The Salt Fields

by Stacy D. Flood

  In the end, she was right. It was a fascination I fought against and hated myself for, but it was there.

  With her fangs in the jugular, Lanah couldn’t resist biting. “Tell me, what would you do if you had me?”

  “I’ve only known you for a day.”

  “But you know me.”

  “Barely.”

  “People aren’t that complicated, really. If you pay attention, they tell you what they want you to know, and you can figure out the rest.” She sighed. “Certainly a man like you doesn’t lack imagination.”

  I changed the subject. “Do you and Divinion have any children?”

  “That’s a stupid question. Do you see any children with us?”

  “I thought you might have sent them ahead, or left them behind. People do that sometimes.” A bumblebee lit on the edge of my glass of lemonade but flew away before I had a chance to wave it off. Lanah was silent for awhile. I saw this as a chance to get the advantage, to be the mouse that had a chance to scurry away before the cat pounced again. “Have you and he discussed children?”

  “Children slow you down. Like pets.”

  “But it must be particularly worthwhile with someone so...appealing.” I smirked, then we both began laughing. “I’m sorry. That was clumsy.”

  “Do you have children?” she asked.

  “No,” I answered, perhaps a little too quickly.

  “Then I assume we have the same opinion on the subject.” I took a long drink from my lemonade to let her impression cement itself. “History slows you down, too. I’m one for looking forward.” She squinted as she surveyed the street again. “The South is rancid, dying. Decay or travel: we leave it one way or the other. I’m one for going as far as I can as fast as I can.”

  “Then why not the other side of the world? Asia?”

  “Maybe someday. For right now I want to be interesting, not a novelty. Hey, you should travel with me.”

  “As what? Entertainment?”

  “Believe it or not, you’re interesting.” She dabbed her lips with her napkin. “And if you can turn around your melancholy, then maybe you’ll be worth something.” She motioned for the check. “Think about it. We have a few more hours to decide the rest of our lives.”

  * * *

  On the way back to the station Lanah took my arm. From the porches of the white clapboard houses people stared at us as if we were important, and I felt exquisite simply through proximity. Bees floated from one low flower to the next, languid in the heat and the faded colors of the bright day.

  “I want to buy a magazine,” Lanah said.

  “There’s probably one in the corner store.”

  “Not one I’d be interested in.”

  She wasn’t in any rush. I had to shorten my pace to walk so slowly beside her. While sucking on one of the remaining slices of sugared lemon from our drinks, Lanah told me about all the clouds I might have missed on the journey so far—the shapes and configurations and what each one resembled as it disappeared into the distance. She seemed to take joy in every inch of the South we left behind us, and once we were back at the station, while Divinion, Carvall, and other travelers crowded around a radio to hear sports scores and the news of the day, she ignored them all and spoke to me solely—in a full voice, ignoring sideways glances from those straining to hear wispy sentences from a distant announcer. She talked more about her future and what she envisioned for herself. Every so often she touched my arm for emphasis.

  I was hers. She had my full attention, and used it, and only once did she speak about her past again, about the alfalfa and mulberries on her grandfather’s land. That land, that farm, and that history were miles in the opposite direction of where she was headed, and she seemed content to be expanding the distance even more despite her detached appreciation of past beauties. When she was finished with the lemon rind, she threw it to a colony of ants huddled on the floorboards, and they immediately swarmed as if it were ambrosia.

  * * *

  Back on the train I noticed that, unlike before, Carvall and Divinion weren’t speaking to each other. Lanah didn’t seem to care why; she simply handed a catfish sandwich over to Divinion, who tore into it. Carvall’s haircut was nice, and Divinion looked at it with pride as he ate. I asked Carvall to change seats with me, in order to be closer to the window, to watch the clouds and keep attention away from how often I stole glances at Lanah or inhaled deeply to collect a moment of her perfume amidst the constant smell of ash and dust. Later that afternoon, I watched the horizon as a wide field of cotton approached; once upon us, it lasted for miles, a sea of white unbroken by any figure or frame, not a single picker making their daily sixty cents nor a machine to break the vast calm. It was how I’d always envisioned snow.

  “Salt,” I said, inadvertently aloud.

  Divinion laughed. “Shit, the only Carolina salt I know is cotton.”

  Carvall shook his head. “Oh, there’s salt all over Carolina, salt from tears and blood and the dead. It’s in every riverbed and blade of grass.”

  “Why in tarnation would I want to see that?”

  “Can’t see it anywhere else.”

  “Man, you can see that everywhere.”

  “Not like this.” Carvall began looking out the window as intently as I was. “The whole South ain’t nothing but a scar with some salt on it.”

  But to me, regardless of what they said, the field was salt and sugar and snow reflecting up to heaven.

  The clouds thinned as we traveled farther. Each of us again took turns sleeping through the jolts of the train and the heat, as if each of us felt responsible for the others’ belongings and well-being. I stayed awake from pure excitement, thinking of a possible future with Lanah and hoping the train would pass the ocean or any waters deeper than I’d seen. I watched bars of sunlight—peach through a swift cloud, then again blistering white—cross the train car. Near my foot there was a bluebottle enjoying a crystal of sugar or salt, then a morsel of white bread Divinion had dropped from his sandwich. A couple of times I tried to step on it, but it would escape. Yet always return.

  On my last attempt Divinion asked, before I even knew he was awake, “You trying to step on that fly?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You trying to kill that fly?”

  “I was just...”

  “My daddy is great at killing flies. You should meet him. People think the secret to killing flies is speed. No, sir. You ain’t gonna be faster than those flies. They can sense the change in the air around them and slip away. What you need to do, see, is ease up on them. Go slow. So slow that they see or feel you coming, but they don’t see you as a threat. They think your shadow is just the night, and your hand something ready to pass them by. That’s when you strike. That’s how you kill flies.”

  He smiled at me as the train jolted into the next stop, which seemed to ease Lanah and Carvall awake. Divinion kissed Lanah on the forehead, which she casually accepted.

  “We’re almost there, honey,” he told her.

  “Not really,” I said, seizing my chance to correct him. “We have a few more hours. We probably won’t even get to DC until—”

  “That’s not what he’s talking about,” Lanah interrupted.

  “DC? Who gives a shit about DC?” Divinion asked. We could hear another transistor radio on the platform, and everyone inside the car strained to listen to the broadcast, first Cuban rhythms, then some news story or baseball game: evidence that the world around us still existed so far north and so tall in the day.

  “I heard you can get good Cuban food in DC,” said Lanah.

  “Cuban food? What you know about Cuban food?”

  “You don’t know what I know.” There was fire in Lanah’s reply, and all of us felt it.

  “We may change cars there,” said Carvall. “No more of this segregation.”

&nbs
p; “Man, this is America. There will always be segregation.” Divinion shifted in the seat. “I’m keeping my Black ass right here. DC ain’t no capital of mine.”

  “What did I tell you. Always scared.” Lanah bowed her head.

  “At the interchanges they have those smooth rocks, about the size of my thumb.” After holding up his finger to demonstrate, Divinion flattened the morsel of white bread with his foot. “Those rocks are the perfect size to throw at people. Put it in a sling and kill someone like the story of David and Goliath.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” Carvall said.

  “You watch. There are plenty of ways to kill us. You watch.”

  Divinion glared at us. I looked away. Through the window opposite ours there were the ragged tents of those who picked the fields, some no doubt hoping to jump on one of the trains in the middle of the night, then to hold on with all of their strength until they reached what they thought freedom was supposed to be.

  We left without them, the train lurching into the swelter beyond.

  * * *

  Farther along I watched the swaying of marigolds, then brown grass—shining golden at times in the late daylight—and tried to find a rhythm to the wind’s movement. Far across the field there was a bottle tree, strewn with sculpted glass like what my grandmother would hand out in the middle of the night. I pressed my hand to the window hoping to see some of the reflections of green and brown glass in my palm, but I was too far away. Miles passed like empty breaths. Farther north there was a sky the color of late summer pale, then diluted blood, then roses, then flames.

  In my daydreaming I lost part of Lanah and Divinion’s conversation until it was directed towards Carvall and me.

  “I’ll tell you what, then,” Divinion was saying. “Let’s get off the train.”

  Carvall stared. “Get off the train.”

  “What I said. Let’s get off the train.”

  Lanah stretched her slender fingers and turned to the window.

  Divinion looked to me. “You and me, then.”

  “What?” I answered. I didn’t want to let on how distant my mind was. “I’m not sure...”

  Lanah’s silence caught my attention as she focused intently on something beyond the window. Everything out there was far away. She bowed her head, as if whatever she had just witnessed was gone, or maybe just an illusion.

  “Come on. Come meet my daddy,” Divinion implored. “I can’t travel all this way without saying hello. Come meet my family. They like new company.” He flashed his brightest smile and, predicting my objection, added: “You’re wearing a tie,” as if it were the first time he’d noticed.

  “But the train...”

  “I know this stop. It’s a long one. We’ve got three, four hours before we depart, right, honey?” He patted Lanah’s leg. She didn’t respond. “Besides, you can help me carry some food back for these two.”

  It was raining at the station when the train arrived; jagged streaks of tears across the windows cut into the soot. I watched a few droplets merge, then float away. I waited for thunder, but none came.

  “When it rains I think it’s my ancestors spitting down on me. I don’t like going out in the rain,” Divinion said. At first I thought he was rescinding his invitation. But by the time he and I stepped onto the platform, the rain had stopped, the cigarette-ash clouds had moved eastward, and everything stained dark by the storm seemed to dry instantly.

  Black and white passengers wordlessly passed each other, as if each had a place and purpose, and in the humidity the station smelled like lye and old bleach: a place trying to be cleansed, or erased. As we approached a phone booth at the end of the station, Divinion took a nickel from his pocket, asked me for another, and simultaneously flipped each in the air, watching them spin before clenching them in his fists. He turned to me, arms outstretched, fists closed—searching my face, I’m still convinced, for fear or surprise or admiration of his parlor trick.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said as he turned his fists palms upward. “If both of these coins are on the same side, heads or tails, we drop them in that phone over there and call my brother-in-law to come pick us up. If they are on different sides, we walk.”

  I looked at the wall planks behind him, each a different faded color.

  At that moment I realized how much he believed in luck and chance, the fluidity and power of each. Maybe that was his secret for attracting the type of woman I was already enchanted by: adventurous and bold, yet always weighing risk and reward. This journey to his family’s home might provide some answers. In addition, I wondered if refusing Divinion’s offer and staying on the train would arouse suspicions regarding my interest in Lanah. Maybe this was his test. Joining him, I reasoned, would solve two problems.

  I looked at his fists, still hiding the coins. “Why are we choosing at all?”

  “We aren’t choosing. We’re letting the Lord do it for us.”

  I waited. “Am I supposed to guess?”

  “No, we just leave it up to Providence.” His smile widened. “Deal?”

  When I nodded, he opened his hands as if presenting me with a gift. Then he shoved the mismatched coins, and his hands, into his pockets and started walking up the road.

  Before long, Divinion seemed even more exhausted by the walk than I; neither of us was wearing the right footwear for anything more than pacing up and down the length of a train car, and as we followed the road, avoiding the puddles that remained from the earlier shower, specks of mud collected on the tops of our shoes. We felt each stone beneath our soles.

  Our shadows lengthened as we moved. Clouds of insects amassed over the fields and in perfect, hovering spheres alongside the cattails and sedges and dry ferns at the road’s edges. Up ahead, beyond a line of trees, the road dipped into a valley flush with the smell of honey locusts and the call of distant birds. I could hear a river nearby—uncertain, thick waters rushing over stone, tumbling through the knotted roots of trees and emerging like claws.

  “People say there are alligators and stray dogs out here,” Divinion said, tipping the brim of his fedora as if to acknowledge each. “But I always say that if there’s the first there surely can’t be the second.”

  I looked back towards the station. “Are you sure Lanah didn’t want to come with us?”

  “My family can’t stand Lanah. Never could.” He wiped his brow. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you why.”

  I thought this was when he would slide into asking me what Lanah and I talked about at lunch, and that this was also my chance to punish her confidence in me and prove her wrong: prove I am worth something, something dangerous.

  “She can come across the wrong way sometimes,” he said. “It’s just her way. My family has never liked it.”

  “She...”

  “She’s a good person,” he continued. “But she can seem kind of uppity.” He waited for me to reply, but I only stared at the road ahead of us. “Like Lanah thinks she has some family overseas. All she has is some postcard from her white grandmother with a faded stamp from some country she knows nothing about.” He rubbed his shoulders. “She don’t mean no harm, though. I want you to know that.”

  * * *

  Above the tops of trees the sky was albumin, almost cellophane, which darkened the leaves against it to black. Although the sky was crisp, there was still moisture in the air. We heard bits of a voice yelling from a distance, and Divinion laughed.

  I started to ask, “How much farther—”

  “Ain’t no rain!” he yelled back at the voice. “Took us no time at all!”

  There was more yelling over the rustle of leaves and insects, and Divinion’s pace quickened. He was home.

  After a few more steps the road opened to an enormous meadow with a large colonial home, freshly painted, and thick orchards behind it, the trees perfectly aligned. This vision ma
de me stop short, enraptured. It was so far from the hardscrabble world I’d envisioned as Divinion’s past and assumed to be all of ours. The front lawn was perfectly emerald and manicured, tiny beige grasshoppers leaping from blade to blade as we approached. As we moved closer the house expanded in my vision, its alchemy only broken by the sounds of a few grey squirrels in the nearby oak trees.

  “It’s...” I began. I tried to find the words to tell Divinion how magnificent this was, but he was focused on capturing other words in the breeze. Once we were on the gravel pathway, a wide, oak-stained, porch opened before us, and after a short run up its three steps, Divinion wrapped his arms around someone whose face I couldn’t see; the two of them laughed as they hugged and he spun her around. I lingered behind, inhaling everything I never thought possible.

  “Fine, fine,” Divinion was saying as I ascended the steps myself. Then I was met with names, new faces, and outstretched hands. Divinion leaned over a small figure in a rocking chair, draped in a shawl. “This here is Minister,” he announced, almost proudly.

  “Oh!” the older lady exclaimed. “You brought a minister by to see us!”

  “No, Mama. His name is Minister,” Divinion said.

  The woman tried to not appear perplexed.

  “Minister Peters,” I replied to release the tension, as if my last name would offer some sort of explanation.

  “Well, that just means you must be extra holy,” she answered. Divinion laughed. “You hungry?”

  Before I could finish saying “Yes, ma’am”—more from politeness than the need for nourishment—Divinion said: “Are you kidding? You should watch this boy eat,” and then he was leading me through the rickety screen door and into a living room with high ceilings of dark oak. It appeared to be a plantation house reclaimed, filled with dark faces, the eyes of each person sparkling as they looked at me. Each smile was genuine, and each handshake welcomed me as if I were a prodigal son returning. I met aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, matriarchs, patriarchs, and children with perfect white teeth who led me through the various rooms upstairs—some with well-made four-post beds that had beautifully embroidered quilts over clean linen—and pointed out the pictures, in gilded or silver frames, of those family members who weren’t there. I looked for photographs of Lanah or a younger Divinion, but I was playfully whisked past them all so quickly that I couldn’t recognize anyone.