EVERSWEET, by Sue Chamblin Frederick

EverSweet

    By Sue Chamblin Frederick

 

Prologue

The screams came from a quarter-mile away, the mountain winds carrying the desperate cry to a ridge jutting out over a deep Appalachian valley. When she heard the pitiful sounds, Lula Starling was sitting on her cabin porch, snapping beans. She pushed the heavy enamel pan from her lap and stumbled down wooden steps that led to the narrow mountain trail that would take her to Hattie Murphy’s cabin.

Panting for breath at the top of the ridge, the thin woman slowed and called out, “Hattie?” Only a few feet from the small two-room shack, she called again, “Hattie? You in there?” There was no reply, and warped slats creaked as she stepped onto the porch and moved toward what was now soft whimpering. Easing through the half-closed front door, she announced, “It’s me, Hattie. Lula.”

A weak voice drifted through the shadows of a small room at the back of the house. “Oh, Lula. Help me. Come help me.” Hattie reached out her hand to Lula as she rushed in. “I done had this baby, Lula. A tiny little thing. And I think there’s another one comin’!”

“Two babies…you havin’ two babies, Hattie?” Lula leaned over the bed. “Oh, my. Look at that little thing. No bigger than a mountain trout.”

“I already done named her EverSweet,” said Hattie. “Pyune EverSweet Murphy.” She closed her eyes.

“Where’s Vernon,” Lula asked.

“I ain’t seen Vernon. Left yesterday afternoon, lookin for one of our pigs.”

Lula ran to the sink and returned with a wet towel.

A moment later a scream split the air. “Here it comes, Lula. Here it comes.” Hattie grasped the protruding wooden rail on the headboard and raised her hips, groaning and gasping for breath. “Oh, God in heaven,” she cried as the second baby spilled out into Lula’s hands.

“Another girl, Hattie. So tiny.” Lula stared. “Oh, my. Two of them. Now, ain’t that somethin’.”

Lula hummed as she wrapped the squirming little girls tightly. A self-taught midwife in the remote high peaks of the Appalachians, Lula had no children of her own. She snuggled both babies in the crooks of her arms and grinned at Hattie. “Just let me hold these babies a minute. Then I’ll get you fixed up.”

Hattie, her eyes still closed, spoke softly. “Lula, I can’t take care of two babies.” She opened her eyes, tears flowing freely. “You take one,.” As exhausted as she was, she rose onto her elbows. “You got to take one, Lula. You just got to.”

 

Chapter 1

At The Boardinghouse, where for years the venerable country kitchen had provided Union County’s folks with the most delicious food imaginable, Wiley leaned over the documents placed in front of him and examined each paragraph, one by one. His doctorate in environmental engineering from Georgia Tech was no help at all as he strived to interpret the meaning of a formal invitation with all sorts of instructions. His Scottish-flavored Elizabethan English was buried deep inside his mountain self as he quietly struggled to put together exactly what was expected of Pyune EverSweet Murphy.

“Okay,” he proclaimed at last. “I think I got it. You have to be in New York City on Wednesday, the twentieth. Then you catch a return flight on Sunday night, the twenty-fourth.”

“You needed all that time to tell me that?” Pyune threw a dishtowel across her shoulder and sat down at her worktable. “I think I’m just going to leave the twenty-five thousand dollars with those people.”

“Like heck you are!” Wiley refilled his favorite coffee cup, the one with the faded image of Roy Rogers and Trigger on the side. “This kitchen needs a new stove and larger refrigerators, and that twenty-five thousand dollars will be a big help. You’re going to New York, get that check, and then come back to where you belong—in Ivy Log, Georgia.” Wiley bobbed his head up and down. “Enough said about that! You got four days to get yourself together. You ought to start packing now.”

“Can’t you come with me?” Pyune asked, her soft eyes pleading better than her gentle voice.

“No, I can’t. We’ve talked about this all we’re goin’ to. This is your time. Pyune EverSweet Murphy is the queen of Bakers’ World Magazine, and you’re going to be the belle of the ball. Just think, yours was the number-one recipe of all! It beat out thousands of entries!”

“I know…I know.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Except for where I was born, I’ve never been out of Union County.” She jumped up and began pacing. “Check that paperwork again. Can’t they just send me the check?”

“Not from what this contract says.” Wiley waved the papers back and forth. “It’s spelled out—to get that twenty-five thousand dollars you got to go to New York. And that ain’t all. You have to attend a reception on Wednesday night, where all the magazine’s board members will honor you. On Thursday you have a big photo session, and on Friday you and three of New York’s celebrity chefs will compete in a fundraiser to benefit the city’s homeless. You finish up on Saturday night at a big awards banquet when you get the check. How good is that?”

“Oh, not good at all. I just want to get the check and come back here.”

Wiley licked his lips. “Oh, Lordy. Says here you’ll be on ‘The Today Show,’ Thursday morning. Reckon you’ll be interviewed by that bald-headed fella?”

‘“The Today Show’!” Pyune drew her hands up to her face. “There’s no way, Wiley! I just can’t do it!”

Wiley left his chair and pulled Pyune into his arms. “You can do it. You’re Ivy Log’s most prominent citizen. This whole town is proud of you, and you’ve got to go to New York for all the folks who’ve supported you and The Boardinghouse for all these years.” He rubbed her back and rocked her gently back and forth. “That’s all there is to it, my little EverSweet.”

Wiley was right, it was Pyune’s time. She had walked barefooted on the mountain trails that led to Ivy Log when she was two years old, one hand holding onto her mama, the other sucking her thumb. In Ivy Log, they’d come upon a deserted Main Street, but when she and her mama heard music they walked toward it and found the town square.

Everyone had gathered around picnic tables, where watermelons lay split open and lemonade flowed from big glass pitchers. Atop a flagpole, an American flag flapped in the breeze. It was the Fourth of July Festival, and the most beautiful sight Pyune had ever seen. Her little feet began tapping to the fiddle music, and she laughed her way to the red juicy watermelons, climbing onto the table and plopping a big slice of melon in her lap and eating it and a few more like it until her mama told her to quit ’fore she got a tummy ache.

This faint glimmer of time had remained in her mind even after forty years had passed. Ivy Log’s town square continued to be the gathering place for all events, important or not, the flagpole the very same one that stood so many years ago when Pyune had first arrived. Nothing much had changed, not even The Boardinghouse, except for a coat or two of paint now and then, and maybe an occasional board replaced on the porch. Pyune’s place in Ivy Log was one of grace, enhanced by a soft refinement that belied her origins in the remote peaks of the Appalachians. She was a mountain woman, true, but beneath her shy, unassuming character, the rest of her lay ready for an awakening. She just didn’t know it yet.

 


Robert L. Bacon
theperfectwrite.com


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