Coot seized his opportunity.
He darted into the tent. It was almost too much to bear. A few moments ago, he was Coot, the man who wandered the world in freight trains. But here, he was the Child Preacher of the Plains, standing before the Devil himself.
The big man’s eyes moved to Coot’s hands. He eyed the burlap sack. Both men were silent for a few moments.
“I was wondering when you’d come back,” said E. P.
Coot wanted to say something very clever, and in fact, he’d been thinking about it all night. But before he could get a word out, he felt something stiff jam against his shoulder blades. He turned to look behind him but couldn’t get a good look.
“Evening, son,” said a deep voice behind him. “I don’t think I’d move if I were you.”
Coot took one step sideways. He felt the stabbing in his shoulder blades get harder. “I mean it,” said the voice behind him. “You try anything and you’ll wake up carrying a harp.”
So this was the big plan, Coot thought. Rush into a tent and get suckered by a man with a gun. Some plan.
Coot said nothing. He dropped the sack and raised his hands.
E. P. walked toward Coot. He gripped Coot’s jaw, pressing his cheeks together. He glared at Coot with reddened eyes. “You ain’t changed a bit. You look just like your mama.”
Coot felt a pang in his gut when E. P. searched through the contents of the burlap bag. Finally he closed the sack and frowned. He flung it against the wall. He stepped toward Coot and let his face contort with hatred. He flicked Coot’s nose and said, “I’m pretty disappointed in you, Coot. I raised you better ’n this.”
“You didn’t raise me,” said Coot.
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I did more than just raise you. I gave you life, you wretched boy.”
Coot felt his heart beating in his ears. “You’re a liar.”
“Well, now, you have a point,” said E. P. with a smirk. “But I’m also your pa.”
“You’re nothing.”
“Your mama told me you was mine the night she had you. Told me you were my responsibility. I didn’t believe her, and I never believed her. Until now.”
The man walked toward the small mirror hanging above the washbasin. He unlatched it from the hinges and brought it to Coot.
“See that?” said E. P. “Same hair, bones, eyes. You’re more mine than you were hers.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Believe me, I ain’t any happier about it than you are.” He laughed. “But don’t think just ’cause you’re kin means you get special privileges, son. You’re still a little thief.”
Coot felt a blow behind his head. He hit the ground. He felt his eyes get heavy beneath the weight of unconsciousness.
The large man squatted to get a better look at Coot. He brought his eyes even with Coot’s. “You’re a thief, just like your old man is.”
He felt another blow to his head, then Coot’s world went black.
Sixty-Seven
In Care of Paul Foldger
He was in Miss Warner’s bed. That’s where he was. He knew by the wallpaper on the walls. The flowers with little ivy around them. But it took a few moments to realize who he was. His brain was moving slow. Very. Slow. One thought would come to him, but before he understood that thought, another one took its place. And the two thoughts were unrelated. He was confused and in pain. He felt like his head was going to explode.
Ruth and Miss Warner fed him broth. He saw them do it but could not understand what he was seeing and was unaware that he was eating at all until he felt hot liquid run down his chin. And it made him laugh. When he did, he spit broth all over himself.
He opened his mouth to speak and felt his diaphragm tense. He meant to say, “I’m a good-for-nothing slob, ain’t I?” to break the tension in the room. But all he could get out were unintelligible moans.
So he closed his mouth. He was a prisoner in his own body.
When they finished feeding him broth, they changed his stained clothes by leaning him forward in bed. He was vaguely aware of what they were doing. But most of the time he was years in the past, with her. He could see her, standing beside a clothesline, smiling at him.
He felt jostled from his own memories.
It was Pete who rushed to him and embraced him. “I love you, Paul. I love you.”
Paul struggled with more words. He really worked at it this time because Pete had never showed this kind of concern before. He wanted nothing more than to set Pete’s mind at ease. To tell him it would all be okay. To reassure his family that he would pull through this and everything would work itself out. That life would go on, and nothing was ever as bad as it seemed.
But he couldn’t get any words to come out. He struggled to get his jaw open. His neck muscles trembled, and he leaned his head against the headboard. He became so frustrated with himself that he tried to writhe right out of bed. He was going to will himself to stand up by nothing but hardheadedness. That’s how he’d made it through life, after all. Stubbornness. But he couldn’t move anything in his body. Not a single muscle did what he wanted it to do.
“No, Paul,” said Vern. “Stay where you is, stay right where you is. We all right here. We love you, Paul.”
Ruth held his hand. “We love you so much, Paul.”
Miss Warner stood in the back of the room with her hands folded against herself, head down.
It was beginning to settle on Paul’s weary brain what was happening. He’d always known it would happen, of course. It happened to everyone. Paul had been thinking about it since his teens, when his father died. But he’d never thought about how it would feel. It felt ominous, and big, and kind. Whatever it was, it felt like it was washing over him like a spring rain. Then like a waterfall. Then like a landslide. Like acres of mud, grit, and earth falling upon him and enveloping him.
He tried to draw in a sharp breath but felt nothing in his lungs. He only felt hot. He decided to give it one last shot. He opened his jaw. “I-I-I,” he moaned.
One word down, fifty more to go, he thought.
“What do you need?” Ruth asked. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”
“Are you hungry?” said Pete.
Then he laughed. His laugh sounded awkward to his own ears, and all wrong. He couldn’t say what he needed to say. And there was no way it was going to happen. Not with the world falling upon him like it was.
So he stared at Ruth. It took all the energy he had to keep his eyes on her without getting drawn away by the woman by the clothesline. He could feel her calling to him. He could see her standing beside a doorway to another place, another time, and another world. Her hair was bright in the sunlight, and she was waiting.
Ruth touched Paul’s face. She was crying. Her tears fell upon him. They saturated his clothes and gathered in the wrinkles on the skin of his aged neck.
And he was whisked away from his own mind for a brief moment.
The woman from the clothesline had carried him away into a memory. She took him through an entire storybook of his own life. A life he never knew he was so proud of until this very moment. He saw the farm where he was born. He saw the swing his father hung from the old tree by the well. He saw the chicken coops. He saw the woman he married. He saw the day of her funeral. He saw Vern as a young man. He saw a lot.
Then his journey was stopped. He saw an old newspaper photograph. It was old. Dry-rotted at the corners with age. In the photo was a man, a younger version of himself, looking at the camera, with a baby in his lap. The child on his knee. It was his child. Even though it was not his blood, she was his life’s ambition. She’d given him something he never knew he needed. Something without a name.
He forced himself back into the land of the living. But he didn’t have the energy to speak.
Ruth kissed him. Over and over again, she kissed him.
Pete had crawled into the bed beside him and kept his body close to the old man.
Vern knelt
at the bedpost and held Paul’s limp hand.
He had his family with him. He had them. He’d always had them. They were more than a family. They were the guide for a meandering life, giving him what a man like him was not worthy to have, but somehow received anyway by an act of divine mercy.
He was pulled from the world again. The woman from the clothesline led him to a cotton field, then a tobacco field, then a firepit.
Then he was in the newspaper office. He was holding the redheaded baby. He was looking at a newspaper clipping that read:
Lost baby rescued near Rabbit Creek, Mobile, Ala. Red hair, violet eyes. In care of Paul Foldger until appropriate person or persons step forward.
Ruth’s kisses on his forehead brought him back.
With all the effort he had, he gained control over his right arm. He gripped her wrist. He brought his gaze to her violet eyes. He labored beneath a broken jaw. He felt a longing inside himself that could not be satisfied. Not this time. A longing to live. Not for himself, but for the young man beside him, for the girl who kissed his forehead, for the young married woman a whole state away, and for the black man who held his hand. And he felt like he’d failed them all, somehow.
“I-I-I’m sorry, Ruth,” he said.
She smiled and wiped her tears away. “You can go, Paul. You can go if you have to. You can go.”
No sooner had she said it than he felt warmth surrounding him. The heavenly forces holding the landslide released their barricades and allowed the inner dome of the world to fall upon him. A light filled the room momentarily, and he began to let out a short chuckle. It was beautiful. It was all so beautiful. He’d never known it to be this beautiful, even though it was around him all the time.
He could feel a laugh start inside him. It was only inside him. And it felt so good. It felt better than anything he’d ever felt.
“Oh, Delpha,” he said.
And Paul Foldger died.
Sixty-Eight
Going to Meeting
“I ain’t going to no stupid revival,” said Rachel, plopping herself in the chair beside the fan. “I’d break out in a nervous sweat if a preacher so much as looked at me.” The fan blew Rachel’s blonde hair backward. She held her arms up to catch the breeze beneath them.
“I don’t think it’s like that,” said Marigold. “They say there’s healings there, and miracles.”
“We got enough healings going on right here,” said Laughing Girl. “People come from all over just to see you, Marigold, not some holy roller.”
“I don’t trust church people,” said Helen, who was making the bed on the other side of the room. “Those people are liars.”
“So what if they are?” said Marigold. “It doesn’t mean I have to tattoo their name on my forehead or anything. They say they have healings and miracles.”
“They’re full of it,” said Helen. “You already know what you’re doing. Who needs them?”
Marigold sighed. “There must be somebody out there like me. Somebody who feels like I do.”
“Those people would humiliate us,” said Helen. “They know who we are, and they know what we do. They probably have posters with our mug shots in all their holy little church lobbies.”
Rachel laughed at this.
“Helen’s right,” Rachel said. “I don’t think whores oughta be going to no revival. Ain’t good for business.”
“Well, I don’t wanna go by myself,” said Marigold.
“Why go at all?” said Laughing Girl. “Those people are not like us. They will look at us with religious eyes and make us sorry.”
“That’s not the point,” Marigold said. “I wanna see what the healings are like. I wanna see who does them.”
Rachel placed her bare feet on the windowsill and let the fan blow against her silk robe. “I ain’t going. Besides, I ain’t got nothing to wear to a church service.”
Laughing Girl added, “Me neither. I have nothing to wear.”
“What do you mean?” said Marigold. “You both have more clothes than anybody.”
“But nothing decent,” said Rachel. “Nothing a preacherman wants to see.”
The girls laughed again.
Helen placed both hands on Marigold’s shoulders and said, “People like us don’t belong there, Marigold. Just the way the world works.”
Marigold walked outside to the porch. She leaned against the railing and looked at the sunset above her. Helen followed and let the screen door slap behind her.
“I feel alone,” said Marigold. “I feel like a freak sometimes.”
“Honey, you’re not a freak,” said Helen.
“I’m someone mystic people come to see in the woods, and that’s all. They don’t wanna know me, they don’t wanna meet me, they don’t wanna have me over for supper or invite me to church to sit beside them. They just want me to do something for them. And when I do it, they’re gone.”
Helen said nothing.
“I do our laundry, I cook the food, I watch Abe, and I watch the men come in and out of Cowikee’s by the droves to escape their pitiful lives. And at night we’re alone. I’m alone. Nobody comes calling on me. Nobody even cares.” Marigold began to cry. “I just wanna know if there’s anyone else like me out there. Anyone.”
Helen wrapped her arms around Marigold. She kissed her cheek. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, we’ll do it.”
“You will?”
“I said we’ll do it, and we will.”
“Well, I won’t,” Rachel hollered through the open window. “Not unless you want us all to get struck by lightning before we even find a seat.”
“She’ll go with us,” said Helen. “She will go. So will Laughing Girl. And so will Abe. We’ll all be there. Front row, if you want us to be.”
Sixty-Nine
I Shall Not Want
Vern felt strange in his suit. He knew he must look as strange as he felt. He had never worn a suit before, let alone a necktie. Not ever. Miss Warner had bought it for him in town and persuaded him to wear it. “Wear it out of respect,” she had said. Vern didn’t see how a necktie was respectful, not when Paul himself had hated them. But it wasn’t worth arguing about. Miss Warner could keep a small argument burning for several decades. He’d never exchanged a cross word with her, and he didn’t want to start now. Besides, he wanted Paul to be respected, so he wore the ugly thing.
It was impossible not to tug at the tie every few seconds. Pete tugged at his tie too. Their neckties were nooses, reminding them of what today was all about.
Over the past days, Vern had cried so hard his neck muscles hurt. He had never cried that hard. Not even when his own father went on to glory. Vern had sat in his bunk behind the barn, sobbing into a pillow so nobody would hear him. It was the end of the world, he thought. The real end. The earth felt hollow and dead. Nothing was the way it had been when Paul was alive. Nothing. There was no sunshine and no sounds of birds. It was like living in a graveyard.
Pete and Vern had pooled money together for a pauper’s funeral. Miss Warner gave them a burial plot that had been in her family at the Methodist church. Still, Pete and Vern were eleven dollars short when they paid the undertaker.
The funeral consisted of nothing more than a pine box, a linen sheet, and a Methodist preacher. Pete and Vern dug the grave themselves.
The long walk to the cemetery, with Paul in his narrow box, felt odd to Vern. It was as though these events were happening to some other family, not his. It was like a different Vern was grieving for a different Paul, not the real Vern and the real Paul. It was as though somewhere in the world, the real Vern and Paul were still out there living and doing what they’d always done, replacing roofs, cooking hogs, picking tobacco, and raising young’uns.
Pete, Vern, and two other men lowered Paul’s pinewood box into the deep hole using ropes. It was more difficult than Vern had thought it would be. The rope slid out of his grip and burned his hands. Another man lost control of the casket too. Paul’s box slammed into the pit.
The lid popped loose, and his white hand could be seen flung outside the box. Those who’d gathered to pay their respects pretended not to notice what had happened.
The preacher went ahead with the service, even though Paul’s hand was showing. All Vern could think about while the preacherman read his words was that hand. He thought of all the things that hand had done in its years. The hand had made things from wood, held babies, and paid their way through the world.
Pete’s dog, Stringbean, sat among the small group of people, watching the service. Ruth stood beside the dog with a blank face. Pete stood beside her, looking like a ghost.
When the preacher finished, Vern stepped forward and cleared his throat. He knew it was improper for a man of his color to speak at a white-people church, but Paul was his best friend, his brother, and sort of a father too. He was speaking not just to Paul but for him. He wanted Pete, Ruth, Reese, and Miss Warner to be comforted. It was a job Paul had assumed all his life. To comfort those who were afraid. And now it was Vern’s occupation.
“The Lord, he is nigh to the brokenhearted,” said Vern. “And he saveth those who is crushed in spirit. The righteous man might have a good many troubles, but the Lord shall deliver him outta all of ’em, so that not even a single bone in his body shall be broken.”
“Amen,” said the preacher.
“Amen,” said the rest of those gathered.
Vern took one step backward and rejoined Ruth, Reese, and Pete.
“That was lovely,” whispered Reese, squeezing his arm.
“Thanks,” said Vern. “Ain’t my words. J. Wilbur Chaplain wrote them, I think.”
Then it was time. Vern tossed the first shovelful into the hole. He choked back tears that started. So did Pete, who wiped his eyes with his palm.
Miss Warner did not cry. She only stooped low and sprinkled a handful of dirt on the pine box. Then she took Ruth by the shoulder and said, “Let’s get back to the house before the others. I have a sponge cake in the oven.”
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