The Women of Jacob’s Mountain Boxed Set

by Hining, Deborah;

  “Rachel Lenoir?” His pronunciation was even worse than Rachel’s. Suddenly he dropped the stony façade to smile sincerely at Rachel. “Lordy, girl, I ain’t seen you since the ninth grade. Was that you bought that Raven Creek place?”

  “Yes, and that’s Geneva—” began Rachel.

  “Little Geneva?!” he exclaimed in his rapid Appalachian speech, turning to her, “Well, if you ain’t growed up!” He turned to his companion excitedly, “You won’t believe it, but this here was the scrawniest little old thing you ever did see. And just look at her now!” He laughed. “I’m Hard. Hard Knight,” Geneva heard him say as he bobbed his head at her.

  Geneva fought for meaning through the dialect. A faint, familiar bell tinkled deep in her mind at the sound of the first name. She didn’t remember this man, but the name struck her. “Haa-waard Kni-eght?” she articulated primly, making the first name two syllables and placing the diphthong in the second, willing him to be schooled in the proper pronunciation of his own name.

  “Yeah, Hard,” came the eager, smiling reply. “This here’s my cousin, Jimmy Lee.”

  Jimmy Lee grinned at her. “Jimmy Lee Land. Hidy,” he said, giving her a little, cringing bow. Before she could respond, Jimmy Lee jerked his head sideways at the sound of a low growl coming from the darkness. Geneva turned her head toward it, too, in time to see a rangy dog, part hound, part who- knows-what, slinking low and menacing around the corner of the service station building. The growl deepened in intensity.

  “Lamentations!” cried Jimmy Lee sharply. The growl grew louder.

  “Lamentations!” cried Jimmy Lee again, louder. “Calm down! Don’t git yersef all worked up, now. Jist shut up! Don’t mind him, ma’am,” he apologized to Geneva, looking very embarrassed. His eyes darted back to the dog. Lamintaaashuuuuuuns! Don’t yew start!” His voice held a desperate warning.

  But the dog was still inching forward, his growls growing louder and meaner. He began to bark in a strange, snarling way that nearly terrified Geneva. She took a step back. Lamentations looked back over his shoulder with wide, rolling eyes, growling louder, then snarling and barking. Suddenly, he gave a mighty leap backward and started chasing his tail in a frenzied display of hysterical anger, snapping and thrashing, yelping and barking. Jimmy Lee cringed with embarrassment, while Howard Knight dropped his eyes and raised a hand to his mouth. Geneva thought he looked like he was hiding a grin.

  At last, Jimmy Lee sprang into action. “Lamentations!” he shrieked, picking up a newly downed leafy branch that lay near the truck and striding resolutely over to the frenzied dog. “Igod, yew stop that! Now!” He proceeded to flail at the dog with the branch, which was so large and full of leaves that it did not serve as a proper beating stick. It merely looked like he was waving it gently through the air around Lamentation’s head, brushing the animal with the leaves. Geneva stared, astonished. Howard Knight was wiping his mouth with his hand and his shoulders moved convulsively. Jimmy Lee shouted louder, redoubling his efforts to control the waving tree limb.

  The dog finally slowed down, then gradually stopped his circling. He made one last snap at his tail, which, Geneva noticed, was bent in several places and lacked big patches of hair along its length. Jimmy Lee dropped the branch, then turned to Geneva apologetically. “Don’t mind him, ma’am. An eagle tried to carry him off when he wuz a pup and dropped him on his head. He ain’t been right since. Good dog, though,” he added lamely.

  “Howard, I’m sorry, but we’ve got a real problem here,” broke in Rachel. “I’m having a baby—two of them actually, and we’ve got to get to town right now. We’re lost, and don’t even know how far we are from a hospital. Are we anywhere near Tucker?”

  “About three hours, I reckon, but you’re on the wrong road, and you’re goin’ the wrong way. Ye kin cut over on Tab Cat Road about a mile up ahead to git over to the highway, then turn south. Yew stay on this road, ye end up in Kentucky.”

  Geneva was quiet, thinking desperate thoughts. She remembered the times Howard, the boyfriend back in DC had scolded her for getting them lost in the city. She had thought she could do better out in the open, on her own turf.

  “Can you take us?” Rachel looked at him despairingly, then closed her eyes while she breathed very deliberately for a full minute.

  Howard Knight’s expression changed abruptly. He whirled, slamming down the hood of the pickup truck. “Jimmy Lee,” he directed the young man beside him, “yew jump in the back. We cain’t waste no time.” Striding to Geneva’s car on his long legs, he gently helped Rachel out, then nudged her toward his truck. “You git in first,” he instructed Geneva. “I got a stick shift, and she ain’t gonna fit.”

  Geneva obliged. Jimmy Lee was already perched in the bed of the pickup truck, looking pale and worried. He held Lamentations closely in his arms. Howard virtually lifted Rachel into the truck, then sprang around to the driver’s side.

  The truck jerked forward, spinning gravel into the two ancient gas pumps, then laid rubber on the blacktop as Howard Knight attacked the mountain road. Geneva closed her eyes and fought the urge to wrestle the wheel away from this crazy man who drove as if the road were white hot. She felt like she might be on a wild amusement park ride, but a moment later, when he turned off the highway onto a dirt road marked with a one-way sign, the amusement park image gave way to something far more sinister.

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh God! Geneva peered into the darkness beside the window and wondered, nearly aloud, where he was taking them. Her ideas about the hillbilly code of honor dissipated before images planted by horror movies which told of backwoodsmen kidnapping helpless women and holding them in filthy cabins, maybe even in caves deep in some mountain ravine, foiling all attempts of their loved ones to find them. It would not be difficult to dispose of her car. She and her sister and those approaching babies might never see civilization again. Oh God. Even dogs would not be able to track them. They would disappear off the face of the earth…

  It was an incredibly bad road, so bad that Geneva wondered if it were a road at all, or simply an old riverbed, so filled it was with rocks and ruts. Howard was forced to slow down, but not enough, as far as Geneva was concerned. She already felt she might be suffering from a whiplash injury. Rachel moaned once, then cried out aloud. Howard glanced over Geneva’s head at Rachel and slowed to a crawl.

  “Sorry about the road,” he said, “but we won’t be on it long, and it takes a big piece out of the trip. He looked again at Rachel’s face, white and frightened in the moonlight pouring over her, lighting up her golden hair and giving her an ethereal glow. “We’re gonna make it, girlie,” he continued reassuringly. “This here road’s as sweet as a lady once yew git past this part that got warshed out last spring. She’ll take us right on over to the main highway, and then we kin git you offa this mountain.”

  Sure enough, the road evened out shortly, becoming less of a washboard and more of a real road laid over with gravel. Geneva’s more spectacular fears of the strangers diminished with the dark man’s gentle tone. Still, she watched him with suspicion as he drove. His jaw was hard, the muscles clenched in the clean chin, and his dark eyes held a quick, desperate look as he maneuvered the truck around the rocks and switchbacks. He kept glancing at Rachel. Geneva noticed that he seemed to relax as five, then seven, then eight minutes passed without a contraction.

  Geneva felt desperately helpless, bouncing between the hillbilly and her huge, laboring sister, and she wished fervently that somebody would say something to ease the clawing tension. She cleared her throat and said inanely, “So, Howard, I don’t remember you. Did you go to Tucker High?”

  Howard steered the truck halfway up an embankment to avoid a boulder in the road, then bounced back into the smoother ruts. “Haw, no. I quit after the ninth grade. Didn’t see no sense in it.”

  “Oh,” Geneva said quietly. Her fear subsided enough to allow her to be aware of the ugly head of elitism rearing up in her brain. She felt her head go back, her nost
rils flare; the city twin sat in a huff, but the country twin tried to be cordial.

  “So, do you farm up here?” It was all she could think of to say.

  Howard glanced at her briefly, the first time he had looked at her since he had seen Rachel’s predicament. She saw his face harden, his eyes narrow, then he turned his eyes back to the road. After a moment, he spoke.

  “I got me a little cash crop back up in one of the hollers.” He grinned slyly, keeping his eyes straight ahead. Geneva sensed that he was taunting her.

  “Tobacco?’ she asked brightly.

  “Naw,” he guffawed. “Hemp. But don’t tell nobody. Them revenuers has been snoopin’ around, actin’ suspicious. Can’t nobody find my patch, though.”

  “Hemp?” asked Geneva. “You mean what they make rope out of?”

  “Marijuana, Geneva,” said Rachel gently. “A lot of the farmers up here need a good cash crop just to hang on to their land, and it’s one of the most lucrative.”

  “Oh,” said Geneva again, then fell silent for several more minutes. She listened to Rachel breathe.

  She thought about Howard’s cash crop. At one time in her life, she had smoked quite a lot of grass, and she remembered that it had drastically altered her life for a short while. In fact, she credited several interesting decisions to it: her choice of a major, her way of looking at the world; it had even played a large role in the loss of her virginity. Looking back, she remembered how much she might have regretted that last event if she hadn’t enjoyed it so much. Now the only thing she regretted was the young man with whom she had been involved.

  He had been an actor, an MFA student from New Jersey, and he had been one of the most beautiful, most talented people she had ever met. She had been a freshman straight from the hills, straight from the Puritan values of her home nest and of the First Congregational Church of Tucker. Because of Jerry, she had changed her major from education to theatre, finding in him a mentor and an inspiration. She adored him and took every opportunity to be near him, hoping he would notice her and ask her out.

  One night he invited her to his apartment, offered her a toke, and then seduced her. She had loved it. She had loved him, too, she thought, and, forgetting everything her mother had ever told her about Yankee men, and an agnostic to boot, she had moved in with him, feeling beautiful and important and reckless. She and Jerry had smoked a lot of dope, and they had always made love while they were high. For three weeks, she believed she had discovered the meaning of life.

  Then one night, Jerry had laughed while he was rolling a joint, saying, “I love it when you get high. You’re such a slut. The worst I’ve ever seen. A hillbilly slut.” He threw back his head and laughed for a long time, then reached over and pinched her bare nipple, hard, through her T-shirt. Still laughing, he told her how he always enjoyed making it with sluts. Then he threw himself at her, pinning her under him, kissing her and fondling her. Geneva had lain stock still under his weight, too stunned to move, hearing her mother’s voice, her father’s voice, her grandmother’s voice, even the voice of Miss Lacy, her Sunday School teacher, all warning her, all telling her to run, run, run, to get away, or she would be lost, drugged, damned, dragged off into a gutter, surrounded by leering men who would laugh at her and hurt her. Responding reflexively, she had brought her knee up sharply into Jerry’s groin, then she shoved him off and walked out. She had never spoken another word to Jerry again except once, when they were in a play together, and then it was only the lines she had to deliver. Nor had she ever touched illegal drugs again.

  Suddenly Rachel gasped, “Oh, Howard,” she said breathlessly, “I’ve messed up your truck bad.

  “How, darlin’?”

  “My water just broke all over the place. Oh, gosh, what a mess.”

  “Hey, don’t you worry about a little mess in my truck. Just last week Jimmy Lee got drunk on somma his no good moonshine and puked all over the place. A year or two back, my cousin Billy Ray got in a knife fight and bled to death all over the front seat here. Don’t you worry about no mess.”

  “He died right here in this truck?” gasped Geneva.

  “Yep. We tried to make it to the hospital, but we only got as far as Bearhead Creek.”

  “I’m sorry,” began Geneva, then her words died. The night was beginning to seem too unreal.

  “Oh, that’s awright,” said Howard with a grim laugh. “He was a mean sonnava bitch anyway. He deserved everthang he got.”

  Without warning, Howard slammed on the brakes, turning the steering wheel sharply to the right. The truck skidded, then spun around and crashed down an embankment. Geneva felt a clean, sharp hurt in her left temple, and for the next few moments, she felt dreamy, watching everyone moving silently through milky clouds. She shook her head. Her ears filled with sound—raging, thundering, oceans of sound, somehow connected with pain. She looked at Howard in confusion, expecting him to explain the roar.

  He seemed much too close. She tried to move away from him, but movement required an enormous effort. There was a terrible weight upon her. After a moment of struggling, she gave up and looked at Howard again. He was holding his hand to his head, and as Geneva watched, still wondering about the roaring, he began to delicately prod his forehead that had bloomed red with blood. As he turned his head, he caught Geneva’s eye, then stared straight at her for what seemed like a long time. Slowly, as if he were moving under the sea, he moved his hand from his own face, reaching out to Geneva’s. She watched him without curiosity, expecting the touch, wondering if she would feel it. But just as his fingers closed the distance between them, he startled and drew back his hand. Somewhere a woman had begun screaming. A vague pain settled in Geneva’s right ear.

  Howard swung his head to his left, peered into the darkness, then looked quickly toward Geneva, then past her. There was a click, as if something mechanically shifted into focus, and Geneva became more aware of what was happening. Looking out Howard’s window, she saw black water at eye level less than three feet away, swirling angrily past newly overturned trees. The truck they were in was upright on its wheels, but resting on so steep an embankment that at first Geneva perceived that it was lying on its side. The roaring sound came from a waterfall ten feet away from their heads; the screaming came from Rachel, who was lying against Geneva’s right side, her open, screaming mouth pressed against Geneva’s ear. Geneva, in turn, was lying against Howard.

  “What is it?’ Geneva asked. Her voice sounded oddly calm.

  “Bridge out,” returned Howard grimly. “Musta been a flash flood from the storm.”

  Rachel, screaming and gasping, grabbed Geneva’s hand and stared at her, her eyes wild and unfocused. Howard reached across Geneva to hold Rachel by the shoulder. “Don’t go off on me now, honey,” he said, looking fiercely at her and squeezing her arm. Waiting until the contraction ended, he asked, “Did ye git hurt?”

  Rachel focused on him, panting. She shook her head, no. Geneva suddenly felt irrationally annoyed. Here she was, wedged between this forward man and an incredibly fat woman, as smashed as a banana sandwich, and nobody was paying one bit of attention to her plight. Howard and Rachel were talking around and through her as if she did not exist.

  “Yer doin’ jist fine and we’re goin’ to git ye out of here so ye kin have them little babies in a nice, clean, hospital,” he said gently, patting and stroking Rachel’s head.

  “I don’t think so,” whimpered Rachel. “I think I’m close to transition.” Geneva’s hurt brain registered a new level of understanding. Something was happening to Rachel! Something bad! As if to confirm her thoughts, Rachel vomited into her sister’s lap. Piqued, Geneva merely sat there, which she would have done even if she could have moved. There was nothing else to do. The world was conspiring against her.

  “Jist hang on,” commanded Howard. “I know what to do.” He squirmed out of the open truck window and began making his way up the bank toward the passenger side. As soon as he had vacated his seat, Geneva slid helple
ssly against the door, pushed by Rachel’s considerable weight. After another moment of muddling through her confusion, Geneva squeezed herself out of the window and followed Howard. She did not know what else to do. Clambering up the embankment, Howard suddenly stopped and wheeled, fairly tumbling into the stream.

  “What are you doing?” screamed Geneva above the roar.

  Howard turned briefly, then pointed downstream at a dark lump huddled on a sandbar. It was Lamentations, worrying with another, smaller lump protruding out of the water.

  “That’s Jimmy Lee,” he said, stepping into the waist-deep, swirling blackness, fighting his way, falling down and fighting his way back up again. The water was pulling at the motionless form. Lamentations had caught Jimmy Lee’s shirt collar in his teeth, and bracing feet into the soft sand, strained to hold the man’s head out of the rushing water. The current caught Jimmy Lee’s body in an eddy and began moving it downstream. Slowly, an inch at a time, the water gained against Lamentations, until the dog, too, was submerged in the angry water.

  The fog in Geneva’s brain lifted, and everything fell into sharp focus. She did not wait for Howard’s cry for help, but flew into the swollen creek. The moment her feet hit the mossy rocks she slipped, plunging into the icy, unbelievably strong current. Caught in its frenzied embrace, Geneva struggled to keep her head above water as it washed her downstream, buffeting her, bruising her whole freezing body against rocks and logs. Despite her desperation, her mind cleared enough to react. She crouched down into the wild torrent to keep her center of gravity low, and she fought the current, grabbing the rocks, shoving with her feet, half swimming, half scrambling her way toward the drowning, perhaps already drowned man.

  Howard was already there; Lamentations had disappeared, but Howard had turned Jimmy Lee’s face up out of the water and was pulling at him with all the strength in his powerful arms and legs. Slipping on the glassy rocks, he fell down repeatedly before Geneva reached them. Keeping low in the water, sometimes on her knees, Geneva helped him inch Jimmy Lee, a limp, dead weight, toward the bank.