As they went about their morning chores, Uncle Luther would say, “Don’t get behind, boy, or I’ll send you to town right now.” At first, he puzzled over this; then he came to realize that Uncle Luther must think he hated going to town because he, Uncle Luther, would hate it. In fact, John looked forward to walking the road to town.
One afternoon as he reached the dirt road, he stood on the barbed wire and noticed that Little Luther sat on the ground whittling and Uncle Luther was walking away in the opposite direction from their house.
That day on the highway to town, he saw two little colored boys with sticks walking up either side of the road. They fished around in the grass, looking for soft-drink bottles. When they found one, thrown out by some passing motorist, they would whoop and dance around before placing it in a burlap bag they carried. When he asked, they told him, “Mr. Tex down at the station give three cent a bottle.”
He began to look for old bottles on his trips to town. He found three. Mr. Tex mashed the button on the cash register at the filling station and gave him nine cents without comment. It was easy. On his way home that afternoon, he buried the money under a big rock that was near the entrance to the dirt road.
The afternoon trips to town gave him his own routine. He looked for bottles the length of the paved road. When he came into town, after he had stopped by Mr. Tex, he would pause at the hardware store to see what, if anything, was on the television. Usually, it was a test pattern. He would wander into the Piggly Wiggly to look at the food. When he had saved up enough under his money rock, he would treat himself to a candy bar, spending long minutes in front of the candy display, trying to choose the one that most suited his liking that day. Striding out of the Piggly Wiggly, he was amazed at how wonderful his Goo Goo Cluster tasted. He never remembered candy tasting like that before, and his mother had bought sweets for him all the time.
He began to notice the women who sat on their porches as he passed the mostly white wood-frame houses that lined the main street in between the Piggly Wiggly and the post office. Very few, if any, had air conditioning and so families spent their afternoons sitting under porch ceiling fans, cooled by a breeze that swayed large baskets of Boston ferns hung out over the railings. The porches were like outdoor living rooms, with lamps and tables, chairs with brightly colored cushions, and radios tuned to stations in Montgomery or Selma. Sometimes he saw children sitting on the floor playing board games while their mothers snapped beans or peeled potatoes for supper. He didn’t wave, but they did, or they would smile as he passed. He would look quickly away. On a few occasions, he saw Mrs. Vance or Mrs. Vance and the Judge walking along the sidewalk. He would duck behind the nearest tree until she, or they, had passed. John would stand, his back up against the bark of an old oak, remembering the night on the train when he had met them, the Judge’s handshake, his stumbling clumsiness in the aisle, the delicious food at supper. The memory would bring a knot to his stomach. He would have to walk long distances for it to go away.
When he got to the post office, there never was much mail, usually advertisements or the Baptist church bulletin. Aunt Nelda said she used to attend long ago and that someday she would go back.
Then one afternoon, sliding across the wood counter straight from Mr. Dover’s hand, there was a letter addressed to him. It had his name on the front: “John McMillan, Lower Peach Tree, Alabama.”
“Well, pick it up, son,” Mr. Dover said. “You’re the only John McMillan we got round these parts. Looks to me like it’s from your hometown, from up in Bainbridge.”
“How do you know I come from Bainbridge?” he asked, still staring at the letter.
“I’m the postmaster, boy; I know everything that goes on around here. I know you come from way, way up above the gnat line. I know you ’bout killed yourself out there in them fields awhile back. I even know you ain’t too partial to Mrs. Vance, the way you sneak round every time you see her comin’.” He smiled when he said this and called back over his shoulder to his assistant. “Ain’t that right, Clovis?”
Clovis grinned through a missing front tooth. “He skitters round here like a rabbit. Scared some woman is gonna say boo to him.”
“I am not either.” He grabbed the mail and walked out slowly, afraid he might be skittering if he moved too fast.
He waited until he got to his money rock at the head of the dirt road to open the letter; he had put it in his pocket and held tight to it all the way there. It was from his next-door neighbor in Bainbridge. He knew that by the handwriting on the outside. All the way to the rock, he imagined what it would say: that they missed him; that he must come back to them; that they would adopt him and he could live with them for as long as he wanted.
Dear John, My mother said for me to write this. How are you? We are doing fine. Are you playing football? Your friend, Tab.
He turned the paper over. There was nothing on the other side. Not even a return address. Of course he knew the return address, but didn’t they know about him, about this place, about how miserable he was? He almost tore it up, but instead, he sat there looking at the paper, folding it over and over into a small square. He lifted the money rock and put the letter underneath.
Off in the direction of the house he heard a large truck coming toward him on the dirt road. It bumped and bounced over the ruts, looming larger and larger, until he realized it wasn’t a farm truck, but a moving van. DIXIELAND MOVERS was the faded sign on its side. The driver raised a finger from the steering wheel, stopped, shifted gears, and lumbered up onto the asphalt. John watched as it disappeared down the highway, headed west. It took a minute for him to realize what the truck meant, a moving van way out here. Then he was up off the rock and trotting down the dirt road faster and faster as visions of what lay ahead came clear to him. It would never be the same, he knew that, but to have some of the things that were his, any of the things that were his and his mother’s, even if they were just stacked around him on the porch, even if they had to stay in boxes until they made a crop and moved to a regular house, still they would be there. They would be his. He ran on. He could see the slight rise in the land that would give him a view of the house once he reached the top. He could hear the soft, steady plop of his shoes hitting the dusty road as he ran along, sweat building on his face. He wouldn’t slow down until he had reached a place where he could see the house. He tripped in the dust right before he gained the crest of the road and crawled on all fours for the last five or six feet.
CHAPTER 17
THERE, spread out before him, were the leavings of the moving van from Bainbridge. Furniture and boxes were in every part of the yard. Half the boxes were open and the contents spilled out on the ground. Uncle Luther was systematically going from box to box with his pocketknife. He jammed the blade in the top of the cardboard, then ripped it open. Once he had looked inside, he would go on to the next one. Little Luther and Shell followed behind, pulling out the contents and quickly tiring of what they found. Comic books were lying in the dust, pages rippling in the breeze. His set of electric trains was spread out in the dirt, the tracks thrown about, the cars and engines stacked in a pile. Books that he had meticulously packed in alphabetical order had been taken out of their boxes and scattered on the ground so Uncle Luther could see if there was anything of value at the bottom. He watched as Uncle Luther came to the bottom of another box of books, throwing them back over his shoulder. Aunt Nelda was carrying armloads of kitchen utensils into the house, some spilling out as she walked along.
Still on all fours, he eased back to sit on his legs and watch. Everything, everything he valued, was being ripped up and thrown about. He tried yelling but something constricted his throat as if he were being strangled. He threw up, heaving only yellow liquid down into the dust, feeling his stomach muscles knot and then let go time and time again, until he was completely exhausted and rolled over onto his back, gulping in air, his eyes closed to the afternoon sky.
It came to him as he lay there, something he had
seen before. The scene was like a picture he remembered from a history book he had read. The Indians had massacred everyone in the fort and now they were discovering all the white man’s treasures. In the picture, the pioneers and soldiers lay dead off to the side while the Indian braves were trying on the white women’s dresses. The Indian children ran about twirling parasols in the air. The Indian squaws were pulling boots off the dead soldiers’ feet.
He rolled over on his stomach to look at them again. Now Uncle Luther was pulling the drawers of his mother’s secretary in and out, examining them as if the desk were some strange rocket ship bound for the moon. Little Luther had his bicycle and was riding around in circles, running over books and tracks, grinding them into the dust. Shell sat under the oak tree, playing with his Lincoln Logs. Aunt Nelda was dashing from one piece of furniture to another, dusting.
He had regained his breath now. There was a bitter taste in his mouth that he tried to spit out, but it wouldn’t go away. He could have called to them, yelled at them, but he didn’t. What would he say? What could he say that they would care about?
John turned over on his back and looked into a fading sky and cried, grabbing handfuls of dirt and throwing them up in the air, then watching as they settled back down over him. In the end, he lay unmoving, like some discarded roadkill left along the highway.
It was not because of the comics or the books or the trains. Not because everything resembling order, his sense of order, had been completely disregarded. It was because he finally knew for the first time, knew beyond all doubt, that she was not there like he had hoped she was. Not there for him to rail against. Not there for him to blame. Not there to make sure things didn’t get unbearable.
She had never been there watching over him.
CHAPTER 18
THE next morning, Uncle Luther was the man Aunt Nelda must have married long years ago. He sat at the breakfast table with a shy, almost schoolboy countenance.
Why didn’t they just take the day off and go into town? Uncle Luther suggested. Only they couldn’t because it was Saturday and only coloreds were in town on Saturday. Uncle Luther was undeterred. Well then, why didn’t they take a picnic down by the creek and swim? Only they couldn’t because Aunt Nelda wanted to make sure all the furniture was protected. She needed to move some of it indoors and the rest on the porch or out in the toolshed. Uncle Luther was the picture of cordiality. All right, if they didn’t want to have a good time, he believed he would help her do the moving, and then he had some business to attend to.
John spent the afternoon in his quilts, which were now surrounded by furniture. He had rescued some books from out of the dust and spent the day in faraway India with the British troops. Occasionally, he was brought back to the cabin’s porch by the sounds of Little Luther and Shell trying to hand-run his electric trains between the outcropping of roots under the oak tree. He tried not to hear them.
The next day being Sunday, Uncle Luther suggested that John and Aunt Nelda go to church. Maybe Nelda could see Mr. Holland from the antique store over in Uniontown. “Don’t he come to Lower Peach Tree to go to church, him being a Baptist?”
“Why, yes, he does,” Aunt Nelda said, surprised that Luther had remembered she wanted to get in touch with Mr. Holland. Mr. Holland handled fine antiques and she wanted him to take a look at the secretary. It was a lovely piece, but it was nine feet high, and she would never have room for it. “Maybe I can get a good price for it—and maybe a few other things,” she mumbled when she saw John watching her face.
Uncle Luther even walked the three miles over to Arlo Thigpin’s house and had Arlo bring him back in his truck with a battery for their truck. “It ain’t gonna run long with that oil leak, but enough to get you to town and back.”
Aunt Nelda dug around in some of the newly arrived boxes and found clothes for John and a dress for herself. He had not wanted to go, with Aunt Nelda dressed in his mother’s old clothes and him wearing a wrinkled shirt and short wool pants that smelled of mothballs, but no one had asked him his opinion. There had never seemed to be a question of Little Luther and Shell coming along.
He was resigned to enduring it as he sat on the truck’s bench seat with her, his hands between his legs. It wouldn’t be more than a couple of hours.
“Nothin’ like a little light at the end of the tunnel to raise your spirits,” Aunt Nelda said to him as they drove out of the yard in the truck. She glanced in the rearview mirror at Uncle Luther. “He really ain’t all that bad when things ain’t pressin’ in on him.”
When they reached town, Aunt Nelda had to park the truck two blocks away. Cars lined the sidewalk all the way to the door of the church. Across the street, a smaller group of Methodists were congregating. A few people spoke to Nelda; more spoke to John, raising their hands in greeting or smiling at him. He thought he recognized faces from porches, maybe from the Piggly Wiggly, but he pretended not to be aware of them.
“My goodness,” Aunt Nelda said. “How do all these people know you?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled.
The minister, who recognized immediately that they were members of his flock who had strayed, enthusiastically greeted them at the door. John took a bulletin from him and kept his head down.
The two of them took a seat on the back row. The people sitting next to him scooted over in their seats, ostensibly to give them more room. He knew it was the mothball smell. He stared straight ahead, the muscles in his jaw flexing.
It was the first time he had been in church since his mother’s funeral. He was unmoved. These people were disgusting, all dressed up in their fancy Sunday clothes. Probably never did a real day’s work in their life.
After it was over, everyone filed back out into the sunlight. Aunt Nelda and John were standing on the front steps when she spied Mr. Holland from the antique store over in Uniontown. She waved her hankie. “Oh, Mr. Holland, just the man I want to see.” She left John standing by himself. He walked down the steps, thinking he would go back to the truck and wait for her there. He recognized the voice before he turned to see her.
“Will you look who we have here. Why Judge, it’s little John—you know, from the train. Nelda’s nephew, you remember.” She wore purple, purple everything—hat, shoes, gloves, dress, and made to match the dress was a thin purple duster. Remembered hours of dyeing Easter eggs with his mother came to him.
She took a deep breath when she saw his face. “My, John, you certainly have . . . have changed since we saw you last.” She came closer, studying him. “Is that a bad sunburn you’re gettin’ over?” She raised her hand to touch his face, but he backed away.
“No,” he said, touching his face, but not meaning to. “No, ma’am.”
“Well, well, Judge, I do believe he’s grown a foot. Why, I wouldn’t have known him except that I saw him with Nelda. He . . . he’s—”
“He’s growing into his responsibilities just like we knew he would. Isn’t that right, son?” The Judge seemed to smile. He held Mrs. Vance’s arm and spoke to the tree branches behind and above John.
John tried to mirror as much disgust as possible over what he now considered the Judge’s condescending attitude. “Yes. Sir!”
The Judge seemed not to notice. “See there, Adell. Why, here he is on a Sunday, bringing his aunt to church. He probably even listened to the sermon, didn’t you, son?”
The Judge had not heard the disgust in his voice. He would try again. “Yes, sir. If you say so, sir.” He spit it out.
“You did?” Mrs. Vance said, seeming to be completely oblivious. “Why, my gracious. I don’t recall ever really listening to a sermon when I was your age. What did you think he was talking about, sweetheart?”
John looked at her, his face a mask. “My mother always discussed the sermons with me every Sunday.” He let out a sigh. Mrs. Vance’s face still did not reflect his loathing. Maybe it was true what Little Luther said about women.
He let out another loud sigh and continued in a
sarcastic tone. “He was talking about salvation. He said if we are truly saved, we will go to a beautiful place when we die.” He turned away from her and tried his new voice on the Judge. “Of course, that’s not logical.”
The Judge caught Mrs. Vance’s hand before she could say anything. “Oh really. Well, why is that, son?”
“Because if I truly believed heaven was a better place, why would I want to stay around here? I would just as soon go on to heaven right now.”
There was silence.
Mrs. Vance tried to laugh. “Well now no, dear, I don’t think that’s exactly what the minister had in mind.”
John’s expression never changed. “That’s what he said. Heaven is perfect. You’re never scared or tired or . . . or sunburned.”
He turned back to the Judge for one last try at being vulgar. “That’s what he said. And I don’t care to have you calling me ‘son,’ either.” He turned and walked away, hurrying to find Aunt Nelda so he wouldn’t be left behind.
CHAPTER 19
SHE had hummed “Crown Him with Many Crowns” when they started the trip back home. It had been the closing hymn. Now, as they turned into the dirt road, she seemed to get anxious. The humming stopped. She held the steering wheel with both hands and concentrated on the road. She seemed to know it showed.
“I guess it’s just silly of me, bein’ impatient to get home. It’s just that now that I know, now that I’ve talked to Mr. Holland—” The minute they reached the rise in the road, they could see things had changed.
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