Under the Johnisee Rock (1978)

¦f j¿>^ UNDER THE JOHNISEE ROCK by DANNY MILLER The house, in the level clearing on the slopes of the Johnisee Rock, was more a house by accident than design. It had been a barn. The wide gaps between the boards had been chinked with a plaster of sorts; a floor had been laid over the dirt and dung; and the side door for the cows to come in and go out had been boarded up and a smaller one for people put up in its place. But it was still a barn, weather worn and crumbling, and any onlooker could have told that it was still more suited for cattle than for human beings. The Johnisee Rock was not a rock, but a mountain. From the actual rock at its summit, from which it got its name, it fell sharply off on the western side, so steep that the rock could indeed have been the Lover's Leap some of the old 10 folks claimed it had been. But on the eastern side of the rock the mountain sloped gently to its foot in the valley far below, and on this gentle mountainside stood the barn house of Jerome and Ida Pilkenton. It was a hot and sultry day, one of those "Dog Days" which seem to always come about the time of cherry picking. High up the hill, in the orchard, Rome Pilkenton was perched in a black-heart tree, gazing down at the house below, his nearly full bucket suspended about an arm's length from him on a slender bough by a cross-tie "S" used as the hook. His wife, Ida, a woman of about thirty-five years of age, stood on the ground beneath the tree, gleaning her berries from lowhanging branches that she pulled down with a long pole. The sun was declining in the sky, but its afternoon rays were deflected by the tree so that the three boys who sat around its base eating cherries were in shade. As it was nearly supper time, their mother occasionally scolded them, but she could not really begrudge her sons this small pleasure, nor be too cross with them, for she herself hadgorged on the large, delicious cherries. Aunt Ida, though she was "old before her time," though her hands were calloused and rough, though she wore a faded blue dress and no shoes on this hot yellow day, could still be described as beautiful. Her hair was auburn, inherited from her Scottish grandmother, and her eyes were a pale and almost imperceptible blue. She was a strong and able woman. As she pulled the last limb of the day downward, Ida glanced at the sore on her leg. Climbing through the barbed wire fence which had been strung up to keep the cattle out of the orchard, Ida had torn a large gash in her left leg, so deep that it had bled for some time, reddening the ground, until she had stopped the blood and assured everyone she was all right. Now she was conscious of a dull ache in the leg and could see that the wound had swollen and looked red and raw. Still, she dismissed it from her mind and finished filling her bucket. These berries would make fine preserves, she thought. Rome came down from the tree, lowering his bucketful before him with a length of twine. As the last rays of the sun diminished in the west, the family ambled down the sloping mountainside. The supper of cold cornbread cooked earlier in the day and crumbled into glasses of spring-cooled milk was soon disposed of and the family went to bed. Aunt Ida, however, as she lay uncovered on the bed beside Rome, was again conscious of the cut on her leg. She rose and put some mercurichrome on it, then laid down again. Unpicked cherries mouldered in the topmost branches of the cherry trees as summer advanced into early fall. Aunt Ida Pilkenton had a stringy toughness, like the inside of a pumpkin, and it was a bad sign when her wound didn't scab over or begin to heal. Instead, as the days got...