These Healing Hills

by Ann H. Gabhart

  “I can’t imagine anybody bothering me.”

  “Then you don’t have much of an imagination.” Betty’s eyes narrowed on Fran. “I’ve lived here longer than you, and it takes no imagination at all to know someone will be passing around moonshine in mason jars before the day is through. A man drinks much of that, he can forget every shred of decency.”

  So with the sun just up, Fran was on the porch in her nurse uniform when the truck bounced down the ruts that passed as a road and stopped by the yard gate. Ben leaned out the window. “Climb in.”

  The cab was full with Becca and Granny Em. Woody, Mrs. Locke, and Sadie, in the bed of the truck, waved her toward them.

  She turned to tell Sarge to stay, but Woody yelled, “Sarge can come too. We brung a rope to tie him if he gets to be a bother.”

  Sadie spoke up. “They wouldn’t let me bring Buttons.” She made a sad face.

  “She’s too little. She’d get trampled for certain,” Mrs. Locke said.

  “And she had to stay home to keep Bruiser company.”

  “Bruiser?” Fran laughed at the name. “You named that little pup Bruiser?”

  “I named him for the future.” Woody jumped out of the truck and lowered the tailgate. “Just wait. He’ll be a bruiser.”

  When Fran patted the truck bed, Sarge jumped in and then watched Fran scramble into the truck before he danced over to see Sadie.

  “Nurse Dawson didn’t want to come?” Mrs. Locke asked.

  “She thanks you for the invitation, but she decided to stay here in case someone needs something.”

  “If they do, they’ll be needing it at the Hoskins stir-off. That’s where everybody will be.” Woody slammed the tailgate shut and clambered back into the truck.

  “Hang on,” Ben called back to them as he shifted the truck into gear.

  “You ever rode in the back of a truck before?” Woody asked.

  “Just once.” Fran’s ride with Lurene Nolan down the mountain to the hospital wasn’t a good memory.

  Now she wasn’t sure where to sit or stand. Mrs. Locke perched on a wheel well and held onto the sides of the truck bed. Sadie sat on a folded blanket in front of her. Woody took up a position behind the truck cab.

  “You can stand here behind the cab as long as you’re ready to duck if tree limbs hang down over the road. Or sit on the other wheel well over there.” Woody pointed.

  “Maybe I should try that.” Fran settled on the opposite wheel well from Mrs. Locke.

  “It’s a bumpy ride but a mite faster than walking.” Mrs. Locke smiled over at Fran. “We would have let you ride up front, but considering Becca’s condition and Granny Em’s age, we give them the front.”

  “That’s fine. This is fun.” And it was fun to feel the wind blowing her hair back from her face. Sarge stepped up beside her, leaned his head over the edge of the truck, and panted into the wind.

  The sorghum making was well under way when they got there, with the field already crawling with people. Horses and mules were tied to trees near the clearing, and children and dogs ran helter-skelter everywhere.

  After Ben parked the truck alongside some other vehicles, he came around to open the tailgate and help his mother and Sadie out of the truck. Woody had jumped out before the truck came to a complete stop and run into the middle of the crowd.

  “That boy.” Mrs. Locke shook her head, but she was smiling. “Acts like I never taught him nothing.”

  Fran sat down on the tailgate and scooted out of the truck bed before Ben could offer to lift her down the way he did Sadie and his mother. Best to keep that professional distance Betty talked about.

  Not so easy to do with this family. Becca grabbed her in a hug. “I’m so glad you came. I’m figuring we might even have time for a song or two on the way home, or would if Ma would let me ride in the back. Granny Em’s not much for singing and Ben’s got to be the strong, silent type here lately. I remember he used to sing before he went off to the army.” She gave Ben a look. “I guess he’s forgot how.”

  “I haven’t forgot anything. Around the house there’s not an inch of quiet time to squeeze in a note, what with you and Woody always jabbering.” Ben laughed.

  Fran felt better just hearing him laugh, the same as she had that day out in the woods when he’d laughed after she told him to call her Sergeant.

  Ben gave Becca a playful shove away from him. “Go on and hunt somebody else to pester.”

  “But what about Nurse Howard? It’s not nice to just leave her standin’ here not knowin’ nobody.” Becca looked around. Her mother and Sadie had already walked away, carrying the food they’d brought to add to the lunch. Granny Em followed after them.

  “I’ll be fine, Becca. Don’t let me put a damper on your day,” Fran said.

  “I can show her around.” Ben looked over at Fran. “If you’re all right with that, Nurse.”

  “I would like to see how sorghum is made.” Fran kept her smile easy in spite of the way her heart started hammering faster.

  “Oh no. You sound like one of those weird people from the north wanting to learn our old-time ways.” Becca rolled her eyes.

  “Becca.” Ben’s voice was sharp.

  Fran just laughed. “I guess I am one of those weird people from the north.”

  “That did sound awful, didn’t it?” Becca hunched her shoulders and made a face. “But I wasn’t meaning you, Nurse Howard. No denyin’ you’re from the north, but we’re turning you mountain.” The girl’s smile came back. “But trust me. Watching sorghum cook is like listening to water dripping in a bucket. Dull as all get-out.”

  Somebody waved and yelled Becca’s name from across the way. Becca went up on her toes and waved back. “That’s Maxine. I haven’t seen her in forever.” She gave Fran a quick look. “Tell you what. You get bored watching green juice squeezings, hunt me up.”

  She was off in a flash, leaving Fran alone with Ben. Fran was glad when Sarge pushed against her. She put her hand on the dog’s head. “Are you sure Sarge is going to be all right with all these other dogs?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t we ask him?” Ben squatted down in front of Sarge. “Are you going to stay with us and not get in any fights, Sarge?”

  Fran twisted her lips to keep from smiling. “What’s he say?”

  Ben stood up. “Couldn’t you hear him? He said he planned to stay right beside you. That’s his job.”

  “He does it well.” Fran scratched behind Sarge’s ears. It was easier to look at the dog than into those dark blue eyes. “But what about this green juice Becca was talking about? I thought sorghum was brown.”

  “You are a city girl.” Ben put his hand under her elbow. “Come on. It’s time you found out the secrets behind sorghum molasses.”

  He pointed at a pile of green stalks next to what he called the sorghum press. Some of the stalks looked ten feet long.

  “The cane grew over there.” He nodded toward a field where nothing was left but stubble and weeds. “The Hoskins have a good flat place here for their sorghum cane. Most of us have to do hillside farming.”

  “I’ve seen that growing. You’ll laugh at me, but I thought it was some different kind of corn. I wondered why I never saw any ears.” Fran laughed at herself. “I should have asked somebody. What happened to the leaves?”

  “They strip the leaves off before they cut the stalks. Faster to do that while the cane is standing, but you’d best wear long sleeves and gloves. Those leaves are rough on your skin. After they cut the cane, they let it weather a few days for the sugar to rise in the stalks. Then they haul it to the press to squeeze out the juice.”

  Fran watched a couple of men feeding the long green stalks between two rollers. A boy about Woody’s age was leading a mule harnessed to a long pole attached to the press around in a circle. The mule had already worn a circular path in the grass.

  “I guess that’s mule power.”

  “Best power for up here in the hills. A mule can keep going all d
ay.” Ben watched the mule make a circle. “There were times I wished we had a mule with our army division. Of course, sometimes a mule can take the studs and be more trouble than help.”

  “Take the studs?” Fran frowned a little. “What’s that mean?’

  “I guess it’s mountain talk for being contrary. Refusing to do something.” Ben laughed. “Being mule stubborn.”

  “Oh. That I understand.” Fran smiled and pointed at the green juice spilling out of a pipe at the bottom of the press into a bucket. “The squeezings?”

  “Right.”

  Smoke drifted over from the fire. “Then they cook it?” Fran moved to get a better look at a long tin trough-like pan full of the green liquid over a slow-burning fire. When Ben nodded, she asked, “How long?”

  “It takes a while. One of the old-timers here will judge when it’s ready. Then they’ll pour it up into jars. A lot of stirring and skimming before that.”

  Fran watched a woman skim green scum off the top with a large wooden paddle. Then she started stirring again. On the other side of the fire, a man worked the same kind of paddle through the green liquid. “It’s hard to think about that turning into the sorghum molasses I’ve seen.”

  “It takes some doing to get it right. The same as with most things.”

  People milled around them. Some stopped to clap Ben on the back and welcome him home. Then they’d nod at Fran. She knew some faces, but many were new to her. Fran was right about standing out in her frontier nurse trousers. Nearly all the women wore dresses. But it wasn’t a fashion show. It was a neighbor gathering, although a little courting was surely going on when she spotted Woody following Jeralene around.

  The fact that Ben Locke was staying beside her was probably more the reason for the looks she was getting than her trousers. She thought she should tell him he didn’t have to play host to her, but she liked him beside her. That professional distance was getting harder and harder, but Ben looked healthy. It was unlikely he was going to be her patient. And it wasn’t as if he had any ideas of courting. She was Nurse Howard to him. Somebody brought-in.

  27

  “Do you think they’d let me stir it?” Fran looked up at Ben.

  “I don’t see why not.” She looked so eager Ben couldn’t keep from smiling at her.

  Something about this woman grabbed at him the way no other woman ever had. She was different. Different wasn’t always good, but with Francine it felt good. She had a way of looking at everything here with fresh eyes.

  His view of it all should be fresh too after so long away, but what he kept seeing anew were all the wrong things about the mountains. Barefoot kids because they didn’t have shoes. Men going to work the mines or moonshining against the law because that was the only way to make money. A place where a stretch of dry weather might mean going hungry come winter without the vegetables put up in the cellar. His ma worked dawn to dark to see that their cellar was well stocked.

  He wanted to be home. He was home, but a restless feeling kept scratching at him. He needed to figure out what tomorrow held for him. Funny how he hadn’t worried about that while he was in the army. Then his whole focus had been on surviving to get home. He hadn’t thought about what he’d do once he was here. He hadn’t considered how changed he would be from the boy who had left for the war.

  He’d seen the world outside the mountains. Serving in the army opened up opportunities. He could go to school on the GI Bill, but diplomas didn’t count for much in the hills.

  What was it his pa used to say when Ben started worrying a problem like a dog licking a sore? You don’t have to know the last step. Just the first one. You and the good Lord can figure out the rest of it on the way.

  Today was a gift. Each day was. Plenty of soldiers’ only trip home was in a body bag. They never had the chance to open the gift of this day or stand next to a pretty girl and see their world through her eyes. Best to stop fretting about tomorrow and grab hold of today.

  He nodded toward one of the women stirring the cane juice. “I can ask Miss Jessie over there if you can have a turn. She used to go to church with us before she moved across the way to where her daughter lives.”

  “Everything is family up here, isn’t it?” Fran looked a little wistful.

  “Don’t you have family?”

  “My mother. Dad died and Mother remarried a year ago. So I have a stepfather, but I hardly know him.”

  “No sisters and brothers?” Ben couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

  “Nope. But I always wished I did.”

  “I’ll loan you mine. I figure in a week or probably before a day was over, you’d be sending them packing back up the hill to me.”

  “I’d give it a try with Sadie and Woody, but I’m not sure I could get Nurse Dawson to go along with the idea. Especially if they brought those new pups with them. Sarge is winning her over, but I can’t see her taking in a Bruiser.” Fran laughed. “But what about this stirring? You think I can do it?”

  “I think you can do anything you set your mind to.” Now why did he say that? He believed it, but a man didn’t have to let every livelong word out into the air.

  “There have been times I’ve wondered about that.” Her smile faded for a moment, but then came back brighter than ever. “But I would like to know how to stir sorghum.”

  “We can make it happen.”

  He tapped Miss Jessie on the shoulder. When she looked around at him, she propped her paddle across the tin trough to give him a hug. “Ben Locke, if you ain’t a sight for sore eyes. I hear’d you was home from the war. I prayed for you ev’ry night. Along with all the other boys over there.”

  “Thank you for that, Miss Jessie. Times were I needed those prayers.”

  “Could be what brung you home. And now that you’re here, it’s time you settled down.” She gave him a look over. “I got a pretty little granddaughter what’s got grown since you been away. I bet she’d make eyes at you.” The woman grinned up at him and then noticed Fran beside him. “And looka here. You must be one of Mrs. B’s nurses. Come for a look-see at our sorghum stir-off.”

  “I’m Nurse Howard.” Francine held out her hand.

  Miss Jessie laughed and pushed Francine’s hand to the side. “We do hugs round about here, child. You at a stir-off, you have to abide by mountain rules no matter how far away you come from. You ain’t one of them English nurses from across the ocean, are you?”

  “No, much closer than that. Cincinnati.”

  “That ain’t so far. Jest over the river in Ohio. Some of my folks went up there to work in the munitions factories during the war. Settled in. Ain’t come back down this way yet awhile.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine not having these hills around me.”

  “It’s a beautiful place.” Fran stepped back from the hug, taking some of the green stain of the juice with her. “I love the mountains.”

  And that’s what Ben liked best about Francine. She might not be a mountain girl, but she was here because she wanted to be. Now he just had to decide if he was there for the same reason. He couldn’t believe he was even wondering about that. He was home. With his people. His roots went deep. And yet . . .

  He pushed those thoughts aside as he watched Miss Jessie show Francine how to stir the squeezings without sloshing any out.

  “You got to get some shoulder into it,” the woman told Francine. “But keep back from the fire. Don’t want to catch your skirt tail on fire.” The woman laughed. “Reckon you don’t have no worry about that in your men’s clothes.”

  Francine laughed with her as she worked the paddle.

  “Don’t skip the corners,” Miss Jessie warned. “And you gotta keep that scum skimmed off.”

  By the time Francine turned the stirring paddle back over to Miss Jessie, the woman was ready to claim her as a granddaughter too. Everywhere Francine went, her smile won over people.

  After they ate the meal laid out on planks set across sawhorses, the first batch of sorghum w
as declared done and the syrup poured into jars. Then a couple of men passed out short bits of stalk for the children and anybody else who wanted to scrape the cooked syrup off the sides and bottoms of the tin cooker. Ben lined up with Francine to get a taste of the sweet molasses. He hadn’t enjoyed a stir-off this much since he was Woody’s age. All because of the woman beside him.

  They were sitting on the tailgate of his truck in the shade, licking the last of the sweet syrup off the stalks, when a gunshot went off over close to the woods. Then somebody was screaming.

  The sound of the gun shook Ben. For a few seconds he was back on the battlefield with men dying around him. Where it was up to him to keep them alive.

  “Was that—”

  “Gunfire.” He jumped off the tailgate, his eyes searching through the people. He spotted Sadie clinging to his mother’s skirt, while Ma was doing the same as Ben. Searching through the people to let her eyes touch on the ones who mattered most to her. And there was Becca with some other young women.

  Then Jeralene was running toward them. Blood on her sleeve. “Nurse. You’ve got to help him. Woody’s been shot.”

  Ben couldn’t move. He’d seen too many boys die. He couldn’t bear to watch his brother be one of them.

  28

  Fran ran past Ben. When he didn’t follow, she looked back. At the stricken look on his face, she wanted to stop and take his hand, but every second might be vital to Woody. So instead she yelled at him. “Come on, Ben. I’ll need your help.”

  She didn’t look back again as she raced toward where Jeralene pointed. The people parted to let her through. Woody was sitting on the ground, his hand on his chest. Blood seeped through his fingers.

  With eyes wide, he stared at Fran. “Somebody shot me.” He sounded surprised.

  Ben was there then. “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” Woody’s breathing was getting a little rougher. “I didn’t do nothing, Ben. Honest.”