The Hollows--A Novel

by Jess Montgomery

  It’s cooler on the path, the dense forest exhaling the last of summer’s warmth while inhaling the coming winter. The quietness of night thickens, clinging to trunks like lichen. An owl hoots from a distance yet sounds as if it’s beside her. Another animal—raccoon or fox or bobcat—rustles in the thicket.

  Out of the corner of her eye, something shimmers. A young boy. He dashes merrily, chasing something. A ball or a dog. Suddenly he disappears. Lily rubs her eyes, reprimands herself: She’s not really seeing a child. She’s just tired. Should have had more coffee.

  Yet her temples pound, and she fights the urge to gasp for air.

  She glances at her driver. He stares ahead, placidly. He starts whistling, off-key. Irksome, but it covers the sound of her nervous gasp. With her next inhale, she steadies her breath, focuses on the odors of the mule, the hay bales, the musk of the forest, finding comfort in their earthiness. She exhales slowly.

  Then she asks, “You came from Moonvale on this path?”

  The man startles. Lily smiles a little. Perhaps whistling is his cover for uneasiness.

  He nods. “Widest and easiest path in or out of Moonvale, south toward Kinship, so I was told. There are other paths. Anyway, this rig belongs to a villager. The engineer laid claim to it for to fetch you. There’s another path like this ’un, but toward Athens. That’s it, other’n walking trails only the locals’d know.”

  The way he draws out his vowels tells Lily he’s from Appalachia, but not her part of it. Farther south, she reckons.

  “Where are you from to begin with?”

  “Logan County. Kentucky.”

  Coal-mining territory. “You’re not working the mines there?”

  He straightens, a mix of pride and defensiveness, winces again. That shoulder. “I did, but I got out—work for real money, real job, not company scrip!” He glances at her, wary and apologetic. “I reckon you’re not from coal—”

  “My daddy’s people were,” Lily says, meaning her father’s father. “He got out. He ran the grocery in Kinship.”

  “That sounds right nice.”

  “Yes.” No need to say Daddy had died alongside a union organizer and the common-law husband of her friend Marvena Whitcomb, trying to rescue miners from a cave-in, two years ago. On an autumn night, like this one. Lily clears her throat. “What can you tell me? All I know is someone fell from the top of the Moonvale Hollow Tunnel.”

  He stiffens. “I was told to meet the sheriff, ma’am. Bring him—you—to the scene.”

  “You didn’t see what happened?”

  “No, ma’am. I was dozing in the crew car.”

  “How’d you hurt your shoulder?”

  The flagman stares ahead into the darkness.

  “I hope the injury doesn’t get in the way of your training. Send you back home.”

  He inhales sharply at the notion.

  “Course, in that case, it would be good to have an official record of the injury not being your fault. You’d have time off, to heal up? Working for a real company, and all?”

  For a long moment, the only sounds come from the forest—another owl cry. The chittering of crickets. A nearby stream.

  The young man clears his throat. “Train stopped, all of a sudden. I got thrown out of my bunk. Hit the floor.”

  “So the train was going fast?”

  “No faster’n usual.”

  There’s a tight defensiveness to his tone. Lily asks gently, “What’s usual?”

  “Coming out of the tunnel, maybe twenty miles an hour, and the brakemen would be fixing to slow her down before crossing another trestle bridge into the village.”

  “But you were asleep before the train stopped.”

  “Yep.”

  So he would not know whether the train was going its usual speed.

  “What did you do after the train stopped?”

  “Well, me and the flagman got off. The engineer ran back to the caboose, must’ve talked to the conductor—”

  “He’s in the caboose?”

  Despite his sore shoulder, he straightens, preening at having knowledge she doesn’t. “Yeah. Conductor is in the caboose, with the rear brakeman. Front brakeman, engineer, are up front. Flagmen, fireman, we’re wherever we’re needed for the run—or can fit.”

  Lily turns on her flashlight, gets her notebook and pencil from her bag. “Can you give me the names and titles of your crew?”

  In the ambient light from her flashlight, she sees him purse his lips, reconsider how unconstrained he’d become with her. “May oughta talk to the engineer about that—”

  Lily makes herself sound aghast. “I’d hate to delay the train for any longer than necessary. I reckon he’d appreciate you’re cooperating with me, speeding this along.”

  He gives her the names and titles of the crew. When she finishes jotting them down, she shows him; he glances at the page, nods too quickly to have really proofed her work. Ah. Her earlier observation was right; he can’t read. She puts her notebook away, turns off her flashlight, and tucks it away, too.

  “Did you see the body after the train stopped, or talk to other crew members?”

  “No. I got off, waited with everyone else to find out what had happened.”

  “So you stood alongside the train? And you didn’t do or observe anything?”

  He frowns. Good. Let him be insulted enough to want to prove himself. “Well, yeah. Mr. Greene—”

  “The conductor?” Lily hasn’t forgotten already—Greene is the engineer—but she’s willing to play the dumb “little lady” from time to time to get more information from men than they intend to share.

  Sure enough, he says, “I heard Mr. Greene—the engineer—say he thought the person was female. The body clipped the side of a freight car, and the impact tossed it into the thicket, between the track and the telegraph line.” He clears his throat. “I’m sorry if this is too much.”

  “No, go on.”

  “Well, that’s about all I can tell you, anyway. The conductor sent me to run down the line to the village to fetch the stationmaster. He wasn’t on duty, but the deputy was, so he sent the telegram to you from the station. After that, I was sent to wait for you.”

  They ride on in silence for a few minutes more until the mule stops shy of an embankment. A harsh crop on the mule’s flank and the beast pulls them up out of the branch and thicket tunnel, alongside the track.

  It takes a moment for Lily’s vision to adjust to the brightness of the train headlight, to see westward down a steep grade of track to the tiny village, all shadows and torchlight. Lily cannot make out any buildings or people, but she imagines the torchlights are held by villagers, curious about the hullabaloo at the depot, about why someone’s mule and cart have been requisitioned.

  Since her husband’s death, Lily has found that the absences of ordinary, predictable sounds—Daniel shaving in the washroom, Daniel humming, Daniel sitting on the edge of their bed to pull on his boots and then clunking his feet on the floor—are more noticeable than the sounds themselves ever were.

  Lily wraps her arms around her midriff, a sudden hollowness roiling her gut.

  Perhaps it was like that for the villagers tonight. They were alarmed by the absence of the regular train whistle, the aural ghost of the expected discordant wail, and gathered outside to ask one another what must have happened.

  “Ma’am—you all right?”

  Lily hoists herself off the cart and looks eastward at the train, the engine’s bright headlight flooding the single track, the tunnel a distance behind the caboose. Above the tunnel to the full moon and the tree-covered top of the Moonvale Hollow Tunnel, from whence the body allegedly had fallen.

  CHAPTER 2

  HILDY

  Tuesday, September 21—11:10 p.m.

  On this clear night, the full moon rides high and bright, spilling milky light through the dirty bedroom window, onto the thin pillow between Hildy Cooper and Tom Whitcomb. Both now lay on their sides in his bed, eyes locked.
>
  Heat rushes Hildy’s face. Suddenly shy, she tries to look away. Can’t. Moonlight brightens Tom’s blue eyes and there’s nothing in the world she can imagine wanting to see more.

  The thought only deepens her blush, which makes Tom grin, and she sees in his eyes and smile that he’s both amused and touched by her sudden onset of modesty, moments after there’d been not a whit of shyness—or space—between them.

  Tom reaches to stroke Hildy’s cheek, and in the pale light she notes the coal-stained rims of his fingernails, the rough callouses on his thick fingers and large hands. That such hands could also be tender restirs yearning, though she is still breathless from their lovemaking. Suddenly the spare space between his hand and her cheek seems an impossible distance, the mere moment it will take for him to reach her an unbearable eternity. She grasps his hand, brings it to her cheek. And there it is again—from his slightest touch, fire dancing over and through her whole body.

  Hildy presses her eyes shut, Tom’s gaze too much.

  But behind her tightened lids, there he is, unwavering, still regarding her, this time from a months-old memory.

  * * *

  One moment, Tom was just another adult student she helped Olive Harding—Rossville’s schoolmarm—tutor in letters and reading, a few hours twice a week after the regular school day.

  Then one of the other students—a miner like Tom—cursed and banged his fists against his desk, crying out, Ain’t no good, I can’t. While everyone else stared at the man’s outburst, Tom gave him a wry smile, saying, You mean to tell me you can pickaxe your way through a mountain, but you’re gonna let a little pile of gray letters get the best of you? If’n I can do this, anyone can.

  As the other man laughed and the tension eased in the one-room schoolhouse, Hildy stared as Tom nearly toppled the child-sized school desk, leaning over to help his friend sort out the source of his trouble. Tom was the quickest study among the adults, speeding along with his lessons, but never braggartly. It struck Hildy that Tom was likely the same way in the mines.

  A year before, Hildy had helped her good friend and county sheriff, Lily Ross, with troubles that had arisen in Rossville and then came to know Tom as the widower brother of Lily’s other good friend, the union organizer Marvena Whitcomb.

  In that moment in the schoolhouse, as he helped the other man sound out the gr consonant combination, it was as if Hildy saw Tom for the first time, noting his quiet confidence. His humility and humor. His kindness. Tom must have sensed her looking at him, for he turned his gaze to her, and she’d nearly gasped as she finally saw past his care-worn scruffiness as his sharp blue-eyed gaze took her in. His eyebrows lifting in surprise—seeing her, too, as if for the first time.

  She’d also blushed then, redness rising up her chest and creeping over the top of her high-necked dress collar, as she realized for the first time in years—since she’d been engaged to be married to Lily’s brother, who had died in the Great War and left her a widow-of-the-heart—she was regarding a man and feeling surprisingly delicious tingles dance over her skin. Tom grinned.

  He’d been all seriousness when Hildy came to check on his progress. There was no way out of it, for breaking the usual routine would draw the attention of the others. As she sat next to him, listened to him sound out sentences from the children’s primer, she felt herself come alive. And she hadn’t even known, until that moment, that since losing her first fiancé she’d been merely going through the motions of life, half-dead even though she still breathed.

  That night, back at home in Kinship, after a quiet dinner with Mother, Hildy had gone to bed early, claiming a headache, though really her head pounded with fantasies of Tom peeling back her blouse, of his touch tracing a gentle line down her throat, to her collarbones, clavicle, bosom. She’d tried to banish such sinful thoughts—for she’d been engaged for the past three months to be married to another man.

  A suitable man—as Mother would say. Proper. The owner of the grocery in Kinship.

  A man everyone—including her best friend, Lily—told her was a great catch for her. Safe. Comfortable. Respectable.

  A few days later, Hildy had almost not driven over to Rossville to help the schoolmarm with tutoring. That would have pleased Mother, who found Hildy’s volunteerism in a scruffy coal-mining town unsuitable for a properly engaged woman from the Bronwyn County seat of Kinship. But Hildy had been haunted by thoughts of Tom, no matter how cruelly she cajoled herself for such silliness.

  She told herself she’d go as usual, see Tom, and he’d have retreated back to being another miner she was teaching to read. Out of Christian charity. Nothing more. And her desires would surely fizzle out as foolish fancies, and her decision to marry the grocer would return to its proper, sensible priority.

  Instead, her heart fell when Tom did not arrive at the start of the tutoring session. Blinking back disappointed tears, she’d gone about her tasks alongside Olive. Then when the door swung open and Tom entered—apologizing for his lateness, explaining that his boy had a cough that needed tending to by Nana Sacovech, Rossville’s unofficial midwife and healing woman—Hildy had nearly cried out in relief at the sight of him.

  He’d lingered after the lesson—to catch up, he said. And Hildy found herself saying she’d be glad to stay to help him. Olive had shot Hildy a knowing, amused look but then looked away when Hildy frowned. After all, Olive was keeping her own scandalous secret—far more serious and potentially dangerous—and Hildy, sympathetic to Olive’s plight, was helping her keep it. She’d even told Olive about her father’s old hunting shack on a small piece of land between Rossville and Moonvale Hollow, and roughly how to get there. She’d only been hunting a few times with Daddy—an unladylike hobby, according to Mother. They had yet to sell the land and shack.

  Olive had left, leaving Hildy and Tom alone together—scandalous enough in its own way. It would be two more lessons before Hildy would find herself letting her fingertips brush his wrist, curious to see if the pull she sensed pulsing between them would simply disappear if they actually touched.

  The pull got stronger.

  A week later, when they were again alone and he reached for her, she leaned into him, bringing her lips to his.

  * * *

  Now here they are. It’s the third time they’ve made love in Tom’s modest company-owned house, his son sent to stay with Nana so she could tend to his tricky, persistent cough.

  Hildy opens her eyes. Tom still contemplates her, but he no longer grins. His lined face is taut, his gaze flashing with judgment, though not over her enjoyment of the lovemaking they’d just shared. Even when she’d told him—as she’d never confessed to anyone else—that she and first fiancé Roger had made love before he’d shipped out for the Great War, even when she’d confessed that some small part of her still missed Roger and always would, Tom had shown no judgment, only empathy. In turn, he admitted he still thought with sorrow about his wife, who’d died thirteen years before, not long after their son was born.

  No, Hildy realizes, Tom judges her harshly because he reads in her expression her shame at their unlikely, yet miraculous, pairing.

  “Folks see your automobile, still parked at the schoolhouse,” Tom says. “No one here’s falling for the tale that you stay to sweep up and straighten books for hours after school’s out.”

  “You’re telling me I should go?”

  “No.” Tom sweeps a loose strand of her hair back from her forehead. “I’m tellin’ you we gotta make this honest. Make it right.”

  “We will. It’s just that Merle—” Hildy stops. Here, in Rossville, in Tom’s bed, her fiancé’s name said aloud sounds like a foul oath. Yet in Kinship, it sounds a source of pride, as she overhears her mother’s friends talk when they come into the grocery, where she works for Merle Douglas several days a week. Once they’re wed, he wants her to continue to help in the store.

  There’s Hildy Cooper—did you know she’s engaged to Mr. Douglas?

  Why, he’s near
on old enough to be her father!

  Still, a lucky catch for her!

  Have they set a date yet?

  No—but you know her mother will want the wedding to be fancy!

  Well, she’d better get to the altar soon! She’s such a quiet, mousy little thing—

  Hildy shakes away the voices, refocuses on Tom. “I need time to break it to Merle—”

  Tom frowns. “This ain’t no good, sugar. You got to choose—and I want it to be me, even though it’d be better for you if it was Merle.”

  “Easier, you mean.”

  “In the long run, yeah.”

  Hildy stares at Tom, considers his lank figure, barely covered under the bedsheet, his thinning hair, the fine wrinkles around his eyes and mouth etched with coal dust ground into his skin. She wishes for his gap-toothed smile to open the stern set of his lips. He is not a handsome man. Weariness and wear show in his overworked, thin lines. But there is that kindness, and humor, and humility in his eyes, even as he gazes at her sorrowfully. She might be hungry at night every now and again in a future with Tom—and by choosing him, she’d horrify Mother and many people she knows in Kinship, maybe even Lily. She’s not sure his sister, Marvena, who seems wary of her, would accept her.

  Tom sits up straight, leans his head back against the wall. He pulls away from her touch.

  “I can’t do this no more.” Tom’s voice twists on the words, as if he is trying to resist their pain.

  “I need to find the right time.” Hildy’s reply is snappish.

  The summer before, Merle’s interest in her had been intriguing, flattering, but soon became overwhelming. Still, Merle had also seemed an escape from her otherwise fraught life with Mother.

  Yet when Mother and Merle began pressing her over a month ago to commit to a wedding date, she found herself resisting. Hedging, as she is now with Tom.