Donna VanLiere - The Angels of Morgan Hill

The Angels of Morgan Hill

ALSO BY DONNA VANLIERE

The Christmas Shoes

The Christmas Blessing

The Christmas Hope

The Angels of
Morgan Hill

DONNA VANLIERE

Copyright 2006 by Donna VanLiere.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Published by arrangement with St. Martins Press.

WestBow Press books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com

Publishers Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used fictitiously.

All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

VanLiere, Donna, 1966
The Angels of Morgan Hill / Donna VanLiere. 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-33452-9
ISBN-10: 0-312-33452-4 1.
ChildrenTennesseeFiction. 2. Race relationsFiction.
3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3622.A66A85 2006
813'.6dc22

2006040637

Printed in the United States of America

06 07 08 09 QW 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my mother, Alice Jane Payne
who grew up in a place like Morgan Hill

CONTENTS

Much appreciation and thanks to...

Troy, Gracie, and Kate for being the sweetest part of my life.

My mother for inspiring this story. Many years ago she told me that she was nearly a grown woman before she ever saw a black person up close. She and my father, Archie, grew up in Greene County, Tennessee, and many of their childhood tales of walking down railroad tracks, milking cows, growing tobacco, and spending time in small country stores like Henrys are reflected in these pages.

Jennifer Gates and Esmond Harmsworth for reading this book over and over and then over again. It wouldnt be the book it is today without your input!

Jennifer Enderlin for believing in Morgan Hill and inspiring that belief in others! Welcome, June!! Thanks to Sally Richardson, George Witte, Matthew Shear, John Karle, Matthew Baldacci, Mike Storrings (for the beautiful cover), and the entire sales staff at St. Martins for making it happen.

My aunt Geraldine Culbertson for being my chauffeur as I traveled through Greene County. Thanks to my aunt Maxine Harrison and her husband, Merrill, for providing a place to stay and lots of great meals!

I met Rhonda Julian in her home as her four small children played nearby. Rhonda invited her father, Jack Lawson, and uncle Tom Lawson over to talk about raising tobacco in the 1940s. She was kind and gracious, and it was obvious her children adored her. Leukemia took her from this world much too early (her father also passed away during the writing of this book), but Im grateful for the spirit in which she welcomed me and the belief she had in this story.

James Spud Ailshie, a former general store owner (and tobacco farmer!) from the 1940s who made Henrys store come to life within these pages.

My pastor, Chris Carter, and everyone at the Orchard Church in Franklin for friendship and continued inspiration.

I started writing this book a few years ago at the log cabin home of Johnny and Janet Hunt, Raymond and Glenda Pumphrey, and Jim and Kathy Law. Thank you all for the ideal setting!

Miss Karen Parente, Miss Carole Consiglio, and Miss

Kelly Long at Little School for your heart!

And again, to Bailey, who does whatever he can to always be by my side.

I am a part of all that I have met.

ALFRED TENNYSON, ULYSSES

It was raining real hard the day we buried my daddy. Mama said it was because the angels were crying; but after hours of drenching downpour I doubted the angels were crying tears of joy about seeing Daddy in heaven but instead were just downright upset about having him there.

My father was a diabetic and a drunktwo conditions that dont get along well with each other. Doc Langley kept telling him the drinking was going to kill him but Daddy never listened. He was playing cards with Beef, Dewey, and the rest of the boys one night when he had what they described as some sort of fit and passed out. They thought hed just drunk too much so they let him be, head down on the table for the next twelve hours while they finished their game. By the time one of the boys got the good sense to think Daddy wasnt taking a catnap (trust me when I say that taking just twelve hours to figure something out was a record-breaking feat for them), they fetched the doctor, but Daddy was all but gone. Doc said it wouldnt have done any good if hed gotten to him earlier the alcohol poisoned his bloodstream and threw him into a diabetic coma. He was twenty-eight years old. I was nine.

The day we buried him was the same day I first saw a black face up close. East Tennessee didnt have slaves during the Civil War, so there was never a large population of black people to settle there. Many lived in Greeneville but in my nine years of life Id never set foot anywhere but Morgan Hill. My brother, John, and I were riding in the car with Aunt Dora when we got behind an old pickup. Aunt Dora was looking for a way to pass when a tiny head popped up from inside the truck bed. He was a little boy, no older than John, and the color of pure milk chocolate. His head was round and bald and his eyes were as big and black as shiny marbles. He hung on to the tailgate and stared at us. I remembered hearing Mama talk about some coloreds who had moved to town but Id never seen them, and in that brief moment I found myself gawking at him. He almost lost his footing when the truck lunged over a rut in the road and, as suddenly as he appeared, the little boy smiled real bigthe biggest, whitest smile Id ever seenand ducked down into the truck before it pulled onto the drive that led to the Cannon farm.

Well, look at that, Aunt Dora said. Theres them coloreds your mama said moved to town. They should shake things up. I didnt really know what she meant at the time but all that would change soon enough.

That was the spring of 1947 in Morgan Hill, Tennessee. Morgan Hill is fifty-five miles northeast of Knoxville where it lays claim to the most beautiful rolling, green hills youll ever see. Thomas Morgan was the first to settle there in 1810. He lived at the base of a small hill he deemed Morgans Hill in honor of himself. The s was eventually dropped. Who knows why. In 1947 Morgan Hill boasted Walkers (a tiny general market with a single gas pump in front), the Morgan Hill Baptist Church, and the Langley School Building (named after Doc Langleys great granddaddy), which housed grades one through twelve in one hot, cramped brick building on top of the hill right in the middle of town. We were a poor community; some of the homes, ours included, that were hooked to electricity just three years earlier couldnt afford the electric bill so we continued to use coal oil lamps. We milked our own cows, butchered our own pigs, grew our own vegetables, and scraped out a living the best we knew how.

Now you might think that what youre about to read has a great deal to do with my father and growing up poor in east Tennessee, but there is so much morewhat captured my heart was the hope of belonging and the dream of family. Fifty-four years have passed and many of the details have blurred, but the memories of the heart are as alive for me today as they were then. The woman I am has a great deal to do with that ninth year of my life. It started out as any other year, nothing extraordinary, but as each day unfolded it became remarkable in every way. There are times when Im still amazed that we made it through. It has been said that every life has a story. This is my story, although it belongs to so many others, for I was never alone. They were always with me... and still are today.