Out of the Night That Covers Me

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  “Lord, if that ain’t the truth.” Claude’s rough fingers reached over and touched the face of his baby girl, who was sleeping in her mother’s arms.

  For dessert, there were strawberries out of Lucile’s garden.

  After dinner, he and Willie would lie under the shade of a front yard tree, resting before going back to the fields.

  John’s head was cradled in his outstretched hands. He had taken off his shoes, which were rapidly getting too small, to cool his feet in the grass. They would look up at the passing clouds and tell what they saw. John always saw things he had read about in books, knights and cowboys and Indians. Willie always saw things his mother had told him about, things from Chicago, tall buildings, and “peoples, armies of peoples marchin’ along.”

  “So what are you gonna do when you get to Chicago?” John asked.

  “We gonna have a ’partment. Mama gonna get a job in one of them big hotels cleanin’ rooms. On Friday night, we gonna go on out dancin’, just me and Mama. We ain’t gonna have no mens round.” He would take a stick and draw in the dirt exactly how their apartment would look. “We ain’t gonna have no room together. I’m gonna have a room and she gonna have a room and we gonna have a separate room for livin’ and eatin’ in.”

  John turned on his side, propped his head in his hand, and studied Willie’s drawing in the dirt, afraid to ask if he might come along.

  They worked at Claude’s farm every day for two weeks and then every afternoon went home to chop wood and bring fresh drinking water to the front porch bucket and cooking water to the kettle. They would haul buckets of water from the pump in the backyard around to the side yard to fill the kettle for the night’s cooking. John was barely passable at this chore, sloshing water on his shoes and pants legs, the weight of the bucket keeping him off balance from the pump to the kettle. By the time he was ready to pour out his water, about half of it remained.

  Willie seemed to know just the right amount to put in his bucket in the first place. He would lift it with two hands and in one quick barefooted motion glide across the yard, arms swinging back just as he was about to reach the kettle. One hand would leave the handle and lift the bottom of the bucket at the precise moment he reached the kettle. Making an arc with his walking, he would hurriedly start back toward the pump, knowing he wasn’t finished until water reached to the midpoint of the kettle. Sometimes he would pass John in their trips back and forth. The boy felt embarrassed to be the older and yet the less skilled, but the more he tried to hurry, the more water he spilled out of his bucket. He had settled for a slower pace and wetter shoes.

  Days after they had finished working for Claude, Mama Tuway had rewarded them by letting them go frog gigging again. He and Willie had gone to search the shed for sacks and gigging sticks. “You see these old sacks?” John shook out one of the old fertilizer sacks they used to put their frogs in. “If you wash them up real good, there’s a doll pattern on the outside you can put together.” He held it up for Willie to see. “You wanta do that?”

  “I don’t want no doll. That’s girl’s stuff. Why would I want that?”

  “For your mama. I thought we could make it and give it to your mama. I’ve seen it done before. You know she’s always talking about baby dolls when she . . . well, when she’s in her sleep. We could make it for her to put on her bed, like a throw pillow.”

  “A what?” Willie had not shown much interest. He was still searching for the gigging stick. When he finally found it, he pushed the toolshed door closed.

  “It might make her sleep better, you know. She’s been, uh, talking every night now.”

  Willie came over to examine the dirty sack. “You think?”

  “Maybe.”

  Willie took the sack and held it to the light, trying to make out the faded drawing of the little brown baby doll, one hand in her mouth, the other holding her bonnet. “I was wonderin’,” Willie said, his eyes still on the sack. “What come of your mama?”

  John stared at him and then turned quickly to look at the sack. No one had ever asked him that before, not outright. Everyone had always known. He had never had to say it before, out loud. He could feel his throat closing up and his eyes beginning to water, as in times past when he had thought of her. There was such a long silence, Willie finally turned to look up at him.

  John cleared his throat. “She’s dead.” A feeling of release washed over him. He had said it and it had sounded clear, without any sign of his voice cracking. “She died a long time ago,” he repeated almost to himself. His whole body seemed somehow to relax. “Yes, she died a long time ago,” he said.

  Willie began to fold the sack and stuff it in the back waist of his pants. “I been thinkin’.” He didn’t look at John. He was looking out at the tops of the trees. “You ain’t goin’ on off to Chicago before me?”

  John looked at the big trusting eyes and the missing front tooth, which showed when he smiled. He had never really thought about it before, but Willie was a kid, like he used to be. He put his arm on Willie’s shoulder as they turned to walk to the boat. “I been thinkin’ we’d go on off to Chicago together.”

  Willie reached his hand up to John’s back. “That’s what I been thinkin’. You and me together, we could take care of Mama.”

  CHAPTER 48

  THE Fourth Day was approaching, to mark the midpoint of summer. Most of the farmers had their cotton crops laid by and work would slack off until cotton picking commenced. The Fourth Day was a time everyone in the Bend and in the surrounding counties celebrated.

  When he thought about it, John was astounded at how much time had passed since he had come to south Alabama. This Fourth of July would mark over a year that he had been in the Black Belt. He could barely remember the train ride from Bainbridge with Aunt Nelda, the sunburn that turned his skin raw, the bare feet that were so tender, he could hardly walk through the cotton fields with Shell. Now he ran without shoes half the time. He had outgrown the ones he came to the swamp in. His skin was so dark, even the fly medicine didn’t mark him with that much notice anymore. Every day, he was up early, carrying water, hoeing in the garden, sawing wood for the woodpile, working so hard that by the time night came, he ate enormous amounts of food and then fell dead asleep. And—he had to pause when he thought of this—he was getting better at his chores and—this amazed him most of all—he liked it. The thought crossed his mind one day on the way to get a bushel of corn in the garden: What would he be doing now if he could somehow go back to Bainbridge and live with his mother in their house again? That had been the one thing he had once longed for with all his heart when he was sitting on the train leaving Bainbridge—to have all his toys again, to be safe in the basement where he spent most of his summers, to be the most important person in his mother’s life.

  The thought somehow made his heart race just the way it had that night on the cattle car when Tuway had held him out the door of the speeding train, ready to drop him into a black void. Now his old life seemed just that, old, and far away in time.

  He thought of another place when he crawled in his bed at night and stared out at the stars for the few minutes before sleep came. He thought of the smell of his pipe, of sitting on the sunporch and reading the Sunday paper, of their family dinners together. But now he thought of it not as something owed to him, something he deserved, as he had with his mother, but as a memory, something he longed for but something he could live without seeing or doing ever again if he had to.

  Later that day, he and Willie were cutting wood out near the edge of the yard, where the swamp began. They had set up a sawhorse next to a tree Tuway had felled for them when he was home last. After they stripped the small branches off the old hickory and cut a length of branch long enough to lift on the sawhorse, they would cut it into small pieces. Then they carried this green wood over to the woodpile behind the house. This stack of fresh-cut wood was separate from the wood that had been cut and aged since last winter. After they had made a stack several feet hi
gh, he and Willie sat down to rest on the old stack of wood. He remembered turning to say something to Willie and seeing Willie’s face frozen in fear.

  John had seen many snakes in the swamp, at a distance, but this one was not six inches from Willie’s head. They had taken a seat almost on top of a three-foot-long cottonmouth moccasin napping in the shade. It had been beautifully camouflaged in among the aging kindling, and when disturbed, it immediately coiled, ready to strike. They both sat frozen for a moment. John’s right hand was resting on a short piece of wood, which his fingers now grasped. He decided, without thinking it through, that the best thing to do was to push Willie down off the woodpile with his left hand and kill the snake with the piece of wood in his right hand. He had seen Mama Tuway kill one once with a garden hoe and it had looked easy.

  He pushed Willie forward off the pile and brought the wood around much too slowly. The snake had all the time in his world to sink his fangs into John’s left arm, which was coming back from pushing Willie. The open white mouth, as if a released spring, darted upward, fixing itself to the underside of John’s arm. He stood up, amazed that the huge snake still clung to him. He could hear Willie shouting and running to the house. John grabbed the snake with his other hand and tried to pull it off. This only drove the fangs deeper into the fleshy underside of his upper arm. They stood there, snake and boy, wrestling with each other as Willie ran toward him with a hoe.

  That was all he really remembered. There was much confusion around him after that, and he began to feel dizzy and sick. He remembered looking at his arm where the snake fangs had entered, after Willie had flung it off him with the hoe and chopped its head off. He remembered seeing his arm begin to swell and feeling it burn, as if someone was holding a match to the skin. He remembered Ella and Mama Tuway leading him to the house. It was the first time he had been inside one of its rooms. They put him on top of a bright quilt that covered what he thought must be Mama Tuway’s bed. He remembered looking around and seeing one wall lined with shelves that contained all manner of jars and bottles. Mama Tuway was taking a small glass vial off one of the shelves and, at the same time, Ella was tying a piece of cloth around his upper arm. “Just give me time to mix up some iodine with this here. That’s the best I know of for moccasin.” They wrapped another cloth, which felt cool and wet around his wound, then gave him something to drink that tasted sweet and made him sick to his stomach. After that, he seemed to drift away into blackness.

  Intermittently, for what must have been days, he woke and could hear people moving about him. Once he thought he saw Tuway come to his bed and sit beside him, the big black-and-white hand reaching up to touch his forehead. “You better make it, boy. The Judge gonna need you when I go off to Chicago.” He knew the snake poison was confusing everything in his brain. He, John, was going to Chicago, not Tuway.

  Another time, he thought he remembered Willie saying he would save the snake’s skin for him, and once he thought he could hear Berl laughing out on the porch. He remembered feeling a terrible throbbing in his arm whenever he woke.

  Mostly, he dreamed wild dreams. Uncle Luther, Shell, the Judge—all floated in and out of nonsensical stories about picking cotton and swimming in a river of snakes. Once, he was on the train with Tuway, and this time Tuway dropped him from the boxcar out into an endless black night. He must have yelled out, because he thought he remembered Ella coming to his bedside and holding his hand and kissing his cheek. He knew it must be an Ella he had dreamed up, one he had never seen before and would never see again.

  When he finally woke long enough to see and hear what was going on in the real world, he was tired and sore and hungry. Mama Tuway would let him eat only small amounts of food. He looked down at his arm, swollen to twice its size and turning purple and black around the skin the fangs had held to.

  While he lay there on Mama Tuway’s quilt, Willie was outside, telling the story of how they had killed the snake. He had told everyone of how John had wrestled the snake while he, Willie, had gone to get the hoe and chopped its head off. Willie had sat on the porch that first night and told everybody the story as they came in from working. The more Willie talked, the better it got.

  “John just take that snake and he wrestle him to the ground, all the time fightin’ with him.” When the listener seemed at all skeptical, Willie would refer them to Mama Tuway, who could truthfully say, “When I got to the side yard, John had holt of that snake with both hands ’fore Willie flung it off him with the hoe.”

  “And then, I”—Willie smiled—“I kilt it.”

  Gradually, John seemed to get better in the rest of his body, but the place on his upper arm where the fangs had dug into the skin was still hot with infection and draining pus and blood. He didn’t like looking at it and turned away when Mama Tuway changed the bandage.

  The first night he was allowed to join the others, on the porch swing in the evening after supper, Willie pointed with pride to the snakeskin he had tacked to the wall to dry. Mama Tuway had put John’s bad arm in a sling, but he walked over and touched the skin with his right hand and felt weak in the knees, remembering.

  He had not seen the significance of any of this until his first night back around the supper fire. John was usually the last one to be served, and he waited for Mama Tuway to tell him and Willie to come get their plates, but this night she called them to be first. “Come on over here, snake men. You get first tonight.” All the talking stopped as they walked across the yard to get their plates. She had stacked them high with everything they liked. The boys walked back to their table, John holding his plate with his good arm. No one moved toward the dinner line until they had taken their seats.

  John lowered his head, pretending to concentrate on his food but knowing the tightness in his throat had taken away his appetite. He glanced over to a smiling Willie and tried to smile back, but he knew he couldn’t control the muscles in his face. They might have him crying, when all the while he felt absolute joy.

  Aunt Nelda had come to Little Luther’s room before sunup. The kerosene lamp she carried filled the center of the room with light. The corners stayed in dark shadows. She put the lantern on top of the chest near the wall and came to sit down at the foot of Little Luther’s bed. “Wake up, Little Luther.” She rested her elbow on the end of the old iron bed frame and cradled her head in her hand. She didn’t bother to look at him. She was too tired. “He didn’t come home again last night. That’s three days we ain’t seen hide nor hair of him.”

  “I know, Ma.” He rolled over, still half-asleep, and pulled the cover over his head to block the light. “What’s you wakin’ me up to tell me that? I coulda got more sleep.”

  “This is the third time this summer he done this.”

  “I know, Ma.”

  “I know where he’s at.”

  “Me, too—Arlo’s, or him and Arlo done gone off on some toot over at Demopolis.”

  Her head still rested in her hand, but she turned it to look at him. “Demopolis? How do you know that?”

  He pulled the cover off his head and lay there with his eyes closed. “Lou Ann, Arlo’s girl. She says soon as her daddy and my daddy get any money, they go over there and drink it all up in store-bought.”

  “Money? He don’t have two cents since he stopped gettin’ money from the Judge, since John left. Where’s he gettin’ any money?”

  “Lou Ann says he had some left over from a long time ago when he done sold John’s mama’s stuff. Says Arlo keeps it for him.” Little Luther kept his eyes shut as he spoke. “Says he had to use most of it to pay back Arlo for all the drinkin’ he done over the years, but he had some little left.”

  She was too tired to be incensed. “I want you to go right over there and get that money back,” she said in a monotone.

  He didn’t say anything. She thought he had gone back to sleep.

  “Did you hear me?” She took her free hand and shook one of Little Luther’s legs. “Did you hear me?”

  “Ma, y
ou know I can’t do that. He’d beat the livin’ shit out of me, and then you wouldn’t have nobody to work in the fields with you.” He rolled over and went back to sleep.

  She lay back on the foot of Little Luther’s bed to get a few more minutes of sleep before the day began. “I guess,” she said.

  CHAPTER 49

  BY the time John was up and about, the preparations for the Fourth Day were under way and Berl was in charge. He had seemed to take to life in the swamp and at the Bend, entering into everything that went on, getting to know and be known by everyone. Absent the burden of his farm, Berl found that the Bend took on all those things he had been going to Chicago to find. When he had first come, he had asked every few days when the train to Chicago was coming. Lately, he had not.

  Berl had even volunteered to dig the pit for the Fourth Day barbecue. He and the Reverend and Claude Ingram, the farmer, had gathered on Thursday—the Fourth Day being the next Saturday—to commence with the digging. The Fourth Day celebration was to be at the church because everyone would attend. The whole Bend was celebrating the end of the long hours of labor it took to get a cotton crop up and growing in the fields.

  Large mounds of dirt soon circled the pit, which needed to be redug every year to accommodate cooking the barbecue. Several men stood around watching Berl, Claude, and the Reverend taking turns with the two shovels the space would allow. When it was finished, Berl and a few others stayed to sit on the mounds of dirt, admiring their handiwork and passing around a jar of homemade.

  Friday, fresh-cut logs of hickory were put in the pit and lighted to begin the burn down to coals that would be perfect for cooking the pig one of the farmers at the Bend had given up to the celebration.

  John was not allowed to go to the Bend to see these preparations. He was still too weak from the snakebite. Willie, who was given permission to follow Berl, would come back and tell John what was going on.