One Shenandoah Winter (2 page)

Which was what had started the argument. Connie was certain Dawn had decided against attending university because she wanted to be close to Duke Langdon. Connie's loudly stated opinion that no man was worth such a sacrifice, most especially Duke, had not exactly gone over well.

Dawn gave her a sideways look, not certain that things really had progressed beyond her makeup. “Does this mean we're through with what we started on last night, Aunt Connie?”

“I won't talk about it any more,” Connie agreed, though admitting defeat was hard. She had never been good at losing anything, especially an argument.

Dawn nodded, turned back to the road, and said to the windshield, “I prayed last night and again this morning that things would be right between us. I don't like it when we quarrel. It makes my whole world feel out of joint.”

“Mine too.” But Connie was held by the news of having been prayed over. The words had come so easily to Dawn. Connie tried to think of the last time she had actually turned a problem over to God, but she could not remember. It left her unable to run from an honest reply. “I think I've been partly arguing with myself and not with you. For everything that isn't right in my life.”

“Like what, Aunt Connie?”

She gave Hattie Campbell's daughter as much of a smile as she could manage. “I think it's time you started calling me Connie. To have an
adult
call me aunt makes me feel ancient.”

Dawn accepted the statement with a thoughtful nod, but only said, “What's the matter with your life?” When Connie did not respond, she went on, “I've always thought I'd like to turn out just like you.”

Connie shot a glance at herself in the rearview mirror, for her reply was to be shared only with herself. On a good day she would have called herself attractive, but today was not that kind. She accepted the copper-blonde hair and the clear green eyes and the strong chin and the warm-toned complexion with a sort of commonplace satisfaction. What caused her to turn back to the road was the sadness she saw layered over it all.

The road lifted up and over the last hill, and the valley of Hillsboro opened up before them. The narrow lowlands contained a cluster of buildings, most of them dating back to the early decades of the century. Back in the teens and twenties, their local stone was considered as fine a construction material as marble. Many of the Richmond government buildings were finished with polished slabs of Hillsboro granite. The resulting flush of money had spurred a building spree, when every structure from the local courthouse to Langdon's Emporium had competed for small-town grandeur.

Then the Great Depression had struck, and the demand for Hillsboro granite dried up. Afterward, when the rest of the world began to accelerate once again, Hillsboro had remained locked in the same destitute gap that trapped it today. Going nowhere fast.

But today was one of those special moments in the Appalachians, when hardship had no place. The air was scrubbed a fine china blue, and the hillsides were a thousand hues of green. Down the center of the valley flowed a sparkling silver ribbon, known to all as the Shenandoah River.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I heard.” Connie's slow reply hung heavy with all that she could not put into words. Not ever. Especially not to Dawn. “Thank you very much for the compliment, but I wouldn't wish my own state on anyone, much less you.”

“But why?” Dawn's consternation was genuine. “You're, gosh, you're great. Successful, independent, respected by almost everybody in town.”

For years now, Connie had been paid by the state but employed by the county and the town, an extremely Virginian kind of arrangement. She looked out for the town's interests at the state level, and monitored state funds sent to help lift the town from the rut of poverty.

“Too independent by half,” Connie said ruefully. “And success doesn't make you happy.”

But Dawn wasn't through. “And now that you're assistant mayor, Momma says there's going to be some great things getting done.”

“I got appointed because nobody else wanted the job.”

“That's not true and you know it. You've already gotten a doctor to come to town. Isn't that a great start?”

Connie pulled up in front of Campbell's Grocery. She found it harder to let the child go on some days than others. Today it was like getting taffy off her teeth. “Is Duke bringing you home?”

“No, he's got some big meeting at the store.”

“I have to go see Poppa Joe this afternoon. Mind coming with me?”

The young lady showed genuine delight. “Are you kidding?”

“I'm sorry about what I said, Dawn. I don't know what's kept me so riled.”

“I do.” She slid from the car, then said through the open door, “Momma always says I'm nine parts angel and one part migraine.”

Connie drove off, waving at people she could hardly see for the sheen growing before her eyes. It was an old ache, one she had thought was long gone. But the sorrow held her still, murmuring right alongside the grumbling engine. There was too much truth in the old truck for her to refuse to see how much she wished Dawn had been her own child.

Two

C
onnie drove from the grocery straight to the church. Before she could climb from the truck, Pastor Brian Blackstone came bounding down the stairs. Connie had known Brian since grade school, and the man looked as worried as she had ever seen him. When he opened the door to the truck, she greeted him with, “How is the baby?”

“Exactly the same.” Hill country wisdom held that the best pastor was one who had suffered, so he could talk from experience when dealing with his flock. Brian Blackstone certainly fit that bill. “Don't tell me the doctor's decided not to come.”

“Not as far as I know,” Connie replied. “Why, have you heard something?”

“No, nothing. It's just that . . .” The pastor cast a worried glance around him. “I'm not certain this truck is the proper first impression we want to give our new doctor.”

“Listen to you. ‘Not certain we're giving a proper impression.'” She ground the clutch and levered the old truck into first. “You'd think you did your schooling at Harvard and not some Ozark college for hillbilly preachers.”

“I attended seminary in Louisville, as you well know,” Brian said stiffly. He glanced at his watch. “Are we late?”

“Calm down, Brian.” Reverend Blackstone was from a Hillsboro family as old and set in Shenandoah country as her own. But somewhere along the way Brian had picked up a very proper way of talking. It hadn't come from seminary— Brian had spoken like this ever since grade school. It was only the fact that his big brother would have walloped anyone who made fun of Brian that had saved him from early torment. “We don't even know when he's arriving. All Fuller asked was for us to drop by the clinic and say our howdies.”

“Then don't start just yet. Let's have a moment of prayer together.” When she hesitated before cutting the motor, he insisted. “Connie, this new doctor could be absolutely crucial, to Sadie and to me and to the entire town.”

“I know that.” Still, she felt defensive. For the second time in one day someone had mentioned turning a problem over to the Lord. Connie cut off the engine and bowed her head. She listened as the pastor asked for success with their hopes of the day, and found herself growing increasingly nervous. Not over what lay ahead, but rather from what lay within. As soon as Brian announced the amen, she started the motor and pulled onto the road.

Brian gripped the dashboard as she took the corner onto Main. The front left suspension was going again, and the truck had a tendency to buck on curves. He asked, “How is Poppa Joe doing?”

DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD
OF CHURCH

DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD
OF CHURCH

“Still ornery over how they took away his driver's license.” Connie's uncle was fast approaching his eighty-third birthday, and he tended to treat every road he met as his own. The last time the sheriff had stopped him, it was for mowing down a stop sign and carrying it until his busted radiator had given up the ghost. “Only way I knew to keep him from getting behind the wheel was to take the truck home with me.”

“But why drive it today?”

“We're going out to see him this afternoon, Dawn and I.” She drove down to where the street joined with the nicest bridge in town, one fashioned from granite so polished it reflected the morning sun like a water-born jewel. She took an easy right onto River Road and continued, “Driving his truck over reassures him that I'm keeping it up.”

“I still think . . .” Brian's voice trailed off as she pulled into the weed-choked lot. Beneath the mass of greenery should have been a gravel parking area. “I thought they were going to regrade this.”

“So did I.” But Connie was far more concerned about how the clinic itself appeared. The fresh paint lay on the old structure like a new coat on a cadaver. “This place looks plain awful.”

“We should have had it rebuilt long ago.”

“Where were we supposed to find the money?” It was a litany so often expressed she didn't even have to think the words. They just came. Lack of funding defined her every action for the town she loved. “Don't worry, Brian. This doctor knows about our situation. We didn't paint him a rosy picture. No chance of that and be honest over why we haven't had a live-in doctor for almost three years.”

It was not just the loss of their town's only doctor that caused hardship these days. But the problem typified what Connie and the rest of Hillsboro faced. Down below, the world had entered modern times. People worked at jobs that meant something. If they didn't like what they did, they walked out and went somewhere else and found another job. Flatland life was like that. But a good-paying job that gave a fellow a feeling of worth was often out of reach in the hills.

And it was not just work that separated them. Down below, the world was changing at a pace the hillfolk could hardly believe. People didn't just have more money in the flatlands, they had more things to buy. Televisions had appeared in most homes, if word could be believed. Up in the hills, those who had TV sets didn't watch them much because the snowy reception hurt their eyes and they could hardly hear what was being said.

Apparently the flatland world stopped dead in its tracks for shows like
Rawhide, The Ed Sullivan Show,
and
American Bandstand.
The newspapers were full of things that were little more than words on the page, like how a wall was being built down the middle of Berlin. And just this summer, President Kennedy himself had declared the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. People would talk of such things and just shake their heads. It didn't hardly seem as though they were living in the same world any more.

Hillfolk liked to brag about going down the mountains and seeing such changes for themselves. When they returned home more often than not they declared stoutly that it didn't mean nothing but trouble to come. As though pessimism were the only defense the hillfolk had against hardship and isolation.

As Connie climbed down from the truck, she tugged at the front edges of her jacket, pretending to clear away the creases but in truth wishing she had worn something that did not make her look so thick. There were days when she could look in the mirror and see a woman who had retained her youthful energy and grace. Today, however, she had applied her makeup without really looking, fearing she would inspect herself and come up with a word like hefty. She hated mirrors on mornings like this.

Together with Brian she started across the unkempt lawn and listened for some sign of life. The clinic's front door was open, but the only sound came from the river chuckling from the ravine across the road. Brian asked, “Is my tie straight?”

“You look just fine.” She gave him as reassuring a smile as she could manage. “I'm sure—”

From inside the clinic came the noise of a slamming door. A muffled voice said something, only to be answered with a shout of rage. Brian's nervous features creased with genuine worry. “That doesn't sound at all good.”

“Maybe we'd better go lend Fuller a hand.”

They climbed the concrete block stairs and entered the Hillsboro Clinic's reception area. The place had once been a mill worker's cottage, given to the state in lieu of unpaid taxes when the mill went bankrupt. That was back when the hill farmers stopped bringing their corn by horse cart to have it ground at the water-powered mill.

Not long afterward, a local fellow who had made it to medical school and then survived the First World War decided to return home. With the town's blessing he had turned the old mill house into a much-needed medical clinic.

But the local fellow had died three years earlier, after doctoring the mountain folk for almost forty years. By then, even the few friends who had managed to outlive him were admitting that the old man was long past his prime.

Even so, a doddering old curmudgeon a half-century away from medical school was far better than no doctor at all. As the town had come to know at its own cruel cost.

Connie and Brian entered the open door to find Mayor Fuller Allen standing in the middle of the front room. A sheen of perspiration turned his bald pate to a polished dome. “Doctor Reynolds, I'd be the first to admit the clinic is lacking a few things. But if you'd just—”

“A few things!” The dark-haired stranger swept an angry hand at the door leading to the examining rooms. “I've seen better-equipped high school labs!”

“But Doctor Reynolds—”

“And outhouses with a higher standard of cleanliness!” The doctor's gaze turned their way, and Connie found herself staring at gray eyes smoky with rage. “Are you my nurse?”

“Me?” She took an involuntary step back. “Goodness, no.”