Out of the Night That Covers Me

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  “You forgettin’ about his children and his wife?”

  “No, I have not, Tuway, but what good does it do them? Every time he gets any cash, he drinks it up. They never benefit. You told me yourself the last time you were out there that the children looked like ragamuffins and half the cotton wasn’t out of the ground.” He paused crossing the street. “Well, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir, Judge, I did.”

  “Well, what do you expect me to do? I have to answer to the board. I can’t just go around throwing away money.”

  They walked on in silence, John, Tuway, and the Judge.

  “Maybe you can try and get his wife a job at the okra plant,” the Judge said.

  “Done already tried out at the okra plant, Judge. They ain’t hirin’.”

  “Anybody else on our list?” the Judge asked. They all stopped so that Tuway could take out his black book and consult it.

  “Only them people out at the Bend, but they done got they full loans at the first of the season. Cal need to go out there to check on’m?” Tuway watched the Judge’s face.

  “No, too far. It takes half a day to go and come in good weather. Besides, they grow the best cotton in the county.”

  “I’m just remindin’ you—they didn’t make back they loan last year.”

  “Did you feel those staple samples they brought in last year? I thought L.B. was gonna turn green right on the spot when he saw them. No, leave them be. They’re some of the best farmers in the county.”

  Tuway nodded his head and put his little book back in his pocket.

  They reached the bank and John ran around them quickly to open the door so they would remember he was still there.

  “All right, John, here we are, your first day on the job.” The Judge smiled, but not much. “First thing I want you to do is tell Miss Maroon that you’re here; then go around and empty all the trash baskets. That’s one job she’ll be glad to have done on a regular basis. Then go on down to the basement and find Cal. He’s the man who drives the truck.”

  “What truck?”

  “The bank truck. He delivers supplies to farmers who have loans with the bank. Tell him you’re supposed to go with him to help out. I know you’re not big enough to haul sacks, but you can open gates for him to make his trip faster. Tuway, will you—”

  “I’ll see to him,” Tuway said.

  There was a loading dock around in the back of the bank that led into the basement. Stacks of fertilizer and poison were on the concrete floor. Cal was loading bags into the truck as John and Tuway walked down the dark steps that led from the lobby to the basement.

  “I thought banks had money inside, not sacks of fertilizer.” John was looking at what seemed more like a seed and feed store than a bank.

  “The money’s upstairs. This here is what makes the money.”

  “Cal, this here is John.” Cal turned from what he was doing and brushed off his hand, sending puffs of white dust up into the air. He immediately recognized John.

  “I remember you. You the one I took home from the train station awhile back. How you gettin’ on with them Spraigs?”

  “Fine.” John looked out at the fertilizer truck.

  “The Judge say for you to take him on rounds this afternoon. He can help with the gates.”

  Cal laughed as he wiped his head with a red handkerchief out of his back pocket. “Well, that ain’t much help, but I’ll take all I can get.” He was short and chubby, with a round black face and a gold front tooth when he smiled. “The Judge startin’m mighty young these days, ain’t he?”

  “It more like the Mrs. Judge startin’ him than the Mr. Judge, if you make out my meanin’.”

  Cal turned to grab another sack and heave it into the truck bed, the muscles inside his rolled-up shirtsleeves bulging. “I know you gotta keep them women happy or it’s hell to pay.” He brushed off his hands again. “Okay, that’s it, ’less you want me to take the Spraigs they poison today. I know where they stayin’ now, and it’s near where I’m goin’.”

  “No. Remember, this here is a Spraig,” he said, pointing to John. “The Judge say stay away from the Spraigs when you got him with you, and that means all the way away. You got that?”

  Cal opened the door of the truck and stepped up to the driver’s seat. “Yes, sir, Mr. Tuway,” Cal said, smiling. “I’d just as soon stay away from old man Luther altogether, if it was up to me.” He started the engine. “Well, go on and get on in here.” He motioned to John. “We ain’t got all day.” He reached over to the other side of the cab and opened the door. John ran around and climbed up the muddy running board into the seat beside Cal.

  Cal took out a pack of cigarettes. “You know,” he said out the window to Tuway, “I got me two extra cigarettes to give to you if you was of a mind to take’m.”

  Tuway looked down at the cigarettes. Then, without moving his head, his eyes shifted to look at Cal’s face. “I ain’t of a mind. I done stopped smokin’ for the time bein’.”

  Cal looked surprised. “You done stopped smokin’? What you mean you done stopped smokin’? I heard you took four last week and three last month.”

  Tuway looked straight at Cal. “I told ya. I done stopped.”

  Cal held up his hands. “All right, all right, cousin. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. You the one got the habit in the first place. I done told you all along it was bad for you. Liable to land you trouble.”

  He said this as he took a cigarette out of the pack and lit it with one of the big kitchen matches he had stuck over the sun visor. He blew the smoke out into the cab. “We’ll be back directly.”

  Cal’s hand jammed the big stick-shift knob into gear and the truck moved slowly out of the drive. John looked out of the rearview mirror on his side of the truck to see Tuway take a cigarette from his coat pocket and light up as he watched them leave.

  CHAPTER 25

  THEY bumped along in the old truck, Cal talking half to himself as he shifted gears. “Don’t smoke no more. What the hell he talkin’, don’t smoke no more. Ain’t nobody gonna believe that. He the one started it in the first place.”

  They came to a dirt road that had potholes the size of the sacks they were carrying. John had to hold on to the open window frame to keep from bumping his head on the ceiling. “Is he . . . is he really your cousin?” he asked between flying up in the air and banging back down on the seat.

  “Is who really my cousin?”

  “Tuway, is Tuway really your cousin, like you said?”

  Cal laughed. “Tuway everybody’s cousin.”

  They bumped along a minute more, not saying anything. Then John had to ask. “Do you have any other cousins that, you know, that look like Tuway?”

  “Look like Tuway?” Cal roared with laughter. “Ain’t nobody else like Tuway, boy. Don’t you know ’bout Tuway?”

  John shook his head.

  Cal smiled, mischief in his eyes. The gold tooth sparkled in the sunlight. “They say”—he raised his eyebrows—“Tuway had an Indian daddy and a colored mama. His mama done handed him off to a swamp woman right after he got born. Ain’t nobody seed Tuway round these parts ’til he was full grown. Then one day, he just ’peared out of the swamps where he been livin’ since he was a baby.” Cal looked over at John to see if he believed him. He flicked his cigarette out the window. “Why, some peoples say he got the mark on him.”

  John said nothing and sat in the cab, staring straight ahead.

  Cal laughed. “Well, ain’t you gonna ask what the mark is?”

  “What, what’s the mark?” John said.

  Cal leaned over real close and said in John’s ear, “They say if you cross Tuway, that’ll be the end of you. They say he got magic powers give to him by his swamp mama. Peoples don’t mess with Tuway.”

  The truck came to a stop, dust swirling up all around. Cal sat up straight and laughed. “Okay, first gate.”

  “What?”

  “First gate, boy. Remember, it’s your job.”r />
  John looked out to see a barbed-wire gate across the road. Beyond that was a dogtrot house like the one he lived in, except this one was neat, with painted shutters and flowers growing in old coffee cans that lined the porch railing. Two old tires painted white and half-buried in the ground marked the path up to the steps. He got out and unhitched the gateposts from the wire to let Cal through. Then he hitched it back and walked up behind the truck into the yard, where two little colored children were playing on a tire swing.

  CHAPTER 26

  SCHOOL began the next week. It would last for four weeks and then close up again for cotton picking. John was placed in the fifth grade, in Miss Belva’s class. Little Luther was in the fourth, Shell in the second.

  “If we don’t let out after four weeks, some parents will take the children out anyway, so might as well let y’all go,” Miss Belva said. She was standing in front of the class, looking over her new crop of fifth graders. These were the same group of faces that had been in the fourth, the third, the second, just as hers was the same face all children passing through the fifth grade had seen for the last ten years. This year, the exception was the new boy, John. She had seated him in the front row. She had asked to have him in her class, more to break the monotony than as a favor to Mrs. Vance, although she knew Adell Vance would be pleased. She continued to talk as she began erasing the blackboard. The students sat with their feet on the floor and their hands on desktops, as they had been taught. Conformity was still novel after a long summer.

  She had been to Montgomery to visit this summer, she said. She knew that most of the state didn’t do this kind of thing anymore—splitting up the school year—and for the life of her, she couldn’t see why they kept doing it here in Perry County.

  “Not that many people are raisin’ cotton anymore, and you don’t need to stop school to tend cows.” She turned from erasing the blackboard, chalk dust on her dress. “Now raise your hands. How many of you are actually gonna be pickin’ this year?” Ten of the twenty raised their hands. She studied the number and dismissed it. “Well, this class is unusual.”

  A hand went up in the back of the room. “Yes, Horace,” Miss Belva said, pointing a chalky finger.

  “What’s he doin’ here?” Horace nodded in the direction of John.

  Miss Belva brushed off her hands and walked over to John. “I’m glad you asked that. This is our new student. His name is John McMillan. He is livin’ with the Spraigs now.”

  “Is he just visitin’?” Horace said.

  “Oh, no, no, he is a regular student now.”

  “He’s too little to be in with us,” a girl in the back of the room said.

  “Oh, no, Darlene, he skipped a grade in his old school and another one here. This is where he belongs and this is where he’ll stay if he can do the work.” She dismissed the subject and went on to the annual first question of the school year. “Now who all wants to tell me what they did during their summer vacation?” Nineteen of the twenty hands went up.

  It was not a bad school, an old brick building with two floors. The first through the fourth grades were on the ground floor, the fifth through the seventh on the second. He felt very superior each morning when he walked up the stairs to the second floor, but when he got there, he felt miserable. No one talked to him. He was so small, he wasn’t even afforded recognition by the school bullies.

  It was so hot, all he wanted to do was wait for the time to pass so he could go to the Judge’s house in the afternoons. All the windows were open and there was only one big fan. It blew mostly on Miss Belva, but after awhile, its motor would get hot and start making a screeching noise. Then Miss Belva would turn it off. Flies buzzed in and out of the open windows. He made slow circling motions with his feet, shifting the small particles of sawdust left on the floor after it was cleaned. He could listen to Miss Belva while he looked out the window. Everything she talked about, he already knew.

  He never saw Little Luther or Shell, since they were on the first floor and ate and had playground at different times. Sometimes he would see them at school assembly in between the rows of heads in front of him. This year, ringworm was going around the school. Shaved heads painted with purple medicine were lined up in front of him, but when everybody stood for the flag, he could see between the heads and shoulders to where Shell stood. He always recognized the back of her stringy blond hair.

  John and Shell and Little Luther brought their lunches in paper sacks. It was usually biscuits with bacon or strawberry jam, but sometimes nothing in the middle. He didn’t care. He knew he could get something good to eat in the afternoons at the Judge’s house. He would run all the way there when school let out. Mrs. Vance would have a sandwich and drink for him, cookies and sometimes cake. He would eat and then hurry to change clothes for the bank. He had never felt at ease with people his own age anyway.

  He was getting to know everybody at the bank. Sometimes he helped the Judge’s secretary, Miss Maroon. She would keep him busy emptying trash cans and ashtrays. Sometimes the tellers would say, “Would you please take these pencils and sharpen them for me, John?” And he would say, “I’ll be happy to, ma’am.” He loved saying the words. He loved doing the deeds. The brass on the tellers’ cages needed polishing. The marble on the customer deposit tables needed cleaning. He used Windex to polish up his glasses, and he could see clearly for the first time in what he thought must be many years.

  Sometimes he thought that Shell and Aunt Nelda and maybe even Little Luther would like to do his job, but they couldn’t, because it was his, all his.

  Sometimes he rode with Cal and opened gates. The more he rode, the more Cal talked. He talked all the time to himself and to John, answering questions John had asked him, though John never knew whether to believe him or not.

  “Why do they call him that?” He settled in beside Cal, comfortable with their rides now. The truck bumped out over the curb onto the road out of town.

  “The Judge? Why do they call him Judge?” Cal waved at a young girl going into the Piggly Wiggly. “Well, I’ll tell you, but you ain’t gonna understand it. See, bankers is judges if they like the Judge. He the one says if you gets a crop loan or not. Round here, if you gets a crop loan, you can make it, and if you don’t, you might just as well go on off down the road.”

  Cal yelled to two colored men at the Texaco as he turned right onto Highway 80. “Jesseeee. I done seen you down there Saturday night at The Store. You bound to get you some, wasn’t he, Earl?” Earl swallowed a mouthful of Coke and peanuts before he burst out laughing. Jesse threw up a hand to push Cal on his way.

  Cal laughed and shifted into third gear. “Long time ago, the only ones that give you a crop loan was the man that own the land you stay on. Then the Judge come along, and he say if the man don’t do you right and you need a crop loan, then you can come to him and he give you a loan. That’s how come all the peoples start sayin’ if the man don’t do right by’m, they goin’ to the Judge. Only now, some of the white peoples that got the land, they don’t like the Judge ’cause he’s takin’ way they business, and the Judge say if they was honest in the first place, he wouldn’t be gettin’ all the business, and the coloreds, they ain’t happy with nobody ’cause they ain’t gettin’ no fair share, but goin’ with the Judge is better than goin’ with the man. Ain’t nobody happy, but everybody got to get along if they wants to eat. And that’s what that’s all about.”

  He looked over to John. “I told you you wouldn’t understand. Hell, I don’t understand. So ask me a question that’s easy.”

  “Okay, this is easy. How much money do you think we have in our bank?”

  “Ah, well now.” Cal shifted into fourth and the truck rattled and clanked up to its top speed of forty miles an hour. “Some folks say it’s near ’bout one million dollars, but I say it’s more like round two hundred million dollars. They say they is a secret vault where gold is stored by the stacks, left over from Worlds War Two.”

  “Is that really true,
Cal?”

  “I ain’t funnin’ ya.” Cal winked. “It’s down there behind them poison and fertilizer sacks, and if we ever get’m all delivered, we gonna find it one of these years. Yessir, I could use me some of that money.” They both sat quietly for a time, pondering the many uses of millions of dollars. Presently, Cal broke the silence.

  “You see this here highway, the one we on right this minute?” John nodded. “Well, you get on this here road goin’ the way we goin’ right now and you can go all the way to Savannah, Georgia. You get on it goin’ the other way and you can go all the way to California. Someday I’m gonna get on here and just keep goin’, and never come back. I could sure use me some of that money then.”

  “When you go, will you—” But he thought better of it and said, “I bet you don’t know how many zeros in a trillion dollars, Cal.”

  “Let’s see here now. You take your finger and you start writin’ zeros in the dust up there on the dash. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  CHAPTER 27

  SOMETIMES on slow afternoons, the Judge would call John into his office to read the Montgomery Advertiser to him. Soon it became habit for the boy to complete his work and then sit on the bench outside the Judge’s office, hoping to be called. He would pretend to read a magazine as he watched Miss Maroon conduct business at her desk in front of the Judge’s door. She took all of his calls and would grimace every time L.B. came on the line. The boy watched as her eyebrows rose far up into her brown bangs and her eyes searched the ceiling. Miss Maroon would hold the receiver away from her ear, letting out long sighs.

  John had not paid too much attention to who L.B. was until one day at closing time. The boy was in the habit of walking back to the house with the Judge and Tuway before he went home. This afternoon, the three of them were leaving the bank, when a woman, about the Judge’s age, saw them from across the street and raised her hand to get their attention.