Friends of the Family (The Colter Saga Book 1)

by Joel Baker

  “Thank you, Mr. Colter,” Eddie said. “I’ll make her a good and loving husband.”

  Jesse got up and walked into the house. Sarah and Lily were sitting in the kitchen trying to look busy.

  “Lily, there’s someone on the front porch who wants to talk to you, I believe,” Jesse said.

  Lily jumped to her feet, gave her dad a hug, and ran for the front porch. Jesse poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table next to Sarah.

  “I can’t believe Lily’s going to marry someone with the last name of Scroggins,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “I always thought that was the ugliest last name I ever heard.”

  “Would you have preferred Luther Thiggs,” Sarah said.

  “Let’s see,” Jesse said. “Lily Thiggs… Maybe Scroggins isn’t such a bad name after all.”

  Jesse and Sarah both began to laugh.

  ****

  The wedding took place in Eagle Rock three weeks after Eddie and his dad finished the cabin just up the creek from the rest of the Colter houses. Jesse gave Lily away, but couldn’t help feeling melancholy about the whole thing.

  Sarah and Hattie made the wedding gown. Hattie complained the whole time about how there was no way that a Scroggins was good enough for her Lily, and how she would probably never see her again and so on. When Hattie found out Lily and Eddie would only be living a couple of hundred yards away, she took to the idea with more enthusiasm.

  It was late, the same night the wedding. All guests had departed. Sarah and Jesse stood on their front porch and watched the newlyweds walk hand and hand up the East Ridge road to their new cabin.

  “I’m feeling very old right now,” Jesse said.

  “I know. This is when I miss baby Jessica most,” Sarah said.

  “Me too,” Jesse said. “Me too.”

  ****

  Cole and his family were frequent visitors at Haven. His children played and swam with the Colter children in Colter creek. His wife, Karen, became a daughter to Jesse and Sarah, just as Cole was their son.

  Cole gained a bit of a reputation as someone not to mess with. He continued to wear the long brown coat Sarah made for him so many years ago. Cole started wearing a holster and pistol. He was renowned as lightning quick and deadly accurate. Cole was welcomed wherever he went in pursuit of people who robbed or murdered simple folk.

  No one, beyond Karen and Jesse, could understand or explain the relentless determination of Cole. People would marvel at how he never gave up once he took to someone’s trail. Both decent folk and outlaws wondered at Cole’s persistence.

  Karen knew Cole better than anyone. She knew how Jesse and Sarah had taken Cole in at the time of the move. She knew they loved him like a son. Cole always avoided questions about that time, and discussions about his parents. One day while cleaning out a junk drawer, Karen came across an old faded and crinkled photo. At first glance Karen thought it was Cole with another woman and a little boy holding on to his leg. Karen was taken back by the resemblance between Cole and his father and the stoic look on the little boy's face.

  ****

  Franklin died fifteen years to the day after the Colters arrived in Haven. He’d been working in the north end of the valley all morning. Hattie went out and rang the dinner bell for lunch. The grandchildren and Jesse arrived in a rush. Sarah and Hattie served up a farmer’s lunch. Slices of ham, with green beans and fresh corn on the cob were served on big platters. Potato salad and big glasses of sun tea chilled in the creek completed lunch. Franklin still hadn’t arrived.

  Jesse asked JJ, Mark’s oldest boy, to go get him. Franklin was known to fall asleep in the fields lately, so nobody worried. When Jesse saw the boy riding hard towards the house, he knew something was wrong.

  “Grandpa Jesse,” JJ said. “Come quick. Something’s awful wrong with Franklin.”

  Jesse climbed up behind JJ and rode to where Franklin laid in what appeared to be a peaceful sleep with a gentle smile on his lips. Jesse knelt down by his best friend.

  “Franklin?” Jesse said as he shook him gently.

  Jesse leaned over and put his ear on Franklin’s chest. When he knew the great heart was stilled, Jesse took Franklin in his arms and held him close for a few moments. Good bye old friend.

  Tears filled his eyes. Jesse lifted Franklin and placed him over the horse. He and JJ led the horse and Franklin back to Hattie.

  Hattie took to her cabin for several days and refused to attend the funeral. She told Sarah she wanted to send Franklin off in her own way, but asked that certain passages from the Bible be read over him. Hattie made a special effort to comfort Jesse, who took Franklin’s death hard. Jesse and Sarah agreed that Hattie was the strongest person they’d ever known.

  For Hattie’s part, she took an increased interest in Lily, and her education in the use of plants and medicine. No one but Hattie knew that in the still dark hours of the pre-morning, she would roam all around Haven and remember times past. She would think about her own stillborn babies, and her regrets about not having children to comfort her in her old age.

  Then she would smile and cry at the memory of her Franklin and the joy she felt when she considered they’d be together again, once she also crossed over the river Jordan. She’d have babies then, lots and lots of babies.

  Chapter 29

  Jessie Colter is dying and he's okay with that. The uninvited dark clump in his gut is a welcomed guest. It’s time, and Jessie feels complacent. He’s an old man with a bent back and sore joints sitting on an oak tree stump, in front of a fire, in a small flat clearing on the side of a mountain in Tennessee. It was a cold dreary afternoon in late November.

  The old man’s gray hair hangs down to his shoulders. It covers the collar of his long brown canvas coat. His rifle rests across his knees. The odd-shaped blanket around his shoulders was the first result of the family’s experiment with weaving on a rickety handmade loom.

  Jesse lifts his head and gazes out over the panoramic vista of mountain ridges. They’re covered with pine, birch hickory, ash, oak, beechnut and slippery elm trees that wave the last of their brown leaves in the occasional westerly breeze. Below lays Haven. A valley with the quick-flowing stream, lined with cabins that house his family and the friends of the family.

  Jesse and Sarah had built the community almost thirty years ago. No longer threatened, and self-sufficient, Jesse feels a sense of inner-peace. Finally, he’s free to join his beloved wife, Sarah.

  The day lengthens, and the cold mountain breeze with its icy fingers reaches out and stirs his hair. The breeze ebbs and flows through the tree leaves, sounding like gentle surf hitting a distant shore. Icy fingers squeeze Jesse’s neck, sending chills down his back. It smells of snow. The gray clouds lower, and darken to the color of a gray slate chalkboard at their edges. He moves closer to the fire and clutches the lumpy blanket around his shoulders more tightly. He studies his scarred and leathered hands.

  “Jesse, when did you become an old man?” he says out loud, to nobody.

  Jesse remembers everything and nothing. He always said he’d been hit on the head one too many times. But he is sharp enough. It’s just that his memory plays tricks on him. Sometimes he can remember long ago times. Like how the spider web in the corner of the corncrib looked, in the early morning, when it was still covered with small drops of dew.

  Let’s see, that was when I was six. I moved from Haven to live with Aunt Rose when I was… I know it was after my parents died…

  Jesse lives in the twilight now. He knows why they call them the twilight years. A dewy summer’s morning is clear. What he ate for dinner last night, isn’t. Jesse shivers and is back on the mountain. He sits in front of a fire with a view to all the land that makes up Haven. A cascade of mountains marches toward the lowering gray sky. Row after row of blue hills are shrouded in a cold gray mist. The scent of pine trees and the acrid smell of smoke from Jesse’s fire mingle.

  The cold always makes my eyes water and my nose run.

&nb
sp; He sniffs, and wipes his nose with a bright red bandana.

  Sarah thought it was because he had his nose broken so many times. “Won’t you ever learn to duck?” Jesse smiles to himself, remembering. His eyes water some more. This time, it isn’t from the cold.

  He slowly scans the valley from right to left. Far below is a cluster of cabins that are weathered gray.

  Like the people in the Colter family, the cabins and buildings were added as they came. They followed the stream snaking through the valley. They were tough and equal to whatever came their way. The family, and the cabins that sheltered them, endured. They were rough-looking on the outside, but filled with warmth and a glow. They were resolved to see it through, to shelter those in need. The cabins, and the people they sheltered, were very much alike.

  When they’d first come to Haven only a couple of cabins and some sheds sat in the central part of the valley along the stream. They’d been serviceable, but run down with thirty years of neglect. Brown lumps sitting along a bubbling creek, in the green sea of grass that occupied the center of the valley. An old shack clung to the side of the west ridge about half way down, and could barely be seen in amongst the bramble bushes and lodge pole pines that engulfed it.

  ****

  When Sarah had slowed and fallen ill a little over year ago, Jesse had been on a trip with the friends of the family. While Jesse was gone, Sarah grew worse. One by one, she said goodbye to all her children and grandchildren, then waited for Jesse to return. When Jesse finally rode slowly up, dismounted, and tied his reins to the porch post, he’d sensed something was wrong. Lily came out on the front porch and dabbed her eyes with her hanky.

  “Daddy, I think Momma’s crossing over,” Lily said in hushed tones.

  “Honey, where is she?” Jesse asked.

  “She’s in the back bedroom waiting for you,” Lily said.

  Jesse slowly climbed the steps, crossed the porch, took his hat in his hands, and entered the cool dark interior of the cabin. He stood for a while and let his eyes adjust to the pale light filtering through the windows. Jesse thought if he took his time, Sarah might live a while longer. He walked slowly to the back bedroom door. Still a tall man, Jesse ducked his head and entered the room with sunlight filtering through the lacey curtains that hung in the windows.

  Jesse couldn’t breathe. Sarah lay on the bed. But not the Sarah he’d kissed goodbye a week ago. This was the Sarah he knew thirty years ago. Her hair was a rich brown. Her face was unlined and unwrinkled. Her lips were full and red. The smooth sheet revealed the soft curves that Jesse remembered so vividly. On her face the sweet look of sleep. Jesse started to cry silently.

  “Jesse, is that you?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes, darling it’s me,” Jesse said.

  “Come over and give me a kiss goodbye,” Sarah said.

  “Where are you going?” Jesse asked.

  I’m not really sure where,” Sarah said. “But I know that when I get there, I got a sweet little baby that wants to grow up, waiting for me.”

  “I’m going with you,” Jesse said.

  “In a little while Jesse,” Sarah coughed weakly. “But not right now. You got little ones to be grandpa to. The boys need your advice for a while more. When you’re done with that, you come be with me. Now come on over here.”

  Jesse walked across the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He could see the illusion that startled him when he'd first entered the room. Sarah had someone, probably Lily, touch up her hair with a dye made from walnut husks. Her skin was relaxed and showed no sign of age. The sheet covering her form didn’t lie. Jesse smiled at Sarah.

  “Had you going when you first came in, didn’t I?” Sarah gave Jesse her old mischievous grin.

  “You sure did, girl,” Sarah said.

  “Well, if I left before you got back,” Sarah said. “I didn’t want your last sight of me to be some gray-haired old woman.”

  “Darling, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’ve loved you with my whole heart for fifty years. I found my soul mate, my lover, all those years ago. Even last week, when we kissed goodbye, I saw the sweet beauty of my youth. When my time comes, I’ll only know for sure I’m in heaven, when I see you walking slowing to meet me, with that swing in your hips and the love in your eyes.”

  Sarah smiled lovingly into Jesse’s eyes, too weak to speak. Holding each other’s hands, both tried to hold that moment in time, forever. Jesse kissed Sarah as if for the last time. It was.

  Jesse's eyes watered up again. As he leaned over Sarah, a single tear dropped lightly onto her cheek. Jesse kissed each of her eyes and her still warm lips. His teardrop ran slowly down Sara’s cheek. Jesse sat and held Sarah’s hand gently as the light filtering through the lacy curtains dimmed to dark.

  ****

  After the funeral, Jesse went away for a while. He went to his spot on the side of the mountain where he could see all of Haven. The friends of the family checked on him from time to time. They made sure no one bothered him. He barely noticed their silent coming and going.

  He sat for days and thought of his life with Sarah. That’s when he first noticed a twinge in his stomach. It was a small sharp pain that promised a great deal more. Occasionally at night, when the wind blew through the lodge pole pines, they whispered a message to Jesse. The boughs would creak and rasp as they rubbed together and the needles would sing softly.

  One morning Jesse stood, put the embers of his fire out with water from the spring near where he sat, and walked down the mountain. Family and friends consoled him, and Jesse frequently went on trips with the friends. The requests from the little ones for the family story were more frequent, as if they sensed something. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and fall arrived. He spent more and more time sitting on his spot on the mountain. He sits there now.

  The uninvited guest in Jesse shoots a small bolt of pain through his gut. Jesse figures the guest just wants to remind him from time to time. Just a little notice to Jesse that he’ll be with Sarah before the snow melts and the Mountain Holly is in bloom.

  As an omen of things to come, it begins to snow. Light flakes, occasional flakes fall in meandering paths drifting slowly left, then right. As the first flakes touch the earth, they pause then slowly melt. Each flake giving its life to cool the earth, so other flakes survive. One flake, perhaps bolder than the rest, perhaps a simple matter of fortunate timing, clings to a single blade of grass and refuses to let go. It waits to see if it will live. A second flake joins the first. They wait together. A third joins, then a forth, a fifth.

  The collection becomes a dusting, then a covering. A white blanket runs down the sides of the mountain. It covers the roofs of the cabins below, the cords of firewood stacked high against the walls, the dead rusted shell of a truck, and the barnyard where the horses stand side by side and peer up with dull wonder at the falling snow.

  Jesse sees the door of the main cabin open and a large man with a bushy beard walks out on the porch and stretches. He’s wearing a long brown canvas coat reaching nearly to the ground, just like the one Jesse wears. His hat’s pulled down on his ears and he looks up at the falling snow. Emerging from the door behind the man, appear the friends of the family.

  They walk out in single file and sit in an orderly row. Jesse recognizes his oldest son Mark, almost fifty now. The large black dogs look up at Mark with golden eyes and close attention.

  Mark kneels by the largest dog. He lays his hand on the dog’s head and says something. The dog rises and trots off at a leisurely gait. The remaining dogs stay at Mark’s side. Jesse follows the first dog’s progress as he trots toward, then up the mountain path. The path leads to where Jesse sits in front of a fire, being slowly smothered by a blanket of snow.

  As the dog comes up the path, it disappears and reappears from behind rock outcroppings and trees. When the dog reaches a relatively level surface, Jesse notes that one of its legs appears injured. It’s Boss. Jesse named the dog after the first Boss, the obvious leader of
the friends all those years ago.

  Jesse watches the dog make steady progress up the path, and as expected, he vanishes as he approaches the clearing where Jesse sits. The friends seldom approached you from where you expect. Instead they disappear behind a rock, a shrub, a tree, a stand of tall grass. They were seldom seen, unless they wanted to be.

  Jesse waits. The snow continues. Slowly the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise and Jesse looks over his shoulder. Boss sits staring silently. His sleek black coat is slick with wet snow. His golden eyes fixed on Jesse’s back. Boss sits down and lays his massive head on his leg.

  Jesse knows Mark sent the dog to fetch him, but he’s in no hurry. He watches the smoke continue to rise from the cabins below, blue-gray blending with the lowering clouds. The smell of acrid smoke from his dying campfire recalls good memories. He leans forward and pats the dog’s head.

  Jesse listens to the wind in the pines. They haven’t whispered to him in quite some time. Instead, Jesse hears the faint ticking of that invisible clock. It’s slowly ticking as he waits on the side of a mountain, for the snow to melt and the Mountain Holly to bloom.