[Troublesome Creek 01] - Troublesome Creek

by Jan Watson

  Was that preacher right? Did true believers have the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Could she speak in tongues? She couldn’t wait to talk to Daddy about it in private. She pretty much knew what Mam’s reaction would be. It must be easier, Copper thought, to just believe what you believe, as Mam does, and not be pulled in different directions about things.

  Copper was comforted by her family as Daniel leaned against her side yawning, almost asleep. Mam sat in front of her, shoulders squared, resolute, but Copper noticed that her hand rested on Daddy’s thigh as if she also needed comfort. Daddy held the reins and sang the closing song: “ ‘Through floods and flames, if Jesus lead, I’ll follow where He goes. Hinder me not, shall be my cry, though earth and hell oppose.’”

  Willy sat on the other side of Daniel, quiet for once. Copper could almost see the gears turning in his brain, trying to make sense of it all.

  No one broke the silence until the horse turned toward the entrance to their farm. Then Willy said, “I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but I think someone sewed them snakes’ lips shut!” That said, he jumped down from the buggy to open the cattle gate and lead the horse through.

  Tension drained from Copper’s body as she joined her parents’ laughter and lost herself in merriment. Daddy took off his hat and slapped it against his thigh, and Mam held her handkerchief to her mouth. Only Daniel remained quiet, as if he had his own answer to the mystery of the snakes.

  CHAPTER 20

  Several summer days later, things had settled back to normal. Daddy and Copper would have liked to attend more of the camp meetings, but after seeing the snakes Mam was adamant in her refusal to accompany them, and Daddy would not go without her.

  Copper was sorely disappointed. The brush-arbor meeting was the most exciting event she’d ever witnessed, and it might be a very long time before another one was held. She’d tried to wheedle Daddy into taking her, but he said that wouldn’t be fair to Mam. He might have been coaxed into letting her go with John, but as usual John was off working as a hired man. He said he needed to make money for a piece of land where they could set up housekeeping.

  Copper spent most of the morning patching the fence that enclosed one side of the chicken house. The hens had become possessive of their eggs, signaling that there would soon be baby chicks to care for, tiny balls of fluff no bigger than the palm of her hand. All the while she cut and strung chicken wire and pounded stakes into the hard ground, she stewed. Why must everyone else decide what she could and couldn’t do? Mam with her list of don’ts and Daddy always trying to please Mam, and now John determining they’d marry someday when last she knew she’d never even been asked! She crimped the last piece of patching wire in place and stomped into the henhouse, flinging her pliers onto the ground in frustration.

  Her anger set the hens to murmuring and fidgeting on their nests. Discomfited, she stood in the middle of the small room and calmed herself. Chickens liked peace and quiet when they were brooding; she didn’t want to scare them from their nests.

  The chicken coop was just a little wooden shed with open boxes built along two walls. The boxes were several feet off the floor, so the hens would have a place to lay their eggs instead of dropping them willy-nilly under bushes and in clumps of grass. There was a small doorlike window connecting the yard to the coop. On sunny days Copper would prop it open so the chicks could scratch in the dirt and take in some air. The chicken wire protected the doodles from scavenging possums and fierce chicken hawks.

  Copper scrubbed all the feeders and water containers and left them to dry in the sun. She would water the little birds from a Mason jar turned upside down and placed in a shallow, slant-sided glass dish. The dish had a glass crosspiece that kept the rim of the jar from touching the bottom, thus allowing small amounts of fresh water to trickle into the saucer at all times.

  Next she carried a twenty-five-pound burlap bag of rolled oats that Daddy had put on the porch for her out to the coop and left it there to feed to the babies when they hatched. She felt ever so much better. As Mam was fond of saying: “Busy hands make a happy heart.” Besides, Copper had never been able to carry a grudge for long.

  Once the repair work was done and the cleaning finished, Copper retrieved her woven egg basket from the kitchen and went to gather the fresh eggs. She had marked the setting eggs with an X on the rounded end with a wax pencil so she could tell the newly laid ones from the incubators. The setting hens reminded her of the old adage “A man works from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done.” Here were the hens still producing eggs daily while also bringing new chicks to life, and there was Cock-a-Doodle high-stepping it around the farmyard, occasionally stopping to preen his long, glossy, red feathers. As far as Copper could see, Cock-a-Doodle’s only duty was to serve as an alarm with his loud crowing at dawn.

  Copper uttered a soft cluck-cluck-cluck as she went back into the henhouse. She had made pets of most of the hens, and they didn’t fuss too much when she searched their nests. Most folks thought a chicken’s stupidity was outranked only by that of a turkey, but that didn’t bother Copper. She thought of what good mothers these chickens made as she grabbed Fanny Mae’s tail feathers with her left hand, lifted her fat bottom from the nest, and felt for fresh eggs with her right.

  She’d been flogged many times as a child before she learned to treat brooding hens with authority. She smiled to remember how she’d dreaded gathering eggs. She used to stand near the door and pry the hens off their nests with a long board. They’d jump down with a great squawking and flapping of wings, then run around the chicken house as if it were the Rapture and they’d been left behind, giving Copper time to raid their nests.

  When Copper felt thin cracks in the marked eggs under Bertha’s bottom, she was glad she’d finished cleaning the coop. Baby chicks needed clean surroundings so they wouldn’t get sick, and these would be here soon. She stroked the chicken’s back. “Good work, Bertha. These babies should be hatched by morning.”

  Copper set her basket aside when she heard Willy call, “Sissy, Sissy, come and look! Come and look!”

  The boys had been minding one wayward hen and her brood while Copper prepared the house to receive them. The ornery bird had hidden her nest in the woods, and when her progeny hatched she had proudly ushered them into the barnyard, where the food was easy pickings. She had produced five downy yellow chicks with tiny yellow beaks, and somehow she’d managed to adopt a misfit too. A gangly, web-footed, big-billed duckling that would snuggle under her wings just like the chicks did when frightened.

  A funny sight awaited Copper as she stepped from the gloom of the henhouse into the glare of the noontime sun. Big Momma, as Copper had dubbed the errant hen, was frantically clucking to the duckling, warning him of extreme danger as he paddled around in a mud puddle ducking his head and slinging dirty water over his back. His tiny siblings ran behind Big Momma, first this way, then that, as she tried to persuade her strange baby to come out of the water.

  “Isn’t this the strangest thing you’ve ever seen, Sissy?” Willy laughed at the mother hen.

  “It is odd, Willy, but why don’t we help her by shooing her and the doodles into the chicken coop so we can feed and water them? You and Daniel can keep the duck for a pet.”

  “Oh, good idea. That will be great fun,” Daniel replied. “We’ve never had a pet duck before. Let’s name him Bill—okay, Willy?”

  “Yeah, that’s a good name for him,” Willy answered. “How about Big Bill, ’cause of his big beak?”

  Daniel caught the little splashing duckling and carried him to the porch as Copper and Willy directed Big Momma and her chicks into the coop. Willy sprinkled rolled oats onto the just-swept floor while Copper filled the water jar and tapped her finger against the floor to show the doodles where the food was. Soon the chicks were scratching and pecking at the oats and dipping their beaks in the water dish before throwing their fuzzy heads back to let the water run down their throats.

  “I could watch
them all day, couldn’t you?” Copper laughed.

  “Yeah, they’re sure fun, Sissy. But I guess I’d better get going and pull some weeds from the garden before Daddy comes in. Me and Daniel got sidetracked by them chickens.”

  “Those chickens, Willy—those chickens. It seems your language gets worse instead of better the more you’re corrected.”

  “Oh, that’s what Mam says.” Willy sighed. “I ought to let Daniel do all the talking. But then nobody’d ever say anything. You know that Daniel’s a man of few words.”

  “Well, don’t ever stop gabbing.” Copper smoothed his wayward hair. “I would certainly miss the sound of your voice.”

  Late that afternoon before supper, Copper and Mam sat on the porch, Copper snapping green beans and Mam churning butter. Daddy was still at the coal bank chunking coal with Daniel Pelfrey. Copper had seen the twins run off into the woods beyond the yard earlier to look under rocks for fishing worms.

  “Help me pour off some buttermilk, Copper.” Mam put the dasher aside and hefted a gallon crock to her hip. “We’ll have some for supper.”

  Suddenly a child’s scream rent the air.

  “What?” Mam exclaimed before the crock crashed to the floor, splattering clabber, the same deadly color as her complexion, over everything.

  “Mam! Mam! Daniel’s killed!” Willy shouted as he tore from the woods and collapsed, sobbing, onto the porch.

  Copper pulled him to his feet. “Stop it, Willy! What’s happened?”

  “Sissy. Oh, Sissy—Mam—” He gulped air. “I tried to stop him, but he went up under that cliff where the snakes live. Now he’s laying up there an’ he’s not moving, just moaning, an’ his legs are a-jerking.”

  “Willy, you go to the coal bank and get Daddy. Run!” Copper grabbed Mam’s hand and took off toward the trees.

  A short time later they came upon Daniel, lying just where Willy had said. He was deathly still except for an odd spasm in his right leg. There was a bluish tint around his mouth, and he was cold to Copper’s touch.

  Mam sank to the ground beside him, gathered him into her arms, and began to kiss his face. “Wake up, baby,” she cried. “Please wake up.”

  Copper knelt and examined him. She took his right foot in her hand, pushed up his pant leg, and revealed the narrow puncture wounds of a snake’s fangs. Daniel could die from the snake’s venom if they didn’t take action soon. What was it Daddy had told her to do if she was ever bitten by a snake? She searched her mind frantically. Finally she remembered: prepare a tourniquet and cut an X into the wound. Could she do that? Feeling sick, she studied the ugly mark of the snake. How could she bring herself to cut her little brother’s leg?

  Daniel moaned and raised a feeble arm toward her before his hand fell back against the ground.

  Lord, help us, she prayed before she took action.

  “Mam, you need to sit behind him and hold him up against your chest,” Copper urged. “Keep his head higher than his heart so the poison will travel more slowly.” Copper tore a long strip of material from her petticoat and wound it around Daniel’s leg above the bite, tourniquet fashion.

  “I need something sharp.” She glanced helplessly around her. “Do you have your sewing scissors in your pocket? Yes? Give them to me.”

  Mam’s hand trembled as she passed the small scissors to Copper. Copper opened them and without a moment’s hesitation, cut an X deep into Daniel’s wound with one of the blades. Bending low over his leg, she sucked on the bite and spat blood, then loosened the tourniquet for a short time before she sucked and spat again.

  “Laura Grace,” Mam pleaded, her face ashen, “is he alive?”

  Copper held her breath. He didn’t look good. She’d never seen a body with that waxen color, and his head lolled around on Mam’s chest. Placing her hand on Daniel’s chest, she felt a wild pulse against her palm. “He’s living, but his heart is racing from the poison.” Her eyes met Mam’s. “We can only wait for Daddy and pray. Oh, Daniel, what were you thinking?”

  After minutes that seemed like hours, the heavy thud of footsteps running through the forest announced the men’s arrival. Daniel Pelfrey, carrying little Daniel, ran next to Daddy all the way to the cabin, where he handed Daniel over to his father. Daddy sat with his back against the porch wall and moved Daniel into a sitting position between his legs. Copper followed, barely able to catch her breath after pushing herself to keep up with the men’s long legs.

  “Will,” she heard Daniel Pelfrey say, “there’s a doctor over at Miss Lottie Boone’s. Do you want me to fetch him?”

  “Might be good to have some help,” Daddy agreed. “I reckon you’d better hurry, Dan.”

  A doctor, Copper thought. Daddy’s sending for a doctor! Is Daniel going to die?

  “Copper,” Daddy told her, “go kill the fattest hen you can find. We need some unctuous flesh to draw out the poison.”

  Copper gasped for air and waved at Willy, who came onto the porch with Mam. “Come and help me, little brother,” she urged. Willy looked like he might faint; she needed to distract him.

  They hurried to the chicken yard. Copper knew she had to grab the first hen she saw, and she hoped it wouldn’t be Bertha or Big Momma. Thankfully, the bird that soon picked its way across her path was not a favorite and was fat and slow . . . an easy target. “You’re lucky a wily fox hasn’t eaten you already,” she told the hapless hen before turning to her brother. “Willy, grab the hatchet.”

  The log they killed chickens on was at the side of the barn under a large-leafed catalpa tree. It was the end piece of a hardwood tree trunk about twelve inches in diameter. It sat upright and two large nails, spaced the width of a chicken’s neck apart, protruded from its surface. Copper laid the chicken across the log, its head hanging over the edge, its neck secured between the nails. She took the hatchet from Willy, raised it over her head, and without a blink severed the hen’s neck with a quick whack.

  In her haste to release the chicken’s body from the log, Copper lost hold of it and watched as the headless bird staggered a few feet down the dusty lane and fell over in the dirt. Willy carried it back, holding it out from his side by the feet, leaving a trail of spattered blood. Copper quickly cut a chunk of marbled breast meat and handed it to him. “Run this to Daddy,” she told him. She had to have a moment with the Lord.

  “Save them chicken feet,” he called over his shoulder as he tore down the path toward the cabin. “Me an’ Daniel will want to play with them.”

  Copper watched him go and knelt in the bloodstained dirt. Dear Lord, she prayed, please heal Daniel of the snakebite. Whatever would we do without him?

  She shuddered, suddenly cold even as the waning sunlight bathed her in its golden glow. She knew God could perform miracles, could heal the sick, could move mountains if He had a mind to, but she also knew that sometimes God revealed His plan for His children through pain and suffering. He did not always say yes. As Mam often said, “God is not Santy Claus.”

  Copper’s heart jerked in crazy rhythm a moment later when she heard Mam’s scream and saw one of the Pelfrey boys running toward the road. He’s dead! she thought. He’s dead and I’m not with him.

  Desperate in her haste to join them, she cried out in frustration and pain as her feet tangled in her skirts, pitching her face-first to the ground. “Please,” she whimpered. “Lord, please.”

  CHAPTER 21

  When Will took his eyes off Daniel to look out over the yard, it seemed like the whole neighborhood had assembled here. He saw Pelfreys of every size and description, several families from church, Mailman Bramble, Mr. Smithers, Oney Barlow, and even Aunt Ida Sizemore, who hadn’t moved in three months. Every eye was on Daniel and Will who still held him. Brother Isaac knelt beside them on the porch, reading Scripture from his open Bible and praying aloud.

  Aunt Ida, who must have been a hundred if she was a day, worried the snuff in her upper lip with a slender frayed stick. Someone had fetched her a straight-backed chair, and she
worked it like a throne. Slowly, she raised her arm and pointed a long, bony finger in Daniel’s direction. “That there boy’s done died, Will Brown,” she croaked. “Ye don’t come back once the rigor starts. Might as well set about the digging.”

  “No he ain’t!” Willy looked fiercely in her direction. “No he ain’t. Is he, Daddy?” No one missed the quaver in Willy’s voice as he pleaded with his father.

  Will didn’t know how to answer. Daniel lay across him like a piece of timber. His face had gone completely gray. A lacy reddish froth spilled from the corner of his mouth. Then it started—with a mighty twitch and jerk, Daniel folded like the blade of a jackknife, then snapped back open.

  “Lord, help us,” Will murmured, his heart in his throat. “Where’s that doctor?”

  “Lay him down,” Copper said. “Somebody get me a spoon.”

  John Pelfrey knelt beside Copper on the porch and handed her the spoon. “Tell me what to do,” he said.

  “Just hold his head while I—” Deftly she slipped the handle between Daniel’s clenched teeth. “This will keep him from biting his tongue.” She sat back on her heels.

  “They’re coming!” one of the Pelfrey boys yelled as he ran into the yard. “I seen ’em coming up the road.”

  John ran out to take the horses from his father and a stranger.

  “See to Pard, won’t you?” Will heard the man say as he dismounted. “He’s worked himself into a lather, racing down the mountain.”

  John took the reins. “They’re yonder,” he directed, as if there was any doubt, “yonder on the porch.”