I am leaving here, she said. I’m loadin’ up the truck with my herbals and whatnot and goin’ back to Memphis. I’m goin’ to Orange Mound, where the black people live, and open up a store there. And I need to do it alone. Don’t ask me why. It suits me, is all, it suits me. You all can stay on here. I don’t care. I’m goin’ back to Memphis. I’m leavin’ in the mornin’.
Bernard was stunned. He stared up at her dumbstruck. Bald Horace, on the other hand, had something to say.
I think I’d like to move on, too. I don’t know if you all noticed, but there’s some things that happened recently I just can’t get out of my thoughts, awake or asleep. I believe I need to do penance for my sins. So, ’Rora Mae, I want you to take my share of the gold. I don’t believe I should profit by it. Lord knows, the white world owes us both, but it owes you a heap more than it owes me. I think I should sell my flock and my herd and head on to wherever God sends me. Mornin’ does me fine as well.
They embraced.
Bernard snapped himself out of shock and argued with them. He made pleas to their sense of family, to the foolishness of splitting up again when it had required so much grief to bring them back together, to the bonds they shared from the antediluvian past up to that very day. When all of that did no good, he played his ace. How could they leave him when he’d saved their lives?
And I thank you, Aurora Mae said, meaning her gratitude should be sufficient. In any case, it was all she was prepared to give.
I saved yours back, Bald Horace said. And it’s killin’ me.
They were at an impasse. Bernard felt as if a pile of rocks crushed his chest. He’d run out of argument, bribery, and blackmail. He felt a husk of a man, light as milkweed. His heart was too dry to break. When the others went to sleep, he sat alone on his bed and stared into darkness. Just before dawn, he got up and walked flatfooted through the house to Aurora Mae’s bedroom. The door was open. He went through it. He could see her, lying there, naked under a sheet, bathed in moonlight. He sat on the edge of the bed. Quietly, so as not to wake her, Bernard wept. She opened her eyes.
There was no surprise in her expression. It was as if she’d been expecting him. Out of kindness, out of affection, she lifted her arm and put a hand behind his neck, drawing him down beside her to comfort him. He felt like a child next to her. She was that big.
I’m sorry, Bernard. I got to go. I got to be alone.
Words he’d kept inside for years spilled out.
I love you, Aurora Mae.
I know. I know.
He propped himself up on an elbow and tried to kiss her, but she turned her head and his lips landed on her cheek.
I can’t do that, she said softly. Maybe once upon a time I could. I always had feelin’ for you, Bernard. I did. But them crackers ruined me for that.
He cried out and sobbed, the great ragged sobs of a rent and tortured soul. The sound of it roused her brother, who was suddenly at the doorway in his nightshirt, his mouth dropped open at the sight before him.
Help him up, Horace, she said. He’s at least as broke down as us.
The next morning, after Aurora Mae packed up the truck bed and Bald Horace sold his goats and chickens to a cousin, Bernard stood on the porch watching them leave, she in the truck and Bald Horace on foot with two days’ rations and a staff, which he believed was the only way a penitent should travel. After a handful of months, Bernard realized they weren’t changing their minds and coming back. Staying there without them made no sense. The cousins were kind but kept a cautious distance from him now that Woodwitch and her brother were gone, because you never knew with white people. They could be sweet all their lives long and then just like that turn on you. Their reserve dug the pit he was in a little deeper. Bundling his broken heart together with his memories and his gold, he left, too, without plan or purpose.
The first thing he did was find a place to bury half the gold. There was that much of it. He could not carry it all for long. He chose a high place at the outskirts of Saint Louis in a graveyard flanked by a great stone church, thinking it unlikely to be disturbed by flood and impossible to forget. Then he headed west for no particular reason other than to fight the temptation to follow his lost love south. Besides, he’d had enough of the North in Cincinatti. Despite the gold sewn inside his jacket and the false pockets of his pack, he’d been poor too long to know how to be rich. He rode the rails where he could or walked. Boxcars were stuffed with black folk. The first car he hopped, he threw his pack in ahead of him, and the weight of it slamming against the floor created a great cloud of dust. As he hauled his limbs up and in, a multitude of coughing fits welcomed him. He looked up through the settling air to see what appeared to be two dozen Negroes ranging in age from toddlers to ancients.
At the sight of him, women shrunk back against the walls, grabbing their children and holding them close. Most of the men clenched their fists, the rest looked to be reaching behind them, for what Bernard did not care to find out. He gave them his most practiced good-natured smile. He doffed his hat. Ladies, he said. Gentlemen. He bowed a bit from the waist, but not overly low or they’d think it mockery. He smiled wide and open. Wiggled his big ears for the amusement of the children. Then he settled into a corner of the car far from everyone else and whistled a popular song. In short, he did everything he could to make himself seem friendly. It didn’t help much. The women eased the pressure on their backs and the men loosed their fists, but no one gave him welcome. He opened up his pack and produced what he had to eat: a few potatoes and onions, three tins of sardines, one of salmon, and two cans of tomatoes. He cradled them in two arms and held them aloft. The body helps cook these up will surely share them, he said.
The ice broke. The wall tumbled. So many voices chimed in together, he didn’t know who was talking when. The men made a fire in a metal tub and the women cooked a stew over it, adding their own stores of turnips and spice to Bernard’s cache. There wasn’t much per head, but it was more than many of them had eaten for a time. Soon a festive air replaced suspicion, and Bernard felt comfortable enough to pull out of his pack what his riverboat ancestors would have called the pièce de résistance, a bottle of bourbon. It was turning dark and cold. Everyone took a sip—men, women, and children all. There was a second pass about just for grown-ups, a third just for men, then Bernard got an earful.
Down in the Delta after the flood, they told him, life was as cruel for Negroes as life could get. There was plenty of work digging out, cleaning up, rebuilding, unloading, and distributing federal aid, but it was miserable work, conscript labor performed under rifle and whip. Wages, when they were given, were worthless chits. There was typhus, cholera, dysentery and no medicine unless you worked like your granddaddy slave, while the whites put out a hand and got it government-free.
Time has passed, they said, the waters have drawn back and things are put back together some, but still there’s lynchin’ in the wood and murder at the work camps. Every morning the sun shines down on more black men turned up dead of gunshot and knife wounds, and heaven help every woman, whether good lookin’ or plain, once that day is over and darkness falls. The bosses suffered terrible in the flood time, and we did, too, but in our case, it was more of the same, and in theirs, trouble newborn. They had not known the Lord’s rod in times gone, only His velvet glove. The devil’s anger took hold of ’em. Someone had to pay. We are the scapegoats, they said, striking chests made scrawny from illness and hunger, just like in the Bible. We cannot survive it. We are on the move. Going north. Going west. Don’t matter where. Anywhere that ain’t the Delta.
Every car he rode, he found Negroes with like stories. It seemed God had rained down the flood on them, after which white men rained down the fire and brimstone. Bernard could not rest thinking of poor, fractured Bald Horace with no gold and nothing but the hate of others and his heart’s desolation to keep him company. He did not care to think of Aurora Mae. When he focused on her possible fate, his fancies met up with the horror of wha
t was told him on the rails, and he could not bear the pain of it. He consoled himself with the thought that at least she had two portions of gold. There was always the possibility she’d convinced Bald Horace to stick with her after all, and the two of them were safe, protecting each other however they may. Then he’d think of how they’d both abandoned him and grieve.
He put down stakes for a while in Kansas City. When he got to town, he went first to a bathhouse and washed the road and rails off. He obtained the address of a good haberdasher, who outfitted him in a respectable wardrobe from drawers to fedora. After noting the way the tailor’s eyes lit up at the sight of payment in gold coin, he went to a bank next and got himself several safety deposit boxes as his gold would not fit in merely one or two. Then he checked into the best rooming house in town. There he slept and ate well and found he liked it. If I am not to have love, he thought with more resignation than bitterness, then I shall have luxury and the company of fine folk. So he studied the ways of the guests of Mrs. Karp’s Home Away from Home on Blossom Street, a steady stream of salesmen, married couples on a honeymoon, schoolteachers, well-heeled tourists all on their way to someplace else, and learned a thing or two about how to speak and hold his fork properly. He was a favorite of Mrs. Karp, mostly because he stayed on while others passed through and was never late with the rent. Mrs. Karp was a blonde, rosy-cheeked widow not much beyond forty, plump and pretty, who did not know how lonely she was until Bernard Levy came to stay. She found herself drawn to him, because he was a strong, quiet type of independent means, always clean and never rude. Looks aren’t everything, she told her cook, Lulu, in fact, looks can deceive when homeliness masks a noble nature and beauty a base one.
It wasn’t long before she made her move.
Bernard sat on the back porch in a rocker smoking a cigar. It was a warm night. He’d chosen the back, because the kitchen windows and door would be open while Lulu and her husband, Daniel, the general caretaker of the place, cleaned up after dinner. He felt more at home listening to those two squabble and gossip than he did in the front parlor where he was still a little afraid of opening his mouth and saying something to a fellow guest that would label him the low-class son of the Mississippi he was.
The screen door opened and fell shut in a clatter of noise that stirred him from thoughts of Aurora Mae in better times, which was why his eyes were damp. Mrs. Karp noticed.
Why, Mr. Levy, are you feelin’ well? she said. You look about to come down with a cold or worse. I could get you some tea with honey. Maybe spike it up, too. It’ll help you sleep.
She didn’t wait for an answer but called out to Lulu to bring the drink for them both, easing herself into a rocker set close by Bernard’s with just a tiny wedge of table between them. She dismissed Lulu and Daniel, shooing them away from porch and kitchen with a waved hand and harsh looks. She leaned over and touched Bernard’s arm while she murmured pleasantries. She wasn’t but halfway through with her tea and admiring the moon when Mrs. Karp pronounced herself feeling chilled, and why didn’t they move indoors.
This was a surprise to Bernard. Her flesh radiated heat. He should have been forewarned, but he’d been so awful lonely that her company proved welcome. Once they settled on the second parlor couch in a room that was vestibule to her private quarters, she poured them both a second cup, spoke to him softly about the death of Mr. Karp in the Great War. And me, she said, a child bride, suddenly alone in the world. Then came tears, followed by a clumsy effort Bernard made to comfort her. He really didn’t know how it happened, but a hand he thought he’d placed around her shoulder for a good pat found itself under her left breast after she’d twisted around unexpectedly. Then one of her hands fluttered about as deft as butterflies, clever as monkeys undoing all his buttons and ties while her other hand took care of her own. Come the dawn, he found himself being served breakfast in bed by a flushed, robust blonde, old enough to teach him a thing or two and young enough for him to like it.
He lived with Mrs. Karp just shy of two years. He grew fond enough of her, as he’d nothing else to do. He ran her errands, patched her roof, evicted tenants, bought whatever she claimed she could not live without. They became an item in the town, an odd couple who amused their betters. Though no one expected the widowed operator of a rooming house to be as respectable as her lodgers, her choice of lover invited fun. Inevitably, women being what they are, she began to demand avowals from him he could not give. He gave her the best he could and remain honest, but he disappointed. She nagged him constantly. He thought often of leaving her. If he’d had somewhere else to go or an ambition in the world beyond one day hearing from Aurora Mae or Bald Horace, he would have. The stock market crash came next, landing like a wall of bricks across their bed. Her clientele dried up. The lodgers she did have were less and less well heeled, and her resentment grew that Bernard did not give up his amatory reticence nor wholesale his gold. Her breath went sour with whiskey at odd times of day. Her hair was always loose and wild. It did not occur to Bernard that he was breaking her heart, indeed that he could break anyone’s heart or that anyone would offer him her heart to begin with. But he was.
On a certain Saturday morning, he woke up to the sight of her standing over him in her duster, a paisley scarf tied around her head. Get up, she said, get up. We’ve somewhere to go. He did so, because he was accustomed to obeying women, from his mama to Miss Maple, from the riverboat dolls to Aurora Mae. There was no other reason. Without complaint or question, he dressed in the clothes she told him to wear, his corduroy suit, flat cap, and his sturdiest boots. He followed her to the Packard he’d bought her used for her birthday. I’m drivin’, she said. He got in from the passenger side.
He thought to ask Mrs. Karp where they were going, but one glance at her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel made him reconsider. It was possible she was in one of those moods becoming more common every week when her nagging turned to yelling and her voice screeched. Times like those, it seemed she was halfway to the madhouse. He kept mum.
She started up the car without another word. They drove deep into the Osage plains. Once, she stopped and sweetly asked Bernard to refill the gas tank from the canisters she had in the back. He complied, wondering what it was he didn’t like about her tone, sweet though it might be. When he got back in the car, he fell asleep.
Bernard woke up when the car came to a halt with a jolt. They were in a tallgrass prairie full of bluestem and switchgrass. Far off on the horizon was a blue line of hills rolling there like a tide of tiny waves.
Now put up or get out, Mrs. Karp said. Her eyes were wide and round. They bulged a little. Her lip quivered. She sprayed when she talked. At last, she’d achieved a primary goal. She frightened him.
He backed against the car door to get as far away from her as he could without leaving the vehicle. What are you talking about?
You heard me. Put up or get out, get out, get out. You like it out there? She gestured in a grand way, encompassing the whole of the wilderness. Better than livin’ with me? Because that’s your choice, Bernard. You can either marry me today at the first justice of the peace we can find, or you can make a new life here. Find out if you prefer the company of prairie dogs and snakes to me.
She laughed in a maniacal way that, whatever her intention, had Bernard running from the car at top speed. He ducked down in the grass. She howled and drove the car around in mad circles looking for him. He crawled on his belly zigzagging and hoped for escape. Eventually, she stopped the car. Wept. He could hear her cries, and each one was like a knife to his gut. He thought of getting up and seeing if he could comfort her, coax her back to sanity somehow, but by then her cries had turned to sniffles and whimpers. Just as if he’d never existed, she started up the car again and slowly drove off.
It took him three days to walk back to Kansas City. He had three days of walking, of begging for scraps at the farms and towns he passed through along the way, three days to review his life so far and how it all had com
e down to the vengeance of a woman’s unrequited love. He could not decide if all his times of glory and all his times of pain amounted to a tragedy or a comedy. He vowed that he would marry one day. It seemed far too dangerous to remain single, and the idea of children had begun to appeal. He vowed to marry as soon as he found a woman who was as unlike Mrs. Karp and as much like Aurora Mae before her troubles as he could find. Respectable, he decided, a virgin, strong in her opinions, with lots of thick black hair, yes, the hair would be nonnegotiable. Whoever she was, he wanted to lie in bed with her and bury himself in her hair and maybe then he might catch the scent of Aurora Mae once in a while and be happy.
When he got back to town, he went to the bank and emptied his deposit boxes into a flour sack he’d come across on the way. He went to a livery, decided to buy a car instead of a horse. He bought a battered Model T with a reconditioned engine, as it suits a wanderer with a flour sack full of gold to be nondescript, and left his home for the past two years without a plan, without direction.
Somewhere out there a new life beckoned. What it was mystified him completely.
XVI
Memphis, Tennessee–Guilford, Mississippi, 1962–1964
IT WAS AFTER DUSK BEFORE Mickey Moe drove far enough along a certain wooded dirt road to find the knocked-down tree with pink flowers sitting in a ditch next to a path strewn with acorns, pinecones, empty beer bottles, and one or two jugs of hard liquor. He found the air crisp for a summer night. He shivered as he exited the LTD and dropped himself into the darkness of a night lit only intermittently by the full moon as there were clouds above that shifted constantly, jockeying for dominance over that old man and his silver light. One minute he could see before himself plain as day, and the next hardly at all. So he walked then stopped as the light permitted. When he was still, he looked up to see when the clouds might part again. It took time to come to the place he sought, the spot where a fire had burned and men had been tortured not three nights before.
One More River Page 21