Body and Bread

by Nan Cuba

  “Uh, Dad?” I interrupted, unable to stop myself. “You mean it was, ah, a lynching?” I couldn’t think about my grandfather and the dead body yet.

  “Times were different then, Sarah.”

  “But what happened to the skin and hair and all?” Hugh asked, his face puckered as the one he imagined.

  “I know—” my father started.

  “No, excuse me,” I said, nervous but determined. “Could you tell us anything else about it, the lynching, I mean?” I’d heard about such things, but the men were always black and the hangings happened around the Civil War, on plantations. Not in Nugent with my grandfather in the crowd.

  “I don’t know anything, Sarah. I told you, it happened a long time ago.”

  “But Granddaddy was there?” I wondered if he’d helped slip the rope around the Mexican man’s neck. “What did he say happened? Did he know anyone who did it?” I was getting scared.

  My father sat again. He rolled his chair over to my stool in the corner, pulling Hugh with him. “Sarah, you’re right to be upset. What happened was terrible.” He looked into each of our faces. “A man was murdered by a mob. True, he probably committed a crime, but that shouldn’t matter. He didn’t get a trial, so we’ll never know.”

  Hugh bounced the foot skeleton on my lap.

  “Stop!” I shouted.

  He leaned back, stricken.

  My father set the foot beside him in his chair. “The important thing,” he said, “is that Granddaddy didn’t have anything to do with the hanging. I don’t know who did, although I’m sure there must be some kind of record.” He turned to me. “If you’re interested, you might look that up. In fact, I hope you will, because you won’t find your grandfather’s name there.”

  “But I don’t know how.” I wouldn’t be placated. I pictured my grandfather describing Otis as “a good and faithful servant.” I wondered if Otis knew how the man from Juarez had died.

  “Where do you think you might find such a record?”

  “I don’t know…the library is the only place I can think of.”

  “Good. When you get to the library, where will you go?”

  “Old newspapers?” My father always seemed to be testing. Why couldn’t he just take me to the library himself?

  “Sarah, you can do this; you don’t need anyone’s help. As I recall, the hanging took place during the summer of 1915. That’s all you’ll need to get started.”

  Buoyed by his rare expression of confidence, I pledged to go to the library as soon as possible. I didn’t know what I’d do if I recognized any of the names, and I prayed he’d be right about Granddaddy. “But he took the dead body?” I was still innocent enough to hope that my grandfather had deserved a professional claim on someone’s son, brother, friend, regardless of whether the man was guilty. Otherwise, how could my father keep the bones in our house, encouraging us to touch them?

  “I know it’s hard for you to understand,” he said, rolling to his desk. He began placing the bones back into the kettle as Hugh joined him, “But he was used in Granddaddy’s research.” He glanced at me, cleared his throat, coughed. “Hugh, you’ll learn more about anatomy when you’re in medical school.”

  Suddenly I had to know why he didn’t expect me to be a doctor like my brothers. “Can Hugh and I go with you to your lab sometime?” I walked toward him.

  “Mama might have something to say about that,” he said.

  Before I could answer, bones clacked, rolling. Hugh leaned over the kettle, reaching in.

  “Hey, be careful.” My father used both hands, checking. He stacked the bones in their usual order.

  “Grandaddy’s what kind of doctor?” Hugh said, resting his hand on my father’s shoulder.

  “Internist. He operates on the organs.” My father sat back, looking at Hugh.

  “Is he, I mean, he’s good isn’t he?”

  “Son, your grandfather is the best doctor I know. Do you realize what he’s accomplished, the number of people he’s helped?”

  Hugh shook his head, no, his face an empty plate.

  I thought about my father meeting with hospital residents every morning, about his patients’ gifts and letters, about his trips to conferences, his work with Boy Scouts, PTA, and his Sunday class. Had my grandfather done more than that?

  “Great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities, but to make them.” He wiped his jaw. “Come closer, Sarah. I want to tell you both something.”

  We huddled. “About Granddaddy?” Hugh asked.

  “Once, when I was a few years older than you, he decided a sore on his lip was cancerous, so you know what he did? He stood in front of a mirror and cut it off. Just like that. ‘Somebody had to get it out of there,’ he said. I remember the blood but not one complaint. Then he had me sew it up.”

  “Were you scared?” Hugh chewed his thumbnail until my father pulled his hand away from his face.

  “Yes, very.” He sounded out of breath. “But my job was to do what my father expected. He needed me, and it was an honor to help, even though it was hard.” He patted Hugh. “Let men laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty. You have time and eternity to rejoice in.”

  Sam appeared, standing sideways in the doorway, gazing at the far windows. He tongued a wad of gum while he held out his hand. “Ready, Hughie?” he said. Kurt was still at the coast for spring break, but Sam had arrived last night after spending his holidays in Laredo. As usual, I’d barely seen him. “We got to go, guy. Cyril and Terezie will be waiting.”

  Hugh jumped up, his face a commercial for little-brotherhood. “Where are you off to?” My father scowled at Sam, and I wondered how two people who looked alike could stay so mad at each other.

  Sam’s chewing stopped. “Hugh says he wants to look for arrowheads, is all. I said I’d take him.”

  “That’s right, Daddy,” Hugh said. “Sam found a midden. We’re gonna look for a Clovis point.” He leaned sideways.

  “A midden?” my father said, catching Hugh’s shoulder.

  “You know, a trash mound.” Hugh edged toward Sam and the doorway. “Okay? So can I go?”

  I knew what my father was thinking. During the Christmas holidays, I’d talked nonstop about Texas Indians, so Sam, who’d been friends since high school with a West Side brother and sister, Jaime and Mariana Cardona (I wondered if they were descendants of Geronimo), brought me a book on Aztecs. “Read this if you want to know who had the smarts over here,” he said. Later, when I told my father that during the Wichita deer ceremony, a newly initiated shaman ate a coral bean so he could be unconscious while the leader scraped him with a garfish jaw, he said, “If you’re interested in the supernatural, think about Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.”

  “Why is it,” my father said to Sam, “you’re so interested in the very things the rest of us try to avoid, and you avoid what we hold important?”

  Unfair, I thought. I stepped around the desk. “Dad—”

  “Your thinking is somehow off track,” he continued. “Don’t you want to be happy?” He stroked the side of his face. “What attracts you to so much that’s ugly? Pinpoint it, be specific. Please, I need to know.”

  “What’d I do?” Sam looked at Hugh and shrugged, trying to reassure him.

  My father’s features softened; he slumped. “Sometimes, I wonder if there’s anything we can agree about.”

  Hugh frowned, confused.

  “Embarrassing, huh?” Sam said, his expression open as a child’s. “Or maybe I just remind you of something you’d like to forget?”

  My father flinched, leaned forward. “You’re my son. But I don’t like the trouble you take pleasure in causing.”

  “Why do you care so much what people think?” Sam’s gaze soured. He leaned close, whispering, “Even I know you’re too good for that.”

  “Now that I think about it, your problem must have something to do with me.”

  “So there wouldn’t be a problem if I acted like you?” Sam l
ooked away, as though he were thinking it over. “Then we could both follow our dads around,” he said, his voice shaking, “forget what we want.”

  “That’s called responsibility.”

  “No, sir,” Sam whispered again. “You know the name for somebody like that, but I don’t think you want me to say it.”

  “Exactly what I mean. No respect,” my father said. “Some things a man does, son, without question, because they’re morally right.”

  “You think demeaning yourself is a way to show respect? You really want me to do that?” They stared at each other. “And is it morally right for a kid to be hit twenty times with a belt if he doesn’t?”

  My father tapped Hugh. “You’ve got something more important to do this morning,” he said. “Go get your shoes. I need you to caddy.”

  “But, Daddy, Sam—”

  “Arrowheads will wait. Go on. I’ll meet you at the car.” He steered Hugh to the doorway, then faced Sam.

  Sam nodded at Hugh, who turned to leave. Then he nervously popped his gum. “Why don’t you just give it up? Tell the truth, for once.”

  My father reached to snatch the wad from Sam’s mouth. But as his fist clenched, he caught himself.

  I thought, If he hits Sam, will Sam hit back? What truth is Sam after?

  “You’re on your own today,” my father said, inches from Sam. Then he clutched the keys in his pocket, watched Hugh cross the hall.

  “Don’t worry,” Sam said, grinning, “I’m used to that.” He shook his head. “When we do go, though,” he flinched, looking sideways, “I hope you’ll come with us.”

  “Son, scratching will only get you raw. The way to stop your itching is to pat someone else’s back.”

  Sam said he had to talk to somebody, so I agreed to go with him to meet Cyril and Terezie. At moments like these, increasingly predictable times prickled with disaster, I was sadly eager for him to go back to Austin.

  He began talking before I could close the door of the second-hand Corvair. “Did you see that?” he said, starting the engine. “Could you believe it?”

  I was afraid to say anything. I hoped he’d explain.

  He shoved the car in gear. “Our father the hypocrite, scared to death.” He headed toward the road to the farm. “Sad.”

  A sharp turn pressed me against the door. I grabbed the handle. “What’s he scared of?”

  “Anything outside the rulebook in his head. Duty, what a joke.”

  I shrugged, confused.

  “Dad’s got wires for brains. Zing, this is how you work; zing, here’s what’s good and bad; zing, these are the facts. Easy—one, two, three, life makes sense. Guy’s a robot—no emotions, no imagination. You push those buttons, he blows a fuse.”

  Our father had a jazz collection, and he’d built a tree house with elaborate shelves and a stirrup pulley for raising us to its floor. He’d recently explained that Buddha and Jesus were alike in their teachings about compassion. “If you could just talk to him without getting so mad.”

  “Me? You were there, did I do anything?”

  “Something about—”

  “Look, I know he’s a good doctor and you look up to him and all. But you got to see past that. For instance, tradition.” I nodded. “It’s just a habit without a reason. The opposite of truth. Nobody remembers how the thing got started, but it’s sure as hell sacred. How stupid is that?”

  I thought about Sundays at our grandparents’ house and the farm, about my brothers chopping cotton, about church.

  “He doesn’t even know what a midden is, for Christ’s sake.” Sam shook the steering wheel, so I didn’t confess that I didn’t, either. “He sees me, he thinks he hasn’t done things right. I’m like Joseph after his brothers drop him in that well.”

  “I know,” I said, not really understanding.

  He rolled down his window, and the wind whipped his ear, ruffled his shirt. “Whatever’s left out of that rulebook might as well not exist.”

  “Like what?”

  His scowl got scary; then he sighed. “Like, you think he’s eaten baby eel?”

  “No,” I moaned, repulsed.

  “See? You never even tried it.”

  “Gross…why would you?”

  “To see what it tastes like.”

  “Not me.”

  “Why be born then?” He hung his arm out the window, slapped the door.

  He’d told me to face the truth, no matter how ugly. Why was our father’s search for facts any different?

  “I say if there’s something to know, bring it on. You going to tiptoe around like Dad, afraid, only eating baked potatoes?”

  I had a general sense of what he meant. “I guess not.”

  “Smart girl.” He squeezed my shoulder, but I could see he was still upset.

  We drove without talking. If Sam was expected to be like Dad, I thought, was I supposed to emulate our mother? “But what about Mom?”

  “Who? Madame Loafing Meat?”

  I giggled, remembering an afternoon her younger cousin, a girl we rarely saw, had come to visit. They acted like girlfriends, chatting, and I was the outsider. “She never listens; I’m like nothing to her.”

  He turned, rested his arm on the seatback. “Don’t you know the story about her grandparents?”

  I did, but I’d sworn not to tell where I’d heard it. Aunt Lynette had said their parents died in a train wreck on the way to a friend’s wedding in Galveston, so their grandparents had raised them. The grandmother had had a temper, sometimes crawling under the front porch to ambush them when they came home from school. I pictured a crone like the witch in “Hansel and Gretel,” but Aunt Lynette laughed when I said that. She showed me a wallet-sized photo of a woman, her hair parted in the middle, holding a wide-brimmed straw hat, standing in a garden of vegetables and daisies next to a white clapboard house. The girls fended for themselves unless their grandfather fried a platter of squirrels. “Might as well’ve been rat,” Aunt Lynette had said.

  “Now,” Sam said, “Mom’s a gourmet cook, and everybody thinks we’re perfect so she can forget about when she was a kid.”

  “Really?” I said, looking out the window. A stand of mesquites bordered a fence in the distance next to the highway. Straight ahead, the sky’s edge seemed only a few miles down the road, its blue abutment a vast backdrop to the familiar stretch of concrete. “But, you know, sometimes Mom acts like it’s my fault,” I said. “And it’s not,” I added. “I don’t like that.”

  Sam turned onto the farm road, stopping at the gate, and a covey of bobwhites fluttered from the hedgerow. He latched the gate behind us, then crossed the cattle guard, drove over a wooden bridge, and parked in the corral next to the Cervenkas’ house. He leapt out of the car, whistling as though he hadn’t just fought with our father, as though we’d entered a different world. Maybe we had.

  We walked to the barn, where Cyril and Terezie were saddling four horses. I had to admit Sam’s girlfriend was pretty. Makeup would’ve made her look like everyone else. Faded workman’s jeans clung like kidskin. Would Sam tell her what had happened at our house? “I thought you were bringing Hugh,” she said, buckling a girth strap. “Everything okay?”

  Sam kissed her. “Peachy,” he whispered. “I brought our Indian expert instead.” He aimed an index finger at me, his other arm draping her shoulder. He nodded at Cyril. “I.Q., my man,” he sang.

  “Dad needed Hugh to caddy,” I said, stroking a mare’s neck, still worried about Sam and relieved I wouldn’t have to explain. A hog rooted noisily at a trough in its pen. “I hope it’s all right…” My plan was to hang back, try not to be noticed.

  “Sure, it’s all right. Now the numbers are even,” she said, handing me the reins. “I’ve been on testosterone overload.” She was getting harder not to like.

  “You interested in Indians?” Cyril said, swinging himself onto a saddle. He squeezed with his boot heels, and his palomino trotted into the barnyard.

  The three of us joined
him, galloping along the path to the creek. “Well?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, and he nodded. He’d been on a university archeological dig, and I hoped he’d talk about it. He would graduate soon in political science with plans for law school.

  Eight cows meandered toward us, on their way to the afternoon pasture. “Hello,” I said, leaning to pat a dusty back. In between a cluster of live oak and agarita, I glimpsed a newly planted cotton field, the furrows raised like groundhog tunnels. Hugh would work there next summer alongside Cyril.

  Sam led us into the creek, my horse leaping off the bank from a flat-footed position, rocking me forward as I clutched the saddle horn, soaking my jeans. The mare paddled, so I slackened the reins, allowing her to maneuver forward. Her breaths echoed off the water.

  Sam steered us up a gently terraced incline on the other side. He dismounted near a spiny hackberry then tied his and Terezie’s reins to a limb. Cyril and I tethered our horses and followed Sam to a grassy mound in the open. It had to be the midden, and I wondered if my brother, as Hugh claimed, had actually found it.

  Cyril produced a canteen, two small picks, and a hand shovel, which he passed around. He assigned us each an area and started digging with a hunting knife he had attached to his belt. We peeled back grass and poked through a top layer of dirt. Sam attacked the midden like he did everything, digging toward its heart. A few yards away, bluebonnets peeked through buffle, mountain laurel smelled like cider, and an owl hooted in a littleleaf sumac near the horses.

  “You think Dad might come if we tell him what’s here?” Sam said, shoveling. “I mean, he’s a history buff, right?”

  “Sure,” I said, wanting to hug him. Maybe they could somehow work everything out.