“Tom Rossi drove him to the doctor,” I said. “He’d lost a lot of blood.” It had been everywhere: drenching his shirt, pooling on the floor, spattering Turpin’s white robes.
“Why?” she asked. “Why did they do it?
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the photo and handed it to her. She looked at it, then back at me. “Who are they?”
“That’s Ronsel’s German lover, and the child she had by him. There was a letter with it, I don’t know what happened to it.”
“How did they get hold of this?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Lie number two. “I guess Ronsel must have dropped it somewhere.”
“And one of them found it.”
“Yes.”
“Who else was there, besides Pappy?”
“I didn’t recognize any of the others,” I said.
Lie number three, this one for her own safety. I’m sure she saw through it, but she didn’t call me on it. She just gazed at me thoughtfully. I had the feeling I was being weighed, and found wanting. It gave me an unfamiliar pang. I’d cheerfully disappointed dozens of women. Why, with Laura, did it feel so bad?
“What will you tell Henry?” she asked.
“I don’t know. He’s going to be upset enough as it is, without having to know that our father was part of a lynch mob.”
“Did Tom or Sheriff Tacker actually see Pappy at the sawmill?”
“I don’t think so. But even if they did, this is the Delta. The last thing the sheriff wants to do is identify any of them.”
“What about Ronsel?”
“He won’t talk. They made sure of that.”
“He could write it down.”
I shook my head. “What do you suppose would happen to him if he did? What would happen to his family?”
Laura’s eyes widened. “Are we in danger?”
“No,” I said. “Not as long as I leave here.”
She walked to the barn door and looked out at the brown fields and the bleak crouching sky, hugging herself with her arms. “How I hate this place,” she said softly.
I remembered the strength of those arms around me, and the surprising sureness with which her hand had gripped me and guided me into her. I wondered if she was that fierce and sure with my brother. If she cried out his name like she’d cried out mine.
“I can’t see any reason to tell Henry your father was involved,” she said finally. “It would only hurt him needlessly, to know the truth.”
“All right. If you think so.”
She turned and looked at me, holding my gaze for long seconds. “We won’t ever speak of it,” she said.
WHEN HENRY GOT home he was already in a welter because of the storm. Laura and I met him at the car, but he barely gave us a glance as he brushed by us to kneel in the fields and examine one of the flattened rows of newly planted cotton. It had started to rain again, and we were all getting soaked.
“If this keeps up all the seed will be washed away, and we’ll have to replant,” he said. “The almanac predicted light rain in April, damnit. What time did it start here?”
“Around five o’clock yesterday,” said Laura. “It poured all night long.”
Her voice sounded strained. Henry looked from her to me and frowned. “What happened to your face?”
I’d forgotten all about my face. I tried to think up a story to explain it, but my mind was blank.
“Venus kicked him,” Laura blurted out. “Last night, when he was milking. The storm agitated her. All the animals. One of the pigs is dead. The others trampled it.”
Henry looked from her back to me. “What in the hell’s the matter with the two of you?”
She waited for me to tell him, but I shook my head. I couldn’t speak. “Honey,” she said, “your father is gone. He died last night in his sleep.”
She went and stood next to him but didn’t touch him. He wasn’t ready to be touched yet. How well she knows him, I thought. How well they suit each other. He bent his head and stared at his muddy boots. Eldest child, now the head of our family. I saw the weight of that settle on him.
“Is he . . . still in his bed?” Henry was asking me. I nodded. “I guess I’d better go and see him,” he said.
Together the three of us walked to the lean-to. Henry went in first. Laura and I followed, coming to stand on either side of him. He pulled the sheet down. Pappy’s eyes, vacant and bulging, stared up at us. Henry reached out to close them, but Laura took his hand and gently pulled it back.
“No, honey,” she said. “We already tried. He’s still too stiff.”
Henry let out a long breath. I put an arm around him and so did Laura. When our hands accidentally touched behind his back, she shifted hers away.
I hadn’t expected Henry to cry, and he didn’t. His face was impassive as he looked down at our father’s dead body. He turned to me. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I felt a flare of resentment. Did he never get tired of being the strong one, of being stoic and honorable and dependable? I saw in that moment that I’d always resented him, even as I’d looked up to him, and that I’d bedded his wife in part to punish him for being all the things I wasn’t.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Henry nodded and squeezed my shoulder, then looked back down at Pappy. “I wonder what he saw, at the end.”
“It was a dark night,” I told him. “No moon or stars. I doubt he saw much of anything.”
Lie number four.
“NIGGER LOVER!” Turpin shouted. “Judas!”
Finally a boot connected with the back of my head, and that was all—for five minutes or so. When I came to, somebody was none too gently slapping my cheek. I was lying on my side with the other cheek against the dirt. The room was a blur of legs and white robes.
“Wake up,” said my father, giving me a hard shake. A half dozen overlapping hooded heads swam over me. I tried to push him away from me. That’s when I realized my hands were tied behind my back. He pulled me to a sitting position and propped me against the wall. The sudden motion made the room spin, and I felt myself starting to topple over. Pappy yanked me back up again by my jacket collar. “Sit up and act like a man,” he hissed in my ear. “You make one more wrong move, and these boys are liable to kill you.”
When the room resettled itself I saw Ronsel, still alive, his head straining upward in an effort to keep the noose from choking him.
“What are we gonna do with him?” said Deweese, waving in my direction.
“No need to do anything,” said Pappy. “He won’t talk, he told you so already. Ain’t that right, son?”
My father was scared, I realized. He was scared as hell, and he was trying to protect me. I think it was right then that I really began to feel afraid myself. My heart started to pound and I felt sweat breaking out all over me, but I made my voice stay calm and confident. For me and Ronsel to walk out of here alive, I would need to give the performance of my life.
“That’s right,” I said. “Just let him go, and as far as I’m concerned this never happened.”
The hulking figure of Orris Stokes loomed over me.
“You ain’t in a position to make demands, nigger lover. If I was you, I’d worry less about what happens to him and more about your own skin.”
“Jamie won’t go to the law,” said Pappy. “Not when we tell him what the nigger did.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He fucked a white woman and got a child on her,” Pappy said.
“Bullshit. Ronsel wouldn’t do any such thing.”
“Is that a fact,” said Turpin. “You think you know him, huh? Well, what do you say to this?”
He thrust a photo in front of my eyes, of a thin, pretty blonde holding a mulatto baby. It definitely hadn’t been taken in Mississippi. The ground was covered with snow, and there was an alpine-style house in the background.
“Who is she?” I said.
“Some German gal,” said Turpin.
“And
what makes you think Ronsel’s the father?”
He waved a piece of paper in the air. “Says so right here in this letter. She even named it after him.”
My feelings must have shown in my face. “See?” Pappy said. “I told you boys he’d be with us on this.”
I looked over at Ronsel. He blinked once, slowly, in affirmation. There was no shame in his eyes. If anything, they seemed to challenge me, to say, What kind of man are you? Guess we’re about to find out. I looked at the photo again, remembering how shocked I’d been when I first saw Negro GIs with white girls in the pubs and dance halls of Europe. Eventually I’d gotten used to it. Soldiers will be soldiers, I’d told myself, and the girls were obviously willing. But I’d never been easy with it, and I still wasn’t. And if I wasn’t, I could only imagine what that photograph stirred up in these white-sheeted men. That, and Ronsel’s quiet pride in himself, which must have infuriated them. I knew their kind: locked in the imagined glory of the past, scared of losing what they thought was theirs. They would make an answer. I understood that, and them, all too well. But I couldn’t let them kill Ronsel. And if I didn’t come up with something quick, they would.
“What do you fellows care about some Kraut whore?” I said.
That earned me a hard kick in the thigh from Orris’s boot.
“Just tell em you won’t talk,” urged Pappy. I could hear the desperation in his voice, and if I could hear it, so could they. That was dangerous. Nothing goads a pack like the scent of fear.
“You’re not taking my meaning,” I said. “These fräuleins, they’re not like our women. They’re cold-hearted cunts who’ll smile to your face then stab you in the back the first chance they get. They got an awful lot of our boys killed over there. So if Ronsel exacted a little vengeance on one of them and left her with a reminder of it, I call it justice.”
There was silence. I began to have a little hope.
“You’re good, boy,” said Turpin. “Too bad you’re full of shit.”
“Listen, I’m not saying we should give him a medal for it. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem right, killing a decorated soldier over an enemy whore.”
Another silence.
“The nigger’s still got to be punished,” Pappy said.
“And kept from doing it again,” said Stokes. “You know how these bucks are once they get a taste for white women. What’s to stop him from going after one here?”
“We’re gonna stop him,” said Turpin. “Right here and right now.”
He opened a leather case on the floor and pulled out a scalpel. Somebody whistled. Excitement crackled through the room. Ronsel and I started talking at the same time:
“Please, suh. I’m begging you, please don’t—”
“You don’t need that, he’s learned his les—”
Doc Turpin’s voice cut across ours like a whip. “If either of them says one more word, shoot the nigger.”
I shut up, and so did Ronsel.
“This nigger profaned a white woman,” Turpin said. “He fouled her body with his eyes and his hands and his tongue and his seed, and for that he’s got to pay. What’ll it be, boys?”
They all spoke at once: “Geld him.” “Blind him.” “Cut it all off!”
I caught a whiff of urine and saw a stain spreading across the front of Ronsel’s pants. The smell of piss and sweat and musk was overwhelming. I swallowed hard to keep myself from throwing up.
Then my father said, “I say we let my son decide.”
“Why should we do that?” Turpin demanded.
“Yeah,” said Stokes, “why should he get to do it?”
“If he decides, he’s part of it,” said Pappy.
“No,” I said. “I won’t do it.”
My father bent down to me, his eyes narrowed to slits. He put his mouth up to my ear. “You know where I found that letter?” he said. “In the cab of our truck, on the floor of the passenger seat. Only one way it could’ve got there, and that’s if you let him ride with you again. This is your doing. You think about that.”
I shook my head hard, not wanting to believe it, knowing it had to be true. Pappy pulled away and raised his voice so the others could hear. “You had to stick your nose in. Busting in here like Gary Cooper, waving that gun around and making threats. Threatening me, your own father, over a nigger! Well, you’re in it now, son. You don’t want him killed, fine. You decide his punishment.”
“I said I won’t do it.”
“You will,” said Turpin. “Or I will. And I don’t think your boy here will like my choice.” He made a crude stabbing gesture toward his crotch. There were hoots and chuckles from the others. Ronsel was shuddering, his muscles straining against the ropes that bound him. His eyes implored me.
“What’s it gonna be?” said Turpin. “His eyes, his tongue, his hands or his balls? Choose, nigger lover.”
When I didn’t answer Deweese swung the shotgun around, pointing it at me. My father stepped away from me, leaving me alone in the shotgun’s field. Deweese cocked it. “Choose,” he said.
Here it was, the oblivion I’d been chasing for so long. All I had to do was stay silent, and I would have it—an end to pain and fear and emptiness. Here it was, if I just had the guts to reach out and grab hold of it.
“Choose, goddamnit,” said my father.
I chose.
LAURA
I WENT TO SEE Florence the day after we found Pappy dead. I wanted to find out how Ronsel was. I also needed to have a private talk with her. I couldn’t have her working for me anymore. I didn’t think she’d want to in any case, but I had to be sure of it, and of her silence.
I told Jamie where I was going and asked him to watch the children for me. As I was about to walk out the door, he pulled something from his pocket and handed it to me: the photograph of Ronsel’s German lover and their child. My arms broke out into gooseflesh; I didn’t want to touch it. I tried to hand it back to him.
“No,” he said. “You give that to Florence, for Ronsel. Ask her to tell him . . .” He shook his head, at a loss. His mouth was tight with self-loathing.
I gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m sure he knows,” I said.
I intended to drive, but both the car and the truck were mired too deeply in mud, so I took my umbrella and set out on foot. The rain had slackened a little since yesterday, but it was still coming down steadily. As I walked past the barn, Henry saw me and came to the open door. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“To Florence’s. She didn’t show up for work yesterday or today.”
Henry still didn’t know about what had happened to Ronsel. Hap hadn’t come and told him, and we’d been cut off from town since last night. Jamie and I had said nothing, of course. We weren’t supposed to know about it yet.
Henry frowned. “You shouldn’t be out in this mess. I’ll go over there later and see about it. You go on back to the house.”
I thought quickly. “I need to ask her some questions. About how to prepare the body.”
“All right. But take care you don’t fall. The road’s slippery.”
His concern for me brought a lump to my throat. “I’ll be careful,” I said.
Lilly May answered my knock. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. I asked to speak to her mother.
“I’ll see,” she said.
She closed the door in my face. I felt a clutch of fear. What if Ronsel hadn’t survived his wounds? For his family’s sake, and for Jamie’s, I prayed that he had. I waited on the porch for perhaps five minutes, though it felt like much longer. Finally the door opened and Florence came out. Her face was drawn, her eyes sunken. I feared the worst, but then there came a long, guttural moan from inside the house. It was a horrible sound, but it meant he was alive. They must have brought him back home yesterday afternoon, I thought, before the river flooded the bridge.
“How is he?” I asked.
Florence didn’t answer, just gave me a cold, knowing stare. I stared back at her, adulteress
to murderess. Reminding her that I knew things too.
“We leaving here soon as the river goes down,” she said curtly. “Hap’ll be by later today to tell your husband.”
Relief flooded me, overwhelming the small bit of shame that accompanied it. I would not have to see her, even from a distance; would not be reminded daily of how my family had destroyed hers. “Where will you go?” I asked.
She shrugged and looked out over the drowned fields. “Away from here.”
There was only one thing I could offer her. “The old man is dead,” I said. “He died night before last, in his sleep.” I emphasized the last part, but if she was reassured her face didn’t show it. If anything, she looked even more bitter. “God will know what to do with him,” I said.
She shook her head. “God don’t give a damn.”
As if to prove her words, Ronsel moaned again. Florence closed her eyes. I don’t know what was more terrible: listening to that sound, or watching Florence listen to it. It might as well have been her own tongue being torn from her body. I shuddered, imagining how I would feel if that sound were coming out of Amanda Leigh or Bella. I thought of Vera Atwood. Of my own mother, still grieving after all these years for Teddy’s lost twin.
“I have something for him, from Jamie,” I said. I took out the photograph and handed it to her. “It was taken in Germany. The child is—”
“I know who he is.” She brushed her fingers lightly across the surface of the picture, touching the face of the grandson she would never see. Then she shoved it in her pocket and looked at me. “I need to get back to him,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Two words, pitifully inadequate to carry the weight of all that had happened, but I said them anyway.
Ain’t your fault. Three words, a gift of absolution I didn’t deserve. I would have given anything to hear Florence say them, but she didn’t. All she said was goodbye.
JAMIE
Mudbound Page 23