“Well, you needn’t worry about it,” Bertrand said and patted Lonnie’s shoulder. I don’t teach your grade anyway.” They all laughed uncomfortably. Bertrand quickly finished his drink and announced that it was time for him to leave.
“But I am serious,” Wayne said. “And I want my son to know that I am.” He was looking at Bertrand as he spoke. “We have fought the most terrible war there has ever been. I hope it is the last war anybody will ever have to fight. And why shouldn’t it be? Look a-here, white and colored together—we fought it, and so many people. They are saying millions of people died.” He leaned forward and grasped Bertrand’s arm. “They are saying that maybe ten million people died, by the time they’re finished counting. I go crazy thinking about it. It’s like somebody’s taking a hammer to my head, and yet, I was there, and you were there to see it.”
“Yes,” Bertrand said meekly. “I saw the Jewish camps. One of them.”
“So, what are we going to do, then? Are we keeping on in the old ways?” He turned to Lonnie and pulled him close. “No, son, we’re fixin’ to change things. I ain’t a fool to think that it’s going to happen overnight, but it’s got to start somewhere.”
Bertrand nodded. “I hear you, Brother Wayne.”
Just then, Aileen entered. She had been lying down, complaining of a backache. Lonnie looked at her stricken face. “What’s the matter, Momma?”
“Nothing,” she said curtly and motioned to her husband. He followed her to the back bedroom, and in a minute returned in a rush. “We need to run over to see Doctor Talmaedge,” he announced. “Something is wrong with the baby.”
Bertrand stood abruptly, but Wayne asked him to sit with Lonnie while they were gone. Wayne had grabbed the car keys and his and Aileen’s coats, and rushed to the back of the house before Bertrand answered.
Losing the baby was an abstraction to Lonnie. His mother had barely begun to show, and, except for the crib, there was very little evidence that a baby was on the way. On the night his mother went to the doctor, he had waited very late sitting in lamplight with the colored man. At first the man had tried to comfort him, though neither knew what the problem was. Then the man had tried to carry on small talk with him, asking him questions about school and telling him about American history, the subject that the man had studied in college. When Lonnie ventured to ask questions about the war, like his father, the man went vague or silent. After a while, he began to fall asleep and the man suggested he go to bed. He would not. He did not want to leave the man in the house while he slept. The man worried aloud that his wife would be wondering where he was, and Lonnie suggested that he go home; but, the man dutifully sat, at times dozing, at times seemingly deep in thought.
He was relieved when his parents returned, his father helping his mother to the bedroom. Wayne spoke quietly with Bertand and sent him on his way. Then he sat and drew Lonnie into his arms. “Your ma’s going to be all right,” he said, his mouth against the boy’s ear. “These problems happen to women, but the doctor said that she can have another baby.” Lonnie leaned his head on his father’s shoulder. The Ike jacket scratched his cheek pleasantly and he soon fell asleep. In the morning, his mother told him that the baby would have been a girl and that she would have named her Eliza, after her own mother.
FIVE
Just as Bertrand had said, a letter of acceptance for the trade school came in a few weeks. It was a wonderful Christmas present, Wayne announced. The classes began in March, so the family had some time to plan. Bertrand, who knew Atlanta better than any of them, suggested that Wayne move ahead of the family and find a place for them to live. He could room at the white YMCA on Luckie Street, not far from the school, and use the trolley to get around. That way he could leave the car for Aileen and when he had found a place for them, Aileen could drive over to Atlanta. Aileen didn’t know how to drive, a fact that seemed to surprise the colored man, since he said his own wife was a good driver. Wayne said that he would teach her, and Lonnie thought it was a fine plan since he could sit in the back seat and learn to drive, too.
Christmas Eve day turned cold and blustery, though the sky was clear except for a few high clouds. With numb fingers, Wayne and Lonnie chopped down a small pine that grew at the edge of one of Venable’s fields and affixed it to a wooden stand. Aileen helped them decorate it with glass bulbs, tinsel, and a star. On the holiday morning, Lonnie found that all the gifts under the tree were for him: two pair of dungarees, two flannel shirts, a pair of shoes, two comic books, a slinky, and a Captain Marvel set of flying heroes—Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Junior. They were like paper dolls, only they flew like paper airplanes. It was a bonanza, he thought, so many toys, when the last year he had only gotten new clothes and oranges. He was outside, risking losing one of the flying toys to the wind, when Bertrand’s car pulled into the yard. With Bertrand was a doleful-faced woman whom Lonnie assumed was his wife. The woman sat in the car while Bertrand got out, leaned in again and brought out a cake wrapped in waxed paper. Bertrand called “Merry Christmas!” to Lonnie and went to the door. Wayne answered the door, received the cake with loud appreciation, and called to Aileen. He invited Bertrand to come in, but Bertrand indicated the woman. Again, Wayne called to Aileen. He went to the car, still holding the cake, and greeted the woman. As far as Lonnie could see, the woman remained stiff and polite. Wayne called Lonnie to the car to present himself and to thank the woman for the cake she had made for them. On closer inspection Lonnie saw that the woman, dark and smooth skinned, had a pleasant look about her, but there was something peculiar, too. Some quality in the way that she spoke—crisply, properly, and aloofly—scared him. She seemed refined, but sad. Bertrand, on the other hand, seemed as jolly as Santa. After a few minutes of chatting, Bertrand got into the car and drove off.
“Now that wife, Luellen,” Wayne said later, as he told Aileen about the meeting, “she is a strange bird. Wouldn’t you say so, Lonnie?”
Lonnie agreed, though he couldn’t say in what way the woman was strange. “She was like a mean teacher,” he said.
His parents laughed. “I don’t know how mean she is,” Wayne said, “but she is a teacher over at the Normal School. Both of them.”
For supper they had oyster stew, Wayne having caught the fishmonger in town and remembering that Aileen, being from Savannah, liked oysters. There was a turkey, too, not a large bird, but more than the three of them could eat in a week. “This is a special dinner,” Aileen announced, “our last Christmas in this house for a while, maybe forever.” Wayne offered a grace. Not a religious man, he nonetheless thanked God for his family, for their safety, and for the bright future ahead of them. He nearly came to tears. At the end of the meal, they ate the strange woman’s pound cake. It was delicious.
One morning in late January, Lonnie woke to find the landscape glazed with ice. Overnight, frozen rain coated and bowed tree branches. The road in front of the house looked like a frozen river, and his heart leapt, for he knew there would be no school that day. He dressed in the cold room and went down to the kitchen, warmed by the stove, where Aileen was already cooking.
“Good morning, Mr. Sleepyhead.”
“Morning.”
Aileen gave him a hug. “Busses won’t run today. I don’t see much of anything running.”
“Where’s Papa?”
“He went out early with the gun. I told him there ain’t no critters out in this weather. But he went anyway, probably just as much for the walk as anything.”
Lonnie was disappointed that his father hadn’t taken him. He ate his breakfast and went outside to do his chores. The world was transformed to platinum and crystalline grotesquery. He pushed against the porch screen and a pane of ice shattered and tinkled to the ground. The wood shed seemed more a cave, with stalactites hanging over the neatly stacked cords of wood. When he swung open well house’s doors, ice cracked, then exploded in a shower, and as the bucket chain rattled through the pulley, chunks of ice dislodged and sp
lashed into the echoing well. By lunchtime, Wayne had not returned and Aileen wondered aloud about his whereabouts. Perhaps he had met with Bertrand and they had become caught up in war talk. He hadn’t had breakfast, she reasoned, so he would soon come home for lunch.
The afternoon wore on, and Wayne did not return. Aileen went several times to the porch, yelling toward the woods for him. Then she debated with herself as whether or not to send Lonnie to find him. “Go just to the edge of the woods,” she instructed, “and call him.” Then she mumbled, “No need you traipsing in the woods in this weather. Hunters, too.”
Lonnie had been at the woods’ edge many times, but today, in the muted light of freezing rain, the trees looked foreboding. To cross from the bright, ice-covered field with its tortured shapes into the dark woods with its ice canopy was to cross a spectral frontier. He called for his father, listening as his voice echoed down the creek valley. His mother had told him to call and return, but he braved a few steps into the woods. Above him the branches, bent with ice, made a metallic net, a vision that frightened and thrilled him. He imagined for a moment that he might be Captain Marvel Junior.
His father would be Captain Marvel, and even though Mary Marvel was Captain Marvel’s sister, not his wife, his mother would have to be Mary. The path into the woods leveled for a while, then sloped down toward the creek, and then up again, running on the hillside parallel to the creek. He decided that he would go to just where the hill sloped, and as he did so, he saw where his father’s boots must have cracked the frozen leaf litter, and he followed on. At places the path was slippery and he slipped several times, never falling, but intensifying his effort to tread the slippery ground. Soon he was on the level path again, under a grove of big-leaf pines that stood between the deciduous trees and one of Venable’s fields. He saw his father’s tracks again and followed. Now he thought how surprised his father might be to have him appear along beside him. Behind him there was a loud yawning and then a crash like cymbals, as a branch broke and fell through the canopy. The forest seemed alive, sentient—despite the absence of the squirrels and birds, the trees and undergrowth, though bare, seemed quickened, shimmering like quicksilver.
The path wound back into the deciduous woods. Again he climbed through the ravine above the creek until he came to the creek’s end, now an old spring, so long unused it had once more transformed into a marshy place in the nook of the hills. The path snaked around it, and he continued, looking for signs of his father. Soon he came to the foot of Christmas Hill, where there was said to be the haunted homestead. Here the skeletal remains of a blackberry bramble resembled a tangle of new fence wire. He thought better of going further, remembering that his mother had said only to go to the woods’ edge. Perhaps now his father had returned anyway, he thought, and might be looking for him. He went back down the path, and as he reached the last hill before home he heard the car horn blowing in long urgent blares. He rushed along, slipping and catching himself. His bare hands went deep into the frozen hummus and he got up with his hands blackened and burning with cold. The horn continued to blow. He moved faster. Out of the woods, he saw his mother standing by the car, the driver’s door open. His heart stopped. She ordered him into the car and made several agitated attempts to start the car before it cranked. Lonnie’s asked her where they were going and what was the matter. She said nothing. She found the reverse gear and released the clutch, sending the car spinning on the ice, then lurching until she had backed it into the road.
“Where are we going?” Lonnie screamed. He felt himself losing his breath and tears coming.
“To town,” Aileen screamed back at him. “Now let me drive.”
She found the first drive gear, and again spinning on the ice, the car jerked forward. They went along slowly, the engine revving for the second gear, and with some effort she placed the gear and the car jerked forward again. She never gained enough speed to shift to third. She steered through the middle of the road, following in tracks already laid.
Again, Lonnie questioned her, and again she admonished him just to let her drive. On the level, straight part of the road, she steered well, but turning the curves she seized the wheel and grimaced, while the car fishtailed. She managed going up the shallow grades, but coming down she simultaneously pushed the brake and the accelerator causing the car’s engine to sputter and the wheels to spin and whine. Slowly, erratically, they made their way along the frozen road past the ice-laden fields and forests. Aileen turned onto the main road without braking, causing the car to slide and then straighten. The main road, to Lonnie’s relief, had less ice. Here she accelerated and shifted into the third gear with ease, but now the car seemed to be going too fast, the boy thought. He gripped the arm rest. The muscles in his mother’s jaw formed hard knots.
“Is there something the matter with Daddy?”
Aileen did not answer, seemingly absorbed with steering. They were ascending a rise, and Lonnie noted that the speedometer read thirty-five miles. He recognized where they were, though the thicket seemed disguised by the ice. At the top of the hill would be a long, steep slope toward the river and the old iron bridge. He warned his mother, but she did not seem to hear. “We are at the river,” he said again. Even on dry days, cars seem to swoop down the hill with too much speed. At fast speeds, aiming for the bridge was a bit too much like aiming for the eye of a needle. From the crest, he saw the narrow bridge and the river, slate and frothy at the riffles, thirty feet below it. Aileen saw it too, and began to apply the brakes, but the car fishtailed, and she slammed the brakes causing them to lock and the car to slide. Aileen raised her hips from the seat and stood on the brake, but the car kept sliding, first head on, then sideways, and then head on again. She twisted the steering wheel wildly and Lonnie braced himself against the dash. The car continued to slide, picking up speed as it slid, crookedly, now, toward one of the diagonal beams of the truss. It might hit the beam on Lonnie’s side, and teeter over the bank into the river. Just as Lonnie imagined the worst, the car grounded itself into the ditch and stopped with a jerk that sent him tumbling onto the dashboard and against the windshield.
Neither he nor his mother said anything for a moment, and then, she, still gripping the steering wheel asked if he were all right. He pushed himself down from the dashboard and said he was fine, though he felt as if someone had hit him hard in the front of the shoulder. “Jesus, sweet Jesus,” his mother screamed. “Why have you forsaken me?” Then she laid her head against the steering wheel and began to sob. Though he tried, Lonnie could not console her.
Nearly an hour passed before they heard a jangling over the sound of an engine downshifting. It was an old Chevy pickup with chains on the tires. The truck stopped beside the car and an elderly colored man got out. He asked if they were all right and waited to hear what they wanted him to do. Aileen said they needed to go to Bethany Clinic. Lonnie’s stomach clenched. He knew then that something bad had happened to his father. Maybe shot.
On the way, the old man handling his truck skillfully on the icy hill, Aileen explained rapidly that Sheriff Cook had come by her house to tell her that her husband had had an accident and had been taken to the clinic. The Sheriff had other business and could not give her a ride into town, so she had tried to drive herself. The man nodded and said he was sorry to hear about her husband. His hair was gray with a yellow tint and a matted ring where his cap fit. He talked about the weather and about having been prepared for it, with chains for his tires, and bricks to weigh down the back of the truck. No other word about Wayne was mentioned until they got to the clinic. But Lonnie’s mind was busy with what might have happened. He reasoned that they wouldn’t be rushing to the clinic if his father were dead.
Aileen tried to pay the colored man. He would not accept her money and he wished her good luck.
SIX
The boy enjoyed the woods, just as his father had, and now that his father was dead, the woods in spring reminded him of the walks he had taken with the big man. He
loved the dogwoods, particularly, to see them from the roads or to stand on a ridge and look through the dark trunks and fissured branches and witness the white flowers. They looked like angels.
Wayne had taught him the names of trees and shrubs and told him stories about their uses. How sassafras made a tea that cured a stomachache, and how white pine sap cured a bad cough. The dogwood, too, was more than just something to look at. Its bark, made into a tea, could cure a fever, and a peeled twig made a good toothbrush. Wayne knew these things, he said, because he had Indian blood—the blood of the Creeks ran in his veins, bringing with it the potent knowledge of plants and animals and the love for the land. They were white men, Wayne had insisted, but beneath their white skins pulsed the pure blood of America. So the two of them were more than father and son, they were blood brothers, brothers of the spirit. On some days, Lonnie imagined that the spirits of his blood brother, Wayne, and his faithful mutt, Toby, accompanied him through the woods; when a bush seemed to quiver and no wind blew, or when he discovered a new dogwood, nearly fully mature, where he hadn’t noticed one before—when these miracles happened—he told himself they were his father’s gifts. To his mind, Wayne was the miraculous facilitator even of Bertrand coming weekly to their place to help his mother, coming to talk with him and to tell him stories. Lonnie loved the wild azaleas, too, with their thin, sprawling branches and blossoms the color of pigs’ nipples—and the ghost gray trunks of white oaks with their soft, pink and green leaves. The leaves held the surprising color of the sea foam the time he had seen it near Savannah when they had driven to Aunty’s funeral. Spring in Georgia was a miracle. Perhaps a miracle wherever it occurred, but since he had only seen Georgia and, for that matter, Talmaedge County, he only knew spring in his own backyard. Only here could the dead rise.
Bertrand came often that spring, usually walking the path, and by the time Lonnie or his mother saw him, it was as though he materialized, a spirit, by the woodpile or by the porch door with one of his wife’s cakes in hand, asking Aileen what chores he might help her with. Though Lonnie and Aileen managed with much of the daily work such as feeding the animals, Bertrand was helpful with the harder tasks: splitting logs for firewood, plowing and disking the garden, repairing the pig pens and chicken coop. At first Aileen tried to pay him, but he refused, saying that Wayne had been his friend and a fellow soldier. It was his Christian duty.
The Vain Conversation Page 6