Lost Town of the Alleghenies
by Stacy Stepanovich
You know this town; it is exactly like every other small town wherestories mean more than fact. Nothing has changed in the seventeenyears since I spent a summer on the farm here, nothing except the face ofthe mountain is stripped bare. The coal is gone and the pines havebeen replaced with white birch trees, the only thing that will grow onthe shale that remains.
The great tragedies of this town occur with the seasons. This is atown that has suffered harsh winters and lean harvests. They haveseen the waters rise up and sweep away the sweat of their labor. There are stories about dust in every bite of a meal and cows too skinnyto yield milk. This is a town where innocence was once as naturalas rain, before the mines drew workers from out-of-town. Strangers,parents told their children, were to be watched like a risingstream.
It is early May and my jacket pocket is filled with fresh mintleaves. I watch as children skip rope in the church playground,ignoring their parent’s calls to come inside. Parishioners ignoreJesse Harper, the homeless man smiling at the yellow dandelions that twogirls throw at him, chanting, Jesse had a baby and its head poppedoff.
I will tell Harper’s story exactly as I was told: Spring wasslow to come the year two young children disappeared. Snow stillclung to the mountain tops the evening that Matthew and Georgina defiedtheir mother’s order to stay in the pasture. Five stepsinto the forest and you’ll not find your way back, shesaid. They walked along the dark edges of the tree line. One…two…three…. They giggled andchased each other and hid behind trees.
When they stopped, they couldn’t see the farmhouse. Theoldest, Georgina, knew it would be getting dark. They walked untiltheir feet hurt and the air grew cold. Their sweat made themshiver. Their breath hung above them in the muted light as they tookshelter in the hollow of a tree.
Their parents’ voices echoed into the darkness. Neighborssearched until dawn. Coyotes, they said when the mothercouldn’t hear. Others whispered about the ghosts from anotherstory from another time. Days passed before a young miner from Ohiotold the town priest about his dream. Jackson Harper said he sawthe children huddled in an oak tree fallen near a wide stream.
Church bells echo through town now, just as they did when the childrenwere found and Harper was jailed. His dreams were too vivid, theysaid.
The story is still told to children, just as it was told to me at the endof a long summer day. Harper’s innocence, proven fifteenyears too late, hasn’t changed the way it is told. This is atown that still carefully eyes strangers as the white birch trees fail togrow and the mountains slowly wash into the streams.
Stacy Stepanovich is a writer who lives aboard a 47 foot Concorde motoryacht in St. Marks, Florida. She has a MFA in CreativeWriting from Goddard College and a BA in English from the University of Pittsburgh. Contact Stacy.
