by Jay, Karla M
I nudge Miss Jojo and point to the woman’s head wound, cut clean to the bone.
Miss Jojo’s eyes widen, and she shakes her head.
“Jesus will protect me. He heard my vow.” Miss Ardith turns her head and spits out a tooth with a spray of blood. “Get some white men…to help me.”
Jojo straightens, her face set in a dark mask. She hands me Karl. Looks to be recalling all the pain Miss Ardith caused her. Taking her baby away. Giving her a dead one. Having the doctor cut her so she can’t have any more.
Is she gonna kill her? Miss Ardith isn’t long for this life as it is.
Miss Jojo unwraps her headscarf and walks to Miss Ardith.
“White men will be here shortly to help you. I only got this here rag you once called lice-filled to help you with.” She ties it round Miss Ardith’s head. “That oughta help some.”
“William? Where’s my Baby Katherine?” Her voice is weak. Her eyes are closed. Her hands are open on her chest like she’s cradling an infant.
I lay Baby Karl on her wet chest, and she closes her hands around him. He squirms against the cold wetness of her body. Moments later, her arms drop away.
“She gone,” Miss Jojo says, turning her head away.
A hobo has come back to see where we are.
“We gotta get,” he says. “Folks will pilfer that train and we’ll get blamed for it.”
He’s right. If Miss Jojo and I get taken in, our arrest records will show up. My time will start over in some other place. I just want to go home.
And I want to be as far away as possible from the spot where Briar’s soul left for heaven.
Miss Jojo walks away, softly talking to Karl. She turns to me.
“How we going to get this babe home?”
I haven’t had a chance to explain about Mr. William’s letter to Miss Ardith. Mr. William is gone, lost to wherever he took off to. I’ll tell her as soon as I can get some paper.
I shrug. Then I point to Miss Jojo and mimic her rocking the infant. She needs to raise him.
“You saying I keep him?” She runs her finger down the baby’s face. “I’ll get arrested for stealing a baby.”
I shake my head. Point to her stomach trying to say who will know. She has all the proof that she recently gave birth.
“We get to St. Louis and see your lawyer friend. Will we say this is my baby?”
I nod. It doesn’t feel wrong. In the end, Miss Ardith owes her at least this much.
Willow Stewart
By the time we made it to the hobo camp that day, things were hazy for me, but my travel mate kept her head. A good Christian farmer and his wife drove us into the city, even gave us a little money for food. We read the names of the dead and injured in the newspaper. Briar and Ilya weren’t listed, but they hadn’t bought tickets so no one could have known their names. I cry each day when I think he was only on that train to protect me. In the end, he did our family proud.
I had Miss Jojo call Miss Burns. That’s a right smart contraption that telephone. She sent Miss Jojo and me money to stay in a boarding house in St. Louis, where we spent three nights. No one is the wiser about Baby Karl not being Miss Jojo’s. She felt less guilty keeping the baby when she learned Mr. William disappeared with Oliver. The Legal Aid Society is very interested in helping Miss Jojo get her mother out of the insane asylum in Virginia so they can live together. Probably in Washington, DC. Even gave Jojo a job working in their office.
And no more trains for me.
I’ve been traveling by bus back home to Georgia, and early this morning got let off where the Fancy Road meets the trail, leading to my home.
I’m trying to keep my excitement tampered down, but it’s running all around inside me like how Oliver used to circle the backyard. I think of him and hope he and Mr. William are doing well.
I relax a little as I soak in the combined scents of the forest around me, fresh and breezy with wild apple blossoms and honeysuckle that climbs the nearest trees. The woods feel alive. I’m back in the heartbeat of this mountain, the place that sharpens my mind, fills me with love. When I reach the first peak, I see layers of dark blue mountains stacked in the distance, darkening and then greening again under the shadows of the passing clouds.
I all but run up the long trail, along the creek, and over the bridge where Cousin Len died. A squawking comes from the trees—our pet magpie, Lucy. She hops from branch to branch, pointing me home.
Been gone six weeks. Feels like a whole year.
The family cemetery comes into view, tucked under the pines at the outer edge of the homestead. Grass grows over the newest grave. No headstone yet, but my throat hitches. Mama and Baby Luther must lie there. I send a prayer skyward, thanking the Lord for the time we had and telling Him I’m happy they’re together. I turn to leave. Off to the side, another grave had been dug and filled. The wooden board stuck in the ground has the word Outsider carved into it.
It takes me a moment, but I realize Poppy must’ve come looking for me when Jacca returned home with my note under his saddle. He’d have found dead Mr. Coburn and buried him up here. That’s why the police couldn’t find his body.
And Poppy wouldn’t know the wrong Mr. Coburn done to me. He just followed the family motto to help others in need.
The corral comes next. Jacca’s back is to me, but I watch him sniff the air. Then he spins, his ears perked, and he runs to the fence, neighing and talking like I never heard before. I bury my face in his neck, breathing in his rich horse scent. I smile so wide my cheeks hurt.
By now, everyone in the cabin must know someone’s here.
I give him one long rub and touch foreheads before heading up the sloping yard. Billy Leo charges my way, and I swear he’s grown. Poppy is right behind him, with a huge smile stretching his lips toward his ears. He grabs me around the waist and twirls me round and round before setting me down.
“Willow. My lands!” He rubs my arms back and forth. “You made it back.” His voice is husky blue. Full of emotion.
In this swimmy-headed spinning world, I see two images of my sister Ruthy on the porch.
Then my sight clears.
It’s Ruthy and right beside her is…Mama? Mama! My poor eyes never stretched so big.
But how is this possible? What two buryings did Preacher Holcombe do that day?
I rush into her arms, into her wraparound hug. Her embrace never felt so warm.
“Willow.” Her voice is the creamy peach sound I always hear in my head. “Thank you, Lord, for seeing her home.”
When the tears and hugging are over, I sign, “Who died the day I left?”
“Cousin Lucille,” Poppy said. “Stood up and fell right over dead not long after you left.”
“I thought it was Mama.”
“Bless your little heart,” Mama says. “What a sad weight to be carrying all by yourself. And according to Briar, you both sure had you a passel of troubles off this mountain.”
He must’ve written like I did. I nod. Guess it’s time to tell them about him.
“And that boy, Ilya, that he helped had a mighty hard row to hoe too,” Ruthy says.
Wait. How would they know about him? Once Briar escaped from the work camp with the boy, with Ilya, Briar was too busy catching trains so he could stay up with me.
The magpie swoops to the trees and sets to talking again.
Briar and Ilya come walking up the hill, carrying an axe and an armful of wood.
I burst into tears. They didn’t get crushed. Not sure how Briar got off that train, but I’ve never been so happy in so many short moments in all my life.
And he didn’t keep going to head out west. Briar’s come home.
My family is back together.
“You take the slow way home, Willow?” Briar’s voice is cheery orange, and his smile reaches into my chest and soothes all the pain I been carrying there. “We went lookin
g for you after the wreck.”
I laugh and cry at the same time and fall into his arms.
“The hobos said they took you to the jungle, then we heard you caught a ride into the city. Didn’t take too much asking at hotels and boarding housing to learn where a silent girl with red hair might’ve been keeping herself. That gal you were with told us you were taking the bus home.”
Ah, Miss Jojo. She stayed behind another few days to get squared away with the Legal Aid Society.
I sign, “I couldn’t bear to ride another train. How did you get off before the wreck?”
He laughs and says, “Ilya here. The boy has eagle eyes. He spotted that other engine’s smoke long before the horn. Saved our lives.”
I sign, “Thank you,” to Ilya.
He signs, “Good soup,” back and we all laugh. At least he’s trying.
A few nights later, we’re all on the porch watching the sun lower its sleepy head to the Earth. Ruthy and I are peeling potatoes, Briar and Poppy are tinkering with a new plow head, and Billy Leo is showing Ilya his lightning bug collection.
If anybody comes looking, Briar Stewart died in Chicago, his death certificate signed by a hobo doctor in trade for six agates. Briar’s new name is Cy Gojack, Ilya’s brother.
Ilya’s a free man as well. Not that he was ever formally charged.
Seems the turpentine camp shut down when the boss man, Taggert, got attacked by some crows one day in the woods. Pecked one of Taggert’s eyes clean-out. Briar said the man had once shot at them and they didn’t forget. Since there was no record of Ilya being an assigned convict at the camp, nobody’s hunting him.
Before Briar returned home with Ilya, they stopped by Cy’s grave. We heard some of the story about what happened at the cave, but there’s more to come, I think. It’ll roll out in time.
Poppy said that if the crops are good this fall, he’ll pay for Cy to be moved to our family plot. Whether Ilya remains here or not, he will know where he can come visit his brother.
And part of me hopes he stays. My heart does a strange jump when he smiles my way or tries to practice the signs he sees me use.
Tonight, Mama has the newest edition of the Atlanta Constitution and is reading from her rocker. I told her to be on the lookout for anything on Miss Ardith or the Beck Infantorium.
“Ah, here’s one.”
“The case of missing person Sissy Belle Strunk is solved. She has been masquerading in Marietta as a socialite for six years, married to a well-known businessman, William Dobbs. Information received implicates her in the death of her brother and the preacher Gator Tyre near Hickory Nut Hollow seven years earlier. Mrs. Ardith Dobbs died in the train crash outside St. Louis last month. Her infant son is thought to have been swept away in the river. Mr. Dobbs and his young son have left Marietta and have not been located. The couple has ties to the controversial Ku Klux Klan.
The Klan Grand Dragon denies knowing them.
In a strange twist, Mrs. Dobbs is linked to the now infamous Beck Infantorium, the horrific disposal place for unwanted babies. Mrs. Dobbs continued to take babies there even after learning that the two sisters who ran the house were collecting money in an adoption and insurance scam and then letting the babies die.
The search for bodies around the Infantorium and in the mass graves in the cemetery behind the property continues. The Beck sisters are in jail awaiting trial.”
I don’t wish anyone dead, but Miss Ardith might have gotten off easy. She craved attention and praise, and none of that was going to be in her future if she had lived.
I may have a silent voice, but I’m proud I spoke up for Jojo, for the poor babies who died so horribly neglected. I told Miss Jojo she can receive the reward money for finding Sissy Belle Strunk. She’ll use it to get her mother out of the asylum.
And speaking of voices, Ilya’s is spring green. Fresh, like grass pushing from the ground, reaching for all that life offers. Makes me smile, hope again.
One day, I might write about all that’s happened. The whole world seems to be holding on to secrets of one sort or another. Staying silent when words should be said.
Someday, I hope to understand why that is.
For now, I’m gonna watch the sun drape our mountain in golden shades each morning and bathe us in pale orange warmth every sunset. Well, except when moody weather says not today.
And one of these days, I might venture off our mountain again. May consider being a backwoods librarian or teacher for the deaf, those who can’t talk or hear, like Miss Helen Keller.
But for now, I’m right where I’ve longed to be.
Home.
The End
Author’s Note
Women of the KKK:
In 2017, while searching for information about the beginning of the women’s rights movement, I ran across an article about the women of the KKK. Several research books later, I understood why the WKKK became known as “A Poison Squad of Whispering Women.” Their role in feeding their husbands the names of citizens who were “breaking the Klan’s rules” or not promoting “a purer America” served the Klan well.
There were dozens of women’s groups during that time. Many mentioned in the novel. One of the most frightening pictures I found was that of the Dixie Protestant Women’s Political League in their regalia. (From Newspaper.org)
Miss Daisy Barr was a highly influential Quaker woman who started out as a temperance advocate, then became an evangelist, a political organizer, the president of the Humane Society, and found her voice in 1920 with the Indiana WKKK. Over the next year, she used her revival speaker skills to organize WKKK realms in many states, personally recruiting 75,000 members in Indiana and Ohio alone in a few short months.
The WKKK ritual in the novel came from the book Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s by Kathleen M. Blee. (Berkeley Press 1991) This book was quite valuable in learning about the rise and fall of the Women’s Klan and the motivation and beliefs that compelled so many women to join. Here’s a quote: “By packaging its noxious ideology as traditional small-town values and wholesome fun, the Klan of the 1920s encouraged native-born white Americans to believe that bigotry, intimidation, harassment, and extralegal violence were all perfectly compatible with, if not central to, patriotic respectability.”
The second Klan fizzled out by the end of the 1930s. But by then, it is estimated that 8,000,000 joined, and 500,000 were women. Ku Klux Kiddies was the youth group, and tens of thousands of babies and children were baptized in Klan ceremonies.
Another good book about the Klan in general is Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan by Nancy Maclean. (Oxford Press 1994)
Klan members believed that Pope was coming to take over the United States and that he’d inserted his picture on the dollar bill. I spend many hours studying old 1920 bills and there is an odd object in the upper right-hand corner near the 1, but to say that it is a face, is a stretch. My only conclusion is, when you are looking for conspiracies, you can find them anywhere.
Baby Farms:
This was the hardest part of my research. The horrible stories of thousands of babies left to die or be killed or sacrificed for the life insurance money because they had no perceived value were difficult to read. Baby farming referred to a system in which infants were sent away to be nursed and boarded by private individuals for either a flat, one-time fee or a weekly or monthly charge. Baby farmers, usually middle-aged women, solicited these infants through “adoption” advertisements in newspapers, and through nurses, midwives, and the keepers of lying-in houses (private houses where poor, unwed women could pay to give birth and arrange for the transfer of their infants to baby farmers).
In 1922, in New York City, one baby a day was disposed of, some sold at bargain prices. A dramatic finding in a New York State charity study found that newspaper advertisements offered and requested children for adoption. The unma
rried mother willingly paid any amount of money to dispose of her child and could be charged from as much as $15 to $65 by a maternity hospital or an individual willing to dispose of her baby. The new trade slogan of one baby seller was “it’s cheaper and easier to buy a baby for $100 than to have one of your own.”
The Beck Infantorium was based on a real-life horror show run by Mrs. Helene Geisen-Volk, a former German war nurse who dealt in babies. According to the evidence, some fifty-three children committed to her care died of one cause or another, usually of starvation. Conditions at her infantorium—described as a baby farm or a “baby disposal plant”—were called miserable and filthy in the extreme. A probation officer reported she had “strangled or frozen to death or otherwise disposed of babies left in her custody in order that she might reap a profit through her acts.”
Like Ardith in the novel, Geisen-Volk came into the limelight after she substituted a baby for another whose fate never was discovered. After the body of another child had been exhumed, she was indicted for manslaughter. She received a three-and-a-half-year sentence for the deaths of the fifty-three children.
Babies and children gained “value” in the late 1930s when sweatshops were outlawed and adopting a child became a fad of the wealthy. A fascinating book is Pricing the Priceless Child. The Changing Social Value of Children by Viviana A. Zelizer. (Princeton University Press 1985) Zelizer traces the attitudes society held toward babies and children from the 1800s through modern day. Early days were not kind.
Chain Gangs:
Prior to 1900, the dilemma of operating tax-supported state prisons was solved by transforming state prisons into leased convict labor for private profit. By 1908, Georgia “prison farms” ended and the convict-leasing era wound down as a consequence of accusations that too many affluent southerners had profited from the system. Finally, there was a flicker of moral indignation over the treatment of convicts.