The Bean Trees Chapter 1 Summary

The One to Get Away

• The story starts with Taylor recounting her youth and adolescence in Pittman County, Kentucky. Sounds glamorous, right?
• Wrong. At least according to Taylor. Keep in mind that when she was growing up, she was called Marietta, or "Missy." Not so glam, in her mind.
• Taylor explains that a formative moment in her young life was the time she saw Newt Hardbine's father get blown over the Standard Oil sign by an exploding tractor tire (1.1). Yup, pretty violent. And she's not about to forget it anytime soon.
• Taylor describes other bits and pieces of her childhood and moves her story pretty rapidly through the years. But when it comes to Marietta's last years of high school, our re-named narrator slows things down.
• Taylor recounts the arrival of Mr. Hughes Walter, the high-school science teacher who changes her life. Yes, for the better.
• Hugh Walter's recommendation gets Marietta a job at the Pittman County Hospital, "one of the most important and cleanest places for about a hundred miles" (1.13). Sounds like Kentucky's the place to be.
• After about a week of work, Marietta witnesses a bloody scene at the hospital. A young couple from the county—Newt Hardbine and Jolene Shanks—are wheeled in. Jolene is pale and covered in blood, and has been shot. Newt is dead.
• Yup, that's the same Newt whose father she saw get similarly bloody years back. That is one unlucky family.
• But this isn't some run-o'-the-mill tractor accident like with Newt's pop. Instead, this event gives Marietta her first glimpse of the terrible fallout of domestic violence. The story isn't entirely clear, but Newt seems to have shot Jolene, then shot himself.
• Taylor explains that her first thought was that she would go home and tell her Mama that she was going to quit her job.
• But, by the time both she and her Mama get home, she's calmed down, and is feeling more determined to keep up with the job.
• At this point, Taylor's narrative skips ahead. Looks like about five and a half years later.
• So. Marietta has been working at the hospital all this time, helping "Mama out with the rent and the bills" (1.48), and putting the rest of her pay aside.
• Now that she has enough money saved up, she buys herself a car: "a '55 Volkswagen bug with no windows to speak of, and no back seat and no starter" (1.48). But hey: it runs!
• As Taylor says, "[i]n this car I intended to drive out of Pittman County one day and never look back, except maybe for Mama" (1.48).
• After convincing her Mama that she'll be able to handle any trouble that her beat-up old bug will give her, Marietta hits the road. Byyee!
• As soon as she starts down the highway, Marietta decides: hey, she's changing everything else, so why not change her name, too?
• Go get 'em, tiger.
• She wants the decision to have a bit of fate, destiny, or chance involved, so she figures she'll "let the gas tank decide" (1.54).
• When the tank runs dry in Taylorville, Illinois, Marietta renames herself Taylor Greer.
• Boom! Done.
• As Taylor continues west, her first sight of the Great Plain fills her with "despair" (1.58). As she says, "I had never imagined that any part of a round earth could be so flat" (1.58).
• Driving through Oklahoma makes Taylor feel like there is "nothing left to hope for" (1.58). Not the greatest Travelocity ad, we'll admit.
• Unhappily for her, Oklahoma is where her car finally gives out. Luckily, she finds a service station "in the middle of a great emptiness that according to the road signs was owned by the Cherokee tribe" (1.59).
• Taylor explains that she and her Mama have Cherokee heritage: one of her mother's grandfathers was a Cherokee from Tennessee. She recalls how her Mama used to joke that if things ever got really tough for them in Kentucky, they could always go and live on the lands of the Cherokee Nation (1.66).
• Which is at least sort of foreshadowing.
• Night has fallen by the time her car is fixed, and Taylor is eager to get on her way. But, she doesn't "want to begin a night of driving without a cup of coffee and something to eat" (1.64). Hey, who could blame her.
• Across from the service station is a building with "a neon Budweiser light in the window" (1.64), and so, ever the logical lady, she drives the car over there.
• Inside the bar, Taylor drinks a cup of coffee and waits for her 99-cent burger to arrive. The place is nearly empty, but there are two men at the counter, and one woman "sitting at one of the tables near the back" (1.85). That's it.
• One of the men is Native, and the other is white. Taylor thinks that the white guy looks "like he had a mean streak to him," and seems like "the kind that's looking for trouble" (1.78).
• Taylor notices that the woman in the back often looks over "at the two men, or maybe just one of them (1.85). She says: "[t]he way she looked at them made me feel like if I had better sense I'd be scared" (1.85). Did we already say about foreshadowing?
• But she avoids the meanies, and after she eats, Taylor leaves the bar and gets back into her car. She's still working up the energy to give it a push start when the woman from the bar comes up and taps on her windshield.
• To Taylor's surprise, the woman lifts a small child out from under the blanket she has wrapped around her. After wrapping the blanket around the child, she sets the living bundle onto Taylor's passenger seat, and tells Taylor to take the child.
• Yes, this is that moment when we are very grateful this is fiction and not our lives.
• So Taylor objects, but the woman won't take no for an answer. She tells Taylor that the child is her sister's, and that her sister is dead. How could that not start up the tear ducts? She says no one will come looking for the child, and that no one "that matters"—like the police or hospitals—even knows that the child exists (1.105).
• Before Taylor can say or do more, the woman walks away and gets into a pickup with one of the men from the bar. It's dark by then, and Taylor can't tell which man it was. We're hoping it was the one who looked slightly less mean.
• While she's trying to decide what to do, the lights in the bar go out, and another pickup truck drives away. Left with the child, Taylor decides to find somewhere to sleep. What else can she do?
• Taylor drives and scopes out motels until she comes to the Broken Arrow Motor Lodge, where she sees a gray-haired woman in the office window. Hoping that she'll be able to inspire the old woman's sympathy, she asks if she can exchange some help with the housekeeping for a room.
• The woman agrees. At least that's one stroke o' luck.
• Once Taylor gets her things settled in the room, she runs water for a bath so that she can get the child out of its sopping, wetted clothes.
• Gross. But hey, Taylor's a nice lady.
• When Taylor undresses the child, she's horrified to discover large bruises, "and worse" (1.149). The little girl has severe injuries that have clearly been caused by sexual abuse.
• Taylor is so overcome by emotion and anger, she has to fight not to throw up. And hey, we can't really blame her. That's not what you want to see when you're expecting a nice round of "rubber ducky, you're the one."
• Once Taylor recovers, she finishes bathing the child, and gets her dressed for bed.
• Once the child is asleep, Taylor makes a final decision to keep her. Well, someone's got to keep her safe, even if it's a young lady who doesn't know the first thing about mothering.