Wildwood Creek (15 page)

“She was
eighteen
years old.” For whatever reason, his portrayal felt vastly offensive. “An orphaned girl with a younger sister to raise. It seems like quite a stretch to believe she’d be capable of manipulating an entire town. I mean, she—” I bit off the sentence, realizing that I’d gotten more impassioned then I meant to.

But the idea of using a girl who’d most likely died at eighteen, who couldn’t defend herself, to add some sort of dark plot twist to this summer’s production both made me queasy and lit a fire inside me. Given Rav Singh’s usual bent toward warped reality shows—and the sometimes-twisted nature of
Mysterious History
projects—it didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility that the intentions for
Wildwood Creek
went well beyond the factual representation of the town. In fact, given Singh’s reputation, his questions about Bonnie Rose seemed a likely answer to why someone like him would take on a project like this.

He was completely unbothered by my protest. In fact, he didn’t look my way. Instead, he continued speculating toward the whitewashed ceiling. “There were some accounts given after Wildwood was abandoned—claims made by citizens who’d run from this place before its last days, taking almost nothing with them. They told of strange happenings, people jumping off cliffs into the river, people disappearing without a trace. A sort of hysteria among the citizenry. There was talk of some sort of mythical river people who tempted victims
from sleep, dragging them to watery graves in the dark of midnight.

“It has been said that the events began not long after the arrival of Bonnie Rose. Shortly following her installment as a teacher here, a young woman—reportedly Bonnie’s rival—hurled herself to her death. Harland Delevan gave an account of these things to a field reporter during your Civil War. Did you know that? Even as he was dying in a field hospital, he did not change his story. He claimed that Bonnie Rose was some sort of witch—that it was all her doing. Why would a man lie on his deathbed?”

“Maybe because he wanted the truth to die with him.” My explanation made more sense than his, considering his had to be pure fantasy. “But I don’t believe an eighteen-year-old girl was responsible for the demise of an entire town. I don’t believe in witches, ghosts, and river people either. There’s a logical explanation—there always is.”

“What do
you
think happened? What do you believe? I know you’ve done a fine job of researching the place.”

I hugged the folder against my chest, the shadows falling thicker now. Outside, an owl hooted long and low, and suddenly the conversation, the village, and Singh’s presence were more than disquieting. I wanted to leave. “I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, I’ve just focused on my job. Speaking of, I’d better get back to the Berman. They’ll be wondering where I am, and it’s a long drive to Austin.” So much for making brownie points with the big boss. I was outta here.

“There was a song about her, sung in Civil War camps and on cattle drives of the time. ‘The Ballad of Wildwood.’ Have you heard of it? The lyrics, for the most part, seem to have been lost to history, other than oral tradition among some of the locals.”

“I don’t think I saw anything about it in the research.”

And lays them down in sweet repose,

The milky hands of Bonnie Rose . . .

The words whispered through my mind out of no place. Had I read them somewhere?

Above the cliffs, alone she stood,

The bitter maiden of Wildwood . . .

I blinked, stopped a few steps from him in the aisle, but no more words came.

Singh hadn’t moved, but he was watching me as if he either expected our conversation to continue or intended to stay after I left. I studied him without wanting to. His features were emotionless, his fathomless dark eyes probing, seeming to be searching for something in me.

I slipped a hand into my jeans pocket and took out the keys. “So . . . I’d better hit the road. I’ll never find my way out of these hills after sundown. It was nice meeting you.”

He smiled slightly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It was more a look of assessment, a measuring. “It does get very dark. I spent the night here last night.”

Heebie-jeebies danced over my skin. What in the world was I supposed to say to that? “Oh.”
Not me, mister. No way I’m staying in this place alone . . . or with you, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.
I took another side step toward the door. “Well, I definitely don’t want to miss the last of the light.”
Outta here. So outta here. Whoosh. See that dust trail? That’s me. Gone.
Kim would have an astronomical freak out when I told her about this conversation.

The creep factor right now was off the charts. In fact, part of me wanted to reconsider my whole decision to spend the summer here. But with more than a hundred cast and crewmembers, it would surely feel safe enough, even after dark.

“Not a trace of ambient light,” he mused, now surveying
the window. “The stars so close, they are just beyond your fingertip.”

“It sounds . . . awesome.”
Please, God, help me to extricate myself from the situation in some way that is not ridiculously ungraceful. Now. Please, now.
“I’ll have to watch on the way home.”
Far, far from here. By myself.
I took another step toward the door. One, two, three. I was almost there.

“I want
you
to become her.” The words stopped me on the threshold. I turned slowly. Maybe he had me confused with someone else. One of the cast members, perhaps?

Maybe he was just . . . talking to himself . . . or to the ghosts he thought were here. Maybe he was completely off his rocker. Creative types tended to teeter on the ragged edge sometimes.

He hadn’t changed position. Instead, he was leaning slightly over his crossed arms, seemingly deep in thought, studying an expensive-looking pair of black boots. Actually, I realized now that he was dressed from head to toe in black. Black boots. Black slacks. Black button-up shirt in some sort of slightly iridescent fabric that caught the fading light. Silk, most likely.

“Excuse me?” Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is play dumb.

He nodded slowly, as if he were establishing something in his mind. “I want you to become Bonnie Rose.”

The keys slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor, disturbing the dusty air in the schoolhouse.

Singh looked my way then, his head swiveling slowly. His gaze started at my feet and traveled carefully up my body, past my eyes, and then back down again in a way that made me feel more than weird—as if I were a new car or a slick polo pony he was thinking about buying. “You’re perfect.”

In most instances,
You’re perfect
feels like flattery, but in this case, it just felt . . .bizarre. I fumbled for a response. What
were the right words in a circumstance like this? I finally settled for “Oh, I’m just in production. An assistant . . . Well, sort of an intern, really. I’m not part of the cast. I work for Tova. Tova Kask? I have several years’ experience in community and university theater, and I’m working on my masters in film. This summer is a dream job for me.”

I was babbling now, and I knew it. I tried to pause, to see if he would jump in, but he wasn’t saying anything, so I felt compelled to babble some more. “I love research and costuming, especially. I really do. And I’ve learned so much this summer from Randy, Phyllis, and Michelle. It’s been a fantastic experience so far. And I’m working my way through school, so I needed the job. It’s always been a dream of mine . . . film . . . But behind the scenes, I mean. I flunked out of being on stage in the fifth grade. Totally. Complete stage fright. They had to carry me off. I was the only kid assigned to work with the teacher, helping with costumes and props. I didn’t mind it though, because . . .”

The intensity of his gaze stopped me. My mind went completely blank. “I know who you are, Allie Kirkland.” He pulled his lips between his teeth, tilted his head slightly to one side, regarded me the way a portrait painter might take in a subject he’s about to render onto canvas. Something inside me shuddered. I’d never had anybody look at me with such intense scrutiny. “I make it my business to know everyone who works for me. Your father was a director.”

The uncomfortable quiver inside me radiated outward, crawled over my bones, and slipped into the air. What in the world was happening here? What would he do if I said no—
when
I said no—to this insane proposition? “Yes, he was,” I answered tentatively. “My earliest memories are of film sets. Behind the scenes. I’ve always wanted to follow in his footsteps, see if I have what it takes. My father’s work
ended way too soon.” If he knew everything else about me, he probably knew that as well. It didn’t matter now. My purpose was to convince him that I was much more valuable in a support capacity, that I could pull my weight and then some.

It occurred to me to wonder whether Tova had set this up. She was the one who’d sent me here today, alone. Maybe this was her way to avoid being stuck in a crew trailer with me all summer. But I had done a good job so far, hadn’t I? I’d worked like a dog in the basement of the Berman all these weeks. I was the one who knew how to fix the machinery, who knew how the files were organized, who knew many of the costumes seam by seam, inch by inch. She had to realize that. Would she do this to me now? Was she really that heartless?

Singh’s eyelids lowered slowly to half-mast.

Sweat dripped beneath my shirt, despite the fact that the evening air had cooled noticeably.

“What if you could have that dream, Allie? What if, by doing what I am asking of you, you could guarantee yourself the funds for not
one
semester of film school, but all of it? What then?”

I lost my balance, staggered a step, my tennis shoe landing on the raised threshold so that I fell backward and ended up catching my footing on the porch outside, which was just as well, because that put me farther from Singh and closer to an escape. Even so, I stood frozen.

“What exactly are you . . .” I paused to collect my thoughts, if I could find any. Now wasn’t the time to speak without thinking. I had to be careful. Singh did not look like the kind of man who was accustomed to being told
no
.

“What am I saying?” He finished the question. “That’s what you were about to ask, correct? That’s the thing you want to know?”

I nodded.

“Simply, that you assume the life of Bonnie Rose this summer. For three months. That’s all that’s being asked of you. And then I will see that you have what you need for film school. I hold sway over any number of scholarships and admissions boards. This
is
a business of special favors. Should I make it known to the right people that we had an exceptionally bright and capable young intern serving us in
Wildwood Creek
, you could quite quickly find yourself stepping into the life you’ve always wanted. Law school is, of course, admirable, if it’s what you desire in life . . . but if it’s nothing more than a family expectation, then it amounts to enslavement of a sort, don’t you think? What is enslavement, if it’s not the forcing of your labor toward a life that has been chosen for you?”

I stood staring at him, unable to formulate anything other than a three-word response, which seemed rather pointless now. “But why me?”

His fingers slipped under the flap on his shirt pocket, reached in, and slid something out. Pushing off the back of the pew, he walked forward to hand it to me. An unconscious retreat moved me a half step before I forced myself to take what he offered. A photograph. A tintype similar to many of the ones Stewart and I had scrounged off the Internet or copied from books and magazines for the costume diaries. But this one was original.

I turned it slowly in my hands . . . a picture of a school.
This
school. Children were posed on the steps. A dozen or more. All ages, from no more than five or six to as old as fourteen, wearing everything from nicely made dresses and stockings to what looked like flour sacks cinched at the waist with twine, bare feet sticking out the bottom.

Standing beside them was their teacher, Bonnie Rose.

Tall, slender, with long ringlets of hair that were probably
red, she looked only slightly like the sketch Randy had rendered in her costume diary.

She was startlingly familiar, though I’d never seen her before.

If the picture hadn’t been taken over a hundred and fifty years ago, she could have been my sister.

B
ONNIE
R
OSE
M
AY
1861

Y
ou’d best be marching up the hill now,” Mrs. Forsythe says to me as I pass through her kitchen. “Take your sister along with you, and she’ll not trouble me this aft.” Her eyes narrow in her meaty face, and she looks pleased to be sending us off again.

Daily, Mrs. Delevan holds a ladies’ tea and sewing circle in her fine home on the hill, but it’s not an invitation the womenfolk of Wildwood are thankful to be receiving. Mrs. Forsythe knows this as well as I, and that’s the cause of her satisfied look today. It’s the better part of a month now, during the buildin’ of our room aback the schoolhouse, that Maggie May and I have been underfoot of the Forsythes, and it’s hard to know whether remaining here or participating in one of Mrs. Delevan’s odd tea parties is worse.

It’s not as though I’ll be refusing Mrs. Delevan’s invitation, of course. With the town fair to burstin’ from so many folk arriving each day, and the one small hotel operated by Mr. Hollis always full, it’s easy enough to see how fortunate Maggie May and I are to have the kind patronage of Mr. Delevan. While others go wanting, we are put up in the
Forsythe home. They’ve ousted their two daughters to give us the space, and it’s clear that Mrs. Forsythe was told to do it. Angry whispers hiss through the walls as we lie abed at night. Her daughters sleep in the hay above the wagon shed out back now. The lady of the house is not happy to be feeding extras, either, not one bit. Goods run a pretty penny at the Unger Store, when they can be had at all.

But as with everythin’ in Wildwood, the Delevans hold the mortgage on the mill where Mr. Forsythe earns his daily bread. So he keeps us as boarders whether it pleases his wife or not.

She smiles behind her hand as I gather up Maggie and go. It’s a small bit of satisfaction to her.

On the trek uphill, Maggie complains again. She’s not allowed into the ladies’ teas, and she’s loath to sit on the steps aback the Delevan house by the hour, waiting for old Mrs. Delevan and her addle-minded sister, Peasie, to tire of their guests and set us free.

“I’ll stay at the schoolhouse. I’ll not wander a bit. . . .” Maggie pleads as we pass by the small buildin’, where, to date, we have only seven children in grades from first to sixth. They come for classes from morn until just past midday. We’ll add seventh and eighth grades later, if there’s a need for it, but by the upper ages, most children here are helping their parents to open crosscuts and sink shafts in the hillsides of Chinquapin Peaks. The immigrant families, having risked all to come here, live in hopes of striking the deep veins that generate the gold-bearing ore found near the surface. There’s barely a man can’t tell of some color scratched from his claim, yet none have amounted to much thus far, it seems. After the portions owed Mr. Delevan’s Miners Exchange and his store are paid, they have even less.

For the most part, those who’ve come with dreams of
wealth have found themselves living in homes built of anythin’ they can scratch up. The womenfolk turn their hands to keeping their broods fed and washed, but growing table fodder in this rocky soil is no small matter. Those operating businesses in town at Mr. Delevan’s direction fare somewhat better. They seem to be German folk mostly, and the claim seekers being mostly Irish. The Irish are known for the dreamin’, much the same as my da. It’s nothin’ to them to take on a risk. They haven’t much awaiting them back East but hard labor and low wage.

“You’ll be coming up the hill with me, Maggie May. And no complainin’ about it,” I say to her as we pass by the Unger Store and the climb grows steeper, up the high side of the street toward the Delevan home on the hill. “And mind your manners, on the chance that old Mrs. Delevan should look out and see you there. Don’t be making trouble for Essie Jane and the others.”

Five slave women work in the Delevan home—so many they seem to be stumblin’ over one another. With only the two older ladies and Mr. Delevan to care for, the slaves spend their time scrubbing the corners of the house, then scrubbing them again.

On tea days they help with dressing the ladies. It’s an odd ritual I wouldn’t have been believing, if not for seeing it with my own eyes. Mrs. Delevan will have nothin’ of dirt off the streets brushed over her carpets, or common clothing sitting on her fine chairs. Before entering the home, each of the women is brought ’round back to the kitchen house, and there helped to shed her own frock in favor of something pleasing to Mrs. Delevan. The clothing is laced, or bound, or given a hasty stitch as need be to fit it to the wearer, and then the women are gathered and proceed to the front to pretend to be just arriving at the Delevan home.

It’s a strange thing, to be sure, old Mrs. Delevan poised there in her son’s fine parlor, delightin’ herself over the dresses and hats, pretending never to have seen the garments before. A grown woman, playing at a game of dollhouse. No one says anythin’ about it, and there beside her, Peasie looks on quiet and meek but just as delighted, her countenance that of an overgrown girl.

I’ve wondered if Mr. Delevan knows of these things, but he’s been gone away on business since my coming to Wildwood. With shots now fired between the Unionists and the Secessionists at Fort Sumter, and Texas having voted to join the Confederate cause over a month ago, there’s much talk and whisperin’and meetin’ taking place somewhere outside Wildwood—I’ve gathered that much, though our information here is slight. Wildwood not being on the path to anyplace else, few come here, unless it is to stay.

I’ve no way of knowing whether this folly with Mrs. Delevan’s tea parties will continue on when her son returns to take up the reins of his household, or whether it may end. He seems a more practical man than this. The womenfolk in town have work to do—children to tend, meals to scratch up, businesses to look after with their husbands.

“Please,” Maggie whispers, tuggin’ on my arm. “I won’t wander if you leave me here.” She looks back to the schoolhouse, but I worry over letting her stay behind. The Reverend Brahn, who makes his home in the boardin’ room next to one being finished for Maggie and me, seems a drunken and slovenly old man, and I’ve my suspicions as to whether he is a reverend at all. He’s been no help in starting the school or in persuading families living in their dugouts of canvas and timber that there can be advantage in educating the young. Only the town children have come, thus far—those from the German families. But dozens of families live out in the wood.
The few I’ve seen are a scrappy, ragged lot, their clothes in tatters, their feet bare, and their hair matted. They are as hardscrabble as the hills themselves.

A wagon rolls along the street past us and stops beside the Unger warehouse, and four men scurry to do the unloading. The driver jumps down with a leather-bound packet ’neath his arm, and I know his lanky walk before we come close enough to see his face. I’ve not crossed paths with Mr. Hardwick since he delivered me to the Forsythe home a month ago now. What I have heard of him is that, upon leaving Wildwood, he manages his living by the constant transportation of goods to other settlements downriver.

I find myself quickening my pace, though I’m not certain why. The man did bring us safely across the unsettled country, but I’ve not forgotten several insufferable moments on our journey. Not the least of which that river crossin’, which almost took us all. Doubtless, he has neither forgotten me.

He casts eyes my way, and I’m a bit taken aback when he pauses to tip his hat, pleasant enough. “Miss Rose.”

“Mr. Hardwick.”

He studies me with a keen interest then, and I’m surprised by it. “You’re looking well, I reckon. Finding life in Wildwood agreeable so far? No more rivers to cross, at least.” A slight smirk follows the question, and I feel myself bristlin’. Perhaps he thought he would find me at this point, simperin’ and babblin’ and pleadin’ for deliverance from this place. Just last week, a young woman ran the length of the street screaming and moaning and tearing at her clothes. Mrs. Forsythe did not even move from her wash line. “There’s some womenfolk can’t bear up,” she said, sending a hard look my way.

Now Mr. Hardwick seems to be entertaining the same thoughts of me.

“Some matters are difficult,” I answer and meet his cool,
gray eyes. They remind me of the water in the river, a glassy surface hiding secrets beneath. “But that is, of course, to be expected. While it is a bit of slow going, persuading the families living out on claims to surrender the labors of their children to an education, I have faith that it can be accomplished in time. For now, we await the arrival of books and materials . . . and a room to be completed for Maggie May and me aback the building. I look forward to no longer imposing on the hospitality of Mrs. Forsythe.”

“I’ve never known her to have any,” he remarks and smiles then, and I am again surprised by him. He is at least a decade older than I, perhaps made to look more so by the scar beneath his eye and his thick head of hair gone early gray, but his smile suddenly seems that of a young man. A man who was playful once.

A laugh pushes up my throat, despite the bad manners of it, and I stifle it into my glove, pretending to cough.

Beside me, Maggie giggles straightaway. “She steals the bread off our plates, and says we ate it, and then she feeds it to her daughters.”

“Maggie!” I reach across and grab her arm hard.

Mr. Hardwick is surprisingly charmed. I’ve never supposed that he could be. He leans close to Maggie, touches a fingertip to her chin, and says, “Could be because her daughters aren’t near so pretty as you, Maggie Rose.”

I tug Maggie’s arm, shifting her away slightly as she favors him with a smile. I’ve come to be leery of the sort of men here in Wildwood. Though none have offered any trouble to Maggie and me, they are rough-cut and many in want of a woman. Mrs. Delevan will not allow saloons and the like in her town and insists that the bathhouses do only respectable business, but just down the spring creek in Red Leaf Hollow lies a place where gamin’ and drinkin’ and all manner of
debauchery is said to happen. The girl who ran screaming through the street had come from there.

Mr. Hardwick straightens to his full height and looks over his shoulder toward the wagon. “Reckon I’ve got some of your books and slates in the crate there. I’ll deliver them up to the schoolhouse after I’ve taken the mail bag to Unger’s.”

“I could help you,” Maggie offers, and her forwardness is surprisin’. Perhaps being here in this strange place has made Mr. Hardwick’s face seem more like that of a friend than it should be.

Even more surprisin’, Mr. Hardwick appears somewhat agreeable to it. Before I know what’s happened, he’s taken the mail pouch from his arm. “Reckon you could trot this in to Mrs. Unger, and I’ll walk up to the smithy to see about new shoes on my red mule? Then we’ll take the books down to the church house.” He turns to me, finally. “Reckon you’ll be hankering to see what’s in the crates as soon as they’re opened too.”

His gaze darts toward the wagon and then to his hands, almost bashful. It’s a bafflement. Does he mean to invite me along? Of a sudden, he seems nothin’ of the hard-edged man who delivered us here. I find myself blushing and tripping over my words. “I’ve been called up the hill for tea. There’s never any telling how long it’ll be.”

He nods without looking at me, seeming unsurprised that I’ve answered in the negative.

“But I suppose it will be well enough if Maggie goes along.” I’m stunned to find myself saying it, and it surprises Maggie as well. She catches a breath, smiling for the first time in a fair bit. She’s happy to escape the big house today.

It’s just as well not having her there, I decide. Essie Jane has learned far too much from the slaves in the kitchen house, and she shares her new knowledge. Maggie’s been privy to
more than she should know about that place in the wood at Red Leaf Hollow and what sort of sinful behavior happens there. Even the women slaves don’t go that direction along Wildwood Creek when they’re out gathering mushrooms, nuts, and herbs for cooking.

I turn to Maggie. “But no slipping off to the wood or around town when you finish helping Mr. Hardwick. Are you understanding me, Maggie May?” She has a wicked curiosity in her mind about that place, Red Leaf Hollow. I’ve seen it in her eyes when she whispers about what Essie Jane has told her. She’s wonderin’ after it, even though Essie Jane and the kitchen women’s purpose was to warn the young girls never to stray near.

“Yes’m,” she answers, then bounces on her toes as she clutches the mailbag to her chest. It’s no small thing that Mr. Hardwick is trusting her with it. She dashes for the store, and Mr. Hardwick takes his leave of me. I’m wishing I could share their afternoon, rather than partake of the one assigned me.

My mind remains with Maggie May and the new schoolbooks as I make my way to the Delevans’ kitchen house and proceed to change into finery that must be pinned up at the back, as it’s too large in the middle and the breast for me. Asmae, the eldest of the kitchen women, finishes the task by arranging my hair in curls atop my head and securing a green wool felt hat with a pin that comes just short of drawing blood from my scalp. She’s impatient with the silly task, and I don’t blame her in the least. When it’s all finished, the only things I’ve left of my own are my gloves, unmentionables, and the locket I wear on a thick length of ribbon coverin’ the scars. I am careful always to hold it in place during the dressing and the undressing so none of the other women can see what hides underneath it. Coming to tea today, along with me, are four others whose husbands operate businesses in town.

We make our way ’round to the front to be presented properly to Mrs. Delevan, me lagging behind, as the slippers are too snug on my feet. I feel as if I’ve got my toes caught in the blacksmith billows, and Big Neb is pushing down with each step. I long for my ankle boots, which wait in the kitchen house.

We’ve barely made our way inside the house and to the ladies’ salon before there’s the sound of someone new coming in the door, and in a wink, Harland Delevan himself stands in the entry, observing the tea ladies. He’s dusty from travelin’, but his mother seems to mind not a bit. His aunt Peasie smiles and claps her hands together, and Mrs. Delevan’s eyes fill with her son as he moves across the room, then bends to kiss her cheek. He greets the rest of the ladies properly, before calling for me to leave the room with him.