I opened the lunch tin once more. The napkin stirred and billowed until the tin couldn’t hold it any longer. When it reached the top it escaped into the air, danced on the wind, and flew beyond my grasp. I had to squint to see it light upon a yellow flower, then lift and float anew into the clear dark.
I thought of my grandmother and loss. Then I let the tin slip from my hands. It bounced onto the wooden slats between the tracks, end over end, as though running away. Then it stopped, and we kept moving. As I turned to go back to my seat, the wind caught my grandmother’s quilt and tore it from my shoulders. I grabbed for it frantically, but soon it was beyond my reach as well—blowing along the tracks, into the distance, draping the past.
It was hotter than I’d thought it would be this far north or this late in the night, with the tang of soot and metal thick on the breeze. In the field beyond the train, a white tent glowed, illuminating wildflowers and clouds of gnats; I could hear shouts and drums and organs as the revival played into the moonlight. The preacher was a growl into metal and ether, and the tent—now a temple, the dirt beneath it consecrated and sanctified by the faithful—shook with bodies convulsing, swaying, and saved. There was singing and the screams of those moved by God—some like pain, some like ecstasy—as the pearl canvas rippled against glowing grass. I thought about all I was leaving, the tiny shards and slivers and jetsam of myself far behind along the tracks. Though the worshippers were obscured by the radiant tent, I saw each one of their faces, like those in the train, and thought I knew them all.
I returned to my seat and waited for the rest of the car to stir, leaving everyone unaware that the train was now a little lighter, a little faster, and a little closer to our destiny than they imagined, now that the weight of my history was behind us. For all the bodies surrounding me, their breathing constant in my ears, I felt alone. The children were quiet, and few babies cried. From time to time conversations bloomed, but whatever tatters I could catch sounded scratched, broken, less than whispers.
* * *
Late-night stops were few. As long as the train stayed in motion, the night air through the open windows kept it cool; whenever it stopped, humidity blanketed us instead. I don’t know what time it was when I woke to that dampness and the porters and engineers once again walking alongside the train, this time carrying lanterns and grimacing.
Jolted awake, Divinion whipped his head back and forth. “Yeah, this is the spot. This is the place.” He pointed to a lone telephone pole in the distance that glowed with auburn light. “Look, there’s that crooked telephone pole the man was telling us about.”
“You know how many crooked poles there are in—” Carvall began.
Divinion interrupted. “Nah, I can feel it. We’ve got to be in Virginia. I can smell it in the night dew.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Damn right I am. But this is the stop. I can hear the music from here.”
I could not hear music or sense whatever tiny vibrations he seemed attuned to in the festering air. From the looks of it, Carvall couldn’t either.
“We have to go,” said Divinion.
“We don’t have to go anywhere,” replied Carvall.
“We promised the man. You sat right there in that barber’s chair and told him—”
“I know what I told him.”
“Well, c’mon, then.”
“Even when I said it I had no intention of going.”
“So you lied, then. You lied to that old man.”
“I didn’t lie to anybody.”
“Then let’s go.”
“There isn’t time.”
“That old man said we’d have hours.”
“What does some old man remember?”
Divinion pointed to the engineers outside. “Look at them milling around.”
“So?”
“Besides, how much time do we need? This is our chance to cut loose.”
“I don’t want to cut loose.”
“Bullshit. The hell you don’t. You been cooped up in that uniform for how long now. I bet that tie is practically choking you.”
“I’m fine.”
“And before then you was cooped up in those barracks overseas.”
Carvall cut him a glance I’d only seen when Divinion was sleeping, when he pressed the barrel of his gun against Divinion’s cranium, then below Lanah’s fluttering eyelid. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’ve got no idea what it’s going to be like, and no idea what you’ll probably be doing when you get up north, so why not have some fun now, boy?” Divinion shifted in his seat, impatient. “Minister wants to go.”
“What?” I said.
“He does not,” said Carvall.
“Sure he does. We’re family now.”
“Go where?” I asked.
“Nowhere,” said Carvall with a finality meant to stop further conversation.
Divinion wasn’t giving up so easily. “While we were in that barber shop this morning, this old man told us about this seriously jumping juke joint in the Virginia woods that we have to go to.” He pointed. “Behind all that dried grass, right through those mangled trees, was the best greasy juke joint he’d ever been in. Said he danced and drank and hollered there until his feet bled, his knees buckled, and his throat was sore from whooping and moonshine. Best time he ever had in his life. Didn’t he say that? Time of his life, boy.” I no longer trusted the big grin that spread across his face. He seemed just as excited about this place as he had about seeing his family again—the family he abandoned me with. Sensing my apprehension, he added: “We don’t have to stay long. A drink. Maybe a card game or two.”
“I don’t play cards.” When had he ever seen me play cards? Who did he think I was?
He tried again. “The man also said there was plenty of nice women there.”
“He didn’t say ‘nice’.”
“No, he did not.” At this Divinion burst into laughter again. I started to wonder if he was simply the type of person who got excited about things. Maybe that was what had appealed to Lanah so much about him, that perceived adventurousness made him affable until you got to know him better. Still—Lanah was at his side, not mine.
It was almost as if he sensed my interest there, too. “Maybe you’ll even find a Lanah of your own.” He kissed her on the cheek. “This one’s taken.”
“Do you want to go?” I asked Lanah.
“And deal with a bunch of drunk fools?” She didn’t bother looking at either of us, though Divinion laughed at her question. “No thank you, doesn’t sound like a place for me. I’ll stay here.”
“Yeah, you better stay here,” said Divinion. “Doesn’t sound like the type of place for a lady. My lady.” He winked at me and flashed a smile of camaraderie that I’d never seen before, like he thought we were true brothers.
“Besides,” Lanah continued. “I’m sick of chasing and babysitting Black men trying to figure out who they are and where they stand in this world.”
“Now, that’s got nothing to do with it,” Divinion said. “Brothers got to have a little fun every once in a while, right?”
She unwrapped another golden piece of candy from her purse and placed it onto her tongue. As she noticed me watching she offered me a piece—which I refused, then immediately feared that refusing this small confectionary would be interpreted as rejecting the invitation to travel on with her. I wanted to accept her offer right there—How many seas do you think we could cross together?—but reasoned to myself that if I went to the juke joint, I could actually prove I was not the ball of sadness she claimed I was. I could prove that I was all Divinion was and more.
Also, I didn’t know what would happen if Carvall and Divinion were alone together for that long—nor which outcome would be best for me.
“I’ll go,” I said. Once the words lef
t my lips, it felt as if a hush came across the entire coach. Carvall and Divinion both stared. “I’ll go,” I repeated.
“There you go, Minister.” Divinion slapped Carvall on the knee. “You heard the man.”
Divinion rose to his feet. Still staring at me, Carvall rose as well, as if to confront him, but Divinion took it as compliance. I was the last to stand. Lanah didn’t look up from beneath her hat at any of us.
“We’ll be back,” I said. “I promise.” She didn’t react, right when I needed her to. We’ll be together then. I still wonder if I ever actually added those words, if they ever reached my lips from my mind.
It was just up the road, Divinion promised us every so often, a few yards more and two bends on. There were no streetlights, only a clouded moon and fireflies illuminating the marshes on either side of the dirt road. The sky seemed the color of ripe plums. Frogs and crickets silenced as we passed.
“Crocodile,” Carvall said as he pointed to one of the swamps. Its surface crinkled under the mist and breeze, but I didn’t see anything except mud, broken reeds, and tiny ripples from bass or salamanders already submerged, disappeared. I looked for snapping turtles. I looked for my reflection in the water. In the pitch lowlands and wet air I thought I saw the eyes of a possum, or maybe a boar, scurrying to hide its scent and itself. In places the murky waters had receded from their banks, leaving bare tree roots like tendrils or arteries. Further out in the waters appeared the silhouettes of two children, a boy and a girl, holding hands—but as I passed by, gaping, I recognized them as simple tree trunks. Not ghosts, not observers or judges or the abandoned or the lost.
The moon hid and shone, hid and shone, as high breezes swept the clouds across it. I wanted to see a comet or an eclipse, anything to let me know if God were still up there. Was Lanah or Ronalda looking at the same tattered sky?
The dirt of the road—slick, but not wet—now seemed to soften, which made Divinion walk even faster in excitement. As we approached, the place we were heading was more heat than light; we felt it long before we saw it. The rumble of horns, rhythm, and slide guitar. We felt the vibrations through our shoes, into our bones. Every other creature around us was silent, frozen, as if in the sights of a predator.
Then there was laughter, with scraps of conversation on the wind. Around the next bend headlights approached us, then the car turned onto a side road I hadn’t noticed before. The music became louder with each step we took, and the headlights more frequent; we left the dangers of the road and walked through the tall, dry grass instead. Carvall looked back as if concerned about how far we’d come, and how we’d get back to the train later.
The closer we got, the more the shack revealed itself to be an old barn rigged with lights in full glow against the night, with patrons leaning against dilapidated farm equipment outside, and two hounds standing nearby—one scratching at something swallowed by the earth, the other keeping watch. Divinion nodded and tipped his hat to everyone he saw. He appeared just as much at home here as at his family’s house, now miles away. Maybe he was more capable than I gave him credit for. With a few well-placed utterances of “ladies” and “my man,” he deftly navigated through the crowd that loitered in the parking lot clad in zoot suits and A-line dresses. Up close the barn’s paint looked faded, the siding warped. In the dimness of the car lights, the makeshift lanterns, the bare light bulbs, and the moon, I couldn’t tell what color the building would be in the daytime. Beyond it there was no horizon, no stars. A few clouds lit with purplish underglow slid across the moon and then, like the rest of the world, faded away.
Divinion climbed the creaky, unbalanced planks of the entrance steps, where he leaned towards a fat man sitting on a stool and whispered into his ear, then slipped a few dollars into his hand. The man took a long drag from his cigarette and nodded. Divinion turned back to Carvall and me.
“Are we good?” he asked.
“We’re good,” Carvall said, more quickly than I’d expected.
My agreement wasn’t needed. Divinion crowed over our heads into the darkness, as if he’d won.
* * *
Inside, the entire place radiated whiskey and heat. Women laughed without reservation. Men smiled with a comfort and ease I’d rarely seen on Black faces in the outside world. Young girls stood against the walls, tapping their feet, snapping their fingers, and singing along, in preparation for being asked to dance. Young men sat in the rafters, clutching the only beers they could afford and howling as amps blared feedback from the guitars and the singer screamed down a microphone, into the static. Below their dangling feet, the dance floor was packed and fluid. As slippery as each dancer appeared, they all seemed to move as one, anticipating the music—as if this were familiar to each of them, the place they truly felt home. They were connected, the music pulsing through them, wet. Fingertips brushed hips, then slid away. Clothing stuck to warm skin in some places but flared away in others. It was a long kiss between everyone in the room: sensual, passionate. Few of the dancers looked at their partners; most watched the floor as if waiting, through the vibrations, for something to arise.
The floorboards groaned and snapped in syncopation as fingers sliced across ivory and ebony keys. Cutting every sight were glints of brass and honey. Clear and golden liquors poured, then swirled in jars and glasses, some a translucent auburn like burnt stars, like all of us. Auric horns and trumpets growled and screamed into the thick night air. There were gold-plated rings and earrings and teeth and tie clips and tassels. Everyone and everything gleamed—from the chipped ice to the congolene—but not like the house of Divinion’s family or the revival tent I’d seen earlier. This was the other side of things.
And we were in it, waves and cymbals crashing, every particle vibrating from the percussion. Divinion was alive. I tried to keep my eye on him in case he tried to leave me again, this time with no prospects for getting back to the station. Carvall, too, seemed cautious—if not of Divinion, then of our general safety. His gaze flicked around as if he were expecting something to leap out, ambush him, and make him betray the promise he’d made to himself overseas, to never be vulnerable again.
Then we were lost—Carvall, Divinion, and I—separated into the crowd as if by an unseen whirlpool. Divinion let the swirling crowd take him; Carvall used a combination of skill, elegance, and determination to reach the bar, while I tried to manuever myself towards an empty spot near a wall beside the stage. I stepped over islands of tobacco spittle and dirt and foam, hoping to keep what balance I could in the storm. It wasn’t dancing; it was celestial navigation. As I turned, I thought I saw Ronalda in the shadows and half-light, but it wasn’t her, my spinning mind convinced me, only ghosts and steam and cigarette smoke. Like earlier that day, amid the ceaseless motion and the haze, I lost my footing and myself, unsure where to shift or bend or how, and I slammed hard into a smaller man. His hat was knocked askew by the collision, revealing a mass of oiled hair glistening beneath.
“Muthafucka!” I heard him say through the throbbing air. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, his dark skin slick, his eyes bloodshot and damaged. A pool of red in the right eye reached from the sclera to the caruncle.
A tall man stood behind him, a hat shadowing his eyes, silent.
“Oscar?” I muttered—not because he looked like Oscar Wheatts, only because he reminded me of someone missing.
“What?”
I mumbled an apology, trying not to make a scene, but when I turned away the man spun me around again, this time pushing his face within an inch of mine as he yelled, “Nigga, you got something to say?!”
“No!” I yelled back, perhaps erroneously interpreting his ask as a challenge rather than a request to repeat myself. Before I had a chance to clarify or explain, I saw Carvall’s hand on the man’s shoulder.
But as quickly as it was placed it was brushed away, and less than a second after that Carvall was sliding on the oily woode
n planks beneath us. I wasn’t even sure if he’d been punched—all I saw was that now he was on the ground and away from me. There was more yelling, barely audible above the music, and soon the mass of legs and rhythmic bodies engulfed him and he was hidden. The man with the red eye was still in my face, his tall friend still silent behind him.
Although I couldn’t make out a word he was saying, I knew that Red Eyes was screaming at me, spittle flying. A blue vein on his forehead pulsed, grew, the river of blood within nearly visible. At times he would pause, and his smile, his tongue, his gums, the inside of his cheeks, even the puffs of his breath gleamed red in the light. Then words rushed from him again, but still I couldn’t hear over the music, or understand.
I stepped back, my heart pounding. The words kept hurtling towards me, faster and faster. I looked for Divinion. I looked for Carvall on the floor. The music kept playing while a small circle formed around us—a new song in the pulsating darkness—and I could no longer tell which limbs belonged to whom. I wondered if Carvall were bleeding. Divinion was gone. Again? Back to the train? Inside the music? Drowned? We were brothers. We were supposed to be there for each other. Everything was falling but nothing ever hit ground. I wanted to reach for my daughter’s picture, but before I knew it the gun was in my hand instead.
The Salt Fields Page 8