Smoky Mountain Mystery 01 - Out on a Limb

by Carolyn Jourdan

  In keeping with Sean’s distinctive personal style, his burial was taking place atop a high bald knob in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park amid half a million acres of wilderness. Getting there was no problem for Sean, but it made things tough on his mourners because the highest elevations of the Smokies were cloud forests and fog forests, places as damp as rainforests but at an altitude where the water tended to remain airborne. Today the endlessly playful sky was in exuberant form, bombarding Sean’s friends and family with alternating mist, fog, clouds, and light rain.

  Phoebe’s mind was mirroring the weather, leaping uncontrollably from one topic to another. She struggled to follow the prayers that were being read, but for some reason a bizarre idea kept recurring no matter how forcefully she repressed it. It was the notion that this would make a fantastic pilot episode for a television series called Xtreme Funerals. Phoebe didn’t even own a television, but she knew lots of people watched shows like that.

  It had everything. It was taking place in an exclusive setting in one of the world’s top vacation spots. The service was being spoken in the singsong cadences of the local dialect, a patois of old speech brought from England, Scotland, and Ireland, in an accent that would be largely unintelligible to outsiders.

  She looked at her fellow mourners. Not one person was wearing traditional funeral garb. It wasn’t disrespect for Sean, it was just practical considering the logistics. Instead of black there were a lot of bright splashes of color from the high-tech hiking gear necessary to stay relatively comfortable while traveling on foot three miles horizontally and a thousand feet vertically from the parking lot through an Appalachian jungle and back again.

  If you were out for several hours in the higher elevations of the Smokies, it was inevitable that you’d get rained on. And if you weren’t dressed for that in layers topped off with breathable waterproofing, you were likely to get hypothermia, even in the middle of summer.

  Sean’s funeral attendance looked like Outward Bound meets Protestant descendants of Druids, but there was also a Mexican family he’d befriended.

  She couldn’t believe shameful thoughts like this were filling her head. They’d only been going out for a month and a half, but still, she owed him more internal decorum than he was getting. She wondered how many others in the sober-faced crowd were also lost in a tangle of idiotic thoughts.

  Fog swirled around Phoebe’s feet, obscuring the ground. Hours earlier, dawn had lent an encouraging pink glow to the mist-enshrouded landscape, in God’s version of those special light bulbs you could buy to make your complexion look better. But now that the sun was higher it was turning the fog to a dirty white that blurred the edges of everything.

  Thirty-eight years ago when she’d gone on her first date Phoebe never imagined that she’d work her way through a succession of boyfriends that progressed from sweet sixteen until one of them would actually die.

  Did any young girl picture herself moving from slender teen guys who didn’t need to shave, to men whose dinner conversation revolved around prostate and bladder problems? She doubted it.

  She dared not try to imagine her future. Not right now anyway. The preacher read from the King James Bible. The cadences of it pervaded life in White Oak.

  “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.”

  The fog whirled away leaving a gap just in time for everyone to see Sean’s ashes being deposited with somber ceremony into a narrow hole dug between where his parents lay in one of the oldest graveyards in the national park. His mother had come from one of the thousand families who’d been ejected from their farms in the 30’s when the park was created.

  A few descendants of these original families still had the right to be buried in the family plots. But in these areas where all signs of habitation had been removed and wilderness allowed to reclaim the land, no more gravestones or even modifications to gravestones were allowed. There would never be any indication of Sean’s presence here. Not even a Post-It note on his parents’ headstone. That seemed harsh, but Phoebe didn’t think Sean would mind. He’d been a very low-key guy.

  “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting….”

  Sean had been an only child. His closest next-of-kin were double first cousins and they were good people. They made it easy on the pallbearers by having Sean cremated and then they thoughtfully dug the hole for his ashes ahead of time with a post hole digger from Sean’s own barn. Sean would’ve appreciated that touch. Like all men everywhere, he loved his tools. But even with all the manual labor taken care of, it was still an ordeal for everyone to hike the steep, muddy, and rocky trail to get to the graveyard. And it would be a sweaty, messy trip back.

  Phoebe wondered if Sean’s death confirmed her as a spinster, an old maid. She wasn’t bothered by the old maid label because she knew women like her might be old, but most of them were less of a maid in any sense of the word than other women. Phoebe had been through a long string of men and hadn’t cleaned up after any of them. She’d dated all kinds.

  Phoebe knew deep down that the real reason she’d never gotten married was that she’d never met a man she believed was capable of honoring marriage vows. Maybe nobody could. But Phoebe had been hurt the same way over and over again until she’d lost her optimism about the notion of a permanent commitment.

  She didn’t want to be bitter about it. She tried to accept that men were just different from women and leave it at that. She knew she was lucky in that she enjoyed her own company and made enough money to get by on, so she hadn’t been forced to shackle herself for social or financial reasons to someone she couldn’t trust.

  Sean had never been married either. She stared at the small circular seam in the sod that carpeted his tiny new bachelor pad. Then she swiveled her head to take in the surroundings. It was early October and the leaves were still on the nearby trees. Just a hint of red touched the sumac and blackberry.

  In a couple of weeks though, the place would be afire with yellow, orange, purple, and red. Tourists would flock to the area to enjoy the world famous spectacle as the color started at the top of the mountains and then gradually slid downhill for a month or so until the show was over and the leaves were all on the ground.

  “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

  Exotic vapors swirled through the crowd again, making sounds bounce and echo eerily. Suddenly Phoebe found herself standing in a mini-whiteout. She and the grave were enveloped in a cloud. She’d been standing alongside a dozen others, then they’d all vanished. While the cloud wafted past, she seemed to be alone.

  Maybe it was a metaphor for her life from this point on. She was all alone in the world. The notion made her cry. She took a deep breath of the nearly liquid air and felt cool droplets of moisture condense onto her hot face. It was a comforting counterpoint to her tears. She wondered if this cloud-out might be what heaven was like. Maybe angels didn’t bother to dry anybody’s tears, but simply drowned them out with something useful, like rain. Something that could do the world some good.

  While wrapped in her own personal cloud, Phoebe tried to concentrate on the bright side. The most obvious plus in this situation was that mercifully for Sean, he hadn’t suffered. He’d been out walking, fallen, hit his head on a rock, and died instantly.

  Phoebe knew most people weren’t that lucky. Most people suffered.

  It w
as strange that he’d been out in the woods, because she’d never known him to go hiking, but there were no signs of foul play. And he wasn’t the kind of guy who had enemies. She tried not to get paranoid.

  Over the years she’d had countless patients pass away and even some friends, too, but she’d never lost a boyfriend to death. Just when she thought she’d seen it all, she had a brand new reason to cry over a breakup.

  “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

  She’d learned a long time ago that she couldn’t trust men much, but she used to at least be able to depend on them to stay alive until they got tired of her and cheated, and she caught them and broke up. And yet, four days ago one of them had gone from being hot to being not in the blink of an eye.

  She knew it wasn’t fair to blame Sean for dying, but it was annoying to keep having to adjust her standards down. Honestly, what was left when you couldn’t count on a man to maintain vital signs? Was she still asking too much?

  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

  Phoebe would try to keep that last bit of advice in mind.

  Chapter 10

  After the service was over the mourners headed back down the trail. Phoebe was the last to leave, or at least she’d thought she was. She finished saying goodbye to Sean and prepared to make a long solitary walk back to her car. But when she turned to leave, she saw the group’s official escort from the National Park Service was still there. She read the nametag on his ranger uniform: H. Matthews. Then she looked at his face. Good grief, it was Henry.

  She was shocked and embarrassed that she hadn’t noticed him earlier. They’d gone to school together and even been sweethearts when they were children, but she hadn’t seen him in years. In fact, she wasn’t sure she would’ve known who he was unless she’d seen his badge. He must’ve had to wait for her so he could be sure everybody got back safely.

  Without saying anything, Henry started down the trail. Maybe he didn’t recognize her. Phoebe raised the hood on her jacket and followed him. It was going to be a wet trip back. The mist was giving way to rain again. The vegetation dripped onto them from overhead and shed water every time they brushed against it.

  Neither of them spoke for a long time. They’d both spent a large part of their lives playing in woods like these, so they were comfortable with the sound of the rain and the smells of the forest.

  Their boots thudded and vibrated against the ground as they clomped down the steep trail. The footing was precarious on account of slippery mud, jagged rocks, and gnarled roots exposed by the lugs on thousands of pairs of heavy hiking boots and decades of rushing water.

  “I’m real sorry about your friend dyin,” said Henry, as he held a branch out of the way.

  “Thank you,” Phoebe said. “So am I. He was a nice fella.”

  They walked some more, then Phoebe said, “Do you have to go to a lot of burials?”

  “Not too many,” he replied.

  “Sean’s cousins gave him a nice send-off, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “they sure did.”

  As they descended from the high to the mid-elevations, the cold rain stopped, the sun came out, and curling tendrils of nearly transparent smoke rose from the ground as the water evaporated.

  “His cousins said it took more paperwork to get him buried in the park than on the White House lawn,” Phoebe said.

  Henry nodded his agreement.

  “I guess whenever the government’s involved,” Phoebe said, “there’s always a lot of paperwork.”

  “That’s true,” Henry said. “There are all kinda rules and regulations for buryin somebody in the park.”

  They came to a blowdown where a huge tree lay across the trail. Henry climbed over it and Phoebe stooped to go underneath. Henry reached under the trunk and took her hand to steady her so she wouldn’t have to crawl and get her knees muddy.

  “There’s a reason for restrictions on burials in the park,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  He let go of her hand, but stood looking at her with concern, and said, “You don’t really wanna talk about this kinda thing right now, do ye?”

  “Sure I do,” she said. “We’ve got another forty-five minutes of walkin ahead of us.”

  Henry smiled. The mischievous sense of humor so prevalent in the community was blazing from his eyes and suddenly all the years and all the sadness dropped away from Phoebe and they were just kids again, playing in the woods.

  “There’s millions of people roamin around in this park,” he said as he turned away from her and resumed walking. “You wouldn’t believe what kinda stuff they get up to.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like throwin out a bag of ashes on the upwind side of a full picnic ground and gettin little flakes of granny all over people’s tater salad.”

  Phoebe snorted. “Good Lord, can’t they even step into the woods?” Ten feet into the verdant Smokies would put them totally out of view behind a screen of vegetation.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Eighty-five percent of the visitors to the park never get more than fifty yards from their car. There’s about 900 miles of trails and 2,100 miles of rivers and creeks, but nearly everbody’s trompin around on the same little bald patches of dirt.”

  They both laughed.

  “I can’t see the reasonin behind bringin yer loved one’s ashes to the park just so you can toss em out onto the asphalt,” he said. “But that’s what people do, time after time. And that’s just one example. We’ve caught em puttin ashes in a creek a few feet upstream from swimmin holes where little kids are splashin around or right above where some fool’s fillin up a canteen!”

  Phoebe laughed so hard that it made her lose her footing. She had to windmill her arms to stay upright. “I thought people knew better than to drink outta these creeks nowadays.”

  “Well they don’t. They come here from God knows where so they can indulge a fantasy about drinkin fresh cold mountain spring water, but they’re actually drinkin the used toilet and bath water from wild hogs.”

  Phoebe was laughing and smiling now and Henry was glad he was able to take her mind off her sadness. If tourist escapades made her feel better, he was happy to oblige. Thirty years spent wrangling people and critters had given him an endless supply of material.

  “Lord, Phoebe, sometimes they don’t even take the ashes outta the container! We’ve found sealed plastic bags full of ashes layin right in the middle of a creek, stickin up in plain view of a scenic overlook. But when they do that, we can catch em. People don’t realize there’s a little metal tag inside the packages that identifies the deceased.

  “When we get hold of that tag, we can track down the survivin family and find out who did it. I can’t understand it, but even with the ones who manage to get the container open, sometimes we find the little metal tags layin right in or beside the trail, or the fisheries people see em flashin in the creek. We go after those people, too.”

  “That’s pitiful,” Phoebe said.

  “Well, I guess if they’re lucky, people don’t have much experience disposin of human remains,” Henry said. “You’d hope only a professional would get practice at it. And the amateurs are doin it when they’re the most upset they’ve ever been in their lives. So I guess there’s a lot of potential for mistakes.

  “And the survivor’s likely to be old and female. That plastic is real strong and an elderly woman’s too weak to tear it open bare handed. And too frail to wade into a creek to fish the old man out and try again.”

  Phoebe laughed and said, “That’s true.”

  “It gets worse,” Henry said. “Sometimes a ridge runner’ll find a brand new headstone right alongside the Appalachian Trail! If we didn’t police it, Phoebe
, there’d be dead people layin all over the most popular places in the park. We’d have eight hundred square miles of wilderness ringed with mass graves!”

  Phoebe snorted with laughter.

  “Then there’s the memorial tree people,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how many requests we get ever year to plant a memorial tree in one of the few little bits of lawn we’ve got in the public areas. The biggest hardwood forest on the face of the earth ain’t enough. They wanna plant one more tree, usually an invasive species, with a commemorative plaque, and they want it right in front of a Visitor Center.”

  “Why not plant the tree in a place where people’d need em?” Phoebe asked.

  “I don’t know! I’m sure they mean well. It’s just that people love this park beyond reason. And they want to do somethin nice for the dead person, but they just don’t think it through.”

  Phoebe reflected on how hard it was to be dignified, especially for hillbillies, and even more for a group of hillbillies. A cluster of hillbillies was a volatile mix. They were combustible in so many ways, both comic and violent, often both at the same time. They were an unpredictably impulsive lot. She knew because she was a purebred one herself, eleventh generation born in the USA.

  To be a full-blooded hillbilly was to be a living koan. Half of you wanted to be dignified and half of you couldn’t tolerate any restraint. You could see it in the regional art and hear it in the music. Wood carving with chainsaws. Cloggers who danced up a storm with the lower half of their bodies, but held the upper half perfectly still and stared off into the distance stone-faced. Or a group of bluegrass musicians who’d be playing the most raucous tunes imaginable, looking around at each other with bemused expressions that seemed to say where’s all that racket comin from?

  Phoebe believed that nearly all the adult males everywhere were pretty much the same way. Most of them could manage to keep the top half of themselves under a semblance of control, but the bottom half tended to run wild. As she continued to descend the trail she couldn’t help but think that most men were mentally ill below the waist.