The Hollows--A Novel

by Jess Montgomery

  Garnet never said who was the father—but now, with knowledge and experience I certainly didn’t have at seven—I can guess that her master or one of the men who worked for him was the father. John and Garnet, unrelated, had come up from Charleston, South Carolina, at roughly the same time. They didn’t get on. Quarreled worse than Mama and Daddy. Still, John felt obliged to watch out for her. That’s the kind of man he was.

  Me, I hoped Garnet would have the baby while still with us. I knew Mama had lost several babies before and since having me—her only live birth—and I thought maybe seeing the hope of a new baby, even under such circumstances, would make her happy.

  Once, out hunting with Daddy, I asked him why he thought the Good Lord had seen fit to spare me, separate from all those siblings whose lives had ended before they could begin. Daddy said I was a rare rose, a blessing to him and Mama.

  Now I think that instead of being a blessing to Mama, I was a reminder of the others she’d lost. Maybe that was why she wanted Garnet and John to move on—so she wouldn’t have to see a baby born.

  I wish I could say I remember what I talked about with John and Garnet, at the back of the cave, that night. Maybe Garnet sang, soft and low. She had a beautiful voice. Or John might have sounded out words from the Bible, as he liked to do. Somehow, the tragedies that followed, and all the places I have been, have blurred those specific memories. I don’t think it’s just because I’ve been losing track of memories and ideas of late. I think, maybe, all these years I’ve been forever moving—seeking asylum somewhere, refuge from my guilt, because it’s too hard to remember. It’s better to blot out specifics.

  But I’ve never been able to blot out that last night. After I came back to the house, we had our own dinner, ham and corn and what was left of the green tomato pie. Mama lit the candle on the table and the light from it and the fireplace caused shadows to dance on my parents’ heads, and I peeked from over the tops of my clasped hands to watch those shadows as Daddy led us in prayer, same prayer as every night—“We thank thee, Lord, for our many blessings and humbly ask for your strength to do your will on behalf of those made less fortunate by the wickedness of men. Bless this food to our bodies and our bodies to your use. Amen.”

  Even though I’d heard that prayer so often I could recite it word for word at age seven, for the first time I must have really *heard* it, for I was struck by the notion: it was God’s will I go along with Daddy on this last run. I heard that still small voice, and I was determined to obey it. I understood, at some level I couldn’t put in words until years later, that no matter how it might test or break us, we should do what is right—and that what is right might not fit what wicked men would tell us is right. It was an understanding I’d be forced to put aside later, to sacrifice John, to save Daddy’s true killer.

  We ate in silence until I clutched my stomach, feigning pain. My first bit of acting.

  “Whatever is the problem, child?” Mama asked.

  “It’s all those damned green tomatoes!” Daddy snapped, and we both looked at him in shock. He rarely raised his voice, never cursed, but he had been particularly tense all day. He’d been to Kinship on some business, and probably visited his brother, Uncle Claude, who was a blacksmith. Daddy always came back from visits with him unhappy. Uncle Claude was strictly on the other side of Daddy on the topic of abolition.

  Uncle Claude never came to our cabin, but we visited once, the year before, when my grandmother died, and even at the funeral service, Daddy and Uncle argued over the topic.

  Because of my “stomachache,” I was allowed to sleep that night in the front room, closer to the door and therefore to the outhouse. I waited for a while, after my parents went to bed, and then I made my pillow look like a lump under the quilt on the bench where I’d been sleeping.

  I snuck out to the wagon in the barn, and hid in the false bottom, wrapped in a blanket.

  There I did fall asleep, until I jolted awake and realized that in the wagon with me were John and Garnet, tucked close.

  We jolted and rattled along, until my stomach really did hurt. Suddenly we stopped, and then we were tumbling, the wagon turning, turning, turning.

  John and Garnet and I spilled from the wagon, then into a ravine. We crawled out. Garnet’s face was gashed and both of us were crying. John checked us—miraculously, though we were cut and scratched, nothing was broken on any of us.

  But up on the road, lit by tar-dipped torches, my daddy was surrounded by angry men, pushing and prodding him.

  Bounty hunters. One in particular was shouting into Daddy’s face.

  I thought I recognized him, and when he turned and looked down the ravine at us, in those bright lights, I did. Uncle Claude.

  That’s when John looked at Garnet and me, shouted at us, “Run!” and ran, himself, up the hill toward Daddy.

  Garnet and I went the opposite way, stumbling and crying, running as best we could, until we no longer heard the jeering voices of the men or the howling of the hounds.

  Somehow, we got back to the cave. Garnet’s face was pinched with pain.

  I fetched Mama, and, after all, she delivered a baby. A healthy boy.

  Garnet did not make it.

  Mama studied the baby for a long time, even after she cleaned him up.

  And then she thrust him at me.

  “Take him to the Dyer household,” Mama said. And for the first time in a long while—and, as it would turn out, for the last time ever—Mama’s voice was firm. Strong.

  We went sometimes to Joyce and Adam Dyer’s house to do laundry and household chores, because Joyce was sickly, but her husband had leased land to the B&R Railroad, and made a fair penny from it.

  Mama continued, working things out for herself, out loud. “Babies are left on the doorsteps of their fathers from time to time. No one will question that Adam would step out on Joyce—she’s always so sickly. And Joyce wants a baby more than anything.” She looked then at the baby boy, smoothed back the fine reddish hair on his head. Studied him for another minute. “He can pass,” she said.

  I took the baby gently, and tried to keep my eyes from looking at his poor mother. I couldn’t resist a glance—maybe I was wrong? Maybe she was just tired? Still alive?

  I yelped as I looked at her. She was dead, and already shrinking in on herself.

  Yelped again as Mama grabbed my arm, pinched hard. “I will take care of her! You do as I say. Take the boy; leave him at the back door. Throw a rock through the kitchen window. Then run down the train track back this way—it’s the fastest, and no train is running this late. When you’re back, you do as your daddy and I say—whatever it is—to keep us safe!”

  I stared at her, eyes wide.

  She gave me a shake. “If’n you don’t, this baby’ll die, too!”

  So I stumbled through the woods with the baby, holding him close lest he cry out, praying I wouldn’t smother him, holding him so tight. I got to the Dyers’ place quick as I could, and left the baby as Mama said, and threw the rock, and then stumbled down to the train track and ran, and ran, and ran.

  Until I saw him, hanging.

  Daddy.

  His body swaying, outlined in the moonlight.

  I went back to the Dyers to ask for help, though I knew Daddy was far beyond helping.

  Later, though I knew in my bones it had to be my uncle Claude, that it couldn’t be poor John, who’d killed him, I went on the witness stand and said it was.

  I listened—I did—for the still small voice to tell me something else to say or do than what Mama told me I must. But I couldn’t hear it. I reckoned that no matter what I said, someone would find a way to pin the blame on John. And I wanted that baby to live. Garnet’s baby.

  Murphy.

  By the time of the trial, the Dyers had named him Murphy.

  Acted like he was theirs. Like he’d been theirs for a year. And no one questioned it, because the Dyers had so much money and the people of Moonvale relied on them.

  I did
as Mama said I must—testified, as Uncle Claude wanted, that I saw John take Daddy’s life. I never said a word about Garnet or the truth of how Murphy came into this world.

  There was no still small voice telling me to do any different.

  I’ve listened for it, ever since, and never heard it, no matter where I went, or how I tried.

  Until lately—and maybe it’s just the foolishness of an old woman—but I hear a voice in my head telling me, Now, Thea.

  Now is the time to get your truth written down.

  CHAPTER 34

  LILY AND HILDY

  Hildy

  Saturday, October 2—2:00 a.m.

  Hildy again stirs to wakefulness.

  Angry voices.

  She tries to lift her hand to rub her gummy eyes, but her hands are bound behind her. She vaguely recalls something about the binding being necessary for her to not hurt herself or others.

  Bound—just as Thea had been, shortly before her escape.

  But she had escaped. Hildy shakes her head to clear it. She must also find a way.

  Then, as her vision clears, she sees etched in the plaster wall across from her the message: I never was crazy.

  Well. Could Hildy say that? She’d feigned being crazy to get in here—but in some ways she’d acted crazy of late. Not about Tom and Merle. About her jealousy of Lily and Marvena’s friendship. And yet, she realizes in a flash of clarity, what she’d really been jealous of was not their relationship, but their independence. Their courage. They respected each other for those traits—and Hildy had wanted to be like that, too.

  So, she’d tried. And look where it had gotten her.

  Angry voices. One is foggily familiar. A nurse who had tried to force a foul-tasting liquid down her throat, while guards held her.

  Hildy had fought. Yes, fought and bit. Even now, as her head pounds with stabbing pain, a slight smile cracks Hildy’s lips. She’d fought. But when they couldn’t make her swallow, they’d injected the liquid into her.

  Still even as the needle slipped into her vein, she’d repeated the important information she’d gotten out of Helen over and over to herself, until it became a gruesome lullaby. She had to remember what she’d learned, so she could tell Lily.

  Lily.

  That is Lily, outside this door, shouting, “God Almighty, I will take her out of here. Jurisdiction be damned! I’ll deal with that later!”

  As Hildy starts to weep, the door opens, and Lily rushes in.

  LILY

  Saturday, October 2—4:00 a.m.

  “Hildy will be fine.”

  Lily, suddenly light-headed, leans against the doorframe in the bedroom at Mrs. Gottschalk’s house. Abe had brought both Lily and Hildy here from the asylum. On the drive, Lily had tried to keep her friend calm and quiet, but Hildy insisted on telling her what she’d learned from Helen.

  Every word struggling from Hildy’s lips had wrenched Lily’s heart—not just for the content, but for the effort. Why had she ever discounted Hildy as anything less than brave?

  At the house, while Mama and Mrs. Gottschalk settled Hildy into bed, Lily told Abe, “I need one more favor. Get Dr. Goshen from Kinship. If he drives here on his own, follow him to make sure he really comes.”

  Abe, who’d said nothing on the drive back from the Hollows, glanced at Hildy, an expression approximating a smidge of sympathy crossing his face. Then he’d nodded, left, and forty-five minutes later Dr. Goshen was knocking on the door.

  Now, in the next room, Mama and Mrs. Gottschalk are settling the children—rightfully stirred and upset by the night’s commotion—as Dr. Goshen stares at Lily with concern. “What about you? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Lily barely keeps her tone patient. “Tell me about Hildy.”

  “She was given too much potassium bromide at the Hollows. More than any doctor should sanction—even for the most severe psychiatric cases. Fortunately, she is stronger than she appears. With rest and time, it will work itself out of her system. She should have only light liquids for now, until she can hold down food. The bromide will keep her nauseous for a while.”

  After a long moment, Lily nods. Thank God. “And you have the paperwork?”

  Dr. Goshen’s eyes darken, but he nods. “She should never have been taken there in the first place. I’ll take it to the director today.”

  Lily exhales, relieved. The doctor’s letter would assure the Hollows has no hold on Hildy. Just as Abe—somehow—had made sure that there would be no ramifications for Lily overstepping her jurisdiction in Athens County. George now has a deeper hold on Lily, if he wants it. But the moment she saw Hildy in that solitary holding cell, where Lily herself had been for a few hours earlier in the week, Lily knew she’d pay any price to get her out.

  The doctor says, “If you need me, send for me. But you don’t need to have your friend follow me!”

  “He’s not a friend. And I’m guessing he drove on after you pulled in?” Lily pulls back the curtain, glances out the window, but it’s impossible to see what automobiles are in the gravel drive on this dark, nearly moonless night.

  “He did,” Dr. Goshen says abruptly.

  “Would you mind giving me a ride back to town? I need to return to the Hollows—”

  “I said I’d take the paperwork!”

  “I know—and thank you. I need to interrogate a nurse’s aide there.”

  Dr. Goshen nods and swiftly leaves the bedroom.

  For a moment, Lily gazes at Hildy. She gently pulls the quilt up to cover Hildy’s shoulders. Rest and heal quickly, my dear friend.

  “Lily?”

  She turns to Olive, sitting up in the twin bed on the other side of the room. Olive had observed the comings and goings with Hildy with wide-eyed alarm.

  Now Olive stares at Hildy. “Do you think Margaret had anything to do with this?”

  “Not directly. She is still being held in the jail.” Lily considers. Olive remains fragile, recovering. “But she’s retracted her admission of beating you, and I can’t hold her more than another day without official charges.” She pauses, calculates. Actually, enough time had passed that she should have released Margaret—but with the need to rescue Hildy, she’d gotten back to the area later than expected. No need to upset Olive with this fact, though. “Anyway, Hildy was able to tell me on the way over that a nurse’s aide confessed she helped Thea leave the asylum. Thea was upset because she’d overheard two nurses talk about a plot to lynch Clarence—though they just referred to him as a Negro working to integrate the mines. In Thea’s mind, that meant John.”

  Olive looks confused at this last reference. “Explain that to me later.” As she glances at Hildy, a mix of sorrow and anger flashes across her face. Then she looks resolutely at Lily. “I’m ready to press official charges against Margaret.”

  LILY

  Saturday, October 2—8:00 a.m.

  “I don’t know who the nurses are!” Helen says. She looks from Dr. Harkins to Chief Warren. Her chin trembles, and her eyes well up.

  Lily turns her gaze to the window behind Dr. Harkins, watches a hawk swooping past. They’ve gathered at Lily’s insistence—though both the location and the presence of the police chief are Dr. Harkins’s preference. When Lily looks back at Helen, the young woman shrinks back as if struck.

  “Hildy swears you told her that Thea said she overheard two nurses talking over plans to murder a man,” Lily says. “Did she share the names with you, or if not, who do you suspect—”

  “She’s already answered! Kincaide didn’t say, and furthermore, her comments were the ramblings of an old woman with dementia!” Dr. Harkins snaps. “Certainly no one in our employ here would be conspiring murder. We hire only the finest people—”

  “People who would administer a deadly dose of bromide to Hildy—a sworn officer of the law, by the way, here undercover”—never mind that Lily did not know of Hildy’s choice, and would never have sanctioned it—“to find out why Miss Kincaide was so determined to le
ave.”

  Helen inhales sharply and starts to cry. “Is she all right?”

  Lily ignores the question as Dr. Harkins says, “Bromide was administered because Miss Cooper, who was brought here willingly by her mother and fiancé, attacked one of our guards!”

  Chief Warren clears his throat. “If you were going to send an officer in to conduct undercover investigations, you should have cleared it with myself and Dr. Harkins.”

  “That would hardly have been undercover,” Lily says. “And who knows how many of your fine people are part of the WKKK, or the KKK for that matter, and part of a conspiracy to murder an employee of the United Mine Workers.”

  “Are you making an accusation, Sheriff Ross, beyond these two alleged nurses?” Dr. Harkins’s tone is cool.

  Lily sighs. She’s gone too far. “No. I’m trying to find out the names of the nurses. If they confirm they were talking about this conspiracy in a location where Miss Kincaide could have overheard, then I have proof—”

  “That her fears weren’t delusions?” Dr. Harkins steeples his fingertips.

  “That she had—or felt she had—justifiable fears, though jumbled with a tragic past murder in her mind, to leave the grounds. If she really feared this, and then stumbled into a WKKK meeting, and shared her fears, then someone at that meeting would have had motive to murder her.” Lily looks sharply at Helen. “As it was, the poor old woman was willing to trade her jewelry, and even her shoes, for your assistance in leaving, wasn’t she?”

  Helen sobs. “Yes, and I know I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t think she’d get far, figured she’d come back—”

  Dr. Harkins frowns. “Taking advantage of a patient in this way is cause for dismissal.”

  “It might even be considered thievery.” Lily looks to Chief Warren for confirmation. He nods.