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Hollow Junction
Hollow Junction
Hollow Junction
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Hollow Junction

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A story of three young boys coming of age just as the Second World War begins. They go off to war and soon become men, never to return to the simple life they left.

LanguageEnglish
PublisheriUniverse
Release dateAug 27, 2001
ISBN9781462091034
Hollow Junction
Author

Robert L. Bailey

Robert L. Bailey is a seasoned storyteller with ten previously published novels. He is now retired from a career of public service and spends time editing manuscripts and working on his next novel. He lives with his lifelong companion, his wife Linda, in rural Southwest Iowa.

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    Book preview

    Hollow Junction - Robert L. Bailey

    CHAPTER 1

    The bright sun was slowly descending to touch the horizon as the slender young man walked up to the lip of the wall of the old rock quarry. He stopped at the edge and peered down at the blue water some eighty or ninety feet below. He momentarily felt dizzy and stepped back. He really wasn’t afraid of heights but the rock wall was straight down and the thought of falling over gave him a bad feeling. He sat down and scooted to the edge, dropped his lower legs over and sat up straight as though he was forcing himself to brave this dangerous place.

    He looked again at the clear water and calculated in his mind how deep it must be. His eyes traveled around the large deep hole, wondering how many years it took to get as big as it is. The quarry had been closed long before he was born but he remembered stories about how busy a place it had been years ago and how monumental a task it had been to cut out the slabs of granite, drag them up the sloping incline over there on the west side and load them on trucks to haul down to the railroad. His seventh grade teacher, Lila Delequart, had a thick scrap-book on the quarry and it seemed to be an obsession of hers to tell how her father bossed the crews as they toiled in the hot pit.

    He had a thought that they might not come tonight but erased that from his mind. He knew that they were always out here. He pushed himself back from the precipice and stood up. He looked around for the best place to conceal himself and settled on a pile of granite with scrub trees growing out of the spaces between the randomly placed slabs. It was close to the road they would come on as they drove up to the quarry. He crossed to the mound of rock then around it and into the thick growth of pine trees that circled most of the open quarry. He shivered from the cool air the canopy of tree branches kept tucked below as it screened off the sun.

    He leaned against a tree and reached into the back pocket of his pants, his fingers touching the gun. It will be dark soon, he thought. They will come, he kept repeating in his mind as though to convince himself. He felt his nervous system twitch when he first heard the car motor.

    He saw the 1936 Ford as it came up over the slight rise then slid to a stop thirty or forty yards from the edge of the quarry. It’s them, he thought. Leon McKaffe is driving and that’s Eddie Curtis beside him up front. Bart McKaffee, Eddie’s big brother has to be in the back seat but there’s someone else in there too. Who is it, he wondered. It was rapidly getting dark. He would have to wait until his eyes adjusted. He took the .32 automatic from his pocket, pulled back on the mechanism to jack a shell into the chamber and flipped on the safety. Patience, he told himself. Let them get settled in first.

    The engine stopped and the head and tail lights went out. He was twenty yards from them. He would have to get closer. No, it’s not dark enough yet. He jumped when he heard a bottle break. One of them tossed an empty out the window. He could hear them talking but couldn’t make out what they were saying.

    He stayed where he was for several minutes working hard to keep from shaking. He kept telling himself not to be afraid. He was certain the cold night air was causing him to shiver. He was spurred into action when he heard someone in the back seat scream. He started toward the car holding the gun out in front of him. When he was up beside the driver’s window he could see all four inside the car. He pointed the gun at the driver and pulled the trigger. Nothing. It didn’t fire. He almost panicked then remembered the safety was still on. He flipped it off, pushed the gun up close to the driver’s head and fired. Thick red blood and brains sprayed over Eddie Curtis and Leon McKaffe slumped forward against the steering wheel. He fired again striking Curtis in the chest then shifted his attention to the back seat. Bart McKaffe had the door open and was trying to get away. He fired again, hitting him under his left shoulder blade, the slug blowing through McKaffe’s heart and into the car door. He calmly walked around the back of the car to the open door. McKaffe was lying across the floorboard, his head on the ground, the rest of him still in the car. The young man stooped down and looked into McKaffe’s face. After a moment his attention turned to the figure lying on the back seat. A slender young girl was pulling herself up into the far corner of the car. The top of her dress was torn open, her skirt up around her waist. She was sobbing hysterically, her eyes open wide, her face contorted with fear.

    The young man could hear the echo of the gunshots still reverberating around the large quarry as he stood up. He was pumped high, the adrenalin flowing freely but he felt calm. He put the gun into his back pocket and spoke to the girl.

    Calm down, it’s over now. I’m not going to hurt you, he said. He could barely make out her face in the dark. She’s pretty, he thought. He took her arm and pulled her out of the car being careful not to step on Bart. She didn’t struggle and let him lead her across the clearing to the trees. He gently pushed her down on a flat boulder at the edge of the large stone pile. She had quit sobbing but she was now shaking. Her hand clutched the torn dress trying to hold it together to cover her.

    What were you doing up here with those bastards? he asked her.

    Bart was going to rape me, she said, her words bringing on the sobbing again. I shouldn’t have gotten in the car with all of them. They said they were going to pick up Jenny to ride around with us but they never did. They just drove right out here. Bart was all over me with his hands. I kept telling him to take me back to town but he just laughed at me. Are they dead?

    Well if you can sit here quietly I’ll go back and see if they’re dead, the young man responded. Can you do that?

    I’ll stay here, she said.

    He walked over to the car, opened the front door and looked close at the two in the front seat. Yea, these two have had it he thought. He closed the door and walked around to the back door where Bart laid sprawled half in and half out of the car. He grabbed the dead youth’s shoulders and folded him back into the car pushing him down on the floorboard. Payback time you ass holes, he said. He closed the door and walked back to the girl.

    Why did you shoot them? she asked.

    You ever hear of Bertram Wallace? the young man responded.

    He was the black kid who committed suicide. I heard he hung himself, she said.

    He didn’t hang himself. Those three killed him and they just got paid back for it. You know how to get back to town? he said.

    I’ve been up here before but I’m not sure how to get back.

    You afraid of the dark?

    After escaping from McKaffe I don’t think anything out there in the dark can hurt me, she said.

    What’s your name? he said.

    Cindy Johnson.

    Well Cindy you walk back down the road there and when you get to the blacktop highway you go left and stay on it. It will twist and turn but it finally comes out at the edge of town, he said.

    What you going to do. Who are you?

    You don’t want to know. That goes for both of your questions. I think you better get started now, he said.

    She reluctantly stood up and started for the road. She turned back to look at him twice then started to run. He smiled when he saw this. He felt she didn’t trust him. He waited a few minutes to make sure she was gone then walked over to the car. He opened the front door, pulled

    Leon’s body back against the seat and then started the engine. He noticed a pack of cigarettes on the dash and picked them up. He stood by the open door on his left foot, used his right foot to depress the clutch then pulled the gear shift lever into low. He released the clutch and jumped back, slamming the door shut, as the car started moving. He started after the car, following behind as it approached the edge of the steep wall. He wondered if it was moving fast enough to go over the edge or if it would get hung up. He breathed a sigh of relief as the front wheels dropped over and the car disappeared over the edge. He stopped a couple feet back and watched as the car hit the water more than thirty feet out from the wall. It sank out of sight in just a few moments. He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket, searched in his pants until he found some matches, lit one up and stood watching the reflection of the stars off the water below. He turned and walked around the edge of the wall for fifty yards, took the gun from his back pocket and threw it out into the quarry as far as he could. He saw it hit, a waterspout rising up as it struck the water. He turned and started for the road leading out through the woods.

    He had an advantage over the girl ahead of him. He knew shortcuts back to town. He and his buddies had walked out to the quarry many times, going across the open fields and through the thick growth of pine trees. The moon was up now and he could see the path ahead. He was thinking about his friend Bert Wallace and how he died. He would never get that out of his mind the way he looked hanging from the water tower by the tracks. Well the red necks that hung him were now resting in eighty feet of water. He felt no remorse, no regret for what he had done. Those three had caused a world of misery for everyone they bullied and tormented. He never discussed what he planned to do with the others. He just knew it was up to him to do it. He wasn’t sure if either of the other two had what it took to do it. There was always four of them playing together, laughing together and enjoying each other’s company. Now there were just three. Bert was gone now. He surely missed him. It never made any difference to any of them that Bert was black. With the way blacks were treated in his town here in this year 1941 he supposed they should have known something could happen to Bert but what did cause it was such a little thing. They had all been on the bench in front of the drug store that night when Amanda Lewis came outside and stopped to talk with them. They knew the girl from school and she never meant any harm by talking to Bert. The McKaffe brothers and their cousin Eddie Curtis drove by in their Ford and saw it. They stopped right there in the street and jumped out, ran up to Bert and started beating on him, yelling something about a low life nigger talking to Eddie’s girl friend.

    We all jumped in to help Bert and got him away from them. The night cop, dumb old Miran Lister, came running across the street and told Bart McKaffe to get his car out of the street and for us to get on home. We walked with Bart to his place and that was the last time we saw him alive.

    All this kept playing through the young man’s mind as he made his way home. He wondered about Cindy Johnson and how good a look she got of him. He wondered if she would run and tell the sheriff. For some reason he wasn’t too worried that this would happen. Half an hour later he could see the lights of his house. Mom is still up, he thought.

    CHAPTER 2

    Ballenshope, Tennessee is a small town of fifteen hundred inhabitants sitting a mile north of the Georgia border just forty miles southeast of Chattanooga. It is almost in the shadow of Lookout Mountain, the site of a famous civil war battle. The town has been the same size since the eighteen sixties and owes much of it’s existence to the two railroad lines that run through the valley. One line, the Knoxville, Natchez and Vicksburg line runs east and west along the river. Two miles east of Ballenshope it crosses the Cumberland line running southwest through Chattanooga then cutting off to the southeast into Georgia. It is said that this Cumberland Railroad was up and running during the Civil War and General Grant used it to haul in supplies to break the siege the confederates had around Chattanooga.

    It was raining this Monday morning the third week in November, the cold winter wind blowing the rain across the playground of the sprawling old brick school building. The school is the only one in town. The only school for white kids. The black kids go to school in a rundown clapboard covered building much smaller. The white school houses the kids from kindergarten to the twelfth grade and it is common for new students to have the same teachers who taught their parents to read, write and cipher.

    A rusty old Model A Ford pulled into the rock lot in front of the building and parked next to the superintendent’s new Studebaker. Not many residents of Ballenshope could afford cars and few were ever parked in the lot. Billie Joe Stemp shut off the ignition and fished around in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. Johnnie White was in the passenger seat beside him and Fred Harman was in the back seat.

    I’m out of smokes, Billie Joe said. You guys got any?

    Johnnie took a pack from his pants pocket and handed it to Billie Joe.

    Aw shit Johnnie these are all crushed. Why in the hell do you carry them in your pants? They get all mashed, Billie Joe said as he worked to dig one from the pack.

    Well Jesus damn Billie Joe, you’re pretty darn particular for someone who’s out and bumming a smoke. I keep them in my pants so the teachers don’t spot them and take them away. Get your own damn smokes next time, Johnnie said.

    How come you’re so damn quiet Freddie? Billie Joe said turning in the seat to look at his friend in the back. Bet you’re dreaming about Lana again.

    We told you a hundred times Freddie that it won’t do no good dreaming about Lana Jean Shannon. She’s too uppity for the likes of you. She’s got her pick of anyone in the whole school or the whole county if she wants, as hot as she looks. Why do you think she would give a second thought about an ugly peckerwood like you, Johnnie said.

    Fred reached over the seat and cuffed his friend on the back of the head and was about to respond when Billie Joe interrupted.

    Hell, there she is, he said.

    An old thirty-one Plymouth stopped in the lot behind them and Lana Jean Shannon slammed the car door shut then hurried through the rain to the building. The boys sat watching her run, her breasts bobbing up and down under her sweater as she hurried up the front steps.

    The boys left the Model A and sauntered slowly up to the school building seeming oblivious to the rain. It would not be proper for them to run as though afraid of getting wet. They were all soaked when they

    were inside the building. They climbed the old stairs to the second floor and slowly made their way to their first class of the morning.

    Betty Simpson was at her desk in the small room as the boys came in and went to their assigned desks. She looked up from the papers she was grading and watched them. Her gaze centered on Fred Harman. He was the best looking young man in her history class. She felt a warm rush as she watched him. She often thought her attraction to good-looking boys might hinder her job as a teacher but she couldn’t help herself. This was her first year teaching in Ballenshope and her first year ever, teaching history to seniors. She was just twenty-two and not really much older than some of the students. She was tall and slender with a normal figure but though she might be considered attractive she was by no means pretty. She dressed like many old maid schoolteachers of the time. She wore a plain print cotton dress; her hair pulled up on top of her head and of course the glasses. It seemed that all the teachers wore glasses. She had been surprised when the school board hired her since she was not a native of the South. She was born and raised in Indiana and had little knowledge and absolutely no instincts about what life was like in Tennessee in this year of our Lord, 1941.

    Settle down class, she said as the last student found her desk. Turn to page one fifty eight in your text book and read the whole chapter. Concentrate on what you read in case I decide to use it in a test.

    There was the usual complaining from the students who had no interest in reading but they all respected Miss Simpson and did as she told them. She left her desk as the students found their books and settled down to read. She walked to the window and looked out at the pouring rain. Someone giggled behind her and she turned to see what was going on. All the students were calm again, their nose deep in their books. Her eyes went around the room then stopped at Fred Harman. He was more serious and pleasant than his two friends, she thought. It was common knowledge in Ballenshope that Fred, Billie Joe Stemp and Johnnie White were best friends and where you saw one you saw all of them. There had been four of them until recently. The black boy Bertram Wallace ran with them until he died. Of course Wallace couldn’t be with them here in school. He had to go to his own black school across town. Betty was puzzled by segregation in the South. There weren’t any black people anywhere near where she grew up so she had never seen how they were treated until she came down to Tennessee. Let’s see, she thought. When did the Wallace boy die? She thought it was about two weeks ago. It was on his seventeenth birthday. All four of the boys had been seventeen. She thought Fred was the oldest and would turn eighteen first. The story around town was that Wallace hung himself from the water tower down by the railroad tracks. She could not imagine what despair could be in the mind of a seventeen year old boy that would cause him to take his own life. She heard something else that was strange. Three youngsters from the community had disappeared last Saturday. Bart and Leon McKaffe and Eddie Curtis didn’t come home and were the object of a search around Ballenshope. She didn’t know any of the boys since they all dropped out of school before she moved here. They didn’t have a very good reputation she understood. They didn’t work and were always raising hell, drinking and getting into fights. Maybe they just took off for somewhere, she thought. Her thoughts returned to Fred and his two friends sitting nearby in her class. Billie Joe was tall and skinny. He had a nice smile with dimples in his cheeks. His sandy colored hair was always unruly and not combed and his clothes, though clean, looked like they didn’t fit. He was the loudest of the three, always-telling stories or joking around with whoever would listen. Johnnie White was quiet and she thought might have a little of an inferiority complex. He was pleasant looking with dark brown hair, a nice freckled face and was always polite and studious.

    She thought Fred was probably the smartest of the group. He got the best grades but didn’t seem to study more than his friends. Must come easier for him she thought. He was probably five ten or so and his growth was normal, his body filled out good for an eighteen year old. Seventeen year old, she corrected herself. His hair was dark black, his facial features strong and well proportioned. His eyebrows were thick and black and his eyes were a solid green color. She was always drawn to those eyes whenever she spoke to him or on the rare occasion when he spoke to her. He wore clean clothes, though they were well worn. She didn’t think any of the boys came from a wealthy family. She heard that Fred’s father was gone and he lived with just his mother.

    A voice in the room brought her out of her thoughts.

    It’s time, Miss Simpson, the girl said.

    What? she responded.

    It’s ten, time for the next class, the girl said.

    Oh yes, if any of you didn’t get finished with the chapter be sure to read it in your study time. You can go, Miss Simpson said. She walked back to her desk as the students crowded in the doorway on their way out. Her eyes were drawn to Fred Harman as he passed her, dropping to the back of his pants and his tight butt. She felt a warm flush in her face as a nasty thought went through her mind.

    The boys had two more classes before lunch and then argued about who was going to run out to the Model A and bring in their sack lunches.

    Hell, let’s just eat out in the car, Johnnie said as he knew he would be the one who would have to run out in the pouring rain to get them.

    Now you know Fred wants to sit in the lunch room and stare at Lana Jean. Just go get them Johnnie, Billie Joe said.

    Johnnie started to argue when Fred surprised them both. He opened the front door and ran down the steps and out to the car. He was back in a few moments with the brown paper bags clutched in his hand. Neither of his buddies said anything as he separated the bags and handed them theirs. They just followed him down to the lunchroom in the basement. Fred picked a vacant table, pulled a chair out and sat down. He looked around at the students as the room filled up. Lana Jean wasn’t there.

    Where you think the McKaffe brothers went off to? Billie Joe asked as he sat down and took a sandwich from his sack.

    I sure as hell don’t give a shit, Johnnie said. Good riddance of bad rubbish.

    Billie Joe was about to continue when the school principal came up behind him and spoke.

    You three come with me, the

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