Magic Mountain Creek

Magi C Mount ai N Cre e K

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A nove ls e ti nDe pre s s i onEraKe ntucky bY

Ti m di ggl e S

COPYRIGHT © 2021 by Timothy Diggles All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

Cover Design by the author Cover photograph by James Gregory

Magic Mountain Creek

It was a great day for the WPA Packhorse Library Scheme.

The First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, was coming to visit the headquarters, to meet the travelling librarians, and inspect the work they did.

The Kentucky State Library Assistant Superintendent, Mr Theodore Jefferson Fisher, wore a new suit and the brightest blue tie anyone had seen.

“I thought he was a staunch Republican” whispered one of the librarians to Jo. “All depends who’s in power I think, Theodore always knows which side his bread is buttered” Jo replied and they both giggled.

Mr Fisher gave them a ‘look’ and they straightened their faces as he checked the ‘exhibition’ they had put together. A Life Magazine photographer had been assigned to follow some of the librarians on their rounds and prints of the photographs were pinned to boards alongside posters; alongside them were small piles of pristine books that none of the librarians had previously seen.

“Yes, yes, well done ladies, well done, I think she will be impressed, yes…” and he busied himself moving a couple of chairs from one side of the room to the other, then back again.

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Jo regularly read The First Lady’s columns in The Courier-Journal and listened to her regular radio talks. She liked what Eleanor Roosevelt stood for and had to say.

At 1.30, half an hour after the planned time, a large dusty black car pulled up in the street and the librarians excitedly watched through the window as the tall figure of Eleanor Roosevelt alighted and discreetly stretched herself; a squatter lady, Maisy Cook, got out of the other side. As the two came together she put a hand on the First Lady’s hand, and from what Jo could see, asked if she was OK. Mr Fisher rushed out to greet them, half bowed, and busily guided them through a small crowd which had gathered on the pavement, some of who cheered. The First Lady had a smile for everyone.

Inside after an official greeting by Happy Chandler, the Deputy State Governor, which all agreed afterwards was at least five minutes too long, Eleanor Roosevelt sat down with the librarians and drank tea. Mr Fisher was effusive and kept butting in as Mrs Roosevelt tried to talk to the young women. Soon it was obvious she’d dealt with men like him many times and gently pushed him aside, with a grace and resolve that wouldn’t be noticed, other than

by Mr Fisher.

The Kentucky State Official Photographer took some pictures.

As Mrs Roosevelt inspected the exhibition she turned to Jo. “You must be Jo Summer?”

“Yes Mrs Roosevelt, yes, how did you know?”

“I was told that there was a graduate of Bryn Mawr working here…” she looked around at the other women, “…I guessed it was you. I love the college and the work they do for social justice.

I worked with Carey Thomas on a few committees when we were fighting to secure the vote, although we didn’t always share the 2

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same opinions about race and a number of other things, we agreed about that. She must have been quite an inspiration for you?”

“She was, her talks to us and her experiences as a suffragette inspired us all, thank you” “You are doing wonderful work here, and all that riding, I love to go riding when I get the time, after so many miles over the hills you must get exhausted?”

“It can be wearing, but meeting the people, many of them are in such distress, makes it worthwhile. I just hope that the books help in some way take them out of their misery” “I think Miss Thomas would be proud of you, she has always been a very practical person. She isn’t very well at present. I will mention your good works when I see her next” “Thank you I don’t know if she’d remember me, I wasn’t one of the outstanding students” “By the way I have brought a box of books for you to take out on your rounds, maybe you would make sure they get to the people most in need?”

“Yes of course, that is most generous of you” Then loudly and in a very matter of fact manner so the whole room could hear, The First Lady asked Jo “Do you carry a pistol Miss Summer?” and turning to her companion, “Miss Cook and I do, you just never know, a Smith and Wesson which my bodyguard gave me as a gift. It’s engraved ‘May your aims always be perfect’, a good motto I think Miss Summer, and for all you young ladies” “I do carry one Mrs Roosevelt, just a small one, more for it’s noise, we’re often riding through woods, wild animals and so on…”

Jo’s answer trailed away as The First Lady moved on to speak to someone else and was being hurried along by Maisy Cook who quietly told her that it was nearly time to get on to the next appointment.

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Mr Fisher looked coldly at Jo, she smiled at him. During the ten years she’d known him she’d always felt that he was intimidated by her. He had been most condescending and gloating towards her when given the senior managerial appointment, which she felt should have been given to her.

The huge black car whisked Mrs Roosevelt away and all was quiet again, the librarians dismantled the exhibition and Mr Fisher carried the box of books to his office.

Jo was about to leave when Mr Fisher opened his door.

“Miss Summer, I’m glad you are still here, please, I’d like a word” Jo went into the office, he asked her to close the door behind her.

“Miss Summer, that seemed a successful visit don’t you think?”

“Absolutely Mr Fisher, Mrs Roosevelt seemed most impressed” “Yes, yes, I may not always approve of her husband’s politics and all that waste of tax-payers money, but I think she was. It will be good for our Department. Did you know she was going to talk to you?”

“Absolutely not” Mr Fisher butted in “Because I hope you did not contact her people beforehand, it was most embarrassing to me for you to be singled out Miss Summer, we have a hierarchy in this Department as you well know, I was expecting to have quite a long conversation with Mrs Roosevelt, she hardly even acknowledged me” “I can assure you Mr Fisher I had no idea, one of her staff must have done some research, I had no idea she had links with Bryn Mawr” “Yes that too was most unfortunate, I hope the local press don’t pick up on that, after all I and some of the other librarians attended The University of Kentucky, it would have been much better for her to highlight a local institution than a Yankee college, especially 4

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one that teaches such socially liberal attitudes to impressionable young women” “I think she meant nothing by it” Jo replied, “Bryn Mawr’s former Director is a friend of hers who she admires, maybe if there had been more time there could have been greater recognition of the local institutions” Mr Fisher made a disapproving ‘hmmph’ sound and fiddled about with some papers.

“That will be all Miss Summer” “Mrs Roosevelt left some books for us to distribute, you brought the box in the office I think?”

“I did indeed, yes indeed I did. I need to check them to see if they are suitable for our readers Miss Summer, I am concerned that some of the values our First Lady holds may not coincide with those of the good people of Kentucky. Good day” Jo left the office with a wry smile and shut the door. She was reminded of a quote and was whispering it to herself as she headed out into town.

“The Soul selects her own Society… Then shuts the Door… To her divine Majority… Present no more…” (i)

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A few days later Jo pulled up her horse, Ulysses, outside a dishevelled cabin. Two children were playing. She looked at a printed list of names and addresses and asked if this was the last house in the valley.

“No, we’re not the last house” the girl said, “there’s another way up yonder, the road ends here” As she dismounted Jo thought that if that had been a road what was in store for her.

“The only way is to follow Magic Mountain Creek, you have to go round the falls” stopping to think, the painfully thin girl looked at Ulysses, “he won’t like the noise, he’ll let you know when it’s time to go through the wood” “If I were you I’d wait and get a mule” a gaunt boy added, “…or better still don’t bother with him, he only comes down once a year” “Now don’t you lie Joshua, he was down five times last year taking skins and we only saw him just a month ago!”

“What’s his name?” Jo asked, as she looked through the list of people the County had given her.

“Don’t know miss, you won’t find him on any lists, when the County men came out they didn’t bother going any further than here” “Can you both read?”

“Oh yes, both of us, it’s my best subject at school, I love reading” the girl said.

Jo took some books from a saddle bag and as she handed them out told the children about how she was a librarian bringing books for people who hadn’t got a local library nearby.

“And can we keep these books miss? I’m Ruth and this is Joshua” 6

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“Of course you can, then return them to me when I come back in a few weeks time and I will bring you more” Huge smiles broke out on their dirty faces.

“We’ll take good care of them miss, good care” “Does your mother know the man’s name?”

A tall, emaciated woman, younger than Jo, but had a look of someone twenty years older, came out of the wooden planked house.

“I think it is McAdam, yes I’m sure that’s what he said, only spoken to him once or twice, a couple of years ago”, she wiped her hands on the grey brown once white apron which covered a wellworn flowered skirt. “He never stops here when he comes down, takes goatskins to the yard in Pikeville. I’ve never been up there and only seen a few who have bothered recently, though there were some people a couple of years ago - and there was a man, I think someone said he was his brother, similar looking fella not as big, he was around for a while, came past a few times going down to Pikeville. Mr Thompson at the store would know more, he knows most things going on round here”, she smiled at Jo, who could see how good looking she could be beneath the grime of poverty. “It’s good of you to bring those books, I never learnt reading, Daddy said it wasn’t worth teaching a girl, but I want more for these two, Ruth’s a good reader” “Yes” Jo said, “yes she told me. I hope you do” she looked down at her list “Mrs Susanna Norris?” Jo looked up and the woman nodded “you know if you want to learn to read I can help, we can offer that as well” “No, no, I don’t need to, too late for me but with that new road up the valley they say’s coming and that rail spur they just finished, some say in town it will bring jobs, so these two need their learning. Ruth’s twelve soon thirteen, she will be able to work soon. Are you going up the valley today?”

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“Well I was planning to” “You’ll need a day at least to get there and back, I can’t see you’ll do it starting out now and get back before dark” Jo hitched the saddle bags back on the horse.

“Mrs Norris, does your husband read?”

“No he doesn’t” Ruth cut in “Daddy’s not here, he’s away working, I wish he was” “Ruthy you shouldn’t tell anyone our business, I’ve told you both before” her mother scolded.

“It doesn’t matter to me Mrs Norris, I’m not here to check up on you, it’s just the list they gave me says he lives here, that’s all” “Well, I am on my own most of the year, Nate came back last fall for a week. He’s working in Cleveland, most of the time anyhows, sends back what he can. I go each month to town, see if there’s a letter, he can’t write, but there’s someone he knows who addresses an envelope and sometimes writes a few lines for him about how he’s getting on. Nate said that when he’s properly settled we can join him” “It must be lonely for you” “Oh, you know you get used to it, don’t want any more children living here and so it’s best we’re apart. Nate can’t get a job around here, union man, he’s well skilled but his head’s full of the union, bosses don’t like it, nearly got him killed in twenty-nine” Jo had got her saddle bags sorted and mounted with the ease of an experienced rider.

“I’ll see you again in a few weeks, is there anything you need Mrs Norris?”

She shook her head and gathered her children to her.

“Please don’t say anything about Nate not being here, Ruthy shouldn’t have said anything, I could lose the house and then I don’t know what would happen, please don’t” 8

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Jo looked at the underfed family and gave a reassuring smile.

“Of course not, I’m just a librarian, here to bring some pleasure” she pulled on the reins and headed back up to the rocky path they called a road.

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A month later Jo was back at the Norris’ home, and was standing at the gate with Mrs Norris as she readied Ulysses for the next stage of her journey, it was early morning and the rising sun was casting long shadows across the valley.

“At least that snow has gone, that was a surprise, it must have been cold for you” “I’m used to it, born in the mountains. You’ll find the creek’s up, it’s melting on top and gets very fast. It’ll take you some time most of the day, you can stay here if it’s late on your way back, we haven’t much” Mrs Norris replied, “and thank you for the new books, Ruthy read both to me and even Joshua read some of his out, acted some of the parts, it was so funny!”

“I’d loved to have seen it, The Ransom of Red Chief is a great favourite. I hope you both enjoy Little Women, you know my mother called me after the main character, it’s a fine book, I hope not too difficult for Ruth” “Heck Mam, she can tackle most things, well you better be off if you’re going to get there and back before dark, thank you” Jo began her journey, the creek was certainly higher than last time she was there, the water running quick and clear. For much of the first hour she was able to ride along the banks which at that level were almost treeless, mainly stumps looking like steppingstones where people had cut them down for firewood. In the distance the forests were a deep blue green and on top there were still patches of snow like white fingered gloves holding the hills in place.

Jo knew about riding in the hills. Most of her childhood summers had been spent at her grandparents’ farm in Hunter, upstate Pennsylvania, sent there to get away from the choking heat 10

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and humidity of Philadelphia. The farm was surrounded by woods and hills, which she and her sisters explored; laying out in shady clearings, swimming in ice-cold streams, exploring woodland pathways. She realised now how perfect things had been, so different to this Depression scarred land.

As the forest thickened and almost no sign of tree felling, her grandfather’s old watch chimed the hour, it was time to rest a while. This gave her an opportunity to look back at where she’d travelled from. She had risen quite a way, more than she’d realised.

The Norris’ house was well out of sight, the haze of woodfires from the lower valley just a blue-grey line topping the trees in the distance, the surrounding hillsides becoming densely wooded.

The watch was an interesting object, made of copper and when she opened it up there was a compass on one side with the timepiece on the other. It had a dent which her grandfather always said was from a Confederate bullet; at which he went into a fantastical story about helping slaves and captured soldiers run for freedom and being chased by hundreds of rebel soldiers; he cut himself a heroic figure. Then her grandma would tell him off and say it happened when he fell over drunk in a bar in Wilkes-Barr and he’d never travelled further south than Philadelphia and was anyway far too young to have fought in the war. Jo used to like the story better.

Initially Jo had been heading due east, the compass now showed her that after the last curve, the creek was sending her northeastwards. Ahead she could see hills folding into each other into the distance and knew her view of ‘civilisation’ westwards would disappear soon.

Jo set off again, for a while she led Ulysses along the creek, feeling the chilled water against her boots and her feet became uncomfortably cold. Then Magic Mountain Creek slowed and widened, became benign as they reached a flattening in its course, 11

Magic Mountain Creek

the grass was greener on the banks which had widened, so she rode a while along the bank until the valley narrowed again and trees were densely packed right up to the water's edge.

The chime of the watch made her check the time, it felt as though she’d been travelling all day, but it was only ten in the morning, nearly four hours since she dropped the books off at the Norris’s. It was hard to tell how far she’d travelled as the going had been fairly slow. The creek was running faster again and she could hear a loud water noise, which she guessed must be the falls Ruth had mentioned.

After about what must have been another half-mile, Jo halted Ulysses in front of a cascading waterfall.

Sitting up on Ulysses she could see over the top. They weren’t that high, about a six-foot sheer drop like a wall in front of her, and beyond that a series of two and three foot high ‘steps’ of rock, strewn with boulders, tree trunks and undergrowth which had been caught up creating mini waterfalls and rapids. Maybe when Jo was younger, she’d have tried jumping it and Ulysses was certainly a big enough horse capable of doing it, but sense prevailed. The sound of falling water echoed from one side of the valley to the other, the left side of which was bare moss-covered stone with bright green ferns growing from cracks in the rocks and birds chasing insects at breakneck speed.

Ulysses was becoming disturbed by the noise; Jo calmed him and rode to the shore. There was a steep pathway made by animals and she guessed Mr McAdam when he travelled to town, winding around through oak and chestnut trees. The sun was high and light dappled the undergrowth below the canopy of trees. The path led quite a way away from the creek and the sound of water became distant bringing the noises of the forest to the foreground. It was the quietest she’d been all the journey. From time to time she stopped and listened to the birds and the breeze. Her grandfather 12

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had pointed out the songs of birds when they used to go out together, the Mourning Dove was easy to tell and woodpeckers, the others blended together in a speckled symphony of sound.

Jo led Ulysses through the shaded coolness, then as abruptly as it had begun the path curved back down to the waterside where she stopped, let Ulysses rest and ate some bread, cheese and an apple; refilling her water bottle from a small stream running from high up in the hills towards the creek for the rest of the joiurney. It was just after twelve and her compass indicated that the creek was now flowing almost directly down from the north.

A short distance after the falls a fast flowing stream joined the creek from her left side, tumbling down the rocks, creating a swirling pool, water was more than halfway up Ulysses legs and riding became slow going. Then the valley gradually widened again and the creek quietened, flowing lazily over huge flat stones like some ancient roadway giants had laid down. The creek turned again and about a quarter of a mile away Jo could see woodsmoke rising above the trees. She was able to ride Ulysses unhindered along the grassland beside the creek towards what she supposed was McAdam’s cabin.

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As Jo neared the cabin she couldn’t see anyone, then a large dog began barking and bounded towards her, a tall well-built man with red hair and beard appeared at an opened door, filling the frame.

Jo couldn’t see a gun but guessed one would be close at hand.

The dog circled her and Ulysses about 15 feet away as she rode on. The man gruffly called out “Carson!” and it immediately turned back towards the barn.

The outside of the cabin was tidy and painted with a brown tar to seal it from the weather. The stones making up the chimneybreast were well pointed, the wood tiled roof looked in good condition. McAdam’s cabin stood about thirty feet above and about twenty yards back from where the creek had widened at a curve, creating a deep swimming hole where large smoothly rounded rocks stemmed its flow. Trees arced around a large open space; Jo could see there was a sizeable vegetable patch, a fenced off area with feed and water, next to it was another similar ‘field’ which housed some goats, and she could see more goats grazing on the opposite side of the creek. Behind the cabin was a barn similar in size to the cabin and another smaller newly built building set back some way from the creek’s edge.

As she entered the widening space, she noted three graves on the edge of the property, one grave was bordered by bright yellow daffodils, a flower hardly seen in Kentucky and a pruned rose bush set in the centre of it. The third, plainer grave, was a little away from the other two.

Jo was about thirty yards away from the cabin when the man called out to her.

“Are you lost miss?”

Jo dismounted and led the horse towards him.

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“No, thank you for asking, I have come to see you, you are Mr McAdam?”

“I am, yes I am he” She reached the cabin’s porch and hitched Ulysses onto the rail.

“I’m Miss Jo Summer, a librarian, part of a WPA scheme to lend books to people who live in out of the way places, and well, you are certainly out of the way Mr McAdam. I left some books with Mrs Norris and her children down the valley, they told me you lived up here” “That’s a fine horse you have Miss Summer” “Yes, he’s taken me all over the county, sure footed” “He’d have to be to get up here. I’m surprised you bothered coming, I hardly see anyone from one year to the next. I’ll help you off with that saddle and the bags, give him a rest and let him wander around, it’s certainly a haul up that hill” Jo thought that was a bit more than a hill but didn’t say anything as Mr McAdam easily freed Ulysses of his burden. She couldn’t place the accent, it certainly wasn’t local.

“Come and sit down Miss Summer, you did say ‘Miss’?”

“Yes I did, that’s very kind of you” “Would you like a drink, I made a pot of tea just before Carson heard you” “I’d love one” McAdam went inside and Jo sat on a sturdy chair overlooking the creek and hills. McAdam returned, handing her a huge steaming enamel mug of deep brown tea.

“It’s goats’ milk. You’re not from around here Miss Summer?”

“No, Philadelphia originally” “Quite a way off” “Yes, father moved to Louisville after the Great War when mother died, he was with The Louisville and Nashville. He needed 15

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a change and my aunt lived nearby, but she died soon after we moved. You are not local either Mr McAdam” There was a period of quiet, almost as if he was calculating whether to share information with her.

“I came from Ulster” “Ulster? Is that in Massachusetts?” Jo didn’t recognise the name.

“Great Britain, it’s the north of Ireland, the part that stayed in the Empire” there was a silence again, then McAdam continued.

“After the war, the Boer War, I married a catholic girl and when all the fuss about Home Rule welled up again it wasn’t the best place to live for either of us, so, we headed for America, like so many others over the years and ended up here” Jo thought he spoke like she sometimes did when she hadn’t talked to anyone for a long while; talking too much too quickly and looking downwards.

“Is your wife home?”

Again, there was a silence and McAdam’s eyes searched the creek and distant hills. As they sat she noticed grey streaks of hair amongst the red, especially in his beard, and sad but glinting grey eyes.

“You could say that, yes you could say that. One of those graves you probably saw as you rode in, that’s her, the one next to hers is our boy, Jack. It was the Spanish flu, took them both, I passed it on to them, they just weren’t strong enough” “Oh, Mr McAdam I am so terribly sorry, I didn’t mean…”

“No, no, it’s some time ago now isn’t it” “I remember that time in Philly, there were coffins piled high along the streets, it was terrible, so many died, young and old, it didn’t care” They sat in the shade of the porch, Ulysses slowly wandering around, finding clumps of grass to chew. The watch chimed and she opened it up to check the time.

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“That’s a fine watch” “Yes, grandpa left it me, it’s telling me I must be heading back soon” “Yes, Miss Summer, probably best, it’s nice now, but there’s a storm coming” The sky was clear and blue and Jo said doubtfully “Ooh Mr McAdam surely it’s such a beautiful day” “Well Miss Summer, the Creek’s up somewhat and that usually means it’s raining about twenty miles from here, over in West Virginia, and the breeze is coming that way, look over there how the leaves are turning over” She looked and they were.

“I brought some books, I thought you may want to borrow some”, Jo unbuckled one the saddle bags and spread the books out on the porch.

“I like reading, don’t get that much time for reading at this time of year, usually more in the winter. I’ve a shelf of books Maria brought with her, perhaps if you come again you’d like to look, I’ve read most of them. I hear her voice when I read, she used to read to us aloud, it keeps her alive” Jo had to hold a tear in.

“Oh Mr McAdam that is a lovely thing to say” McAdam looked at the selection she had laid out. He chose a rather tattered volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which pleased Jo as it was by far the heaviest she carried; Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and a well used copy of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The last as surprising as the tea he had served.

“I will be back in three or four weeks, depending on how my other rounds go. Do you like Dickens? We have a great deal of Dickens, a kind donation by a rich admirer of his writing. As you can see some are well worn, the odd page missing, but is there anything you’d like me to bring?”

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“I read a lot of Dickens as a boy, father had bought one of those complete editions and the leather bound books sat pride of place on a shelf in the parlour. I will think which of his I’ve not read and let you know. What’s in the other saddle bag?”

“Oh, that’s mainly religious writing, tales of unlucky people overcoming bad events through prayer, quite popular with some of the people in the valley. I can show you if you wish” “No, no you were right in your estimation of me, I have had enough of religion in my life” “Don’t tell that to anyone in this County Mr McAdam, they’ll be coming up here for you with pitchforks” McAdam gave a chuckle.

“Well there is something you could do for me” McAdam said slowly thinking about his words, “if you could bring me some newspapers, I don’t mean the local ones, The New York Times, Washington Post…”

“The Inquirer? I get that for father whenever I go to visit him in Louisville, he likes news from Philly, there’s a stall in Union Station that sells papers from all over the East Coast, The Dixie Flyer drops them off. They could be a few days old?”

“Doesn’t matter, they have nothing like that in town. Look here, miss, I will buy them”, he went inside and brought a dollar bill, “here, get me as many as you can” Jo took it, “I can buy ten at least with that, I usually go once a month, to check on father; I meant were there any books you’d like, we don’t have that much in stock, but I can look?”

“I will leave it to you” he went inside the cabin and came out with a dark green well-worn waterproof cape, “here, you’ll need this on your journey back” “But I couldn’t possibly”

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“It was Maria’s, it’s no use to me, just hangs on a peg, I used to have two and lent one to another lady travelling by a few years ago who got caught in a storm. You can return it when you come back” Jo thanked him and gathered up the unwanted books, filling the saddlebag. She called Ulysses who slowly walked up. McAdam easily saddled him and made sure the saddlebags were secure.

As she rode away she turned to wave goodbye, but he had left the porch and was in the field with the goats, his broad back to her.

“Ah well… not what I expected, come on Ulysses let’s get on” and a line of poetry was drawn up from the well of her memory, “…who have watched his mould of man, big boned and hardy handsome” (ii), and she smiled as her watch chimed and she realised she had only been there just over an hour. It had felt longer, but not in a bad way.

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As Jo reached the waterfall the wind had risen and clouds scurried overhead replacing what had been blue skies just a short time before. She dismounted and led Ulysses through the woods.

The leaves hissed in the breeze and high above she could see branches bending in the wind and clouds darkening. A steady pitter-patter of rain on leaves became louder and faster. The dusty smell of the woods had changed, it was earthy, clean. Jo unhooked the oilskin cape from the saddle, as she put it on, she told Ulysses that McAdam had been right, he knew this area far better than she did. The cape was quite heavy, and smelt a bit musty, but it was keeping her dry as she trudged along the pathway.

When Jo remounted the cape flowed over Ulysses’ back towards his tail. She followed a rough trail beside the creek which she’d not noticed on the way up and made riding a little easier which for a while, despite the rain, helped her make good time.

The cape was making her sweat and uncomfortable; rain was heavy for the next hour, ‘stair rods’ as her grandfather would have said.

As it cleared away smoke rings of mist hung over the tops of the trees. She dismounted and checked the time, 3.45pm, so at most three hours of good light left. The breeze felt chilly, the rain had taken all the spring warmth from the day. The trail disappeared and Jo tried to ride along the muddying banks as much as possible as the creek had risen quickly in the past hour, which slowed Ulysses down, she could see why McAdam had built the cabin so high up.

The journey was now becoming a trudge, the excitement of seeing new landscapes and the thought of meeting someone new was gone. This was now a case of a race to get home before darkness descended.

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There was a loud cracking noise and Jo found herself half sitting half lying in the water. Dazed, the side of her head and forehead hurt, her knee and the ball of her hand thumped with pain. As her thoughts cleared the realisation set in she’d fallen off Ulysses. She was becoming chilled, her soaking brown twill riding skirt clinging to her and getting heavy. Her hat was floating away and as she fully came to her senses she looked around for Ulysses, he was only a few yards away chewing some grass on the bankside, luckily the saddle and bags still in place. With difficulty Jo pushed herself up to standing and wondered if Ulysses had been frightened by something, then she put her hand to her forehead which was very sore and rubbed off some slivers of bark and blood began to drip into her eyes. Jo looked around and realised she must have hit a branch which reached out over the creek, hidden in the gathering darkness of another storm arriving. She made her way to the bankside.

Jo sat on a boulder; the cold of the wetness in the breeze was making her shiver. She told herself off for not heeding her own advice to carry spare clothes and for not wearing her riding breeches having felt more attractive in a split riding skirt; but she did have a dry blanket and her first aid kit. She took the cape off and most of her clothes, feeling a slight thrill as the cool fresh air enveloped her skin. She wrapped the blanket around her body, and gradually warmed up.

The scrape on her temple stung when she wiped on Rexall and Jo wondered if she needed to bandage her knee which thumped with pain but was not bleeding, and decided not to and let it swell up naturally. Luckily the rain had stopped and it looked like the storm was moving away, but there was no way her clothes would dry properly. However, there was a breeze, and she felt that if she waited half an hour and hung some of the clothes on branches, they would at least be more comfortable for the rest of the journey. The 21

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blanket was drying her skin and under the tick canopy of trees the ground was still fairly dry despite the heavy rain. So she laid the cape down inside out and lay down almost naked except for the blanket to rest. Her knee throbbed and was stiffening, she could see it was beginning to swell, which made it painful and hard to get comfortable.

Jo knew it wasn’t good to sleep after a head injury but couldn’t help drifting in and out until her senses awoke her properly. It was nearly an hour before Jo put her clothes back on, they were still damp but not soaking, she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and put the cape back on.

The bankside rose about five feet above the creek a few yards downstream and with some difficulty Jo led Ulysses to that point and was painfully able to mount him. As she made her journey down the creek each step made her wince with pain. The damp clothes were unpleasant against her skin, but the cape was keeping the chilly late afternoon breeze from freezing her.

Two hours went slowly and agonisingly by, the watch still chimed, luckily it hadn’t got damaged. As she turned a corner in the distance she saw the Norris’s house and wondered whether to take up Susanna’s offer to stay, but decided to continue, as she knew that when she got home she could get warm and have a hot drink. She wasn’t sure if Mrs Norris would be able to offer that, and it really wasn’t fair to ask.

When she reached the rough road it felt like civilisation after the long trek down Magic Mountain Creek.

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After the fall Jo took take two weeks off, her knee had swollen and was stiff, but luckily nothing was broken. Jo’s next visit to the valley was a few weeks later than she had planned, spring had turned to early summer.

She’d dropped off more books for the Norris children as well as some paper and crayons which had been donated to the scheme.

Mrs Norris had taken a motherly interest in her after hearing about her fall, and before she continued Jo had to promise to be careful and be sure to call in if anything like that happened again.

The rushing creek of a few weeks back was now a narrow stream, the County hadn’t seen any rain since Jo’s last journey there. The hills and mountains were a blue green colour as fully leafed trees reflected the clear sky.

Jo made good time to McAdam’s cabin, maybe half an hour quicker than the previous journey even though her knee was painful as Ulysses jogged along. She’d taken the precaution to bring along spare clothes, a towel and this time sensibly wore her riding breeches, tough olive green ex-army ones, and replenished her first-aid kit with even more items. She had the cape with her to return, she’d be sorry to see it go, it had saved her from getting a bad chill.

As Jo rounded the bend she could see McAdam working on his roof replacing a shingle. Like before Carson heard her and stood barking from the porch then as she neared, he circled at a good distance around her, guiding her in like a sheep dog rounding up a flock. McAdam looked around and shouted something Jo couldn’t make out and Carson disappeared towards the barn.

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They arrived at the porch at about the same time, McAdam wore well worn overalls with tools in the pockets, a large knife attached to his belt.

“Miss Summer, welcome, I didn’t think you’d be coming again after your fall” “News travels Mr McAdam, I hadn’t realised anyone knew” “Oh not much happens on the creek that Thompson at the store doesn’t hear about” “You went to town?”

“Yes I did, I had some skins to deliver and sold one of the mules, I don’t need two all the time, uses up too much feed. I called in Thompson’s for supplies, he knew every detail and probably more than there really were, you were quite the talking point Miss Summer” “Was I really”, Jo wasn’t sure if she wanted to be the subject of gossip.

McAdam helped her down as she dismounted with some stiffness and she felt a neglected thrill as his large hands securely gripped her round her slim waist. Jo thanked him then unhitched the bulging saddlebags. McAdam removed the saddle so Ulysses could roam around.

McAdam went in the cabin and a few minutes later brought Jo a steaming mug of tea. In the meantime Jo had emptied one of the saddlebags, and handed McAdam a pile of newspapers and magazines.

Pointing to the magazines she explained, “…I got these in a thrift store, near Union Station, there’s some New Yorkers, Colliers and Saturday Evening Posts, Time oh and a National Geographic, there’s a good pile, most seem to be from a couple of years ago” “That doesn’t matter Miss Summer, time stays still up here… mostly” McAdam said as he sorted through them, “…oh you got a few copies of the Times and Post. No Inquirer?”

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“No, father was most disappointed, for some reason none were at the station, there are a couple of Chicago Tribunes, which are not usually on sale, it’s a good paper” “Yes, well thank you, they must have been a considerable burden bringing them all this way, do I owe you anything?”

“No, no Mr McAdam, the magazines were good reading as I recuperated, the shop only wanted a quarter for all of those, good value I think,” “Absolutely yes, oh yes” As they sat and Jo drank her tea, McAdam scanned the front page of the most recent Washington Post.

“Things are not good in Germany, not at all” he was semi talking to himself.

“Sorry what did you say Mr McAdam?”

“Sorry, habit of living alone. I was just musing to myself about Germany, this man Hitler, he’ll need stopping sometime, they didn’t finish it off properly in eighteen. And from this article I see he has quite a bit of support over here, one talking about a rally of Germans and Irish in support of him in Boston. Calls himself a National Socialist, it doesn’t much sound like socialism to me” “I’ve not been following things from Europe Mr McAdam, there are so many problems just here in the valley, so much hardship, and it all seems so far away” “That’s what they said about the Great War, ach but I can see you have your hands full with what you do” “Yes, it feels like that, I am trying to make up for the time I had off, it was my knee, the swelling made it hard to walk never mind riding; the rest was mainly a bit of bruising and scrapes as much to my self-esteem as my body, I’d not fallen off a horse since I was a girl. I think the couple of weeks off did me good”

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“At the store they said you nearly drowned and Ulysses bolted all the way down the valley galloping at full speed right past the store” “No, I didn’t see a branch, that’s all, I landed in the water and got soaked, certainly not drowned, and Ulysses was standing right next to me, I rode him all the way back home, which was painful.

He’s a good horse Mr McAdam” He chuckled, it was the second time Jo had heard him laugh, and she did too.

“The things they come up with eh?” he said.

“Yes, the things they come up with” The watch chimed.

“Ah, your grandfather’s watch survived the soaking it did” “It will probably outlive me” “Something to hand on to your grandchildren and some adventures to tell eh” “Do you want to look at the books I have brought you” Jo unbuckled the other saddlebag and placed them on the table.

There were a couple of detective novels; a well-thumbed horticultural manual; a battered copy of Bleak House; a big leather bound history of the USA published in the 1890’s.

“I couldn’t find many more suitable for you Mr McAdam” McAdam wasn’t listening and was immersed in an old copy of The New Yorker. He passed it over to Jo. “Look at this, could you get me that book if possible?”

He handed the magazine to Jo, it was an appreciation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which Jo had never heard of.

“I’m not sure we’ll have it in the library, our stock is rather limited. Looks interesting, I’ve never heard of Thomas Mann, ah, I see he is German. Have you read many German authors?”

“Only one called Fontane, I read a book about his travels in Scotland when I was in South Africa, Captain Winstanley passed it 26

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on to me as he knew I liked reading, there wasn’t much else to read out on the Veldt” More surprises for Jo, she had never heard of Fontane either.

“South Africa?”

“Yes, The Boer War, I was in the Royal Engineers, mainly mending railway bridges after the Boers had blown them up, or building camps for the locals to be kept in, stopping them from helping the Boer fighters, not very pleasant work but orders were orders” Jo nodded as if she understood, but had very little idea what The Boer War was, it too had seemed very distant in Philadelphia.

Jo knew her father would know and it would be something to talk about when she visited him next.

“If it’s not in the library I could probably order it from the bookseller my father goes to when I go to Louisville if you’d like me to, he carries many good quality second-hand editions.”

McAdam looked at the article.

“That would be very kind of you. It’s four dollars Miss Summer, I’ll give you the money” As McAdam stood up Jo intervened, “No, don’t worry, you can pay me back when I bring it” “Four dollars is an awful lot of money for a book, I’m sure your salary doesn’t stretch to that sort of expenditure” “Don’t worry Mr McAdam, I have savings, and I can’t be certain when I will be back up here, it just may be a bit longer than before, I have even more homes to cover now” “Well thank you, it does look interesting I must say. Now what have you brought me today?”

He chose Bleak House.

“I’ll just take the Dickens this time, what with all those magazines to read. That Faulkner was wonderful, boy he knows how to write, I had to keep putting it away or wouldn’t have got 27

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work done, lots to do at this time of year to survive the winter, but the Gibbon was hard going I didn’t get very far with it. Can I keep the Whitman for a while, I like how he writes, it’s real, he knows his landscape” “Of course, the Faulkner was one of the books Mrs Roosevelt donated to us. I think we have more Whitman in stock, I’ll bring some for you”, she took out a small leather notebook and wrote some notes in pencil, “what was that book called, The Magic Mountain?”

“Yes, by Thomas Mann, with two n’s, it’s in two volumes, well the edition mentioned here is, the article is a few years old, so maybe there’s a single volume one which may be cheaper” “I will ask Mr McAdam” McAdam went and got another mug of tea and a thick slice of bread thickly spread with dark red jam.

“I’m sorry Miss Summer, I have no butter at the moment, the goats are not making much milk” “Ah thank you, that is kind of you” Jo noticed some goat skins hanging on wooden frames, their beautiful markings and colours glowing in the sun. They didn’t talk as they both ate and drank. When she’d finished Jo gathered the books together, packed and buckled up the saddlebags.

“I must go soon Mr McAdam and I will try and come again in a few weeks time” McAdam rounded up Ulysses and prepared him for her return journey.

“Oh, I must return the cape, it saved my life, well not literally but I don’t know what I’d have done without it” Jo said, opening another bag.

McAdam thought for a few moments.

“No, Miss Summer, you keep it, it would never fit me, it’ll just hang there, it’s more use to you” 28

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“Well if you are sure, it was most useful” “Of course, I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it” he stopped abruptly, “sorry, being on my own, I forget my manners” “No matter, not at all Mr McAdam, I know how it gets when you’re on your own with no-one but yourself to listen” Jo mounted the horse and began the journey back down the creek. She turned around to see McAdam climbing a ladder to continue working the roof and smiled, speaking a couple of lines to Ulysses that came to mind: “Best Things dwell out of Sight The Pearl—the Just—Our Thought” (iii)

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The Norris’s cabin was spare, only the bare necessities. Jo had been asked inside as Mrs Norris wanted to discuss a private matter with her.

Ruth and Joshua were sitting outside on the porch reading the books Jo had brought them The Secret of the Old Clock and The Story of Doctor Doolittle.

Mrs Norris dusted around a bit, tidied some clothes into a drawer, then turned to Jo. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything, it doesn’t seem very friendly, but I can’t, I have nothing” “No matter Mrs Norris, what is it you wanted to tell me?”

“Miss Summer, I am not sure who to tell, I am not sure I can trust anyone in the Valley” “Well, Mrs Norris you can trust me, I will not disclose anything” “Miss Summer, I haven’t heard from Nate, Mr Norris, for nearly four months and we have run out of food. I haven’t eaten properly for six days, but I’m used to that, the children have eaten what little was left, and now we have no money. Joshua’s been a good lad, caught a few fish and a rabbit, but they’re scarce now, everyone else is out trying, he got chased by some older boys who took a squirrel off him, and nothing grows in that yard, nothing” Jo and the other librarians had been warned by Mr Fisher, not to lend or give money to any of the families. During a long oration, he made his feelings known in no uncertain terms that the people they were dealing with were all ‘immoral wastrels’.

“Oh, Mrs Norris, what are you going to do?”

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“I don’t know, I really don’t know” there was a pause, “well I hope you won’t feel ill of me or think I have sinned, but I went to see Madam DeRosa, she lends money sometimes” “Madam DeRosa?”

“She runs a house that gentlemen use, the whorehouse in Pikeville on the Dixey Road, I’m sure you wouldn’t know about it” “I’ve heard about it, oh yes I certainly have, I just hadn’t heard that name” “She wouldn’t lend me money there and then, but said I was still good looking and fairly young, and if I went to live at her house she’d see I put some weight back on, then I could work there, meeting gentlemen. If I agreed she would give me some money, and in a few months told me I would make more than enough to pay her back. She also asked if Ruth…”

“Oh Mrs Norris!” Jo intervened.

“See! I knew you would be shocked and think bad of me, it was a sin to even think of it” “No, no not at all, it is no sin to want to feed your children, but Ruth, she’s a child” “I didn’t know where else to go, no one has money here, I haven’t any family in these parts, no family at all really, not that are any use anyways, I am at a loss, I can’t let Ruth go there even though I was younger than her when I first went with a man, a friend of my father’s” “You certainly can’t, absolutely not” There was a short silence as Mrs Norris looked out at the children through the dirty window.

“Now then Mrs Norris, I will go to the store and buy you enough food for a week and leave some money with Mr Thompson for you to get more” “I already owe him” 31

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“How much?”

“Two dollars and a quarter” “I will sort that out with Mr Thompson, I’ve found he’s a fair man, he won’t refuse me and when Mr Norris writes, as I am sure he will very soon, you can return the money to me, let’s call it a loan, pay a bit each time I come, now you need just about everything don’t you” “Oh Miss Summer” and she began to cry and hugged Jo, who didn’t really know what to do.

“Ruth can come with me, help me carry things, and when I get back, I will read you one of the leaflets I carry about how the State can help you” “But I don’t want Ruth and Josh taken away” “They won’t do that, not if I help you, but they may well do if you go to Madam DeRosa’s” As Jo and Ruth rode to the store Jo knew she really shouldn’t be doing this, and also that the time had passed when she could ride up to Mr McAdams’ and back that day. She would have to tell Mr Thompson to keep this quiet or the whole valley would be asking her for money. Jo wondered how many other women Madam DeRosa had persuaded and felt glad she had both an education and means of her own.

Ruth was full of talk about books and characters, especially Amy in Little Women and wanted to read Good Wives which had been advertised on the back cover. Jo told her she’d try and get it for her.

Jo paid off Mrs Norris’s debt at the store, Mr Thompson solemnly promised not to tell anyone, Jo wondered if he could be trusted. She bought enough basic food and dry goods for a week and added a few sweets for the children.

Jo let Ruth ride Ulysses back home.

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After Mrs Norris had put away the food and profusely and tearfully thanked Jo, they sat down, for what Mrs Norris said was the first coffee she’d drunk in three months.

“Miss Summer you said that there was proper help available” Jo took out a folder full of leaflets from the County.

“In one of these leaflets it explains how you can get help, there’s State Aid as well as local support. It looks like there will be even more coming next year from the Federal Government. Sometimes they want you to do some work for the County, it usually isn’t much, perhaps helping look after old people or cleaning at a public building; and there’s also a group of church charities who help out” “But isn’t that meant for widows? And there is still the poorhouse where they can send us, they’d take Ruth and Josh away, I can’t live like that. They will see I am married. I don’t even know if I am a widow or if Nate has deserted me for another woman, or there’s just no-one to write the envelopes for him, or maybe they are stealing the money before sending it” “Mrs Norris” “No, no, they will expect Nate to support me, they believe that is the role of a husband, and it is and he isn’t. They’ll think it’s my fault, that I’m not a good mother, a good wife, you don’t know what these people are like, they judge you because you’re poor, one came round once from the church about the clothes they were wearing for school” “I can help you, I can support you until you are back on your feet. I will come back in a week and will bring the forms and help you complete them, then I will go with you to the County and speak up for you, I have met Mrs Langley at the County office, she is not like that, she’s a good woman.”

“Miss Summer, you are so kind, but you don’t understand, you see my poverty, and the poverty up and down the valley. You see 33

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it but you don’t live it. Living it, it grinds me down, every day I have to think about how my children will eat, if they will eat at all, not just the odd day, but every day. There are many nights I go to sleep hoping none of us will wake up in the morning. That is wrong isn’t it. And when I have to face these people, in their fancy clothes, with nice houses, the best seats in church; they judge me, think I am a spendthrift, not a decent person, maybe that I should never have had the children if I can’t afford to keep them, you can shake your head, but they will” Jo couldn’t answer, Mrs Norris was not able to understand her, or Jo realised maybe it was the other way around.

“Mrs Norris, I will see you next week, and remember Mr Thompson has given me credit for you, just go and get what you need and I will sort it out. If you have any problem with him, I will deal with it when I come back” Mrs Norris nodded and couldn’t really speak properly. Jo put her arms around her and told her to stay strong, then mounted Ulysses and rode back down the valley.

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Two days later Jo passed the Norris house without stopping.

The house was quiet, a straight waft of smoke coming from the chimney in the stillness. It was early, only 5.30a.m., she was on her way to McAdam’s cabin.

Every half hour she would ride then dismount and lead Ulysses for half an hour. The valley was in deep morning shadow, trees high up on the hill tops were catching the sun like a golden crown. It hadn’t rained and Magic Mountain Creek was a trickle and made travel easier.

After two hours she stopped, the valley was wider here and the grass a lush green. More trees had been felled even this far up, she couldn’t blame people, coal was a tremendous price even though they mined it just twenty miles away. She took the saddlebags off and let Ulysses wander around, then sat on a tree stump. She’d recently bought a thermos flask and was able to have a hot drink of coffee and from a tin box took out a substantial flapjack she’d made, baking wasn’t one of her best skills and this took some chewing.

Jo got out the cased two volumes of The Magic Mountain from her saddle bag. She was intrigued by why McAdam had requested the book, maybe it was just the name association with the creek, but maybe more. She began reading Volume One. At first she found the style dense, but the writing had such insight, such care over how each character spoke and thought. Jo was quickly drawn into the snow-covered Alps and the collection of remarkable characters from all over old Europe, who had such wonderfully exotic names.

The watch chimed and she realised she had been reading for an hour and a half. Ulysses was wandering around close to her, she stood and went to pat him telling him he was such a faithful horse.

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As she continued with her journey, her mind was trying to work out how the book would develop, whether Hans Castorp would ever leave the top of the mountain, which made her wonder if she would ever leave these hills and mountains.

Jo didn’t think she’d read anything so complex even at college, The Magic Mountain was at times more like philosophy than a novel. She wondered what else Mann had written and what he was doing now, he was alive somewhere on the planet, maybe writing at this moment. It made her realise the limitations of her time at Bryn Mawr College, she could quote acres of Shakespeare, learnt many poems off by heart, studied novels by Dickens, Twain, Elliot, Bronte’s, Melville, Thackery, Hawthorne and Henry James, but not many contemporary writers except for Edith Wharton, who she still read and had recently finished Hudson River Bracketed. She wanted to stop and continue reading, and decided she would ask McAdam if she could borrow the book when he had finished reading it, a sort of roles reversed, which made her laugh a little and she hurried Ulysses onwards.

When she’d mentioned The Magic Mountain at the Librarians meeting, Mr Fisher had stopped her in her tracks, and told the librarians in no uncertain terms that Thomas Mann was not suitable reading, that his ideas were dangerous possibly even degenerate, that Mann had been censured in his own country, in fact his works were banned. The whole room had turned to look at Jo and she stoically refused to blush.

As she neared McAdam’s cabin the surrounding hills were crowned with grey rain clouds and a chill wind began blowing in from the north.

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Carson was barking his greeting and was loping round them as she rode in. McAdam came out and with his usual gruff order sent Carson to the barn, Jo reached the porch just as the clouds burst.

“Oh Miss Summer, come in, come in quickly you’ll be soaked.

I’ll deal with Ulysses” She dismounted and before she could thank him, he ran with Ulysses to the barn. She waited on the porch and McAdam returned with the saddlebags, as rolls of thunder filled the air.

“Come in Miss Summer, please” She followed McAdam into the cabin.

The cabin was a bit dusty and utilitarian, and even though it had been fifteen years since she died there were signs of Maria photographs, ornaments, faded curtains and cushions, the fragments of a previous life. The ‘shelf of books’ was actually a bookcase with three shelves, absolutely crammed, with some books laid on top of others; quite a collection. No bible, but she noted Karl Marx who she’d been told was another ‘wrong’un’ by Mr Fisher, and ‘to note down the names of anyone who asks for his books’.

“Your wife was an avid reader Mr McAdam” “Yes she liked her books, always trying to get me to read even more, some of those were Jack’s, he read well for a nine year old.

I’ll make some tea Miss Summer, this storm will be going on for some time, we’ve not had rain for weeks, would you like some bread and jam, I make the bread as well, soda bread, well it would be coming from Ulster” Was there anything Mr McAdam couldn’t do she thought, her father was quite useless in the home, knew how to organise a busy 37

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railroad, but couldn’t make a decent coffee, he’d spent a lifetime surrounded by devoted women to look after him.

“Thank you Mr McAdam, that is very kind of you, your tea is delicious” “It’s Barry’s, I order it twice a year, comes in through Baltimore, imported all the way from Cork, it’s one of my biggest expenses. My father sells the best blends in Belfast, so I got a taste for tea. I prefer Bewley’s, that’s what the protestants drink, but seems impossible to get hold of here” “Well it’s worth it Mr McAdam” While he was making the tea she pulled Capital from the bookshelf and thumbed through, it seemed dense and technical, his wife must have been a clever woman to get through it she thought.

They sat at a table with twist legs, it needed properly polishing, not dirty but almost white from scrubbing. The rain was lashing at the door and windows, beating against the roof, Jo couldn’t hear or see any drips.

“You seem to have done a good job on the roof Mr McAdam, you were mending the roof last time I came” “It’s important to be dry Miss Summer” “I have that book for you, The Magic Mountain” “Ah, Miss Summer, that is so kind of you, how much do I owe you?”

“Two dollars, it is second hand, but it’s as good as new, it really is. Perhaps when you have read it I can borrow it, I hope you don’t mind but when I stopped on the way here I read some of it” “Not at all and of course Miss Summer, of course, how did you find it? Maybe when we’ve both read it we can discuss it, it’s good to get someone else’s opinion I always think” “Intriguing, I have never read anything like it. My Supervisor said it was not suitable material to lend, but then I doubt he has read it. He said it was banned in Germany” 38

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“Yes, a lot of books are. A Jewish writer. They’ve been burning books they don’t like” “That makes no sense, books make people think” “I know but they are making no sense in Germany and many other places, even here in America Miss Summer, even here. They were burning books in Alabama not long ago” “But Mr Roosevelt, he is changing things, giving people hope.

Why, next year there is going to be proper support for people like Mrs Norris down the valley” “Yes, but for how long, that’s what worries me, how long before the thieves are back in charge and changing everything to their advantage” McAdam picked up the case with the two volumes enclosed.

He pulled one out looked at the cover illustration of the snowcovered mountain and the sanatorium nestling in the valley. It was as if he were weighing them in his hands.

“Even second-hand it’s a lot to pay for a book Mr McAdam, I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than a dollar, and that was for a Complete Shakespeare” “It is Miss Summer, but sometimes for greatness you have to pay” “Yes I suppose so, that’s a good way to put it Mr McAdam, I’d never thought of things like that. What made you want it after seeing that New Yorker article?”

“Well, just from the description I could see that Mr Mann was exploring new ways of thinking by showing how the old Europe was breaking down, becoming pleased with itself, looking in at itself, unable to move forward, society festering like the disease the patients were suffering with in the clinic. It seems that the metaphor of being able to breathe only at the high level will show how cruel the system was and is. If they came down to reality they would die. It looks a lot of reading Miss Summer, it certainly does” 39

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“And do you think a similar book could be written about America, say based in Colorado, where I believe there are similar sanatoria” “I am sure it could be, especially when Hoover and all his cronies were in power and got us into all this mess!”

“You sound angry Mr McAdam” “I am yes I am, they just let things go along without proper intervention and look now at the valley, people have died in their thousands because of Hoover sitting back and doing nothing, nothing at all, just raking in the profits for his friends and backers.

Roosevelt has a big job on his hands and a lot of people will try to block him, he will never get through much of what he’s planned, let’s just hope it will be enough” “You sound like father” “Well, any right-thinking person would see the same, and you Miss Summer, I hope I haven’t shocked you?”

“Oh I wholeheartedly agree with you Mr McAdam, yes I do. I see it every day, all I can do is take books to these poor families who’ve lost everything, then when I’m back home in Philly I see the people even in my own family wasting food and money, saying the poor bring it on themselves and criticising Mr Roosevelt for spending their taxes and making people’s lives decent” Mr McAdam put his hand out, Jo wasn’t sure at first why, then realised it was to shake it, they shook hands. His huge hand could have fitted four of hers in it. She thought that may be the first woman’s hand he has touched since his wife died, but with that glint he had in his eye, she guessed maybe not. Odd thing to think she thought and turned away fussing about with some more things in one of the saddle bags.

“I’ve brought you some more magazines and newspapers Mr McAdam, and some books to look through if you want. There’s an 40

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article in one of The Atlantics about William Faulkner, very interesting” “Thank you, I will pay you for them” “No, no Mr McAdam, I have had them a few weeks and read them, the magazines were from a friend of my father’s, he was only too happy to let you have them” “You have talked your father about me?”

“Well yes, he likes to know how I get on, it’s something to talk about, he told me all about Ulster, what he knew anyway. I really had no idea, I thought all of Ireland was one and the same” “Ah, I think only when you’ve lived there, then get away, as I did in the Engineers, do you really see it for what it is” “What do you mean?”

“Well Miss Summer, as a child we never met Catholics, there were three families at one end of the street and we never played with them, they went to a different school, a bit like the negroes here. In church we were told about the evils that papists performed. Then, when I joined the army it didn’t matter, in the Royal Engineers, ‘The Flying Bricklayers’ as the others called us, there were Catholic lads, a couple of Jews, some Zulus and a few Hindus and Muslims from Indian regiments seconded to us. No one gave a damn, we watched each others backs, kept each other alive.

“When I got back from South Africa I was injured in a training session and got sent to a hospital in London. One of the nurses had a Belfast accent, however hard she tried to hide it; that was Maria, she recognised my accent and we’d talk late into the night when she was on duty about home, and found we had very different ‘homes’; after I was released and left the army, we walked out and well in a few months we were married, we didn’t tell the families.

She was a Catholic, in London it didn’t matter, no-one cared. They cared more about us being Irish, that hurt me as I had served the Empire, had medals and even scars for it. Look” McAdam rolled 41

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his left trouser leg up, a deep scar warped the shape of his leg, “…that’s where I was hit by a Boer sniper. I got him though, even with this bleeding all over the place. I’m a good shot, wanted to be a sniper myself, but when you’re my size it’s hard to hide.

“Anyway, Maria wanted to be near her family, Jack was on the way so we moved back to Belfast, and that’s when trouble started.

Bricks got thrown at the windows, Maria got spat at, they’d never dare do anything like that to me or when she was with me, but things got bad, so we decided to move here just after Jack was born” “I never knew Mr McAdam, father said there was tension between religions, but that’s awful, and your wife’s interest in Marx?”

“Well when we were in Stepney, that’s in London, east London, where wer lived when we were first married, it’s a rundown poor area, but somewhere we could afford to live. We heard lots of speeches on street corners and got interested in the Labour Party and socialism” pointing to Capital “…she picked that up in a shop second hand as a lot of people talked about Karl Marx.

I don’t think either of us really had the learning to fully understand it, she much preferred reading William Morris and his ideas. What we liked was the inclusivity of the politics, the meetings were attended by all sorts of people and both she and I were made to feel equals, even though we were Irish” “I don’t really know William Morris either I’m afraid, I’ve heard the name. I will look him up, though Mr Fisher probably won’t approve. It sounds like you had found a home Mr McAdam, why didn’t you just go back to live in London, why America, it’s another world away from home?”

“Maybe that was it Miss Summer, maybe that was it, a new start, new people, isn’t that why all the others came here?”

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“When everything goes against you, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time the tide will turn…”

“That’s very profound Miss Summer…”

“Oh it’s not me, Mr McAdam, I am not that eloquent, no, my mother used to say it when things weren’t going well for us; Harriet Beecher Stowe, from I think her book Old Town Folks, which was a favourite of hers’, she was a forward thinking woman” “Your mother?”

“Well both of them. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin and lots of other abolitionist books” “You don’t mind me asking Miss Summer, but you talk of your mother in past tense” “Yes, she passed away when I was twenty-three, and that’s when father moved here, he couldn’t stand seeing the places they’d been so happy together. I had just finished at Bryn Mawr” “Bryn Mawr?”

“A women’s college in Philadelphia. As my sisters were married, I came with father, I think they thought I would stay at home and look after him, but he knew mother wished me to be independent, and Bryn Mawr taught us independence; so he encouraged me to live my own life. I was thinking of being a teacher, but a position came up in Frankfort at the State Library, so, here I am, nearly twelve years later sharing books with all these poor folks” “I think Maria would have liked to meet you Miss Summer” “And I think I’d have liked to meet Maria Mr McAdam, but I have met her books and that always gives a good idea about a person, it really does” She pulled out The Mill on the Floss, opened it to a page bookmarked with a fading blue ink handwritten note which read ‘remember this’. Jo scanned the pages quickly and wasn’t sure what she was looking for.

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“Maria didn’t like writing on the text” McAdam pointed out.

“Nor do I Mr McAdam, annoys me greatly, at college great chunks of text were underlined or notated by former students, always got me mad. You know George Eliot was a woman, Mary Ann Evans” and almost whispering to herself “…In their death, they were not divided” as she saw another note in the page, it just read, ‘Alfred’.

“Yes, Maria told me. I’ve read that one, it was the last book she read, it was at her bedside when she passed away” Jo returned the book to the shelf and with her finger scanned along the collection. She stopped and walked to the window, it had ceased raining, the sun was cutting through silver edged dark clouds. The rain was moving eastwards. She could see the creek had risen and everywhere looked fresh and clean, she opened the door and took in a deep breath of rain soaked leaves, pines, grass.

Her watch chimed. She thought she had been there hours but it had been less than two hours, the dark clouds, the talking and beating rain had created a sort of time vacuum.

“You know Mr McAdam I see what you mean when you said last time about time standing still here. I must go or I’ll never get down the valley before dark” McAdam went and fetched Ulysses who seemed ready to go and saddled him. Jo got the saddlebags prepared.

“I quite forgot, did you want to borrow another book?”

“I haven’t had time to read all of Bleak House yet, it gets quite busy at this time of year, what with the goats and preparing the skins. Here” he handed her the thermos flask, “I’ve filled it with tea for the journey back, careful of the banks, with all that rain after the dryness they’ll be muddy and can break up, we don’t want you falling off again” Jo mounted Ulysses.

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“I will take care Mr McAdam, and thank you for looking after me so kindly, it’s nice to talk” “Yes, it gets kind of quiet up here” “My life is not much better Mr McAdam, I will see you in a few weeks” And with that she set off south westwards, then stopped.

“Mr McAdam” she called, he turned toward her, “have you ever read Thoreau? Walden?”

“No, no, I’ve read about it, not read it” “Good, I’ll bring a copy next time, you may like it” He turned round the corner of the house towards the barn.

“Never says a goodbye” she murmured to Ulysses.

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“Mr Thompson says you haven’t been to the shop for any extras” “No, I didn’t like to” “Well Mrs Norris that’s why I set up the credit with him, I really don’t mind. Have you heard anything yet from Mr Norris?”

“No, nothing. I’m fearing he’s dead, d’you think I should go to Cleveland see if I can find him?”

“Cleveland’s an awfully big city to find someone, did he ever give you an address where he’s staying?”

Mrs Norris got a battered tin box from under her bed and took out some letters.

“Here Miss Summer, Ruthy says one of them is written on headed paper, whatever that is” Jo looked through the letters which weren’t really letters, just sheets of paper to hold banknotes with a short note. Most seemed to be written in the same handwriting and just said ‘so many dollars from Mr Nathaniel Norris for Mrs Susanna Norris’ and a date. The largest amount was $25. As Ruth had pointed out one was written on the headed paper of a boarding house.

“If you would like me to I will write to the boarding house and see if they know anything of his whereabouts, he may have given a forwarding address, or let's hope, he’s still staying there, pity there’s no telephone number”, Jo skimmed through the pages again and almost speaking to herself “the man who wrote these, he doesn’t sign them, no name anywhere…”

“I don’t know Miss Summer, perhaps I should just go and look” “Let’s try this first. You said he was involved in forming a union here?”

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“Yes, and terrible trouble that brought us, he was lucky to be alive after they brought in those Pinkertons and the National Guard” “Well, if he is involved in Cleveland” “I got him to promise he wouldn’t, but I doubt he took any notice” “If he’s in a union, they may know him, I will write to some of them and see. You know that since Mr Roosevelt was elected things have got a lot better for the unions” Mrs Norris opened an almost empty cupboard.

“Could you live like this Miss Summer living on handouts? No, please” Jo tried to say something. “You have a job, you’re obviously well educated, and from what you wear I guess you come from a family who have a bit of money so maybe have a bit of extra income, you don’t have children. People don’t look at you and think you have failed to be a proper mother because your children are hungry and because your husband has gone, a proper wife” Jo sat and couldn’t answer, she was shaking her head, trying to think of something to say.

“You are very kind Miss Summer, very kind, no-one has ever helped me ever like you have, but I can’t live on what you hand out and maybe what the County and State hands out, or go to some church for charity. You know, we’re from Mason County, Nate’s family’s been there generations, he’s the last one on his side, we moved here with his brother a few years ago and they had good jobs at the mine. He brought money in, not fortunes, but enough, enough for us to go to town to the movie theatre each week, how we loved that, enough to feed and clothe the children properly, sometimes go to a diner. Then the company started cutting back, you either took lower wages or were canned, he took it for a year and then it got too much, we were borrowing just to buy food, we lost our house and went from shack to shack, each time worse, 47

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ending up here in this place. The company blacklisted him for union organising, brought in Pinkertons. They shot my brother-in-law dead during a strike, Nate took one in the arm, no doctor would treat him for fear of losing company contracts, I had to deal with it. You just don’t know Miss Summer, you don’t know” Jo stood and went to the door.

“I can try Mrs Norris” “Why Miss Summer? Why are you helping us, there must be hundreds maybe thousands of families like us on your rounds. Do you get a good feeling from helping those less fortunate?” Mrs Norris realised how it sounded, “I’m sorry I didn’t mean it like that, I sound ungrateful” “No, no you are right. I just felt, well, at least I could help someone, at least one” Jo left the house and mounted Ulysses.

Ruth and Joshua lifted their heads from reading, smiled and watched her, Jo waved at them as she rode away, they both lifted a hand in acknowledgement and went back to reading.

Jo felt like it may be the last time she’d see them.

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Two weeks later Jo was sitting on Ulysses outside the Norris’ home. It was quiet, but there was a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney. Mrs Norris came to the door.

“Ruthy and Josh aren’t here Miss Summer, the County found them somewhere else to live” “I don’t understand, why?”

“They found out that Nathaniel wasn’t living here and the landlord has told me I can’t live here without some sort of income” “But they can’t do that, they can’t just take your children away” “It appears they can, I have, they say, been deserted, look”, she went into the house and brought out a piece of paper, handed it to Jo. It was an officially headed order from the County saying she had a week to let them know what her income was and until then the children would be taken away for their own safety.

“Ruthy read it to me before they took her, I’m just packing a few things up and I’m off, I’m going to see Madam DeRosa, I need money to get to Cleveland and find Nathaniel” “Mrs Norris, I can help you. I wrote to the address you gave me and to a couple of the unions, I’ve not heard anything back yet” “No, no Miss Summer I have to do this, even if it means well.

At least Ruthy and Josh are safe in good hands, it’s up to me now to get this sorted” “But… but Mrs Norris I can give you some money, and you know if the County find you are working there, well they could take them away permanently you know, people talk, you know that” 49

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“Yes, yes I know that only too well and if so, well, maybe they’d be better off, this is no life is it? At least they will be fed” There was a silence between them, she went back inside the house and brought two books out and handed them to Jo. “Here, Ruth told me that it was important to make sure you got these” With that she returned inside.

Jo could see there was a letter inside one of them.

“Mrs Norris!” Jo called out “I will come back in a couple of days and bring you some money, I promise, I will, please just wait a couple of days” There was no response and Jo rode away.

There was nothing more she could do.

Dear Miss Summer, Joshua Norris drew this picture of you on Ulysses, he gave you a flowery hat which I think is very funny and not like you at all. Thank you for all the books you brought we have both enjoyed them very much. I think Little Women was my favourite, I read it three times, it would be lovely to think Dad was coming home like Mr March did.

Mom showed me the letter from the County, I read it out to her and from what I can understand it seems we have to go to a County Children’s Home run by one of the churches in Pikeville for a whiles. I hope you deliver books there. Mom says she will go away for a little while and look for Dad then come and get us as life will be better in Cleveland as there is still some work there. I will miss the valley and playing in the woods. She has told us to behave ourselves as they are very strict and that they may say things about her that are not true. I will always love Mom whatever they say. Yours faithfully, Miss Ruth Heather Norris 50

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Jo put the letter in her bag and looked at the drawing Joshua had done. A huge yellow sun shone on a crudely drawn out figure sitting on a brown horse holding a pile of books in her hands; there was a green line with bright flowers growing, and as Ruth had said she was wearing a bright flower covered hat. She folded the drawing and placed it next to the letter.

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It was late summer before Jo could get to the far end of the valley again. On her way she called at Thompson’s Store.

“No, not seen any of them Miss Summer, they’re in Pikeville.

I’ve been told she’s working” and he laughed to himself knowingly, “a new family are living up there now, moved in” Thompson looked at two men sitting drinking a beer in the corner, one turned to Jo. “’bout end of July, yep, end of July, we dropped off some furniture on the mules for ‘em” he said.

“Pay their bills too not like some round here!” and Thompson laughed in the direction of the two men and one of them threw an apple core at him.

“I’ll take a quarter of Candy Corn Mr Thompson, it’s nice to have something sweet when I’m riding, d’you know the names of the new residents?”

“Something German I think, certainly not from round here, don’t think she speaks English, three small children, I know he works at the mine, see him most days on his way to work, ah I have something for you” Thompson stopped weighing out the candies and went to the back of the shop, “the Post came up from Pikeville and left this letter for Mrs Norris as they got no reply at the cabin, maybe you could drop it back off in Pikeville or pass it on if you know where she is?”

Jo guessed where and took it as he laughed to himself again and paid for the candy.

As she rode she mulled over whether to read the letter, it was postmarked Erie, so maybe Nate Norris had got work further along the lake. When she reached the former Norris’ cabin there was smoke coming from the chimney, some hens were running round and she could hear small children’s playful voices. She pulled 52

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Ulysses up at the gate. A solid young woman came out of the house and three small children ran to her and were hanging on to her gleaming white apron. Jo noticed how organised the yard was and how well kept it looked. There was a long washing line of white sheets and mainly blue clothes blowing in the breeze.

“Kann ich Ihnen mit irgendwas helfen?” she said, then shaking her head and lifting a hand to stop herself “may I… err help you Fräulein?”

“I am a librarian” the woman looked lost at what Jo said, so she took a book from one of the saddlebags and held it aloft “I bring books for you to borrow and read”, Jo thought deeply she had done a little German at school and that was a long while ago, “Ich bin Bibliothekar” “Ah! Gut, ya ya” the woman smiled.

Jo dismounted. She knew she had some picture books for the small children and took them out of the saddlebag. She tried to hand them over, but they were too shy to take them, the woman took them.

Jo slowly said “Ich habe keine Bücher auf Deutsch” The woman laughed at her accent and corrected the way she said ‘keine Bücher’, “Wollten Sie etwas zu trinken, bevor Sie gehen” Jo was now lost. The woman went and got a glass of water and Jo accepted it, thanking her and tried to tell her she’d be back, but it all got a bit lost.

She continued on up the valley. Magic Mountain Creek was running fast but not impassable and Jo realised how much she’d missed this journey and the talks she had with Mr McAdam.

As the she rose higher into the hills more and more trees were beginning to show Fall colours which seemed to be coming early that year, distant hillsides had splashes of gold amongst deep reds, 53

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and she noticed more small animals scurrying about probably out gathering for the coming winter.

The watch chimed and she decided to have a rest. The coffee was still hot in the flask and felt good as the air had a chill passing through it. Jo decided to open the letter. It was from The Erie City Police Department informing Mrs Norris that her husband had died in custody and what were they to do with his body, giving her one month to answer. It was a matter of fact letter, no apology or remorse for his death in their care, or as Jo thought, at their hands most likely. Jo noted the date of the letter was nearly two months previously, so they would have almost certainly disposed of him in a communal grave by now.

Jo wasn’t sure what to think, but at least Susanna Norris was now a widow so was eligible for greater financial support. Jo wondered how she and the children would take the news. She’d never met Nate but was sorry for Susanna’s loss and Ruth’s hopes of the homecoming, not everything works out in real life like it does in novels.

A couple of blustery showers made the ride upstream tedious.

The pathway around the falls was almost invisible and slippery under the fallen leaves and at every edge of the creek where there was no current leaves had built up.

She reached the turn in the valley where normally wood smoke could be seen rising above the trees from McAdam’s cabin. There was none today. She checked her position and the landmarks she’d learnt to look out for and knew she had almost arrived there.

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As Jo arrived at the clearing the first thing she noticed was that Carson didn’t run out of the barn barking. She then saw him lying beside the creek, he wasn’t asleep, his body was limp like a discarded sack and as she got nearer, she could see a pool of blood surrounding him.

She hurried Ulysses on.

Some of the goats in the paddock were bleating and she could hear the noise of the mule in the barn. Across the creek other goats were busy finding grass and she saw that one of them, like Carson, was just a lifeless heap surrounded by blood. The door of the cabin was open, but it wasn’t until she had neared the porch that she saw McAdam slumped against the cabin wall next to the doorway, a trail of blood leading up the steps.

Jo jumped off Ulysses. McAdam was semi-conscious and breathing hard. His rifle was lying beside him, shells and empty cartridges scattered around. She automatically picked up the gun and looked around, there was no-one to be seen.

McAdam became aware of Jo and groaned with pain.

“Mr McAdam what on earth” He gestured to his left shoulder where there was a gunshot wound. Jo could also see blood seeping through his trousers on his thigh.

“Two men” he whispered “yesterday I think, yes… yesterday. I think I got one and hit the other” “Don’t talk Mr McAdam. You need to help me to get you inside, it’s going to be hard but I need to move you, I need to get these things off and see what the damage is and clean you up as best I can and get these wounds seen to” 55

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McAdam was a big man and the shock of the injury had made him a dead weight. He tried to push himself up and fresh blood soaked through his clothes.

“I can only pull you along Mr McAdam, try pushing yourself, yes like that” With him pushing his feet as hard as he could along the floor and Jo pulling him into the cabin as gently as she could, they got through the door. He’d landed on a mat so at least that slid a bit over the dried blood. The bleeding had now stopped after the initial movement.

“I’m never going to get you onto your bed Mr McAdam” She lifted the mattress off the bed and placed it beside him. In a drawer she found some old but clean sheets and she ran to the barn and found a thick horse blanket. Jo laid that on the mattress then the sheets and together with great difficulty and some groans of pain and swearing she rolled McAdam onto it. He was getting cold, so she covered him with what looked like an old army blanket piled in one corner, then got the black pot-bellied stove fired up, it wasn’t fully out and there was a huge stock of dry wood outside.

Soon the room was warming up.

Jo made sure he drank water, then began the job of removing the blooded clothing, having to use a knife to rip off the jacket, shirt, trousers and underwear. She ensured he kept warm with blankets. All his clothes were ruined, caked with blood, and she threw them outside to dispose of them later.

She went to Ulysses and got her first aid kit and her gun from the saddlebags, then led him to the barn, unsaddled him, leaving him free to roam about with the mule.

When Jo got back in the cabin McAdam was a bit more awake and in pain, swearing each time he moved.

“First Mr McAdam I’m going to clean you up, I’ve got some spirits here, it’s only a small bottle, have you anything?”

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He gestured to a cupboard, where there were a few useful things, though not enough bandages. In a woven crate there were some more clean spare sheets she could use and she ripped up what looked the most worn out.

She worked quickly around the wounds. A bullet had gone right through the trapezius and out of the back, he was lucky, a quarter inch either way would have hit an artery. The thigh injury looked like the bullet had taken away quite a lot of skin and maybe some muscle but nothing had embedded. The rubbing alcohol was far from ideal but it would clean the wounds and McAdam flinched and swore as she worked.

“The shoulder needs to be sewn Mr McAdam or it’ll just open up again as you move. It’s going to hurt like hell, sorry. Your thigh will just have to hurt, there’s nothing to sew, but I can bind it up.

Have you any alcohol to drink?”

“Under there” and he gestured to another cupboard. She handed him a bottle of whiskey.

“Have you got a strong needle and thread, for leather maybe?”

“Shed, where I do the skins” She went and found what she needed.

“Get another good drink of that in you while I clean this needle, you’re going to need it. You know you really need to get to a doctor, all I can do is patch you up for now, try to keep it clean before gangrene can set in” Jo boiled a pan of water with three needles in.

“You said two men came?”

“I heard Carson barking, then a shot. I think he’s by the creek.

I got my rifle and as I got to the door felt the thump of the bullet hit my leg, I shot back and hit one of them in the head and he slumped down over his mule” McAdam took a deep breath and pain filled his face, “then I felt another in the shoulder, I shot again and I think got the other man in the arm, maybe his chest, he turned 57

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away and left pulling along the other mule, I sat out on the porch in case he or some others came back, then some time last night must have blacked out. You didn’t see anyone or anything on your way up?”

“No” “There’s another route out, maybe went that way” McAdam was slurring a bit.

Jo cleaned the shoulder wound again.

“Now this really will hurt, I can’t do much about that, give me the whiskey” She took a big slug of it, which made her shudder and poured some on the wound which made him flinch and swear, then slowly and painfully and with much swearing on both their parts, Jo sewed the wounds up like she’d seen doctors doing when she’d worked as a volunteer nurse. After she’d finished it didn’t look pretty but it had done the job, for now. She cleaned the wounded areas again and McAdam was in some shock from the pain.

He lay back as she bandaged the shoulder area and within a few minutes was asleep. She cleaned and bandaged the thigh which was nasty and looked like someone had sliced off a piece of meat.

She was tired, the watch chimed and she realised that she had been there a long time but it had flown by, it wasn’t going to be long until it would be dark. With the state he was in she knew she would have to stay over, McAdam was totally unable to travel for maybe a couple of days and even then the six hour journey to the doctor would be difficult for him. She didn’t trust the doctor to ride out alone if she just went and told him what had happened.

Jo wasn’t sure if sleep for him was a good thing, but the last hour of so had exhausted them both. However, she also knew she couldn’t just sit and rest, there was a lot to do.

First, she made strong coffee to get her going; then cleaned up the blood around the door as she knew this could cause infections 58

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for both of them. In the barn she found cleaner solution he must use for the animal stores and scrubbed and rubbed until most of the blood was gone. When that was completed there were some farm chores to be done; two of the goats needed milking, they weren’t used to her and had little wish to be caught. It took time but this got sorted.

She went to check on McAdam, his breathing was good as he slept and he didn’t seem to have a fever, she really wasn’t sure what she could do if one came. He looked much weaker than he’d ever done before. There was some blood seeping through the bandages, so she changed them again without him waking, using ripped up clothes from a drawer which she guessed had been Maria’s, they were clean and soft. Maybe she was treading on his grief but she knew how important it was to keep the wounds clean.

The hens were clucking around and seemed to be sorting themselves out, though she was surprised a fox hadn’t heard them in the night when they’d been left out. Jo led the mule out and he chewed at some grass alongside Ulysses.

The body of Carson had to be dealt with, that would encourage all sorts of animals in the night. Crows had already been busy on his body. She tried to lift him but he was a heavy dog, so she got a tarpaulin from the barn and rolled him on it; then dragged the body to an area close to where McAdam had been digging and covered the body with dirt, placing some stones on top. McAdam could deal with him properly when he was able to.

She looked down at herself and realised she was covered in mud and animal dirt, her clothes were caked in it. Before she left Carson she stood for a few moments by the mound then said “Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell… goodbye Carson, you served your master well” (iv)

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The goats across the creek would have to wait, she knew she wasn’t physically able to sort them at that time. She’d have to think what to do with the dead one. It was getting to be twilight.

She checked on McAdam who was now deeply asleep, she’d seen a clean shirt of McAdam’s and a skirt of Maria’s which just might fit, they would do whilst her clothes dried. Then in the barn she stripped off, ran naked to the creek and slipped into the swimming hole. Her body was shocked and exhilarated by the icy water, after initially gasping with the cold, she’d not felt like this since she was a girl and a shudder of life ran through her body. As she got used to the chill she felt a freedom that she couldn’t quite put into words in her mind.

She went back to the barn where she dried off and put the shirt on which could have fitted two or three of her. The skirt was a lovely linen fabric though a bit tight on her.

By now it was almost dark so she lit a lamp she’d seen hanging in the barn and set to washing her clothes. The mud and blood took some removing, but there were some good stones to rub them on.

Her favourite blouse seemed to be irreparably stained. The riding breaches were made of real tough canvas and as good as ‘new’ when she’d finished.

By now only the moon lit the farm up. Ulysses and the mule were already standing in barn, she made sure all the hens were inside and bolted the doors, hoping it was strong enough to keep any wandering animals out.

Back in the cabin the room had heated up and she hung the clothes close to the range and the room began to steam up. Her stomach told her that she was also very hungry.

She found that McAdam was well organised and stocked up.

In the cool lean to on the shaded north side of the cabin a side of bacon hung up, there were bags of beans, some goats milk 60

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cheeses, a huge bag of flour and eggs. There were also a lot of tins of food and bottles of fruit and vegetables.

Jo took a tin of meat and a tin of spaghetti and some preserved plums. She heated the tinned food up, ate, then sat next to the bed.

She woke as her watch chimed, it was eleven, she’d slept for over two hours. McAdam hadn’t moved, which was a good thing, it would allow the wound to heal. His breathing was strong but he had become feverish. She put a wet towel on his forehead and bathed his body with cold water. In her first aid kit she had some aspirin and that was all she had to help any infection, so she ground some up and mixed it with water to give McAdam when he woke.

Then, she found bullets for the rifle and reloaded it.

A golden light from the oil lamp made the room flicker with shadows. McAdam had begun to wake, when he saw Jo it took a few seconds to realise who she was.

“I borrowed a shirt and I hope you don’t mind one of Maria’s skirts” “For a second…” he replied quietly, then between his teeth breathed in in pain and swore, “sorry” Jo went for the aspirin and gave it to McAdam.

“Where did you learn all those words Miss Summer, felt like I was back in the barracks!” McAdam smiled, winced with pain, “I know I used some choice ones when you were sewing me up, I apologise” “Oh I am sorry too I don’t usually swear aloud. I did some nursing near the end of The War, my college got us trained to help when the ships returned the troops from France, Philadelphia docks, we had to clean men up and help out with some operations all sorts of things. Men say things when in pain they’d never usually utter in front of a lady, so it just stuck and under pressure well they come out and sewing you up was pressure I can tell you, you’ve got skin like shoe-leather, it was hard work dealing with those men 61

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- but I missed it when it was all over, I know it’s an odd thing to say but I think a lot of people missed the War when it was over, for many it was a taste of freedom” McAdam winced again with pain and moved to find a comfortable position on the mattress.

“Try not to move Mr McAdam, we don’t want those stitches broken, I could only find what looked like boot thread, it’ll be a bit of a mess, but it should hold you until I can get you to a doctor and you need to report this to the Sherriff” “No, no doctor I’ll take my chances, and no police” Jo tried to say something but McAdam had gone back to sleep.

Before settling down for the night in the only comfortable chair she had another look around the cabin. In a tin box in another cupboard she found various medicines, some looked a bit old.

Amongst them was an almost full bottle of liquid heroin, which she knew would certainly take much of the pain away, on opening it, it smelt strong, and Jo put it on the table near to where McAdam slept on the floor.

After checking around outside again in the moonlight, Jo got herself comfortable on a chair, she wrapped herself in a blanket and ensured the rifle and pistol were close by.

Sleep was fitful for Jo and she was regularly woken by unfamiliar noises outside and by McAdam who seemed to be having nightmares. She had heard these words and sounds before when caring for the returning soldiers, they were sounds of war, of fright, of not being in control of your life. A couple of times she got up and scanned the surroundings through the window. It was a clear night and the full moon created long dark shadows on the silvery damp grass. The surrounding hills were deep blue black against the starry sky. Eventually she slept deeply.

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There was a bright morning sun streaming through the front window when Jo woke. The ‘bed’ was empty and as she properly came round McAdam came in through the door, limping and pulling a face of pain at each step.

“Mr McAdam!”

“I know, I know, but you were deep in sleep, I heard you up and down in the night. It’s very good of you to stay and see I am comfortable” Jo had got out of the chair and was putting the mattress back on the bed.

“Here, let me help you…” and as he did so McAdam swore with pain “sorry” and sat down on the chair with exhaustion.

“I found this in the medicine tin” Jo held up the heroin bottle, “I’ll give you a spoon of it, should help ease that pain, just be careful how much you take, we’ll need quite a bit to get you through this” McAdam took a dose as Jo made the bed up with the remaining clean sheet.

“I’m going to have to wash these sheets, do you have any powder?”

“There’s some Gold Dust, it’s in the barn” he stood up to get it.

“No, Mr McAdam, you go back to bed, I’ll sort it. Are you ready to eat?”

“Starving Miss Summer, absolutely starving” He got back into the clean bed as Jo made a sort of scrambled eggs and cheese, it looked a bit odd, but McAdam ate it with the last of the bread. She left him and went to the creek to wash the sheets, a fall chill underlay the bright sunshine and a low mist wafted around the ground, whenever a bluster of wind caught the trees it rained down rattling leaves, creating a carpet of orange, yellows, reds and browns.

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The heroin must have worked as McAdam was deeply asleep when she returned to the cabin. The washing was drying in the breeze outside. She hung her clothes out which had been drying all night to get some air and used Gold Dust to further clean the floor where the blood had been getting in to the cracks and around where she’d ‘operated’ on McAdam. All the time she was listening out in case the attackers came back, the loaded rifle next to the door. She wasn’t sure if she could shoot a man but she knew she’d not back down.

The chores around the ‘farm’ filled her time. She enjoyed the change of life, it was hard and things that had seemed easy when she was a teenager at her grandfathers’ were not quite so easy now.

During one of her breaks for rest McAdam was standing at the door.

“What happened to Carson? I know they shot him” “You should be resting Mr McAdam. I covered him over with dirt, on that patch you’re digging over, I hadn’t the strength to bury him, I didn’t want a fox or anything getting him, thought you could deal with him when you’re better” “Ah, he was a good dog, ten years I had him. Yes, I’ll deal with it, thank you, I’ve not really thanked you for what you’ve done for me Miss Summer, few people would have done it” “Oh I don’t know Mr McAdam, people at heart are good really, it was lucky I came by when I did” “It was lucky for you that you didn’t run into them on your way here, you need to be careful” “I carry a gun Mr McAdam” “Still, it’s dangerous for a woman to be out their alone” “And for a man Mr McAdam. I saw no sign of anything on my way up” “No, there’s a back route directly southwards, takes you down into Virginia over the top, there’s a gap. I think there was a bit of 64

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fighting there in the Civil War, there are some ruins of homes, it’s thirty miles away, probably went that way, though he’d have left the body somewhere closer to get some speed on, can’t see him coming back” “I hope not, I kept the rifle close last night” “I saw, and you know how to use it?”

“My grandfather taught me, yes, said it may come in useful one day, used to take me hunting, only me not my sisters” “Sounds a fine chap” “He was. Have you any idea who they were?”

McAdam hesitated.

“Not really, there was a bit of a problem a few years back, maybe something to do with that, or maybe just chancers looking for cash, rustle a few animals, I’ve had a few goats go in the past” Jo waited for a bit more explanation, but McAdam wasn’t going any further, and why should he she thought.

“I need to get those goats sorted, put them in the barn. Did you see one of them got shot as well, the others seem to be giving it a wide birth” “Carson usually was able to bring them in. Maybe just leave them Miss Summer, they can be awkward old buggers some of them” That evening she cooked for both of them, and she could tell McAdam ate it because he needed to eat.

McAdam slept after they’d eaten and was again troubled by his dreams. Jo heard names and places he mumbled, but they didn’t make sense. She checked a few times whether his wound was seeping, but she seemed to have done a good job, it was far from pretty and she was more concerned about his thigh.

During the night Jo took a lamp and went outside and sat next to the creek, it was another clear moonlit night, a chilly breeze 65

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whipped around the valley, picking up leaves and breaking up the surface of the water hole. She looked around to make sure McAdam wasn’t up and about, stripped off and entered the swimming hole, the cold water making her gasp again and her skin tingle. The moonlight reflected off the surface of the water, there was just enough space to swim a couple of strokes, she lay on her back looking down at her body lit by the cold white light highlighted by the water and becoming surrounded by floating leaves.

She stared up at the vastness of space and some lines came to her which she spoke out loud.

“On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping White Ophelia floats like a great lily; Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...

In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort” Jo looked down at herself and laughed.

“Now how did it end, oh yes – And the poet says that by starlight You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils White Ophelia floating, like a great lily… (v) Oh Jo, Jo, Jo, you’re a bit old to play at Ophelia” she proclaimed and laughed into the night’s emptiness.

The breeze against her wet body made her shiver as she climbed onto the bankside. She rubbed herself down with a blanket and was pleased when she was back in the warmth of the cabin.

McAdam was stirring and awoke making a pained sound as he moved.

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“Were you talking to someone Miss Summer? I’m sure I heard a woman speaking, or was I dreaming?”

“No, I was just playing at being Ophelia, it’s a beautiful night Mr McAdam, cold but…”

Jo’s voice tailed off as McAdam had dropped back into his troubled sleep and very soon he was somewhere Jo couldn’t imagine.

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The chime of Jo’s watch woke her.

Outside it was just getting light and she could hear rain on the roof. McAdam was sleeping, quiet for the moment. Jo pushed herself stiffly from the chair, keeping the blanket around her, the temperature had dropped. She went to the window to see rain lashing down from the north, dogwoods on the opposite bank were troubled in the wind their tops bending and the last of the leaves being taken away like red and orange sheets torn from a washing line. She could see the goats huddled together under some trees, there didn’t appear to be any less than the day before.

She brought the stove back to life and soon the room was warming up, then got the big black coffee pot brewing. Jo checked on McAdam, no fever and he was much stiller, as she expected the heroin was working better than the aspirin at calming the pain.

Jo knew that she probably had to leave him today. There wasn’t any bread left but all the ingredients were there to make biscuits in the skillet, and Jo could make those fairly tolerably “That smells good Miss Summer” McAdam had woken and had been able to push himself up to a sitting up position.

“You’ve run out of bread, so I thought I’d make some biscuits, much quicker, I just hope they work out, my sisters used to tease me for making them like rocks when we were young!”

“Has it been raining long?”

“It was raining when I woke, didn’t hear anything in the night, looks set in for a while” McAdam with some difficulty got out of bed and made his way to the window.

“Yesterday, I got up easily, today feel a bit weaker” 68

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“I’m not surprised, how is the thigh feeling today?”

“Not bad, very stiff as if the whole area is pulling back together” “Well I’m glad you have feeling in it” “I certainly have Miss Summer, I certainly have” and he winced as a shot of pain crossed his body, “hadn’t you be getting back down the valley when this rain passes, they’ll be sending a search party out” “Well, do you think you can look after yourself? There’s the chores to do, those goats and so on” “Maybe not, not just yet” With difficulty McAdam went outside onto the porch and shivered a little in the damp fall chill. The rain felt like the final sign of the changing season. The creek was flowing faster and the ground sodden.

Jo joined him and handed him a mug of coffee and a warm biscuit, they stood watching the rain, which was still sheeting down.

“There are still things to do Miss Summer before winter sets in” Jo tried to intervene, “and no, not things you can do. There’s more wood to store, I just have enough, but that tree over there”, he pointed across the river to a felled oak “that needs cutting up. I’m going to have to cull a couple of the goats or the feed will not last, the meat can be air-dried and I can work on the skins when it snows. I need to get to town, you saw my supplies, there looks a lot but if we get an early snow and it lasts like in twenty-seven I may not have enough. So Miss Summer, I will accompany you back down, and I promise I will call in at Dr Matthias, what little use that old quack is, and get him to check your workmanship, then go get some supplies at the store” “All right Mr McAdam, but I insist we go tomorrow morning, get another night’s rest, it’s not the easiest of journeys. And, I will 69

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come with you to Dr Matthias, see what he thinks of my handywork” “Yes Sir” he saluted in full army fashion then swore with pain.

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The next morning Jo woke up stiff from sitting again all night and the chores she’d done the previous day, but she’d slept well, only twice had McAdam’s dreams woken her. It was early but he was up and she could smell bacon.

“I thought we’d need a good breakfast before the journey” McAdam said in a far stronger voice than previous days.

“Smells good, I’ll finish that off” Jo said as she stretched. She went to the window, it was a beautiful bright day, the sky cloudless, the grass frosted over and a wispy mist floating up through the trees. She shivered when McAdam opened the door and went to the barn, the goats ran out and immediately went to the creek to drink. It reminded Jo of a few lines which she said out loud to the empty room.

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns” (vi) Jo turned the thick slices of bacon and broke a couple of eggs into the pan to fry.

“You were being poetic again Miss Summer” “Ah, I didn’t think you were in, George Eliot Mr McAdam, we learnt so much and it just lies dormant in the mind until it seems apt” “I could hear you outside. Well it’s a great thing you have stored up” When they’d finished breakfast they prepared to leave. Jo checked McAdam’s wounds and put fresh dressings on, there were washed bandages she’d previously used, hoping they would last the bumpy six hour journey and gave him the last of the heroin.

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“Try and see if he will prescribe you more, you’ll need it to get back home” McAdam locked the barn making sure there was plenty of food and water for the goats and together they placed shutters on the door and windows of the cabin. As they started off McAdam rode around by the graves and stopped for a few seconds, then rejoined Jo. “I always do that, just in case” The day remained bright and chilled, the creek higher than normal but not so deep it slowed Ulysses or McAdam’s mule. They reached the falls in good time and led the animals around on the path. McAdam kept his rifle within easy reach and Jo had her pistol ready on the saddle.

They’d both been quiet for this first part. At the sound of Jo’s watch chiming, they decided to stop. Jo checked the wounds which were holding up well though the dressings on the thigh had got very wet, there wasn’t much she could do about it.

They rode for the next half hour and Jo began telling McAdam about the Norris family.

“I met Nate Norris a couple of times” he told Jo, “very fired up he was, angry about his plight, suppose you can’t blame him, especially with a wife and children to feed” “Mrs Norris talked about going to work at Madam DeRosa’s, to get money together to find him” “Madam DeRosa’s, ha…”

“You know it?”

“I’m afraid so Miss Summer, I doubt there’s a man in Pike County who hasn’t heard of it, or been there” “Have you been to it, I’m sorry to be so personal Mr McAdam, but I need to take a letter to Mrs Norris and I need to know something about the place” 72

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“Well I hope you don’t feel badly about me, but yes, I have been there only once, many years ago, I’m afraid my brother became a bit of a regular” They were silent for a few minutes. Jo knew the feelings of loneliness and how McAdam would have needed female company, it of course went against all her moral and political beliefs. She hoped she wasn’t showing it.

“And what is it like Mr McAdam?”

“A large stuffy house, bigger than it looks from the front, set back a bit from the main road, some trees in front, you know lots of men use it who don’t want to be seen there, politicians, pastors, judges, police, married men” “I’m certainly not judging you, it’s not my place to but I would like to see to it that Mrs Norris doesn’t have to stay there, and after that letter, well she doesn’t” “No, no she doesn’t. I would take the letter but there was some trouble in the past, I don’t think I’d be welcome. It’s really no place for a lady like you to be seen” “Oh no worry about that Mr McAdam, I’m not quite as sheltered as you may think. I will deal with it, but thank you. You need to get to that doctor and get this better, I will go there tomorrow” They rode on, Jo a bit embarrassed by the revelations. Men, she thought to herself, so very different in their desires, or maybe they weren’t really, then quickly put the thought out of her head. Jo thought to herself that she never felt ill at ease with McAdam.

Eventually they reached Thompson’s Stores.

“Ah, Miss Summer there have been people looking for you, they left this for you” said Thompson handing her an envelope, while taking in the fact she had walked in with McAdam and trying to see what his very obvious injuries were.

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While McAdam wrote out a list of items he would pick up on his way back. Jo opened the letter. It was a note from her father’s housekeeper.

“Miss Summer, your father’s not been well, a stroke the doctor said, I thought I better let you know and you may want to come before your usual visit later in the month, I’ve sent word to your sisters” “Who left this Mr Thompson?”

“One of the other of you librarian ladies, a Miss Heinneman I think she said, pretty young thing she was” “Thank you” Jo and McAdam rode on towards Doctor Matthias’ house.

When they dismounted she told him about the note.

“Well Miss Summer, I think you better go and soon” “I will, but are you really sure you are going to be all right, I’m quite willing to ride back with you” “Miss Summer, this is your father, your family - he will feel a lot better when you are there” “Yes, I will get tomorrow afternoon’s train, I’m sorry” He pulled her towards him, enveloped her with his great body and kissed her lips. Then marched into the doctors without looking back.

Jo stood for a few seconds, unsure if she were shocked or delighted or disgusted, mounted Ulysses and rode towards home.

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Madam DeRosa’s three storey house was as McAdam had said, set back behind trees on the edge of Pikeville almost in Little Dixie.

Jo had passed there many times without noticing it. A man sat on a rocking chair on the porch, nearby a rifle was leaning against the house. All the windows were shuttered. At the side there were two long lines of washing fluttering in the cool breeze. There were three cars parked away from sight under the trees.

The man stood as Jo neared.

“Madam doesn’t like do-gooders comin here Miss” he called to her.

“I’m here to see Mrs Norris” “Madam DeRosa! There’s a woman to see you” he shouted.

After a short while the fancy polished door opened and a small square woman with huge hair almost the size of her body ushered the man away.

“Miss, if you are here to see one of my girls we can offer that, but for the sake of my other customers I have another entrance at the far side specifically for ladies who like that sort of thing” At first Jo wasn’t sure what she meant, then blushed a little.

“No, no absolutely not, Miss DeRosa” “My name is Madam DeRosa, well I want no do-gooders here, my girls have their own prayer service on a Sunday, a preacher comes here special, keeps their souls saved as much as we can save them” “I am here to see Mrs Norris, I have a letter about her husband” “We don’t use last names here” Madam DeRosa looked down at Jo’s unringed left hand “Miss?”

“Miss Summer. I picked up a letter for her at Thompson’s Store” 75

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“I can give it to her” “I would rather hand it to her myself, it is very important about her husband” Madam DeRosa thought silently looked Jo up and down again.

“All right then. Come in, please, but I want no trouble, this is a discreet business, important gentlemen use our services” The hallway was tiled black and white, two dark wood staircases led up to a landing and two passageways leading off.

There were some large pot plants and dark paintings of hunting scenes. It felt hot and stuffy. To the right open double doors led to a room with sofas and side tables and a bar, it appeared to be empty.

All was very quiet.

Madam DeRosa led Jo to the left through another set of doors.

This room was even stuffier, though here at least there was some daylight. The furniture looked as if it came from early in the last century and the room was decorated in purples and deep reds.

Madam DeRosa sat down behind a richly decorated wooden desk, above her a large fancily gold framed painting of a provocative reclining nude which Jo could tell was of her, a very much younger version of her.

“Yes Miss Summer, that is me you are looking at, a few years ago, when I had a house in Charleston” “It’s a fine painting” “It was commissioned by the State Governor, he brought an artist to paint it all the way from Washington, where he painted Presidents and politicians. A very fine house we had, the most beautiful girls in the South men said; all the best people used it, well that’s a long time ago. Mrs Norris, as I said we don’t use last names here, it’s best for everyone, she’s known as Liza here, is it good news?”

“I’m afraid not, no” 76

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“You know she doesn’t read or write, it may surprise you to hear that I would prefer my girls to have some reading, keeps them occupied when they’re not with clients. I will go and get her, would you like some tea or something stronger” “Nothing for me thank you” When she’d left Jo wandered around the room, looking at heavy framed photographs, some of Madam DeRosa when younger with groups of other young women and well dressed men, some studio portraits of her and others including two children, it felt as if time was bound up in aspic, everything stuck in a past era. A wall of shelves was filled with glass cased stuffed animals set forever in aggressive poses. No books, except a locked bookcase filled with black leather-bound ledgers. Jo had absolutely no idea what this woman’s life had been like and what experiences she’d lived through. Who was she to judge her.

Ten minutes had passed by when Susanna Norris came in alone.

Jo could see she’d put on weight, she was very good looking now, gone the hollowed out face and the bone like arms. She wore a good quality dress, almost fashionable and good shoes.

“Ah Miss Summer, how did you find me, and here, you know you really shouldn’t be here, they don’t like it. Have you seen Ruthy and Josh?”

“Mr Thompson said you were working in Pikeville, so I guessed. And no, not yet I was going to call in on them on my way to the station, I have to go to Louisville for a while” “Madam DeRosa said you have some news for me, about Nate?”

“I think you better sit down Susanna. I went to the Store a few days ago Thompson had a letter for you, I hope you don’t mind but I opened it” “Of course not, where is he?”

“Well, as I said it’s not good news, not at all. I’m afraid he died in police custody, the letter is from the Erie Police” 77

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Before Jo could finish telling her more Susanna had fainted, falling sideways into the sofa.

“Madam DeRosa!” Jo called out knowing she wouldn’t be far away.

She hurried in and together they propped Susanna up. Madam DeRosa had some smelling salts and Susanna came round with a jump and buried her head into Jo’s chest.

“No! No, that’s not right, that’s not right Miss Summer - read it to me!” she said grabing the letter out of Jo’s hand and handing it to Madam, who read it aloud.

“Are they sure, are they really sure. Nate wouldn’t have had anything on him to say who he was, he was always most careful, it could have been anyone, anyone Miss Summer” and looking at Madam, “you know well what these cops are like. I know he’s not dead, I know! I’d know wouldn’t I, I’d have felt it, I’d know, I’d know” “Well it says here” Madam read the letter out again.

“Susanna” Jo said “Susanna, listen, listen to me, please? I will look into it, make sure what they say is true, my brother-in-law is a lawyer in Philladelphia, and he will almost certainly have some contacts in Erie, I will phone him. I have to go and see my father as he is unwell, I can use his telephone. I will try and find out and get back in touch with you” “Please, please don’t say anything to Ruthy and Josh, not until we know for certain, please Miss Summer” “I won’t say anything don’t worry” Jo turned to Madam DeRosa “now what is Susanna’s situation here?”

“She’s known as Liza” Madam said.

“What is Liza’s situation?”

“Well Miss Summer, she is working for me, meeting gentlemen” she put her hand up to stop Jo butting in “meeting 78

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gentlemen like the other girls here. She was loaned two hundred dollars” “That’s a lot of money to pay back” Jo intervened.

“It is, it certainly is. When she has earned that, with the interest and expenses paid, Liza can leave with that sum of money in her pocket, in cash. This is a business Miss Summer and there are a number of highly influential people with a financial interest in it, it is not a charity however much we would like to help young women in these trying times” “So that means?”

“Well the money clients pay has to be weighed against clothes, food and lodgings I offer and of course the use of these facilities, it is only fair dealing. If she is popular, and Liza seems popular especially with some of the older gentlemen she will pay her debyt off in good time. As you can see yourself, a bit of food and some good clothes and Liza is a very beautiful young woman” “I’m sorry Madam DeRosa, how much will she be having to pay off?”

“It is ongoing Miss Summer, it is as one of my businessmen clients always says an ongoing loan” Jo knew it was impossible to get a straight answer.

“So, if I were to offer the two hundred dollars she owes to you” “That wouldn’t even begin to cover what we have invested up to now Miss Summer, nowhere near, as you can see it has taken us a lot of work and effort to make Liza presentable, no we will work this out between ourselves won’t we Liza” she looked at Susanna “you know some of my business partners probably have contacts in Erie, we may be able to find something out ourselves” Jo looked at Susanna “Would you come with me when I leave here, now?”

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“I don’t think that will be possible Miss Summer, Liza is an investment for a number of people” Madam DeRosa said very matter of factly.

“Susanna?” Jo asked loudly.

Susanna shook her head, stood up and left the room clutching the letter.

“There, see Miss Summer, Liza knows what is the best for her, she is doing this of her own free will, this is America and it’s what we stand for” Jo looked at her and knew there wasn’t anything more she could say.

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“Who did you say you were? Only relatives are allowed to visit and only those with written permission from the County” “I am Jo Summer, I am a travelling librarian and I used to take books to the Norris children” “So you are not a relative” “No” “We don’t need a librarian Miss, we have plenty of books here, donated through the church” “Well Miss” “Mrs Howard” “Well Mrs Howard, I have brought some books for Ruth and Joshua, ones which they will enjoy, like the ones they borrowed before. They are gifts from myself, they so enjoyed reading” “Miss Summer, they are not allowed gifts. They come from the home of such sinners, abominations to God, a communist and a whore, our books will help change their ways and lead them on a path to righteousness”, she looked at the books Jo had brought Good Wives, Little Men and Rob Roy, “and those novels certainly won’t!”

In Jo’s mind she punched her on the nose.

“Well Mrs Howard I am very sorry that you are going to close their minds” “Perhaps Miss Summer you need yours opening to God, who will lead you towards a better life than peddling novels of unwholesome lives to innocent minds” and with that Mrs Howard closed the door.

Jo slammed the gate so hard the sign fell off which she kicked into the mud. She made her way through a fine fall misty rain to the station for the early afternoon train; she would be with her father in about four hours and he would probably laugh at her story, 81

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telling her not to get so mad and what more should she expect in Kentucky.

But she was mad, so very mad.

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Jo’s father wasn’t well, worse than Mrs Kyper the housekeeper had intimated, he’d had a stroke and seemed to be getting weaker by the day. A week after she arrived at his home in Louisville a letter arrived for her, asking her to attend a meeting at the Library HQ at The State Capitol in Frankfort to meet with Mr Fisher. She assumed it was because she had requested time off to look after her father.

Jo was shown to a Committee Room where Mr Fisher sat behind a large highly polished table with a woman who wore a huge hat and a black coated minister. A plain wooden chair was set opposite them.

“Please sit Miss Summer” Mr Fisher ordered, “we’ve asked you here today because of more than one concerning incident with your conduct, this is Mrs Reinhardt from the Christian Moral Welfare Committee and The Reverend Sykes, both members of the Library Commission as you probably already know” “And what incidents are they Mr Fisher?”

“Firstly you took unauthorised time off, which I understand you used to spend three nights at the home of a man named McAdam; then you were reported to have visited a brothel in Pikeville for what reason I have not been told and perhaps would prefer not to know; and then you caused an incident at The Church Children’s Home in Pikeville where not only did you try and give unsuitable literature to two children you damaged a sign which has cost four dollars to repair. This seems most inappropriate behaviour especially for a woman of your experience and background, and certainly not the behaviour expected of our librarians and especially of you Miss Summer. I have known you for over ten years Miss Summer and am surprised, well shocked” 83

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“May I answer some of this how can I say it, tittle-tattle Mr Fisher. Firstly I went with some books for Mr McAdam and found him gravely injured when I got there. It takes around five hours to reach his cabin so I used nursing skills I had been taught in Philadelphia to look after injured troops returning after the War, had I left him he would almost certainly have died. I stayed there until he was strong enough to travel to the doctor, which we did.

Does that answer you?”

Mrs Reinhardt asked “Miss Summer were you alone with the man?”

“Yes” “And do you think that was proper?”

“He may have died Mrs Reinhardt had I not been there and I can assure you I did not share his bed though, and this may shock you, I had to strip him of blood soaked and wet clothes and wash his body. As nurses often have to” “You are not a nurse Miss Summer” Reverend Sykes said.

“No, but as I said I had good training previously” “Nursing soldiers, did any of those happen to be negro soldiers Miss Summer?” he said looking at the other two.

“Yes some were, in fact most I dealt with were. I was nursing American soldiers who had served their country, lost limbs for their country, lost eyesight for their country, their race is immaterial” “We differ there and there is no need for that sort of attitude Miss Summer” Mr Fisher said.

“Mr Fisher this is nineteen thirty four, not eighteen thirty four” “Is this McAdam the man who requested a banned book?”

“A book banned in Germany, yes, I don’t believe it is banned here and it has only been banned because it is written by a Jew” “Books don’t get banned for no good reason Miss Summer, even in Germany, who appear to have a well-ordered society 84

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nowadays; and I am surprised you went against my advice and took it to him” “Miss Summer” said Mrs Reinhardt, “you are unmarried and are not young. Do you have any feelings for this man McAdam who I believe is a widower, you seem to have been to his cabin alone on numerous other occasions, I quite understand that someone at your age may be getting frustrated at becoming a spinster?”

“I am not going to reply to that question Mrs Reinhardt as I feel it is totally inappropriate” They sat in silence for a longer than awkward moment.

“So let us come onto the other issues Miss Summer. You have been seen at a brothel in Pikeville” “Mr Fisher, I am sure if you asked half or more of the Senators in this building, and they actually told the truth for once, they may also have been seen there at one time or another. However, I will answer to this though I don’t see for the life of me why I need to. I went to see a woman who through many reasons of poverty has gone to work there” The three looked at each other.

“You mean a prostitute a whore Miss Summer” Mrs Reinhardt intervened.

“I mean a mother of two children, Mrs Norris, who had got into difficulty” “Whose husband is a known communist and agitator” “Who is a mother of two and through no fault of her own had to take the only work she could, to get the money together to go to find her husband. I was there to give her the news that he had died in Erie” “So you went inside the brothel?” Reverend Sykes asked.

“Yes, yes I did, and I was told by its owner that each Sunday so does a preacher to run a prayer meeting” 85

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“And did you think that was proper behaviour for a woman of your standing?”

“Well how else was I to tell her” “The proper authorities could have informed her” “Reverend Sykes, her husband had died, I knew she would be very upset, they were very close” “I’m sorry Miss Summer but I have found such degenerates don’t have the same feelings as we people do. Perhaps you need to read Francis Galton who is very erudite on the subject” he wafted a hand towards the others, “maybe Mr Fisher we need to organise some lectures for your staff on his work, it is most illuminating, brings things into perspective. Miss Summer I think you have behaved throughout in a naïve way, this Norris woman needed reminding of her duties as a mother and wife, not your support for her and her prostitution” Jo looked furious and refused to answer.

“Then,” Mr Fisher said “there was the incident at the children’s home?”

“Yes, I went with books for the Norris children” “And quite rightly they were refused as being totally unsuitable” the Reverend butted in.

“So they thought, I thought very suitable and would have helped them take their minds off what must be a terrible situation for them” “Oh Miss Summer your naivety again” and he smiled a knowing smile towards the others, “they should be reminded of their mother and father’s situations daily so as not to fall into such morally degenerate ways themselves. And you damaged the sign, in what is seen as a wonton act of vandalism. The only reason they didn’t involve the police department was because they have generous supporters like Mrs Reinhardt and didn’t want her embarrassed” “I will happily pay for any damages” 86

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“That is not the point Miss Summer, far from” Mr Fisher intervened, “it is your general behaviour which I am concerned about. It feels that since Mr Roosevelt has come to power you have changed, it could be said that you have become a bad influence on the younger librarians. You, at your age, should be showing a good example to our younger employees, not this, well how can I say, perverted behaviour” “Is that all Mr Fisher” Jo stood up, opened her purse, took out $2 and threw it on the table, “I will send the rest later to cover the cost of replacing their ridiculous sign. I have a gravely ill father to look after, so I hereby give my notice to resign, here and now, I cannot work with or for such narrow minded hypocrites” All three protested as Jo marched quickly out of the room.

She could hear Mr Fisher calling her back saying they hadn’t finished.

She gave a frustrated growl which echoed around the dome of The State Capitol as she stomped down the marble staircase and out into the rain.

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Jo’s father laughed out loud.

“Oh I wish I’d been there Jo, your mother would have been so proud of you, she really would” “Father it isn’t funny, I have no job now and what I did was so important” They were sitting in front of a roaring fire as the weather had become colder, the daylight was drifting into night and the room was dark except for the flickering of warm light from the fire. Jo went and switched the lights on. Her father was sitting in a winged chair with a blanket over his legs.

“You know Jo, that Mr Fisher, what was his first name? Ah yes, Theodore. Do you remember when he came for dinner?”

“Ah yes, just after his mother died” “You thought he needed a change. Well I think he thought you were making a play for him” “Noooo” she giggled.

“Absolutely, well when you had gone to the kitchen to arrange coffee, he asked me if I would approve if he asked you for your hand” “You never said anything!”

“No, well no, I thought he must have said something to you and sensibly you’d refused” “And what did you say?”

“Well, I remember I said that you were over twenty-one and so he didn’t need my permission, though I think in this State you only need to be fourteen, but anyway, I said that he needed to think about how hard a marriage can be when the woman is so much better educated than the man” “You didn’t!”

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“I did!”

“And if I remember he left very soon afterwards” “He did, yes he did. And he didn’t say anything to you?”

“Well no, nothing, I never thought, well I never wanted to think, I definitely would never have accepted, never” “I could see what a self-important little man he was and how little he knew or understood” “Absolutely, yes father, and thank you. Are you uncomfortable?”

She moved him in the chair and the cushions back into place.

“It’s almost time for your medicine father” “Oh I am fed up with all this, I really am, it’s not going to get better is it Jo?” “We’ll see, we’ll see, the doctor says in a few weeks if this works” “Oh stuff him! Anyway what about this Mr McAdam, you talked a lot about him before, is he someone you care about, you know I always feel bad you’ve never found anyone” “Well anyone suitable” “There was that captain in Philadelphia, what was his name?”

“Sandy Miller, father, and you know he was already married.

He didn’t tell me even when we went away for those weekends when he promised all sorts of things. Mother guessed but I wouldn’t listen, you don’t when you’re nineteen. Then don’t you remember his wife wrote to me? Told me I was not the first. I thought it was just because he was in the hospital and I was looking after him, sometimes men grow close to those who care, too close so they don’t think properly. But it appeared this was what he was like. I learnt the hard way” “Yes, I had forgotten, you know I keep forgetting things, ever since that last bout. And wasn’t there Professor something” 89

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“Oh yes, I think he just wanted someone to compile indexes and bibliographies for nothing. Oakenshaw, that was his name” “I think I heard you saying to Katherine that he had some odd tastes” “Ooo you were listening in to our conversations” “Well I look out for you, what were they Jo, the odd tastes?”

“Not something a daughter wishes to discuss with her father” “But you can with your sister” “Yes” there was a silence. “Did you want to listen to the radio or shall we get you to bed?”

“Bed I think, anyway before I go what about McAdam?”

“Nothing really to tell father, I helped him out of a bad situation, he’s at least twenty years older than me anyway and I don’t feel anything like what I think you mean anyway, I don’t think so anyway, no, no I like the books he likes. He intrigued me this big man living in the hills wanting a book by Thomas Mann.

And I like his life at the cabin though it must be hard but I can see why he lives like that, but no” “I was nearly twenty years older than your mother, it never worried us” “But… oh it’s time for you to be in bed father” However. Jo couldn’t help thinking about that kiss, it was heartfelt directly on her lips and his strong arms and large body had almost squeezed the air out of her, she’d never felt so enveloped with care since being a child. Her body had felt more alive in that moment. as if it wasn’t just going through the motions, as if someone wanted her, not just to do something, but her and it had been a long time since she had had that feeling, if ever truly before.

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Jo’s father died on Christmas Eve. Jo and her sisters Katherine and Harriet were beside him when he passed over. He hadn’t wanted a fuss or a church funeral, so they had a simple ceremony for the family on a cold rainy January 10th 1935 in Philadelphia, and he was laid next to their mother Clari, in the Upper Burial Ground, Germantown.

At the graveside Jo read his favourite poem The Psalm of Life by Longfellow which begins: Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

Jo stayed on in Philadelphia, first with Katherine for two months then with Harriet for a further four.

Katherine’s husband Robert was a lawyer and their life revolved around their two lively children, and even more for the round of society events which she loved dressing up for. There was plenty of money, Katherine had her own car and driver, it seemed a life so different to the lives Jo had seen in Kentucky, privilege didn’t seem to have been affected by the Depression, in fact as wages were so low they were able to employ a nanny full time as well as a cook, housekeeper and the driver. Jo told Katherine off for exploiting the 91

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situation and Katherine retorted as ever that Jo was just a red, and wasn’t she giving work to people who needed it.

Jo had phoned Robert about Nathaniel Norris soon after she went to stay at her father’s, but with the illness the matter had got sidelined. Now there was more time to perhaps sort things out.

Robert knew all about the Erie Police from some cases he’d defended, they were basically the enforcers for local company bosses and could quite believe he wouldn’t have survived being incarcerated by them. Robert said Nathaniel was lucky not to have washed up on the shore of Lake Erie or in the Canal, they must have wanted to make a very public point. He had made some enquiries and showed Jo a coroner’s report which gave the cause of death as suicide, he told her there was no way of telling if it actually was him, as the body had been disposed of. Jo told him she may go there to investigate it, but he warned her that Erie was not a safe place to visit at the present time, there was almost a state of civil war there.

Harriet’s home life was even more substantial than Katherine’s.

She had married into one of the oldest and wealthiest Philadelphia families, but it seemed less formal than Katherine’s for all that. She urged Jo to stay on longer as there was plenty of space for her in their large home in Radnor, and Harriet as always had some men lined up who ‘may be of interest to Jo’. Her sisters would regularly pair Jo up whenever she paid them a visit, there was usually an eligible widower, divorcee or bachelor in their circle of friends and they’d be invited to dinner or to a picnic, or to accompany them to the theatre or concert.

Robert dealt with their father’s estate. He had left everything to Jo, except for some sums to charities and cultural institutions he’d been involved in. The railway shares and other investments he had depended on for income had not lost too much value in the crash of ‘29 and he had sensibly held on to them, Robert said they 92

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would only increase in value as the economy got back on track. Jo decided not to keep the house in Louisville and invest the proceeds either in a smaller home or towards her living costs. She sat Katherine and Harriet down and told them she didn’t think it fair she had been left all the estate and told them she would share the portfolio of shares between them, they both protested as they were both well off and told her she’d need it to have a decent life as she had no husband to provide for her, which made Jo laugh. Jo said then they should use the income to set up college to fund young people from poorer families in Louisville, all three felt it would be a suitable legacy for their parents’ memory.

In the end it left Jo with a reasonable annual income to live off and she’d never have to work again if she didn’t wish to or depend on finding a husband with means, which she told her sisters in no uncertain terms she was not planning to do.

She didn’t say anything to her sisters about McAdam as she knew Katherine certainly wouldn’t approve of him, she didn’t think as their father had also, that either of her sisters had the imagination to think outside the bourgeois social circles of Philadelphia. Jo was the only one to go further with education, Katherine and Harriet were just determined to find wealthy husbands and in that they had succeeded.

After those few months in Philadelphia Jo needed a change of scene. She had begun to love the landscapes of Kentucky, and even the people for all their faults, so decided she would return there to live after going for a trip to London, Switzerland and Paris. She wanted to go to Italy and Spain but the thought of having to put up with the fascists was far too much to face.

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Alfred McAdam leant on a shovel at the bottom of the grave he had just dug to take a few minutes rest. It had been tough work as he had only recently got over Spanish Flu and still felt weak, but he had to bury his son Jack and knew, deep down, that fairly soon he would be burying his wife Maria.

He had dug the grave in the shade of the trees which surrounded their plot of land deep in The Magic Mountain area in Kentucky about twenty-five miles from the State border with West Virginia, next to Magic Mountain Creek which was running fast after a week of rain. The sound of water filled the air, birds were squabbling in the treetops swaying in the breeze high above him. This was the peaceful place they had wanted to live but death had come to visit, as it had so many in that year.

The previous month Alfred had made the long ride down to Pikeville to pick up supplies and post, when he returned he’d woken with a fever and his strong body felt as if all the energy and strength had been drained from him. For a couple of days he found it hard to breathe properly. Maria nursed him, massaging his back to clear his lungs, boiling water so he could breathe in hot steam.

They had aspirin which seemed to help with the fever.

Then just as Alfred was getting better Jack caught it. At nine years old he didn’t have Alfred’s strength and it affected him much harder. Jack soon became unconsciousness and his breathing was 94

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worse and worse. Maria stayed up with him all day and all night; in a short time she also started to feel the symptoms, but with all her strength struggled to look after Jack. Eventually Alfred was well enough to attempt to look after both of them, but Jack’s health was going down fast. Maria persuaded Alfred to ride to town to get Dr Matthias to come.

In the nearly ten hours it took to return Jack had died and Maria was almost unconscious, finding it hard to breath. Dr Matthias attempted to empty her lungs, but it wasn’t working and seemed to get her into even greater distress. He gave her heroin which calmed her and left a large bottle. Before he left he completed a death certificate for Jack and an undated one for Maria, then after Alfred had paid him headed back down the valley to deal with other cases sweeping the area.

Alfred made a makeshift coffin from a large packing case in the barn, it wasn’t how they’d have wished Jack should be buried, but it was best done quickly. He placed the coffin in the hole, then Jack into it wrapping him in a sheet, and hammered the lid down. He piled some stones on top to weigh it down just in case the creek flooded, it was thirty or so feet above water level, but unexpected things happen in this landscape he thought. Throughout the whole process his eyes were full of tears and he kept wishing it was he and not Jack lying there, blaming himself for bringing the virus back with him.

After filling in with earth Alfred returned to Maria, she was quiet, hardly breathing now. He sat with her, keeping the room warm but she automatically in her unconsciousness pushed aside the bedclothes in her fever. He constantly wiped her forehead.

As dawn broke she awoke.

“Alfred” her whispering voice was watery and crackly, her lungs full of infection.

“I’m here Maria, don’t talk, rest” 95

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“Jack? I couldn’t do anything, I tried, I tried so hard I just couldn’t do anything, please…”

“I know, I know. I buried Jack, up near the trees where he loved to play, where he built a den, do you remember?”

“I do, oh yes I do. Please, please Alfred, put me next to him” “You aren’t going to die Maria, you aren’t see you have come out of it” “No Alfred, no I haven’t, Jack was like this, he woke asked for you, I tried so hard, you know I did, I just couldn’t” She fell asleep and her breathing became worse, then about an hour later she woke and turned to Alfred.

“Please say the words, please say the words” Maria turned over, her breathing became almost indistinguishable and after time it slowed and slowed, then stopped.

Alfred shouted and screamed and yelled, he punched and punched the cabin door until it broke into splinters.

He didn’t know where to put himself to calm down, he kept returning to Maria’s body and checking for breathing, again and again, putting his ear to her chest, carrying her outside into the fresh air then inside again.

That night he slept fitfully beside the dead body of Maria.

When morning light broke he dug a hole beside Jack’s.

Tears had gone now and he was in a determined sombre mood.

When he had finished covered in dirt, he went and made another coffin in the barn, feeling guilty again that this was not what she deserved but knew as he made it that each plank was fitted with love.

He then cleaned himself in the creek, shaved, and dressed in the best clothes he could find. Alfred washed Maria’s body, brushed her hair and dressed her in her wedding dress which she’d carried 96

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with her, folded in a gold card box, to all their homes in their too short marriage.

He picked spring flowers which he placed in Maria’s hands, then carefully wrapped her in a beautiful silk Chinese shawl he had bought her when they lived in London.

Alfred carried her to the hole and after kissing her face one final time placed her in the coffin and nailed on the lid.

He stood upright at the foot of the grave as if on parade in his army days, took a book from his pocket, Maria’s old black leather Daily Missal.

“Forgive me Maria if I get this wrong” and Alfred read the tiny printed unfamiliar words as best he could. “…Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.

Et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion, Et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem Exaudi orationem meam Ad te omnis caro veniet.”

Maria had marked the passages she wanted and he finished with “… In paradisum deducant angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyrus et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.

Chorus angelorum te suscipat et cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, aeternam habeas requiem.”

It was the only time he’d smiled for days and he said outloud to Maria in the grave.

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“Well if that hasn’t sent me to Hell in the eyes of my family nothing will!”

He began singing lowly at first then louder and louder as tears ran down his cheeks as he remembered their days in London and the politics which brought them together.

“Stand up, all victims of oppression For the tyrants fear your might!

Don't cling so hard to your possessions For you have nothing if you have no rights!

Let racist ignorance be ended For respect makes the empires fall!

Freedom is merely privilege extended Unless enjoyed by one and all…”

He hummed some lines as he’d forgotten the words, Maria had been so much better at remembering than he.

“So come brothers and sisters For the struggle carries on And end the vanity of nations We've but one Earth on which to live” He lifted a fist into the air and threw more flowers into the grave followed by the missal. Then he filled in the grave with stones and dirt; his best clothes were now covered in dirt, but he didn’t care.

Alfred went to the small flower garden in front of the cabin and dug up a rose bush Maria had brought with her from Belfast; and replanted it in the centre of her grave. The afternoon and evening were spent making two wooden ‘headstones’ with their names and dates roughly carved on them.

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The next morning he dug those into place.

Then there seemed nothing more to do.

Daily jobs on the farm should have been completed, but Alfred just sat on the porch and wept and wondered. He picked up his army Lee-Enfield rifle and put it into his mouth, he sat for a while like this not really thinking, then took it out, pulling the trigger again and again until it was empty, firing at nothing but air and trees.

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After a month of anger, when Alfred worked so much on the farm he made himself physically exhausted each day then dropped to sleep, but without feeling rested when he woke. He sat in the shade of the forest next to Maria and Jack’s graves and wrote to his mother in Belfast. …I have some terrible news for you, Maria and your grandson Jack have died of the Spanish flu. I am so sorry you only met Jack when he was just a tiny baby, I know you would have loved him, I know that with all my heart, he so reminded me of George, in the best ways. Remember how little George used to sometimes just sit staring for ages from the upstairs window, that one you could see Divis between the Hamilton’s and Boyle’s, he used to tell stories to us about a dragon who lived up there, keeping all the bad people away from Belfast. Jack did that sort of thing. He’d go and sit at the edge of the farm and look into the woods, then we could hear him telling himself stories about the animals, about the tree people he imagined and drew. I’m sure he’d have one day become a great writer.

I have enclosed one of the drawings he did, perhaps it may make you feel close to him. One day perhaps he’d have travelled over to see you all, I so wanted you to meet him, and I feel so guilty mam.

It was me who brought the flu to our home, I got over it fairly easily but then Jack got it and then Maria when she was looking after him. They suffered so much, they weren’t strong enough. I wasn’t sure I would be able to live after they went, I am still not and I know you will probably think it a sin, and father a weakness, that I thought of taking my life, but I nearly did it and may still. But I remember you once saying to me after 100

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grandad died, that when no one remembers someone then that is when they really die, and I don’t want my beautiful boy Jack and my beautiful wife Maria to die so I will try to keep living to keep them alive as long as I can.

I hope you and father are well and that the shop is thriving. I haven’t heard from you for a while but post to here does sometimes take some time to reach me. How has Edward been since being demobbed, you must be happy that he survived when so many others didn’t, it’s hard to think of him as a soldier he was just a gangly lad when we left. I know it took me some time to get used to civilian life again, be careful of him, he will have seen things he probably won’t want to tell you about, I did. I still have terrible dreams reliving what happened and I don’t think South Africa was anything like as bad as the Western Front. But he’s safe and that’s the most important thing.

How are George and Sally, last time you wrote you said they had two girls, do you ever see them, I hope you do, it’s not that hard for them to come and visit you from Glasgow. He’s done well getting so high at the shipyards, I hope it hasn’t changed him too much.

I was sorry that we had to move away, but I hope you both understand now. I know especially father didn’t approve of me marrying a Catholic girl, and I know it wasn’t her you disapproved of, but you could see the difficulties that would arise with all that talk of Home Rule, and they did. Father’s Lodge had harsh words to say, so it was all for the best.

I have been reading about the problems going on, most of the newspapers here only report on Dublin and they are totally behind the Republican Government, but there was some news of troubles in Beechmount and burnings out in Blackstaff. It looks like Ulster will stay in the Empire, but the rest looks like it could take some time to sort out, as usual no one wants to budge 101

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an inch, it’s something in us Irish isn’t it whichever part we come from.

I’m sitting writing this beside Maria and Jack’s graves and I don’t think I have ever written as much since I used to write home from South Africa. Don’t worry about me, I don’t know if I will ever get back to Belfast, I am here up The Magic Mountain and the work is hard but it is peaceful and there’s no-one to bother me.

And a final request. As you will see I have enclosed a letter to Maria’s parents, I do not feel that they should hear about the death of their only daughter and grandson just by post. I realise that at this time it may be dangerous for you, but please would you take the letter to them and be there for when they open it. I do not think it a good idea for father or Edward to go with you, perhaps if Mrs Kane is still around, her work at the Lying–in Hospital means she goes to many neighbourhoods and will be trusted and known in their area. Please try and do this it would mean a lot to me.

My love to all of you especially to you mother who is deep in my heart and soul and will be until my dying day.

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Four months later, Alfred went to Pikeville to pick up supplies.

He called into the post office to check if any letters had arrived for him. There was one addressed in his mother’s neat flowing hand and a brown paper parcel tied with string addressed by his father.

Alfred sat in the early spring sun in the newly opened City Park and opened the letter.

His mother wrote: “We were so sad to hear about Jack and Maria, the photograph you sent when he was two years old sits on the mantlepiece, we so wanted to meet him, we are both so sorry, I have never seen you father so upset, he sat in his chair day after day looking up at the picture in tears, asking God why he had taken him so young. I have never seen him in tears even when his mother died.

I took your advice and went to Lepper Street with Mrs Kane, she knows a lot of families around there. It was sad to see so many burnt out houses, I hadn’t realised how much trouble there had been over there.

The Callan’s house was empty, a neighbour Mrs Kane knew, told me that they had packed up and gone to live with Mr Callan’s sister in Dundalk, she gave me the address. So I talked to your father and he agreed that the letter needed to be taken personally, he would have wanted that had it been you.

I took the Dublin train which had an armed guard, and Edward met me at the station, he is stationed just outside Dundalk.

There was one of those huge tanks, I think that’s what they’re called, sitting outside the station, with soldiers doing work on the engines, lots of little boys looking at it and shouting at the 103

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tommies. I remember they had one outside City Hall during the Armistice Celebrations when Lloyd George gave a speech.

You won’t know, but Edward was recruited as a Temporary Constable just after Christmas and he says lots of unemployed ex-soldiers have been, they are there to protect the policemen and go on patrol as the Republican Army, that’s what they are called now, are a problem, they’re no better than the Fenians.

Your father gets into endless noisy discussions about it all in the shop. I wasn’t very happy about him joining up again so soon after coming home from the War. Edward told me they’d be in the background not fighting, whatever that means.

Edward was wearing such a strange uniform, you’d have laughed as I remember how smart and handsome you looked in your uniform. His trousers look like black police ones and the jacket like his old army one, and he wore a floppy black beret like some Scotsman. I think it was all put together very quickly, and it looks like it. He said there were lots of them stationed around Dundalk getting training and that he’d probably soon be going to the west or to Dublin, which he was looking forward to. Edward said most of the others were from London or Scotland but there were some lads there from Belfast and Portadown. Like him they hadn’t been able to get a job since demobilisation. He reckons by the end of his time he will have been paid enough to afford a passage to America, if he does maybe he could stay with you for a time. I hope he doesn’t, but I wouldn’t blame him, there’s little here now for anyone young, since the war ended, they’re not even taking on anyone at Harlands, lots of men just hanging around corners hoping something will turn up.

Well, he took me to the road where the Callans live, a nice house overlooking a park, he didn’t come all the way as he said 104

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not all locals were keen on being seen with the police, although Dundalk in general was supportive of them.

Mrs Callan’s sister-in-law met me at the door, I explained what had happened to her and she was shocked, she brought Mrs Callan to the parlour and we sat and she opened the letter. Mr Callan wasn’t there, he was helping out at his brother-in-law’s bakery. When she read what you’d written she went white as a sheet and near fainted, I was pleased there was someone else there. When she came around, we talked about Maria and Jack and you, she doesn’t blame you whatsoever, whatever it was you said in the letter, she said how it was an evil which had spread around the world and nothing you could have done would have stopped it. We both agreed that whether we like it or not, it was God’s will.

We prayed together and she could see I felt awkward hearing those Latin words, but she held my hand tightly and told me what they meant, and you know they’re hardly any different than the words we say in church. She had no idea how to break the news to Mr Callan, Maria meant so much to him, his angel she kept saying over and over. She thought it may kill him as she was their only child and they both had so much hope for Jack and the opportunities open to him in America. I showed her the picture you sent that Jack had drawn and gave it to her, perhaps you would send another to me.

You know we both held each other for nearly two hours until the evening began to draw in and it was time to go for the train home. They asked me to stay but I thought your father would be worried what with all the trouble going on.

Edward had waited all that time for me and took me to the station.

You know it’s odd to think, I am over sixty years old and had never been inside the home of a Catholic family before, that 105

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seems terrible to me now after they were so nice, what’s to become of us here in Ulster.

Your father misses you but would never say it to you. He came off his high horse and asked me to tell you that if you wanted to come home and run the shop he would be only too happy. I know how much you argued before you both left, I think you both said things you probably regret now.

I haven’t ever told you that he left the Lodge after they had criticised you for marrying Maria, harsh words were said, he stood up for you and some of the others didn’t like it, almost came to fisticuffs from what he told me. We lost quite a bit of trade at first, and one year on the Twelfth, one of the shop windows was broken when the parade went by, but the Lodge paid for the repairs and nothing’s happened since. Some of his old Lodge friends have started to come back again, your father has always managed to get the best blends of tea in East Belfast, even they can’t resist that. Then they go on and on forever about Home Rule and keeping Ulster in The Empire. I just leave them to it, it wears me out, you know Alfred a lot of things tire me out nowadays.

Oh Alfred I really don’t know what will happen, I thought when that war was over things would settle down, you did the best thing getting away from all this.

Your father asked this because you know he will be seventy in twenty-two and I will be sixty four, so maybe it’s time to slow down a bit. He doesn’t think Edward will want to, or is able to run things, he seems a bit lost since coming back. Father says maybe the best thing for him after doing this extra service in the south, would be to become a sailor and travel the world. Edward won’t talk about anything that went he went through in France, says he wants to forget and everyone else should do so as well, just get on with life, let things be like they were before it 106

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all happened. But he never was one for talking much was he, you were always the one I could talk best to.

I had hoped he might get together with Katy Lynch, you remember how they used to play together and go on long bicycle rides. But she married a butcher from Ards in 16. Edward was away for too long and no one knew if he’d ever come back, so many didn’t, oh those lists in the Telegraph were terrible, whenever we looked there was someone’s son we knew who’d never be seen again, who what felt like only a few months before had been in the shop buying sweets and playing in the street, then gone forever. Every day we feared the messenger boy knocking.

It’s hard for me to imagine what you are going through and what life is like for you living so far away from anyone, there are times I wish I could be like that, you know too many people around here know too much about everyone else.

We are planning to visit George and Sally in the spring, I am knitting things for the girls. I’ve only been across the water once, that was many years ago, do you remember? We left you and George with my parents, you were six, George five. Edward wasn’t even born then. Your father took me to the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in London, I still remember the crowds and all the times we got lost. We stayed in a guesthouse in Highbury, Mrs Honeyberry, I always remember the name, she was lovely, was originally from Bangor, we kept in touch for many years afterwards. London felt so exciting and that huge parade with all those soldiers from all over the Empire, so much colour and then seeing The Queen in her carriage followed by kings, maharajas, princes and emperors on horseback.

We went on an underground train, I lost my hat when someone opened a window and your father shouted at them. Your father bought that plate of The Queen at her Coronation 1837 then 107

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as Empress in 1887, surrounded by pictures of India, Australia, Canada and South Africa we still have it hanging in the shop.

When I see it I sometimes imagine you in the picture of Canada and that man fording a river on a log.

Then it was so lovely to see you both when we returned home, I think grandfather had been a bit strict with you both because you both ran across the front field and hugged me and wouldn’t let go, but you will always be my lovely kind little Alfred who was always building things.

You know I really liked Maria, it was hard because of father and his beliefs, but after he met her I think he came round to her, but would never admit it. I don’t know if she ever told you about when she came to the shop when your father was first unwell, you were working away, remember when you went to Cork for a month, and she took such good care of him. I heard them talking well you could almost say arguing. She was able to keep up her side of any argument (which I am sure you found out), I think it was about the suffragettes, even though he disagreed with her views, he liked her for having the strength of mind to stand up to him, said she had a good brain and was perfectly capable of making a strong case, he thought she should have been a lawyer rather than a nurse.

Oh Alfred things should have been so different.

I hope you get the parcel. It’s a pound of the special blend of Bewley’s Tea in a commemorative tin, some lovely pictures of old Ireland before the silly Home Rule. Mrs Callan says she will write, but it may be some time as I think it will take her some time to recover if she ever does.

Please keep safe and think about coming home, you know you will be made most welcome. If money is a problem we can pay for your passage….”

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Alfred put the letter in his pocket. There was a lot to think about.

He unwrapped the parcel, the gaudily decorated tin had got a bit bumped and distorted a picture of the Blarney Stone. He lifted the lid, closed his eyes, smelt the aroma of the tealeaves and was a small boy bringing down a message to his father in the shop and secretly being given an Everton Mint by Miss Price the assistant.

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“Please don’t tell Madam DeRosa, she’ll stop my money, I can’t afford that” “No, don’t worry, it’s not your fault. I should never have come” “Please don’t say that Mr Alfred, it is Alfred isn’t it, it’s been so nice, so many of the men, well they just take advantage, Madam says we can complain but she always takes their side and stops our money if we do” “It’s just been so long, it can get so lonely and I just needed to feel a woman next to me, it’s hard to explain. I feel so guilty, my wife my Maria died eight, no nine years ago, I miss her so and I just thought” “Oh Mr Alfred, please, don’t feel guilty, we all need some care, someone to hold us. I spend all day and all night meeting men who use me, I sometimes just want someone to care for me. Some are so cruel, there’s no love, no caring, it’s lust, it’s feels like hatred of women, it’s just horrible, especially because of my colour, they think well, that they can do anything they like, and Madam tells them they can. I do things I despise with those cracker good ‘ol boys who, well I pretend to enjoy their company, sometimes the more we pretend to enjoy it we get a good tip, but you are different and I think Maria was a very lucky woman, oh I am sorry I didn’t mean” “No, no. It’s good to talk, I live a long way out I can spend months without talking to anyone. My son died at the same time” “Oh that is terrible” “Spanish flu” 110

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“And there’s no-one else, you’re a good-looking man, you could easily find another woman you know lots of women are looking for a good man, who will work and not beat them. Have you never thought” “No, no I don’t think I could. I feel guilty coming here, exploiting you, it’s against all I believe in, but it all just got too much, I’m afraid I may do something stupid, you were an outlet” “Oh Mr Alfred, please, you shouldn’t think such thoughts you have so much to give” There was a pause as they lay on the bed naked.

“What is your real name, Jezabel is so demeaning” “Madam gave me that name, after she’d seen a minstrel show.

I’m not supposed to tell you, but it is Serah, Serah Livingston” “The Morning Star, Genesis” “Oh, you know your Bible Mr Alfred” “It was literally drummed into us in Belfast, Sundays were spent studying it, we weren’t allowed to play outside, it was what everyone did in our street. Long passages of the Bible had to be learnt by heart each week or no tea” “Me too, in Kansas City my mother, God rest her soul, read us the good book every night, told us it would save us, now look at me The Whore of Babylon as my Daddy would have said. She named me Serah because as a baby I looked so fresh, untouched by night and dark” “I was named after one of Queen Victoria’s children, it was the thing in those times, it could have been worse I suppose” “Ha! Well Mr Alfred, our time is nearly up, Madam will be knocking on the door soon, especially if there’s another customer waiting. Please don’t tell Madam DeRosa we didn’t do… well you know what. She’s already threatened me with being lynched if I don’t satisfy the customers and bring them back for more, with her it’s all about one thing, dollars” 111

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“Can’t you leave? Find a new town a new life? You know you don’t have to call me Mr Alfred” “No, I am here because of my brother’s debt, gambling, and it never seems to get paid off, it’s my life, I was ten I think when I came here, they would find me with dogs if I tried to escape, hang me on a tree and burn me. Madam says the crackers like to be called Mr, some even prefer to be called Master. It’s got into a habit” “Well with me you certainly don’t have to. I don’t know if I will visit you again Serah, thank you for all your understanding, thank you so much” “And thank you Mr Alfred, sorry Alfred. And remember if you do come and it would be nice to see you, not to ask for Serah, I’ll be beaten again, and there’s plenty of Mister Charlies will pay to do that. Jezabel, remember Mr Alfred if you come again, ask for Jezabel”

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As Alfred made his way to Pikeville Post Office he felt troubled.

Far from allaying his feelings of loneliness, which had welled up over the past few months to an almost manic proportion, he felt guilt, whatever Serah had said to soothe him. He knew he had done wrong.

There was a letter waiting for him postmarked Glasgow from George. He didn’t read it until he was back at the cabin.

“Sally and the girls are well, I hope one day you will be able to meet them, I have often told them about you and the things we got up to, well not everything! I am hoping Mary will go to the technical college in Glasgow next year, she has surprised us at how good she is at the sciences, Alexandra doesn’t seem interested in anything but reading silly romantic novels.

I know it is a few years ago now, far too many, and I apologise for not writing sooner, but Sally and I were both so deeply sorry to hear about Maria and Jack. Such a tragedy, we thought after such a tragedy you may have come back home, I know mother had hoped you would.

Mother and Father have made a number of plans to visit us, but perhaps she told you, she wasn’t well for a time, well most of the time, so we have been over there to visit a couple of times lately. Mother constantly seems very tired, whereas father for a seventy eight year old seems on top form. I think that civil war in twenty-one rejuvenated him. He kept saying that it showed how the Free Staters couldn’t organise a piss up at a brewery and that Ulster was better off without them anyway. The trouble spilled over in Glasgow, at the Yard we had to get rid of the Catholics as fights were breaking out during work time. It’s not the only trouble we’ve had, strikes were taking place 113

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organised by the Communists when that Labour government was in power, but Stanley Baldwin seems to have got things under control. I think it’s been a good move, I am sure you don’t, though maybe some of your ideas, which were so extreme when you returned from London have faded a bit now you are living in America.

We are both worried about mother and Sally said she was worried it may be a cancer, so I have paid for a consultation with an oncology specialist, though she says she doesn’t want to go, you know what mother is like, probably more stubborn than even father is.

I am also concerned about Eddy. I am of course proud he did his bit in The Great War and then as a Special. I don’t know if mother ever told you that I tried to join up in 14, but my work here at the Yard, and all the ships required by the Navy, was deemed too important for me to go.

Eddy came to stay with us a few years after he’d finished as a Special in 22. They got called the Black n’ Tans in the papers and from what he told me sometimes things got a bit out of control, but those Republicans deserved it, I’m glad the Empire is rid of them that’s what I say. I won’t take any of them on here, bad influences.

He didn’t seem able to settle down, I got him some work at the yard but his drinking got out of hand and he became a danger to others. In the end I had to ask him to leave, I couldn’t let the girls see someone in the state he often was in, in our home. I didn’t like doing it but there we are. He said he may go to America, so maybe you will see him. He talked about you a lot, saying you may understand what he is going through as you had been a soldier too. Perhaps that’s true. I wrote to a company we do business with in Wolverhampton and recommended him for a job, and when he left here he was on his 114

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way there, I bought him a railway ticket and gave him some money to tide him over, though I think he had more squirreled away than he was letting on, you remember what Eddy was always like, hiding things. But I heard from them he never turned up. I must say it didn’t go down well at all. He really let me down.

Well there we are, that’s how things are. When I get a report on mother from the specialist I will let you know.

I know you live deep in the mountains away from everyone else, I envy you that at times, but is there a telegraph office near you if it is urgent, letters seem to be taking a long time” Alfred ripped the letter up and threw it into the stove.

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About a month later Carson was barking, he was only a couple of years old but had soon learnt to warn Alfred when anything unusual was happening. Carson had a deep warning bark very different from his normal sound. Alfred was in the barn and before going to see who it may be made sure his rifle was to hand.

Three men on horseback were on the southern edge of the property and they rode towards him up the creek, which was low for the time of year.

“Mr McAdam isn’t it?” the best dressed one called out.

“Yes, can I help you gentlemen” “We’re looking for a woman, a n****r woman” the man said, and the hair bristled on Alfred’s neck, he hated that term, “have you seen anyone of that description come past?”

“No, no one’s been up here for a couple of months, last folks I saw were a couple of fellas out hunting. What you looking for her for?”

“Stole a mule and owes our employer money. The man at the store down the valley said she went past his place and he saw her headed up the valley, towards your place” “Well, just after the falls there’s another path through the woods, takes you over to Virginia, if she knows the area she may know that way” Alfred saw they were all armed and one of them had rope hanging from his saddle.

“Well Mr McAdam if she comes past and you can get hold of her, she’s a slippery one, there’s a twenty dollar bounty for her capture, do whatever you like with her, just keep her alive” the man grinned, and the others sniggered, “we want to deal with this 116

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bitch in our own way. We’ll be back in a few days if we don’t find her. You said back at the falls?”

“Yes, it’s not easy to see but it’s there” They turned and began riding back down the valley. He had a feeling they’d be watching the cabin for some time and he’d have to keep alert. Alfred knew whoever it was wouldn’t know that pathway, and the men would soon realise no one had been on it for many years.

Alfred woke to a very light tapping on the window, he’d slept with the loaded rifle next to him. He got up and flicked the safety, edged to the window and saw a shadowy movement. It was raining quite hard and difficult to see anything clearly. He could hear movement so readied his rifle and flung open the door.

Serah almost fell into the cabin.

“Come in quick Miss Livingston, those men may be watching the cabin. I put them off, told them about an old pathway” Serah was soaked through, “where have you put the mule?”

“I left him back in the woods a few miles back, if they find him he’s far enough away from here, I’ve been walking for hours through the trees, I saw them stopping here, I was up beyond those firs, I lay in the undergrowth until I thought it safe” Alfred stoked up the stove to full heat.

“We need to be careful about too much smoke at this time of night, so get warm then I’ll damp it down. Here, put these on” he handed her a huge woollen pullover and cotton flannel pyjama bottoms. She began to undress.

“No, no Miss Livingston” and ushered her behind a screen.

She looked at him, head to one side for a moment, “Thank you Mr McAdam”

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He put the kettle on the stove and got four eggs and six thick slices of bacon and put them in a pan, then cut a loaf into huge slices.

Serah ate it all, wiping the plate with the bread. Serah was visibly wilting “You look dead beat, we’ll have to think of something in the morning, those men will be back” “Did they tell you why they’re after me?”

“It doesn’t matter, I know what they really want” “I refused a customer what he wanted, look” Serah lifted the pullover and there were three long deep whiplash marks on her back “Madam DeRosa did that, in the room while the man watched, then he and two others” “Miss Livingston, you do not need to explain. I know you were not in the wrong, now sleep. I will sleep over here” “No Mr McAdam, you sleep in your own bed, I will share it with you, we both need proper rest. You are a gentleman and if you aren’t, well I am a very bad judge of character” So after Alfred had made a patrol of his land with Carson and was pretty sure no one was around, he got into the bed. Serah was fast asleep. It felt strange to him to be sharing the bed and it took him some time to get to sleep, his rifle was loaded at hand as was a revolver. He thought how stealthy she must be to get to the cabin and Carson not wake; he thought of Maria and knew she would have done what he did; he took a journey through the streets of Belfast and as he did so fell into a deep sleep.

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Serah was still fast asleep when Alfred woke, she appeared to have hardly moved in the night. The rain had stopped and he could hear that the creek was running fast which would make it harder for the three men to get up the valley. Just in case they were watching the cabin, he went out and did his usual early morning chores: guiding some of the goats into the paddock, filling their trough with water and milking the ones who were ready; making sure the other goats were secure across the creek; feeding and watering his two mules in the barn; he took a walk around the vegetable patch pulling out some weeds; checked the small cornfield; as he did he surreptitiously kept a watch on the surroundings. Alfred drew three buckets of water from the creek and left them on the porch then went to the woodstore and carried in a pile of dry wood.

Serah was up and sitting away from the window and doorway.

“You were very restless Mr McAdam, you have very bad dreams” “I do each night Miss Livingston, I saw and did things in the army I’m not proud of, I hope I didn’t wake you” “A couple of times, you were saying things, I put my arm round you for a short while and it seemed to quieten you. I’m sorry, it must be terrible” “Nothing like you’ve been through Miss Livingston, now let’s eat something and plan what to do next” After breakfast Alfred set out a map on the table.

“You can take the grey and white mule, he’s a good animal. If you ride due east of here, it’s hard going over Magic Mountain, forest all the way. You’ll eventually reach Tug Fork, here” he 119

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pointed at the map, “on the other side is West Virginia. Now you don’t want to head north east to Matawan. There is a similar establishment there to Madam’s, and probably run by the same people. Matawan’s the obvious and probably easiest route to go through, so they will certainly be on the lookout for you as there are quite a few black miners living there, you would blend in but mining families are a very close knit lot and you’d be known as an outsider as soon as you reached town. They’re paying twenty dollars cash for you so plenty will be tempted even if it would mean you being lynched” They both took a deep breath and looked at each other.

“So, when you reach here… turn south east, it’s a harder route, there are fewer trails to follow but you’ll reach the river lower down. It’s very deep and wide and fast running, the mule won’t swim it and if you tried he’s likely to panic and buck you off. When you reach the river follow it and keep going eastwards. There are only a couple of rickety foot bridges around there. You need to get to Devon, there’s not much there, but there is a station on the Norfolk and Western where nearly all trains stop to water and refuel. I can’t see them looking for you there. There’s a bridge just south of Devon where you can cross over, it’s a disused railway bridge, not in too good condition, but I am sure you can do it, I’ve done it quite a few times” There was a silence as Serah studied the map.

“On the West Virginia side I know someone, Jacob, he sells mules, he lives there” Alfred pointed at a curve in the hills and river, “he’s a good man, rob you blind when dealing mules and goats, but that’s his business, we have some fine arguments but always reach a deal. I’ll write a note for Martha, his wife, he can’t read, explain a bit about the situation, he will buy the mule and saddle off you and you can use that money. I will ask Martha to give you some clean clothes, I can pay for them when I next go. They 120

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can take you in their cart to the station. People won’t be looking for a couple with their neice or whatever story you concoct between you. I don’t know how accurate this map is and I have no idea what trains stop at Devon, but it’s the best I can think of at the moment. Jacob should know the trains as they run right past his place. Can you use a compass?”

“I can learn and if I can get here, then I can get there” “It’s a tough ride, you’re going to have to sleep out at least one night, maybe two, and stay close to the creek until it runs dry as it’s the only landmark or else you could be going round in circles.

There’s some rough people live around there, they won’t ask questions, just shoot, there’s some sort of long running feud going on, they don’t like strangers, especially blacks. So you’ll need to keep your wits about you and stay well out of anyone’s way.

“If Madam DeRosa and her people have got the word out there’s a bounty on your head then everyone will be on the lookout for you. Here” Alfred handed her ninety dollars in bills, lifted his hand when she began to talk “and no, I already know what you’re going to say. I know my Maria would have wanted to help you, this was hers. You’ll need this cash as well as the money for the mule for train tickets and places to stay until you get yourself sorted. If you’ve still got any family in Kansas City, I’d say go there first then maybe move on as far as you can get to” “Mr McAdam, you can’t, I’ve never seen so much money, you can’t afford” “I can and you need it. It’s been sitting there in a box hidden in the barn, I was going to send it to my nieces in Glasgow one day, but you need it far more than they do” “I will pay it back, whatever I do, I will pay it back” “There’s no need, if I didn’t mean it I wouldn’t offer it.

Normally I would go with you as I’ve been over there plenty of times and know the route well. But it’s far better that I stay here, 121

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it would look strange if those men came back and I wasn’t here and they hadn’t seen me going down the valley on their way up. I can put them off again, there’s another route south west from here maybe I can take them that way, they don’t look like they are used to riding the hills, but they’ve got rifles and a rope. You’ll need to get going early evening it’s not dark until nearly eight, so you could easily get a few hours travelling in and if it’s a clear night maybe a bit more, get a good head start” They looked at each other.

“Yes, yes that’s best” she put her arms around Alfred’s big body and kissed him on the lips, “thank you, thank you so much, I am so sorry to have put you in danger like this” He put his arms around her and they stood embracing. Without saying anything he wished she could stay forever and she without saying anything wished it too, but now wasn’t the time.

“You’re going to need things” he went to a drawer and took out an old revolver, “can you shoot one of these?”

“Yes, it’s been a few years, but my brother had a gun, he shouldn’t have but did. He showed me how to shoot” “Well if they do catch up with you or you have any other trouble, aim for the horses or mules, they are bigger targets and they can’t follow you without them. You’ll need some food and a container for water, remember to drink as much as you can, there’s plenty of clean streams to refill. Before you get to Devon Station give the gun and compass to Jacob he’ll hide them and I’ll pick them up next time I go, a negro woman found carrying a gun would cause a lot of questions” After showing her how to use a compass they put some food together. The clothes she’d arrived in were now dried and he gave her an old dark waterproof cape of Marias’ and a thick blanket.

They packed everything up and loaded the mule. Alfred made a reconnaissance of his boundary to check if there was any sight of 122

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the men, then at 4pm she set off north east up Magic Mountain Creek.

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Three days later Carson was barking, his warning bark. Alfred was in his cornfield and he made his way to the cabin, making sure his Lee-Enfield was to hand.

There were only two of the men, but he guessed the third was probably somewhere in the woods covering them.

“Mr McAdam, hello again” “Hello” “Have you seen that woman yet?” Alfred thought the man had a Scottish accent.

“No, and as you can hear, Carson hears most things coming here, can’t see that she could pass without him hearing” “We tried that route you told us about, can’t see she’d have got up there. Thompson at the stores saw the mule go past his place without a rider yesterday, made us think maybe she’s been hiding in the hills round here” “No, seen nothing” “Do you mind if we take a look in your barn there, just in case?”

“Not at all, do those horses need any feed?”

“No, we’ll just take a look” One dismounted and the other sat on his horse with his rifle to hand.

Alfred knew he could easily take them out, his rifle was far superior to their weapons and his training had made him a fast shot, but it would cause problems however much he wanted to.

The man came out of the barn.

“A fine mule you have there Mr McAdam. Mr Thompson said you had two, there looks enough feed set out for two” “I used to, traded it a couple of months ago, couldn’t grow enough feed for both to last the winter, so I aim to just hire one 124

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when I need one for ploughing. Those goats need feeding too you know, I get snowed in a few times each winter, so I plan well” “I can see, you’ve got a good spread here Madam DeRosa said you went with that black when you went to her house, you didn’t plan anything together did you?”

“Whoever you are, you’ve seen that she’s not here and not been here, so I’ll ask you now to leave my land, I got lots of chores need doing” “Well Mr McAdam if we find you have anything to do with this theft then we’ll be back and I will bring the law, can I look in the cabin?”

“You can look then I request that you leave me in peace, I’ve work to do” The man went through the cabin and out the back door. Alfred saw him make some sort of sign into the woods.

“That your wife there Mr McAdam?” he said as he passed the two graves.

“It is and my son” “A terrible thing for you, I can see why you need a woman” Alfred was about to pick up his gun and blow them both away, but kept his anger below boiling point. He didn’t answer just stood on the porch and watched them ride back down the valley where he could see the third man join them.

He reckoned Serah must have safely reached Devon by now.

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Alfred held the kid firmly under his left arm. It didn’t struggle.

The kid was used to his touch from birth so made no noise.

He picked up a mallet and, as he always did, said a ‘thank you’ to the kid, gently kissed its head, then hit it hard on its forehead, hard enough to knock it out and not shatter the skull which would have hurt it. He checked it was out cold then quickly and expertly slit the throat. He felt the animals’ muscles loosen and the life drain from it like the trickle of blood running down his hand.

Alfred hung the carcass to drain, the blood slowly running towards the creek where it melted some ice at the edge, swirled a little and disappeared down the valley.

After a couple of hours he placed the kid on the cutting table and began the work of removing the skin without harming it, he had done this many hundreds of times and quickly all that was left on the table was the carcass.

Alfred preferred to do his own killing. He’d seen the inhuman way they treated animals at the slaughterhouse in Pikeville and wouldn’t let them touch his animals. His goats trusted him, he’d brought most of them up since birth, usually been there to help bring them in to the world, and they gave him a living, so he felt it was only fair to be fair to them, they deserved a good life however short.

He could hear the mother goat bleating in the field across the creek, by the next day she’d be fine. He took the carcass into the coldstore and would butcher it properly after he had begun the process of preparing the skin.

Alfred sold the kidskins and goatskins to a glover, Aaron Levov, in Newark NJ, who had placed an advert in a newspaper looking for high quality suppliers. He made the finest, most expensive 126

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gloves, which were sold in upmarket stores in Manhatten, often making pairs specifically to fit a client. He was Alfred’s only customer, and on the one time they’d met Mr Levov told him that because of the care his goats were given, that his were some of the finest skins he could get hold of and would always take whatever was available, at a very fair price. Despite the Depression the price of gloves for the rich hadn’t fallen.

The meat from the animals helped feed him and Carson all year round, if there was a surplus he’d take it down the valley and sell it to Thompson at the stores or the butcher’s shop in Pikeville.

Melting ice and snow was making Magic Mountain Creek run fast, the edges still had a coating of ice on the dead grass, the goats were pawing at snow to find edible patches of grass amongst dark elongated shadows in the shapes of the woodlands and hills around the farm, a low sun was just gaining some warmth rose above the dripping woods.

It had been a hard winter, Alfred had lost a few goats and was getting short of feed, he’d not been able to get down the valley for nearly three months.

Carson began barking.

Alfred was cleaning blood from his hands and picked up his rifle, went into the cabin and hid behind the thick outer door with its embrasure. He could see a man leading a rather decrepit looking mule and knew him, a bit weightier than he was last time he’d seen him. He went out to the porch. The man saw him.

“Play up The Glens yer bastard!” Edward shouted with a laugh in his voice stopping and waving.

“Play up The Glens yerself Eddy!” Alfred shouted back laughing.

They met halfway and embraced.

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“Ach bloody hell man, you’ve been a bugger to find, what the fuck yer doin living out here, there’s no-one for miles, thought I was going to die back there. Looks like you’re keepin dick eh?”

Edward said nodding to the Lee-Enfield in Alfred’s hand.

“Ach it’s a long story. And what the bloody hell are you doing here man you buck eejit, George wrote ages ago that you’d just disappeared” “I need a big brew and I’ll tell you about it. I’m buggered freezin man, surprised me balls haven’t floated off down that damn river” Carson could see this was a friendly person but kept his distance, loping around them in circles.

“Here, you go inside get warmed up, I’ll take this bag o’ bones into the barn, looks like he’s never been fed for months” “Bargain the man said” “Bargain my arse, and how much did they skin yer for it. Those fellas back there knew an eejit when they see one, now get inside an get that brew on” When Alfred returned to the cabin the kettle was on and Edward was doing rifle drill with the Lee-Enfield.

“Ach one of these was my best mucker in the trenches Alfie, wouldn’t have bin here without it, hard buggers them Hun were, was bloody fubar most of the time I tell yer, bloody fubar. You got the tin-opener?”

“I use it for dealing with the goats, comes in handy” “I used mine for dealing with Hun, nasty business ripping a man’s guts out, but it was him or me” Alfred made tea and cut up some soda bread.

“No butter and no Veda, it ain’t mam’s here you know” Edward demolished it all.

“So Eddy, how d’ya get here, yer could av let me know” “Got any fags?”

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“Only a pipe now, Eddy, smoke a pipe now and not that often, you can try that” “Did yer not get the letter, I sent one from Halifax, said I was makin’ me way down the coast” “Nothin’ I been stuck up here three months, the weathers only just breakin’” “Ach, well, after the Specials I was at the shop awhile, then ended up at George’s, but he’s got a bit stuck up now, don’t blame him I suppose. I kept getting pissed up with a bunch of kilties I’d known in 17. Yer know I ended up in The Micks at The Somme after I was in the 36th and there was hardly any of us left after we went over the top, so they got me and a bunch of other Belfast lads in with the 15th kilties for a while and somehow in all that bloody mayhem I made it back. God knows how I didn’t end up shot in The Micks and all their posh FEB officers so it is, wanting glory takin’ us over the top, talkin about their schools and keepin up traditions. Yer know I never had a scratch all through just a bit of gas got me a couple of months behind.

“Then when I got down to Limerick with the Specials some bastard Fenian got me in the leg” he pulled up his trouser to reveal a big scar, “just like yours Eddy, must be a family trait. Still got some good compo eventually” They both laughed knowing that getting compensation was better than a medal.

“Anyway, should have gone to Wolverhampton, to some job stuck-up George organised, but when the train stopped I looked out at all the smoke and factories and I thought shit to that, carried on and ended up in Bristol. Got some work on a few boats, been all round the World I have, fucked all colours of women you can think of. Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Cape Town, Bombay all over - then somehow ended up in Halifax Nova Scotia, where I was signed off ship after some trouble on board with a Fenian bastard, 129

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shit man that’s the bloody coldest place I’ve ever been, except that fuckin’ river of yours!

“Thought about crossing Canada, get some work in the logging but then Eddy came to mind and signed on with a coaster going to Boston, got in a few more fights there, worse Fenians there than in bloody Dublin. When they knew I’d bin a Black n’ Tan those fuckin Boston coppers were even worse! Look at that dent in me skull” “Didn’t knock anymore sense in to yer then” “Ha, had dizzy spells ever since. When I got out of jail I worked a cattle boat down to Alexandria, rode a few trains and ended up in Pikeville. And here I am. And don’t yer worry, I got plenty of cash, I can pay me way, but out here there’s nowt to fuckin’ spend it on!”

“Well, you can help me on the farm, springs coming up, lots to do” “Saw two graves as I was coming in, is that Maria and Jack?”

“Yes” there was a pause, “it was hard, it is hard” “I wasn’t fair to you back then, full of the Volunteers, but I was only a kid, couldn’t see why you’d marry a taig, didn’t seem right.

She was always nice to me, I must have seemed rude, I am sorry, I really am Alfie, there was no need” They sat, looking at the red glow of the stove, taking in the warmth.

“You know Alfie, I lost my nerve in the Specials, I think that’s how I got hit. We were down in a little village near Glengariff, three Crossleys and a Mark One, there’d been a tip off about guns being landed. As we parked up we saw this woman pushing a pram, we’d heard stories about guns being hidden in prams and underneath priests surplus’, you know the sort of shit. Anyway one of the lads said he could hear a metal noise coming from the pram.

The officer shouted at her to stop, she didn’t, he ordered me to shoot her, I was the best shot, like you. Got her in the head with 130

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one bullet. Her mammy came running out into the street screaming that she was deaf and a bit simple. It appeared she went round all day pushing a pram finding bits of old metal.

“It got me, you know fair got the wind up me. I could take hand to hand in a trench with a Hun, you know it was me or him, they was armed and trained, like us, good lads really if we hadn’t been enemies, it was war, but going round burning farms which looked like grandads’ or shooting civilians, I know many of them were bastard Fenians, but they looked like us, like me and you, like Dad, like Mam - just ordinary people. The lads from England couldn’t give a shit, we were all ‘dirty paddys’ to them, even us lads serving with ‘em from Ulster, and they were pissed up most of the time.

“So that’s how I got pipped, a real blighty one, the sort we were looking out for in France. My mind was elsewhere, should have seen them behind the rocks. Went on a bender for the next couple of years, kept seeing her mammy’s eyes, so full of hate” “Didn’t anyone investigate it?”

“Investigate what? No one ever bothered, it was active service, a war situation, we Specials were left to just do whatever we wanted, whatever the kids in the regulars couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

When we raided a farm one lad used to go and shoot all the livestock just for fun, had a go at him and he told me if I didn’t look out I’d be next, fuckin’ English” “Sounds like the Transvaal” They were silent again for some time.

“When I was in hospital I thought I might meet a beautiful nurse like you did, but they were all men, all fuckin’ blokes doing the nursing so it is” “She was beautiful wasn’t she” Alfred said looking at the framed photograph of Maria on the wall.

“So she was and that doesn’t do her justice” 131

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“No, odd isn’t it, photographs are supposed to be true likenesses, but Maria, he just couldn’t capture her, that look she had, like she always cared” “And only God knows how a great big ugly bastard like you got hold of a beautiful woman like her, she must have been on the Bucky that day!”

And they both laughed out loud.

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That summer was hot, it always was in Kentucky, but that year seemed hotter. Magic Mountain Creek almost dried up. Having Edward there was a huge help to Alfred and they cleared trees giving greater space to grow forage and for the goats to roam around.

After a few months of proper feeding Edward’s mule had become strong and solid and was able to pull a plough which Alfred got second hand in Pikeville, so there was more than enough feed for the coming winter. Back where some of the trees had been they dug a well where Alfred guessed there was a spring and by July water was easier to come by. It wasn’t their way to talk much, it never was. Days could go by when they only said the words necessary to do the work.

Alfred didn’t say anything about Serah and nothing had been told him on his visits to town. Edward was in the habit of visiting Madam DeRosa’s most weeks and after he’d been the second time he said to Alfred; “Ach, those lasses are something so they are, you ought to come with me, wind yer windy down and get bucked, do yer good man.

Madam did a check on me, right scundered I was, see if I had the clap, like they used to do at Eetapps after we’d bin on leave. She said you’d helped one of her girls get away, is that true?”

Alfred told him that some men came looking for a woman the past fall, but he’d not seen anything of her. He knew what Edward was like, as a kid he could never keep his gob shut and regularly got him and George into trouble, after a few drinks he’d never be able to keep a secret.

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When Alfred next went to Pikeville there were two letters waiting for him, Edward had stayed at the cabin, looking after things.

He opened the letter from his mother, the writing was shaky compared to her usual beautifully clear hand. …thanks for letting us know Edward is with you. We were both worried even though your father never showed it. George said he’d got a job for him with a friend of his, but he never showed up, that was years ago. I let George know and he wasn’t very happy, I could tell from his letter.

I’ve not been able to write earlier, my hand kept shaking, it was after George sent me to that hospital, makes you worse I always think, when they start prodding around. Still it’s not something to discuss with sons, I talked it over with Mrs Kane and she says I have to take it easy and rest more, and that I may have to go to hospital for a while to get it sorted. Well I’ve been telling your father to take it easier. Mrs Donald next door comes in most days and helps me, but she’s a terror for looking on the worst side of things, planning where I’ll be buried and what I want at my funeral and so on. You may remember what she was like, and she gets worse as she gets older.

It must be nice for you having company after all these years and I am sure he’s a good help on that farm of yours. What do you think he’s going to do? Father says he’s just restless and needs something to calm him down, a regular job, but they’re hard to come by. We’ve been having problems at the shop, so many have been laid off lately there’s hardly any money, your father can’t afford to keep giving credit, some days he says he’s giving more away than he is taking in, but they are old friends and regular customers. George was urging him to sell the business last year, 134

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I wish we had, things have got so bad no one will want to buy it now.

I just get so tired, it feels like I have no energy, some days I can’t get out of bed and I have such a pain at times.

We still have grandad’s farm, there’s trains to Comber it’s not that far away and there’s even the omnibus to Ards which goes past the end of the lane, I would like us to move there, it would be peaceful, I don’t think your father does, he seems wedded to the business. The tenants moved out last year so it’s empty. But we’d need some help, if Edward or you want to return there’d be plenty to do and you’d have the house after we’d gone. Please keep it in mind, I know it wouldn’t be easy for you to leave as you have made your home in America, so many have from Ireland.

It is much quieter since partition, a lot of your father’s friends thought all the Catholics should be sent down south and a lot did go, and a lot of prodys came to live up here. But on both sides of the border there seems less trouble, we hardly hear a southern accent any more, I used to like to hear it, so much softer than we have in Belfast, like singing.

I’ve not heard anything from Mr and Mrs Callan. I know there were a lot of reprisals in Dundalk, perhaps you would write and see how they are, I’m finding it so tiring to write at all, but I wanted to be in touch with you again, it makes me feel you are much closer than you are, as if I am just talking to you across the room, like the long talks we used to have sitting by this fire as the late afternoon darkened into the evening. I miss those, I really do, you’re a good lad Alfred, a really good lad.

Give my love to Edward and make sure he doesn’t get into too much trouble, but he always will, that’s what he’s like, says things without thinking, then comes up shining.

All my love to you as always, I’m just too tired to write more...

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Alfred shed a few tears he had the feeling that was the last letter he would receive from his mother. He opened the other letter which had a Chicago postmark, in the folded paper were three crisp ten dollar bills. The letter was typed. …I am sorry not to have been in touch sooner, I didn’t want to write until I had something to pay you back, I will pay the rest back soon. You must have wondered how I got on and whether I was still alive, it’s almost three years now. Maybe Jacob told you something.

After leaving you I got on quite well and slept in the woods, it took a while to get used to following the compass and I ended up in a few awkward places where I had to double back. On the second night I was awoken by some voices, they were a long way away and I could just see the lights of a cabin in the distance, it looked a lot sloppier than yours Mr McAdam, but the wind and night silence carried their voices. As soon as there was a sliver of light in the sky I started out and soon came on a pathway, I wasn’t sure whether to follow it in case it just led to the cabin but it was going in the right direction and I was able to keep going much faster. So I took my chance.

After a couple of hours I saw a man on a mule coming towards me, he’d seen me so I couldn’t get off the path. I’d kept the gun close to me and was holding it under that big black cape you gave me. When we reached each other I think at first he thought I was a boy and told me he was going to take my mule as I must have stolen such a good one, he seemed drunk, then he looked at me and said to me that I was that woman they were after and said something about the twenty dollars. I could see him going for his rifle and, just like you said to do, I aimed at his mule and with two shots must have killed it, as it fell over sideways 136

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with him underneath. I got moving as quick as the mule would move and I could hear him shouting in pain that I’d broken his leg and all the things he’d do to me when he got hold of me.

About an hour later I could hear the noise of a train and the river, so knew I was near Tug Fork.

When I got into the valley a coal wagon passed by but it was driven by a colored man who just glanced and nodded at me.

Getting across Tug Fork wasn’t easy, that mule just did not want to cross the old railway bridge as you could see the river below and it was in full flow, I almost left him on the Kentucky side but I thought if anyone found that man and saw a mule wandering around they’d put two and two together and guess where I’d gone. I eventually got him over and reached Jacob and Martha’s spread at about 5pm, luckily a lot of the mules there looked just like yours, so he fitted in well with the others.

I gave Martha the note and told them about the man on the pathway, Jacob knew who it probably was when I described the mule, a man named Carter. Jacob said he’d go up there in the morning to see if he was still there, and they decided it was best not to stay there too long and get a train as soon as possible; there was one each night to Petersberg at 10pm which would get there about 6am. So they let me wash up, Martha had some clothes which made me look about forty years older, but they were clean and dry. She had an old pair of glasses which totally changed the way I looked. They burnt my clothes, it was as if they were burning my old life and that felt good.

Then they took me in their wagon to the station, Jacob went and bought the ticket, told them it was for his niece like you suggested. He gave me fifteen dollars for the mule, he was certainly worth more than that, saved my life, as you have Mr McAdam. He may already have told you this.

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At Petersburg I got another train up to Cincinnati, then one to St.Louis where I stayed at a colored hotel and bought some new clothes, shoes and a suitcase. After a couple of days I took a train to Kansas City.

I went to see my brother, Clifton, who has gone up in the world a bit, he owns three stores now, I was well annoyed as he could easily have paid off the debt. It was after all he who owed the money to the mob and sent me to Madam DeRosa’s as cover for it. You know if I’d still had that gun I may have had a mind to shoot him too for all I went through. I’ll never speak to him again.

Well he said those men would almost certainly come looking for me in KC, so after staying the night at an old acquaintance and visiting Mother’s grave, I got a train to Chicago where my cousin Claris lives. My other brother, Marvin, he’s a Red Cap and slipped me into an empty suite as he had a friend who’s a sleeping car attendant, so I had a very comfortable journey and arrived in Chicago in real style, that is after having to fend his friend off joining me in bed in no uncertain manner as payment for the favour.

Claris lives in the South Side and I don’t think Madam’s men would dare to come anywhere near here.

She got me a job at The Chicago Defender, a newspaper for colored. As you can see I have learnt to type it’s the way to get on nowadays.

It’s busy here and Chicago is huge, it feels like everything is moving at a million miles an hour, I can go to the movies every night if I want, there’s lots of music and dancing wherever you go. I am moving into my own apartment soon, life feels good at last.

One of the editors says that I have some good ideas and may get me to write some articles, though knowing men it may just be a 138

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way to get his way with me, he has an eye for the ladies and thinks a lot of himself. Claris doesn’t know what I’d been doing in Pikeville nor do they at the paper, she knows there were some people after me because of money Clifton owes, which didn’t surprise her, so my name is now Pearl Weston, which I like, classy I think.

I can’t thank you enough Alfred McAdam and maybe if you ever travel to Chicago we could meet up. I will make sure I pay back all I owe you, I am earning well and keeping myself to myself now. Keep safe and look after yourself and I hope you find someone who can care for you as much as you cared for me. It may be best to destroy this letter…

Alfred lit a match and burned the letter and envelope, throwing the ashes into the creek and they swirled around in the current as it ran towards the falls. He then lit his pipe and continued his journey back to the cabin.

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Alfred woke and the cabin was dark, he lit the lamp and looked at the clock, 7am, he was late waking and it should have been getting light. The cabin felt bitterly cold and the stove needed raking out and restarting, as he went to the window all he could see was snow to the top, with some difficulty he opened the door and it was a wall of snow, packed hard against the cabin, some fell in on top of him.

By now Edward had woken up and was getting the stove lit, Alfred told him to stop as the snow may have covered the chimney as well.

“A storm must have come up the valley, never happened before, built the place so it faced south west” He went to the back door and that was stuck as it opened outwards. The rear window was covered by a wooden screen to stop the draft. Alfred pulled it off and the snow on that side had only just reached the bottom of it.

“If we’re going to get out we’re going to have to take this whole frame out” Edward and Alfred worked on getting the window frame out without totally smashing it up, then climbed out into snow up to their waists. By now the sun had come out, the sky was a sharp clear blue with long deep blue shadows crossing the land. It was hard and hot work digging a pathway around the cabin. Luckily the chimney wasn’t covered and Edward went back inside and got the stove going as Alfred continued digging a path to the barn, which had a snowdrift up it. When he’d got the door open Carson flew 140

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out and was engulfed in a snowdrift, which set both Alfred and Edward off into gales of laughter.

Edward had brought out a big black jug of coffee and they drank that as they surveyed the white landscape. The trees dripped like rain as the sun rose higher; the creek was just a narrow gully slowly wideneing as it broke through packed snow and ice; the front of the cabin was like a white hill with the now smoking chimney rearing upwards.

They fed the animals and then led the mules up and down the path they’d dug to flatten it out, then began the task of clearing around the well. They had only just completed lining it at the end of November and eventually got the lid off which was frozen to the stonework. The ice hadn’t penetrated as far as the water and they were able to water the animals and get enough in for themselves.

The creek was still mainly iced over so looking southwest it was just one snowfield up to the edge of the forest. The goats easily crossed to and fro and seemed happy enough to paw at the ground and find bits to eat or gnaw at some of the trees surrounding the property.

As the snow melted in the sun they could see that the weight of snow had done some damage to the porch, with the roof over it caved in about three feet, but the cabin roof looked intact and there were no drips coming through inside. Melting water was creating long icicles off the gable end on the northern side.

They spend most of the rest of the daylight hours digging to the door then propping up the roof over the porch with some uncut logs.

Clouds were gathering in the north but the wind had changed and Alfred reckoned the cabin would be protected by the woods if it snowed again.

They were exhausted by the time the door was cleared of snow, but they knew they had to replace the window and put some sort 141

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of protection over the front. They nailed some sawn planks to cover the back window space.

When they finished it was dark and by the time Alfred and Edward sat down next to the stove they looked at each other shook their heads and laughed.

“Ach fuck Alfie, that was bloody dingo that was so, we had snow like that once in a trench near Arse filled to the top with snow it was and some bloody FEB donkey walloper comes along carrying messages and him and his horse fell right down into the trench, didn’t see it was a trench, fuckin eejit, took flamin’ hours dig em out, ad shoot the horse, broke its leg; god you should have heard the noise it made. Bloody Hun saw something was up and sent loads of moaning minnies over, all bloody day we were jumpin in and out of snow to keep from being blown to fuck. Bet you never got that in Transvaal, bloody summer holiday you lot had!”

“Huh, it was fuckin’ shit there too man, so fuckin hot you could lose half yer weight sweatin all day then freeze your balls off at night. Them Boer sharpshooters were experts with a Mauser, could shoot yer cock, yer balls, and yer ten fingers and toes off one by one just for fun” They sat and laughed at each other.

“Yer need a woman here Alfie, someone to look after us, feed us, keep the bed warm, could get one of the girls at Madam’s come up, share her we could. I’d go first of course!”

Alfred was silent as Edward laughed.

“Sorry Edward I don’t find that funny, not funny at all. Those girls are no better than slaves there and you know it” “No need be like that Alfie, no need at all, I was just joshin’” “Well I don’t like it, I don’t like it”

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The snow melted almost as quickly as it had arrived as a warm wind brought heavy rain from the south for a week. The creek rose higher than Alfred had ever experienced and soon reached the shed used for slaughtering and processing the goats. Quickly they had to remove as much of the paraphernalia that they could before a torrent of water roared in taking the shed and what was left in it downstream, smashing it to pieces against the rocks. The water didn’t reach the barn or the house but washed away some of the land opposite and widened the creek by a few yards.

The high wind blew over the outhouse which made them both laugh even though it was most inconvenient for a few days, toilet jokes always went down well between the brothers. They decided to move it further from the house into a more sheltered position and far away from the well, so a few days were taken up digging deep down and making a more substantial ‘building’. Then they built another shed for processing the goat skins, they needed more materials to complete it so both Edward and Alfred took the mules and made their way down to Pikeville when the creek had dropped a bit.

Halfway they stopped for a rest.

“You all right Eddy? You’ve been quiet lately” “Ach no more than normal could do with a good shag” and they both laughed a sort of knowing ‘huh’, “I been thinking I ought to move on soon, don’t want to leave you in the lurch what with the work on the farm, but you know” “Yeh, don’t think about me, but I used to get on fine without a lazy buck eejit in the way all day, so won’t make too much difference” 143

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“Nice to know I won’t be missed! I may go to California, maybe go and be a movie star in Hollywood some good craic there I bet!”

“That’ll be grand for yer, heard they’re looking for ugly bastards like you, they’ll be queuing up for yer, yer daft bugger!

I’ll need to hire a couple of mules bring all the stuff we need back up. That storm’s done damage all way down here” Alfred said looking around at the devastated woods and creekside.

They readied themselves for the rest of the journey, looked at each other as they sat on the mules.

“Play up the Glens!” they both cried out laughing and continued down the creek.

“There’s a wire for you Mr McAdam, came three days ago” Alfred knew exactly what it would be, he’d expected it each time he went to the post office for the past couple of years since George’s letter. He put it in his pocket with the other mail. He guessed if he told Edward, who had gone off to Madam DeRosa’s for an hour, that he’d go on a bender maybe never come back, so he felt it best to read it together then have a few drinks at the cabin, so he went and bought a couple of bottles of illicit whiskey from a place behind the Sherriff’s office.

It was dark when they arrived back at the cabin. Alfred had left a couple of lanterns a mile away so they would have enough light.

Carson knew their noise and calmly met them nearly half a mile downstream and followed circling around. It took a while to unload the extra mules and Edward said that he was worn out and would sleep; Alfred decided to wait until the morning to break the news.

“You should have told me, you had no right Alfy, you had no right” Alfred tried to protest.

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“No Alfy, no! That telegram, that was for both of us. Just because you’re the oldest you’ve always been the same, always right and I’m always wrong, always! Always had to have things your way. Just because you’re the oldest you think you know best. You had no right, fuck you Alfy fuck you!”

Edward swiped up one of the whiskey bottles and strode out of the cabin down to the creek and sat down on a huge boulder watching the water flowing by.

Alfred sat for a few minutes, the telegram in hand; he opened the door of the stove and threw it in to the fire where it turned to ash in a matter of seconds and slammed the door closed. He made his way to the barn where he spent the next couple of hours clearing and cleaning, anything to keep himself occupied.

Then carrying the other bottle, he went and sat beside Edward who was staring into the distance. Without looking at each other they clinked the bottles and for quite some time sat in silence.

“Do you remember Alfred, you probably wouldn’t, that time mother and I took the tram up the Antrim Road to visit her cousin, Aunty Harriet, who worked as a housekeeper at a huge house up there. You were sixteen and father had you and George helping out at the shop, so this was just an adventure for us two. It took ages and felt like travelling to the end of the earth rattling along the road, there were even fields and cattle up there in those days. It dropped us at the end of a long tree lined driveway leading to this huge dark stone building, it looked like we were going to a castle in an adventure story.

“The owners were away. I remember Aunty Harriet had a massive bunch of keys hanging down from her belt, and she took us round rooms the size of our whole shop and house put together.

I remember great big tall windows and dark curtains which she’d open with a huge sweep and clouds of dust and we saw views of the parkland right down to the lough. Then we went to her rooms and 145

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a maid wearing a bright white apron brought tea and the sweetest cake, like a tea shop in town. Aunty Harriet took me to the playroom and I played with the sort of toys I’d only ever gawped at in Robbs’ window at Christmas time. They chatted as I played and just before we left Aunty Harriet handed me a Brittains toy soldier with not a mark on it, not like our battered toys. He had a red and blue uniform and rifle slope over the shoulder, like position 3. She said that the children there had all grown up and left, so all the toys were just gathering dust and they’d never notice one soldier.

“Then on the way home I dropped it between the rails when we had to change trams and I cried and cried. Mother hugged me, that hug which enveloped you, and that perfume, like a rose garden which made you feel warm and special; then she took me to that toy shop on Bridge Street, ach what was it called now and bought me another one just like it, telling me not to tell father. I kept it hidden from him and you two. Only played with it when I was on my own. I took it in my kit bag to France, thought it would bring me good luck. But then lost that too at Wipers in sixteen, when a bloody whizz-bang wiped out all our gear behind the line, fuckin napoo, as well as a couple of brothers from Bangor. I was left with sweet fanny adams, sweet fuckin fanny adams. It was the only time I cried in the whole bloody war. A week later I got gassed and was in Etapps for a couple of months” They clinked bottles and Edward took a swig as did Alfred.

“D’you remember Mam’s meat ‘n tatty pie?”

“Ach fuck Alfy, I could eat that now and the gravy, that bloody gravy” “Ay that gravy. She always had a huge one ready for when we got back from the Glens, it’d be just getting dark and always fuckin’ raining” they both laughed a laugh of knowing remembrance, “dad would be shutting up the shop with Miss Price getting her coat and 146

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hat on. Mam would make us wash our hands at the outside tap and get any mud off our boots, ask who won, then get the pie out of the oven, huge it was looked like it could have fed a regiment, thick golden pastry she made and there’d be a steaming pan of boiled tatty’s and carrots and always dark green cabbage. The kitchen was steaming and there was always clothes hanging on the airer above us. We’d all sit round the table, the range door open burning our legs and she’d dosh out a plate full, then bring that white enamel jug the size of a bucket and pour the gravy on until it almost swam off the plate. Father would say grace then we’d dig in, I always won and got my seconds first” “Course yer did yer great eejit, you were the biggest you bastard, course you did, fourteen years older and threatened me with all sorts behind Mam’s back if I took the last of the gravy!”

“Aye, they were good times, they were” they clinked bottles again, “d’you remember that time at the Glens, you were sitting on my shoulders, you must have only been about five, when the Cliftonville goalie had enough of Sam Mackie calling him all sorts and jumped in and they had a fight, God that was funny” they both laughed again and took big slugs.

Edward shuddered as he drank.

“Where on earth did you get this stuff Alfy, it certainly isn’t whiskey whatever it says on the bottle” “Some bloke behind the Sherriff’s office, think they make it up in the hills, shit stuff isn’t it” “Taken away a lot of the bank, must be six foot wider” They sat watching the goats on the opposite bank finding bits to chew at in the grass.

“Why the fuck do you live in such a shite country Alfy? Yer can’t buy a proper drink, yer miles from anywhere, it’s either too fuckin hot or bloody freezing yer balls off and everyone hates each other, Italians hate the Greeks, Germans hate the Poles, Ruskies hate the 147

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Swedes, Irish hate the Jews and the Italians and they all hate the blacks” “Eddy, everyone hates each other back home” “I suppose so, but if you’re black here you got no chance, people don’t like it if you even talk to a negro” “Eddy you should have heard what they said to Maria back home, disgusting it was” “Ach Mam was nice to her, she used to tell me off for saying things but I was only a lad, just copied what all the other kids said.

That bastard Sir Edward Carson got us all riled up against the taigs.

I didn’t see him at the front when the War came, sat safe in London with his FEB friends, his speech got all us lads eager to take on the Hun. You know only three of us came back from thirty that joined up that day he came to the Hall… three! Told us it was going be glorious, fuckin’ glorious my arse” “Why d’you think we left after Jack was born, needed a new start, get away, a better life for him and for us” “I don’t think I can ever go back. I’ll never go back, no I won’t see Belfast again. When I got injured in Limerick they patched me up and sent me to Kilmainham Gaol to guard the Fenians until the settlement. I got friendly with some, I wasn’t supposed to talk to them, but they were better than the English who treated them badly, like animals. Those men and also women, they believed in something, we weren’t that much different, I suppose if they could have they’d have slit my throat, but that’s war isn’t it. Then when it was all over a major came around offering us well paid posts in the Palestine Police” “Why didn’t you go?”

“I’d had enough Alfy, I’d just had enough of it all” They sat for hours in silence until the sun began dropping behind the trees and the field opposite was in shadow.

“Got to sort things out Eddy before it’s dark” 148

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Edward began standing, a bit wobbly.

“Ach, sit yerself down, only need feed the animals, I can sort it” Edward was asleep when Alfred returned to the cabin from his chores and he soon got to sleep.

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A couple of weeks later Alfred woke up to a grey overcast day.

The cabin was quiet, he couldn’t hear Edward’s usually boisterous sleep where all the bedclothes ended on the floor or screwed up in a ball around him, he’d always been like that. The stove hadn’t been fired up and the room felt chilly and a bit damp.

He looked through the window; smoke wisps of clouds hung to the trees and made the hills disappear into the sky, no sign of him by the river.

He checked Edwards’ things thinking he may have set out to leave, as he’d told him he wanted to do without the difficulty of saying goodbye, but they were still there, a messy pile in a corner.

Alfred got the stove firing and put the kettle on it. He went to the door and called “Eddy! D’you want a brew? Eddy?”

No answer. Carson wandered around from the barn looking for his breakfast.

“You seen Eddy Carson?” he said patting him on the back; Carson just lay down on the porch at his usual lookout point.

After a mug of tea and some bread and butter Alfred went to the barn, Edward’s mule was gone, so he presumed he’d gone down to Madam DeRosa’s and sighed. He’d been very quiet for a few days, ever since they’d heard about mother. Not that they were endlessly chatting, but Alfred had noticed and asked a couple of times if he was all right. Edward always just answered snappily ‘Ach yes of course, why you asking?’ then just carried on with things.

They’d completed building another shed to deal with the goats and skins, got some of the other storm damage sorted. Each night Edward would go and sit by the creek for a couple of hours and just look up at the stars if it was clear or down at the water, then wander 150

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back in the cabin and sleep. Alfred didn’t think anything of it and just got on with things.

He got on with his usual early morning chores – checking, cleaning out, letting out, weeding, feeding and watering.

Around midday Carson was agitated and Alfred looked up from his weeding and saw Edward’s mule wandering down the far bank of the creek on its own, coming from the north. It made its way over to the barn where it ate some feed. Alfred got his rifle and called Carson to follow him, then leading the mule he set off up the creek. As he walked he regularly called out ‘Edward!’, stopping to listen for a reply, a couple of times he shot into the air. There were places the woods opened up and Alfred searched them.

Then Carson, who was a hundred yards ahead, began barking, Alfred hurried on leaving the mule to follow.

Carson was sitting below a tree and hanging from it was Edward. Alfred had seen enough death in his life to know he had been dead some time, the rope was from the barn, Alfred hadn’t noticed it gone.

“Oh shit yer banjaxed eejit, what the fuck you done that for” and Alfred stood a few minutes to take it in. He wondered if he’d left a note and looked around, but that wasn’t Edward’s style. He brought the mule up and climbed up to cut the rope. Edward’s body dropped like a sack of potatoes, then he lifted it onto the mule and led them back to the cabin.

He wondered if he should go and tell the Sheriff or someone, but he doubted Edward had been there officially, and what could they do anyway.

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A few days later Alfred wrote to George. …I didn’t write to Father as I think this needs to be told in person by you, so I’ll ask you to go over to Belfast, I know how busy you are, but this needs to be family and personal. I don’t think you ought to tell father that Eddy killed himself, he doesn’t need to know, not so soon after Mother’s death. Maybe tell him it was an accident felling trees, that will be bad enough. Eddy was morose after hearing about Mam, but we both were, we had a few drinks and watched the sun go down and talked about her. Perhaps I could have done more, I don’t know.

Maybe he needed to talk more about what he went through in the War but we’re not great at that in our family are we. Don’t worry about me, I’m not about to follow him. In a few years time I may try and get back home, but don’t say anything to father as I know he wanted me to come and run the business some years ago.

I’ve buried Eddy a few yards away from Maria and Jack, he was quite a weight to move around I can tell you. I made a wooden memorial, it reads Edward McAdam born Belfast 1895 died 1931 Play Up The Glens! He’d have liked that I think, maybe one day I’ll get some proper stones made for them all.

I don’t think there’s that much more to say in writing, it’s not easy to find the words. Well life does go on and changes in ways we can never foresee, perhaps luckily we don’t know what will happen in the future or we’d never make it there. Good luck to you George and the family and good health…

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Seasons trudged by for Alfred, some evenings he’d sit by the creek with the hot sun setting, or by the glowing stove with rain lashing down against the roof. Often he’d plan for a journey to Belfast, sell everything and take over running the shop, imagining walking around the streets and places of his younger life, talking to the people from his past. He wondered if Miss Price was still alive.

Sometimes he thought to do like Edward wanted to and go westward, though things weren’t much better there so what was the point. Perhaps go to Chicago like Serah had done, he’d like to see her again before he left, the more he thought about it the more that was something he wanted to do. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to leave Maria and Jack or whether he could fit back into the set ways of his father and the people in Belfast. Could he change his ways in his fifties, he couldn’t believe he’d now reached fifty, and gone well past it now looking towards sixty. It seemed such a long way away in his time in the army, generals were in their fifties, old men reminiscing in corner pubs were in their fifties, and yet here he was.

On a spring morning that looked like rain later Carson was running around barking, not his protective bark, but the bark to note someone friendly was arriving. Alfred was busy getting seedlings ready for planting and hearing Carson went through the cabin and got his rifle ready, leaving it just inside the door, just in case.

He stood in the door and could see a woman riding a very fine looking horse whose coat shone in the sun, Carson was circling 154

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them at a safe distance as he always did. Alfred called him and he disappeared into the barn. When she was about thirty yards away Alfred shouted to her.

“Are you lost miss?”

The woman dismounted and led the horse towards him. She wore a wide brimmed hat at an angle, which kept a mass of long dark hair tidy; she was wearing a white expensive looking blouse and totally unsuitable skirt for riding up the creek.

“No, thank you, I have come to see you… you are Mr McAdam?”

“I am that” “I’m Jo Summer, a librarian, part of a WPA scheme to lend books to people who live in out of the way places, and well you are certainly out of the way Mr McAdam. I left some books with Mrs Norris and her children down the valley, they told me you lived up here” “That’s a fine horse you have Miss Summer” She patted the horse and tied him up on the porch.

Alfred got a better look at her noting her good quality boots, and that she was good looking, not in a pretty way, but a strong face and quite slim, a healthy slim, not thin, like many of the women down in the valley. She had a confident manner in the way she moved and organised herself and he felt she’d be on top of most situations.

“Yes, Ulysees, he’s taken me all over the place, sure footed” “He’d have to be to get up here. I’m surprised you bothered coming, I hardly see anyone from one year to the next. I’ll help you off with that saddle and the bags, give him a rest and let him wander around, it’s certainly a haul up that hill”

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“Hi Granpops” Jo could see Grandpa Michael was speaking but no sound was coming through her iPad speaker.

“Grandpa, you are on mute, click the red mic button at the bottom” Jo indicated to her mouth and made a cross, she could see him looking at his screen then moving his mouse and a plop of sound came through at her end.

“Is that better Jo?” “Yes I can hear you now, hello Granpops” “Hello Jo, lovely to see you. Thank your Mom for the shopping and tell her next time I won’t need any more cheese” “I thought you like cheese Granpops?”

“I do, but there’s only so much I can eat, it’s all very kind of you, I loved the cake you made, you’re a clever girl” “I tried an old recipe of granmom’s” “And it’s just like she used to make, delicious” “Mom helped me a bit. Granpops, I want your help. At our Zoom lesson my teacher asked us to do some research and do a project about one of our past kinsfolk while we’re off school, ask the old people in our families and make a project book” “Well I’m certainly old but not very interesting Jo” 156

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“Oh you are granpops, you are a Vet, you went to Vietnam, but no, no I was thinking Great Aunt Jo” “You mean my Aunt Jo, she’s your, let me work it out; your Great Great Great Aunt, or is that one too many or too few greats, well it doesn’t matter really does it. Oh yes she was a character all right, I was so pleased when your Mom named you after her” “Yes and she was named after Jo in Little Women, we saw the film on Netflix last week, I loved it” “Yes, you are right, just wait there” Michael went off screen and a couple of minutes later, whilst Jo had spent her time scrolling through Tik Tok, he came back with a buff-coloured file.

“Right Jo, look at this” he took a photograph out of the file and showed it to the camera “this is Jo when she met Eleanor Roosevelt” “Wasn’t she The First Lady? We learnt all about her and the United Nations at school, Mrs Bentham says she is a good role model for us to follow” “Well she’s certainly right there, you’re a clever girl Jo, you certainly take after your namesake!”

Michael held another photograph up.

“This is Jo on a horse when she was delivering books to children in Kentucky as a pack-horse librarian, it appeared in The Smithsonian Magazine a few years ago” “Oh she looks like a cowboy! Oh Granpops, these are cool, can you scan them for me so I can put them in my folder. Mom says that you met her, didn’t you?”

“I did, many times Jo, she was quite old, well she seemed old to me then, but I’m now older than she was when we first met, time flies Jo, time flies by before we know it’s even happened. We stayed at her cabin a few times for holidays, it was so far out in the hills, you know she didn’t even have electricity the first time we went” 157

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“So she didn’t have a TV or a phone or a computer!”

“She never did, you know Jo, I never saw a computer until I was over forty and didn’t have a cell phone until I was even older.

You know Aunt Jo even when she got power she didn’t have a TV, she had a radio, a red and cream battery one from Radio Shack, she loved that, listened to baseball all the time, the Phillies, though she always said she liked the Athletics better” “But aren’t they in Oakland or somewhere?”

“You’re right Jo, I’m surprised you know that” “Nick plays with some old baseball cards of Dad’s when we stay there, I saw it on one of those. Nick’s always asking me questions from them just so he can catch me out and pretend he knows about something more than I do, so one time I read through all of them and now I get nearly all the answers right which gets him really mad” “Well when Jo a girl, your sort of age, they were a Philly team and moved out west in the nineteen fifties. Her father, my great grandfather, used to follow them and go to the games, they were World Champs three years running. Odd old gal she was. Look why don’t I write down some things about her and send it to your mom, I could go on and on?”

“Oh granpops, that would be wonderful, are you sure you’ve got time?”

“Jo, I have all the time in the world, I’m not allowed to go to The Tap yet” “Oh granpops, Mom says you spend far too much time in there!”

“Ah does she, well I’ll have to speak to her about that! It’s just nice to meet and talk to old buddies you know, there are lots of days I hardly speak to anybody. Don’t you miss all your friends?”

“Oh I do, I can’t wait for us to be able to get back to school” “Hello Nick!”

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“Hi granpaps” Nick said as he pushed into Jo. “Oh Nick get away will you, granpops and I are talking about important things get out of my way!”

They had a little scuffle.

“I better go granpops, Nick’s being annoying as usual, keep safe” “And you darling, keep very safe and it was lovely to see you even if I can’t give you a hug yet” The screen went black.

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A couple of days later an e-mail dropped into Maggie’s, Jo’s mother, inbox.

I’m sending this to you Maggie as maybe Jo is a bit young to fully understand, you’re an editor so maybe you can make it readable for a ten-year-old.

I was going to tell you most of this anyway sometime or other, but with the suddenness of your mum’s passing it sort of got sidelined in all the fuss, and then this damn virus. I thought you may be interested and maybe one day your Great Great Aunt Jo’s life may make a good book, I haven’t the talent to write it, but you certainly do.

Your great-grandmother Katherine was a bit of a snob and wasn’t keen for us children to meet Great Aunt Jo (I’ll call her Jo from now as she asked me to call her that, the first adult I called by a first name), after she got arrested at a Civil Rights march in Louisville.

Jo rang my Grandad and asked him to come and represent her, he only dealt with company law so sent my Dad, who was the leading criminal lawyer in their firm. She also asked him to represent a friend of hers, an African American woman named Serah who was arrested at the same time.

Jo it seems had punched a policeman. I’ll go into that more later, it’s quite a good story on its own. That was 1961 I think.

It wasn’t until 1966 that I first met her. I was 14, Aunt Deborah was 16 and your Aunt Lucille she didn’t go with us, she was 18 and away on a yacht going round the Mediterranean for the summer with some very fancy people whose name eludes me. Debbie was jealous as hell!

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We went for a week camping holiday. Dad insisted we go, and as the county had recently built a new road on the opposite side of the valley passing by Jo’s cabin, we could get the car there, only a few years earlier we’d have had a long journey on mules up the creek! Mother, your grandmother, who I of course loved very much, but I think even she would admit was as big a snob as my grandmother, was still furious with her as the case had got into the Inquirer because of the local connections. Remember she was a staunch Republican, a big supporter of Nixon.

Jo lived in a cabin beside the wonderfully named Magic Mountain Creek in Kentucky, not far from the border with West Virginia, a very different world to Philly! Mother was always superbly dressed like her mother and insisted on looking perfect whatever the situation. Whereas Jo looked like the hippies we’d started seeing on TV and on South Street. She had thick long grey hair and wore a mix of all sorts of clothes which looked like they came from thrift stores, with scarves floating around her, oh and always hats. She had a range of hats which were always worn at a jaunty angle. She’d not got electricity or sewerage system, she had an outhouse and drew water from a well. Whilst we were there Dad went and organised power to be connected, which already ran up the new road. It was installed the next time we went as was a sewer pipe.

We pitched a tent beside the creek near the cabin. I remember the shock we had on the first morning as Jo trotted out of the cabin, buck naked, and jumped into the swimming hole in the creek. She said it woke up all the senses and did it every day even when it snowed. Mother told her off as she could probably be seen from the new road. Jo said that if anyone got turned on by her old body then good luck to them and maybe she’d like to meet them!

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That did it for Mother and she took Debbie and went to a resort hotel by some lake, they didn’t bother joining us again and Dad had to go and pick them up on the way home.

Then each morning we joined her and I can still remember the invigorating shock of the cold creek water. Good times.

So that left Dad and I alone, and we had a great time with Jo, looking after the goats, doing farm chores, hiking in the woods, chopping wood, swimming, and mule riding. In fact I stayed on for another few weeks and helped out with the farm chores.

When Dad had gone Jo taught me how to shoot a rifle, an old British army one which weighed a ton and felt like it was going to break my shoulder when it recoiled.

Once or twice a week a man named Joshua came to see that Jo was OK, he brought things she’d need, like new batteries for that radio she never stopped listening to. He did some of the heavy things Jo couldn’t do and would sit on the porch with her in the evenings.

While we were working he told me that Jo had been good to him and his sister back in the thirties when their Mom had got into some difficulty. She’d died a long time back in some sort of altercation in Pikeville and they ended up in a children’s home.

Well it seems Jo made sure they were found a good family to live with after many arguments with the authorities. His sister Ruthy visited one time as well. She brought one of her sons with her, I can remember now what a huge man he was, could have been a defensive end, mixed race which you didn’t see much in Kentucky in those days. They got the barn and cabin roof mended, they showed me how to tile and fix wood beams, good times they were, and I learned a lot of swear words, useful in my time in the army years later.

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watching the creek! That was my first time smoking it and I can still remember not being able to stop laughing then being very sick! Dad didn’t say anything, but your grandmother would have had the sherrif out if she’d known.

When I work it out, she was actually a couple of years younger than I am now, and yet to me at fourteen she seemed an old lady. But she never acted it.

After that I went there each summer vacation until ’71 when I was conscripted. Dad drove me for a few years, he loved it there and would usually stay a few days if he wasn’t involved in a case. To be honest I think he envied the simple life Jo lived. My mother was the perfect host, the perfect wife for all those fancy events they had to attend, but Dad was never really much for all that, it amazes me they stayed together, but maybe people did in those days.

After I was sixteen, I drove down in a forty year old Chevy Pickup and I’ll never know how that old thing actually got me there (probably worth a small fortune now but I bought it for $20 I earned cutting lawns and it looked like something out of The Beverly Hillbillies if you remember that show). Josh was a wizard with mechanics and showed me how to keep the thing running, when I went in the army, I left it there for him, and he kept it running until I got back.

I remember how much Jo enjoyed the drives we sometimes took picking things up in Pikeville and Elkhorn. One time a couple of goats from across in WV and they jumped off the truck into the woods and we chased them round for ages trying to catch them. Another time we went to Louisville where she showed me the house my great grandfather had lived, the Woolworths where she’d first been arrested, the police station where she’d 163

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twice been imprisoned and the courthouse where my Dad had defended her.

I had a Lear Jet eight-track player in that Chevy that had been in Dad’s old car, probably worth more than the pickup. I only had a few tapes, she loved listening to Townes van Zandt and The Beatles and we used to sing the songs as we drove along, good memories.

Jo used to talk to me about all sorts of things, you know what it’s like when someone lives on their own, sometimes I felt she’d been thinking up things to say all winter, as it often came out in one long train of thought and on the drives she’d be talking not stop whether it was about the farm or people and events from her past. The truck’s engine was so noisy that I could hardly hear her. She talked to me like she would to an adult and I hope I appreciated it. I look back and wish I’d recorded her. One time I asked her how come she lived in the cabin, and she told me all about being a pack-horse librarian for a WPA scheme and going to the homes of desperately poor people during the Depression, that’s the photograph I sent over. How she’d ride miles and miles through the hills and valleys on a wonderful horse named Ulysses, sometimes arriving at homes where all the family had died of hunger since she’d last been there; or left for better places to find work. How hard it all was.

That’s how she met the Irishman called Alfred McAdam and something about how he wanted to read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which I am sure you must have read, I couldn’t get through it, found it far too wordy. She still had all the books that man’s wife had brought with her. The way she talked I think she had been secretly in love with him.

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There were three graves in the grounds which Jo tended with great care. That freaked me out a bit when I first went there, the thought of dead people lying under the ground just a few feet from the tent. But later I understood their importance.

One of our trips out in the Chevy was to pick up three headstones from a stonemason in Millard she’d had carved for them, Alfred wasn’t one of them, they were his wife, child and brother, who she only knew through being told about them.

Oddly it made them feel alive for me knowing something of the history of the place. I often wonder if they are still there, maybe one day we ought to take a trip over to see, make a nice change after being stuck here for all these months. Jo told me that the last time she’d seen Alfred was when he’d been shot by some men, and she arrived and saved his life. Then in 1937 after her father died and a year-long trip to Europe Jo travelled back to KY to ostensibly sort outstanding things from her father’s estate, but I really think primarily to see Alfred. However when she arrived there was a letter waiting for her at the store down the valley, it was a bit faded and dated six months previous which said he had to go back home to Belfast to look after the family business, she could use the cabin if she wanted and that he would one day return there. After another short spell back in Philly she made the decision to return and live there, looking after things until Alfred’s hoped for return. It was a brave decision, it was really a long way out and she was on her own.

She’d been there ever since and never travelled beyond Pikeville.

My last visit, as a boy, was in 1970, I was nineteen and my name had been drawn in the lottery and I’d been sent my army draft papers, so expected soon to be sent to Nam. Dad said he could get me out of it, they’d done that for a lot of the richer 165

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clients at the practice, like joining The Air National Guard as Bush did, and mother was most insistent he sort it. But against their wishes I decided I wanted to go and go as a private, I don’t know why it was one of those stupid things you do when young. As youi know I’ve never been a stars and stripes patriot, but it felt right to go if called up. Jo was very upset with me as she’d been on lots of anti-war marches, in fact she’d been arrested again in 1965 after hitting another policeman with a banner, but because of her age they just gave her a warning after keeping her in a cell overnight.

I went off to Nam. I have written about my experiences in a file on my PC, I would prefer you not to read it until I pass away. I see now it was not a good time and I was part of some nasty things which now I regret. I decided to write it down a couple of years ago after that documentary series was on PBS and I saw myself on TV, remember I told you. It was the oddest experience, a 20-year-old wearing a uniform two sizes too large, carrying a rifle, a pack of Chesterfield’s stuck in my helmet strap, it wasn’t really me, but I knew it was. I didn’t smoke until Nam and never since, odd eh. I was on screen for just a couple of seconds if that, but it jolted me and made me think that now my life is becoming a part of history.

When I was over there I regularly wrote to Jo and told her it was as bad as she thought it was, probably worse, and thanked her for protesting. She wrote back in her beautiful careful handwriting and told me all about the everyday things happening at the cabin, things like how the goats were doing, what vegetables she’d planted, how high the creek had got in the winter and it helped so much, it’s hard to say how I needed that calmness in all the madness and chaos over there. It felt 166

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like I was sitting next to her and I think she knew how important that was. She told me about the troubled dreams Alfred McAdam had about his time in the army and how not to be ashamed of fear.

When I was demobbed in ’74 I went to stay there rather than Philly, I stayed for nearly a year, I needed quiet. I was a man when I got back, I know an odd thing to say but it felt like that, and still does. How does that Bob Dylan song go – I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.

Somehow, and I don’t really know how, all that I saw and did in Nam hasn’t got me that way like those two, not that I noticed anyways, but maybe now I can see it for what it was.

I hope I am not rambling Maggie, this may take more than one e-mail!

Maggie I will write more later, something I forgot and need to do. Thanks for the bags of food yesterday, you remembered how much I like that Cascade Stout, where did you get that from, not seen it in ages! Love to Jo and Nick, they must be driving you mad in this lockdown! And love to Florence, loved her playing on that Bach album she sent me.

Maggie replied.

I will look forward to seeing your next instalment Dad. Who was this Serah she sounds interesting? It’s actually been lovely having time with Jo and Nic, and with Florence. I think her playing on the Double Concerto is the best thing she’s done, looks like it may win an award, fingers crossed. Though she winces when I play it finding fault with her playing, you know 167

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what she’s like, never good enough, but I suppose that’s how you get better. I think we needed this time together it’s been a whirlwind since we got together. Most days before lockdown were filled either endlessly editing for me at the office and Flo recording or rehearsing or practicing or performing all over the place, then whatever time there was after school or weekends taking the kids to soccer or dance or art or music or science club.

We’ve had real family time together despite a few off days. I feel very sorry for those who don’t have our sort of yard and size of house and those who’ve died, have any of your friends been effected?

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Two days later an e-mail dropped into Maggie’s inbox.

I got a bit overwhelmed, I think it was writing about Nam, seems to get me more now than in the past, brings some bad memories back.

Also I heard that Des, one of the guys at The Tap, caught Covid and passed away, sort of brings home how vulnerable we are.

I’m sure there’ll be more I hear about when we’re allowed out again especially at The Vets Home.

Well, the gap made me remember some more things.

Back in 1988 I had a message on the answer machine from a Jack McAdam, I remember it took me a few moments to place where I knew the name from, it was of course one of those on the gravestones at Jo’s cabin. The voice had a slight Irish twang but was more Chicago.

I rang back and Jack McAdam was Serah and Alfred’s son. He’d found me through the Vets, having served in Nam a few years earlier than me, got a silver star then was sent home with a bullet in the arm he got at Dac To, not too bad but it invalided him out, the sort of homer you wanted when you were out there.

He’d been trying to find me for a couple of years to let me know that his mother had died in 1986 and that he had some papers for the property in KY, which mentioned Jo, allowing her to live there for as long as she needed to.

We decided to meet as there was a lot to talk about and the phone didn’t seem to be the best way. We went up to Chicago, you were only 2, so I don’t suppose you’d remember it and stayed in a hotel on Lake Shore Drive. Jack and his wife had 169

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dinner with us, then he and I met for a drink, he was a journalist.

Well first we swapped a few war stories, shared some similar experiences, raised a glass for absent friends. Then he told me about his mother.

It appears when she was 20 Alfred McAdam helped her escape from a brothel in Pikeville and the local mobsters were after her and would have lynched her. Her flight to freedom sounded quite an adventure, I’ll try and remember all he said and let you know about it. She ended up in Chicago and began work on the Chicago Defender, where Jack now worked. After she’d been there around five years, Alfred turned up at the office out of the blue on a roundabout way back home to Ireland and two weeks later they got married. I think everyone was shocked because Alfred was this huge ginger haired white Irishman who’d been living up a mountain for years, or should I say properly, Ulsterman, about 35 years older than her. She was black, mixed marriages were very unusual in those days.

Jack showed me Serah’s photograph, she was a most beautiful petite elegantly dressed woman. Then they just up and left taking a boat from Canada and went to live in Belfast, where they took over the family shop after his father died.

Jack said that Serah told him some people came especially to the shop just to look at Serah because there were hardly any black people in Belfast.

Jack was born during the middle of an air raid in 1941, it was a target because Belfast had huge shipyards (it’s where The Titanic was built), and the hospital was full of injured people with her giving birth in the middle of utter chaos. Then when Jack was 10 Alfred died aged 70, he didn’t say what of, maybe I should have asked and will ask. Serah sold the business and 170

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moved back to Chicago in 1952 and The Defender gave her a job again as a reporter.

I think much against Serah’s wishes Jack joined the Marines in ’62 when he was only 21, he knew that he was following in the footsteps of both his father and late. He was a big fit man, still was when we met, good at football but couldn’t get a scholarship for college, reckoned if given the chance he may even have played pro.

The year before Serah had been sent by The Defender to cover the Civil Rights marches and civil disobediences in the South, and as she had the deeds for the cabin, went there to see how things were. It seems Alfred had told her quite a bit about Jo, so it wasn’t any sort of surprise to find her living there, and as soon as they met, they became firm friends. Jo then travelled around with Serah, as she could get into places and meet people Serah couldn’t. That’s how they got arrested in Louisville, Serah and she went to a mass sit in by teenagers against school segregation, then went to a Woolworths lunch counter and ordered food. It was of course back then segregated, there was some trouble and Jo hit not only a policeman with a wooden stool, but three men, one of whose nose’s she broke, they had been pouring milk and cigarette ash over them. Serah had been trained how to peacefully protest, Jo wasn’t able to keep her temper, and that’s how come Dad went and defended Jo and Serah.

There’s an article I have from the Inquirer, the one that so infuriated mother and grandmother. I’ll make a copy for you, it goes something like – Miss Jo Summer, 62, sister of Philadelphia socialite Mrs Kathleen Westcliff was in court in Louisville for attacking a policeman in a racially motivated political protest. Mrs Westcliff’s son Franklin defended his aunt and a negro woman named as Mrs Serah McAdam. Miss 171

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Summer, a former librarian, was fined $50 for insulting the judge and the local police chief during the trial and given a suspended sentence in consideration of previous good conduct and her age. Mrs McAdam was found not guilty due to lack of evidence.

It made me laugh, though a sad indictment of the age, I can well imagine Jo getting enraged in the courtroom and telling them what for.

Jack gave me a photograph he took of them standing together outside the cabin in 1964, it’s fading a bit, I wish I had the negative. I’ll send that to you as well, it’s not too sharp but you can see their faces quite clearly. Serah stopped going when a group of men turned up at the cabin and threated Jo. Serah didn’t think it fair to make life more dangerous for her by her presence. You know that Pike County is named after General Pike one of the KKK’s founders, so it could well have been them.

They kept in touch by letter and Jack sent me some copies of a few of Jo’s letters. He told me that Serah always felt at risk in the County even though all her troubles had been over thirty years earlier. I didn’t find any of Serah’s letters in the cabin after Jo died, but someone, Ruth and Josh had been and done a lot of clearing out, I was sorry about that. I will let you have them, they give a really vivid picture of her life there as well as lots about baseball!

Perhaps when you read the letters and the little notebook Jo kept you can work more out about Jo, they may be a bit subtle for me.

I didn’t see so much of Jo after I went to college in ’76 and needed to work vacations, always thought there would be plenty of time for visits at a later date. Then as you know I went to France for three years, where I met your mother.

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The last time I saw Jo was 1981, and she’d really aged. I took your mother just after we’d got married, and they got on so well, I had no idea Jo could speak French, Chloé was delighted.

But we had to go back to France for my work and Chloé wanted to be there for her mother who wasn’t well.

Then Jo died in 1982, she’d have been 83. Josh (I remembered his surname, Norris) told me he turned up at the cabin as usual to help out and all was quiet, even her dog Carson, who was then the meanest dog in the USA and everyone was terrified of, just came to him with head bowed and tail down. Carson had no fear of anyone or anything but one whisper from Jo and he’d be rolling round like a silly puppy.

Josh went inside and Jo was lying in bed as if she’d fallen asleep reading, with a copy of The Magic Mountain open on her lap.

She’d probably died the previous day the doctor told him and explained that she’d had cancer, but had refused any treatment and never told anyone. She’d still been swimming in that hole right to the end as Josh found a towel and a wrap hanging, still a bit damp, on the porch.

Jo hadn’t wanted any fuss at her funeral and was cremated rather than buried in Philly, I couldn’t get there, but Josh had kept the ashes with a note for me that Jo had left in The Mill on The Floss, it just read ‘I think you’ll know what to do with these’.

Your mother and I stayed overnight at the cabin, and in Jo’s memory jumped naked into the swimming hole the next morning, and as we were floating in the chilly water watching the birds swooping between the trees, Chloé said we ought to scatter the ashes there and then in the pool, in the cool morning light when Jo liked to refresh herself.

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I found the copy of Emily Dickinson which Jo often read and one poem was bookmarked with a torn bit of yellow paper.

Chloé read out as I scattered: These words they sing Of hope Of joy These words leave me to Play Within my mind Within my heart Within my newer day My newest day Sparkling bright Washing cares away My newest day Born afresh Born afresh…

Today Giving me Once again The chance to Seek And pray Giving me The chance To thank The One who gives this day 174

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Behold!

My newness…

Startling me Though mirrors are away…

As in my mind Once again Life’s magic has its way Has its way Comforts me Walks hand in hand with age Walking towards that Promised Land…

Where newness wins the day! (vii) Oh Maggie how I miss your mother sometimes, well at all times, she always knew the right thing to do.

As the ashes spread out over the surface a breeze caught them and momentarily they swirled around creating an almost perfect circle, until a flurry of water got hold of them, and carried them down the creek. Carson jumped in swimming with them to the edge of the property where he got out, shook himself, ran back to us, and sat beside Chloé as good as gold. You must remember him, there’s certainly photographs in those albums in the loft of you with him, I’ll dig them out later, we had him until you were seven; you rode on his back, pulled his fur, put hats on him, dressed him up. He’d sit on guard at your bedroom door all night. I didn’t dare go past him, but your mother could.

I kept back about a cup full of Jo’s ashes in a battered old tea caddy from Ireland I found in the cabin, I’ve still got it and have always meant to go to 29th and Lehigh where the Athletics 175

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had their stadium and spread them there. I think she’d have appreciated that. Perhaps one day we could go, maybe take Jo to be a part of it, I think it’s a McDonald’s now or a school. I’ll do a bit of research or maybe Jo could as part of this project she’s doing.

Jack’s still in Chicago, getting on now, we send cards at Christmas and the odd Facebook message. He’s always been handy with computers, took me years to get used to them after charting with pencil and rulers for so long, still never sure if I’m doing things right. Maybe it’s time to meet up again and see what more he remembers, perhaps next summer. We Vets can get some good deals at hotels you know, think it’s their bad conscience for how they treated us when we returned from Nam back in the day.

I’m sure there’s a lot more I can write down when I remember it, but I think there’s plenty there for Jo to write up a story for school. I think you’d have liked your Great Great Aunt Jo, she could be awkward and grumpy when she wanted and liked to get her own way, much like you. Tough as old boots but was sensitive under all of it, a sympathetic and wonderful listener, who gave good advice. She could shoot a leaf off a tree 300 feet away.

I don’t suppose we’ll ever know everything all the whys and wherefores of her life, but I suppose that’s how things go.

Love to Flo, Jo and Nick

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Refs: i

Emily Dickinson – Society

ii

Gerald Manley Hopkins – Felix Randal

iii

Emily Dickinson – Best Things Dwell Out of Sight

iv

Emily Dickinson – Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson

v

Arthur Rimbaud – Ophelia

vi

George Eliot – Letter to Miss Lewis

vii

Emily Dickinson – We grow not older with years, but newer every day

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Tim Diggles

Tim Diggles lives inThe Potteries and is an artist who writes stories and poetry, takes photographs, makes films, and sometimes draws and paints. He went to Cardiff College of Art in the early 1970’s then worked in the arts for the next 40 odd years.

Magic Mountain Creek was written during lockdown in 2020, inspired by an article in The Smithsonian Magazine about the travelling librarians in Depression era Kentucky.

Go to timdiggles.wordpress.com for more ofTim’s work

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