One Shenandoah Winter
One Shenandoah
Winter
A Novel
T. Davis Bunn
© 1998 by T. Davis Bunn
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bunn, T. Davis, 1952â
One Shenandoah Winter: a novel / T. Davis Bunn.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-595554-831-3
I. Title.
PS3552.U4718056 1998
813'.54âdc21
98-19987
CIP
Printed in the United States of America.
08 09 10 11 LSI 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to
JANETTE OKE
Whose friendship remains a brilliant beacon.
So teach us to number our days,
that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Psalm 90:12
KJV
Contents
Autumn 1961
One
T
he first thing Connie saw when she rounded the final rise was Dawn waiting out in front of the house, her golden hair shining in the sun like a crown. The sight was enough to hollow out Connie's chest. How beautiful the girl was, and how full of life. But that was not what saddened Connie. The evening before, the first time they had seen one another in two long months, they had quarreled. And of all the topics Connie could have argued over, she had chosen to criticize Dawn's boyfriend. As though Connie's lonely life granted her any right whatsoever to give advice about men.
Dawn waved like she had since she was six, when Connie had started picking her up on the way into town. As usual, Dawn's parents had left two hours earlier. Hattie and Chad Campbell ran Hillsboro's only grocery, and a life of longer hours Connie had yet to find. Dawn waved with her hand high over her head and used her entire body to put emphasis behind the greeting. The straight yellow hair swayed back and forth, and rippled like water pouring down a golden waterfall.
Connie Wilkes slowed to grant herself time to swallow the gouging sadness. Such silliness was not permitted on a beautiful early-October morning. Especially when there was absolutely nothing to be done about anything. Dawn had been spending time with Duke Langdon for almost a year now, and it was her choice. Life was just that way.
The brakes on her uncle's old pickup shuddered as Connie stopped. Most young people would have called the heap an absolute embarrassment and refused to be seen dead inside. But Dawn opened her door and smiled her way into the seat, then took a deep breath and declared, “Still smells like Poppa Joe. Wet dogs and strong tobacco and gun oil.”
“I think that's why I keep it,” Connie agreed. Poppa Joe was her uncle, a cantakerous mountain man who had bought the truck in Connie's fourteenth year. “It reminds me of how happy I was âway back when.'”
“Me too.” Dawn Campbell bounced up and down on the seat, making the old springs squeak a tired welcome. She used both hands to crank down the window, the motions coming easy with years of practice. “I like to remember times with Poppa Joe when things get me down.”
“Honey, you're too young to have a past and too pretty for bad memories.” Connie searched the empty road ahead and behind, then was caught by the look Dawn gave her. It was far too ancient to be coming from such a vibrant face. “What?”
“Nothing, Aunt Connie. The road's clear.” But the look held on, telling Connie that the young girl beside her was growing up a lot faster than Connie might have liked.
Connie grasped the gearshift lever and yanked it up into first. The truck was twenty-five years old and had done a hundred-fifty-five thousand miles, most of them over hills and gravel tracks. The engine had been rebored six times, the shocks and brakes replaced more often than Connie cared to think. The radio and the passenger windshield wiper didn't work, the lights jounced and jiggled with every bump, and the paint had long been scraped off by passing branches and shrubs. The hood was rounded and a mile long, and she needed a thick cushion to protect her back from the springs sticking through the old seat covers. But the truck was a part of almost every good memory she held, and many of those not so good. As long as she could, Connie was going to keep the old heap on the road.
Dawn was twenty and the daughter of Connie's oldest friend. She had grown from an angel of a little girl into the darling of Hillsboro, Virginia, and everyone who knew her wished there were some way to keep her from spreading her wings and flying away, Connie most of all.
Dawn gave her a smile that twisted her heart and said, “Today's the big day!”
Connie nodded, knowing she should be happy finally to have landed a doctor for her town, yet surprised to find her earlier sadness still present. The unwanted emotion remained stationed right there between them. But the idea of an older man like Duke Langdon making time with her darling Dawn rankled so much it felt as if she had eaten a jar of pickles with her breakfast coffee.
True, Duke was only twenty-nine, but he had an air about him that made him seem much older. He was far too handsome for his own good. He was also as rich as anyone could be in a small Shenandoah Valley town. Connie had long suspected that behind those sparkling eyes and cleft chin resided a very large vacuum. She could just see him now, smug in his knowledge that he could have any girl he wanted, only to brush her aside whenever the magic faded.
Her worry and her anger fueled the look she gave Dawn then. A look meant to find something to criticize. And Connie did not have to look very far. The year of 1961 was more than halfway over, and already this strange new decade threatened to change everything and everybody, whether they wanted change or not. The lowland papers were full of what they called the rock-and-roll era. Pictures showed boys in ducktails and stovepipe jeans jiving with girls in bobby socks, ponytails, and petticoats. And lipstick as red as Dawn's. “Does your mother mind you laying the makeup on like a woman twice your age?”
Dawn gave her hair an irritated tug. “Don't you start.”
“I take it that means yes.”
“I'll tell you the same thing I told her. Get used to it. My makeup is just fine, thank you.”
There was something new in her voice. After a moment of dragging the truck around a hairpin curve, Connie realized what it was. Dawn sounded exactly like Connie did when she was angry. The person beside her was no longer a child, but an irritated woman. Grown and aware and certain of herself. Connie said quietly, “Yes, you're right. It's just fine.”
“Be glad it's not jewelry I can only wear when I've got holes in my ears,” Dawn huffed.
“You can stop arguing with your mother now,” Connie said.
“You started it.”
“And I'm sorry.” But the tension remained in the air between them. “I was still mad when you got in. I apologize.”
The words surprised them both. It was the first time she had ever spoken to Dawn as an adult. The knowledge occupied Connie's mind and heart as they descended the hillside toward town. Not even last night, when they had quarreled over her keeping company with Duke Langdon, had Connie seen this person beside her as a woman. It jolted her to think this was what the row might really have been about.
Dawn had been attending Mountainview Junior College for two years now. The Jonestown campus was twenty-five miles away as the crow flew, but only if the crow could crest the highland ridges that separated the two valleys. For the earthbound traveler it was a ninety-minute drive along winding Appalachian roads. This summer Dawn had gone straight from Jonestown to Richmond, where she had attended four months of classes at the business college. After acing every course, she had returned home the previous weekend and announced she was going to stop with college entirely. Attending the more distant university was out.