Rattlesnake Hill

by Leslie Wheeler

  He saw the pond but something else as well, something that made his heart jump. A figure stood on the grassy slope between house and pond. Even from a distance, he could tell it was a woman. Could it really be her? Oh, Diana, oh baby. He leaned forward with yearning. Then fear, as he remembered the harsh words they had spoken the night before her death. What if she had come back, not in love and forgiveness, but in anger? What if she turned away when he held out his arms, defiant in death as in life?

  Blue metal flashed before his eyes. Shit! Earl pulled hard on the steering wheel, narrowly missing the car parked in front of the house. The near collision snapped him back to his senses. It wasn’t Diana’s ghost he was seeing but a living woman. The new tenant?

  He’d heard rumors someone might be moving in but had dismissed them. Nobody moved here in this off-season time between the last of the foliage and the first snowfall. He’d counted on the house being empty from now until next summer. He was wrong.

  Earl made a sharp U-turn in the parking area and sped back down the driveway. A deep disappointment replaced the anticipation, laced with dread, he’d felt at the outset. Disappointment and annoyance at the new tenant. She was an intruder. He hoped her stay proved as short as those of the previous tenants.

  At the end of the driveway, Earl turned right. Might as well go home now—“home” to his tin can. Anger surged through him. He wanted to be out on the patio of the Farley house, dammit, not cooped up in his trailer. But he couldn’t while she was there. He wouldn’t have a chance like this for another year. She had no business moving in today of all days. Had no business moving in at all.

  Earl slammed on the brakes and the truck shuddered to a stop. He bounced a fist off the steering wheel. Maybe this time he wouldn’t wait for events to take their course. Maybe he’d do something to speed up the process. He cranked the pickup around again. He wouldn’t spend the rest of the afternoon sulking in his trailer, no. He’d make his plans over a few beers at the White Stag.

  The snake rattle that hung from his rearview mirror whirred as he zoomed downhill. He was so accustomed to its sound that he hardly heard it anymore, but now it almost seemed to be speaking to him.

  Chapter 3

  The phone rang and rang. Why didn’t the old woman pick up? Was she too feeble to get to it? Or even worse, dead? It would be a supreme irony if the one person who had the information she wanted died before Kathryn had a chance speak to her. Finally, a woman’s breathless voice came onto the line: “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Goodale, this is Kathryn Stinson. I’m calling to confirm our appointment this morning.”

  “Em’s not here. I’m her helper. Heard the phone on the way to my car. If you’ve got an appointment, she must of forgotten. She left the house a while ago.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Senior center in Great Barrington like always on Tuesday.”

  “When do you expect her back?”

  “Dinnertime.”

  “Please leave her a message that I called.” Kathryn gave the woman her name and number and hung up.

  She was annoyed but not particularly surprised. From past experience with potential donors to the Lyceum’s collection, she knew elderly people could be forgetful. But dinnertime? That was a long time to wait. Too long. Although it was only her second day in New Nottingham, she was anxious to get on with the business that had brought her here. She’d drive to Great Barrington and call on Mrs. Goodale at the senior center.

  As she was about to leave, Kathryn noticed a few flies buzzing against the living room windowpanes. They must have gotten in during yesterday’s move. She’d deal with them when she got back. Amore, the cat she was taking care of while his owner was abroad, crouched in the living room, tail twitching, fixated on the flies.

  *****

  The receptionist at the senior center directed Kathryn to the crewel embroidery class. A half-dozen elderly women sat on folding chairs in a circle. Their heads were bent in concentration, while their needles flashed in and out of cloth stretched tight on wooden hoops. Hens scratching the dirt for grain.

  “I’m looking for Emily Goodale.” Kathryn spoke loudly in case Mrs. Goodale was hard of hearing.

  “I’m Emily,” a woman said in the cracked voice of an old record. Wisps of cotton-white hair, through which pink scalp was visible, framed features grown blurry with age. But the blue eyes that stared at her were laser-sharp.

  “Kathryn Stinson. I’m sorry to bother you here, but your helper said you wouldn’t be home until dinnertime.”

  “Dinner’s at noon. You could have waited. What did you say your name is?”

  “Kathryn Stinson.”

  “Kathryn, eh? You’re a lot younger than I expected.”

  “I’m Kathryn Cutter Turner’s great-niece. I wrote you I was coming.”

  Emily’s blue eyes clouded briefly then cleared. “So you did. But for a long time now I’ve been expecting the other Kathryn.”

  “My great-aunt passed away last spring.” This information had also been in Kathryn’s letter.

  “That’s a crying shame. She was supposed to bring the photograph. Now she never will,” Emily said plaintively.

  “I have it.” Again Kathryn repeated information in her letter. She hoped Emily’s long-term memory was better than her short-term.

  “Let me see it.”

  Emily snatched the photograph before Kathryn could give her white cotton gloves to put on. The old woman’s eyes gleamed triumphantly but her tone was petulant. “The spots make her look diseased.”

  “Can I have a look, Em?” a woman sitting on Emily’s left asked. Twin bull’s-eyes of rouge decorated the woman’s cheeks. Emily showed the portrait to the bull’s-eye woman without letting her touch it.

  “Looks diseased, all right,” Bull’s-eye remarked.

  The word “disease” was passed around the circle. Heads turned to Kathryn accusingly, as if she were the epidemic’s Typhoid Mary.

  “The spots have been there as long as I remember,” Kathryn said.

  “You staying here in town?” Emily changed the subject.

  “I’ve rented the Farley house in New Nottingham.”

  “The Farley house.” Emily gazed pensively at the photograph. “Lovely girl, Diana,” she murmured.

  “Lovely . . . Diana.” The words were picked up and passed around the circle again.

  “Her name’s Diana?” Kathryn asked eagerly.

  “What?”

  “The woman in the photograph.”

  “No. Diana was Gordon’s wife.”

  “They’re divorced?”

  “Dead,” Emily said in a dirge-like tone.

  “Dead,” the chorus echoed.

  “Like her.” Emily stared mournfully at the photograph.

  “Who was she?” Kathryn tried again.

  “His wife.”

  “I meant the woman in the photograph.” Kathryn tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “Do you know who she was?”

  Emily’s blue eyes fixed on her. “Been to the house yet?”

  “I moved in yesterday.”

  “I meant the Cutter house.”

  Kathryn stared at Emily, surprised. “My great-aunt told me it burned down years ago.”

  “Foundation’s still there. Ruins of the paper mill your family owned, too. Think you’d want to see those places. When you’ve visited ’em, come back and we’ll talk.”

  “But—”

  “Go now.” Emily waved Kathryn away like a queen dismissing an unlucky supplicant.

  Kathryn had turned to leave when she remembered the photograph. “I’d like the picture back, please.”

  Emily held out empty hands. “I already gave it to you. You saw her take it, didn’t you?” she appealed to the Greek chorus. Most of the women looked unsure, but Bull’s-eye
said, “It’s right there in your lap, Em.”

  Emily glared at Bull’s-eye. “Must’ve set it down without realizing it. You don’t mind if I keep it just for now, do you?”

  She looked at Kathryn so beseechingly that Kathryn was half tempted to let her have the photograph for the time being. But no, best to keep it. Emily hadn’t told her anything, and had even set her a task she needed to complete before she would. “I’d like it back,” she repeated. Reluctantly, Emily surrendered the photograph. “I’ll see you again after I’ve been to the Cutter house site and mill ruins,” Kathryn said in parting.

  Emily gazed forlornly at the empty place in her lap. “Be sure to bring the photograph.”

  Outside, Kathryn collected her thoughts. The meeting hadn’t gone as she’d hoped. She hadn’t learned the mystery woman’s name, and Emily had even tried to hold onto the photograph. Was the old woman genuinely confused, or was it all an act? She knew Emily could be difficult from Aunt Kit’s correspondence.

  When Aunt Kit had first written to ask if Emily could identify the photograph, she’d included a good-quality copy. Emily had rejected copy after copy, claiming she needed to see the original to make a proper identification. She wanted Aunt Kit to mail her the photograph, but Aunt Kit was unwilling to part with it. Finally, they agreed that Aunt Kit would bring the photograph when she came for a visit.

  Why did Emily want the photograph so much? Obviously, she had some personal connection to it, but what was it? Another layer of mystery had been added to the daguerreotype. She’d have to peel away these layers until she arrived at the truth. The next step was to visit the remains of the house and mill. That wouldn’t be so hard, would it?

  Chapter 4

  My cousins and I were scared to death of Old Man Barker because we heard he’d murdered someone a long time ago. When I knew him, he was well into his eighties with matted, gray hair, cloudy blind eyes, and a face and arms that were blackened from years of work over a hot forge.

  The Barkers made their living running a smithy—now an auto body shop—next to their house. In the fall, there was a steady stream of traffic to the forge. Farmers brought their horses to have their shoes sharpened so they’d get through the snow better. Sometimes we saw Old Man Barker riding in a wagon beside another member of the clan on their way to pick up shipments of iron that came by train to Great Barrington.

  When Old Man Barker showed up in the village, we children scampered to the other side of the street. But one time a group of older boys shouted insults and pelted him with stones. He shook his cane at them, hollering like a gored bull.

  −Recollections of Emily Goodale

  Emily eased her brittle bones onto the bed. She’d had her dinner and now it was time for her nap. Through half-closed eyes, she watched her teenage helper Sis leave the room, belly with its precious cargo leading the way.

  Lordie, she was tired! Young Kathryn had no business barging in on her at the senior center. Girl could have waited till she was home. At least she’d finally gotten a look at the actual photograph instead of those silly copies Old Kathryn kept sending. Almost got to keep it, too, but then Gertie had to tell on her. She’d have more chances, though. Young Kathryn would come again.

  Shutting her eyes, she let sleep overtake her. She dreamed she was a slip of a girl frolicking in the fields of the family farm on Rattlesnake Hill. “Betcha can’t catch me,” she called to Cousin George.

  “Bet I can!” he yelled back. Then she was off and running. Too fast for Cousin George, but not for the giant now chasing her. The earth shuddered with his heavy footfalls. She hurled herself forward in a frantic burst of energy, but her foot caught in an animal hole, bringing her down.

  Rough hands turned her over. A soot-black face with dead-fish eyes peered down at her. She wanted to scream but no sound came out, even as his fingers clawed at her face.

  “Who do you favor? Leonora or . . .?” he asked quietly then more and more loudly until she thought her eardrums would burst.

  “Who do you favor? Who do you favor?”

  She wanted desperately to answer. But his hands were on her throat, choking back her words, squeezing tighter and tighter.

  She woke with a gasp. The hands that scrabbled at her neck were her own. She hadn’t had that nightmare for years, not since she’d learned the truth about her childhood bogeyman. She levered herself up, twisting her head so she could see the gold medal in its glass-domed case on the dresser. Poor Clyde.

  “Poor Clyde,” voices echoed. She glanced around, half expecting to see the Greek Chorus from the senior center. Instead, others emerged from the shadows, insubstantial at first, but gradually assuming distinct shapes. There was her husband Walter, there her mother, there Cousin George, there her great-grandmother Aurelia Judd, there her darling Diana, there Clyde himself. They smiled and held out their arms.

  How wonderful to see them again! She smiled back and reached for them. Closer and closer they came until suddenly they were too close: balloon faces pressing against her, sucking up the air, making her dizzy and weak. She tried to push them away, but she had no strength left in her arms. No strength to stop Diana from kissing her cheek with bloated lips. A kiss that numbed the entire left side of her face.

  She knew then why they were here, and the knowledge gave her the will to resist. “Go away! I’m not ready yet!” she cried, flinging out her arms. They scattered and grew transparent, dissolving into the air like so many soap bubbles.

  The room stopped spinning. She poked her left cheek with a finger and felt the sensation returning. Thank heaven! She wouldn’t tell anyone about this. If her daughters ever found out, they’d shut her away in a nursing home. She couldn’t allow that. She would die at home, surrounded by familiar faces. But first she had work to do, promises to keep.

  Emily opened the nightstand drawer and surveyed the contents. Everything was there, lying in readiness for the last important act of her life.

  Chapter 5

  Kathryn heard the buzzing before she saw the flies blanketing the living room windows. She attacked them with a flyswatter. Soon bodies smeared the glass and littered the floor. Yet by the time she’d swept the floor and returned with a spray bottle of window cleaner, more live flies had joined the dead ones. There seemed to be no end to them.

  In desperation, she drove to the village. Perched on the crest of one of the area’s many hills, New Nottingham consisted of a town hall, a general store, a post office, a meetinghouse, and about a dozen houses. She pulled up in front of the general store, where a hand-lettered sign promised “Cold Beer, Cigarettes, Guns, Ammo, Groceries, and Nite Crawlers.” A man with a bald, spud-shaped head sat on a bench next to the sign. As if her arrival were a signal for him to depart, he rose and vanished within.

  Puzzled, she entered the store. A huge refrigerator case of beer stood front and center. Next to it was a case containing cigarettes. Their odor filled the air, along with the smell of smoked meat that seemed to come from a large man hunkered in front of the deli case in back. He had a thick neck and big hands spilling from the sleeves of his camouflage jacket like slabs of streaky bacon.

  The man with the potato-shaped head emerged from a storeroom in back and ambled toward her, smiling. “You must be Miz Stinson, the new tenant at the Farley place.” He extended a hand. “Lucas Rogers.”

  She looked at him, dumbfounded. “How did you know?”

  “Word gets around. You’re in luck. I just happen to have a box of fly strips left.”

  Her astonishment grew. “How do you know that’s what I came for?”

  “Sunny day like this always brings out the flies there. Everybody knows that.”

  Everybody but her, the outsider. “You mean whenever there’s a nice day, I’m going to have a swarm of flies inside?”

  “Only in the fall and spring. Come winter they’ll die off, and by summer they’re ha
ppy to be outdoors like the rest of us.”

  The deli case door slammed shut.

  “Hey, Garth, you bagged the white stag yet?” Rogers called.

  “Up yours!” the other man growled.

  Rogers turned back to Kathryn with a shrug. “As I was saying, the flies are only bad in the fall and spring.”

  “Isn’t there anything I can do besides swatting and putting up fly strips?”

  Rogers scratched his head. “Could have an exterminator come. Have to get Gordon’s permission, though. Believe he looked into it once and even got an estimate of the cost, but Diana put the kibosh on that.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t want pesticides killing the birds, poisoning the pond. Knowing her, she probably felt the flies had as much right to live as the rest of us.”

  Feet shuffled toward her. The door of the refrigerator case rattled. The smokehouse smell was overpowering. She fought back nausea.

  “. . . raw meat,” Rogers said.

  “What?”

  “Could try raw meat. Put it in a glass jar with a cover and some holes, stick the jar outdoors, and it’s supposed to draw the flies out.”

  The thought of putrefying meat blackened with flies made her even more ill. She’d only try it as a last resort. “Thanks for the tip. What do I owe you?”

  Rogers put the fly strip box into a bag. “No charge for this one. Be getting more in a few days.”

  “Thanks.” Kathryn took the bag and turned to go, eager for some fresh air. At the same moment, the smokehouse man also turned. He looked at her with narrowed eyes. The next instant, he rammed her shoulder with a thirty-pack of beer. “Ouch!” Without apologizing, he lumbered from the store. She rubbed her stinging shoulder. “Who was that?”