Out of the Night That Covers Me

by Pat Cunningham Devoto

  This time, there was nothing the sheriff could do. The black men on the wagons were being dragged down off their high seats, thrown to the ground, and pummeled by the black men and women of the Bend.

  Nobody was touching the sheriff, but he knew it was only because he had his gun in hand, and he kept it there, backing away out of the brawl.

  L.B. was watching what was going on, not so much afraid as curious that something like this would happen. The possibility had never entered his mind. Suddenly, in all the dust and shouting, he caught sight of a familiar face and he called to him.

  “Is that you, Willie?” The boy looked up from his frantic efforts at kicking the man Claude had grounded. “What the hell you doin’ over here, boy?” L.B. stepped in his direction. Willie turned to run, but L.B. sprinted after him, dodging in and out of fighting people and others trying to gather up Claude’s possessions, which were scattered everywhere. “Hey, don’t you hear me? Stop when I’m talkin’ to you.” He grabbed Willie by the arm and turned him around.

  Ella appeared out of nowhere, catching hold of Willie’s other arm. She had been picking up knives and forks off the ground until she heard L.B.’s voice. Now she stood facing him, still holding a kitchen knife in one hand.

  “We ain’t gonna go back to Mr. L.B.,” Willie said to his mother. “ ’Member, we said we wasn’t never gonna go back to Mr. L.B. Ain’t that right, Mama?”

  Ella pulled Willie to her and then pushed him past her. “Git,” she said.

  “Not ’less you promise me,” he said.

  “I promise,” she said, not looking at him.

  He ran for the trees.

  In the distance, the ferry was landing its last wagon. Tuway had jumped off into the shallow water before the bow hit shore, and now he was running up the hill toward her.

  There was a flash of pleasure in L.B.’s narrowed eyes as he looked at Ella. “Why, lookie here, if it ain’t my little old baby doll.” He took a step closer, automatically reaching for the comb in his shirt pocket. “I thought you might be someplace around here when I saw little Willie.” He ran the comb through his hair, put it back in his shirt pocket, and reached out to grab her arm, as he had done so many times on so many nights in Selma. “What’s you doin’ out here?”

  His touch seemed to take her back to another place. In her mind, she might still have been in Selma at the barbecue joint down in colored town where they first met or in the house he had rented for her. She stared down at his hand gripping her arm.

  “So this is where you ran off to.” His free hand came to clutch her throat and pull her close to him. “What you mean leavin’ without tellin’ me?” he said in a whisper, oblivious now to all of the chaos around him.

  She tried to pull away, and when his grip held firm, she looked into his eyes and calmly pushed the knife into his stomach just below the ribs. The expression on her face never changed. She could have been standing by the fire, gutting one of the catfish in the side yard of Mama Tuway’s house.

  L.B. backed away. “You always was a feisty little bitch . . .” His eyes widened, his knees buckled, and he fell, kneeling in the dirt.

  She never hesitated. She dropped down over him and began to drive the knife into his back. And he—so completely unaware that he had been, and now most certainly was, a dying breed—still tried to cajole her. “Ella,” he gasped, trying to rise up again, “you better cut that out if you know what’s—” When she hit bone, she would wrench the knife free and begin again.

  All the while, Tuway was running toward her. With each forward motion, he could feel his legs stumbling, deserting him in the race. The reality of where he was, of what was about to happen would not sink in.

  Instead, as he ran, other pictures flashed through his mind—things he had only vaguely dreamed of before: the two of them, in their own apartment in Chicago, sitting in the living room, listening to the radio as they heard the overhead train rumbling past, the walls vibrating. They were smiling at each other. The noise was of no consequence to them.

  He dimly heard his mother shouting at him to stay away. He never heard the bullet from the sheriff’s gun tear a hole in Ella’s blue blouse just as he dove between her and the sheriff. He knew he had saved her, because, of course, one bullet wasn’t enough to stop her. Like some windup toy, she raised the knife again and again, plunging it in L.B.’s shoulder, his arm, his back.

  He saw this happen, but all the while, he was in Chicago, standing with his arms around her. They were looking out of their apartment window, watching the sun go down through a haze of smoke and grime that covered their part of the city. Somehow, he knew that later that night they would go dancing.

  And now the sheriff, disgusted because his first bullet had not stopped her, emptied his remaining four bullets in her direction, not particularly concerned about any other black bodies he might hit.

  As he reached up to shield her, one of the sheriff’s wayward bullets buried itself in Tuway’s arm, near the shoulder. Others found their intended mark and struck Ella in the chest, making her dance as if some amateur puppeteer were pulling her strings, arms flailing in the air, head jerking from side to side, dancing as she had danced so many times for so many men, but this time, strings finally cut, she slumped forward, resting peacefully in the dust at long last.

  In Chicago, he had gotten a job in the stockyards and was making good money, more than he had ever made in his life. He could buy her anything she wanted, a million periwinkle blue blouses if she wanted.

  To the Benders, gunshots only meant that the sheriff was trying to quiet them again, and they were long past quiet. All around, there was yelling and shouting, pushing and shoving as they beat out their frustration on anything that moved. The mules on the first two wagons were let loose from their harnesses and slapped on the rump and yelled away. They trotted off down the road and left the wooden wagons stranded. Those Benders who weren’t fighting with drivers or picking up fallen household goods began to tear the two gin wagons apart, pulling the long wooden side slats until they broke and then using them to pound the other parts of the wagon.

  Tuway crawled to her crumpled body, all the while looking around, daring someone to come near. He was some wild animal protecting his young, eyes scanning the scene with menacing glances. She was hurt, yes, maybe hurt badly, but she wasn’t gone. He knew she couldn’t be.

  After they had been in Chicago no more than a year, she had had his first baby. It was a little girl, perfect and beautiful, with skin . . . He strained to see as he strained to lift her up off the ground. Was it skin that was a beautiful brown color or skin like his? The picture faded. In the swirl of dust, in the center of the beginnings of cataclysmic change, he was standing, holding her now. It was the first time he had touched her and his whole body was on fire, as he had known it would be.

  Mama Tuway was there, saying something to him, trying to reach up and touch Ella. He twisted and swung Ella’s body away from her. “No,” he yelled at her, and it echoed in his head.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” she was shouting at him. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  This only infuriated him. He stepped away from her and a low snarl came from somewhere in his body. She had had her chance with Ella and never took it, all the time trying to turn him against her.

  “Tuway, she’s—”

  “NO,” he yelled, so loudly that this time everybody seemed to stop what they were doing and look at him. Willie had run up, and John behind him. Willie reached up and tried to take his mother’s hand. Again Tuway twisted around violently, flinging Ella’s limp legs out, hitting the boy so hard that he fell backward. At the same time, he could hear the Judge calling to him.

  “Tuway, what’s going on, my man? Where are you?”

  None of this was Tuway, these people constantly fighting, constantly wanting him to do things that were impossible for him to do. All the while telling him about what life was going to be like in Chicago, all the time talking about it and never once having a
thought that he might want to go, might want the same things they wanted. The Judge pulling one way, Mama Tuway pulling the other. It was time to leave them all.

  He staggered away, back down toward the river, holding her close. He knew the way better than any of them. Who did they think had taught them all they knew and then acted like it was theirs alone to share? He turned around and headed for the mouth of the creek. He knew the way. He would ford the creek, head around through the swamp, and wait for the train. Others had done it hundreds of times, and he would do it now.

  He turned around one last time and saw John and little Willie dogging him, calling after him. He took a few steps toward them. Then he kicked out as hard as he could, catching little Willie a glancing blow on his shoulder. It sent the boy backward into John, and both of them went sprawling in the mud.

  “Git,” he yelled, and turned back around to walk into the water, holding Ella high away from the wet.

  “Tuwaaay,” John called out one last time. The sound was loud enough to scare a flock of crows out of their nesting in a big water oak, but not loud enough for Tuway to take any notice.

  He watched the water turn red as he forded the stream up to his waist, but it was his blood, not hers. He knew that. He could feel the sharp pain in his arm where the bullet had gone in. He was the one who was bleeding, and he still had plenty of strength—so she would be all right, if he could just get her to . . .

  Mama Tuway had come to little Willie and was tending the gash on his shoulder. “Don’t you worry none. He’s plumb out of his head. He come to his senses and bring her back directly.” They watched him reach the other side and disappear into the thick undergrowth.

  The Bend

  THE sheriff of Telco County had had enough. What had begun as an ordinary day had somehow turned into a horrible mess. Two of the four gin wagons that he was responsible for were almost in ruins and the mules had run off. His hired coloreds would have to get paid, and they hadn’t done what they were supposed to do, and, for that matter, neither had he. He had been a fool not to bring deputies with him. On top of that, he had what was probably a dying white man on his hands. He would have to be able to explain this. And to top that off, the crazy black-and-white-looking nigger had run off with the colored girl like some ape in the goddamn jungle. After all these years, there was still no explaining niggers. What did he think he was gonna do, bury her out there in the swamp? She was dead as a doornail. He had seen to that. Well, if she was, it was fine with him. All he had been trying to do was to protect the smart-ass banker, and it had ended up like this. That’s what happens when you go to dealing with coloreds. They didn’t seem at all concerned about the white man. Just like them, not caring about civilized people. The kid banker probably had a mama somewhere that the sheriff was going to have to answer to.

  Somebody had even led the old blind Judge over to where the kids were on the ground, and he was kneeling over them in the mud, getting his clothes all dirty, for Christ’s sake.

  The next time anybody from outside his county came in and wanted to stir up trouble, and on his day off, he would tell’m to go screw themselves.

  “Put that one in that wagon.” He gestured with his empty gun to the last wagon down near the ferry. “And be careful—I think he’s still alive.” He had kept his gun drawn because the men he had hired had stopped fighting after giving a half-ass account of themselves, and the people of the Bend were edging closer and closer.

  “You heard me.” He gestured again with his gun and backed up a few steps closer to the wagon.

  “We’re leaving now, but we’ll be back,” he said, having no idea of returning if he could possibly help it.

  The wagon driver coaxed his team up the hill enough to turn around and head back down to the ferry. People were yelling things at him and his niggers as they got back on the ferry. He thought they were cussing him, but you couldn’t make out what they said sometimes. Surely to hell they had more sense than to cuss him. If they were, he should have done something about that—gone after them and beat the living shit out of them—except that a big crowd of coloreds was following him down to the water’s edge and he needed to get the white man back to the other side. Probably it was useless, but he thought he had seen his chest rising once or twice. Besides, he might be somebody important, and he needed to make the effort, no matter that the whole thing was the stupid half-ass banker’s damn fault in the first place.

  Tuway had skirted the river, then gone inland to walk the water boards to the bottom of the train embankment and wait. He had laid Ella on the ground and straightened out her skirt and blouse, brushed his hand through her hair, and tried not to look at her wound, except that he knew he had seen her chest move slightly when she would breathe. She would be fine as soon as they got to . . . He had ripped off the sleeves of his shirt and bound up his wound. Blood kept soaking through.

  He heard a train whistle off in the distance. In the haze that was clouding over his mind, he vaguely remembered that it was still daylight and that this one seemed to be coming from the north and going south, but no matter. He would figure it all out once he got them on board. He remembered that you had to change trains in Memphis, and once they got to Memphis, he would know what to do. He would figure something out. Just get on the train.

  He heard the whistle coming closer and stooped down and waited for the engine to pass before he began staggering up the hill with her in his arms.

  When the last mule team and wagon were halfway across the river, the sheriff noticed some of the Benders had come to the river’s edge with a sledgehammer and were taking turns swinging away at the pole that held the ferry cable. Each time there was a blow to the cable, the ferry momentarily stopped in the water as the vibrations ran along the cable line. Moments after it reached the other side, the cable pole and line gave way and collapsed into the brown depths of the Alabama River.

  The two o’clock to Mobile was visible to all of the Benders as it entered the bridge trestle that spanned the river maybe three-quarters of a mile from where they stood. They all looked up to watch it cross, an easy place to rest their eyes after a day of so many terrible sights.

  Tuway had managed to run alongside the train enough to catch up with one of the cattle cars. He had done this millions of times. Pull open the door and fling yourself in. He had done it that night when John had surprised him. He had watched dozens, maybe hundreds of others do it—fathers and sons, whole families, women and children. He knew it was easy if you knew what you were doing. He managed to get a foothold and grab the side of the car with one hand while with the other he held Ella like a sack over his shoulder. But somehow the door wouldn’t slide open.

  The Benders were milling around on the shore, talking and preparing a boat so that Berl and John could row the Judge back across the river to his car. From where they stood, off at that distance, it had looked like nothing more than a large fertilizer sack that had slipped out of one of the freight cars and banged against the sides of the train trestle before it separated and fell straight down into the water.

  Only Mama Tuway had known. Only Mama Tuway had let out a cry so filled with anguish that it echoed up and down the river, silencing everything in its path.

  Lower Peach Tree

  THEY had come into the kitchen, the Judge’s grip firm on the boy’s shoulder. He had even been reluctant to give him up to Adell Vance’s hugs and kisses. Now the two of them were seated side by side at the kitchen table. As they told her what happened, they would touch each other’s arms or finish each other’s sentences, especially when Tuway entered the telling. The Judge would fumble with his pipe and John would continue with the story.

  Adell Vance sat across from them, a handkerchief over her mouth, tears streaming down her face, doing their crying for them.

  After a time, both the Judge and John were talked out and Adell Vance was cried out and an easy silence fell over the kitchen table. The overhead fan swirled steam that rose from a pot cooking on top of
the stove. A breeze drifted in through the door that was open to the back porch.

  “The funeral will be next weekend. We’ll need to start early in the morning to come into the Bend by the road,” the Judge said, glimpsing the empty rocker on the back porch. “I don’t think we can take another trip back across the river in one of those rickety old boats, although I certainly appreciated Berl rowing us.”

  John sat staring at the beads of sweat trickling down the outside of his ice tea glass.

  Mrs. Vance finally pulled up out of her chair, put the handkerchief back in her apron pocket, and began clearing the table of the tea and sandwiches and cookies she had hastily put together when they had come home.

  “As soon as I finish this, I’m gonna go get your room ready, John honey.”

  John was silent.

  She looked at the Judge and then at John. “You will be stayin’ on with us, won’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, but he didn’t look up at her.

  He took up his teaspoon and swirled the ice cubes around in the glass. “This is the first time I’ve had ice since Willie brought me a glass of lemonade on the Fourth Day—on the Fourth of July, I mean.”

  Mrs. Vance finished putting dishes in the sink. “I’m gonna go on up there right now and get everything ready. You must be dog-tired, both of you. Y’all might want to take a little nap before supper.” She disappeared into the hall. They could hear her footsteps on the stairs.

  “She’s right. I’m bushed,” the Judge said, “but it’s too late for a nap. What say we go in the den? I could use a pipe right now. I even have some fresh tobacco that Tuway—that I got a couple of weeks ago.” He got up. “You coming?”