Authors: Bernice McFadden
This Bitter Earth
Table of Contents
Part One - Bigelow Winter 1955
Part Two - Once and Again... St. Louis-1965
More Praise for
This Bitter Earth
...
“Resonates with the mythic patterns of an epic poem, complete with lyrical language and an omniscient narrator. The threads of the story dovetail into an engrossing finale. McFadden uses dialogue—and words left unspoken—to sharpen focus of every emotion and to paint her characters as distinctly as if on canvas.”
—Houston Chronicle
“Fans of novelist Bernice L. McFadden will delight in her third novel.”—
Essence
magazine
“Beautifully written ... McFadden has created an ambitious and dramatic story ... The author’s engaging, rich, and wickedly damaged characters breathe life into this complex tale.”
—Black Issues Book Review
“McFadden has a real talent for storytelling ...
This Bitter Earth
is a real page-turner and sure to earn scores of new fans.”
—The Baltimore Times
“McFadden isn’t afraid to use her writing to paint vivid but disturbing pictures and capture raw situations.
This Bitter Earth
is a masterfully written and unsettling song.”
—The Dallas Morning News
Bernice L. McFadden is the author of the national bestsellers
Sugar
and
The Warmest December
(both available from Plume). Her fourth novel,
Loving Donovan,
will be available from Dutton in February 2003. Bernice was recently awarded the Zora Neale Hurston Society Award. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she was born and raised.
The Warmest December...
“Searing and expertly imagined.”—Toni Morrison
“McFadden knows how to tell a story with insight and clarity ... I couldn’t put it down.”—Tamara Henry,
USA Today
“Riveting.”—
Essence
magazine
“Written with such great eloquence,
The Warmest December
is clearly one of the best books I have ever read.”
—Kimberla Lawson Roby, author of
Casting the First Stone
Sugar
...
“One of the most compelling and thought-provoking novels I’ve read in years.”—Terry McMillan
“Sugar
sings with unforgettable images, unique characters, and a moving story line. A haunting story that keeps the pages turning until the end.”—
Ebony
“Strong and folksy storytelling ... Think Zora Neale Hurston ...
Sugar
speaks of what is real.”—
The Dallas Morning News
“Vivid.”—
The New York Times
“A stunning tale of love and loss ... Bernice L. McFadden erupts on the scene with a literary explosion [and] reveals amazing talent and promise.”—
The Chicago Defender
PLUME
Published by Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Previously published in a Dutton edition.
First Plume Printing, January 2003
Copyright © Bernice L. McFadden, 2002
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows:
McFadden, Bernice L.
This bitter earth : a novel / Bernice L. McFadden.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-15390-1
PS3563.C3622 T48 2002
813’.54—dc21
2001051141
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For
R‘yane Azsa Waterton
Shania Simon
Myles & Jaron McFadden
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank my higher power, my guides and spirits, my parents, family, friends and readers.
Much respect and appreciation to all of the wonderful authors who have acknowledged my work and supported my efforts.
To my editor, Laurie Chittenden; my agent, James Vines; and my publicist, Kathleen Matthews-Schmidt, my sincere gratitude.
To Gloria Hardy, who found the house that Sugar bought. Desmond Waterton, for his hard work and emotional support, and Crystal and Walston Bobb-Semple of Brownstone Books and The Parlor Floor in Brooklyn, whose words and brownstone wisdom helped me through the early stages of turning my house into a home.
A special acknowledgment to childhood friends Annette Mckinnon-Barno and June Prince—here’s to thirty years of friendship!
Blessings.
“... for
she does not know
the path to life. She staggers
down a crooked trail and doesn’t
even realize where it leads.”
Proverbs 5:3-14
Prologue
Bigelow, Arkansas
June 1, 1965
THERE was the sound of a shotgun being cocked and then the snapping of twigs echoed through the field and rose above the screaming whistle of the northbound #2276.
The sun had dropped from the sky hours earlier, leaving the moon dressed in a red ring.
There should have been dogs out that night. White people would have used dogs to trap something that offensive, no matter that the smell of blood was strong enough for any human—black or white—to follow.
Even without the smell of blood, the tiny beads that sparkled like scarlet raindrops on the green leaves of the chrysanthemums that grew under the living room window of #9 Grove Street would have given it all away, that and the streaks of crimson on the corn husks that were a week from harvesting.
The blood left a clear trail for any human to follow and so the dogs would not be needed, but the sight of the gun and the heavy black boots had agitated them, sending them in circles inside their pen, their noses close to the ground, snorting and sneezing and nipping at one another’s hind legs until they raised their heads and began trumpeting the moon.
When the truck pulled out without them, the headlights catching the brown of their eyes for a moment before slicing through the darkness, the hounds howled their disappointment and began to take turns digging up the loose dirt where the chicken wire went four inches deep, instead of ten.
He left the truck and set out on foot.
He stroked the wooden butt of the gun, running the tip of his index finger over the sixteen nicks that he’d carved into the light pinewood over the years. Sixteen bullets, sixteen shots, sixteen kills, sixteen nicks.
He studied the bloody post that marked the entrance to the Hale property while he decided whether a nick would be appropriate. His mind made up, he patted the left pocket of his pants to make sure his hunting knife was there.
There were six others in the field that night, one barefoot, one on the edge of madness, another that walked bent over and bleeding, two burdened with memories and one clutching the small piece of paper that held the truth.
He was number seven. Number seven, the luckiest of numbers; the thought made him smile.
He held back, leaving half a mile between himself and the other six. They needn’t know he was there. Them knowing would only interfere with what he needed to do, what the blackbirds had proph esized twenty-five years earlier.
He moved slowly, his ears keen to the sounds of the night, his eyes acute in the blue darkness. He stopped to examine the cornstalks. He knew by the way the plants leaned lopsided like a tired woman instead of bending over like a beaten man that the other had moved through the field slowly and cautiously.
He lifted his gun and brought the long black metal to rest in the crook of his neck. He liked the way the iron felt against his skin; it was cooling and it calmed the clamorous rhythm of his heart.
He was entitled to a little anxiety. He’d been patient for a long time, too long. And now the universe had fixed it so that he could put to rest this evil.
God is good all of the time,
he thought as he stepped from the moonlit field and into the heavy darkness of the woods.