The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Mark Underbill's voice broke through his reverie. "It's very kind of you to ask us, Mr. Stuart," he was saying, "but my sister and I already have plans. I was calling you about something else."

  "All right." Dallas Stuart disguised his sigh of relief with a discreet cough. "What can I do for you?"

  "Did my father say anything in his will about another bank account?"

  Whatever the attorney had been expecting to 174

  hear, it was not that. "I don't think so," he murmured. "Let me just go to the filing cabinet and get the papers. Can you hold on?" When he put the phone down, Stuart shuffled to the oak-veneer cabinet, still trying to figure out what the Underhill boy was getting at. There wasn't a lot of money in that account, but the life insurance money had been added to it by now, hadn't it? He found the file in the back of the second drawer, and went back to the phone.

  "What do you mean by another account, Mark?" he asked, skimming the documents. "You mean savings bonds, or something like that?"

  On the other end of the line he heard the boy take a deep breath. "My father had acquired a good deal of money in various ways while he was overseas, and that money was not reflected in the bank statements from the local branch. I wondered if there was anything in his papers about a safety deposit box or a key or anything like that?"

  "Your father never mentioned anything like that to me, Mark. Are you sure you understood him correctly?"

  "What about an address of a foreign bank or an account number?"

  "Nothing. It's all perfectly straightforward, and there's no indication that your dad had any more money to leave than you'd expect of a retired military man. Can you tell me why you think there ought to be more?"

  Mark Underhill laughed. "If you can't help me, there doesn't seem to be any point in going

  into it, does there? I guess I'll have to find out for myself."

  Dallas Stuart found himself listening to a dial tone. By the time he put the folder back in its proper place, he had forgotten about the Underbills, and was busy reviewing his party obligations at the end of this year's calendar.

  It was a strange way to spend the Saturday before Christmas—standing on a grassy hillside next to the railroad tracks with fifty other people, most of them with kids in tow. Strictly speaking, Spencer Arrowood wasn't on duty, but he wore his uniform, anyway, under the sheepskin jacket that was keeping him warm, and he'd driven the patrol car to make his presence official. He'd never seen a fight break out at this event, but it was just as well to be prepared.

  The day was as fine as you could ask for in December. The high white clouds didn't obscure the sun, and the breeze was mild, with the temperature in the low fifties. Anybody with a decent coat on would be comfortable enough. Of course, quite a few of these people wore no coats at all; that's why they were here.

  One wiry old man in a red plaid jacket left the group of women and children on the hill, and sauntered down to the railroad track. He put his ear to the steel rail for a moment, then stood up, shaking his head. Not yet. The crowd let out a collective groan, but it was good-natured. They were a little tired of waiting, but they weren't going anywhere. 176

  Spencer adjusted his brown Stetson, and strolled down to the track. The steel rails stretched away between the cuts in the mountain pastureland, curving out of sight at the bend where the forest began. Spencer's boots crunched on the gravel siding as he leaned out to look along the length of track facing east. All was still. He turned and waved to the crowd camped out on the hill. Some of them had brought blankets to sit on; others stood and talked, cigarettes dangling from their fingers, as shrieking blond children chased each other through the clumps of people and into the weeds.

  There was a sameness to them., he thought, scanning the faces. Many of the women were overweight from a lifetime on the diet of the poor. The deep-fried and starchy foods that are both filling and cheap make pasty complexions and lumpish bodies. The men were short and gaunt, a combination of ancestral genetics and poor nutrition. Beer and cigarettes in lieu of vegetables and jogging didn't help any, either. But they were honest people, and if there was work to be had, they'd put in long hours without a murmur.

  People he knew from Knoxville and from the flatlands were always saying how great the house prices were in east Tennessee, and how cheap it was to live in the mountains, but Spencer reckoned that living in the mountains cost most of those people on the hillside ten years of their lives. And maybe a future for their children. But they wouldn't leave—not for jobs or 177

  love. Those that did leave sickened in exile in the ugly cities of the Midwest, pining for the hills of home. Even people who weren't poor, like himself or Dallas Stuart's young law partner, J. W. Lyon, could make more money and advance in their careers by moving elsewhere, but they continued to stay in the shadows of the mountains. Why can't we just get out of these hills? he wondered for the thousandth time. Why are we willing to sacrifice so much to live in this beautiful place? If this were the Garden of Eden, God couldn't drive us out of here with a flaming sword; we'd sneak back when the angel wasn't looking.

  The sad thing was that the poverty wasn't natural to the region. The livestock business had thrived before the chestnut blight, and just to the north of Hamelin lay land that bore the richest deposits of anthracite coal in the world. You could stand by this railroad track any hour of any day you chose and watch a mile-long coal train hauling the natural resources away. The coal mines weren't locally owned, and they didn't put much back into local taxes, either. The mine owners could afford lawyers and lobbyists to see to that. Spencer had read once that ninety percent of the state of West Virginia was owned by absentee landlords.

  The coal companies would be running the train today; the only one of the year that didn't haul coal. At least they made this gesture; offered a little money to the people. But maybe if things had been different politically, there wouldn't have to be a train like this one. 178

  Somebody up on the hill called out to him. "Merry Christmas, Sheriff!"

  Spencer grinned and waved back. "Merry Christmas, y'all!"

  Most of them echoed his greeting, but a few of the men scowled and turned away. He recognized them. They were regulars in his line of work: the ones who got in more than their share of car wrecks and brawls. People who had frequent run-ins with the law were the type who held grudges; it was convenient to blame the sheriff for their misfortunes.

  "The train should be along soon," Spencer called out, cupping his hands around his mouth to make himself heard. "When it does come in sight, I want all you mamas and daddys to keep the children behind this rock." He pointed to a boulder sticking out of the base of the hill, five feet back from the rails. "Those trains are big and dangerous, and I don't want any accidents spoiling everybody's holidays. Okay?"

  There were solemn nods from many of the women. The children stared at him, big-eyed and silent.

  "I'll stay down here to make sure everybody remembers to keep back. If anything falls in front of this boulder, you can come down and pick it up after the train is past. Understood? And remember not to be greedy. Let everybody get something. Especially the little fellers." He looked sternly at a pack of teenage boys hovering on the edge of the crowd. They pretended not to hear him.

  Spencer sat down on the boulder and joined 179

  the wait. Above the trees on the other side of the tracks a hawk circled lazily, eyeing the intruders. Somebody in the crowd on the hill tried to get some carol singing started, but the response was ragged, and soon died away. People wanted to be able to hear the train when it came.

  A tow-headed three-year-old in a Kmart fighter pilot jacket peered up at Spencer with an expression of round-eyed solemnity. "Is that your gun?" he asked.

  "Sure is, son," said Spencer with equal gravity. "I'd take it out and let you have a look at it, but guns aren't to be played with. I bet you have a toy one at home, though, don't you?" He wondered if the child was cold in that plastic jacket with the air force patches on
the shoulders.

  "Well, I have a wooden one. I got a labor sword, too."

  "A labor sword?"

  "It lights up, and makes a noise when you shoot." The little boy demonstrated the appropriate sound effect.

  "A laser sword," said Spencer, sorting out the child's meaning.

  "Morgan, get on back up here and quit pestering the sheriff!" Waving her arm for balance, the boy's mother perched on the side of the hill, just out of arm's reach. "Come on back here, Morgan! Do you want that train to get you?"

  She didn't look more than twenty herself. Her hair was naturally blond and her fine-boned face was much too fair for the black eyeliner 180

  and mascara she used. It gave her features a hardness that did not belong there; underneath the cheap makeup she was probably quite pretty. She wore a fake-fur jacket and tight jeans, but she still managed to look maternal in her concern for her straying child.

  Spencer smiled up at her. "He's a handful, isn't he? I'll keep an eye on him, if he wants to stay down here. See that the big kids don't get it all."

  She blushed and looked away. "This is my first time coming to this," she said softly. "If my momma and daddy were alive, they'd have a fit seeing me here. They didn't believe in taking charity. It's just because of him." She nodded toward the blond boy, staring at the bend in the tracks. "My husband is overseas, see, and the money he sends back doesn't go too far."

  Spencer felt himself blushing as he listened to the shame in her voice. "What do you reckon little Morgan wants for Christmas?" he asked her.

  She squinted off into the sun. "Oh, some old weapon, I reckon. He just loves those Ninja Turtles on the television. He's been talking about getting a plastic Turtle sword. And a Ghostbusters Proton Pack, whatever that is. He sees all these commercials with his cartoons every afternoon, and he remembers every one of them. He's a smart boy."

  "Well, that's good." Spencer was trying to

  think of some way to find out where she lived

  without being too obvious about it. He'd seen

  Ninja Turtle swords at the Kmart in Johnson

  City; they cost less than ten bucks—not much to pay to keep from being haunted by a solemn-faced ghost of Christmas present. Before he could resume the conversation, though, someone on the hill jumped up and yelled, "It's a-coming!" and the crowd surged forward, craning their necks as if they could see around the bend.

  The sound was a low rumble at first, indistinguishable from distant thunder or an eighteen-wheeler half a mile away, but a few seconds later the sound sharpened to a rhythmic churning that seemed to shake the air itself, and then the scream of a whistle clinched the matter. "Here comes the train!"

  Mothers grabbed the wrists of their toddlers, and walked down the length of track, until the whole group formed a line almost as long as the train itself. Spencer stayed where he was, keeping an eye on the little blond boy, who was dancing with excitement. "Will I see Santa Claus?"

  "I wouldn't be surprised," said Spencer. "Why don't you wave at the train?"

  The black locomotive rounded the bend, and blew its whistle again, this time in greeting to the people along the tracks. Young and old, they shouted and waved back. The train slowed down as it passed the first group of children standing in the weeds. Instead of the usual complement of coal cars, the locomotive pulled a couple of excursion cars and a caboose. Men in overcoats were standing on the platforms of the excursion cars, with large canvas sacks at 182

  their feet. When their platform drew alongside the row of waving people, the men began to throw things onto the hillside, well away from the path of the train. Wrapped boxes. Red net stockings filled with hard candy and small toys. Footballs. Boxes of dolls and plastic tea sets. On the hill, the squealing children scrambled for the prizes.

  "Let the little ones get some!" shouted the grown-ups.

  Spencer put his hand on the little boy's shoulder. "Get ready!"

  The men on the excursion car smiled and waved, then dipped into their sacks for new boxes to pitch. "Merry Christmas!" they shouted, tossing out a rainbow of brightly wrapped candy.

  A box landed with a plop at the sheriff's feet. Inside the cellophane-wrapped cardboard lay a toy gun and holster, a pair of plastic handcuffs, and a tin sheriff's badge. The well-dressed man on the platform tossed Spencer a mock salute before he went back to waving at the shouting children. The train picked up speed now, hurrying on to another trackside rendezvous in the next little community, a donation from area businesses, the railroad, and the coal companies, bringing Christmas to the rural poor. On the porch of the red caboose, Santa Claus shouted Christmas greetings above the clatter of steel wheels.

  The sheriff knelt down and picked up the cardboard box out of the dust. "There you are, 183

  fella," he said, handing the box to the blond child. "Now you can have my job."

  "Oh, boy! It's a gun!"

  "Tell the man thank you," he heard Morgan's mother say as he walked away.

  CHAPTER 9

  I wonder as I wander out under the sky How poor Baby Jesus was born for to die, For poor wretched sinners like you and like I, I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

  —traditional Appalachian carol

  Winter had come to the Tennessee mountains two weeks shy of the solstice marking its official advent. The glorious curtain of leaves fell to the valley in mid-November, so that hunting season took place on brown hillsides devoid of cover. The Hangman, barren as a skull, towered over Dark Hollow, and Nora Bonesteel's house looked as blank as a sleeping child, with only a breath of chimney smoke to indicate life. With a sigh of relief at having finished another summer, the people gave up their outdoor pastimes for another season. Gardens lay neglected in the wind, and fishing poles went into the hall closet until spring. Now was the time for quilting, watching football on television, and hunkering down to wait on spring.

  The cycle of the seasons had been going on a long time for the mountain people. Not just in the Appalachians, with descendants of Germans, Scots, Irish, Welshmen, and all the other settlers, but long before that, when an ancient tribe, the Celtic hearth culture in Switzerland, had observed the changing year with similar customs, the ancestors of these people had been

  together. In the centuries since their time, the descendants of that Celtic hearth culture migrated west to Brittany, to Germany, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall, taking with them fragments of the old beliefs. Taking along the Sight, they'll tell you. And the habit of lighting signal fires to pass along a piece of news from ridge to ridge over miles of open country. When they met up again in the great American culture stew on the eighteenth-century frontier, they didn't know they were long-lost kin, but it showed in their way of doing things. A folktale here, a superstition there, or a snatch of an old fiddle tune would be just recognizable enough for folks to see the family resemblance that traced their lineage back to the hearth culture of the ancient Celts, those mountain dwellers whose Appalachia was the Alps.

  "Don't shoot the Scotsmen," George Washington had told his troops in the Revolution. "After the war is over, they'll stay."

  Stay they did. But they didn't want anything to do with the flat coastal land where the English had settled, where the folks crowded their houses together in little villages and then went outside its boundaries to work the land. The Scots, the Irish, the Germans, the Welsh, all wanted land of their own surrounding the house, and space between neighbors. They especially didn't want a lot of well-to-do folks running their lives, and making laws right and left. So mostly the English stayed in flatland that could pass for Hampshire, where they could have big farms, needing many workers to

  run them. The others settled for hilly land more suited to livestock and orchards than field crops, and they did the work themselves. They brought their fiddle tunes from Ireland, their knowledge of whiskey making from Scotland, and their quilt patterns from a time before history began.

  The mountain and flatlander ways of life would clash head-on in 1861, w
hen the Southern mountaineers couldn't see any reason to leave the Union, but no one saw that coming. Nor did the Sight apprise them of the coming of railroads, riverboat navigation, and the industrialization of the flatlands that would leave the settlers' descendants high and dry in their mountain paradise, with no jobs and no political power. As Nora Bonesteel often said, "The Sight never tells me anything I want to know."

  Right now she wanted to know when her ride would come to take her to church, but the view from the front parlor window was blocked by the uphill slope of the meadow. She waited in her armchair by the fire, listening for a car horn on the road above. A silly red knitted tarn and brown woolen gloves lay in her lap beneath the spine of the Bible. Nora Bonesteel was reading Jeremiah. On the table beside her sat a square package wrapped in slightly rumpled Christmas paper; it seemed sinful to waste such pretty decorations by using them only once. That and a few cards set up on the mantelpiece were the only indications that Christmas was near. She was getting too old to fool with an indoor Christmas tree; so she strung popcorn on the 189

  blue spruce in the side yard, so that her holiday tree was decorated with the colors of feasting birds.

  When the knock came, she almost missed it, so intent had she been upon hearing the sound of a car horn. She snatched up the package, and hurried to the door, pulling on her gloves as she went, and found Jane Arrowood standing in the doorway making clouds with her breath. The cold had turned her cheeks as red as her woolen coat, and her carefully waved white hair sparkled with snowflakes.