It Must Have Been the Mistletoe(3)

The way she looked at it, she had two choices—well, actually three, if she counted turning around and going back down the road to civilization. “Right or left,” she murmured. She had a fifty-fifty chance of finding Ettie Lee Harper’s cabin. The same odds had her getting stuck on a muddy road with no way of calling for help.

Alison had spent the past four months tracking down the elusive Ettie Lee and she was running out of time. Her search had begun the moment she uncovered an old reel-to-reel recording in the archives at the university last summer. A yellowed label gave the date as 1939, but a sound technician friend said that the tape was probably a recording of an old phonograph record. It featured a young Ettie Lee Harper, her voice clear as a church bell on a cold winter night, singing Appalachian Christmas songs along with a dulcimer.

For a musicologist, it had been like discovering a treasure chest filled with precious jewels. Only Alison’s jewels were songs—traditional songs that had been passed down for generations in mountain families and over time were transformed into entirely new versions. She recognized many of the original songs but there were three on the tape that were completely unfamiliar to her—three lost treasures that she was determined to uncover.

Alison had made Christmas carols the subject of her doctoral thesis at East Tennessee State, tracing the roots of Appalachian songs back to their origins with the Scots and Irish settlers who carved out a life in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Discovering a trio of new songs would open all sorts of doors. She could put together an album featuring the new songs or publish them in a folio. And she’d sing them at her Christmas-themed recital in two weeks.

The discovery alone was enough to assure her of her dream job, the chance to start a whole new department at the University of North Texas, one of the nation’s top music colleges. The selection committee was coming to hear her Christmas faculty recital and she’d already been scheduled for a series of interviews in Denton.

With this new music, they’d have to see how important her work would be to their university. At the least, she’d finally get an offer of a tenure position at East Tennessee. She’d be Professor Alison Cole, Ph.D., making her music teacher parents proud.

“That’s it,” she muttered. “I’m calling the governor. This is ridiculous. I’m still in Tennessee. We have road signs in Tennessee.”

Over the past year, Alison had ventured into the mountains a number of times in search of singers and songs. And she’d learned one important thing—mountain folk were suspicious of outsiders. Maybe suspicious enough to pull down road signs? She leaned over the steering wheel and squinted into the gray light of the afternoon.

There it was. Not a regular Tennessee Department of Transportation sign, but a crude wooden marker nailed to a post. Alison jumped out of the car and ran toward it, trying to read the letters carved into the weathered plank. “Harper,” she said with a smile. The left end of the sign had been fashioned into a point and she stared down the muddy road. Though the narrow cut through the forest looked nearly impassable, at least she knew there would be help at the other end if she got stuck.

Alison ran back to the car and got behind the wheel, then sharply turned the Subaru to the left. There were signs in the mud that another vehicle had passed that way recently, giving her a boost of confidence. After two minutes on the steep, winding drive, the thick forest opened into a small clearing. A pickup truck was parked off to the side of the driveway and she pulled in behind it.

A wide porch spanned the front facade of the rough-hewn log cabin and smoke curled out of a stone chimney. A small oil lamp flickered in the window between panels of a lace curtain. There were no wires or poles running along the driveway. Though indoor plumbing wasn’t a must in many of the mountain cabins she’d visited, nearly everyone had electricity and phone service these days.

She honked her horn to announce her presence and waited for the obligatory dogs to appear to chase her off. When they didn’t, Alison stepped out of the car and started toward the front steps. But halfway up the muddy path, the front door swung open. Two dogs came tearing out and Alison glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she could get back to the safety of the Subaru in time. Her split second of hesitation was too long and the hounds raced around her, barking and sniffing at her feet.

If that wasn’t enough to frighten her, an elderly woman appeared on the porch, a shotgun in her hands. She raised it, pointing it directly at Alison. “You better watch yourself,” she shouted, holding the gun steady. “This is private property and you’re officially trespassing.”