Chapter 1

Going Home

Danny Johnson was just your average redneck white boy. He grew up in a small southern mill town where there was nothing to do except work in the cotton mill, or leave town. Danny left town. He soon learned that small towns in the south were all about the same. Of course, big towns weren't much different. They were just bigger.

When the cotton mills closed there wasn't much a man could do to earn a living. The economy might be good if you earned your living in the stock market, but as a fixer in a finishing mill, Danny didn't stand much chance of finding a job. Danny decided he'd be better off being poor back home, than poor in Atlanta.

When times were better, Danny had saved his money, and bought himself a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. It was a full dresser, an Electraglide, with all the chrome in the world, and the loudest pipes he had ever heard. Now, he was riding his hog back home. It rained the whole way.

Riding through these southern mill towns was always the same: little boys amazed at the roar of the pipes, teenage girls swooning over him like he was the latest teen heart-throb, and everyone else acting as if he were as worthless as the red clay dirt that covers the ground where the Kudzu grows.

As Danny rode into his hometown of Adamsville-- named for the Adam's Cotton Mill built in the 1870's-- he realized he was now a stranger there. The town had changed even though it looked-- for the most part-- exactly as it had looked when he left on the Greyhound bus all those years ago.

Adamsville had been picked as the site for the mill because the area was right on the fall line where the Piedmont Plateau changed to the Coastal Plain and there was abundant water power to run the early mill in the days before commercial electricity was available. Prior to the mill, what was now Adamsville had been only a Long-leaf Pine forest amidst the cotton fields. The town had sprung up around the mill as desperate former slaves, and equally poor, white trash, came looking for jobs and company housing during the many lean years that followed the American Civil War. For many, the early days of working for the Adam’s Mill was worse than being a slave. Men, women, and even children worked twenty hour days just to feed themselves.

Many of the downtown shops and businesses had closed because folks either couldn't afford to shop there, or they shopped at the super stores in Jefferson City, about twenty miles away. It looked as if most folks had left town, or just plain given up hope. I wonder what I'm coming back to, Danny thought as he motored along the dusty streets of a once prosperous village.

The last time Danny had been home was when his mother died three years before. Folks had blamed it on Danny. They said, since his daddy died when he was just eleven, that his momma lived just for him and they said it broke her heart when he just up and left town. Danny motored the Harley down Main Street past the old Adam's mansion (a boarding house now) turned right on Elm Street, and pulled to the right in front of the Elm Street First Baptist Church Cemetery.

Danny leaned his hog over on the side-stand and walked to his mother's grave. Someone had kept fresh flowers in the vase that was mounted on the tombstone where the inscription read, "Elizabeth Connor Johnson, a lovely verse in the poem called life..." "Howdy Momma," he said, his voice ragged and breaking just as his heart had broken when he learned of her death three years before. "I come to see you first, before I let folks know I'm back to stay. I'll try an' get by right regular now that I'm livin’ here in town again. I kept the ol' house so I guess I'll fix it up, an' live in it. See you soon, Momma. I promise."

Danny began walking back towards his motorcycle, stopped, turned back to face his mother’s grave and said, “Momma, I’ll try an’ stay out of trouble this time. I promise.” Then he got back on his bike and rode to the house in which he'd spent his entire childhood.

He parked the motorcycle in the driveway and looked around the old home place. The yard was grown up but not as much as he had expected. He figured that someone had been mowing occasionally. Somebody had boarded up all the windows that weren't broken. "Gonna take some work," he said as he walked to the door expecting everything his mother left to him to be gone. It was.

There were darkened places on the walls where the pictures of his family used to hang. Several of the windows were knocked out and there wasn't a stick of furniture to be seen. It seemed as if every childhood memory he had ever treasured was forever lost along with the bright future he guessed he'd never know. He had expected it, but he still wasn't sure he believed it.

"I put all your momma's things in my garage where they'd be safe," a woman's voice said. Startled, Danny turned to see a black woman, Mrs. Wilson, his mother's next door neighbor and life-long friend, standing on the porch behind him. "There was kids who used to sneak in here at night to get high and stuff, so I figured her things wouldn't be 'round long if somebody didn't do something. You know how them kids are. You're welcome to get it all back, Danny."

Mrs. Wilson was the first person Danny remembered meeting besides his momma and daddy. Fact is, he couldn't remember not knowing her. She never had any children of her own and had helped raise Danny even before his daddy died. Her experience as a nurse in the delivery room, and later in the children's ward, probably made her the best babysitter ever. Danny never gave any thought to the fact that she was black and had never doubted she loved him as if he were the son she never had."Thank you, Mrs. Wilson," Danny replied. "I'll get right on it."

"Oh, no need to hurry, Honey," she replied. "Take your time, an' fix the place up some first. It ain't in my way. I ain't had a car in years. 'Sides, if you move it back in afore you get the place secured, it'll all get ruined. You are gonna stay, right?"

"Yes Ma'am. I got laid-off from my old job in Atlanta so I thought I may as well come home, try an’ find somethin’ here."

"Makes sense," she replied. "If you're gonna be poor, you might as well be poor at home."

"Yes Ma'am,” Danny said with a short laugh. “That was my thinkin' too.”

"Well, I'm fixin' stew beef, an' pineapple upside-down cake for supper. You do still eat stew beef and pineapple upside down cake? You loved it when you were little."

"Yes Ma'am. I still love it."

"Well good. Supper'll be ready 'bout six."

Danny walked out to get his few things (sleeping bag, a fresh change of clothes, and emergency tool kit) off the motorcycle as Mrs. Wilson walked next door.