“Yes, sir.”
“You want a drink?”
“I’m too little.”
L.B. broke into gales of laughter as he spilled portions of bourbon in the glass and on the tray. “I didn’t mean this. This is a man’s drink. Didn’t start drinkin’ this ’til I was a freshman at Alabama.” He turned to John and put his fingers to his lips. “Well, maybe a little before that, but don’t tell.” He began laughing again.
“I meant a Coke, doofus. You want a Coca-Cola?”
“Yes, sir. That would be nice,” John said. He was watching very carefully now. This was and wasn’t reminiscent of Uncle Luther. He was not sure what would happen next, but he wanted to be ready to run.
L.B. took a hot Coke out of the cabinet directly beneath the bourbon tray, popped the top, and handed it to John as the fizz bubbled over onto his hand.
“Come on over here and sit down.” L.B. stumbled to the sitting area in front of the fireplace and sat down heavy into one of the overstuffed chairs. The drink in his hand spilled out onto his shirtsleeve. He took a white handkerchief out of his coat pocket to dab at the spill. Then he stuffed it back in his pocket and sipped his drink while he studied John. “What’s that you got in your hand?”
John looked down to the picture he still held in his hand, the one he had been looking at when he heard L.B. on the stairs. “Oh, I’m sorry. It goes over . . .” He moved toward the table to replace it, but L.B. gestured for him to bring it to him.
“Let’s see. All these pictures, they got a story behind them, you know. I can tell you a million stories.”
John walked over and gave the picture to L.B., who held it at arm’s length, trying to focus on it.
“Now this is a picture of a party Mama used to give in the spring. People came from all over the Black Belt. See right over there”—he pointed to the side of the group of people standing in the snapshot—“that’s Scottie and Zelda. That’s what Mama used to call’m, Scottie and Zelda. Came down from Montgomery just to come to our parties. That’s how famous they were.” He studied the picture closely. “That’s how famous we were.
“You know where this picture was taken?” John shook his head no. L.B. pointed the picture skyward. “Up there.” He brought the picture down again to look at it. “Looks like a ballroom out of the goddamn Waldorf-Astoria, but it’s right upstairs. Biggest damn ballroom you ever saw. Mama had it built. Most people have bedrooms on the second floor. We got a goddamn ballroom.” He laughed and looked at John. “Is that funny or what?” John tried to smile.
“People used to come in and go up those steps”—he gestured to the hall—“and dance the night away. Hell, you could hear the orchestra all over the house.” He stared out into space, his head moving slightly back and forth, keeping time with some long-ago melody. He turned to look at John. “I was a little kid then, but I saw it all. Hell, I saw it all.”
He looked down at the picture. “She used to dress me up in black velvet.” He pointed to a woman in a long dress. “See this. That’s Mama.” He looked at his mother for a long time, then leaned his head back on the crocheted antimacassar that covered the top of the chair. John thought he might be going to sleep, but L.B. roused himself. “Here, take this back and go get me another picture. I can tell you a million stories.”
John was replacing the picture and about to pick up another, when George appeared at the door carrying a heavy jack handle in one hand. “I think we got us what we need here. Come on, boy. I got the rest outside. I’ll help you carry it down to Cal.”
John set his Coke bottle down and began to walk toward the door.
“Oh, hell no, George,” L.B. whimpered, “I got a million stories to tell him.”
“You just sit right there, Mr. L.B., and finish your drink. I’ll help the boy and be back directly.”
A few days later—it was on a Wednesday; John remembered the day because all the stores had closed at noon—he and Tuway were on the back porch, John reading a Nancy Drew mystery he had found in the room upstairs, Tuway dozing in his rocker. Suddenly, they heard a rustle and Cal came rushing through the wooden gate into the Vances’ backyard. He started talking without any kind of greeting.
“Now I know you said you done stopped, cousin, but this one last time I needs your help.” He was breathing hard, as if he had been running. “I ain’t askin’ for myself. It’s my cousin Darrell. He been kicked outta where he stay. The law’s comin’ after him. He gotta have a way up to Chicago.”
“Your cousin Darrell?” Tuway was half-awake and had forgotten John was there. “I ain’t never heard of your cousin.” He sat in his rocking chair, rubbing his eyes.
“That’s ’cause he stay over in Selma. Don’t visit here much.”
“Selma,” Tuway almost shouted. “Selma. What the hell you bringin’ somebody all the way from Selma? I ain’t runnin’ no travel bureau here. What’s got into you, Cal?”
Cal came closer to the screen and whispered, “He’s in bad trouble, Tuway, and it ain’t his fault. The man after him for somethin’ wasn’t none of his doin’. You got to help him.” He turned toward the gate and said, “Come on out here, Darrell. Let Tuway see you.”
Tuway jumped up out of his chair. “What the—You bringin’ him here? Are you crazy, nigger?” He was through the screen door, pushing Cal out of the backyard. They disappeared around the side of the house.
John sat there for the longest time holding the Nancy Drew book and staring at Tuway’s little leather book, which had fallen on the floor as he ran out.
When he reached down to pick it up, his hand was shaking.
It was divided into two sections. The first one said “bank” on the separation tab. In the back was a smaller section. That tab was marked with an X.
He looked around the yard and into the kitchen. There was not a sound except for some birds playing in the birdbath in the garden. He turned to the X tab. There were lists of names and then dates beside them. He turned through all the pages till he got to the last one with writing on it. There they were, R.C., Willa.
PART TWO
CHAPTER 34
JOHN had known what he wanted to do from the minute he looked into Tuway’s little book, but knowing and doing were different things. All through the fall and into the winter, he kept thinking about it, making plans. Each time Uncle Luther had another “flare-up,” as Aunt Nelda called it, John would vow to leave.
School had started again after cotton picking was over. The weather turned cool, never really cold. John had moved his bed into the feed-sack room behind Little Luther’s bedroom. This had been just fine with him. It was dusty and, on some mornings, cold, but there weren’t as many sacks left by then and he had it all to himself. He had taken Aunt Nelda’s broom and swept the floor clean of spiders and other debris. Webs that were too high for the broom to reach, he left.
At night, he lay awake, watching the ceiling spiders spinning their webs by the light of his kerosene lantern and thinking of how he might escape to Chicago. He would follow Tuway the next time he put somebody on the train to Chicago. Tuway, he would say, you have to send me to Chicago, too, or I’ll tell, or words to that effect. He constantly worked on that part in his mind, altering the words, thinking of new ways to threaten Tuway.
John knew that was what was happening. He hadn’t dreamed it. Tuway was somehow sending people, who had no money to get there, up to Chicago, probably on the train. He would be one of those people just any day now, maybe this next Saturday.
But as each Saturday arrived, he would think of some excuse not to go. The Judge needed him to work in the garden that day or Uncle Luther might whip him again if he caught him trying to leave. He had to make a foolproof plan. The Saturdays came and went.
Uncle Luther sold his cotton and made just enough to pay back the bank and pay rent on the land, with precious little left over. It had not been a good year for cotton. In addition, most of his crop had been planted so late and was so poorly tended that the yield was l
ess than half of what everyone else got. He made great show of telling the supper table that next year they would make twice as much as this year.
Aunt Nelda seemed to know better. At night, she sat at the kitchen table after supper, smoking her Lucky Strikes, looking into the clouds of smoke for answers.
By and by, the merchants of Lower Peach Tree brought out their tensile candy canes that hung on lampposts all up and down the main street. Storefronts were festooned with colored lights. There was a new television set with a big red bow tied around it in McKinna’s Hardware window. Someone in town would get a television for Christmas, probably one of the first in a private home in Lower Peach Tree. The houses along the walk to the post office had wreaths in their windows. Plastic bells and Santa Claus faces decorated front doors. In the late afternoons, the light of living room Christmas trees shone through moisture-laden windows. John squinted as he passed by, trying to see the hazy figures moving around the trees.
He got a Slinky, some books, and new clothes from the Vances for Christmas.
At home, Santa Claus gave each one of them an orange, an apple, and raisins with the seeds still in them in a stocking that had a comic book sticking out of the top.
Aunt Nelda stood at the stove on Christmas morning, watching them take down their stockings. Uncle Luther slept late.
Christmas dinner was chicken with dressing and sweet-potato pie for dessert. Uncle Luther had dinner with the family and then decided to pay a Christmas visit to his neighbor Arlo. This had been fine with everyone else. They had all stayed gathered around the stove after he left. It was a cold rainy day outside and so it seemed especially cozy inside with the lingering smell of chicken hanging in the air and the steady tapping of rain on the tin roof.
Shell had begged him, and John had finally come to the kitchen table to read her Santa Claus comic book out loud. She sat next to him, looking at the pictures as he read. When he finished, Little Luther, who had been sitting at the far end of the table whittling, pushed his comic book over to John and continued whittling without saying anything. John took up the comic book and began to read. As he was about to turn the first page, Little Luther came to stand behind him. “Wait a minute. Let me look at them pictures ’fore you turn.” John waited patiently and then turned the pages slowly while Little Luther stood behind him, whittling and watching.
After he finished Little Luther’s book, John picked up his own comic book. Little Luther sat down on the other side of John for The Adventures of Captain Marvel.
Aunt Nelda listened as she washed dishes. The clock on the mantel, which had been decorated with sprigs of pine and pinecones, ticked off the hours of the afternoon. Outside, the rain gathered in furrows, then twisted and turned its way through the open fields, soaking long-dead cotton plants that no longer had a need.
In the late afternoon, they had gone to the porch and, for want of a dry place to play, had drawn a hopscotch game on the wood floor. They spent the rest of the day playing there. Even Aunt Nelda had come out at one point and taken a turn, hopping up and down the squares and laughing when she missed. After awhile, she went back inside to start supper.
As the light was fading, the children noticed on a far-off hill a silhouette walking toward them through the rain. No one mentioned this, but everyone saw it as they glanced up from their play. What had been an easy game with Little Luther teasing Shell and John every time they missed suddenly became serious and quiet. Rocks were thrown and squares were hopped as intermittently all three glanced out into the rain-soaked fields that faded into lighter and lighter shades of gray before disappearing altogether in the fog.
He had been at Arlo’s for hours and now he appeared out of the mist. His steps were erratic. He left a path in the mud that zigzagged down the sloping landscape. Once, he stumbled and almost fell in a puddle. They had continued their game but kept an eye on his coming. He was at such a distance, it would take some time for him to get to them.
They could pretend courage awhile longer. Little Luther seemed especially determined to finish what he had started. He threw his rock at a faster pace, then pushed them to hurry with their turns.
As he got closer, Uncle Luther began to walk straighter, sobered perhaps by the rain. This was not a good sign. The drunker he was, the less threatening he seemed to be. The danger was when he was halfway between the two worlds.
It was so dark now that the next time they looked up, he was nowhere to be seen. Without a word, the children gathered their comic books, threw their hopscotch rocks out in the yard, and headed toward their separate rooms. Shell had hesitated on the way into her room. She turned to look at John. “Could I come with you?”
He pretended not to hear her and jumped off the porch to go to his room, which had to be entered from the back of the house.
Aunt Nelda had gone inside earlier and turned up the wick on the kerosene lamp. In the dark, light streamed through the open door onto the porch floor.
John sat in his room and heard boots stomping off mud on the porch steps. Uncle Luther was mumbling words that could not be deciphered. John strained to hear every sound. Uncle Luther had thrown his rain-soaked coat off and was standing in the doorway. “Nelda,” they all heard him yell through the thin walls. “What the hell is all this markin’ on the floor? You think we live in a pigsty?”
She must have come to the door to see what he was talking about and misjudged his condition, because she talked back to him. “Luther, that ain’t nothin’ but some game the kids was playin’.” The screen door slammed as she walked back inside.
“Don’t you turn your back on me, woman, when I’m talkin’.” They heard the door jerk open. There followed shouts from each of them and then the low, unmistakable thudding sound of his fist hitting soft skin. Then there was silence.
John lay down on his bed, trying to put the sound out of his mind, trying to remember the one Christmas gift he had given. No one knew about it but Shell. He had taken one of the fertilizer sacks still in his room, one with the cutout colored baby doll on the outside, and had furtively poured the fertilizer out when no one was watching. He knew this would make Uncle Luther furious, because he planned to use this fertilizer next year on a new cotton crop. It was extra the bank thought he had already used.
It had taken several weeks. John had dipped a small amount out of the sack each day and put it in his pocket. On his way to school, he had emptied it out. At last, he had a sack ready to be cut out and assembled into a colored baby doll. Mrs. Vance had given him a needle and thread. He had told her he needed it to mend some things at home.
John had given the baby doll to Shell on Christmas Eve and told her never to let Uncle Luther see it. She was so pleased, she cried, and he felt terrible, because his motive had not been to make her happy but to get back at Uncle Luther.
Someday, after John was gone, Uncle Luther would find out about it. John loved thinking of the moment when Uncle Luther would come to realize that Shell had had the colored baby all along. Before, when he was sewing up the doll, he would chuckle when he imagined Uncle Luther’s face. Now, as he lay there remembering the tears in Shell’s eyes when she took the doll, he felt like crying himself.
CHAPTER 35
JANUARY had been too cold to go to Chicago. He didn’t have a warm coat. February was the same. The days drifted into spring. He woke up one morning and the weather was turning hot. Soon they would be out for summer vacation again. Then he would decide what to do.
It was another Saturday dinner at the Vance house, but a special one. Candles were lit in silver candelabra placed in the middle of the table. Mrs. Vance had set it with a white linen tablecloth, napkins, the good china, and crystal glasses that usually stayed in the china cabinet in the corner of the dining room. There was a silence about the room when they came in to sit down. He felt strange, as if it were in the wrong house. They sat down, and after the blessing, Mrs. Vance went to get the roast.
“Why are we so . . . so serious at this meal?” he
almost whispered to the Judge.
The Judge was taking down his napkin and feeling around for his silverware. “Ah, I see we have the good silver out, and I suspect the silver candelabra are on the table. Am I right?” It did not escape John’s notice that a few months earlier, the Judge would have been able to see the light from the candles.
“Yes, sir, two in the middle of the table.”
“This is the birthday of our child, who died several years ago. Adell—Mrs. Vance—always marks the occasion with a special dinner.” The Judge sighed. “You know women.”
“Nobody told me you had a baby. Was it a boy?”
“No, a little girl. She only lived three and a half weeks. She was born with a heart condition. Not time enough to know her really, but Adell had already decorated a room and planned her whole future by the time she was born. Now she remembers Mary Beth—that was her name, Mary Beth. She likes to remember her just as if her life had played out as she planned it.”
Mrs. Vance came in with a pork roast sitting on a big silver platter surrounded by potatoes and carrots. Then she went back in the kitchen for gravy and hot biscuits and a relish tray. When she came back, she poured a glass of wine for herself and one for the Judge.
“John,” she said, taking her napkin down, “this would have been the twenty-fifth birthday of our little girl, Mary Beth. The Judge and I always remember her once a year with a special little dinner. We’re glad you could join us.” She raised her glass. The Judge did the same, seeming to know what she was doing.
“Mary Beth would have graduated from the university over in Tuscaloosa by now, and with honors, I’m sure.” She took a drink of her wine.
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