The Grass Widow: A Novel

Contents

Preface

Prolog

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Preface

The Land

In 1837 a forty-acre section of a large farm owned by Archibald Decatur adjoined the farm owned by his brother-in-law, John Madison. Madison, a large, robust man just past his prime, had placed a cabin on the edge of his land where it abutted that of Decatur. There he installed his mistress, a mulatto slave named Kate Hamilton, as far out of reach of his wife’s whip as he could. Kate bore him one child, a son named James. Kate died when the boy was fifteen years old. Before she died she wrung a promise of land and freedom from John Madison for their son. A year after her death John Madison went to Archibald Decatur and offered to buy a section of land from him that was near Kate’s cabin. It was at the bottom of a steep hill, inaccessible from Decatur’s land, and at the end of Madison’s property, really of no use to Decatur. But Decatur was reluctant to sell, namely because Madison was married to his sister, and he knew he would never hear the end of it. Then one day he saw James, now eighteen, fighting one of the other Negroes on his farm over a woman on his place. James was big and barrel-chested like his sire, and muscles well developed from working on the farm. Decatur liked to give boxing shows for entertainment to his guests, and a holiday was coming up. Usually he had two strapping black Negroes fight, but when he saw James, he thought he’d like to put that mulatto boy out there to make the fight more interesting. Some of the dark skinned black men loved to fight the light skinned ‘sons of the masters’ to prove their superiority.

Decatur put a proposition to Madison, who put the proposition to James. If he could beat the buck, Decatur would sell him fifty acres of land and he’d give James forty-two acres of the land near his mother’s and set him free.

What man would not become a raging bull to win his freedom? James fought and won, and in the Virginia Registry of Free Negroes of Mason County, there is listed among many others the following:

Register of Free Negroes 1817-1865

Furlong County, Virginia

James Hamilton. Twenty years, 5’11. A very bright mulatto colored negro man, with a round scar between the eye, and a scar above it reaching toward the right eye. A scar on the side of the nose under the right eye, a scar on the forehead above the left eye with a large scar on the left eye occasioned by a rupture. Emancipated by John Madison by deed. 16 April 1855, certified 13 June, 1855.

Catherine Hamilton. mother of James, about forty-five years, five feet, three inches, a bright copper colored negro woman with red hair and with a scar on the left side of her neck; long scar occasioned by a bite on the left hand in the angle of the thumb and forefinger. Born free. Certified 1837.

And Hamiltons begat and begat with each other and others, slave and free, black and white, legal and illegal, and spread around Furlong and Pharaoh and Jamison and other places around, and by the beginning of the twentieth century they had been scattered through the land like shot put. Scratch a black Hamilton and you’d get a sniff of a white Hamilton or a black somebody else. Even a Decatur. Something about the eyes, or the noses, or the set of the mouth or the body or the thickness of the calves. For almost two hundred years the direct descendants of James and Catherine lived on the land and were prosperous farmers, but by the end of the twentieth century the hard-won land that James had won was about to disappear, as was the land of countless farmers in that area, sold in the name of progress.

Prolog

Before they dug up the roads for all the new construction, any long-time resident of Furlong County, Virginia, could tell you how to reach the Hamilton place. To get there, you drove east through town to route 43, turned left, then drove for about two miles until you came to a gravelled road, turned left again and followed the road. And you had to take care. The road was only wide enough for one automobile at a time and had enough holes to knock your car around and you had to watch out for unruly juveniles tearin up and down that road like loons on the loose! They’d try to pass you and you’d end up in a ditch. Well, you drove as far as you could to a barbedwire fence that ran across the end of the road. Ahead of you was where Mr. Archibald Decatur’s farm began. To your right, past that old wood fence, far back from the road, was where the Hamiltons lived, in a weathered clapboard house with a faded red roof, sittin on a low hill in the middle of a field of dried out grass. To the right of the house was an old twisted maple tree with one branch raised up with a leafy fist, cussin at the sky. A driveway choked with sandy dirt and dusty weeds ran from the road to the house, then curved left in front of the tree and stopped in front of three broad wooden steps leading up to a narrow porch that ran along the house. And right there sat Miss Catherine’s rockin chair greetin you when you stepped up.

One warm Sunday morning in 1983 a dusty blue Chevrolet sat idling in the driveway. In the front seat Kate Hamilton sat wilting, waiting for her husband, Elmore, thinking unkind thoughts as she dabbed lightly at the perspiration on her pale face. Drat that man! Making us late for church over a handkerchief. Let her be a second late. He would be out here honking loud enough to wake the dead. What had got into him anyway this morning? Right after he slid behind the wheel he patted the breast pocket of his new navy blue suit and exclaimed about not having a white handkerchief and jumped out of the car and hurried back inside to get one. Deacon Hamilton couldn’t go to church without a handkerchief there, no, sir. That would be worse than entering the house of God without combing his hair. And he sure was taking his time to find one. Lordy! She could fall out from a heat stroke he didn’t hurry up!

Just as Kate reached over to honk for him she heard the screen door slap shut and she looked over and saw Elmore lurching across the porch, his mouth hanging open, eyes popping from the sockets, waving the handkerchief in his hand. He was moving his lips, trying to talk, but he could only grunt, so she couldn’t understand him, then he fell down the steps and staggered into the yard. And she cried Good God! and jumped out of the car and ran over to him. You-you-you- At least that’s what she thought he was calling out. And just as she reached him he fell at her feet and stared up at her, his slate blue eyes large and round in their sockets, veins red from straining to hold them open. She dropped to her knees beside him and his mouth was twisting. You-you you- and she cradled his head in her lap and lowered her head and turned her ear to his mouth and he breathed in her ear. "You-you-whore." (She gasped when he said that.) And she hung over him and looked down into his eyes, but he could say no more for the twisting of his face. His arm jerked, and she looked down at his hand which was holding not a white handkerchief, but--a crumpled letter. She reached for it, tried to take it, but he clenched his fist, crushing it more, and she put her arm under his shoulder and they struggled over to the porch and he fell into a chair by the door. The note fell from his hand. Kate snatched it, ran into the house and called an ambulance. Minutes later she watched the Furlong County Rescue Squad whirl him away, then with the note in her hand she fell into the house, and, sliding along the wall, made her way to the parlor where she sank cross-legged onto the floor, read the note and lapsed into a wild-eyed, tight-lipped silence. Whore. The word resounded in her brain; guilt enclosed her heart like a vise; she was afraid to take a breath for fear she would die.

Miss Myrtle Bless, a close family friend who lived nearby, was also getting ready for church. Upon hearing the ambulance sirens, she rushed over and found Kate, still in a state of shock, collapsed on the floor. At ninety-three Miss Myrtle was a small wiry woman with wild white hair and skin the color of a pecan shell. She was nimble as a nanny goat and well-versed in the mysterious ailments of country women as well as the treatment of those ailments. Kate herself was big-boned and lean, but Miss Myrtle lifted her lanky form with ease and stretched her out on the settee and covered her with a loosely woven afghan, then went and got cool damp towel and placed it on her forehead and spoke softly like a mother soothing a frightened child. "Child, child. What’s happened here? Talk to me." But Kate’s jaws were clamped shut and Miss Myrtle could wrest from her only two whispered words. Elmore and stroke. No more than that.

For a little while Miss Myrtle sat silent, closely observing her friend, then she made a call to Kate’s oldest sister Olivia in New York City and repeated Kate’s cryptic message, Elmore, stroke and told her that she would stay with Kate until she made other arrangements. Olivia drove down the next day. She, too, had no success breaking Kate’s silence. After a brief visit with Elmore in the hospital, unable to find out from him exactly what had occurred, she left in a huff three days after she arrived, leaving her sister in the care of Miss Myrtle, and her brother-in-law in the hands of the capable professionals at the Furlong County Hospital.

For days Kate did not speak. Miss Myrtle did not pressure her. Her presence was enough. She fixed Kate’s meals, helped her bathe and brush her limp tan hair and slip into a loose smock that Miss Myrtle washed every night and ironed every day. Like a rag doll thrown on a chair, Kate sat and watched her caretaker with soulful eyes as she sang and smiled and cleaned and dusted. Mornings Miss Myrtle propped her up at the kitchen table and served up coffee and tales about the misery of childhood and poverty. "Plenty of books about that, Child. People say that bein poor is the worst thing that can happen to a person. I am here to tell you it ain’t true. No, suh. (Have a biscuit. Put some meat on them bones. Let me put some butter on it for you. A biscuit soaked with butter. Nothin better.) When I was a little child, we was so poor a biscuit was a banquet. Hmph. And people talkin ‘bout no meat on chicken feet. Well, they never asked me. Made good broth with the feet then drop in some dumplins. Good soup. And there was meat on them feet. Now have you ever had a pig ear sandwich? (I see that smile.) Yes, indeed. You grind them pig ears up and chop up a little bit of pickle and onions and put some pickle juice and mayonnaise in that mixture and slap it inside two pieces of bread and you had some good eatin."

Miss Myrtle’s uninterrupted nonsense therapy drew smiles from Kate, then giggles, then laughs, and after a few days she came out of her fog. One morning she placed on the kitchen table the crumpled note she had pried from Elmore’s hand that fateful Sunday morning. Tear-fully she pushed it toward Miss Myrtle and explained quietly, Elmore came out of the house and waved this note at me and called me a whore and then he fell down to his knees.

Miss Myrtle clucked her tongue. Now he didn’t have to use that kind of language. She studied Kate’s face. And now you feelin bad because you think it’s your fault he had a stroke.

Kate nodded.

Miss Myrtle fingered the letter. Turned it over. He balled it up and you smoothed it out. The way it’s patched up looks like he ripped it up good after he read it. Can’t see who wrote it.

Idessa.

Looks like it was wrote in nineteen- she frowned. Can’t see them last two numbers.

Seventy-eight.

"Now you tell me. What was Elmore doin with a letter wrote to you five years ago?

Kate wiped her eyes. I was readin it and forgot to put it away.

"Still, it was to you. Now that’s what I call snoopin. It wasn’t to him. That’s why people shouldn’t snoop. Might see somethin they don’t want to see. That’s what my mother always taught me. Now let me see what he was snoopin for." She held the letter at arm’s length, squinted and began to read softly, forming the words as she made them out.

Dear Kate. Guess who came by today. Tim. Shocked me out of my wits. He wants to see you. After all this time. And still knowing what he does. I told him everything about you like you said. And he said he doesn’t care, he still loves you and he’s going to find you. I told him I’d write to you but I wouldn’t tell him your address and I told him I wouldn’t give you his. I will talk to you soon. Idessa

Miss Myrtle lowered the letter and nodded, frowned, thought a little, and said finally, So you forgot to hide the note and Elmore went snoopin and found it.

Kate nodded, and her breath caught in her throat. And another one. Miss Myrtle, I was readin them and thought I put them away. If I had he wouldn’t have seen them.

Child, I’ve known you just about all your life, and from what I know about you and your husband, it definitely ain’t your fault he had a stroke. So don’t you go around feelin guilty. She pressed the letter and smoothed it out. He thought you was gonna leave him, that’s what.

He just found this note but it came a long time ago, Miss Myrtle.

"That don’t mean nothin to Elmore. He read this note with his heart and his head, child, not yours. The heart of a sixty-year-old man who been a scoundrel from the time you was married and now he’s old and sick and he feel guilty. When he come home from that hospital, that note’s still what’s gonna be on his mind, if he still got one left. And that’s what you’re gonna have to deal with, him thinkin you gonna leave him now that he had a stroke. And that’s a dangerous state of mind for a sick old man to be in. Especially one who drinks. Stroke ain’t gonna stop him from bein resentful. May slow him down, but it ain’t gonna stop him."

Elmore stopped drinkin hard years ago, Miss Myrtle.

"Don’t need to drink hard. One will do the trick. He might hurt you. And that’s part of what you have to make up your mind about. Whether you gonna leave him or stay with him."

Oh, Miss Myrtle. Kate sighed. "He won’t hurt me. I’m his wife."

"I know it. Miss Myrtle eyed Kate over a second cup of coffee. And you know it. It just seem like Elmore remember that when it suit him."

The news of Elmore Hamilton’s stroke rustled through the Canaan community like the wind through the grasses that still grew tall in the fields of Furlong County.

A stroke? Deacon Hamilton?

Like he was struck by a bolt of lightnin.

They sure gonna miss him at Canaan Baptist.

Him and Kate sure hold that church together..

Kate, you mean. Elmore Hamilton ain’t nothin but a scamp.

Well, he sure keeps them deacons in line.

He still a scamp.

Why you say that? You don’t hardly know the man.

I know enough.

Elmore Hamilton. A stroke. Well, well.

The Lord always takes the good ones.

Well, he sure ain’t ready for heaven. That’s why he only had a stroke.

How old you say he is? In his sixties?

That stroke didn’t have nothin to do with age. Eatin was his downfall.

He was sure lucky he fell out on the porch.

Could’a laid in the field all day before she got to him down in them woods.

Too bad she did. Damned scamp.

Now how long you know that man.

Long enough to know he’s a scamp.

Chapter 1

Five years later, on a Wednesday morning in August, Kate rested her head against a flowered pillow attached to the back of her chair. Rocking slowly, she folded her hands on her lap and closed her eyes. She had come out early to enjoy the sweet summer air and work on her embroidery, a white linen bureau scarf for the middle bedroom. Now lazy thoughts crossed her mind. A beautiful day. Dry, sunny. Not too warm this morning. Lord, let it keep up for a few more days. A feeling of deep despair swept over her. Third Sunday. Homecoming. Lydia with Olivia this time. Lordy...Five years since Elmore had his stroke. Five summers growing older sitting on this porch, rocking, at the beck and call of a man who had never spent five weeks a year at home---Suddenly the sound of a piano and a strong tenor voice shattered the soft silence.

What a friend we ha-ave in Jeee-sus

All our sins and grief to bear!

What a privuhlege to cair-air-air-ee

Ev’ry thing to God in prayer.

When the first chord struck, Kate jerked forward; the needle pierced her finger, leaving a tiny red drop. She scowled and wrapped a tissue around her finger. Now out of the mood to stitch she scowled and jumped up. What in the world was wrong with John? Banging on that piano like God was deaf. No respect. Not for her, and none for his father at all, up in the bed weak as a kitten and his son banging on that piano. Elmore would grumble about it, but he’d leave it up to her to complain to John. Her husband had become complacent since his stroke. But even if she did go in to stop John now he’d give her a fresh answer and she’d say something she’d regret. For some reason that son of hers was spoiling for an argument this early in the morning

She walked to the edge of the porch. At fifty-eight she was still slim, fair-skinned, and freckled, her tan hair streaked with gray, dressed in a faded denim sun dress that reached below her calves. Hand shading her eyes, she gazed at the field being cleared across the road. During the past month she had sat and listened to the whining saws and saw the bushes disappearing. Maybe those people were done. She stiffened, then leaned forward, drawn by an incredible sight. Why, the pine tree was gone. She and her cousin Idessa had spent hours under it, tall and green and thick against the skyline. Idessa had brought a saw to cut off the lower branches of the tree so that they drooped heavily on the side facing the road, shielding them from the prying eyes of their mothers in the garden across the field. Those women could sniff out anything. ’Dessa! Kate! Don’t let us catch you slippin around readin them true love magazines! Come over here and help pick these tomatoes before they rot! But the lure of love was too compelling and on hot days they would spread a worn blanket over the pine needles and lie on their stomachs, bare feet waving in the air, and sift through the magazines for the more tempestuous passages. Remembering, Kate’s eyes stung. She took a few quick breaths, then stepped off the porch and walked down the driveway to the road, stopped at the fence to stare across at the vast emptiness.

All week she had watched the trees lean and crash against each other; their branches had scratched at the sky as they sank, slowly, as if gobbled from the roots. Now, where there had been a dense growth of junipers and firs and sassafras treees there was only a straggling line of scrub pines and bushes. And now the morning sun, no longer blocked by the giant pine, shone so brightly that Kate shielded her eyes against the bright rays. The disappearance of the tree erased any remaining doubt. Old man Decatur’s property had been sold.

She crossed the road to a driveway and struggled up onto a soft mound of red dirt, gazed into the gaping hole where the pine had stood, and then turned and trudged over to a few straggling trees. She made her way through the dead silence and stared at whorls of red dirt spun around into a giant whirlpool. For a long while she gazed, then turned and walked slowly back to the road. She bent over and knocked the mud from her shoes, then straightened and wiped her face and neck. Not even eight o’clock and she was already dripping wet.

Slowly she walked toward the house. Halfway up she stopped and gazed at the dingy clapboard on the wind-whipped house, the flowers wilting in their beds around the porch and to her right the tall brown grasses nodding in fields that had once been filled with green cornstalks. She sank down onto the grass next to the driveway and sighed. Soon this will be gone. This house, our land. Decatur’s farm. Like we never lived here at all. And my pine tree is gone! She felt what seemed a physical blow to her chest and almost burst into tears. Silly woman. Better get up before Jessie looked out and swore she was having a stroke.

A few minutes later, back on the porch, she removed the tissue from her finger. Not a spot of blood now. She picked up her needlework. The piano was silent now. She could work in peace. As she stitched, thoughts flew through her mind again, each crowding out the other. Company. Lydia and Olivia coming down tomorrow for Third Sunday. John and Jessie here three days early to help out and him banging on that piano sure not helping. Why Lydia this year? Hadn’t been down for five years. Just after Elmore had his stroke. Couldn’t stand seeing him twisted and slobbering in his chair. Olivia had laughed hysterically at that. Fell to her knees laughing. Well, something was making Lydia buck that traffic. Probably the land. Coming to start some trouble. And John and his wife eating three meals a day like there was no tomorrow, and Elmore up in his room playing invalid instead of coming out. Like a dad-burned turtle.

Miss Kate. The voice came from behind the screen door, the words so soft Kate hardly heard them. Jessie’s.

What? Kate’s reply was like the snap of a dry twig and as soon as it was out she wanted to call it back. But Jessie ought to have more sense than to stand at the door talking to her with that little teeny voice of hers. Child, she said, more softly, I don’t know how you expect me to hear a word you’re sayin.

Jessie spoke louder. I was askin about the middle room, about Miss Lydia takin it.

Come out here, Jessie. It’s a real strain on my neck tryin to talk backwards.

Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Kate. Jessie stepped onto the porch and stood at Kate’s elbow. She was slim and neat in blue jeans and a crisp white sleeveless blouse. Tall, with skin and eyes the color of strong tea, black hair parted in the middle, straightened and cut in a bob, short in the back and long on the sides to frame her face.

Kate smiled up at her. Now. Isn’t this better?

Jessie nodded.

Lydia will sleep in the middle room.

And what about Miss Olivia?

I thought I said the middle room for her, too.

Miss Olivia and Miss Lydia in the same room?

Twin beds. That’s why I asked you and John to move. If they can’t get along, they can go to a motel.

Then where are you going to sleep?

Kate sighed. She was sure she had gone over everything with this woman the evening before. In my study.

After a small silence, Jessie continued, And John wanted to know where we’ll sleep.

So that was what this fuss was all about. John was worried about where he’d sleep.

Well, since there’s a double bed in my bedroom, you all move out of the middle room and take it and Elmore can take the back room.

Miss Kate, I don’t feel right puttin you and Mr. Elmore out of the front room. I and John can take the study.

Kate stiffened. Now Jessie and John had lived in this house for five years before Elmore got sick, and for a year they’d slept in his old room on that same sofa bed that was now in the study. And didn’t John moan for the whole time about that thing being too lumpy? But she wasn’t going to remind Jessie of all that. "Jessie, I will say this one more time. Elmore is in the back room most of the day anyway. He is accustomed to sleepin in there. And I don’t need a big double bed. So it’s best you and John take my room. It’s better! Now I hope I made it plain. I will take the study. I declare!"

I didn’t mean to upset you, Miss Kate.

All this talk about where somebody is going to park their behinds.

Jessie turned to the door. I’ll go tell John. I think he went upstairs.

Kate sat