MOUNTAIN ANGEL

Lizzie was the camp cook. She was also what my mother called a "camp follower." The men called her "the Mountain Angel." She was a woman with hardly any sense of morals. She was also what they called in those days "slow." I don't know if she was retarded or if it was just that no one had ever cared enough to teach her anything other than cooking.

There were twenty to thirty men in the camp at the top of "Old Baldy." There were only four women in camp and three were married. The nearest "house of ill repute" was somewhere at the bottom of the mountain. It was a long way down the mountain and an even longer trip coming back up.

Lizzie owned five dresses. She wore them all at the same time. Occasionally, she would go in the out house and change the order so a different one was on the outside. Perhaps somewhere in her past, she wasn't allowed to own more that one dress. Maybe she thought someone would steal them if she didn't wear them.

When Lizzie started to bulge, what with all the layers of extra clothing, no one noticed. One night she just disappeared! They hunted, but they couldn't find her. Two days later, she reappeared in the morning in the cookhouse as though no time had passed.

The big difference was the baby. It was very tiny. In fact, the baby was so small, that she kept it in a shoebox with a circle cut out where it's tiny doll-like face was. When he was older, he slept in a dresser drawer.

Here the story ends because winter was coming The logging season was over. My parents moved back down the mountain to a caretaker job. My mother was pregnant with my oldest sister, Anna. In December, war was declared and Dad joined up. He never went back to logging in the Adirondacks.