Rattlesnake Hill

by Leslie Wheeler

  “Of course. It was a stupid question. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  Alan sighed. “No, no, I’m the one who ought to apologize. I’ve given you a long-winded response when a simple ‘yes’ would have sufficed. It’s my legal training.”

  “I’m so glad Sophie’s better.” She changed the subject.

  “Thanks in part to you.”

  “Me?”

  “You brought the special soil.”

  Although the conversation ended on a positive note, Kathryn felt bad afterward. Sophie’s near fatal illness had given Alan enough to worry about without foolish questions from her. His devotion to his daughter—so unlike her own father’s complete disregard of her and her mother in pursuit of his various amours—was one of the things that had attracted her to him in the first place. That and the fact he was eminently rational and responsible, and not given to reckless, extravagant gestures.

  *****

  That night, she dreamed she was floating on the pond. A gentle rain began to fall, and she opened her mouth to catch the drops. In the distance thunder rumbled. She knew she should leave the water before the storm approached, but she went right on lapping up the rain.

  Chapter 27

  “Please tell me the rest of the story,” Kathryn begged Emily the next day. “What happened between Marguerite and Clyde Barker? And what was her connection with my ancestor, Jared Cutter?”

  Emily was silent a long time, her expression unreadable. “You ought to visit her grave,” she said finally.

  *****

  Finding Marguerite’s grave would be difficult but not impossible, Kathryn thought as she drove to the town cemetery later that afternoon. With only a first name to go on, she’d have to look for Marguerites in the various family plots, but at least she only had to check the older ones. She’d start with the Barker and Cutter plots, in case Marguerite had married either man.

  It was almost four. In this dark season, the light would soon be gone. She climbed the hill to the older section and began scanning the names on stones. She had to stoop often to make them out. Her eyes hurt from squinting at the shadowy letters and her back ached from bending, but the sense she was on the verge of an important discovery drove her on.

  She was unable to find any Barker graves, but eventually she located a cluster of Cutter graves. Her ancestors lay there. She should pay her respects, adopt an appropriately reverential attitude, but she felt only disappointment she hadn’t yet found Marguerite’s grave.

  She was about to move on when an inscription caught her eye: “Marguerite, beloved. . . ” Moss covered the rest of the words except for the dates at the bottom: “Born December 3, 1834; Died June 25, 1855.” The dates fit: This Marguerite had died in the same year Jared Cutter left for California. Perhaps Aunt Kit had been right to believe his departure was related to something that happened between them. Had she been his beloved then? Beloved sister or wife?

  She knelt on the damp ground and scraped the moss away. Where the words should have been, there was a rough, hollowed-out space. It looked as if someone had taken a chisel and deliberately destroyed the carving. Who? And why? Cold seeped into her bent legs and traveled up her spine. Her fingers were numb. She felt a sense of defilement deeper than any surface damage, as if Marguerite’s very grave had been desecrated. Maybe it had.

  Joints stiff from kneeling, she rose and made her way down the hill. In her car with the heater turned on full blast, she felt better. Yet when she saw the Farley house, looming out of the shadows with its blank, blind-eye windows, she knew she didn’t want to be alone. After the graveyard, she needed to be among the living.

  *****

  The bar in Great Barrington was noisy and crowded with people waiting for tables. Brandy sat in a booth with a man. Earl? Kathryn was about to leave when Brandy spotted her and waved. Reluctantly, she approached, relieved to discover that Brandy’s companion wasn’t Earl, but a burly, bear-like man. Black hair bristled on his head, chin, forearms, and through the v-neck of his shirt. Brandy introduced him as Norm St. Clair.

  “I’m the naturalist at Barthlomew’s Cobble,” he said after Kathryn joined them. “You been there?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the place to go if you like flowers or ferns. We’ve got nearly five hundred species of wildflowers and fifty-three kinds of ferns. People come from all over the world to see them. The Cobble’s rich in plant life because of the marble and quartzite. Marble releases lime, an important plant food, while quartzite . . .”

  He went on explaining the unique features of the Cobble during drinks and dinner. Brandy looked bored and Kathryn’s thoughts kept drifting back to Marguerite’s defaced gravestone.

  “Only buy fiddleheads at the supermarket,” Norm St. Clair’s voice broke her reverie.

  “Pardon?”

  “Only buy fiddleheads at the market because the ones you pick yourself might contain liver toxin which can kill you.”

  “I’ll remember that. Earl Barker said you two count rattlesnakes in the fall.”

  “That’s right. We were just at the ledges last month.”

  “Yuck.” Brandy made a face. “You wouldn’t catch me up there with all those rattlers.”

  “They’re not so bad,” Norm said. “Didn’t bother Diana. But then she was something else,” he added with an appreciative chuckle. “She and Earl went to the ledges a lot. I think they even—”

  “Norm,” Brandy said sharply.

  He shrugged. “Anyway, as I was saying, I used to envy Earl having a woman who’d—”

  A scuffle under the table told her Brandy had kicked him.

  “Who’d go all those places with him,” Norm finished sheepishly.

  “Where else did they go?” Kathryn asked.

  “The boat ramp, an old ruined mill, the—”

  “What old ruined mill?” she interrupted.

  “In the woods near a swamp.”

  The news gave her a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Diana and Earl had visited the ruins for the same reason he and Millie and other couples had. They’d kissed and perhaps even made love at the very place where she was later killed.

  “You okay?” Brandy asked. “You look kinda pale.”

  Kathryn took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m all right.”

  “We’re going to a movie. Want to join us?”

  “No thanks.”

  As they were leaving, Norm St. Clair turned to her. “You see Earl again, tell him I’ve got a bone to pick with him. It’s about the—”

  “C’mon, Norm.” Brandy took him by the arm, “We don’t get a move on we’ll be late.”

  Chapter 28

  “Ivisited Marguerite’s grave in the village cemetery,” Kathryn reported to Emily the next day. “But someone scraped away part of the inscription, so I didn’t learn much except her dates.”

  “You went to the wrong grave.”

  “There’s more than one?” she asked, dumbfounded.

  Emily separated a macaroni noodle from its cheesy crust with her fingers and nodded. “The grave you found was her first resting place. She’s somewhere else now.”

  “You mean she was moved?” This was beyond bizarre.

  “Yup.”

  “By whom?”

  “Clyde.”

  “Why?”

  “He wanted her up on the hill with his folks.”

  “He had permission to do that?”

  “He just did it.”

  “Nobody tried to stop him?”

  “He moved her at night when everyone was asleep.”

  “But afterward people must’ve noticed her grave had been tampered with.”

  “If they did, they didn’t make a fuss. The only person who might’ve cared was Jared Cutter, and he’d already left for California.”

&nbs
p; “Then she was Jared Cutter’s beloved? Beloved what?”

  “Wife,” Emily said softly.

  “Why didn’t you tell me in the first place?” Kathryn cried, exasperated.

  “I believe I did.”

  Had she missed something? “When?”

  “The morning you came to the senior center with the photograph. You asked who she was and I said his wife.”

  “I thought you were talking about Diana.”

  “Goodness, no. She was Gordon Farley’s wife, not Jared Cutter’s.”

  “If Marguerite was Jared Cutter’s wife, why did Clyde move her to the hillside?”

  “Barkers have always buried their own,” Emily replied cryptically.

  “She wasn’t his wife.”

  “He loved her. Earl told you the story about how he rescued her from drowning, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Emily placed a gnarled, greasy hand on her arm. “You visit her real grave then maybe you’ll understand.”

  “Where is it?”

  “On the ledges behind the Barker place.” Emily stabbed a finger at her plate. “You better zap this again. My dinner’s cold.”

  *****

  Later that afternoon, Kathryn drove up Rattlesnake Hill past the gated driveway of the old Whittemore mansion, then Garth’s crude cabin. Beyond the cabin, the road climbed, then dipped and leveled out again. Ahead on the right, she spotted a freshly painted white house with green shutters and a green door, flanked by twin barrels of mums. The house sat on a square of manicured grass. House and lawn looked as if they’d been lifted from a suburban neighborhood and plopped down on the wild backside of the hill. She doubted any Barkers lived there.

  More likely, the collection of ramshackle, dark-timbered buildings a little further on belonged to the family. Nearby was a jumble of rusted appliances, old farm equipment, several trucks and a couple of early-model cars that looked like leftovers from a demolition derby. She parked opposite the compound. A steep, rock-strewn hill rose behind it. The family burying ground must be there, though she saw no path leading upward, no cluster of gravestones at the top, which was covered with stunted pines, interspersed with boulders.

  Before she could get out for a closer look, a pack of snarling black and tan mongrels surrounded the car. They reared up on their hind legs, claws scratching the metal sides, teeth snapping at the windows, tongues smearing them with slobber. She shut her eyes in sheer terror. When she opened them again, the dogs were still there. Surely, someone would come and call them off. No one did, but eventually they grew tired. After several face-saving barks, they straggled back to the buildings. All but one mangy beast. He clung to the car so closely that when she made a U-turn and drove back down the road, she worried she’d run over him.

  The dog followed her all the way to the Farley house. She was afraid to open the car door lest he leap inside. Luckily, he discovered the pond. While he plunged in, she made a dash for the house. Amore hissed at the dog when he appeared on the patio and shook himself, splattering the glass door. The cat gave her a severe look, as if she were to blame for bringing such a loathsome creature home.

  The dog hung around the rest of the afternoon and evening like a hound from hell. He clawed at the door, barked and howled, and pressed his black nose against the window. Finally she closed the curtains, putting him out of sight, if not out of mind.

  Chapter 29

  By mid-Sunday morning, the dog was still there, and Kathryn felt like a prisoner in the house. Desperate, she telephoned Hank Lapsley. The phone rang and rang. When he finally answered, she could tell from his groggy, annoyed voice she’d woken him. She apologized then explained about the dog.

  “What d’you expect me to do?”

  “Take him away.”

  “Barkers’ dog, they should get ’im. And please, Miz Stinson, don’t call me again ’less it’s a real emergency.”

  “But—”

  The drone of the dial tone filled her ears. Hauling out the phone book, she found four Barkers listed on Rattlesnake Hill: Earl, Garth, Roy, and Wayne. Garth was in the hospital and she didn’t know the other two, so Earl was the logical one to try. Yet for reasons she didn’t want to examine too closely, she was reluctant to call him. She wished there was someone else in town she could turn to. Still, as Hank had pointed out, it was the Barkers’ dog.

  “Is this about the driveway?” Earl sounded surprised to hear from her.

  “One of your dogs followed me home yesterday and he won’t leave.”

  “You want me to get him?”

  “Please.”

  Ten minutes later, she heard his truck on the driveway, then his voice calling the dog, followed by a knock on the door. Earl stood on the stone landing, the dog sitting obediently beside him. She stepped back warily in case the dog changed its mind and lunged at her.

  “He won’t bite,” Earl assured her. “Hold out your hand and let him sniff you.”

  She extended her hand gingerly, feeling the dog’s warm breath on her fingers, then his wet nose and tongue.

  “See, he just wants to be friends.”

  “He acted vicious earlier. All your dogs did.”

  “What were you doing up at our place?” His blue eyes bore into her.

  “I’m trying to find out more about Marguerite. Emily told me I should visit her grave in your family’s burial ground. I would have asked your permission, but I never got a chance because of the dogs.”

  Earl studied the large rock that formed the doorstep. He seemed to find its surface very interesting. Finally, he said, “I’ll take you to the cemetery, but you better put on hiking boots if you got ’em.”

  *****

  Again, the day was unseasonably warm. Even with both windows wide open, the truck felt like an oven. The heat, combined with the whirring of the snake rattle, made her nervous. “I hope there aren’t any snakes where we’re going.”

  “Matter of fact, there are. But don’t worry, they won’t be out this late in the year.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’d be awfully surprised if they were.”

  “Whose little bit of suburbia is that?” she asked when the white house with green shutters came into view.

  “Mill’s. And our youngest son, Pete. The other two are out on their own.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I’ve got a trailer in the woods that we used when we were building the house.”

  He pulled off the road onto a stretch of grass, flattened by tire marks, just short of the collection of tumbledown buildings. The dog leaped from the truck bed and joined the swarm of black and tan mongrels that bounded over, barking excitedly. They fell silent and bowed their heads when Earl got out. Clearly, he was boss. He scratched their ears and shooed them away.

  The coast clear, she left the truck and followed Earl along the tire tracks to the back of the compound. A white-haired man in overalls appeared in a doorway. “That you, Earl?”

  “Yeah. Grand-dad, this is Kathryn Stinson. Kathryn, grand-dad.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I’m taking her to the cemetery to look at graves.”

  “You behave yourselves up there, you hear?” grand-dad advised.

  “What did he mean by that?” she asked after the old man had gone back into the building. Earl shrugged and looked away. She flushed. The ledges were one of the places he’d gone with Diana.

  “This way.” He strode briskly toward a rocky slope several hundred yards away.

  She trotted after him. “That’s the first time you’ve called me by my real name.”

  “He’s my grand-dad,” Earl replied, as if this were explanation enough. At the foot of the hill, he stopped. “There’s not much of a trail, so follow me.”

  They found the occasional foothold between the r
ocks, but mostly they had to scramble over boulders, slippery with moss and lichen. She climbed slowly, keeping an eye out for snakes. When the going was especially rough, Earl gave her a hand. By the time they reached the top, she was winded and sweaty. “Why on earth did they put the graveyard up here?”

  “High ground’s always better.”

  “They must have had a terrible time getting the coffins up.”

  “They used ropes and pulleys and once the coffins were there, nobody could mess with them.”

  “I still don’t understand why they couldn’t have just used the town cemetery.”

  “Barkers have always buried their own.” He repeated Emily’s words. “I’ll show you Marguerite’s grave now.”

  He led her to a jumble of headstones in a clearing amid the brush and stunted trees. Many of the headstones were overgrown with weeds and tilted at odd angles. A few looked well-tended, though. “That’s hers.” He pointed at a well-tended stone. A blue glass bottle filled with faded asters stood on the ground beside it. The stone was old and weathered, but the inscription appeared newly minted. Kathryn squatted to read it.

  Marguerite

  Beloved of Clyde Barker

  Born December 3, 1834, Died June 25, 1855

  Parted in this life, yet shall we be joined

  Forever in the next.

  Below was a pair of entwined hearts. A shadow fell on the stone. Earl stood behind her. “They say Clyde used to spend hours here. Although he couldn’t see the stone on account of his blindness, he touched it over and over again. That’s why the sides are smooth and the inscription looks like it was cut yesterday. Feel it and you’ll see what I mean.”

  She ran a finger along a polished edge, moved by Clyde’s devotion. “Where’s he buried?”

  “Next to her.” Earl gestured at a headstone to the left of Marguerite’s. Again she had to squat to read the inscription:

  Clyde Barker

  Born March 5, 1836, Died May19, 1938

  He dwelt in darkness,