The Good People of The Valley
The buds on the trees were just starting to grow the slightest bit bigger, slowly shedding their Just-Left-Winter shape and prepared in only a few days to bloom into Signs of Spring. The grass along the meadow shimmered with light as the breeze made each blade wave gently across several miles of gorgeous emerald green patches deep in the valley, bowing to Father Sun. The sky did not seem real; its electric blue dotted with cottony white pillows looked made from purest magic.
This valley had stood proud and wild for well over two centuries. Tiny villages and hamlets dotted the landscape. It had seen many things in its time. It had evaded the Civil War, tucked away as it was in the rugged mountains that held it in their palms, shielding it from the world’s prying eyes. Because the valley was so hard to get to, no one could attempt to destroy its bucolic beauty. A sparkling diamond in what often felt to the valley’s residents like a sea of suffering. Because of this, the generations that lived in it refused to allow any bloom off the rose that was their fertile, gorgeous cocoon. Small children ran through the wildflower patches that sprung up hither, thither and yon. Butterflies danced in the air as the doting mothers of those running, mostly blond children chatted quietly with each other while walking.
It was indeed a perfect place. So perfect in fact, that no one bothered to acknowledge the stinging coppery smell from the pools of fresh blood that the loamy soil, so perfect for farming and gardening, was still trying to soak up and absorb beneath the running children’s feet. No one made the hint of a whisper or gasp when three kids started playing with the knotted rope the Sheriff had cut down and threw carelessly on the ground last night; still frayed and with bits of cloth stuck to it. Only the Great Oak, silent sentinel of all that occurred at the hands of the valley’s denizens, could still hear the anguished screams haunting its bark from recent events it had no choice but to witness.
A little girl picked up a crumpled piece of paper that had been huddling by a dead branch near the foot of the Great Oak’s trunk. She batted it around for a bit, much like a cat with a ball of yarn. Her slightly older brother ran over and grabbed it from her. They began to chase each other, one with the paper, one wailing for her mother to tell him to give it back to her. Their mother was of course, still knee-deep in conversation with her best friend, and so there would be no interference regardless of tears today. The little girl felt instantly oppressed by her mother’s cruel indifference, which she felt amounted to a kind of tyranny. She kept running after her brother, but she was small with stubby legs. She could not keep up with her lean, lanky brat of a brother. Annoyance is a great motivator for keeping a quick pace, so it would seem.
Eventually the little girl gave up, and went to find the two other girls her age that were the children of her mother’s best friend. They were playing jump rope farther down the meadow. The brother went over to sit by the small pond which housed all manner of joyously slimy things: frogs, turtles, catfish, dragonflies: everything a young lad could spend hours chasing and then grabbing to stick in their mother’s purse or basket. He sat on a rock, ready to revel in his stolen prize and began to uncrumple the balled-up paper while feeling calm with the sound of the frogs singing the song of their people all around him. As he unfurled the paper, he heard a dog bark, and then someone called his name in a familiar voice. It was probably his friend Andy, who had told him his dad was taking him hunting in the late afternoon. Distracted, he hurriedly opened the paper to see if it was anything fun or interesting. Maybe it was a map with the clues to buried treasure! It looked at first like simply a bunch of scrawls.
He held it closely to his face:
“Tell Retta I love her.”
The boy had no idea who Retta was, nor did he particularly care. The barely legible scrawlings of a doomed man hung from the Great Oak did nothing to entice his curiosity further. He had known nothing about it, and even if he had, he had been taught long ago to not dwell on “those things”. Many kids in town were brought to these events, but his parents felt it was best to just ignore them. “Good people don’t participate in those things, better to just put it out of one’s mind!” is what his mother would say. Andy’s voice grew louder, and before he knew it, the boy was being knocked off the rock by incredibly enthusiastic licks from a Bluetick Coon Hound named Riley. The piece of paper was knocked from his hand as he put his arms up to try and gently nudge Riley off of him. Andy and his father approached him and asked if he wanted to join them on a Coon hunt. He said yes with excitement, and promptly forgot all about the paper.
The paper, still fairly crumpled, sat just at the precipice of the pond’s surface lonely and waiting for some person to acknowledge the horror it carried. A frog leapt up from his lily pad over the paper. The slight hint of wind the frog’s movement made shifted the paper and it slid right off the edge and into the water. As it sank, the valley gazed at it, wordlessly nodding its collective head in sorrow. It was always the duty of the valley to bear witness to the swallowing whole of a life. So it was then, so it would be forever. Soon, the paper was consumed by water, never to be seen by the light of day again. It floated all the way down to the silty pond bottom, and rested just on the top of a large black boot attached to a large Black foot that housed a large, Black body; only then did it begin to disintegrate.
The valley shuddered in the fading of the day, and as the sun set, so did the last words of what had transpired, eaten up by water and time. The next day would simply be another lazy afternoon of bucolic rolling hills, children’s laughter, and nothing more.
That is how the valley kept its peace.
