Midnight Rescue / The Proposal / Christy's Choice

by Catherine Marshall

  I suppose I have even grown accustomed to the fact that a little girl’s life might be held hostage to superstition and suspicion and bootleg whiskey. Although it makes me angry beyond words.

  Still, as I think of visiting my home again, all the old memories come rushing back . . .

  What will it be like to be clean again? Clean, all of the time!

  What will it be like to talk with people who can talk of world events and art and poetry? Most of the mountain people speak little, and then, only of the necessary things: of crops and hunting and mending broken plows. What will it be like to once again talk of Paris fashions and New York literature?

  Will I seem backward and rustic to all my old friends? And what will they make of Ruby Mae or David or Neil?

  I should be looking forward to this trip. And yet it makes me uneasy. It makes me think of all I have given up to be here.

  When I left Asheville, my head was full of romantic notions. I knew nothing about blood feuds and moonshine; I understood nothing about the ignorance and fear that still live in these mountains. And I never thought about money—about whether this mission could even be kept alive!

  Many of my romantic notions have been lost. I love my students, and I am devoted to the mission. But, knowing all the harsh realities, will I be able to leave my home and my family a second time? If I return to Asheville now, will I still have the devotion to come back to Cutter Gap?

  Four

  Miz Christy, Miz Christy,” Ruby Mae yelled. “Where are you, Miz Christy?”

  “I’m right here, Ruby Mae,” Christy said. It was Saturday morning, and Christy was walking toward the school with her arms full of flowers in every color of the rainbow. Fairlight Spencer was with her. “I just got back. What’s the matter?”

  “Howdy, Miz Spencer,” Ruby Mae said. “What are all them flowers for?”

  Fairlight was Christy’s closest friend among the mountain people. Five of her children, including John and Zady, were in Christy’s class. Fairlight was a simple woman, only now learning to read. But she had the bearing of a princess, and Christy admired her sense of wonder about life, as well as her common sense and decency.

  “They’re for the altar, for services tomorrow,” Fairlight explained. “Aren’t they lovely, Ruby Mae?”

  “Yes’m, I ’spect they’ll give me something to admire in church when I start to fall asleep during the sermon.”

  Fairlight and Christy exchanged an amused look. Fortunately, David was not around to hear Ruby Mae’s opinion of his sermons.

  “I got to talk to you, quick-like, Miz Christy,” Ruby Mae said, tugging on Christy’s sleeve. “It’s Bessie’s pa. He got back all liqoured up and he and Mrs. Coburn, they got to argufyin’ fit to wake the dead. And now he’s got it all stuck in his head that Bessie can’t be going to Asheville or having no operation, neither!”

  Christy thought for a moment. She wished Miss Alice were there. But Miss Alice rode out regularly to check on the health needs of people in several small mountain communities, and she was away for the day. “Ruby Mae, go and saddle up Prince for me. I’m going for the doctor.”

  “Yes’m,” Ruby Mae said. “Only how am I gonna keep up if you’re on a horse?”

  “I’m going alone. Just for once, don’t argue, Ruby Mae.”

  “I’ll take care of the flowers,” Fairlight said. She put her hand on Christy’s arm. “You be careful. Kyle Coburn is a decent man when he’s sober. But if he’s been at that jug, don’t you be messin’ with him.”

  Doctor MacNeill was on the roof of his house, nailing new wooden shingles. He saw Christy riding up, threading the twisting trails, then galloping across the meadow.

  He had a pretty good idea why she was coming. News traveled with amazing speed in the Cove. Sometimes he thought they would never need telephones in these hills, the way they could pass along gossip.

  He took a moment to enjoy the sight before him—the mountains looming all around; the nearby brook that bubbled and leapt with new-melted snow; and the rather beautiful sight of Christy, her hair flying free in the wind as she galloped toward him on the mission’s big black horse.

  He climbed down from the roof and went inside for a shirt and his medical bag. When he came back out, Christy was just reining Prince to a halt.

  “Well, good morning, Christy,” he said.

  “Doctor,” she said, a little breathlessly. “It’s Bessie. Her father—”

  “Yes, I know all about it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yep. In fact, I was just on my way to see Granny Barclay. I thought she might offer me her professional opinion on the case.”

  Neil paused, enjoying the look of confusion on Christy’s face. “Prince is tired, by the look of him,” he said. “We’ll go on foot.”

  “But why on earth would we go to Granny Barclay?” Christy protested.

  “Before I got here, Granny Barclay was the closest thing to a doctor this cove had seen. Would you prefer that I went stomping up to the Coburns’ cabin to lecture Kyle Coburn on what he should do?” Neil asked. “That would just get his pride up, and then there will be no moving him.”

  “Well, we certainly have to do something.”

  “Yes. But not always the most direct thing,” Neil said. “You can come along, if you wish.”

  With that, he set out at a brisk pace. He was not at all surprised that Christy followed him.

  It was a mile to Granny Barclay’s simple cabin. The old woman was sitting on her porch on a rocking chair made of bent sticks and wrapped with vines. Her face was deeply wrinkled. Most of her teeth were gone. But her green eyes were still bright, attentive, and shrewd. She showed no surprise at seeing Neil and Christy.

  “Morning, Granny,” Neil said. “May we have a word with you?”

  “I’d be right proud to have you sit a spell with an old woman,” Granny said.

  “I find I have a little problem, of a medical nature,” Neil said. “It’s Bessie Coburn. I was wondering if you might be so kind as to come with me to take a look at her.”

  Neil could see the shocked look on Christy’s face.

  “I reckon I could,” Granny said. “I could do with a stretch.”

  Without another word, Granny set off in the direction of the Coburn cabin.

  “Doctor, it must be two miles from here to the Coburn place, most of it either straight up or straight down,” Christy whispered in Neil’s ear as they followed the old woman. “Granny is eighty years old! She can’t possibly walk that far.”

  “I think you may be mistaken about that, Christy,” Neil replied. “First of all, she’s closer to ninety. Now, let’s hurry, or we won’t be able to catch up with her.”

  Granny Barclay set a pace that soon had Christy and Neil panting and sweating. A dozen yards from the Coburns’ cabin, Granny finally stopped. She made a show of rubbing her shoulder. “I guess these old bones o’ mine ain’t got quite the life they used to. I don’t ’spec I could walk more’n another two, three hours at this pace.”

  Christy wiped the sweat from her brow and groaned. “Granny isn’t quite as frail as she looks,” Neil said.

  Christy laughed ruefully. “So I’ve noticed.”

  Granny Barclay cackled happily.

  Inside the Coburn cabin, they found Bessie still in her bed. Lety Coburn was wiping her brow. Kyle Coburn sat in a corner, looking angry and sullen.

  Neil took a quick look around. There was no liquor jug in evidence. And Kyle appeared to be sober, if a bit hung over.

  “Kyle, Lety,” Neil said, “I’ve asked Granny Barclay if she would be so kind as to consult with me on Bessie’s case.”

  Kyle stared hard. “You askin’ for Granny’s help?” he demanded suspiciously. “I was afixin’ to ask Granny to come over myself. She midwifed at Bessie’s birth. And she helped me that time I had the fever.”

  “Let me see the child,” Granny said, bustling over to Bessie’s bedside.

  “I didn’t think you cit
y folk put no stock in Granny’s medicine,” Kyle said doubtfully.

  “Granny has delivered more babies than I’ve ever seen,” Neil said honestly. “And she has a great store of wisdom.”

  Kyle nodded. “And Granny don’t go around cuttin’ folks open, neither. No good comes of cuttin’ a body open. That just stands to reason.”

  “Yes,” Neil agreed, “it is dangerous to perform surgery.”

  Kyle sat forward suddenly. “So you admit right out it be dangerous! My little girl could die.”

  This was the real reason Kyle was resisting the surgery, Neil knew. He was just worried about his daughter.

  Neil looked Kyle straight in the eye. “Yes, she could die,” he said gently. “There could be complications.”

  Granny patted Bessie on the head and stood. “There’s a lump inside that girl where don’t no lump belong,” she announced. “That’s what’s causing the pain and the fever.”

  “Cain’t you do nothin’ to make it go away?” Kyle pleaded.

  “I can help ease the pain, but only a little,” Granny said. “I can give her some bark tea and some other potions that will take the edge off’n the hurt. But that won’t help for long. The pain will go right on getting worse till it overcomes all medicine.”

  Kyle looked shattered. “There ain’t nothing you can do, Granny?”

  “There’s something I can do,” Neil said. “I can take her to Asheville, to a real hospital. And I can get the best man in the area to help me do the operation.”

  “Kyle, you got to let them try,” Lety urged, fighting back tears.

  Kyle looked tortured. “I have to send my little girl off to some city and not even know whether she’s livin’ or dyin’? What am I supposed to do? I can’t just sit here a-doin’ nothing.”

  “Kyle, you have to trust to modern medical science,” Neil said. But the man looked unmoved.

  “There is something you can do,” Christy said, speaking for the first time. “You can pray that God will guide Doctor MacNeill’s hand and keep Bessie well.”

  When Neil and Christy went back outside several minutes later, they had received Kyle’s permission to do the operation. Granny stayed behind to brew up her pain-fightin’ bark tea.

  “That was very clever of you, Doctor,” Christy said. “You knew Kyle was holding out hope that Granny could save Bessie from having to undergo surgery. So you brought Granny over.”

  “It’s something you should learn, Christy. The head-on approach isn’t always the best. I could have argued myself blue, but by asking Granny’s opinion, I made Kyle realize he had no choice.”

  “It seemed to me that Mr. Coburn was still doubtful about the operation, even then,” Christy said. “He needed to feel he could be involved in some way.”

  “You mean the thing about praying?” Neil nodded. “Yes, I suppose that did make him feel as if he were doing something to help his daughter.”

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “What? That God is guiding my hands when I’m performing surgery? No. I believe in medicine and science. When my knowledge and skill are sufficient, I am successful.”

  “I see,” Christy said, arms crossed over her chest. “So your advice to Mr. Coburn would be to believe in Almighty Doctor MacNeill rather than Almighty God?”

  Neil had to laugh. “Well, when you put it that way, I suppose it does sound just a wee bit egotistical.”

  Christy shook her head, giving him a grudging smile. “Yes,” she agreed, “just a wee bit.”

  Five

  The train whistle blew shrilly. It was so loud that even though she was sitting in the next-to-last car, Christy covered her ears. It was an exciting sound, full of promises of adventure. But the sound was also full of memories. It had been this very train—Old Buncombe, they called it—that had first carried Christy away from home last January.

  It was Monday morning. Yesterday, after church, they had carried Bessie to El Pano, the nearest town on the railroad line. Miss Alice had arranged for them to stay overnight with a friend. Bessie had rested fairly well last night. Then, early this morning they had caught the train for Asheville.

  Christy was sitting beside David. Behind them, Bessie lay across both seats, with the doctor nearby across the aisle. Bessie looked very pale and weak, but the combination of the doctor’s medicine and Granny Barclay’s tea seemed to have her pain under control.

  Ruby Mae seemed unable to sit anywhere for more than two seconds.

  “Are we going yet?” she asked excitedly, leaning over Christy and David to look out the window.

  The train lurched forward and sent Ruby Mae sprawling over Christy’s lap.

  “Now we’re going,” Christy said with a laugh.

  “Sorry, Miz Christy,” Ruby Mae said breathlessly, taking a seat behind Bessie. “I ain’t been on no train afore. It’s got me as jittery as a bug on a hot skillet.”

  The train began to pick up speed and pull away from the little station house at El Pano.

  “Lordamercy!” Ruby Mae said. “We’re practically flying! Look at how the trees just shoot right past till they’s nothin’ but a blur.”

  “I’d guess we’re going at least twenty miles per hour now,” David said. “We’ll get up close to forty on the flatter stretches of track.”

  “It don’t seem possible,” Ruby Mae said. “Aren’t you excited, Bessie? Ain’t this just the best thing ever?”

  Bessie managed a tired smile. “It is a wonder,” she agreed.

  “You let me know if the pain gets worse,” Doctor MacNeill told her.

  Ruby Mae chattered on, remarking on every new twist and turn in the railroad track. And there were plenty of twists and turns. Sometimes it was impossible to see any ground outside the window, because the track ran right along the edge of sheer drops that plunged down hundreds of feet.

  Here and there, Christy caught sight of tumbledown shacks stuck back in the trees. They were gray and shabby, just like the homes of most of her students. No running water, no telephones, no indoor plumbing, none of the luxuries that people in the cities took for granted. Sometimes it seemed as if these small cabins had been marooned there, trapped by the sheer walls of the mountains and unable to escape.

  The train wound through tunnels and across narrow bridges over the swollen river below. At times it climbed slowly, straining against the force of gravity drawing it downward. But with each turn, the mountains opened a bit wider. The flat stretches grew longer. The curves grew less extreme.

  They had only been traveling for seven hours, but it seemed to Christy that Cutter Gap was a million miles behind them.

  And then she saw it—Asheville.

  It, too, was nestled in the valleys between mountains. But these mountains were small and tame. Here, the houses were white-painted clapboard or dark brick. There were proper chimneys poking through steep shingled roofs. Streets were paved in most areas, with curbs and shade trees in neat lines. Everywhere she looked, Christy saw telephone wires strung on tall poles.

  As the train slowed to enter town, it ran parallel to a road. A beautiful dark blue Deusenberg motorcar, driven by a white-gloved chauffeur, kept pace for a while.

  “Look at that!” Ruby Mae exclaimed. “That’s one of them automobiles! My, don’t it look fine?”

  “Yes, it’s probably heading for the Biltmore Estate,” Christy said. The Biltmore Estate, which belonged to the famous Vanderbilt family, was more of a palace than a home. It rivaled anything ever created by French kings or English lords.

  “Do you know the Vanderbilts?” Doctor MacNeill asked.

  Christy blushed. “Of course not. I’ve never met Mr. Vanderbilt. Although I have seen him in Pack Square on occasion. I don’t suppose he will be in town at this time of the year. The high season doesn’t begin until summer.”

  “Ah, yes. When all the idle rich who live off the labor of others escape from sweltering New York and steamy Richmond and stuffy Washington, D.C.,” Doctor MacNeill said gruffly. �
��They come to the mountains to breathe fresh air for three months.”

  Somehow, Christy got the impression the doctor did not entirely approve of Asheville’s wealthier residents. She noticed him looking critically at a frayed patch on his jacket. Was he actually feeling unsure of himself? Was he self-conscious about looking rustic? It didn’t seem possible that Neil MacNeill could ever feel uncertain about anything.

  She glanced over at David. He was looking out of the window. His gaze seemed to be drawn to each church steeple that came into view. His face looked troubled and a little wistful.

  “That’s the church I was baptized in,” Christy said, pointing to a particular stone steeple. “I used to sing in the choir. Badly, I’m afraid. That’s the church where you’ve been invited to speak.”

  “A church that size must have quite a congregation,” David said thoughtfully.

  Christy noticed that even Ruby Mae had fallen silent. She, too, was staring out of the window, looking just a little intimidated.

  “Are you excited to be here at last?” Christy asked her.

  “Folks has all got so much here,” she answered. “Automobiles and fine houses and such. I seen some of the women as we passed by. They was all dressed fit for a wedding or a funeral. I don’t s’pose these fine ladies would even stoop to speak to someone who looked like me.”

  “Ruby Mae, that’s not true,” Christy said earnestly. “This is where I come from. And have I ever been haughty to you?”

  “No, Miz Christy,” Ruby Mae said. She smiled in relief. “I ’spec you’re right. Folks is just folks, no matter how they look on the outside.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have a good time in Asheville, Ruby Mae,” Christy assured her. Still, she couldn’t help recalling the way some residents behaved cruelly toward mountain people visiting the city. They called them hillbillies or hicks, among other names.

  “I’ll tell you what, Ruby Mae,” Christy said. “I have more dresses than I could ever need. We’ll find something that will fit you just fine, if you like. And we’ll get something nice for Bessie, too. Pretty soon she’ll be back on her feet, and we’ll all be having a wonderful time together.”