by Robert Hicks
When he turned around, Mariah was standing there staring right up into his eyes, her brow crumpled and angry. “She leave you after your boy passed on?”
Tole nodded, as if the conversation had been going through his mind as well. “Not right away. Think maybe she should’ve. She was a better woman than that. She tried to forgive me for his death and how it was after he died, but after a while it was too late. I wasn’t much of a husband to her. I wasn’t much of anything.”
“You was a sorry man.” She said it because it was true, and she said it direct because that was her way. It didn’t make him mad.
“Can’t think of a single night I didn’t wake up on the floor somewhere,” he agreed. “Stinkin’ like booze. And then I’d get home and yell at her the way my daddy used to do me and my brother. Pound on the doors when she’d lock herself in the bedroom. Punched holes in the walls. Never lay a hand on her, but only because she left before I could get that bad. One day, I woke up and found a note on the bed. She said she’d gone to stay with her sister upstate. I didn’t even care, just went back to drinkin’. It was probably a week or so before I realized she was gone for good.”
“It’s the Devil in it.”
“And then he get in you.”
“Why she need to forgive you for your boy dying?” Mariah still stared up into his eyes, frowning, searching. The moonlight was cold upon them. Far away the crickets sawed, out of tune. A single candle lit up one of Carnton’s windows upstairs, and Tole could see the curtains moving slowly in the breeze, like water, like grief.
“When I tell you little Miles die of dysentery, I didn’t tell everything, neither. He die because of me. Because I leave my whiskey where he could reach it. Eight years old. He was sick, already dying, and then he took a big gulp of my whiskey. Maybe more, no one was paying attention, we was sleeping. After a while he began choking up blood. Charlotte woke up first, tried to help him, waked me up, too. She was shaking me and crying and hollerin’, but I was too goddamn drunk to even stand. But still I tried, Mrs. Reddick. I tried to get him to stop choking. He was already weak. His big brown eyes turn red and he had blood in his tears. And I screamed, ‘Somebody help him, please,’ but nobody come.”
Quiet grew between them. What more was there to say? A lot, Tole thought, but not then. She had been tense and on guard at first, but he could sense her relaxing, unclenching. After a while: “Where he buried?”
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Wasn’t in no fit state to remember.”
“How drunk were you?”
He didn’t answer. More quiet. An owl called out, mournful, from down in the Alabama section of the cemetery. Mariah walked right up to him; he could feel her heat. “Reckon not knowing that is the worst kind of torture.”
She knows, Tole thought.
She inspected him, and he became conscious of how he appeared—his clothes, once the best of the best, had worn through here and there at the elbows and knees, and had gone gray from dust. His shoes flapped at the toe. He had no socks. He could feel her taking stock, and felt unworthy.
“You been here how long?”
“Since just after noon.”
“I mean in town.”
“Six months.”
“And the work you do here the only work you got?”
Tole nodded. “Not found any of my kind of work,” he said, which was a lie. He’d found too much of his kind of work. Any amount was too much.
“And what is your kind of work, Mr. Tole?”
What to call it? He had been a man called to fix unfixable situations.
“Handyman.” All of Franklin was falling down, people were desperate for skilled workers, and he, a “handyman,” couldn’t find a job except one given to him from charity? But what could he tell her? I’m a drunk? I’m living off my soldier’s pension and drinking myself to death, here in this broken southern town in the middle of nowhere, where even God can’t find me? And my trade is death? “Handyman” sounded vastly more respectable.
Mariah nodded. She had softened toward him, he thought. Her eyes were so gray, they might blow away like smoke. She smiled kindly, which was more than he knew he deserved. He had tricked her, misled her, run a game on her. He wanted to deny it, to denounce this part of himself. But this woman! He would do anything to right the scales for her, to make things right. He knew this instantly, even though he also knew that righting the scales would make things very dangerous for George Tole.
“You know Hooper?” she asked.
“The liquor man?”
“He’s a ragman and a liquor man. He also delivers firewood, and I think he got chopping to do. When he come to see you, you know that I sent him. That be two jobs, then.”
“Thank you. Appreciate it.”
She turned and began along the path back to the house. There wasn’t another soul in sight, and Tole wondered how she could stand the quiet, so much quiet. He wondered if she was lonely.
“You can come up to visit the graves, or whatever you do up here, whenever you want. I ain’t stopping you, Mr. Tole.”
As she got farther away, she seemed to disappear into the tall grass, and Tole was sorry to see her go.
Chapter 18
Mariah
July 17, 1867
It was raining when Mariah found Hooper’s chimney by the smoke she saw tailing up out of the woods far off, down the stream. Hooper had built the chimney himself from river rock and old abandoned stone fences. It tipped here and there but never fell, and it always contained the warm fire the whiskey man used to make the heat that drove his chemistries.
Townsmen told many stories about the liquor man: that his was a recipe brought directly over from the old country by pirates; that his secret ingredient was the tears of abolitionists; that each jar contained six months of work; that he had been stolen and set free by the outlaws of Cave-in-Rock on the Ohio because none of them could defeat him in a wrestling match; that he never drank his own product; that his own liquor man was the Devil hisself; that he never slept; and that his only real pleasure was the tending of fire. Only Hooper knew what part of it was true. If they kept buying his jars, what trouble could he ever have? He aimed to avoid trouble first and foremost, always. He took very few risks.
Mariah entered the clearing that was Hooper’s workshop and living room, mud packed and hard, ringed by scrub oak and hickory.
“What you want, Mariah?” He sounded uncomfortable, like he already knew what she wanted but had to go through the ritual of asking, the back-and-forth.
His voice came from behind one of the burlap sacks that hung low from tree branches, embroidered and drawn upon like tapestries. Hooper had many private rooms in his clearing set off by these hanging sacks, and a lean-to at the south end of the clearing in which to sleep. The sacks flapped in the storm wind, barely a breeze now but getting stronger, and it seemed to Mariah that the clearing itself was moving, flapping, shaking. She went to the hearth before answering.
“That you, mister?”
“Who else would it be, girl?”
“Abraham Lincoln for all I know.”
“Mr. Lincoln dead, everyone know that.”
The fire spat and smoked behind her, heating the copper kettle. She sat on an oak stump Hooper used for wood splitting. On the stone hearth sat a near-full jar of that thick, syrupy stuff the whiskey man made every day of his life. Mariah dipped her pinky, took a suck.
Hooper came around the edge of his burlap and stepped into the center of the clearing. In his full glory, it became instantly clear why he could remain alone out there in the woods, unmolested by man or law. Far from Carnton’s porch, in the seat of his power, he seemed tall as a horse and practically as wide. He was dark brown, and his beard, which he had been trimming with a Bowie knife, was gray-flecked and thick, not so much grown on his chin as sculpted there. He was powerful- and hard-looking, but something about him seemed pieced together to Mariah, none of the parts seemi
ng to quite fit into the whole. He had been beaten severely at least once in his life, probably many times; there were scars at each corner of his eye, and his nose had become flattened and canted to the left. His eyes were almost black and very wide. In him she recognized both the power and the wreckage she associated almost always with black men—especially in her memory of the three brothers she had not seen or heard from since she was twelve.
White liquid dripped from the lip of Hooper’s still, which sat squat on a platform of stone next to the chimney.
“I heard they killed your boy.”
They. He knew. What did he know? She nearly leapt up to claw his face off until he told her. They all knew, of course. They, they, they. He sat down across from her and stared unblinking. The wind picked up and blew tiny dirt swirls across the cleared patch, from her side to his.
“I liked your boy, Mariah, and I reckon all this don’t sit well with you.” His vest, made from deerskin like the roof of his lean-to, opened wide in the wind and flapped around.
“Everybody liked my boy. Didn’t matter much, did it?”
“He was a good customer. Don’t know where he got the money, but he always paid.”
“He made shoes, that’s where he got the money.” She looked down at Hooper’s own shoes, which were sprung at the sole and had been wrapped with twine and rag. “Might have thought about buying some from him yourself.”
Now he stood up again, like something ancient unbending itself, all creaks and cracks. He walked over and stoked the fire to roaring, and turned back. “When I heard you moved back to Carnton to live with Missus McGavock, I knew right away why you done it. That town, every town, got a thirst for blood and don’t care who you are or what you want from this life—you best be living their way and according to their rules so long as you live among ’em. And their rules what done Theo.”
He took a deep breath. “I did want to talk to you, Mariah Reddick.”
“I know. It’s part of why I come.”
“I suppose you read my mind, houdou witch.”
“Don’t take much to read you.”
Hooper slapped his knee. “Good! I’m glad! I ain’t gone sneak through this life.” He looked down at the ground again. Mariah wondered if the words were going to kill him and if he was afraid of dying.
“I guess you know that I get around that town a lot, though I hate it.”
“Part of your business, I reckon.”
“That’s true. And people drink in front of me, and when they drink in front of me they say things.”
“Who they?”
“They. And you know who I mean.”
Mariah nodded her head.
“I don’t want them coming out here,” he hissed. He was scared.
“All right.”
He became a little more comfortable then, and looked her in the eye. “I know you got your little spies, and I’m sure they fulla horseshit, because I hear them talking in the back rooms and in the hallways when I make my deliveries. But you got the right idea, having them listening. If you really do want to know what happened to your boy.”
“I do want to know,” Mariah said. “Do you think you know?”
“No.”
“Then why am I here? What the hell is all this about, Hooper?”
“I don’t know the what or the why. But I do know two things. First, remember the lady whose baby they say you delivered the day before? I weren’t there, so I don’t know.”
“Evangeline Dixon. Yes, I do.”
“You have to talk to her.”
“Why?”
“Ask her. I ain’t speaking for her. But why the hell do you think? I ain’t talking for my health.”
“Fine then. I talk to her.”
“And I know one more thing. Some of them men who were in that mob, some of them who was beating on your son, said they didn’t see no guns on the stage.”
“They say Theopolis had a pistol and shot the grocer. Mr. Sykes.”
“You think that’s true?”
“I know it’s not.”
“Smart woman.” Hooper blew out one more sigh from puffed cheeks. He stood up as if to escort her out, so Mariah also stood and gathered her skirts in her left fist to avoid the mud. “Other people know it’s not true, too,” Hooper said. “And I heard that there are some who was beating on Theopolis who want to know who was doing the shooting. You find out who some of them men were, and maybe you find out what they know.”
“Do you know who they are?”
But Hooper just stared at her. A little lightness had come into the sky behind him, and in silhouette he seemed to Mariah a massive thing casting its shadow over her. He loomed, he rocked and nodded his head, working up to something. “Your boy got caught in the middle of a group of men who don’t like niggers, or don’t like things changing. They ’specially don’t like niggers like your boy, ones with brains, ones who could make a difference in this world. There lot of men who don’t like anything about any of that.”
He became small just then, or perhaps it was the rain that still ran down the leaves and dripped upon his head, flattening and darkening him. He sagged, she thought. The giant man was scared, and this fear made her nearly vomit. What am I doing? I can’t do this.
“But you can get even if you clever about it, Mariah Reddick,” he said.
Clever. Even. Later she would say the words over and over in her head as she walked back to Carnton in the rain. Clever. She could try. Clever would be getting the ragman, Hooper, her friend of many years, to be her spymaster. He moved in and out of every house in town picking up junk and delivering firewood, and she guessed that most of the people whose houses he visited didn’t notice him and couldn’t even remember his name. He was a ghost. That seemed appropriate; that would be useful.
And then she wondered if she would need to be clever with the woman whose baby she had saved the day before she lost her own. She thought not. She thought, instead, that such a woman would owe her the truth.
Before she left Hooper, Mariah had one last request.
“Hooper,” she asked, “you been by my boy’s house since he was killed?”
“No ma’am.”
“I been meaning to go in there and clean it out, but I can’t seem to bring myself to get it done. I don’t know if I’d be able to throw any of it away, or give it away, like needs to be done.”
“I didn’t take you for sentimental, Mariah.”
Mariah laughed, mostly to herself. “You know, when I was a young girl, five, six years old, before my mama would head off to the fields, she’d send me up to the big house for Bible study. She’d make my lunch out of whatever food there was laying around, scraps from this and that, and she’d wrap it tight in this brown parchment paper. Foolish little thing I was, I’d fold the paper up and save it. I remember Miss Carrie asking me once why I saved it the way I did, and I tried to explain to her, my mama had touched the paper, and I couldn’t just throw away my mama’s handwork. I haven’t thought about that in years.”
“Mariah, you need me to clean out your son’s house, all you gotta do is ask.”
“All right,” she said. “I’m asking. And there’s a man I’d like you to help with it. Name of George Tole. Lives right near Theopolis’s house. He might want some of the things. If he does, let him have them. Pay him fair.”
Chapter 19
Mariah
July 19, 1867
The trip to Elijah Dixon’s house should not have made Mariah so nervous. She had been summoned, after all, and not for her inquiries into the murder. It was Evangeline who wanted her.
As a midwife, she had made many such visits to newborns during the first few weeks of their lives. Most of the time there was some challenge that their mamas were at wit’s end about, and Mariah would do what she could to fix things. There were colicky babies, babies that had become thin, babies that wouldn’t sleep, babies that slept too much, babies that slept so soundly they seemed dead, babies that couldn’t cry. The
re were also the fevered babies, the cold babies, and the babies that seemed perfectly healthy but had been brought into the world by women who couldn’t stand their smell, their noise, their constant hunger, their breathing. These last were the babies that would have the hardest time of it, Mariah knew.
On the occasion that she found a child who just seemed to need to go on and cross death’s river, she had no words to turn it back. Those children, motionless in their fevers by fireplaces, scaly-skinned, twisted up in bedclothes and unmoved by the sweet smoke and the smelly poultices she applied to their chests so lightly—those children taught her more than she ever could do for them. This is what she thought during those hours by the cradle listening to the wheels turning down the dirt ruts in front of the parents’ house, when she was listening to the world move on by as if there were not a child dying in the house: What does this child know? She thought such children had some kind of foreknowledge, some sight that was more than human. Or, rather, such a child had an immortal’s sense of time, which was no such sense. Such a baby was a pure thing, breathing shallowly, unmoved and isolated from the muddy, fleshy, and cruel state of being human that other humans would hold on to and kill to maintain. There was wisdom in such a child.
Evangeline Dixon came to the door bloodless and pale, gripping her skirt in one hand and balancing little Augusten precariously on her other hip, as if she hardly wanted to hold him. Behind her Mariah could hear the sounds of the other children playing—four others, she recalled.
There was nothing wrong with the child that Mariah could see. Augusten was pink like a piglet and nearly as fat. But Evangeline had not been thriving. She seemed thin, colicky, and the little purple pouches beneath her eyes seemed to indicate a young woman who had been trying to cry herself to sleep at night without success.
They walked around to the back, where they both took seats, Evangeline on the sofa and Mariah, hands full of the boy, on the settee. Evangeline twirled the hair at the nape of her neck until her fingertip turned bright red. “I need…” But she wouldn’t finish her sentence. She shook her head, she closed her eyes, she flipped them open and locked in on Mariah’s own, like she was waiting for the Negro midwife to come up with the words to describe a wealthy white lady’s horror.