Out of the Night That Covers Me

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  “There’s so much goin’ on, it’s just hard to know where to begin—with the national news, with the state news? They got a mess up there in Montgomery; says they might think about callin’ a special session of the legislature. And up in Washington—”

  The Judge was half-listening as he rubbed his fingers along the coarse weave of the old wicker swing he had hung in this spot some ten years ago. “Why don’t you start with ‘The Phantom’?”

  “The what?” She looked up from the front page of the Advertiser.

  “‘The Phantom’—you know, Adell, that comic strip about the masked man who lives in the jungles of Africa.”

  She laughed out loud. “Byron Vance, where in the world do you come up with these things? I haven’t read the comic strips in years.”

  He raised an imaginary cigar to his lips and flicked the ashes—his secretary at the bank had told him he did a wonderful W. C. Fields imitation. “My dear,” he said, smiling, “I am a man of many faces.”

  CHAPTER 9

  UNCLE Luther was leaning against a pine tree in the front yard, biting off a chunk of rope tobacco he had taken out of his overall pocket. John could see him now. The sun was just breaking over a cluster of pine trees off to the east, sending long shadows across the flat fields that surrounded the house. With the exception of the trees and underbrush growing around the house, there were miles of fields, planted in what the boy assumed, from his reading, was cotton. The light cut across the bridge of Uncle Luther’s nose, accentuating his gaunt features. He could have been handsome once. The teeth that had been white were stained brown now. The face that must have been smooth in his early years was wrinkled around the eyes and the mouth. Dirty brown hair grew down the back of his neck and receded from his temples. He reminded John of pictures he had seen in one of his geography books—“These people live in the Appalachian Mountains.”

  Aunt Nelda was bending down to give John a wet washcloth to wipe his face. “Now Luther, I do think the boy is tuckered out from his trip. Maybe it would be best for him to stay round here today and rest.”

  Uncle Luther spit and looked at her with eyes half-seeing. He spit again, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “He’s comin’ with me, Nelda. From the looks of him, he probably ain’t gonna last the day, but he needs to learn from the get-go—everybody pulls they own weight round here.”

  Aunt Nelda bit her lip and tried to laugh. “Oh, you men, having to be so rugged.” She patted John on the head. “I can see you would rather be with the men than sit around here all day with us girls.”

  “I wouldn’t mind, Aunt Nelda. I don’t feel so—”

  “Now never you mind, John honey. You go right ahead on with your uncle Luther. It’ll give y’all a chance to get to know each other.” She turned quickly and went back in the room that held the kitchen. John sat there holding the cloth to his face.

  “Ain’t you got no long pants, boy?”

  John shook his head no.

  “Little Luther,” he yelled, “get your sorry ass out here. We ain’t got all day.”

  Little Luther came hurrying out of the outhouse that was off under a small grove of trees behind the house. He was buttoning up his pants as he came.

  “Bring them hoes with you,” Luther said as he turned and walked off down the road.

  Little Luther ran to the side of the house and gathered up three hoes that were leaning against the weathered gray boarding. He never looked in John’s direction.

  John slowly folded the wet cloth, laid it on the porch floor, and stepped out into the dirt that was the front yard.

  The sun was well up now. Away from the house, the fields stretched out before them, flat green blankets laid down from fence line to fence line, broken only by an occasional gathering of trees in the slight draws formed by the rolling land. John began to lose the nausea he had felt before. It was hot but not smothering, as he knew it would be as the day wore on. Grasshoppers were jumping all around him as he shuffled through the weeds growing in the middle of the dirt road. Eventually, the land sloped down toward a swampy area. They were headed in that direction.

  In his mind, he had decided what they were doing. They were out here checking the cotton plants. They would see how they looked and then go back to the house for dinner after a while. Not a very pleasant house, but he could tolerate it. Surely this was not a permanent arrangement. After all, in a few days all of his things were to arrive, and Aunt Nelda’s things, too. They couldn’t possibly live here. Butch’s room wouldn’t even hold half of his toys, let alone his clothes.

  All of these rows of plants they were passing must be cotton. Anyone who had this much cotton couldn’t be poor. From the looks of it, half the cotton in Alabama must be here on this farm.

  He was beginning to feel better now. There was a breeze stirring. He even ventured some bit of conversation. “Are we going to check the crops?” he asked to either one of them.

  No one answered. He could hear Little Luther snicker.

  “You certainly do have a beautiful farm here, Uncle Luther.”

  Uncle Luther kept walking and spitting. “This here ain’t mine.”

  They walked on until they came to a barbed-wire gate. Its fencing surrounded a field bordered by a low-lying swampy area to the east. Uncle Luther stopped to unlatch the gate to a field that was not as neat as the others. Weeds grew up between plants that had a yellow cast and were smaller and weaker than vegetation in some of the surrounding fields.

  Little Luther closed the gate after he had dragged in the hoes.

  “Take one. Give’m one.” Uncle Luther turned to Little Luther, who had dropped all the hoes just inside the gate. Little Luther picked up one and tossed it in John’s direction.

  It landed on the ground in front of him.

  “We got to hoe least half this here today. Don’t be lettin’ up just ’cause you come to the end of a row. Go on to the next one.”

  John felt the coarse wood handle as he picked the hoe up off the ground. He tried to mimic the way Little Luther stood nonchalantly holding his hoe.

  “Well, get on with it.” Uncle Luther stood staring at him. “Start with this here one.”

  “Do I chop down all the weeds around the small plants or do you want me to chop down the plants themselves?”

  Little Luther burst out laughing but quickly returned to a straight face when he caught sight of his father’s expression.

  The boy tried to smile. “Well, there is a certain contradiction here. I have heard the expression, but what exactly does ‘chopping cotton’ mean?”

  In one quick motion, Uncle Luther stepped forward and grabbed John by his shirt. “Are you sassin’ me, boy?” He pulled him up into his face. John could see the tobacco juice running down his chin.

  “No, sir! No, sir! I—I just never—I never have—uh—have chopped before.”

  Uncle Luther spit the words out. “We ain’t choppin’. We hoein’. Done finished choppin’ two months ago. You think you gonna be a smart-ass, do you, boy? Just ’cause my field ain’t far along as t’others.”

  “Oh, no, oh, no, sir.” John shook his head violently. He had no idea what he and Uncle Luther were talking about, but he had obviously insulted Uncle Luther in some way.

  “I’ll tell you what.” Uncle Luther pulled John closer. “You can just hoe two rows for every one I hoe. Maybe that’ll learn you hoein’. Now get on over there.” He let go of John’s shirt and pushed him so hard, he fell in the dirt. Little Luther was laughing out loud now that it seemed he could get away with it.

  His father turned on him. “You get the hell busy or you’ll get the same or worse.”

  Little Luther grabbed his hoe and began chopping at the ground.

  John tried to busy himself and at the same time sneak glances at Little Luther so as to quickly learn the art of hoeing.

  The Bend

  IN the years before she had come to the swamp, Mama Tuway had lived on the high ground in the Bend, on a neat farm she and
her husband, James, had worked. It had been around the time of the First World War. They had planted cotton and sugarcane. They had become famous for their cane crop. People used to come from miles around to help with making sorghum molasses in the fall. Sadie, their old mule, would trudge around and around in a circle, crushing the sugarcanes. James would build a hardwood fire to cook the cane juice. Sometimes, even now, on a bright day in the fall, she could still smell the steam that rose off that old cooking tray.

  Those were good years, before James lost his health. Despite all she could do, he kept going downhill. Even then, she had a reputation as a healer, like her mother and her Indian grandmother, but in the end she couldn’t heal her own.

  After he died, she tried to stick it out two or three more years, doing all the work herself. With no children to help out, it was too much to keep up with.

  One day, she woke up and realized she was making more money treating people and telling futures than she was farming, and farming was taking all her time and energy. That’s when she got the idea about living in the old hunting cabin in the swamp clearing. She had been out gathering sassafras roots when she stumbled on the deserted cabin. After that, the idea wouldn’t go away.

  When she moved there, she experienced a freedom she had never known before. All the work and worry over farming were gone. A whole new life opened up for her. People liked coming to the swamp, as if they were going someplace real, to a doctor’s office, or to someone almost like a preacher, to get advice.

  The people of the Bend got so they wouldn’t make a move without her. Being away like that, just that little distance, set her apart. Back then, even the preacher started coming down for an occasional visit. Of course he wouldn’t admit he was coming for information. “No, just comin’ to pass the time, Polly.” That’s what everyone called her back then, Polly. It had been before Tuway had come along. After Tuway came, people began calling her Mama Tuway. That was so long ago, she couldn’t remember exactly when the transition had occurred. Now that name fit like skin. Polly was someone from another life.

  Now the preacher, the Reverend James Kay—most of the Benders had kept their slave last name, and the Reverend Kay was one of them—was a regular visitor. He would come and sit on the porch, rocking away and asking her about everything from cough syrup to cotton prices.

  She smiled. She knew it all—and they thought she was reading it out of their palms or looking onto the tea leaves, but that wasn’t it. She had other sources.

  CHAPTER 10

  IT wasn’t bad at first. The sun was not that hot. There was a breeze from time to time. John actually liked making a neat chopped row. Each time he finished clearing all the weeds from around one cotton plant, he would check to see how nice it looked. Then he would compare it to all the other plants in his row, making sure to create a precise line as he progressed. The cotton plants themselves were leggy with yellowing leaves. He felt each time he cleared weeds away from one that he was giving it a new chance in life.

  After an hour, he was hot and thirsty. His soft hands began to develop blisters. He kept finding new ways to grasp his hoe in order to stay away from a particular blister that was forming. After two hours, his arms and legs were covered with sweat and dirt. He swatted at sweat bees that constantly buzzed around his head and he noticed for the first time that Little Luther and his father had on straw hats, while the sun was baking the top of his head, his neck, his arms, his legs. Skin long hidden in the cool quiet of his mother’s house—especially during those polio summers when he lived in the basement—stood full face in the sun, completely naïve to its power.

  He pushed back slippery glasses, to see that Uncle Luther and Little Luther were farther and farther ahead of him with their rows.

  Along about ten o’clock, he began thinking of ways of quitting. He practiced what he would say to Uncle Luther. “I’m going to get a drink of water and I’ll be right back.” Or “I need to go to the bathroom and I’ll be right back.”

  Off in the distance, he noticed a girl walking down the dirt path in a sunbonnet, and barefoot, carrying a bucket too big for her. She stopped by the barbed-wire fence to open it and come into their field. When she had fastened the fence gate back, she picked up the bucket with both hands and walked over to him. She looked to be about his age, but bigger in size, of course, with stringy blond hair and eyes that said nothing.

  “Ain’t you got more sense than to be out here without no head cover?” She stood staring at him. “Look at you. You as red as a tomater and the day ain’t half-started.”

  “Shell,” Uncle Luther called from his place in the field. “Bring that water on over here to your daddy and stop lollygagging.”

  “I got to go. Pa wants his mornin’ drink.”

  “But can’t I—”

  “I’ll be back to you. Pa gets his first, then everybody else.” She pulled up the bucket handle and started off again.

  By the time Shell finished with Uncle Luther and Little Luther, there was precious little left when she got back to John. He took the tin ladle hanging inside the bucket and dipped out all that was reachable. Then he held up the heavy bucket and drank straight out of it to get the rest. He drank like he had never tasted water before. He was surprised at how delicious it was. He had never remembered it tasting like that. It had always been second choice at the dinner table, side by side with a glass of ice tea. He had never given water its due.

  “Pa says I can give you my bonnet to keep the sun off if I want to, since you work slow as a woman anyway. You want it?”

  “My face is getting quite sore and the back of my neck is burning.”

  She took it off and handed it to him. “Are you sure?” she said.

  “Sure I’m sure. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s hot as blue blazes out here.”

  “You gonna get fierce doggin’ wearin’ girl clothes like this here,” she said, holding the bonnet out.

  “Maybe, but what can I do? I’m burning up, and you said yourself the day isn’t half over. The top of my head feels like it’s on fire.” He took the hat.

  “You could keep on, not wearin’ anything, like a man,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, looking down at the hat in his hand. “Well, uh, well, I think I’ll wear it just for the morning, till we come in for dinner. We do get to stop for eating, don’t we?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled at him like he might not be too bright. “Yeah, but that’s likely two hours off.”

  “Well, nobody will see me but Uncle Luther and Little—Butch.”

  “Yeah, nobody but Pa and Butch,” she said, and smiled again.

  “Is that who you are? Are you Butch’s sister? Are you part of our, uh, the family?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m part of ’um.” She pushed her stringy blond hair out of her face and behind one ear. “Wasn’t up when you was up this mornin’. I got to lay out ’cause I been keepin’ house while Momma was gone.” She walked on off, taking care to step only where the dirt was easy on her feet.

  He looked around to see if they were looking at him before he put the hat on. Nobody seemed to be paying him any mind, so he continued hoeing.

  A while later, Little Luther caught up with him a few rows over, hoeing twice as fast and not half as neat. It was then he started in on John about how he was so pretty in the bonnet and how he was going to tell all the boys John would be going to school with in the fall. This didn’t bother him so much as when Uncle Luther began laughing at some of the things Little Luther was saying. At the end of the next row, when no one was looking, he took the hat off and laid it on the ground. The sun fell unhindered.

  The songs of the cicadas in the willows at the edge of the field would rise, then slowly drift away like the dust from his hoe. He chopped around plant after plant for what seemed like hours just to reach the end of one row. Then he would look up, to see an ocean of rows full of weeds. The ground began to move before his eyes like giant waves in a green ocean. He stopped sweating and began to fee
l a chill.

  Finally, it came time to eat. He knew this because Uncle Luther walked past him on his way out of the field and said, “Dinner.” John dropped his hoe and began to follow.

  “Finish that row, boy. You three rows behind as it is,” Uncle Luther said when he saw John following. The boy hurried back to finish and then headed in the direction the others had taken.

  As he walked, he realized something was wrong. His eyes were beginning to swell shut. He felt hot and cold at the same time. He couldn’t seem to walk in a straight line. When he finally reached the house, he heard, but could not make out, Aunt Nelda standing on the porch. “My God, Luther, what have y’all been doin’ out there?”

  He heard, but could not see, Uncle Luther come out on the porch to stand beside her. “Ain’t nothin’ but a little sun. He’ll learn to live with it.” Uncle Luther walked down off the porch and poked him on the arm. “Damn if you ain’t almost done, boy.”

  John looked up but could only see their outlines against the house. His eyes were almost completely shut now. He felt Aunt Nelda take his hand and lead him up the steps to a seat on the wood bench next to the wall. Every part of his body that wasn’t covered by clothing was beginning to burn.

  “Honey, you look a fright.” She stood before him, twisting something in her hands. Maybe it was a dish towel. “I never thought this would happen.”

  He spoke in a whisper, his breathing uneven. “My mother doesn’t—didn’t—allow me. I stayed inside a lot,” he said through lips that felt like biscuit dough. “Do—do I look bad, Aunt Nelda?”

  Little Luther laughed somewhere on the porch. “Do you look bad? Do you look bad? You look like somethin’ on the Fourth of July barbecue pit down at Mr. Arlo’s.”