“But you still got bills. Are you renters?”
“Oh, the rent,” Chet said, his mouth drooping.
“Y’all are gonna have to grow up fast. No more loafing on the porch with the dogs. But, I could use a hand with deliveries in the early morning—and I mean early, well before sunup. Job pays twenty cents a day and breakfast at Dora’s when we’re done. You can still walk to school before it starts. You up for it, Jay?”
My oldest brother said to Chet, “You can wake in time to get Bud up and do the chores?”
Chet said, “So you’ll be the commandant and I’ll be the general?” When Jay said yes, Chet grinned at me.
“What’s my new rank?” I hoped to be a lieutenant like Nat. Or even a captain, a colonel—
Jay scratched his fingernail against the sleeve covering my shoulder, tracing three teepees, one over the other. “You’re a sergeant now.”
“Same as Lonnie?”
“Lonnie’s a master sergeant,” Chet said, “He still ranks above you.”
I said, “I gotta outrank somebody.”
“Darlene,” Chet said. “And the dogs and cats and all.”
Jerry asked, “What’s your mama’s rank?”
Jay said, “She’s the cook, I guess.”
“Cook’s pretty important to a outfit. Oughta have a rank.” Jerry collected our bottles for the deposit. When he returned, he said, “I’d make her a general alongside Chet anyway.”
Chet looked Jerry over and leaned against the van, arms folded. “Why are you doing all this, Mr. Flynn?”
Jerry said, “I grew up without any folks at all, had to scrape all the way, so I know what y’all are up against. I figure when you’re buried to your armpits, least I can do is give you a shovel.” He placed his thick-fingered hand on my shoulder. “Also ’cause this new sergeant of yours did the bravest thing I ever saw anybody do, man or boy.”
*
A week after the shooting, Mama called for me when I came home from school. She still lay in bed, her hair a regular rat’s nest. Food stained the front of the housedress she’d worn for days. Near her pillow, a wan glow seeped through the old bullet hole Papa had shot through the wall. It looked like a blind eye. She said, “The county’s lawyer came by, wanting me to testify. You too.”
“In court and all?”
“Stop your shaking. I told ’im no. They can hang the sonofabitch without us. I won’t sit there while they tell everybody about him two-timing me, about a whole ‘nother family. Hell, maybe they found others he’s got squirreled away…Anyway, we ain’t gonna suffer one more humiliation for his pleasure.”
“Is he really gonna get hanged?”
“Sorry, no he ain’t. If he killed me like he wanted, then maybe.” She rubbed her side while her jaw quivered. After a few hard swallows, she muttered, “I still can’t believe he shot me. I thought we’d have it out like usual and he’d come home again, in a day or two anyway.”
“What if you didn’t grab his gun, Mama?”
She sat upright and put her small-boned feet on the floor. When she stood, she suddenly looked strong again. And angry. “Are you saying it’s my fault? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, ma’am.” I backed toward the door.
“That’s why I don’t want you to testify. You kept his secrets; you’d take his side against me. What else do you know? Why do you wanna hurt me?”
Tears burned my eyes as I blurted out, “I saved you.”
“He wasn’t gonna shoot. He only pulled the trigger ’cause you jerked his arm. You almost got me killed is what you did.”
I rocked in place, hands over my ears to block out her ranting. I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t see how her mouth twisted as she yelled at me. Mama shoved me against the wall and held me there.
“You’ve ruined us,” she shouted. “Don’t you understand that? How are we gonna survive on nuthin?”
I cried, shoulders pinned, proud of myself before but now so confused. “Jay’s got him a job—”
“Twenty cents a day. Rent is five dollars a month, due in two weeks.” She shook me. “I counted on Mance for everything.”
“He woulda killed you.”
“Then I’d be free of all this: your bottomless stomachs, the damn rent.”
Darlene said from the doorway, “Mama, you’ll hurt him. Let go!” After our mother had stepped back, Darlene continued, her voice getting shakier, “You said you had your eyes open. You said you had a plan.”
“I’m not ready. All I got are prospects; I need time.” Her face reddened and she began to cry as well. “Your father left me with zip; I don’t know where his money is.” Clutching her wounded side, she staggered back to the bed and sat on the edge. Mama’s shoulders quivered as she sobbed, yelling at us, “Without more of your help, I can’t afford a damned thing.”
*
Papa’s trial ended before we knew it had begun. Aunt Maxine and Uncle Jake had gone down to the courthouse in Bainbridge, “Just to make sure he really was going away,” my uncle said on Thursday night, sharing supper at our kitchen table. Papa had waived his right to a jury trial, throwing himself on the mercy of Judge McCrory. The judge gave him five years at the upstate penitentiary. Uncle Jake reported that before the police led my father away, the judge said, “Hey, Mance, who’s gonna deal with the Ashers until you’re back?”
“Reva,” Aunt Maxine said, “five years don’t seem long enough.”
“It’s forever if you’re broke.”
Mama’s sister glanced at me and my siblings before asking, “You gonna file papers?”
“Ha! If Mance thinks he’s shed of me, he’s got another thing coming. I’ll get his money, every dime. Just you wait.”
After our company left, we listened to Mama’s plan for making enough money to survive. As she washed dishes, she said, “Nat can drive the truck. Two of you go down to Florida with him and get the usual haul.” The police had given Mama the key to Papa’s Ford as well as the gun that had almost killed her. Somehow, the money he usually carried had vanished; the police had said his pockets were empty. Rather than smashing the gun or at least selling it, Mama kept the snub-nosed Colt under her pillow.
Jay scratched his thumbnail along a splinter of wood, lifting it out of the table like raising the dead. “But Papa would pay them Ashers when he took delivery. They ain’t gonna give their whiskey to us on credit.”
“They’d sooner shoot us,” Chet said.
She plunked the last plate in the water, swiped her hand around it, and set it in the wooden drain-rack. Wiping her hands on her apron, she said, “Maybe I should go. Throw myself on their mercy like your papa did in court.”
“I don’t know, Mama,” Jay said. “They’re real rough cobs. Better I should quit school to work for Mr. Flynn and get a day-job.”
“You ready to be the man of the house?”
Jay shrugged, looking at the tabletop instead of Mama. I’d never seen him scared before.
Chet said, “Me and Bud could hire out after school.”
“If it’ll help,” I added.
“‘Course it will.” Mama sat at her usual place. The head of the table remained Papa’s, even in his absence. I wondered if I’d ever see her spot as the command post.
Darlene continued to stare at Jay, twisting her fingers. Finally, she said, “How can I help?”
*
Jay decided to make Friday his last day of school; he quit with a fourth-grade education. But first, well before dawn, he rolled out of bed and got dressed so he could walk to Hardscrabble Road and meet Jerry’s bread truck. Chet didn’t stir, but I came awake at the one yawn my oldest brother allowed himself as he headed out the front door.
Waking when Jay left caused me to fall into a stupor at school. I’d had trouble concentrating in class since my birthday-trip to Bainbridge; Mama’s shooting had only made it harder to stay focused. Now, I couldn’t shake off sleep. Miss Wingate—soon to be Mrs. Gladney—tried to keep me alert, calling on
me often, but all I wanted to do was curl up on her long desk and turn the stacks of paper into a pillow.
Worse, I didn’t even have a dinner: Mama had decided on Thursday night that we needed to hoard our food. She must’ve gone to see Mr. Gladney because he appeared before noon and announced, “Roger MacLeod has been added to the list for free dinners.” He asked Miss Wingate to make sure I reported to the front office each day for my handout. The other kids stared at me. Even the ones dressed as shabbily as me had some kind of meal they’d brought from home. Many of them mouthed a single word: “Poor.”
On the way to the office at dinnertime, Miss Wingate said, “I’ll talk to my father about store credits for your family. Just until you get back on your feet.” I thanked her, ears burning with shame, and she said, “You look like you could lay down right here and sleep for a hundred years.”
I said, “Miss Wingate, you should see my brother Jay.”
He leaned against a wall outside the front office, eyes closed. Of course, he and Chet and Darlene were also on the “pity list,” as a classmate told me it was called. Darlene sat in the one available chair, staring straight ahead, as a half-dozen boys with dirty necks and torn, ragged clothes milled around. Chet had not come for the free food.
Miss Wingate didn’t know my siblings. Jay came awake, and, while I made introductions, the front door was opened by a Negro man in a dark suit who glanced in and murmured in a surprised voice, “Miss Valerie.”
“Hello, Brooks…morning, Lucy.” The maid came through the door bearing a covered tray with my teacher’s meal. Everyone watched her walk past and go down the hall, leaving a scent of warm roast beef that mingled with Miss Wingate’s flowery perfume. Brooks closed the door, and Miss Wingate said, “I could stay.”
I couldn’t bear the embarrassment any longer, so I said, “No, ma’am. Thank you.”
“Well, Bud, um, see you in class. Good to meet y’all.” She waved to my brother and sister and left us.
In a moment, Brooks opened the front door again, this time for Mabel Boggs, a hatchet-faced spinster who ran the county charities. Papa had once pointed her out to me. Even adults called her Old Lady Boggs. She lugged a stained drawstring sack in one hand while the other hoisted a clipboard. The ragged boys made a half-circle before her, and she called their names, checking them off as she passed each one a tiny parcel wrapped in greasy brown paper. The boys clutched the handouts and bolted outside.
Old Lady Boggs stared at us and then glanced down at her clipboard. The school secretary came out of the front office and said, “The new ones, they’re the children I telephoned you about this morning.”
“I jotted ’em down here, but you said four.”
The secretary looked us over and frowned. Her head bobbed as she counted me, Jay, and Darlene twice. Jay said, “Chet didn’t come. We can take him something.”
“The hell you can,” Old Lady Boggs said. “If he’s too shiftless to show up, he ain’t hungry enough to eat.” She slashed the pencil across her page and then summoned each of us in turn. I was last and accepted the slick package she thrust at me. Before she yanked the drawstring bundle closed, I saw Chet’s meal, three small fritters, scattered in the bottom.
Each of us got the same thing: cornmeal mush fried into crispy disks. Darlene tasted one with her front teeth, and the secretary said, “Outside. This ain’t a cafeteria.”
So we followed Old Lady Boggs out of the school. While she crossed to a battered gray Plymouth sedan, we walked alongside the building, heading for the playground. The “doughboys” were days old and had no seasoning. Still, I finished mine in no time; Darlene had eaten hers even faster.
Jay said, “Jerry fed me good at Dora’s. I’ll see if General Blunt Stump wants these.” He wandered the sandlot in search of Chet, and Darlene went to the other side of the hog-wire fence. She stood alone until Cecilia and one other girl joined her; all of her other friends stayed away.
When we got home from school, Darlene wouldn’t speak to Mama. She went to her room and stayed there until supper, which was one hardboiled egg apiece and doughboys. At least Mama seasoned hers. Instead of the regular cuss-fights and violent threats we used to endure, now we ate in silence. But nobody got hit.
After Mama finished eating, she told Jay, “I talked to the foreman at Ramsey Lumber outside of Colquitt. They could use a boy to sweep up and do odd jobs for fifteen cents an hour. You’re to start on Monday.”
“Should I tell Jerry I’m quitting the bread run?”
“Well, son, every little bit is gonna help. Besides, Jerry Flynn can drop you there. I’ll come fetch you.”
Jay stifled a yawn as he nodded.
Mama turned to Chet. “Come Monday, get off the bus at Mr. Blankenship’s place and do what his foreman tells you. He’ll pay you a quarter for four hours’ work.” Blankenship Farm was really a plantation; it always took first place for growing the most peanuts and sugar cane in South Georgia and ran a close second with other produce. Chet would have to walk an hour to get home unless he hitchhiked.
He said, “After school only?”
“You and your brothers are all working there on Saturdays if you’re needed.” Mama pointed to me and said, “You’re going to Mr. Turner’s after school.”
I gave her a gap-toothed grin and lisped, “Cecilia’s place?”
“Those teeth ain’t come in yet? Aye God, they’re as slow as Christmas. Now mind you don’t remark on her father’s hand.”
Cecilia’s father had been injured a few years before while grinding sugarcane. He’d slipped while jamming a thick stalk between the steel rollers and got drawn into the machinery. The rollers crushed his left hand before the gears could be reversed. Papa had hired us out to help at the mill, so we watched as workers hustled Mr. Turner into a jalopy and drove off. We also got to help clean the blood and gristle from the rollers and the trough beneath it that was slick with pink-tinged cane juice and crawled with yellow jackets.
After the accident, Mr. Turner qualified for government programs that allowed him to buy his own farm. Cecilia once told me that the hospital doctor gave her father the flattened hand as a keepsake. Mr. Turner had displayed his souvenir in a fruit jar of alcohol until somebody stole it.
I told Mama that I’d behave, while imagining the Turners’ wide front porch, drinking lemonade and rocking in a swing with Cecilia. My birthmark tingled where she’d kissed it.
Darlene asked, “What can I do, Mama?”
“I’m starting a list of promising boys, honey. Your job is to do better than I did.”
CHAPTER 17
I missed a day of work in November. A classmate in the aisle beside me had been coughing all week and had looked so pale and feverish that Miss Wingate had dismissed him early on Friday; she’d had her chauffer, Brooks, drive him home. By that afternoon I’d started coughing as well and skipped supper, complaining that my throat hurt. Actually, I had no appetite—the first time that had ever happened. Before sunup on Saturday morning, Chet kicked me awake, saying, “Jeez, Bud, you peed the bed!”
A bout of night sweats had soaked the sheets and mattress. Jay complained that my coughing had kept him awake anyway. Chet went out to sleep on the back porch and my oldest brother made a pallet on the floor with a quilt I’d dampened. I had the bed to myself but my cough took on a loose, wet feel, like blunt knives scraping away my insides.
Mama felt my forehead in the morning. She shook her head and said, “I’ll get your brothers to fill the big wash basin before they go off to Mr. Blankenship’s. A cold soak might break that fever.” She said that she’d make my excuses to the foreman before taking Darlene into Bainbridge to shop for courting clothes. After they’d all gone, I shivered in the galvanized basin with my hot forehead pressed against the goose bumps on my knees. For hours I sat there, doubled up and coughing into my submerged lap.
I lay on the mattress all afternoon, hot and then cold and burning once more. My shirt and overalls clung to me, and fever drea
ms plagued my sleep. I dreamed that Papa had my family all lay facedown on the porch. He said, “Bye-bye, baby,” as he pointed his Colt. Instead of shooting, though, a ragged hole opened under each of us and we fell through. The rest of my family disappeared, but I landed beside the graveyard I’d made for my teeth. The wounded rabbit had dug them up and was eating the tiny bones like kernels of corn. When I reached out, the rabbit fur turned to piled stones. I was clutching the grave marker of Eliza Jean. Daylight came through the hole in the porch above, and Uncle Stan reached down to me. In his soft voice, he said, “Unh-uh. Let her sleep.”
My brothers came in an hour before dusk. During my dreams, I’d kicked off the top sheet. I pulled it up to my chin as my teeth chattered. Jay said, “How’s the patient?”
I hacked into my lumpy down pillow before replying, “Fair to middling.”
“You cough any harder and feathers’ll blow out the other side. Where’s Mama?”
I didn’t hear any sounds coming from the kitchen. “She ain’t back yet?”
Chet said, “Truck’s still gone. You up for some hunting?”
“I ain’t hungry. I’ll tell ’er where y’all went.” I hadn’t eaten anything all day, and I still couldn’t imagine wanting food.
Jay peered at me and stepped away. “You reckon you got the consumption?”
A chill ripped through me like a whip cracking. I recalled the burned-up mattresses and bedding at the dump. Sometimes landlords evicted tenant families who’d taken sick; other houses were torched after TB had killed everybody. Because of me, my whole family could become homeless or dead.
I hoped they’d say something to cheer me, but my brothers backed onto the front porch. Chet said, “Think we might camp out tonight. We ain’t done that in a coon’s age.”
Jay waved at me. “We’ll bring you back something good, Bud. Maybe some red squirrel? See you tomorrow.” He and Chet went all the way around the house and came into the kitchen to get the rifle and cooking gear.
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