Home Free

By Jean McCord

This historical fiction novel follows Nell as she grows up in a small Georgia town in the 1940s and 1950s. Her family is both poor and dysfunctional as Nell seeks to find what she wants in life.

She searches for worthiness and belonging, trying to find comfort in friends and even in God, but without success. It is a moving account of one girl's decisions as she tries to understand her world and where she fits. The reader comes to admire Nell on the very first page and cheer her on as, in the last chapter, she finally realizes that her family—which has pulled itself together at last—is where she can find what she needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781304491053

Book preview

Home Free

by Jean McCord

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

©2024 Jean McCord

A printed first edition of this book was published by Latitude Zero.

All rights reserved. Beyond brief quotations in reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the author.

ISBN-10: 1-304-49105-3

ISBN-13: 978-1-304-49105-3

To Ann Fourt, Leonor (Noshy) Pinos,

and Soledad Riquetti Carrasco,

who

helped me through some

very rough times.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD.................................................................. .....

PART ONE..................................................................... .....

CHAPTER ONE......................................................... ....

CHAPTER TWO................................................... ...

CHAPTER THREE............................................... ...

CHAPTER FOUR................................................. ...

CHAPTER FIVE................................................... ...

CHAPTER SIX..................................................... ...

CHAPTER SEVEN............................................... .

CHAPTER EIGHT................................................ .

CHAPTER NINE.................................................. .

CHAPTER TEN.................................................... .

CHAPTER ELEVEN............................................ .

CHAPTER TWELVE........................................... .

PART TWO.................................................................... .

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............................... .

PART THREE.................................................................

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE......................................

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX....................................

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN............................. .

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.............................. .

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE................................ .

CHAPTER THIRTY..............................................

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................... .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR....................................... .

FOREWORD

This story takes place in the State of Georgia in the 1940s and 1950s, when segregation reigned. I have tried to be as true as possible to the time and place, and therefore have included language commonly used at the time, although these words are unacceptable today.

The public schools of Georgia did not begin to integrate until the early 1960s, starting from the high school senior year down, one year at a time. In many districts, this was done solely to delay integration as long as possible. At this same time, many Christian

private schools were formed with the purpose of keeping the races separate. While this book is not about race relations, issues of customs, race, and class are necessarily parts of the story.

The title Home Free comes from a game that southern children played after dark: Ain’t no boogers out tonight. Daddy killed them all last night. At the end of the game, the players who had not been caught by the booger were able to return to the safe place

Home Free.

Jean McCord

Cuenca, Ecuador, 2023

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

She remembers the time when they lived in the mountains, in spite of what Mama says. According to Mama, Nell’s memories are just hand-me-downs from when Mama and others talk of that time, but nobody else knows some of the things Nell remembers. If she talks about them, they say it was just her imagination.

But she remembers the owl that hooted and hooted outside her window until she screamed and scared it off and Mama came running, saying it was just a nightmare. Animals also roamed the woods where the grown-ups never went, half-seen shapes that seemed to follow Nell until she ran out into the sunlit meadows. She also remembers something sniffed around the house at night in winter, something that

seemed to be trying to get in, something that overturned the garbage can and killed Aunt Alice’s dog.

Larry said he’d heard the noises too. In fact, he’d not only heard them, but had also seen what was making them. I saw something that died up in the hills a long time ago and now he wants to get in where people are living—in our house. I think it was a goblin. Larry said there were not only goblins, but also other shapes that followed Nell in the woods: werewolves or devils—or maybe even THE Devil.

Larry had heard about them from the older boys, and Uncle Jake had read to them about Little Orphant Annie, and the Gobble-uns ‘ll git you ef you don’t watch out. Nell thought maybe the Devil was the worst, because the preacher at church said so.

Larry turned the woods into a place of terror for her, so when she was alone she often stayed in the cleared spaces on the mountains, leaving large pinecones on the edge of the woods as offerings to the Devil and the goblins.

There were five in her family, not counting Daddy, who had gone to the flat country to start a business and who was outside of her life. Nell was four

that year; perhaps that’s why her Mama says she can’t remember anything, but she remembers knowing Mama was going to have a baby.

Mama was fat and didn’t keep a close eye on her or her brothers and sister anymore, so they were free to go where they wanted.

Nell and Larry and Nancy roamed all over the hills and mountains, playing under the pines and among the rhododendrons, taking off their clothes and splashing in the shadowy creek and gathering the musty-smelling wild violets that grew in the cool earth near the creek, or the sun-warmed black-eyed Susans and daisies from the meadows. The flowers were beautiful and blooming when picked, but so wilted by the time they got home that Mama always threw them out right away.

Nell and Nancy made lace collars and cuffs from the Queen Anne’s lace that grew freely near the house, but Mama got mad at them if they wore the collars home.

I’ve told you not to play with those weeds,

Mama’d yell. Y’all will get chiggers from them! But the girls played with the daisies too, pulling the petals off to see if there would be chocolate pudding for

dessert, or if they’d have potatoes instead of grits, but it didn’t always work.

Then everything changed.

Mama called the children together in the dark kitchen after breakfast and told them they were going away on a bus and would live in a new place and never come back. In just a few days she packed all the clothes in suitcases and cardboard boxes and arranged for some men to come and take the furniture away.

Then the family moved into Aunt Alice’s large white house for a while.

The move meant nothing to Nell until Larry started telling her about where they would live. Larry was two years older than her, taller, and different—

blond, while the rest of them had brown hair. When he handed down this important pronouncement, he called Nell before him, made her stand at attention, and said with utmost dignity, You ain’t gonna like this new place, Nell. There ain’t no hills there, and no mountains, neither. It’s all flat, and houses are all around our house, and we’ll be living in a town.

How do you know, smarty?

"Mama told me. She says Daddy wrote her how it’ll be and that’s what he said. You can’t go picking

any flowers, and you’ll have to stay in the yard or the neighbors’ll get mad at you."

Nell didn’t try to hit him as she usually did when he made her angry; instead, she wandered off, afraid. The hills whispered to her as she lay in bed at night and they sang and whistled with her as she wandered over their slopes with the other children. The sharp scent of the evergreens and the dark brown smell of the mountain sod had soaked into her nostrils, and she knew and loved the changing colors of the plants as the seasons progressed. Even with all the bad creatures Larry told her about, she treasured the mountains.

She wondered if the move was somehow

connected with some of Mama’s incomprehensible rules. Nell never knew all the rules but was always punished with a swat—or worse—whenever she broke them. Perhaps taking her from her mountains was what she deserved.

Aunt Alice said she would go with them for a while, taking her son Jim, just a few months older than Nell, with her. When they left the mountains of Western Carolina to descend to the Georgia plains, there were seven of them, five small children and two

women, the older very pregnant, the younger solicitous of her.

It was hot and muggy, one of those early June days when it seems the whole force of summer has suddenly decided to attack, massed and striking with the full weight of the sun, the humidity, and the breezelessness to which mountain folk can never accustom themselves.

Nell’s hands, back, and legs were sticky with sweat as she sat on the prickly brown nap of the bus seat, and a fly bite on her wet arm throbbed throughout the trip. But her sharpest memory is of Mama sitting heavily in her seat, her upper lip ringed with droplets of sweat, her face yellowed by nausea. Seeing her that way, Nell, too, felt her stomach vaguely protesting.

Daddy was at the side of the road as the bus pulled up at a filling station. Nell looked at him, trying to see if she remembered him and if he was the same: so tall she didn’t even come up to his waist, with a big frame that dwarfed Mama when she stood beside him, and wavy black hair that left an oily film and a sweetish smell when touched.

He wiped his hands on his pants legs and tucked in his shirt when he saw them on the bus, then

brushed his arm across his forehead and stood there, waiting.

They filed off the bus, all of them turning to watch the driver as he unloaded the baggage from underneath the bus, postponing their meeting with Daddy. He walked slowly up and hugged Mama, holding himself away from her big belly, then bent and reached for the baggage, still without saying a word.

Nell glanced at Mama, who seemed more tired and sick than ever, and realized Mama had expected something more; whatever she had expected, she hadn’t gotten it.

Nell looked again at Daddy and suddenly was running at him, arms flailing, fists clenched and beating in the air, then beating at his legs. "You dope, you dope, that’s my Mama!" she yelled at him.

Dropping the suitcases, he pulled his pants legs up to keep from bagging them, then squatted down to calm her. The forgotten roughness of his face was surprising, different from the gentleness of the women’s faces, but Nell hit at him until he caught her arms with his big hands and gently stilled her.

Aunt Alice started running as soon as she saw what Nell was doing, and Mama simply turned and

stared, her mouth hanging open. Nancy, Nell’s older sister, and Pete, her baby brother, burst into tears, while Larry and Jim cheered for Daddy to lay into Nell. Daddy crouched, holding her arms and looking at her with drooping mouth and sad eyes.

He turned to look at Mama, and said, Julia, I’m so glad y’all are here. It’s been too long. And Mama seemed to be content, seemed to understand far more than the words said.

Then Daddy whispered, Hey, Nell, and

greeted the other children and Aunt Alice and Jim, making Nell in some way satisfied.

Now that Mama was happy, Nell was free to explore the new place with Jim and Larry. The three children ran to the filling station while the adults tried to hush Nancy and Pete. The old station of dirty red brick had a porch and two pumps between the pillars.

Candy and groceries covered low shelves along one wall, while oil filters, batteries, spark plugs, fan belts, maps, and other car equipment was piled high on shelves. Water dripped into a sink behind the counter; a huge gray bar of Lava soap, with big grooves stained darker gray by dirt, rested beside it. Oil soaked the

cement floor, and tobacco juice had splattered on the wall and floor near the spittoon in the corner.

Two men sat, leaning back on tilted cane-bottom chairs around a radio in another corner. The excited voice of the speaker hit the children as they ran in the door: "It’s tied, folks, a tie, the Dodgers and the Giants tied in the eighth, five to five! Looks like a consultation on the mound. Say, men, how are you fixed for blades?"

The men had been lazily talking about the game, but now they looked up, questioning. One was swarthy and badly in need of a shave. His belly hung over his belt, showing black hair and pale skin in the gap between his shirt and pants. Two stains of acrid sweat spread under his arms, the smell overpowering at close range. He laughed, demanding in a rough, friendly voice, Say, who’re the kids?

Nell looked at him, then at the other man. I’m Nell Morgan and this is my cousin Jim Thomas, and this is my brother Larry Morgan, and we’re gonna live here. Then she stopped, out of breath.

They’re John Morgan’s kids, the second man explained. "He’s the guy what rented my house down

the road. His wife’n’kids’re movin’ in today. Come by bus."

Daddy and the others trooped in just as Nell demanded who the men were, and the second man briskly began to sort people out and make the introductions. He was Rob Singleton, the owner of the filling station and the house where they would live; the other one was Abel Harmon.

Abel, Mr. Singleton said suddenly, Kin ya watch the station while I run these folks over to the house? I’d jes’ like to get ‘em settled, an’ it’s too hot to walk with ‘at baggage, even as far as the house.

You don’t have to, Mr. Singleton, Mama protested. "I’m sure we can make it; it’s not very far.

John just pointed it out to me, down the road."

"Why, Missus Morgan, you don’t think I’d let ya walk in your condition, do ya? he drawled, making Mama blush. It ain’t no trouble at all to run y’all down to the house. An’ ‘sides, ya might want to ask some questions. I’m still keepin’ some chickens over there—hope ya don’t mind. Mr. Morgan said they wouldn’t be no trouble, an’ I don’t have no place for

‘em here. I’m livin’ behind the station now, with my wife an’ mother."

He stopped talking and shuffled toward his pickup truck, where he piled the boxes and suitcases in the back before hoisting the children up. Then he looked at Daddy and said, Well, John, I’m scared you’ll have to get in back with the kids ‘r walk, ‘cause there ain’t enough room in front for more’n three.

I’ll walk, thanks, Daddy said, setting off toward the house, which was separated from the filling station by a wide stretch of tall grass. He got a head start going down the road, and the kids yelled at Mr.

Singleton to pass him. Then they jeered at Daddy for being so slow when he caught up with them in the driveway and lifted them out of the truck bed.

Daddy was proud of the house and yard as he showed them around. As soon as they were inside, he headed straight for the bathroom and turned on one of the faucets. "Look, Julia, all the hot water you’ll need!

No more heating water on the stove for the kids’ baths.

And no more outhouse," he said, pushing the handle of the toilet. The gurgling of the toilet was fascinating, and Daddy let each of the kids flush it once, having to wait while the tank filled between flushes.

Then he pushed them all out into the hall, still talking. Electricity all over the house, too, he said,

flicking on the hall light. He pointed to the large metal grate in the floor. There’s central heating, with a smaller grate in each room, so we’ll be warm this winter without having to carry in wood and coal. He kept smiling and wiping his hands on his shirt as he told Mama how much easier it would be here.

The new house wasn’t as bad as Larry had said.

It had a big yard with a couple of trees and a garage and a barn. Chickens clucked and pecked in a small wire pen near the barn; their coop was just the size of a playhouse. The house was brick, not wood as the one in the mountains had been, and Nell giggled at the way the inside looked. Daddy had pushed all the chairs flat against the wall, and the beds all looked lumpy from the way he had made them. Mama’s little figurines stood smack in the middle of the tables and shelves, and he’d hung all the pictures crookedly right in the center of each wall.

Mama went to lie down, and Daddy followed her into the bedroom as soon as Mr. Singleton left. He started talking to her, not even noticing Nell standing in the doorway.

Julia, he whispered, "Julia, I hope you like it.

It seems like a good place to live." Then he stopped,

and Mama seemed to understand something Nell didn’t, for she took his hand and smiled at him, and he started to kiss her.

Aunt Alice yelled for Nell to get out of there

just then, so she ran into the yard to explore with the others.

CHAPTER TWO

The heat plagued Nell as it never had

previously, and she was always sweaty and dirty as she and Jim played in the yard. Here, instead of the clean, cool grass of the mountains, there was brown, hot grass, parched by the sun and covered with dust from the roads. The heat and dirt soon became a part of this new life, and she could barely remember where they had lived before.

There were no mountains, just as Larry had said, but there were woods behind the house, a large stretch of high grass between the house and the filling station, and a barn to play in. But the filling station itself drew her. She had seen only the front and inside on the day they moved here, but the back had much more to offer. Cases of empty pop bottles piled one on another left spaces between them where the kids could

hide. Millions of bottle caps lay all around, shaped like small crowns they could imprint on their arms, and with exotic colors and names they had never before seen: Nehi, Red Rock, Dr. Pepper, Royal Crown. Nuts and bolts and strange pieces of cars turned up among the bottle caps, and once she found three cat’s-eye marbles half buried in the oil-drenched ground.

But it was the tires that took and held Nell’s and Jim’s imagination. Hundreds of discarded automobile tires, some stacked in high, orderly columns, others simply thrown in heaps, still others laid side by side, made tunnels where they could crawl and hide and play follow the leader. They could even roll each other around inside some of the big ones.

They’d make castles, one child climbing inside a small column and the other helping to pile the tires up until the column was taller than they were, so the one inside could see only the insides and the sky above. Then that one would climb up the rims and jump down on the outside and help the other climb in. Often the castles tumbled when they’d try to climb from the outside, and they’d have to build new ones. They got covered with grease and dirt and rubber from the tires—a black, tenacious dirt that soaked into their skin and clothes

and made Aunt Alice mad at them, no matter how hard they tried to wash it off before going into the house.

Mama was in bed most of the time, and Aunt Alice was always busy, washing, cooking, cleaning the house, and looking after Mama and Pete, so Jim and Nell did almost anything they liked. Aunt Alice never noticed where they played as long as they didn’t bother her or make Pete cry. Nancy and Larry either played together or with their new friends in the neighborhood, leaving the younger children alone.

Like Mama, Aunt Alice had rules Nell didn’t know. Nell and Jim had been playing in the tires for most of one morning when Aunt Alice came out in the yard and saw them behind the filling station. She waved her arms, yelling for them to Come on home right now!

Jim said she’d beat them if they didn’t get there in a hurry, so they ran through the dry grass, wondering what was the matter. It wasn’t until they were there and Aunt Alice grabbed Jim and slapped him, that Nell knew they’d broken some of her rules.

Jim howled from the slap, but only Mama had ever punished Nell; she kicked at Aunt Alice, who then slapped Nell twice as hard as she had Jim.

"Don’t y’all ever play there again! she threatened. Don’t y’all know you could break your fool necks? And that’s where you get so dirty I can hardly get your skin clean, let alone your clothes! Now stay away from there! Do you hear me?"

Mama and Aunt Alice never explained the rules so the kids understood them, so the children continued to play behind the filling station, always careful to keep out of sight behind a pile of tires and to stay as clean as possible.

They were playing there one day, not having much fun, but with the idea that they were showing Aunt Alice she couldn’t boss them around, when an old woman, wailing like the wrath of God, lurched out of the back of the station madly waving a dish towel.

Nell stood frozen in front of Jim, who was inside a pile of tires they were building, terrified of the witch’s burning eyes, streaming brown-white hair, and the spittle flying from her toothless mouth.

You rascals! she yelled, swaying from side to side on her skinny legs. "I’ve watched you, meddlin’

an’ trespassin’ around our propitty. Don’t you know the Devil’s gonna git you an’ take you down under if you don’t act right an’ keep to yourself? He’s gonna

come in at night an’ take you away! You’re bad! she yelled, flapping the dish towel in Jim’s face as he climbed up the inside of the tire castle and burst into tears. Your ma don’t want you here an’ we don’t want you here neither."

Her black dress came open as she waved her arms, and her withered breasts flopped around inside a white cotton slip as the children cowered before her.

"You’re goin’ to Hell just like your Daddy is, with his drinkin’ an’ runnin’ around. The Devil’s gonna git you

‘cause you’re breakin’ all his rules! Y’all are bad!" she spat at them.

Nell clutched at Jim, grabbing him around his head, which was all that was visible above the tires.

She clenched her eyes tight and sobbed, knowing what the old woman was talking about. She had felt the shadows in the woods following her and she knew the Devil had been after her before and had tracked her here.

The sound of footsteps came around the corner of the station as Nell pulled at Jim’s head, trying to help him out of the encircling tires so they could run if this were the Devil. Jim tumbled out of the pile

headfirst and started bawling, lying in the dirt, while Nell grabbed his arm and tried to pull him up.

Come on, Ma, Mr. Singleton said slowly and calmly. It’s time for your nap, he said, taking the old woman’s arm.

Nell looked up, stopping her crying in

astonishment as the witch docilely followed Mr.

Singleton’s lead, muttering, It ain’t really time for my nap, is it? Do I gotta go to sleep now?

Singleton turned to the children. Go on home now, he growled, not unkindly. Go on—and don’t play around here anymore.

Nell and Jim grabbed each other’s hands, and ran through the high grass to the barn, where they hid until it was almost time for supper.

For two days they didn’t leave the yard. They played quietly, not telling Mama or Aunt Alice what had happened, and the fear of the Devil grew, giving them nightmares that made them cry out at night. Nell kept thinking of the poem about Little Orphant Annie and the pictures of goblins and other creatures in the

Book of Knowledge. The Devil must be like those pictures, like the half-seen shapes she’d seen in the woods, and he’d take them away where they’d never

be found. Slowly, through those days, Nell and Jim worked out a plan: The Devil had to be bought off, and only sacrifice was acceptable. He needed more than the pinecones they used to leave in the woods on the mountainside, more than countless sticks and pretty stones, more even than the three prized cat’s-eye marbles Nell had found among the bottle caps.

Larry might know. Larry knew everything; he would know what the Devil wanted from them. They went to him, trusting him for the answer. Larry, remember like in Sunday School, when they told about giving things to God in the temple? Nell asked.

What kind of things did they give Him?

Larry thought a minute, screwing up his eyes in concentration, then answered, Well, they killed goats and sheep and pigeons and things. They got the place awfully bloody, he recounted gleefully. They took long knives and cut them right open, even while they were ‘live, and then they gave them to God and sprinkled all the blood on top of the people.

Would a ol’ rooster be just as good? Jim asked.

I s’pose so, Larry replied doubtfully, wearying of the questioning. Yeah, sure.

Nell forced Jim to catch the rooster, an old one they both hated since it chased them out of the chickenyard whenever they looked for eggs, and it woke everyone up early in the morning, making Daddy angry all day long. Jim argued about catching it, since he was as scared as Nell, but she finally yelled at him,

You don’t want the Devil to get both of us, do you?

"No, but I’m scared. That ol’ thing’s gonna peck me full of holes. He’s a mean ol’ rooster!"

You gotta catch the rooster! That’s the only thing that’ll do it. Besides, in Sunday School it was only men killing the animals in the temple. I’m a girl. I can’t do it.

Jim went to catch the rooster while Nell dug a hole to put it in. They had worked out a plan for the sacrifice: They were afraid of the blood and they couldn’t get a knife anyway without Aunt Alice seeing them, so they were going to bury the rooster—alive.

The Devil lived below; if they buried the offering he would come and take it from beneath the ground.

Jim took a stick into the chicken pen with him and hit at the rooster whenever it tried to peck him.

When the rooster rushed at him, flying up at his face in

frenzied attack, Jim caught the rooster a stunning blow on the side of the head and grabbed him by the neck.

The hole ain’t big enough, he complained, taking the rooster over to Nell. "We can’t bury him in that little hole."

I can’t get it any deeper, she said, pointing to the baked red clay. And we ain’t got enough time to make a bigger one anyway. We gotta hurry. She felt a sense of urgency lest the Devil take them before they could offer up the victim. We can just bury his feet and pile rocks around him, she said quickly. Jim, you pray.

Jim thought through the prayers he had heard, then bowed his head and prayed, Oh, Devil, take this chicken to be yours and bless it and san’tify it and don’t take us, now you got the rooster. Amen. Then they buried the stunned rooster as far as it would fit in the hole, piling rocks and sticks around it so it wouldn’t escape its part in the Devil’s worship, and they went away, relieved by their offering to this power who would so surely get them if they weren’t good.

Still shadowed by fear of the Devil,