Introduction

Rowen Hart has been raised as the pampered son and only child of a prominent family in the small community of White Rock, North Carolina. It’s the 1950s and he’s drifting through the days, following the life path his parents have planned for him and preparing to go away to college. When his father’s suicide turns his world upside down, he finds himself responsible for his mother in their suddenly reduced circumstances that leave them dependent on his uncle, his father’s business partner.

Ill prepared to take over as head of the family, Rowen doesn’t know which way to turn. Then a neighbor’s ten year old daughter comes to live with them, baffling him with her wild behavior and never ending attempts to win his approval and making his new responsibilities even more overwhelming.

As Rowen tries to find his way, he begins to question everything about his upbringing, his current circumstances and his plans for the future as they turn to dust in his hands.

Editorial Review

No Editorial Review Currently Available

Excerpt

When, at last, he reached his own yard, the hinge on the picket gate popped and the gate dropped in his hand. Ever since they’d moved here, one thing after another was busting, sagging, decaying. Nothing had ever worn out when his daddy was alive.

Adeline was boiling ham hocks in the kitchen, and the fan on the counter blasted the odor around him. She spoke without turning. “Since you been gone ’bout two hours, we can assume you seen all you needed to.”

She wasn’t going to give away the slightest sign even though she was dying to know what had happened. She was counting on him not being able to contain himself and spilling it all. That’s what he’d always done when she’d acted uninterested because it was so damn frustrating. But even if he fooled with her a little and didn’t breathe a word, she’d just keep on stirring pots and slamming lids. After all, she always found out everything anyway. An underground current plugged right into her, and most times she spilled the White Rock scandals long before they were whispered in church.

Then it came to him, how to cast out a hook.

“Nothing much happened. The only witness they put on this morning was the Whitney girl.”

He held his breath and didn’t say another word.

That did it! She looked over her shoulder.

“They put that poor baby on the stand? What did she say?”

“She said she saw Franklin shoot her daddy.”

Adeline turned back to the stove. “Upsetting that orphan baby for nothin’. It’d been better if they’d left her alone.”

“She’s not an orphan! She’s still got her mama.”

“You got a mama like that, you’s an orphan. I worked for the Whites before I come to work for your mama and daddy, and I’ve knowed Coman Whitney from before she dropped out of school. Low down mean as a sow. But that’s not the point. Point is she knows her brother shot her man in cold blood and instead of standing up and telling it like it was, she throws her child to the dogs. She knows ain’t no one going to listen to that child.”

“But it happened outside the house. Sounds like the girl was the only one who saw it all.”

Adeline turned to look at him as she took a pie out of the oven. “Uh-huh.”

“If the girl’s the only one that saw it and she says Franklin shot her daddy, how can they find him not guilty?”

“Think on what your Bible say. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but the man’s that got a big bank account can cut 'em all down like standing grain. Mr. White, he’s same as Jacob, and Mr. Whitney, he’s the Esau, and all that little girl’ll ever be is a lamb for the sacrifice.”

As well he knew there were two Bibles: the King James Bible and the Bible According to Adeline. “But Whitney’s dead. And Jacob didn’t kill Esau. That was Cain and Abel.”

“No, you got it wrong. Cain, he was marked. Franklin White, he’ll keep himself pure as the driven snow.” She ladled some broth into a bowl. “Here, you take this to your mama now.”

He shuffled to his mother’s room slowly so as not to spill the soup and bumped the door open with his elbow. His mother’s favorite scent, lavender, greeted him, but the scent underneath it, the human stench, nearly made him gag. He’d never smelled her body scent before at the old house. He didn’t even realize she had one. He hated himself for his revulsion. She was sick, after all. It wasn’t her fault that she was here, it was his daddy’s and his daddy had seen fit to put himself in a place where you couldn’t even go shout at him. So far, Rowen hadn’t managed to make things any better. What a sorry excuse of a son he was if he couldn’t even bring her lunch without feeling sick and ashamed.

The dimmed room gave him an excuse to hesitate. What she would see as his eyes adjusting would cover his effort to master himself. She hadn’t allowed an open shade here since they’d moved in. Her classical music station played in the background, piano chords softly rolling.

“Brahms, Rowen. Isn’t it lovely?”

In addition to the odor, he hadn’t gotten used to the sight of her lying in bed every day. Up until his daddy had died, he’d woken every morning to the rap of her heels crossing the bedroom floor. “The sun is waiting to greet your smile, Alexander Rowen Hart,” she’d sing out as she snapped up the shades. He’d grown to hate that routine about the time he’d sprouted underarm hair. And then off she’d flown down the stairs, hollering for Adeline to help with whatever events she was heading up that week for the Daughters of the Cape Fear, or the Women’s Missionary Union. Throughout the kitchen, there were full calendars and lists and invitations waiting to be mailed.

But after the funeral, the last event she’d planned, she’d gone to her bedroom and shut the door, ignoring the folks congregated downstairs. Toward evening, after the house had emptied, Adeline had rapped on her door. “Miz Rita, Miz Rita,” she called.

Rowen had sat in the foyer, listening to Adeline’s voice reverberate through the house. He loosened his tie, untied his shoes. For the first time in his life, no one switched on the lights and started supper. He didn’t look up when Adeline went out to fetch the doctor, and he was still sitting in the dark when she returned. The doctor muttered words about “terrible shock” and “breakdown” and then said to him, “She’s fortunate that you’re grown now and can take care of her.”

He looked over the doctor’s shoulder at Adeline. Grown? Was eighteen years of age grown? He’d never taken care of himself, much less anyone else. Any moment now, Adeline would speak up and say so.

She hadn’t said anything. She had just stared back at him.

“Yes, Mama, nice piano.”

On the night table, a fan cycled back and forth. His mother sat up. Tendrils of hair stuck to her forehead. “I heard that row with you and Adeline this morning. I know how much you wanted to be on time for Franklin’s trial. I’m sorry, Rowen.”

He gestured with the tray he clutched, “Adeline made you some broth.”

“It’s too hot to eat, but we must not hurt Adeline’s feelings when she devotes herself so. I’m ready, you can set it down. No, you mustn’t charge out the door, as if you are ashamed to spare a moment with me. I want to hear everything that happened this morning.”

He perched at the edge of the bed.

“Were they all asking where I was? I know Claretta Ingersoll has been saying awful things about me, saying that I was too lavish and that was the cause of your daddy’s suicide. When he never talked to me about our finances, ever. I’m sure they’re all repeating her lies all over town. I’m sure the courtroom was full of it.”

“No one was talking about you, Mama.”

“Are you sure? Did you see Claretta there?”

“I had to sit in the back because I was late. She mightta been there.”

“I’m telling you she was there and saying horrible things about me.”

“How do you know that?”

She paused, and her lower lip drooped. “I heard it, that’s all.”

“Who could you have heard it from? Not one of 'em has been here.”

“Rowen, you’re young, still a child practically. It’s how people talk, that’s all, how they’ve always talked. Especially since everyone loved your father and so they must have someone—his widow—to blame for his death. That’s what makes it comprehensible. Now stop talking back to me and tell me what happened this morning.”

“Miz Whitney’s little girl testified.”

“What did she say?”

“She said her pa and Franklin had been fussin’ in the house, that her pa was drinking but that he left and went to the car and Franklin shot him.”

It gratified him that a spark of interest lit in her eyes. The pillows rustled as she leaned forward. “Was she telling the truth?”

“I don’t know. But Franklin’s attorney said Whitney was coming after him with a pipe wrench.”

“Where was Coman?”

“Sitting behind Franklin. That girl was bawling like crazy and Miz Whitney wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t hug her, wouldn’t even wipe her face.”

His mother picked up the spoon and sipped a thimbleful of broth. “The problem was Coman wasn’t pretty as other girls in her milieu. Bless her heart, she could not shed her baby fat though they took her to doctor after doctor. She did have such a marvelous wit that she could make a stone laugh 'till it cried.”

She set the spoon back down.

“Her birthday parties were well attended and not just because her family had money. She had friends. But she was the autumn baby, the autumn of her parents’ lives that is, and that blunder always results in the most undisciplined children. At fifteen, she mortified her parents by carrying on so with that Whitney boy. They met at some Negro tavern, I heard. And then she ran away and married him. Of course, one must allow for the possibility that she had to get married.

“Whitney, mind you, was just a farm laborer’s boy. He had no education or money. Poverty must have been a rude awakening to Coman—no more parties—and well, a young lady might sour.

“The last time I saw her was in the sewing shop, you know, The Stitch-in-Time. Eden was in a stroller. Such china blue eyes that child had with gorgeous red hair. ‘Eden,’ I said, ‘what a lovely name,’ although I had never heard of anyone naming their child after the place where the Devil brought Evil into the world. Pray that it isn’t an omen.

“And all Coman said was, could she borrow a little money to buy material for a baby dress. I gave her a dollar, but I tried to explain that the church consignment shop had such adorable clothes for babies. She acted as if I’d said something vile and whipped that stroller straight out the door. All the ladies at the counter noticed.

“And Franklin—he’s never mentioned her once in all these years, neither her nor the child.”

She collapsed back against the pillows. “I believe that’s all I’ll have now, Rowen.”

“You didn’t hardly have none of it.”

She closed her eyes.“Tell Adeline, I’ll eat it in the evening, when it’s cooler.”

Adeline had his lunch laid out when he returned to the kitchen: ham and collard greens and fresh sliced tomatoes. He set his mother’s bowl by the sink.

“She wouldn’t eat anything.”

“Don’t you worry. By fall, she’ll be better. This heat ain’t bringing her no relief, that’s all.”

“Daddy’s been gone two months. And she’s still in bed.”

“You were there when the doctor was telling us that time was what was needed for her to heal. He didn’t expect no kind of miracles.”

“How’s she going to get better just lying there?”

“I don’t see how you goin' to get paid if you don’t eat and get on over to Mr. Sawyer’s. Did you tell him you was goin' to be late today?”

“No.”

She picked up her wooden spoon and smacked his knuckles. “Mr. Sawyer took pity on you and give you that job when you ain’t never been out in the fields before and now you do him like that. I swear you don’t make no sense to me. The Rowen Hart I been around was raised better than that. You got something to say for yourself?”

“I didn’t think he’d let me go. So I thought I’d tell him I was sick.”

“Hm, hm. Spreading on the greasy lies to dress your sloth. Everyone lay a table before the eyes of the Lord, Mr. Rowen. What’s He gonna think when he sees yours?” She snatched his plate away. “I ain’t feeding no hobos here. You better be out the door to be finding out if you still got a job.”

Outside, the heat had stifled the cicadas at last. All the sun-blistered yards he passed were emptied of children and old men. Everyone had fled indoors. He’d eaten most of his lunch, but what he knew he’d missed was whatever Adeline had made for dessert. What kind of pie had she baked—blueberry, lemon meringue? If she was still there when he came home, she’d let him have it. Only trouble was all the long hours to endure before he could sit down with it, whatever it was, among the fireflies on the porch.

Sawyer’s house was the oldest in the neighborhood with towering yellow pines shading the yard. The house itself was a palace compared to the neighbors’—two stories high and whitewashed, not a smear of mold anywhere. Fresh-painted white rockers lined the front porch.

Behind the house, he crossed the footbridge over a ditch where insects swarmed in shrinking puddles of muddy water, and then rows and rows of chest-high leafy stalks pressed all around, nearly squeezing him to suffocation.

He pushed through into a row, and down at the end, he could see a mule’s ears twitch. He followed them and there was old man Sawyer on the skidder.

Sawyer addressed the mule. “Well, Hester Prynne, Mr. Hart has blessed us with his presence.” He turned to Rowen. “I ’spose you’re going to tell me you been layin’ in bed sick.”

Trouble with Adeline was, he could shrug off whatever it was she had to say only to find later that little barbs of it had pricked him.

“No, sir. I went to watch Franklin White’s trial in town. Sorry I didn’t say nothin’.”

“Even the niggers do me better than that, boy. I guess it comes from growing up with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sawyer. It won’t happen again.”

“That’s right, it won’t happen 'cause I won’t pity your mama a second time.”

Hester Prynne squirted a river of piss. In the mule’s eyes, he saw spoiled little city boy.

“I’d have thought a boy whose daddy shamed him by stiffin’ his bill collectors and then killin’ hisself, leavin’ that boy and his mama as begging paupers, would be more. . .” He glanced at Hester Prynne, as if she was going to finish the sentence, “. . . obliging.”

The stench of piss filled the air. Flies bit his ears.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Sawyer, you’re right. I’m grateful for the work, and I didn’t mean any disrespect. It was just. . . Mr. White being who he is and all, I wanted to see what was going to happen.”

No point in bringing up Sawyer’s tangential role at the trial. Heck, maybe he didn’t even know Eden Whitney was stealing his apples.

Sawyer nodded off to where the colored boy, Sammy, whisked leaves off the plants. “That boy there’s worth two of you. He doesn’t find the excitement in town to be so distracting.”

“I understand, Mr. Sawyer, and I won’t either no more.”

Rowen snatched a sack off the skidder and started on the row next to Sammy’s. He hadn’t known Sammy until he started working here. If Sammy had gone to school at all, he would have been in the colored school. Sammy was his own age, but towered over him, with legs and arms moving so fast it seemed the leaves jumped off the plants.

As they met along the row, Sammy said, “You new here, boy? Don’t believe I know you.”

“Cut it out, I already took it from Sawyer.”

“Oooo, bet you was worn out from a hot date,” Sammy leered. Sammy’s topics of conversation always jumped to sexual exploits that so far had eluded Rowen. Sammy’s air of superior knowledge in such matters made Rowen jealous and he knew he couldn’t hide it, which made Sammy taunt him even more.

“I was at Franklin White’s trial. You shoulda been there. The rest of the town was there.”

Sammy squatted to pluck some lugs and peered up at him through the leaves. “Weren’t any Negroes there, right?”

“No, but the bank vice-president’s on trial. I bet there are Negroes that owe him money, too. He could go to jail for the rest of his life. Or maybe even get the death penalty.”

Sammy laughed as he scooted on past Rowen. “Boy goin’ to the U-nee-ver-sity, but how he gonna succeed when he’s so weak in mind?” Rowen straightened to make a comeback, but Sammy kept on moving and now he was at a distance where Rowen would have to shout a response.

Adeline. That’s who would have trumpeted the news about his university admission.

When the letter came a month ago, his mama and Adeline had whooped like guinea hens. Now he’d be a university student like Adeline’s daughter, Chloe, who’d taken off for Howard University just last fall! They didn’t bother to consider for a moment that he wasn’t anything like Chloe. Chloe could have had the face of the Queen of Sheba for all anyone knew, because her nose had never been out of her books. The times she’d come over with Adeline and sat at the kitchen table, she’d never been able to tear herself out of a page for more than an instant to say “Hey, Rowen,” while all he had to do was crack open World History, or whatever fool tome that he’d had to lug home, and his mind shot straight out the window, daydreaming about that shiny Skylark down at the Buick lot that he’d be able to put a down payment on one day if he could just get out of school and start his real life, whatever it would be. He couldn’t fathom what he might be doing but he was dang sure he would have money.

Without so much as asking him, his mama had sat up in her bed long enough to reply that, yes, he’d be attending the University of North Carolina. Back last fall he’d applied because that’s what his parents had told him to do. That’s what his daddy told him to do, the daddy who, it turned out, had steeped them all in a life of lies. Rowen hadn’t defied him at the time. He had thought that it wasn’t a matter of choice. For as long as he had lived, it was White Rock’s tradition for the children of the prosperous to be packed off to the university, some never to return and some, like Franklin, to come home and be set up on pedestals.

Why should Adeline and his mama get to decree his fate now? Never mind where the money was going to come from. As miserable as things were, he had no urge to start from scratch among a throng he didn’t know, just to attain some higher life too foggy to imagine. What was the hocus-pocus by which a boy turned into a man? Far as he could tell, it didn’t have anything to do with how many degrees he got. All he’d ever be was the boy whose daddy picked suicide over bankruptcy. Hadn’t Sawyer said as much?

And the Skylark, that dream was gone for good.

Yes, all right, he was living in a shack, but outside on that front porch, he could see a person coming from a mile off and know, white or colored, who they were and what they wanted. Everything within his range of vision was known, and if he had to be busted poor, he wanted life to stay right like it was where he could see everything coming.

And here came Sammy down the row again. Sammy glanced back at Sawyer who was picking himself and not watching them anymore.

“That ‘trial’ is just a big cover story for you, Mr. Rowen. You was there to chase you some pussy.”

“The only girl I even seen was the one that testified. And she was ten years old.”

“Whoa, you’ve got to look at them that young?”

Rowen’s wits were buckling in the heat. He couldn’t utter more than a bleat. Sammy laughed and moved on, his hands flying so fast they were a blur, while Rowen dragged his sack down the row and emptied it on the skidder. He’d have to give up trying to keep up with Sammy. It was all he could do to focus on the next stalk.

There was no passing of time through the stifling afternoon, only a continuum of mule stench and leaves snapping off stalks and rows following one after another, thousands of them. And when Rowen gave up talking, Sammy whipped out his transistor radio and the buzz of it alternately magnified and receded as they passed one another. Seemed like the only sound Rowen could make out was Hollinger’s advertisements for his Sears store, which contributed to the sense of infinite purgatory.

Once the sun dropped below the tree line and the blaring furnace heat abated, he could begin to anticipate the end of the day. Still more hours passed, as the tobacco stalks ahead faded into the dusk, before Sawyer hollered, “Quittin’ time.” Rowen barely glimpsed Sammy stand and stretch and then he was gone.

The steamy heat of the evening hadn’t yet broken as Rowen dragged home. Yard lights snapped on one by one and children spilled out of screen doors. Lights burned from his own house, which surprised him because Adeline should have left by now. Instead, she was waiting for him at the porch door, arms crossed over her apron.

“Your Uncle Hugh was here,” she said.

Hugh Grimes had been his daddy’s partner in their auction business. Since moving out here, Hugh had visited once a month. Adeline had never come out and claimed her opinion of him one way or another. Instead, after pouring him a cold drink, she’d scoot outside.

The ritual that had evolved was that Rowen would sit at the dining room table across from Uncle Hugh while he scrawled out a check. The check would be slid, dramatically, under Rowen’s nose and Rowen would mumble an incantation of gratitude. All he really felt was shame, which was what he suspected that Uncle Hugh wanted, and savored.

Meanwhile, outside, Adeline would bang garden implements and bellow songs as loud as she could. “'My good Jerry is a Carolina mule, he been everywhere and he ain’t no fool.’”

Uncle Hugh’s lip curled. “She never caterwauled like that in town, did she?”

Was she acting that way because she thought Uncle Hugh should have given them more money? That’s what Rowen guessed. Surely Uncle Hugh gave them all that he could. He was his mother’s brother after all.

Now, as he met Adeline’s stare, he wondered what the hell she expected of him. None of this was his fault.

“Does he want me to go over to his place?”

“I told him you’d be home anytime. He’ll be back. I guess Mr. Sawyer took pity on you and kept you on.”

“Yes, and I won’t skip out again. Did Uncle Hugh talk to Mama?”

“He didn’t talk to her, didn’t even ask to see her.”

Rowen took his plate of coleslaw and pintos outside and sat on the stoop. Moonbeams poked through the trees, and the cicadas revved back up from their afternoon drowse. Down the road, children whooped and shrieked. The night pulsed with noise.

A car slowed and he recognized the rumble of his uncle’s Cadillac. Uncle Hugh parked next to the fence, then took his time getting out. The car roof gleamed in the moonlight.

Rowen called out. “Hey, Uncle Hugh.”

Uncle Hugh stood in the broken gate and pushed his straw hat back on his head. “Evenin’, Rowen. Adeline says you’re pickin’ tubaka for Sawyer.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good thing, you’ll need that extra money when you start school.”

“Mama says it’ll cover my books while the money you give us will cover my tuition.”

“That’s what I come to talk about. Let’s go inside.”

Adeline sat at the kitchen table. Her sewing basket was on the floor and she appeared to be thoroughly absorbed in repairing one of Rowen’s shirts. She didn’t look up as they crossed to the dining room. “You all want some lemonade?”

Uncle Hugh’s lips curled over his yellow teeth as he pulled out a chair. “You’d think that woman’d pick herself up and come in here to address working men.”

He called back that he wanted some and Rowen shifted to watch her. Her hand trembled as she lifted the pitcher and poured. It shocked him, what could it mean? He blinked to wash it out of his vision.

She brought them their lemonade, backed two steps and then balked in the doorway.

“Adeline,” said Uncle Hugh, “I need to speak to the boy alone.”

She blurted, “Ain’t nothing you can say to him that you can’t say to me. I been working for his folks all his life.” She looked solid as a granite slab, standing there. But Uncle Hugh hadn’t seen her pour the lemonade.

“It’s family business, Adeline, it ain’t nothin' that concerns you.”

“Then why ain’t you talkin to his mama?”

“Rita’s sick, she doesn’t hardly know what’s going on around her, you know that. The boy here. . . well, he’s not a boy anymore. He’s a man. He oughta be taking on the family affairs.”

Adeline didn’t budge.

“Adeline, it ain’t your place to be here.”

“'Till Rowen tell me to leave, my place is right here.”

Uncle Hugh ran his fingernail down the checkered pattern in the oilcloth. “Adeline, you know better than this. You’re a sharp girl. You been around enough to know we live in strange times. You never can predict what’ll happen from day to day. Them that are proud and vain, they’re the ones God strikes down. Your preacher preaches that, don’t he?”

“If it’s all right with you, Uncle Hugh, I want Adeline to stay.”

Uncle Hugh’s eyebrows arched and then he gulped back his lemonade. He set the glass down heavily on the table. “You’re half orphaned and you ain’t getting the schooling a young man needs. You’re lucky I come 'round as often as I do. But if you don’t watch yourself, it’ll spread like wildfire all over this county that Virgil Hart’s son is letting a Negra woman run his business. It’ll tear you down in this community! God knows I’ll hear of it. Now send her home!”

Rowen’s pulse pounded in his ears. Whatever Adeline was made of—the material that held her upright in the face of his uncle’s swelling rancor—there wasn’t an ounce of it in him.

“Uncle Hugh says it’s business, Adeline.”

“You sure about that?” she blurted.

No, he wasn’t. “Yes, ma’am.”

Adeline turned away. He heard her gather her things, then the screen door spring squealed.

“'Night, Rowen.”

Uncle Hugh’s shoulders twitched at her failure to address him. “Your daddy’s not been gone two months and that woman’s lost all respect. People hear about this, my guess is, no decent family in town will have her.

“Now what I’ve come to tell you. . . ,” he grimaced, as if the words gathering against his teeth pained him, but despite all his effort to hold them back, they were set on bolting out anyway.

“Your daddy died owing me money, too. Though killing himself—what a fool thing to do. No disrespect, he was your daddy, but as a man, son, he wasn’t much more than a bowl of pudding. I been carrying him ever since he married my sister. And he didn’t help hisself by drinking the way he did. I ain’t blaming you. Though you’ve been coddled something shameful.

“Every couple a months he might re-pay me a dollar or two, after I reminded him I had a crippled child to support. And you know good and well, I shouldn’t have had to remind him. She was there at the door in his face every morning when he came into the office. Didn’t seem to bother him. But his debt’s never been repaid. It’s built up and up. Even without the interest.

“What I come to tell you is this: the appraiser’s done appraised the auction yard, and it ain’t as good as we mighta thought. We thought your daddy’s share would take care of his debts and be enough to support your mother. Best case, there’d be a little extra to put you through school.

“It didn’t come out that way. If I take a good cut on what I’m owed, there’s enough there for your mother to live on for a few years. If she watches her money. Lord knows she oughta be able to get help cheaper than what she pays Adeline. But there ain’t enough for you both. Unless you want to take her share. I don’t think that’s what you want.”

Uncle Hugh’s eyes bugged out at him, demanding a response. “Did you hear me? I’m forgiving part of your daddy’s debts, which, if you was any kind of , you oughta pay, and I’m doing it so as to keep your mama up. You’d think I’d get thanked.”

Rowen didn’t know which angered him more, Uncle Hugh, or the sobs clogging up his throat. His voice squeaked loose. “She’s sold all her jewelry, all her furniture, nearly everything in the house.”

“I didn’t charge her no fees for that auction, did I? Now that you’ve been brought to your rightful place by the hand of God Almighty, the place you would have been in years ago, but for my sense of duty, let me tell you, nobody owes you nothin’. I don’t owe you or your mama nothin’. I didn’t tell your parents to live the way they did. That woman mewlin’ in that bedroom, she ain’t my mother. Now you’re going to show me some manners, or I’m going to walk out that door.”

Where was the code of behavior that could prompt him on how to act, or what to say? How he wished Adeline had stayed, because then he could have looked to her, and she would know.

“Thank you, Uncle Hugh.”

Uncle Hugh leaned back in his chair. “That’s better. Now you kin prob’bly get a scholarship to go to that school. Or maybe you can work.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I were you, I’d look into that tomarra.”

“Yes, sir.”

Uncle Hugh wrote the check and slid it across the table with a searing glare. The figure was less than half of the last month’s check.

“Like I said, son, Rita’s gotta learn to watch her money.” The chair squeaked against the linoleum as Uncle Hugh pushed back. “You tell your mother I said hello. I’ll send out a car with your cousin, Mabel, in a couple of days. She’s lonesome for y’all, 'specially you, Rowen. With the office so busy, I haven’t been able to spare her to travel all the way out here.”

That’s all they needed, a visit from Cousin Mabel. It would be more trouble than it was worth. He wasn’t sure if her wheelchair would fit through the door. She’d protest about all the fuss—Cousin Mabel always protested about people fussing over her—and his mother would insist that she come in. He pictured her wheeling through the rooms, ignoring the squalor, while murmuring dainty compliments. She’d be so gracious in masking her pity, and she’d expect them to notice it.

It wasn’t any mystery that his father had killed himself to escape this helplessness in the face of ruin. The mystery was that he’d cared so little for what would happen to them.

“Mama would like that. If Cousin Mabel came out.”

He saw his uncle to the door. Insects, from mosquitoes to beetles the size of his palm, swarmed around the door light, and Uncle Hugh called back from the road, “You oughta fix this gate here, son.”

Rowen went back to his mother’s bedroom. The lights were off, and he listened from the doorway. He was about to turn away when he heard, “Rowen?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“That was Hugh, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Come here.”

He shuffled in and sat down. She squeezed his hand. “Did Hugh give you the tuition money?”

Even though he couldn’t see her face, the air of expectancy swelled.

“Yes, Mama.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. After Rowen tells Eden that her Uncle Franklin is coming back to take her away, Eden runs away. Why doesn’t Rowen stop her?

2. What role do the community perceptions of Franklin White, Birch Whitney and Eden play in their success or demise?

3. What is the significance of the title?

Weblinks

»	Author's website
»	Follow the author on Facebook
»	Follow the author on Twitter

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.

Member Reviews

There are no user reviews at this time.
Rate this book