Provenance: A Novel
Donna Drew Saw yer
Creative Cache, LLC
2015
©2015 by Donna Drew Sawyer
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
Published in the United States by Creative Cache, LLC.
www.creativecache.biz
Cover design: Francesco Di Biase and Federica Quadrelli
Interior design: Jera Publishing
Author Photo by: Dwight Carter
Provenance: A Novel is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue and all characters, with the exception of some historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and not to be
construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents and dialogue attributed to those persons
are not intended to depict actual events and are used in a fictitious manner. Any other names, characters, businesses, places, events
and incidents are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, or actual events or locals is purely coincidental.
First Edition
ISBN: 978-0-9916143-2-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948208
To Granville, for your love and support,
and for believing I was a writer long before I did
PROVENANCE, a noun
Origin: From the French provenir, to originate, to come from.
Definition: Where something originated or was nurtured in
its early existence.
Art enables us to find ourselves
and lose ourselves at the same time.
~Thomas Merton
Contents
Prologue
Park Place, Virginia—Fall 1909
“Hank, run!” was the last thing he heard
Junior say. Deputies struggled to hold and
handcuff his two brothers while the sheriff
tried to restrain Hank. The old man was no match for the
18-year-old; Hank fought his way free and ran. He could hear
the sheriff’s labored breathing behind him, sweat was stinging
and clouding his eyes; he needed to reach the safety of Park
Place, the black side of town.
“We’re Richard Whitaker’s boys, you know us!” Hank
shouted over his shoulder, not slowing to see if his words made
a difference.
Angry, red-faced and short-of-breath the sheriff sputtered,
“Then you know! No niggers ‘llowed in town after sundown.
You look white but you ain’t! For sure, you the Whitaker boy
that needs a lesson, and I’m the one to teach—”
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Hank turned just in time to see the sheriff grab his chest,
drop to his knees and fall face forward onto the unforgiving
pavement. Hank stopped, not sure what to do until he heard,
“Sheriff, did you git that other nigger?” Hank took off,
leaving the sheriff bleeding and gasping for air. He did what
Junior told him to do—he ran.
•
The toe of a man’s boot awakened him.
“What you doin’ sleeping out here, youngin’?” Hank opened
his eyes and squinted into the sun blinding his view of the man’s
face. Was he one of the sheriff’s men from last night, the one
who told him he could fix it so he and his brothers would never
see the light of another day?
Hank was where he’d collapsed the night before – legs
aching, out of breath, confused, scared, and tired. Damn tired
of being treated like a criminal for just wanting to see the end of the Negro League game at Hampton Normal and Agricultural.
If they’d just caught the early ferry, he and his brothers would
be safe at home in their own beds. He’d needed only a few
minutes of rest—but now it was morning and his back was stil
against the broad oak that hid him last night. Hank’s hand
slowly searched the cool damp earth behind him for a rock,
a stick, anything to defend himself. The man reached toward
him, blocking the sun shining in Hank’s eyes. The outstretched
arm was that of an elderly white man, not the vigilantes from
last night. He extended an open hand instead of a clenched fist.
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“Let me give you a hand up. We shouldn’t be ’round here,
that’s Park Place over yonder. I’ll take ya back to our part of
town then you git on home from there,” the old man said as he
started his truck. To this stranger, Hank’s fair skin, hazel eyes
and sandy-colored straight hair made him a white man. People
in Llewellyn knew he looked like his mother, who looked like
her Scotch-Irish father, not her African mother.
“You don’t wanna be gettin’ so drunk you end up in these
parts. I know some of you youngins like those little colored
girls. Don’t believe in race mixin’ myself, but you youngins’
gotta satisfy those desires, I understand it. Don’t recommend
you keep up that behavior—somethin’ go wrong and you’d be
caught up in it, like last night. Sheriff and some of his deputies
chased a bunch of niggers out of Llewellyn. Everybody knows
this here’s a sundown town. One of ‘em put the sheriff in the
hospital. Heard say he’s bad—ain’t gonna make it.”
What the hel ? I didn’t touch him, Hank thought.
“Whole of Llewellyn’s jumpy this morning, they lookin’
for that boy. Glad I’m headin’ home and outta these parts, that
boy’s gonna swing.”
“What happened to the others? You said there were other…
niggers?” The word stuck in Hank’s throat, he was desper-
ate for information about his brothers so he spoke the old
man’s language.
“Yeah, a couple of ‘em was already in custody when the
other one got away. Heard those two got a beatin’ for good
measure and they sent ‘em back over to nigger-town. They’ll
get the one that got away, always do.”
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Hank swallowed hard. Looking out of the passenger side
window, he watched the landscape change from familiar to
strange as the truck headed away from Park Place and all Hank
knew, and all who knew him. He had no choice now but to
keep going.
“Where you from, youngin’?” the man asked.
“Richmond,” Hank said, naming the first city that
came to mind.
“Well hell, that’s where I’m headed. Need a ride?”
4
Part One
Surrealism:
An art movement between 1924 and 1945, associated with the
Paris-based artists who often explored images from dreams,
using realistic painting techniques that juxtaposed unexpected
objects, creating an alternate reality.
5
• 1 •
Richmond, Virginia—Early Summer 1912
(I)
Maggie Bennett escaped to the front porch to
avoid the stifling formality of an evening in the
parlor with her mother and father. She moved the
wooden porch swing back and forth to the rhythm of the cicada
chorus, ever grateful for the shadowy solace of the outdoor
room and the distance it offered from her mother’s withering
gaze. She had disappointed her mother once again by failing
to attract one of Richmond’s eligible bachelors to the Bennett’s
porch on this prime summer evening. But Maggie had the
gentleman caller she wanted in her sights. She watched the
not so subtle young man as he pretended to stroll by her house,
his hands nervously rolling his cap into a cylinder that would
render it unfit for wearing. He was tall and lean; his long legs
stretched out to cover the distance between her house and the
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intersection in half the time it would have taken her. Walking
together, she would have had to run to keep up with him. He
walked up one side of the wide boulevard and then crossed the
grassy median to stroll past her house again.
This would be the third time he’d passed this evening. He
would stop and speak this time, she decided. Maggie got up
and walked to the porch steps, “How many times are you going
to go by here?” she called out to him. “You lost or something?”
She startled him so that he thought his voice would come
out as a squeak. He took a deep breath and managed to lower it.
“Uh, no, Miss, I’m just enjoyin’ the cool night air.”
“As many times as you been up and down this here block,
I suspect you worked up a sweat rather than cooled one down,”
she said. “Want some sweet tea?”
“I don’t want to trouble you, miss.”
“No trouble, wouldn’t have asked if it were.”
“Well, if it ain’t no trouble.”
Coming home late from his office one evening, he had seen
her sitting alone on her porch after first noticing her down at
Beal’s General Store. Though he knew it was best to keep to
himself, there was something about this girl that made him
want to ignore all the reasons that he should. Now, after fin-
ishing work each day, he often took the route past her house
for his evening strolls, always longing for a reason to stop. She
looked different up close, nearly a foot shorter than his six feet, delicate and needing to be taken care of. Her voice however,
was strong, clear and purposeful, not at all what he expected.
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“Come on up and sit,” Maggie said, motioning toward the
wicker chair across from the porch swing. “Al the ice is melted
but I can have Frances chip more if you want.”
“No, no, this is just fine for me. Sweet and wet is all I need.”
“I’m Miss Margaret Bennett. But everyone, except my
mother, calls me Maggie. I’ve seen you around town,” Maggie
said, placing the glass of tea she poured for him on the table
between them. “Seen you with the men cleaning up—”
“I’m not a janitor,” Hank blurted out. “I owns my business.”
“A janitor business?”
“Property Services,” he said.
“Do you have a name, Mr. Property Services?”
“I’m Hank—Henry—Mr. Henry Whitaker of Whitaker’s
Property Services. I’m the boss, I owns my business. I got a
dozen men workin’ for me. We clean up, make repairs, paint—
whatever needs takin’ care of. I got accounts with City Hall,
the library, I’m biddin’ on the new hotel downtown and I got
a retail establishment, Beal’s General on Main.” Where I first
saw you, he thought.
“That’s quite the resume, Mr. Henry Whitaker of Whitaker
Property Services.” Maggie took a sip of her sweet tea but
kept her gaze on Hank. “I go down to Beal’s sometimes to
buy a few things. I think I’ve seen you down there.” Where I
went looking for you, she thought but didn’t say. Maggie had noticed him a couple of months before and several times since.
Mr. Beale never allowed Hank and his cleaning crew in the
front of the store until all the customers were gone so Maggie
began to show up just before closing time. She’d take a seat
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at a table in the sewing section pretending to page through
the pattern books while watching Hank direct his men as
they started their work in the back of the store. Even though
Maggie knew Mr. Beale was anxious for her to leave and Mrs.
Beale was probably waiting dinner on him, she needed a little
more time to surreptitiously study Hank.
She liked the way he took charge, wearing a white dress
shirt with the sleeves rolled up just so, pants crisply creased,
shoes shined, his sandy hair neatly slicked back. Even late in
the day he looked clean-shaven. He looks like he has a wife who takes good care of him, Maggie thought. But she saw no ring on his finger and that made her hopeful.
Maggie liked what she saw from a distance, and even more
what she saw up close tonight. He seemed taller and his eyes
were beautiful. In the shadows of the porch lights she couldn’t
see the exact color but they were light-colored, serious and a
little sad—like he had lost something or someone. He had high
cheekbones and a mouth perfect for kissing—a thin upper lip
atop a full bottom lip. She would kiss that mouth one day, she
determined.
“I didn’t know you worked all those places,” Maggie said,
or I probably would have started going there too.
“I don’t, they’s clients. That’s what you call them when I
work for me and they hire out their property work.”
“Sounds very business-like.”
“Oh it is, it is,” Hank agreed. He picked up the sweet tea
Maggie had placed in front of him, hoping she would keep the
conversation going. Hank watched her move the porch swing
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back and forth, waiting for him to say something. He looked
down and away from her intense stare, taking sips of his tea,
wanting it to last so he would have an excuse to stay; it would
be an insult, he decided, not to finish the entire glass. Here he
was on the porch of the woman he had longed to talk to for
months, and he wasn’t capable of a simple conversation. Hank
had no trouble talking to his clients, but he struggled to talk
to Miss Maggie Burnett.
“Just sayin’ hello to a white woman can end a black man’s
life,” his father had drilled into the Whitaker boys from the
moment they were old enough to understand. It was a lesson
they learned early and one that their father repeated often. But
here in Richmond everyone believed he was a white man so
black women feared him and he was afraid when white women
found him desirable. The dilemma sent the twenty-one year-old
Hank to places where identity didn’t matter, there were no
questions and he could satisfy his physical needs for a price.
But Hank longed for more warmth than a sexual transac-
tion could offer; he wanted the deep emotional connection his
parents had �
� a connection so strong that only death had ever
separated them. Because of a careless adventure one night three
years ago, the possibility of a life like theirs in his homeplace of Park Place was no longer an option. Hank looked at Maggie,
she excited him like no woman, black or white, ever had. He
couldn’t explain it but he could definitely feel it.
Before the silence of Hank’s thoughts and Maggie’s gaze
reached an awkward stage, the screen door swung open and an
elegant, shapely woman stepped onto the porch. She paused for
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a few moments under the porch light, as if walking onto a stage.
She wore a stylish dress, complemented by several strands of
opera length pearls; her attire more appropriate for dinner out
than an evening at home. When Hank looked at her face, he
saw a mature version of the young woman on the porch swing
across from him, both truly beautiful women.
“Margaret, who are you talking to out here?” she asked.
When she saw Hank her face went from anticipation to
disappointment.
“Oh Momma, this is Mr. . . .”
“Hank Whitaker,” he said, jumping to his feet, nearly
spilling the contents of his glass. Maggie saw her mother start
to finger the pearls around her neck; the inquisition was about
to begin.
“And who are your people, Mr. Whitaker?” Charlotte
Bennett asked, as she looked him over - head to toe and
back again.
“I’m alone in this world, ma’am. No family,” Hank paused
for a second, “here in Richmond.”
“I see,” Charlotte said with a palpable chill. Strike one. She looked at his open-collared shirt, rolled up shirt sleeves, no tie
or jacket, a worn cap shoved in his pocket. Strike two.
“Mr. Whitaker owns his own business, Momma. He has
accounts, clients, with businesses all over town.”
“What kind of business, Mr. Whitaker?” Charlotte asked,
with a tinge of hopefulness.
“Property management services, ma’am,” Hank said proudly.
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A janitor, thought Charlotte. Strike three. Mr. Whitaker has struck out.
“Margaret, it’s getting late,” she said as she turned her back
to Hank. He took her cue.
“Thank you again, Miss Maggie, ma’am,” he said, direct-
ing his gaze first to Maggie, then to Charlotte and back to
Maggie, where it stayed until he drained his glass. He wiped
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