Stars of Alabama

by Sean Dietrich

  “No, sir,” she said.

  The man’s eyes didn’t leave her. He only raised an eyebrow. “What’re you looking for?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “You must be hunting something. You’ve been pacing for nearly fifteen minutes.”

  The beans were tugging her collar downward. Her enormous chest was sinking. She wanted to leave the beans on the floor and run for the woods, head straight for Maggie. She wanted to forget all about this borrowing. She wanted to scoop her baby in her arms and get far away from this town and never come back.

  But she stood still.

  The man’s face got harder. He removed his glasses. “Little girl, what’s underneath your—”

  She started for the door. She could feel the beans falling toward her ribs. She felt them slip past her belly. She made a strained face, willing the beans to stop sliding downward. A bag of beans dropped and plopped on the floor between her feet.

  She ran as fast as she could.

  He sprang after her. Caught her by the waist. To her horror, the man reached down her blouse and removed the remaining sack of beans. She moved by reflex. She heard a crack and was almost certain she’d broken his rib. He fell to the floor and held his side. His face was contorted with pain.

  “Why, you thief!” he said, coughing. “You’re trying to rip me off!”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “I just wanted to try them out!”

  She sprinted down the street. And she almost got away. But she ran face-first into a big man who was walking toward her. She collided with him so hard that she knocked him over and lost her balance.

  “Stop her!” the store owner yelled.

  The big man pinned Marigold to the ground. She spit at him until she ran out of saliva. “Go suck an egg!” she yelled.

  “Get the sheriff!” the store owner hollered. “She’s stealing.”

  “I wasn’t stealing!”

  When the store owner got near, the big man looked at Marigold with kind eyes. “If you behave, honey, I’ll let you go,” he said. “You promise to behave?”

  Marigold could feel the sweetness in him. She could tell things about people that they didn’t even know about themselves. It was a talent from her birth.

  She nodded her head. “I swear I’ll behave.”

  “Okay, then.” The man let his weight off her and wore a sheepish look on his face. “I’m sorry if I hurt you, honey. Are you alright?”

  She hit the man hard enough to break his ribs.

  And that’s how Marigold landed in jail for the night.

  Four

  Child of the Plains

  The Kansas prairie was wide and gold. And dry. The acres stretched for miles and miles, uninterrupted by even the smallest tree. The plains were hot and dusty. It was beautiful in some parts, but most areas were not. The scenery could be boring enough to drive a man nuts. The Kansan skies could get so blue they looked purple, and that was all a boy could see. Sky. Sky. And what’s that in the distance? More sky.

  Unless the dust storms were in the air. Then you couldn’t see sky at all. In fact, you couldn’t do anything but lock yourself in a closet with a wet rag over your face and pray. The dust could get so bad it killed young children. Child-size caskets were common in this world. Dust pneumonia was killing kids, animals, and old people.

  Fourteen-year-old Coot waited behind the canvas tent while the dust swirled in little drifts. It wasn’t a bad storm. Only a minor sandstorm. He thumbed through a pack of baseball cards. The last storm had been worse. It had destroyed parts of Deerfield. The wind was so hard it turned a car over on its side and ate the paint off the doors. Since then, the sky had been light blue, without clouds. But such pleasant skies never lasted for long.

  The baseball cards came from Blake. It didn’t matter which town they were preaching in, Blake always had a radio going or a newspaper unfolded in front of him. He was a baseball man, inside and out. He passed this weakness on to Coot.

  Coot carried these cards everywhere. The grainy photos of men in wool caps wearing heroic looks on their stone faces. On the reverse sides were all sorts of numbers. Batting averages is what they were, Blake had told him.

  Coot had only seen one professional baseball game. Blake had taken him to a game in Wichita to see the Monarchs play the Birmingham Black Barons in an exhibition. The players of the Negro leagues were the best players in the world, Blake explained. They played a different variety of ball than the other leagues. It was exciting and loud. That day was the best day of Coot’s entire life, hands down. Until that day, he’d only seen community leagues of local men who had other jobs. These men played baseball professionally.

  When Coot was a toddler, Blake had outlined the rules of the game using a pencil and a peanut bag. It only took one explanation for Coot to grasp the game entirely.

  “My goodness,” Blake had said to Coot. “You got a camera for a mind, boy.”

  And this was true. Only his mind was more like a Victrola than it was a camera. He could remember anything as long as he heard it. It only worked with his ears. His memory was so good he could remember entire games he’d heard on the radio. Play by play. Word by word. Sometimes he would replay a game in his head before he went to sleep.

  He liked the way the baseball announcers talked. They had special words for things that happened on the field.

  “Here she comes,” an announcer would say over the small radio speaker. “The Bugs Bunny ball takes a bus ride home . . . King Carl Morris swings . . . Lord have mercy, folks, the King gets caught looking!”

  That was the radio’s way of saying “strike three.”

  Or an announcer would say, “He’s pitching from the stretch, and there’s the delivery. Crack! Goodbye, Daddy, that train is leaving the station!”

  That meant a home run had been hit.

  “The King rounds the bases and waves at his fans, folks. This home run is brought to you by Dan’s Hardware, folks. Don’t forget to visit Dan’s Hardware for all your hardware needs!”

  Coot stared at the baseball player’s face on the card. He touched the card and wished he were far away, in a stadium, wearing a cotton uniform, playing ball. But that was not his lot in life.

  Coot was interrupted by a hard smack on his ear. He dropped the cards and stumbled backward.

  E. P. Willard stood over Coot and kicked dust over the cards until they were covered. E. P.’s wide body towered over Coot like a slab of rock.

  “Put those things down,” he said. “You’re about to preach. Someone mighta seen you out here lollygagging.”

  He smacked Coot one more time for good measure. E. P.’s hand was so fat, it felt more like having a disagreement with a skillet.

  E. P. peeked inside the tent flap. He was checking the size of the crowd. It wasn’t a big crowd. A far cry from the multitudes Coot had preached for in Emporia.

  Blake was standing on the stage, shouting into a megaphone at the crowd. He was wearing a white shirt that was drenched in sweat. He was warming up the audience for Coot.

  “Saints of God,” Blake hollered, “a generation base and wicked, seeking solace in times of trial, shall you be found ready when the good Lord calleth? Or shall we be caught looking when the Lord throws a final strike?”

  That made Coot smile. He knew Blake had only said that for Coot’s benefit.

  Blake always introduced Coot before each service using the growling voice he was known for. And after a long introduction, Blake finally got to Coot’s cue. The crowd went nuts.

  “You’re on,” said E. P. Then he smacked Coot on the back of the head. “Get your head out of the stands, boy.”

  E. P. pushed Coot forward, and Coot stumbled through the canvas tent flaps. He looked back at E. P., who glared through a sliver of daylight between the tent flaps.

  Last week Coot’s collections had been small. E. P. had beaten Coot with his belt so hard it left purple marks on his shoulder blades.

  Coot took center stage. There were sixty
-two people in the audience. That’s what Blake had told him earlier. Each looked at Coot. They were Kansans, white-haired farmers, tired housewives, miserable migrants, those infected with dust pneumonia. They all met Coot with curious faces. And he could practically hear what they were thinking. He’d been preaching since his seventh birthday when he was ordained by E. P.

  He’d spent enough time on stages to know what his people were thinking. They were scared. That’s what was at the core of these people. They were terrified of the dust that hovered above the world. They drank the dust, ate the dust. The dust suffocated their children and wilted their food. He was used to their dry faces. And he was used to preaching the money right out of their pockets like E. P. taught him to do.

  Coot closed his eyes tight. He reached one hand into the air and made a fist. He squeezed the air so tight that his knuckles went pale. Drama was what he wanted here. The silent kind. The longer you waited, the bigger the reaction.

  He held his hand high and waited. Silence fell on the room. Bubbling chatter turned to stillness. And even though Coot’s eyes were closed, he knew every eye was on his fist.

  He drew in a sharp breath. More waiting.

  Silence fell over the crowd so that Coot could hear them breathing. A woman in the back corner was wheezing.

  Then Coot said in a slow, loud voice, “Oh, God, it is thee we ask for help! We, thy people, who hath sought you in the hour of a terrible storm!”

  Nobody reacted. No amens. Only a few people clearing their throats.

  Tough crowd.

  So Coot waited longer. The pause was the most powerful tool a preacher had. If you paused long enough, people would start weeping of their own volition. E. P. once told him that pure silence could do more than a whole sermon.

  E. P. once said that he’d seen J. Wilbur Chaplain preach in Atlanta and say only ten words, and the place came unglued. If you kept a room silent for long enough, people would either start bawling or fainting. If they cried, it was a good service. If they fainted, it was a great one.

  Coot’s silence lasted for another three minutes. Not a single chair creak, dry cough, or ladybug sneeze was heard.

  Coot went on in a soft voice, “Breathe fire from heaven on your people, O Lord. Shake the dust from their bones . . .”

  Coot had just come up with that last line. A nice touch, he thought.

  A woman in the audience stood first. Coot stared at her. Normally he would’ve stretched his hand toward her and shouted, “The power of the Lord!” but he was feeling more dramatic today.

  He drew his hand back and formed an imaginary baseball bat in his fists. Then he swung toward her like he was swinging at a four-seam fastball. The woman fell backward just like she’d been paid to do. Only she put more emphasis into this fall than she usually did. Coot had heard she’d been given a pay increase a few days earlier, ever since her sciatica started acting up and she’d threatened to leave.

  Another man stood. Eyes closed, palms toward the sky. Coot motioned his hand toward the man like a baseball player swinging at a seventh-inning pitch, full count, bottom of the inning.

  “The power of the Holy Spirit!” Coot shouted.

  Crack! Goodbye, Daddy, that train is leaving the station.

  The man fell backward. The man’s nickname was Chowder. Coot had known him for most of his life. Sometimes Chowder could fall so well, people thought he was dead.

  When Chowder fell, the crowd gasped. Several folks started crying. Crying was good.

  Coot was batting one hundred.

  Another man rose to his feet. This man was the real thing. A stranger. A farmer. Farmers were hard to read. You could never tell how farmers would react. They were reserved people by nature, quiet, steady, and skeptical. Some wouldn’t fall down even if you cut their legs off with a jackknife. Then again, others would cluck like chickens for Jesus.

  Coot breathed inward, then swung his imaginary bat. “The power of God!”

  The man just blinked for a few seconds. Finally he collapsed and wiggled on the floor.

  Home run.

  “Coot rounds the bases and waves at his fans, folks! This home run moment is brought to you by Dan’s Hardware, folks! Don’t forget to visit Dan’s for all your hardware needs!”

  The entire tent started hollering words that weren’t words at all. They were syllables. Speaking in tongues, they called it. It was still a new thing to Coot’s ears. But whenever this happened, Coot knew he had them where he wanted them.

  Coot recited a Spanish poem that E. P. had taught him long ago. He told Coot to use this poem whenever a congregation started tongue-talking. After this, Coot recited a limerick in Russian. This was a real crowd-pleaser, because Russian has a lot of weird sounds in it. He had no idea what the poem was about, but he liked the way it felt on his tongue.

  Coot preached for thirty minutes. He shouted. He quoted long, intricate passages from the gospel of Matthew, the book of Revelation, and even something from Aesop’s Fables. Twenty-three people came down for salvation. Ten walked out of the tent in disgust. Fourteen claimed to be healed.

  One woman claimed she’d regained her hearing. Another man threw his walking stick away. One young woman from Syracuse asked Coot to cast a demon out of her husband, who was a well-known jerk. Coot had never done this before, but he figured it was easy enough.

  The service was a success. Still, these were poverty-stricken people, poor as dirt farmers without much in their pockets, and these were hard times. The ushers only collected six dollars and ninety-two cents from the crowd. It wasn’t nearly enough money to make E. P. happy. It wasn’t even enough to pay rent on the field the tent was in.

  E. P. beat Coot with the buckle end of his belt until it chipped a bone in Coot’s neck.

  Five

  Two Men and a Baby

  Vern’s big hand was twice the size of the baby’s head. The baby was a newborn but already had more red hair than most babies have.

  “Yours?” shouted Paul. “You big, stupid man. You can’t raise a baby!”

  Paul didn’t have the patience or the maternal sensitivity to have this kind of conversation.

  “We have a half-shingled millhouse that needs finishing and painting,” said Paul. “And you wanna start feeding babies?”

  “She all alone, Paul.”

  “That ain’t my problem,” said Paul. “Besides, she probably belongs to somebody who ain’t gonna be too happy when they find you stole her.”

  “They left her.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She told me.” Vern rocked the baby and stared the little girl in the eyes. “She mine now.”

  Paul removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his head. “How’re we gonna paint Mister Dreyfus’s millhouse by tomorrow morning if you got a baby latched on your teat?”

  “She need me. She mine.”

  “She needs her mama, and she’s probably on her way back to this tent right now. Now put that baby down before her folks get here and carve us up with axes for manhandling their young’un.”

  “I can be her mama.”

  “Put her down, Vern.”

  “I can love her.”

  Paul removed his hat and fanned his face. He had heard of families leaving their children behind. These hard times made people do awful things.

  “I can do all the things a mama do,” Vern went on. “See? She a sweet girl.”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” said Paul. “We got work to do, and here you are—”

  “Sweet, sweet, sweet girl, yes, she is . . .”

  “You oughta hear yourself. You sound like a blamed fool.”

  “Boogaboogaboooo . . .”

  “You belong in a nuthouse, you know that?”

  “. . . Googaboogaboogaboogaboo . . .”

  “Put that child down before someone catches us.”

  “You wanna hold her, Paul?”

  Paul pushed the brim of his hat upward. He thought about this for a moment. “No, Vern, I don’
t wanna hold her. I got work to do, and so do you.”

  Vern extended the baby toward Paul.

  Paul took the child in his arms. Her eyelids cracked open. She focused her lazy eyes on him. Violet eyes. Paul had never seen violet eyes before. They were the color of a night sky, just before the sun rises and cuts through the blackness of it all.

  “See?” said Vern. “Told you, she a real sweet girl. Now give ’er back.”

  Paul stepped away from Vern with the child against his chest. “Go get your own dadgum baby.”

  Six

  The Runner

  The sheriff released Marigold from the jailhouse at noon. In two minutes she was darting toward the woods, passing storefronts, pedestrians, and lampposts. The town was a pretty one, but she didn’t pause long enough to take it in. She ran past the brick facades, shops, and clapboard homes on the side streets. Her heart hurt so bad it threatened to give out. She cussed herself. She cried. She cussed herself some more.

  How could I leave Maggie? she thought. I am a stupid, stupid girl.

  In her mind she could see Maggie’s purple eyes and copper hair. She felt ashamed before her own conscience.

  Her body was growing weak from hunger. The night before she’d refused to eat or drink in the jailhouse. It was a form of protest. She’d hoped the sheriff would feel sorry for her and let her go free, or at least be impressed by her magnificent courage. Instead, he ate her supper right in front of her and said, “Suit yourself, you ungrateful little brat.”

  Stupid girl.

  She was stupid, weak, and thirsty. That’s what she was. The sun was draining her body. Her mouth was getting dry. When she reached the edge of town, the thirst made her tongue swell. She stopped near a white house surrounded by oak trees. She caught her breath in the shade and held her stomach to keep from vomiting. She touched her chest and felt the ache in her bosom.

  “Maggie,” she said to herself. “I’m coming.”