There Is a River Read online

  There Is a River

  a novel by

  Charlotte Miller

  NewSouth Books

  Montgomery

  Also by Charlotte Miller

  Behold, This Dreamer

  Through a Glass, Darkly

  NewSouth Books

  P.O. Box 1588

  Montgomery, AL 36102

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, dialogue and plots are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright 2002 by Charlotte Miller. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.

  ISBN: 978-1-58838-090-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-266-4

  LCCN: 2003535404

  Visit www.newsouthbooks.com.

  . . . We will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God . . . God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved . . .

  The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts . . . He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear . . .

  Be still, and know that I am God.

  — Psalms 46: 2-10 (RSV)

  To Randall Williams, who always believed.

  Contents

  Prologue

  PART ONE - 1939

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART TWO - 1941

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  PART THREE - 1986

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Eason County, Alabama

  October 1939

  Cassandra Price could hear the sound of furniture breaking after the old man walked out of Buddy’s office. She reached the doorway to see Buddy yank a drawer from his desk and throw it, contents and all, directly at where she was standing.

  She moved back and the drawer hit the door frame waist high, sending fountain pens, rubber bands, and dozens of boxes of matches skittering over the floor near her feet. She placed one hand on her belly, assuring herself that nothing had hit her there—she could not let anything happen now. Not when she was this close.

  Not when she was going to have Buddy Eason’s baby.

  She peeked around the doorjamb once Buddy was no longer throwing furniture. He was yanking drawers open and slamming items on the desk. He was cursing, but Cassandra did not take the time to listen—whatever he was saying did not matter. He and his grandfather had fought. But he and his grandfather fought often. It did not usually result in thrown furniture or a bloody face, which Buddy had at the moment, Cassandra noted with distaste—but that did not matter either. She had not bedded him for his looks. She had not bedded him for his personality. She had bedded him for the baby growing inside of her, and for the money and the Eason name the baby would bring her.

  “Buddy, are you hurt?” she asked, though she did not care. She was startled to see him take a gun from a lower drawer and lay it on the desktop. He fished in the drawer again, not answering, and came up with a handful of bullets. “Buddy—?”

  “What?” he hissed at her, and she stepped back.

  She did not say anything as he loaded the gun and set it on the desktop, then watched as he yanked open another drawer. He slammed it, then started across the room toward her, and Cassandra shrank away, though he did nothing but take his coat and hat from the hatrack to toss them on one of the leather armchairs before his desk.

  “Are you going somewhere?” she asked.

  He did not answer. He set an open briefcase in the chair, then began to rake things from the desktop into it. The gun was dumped in with everything else.

  “Are you—” she began again, crossing toward him.

  “Yeah, I’m going, if it’s anything to you.”

  “But, where?”

  He did not answer.

  “But—but, you can’t leave—I mean—” She panicked. He couldn’t leave. Not now. Not with her pregnant. He had to marry her. That was what was supposed to happen. He had to.

  She stared at his back.

  “Whatever you and your grandfather were fighting about, it can’t be so bad—you need to—”

  “The old man is the first thing I’m going to settle.”

  That made no sense. Buddy squatted before the credenza and yanked open a door.

  “But, why—”

  “What does it matter to you?”

  “But, you can’t leave—I—I’m pregnant—” she blurted out. “You’ve got to stay and—”

  He turned to look at her. “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “But—it’s yours; the baby, it’s yours,” she said, and could hear the desperation in her voice. No, it was not supposed to happen like this.

  “So? What if it is?”

  “But, you can’t—you—you have to marry me! You have to! Your grandfather won’t let—”

  “Do you think I would marry some mill village whore like you?” he asked, and Cassandra was surprised to hear his snorting laugh. “Do you think the old man would let me marry somebody like you, even if I wanted to?”

  And suddenly she understood.

  He never would have married her.

  The railroad tracks that cut the town in half had decided it after all.

  Cassandra was from the mill village. Buddy Eason was from town.

  And he would never marry her.

  The memory of something her mother said about a pregnant, unmarried cousin came to her—rather dead and buried than to disgrace the family.

  If Buddy did not marry her, she knew that her self-righteous mother, Helene, would put her out the minute she learned Cassandra was pregnant. There was no doubt—better dead and buried, Cassandra told herself. Better dead.

  Cassandra’s eyes moved to the gun in the open briefcase, and she reached for it almost without thought—better dead. Better not to have people laugh at her and call her trash. She was not trash—she was Cassandra Price—her mother had always said she was better than anyone else living in the mill village.

  She had been good enough for Buddy Eason to bed.

  She just wasn’t good enough to marry.

  She was crossing the room before she consciously made the decision—better dead. But she would take care of something first.

  When Buddy stood and turned, Cassandra placed the business end of the gun to his crotch—take care of something. Oh, yes.

  Panic came to Buddy’s eyes. He was shoving her away with one hand, grabbing for the gun with the other, when Cassandra Price—who knew now that she would never be Mrs. Buddy Eason—pul
led the trigger.

  PART ONE

  1939

  1

  The boards at the edge of the unpainted porch floor, where it overhung the bare-swept yard, were water damaged and gapped in places, reminding Nathan Betts of the look of rotted teeth. He stopped that Thursday afternoon in October of 1939 just short of the front steps and stared at them, though he knew already he was being watched from behind more than one set of curtains up and down the length of Spring Street. People minded each other’s business here in Eason County. Nathan accepted that. It was part of living here, and there was no need to waste thought on something that could not be gotten around.

  He walked up the steps and picked his way carefully across the front porch, took his hat from his head, knocked, and waited. He could hear a dog barking behind the house, and another up the street. Nathan knew this house probably belonged to George Marion, the same white man who owned the house where Nathan lived several streets away, as well as so many other houses here in this part of town. Mr. Marion would let a porch fall through before he ever had it fixed—but that was just the way white folks were when they had more money than they had a use for, Nathan told himself. They bought houses here in the colored part of town to rent them out for more than the houses were worth, and they never wanted to spend any money to keep the places safe and decent.

  He knocked for a second time, reminding himself that people could do things far worse than that to each other.

  That was what had brought him here in the first place, after all.

  He held his hat in both hands by the brim, hearing at last the sound of heavy footsteps inside the house.

  Esther Tipton opened the door only slightly and peered out. Her face was broad and very plain, darker than his, and it held no welcome for this man who had come uninvited to her doorstep.

  “Brother Jakes said that you was comin’ by t’ talk t’ me,” she said. “I cain’t think what for.”

  “Can we talk inside?” he asked, realizing that he was now turning the hat.

  “No.” She gave no explanation, and Nathan knew there would be no choice but to have his say here on the front porch where half the neighborhood could watch him.

  He took a deep breath and made himself quit turning the hat. He had done this before, he reminded himself—but he had been a young man then, with no white in his hair. “I come t’ ask if you wanted to marry me,” he said at last, then watched with no surprise as anger came to her face.

  “Why would you want t’ ask me that?”

  “I got a boy, an’ two girls at home who need a momma. I understan’ you need a husband just th’ same.”

  Hate came to her face to push aside the anger that had been on it. She pulled the door back fully to stare up at him, and for a moment Nathan was certain she would step out onto the porch and drive him out into her front yard. “Look at you, nigger, comin’ here ’cause Old Walter Eason sent you—does he own you body an’ soul so much that he can pick a wife for you? I didn’t have no choice in what Buddy Eason done t’ me—but this is my baby he put inside ’a me an’ I’m gonna raise it, an’ I ain’t gonna be bought off by no sorry excuse for a man sent t’ me for a husband.”

  “Walter Eason didn’t send me here,” Nathan said, staring back. “I come on my own. Brother Jakes told me that Buddy Eason forced hisself on you an’ got you with child. He said your baby’s gonna need a name an’ you’re gonna need a man in th’ house, an’ he reminded me that my children need a momma—”

  “You’d raise Buddy Eason’s child like it was your own?”

  “It would be my own.”

  “What if it looks white?” she asked, and the words hung there between them.

  “That don’t matter. My momma’s daddy was white; wouldn’t nobody know no difference.”

  She nodded finally and looked away. She stared at the rotting boards in the porch floor. Nathan watched, thinking she might be a handsome woman if she ever smiled.

  But Esther Tipton had little to smile about. Nathan knew she would never have the satisfaction of seeing Buddy Eason pay for what he had done to her. At least she could have some justice in knowing that he was paying for what he had done to someone else. Buddy Eason was in the hospital now, a fat white man under the care of fat white doctors, having been put there by a skinny white woman he had probably wronged as well.

  “We could have a good life,” he said, his eyes not leaving Esther. “I won’t never hurt you like he done,” he said, and her eyes rose to meet his at last. “I ain’t no kind’a man like that.”

  “But, that’s not possible,” Helene Price said for the second time as she settled heavily into a chair near her husband in the waiting room of the Eason County Hospital in Pine.

  Walter Eason stared at her from across the room, where he stood before the tall windows that overlooked the narrow front lawn. He saw disbelief settle on her face, and he wondered why she had not shown such utter refusal to believe when she had learned a few days before that her daughter, Cassandra, had tried to kill Walter’s grandson, Buddy.

  That day Helene had asked only if Cassandra would have to spend the night in jail, or if Helene could possibly take her home “until all this mess gets straightened out.”

  This time it had taken only the words of a doctor to bring this look of absolute refusal to her face.

  “That’s not possible,” Helene said again.

  Cassandra had tried to induce a miscarriage of the child she was carrying, Buddy’s child. Walter Eason’s first great-grandchild.

  “Cassandra is not—she’s not—”

  The woman waved one hand in the air. The hand slowly settled back to her lap, and her chin rose. Walter then read the look on her face for what it was—sheer defiance to believe that her unmarried daughter would have gotten herself into this situation.

  “My daughter is not with child,” she said dismissively. Helene straightened her back. She sniffed, her chin still raised, and Walter knew she was trying to be more than she was, more than just the wife of the supply room boss at the cotton mill. More than just the mother of a young woman who had gone wrong. More than the mother of a daughter who had intended to kill Walter’s grandson.

  Dr. Thrasher stared at Helene, then turned his eyes to her husband. “When she realized that what she’d done hadn’t worked, she asked me to do away with the child—”

  “Well, do it then,” Helene Price said, sitting forward suddenly. The words were hurriedly spoken, quieter than any other words she had uttered since she entered the room. She leaned toward the doctor now, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. “Get rid of it. No one would ever have to—”

  “Helene!” Bert Price rose to his feet. He was a little man, hardly taller than his stout wife, and so thin it appeared he was in the process of wasting away, as if living with Helene Price and that daughter of his had drawn all the life out of him. Walter could remember Bert Price in his younger years, could remember him vital and strong, before life—and Helene Price—had beaten the desire for living out of him. Bert stood swaying on his feet, staring at his wife, his mouth slack and open now, as if he could think of nothing more to say.

  “But—no one would know, and we certainly wouldn’t tell anyone,” Helene Price continued.

  She looked from her husband to the doctor, cold reason now on her face. Her hands smoothed the fabric of her skirt. The garment was picked in several places, and badly nappy along one side where she had repeatedly brushed against some object over the years she had worn it. It must have been expensive when it was new, though too tight for the woman wearing it, as most garments appeared when Helene Price was in them. She sat primly now, her hands folded lady-like in her lap.

  “Cassandra was having female problems,” she said. “That was why Dr. Thrasher was called in. Young women her age are always—”

  “That’s enough,” Walter said, unable to lis
ten to her any longer. He was not surprised when silence fell over the others in the room, though Helene Price fidgeted nervously, picking at an invisible bit of lint. Walter stared at her then his eyes moved to Bert Price, and an unexpected feeling of pity came over him—what could it be like to live with such a woman? Walter could think of very few men who deserved that particular hell.

  “I’ll take care of this,” he said at last, his eyes settling on Helene Price. Very few men, indeed.

  Buddy did not acknowledge his grandfather’s presence when Walter Eason entered his hospital room that evening. His eyes were fixed on the silent radio across the room, one hand resting on an open Life magazine on the bed beside him. Seeing him, Walter thought of all the hopes he had once had for his only grandson—but those hopes had vanished one by one through the years, culminating in the afternoon Buddy was shot, when Buddy had dislocated Walter’s left shoulder in the course of an altercation between them. Walter had no doubt that Buddy would have killed him that afternoon if not for the small pistol Walter had had the foresight to conceal in his pocket before he went to Buddy’s office that day.

  The same pistol he had brought with him in a pocket today.

  He walked closer to the bed, thinking that being shot and believing he would die, even for so short a time, could change a man, and perhaps it could change even his thirty-one-year-old grandson. Walter’s gaze fell on the magazine beneath Buddy’s hand, and on the photograph of a young woman dressed in a bathing costume—Buddy had drawn grotesque breasts on her picture, and shaded in the nether region with the appearance of hair. Vulgar images had been inked in the sky across the top of the page, depicting—

  Walter looked away.

  Cassandra Price had intended to shoot Buddy in the groin. Walter knew that, for Buddy had been screaming the words over and over again when Walter had arrived at the hospital no more than an hour after the shooting. Buddy had grabbed for the gun when he realized her intentions, and the bullet had gone into this thigh, hitting a blood vessel. Buddy had been certain he would die. Walter had been told he had screamed over and over again for someone to get a doctor, even before they were able to move him from his office at the mill, which was probably the only thing that had saved Cassandra Price’s life.