Sugar Land

by tammy lynne stoner

  At the end of the walk out I’d stopped crying and the anger had gone away, leaving room for just the fear of the head cook’s retribution. “Thank you, Beauregard.”

  “You don’t mention it, Miss Dara.”

  He was about as decent a man as there was. A good friend. My heart swelled knowing how much he’d risked to help me.

  Beauregard watched me turn the corner on my way home. I had trouble walking since my legs were shaking so badly I thought I’d fall over. I hadn’t shook that badly since right before Rhodie’s mother hit me on the side of the head.

  I took in a deep lungful of heavy Texas air, thankful for the cool breeze coming by, and stabilized myself. As I walked, I worried myself nearly to death about the head cook coming to hunt me down—how many ways there were to get in my shanty. All those windows I’d appreciated before were now little pathways to my murder.

  When I got home, two stray cats were hanging around more than usual, and I made the decision to take them in. Maybe the company would quiet me.

  “Come on in.”

  The strange little things padded in right after me, sniffed the air and looked around, as if they couldn’t decide if my place was sophisticated enough for them. When I sat down on my mostly green love seat, the little one purred at my feet, demure-like, while the big one jumped up on me with complete disregard for the amount of weight she hauled around. He damn near left bruises on my thighs. I decided to name them Cucumber and Pickle; a cucumber being bigger than—and yet related to—a pickle.

  I dropped the stack of letters from Rhodie on the couch next to me. It made me angry to see them all ripped open and torn into. That bastard.

  “I’d love to have some bourbon,” I explained to the cats, “but I need to be watchful tonight. Either of you know how to fight?”

  Cucumber responded with a deep, long meow.

  I nodded. “I’m glad I can rely on you for help.”

  We sat still, me with my hand on the letters. Something scampered in a tree outside, and spikes of adrenaline shot through the middle of my body. Was that the head cook?

  He’s going to kill me, I thought. He’s going to punch his way through my busted up door or my thin windows and he’s going to beat me and kick me and strangle me and Lord knows what until I am defiled and, eventually, dead. I should have listened to Huddie and killed the bastard rather than going for the dramatics.

  The wind blew. Of all the nights, there had to be wind that night. It scraped and gouged at my shanty, and with every little flutter I nearly went crazy with anxiety.

  Pickle purred. He rested his narrow, soft head back down on Rhodie’s letters.

  “No sleep for me tonight, Pickle.”

  I set my gun down and stood up—disrupting my new brood—to get myself some coffee, then called the cats back over to my lap.

  “These letters are from someone I love,” I explained to them while they nestled down. “Her name’s Rhodie. Rhodie wrote me all these letters while all I did was hide out, kitties, hide out. I tricked myself into thinking I was the strong one, but that’s not true. And look what came of it: I hid out, but got caught anyway.”

  I pulled the stack of letters over and opened the one on top. Together, me and Cucumber and Pickle read those letters from Rhodie until my face flushed pink from all my crying. To read all the longing and the love in her words. Even while she’d been betrayed by me not writing back, Rhodie hung on and saw the best; she hoped for the best in me to come out again. She waited for me to reply. Meanwhile, I’d been concerned only with myself.

  Not writing to her was probably the worst thing I could have done.

  “But then, if she’d have stopped writing,” I told Pickle, “I wouldn’t be sitting here with you two—not that you aren’t lovely, but you do smell bad—and a gun, waiting to die. Why couldn’t she just let me go?”

  Cucumber meowed at me.

  “I know,” I said to him. “I hear it. I hear that I sound upside down. I didn’t tell her I wasn’t going to write, so she kept writing, and then I blame her for writing. Really, I blame her for loving me. That’s it. And now this is my penalty—this horseshit with the head cook is my penalty.”

  The night clouds moved across the moon outside my living room window. I leaned forward. The love seat scratched the backs of my knees.

  There, in the moonlight with my new cats, I burned all of Rhodie’s letters, one after the other. The room reeked of torched paper, but I couldn’t open a window or a door for fear of the head cook finding a way in.

  Eventually, the coffee can stopped smoking. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, hoping to relax. It didn’t work. I started over again—one, two, three—then I heard another noise outside.

  “What’s that?”

  I jolted up and cocked Dead Eye, looking around for the man who was going to kill me—but he never came in. I held that gun until my arm fell asleep, but he never came.

  × × ×

  The next morning, tired like I had the Black Death, I woke up to a crick in my neck so bad that I couldn’t turn my head past center to the right. It was still early, but I didn’t want to be in my shanty any more. Better to sit around at work, surrounded by people, then to sit here alone.

  When I walked outside, carrying my other uniform—the clean one—I looked over and there, leaning back against the wall of my house, was Beauregard, sound asleep. He must’ve stayed there all night. That was probably who I’d heard creeping around.

  I nudged his work boot with mine and he jolted up. “What? What?”

  “Beauregard, you keeping post for me?”

  He rubbed his neck and brushed the dirt off his black pants. “Who, me? No. I just had one too many at Maria’s Roundabout and decided this looked as good as spot as any to rest up.” He stood up.

  I smiled. “Let’s get to work.”

  We walked on toward the prison along the quiet morning streets. We didn’t say anything during our walk, just enjoyed the misty pink morning on a day when I was still alive and in the care of a good friend.

  × × ×

  After we entered the kitchen building, Beauregard and I went our separate ways.

  I walked out to the mailroom to ask that they return any letters that might come to me from the University of Texas, San Antonio. The woman running the window, presumably the one who read all of the incoming letters, shot me looks that said I was one step up from a dung beetle, but agreed with a curt nod of her tiny, pearl-earringed head.

  She said: “Return them. Best to do that. Best to.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hmm.”

  I walked away with bigger things to worry about than her judgment. My stomach tightened up and soured from the stress of going back to that kitchen. Would the head cook be there now?

  No one except Jesus with his cross ever walked a longer walk as I did that day, across the yard and down the hallway into the kitchen. With every step, I felt nearer and nearer to my death.

  When I stepped in, Beauregard walked up to me, reapplying his mustache wax in the dull morning light. “No sign of him yet,” he said.

  I nodded and pushed some of my thin brown hair, damp with nervous sweat, behind my ear. I looked around, checking if the head cook’s door was open.

  Beauregard scrunched his forehead in concern. “You fine to work today?”

  My stomach flipped and flopped, but I smiled. “I am.”

  “Let’s go then. Coffee time.”

  Beauregard and I set it all up, precise as a clock. The entire time, I waited for the head cook to come in, but he never did.

  An hour later, the Warden—his chest puffed out—walked into the kitchen. His boots made a steady clomp on the floor as he approached me over by the sink, where I was mashing corn for hominy.

  He pulled me aside, next to a bag of onions that was almost as round as me. “Everything going well with you today?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, not sure where to put my arms, so I tucked them behind my back in a
soldier pose.

  “The guard told me last night about how he found the head cook bleeding yesterday in his office, with you.”

  I looked at my shoes, then up again, determined to not take a guilty stance. “Yes.”

  “Well, that is not how I run my ship here.” He scratched uncomfortably at his right sideburn. “You won’t be seeing the cook anymore. He’s gone. Gone for good. You understand me?”

  I let out a breath. “Thank you.”

  “He was taken away last night, with his family, and relocated under strict orders never to come to Sugar Land, Texas again. Not just the prison, the whole town. If he comes here or anywhere near you ever again, he will be arrested.”

  I nodded, relief softening me.

  “He mentioned some strange things though. He talked about you and a woman named Rhodie and a packet of letters.”

  I prayed that I wouldn’t blush—that I could hold it all in and tell this lie. “Letters?”

  “Yes.” He eyed me up. “Of a personal nature.”

  “Letters often are.”

  The Warden smiled. “Yes, they are.”

  “Did he have letters to give to me?” The more I talked, the easier the lie came. “Because I don’t know anyone named Rhodie.”

  For a moment, I wondered if he would call my parents and ask them, if he would take this further. Then I reminded myself that I was in the adult world now, and there would be no calling of parents.

  But what about the woman in the mailroom? No, the head cook wouldn’t say he got the letters from her or she’d be fired and maybe sent to jail herself. I’m sure he said he found them or something.

  The Warden sighed. “The cook had it in for you, as he probably would have for any woman I dared hire. He’s no doubt telling tales out of turn to make a case.”

  I nodded, thinking that I had just experienced a miracle.

  “Please accept my apology,” he said in a very low tone.

  To keep his privacy and keep myself under control, I only smiled.

  The Warden gave a quick nod, turned, and walked out without saying goodbye, stealing a pinch of corn on the way.

  All through the day I thought about miracles, how many happen that we just fail to see. Miracles happened to me all the time. All the time.

  I wished Huddie was back on kitchen duty with me so we could share a few words about what had happened. Beauregard was a true friend, to be sure, but we couldn’t really talk. He and I tossed around jokes and snapped towels and hid each other’s keys, but Huddie and I had this unspoken sort of intimacy. I knew I could tell him what had happened with the head cook and my feelings about it all and he would understand. If Huddie were to ask me how I was getting on, I wouldn’t just say “Fine,” the way I did with everyone else.

  In the breakfast line that morning, Huddie nodded and I gave him a slow nod back, letting him know that something had happened. He tilted his head and I shrugged a bit, telling him I was OK, despite what had taken place. I blinked hard, saying I had held my own. He bumped out a tight nod and I smiled back, acknowledging that yes, we would talk more about it at our next time near the Wood.

  The following Wednesday we met at the Wood and I gave him the quick story, saying the head cook came at me with his pants down and I cut him.

  “You sure can take care of yourself.”

  “I’m learning to,” I said.

  “Where’s he at now?”

  “They sent him away with threats not to return.” I looked down at the dirt. “Gave me some terrible nights, though, wondering if he might try to come back anyway. But I don’t think he will. He has family—a son he loves, Beauregard said.”

  Huddie nodded and eyed me up, seeing if what I said rang true, or if I was trying to keep him from getting riled up again. “Good. Good.” He checked over his shoulder for the guard. “You lock up your house, now, just in case.”

  “I do.”

  “And you keep something under your pillow?”

  “I do.”

  He nodded and pretended to finish up. “Good, then I can sleep better too.”

  I GO, YOU GO

  In the beginning of 1924, Huddie played his first concert for the guards and the families of the guards in the yard. This is how the plans for his escape—and mine—got started.

  The Warden had chairs set in family groupings with the guards sitting—or standing—near their wives and children, who were all dressed as if the Royal Family was coming for tea. I’d wished Rhodie could have been there with me to see it, her loving music the way she did.

  On concert day, I leaned back against the warm wall of the kitchen building and lit a cigarette on my break. Huddie wandered up the middle of the crowd to the cleared area, his upper arm held tightly by a guard who matched his height.

  “Hi there,” he said to the crowd, smiling his sad smile under the hot sun as he took a seat on the graying picnic table that had been set up in lieu of a stage. His guitar sat in a case on the ground, like a casket, next to him. The scene was picturesque, to be sure—all grays and blues against the whites of his eyes.

  The grass was Texas-brown and worn down with big spots where dust blew up. When the breezes came through, the women covered their mouths with thin handkerchiefs. I knew enough to position myself close to a wall so I could turn my head to one side to avoid the dust.

  Huddie said to the crowd, “I’s fixin’ to start playing when the Warden says it’s time and stop playing when the Warden says it’s time.” He opened his guitar case, pulled out his beat-up twelve-string, and turned the tuning pegs until the strings hit a certain note. “I know so many songs that unless you stop me, Warden, we could be here all week.”

  The crowd relaxed a bit, put at ease by Huddie’s deference to the Warden.

  “We looking forward to it, Huddie,” the Warden said from where he stood off to the side, up towards the front. His back faced the sun so his shadow stretched out extra long in front of him on the cracked dirt.

  Huddie nodded with his gap-tooth grin, wearing those gray, dingy stripes, his face shiny with sweat, his sad eyes looking out. He brought his hand up the neck of his guitar with such familiarity that he didn’t need to look down when he started playing. And when he did, he changed—his face opened up, and his eyes took a joy in them. His neck got loose, and he straightened up a bit. And when he sang, he sang as if no one was watching.

  Huddie’s fingers moved over the fretboard. Sometimes he’d get playful with it and pull a note out by pressing and wiggling the string with his thick, dry index finger, bending the music. Sometimes he’d get low and gritty and hunch over, playing real close to his guitar—an intimate moment just those two were sharing.

  His songs had stories to them. The stories were about heartbreak and dark rooms and running free. All the while, he strummed and beat that guitar along in the background, having more fun than I’d ever seen someone have while making music.

  The side door clicked. Beauregard slinked around the building to join me. He lit his hand-rolled cigarette and nodded off to where the audience was sitting around the picnic tables, all watching Huddie.

  Beauregard squinted. “Damn that man, huh?” He blew out smoke with his words. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe his music should be free of this place.”

  I knew from his coded talk around the kitchen that Beauregard went to mixed-color joints to dance, so I assumed he meant that the music should be out there to change people’s minds about colored folks—but I wanted confirmation.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Well.” He looked off. “What do you think those people thought when they first came here to listen to Huddie?”

  “I think they were curious about what a Negro could do.”

  “Carnival-like?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Now what you think they think?”

  “I think they just look forward to hearing the music.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Huddie got them to think past color, or
maybe think about color a different way.”

  I nodded.

  “If he gets out there—out past these walls—he could open a lot more minds.” Beauregard leaned in. “Besides which, I’ve always wanted to be involved in a prison break.”

  We settled back and looked over at Huddie, sharing his joy—not to be generous, but just because he had so much that it had to go somewhere, or it would cause him to explode. At the end of the first song, the new head cook called for Beauregard and me to get our asses back in there.

  “Presumably he wants the rest of us as well,” Beauregard said.

  “Presumably.”

  The new head cook was the polar opposite of the old cook—thin and nervous as a compass in a box of magnets. Old enough that the knuckles on his hands had started to knot up.

  “Get moving!” the head cook shouted to us, not leaving the kitchen.

  I stubbed out my cigarette in the dirt. Beauregard tapped out the lit head of his and put the stub in his pocket for later.

  “You serious about a prison break?” I asked.

  “You joking? They’d arrest me and put me in here where these Negroes would tear my handsome self up. Animals.” He smiled.

  × × ×

  The next Sunday there were more people than the week before—maybe even a Yankee or two among them, with their dark pants and city haircuts. I stood along the kitchen wall, alone in the shade with my cigarette.

  Huddie started up some low, slow blues, and I closed my eyes. I let the smoke float out of me. I knew the trash was buzzing near me, but I didn’t care. I just leaned back and felt the hot brick through my shirts while I listened to that man do what he was built to do.

  Huddie pulled a string or two in the middle of a chord so it sounded like two people playing.

  “Whew boy!” someone shouted out, followed by a spontaneous clapping of the crowd.

  The Warden had wandered up, but I didn’t notice until he cleared his throat and I opened my eyes again.

  “Oh, Warden! Pardon me.”

  “Far be it from me to pardon anyone—that’s the governor’s job. That’s him over there. The governor. Governor Neff, come down on my invitation to see Huddie perform. Next week he’s bringing the whole family.”