by Brad Watson
The real nigra was that Frank, who’d just appeared the week before—a black ragged ghost, there in the yard raking leaves in the scant dark gray light of a late afternoon. -You there, she shouted out to him, what do you want? -Yes’m, he said, I’s just raking the leaves, something like that. She told him to talk to Earl, they couldn’t hire another nigra around the place. But Earl says, -Well I’m sure as hell not going to rake the leaves, and it’s hard enough to get someone over here to do that. Besides, he’s staying with Creasie out there, looks like, maybe she can use the company, better to help keep her around.
She’d have liked to be done with the both of them, with the lot of them, there were plenty of white people, even old people, could be got to do that work. She didn’t like them skulking around. If she hadn’t gotten to where she liked for Creasie to fetch her sassafras for tea from old Vish—it was good for her stomach trouble and other ailments, too—she might have just let her go, but then too firing one of them could be harder than hiring, so she didn’t.
Earl got to where he’d take Frank off fishing with him, down to the coast, where she knew he was seeing the woman he’d hired at the store that year and sent off to manage the new store in Tallahassee, so Frank knew that about him, about her, which was humiliating. She knew Earl was seeing her down there, but said nothing, it was out of her sight. But it made her feel all the more lost in her life, what she had become, and she would find herself sometimes on weekends when he was down there thinking she had slipped into another life where he wasn’t even alive anymore, had disappeared almost as if he’d been gone for a long time, and she wandered the grounds around the house picking leaves from the trees and bushes and memorizing their vein patterns, their shapes, and digging earthworms from the black earth at the base of the magnolia tree out by the road to take fishing by herself out at the lake. At the lake sometimes she would stay into the dark, and lie on the cot in the living room of the cabin smelling the rank smell of the bedding bream and would want to touch herself but when she did felt nothing, no desire, as if she were physically numbed as well, just made her think of her sisters and being girls together and she’d feel sad, and she would get up and drive in the darkness down the dirt road back to the highway.
She wanted to escape it all, go back to the past. To be a girl again. When she turned into the long winding driveway to the house and saw the bleak light spilling weakly from the curtains in the kitchen and den where Creasie sat there like a black shadow in the dim electric lamp’s penumbra with little Ruthie’s children in irregular orbits around her, she felt she was a stranger reentering a world she would have to remember all over again when she stepped in the door, by sight and touch and by things the others said that might bring her back to who she supposedly was, like someone lost her memory and struggling always against her own will to know something of this place, these people, these lives.
Discussion with the Dummy
CREASIE HAD HATED the dummy from the start. Mr. Junius would round up all the little grandchildren, Ruthie’s two and Edsel’s Robert, bring them out there and walk them out to the shed to see the dummy. Come on, let’s go see Oscar! he’d say. Come on, Creasie, you come along. And out they’d troop back to the shed, Miss Birdie fussing at him from the kitchen door the whole way, she didn’t like that dummy. Mr. Junius would rattle his keys and open an old hasp lock on the shed door, call out, Look alive, now, Oscar! Company coming! and he’d cre-e-e-eak open the big wide door that was nothing but another sheet of roofing tin on a frame made into a shed door. Blade of light would slice slowly into the shed’s darkness. And up on the highest shelf, feet dangling, eyes looking off to his left like a happy blind man, sat Oscar. He wore a dingy white shirt with no collar, shabby work britches with faded red suspenders, white socks, and a pair of knobby-toed work shoes that came over his ankles, if indeed he had ankles, she couldn’t say.
All of them looked up at Oscar in dread and a kind of wonder, though hers of a slightly different kind than theirs, wondering just what it was made this white man want to keep a colored dummy locked up in a black-dark shed like that, up on a shelf. Something about it very odd.
-Well hello there Oscar how you doin’ today! Mr. Urquhart’s most jolly voice would boom in the tiny stuffiness of the shed.
And there in a second would come Oscar’s voice, strange and muffled as if strained through cheesecloth: -Oh I’s fine Mr. Junius, how you?
-Well we doin’ all right here Oscar what you been up to?
-Oh nothin’ much Mr. Junie I guess I been busy with this’n’that, here’n’there.
-Well I just thought I’d bring the chulluns out to say hello to you, Oscar, it’s Sunday.
-Well they looking mighty fine Mr. Junie, mighty fine!
-Y’all say hello to Oscar now.
Hello hello hey they peeped, barely audible.
-Y’all want to touch old Oscar? You want to feel of his leg?
Silent, little heads barely waggling no, big eyes stuck on the dummy, hands clutching one another’s hands, and little Robert holding tight to Creasie’s.
-Well I reckon we better get on back to the house Oscar, is there anything I can get you, anything you need?
-No sah Mr. Junie I don’t need a thing!
-All right now.
And gently he would shoo them out and cre-e-e-eak the door would gently shut and rattle the lock back onto the hasp and she, Creasie, would be staring at the door and directly one of the children would always ask, GranPapa, don’t he mind being shut up in that shed all the time?
-Oh, no, Mr. Urquhart would say, old Oscar is a happy nigger. And she thinking how horrible it would be to be locked up in the dark like that all the time, dummy or no, it gave her nightmares, she’d be locked in there with him and he’d turn his old head at her and his awful red lips and white teeth would make her cry out in her sleep. He was going to bite her head off.
And then he’d taken her out there one Sunday afternoon Miss Birdie and Mr. Earl and the children gone into town, and she was going to head down to the ravine and see her mama but then he come driving up in his old automobile without honking the horn, had been to town but come back, said he’d thought she might be wanting a ride in. She said, -Thank you, sir, I’ll get my things from the cabin, and he followed her halfway there, stopping at the shed. She comes back and the shed door’s open, he’s in there, calls out, -Hey, Creasie, come here and help me with something. And when she steps in there he closes the door, nothing but dark and a cleaver blade of light through the black, across the dummy, and old Mr. Urquhart begins to run his hands all over that dummy, showing her this and that, though you could hardly see in there, just that blade of light from the door ajar. Then saying, -See this here plug in his heel here, this here’s an electric nigra, and then saying, -Why look here, I do believe this’s a horny old nigger here, too, my my I believe just the sight of you has put a spark in him, got him all worked up! -No, sir, she said, I don’t think he all worked up. -Oh, I believe he is, Mr. Urquhart said, and then he’d started doing something else—to her. He pushed her up against the wall and began to run his hands over her, and grabbing her, she was too frightened to breathe. When he pushed her down onto the floor of the shed she shouted and struggled, but he held her down and yanked at her clothing, and then he was lying heavy on her and pushing himself into her, the pain first sharp and hard down there and then cutting into her brain behind her eyes, and all the time looking up at that wide-eyed dummy up on the shelf, his amazed eyes wide open and dull in the blade of light from the door, and after what seemed a long time, a loud roaring in her head receded slowly into a distant noise and she heard a sound, a tic tic tic, and she could see a little gold chain disappearing into the little pocket in his vest which had ridden up on him and was close to her eye, a tic tic tic of the hidden watch in there, though this moment seemed outside of time, so that when he was at some point up and off of her and she was lying on the floor of the shed, she couldn’t have said how long she’d been ly
ing there just staring at the dummy, not in her right mind. She said,
-You didn’t see nothing.
Dummy didn’t even blink.
-Son of a goddamn bitch! she heard old Mr. Urquhart say outside the shed door, his pocket change and belt buckle tinkling. And then in a softer voice, -Little nigger bitch, just talking to himself. -Bled on me like a stuck pig.
-I been stuck, she would say to herself later, when the capacity for reason had slipped back into her like waking up from a dream, but you the pig.
She heard him jingle off with his coins and keys. Heard the car start up. Heard him call out in a minute, -Come on, now, I’ll take you to town! Heard nothing but the car motor for a while. Heard the car door shut and heard him drive away. The dummy sat there.
She said, her voice strange to her own ears, -Why don’t they plug you into the electric? I know what you’d do. Go kill them all. Cut they throat.
She lay there a long time no longer in pain, as if drugged or drunk, and then pain came back dull at first and then sharp and an ache all over. She gathered herself best she could and hobbled back to the little cabin and washed up, changed clothes, and put a bunch of rags in down there, found a powder and took it and lay down awhile, and since it was too late by then to go to the ravine she figured she’d better go on back over to the house and fix supper, since Miss Birdie and Mr. Earl and the children would be back soon. And that day, wasn’t too cold for a day in December, but nearly dark at five o’clock, she finally gets back to the house, walking slow, hurting, a wad of rags stuffed into her drawers, and Miss Birdie is in there rushing about with supper.
-Creasie! she says. -Where have you been? Hurry up and help me here with supper before Mr. Earl throws a fit. And so she pitched in, feeling like the whole world was dark dark outside the kitchen in which they labored, feeling like she might faint anytime, and when she heard a car crunch up in the drive and heard old Mr. Junius hail from the driveway she slipped out the kitchen door and ran back to her cabin and wouldn’t come out at all that evening though Miss Birdie called her from over there, called out two or three times, but she lay in the dark that was the whole world outside that little bit of light in the kitchen across the yard that even itself was fading now into nothing.
A Tree Spirit
AUNT VISH KNEW the herbs, and when Creasie missed her period she went to the ravine to see her. Vish gave her a smelly green potion in a little wooden cup, told her to drink it and wait twenty-four hours there in her little cabin next door, where Creasie’s parents had lived when she was born, before her mother died and her father left her with Vish and went away. The next morning, Creasie left whatever there was in her of Junius Urquhart in a hole she dug in the loamy ground next to the creek at the bottom of the ravine. She never let herself get lured back to the shed again, never saw that dummy again but in her nightmares. Staring at her like he did the whole time it was happening. She tried to blank it out of her mind.
But she had nightmares all that year, after. She was still having them the night Frank came in through the window, silent as a ghost.
She was sleeping in her nightgown on top of the sheets, hot, having the dream, and woke herself trying to cry out. It took her a second to know where she was. She cleared her throat and had reached down to pull the covers up over herself when she saw him sitting there in the chair across from the foot of the bed in the wooden chair, black but for the faintly gleaming whites of his eyes, and screamed. He was up and onto her in half a second and had his hand over her mouth, whispering -Shut up now, I ain’t going to hurt you, I ain’t going to do nothing to you, hush up.
It was dark, he was flesh and blood, holding a big hard hand over her mouth. He was flesh and blood but for a second all she could think was the dummy. He took the hand away when her breathing slowed enough so he must have trusted her not to scream and they lay there like that, his breath on her hot and sour, smelled like liquor and a fresh-cut pine tree. He held her shoulder bones with big knotty hands and looked away as if listening for something, then his big eyes turned her way and he looked at her.
-What you want? she whispered, hardly able to gather the breath for speech.
-I just want to know the man own this big house need a nigger to work for him around here.
-Get off me.
-Just tell me.
-Get off me, I’ll tell you.
He rolled off her slowly and stood at the edge of the bed, looking ready to spring on her again if she started shouting. She couldn’t speak, thought to run. He made like to come at her again and she said, -He might need somebody to rake leaves and cut the grass. He hires it out whenever he thinks of it but Miss Birdie’s always on him to get it done, he don’t think of it himself.
He stood there a second, then nodded.
-I’ll speak to him in the morning then, he said. -You mind if I stay here tonight? I can sleep on the floor.
She didn’t say anything, but was thinking if he didn’t do what she thought he was going to do before, then she guessed he wasn’t going to do it later, either, and how could she keep him out anyway if he wanted in, and let him out couldn’t go for help as he’d be out there waiting on her, her heart like a bird fluttering the mites out of its feathers and wouldn’t stop. Then calmed again. Something about him, turning away toward the window, like she wasn’t even there. She changed, wasn’t afraid. Something about his face in the pale light from the window, like he was a man too far away in his mind to be a danger. She said, -I’ll make you a pallet with a quilt I got in the chiffarobe.
So she did, and gave him one of her pillows, and lay there wide awake and listening to him breathe and then snore, and at some point fell asleep in spite of herself. When she woke the next morning he was gone and the quilt folded with the pillow resting on top of it on the floor. She washed in the basin and got dressed and went over to the house and was cooking bread and Miss Birdie comes in the kitchen, says, -Creasie, Junius come by sometime, I don’t know when, and took that dummy off, and I know you’re as glad as I am about it, that old thing was evil. She looked at Creasie. -Is your lip busted? What happened to you?
She tasted the dried blood for the first time, ran her tongue over it. Stopped and had turned to Miss Birdie.
-What’d he do with him? she said.
-What?
-What did Mr. Junius do with the dummy?
-I hope you’re not sneaking out and going honky-tonking on me. Now don’t look at me like that.
-No’m. I just bit it, accidentally.
-You start acting like trash, now, I just can’t keep you on.
Miss Birdie looked just like a doll in a store when her eyes got big like that, little doll mouth. She thought maybe she would have laughed at her but she was fixed on what she’d said, about the dummy.
-Yes’m. What did Mr. Junius do with the dummy?
-Sold him or give him away, one, some man took him away. I don’t know where and I don’t care! Listen, she said, and gave her a five-dollar bill, if you go home to the ravine get me some more sassafras for my tea. I’m about out.
-Yes’m.
That evening lying there with the window open again, she had closed it but the room was just too hot, and a warm damp breeze blowing in from the black evening. And sometime late when she’s drifting off, in he comes, a quick shadow upping one bare foot onto the sill, and crosses the room without so much as a word and goes to where she’d left the quilt and pillow and makes up his pallet again and lies down, soon enough she could hear his gentle rasping, no more than a child’s snore coming from such a big man. Come dawn she crept in and looked him over good. He was sleeping with his mouth wide open and the morning light glinted off a gold tooth partway back in his mouth. Who puts a gold tooth way back in his mouth where can’t nobody see it? She stared till his eyes came open and he looked at her and closed his mouth and swallowed. -I’m Frank, he’d said in a hoarse dry voice. She said, -I’m Creasie. -I know, he said. Then she said, laughing kind of to herself, -I got a cr
azy notion about you.
Looking at her he says in this husky quiet voice like he wasn’t so used to saying much, -What?
She just shook her head.
-I thought you done gone.
He didn’t move, eyes droopy with sleep, and in a minute said in that same voice, -Where to?
-I don’t know. Nowhere. Just a foolish notion I come by.
-Ain’t nobody run me off. Not yet anyway. I’m on see if Mr. Urquhart won’t give me some work.
She looked back toward her little kitchen for moment, nothing but a corner where the cold iron stove sat like a big iron toad frog staring at her, wanting to croak.
-You can use the door next time you come in, unless you just like coming in people houses through the window.
She looked back but he was gone, out the door this time, his bare feet making no more sound than a breeze tippling through last fall’s leaves dry on the ground.
Which he would show up raking later that afternoon.
She watched him out the Urquhart’s kitchen window and whenever he would glance up she would turn quickly away, her face burning. She went out back to rinse some old rags in a washtub. She heard Miss Birdie holler at him from where she was in the kitchen, You there, what are you doing? And he says, Yes ma’am I’m raking the yard. Creasie was listening without looking up from the washtub. Miss Birdie says, Well I see you are raking, who are you? Name Frank, ma’am. Well you talk to my husband about getting paid, I don’t have any money for you. Yes, ma’am, he said, I will. And he did. Mr. Earl, home that afternoon, just looked at him for a long time, his short moustache twitching every now and then and his eyes kind of squinted, then he lights a cigarette and gives one to Frank, goes away. Next day, same thing, Frank weeding the beds, Mr. Earl coming home and standing there looking at him, gives him a cigarette, goes on in the house. Finally he comes out a little later and says to him, -You staying with Creasie now on my property?