Free Smoky Mountain Dreams by Leta Blake

old gears and axle, and admired the metal
equipment that sorted and poured the flour after it was ground.
    “Nice, huh?”
    “Beautiful,” Jesse said.
    “I thought you’d appreciate it. My Gran used to work here
when she was a teenager. She started when she was fourteen. It was a long time
before Smoky Mountain Dreams bought the property, obviously.” Christopher ran
his hand along the polished wood of the banister that was erected to keep the
tourists away from the equipment when it was running. “Well, more accurately,
she was married to the owner.”
    “Wow. It’s hard to believe how young people got married back then.”
    Christopher looked thoughtful. “Yeah. She was forced into it
for money reasons. He was fifty.”
    “Oh,” Jesse said, a feeling of repulsion rocking through
him. He’d met men like that when he was younger. Chicken hawks, they’d called
them, and he’d let one take him home only once when he’d been desperate and
full of self-destructive recklessness.
    “She said working in the mill saved her sanity, though. She
loved it. It kept her mind off the rest of her life. And when her husband died
of scarlet fever when Gran was seventeen and pregnant with Uncle Rodney, she
sold it for enough money so she could start a life in Gatlinburg.”
    “Wow. That’s a sad story in a way.”
    “It gets sadder because Rodney died in Vietnam.”
    “Your poor Gran.”
    “Yeah. Appalachia is full of sad stories. Great ones too.
Triumph over adversity and all of that stuff. Like this park and what Melissa
Mundy’s done for the people around here. But you’re from this area. You already
know that.”
    Jesse agreed. His own family was a perfect example. They’d
been mountain folk too, and when he’d been very small, his grandfather had told
him stories of the first time he’d seen the electric lights, fueled by power
from the TVA dams, turn on in the Tennessee Valley. It’d been beautiful, and it’d
blown his mind.
    Christopher went on, “Her life wound up being happy enough,
I guess. She met my grandfather when she was twenty-four and had a good life
with him. She’d used the money from selling this mill to open a store. She sold
fudge…and books, because, well, why not?”
    “No way. She owned Books and Fudge? I loved that place as a
kid.” Jesse grinned. “I mean, where else in the world could you buy books and fudge ?”
    Christopher laughed. “You’d know better than I would.”
    “I guess I knew your grandmother. She was there every day,
right? Sweet lady. She used to help me and my sister pick out cool books from
the kid’s section, and then she’d give us a piece of fudge to split for free. I
don’t really know why she did that. I’m sure she knew we could afford to buy
it.”
    “Gran liked to see kids smile. Maybe she thought you didn’t
smile enough.”
    “Probably not. Hell, we probably didn’t.” Jesse looked
thoughtful. “My sister cried when Books and Fudge went out of business.”
    Christopher’s lashes dropped down, making a long shadow on
his cheeks. “Yeah. That was my fault. Sorry about that.”
    Jesse couldn’t imagine that it could have been Christopher’s
fault. The place had shut down long ago, when Jesse was eighteen, and though
Christopher looked a little bit younger than him, he didn’t think that
Christopher could have been more than fourteen, if that. “How could you have
been responsible for a shop going out of business?”
    “It’s a long story.” Christopher shrugged. “Come on, let’s
get some cookies. Libby puts those on the verge of going stale out in the
kitchen. They’re up for grabs. If Libby likes you enough to let you have a key
that is.”
    Jesse followed Christopher over the freshly swept, wood
floor, and into the dimly lit kitchen that had been built onto the mill proper.
It was impeccably clean. Sure enough, there was a tray of gingerbread men,
women, and eagles—the Smoky Mountain Dreams mascot—covered with plastic wrap on
a