Out of the Night That Covers Me

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  “My feet feel funny.”

  Aunt Nelda took off his shoes to let his swelling feet grow to twice their size. Before he could ask the question, she was answering it. “Of course you’re gonna be just fine, nothin’ at all to worry about. Just a little too much sun.” She was fanning him with the dish towel. “Shell. Shell!” She almost yelled the second time when Shell didn’t appear immediately. “Go get some of my burn lotion, right now.” Shell came hurrying back with what looked and smelled like a can of grease. Aunt Nelda smeared it over every exposed part of his body. Her fingers ran over his eyelids, under his nose, around his lips. It didn’t help the burning.

  “Shell, get him water.” Shell left and returned with a pail. She scooped out a ladle half-full and raised it to his lips. He swallowed what he could. The rest ran down his face and shirt.

  The men soon became bored with watching and went back in the kitchen to finish their interrupted dinner. “Nelda,” Luther called through the screened door, “I need more bread in here.”

  Nelda rose from her knees in front of John and handed the dish towel to Shell. “Keep fannin’ him.”

  After dinner, the men passed by him on their way out to sit in two straight-back chairs under the big tree in the front yard. John could hear the low hum of their voices as Uncle Luther did most of the talking. It seemed to be about all the money he was going to make off his cotton crop. Even if they didn’t have an eight-disk harrow like his friend Arlo, they had made out just fine with what they had. They could always borrow Arlo’s tractor if they needed it. There was no mention of Aunt Nelda’s boxes and bags sitting around the porch. Little Luther sat and whittled a stick with his knife, occasionally saying, “Yes, sir.” Presently, everybody left for chores. Shell got tired of fanning him and went into the kitchen to help her mother.

  He sat this way for the rest of the afternoon, feet on the floor of the porch, arms out to his sides, holding on to the bench. He was too burned to lie down, too swollen to stand and walk. Aunt Nelda passed by at intervals, taking up the dish towel and fanning it. “It’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be just fine,” she would say, absentmindedly fanning. She would put the dish towel down and leave, saying, “I’ll be right back,” then not come back for an hour.

  He had never had occasion to cry out in pain. His needs had always been taken care of long before it got to that point, but as the afternoon wore on and the pain and fear increased, tears began to run down his face. He held tight to the bench he sat on and lowered his head to whimper. “Aunt Nelda,” he said as she passed by. “Am I gonna die?”

  She stopped what she was doing and came to him. “Here now, honey. Big boys don’t cry.” She sneaked a glance out toward the fields. “You don’t want them to see you cry. You’ll never hear the end of it.” She picked up the dish towel beside him and began fanning. “I tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna make you your own bed, right out here on the porch.” She pointed to a spot in the corner toward the back of the porch. “It’ll be your very own place. It’s always the coolest place in the house, you know. You’ll like that, won’t you?” He sniffed and tried to nod yes.

  She told Shell to wet a washcloth for his eyes—to help with the swelling, she said. He knew it was to hide the tears. He tried to hold the washcloth in place but soon gave up.

  Aunt Nelda went inside Little Luther’s room and came back out with a load of quilts and blankets in her arms. “It’s just a little too much sun. That’s all it is, just a little too much sun.” She was folding blankets on the floor, never looking at him as she talked. “Just think, you get to sleep out here on the porch for the next few nights. Coolest place in the house.” She added a quilt to the top of two folded blankets. “If any breeze stirs, you’ll get it right out here. Nothing like a breeze to make a sunburn feel better. Why, in a few days, you’ll be up and around like nothing ever happened.” She surveyed her bed.

  “I don’t think I will,” he said through swollen lips.

  “You just wait and see,” she said, still looking at the bed. “Why, in no time at all . . . I’m going right inside and get you a fresh pail of water so you can have water right by your bed. Much better than one little old glass. Why, it’ll be just like your own little room.” She opened the kitchen door and went inside.

  He saw the outline of the bed in the corner but could not bring himself to move to it. He placed the wet washcloth Shell had given him on the top of one leg. Then after counting to ten, he would loosen his grip on the bench and place it on the top of the other leg. It would bring him relief only for the few seconds that the wet cloth touched his skin. Then the skin would resume burning. He wondered if he would keep burning and burning and eventually burn up. Perhaps he would end up like the clinkers the maid removed from the furnace in his old house when they had completely given up their energy and become hard and shriveled.

  The day divided itself into minutes, then seconds, then half seconds. It would not end.

  Late that afternoon, because he kept falling forward when he felt dizzy, he finally got up and inched over to his cot to lie among the quilts. He yelled out when his skin touched the cloth, but no one heard him. The last thing he remembered was seeing a full moon rising up across the darkening fields. Then he, in some way, became unconscious, whether from sleep or pain, he didn’t know or care.

  Off in the distance he thought he could hear Uncle Luther and Aunt Nelda standing over him, talking. He pretended he was asleep. In fact, he might have been asleep; he wasn’t sure.

  “We need to call Doc Hays,” she would say, and he would say, “We ain’t spendin’ good money to have the Doc come all the way out here and say he’s done got burnt. Hell, we can see that by lookin’ at him. Feed him plenty of water and he’ll make it.” John thought he heard the sound of tobacco juice being spit out onto the dirt. “Hell, he better make it, Nelda. I need him back in the fields soon as he’s up, even if he ain’t worth shit when it comes to usin’ a hoe.”

  CHAPTER 11

  ON the third day, or what he believed to be the third day, he woke, to feel blisters all over his arms and legs, face and neck, even on his head, in his hair. The tops of his shoulders were burned where the sun’s rays had drilled in under the cloth. At least the pain had subsided somewhat. As the blisters began to break, an oozing liquid ran out and seemed to glue him to his shirt and pants and then to the quilts he lay on.

  His only consolation was that no one bothered him. He slept on the porch at night and feigned sleep in the early morning, when the others went to the fields.

  Shell came along every hour or so during the day to dip the washcloth in a bucket of water by his cot. She stood looking at him, then wrung out the cloth and put it back on his eyes. He came to find out her real name was Michelle. She said her mother had liked the name but that her pa had shortened it to Shell, and after awhile her mother gave up and started calling her Shell. He would listen to her, not saying anything, just watching her through eyes that were only slits in a round, puffy, swollen mask that did not feel a part of him. From time to time, he would reach up to his face to test the blisters with his fingers. None of it felt like what he remembered his face to be.

  Late one afternoon several days later, Shell came up on the porch to change his washcloth. This time, she changed it and kept squatting there beside him, looking into his face.

  “How long you think you gonna lie there like that?” she said. “My pa says them blisters is poppin’, and that means you can go on back to the fields soon.”

  He lifted the cloth off of one eye to look at her and see if she was kidding.

  “I’m too sick. Can’t you see that I’m nearly burned to a cinder? I might die if I go back out there.”

  She laughed and went from squatting to sitting on the floor of the porch.

  “Well, what you think you gonna do, sit round here all day and do nothin’?”

  “I don’t see you out in the fields, Shell.” He glared at her.

  Her long stringy h
air fell down over her face as she lowered her head to think about it. “Well, I ain’t been told to. I will when it gets to be pickin’ time. Besides, I sweep the yard, keep clean water in the washstand, make up the garden so everybody has plenty to eat. I’m needed round here.”

  “Well, I’m not, and I’m not going to be. You can get sick working out there in the sun. Don’t you see that?” He took the cloth off of both eyes to make sure she was looking at his pitiful condition.

  She stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned up against the wall. “Well, if you ain’t needed, what good are you? Why would anybody want you round?”

  She stared at him, trying to determine what he might be useful for. “What did you do in the town you come from?”

  “I learned to read when I was only five, Shell. I made straight A’s.” He lifted the cloth off of his eyes and began searching its dingy gray material, trying to think of the life he had had before this. “I talked to my mother and Miss Mama, our housekeeper, about very intelligent things. I kept my toys nice and neat. You’ll see when they get here. They’re being shipped with all of Aunt Nelda’s stuff.”

  “All that don’t mean a hill of beans. What did you do?”

  “People liked me, Shell. They thought I had nice manners. Mother said it was important to—”

  “Nice manners?” She started getting up to leave. “Nice manners is makin’ sure you got your hat on ’fore you scald the fire outta yourself. Nice manners is not steppin’ on a cottonmouth when you’re playin’ in the creek.” She stood shaking her head at him, then turned and walked on off the porch.

  He pulled the washcloth back down over his eyes and gritted his teeth. For the first time in many days he was screaming at her in his head. I am not, not, going back out to the fields.

  The Bend

  LATE-AFTERNOON shadows painted a stretched picture of the swamp cabin on its dirt-swept front yard. The old woman rose from her rocker to the sound of someone coming up the path in front of the cabin. Her dogs watched but, knowing, did not bark.

  Tuway appeared first, walking slowly.

  “What you bringin’ me this time?” she said, and settled back in her seat.

  “They be along directly,” he said. He took a seat on the steps of the front porch and reached for a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket.

  “You ain’t bein’ very hospitable, leavin’m to find they own way.”

  “I’m bein’ hospitable as I can be. They strange.”

  “How you mean?” She searched down the path. “Couldn’t be no more strange than some of them others. You always pickin’ up some stray cat.”

  “These two strange. She’s strange. Ain’t never seen nothin’ like her.” He looked to the path. “If they don’t come on directly, I’ll go back lookin’.”

  “Why didn’t you just stay with ’em in the first place?”

  Tuway took a deep drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke out. “ ’Cause she goes to shakin’ every time I come in ten feet of her.”

  “Well, you do scare some peoples.”

  “No, it ain’t that. She scared of all mens. She scared of everybody ’cept the boy. He the only one she let close.” He dropped his cigarette and stood up. “Here they come.” He backed away to the other end of the porch.

  The little boy, perhaps five or six, and the woman had come into the clearing that was the front yard.

  “Here it is,” Tuway said. “Just like I told you. Nothin’ here but us. She”—he pointed to the old woman—“she help you.”

  The little boy tugged at his mother’s arm. “Come on, Mama.”

  The woman walked slowly forward, being pulled by the boy. “Don’t need no help,” she said.

  She was close enough now for the old woman to get a good look, and she winced at what she saw. A cut on one arm was bleeding through the bandages. A light brown face that had been badly beaten, and her head—her head was shaved bald.

  As the girl came closer, she watched the man out of the corner of her eye. Once she stopped and stared at him. He moved a few more feet away. Only then did she begin walking toward the house again. She finally reached the front porch and let the old woman take her hand and lead her inside.

  Tuway walked over and took a seat on the porch steps to wait. The smoke from his cigarette rose straight up through damp evening air as the sun dropped slowly behind the ragged line of pines and water oaks that circled the world of his mother’s cabin. How many times, he wondered, and for how many years had he sat watching this scene? It was the first thing he remembered of his childhood, sitting here with his mother, later with his friends, watching the night close in around him. The evening call of a screech owl came from somewhere off in the swamp. Screech owls were supposed to be death omens, but he knew that was an old wives’ tale. It was actually a very soothing sound, coming at regular intervals, measuring time.

  He knew he could have gone to Chicago like the others. He could be there now, watching this same sun disappear behind tall buildings; catching a whiff of the stockyards; getting ready for a night on the town after payday; but he didn’t go or he couldn’t go—which was it? In his mind he listed the reasons—or were they excuses?—again. She was getting older now and she needed him. He owed it to her. She was the reason he had survived. Besides, who was up there for him? Besides, if he left, who would do, could do, what he did? Somebody had to. More and more people were hard-pressed to find farming work, and when they did find it and had one or two dry years, the debt got so bad, there was no way of keeping up.

  Now, he said to himself, say the real reason. Because, up there, everybody would stare at him and make remarks about the way he looked. Down here, everybody knew him. Everybody was used to the way he looked. In the end, he always reminded himself of this when he was listing the reasons. This helped him look at himself square in the face and not back away from the obvious. He might love this old place, but he would never know just how much with the other weighing so heavy in opposition. So what if he didn’t look like he did? Then would he love it enough to stay? He always got to this point and gave up. He couldn’t imagine what he would be like if he didn’t look the way he looked.

  Tuway got up, went to the wall, and lifted a lantern off its nail, then pulled the glass globe up to light the wick. He placed it on the railing that was at the other end of the porch from the swing, where he took a seat. Immediately, night creatures began to circle the lantern. He watched as moths as big as his fist and tiny flying insects no larger than grains of sand began their dances around the light. They never seemed satisfied, so drawn to the thing that might kill them if they ventured too close.

  He counted the time his mother and the other two had been inside by the six cigarettes he smoked before the screen door opened. The old woman came to sit in her rocker, opposite the swing.

  He waited a few minutes to ask so as not to appear too interested.

  “She be all right?”

  “We’ll see.” The old woman looked out at the night. “Some white man done messed with her bad.”

  CHAPTER 12

  JOHN thought that a week of nights and days must have passed as he lay there on the porch radiating heat like some glowing furnace coal. After awhile, he found that if he stayed very still, with his arms straight out beside him, his legs slightly bent so as not to touch the backs to anything, he could be fairly comfortable. He eased his glasses back on over his burned ears and lay there, afraid to move, staring up at the porch ceiling for hours.

  Nothing up under the tin roof moved without his knowledge. In the morning, after everyone had gone to work, he could hear Aunt Nelda going about her chores, scrubbing out pans, banking the stove fire for later use. He watched dirt daubers as they flew about the business of making mud houses along the crossbeam that ran above the kitchen door. Around eight o’clock every morning, a sparrow came to sit near her abandoned nest situated in the V of crossed boards running to the tin roof. Above him and to the right, an army of ants formed a
line, starting over the kitchen door and marching along a beam and down the opposite wall to a point very close to his head, before they disappeared into the porch floor. They seemed to be carrying tiny bits of cornbread.

  He began to tell time by the position of the light on the rafters. In early morning, there was a cool breeze and the light hit against the underpinnings of the tin roof. At noon, they were all—ants, birds, dirt daubers—in the shade. This meant that Uncle Luther and Butch would be coming home for dinner soon. He kept the washcloth over his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

  Late afternoon and there was a line of sunlight that cut across half the ceiling and porch floor before it inched closer and closer to him. Then it paled and began to blend in with the shadows as night came on.

  Of course, there were times when he had to move from his porch bed. At first, he struggled to make it to the outhouse every time he had to go. At first, Shell helped him up and pointed him in the right direction. After a few times of this, he walked far enough away from the house, just out of Shell’s sight, to relieve himself. One night, he realized he could stand on the edge of the porch and accomplish his mission without having to negotiate the steps. He wondered if his mother were seeing this. He didn’t care. It served her right. He peed in a great arc out into the dark dirt yard, like some stray dog marking his territory.

  Every afternoon after the others had eaten and left, Aunt Nelda brought him some kind of soup, chicken or whatever she had, with cornbread crumbled up on the top. She would frown, watching him as he slowly turned on his side to spoon the soup past his swollen lips. Gradually, he got so he could eat leaning up against the clapboards of the old house. Afterward, he would make great show of being exhausted and lie back down in among his quilts.

  He began to feel comfortable there with the birds and ants and dirt daubers. So much so that he was irritated the morning Shell came out on the porch and told him he was well enough to go to the creek for a quick swim. “Ma said for me to go with you and make sure there’s no snakes round.” Shell stood there waiting for him, then turned to go.