The Bend
NOW he came to the Bend at every opportunity, usually in the evening, when the light had dimmed, when appearances had softened.
Mama Tuway did not let this go unnoticed. “Tuway, I used to think the best thing ’bout you was how you look at everything right side up. But maybe that ain’t the truth.” She waited for him to deny it, but he said nothing. “You know that girl messed up in the head. She might be good-lookin’, but she don’t know it. She don’t feel it.”
He tried not to think of her as good-looking. If he did, it meant others thought the same thing. He hoped she looked like a freak to others.
“Good-lookin’? What’s you say good-lookin’? With that skinned head?”
“You can grow back a head of hair. You know that ain’t it. It’s what’s inside.”
A coldness would run through him when she said things like that. “I ain’t worried.” He would smile at her the way he had when asking a favor as a child. “You fix her. Get some of them herbs out the swamp. You fix everybody.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know ’bout that, Tuway.”
She had never taken pity on him before and so he didn’t recognize it in her.
“Ah, go on. You can fix it.”
The old woman looked away. “I do know we ain’t gonna let her go on off to Chicago with little Willie—and her bein’ like that.”
Once her hair began to grow and her face lost most of its bruising and swelling, it was like flies to the honey. Men, upon first seeing her, were mesmerized. They stood together in groups, watching the long legs moving back and forth from the house to the side yard as she helped with supper chores. Eyes followed the arms raised to wipe sweat off her forehead, the profile etched against the fading light. It would have been unnatural if she had gone ignored.
This was before they knew her, before they had heard her.
The first time it happened, everyone had gathered in the yard for supper. One of the younger men from the Bend had started teasing her. It was harmless enough, but when he tried to put his arm around her, Ella went rigid. Her eyes glazed over. She began spewing withering fire, words so repulsive, everyone within hearing distance cringed. Her face contorted, so that she seemed to become someone else. The beauty they had thought was there had disappeared, drained from her body. Like a chameleon, she had changed before their eyes. It was disgusting to look at, embarrassing for them to realize they had been all wrong about her.
On these occasions, little Willie would sit with his hands over his ears, his eyes shut tight. The night it first happened, Tuway had stepped in to shoo away the transgressor. It had not taken much effort. No one would think of crossing Tuway, and besides, Ella had lost all her appeal by then. Tuway stood up from his place around the fire and looked at the man.
The man immediately held up his hands. “Just funnin’ with her, Tuway. Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” This, Tuway now realized, had been great good fortune for him, because after that night, Ella came to see him as a guardian of sorts.
At supper, Tuway would choose a picnic table off to himself. He would sit there carefully studying his piece of fried chicken, turning it in his hands as he ate, pretending not to notice her. More often than not, Ella and Willie would come sit at the opposite end to eat their dinner, never talking to him, never even glancing up at him, but knowing they were in his protected sphere.
Once he had offered her a piece of fried chicken. She accepted it but gave it to Willie. It was trifling, he knew, yet it lasted him for days.
CHAPTER 23
TUWAY was John’s new boss. His appearance fascinated John, but he had to be careful. If Tuway caught him staring, he would stare back, and then John couldn’t seem to pull away once their eyes were locked. Tuway held him—and even John knew this was ridiculous—in almost a trance.
He had never read about anyone like Tuway, and now there was no one to ask, nowhere to go to find out about such a person. The boy decided that what must have happened was that Tuway had a black daddy and a white mother who didn’t mix when they made Tuway. They must have both been very big, because Tuway was bigger than the Judge, bigger than Uncle Luther. He was not frightened of Tuway like he was frightened of Uncle Luther. He was scared of Tuway as one might be afraid of a ghost.
Uncle Luther had taken to the idea of John’s job immediately. Aunt Nelda wasn’t so sure. “Why, hell yes, Nelda,” he had said that night at supper. “He ain’t no help in the fields, and this way, at least we get money for him workin’.” He glanced up from his plate. “Course I’ll save it up for him.” No one thought it worth the trouble of taking exception to that. In fact, no one ever even asked what happened to the money Uncle Luther got for selling all John’s mother’s things. Maybe Aunt Nelda and Uncle Luther had discussed it, but not at the dinner table. John did notice that the truck had new tires and seemed to run better.
The boy would wake with the others, eat breakfast, and walk to town as the morning dew was drying on the fields. If he found any bottles, he would hide them in a nearby cotton field to sell at a later time.
John would sit on the back steps of the Judge’s house, waiting, as he had been told, until Tuway came to give him instructions. Tuway would seem to come from out of nowhere, walking past the cemetery that lay just across the street. When John had asked, Mrs. Vance said Tuway lived in a house just outside of town.
Tuway always seemed to have other things on his mind, so the boy would go unnoticed until Tuway got halfway up the back steps, adjusting his tie, buttoning the sleeves of his frayed white shirt. Then he would notice the boy and quickly survey the backyard to give John his assignment for the morning.
“See them rose beds right yonder, the ones with the white roses?” he would say, pointing.
“Yes, sir.”
“Weed ’em. Then plump up the ground all round with a hand trowel. By the time I get back here for dinner, I don’t wanna see no sign of no weeds. You understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, don’t just stand there lookin’ at me. Put the hurt to them weeds, boy.”
John would jump to his task, hurry to the toolshed directly behind the grape arbor at the end of the backyard, find a trowel, and begin his assignment, all the while keeping an eye on the comings and goings in the house.
At a quarter to nine each morning, Tuway walked the Judge to work. The bank was just three blocks from the house, so every noon they came home for dinner and every noon Tuway came out back to see after John and tell him what to do for the rest of the day.
They took their dinner together on the screened-in back porch, sitting at an old discarded kitchen table. John thought the food alone was worth the job. Real ice tea, fried chicken, cornbread, string beans, and potatoes. Mrs. Vance seemed to prefer to do all the cooking herself. She would bring John an extra-large portion that he would immediately devour and then sit watching to see if Tuway was going to finish his plate. Tuway didn’t eat much, and if he looked up and saw John watching, he would push it in his direction. “Don’t they feed you nothin’ out there, boy?” Having seen no other indications, the boy took the sharing of food as a sure sign Tuway was beginning to like him.
After dinner, Tuway would take his coat off, turn on the overhead fan, and move to a wicker rocker that had seen better days. He would sit studying a small black notebook he had taken from his coat pocket. It seemed to be filled with all the happenings of the day. Sometimes the Judge would come to the back door and ask Tuway if such-and-such was on the schedule for the day. Tuway would consult the book and say when and where.
John lounged in an old green glider discarded from the sunporch on the side of the house. He would read from old newspapers that were stacked in the corner. Tuway smoked a cigarette and stared out into the backyard or at his notebook.
At times, other Negroes came by the back door and called to Tuway in a very respectful manner. “Mr. Tuway, I’d count it a favor to have a word with you.” He would look up and study them
for a minute before he moved. More times than not, he eased out of his chair to talk to them out in the yard. He always had plenty of time. The Judge, and, in fact, all of Lower Peach Tree, took a nap after dinner. Business got started again around two o’clock.
One afternoon, Mrs. Vance brought out a pitcher of ice tea and cookies. John brushed the dirt off his hands and drank down two glasses before he stopped to thank her. She smiled and took a seat on the glider, holding the big glass pitcher in her lap.
“How are things at home? I mean, how is your aunt Nelda these days, John?”
“She’s fine.”
“And your uncle Luther?”
“He’s fine.”
She looked down into the pitcher of tea as if she were seeing something bobbing around in there with the mint and lemons. “The Judge was telling me you had a black eye when you came to interview with him. Is that right?”
“No.”
“No?” she said.
“I mean, no, ma’am.”
“I didn’t mean that; I meant, you didn’t have a black eye?”
“I don’t have a mirror. I don’t know if I had a black eye or not.”
“How did you . . .” She looked down in the tea pitcher again. “I just wondered how you came by that eye.”
He held his glass out and she poured more tea, which he drank straight down without answering. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, still trying to decide what to tell her. He couldn’t take the chance of jeopardizing this new job. “I didn’t do anything bad, if that’s what you were thinkin’. I got it because I didn’t stand still, that’s all.”
“What?”
“I didn’t stand still when he got mad, and if you don’t stand still, then you’re liable to get hit. Did you think I didn’t know how to act? I know how to act.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t think that at all.” She got up quickly and went over to the wrought-iron table, where she had left the cookies. “Here, come have some of these cookies. Don’t all children like Oreos?”
He didn’t say anything but took a cookie and pulled it apart, eating the side without icing and saving the other side. He eyed her suspiciously and took another cookie. “Everybody knows if you stand still, you won’t get hit. Most of the time now, I am so still, nobody even sees me.”
“Well I never . . .” She grabbed a cookie off the plate and began nervously turning it over and over in her hands.
He watched her as he ate the second side without icing and then put together the two sides with icing. “I won’t be missing any days working here ’cause my legs are hurting or anything like that.”
Her face had turned pale. She grabbed the arm of the glider and sat down quickly.
John smiled at his homemade cookie before he took a bite. “You can count on me,” he reassured her. “Little Luther told me what to do, and Shell. They learned me,” he said, and popped the rest of the double-icing cookie in his mouth.
“They taught you.” Adell Vance corrected him without realizing she had done it. She was staring at the ground.
He took the last four cookies off the plate and put them in his pocket. “Learned me, taught me. What difference does it make? Now I know what to do.” He corrected himself in deference to her. “Now I know what to do, ma’am,” he said. “They even taught me how to hold my breath if it gets too bad. I can even hold it to a faint. Want to see me do it?”
She raised her hand and shook her head. “No, no. I believe you. That won’t be necessary.”
He drank down the last of his ice tea and stood there watching her. “I was just wondering, ma’am.”
“Yes, what is it?” She had taken a handkerchief out of her pocket and was fanning herself.
“Are you gonna eat that last cookie you got there in your hand?”
She gave it to him. He thanked her, put it in his pocket, picked up his hoe, and went back to the weeds. He would save a cookie or two for Shell and Little Luther. The rest were for him.
CHAPTER 24
THAT afternoon, while he was weeding under the kitchen window, John heard her talking on the phone.
“It just made my blood run cold. He needs—I am gonna say it. He needs a man’s influence—Tuway is not enough. Byron, I know you don’t want to get involved. . . . I appreciate that you have other problems. . . . I know the Spraigs will take advantage of the—”
There was a long silence while he talked on the other end of the line. She tried to interrupt him several times but couldn’t. Finally, when he was finished, she said, “You know, Byron, if I didn’t know better, I might think you were afraid of feeling too much for the boy rather than too little. . . . I didn’t mean to imply he was one bit like Mary Beth. There’s no comparison. I know that. . . . You’re right—we’ll talk about it tonight.”
A few days later, she called John into the house early in the morning.
“Well now, John. The Judge has decided that he needs you to work for him in the afternoons.” She was sitting at the kitchen table and fishing through her sewing box. “Of course, if you’re going to work at the bank, you’ll need some proper clothes.”
“Like a tie and a suit?”
“No.” She smiled. “Just some clean—I mean, some new short pants and shirts. We’ll keep them here at the house so . . . well, so your aunt Nelda won’t be bothered with having to wash them.”
“That’s okay. I can wash’m. I know how to do it. You take them to the pond and go swimming in them.”
“Well, yes, that would be very nice, but why don’t we just keep them here at the house. I’ll wash them. Now let me measure your waist. I don’t want to buy the wrong size.”
She even bought him new shoes and socks. All to keep there at the house. “Go on upstairs, honey, and use the bedroom at the top of the steps on the right. The bathroom is at the end of the hall. You take a quick bath and change and come on back down here before the Judge gets home for dinner.”
He ran up the stairs, stepping on the first carpet he had felt underfoot since he had left Bainbridge. In the bedroom, he went around touching everything—the bedcovers, the cedar chest at the end of the bed, the books in a small bookcase under the windows that overlooked the front yard. He touched the lace curtains that framed the window, then let his finger trace the flower designs on the wallpaper. From the open window, he could see across the street to the Lower Peach Tree Cemetery that was in among the cedars surrounding it. He had forgotten the smell of a regular house, the quiet, the feel.
He turned and went into the bathroom down the hall and jerked off his clothes. Suddenly, he saw himself in the mirror on the door. He didn’t recognize the person standing there. He reached his hand up to touch a face grown dark and angular. While his arms and legs were very dark brown and scratched in places, the rest of his body was the color of a china plate. He stared at himself, turning slowly around to inspect every part of his body. He seemed to be half of what he used to be and half of what he was becoming.
“Is everything all right up there?” she called.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be down in a minute.” He turned on the bath water quickly and sat down in the first real bath he had had since coming to Lower Peach Tree. At Uncle Luther’s, they used a tin bathtub or the creek.
The clothes he found in the bedroom fit him perfectly. He ran back to the bathroom to look in the mirror. The Judge would think he looked good, good enough to sit at the same table.
Down the steps two at a time and into the dining room just as they were sitting down. “My goodness me, John, you look like a new man,” she said, “and the clothes fit.”
He stood, smiling, waiting to be asked.
“Now why don’t you run on and eat your dinner. I put it on the porch,” she said.
“But I—”
“What is it?” She smiled.
“Oh . . . oh, nothing.”
The Judge spoke. “Undoubtedly, John wants to thank you for going to all the time and effort it took to get him those new clothes.”
John could feel his face glowing. “Uh, yes, sir, I do. That—that’s what I wanted. Thanks for the new clothes, Mrs. Vance.” He turned around and walked through the kitchen to the back porch, hearing her saying it was no trouble at all.
When Tuway saw him, he almost smiled, but not quite.
They started off to the bank around two o’clock. The Judge walked with a cane, but it seemed only incidental to his progress. He would poke his stick around for the curbs, but he was aware of where they were before he reached them. If somebody was coming, Tuway would say in a low voice, “Mrs. Marlie comin’ up,” so that just about the time Mrs. Marlie would be on them, the Judge would raise his cane, more like a scepter than an aid. “Afternoon, Cora.”
And Mrs. Marlie would say, “Afternoon, Judge” as if he were an ordinary sighted person walking by and noticing her.
The Judge kept up a conversation with Tuway the whole time he wasn’t greeting people.
“This afternoon, you need to make sure the Pratts and the Willises get poison delivered out to their places. Take the key and open up the basement for Cal.”
“What about R.C.? You gonna give him any? You already done give him the seed and the fertilizer.”
The Judge slowed down and took a deep breath. “No, I’m tired of throwing good money after bad. Cal delivered his seed out there. He messed around and didn’t plant it till it was too late. Then he stayed drunk the whole time he should have been chopping. What’s the use? I made a mistake furnishing him in the first place. I’m not going to compound it any more. This has been going on for years. It’s not like it’s the first time.”
Out of the Night That Covers Me Page 13