The Borrowed World Series | Book 8 | Blood & Banjos

by Horton, Franklin

  Everyone around the fire was lost in their own thoughts. Ariel, often a standoffish child, wouldn’t leave her father’s side. She wasn’t happy about his decision. She didn’t understand the nuance of the situation. To her, it was Daddy going away after he promised he’d never do that again. The only consolation he could offer was to point to the distant Beartown Mountain, the green crest that loomed over their backyard, and offer to take her there one day.

  She’d asked him to take pictures and for that reason alone he was taking his worthless iPhone and the solar charger that kept it powered. The availability of that phone and the pictures it contained was a double-edged sword. Looking at pictures of his family on that original desperate walk home from Richmond had been motivating, but it had also opened chasms of pain and longing. Seeing pictures of the things he and his family had done had made him feel blessed at one moment and a failure at others.

  Sometimes it made him wonder why they hadn’t been out camping every weekend. Why had he not spent every second with them doing the things they loved to do? But life couldn’t be that way. Other things had to be done and people forgot about those responsibilities in the warm glow of memory. They forgot about the daily hassles, the exhaustion of raising small children, and the pressures of work—all those little things that kept them from playing all the time.

  “I hear them,” Ellen said.

  Jim cocked an ear and picked it up as well, the clop of hooves on the hard-packed farm road. A year ago that sound would have been the crunch of hooves on gravel but the earth was swallowing the stone. Grass and mud were reclaiming the earth from Jim’s efforts to shape it. He rose from the wooden bench where he sat with his daughter, giving her tiny shoulders a squeeze before he stood. His horse and the packhorse were already loaded. They stood tied to the fence, occasionally shifting or switching their tails at bugs.

  Jim hugged his wife and was pleased that she didn’t seem upset. She was already switching gears, ready to assume her new responsibilities in his absence. She had to push emotion aside and be strong. She was strong, of course. He’d always known it and she’d consistently proven it, but that didn’t mean his absence would be easy. They’d been there before and no one wanted to revisit that dark period. Jim’s only consolation was that things would be different this time. She had support and community. She had backup.

  Lloyd came into view, leading his horse. Randi walked alongside him. Everyone stopped to watch them approach. The pair paused at the fence and Lloyd tied his horse a few posts away from Jim’s. Before joining the group, he gave Randi the same kind of weak hug you might give a little old lady who made you a pan of brownies.

  Not impressed with the gesture, Randi grabbed him and pulled him into a kiss. When she broke it off, she noticed she had an audience. “What the hell you all gawping at?”

  Jim snickered and cued up a remark, then thought better of it. There was nothing he liked more than giving Randi grief, but she’d probably punch him. He didn’t want to spend the night riding with internal bleeding.

  “You have something to say?” Randi asked, noticing Jim’s expression.

  “Not a word,” Jim replied.

  Randi nodded with satisfaction. “That’s what I thought.”

  Jim said his goodbyes to the rest of his family. His dad assured him he’d take good care of everyone and keep an eye on the gardens. His mom was short, not pleased with the prospect of her son riding off into the wild blue yonder. She frequently found herself questioning his decisions.

  He hugged Pete and reminded him of how proud he was of him, then did the same with Alice’s son Charlie. He shook hands with Gary and Will, then even had a hug for Randi. He returned to his wife and kissed her goodbye, then stood there pondering. “Is there anyone I’ve forgotten?”

  Ariel gave him a frown. “Me, loser.”

  Jim grinned. “Oh yeah.” He pulled Ariel up into a tight hug.

  “Don’t forget my pictures,” she said.

  “I won’t.”

  He put her down and she looked away. She wasn’t ready to cry but he could tell she was sad. He’d drawn this out long enough. “Let’s hit the trail, Festus,” he said to Lloyd, referring to the drawling deputy from the old western, Gunsmoke.

  “Sure thing, Marshal Matt,” Lloyd drawled, falling into character and limping toward his horse.

  Jim fought the urge to repeat his round of farewells. This was painful enough already. He walked toward his horse feeling the eyes of his loved ones on his back, untied the long lead for the packhorse, then untied his own mount. He climbed into the saddle and rode toward his family. He and Lloyd would be leaving through the back gate, cutting through the field toward Rockdell Farms rather than using the road.

  Passing his family, he offered waves and smiles that felt completely ridiculous when weighed against the step he was taking. He was hit with a surge of doubt and second-guessing himself. Hell, wouldn’t it be better for him to simply hide in the basement? At least then he’d be there for his family and could help them if he needed to.

  He couldn’t do it, though. He hoped they understood this was how it had to go. He needed to give it time to cool off. If there were people out there determined to keep looking for him, he had to give them time to satisfy their curiosity. Eventually, someone would find a position where they could watch his house and he wouldn’t be there for them to see. Word would spread and people would forget about him.

  Or so he prayed.

  Pete ran ahead and opened the narrow gate that separated the yard from the pasture. It was a new addition Jim had put in place since foot traffic had changed the way they moved around the property. The driveway was no longer the main way in and out. People took shortcuts. Jim smiled and thanked his son when he rode through. As the last orange crescent of sun dropped below the ridge, Jim turned and waved at his family.

  Without waiting for their returning waves, he spun his horse and trotted off. Behind him, he heard Pete swing the gate shut, then the rattle of chain as he fastened it. Jim stared ahead. He’d traveled through this very field more times than he could count over the last year. Never had it felt like this. Never had it left him feeling so unsettled.

  Lloyd began singing Gene Autry. “I’m back in the saddle again. Out where a friend is a friend.”

  Jim groaned. “I can put up with a lot of shit, but I’m not spending three months listening to cowboy songs. I ain’t in the mood.”

  “I brought my banjo. You rather hear a banjo tune? I can play Dueling Banjos.”

  “I’m more concerned about whether you remembered a gun or not.”

  Lloyd pulled up alongside him, giving Jim his first close look at his packing efforts. Lloyd’s pack was cinched behind the saddle. A soft banjo case was strapped atop that. Lloyd had a pump shotgun hooked over the saddle horn. With his demonstrated lack of marksmanship ability, a scattergun was a solid approach.

  “You brought more shells for that?”

  “I’ve got two hundred or so mixed shotgun shells. Stuff we took off the dead.”

  “I’m assuming your .32 pistol is on you somewhere?”

  Lloyd shook his head. “Nope, you hurt its feelings. You’ve insulted that .32 for the last time. I left it with one of Randi’s daughters. I’m carrying Buddy’s old Colt 1911.”

  “That’s a solid choice, Lloyd.” Jim dabbed at a fake tear. “It’s like you’ve finally grown up. I’m so proud of you.”

  “About damn time.”

  After a few minutes, they passed by Randi’s house. No one was out. They continued on through the fields, following a path barely visible in the tall, uncut hay. A little further along they topped a rise and were able to see down onto Gary’s house, the place that used to belong to Jim’s old friend Henry.

  They descended the hill above Gary’s place to a creek that ran behind his house. It was the feature of the property that his grandchildren found most entertaining. Many summer afternoons Ariel would join them to wade in the creek and catch crawdads.
The mothers and grandmothers found it relaxing not just because it occupied the children but because it was nice to see them playing and happy.

  The salmon-colored clouds high above them reflected in the still pool of the dark creek. Just beyond the swimming hole, the pair rode through a gap in the fence and climbed onto the road. This was the same spot where they’d fought the folks from Washington County. Those people had initially come to the area to buy cattle, then decided it might be a good place to resettle. The only thing they needed to do was drive out the locals.

  The locals, Jim and his neighbors, weren’t thrilled about that prospect and it ended in violence. Signs of that battle remained. A few burned-out vehicles were scattered along the roadside. Trash from their encampments littered the field, much of it picked over of anything useful.

  They didn’t stay on the road, simply crossing it to resume their progress following alongside the lazy creek. They were on Rockdell Farms property, the fields vast and clear. They were untended now, the cattle wild and the hay uncut for the first time in two centuries. This was old country, long-populated and touched by the hand of man. With a lapse in efforts, it took no time for the world to begin erasing man’s presence. Weeds and grass grew to hide the scars, gravity tugged at the structures, and rain and wind eroded.

  In another mile they crossed the second and last paved road between them and their destination. It was Route 80, a modern road that followed an ancient path over Clinch Mountain. Native Americans had used it for trading and for obtaining salt from nearby Saltville. In fact, all these lands had hosted centuries of villages and hunting parties. Each year when the fields were plowed anew, relic hunters scoured the soil for arrowheads, spear points, fish hooks, paint pots, and various other remnants of the Native American presence.

  Not long after crossing Route 80, the terrain changed from flat bottomland to the rolling pastures that made up the foothills of the mountain. They saw no one and smelled no fires. There were no homes for miles in any direction, which was part of why Jim had chosen this route. They stuck to the existing farm road so they’d be able to use the gates when they hit interior cross-fencing.

  The light faded and stripped the color from the world. The land went from green to gray, only the sky able to retain its tinge of blue. The farm road climbed and rolled, taking them higher with each passing mile.

  “I hope you know where you’re going,” Lloyd mumbled.

  “Don’t tell me you’re getting tired. You ain’t doing nothing. Your horse is doing all the work.”

  “I’m holding on.”

  Jim snorted. “To your sobriety? Your sanity?”

  “Both, and it’s wearing me out.”

  “There’s a place I want to see. Maybe a twenty-minute ride from here. We’ll overnight there. It’s secluded.”

  6

  Beartown Mountain

  As the pair of riders climbed in elevation, the foothills about them rippled with ambling geographic convolutions. Who knew why these mountains had formed this particular way in their ancient upsurge from the core of the Earth? In some ways the logic of mountains was no more decipherable than that of men, their inspiration often lost and obfuscated with time. As with men and mountains, sometimes the monument to their existence was plain and featureless, an ordinary life. Other times, it stood so bold and glaring upon the land that one could not turn away.

  When this particular mountain rose from the mantle of the Earth, it did so without thought to being there three hundred and twenty million years later. It did so without regard for how people would look upon it and the emotions it might provoke. Yet people did look upon its towering presence and they cast their own judgments.

  It was often the same with the cruelty and ill deeds of men, the impacts of an individual life that remained when the flesh was long buried and gone. The words spoken, the actions, could shape lives for generations. Those actions themselves sometimes became monuments, the legacy of the departed. They rose above the plane of an otherwise featureless life to become the peak from which everything else was viewed. One decision could become the feature that defined everything. The single point which overshadowed every other year, every single moment, and every word a person ever uttered.

  Sometimes those accomplishments, those peaks, were moments of heroism, where someone rose above the fray to save lives. Other times it was a person becoming a leader at a time when there was a void to be filled. Those mountains that stood within a life could also be negative. Like the ill-planned coupling between incapable, incompatible, and incomplete humans who turned their children out like dogs to fend for themselves in the world. Like the blurry barroom decisions that resulted in drunken fatalities and shattered families. Like the suicide that cursed generations with the perception of mutual shame and a free-floating sense of responsibility that, like a balloon with no string, no one understood how to take hold of. One moment, one decision rising above all others.

  Jim’s life had become such a thing itself. It was a composite of little things that altered the landscape around him. There was the decision to live a prepared lifestyle before the collapse and the decision to surround himself with a clan of friends afterward. There was the decision to fight violently against those things that he saw as wrong. It was the amalgamation of all those decisions that put him in the situation he was in now.

  Above all those things, all those choices, was the most drastic choice he made, which was to interfere with the process of restoring power to his community. It was a small choice he’d undertaken in a big way, leaving the power plant itself in such a state that it might take years to restore under ideal conditions. Was that how he’d be remembered? Was that how his children and grandchildren would be remembered? Would history smile on him for his adherence to old ideals of freedom or would his descendants be scorned as traitors for impeding progress?

  Jim navigated the gloaming with minimal visibility now, depending entirely upon the prowess of his horse. He was headed to a place he’d never been and had indeed only speculated about with the aid of binoculars and a crude ninety-year-old map he’d seen in a book. He’d often been tempted to skulk into the mountains beneath the cover of darkness and come to this place, but he’d never done so. It was not his land, not his secret.

  They topped a rise and descended into a dark basin. The trail was a deep rut carved by the sharp hooves of thousands of cattle. Exposed limestone rippled from the ground like the remnants of dinosaur skeletons. Then the air changed around them and the horses stopped in their tracks as if they’d known all along that this was where they were going.

  Aware that the basin in which they stood sheltered them on all sides, Jim clicked on his headlamp. The wide mouth of a cave opened before them like the yawning maw of a lost whale. The ground beneath their horses had been chewed to bare dirt by the hooves of cattle and was now baked into a scarred brick by the summer sun. The cave entrance was fenced to keep the cattle from wandering inside. Several No Trespassing signs hung from rusty strands of barbed wire.

  A second light clicked on and Lloyd muttered, “Wow.”

  “Wow is right.”

  “That’s a big cave.”

  “It’s not just any cave,” Jim said, barely concealing his excitement, his reverence for this location. “I’ve waited years to see this place.”

  “How the hell did you even know it was here? I grew up in this town and never heard of this cave.”

  Jim slid off his horse, leading it and the packhorse to a dwarfed and twisted tree, the bark scrubbed loose by hordes of scratching cattle. “Research. I’ve always been interested in the history of this valley. It has a long history of early settlers and there were eons of Native Americans before that. One day I came across an old article talking about the custom of cave burials in some areas of southwestern Virginia.”

  “Cave burials?” Lloyd asked, a wary tone in his voice. He reluctantly climbed off his horse and tied it to a different tree. He leaned back, crossed his arms, and stared at
the cave with a little more trepidation.

  “Yeah, most tribes in this part of the country buried their dead in the ground. A small segment of local tribes or clans, for reasons we still don’t understand, laid their dead out in caves. It’s an isolated thing. Only a few counties around here have them. It’s something more common in the desert southwest where the bodies would mummify in caves. Here they just rot.”

  Lloyd played his light across the wide entrance as if he expected to find bones staring back at him. “You’re telling me this cave was used to bury people?”

  “Oh yeah. This is the granddaddy of burial caves, Lloyd. The Smithsonian was here in the 1930s and they estimate there were over three hundred graves in there. The skeletons had already been jumbled up by that time so it made it difficult to get an accurate count. Relic hunters had been inside for decades to scavenge anything they could find. In this community it was common to find skulls on mantels or on a kid’s dresser.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “Seems that way now but it wasn’t at the time. This cave was a popular destination for young people whose families worked at Rockdell Farms. It was a huge operation at the time. They had their own schools and towns. Besides swimming and baseball, exploring caves was part of their recreation.”

  Lloyd was unconvinced. “I can’t believe I never heard of it.”

  “I’ve talked to other people who grew up here and never heard of it either. It wasn’t always a secret but it became one over time. It’s protected now, or at least it was before things fell apart. There are supposedly trail cameras around here to make sure no one tampers with anything.”

  Lloyd chuckled. “I think we’re safe. Besides, with all the shit you’ve already done, what’s a little trespassing?”

  “Good point. You ready to take a look inside?”