Out of the Night That Covers Me

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  Tuway was trying to conjure up a mental image of L.B. sitting in the Judge’s chair at the bank. The picture would not come. “I know we always was funnin’ ’bout him tryin’ to take over, but . . . He don’t know nothin’ ’bout bankin’. He’s just a boy.” Tuway reconsidered this, knowing that he and L.B. were almost the same age. “Well, he seem like just a boy.”

  “Whether he does or he doesn’t know banking makes no difference now. He has the majority of the stock and he’s runnin’ the show.” The Judge sat back in his chair, his shoulders slumping. “It’s not so much L.B. I always knew he was a little sycophant, trying to work his adolescent schemes. You know, he’s like so many other Black Belt boys with too much land and too much time—ruined from the get-go.” He retrieved his coffee cup back off the tray, took an absentminded drink, and winced. “The others are the ones. Why in the world can’t they see through that bullshit?” He put the cup back on the tray. “ ’Cause it’s easier for them not to. That’s why. People just take the goddamn easy way out, Tuway. People come to a meeting; they swallow hard, vote for something they know isn’t right, but it’s too much trouble to take exception. . . . Besides, they got dinner plans for the evening and they’re thinking to themselves, How much harm can the kid do? Running a bank isn’t rocket science.”

  Tuway was not listening. His mind was whirling. What would he do? Where would he go? Obadiah might be able to get him a job on the train. Obadiah had helped him with the trains all these years, telling him what cars were empty and when. Maybe now . . . He was looking at the Judge, but his mind was racing. A train job would take him away from her. . . . That wouldn’t do. Would he stay on with the Judge? The Judge might not be able to afford him. . . . He felt a cold chill in the back of his head as it occurred to him for the first time . . . the swamp, the people at the Bend.

  Tuway focused back on the Judge, who seemed not to know what to do with his hands. First he would sip coffee; then he would put the cup back on the tray and rub his hands together. “It was not naïveté,” he was saying. “It made good economic sense. If only they didn’t have such blinders on.”

  “What?” Tuway said.

  “You might as well know the whole story, since you weren’t at your usual listening post. Rather ironic, the biggest meeting, and you weren’t there to hear it.” He picked up his cup again.

  “About ten this morning, Miss Maroon said that L.B. had called and wanted to have a meeting of the board. I told her to tell him it was impossible—too much going on—but he insisted. . . . Anyway, at three this afternoon, he marches in, backed up by Debo, and the rest.

  “The bank’s last several loans had gone bad, he said, and now the whites and the coloreds both weren’t supporting me. And although they regretted it—the nerve of him sitting there and saying that—he, they, the board, would give me two months pay and . . . The upshot of it is, he got the rest of them to go along with him. They just sat there, not one word of support.

  “‘How do you expect to run this place now?’ I said. I turned to Debo. ‘You don’t expect L.B. to deal with the coloreds, do you, Debo?’ I outright asked him. Debo just sat there like he hadn’t known me for years.

  “‘Well now, Byron, you have been a little naïve in your bankin’ practices.’ I looked at Red. ‘Me naïve?’

  “Red said, ‘Now Byron, it don’t mean things can’t go on like they always have. We’ll still meet every Saturday at the gin and shoot the bull. You know that. It’ll be like you retired. Hell, man, I wish I could retire.’

  “That’s what he said, Tuway, right to my face. Like the highlight of my life was meeting at that broken-down old gin every Saturday.

  “More coffee, Tuway.” He held out his cup, then pulled it back. “Oh, to hell with them. Let’m run the thing into the ground. What do I care?”

  Tuway tried to sound casual. “What about all them people got loans out?”

  The Judge said, “What about the rest of the people at the bank? What about the businesses in this town that are in enough trouble already? Hell, I don’t know.

  “Tuway, why don’t you get us something out of the desk drawer. If ever there was a time . . .”

  “You bet.” Tuway got up and took a bottle out of the bottom drawer of the old rolltop desk on the opposite side of the room.

  “They’ll have to deal with him.” He held out his coffee cup and Tuway poured, then added a little to a glass he had taken from the drawer.

  “They’ll just have to deal with him.” The Judge took his finger and stirred his cup, then began to sip his coffee in silence.

  Tuway returned to his seat with his glass. Late-afternoon heat had finally made its way into the room. The turning face of the fan blew it first on Tuway and then on the Judge. There was only the sound of the fan and the distant noises from the kitchen as Adell Vance cooked out her disgust.

  Tuway cleared his throat. “Judge, what ’bout places like people down at the Bend, places like that? You been furnishin’ them for years, and the last few crops ain’t been so good.”

  “They’ll have a good year next year and pay it back—do it all the time. You know all that land is Miss Lucile’s.” The Judge was irritated at what he thought was Tuway’s forgetfulness. “You know that. L.B. can’t mess with that land.”

  “What’s you been usin’ for backup?”

  “Why are you asking me that? You know, chattel loans.” The Judge sat there staring into space. Then he freed himself of the thought. “Even L.B. wouldn’t waste his time. He probably doesn’t even know how to get out there. Hell, you and I haven’t been there in years. It’s so far away . . . there’s nothing there to take that I know of—a few cows and chickens, maybe an old tractor or two.

  “Besides, that’s like money in the bank. Even L.B. isn’t that stupid.” The Judge took a last drink of his coffee. “Well, there isn’t anything out there worth fighting over, is there?”

  “Nothin’ I know of, but, like you say, we ain’t been to the Bend in years.”

  The Bend

  IT had been early morning when a few of the children from the Bend came across to the swamp in their boats. They threw their poles on the ground and rushed to the old woman’s house. “My daddy say come look. The sheriff or somebody gettin’ ready to come cross the river at the old ferry landin’.”

  She sat in her rocker on the porch, shucking corn. “Nobody used that ferry in ten years. If he comin’, he most likely ain’t gettin’ here that way.”

  “My daddy say come look” was all the children would say, smiling and holding out their hands, gesturing for her to come. She finished her shucking and called to Ella. “Go on and get that old green boat out from under the tree. We’ll have us a look-see.”

  After a halfhearted attempt to beg off going, Ella had gone to the tree where the boat was tied and readied it for Mama Tuway.

  Willie and John, unnoticed by the others in the rush, had immediately gone to their boat and out into the water. They poled to the end of the creek, which led out to the river, and tied up, making sure to stay out of sight of the opposite shore.

  Many of the Bend people had stopped work as news of what was happening spread. The Reverend had ridden his mule from the church. Claude and his wife could see the ferry from their front porch, so others had walked over to sit with them or sit along the riverbank, watching the other side.

  There was something approaching a lighthearted mood. Glad for the break in a hot working day, people sat by the bank, talking and watching what was going on across the river. Claude’s wife went inside her house to make a big pitcher of lemonade, which she began offering new arrivals. The best seat on the porch was, of course, reserved for Mama Tuway’s coming.

  “Look like they some white peoples tryin’ to pay us a visit,” Mama Tuway said as she took her seat and the large glass of lemonade she was offered. Ella shook her head no to lemonade and took up a position behind Mama Tuway’s rocker, her back ridged up against the clapboard porch wall.


  Mama Tuway settled in and began to take a good look at what was happening on the other side of the river. It was a bright, sunny morning and millions of sun stars danced on the light ripples in the water. She had to shield her eyes from the glare to see the figures across the way and then to look up at the three turkey vultures that glided high in the air, almost out of sight, passing back and forth across the sun. Off in the distance to her right, almost a mile away, was the old train trestle over the river.

  On seeing Mama Tuway’s arrival, Benders who had come to take a look at what was happening and then head back to work changed their minds. Her presence made this a formal event, as if they were about to witness something important. They began to gather closer to the porch or to sit down in the grass, laughing, talking, and reminiscing.

  “ ’Member when President Roosevelt sent them peoples down back in ’34, or there ’bout? Brought in all them workers right across on the ferry to build a community center, and what we gonna do with a community center?” Mama Tuway said.

  “Well, I’m much obliged to old Roosevelt. It sho do make a fine church,” the Reverend said, and everybody laughed.

  “I ain’t complainin’ ’bout Roosevelt.” Claude came through the screen door and let it slam, as his hands were full of more glasses and another pitcher of warm lemonade. “I’d still be havin’ a dirt floor to walk on, wasn’t for old Roosevelt. No, I ain’t complainin’ t’all.” He gave the Reverend an empty glass and poured him some lemonade. “Wouldn’t have none of these here houses all over the Bend, wasn’t for him.”

  “You ain’t forgettin’ when they come over here to get peoples to go off to the war, are you?” Mama Tuway said. All eyes turned back to watch the opposite shore more intently.

  Lined up in a row were four gin wagons pulled by two-mule teams. Each wagon had three colored men sitting or standing patiently waiting, as they often did, to unload at the gin, but there was no cotton, no gin, only a sheriff’s car and two or three men down by the river’s edge, looking at the old ferry motor that had in times past pushed the ferry from one side of the river to the other, attached to a steel cable strung across the water.

  Off to the side, parked in the grass, was a Desoto convertible. The top was down and a man with blond hair sat in the driver’s seat, sunning himself.

  “I remember them war days,” said one of the older men sitting on the front steps. “Come over here with them uniforms on, took near ’bout everybody old enough to plow a straight line.”

  “And half of them didn’t come back,” the Reverend Kay said.

  Just then, Berl walked up from the path that led down to the swamp. He tried to affect a casual air, but everyone could see he was hot and breathing hard from running.

  “What I been missin’? This some kind of a party goin’ on here?”

  “Look here now,” Claude said to everybody on the porch and in the yard. “I know what it is. They done found out Berl stayin’ over here and they comin’ after him.” There was a moment of silence as everyone looked at Berl, and he jerked his head around to follow fingers pointing to the other side.

  After a second or two, Berl began to laugh. “Don’t y’all go funnin’ me like that. They ain’t comin’ for me. See that?” He gestured to the other side. “Telco County Sheriff’s car. I ain’t from Telco.” Berl looked to Mama Tuway for assurance. “They ain’t comin’ for me, are they?”

  Mama Tuway shook her head. “Don’t take four gin wagons and, near as I can make out, twelve helpers to catch you, Berl. You ain’t worth all that trouble they goin’ to.”

  With Mama Tuway’s blessing, Berl breathed easier. “All right. How ’bout some of that lemonade you famous for, Miss Lucile?” He walked over to get a glass.

  People on the Bend side began to talk among themselves. Berl walked out in the yard toward the river’s shore to get a better look. “Besides, they ain’t gonna get that thing started for nothin’. Thing been sittin’ over there for years. White folks ain’t got the sense they was born with.”

  People on the Bend side looked at one another and smiled. Berl was right.

  “They ain’t never gonna get that old thing started,” one said.

  “Thing been sittin’ over there for years in that same place,” another said.

  “Ain’t been used since the worlds war.”

  The Lower Peach Tree Side

  WHY didn’t you tell me?” He had said this five or six times. It made no matter. Tuway wasn’t listening anyway. His hands gripped the steering wheel, trying to keep the careening car—headed straight for the river—on the road. They had gone to the car the minute Tuway had told him his mother was at the Bend. It had been an automatic response, to head straight there. What they would do, how they would cross the river had not yet occurred to them. They were still in the throes of explanation.

  “My God, Tuway, if you had told me, I would have . . .” His voice trailed off, for he didn’t know what he would have done. Told Tuway to tell his mother to move? No, in the entire county, it was the best place for a colored person to be. Would he not have given the farmers loans if he had known she was there? Of course not. They were among the best, most reliable of farmers in all the Black Belt.

  Was it his fault? Was it the economy? Was it the bad weather they had had for the last two seasons? Was it L.B.? He pulled the pipe out of his coat pocket and twisted it in his hands. What makes one person grow into an L.B. and another with just as much to overcome grow into someone like, well, like he had hoped John was growing into before the boy gave up and sneaked out of town.

  “Damn it, man. Do you want to get us killed before we get there?” The car had hit a rut in the road and the Judge bounced up, hitting his head on the roof lining. Tuway slowed to breakneck speed.

  “And another thing, Judge, I ain’t told you and you gonna know soon enough.”

  “Nothing else would surprise me, Tuway. I had no idea your mother was still living. You talked about your cousins but never—”

  “The thing is, Judge.” Tuway cleared his throat. “The thing is, John is out at the Bend, too. Done been out there all summer. Wasn’t my fault.”

  “What? What John?”

  “I’m tellin’ you it wasn’t my fault. It was all his doin’. The boy done finally gone and got hisself some backbone.”

  “John McMillan? That John?”

  “John, your John. He done followed me one night, out to the Bend.”

  “You told me you saw him get on the train. You told me he was visiting friends in—”

  The car hit another bump in the road. The Judge grabbed ahold of the open windowsill. Then there was silence between them. Dust rolled in huge swirls up into the air as the car dropped from the potholed paved road onto a dirt road that led to the river. Hot wind and dust blew in their faces from the open side-window vents.

  The pipe turned over and over in his free hand. “In all our years together, I can’t think of any other circumstance in which you lied to me, Tuway.”

  Tuway didn’t say anything, gripped the wheel, and kept his eyes on the road.

  Finally, he said, “I always told you the truth . . . much as the circumstances would let me.”

  The Bend Side

  THE people of the Bend had settled in now, viewing the show. Some of the children were at the water’s edge, poking sticks in the mud. Others sat in their mothers’ laps on the grassy space between the river and the road that ran in front of Claude’s house. John and little Willie had found a place on the lower branches of a big oak in the front yard and were watching all that was going on. So far, Mama Tuway had not noticed them.

  “What they doin’ now?” someone said. The sounds of an engine trying to start could be heard from across the river.

  “Look to me like they still tryin’ to get that old ferryboat motor started. That thing nothin’ but a heap of junk.”

  They watched as one of the men the sheriff had brought along seemed to be pouring something directly onto the engine. There
was a whining sound; then flames shot up into the air as the men jumped back to take cover.

  There were roars of laughter on the Bend side. Little children held their hands over their mouths and squealed at such a sight. Old men slapped their pants legs and shook their heads, laughing. “Them white folks gonna kill they fool selves on somethin’ they don’t know nothin’ ’bout.”

  Mama Tuway rocked and sipped her lemonade but said nothing.

  Ella stood behind her, hands flat up against the whitewashed wall of Claude’s house. “Don’t like this.”

  Mama Tuway turned to glance at Ella. “Now Ella, child. They almost a mile away. Can’t do you no harm.”

  “I wanta go back.”

  “You need to get used to other peoples again.” She reached back and patted Ella’s hand; then she turned around to watch the opposite shore.

  “What you suppose they wanta fix up that old ferryboat for? Ain’t nothin’ for’m even if they do get over here,” Joe Ben Kay said. He had wandered up to the porch to talk. Joe Ben and his family farmed the land up the road from Claude. His wife and children had settled down in the grass across the road. Like everybody in the Bend, they were cousins to Claude and Lucile and Mama Tuway. Joe Ben had pretended that his remark was for everyone assembled on the porch, but what he really wanted to know was what Mama Tuway thought.

  She rocked a moment longer. “Don’t nobody go to the trouble to bring no four empty wagons ’less they mean to fill’m up,” she said. She took a last sip of her lemonade and looked straight at Joe Ben. “Joe Ben, you ain’t old as me, but you old enough to remember the last time anybody come ’cross that river with empty wagons.”