McKie spots something in the dark, goes and picks up a Mason jar. “He got into your brother’s stuff,” he says.
“Let’s get him inside and cleaned up.” Celia leads Harris into the house, with Bill on his other side.
Mallory clears her throat. “Well, see you tomorrow.”
“I had a lot of fun,” says Luis. She blows him a kiss and goes in. He stands in the garden til he sees her light go off. He hesitates at the back door of the house, but what has he got to say that’ll make any difference?
CELIA PUTS FRESH SHEETS on the bed in the back bedroom. She’s done it over in pale green for friends she hopes will visit this winter. She left the shelves filled with books and rocks and shells, on either side of the window that looks over the low roof of the Back House towards the fields.
Bill comes out of the bathroom with Harris’ clothes rolled up in a towel. “I told him not to drown in there.”
“If you’ll get him into bed, I’ll bring up some iced tea, get him rehydrated.” Celia tucks in the last corner and stands. “When I was a girl, this was Scott’s room.”
Bill says, “I’d like to talk to you about your brother.”
“I’ve been thinking, too,” says Celia.
THE MAN IS A RUIN AT SIXTY-FIVE. Heart mainly, acute coronary syndrome, but kidneys, veins, legs, lungs—what isn’t wrong with him? He’s on oxygen, his breath a cold whistle up his nose when he puts the cannula in, though sometimes it sits around his neck, because too much oxygen gives him reflux. From the blood thinners, his skin is translucent and in places broken. You can see the purple bruises where IVs were put into the backs of his hands when he was in hospital care in the summer, though right now he’s back on the residential side, in his own room. His nose is lopsided where a skin cancer was cut away.
In June when she’d reported on cleaning up the house he got irritated, so Celia stopped telling him about anything going on there, stuck to general news in town, not that he responds. He’ll leaf through a Sports Illustrated she’s brought him or listen to a small radio he has, on earphones, all through her visit. Usually after a little while she goes down the hall and talks to the nursing staff, wanting to be sure they know somebody cares about him.
This morning, he is sitting in a wheelchair, looking out the window at the rain. Celia lays the newspaper on his lap. “Grim Find by Archaeologists” is the headline, below the picture of the box. He looks at her, looks down, reads, frowning. “What’re archaeologists doing there?”
She says, “I invited them. Scott, we have to talk.”
He puts the cannula in his nostrils, breathes. Mouth clamped shut.
Celia says, “There’s someone else to see you,” and leaves the room. When she comes back in with Bill McKie, Scott clasps his hand. Bill pulls over the guest chair for Celia but she gestures him into it and sits on the bed.
Celia says, “Bill thinks those were the hands of Veneece Cole.”
Scott clears his throat, nods. To Bill he says, “I told her to get out of town.” He breathes. “She was going with you.”
Bill says, “What happened? I need to know.”
“I told her to get gone. Daddy’s friends were all talking about the activists. Had lists of what he called the agitative.” He says, “Sister, could I have a glass of water?”
Celia goes and fills a Dixie cup in the little bathroom, hands it to him, and he drinks, then speaks with more voice.
“She rode around with them. She knew where black folks lived, way off the road. People they might register.” He coughs. “I saw her one morning near the courthouse. Going to stand in support of some who were registering. She could get arrested too. Just for being there. Get sent to Parchman. I told her she was on a list and ought to get away.
“We fooled around when we were younger.” He says to Bill, “Just kid stuff. Then they moved; everybody was going to the cities for work. Daddy’d caught on, saw me looking at her. Said I should go down to Miss Nelly’s in Natchez to become a man. Fought with him a lot til I got shipped off—that was Mom’s idea. Military school, where they taught me to shut up and fit in.” He breathes a while. “When James Meredith came into the dining hall at Ole Miss, we banged our silverware. That’s what you did.
“I attended a dance that evening at the country club. Had a black band playing for the white people. Still no blacks allowed in there, right? Shit. I got home and Daddy was out in the Back House. He had her hands.” He shakes his head. “In a bucket. There was blood. No body. He’d been with his group, at a meeting, out east of Clarksdale, and on the way home he saw her walking. He offered her a ride, and she got in, but then he must have said something because she tried to jump back out and he shoved her head against the dashboard, knocked her out. That was his Olds Super 88, hard dashboard.”
Bill says, “She was going to the bus station. I was meeting her there.”
“Yes, she had a small suitcase with her, but I don’t know if she had a chance to tell him where she was going. With her knocked out he drove home and found that she was dead. He hadn’t intended to, he insisted.”
“What did he intend?” asks Celia.
“Said they all said she was his responsibility, cause she grew up out here. Said he thought he’d scare her, but here she was, dead. He had to get rid of the body and best he could think was to put it in the water, weighted down. But he was worried she’d come up. Bodies kept coming back up. That was something they’d learned. He knew she’d been arrested, her fingerprints would be on file. I don’t know that you could get fingerprints off a body that’d been in the water, but that’s what he said. So he took a hatchet, a bucket, went down by Old River, drug her over to a swampy part, chopped off her hands. He went into the water with her and he weighted her down with some chains, a tire iron, not sure what all. He got back just before I got there. He was going to dissolve the hands in lye, at least enough to get the skin off. Mom had lye out there, for hominy.
“Celia, you wouldn’t have recognized him. He was soaking wet, shaking. Said he was sick, that carrying all the weight had ripped up where he was gut-shot in the war. Said he’d killed Japs, but he didn’t mean to do this. And he wasn’t going to be caught for it. He was as big a coward as I’ve always been.” Scott breathes, looking at the ceiling.
“So he went along when I told him I’d take care of it. The box was one I had around, kept old stuff in it, coins, fossils, arrowheads. I put the hands in. They were drained out, gray looking. I knew it was a burial ground out back, so I thought that would be the right place. Put the box down deep, made sure the dirt was packed back in, laid the grass back across. Made sure no animals dug it up. If you weren’t looking, you could never tell the spot.
“Daddy, the day after, burned up her suitcase and her pocketbook in a fire with a lot of brush. Asked me where her hands were, he wanted to burn them too, but I told him they were long gone. Later I drove over the whole area back of the mound with a big mower, and the rains settled it all down. Made me nervous to be away though. Couldn’t concentrate at school. Had to drink to sleep. I felt better being at home and watching over her.
“Sometimes I thought, if her body surfaced and they were investigating, I would dig up the box and turn him in, but it didn’t and I don’t know that I’d ever have had the guts. My own father, you know. No matter what.
“And then he died. And just I lived with it. I tried to be a decent man, but I’ve got my demons. Married for a while, but she said I was hard to talk to. When there’s something you can never say—”
He says to Celia, “Never could talk to you, either. Just tried to keep Mom off your back when she got real religious. Tried to help people. Quit that country club and drank at home. Worked so I could give a helping hand where I could. I came to feel I wasn’t watching over her so much as she was watching over me.”
He takes out the cannula, coughs. “Man,” he says to Bill, “you know I’m sorry.”
Bill says, “Okay, I know. Everything counts.” He lays his
palm on the back of Scott’s hand, where it’s bruised.
“The body never came up, but the box did. Who would have thought that? What happens now?”
Bill says, “She had a brother, might be alive, would want to know.”
Scott nods.
Celia says, “We’ll talk to the sheriff. I guess he’ll come see you and take a statement, for starters.”
Scott says, “Tell him to hurry up. I won’t last long.” And he smiles. “My stupid heart.”
SHIT FIRE, Harris feels awful. He’s in a real bed, though, in a room with a smell of pine cleaner. After careful consideration he rolls over and sees there’s a wastebasket beside the bed, in case he has to hurl. It makes him laugh. He checks out the bruises down his right side. Luis must have kicked his ass. He can’t find his clothes, but when he tiptoes downstairs with a towel around him, he finds them clean and dry on the dining room table. He dresses fast. When he checks the big clock in the hall, it’s nearly eleven. He opens the front door and stands in the portico, breathing in the cool rain that’s drenching the Delta.
Out near the road, he sees Luis bent over talking to Mallory, who’s in her car headed out. What did he say to her last night? He remembers thinking he was in bad need of reform. Too right.
Mallory tells Luis she’s going back to school, might as well get some work done. They’re not going to do a thing here in this downpour. Luis says he laid out tarps when he got up early this morning, but he has to agree, it’ll take at least a few days for their site to dry, even if the weather clears tonight. He leans towards her through the car window, his dark hair full of rain.
She explains she’s not sure whether the Kitchen is going to be considered compromised by all the messing they did with it yesterday, perhaps a bad choice for a thesis. “Here comes Harris. Let’s let things settle down,” she says. “I’ll see you at school.”
She kisses him convincingly, pops a CD into the player and goes off listening to Memphis Minnie’s “Me and My Chauffeur Blues.”
Luis turns and sees Harris making his way down to him with his shirt draped over his head. He braces.
“Hey,” says Harris. “Pax.”
Luis says, “You swung at me.”
“Listen,” says Harris. “When you lose a woman, it’s easier to blame the other man.”
“Okay,” says Luis.
“‘The past is over. Let the dead bury the dead.’ Know who said that?”
Luis shakes his head.
“Jefferson Davis. Too bad nobody listened. Takes a man who really lost to give that advice, I guess.”
Somebody hollers Luis’ name. Bill McKie is standing out by his house, in a long slicker. He beckons them over. Luis looks at Harris.
“Already wet,” says Harris. “Let’s go.”
They dash and reach McKie’s porch. He’s standing on a patch of turned-up ground beside it, scattering seeds. “Best time to plant greens,” he says. “Celia has business in town. She’ll be a while. I’m cooking some red beans and rice. Got plenty. Come on in.”
They follow him into a room rich with the smell of sausage. In the dimness, they turn in wonder. Silvered boards of cypress are papered with a hundred notices and posters in deep and gaudy hues. On some, Luis spots the younger face of Bill McKie.
“This one here’s Bill Big Broonzy,” says McKie, “and that’s Sonny Boy Williamson II. You can visit his grave in Tutwiler, not far from here. People leave harmonicas there for him. You boys ready now to learn about the blues?”
12 Crossroads Bargain
Charlaine Harris
IT WAS HOT AS THE SIX SHADES OF HELL, even in the middle of the night. The moon was a full orange globe that hung frighteningly close to the flat Delta earth. All around the locusts sang.
A black man walked down the middle of the dirt road by himself in the night. He blessed the moon, which gave him enough light to avoid the worst ruts baked in the dusty soil. He’d been playing at a jook joint outside Clarksdale, and his hands and soul were tired. His guitar case thumped softly against his right leg as he walked. Sweat stained his clothes and his shoes were broken and worn.
Two more miles and he’d be home.
He didn’t have the money to travel far to play. Most of his singing was done in the ramshackle jook joints of the Delta. When he could afford it, he caught a train to some of the nearby towns, but even then he had a far piece to walk. The joints were out in the fields. He figured he could eat twice what he did and still not grow fat because he walked so much. He hoped some day to have the opportunity to test that idea.
It was easier to wear his hat than to carry it, though its broad brim was a hindrance at night.
As he walked, Ernest Washington wrote a song in his head. Though he was tired, he still felt the power of the music, the songs the small crowd had enjoyed so much. Ernest Washington, who was called Partner in the joints, glanced up at the radiant moon. It made him think of the woman who’d danced right in front of him, a well-rounded woman with a beautiful bottom and a glow to her complexion, an undertone of orange as if she was a pumpkin pie right out of the oven, sweet and spicy. Her boyfriend was Isaiah Cleveland, though, and no matter how many looks her dark eyes had cast Partner’s way, he’d taken care not to look back. Isaiah Cleveland lived down the road from Partner, and Partner knew for a fact that Isaiah had blacked a few eyes that rested on his woman for too long a stare. Partner had no desire to have his own face punched. However, the pumpkin pie woman was worthy of a song, and Partner had fixed a few lines in his head.
Partner was so absorbed in his composition that it took him a while to realize he wasn’t alone on the road. Another man walked at the same pace. Even the glow of the moon didn’t show Partner clearly what the man looked like. He seemed to be a hole in the night, absorbing all the light and giving back none. He was tall, taller than Partner, who was not a large man. The stranger wore a suit like Partner, and a white shirt like Partner, and, like Partner, a hat.
But the big man’s steps were silent.
“Who are you?” Partner asked, though he was almost too frightened to speak.
“I’m the man gone save your life,” said his new companion, in a deep voice as resonant as the bass fiddle Partner had once seen played by the backup band for a gospel singer.
“Save me from what?” Partner clutched his guitar case a little more firmly.
“Listen! The truck’s coming,” the man said. “You better hide. These men mean mischief.”
As if he’d taken earmuffs off, Partner heard a truck turning down the road he’d taken. Two bright cones of the headlights cut across the fields. Any minute they’d spot him, and he could hear the yelling from the truck’s passengers. The truck swerved and bounced across the ruts. By the way it veered, Partner could tell the driver was drunk. This was exactly the situation that got black men killed. Partner had feared it all his life.
Moving quick as a rabbit, Partner dashed into the cotton, down one of the rows. It had been hoed recently, making a clear aisle, but the stalks of the mature cotton grabbed at his clothes. Partner moved like the devil was after him. As far as he was concerned, that was the situation. The all-important guitar case banged his leg violently as he ran, and he feared the noise it made, though maybe over the truck engine and the hollering the men would not hear it.
Jesus, protect me from harm, he prayed. He felt the man who’d warned him had nothing to do with Jesus.
A tree stood where four fields converged, and Partner ran toward it with single-minded purpose. Just as the headlights swept the place where he’d left the road, he got to the tree, a big live oak, and hid behind it. His guitar case didn’t match the profile of the tree, and he shoved it up into the lowest branches and prayed he hadn’t damaged it. He’d saved and saved to buy it from Sears.
“Stop drivin’! I see me some tracks!” a white man yelled.
Partner’s heart constricted. Partner recognized the voice. It belonged to Jimmy Bradley, the son of the cotton gin owner.
Jimmy Bradley was a bad man, a drinker and abuser, and he’d raped Mary Emma Johnson, his mother’s maid. The fact that Jimmy Bradley’s father had beaten his son after he’d found out didn’t help Mary Emma. She was so shamed she’d only told Partner’s wife Bessie, her best friend, when Bessie had been offered the job Mary Emma had vacated.
The truck halted, and the sound of its idling motor made Partner feel faint. The blues man thought his own heart might stop, right along with the drone of the crickets and locusts.
“I ain’t driving out in my daddy’s cotton,” said another voice, carrying clearly in the night. This voice didn’t sound quite as drunk as Jimmy Bradley’s, and Partner thought it might belong to Theron Dale, a planter’s son. “We ain’t hurting anyone tonight, Jimmy, and we ain’t driving out into the fields. We’re moving on. Let’s go visit the cathouse behind Moses’ jook.”
And quick as that, Jimmy Bradley was diverted and Partner’s life was safe … at least that was what he hoped. The truck lurched off, and when it was far away and he was sure it would not turn back, that this was not some sadistic trick, Partner sagged against the tree in profound relief. A tear trickled down each cheek.
“What you cryin’ for, man?” the bass voice said.
Partner smiled, though he knew that it would be invisible to his companion. “I’m cryin’ cause I’m alive,” he said. The voice had come from above him, and he looked up to see the dark man sitting in the branches of the live oak. In fact, he perched right beside the guitar case and he gripped the handle.
“You pass me my guitar, please?” Partner said, unable to keep the alarm out of his voice.
“Maybe,” said the dark man.
“I’m grateful you told me they was comin’,” Partner said, very carefully. He was trying to think his way through the problem presented by the unexpected company he was keeping. “And I appreciate your helpin’ me. But I would sure like to have my guitar back.”
“I know you would,” said the other, with imperturbable gravity. “You play in the jooks?”
Delta Blues Page 19