And yet…
“Oh, will you look at this?” Kendra came up beside him.
He heard the emotion in her voice. “According to my GPS, that’s the Blackburn house.”
There wasn’t a lot left. Trees and undergrowth had filled in much of what once had been fields and pastureland, of course. But as the ranger had told them, the outline of a foundation was still visible through the summer foliage. The skeleton of one wall had refused to fall. The bottom third of a stone chimney was a monument to another time.
Caleb was already walking toward the ruin, taking photos. Isaac was glad Kendra had bought the teenager a camera. He could not have objectified this moment in a photograph had his life depended on it.
“They woke up every morning, and this is what they saw,” Kendra said. “Can you imagine?”
They were standing in paradise, pure and simple. Even through all the trees, they could see mountains on top of mountains in the distance. Gentle hills looking over them. Rocky outcrops like contemporary sculptures. Somewhere the sound of a spring flowing unfettered.
“It looks like there are still remnants of their landscaping,” Isaac said, a catch in his voice.
She took his hand. “Let’s go down and see.”
They walked slowly. For the first time Isaac understood the expression “hallowed ground.” For better or worse, he was the last link in the human chain that had been forged in this place. With the exception of Etta, who was only the most distant of cousins, he had never met the people who farmed this land, who lived in this house, who survived sorrows and joys here and then were forced to live elsewhere. But despite that, he was still one of them. He had never stepped foot on this soil, but somehow his roots were here.
“The soil around the house is rocky,” Kendra said. “That’s why it hasn’t grown over. But isn’t that a lilac?” She pointed to a flourishing shrub at the near right corner of the foundation.
“I think so.”
“I’ve always wanted lilacs,” Kendra said.
“They don’t grow on windowsills, do they?”
“No, but something tells me that if there’s a viable sprout, I’m going to have one to plant at our cabin when we leave the park tomorrow. And don’t tell me I’m not supposed to take so much as a stone with me. I know.”
He didn’t argue. He understood what she was feeling. In the long run, he would have to agree with the government’s desire to save this land from being heavily farmed and to open it for all who wanted to enjoy it. In the short run, he was angry that the family he would never know had been forced off land they had owned for generations. And today, at least one heirloom lilac sprout belonged to him.
When they reached Caleb, he was taking photographs of the ruins. Isaac watched the boy’s serious expression as he framed each shot. It would be a worthy collage when he had finished. When Caleb had exhausted the ruins as a subject, the three of them wandered down behind the house and found remnants of what probably had been a barn. The logs were rotting, but the shape of the former building was there to see.
“It wasn’t very large,” Kendra said.
“I doubt they had more than a cow or two, maybe a mule or a horse, some pigs for fattening.”
“It couldn’t have been an easy life.”
“It might have been a satisfying one, though.”
“They sure didn’t face traffic jams.” Kendra brushed aside a clump of weeds. “Look at this.”
Isaac peeked over her shoulder. It was a tool of some sort, cast iron and heavy. He squatted and parted the grass to get a better look. “I think it’s some part of a plow. The piece that digs a furrow.”
“I wonder how many furrows it dug in its time.”
“Let’s look around some more.”
They spent another hour wandering the immediate area. Kendra dug a lilac sprout and packed it in a plastic bag, watered and sealed it and stuck the bag in her day pack. “I feel guilty. I wouldn’t take a native plant. I swear.”
“You don’t have to convince
me
you’re law-abiding and environmentally correct,” Isaac said.
“I wonder what Leah brought with her to the Valley. If anything planted at the cabin now came from this place. There are hollyhocks that look old. I’ve managed to free them from weeds, and I hope they’ll flourish.”
“If she had anything to do with those bodies, she got out of here fast. I doubt she was engulfed in sentiment.”
He looked down at her and saw she was pale and perspiring. “We’re going to find you some shade,” he said. “And I’m going to locate that spring for some nice cool Blackburn water.”
“I don’t want to spoil this for you.”
“You’ve been pushing yourself and doing great, but let’s not take any chances, okay?”
She nodded, obviously glad to rest.
They spread a sleeping bag under a tree that had been there long enough to observe generations of Blackburns. Caleb had already located the stream and filled the filter bottle. Cold water was their reward. Isaac unpacked gorp and they each took a handful.
“There must be a family cemetery somewhere on the property,” Kendra said. “From what I’ve read, the park didn’t move them, but they don’t maintain them, either. That’s up to the families.”
“That doesn’t seem right,” Caleb said. “Take the land, then tell people they have to come back from wherever they were scattered to care for their dead.”
“We’ll find it another time. I want to find my way over to the Spurlock place before it gets dark.” Isaac put his hand on Kendra’s knee. “And I want you to stay right here. No arguments. From what I can tell, the best way to get there is up that ridge and over. It’s a tough climb, and you’ve had enough for the day.”
She looked relieved. “I like it here. I’ll wait for you and Caleb.”
Caleb frowned. “I’ll just stay here and wait.”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’m going to close my eyes and take a nap.”
“We should have brought Dusty to protect you.”
“Dusty the rug would lie right down beside her and take a nap, too,” Isaac said.
Caleb looked from one face to the other; then he chuckled. “Well, she’d still have some company.”
Kendra took off her cap and used it to fan her face. “Looks like she’s got a longer name, too. Dusty Rug. Rug for short, until she gathers some energy. I’ve got the sun and the sky, and there’s a breeze that tells every animal in sniffing distance I’m here, so they’ll stay away. Don’t worry about me.”
The two males filled water bottles after another trip to the spring and took a couple of PowerBars each. Kendra teased them about having enough power between them to walk the length of the park. Then she settled back, cap over her eyes, and left them to their adventures.
Caleb was silent as he and Isaac picked their way up the slope. He kept up without difficulty, a good sign, considering his early health problems. They stopped about a third of the way up, and Isaac took a reading with the GPS.
“Do you want to see the cave where the bodies were found?”
“The whole thing is kind of creepy, isn’t it.”
“That’s a good word for it. It’s up to you.”
“I don’t think I want to go inside.”
They cut across the slope and down to a rocky area that backed up to another ridge. Isaac stopped and took another reading; then he looked up. “It should be right over there.”
The cave wasn’t hard to spot. There was a distinct space among several large boulders. Shielded by another rock, as it had been before the dog squeezed inside, it wouldn’t have been noticeable. Isaac imagined children finding this place, playing together inside, neglecting to tell their parents where they had been—parents who had probably played there themselves as children.
“There are probably more caves,” Isaac said. “But this is where the ranger told us to look.”
“I would like to live out here,” Caleb said.
“Me, too.” Isaac clapped him on the back. “But we can come and visit any time we want.”
Caleb took some photos. Then they went back up the slope and continued toward the Spurlock farm.
For a time they walked in silence. Once Isaac asked Caleb to identify a birdcall, and he told Isaac it was probably a wood thrush.
“Do you want to be a naturalist?” Isaac asked.
“Maybe I want to be a doctor.”
“Like I said, at your age, so did I.”
“A surgeon gave me back my life. I’d like to do that for somebody someday.”
“That’s a good reason.”
“Why did you?”
“We lived all over the world. I saw so many sick and injured people, I wanted to fix them all. Turns out I’m better at fixing the earth. I saw a lot of land that needed help, too.”
“I guess there’s a lot that needs fixing, no matter how you look at it.”
After another twenty-five minutes of hard hiking, they reached the Spurlock farm. Isaac was sure the trip must have been easier when his grandmother and grandfather lived here. Fields had grown up, and paths were used only by the occasional hiker. Without his GPS, he wouldn’t have known they’d arrived.
“Let’s see if we can find anything of the house,” Isaac said.
They found it at last, a larger footprint than the Blackburn home. There were no walls here, only a foundation and what might once have been a fireplace but was now a rubble pile. He tried to imagine it as it had been. By the standards of today, it had been primitive, at best. By the standards in the Virginia mountains, he thought it might have been a palace. Now what was left of it lay under a tangle of blackberry brambles, wild roses and mountain laurel.
“Wow, see what they looked at every day?” Caleb said after a while. “I’m going over there to take some pictures.”
Isaac glanced up and realized that beyond the closest row of trees a mountain rose high in the distance. They were at the farthest reaches of the park. Not far beyond them, park property ended, but of course it ended at a ridge, and there was little below them for a ways—nothing at all until the land leveled off again and could be used for pasture.
But beyond that, wild and still uninhabited, was a mountainside, covered with forest, unbroken by farm-steads or estates or ski lodges. He moved out of the shadow of the Spurlock family homestead and toward the view, until he was standing next to Caleb.
He stared at it for a long time, his heart pounding faster. This was the sight his family had awakened to each morning. The sight that had greeted them as they went about their chores. The last thing they had seen from their windows at night.
“It’s a wonder, isn’t it,” Caleb said, “that it’s there like that? Maybe the park’s a good thing. I’ve been wondering. But if it can keep a mountain like that the way God made it, then maybe all the suffering was worth it.”
“Unfortunately, that mountain’s not in the park,” Isaac said. “It’s just outside the borders. It’s called Pallatine. Pallatine Mountain.”
T
hey walked more slowly on the way back to the Blackburn farm. “It must be weird going to a place where your family used to live,” Caleb said.
Isaac knew enough about Caleb to understand this was not a casual remark. “Next time we’ll hike into Corbin Hollow,” he promised. “Kendra tells me that might be the area where your family was from.”
“I don’t know anything about them. Just what Cissy says.”
One part of Isaac wanted silence, so he could consider what he had just seen. The other part wanted to help Caleb put his life in perspective. Apparently that part was stronger.
“I didn’t know anything about my family until recently. I was adopted as a baby.”
“Nobody wanted to adopt me. I wasn’t perfect enough.” Caleb said this without bitterness, as if he thought this was understandable.
“It was their loss, but in a funny way it worked out for you, didn’t it? You were reunited with your sister, and you’re living with people who care about you.”
“They don’t feel like family. Not Cissy, either.” Caleb paused. “Maybe I just don’t know what family feels like. Did you learn that from your adoptive parents?”
Isaac wondered why Caleb had chosen
him
to open up to and supposed it was because he was an adopted child. But Isaac didn’t discuss his childhood. Even Kendra only knew bits and pieces. On the other hand, he supposed he ought to be glad the boy was opening up to somebody.
“Here’s the truth,” he said, after moments of silently phrasing and discarding answers that put a positive spin on his life. “My adoptive family was unhealthy, and I grew up thinking I wasn’t worth a lot.”
“Is that why you’re so interested in the family you came from?”
“My birth family?” Isaac started to say that Kendra was the one who was intrigued, but he couldn’t. Her quest had become his. “I guess my grandmother reached out from the grave and pulled me into generations of people up here. I felt like I was part of something when I was standing on that hillside with you. Of course, I realize that makes no sense.” He was surprised to hear the catch in his voice.
“I wish that would happen to me.”
Isaac was touched. “Here’s what I think. You learn to love people a little at a time. You don’t worry about it. You just stay open to the possibility. You notice how they treat you and listen to what they say. Then one day you realize how much you would miss them if they vanished from your life.”
“I used to think I made people vanish, so many did.”
“And now?”
“It’s just the way things happened. Only maybe they’ll keep happening that way.”
This time Isaac was surprised he knew how to answer. “There are two kinds of people who’ll care about you in your life, Caleb. The ones who are paid to care, then move on, and the ones who care because they can’t help themselves. Nobody pays that second kind. They do it out of love. The people who are paid, like doctors or nurses or foster parents or teachers? They know caring about you has to be temporary. That doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine, but they know it has to end.”
“That happened a lot.”
“But the second kind? Those people want the caring to last forever. Your sister falls in that category, and I think maybe the Claibornes do, as well. And later in your life, a woman’ll come along and care about you whether you’re perfect or not.”
They started down the ridge that would lead them to the farm.
“Is that what Kendra did?”
Isaac laughed. “You know, apparently everything you’ve been through has given you some insight.”
“Did living with bad parents do that for
you?
”
Isaac had never thought about his life that way. Had he learned things he could use? Had those early, painful years taught him things that had made him a better person?
In the end, he had to be truthful. “I think I learned more about how not to live. And I think I’m a slow learner, anyway. It’s easier for me to shut people out than to bring them into my life. Don’t be that way. Start now. Let people get closer. You’ll be a lot happier.”
“Are there only two categories, do you think? Or maybe there’s a third. People who care about you because they just like being with you? Maybe not forever, but while they can.”
“I think we call those people friends.”
“Then I guess you and Kendra are my friends.”
“I wouldn’t take ‘forever’ out of that mix. I hope we’ll be friends a long, long time.”
Caleb grinned. Isaac punched his arm. On the reticent male-bonding scale, the rating for this conversation was high.
Kendra was standing at the bottom of their trail watching them descend. She waved in welcome.
“A fox came to say hello. A big red one. And there are enough chipmunks around the foundation of the house to make me wonder where all the snakes and hawks are living. Clearly not here.”
“Some Indian tribes think a fox has healing powers,” Caleb said. “Maybe the fox is your totem.”
“What about the chipmunks?”
“They snoop. They’re nature’s detectives. They want to know everything.”
“Like reporters,” Kendra said. “Suddenly I believe in totems.”
They weren’t supposed to make a fire outside an official fire pit, and
this
rule they followed. They ate the freeze-dried chicken and rice, which came with chocolate pudding, and they toasted marshmallows over the tiny flame of Isaac’s camp stove for one more round of s’mores.
Since they were supposed to camp fifty yards away from any ruins, they chose a wooded area off the trail. Someone had camped there recently, which made it that much more desirable. Rocks had been cleared so that the larger tent nestled in the space. Between them, Isaac and Caleb cleared another spot a few yards away for Caleb’s.
By the time the nightly rituals had been performed, Caleb pleaded exhaustion and went to bed. Between waiting for bears last night, carrying a pack and climbing the ridge, he needed sleep.
Kendra wasn’t ready to go to bed. The air was cool, and the moon was nearly full. Pine and something sweetly floral perfumed the air. She couldn’t breathe enough of it to satisfy herself. It was enchanting.
“Let’s go for a walk.” She held out her hand to Isaac. “Let’s see how the ruins look in the moonlight. Bring the lantern.”
They told Caleb they would be back, and received a sleepy “uh-huh” in answer. Isaac took her hand, and they started toward what remained of the farmhouse.
“I want to hear what it was like to go to the Spurlock farm,” she said, when they were away from the tents. “And I have something I want to show you. We can show Caleb in the morning.”
“Do you know what Jesse saw every day of his childhood?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Pallatine Mountain.”
She stopped. “You’re kidding.”
He tugged until she started walking again. “I knew it was close to park property. But when I researched Pallatine on maps at the beginning of our negotiations, I didn’t know there was anything special about Little Lock Mountain. It was just one of a lot of smaller mountains in the Blue Ridge.”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh, no question. It has a distinct shape. And it’s pristine. For now.”
Kendra could hear the conflict in his voice. “I guess that’s a view of it you never thought you’d have.”
“I imagine that view was one of the hardest things to leave behind.”
She waited, but he didn’t say anything else. She knew he was struggling with his part in securing Pallatine for ACRE, and she hoped, when he was ready, he would share the struggle with her.
They wandered past the ruins, which were ghostly in the mist rising from the cooling earth. Shadows moved and reformed as filmy clouds slid across the moon.
“What did you want to show me?” Isaac asked.
The lantern and moon helped, but the darkness was still thick. Kendra had second thoughts. “It’s a little farther. Can we see well enough to make it?”
“Just lift your feet as high as you can manage. And you take the lantern.”
She led him around the house, but not in the direction of the barn. There was enough of a path that she could see the way to her find. Finally she stopped. A small iron fence was almost hidden by brambles and weeds, and saplings were taking root inside its confines. But this area was not under the guidelines of “leave no trace.” Someone had been here in the recent past and had tended to it.
“The Blackburn family graveyard,” she said. “I went for a little walk while you were gone, and I found it.”
He didn’t speak. She moved forward and felt along the top of the fence until she discovered what she was looking for. “Here’s the gate.”
She opened it and motioned him inside. Isaac seemed reluctant, but he followed.
“I found Leah’s mother and father, your great-grandparents. There are just two little stones to mark it. They were buried side by side. Somebody chiseled their first names. Flossie and Dyer.” She stopped and handed him the lantern. “Right here. Maybe Leah intended to have real headstones put up but didn’t have time or money before she had to leave.”
Isaac came to rest beside her. “This feels odd.”
“I know.”
He was silent for a time, shining the light on the stones, then away. She waited quietly.
“Are there others?” he asked at last.
“We’d need to clear the brush to get back into the corners. I think there are at least several that aren’t well marked. Maybe more. But there’s something else you need to see. It’s the reason I brought you here without Caleb.”
“I’m glad you did.”
She hadn’t been sure how he would feel. “Can you see that this has been cleared and tended sometime in the past year or two?”
“It looks that way. Hikers?”
“Here’s why I don’t think so.” She led him back the way they’d come in, then skirted the edge of the fence on the inside, stopping directly across from the place they had been. She gestured to the ground at her feet. “Shine the light right there.”
He did, and a small gray marble slab glistened. Isaac squatted to get a better look. “I’ll be damned,” he said.
“I know. I was really taken aback when I found it.” She didn’t have to look to remember the inscription.
Jesse Isaac Spurlock 1911-1934
. And under that:
Birdie Florence Blackburn 1911-1934
.
Isaac traced the letters, professionally chiseled into the slab, which lay flush to the ground. Finally he got to his feet.
“Somebody knows what happened to them.” Isaac’s eyes met hers. “Do you think they’re buried here?”
“I don’t think so. Somebody put this here as a memorial, and fairly recently, at that.”
“His middle name was Isaac.”
Kendra wanted to touch him, but she knew better. Whatever Isaac was feeling was extraordinarily personal. “I’ve thought about that all afternoon. I bet your mother made that a condition of your adoption. It was a private adoption through an attorney. She could have asked for almost any conditions she wanted.”
“She never even knew him.”
“But she imagined him. She told Marion Claiborne that Jesse was a prince. Maybe she wanted to give you some small part of the grandfather you’d never meet.”
Kendra knew the simple, intimate act connected Isaac to the mother he’d never wanted to think about. Rachel had given him away, but, like Leah, she had given him what she could.
He didn’t speak for a few moments. Kendra hesitated, then slipped her arm around his waist, and he seemed grateful for the contact.
Finally he asked the obvious question. “Who do you think put it here? I’m sure the park doesn’t know. They wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Someone who knows Birdie and Jesse didn’t run away together, that they died back in 1934.”
“Do you have any suspicions?”
“Aubrey Grayling knows more than he told me. If anyone knows who put it here, he’s the one. But he won’t talk to me.”
“Maybe he’ll talk to me.” Isaac released her and led her out. “Legally, as family, I have the right to tend these graves.”
“Are you going to do it?”
“I don’t know.”
She knew better than to push. But she suspected they would be back in the future, carrying a spade and a saw. She was glad.
As they walked back, the silence was almost oppressive. No owls hooted; even the crickets were subdued. If animals hovered in the forest, they didn’t make themselves known.
Kendra shivered and rubbed her bare arms. She realized she should have worn her windbreaker. As they neared the ruins, she broke the silence.
“You and Caleb are getting along well. You’re enough alike, it’s like watching brothers together.”
He surprised her by taking her hand and sinking to a stone large enough to hold them both. He slung his arm over her shoulders to warm her. “He’d like that.”
She was surprised he wanted to talk, and unaccountably wary. The forest seemed to be holding its breath, and now
she
was, as well. “Maybe you would like it, too. You never had one.”
He looked down at her. “But I did.”
Kendra didn’t know what to say. Isaac wasn’t forthcoming about his childhood. But at the very least, she thought he’d told her the basics.
“I had a brother for seven months,” he said. “I was eight, and he was four. He was an Air Force brat, too. His parents were killed. I don’t think anyone ever told me how. But my father and mother volunteered to adopt him. I don’t know how these things get worked out, but one day he moved into my bedroom. His name was Davey.”
She was almost afraid to ask. “What happened to him?”
“Nothing as bad as you’re thinking. My father was a tyrant, but he stopped short of murdering children. Nobody buried Davey in a secret grave.”
God help her, she had been thinking that very thing. She had met Isaac’s father only once, and it had been one time too many.
“Davey knew what a family was supposed to be like,” Isaac said. “Between the trauma of losing his real parents and the trauma of living with mine, he went from a normal little kid to a monster. It makes sense, of course.”
“It does.” She waited. It took Isaac some time to tell the rest.
“The colonel didn’t have a lot of patience. He thought discipline was the answer, of course. But Davey had more spunk than I had, or he’d seen what good parents were like, or some combination. He refused to budge. No punishment my father could devise did the trick, and of course talking to him or showing him compassion was out of the question. So one day my father just gave him back. Said he was the devil’s seed and he didn’t want him in his house. I came home from school, and every trace of him was gone. My mother wanted to keep him, of course. But she couldn’t stand up to the colonel. For months, I heard her crying at night.”