Help me, please help me

It was the coldest day I could remember, ever, the first Sunday after New Year's Day, 1957, and I was sick, feverishly so, with a kidney infection. They called it 'Bright's Disease' in those days. Although my head and back felt hot with the fever, the rest of me was chilled to the bone.

Everyone had gone to church except my Uncle Charlie who was not a believer, and so he was in charge of looking after me. I was 15 years old so it was no large task. He was more apt to shiver than I, a thin, good looking man, pale from spending his days in the pits of the coal mines, "a dirty, living hell" he said.

I had managed to get up off my butt and made us a pineapple pie which was baking and smelled heavenly. It was the only pie I could make at the time. The recipe came with a bunch of others when we got the new stove. A booklet that came with the stove proclaimed, "an entire meal in the oven in an hour." One could make the main dish, a side dish and a pie and bake them all at the same time. That pie was a pineapple pie.

But I digress. About that time, I heard it from the kitchen where I was near the window over the sink, beside the stove. "Help.. help me." It scared the stuffing out of me. I became quiet, wiped my hands on my apron and tip toed to the door of the living room, a few feet away.

"Did you hear that?" I asked Charlie, who was reading the Sunday paper. Actually, he was reading the funnies, Dick Tracy, specifically, his favorite. I liked Mutt and Jeff myself.

"Hear what?" he asked.

"You didn't hear someone calling for help?" I asked.

He shook his head "no" and kept reading. After a while, he lifted his head and said "I told you not to read those scary books, not good for you."

I was into reading Charlotte Armstrong mysteries then, couldn't wait til the next one arrived at the local library, a long wait in the backwoods counties of Mingo and Logan. Mingo County, WV, named after a tribe of Indians, another story, the "bloody Mingos." No one ever thought of purchasing a book, not in our family and not at 50 cents a copy. They thought me too weird and eccentric anyway with my books and writing and crazy imagination. The only normal thing about me, my Aunt Lila said, was my love for Elvis. Now one could understand loving a man like that, she would say and smile. She knew about crushes. She was half in love with this preacher over in Wyoming County, but he was married. Didn't stop her from attending every revival he had, weekend after weekend. Oh, there I go again. Back to the voice.

"Not only the scary books," Charlie said, "but that crazy Silvie talking foolishness to you all the time. Just ain't right. More crazy Curry women than you can shake a stick at."

Silvie was my mother's aunt. She could tell fortunes and with just a plain deck of playing cards. No matter what Charlie said, she had the mojo going. She told her cousin not to ride the train into Huntington. The girl didn't listen, took the trip and fell between two coal cars on the way back. It killed her deader than Able, and it made a believer out of me. If Silvie told me not to pee, I wouldn't pee. She was that good. She told me I would marry a tall dark stranger and bear a child in terrible pain. My husband was tall, dark and handsome and was a "stranger," being from Michigan. My labor was terrible as I was in the midst of losing a kidney at the time. She told my own mother that she would marry three times before she found happiness. Yes, mother married three times. I don't know how many things Silvie said that didn't come true. Who keeps track of that?

Back to my story. About this time, I checked on the pie. The wind whistled around the window and door in the kitchen, cold air just begging to come in and rob us of warmth. The house was nothing but a "prefab,' sort of like a sorry double wide trailer with siding, walls so thin one could blow a tune through them. Then I heard it again. "O, my lord. Help me, O God, help me."

I ran to the door of the living room, "please Charlie, come and listen" I begged.

He looked at me long suffering like, but he was a kind man, all in all, so he got up slowly and came to the kitchen. I told him to listen at the window. He did.

"Just the wind, Iva, nothing out there. It's near mid day for Christ's sake and not a soul for miles around."

"But I hear her, I hear her begging for help," I cried.

"All right he said, I'll go check." He put on his fire jacket and hat and went out the back door and off into the woods, back of the house. He was gone the longest time but finally came back in, beating his arms to his sides.

"Didn't find a thing," he said.

"Did you hear her?" I asked him.

"Just told you girl, didn't find a thing." He went back to his Sunday paper.

I heard her only once more, about 20 minutes later, then nothing. The wind died down, the others came home from church, the pie was a hit and so was the story about the woman crying for help. But, like all good stories, one loses interest and moves on the next best thing.

Many years later, my Uncle Charlie was dying from lung cancer. We were sitting quietly, companionably, just the two of us in two big recliners. Suddenly, he said, "I heard her Iva. Just as plain as day. 'Help me' she said 'O God, help me.' But I couldn't find her."

"You tried," I said. "I knew that you heard her."

****

Addendum:
We never knew what happened that day. After about 17 years, a skeleton was found in the wooded area near our home, but the cause of death or who it was were never determined, so I will never know if it was the woman I heard cry for help.