Skyline Drive

by Rita Welty Bourke

The plow cut through the moist soil, turning it cleanly, the team of horses pulling steadily. Good horses, those two. Draft horses. Strong, yet docile. Broad backs and powerful hindquarters.  

The man guiding the plow, Hugh, let the blade rise to the surface. “Whoa, Dull. Whoa, Pet,” he called. The horses stopped. Blew. Glad for the rest. They began to search for clumps of grass, though they were hindered by the wire muzzles attached to their hackamores. Pet was prone to founder on spring grass. If she sickened, there would be no money to replace her.  

Hugh let go of the handles, walked back over the freshly-turned earth, and picked up a stone that had been brought to the surface. He brushed away the dirt and turned it over in his hands. Smooth to the touch. Warm, as if the noon day sun had reached into the earth to where it lay hidden.

“Tomahawk,” he murmured. “Indian tomahawk.” Both horses turned toward him, ears perked.  

Years ago, Hugh surmised, someone had picked up that bit of granite and saw possibilities in its shape. An Indian, surely, from one of the tribes that lived in the area. He must have worked on it for weeks, grinding away at the edges, polishing it to the smoothness of glass, sharpening the end. Hollowing out a groove in the neck so he could use a strip of wet rawhide to attach the stone to a club. When the rawhide dried, he had a fearsome weapon.

When he was a child, Hugh had actually made such a weapon himself. Though it was a poor imitation of the stone he now held in his hand, he’d used it to hack into the apple tree that shaded the watering trough. The tree might have died, but for the intervention of his mother. She took the hatchet from her son and secreted it on a high shelf in the kitchen. Hoping it would seal the wound, she bandaged the tree as best she could. Then, with the gentleness of a woman used to protecting her child from an angry father, she took him onto her lap and told him the history of the tomahawk. How it had been invented by the Algonquin Indians of the Shenandoah Valley. 

The word had a rhythm to it that entranced the boy. “Shen-do-ah,” he said. 

His mother shook her head. “Shan-uhn-doh-uh,” she said, holding up four fingers. “Four syllables. One, two, three, four. Shan-uhn-doh-uh.” 

He tried again. And then a third time, and he had it. The word was his, and he clapped his hands.

His mother told how the weapon had been used in war. How it had spread to other Indian tribes, then to settlers arriving from Europe. By then it was recognized as a tool that was useful for everyday tasks, like hunting, chopping, and cutting.  

In time the apple tree healed, and twenty-five years later, it still provided a place where horses could find refuge from the summer sun while they quenched their thirst in the trough kept brimming with water pumped from the well. And in mid-summer stretching into the fall they could enjoy the apples that fell in great proliferation from its branches.

Hugh turned the stone this way and that in his hands, marveling at its perfection. Who had it belonged to, he wondered, and what use had they made of it?   

Pet shifted in her traces. She pawed the ground.  Prevented from eating the sugar-laden spring grass, she was anxious to get on with the task ahead. Impatient for the reward of cool water and a hay rack filled with last year’s timothy that still smelled of the sun. 

Hugh grasped the plow handles, pressed downward, and called for the horses to giddy-up. There was no need for a whip. 

The plow bit deeply into the earth and he walked along behind, watching the soil slide smoothly onto the blade and then curl over until a portion of it rested on the ground. The work was monotonous, yet there was joy in it. He knew his muscles, not yet hardened by plowing, planting, scything, shucking, and all the other chores of the season, would ache in the morning.  His hands would blister and when the blisters healed, calluses would form. But by mid-summer, if he were lucky and the weather cooperated, he would be rewarded with a crop of corn that would feed the horses and keep the chickens laying through the winter. 

The horses, sensing his reverie, had slowed. He cracked the whip over their heads, and they picked up their gait. He could smell the sweat that came off their bodies, and the garlic uprooted by the plow, and the freshness of the dark soil exposed to the air.    

The stone weighed heavy in his pocket. Tonight he’d show it to Gracie. Thinking of her made him look toward the distant mountains wreathed in blue mist, and then to the foothills, closer in. He saw a thin column of smoke rising from the base of the mountain. Her house, he thought, though he couldn’t be certain. The distance was too great. 

By the time he reached the far end of the field, he was certain. Through the trees he’d glimpsed a pair of red brick chimneys protruding from the gable ends of the house. This was where his Gracie lived with her mother, four brothers, and six sisters. 

When he finished with the plowing, he’d curry the horses, give them a few handfuls of grain, and fill the hay racks. He’d gather the eggs in the chicken house and put them in the cardboard flats inside the spring house. After he’d eaten supper he’d change clothes, then take the ’29 Chevy into town. He’d follow the mountain road across the bridge over Flat Run past the school house and up the steep hill to the house where Gracie lived. When he saw her tonight, he’d show her the stone. He’d ask her to guess what it might have to do with their wedding, just two months away. She’d never be able to guess. 

The egg man who came once a week from Baltimore had first told him of the road being built along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. “They’re calling it the Skyline Drive,” Kristenberry said, lifting an empty egg crate over the railing of his Model A Ford truck. The old man was bone thin, but he needed no help. His arms were muscular, his hands blue-veined, his exposed skin permanently bronzed. “When it’s finished, it’ll run along the crest of the mountains for over a hundred miles.”  

Hugh offered to take one end of the crate, but Kristenberry waved him off. “It’ll be years before it’s finished,” the old man said, “but they’ve already opened a part of it to the public.”  

Hugh unlatched the gate into the yard and led the way to the spring house. A glimmer of an idea had begun to take shape in his mind. “How do you get to this road?” he asked. “Is it far?”

“I took the wife a few weeks ago,” Kristenberry said. “It felt like we were riding in the clouds. All you could see to the west was mountain ranges, one after another, like an accordion, the ranges getting smaller and smaller. To the east it was all valleys, farms, roads, villages. The Shenandoah River looked like a tiny little stream from that high up.”

He spoke of the waters that rushed down mountain slopes toward the river, and pull-offs where you could rest. “Sometime this summer, when it’s a little warmer, we’re gonna do it again,” Kristenberry  said. “The wife wants to take a picnic lunch, make a day of it. Check out some of the trails. Evidently there are caverns, too, and she wants to see what they’re like inside.”  

“Indian artifacts?” Hugh asked.

Kristenberry shrugged. “It’s not my idea of a good time,” he said. “The road is scary in places. A hundred, two-hundred-foot sheer drops on both sides. Maybe more. They’re putting up guardrails in the worst spots.

“They’re hiring lots of people down there,” he continued, following Hugh into the spring house, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the dark interior. “If I were a younger man, I’d be tempted to apply for a job myself.” He paused for a moment. “Well, maybe not. The wife wouldn’t be happy if I was gone five days a week, living in a camp with a bunch of men.” 

“Where does the road start?” Hugh asked again. “How far do you have to drive?” 

“There’s an access road at Front Royal. From Baltimore it’s about a hundred miles. From here, maybe only eighty-five or ninety. How many eggs you got for me this week?”

“Ten flats,” Hugh said. “Thirty dozen. Are there places where you can stay?”

“You can rent cabins,” Kristenberry said. “There are campgrounds, too, if you’re into that kind of thing. What do you think of our new president?” 

“Anyone would be better than Hoover,” Hugh responded.

“This Skyline Drive was his idea, you know. Hoover’s. They’re saying he has a summer home in the Shenandoah Valley, and he wanted to be able to get to it. So he decided to build this road.” 

Hugh sighed. “It would be a long trip. A long way to go.” 

 “I hear there are places where they’ve actually tunneled through mountains.”

“That would be something to see,” Hugh said. 

“You say you have ten flats? How much have I been paying a dozen? Twenty cents?” He shook his head. “Times are hard, Hugh. The best I can do is eighteen. Eighteen cents a dozen. The ones I bought last week aren’t selling through. People can’t afford to buy ’em. Eighteen times thirty, that’ll be $5.40. I’ll make it $5.50. Does that sound okay?” 

Hugh caught his breath. A week’s worth of eggs, five dollars and fifty cents. He wondered if he could hold some back, take them to grocery stores in Fairfield, Taneytown, Emmitsburg, maybe even Gettysburg, hoping for a higher price.

But his mother had asked at Frailey’s Grocery just last week: would they be interested in buying her eggs? She could supply them with ten, maybe fifteen dozen a week. 

Frailey was receptive, but could offer no more than twelve cents a dozen. She walked away, slump-shouldered. 

“Eighteen cents a dozen will hardly cover my costs,” Hugh said. 

“I know it,” Kristenberry said. “And I’m sorry.” He removed his hat and smoothed his hair and put the hat back on his head. He looked up to the rafters of the building, then to the pool of water by the back wall.  

Hugh turned away from the huckster. He dug his hands into his pockets and took a deep breath. The price of eggs had been dropping steadily for nearly two years. His father insisted they could counter the lower prices by raising more chickens, but Hugh was not convinced. Nor did he believe the blacksmithing business his father ran would ever be more than marginally profitable.  

The words of the newly-elected president, spoken just six weeks earlier, echoed in his brain: “… farmers find no markets for their produce.”

The family had gathered in the living room that Saturday afternoon to hear the president deliver his first inaugural address. It was a cold, blustery day. Roosevelt began to speak, and the family leaned forward in their chairs, hoping to block out the sound of the wind and the rain. Hugh’s mother rose from her chair to adjust the dial and turn up the volume. The static disappeared, and the words of the new president came through loud and clear. Hugh and his parents sat in silence, eyeing the radio, their gazes shifting occasionally to the mason jar atop the cabinet filled with dry strawflowers, then to the gloom outside the windows.

Hoover was gone, retreating to his home in Palo Alto, California. In his place was a man who believed in hope and good cheer, a man who was determined to fix what had gone so terribly wrong. “This great nation will endure as it has endured,” he said. “It will revive and (it) will prosper. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

“… a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

“…I am prepared under my constitutional duties to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.” 

When the speech ended on that dreary day in March of 1933, Hugh’s father cleared his throat, rose from his chair, and left the room. He was a beaten man. He did not believe. But Hugh did. Hugh believed.

Sometime in the night it began to snow, and in the morning the road outside their house was impassable. The sun came out and it spread cheer across the landscape and by late afternoon the snow was gone. The newly-elected president had given the nation something they desperately needed: hope. He promised jobs. A new deal for the millions who were unemployed, who stood in bread lines, who tramped the highways looking for work or a hand-out. Anything that would let them survive for another day. 

He promised strict supervision of banks. An end to speculation with other people’s money. If congress refused his requests, he would ask for broad executive powers to wage war against those who opposed him. 

A month after the broadcast, five dollars and fifty cents for ten flats of eggs was not a good sign. But Hugh was excited. In the time he had left before his wedding, he would learn all he could about the Skyline Drive. They would spend their first night in the bedroom across from that of his parents. Early the next morning they would drive to Front Royal, Virginia, and climb to the peak of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They would take their time driving along the crest, stopping to gaze out over the countryside, to explore trails that led deep into the forests, but mostly to marvel at the sheer audacity of such an undertaking. Come nightfall, he would rent a cabin, and they would be truly alone for the first time. 

He would ask his mother to pack food for them: biscuits, apple butter, peach jelly, country ham so salty you could leave it hanging in the summer sun for days and it would not spoil. He’d need water, both for the car and for himself and for Gracie. Would there be water available along the road? Would the engine overheat when he had to climb steep mountain slopes? Would he be able to buy gasoline along the way? 

The afternoon was well advanced when he finished the plowing. He led the horses back to the barn, but before he unhitched them, he turned to look out over the field. He saw then how crooked his furrowed lines had become. If his father noticed, and he surely would, the old man was certain to reprimand him. But what did it matter? In a mere eight weeks, he would be married. 

* * *  

The first thing Hugh saw when he approached Gracie’s house that evening was Angus Chapman’s Model T Ford, parked haphazardly by the garden gate. In the year that Hugh had been courting Gracie, Chapman had made no secret of his fondness for Gracie. Even after she announced her engagement to Hugh, he was not deterred. 

The evening was pleasantly cool, and the family was gathered on the wraparound porch.  Chapman sat on the swing beside Gracie’s mother. Martin, Gracie’s brother, was lounging against the railing. Several of Gracie’s sisters were flitting about. 

Maybe Chapman would take an interest in one of them, Hugh thought, now that Gracie was spoken for. Just the sight of this man with his shock of red hair, his gangliness, his air of self-importance, made him angry. 

Gracie, he saw, was sitting on the swing that hung from the oak tree, a tree so ancient and dense no grass grew beneath it. She was wearing white, as she often did, a lacy thing with a high neckline and fitted bodice. 

Hugh pulled his car up to the picket fence and shut off the engine. Gracie turned to look at him. He couldn’t be certain, but he thought he saw a shy smile creep across on her face.

She was such a lovely girl. Just nineteen to his twenty-nine. Dark, curly hair, blue-gray eyes that drew him in, leaving him feeling both tongue-tied and vaguely uncomfortable. He would never tire of gazing into those eyes, no matter how long he lived. Of that he was certain. 

He thought of the first time he’d seen her. Felix Turner had stopped at the farm to arrange a time when he could bring his combine to thrash out the wheat. He’d brought Gracie, his stepdaughter, with him. The two men walked out into the field to make the arrangements while the girl walked into the pasture where the horses were grazing. When they had settled on a price and a time, they returned to the car; Gracie hurried to meet them there. As they were pulling away, she looked back at Hugh. In that moment, in that single glance, something magical happened. Hugh was suddenly, inextricably, undeniably in love with a girl he’d spent all of ten minutes with, had hardly spoken to, knew little about. But there were those eyes, and that half-smile, and the honeysuckle smell of her, and the indelible picture of her running through the field of ripening wheat.

* * *

The next time he saw her, she was standing beside her mother at her stepfather’s grave. Her skin was pale, her breathing shallow, and there was a look of disbelief on her face. Hugh stood off to the side, unsure of himself. Did he even belong there? But it was a chance to see her again, and so he went. 

The wheat was harvested by then, and Hugh had been able to pay the bill. It seemed likely that Felix deposited the money in his bank account. A week later, the Annan-Horner bank, like hundreds of other banks across the nation, closed its doors. 

If only Roosevelt had taken office a year earlier, Hugh thought, Gracie’s stepfather might still be alive. A banking holiday might have saved at least part of the money Felix had in his account. Deposit insurance guaranteed by the Federal Government might have kept him solvent. But the bank went under, and it took with it all of Felix’s savings, and all he had left was a mortgage on the thrashing machine he had recently bought. And the gun he kept on the top shelf in his bedroom closet. 

* * *

By the time Hugh exited the car, Gracie was standing by the gate, waiting for him. She swung it open when he approached. She said his name, softly, so softly he wanted to ask her to repeat it.

Instead, he took her hand in his. “Gracie,” he said.  

“I thought you might come for supper,” she murmured. Hand in hand, they started up the path toward the house.

“I had to finish the plowing. We’re planting corn in that field by the woods.” 

“It was a perfect day,” she said. “For working outside, I mean.”

He wanted to tell her of the long hours he’d spent walking behind the team of horses, and how tiresome it had become, but he thought better of it. Instead: “One day I hope I’ll be able to buy a tractor. And a plow. There’s no end to the machinery you can get nowadays. There’s even a machine that disks and plows at the same time. Imagine what an improvement that would be, how much time it would save.” They paused at the bottom of the steps leading up to the porch. “That’s what I have to do tomorrow,” he said. “Disk the field. If the weather holds, I might be able to plant in a few days.” He looked upward in that timeless way of farm people who must constantly scan the sky, needing to know what it might hold for them and what effect it might have on their crops and their livelihoods. 

He regretted what he’d said about the horses, the discontent he’d expressed in his work. If a part of him was uneasy about the future, another part believed in what the new president had said. One day he would have that tractor and that disk, and together he and Gracie could look forward to a bright future. He adjusted his grip on her hand so that now he held it a bit tighter than before.  

The truth was, he saw no future in raising chickens and selling eggs to people in the city.  But more than that, he disliked chickens. Such dumb creatures, with not a hint of personality in an entire flock. Having to be protected from foxes, raccoons, bobcats, skunks, hawks, owls, even snakes. And such cowards. Once he’d seen an entire flock of chickens, thirty or forty of them, held captive by six of his mother’s guinea hens who had decided to not let the chickens out of the chicken house. They might have stayed in the building all day in the sweltering July heat had his mother not seen what was happening and intervened. He hated the incessant crowing of the roosters, their habit of picking a hen to death for no apparent reason. Let one chicken draw blood, and they went crazy, the entire flock participating in a death ritual that was sickening to behold. 

But he would say none of this to Gracie.  

Suddenly they were surrounded by Gracie’s sisters, four or five of them, greeting him, talking over each other.
“Would you like a glass of lemonade?”

“Will you come see the new litter of kittens? They’re out in the garden shed. Just a week old, born way too early in the year, the mother has no common sense, but the babies are so cute. Will you come see them?”

“Wait till you see Gracie’s new dress,” said another. “She and Anna went shopping today. They got it at Newsom’s. It’s so pretty.” 

“No,” said another. “He can’t see her dress. Not until the wedding.” 

“It’s not her wedding dress …”

“All the same, it’s part of her trousseau …” 

“It had a tiny tear in the lace, but Ruthie was able to fix it. Weren’t you, Ruthie? She’s such a good seamstress.” 

“The wedding dress is nearly finished. Mother was working on it today. It’s just lovely, and it’s going to be such a nice day.” 

“Marry when June roses grow, over land and sea you’ll go.” That last, from Rachel, the youngest, a girl of twelve, red hair, freckles strewn across her face and arms. “It’s a line from a poem,” she said. “No one knows who wrote it. It’s anonymous.”  

Stanley, one of Gracie’s brothers, approached from around the side of the house. He was carrying a handgun.

“We need a shotgun,” Chapman called to him. “She’s holding a shotgun in the picture.” He rose from the porch swing and walked toward Stanley. Dangling from a hand strap around his wrist was a camera. 

“Brand new Kodak Hawk-eye,” he said to Hugh as he walked past. “Ever see one before? It takes sixteen pictures on a single roll of film.”

Gracie let go of Hugh’s hand, walked up the steps, and sat beside her mother. Hugh greeted the older woman and took a chair by the wall. 

“Have they been drinking?” he heard Gracie ask. “Stanley and Angus?”

“I expect so,” her mother said. She leaned back in her seat, pushed against the floor, and the swing began to move. This woman, Louisa, was forty-five years old. She’d borne eleven children, buried two husbands, and was still remarkably pretty. With her pale skin, dark hair, and chiseled nose, Hugh could see an older version of his Gracie, and he was pleased.

“He just bought the camera,” Louisa said, “and he wants to try it out.” She picked up a newspaper that lay on the seat between them. “He brought this up from Baltimore. Evidently there was a shootout with a gang of bank robbers somewhere in Missouri. Two policemen were killed. When they searched the apartment, they found a roll of film. I guess it didn’t mean much to the police, so they gave it to a reporter. He sent it off to be developed.”

She handed the paper to Gracie. “It wasn’t until the police saw the pictures that they realized who they’d been up against: Bonnie and Clyde. They’d been living in this apartment over a garage for a month, just like normal people.”

Gracie unfolded the paper. Spread across the top half was a picture of Bonnie holding a grinning Clyde at gunpoint. A wisp of a girl, she wore a long skirt and a striped blouse. Her hair was hidden beneath a beret. Her left hand was outstretched, as if reaching out to her lover. In her other hand she held a gun.

Directly beneath was another picture of Bonnie, standing with one foot on the fender of a car, cigar in her mouth, pistol pointed toward the ground. Beside it was one of Clyde, wearing a suit and tie, three shotguns propped against the bumper of the car. 

“She looks so young,” Louisa said, and there was a wistful tone in her voice. “She can’t be any older than you are, Gracie. Two policemen dead; she’s bound to come to a bad end.” 

“They call her a ‘cigar-smoking gun mole,’” Gracie said, reading from the article.

“The two drove out of the garage in a Ford V-8, rammed the police car, and roared away under a hail of bullets.” 

Gracie laid the paper on the swing and looked toward where her brother and Angus were standing. As did Hugh, who now stood by the railing.   

Angus was reaching out to Stanley with one hand, holding the shotgun aimed at Stanley’s chest with the other. Stanley’s hands were raised over his head in surrender. Both men were smiling. Angus’s Model T was in the background. 

As the family looked on, one of Gracie’s sisters snapped a picture. With great merriment the two men changed places, Stanley now holding the gun, Angus’s hands raised in surrender. She snapped another. 

“Gracie,” Angus called. “Come on over and let me take your picture. You’ll be Bonnie. Try and get the drop on me.” 

Louise laid her hand on Gracie’s. “Don’t,” she said. “They’ve had too much to drink. And it’s not a game, what they’re doing.”
The group went silent, the boisterousness of evening suddenly gone. Angus turned away. He checked the number of photos left on the roll, then snapped a picture of Rachel, half-hidden behind a branch of the oak tree. He took one of Anna, sitting on the steps, a glass of lemonade in her hand. Ruthie, one foot resting on the bumper of Hugh’s car. Louisa, alone now on the porch swing. Gracie, descending the stairs, looking over her shoulder toward the camera. 

* * *

The sun slid behind the mountains and for a time the sky was streaked with red before it surrendered to darkness. Someone lit a fire in the circle of stones outside the yard, and it blazed high. The group gathered round, and their voices echoed out over the valley. Louisa had gone into the house by then, Rachel following soon after. Hugh and Gracie sat by the fire, Stanley, Martin, and the other girls close by. 

Angus put his camera in his car and joined them in the circle.

Will you bring us the pictures, when you get them developed? 

I’ll do better than that. I’ll have copies made. 

I hope they come out. 

They will. There’ll be some good ones.

I hope we get some rain soon. If we don’t, pretty soon we’ll be as bad off as the farmers out west.

Coming up from Baltimore, I must have seen a hundred hobos. Men just walking along the highway. No place to go. Just walking. 

We’re better off than most, but you wonder, for how long? Without Felix, it’s gonna be  hard. 

The fire crackled, filling in the empty spaces between the words. 

It’s a shame about the two policemen. You wonder how long they’ll be able to go on, joy-riding across the country. Bonnie and Clyde, I mean. 

What choice do they have? Once you start out like they did … 

What do you mean? 

Clyde’s family, when they first moved to Dallas, didn’t have a nickel to their name. They had to sleep under a wagon until they could get enough money to buy a tent. Clyde was just a kid at the time.

I heard he killed someone when he was in prison. Then he chopped off two of his toes, hoping they’d release him, him being a cripple by then. 

They steal cars. The two of them. They rob banks.

Banks rob people. Look at what Annan-Horner did to Felix.

Silence again, and the night sounds grew louder: the croaking of frogs, the rustling of leaves, the mooing of cattle. Someone added a fresh log to the fire, and it blazed up, sending sparks into the sky. Hugh stood and pulled Gracie to her feet. They moved back from the fire.

It’s been hard for Louisa, trying to hold everything together. The way I see it, the more banks they rob, the better. 

They rob gas stations, too. 

It’s banks they mostly go after. Like Willie Sutton said, banks are where the money is. 

She’s such a tiny little thing, Bonnie. Weighs under a hundred pounds, according to the wanted posters. I saw one in the post office the other day. 

Her beret is so cute. So stylish. I wonder where she got it. 

Papers say they robbed a bank in Indiana, then another in Minnesota just a day later. Then they kidnapped a couple in Louisiana. Makes you wonder how they could be in all those places at once. Seems like they want to pin every crime ever committed on those two kids. How old are they, anyway? 

Clyde is 22 or 23, according to the wanted poster. Bonnie about the same, but she looks younger.

There’s plenty of reason to turn to crime nowadays. A body has to eat. 

They steal cars. 

But only the best. Only Ford V-8s. Like the one in the picture. 

Laughter, but short. Embarrassed.  

I’d steal a Ford V-8, if I thought I could get away with it. 

Would you turn them in for the reward money? Bonnie and Clyde? Two hundred and fifty dollars?

I heard it was a lot more than that. Like a thousand dollars for the two of them.  

Be hard to pass up an amount like that. 

Annan is headed for California, I hear. 

With Felix’s money, no doubt. Hoover’s gone out there too. He’s a rich man. They say he used to own homes all over the world. 

No sense talking about it now. It’s over and done with. Nothing we can do. 

You wonder what’s going to happen out west. They’ve had no rain for something like three years now. Banks foreclosing, people moving on. Dust so thick a man can hardly see to plow his fields.

Things aren’t much better around here. 

Louisa gives egg sandwiches to anyone who comes to the door. She likes to give them some chore to do, like chopping wood or something.  

The drought won’t go on forever. The rains will come.

* * *

Hugh and Gracie had slipped away from the group by then. When they reached the end of the driveway they turned onto the road that led to Rocky River Drive. They had gone only a short distance when the road narrowed. Branches of trees intertwined above them, and starlight shining through the leaves turned the canopy to lace.

“Ruthie did a great job on my dress,” Gracie said. “I can’t wait for you to see it.” 

“Just two months …” 

“Martin tells me you’ve asked him to be your best man,” Gracie said. 

“We’ve become good friends. I like him a lot. I like your whole family.”

“He told me you prayed a novena that I would say yes when you asked me to marry you. Is that true?”

“He shouldn’t have told you.”

“I think he wanted me to know what kind of man I was about to marry. He said you were afraid I’d choose Angus. Were you really afraid of that?”

“It was pretty clear Angus was interested in you. And still is.” 

“But I never liked him. Not one little bit. So is it true? Did you really go to church eight days in a row and pray that I would say yes?”

“Not eight. Nine. The same prayer, repeated each night.” 

“What a lucky girl I am. What novena? Novena to which saint?” She hurried ahead, then turned to face him. “I know. You said a novena to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Saint of desperate situations.” 

He didn’t want to tell her, didn’t want her to know how desperately he wanted her. “I came up to see you one evening, a few weeks after your father died, and you’d gone off with Angus. I think Martin felt bad about it. He said you didn’t know I was coming, that he’d talk to you when you got home. He promised to put in a good word for me.” 

“I remember,” Gracie said, and her tone had changed. She spoke softly now, her gaze downcast. “Angus kept asking me to go out with him, but I never did. I didn’t care for him. Not like I do for you.” 

She slowed. “That was the night I took rhubarb pies out to St. Anthony’s. They were having a bingo party, and Mother had promised them for the bake sale. She was feeling so blue.  I told her I’d take the pies out, that it would be a nice walk. Then Angus appeared and offered to give me a ride.” 

“I never considered it a hopeless cause,” Hugh said. “The St. Jude thing. I just thought, after everything that had happened, things were really hard for you and your family. Especially for your mother. When I left your house that night, I didn’t go straight home. I parked down by the river and said the rosary. I asked God to be with you, to take care of you.”  

The overhang of trees had disappeared by then, and Louisa’s house came into view. The fire still burned, but low, and it cast shadows across the pasture. 

“It was a hard time,” Gracie said. “I hated it that my mother had to beg for him to be buried in consecrated ground. Felix, I mean. There was a family plot, but the priest said he needed permission from the Bishop before he could allow a burial there. She came home crying.”

The road was deeply rutted, and she moved to the far side of the wheel tracks. “I may not be as good a person as you think I am, Hugh. I hated how they treated my mother, and the thing about the Bishop, I think the priest made that up. I don’t think he needed the Bishop’s approval at all. I’ve heard of other cases where they never even brought it up—the suicide thing. And even if what he said was true, why couldn’t he have shown a little compassion for my mother?”

Hugh was at a loss for words. All he could feel was the pain of what the family, and Gracie, had endured. 

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” Gracie went on, “but the day I took those pies out to St. Anthony’s, I actually thought of tossing them into the woods.” She kicked a stone that was in her path, and when they reached the spot where it landed, she kicked it again. “‘Suicide is the gravest of sins,’ the priest said to my mother. ‘If a person commits suicide, he is unable to repent. The church can simply not allow a suicide to be buried in consecrated ground. We cannot make an exception now. If we were to allow it, it would be seen as approving of an act we can never condone.’”

“Let it go, Gracie,” Hugh said. “It all turned out okay. Felix was buried where he needed to be buried.” 

“I know. But it wasn’t right, what they made my mother go through. What if we get married, Hugh, and you discover I’m not who you think I am? Maybe I don’t even believe half the things they say about sin and heaven and all the other things they talk about. What if I just don’t believe?”

“It won’t matter,” Hugh said. 

“The priest actually suggested burying him outside the cemetery walls. He said he knew of cases where that had been done. Who was he to decide what Felix was thinking in those last moments? He wasn’t there. He didn’t know. It wasn’t his place to say that.”

“Don’t talk about it anymore, Gracie. Try not to even think about it. There’s nothing to be done. About any of it.” 

They had reached the paved road by then, and they paused there. The fire from the bonfire was visible through the trees, and it blazed high, sending cinders and smoke into the sky.    

“We could walk down to the river,” Hugh said, wanting to spend more time with her. 

“I think I’d better get back. Mother will be worried. She won’t go to bed until she knows I’m safe at home.” 

He nodded, understanding. That they’d been able to slip away without a chaperone was more than he could have hoped for. To stay out even longer was unthinkable.

“Pray for him, Gracie,” Hugh said. “Whenever you think of your stepfather, say a prayer.”

“I do pray for him,” she said as they began the walk back to the house. “And for my father. For Martin.” 

Martin. The man for whom Gracie’s brother had been named. Martin, lying now in the graveyard beside St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. Next to his brother, Felix. 

Hugh thought of the stone he’d found in the field earlier that day. He’d intended to show it to Gracie, and to tell her about the Shenandoah Indians and the Skyline Drive. Now he was glad he’d left it in his car. The mention of Gracie’s father, and the accident on that mountain road near Pen Mar, made him question all the plans he’d made.

His car hit loose gravel and went over a cliff near the Pennsylvania/Maryland state line. He was pinned beneath it. Hours went by before someone came along, saw the wreckage, and summoned help.  

They did what they could for him at the hospital, but after two weeks, they sent him home to die. Paralyzed from the waist down. Louisa seven months pregnant with Gracie.

Martin’s car had gone off the road, down into a ravine. It sounded so familiar. Too much like the place he planned to take Gracie for their honeymoon. If the Skyline Drive was as steep as the egg huckster said, sheer drops on both sides of the road, should he even consider taking Gracie there?  Was this the right way to begin their marriage? Had all his planning been for naught?

* * *

The corn was stunted. Seedlings that had shown such promise in the spring and early summer were suffering. There had been not a single drop of rain, and the leaves had begun to curl. Even in the early morning, Hugh could see the leaves rolling in on themselves, trying to preserve what moisture they had been able to gather during the night. By mid-afternoon, with the sun beating down, the leaves were tightly rolled. Dusk brought a measure of relief, if only temporary.

Hugh watched as his father, hands clasped behind his back, walked out into the fields to inspect the crop. He was a tall man, stick thin, and the setting sun elongated his shadow. His shadow was as black as the clothing he wore.

The old man walked slowly through the corn field, and each step brought swirls of dust. Occasionally he would stop to kick dry dirt around plants whose roots were exposed, to pull weeds and lay them in the rows, to gaze at the darkening sky. 

“You should have planted earlier in the season,” Joseph had earlier admonished his son. “If you’d planted back then, there was still moisture in the ground.” 

“There’s always danger of a cold snap,” Hugh had responded. “If the weather turned against us, the seeds would not germinate. They would rot in the ground and the crop would be lost.” 

But time had proved Joseph right. It had been a warm spring. A few extra weeks or even days might have given the seedlings a head start that would carry them through. 

Corn is a thirsty crop, but even now, in the midst of a drought, one good rain could bring it back, Hugh believed. The same with the hayfields that lay suffering in the heat, the timothy turning a sickly brown, the clover flowering before it should. One good rain would do wonders.

Hugh waited by the gate for his father to return from the field. When he did, the two men walked side by side toward the house. It was nearly supper time, and even from a distance, Hugh could smell freshly-baked bread. Sourdough, he thought, made from the starter his mother kept on the cellar steps. New potatoes from her kitchen garden, he hoped. Too early for tomatoes, but perhaps sugar snap peas. 

“We need rain,” the old man said.

Hugh nodded. “I was thinking of planting alfalfa next year. I hear it’s a lot more drought resistant. There are farmers down around York, Harvey Graber for one, who are getting two, sometimes three cuttings off a single field. Even four is not unheard of.”

“You can’t feed alfalfa to horses,” the old man said. “Too rich. You’d likely end up with some dead animals.”

“As long as you don’t give them too much, I think it would be fine. Mix it with timothy or clover, and it wouldn’t hurt them. And we could sell what we didn’t need.”

They stopped by the well near the back door of the house. Joseph removed the tin cup from the hook and motioned for Hugh to pump the handle. Fresh water gushed forth, filling the cup. Joseph drank.

“The wedding is coming up,” Hugh said.

“I know it.”

“I plan to take Gracie on a trip after we’re married,” he said. “A honeymoon.”

“Isabelle Winebrenner would make you a better wife. She’s a fine woman. This Gracie, she’s too delicate. Has she ever gotten her hands dirty? I doubt it. I’ve seen her in church on Sundays, all dressed up in those fancy lace dresses she favors, white stockings, hats she probably buys at some fancy millinery shop in the city. And that red-haired one, the youngest, ribbons in her hair. Those things don’t come cheap, Hugh.”

He held the cup under the faucet and waited for Hugh to fill it again. “She’s been raised in the lap of luxury, Hugh. Back when Martin was alive, you can’t imagine how they pranced around, the whole family, acting like they were better than anyone else. Fur coats, cars, and what of the mother? What of Louisa, married first to Martin, then to his brother? What of the rumors that Louisa was having an affair with Felix, and her husband learned of it?”

“It’s not true, Father,” Hugh said. “It’s not true.” 

Joseph tossed the water that was left in his cup into the yard. “They look down on us, Hugh, living in that great brick house up on that hill. I wish you’d call this whole thing off. And consider Isabelle. She’d make a fine wife for you.”

“I can’t do that, Father. It’s Gracie that I care about.”

“You could learn to care for Isabelle. She may not be much of a looker, like this Turner girl, but those things don’t count for much. Not in the long run. Someday you’ll learn that, Hugh. What matters is will she be faithful. Will she stand by you, work alongside you. Will she be a helpmate, like the bible says. I have my doubts about this Gracie. Serious doubts.” He set the cup back on the hook and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat. 

“If you go through with this,” he said, “if you marry her, she’ll have to quit her job. No married woman should hold a job when so many men are unemployed.”

He climbed the steps that led into the house and began to wash his hands at the sink in the pantry. “A married woman has no need of a job,” he went on. “She has a husband to take care of her. She can’t continue to work in that shirt factory.” He paused before pushing open the door that led into the kitchen. “I know you don’t much care for Isabelle, son, but she’s our kind of people. I think if you chose her, you’d be more satisfied. And the business of her being related, second or third cousin or whatever, it’s so far back, it’s nothing to be concerned about.” 

“I’ve never cared for her, Father. I think I’d rather stay single than to marry her. And what would be the harm, if Gracie kept her job, at least until we have children? She likes working; she’s told me that. She likes earning her own money. And wouldn’t it be a help if she brought in some extra money? She could still walk to work, like she does now.” 

“It isn’t seemly,” Joseph said. “It isn’t done. She’ll have to quit.” 

* * *

Esther, Hugh’s mother, greeted them, then turned back to the stove. The two men sat, and she brought the food to the table: A platter of ham submersed in milk gravy. A basket of warm bread. A jar of blackberry jam. A dish of watermelon pickles. 

She sat across from Joseph, bowed her head and folded her hands: “Bless us oh Lord and these thy gifts …” Her voice was muted, as if the prayer were a private communication between her and her God. Hugh looked across at his mother, and he thought how the years had changed her, graying her hair, wrinkling her face, thinning the flesh on her hands.  He wondered if having Gracie in the household would be a relief to her.

His father picked up the platter of ham and helped himself. “Did you know, Esther, that this girl Hugh plans to marry intends to keep working in that sewing factory? When men are out begging for something to eat, and their families are starving, she wants to keep on working. How much does she earn, Hugh? How much a week?”

“Ten dollars,” Hugh said, taking the platter from his father. “But she only keeps $5.00. She gives the rest to her mother.” 

“She save any of it? Or does she spend it on pretty things for herself?”

Hugh set the platter down, rose from the table, and went out the back door. 

* * *

In the weeks before the wedding, Hugh felt a profound thirst for information about the world that existed outside the one he knew. The newspapers were one way he could get a glimpse into that world, and he became an avid reader of whatever papers he could find. When Kristenberry came to buy eggs, he often brought the Baltimore Sun. Hugh would ask if he had finished reading it, and if he had, might he have it. When he filled the car with gasoline, he inquired of the clerk if there was a copy of yesterday’s Gettysburg Times he could have. He looked for old copies of the Frederick News Post when he visited the grocery store. When he had business at the newly-reopened bank, he picked up a copy of whatever newspaper was lying about, and he did not offer to pay the two pennies the paper cost. If one of the tellers or bank officials should object, he knew exactly what he would say. No one ever did. 

Once outside the building, he would scan the headlines, then fold the paper carefully, saving it for a time when he could go through it page by page. 

The world was so much bigger than he’d ever realized, and he understood that it was the prospect of his honeymoon trip that had made him begin to consider this. Soon he would be driving to a place he’d never been before, never imagined he might go. Where once his world had been limited to a circle that reached no farther than twenty miles in any direction, now it had expanded. He would be venturing out, Gracie by his side, into a part of the country that was foreign to him. Therein lay part of the reason his father preferred that he take Isabelle for his wife, he understood. Isabelle lived within that circle, and there was safety there. She was one of their own. Gracie was exotic, where Isabelle was content. Gracie would break down barriers. Isabelle would plod through life, accepting whatever came her way. Gracie could be fiery. Gracie might go against tradition. Gracie would love the idea of driving on the Skyline Drive. She would be thrilled by the cliffs, the mountain peaks, the waterfalls and tunnels. Isabelle would be worried about the dozens of things that could go wrong. 

Isabelle’s face was long and lean. Her legs were like fence posts. Her hips were too wide, her breasts too small. Isabelle had no spirit. Isabelle was sombre; Hugh could not recall ever having heard her laugh. Isabelle would never say a word against a priest, as Gracie had done. Isabelle would bow her head and allow her father to be buried outside the cemetery walls. Gracie would not. 

*  *  *

Lingering on the sidewalk outside his house, supper forgotten, Hugh thought of things he had learned in the newspapers he read by candlelight: 

“A woman from Albany, NY, mother of three, has been sentenced to death in the electric chair for the slaying of her husband.” 

“Rooms papered for $5.00.”

“For sale, 500 bushels of apples, 50 cents and up.” 

“Public sale of valuable real estate and personal property.”

 This last ad was from the Frederick News Post: might there be a wedding ring among the personal property, Hugh wondered? A month ago he’d visited Blocker’s Jewelry store in Taneytown, but left when he learned the price of a simple gold band. 

He perused ads from stores he had never heard of: the Palais Department Store in Washington, Hecht’s and the May Company in Baltimore. Shoes, $4.95. Suits, $129.00. Other ads from stores he knew: Men’s silk ties, 56 cents. Men’s felt hats, $2.66. Shoe Repair, Half Soles and Rubber Heels, 49 cents.

“Roosevelt announces $400,000,000 cut in Veterans’ Benefits.”

“The Reverend Charles E. Coughlin renewed his attack on bankers …”

“Escaped criminal John Herbert Dillinger and his gang robbed a bank in Ohio.”

The world is in turmoil, Hugh thought. It wasn’t just Dillinger. There was Baby Face Nelson, the Barrow gang, Al Capone, Ma Barker, and Pretty Boy Floyd. Bootleggers, robbers, and kidnappers. 

Bonnie and Clyde stood apart from the rest. They were different. They were kids, unmarried, joy-riding across the country in stolen vehicles. If one got stuck in the mud, they stole another. If Clyde, a notoriously reckless driver, wrecked a car, he hot-wired another. Bonnie bought movie magazines and read them as they roamed across the southern states. She dreamed of one day becoming an actress. She wrote poetry, and newspapers delighted in printing them. 

“The road was so dimly lighted,

there were no highway signs to guide.

But they made up their minds;

if all roads were blind,

they wouldn’t give up till they died.” 

* * *

Hugh sat on the porch steps and rested his head in his cupped hands. In a matter of weeks he would be married. He still had not bought a suit. He would need dress shoes. A white shirt and tie. He owned none of these. 

His father had always kept tight control of the money that came into the household. While he never gave Hugh a set amount per week, if there was money to spare, if the crops did well, if there was work in the blacksmith shop, if the price of eggs and pullets remained steady, Joseph could, on occasion, be generous. Over the years Hugh had been able to save a small amount of money. He would use it to buy the things he needed to buy.  

And the matter of the ring? He’d found one in the Sears Catalog that he could afford: a simple band, made of palladium, silver white. Cost, $10.95. It was paired with a 1/8 carat engagement ring, $84.95. The rings were available in sizes 5 to 8. Lightweight and durable, the rings would not tarnish, the ad promised.

Someday, Hugh promised himself, he would buy the engagement ring for Gracie. But not  now. Not yet. Not until the world righted itself. Until the rains came again, and the air was not so dusty, and food not so scarce, and so many hovering on the brink of starvation. So many who asked to sleep in barns, or burrowed into haystacks, or boarded trains that would take them anywhere, any place, where life was not so hard. 

“Ring size is roughly equal to shoe size,” Esther told him when he showed her the picture, and she looked at him inquiringly. As if he should know. Or at least have some idea what size Gracie might wear.

He was at a loss. “She has small hands,” he said, thinking how warm they felt when he held them, how fragile they were when encased in his own work-hardened ones.

“Size seven,” she suggested. “She’s such a little thing; that might be too big, but it’s better to buy too big than too small. If it’s not right, Sears will resize for free. All you have to do is return the ring with the desired size.”

Hugh filled out the order blank. Before he slipped it into the envelope provided, he looked longingly at the picture of the matching engagement ring. Someday, he thought. No matter how hard I have to work, I’ll buy her the engagement ring. There will come a day when I slip it onto her finger. 

He tore the page from the catalog and placed it under the lace doily on his dresser. But then, remembering they would be spending their first night there, he removed the page, carried it downstairs and put it on the top shelf of his mother’s china cabinet. 

The next day he purchased a money order at the post office, put it in the envelope with the order sheet, sealed it and dropped it into the mail slot. 

Driving home that evening, the setting sun behind him, he surveyed the dry fields, grazing cattle, unpainted barns and houses. After he had passed Flat Run, a creek that ran wide and shallow in the spring, he slowed. On the right, set far back from the road and almost hidden by tall trees, was a house built twenty years before. It had been ordered out of a Sears catalog. When it arrived loaded onto the back of a truck, it had been the source of much merriment among the people who lived in the surrounding area. 

“A house in a box,” they said. 

“Imagine such a thing.”

“Pre-cut lumber, every piece marked.” 

“Loaded on the back of a truck. A Crafton, they call it.”

“More like a jigsaw puzzle.” 

But when it was all put together, it looked no different from other houses. The laughter stopped. 

Hugh drove on, his mind on Gracie, the children they would have, the house they would one day build.  

* * *

Hugh rose from his seat on the steps, went into the house, and climbed the stairs to his room. On the dresser lay a postcard that had arrived a week ago. The Civilian Conservation Corp was hiring. Workers were needed for conservation projects and for building roads. Pay, $30 a month, $25 of which would be sent home to the family of the worker. Training would be provided, as well as food and shelter.

“Building roads,” Hugh murmured. “Like the Skyline Drive.” 

“Because of the drought, fruit pickers from Virginia will be given priority,” the card said. “The jobs will entail grading slopes, building guardrails and stone walls, planting trees, clearing picnic areas, and building comfort stations. 

“The CCC expects to hire 1,000 men. They will be assigned to ten camps along the route.” 

Hugh wrote his name and address in the space provided and set the card back on his dresser. He’d talk to Gracie about it.

* * *

Two days before his wedding, Hugh’s father reached into his pocket and withdrew several bills. He removed one and held it out to his son.   

Hugh looked at the ragged bit of paper. Dog-eared and wrinkled, many times folded and unfolded but still recognizable: a ten-dollar bill.  

Joseph laid the money on the side table where he kept his tools and turned back to the forge. A pair of horseshoes lay on the bed of coals. “If you’re determined to go on this trip,” he said, “you’ll need some extra money. Make sure you take the toolbox along. Hard to tell what troubles you might run into, or how much you’re gonna have to pay for gas.” He reached down to turn the crank beneath the forge and the coals began to redden. He took a step backwards, away from the burst of air thick with heat and smoke and coal dust.

“I planned to fill up before we left,” Hugh said, watching the horseshoes begin to take on the color of the burning coals. “I think we can make it to Front Royal on a tank of gas.” He’d done the math: if he got ten miles to the gallon, and the tank held eleven gallons, he could make  it. He’d fill up again before heading up the mountain. If he could find gas for ten cents a gallon, the fill-up would cost $1.10. If he had to pay fifteen cents, it would cost $1.65. 

It was all speculation. He had no idea how many miles per gallon he’d actually get or how much he’d have to pay. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. To start out on a trip like this, with so little money … if Gracie knew, what would she say? 

Yet he felt a swell of gratitude for his father. He hadn’t expected the extra money, but it would make things easier. The honeymoon he planned would come to pass. He and Gracie would climb to the heights of the Blue Ridge Mountain range and they would begin their future together.

Hanging on the nail in his bedroom was a gray, pin-striped suit. In the top drawer of his dresser, a white shirt, carefully folded. Beside it, a white bow tie. On the floor next to his bed, a pair of brown Oxford shoes. Beneath the bed, a cardboard suitcase, already packed. To buy these things had taken most of the money he’d saved. 

Hugh picked up the bill from the side table and slipped it into his pocket. “Thank you, sir,” he said. 

“Remember to check the oil every time you stop at a gas station. If you see blue smoke coming out the tailpipe, try cleaning the spark plugs. That might save you having to buy a new set. Take along a patching kit, in case you have a flat.”

“I think I’m prepared, Sir.” 

“Don’t drive too fast on those mountain roads.”

“I don’t plan to.” 

The old man picked up tongs and removed a shoe from the forge. He laid it on the anvil and began to beat it into shape. When he was satisfied with his work, he used the tongs to drop the shoe into a bucket of water. Steam rose in a great burst and the shoe hissed and the two men waited for the air to clear and a semblance of calm to return to the darkened room.  

“After you’re married,” Joseph said, “I’ll give you $8.00 a week. Two people, free room and board, that should be enough. Esther and your Gracie can go to the grocery store together, buy what they need and split it. Times are hard, and we aren’t rich people. Not like the Turners.”

“They aren’t rich, Father. They just work hard.” 

“And we don’t?”

Hugh did not answer. He reached to turn the crank that would force air through the openings in the bottom of the forge. Orange flames rose up, and sputtered, and died away. The second shoe began to redden.

He gazed into the forge and wondered how he would tell his new bride she would have to shop for groceries with his mother, and that the two women would split the food they bought. Would she understand what hold his father had on him? Not his father, he realized. His mother. His long-suffering mother. Esther. 

In his mind came a picture of Esther, standing on the porch, looking out across the yard where her supper lay strewn. She’d made cornmeal mush, and she’d left it on the stove too long. No amount of milk or molasses could mask the scorched taste. Joseph pronounced it unfit to eat. He picked up the pot, carried it outside, and slung the contents across the yard. 

Eight dollars a week. Coffee, flour, and sugar. Joseph liked bacon with his eggs in the morning; he would insist that Esther buy it for him. Thirty-nine cents a pound. Two pounds, $.78 cents. Three pounds, $1.17. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Hugh said, “if we bought a few cows, we’d have our own milk. We could churn butter and make our own cheese. It’s something I’d like to consider. Jacob Talbot has some heifers he’s willing to sell.” 

“We have all the work we can handle right now,” Joseph said. “How long do you plan on being away?” 

“I don’t know. Three or four days. No more than that.”   

“Pet has gone lame. I think one of her shoes has come loose. Right rear. Take a look at it, will you? If that’s all it is, take it off. I’d do it myself, but Overhaltzer is bringing his team in for me to shoe this afternoon.”

“His mules? Do they need new shoes, or just trimming and resetting?” 

“They’ll need new ones, I expect.”

“I can take care of it for you,” Hugh said. “If it’s okay, I’d like to keep the money. Going away on a trip like this, I might need it.”

“You’ll have to pay me for the shoes,” the old man said. “Five cents a piece. Two mules, eight shoes, forty cents. 

* * *

Years later, Hugh would remember little of the day he married Gracie Turner. The events flowed into one another, a kaleidoscope of changing scenes, colors, and voices. Jumbled and out of sequence as they were, the most vivid rose to the top, like cream. It was those memories, flawed and distorted as they might have been, that would stay with him throughout his life. 

He remembered Esther, his mother, watching him descend the stairs that morning. Esther, so elegant in her new dress, navy crepe beaded around the neck, her hat a matching navy velour. Esther, gazing at him through eyes dimmed with glaucoma, glistening with unshed tears. Joseph, dressed all in black, so tall and straight, hands crossed behind his back in his customary pose, head held high, mustache trimmed unevenly but who would dare tell him. 

And Hugh, his shirt collar too tight around his neck. Regretting that he’d waited until the last day to break in his new shoes. They felt stiff, unyielding, the left one too tight across the arch. A blister would form on the back of his right foot before the day was over, he was certain. And the suit: his mother had insisted on worsted wool, and he had bowed to her superior knowledge of such things. The shoulders were padded, the lapels wide, the trousers pleated at the waist, cuffed at the bottom. But it was the fabric that he found so amazing: lightweight and soft, perfect for either a summer day or a winter snowstorm. 

“You’re every bit as handsome as Clark Gable,” she’d said, and proceeded to adjust his tie. Before they left the house, she put a straight pin in an inside seam of the bodice of her dress. “For the boutonnière,” she explained. “In case the florist forgets to bring one.” 

Joseph turned away. “So much waste,” he muttered, retrieving his cane from the stand by the front door.  

Burned into Hugh’s memory was the moment he caught his first glimpse of Gracie. Standing on the altar with Martin, he watched her walk down the aisle, her brother Stanley by her side. Resplendent in her white dress, she wore a veil that cascaded down from a pearl encrusted headpiece. He wished he could see her face, but it was covered, and he could not. Halfway down the aisle she turned to greet someone, and he felt a pang of jealousy.

There was a Mass, he knew, and it seemed interminable. The leather on the kneeler was hard and cracked, and his knees began to hurt. But the church was nearly full and there were so many people watching, he could do nothing but bear it. 

He remembered the moment in the service when the priest—he could never afterwards bring back the man’s face or his name—the priest raised his voice and spoke directly to the congregation. “If anyone here can show just cause why this couple cannot lawfully be joined together in matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.” 

Isabelle Winebrenner was sitting directly behind Joseph and Esther. Would she stand and denounce him? Tell all who were gathered there that since childhood they were expected to marry? That Hugh had known of these expectations, and never given her reason to doubt they would one day be wed? 

She did not. The moment passed. 

He would always remember the sound of Gracie’s voice, almost inaudible at first, but gaining strength as she repeated the words of the priest … “to be my wedded husband …,” “for richer, for poorer …,” “till death do us part.” He could only hope their lives would be like that, tentative at first, tender toward each other, but gaining strength in their love as the years went by. 

The late afternoon sun was slanting through the stained-glass windows when the ceremony was over. He and Gracie turned to face each other for the first time as man and wife. They kissed, then turned, smiling, to the congregation. Hand in hand they faced the people gathered there, then hurried down the aisle, out the door and down the steps. There were congratulations and sighs of relief and a photographer snapping pictures. Hugh helped his bride into the Chevy and they drove to Gracie’s house. Joseph and Esther rode in back. 

The 21st amendment that repealed Prohibition had passed in February of 1933, but four months later, on the day Hugh and Gracie were married, it had not yet been ratified by the required number of states. Liquor was still illegal, but the Turner house sat far above the town, and it was surrounded by hills, and it was a happy occasion. Hugh was cajoled into taking a drink, but he was so overcome with the enormity of how his life had changed that he did not finish it, and when he was offered another, he refused. 

There was joy and merry-making, but he was haunted by a moment during the Mass when he and Gracie knelt side by side on the kneeler. Her head was bowed so that her veil obscured much of her face. He was struck with how lovely she was, how young and innocent.

He wondered if she had any idea how hard their life together might be. It was a thought that would weigh heavily on him for many years into the future. 

* * *

The needle on the gas gauge was erratic. The closer Hugh and Gracie got to Front Royal, the more erratic it became. When they were climbing a hill, it hovered near empty. When they crested and began the downhill run, it would surge well past the quarter tank mark. Hugh had no idea of its accuracy, but he was prepared. Behind the back seat of the car he’d placed a five-gallon can of gasoline.

They’d left early in the morning, and Hugh had driven nearly ninety miles. He would need to fill up before they began the climb to the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. When he saw a gas station on the outskirts of Front Royal, he pulled in. The posted price was fourteen cents per gallon.

“Fill it, please,” he told the attendant. 

Gracie went inside to use the restroom, and Hugh leaned against the side of the car while the attendant filled the tank. 

“How far to the Skyline Drive?” he asked the boy, a tall, skinny kid who looked to be no more than fourteen. 

“Stay on this road for another mile,” the boy said, so immersed in his job he did not look up. “South Royal turns into 340. You’ll see the signs. The entrance is on your left.” 

“Do you know how far it is to Mary’s Rock Tunnel?”

“People ask that all the time. About thirty miles, my dad says. He’s been through it a few times. Kinda scary, if you ask me. They blasted through solid rock.” He withdrew the nozzle from the tank and placed it in the holder. “$1.40 for the gas,” he said. “Pay inside.” 

Gracie was coming out as Hugh went in. “They have sodas,” he said, pointing to the advertisement on the side of the building. “Would you like one?”

“I would,” she answered, and she followed him back into the store. Hugh fished two bottles out of the ice-filled chest and set them on the counter. He handed the clerk two dollars and watched as the man rang up the sale. He held out his hand for the change: fifty cents.

* * *

With the bottles of Coke in the picnic basket on the back seat, they drove on until they reached the access road that led up the mountain. Hugh slowed to read the sign: Skyline Drive, North Entrance, Shenandoah National Park, U.S. Department of the Interior.

He turned onto a smooth macadam road that rose sharply into dense forest, then leveled off. A mile farther on they reached the toll plaza. Entrance fee, one to seven days, twenty-five cents. Hugh stopped beside the booth, reached into his pocket, withdrew a quarter, and handed it to the Ranger. He was left with four dollars and eighty-five cents.
“Your first time on the Skyline?” the Ranger asked. 

Hugh nodded.

“You wouldn’t be on your honeymoon, would you?”

Hugh looked at the ranger in surprise. How did he know? 

“Lots of newlyweds come here,” the man went on. “It’s a popular destination.” He leaned close to the car. “Your bride is very pretty. Take care of her.” 

“I plan to,” Hugh responded, embarrassed, anxious to pull away. 

“It’ll be chilly when you get farther up the mountain. Pay attention to the speed limit: 35 miles per hour. And watch out for deer; the park is full of them.” He handed Hugh a map and a brochure; Hugh passed them to Gracie, nodded his thanks to the Ranger and pulled away.

“We’re here, Gracie,” he said as he accelerated. “We’re actually on the Skyline Drive. They’re still working on it down south, but when it’s finished, you’ll be able to drive for over a hundred miles along the crest of the mountain.” 

“A hundred and five,” Gracie responded, reading from the brochure. “Can we stay for the whole seven days? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? The brochure says you can rent cabins.”

“It’s a long time to be away from home,” Hugh said.  

“There are trails all through the park. And waterfalls. Let’s find a place by a stream  where we can have our picnic lunch. And let’s plan on coming back next year, Hugh, and every year after that. There’s so much to see.”

“We can try. It might not be possible.” He looked over at her. “But we can try,” he repeated, resolving at that moment that he would do everything he could to make it happen. And knowing, just as certainly, that it could not be. 

They drove on, and for what seemed like miles there was no sign of civilization: just trees and road and the occasional car heading in the opposite direction. Kristenberry had warned him the altitude might affect the car, but the motor ran smooth and steady. The climb had been so gradual it seemed no climb at all. He could feel the power beneath his hands, his foot on the accelerator, the vibrations through the floorboard. 

The road meandered and rose and dipped, and the forest inched closer to the car. The wind blew gently and Gracie turned her face toward the window, eyes closed, and Hugh was grateful for the warmth of the sun and the freedom of this place that for the next few days was theirs and theirs alone. He was as happy as he had ever been. 

They stopped at an overlook and stood, hand in hand, gazing out across the valley, the brilliant green of the close-in hillside, the darker green of the valley floor shading to sage as the distance gathered, then to blue as the sky reached down and covered the mountains. Just beyond the low stone wall was a field filled with daisies. Gracie leaned across the barrier and picked one. Turning to Hugh, she began to remove the petals, one by one. “He loves me, he loves me not,” she recited, and he could see the whimsy in her eyes, the teasing, the playfulness. 

He watched as she removed the petals and let them drift away on the wind. Long before she removed the last one, Hugh had picked another daisy from the field. “If it ends with ‘he loves me not,’ you’ll have to do it all over again.”

It was a light-hearted moment, and it ended as Hugh hoped it would: “He loves me.” 

“We’ll come back some day,” he said, threading the second daisy into her hair. “We’ll come back, I promise.” 

* * * 

They drove on until they reached the Signal Knob parking area. Hugh lifted the picnic basket from the back seat of the car, and they walked down a path that led to an old stone house, long abandoned. They followed a stream uphill until they came to a small pool fed by water that seeped from beneath an overhang. They sat on a smooth rock beside the pool and opened the picnic basket. Inside, they found ham sandwiches, watercress salad sprinkled with walnuts, a jar of sweet pickles, apple dumplings wrapped in brown paper.   

Gracie spread the food on the tablecloth Esther had provided, while Hugh, using the thin edge of the overhanging rock, opened the bottles of Coke.  

The walnuts, he knew, were from a tree at the edge of the cornfield. Every year Hugh’s mother gathered them and laid them in the driveway to be trampled or run over until their blackened hulls were gone. When they were dry she sat on the back steps and cracked them open, then stored the meats in the root cellar. The pickles were made from cucumbers she’d grown in her garden, the apples from the tree beside the watering trough. She’d gathered the watercress from the stream that ran through the meadow. The apple dumplings were sweetened with honey from the beehives she kept near the woods. The flour she used to make the dough came from the wheat they had carried to the Turner mill in late summer to be ground. 

He wanted to tell Gracie these things, but something stopped him. That so much of what they ate came from the things around them spoke of their poverty, a poverty he would be inflicting on her. 

And when they had children, as they surely would, if the depression had not ended, he wondered how hard things might become. 

* * *

The wind grew strong as they climbed higher into the mountains. The temperature dropped. Once they had to stop to allow a bear to cross the road in front of them. They sat motionless in the car, wondering if they were in danger. Halfway across the animal stopped, stood up on hind legs and gazed at the car and its occupants. 

Hugh quietly shifted to reverse but made no other move. 

They heard rustling sounds, leaves being crunched, sticks breaking. A moment later the bear dropped to all fours and went back into the woods from which she had emerged. Two cubs bounded toward her, tumbling over her, swatting at her, licking her face. She shook them off and walked deeper into the woods. 

They heard scraping sounds. 

“What is she doing?” Gracie whispered. 

“There’s an old rotted log there. She’s probably digging. Looking for insects,” Hugh said, “or maybe roots. Bears eat just about anything they can find. Later on, when blackberries are ripe, they’ll gorge themselves.”

“Is it safe to drive on?” 

He put the car in gear, but as he inched forward, the bear again moved onto the road. Hugh braked to a standstill. 

She crossed so close in front of the car they could smell her, an odor that was like a hayfield in autumn. The two cubs scampered after her.  

When all three had disappeared into the undergrowth, and the sounds of their passage had faded, Hugh drove on. There were hairpin turns and lazy circles; the sun skittering around the car from the passenger to the driver’s side and back. They stopped at overlooks to view panoramas laid out before them, lakes and farmhouses, freshly plowed fields, meadows filled with wildflowers. 

Evening was approaching when they set out to hike the Little Devil Stairs Trail. It was a steep climb, and it became steeper as they made their way up the mountain. They crossed a wide ravine, and the trail narrowed. They walked along the banks of a mountain stream, single-file, until they found what looked like an easy way to cross. Stepping from rock to rock they made their way to the other side. The trail now became so steep they had to grab onto tree branches to pull themselves up. 

Halfway to the top, Gracie stopped to catch her breath. “You should have told me we’d be hiking up a mountain,” she said. “I’d have worn trousers. And brought along my gardening shoes.”

“We can turn around if you want. Find another trail. One that’s not quite so steep.”

“Let’s keep going. With a name like Little Devil Stairs, it must be worth seeing. It can’t be too much farther.” 

“I’ve never seen you wear trousers.” 

She looked at him, eyebrows raised, as if wondering what he meant. “Would you disapprove?”

He answered quickly. “No. Not at all.”

“I don’t wear them often. Women, older women especially, look at you like you’ve committed some kind of crime if you wear them in public. But I love them. They make me feel so free. My friend Callie, from work, talked me into buying a pair.”

“I think my father might …” he hesitated, wondering what words to use. “Not approve,” he finished. And felt the insincerity of what he’d said, the cowardliness. 

“So I shouldn’t wear them around him?”

“Wear what you want. Pay him no mind. If he says anything, ignore him.”   

“They’re so comfortable. I like how I feel when I’m wearing them. They have pockets, and the waistline is really high, and they’re pleated.” 

Hugh thought of the suit he’d worn yesterday. The pants were pleated. His mother had pronounced them very stylish. 

Gracie went on: “Callie says there’s a verse in the Bible about women not being allowed to wear men’s clothing. She laughs at it, says someone made it up and stuck it in there. Why would God care what kind of clothes a person wore? Trousers make so much sense when you’re working in the fields or doing all kinds of things. I like dresses okay, I love my wedding dress, did you like it, Hugh? Was it pretty?”

“It was,” he said. “It was beautiful. I wanted to tell you, yesterday, but there were so many people … I just couldn’t find the right words, or the right time.” The trail had widened by then; he took her hand and they walked on.

“You were utterly beautiful, Gracie. And so was your dress. I’m a lucky man.”

“Would your mother disapprove if I wore trousers around the house? Doing chores and things?”

“I think she might. But maybe not. I don’t know. She might think they’re very stylish. And practical. You could ask her.” 

“I will. If she likes them, I could offer to make some for her.” She swung their hands back and forth, and on that mountain trail they were like children. “I’m a pretty good seamstress, Hugh. Did you know that? I’ll bet you didn’t. Not as good as my sister, but if I have a pattern, I do okay. I make most of my own clothes. Does your mother have a sewing machine? It’s okay if she doesn’t. I can use the one at home. You’ll take me home to see my mother, won’t you, Hugh? Every Sunday, I’d like to go back. Help her fix Sunday dinner. Can we do that?” 

“Are you missing your family already?”

“Maybe. A little.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. With her next words, her tone had changed. “I know how hard times are, Hugh. I won’t be a burden, and I won’t ask too much of you. I’ll be a helpmate. I promise.”  

* * *

A half mile farther on they reached a waterfall, the water pouring down from far above them. They lingered there, resting from the climb, gazing at the tumbling water. Gracie found a rock to sit on, and Hugh joined her, and they let the spray wet their clothes, their hair, and their skin. It hardly mattered. In that remote forest, on a trail that had been blazed by animals and Indians and now the descendants of European immigrants, they felt more alone yet more together than they had ever felt. The wedding and the reception had faded, the supper at Hugh’s house, the breakfast with Joseph and Esther, it all seemed such a long time ago. The future lay before them and it was without form. And on that day on that mountain, they had no fear of what might lie ahead.  

When some interminable time had passed, and the sun was slanting through the trees, they decided they would leave the Devil Stairs, still somewhere above them, for another day.

They went down the trail and got into the car and drove on. Evening was upon them. The temperature was dropping, and a mist had settled in the valleys. It was time to look for a place to stay for the night. 

For the next ten miles, there was only forest. Until they came to Mary’s Rock Tunnel. “Seven hundred feet blasted through solid granite rock,” Gracie read from the brochure. “One billion three hundred million years ago this rock was still molten magma.” She looked up. “I have no concept of how long ago that was. It’s too big a number. And how could anyone really know?”

Hugh had no answer. The tunnel loomed.

* * *

They were barely inside when the headlamp on the passenger side of the car failed. The tunnel darkened. The sound of the motor changed as the car labored uphill; it became lower, deeper, more gravelly. Water dripped from the ceiling, seeped through the concrete walls, and lay in puddles on the road.

Gracie leaned forward in her seat. There was light, but it was far away and dim. “I wouldn’t like to be caught in here,” she said. “For the car to stall out or something.” 

“There’s nothing to worry about, Gracie. It’s a good car. It made it up hills a lot worse than this.” But he was thinking of the slippery road surface, the musty odor inside the tunnel, the clamminess of the trapped air. 

A car approached from the opposite direction, and its headlamps illuminated the tunnel walls and ceiling. When it was nearly abreast of them, it hit a puddle, throwing dirty water onto the side of their vehicle. Hugh flinched. He tightened his grip on the wheel and drove on toward the tunnel opening.

Outside, it was a different world. The fog was as dense as ever, but the sky had darkened, and it had begun to rain. Hugh drove more slowly now, watching the white line in the middle of the road, thankful it was the passenger side headlamp that had gone out and not the one on the driver’s side. 

It was time to stop for the night. But they had entered a section of the Skyline Drive man had abandoned. In the construction of the roadway the workers had blasted away mountains and filled valleys with the tailings. There were sheer cliffs on one side of the road, drop-offs on the other, hairpin turns, steep ascents and downhill slopes. But there were no settlements, no rest areas, no overlooks.

“It was raining the night my father had his accident,” Gracie said.

Hugh caught his breath. It had happened so long ago, before Gracie was born. He knew few of the details. 

“They said he probably couldn’t see the road ahead, because of the rain. He was near the top of the mountain. There was a sharp turn, and they think he tried to make it, but he was too late. The car went down an embankment, into a ravine. It was hours before anyone found him.”

“Did your mother tell you that?”

She nodded. “His car was one of the first to have an electric starter. He’d only had it for a few months. A 1912 Ford Model T. He was so proud of it, my mother said. After the accident they brought it home and parked it in the barn. It was there for a long time, until someone came along who wanted to buy it.”   

All Hugh could think to do was reach over and squeeze her hand. “We’ll be fine, Gracie.” he said. “I’ll fix the headlamp in the morning. And we’ll find a place to stay tonight. I promise.”

* * *

The rain turned into a downpour, and Hugh was forced to reduce his speed even further. They rounded a bend and he caught a glimpse of a sign beside the road. Did it contain the word “cabin”? He wasn’t certain. 

But Gracie was. “Cabins for Rent,” she said, her voice full of excitement. “Three miles ahead. Let’s stop there, Hugh. Let’s get out of this rain.”  

“Three miles ahead? Did it say that on the sign?”

“It was on the bottom; didn’t you see it? Let’s stop there for the night. And if it’s nice, we can stay longer. Oh, I do hope it isn’t raining tomorrow. This is our honeymoon. I want the weather to be perfect. I want everything to be perfect. It can’t be raining.” 

“We’ll stop and see what it’s like.”

It hardly mattered. He had no idea how far he might have to drive before they found other accommodations. When they reached the cabins they would stop, and they would stay the night.            

* * *

They were the longest three miles Hugh had ever driven. The fog, the rain, the twisting highway. Low guardrails meant to keep drivers from going off the road. The chill in the night air.  The image of Gracie’s father’s car, going off the road, tumbling down the side of the mountain.  

Speed limit thirty-five, but in this weather and under these conditions, he could do no more than creep along, barely able to see the white line that divided the highway. Could they have missed the cabins? Surely they’d traveled more than three miles. There was nothing to do but keep going, into the darkness, no moon, no stars. Only blackness. And rain. 

Then there it was: “Cabins for Rent.” Beneath it, an arrow pointing to the right. 

The gravel road descended sharply, then leveled off in front of a general store. Gas pumps in front; several cabins nestled in the woods.  

Hugh parked and went inside. Gracie waited in the car. 

“Nasty out there,” the man behind the counter said. Dressed in bib overalls, he was a giant of a man, well over six feet, middle-aged, muscular arms full of scars. A lumberman, Hugh guessed.  

“You need gas?” He lowered the volume of the radio which sat on the counter beside the cash register.

“I’d like to rent one of your cabins.”

“Two of you?” He nodded toward the car.

“Yes. Me and my wife,” he said, realizing it was the first time he had said those words. “Me and my wife,” Hugh said again, more loudly this time, and felt a thrill when he heard the words. 

“Just one night?” 

“How much will it be?”

“$1.25. Supper included. It’s late, but I think the wife can rustle you up something.” Breakfast for another 50 cents.” 

“One night,” Hugh said. 

“Two nights,” said Gracie. 

He hadn’t heard the car door slam, the shop door open, her footsteps. But there she was, beside him, gazing up at him, looking pleased with herself.

“Are you sure, Gracie? Two nights? You don’t want to go any farther on the Skyline Drive?”

“It’s a nice cabin,” the proprietor broke in. “I built it myself. There’s a fireplace. On a chilly night like tonight, you’ll want a fire. There’s wood already split on the front porch, and some kindling. It should be nice and dry.”

“I asked for a whole week off from my job,” Gracie said. She turned to the proprietor. “Could you turn the volume up on the radio? I love Jimmie Rodgers, and that’s my favorite song.”

She turned to Hugh, index finger across her lips:  

A thousand miles away from home and sleeping in the rain. 

“That’s us, Hugh,” she whispered. “A thousand miles away from home and sleeping in the rain.”  

“Not quite a thousand,” he said, smiling at her. 

They stood in silence, the three of them, waiting for the lines they all knew were coming:  I haven’t got a nickel not a penny can I show.

Get off get off you railroad bum,

            He slammed the box car door.  

* * *

The cabin was lit by a blazing fire. They sat at a round table by the window. Beneath the white cloth was cold chicken, buttermilk biscuits, and Harvard beets. A bottle of wild cherry wine. Delivered by the proprietor’s wife. 

He told her Harvard beets were his favorite. She promised to ask the proprietor’s wife for the recipe in the morning. He wanted to tell her how happy he was, how lucky he was to have her as his wife; he found the words did not come easily. 

When they finished their supper Gracie set the tray on the porch and came back inside. They sat, watching the fire until it died down, and there was only the glow of embers, and night sounds: the stream in its broken travels, the song of lonely nightingales, the croak of excited frogs. And the sound of rain on the roof. 

For that night, they needed nothing more than to be together. 

In the morning Hugh would tell her his money was nearly gone. He would promise to take her on a real honeymoon when he could afford it. But for tonight, there was the warm glow from the fireplace, and the walls of the rented cabin on the Skyline Drive. 

* * *

Before they left in the morning, on that same radio, they would hear news of Bonnie and Clyde. Always a fast driver, Clyde had been racing along a country road in north Texas in a stolen Ford V-8. Going too fast to read the sign warning that the bridge was out, he smashed through the barricade, sailed into the air, and landed in a dry riverbed. 

A family named Pritchard who lived nearby heard the crash. They ran to the river, got Bonnie out of the car, and carried her back to their house. Her leg was badly burned, almost to the bone. Mrs. Pritchard treated it with bicarbonate of soda. A Pritchard nephew went for a doctor. He brought back the sheriff and a deputy. 

Clyde was quick with a gun. He took the two officers captive and forced them into the back of their patrol car. Hours later he released them. “He tied us to a tree,” one of the officers said, “but he didn’t make the rope very tight. I think he wanted us to be able to escape. ‘You’ve been kind to Bonnie,’ he said. Then he got in the car and, with Bonnie in the passenger seat, he roared off.” 

Gracie, hearing the news, would surely think of her father, Martin, at the bottom of that ravine nineteen years ago. And of her stepfather, Felix, on the pantry floor just a year ago. Bonnie, her leg burned so badly she would walk with a limp for the rest of her life. Bonnie and Clyde, on the run, spending nights in remote cabins or cheap motels or in one of the cars they had stolen.

“She’s bound to come to a bad end,” Gracie’s mother had said.

And Gracie would reach out to take Hugh’s hand, knowing that, with this man, there would be hardships. Until the world righted itself, they would struggle. But their lives would be different from that of two young kids who were as much in love as she and Hugh, but a couple who, in just a few months, would die in a hail of bullets.

About the author

Rita Welty Bourke is the author of Kylie's Ark: The Making of a Veterinarian and Islomanes of Cumberland Island. Her third novel, A Stone from the River Rhine, is forthcoming. She has published fiction and nonfiction in numerous literary journals. Married to songwriter Rory M. Bourke, she lives in Nashville and is the mother of three daughters. Visit her website at RitaWeltyBourke.com.  

About the illustration

The illustration is a snapshot of criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, from an undeveloped roll of film seized by police in the spring of 1933. In the collection of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Freedom of Information Act Library. In the public domain.

An excerpt of the poem "The Trail's End" by Bonnie Parker is reprinted here. The poem is in the public domain.

Lyrics from "Waiting for a Train" by Jimmie Rodgers are reprinted here. This work is in the public domain.