A Tale from the Hills Read online

  A Tale From The Hills

  by

  Terry Hayden

  © Copyright 2003 Terry Hayden. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Hayden, Terry, 1950-

  A tale from the hills / Terry Hayden.

  ISBN 1-4120-0221-4 I. Title.

  ISBN 978-1-4122-1163-5 (ebook)

  PS3608.A92T34 2003 813’.6 C2003-

  902169-6

  This book was published on-demand in cooperation with Trafford Publishing.

  On-demand publishing is a unique process and service of making a book available for retail sale to the public taking advantage of on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing. On-demand publishing includes promotions, retail sales, manufacturing, order fulfilment, accounting and collecting royalties on behalf of the author.

  Suite 6E, 2333 Government St., Victoria, B.C. V8T 4P4, CANADA

  Phone 250-383-6864 Toll-free 1-888-232-4444 (Canada & US)

  Fax 250-383-6804 E-mail [email protected]

  Web site www.trafford.com trafford publishing is a division of trafford holdings ltd.

  Trafford Catalogue #03-0590 www.trafford.com/robots/03-0590.html

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Contents

  Part One

  Part Two

  Chapter one

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Four

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  PART FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  Part One

  In the southwestern part of Virginia, in a region known for its beauty and southern hospitality, lies a scenic byway frequented by tourists and locals alike. The byproduct of a long extinct railroad track that made its way from the town of Abingdon to the edge of North Carolina; few places in the eastern United States can rival its charm and unspoiled natural scenery. On any given day horsemen, bicyclists, and hikers enjoy the fresh air and vistas of the Virginia Creeper Trail. A highway runs parallel to sections of the trail; however, long sections are remote.

  During the bygone days of the Virginia Creeper Railroad, life was hard for people who lived in the area. The terrain was beautiful but very rugged. The inhabitants lived and labored under severe conditions. The modern conveniences of electricity and telephone service were not available to the poor but hardworking people. Tiny houses no better than shacks dotted the mountain landscape. Families lived in hollows and ridges along the railroad tracks that were impenetrable except by horseback or on foot. A sense of community or neighborhood spirit did not exist. On rare occasions family members would go into town for supplies because necessities were actually luxuries to the proud mountaineers. They kept to themselves. They were backward and clannish. Superstitions, omens, and unexplained phenomena were often a part of their daily lives. When the rest of the country was suffering under the grip of the Great Depression, inhabitants along the Creeper tracks could not tell the difference.

  Illnesses that could easily be cured in more modern times took a heavy toll during that harsh time. The infant mortality rate was high and few people survived to live an old age. Medicines were precious and expensive. Medication and therapy for mental illness was nonexistent. The inflicted family kept its mentally disturbed father, or mother, or child at home. They managed as well as they could, but life was very hard.

  The Second World War brought civilization to a random sampling of the mountain population. Men and boys who had never left the shadows of Virginia’s mountains, found themselves in far off lands in Europe and in the Pacific. Survival of the fittest had been their unwritten code before the great war; therefore, most of the men survived, even flourished in the hostile environment of war. When the war ended the vast majority of the men returned to Southwest Virginia.

  Some of the men were killed in the field of battle. As an example, two of the men were foraging in a bombed out building and an unexploded shell detonated. The men had been looking for anything of value. They unearthed trinkets in other buildings and sent them home to loved ones. After the explosion the only trinkets sent home were the dog tags that used to hang from their necks. Another soldier went berserk and was killed by his comrades in arms, because they were afraid of him.

  When the war erupted in Europe and the Pacific, America was not as prepared as she should have been. In the rush to build a strong military, the rules were relaxed. Testing and evaluating were kept to a minimum much of the time, and as a result, physical and emotional abnormalities that could hinder service were not discovered. The abnormalities were left unchecked until usually it was too late.

  William Robert Hill grew up in the mountains of Virginia, slipped through the cracks into military service, survived the war and returned to the United States, via New York City. He met a petite, dark haired waitress from Queens, who reminded him so much of a woman that he used to know and love named Mona, that he stayed in New York. After a two day courtship William Hill and Lola D’Angelo were married in a civil ceremony. William was not a religious man and Lola was much too timid to tell him about her Catholic upbringing. After the wedding ceremony Lola was not allowed to attend church or even speak of anything holy.

  William pointed his finger into the air and preached to Lola, “There ain’t no God! You should see the things that I have seen girl. Women, children, old people tortured and mutilated and burned alive in furnaces. Hell, I was there girl. I believe in Hell and I think that I’ve seen the Devil many times, but there ain’t no God. You take care of me and my needs. That’s enough for you.”

  In a bizarre sort of way Lola was flattered by his strange words. She would take care of her man and see to his needs. The lovesick girl could think of nothing more important than her man.

  Before their first wedding anniversary William was beating her on a regular basis. He had a menial job with the city sanitation department, and she cleaned houses and offices. If she came home even five minutes late from a job, he would beat her. She would run from the subway to make sure that she was home on time. He timed the travel from each of her jobs with his long stride, so she could hardly keep in step with his insane schedule. William accused her of sexual liaisons with her employers, people on the subway, and even the corner grocer. She quickly became terrified of him, but she did nothing to improve her situation.

  Even though they lived from paycheck to paycheck, William wanted a child from Lola. She realized that they could not afford a child, and that she could not quit her job to take care of a baby. But she was helpless to intervene. She had no access to birth control, not that she would have used it, and with William it was completely out of the question. He took her everyday, some days two or three times, because he had set his mind to do this thing, to have a child that was his own.
/>
  Lola was with child by early Spring. She worked everyday until the day before the baby was due. During the long hot New York Summer she was so miserable that she wanted to die. In late November the baby was born. He was a healthy baby boy that he decided to name William Junior.

  The birth of the baby was the beginning of the endfor Lola. The beatings had continued throughout the term of the pregnancy and she feared that her situation would worsen now that she was no longer with child. One afternoon after a humiliating day at work, William flew into a rage. He was angry at his supervisor at work but poor Lola received his wrath. When she walked in the door from the corner store, he struck her in the stomach with such force that she tumbled across a table. She started hemorrhaging internally and he did absolutely nothing to help her. By the time that he finally called an ambulance it was too late. Lola died en route to the hospital. Complications from the recent child birth convinced the emergency room doctor that the hemorrhaging was not that unusual. Her death was ruled complications from recent childbirth.

  William Hill murdered his young wife but he blamed his tiny son for her death. His insane logic had convinced him that the little bastard was probably not even his child. If a concerned neighbor had not intervened in the baby’s behalf, the infant mortality statistic for that year would have climbed by a fraction of a percentage point.

  William and Lola’s apartment was on the third floor of a rundown tenement in Queens, New York. The rooms were small and the walls were paper thin. Nell Higgins lived in the apartment next to theirs. Nell was painfully aware of the domestic situation in the Hill apartment. She knew that William beat Lola, and she suspected that he would hurt the baby as well.

  Nell had lived in the same tiny apartment for many years. Her husband was killed in a traffic accident years earlier and she survived on a widow’s pension. During her tenure in the building many people had come and gone, but Nell became close to Lola. Nell felt powerless to help Lola, and she knew that the worst possible scenario would eventually take place between poor Lola and William. Nell realized early in her relationship with the Hills that William was quite insane. She saw the way that he looked at Lola, the way that he looked at other tenants, especially the men, and the way that he looked at Nell herself. She was terrifiedof him and she had witnessed firsthand the brute intimidation that he forced upon mild mannered Lola.

  On the night of Lola’s death William knocked at Nell’s door. When she opened the door William without even asking, practically threw the baby at her.

  “Take care of the kid will you? Lola is sick. I’m taking her to the hospital. I’ll get the kid as soon as I can. Milk and diapers are in the apartment. Here’s the key.” he said.

  He practically threw the key at her too. It fell to the floor but he did not bother to pick it up.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.” he added.

  He closed the door before Nell could say ‘yes’, or ‘no’, or ask any questions about poor Lola.

  Nell laid the baby on her bed. She placed pillows around him to make sure that he did not roll off of the bed. He was a newborn baby, but she was not about to take any chances with his safety.

  Nell was so concerned with Lola’s health that she sat in the rocker beside of the bed, and she prayed for what seemed like hours. The next morning she awoke early because the baby was crying. It was six a.m., and she was sure that William, Jr. was wet and hungry. Taking the key that he practically threw at her the night before, Nell unlocked William’s door. He was slouching at the table and drinking a beer. His eyes were puffy but he appeared to be furious.

  “How is Lola?” Nell asked very quietly, almost whispering.

  “The bitch died on me.” he fumed.

  “Oh, I am so sorry.” Nell apologized.

  “I don’t know what I am going to do, especially with the kid.” he stated.

  After a few moments he added, “I need to contact her family. I don’t even know if they have a telephone. And her funeral, and…. Hell! I don’t know… so much to do.”

  His speech was slurred.

  “Don’t worry about the baby.” Nell said. “I’ll take care of him. Do you have diapers?”

  “They’re over there in the cupboard with his other stuff. I don’t want to see him now.” he snapped.

  Nell gathered up the supplies and left the apartment as quickly as she could. William eventually fell asleep but resumed drinking again as soon as he awoke. The more beer that he drank on that day after Lola’s death, the angrier that he became. His anger at the baby was irrational and unjustified. If only he could rid himself of the bastard child, then maybe his Lola would come back to him. In his drunken stupor he realized that he was lost without her. He decided something else too. He was going to kill that goddamned baby, and the old lady too, if she got in his way.

  Under the sink was a box that contained the tools that were necessary to maintain their outdated apartment. William snatched the largest tool, a pipe wrench, from the tool box, and staggered toward the door. For the first time since he came back from the war, he wished that he still had a gun.

  Nell Higgins heard William thrashing and cursing in his apartment and she was scared. She feared for the baby’s life. How could an innocent child bring out so much anger in a man? Although she had spent several hours praying for Lola the night before, she had never been a particularly religious woman. Regardless of that fact, for a split second she thought about the baby Jesus. She also thought about calling the police but she knew that by the time that they arrived, it might be too late. She remembered that her late husband kept an old gun in the nightstand , and she rummaged around until she found it.

  BAM! BAM! BAM! William’s fist slammed at her door.

  “Let me in old lady!” he screamed. “I want thebaby!”

  Nell stood there like a statue in an earthquake. She was trembling so badly that she almost dropped the gun.

  “No.” she cried softly.

  BAM! BAM! BAM!

  “Let me in you bitch!”

  “No!” she cried louder this time. “Get away from mydoor!”

  The words hardly left her trembling throat when William burst through the door. The nine mm. bullet passed through his chest and lodged into the wall behind him.

  Nell Higgins walked slowly into her bedroom. She sat down in the rocker beside of the baby’s makeshift bed, took a deep breath, and died instantly of a massive heart attack.

  The commotion in Nell’s apartment and the explosion of the nine mm. bullet woke the baby. He started to cry. The innocent child less than a week old had become an orphan and a ward of the state.

  A social worker with a poetic nature would describe him as, “A tiny seedling in the garden of society”.

  What would become of him? Would he grow up to know the sacrifice of his mother and Nell Higgins? Would he ever discover the truth about his psychotic, sadistic father? Would he become his father’s son? Does the proverbial apple fall far from the family tree? There were so many questions, and few, if any answers. Right now he could not even focus his tiny blue eyes, or realize any of the events that had taken place around him.

  Someone in another apartment called the police. They arrived to find a grisly scene. The nine mm. bullet splattered pieces of William Hill’s evil heart on the ceiling and the wall behind him. He died with murderous thoughts and evil intentions. A look of surprise was in his wide open eyes. A blue tinge was forming in the corners of his mouth and around his nose.

  Nell Higgins looked as if she was taking a nap, except a military looking pistol was dangling from her right hand. Her index finger clinched the trigger in the grip of death. The undertaker would have to break her finger to release the gun from her hand.

  The noble murder that she committed would go with no rewards in this world. The baby was crying. The look of confusion that all b
abies have, seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

  End of Part One

  Part Two

  Chapter one

  Twenty-five years earlier, William Robert Hill was born in a two room shack on Jewel Ridge Mountain, in Washington County, Virginia. The Virginia Creeper Railroad track almost touched the front porch steps, except the steps had rotted away long before the Hills moved there. William was the youngest child of Tom and Mary Hill. He had three older brothers, and one sister who was eleven months old when William was born.

  William was the last child born to Mary Hill because she died when he was only six months old. More than likely, she was pregnant at the time. By the time that she was twenty years old, Mary was the mother of five children. She should not have borne even one. Pale Mary, as her mother called, contracted leukemia when she was just a little girl. She was never diagnosed because she never went to the doctor a single time in her entire life.

  Mary married Tom Hill just before her fifteenth birthday. She did not tell her daddy that she was pregnant at the time, not that it would have really mattered to him. He would have one less mouth to feed after she was gone.

  Mary, who was too proud to let her parents find out about her pregnancy, pleaded with her new husband to leave the area where she grew up. They moved from just across the North Carolina line to Jewel Ridge Mountain, less than thirty miles away. But that was far enough for Mary, because she never saw her parents again. Five kids and seven months after her twentieth birthday, she was dead. No one was called, the authorities were never notified. It was as if she never existed, except she had brought five new souls into the world. Tom buried Mary under the oak tree that she liked to sit under at night to gaze at the stars.

  Tom provided for his family at night. He never showed his face in public in the daytime because he feared that someone might recognize him. The chance of that everhappening was minute. Soon after he and Mary moved from North Carolina, Tom devised a means of obtaining food for free. The railroad company maintained a supply house about a mile down the line from the Hill shack. Tom dug a shallow trench along the back side of the supply house that was just deep enough for his skinny body to crawl underneath the wall. He loosened a board in the floor and wiggled inside the storage compartment. He skimmed only enough food from the supply bags to feed his family for a day or two each time. He would leave the supply house the same way that he came. He continued that practice for years and he was never caught.