The bus for Knoxville left Union Station at seven that morning. With two large suitcases and a lunch she prepared the night before, Ava splurges on a taxicab to the station. Theodore does not see her off. They’d said their goodbyes the night before. Ava could see no reason for more tears.
The wind is out of the south and she can smell the pungent odor of the stockyards on the morning air as she gets out of the taxi. She goes inside and pays for her ticket before dragging her bags to the Greyhound that sits idling outside. The bus is less than half full. Ava takes a window seat and as they pull out of the station, she watches out the window to the city she’s called home for four years and she wonders if she’ll ever be back. Somewhere a few blocks north, Theodore is probably still sleeping. Musicians stay up late and sleep in. When he wakes though, she knows he’ll be wondering the same thing.
The Greyhound stops frequently, and it takes a better part of two days to arrive at Knoxville, passing through countless small towns as well as Indianapolis and Louisville and Nashville. Ava reads her books and sleeps fitfully on the bus. Attempts to charm her along the way are made by a couple of soldiers, an encyclopedia salesman, and a man who claims to be a cowboy. He wears a black Stetson and cowboy boots, but his hands are as soft and pink as a baby’s so Ava isn’t buying his story, or anything else he’s trying to sell.
In Knoxville the following morning, she is obliged to switch from Greyhound to the Tennessee Coach Company for the run south to Wilkesboro, arriving there around mid-afternoon. The salesman is also bound for Wilkesboro and suggests that Ava’s family might be willing to put him up for a night or two while he conducts his business. Ava points him in the direction of the ancient Wilkesboro Hotel and leaves him sitting on his steamer trunk, pouting a little over the combined loss of what he hoped would be free accommodation and any potential for romance.
Ava gathers her bags and starts on foot along the red dirt road for Flagg’s Hollow, two miles north of town. The day has grown warm and the road is dusty where it isn’t littered with road apples from horses and mules, which still outnumber motorcars by two to one in Wilkes County. There are shotgun shacks along the roadside, with vegetable gardens in backyards and clothes hanging on lines. Chickens run in and out from under the buildings. Two old colored men sit in front of Lou’s Blacksmith & Repair, lounging in the shade, a deck of cards laying idle on a table between them. Too hot even for a game of gin. Ava doubts there is much repair work to be had these days. Poverty hangs over the town like a cloak, just as it envelopes the entire republic. At the crossroads, she stops for a rest, sitting on her suitcase and removing her hat to wipe her brow. A boy of eight or nine comes out of a tarpaper shed and approaches nervously. Several other kids appear then too, hanging back, watching his lead.
“Can I have a nickel, please?” the boy asks.
Ava looks the kid over. His pants are too small and his shirt too big. She doubts he is the first owner of either garment or will be the last. His hair, beneath a stained tweed cap, is clipped close to the skull. A summer haircut, as is the fashion in these parts. His shoes have no laces and not a whole lot of sole leather.
“What would you do with a nickel?” Ava asks.
“Get me some licorice.”
Ava glances to the other kids, now inching closer, possibly sensing that she is at least open to negotiation.
“If I give you a nickel, I’ll have to give everybody a nickel.”
The kid turns to look at the others, not happy that they have apparently ruined his chances. Ava stands up and goes through her purse for a quarter.
“You make sure everybody gets a licorice,” she says. “I find out different, I’m going to come looking for you. You hear?”
The kid nods his head so vigorously his hat falls off. Ava gives him the coin, gathers her bags and continues for home. The dirt road curves as it descends down into the hollow. She sees the faded sign as she makes the turn, the white letters standing out against the weathered brick of the warehouse.
HOMER FLAGG & SONS MOLASSES COMPANY EST. 1859
Homer Flagg was Ava’s grandfather. He’d been a preacher and a farmer and the first man to produce molasses in North Carolina. He originally imported sugarcane from the West Indies. Later he grew sugar beets on the Flagg farm. The factory is built of red brick fired from the local clay pits, and is a hundred and fifty feet long, with a loading dock facing the road where Ava now walks. The building is not in good repair. The paint on the sashes and jambs is peeling and several of the windows have been shuttered closed. Two Model T Ford delivery trucks, one up on blocks, are parked alongside.
The Flagg home is on a rise behind the factory. The original house had been fired during the war between the states, by persons unknown, and rebuilt after the war ended, with the same red brick used in the warehouse. Farther along, and to the east is Darkytown, a scattershot cluster of houses and sheds and outbuildings. Most of the residents are sharecroppers or field hands for the larger farms in the area. Growing up, Ava had passed many a day there, playing with the colored kids her age.
Homer had died of the influenza in ’19. Ava’s father Jedediah at that time took over the farm and the molasses plant. He is also a preacher, following his father’s and grandfather’s lead. And at this moment, he is sitting in a slat-back chair on the loading dock, smoking a pipe and watching his only daughter make her approach along the dusty roadway. Now he stands, walks stiff-legged to the steps alongside the dock and climbs down to help her with her bags.
“Daughter,” he says. “Welcome home.”
“How is it, old man?” Ava embraces him, holds him close for a long moment before kissing him on his cheek.
That evening Ezra’s wife Rachel cooks a big meal in honor of Rose’s return. Ezra is Ava’s older brother. He is tall and thin, with a full beard, and he is rigid as a barn beam, in every way she could name. Morgan is smaller and fairer than Ezra and is Ava’s twin. She is closer to him than to anybody on the planet. Well, with the recent exception of Theodore, but that is an entirely different relationship than the one with Morgan. Ezra and Rachel have two kids, a boy and a girl, eight and ten. Rachel is quiet and somewhat insecure, although Ava catches her from time to time rolling her eyes at her husband’s obtuseness.
After dinner in the big house, they sit outside on the porch. Morgan, on the top step, plays a few chords on his guitar while Jedediah is down by the pond with the kids, patiently baiting hooks with worms on bamboo poles and casting cork bobbers into the water.
“That’s real nice, Morgan,” Rachel says. “Does it have words?” “Not as yet,” Morgan says. “Something new.”
Ava watches him as he bends over the guitar, trying out the sound. He has fine blonde hair and features. Ava doubts he could sprout a mustache. They both turned twenty-eight that winter but Morgan looks and acts younger. He’d always seemed younger than her, even when growing up. She’d been the tomboy and daredevil, always leaping before looking, often to her regret.
“Are you producing anything at all?” she asks Ezra then. Meaning the plant.
“A few gallons a month,” Ezra replies. “And having trouble selling that much. Laid everybody off. Most of the markets south, Georgia and Florida, have dried up.”
Morgan strums the guitar once more and then sets it aside. “What happened in Chicago?”
“Same as everywhere, I guess,” Ava says. “The people who aren’t buying molasses aren’t buying books either.” She glances down to the pond. “How is father taking it?”
“You know the old man,” Morgan says. “‘The Lord will provide.’ Well, he’s taking his sweet damn time doing it.”
“Don’t blaspheme, brother,” Ezra tells him.
Morgan looks over at Ava and smiles.