“Where’d you find this little girl?” Eulah asked.
“Who, Baby Ruth?”
“You don’t have to call her that, you know. Pete just gets excited about things sometimes. He daydreams and comes up with these ridiculous ideas.”
Paul smiled. “It’s a good name, Ruth. My grandmother’s name was Ruth.”
“Really?”
“No, I just made that up. Her name was Josephine, and she was the devil.”
Paul dug into his shirt pocket and showed her the folded newspaper clipping.
Eulah scanned it and said, “Good heavens. A mother leaves her baby, and in these hard times. This world is in big trouble, ain’t it?”
“Worst trouble I ever seen.”
“People don’t act civil no more.”
“No, they don’t, and nobody trusts nobody.”
“You reckon these is the Judgment Days?”
Paul shrugged. “Maybe.”
Lots of people claimed these were the Judgment Days. It wasn’t just the droughts and the absence of jobs that made them say it. It was the boll weevil eating through all the cotton. It was the food shortages in Atlanta, the scarlet fever and tuberculosis, the dust in Kansas and Oklahoma, the bread lines in New York and New Jersey, and the price of living. It was enough tragedy that it made weaker-minded men kill themselves. And suicide was becoming an epidemic in some places.
“You reckon God’s gonna wipe us all off the planet?”
“I don’t know,” said Paul. “But it don’t make no difference either way to me. God does his thing, I do mine. I don’t bother him, and I ask him to give me the same treatment.”
A long silence passed between them. Eulah rocked the baby in her arms until the child fell asleep. And so did Eulah. Her eyes were shut tight. She coughed now and then. It was a productive cough that sounded like her lungs were rattling. Paul watched her and felt sorry for her and for all she’d been through. He felt sorry for her children, and for the baby, and even sorrier for himself—for he was out of cigarettes.
Then . . .
The sky was lit with red-and-purple light, only for a moment. Paul could hardly believe it. The sound of thunder shook the highway. It happened again. And for a flash, the tree line became visible before an electric sky.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Paul in a whisper. He didn’t want to say it too loud. He didn’t want to wake the tired woman beside him.
Paul pulled the car over. Vern pulled over behind him, crackling on the gravel shoulder. Paul stepped out of the truck, removed his hat, and looked upward. The sky was putting on a light show for the world to see.
It hadn’t rained since three weeks before they started construction on the Dreyfus barn. In fact, their dry world had gone so long without rain, Paul couldn’t even remember what the stuff smelled like. And the smell of rain was his favorite smell. It awakened the farmer inside him, which was a piece of himself he thought had been eaten up by boll weevils and greedy banks.
“You think she’s gonna go?” said Vern, walking toward him, looking upward.
“Dunno,” said Paul.
They waited several minutes until it finally started. One drop at a time. The rain began beating the roofs of the two vehicles. Slow at first. Then harder. Soon it sounded like a freight train crashing into the world. Loud. Heavy. Warm. Water.
Paul laughed with an open mouth. He let the hot rain hit his old face and felt the weight of the heavy drops on his cheeks.
“Reckon someone must’ve hung a rattlesnake on a fence,” said Vern.
Paul squatted onto the ground and bowed his head. He let the rainwater run over his greasy hair and down his back. He felt his shirt, saturated, stick to his back.
“God,” he said in a soft voice meant only for the heavens. “If you’re up there, please, I beg of you, dear Lord, please let me find a cigarette.”
Twenty-Six
Lightning Strikes
“Get up,” were the only words Marigold heard.
And when Marigold opened her eyes, she was looking at Helen, who was lying beside her.
“What is it?” asked Marigold.
Lightning. Thunder. Rumbling.
“That,” said Helen. “Hear it?”
The surface of the walls inside the room became white and blue for an instant. Then the light disappeared and the place went black. Then blue again. And black.
“I think it’s gonna rain,” said Helen.
Helen jumped out of bed and walked toward the window. She was obviously excited. “C’mon. It’s a storm.”
A low rumble vibrated the cabin and railcar. Then a loud clap of thunder that made Helen smile. Then another clap. The world lit up flickering white.
Helen counted, “One Chattahoochee, two Chattahoochee, three . . .” The whole earth shook like it would fall apart. Another lightning flash.
Helen counted again. “One Chattahoochee . . .”
Rumbles shook the place.
“It’s getting closer,” said Helen.
Outside on Cowikee’s front porch, Rachel was already standing with the other girls, watching the sky. They were quiet, wearing nightgowns, smoking cigarettes, arms crossed.
It was an eerie atmosphere. The dark world was calm between episodes of thunder and flashes of light. Laughing Girl stood beside Rachel. She was a tall, slender woman with long black hair and cocoa skin. She’d told Marigold she was Cherokee, and she must have been. Her cheekbones were so high they made her eyes look pinched.
“Don’t hear no rain,” said Rachel. “Could be it’s only heat lightning.”
“No, it is coming,” said Laughing Girl.
“How do you know?” Marigold asked.
“My hair,” Laughing Girl replied. “My hair knows when it will rain.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Helen.
Marigold could not remember the last time it rained. Months. Lots of months. Too many months.
Helen stepped off the porch and looked at the sky. “C’mon, Lord,” she said. “Do it up big tonight.”
They all watched the sky. Nobody said anything. They only waited.
The first few drops hit the tin roof of the porch and made a marvelous sound.
“There it is!” said Helen. “Don’t just stand there, come on.”
Helen led Marigold and the others across the dusty road, through the pines, to the peanut field down the road from Cowikee’s railcar. A single oak sat in the field, surrounded by a tin shed, dead peanut plants, and a few cattle.
The girls walked through the field in the darkness, stepping between the rows of dead foliage toward the tin building. It was a leaning structure with a rusted roof. Helen unlatched the door and muscled it open. Inside were wooden barrels with rusty rings and dry-rotted tops. Helen rolled one outside, spinning it on its rim. She popped the top and positioned the barrel beneath the gutter spout of the shed.
“Don’t just stand there,” said Helen. “Help me. These things ain’t exactly light.”
“What’re we doing?” asked Marigold.
But Helen wasn’t listening to her. She was already rolling another barrel with Laughing Girl. They placed it beneath the eave of the tin roof.
When three barrels were positioned around the shed, the sky opened itself. The smacking raindrops got louder and sounded like a mighty waterfall. The shower cooled Marigold’s red hair, and it made her wonder about Maggie. She wondered where she was and if she was safe. She hoped Maggie could see the rain.
The rain fell harder. It pelted the tin roof and made noises so loud it sounded like a train. Water ran across the tin roof and trickled into the barrels.
“Four months and six days,” said Helen again. “That’s almost half a year without water. Four months and six long days.”
The girls stood inside the shed, watching a downpour saturate the field around them. But not Helen. She was out in it, letting it mat her hair against her head and her clothes to her body. To Marigold, the rain was the smell she liked best. It sm
elled and tasted like some kind of miracle. And it sounded even better.
Rachel broke the silence by saying to Marigold, “Lawrence said he’s gonna take me with him when he leaves for Birmingham.”
Marigold only looked at her with a warm smile. Water dripped from Rachel’s brow and from her strands of light hair.
Rachel went on. “He said we’s gonna buy a house, said we’s gonna settle down and, you know, make a family.”
Marigold touched Rachel on the shoulder. She felt a tingling beneath her hand that ran up her arm, through her head, then down her legs. It was such a strong sensation of loneliness that it almost made her stomach turn upside down. The tingling became stronger and stronger. She released Rachel’s shoulder and steadied her breathing. But to Marigold’s surprise, Rachel didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. She was smiling and watching the rain.
“He said he loved me,” Rachel added. “He loves me.”
“Love,” Laughing Girl said. “May lightning strike him dead if he is lying to you.”
The sky flashed again.
Twenty-Seven
Motor Inns
All Wichita was covered in a film of dust and sand. Cars were stripped of their paint, and streetlamps were broken. The Hudson had piles of grit on the hood and on the roof. Once, the vehicle had been a plain black; now it was bare metal in many places.
They left the windswept city and drove through the dry landscape. They passed mounds of red and tan dust piled on the sides of the dust-covered highway like miniature mountains. At least, they thought this was the highway. There was no way to be sure since they could see nothing but dust before them, behind them, and around them.
Blake pulled into a motor inn just outside the sandy city of Eureka. The wind was still blowing dust along the streets, making swirls and tiny cyclones. It was hard to see where the sidewalks stopped and the curbs began.
The motor inn was a low building with a flat roof, boarded windows, and a dirt-covered parking lot filled with dilapidated cars that were almost all paint-stripped and dented. Blake went inside and returned to the Hudson with a key ring.
“We’re living high cotton tonight, Coot,” Blake said.
The room was nice. It had a bathtub with a shower and a frilly curtain around a claw-foot tub. There were two single beds, and a big wooden radio sat on the dresser.
“Look at the size of that radio,” said Coot.
Blake whistled.
Coot turned on the radio, and the sound of horns and banjos filled the little room. “They got jazz here,” Coot said, turning up the radio.
“Sounds like it.”
“Do they have jazz in Alabama?”
“Have it? Why, we invented it.”
Blake lit a cigar and tapped the ember against an ashtray. He tipped his boot upside down and a stream of sand fell out of it. Coot listened to the music with great curiosity and happiness. For it was curious and happy music. A vocalist sang cheery melodies, wiggling her voice in a way that revival singers did not.
“How much longer until Alabama?” said Coot.
“Never you mind. You just listen to the Dixie music, we’ll be there soon enough.” Blake sat straight in his bed and knocked the heels of his boots together. “Mobile makes this place look like a burn pile.”
“It does?”
“Oh yeah, Alabama’s like Eden, only without all the snakes.”
Coot flipped past the stations on the radio until he landed on one that played the sound of a baseball game. The cheering crowd did something to him, made him feel excited inside. A feeling he did not have often. But his excitement began to sour in him when he remembered the men in the police car chasing them.
“What if they catch us, Blake?”
Blake didn’t speak. He only blew a cloudy breath at the ceiling and watched it gather around the ceiling fan. Then he leaned forward and turned off the radio. His face went from lighthearted to serious. He touched his mustache and took in a few labored breaths like he was thinking.
Blake reached into a brown leather bag and retrieved the metal box he’d stolen from E. P. It was a red tin box with a wire handle on it. He placed it in Coot’s lap and said, “This money, it belongs to you, Coot. You and your mama. And if anything ever happens to me . . .”
“Blake, don’t talk like that.”
“I mean it. There’s a lot in there, and it ain’t mine.”
“Blake . . .”
“There’s enough in that there box to put me away for a long time. And if anything ever happens to me, you go find a bus station and go as far away as you can. Doesn’t matter where.”
Coot didn’t like hearing him talk like this. It filled him with fear and made his lungs cold.
“Blake, I couldn’t make it on my own.”
“Now, you listen to me.” Blake replaced the money box in the bag and zipped it shut. He plopped the entire bag in Coot’s lap. “Don’t never let that money outta sight.”
“But—”
“Hush and let me finish. Now, you’re a lot more courageous than you think you are, and I want you to remember that.” He patted Coot’s hair. “If I was you, I’d quit thinking about all these bad things and get cleaned up.”
“Get cleaned up for what?”
“I’d put on my nice duds too. Wouldn’t wanna be late, you know.”
“Late for what?”
Blake leaned back on the bed, resting his head on the pillow. He let out a chestful of blue smoke and coughed. The coughing lasted a few minutes. The dust had done a number on them both.
“Where’re we going, Blake?”
“I’d grease up my shoes real good and fix my hair—” Blake coughed again.
“Why, Blake? Where’re we going?”
“’Course, that’s just how I’d do it. You can do what you want, you’re practically a grown man anyway. Besides, what a fella wears to his first baseball game ain’t nobody’s business but his own.”
“Baseball! Are you putting me on?”
Blake coughed again. “Why, Coot, I’m offended. Would old Blake lie to you?”
Twenty-Eight
Stealing Home
The baseball bat made a cracking sound that could probably be heard all the way to China. Coot had only heard this particular noise a few times in his life. He’d heard a bat hit a ball before, certainly, but never with this kind of sincerity.
The sound did something to him. So did the smacking sound the ball made when it hit the catcher’s mitt. They sat in the nosebleeds, high above the small diamond. Coot watched the men on the field run from bag to bag. These men didn’t just trot like the farmers in the rural leagues. These men were running full-speed, earning their paychecks when they slid into home plate.
And Coot could even hear their voices. The players would scream at each other. The umpire would shout back at them. Cuss words were abundant. Coot found himself shouting at the top of his lungs too during important plays. When the Joplin Miners took the lead against the Wichita Aviators, he became so excited he forgot all about his peanuts in the red-and-white bag. And when the game ended, Coot was sorry it was over.
Afterward, Blake and Coot walked through the corridors of the small ballpark, making their way to the exit.
“You know I used to play a little,” said Blake.
“You did?”
“Little. Wasn’t bad. Had me a chance to play with the Pine Bluff Judges, outta Arkansas, but I didn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
Blake sighed. “A woman, Coot.”
“You mean you were in love with a girl?”
“No, Coot, a woman. That’s different from a girl. A woman makes you do things you never thought you’d do. I was in love up to my eyeballs with her.”
“What’d she make you do?”
“She made me as stupid as room-temperature mud is what she done. There I was, in a traveling show, and she was a high-society lady. The two don’t match up no matter how you spin it.”
“
Is that where you learned to twirl rope, in the traveling show?”
“Where I learned a lotta worthless things.”
“What happened with her?”
“She hurt me, that’s what happened. I thought I’d never get over her. Last I heard, she married a banker in Greensburg. Broke my heart. You never get over someone choosing a banker instead of you.”
When they neared the door, Blake stopped walking. Coot could feel Blake’s body tense. He gripped Coot’s shoulder and held him back. It all happened so fast that it took a moment for Coot to even realize that something was wrong. His mind was too much on double plays, home runs, and infield flies.
But Blake’s eyes were fixed on men in the distance. Men with badges. Coot could see them. Four men in khaki uniforms, lingering by the exit sign. One man wore a leather jacket, with a hat tilted sideways on his head.
Blake coughed a few times into his fist. He closed his eyes. He stroked his thick mustache.
“Are those cops?” Coot said.
“They sure ain’t the welcome committee, I can tell you that much.”
“What’ll we do?”
“Hush and follow me’s what you do.”
They wandered through the ballpark, weaving through rows of seats, up the aisles, pausing every few moments to look behind them. Coot carried the bulky leather bag with both hands. Blake moved fast, and Coot moved quick behind him. Soon they were on the field, jogging across the cropped grass toward a tall outfield wall. A large advertisement for B&R Headache Powder was over the left field. Blake found a door within the giant “&” on the wall. The door led into the dirt parking lot with a few tractors and chalk spreaders and baskets of baseballs.
They crept toward their Hudson, pausing to take cover behind vehicles. Blake told Coot to get on all fours and peek beneath the cars to see if the coast was clear. When they neared the area where they’d left the Hudson, they could see the vehicle surrounded by more men in official-looking uniforms. The door of the vehicle, though it had been battered by dust, revealed the faintest remnants of text on the side advertising the gospel troop.
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