In a Dark Season

by Vicki Lane

  It was broken beyond repair. It’s just taking up space in the closet; toss it, Elizabeth. But she hesitated, remembering the tedious chore of cleaning the basketball-sized globe to prepare its surface for the paint, scraping out the plump, dry seeds and papery membranes from the interior. Her fingers traced the incised lines of the mountains around the gourd’s fat circumference and then the raptor soaring above the peaks. The acrid smell as her wood-burning tool bit into the gourd’s smooth tan skin, the tiny sting of smoke in her eyes—it all came back to her.

  It’s hard to just throw out something I worked so hard on— she cradled the object in both hands, noting the thinness of the gourd’s shell and the jagged crack that parted the sky and just touched the etched mountain rim of this little world. What’s that thing I read? Some people are process-oriented—getting all their enjoyment from the doing of a thing—while others are driven by the desire for the finished product. Well, I enjoyed the process of this for sure, and the product as well. But now…

  With sudden decision Elizabeth moved for the fireplace. The fire had subsided to coals. This’ll be better than putting it in the trash—more suitable, somehow. With a wry smile at her own silliness, she opened the glass door, laid the broken gourd on the bed of glowing red coals, and sat down on the hearth to watch.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then transparent orange-and-blue flames appeared, licking at the base of the gourd. Elizabeth leaned closer, enthralled by the sight. Now, with a sigh, a soft pumph of sound, there was fire inside the hollow sphere, and a faint smell, fleetingly reminiscent of cooking squash, wafted toward her, only to disappear as the gourd was engulfed in flames.

  The disfiguring crack widened, revealing the interior inferno. This is beautiful! she thought, as half of the gourd, now only a brittle charcoal shell, collapsed, leaving a black jagged wall pointing upward. This lingered, then, as part fell away, assumed a new shape.

  It looked like an Indian…and then like a pointing hand…and now it’s a hanging man. You could use this, like tea leaves, to read omens. It doesn’t matter what means you use—tea leaves, clouds, animal entrails—all you’re really doing is freeing your subconscious to work.

  She was lost in thought, still staring into the fireplace, now returned to a slumbering bed of ashy coals, when Phillip came into the room.

  “Lizabeth? You okay?”

  With a start, she jerked back to the here and now. “I’m fine. I was just…freeing my subconscious.”

  The hanging man. A sign of ill omen. Maybe that’s why I always hated those damn baby dolls, hanging on the porch at the stand house. At least they’re not there anymore.

  With a start, she remembered just where they were—in the bottom of her big, rarely used shoulder bag. I was thinking about burying them but maybe that’s a bit…a bit dramatic. What if I wrapped them up and put them in the trash? That way I wouldn’t have to see their creepy little hands waving at me.

  As she pulled the pinkly obscene creatures from the bag, she noticed that the head of one was screwed round so as almost to face backward, giving the creature a particularly horrible, demonic look. On her way to the kitchen and the garbage pail, she fiddled with the head, trying to put it right.

  It fell off in her hands and she made an involuntary sound of disgust.

  “What are you doing to that baby doll, Miz Goodweather?” Phillip asked, watching with amusement.

  Elizabeth didn’t reply but stood looking into the interior of the headless toy.

  “There’s something in here,” she said at last. “Paper.”

  A sheet of paper, folded and refolded, was wedged into the chest of the doll. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and scanned its contents.

  “It’s a letter from Spinner to Tracy, dated December 11, 1995.”

  “Dear Tracy,

  Please believe me that I didn’t mean for that to happen—all the others. It was Hollis came looking for me and found you and me and then he called Vance and the Mortons. I wasn’t part of it—what happened. Hollis made me stay and watch. He said it would make a man of me but I think it made me see that if that was being a man, I was happier to be what I am. I left town as soon as I knew you were safe—I told the Cat Man where you were and he promised to go get you out. If I’d been braver—but I wasn’t.

  I’m back in Ransom now and I’ve tried to find out where you’ve gone but no one will tell me. Your uncle has promised to forward this letter and I’ve told him how important it is that you get it right away.

  Because this is the terrible thing I have to tell you—”

  Elizabeth looked up at Phillip, her eyes brimming. “He’s writing to tell her that he’s just found out he has AIDS and that she should go get checked right away.”

  “And Revis just kept the letter—maybe thinking to use it for more blackmail. God, what a sick—”

  “Did you see the part at the bottom, where he tells Tracy about his little sister and how much he loves her and how afraid he is of losing her love because of being gay and having AIDS?”

  Elizabeth stood and headed for the back door and the path to Ben’s cabin. “I think we need to let Amanda see this letter—and then let Tracy know about it too.”

  When Elizabeth returned from the cabin, her face was shining. “Do you know what Amanda said, Phillip? She said, ‘You’ve given me back my brother.’”

  Chapter 56

  New Year’s Eve…with Distant Fireworks

  Sunday, December 31, and Monday, January 1

  Have you thought about it, Lizabeth?”

  Bundled against the freezing temperature of the clear, windless night, Elizabeth and Phillip stood side by side at the porch railing. Behind them the rich strains of Yo-Yo Ma’s cello reached out to enfold them in the caressing embrace of a Bach composition. In the distance beyond the river, a fireworks display was in progress, and the higher-flying rockets were gloriously visible. At that moment a glowing ball of cherry red soared heavenward, then opened into a golden-ribbed umbrella that released a shower of tiny red and green stars.

  “Yes, I have—almost constantly.”

  Without taking his eyes from the sky, Phillip said, “I’d really like to start this year by marrying you, Elizabeth. But if you’ve decided it’s not what you want, then we can go on like we are. If what you’re getting ready to tell me is no, I’ll accept that.”

  Elizabeth leaned against him. “Phillip, my love, I made up my mind, that day on Max Patch. Somehow, up there, I saw how ridiculous all my doubting and hesitating was. And I haven’t changed my mind. I want to be your wife—for better or for worse, and all the rest.”

  The cello suite that had surrounded them ended and the speakers hanging on the porch gave a little cough, then slipped into a doleful mountain ballad.

  “Don’t give your heart to nary man…” The singer’s voice was raw with pain and longing.

  Elizabeth turned a rueful face toward the speakers. “I didn’t know that was on the changer. Hardly appropriate for the moment. She’s so sad and I’m so happy.”

  “Happy’s good.” Phillip put his arms around her. “You make me happy, Lizabeth Goodweather.”

  They stood at the porch railing, arms snug around each other, and watched as the fireworks display in the distance reached its climax.

  Behind them in the empty house the telephone rang. One, two, three, the muffled sound was lost in the mournful song that drifted on the cold air of the dying year.

  “…for men ain’t what…they oftimes seem…” the singer warned.

  In the little office, the answering machine clicked on. “This is Full Circle Farm. Leave us a message.”

  “Hello, Elizabeth. It’s Aunt Dodie. I thought it would be fun to wish you a Happy New Year but I expect you’re out at a party or something. It gets harder and harder for me to stay awake till midnight, but I’ve done it since I was a child, and just because I’m eighty-three I see no reason to give in and go to bed. But the television’s so dull and I didn’t feel like
reading, so I decided to pass the time by cleaning out the old gentleman’s desk. It hadn’t been touched since he died and that would be—well, let me see, he passed away back in ’75.

  “And here it is just a few minutes till ought-seven and in all that time I haven’t been able to bring myself to disturb the big old rolltop desk in his study. Of course, all our business matters were in the other desk, you know the one I mean, that tall glass-fronted secretary in the parlor. The rolltop desk was where he kept his personal correspondence and the notes for the memoirs of his years in the Navy he said he was working on, though I’m well aware that most of the time he was in the den he was napping or reading those Hornblower novels. Poor dear, I know that time hung heavy for him after all those years of being in the thick of things.”

  The sound of a sudden crash alarmed James, who had been curled comfortably in the office’s big leather chair. His head came up. There was no repetition of the loud noise, and as the voice on the machine continued its flow, the little dog’s eyes slowly closed and his head drooped till his nose rested on the chair seat. A soft snore emanated from the small furry body as Aunt Dodie rattled on.

  “Oh, excuse me, Elizabeth dear, I dropped you on the floor—or at least, your answering machine. Now, what was I…oh, yes, well, I was talking to an old friend the other day, of course at my age that’s about the only kind there is, and I asked her what she was doing and she said she was putting her house in order— death order was what she said actually—so that her children wouldn’t have to deal with her personal letters and things that might be meaningless to them after she’d passed on, though she’s in perfect health as far as I know and younger than I by several years.

  “But what she said got me to thinking that I’d do the same for my New Year’s resolution and I realized that I ought to go through the old gentleman’s desk—some of his Navy things might be of interest to the Maritime Museum in Beaufort and I could just burn the rest. So I began by taking things out and sorting them into piles—you know, newspaper clippings, documents, old photographs—and there was the sweetest one of you and Sam when you came through here on your honeymoon; I’m having a copy made and will send it to you; you both looked so happy, but oh dear, then I found the letter from Sam…

  “And some of the things Sam said were so strange, and he had questions for the old gentleman about someone he was working with whom he didn’t quite trust—someone he called the Hawk—and—oh, thank goodness, there’s the clock striking midnight—well, I’ve made it through another New Year’s Eve. Happy New Year, Elizabeth dear. May it be filled with all the happiness you deserve.”

  Acknowledgments

  My editor Kate Miciak’s power to make me grow as a writer continues to amaze me. And now I’m thankful for her patience too. My wonderful agent, Ann Collette, is always a welcome source of advice, encouragement, and cheer. Someday soon I hope to introduce her to country life, up close and personal, bugs and tomatoes and all. Thanks to Deb Dwyer, my eagle-eyed copy editor, for her precision and for the nice comments. And once again, many thanks to Jamie S. Warren Youll for the great covers.

  Cynthia Niles gave pharmaceutical advice and Marianna Daly, MD, and Polly Ross, MD, provided information on HIV/AIDS. I appreciate their help and hope I got it right.

  The people of Hickory Nut Gap Farm and Sherrill’s Inn, one of the few stands still in existence in my area, were a great resource. Many thanks to Cindy Clarke for suggesting I visit and for showing me around, and to John and Annie Ager for allowing a stranger to wander through their house and imagine it as it had been.

  The Vance birthplace in Weaverville, NC, a pioneer farmstead with a five-room log house reconstructed around original chimneys and furnished to evoke the period from 1795–1840, helped me to visualize the world of Lydy Goforth.

  Thanks to old friend Dayton Wild, a link with the past. When Dayton told me how his father (older than his grandfather—you work it out) had told him stories about the Drovers’ Road, it gave me goose bumps and helped to make the past a little more real.

  And I’m eternally grateful to all the fans who share stories with me or just tell me to keep going. Thanks to SFC Robert A. Myers (ret.) whose vivid reminiscence of a Melungeon couple he had known inspired Ish and Mariah Flores. And to Larry Suttles, who won the right in a library raffle to name a character. He asked that I use the name of his late father who had lived up on Max Patch and was a great plant propagator. “Maybe he could still be alive in your story,” Larry suggested, and that gave me an idea….

  The following books were useful to me in working on this novel: History of Buncombe County, NC, F.A. Sondley, LL.D. (The Reprint Company Publishers, Spartanburg, SC, 1997—repro of 1930 ed.); The French Broad, Wilma Dykeman (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1955); Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia, Anthony Cavender, (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2003); and The Kingdom of Madison: A Southern Mountain Fastness and Its People by Manly Wade Wellman, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1973.

  About the Author

  Vicki Lane has lived with her family on a mountain farm in North Carolina since 1975. She is the author of Signs in the Blood, Art’s Blood, and Old Wounds, which was chosen as a Book Sense Notable Book. She is currently at work on an addition to her chronicles of Elizabeth Goodweather’s Marshall County, The Day of Small Things.

  “Vicki Lane writes of Appalachia as if she’d been driving up our hills and through our hollows her whole life…. In showing us how memory lingers like a smoky mist across the mountains, Lane reminds us again that the past never completely dies.”

  —Margaret Maron, award-winning author of Hard Row

  If you enjoyed Vicki Lane’s

  IN A DARK SEASON,

  you won’t want to miss any of her haunting novels of suspense set in Appalachia. Look for them at your favorite bookseller.

  Read on for an electrifying early look at her next novel.

  THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS

  by

  Vicki Lane

  Coming soon from Dell

  The Day of Small Things

  Coming soon from Dell

  The Beginning

  Dark Holler ~ 1922

  On the evening of the third day, her screams filled the little cabin, escaping through the open door to tangle themselves in the dark brooding hemlocks that loomed above the house. The weary midwife, returning from a visit to the privy, glanced up at the mournful trees and shuddered.

  “Seems them ol low-droopin boughs is just a-holdin in the sound. And all that pain and misery—hit’ll linger there till ever wind that stirs’ll be like to bring it back—all them cries a-flutterin round the house again like so many black crows.”

  Pausing to adjust her long skirt, the midwife frowned at such an unaccustomed flight of fancy. “Law, whatever put such foolishness into my head? I’m flat wore out, and that’s the truth—how else would I come to think such quare things? But hit’s a lonesome, sorrowful place fer all that and a sorrowful time fer poor Fronie. Her man not yet cold in his grave and her boy tarryin at death’s door—ay, law, hit’s a cruel hard time to birth a child—iffen hit don’t kill her first.

  For days the woman had labored. For almost forty hours she had clung to a fierce, tooth-clenched silence, broken only by an occasional low groan or an involuntary gasp as the pains came on anew. But at last her stern control had shattered, giving way to a frenzy of sobs and curses as the contractions grew in strength. And still the child would not be born.

  Hurrying back into the small log house, the midwife pulled on the clean muslin apron that was the badge of her calling. The screams broke off and the expectant mother lay panting on the stained and stinking corn shuck tick, her breath coming in hoarse rasps. Long dark hair, carefully combed free of tangles in vain hope of easing the birth, fanned out in damp strands around her death-pale face. The anguish, the fear, the anger that had passed, like a succession of hideous masks, over the laboring woman’s gaunt counten
ance, was momentarily replaced by an otherworldly absence of all emotion.

  Then a great ripple surged across the huge belly swelling beneath her thin shift and the woman’s face contorted once more. Her cracked lips opened to scream but nothing more than a strangled croak emerged. Gasping with pain and frustration, the woman twisted her misshapen torso from side to side as she clawed at her heaving belly.

  The midwife caught at the woman’s hands and held them till the contraction passed. “Hit’ll be born afore sundown or they’ll be the two of ’em to bury,” she whispered to the frightened girl standing at the bedside.

  “I ain’t never seen no one die, Miz Romarie. My daddy, he was already gone when they fetched him home from the loggin camp.” The girl’s wide eyes brimmed with tears. She turned her face, ashen in the fading light, to the midwife. “Miz Romarie, I’m so a-feared…”

  The midwife patted the girl’s thin shoulder and then reached for the bottle of sweet oil that stood on a nearby stool. “We ain’t got time fer that now, Fairlight. You catch hold of yore mama’s hands whilst I see kin I turn the babe and bring hit on. Hold ’em tight now, honey.”

  Black night had come and owls called out amid the sighing of the hemlocks as the exhausted woman looked without pleasure at her red, squalling infant. At last she spoke. “Hit’ll allus be the least un, fer there won’t be no more. Reckon that’ll do fer a name—call hit Least.”