Home and Away

by Rochelle Alers

Genres: African American; African American Historical; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Spanning more than eighty years, from Memphis in the 1930s and 1940s to present-day Chicago, this sweeping novel draws on the turbulent history of the Negro Baseball Leagues, as the great-granddaughter of a former player sets out to tell her family’s story—and redefine her own.

Harper Fleming is done with being passed over. As a journalist for a Chicago newspaper, she’s been refused a shot at the sportswriter position she longs for. And her on again/off again relationship is going nowhere. Leaving both behind, she heads to Nashville, Tennessee, where she plans to interview her widowed grandfather, Bernard Fleming, for a book about his father Kelton Fleming’s time in the Negro Baseball Leagues.

When Bernard reveals health issues within days of her arrival, Harper assumes responsibility for taking care of him. And when she mentions his father playing baseball in the Negro Leagues, Bernard gives her a trove of letters, journals, and clippings encompassing Kelton’s career. But some stories are too personal to print without dishonoring the memory of her great-grandmother. Instead, with Bernard’s approval, Harper begins weaving them into a novel, telling her great-grandfather’s story through the eyes of the fictional Moses Gillian.

Chapters flow effortlessly as Harper breathes life into each memory. Particularly intense are Kelton’s recollections of the Green Book, an annual guidebook that helped African Americans navigate the segregated South. Negro League teams relied on it as they traveled between games, hurrying out of unwelcoming towns before sundown to avoid the Klan.

As Harper delves into Kelton’s past, a piece of her own resurfaces in the form of Cheney, the childhood friend of her brothers’. And as Harper honors her great-grandfather’s life, she finds the inspiration to take her own in a bold new direction . . .

Release date: December 24, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

Leaning back in her chair, Harper Fleming closed her eyes as she attempted not to lose her temper. Her first impulse after meeting with the paper’s editor in chief was to tell him that he was a sanctimonious sonofabitch, and she hated his shit-eating grin as he tried to downplay the reason she’d been passed over as the sports reporter, for the second time in six years. She knew it had to be because she was a woman. In his narrow-minded opinion, she was perfect for covering local politics and social events for the biweekly. He didn’t have to say outright that female reporters were better suited to cover events in a ballroom rather than a men’s locker room, but nonetheless she got his message loud and clear.

Harper had lost track of the number of times she had chided herself for allowing herself to be lured away from a position with another newspaper to work for the biweekly because she’d felt obligated to support the Black-owned periodical. She had given the newspaper everything she had as a journalist, and for the editor it was never enough. Even when she had assisted the investigative reporter in uncovering the identity of the murderer of a social justice advocate, she received a measly pat on the head, as if she’d been an obedient puppy, while the editor continued to extol the brilliance of the other reporter at many of the staff meetings. Harper wouldn’t have felt so disappointed if her colleague had given her some credit, because the murderer wouldn’t have been apprehended without her assistance, but what followed was crickets from the egotistical coworker.

This is not to say she begrudged her colleagues whenever they broke a story, but Harper was tired of attending political meetings and covering the fundraisers for candidates vying for power in a city where politics have always been muddled.

“I know you’re disappointed, Harper, but—”

“I’m not disappointed,” she countered, cutting him off. “Right now, I couldn’t be more pleased with myself because I’m quitting. I’ve already been approved for vacation, so that means you have my two weeks’ notice. And to quote Edward R. Murrow’s sign-off, ‘Goodnight and good luck.’ ”

Pushing to her feet, Harper walked out of the office. The sound of heavy breathing from the paper’s editor followed her. Harper knew she had shocked him with her resignation, but she was beyond caring or worrying if he could get anyone to replace her. That was no longer her problem.

Enough was enough until it had become too much for her. What she didn’t want was to come into work angry and add to the ongoing hostile workplace environment. She was aware that many on staff were disgruntled about long-awaited raises, but for Harper it was a long-promised promotion. She’d begun cleaning out her desk several weeks ago. Somehow, she knew intuitively that she wasn’t going to be promoted, and the time had come for her to leave. Not only was her career on pause, but also her love life.

She’d been seeing the same man off and on for a year. The relationship was going nowhere because he claimed he didn’t believe in commitment. At first, this didn’t bother Harper, but now, at thirty-three, she had come to the realization that she’d given up a year of her life making herself available for him whenever he called. Earlier that morning she had deleted and blocked his number from her cell phone. Now that she was leaving the newspaper, he wouldn’t be able to contact her there.

Harper gathered her tote bag and walked out of the office for the last time, brimming with confidence. She took the elevator to the street, walking a block to her car in a nearby parking lot. Before starting up her car, she sent a text message to her father telling him she had quit her job and she’d talk to him later. Instead of driving to her apartment, she headed in the direction of her parents’ house in a Chicago suburb. She knew her father wouldn’t be home because, as a television baseball broadcaster for the Chicago White Sox, he followed the team for home and away games.

In the past she had spoken with Daniel Fleming at length about her frustration working at a dead-end job. He reminded her that she had options, but only if she decided to exercise them.

You’re so right, Dad, she thought, before starting up the SUV.

Tapping the screen on the dashboard, she activated the Bluetooth feature and her parents’ number. It rang twice before she heard her mother’s voice.

“Hi, Mom. Is it all right if I come over?”

“Of course. Is something wrong?”

Harper knew it was impossible to fool her mother. School clinical psychologist Martell Fleming claimed she knew more about her children than they did about themselves, so it was a waste of time to try and conceal things from her.

“Not tonight, Mom. In fact, everything is wonderful.”

“You quit your job.”

“How did you know?”

“Harper, honey, that’s all you’ve been talking about every time we get together. That one day you’re going to get up enough nerve to say I’m out.”

“I put in for a vacation, so that’s going to serve as my two-week notice.”

“Do you plan to look for a position with another newspaper?”

“Not right away. I need to get away and clear my head, so I’m going to call Grandpa Flem and ask if I can spend time with him this summer.”

“You know he’s going to love that.”

Harper smiled. “And I’m going to love seeing him again.” She had reconnected with her grandfather last Christmas when she, her parents, and her brothers and their families went to Tennessee to celebrate the holiday with Bernard Fleming. Two years ago, after burying his wife, he’d sold his house and moved to Nashville.

“Every time I call and ask how he is, Bernard tells me he’s doing well,” Martell said, “but I keep telling your father that at seventy-nine and soon to be eighty, the man shouldn’t be living alone.”

“He’s not as isolated as he was in Memphis,” Harper said in defense of her elderly grandfather. He had moved to a community where he quickly made friends with several neighbors.

Bernard and his wife, Nadine, a retired corrections officer and schoolteacher respectively, had taken over the small family farm that had belonged to his parents. It was where Harper and her brothers spent their summers gathering eggs from the chickens, feeding the hogs, and weeding fruit and vegetable gardens. She couldn’t wait for the end of the school year when she was able to leave Chicago for Memphis to run barefoot, pick berries, and help her grandmother prepare meals. Those days were branded in her memory like a permanent tattoo, a constant reminder that her childhood was as close to perfect as it could get.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t grown up privileged, because her father was a professional baseball player who’d signed a multimillion-dollar contract, which had afforded his family the luxury of living in an affluent Chicago suburb. She and her siblings had attended private schools, and subsequently enrolled in prestigious private colleges. Her mother worked as a clinical psychologist for a public school district and was also a partner in a private practice with a social worker whose clients were substance abusers.

Harper would have been willing to trade all the luxuries at home to live on what had been her great-grandparents’ farm in rural Tennessee near Memphis. She’d looked forward to waking up at dawn to the crowing of the rooster and walking barefoot in the wet grass before the sun rose high enough to dispel the dew. She also loved accompanying her grandmother to the garden to pick the fruits or vegetables for what she planned to cook for the day. Harper didn’t know why, but everything she ate seemed more delicious because it was home grown.

Now she planned to return to Tennessee, but not to the family farm near Memphis. Instead, she was going to visit a small community of retirees to spend time with Bernard Fleming, and hopefully relive her childhood. She loved listening to him reminisce about his father, who had played in the Negro Leagues. Kelton Fleming was good enough to play for Major League Baseball once Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, but a series of incidents had derailed his career, which resulted in him walking away from the game he had loved more than anyone or anything in his life.

“How long do you plan to stay in Nashville?” Martell asked Harper as they sat in the alcove of a spacious ultramodern kitchen.

She peered over the rim of the crystal water goblet, meeting her mother’s large, dark brown eyes. Martell, who had recently celebrated her fifty-eighth birthday, could easily pass for a woman at least ten years younger. She’d cut her hair shorter, worked out several days a week, and had modified her diet to include more lean meat, fruits, and vegetables. Harper’s father would repeat ad nauseam that it had only taken a single glance at his teammate’s cousin to know he wanted to marry her. After a whirlwind courtship lasting less than three months, Daniel Fletcher married Martell a week before the beginning of spring training.

Harper set the glass on a coaster. “I’m not sure. When I talk to Grandpa, occasionally he will mention something about his father playing in the Negro Leagues, and I can’t stop thinking about writing a book based on Kelton Fleming’s life as a Black baseball player before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier.”

“Would it be biographical?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to wait and see what he’s willing to tell me. There are times when I bring up the subject of his father playing baseball and he’ll just smile and nod. That’s when I suspect there are family secrets he would prefer remain hidden.”

Martell’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “I can’t imagine what would be so horrific about his father that he wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

Harper smiled. “We’ll just have to wait and see. If it’s that horrific, then it can’t be biographical. I don’t want to disclose something about Dad’s family that could taint his career as a sports commentator.” Her father, who had spent his entire baseball career playing for the Chicago White Sox, had become an analyst and then a commentator for the team following his retirement.

“Maybe you should let your father see what you’ve written, to get his approval.”

Harper shook her head. “That’s something I won’t do. If I’m going to write a book, then whatever is written will be between me, a book publisher, and editor.”

“What if it’s scandalous?”

“How scandalous, Mom?”

Martell lowered her eyes. “Adulterous affairs, secret babies, illegal abortions, and murder.”

Throwing back her head, Harper laughed with wild abandon. “You have to stop watching those true crime shows, Mom.” She sobered up when her mother glared at her. “I don’t know how much Grandpa knows about his mother and father, but if it’s anything salacious then I won’t include it. Better yet, I will write a fictional account and change names and places to conceal their identity.”

“That sounds better,” Martell agreed.

“It sounds better, because it won’t be about your family,” she said to Martell.

“We are not talking about my family, Harper. I know who my folks are and what they have done. This isn’t about me.”

Harper knew her mother was concerned that her social standing would take a hit if Harper were to uncover something about her husband’s family. Martell Fleming would never admit it, but she was a successful social climber and well-respected wife of a professional ballplayer who gave her a lifestyle she never could have imagined while growing up in a blue-collar factory town in Ohio known for having a double-digit unemployment rate after several factories closed or relocated following prolonged union strikes. She also wondered if Martell knew something about her husband’s family she did not want made public.

However, when it came to family secrets, Martell Fleming had enough to fill a dumpster. She claimed relatives with criminal records spanning decades, if not generations, and who had spent more time in prison in their lifetimes than on the outside. However, Martell had hit the proverbial jackpot when a distant cousin who played for the White Sox invited her to attend a game being played against the former Cleveland Indians, now known as the Guardians, and ended up catching the attention of third baseman Daniel Fleming.

“I’m going to call Grandpa when I get home to ask if I can come and stay with him for the summer.”

Martell smiled, the expression relaxing the lines of tension around her mouth. “You know he’s going to say yes.”

That was what Harper hoped for. It was early May and spending the rest of the summer months and, if necessary, beyond that in Nashville would come as a welcome change from being in Chicago, jobless and with no boyfriend.

Martell paused. “I know I’ll probably not see much of you this summer, so why don’t we go out to dinner at Lawry’s before you leave.”

Harper knew her mother didn’t like eating alone when her husband was out of town, and Martell had selected one of her favorite steakhouse restaurants. “We can do that tomorrow. I need to call Grandpa and let him know I’m coming down, then clean out my fridge, and forward my mail before I leave.” Pushing back her chair, she circled the table and kissed Martell’s cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She waited until she was in her apartment to call her grandfather. The phone rang three times before she heard, “Talk to me.”

Harper smiled when hearing his familiar greeting. “Hello, Grandpa. I’m calling to ask if I can come down and hang out with you for a while?”

“How long is a while, grandbaby girl?”

Harper felt tears prick the back of her eyelids whenever he called her that. “What about for the summer?”

A beat passed before Bernard said, “Aren’t you working?”

“Not anymore, Grandpa. I quit my job today.”

There came another pause. “What are you going to do?”

“Right now, nothing. I’m going to take the summer off and plan the next phase of my career. You know I’ve been talking about writing a book about your father when he played in the Negro Baseball Leagues. You said your father used to talk to you all the time about his life when he was a ballplayer.”

“Not only did my father talk incessantly about his days as a baseball player, he also wrote everything down. It’s taken me a while to unpack everything I had shipped from the farm. There was an old trunk filled with his notebooks and lots of my mother’s faded photos and handbills from the 1930s and ’40s.”

Harper felt a shiver of excitement sweep over her with this disclosure. Now she did not have to rely on her grandfather’s oral history, but written documentation. “How many, Grandpa?”

“A lot, Harper.”

“Have you read any of them?”

“Not really. What I did do was put them in chronological order.”

“Why didn’t you read them, Grandpa?”

“I didn’t want to relive the experience of my father going on and on about his ballplaying days. Those were the times when I’d just tune him out. It was as if he’d become so obsessed with the game that I suspected at one time it had taken over his whole life. Even my mother would whisper to me that she thought he was losing his mind whenever he picked up a bat and would begin swinging at an imaginary ball.”

Her grandfather did not want to revisit his father’s life on the page, but it was different for Harper. She’d read books and watched documentaries about the Negro Leagues and the stories of African American baseball, but to read an eyewitness account of the game was akin to having a genie grant her fervent wish.

“What condition are they in?” she asked.

“Surprisingly, they are in good condition. Some pages in the older ones have begun to turn yellow though. What saved them was that he wrapped them in oilcloth, and then in burlap before packing them away in the trunk.”

“Thank you, Grandpa, for not throwing them away.”

“Not to worry, grandbaby girl. I never would’ve thrown them away without telling you or Daniel. I also found your grandmom’s cast-iron frying pans. I know you were asking about them after she passed away.”

Harper had believed her grandmother’s fried chicken, pork chops, and cornbread were the best she’d ever eaten because of the cast-iron frying pans. When she and her family had gone to Nashville for Christmas it was only three months after Bernard had moved from Memphis, and several rooms were still filled with boxes he claimed he was going to take his time unpacking.

“Have you finished unboxing everything?”

A deep chuckle came through the earpiece. “Not yet. I still have a few more.”

“Leave them, Grandpa. We can open them together and then figure out what you want to keep or donate to charity.”

“That sounds good to me. When are you coming down?”

Harper thought about what she had to do to close her apartment for the next five months. “Wednesday.”

“Wednesday it is. It’s going to be like old times when you used to spend the summers at the farm, only this time there won’t be any animals.”

She noticed he’d mentioned animals and not his wife. Harper knew Bernard Fleming did not like talking about his late wife, because then he would lapse into a funk for days. He and Nadine had been married for more than fifty years and he’d claimed she was the love of his life.

“See you soon, Grandpa.”

“Okay.”

“Love you.”

“Love you more,” Bernard said.

Harper ended the call as she stared out her bedroom window. Her grandfather finding his father’s notebooks was like winning the Powerball. Whenever she opened someone’s journal or diary she’d become a voyeur, reading the innermost thoughts and desires of the writer.

She never knew her great-grandfather, but after reading the journals, there was no doubt she would discover who Kelton Fleming was.

Harper left Chicago at five o’clock in the morning, knowing it would take her more than seven hours to drive to Nashville, Tennessee. She planned to stop midway between the two cities in Columbus, Indiana, to eat, refuel, and stretch her legs. She’d called her grandfather the day before to tell him to expect her the following afternoon.

After stopping in Columbus, Indiana, for about forty minutes, she was back on the road, singing along to the tunes on her phone’s playlist. Harper smiled when she saw the highway sign indicating the number of miles to Nashville. Not only was she looking forward to reuniting with her grandfather, but also the city’s delicious Southern cuisine, featuring authentic soul food and barbecue.

Her phone rang and her father’s name appeared on the navigation screen. Tapping a button on the steering wheel, she activated the Bluetooth feature. “Hi, Dad.”

“Hi, yourself. I just got in from LA and I want to talk to you about you quitting your job.”

“Well, I finally did it.”

There came a pause before Daniel Fleming said, “Good for you. Now, if you want me to put in a word for you at some of the networks I—”

“No, Dad,” Harper said, interrupting him.

“I don’t want you to think of it as nepotism, Harper, because you have the—”

“Don’t say it, Dad,” she said, cutting him off again. She knew her father was going to say she had the chops to make it as a television sports analyst. All she had to do was apply to several sports networks. The instant she’d announce herself as the daughter of Hall of Famer third baseman Daniel Fleming, she would be viewed differently from other candidates vying for the same position. And if hired, she did not want to set herself up for resentment from those who believed if she wasn’t Daniel’s daughter, she wouldn’t have got the job.

“Okay, sweets, I won’t say it. Your mother said you’re going to take the summer off and stay with Dad.”

“I’m on my way to Nashville right now.”

“Do you need money to tide you over until you find another job?”

Harper blew out her breath, shaking her head. “No, Dad. I don’t need money.” She didn’t know why Daniel Fleming believed he had to be financially responsible for her. She’d graduated from college without having to apply for student loans, and she’d lived at home until getting a job and saving enough money to rent a studio apartment. She’d driven her mother’s older-model cars for years until she purchased the SUV to celebrate her thirtieth birthday three years ago.

Fiercely independent, Harper had learned to budget her earnings, saving ten percent of her take-home pay each month. As the beneficiary of her grandmother’s insurance policy she’d become even more financially secure.

“I was just asking.”

She smiled. “And I thank you for asking, but I’m good.”

“I’m going to ring off now because I’m beginning to feel the effects of jetlag.”

“Get some sleep, Dad. I’ll talk to you in a couple of days to let you know how Grandpa is doing.”

“I’m glad you’re going to stay with him. I stopped in to see him when I was in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago. Although he appeared thinner, he seemed to be feeling well.”

“Don’t worry about your father, Dad. I’ll take loving care of him.”

“Thanks, sweetie. Talk to you soon.”

Later, Dad.”

Harper tapped the button, ending the connection. Although she appreciated her father offering to give her money, she did not want to depend on her parents financially, which wouldn’t allow her to feel like an adult. As the youngest of three, and the only girl, she had to challenge her parents for independence; they raised her differently from their sons, who were permitted more freedom when it came to selecting out-of-state colleges, while her choices were limited to the state of Illinois. It hadn’t mattered how much she pleaded and begged, they wouldn’t give in, and that was when she vowed it would be the last time she’d permit her parents or anyone else to control her life.

She bypassed downtown Nashville and drove in the direction of a community populated mostly by retirees. Nine hours after leaving Chicago, Harper maneuvered into the driveway of a modest one-story ranch house and came to a stop behind her grandfather’s Ford Taurus. The front door opened before she could get out of her vehicle. Harper smiled when he came over to greet her. Bernard Fleming was the quintessential Southern gentleman, who believed it was incumbent upon men to take care of women. Harper wanted to tell him he was a dinosaur, because some of the men she dealt with were looking for a woman to take care of them.

Daniel Fleming was right about his father losing weight. It hadn’t been six months since Harper last saw her grandfather face-to-face, and he now appeared frail. Bernard, standing at an even six feet, had always been slender, but unlike most people who put on weight as they aged, it was the reverse for him, despite always having a hearty appetite.

I hope he isn’t sick. Harper shook her head as if to dispel the thought as she hugged her grandfather. “It’s so good seeing you again.”

Bernard Fleming smiled down at his granddaughter. He didn’t believe he would ever get over the shock that Harper looked so much like Nadine. In fact, she could’ve been his late wife’s clone. Harper was several inches taller than her petite paternal grandmother, but that was the only difference. She had inherited Nadine’s slender figure, round face, and flawless brown complexion with orange undertones that reminded him of autumn leaves. Her wide-set dark brown eyes were laughing even when she wasn’t.

He kissed her cheek. “That goes double for me. I know you must be tired from all that driving, so come into the house and rest yourself.”

Harper eased out of his embrace. “I just need to get my bags.”

Bernard nodded. “I’ll help you with that,” he said when Harper pressed a button on her car’s fob to open the hatch. Walking to the rear of the SUV, he removed the wheeled Pullman and waited for Harper to take out another smaller wheeled monogrammed leather case he knew contained her laptop. He smiled. It was the last gift Nadine had given her granddaughter before her passing.

“Even though the calendar says it’s still spring, it definitely feels like summer down here,” Harper remarked as she closed the hatch.

Bernard nodded again. “Even though folks keep talking about global warming, there are those who claim they’re just talking out the side of their necks. It was the same back in the day when Noah warned folks to stop sinning because a flood was coming.”

“For most folks seeing is believing, Grandpa.”

“Sure, you right,” he said under his breath.

Harper laughed. “It’s funny that I don’t remember some of the colloquialisms germane to the South until I stay here a while.”

“Like y’all for you all?”

“Not so much y’all because I tend to say it, too.”

“That’s because your daddy was raised down here and I always say you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.”

“That’s what makes him so popular to millions of baseball fans because he intersperses Southern colloquialisms into the game commentary.”

“Your father grew up listening to Yankee games play-by-play with Mel Allen’s catchphrases. He used to say that if he couldn’t play baseball, then he wanted to become a commentator.”

“He was lucky because he realized both of his dreams.”

“That he did,” Bernard said, smiling. His son had become a professional baseball player and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, something that wasn’t possible for Kelton Fleming because of his race and the times. Daniel was a baseball phenom, and his agent had negotiated his last ten-year contract with deferred payments spread over twenty-five years.

Things were different for Bernard’s son when compared to his father. There were times when Bernard had tended to tune Kelton out whenever he reminisced about his time playing in the Negro Leagues. Now that Harper wanted to write about those glory days when Black men played the game, often better than their White counterparts, Bernard knew even though his father was no longer alive, his story would be told accurately by his great-granddaughter.

It wasn’t until after Kelton’s passing that Bernard found a letter addressed to him about his notebooks. Kelton had indicated he wanted his son to read them because there were things he wanted him to know about his time when he played the game, but Bernard did not want to relive the stories he’d heard over and over again. He’d almost forgotten about them until he sold the farm and moved everything to Nashville. When he opened the trunk, it was as if it was a portal to the past—a past Harper would bring into the future.

He held open the screen door for Harper. “Are you hungry?”

She smiled at him over her shoulder. “No. I stopped to eat something. I’d like to wait a few hours before I take you out to dinner.”

Bernard set the Pullman next to the table in the entryway. “I have to watch what I eat, because the last time I had a checkup my blood pressure was a little high.”

“How high is high, Grandpa?”

“I forget the numbers, but I knew something was wrong when I’d get lightheaded and had to sit or fall down.”

Harper met her grandfather’s eyes, wondering if there was something else going on with him other than hypertension. “Are you taking medication?”

Bernard ran a hand over his cropped white hair. “Yes. And I’m also on a strict diet because my cholesterol is also little high.”

She wanted to ask him how his health had deteriorated so quickly when six months ago he’d announced that he passed his medical checkup with flying colors. “You’re going to have to let me know what you can or cannot eat.”

Bernard’s snow-white bushy eyebrows lifted. “You’re going to cook for me?”

Harper gave him an incredulous stare. “Of course. Did you expect me to order takeout?”

A sheepish expression flitted over Bernard’s features. “I only asked because there is someone who cooks for me.”

“Who, Grandpa?”

“A lady friend.”

“You have a lady friend?”

“Yes. She’s a widow who lives across the street.”

Harper paused as she carefully thought about what she wanted to say. She didn’t want to interfere in her grandfather’s personal life. She didn’t want him to resent her, but she felt it incumbent to assume some responsibility for his well-being. “You can tell your lady friend that your granddaughter will prepare your meals while she’s here.”

A beat passed before Bernard said, “Okay. I’ll tell her.”

“Good. Now I’m going to take my thing. . .