A Peach For Big Jim

by Lisa Belmont

  Praise for

  A Peach For Big Jim

  by Lisa Belmont

  “Lisa Belmont transports her readers to the Deep South of the 1940s with her spectacular descriptions, lively and spot-on dialogue, and characters that could only exist in that time and place. This compelling story will keep readers riveted as young Chloe navigates a morass of fear, superstition, and racism to become a young woman who must face the most difficult choices. Don’t miss this beautiful, memorable story.”

  — Rosi Hollinbeck, Manhattan Book Review

  “Belmont is clearly knowledgeable about her setting, and her strong prose vividly describes the rural atmosphere, with references to ceaseless humidity, veneration of Confederate-era ancestors, and local folk songs...the novel’s resolution is largely satisfying.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “This is a riveting tale with many twists and turns...friendships will be betrayed, secrets will be exposed. I loved every moment of the story, and I couldn’t have hoped for a better ending.”

  — Esther Wairimu, San Francisco Book Review

  A PEACH FOR BIG JIM Copyright © 2019 Lisa Belmont

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief passages quoted by a reviewer in a newspaper or magazine. To perform any of the above is an infringement of copyright law.

  eISBN: 978-1-7335855-1-4

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America

  by King’s House Press, 2019

  Cover Art by Noelle Hixon

  KING'S HOUSE PRESS

  A PEACH FOR BIG JIM

  Lisa Belmont lives in Seattle with her family and a sweet, merry bichon frise named Frosty. A Peach For Big Jim is her first novel.

  For my darling Noelle, with all my love

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I would like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be all the glory for anything worthwhile that I’ve written.

  I’m grateful to my mother, Wanda Belmont, a wonderful writer in her own right. Her many childhood stories helped inspire this novel in more ways than I can count.

  A special thanks to my daughter, Noelle, for the beautiful book cover she designed for A Peach For Big Jim. A writer could not ask for a more fitting rendition of Chloe.

  I owe much to April Eberhardt, a wonderful literary agent who fell in love with this novel and championed it to several publishing houses. Your work and dedication are so very appreciated.

  I’d also like to thank Priyanka Krishnan, the thoughtful editor at Random House who enjoyed this novel and offered some sage advice for improving it.

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Chapter One

  Mills Hollow, South Carolina 1947

  Some folks said Foxhole Swamp was haunted. When the wind got to moving good, you could hear all them slave voices echoing through the tupelo gums. They’d call out, one after another. Some were the voices of those who had been whipped with birch rods. Others were those who had been branded with irons. Slaves hadn’t picked cotton at Whitehall Plantation for eighty years now but seemed like the swamp didn’t know no better.

  I didn’t go in for all them superstitions like Caleb. My brother was always dredging up some local folklore that’d frighten you good. Maybe that’s why he liked the big cypress tree. It had knobby knees that stuck out of the water, and it was draped in eerie moss. Some folks said the tree had been around since the first slave set foot on South Carolina soil. Others said there was a ghost that lived in it who only came out on Halloween night.

  All I knew was that Caleb thought that coon would be back in the tree before nightfall. Pa told Caleb he’d better shoot the coon because it’d been stealing eggs from the henhouse. That’s all Caleb heard before he grabbed his twelve-gauge shotgun and went out the back door.

  He wasn’t afraid to shoot neither. If there was anything he loved – besides Babe Ruth – it was shooting. He didn’t care if it was a squirrel in Momma’s pecan tree or a deer eating the petals off a violet. Caleb would shoot anything that moved.

  A bluish mist settled over us while Caleb and I waited under the cypress. Frogs croaked from their hidey-holes, and something splashed in the water.

  “What was that?” I said, standing to my full height.

  “Be still, Chloe,” Caleb said, nodding to the trail. “No use you coming down here and scaring off the coon.”

  Caleb was always real nervous about doing things right. Pa told him he could skin a buck this fall and, Lord, if that didn’t get Caleb all riled up. He’d sit out on the front porch, whittling a hunk of wood to get the feel of the knife. I’d watch him go at it, his strong hand flicking those wood shavings like they were dust. Sometimes, when I got to thinking about it, Caleb was kinda like a deer in the wild – the way they’d get to moving real precise like, their ears always perked up.

  Course, sometimes there was a sadness to all that precision like Caleb wasn’t none too happy about always trying to be perfect. That’s why I did what he asked and squatted low.

  There was something about being still that made the swamp come alive. I’d never heard them chorus frogs get to croaking so good. Or them crickets that got to chirping. Seemed like they were singing a lullaby to all them lightning bugs glowing in the night air.

  Caleb’s lantern shone a path through a patch of milkweed, and I noticed a little brown bird. Every now and then it got to twitching.


  “Caleb, that bird looks real scared.”

  “What bird?”

  “That one. Over by the water,” I said, pointing to the raggedy milkweed.

  Caleb didn’t pay me no mind and went back to looking for the coon. The light from the kerosene lamp caught his hazel eyes and chestnut brown hair and gave him a burnished glow. I just hoped the lantern wouldn’t burn out.

  It was no secret that I was afraid of the dark. Momma said I’d grow out of it, but I wondered when. Maybe the bird was scared, too. Soon there’d be foxes and possums coming out of their dens. I got to thinking it wasn’t right to just leave it.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Caleb.

  He shot me an annoyed glance. I knew he wished I’d be as still as he was, but I didn’t have the same hunting instincts he had. Caleb could track a turkey through the marsh and have it sitting on the dinner table before Momma got the sweet potatoes cooked. Pa said he was a natural hunter, something he acquired from generations of Southern blood.

  Blood or not, I knelt beside the little bird. His wings got to twitching, but you could tell he couldn’t fly. He looked so helpless that I scooped him in my hand and carried him to Caleb.

  “What’d you bring it here for?” he said, as I sat beside him.

  “He’s hurt.”

  “Probably snake bit.”

  “Ain’t snake bit.”

  Caleb shrugged. “Momma will know what to do.”

  I stroked the little bird and told him to get better while Caleb kept lookout for the coon. Every now and then he’d glance over at me. The tall grass rustled in the wind and the bird let out a sweet sound, a little chirp. I thought Caleb was going to tell him to be quiet, but he just shook his head.

  “Little Chirpie. That’s what you oughta call him.”

  Sometimes I truly loved my brother. I wondered how many girls had a brother who’d take them on a coon hunt. Not like this was a genuine hunt – those were done at night with lanterns and coonhounds – but still, this was pretty close.

  At times, I wished I was more like Caleb. He’d paddle around in his canoe, gliding past lily pads at the first blush of dawn. He’d stay out for hours and catch a passel of fish for Momma to fry up with okra and biscuits. Course, I was scared of the black water. Especially with them copperheads that liked to bob along for frogs.

  “Caleb, ain’t it time to go?”

  Lord, you’d a thought I’d summoned the dead cuz all them owls got to hooting and the biggest coon I’d ever seen waddled through the cattails. Caleb lifted the gun to his cheek and tracked the coon with the muzzle. I thought for sure he was gonna shoot it, but the sound of something moving straight for us – loud and crackling over twigs – sent the barrel of his gun toward the line of trees. You never knew what might be lurking nearby. The woods were full of bears and bobcats. Once in a while, you’d even see a wild hog. Caleb motioned for me to get behind him and, Lord, if I didn’t hold Little Chirpie tight.

  Caleb pointed the gun to the dark outline of tupelo gums, everything still but the sweeping sound of what was coming. It had a cadence to it. Something fateful and insistent. I felt it in my chest, a deep foreboding, and wondered if this is how those women felt at the Salem witch trials. Like nothing would ever be the same. Like they were marked for life. Maybe I was marked, too, because when the leafy branches of a maple parted, Big Jim emerged – blacker than night.

  He was at least six foot four with thick shoulders and a round face like the moon. His momma, Hattie Mae, raised him in a little shack down by the river. Of course, he didn’t go to school with us or have anything to do with us. That was just the way it was.

  Big Jim looked from me to Caleb, his eyes wide and moving. It was fear. You could smell it on the water.

  “What you doin’ on our back property, boy?”

  It wasn’t exactly our back property, but Momma had known Widow Jones for more than thirty years, so maybe that counted for something.

  Big Jim moved his fingers real twitchy like. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead.

  Caleb pointed the gun. “You best get!”

  Big Jim pushed his way through the brush, whimpering something awful as Caleb counted, “One, two, three….”

  I crouched low and Caleb shot into the treetops. An owl flew from its perch and the sound of gunfire reverberated across the swamp.

  “Ought to scare that nigger.”

  “Big Jim never hurt you.”

  “No, but there’s been talk.”

  “What kind of talk?”

  “The kind of talk that Momma’d skin me alive if I told.”

  “About Big Jim?”

  “He ain’t right in the head, Chloe. None of ‘em are.”

  “How come?”

  “No one knows why. Just is.”

  We walked home, and Caleb was quiet. Too quiet. He lifted the lantern and we waded through the cattails. They were thick at our feet, and he broke one off. He chewed on the stem, complaining that he should have got the coon.

  I knew he would’ve given anything to carry home that ring-tailed critter and toss it on the porch at Pa’s feet. That was the thing about Caleb. He had to work so hard to earn Pa’s approval. It made him hungry for it, like a plate of biscuits after chopping wood. But Pa wasn’t like that with me. He’d set me on his knee and make over me like I was something real special. He called me his little Buttercup. That’s what I thought my name was for the longest time. Buttercup.

  “Don’t worry about the coon,” I said, holding Little Chirpie to my chest. “You’ll get him before the next full moon.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Sure, you will. You’ll be wearing a coonskin cap before you know it.”

  I thought that’d cheer him up, but he sulked the whole way home, kicking at ferns and using his gun to whack branches out of our way.

  At least we had the lantern, the yellow, waxy glow that illuminated our path. It kept me from jumping at every sound I heard. The water was darker than grease from Momma’s skillet. And, Lord, them tupelo gum trees stood all around us, like watchers in the night. What they were watching no one could say, but on calm, summer nights – when the hummingbirds were in the mimosas – you’d see duckweed moving across the water and know it was a gator.

  Caleb let the light from the lantern move over the water, and an eerie feeling came over me. I wanted to run ahead, through the Spanish moss that hung in lacy cobwebs, but Caleb just stood there, looking at the water. I knew what he was trying to see.

  “Ain’t no ghost,” I said, finally.

  “Oh, yeah? Why d’ya think the water’s so black?”

  “Them cypress trees.”

  “That’s what Momma and Pa say, but it ain’t true. It’s cuz them hounds chased that runaway slave right into the swamp.”

  I looked at the water, the lantern light rippling over the murky surface.

  “He drowned, Chloe. Right in there.”

  Them cypress trees swayed liked a haint was moving through ‘em, stirring up the leaves real good. I yanked on Caleb’s sleeve, and we left all them haunted souls.

  Don’t know how long it took to get home. Wasn’t far but the Carolina moon and our lantern were all we had to go by. I reckon that’s why we couldn’t take our eyes off the bat that flew overhead. Gave me a lonely feeling just watching it float through the trees. Granny once told me it’s an omen. “When you see a bat, it means the devil’s after you.”

  I grabbed the back of Caleb’s shirt, hoping to see blue smoke crooking from our chimney. We cleared the dark blur of trees at the edge of the swamp and there it was. Our little house. Chimney smoke going real good.

  “Well, would you look at that?” Caleb said, nodding to the thicket of trees that fringed our little shotgun house.

  Outlined in a haze of smoke, the moonlight shining on it real good, a bat was flapping its wings. It headed straight for our chimney.

  “Followed us home,” Caleb said, slinging his gun over his shoulder.


  I watched it land on our roof and get nestled in real good. The crickets chirped at the edge of the woods and I looked up at our chimney, praying Granny’s words weren’t true.

  It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Chapter Two

  “How come you keeping my girl out so late?” Pa said.

  Light sputtered from the porch, casting a long shadow across Pa’s rocking chair. Our little log house was made of cypress wood and had a wraparound porch where Pa would smoke into the night.

  I ran up the weathered steps, and Pa gave me a big hug. He never hugged Caleb, though. Not once that I could remember.

  Pa was what you might call a true Southerner. His name was Tucker Ray, but everyone called him Mason. He had certain ideas about things that weren’t ever gonna change. One of them was that a boy became a man by hunting, tracking, and shooting. That’s what he was doing with Caleb, I guess. Making him a man.

  I held out my hand and showed Pa the little bird. “Why, he looks like he needs some mending,” Pa said.

  “Yeah,” Caleb said. “Probably left for dead after a duck hunt.”

  I didn’t pay Caleb no mind. I just looked up at Pa, real hopeful like. “So, can I keep him?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Pa said, putting an arm around me.

  He had deep auburn hair and pale skin that freckled in the heat, and he was never without his red hunting cap. Course, what he was most famous for was the deep scar that ran from his belly all the way down his leg to his ankle. It was fabled in these parts. Whiter than a skull and longer than a pirate’s peg leg. Course, I only got to see it when Pa would hitch up his pants and go wading in the creek.

  “If anyone can fix this bird up, I know my little Buttercup can,” Pa said, giving me a wink.

  Caleb wiped his brow and let out an exasperated sigh.

  “Got something for you, Chloe,” Pa said, reaching into his pocket.

  It wasn’t unusual for Pa to give me a little something here and there, but I could tell by the way he held up the black ribbon choker, letting it catch the lantern light, that this was different. A lady with her hair done up real fancy was carved into a cameo pendant that dangled from the ribbon.