To Break an Hourglass

By Hayley Maynard

This coming of age novel parallels the lives of a young girl, Jemaline (Jem) Foster and her older neighbor Samantha Cunningham. From a young age Jem has been drawn to the mysterious and beautiful Sam, striving to learn more about her shrouded past. One day a stranger comes to small town Greenville, Alabama and the two women’s lives get turned upside down. They embark on a journey across the world, and as they pirate the coastal waters of Africa, Jem discovers more about the past of her mentor and experiences first hand the ravages and blessings of time. Jem begins to lead the life she had always dreamed about as a girl in small town Greenville, Alabama. Love, risk, danger, and high seas adventure dole out life’s lessons by the barrel. But when word comes to the two of a former slave trade boss at work again in Northern Africa, Jem and Samantha begin an all-out chase to save the kidnapped children from being forced into slavery. As they ride across the Sudanese plains the line separating their two lives slowly becomes indistinguishable. And, in the end, Jem must choose what life she will claim and who she will save.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hayley Maynard
• Release date: Feb 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466035669

Book preview

Chapter 1

She smelled of peppermint and honeysuckle and wore a broad ankle-length skirt and a long sleeved, starched collar, white blouse every day. She was rigid and straight, angular in movement, even her breathing was regimented, inhales and exhales exactly timed. They say she was born old. Maybe it was the culmination of drama filled past lives or an aptitude for solemnity; no one knew why or how Ms. Samantha Cunningham came to be, but there were speculations.

As for me, I always kinda liked her. Most of the other kids in the neighborhood hated her scolding for no reason other than accidentally stomping in her flower beds.

Just playing, we are kids, they’d always say when she would tell them off for hitting a baseball into her garden. They didn’t see it but it was there, a faint glimmer of warmth, compassion, (or could it be a glimpse of untamed spirit?) behind those taciturn eyes. I’d always look for it when receiving a scolding, maybe that’s why I never thought ill of her.

Deep down I thought there was a reason for her framed nature, but it wasn’t until many years later that I learned her story.

Chapter 2

I was born in 1937, the year Amelia Earhart died, in Greenville, Alabama so named after the green river that ran through it. I was always adventuring, or as momma would say finding trouble. She used to tell me she swore the spirit of that danged pilot found its way into my soul. Jemaline Marie Foster was my given name, but I never heard all that, not unless I was in trouble any way. Jem was what they’d call me. Every now and then on the first day of school some teacher would try to work her way through my full name, she’d struggle through the first couple syllables of my first name before someone in the class would yell out Just call her Jem! I was never paying attention. Momma said I just couldn’t be bothered to be in the present, but, I don’t know, my mind always just had better places to be than the ones afforded to me inside the four corners of school.

Greenville is a small town located two hours south of nowhere and three hours east of nothing. The only directions out of town were South which reigned in storm clouds and the occasional twister, and West always the direction of opportunity thanks to its fictionally alluded repertoire. It was a quiet town to say the least. A drive-in movie theater, really just a white screen lifted every Saturday between two poles in a parking lot, a grocery store, and of course an old Southern bar. There was one two-story house in town and it sure wasn’t mine.

My old man was a faithful member of the Greenville Saloon an alcoholic by trade, some are gifted athletes or scholars and some are just born to drink he’d say. But he wasn’t angry nor a violent man, just settled in his potential thwarted fate. Our relationship was one of resigned intermingling. I harbored no ill will toward him, he was a DNA donor and for that I was grateful. Out of chromosomal duty I think I loved him and like to think deep down somewhere he felt the same. Occasionally, when I really messed up he’d grin real wide and pull me up a chair to sit by him. I never knew if it was conciliatory or just that misery loves company, but the unexpected extra attention always made me feel better and that’s what I chose to take away from that.

My momma was pretty. Everyone in town told stories about what a heartthrob she was in her younger years. Even later when the old man would get too inebriated to stumble home and she would have to go and fetch him, jaws would drop and heads would turn when she’d walk into that saloon. A smart lady too, she could talk politics with the educated and hem lines with the old women. A firecracker some called her. But an untimed pregnancy her last year of high school tied her and my father with matching rings and a matching fate. I didn’t read too much into her borderline apathetic nature. I personified the culmination of dashed hopes and unreached potential, a tactfully placed banana peel on the sidewalk of fate. She was a stern, unapproachable lady, but she always made sure I had a shirt on my back and a somewhat full belly. Every morning she’d wake at dawn, holler at me to get going, and then walk to the country store where she worked as the clerk. Regimented and timely she was, though I like to think she wasn’t always that way. But she was never in want of a bed, some nice gentleman could always afford her that, and sometime before the sun came up she’d crawl back into the cave and wait for dawn.

Me, I was a tomboy from day one, and as a former pageant winner, Momma disapproved of everything about me. I’d wear shorts and a t-shirt everyday. Whenever Momma wrestled me into a dress I’d dirty it as fast as I could. I’d play baseball and kick the can until the streetlights came on while the other girls played with their dolls and strollers. A latch key kid from an early age I came and went as I pleased. Dad was always getting drunk and Momma, well, whether or not rumors about her bed of choice were just hearsay, she wouldn’t get home ‘til late either. I was pretty independent from a young age, had to be I suppose; but I was good at making friends and enjoyed popping over to others’ houses for dinner and some motherly affection. Their moms would treat me like an adopted child and smother me with the kisses I never got at home.

I guess I had about a million friends, though none close. Something kept me from really bonding with others in Greenville, except for the dogs but I just think it’s because we were the only color-blind things in that town. I crossed both sides of the tracks spending time with black and white, I could never tell the difference between anyone anyway. Life and the people in that molasses town crept along about as fast as a two legged dog with an elephant on its back, and me I ran with the wind, that is when it could keep up.

I’d spend summer days playing in the river and winter ones exploring the bush. The other kids and I would play until the street lamps began to twinkle, and then they would all run home. But I always liked the night. Everything was so still. I’d listen to the cricket symphonies and chase the bats; I especially liked dissecting the light parts from fireflies and putting them on my fingers. Most summer nights I would walk home with ten firefly rings glowing on my hands.

But mostly when I was alone I thought about what lay out of reach, what was out there in the rest of the world. For most people of Greenville, Alabama life stopped at the town limits.

Why leave? they’d ask me when I questioned what lay beyond our humble boundaries. You eat well here, don’t ya? Got clothes on your back, friends to play with, a bed to sleep in, and a church to pray? What more you want, silly child?

Yep, most everyone in town, both sides a’ the tracks thought like this, most everyone, that is, except one. Samantha Cunningham.

She fit in with the rest of the town at first glance all right. Conservative dress, tidy garden, pious, erect, but there was something different. First of all she wasn’t married and didn’t work. She was cordial with everyone in town no matter the skin color, saying good morning when it was called for and good evening when required, but unlike everyone else in town, she never engaged in summer time sunset porch gossip or wintertime tea small talk. Sure she discussed the weather, the Sunday sermon, and occasionally a really exquisite roast pork recipe she had tried, but when the conversation would turn towards goosy, tittle-tattle chitchat she would always come up with a reason to excuse herself from the conversation. Everyone liked her, well, to be more accurate no one disliked her, but see it’s hard to like someone you don’t understand. No one knew why she had no husband; she was a very pretty lady even for her middle age. It was a toss-up between her and my momma who could turn more heads in town. But unlike my flesh and blood Samantha Cunningham didn’t seek out different pillows in fruitless attempts to dream away her past nor did she poison her bloodstream to kill off those damn memories of what coulda been. Where she got the money (because she must have money to live without working) and how she ended up in Greenville were constant topics of gossip among the townsfolk for at least as long as I can remember.

From a young age I found myself drawn to Samantha. I’d rack my brain for excuses to go to her house, most of the time she wouldn’t answer the door, but every so often she’d resign a sigh and almost laugh as she opened her house to an unruly child. Each visit I would use every mental crow bar I possessed to try and pry stories from her tacit lips, but although never even the mention of adventure escaped her breath she couldn’t ever quite close the shutters of her eyes and I was encouraged on by the shimmering light tucked away just below the surface.

I had a gangly body that I eventually grew into, scraggly blonde hair I chose never to tame, and once I hit puberty I acquired the womanly features so exaggerated in societal fixations. From my momma I inherited all my features, and people ‘round town liked to proclaim the likeness they observed between us. Deep down though I hoped that a physical resemblance was all I came into from her.

Primary school whisked away with it my innocence, but I didn’t tell time by the passing of periods, or the changing of seasons. The cumulating wrinkles under my momma’s eyes and my pappa’s growing belly let me know that time was indeed passing for them so it must be passing for me.

In high school when boys made their first appearance on my radar it was my momma’s eyes that told me to be careful, her submissive spirit that warned me never to be like her. Those once beautiful, vibrant eyes, dulled by the stained mascara marks on her lower lids and the crow’s feet not from laughter but from tears, they spoke louder than the harshest shrill. In his consistent deference to my maturing person my old man would acknowledge me in the morning with a groan. Then he would down his first and only glass of water for the day with the first of many aspirin, numbing himself before continuing his personal onslaught. The only love I knew was in co-habitation, but it suited me as I think it suited them. But Ms. Cunningham, while maybe not quite as tight skinned as she was seventeen years prior, exhibited far less evidence of the ravages of time. It seemed to me then that she was on her own schedule. The Gregorian unitary time schedule that the rest of the world operated under didn’t play into her day-to-day life. Even then I could see that time knew better than to try and control her.

Through my teenage years, I still sought out the company of Ms. Cunningham. Though she afforded me neither secrets nor long awaited stories, I saw in her something I wanted to see in myself. And she was the only other white lady in town who saw no difference between herself and the black people living just across the railroad tracks.

It was Ms. Cunningham who prompted my literary thirst. From Robinson Crusoe to Tarzan, I was captivated by every novel she gave me, and I longed for my own adventures.

Chapter 3

I remember that day like it was Christmas though it was far from innocent and joyous. It was April 15, 1954. Communism was a growing threat, US and Soviet ties were straining, to say the least, and the Korean War had just ended. But you’d hardly know any of this walking around Greenville. Life still meandered on like a wandering stream through a lazy meadow. Black people lived on one side of the tracks, white people on the other. The drive-in still showed a picture on Saturday night and Momma still worked at the only grocery in town. I was seventeen and felt every bit of it. My old man drove himself into the ground, a decrepit body and a wasted spirit, doomed to drink ‘til Death would save him. And Momma, well it was her eyes that gave her away, older, still pretty, but worse for the wear, like a wilting flower. But it was those sunken blue eyes. I couldn’t look into them anymore, it was like looking at a suicide scene, all I could see was her drowned self.

But on that fresh spring day, April 15, someone new came into town, a tall dark brown man in a tailored suit carrying nothing but a briefcase and a daisy. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him. Brown people didn’t have much place in Greenville—he was neither black nor white so no one could direct him to stay on a certain side of the tracks. Maybe he could just stand in the middle? He walked around town all afternoon looking for something or someone. After school, I went to Ms. Cunningham’s to drop off a book and talk with her about the mysterious man in town but when I got there she was feverishly packing a small suitcase. Throwing clothes I had never seen before into a brown leather bag. Pants, shorts, knife, gun? Where had these items come from? In all my secret explorations of her house I had never come across any of these objects.

Ms. Cunningham? I queried with a somewhat shaky voice. Ms. Cunningham, begging pardon, but what are you doing?

I’m packing. She replied tersely.

For where? Disbelief enveloped my being.

I’m leaving, Jem.

Then I’m coming too.

No.

Why not? I have nothing here. I want to come with you wherever you’re going.

No, Jem, I’m not coming back. It will be dangerous. You are safe here. You will stay.

It’s because of that man, in’t it? I’ll tell him I know you if you won’t let me come. Everyone in town knows I spend most of my time with you. If he’s dangerous I’m better off with you. I’m coming.

Maybe it was because she actually thought I’d be safer with her, or maybe because every second was vital to our escape, but she relented. She threw in an extra coat and pair of slacks knowing full well I wouldn’t have let her out of my sight to run home and pack up a bag for myself, not that I had any belongings I was attached to anyway.

I