Look Away, Dixieland

By Marona Posey

Skye Campbell, her teenage daughters, and newborn son flee their home in the South after the death of Skye's second husband, who died under mysterious circumstances. Jenna, the oldest daughter, flees to Chicago while Carrie remains with her mother. They know the missing husband is in the Tennessee River but hid that from his brother who is searching for him, as well as from the detective who wants to question Skye's husband about an unsolved murder. When Pearl Harbor is bombed and World War II begins, the journey of the women takes them from one end of America to another. They are haunted by the ghosts of the past as they strive to forge ahead with a new life. You will bond with these characters as they progress through the next 25 years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marona Posey
• Release date: Aug 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310912276

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

A cold night in February, 1966

It was a miracle we got his body to the river in that snowstorm. Snow had been falling for hours and the temperature was dropping when we left the barn, pulling the sled with his body tied to it. I’ll never forget how cold it was that night, how the frigid air penetrated to my insides, how my feet lost feeling when the icy slush hit my feet. I didn’t want to be out there but Mother couldn’t do it alone. She couldn’t handle his body, he was too big. The woman looked at the two men in the room as her story unraveled.

My stepfather was a big man, over six feet tall and hefty. It was hard on us to pull him, especially since the two people doing the dragging were me, a skinny thirteen-year-old, and my mother, who was eight months pregnant. It’s a wonder we didn’t die from exposure. Carrie Patterson explained as she sat at a table while two detectives stood opposite her, their backs to the wall.

A single light bulb above the thick, oak table, provided the only warmth in the ten foot square room. The stained, institutional grey walls, typical of courthouses in the South, held a slightly askew photograph of the judge who used the connecting courtroom. A black metal clock with a white face hung above his photograph. Nothing else graced the walls. A metal ashtray, half full of cigarette butts, occupied the middle of the table, flanked by a tape recorder, two rumpled packs of cigarettes and the woman’s leather handbag.

Carrie stared at the on and record buttons as the reel of the tape recorder slowly turned. A smell of urine, cigarette smoke and diluted bleach circulated the room, moved by the wind that found its way through a crack in the window.

She took a cigarette from the pack on the table. The two detectives rushed toward her but the youngest man got there first. His silver lighter flashed as the flame darted toward the cigarette. She took a long draw. Smoke floated upward, hitting the ceiling where it stalled and drifted down.

Gordon Walton, the oldest man, tried to hide his fatigue. His thirty years in law enforcement had beaten down his emotions, taken away his trust and eaten into his life. His ex-wife reminded him how his job interfered with his life and a few months ago, a nasty gunshot knocked him down. When the pain came at night, he missed her. There was no one there to soothe him, comfort him, but, he didn’t complain. Bitching wasn’t something he did.

Gordon kept looking at Carrie, certain he had met her before but he had no reason to know her. She wasn’t in his social circles, he hadn’t seen her there. She was a classy woman, one of wealth who wouldn’t fit in with his beer drinking buddies who were married to high school drop-out, bottle blonde, and gum smacking females. But he never forgot a face.

The woman got up from the table and walked toward the window. Gordon noticed her manicured nails, painted light pink, a perfect ending to her delicate hands. Her auburn hair brushed her shoulders. Cut in the latest style, it was perfect, every hair in place.

He asked her in a low tone, Can you continue?

She stared at the tape recorder. I was terrified but we knew there was no other way to get him to the river but to pull him on the sled. We didn’t get his body out of the barn until four or five in the morning. Mother and I had to do it. Jenna, my oldest sister, had locked herself in her room.

She turned away from the window when a breeze caught a sliver of her hair, moving it toward her face. Brushing it away she began again. Maybe I should start from the beginning. Mother was tired and had gone to bed early. She was eight months pregnant and the baby was very active, causing her a lot of discomfort. It had been a difficult pregnancy and she had been on her feet all day, doing the usual chores and helping us put the animals in the barn when we felt a cold front blow in. The animals were restless and had to be secured. Even in her condition she helped us.

She rubbed her arms, trying to keep warm. We hoped Owen would return early to help us but he didn’t. I don’t know when he came home but he was probably drunk. That was his usual habit. I hated Owen. I never understood why Mother married him. He treated her like a slave. He beat her, slapped her around and belittled her. Once he hit her so hard it broke her jaw. She couldn’t chew for weeks.

Carrie tightened her mouth, her eyes stared straight ahead and she began to pace. He had no problem killing animals, hurting people. I was too young to understand how easy killing came to him, how he had no conscience. I knew there was a big secret about him killing a man but I never knew the details. I wasn’t afraid of him but I should have been.

She had circled the table then she leaned against the dirty wall across the table from them.

Owen knew I hated him. When I was ten he tried to get in bed with me one night, you know what I mean. He was drunk and came into the room where my sister and I slept. He grabbed my nightgown and tried to push his hand up my legs. I kicked him and shoved him off me. After that, he left me alone, for a while. Sometimes, when no one else was home, he’d try to corner me. I avoided him by hiding in the barn, or I would stay in the woods until I knew someone else was home. I was a tough little girl back then, a resilient kid.

The woman caught Gordon’s eyes. A tear ran down her cheek and stalled at her chin. She wiped if off then reached over the chair and retrieved another cigarette from the pack. The youngest detective lit it. She took two long draws before she tapped it on the edge of the ashtray. Ashes spilled out. She brushed them to the floor then stared at the corner of the room. A couple of feet up the wall, a suspicious wet spot ran down to the floor. A puddle of yellow liquid revealed some inmate had recently urinated there and no one had bothered to clean up the mess. She looked at Gordon. He nodded to verify the act.

Can you continue? He felt the chill in the room.

When I went to bed that night Jenna was sitting with Mother in front of the fireplace. Owen wasn’t home and Mother was reading the newspaper to Jenna about the war conditions in England. Owen was half Irish. We tried to be current on the news in that part of the world since the war was raging over there. I had gone to bed and the next thing I knew, Mother was shaking me and yelling at me to wake up.

Gordon looked at her, scrutinizing her flawless face, her perfect figure, her erect posture. She could easily pass for thirty something but he knew she was over forty. He noticed her expensive clothes, her tan slacks that matched the thin sweater covering her breasts. They made delicate peaks in the sweater, her erect nipples pushed against the fabric. He could see an outline of her panties and for a few seconds wondered what the crotch smelled like.

Gordon felt a rumbling in his groin. It would be a miracle if her sexuality caused an erection. After his gunshot wound the doctor told him sex was over for him but now, well, he wondered. He put his hand in his pocket and detected some stiffening to his penis. Then he rattled a few coins and told himself to take charge of his body. A slight smile formed at the corners of his mouth. Life is full of surprises.

Gordon glanced at her herringbone blazer, now hung loosely on the back of the metal chair, designer label showing. It cost a lot of money. Hell, it cost more than his suits. He wished she would put it on, he knew she was cold and that would hide her hardened nipples. He would suggest that, when they had a break in the flow of the interrogation. Now he wanted the events of that night, almost thirty years ago, to unravel.

Mother started shaking me. She was yelling, ‘We have to get him out of the barn. We have to get him out of the barn.’ Mother was covered in blood. It was all over her night gown and I thought she had gone into labor but the blood was on the front of her nightgown. Her clothes were soaking wet. She had been outside in the snow storm. She was crying and babbling about Jenna and Owen. I ran out to the barn.

She took a deep breath. When I got to the barn I could hear Jenna wailing. I found her in the back, sitting on a pile of hay, cradling Owen’s head in her lap. Blood was everywhere and he was gurgling foamy blood. His eyes were open and fixed.

The woman looked at Gordon. He didn’t nod or acknowledge her. She looked distraught as she started again. He was naked from the waist down. His pants and boots were in a pile, a few feet away. They’d been in the hay, you know, having sex. That had been going on for several months.

Then she muttered something inaudible. A gust of wind shook the loose panes as ice peppered the glass, the noise filling the room. She gazed past the men, staring at the window as if she were looking through an aperture to the past. Her head snapped to the table when the on button popped out with a loud click.

Gordon looked at her again and suddenly his mind flashed to an image of a young girl, holding a baby, in the living room of a little white house in Decatur, back in 1942. He’d been on the police force two weeks, after being rejected by the Army for his poor eyesight. It was all coming back. He and Harry Thompson went out to interview Skye Campbell about the death of Morris Elliot, a revenuer killed while searching for the location of Owen Campbell’s still. This woman was that girl who sat in the corner with her arms around a baby and never spoke.

Of course she didn’t recognize him; he looked different back then. The years had added sixty pounds to his frame, he had a lot less hair and his thick glasses had been replaced with contact lenses.

Gordon brought his mind back to the questioning. He realized the woman had stopped talking. The smoky air in the room drifted downward as she stood in a daze. He was ready to continue this questioning until the next day. He looked at the clock, it was almost eleven. A roach peeked out from under the six and ran down the wall, looking for some left behind crumbs. Suddenly the door opened and two men stormed into the room.

This interview is over. Both of you know better than this. I’ll have your heads for it. Bill Powers, one of the best attorneys in Huntsville, bellowed.

The other man, probably her husband, took her blazer off the chair, put it around her and cradled her in his arms. He picked up her purse and they started toward the door. He turned back and gave a killer stare to Gordon. Instantly he knew they wouldn’t get any more information from her.

Tomorrow they would file their reports, get a transcript of the tape and try to piece together the information with what they already knew.

They still didn’t know how Owen Campbell died.

CHAPTER 2

Twenty-five years earlier

A frigid, December night, 1941

Carrie, wake up, wake up. I need your help to get him out of the barn, we have to get him out of the barn, Skye, mumbled as she shook her awake.

Carrie, warm and asleep under a mound of quilts, struggled with the heavy covers and pushed them off as she threw her legs to the side of the bed. Her eyes adjusted to the pale light of the fireplace in the next room.

Is the house is on fire? Mother has never done anything like this before, Carrie thought.

Her feet hit the frigid, wooden floor. Their log house, drafty and old, with a fireplace as the only source of heat, never warmed during this kind of weather. It was below freezing. Carrie knew that for sure. When she went to get the water in the pitcher on the bureau, it had a thin sheet of ice covering the top.

Her mother slumped to the floor and Carrie reached out to grab her. Her mother’s hands were icy, her nightgown wet and covered with blood, a lot of blood.

Mother, what is wrong? Why are you wet and why is there blood all over you? Are you in labor?

Carrie pulled her mother up to the bed and covered her with a quilt. Her mother roused and she pulled the wet nightgown over her head. On the top of her left breast a wound oozed blood down her breast where it dripped off and ran down her baby inflated belly.

Owen and Jenna in the barn, go get her, her mother mumbled as Carrie wiped off the blood.

Mother, you’re not making sense. Stay right here while I light the lamp.

Carrie knew something bad had happened. She called for Jenna and Owen as she ran through the parlor into the kitchen. Then she went to the tiny room where Jenna slept. Jenna wasn’t there. Carrie could see from the kitchen there was a light in the barn, a hundred feet away. Snow was six inches deep and still falling. She didn’t want to go out there. A sick feeling rose in the pit of her stomach. Why would they be out there? Suddenly she knew. Jenna and Owen, their stepfather, had been meeting out in the barn, having sex in the hay pile. Jenna told her about their trysts one day last week.

Carrie ran back to her mother, now alert and moaning, Skye held her hand over her left breast. Blood seeped between her fingers.

How’d you get hurt? What happened? Carrie asked.

He stabbed me when I found them. He’s out there and so is Jenna.

Found them where?

In the back of the barn, they’re in the back of the barn.

Is the baby coming now? Carrie lit the lamp on a hook by the door. She turned up the flame.

No, I’m not in labor. Help Jenna, please help her. Skye curled around her belly.

Carrie ran to the kitchen, grabbed the kerosene lamp they kept by the back door, grabbed an old coat her mother wore to milk the cow and her barn boots. She stepped off the back porch into a foot of snow, the icy powder crunching under her feet. Sleet, mixed with snowflakes as big as nickels, stung her face, stuck to her hair and swirled around the lamp.

What did Mother mean that she had been stabbed? Who would stab her? Carrie ran to the barn with a vision of one of the cows delivering a calf too early, or maybe Silver, their prize stallion had hurt himself in his stall. But, that didn’t account for a stab wound.

The smell of fresh animal excrement hit her nostrils when she went through the half opened barn door. The horses were at the front of their stalls, their ears forward, their noses flared with excitement. She could see movement in a dull light at the back of the darn. She heard weeping and ran to the sound. She found Jenna sitting on a pile of hay, sobbing hysterically. Owen, their stepfather, was stretched out in front of Jenna, his head in her lap. Blood was everywhere, a lot of blood. He was dead, or close to it. Foamy blood oozed from his mouth and nostrils. His open eyes stared straight up. He had on a flannel shirt that was unbuttoned and nothing else. Carrie tried not to stare at his nakedness but couldn’t help noticing his limp penis, lying in a pile of bright red pubic hair, the same color as the hair on his head.

What happened? Carrie asked her sister. There was no reply.

Jenna, what happened? She asked again, louder.

Jenna looked at her then tried to reach a quilt bunched at Owen’s feet. She grabbed it on the second try and pulled it up to his waist. Jenna wrapped the ragged coat around her sister who had nothing on but her nightgown.

The gurgling noise stopped and the foamy blood ceased to flow. Methodically Jenna reached down and pulled the quilt over Owen’s face. They knew he was dead, they had seen animals die. Carrie walked around Jenna and pulled his wrist out from under the quilt. She felt for a pulse. There was none. His chest was too bloody to listen for a heartbeat there.

He’s dead Jenna. Let’s go to the house. There’s nothing we can do for him. Carrie touched her sister on the shoulder.

No. No. I don’t want him to die. He can’t die. He promised me he would take me to Mobile this spring. He promised he would marry me and we would start a new life. He promised me he would take me off this mountain. I love him, I love him. Now what’ll I do? Where will I go? I can’t stay here. Mother knows. Everything is spoiled. Jenna screamed between sobs.

Then she was quiet. In a calm voice she asked, Oh, Carrie, what have I done?

Jenna looked at the shape under the quilt. Suddenly she pushed him off her, his limp body rolling over, the quilt sticking to the blood on his chest. The back of his body was exposed to them, his red pubic hair growing all the way through to the crack in his buttocks.

Jenna stood up, leaned over and vomited. Her last meal landed close to his head, mixing with foamy blood on the straw. Then she looked at her hands and her nightgown, both covered with blood. She tried to wipe her hands on the hem of the garment then she pushed the hair out of her face but the red, sticky liquid followed, making a streak on her cheek.

Jenna wailed like a wounded animal then bent over and vomited again, this time the vomit splattering on her bare feet. Blood, straw, and vomit were on the front of her thin, cotton nightgown, made from sewn together flour sacks. She pulled the ragged coat around her and slowly started out of the barn. Carrie followed her. Both stopped to look back at Owen. Maybe he would sit up, talk to them, flash a smile with his gold tooth, but he didn't, he was still lying there, still motionless, still lying in the bloody mess, still dead.

They ran from the barn to the house. Jenna ran straight to her small room. She shut the door quickly then threw the latch on the door. Carrie could see light coming out from under the door as Jenna lit her lamp. She heard her crying and mumbling and dragging things.

Carrie turned around to find her mother sitting by the fire in the parlor, staring straight ahead, paying no attention to Jenna as she ran through the room behind them. She had pulled her robe around her and a quilt rested over her belly. Slivers of fire danced around the logs in the fireplace, now roaring with warmth from coal that had be dumped on the ashes.

Carrie settled in the old, horse hair, stuffed chair and looked at her mother.

I'm not hurt that much, the wounds aren't deep. Get some dry clothes on. Then we can decide what we have to do. We can’t leave him in the barn. Skye announced.

Carrie changed into dry clothes, went to the kitchen to start some coffee as her mother’s last words marched through her mind. Her mother was right. He had to be moved. But to where? How?

She filled the percolator with water, put coffee grounds in the basket and slid it to the front stove burner. As the familiar gurgle started, the smell of the coffee hit her, bringing life to her body, visions to her brain. Moving him wasn’t the only problem.

Colin, Owen’s brother, would drive up the mountain to visit them when the roads opened and if he found his brother murdered, he would have Jenna and their mother arrested. He’d never believe his brother’s death wasn’t planned. He’d say they wanted to kill him for the pitiful stock of horses Owen owned and the little bit of money he had stashed away from his moonshine business. That is the way Colin and Owen thought. They always figured someone was after them, that people wanted to cheat them.

If Colin went to the police then what would they do? What would happen to them? What would happen to the new baby that was due in three weeks? Mother was right. They had to bury him and make up some reason he wasn’t there anymore. But how could they bury him in this snowstorm? Suddenly Carrie felt a wave of fear flood through her body. Her mother was her rock and she’d do anything to protect her.

Whatever it takes I will do it. Carrie handed her mother a cup of hot coffee and sat down beside her in the old rocking chair. They rocked in unison, staring at the fire.

They were stuck on this mountain with the bloody body of her mother’s husband, with no way out.

CHAPTER 3

Near dawn, December 7, 1941

Carrie could hear the rushing sounds of the creek cascading through the small canyon on its way to the river. They were almost there. The creek and the trail beside it led to the Tennessee River, the river they loved, the river that supplied fish for them, the river they considered their friend. In the summer they played in its warm water, floating on the soft waves left by the barges heading to the Ohio River, then on to the mighty Mississippi.

Neither of them could have done it alone. Owen, over six feet tall and a hefty man, was hard to move. His body had to be dragged out of the barn and loaded onto a sled. Skye, pregnant, wounded and barely five feet tall, could not lift him. Carrie, a skinny thirteen-year-old, was stronger but also could not lift him on her own. Together they managed to tie his body to the old sled they used to haul hay. Usually a horse pulled it but there were too many low hanging trees over the trail for a horse to maneuver.

They waited until the sky began to brighten in the east, putting on layers of clothes, a coat, gloves and their strongest shoes. They knew every turn and twist of the trail to the river and figured it would take an hour, or more, to get him there, if they were lucky.

Skye had only one dress that still fit her, a wool one that hung several inches below her coat. The coat wouldn’t button over her belly, leaving it out in the cold. The dress brushed the ground when she walked, soaking up slush on the snow covered trail, the wetness traveling up the wool fabric to her swollen belly that held her dead husband’s baby.

The dull light of the breaking dawn, enhanced by the whiteness of the snow, outlined the shivering women pulling the sled through the pasture where the path started down, through the thick forest to the river. Snow continued to fall, sticking to their hair and landing on their clothes.

Tall pines, oak, elm and ash trees, intermixed with hickory and an occasional black walnut, made a canopy over them, their low branches pulled down with the added weight of the frozen precipitation. Twice the women had to stop and stoop down to continue their journey as clumps of snow fell on them when the tree branches were disturbed.

Carrie stumbled over a large rock and hit the sled. It slid and turned over, hitting a giant tree trunk. In the hazy, pastel light, they could see a corner of the sheet covering his body had caught on a snag. Owen’s face was exposed, his mouth agape; the stiffness settling in his body had pulled his chin down. A glimmer of his gold tooth peeked out from under his upper lip. Snow fell on his open eyes. Then a flake hit his mouth, his pallid skin matching the snow.

In silence they hurriedly grabbed the sheet, tucked it around his head and tightened the rope. They pulled the sled back onto the trail and kept going down, toward the river, gaining speed as the trail steepened. They continued in silence, tugging and pulling the sled with its burden. The crack of a frozen branch startled them as it fell, pinning Skye underneath. Carrie pulled it away then together