Crossing the River

by Fenton Johnson

  Things had reached their peak—with everybody glaring at each other and Leo starting in on the communists and civil rights—when Miracle saw Bradford stumbling through the crowd. He reached across the bar and seized Miracle’s hand. “I’m in trouble, Miracle.”

  “So what else is new.” Bradford’s eyes were glazed over, his pupils hardly bigger than pinheads. He weaved in time with his words. Miracle sniffed. There was not a drop of liquor on his breath.

  “It’s LaHoma Dean,” Bradford said. “We had a date. Christmas date. She says. She wants. She’s got to get married, that’s all she’ll consider.”

  “So? You been talking about breaking up for six months,” Miracle said. “Now’s your chance. You’ve already told her how you feel about that.”

  “I got to go, Miracle. Get out. I’d go to California if I had the money. You can get me the money, hnnh? You must have lots of money around here. I bet you go through a thousand dollars on a night like this. Bernie’d never miss a couple hundred. Hnnh?”

  “How can you not have the money? You’ve been working since July.”

  Bradford shrugged. “It just goes, Miracle. One thing and another. A little tail, a little crystal. I’ve paid more money to Fort Knox GI’s than Uncle Sam has. And now LaHoma Dean. She says she’s got to get married. Got to.”

  Understanding struck. Miracle shook his head. “You mean—”

  Bradford slapped his hand over Miracle’s mouth. “Not here, Miracle. Not now. Somebody’ll hear. If her folks find out—if my folks find out—it’ll be shotgun or run for me.” Bradford laid his head on the bar. “I’ll go to Nashville. I’ll live with Sister, sweet, darling Sister. My sister the star. How’d you like to have a sister who’s a star. Oh, God, Miracle, how in the hell am I going to get out of this one?”

  Miracle looked around. Bernie was out of sight. Miracle pushed Bradford’s head up. “The first thing you got to do is, straighten up. I don’t know what you’re high on but you can’t get high on it here. Bernie’ll have you out on your ass in the time it takes you to figure out where you’re going.”

  Bradford jerked upright. “Let him try.” He slammed the bar with his fist. Heads turned, all except Leo’s, too deep in his argument to notice. “Any man who can’t keep his own wife tied down ain’t likely to be throwing me around.”

  Miracle could count on one hand the fights he’d been in. He could count on his fist the fights he’d started. But it was Christmas Eve, and Rosamund was in town, and here came Bradford, drugged up and putting into words what Miracle had heard whispered, just loud enough for him to hear. He’d not believed it. He wouldn’t believe it now. Quicker than thought, Miracle slammed his fist against the sharp edge of Bradford Uptegrove’s teeth.

  In the South, in the Inn, fighting was as contagious as summer flu. For a long calm moment Miracle stared at his Uncle Leo’s face without really understanding how it got there, lying flat on the bar with one eye swelling shut and the other roving the ceiling. In the second Bradford Uptegrove took to regain his balance, Miracle realized there were two fights going and that someone had laid Leo across the bar.

  Miracle and Bernie collided at the flap that separated the white and colored bars. Bernie swept Miracle back with a wave of his arm, pushing him against the rack of bottles. Miracle was up and through the flap before it fell shut.

  They were too late. Leo was on his attacker and already somebody was on top of Leo. Bernie waded into the bodies, to be caught by a fist—maybe even Leo’s fist—and knocked against the bar. Bradford came weaving after Miracle, his lip dribbling a red trickle of blood. Bradford threw a fist. Miracle dodged. Bradford stumbled against the ornate oak pilasters of the colored bar.

  The crowd thinned to the fighters, mostly Catholics. The Baptists hanging in the corners fled. Through moving bodies and flying fists Miracle saw Bernie, struggling to his feet. Bernie was angry and afraid at once, his square jaw slack and his eyes glancing about and his hands clutching and unclutching at his sides. From the direction of his father’s glances Miracle knew Bernie was afraid not for himself but for the Inn, the building that was more Miracle than any single Miracle, the place that was his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather in wood and copper and glass. Miracle leapt into the pile of bodies.

  He didn’t last long. He never saw who hit him. Later Miracle swore it was Bradford Uptegrove. At that moment Miracle knew only that the blow was from behind, and that it was something hard and heavy and solid. He pitched forward, his hands flailing and his vision blurred, his eyes losing focus slowly, like a binocular lens turned too far. He heard a loud crash, then a sound like the rush of the river past the bridge pilings in a March flood. The rush turned to a roar. Miracle passed out, his head neatly framed against the hills and the rising (or setting) sun carved into the pale oak of the colored bar.

  In Jessup County the Miracle Inn is the civilized bar, the bar where the money goes, when there is any, the bar that the other bar owners come to when they have somebody to impress. Over the years Bernie had made it clear that he did not allow personal differences to be settled on the premises. People who chose to fight were writing their own tickets out, and Bernie had a long memory.

  To give Miracle his due, Bradford Uptegrove did in fact swing the beer mug that struck Miracle from behind. The crash that Miracle heard as he fell was the mug, torn from Bradford’s hands by Leo and tossed at his attacker. But Leo had no time to compensate for his swollen eye. The mug floated past Bradford into the beveled mirror behind the white bar, that had mirrored soldiers at their Union and Confederate reunions and soldiers from the Spanish American and World Wars and Korea, that had seen Prohibition come and go and liquor legal and illegal enter the door, that had begun to see soldiers off to Vietnam, that mirror that had reflected Martha Pickett and her son and Talbott on the long night of the Jessup County fair—that beveled mirror shattered into ten thousand slivers of light, as if for a century it had waited patiently for a one-eyed cyclops to toss his mug.

  The fight stopped, as quickly as it had started. Maybe it was fear of Bernie. Maybe it was the first bell at Assumption Church, sounding the call to midnight Mass. Most likely it was the realization, even through the pounding of arteries bursting with adrenalin and alcohol, that any man who fought on a floor covered with broken glass was likely to get his ass cut.

  Men who a few minutes earlier had been pounding each other’s heads, helped one another straighten ties and brush off dirt. More than one man turned to the mirror to straighten his clothes, only to find the mirror gone and in its place a starburst of a black hole.

  Those who hadn’t families to drive to Mass swept up glass and set up the chairs that had been overturned. One by one they left, muttering apologies and excuses to Bernie. In the confusion Leo disappeared.

  Bernie propped his son on a chair. He ran his hand over Miracle’s head, knocking shards of glass to the floor. He found no cuts but felt a goose egg rising from the nape of his son’s neck. With a woman’s tenderness he wiped clean his son’s face. He wrapped the towel around some ice and draped it over Miracle’s head.

  Miracle opened his eyes. He saw Bernie, his anxious face peering into Miracle’s own, from closer than Bernie had been since before Miracle had a memory to remember. Miracle struggled to sit upright. He felt his swollen head. His eyes swam.

  “How are you feeling,” Bernie said.

  “Like I stepped in front of the L & N coal run.”

  “Good. I don’t know if it’s happened to you before, but if you’re going to stay in this business it’s got to happen to you sometime, you can’t learn any other way.” Bernie unfolded himself upward. “If you’re going to stay in this business. I wish it hadn’t happened here. I don’t know why you can’t learn your lessons in some two-bit bar joint instead of here, where you think you’d have some respect for the family.”

  Bernie picked at his sleeves as he spoke, staring not at his son but at the mirror shards littering the floor and picking,
picking. “You don’t understand what you have here. This place will be here after I’m gone and after you’re gone. People might not remember you but they’ll remember the Miracle name and they’ll go to the Miracle Inn and have a drink on us whether they know it or not. They’ll meet people and they’ll have a few beers and maybe they’ll get to where they don’t feel so bad about themselves and the world. Someday maybe you’ll understand how much that means.”

  He stood for a while in silence. Miracle waited for more. Bernie had heard, could not help but have heard, what Bradford had said about Martha and Talbott. He must know why Miracle had thrown the first fist, what had started that fight. Bernie must know something about Martha and Talbott, and knowing, surely he would say something.

  Bernie said nothing. He laid the keys on the pool table. “Lock up,” he said. “I’m meeting your mother at Assumption Church. If I’m not there God knows what she’ll get into. If you’re feeling good enough to talk back, you’re well enough to lock up.” Bernie left.

  Miracle cursed himself. He might have said something to bridge the gap between himself and Bernie. He had the chance, back there on the chair, with Bernie looking at him as if he were a child again and had fallen and skinned his shin. Following Miracle’s regrets came his pride, as fast and strong as the Knobs Fork after a July cloudburst, and his stubbornness. He had no call to say anything. He had never asked to run the Inn.

  It was the pride and stubbornness of the Miracle blood, the blood that made them father and son and that kept them apart.

  Miracle pondered this as he moved about the bar, turning off lights, counting the change and bills in the register. He moved slower than usual. It was past midnight by the time he banked the ashes in the stove and tapped the damper shut. He straightened himself slow as an old man—he still had the dripping towel around his neck. Behind him the door opened.

  Miracle turned, already clearing his throat to ask the latecomer to leave.

  Rosamund Uptegrove stood in the doorway, wearing the same blue chiffon and sequined dress that only last August had swept Miracle’s breath away.

  His breath was swept away now, and his heart, and his blood. He stood unmoving, unable to move, until Rosamund crossed the room and wrapped him in her arms.

  She pulled him from his stool and thrust his head under the faucet behind the bar. Miracle found himself blessing the beer mug that had raised the lump on his skull and that had brought Rosamund to his side with cries of mercy, Florence Nightingale in blue sequins, gently toweling his red hair. Rosamund Uptegrove loved him more than ever. She loved him because she had saved his life.

  She told her story as she patted his hair dry. She was angry with Talbott. From rumors and Big Rosie’s hints she’d surmised his affair with Martha.

  “Not that there was much guessing,” Rosamund said. “Mamma doesn’t leave much to the imagination.”

  Miracle picked at his sleeves, rolled them down, buttoned and unbuttoned his collar. “What business is it of hers anyway,” he said finally. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Well, it’s true,” Rosamund said.

  “It is not true.”

  “Miracle, I know. I asked him. And at least he didn’t try to lie his way out of it, I’ll give him that much.”

  “So why are you still seeing him!” Miracle cried. He jerked his head up. His temples throbbed, his vision swam. He lowered his head.

  “I’m not seeing him, dear,” Rosamund said with cool logic. “I’m seeing you.”

  “You’ll see him again.”

  “I might. I don’t see how that’s a concern of yours.”

  She was an Uptegrove, no doubt about it. Only Big Rosie’s daughter could be quite so cool about matters that set Miracle’s own Pickett heart on fire. Faced with her unflappable certainty, Miracle made his decision: he would play her way. He reached behind his head, grabbed her hand, and tugged her in front of him. “To hell with all of them anyway,” he said, and pulled her into his lap.

  Through long kisses his mind wandered. He suspected that Rosamund’s attention had its source in some desire to spite his mother by seducing her son. Well, two could play that game. With the same spirit that led his mother to forge ahead with a doomed affair with a married man, Miracle quelled inner wisdom in favor of love and desire and a small measure of his own revenge: on Talbott, on his mother, on Bradford Uptegrove, for being so free and easy with his beer mug.

  He forced his mind back to the present. He wrapped his arm around Rosamund’s shoulder, shifting his hand so that it was in her long, dark hair.

  “Not here,” she hissed, but she stayed inside the curve of his arm.

  “Don’t move, not a finger,” Miracle said. He rose and circled the room, pulling the shade at each window and turning out the lights. He stopped at the jukebox, dropped in a quarter, and punched up three Patsy Cline tunes.

  He stood next to Rosamund. She leaned into him, her hair like spun coal bunched against his chest. She pressed the length of her body against him, half lifting him onto the pool table. She hefted herself onto his lap and undid the bottom buttons of his shirt while he fumbled among her sequins for her zipper. Before the heat of her purpose and passion his Catholic guilt wilted like plucked chicory in a July sun. On the soft green baize of the north-slanting pool table, for the first time in his life, Miracle lost himself to lust and love.

  Or tried to lose himself. According to what he’d heard, this was supposed to come naturally, without thinking. Miracle found himself thinking double-time, working harder than on any Saturday night at the Inn. In the midst of romance, in the middle of the longest kisses he’d ever known, his mind was drifting, no matter how he fought against it: off to his mother, to Talbott Marquand. Where was Talbott now? Up in Detroit, no doubt dividing his time between a third and fourth woman.

  And here was Miracle, in his first try at honest-to-God, all-the-way sex. He knew what it was supposed to be like. He’d read books and magazines. They all agreed that the first time was the best time. Miracle found himself thinking that if this time was the best, he had a sorry sex life ahead. His pecker stayed limp, a flaccid jello wiener under Rosamund’s hand. How could this happen, after so many nights of hoping and praying for just what had come to pass? Sex on the pool table at the Miracle Inn! Nobody would believe it. He couldn’t believe it. Miracle put all his brain below his belt. Nothing happened.

  In the middle of a tepid kiss Rosamund broke away. “Earth to Miracle,” she said. “Come in, please. What’s wrong with you?”

  “My head hurts too much,” he said lamely. “We should make a date. Tomorrow night. I’ll be better tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll be in Nashville tomorrow night. Thank God.” She slid from the pool table. “I’m not about to get Big Rosie on my tail for sitting and smooching in the Miracle Inn.” Miracle looked crestfallen. Rosamund relented, laying her arms across his shoulders, “Cheer up, Miracle. I’ll write, I promise, and tell you all about it. And you can come on down, sometime. You promised, remember? At the fair.” She played with the hair at the nape of his neck, running her fingers across the lump, still rising. Miracle grimaced. She laughed and pecked his cheek. “That’s what you get for fighting over women,” she said. “See you down south.”

  She was gone before he could stand, out the door in a great clashing of chiffon. In Willie Uptegrove’s Lincoln she spun from the lot, throwing gravel against the Inn windows, leaving Miracle standing alone on the splintered planks of the Miracle Inn, hugging his bony elbows to his chest and considering the jagged fragments of his reflection in the shattered mirror.

  Standing in the Assumption Church vestibule Martha bent to the clear pane in the stained glass doors, to watch the priest lead his procession of servers to midnight Mass. They walked with the grace of penguins on land, the tallest and oldest boys who brought up the rear pushing and shoving as they marched up the aisle. She’d seen her first Mass from this same pane. The priest was older and fatte
r now, his prayers were in English, but the congregation still mumbled and the vestibule smelled as faintly and thoroughly of incense as ever.

  Bernie laid his hand on her shoulder, so quietly and suddenly she jumped. When she looked at him she fell against the swinging door, so hard that faces in the rear pew turned.

  Bernie had managed to tie his tie in the car mirror but patches of dirt spotted his coat and the red rose Martha pinned on him each Christmas Eve was squashed flat against his lapel. Under one eye his cheek swelled pink and green and the effect on Bernie’s pale and bony face was close to leprosy.

  Behind the bruises Martha saw the look of knowledge in his eyes. She could not know who told him or how, though she connected his look instantly and unmistakably with the bruise under his eye and the smudges on his coat. “Where’s Miracle?” she asked, the easiest and least dangerous question she knew.

  Bernie took her arm. “He is not in the grave or in jail or chasing after whoever it is he’s fixed himself on climbing into bed with. He is at the Inn, where he ought to be on Christmas Eve, closing up the bar like I did when I was his age and where God willing his son will be on Christmas Eve when he is my age. Now sit down and we will pray for the family like the good Catholics we ought to be even if we ain’t. God knows we need it.” He guided her into the church, his grasp on her arm as weak as a child’s, his step as tired and shuffling as the oldest man’s.

  7

  Promises, Promises

  Miracle knew something was up when on Christmas Day Bernie asked him to chop wood. Hard work on Christmas Day had to be a mortal sin, and Bernie could be relied upon to know all the sins in all their degrees. Besides, Bernie never asked anybody to do anything. Either you did it or Bernie did it himself, conveying without words the fact that he was doing your job and doing a better job of it to boot. When Bernie made his request of Miracle, he’d made it politely, in language more likely to come from Martha than from anybody on the Miracle side of the family.