Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush

by Virginia Hamilton

  “Uncle Willie?” she said, hardly breathing. She felt her heart skipping. “I never even met Uncle Willie. He did die, I think I remember M’Vy say, long time ago!”

  “Yeah? Yeah?” Dab said. He swayed in the chair. His face was ashen. “Don’t take me no funerals no more.”

  “Oh, Dab!” Tree kneeled down beside him. “I didn’t know. Oh, that’s scary! I thought you was wit me!” She hugged him. He kept his hands resting in his lap. He had his knees together. Bony knees, with tremors through them. He was weak, barely able to lift his hands. “Come on, I’ll help you to bed,” she said. “Bring you some food in when I get it ready.”

  “It all right,” he said. “I want stay in here wif you.”

  “Dab, wit you. I mean, with you. You know what M’Vy saying about stuff like wif. But you can stay in here wit me if you want to. You just don’t think about anything. Funerals! I went in the car. You were there, in the backseat. Don’t worry,” she said, “I won’t take you back there again, lest I can’t help it.”

  She began preparing the food. She knew how to make macaroni and cheese from scratch.

  “No package noodles for us, is it, Dab?” she said, needing to hear the sound of her voice in the still apartment. “Talk to me, Dabney,” she said playfully. But he didn’t feel up to it, she could tell. Some days Dab could say whole sentences. He would talk for ten minutes straight. It had been some time since he’d been that good or had felt that well.

  Tree knew how to make white sauce. She grated cheese and put a cup of it with chopped onion in the sauce when it was ready, while the noodles boiled.

  “Key to everything is get it all done at the same time,” she said. “M’Vy say it is the art of cooking, timing all of it to the split minute.”

  In the middle of mixing cheese sauce with cooked noodles in the carefully greased glass bowl, she thought to ask Dab something. “You say funerals, plural? Who else be dying?”

  “Unh? Huh?” said Dab. “Nothin. Nothin.”

  “Dab, don’t say things twice.”

  He made crying sounds, so she quit trying to get his mind clear.

  Must’ve been Ken, my daddy, she thought. M’Vy say he die all a sudden. Heart, after Willie die. I don’t remember him.

  “It’s all right,” she told Dab. “You in here with me, and we good people.” She smiled at the proper sound of her words.

  She made bread crumbs out of toast, first letting the toast cool to get it hard. She sprinkled the crumb-and-cheese mixture on the macaroni-and-cheese dish. She shook paprika over the topping and placed dabs of margarine here and there.

  “See, Dab? Did I do a good job? See?”

  “Yeah-uh-huh. Uh-huh,” he said. She felt sad for him, for his lonesome self inside the small amount of mind he seemed to have. How had it happened, she wondered, that he was born with trouble in his brain? Or did it happen later?

  She put the dish in the oven and turned the temperature to 350 degrees. Finished, she washed up the dirty dishes. Standing at the sink, fear commenced crawling up her neck. There had been no warning. She stood, frozen, her hands in the soapy water.

  Somebody come in here behind me—am I losin my mind?

  She didn’t dare call out to Dab and make him fearful. Any time she sensed danger and Dab was nearby, he would feel the danger from her. That was why she usually remained calm about everything.

  She wiped her hands and got up her nerve. She turned around, looking at everything as she turned. Sink, counter, chopping board. Refrigerator. Hot-water heater over in the corner. Stove. There. Dab at the table. Nothing through the table. All was as it should have been. She walked over and calmly turned the oven up to 375 degrees.

  That what it should be in the first place. I made a mistake.

  “Come on, Dab,” she said. She took his hand and pulled him up. “We got to wait for the food. Let’s go read some.”

  She led him into the living room. She kept her eyes on her feet so she wouldn’t have to see down the hall to the little room. She wouldn’t give that room a second thought, wouldn’t shape the words to say it in her mind. That was how she got them quickly into the living room. Dab stretched out on the couch. She sat in the easy chair right next to the couch and propped her feet up on the coffee table.

  “Now,” she began. “What you want me to read?” She had already taken up the book. No matter how many books M’Vy provided them with when she had the dollars for a paper cover, Dab only wanted the same one.

  “Read it. Read it,” he said. “The Time I Got Lost.”

  “Now that ain’t the book,” she told him, sweetly. “That just be a chapter.” Showing off her education and what she knew about books. Dab loved for her to play like that, as though she were his private teacher and teaching no one else, ever.

  “Now,” she said. “The name of the book is—” She waited for him.

  It took him a minute. She knew it was hard for him to focus his mind. First he would have to think: paper cover. book. pages. book. what it called. what it called. title! no. no. name, then title. She imagined that was the way he came to know.

  “Got the man’s name on top,” Dab said. “Big name in black. Warren Miller. Yeah. Yeah. Then, brown. Boy, sittin by garbage cans. Two cans. Boy with tennis shoes. He sittin on air.”

  “No, Dab, look,” she said. “He sittin on the curb. But the drawing don’t show the curb cause you already know he got to be sittin on something, if he sittin there by the garbage, and he is. So why paint the curb in? See, that’s how the artist think about it.”

  “So why put some garbage cans there?” Dab said. “So why you got to have the boy sittin at all?”

  She laughed and laughed the way she always did when Dab said that. She could remember the first time he said it. M’Vy had been reading to them and she had laughed and laughed. Now she felt just like M’Vy, shaking all over and laughing. Saying, “You ain’t dumb, you ain’t that dumb!” And laughing some more.

  “You want me to tell the title?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Tree said, calming down again. “Tell the title and we can get started.”

  “Title is … The Cool World, born, 1959.”

  Tree laughed and couldn’t stop. “No, oh, God. Dab, not born! They copyright it. See, it say ‘Copyright, c., 1959, by Warren Miller.’”

  “M’Vy say it bout the same,” he mumbled. “Don’t laugh so hard, Tree.”

  “I ain’t laughin at you, Dab. I’m laughin wit chew, believe me.”

  “I ain’t laughin. You see me laughin?”

  “Okay, then, I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t do it again. Didn’t mean nothin by it.” He was silent. “Okay?” she said.

  “Yeah? Yeah?” he said. Like a crazy, she thought, and kicked herself hard inside for thinking so mean.

  When Tree started, she made her voice low and clear so Dab would have an easy time losing himself in the loving words.

  The Cool World was about certain dudes living before she and Dab were born. They were street dudes in a gang. The gang was the Royal Crocodiles, and the enemy’s gang was the Wolves. Dab liked the part that didn’t have anything to do with the gangs, although he liked the whole book because it told about the Street, and Dab loved to think he was cool as some street dudes. But he wasn’t cool.

  Put Dab on the Street for one day and night, and Tree knew he would be dead or, worse, a junkie, or a slave, stealing for somebody, by the next morning.

  “Now,” Tree began, “here I go. You be quiet now, Dab. Ready. Chapter. ‘The Time I Got Lost.’” She read, going into the words as though she had been born in them. Dab went with her. He loved the true words of “The Time I Got Lost.”

  “ ‘Whut I remember is I remember the red dust an how hot it get from the sun on it,’” Tree read. “ ‘An I uset to go bare foot and the dust would ooze up between my bare toes like mud. That whut I remember earliest when my Mother lef me down home with Gramma Custis & I was 3-4 year old I guess.

  “ ‘They uset
to get up real early in the morning down there like 5 o’clock and we eat breakfast with Grampa Custis before he go down the road to work for Mister John Snipe. Or Snead or Snade. Somethin like that. Snead I think it was. He a farmer and Grampa Custis work the farm for him. On Sundays Grampa Custis get all dress up in a black suit an we all go walkin to that beat up church where he preach.’”

  “You want me to skip to the part about some eggs?” Tree asked Dab.

  “Yeah. Yeah? Skip on to there,” Dab said.

  “So here it is,” she said, and started again.

  “ ‘Sometimes we have an egg on the grits an after I thru eatin I uset to go out to the side of the road an watch the 7-8 year old kids walken to school. Some of them wearen shoes. One day I follow behin them to the school house. Half the windows broken an I can hear them sing-in My Country Tisuv Thee. Then I walk back home thru the woods cause I afraid of meetin Mister Snead an his dogs and I got lost. I got lost in the ferny woods …’”

  “Ferny woods! Ferny woods, yeah!” yelled Dab.

  “Now quiet down or I cain’t read you,” gently Tree told him.

  He quieted, and she continued.

  “ ‘I got lost in the ferny woods,’” she started the last sentence again, “ ‘wanderin aroun an finely I just set down near a little pond an just wait till they come for me. I remember how hungry I was. I just set there on a log an waited an sang church songs.

  “ ‘Grampa finely found me. He laugh when he see me sittin there. He say. “Boy you got the most worrying Gramma in Snade County. Praise GOD I foun you for if not I never go home again to Mamie.” Then he pick me up an carry me out of the woods to the road. I guess I was maybe a block from the road all the time.

  “ ‘Goin down the road Grampa singen a song about the LORD and I can hear it vibratin in his chest an his heart goin boom boom boom.’”

  “Boom-boom-boom!” Dab said, raising his head to look at Tree. “Boom!”

  “Okay,” Tree said. “You want me skip some.”

  “Uh-huh? Uh-huh?” Dab said. “Skip to tippin his hat.”

  “Okay,” Tree said. “Now, shhh, so’s I can.” Dab stayed quiet, laying his head down, and she started again.

  “ ‘He (Grampa) tippen his hat to all the white men an sayin. “How you Mister Snipe. How you Mister Snout. How you Mister Snups.”’”

  Dab laughed and laughed, and Tree had to wait for him; then she went on.

  “ ‘They all smile at him an say like “Hows the preachin goin Revrent?” an like that. Same people that kill him after I leave to come up North with my Mother.

  “ ‘One man say. “That you boy Revrent? He the spittin image of you. You doin all right for an old man.’” Tree skipped one line that she didn’t like, then read, “‘“Yessir. Thats right,” Grampa say. “Yessir.”

  “ ‘That time he foun me lost in the woods he carry me home an when Gramma seen us comin she come runnin down the road to us. Cryin. An took me an carry me the rest of the way.’”

  “End of chapter, ‘The Time I Got Lost.’” Tree closed the book. She slid down in the chair. She didn’t look at anything in particular. Dab was lying still, easy in himself. They sat, not a word between them, minute upon minute.

  Dab finally spoke. “Say what it mean, Tree.” He always had to ask before Tree would tell the meaning.

  “Well, see, the boy, Richard, who come down from the North and go back there, is telling this story about his grandpaw. But that ain’t all it, just the story,” she said. “It what goes on there when Richard get lost. He know to wait. Cause he know the grandpaw gone come find him. How he know. Because. Love is it. That boy stay put in the ferny wood because his lovin Grandpaw goin to get him if he wait and wait; that grandpaw is gone come. And he comes, too.”

  “Yeah? Yeah?” Dab said.

  “Yeah, and it don’t matter what the Man do or say to you, the Grandpaw and Grandmaw got all the love inna world for the boy. Grandpaw Custis just yessir the Man to death, it don’t matter a-tall because they keeping the boy, Richard, close. Then the enemies gone and kill the Grandpaw for nothin.”

  “Uh-huh-uh-hun,” Dab said, quiet and low. There was sadness coming over him, making him twitch.

  “But they can’t kill the love in the boy,” Tree told him. “The love the Grandpaw leave him, that was what the old man willed him. The boy never, never forget.”

  The two of them were so quiet in the house, they knew exactly what sounds there were in the apartment and what sounds belonged to the street. Others, to the city. They knew how to be together. And they were peaceful, knowing for certain why the chapter “The Time I Got Lost,” from the book The Cool World by Warren Miller, made them feel so close. They had the will. They could wait out the time.

  Later, Tree went into the kitchen to see about the macaroni. It was bubbling. She turned off the oven. She made salad of cabbage and carrots, with mayonnaise to hold it together. She set the table and poured two glasses of grape Hi-C. “Yeah,” she said, smelling the good smell of macaroni. It was eight o’clock now. She’d nearly finished this day of work and of taking care of things.

  “Sunday comin,” she said softly to herself. “Maybe then I can sleep late.”

  Chapter 8

  TREE WOKE UP in the middle of the night. She opened her eyes on the dark of her room. There was a line of light, like a thin pole the length of her door. It was light coming in from the hallway. Her bedroom door was open a few inches.

  Hear somebody if they try to walk in. What you do if somebody come? Is that it? she thought. What wake me all a sudden? Somebody come creepin in the hallway? Fear was a cold shape under the sheet with her, making chills down her spine.

  That’s okay. I got my protection.

  She was afraid. But silently she slid her arm off the bed and down to the floor. Right by the post of the bed, she kept a slender cylinder of tear gas. All you had to do was press where there was an indentation at the top. She knew using the gas could help her, if and when she had to use it on someone. It would give her time to get away and wake up Dab.

  What Dab gone do? Maybe just let him sleep. Get myself out and down the fire stairs and call the law. Be better and quicker. But they say the law never respond if you a woman calling. Think it be a man beating you. Why you call.

  The tear-gas tube did the best thing for Tree without her ever having to use it. It made her feel safe when she woke up so alone at night. What had awakened her this time? It was always some little thing. Was Brother Rush in the table? A ghost wasn’t something little.

  Ow’nt care. Not going to get up and see.

  Maybe she had heard Dab holler out. Dab often hollered out in his sleep. Tree would wake up every time. His mystery of pain had come back, and it maybe worried her into light sleeping. After supper, Dab had got sick and vomited his food.

  “That’s a shame,” Tree told him, “all that good food.” When he felt better, she tried to get him to eat the macaroni again but he wouldn’t.

  “How about some salad?” she said, but he wouldn’t have it.

  So she made him some grits of yellow mush with hot milk. He ate about half a bowl. It didn’t stay down. She helped him change his pajamas that smelled sour from the vomit. And worried how she would get him to bathe in the next few days if he stayed so weak and sick.

  How to handle him if I cain’t touch him, she thought. Only now did she understand her predicament.

  She had put Dab to bed. He’d been in considerable pain. Asked her not to turn on the light, which, he said, hurt him all over.

  How can that be, she wondered. Light don’t have pressure. Do it? No, cain’t feel nothing of it. Unless you have a bad headache. Then light be hurting you in the eyes and make the headache worse. Maybe it like that for Dab all over him.

  Tree lay in bed, feeling cozy. Slowly she brought the teargas tube in her hand under the covers with her.

  Suddenly she knew why she had awakened. She jumped out of bed. Stooped, placing the tear gas next to the bedpo
st. Smothering a cry of astonishment, she hurried into her velour, three-quarter robe.

  Swear, I’m a loony! Half-asleep until just right now! She fought the robe and couldn’t find the armholes in the dark. Struggling, she was determined to look neat by the time she left the room.

  What Tree had heard: the sound, clink-a-chunk, in the living room. Her bedroom opened on the hallway to the living room. She had heard clink-a-chunk clearly in her sleep. She remembered. She must have forgotten as soon as she was half-awake. So familiar a sound, it made her want to cry. She knew she would cry. Already there was a lump in her throat.

  Struggling into the robe, precious blue, she tied it tight around her and tiptoed out of the bedroom. Once she was in the living room, the hall light lit it well enough without her turning on a lamp.

  There was the big pocketbook. It was black suede. The pocketbook rested on four gold knobs. The fabric would not get soiled when it was placed on the cement at M’Vy’s feet until the bus came. Long wait, sometimes, Tree knew, before the bus came to pick up passengers.

  The pocketbook, sitting square on its four gold knobs. Clink-a-chunk in the living room awhile ago when it had been chucked onto the glass-top coffee table. One of the knobs went chunk as it hit. It was loose. It sounded in Tree’s sleep, clink-a-chunk.

  M’Vy’s coat was flung over the back of the couch. It had white and black stripes, from Mexico. It looked like a hairy blanket to Tree. It was as big as a queen size blanket.

  Tree tiptoed through the living room, following the line of discarded clothes. A pair of black suede shoes rested neatly on the seat of the easy chair. They were run over to the outside even without feet in them. There was an archway from the living room that led to a short hall into the kitchen. There were black gloves flung on the floor in the corner outside of the arch. Tree left the living room. She could see a light on in the kitchen. She went in, stopped.

  M’Vy was there, stepping out of a pink half-slip under her dress that she kicked into her hand. She was taller than Tree remembered. Darkness and night hovered in a scent of fresh, chill air around her. Alone, it was as if M’Vy were yet outside. What was striking was not so much that she was very tall and alone. She was tall and wide, alone. Big and wide and separate from all other of Tree’s loves. M’Vy was big, wide and well boned. Well shaped.