by J. L. Salter
“Hey, I’m going to make a short drive.” Kelly’s announcement broke their brief silence. “Trying to find the Dutton Hill monument. Shouldn’t be too far, want to come?”
Diane eyed the farm house. “Maybe I should check on Joe first.”
“Joe’s a big boy. How much trouble could he get into over the next hour?”
Diane smiled. “Okay. Only, I don’t have my purse so I’m at your mercy. You’re bringing your phone?”
Kelly nodded and then went inside the cabin, grabbed her keys, phone, and carryall. She pulled the door locked — with Perra safely inside — bounded down the steps, and hopped into her Jeep. “Top’s off. Okay?”
****
Kelly relaxed anyway while driving, but on a beautiful spring day near the end of April, it was a wonderful enterprise. With all the extra Cruisers’ traffic in town, Kelly decided to use back roads which she’d learned from Pop and Wade, among others.
Most roads in the Somerset area were laid out like they had no urgent purpose. They’d begun as trails, along waterways, through low places around hills and knobs. Eventually they’d become wagon roads between and among farms and the establishments where folks conducted business. But nearly all were dictated by terrain. By the time pavement first came to Somerset in about 1922, the patterns were already established. So instead of laying out new roads in any meaningful grid, for the most part, they just paved the old wagon roads.
The newer main highways were exceptions: one could see where mountains had been blasted away to allow roadbeds to cut through. But those were about the only straight byways to be found in the area. It was just in the recent few years, new roads, bypasses, and connecting spurs were being overlaid onto the existing network of confusing streets, roads, and lanes.
Kelly made her way to University Avenue. No university present, however — one of many things about Somerset which seemed strange to outsiders and newcomers but perfectly natural to locals. She crossed North Main Street and followed curves to Old Crab Orchard Road, where she turned northeast.
Nearly every place around Somerset was aesthetically pleasing. It was difficult for Kelly to imagine why she’d spent so many horrid years crammed into the cement jungles of Chattanooga and those stultifying tract houses in its bleak outskirts. What a difference! The invigorating wind blew Kelly’s short hair; because of the brightness, she rummaged in the console for sunglasses.
Diane found them and handed them over.
“Do you ever feel stifled? I mean, by the marriage thing?” Kelly’s question was very sudden.
“Not sure what you mean.” Diane turned to face her.
“Well, when I was married before, even though it was only a few years, Rob evidently felt stifled most of the time. I was slow to catch on.”
“Did you feel it too?”
“I sensed something was off, or missing maybe, but couldn’t figure out what.” Kelly checked all three mirrors and then her odometer.
“Lots of women probably feel that way.” Diane shifted in her seat so her head didn’t have to twist as much.
“I think I missed it. I’ll go on up a ways and turn around.” Kelly turned on Frog Hollow Road. “Did you see any signs back there?”
“I don’t know what to look for. I’m just riding, you know.”
“Not sure how it’s marked.” Kelly squinted along the roadside. “Well, anyway, since my divorce, I’ve been very reluctant to get back into the business of belonging to someone.”
Diane appeared puzzled.
“I mean, when I’m involved with someone I love, I want to belong with him. But I don’t want to belong to him. And I definitely don’t want him thinking of me as his property. In a good relationship — to me, anyway — I’m a partner of sorts, but not a possession. You know?”
Diane nodded. “Which way does Mitch make you feel?”
“Mitch has been pretty good about it, but it took him a while to understand the difference. Every now and then, he seems to lapse back to a feeling he owns me.”
“Probably most men have such a lapse. Might be their genetic wiring.”
“This probably sounds corny, but I want to love and be loved, I want to need and be needed. But I can’t be suffocated again. I have to be able to stretch without bumping into some body.”
“Good thing your two pets are relatively short.” Diane smiled.
“Yeah, well, pets are different. Their affection, their needs — even when insistent or demanding, even when inconvenient — it seems to be un-premeditated.”
“But guys are always premeditated?”
Kelly laughed. “Well, that wasn’t the best word. Guys always have so much baggage, so much riding on how it turns out. The critters just come up and rub on me, and I rub on them. But when I need to get up, I just go. I don’t have to soothe their egos or reassure them about anything. As long as I feed them and pet them, they’ll forgive whatever my fault or failure — no hurt feelings, no emotional bruises to contend with.”
A moving tractor caught Diane’s eye and she watched as they passed. “And if guys acted like that?”
“I’d probably have two or three.” Kelly laughed.
Diane joined in. “And maybe you’d let me borrow one…”
“With critters, it wouldn’t be a problem. They’d appreciate your attention as well as mine, without pouting and without their delicate sensibilities being ruffled.”
“Animals would be a lot less complicated. But when a man holds you, it’s different.”
Kelly sighed. “Depending on the man.”
Both laughed.
Kelly spotted the historic marker and turned west into an elegant driveway. She paused and read the marker, an extremely condensed version of what she already knew about the Battle of Dutton’s Hill. No visible sign for Dutton Cemetery Road, though both sides of the huge entrance gate bore the name Dutton Hill. She drove past the gate along the black topped driveway for less than a quarter mile and stopped at a fork. One house to the left, one to the far right, and one more-or-less in the middle.
She cocked an eyebrow at Diane.
“I’d start with the middle one.”
Kelly turned right, then quickly left into the curving driveway of the middle house. As Kelly and Diane left the Jeep, a nice-looking woman was exiting her garage escorted by two cats and five dogs, the largest of which was easily ten times the size of the smallest. “Sorry to intrude, but we’re trying to find the Confederate monument. I thought it’d be out in the open somewhere.” Kelly pointed down the slope, toward the highway. “I’m Kelly Randall and this is Diane Sutton.”
“Tracy Vasser.” She extended her hand. “No problem, I’m always glad to show it. Actually, it’s in this upper field, which is pretty grown up these days. You can barely see it through the trees beyond this fence.” Tracy pointed. “We’ll have to go along the fence and cut back where it’s open. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
Some of the animals peeled off, but one cat and two dogs followed.
“The picture I found in an old clipping showed the monument in a big, open field.” Kelly frowned at a tree about fifty feet tall.
“How old was your clipping?”
“Not sure, it wasn’t dated. But I’d assumed it was fairly recent. Guess not.”
“Well, I’ve lived here for seventeen years, and it was already grown up back then. It’s gotten a lot worse in this part.”
They made their way along a horse path about six feet wide, with briars reaching way into the path and some nearly crossing it completely. The modest monument was perhaps ten feet high. Near the base an inscription was carved directly into the stone with a cursive font.
Diane knelt and studied it. “Hardly readable… it’s so, uh, weathered.”
Kelly handed Tracy a photocopied page. “This is a letter to the editor from Gladys Dutton. She included the text of this inscription.” She pointed toward the bottom of the monument. “Glad I brought it along. Would you read it?”
“S
ure.”
Kelly knelt next to Diane and traced her fingertip over the recognizable words as Tracy read them out loud from the paper.
Here of duty till the last reveille, rest the Southern soldiers, few in number, who were slain in this county during the war of secession. They fell among strangers, unknown, unfriended, yet not unhonored, for strangers’ hands have gathered their ashes here and placed this shaft above them that constancy, valor, sacrifice of self, though displayed in a fruitless enterprise, may not be unremembered.
“Grammar is rather odd, but it’s poignant.” Kelly trailed her finger again over the words: They fell among strangers, unknown, unfriended. “Being mortally wounded and dying would surely be horrible enough. But to die unknown, among strangers, seems additionally tragic.” Not much less tragic for the wounded Reb, who managed to straggle those two miles or so to the Butler cabin. Strangers there, too. At least they took him in and tended to his wounds, or tried. Even though it could have been their peril, even though they realized the soldier was dying, they didn’t turn him away. Kelly admired them for their charity and kindness, their care. She certainly wished they’d managed to squeeze a name out of him before he died, but she admired the Butlers’ sense of duty nonetheless.
“I heard it was placed shortly after the war.” Tracy reached down near her ankles to pet the cat.
Kelly squinted into the sun. “I couldn’t track down any date for it, but some stories say the monument was started by the father of one of the Confederates thought to be buried here.” She glanced around for signs of the mass grave, but didn’t see any.
“They’re supposed to start restoring it pretty soon,” explained Tracy. “I had called the man who runs the museum at Nancy, and he got somebody from the state to call me back. I hope they still have an interest. It’s a shame to let it just wear down like this.”
There wasn’t much else to see at Dutton’s Hill — no recognizable signs of the old battlefield. In fact, from the monument, one couldn’t see anything but surrounding trees and other growth.
Kelly took one final look around, trying to imagine a clash of two large armies… perhaps three thousand men or more fighting there. Willing to kill each other over commandeered cattle during a war between brothers, friends, cousins, neighbors. What a terrible, wasteful kind of war.
The three humans and three animals made their way back along the horse path to the opening in the fence, then back along the fence to their starting point behind the owner’s garage.
Kelly extended her hand. “You’ve been very hospitable letting us interrupt, Tracy, and showing us around. Thanks.”
“No bother at all. School groups come see it every now and then, but they walk from the other side, across the grown-up field.” Tracy turned, then waved, and gathered up some of her animals as she headed back into her garage.
Chapter Twelve
Kelly reached in her glove box for a local map and studied it. “You know, it’s easy to see how those wounded Rebs ended up at the Butler farm. If they hugged Caney Fork Creek to the south of here, it would take them right over to this area.” She pointed. “They would’ve left the creek bed at that point, because it starts to head north, and they’d obviously wanted to return south. From there, it’s only about half a mile to the place where the old Butler cabin used to be.”
Both climbed into the Jeep and Kelly drove back down the estate’s driveway, then turned south on Crab Orchard Road. Shortly, she spotted a gas station with an incorporated mini-mart. “Feel like stopping for coffee?” Kelly already had her blinker on.
“Nothing hot for me, but I sure would drink sweet tea if they’ve got it. You’ll have to stake me, though. No purse, remember?”
“I owe you for gloves and sandals anyway.” Kelly smiled. “Will tea make us even?”
“Even Steven.”
Shortly, in a shady area beside the establishment, Kelly steered Diane over to a picnic table which had obviously been used recently.
Diane selected the cleaner end and took a seat. “How long did you say it’s been since you divorced Rob?”
“Three-and-a-half years between my divorce and when I met Mitch.”
“The social scene, hereabouts, must be very unusual for your age group.”
Kelly chuckled. “An interesting word choice. Small town, just divorced… people talk.”
“You probably had to chase them off with a stick.”
Kelly exhaled audibly. “Nearly had to shoot one of them.”
Diane’s eyes got large and round.
“Oh, I didn’t pull the trigger.” Kelly shrugged. “Pop had loaned me one of his big double-barrel shotguns… said it was for varmints. But I think he had a notion I might also encounter some of those two-legged varmints in tight jeans.”
“So this must be the rest of your J.D. story you’ve never explained. What on earth happened?”
“Well, one of my friends — former friend, you understand — set me up on a blind date and didn’t even tell me, because she realized I wouldn’t have showed up. So I realized it was a setup when this guy waltzed in. J.D. was just chock full of himself, and immediately I disliked him. You know, the smarmy type — thinks they’re heaven’s gift to women. And some of them make it their mission to help newly-divorced women through those first few difficult months. If you know what I mean by help.”
“I can imagine.” Diane shooed away a pesky, fat, black fly. “How wretched of your ex-friend. I’m sure some matchmaking works out nicely, but most of it’s just intrusive meddling.”
“Thank you! Well, anyway, I could barely last out the meal. Then this guy tried to pay for my dinner. I refused. You’d think he could take a hint or two. I mean, I hadn’t even spoken to him since the introductions. I hardly even glanced his direction. For one thing, I was too busy glaring at my ex-friend. Well, this creep took all my inattention as a sign I had the hots for him and simply had to be conquered. Maybe he had an unbroken record of helping divorcees.”
“What an ego!”
“Yeah. So I left, after digging my nails into my ex-friend’s arm and said — with cold irony oozing from every word — ‘Thank you so much for a pleasant evening’. Well, she was already mortified, and had been since the first few minutes when she realized it was such a fiasco. I mean, what was she thinking?”
“Probably he’s the kind of creep that rings her bells.”
“Possibly. So this creep left right behind me. At first I thought he was following me, so I took some extra turns and headed in a different direction. When I was certain I’d lost him, I went on home. Well, as you probably already guessed, he showed up at my cabin about ten minutes later. Still don’t know how he got my address. I’d only been living there about three months by then… this was before I found Perra.”
“So you gave him a friendly welcome?”
“He stayed out in his truck a few more minutes, probably finishing off a drink for some extra manhood. I hadn’t thought to turn off the porch light, but he could tell I was there because my Jeep was outside. So he came up to the front porch, hiked up his tight britches, and knocked. I was already at the door with the deadbolt latched, and told him — firmly and plainly — to leave.”
“I’m guessing he stayed.”
“Right. The fool was so full of himself. Everything I did somehow convinced him even more that I had to be another notch on his cheap belt. So he knocked again, harder. I told him, loud and clear, I had got a shotgun and knew how to use it.”
Diane shook her head. “Still didn’t leave…”
“Not only didn’t leave, but he laughed! That made me angry. I was a little scared up to then, especially not knowing how much he’d been drinking. But when he laughed, I got flat out furious.”
“Men ought to know, never laugh at women with loaded shotguns. In fact, it ought to be a bumper sticker — Don’t Laugh at Ladies with Guns.”
“Well he did. Then his whole demeanor — or whatever — changed, and he switched to hostile… vio
lent. Started pounding on the door. I raised up the heavy double-barrel shotgun and pulled back both hammers.” Kelly demonstrated in pantomime. “Well, I was nervous anyway and those old hammers were stiff, so I had a little trouble cocking them. J.D. saw through the door glass and he laughed again! But the scariest part was the expression on his face. I’ve only seen it in movies before then, I guess, but it’s the look of nightmares — hate, vengeance, violence, everything.”
“Sounds like a real psycho. He might have, uh, tried to…”
“I figured he was going to attack me if he got through my door. So I held up Pop’s old shotgun. Then the creep laughed again and said, ‘What you gonna do with that?’ So I said, ‘I’m gonna fire one barrel at your crotch and the other in your face!’ I couldn’t guess which he valued most — that’s the kind of guy he was. Then, for good measure, I said, ‘They’re gonna scrape up your pieces with a rusty fireplace shovel’.”
“Very colorful, but doesn’t sound like you.”
“Well, I picked up some lingo from Pop… he actually talks like that. Anyhow, once the creep saw the shotgun aimed at his privates, he backed up, very nearly fell off the porch steps, and jumped in his truck. He spit gravel for the whole length of my driveway.”
“Good riddance.” Diane swirled the remaining ice in her tea and took another sip. “You’ve probably heard this question, but do you think you’d have actually shot the creep?”
“I gave him warnings and plenty of chances to leave. It was shaping up to be him or me. I figured, better him.” Kelly stared at her hands, clasped on her lap. “I’m glad I didn’t have to find out, but I’m pretty sure I would’ve shot that punk if he came through my door.”
“Wow, makes me sweat just hearing about it.” Diane shuddered. “Another question…”
“Why didn’t I call 9-1-1? Yeah, I’ve heard that one, too. Only thing I can say is my instinct was to protect myself, and I had Pop’s gun there to do it. Besides, if I had called the cops, who knows how long it would’ve taken them? J.D. might’ve done whatever he had in mind and been long gone before the cops even got there.”
