How Sweet the Sound

by Amy Sorrells

  Mrs. Faye Gadsden and Mrs. Princella Harlan wish to extend their sincere regrets and apologies to everyone in attendance Saturday night and assure the town that such a

  ruckus will not occur again in the future. They also recommend no one allow the band Muddy and the Flaps to return for any Bay Spring event.

  Finally, as author of this column, I feel it is my civic duty to remind everyone there are rules in the South, and they are not made to be broken. When everyone follows them, life is sweet and refreshing as iced tea. If not, things get rotten as a red tide.

  Due to the embarrassment of this evening, I won’t be announcing the names of the eighth-grade debutantes nor the queen of the cotillion in this week’s column as has been the usual tradition. Instead, I will honor them individually next week.

  MAY 1980

  Lafimen pa janm leve san dife.

  “Smoke never rises without fire.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Comfort

  Spring runs into the start of summer without me hardly noticing, except for the seven tornadoes that touch down within five days of each other this first week of May. They nearly demolish the towns of Southside, Lineville, Louisville, Clayton, Theodore, Gulf Shores, and Hubbard’s Landing, barely missing our orchards.

  As if Alabama hadn’t suffer enough after Hurricane Frederic.

  Makes me wonder what kind of a summer we’re in for, storms coming at us faster than we can recover. People say the connection between weather and people is a myth, that the bone-aching worry that comes ahead of time when the sky is bright and clear is coincidence when the storm rolls in. But I wonder anyway. I have an achy feeling that won’t go away.

  A bruised reed I will not break.

  I wish I could believe You, Abba.

  A smoldering wick I will not snuff out.

  All I am is ashes.

  I will bring justice.

  How I wish You would.

  I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and make you to be a light to others who walk your path.

  How? Help me see how.

  I know and see what has taken place. I will make you new.

  Let me go down to the sea again, to hear the call of Your ocean of grace. To bend my weary body to You. To sing like I did when I was younger. To shout from the dunes Your goodness. Let me live to see the day I can do all these things. I can’t take another storm.

  You can’t take another storm. You’re right. But I can.

  Even when I leave my home, I feel the arrows pointing at me, waiting to take another shot. Tornadoes on the horizon waiting to flatten me.

  These things are part of a battle, child. A battle bigger than you.

  Then please fight for me.

  My child, I’ve already won.

  Pousyè pa leve san van.

  “Dust does not lift without wind.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Anniston

  School dragged on when it got close to summer. Dragged on even worse ever since I faced people with my black eye after the cotillion back in March. I pressed myself as close to the walls as I could, passing clumps of students and avoiding everyone’s eyes on the way to my locker. Jed would be there, waiting, so he could walk me to my first-period English class, something he’d been doing since the dance.

  So much happened to him he didn’t ask for—a crooked eye and a catawampus hip, never knowing his real parents, more foster parents than he could count. If any of it bothered him, he never let on. Didn’t even make him angry. I think I felt madder than him about how the kids at school treated him, the way they looked the other direction when he tried to say hello or quick turned down a hall if they saw him coming or stared at their lunch trays when he searched for a table. Sure, he’d been the new kid this year, and new kids always had it rough, especially in a small town like Bay Spring, and a limp and a crooked eye didn’t help.

  Lucky for both of us, no one ever sat at the table by the teachers’ aides, so we’d claimed it as our own. I considered what a relief it’d been not to sit with the other girls in my class at lunch anymore. All they talked about was boys and hair and clothes, how their mamas took them all the way to the fancy New Orleans boutiques to find their cotillion dresses. Nikki Hatch talked about getting to second base with Grady Bingham. Melinda Sue O’Malley said Tommy Sharp tried to get to third. And Cara Lynn Harris complained how Eddie Prince wouldn’t even hold her hand. But as proud as they were of their so-called boyfriends, all those girls turned beet red and couldn’t say a word to save their lives through their jittering teeth whenever the boys came around. How that was any fun at all was beyond me.

  Me and Jed weren’t like that.

  And we certainly weren’t afraid of each other.

  At first, none of the girls who tolerated me sitting with them over the years noticed or cared that I didn’t sit with them anymore. I wasn’t exactly a topic of discussion. But of course, eventually, Sally Roberts had something to say about it. Her and her big mouth.

  A few weeks after the dance, I was stepping away from the cafeteria cashier and nearly choked on a big whiff of her Love’s Baby Soft. She headed to her usual table, and I headed toward Jed, who was saving me a seat across the lunchroom.

  “Where you goin’, Anniston?”

  “Over here. I’ll see ya later.”

  “Is he your boyfriend now? How embarrassing,” Sally said, scrunching up her nose.

  “He’s my friend, and he’s not embarrassing,” I’d said, continuing to walk toward Jed, whose smile turned to a frown because he heard every word Sally said.

  “Fine, then. Sit with your weirdo friend. But don’t expect to sit at our table anymore.” Sally walked off in a huff, shaking her little skirt-covered hiney like she was the coolest thing since jelly shoes.

  “Sorry about that.” I plopped down in the chair next to Jed. “She’s a real jerk.”

  “She’s afraid. And I’m used to people being afraid of me.” He bit into his cheeseburger like hardly anything happened.

  “Well, they shouldn’t be.”

  Ever since then, it’d been me and Jed, and Jed and me.

  “Happy birthday, Anni.” Jed was waiting at my locker, and he handed me the prettiest purple bouquet of lemon beebalm tied up with twine I’d ever seen. And though I knew he’d found them along a roadside, he found them for me, just the same.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Mrs. Nowlan’s bulletin board.” He grinned, and I melted.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He pulled my locker door closer to hide us, leaned over, and kissed me on my cheek.

  This morning, Jed and I had class together. The school held an annual poetry day each May, when every freshman English class paired up with an eighth-grade English class, supposedly to help the eighth graders transition to high school next year. We figured it was an excuse for half of the teachers to sit in the lounge and smoke, since there wasn’t really a transition to speak of. We stayed in the same building with the same teachers and same kids we’d known since grade school. Jed’s class combined with mine, and I sat next to him as Mrs. Nowlan began.

  “William Carlos Williams said a poem ‘must be real, not realism, but reality itself.’ What do you think this means?”

  “It speaks about pain,” I blurted.

  Jed looked up quick from the notebook page he was filling with graffiti sketches of 3-D arrows and stars, peace symbols, and all kinds of robots and superheroes punching their way into space as they flew around bubble letters that spelled out freedom. I looked closer and saw one with my name in the middle—Anni—surrounded by roses and songbirds. Heat like electricity shot straight through to my toes.

  “Interesting response, Anniston. What do you mean?”

  “What good is poetry … any words, really … unless
they open us up to what’s going on inside a person?”

  “Indeed. But how does this apply to ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’? Sixteen words. Just sixteen. And yet these sixteen words by William Carlos Williams represent, for many, poetic genius.”

  “Everything is so bright—the red wheelbarrow, the glaze of the rain, the white chickens,” Cara Lynn said, a little too loud. She was always trying to be the teacher’s pet.

  “Yes. He uses few words to create striking images. Good. Other thoughts?” Mrs. Nowlan scanned the room.

  “Maybe the red means blood running out of a broken heart. The rain tries to harden it but washes it clean, so clean that even white chickens aren’t afraid of it anymore.” Jed leaned back in his seat, shoved his pencil over his ear, and crossed his arms behind his head.

  Mrs. Nowlan didn’t quite know what to say to that. My face flushed hot. I wondered if Princella’s pain would wash away from her and our family, and if maybe there was a chance we could be clean and free like those chickens someday.

  “Interesting perspective, Mr. Manon. Anyone else?”

  “Maybe it is what it is. A wheelbarrow and chickens, like the man wrote. Why does everything have to be read into?” Grady chomped on his gum a little too loud, then winked at Nikki across the room. Nikki turned about the same shade as I imagined that red wheelbarrow.

  “Thank you, Grady. Let’s move on.”

  We spent the rest of the class talking about meter and rhyme and didn’t get into the meaning of much else. But Mrs. Nowlan did give us time to write our own versions of “The Red Wheelbarrow” using the same stress and pattern as Williams. I wrote mine for Comfort:

  so much depends

  upon

  a patch of

  asters

  pushing through

  kudzu

  beneath the oak’s

  shadow

  “Where did that brilliance come from, Manon?” Grady punched him in the arm like he chewed his gum—a little too hard—once the bell’d rung, and we’d all shouldered our way into the hall.

  “Lay off, Grady.” Jed kept close to my right side.

  “No, really, Manon. You’re some kind of geeeee-nius.”

  “Whatever.”

  Grady yanked on Jed’s shoulder, causing him to drop his books. “Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.”

  Jed sighed. “What’dya want, Grady? Wanna pick on me because it’ll make you feel bigger? Better? Stronger? Because it’ll impress Nikki over there?”

  Nikki pulled her locker door open and peered out from behind it.

  “Jed, leave it be.” I’d seen Grady pick fights before, and they never ended pretty.

  “You’re not welcome here, Manon. You’re trash. Foster trash. And we don’t like trash filling our halls like dirty rats. You need to go back to your trailer and find a new place to live. That’s all.”

  “Why don’t you shut up, Grady?” My voice sounded like I was a squeaky, scared little mouse.

  “And you, trash lover.” He stuck a finger in my shoulder. “You make it worse. Bringing him to the dance and ruining it for all of us. Good thing someone in your family set you straight.”

  Before I could say anything, Jed’s fist came flying at his face.

  Grady was on the floor with his hands over his nose, full of blood.

  Mrs. Nowlan ran out of the room. “What’s going on here? Oh, my goodness, someone get Mr. Morrison—get anyone—quick!”

  Lè w’ap neye, ou kenbe branch ou jwenn.

  “When you are drowning, you hang on to the branch you reach.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Anniston

  It was a well-known fact that Grady Bingham regularly beat up new kids, so Mr. Morrison suspended Grady. Since it was Jed’s first offense, Mr. Morrison sent him home, along with me, so we could “blow off steam.” Mama drove us since Mrs. Devine was the only attendant that day at the Tom Thumb gas station where she worked.

  “He was only sticking up for me, Mama,” I said as we piled into her car.

  “I know, honey. I’m not mad.”

  “You’re not?”

  “The way I see it, more folks need to be stood up for around here. Look at it this way, you get half the day off for your birthday.” She grinned at us from the rearview mirror.

  “Then would you care if we hung out a little while?” I asked. Jed mentioned studying at the library for the rest of his now-long afternoon.

  “What’d you two have in mind?”

  “You could drop us at the library, ma’am.”

  “Well, Mr. Morrison might not approve. But sure. I’ll have Ernestine pick you up in a couple hours. We’ve got cake and your favorite dinner for you to get home to tonight. Sound good?”

  “Thanks, Mama.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Harlan, ma’am.”

  We waited on the library steps until Mama drove away, but Jed grabbed my arm when I started for the doors.

  “Wait. There’s something I want to show you.”

  “But I told Mama—”

  “Won’t take long. We’ll come back here and study in plenty of time for Ernestine. C’mon.” He bounded down the steps and rounded the corner, and good night if he wasn’t taking me to the trailer park.

  The trailer park wasn’t big. Only a dozen or so trailers, most of ’em set up on concrete blocks. Some folks kept theirs up real nice with flower beds and oyster-shell paths trimmed neat and gingham curtains fluttering in the breeze. The number forty-eight was stuck to the front door of what I knew to be Jed’s trailer from the same butterscotch-yellow-and-white truck parked there that Mrs. Devine took me home in after the cotillion. Rust stains ran down the faded white door from the screws holding the numbers in place. Jed’s foster parents didn’t keep their trailer up as nice and wasn’t a flower bed in sight, but maybe gardening wasn’t their gifting.

  “Are they home?”

  “Nah. Wouldn’t bring you here if they were. Hettie’s workin’, and John’s down in New Orleans gambling. They saved up all my money for him to go.”

  “What are we doing here, then?” I wasn’t so sure Mama’d approve of me being alone in a house with a boy. Even Jed.

  “Getting my smokes, for one thing.” The outside door creaked and rattled like it might fall off when he opened it, and the inside one didn’t sound much better. Smelled sour inside, like food left out too long and smoke and dirty socks all mixed up together. Hardly any light shone through the dingy curtains, which were shut tight and didn’t look like they were opened much, if ever. I rubbed my arms, feeling all of a sudden wary of the place.

  “I’ll stay out here.” I sat on the vinyl couch, covered in a horrid flower pattern, attached to the wall by the kitchen.

  “Suit yourself. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into a room at the end of the trailer, which must’ve been his bedroom, ’cause he came back with a fishbowl. White fish, almost see-through, flittered around the water, pausing to nibble at each other or the pebbles at the bottom. “Wanted to show you these as long as you’re here.”

  “What are they?”

  “Blind cave fish. Found ’em up north in Key Cave. They got blind cave crayfish and endangered gray bats up there too. They don’t need eyes, so they don’t have eyes. Or maybe God made ’em that way from the start.”

  “Why are they clear like that?”

  “Don’t need the sort of skin and scales that protect ’em from light. Critters like them are called stygobites. They can’t live outside of caves, which is why I keep ’em in the back of my closet where it’s dark all the time.”

  “What are we called, then?”

  “Humans.” He laughed and gently poked my nose with his finger. “There are some animals, like spiders and salamanders, that can live in and out of caves both. They’re called stygophiles.”


  “How’d you learn all this stuff?”

  “On my own. At the library. Same as with my rocks.”

  From the direction of his room, a bird started chirping, then singing, really singing. Prettiest bird song I ever heard. “Is that the canary? The one we found that day?”

  “Yep. Feeling better, ain’t he?” Jed took the fish back to his room and brought the canary out in a small cage. Newspapers were spread across the bottom. Little swings and rings and ropes swayed across the middle for the bird to play on.

  “How’d you know it’s a he?”

  “Wasn’t sure at first. Then, after he ate enough and got to feeling better, he sang. Only boy canaries sing.”

  He put the bird back in his room and came back, a pack of cigarettes tucked in the rolled-up sleeve of his T-shirt. He ushered me out the door and winked at me as he lit one up. “Now let’s go to the library.”

  I found a couple of novels to read, and by the time I came back to our table, Jed was back with a stack of his own on animals, geology, and such.

  “It’s not fair, the way you have to live, no mama or daddy and giving all your money to those folks.”

  “It’s not all bad. They don’t even notice my animals.” He kicked his feet up on the table and dug into one of his books.

  It occurred to me then that maybe he wasn’t so unlucky. He’d learned how to be happy where he was, like a salamander, half in this world and half in a world of his own. Maybe someday I could learn to do the same.

  The windows were open wide when Ernestine and I got home. As I grabbed a co-cola from the fridge, I heard singing outside the doors that led from the kitchen to the rose garden and the edges of the hills beyond, which were full of pecan trees tinged with the green of early summer leaves. Quiet, so she wouldn’t see me, I listened to Princella as she pruned back her roses.