The Lost Saints of Tennessee

by Amy Franklin-Willis

  Ezekiel ran away from home today. Threw a duffel bag and that stinky dog into his truck. Wouldn’t tell me where he’s going. I wonder if Violet told him my news. If she did, he didn’t say a word about it. Of course, that’s not unusual. It’s been twenty-five years since the child said more than “Good dinner, Mother” or “I’ll fix your roof on Sunday” or “Hello, Mother.” Still.

  Summer is almost gone again. It’s been Mississippi hot around here. Muggy. Thunderstorm every week. Nothing to do really when it’s miserable like this. Nothing but lie about and think. Remembering is the only thing left to me. And it’s not enough. If Dr. Trent’s right, the cancer will eat through my lungs until there’s nothing left. Unless he operates. Then I have a chance. Unless the surgery kills me.

  We slip out of our mothers with a certain number of days for living already decided. Now it’s like the doctor’s waved one of those yellow NASCAR caution flags in front of me. My husband loved to watch NASCAR on TV. I didn’t mind it. Going fast was something I could appreciate.

  No one left to pay much attention to me. There’s some telling left to do, though. If someone wants to listen, fine. If not, doesn’t bother me. All I need do is tell.

  The starting point is the middle, where everything fell into place and fell apart. In 1941 I was pregnant for the third time. I knew it would be a boy. A dream kept coming to me where two dark-headed boys sat perched on a limb, high up in a catalpa tree. Every time they called to me I would climb up, but as soon as my hand reached out to them, I’d fall to the ground.

  Carter Sr. told me not to get his hopes up for a boy. After the girls were born, he figured I couldn’t make a son. We didn’t have any of the tests you get nowadays to tell you what it will be ahead of time. You got what you got.

  Lord, did I get big—could barely walk, couldn’t tie my own shoes for months, kept burping up every bite of food I managed to get down. My husband liked to die one night when I lifted up my gown and told him to watch the belly. Looked like there was an octopus inside me, poking through the skin of my stomach, with arms and legs here, there, and everywhere.

  “Jesus, Lillian, what have you got in there?” he said.

  About a week before the boys were born, I was out on the front porch swing with my feet up. The October air blew nice and cool against my skin. For once, Carter Sr. had told me to go sit while he gave Violet and Daisy their baths. The girls started wailing for me to come. Their Daddy never gave them a bath. Carter told them to hush up, and so they did. I was grateful Carter was around. His heart murmur kept him out of the war and home with us. We both knew birthing time was near. Had to be.

  Coming down Five Hills Road were Pearlene Washington and her husband, Moses. They lived a quarter of a mile up the road. Moses made a living fixing anything that was broke, or near broke, and Pearlene knew more about delivering babies than all the doctors in Tolliver, as far as I could tell, having been taught by her grandmother, who used to deliver all the slave babies over at the Twineddy Plantation way back when.

  They stopped in front of the house and I waved them up. Pearlene took one look at me and said, “Mrs. Cooper, that belly is surely big. Bigger than with your other babies. You been eating a lot?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Listen to this name I picked out for the baby—Ezekiel.” I said it again, loving the way it swam off my tongue.

  Pearlene put her hands to my belly and pushed gently on it, this way and that, frowning the whole time. “You got a whole lot of baby in here, Mrs. Cooper. Whole lot.”

  I swatted her hands away. “’Course it’s big. It’s a boy. I heard ‘Ezekiel’ on The Shadow last week. It’s from the Bible, you know, one of the prophets. Doesn’t it sound important? Like a boy who’ll have a lifetime of good things?”

  Pearlene stood up, her arms crossed over her chest. “What’s Mr. Cooper think about the first son not getting his daddy’s name?”

  Carter let me name Violet and Daisy. He said I would be better at picking out a girl’s name. But a son. That would be different.

  One of the boys kicked a foot beneath my ribs and I gasped. This was a favorite game of theirs in the last weeks. I used my hand to press the soft heel over to the other side of my belly.

  The Washingtons stared down at me, trying not to smile too wide.

  “I’ll settle for naming him Carter Ezekiel if I have to,” I said.

  Six days later, the labor pains hit me so bad I dropped the iron skillet on my foot as I was pulling corn bread from the oven. I let out a howl, not sure which was worse—the vise strangling my belly or the smashed toe. Violet and Daisy, only four and two at the time, came running in asking what was wrong. I told them to get their father. Daisy burst into tears and Violet froze right up.

  “Please, Violet. Get your father.”

  “Okay, Momma,” she said, running off to the front yard, where Carter was working on his truck.

  I put Daisy on my hip and grabbed a cool cloth for my toe. My husband barreled through the kitchen doorway, carrying Violet and breathing heavy.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?”

  “I’m having a baby, goddamn you.”

  The girls’ eyes got big. I never cursed in front of the children. At least not until they were older.

  “Now?” Carter asked.

  I started to cry, suddenly scared of what was before me. And it wasn’t even the birthing so much as the caring for another baby. I was already so worn out.

  The tears made Carter move. He told Violet to take herself and her sister over to their aunt Charlotte’s, just a few doors down from our house. Then he scooped me up in his arms, not an easy thing to do when your wife weighs almost two hundred pounds, and began carrying me out to the car. Another contraction sliced me in half. When it passed, I told him to take me to our bed.

  “We’re not going to make it to the hospital. Go get Pearlene.”

  At ten minutes past midnight on a clear October night, our first son was born. While Pearlene washed the baby and swaddled him in a warm flannel blanket, I began squirming with pain again. Pearlene called Carter in from the living room to hold the baby so she could tend to me. After prodding my belly for a minute, she looked up, a small smile creasing her face.

  “Mrs. Cooper, I don’t believe we’re finished here yet.”

  “I’m finished, Pearlene. Give me my son.”

  The contractions came again but I figured it was the after­birth. Carter put the baby in my arms. He cried and cried but stopped as soon as I got him settled on my breast.

  “Hey there, son,” Carter said, stroking the dark, silky hair on the baby’s head. “Hey there, Carter boy.”

  “Now, you know,” I began, “I want to name him—”

  Another pain hit me. Then another.

  Pearlene came back in the room with a fresh stack of towels.

  “Am I bleeding that much?”

  She shook her head. “Not for you.”

  At twenty minutes past midnight, I got my second son. Ezekiel. A little smaller than his brother but twice as loud.

  On their first night in the world, I made up a lullaby for my sweet boys:

  Good night, my sons

  The day is done

  Wait only for angels

  To carry your dreams

  Let sleep begin

  So we may meet again

  I sang it to them at bedtime for years until one night, when he was eight, Ezekiel said, “Momma, I don’t need a lullaby no more.”

  Nineteen

  When Carter and Ezekiel were babies, I’d take them out in the back garden and sit them in the dirt while I weeded, talking the whole time about what I was doing—See, Carter, ­Momma’s pulling this weed up because it’ll choke our little tomato plant. See, Ezekiel, this is going to be a great big cucumber in a few weeks
, just right for you to munch on.

  They were always happiest when they were together. If I tried to give one a bath without the other, they’d cry so much I’d end up putting both of them in the kitchen sink at the same time, the two of them splashing water all over the floor with their chubby little arms, squealing like there wasn’t anything better in the whole world.

  My husband and I took up favorites pretty early with the boys. He seemed to like holding Carter more, maybe because the child had his name, and I couldn’t get enough of Ezekiel, my surprise baby. The month before the boys turned two, another surprise came. A bad one this time. Clayton suffered a measles outbreak. All of the children got it but Carter caught the worst case. He got the rash and then a fever I couldn’t bring down.

  Back then there were only a few doctors left at the hospital in Tolliver. All the younger and able-bodied ones were over in France patching up the soldiers. A Dr. Kentfield, who must have been almost eighty years old, prepared us to lose our boy. He said a child as young as Carter couldn’t last much longer with a fever over 104 degrees, and he suspected encephalitis, as well. Two days later my baby slipped into a coma. The ladies from First Baptist came to Tolliver and sat with us in the waiting room praying for little Carter. Praying. And praying. And praying.

  On day twelve, Carter woke up and pointed at the water pitcher. It was the first sensible thing he’d done since falling sick. The whole family fussed over him when he got home, treating him like a king. I fixed him his favorite treat of corn bread crumbled in a glass of buttermilk; his father bought him and Ezekiel matching cowboy outfits with holsters and hats; Vi and Daisy drew pictures filled with rainbows and hearts.

  It took a while to figure out how the fever changed Carter. He still played the same with Ezekiel, still laughed when I blew air on his tummy, still cried when the whip-poor-wills let out their squawks at night. But by their third birthday, I could tell something wasn’t right. Ezekiel was already telling us tales—making up stories about the wild cats under the house and talking so much that sometimes I’d have to say, “Ezekiel Cooper, your momma’s going to go crazy if you don’t hush up that mouth of yours.” He’d toddle off to find somebody else’s ear to bend. Carter didn’t speak until he was four going on five. I kept telling his daddy something was wrong, really wrong. We’d take the child to the doctor—have his hearing tested, his vision. And the answer was always the same. Normal.

  My sister Charlotte’s first child was a son the same age as my boys. She used to bring Charlie over to play with Ezekiel and Carter. One winter morning we sat drinking coffee at the kitchen table, watching the three boys pull all the pots out from the bottom cabinets. Ezekiel had been the instigator, pulling the first one out. Then Charlie. Then Carter. Charlie and Ezekiel began stacking the pots, one on top of another, until they had a tower. Carter sat there with his knees pulled into his chest, just watching.

  “Go on, Carter,” I said. “You put a pot on the tower.”

  Carter shook his head, smiling a little.

  “It’s all right, son,” I said. “You go on.”

  “He don’t know how, Momma,” Ezekiel answered for his brother, stacking another pot.

  “’Course he does,” I said. “He’s the same age as you. You go on, Carter. Go ahead.”

  But my boy came over to me instead and climbed up into my lap. Charlotte and I looked at each other. My eyes slid away before I had to answer the question in hers.

  I taught Ezekiel his letters and numbers before he went to school. I’d read to him from one of my Photoplay magazines, pointing at each letter until he learned them all. When I tried to teach Carter, he’d just stare at the pictures of the movie stars, pointing and asking, Who that, Momma? not caring one bit for the letters on the page.

  Baby Rose came along when the boys were four. Carter liked to smother that girl to death with all his kisses. He couldn’t get enough of seeing her tiny fingers and toes. It was Carter who held Rosie’s hand as she took her first steps. Carter who wiped her tears when she fell over. Ezekiel thought Rosie was sweet, but he didn’t pay her much mind.

  The year the boys started school even my husband, who could ignore a fire in his own house until it singed the bottom of his toes, had to face up to Carter being different. Lord, how I had to fight for that child. When they were in kindergarten, that mean old bitch Miss Ryder sent Carter home every week for this or that. Once, it was because he didn’t know how to tie his shoes.

  The summer before the boys started first grade, Dr. Grady told me about a Memphis doctor who worked with “special” children. Dr. Grady knew I was worried about Carter, and he thought this Memphis fellow could help us figure out what was wrong, if there was anything wrong. Carter Sr. and I argued about it for weeks. He thought it was a waste of money we didn’t have.

  Things were tight in 1948. My husband gave up trying to feed a family of seven by raising cotton. One of his cousins was a pipe fitter over in Germantown and told Carter it was good solid work. So he spent six months working for almost nothing as an apprentice in Memphis. By the end of summer he would be ready to get jobs on his own from the union.

  He wouldn’t budge about the doctor. “Our boy is fine, Lillian,” he said. “He’s just slow, is all. We don’t need some city doctor telling us what we already know.”

  I gave up fighting about it. Instead, for the first time in my life, I asked a relative for money. My cousin Georgia Parker had married a boy from a rich Virginia family and I knew she would help me. Within a week, I had enough to pay for the visit fee, the train tickets, and a little spending money while we were in the city.

  Carter Sr. got a call from the pipe fitters union about a three-month-long bridge construction job over in Alabama starting in early August. I scheduled the doctor’s visit for the fifteenth. I’d have to tell Carter Sr. eventually—somebody from town was sure to say something when he came home about me taking the boys on the train—but I would deal with him later.

  The morning of the trip was clear and hot. I had to get the three girls delivered to my sister’s house and the boys dressed before the seven-o’clock train came through. When the two loud blasts of the whistle rang out, I was finishing up braiding Daisy’s hair.

  “Run on down to the crossroads, Ezekiel, and ask Mr. O’Leary real nice if he’ll hold the train for us. Tell him your momma’s running just a minute late.”

  Michael O’Leary was a saint and did as Ezekiel asked. The boys and I came running up at five minutes past seven.

  “Lillian Cooper,” Mr. O’Leary called out from the engine car, making a point of looking at his pocket watch, “it’s a good thing you’re easy on these old eyes. I wouldn’t hold this train for just anybody now, you know.”

  I smiled and added the tiniest extra swish to my walk as I hurried the boys up the stairs of the passenger car. We made our way past a few people in the front rows toward the empty seats in the back. Carter sat closest to the window, then Ezekiel, then me. I opened my purse and took out a handkerchief, dabbing the sweat from the back of my neck. All of the windows were down in the car, but with the train standing still, no breeze came through.

  The boys wore their best Sunday clothes—brown pants and checked shirts, ironed fresh that morning, and hair washed the night before. Two little princes they were.

  Twenty

  The towns along the Southern Railway line rolled by: Mabry, Roger Springs, Saulsbury, Grand Junction, La Grange—where all of the houses are painted white and trimmed in green—­Moscow (there’s one of those in Russia, Ezekiel tells me, like I don’t know that already), Rossville, Collierville, Forest Hill, and Germantown. As the train drew near Memphis, the boys couldn’t believe what they saw out the window.

  The deep green of farmland gave way to the gray of concrete and the muddy red of brick buildings. The boys put their hands up to the window’s glass like they were trying to touch e
very office and shop and house that went past.

  Carter tugged at my sleeve, speaking in a half whisper, “What happened to all the grass? Why are there so many buildings? Where do people live?”

  “A taxi! A real taxi!” Ezekiel said.

  Passengers turned at the loudness of his voice, smiling at us around their newspapers. The train sailed down South Main, tall poplars lining the way, before coming to a stop in Central Station. As we stepped off the platform, I felt so scared I wanted to gather my boys up and head right back home. The noise of all those people—yelling, talking, spitting—and the trains, their engines idle but not quiet, was too much. I didn’t know where to turn. People strode in front of us, behind us, jostling us.

  “Look at all these people!” Ezekiel said as he whirled around, taking it all in.

  “Too many people,” I said, reaching into my purse for the cream-colored paper with the neatly printed directions the nurse had mailed me. We had to take two buses to the office. I managed to get us on the right ones. When we got off the second bus, Ezekiel kept stopping to look at things. “Momma, look at that building! How tall it is!” The throngs of people sharing the sidewalk caused Carter to walk so close to me that I could feel his leg brush mine with each step.

  “It’s all right, little man,” I said. “I won’t let anyone sweep you away.”

  We passed Audubon Park with its lawns like green velvet and its pure blue lake. The doctor’s office was in a plain brick building with a sign on the door that read “Dr. Christopher Allen, please ring bell.” Before ringing anything, I took my time straightening the seams on my stockings, smoothing my hair back into its bun, and wiping the boys’ faces.

  “I guess we’ll do.”

  Ezekiel and Carter stood in front of me, hands in their pockets, eyes cast downward.

  “I don’t want to go, Momma,” Carter said. The worry in his voice was heavy.