The Widow of the South

by Robert Hicks

“What, boy?”

  “Promise. He said he had promise. Reckon that? He telling a Negro he got promise? What you think he promised, a white man like that, like Mr. Baylor? What you think Mr. Baylor don’t got that Theopolis got, and that he could make himself a promise about? What’s it, Mariah? You mad?”

  “No, Mr. Eli. And don’t you go thinking I am, either. I just wish my boy could tell me such things hisself.”

  She sniffed, and in her nose she caught the scent of the ham bone she was boiling with the greens. She had sometimes searched for a word to describe the smell of a ham bone in a pot of greens, at the very moment when the bone loses its flavor and the greens take over, bright and pungent. The word was decayed, she realized. It smelled like something decaying, going back to the earth.

  What promise did Theopolis have? There was much the boy had to offer. The question was what that dried-up old man Baylor wanted with her boy. That was the question.

  “You know, Mariah, I believe Theopolis would want to tell you hisself, only he’s so busy and you never go to visit. I believe he’d like you to visit.”

  He’s nice enough for a white boy, she thought.

  While Mariah sat and thought, she let Eli mess around with the food on the stove, stirring the greens and flipping the ham steaks frying slow in the deep iron skillet. He yelped when the fat sprayed up onto his arm, but he stuck with it. He kept looking over his shoulder at Mariah, to see if she was all right. Or maybe it was to see whether he was all right, whether he was doing things right, whether he was pleasing her with his cooking. Mariah watched him dance and shuffle from pot to pot, flicking his face around to sneak a peek at her, and she thought that it would be his constant worrying about what other people were doing that would upend the boy someday, if he weren’t made to grow up quick and become his own man. She would see about that, take charge of it. He was a nice boy.

  Her own boy was a nice boy. A nice and kind man who, of course, wouldn’t see anything wrong with Mr. Baylor bringing him into his circle. She hadn’t talked to Theopolis, but she knew how he’d be feeling: surprised, flattered, and especially vindicated in his decision to move to town. She could hear him rehearsing his speech to her. Well, ain’t that something? Just a country Negro without nothing, and what you know? I might just start up a shoe factory, things keep a-goin’ like this right here. This Negro’s got promise, Mama. I been told so. I understand why you’d want to stay out here with these people. You ain’t known nothing else. But I got to make my way, make a new way, ’cause I’m young and ain’t no one going to take care of folk like me no more. Got to take care of your own self.

  She wondered if they made him come through the back door of the store to deliver his shoes. She wondered how he explained that. He’d think of something, she was sure. She wondered how he explained the young Negro they’d found downriver, burned and drowned, with a plow collar around his neck weighing him down. He was from Pulaski, and word upriver was that he had had promise, too.

  White men had another word for “promise” in a Negro. They had many words. Uppity. Coon. Unnatural. Traitor. There were lots of words for what Theopolis had.

  She prayed that Theopolis would know how to stay out of trouble. He would be right about one thing—there weren’t no one to help him. Mr. John might have helped him. Mr. McGavock. But he could barely help himself lately, or the family, so what good could he do Theopolis? As long as Theopolis didn’t get any more mixed up with that Baylor man, as long as he didn’t take a notion to stick his head up too far, as long as he didn’t covet too much of the white man’s world. She knew that there wasn’t anything to covet that a good, God-fearing man like Theopolis didn’t already have, but she also knew that her prayer for Theopolis was nigh to hopeless. He would need her help, too.

  Eli was tapping on the pots with her good wooden spoons, but she sat and listened for a moment. It was no tune she could recognize, but it was lively and smooth and a welcome noise. He was concentrating so hard on the sounds.

  “Take the ham bone out the greens.”

  “Aww, it ain’t right. I like the pork in my greens. Ought to have ten ham bones in the greens, I were making ’em. Only thing that saves it.”

  “Take it out. It’s ready.”

  39

  ZACHARIAH CASHWELL

  We didn’t go to Franklin right away. We told ourselves that we were circling around the country, covering our tracks just in case one of them boys from the camp decided to catch up with us. It was likely that some word was getting passed around the railroad circuit about us, but it wasn’t real likely they were actually chasing us. We’d have to watch what we said to people, ’cause folks didn’t really like wandering strangers around, and you were liable to get in trouble quicker than shit if folks didn’t know you. But we were smart about it. What Jerrod was really doing was enjoying a little freedom, and what I was really doing was working up the courage to go back to Carnton. So we wandered around Tennessee, headed mostly east but taking detours north and south as the spirit moved us, or when we caught word of something interesting to see, usually a tavern.

  The first thing to know about being on the run, which was a thing I had learned after much experience, was that you had to know how to explain every single damned thing you had with you, and every step you’d taken since practically the day you were born, and if you couldn’t do it, you were risking getting collared and dragged into the authorities, or robbed or shot. You had to know what to say no matter what some nosy jackass asked you. Sometimes you could tell ’em to mind their own damned business, but that never held people off for very long. You had to know what to say, and every word out of your mouth had to be true, just not true about you.

  My saddle? Why, I got that special made in Memphis. Who made it? Well, Jimmy Blackstone over on Market Street, of course. I ain’t riding just any saddle around, friend. Got to take care of my backside, and I like a saddle smooth like glove leather. Ain’t ever had nice gloves, course, but you understand. Sure, run your hand over it, I don’t mind. Blackstone likes to work them special tools and carve up all kinds of curlicues and every pretty little thing he can think of when he ain’t drunk. It really ain’t my style, but, hell, I didn’t want to break old Jimmy’s heart, now, did I? No, sir, I can’t trade you for it. Won’t sell, either. Like I said, I’m mighty particular about my ass. It chaps pretty easy, if you get me. This here? Well, those are my custom-plated Colts. No problem, no problem at all, friend. You have a good ride, now.

  It weren’t even close to being the softest saddle I’d ever ridden. I had boils and sores all up and down my backside, and I couldn’t stand to sit down at the end of the day. And if those pistols of Jerrod’s were custom-plated, they were custom-plated with tarnish and sweat and road dirt, and looked like hell. But you had to have a story, especially ’cause Jerrod had really started to look like death. Not like he was going to die, but like Death itself. His hair was so black it looked heavy, and that eye of his had become brighter and brighter as he’d become used to the loss of the other one. He was self-conscious about the hole where his eye should have been, and so he didn’t like to go about during the day. We traveled at night.

  Jerrod was still bent on making his way, eventually, as a gun for hire and all-around tough man, and that meant practice, he said. I caught him one morning off in the woods shooting at my little Bible from a good seventy-five feet. I cuffed him and gave him hell, but not before noticing that he’d put a bullet right smack in the middle of the book, which had stopped the bullet.

  My daddy gave me that book. I’d carried it everywhere ever since, even into battle, and it ain’t once got a bullet hole in it, or even a stain, until Jerrod went and had to play outlaw on the damned thing. He stomped off saying he was going to go find some whiskey. Must be a moonshiner around here someplace, he said. They a whole lot nicer than you, that’s for damned sure, even if you got you a Bible and know how to talk out of it. I went back over to the fire and flipped the two little bass fish I was
roasting.

  The hole in the book stopped at Second Samuel. I already knew those verses.

  And Absalom met the servants of David. And Absalom rode upon a mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was taken up between the heaven and the earth; and the mule that was under him went away.

  I read on, where the pages were only a little torn by the bullet:

  And a certain man saw it, and told Joab, and said, Behold, I saw Absalom hanged in an oak.

  And Joab said unto the man that told him, And, behold, thou sawest him, and why didst thou not smite him there to the ground? and I would have given thee ten shekels of silver, and a girdle.

  And the man said unto Joab, Though I should receive a thousand shekels of silver in mine hand, yet would I not put forth mine hand against the king’s son: for in our hearing the king charged thee and Abishai and Ittai, saying, Beware that none touch the young man Absalom.

  Otherwise I should have wrought falsehood against mine own life: for there is no matter hid from the king, and thou thyself wouldest have set thyself against me.

  Then said Joab, I may not tarry thus with thee. And he took three darts in his hand, and thrust them through the heart of Absalom, while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak.

  Ain’t that the way of the betrayer, that old rascal Absalom? Seducer of Israel, caught up in an oak, abandoned by a ornery mule, killed where he hung. Mama used to say that if there’d been an oak somewhere around the house, which there weren’t, she’d have had it chopped down right quick to avoid temptation. I don’t even now know who would have been the tempted one. I remember that my father didn’t have much use for Absalom, though.

  I kept reading and thinking about that book. I had thought about being a preacher once. Even thought I had heard the call. But I was little, and that was before I began dreaming of the angels and before I went to live with my aunt. After that, I hadn’t so much as gone to hear a preacher, not ever. Even so, I was sad about the hole in my book, and it made me think about what might have happened had I been a preacher.

  This here book, I said out loud, has on it the mark of the devil. There is a bullet hole here, friend, and it stops right here in Second Samuel. Now, why? I tell you, friends, I was waylaid by the lowest of the low, the meanest and dirtiest man you seen, and he were the devil’s own soldier.

  A preacher got license with the truth, I knew that much. Got to keep people in their seats.

  And he went to rob me, and I held the Good Book up because I’d been reading it as I rode. Do I always read while I ride? By the Lord, yes! The Word of the Lord is good for any time, even if it ain’t the most comfortable time. And that bullet traveled through the book I held with love, and it turned that bullet away from my heart, and I thought I heard the Lord say, “I will not let this one, most humble of my dirty-faced and sinful children, be smited.” He stopped that bullet right here, right where Absalom gets hisself hung up in that tree. And I reckon Absalom stopped that bullet for me, and although I don’t dole out the forgiveness in this life, if I get a chance, I’ll be putting a good word in for old Absalom up in heaven.

  And so that is how I come to have a Bible with a bullet hole in it, and I come to you today to spread the good news of this here book’s loyalty under fire.

  Well, I sounded like a preacher, and that made me laugh right out. But then I picked at that fish and thought a little more about it. I could be a preacher. I knew enough about preaching, I’d seen it high and low. I’d do anything to get my daddy back, but if I had to steal a few ideas from that goddamn snake who come into our house and stole everything, that reverend, well, that seemed like it was right and just. Maybe that’s the new man I was to be.

  “You a preacher now?”

  Jerrod stood in the clearing with a jar of whiskey. If you’ve got a nose for where men make their whiskey, like we did, a trip across the country is just moving from one still to another. We’d look along the little creeks, in the cool dark places where the shiners keep their stills and the centipedes lie around waiting to fall on your neck when you ain’t looking. I’d always make a lot of noise to announce myself, and act real grateful that they’d sell me their rotgut for far more than its worth. Jerrod liked to sneak up on ’em. He thought that was funny.

  “Preacher. That’s good cover. Good thinking. I just heard you from over there in the woods. Guess you practicing. Guess you preacher fellas gots to practice, although it seem a little funny you got to practice the Word of the Lord. Ain’t that the sort of thing that just comes to you right there slap on the spot, like you got the fire in your belly and it just got put there by the Lord Hisself? But what the fuck do I know, I’m as bad a sinner as they come. Where’s my fish?”

  I looked at the little hunk of black on the spit and then back at him. It always surprised me how much he could eat, being so skinny and all. I watched him bite through the fish, skin and all, and damned if he didn’t find a whole lot of white flesh in that burned-up mess. I reckoned he knew some things that I didn’t, could see things I couldn’t.

  “What you think we should call our gang?”

  “We don’t got a gang, Jerrod.”

  Jerrod got a thoughtful look on his face, which made him look a little queasy. Then he smiled.

  “All right, then. Can’t blame a man for trying. I done heard about a job. Heard it from an old boy living out in the woods a few miles or so over those hills, moonshiner. Something about digging up Indian bones. Big-deal Yankee project, but they hiring. And I like anything to do with the injuns, seen a couple when I was little.”

  “Indian bones.”

  “That what the man said. Here’s the thing, too. It’s in Franklin. I reckon it’s time to get on, if that’s where we going and we ain’t going to have a gang.”

  I hadn’t really thought I’d find a job, or even a good reason to go to Franklin besides her. And what was I going to do when I found her? Something, but I still didn’t know.

  “They digging in Franklin?”

  “Somewhere south of there, I think. Where they got those weird-looking hills off the side of the road. I remember them from when we was marching up in there. What do you know, turns out they ain’t hills at all, but burial mounds. Reckon they a lot of people all heaped up in there. Savages.”

  I thought, Too many bones already in Franklin, which made digging up Indian bones seem right stupid. Then I noticed something odd about Jerrod. He had drawn one of his pistols and was staring at it, like it was going to talk to him.

  “Jerrod?”

  He was just wiping his mouth and swallowing his last bite of that burned fish. He was having a hard time swallowing.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where’d you get that moonshine?”

  He didn’t answer right away.

  “You just come across a moonshiner in the woods?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Snuck up on him.”

  “Like usual.”

  “Then what?”

  “He had a fright, but we got to talking. Told me about the job. Sold me this whiskey.”

  “And?”

  “I took his money. Reckoned we needed it. We got nothing, Zachariah.”

  “And?”

  “And I killed him.”

  I should have known that, and I shouldn’t have asked it. No matter how much you think you know a man, if he’s a killer, it’s hard to sleep or eat. Men like Jerrod, even a man who was my friend and who had saved my life, were hard to trust. I was afraid of Jerrod, truthfully, but I was also happy to have some company. I sat silent for a while.

  “Zachariah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry I killed him. I didn’t need to kill him. I wish I hadn’t. I know you wouldn’t have killed him, and it makes me a little ashamed to admit it to you. You’d have never done something like that, would you?”

  I didn’t say nothing.

  “Zachariah?”

  “What?
”

  “You a good man.”

  For a few nights, at least, I slept comfortable on that. And then I prayed for Jerrod’s soul, something I hadn’t done for anyone since I was a boy.

  40

  CARRIE MCGAVOCK

  There was one man in our little town who was not a backward-looking primitive, as John had called them. I was very sure that I wished he were a backward-looking primitive. Then his motives could have been ascertained, his intentions predicted. If only this man had been stupid like the rest of them.

  But Baylor was not a stupid man. He was a bitter, hard man who had never once made a secret of his disdain for Confederate leaders during the war. On the Confederacy itself, who knew what he thought? He was not a man for abstractions, and he was certainly no sentimentalist. His contempt was for Confederate leaders, every one of which he had made a point of calling a fool at one time or another. If the Confederacy is its leaders, I have little hope for the whole experiment, he’d say. His contempt had only deepened since the war. He’d lost a son, Will, on the battlefield at Franklin, and I believe that this very fact caused him to gain a certain sense of provenance not only over his home and his fields but over the whole town. His son had gone and given himself to the cause in his blood, and from what I can tell, this made Baylor think he’d given more than any other man in Franklin and that they owed him something. Whether or not he got along with his son, a matter of some debate, was hopelessly beside the point. His son was dead and gone, led to his death by men that old man Baylor reviled.

  Was Zachariah Cashwell, even though he wasn’t much of a leader, one of those men he would have hated so? I could not fathom it, although I knew it would be true. This is how I knew the depths of Baylor’s hatred. I had been made stronger and wiser by the knowledge that a man like Zachariah could love me, that I could be loved by so unlikely a man. On the rare occasion that I went to town and saw the way our town had gone on in no particularly remarkable way, I could not help but wonder if God had meant for Zachariah to lose his leg so that we could go on as ever. It seemed wrong, and I believed God had meant Zachariah for something far greater, which I had never quite understood. I wondered about this while walking in my garden and asking myself if Zachariah would enjoy the flowers Hattie had made to grow in fulsome waves again. I wondered about it while tending the graves of my children, and I wondered about it when I bathed myself and when I drifted off to sleep late into the night. I wondered, Lord help me, if the Lord had intended me for him. And then I fell into dreamless slumber.