Listen ...The Cabin

THE CABIN by Smoky Trudeau
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Chapter 1

1846

There was a deep connectedness between mountain women in the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia, a connectedness that transcended the tangible, yet was as real as the forest itself. It was a part of the mountain magic, her grandmother had taught her when she was a young child, and it was particularly strong between Corrine and her sister, Catherine.

For this reason alone, Corrine never doubted her sister would know when it was time to come; would know when her baby was about to make her entrance into the world. Whatever distance lay between them, with Corrine living in the cabin on Hoffmann Mountain and Catherine in the valley below, one always knew when she was needed by the other. Just as Corrine, gifted in the healing properties of herbs, had arrived on Catherine’s doorstep with willow bark tea and a soothing slippery elm elixir hours after Catherine had taken to her bed with fever and cough, Catherine, blessed with a midwife’s knowledge and skill, had sweptinto the cabin as the first pains of labor gripped Corrine’s belly.

The childbirth had been difficult, far more difficult than what she’d experienced when her son was born three years prior. But Catherine had remained calm, her voice soothing, encouraging Corrine through every contraction while William, Corrine’s husband, fretted a trail of footprints from the bedroom door to the hearth and back again as he tried to console Cyrus, who, bewildered by his mother’s screams of pain, wailed with equal intensity.

“I’m going to die,” Corrine whispered to her sister. “I saw it in a dream. William, and Cyrus, and the baby, but I was gone.” She let out a gasp as yet another contraction wracked her body. Catherine took her sister’s feet in her hands, pressing firmly on the soft pad of her heel and the inside corner of her ankle until the pain eased and the contraction passed.

“You aren’t going to die. I’m not going to let you die.” Catherine dipped a rag into a pitcher of water, and mopped the sweat from Corrine’s face and chest.

“Promise me…Catherine, look at me!”

Catherine put down the rag.

“Promise me, if anything happens to me…” One last contraction and with a bloodcurdling scream, she pushed her daughter into the world.

Corrine could hear the forest calling her, whispering her name as the soft winds of spring warmed the mountain. She’d never gone so many days without walking through her beloved forest, along its streams and game trails. Since Elizabeth’s birth, she had been too tired and weak to do more than walk to the creek and back. But with Catherine insisting on staying on to help out with the children, she had finally regained her strength and at last was free to escape the stifling confines of the cabin and roam the mountainside once again.

True, it made her husband nervous when she went off by herself. She wasn’t sure why—William was a circuit rider preacher, and often was gone for months at a time as he rode the circuit, preaching the gospel at every home and village in the Shenandoah Valley that would have him. Perhaps when he was gone he simply imagined she stayed tucked cozily into the mountainside cabin, never venturing beyond the gardens, small pasture and barn. And while she didn’t wish to cause him anxiety with her forays away from the safety of the cabin, he really did worry needlessly. She felt as at home walking through the woods as a bear or bobcat might. Corrine was raised in the mountains. Mountain women were both strong and intuitive. She was confident William knew in his head she was as capable of fending for herself and their two children, but she recognized his heart often told him something different.

Listen ...The Warrior of Bast

THE WARRIOR OF BAST by Janet Lane Walters
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Chapter One

Tira wanted three things in life and she had little chance of gaining any of them. She wanted to be financially independent. She wanted to go to Egypt and study the ancient ruins. And she wanted her sister to stop using drugs.

The last desire brought memories of this morning’s quarrel. Luci had taken the money Tira had squirreled away to see them through the rest of the month. “Luci, why?”

“You don’t understand,” Luci screamed.

True. Tira didn’t understand why her sister needed to escape into a drugged stupor instead of studying and working to step onto the road leading from the slums. Tira’s hands stung with the memory of slapping her sister. And the words she’d shouted as she slammed out of the apartment echoed in her thoughts. “I hate you. I wish you were dead.” Tira shuddered. She hadn’t meant those words. As soon as she reached the apartment she would tell Luci.

With a sigh she turned back to the museum display. The Egyptian artifacts awed her. For a short time she allowed the beauty of the objects to carry her into dreams of pyramids and temples, of gods and pharaohs and of digging in the earth to uncover treasures of the past.

The dream hovered beyond her grasp. Her chances of gaining a position on a dig in Egypt were slim. Positions were avidly sought by students who had chosen the right colleges and the right professors. Those choices had been beyond her financially. She sucked in a breath. Instead of adventure, when the summer ended, she would take her place in front of a classroom teaching history at an inner city high school.

A glance at her watch said dreamtime was over. She had to reach the apartment in time to change for her evening shift at a restaurant several blocks from the cramped fifth floor efficiency she shared with her older sister. Once again flashes from the morning’s quarrel exploded in Tira’s thoughts. She’d been so upset she’d missed her martial arts session at the local center.

Tira cast her dream self aside and donned the role of practical sister. She hurried to the exit and stepped from the past into a steamy August day. Heat shimmered from the sidewalk. The air hung heavy and carried the odors of the city and the noises of traffic. She strode along the crowded area taking advantage of every opening.

Ten days to dream. Ten days to walk the halls of the museum. Ten days to study the artifacts that had become her lodestones. She breathed the aromas of real time, spices of cooking foods, metallic scents of passing traffic and the odors of people, some pleasant and some not.

Several blocks from the apartment building the crowds thinned. In an alley she glimpsed furtive movements in the dark shadows. She hurried past. On the corner across the street a group of gang members gathered. She sucked in a breath and held her head high. For all her twenty three years she’d avoided the gangs. As she strode past she heard the usual crude remarks about her body and her attitude.

Listen ...Redeeming Grace

REDEEMING GRACE by Smoky Trudeau
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June, 1928

At one time, he had loved them. During the Pennsylvania years his love had been steady as the beacon from the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse, on the Delaware shore where he’d taken them on vacation when she was seven. He’d bought them salt water taffy, and she’d eaten too much and gotten sick. He held her head while she vomited, speaking soothing words and wiping her mouth and forehead with his handkerchief when she was finished.

Their house had echoed with the chattering laughter of little girls playing Annie Oakley, shooting make-believe pistols in the air while riding on his back as he pranced around on all fours, snorting and pawing the floor in so poor an imitation of a real live horse that she had tumbled to the floor in fits of hysterical laughter, nearly getting trampled in the process. He’d feigned wild fury, rearing up, pawing madly at the air, pretend hooves thrashing. Emily had saved her, roping the marauder with a yellow satin sash lasso.

Then Emily died, and Papa didn’t want to play anymore. He’d packed up the family and moved them away from the only home she’d ever known to Maryland and the sandy shores of the Choptank River. Some memories were too painful to live with.

Emily’s memory refused to stay put in its Pennsylvania grave, following them to the ramshackle farm he bought on credit, drifting in and out of their collective unconsciousness like the shifting sands of the Choptank itself, insinuating itself into every corner of their house and their minds. Grace found comfort in her sister’s memory. Mama cried. Papa alternated between cursing God for taking his child from him and burying his nose in his Bible, searching for a divine reason for the tragedy.

God’s answer—Matthew, a golden-haired son; and Miriam, raven-haired and solemn—arrived, red and screaming, at a time when most women Mama’s age were welcoming grandchildren, not babies of their own. Papa celebrated the miracle of their birth with zealous participation in a month-long revival meeting, where he accepted ordination into the ministry with a single dunking in the river. He left the revival the newly appointed pastor of their tiny rural church. Hope springs eternal, Grace once read. Although his religious epiphany turned the playful father into a serious and strict man, at least Papa’s grief had been replaced with hope.

Then came the sickness, riding in on a heat wave, swallowing up young and old alike with the greed of a stray cur. For three days Matthew lay writhing on his cot, dehydrated and delirious, tangling his sturdy legs in the sweat-soaked sheets until, at last, he writhed no more. He died on his fifth birthday.

Grace fancied she saw his small spirit dance out the window, hand in hand with Emily. She never felt her sister’s presence in the house again.

Listen ...Now What?

NOW WHAT? by Charmaine Gordon
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It was 2:30 a.m. when the phone rang. I fumbled for it, my heart starting a race toward bad news.

Our doctor’s voice urged me to hurry. I crammed into clothes as if I expected this call. Actually I thought all would be well, or did I? It was only a fever that wouldn’t go down.

Only a fever yet the dogs had curled up next to him on his favorite couch and never left his side all week. His ruddy complexion drained to gray. Only a fever.

I cried all the way driving too fast on Eden’s Expressway. Then the slow elevator ride to the fourth floor, a sprint down the dim corridor to his room. He lay on the hospital bed where I’d kissed him goodbye not so many hours before. I’d said, “See you tomorrow.” My husband of thirty years replied with words I hadn’t heard in a long time. “I love you.” Not since the heart attack two years before when he began listening to his heart beat and forgot about me. When he said them, other words flashed across my mind, like writing on a sign: Too late, Bobby. Maybe we both sensed the crossroads ahead, the impending doom.

Our doctor shook his head. “Bob had difficulty breathing. They called me. We did everything possible to save him. I held him in my arms when he took his last breath. Carly, I’m so sorry.”

I asked him to have everyone leave me alone. Settling in beside my Bob, I held his cooling hand and asked the two words spoken many times during our years together.

“Now what?” This time there was no response. I was on my own for the first time.

My hands caressed his sweet face knowing he wasn’t there. Only his shell lay on the bed. The essence, the beauty of his spirit had moved on. I let my eyes gaze around the colorless room; the water glass half empty now, straw bent for easy access. His toothbrush leaned in a container, toothpaste smeared down its side. The scuffed leather slippers under the bed and striped terry cloth robe—a Christmas gift from the kids, draped over a nearby chair.

Homey and homely. And the saddest sight I’ve ever seen.

When my fingers touched his wedding ring, I slipped it off and held it in my fist. The gold band was warm. I clung to him. “Come back to me, dearest.”

I knew from past experience, loved ones always return.