“I ain’t never been outside Mississippi before,” he said. “But I swear looking above me now I would bet you stars were only here, if I didn’t know no better.”
“Sure enough?” I said to him. “Makes you believe that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Like they blinded by the Hollywood lights and some reason they like it here.”
Jesse looked around him innocently, the windstorm having cleared the clouds and left only precious sky.
“For me, Mississippi the only place on earth,” he said. “Anybody leave is as good as falling off the face of it.”
He walked toward the house. He had not spoken of the Missus since that night following dinner at Silva’s yet his eyes seemed to think of her now, that same look I’d seen watching from the corner as Floyd and I drove away. In his eyes was a look of shame, and he dared not glance up from his moving feet to meet my sight. Jesse walked with the stars falling at his head like fireflies, climbing the steps onto the front porch where he grabbed the fly swatter, as requested by Silva, and stood outside that front door as he awaited her, not daring to enter the house with his shoes as muddy as the ground itself.
Silva met him at the door, the dark tree line etched across the fields behind him. He must have had dreams at some point, I considered, although he never spoke of them and, even worse, never seemed to care about anything outside of his work and that bit of praise he received from the Missus, who stroked him like a pet with her exaltations. Reaching the screen door, Silva grabbed the swatter and told him to complete his chores before they returned home. He sighed a deep breath, taking one final glance at the flickering, stained porch light and lurking stars. He had changed this bulb some hundred times yet each day this light flickered on and off, day in and day out.
The Missus arrived on the late train, the leaves shuddering wildly as we left for the station, flapping like hands clapping in the dark. Floyd was once again angry despite his quiet mood as he pulled the turns from his memory. It was impossible to see any light or darkness through the fog. He drove until we saw her there, her shape cradling a pillar beneath the weathered awning and her arms almost fetal as they clung like an infant to its mother.
“Come on, Miss,” I said to her, pulling her slightly. “This weather won’t kill you.”
She eased to me as if there was danger my direction, and I was convinced at that moment that she thought me to be a stranger, she cowered so badly. Floyd rolled his eyes at her attempts for sympathy. The fog worsened, and I could make out my companions’ faces beside me only because I knew it was them. The world outdoors was a shapeless place, marked by dangers we could not define until those tires hit a pothole or branches in the road, and we knew vaguely the things outside our window from the feel of each impact.
CHAPTER 16
Miss Lula’s first day back was a day of resettling. She checked the flowers for water. She made decent her wardrobe. She unpacked her needlework and followed these tasks by compiling a list of duties for Silva to attend to. She read a few letters then saw that they were refolded and put away before she cleared her dresser, which had not seen her attention in three weeks and now met the arrival of those weeks’ worth of clothing. She read a handful of recipes that were delivered by Miss Clementine to all the churchwomen, even if they did not attend services regularly or pay their tithes as they should. Miss Lula commented here and there as to the quality of those domestic rules before she finally retired from these chores and ventured outside to check on the tricks of her favorite pigs Roxy and Corrine. Sadly, Mississippi never felt like home to her, and Mr. Kern never much like family, and so returning to this place was nothing more than a return to some miserable incarceration.
Arkansas was her real home. I’d spotted her love for that place during her family’s visit, Scott’s love for his “Sissy” just as strong as mine for Floyd and his for me, and how we both felt the same for Gloria, that final sibling in our chain. Gloria was the wild child, never feeling the sting of Daddy’s belt a day in her life, although he never spared a curse word toward her either. Indeed, Floyd was the only one who’d actually felt it, that belt with the holes along the center that sucked up pieces of his skin like a vacuum before releasing them with a fiery snap. Daddy was not soft with his belt either, a man of few words and quick-tempered, whose stance was like the roots of the magnolia trees that grew in our front yard, their protruding mounds leaving that entire front enclosure bumpy and grotesque. He swung hard and meant every lick, his arms moving like those branches, thick and sturdy, his belt like the flimsy leaf-covered ends that pelted us on windy nights as we’d walk home from night watch of the farm, down by the old water tower and pecan grove where Floyd and I once played as children before we moved from Sidon. Daddy had little reason for his beatings. Windy or not, they came.
It was with these memories of Sidon and Floyd, along with that water tower and pecan grove, that I understood Miss Lula’s loneliness. For at least I had Floyd, and Silva had Jesse and Fletcher, and even the Mister had Silva’s disinterest, yet the Missus had no one besides those distant relatives and that on-again, off-again affection of both Roxy and Corrine, which could hardly be considered love, although the Missus now accepted anything they had to give. She liked anyone or anything who would like her back, and she’d check on those pigs daily to determine their mood and whether she’d be accepted on that day or not.
The steady trickle of water from recent rains had produced a ringing in the air, a measured counting of the morning that eased by under gray skies and cooler temperatures until it was at last afternoon, and the clouds still looked the same, leading me to believe the weather would continue like this all day. Miss Lula sat alone on the porch with her needlework, a return to that woman who’d once seemed so indifferent to this place and its fatigue. She looked up wearily yet made no shouts for Silva to fetch this or that. No, in silence she simply sat with her feelings, poised to do so the entire evening if Mr. Kern had not stirred her from this rest.
“What’s this nonsense about you taking a hatchet to my parlor?” he fussed from the opened screen door, its hinges still squeaking and popping even as the door stood still.
Despite these words she sat quietly, as it took her a moment to return from whatever imaginary world she’d ventured to and remember this earth and its duties. And so it wasn’t until she’d settled and showed about her a sense of peace that she looked up and smiled, that revived woman once again coming through in her assured countenance.
“That room needs some changing,” she said in a voice kinder than any she’d ever used with the Mister.
He prepared his lips to attack yet deflated rather quickly as her tone settled upon him, and he could no longer bring himself to yell so loudly. He instead made his case as plainly as he could. Simply put, he loved that room for what it was, and it was the only place he still had to himself, and he would have no changes be made to it, refusing the Missus’s insistence that Jesse provide just a few touch-ups to certain areas to make it look nice.
“Just look at the other work he’s done already,” she said. “The entire house looks better, like an actual home now. Like people actually live here.”
“All I’ve heard is a bunch of noise,” Mr. Kern barked back. “Now, I’ve put up with a lot but ain’t nobody gonna change my parlor. And that’s final. If I wanted it changed, I’d do it myself.”
So it remained that from that day on, Mr. Kern cringed each time he spotted Jesse inside the house, the boy performing a job the old man could have surely done in his youth. He loathed the sight of tools left on the table and our miserable attempts at covering those works in progress. His blood boiled each time he smelled sawdust in the air, as its pungency overpowered the robustness of food at his table, the scratch of some newly finished cabinet or dresser bruising his hands so easily in his older, weaker state. Indeed, Silva and I smoothed each wrinkle from his bedsheets, as if even that elevated surfac
e could somehow harm him. The Missus, however, smiled her usual grin, demanding projects that took more and more time, and were vastly noisier than ever before. She beamed with a maliciousness that adored the assault on the Mister’s once-quiet parlor, now turned into a roaring construction site—even if the work did not take place there, he could still feel it.
The Mister stalked about gravely, hating the heat and hating the cold. He despised any laughter that was not sought after and was intolerant of those coming in and out of the house, letting in flies, as he declared. He would have no talk at all and was a pain to all he saw, that is, to all but the Missus, who welcomed his foul mood and saw his temperament fitting for that house.
The harvest had seen its last days with those final rows completely cleared. Still, outdoor duties remained, keeping me away from the house during this critical time of the Missus’s deceit. As promised to Jesse, I needed to regain the Missus’s trust. In truth, I needed a way back inside that house, a thought as unlikely by anyone as some soul attempting to bribe its way back into hell. She’d grabbed Jesse privately several times since her return, leading him through the house with her hand upon his shoulder. She’d whispered in his ear and touched his cheek with her lips, sitting him down, where she caressed him softly.
With the cooler weather, the Missus no longer took her needlework or coffee outdoors, instead sitting in her quarters and listening to the work below that signaled Jesse’s presence and brought a smile to her face as she ran to collect him. In my efforts, I hovered at the breakfast table, yet she did not bite. I sparked conversations we’d had during our walks, yet she still felt no certain need to talk, her thoughts remaining only on the work to be done. Yet one day when there was enough time in the afternoon and the birds chirped at a consistent enough level, I invited the Missus outdoors in the rare appearance of the sun and that calmness of the pestering wind that so often kicked up loose soil and made it unbearable to sit in the open air, let alone have an open window. She gave reason not to but, just as quickly, she obliged my offer and brought her needlework onto the porch with a blanket, not that she ever used it. Her mood was pleasant and her eyes casually glanced around her at the fields she hadn’t viewed in weeks. Still, she was quiet.
“We might finally thaw today,” I said.
“Hmm,” she replied, not really taking in these thoughts but feeling a need to respond.
She made several more stitches before finally looking up again.
“I think you might be right, Bernie,” she said, a certain warmth returning to her skin that brought with it a sense of peace to her eyes.
And with this I knew I had her.
“I bet those fescues and rye aren’t nearly as hard as they were a week ago,” she continued.
“Not warm enough for you to walk through barefoot, that’s for sure,” I said.
“The mud would stop you, but I’m sure it’s warm,” she replied.
“Ain’t enough sun in the world could warm them about now,” I said. “I already miss it. That grass started turning a few days ago. By next week, it’ll already be yellow. Still ain’t worse than the trees, though. They change from green to yellow to orange to red, and then they die before summer’s even out. Swear it’s a blink in the night. A nap and it’s over.”
“Don’t be so down,” she insisted. “It’s not that bad. I done seen lots of green out there, Bernie.”
“I walked it just today!” I protested. “You’ll never see such a sad sight in your life.”
“Then you show me,” she said, placing her needlework in her chair as she stood and packed her loose yarn into her carrier.
With our covers about us, we walked toward the east end of the plantation, not an area we typically visited but a sight I knew would get the Missus talking. The trees had started to lose their leaves yet nothing as dire as the situation I painted.
“Where are these hellish sights?” she insisted.
“There!” I pointed, picking out a small tree that had already lost most of its colorful parts.
“It’s a baby,” she insisted. “Of course it’s lost its leaves, if it had any to begin with.”
“Your cup is too full, Miss,” I said.
“And yours too empty, Bernie,” she said.
We had been amongst the graves for several minutes before she noticed, our location settling upon her like a chill that starts small then spreads over one’s entire body, as I hoped it would on this day. She looked around solemnly at the field of gravestones along the churchyard.
“Maybe not so full,” she finally acknowledged. “At least not as full as it might seem.”
Patience being a conspirator’s best friend, I waited, allowing her to come to me before I said another word.
“I swear it’s been years,” she continued. “Ain’t been here since it happened, Bernie. Makes you glad you’re alive, I guess. Until you realize what you lost.”
“Elizabeth?” I prodded.
“Yes,” she caved. “She rest right up there on that hill. The prettiest one up there.”
The Missus pointed to the church at the very top, a white wooden structure with graves that extended down like tiers of a woman’s petticoat and cascaded to their final resting place at the side of the road. It was a pale-yellow sun that guided us up that hill and indeed sat directly above the steeple. The Missus walked ahead as I satisfied my curiosity in observance of the multitude of forgotten graves: Robert Kindsman—A Loving Father; Julie Sinclair—A Wife and Mother; Mary Givens—Beloved; Oliver Capps—Remembered Always.
When I’d arrived at the last gravestone nearest the top, Miss Lula sat at the youngest, Elizabeth’s gravestone being simple—her name, date of birth and return to the Lord, and the word Angel all on a gabled slab of stone that sat crooked in the ground. I dared not disturb the dead or the grieving, or else face judgment myself when that time came for my sins, and so I sat in silence as the Missus mourned. At that moment Miss Lula possessed a delicacy about her like that of a cut flower, an evanescence to that life in her veins that was only present for a certain amount of time before it withered, as it often did, only to reappear later before she soon lost it again. I pictured Elizabeth to have her mother’s same beauty, yet conversely that same unsoundness of life that Miss Lula suffered from and that plagued her even now.
She sat with her legs crumpled beneath her, the uselessness of her arms in full display as she sobbed. Her tears could have scratched the eyes of God, I swear, as in her despair she looked up to that place where God’s kingdom reigned, yet pitiably she saw only the rising moon in the dead of day—bad luck, as anyone knew. She had been cursed once and now felt that sting again, willing to surely kidnap the moon as ransom for her love. Still, truth was a whisper spoken softly beneath the chaos of it all, as a voice barely heard in her grief and friendly as any I’d ever witnessed came now from a man who crept by slowly, saying, “You’ll see ’er agin.” Or maybe he hollered it over the madness of her sobs, for his words were mute to both our current conditions.
The Missus soon turned to me with renewed willingness to depart as she reached for my hand. Wobbly, she woke from her prayers to find her legs numb, my arms easing her to her feet and back to that awareness of this present time and space. She wore a look of resignation, as was often the case in places like these. And so it was that we walked in silence nearly the entire road home before she finally spoke again, her heart a matted cacophony of sound that now spewed from her lips in miscellaneous wanderings.
“Bernie,” she said painfully, “you got children?”
“No, Miss, I don’t,” I replied, a sense of care in my delivery, as she was still grieving, and I dared not anger God. “But I do have nieces and nephews that I love like they were my own.”
“Floyd?” she asked.
“Yes, Miss,” I said. “And my sister, Gloria, too. Floyd with Arnold, and Gloria with Janice and Steven.”
“I don’t even know the first thing about you,” she said with a slight smile that grew to be as big as her head and showed all of her teeth. “Other than you’re Floyd’s sister, I don’t even think I know where you come from.”
“You know people by their actions and how they are to you,” I said. “Everything else means nothing.”
“I guess I don’t know too many people then,” she laughed.
“I’m sure you know enough,” I said.
“After Elizabeth,” she began, “I don’t think I wanted to know anybody else.”
“And how about now?”
“I don’t know, Bernie,” she said. “I got a plague in my heart.”
She stopped at the side of the road and leaned against a tree, taking her eyes with her wherever it was she’d drifted.
“I see Elizabeth all grown-up in my dreams sometimes,” she said. “I see her running around the house and through the fields just as happy as all the other children out there. Then I wake up and she’s gone, and I’m furious I even saw her in the first place, because it breaks my heart to lose her all over again. I hate that she’ll never grow up and get married and have children of her own to love. She’ll never see my face or hear my voice, and then I wonder if she even remembers me, wherever she is. And then I feel selfish and foolish for even wanting it. You never wanna lose something like that again, you know. It hurts you too much.”
My mind prepared a speech about how life’s just like that and you live with it every day, yet my heart beseeched stillness as the Missus soon regained her footing, and we started down the road without a word between us until the main house was in sight. Falling at our heads were wondrous magnolia blooms, as those giants never gave in to the stern commands of winter or parted with their leaves even if it meant a less vibrant display of their grandeur than in those summer months.
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