The Borrowed World Series | Book 8 | Blood & Banjos

by Horton, Franklin

  Honey leaned into the harness, moving toward Sharon. Though she couldn’t see the chair over the far embankment, she could hear the sound of it bumping along as Honey pulled. It was moving.

  Sharon couldn’t help but smile at the progress. “C’mon girl, you’re doing it. Keep pulling.”

  Gaining momentum now that the chair was moving, Honey easily tugged it up the hillside. Soon she was alongside Sharon and the chair was cresting the hill. When it finally came to rest on the flat surface of the road, Sharon tugged on the reins and halted the pony. “You did it, girl. You did it!”

  Sharon painfully made her way down the length of the harness to where the chair lay in the dusty road. Aside from a few scratches and abrasions to the harness it didn’t appear to be damaged. She flipped it upright and tentatively rolled it back and forth a few inches. Everything was moving as it should.

  She ducked beneath the nearest harness line and maneuvered herself into the chair. It was never easy getting in there from ground level, especially with spent muscles, but she made it with a fair amount of grunting and swearing. When she was finally settled in, she sagged backward, letting her head hang. She spent a minute catching her breath and resting.

  When she felt ready, she took stock of her battered body. The denim shorts and t-shirt she was wearing were filthy, as was her body beneath them. The dust she’d crawled through had mixed with her sweat to form a film of mud that stretched from her face to her ankles. Her legs were skinned, knees raw, and blood seeped from dozens of tiny scratches. Long raised welts striped her legs from the briars she’d pulled herself over. She worried she’d be covered with poison ivy too, though that may not show up for a few days.

  Her upper body was no better. Her hands were tough but they were sore. Her elbows were scraped, as were her forearms, from the uphill crawl. Rivulets of blood ran from her raw wounds, mixing with the dirt and the sweat. There was nothing here life-threatening. Nothing a few days of rubbing alcohol, Neosporin, and Band-Aids couldn’t fix.

  She dropped her hands to the wheels and tentatively rolled back and forth a few times. Aside from a bent brake lever everything was working. She picked up the reins and held them in her lap. Mobile again, she was now faced with the prospect of where to go. She glanced over her shoulder, staring at the section of the embankment that had been her undoing. That was not a possibility. There was no way she was going to risk it. She knew how that movie ended.

  Looking down at her bedraggled condition, she didn’t look like anyone fit to go visiting at a neighbor’s house. She looked more like the kind of vagrant you’d turn away at gunpoint. Yet it was either proceed with her original plan or attempt to find an alternative route back to Oliver’s house.

  She didn’t go backward. That wasn’t how Sharon lived life. She wasn’t a quitter. She didn’t flee and she didn’t run. She used the damp tail of her shirt to wipe her face, then attempted to do the same to her grubby arms. When she was done, she flicked the reins and clucked at Honey. “Let’s go, girl.”

  23

  The Farm Road

  After her spill, it wasn’t five minutes before Sharon came to the first of the houses along the road. The first thing Sharon noticed was that the folks who lived there had somehow managed to come up with an old reel-type mower that allowed them to keep their lawn cut even without fuel. Sharon hadn’t been certain which of the houses she’d stop at. She’d met several of the folks along the road but didn’t really know any of them.

  She ended up stopping at the first house when she spotted two figures on the porch. A man in overalls and a cap was stringing beans with his wife. Both were timeless figures who by dress and demeanor appeared as if they could have stepped from the late 1960s. They were not modern people but faithful recreations of those who’d come before them. Farmer and wife. Rural porch-dwellers who preferred to watch the world over watching the television.

  They’d heard her coming, the crunch of gravel beneath wheel and hoof. They stopped mid-bean to stare at her as if she were some apparition. What Sharon initially took as unfriendliness was instead surprise at both her appearance and her condition. She wasn’t just a woman traveling along a dirt road. She was a blood-stained and dirty woman being pulled along in a horse-drawn wheelchair.

  The pair on the porch exchanged a few words between themselves without taking their eyes off her. Apparently coming to some conclusion, they stood in tandem and placed their stainless steel bean bowls down on the padded glider from which they worked. The man came down the short set of steps first, hurrying toward Sharon with surprising grace, like a dancer in bibbed overalls. The woman came behind him, moving with the same urgency, apron flapping.

  Familiar with the way of horses, the husband reached out and took hold of the pony’s bridle before turning his attention to Sharon. By then his wife was already upon on her, bent over with a gentle hand on Sharon’s shoulder.

  “Honey, are you okay?” she cooed. “What happened?”

  Sharon, who’d managed the day’s events with grit and stoicism, erupted into tears she couldn’t hold back. She wasn’t certain what had done it. The sincerity of this couple? The woman’s genuine concern? The fact she’d gone through so much today with no adult to share it with?

  The woman looked at her husband with concern. The man’s brow was furrowed. “Is everything okay? Are those children okay?”

  Sharon took several deep breaths, trying to control her sobs. “The children are...fine.”

  “Let’s get you over to the porch,” the woman said. “I know who you are but I don’t think we’ve ever been introduced. I’m Freda.”

  The husband studied Sharon’s rig for a moment before unclipping Honey’s harness from the chair. He led the pony off into the yard and tied it to a cherry tree. When he was done, he rushed back to the road, where Freda was assisting Sharon toward the porch. Two concrete steps led up to the broad country porch and the pair worked together to get Sharon’s chair up.

  When they were done, she rolled out of the sun and started wiping at her eyes. “I’m sorry about the crying. I don’t know where this came from.”

  “Honey, all you’re doing is smearing mud around your face,” Freda said. “Let me get something to clean you up.”

  “I don’t want to be any bother.”

  “Nonsense,” Freda said with a tone that made it clear it would be the last word on that.

  Her husband took a seat beside Sharon. “I don’t know if you remember me or not. We’ve met a time or two. I cut hay off Oliver and graze a few head on his place. Name’s Kendall.”

  “Kendall, I’m Sharon. I run the camp.”

  Kendall nodded seriously. “I recollect that. Oliver mentioned you often. I told Oliver you all should come by if you needed anything, but he said you all were doing well under the circumstances. He put all the credit for that on you.”

  Sharon smiled, trying to get her emotions in check. She was saved from having to speak by Freda’s appearance on the porch. She handed Sharon a tall glass of water with a concerned smile.

  “Thank you,” Sharon said, taking a sip of the water. “It’s nice and cold.”

  Kendall smiled. “Got a spring-box up on the hill there. Feeds the house. Never been much pressure but it’s the best water you’ll ever drink.”

  Freda disappeared again, then backed through the door with a basin of water and a towel draped over her arm.

  “I don’t want you to go to any trouble,” Sharon protested, resting the glass of water on the arm of her chair.

  Freda gave her a stern look. “We’re going to clean you up and see if any of those scratches need tending.”

  Sharon reached for the towel. “I can do that.”

  Freda pulled it back from her reach. “I never said you couldn’t do it, but you look to me like someone in need of a little help right now. Why don’t you just sit there and let me help you? While I’m scrubbing you off, you can tell us what’s going on.”

  Sharon relaxed, or tried to.
She was fiercely independent but she’d triggered Freda’s maternal instinct and it was better to give in to it than risk offending her. “On the road between here and Oliver’s house there was a limb down in the road and I tried to go around it. My chair turned over and I rolled down the bank. That’s why I’m such a mess. I had to climb back up the hill.”

  “Why would you do a thing like that?” Freda asked. “Why were you coming up the road alone?”

  Kendall was a step ahead of his wife. He’d already put together that Sharon wouldn’t have made this trip if there wasn’t something wrong. “Is Oliver okay?”

  Sharon looked him in the eye and shook her head. As much as she tried to fight it back, her eyes filled with tears again. “He died.”

  Freda’s hand moved to her mouth. “Oh my.”

  Kendall’s mouth tightened. “Lord, I hate to hear that. We’ve been neighbors for better than forty years. What happened?”

  Sharon wiped at her eyes, prompting Freda to get on her knees beside the chair and start dabbing at Sharon’s face. “I’m pretty sure it was a stroke. I’ve seen them before. I found him like that this morning. I tried taking care of him but he couldn’t swallow or anything. He passed about an hour ago.”

  “Have you thought about what you intend to do with the...his body?” Kendall asked in as delicate and considerate a manner as he could.

  “I told the children he probably wouldn’t make it, but they don’t know it’s already happened. They’re back at the camp with the older children looking after them. They suggested we bury him at the camp, at the circle where he used to tell them stories. Some of the kids are already working on digging the grave.”

  Kendall started shaking his head again. “That’s the saddest thing I believe I’ve ever heard. That ain’t no job for children.”

  “I know,” Sharon admitted, “but they wanted to do it and I don’t know how else it’s going to get done.”

  “That means you’re going to have to get him from his house to the camp,” Freda said, moving on to scrubbing the grime off Sharon’s arms. “Have you thought about how you’re going to do that? That’s a mile of bad road.”

  Sharon shrugged, a wordless concession that she had no clue how they were going to accomplish that.

  “That’s the kind of thing neighbors are for,” Kendall said. “We can help.”

  “While that would be much appreciated,” Sharon said, “I didn’t come up here to beg for help. I thought you all might want to know he’d passed and might want to come for the service.”

  “We’ll definitely do that,” Kendall said. “Oliver was a might protective of you all. He didn’t say much about what was going on up there, other than that some of the kids got stranded. He insisted you all were taking care of it.”

  Sharon smiled. “That camp was his baby. He was protective.”

  “Oliver was highly thought of in the community here,” Freda said. “We’ll pass the word up and down the road. There might be a few folks who want to attend if that’s okay with you.”

  “Oh definitely,” Sharon said. “If folks want to pay their respects we’d be glad to have them.”

  “Are you aware of the arrangements Oliver made for the camp to continue?” Kendall asked. “Did you know about his will?”

  “I do,” Sharon replied. “I had to go to a lawyer’s office with him several years back to sign some papers. Since he didn’t have any immediate heirs he left everything to the camp. There’s supposed to be a trust formed upon his death. The trustees are supposed to ensure that the farm is operated in a manner that will make the most money for the camp. He envisioned selling some timber each year, some hunting rights in the winter, selling leases for grazing cattle and raising corn. He thought that would be enough to keep the camp going since he set the whole thing up as a tax-exempt organization.”

  “He told me about it,” Kendall said. “I saw the papers. He asked if I’d be willing to serve as a trustee and I told him I would. He sure was proud of the camp. He wanted it to keep going.”

  Freda was wiping down Sharon’s legs now and shaking her head with disapproval as she went. “Lord, look what you gone and done to yourself.”

  Sharon laughed. “I promise you it wasn’t intentional.”

  “We need to put some alcohol on there and clean that up. It might sting.”

  Sharon smiled. “Don’t worry. I can’t feel them.”

  Freda looked embarrassed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean...”

  Sharon put a reassuring arm on Freda’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. I appreciate the help. I didn’t realize how bad I felt until I started sobbing like a baby.”

  “Now, honey, don’t you worry about a thing,” Kendall said. “People need neighbors. They need help sometimes. With Oliver gone, we’ll do our best to help you in every way we can.”

  When Freda finished rubbing on the alcohol she stood and stretched. “That’s about as good as it’s going to get for now. You’re going to need to keep an eye on all those scratches.”

  “I’m going to clear that tree out of the road for Sharon and then I’ll let the neighbors know about Oliver,” Kendall announced, standing.

  Sharon felt tears well up at the warmth she felt for this kind older couple. She hadn’t known them even an hour ago and now she felt like she’d known them all her life. This was just what she needed and it came at the exact moment she needed it. She was almost certain that she could feel Oliver out there smiling at her choice to travel up the road.

  24

  Laurel Bed Lake

  Clinch Mountain Wildlife Management Area

  Before they lost all light for the evening, Jim walked to the water’s edge and gathered his horses. He stretched his headlamp over his sweat-dampened cap and slung his rifle over his back. Mosquitoes swarmed around his face and hummed in his ear.

  “Whereabouts you going?” Andrew called.

  “Going to find a spot to settle in for the night,” Jim said. “I’m beat.”

  The old man cocked his head at Jim. “I thought you didn’t find that old campsite up the lake to your liking?”

  “I didn’t. There’s too many memories there,” Jim said. “Don’t want to be tripping over them all night. I’ll find a clearing in the woods somewhere and stretch out.”

  “I thought we’d just camp here with Andrew,” Lloyd said, looking disappointed. He wasn’t anxious to leave the first new friend he’d made in a while. “We’ve kind of hit it off.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here tonight but I’m not comfortable out in the open with all this racket. Sound travels on the water. Fires reflect. I’ll sleep better in the woods.”

  Lloyd cast a glance at Andrew. “You hear the way he talks about my playing and singing? A racket! He does me that way all the time. No regard for a man’s feelings. Ain’t sure there’s a shred of human decency in him.”

  Andrew mumbled and nodded, agreeing with the injustice of it all.

  “You can come with me or stay here, Lloyd, but I’m headed into the woods and turning in early,” Jim said. “It’s been a long, hot day and I expect tomorrow will be more of the same.”

  Lloyd raised one of his quart-sized traveling jars toward Andrew, gesturing at it like some magic potion. “What were you planning for the evening?”

  “I got a big old lake trout on a stringer over there. Figured I’d fillet it out and throw it in a skillet with some lard. Y’all are welcome to join me.”

  Lloyd licked his lips. “Ooh, that sounds good. I might be able to scrape up a can of corn. Maybe a handful of noodles or something.”

  Getting the hint, Jim dug into the bags on the packhorse and tossed Lloyd a can of corn and a package of ramen noodles. “Here you go. Guess you’re staying over here?”

  “Ain’t decided if I’m staying all night but I ain’t leaving yet.” Lloyd rubbed his stomach. “Sounds like we got dinner to cook. Might be some picking and singing later.”

  “That’s fine but if yo
u come looking for me later you better announce yourself first. If I hear steps in the woods I’m going to be assuming it’s a bear or an unwanted guest.”

  “I’ve dealt with some pushy bears, but I ain’t had no trouble out of people since I been up here,” said Andrew. “People have behaved themselves.”

  “Then you’ve been lucky,” Jim said. “We’ve run into every kind of slack-jawed, drug-addled scoundrel walking on two legs. They’re everywhere. If you haven’t seen them yet, you will.”

  Andrew rose from his chair. “Well, I hope it ain’t tonight because I got fish to fry.”

  The old man disappeared into his RV. Jim heard pots and pans banging around. Cabinet doors were slammed and drawers yanked open.

  “I’m leaving. You guys be careful,” Jim warned. “Try not to get so drunk that you can’t keep an eye open for trouble. Despite what Andrew says, I ain’t letting down my guard. I’ll be back first thing in the morning and we’ll get a start out toward that music camp if you want.”

  “Can you have me a couple of cinnamon rolls and a cup of black coffee ready when I get up?” Lloyd asked.

  Jim raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I’ll run my horse through the Starbucks drive-through on the way over. Can you at least keep a weapon handy tonight?”

  Lloyd looked around confused, trying to remember where he’d left his shotgun.

  “It’s still on your horse.” Jim pointed. “Which you need to unsaddle if you’re going to stick around here for the night.”

  Lloyd laid his banjo on the case and stood up. “Nag, nag, nag.”

  Jim led his two horses away, listening to Lloyd mumbling complaints behind him. The guy was the best friend he’d ever had, but he wasn’t cut out for the current state of things. That was obvious from his joy at having someone new to talk to. It also showed in the fact that no amount of lecturing could force him to remain vigilant. It simply wasn’t in his nature to constantly be on guard against trouble.