Under a Cloudless Sky

by Chris Fabry

“Is there anything in this life that would make you draw a line in the sand and say, ‘You can come this far but you can’t come no farther’? That’s how I feel. And I can’t make you stand with me. Curtis and Ruthanne are friends, and they’ll be friends even though we’ve got this between us. But I’ll be standing here when they drive the trucks in filled with dynamite.”

  The room was still now except for the creaking of one pew in the back. He looked up and saw Juniper rocking her thin frame back and forth and finally standing and heading for the door.

  “There’s fear in here as thick as apple butter,” Hollis said. “You’re afraid of what you might lose. I say there’s a bigger fear. What if this is not about losing money or land? What if the next generation is looking at us and asking how they ought to live?”

  He stared at the top of Charlotte’s head. She wrote furiously.

  “We’ve bought the lie that Coleman sets the price. He doesn’t own this town. We have more power than we know. We have something valuable. We can sell our birthright, like old Esau, or we can do something daring. We can say no. We’re the ones who can do that.”

  Hollis had heard many sermons in this old church. Some were fire and brimstone. Others were filled with grace and mercy. Most were a little of both. He’d never been so convinced of what he was saying.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve heard from the Lord. I’ve been asking him to raise up people to stand with me. The other night I heard him clear as a bell. You won’t stand alone, Hollis. And I believe it. So I’m asking that we choose faith over fear.

  “It’s going to take backbone to say no. But if we stand together, we’re giving somebody on the next ridge that same chance. It lets them know it’s an option. It opens the door to letting people think differently. And we need some different kind of thinking.”

  Thelma Hutchins spoke. “Hollis, you made good points. You know we respect you and nobody here wants to give up their land. But you got to know when to hold and when to fold, and you don’t have the face cards, and Coleman is the dealer.”

  Her words were like a dagger in the back. “That’s where you’ve got it wrong, Thelma. Coleman is not the dealer. He pretends he is. The real dealer is the Almighty, and he’s looking for one or two of us to stand up. I’ve made my decision. This is the thing I’ll die fighting for. I’m not backing down.”

  Juniper had stood at the door. She finally leaned against it and pushed her way through. Hollis excused himself and nodded at Charlotte as he passed.

  “Nice speech,” she whispered.

  Hollis found Juniper navigating the concrete steps to the parking lot. The laws about the disabled hadn’t reached Beulah Mountain.

  “Where you going?” Hollis said, taking one hand as she held on to the iron railing with the other.

  “Sit in the truck.”

  “I thought you were visiting with Debbie.”

  “I was. And then I got to wondering what was happening in there.”

  “Why don’t you stay? Why don’t you speak up?”

  She looked at him. “If you’ll die for that mountain, you’ll die alone. There’s been enough dying in this family. That granddaughter of yours don’t need you dying. She needs you living.”

  She swayed in the gentle breeze, then reached out both hands and grabbed on to the rail. “I ain’t telling you to back away from what the Lord says. But I’m not climbing onto the bandwagon. There’s things worth more than a mountain, Hollis. It hurts me to hear you say it’s the most important thing.”

  “Look, you know what I meant.”

  He opened the truck door for her and she climbed in and sat there, winded. He thought of Job’s wife. Juniper hadn’t told him to curse God and die, but it felt the same. How could two people who had gone through so much together be at odds over something so fundamental?

  “You know I’d do anything for you,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” She reached out and closed the door.

  As he walked into the church, he noticed Charlotte scribbling. “What did they say while I was gone?”

  She whispered, “They all sympathize. They think you’re right. But they’re still going to sell.”

  He sat beside her. “What do you think?”

  Charlotte stared at her notepad. “This is like It’s a Wonderful Life, Papaw. Old Man Potter and his bank want to own everything in town, and the only thing standing in his way is the Building and Loan. I don’t know if George Bailey has enough friends this time.”

  Hollis put his arm around her.

  “Hollis, we’ve come to a decision,” Shorty Hutchins said. “There ain’t one person in here that wants to hurt you or see you lose your slice of that mountain. Every one of us will help in whatever way we can.”

  “That’s right,” people said around the room.

  “Nobody wants Buddy to win. But we don’t see no other way. I worked these hills. Saw the union come in. Went on strike and had to dig ginseng to sell. I’ve eaten my share of squirrel and possum. It’s been hard. And it’ll get harder if we try to outlast the company. I’m sorry, Hollis.”

  Thelma looked at him with pupils as wide as pinholes. “You ought to think of Juniper.”

  The bile rose and he nearly said something he regretted. He glanced at Jared Stover, who was curiously studying the floor. Either that or he was having an episode. Maybe his wife had gotten to him.

  It felt like someone should pray or sing a final hymn. Instead, one by one, people rose and left. Hollis turned off the lights and locked the door. Charlotte stood with him on the steps.

  “You going to write about this?”

  “Yeah. What you said in there, all of it was true. But it didn’t sway anybody.”

  “Didn’t think it would. I still had to try.”

  “Well, you still have me, Papaw.”

  “Yes, I do. That’ll have to be enough.”

  “I’ve been doing research. I’ve found out some things about the history of the mine . . . probably won’t change anything.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “You ever heard of a woman named Ruby Handley? She married a Freeman, so her name—”

  “I heard of her,” he said, interrupting. “I wouldn’t pee on her foot if it was on fire.”

  “That’s terrible, Papaw. You don’t even know her.”

  “I know enough. She and her daddy were part of the problem, coming in here from the outside and taking what they wanted.”

  “She was just a child, though.”

  “My parents didn’t have much good to say about any of the owners. I expect she has their DNA.”

  Charlotte turned to him but he couldn’t help staring at Juniper in the front seat of the truck. She’d looked sick for a long time but he’d never seen her this defeated.

  “Did the Lord really say that to you?” Charlotte said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What you said in the meeting. Did God speak to you and say you wouldn’t stand alone?”

  Hollis looked away. “I’ve not heard from him in a while. I’m not sure I’d recognize his voice. But if he had spoken to me, that’s what I would have wanted him to say.”

  Charlotte gave him a hug. “Good night, Papaw.”

  16

  FRANCES MAKES A HARD PHONE CALL

  BIDING, KENTUCKY

  WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2004

  Darkness enveloped the house and it took on a ghostly feel. Every creak of the floor and scratch of the wind-driven rosebushes against the siding made Frances uneasy, as if she were being watched. She looked out a front window, searching for headlights, and said a silent prayer for her mother.

  She had put her mother through this, of course, in her teenage years. She’d gone off with friends several times when her mother wanted her home. The roads were too slick or it was the weekend and there were drunks out. Each time Frances had returned after curfew and found her mother waiting in the darkened living room. She gave no warnings or shame, simply put a hand on Fr
ances’s shoulder and said, “Good night.”

  As a teenager, Frances wished her mother had yelled. It was more unnerving to see her walk silently to her room and leave her wondering. But this was her mother’s way.

  Frances went to the kitchen and turned on the light, memories swirling like the aroma of her mother’s cooking. She collected the news clippings from the dresser and sat at the table. Some clippings were yellowing and brittle. They were mostly from a newspaper called the Beulah Mountain Breeze. A few fresh copies were in the stack to be recycled. It was clear from the address label and the postage stamped on the front that Ruby had the paper mailed each week. Frances took the top paper from the stack and flipped through it.

  The Breeze was a glorified grocery store flyer, but the pictures of the small town and the stories about the people were quaint. There was something sad about the pages and pictures, though. Each story had subtext of the struggle in the hills where industry and progress had moved away—and with it the people.

  She replaced the paper and turned back to the clippings her mother had saved. Some were stories of residents pictured at kitchen tables or on front stoops in rocking chairs. Most were obituaries with forgotten histories and genealogies.

  One obituary from 1974 had a star next to it. Beside the star in her mother’s flowing handwriting were the words The man who led me to Jesus. The man, Haddon Gander Brace, had been the pastor of Beulah Mountain Baptist Church since 1931. Frances studied his face. He had a bulbous nose and thick glasses. Very little hair. His expression looked almost mischievous as if he’d just kicked a skunk into the baptistery.

  The obituary detailed the man’s life, how he had survived a mine war in Matewan and how he was called to the ministry. That call came when he was trapped inside a mine in Waldorf, West Virginia. Brace made a promise to serve God if he survived and was good to his word. He had traveled to Chicago and studied at a Bible school and then returned to the hills and became the pastor of Beulah Mountain Baptist, and stayed there most of his life.

  Frances smiled at the man’s picture and wished she could ask her mother about him. From the sketchy history Frances knew, her mother had been in Beulah Mountain only a short time. That this man had made an impact on her spiritually warmed Frances. She wondered if there were more pictures or documents saved that detailed Ruby’s life. Frankly, she hadn’t been interested enough to ask, but now she wished she had. She remembered an old steamer trunk her mother had kept covered with a tablecloth at the foot of her bed. Where had she put that?

  She riffled through a few more articles and obituaries and put them aside, then walked through the pantry, noticing the bags of flour and sugar stacked at eye level. How had her mother moved all of that?

  The old trunk wasn’t in her mother’s bedroom or in any room on the main floor. Perhaps she had gotten rid of it. No, she wouldn’t have done that. She would have stored it. Frances opened the basement door and turned on the light, but the musty smell and the darkness were too much.

  She sat on the couch and tried to still her heart.

  What would Ruby do?

  That made her smile, thinking of the WWRD bracelet she could make and sell. If their roles were reversed, her mother wouldn’t stop looking. Ruby would keep going until she found Frances, until she figured out what was going on inside her that had caused her to leave. Was it spite? Anger? Was Ruby holed up in a Holiday Inn a few miles away, happy she was making them worry?

  She dialed her brother’s house and her sister-in-law answered after the third ring.

  “No, we haven’t heard anything,” Laurie said abruptly. “I don’t know why you would upset her like this.”

  “Why I would upset her?” Frances said.

  “Jerry told me what you did and how much it hurt Ruby. And then for you to accuse him of doing something? It’s beyond me, Frances.”

  “Laurie, I didn’t accuse him. I simply asked—”

  “You stuck your nose in where you had no business. If you ask me, she’s probably waiting for you to leave so she can come home. You always blow things up bigger than they are.”

  Laurie’s vitriol took Frances’s breath away. She could only imagine how Jerry had described their conversations. Through the years Laurie had been polite, but there was always something beneath the surface of their interactions. Call it anger or distrust or frustration—it was bobbing now in an ugly way.

  “May I speak with Jerry?” Frances said, her voice trembling.

  A noise on the phone like Laurie had covered the mouthpiece. After a moment she said, “He’s in bed. He said he’d call you in the morning.”

  “Well, could you tell me if he found out anything about her credit card? He said he was going to call the card company—”

  “He said he’d call you in the morning. Good night, Frances.”

  The line went dead. Frances took a deep breath and hung up. More mind swirling. What if Laurie was right? What if Frances had caused her mother to leave?

  She turned off the kitchen light but left the small one on above the stove and wandered to the living room. Her mother had either the radio or the TV on at all times of the day and Frances had to fight the urge to do the same. It was easier to turn something on that drowned out the pain and questions. She sat back in the easy chair and let the events of the day flow through her mind. The stream felt toxic, tainted by anger and the hurt of the past, but she had learned some things.

  Her mother had called Franklin Brown after a message on forgiveness. Who did Ruby need to forgive? What had dredged up the past infraction? Did it have something to do with Jerry?

  No matter how Frances turned and twisted the possibilities, she couldn’t come up with any explanation other than the worst: her mother had met with tragedy. There were stories every day about disoriented older people driving into lakes and rivers. Or stories of older people found in the trunks of burned-out cars, the perpetrators never caught.

  She closed her eyes and tried not to think of her mother banging on the inside of her car trunk with her cane. Or floating in water at the bottom of a reservoir. Or going through a guardrail and careening down a mountainside. The possibilities were endless and Frances knew it was going to be a long night.

  What if this wasn’t about the car? What if Ruby had found evidence her husband had been unfaithful? What if Frances’s father had a child by another woman? Ruby could be traveling to see the woman or the child. What if the unavailable number was the child making contact or wanting an inheritance? Or someone who was scamming her at that very moment?

  Frances had let her thoughts betray her father. He was a one-woman kind of man and had loved her mother dearly. She needed to calm herself and stop thinking. All her life, if she could put the x’s and y’s together with the right combination of theoretic equations, she could move forward. Her job was numbers. Addition and subtraction and everything balancing from top to bottom.

  Frances picked up the phone and scrolled through the call list again. She had seen the calls to and from her daughter and assumed they were chatting. There had been a falling-out between Frances and Julia. Her daughter had asked for space. It was a hard conversation but Frances hoped they could reconcile and things would return to normal. They had always been close.

  But what if Julia was in trouble? Did it have something to do with her boyfriend? He wasn’t good for her. From what Frances knew, he seemed a lot like . . . Well, she didn’t want to go there.

  What if Julia had called Ruby to ask for help? What if Julia had avoided calling her own mother? What if Julia had sworn Ruby to secrecy about something?

  Frances sat up straight, a lightbulb going on in her head.

  What if Ruby, at that very moment, was in the college town with Julia, sleeping in some hotel near campus, preparing to drive her granddaughter to the pro-life clinic? Or what if the forgiveness she was seeking had something to do with her granddaughter and an abortion? What if the frantic call to the radio preacher was about forgiveness Julia needed?


  Frances dialed Julia’s cell number but it went to her voice mail. She hung up and dialed the apartment.

  “Hello?” someone said on the other end.

  “Is this Melanie?” Frances said.

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “It’s Julia’s mother. I apologize for calling so late. I’m trying to reach her.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Freeman. She’s not here. You can try her cell.”

  “I did. There was no answer.”

  “Oh, it’s here. She’s charging it. She said something about having trouble with it.”

  Frances looked at the clock. “Do you know where she went?”

  “She just said she was meeting somebody.”

  “And you don’t know who?”

  “We don’t talk a whole lot these days. She’s been in a funk since . . .”

  “Since what? Is something wrong?”

  “Since the breakup. Did she tell you?”

  “No. I had no idea.” Finally some good news, Frances thought. “I didn’t think . . . well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

  “I hope I didn’t overstep,” Melanie said.

  “You didn’t. I won’t mention anything about it when I talk with Julia. Melanie, has she said anything about her grandmother?”

  “No. But she’s kind of in her own world with studying and everything that’s going on.”

  “And you have no idea who she’s meeting tonight?”

  “I heard her on the phone with someone but I try not to listen. Do you want me to give her a message?”

  Frances tried to think quickly but there were so many competing thoughts. “Just ask her to call me. Say it’s important. A family matter.”

  “I’ll do that, Mrs. Freeman.”

  “Thank you, Melanie.”

  Frances held the phone in one hand like it was a loaded weapon without a safety and she was so caught up she didn’t notice the fast beeping. She placed it on the cradle.

  Julia’s school was six hours away. But the way Ruby drove, it could be eight hours or more. Or a two-day trip. Could Ruby be caught between a promise made to her granddaughter and the concern of her own children about her driving?