spent long afternoons sitting on the porch with Edward in her lap, Caldonia by her side, and the children playing in the yard. As she watched them grow and blossom, a new kind of happiness settled in her heart. It was a peacefulness she’d never known with Martin. He’d been a man who sought importance, and yet he’d ignored the people to whom he truly was important. In the end, he’d become a nameless body, swept away by the Susquehanna River, with no one to mourn him or grieve his loss.
At first she’d felt only hatred for him because of what he’d done and the heartache he’d caused, but over time the peacefulness she’d come to know pushed it aside and all that remained was a heartfelt sorrow that he’d never really known the joy of his children.
For months, she’d wrestled with guilt over the money the boys had taken from Martin’s pocket, but there was no way she could return it without acknowledging what had happened. Ultimately she came to view it as a stroke of providence, for with it she bought the train tickets back to Coal Creek and saw to the children’s needs for well over two years. While there was nothing left over for luxuries, no one went hungry or without shoes.
Dewey was the next to leave home. For nearly a year he’d been helping out at a small newspaper in Charleston. When a pressman left in November of 1912, they offered him the job. Nine months later, Margaret Rose was sent to live with her elderly aunt in South Charleston. She’d raised quite a row over it and claimed if she was made to go she’d run away from home.
The night before she was to leave, Margaret Rose and her mama sat on the porch pushing back and forth in the swing.
“I realize you don’t want to go,” Eliza said, “but it’s for your own good. Aunt Rose will teach you things I can’t. You’ll wear nice clothes, go to fancy restaurants, and meet the kind of young men who are worthy of your attention.”
“Aunt Rose is terribly cranky, and she’s always telling people what to do. If she sees you sitting comfortable in a chair, she pokes her finger in your back and says sit up.”
“That’s because she wants you to have a backbone that’s straight and strong.”
“I think it’s because she hates me.”
Eliza laughed. “Rose doesn’t hate you; she loves you. But she remembers what it’s like to live up here in the hollow and wants you to have it better.”
“There’s nothing wrong with living here,” Margaret Rose said defensively.
“Do you think it’s as nice as when we lived in Barrettsville?”
Margaret Rose pushed back and forth several times then shook her head.
“Wouldn’t you like to have a house like that again? To live a place where you can ride the trolley into the square and stop into the confectioner’s shop for a hot chocolate or dish of ice cream?”
“Well, sure. But, Mama—”
“No more buts. You’re going to live with Aunt Rose, because I want that life for you.” She gave a lingering sigh. “If you get homesick and start missing me, I want you to remember one thing.”
“What’s that, Mama?”
“No matter how much you’re missing me, I’m missing you ten times more.”
Virgil also left home that year. He was 10, small in stature and relatively thin, but had the reasoning and sensibility of a grown man. Earlier in the year they’d gotten a letter from Ben Roland saying he was now married and living in Alabama, so Virgil took it on himself to write Ben Roland and ask if he could come and live with them.
Mama’s changed my name to Palmer, he wrote, and I’m looking to move someplace where folks don’t know I’m a Hobbs.
By then Eliza’s health had begun to deteriorate. The day he left she was feeling poorly and said she wasn’t going to be able to make it down to the train station and back.
“I’ll get Jeb to go with you,” she suggested, but Virgil shook his head, said he knew the way to the station, and didn’t need anybody to hold his hand.
Before she could argue the point, he took off walking down the hollow by himself. Mrs. Welby spotted him heading for the railroad station. Figuring a boy his size wouldn’t be traveling alone, she started telling people he’d run away.
Once Virgil was gone, only four of the children remained at home with Eliza: Louella, the eldest