A Dead Man Speaks

by Lisa Jones Johnson

At the end of the day, we’d head back to Missus Foster’s. She’d have dinner ready. We’d go and sit in her living room. Sometimes she’d take out one of her books and read out loud to us, or other times, Daddy and her would talk or play cards, and I’d take out one of her other books and read it myself. Her furniture was so nice and comfortable that I could just sink in it and disappear with my book.

  It was one of those times that I’d jumped in the biggest most comfortable chair, that I heard Daddy and Missus Foster talkin’ about Ma. They thought I was asleep ’cause I’d closed my eyes and sunk down real far in the chair. I could hear Daddy settle into the couch. I heard the strike of a match, and I could smell the sweet, woody kinda smell of the tobacco that he put in his pipe. I knew that he was rolling his pipe around in his mouth, making little clicking noises in between his words. Missus Foster was quiet, so I guessed that she was just listenin’ real hard to Daddy talk.

  “When I picked up my boy and hugged him, I couldn’t believe that he’d almost been taken away from me. ’Cause lemme tell ya, when I found out what Sarah had done, I almost hit her. I mean it. I almost knocked all the life outta her. And I’m not that kinda man. My daddy raised me good. ‘Always respect women. Don’t do nothin’ to ’em that you wouldn’t want me to do to your mama,’ he’d say. But when I saw that she’d stole my boy away, I almost forgot everything that Pa had told me. But anyway, I stopped m’self just in time. That’s when I tol’ her it was over, ‘tween her and me that is, and that I was gettin’ my boy back, and I didn’t want nothin’ more to do with her.”

  I’d never heard Daddy talk that way before. He sounded mad, madder than I’d ever heard him, but I felt good, ’cause he was mad at Ma.

  “What did she do when you told her you were leaving?” Missus Foster’s voice broke in, it was real light, almost like she was singing ’stead of talking.

  “Oh, she cried and begged me, but I’d already made up my mind. Truth is, I’d stopped lovin’ Sarah a long time ago. She had a real nasty mean streak. And worse is that she always seemed to take it out on the boy. He was jus’ the cutest thing as a baby, warn’t his fault he didn’t take to the breast.”

  I could hear Daddy make a long, sucking noise on his pipe. When he started talking again, his voice was quieter. I almost couldn’t hear him, and I had to kinda edge a little closer to the end of the chair to hear him.

  “Sarah had a real tough time at the delivery. Doctor said she might die. Afterwards, she was real sick. Couldn’t even pick up little Clive. I pretty much took care of the boy on my own ’til he was ’bout a year. Took her almost that long ’fore she had her strength back real good. Then she got pregnant again. We had a little girl. She was the prettiest, sweetest child you ever seen. Sarah was a different person when she was born. For pretty much the first time I ’member, ’xcept when I first met her, Sarah seemed happy.”

  Daddy was quiet for a minute. He took a deep breath and said softly, “Well, the baby got sick one day. And then…she…passed away. Took Sarah a long time to get over it. She didn’t want no more kids after that.”

  “And what about you, did you want other children?” I could hear Missus Foster ask in a curious kind of way.

  For a minute Daddy didn’t say anything. I could hear him stretch back in his chair. “Well, truth is, I’d always wanted to be a Daddy. From the time I was twelve, I grew up pretty much on my own. My folks died in the typhoid epidemic in ’32. After that I went to live with my Daddy’s sister. She had a baby, cute little thing. He was always gettin’ into things. Well, one day he drank something outta one of them medicine bottles. I don’t really remember what it was, but after that he was never really right. I sorta became like his Daddy and big brother all in one. Then one day he went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Doctor said it was from when he’d been sick b’fore. I felt real bad. Almost like it was my fault ’cause I was supposed to be watchin’ him. I thought if only I’d had another chance, if only I’d seen him ’fore he’d drunk that stuff. I think right at that point I promised m’self that if I had another chance to be a real Daddy, I’d do it right. It’d be different.

  “Well then things got real bad b’tween my aunt and me. Finally, when I was fifteen I just left, and then I was on my own ’til I met Sarah. When we got married and little Clive came pretty much right away, I’d got what I wanted, a son. Sure it woulda been nice to have had other kids, and if our little girl had…lived…well…it was God’s will, I figure. But truth is, for me just being a daddy for Clive was enough.”

  Daddy stopped for a second, and I thought that I couldn’t be any happier, but he kept on talking. “I tol’ you that Sarah almost died when she was deliverin’ Clive, and when the doctor tol’ me that I might have to choose between her or the baby, I didn’t even think about it for a minute. I tol’ ’em that I wanted the baby.”

  Now, I felt happy all over. My toes even curled up. This was better than when I’d had a double chocolate ice cream cone on my birthday. I wanted to run over to Daddy and give him a big hug. But I didn’t want him to stop talking, ’cause everything he said made me feel happier and happier. Daddy loved me more than Ma, more than anybody! I felt happier than I’d ever been, and I didn’t want it to go away, so I just kept listenin’, tryin real hard not to make a sound.

  “I’ll never forgit when I first saw Sarah. I’d gone to visit my cousin Joe Allen. He lived in the same town as Sarah’s mama.”

  Daddy sat up in his chair and turned his head to the side real funny. I almost laughed. Except I couldn’t, ’cause then they’d know I wasn’t ’sleep, and they’d stop talking, so I just held it in real tight and watched Daddy talk. It was almost as if Ma was right there, but only the way she was then. And he was describing it so good, even everything that him and Ma had been sayin’ back then. I could see it right there in front of me the way Pa could and the way it had happened back then…

  * * *

  Eleven Years Earlier, Lorenzo and Sarah through Lorenzo’s eyes…

  “M’name’s Lorenzo.”

  “Don’t b’lieve I was askin.” She kinda tipped her head up so the sun covered her face in this yellow brown glow. I looked dead at her and almost had to catch myself from sayin’ somethin’ stupid. I’d never seen nobody like her. She was tall and pretty in a different kind of way, had her hair tied back in a ponytail with a bright red rag that matched her skirt. She had real high cheekbones. I figured she was part Indian or somethin’. And her body was lean and strong lookin’, kinda like them mountain cats up in the hills, with small round breasts that I jus’ knowed would fit perfect right in the palm of my hand. Her mouth was wide with lips that curled up like a flower jus’ ’fore it was about to open in the sun. And her eyes were dark black and slanted on her face. She didn’t say nothin’. She just kind of smiled and looked at me, like she was somebody from someplace else that had jus’ come down for a little while to be with us regular folks. I felt kinda stupid. What with her not saying nothin’ and me neither, so I cleared my throat and tried again.

  “Uh, I didn’t catch yo name…Miss…”

  “Guess that’s ’cause I didn’t give it.” She flounced that red skirt of hers, turned her back on me and started walking away. Now I wasn’t no patsy, in fact I had plenty a girls after me back home, so I wasn’t ’bout to just give up easy like that. So I walked faster and caught up with her, which wasn’t easy ’cause she had long legs and was pretty tall. In fact, she came up almost to my nose, and I was darn near 6’5 last time I got measured.

  “Mind if I walks with you?”

  “Ain’t no law ’ginst it, I s’ppose.”

  “I’m new ’round here. I came to visit my cousin. You might knows him, Joe Allen Spencer.”

  “Can’t say I does.” She turned real fast and ducked in a little shack that was sellin’ lemonades and sweet corn cakes.

  I figured this was my chance, so I ducked in after her, and fore she could say no, I plopped some change on the counter in front of the old colored wo
man dippin’ the lemonade out of a big glass pitcher that was full of ice and fresh mint all swimmin’ ’round together.

  “We’ll take two lemonades and uh…two of them corn cakes.” The woman just grunted somethin’ I didn’t quite hear and scooped up my money. She set the lemonades in front of me and wrapped the corn cakes in a coupla pieces of clean newspaper. “Lemonade.” I held the glass in front of her.

  For a minute I thought she was gonna say no, but then she smiled in that funny way where I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or somethin’ else that was kinda uppity like she was just toleratin’ ev’rybody, ’cept maybe some special ones like her.

  “Thank you, Lorenzo.”

  My heart jumped a little bit. The way she said my name made all kinds of thoughts jumble around in my head. Things I probably shouldn’t be thinkin’ after only knowin’ her ’bout five minutes.

  She took a long sip from the glass and bit into the corn cake. Her teeth was straight and white like little soldiers, lined up perfect. As she finished it up, she raised one eyebrow. “You know, Lorenzo, I already got a fella. In fact, we’re gonna be married soon’s I finish high school next year.”

  My heart jumped a little bit, and not in a good way, but I wasn’t givin up. “Well that’s nice, but you ain’t married yet, and I don’t see your feller here, so no’s harm in talking and walking, way I sees it.”

  “No harm, I guess.”

  I could tell she was likin’ this.

  “But I jus’ don’t want you t’git disappointed or nothin’, Lorenzo, seein’ how I’m takin. And he ain’t from around here neither. His Daddy’s got a big farm outside a Greenwood, not sharecroppin’ neither. He’s goin’ to college next year, and he got me a job in the colored doctor’s office. I’m gonna work in a office and study to be a nurse. I ain’t workin’ on no more farms. Nope. My feller wants his wife to be somethin’.”

  “Well that sounds real nice.” I didn’t really mean it, but what else could I say. “But the way I sees it, you already is somethin’. You don’t need no job or nothin’ else to make you somethin’ you already is. And likewise, ain’t no job or no big farm or nothin’ that kin make somebody somethin’ when they ain’t nothin’ to begin with.” I don’t know quite where that all came from, kinda surprised me, but I guess since she was speakin’ her mind, I could speak mine, too.

  She raised her eyebrow in that funny way again, and put the glass back on the counter, saying kinda fast, “My feller’s waitin’ for me. He’s got his Daddy’s car, you know. I best be goin.” She turned and then stopped and walked back over to me and planted a big kiss on my cheek. “Thanks for the lemonade and for bein’ real nice.”

  I knowed I musta been grinning all over the place as I said, “You never tol’ me your name.”

  She hesitated, then looked me dead in the eye. “Sarah, m’name’s Sarah Wilcox.” Then she ran away. I knowed I musta turned red, even though it’s pretty much impossible for me to turn red, given my color and all. Anyway, for just that one minute when she turned and kissed me, I saw somebody else. Somebody who wasn’t maybe so sure of herself and wasn’t so uppity as she liked folks to believe. “I’ll be seein’ you around, Sarah.”

  Missus Foster’s voice broke the silence. “What happened to her young man?”

  Daddy reached in his shirt pocket and took out the plastic pouch with his tobacco in it. He dipped his pipe in the pouch like it was an ice cream scooper, and then filled it all the way to the top. Shaking his head slow, he lit the pipe and continued.

  “We’d see each other by and by that summer, nothin’ serious, ’cause her feller would come for her every Saturday and have dinner with her folks on Sundays. I figured I’d just be a good friend, but I guess, truth be told, I was always wishin’ that maybe I’d get my chance with her. Well later that summer, I heard that Sarah’s feller had left her and went off with somebody else, some college gal that his mama wanted him to marry. An since he was the reasin’ Sarah was gonna be movin’ to Greenwood an’ all an’ workin’ in that colored doctor’s office, all that was done, and so she’d be stayin’ where she was. I knew she’d be wantin’ to get outta that small town, with all the folks talkin’ an’ all, so I figured now that she was free, it might be my only chance. I remember standin’ there. My hands was sweatin. She was lookin’ as pretty as the first day I’d seen her, even with everythin’ that’d just happened. I took a deep breath and walked over to her.

  “Mind if I come in?”

  Sarah didn’t say nothin. She just sat on the chair looking out the window. I hadn’t seen her for almost a month. As I got a little closer, I could see that she’d lost some of her fight. I went over and sat in the chair next to hers. Real slow, I took her hand. It felt light and almost numb. Like there wasn’t no life in it no more.

  “Sarah, I wanted to ask you somethin, before you say anything, lemme get it all out. I already talked to yo Daddy and yo mama. And it’s okay with them.” I took a deep breath. “I wanna marry you, Sarah. I’m almost twenty years old, and I got a trade. I ain’t rich, but I’m a real good painter, and I’ll be able to keep food on the table and give us a better life than we’d be able to have stayin’in this town.”

  She looked up at me, and she looked almost confused, and real sad. “Do you really love me or is it jus’ ‘that you feels sorry for me? ’Cause I don’t needs yo pity!” She turned away and wiped a tear from her cheek. I guess it shoulda hurt, her saying that and all, but truth was, even though I liked Sarah a whole lot, I don’t know if I really loved her. ’Cause I don’t figure I really knew love back then at twenty years old. But I was ready to be a husband, and I guess I cared as much for Sarah as I had for anybody, so I said, “I do love you, Sarah. Mor’n I ever loved anybody.”

  And then she started crying softly, saying over and over, “I does like you, Lorenzo. I really does. From the beginnin’ I did…But all I wanted was to get outta here, get off the farm. I wanted to do somethin’ with my life!” She turned back and stared at me real hard. “If you really do loves me, Lorenzo, promise me that you’ll let me do somethin’ with my life. Promise me I won’t end up like Ma and Pa, workin’ to the bone from sun up to sundown and never havin’ nothin’ to show for it. I don’t want that. I wanna be a nurse. I wanna work in a office with people that dresses nice when they go to work. Promise me, Lorenzo. Promise me that you’ll let me do that!”

  I took her in my arms and held her tight. “I promise you, honey, I will.”

  * * *

  The clock chimed and Daddy stopped, like he’d needed to take a breath after all that . Everything was quiet for a minute. All I could hear was the sound of the big clock in the corner of the room. Then I heard Missus Foster say, “I’m glad you came here.” I couldn’t see Missus Foster but I guessed that she was probably smiling, ’cause her voice had that nice smiling kind of sound.

  * * *

  Daddy was quiet, then he cleared his throat. “It’s gettin’ kinda late, me and the boy better get to bed.” Daddy shook me gently. “Wake up, partner, time for bed.”

  I had to pretend that I was sleepy even though I was wide awake and ready to burst with happiness. I pretended to yawn really loud and said, “Where am I?” It must’ve worked, because Missus Foster smiled at me and kissed me goodnight on the forehead. Daddy put his warm, heavy arm around me as we walked up the stairs. That night when I said my prayers, I thanked God for Daddy, for Missus Foster, and for giving me such a perfect life.

  * * *

  I yawned. It was still dark, but for some reason I woke up. I turned over toward Daddy’s bed. The covers were thrown back, and it was empty.

  I sat up. Through the half-light, I could make out his coat and boots neatly by the door, like always. So he couldn’t be far. Must’ve gone to the bathroom down the hall. I plopped back down on the couch. Pulling the thick comforter around my chin.

  I don’t really remember what I was thinking about. I guess I figured I’d just wait up till Daddy got back from the ba
throom. But all of a sudden I got really sleepy, something about the warm spread and the comforting silence.

  Creeeeeaaakk. I turned over. Creeeeaaaakk. I opened one eye. I realized I must’ve been asleep awhile because now it was almost dawn. The room had a grey white light to it as the door opened slowly. I jumped awake. “Daddy?”

  “Go back to sleep, Clive, jus’ had to use the john.”

  Daddy came over and kissed me on the forehead, then climbed back in his bed.

  For the first time in my life, I knew Daddy wasn’t telling me the truth. He couldn’tve been in the john all that time. When I woke up the first time it was dark, and now it was almost light. But I felt funny saying anything to Daddy about it, so I decided I’d just try really hard to stay awake the next night and see if he left again.

  * * *

  I scrunched my eyes up really tightly. I wanted Daddy to think that I was asleep. I could hear the springs on his bed as he got up slowly, grabbing his bathrobe. I waited until he’d closed the door behind him, then I tiptoed over to the door and carefully opened it. The hallway was empty. I couldn’t tell whether Daddy was in the john or somewhere else.

  I crept out into the hall, sliding against the wall toward the john. Opening the door. Empty. My breath started gettin real fast. The last time I felt like that was when I saw Ma and Grandma DeeDee waiting for me. I couldn’t think where Daddy could be. Maybe he went downstairs for a drink of water. I walked softly down the stairs. Everything was completely dark. No lights or anything. He couldn’t be there. Now I was really scared. Where could he be? I was walking back up the stairs when I heard it. A low moaning was coming from Missus Foster’s room. I ran down the hallway.

  The door was slightly open, so I looked in. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, Daddy’s naked body on top of Missus Foster, and she was naked, too. They were moving together in rhythm and moaning and touching and kissing each other all over. I knew what they were doing. Me, Andy, and Jesse had seen a book about it. But I couldn’t believe that Daddy was…My heart fell to my feet.