Requiem by Fire

by Wayne Caldwell

  The can in the barn held half a gallon of coal oil. He squiggled it down each post and sloshed it ceiling-ward. He scratched a match on a dry section and lit a wet. He loved the whoosh of gasoline but was also fond of kerosene’s more orderly ignition, like a speedy worm traversing the structure.

  He leaned against the wagon side, scattering more firewood. He paid the uneasy mule no attention, preferring to watch an orgy of energy destroy the woodshed. It popped and cracked, orange flames ascending, a sweet savor tickling his nose, ash falling all around. A bystanding boxwood’s leaves hissed but did not fall.

  The mule jerked into the traces. McPeters cursed and fell, watching the wagon clatter to the road’s edge. He turned to see the little building’s quick death, flame to ember to ash, yellow to red to white.

  McPeters stretched and drooled like a horny savage. Thirty feet away sat a corncrib, sanctuary for rats, empty save half a dozen dry cobs and a floor full of shucks. A well-tossed match provided a few minutes’ smoke and excitement.

  No curious passersby showed. Rubbing his swollen crotch, he headed with another match to the chicken house, a structure twelve feet wide and six feet deep, southern door and eastern windows covered in rusty wire.

  The Brookses had particularly hated mites. Besides using Sears nest eggs made of insecticide and filler, they’d collected used motor oil to mop onto floor and roosts. The brothers had lined the nest boxes with excelsior. Inside McPeters knelt, breathing the rich odor of chicken manure and motor oil, to place this perfect tinder in each corner. A match lit in succession cigarette and nests, a rite performed as seriously as a celebrant ever swung thurible.

  He barely lit the last before the building erupted and boiled black smoke to the high heavens. Running outside, he threw his cigarette down, unbuttoned his pants, and masturbated to the fire’s increasingly insistent crackling rhythm. Seed spilled on the ground as the roof fell in. Panting, he watched ashes drift down and wiped himself with his shirttail.

  Someone was bound to have noticed dark smoke. He carefully rewrapped his nine remaining matches and laid them in his shirt pocket. Of no mind to douse ashes, after gathering scattered firewood, he left, resembling an itinerant peddler en route to a blacksmith, to trade fuel for wheel repair. Only wet ground and no wind that evening kept a woods fire from catching.

  He unceremoniously dumped stove wood beside the kitchen addition, put up and fed the mule, and walked to what the family regarded as the front porch. His father could not have helped but see and smell his son’s afternoon smoke, but Rafe sat like a wooden Indian as a silent Willie passed beside him, headed to an unlit monkish candle beside his rancid bed.

  CHAPTER 19

  Her Husband’s Absence

  “Blue and yellow, Hiram dear?” Aunt Mary cocked her head at two remnants of cotton fabric. “I always thought they blended well.” She laid them on the kitchen table. “Don’t you think they’ll make a quilt as pretty as can be?”

  Blue goods slightly duskier than Carolina skies made her think of heaven, and yellow with no hint of orange reminded her of buttercups. She measured, finger to shoulder—six yards and a fraction of blue, barely five yards of yellow, but plenty for a quilt top. She cut a yard from each and put the large pieces aside. Stopping frequently to rub arthritic knuckles, she cut the yellow and blue pieces into inch-and-a-half squares. After laying out a checkerboard pattern, Mary polished her eyeglasses on her apron.

  “My mother quilted circles around us girls, but she taught us good. I can see her, by the fire, piecing squares, humming hymns. I reckon she’s in that sweet by and by she loved to sing about.

  “Law, I used to quilt intricate stuff, double wedding ring, log cabin, fence rail, you name the pattern, remember? Piece, baste, quilt, bind, tedious work. Don’t do that no more. Older I get, the better simple looks. Don’t you think so, sweetheart?” She put her spectacles back on. “That’s better. Helps when a gal can see.”

  She didn’t remember exactly when she had begun talking to her husband’s absence. Certainly long before this cool April morning. It had been about fifty years ago, after he’d branched from farm work into the teamster business. When he’d hauled produce or timber, she had found herself, a new bride, doubly alone—bereft of husband, marooned at home with his mother, recluse from everyone. Talking to Hiram, whether present or not, became as important to her as prayer. When he died, in 1926, she mourned in silence. She couldn’t have said why—she was a Christian woman—but she felt him tug her toward death, like Cherokee people said their newly departed did, and it frightened her enough to stop. As her fear subsided, she began to talk to him again. It took about a year.

  When Thomas’s boots hit the back porch, Mary dismissed Hiram with a discreet wave of her left hand. As the screen door opened, her son saw her search for thread with her right.

  “Who you yapping at, Mama?” Thomas darkened the door frame, turning his hat in his meaty hands.

  “What do you mean, Son?”

  “Looked like you was talking to somebody. We got any buttermilk?”

  “In the springhouse, where it always is. And every now and again I talk to myself when it’s lonesome.”

  He lurched from the door and put his hat on. “Long as you don’t answer yourself, that’s fine.” Chuckling, he headed outside.

  She smiled. “Hiram, stay here. We’ll lay these things out just so.” The hall clock Hiram had made for her birthday chimed ten, as resonant as the sound of a woodpecker working a hollow tree.

  Nell Hawkins was fed up with winter, children, and her husband’s job. Lately, between stringing phone lines—the fire lookouts and their house needed to communicate quickly—and chasing firebugs, one of whom certainly was Willie McPeters, Jim was gone dawn to dusk on good days but sometimes stayed half a week in the woods like an old wandering bear. In Nell’s mind such time slowed far enough to touch eternity’s corners. Little Elizabeth was about to turn two, thank goodness, and Mack was getting old enough to help, but they were still constantly needful. She thought in stark terms: I am torn between my loneliness and their dependence.

  The winter had not been preternaturally cold, but she felt a constant draft suck through the house like a low-flying ghost. Kitchen and front room fires made all the heat Nell cared to maintain. When Jim left, she and the children slept in front of the living room fireplace. When Jim returned, he tended a bedroom fire, warming their room enough for love-making, a pleasure Nell needed like oxygen but unceasingly prayed would bring forth no issue save monthlies.

  Mack had been an engaging and happy baby, but after he had started walking, Nell knew she didn’t care to keep up with another. She douched sometimes with pennyroyal tea, other times with water mixed with either vinegar or Lysol, and used preparations for “women’s regularity”—and had managed to avoid getting caught for three years. Morning sickness overtook her, however, in the spring of 1929, so she steeled herself for another cycle of reversed nights and days, bound to breast and bottle. One more, but no more, as God is my promise.

  But on the cusp of spring in 1931 Nell fancied herself victim of a long, troubled season. I don’t know how to put it—neglected, that’s how I feel, alone in this valley that Jim thinks is so pretty but in which no modern person should ever be expected to live, she thought one morning.

  If I hear ‘Mommy, I need… ’ anymore, I’ll scream. They’re wonderful little people, but I need adult company. I need something—a knight in armor? A vision of Jesus? Or just Jim home at night?

  Mack slammed the back door. “Mama, where’s the saw at?”

  Nell stamped her foot. “That does it, Henry Mack. You’re talking like them.”

  “Like who, Mama?”

  “Oh, never mind. Just don’t end your sentences with prepositions.”

  “What’s a preppy-sitting?”

  “Never mind that, either. Young man, we’re getting out for a while.”

  “Why, Mama?”

  “Because, that’s why. Keep your jac
ket on. Mama’s going to fix fires and dress your sister. We’re going visiting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s when you go see somebody else. Talking to an adult makes you remember there’s something besides…” She swept the room with her right hand. “It reminds you to be civilized.”

  “What’s sivel-eye-ged?”

  “What we used to be, far away and long ago. Come along, Master Hawkins.”

  Fires banked, they found their way down the road.

  “Where are we going, Mama?” asked Little Elizabeth.

  “To the store,” Nell said. “Then to visit Aunt Mary Carter.”

  “I love Aunt Mary,” said Mack.

  “That’s sweet. Will you tell her that?”

  “Sure, if I can. She talks a lot.”

  Nell playfully swatted at Mack’s head. “Keep that to yourself, young man.”

  Nelse Howell kept an unvarying routine. Open the store at seven. Build a fire, perk coffee, sweep. Extract change from a cigar box everyone in the valley knew was hidden behind the canned sardines, and feed it to the till. Pour, sit, set the steaming cup on a table, lean against the wall, nap. When Nell and her children stepped on the squeaky stoop at nine-fifteen, Nelse started awake and stood, tying an apron around his waist. There was room for a penny postcard between necktie end and apron top. He smiled at his visitors. “A pretty family’s a sight for sore eyes.”

  “We weren’t so pretty an hour ago,” said Nell. “We needed some fresh air.”

  “Welcome, child. Sweetening for the tykes? It’s on the house.”

  Mack and Little Elizabeth looked hopeful. “Please, Mommy?”

  “If you have good manners.”

  Mack squared his shoulders. “Please, Mr. Nelse, may I?”

  “Certainly, my boy.” He handed Mack a peppermint stick. “How about your pretty sister and mother?”

  Mack looked at Nell, who nodded. “Please, and thank you,” said the boy.

  “We’re off to see Aunt Mary,” said Nell. “What might she like?”

  Nelse produced a box of chocolate-covered cherries. “She’s uncommon fond of these.”

  “How much are they?”

  “Pound box is fifty cents. Little one’s a nickel. It’s got four in it.”

  “We’ll take that, please.” She fished in her purse for a coin. “Here’s a dime.”

  Nelse winked at the boy. “Let’s see, now. An old man has to be careful with his money.” He elaborately totted up the sale on a paper bag with a stub of a pencil, making a score of exasperated faces that put Mack and Little Elizabeth into a fit of giggles, then worried every piece of money in the drawer like Scrooge himself before handing Nell a nickel. “There,” he said. “Hope I done that right.” They left, cherries in a brown paper bag, mother and children eating peppermint sticks. Nell held hers in her left hand and daintily licked it. Little Elizabeth emulated her mother, but Mack sucked his like a felon having a last cigarette before facing a firing squad.

  Times past, Nell would have met folks walking to the store, or might have stopped to pass time with women preparing a patch of early greens, but this morning she saw little evidence of human presence. The church door was shut. Poison oak in the churchyard is, if not a bad omen, at least a sign. The road between church and schoolhouse was likewise deserted—or she hoped so, after stopping to see whether a shadowy movement behind a tree was real or imagined. Jim never mentioned McPeters to her, but she had heard talk about him, and for a very brief moment felt vulnerable and alone in the middle of the road. The feeling soon passed.

  The schoolhouse chimney suddenly poured white smoke, a sign the teacher had laid a fresh stick of wood in the cast-iron heater. Nell strained for the sound of lessons, but the breeze fought against hearing.

  As the road bent gently right, they crossed the creek on upended rocks and lifted the lid from the spring Old Jimmie Carter had discovered nearly a century before. His son Levi had enclosed it in a stone reservoir for the community to share. Nell dipped a handkerchief and wiped her son’s mouth, then took a small metal cup from her handbag, gave Mack a drink, then had one herself. One thing I’ll say, this water is cold and sweet. And look at the size of that crayfish. Jim says they won’t live in bad water. Back on the road, they hugged themselves against the cold, and soon made the edge of Thomas and Manson’s fields. You can sure tell where the Carter place begins. She shook her head. No, not really theirs—it belongs to the government. Like where I live. It’s not my house, just where I stay with Jim and the children, a place that will never be mine but only something to keep weather off our heads until I figure how to return to civilization.

  Mack’s mittened hand knocked on Aunt Mary’s front door. “Try again, honey,” Nell encouraged. Mary finally appeared at the door, all smiles. “Lord have mercy, children, let me see you. Growing up, little Mack, and look at this little girl! Nell, how are you?”

  “I’m fine, Aunt Mary.”

  “Come out of the cold. It’s mighty fine to see you this morning.”

  When they came into the front room, Mary fussed over the children. “I baked tea cakes this morning,” she said, “didn’t even know why. Mack, Elizabeth, you like tea cakes, don’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said. Nell handed Mary the paper bag.

  “What’s this, Nell?”

  “Just a little something.”

  Mary peeked inside. “Lord have mercy. I’d not let you do this except I love these things.” She set the bag on the table. “I believe you two have already had some candy.”

  Nell knelt to clean Little Elizabeth’s mouth. “Mr. Nelse gave them some, Aunt Mary. I thought I’d wiped it all away.”

  “Nell, I believe it’s cold enough to make our own peppermints. You know how, don’t you?”

  “No, ma’am, we always bought it.”

  “Then we are going to have fun this day. My boys couldn’t care less about learning to make butter mints, but this morning you’ll be the daughter I never had a chance to show how.”

  In the pantry she found sugar, food coloring, and a vial of peppermint oil. “You young’uns sit at the table and be good. Nell, fetch a print of butter from the springhouse,” she said, and laid rich pine in the firebox. She carried two pots to the back porch, dipped a measuring cup of water from the cedar bucket into one, and filled the other. Bringing the first back to the kitchen, she set it on the stove and added a stick of dry locust to the fire. Nell came inside. “Where do you want the butter, Aunt Mary?”

  “In that saucer. Then measure out two cups of sugar. When the water boils, stir it in.” She kept a stone slab by the kitchen window so it would stay cold. “This is the secret. Candy won’t harden right if you drop it on anything else.” She cut some butter with which to grease the slab.

  “Is it marble?”

  “The best. Pure white with them little bitty green streaks.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “Law, Nell, my Hiram used to leave Catalooch with a wagonload of firewood or cabbages or apples, depending on the season—some of it was ours and some of it he hauled for other people. He’d go as far as South Carolina, delivering what he got paid to carry, and trading our stuff on the way there and back. He’d be gone sometimes two or three weeks at a time.

  “One day he left with a load of locust fence posts heading to South Carolina, I think around Honea Path. Found a man needed fence but didn’t have cash money. Hiram traded him fence posts for his poor wife’s marble slab, sewing machine tools, and cream separator. Ain’t that just like a man, trade off everything of his wife’s, but never shotgun or fish pole? Oh, look, it’s boiling. Stir in the sugar with this wooden spoon.”

  “Seems like a lot,” Nell said.

  “Two of sugar to one of water, no more or less. See them crystals forming inside the pot? If they fall into the candy they’ll make it grainy.” She wiped the inside of the pot with a damp rag. “Keep stirring. I’ll wipe it out every now and then. In a minute
we’ll give it some butter. Mack, want to help?”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Then cut this butter into little chunks with that table knife, please sir. I’ll get a little picture book for your sister to look at in the front room.”

  Mary laid a stick of locust in the firebox and threw the butter into the pot when the mixture looked right. “Now that it’s melted, quit stirring. Just cook until it’s ready.”

  “How do you know when?”

  “That’s what our pan of cold water outside’s for. You need to let the candy come to a hard ball. Drop a piece into cold water. If it balls up so you can’t pinch it flat without straining, it’s ready. Grease the scissors with butter.”

  “Where did you learn this, Aunt Mary?”

  “From my mama, rest her soul. She learnt it from hers, I reckon. Like she used to say, cooking is common sense. You don’t start out with butter and eggs and expect bean soup, now do you?”

  Nell laughed. “I guess not, Aunt Mary.” She looked into the front room, where little Elizabeth slept, her arms curled around her book. “Little angel,” she said.

  Aunt Mary hadn’t missed a beat.

  “My mama, her name was Louise, taught me to make cornbread. I was just little, I don’t know how old. Anyhow, she said some folks put sugar in cornbread. She made a face, like that was plumb outrageous. ‘Now, Louise’—she used to talk about herself like she wasn’t even in the room—‘ wouldn’t no more put sugar in cornbread than she’d lay a cupful of rock salt into whipping cream. Sugar goes in cake, not bread.’ Never forgot that.”

  When it balled, they laid the wad of candy on the slab. “Now for color and flavor,” Mary said. “Just a drop or two of mint oil will go all the way through it. And I like mints to be green.” She added four drops of McCormick’s food coloring. “When it cools a little, then’s the fun part.”

  They greased their hands, separated the candy into three portions—one small for Mack—and pulled it until it glistened. “It’ll give you muscles, that’s for sure.” They pulled about fifteen minutes. Mack worried his until he sat beside the table. “Mommy, I’m tired.”