Hope in the Holler Read online

  The whole situation made me madder than a yellow jacket stuck on fly tape. Mama was gone, Samantha Rose was part demon, and now I was just supposed to write to these strangers?

  I wanted to scream at Mama for giving me away, but she wasn’t here. How’d they convince her to give me up anyway? I thought of Samantha Rose and the smug way she’d just blurted out the whole story. What I’d give to wipe that smile off her face. If I yelled at her, well, it didn’t warrant thinking about. That left the Bowmans—the people who’d almost taken me away from my mama. “Why’d you keep sending money?” I whispered. “Did you feel sorry for us?”

  I imagined them sitting in a fancy subdivision house, looking down their noses at us. I bet they could tell that even as a baby I wasn’t like them. “Is that why you sent me back, because I wasn’t good enough for you?” I put my pen against the clean sheet of paper and began to write in thick, angry strokes.

  Dear Bowmans,

  You adopted me once, or so I’ve been told from a very unreliable source. If it’s true, I’m writing to tell you something—I’m glad you gave me back to my mama ’cause she was the best person that ever lived! I don’t care that we were poor, or that now I have to live in Convict Holler because she died, ’cause it means I got to be her daughter. And I’m mad I even had to be apart from her for those eight days!

  I don’t know why you kept sending money, maybe you felt guilty, but don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have fit in anyway because I’m not that smart or beautiful. And I’d rather be an orphan like I am now than to never have known my mama. So there!

  Not yours,

  Wavie Boncil Conley

  The Buick drove into the yard and beeped. I tore the letter out of my notebook and stuffed it in a drawer. It felt good getting all my anger down on paper.

  “Get out of the way, you old goat!” Samantha Rose yelled from outside.

  I pulled back the pink curtain and watched as Angel Davis shuffled toward the driver’s side.

  “Philson, get him away from me!”

  Uncle Philson slowly opened his door and hung on to the frame. “Go on now, Angel.”

  Angel scratched at his beard with his long fingernails. “I told your daddy I’d keep you girls together. You should have gone with your sister!” He shuffled closer. “I should have said no to Hap!”

  “Stop coming around here with your crazy talk. Get away from me!” Samantha Rose yelled. She put a hand over her nose.

  I smiled. I’d been up close to Angel. That smell would be with her for a long time, and I found myself wishing he’d touch her hair or her clothes with those fingernails. That would be the grossest thing ever.

  But he didn’t. He just yelled, “You girls were supposed to stay together” one more time, then walked out of the yard, leaving Samantha Rose’s scowling face behind.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  My second Social Security check came and this time both Hoyt and Samantha Rose got cell phones. I barely even cared. The only thing I needed was a new pair of sneakers since I was beginning to get blisters on all my toes now. But I wouldn’t ask Samantha Rose for shoes if the whole world turned to glass.

  I’d just finished dressing for school when Gilbert knocked at my window. As usual, he had his hands over his eyes.

  I pushed the window up. “It’s okay, Gilbert. I’m dressed. Where’s your jug?”

  Gilbert dropped his hand and grinned. “Don’t need it. It’s the best morning out and I’m going to the river. Wanna come?”

  The sun was shining and a warm breeze rustled the curtain. “You’re skipping school?”

  “It won’t hurt this once.” He hitched his jeans up onto his bony hips. “It’s a great day to go find more treasure.”

  “Rusty binoculars aren’t exactly treasure, but I’m in.”

  Gilbert grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. “Don’t go to the bus stop, Mr. Vic might see you. Meet me under the bridge.” He moved away from the window. “Oh, and bring something to eat if you can. No free lunches today!”

  • • •

  THERE WEREN’T A lot of choices in Samantha Rose’s kitchen, so I had to be careful. She’d notice if I took too much. I found a plastic bag and poured a cup of cereal into it. In the refrigerator there was an open package of hot dogs. I threw one, along with a piece of bread, a dill pickle and some saltines, into another grocery sack and put it into my backpack. I’d seen Gilbert eat, so it wouldn’t last us long, but I was used to days with less.

  Conley Hollow looked pretty in the morning sun. Trees, already thick with green leaves, jutted up on all sides, and the river, a thin, silver bracelet, glistened brightly at the bottom of the hill. Spotted Two wagged his tail from underneath a rusty car, too lazy to get up and follow me.

  Gilbert peeked out from under the concrete bridge and waved me over.

  “What are you doing with a fishing rod?” I asked.

  “I had to tell Gran something.” He hid it underneath the bridge. “C’mon.”

  I followed behind him, careful where I put my feet. The banks were covered with rocks, slick with water and algae.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Gilbert picked up a stick and pretended to hit a baseball. “Through the woods to where I found the binoculars. They were stuck under a rock in the ravine, so they didn’t get washed away. Maybe other stuff’s stuck up there, too.”

  “How far from here?”

  “A couple of miles or so. We can just follow the river,” Gilbert said.

  “So what are you talking about? What stuff?”

  Gilbert put the end of the stick against the ground and leaned on it. “I’m talking about Marley Savage. I think those binoculars really did belong to him. Maybe we’ll find his rifle or canteen or some old coins. That part of the river is still fairly wild, so hopefully no one else has beat us to it.”

  “Who’s Marley Savage again?”

  “The guy that took off years ago when his wife died. No one ever found him, remember?”

  I had an uneasy feeling. “We’re looking for old bones? What makes you think he died? Maybe he just left this place for somewhere better.”

  Gilbert shook his head and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Nah. He went into the woods upset about his wife’s death and he never came out. Hunters say when the moon is full they can hear him up there crying for her.” He grinned. “And when I solve the mystery, I’ll finally get my name in the Farley Gazette.”

  “Why do you want to be in the newspaper so bad?”

  Gilbert’s mouth turned down at the corners. “’Cause.” He dropped the stick and started walking. “We’ve still got a way to go.”

  “’Cause why?” I asked, following. “What’s so special about the Farley Gazette?”

  Gilbert didn’t turn around, but he told me. “My mom is upstate in the federal penitentiary. Gran sends her the paper every week to keep up with what’s happening around here.” He wiped his face with his T-shirt. “I thought it’d be nice for her to read something about me. All right?”

  I swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat. “All right. Let’s keep moving.”

  We walked farther and farther from Convict Holler. As the river got narrower, the brush and briars grew thicker and Gilbert had to clear a path for us with his stick. It was peaceful except for the sound of birds, and trucks on the highway above.

  It was a relief when we reached a wider, shallow portion and we could walk on the bank again. I found a large boulder and sat down, taking my shoes off and sinking my toes into the cool sand. I hadn’t walked outside barefoot since last summer and my feet were as white and soft as marshmallows.

  Gilbert stopped. “Why’d you take your shoes off?”

  “I need to rest a minute. Besides, it’s so beautiful here. If we couldn’t hear the semis, I’d swear we’d gone back in time.”

 
; He squatted down in the sand. “Yeah. I bet if we had a picture of this spot from a hundred years ago, it’d look exactly the same.”

  I looked around at the old maple trees along the riverbank. The rock I was sitting on was the perfect place to rest. “I wonder if my mama ever came here. I bet she did, don’t you?”

  Gilbert nodded. “It’s hard to resist a place like this near the water.” He threw a leaf into the stream.

  “Smooth it glides upon its travel,

  Here a wimple, there a gleam—

  O the clean gravel!

  O the smooth stream!”

  His voice was soft, but it echoed through the valley.

  I stared. “What the heck was that?”

  Gilbert’s cheeks turned pink. “A poem. You ain’t ever heard of Robert Louis Stevenson?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know anybody that can recite him.” I grinned. “You really are full of secrets, aren’t you?”

  “Whatever. C’mon. If we’re where I think we are, the ravine should be just up ahead around the bend.”

  Gilbert huffed and puffed in front of me as we climbed.

  “Hey, I found the ravine,” Gilbert shouted.

  I dropped my backpack at my feet. A deep gorge ran straight up the mountain. If it held the bones of Marley Savage, Gilbert would have a tough time finding them, because the mountain was covered with trash.

  “What happened?” I asked. “It looks like a train wreck.”

  Gilbert flung himself down onto the ground. “Nah, just people too sorry to take their stuff to the dump.”

  “So they just throw it here? Down the mountain?”

  “There must be a road up at the top. Which means it ain’t the area where I found the binoculars. Darn.”

  “How’d we miss it? I thought we just needed to follow the river.”

  “Everything looks different from this perspective. Maybe we should have tried one of those side cricks.”

  I sat down beside him. “You want something to eat? I’ve got dry cereal and a hot dog and bread.”

  “I’ll take the hot dog, I guess,” he said glumly. “I know you probably don’t think we’re gonna find Marley Savage or his stuff.”

  He was right; I didn’t. But just because hope didn’t spend much time in Convict Holler didn’t mean I wanted to squash what little of it there was.

  “So you’ll keep looking. You’re bound to find him sooner or later. Who else is even thinking about old Marley Savage?”

  “That’s true.” He wrapped the hot dog in the bread and took a big bite. “Still wasted a lot of time walking.”

  I looked up at the ravine full of trash. “Maybe not. You and Gran take stuff to the recycler, right? I bet we could find something up there—enough pop bottles for a six-pack of Ale-8 maybe.”

  Gilbert pulled his shoulders back and smiled. “That’s good thinking, Wavie B. It’ll make up for not bringing home any fish, too.”

  I emptied half the dry cereal into my mouth and handed the bag to Gilbert. Neither one of us had thought to bring a drink. We were so parched by the time we finished the saltines, we risked drinking water from the river.

  “With my luck we’ll get typhoid fever and die,” Gilbert said. He looked over his shoulder. “Sorry, Wavie.”

  “Ugh.” I wiped my tongue on my T-shirt. “Sorry that you killed me with nasty river water?”

  “For mentioning dying. I never had a friend with a dead parent. Incarcerated, yes, but not dead. Am I not supposed to mention it?”

  “It’s okay, Gilbert,” I said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that remembers Mama’s gone. Samantha Rose hasn’t said her name in weeks.” I leaned down and picked up a smashed can. “Want this?”

  “Takes too many,” Gilbert said. “Bottles, wire, bigger chunks of metal is what we want.”

  I handed him a grocery bag and we moved slowly up the mountain, grabbing trees to hang on to as we climbed. Every few feet we’d stop and put stuff inside. When we reached the top, it was even worse than below. Someone had tacked a sign to a tree that read NO DUMPING, but it clearly hadn’t stopped anybody.

  “You got room in your bag for this?” Gilbert yelled. He held up a hubcap. “My bag is about to break.”

  “I’ll stuff it in my backpack. It should fit.”

  Gilbert bent his elbow and aimed the hubcap like a Frisbee toward me. I jumped but it flew over my head and hit the ground, rolling, rolling, and finally coming to rest against a cardboard box. The sun filtered through the trees, reflecting off the hubcap, blinding me. I dropped my backpack and knelt down to unzip it. That’s when I saw it. The box that had stopped the hubcap’s progress had one word written on the side in handwriting I’d recognize anywhere. SHRED.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I pointed to the box with the familiar writing on it.

  “What’s wrong?” Gilbert asked.

  “Hoyt and Zane. They were supposed to take the trash to the dump but they didn’t!”

  “Figures. Probably pocketed the ten-buck fee instead. So?”

  “So, this is the box with Mama’s papers.” I bent over and peeled back the cardboard sides. It was full of envelopes. Some were marked Hospital Bills, or Tax Receipts, but the majority had the Bank of Andro logo on the upper left corner.

  Gilbert dropped down beside me. “The bank statements! Which one do you need?”

  I flicked a roly-poly bug out of the way. “Look for envelopes postmarked June or December,” I said. “That’s when the checks came.”

  We pawed through the papers. It hadn’t rained recently, but they were stiff from where the sun had dried off the mornings’ dew. Gilbert grabbed big handfuls and put them on the ground beside me. “I’ll scoop, you look.”

  “March, September, February, bingo! Here’s December.” I pulled it out of the stack and held it against my chest. My heart was beating like I’d just run up the ravine. I frowned. I didn’t even want to find these people, so why was I so excited?

  I emptied the envelope onto the ground and picked up the statement. The printout listed all the checks by number and, at the bottom, the amounts credited to the account. Below each number was a scanned printout of the check. It was the second one, right under Mama’s payroll check from Walmart. Two weeks before Christmas, Mama had received a hundred dollars from John and Anita Bowman. Their address was printed right under their name.

  “They’re from Lexington,” Gilbert said. “City people!”

  It wasn’t their names, or the fact they were from a big city, or even that seeing the check made it real that was making my stomach do flips. It was the section on the check where it said For. In pretty, delicate handwriting, it read Wavie.

  Samantha Rose would notice if I came home early, so Gilbert and I hid by the bridge until we saw the bus deposit Frank, Beans and Camille onto the side of the road. As soon as they went inside, I ran up the hill.

  Samantha Rose was sitting at the kitchen table eating macaroni and cheese out of its microwavable container. “They give you any more of these at school?”

  “No. But Gilbert has extra boxes. You want me to trade him something?”

  “Trade? How about you tell him I won’t call the law on his skinny tail for stealing my water the last two years.” She pointed to a chair. “Have a seat.”

  I plopped into the uncomfortable metal seat. “What’s up?”

  “Mrs. Chipman called,” Samantha Rose told me. “She wants to schedule a home visit.”

  At the mention of Mrs. Chipman’s name, my heart skipped a beat. My favorite class at school was Technology, and I’d used my fifteen minutes on the computer last week to research guardianship. I had learned one important thing. There would be a hearing where the minor child’s best interests are taken into account.

  “When’s she coming?” I couldn’t keep the hope from rising jus
t a little bit. Mrs. Chipman had promised Mama she’d find a good home for me. If anyone had my best interests at heart, it was her.

  Samantha Rose’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not thinking of pulling a Ronelda and skipping out of Conley Holler, are you?” She laughed, a short, raspy bark. “Only Ro’s kid would be dumb enough to dream about foster care. You are just like her, aren’t you, hon?”

  I gritted my teeth. I might be mad at Mama for giving me away when I was a baby, but she’d been funny and kind, and not dumb at all. “I hope so,” I said.

  “Fine, dream all you want. But if you say something to Mrs. Chipman to make it seem like you don’t like it here, we might have a problem, sugar.”

  “She told Mama the final decision would be up to me.” I’d barely gotten the words out of my mouth when Samantha Rose smacked me across the face.

  I couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d pulled off a mask to reveal an alien head. No one had ever hit me, ever. It hurt like the devil. I put my hand on my cheek. It stung with the heat of a thousand fire ants. I’d never hated anyone before, but now I had a good idea what it felt like. My eyes filled with angry tears.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that with those big doe eyes; I barely touched you. I’m just trying to wake you up to reality.” She put her hand under my chin and lifted my face. “Your mama is gone and we’re your family now.”

  “I have rights,” I whispered. “It says so right there on the state website.”

  “I know this is hard, sugar,” Samantha Rose said. “You’re still young and think life is full of happy endings, but it ain’t. . . . So let me tell you how this is gonna go. We’re gonna meet with Mrs. Chipman and you’re gonna tell her how happy you are here. You don’t have any other family, and there ain’t a foster home in this county that wants to go up against me. You understand?”

  A tear ran down my face. It felt cool against my hot cheek. “Yes.”

  “Good.” She stood up and stretched. “I’m glad we’ve got that settled. If I go to town later, you want to come?”