Blackberry Days of Summer Read online

  ZANE PRESENTS

  In an exciting historical whodunit, a young black man is murdered and even though suspects abound, no one is trying too hard to find his killer.

  The novel begins as “The Great War” is coming to an end. As Robert Parker’s body is lowered into the grave, Herman Camm introduces himself to the mourning family. He is a beady-eyed, small-framed, well-dressed man with a mysterious stare—and he is about to drastically change the lives of three women: Mae Lou Parker; her daughter, Carrie; and Pearl Brown.

  On Christmas Eve in Jefferson County, Virginia, trouble arrives when Carrie reveals a disturbing secret that will haunt and change their lives forever. Mae Lou is fed up with Herman spending time with other women and she goes to confront him. Everybody wants a part of him, including Willie; however, the tables are slightly turned when Willie ends up with a gun pointing directly at him.

  All of the stories converge when Herman is found dead from a shotgun wound. There are many people Herman has offended. And all three women are suspects in his murder. An investigation is launched. But no one really cares, including the police. Blackberry Days of Summer is a brilliantly crafted story of family secrets, complexity and the courage of forgiveness.

  “Blackberry Days of Summer is a powerful, deeply moving story of triumph and tragedy, love and family. First-time novelist Ruth P. Watson has written a novel that takes readers on a journey straight into the center of the human heart. A story you won’t soon forget by a writer you’ll long remember. Ruth P. Watson is destined for stardom.”

  —USA Today’s Bestselling Author Barbara Bretton

  “‘The old days’ are often regarded as being much simpler times with a common focus on all that is good, kind, and perfect with the world. Watson’s book turns that theory on its ear with the harsh reality of the complicated family structures, forced secrets, moments of pleasure, and ramifications of regret in her novel. Amazing novel explaining the progression of two women, each with her own story to tell.”

  —S. Robinson-Bowen, Goodreads

  Ruth P. Watson lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and son. She divides her time between being a business owner, writer, and educator. She has a master’s degree and is currently working on a new novel and documentary. Visit the author at www.ruthpwatson.com.

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  COVER DESIGN BY MARION DESIGNS • COVER PHOTO BY KEITH SAUNDERS • PHOTO COURTESY OF WAYNE WATSON

  Dear Reader:

  I am proud to introduce a new author, Ruth P. Watson, whose Blackberry Days of Summer conjures up images of The Color Purple. Blackberry Days is a compelling look at African-American life post-World War I, with an interesting and original set of characters. Herman is a womanizer who eventually becomes involved with three women: his wife, Mae Lou; her daughter, Carrie; and a nightclub singer, Pearl. It is about lust, adultery and coming of age; combining romance and suspense.

  Against the Southern backdrop of rural Virginia, the novel unravels and leads to a murder, and all become suspects in a complicated web of deceit. It is an intimate look into the world of strangers and their relationships. Ruth plants the seed of a fascinating literary novel as she makes her debut on the author scene.

  Thanks also for supporting the dozens of other authors that I publish under Strebor Books. We truly appreciate the love. For more information on our titles, please visit www.zanestore.com and simonandschuster.com, and you can find me on my personal website: www.eroticanoir.com. You can also join my online social network at www.planetzane.org

  Blessings,

  Zane

  Publisher

  Strebor Books

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Strebor Books

  P.O. Box 6505

  Largo, MD 20792

  http://www.streborbooks.com

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  © 2012 by Ruth P. Watson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever. For information address Strebor Books, P.O. Box 6505, Largo, MD 20792.

  ISBN 978-1-59309-413-3

  ISBN 978-1-4516-5564-3 (e-book)

  LCCN 2011938327

  First Strebor Books trade paperback edition June 2012

  Cover design: www.mariondesigns.com

  Cover photograph: © Keith Saunders/Marion Designs

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  In memory of my parents, Paige and Mary Virginia, and the stories shared about a time that is old, yet familiar. To my grandmothers, I feel your heavenly smiles every day. For the World War I veterans, and others who saw the need to fight.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1: Carrie

  Chapter 2: Pearl

  Chapter 3: Carrie

  Chapter 4: Pearl

  Chapter 5: Carrie

  Chapter 6: Carrie

  Chapter 7: Pearl

  Chapter 8: Carrie

  Chapter 9: Carrie

  Chapter 10: Pearl

  Chapter 11: Carrie

  Chapter 12: Pearl

  Chapter 13: Carrie

  Chapter 14: Carrie

  Chapter 15: Pearl

  Chapter 16: Carrie

  Chapter 17: Carrie

  Chapter 18: Pearl

  Chapter 19: Carrie

  Chapter 20: Pearl

  Chapter 21: Carrie

  Chapter 22: Carrie

  Chapter 23: Carrie

  Chapter 24: Pearl

  Chapter 25: Carrie

  Chapter 26: Carrie

  Chapter 27: Pearl

  Chapter 28: Carrie

  Chapter 29: Pearl

  Chapter 30: Carrie

  Chapter 31: Carrie

  Chapter 32: Carrie

  Chapter 33: Carrie

  Chapter 34: Pearl

  Chapter 35: Carrie

  About the Author

  Reader’s Discussion Guide

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For everyone who has dared to dream, I thank you. For it is by faith I have waited for this blessing. I can only say, “To God be the glory for the things he has done.”

  To my ancestors, who passed the torch of history to me, and to the writers who shared their gift for the written word, I thank you.

  Everyone has a story to tell and many people encouraged the one burning deep inside me to flourish into this novel. Thank you everyone for the nudge. To those who said I could write this in the beginning thank you; Andrea Peyton, Andretta Rivers, Cecelia Barksdale, Waple Griffin, Vera Lewis, Sharon Akinsowon, Linda Ashford, Towana White, Celestine Brabble, Lori Weems, Marilyn Brown, Carlisa Lewis, Tiffany Pelton, Betty Walker, Ned Cole, MaiLan Bell and Sardale Jones. It would have been hard to accomplish this without the support of lasting friends, Rhea Bumbrey, Kay Farrow-Smith, Cheryl Jennings-Spence, Sharon Johnson Colemore, Janet Ferguson, Betty Payne, Twyla Banks, Jean Booker, Rosalind Sousa Neal, and Naomi Johnson. Thanks Karen Skinner, Cleo Smith, and Vanessa Lovelace for finding me after all these years.

  To my wonderful students, who are artists in their own right, keep doing what you do, and never settle for a no, or a can’t, while reaching for your goals.

  Thanks to my writer friends for unselfishly sharing bits o
f what you knew about publishing with me. What you said was valuable. To my first news editor, David Gibson, thanks for the opportunity. To bestselling author Barbara Bretton, and book reviewer, Shica Robinson Bowen, thanks for not hesitating to read my manuscript. To the Southwest Cascade Library Book Club Members, the Cascade United Methodist Church Communications Committee, the Alpharetta-Smyrna Kappa Alpha Psi Silhouettes and The Sisterhood of The Atlanta Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., thank you for being there.

  Thank you so much Sara Camilli for working tirelessly to open this door for me. To Zane of Strebor Books, I am honored to have you as my publisher, and Charmaine Parker, you are the best. To the Simon & Schuster team, wow, and thanks. To the bookclubs and bookstores who continue to uplift authors by reading and promoting our books, I appreciate you.

  To my family who are my biggest cheerleaders, I love you. To my husband, and son, you are the reason I do what I do.

  To you all, I’m honored.

  CHAPTER 1

  CARRIE

  Mr. Camm barely waited for Papa to be put in the ground. The next day he slithered into our house, mesmerizing Momma with his poison as she lay down with him. That was when all my troubles started.

  I vividly remember the awful day when Papa was summoned to die. It was around two o’clock in the afternoon. The thermometer hanging over the kitchen door read ninety-five degrees, and the gray cotton dress I was wearing clung to my back like molasses to a pancake. Momma sat at the kitchen table gazing blankly out the window. The lines in her face were forged by misfortune and her round chestnut-colored eyes were cloudy with sad tears that trickled down her cocoa cheeks. She blotted her eyes with her hanky, but they continued to leak like a river that had long overflowed.

  “Y’all come on in and sit down,” she mumbled in a voice so muted I hardly recognized it.

  My brothers and I each pulled out a chair and sat down. We were not used to seeing her so broken. Usually she was on her feet handing out orders.

  “Why are you crying? What’s wrong with ya, Momma?” Carl asked, patting her gently on the shoulder.

  Her lips trembled as she said softly, “It’s your papa. He done took sick. He been complaining of a headache and now his lips are twisted to one side. He can’t even stand up. He ain’t doing good.”

  We glanced at each other with puzzled frowns and waited for someone to figure out what to do. But nobody did.

  “What can we do?” Carl asked with the same authority my papa would have used if he’d been feeling well.

  “Be there for him, he’s gonna need you,” Momma said.

  When I saw Papa lying there in the bed helpless, with his eyes rolled back in his head, tears welled up in my eyes. Papa was a big black man, over six feet five inches tall, and strong as a horse. He never smoked or drank liquor the way most men wished away their troubles, mistresses, or debts. We all believed his mind and his body were solid, too strong to be ravaged by sickness.

  Papa had grown up a free man. His daddy had inherited land from his father, given to him by his master, who felt that good service should be rewarded. When the master was fifty years old, dry and nearly dead from pneumonia, he deeded my grandpa some land for all of his hard labor. Yet, even though Papa owned the land, he cut corners every way he could to pay the taxes. Sometimes the profit from his tobacco crop was only enough to break even. He’d help other farmers on Saturday evenings cut down trees or whatever little he could do, all in an effort to make extra cash. He raised pigs, and no matter how many he hung in the smokehouse, our family was only allowed one ham, which was saved and cooked at Christmas.

  When I went into his bedroom and saw him lying there, I fell to my knees and began to pray: Heavenly Father, who’s going to take care of us? We need our papa. Please make him well. Amen.

  Momma was both frightened and saddened by Papa’s illness. During his sickness, she sat in the rocking chair beside his bed all night and watched him sleep, massaging her temples with the balls of her thumbs and holding her head back while staring at the ceiling, waiting for a sign. Dark circles cast shadows under her big, beautiful eyes. Her hair was frizzled, unattended to, and stuck to one side of her head. Papa was the love of her life even though she never seemed to know how to respond to his affectionate ways, especially the nights when he would stroke her cheeks as they sat close on the porch watching the lightning bugs and counting the stars. She’d ease away from his attention, and he would only shake his head. To see Momma showing her love for Papa now was a clear message to us all: our world was falling apart.

  We kept expecting Papa to stand up, stick his big chest out and head right back to the field, anxious to weed the garden, and see if his seeds were sprouting.

  Papa moaned and tossed and turned all night, and then when he had enough, he closed his eyes. It was half past four in the afternoon, so hot outside that a drop of water would sizzle if it hit the dry, red dirt. Momma hung her head low and covered her eyes. That’s when I knew. I cried until my eyes were swollen almost shut. All I could do was grip her shoulders and hold her tight. A part of me died that day with my papa.

  Momma cried out, “I’d seen this day coming. It come to me in my dream the night before it happened; he fell right down in the field, arms pointing east and west, and I couldn’t revive him. He was too stubborn to slow down and rest, didn’t think anybody could work as hard as he could. I begged him the otha mawnin’ to stay inside and he stared me straight in the eyes, put on that ole straw hat and walked out the door. You see, Tuesday was da sun’s day. He lay right down in da sun and began to die. Sho nuff did.”

  Carl drove the two mules down to Aunt Bessie’s to pick her up. We knew that Momma would need the comfort of her sister. I stood in the frame of her bedroom door and watched her take cash out of an old cigar box she kept under her bed. She handed the crumpled money to the rough-looking white man in bib overalls with red dirt glued under his fingernails who’d come from the undertakers. Afterward, he and a field hand put the casket in the front room and left.

  Even before the minister arrived to bless Papa’s body, Momma and Bessie went in the kitchen and took out some herbs from the cabinet. They went into the bedroom, where Papa was still lying, washed his body from head to toe, and then rubbed the herbs on him. They dressed him in the only black suit he owned—the one he wore to funerals and church on Sundays.

  “Bessie, Lord knows that Robert would want us to be strong, but it’s hard,” Momma said, battling back tears. I knew it was tough because crying was a sign of weakness in her mind.

  “He looks like he is just sleeping, Mae Lou,” Bessie said, buttoning up Papa’s suit jacket and staring down at the corpse.

  “He’s been struggling all of his life with the mighty sun suffering for a long while, and now God got him, no more fighting.” Momma said as she folded Papa’s hands across his wide chest. Papa died only a few days after his thirty-eighth birthday.

  Bessie sat down in the high-back chair Papa used to sit in, and she stared Momma right in the eyes. “How you gonna run the farm without a man around?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You need a man, Mae Lou.”

  “Everybody needs a man around, but it ain’t right to think about that now.”

  “Well, it’s hard when ya all alone,” she said, and began to rock as the thought of being alone lingered in the air.

  My papa lay in the front room for two days before I decided to talk to him. After everyone went to bed, I lit a candle and took tiny steps down the shadowed gray hallway to his casket, careful not to knock over anything. The floors creaked and the blackness was all over the country at night. Through the window I noticed only a few stars sprinkled across the midnight sky. I reached the front room without anyone hearing me, and the metal hinge in the casket screeched as I opened it. I wasn’t afraid of dead people because Momma and Papa said that the dead couldn’t hurt you no way.

  An eerie feeling crept over me when I glanced down at Papa’s st
iff body and leathery skin, sunburned almost black. Tears leaked out the corners of my eyes as I leaned over his corpse and began to speak to him. The candlelight cast my moving shadow on the wall, but I still wasn’t afraid. I stood sobbing as droplets of my tears lingered on his burial suit.

  “Oh, Papa, I’m going to miss you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry you had to die, and I know this house will not be the same.” I leaned over and kissed his comatose cheek. “I’m going to be okay, though. I’m going to get away from around here and go to college, like you wanted me to do. I promise, I’m going to make you proud.”

  I said things to Papa that night that I should have said before he passed. After I finished, I felt relieved. I dried my tears with the back of my hands and went back to my room. Somehow, I knew that he had heard me. I knew that Papa didn’t want me to cry for him. Aunt Bessie was right, he looked like he was sleeping, free of all labor and pain, a look of peace permanent on his face.

  We grieved for over a week before we buried Papa. If the smell of rotten flesh had not gotten unbearable, he probably would have lain in the front room longer. Members of the New Covenant Baptist Church drove their buggies to our house. Papa was on the board of deacons and everyone respected him. Countless folks brought us fried chicken and ham and potato pies.

  The day of the funeral was hard for us. Saying good-bye to my father felt like something I treasured had been ripped away from my arms. The deacons arrived at our house early on that Sunday morning. And like the day he died, the sun stood at attention and peeked at us through the clouds. They loaded Papa’s body onto a wagon to take to the church a few miles down the road. When they lifted the casket and slid it onto the wagon, I cried out. I’d felt comforted with his stiff body sleeping in the front room. The deacon with the lazy eye told me to be at peace. I went quiet, but snorted back salty tears all the way to the church.

  All during the service, Mr. Camm stood close to Momma as if he knew her and Papa. He even offered her his handkerchief, but she didn’t have tears. She looked up at him and he grinned, like a man does with a pretty woman. He reached over and softly touched her on the arm. She didn’t flinch.