Joe Ben stared at her in a moment of recognition and then turned to look across the water. The same thing had happened once before, back in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. At that time, the farmers of the Bend had been furnished by a local merchant who had scotched them for two years while the weather was bad. The problem was that before there was a good crop, he had died and his wife had sent the sheriff to collect the debt. They had been left with nothing and almost starved to death. All of their pigs and cattle had been taken; even the corn out of the cribs was loaded in wagons and carried off. That winter, they had survived off of nuts and berries from the woods and a few Red Cross packages.
Joe Ben left the porch and walked to where his wife was sitting in the grass. It looked as if he was trying to convince her to take the children and go home. She shook her head no. Of course she had no idea of missing out on what was going on.
There was a whirring noise and the engine caught, roared to life, and died just as quickly. People on the Bend side stood up from their positions on the bank and began looking hard across the water. Some began backing away from the water a few steps. “I think they gonna do it,” somebody said.
“Nah, they ain’t gonna do it,” Berl said. He had taken a seat on the front steps. “Them pistons might fire a time or two, but that block probably busted down the middle.”
Now they all watched as a man on the Lower Peach Tree side walked back up the hill and got something out of his truck.
“I don’t know,” the Reverend said. “That’s Ed’s truck from over at the Texaco they got workin’ on it. You take Ed and a can of Marvel Mystery oil and you can fix near ’bout anything.”
On the eighth try, the old pistons freed themselves from years of neglect and began to churn up and down. The engine quickly died, but it screamed to life the next time, drinking in the excess gasoline that had been poured directly into its innards. The muffler, long rusted away, gave free rein to a grating, caterwauling sound that echoed down the river. Ospreys flapped up and out of their nests at treetop. A puff of black smoke rose up off the ferry engine.
People on the Bend side began to move back away from the shoreline and up toward the house. Children stopped playing in the water and came to hold their mothers’ hands. The chance that the people on the Lower Peach Tree side could not come had faded into the probability that they would.
10:00 A.M.–Lower Peach Tree Side
TUWAY had driven to the bank in the Judge’s car earlier that morning. The Judge had instructed him to clear out everything in his office and load it in the trunk. They would sort out fourteen years of banking business later, at home, when they had time.
Tuway had walked in the bank to mass confusion. Miss Maroon was in tears. She was leaving; she didn’t care that she didn’t have another job. L.B. had gone too far. He had been stewing for a whole week about what he could do to “turn things around,” as he kept calling it. He was looking for something he could do to make an impression on the older men, to show them that this was a new day for the Planters and Merchants Bank of Lower Peach Tree and that he was their new leader. He spent his days sitting at the Judge’s old desk, studying the paper-clip chain he made and “thinkin’ about the situation,” as he said to Miss Maroon.
By way of trying to keep him busy and out of her hair, she had given him all the files on loans that the bank had outstanding. She had never meant to put the Bend loans in with all the others. After all, they had been dealing with the Bend for years. Nobody ever did anything about those loans. They would make good when they could. Everybody knew that, everybody but L.B. He had immediately seized on them, like some starving dog.
Did she know they were almost two years in arrears? What in the world was the Judge thinking about? She had tried to explain to him that these were some of the best loans the bank made. They always paid off in the end. These were people who had been here forever. They were not about to up and leave and go to Chicago. He hadn’t listened. He had called up the sheriff here in Perry County and told him he wanted him to serve papers on the Bend farmers. The sheriff had said that was crazy. What were they gonna get, a few cows, the contents of a corncrib, some mules, maybe a broken-down tractor or two? He wouldn’t do it. Too damn much trouble. L.B. insisted. Hell no, he wasn’t, the sheriff countered. Besides, the Bend wasn’t in his county. L.B. would have to get Bart Simms, sheriff over in Telco, to get it done. Being just across the river, that was Telco County.
Miss Maroon wrung her hands. “Now L.B.’s gone on out there with the Telco sheriff to take everything he can get his hands on.”
The Bend Side
AS soon as the sheriff of Telco County had sent a wagon with a team of mules across, he decided to go himself, convinced now that the old cable stretched across the river would hold the decrepit ferry.
He had planned to get off work early that day and run his dogs to keep them in shape for hunting season. Then this young fellow from over in Perry County showed up, acting like he was God’s gift to the Black Belt, insisting that the sheriff serve papers today, and way out here in East Jesus. He knew it was impractical to try to come into the Bend by the old hunting road. Nobody had used that for years. It would take all day. His other choice was to get Ed over at the Texaco to fix the old ferry. He had hoped Ed wouldn’t be able to get the motor started; then he would have had a perfectly valid excuse to say he couldn’t do it. Now the fucking motor had to start, and what was he gonna get anyway? Nothing but niggers over there. Just his luck his two deputies had to be off. He could have sent one of them. He felt for his gun and waited for the ferry to slide into shore.
The sheriff stepped off the ferry and stopped to let the wagon driver coax his team onto dry land. A group of people had gathered around the first wagon that had come to a halt in front of a white clapboard house. He walked toward them, and as he walked, he took papers out of his back pocket and consulted them.
“I’m looking for a Claude J. Ingram,” he said to the assembled crowd.
The Benders stared at him as if they had never heard the name.
The sheriff smirked and put the papers back in his pocket. “What the hell, I don’t need’m anyway.” Then he turned to the group of people standing there.
“Now listen here. I’ve come to serve y’all with papers that say you gotta give up what it is you own in order to pay back the . . . the”—he took the papers out of his pocket again—“the Planters and Merchants Bank of Lower Peach Tree.” He folded the papers and turned to look at the three men who were on the first wagon. There was quiet, all except for the mules, which were making nervous pawing motions with their feet.
“What you want us to do, boss?” one of the wagon men said.
The sheriff shrugged his shoulders. “It says we’re suppose to take everything that ain’t nailed down, so go to it.”
They sat there staring at him, still not knowing what to do, what he meant. “What you mean, ‘everything’?”
“Everything, that’s what it says, everything—furniture, cows—now get busy.”
They still sat there.
“We’ll do this place first, then head on to the next farm down the road there.” Then he yelled to get some action. “I said everything; now get started. We ain’t got all day.”
The men from the wagon looked at one another and then began to climb slowly down to the ground. The driver pulled up the wagon brake, wrapped the reins around the brake handle, and started to dismount.
There was silence as everyone on the porch began to back away, everyone but Mama Tuway, who sat firmly in her chair, staring out at the river.
Lucile rushed inside to get her sleeping baby. Claude followed her. The Reverend Kay stood up out of the swing and jumped off the side of the porch. Ella was nowhere to be seen. Berl backed up into the yard.
The men hesitated and then picked up two straight chairs, walked down the steps, and pitched them in the wagon. The chairs made a hollow, rattling sound, landing in the bottom of the empty gin wag
on.
They turned and looked at the sheriff, still not knowing if this was what he meant.
The sheriff shook his head. “That’s it. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Take everything.”
The wagon men walked wearily back up the steps. One reached down and picked up empty lemonade glasses and the pitcher. He walked down the steps and threw them in the wagon, then heard breaking glass as they hit the bottom. One of the children in the crowd began to cry.
The third man, the driver, grabbed some baling wire off a fence post, rounded up two or three chickens that were roaming free in the yard, tied their feet together, and flung them, squawking, into the wagon. The mules, still uneasy from their trip across the river in the noisy ferry, shifted back and forth in their traces, raising clouds of dust in the dry black ground.
The Lower Peach Tree Side
IT’S not much farther, is it?” the Judge said. “I know this road. It’s not much farther. We can look across and see what’s going on when we get there. Perhaps we can get a boat and go across. Maybe the sheriff isn’t there yet. It takes a long time to come all the way around on the old swamp road.”
Tuway kept his eyes on the road. “I ain’t worried about Mama. Mama can take care of herself. They ain’t gonna mess with Mama. Truth is, it’s Ella. She liable to get funny-actin’ with white people round.”
“He’s been there all summer? All summer and I, Mrs. Vance, we, we never knew?” He held his head straightforward, as if he were seeing the road. “She’s been remembering him in her prayers every night, you know. Talked about him almost as if he were dead, and he was right here under our noses all along. Do you see anything, Tuway?” He could feel the car crest a rise and start downhill as the ground eased its way to river level. The Judge gripped the open window frame and turned his head away from Tuway. “The truth is, we . . . I, from the first time I saw him, I—” The words blew past him and out into the hot afternoon air.
Tuway strained to see through the swirling dust. “Fact is, she ain’t liable to; she bound to. That’s how come she out at the Bend in the first place. Couldn’t take white peoples no more.”
“What are you talking about?” The Judge turned to face Tuway.
“Thought if she got used to John, it might do some good.”
“What do you see out there, Tuway? That’s what I want to know.”
Tuway looked over at the Judge, as if he was hearing him for the first time, then back at the road. “I see gin wagons lined up down by the old ferry crossin’. Look like they done got the ferry workin’. They fordin’ the wagons ’cross. I can see one now in the middle of the river.” He rolled down the window all the way to get a better view. “Didn’t think they could do that.”
“What in the hell are they doing? That ferry can’t support all that weight. It hasn’t operated for years.”
“Won’t hold a truck’s weight, but guess it will wagons.”
The Bend
THE sheriff shuffled the papers in his hand and kept his head down. The ferry had started back across the river to get the last wagon. As the sheriff glanced up, he saw L.B. step on shore with the third wagon.
By now, the people of the Bend had had a chance to recover from their first shock and come to some understanding of what was happening. The sheriff of Telco County intended to go from house to house, taking whatever he could get his hands on, everything they owned.
The older people of the Bend watched with weary eyes, remembering. The younger ones, like Claude, looked through a different lens. They had been away from the Bend to fight a war. From time to time, they were visited by cousins who now lived in Chicago, Detroit; and, most important, all of them, young and old, had stood mesmerized, watching the television set in the window of McKinna’s Hardware store, its screen glowing with fuzzy black-and-white pictures from another world.
Lucile muffled a cry as she saw her porch swing being heaved into the wagon. Claude turned from stunned silence and walked back to the barn to pick up a hoe that was leaning up against the inside wall. Berl followed him and found a rake. They rushed back toward the house and the wagon men, who were pitching anything they could find—furniture, pots and pans, kitchen utensils—into their wagon, if only to fill it and get out. Another wagon was directly behind. It would be next.
Claude jumped up on his porch steps and stood in front of one of the drivers to block his way back into the house. The driver knocked shoulders with Claude as he passed. “Don’t you go messin’ with me, nigger,” the driver said. “I’m gettin’ paid twenty dollars to do this here job, and I can use me the money. Ain’t none of my doin’.”
Claude let him pass, but he muttered, “We see ’bout that,” and hit the driver in the back of the knees with his hoe. The driver’s legs buckled. He dropped what he was carrying and fell to the ground. When he got up, he lunged for Claude. They rolled over and over in the dirt as the crowd of men and women from the Bend edged closer and closer to the fight.
The sheriff drew his gun and fired in the air. “All right now, back on off here, boys. Let’s us get this here done and get on out of here.”
L.B. had been standing to one side, watching. “I think you have things in hand, Sheriff. I’ll go on back to the bank. I have work to—”
“You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the sheriff said. “You come in here from out of my county and want me to do your dirty work. You was the one wanted this. You can stay put.” He turned to L.B., his gun still in hand.
“If you really need me,” L.B. said, stepping away a few paces and taking the comb out of his pocket to give his hair a nervous swipe.
“Besides, you got to lead these wagons to where you want to put all this here stuff when we finished.”
L.B. watched the wagon being loaded. It was the first time it had occurred to him that he would have to find a place to put everything they were gathering up. He wondered what the bank usually did with stuff like this.
The wagon driver got up, brushed off his clothes, and started back up the stairs, with everyone looking on.
He and his two helpers now began taking everything they could see—a small handmade baby bed, a picture of Claude and Lucile on their wedding day, knives and forks off the kitchen table.
At length, they came out to the porch for a final look around before going to the barn. One of the men stopped in front of Mama Tuway’s chair. She looked up at him and threw what remained of her lemonade in his face. “You a disgrace.”
He then made the terrible mistake of asking her to get up and give him her chair.
Lower Peach Tree
TUWAY stopped the car and got out as the last wagon driver was leading his team of mules onto the ferry. The Judge followed, holding to the front fender, moving toward the sounds, remembering the last time he had spoken to the boy. He had lectured him about staying out too late and wandering all over the town when he was supposed to get on home
The two drivers slapped reins and called out to mules, which were unsure of their footing as they stepped from solid ground onto the decaying wooden floorboards of the old ferry. The steady cadence of the ferry’s four-cylinder motor was interrupted by a backfire. The mules shied and backed in their traces, pushing wagon and drivers backward, where they had come from. The main driver flipped the reins and began coaxing again. The other two men got down off the wagon and went around to hold the front reins and pull the mules forward.
Tuway kept his eyes trained on the far shore, searching for her. He turned to the Judge, who was standing a few feet away, listening. “I’m goin’ ’cross with this last wagon team, Judge. You best stay here. Ain’t safe, as I see it. That old cable barely holdin’ as it is.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, man. Of course I’m coming, too.” The Judge had walked to Tuway’s voice and taken firm hold of his coat sleeve.
The Bend
IN their minds, it was unthinkable for this outside wagon driver to speak directly to Mama Tuway. Claude and Berl rushed up the stairs and grabbed
at the man, pulling him away from her rocker. They pushed him down the stairs and ran after him.
From where he had been standing by the oak tree, John heard himself yelling as he ran toward them. “Don’t you touch her, you son of a bitch.” The wagon man had hit Claude in the stomach and Claude had wrestled him to the ground, as he had done minutes before, but this time it was different. People were closing in with hoes and pieces of wood grabbed off the woodpile in Claude’s side yard. Dogs were barking. Dust was swirling. John grabbed the wagon man’s arm and bit it until the blood came. Willie was there, kicking at the man’s head while Claude beat him unmercifully. When another wagon man came to help, he was jumped by Joe Ben and Berl.
Joe Ben’s wife and the Reverend Kay used their hats to wave at the mules of the first wagon, causing them to back and shy.
The driver of the second wagon made a clicking sound to the mules and began trying to move around the first wagon to get his mules out of the fray. The Reverend and Joe Ben’s wife caught the animals’ bridles to stop them. The mules pulled their heads up, uncertain of what they were supposed to do. One began to kick out in frustration. The team on the first wagon sensed their nervousness and snorted and pawed at the dust. Two more of the Benders stepped forward, took off their hats, and waved them at the animals.
The mules kicked, the brake came loose, and the first wagon rolled off the road. Its rear wheel stuck in a gully and the wagon turned on its side. The contents spilled out into the dirt. Chairs and tables, knives and forks—all tumbled into a heap in the dust, and the Benders closed in. Some grabbed at the men on their wagon-seat perches. Others rushed to unload what was left in the back of the first wagon.
Out of the Night That Covers Me Page 29