Wildwood Creek

by Wingate, Lisa

  “There was a song about her, sung in Civil War camps and on cattle drives of the time. ‘The Ballad of Wildwood.’ Have you heard of it? The lyrics, for the most part, seem to have been lost to history, other than oral tradition among some of the locals.”

  “I don’t think I saw anything about it in the research.”

  And lays them down in sweet repose,

  The milky hands of Bonnie Rose . . .

  The words whispered through my mind out of no place. Had I read them somewhere?

  Above the cliffs, alone she stood,

  The bitter maiden of Wildwood . . .

  I blinked, stopped a few steps from him in the aisle, but no more words came.

  Singh hadn’t moved, but he was watching me as if he either expected our conversation to continue or intended to stay after I left. I studied him without wanting to. His features were emotionless, his fathomless dark eyes probing, seeming to be searching for something in me.

  I slipped a hand into my jeans pocket and took out the keys. “So . . . I’d better hit the road. I’ll never find my way out of these hills after sundown. It was nice meeting you.”

  He smiled slightly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It was more a look of assessment, a measuring. “It does get very dark. I spent the night here last night.”

  Heebie-jeebies danced over my skin. What in the world was I supposed to say to that? “Oh.” Not me, mister. No way I’m staying in this place alone . . . or with you, if that’s what you’ve got in mind. I took another side step toward the door. “Well, I definitely don’t want to miss the last of the light.” Outta here. So outta here. Whoosh. See that dust trail? That’s me. Gone. Kim would have an astronomical freak out when I told her about this conversation.

  The creep factor right now was off the charts. In fact, part of me wanted to reconsider my whole decision to spend the summer here. But with more than a hundred cast and crewmembers, it would surely feel safe enough, even after dark.

  “Not a trace of ambient light,” he mused, now surveying the window. “The stars so close, they are just beyond your fingertip.”

  “It sounds . . . awesome.” Please, God, help me to extricate myself from the situation in some way that is not ridiculously ungraceful. Now. Please, now. “I’ll have to watch on the way home.” Far, far from here. By myself. I took another step toward the door. One, two, three. I was almost there.

  “I want you to become her.” The words stopped me on the threshold. I turned slowly. Maybe he had me confused with someone else. One of the cast members, perhaps?

  Maybe he was just . . . talking to himself . . . or to the ghosts he thought were here. Maybe he was completely off his rocker. Creative types tended to teeter on the ragged edge sometimes.

  He hadn’t changed position. Instead, he was leaning slightly over his crossed arms, seemingly deep in thought, studying an expensive-looking pair of black boots. Actually, I realized now that he was dressed from head to toe in black. Black boots. Black slacks. Black button-up shirt in some sort of slightly iridescent fabric that caught the fading light. Silk, most likely.

  “Excuse me?” Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is play dumb.

  He nodded slowly, as if he were establishing something in his mind. “I want you to become Bonnie Rose.”

  The keys slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor, disturbing the dusty air in the schoolhouse.

  Singh looked my way then, his head swiveling slowly. His gaze started at my feet and traveled carefully up my body, past my eyes, and then back down again in a way that made me feel more than weird—as if I were a new car or a slick polo pony he was thinking about buying. “You’re perfect.”

  In most instances, You’re perfect feels like flattery, but in this case, it just felt . . .bizarre. I fumbled for a response. What were the right words in a circumstance like this? I finally settled for “Oh, I’m just in production. An assistant . . . Well, sort of an intern, really. I’m not part of the cast. I work for Tova. Tova Kask? I have several years’ experience in community and university theater, and I’m working on my masters in film. This summer is a dream job for me.”

  I was babbling now, and I knew it. I tried to pause, to see if he would jump in, but he wasn’t saying anything, so I felt compelled to babble some more. “I love research and costuming, especially. I really do. And I’ve learned so much this summer from Randy, Phyllis, and Michelle. It’s been a fantastic experience so far. And I’m working my way through school, so I needed the job. It’s always been a dream of mine . . . film . . . But behind the scenes, I mean. I flunked out of being on stage in the fifth grade. Totally. Complete stage fright. They had to carry me off. I was the only kid assigned to work with the teacher, helping with costumes and props. I didn’t mind it though, because . . .”

  The intensity of his gaze stopped me. My mind went completely blank. “I know who you are, Allie Kirkland.” He pulled his lips between his teeth, tilted his head slightly to one side, regarded me the way a portrait painter might take in a subject he’s about to render onto canvas. Something inside me shuddered. I’d never had anybody look at me with such intense scrutiny. “I make it my business to know everyone who works for me. Your father was a director.”

  The uncomfortable quiver inside me radiated outward, crawled over my bones, and slipped into the air. What in the world was happening here? What would he do if I said no—when I said no—to this insane proposition? “Yes, he was,” I answered tentatively. “My earliest memories are of film sets. Behind the scenes. I’ve always wanted to follow in his footsteps, see if I have what it takes. My father’s work ended way too soon.” If he knew everything else about me, he probably knew that as well. It didn’t matter now. My purpose was to convince him that I was much more valuable in a support capacity, that I could pull my weight and then some.

  It occurred to me to wonder whether Tova had set this up. She was the one who’d sent me here today, alone. Maybe this was her way to avoid being stuck in a crew trailer with me all summer. But I had done a good job so far, hadn’t I? I’d worked like a dog in the basement of the Berman all these weeks. I was the one who knew how to fix the machinery, who knew how the files were organized, who knew many of the costumes seam by seam, inch by inch. She had to realize that. Would she do this to me now? Was she really that heartless?

  Singh’s eyelids lowered slowly to half-mast.

  Sweat dripped beneath my shirt, despite the fact that the evening air had cooled noticeably.

  “What if you could have that dream, Allie? What if, by doing what I am asking of you, you could guarantee yourself the funds for not one semester of film school, but all of it? What then?”

  I lost my balance, staggered a step, my tennis shoe landing on the raised threshold so that I fell backward and ended up catching my footing on the porch outside, which was just as well, because that put me farther from Singh and closer to an escape. Even so, I stood frozen.

  “What exactly are you . . .” I paused to collect my thoughts, if I could find any. Now wasn’t the time to speak without thinking. I had to be careful. Singh did not look like the kind of man who was accustomed to being told no.

  “What am I saying?” He finished the question. “That’s what you were about to ask, correct? That’s the thing you want to know?”

  I nodded.

  “Simply, that you assume the life of Bonnie Rose this summer. For three months. That’s all that’s being asked of you. And then I will see that you have what you need for film school. I hold sway over any number of scholarships and admissions boards. This is a business of special favors. Should I make it known to the right people that we had an exceptionally bright and capable young intern serving us in Wildwood Creek, you could quite quickly find yourself stepping into the life you’ve always wanted. Law school is, of course, admirable, if it’s what you desire in life . . . but if it’s nothing more than a family expectation, then it amounts to enslavement of a sort, don’t you think? What is enslavement, if it’
s not the forcing of your labor toward a life that has been chosen for you?”

  I stood staring at him, unable to formulate anything other than a three-word response, which seemed rather pointless now. “But why me?”

  His fingers slipped under the flap on his shirt pocket, reached in, and slid something out. Pushing off the back of the pew, he walked forward to hand it to me. An unconscious retreat moved me a half step before I forced myself to take what he offered. A photograph. A tintype similar to many of the ones Stewart and I had scrounged off the Internet or copied from books and magazines for the costume diaries. But this one was original.

  I turned it slowly in my hands . . . a picture of a school. This school. Children were posed on the steps. A dozen or more. All ages, from no more than five or six to as old as fourteen, wearing everything from nicely made dresses and stockings to what looked like flour sacks cinched at the waist with twine, bare feet sticking out the bottom.

  Standing beside them was their teacher, Bonnie Rose.

  Tall, slender, with long ringlets of hair that were probably red, she looked only slightly like the sketch Randy had rendered in her costume diary.

  She was startlingly familiar, though I’d never seen her before.

  If the picture hadn’t been taken over a hundred and fifty years ago, she could have been my sister.

  Chapter 15

  BONNIE ROSE

  MAY 1861

  You’d best be marching up the hill now,” Mrs. Forsythe says to me as I pass through her kitchen. “Take your sister along with you, and she’ll not trouble me this aft.” Her eyes narrow in her meaty face, and she looks pleased to be sending us off again.

  Daily, Mrs. Delevan holds a ladies’ tea and sewing circle in her fine home on the hill, but it’s not an invitation the womenfolk of Wildwood are thankful to be receiving. Mrs. Forsythe knows this as well as I, and that’s the cause of her satisfied look today. It’s the better part of a month now, during the buildin’ of our room aback the schoolhouse, that Maggie May and I have been underfoot of the Forsythes, and it’s hard to know whether remaining here or participating in one of Mrs. Delevan’s odd tea parties is worse.

  It’s not as though I’ll be refusing Mrs. Delevan’s invitation, of course. With the town fair to burstin’ from so many folk arriving each day, and the one small hotel operated by Mr. Hollis always full, it’s easy enough to see how fortunate Maggie May and I are to have the kind patronage of Mr. Delevan. While others go wanting, we are put up in the Forsythe home. They’ve ousted their two daughters to give us the space, and it’s clear that Mrs. Forsythe was told to do it. Angry whispers hiss through the walls as we lie abed at night. Her daughters sleep in the hay above the wagon shed out back now. The lady of the house is not happy to be feeding extras, either, not one bit. Goods run a pretty penny at the Unger Store, when they can be had at all.

  But as with everythin’ in Wildwood, the Delevans hold the mortgage on the mill where Mr. Forsythe earns his daily bread. So he keeps us as boarders whether it pleases his wife or not.

  She smiles behind her hand as I gather up Maggie and go. It’s a small bit of satisfaction to her.

  On the trek uphill, Maggie complains again. She’s not allowed into the ladies’ teas, and she’s loath to sit on the steps aback the Delevan house by the hour, waiting for old Mrs. Delevan and her addle-minded sister, Peasie, to tire of their guests and set us free.

  “I’ll stay at the schoolhouse. I’ll not wander a bit. . . .” Maggie pleads as we pass by the small buildin’, where, to date, we have only seven children in grades from first to sixth. They come for classes from morn until just past midday. We’ll add seventh and eighth grades later, if there’s a need for it, but by the upper ages, most children here are helping their parents to open crosscuts and sink shafts in the hillsides of Chinquapin Peaks. The immigrant families, having risked all to come here, live in hopes of striking the deep veins that generate the gold-bearing ore found near the surface. There’s barely a man can’t tell of some color scratched from his claim, yet none have amounted to much thus far, it seems. After the portions owed Mr. Delevan’s Miners Exchange and his store are paid, they have even less.

  For the most part, those who’ve come with dreams of wealth have found themselves living in homes built of anythin’ they can scratch up. The womenfolk turn their hands to keeping their broods fed and washed, but growing table fodder in this rocky soil is no small matter. Those operating businesses in town at Mr. Delevan’s direction fare somewhat better. They seem to be German folk mostly, and the claim seekers being mostly Irish. The Irish are known for the dreamin’, much the same as my da. It’s nothin’ to them to take on a risk. They haven’t much awaiting them back East but hard labor and low wage.

  “You’ll be coming up the hill with me, Maggie May. And no complainin’ about it,” I say to her as we pass by the Unger Store and the climb grows steeper, up the high side of the street toward the Delevan home on the hill. “And mind your manners, on the chance that old Mrs. Delevan should look out and see you there. Don’t be making trouble for Essie Jane and the others.”

  Five slave women work in the Delevan home—so many they seem to be stumblin’ over one another. With only the two older ladies and Mr. Delevan to care for, the slaves spend their time scrubbing the corners of the house, then scrubbing them again.

  On tea days they help with dressing the ladies. It’s an odd ritual I wouldn’t have been believing, if not for seeing it with my own eyes. Mrs. Delevan will have nothin’ of dirt off the streets brushed over her carpets, or common clothing sitting on her fine chairs. Before entering the home, each of the women is brought ’round back to the kitchen house, and there helped to shed her own frock in favor of something pleasing to Mrs. Delevan. The clothing is laced, or bound, or given a hasty stitch as need be to fit it to the wearer, and then the women are gathered and proceed to the front to pretend to be just arriving at the Delevan home.

  It’s a strange thing, to be sure, old Mrs. Delevan poised there in her son’s fine parlor, delightin’ herself over the dresses and hats, pretending never to have seen the garments before. A grown woman, playing at a game of dollhouse. No one says anythin’ about it, and there beside her, Peasie looks on quiet and meek but just as delighted, her countenance that of an overgrown girl.

  I’ve wondered if Mr. Delevan knows of these things, but he’s been gone away on business since my coming to Wildwood. With shots now fired between the Unionists and the Secessionists at Fort Sumter, and Texas having voted to join the Confederate cause over a month ago, there’s much talk and whisperin’and meetin’ taking place somewhere outside Wildwood—I’ve gathered that much, though our information here is slight. Wildwood not being on the path to anyplace else, few come here, unless it is to stay.

  I’ve no way of knowing whether this folly with Mrs. Delevan’s tea parties will continue on when her son returns to take up the reins of his household, or whether it may end. He seems a more practical man than this. The womenfolk in town have work to do—children to tend, meals to scratch up, businesses to look after with their husbands.

  “Please,” Maggie whispers, tuggin’ on my arm. “I won’t wander if you leave me here.” She looks back to the schoolhouse, but I worry over letting her stay behind. The Reverend Brahn, who makes his home in the boardin’ room next to one being finished for Maggie and me, seems a drunken and slovenly old man, and I’ve my suspicions as to whether he is a reverend at all. He’s been no help in starting the school or in persuading families living in their dugouts of canvas and timber that there can be advantage in educating the young. Only the town children have come, thus far—those from the German families. But dozens of families live out in the wood. The few I’ve seen are a scrappy, ragged lot, their clothes in tatters, their feet bare, and their hair matted. They are as hardscrabble as the hills themselves.

  A wagon rolls along the street past us and stops beside the Unger warehouse, and four men scurry to do the unloading. The driver jump
s down with a leather-bound packet ’neath his arm, and I know his lanky walk before we come close enough to see his face. I’ve not crossed paths with Mr. Hardwick since he delivered me to the Forsythe home a month ago now. What I have heard of him is that, upon leaving Wildwood, he manages his living by the constant transportation of goods to other settlements downriver.

  I find myself quickening my pace, though I’m not certain why. The man did bring us safely across the unsettled country, but I’ve not forgotten several insufferable moments on our journey. Not the least of which that river crossin’, which almost took us all. Doubtless, he has neither forgotten me.

  He casts eyes my way, and I’m a bit taken aback when he pauses to tip his hat, pleasant enough. “Miss Rose.”

  “Mr. Hardwick.”

  He studies me with a keen interest then, and I’m surprised by it. “You’re looking well, I reckon. Finding life in Wildwood agreeable so far? No more rivers to cross, at least.” A slight smirk follows the question, and I feel myself bristlin’. Perhaps he thought he would find me at this point, simperin’ and babblin’ and pleadin’ for deliverance from this place. Just last week, a young woman ran the length of the street screaming and moaning and tearing at her clothes. Mrs. Forsythe did not even move from her wash line. “There’s some womenfolk can’t bear up,” she said, sending a hard look my way.

  Now Mr. Hardwick seems to be entertaining the same thoughts of me.

  “Some matters are difficult,” I answer and meet his cool, gray eyes. They remind me of the water in the river, a glassy surface hiding secrets beneath. “But that is, of course, to be expected. While it is a bit of slow going, persuading the families living out on claims to surrender the labors of their children to an education, I have faith that it can be accomplished in time. For now, we await the arrival of books and materials . . . and a room to be completed for Maggie May and me aback the building. I look forward to no longer imposing on the hospitality of Mrs. Forsythe.”