting one word, and Mrs. Jacobson was in the midst of telling the class that I was “a true disciple of the Lord’s,” when nine-year-old Ray Coons deliberately stuck his foot out in front of me. Suddenly, I went from walking proudly with my chin up, to lying on the floor with a split in it. The whole class—all thirteen of them—fell into fits of laughter, while stars danced before my eyes as though they were having a celestial recital on the scuffed pine floor where I lay staring in dazed confusion.

  “Ray Coons!” Mrs. Jacobson scolded as she quickly walked over to me. “I saw that!”

  “Why, Miz Jacobson, I didn’t do nothin’,” Ray innocently objected. “She’s just a cripple, that’s all. She can’t walk too good. She’s got that laggin’ leg o’ hers, and she falls all the time, don’t ya, girl?” Ray looked at me as though he’d cut my throat if I didn’t concede that the fall had been my fault. I didn’t—couldn’t—say a word, however, as I was too busy trying to refill my lungs with air; the fall had knocked all of it out of me. And the wracking sobs that had followed only made the possibility of my breathing again that much more unlikely.

  The episode left me with two things: a scar on my chin from the gash that required four stitches (which Doc Pardie sewed during a rare moment of sobriety), and the cruel new nickname. I hid in the back of the loft in the barn after receiving my stitches until Grandma coaxed me out with the smell of a cheese biscuit. I think she’d given me time to process the event—and to get hungry enough to make cheese biscuits more important. I came down the ladder and turned around, facing her.

  Looking at her was like looking at an older version of myself, except for the fact that she had thick, medium-length, coal-black hair, with just a few streaks of gray blended throughout. My hair, however, was long and curly, and the same insignificant color brown as a withered maple leaf, just like my father’s. But Grandma and I had the same build, same face, and the same brilliant blue eyes; “Carolina blue,” she always called them. As we stood looking at each other, she pulled pieces of straw from my hair, then rather roughly rubbed away the telltale tracks of some dried up tears. I knew she wasn’t mad at me for crying, but was angry with whoever had been the cause of it.

  The wind whistled through the gaps in the plank siding on the north side of the barn, creating an eerie tune and causing me to shiver. Our town, Howling Cut, had been named for just that very reason—the eerie, howling sound the wind made when it rushed down the mountains and through one of the logging roads or “cuts” in the forests which surrounded us. And the place was living up to its name at the moment. Grandma handed me the biscuit and pulled the collar of my worn-out brown coat closed, trying in vain to keep the cold out.

  “I can’t keep life from hurtin’ ya, Rachel,” she said. “Alls I can do is learn ya to be tough enough to stand up to it.”

  She pulled me close to her and I could smell the smoke from our wood stove when I laid my face against her breast. She sighed after a long moment, held me away from her, and I caught the glint of tears that threatened to spill over from the reddened pockets of her lower lids.

  “C’mon. We’re gettin’ as cold as our supper is.” Turning, she led the way out of the barn.

  photo credit: Barbara Kahn

  Janie DeVos, a native of Coral Gables, Florida, worked in the advertising industry in the late 1980s, but left the field in 2000, to turn her love of writing into a full-time career. DeVos started her freelance writing company, Rainy Day Creations, and became a copywriter for several greeting card companies. In 2002, her national-award-winning poem How High Can You Fly? was published as a children’s picture book through River Road Press, and a second hard cover picture book, The Path Winds Home, soon followed.

  In 2007, Ms. DeVos’s third children’s picture book, Barthello’s Wing, was published through East End Publishing, and was included in Scholastic Books’North American school book fairs. To date it has sold over 90,000 copies.

  Ms. DeVos gave up city life to live in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, in 2007. And though she continued to write for children, including the publication of her fourth children’s book, The Shopkeeper’s Bear, in 2012, she found her writing interests began to change as she became more embedded in the lives and the traditions of the mountain people.

  Ms. DeVos has made numerous appearances in schools, libraries and bookstores, and has been a keynote speaker as well as a selected author for special events, including the Miami Book Fair International, and the Carolina Literary Festival.

  Janie DeVos has begun writing the first book in a new three-book series, A Corner in Glory.