And so it was with these games taking place inside the house and Fletcher once again an active participant, spending more of his time in that downstairs area, that I wheeled Mr. Kern outdoors more often, now that the weather had warmed. Together we walked the same trails the Missus and I once walked, the yellow light of morning sitting hot on the static tops of the white cotton and over the magnolia and sycamore. Our walks took us along the far reaches of the fields and just before that stretch of marsh that extended around the west end of the plantation, and subsequently led to the pecan groves a few miles down. We walked slowly, allowing the sun to thoroughly warm our arms and legs, exposed to its touch, and we walked graciously, the sky a pale blue above our heads, stretched faint and thin.
When a car one day stopped at the side of the road, and a woman of no more than thirty, and of pleasant enough mood, approached and handed us both pocket bibles, (not that Mr. Kern could grab it, and so she merely placed it onto his lap) we both accepted her openly. Her smile was like that of those people whom Daddy hated to see come around early on Saturday mornings with their pamphlets and brochures, trying to make him believe there was some other god in the sky different from the One he knew. Yet still, that day presented a certain calm, and even Mr. Kern sat without much fuss as we again neared the house and made a trip around the tulips nearly four times before settling on the front porch where he read the Good Book in silence.
There seemed to be a call for everyone to be outdoors on this day as I looked to see both Jesse and David out amongst the honeysuckle that grew in the thicket of brush just beyond the trees along the east side of the house. I wheeled Mr. Kern to a stop along the ramp Floyd had built from old plywood, a rickety thing that seemed to buckle more often than it sat straight, but on this day proved sufficient enough to sustain the weight of the chair and me. Mr. Kern remained on the porch for hours uninterrupted while I went to find Fletcher to inform him of the nasty weeds that grew from the marsh and could easily affect the cotton sooner or later if left untreated, as pointed out to me by Mr. Kern in his vigilance.
When I found him, he was seated in his parlor as usual, his eyes a speculative stare that conjured thoughts of happiness or feelings so rarely seen inside this house that I dared not believe it. Following his eyes to the sight right outside the window, I saw that he watched Jesse and David as they sat in that area just beyond the back enclosure. The two were big and small, a protection Jesse gave to David’s small frame that no one man could seemingly destroy, that was given of God to men for their children. David’s smile was of such bliss, his heart so big and joyful that it burst from his chest. He was precious and sweet and surely the sight God had intended when He conceived the idea of little children. Fletcher indeed saw it just as clearly as I did, his face gleaming and his lips quivering, and he was beautiful and serene in his attentiveness.
Fletcher turned to me with a look of surprise once he noticed my presence, a humanly response that reminded me that he was still flesh and blood, a man of height and width and mass even if he lacked spirit.
“I swear no one makes noise around this house anymore except for Mr. Kern and David,” he said wryly.
“I’m sorry, Fletcher,” I replied, aware that a person’s vulnerabilities when consumed by their own thoughts were private moments that should never be disturbed by anyone or watched in mockery, as I had done.
He accepted these words and gave no further chastisement for my behavior, and I wasted no more of his time with apologies or constant gawking, starting in immediately on what I had seen in those weeds and what Mr. Kern had advised when suddenly he stopped me, his mood appearing to be like that of the Missus on her good days when she was more than willing to talk.
“Miss Bernie,” he now said, having regressed to that intonation he once held as a boy.
He sighed and collected himself before he continued.
“When do you think your time is up?”
These words could have applied to a host of things, like my time here on this earth or my station inside that house. But I knew what he meant, recalling our previous conversation in the pecan groves.
“You once said you wouldn’t stay here forever,” he continued.
“Yes, Fletcher,” I replied. “And I meant it.”
“But when?” he asked.
“No person knows for sure,” I said. “I surely don’t. You just know when your time comes. But rest assured, I’ll let you know before I go.”
I smiled as I patted his head.
“So where will you go?” he asked.
“Somewhere that’s not here,” I said.
“Heaven?” he said slyly, bringing a smile to my face.
“No, not that far,” I chided.
“And you never told me where your husband went either,” he said teasingly.
“I never told you lots of things children shouldn’t know.”
“Well, tell me now as an adult,” he said. “And I’ll listen as a child.”
I had not considered Henry in years and felt my heart drop like those pecans from the burly trees when I considered him now. Still, Fletcher waited patiently to hear the story, a patience his years of confinement inside that room had taught him to bear alone. For confinement indeed served as a lonely creature, not something you could just rush through, no matter how hard you blocked out the days, that like childhood and the process of growing up you just had to complete twenty-four hours of each day in succession until one day you found that you were the person you’d become, and that long-awaited freedom was finally in hand. Confinement humbles you, a solemn reminder that the lessons of life cannot be fast-tracked simply because of some modest plea uttered before a God, who has a lineup of many others placing their orders. And so I freely told him of Henry, knowing Fletcher also knew of love and loss, and that his heart bled for companionship, even if his head warned him against surrender, that the heart could never exist without it.
“Well, we were married for three years,” I began. “Nothing I wanted more at that time than to be married to Henry. He was tall and handsome and spoke like no one else I’d ever met around those parts, sort of like you and Jesse with the spirit he had. He had dreams that were bigger than that place and he actually seemed fit enough to accomplish them. He was a jack-of-all-trades by nature, and I swear he could really do anything. He had a plan for us to go away and he talked about it all the time. He said we were going to leave this place, and I believed him. Then he boarded a bus one day with all of our savings, and I never heard from him again. Never have, never will, as Floyd would say.”
“Miss Bernie, I never knew,” Fletcher said, his heart somehow broken into more pieces than my own.
“No one does except for Floyd,” I replied. “Not even my sister Gloria. She just knows that I’m here. She thinks he died, and I let her because maybe he did.”
“People think you’re crazy if you tell them and crazy if you don’t,” he said knowingly, a look in his eyes that understood all those lonely, confused nights I’d faced as if he’d been there with me. “I think they’re better off not knowing though. Makes them guess and drive theyselves crazy trying to figure it out. You know?”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But don’t tell me you’ve driven yourself mad trying to figure it out.”
Fletcher smiled.
“That amongst other things,” he said.
“Well, since I’ve told you, it’s only fair that others know and not be driven mad as well,” I said jokingly. “Just look at what you’ve become over this secret of mine.”
“No!” he reproached. “They deserve just what they get.”
“And what’s that, Fletcher?”
“A handful of nothing,” he replied. “A pocketful of dust and that’s about it.”
Fletcher smiled, then laughed, then returned to that solemn man he’d become, all of these emotions emerging within a matt
er of blinks on his handsome face.
“I’m not crazy, Miss Bernie,” he now said with a smile. “I know it seems like it, and I don’t have the will to convince you otherwise. Sometimes you just don’t know what to say, and so you say nothing at all, and that is somehow worse than any words you could’ve ever said. But I watched you be silent for nine years in this house and no one gave a damn. I’m quiet for a year and I’m a demon. But I don’t have the will to convince them otherwise either, especially not when they’re the ones who made me this way.”
“No one makes us into anything,” I said sternly. “What we do is our own choice, but it’s a choice that’s laden with scars, Fletcher. It’s crippled by the things we’ve had done to us and the things they continue to do. But we always have a choice. It’s the only thing we got in this world.”
“Well, I guess I’ve made mine just like you and yours,” he said. “Ain’t nothing we can do about it now.”
Fletcher sat quietly after these thoughts, confused as we all were, looking for a place to begin again, yet finding no one and nothing that could ease his journey. I would be quick to say that his troubles began that day on the farm when he was only sixteen, yet after more consideration I would be more inclined to believe that they began some years well before that day, when Silva first perpetuated the lie that robbed the boy of his identity and sense of self. But truly, Fletcher’s story predated the Missus and his birth at all, and even the births of his parents somewhere out near Louisiana in Silva’s case, and right here on this very plantation for Mr. Kern. In all logic, I would venture to say that his story began before the founding of this country we all called home, and even the emergence of kings and queens and the kingdoms they ruled, that it dated back to the beginning of mankind himself and that greed that swore this belonged to one man and was no longer God’s land but mine and mine alone. Yes, that must be the start of his story—that date when those divisions were drawn and colors selected and men given purposes and others given duties. From there we all fell in line and became sidetracked from our true purpose and made to wander.
Fletcher remained silent before me, quiet and reserved and dignified though cruel.
“What was it you said about those weeds?” he now asked coldly.
I again explained to him the things I’d seen during my walk with Mr. Kern and the need for them to be addressed with great urgency if the crop was not to be affected. I explained the extent of their growth and how they had overgrown once before and nearly cost the Mister the entire season on that side, not to mention the effort it took to clean up. I explained the process for their extraction and the time required if it was to be done right but still he didn’t listen, only nodding then turning his head away from me.
“Thank you, Miss Bernie,” he said once it was over, my words coming to him as some sorrowful reminder of these duties he still held, which he cared very little for and only performed out of necessity for his position.
He wanted a way out, it always seemed, but would never take it.
“I’ll have Floyd take care of it,” he said.
Fletcher returned his sights to the window and that playfulness that existed between Jesse and David as they both sipped the stems of the honeysuckle they’d collected. Fletcher’s eyes had lost that bit of warmth I’d seen just moments before and now teemed with a lion’s conviction to pounce.
“Miss Bernie,” Fletcher now thought aloud. “Maybe have Jesse attend to those weeds since he has more time than Floyd nowadays. Ain’t nearly as busy as he used to be. Maybe you could show him the places you saw them. Make sure he does it right.”
“And what about David?” I asked.
“Have him come inside,” he replied. “He can sit with his uncle until you get back or until Mama returns.”
I watched him sternly, knowing he was fully aware that Silva would have no part of him caring for David and that if she returned from town with groceries and saw David alone in Fletcher’s care, there would be need for another trip because she would destroy them all in her fury.
“I’m not crazy either,” I said to him in all seriousness. “Now you know quite well how Silva feels about that. Do what you want, but don’t involve me.”
Possessing a slyness that seemed almost villainous, Fletcher smiled, causing even my heart to seize. Even if his insistence was true that he wasn’t crazy, his intentions were still bad, seeping from him now like the sweat from his pores as he faced the same deceit that plagued the Missus and Mr. Kern and Silva, and even Jesse while inside that home, all bearing their miseries from the curses of others and passing down those chains like keepsakes from one hand to another.
“I understand, Miss Bernie,” Fletcher said in a low refrain. “Funny, there’s something special about a father and son that should never be broken. I would be the last to do that, although that sin happens all the time around here. It’s like a glue they seem determined to break.”
“No, Fletcher,” I appealed. “It holds no matter what.”
“I’d like to think so,” he said. “Something you just hold on to if you can, I guess.”
Fletcher found his way into David’s heart, if not that day then during the weeks that followed as that parlor presented itself to David like some shiny new toy, and Fletcher welcomed the boy openly into the brand-new space. Silva was unaware of these meetings, and I had not the patience to disclose each one, having concluded for myself that Fletcher was not a complete threat to the boy’s civility as I watched them play each day inside the room without a bad thought between them. The two truly acted like uncle and nephew, Fletcher being the most loving I’d seen him and patient with the boy, who could often teeter between joy and anger at not having his way. Fletcher guided him as an older brother would and showed not a mean bone in his body. He’d even relinquished some of that reclusiveness that swore he could live the rest of his life alone, although his treatment of Silva and Jesse and even Mr. Kern remained unchanged. Watching David in his care, I noticed the likeness between them, as David spoke now with a distinct cadence to his speech that was reminiscent of Fletcher. He sat with a peculiar posture that was not of these parts as well, and he slightly squinted his eyes when listening intently to someone speaking, then smiled with Fletcher’s smile. David was surely growing in Fletcher’s image, although few others seemed to notice these changes as the boy retained one after the other like genes obtained inside the womb.
CHAPTER 30
With the warmth and calm that descended that summer also came a slight recovery for Mr. Kern, who could now talk a little, although he still remained helpless and required our constant intervention for even the simplest tasks. Given his gradual improvement, our walks now took us farther away from the house and stretched as far as the pecan groves on one side and the graves on the other, although we never quite reached the churchyard during those walks, stopping well short of the Missus’s grave. Mr. Kern and I spent hours in this refuge, drunk in the pleasure of bees and dragonflies under the shade of massive trees. It was in that contentment that Mr. Kern seemed the greatest improved, as he would bark madness that slowly formed into words and eventually served as complete sentences once he’d strung them all together. I would clap and then he would continue, entertaining himself as much as he did me for hours.
The railroad tracks sat high in the Delta, safe from those flooded fields and swamps that could overtake them with just the slightest summer rain. On both sides were the distractions of bright yellows and greens while the scorching crackle of brown rocks popped under our feet. The sky was a pleasant blue even though it was still hot, yet just when we’d suffered the worst that sun had to offer, a large cloud would come and shade us from its scorn and the winds would blow cool again in the momentary reprieve that touched our skins. By late afternoon would come the threat of those frequent thunderstorms fueled by the summer heat, filling the sky with ash-colored clouds that relieved none of the humidity in the
air and somehow added to its misery. How during those moments every wind gust felt like rain and brought with it a heaviness like thick wool that made the air unbearable and impossibly difficult to breathe.
The insects grew louder, with a sense of cohesion in their croaks and chirps and whistles that climbed the tracks and encircled the trees and landed on us listlessly, lulling us back into our humdrum and wait. In the absence of the rain, the ground burned when touched, although it could rain every day out here and still feel the same way. At sunset, the tracks continued into the haze of trees that blurred into one vaporous mess out at the edge of existence as we knew it, that spot where we couldn’t see the continuing land or sky anymore yet knew the tracks continued on, straight as pencils, laid flat for miles alongside the steamrolled land. The tracks reflected the blistering up above in likeness to a peach slightly grayed on top of our heads and orange as fire in the distance.
We’d passed the shaded coves carved by the tress where we lay sometimes and those wicker bushes that were a burden to navigate if one ever became tangled, all of those quiet places where Mr. Kern and I found peace during our time away from the house that summer. Then I’d roll him onto the front porch, and he would sit there for hours taking in those sights not observed by younger eyes who knew this world awaited them day after day when they woke. Mr. Kern had no such assurance and, as such, sat consumed by each thing he’d seen.
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