A Tale from the Hills (21 page)

The old man gestured toward the other side of the room. Alex was sitting in a chair naked like William. He looked up at William and moved his mouth, but no sounds came out. William could see blood oozing from the huge gap between his chin and Adam’s Apple. The old man and his three ungodly disciples began to laugh mockingly at the staged production in front of them.

William woke himself up crying into his pillow. He must have been crying for a long time because his pillowcase was wet from all of the tears. A voice from thehallway startled him.

“Is everything all right in there?”

It was the landlady.

“Yes, yes. I’m fine.” he answered.

“You were talking and crying and mumbling about something that I could not understand. Are you sure that you are all right?”

“Yes, I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”

“All right then. Goodnight.”

Now he would have to wait until he was sure that she was asleep again before he could leave. That gave him time to think about the events from his dream.

He decided that the old man who had taken on the appearance of his long dead grandfather was the Devil himself. But William could not understand why the Devil was so interested in him. He was just a poor dumb kid from the mountains of Virginia with nothing to offer but his immortal soul. What could that be worth?

In his groggy state of semi-consciousness he decided to make the old man a counter offer. In a low voice that only he could hear he spoke.

“Please stop torturing me old man. Let me sleep in peace and when the time comes you can have my damned old soul. Just leave me the Hell alone while I am alive old man.”

From just outside the door, in an all too familiar voice, he heard, “You just made yourself a deal my boy.”

William thought that he had imagined the whole episode. He rushed to the door and opened it, but no one was there. He brushed the whole thing off and decided to leave the boarding house whether the old lady heard him ornot. He just did not give a damn anymore.

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Chapter Four
 

The year was 1937. In parts of the world that William

Hill had never even heard of, history making and groundbreaking events were taking place. Franklin Roosevelt was beginning his second term as President of the United States. His reelection was the result of the greatest outpouring of voters in the history of American politics. The huge turnout was perceived as an overwhelming endorsement of the New Deal, which was designed to bring the nation out of the grips of the Great Depression.

In England, King Edward the Eighth abdicated the British throne to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson, a divorcee from America. His title was downgraded to the Duke of Windsor and the world famous couple were to share many years together.

There was civil war in Spain. The cruelty and brutality of war influenced the famous painter Pablo Picasso to paint a huge mural entitled
Guernica,
as a form of protest.

Floods along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers left more than a million people homeless. The Golden Gate Bridge, the world’s longest expansion bridge, was finished in San Francisco, California. Benny Goodman’s band was taking the country by storm.

There were two major air disasters. The Hindenburg Blimp blew up on May 6, 1937. Amelia Earhart was lost at sea during an around the world flight in July of that same year.

Hugo Black, a self admitted former member of the Ku Klux Klan, took a seat on the Supreme Court. In Germany the Nazi Party was gathering for mass rallies. Soon the world would become involved in a great war to end the tyranny ofa madman named Adolf Hitler.

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In Alleghany County life was good for the Hill family. Tom and Eunice shared an equal interest in the family farm and prosperity came to them even before it did for the rest of the country. Tom and Samantha formed a close relationship that pleased Eunice almost as much as her own relationship with her only living brother.

It had been years since Tom had worked on a farm but he fell back into the routine very easily. Actual farm life was so much different from his childhood days when work began early and ended late. Now he felt motivated by forces other than his father’s greed. He felt like he was a part of a real family operation that needed more from him than the sweat from his weary brow. He was so thankful that he was back where he belonged.

Tom kept in touch with all of his sons except William. He had not heard a word from his youngest son in close to five years. He used to spend many sleepless nights worrying about William, but he very soon discovered that it did not help the situation at all. He realized that William was old enough to make his own decisions and that he would come around if he wanted to come around. And if he did ever show up at Jewel Ridge Mountain, Josh was still living at the old home place, and Alan was managing the general store.

Electric lines were run into parts of Alleghany County at about the same time that Eunice’s new house was being built. She was lucky enough to have that luxury when Tom came to live on the farm again. One of the first electrical appliances that they bought was a radio. They were listening to it on that fateful night when the Hindenburg Blimp blew out of the sky. The three of them cried along with the pitiful newsman who was reporting the tragic story. They did not hear the inaugural address of their hero FDR, but they were kept well informed about the Nazi situation in Europe. Tom worried that his sons, like his brothers, might have to go to war. The radio had made the world a much smaller place, and sometimes he wondered if they were not better off being uninformed about a lot of the news that they now heard on a nightly basis. But he finally realized that time was not standing still, and that the old saying about ignorance being bliss, was not always true. He could personally vouch for that falsehood because of all of the years that were lost between himself and his sister.

*********

William’s three brothers were doing quite well in Virginia. Joseph was a foreman at the mill in Abingdon, and he was the proud father of two little boys. He hardly ever thought about William anymore. He figured that William was probably dead like little Alice and their mother. He had never thought that his littlest brother had a strong enough constitution to survive on his own. And besides, he had his own family to care about, and he kept in close touch with the rest of the family, even his daddy, on a regular basis.

Josh was working at the same job that he took right after finishing Mountain School. He was living in the old home place and saving most of his money. People who knew him well, kidded him about having the very first nickel that he ever made. They were pretty close to being accurate with that assumption because he was extremely frugal with his money. He had a tidy sum hidden in the old silver box along with the family Bible.

Alan and his wife had taken full ownership of the general store, and since the deaths of her parents, Alan was putting in much too many hours at the store. His wife complained to him all of the time about not spending enough time with her. The couple had two children, but she was not sure that either of them belonged to Alan. She seemed to have an itch that she would allow almost anyone to scratch. Alan was either unaware of the situation or he simple did not care. There was gossip in the community but he turned a deaf ear to it. He treated the children like they were his own, regardless of their true parentage. His heart was much bigger than his libido.

Like Joseph, Josh and Alan always figured that William was either dead or in an insane asylum somewhere. They did not speak of him often because that part of their childhood was still hard to deal with. The siblings agreed that their daddy should have committed William to the institution in Marion when he was a little boy. Every time any of the Hill boys heard someone mention the town of Marion, they automatically thought about the mental hospital and William.

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That early morning when William Hill left Wilkesboro, he was preoccupied with the dream that only hours before had terrified him. Not only terror but extreme sadness and hopelessness characterized the nightmare. He could not shake those dreadful feelings from his mind. He was so distracted that he almost walked into the path of an oncoming train. When the engineer blew the train’s whistle, William cried out in fear and almost dropped the suitcase. He was so embarrassed by the whole outburst that he looked around to see if anyone heard or saw him.

He was about to reach a crossroads in the tracks. He would have to decide the direction and location of his future home. Did he want to see the seasons change in a northern climate, or did he want to be spoiled by the warm southern Sun? He sat down in the morning sunlight to make up his mind.

He had not been sitting there very long when the dream popped back into his thoughts. He tried hard to shut it out but the more that he tried, the more realistic that the dream became. It seemed to him that the old man was forcing him to think about things that would cause him great distress. He saw Alex sitting in the chair with his throat cut wide open. That vision would stay with him for the rest of his life. He could hear the old trolls whispering and sniggering in the background. Even though in his mind he knew that he was a grown man, he had no idea what he was going to do after darkness fell. He knew that he would have to be settled in someplace that was safe and secure. That fact was going to add an extra burden to his life, and it was something else that he could on the dreadful old man. He would be looking over his shoulder every time that he heard a strange noise. And he knew for a fact that he would never trust anyone again, ever.

He wished that he had stayed at Eunice’s. At least if he was there he would not be alone. All of a sudden he missed his family in Virginia. He wondered if his daddy wasstill living in the same old house. He thought about each one of his brothers. He wished that he had kept in touch with them. He felt guilty about leaving them, but deep down he knew that he had no other choice.

He was the black sheep of the family and nothing was going to change that fact of life. And there was another fact that was not going to change either. If he did not get off of his sorry for himself ass and get going, he would be sitting there for the rest of the day. That bit of information snapped him back into the real world, real fast.

He opened the old suitcase to double check its contents. He was glad that he remembered to pack the food that was in his room. He certainly did not want to take the time to buy more. He had wasted too much time already. Everything appeared to be in place except the picture in the old metal frame. It must have been dislodged when he almost dropped the suitcase. The old man was staring up at him with his all too familiar smirk. William snatched the picture from the suitcase and threw it with all of the force that he had built up in the muscle of his arm. He did not see where the picture landed but he heard the crunch of the glass that covered the old couple’s faces. Now he was ready to begin his journey, South. He decided that he did not want to have to deal with cold weather along with his other problems.

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Chapter Five
 

For the first time in his life William was going to ride the train. Not a luxurious train with porters and elegant sleeping quarters. He was going to hop a southbound freight train. He saw the way that hobos did it because he used to hang around the tracks on weekends in Wilkesboro. Since there was not a lot of things to do during the day, he entertained himself for free and he learned a few things at the same time. He knew exactly where to hide while he waited, and he thought that he knew just when to jump onboard the train. Lucky for him there were no other people waiting for a free ride. He craved solitude. He would have surely walked away if anyone else had been at his designated spot. He hoped that the train that he was going to hop would also be free of human cargo. He hid the pistol inside of his pocket as an added precaution.

His wait was not for very long. He heard the familiar whistle only minutes before a freight train approached. It must have been bypassing Wilkesboro because it did not even slow down at the station. In the past when he watched the hobos jump into the fast moving trains, it looked kind of easy. Now it looked pretty damned scary. He had never seen a hobo jump with a suitcase in his hand, and he hoped that it would not prove to be a disaster for him. He did not want to lose the contents of the suitcase, especially the food, but at least he would still have his money and his pistol if he lost everything else.

The only person that he saw on the train as it passed was the engineer. Before he had a chance to think about it and change his mind, he jumped into the open door of a freight car. He landed with a violent thud but everything was intact. He quickly regained his balance and tried to focus his eyes into the darkness of the freight car. The car was practically empty. There were some large wooden crates stacked into one corner. Stenciled on the side of each of the crates was :

WILMINGTON SHIPYARD

WILMINGTON, N.C. Property of the U.S. Navy The train was obviously headed to the coast. William remembered that his former teacher Mr. Rosenbaum, the bastard, talked about the Wilmington Shipyard from time to time. Rosenbaum said that Wilmington was a big city. William hoped that it was bigger than Wilkesboro. Even though it was not quite as far south as he really wanted to be for the Winter, it might just be a good place to get a job and start a new life. At least it would be a long ways from the mountains, and besides if he did not like it there, hecould move the Hell further south or maybe even stowaway on a ship to a distant land.

William managed to move some of the boxes enough to make a secure hiding place for himself. The only way that anyone would find him was to completely empty the freight car. He was sure that would not happen until the train reached Wilmington. Pangs of hunger were coming on by the time that he settled down for what he hoped was the duration of the trip. He barely had enough room for the suitcase in his new cramped quarters that he had created for himself. But he decided that he would much rather be cramped than be discovered, so he adjusted to his temporary home. He dined on dried beef and crusty bread before he settled down to go to sleep. He was concerned about going to sleep because of the dreams, but the rhythm and motion of the train rocked him to a peaceful rest. He must have slept for hours.