Now, in the dark, that same space was transformed. An evening breeze, still full of humidity, sent embers rising in the night sky each time the big logs of oak and hickory settled from their burning. The fire lighted faces working around its circle and the backs of other people seated at tables scattered about the yard. Some huddled in telling a story that ended with laughter and slaps on the wood tabletops. Others shucked large piles of corn, stacking the cleaned ears in a pyramid at the table’s center. The whine of a harmonica laced itself between guitar chords that were preparing for better things.
In his ignorance, John walked faster, thinking he could somehow join in. When he reached the light, all talking stopped. He felt his face reflecting out like a full moon in a clear night sky. He wondered what he was doing here. Why had he been so stupid as to get on the train in the first place? At least when he was in Lower Peach Tree, he had his own bed, even though it was the feed-sack room. At least there, most of the people he knew were his same color.
Mama Tuway was over by a big black kettle of hot grease that smelled of frying fish. She glanced up at him. “If you ain’t the dot on a domino, boy.” She turned to Willie and pointed to the house with her big spoon. “I told you to keep fly medicine on him. Go on in yonder and get some.” She turned the spoon on John. “And I don’t want to see you standin’ out like no light no more, and I ain’t gonna tell you again.”
He ran toward the house, following Willie.
“Isn’t this supposed to be a secret place?” John began to count what he thought might be fifteen or twenty people. “Did I come all the way here and this isn’t even a secret place?”
“The ones that ain’t with us is from the Bend. We join in together in the summer lots of times.”
“All these people aren’t going to Chicago, are they? I’ll be the last one they let go.”
“Course not, most all these peoples born here. They granddaddies walked all the way in here from far away when they was slaves. They ain’t ’bout to up and leave.”
“But the ones that live where we live?”
“Some of them go on up to Chicago when they can get a ride or Tuway put’m on the train. Some stay up there long enough to get a job; then they turn right round and come on back down here, stay awhile, then go on back. Mostly, though, the ones that stay here, they older people, don’t want to go on off to no big city.”
That night, they had fried fish of every sort: catfish, bass, sunfish, anything the river had offered up during the day. The small fish were fried whole. The catfish were nailed to a tree and pliers were used to strip off the skin. After that, they were gutted in one easy motion and handed over to one of the women at a table by the fire. She would roll the fish in cornmeal and drop it in the big vat of bubbling grease.
When all the fish were fried and laid out on paper sacks to drain, handfuls of cornmeal mixed with egg and onion were thrown into the grease, giving rise to a mound of hush puppies draining next to the fish. John, afraid to ask if he could help, took an uneasy seat on the edge of one of the tables and watched Willie shuck fresh corn that still smelled of the fields. No one asked him to help. No one talked to him.
The corn was thrown into another large pot of boiling water, held over the fire by a three-legged iron stand. Fresh-washed tomatoes were set in a wooden crate to be taken up, salted, and eaten like apples.
The boy lurked in the shadows, hoping to get something to eat, wondering if they even knew he was there. He hurried to her when Mama Tuway finally told him to come get a plate, after everyone else had been served. By then, the food was cold, but he didn’t care. He had three catfish, six hush puppies, and two pieces of corn. While he ate, if he looked up at all, he watched Willie’s mother. She stood by Mama Tuway in almost everything she did, coating fish or helping make up the round balls of cornmeal that would become hush puppies. Her long, graceful arms and legs operated in an awkward, clumsy way, as if she were ashamed of them. Her body relaxed only when dealing with Mama Tuway. She called her this—“Mama Tuway”—in a timid, shy voice. The two of them would laugh over some trivia, Ella receiving a pat on the shoulder for a small job well done. All others got only distant stares from Ella’s cold, dark eyes. John did not recognize any shortcomings. He saw only a beautiful face in those rare moments when it wasn’t clouded with uncertainty or hardened to fend off someone thinking, however innocently, to enter her world.
The smell of frying fish lingered in the heavy air and created, among all those in its circle, a sense of satisfaction—from morning getting to evening consuming—some small circle completed.
John sat outside the circle of firelight on the roots of one of the big oaks, his back leaning against its trunk, wondering what Shell and Little Luther might be doing.
The fire logs fell in on themselves a final time, sending another spray of embers into the night. The guitar chords settled into a pattern and the harmonica whined out past the perimeter of light up into the trees, in hearing of a blinking screech owl. Turkey vultures gathered in the top branches of a long-dead oak tree, waiting for first light. Finally, the guitar and mouth organ came together in aching harmony.
CHAPTER 43
JOHN slept that night in the top bunk bed. He and Willie had walked back to their house alone through the swamp. Willie had carried a lantern, which made a small circle of light around them as they made their way down the trail. Ella stayed to help clean up.
Willie placed the lantern on the table. “They used to be three mens livin’ here ’fore we come. That’s how come we got room for you. Get on up while I turn out the light.”
John climbed up to his moss mattress and lay there watching the moon through the cracks in the wall as it passed in and out of thinning clouds. His eyes would not stay open.
It must have been past midnight when he heard the scream. At first, he thought it was a sound out of the swamp. A nighthawk carrying away some baby something. The second scream was so loud and painful that he sat straight up in his bed and hit his head on one of the roof rafters. “Willie,” he whispered. “What is it?” He leaned over to look down at the dark form in Willie’s bunk. Willie had not moved. She screamed again, this time calling out something—he couldn’t tell what—tossing in her bed. He could see a dark outline jerking and turning on the bottom bunk. Slowly, Willie turned over and let his arm hang down toward her. “It’s all right, Mama. It’s just a dream,” he mumbled in his pillow. She jerked and seemed to wake up, breathing as if she had been running. “Willie, you there, Willie?” He wiggled his fingers, waiting for her touch.
They both fell back asleep, holding on.
CHAPTER 44
THE next morning, Willie woke John with a whisper and motioned him to come outside without waking his mother. They walked up the trail to join the other people who were sitting on Mama Tuway’s porch, talking and drinking coffee. Berl was there and the Tagways, who lived on the path across from Willie’s house, and Laura, a young girl who stayed with the Tagways. Two other men, who lived in the house where Berl stayed, were sitting on the porch steps, talking to Berl.
Mama Tuway came out of the house, letting the screen door slam back against its frame. She wiped her hands on the clean feed-sack apron around her waist, looking out at the sun rising over the pines. There was a breeze brought in by yesterday’s rain. The morning was as crisp and clear as it ever got in the swamp—which was to say that it was hotter than it was humid—for the moment. Water left from the night before glistened on leaves and grass. The muddy path leading up to the cabin smelled of pine needles and Black Belt earth. “If we could keep the whole day like the mornin’, wouldn’t that be fine?” she said.
The others nodded but said nothing, except for Mrs. Tagway, who was seated in the wood swing. “Sho would.” The wood-slat rocking chair sat waiting for Mama Tuway, its frame divided in half by sunlight that cut down into the shadows of the porch. Laura handed her a cup of coffee she had been holding. Mama Tuway took a sip and rocked.
“Now
, let’s us see here,” she said. “What do the day hold?” She took another sip. “Leroy”—she looked at one of the men on the steps—“I want you to—” She began to name each person and tell him or her what to do. Some were to go fishing; others to work the garden; still others should do the wash.
The boys sat on the edge of the porch, their feet hanging off, swinging them back and forth and listening to her. She had not looked at John. He had taken care to cover his face and arms with mosquito medicine from the can in Willie’s house.
“Mind when you in the garden,” she instructed. “Ain’t no reason for nobody to use that old road, but mind anyway.”
“Where’s your mamma?” Mama Tuway asked after the others had gone off to their various chores. “She suppose to help me get breakfast.”
Willie watched his swinging feet. “You told me to leave her be if she start screamin’ out in the night again.”
Mama Tuway took another sip of coffee and rocked a bit more. “Bad?”
“Wasn’t t’all bad this time. I think she gettin’ shed of it—them bad dreams and all.” He looked up to watch her face. “Don’t you think she gettin’ shed of it?”
The old woman didn’t say anything. She studied the other people going about their business. “Take that brown handle hoe, Laura. Got a sharper blade.” She sat there rocking in and out of the sunlight. Then she half-stood and scooted the rocker back into the shade. “Go on inside, boys, and get yourself some breakfast, then come on back out here. I got a job for you.”
They got a plate of leftover hush puppies and fresh-washed tomatoes to eat back out on the edge of the porch in the sunlight as the first machine-gun sounds of the cicadas rose out of the trees. After finishing the last bites of their hush puppies, each boy took a long drink out of the tin ladle that was hooked on a nail next to the bucket of fresh well water on the porch table.
“Here’s what I want you to do.” Mama Tuway had lifted a sewing basket to her lap. “Y’all go on down through the swamp to the tracks and get a message off the ten o’clock train. You know how, Willie. And remember, Willie, you look hard. I’m sending white boy along with you ’cause four eyes better than two, but don’t you go lettin’ him out from underneath the tree cover. You, either. Stay hid. You know that, don’t you?” Willie said he did. He was thrilled to be entrusted with the job, fidgeting to go the whole time she was talking to him.
“This is the way I’m gonna go when we start out to Chicago. Every time I go, I practice,” he said as he led the way. The trail ended on the swamp road where the vegetable garden grew. John and Willie waved to a woman tying up pole beans. They found the boat that Tuway had used the night they came to the swamp and the boys poled along among the trees and water, until they came to the right tree and tied up the boat. “This is the best part. I know it by heart.” He got out of the boat and began to walk on the water just like Tuway had the night John came—stepping just so, with no mistakes. “I done practiced lots,” he called back to John as he stood suspended, hands out, showing off, John thought. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
He taught John how to find the marks on the trees that told where the planks were attached underwater, how to slide his foot along just right when he took a step, how to grab the tree trunk, then change directions. John began to catch on, but not until he had fallen in the murky water several times, always scrambling out immediately, fearing the sting of a snakebite on one of his ankles.
Suddenly, in their hearing, the train whistle was blowing an approach to the bridge trestle. Willie turned in panic to get to the edge of the swamp before the train passed. John followed, but he missed steps and had to get back up on the boards to begin again.
The big engines roared past as they watched from their place under the trees. They stared intently.
“What are we looking for?” John shouted, “I don’t know what to look for.”
Willie was looking down, trying to find an end to the train. “Seein’ if the caboose light is on the end of the train,” he shouted back.
When the final cars lumbered by, there it was, swinging from its hook on the back of the caboose. They watched it disappear down the tracks.
“Why do we care about that?”
“I don’t know, just long as I see it and make sure it’s there. We did see it, didn’t we? Didn’t we?”
“I saw it. If somebody wants to send a message, why don’t they use the phone?”
“What you think? We got a phone? Ain’t no phones in the Bend.”
The boys walked the water back to the boat and headed for home. When they told Mama Tuway about the caboose light, she smiled. “It means they ain’t gonna come lookin’ for you—just yet.
“You run on along now,” Mama Tuway said. “Get me some good eatin’ frogs for supper.”
Willie hesitated. “Are you gonna—”
“Yes, yes, I’m gonna see to her.”
He smiled. “Then can I use the flashlight?”
“Yes, but mind you save the batteries.” She went into the house and came back out with a metal flashlight, which she handed to Willie. He gave her a big grin and put it in his pants waist. Then he stood there watching her. She had picked up her sewing basket again, but put it back down. “I’m goin’,” she said and grabbed the handrail, negotiating the steps and starting down the path to Willie’s house.
Willie went back inside and filled a paper sack with their lunch, more hush puppies, leftover fish, and cold corn on the cob. The boys walked around the house to a shed built out against the rear wall. Willie pulled open the door that had fallen off its top hinge, and got out a long reed pole with what looked like a metal fork attached to the end. He handed it to John and then fished around until he found two empty fertilizer sacks, slapping them in the air to get rid of the dust. They were like the one John had stolen from Uncle Luther to make Shell the colored baby doll. He wondered if Uncle Luther was making Shell do extra work to make up for him being gone.
John stood there as Willie shut the door and fastened the metal latch with a wood peg whittled for that purpose.
“What is it your mama is getting shed of?”
Willie looked at him and shrugged his shoulders without answering.
“Tell me again what the note said.” Judge Vance and his wife were sitting in the garden, having their morning coffee.
“Honey, I’ve read it to you three times already.” For the fourth time, Adell Vance picked up the piece of paper that she had found on John’s bed Sunday morning. “It says that he had to do some work at home for his uncle Luther.” She flipped the paper over to make sure, for the fourth time, that she hadn’t missed anything. “That’s all it says.”
“Yes, but it’s two days, and we still haven’t heard from him. He should be here by now. He’s usually sitting on the back steps when we get up in the morning.”
“Byron, you are such a caution. You complain that he’s too much responsibility when he’s here, and when he misses one measly day, you act like he was whisked away by Martians.
“Maybe his uncle had more things for him to do. You know some people are still planting. Have you thought of that?”
“Are you sure that’s his handwriting?”
Adell laughed. “Byron Vance. You do beat all. Of course it’s his handwriting, unless some other nine-year-old slipped into the house and wrote it for him.”
“Just the same, Adell. I’m going to get Tuway to go out to the Spraigs’ when he comes.”
CHAPTER 45
THEY spent the rest of the day poling in the creek, passing back and forth between the high ground of the Bend and the swamp. Willie agreed to let John do all the poling this time. The boat glided alongside reeds that grew out to narrow the creek path. Silent as a snake, they made their way through water cypress and overhanging moss. Sometimes in the creek, they would come upon a farmer tending his fields on the Bend side and wave to him. When the sun was straight overhead, Willie took them to a place on the Bend side where a spring bub
bled up out of the rocks. They drank from it as they ate their sack lunch.
In the late afternoon, Willie directed John to the place with the best frogs. The pole breaking the water surface was their only intrusion into the life of the swamp as they entered the mouth of a small pond off to the side of the creek.
At first, they didn’t use the flashlight. It was still light as the frogs began to come out and call to one another across the pond. Willie was an expert, standing in the bow of the boat, spotting them on the edge of the bank, letting the pole whip out in one easy motion, gigging the frog before it could move. His arm, the spear, his body—all worked as one, with the spear hitting its target every time. There was no thought of missing, only of how many he would get.
As he sat in the boat and watched, John thought Willie gigged frogs like he—so long ago in his mother’s house—had practiced the art of afternoon tea, holding his teacup just so, never making a noise or rattling the china.
At first, John was not any good at gigging. He didn’t spot them in time. He was not quick enough when he did. Then when he did get one, he got sick to his stomach, seeing the frog wiggle on the pole, watching its juices begin to spill out. After many tries, he got better—not good, but better—holding the spear at the proper angle, as Willie had taught him, waiting till the boat glided to a place almost on top of the frog. As the sun went down, they began to use the flashlight. Willie would spot them with the light and John would gig them. After awhile, it became a game, killing the little things, and he got to be good at it. Not as good as Willie, but he thought he would never be as good as Willie.
Willie let him do most of the killing for the rest of the time. They filled two feed sacks full of frogs. Then Willie used the flashlight to guide their way back through the swamp as night things watched from low-hanging branches.
Out of the Night That Covers Me Page 24