The Crows; Warning: Escaping the Wildfires of 1881

By Doris Holik Kelly

The 1881 wildfire in the thumb of Michigan traps two pioneering families. The only place to escape to is the river. After the fire, the children are left alone to survive wolves, bears, and a dangerous and menacing landlord.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Pearls Publishing
• Release date: Mar 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798988699255

Book preview

Acknowledgements

To the Hill and Jones families who lost everything to the fire but their lives.

To the storyteller and lover of books who loved us all, even when we bugged him, Grandpa Mitchell Holik.

To Grandma Muriel Hill Holik who wrangled up to 27 grandchildren at different times.

To my dad Leon Holik who also loved books and remembered family stories.

To my patient mother, Ruth Johnson, and my siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins who keep asking for a new book.

To Grandma Cora Belle Jones Hill, who survived and lends her name to the main character of this book.

To my husband and children, who have always supported me even when I dragged them to historical places.

To the writing friends who read the drafts and gave me the good, bad, and ugly to bring this book to fruition.

To Dara Armstrong Lehner, for using your strong organizational skills, and machete wielding arms through the swamps and underbrush of publishing. (You should never let me write my own acknowledgements.) Long may you persevere.

The Crow Flies Before the Storm

Staring with amber eyes,

twisting through scarlet skies,

like ashes on a dancing wind,

The crow flies before the storm.

Soaring above famished fire,

raucous cawing, lifting higher,

swirling through umber clouds,

The crow flies through the storm.

Preening cremains from glistening feathers,

it pulls away shadowy tethers.

Ascend higher, higher, higher.

Raising souls heavenward on sooty wings.

The crow flies beyond the storm.

~ Doris Holik Kelly

Introduction

The story included in this book, The Crows’ Warning, is not purely fiction, nor is it a detailed non-fiction account of the horrific events occurring in both 1871 and 1881 to the Michigan Indigenous and early settlers. Yet it is a well-researched manuscript. It is a creative representation of the historical and disastrous forest fire that overtook many counties in the state of Michigan in 1881. The author’s ancestors were among those stricken. The story is meant to honor them and tell the story of the ravages of the fire they endured.

The story is told as a creative non-fiction account of Cora Belle Jones and her family’s experiences. While this is a serious and tragic subject, creative non-fiction allows storytelling of historical events with imagination and humor. This account becomes even more important since those that survived have long since died. Therefore, in this story where the crows mysteriously warned people, some names have been changed to protect the privacy of family members and friends who wish to remain anonymous.

Enjoy the adventures of Cora Belle, her family, and neighbors.

Chapter 1

The Crows Leave

A group of birds flying Description automatically generated

September 1881 Sanilac County, Michigan

My day always started with the cawing of crows. Outside my window, summer or winter, they never stopped calling. Up on Crow Hill, or out in our cornfield, those sneaky, feathered troublemakers were into everything.

Pa said the crows were probably somebody’s pets before we arrived at the farm. They stole our spoons and forks if my brothers used them in the sand pile to dig to China, or when I went down to the riverbank and picnicked with my best friend Annie, our utensils would magically disappear. They would fly down and pull my hair ribbons right out of my hair. They took the clothespins from the clothes on the line and stole Pa’s sweat-stained handkerchiefs right out of his pants pockets. Off the crows flew with them to stuff them in their hidey-holes, because they were just the right size for nesting. They even tried to steal my little brother Jakey's stuffed piggy right from his arms, but Jakey screamed bloody murder and Ma came running to shoo them away.

They followed me early on that windy morning, calling, chatting and gurgling, quick-stepping behind me, then flying low over my head when I climbed up to the top of my favorite lookout tree on Crow Hill. It was their favorite tree, too. It was their spot where they kept an eye on the farm and us and where they stashed their stolen treasures from us. High up out of our reach.

Once I boosted myself up the tree, as far up as I could climb, I could see that the world had changed. Hot winds shook the withered trees around me until the dried leaves rattled like a gourd-full of seeds.

Stinky and Snitcher, the worst of the pests, didn’t like me staying in their tree too long so they circled suspiciously in the windy clouds above me with wide black wings. Watching and diving down occasionally to perch and caw at me. If I watched them float around too much it made me dizzy.

When Papa sent me up Crow Hill and up the tree to look around, he didn’t know that the winds up there were twisting through the sky like a scorching hurricane. I was supposed to be careful and keep an eye on what was happening around us from as high as I could climb.

Mysterious clouds appeared as I scrambled up the tree. Clouds that felt like they pressed down on my head and looked like fat gray bubbles floating in the milking pail. There wasn’t a bit of blue sky showing between them as they hurried past us. In the distance black clouds grew bigger and more ominous in the southwest.

Sitting on a half-burnt oak branch almost twenty feet up in the crow's tree I watched the sky turn stranger by the second. Fear grabbed in my stomach and twisted a knot. Something bad was brewing and stewing in the southwest.

Twenty feet below me my mother suddenly stomped up through the spiky knee-high grass at the base of the tree, scaring me when she screeched, Corie! Cora Belle Jones! Get down from that tree! How many times must I tell you that almost-grown women do not climb trees like little boys do? You are wearing a dress. And where is your bonnet? Your freckles are going to run together, and your face will turn as brown as an acorn.

Yes, Ma. I know. I left my bonnet down at the river. But I have brown hair and brown eyes, so I might as well have brown skin. Then I mumbled more to myself than to Ma, Almost-grown women might climb trees more if they could wear trousers once in a while.

Somehow Ma heard my windblown words, and she glared up at me from the bottom of the tree. I declare! Don’t talk like that! You're going to be a woman soon, Cora Belle Jones. Don't forget that! If you truly want to be a teacher don't spout such claptrap. It might come back to haunt you. The school board will laugh at your nonsense and give the job to someone in their right mind.

Ma had tied her ruffled apron over her head to hold her best straw hat on tight and it flopped around in the wind. I truly wanted to laugh at her funny appearance.

My ma loved hats. She would never wear a raggedy straw hat, even to work in her garden. I laughed when a hard gust of wind whipped that apron away and the fancy hat flew off her head and snagged on a bush. Her sharp hairpins flew away with the hat and her long reddish hair burst out and twisted around her head like dancing snakes. I’m sure Stinky or Snitcher would find those pins before she would.

I’m only doing what Pa told me to do, Ma!

I had tried to sneak away so Ma wouldn't see me head for the tree. As usual, even when I was hiding from her and telling secrets down at the river with my best friend Annie, she always found me. And she always hollered at me when I came home.

Why did he send you up that dangerous tree? There's such a wild wind a-blasting it might blow you right out of it! She yelled at me as if I was doing something wrong. I sure would have a lot less work to do and more peace and quiet if Ma wasn’t hollering at me all day.

But Ma, this is important! Pa sent me up here to look out for a fire or anything else strange.

Ma shook her head and grumbled to no one in particular, Him and his fires! He and Barney Hill are always imagining that a fire is coming here again. Well, you can just forget what your Pa wants, Cora Belle Jones. It's just another storm. Get out of that tree, now! I want you to mind your brothers for a while. I scrubbed them down and now I'm so exhausted I'm taking a nap. If you had kept them out of the pig pen instead of running down to the river to meet up with Annie, they wouldn’t be so filthy. I swear all Annie can do is moon about all the neighborhood boys! Now, come on down and make sure your brothers stay inside. Oh, and on your way in, look for Jakey’s stuffed piggy. He misplaced it somewhere out in the yard. Hurry up, and get down here immediately, and don’t ruin your skirt on the way!

Ma stomped away and chased down her hat. She hadn’t even listened to what I said.

I brushed off my skirt and found a small rip to repair later. Yes, Ma. If you say so, Ma, I grumbled under my breath as she marched back down the hill.

What else could I wear up a tree but my skirt? It’s old, and brown gingham is most likely out of style now. I surely can’t climb up the scratchy old tree bare as a naked baby bird but she still won’t let me wear trousers, even if no one is around. Ma keeps up the persnickety ideas that her old-fashioned English mother taught her down in Greene County, Pennsylvania, about what a lady should or should not do. Ma’s book of Ladies Will Never Ever Have Any Fun was enormous.

Ladies do not wear trousers! Ever! I shouted to the wind. You hear that wind? Girls should only cook and clean. Do what you are told, ladies! Boys will always have it easy! Boys can do whatever they want! Pa doesn't care even if they roll in the filthy old pig's poopy mud! Ugh! The wind had responded to my complaint by blowing dust into my face and making me cough.

Even on a farm a hundred miles from Detroit I couldn't wear trousers. Ma thought someone might see me and be shocked into a swoon.

Pooh! Let them swoon.

After spitting out the mouthful of dirt in the direction that Ma had gone, I looked around again. Beyond my best friend Annie Hill's cabin there aren’t any farms within shouting distance. However, from our house a narrow lane turns southwest and curves past the Hill’s home and then toward Cass City, almost five miles away. It passes four more farms. The first farm, a mile away, is Howard Sellers’ home. The most annoying boy in the world lives there with his father. The second one, three miles away, is where John Wright, who Annie is smitten with, lives with his pa. The other two families, the Barrons and Waverleys, are only a mile to the north. Both families are new to the area from New York.

Annie says Howard Sellers only teases me because he likes me. I think Howard is likely thick-headed because his big brown eyes are always very sad, and he stares out the window next to my desk a lot. Some days I don’t mind him teasing me, but most days I wish he'd annoy someone else.

Charred skeletons of trees, left over from the big fire of 1871- ten years ago, and heaps of dried pine-tops and wide pine stumps left by the lumberjacks still clutter the fields next to the narrow dirt road. Some tall trees have twisted branches draped in dried grapevines all knotted-up like snarled hair. I always close my eyes while passing beneath their scraggly branches coming home from church on moonlit nights. From my seat in our buggy the trees always look like they have ghostly hands stretching down reaching for me.

Pa’s fears of wildfires are probably nothing to worry about, but most of our local folk, since we’ve had a very hot dry summer, tell awful stories about the last fire. I have heard a lot about people dying in fields because there was nowhere to escape from the fire. Those are stories that I don't like to hear because they give me nightmares. If another fire comes here