The Hollows--A Novel

by Jess Montgomery

  Sheriff Langmore, wearing a suit fit for a funeral, came out first onto the gallows and asked if anyone would care to speak for the escaped slave John, found guilty of aggravated murder. Several men hooted at the notion, until the sheriff warned that there should be only silence, lest any merrymakers wished to spend a week in the county jail on charges of public disturbance.

  A silence then fell over the crowd of mostly males, though some women were in attendance, and even children. From the silent crowd then emerged a Quaker woman, who refused help up the steep steps, relying on only her cane to aid her assent onto the gallows platform. Though her visage was frail, her voice was firm and resolute.

  She introduced herself as Charity Claymore, and said the following, which your reporter faithfully transcribed: “In our assembly we sit in silence, awaiting the voice of God to move within us, and it is with rarity that we share His words. Today”—and here her voice broke, trembling, so that even the hardest men lost some of their bloodthirsty expressions—“I am so moved to aver that John, though deemed a lesser man on earth for the hue of his skin and decried as a killer despite his protestations, is a child of God, and as such, the spirit of God is within him, and the spirit of God”—and here her voice rose as strong as a sword thrust heavenward—“has no color, but burns brightly and purely, and it is to this spirit I commend the spirit of John!”

  Murmurings of protest against what many in the crowd would decree as religious heresy began to arise until a walloping shout from Sheriff Langmore silenced the crowd.

  Then John, arms cuffed behind him, was brought up onto the gallows, and the sheriff, as executioner for his county by the law of the great state of Ohio, fitted first a burlap bag and then a noose over John’s head, and with another rope bound his ankles. John himself said nothing, nor showed any expression, so quiet and still that one might think his spirit had already left his body.

  Though the sheriff, who has the right to choose the means of execution, elected death by hanging as it is considered the most humane and quickest means, he nevertheless was pale and trembling, only steadying once he had the lever in his grasp. Then he closed his own eyes, and without further warning to the crowd, pulled.

  Some in the crowd gasped, and a few—who had undoubtedly wasted no tears over John’s fate prior to execution day—wailed, though most remained quiet at the specter of death overtaking John’s body, within minutes of the fateful pull of the lever.

  Though my reporting has been as humanly impartial as possible, I add on a personal note that I hope to never again bear witness to any execution—and I daresay that many in the crowd, even those who started out the most enthusiastic, would share the same opinion.

  CHAPTER 20

  LILY

  Sunday, September 26—10:00 a.m.

  Sunday morning, Lily parks her automobile down the hill and walks up to the Stanehart Hollow Friends Meeting House. She’s dressed in her Sunday-go-to-meeting best, a crisply ironed navy blue dress, and her brown jacket. First frost has nipped the morning air, a brisk forewarning of fall that’s singed the roadside clover and bowed the black-eyed Susans. Some trees have turned from green to crimson and golden and orange, bold against a pensively pale blue sky. All these changes in just four days since Lily and Marvena had emerged at the behest of Sadie’s nose from the woods across from the meeting house.

  Now Lily can’t help but smile. What a sight they must have been to Anna Faye, the Quaker woman who’d seen them as she came around the corner.

  Lily looks for her among the people walking to the Friends meeting house. As she moves toward the worshipers, Lily realizes that she’s overdressed. The men and women are in plain clothes—some traditional Quaker garb, others not—that they would wear to work in their fields or kitchens. No one speaks as they go up the stone steps and enter the meeting house, though some folks give her a silent, welcoming nod.

  Inside, Lily sits in the last row of pews. Everyone else moves up to the front, sitting as close together as possible. To her surprise, the men and women do not separate, as is still the custom at the Presbyterian church she occasionally attends. Here, family groups stay together.

  Lily searches for a placard listing hymn numbers, for hymnals and Bibles tucked in the pew racks, for a pulpit from which a pastor will speak—but none of these items are to be found here. Where are the instructions, the order of worship, about what she is supposed to do?

  A woman several rows up turns and looks back at Lily. It’s Anna Faye. She dips her head, a gesture inviting Lily to come up and sit with her family, but Lily stays put, waiting for the meeting to begin.

  No one stands or speaks. Entering in silence was the start of service, Lily realizes. The only sounds are the rustle of clothes on wooden pews, of children fussing, but as mothers reprimand only by pulling them close even the children soon quiet.

  This is it, then. The congregants are simply going to sit in silence. As people bow their heads, or lean forward, or tilt their heads back—howsoever they’re moved—the silence strengthens with a somber yet beguiling quality, binding the congregants.

  To Lily, the silence is unsettling. Itchiness overtakes her skin, making her all too aware of the cloth of her dress, of the tight lacings of her boots. Itchiness claws her, nearly spurring her to spring to her feet, run out the door just behind her.

  Her mind jumps to the tasks awaiting her at home, even on a Sunday. The past two days had been exhausting. The overnight guard had quit. One of the commissioners strongly suggested she hire his nineteen-year-old nephew, and in desperation she’d agreed—though she hoped the scrawny lad wouldn’t shoot his foot off if one of the prisoners whispered, Boo. She had gone to the judge’s house to ask him if he thought she might get the Hollows Asylum search warrant Monday morning—and backed off when he told her she’d be lucky to get it at all if she didn’t leave him alone over the weekend.

  Now here she sits, pinned in place by the great demanding silence suffusing every breath she takes. What is she to do? Listen, as her own pastor admonishes from the pulpit, for the still small voice of God?

  All right, then. Listen. Inhale. Exhale.

  “Oh!” someone cries out. It is a young woman from the front pew, standing up. “Oh, oh, oh!” Tears prick Lily’s eyes—the moans of loss could be her own. A man leaps to the side of the young woman and puts his arms around her. Probably her husband.

  Silence rides the rhythm of the woman’s sorrowful “ohs!” until an old man, sitting next to Anna Faye rises gingerly. His words are strong: “Find the wisdom in your grief.”

  A surge of anger writhes forth in Lily. What nonsense! How can grief provide any wisdom—other than the knowledge that life is more often cruel than not. This life, this world where a child like Thea discovers her own father hanging from the Moonvale Hollow Tunnel.

  Where an escaped slave—identified only by the young Thea—would be condemned for her father’s death.

  Where the sheriff—back then both lawman and executioner—must pull the lever to execute the man.

  Where years later elderly Thea would wander from the asylum, past where once she and her family worshiped, searching for God only knows what or who, only to die brutally, falling onto the train from the top of the same tunnel from which her father was hung from a tree.

  Where is the wisdom in any of this grief?

  From the silence, this knowledge strikes Lily: her grief over Daniel, which she has tried to sublimate by working each day until exhaustion slays her each night, has shaped her every thought, like a hand rising from a grave to squeeze her heart, barely allowing it to keep beating.

  Suddenly service is over. Worshipers stir from silence to shake one another’s hands. Some folks come back to Lily, and though she contemplates leaving, waiting for Anna Faye outside the meeting house, soon she’s caught up in the simple, warm welcome of hand grasping hand, a shake, a smile, a nod.

  Next people take turns speaking—announcements about the fall picnic immediately following
the meeting, about a family in need of food and prayers, an elderly person passing on, a baby born. The individual details of life and death, and the demands they make for community succor and support.

  The announcements blend into one another until another silence falls.

  “Are there any other announcements?” asks the elderly man.

  Lily feels herself rising from her pew, as if she’s being lifted. She clears her throat. The congregants all look at her, their gazes asking why has she stood? Lily herself isn’t sure. She’d come here intending to speak to just Anna Faye, but something compels her to speak to the congregation as a whole. “I am Lily Ross, the sheriff from Bronwyn County. I came by here with a deputy and a hound four days ago, tracking a woman who died, likely at another person’s hand, over in Moonvale Hollow.”

  Murmurs and worried glances stir the small gathering as Lily continues. “I have since learned the identity of the woman—Thea Kincaide. This name might be familiar to some of you. Her father, Rupert Kincaide, was a founding member of this Friends group. He was found—” Lily notes a young girl, about Jolene’s age, staring at her wide-eyed over the back of a pew. Lily chooses her words thoughtfully. “Thea found him in the same place. Of late, Thea was a resident at the Hollows Asylum.”

  A murmur rises in the crowd at that, and nervous glances exchange.

  Lily clears her throat. “Something compelled her to escape from the asylum. I believe she was retracing her steps from that night, probably along a trail he used as part of the Underground Railroad years ago. She was also at a site where I believe a local group had gathered—the Women’s Ku Klux Klan.”

  Murmurs crescendo into alarmed gasps.

  “Surely you of all people must know how dangerous such a group could become, especially as not far from here good people are working to integrate the mines in Rossville. I beg of you, if any of you know anything about Thea Kincaide—or her father—that might help me find out what happened to her, please, come speak to me.”

  As if all the energy had been gut-punched out of her, Lily sinks back down to the pew. People file past her, some pausing to give her a worried look or a handshake, but many looking away as if she is not there.

  She’s failed. By making such a dramatic announcement, instead of stealthily speaking with Anna Faye and others one on one, she’s done nothing more than scare these good people. Or rile them up. After all, Daisy Douglas Barr is an Indiana Quaker who speaks on behalf of the WKKK around the country.

  A hand alights gently on her shoulder, and she looks up. It is the elderly man who had spoken during the meeting. Find the wisdom in your grief.

  “My name is Harold Claymore. Anna Faye is my granddaughter. She told me about your visit a few days ago. May I sit with you?”

  Lily smiles, the tension and anger in her heart slowly easing. “Of course.”

  He sits down next to her, and he’s short enough that his feet dangle over the edge of the pew like he’s a small child. Harold smiles up at her, the lines in his grizzled jaws deepening. “Born up the hill, grew up here, and never left—except to fight in the War Between the States.”

  Lily’s eyebrows rise and he laughs. “Yes, I’m that old. Eighty-five, next month.” Harold coughs deeply, his chest rattling. “If’n I make it, that is.”

  “I was reacting more to your fighting. You being a Quaker and all.”

  “I rebelled. Turned my back on the faith. After I came back, my parents took me back in. So did the meeting house.”

  “Claymore—I just read in an old news article about a Charity Claymore, who spoke out against the execution of the man accused of killing Rupert Kincaide.”

  “My dear grandmother.” He tears up. “Our community was nearly destroyed by those awful events. That’s one reason I left—disgusted by some in our community refusing to help on the Underground Railroad. When I returned, my grandmother in her final years helped me back to a semblance of peace. She taught me that forgiveness is a cornerstone of peace, and peace is the cornerstone of faith. I visited a good friend of mine, over at that asylum. He’d lost his leg, but more than that, he lost his mind. There’s a special plot there, for Union soldiers who lived out their time there. And one Confederate—captured during Morgan’s Raid.”

  Lily nods. In high school, she’d learned about the 1863 panic when it seemed that Confederates, led by a Rebel general named Morgan, would overrun Ohio. The campaign faltered.

  “Met that Confederate fella—would have shot him dead, gladly, in the war, but seeing him all hollowed out with terror like he was? Well. I couldn’t hold anything but pity for him.”

  Is that what this old man meant by find the wisdom in your grief? In sorrow for his friend’s inner torment—and in, Lily reckons, trying to overcome his own—had he found empathy for his enemy?

  Lily’s heart shellacs over at the notion. She is not ready to let go of her distrust and dislike for some people, such as George Vogel.

  Harold smiles gently. “You’re not here to listen to an old man’s war stories, are you?”

  “Papaw?” Anna Faye approaches them. She looks with concern at her grandfather. “We’re having our fall picnic. Perhaps you and Sheriff Ross could join us.”

  “I’m fine, baby girl. Could use some lemonade to wet my whistle, though.”

  Anna Faye looks skeptical but wanders outside. Two men—one of them her husband—remain standing near the pew, well within earshot. What are they afraid of Harold revealing?

  Lily looks back at Harold. “I’d love to listen to all your stories. But I’m interested particularly in anything you—or anyone else—can tell me about Thea Kincaide? Or her father?”

  “We lived on the farm next to the Kincaides. Helped Mr. Kincaide out from time to time. He had the one daughter—Thea. I didn’t take much interest in Thea. She was a little girl, and I was sixteen. I do recollect this—after her father died, my whole family went to call on her and her mother. They needed all the help they could get. Rupert’s own brother wouldn’t do anything for them, and the mother, Cleo, refused any of our help.”

  “Why?”

  “I think she was out of her mind with grief. Let it make her hard.” Harold stares at Lily with such intensity, even with his fading pale blue eyes, that she looks away. Is her own hardness all that obvious? “Said she didn’t want anything more to do with the Friends. Ran the farm on her own as best she could for a bit, then went to work over in Moonvale Hollow.”

  Lily looks at Harold, stunned. “Where her own husband had died so brutally?”

  Harold nods. “She’d been doing laundry and mending for the Dyers for several years before that, to bring in extra money. It seems Rupert wasn’t a particularly successful farmer. He was too keen on his books and studies, and didn’t stick well to a farm schedule. My own father was always trying to help him, but he’d come home shaking his head, saying Rupert would have been better off sticking to his books and being a teacher. Pa would say—”

  One of the men standing nearby clears his throat, and Harold stops. Lily gives him a sympathetic smile. No disrespectful talk of past members.

  “Well, anyhow,” Harold says, “Mrs. Dyer was always sickly. Must’a been a blessing to the Dyers when Cleo and Thea went to work full-time for them—cooking, housekeeping. ’Specially after Mrs. Dyer was blessed with a baby, late in life, their only child. Murphy Dyer.”

  Lily turns this over—Murphy. Perry Dyer’s father. Something pings at the back of her mind, about the dates she’d read but not fully noted when she and Marvena had been at the Dyer cemetery. Something feels off to her.

  “The girl, Thea, and her mother lived there. Mrs. Dyer was still sickly after she had Murphy. Not long after Mrs. Dyer died, Thea’s mother, Cleo, married Mr. Dyer. Reared Murphy as her own.”

  Lily shudders. Poor Thea—she’d grown up on that farm, then. And Murphy—Perry Dyer’s father—would have been a young stepbrother to Thea. It’s believable that Perry never met his stepaunt, Thea, but wouldn’t Murphy h
ave mentioned having an older stepsister? Is that why she was returning there, after she escaped from the asylum? Had she gone to the top of that tunnel, hoping to save her poor father from his terrible fate? Perhaps she’d grown up shuttering away the memories of finding him like that, of the courtroom scene, of seeing the tunnel from time to time as she grew up in that hollow, and then, in old age, the barriers she’d put up broke down, and it all came back in a terrible flood.

  Anna Faye comes back into the meeting hall with a glass of lemonade and gives it to her grandpa. He takes a long drink, smacks his lips. “That’s good.” He regards Lily. “You look a mite peckish, young lady. Come have supper with us.”

  Lily smiles. “That’s right kind of you. But I have plenty to attend to—”

  “On the Lord’s day? It’s meant for rest and reflection,” Anna Faye says.

  Lily looks at her, sees that she means no harm with the admonition, and yet, before she can catch them back, the words fly from her mouth: “The law knows no rest.”

  Shame rises in Lily as redness dots Anna Faye’s cheeks. Lily looks back at Harold. “I think Thea was retracing a path she learned from her father. Do you know—or are there any records—of the paths he’d have taken? Anything I can learn about her last moments might help.”

  Harold starts to speak, but Anna Faye’s husband steps toward them. “There were no records of routes on the Underground Tunnel. No proof except hearsay that this assembly was involved. If you’d like to join us for supper—fried chicken and potato salad—”

  Lily shakes her head. “Thank you, though.”

  Harold hands his glass back to Anna Faye and rises wobbily to his feet, leans on his cane. He shoots a harsh look at the two men hovering nearby, then looks back at Lily. “No hushing up an old man,” he says. “I don’t know what paths Rupert may have taken. More’n likely, that knowledge is lost for all time. But it sounds to me like the beasts of hatred and oppression are trying to rise again—so if you or anyone needs sanctuary here, rest assured it is yours.”