Waking in the Aftermaths: a novel

By C. P. Jennings

In Mist Hill, the Appalachian village of their childhood, the long-estranged Collins siblings Kate and Lynuel (the former a worldly success, the latter a local failure) reunite and confront the past when they encounter the Roma love-child of their dead father and experience the traumatic intrusion of world events on th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Poindexter Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798218311841

Book preview

Prologue: 1961

In the same year that Kate Collins accidentally killed Harry Hearne, she touched the hand of the future president. On a Wednesday in April when Senator John F. Kennedy was campaigning through West Virginia on a bus, the principal of their school, Mr. Shuff, led the children out to the road thinking that when the Senator saw them he might stop to say hello, and that is exactly what happened. Kate was one of the upper grade children at the front of the group, and when she held out her hand, the Senator took it. The hot tingling in her fingers lasted for the rest of the day, and when he became president the following January she was sure that Camelot would become the permanent state. History tells us how that went. For Kate, the brief flourish was her first lesson in betrayal. She had adored and trusted utterly this one man who got himself assassinated and cheated both her and the country of an entire mythology. She was thirteen when he died. Her conscious mind moved on, but the residue of Camelot remained and adhered to the memory of what she did to Harry and the things that had led up to it.

In March that year her brother Lyn turned six and was given the toy he'd begged for, a remote-control submarine. Kate had listened from the sidelines in the weeks before as their parents fooled their gullible boy – so unlike his sister – into believing there wasn't a chance he'd receive, in their words, 'such an expensive and useless toy.' Kate took pity on him in his premature disappointment and said, Don't worry, Lynny. They're just trying to fool you.

For a while he did love that submarine, in spite of the fact that he was only allowed to submerge it in the bathtub or the small backyard wading pool when there was a big, wide, fast-flowing river only footsteps away. Kate was sympathetic. She knew as well as any child the imaginings to which the river gave rise.

Two days after Lyn's birthday, his friend Ned also turned six and received the same present-of-the-year. But Ned wasn't as obedient as Lyn, and as soon as the grownups' backs were turned he and his new toy were headed straight to the river.

Mrs. Maddox saw him go that way. The Maddox's kitchen window looked out over the gravel lane where the kids traipsed from house to house, from river to road, from railroad tracks to mountainside. The lane ran between the houses nestled against the mountain and the so-called highway, a pot-holed two-laner through the valley, on the other side of which were the railroad tracks, the village, and the river.

Mrs. Maddox also saw that he wasn't alone: Harry Hearne was walking with him. That was the last time anyone, if you didn't count Harry, saw Ned alive.

Harry had a bad reputation. He had been caught stealing a fishing pole and tackle box out of the Collinses garage and when confronted had said he was only borrowing. So Jim Collins let him take the equipment, and the next morning found them back in their places, clean and tidy. Still, word went around that he stole. But Harry's reputation was based mainly on the fact that he was the most visible offspring of the dwindling population of Roma who came and went in the ramshackle cluster of houses squeezed between the railroad tracks and the river and right beside the Mound-builder's mound. Everyone, even the Roma, called it Gypsytown. To which of the four or five families Harry belonged was impossible for an outsider to say, not that anyone cared. They were all either Stanleys or Hearnes. Every fall, the children were registered at the local school and attended sporadically, mostly in the spring and fall. It could have been that Harry's visibility had to do with the fact that of all the children he was the most likely to be found in school. During the winter, Gypsytown was completely abandoned, and yet it suffered little vandalism because of the general belief that it was under a protective spell and anyone who disturbed it would be cursed. Stanleys and Hearnes would begin to straggle back in March and were in residence through the summer. The locals, adult and child alike, talked as though they were uneasy to see them return, but the truth was Mist Hill felt incomplete when they weren't there. When the shacks were abandoned for good a few years later, the town felt hollowed out. The Gypsies were not unlike the bluebirds that returned every spring, to enrich the landscape for a while and then move on. If anyone wondered what their lives were actually like, it wasn't done aloud.

Harry was a big boy, not so much in size as in age and presence. He was only a year older than Kate but to Lyn's age group that gave him regal standing. He was twelve at the time of the catastrophes here described. Kate kept her thoughts about Harry to herself, but if anyone had been paying attention they might have noticed her mental note-taking whenever Harry was present. The only conversation she had ever had with him had been brief, to the point, and not in her favor, one fall day when she was playing tag with a few other kids on the green beside the railroad tracks and Harry walked up the tracks, then lingered watching them. Kate ran toward him, stopping just short of the tracks. Hey, she said.

Hey, he said in return.

Are you-all really Gypsies?

Dead silence. He stared at her, his face expressionless. Kate waited. Finally, he said, Romanichal. We're Romanichal. He turned and continued walking, his pace no slower or faster than before. Kate watched him, the skin of her face hot with the sudden awareness of her own ignorance, then returned to the game.

That day walking back up the hill to their house, Lyn asked, Do you like Harry Hearne, Kate?

Like him? Of course not. I don't even know him.

It wasn't a question that required an answer, Lyn realized. Mama told Dad they all look alike, the Stanleys and the Hearnes.

Kate snorted. They don't look any more alike than you and I do. Harry looks like a panther. Or he walks like one anyway. None of the others do. She tried unsuccessfully to make the description sound like an insult.

Harry was black-haired, sultry (for a twelve-year old) and olive, underfed and angular with distinctive cheekbones under deep-set, slightly up-tilted dark eyes, that Kate thought of (from her reading) as European eyes. The small but distinct scar on his upper lip, from a dog bite when he was a toddler, contributed to a faintly shifty expression. At an age when boys generally lagged girls in height, Harry managed to exceed them by an inch or two; this gave him an advantage in that he could intimidate without even meaning to. He was not the kind of child that anyone would ever laugh at. From a grown-up perspective, a bath, a new set of clothes, a haircut and better manners, might have put him on the way to being a particularly attractive boy, with a future. But in 1961, his place was and always would be either Gypsytown or jail.

Six-year-old Ned Milo was Harry's opposite: a blond, blue-eyed, well-nourished child entirely trusting of everything that came to him. He made no judgments; the world was fairyland to him. His whole family was like that, freewheeling and innocent. On the weekends, their house was full from day to night with children, both their own and other's. Lyn was often among them. There were five Milo offspring, close together in age, of whom Ned was the youngest at six and Megan, at Kate's age of eleven, the eldest. Their father was the local pediatrician.

On the day of Ned's birthday, Mrs. Milo's carrying voice bounced off the mountains as she called lunchtime for her children. That in itself wasn't unusual, but it reminded Mrs. Maddox that she had seen Ned with the older Gypsy boy heading toward the river. No, Harry wasn't picking on him—they'd just been walking toward the Indian mound by the river, talking to each other friendly-like, although of course she couldn't hear what they were saying. At some point Ned handed his submarine to Harry, who carried it until they were out of sight down around the side of the mound.

The birthday party was planned for three o'clock. Ned hadn't returned by two, so Mrs. Milo called her husband at the hospital, and Dr. Milo came home immediately, bringing with him Ray Knox, a cop who lived in the village. About the same time, Mrs. Maddox called again to say she'd seen 'that Gypsy boy' on his own; he had come up the lane and crossed back over the road to Gypsytown. Ray went over to question him in the presence of various Stanleys and Hearnes.

It was all low-key. Ray didn't reveal to anyone exactly what Harry had said, but he didn't drag him off in handcuffs as some of the kids congregated on the steps of the Presbyterian church from where they could keep a good lookout fervently hoped he would. Instead, Ray went back over to the Milo's house, still festooned with streamers and balloons, to talk to Ned's parents.

The following day, Sunday, was mild for March and sunny in that thin-aired way of early spring. By 7:00 am, the National Guard had finished setting up camp in the baseball field between the railroad tracks and the river. From there they set out to comb the mountainside, which everyone saw as a way to deflect the pain of the Milo family even though it was a waste of time. On both Sunday and Monday some of them dragged the river. All that time, except during the hour of Sunday service when they were shooed away or sent to Sunday school, the neighborhood children were a fixture on the church steps, their knees propping their elbows and their elbows propping their chins. They weren't entirely free to speculate because Ned's sister Megan was with them. They watched mostly in silence, with an occasional glance at Megan or at Kate, their natural leader. Of all of them, only Lyn gave way to genuine feeling. He tried to hide his tears by pretending he had the sniffles from a cold.

One child, Renée, who had a tendency to blabber, eventually revealed both her own and her parents' insensitivity. My dad says Harry Hearne did something to Ned. My mom says Harry's bad. They say all those no-good Gypsies ought to be run out and the shacks burnt down.

That's not fair, Kate said sharply.

They're no-good, repeated Renée.

Oh, shut up Renée, said Kate.

Lyn was thinking just then about his own, perfect birthday present and how when he got home he was going to throw it on the floor of the closet and cover it with a pile of dirty clothes and old toys so that he would never have to see it again. Unless Ned showed up alive and well.

At one point they saw Harry himself cross the tracks by Gypystown and come up the road. Hey there, Harry, said the high, sweet voice of Megan Milo. He glanced over, mumbled something, possibly Hey, and quickened his pace. He was going up toward the mountain.

He shouldn't be allowed out! exclaimed Renée in what was certainly an imitation of her own mother.

Why shouldn't he? Megan said. We don't know he's done a thing. The other children looked away from her in embarrassed disbelief, but Kate grabbed her hand and squeezed it.

We don't know anything, Kate said firmly.

Monday evening the National Guard decamped. Ray questioned Harry once more. Adult theories filtered back to the children: Harry had pushed Ned off the Indian mound into the river; Ned had dropped his submarine off the mound into the river and Harry had tried to help him get it back, but Ned had reached too far; Harry had held the toy out over the water, daring Ned to reach, and Ned had obliged, and fallen in. The only possibility they didn't mention was the one that Harry admitted to, that Ned had continued on to his fate alone after Harry had left him. Ray Knox aptly summed it up, A tragedy, pure and simple.

Ned's remains turned up the following November, caught in the locks fifteen miles downstream. The Stanleys and the Hearnes, including Harry, had already departed for their winter destination. Soon after, the Milos moved away from the mountains, to a seafront town in Virginia. For a while, Lyn imagined Ned in his diver's suit floating gently, happily out to sea, hovering in warm waters around his family's new home, searching the bottom of the ocean for treasure. The weeks passed and before long these comforting imaginings receded and then ceased.

Even then Kate did not reveal her thoughts.

The Milo's ugly, square brick house sat empty. A for sale sign finally went up on its sloping overgrown lawn, but no one came to look, except for Kate who took long walks alone, up the creek bed that led to the old cemetery where the crude tombstones of Mist Hill's forgotten early settlers were barely distinguishable from the surrounding rock. When she passed the Milo place on her way she almost always stopped and contemplated the empty windows, the silence, the sadness, recognizing in the house the same emptiness that was beginning to overtake the town.

She was nearly twelve and easily annoyed these days; at her parents, for being parents, at her seventeen-year-old brother James for always having better things to do, and at everything about school from her oblivious classmates to her over-concerned teachers. Most of all she was annoyed with her own developing body and its embarrassing efforts to catch up with her precocious mind. The one person she was not especially annoyed with was little Lyn, yet she managed to direct every bit of her vexation toward him.

Lyn had begun to suck his fingers again after Ned's death. He latched onto an old baby blanket he had found in the rag box and carried it around. After a short grace period, their father forbade both activities, throwing away the blanket and painting Lyn's fingers with cayenne. Kate felt sorry for him, and thus it was her own fault that he began to follow her around. He lingered outside her bedroom door, waiting patiently for an invitation to enter or for her to emerge. He followed her around the house and did what she did: had a snack, watched Saturday afternoon movies on TV, Lifeboat, High Noon, Meet Me in St. Louis. Sometimes she indulged him but sometimes she needed to escape, and that became increasingly difficult to do.

His clinginess was what led to the accident.

One mid-June Saturday morning their parents went to town and left Kate in charge of Lyn, who had been particularly annoying that morning. James, as usual, was off somewhere, but he had left an old golf club in the corner by the back door, along with a string bag of practice balls. Kate had no interest in golf, but rather than shout at Lyn to go away and leave her alone, she grabbed the club and the bag of balls and slammed out the back door. It was mindless activity really, and once she began swatting the balls across the yard she became engrossed and forgot about Lyn, exactly her intention. He, meanwhile, mindful of Kate's mood, slipped into the back yard at the other end and became her unintentional target. Kate was mid-swing when Lyn came into sight around the corner of the porch, and the hard little missile hit him in the eye.

He spent two weeks in the hospital flat on his back with both eyes bandaged, sandbags on either side of his head to keep him from moving. If the injury hadn't been serious and Kate's misery at having caused it so impossible to hide, their father would have given her a good belting. Instead, he gave her a 'talk', a disconcerting mishmash of anger and concern, that left her feeling worse than his belt across her backside would have.

Their mother stayed at the hospital with Lyn, in a room with two beds. Every day just after noon, Kate took the hour-long bus ride into Charleston and walked the half-mile to the hospital. She was the same loving bully toward Lyn that she had been before the accident, mostly because she didn't want anyone to think better of her—she didn't deserve to be thought well of. But deep down, she was worried sick that Lyn might lose his sight and frightened by the thoughtlessness of what she'd done. Once or twice Lyn tried to tell her it was fine—he was fine—but she quickly changed the subject, pulling out another book to read to him or asking him about the daily routine of the hospital and if he could tell what people looked like by their voices. He lay there in his blindness while she held his hand playing with his fingers and chatting, or read to him over and over again one of the half-dozen books that sat on the table: Bartholomew and the Ooblick, Uncle Remus, Ferdinand. "You're like Ferdinand, she said one day. You like to sit quietly and smell the flowers. You aren't a fighter."

I can be a fighter, he said, wishing he could see her.

Kate laughed. Not until you're better.

In spite of her devotion to Lyn, Kate had managed to scope out the neighboring rooms, and the patient in one of them interested her. One day Kate and Lyn were left alone while their mother drove home for a quick shower, some clean clothes and a moment to herself. Kate had been reading Ferdinand aloud for the umpteenth time, when she suddenly stopped. Lyn heard the clip of the book as she laid it back on the table, and he realized, with a thrill of genuine fear, that the old Kate, the real Kate, was about to re-emerge.

I've met the girl in the next room. Her name is Jody, and her father stabbed her in the eye with a kitchen knife. He's in jail. Jody's supposed to lie flat on her back like you, but she won't. She pulled the bandage off her good eye and she's in there jumping up and down on her bed right now. The nurses stay out of her room. She yells. No one ever comes to visit her. Want me to bring her in so you can meet her?

This Jody-girl is a fighter, Kate wanted him to understand, and he did understand. Just like her, he wanted to pull off his bandage and jump up and down on the bed, but unlike her he wouldn't dare. No, he didn't want to meet her. He didn't want to guess what she looked like. He could tell from the sound of her voice, even from the distance of the room across the hall, that she was trouble, a kind of trouble he wasn't. She and Kate together would be worse than trouble. He wished Kate hadn't brought it up, and yet.

Yes, I want to meet her.

I'll be right back, said Kate.

A minute later a weight slightly more than his own but less than Kate's was testing the bounceability of his bed. He knew immediately that he didn't like her. Kate had promised her something, made some sort of deal, or this Jody-girl wouldn't have come. He heard Kate close the door to his room and come across to the bed. Jody-girl had yet to speak. Kate took his hand reassuringly then quickly laid it on the covers. This has to be quick, she said, not to him. No. I'll do it. The air around his face swooshed as hands batted each other across it. I'm going to take off your bandages, just for a second, Lynny. Don't move. It was impossible to refuse Kate when she used that tone. Lyn lay perfectly still fighting the urge to hyperventilate as she quickly and decisively pulled the bandages up onto his forehead to reveal his naked, newborn eyes. He clinched them tightly closed.

The Jody-girl leaned in close and breathed heavily. Her breath smelt like sugar. Ain't fair, said Jody. He has to open 'em. Her voice was abrasive and nasal, the kind that made the beautiful mountain accent sound ignorant and worthy of mockery, the way they all knew the wider world heard it. Lyn gathered his nerve and said, You don't have to talk as if I'm not here. The Jody-girl ignored him.

Open your eyes, Lynny, Kate said after a moment's hesitation.

He didn't.

Just for a second. Just for a little longer than a blink.

I'm not supposed to, Lyn whispered.

Open 'em, Kate commanded, and when he again refused, she reached down and pried open the damaged eye. It hurt because he was clinching it closed so hard, but then relief swept through him as Kate's blurry face came into view and behind Kate a round face framed by chopped-off, mousy hair, with one bandaged eye. There, said Kate, trying to sound definite, but there was a quiver in her voice as she pulled the bandages back down over his eyes. He struggled to sit up and she pushed him down. You're supposed to stay still, she snapped.

That was nothin', said Jody.

A deal's a deal, answered Kate.

Then Lyn understood. The swap was his two bandaged eyes for Jody's one. I want to see too, he said and was again ignored. The perpetual-motion Jody-girl was suddenly still, and he could feel the quick movement of the mattress as Kate yanked aside Jody's bandage. Lyn heard a sharp intake of breath, Kate's breath.

Okay, she said. We're done. You'd better go back to your room. Our mother will be back any minute.

It's a lot worse than his, ain't it? It was a boast, not a question. Real bad.

Yes, Kate conceded. Now go.

Jody hopped down off the bed and padded across the floor. In the doorway she stopped. I seen it, she said proudly. Real, real bad. They took my eyeball out."

I wanted to see too, Lyn said when she was gone.

Trust me, you didn't, said Kate. Now you lie there and be still, like Mama says, so you can come home soon. Don't tell anybody about this, okay? When we get home, I'll let you go down The Rope. Just don't tell anybody. Promise.

Lyn promised.

The Rope was Kate's congregation of imaginary friends who gathered deep below the surface of the earth; she herself joined them by sliding down the imaginary rope inside the wall beside her bed, a sort of fireman's pole at the bottom of which was a cavelike system of magical spaces. She thought of it as a club whose members were everyone living, dead or mythical whom she'd ever liked, admired, or wanted to meet. She told Lyn that it was the happiest, wisest place in the universe. She couldn't remember when The Rope had first come into being, but its importance to her had increased since Ned's drowning. When Kate was tired of Lyn's constant shadowing she would say, I'm going down the Rope, then storm into her room and lock the door. What is the Rope? he would beg through the locked door. Where does it go? You promised to take me with you. She never replied to his pleading, proof that she had indeed gone down the Rope and out of hearing. Meanwhile, she lay on her bed and mulled over ways to keep her promise to take Lyn with her.

She fulfilled her promise the following October.

Lyn sat with his legs splayed and his back against the wall under the pendulum clock in the hall directly across from Kate's room, and after an hour his patience was rewarded. Kate emerged. He had expected fancy-dress and grandiosity –something out of their grandmother's old trousseau trunk– but she was in her khakis, sneakers, and frayed gray pullover. She held his own plaid scarf and a strip of red flannel in one hand, and a box of goldfish food in the other.

He followed her downstairs and into the den. First we've got to bless the expedition. Kneel, she commanded.

The ritual was a holdover from an old game of theirs, re-enacting the communion service of their family's Episcopal church. He knelt and folded his hands on the blue upholstery of the window seat as Kate slid open the box of goldfish food and lifted one of the thin wafers, then picked up the silver goblet from the nearby table. Holding the wafer in one hand and the goblet in the other, she intoned, Be with us, Lord, on our journey down the Rope. Bring us safely back again. Amen. She dipped the wafer in the goblet and held it out to him. He started to take it with his hand but her frown re-directed him, and he stuck out his tongue to receive it. She held the goblet to his lips. He choked on the sherry from the cut crystal decanter in the dining room, and Kate waited for him to finishing choking, a disapproving grimace on her face. She ate a fish wafer, lifted the goblet to her mouth and drained it.

Come on, she said, retrieving his scarf and the flannel from the chair where she had thrown them and wrapping the scarf around his neck. It's chilly out, she said. They went back up the stairs to her room, but before she opened the door, she placed the piece of red flannel over his eyes and tied it at the back of his head. Then she opened the door and pushed him into her room.

A chill air struck Lyn full on and threw him without warning or preparation into the unknown world of Kate's creating. He stopped dead, as a grey fog crept up from his feet, toward his torso, limbs and finally—very quickly actually—his brain. It was part of Kate's genius to understand that if seeing was believing, then not seeing was even more so. But for Lyn, who had so recently faced the prospect of actual blindness, it was not a good start to the adventure.

Behind him, Kate tiptoed to the door and edged it silently shut, her eye on her brother so she could register, not without satisfaction, his confused reaction to the sudden blast of air from the open windows.

Are we down the Rope?

Kate reached for his arm and let her hand travel down it to his hand, which she gave a firm squeeze. No, of course not. We're in my room, you know that. But everything is transforming Just a sec.

She moved away from him and he strained to make sense of various sounds as she rummaged in the old toy chest at the foot of her bed and leaned out the window to reassess the distance to the ground. She returned to Lyn's side.

Here. She thrust one end of a length of scratchy hemp into his hands. Just hold that. Don't let go until I tell you or we'll both be in danger. She was behind him, grasping his two hands hard against the rope. It's all right, she assured him. Don't worry – I won't let you fall. It won't take long. A moment later and the children had fallen together, arms entangled, from Kate's window to the damp ground ten feet below. Lyn reached to pull the blindfold from his eyes and felt his hand slapped away.

You have to keep the blindfold on.

She took his hand and pulled him along, and he did his stupid best not to trip on the roots and brambles that rose up deliberately to thwart the journey. Be careful. The path drops off here. He reached for the blindfold again only to have her hand intercept his. He had no sense at all of where they were. Moments later, Kate grabbed his shoulders, pushed him a few feet, and sat him down on a hard, moist surface. She slapped his hand away from his face again. No, Lynny, how many times do I have to tell you? You can't take it off or the other members of the Rope won't accept you. Maybe next time. Here, have a drink of apple juice. He could hear her rummaging around and then felt the edge of a straw as she put it to his lips. The juice was too sweet, but the familiar taste was welcome in the midst of the unknown. He had a sudden longing to go home, to his own room, or to find his mother and hang around watching her darn a sock or let out his pants so he could wear them another few months.