The Hollows--A Novel

by Jess Montgomery

  Lily stares across the bridge. Calculates. It’s perhaps twenty yards across. Then she looks down to the rocky river. Another twenty feet down. Looks back up. The old woman had made it across, seventeen hours before or thereabouts. It had held for her. Had held for decades. Surely it would hold for one more crossing.

  Why?

  The question—this time not about the old woman’s motives but about her own—ricochets in Lily’s mind as surely as if it echoed from someone on the other side of the river.

  Because if she doesn’t cross this bridge, it will ever rankle her own heart. If she can’t do this, for the least of her community, she has no business running for sheriff.

  Lily looks back at Marvena, holds out her hand for the lead line. “Get Guibo. Tell your cousin I’ll bring back Sadie and payment of fifty dollars for his trouble. Then come to the front of the asylum. I’ll meet you there, whether that’s where the rest of this trail leads or not.”

  Lily takes the lead line from Marvena before either of them can change her mind. She pulls the line tight, so Sadie is right by her.

  Then Lily smiles at her friend. “One step at a time, Marvena.”

  She turns, faces the swinging bridge. Puts her foot on the first slat.

  CHAPTER 12

  HILDY

  Wednesday, September 22—10:45 a.m.

  Back at the jailhouse, the stench is overwhelming—one of the prisoners not only had had diarrhea but also had vomited into his chamber pot. Mama had looked so frazzled that Hildy—who only intended to leave a note for Lily that they needed to talk—had sent her back to her house and insisted on taking over.

  Now tears sting her eyes and her throat constricts. Not just from the stench. Somewhere in the brief walk to the pump, the truth has come over her like its own sickness: she’s avoiding going back to see Tom.

  Seth’s comment had boomeranged in her mind. Seth was right—she’d been meant to be with Roger. She’d been happy then, and not just because of loving Roger, but because she did want a conventional life, a pragmatic life, with him.

  Now she feels torn. She wants love like she had with Roger—that’s Tom. And a conventional, pragmatic life—that’s Merle.

  And if she feels torn after less than twenty-four hours after leaving Tom’s side, maybe he’s right. Maybe she’s not strong enough for what a life with him would entail, beyond lovemaking and a fluttery heart.

  Now, finally, the water runs clear, and there is no mess left to clean. She’s wasting water. She gives the handle another pump, though, and another.

  “He-hello? Miss Cooper?”

  Hildy jumps, nearly drops the ceramic pot. When she turns, she sees at the gate Missy Ranklin and her boy, Junior. Missy and her boy hang back, as if at any moment they might turn tail and run back through the open gate and up the road. The boy stares down at the ground, so Hildy can only see the top of his cap, as he stubs his toe into the ground, as if trying to dig a hole. His hands are shoved into his overall pockets, and one strap hangs loose over his shoulder, revealing a grubby white shirt. All of his clothes are too big—hand-me-downs, Hildy reckons, from his father or his older half brother. And the boy needs a good washing up. Even from here, having just washed out a foul chamber pot, Hildy catches a whiff on the fall breeze of his sour odor. The boy shivers. Where is his coat?

  Missy isn’t wearing one, either, nor a hat, and Hildy notes the dark half-moon under her left eye and a red mark along her neck, running down under the collar of her high-neck blouse.

  Hildy’s heart goes out to them, as relief rushes over her. At last, Missy will press charges against her husband, Ralf.

  “Oh, Mrs. Ranklin. I can help you; please come on through the gate; we’ll go to the parlor—” Hildy’s tone betrays her pity, for Missy stiffens, tilts her chin up defiantly.

  “We are here to see Sheriff Ross.”

  Hildy clears her throat, tries to compose her voice to be as poised as Lily’s. “She is not here. I am one of her deputies, so—”

  “We need to see the real sheriff!” Missy’s voice rises to a near shriek.

  “She’s away on a—on a case,” Hildy says. Seth had accepted her assertion of being deputy sheriff because she is his friend. How many times had Missy come, wanted to complain without making it official, and Hildy had shown pity—a shaming reaction compared to true empathy? No one wishes to be pitied. “As I was saying, I can help—”

  Junior peers up at Hildy from under his cap brim. No bruises or marks. Yet his eyes are hollow. The sight freezes Hildy, as the boy keeps stumping his boot toe into the ground.

  Without even looking at him, Missy snaps, “You’re gonna wear a hole in your boot, and your toes’ll freeze off this winter!” She thumps his back, so hard he stumbles forward. Hildy instinctively reaches for him, and the chamber pot she’s just cleaned slips from her hand and shatters against the top of the iron water pump. He falls to his knees.

  She reaches down for his elbow to help him up, but he shakes her off, angrily. When he looks at her, though, his eyes brim with tears.

  “Yoo-hoo!” another voice trills into the backyard. “Oh, there you are, Missy! I wondered where you’d gotten off to!”

  Margaret Dyer stands by the gate. For a moment, the old-fashioned lady Hildy had thought she’d seen in the middle of the street the night before flashes before her eyes. Had that been Margaret? No—Margaret is wearing the latest fashion, a drop-waist dress and cloche hat, items Hildy had recently seen and coveted for herself in Kinship’s dress shop. She must have imagined the lady last night, in her tired state.

  It hits Hildy—other than scattered catnaps, she’s been up for more than twenty-four hours. Exhaustion grips her bones, and it’s all she can do to stand. Though Margaret is panting, as if she’s run a long stretch, Margaret’s lips curl, as if she is pleased to catch Hildy so.

  “Please, the sheriff! I need to see Sheriff Ross, right away—” Missy clutches her boy. Whatever frustrations she’d taken out on him have dissipated, and now she’s protective, a mama bear with arms encircling her cub.

  A faint shadow of something—the old-fashioned lady—hovers out of the corner of Hildy’s vision. She’s not really there, and Hildy knows if she turns to look, the lady will disappear. And yet there’s a whisper, too—Stiffen your spine, Hildy!

  Hildy focuses on Missy. “Sheriff Ross is away on a case, but I can help you—”

  She halts as a wail comes from the jailhouse. As stricken looks come over Missy’s and Junior’s faces, Hildy wishes she’d not left the front door open so the building could air out, but she’d felt sorry for the other prisoners, gagging at the sick man’s odors.

  “One of the men is having stomach troubles, is all; he’ll be fine—” Hildy starts, but fades to a stop as a strangely satisfied smile curls Margaret’s mouth.

  “Oh my,” Margaret says. “Troubling. Say—do you ever have women in the jailhouse?”

  “Rarely.” Hildy frowns. What an oddly timed question. “They get their own cell—”

  “And what of their poor children—”

  “They stay with their fathers or family or—”

  “And if there is no one for them?”

  Hildy glances over at Missy, clutching Junior so tightly that the boy is squirming. What is Margaret getting at? If Missy’s here to file a complaint against Ralf, then Ralf would be in the jail, at least for a while, and Missy would need to tend to Junior as well as her stepchildren. Hildy’s temples throb from a headache born of exhaustion.

  The answer to Margaret’s question is the orphanage in Columbus, but Hildy refocuses on Missy. “You won’t get into any trouble for filing a complaint against your husband—”

  “Oh, I doubt that’s why she’s here,” Margaret interjects. “Missy is staying with us for a while. I need a housekeeper while we get settled in as I’m so busy helping dear Mr. Dyer with his campaign.”

  Hildy gives Margaret a long look—both for the formality of how she refers to her husband, Perry
, and at the notion of hiring another man’s wife as a live-in housekeeper.

  Margaret smiles at Hildy as if she’s dim. “The campaign, dear? For sheriff?”

  “I’m well aware!” Hildy snaps. Another moan drifts from the jailhouse.

  Margaret laughs. “Oh, that’s right. You work for the current sheriff. Who is away. Leaving you with all the glamorous tasks.” She gives Missy a little poke, and she stumbles. Junior frowns, glares at Margaret, and instead of squirming hugs his mother tighter, as if to hold her stable. “Well, go ahead. I know you were eager to make your report, though I told you there isn’t enough evidence.”

  Missy blanches, turns her wide-eyed gaze to Hildy. “I-I-I…”

  Another moan rises from the jailhouse. Margaret purses her lips so hard that her chin sinks back into her neck.

  “No, no,” Missy says. “Never mind. I—I’ve changed my mind.”

  Because of Margaret’s presence? Or because Lily isn’t here—and Missy doesn’t trust Hildy to help?

  Hildy tries to find the right words to shoo away Margaret, to get a few minutes alone with Missy. Maybe then—

  Margaret speaks quickly. “Come along, Missy. I’ve told you—I can take care of you and your boy.”

  What an odd statement. Does she really think that Missy leaving her husband to temporarily work for Margaret is a real solution?

  Missy finally releases her boy, to follow Margaret. Junior’s hand goes slowly, ever so gently, to his mother’s back. A light touch, yet a deep plea.

  “I could clean up your boy’s knee!” Hildy calls. “Since he stumbled at the pump—”

  Margaret looks over her shoulder at Hildy. “He’ll be fine. I’m taking good care of them.”

  Moments after Margaret, Missy, and Junior have exited through the gate, Hildy stares after them. Then the shadow of the old-fashioned lady passes by again, in her peripheral vision.

  She shakes her head to clear it, tells herself she’s weary, shaken by the odd conversation, and as another wail calls her back to her jailhouse duties she turns from the gate.

  CHAPTER 13

  LILY

  Wednesday, September 22—Noon

  The scent trail stops. Sadie plops onto the dirt road alongside the asylum cemetery, summoning a last dollop of energy to scratch behind an ear, making it flop so ridiculously that Lily almost laughs. A gnat buzzes by her ear and lands on her sweaty neck. She slaps the pest away and is tempted to plop down next to Sadie, for her legs still tremble, both from exhaustion and from the lingering terror of crossing the shimmying swing bridge. If she gives into temptation, she might not get back up.

  So she gives Sadie a moment and gazes across the field of identical headstones laid out in the precise style of a military cemetery, each marker and row an equidistance apart, the design offering illusory comfort of death as tidy and orderly. The stones have only numbers—patient numbers, Lily thinks with a jolt.

  Two hawks, circling above, break the brazen blue perfection of the sky. Lily gazes up, then realizes from their wing shape that the birds are actually turkey vultures.

  Lily gives Sadie’s lead line a gentle tug and, as the hound staggers up, an apologetic scratch between the ears. “Sorry, girl,” Lily says. “I can’t leave you here.”

  They continue down the steep, curved road. Past a field with a dairy barn and cows, an orchard, an expansive garden. Men and women work quietly—some dressed in their own clothes, others in pants and shirts or dresses the same shade of blue as the old woman’s gown.

  If one didn’t know they were in a state-run asylum, the scenes would be idyllic.

  * * *

  On a few Sundays in Lily’s childhood, Mama and Daddy had packed up a picnic and made the long drive over from Kinship, bringing Lily and Roger to the grounds to enjoy the fountains and formal gardens. Other families, other children, had been there.

  Curious, young Lily had asked about the place, and eventually learned that the Hollows had been constructed in 1868, with towns such as Pomeroy and Athens and Kinship all competing to get the asylum, because that meant jobs—nursing, carpentry, groundskeeping—and a beautiful estate with expansive grounds for the community to enjoy. The institution—and others like it dotted throughout the country—took in men traumatized from the Civil War and others deemed insane for various reasons: schizophrenia, dementia, and, particularly for women, hysteria.

  Had residents and workers roamed the grounds, mingling with the families? Probably. Lily doesn’t recollect anyone scary or odd. Her memories center on the beautiful rose garden and its crowning feature: a tiered fountain, out of the center of which arose a beautiful enrobed woman, water cascading from the pitcher she held.

  Asylum, after all, means a refuge. Haven. Sanctuary. Of late, the Kinship Daily Courier and other regional newspapers carried reports of overcrowding and understaffing. Would such conditions make it easier for someone like the old woman to slip away, unnoticed?

  Lily limps past the entrance to a new hospital wing on the west side of the main building.

  From the bowers of remembrance Daniel arises: there he is, coming in their back door from a trip to the Hollows. As sheriff, by court order, he’d been required to deliver a fifty-seven-year-old Bronwyn County woman to the asylum, purported to have hysteria brought on by the change of life. Daniel’s normally affable face pinched with sorrow, and he’d pulled Lily to him in a tender hug that lasted longer than usual.

  Lily stops mid-stride, a side cramp. She closes her eyes, willing away the pain.

  A gentle touch on her arm makes her jump, open her eyes. A man—a resident—stares at her. His eyes are wild, and yet sympathetic. He opens his mouth to speak but gapes, mute. Then he turns and rejoins a group doing calisthenics under the guidance of an orderly. The man goes back to his own movement: swirling around and around, as if in his own perpetual game of “ashes to ashes,” never falling down.

  Finally, Lily and Sadie continue around the corner of the hospital building and stand before the only entrance to the main redbrick three-story building.

  Stone steps rise to the grand porch; towers arise on either side—the turrets she’d seen rising above the tree line on the other side of the Kinship River. Receding back from the central building are two wings, three sections per wing, each farther back than the other—the batwing design championed by Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, the physician who was the father of the asylum movement in the United States. Lily recollects that higher-functioning residents were housed closest to the center section, the more troubled and dangerous in sections farther back, with men in the west wing and women in the east. Numerous windows, as evenly placed as the cemetery headstones, are trimmed with ornate wrought-iron designs—and covered with iron bars. Cottages, like the ones she sees on the east lawn of the campus, had been added twenty or so years before for the higher-functioning residents—and to ease crowded conditions.

  Where, Lily wonders as she and Sadie ascend the steps, had the old woman lodged? And why had her scent abruptly stopped—or started—alongside the cemetery?

  Lily pushes open the double door to the asylum. Sadie’s nails click against the black-and-white tile floor, the sound drawing the alarmed attention of a nurse stepping out of a side office. Lily is distracted for a moment—her mouth waters at the unexpected smell of freshly brewed coffee, strong and rich and savory. She forces a reassuring smile, but exhaustion clings to her as if she’s walked through a spiderweb.

  The nurse hurries toward them, so urgently that her crisp nurse’s cap wobbles on top of her head. She comes to an abrupt stop, out of reach of Lily, and crosses her arms over her thin waist. One hand fidgets toward a pocket on the front of her starched white bibbed apron.

  “Miss, where is your escort?” The nurse’s voice is sugarcoated with patience, but too thinly to mask a strain of nervousness.

  Amused, Lily smiles. She must surely be a sight—haggard and filthy. She pulls off her hat, runs a hand over her hair to try to smooth it, discovers that a
few twigs have lodged in her braid, as if something had been trying to build a nest. Her fingers, still sticky from the pawpaw, gum on to a leaf—and too late, she realizes that the nurse is gaping at the holster on Lily’s waist.

  Lily hastily taps her shield—leaf and all. “I’m here on official business. I’m the Sheriff of Bronwyn—”

  The nurse already has her whistle out of her pocket and is blowing it repeatedly, setting poor Sadie to howling. Lily kneels to comfort the hound, and by the time she looks up, two male orderlies have already come from somewhere—for her. She staggers to her feet, crying out, “I am here on official business!”—but they’re already upon her.

  * * *

  In the small, windowless holding cell, Lily sits on the only furnishing, a bench built into the white plaster wall. She clutches her skirt in her fists, keeping the hem hoisted off the brick floor.

  New paint hasn’t filled in all of the scratches on the walls, and etched in the plaster across from her is the message: I never was crazy.

  How long had the man—or woman—been in here, to carve those letters so deeply, and what had they used? Lily forces her fingers between her boot shaft and swollen ankle, to pull up a little higher the leather-sheathed knife she always carries.

  At least they hadn’t found that, though they had her gun, her rucksack, and Sadie. Poor hound, howling like a crazy creature. Anger rises, and she draws a deep breath. Bad idea. The cell smells of urine. Lily exhales slowly. They’d better not hurt that hound.

  As the orderlies had grabbed her, Lily had started to put up a fight, but she heard the nurse, already back in the office, saying into the telephone, “Get me Chief Warren!”

  And so Lily had gone quietly with the two burly, brusque men, so that they would not search her and find the knife, figuring that sooner or later Chief Warren—who she knew briefly from a case earlier this past year—would show up to sign paperwork saying that she needed to be “held” and then, upon seeing her, vouch that she really is sheriff of Bronwyn County.