“I miss Dovie,” I said with a sigh, shifting my thoughts to the only black person I truly knew. The old woman had been part of my life for sixteen years. Her absence still hurt. “I wish we could’ve found a way to keep her on after the bank failed.”
“I hear she’s doing well down in Franklin with the Warrens. I saw Betty not long ago, and she had nothing but good things to say about Dovie. Gus, too, since they hired them both.”
While I knew I should be happy for Dovie and Gus, it irked me that the Warrens had come through the stock market crash unscathed and snatched up our housekeeper even before the dust settled on our upturned household. Mama felt betrayed by Dovie and made a big scene the day she came to tell us goodbye, but I always felt it was more the loss of a housekeeper and the status of keeping servants rather than losing Dovie in particular that brought her tears.
“What would she think about this opportunity you have with the Federal Writers’ Project?” Grandma followed her question with a bit of a smirk, as though she already knew the answer.
The image of Dovie, with hands on her hips and a tilt to her head, flashed across my mind. I grinned. “She’d say, ‘Get on down there and talk to them folks. They ain’t gonna bite you.’”
Grandma chuckled at my imitation of our former housekeeper’s deep Southern drawl and sassy attitude. “I believe you’re exactly right. And I agree.”
My smile slowly faded. “Do you really think I should do it?” I whispered, the very idea tying my gut into a knot. “What if . . . what if . . . ?” I couldn’t finish the sentence, mainly because I didn’t know exactly what I was afraid of. All I knew was fear mounted with every breath I took.
“I think it will be good for you.” Her gray-blue eyes narrowed on me. “You need to see life from a different perspective in order to move forward. I believe this job may be exactly what you need to help you find your place in the world.”
The music of crickets and tree frogs filled the night as I walked home a short time later, but it was Grandma’s words that echoed through my mind. Over the past seven years, I’d confessed to her more than once that I felt stuck. Stuck in time. Stuck in circumstance. Just plain ol’ stuck.
How could interviewing people who’d lived in bondage decades earlier help me see my future more clearly?
There was only one way to find out.
CHAPTER FOUR
A car horn sounded at exactly nine o’clock Thursday morning, three weeks later.
“My, he’s punctual.” Mama glanced out the front window to where a gray, weather-beaten Chevrolet coupe sat in our driveway. She turned to face me as I put on my sweater, her thin lips in a flat line. “A gentleman would come to the door, not sit in the car waiting for the lady.”
“This isn’t a date, Mama.” I tucked my purse strap over my arm. “Mr. Norwood is simply giving me a ride downtown. We both work for the FWP, so we’re business professionals. If he were picking up a male coworker, he wouldn’t come to the door.”
With more confidence than I felt, I snatched up the two steno notebooks I’d purchased per instructions from the Nashville FWP director who’d hired me last week. A bundle of freshly sharpened pencils already occupied a place in my purse, as did the paper containing the address of my first interviewee and the folded list of questions I was to ask.
Ignoring the knot in my stomach, I turned to Mama. “Wish me luck,” I said a bit too brightly.
Mama frowned. “I don’t recall you ever being nervous when you interviewed people for the paper.”
That was because they weren’t former slaves living in Hell’s Half Acre, but I couldn’t tell that to Mama. “I’m just rusty, I guess. I’m sure it will all come back to me.”
I stepped into the foyer. A word of encouragement from Mama would have gone a long way just then, but she simply watched me leave the house and walk down the porch steps. I hadn’t made it to Mr. Norwood’s car yet when I heard the door close behind me.
With a deep breath I hoped would still my quaking insides, I reached for the handle on the passenger side of the car. A young man sat in the driver’s seat. His brown felt hat sat on his head at an angle, reminding me of Errol Flynn.
“Hello.” He gave a small nod of greeting.
“Hello.” I climbed into the vehicle, trying not to stare at several worn places on the seat as I slid over them.
He stuck out his hand but didn’t smile. “Alden Norwood.”
“Lorena Leland,” I returned, briefly engaging his cool hand with my sweaty one. Thankfully, he didn’t retrieve the handkerchief peeking out from his jacket pocket and use it as a towel.
His glance shifted to our house. He studied it a long moment before asking, “You live here?”
The odd question confused me. “Yes.” Why else would I be here so early in the morning, ready to begin a new job that he himself was driving me to?
“Hmm.”
That’s it. That’s all he said before he shoved the gearshift into reverse and backed down the driveway. With one last glance at the house, then at me, he put the car into gear and headed up the street.
I stewed over his hmm for a solid minute before I stole a glance at his profile.
He was far younger than I’d anticipated. For some reason I’d envisioned Alden Norwood as an older gentleman when Mr. Carlson, the director of the Nashville FWP office, told me a fellow writer would pick me up and drive me to Hell’s Half Acre, a run-down neighborhood where all of my interviewees lived. Mr. Carlson had sung Mr. Norwood’s praises, declaring him a true advocate for the downtrodden and a highly experienced interviewer. I was to ask Mr. Norwood any questions I might have regarding my assignment, with the assurance the gentleman would be happy to supply the answers.
Yet Mr. Norwood couldn’t be much older than me. Dark hair in need of a trim poked out from beneath the Errol Flynn hat that, now as I took a closer look, I realized had seen better days. The dark-gray suit he wore might well have come from a church charity box, as threadbare as it appeared. I couldn’t help but wonder at his financial situation and how long he’d been in need of work before he discovered the FWP.
Which brought me full circle back to his hmm. What exactly did it mean? Was it a good hmm or a bad hmm? So intent on my ponderings, I didn’t realize I was staring at him until I found questioning brown eyes returning the gaze while we waited at an intersection.
“I beg your pardon.” A rush of heat rose to my face as I quickly looked away. “I was . . .” What could I say? Embarrassment jumbled my brain, preventing a logical explanation from surfacing in time to save me.
He chuckled. “You wore quite a perplexed frown as you studied me. Dare I ask the nature of such glowering?”
The car lurched forward before I could answer, and we resumed our journey. With his concentration returned to the road, my tense shoulders eased. Perhaps his humor at my poor manners boded well. I hoped so anyway.
“I simply wondered what you meant by hmm.”
He shot me a puzzled look before returning his attention to the other vehicles on the busy street. Nashville’s population had grown over the years despite the depressed economy. Sedans, delivery trucks, and streetcars clogged roads inadequate for so much traffic, yet the city had no money to alleviate the problem.