Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees

by Janie DeVos

  Luther Grange, Papa’s friend from church, stood at the door looking nearly as shook up as the rest of us. “I’m sorry to disturb you folks, but I’ve got to talk to you, Miz Holton,” he said, looking past Prescott toward Grandma.

  “Come in, Luther. It’s cold out there,” she urged.

  “No, ma’am, I think you better come out here,” he insisted.

  Doing as he asked, she pulled her shawl closer around her neck and moved toward the door. “Y’all stay here,” she said, as Prescott and I started to follow. Mama, however, remained frozen in place, and Merry hadn’t moved a muscle either.

  “We want to kn—” Prescott responded.

  “No! Stay here,” Grandma demanded. She closed the door and Prescott and I immediately held our ears to it, but the pine was thick and we couldn’t hear anything coming from the other side. Not a minute later, Grandma quickly walked back in.

  “I’m goin’ with Luther,” she said, heading straight for her bedroom. We talked to her through the closed bedroom door as she hurriedly dressed.

  “Where? Has somethin’ happened to Cal? What’s happening?” Mama cried.

  “I’m goin’, too!” Prescott said.

  “No, you’re not, Prescott! And nothin’s happened to Calvin, Anna! You need to stay here with the children. I’ll be back shortly.” The way she said it left no doubt that she wouldn’t put up with a challenge from any of us, although I still tried.

  “But Grandma, we—” I began to argue but was quickly cut off.

  “Stay put! And I mean it,” she snapped, flinging open the bedroom door and immediately heading out the front. As she turned to pull the door shut, she pinned us with her ice-blue eyes and restated the words once more with absolute finality, “Stay here.”

  “I’m followin’ them,” I urgently whispered to Prescott as soon as the door closed. Without saying another word, and ignoring my mother’s high-pitched, frightened protestations, I got dressed and hurried out the kitchen door with Prescott right behind me. Without taking the time to saddle up, I mounted Mack, Prescott mounted his horse, Sampson, and we exited the barn and followed the settling dust kicked up by Luther’s wagon on the sawmill road.

  We hung back a ways and stayed off the road, traveling out of sight by staying close to the tree line, so Luther and Grandma were unaware that we’d followed them. Before long, the orchard was in sight in the valley below. And sure enough, that’s where they turned in. Several lamps were hung up on nails or pegs out back in a large shed, and we could see the movement of several people in and around the area. Directing our horses to follow the wagon, but still staying far enough behind to keep out of sight, we wound our way down the curving road to the orchard below.

  “What’s goin’ on, Prescott? What’re all those folks doin’ here this time of night?” My throat was dry from the road’s dust as well as nerves, and my voice sounded thick.

  “They gotta be makin’ moonshine,” he flatly stated. “That’s the only thing you hide in the dark to do, ’less it’s huntin’ or screw—” He stopped himself.

  We were getting close to the orchard’s gift store and, because the shed was directly behind it, we decided to hide in the shadow of a large, ancient apple tree that was diagonally across the road. There we sat, waiting to see what was taking place, and exactly who all was involved.

  We strained our eyes, scanning the area for the familiar figure of our father, but we didn’t see him. We could, however, see several people moving around. I didn’t recognize any of them, although standing just outside the ring of light cast by one of the lamps stood a man who did look a bit familiar. Suddenly, he turned toward the light and I could clearly make out a long, jagged scar that ran down the side of his face. It was Jack’s father, Gilbert Harris. We could hear the men’s voices, and they spoke in hurried, anxious sounding tones.

  Suddenly, I saw Grandma and Luther move out of the shadow of the gift shop toward the men. All action around the shed ceased as the two approached, but within a couple of seconds those frozen in place became reanimated upon recognizing my grandmother and Mr. Grange. And one of those was my father, who stepped out from the darkness of the interior of the shed. Prescott and I immediately moved over to the side of the gift shop where we could hear better but remain unseen.

  “God in heaven, Willa! What’re you doin’ here? Damn it, Luther, why’d you bring her?” Papa anxiously asked, stepping off the porch.

  “Since I couldn’t talk sense to you earlier, Cal, I figured maybe she could. Like I told you before, trouble’s comin’. Maybe you’ll listen to her, because you sure ain’t listenin’ to me! I told ya; my wife’s cousin is married to that deputy and the law knows what’s goin’ on. Someone tipped ‘em off and they’re plannin’ on catchin’ you in the act! You gotta get outta here now!”

  “Calvin, you get in that wagon of yours an’ you follow us outta here. You understand me!” Grandma didn’t mince words. She was beyond angry. Her words were clipped and spoken in low, hard tones, not like she was trying to be quiet, but like she was holding herself together and controlling an anger that waited right below the surface. The men standing around her either muttered too quietly for Grandma to hear, or stared down at the ground trying to avoid becoming the focus of her anger.

  “We’re finally finishin’ up, Willa, and I plan on seein’ it through. We got just—”

  But he never got the chance to finish. Suddenly, a shot rang out from the orchard below, immediately followed by a voice within the trees shouting, “This is the law! Hands in the air! No one move!”

  None of the bootleggers had been hit by the warning shot, and they began to scatter. However, one of the men made the grievous error of standing his ground and returning fire. In response, tiny explosions from the deputies’ guns blinked orange among the trees as they took serious aim at the scattering men, several of whom were reaching for their own weapons. The deputies’ bullets met solid marks, including the forehead of Gene Roscoe. He was killed instantly. Then one of the bootleggers’ bullets connected with a deputy’s leg, missing a main artery but shattering his left knee. Papa had separated himself from Grandma and Luther, perhaps to lessen the chance of making them targets, or maybe to return to the shed to retrieve his own weapon. Either way, it was a serious mistake, and as soon as he was back in the illumination from the lamps, he was cut down by a bullet to his stomach. Papa went down hard, hitting his head on the second step of the shed’s porch.

  “Papa!” I yelled, jumping up as I did so, but Prescott grabbed me by the back of my coat and pulled me down hard.

  “Shut up! Are you crazy? Stay down!” he ordered. “There ain’t no use in us getting’ kilt. If we run out there now, the law won’t be able to tell who we are or which side we’re on. And neither will the ’shiners. We’ll end up with holes in us from both sides!” So we stayed pressed tightly against the building while the chaos continued.

  Grandma started to go to Papa, too, but was pulled away by Luther, who dragged her back to the relative safety of the side of the gift shop, exactly the spot where we were crouched down. “Oh, dear God!” Grandma exclaimed, stopping dead in her tracks when she saw us. Then she stumbled forward, hurrying to cover us, while just a step behind her, Luther’s exclamation was softer in sound but stronger in words.

  “Help me shield them!” Grandma cried. Finally, what seemed like an hour later, but was probably no more than another minute or so, the orchard went deathly quiet. The bootleggers who had survived had escaped into the blackness of the orchard, and those who remained were either wounded, some critically so, or already dead.

  Sheriff Donald Weldon came lumbering up the hill in front of the shed, with his rifle still aimed and ready. Following close behind him were Deputies Lawson and Platt, while another deputy stayed behind with the injured one just inside the tree line below. As they began to carefully survey the scene, Grandma and Luther came out from the side of the gift store with Prescott and me close behind. Immediately the lawmen cocke
d and pointed their weapons at us, but upon seeing our arms raised up in the sign of surrender, and hearing Luther shout, “Don’t shoot, Donald! Don’t nobody shoot!” they relaxed their fingers, which lay trembling against the triggers.

  “God Almighty, Willa! What the hell are you all doin’ here?” Sheriff Weldon angrily asked. His gun, though still pointed in our direction, had been lowered, so that if he fired we’d lose our kneecaps, instead of our lives. Lawson and Platt followed suit.

  “We come to bring him home,” Grandma answered, hurrying straight past the lawmen and over to Papa. His breathing was rapid and shallow, and beads of sweat covered his forehead. “Hold on, Calvin! Hold on, son! We’re gonna get you patched up and you’ll be right as rain.” I knelt down by her and softly spoke reassuring words to him, while Prescott went around to Papa’s other side. He was at a complete loss as to what he could do to help our dying father, so Prescott just paced back and forth alongside him, raking his fingers through his hair, all the while repeating, “Oh, Pa! Why’d ya do it, Pa? Why’d ya have to do it?”

  Pulling his shirt up from the waistband of his breeches, Grandma surveyed his wound. Though it was small, it was in a place that usually required the service of an undertaker rather than a doctor. With no time to waste, she used her teeth to start a rip in her shawl, then began tearing it into long black strips. “Bring me some of that whiskey,” she demanded. Immediately Deputy Platt brought a jug of it to her. “Pour it into the wound,” she instructed, “and one of y’all bring me a lamp. I can’t see nothin’!” As Platt poured the alcohol in and around the small bullet hole, the half moan, half scream that issued forth from my father, though chilling, reassured us that he was still with us, and I begged God, and my fading father, that he would live. Papa lapsed into blessed oblivion then, and Grandma continued to carefully work on him, now moving even more quickly. Using a large section of the shawl, Grandma bunched it up to staunch the flow of blood and to keep the wound as clean as possible. Then she had Prescott gently put Pa in a sitting position so that she could examine his back to see if the bullet had exited. Once she confirmed that it had, she used the long strips of her shawl to wrap around his middle and secured the makeshift bandage in place with a sound knot. “Get him in the wagon,” she ordered. “I got to get him someplace warm and clean, and with good light so’s I can tend to him better.” Immediately Platt moved to lift Papa under the arms, while Lawson took his legs. Though the two men had just killed, or, at the very least, wounded others, they lifted Papa as gently as they would their own newborn children, then quickly but carefully placed him into Luther’s wagon bed.

  Prescott tied Mack and Sampson to the back of the wagon Papa had arrived in, and drove behind us, while Grandma and I sat in Luther’s wagon bed tending to Papa while Luther quickly but carefully drove us home. Halfway there, my father opened his eyes and looked directly at me. I was holding his left hand, and wiping the sweat off of his brow with the other. He uttered two words then, “Sweet girl,” clenching my hand tightly as he did. Then Papa released it, as he, too, was being released, and he died with his head in my lap, his sightless eyes ironically reflecting the ghostly blue-and-white hue of the moon’s shine.

  CHAPTER 34

  The River Home

  One morning in June, exactly three months to the day after Papa was killed, Mama walked up to the family cemetery and graced each grave with butter-yellow daylilies, as well as peach and red tulips. Though the mass of flowers she’d picked left her garden nearly bare, the cemetery became a kaleidoscope of bright, beautiful colors. Once she was finished with that, she gathered up a week’s worth of our laundry and said she was going down to the river with the two burlap sacks.

  It was rare for her to wash at the river anymore as she preferred using the large washtub filled with warm water to help prevent her hands from chapping. She always hated chapped hands, and applied cream multiple times a day to prevent them from becoming red and raw.

  She seemed distant and distracted, but that wasn’t unusual for her. At those times, we gave her space, knowing it was just easier to do that than to expect her to give us any particular reason why she was a little off that day. So, when she headed out the door, I let her go without any hesitation. But, by late afternoon, when she’d still not returned, I mentioned the strangeness of it to Grandma, and said I’d walk down to the river to check on her. Prescott, overhearing me as he finished washing up at the kitchen sink, said that, no, he’d go and hurried out the door, but Grandma and I followed him.

  My brother found our laundry on the bank, but not seeing Mama, he dove in and found her almost immediately. He struggled to bring her to the surface though, for she had filled both laundry bags with baseball-size river rocks and tied them around her waist before apparently pushing herself off of the end of the large boulder that jutted out over a deeper part of the river. Using his pocket knife to cut the cordage from around her, Prescott was finally able to bring Mama back up and over to the bank of the river.

  We knelt down beside her and wept. But no one asked why she had done it. We all knew the answer to that. And we also knew that all that had weighed her down in life had been washed away on the river’s current, and there was a certain comforting peace in the knowledge. Three days later, we buried her body between those she so desperately longed for; between Papa and the twins.

  Though we never would have admitted it out loud, an unfamiliar but welcome sense of calm and relief settled over our home even though Grandma, Prescott, and I continued our daily struggle for financial survival. Though stressful, it was a healthy chaos that filled the walls of our cabin, as compared to the chaos that had been created by madness. And though there were times when the reality and the tragedy of the loss of our mother was as painfully felt as a staggering blow to the stomach, we stayed so busy just trying to keep our household going that it left little time to dwell on the sadness and the “what-ifs” of the past.

  Merry, on the other hand, found her own ways of dealing with her emotions. She became the unofficial keeper of the family’s cemetery. She was good about keeping freshly cut flowers on our loved ones’ graves, with the lushest and brightest blooms always reserved for Mama. But she would go on to behave in a way that was contrary to what folks usually do when they’re mourning. And though I realized that it might just be a passing thing, it worried me greatly that Merry was cut from the same bolt of defective cloth that Malcolm and Mama had been.

  PART 4

  Willa and Rachel

  CHAPTER 35

  January 1927, Howling Cut, NC

  “Mr. Mercer wants more gravy,” I said to Grandma as I came through the kitchen door, using my right elbow to push it open while both hands held on to an empty but still heavy bowl of what had been mashed potatoes.

  “Well, tell him he’s done eaten all we had, so if he wants more, then he needs to come on in here and fix it himself,” she complained. “I still have all their dishes to clean, not to mention bread to bake for their breakfast tomorrow. Lord, those men can pack it away. When did that Mercer fella say he was movin’ on, anyway? That one’s about to do me in! He’s bigger ’n a house ’n louder than cicadas in August.” We both laughed, if for no other reason than we were just too worn out to complain anymore.

  Though we were constantly tired and often complained about the endless demands of our boarders, the truth of the matter was that we were awfully glad to have them—even gluttonous, voluble Herman Mercer.

  The laying of the railroad through Howling Cut and the Blue Ridge Mountains had been our family’s saving grace. For over ten years, the iron horse had been huffing and puffing up mountains, down valleys, and through gorges, and with each run it made, it seemed to bring new opportunity with it. The sad truth of the matter was that Papa could have made a far better living for himself—for us all—had he used a little good old-fashioned common sense, and taken advantage of the new age of mass transportation to find markets for our sawmill. As the rails were laid, people were
moving in, which meant houses, office buildings, churches, and stores were needed in order to make these once isolated places new and, hopefully, prosperous towns. And it took building materials to build those towns, much of which we could have supplied. But Papa had simply gotten worn out and worn down, and the temptation of quick and easy money was too much for him to pass up. He’d grown tired of coming home with near-empty pockets, and lying awake night after night worrying about losing his last decent paying customers to the Hollis mill. Then, out of the blue, Gilbert Harris had come to town, and dealing with bout after bout of bad luck with the orchard, the two had plenty to commiserate over. Night after night in the back room at the mill, they’d planned their apple brandy business. Eventually, they brought their well-thought-out plan to life under the cloak of darkness, within the struggling apple orchard.

  As hard as Prescott worked, he was just eighteen and still learning the business. It was too early to tell whether or not he could make the mill any more successful than our father had. We did not have much hope, because the Hollis Mill was still going strong, but we tried to stay positive.

  In the meantime, Grandma and I knew we had to do something to keep our family clothed, sheltered, and fed. Thus, we took advantage when opportunity knocked, and we answered the door to men asking about the availability of a room to rent while they performed the backbreaking labor of building up our town. There were those, too, who worked in the rich mica and feldspar mines. The mines produced enough material to give the world its fill of pottery, china, wallpaper, lampshades, and more, once the trains were able to transport the minerals in and out quickly. Laborers were in great demand, and so was the need for places to house them all.