Read A Tale from the Hills Online
Authors: Terry Hayden
William would be up and ready before Joseph, Josh, and Alan were hardly out of bed. On Saturday morning they were dressed to go when Joseph rolled over and reminded them that there were no classes that day, or even the next. The two of them would have to settle for play school for two whole days.
The older boys were not as gung ho about school by any stretch of the imagination. The first two or three days had been exciting, but things started to go down hill from there. The second grade teacher was not as angelic as Miss Coalson. Josh thought that she came closer to being the Devil himself, or at least his representative at Mountain School. She was a no nonsense, strict disciplinarian.
Second grade arithmetic was proving to be a tough subject for all three of the older Hills, but especially for Josh. Although he and Alan worked on it together at home and to and from school, fractions were inconceivable to him. It was as if the teacher was speaking a foreign language when she started talking about fractions. It did not help the situation that the boys started school well into the term, and Mrs. Roberts had not fully realized that the only schooling previous to now was from their father. She gave Josh a paddling when she saw him gaze at another boy’s paper. The paddling itself was not so bad, but he was embarrassed in front of his classmates. Before the term was over two things would happen to ease his predicament, the Principal would reaffirm that the boys might need extra help, and Josh would see many paddlings for many students besides himself. It was a part of Mrs. Robert’s routine to be generous with the rod and staff, so to speak. Josh figured that it was part of her personal exercise regimen. By the end of the school year, and in years to come, Josh would respect Mrs. Roberts as the best teacher that he ever had. She inspired him to study, to learn, and to want to know about the world around him.
Each of the Hill children took at least one book home every afternoon from school. Tom had no idea that his kids would be so excited about school. It had been a differentstory for him. By the time that he had finished the third grade, his own daddy said that he was smart enough.
Tom Hill was born the year before the Twentieth Century began. He was much too young to remember, but his daddy told him that the fireworks displays ushering in 1900 were the most spectacular that he had ever seen. Of course his daddy had never seen any fireworks displays before that one. Firecrackers and sparklers had been the extent of his previous experience with fireworks all together.
Farming had been the Hill family vocation for generations, even in Ireland. Tom’s father thought that they had first immigrated to Pennsylvania, and then Alleghany County in North Carolina, in the 1820s or 30s. Tom came from a large family of seven brothers and two sisters. It was common in those days to have many children in order to keep the farm going, and the same farm had been in their family for generations.
There was a short period of time just before crops were harvested that farmhands could take a little time off. Tom would usually visit a cousin who lived in Ashe County, North Carolina, for his short vacation. It was in Ashe County that Tom met a fragile, dark haired girl named Mary Hart. Their short courtship resulted in Mary getting pregnant. Tom was sixteen and Mary was barely fifteen. When Mary wrote to Tom in Alleghany County, telling him the news of her pregnancy, his father read the letter first and became furious. He called Mary a tramp and demanded that Tom leave the farm at once. Tom’s mother and siblings dared not to contradict his father’s wishes. Tom cried as he said goodbye to his family. He and Mary were married and they moved to Virginia that same day. Six years later, Mary was dead and Tom was away from his family with five small mouths to feed.
Four of Tom’s brothers saw combat in Europe during World War 1. One of them was killed in Germany, but the others returned to Alleghany County in 1918. No one was sure which brother, if any, carried the virus back from Europe with him, but the deadly influenza strain that had killedmillions of men women and children all over the world, was about to take its toll in their own community. Before anyone hardly realized what was going on, an epidemic was underway. Antibiotics had not been discovered yet to combat the infections from the virus, so doctors were powerless to help. Aspirin was prescribed only in case of extreme emergency. In house after house the virus was rampant. Whole families perished before the disease had run its course.
Every member of Tom’s family in Alleghany County, with the exception of a sister, Eunice, died during the epidemic. While her family was so deathly ill and the farm was quarantined, she never got sick. Eunice nursed her family as best as she could, but when everything was said and done, there was nothing much that she could do. She tried to keep them clean and dry. she wiped blood from the noses, and ears, and mouths, and she prayed for them every waking moment. A wagon moved slowly down the dirt road everyday, carrying the latest victims of the deadly plague. When the wagon left the Hill family farm for the last time, Eunice was all alone.
As cruel as Tom’s father had been on that fateful day that he ordered Tom to leave, he probably saved his life. The isolation of Jewel Ridge Mountain protected Tom and his young wife from both the cruelty of the war and the great plague that followed.
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The last week of October ushered in high winds and heavy rains. The beautiful leaves were all but gone and the mountains had taken on a stark appearance. Except for an occasional patch of green from the pines, the trees appeared to be reaching for the sky with arthritic hands and bony fingers. The eerie atmosphere seemed appropriate for the week before Halloween. Night was approaching earliereach day, and ghostly shadows were forming in the hollows as the children were walking home from school.
The Hill children were not familiar with the traditions of Halloween, when stories began circulating around Mountain School. The older students took great pleasure in taunting the younger kids about ghosts and goblins. Even kids without the knowledge of “All Hallows Eve”, have nightmares, so the stories seemed to validate their fears. Most of the stories were based upon a fear of strangers and other suspicious people who went creeping around at night, or wild animals that waited to pounce upon an unsuspecting child. The little girls and even some of the little boys dared not go to the outhouses by themselves. The week leading up to, and the weeks immediately after Halloween had more accidents involving bodily functions than any other time of the school year.
In order to maintain some degree of control, Mrs. Boatwright and some of the teachers devised a Halloween diversion, in the form of a contest. Students could submit an essay on the Friday before Halloween, which happened to fall on Monday. Since the younger students were not prolific enough to write an essay, they could submit a drawing with a Halloween theme. Mrs. Boatwright would judge the entries over the weekend and the winners would be announced on Monday, Halloween day. There would be two first place winners in each category; essay and drawing. There would also be two second place winners with two honorable mentions. Since most of the students did not want other students to steal their ideas, the scary tactics practically stopped. As an added bonus, the teachers set aside thirty minutes each day after lunch in order for the students to work on their projects during a part of the school day. During that thirty minute break most of the younger students went to sleep. The older kids leafed through books and periodicals for any tidbits of information that might give them an edge over their competition.
When the Hill children were old enough to be curious about the things around them, they asked their daddy how the Creeper Railroad got its name. He did not know any of the history of the area, so he did what most fathers do, he made up a story. He wanted the story to be somewhat scary, so that the children would not dare venture on to the deadly tracks. They lived so close to the tracks that every time the train whistle blew, a shiver went up his spine. One day the train hit something in front of their tiny house and he panicked before he discovered that it was a deer.
As an answer to their question about the Creeper name, Tom began his story:
“About fifty years ago…”
“When was that daddy?” one of them asked.
“Never mind. A long, long time ago this land belonged to the Indians. The Indians loved the land and the land returned their love by supplying them with deer, and turkeys, and squirrels, and rabbits, and plenty of fish to eat. Then one day the white men came. The white men decided that a train would be a good way to get supplies over the mountains. In order to build a railroad track, the Indians would have to move. The ones who would not leave their homes were killed and left to rot into the earth. The ghost of one of the Indians came back to haunt the selfish white men. They said that on a still, moonlit night, the Indian’s ghost could be seen creeping along the tracks. The white men decided to name the train the Creeper Railroad, so that the ghost would be at peace.”
The children were very pleased with their daddy’s explanation of the story.
Joseph decided to write about the Indian’s ghost for the essay contest. Even though he was small the first time that he heard the famous family story, he remembered enough of it to write an essay. Alice and William were going to draw pictures for the contest, and Josh and Alan were not going to enter.
The story that Tom told his children was strangely similar to the real story. The actual events leading up to the construction of the railroad line were controversial and shameful.
A small group of Indians were living in the mountains surrounding the proposed route of the new railroad. Most of the Cherokee tribe had been relocated to Oklahoma in what was called the Trail of Tears. The forced move was sponsored by the government for the supposed good of the Indians, however, it was actually a legal means of stealing the Indian’s land. The group of Indians who stayed had strong ties to the land. They had lived in the rugged mountains for generations, and they did not want to leave the remains of their ancestors behind.
The owner of the proposed railroad line was impatient. Rather than negotiate with the proud group of remaining Indians, he hired a ruthless engineer to solve the problem. The engineer came into the area from New York pretending to be a traveling missionary. He walked the entire route of the proposed railroad line and familiarized himself with the people. Meanwhile, a group of men who had served under him in the Civil War, began arriving in Abingdon, two or three at a time. After he learned the habits of the Indians, he sat his strategy for their removal into motion.
Under the cover of darkness he and his men raided the Indian’s modest homes. Even though the Indians were scattered throughout the mountainous area, he and his men were able to destroy nearly all of their homes. Many of the Indians were shot or burned alive. The survivors were incapable of defending their sacred land, subsequently the engineer and the arrogant railroad owner considered the problem to be solved.
The railroad line was built and at the dedication the owner and the engineer stood proudly on the platform. They sipped champagne and prided themselves and each other oh a job well done, and well under budget.
That night the owner of the railroad line and the engineer disappeared from their elegant hotel rooms in Abingdon. Searches turned up nothing, not even a clue to their whereabouts. The day to day operations of the railroad continued in spite of their disappearances. On the anniversary of the first year of operation, the Board of Directors arrived from New York to take a token ride from Abingdon, across the mountains. As the conductor was rounding the bend at the midway point, he noticed objects lying across the tracks. He blew the whistle but the objects did not move. He managed to stop the train, and he and several of the dignitaries walked up to inspect the foreign objects on the track. The ghastly remains of the owner and his treacherous engineer were stretched across the tracks like gutted pigs. The bodies revealed the grisly scars of a year’s worth of torture. The final assault had been delivered to their grim bodies on the previous night. The men were staked to the track with their necks lying directly in the path of the wheels of the night train, coming down the mountain.
The bodies of the two men were taken to Abingdon, and finally back to New York for burial. Their heads were never found. For many years after the bodies were found, people reported stories of headless bodies creeping along the tracks, obviously searching for their heads.
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The older boys congregated behind the school in the mornings before the school bell rang, and in the afternoons after classes had ended for the day. Most of the students fulfilled their obligations to the school after the short lunch break and immediately after school as well. With that kind of schedule there was about an hour to spare before most of the students went home. Alice and William were glad to stay after school. They used the extra time to read, and look at books, and draw. That gave the older brothers time to associate with some of the other boys behind the school. The large group of boys splintered into smaller groups of lifelong friends and classmates. The Hill boys felt like outsiders at first, but eventually they began to mingle into the group.
On that particular Friday afternoon before Halloween, Alice and William stayed in the classroom to put finishing touches on their drawings. Joseph, Josh, and Alan joined their classmates outside. Four of the older boys were standing close together and they appeared to be whispering among themselves. Mrs. Boatwright looked out of her window and noticed the boys at once. She knew that two of them were troublemakers because she had to deal with them several times over the years for disciplinary problems. With Halloween coming she had an uneasy feeling, and she decided to do something about it. She opened the window and strongly suggested that it was time for everyone to go home. The group dispersed but not before their plans were set into motion.