Chapter One: the longest blog post ever

Before W was born, I worked for years on a novel. I finished draft #23 of it just before he was born and haven't been able to touch it since. After reading a wonderful book, The Help, this week, I just decided I'd put some of my story, based on my great grandmother's life in the deep south, out there. What the hell. Here's chapter one of "A Place Like This". Maybe I'll keep feeding chapters out into the blogosphere...or maybe it will inspire me to pick it back up again. Here goes.

***

The day her daddy shot himself started off like any other.

Hattie Blair Armstrong, five years old and impatient to get older, sighed and danced from one leg to another as she waited for the clean smell of butter and sugar to tickle her nose. It would come, like a pleasant hoped-for sneeze, when her mama finally put the cornbread in the oven. She bounced, trying not to pout, an action she knew all too well that neither of her parents, George or Diddie, would tolerate from her or any of her four brothers and sisters. She was itching to take off the long stockings she’d pulled on in half-sleep at six o’clock that morning. Though it was December, it was hot, and she squinted her eyes into her brow with the knowledge that it was only ten o’clock. The sun was just barely starting its day, and by the end of it, the six hundred acres of Mulberry Grove Plantation would be just like a big old plot of fire.

“Go outside—you can’t sit still,” Diddie said.

Hattie stilled her feet and dropped her hands by her sides, determined to stay where she was, and get dibs on licking the mixing bowl. Her sisters were always trying to cut in on the good things whenever she had been the one to put in long hours of waiting. She wasn’t particularly opposed to sharing, but she didn’t like anyone taking cuts. “Cuts!” she’d yell, even in the five and dime, knowing she’d get a hard look for tattling. Let them look, she always thought. I waited my turn.

“Go on help Mary with the eggs,” Diddie said.

“I wanna stay with you,” Hattie said. She knew she could not keep from bursting much longer, but that Diddie would force her into a chore if she made a ruckus in the kitchen. And so, like the spotted sandpipers she’d seen on the family trip to Tybee beach the week before, she began to run up and down the hallway in the rambling farmhouse, patting her dust-coated toes against the floorboards in baby steps. I can run up and down until the bowl is ready, she thought, even though she knew she would tire before then. Time will go faster and I’ll have a head start to beat out Kat if she runs inside.

In the middle of Hattie’s third trip down the hallway, the oldest Armstrong daughter, Mary, came in from gathering eggs and let the screen door slap behind her. Diddie looked up and Hattie spun around, sprinted back to the center of the kitchen, and slid into the counter with a thud.

“Oopsie,” Hattie said, rubbing her ear. Diddie smiled at her.

"Tater’s out killing a fryer," Mary said.

"Good," Diddie said. The smile disappeared from her face and she looked down to continue work on the cornbread. "We can use it too."

Convinced that Mary had not come inside to steal her prize, Hattie walked to the screen door. She was sure there was nothing more exciting than the beheading of chickens. She knew this was not a proper fascination for a little girl, but she couldn’t help herself. The chickens ran around for a good many seconds after their heads were gone, lopped off like the bad end of a carrot, and she never got tired of watching them spin around in the dust of the coop, their silenced squawks pouring out of their necks in blood. She could still feel the excitement from the last time she got to watch.

“Daddy and Palmer got plenty ducks this morning too,” Mary said, laying out the eggs on a blue checkered dishcloth. “Saw Daddy carry them out to clean in the barn.”

“I saw them too,” Hattie said, though she had not—not that morning.

She had, however, been present many mornings when her daddy and her oldest brother, Palmer, returned from hunting. Many times during the past summer she had waited on the floorboards of the screened-in porch, looked out across the corn rowed land, and watched them walk toward her from out of the distant woods. They dressed in hunting gear the color of the coffee they drank in the mornings, and that summer George and Palmer were nearly as dark as their clothes with sun, so dark Hattie could hardly see the pink hills of mosquito bites that always dotted their necks. Double-barreled shotguns rested on their shoulders, and they carried ill-fated ducks by limp rope-legs, letting them hang upside down, swinging together back and forth as if they were shaking their heads: “no, no, no.” Watching them, Hattie would giggle, excited because George and Palmer always treated her special.

"Reckon we ‘bout cleaned the area," she’d hear her father say. The noise of his boots crunching the dogwood branches and pecan shells along the ground as he walked sounded like brightly wrapped packages being opened. Before she knew it, he’d be standing right in front of her.

“Why Hattie Blair!” he’d say. “You ready for some duck pie?” He’d lift his right arm above his head and show off the bounty while he cradled his gun meticulously, though he’d already taken out the bullets. He was teasing her. The Armstrong family never had duck pie—didn’t waste the duck hiding it in buttermilk and dough when they could fry it up in slivered pieces instead and dip it in buttered grits with their fingers to eat like candy.

“No Daddy,” she’d say. “Let’s fry ‘em.”

“Aw, sugar.” George would hand off his gear to Palmer and pick Hattie up in a bear hug as he swung her around in a circle. “How bout we fix ‘em however you want.”

Because she was the baby of the five Armstrong children, Hattie was treated like a visiting celebrity for the first five and a half years of her life. Diddie put her in the finest dresses she could afford, instead of the hand-me-downs Kat and Mary had worn—part of the effort she made at one last round of the best mothering she would be able to offer. None of Hattie’s siblings could resist vying for her attention. For a time it seemed that she got the best of everything. But Palmer, who was fifteen by the time she was five, and George especially, treated her with even more partiality than everyone else. As is the case in large families, each member of the Armstrong family had someone who was his ally, someone who was always on his side, who always chose to sit by him at meals or the interminable church service—someone who would never let him—or her—down, who would always be there. Kat had Tater and Mary had Diddie and vice versa, and Hattie was lucky enough to have two: her daddy and Palmer.

The two of them never let Hattie feel left out of anything for long. Just when she’d start to feel rejected because she couldn’t stoke the fire with Tater, or play by herself with the baby chicks they ordered from Sears, Roebuck and Co., or help her mama with the cooking, it seemed her daddy would magically appear in the house for some lemonade and sing “Daddy’s little Hattie loves shortnin’ shortnin’, Daddy’s little Hattie loves shortnin’ bread!” Hattie would run to him and if he wasn’t too busy he’d scoop her up, grab a bonnet for her to wear and a parasol for him to carry over her, and take her out to the fifty-acre plot of land he farmed for himself and the family. The plot started just yards from the house, and farming it was simple compared to the challenge he faced in running the entire plantation business, especially then, in 1905, with crop prices falling and a profit getting harder and harder to make.

Diddie looked up and turned her head toward Hattie’s wanderlust gaze out the screen door. "Unh unh, Hattie Blair," she said with a smile. "You don't go out there y'hear?"
Hattie’s face bowed in disappointment and she stomped her foot. She knew she should have run ahead outside before her mama had time to notice.

“Why though?” she whined. “You said go outside.”

“Young lady,” Diddie said. “I know you’re not back-talking me. Now, you aim to lick the bowl or just pout all day long?” She turned away and slid the cornbread into the oven with her old red mitt.

There was the sound of the oven closing, and then Hattie shuddered as if the doctor was checking her knee reflexes with that funny rubber hammer. She heard a gunshot in the distance and looked up into her mama’s face, as she always did when she heard a gun, and saw the reassuring smile and dismissive headshake that told her everything was okay. She knew that all the adults dismissed the sound of gunfire just as quickly as they wondered what animal was being put down or frightened off. The sound of guns was routine at Mulberry Grove, and firing in the air was Hattie’s daddy’s favorite way of scaring the birds away from the crops. Still, she was sure she’d never get completely used to it.

"Yes ma’am!" Hattie said. She turned around like a debutante twirling in a new gown until she saw Kat, who had just appeared in the kitchen and been handed the mixing bowl by Mary. Hattie drew in her chest and said “darnnit!” under her breath—careful not to be heard—as her skirt died a quick death against her shins. After a second’s recovery, she ran to the table and shoved Kat half off her seat. Kat froze and looked at her with her hand poised in mid-air and Hattie took the opportunity to transfer a great glob of the yellow paste into her mouth with her middle and index fingers.

"Tsk. Don't you girls ruin your appetite, hear?" Diddie said. Her eyes traveled from Hattie’s puffed out cheeks to Kat’s precarious seat on the chair. Hattie smiled at her mama and a fine drop of the mixture rolled down the little ridge that ran through the center of her bottom lip. Kat sighed and pushed back against Hattie just a little, so that both sides of her bottom were supported once again. Hattie was pleased to find that even after the readjustment she still had the better position for dipping into the bowl. Because of this, she decided not to push back.

Diddie chuckled. “Well, just more of the same at a higher temperature for lunch,” she said. “Don’t imagine it makes much difference, but you’ll still be expected to drink your milk young ladies.” She leaned over the kitchen counter and touched her youngest daughter on the tip of her nose. She was always telling Hattie how much her nose looked like a cute little button. Hattie couldn’t quite see the resemblance, but hearing this still made her stomach thicken and warm.

Hattie knew it was Palmer the instant she heard the scream. No one had ever heard Palmer scream before. He was the calm one. Even when Tater lost a finger in the combine the winter before, Palmer knew just what to do and did it without a fuss. He saved the finger on ice and Mary said the doctor had praised him for his quick thinking—told him he could’ve sewn it right back on, if they’d just gotten there a few minutes earlier. Partly because it involved Palmer, and partly because it involved blood, it was one of Hattie’s favorite stories. She was sure there was no one more smart or brave than her oldest brother.

Palmer is not supposed to scream, she thought.

Palmer was supposed to carry her around in the unenclosed air, pointing out things he thought she might find interesting—anything he could tell a story about. He showed her things not fifty yards from the very house she had always lived in, but to her these trips with him were as exotic as the traveling medicine men that knocked on their door in the middle of winter.

“That there’s a peanut kernel,” Palmer would say, kneeling down in the churned-over dirt. “We’ll plow just over there next week.” He’d look out a distance away from the patch of kernels. “Maybe Miss Stumbly Bumbly will get to help.” Hattie was always so excited to get places that she tripped over things more often than not, and Palmer had taken to calling her Stumbly Bumbly as a nickname. She was thrilled to have a nickname.

“Will we grow peanut butter?” she often teased him. She knew Diddie made the peanuts into cream in the kitchen, sometimes Hattie even helped if she was allowed, but this question always made Palmer smile and tickle her.

“Silly girl,” he’d say. “Wanna get lost in the corn?”

“Yes! The corn sea!”

To get to the cornfield they had to pass the barn with the stink of manure and horses perspiring in damp hay. Although Hattie didn’t mind the smell, Palmer always stopped just before they got there and asked if she was ready to go through “the stinky tunnel.”

“One, two, three!” he said, and then he pinched her nose up so she couldn’t smell the worst part and ran with her in his arms, his hand on her nose and his other holding up her bottom, and she bounced along laughing and breathing animatedly through her mouth. When they got past the barn he’d let go and they’d fall to the ground, Hattie feeling as if they’d just conquered the world together, and Palmer pretending to be out of breath.

“Whew!” he’d say. “We made it again darlin’.” And then he’d pick her back up and trot her into the long-legged husks of corn where blown open strands of yellow silk tickled her cheeks like cat whiskers, and the world was clear and gold. At those times it was obvious to her: she was special and would always be so.

Hattie’s fingers became stuck in the cornbread residue as if in thick, drying mud. Mary said, “It’s just the chickens, Palmer hates to see them die,” which Hattie knew wasn’t the truth, and Kat, who had a tendency to stop breathing when she was frightened or nervous, echoed Palmer’s scream with her own gasp of air. Hattie looked at Diddie with wide eyes, feeling herself sinking into a place soft and dark, like a prick of blood.

The four of them were still for a few minutes. Hattie listened for any other sign of what might be happening, and at the same time, tried not to hear the shouts pinging back and forth across the yard out front. Someone called for help. Someone else ordered others to stay away. And then Diddie slowly removed her oven mitt and ran toward the door.

Just as she got to the door, Stephen arrived. When Diddie saw his face she reached behind herself like a blind woman, found only air, and then staggered back into a chair at the kitchen table. Hattie swallowed hard, and looked at Stephen. It was strange to see him at the front door, stranger, in fact, than Palmer’s scream. They had not called for Stephen, and Negro field hands—even he, who was her daddy’s most trusted tenant farmer—did not come to their front door.

Tater appeared behind Stephen on the porch and silently ushered him into the house.
“Palm—” Diddie started.

"Okay Miss Diddie,” Stephen said. “Palmer’s just fine. Just fine.” He took off his floppy khaki hat and folded it between his hands as he stood looking at Diddie, shifting in his shoes. Suddenly, he looked over at Tater and said, “Tater, go on tell Miss Hattie and Miss Kat a story now."

Oh, Hattie thought, Daddy will not like this one bit. Field hands in the house talking to Diddie and ordering us around? Oh.

Mary eased herself down into a chair next to Diddie.

Tater, who was only nine, led Hattie and Kat out of the room and on toward the back bedroom, squeezing both their hands in his left one. As she thought about the way he was hurting her fingers, Hattie noticed his right hand was trembling, but he was smiling. Or he was crying. She couldn't be sure at the time. He spoke loudly to them as they walked, as if they were out on the river in the middle of a windstorm, needing directions to get back to shore.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Story time. Time for a nap. Let’s go.” His voice was flat, as if he couldn’t hear what his own mouth was saying.

When he finally had gotten her back to the bedroom, Hattie dropped his hand and ran as fast as she could back into the kitchen, toward Stephen and Mary and Diddie. The wooden floorboards croaked like frogs as she hit them. Tater came after her, Kat following at his heels, but he couldn’t catch her in time and she got to the edge of the kitchen and reached her mama’s side just in time to hear Stephen say:
“I’m sorry, Miss Diddie. It’s Mister George. There been a shotgun accident out in the barn.” Stephen stepped back a bit from Diddie and looked down. He bowed his head low, as if he were about to pray. Diddie waited, silent. “I do believe he’s dead,” Stephen whispered.

Hattie couldn't help making a sound as if she’d just stubbed her toe. It was a single peep, and then she stood, her long blonde hair feeling one hundred pounds heavy—pulling all her weight downward to bury her feet into the wood floor like sand dollars in the surf. Faces turned toward her, but no one spoke. There was a sound like choking coming from Mary, and then, next thing Hattie could tell, Palmer was walking into the kitchen. His face looked bad, as if he’d been kept away from the sun for months. His fifteen-year-old arm muscles were little bulging apples popping out of his undershirt. His work shirt was gone. Hattie thought he looked a lot like her daddy and then she was struck again with what she’d heard Stephen tell her mama. She knew what dead was. She was unsure how long it lasted.

She looked around the kitchen, above the motionless heads all staring in a single direction. The kitchen looked smaller than it ever had before, crowded up with her brothers and sisters, mama, and Stephen. The gas oven range was on low; Diddie had been preparing her daddy’s favorite shrimp dish. The room began, as she watched it recede from herself, to smell more like burnt toast than heated butter, and through the little trail of smoke dancing out of the oven, she noticed for the first time that the orange burlap curtains over the window facing the barn were drooping. She took a few steps back and stood in the hallway. She closed her eyes and opened them back up and still everyone was there, looking stunned—not even crying—just sitting, most of them, at the dining table as if they were waiting for a meal to be served or a meeting to begin.

Then Diddie stood, walked a few steps to the middle of the kitchen, and sat down on the floor, hard and lifeless as a statue. She was breathing hard and her eyes looked wild. Hattie was scared. Her daddy had just read her a story an hour earlier and she felt she could still hear his voice. How can he be dead? she thought. Did I do something bad to make him die? When will he be back? She pinched herself to stop the questions.

Mary jerked away, ran from them, and shut herself up in her bedroom. The slam of her door and the wailing that followed behind it sent Kat into tears and she buried her face in Tater’s chest. Tater stood with his arms around her, looking out toward the barn. No one moved toward Hattie. No one looked at her. Palmer was bent over Diddie with his hand on her back, mumbling, “It’s okay Mama,” in a voice Hattie did not recognize as his. She listened to him for a while, hearing his words but forgetting their meaning, and when he started to cry too—when his knees buckled and he fell down on the kitchen floor—she looked up at the sagging curtains, confused and calm. The curtains swayed in the slight breeze coming in off the land. Maybe Daddy’ll get us new ones for Christmas, she thought. Maybe this time they’ll be red.