Knee-Deep in Wonder

by April Reynolds

  “Hey, ma’am, what’s that noise?”

  His mother crouched low, her ear almost kissing her son’s mouth. “What’s that?”

  “That’s them cows, ain’t it, ma’am? All that noise?”

  Mrs. Hubbert pulled back from her son, her face tight. Just a child, a child, she thought, before she answered, “That’s the water,” and then she turned completely away from Chess, her body silently urging the mules to race faster than their sloshed clip-clip. And with both parents turned away, wildly spurred on by the roar of water, Chess dreamed again—his neighbors and their journey blinked away and, in their place, Lot fleeing with his two daughters and his wife, their arms thrown upward and bent at the elbow, the bangled wrists of the wicked waving with torture as angels fire down God’s wrath. Yes, sir, this sho look like it, cept it’s water this time. In the two wagons that seemed to float alongside his father’s, rapt bemused faces were all fixed on one point: the levee that lay beyond their sight but stood there nonetheless, like hope lifting her dress to beckon.

  Then something happened. The mules knew it first. Aware they were on the verge of being swept away, the mules quickened their pace, flanks taut. They neighed, bucking in their harnesses, shaking their bristled manes, frustrated by short haunches that could not meet their need. Their hooves felt the gash growing miles away. And Mrs. Hubbert, who saw their muscles gathering and tightening beneath their darkening gray hides, let out the breath she had been holding, believing that the mules were now bending to her will.

  Chess heard it next, or rather his dreaming heard before him—a long gathering and rolling that caused him to look away from his neighbors and stare back to where they had come from, almost chanting, Well, here it come; yes, sir, it sho is coming. He did not warn his parents that he heard what he did not hear—galloping water that would crash and drown them all within moments. Finally the grown people heard what made the mules lift their heads and snort within their rigging. But then it was too late. The rising Mississippi broke a private levee sixty miles away, leaving a slash in the man-made structure. Everything was swept by water. Chess, his parents, and the neighbors in the wagon could only look on as the other two wagons traveling with them drowned. Everyone in Mr. Hubbert’s wagon thought, This is the one. We just didn’t see it until now, and Mr. Paw we threw away. Later, Chess would only recall the sound—ahhh—and then the noise sliced away, like a spigot turned off.

  * * *

  So in the end Mr. Paw didn’t seem so foolish building that raft though, foolish or no, Mr. Paw was shot straight in the air, his raft torn to pieces from the force of the water, and that Greenville government levee everyone promised them would last broke first thing in the morning before breakfast. Afterward (this would be five months on) people closest to Natchez said they woke because of the sound, a deafening peal of thunder. The tenant farmers from the Sillers plantation would say they’d heard no such thing, just a long moan that couldn’t seem to stop itself. Even then the Sillers tenants hoped. Weren’t they close to the Vicksburg levee? No more than fifty miles, a hard day’s ride. If they could make good time, they’d get there in a day and a half. But hope had been misplaced, measured and folded, tucked away beneath the hats of men who still cursed that they were on their way to the levee in the first place. The Sillers tenants hoped the precious items nailed down to the floors of their homes were still dry. Yes, they hoped. Hoped about the wrong things.

  Three afternoons later, they made it to Vicksburg. Soaked through, less than half of them remained: four children, five men, six women, two chairs, a trunk’s worth of clothes, and a potbelly stove were all they had left. What once was a wagon had turned into a raft, since the sides had been torn off for paddles. And this should have been the end: before them the levee loomed like a fortress, a city in itself. They saw large vats of steaming food and, farther, crowds of people being helped up. Well, it’s all about done now, Mr. Hubbert thought, watching the white man who seemed to be in charge of it all come toward him.

  “You’ll just keep on coming, I reckon.” He stooped low, yelling. “I got enough, niggers.”

  Mr. Hubbert spoke up. “We from Sillers.”

  “That right?” General Cray Withers laughed with falsetto mirth, the three bands of fat on his chest, stomach, and hips moving quite distinctly from one another. “Well, now. We went by Sillers, couple weeks back, looking for niggers to work.” Withers watched their faces. “Know what? Sillers say he ain’t got no working niggers.” Squatting on his haunches, Withers spat casually into the dirt.

  “I don’t know nothing bout all that.” Mr. Hubbert bowed his head, taking off his hat.

  “Don’t say?” The general looked up and asked the man next to him, “Mr. Simmons, didn’t we ride past the Sillers place looking for niggers and Sillers say he ain’t got none?”

  “Sho did.”

  Withers put his fat hand on his knee, his voice half musing. “Well, now. Seem like me and Simmons got the same recollecting. You ain’t saying Mr. Sillers is a lie, is you?”

  “Naw, sir.” Mr. Hubbert rubbed his head softly with his hand. His voice carried just a thread of pleading.

  “Look like we got a problem. Both me and Simmons got the same recollect, and you and me both know Sillers ain’t no lie. You sho you from the Sillers plantation? Maybe that’s where the mistake is.”

  Mr. Hubbert looked at the general through lowered eyes, both he and the general aware that it was too late to take back what had been said. Mr. Hubbert mumbled, “We’s from Sillers.”

  “Maybe you is from Sillers, but you ain’t a bunch of niggers. Ya’ll niggers?” Loud laughter tore out of Mr. Withers’s mouth. Mr. Simmons picked it up and laughed too: throaty, deep. The noise attracted the attention of several men and they left their work, walking over to the Hubbert wagon, curious.

  “Yes, sir. We niggers.”

  “Yes, well, we got a problem indeed. Sillers told me right off that he ain’t got no working niggers. Maybe ya’ll a different set?”

  Watch out, white man, Mr. Hubbert thought, scared to jump into the opening Mr. Withers seemed to give them. Mr. Hubbert said nothing, waiting for Withers to finish his thought. But Mr. Withers had grown tired; sitting on his heels, his legs had fallen asleep. His last words were spoken without thought, merely sounds to fill up time while he thought of a tactful way to ask Mr. Simmons to help him up. He blinked slowly, almost yawning. Damn niggers got me crouched down here and I can’t get up, should let them float out there for a while; whoever heard of a white man bending to a bunch of niggers anyhow? he thought. And then he remembered the last words he had spoken aloud. With new eyes, he saw how the Sillers tenants stood bundled together on the raft. The smaller children gathered in a tight knot in the center of the raft, almost leaning into the soft arms of their mothers. They all seemed to swing with want. Sweat and rain collecting behind his knees, General Withers suddenly felt they should sing; he deserved that sort of solace. “Maybe you a bunch of singing niggers?” Withers looked at Mr. Hubbert, who caught his breath. “You hear me? I said maybe you a bunch of singing niggers.”

  Come all this way and now this, Mrs. Hubbert thought. She looked away from the levee, holding both her arms. “You niggers gone and sing!” Withers’s voice rang extraordinarily loud, booming over the roar of the water. The people standing, gently swaying before him, said nothing; a soft jostling passed through the group as they readjusted soaked blankets and the children in their arms. He took a fat hand and grabbed Mr. Simmons’s thigh, hauling himself up. The movement caused the three bands of fat to shudder. “You hear what I said? Y’all sing. Something nice.”

  Those from the Sillers plantation chewed heavy air between their teeth and watched farther down the levee a child being swung lightly up and away from a boat into the waiting arms of a man in khakis. All this way, and then a white man trying to turn church on us. They waited, turning away from the baby’s midair flight to safety, heads bowed as they contemplated the shape of their hands.
Nothing was revealed in their faces, no despair, just a weariness that suddenly swept through them all. But Chess couldn’t take his eyes from the child being thrown into waiting arms. A woman with a bonnet tied fast under her chin with a yellow string reached for the levee next. There was nothing to grab onto except the khaki man’s hand, and as she reached for him, her dress lifted, revealing one stocking rolled right above her knee. She almost leapt into his arms. By the time the last man on the boat stuck out his arm to be rescued from the water, Chess couldn’t bear it. What was the harm in singing if he got to get atop the levee? He’d seen the woman’s mouth move (hadn’t he?), saying, “Thank you, thank you,” her voice musical and light. She took the child in her hands, tucking his head beneath her chin, cooing (wasn’t she?) and the men surrounded her, smiling. Why, she’s singing, Chess thought. Something low and sweet, and her child gurgled in her arms. Maybe ma’am should be shamed, cause here we is still in the water; she sing all the time, sometimes for no money, he thought, his mouth already opening, shaping sounds with his tongue. I got to get atop this levee, if for nothing else but to see that baby up close. Desire pushed itself before dignity and hunkered at the base of his throat. Before he could stop himself, Chess sang. A high crackled sound quickly followed by a warbled baritone.

  “Look like your boy know what’s what,” Withers said, smiling. And then Chess saw every face around him clap shut. With his singing, Chess had slashed away their sense of decorum and decency. Don’t get into grown folks’ business; don’t speak unless spoke to; don’t be nasty; and, most importantly, don’t mess with the white folks were rules that southern Negro parents drummed into their children from birth. Chess had forgotten all his home training. The general extended his plump soft hand to Chess’s mother. “All right. We got to get you up here.” Afterward, with cold cornmeal coffee in everyone’s hand, Chess realized he had made a mistake. His neighbors’ silence fell around him; Mrs. Hubbert didn’t even slap away his gaping curiosity, and when he asked to go and find the pretty white lady who had stood cooing (singing?) with her child in her arms, no one took him by the chin and shook hard. Why bother? their closed faces said. If you don’t know enough by now to keep quiet when some white man trying to disgrace you and yours, you won’t ever know. Then he knew. His hum full of longing had shamed them all, a shame so sharp he could not be punished.

  The bunch of singing niggers who except for one did not sing were quickly put to work. The women and children fed the surviving livestock and helped prepare food for more than fifty thousand people, the smell of steaming vats of porridge seeping into their dreams. Mr. Hubbert and the four men in the wagon with him drove pilings, filled sandbags, and loaded supplies. Sixteen hours of work a day made a dollar, and that money moved from the county government to the Red Cross, never touched by a black hand. For twenty nights, Mr. Hubbert whispered his complaints to his wife. “Never should of left Sillers from the get-go. Colored folks ain’t been this bad off since Granny was alive. And Chess, he just don’t seem to know nothing. Caught him twice looking right up in the mouth of some white man. Still asking me bout that baby we saw tossed up to the levee. Gone get killed. They got guns on us. You hear me? Guns. Heard they shot some boy up near the top of the levee cause he was trying to leave to get back to his ma’am.” One humiliation after another, till Mrs. Hubbert hushed her husband with her hand, not telling him that, as sure as she was black, that house of theirs had washed away, leaving behind not a stick of kindling.

  For twenty days, Mrs. Hubbert’s calming hand over her husband’s mouth was enough. But then he saw the canned peaches. Coddled in their own syrup. The Red Cross delivered five hundred White Rose cans of peaches right before lunch. Guns slipped into holsters and rifles slid onto backs as people surrounded the shipment. Men brought out their pocket knives, spearing open the cans. White women licked their fingers, giddy from the pleasure. Standing next to Chess, Mr. Hubbert dropped the sandbag he was holding and walked over to where the men congregated, still wearing his hat. “A taste,” he said, his voice low but not hesitant. A man nearby heard him and stepped a pace away from the crate full of fruit.

  “Say what, now?” His face was pleasant, puzzled. Chess, farther away but close enough to see his father’s clenched hands, knew the man who had stepped away from the crowd; he was the last man from the boat.

  “I said, a taste.”

  “Of what?”

  “Them peaches.”

  “These here peaches ain’t for the colored.” The man smiled, and then turned away, but Mr. Hubbert wasn’t finished, his voice still quiet turned dogged.

  “Colored or no, I want a taste.” He noticed Mr. Hubbert’s clenched fist and his smile slipped. Not vanished, just slipped.

  “Like I said before, son, these here peaches just for us. They ain’t for the colored.” He spoke slowly, licking his lips after each word. “Hey, one of y’all hand me some of them peaches.” A female hand slid out of the crowd, holding an opened can. “See here?” The man’s smile pulled higher on one side of his face. “This here peach for me.” He dipped a hand and held a shiny slice of peach between two fingers. “Not for you.” The peach touched his lips and syrup smeared the corner of his mouth and slid down his chin. The smile tied itself back in place. Chess and Mr. Hubbert saw it rise, gleaming with corn syrup. And perhaps, if he hadn’t done that, Mr. Hubbert would have walked away, still longing for sweet, with his hat on his head. But the smile, and the syrup of the peach dripping off the man’s chin and catching itself on his belt buckle—it was too much. Thinking, breathing, not this one last thing, not this, Mr. Hubbert raised his clenched fist, swiped his thumb across that pretty man’s lips, and stuck the sweet refuse in his mouth.

  So they shot him. A poor man’s cousin next to lynching. But with the rain and mud, a hanging or the coaxing of fire to burn Mr. Hubbert at the stake would have taken more effort. They shot him, the barrel of a Colt revolver shoved into Mr. Hubbert’s chest like a fist. And Chess, who still felt a child’s love for the cooing white lady, watched her move out of the crowd that had quickly gathered to spit carefully into his father’s dead face.

  And now Chess galloped, dropping the sandbag he had filled. He slowed to a trot and then halted altogether, stopped and questioned twice on the way to his mother. “Where you running to, son?” He nodded dumbly, watching their mouths ask the same question—“Where you off to, boy?”—unsure of his answer, since his mind was elsewhere as he wiggled out of their hands through a maze of lean-tos and cloth sack tents. They wasn’t man and wife, like I was thinking. They family. Brother and sister. He recalled the woman’s face as she puckered, aiming. Her caution was undermined by her lack of strength and her spittle caught on her bottom lip, a string that she wiped away with the back of her hand. And then she smiled, the same tight grin Chess had seen on the man who taunted his father with the can of peaches. And behind the memory of the sister’s puckered mouth was his desire, unnamed and bubbling; he couldn’t dwell on it until he was well away from the Vicksburg levee; an instinct of self-preservation had kicked in and wouldn’t allow him to know what he desired most of all. He reached his mother, breathing harshly between his teeth, watching Mrs. Hubbert’s face as she wrung a long unwieldy cloth in her hands.

  “They done kilt him.” Their exchange, filled with grief and anger, sat between them.

  “What they done?”

  “Kilt him. Wit a gun, two times. That woman spit in his face.”

  “No…”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That woman you was loving?”

  “That same one.”

  “Then what?”

  “They throw him in the river. The old ma’ams say that the river was spreading like a floor. But that ain’t right. The river got a mouth. And the water open his mouth and swallow my daddy.”

  “Niggers and water ain’t never mixed. That’s a fact.”

  Chess went on running. Past his mother, their life, and off the levee. Yazoo City, Bastr
op, Minden, then Magnolia, flying through small towns, pausing only long enough to buy two-cent root beer, wincing as the soda burned his throat, cajoling people for the treat, since now though sixteen years old his child’s face and height made old childless women dig into their purses for loose change. His legs and thinking chanted together—Go, go, go—despite the fact that he was always offered a home—women with three children and no food to spare pleaded with him to take what they did not have—he felt forever destined to slip out of beds and hay-ticked pallets in the middle of the night (or early morning) to run again. Every overburdened woman fell prey to what they saw as innocence; Chess’s slouch and speech seemed to say that on his own he could very well be killed by a rabbit snare laid in the woods. But what they thought was guilelessness was fear, tight and tangible, and not fear of being hauled back to the levee. Chess feared his own wanting. Two small towns away, he was overwhelmed by the knowledge of what he felt when he saw his father’s thumb caress that white man’s lips, and now he was pursued by his own desire. Night after night, Chess dreamed of his father being swallowed by a Mississippi that, with the help of a fevered imagination, had become a watery tongue the color of a dirty tide. But behind that dream stood his want, shaped with envy—to know beneath his hand the touch of those small pink lips. As much as he wanted the touch, he also wanted the look that went with it: shame marked with longing. A tender smear across the lips that felt so familiar the recipient couldn’t conceal the desire that flared—never mind that the thumb belonged to a Negro, a man. That a lover’s touch could erupt such hurt, shame, and love all at once scared him into running, because he knew that if he stayed within arm’s reach of a white man’s mouth, he would do it—take his boyish thumb and rub it across a pair of raging red lips, lynching be damned.