Sweet Song

by Terry Persun

  He sat and rubbed his hands over his foot until it became dry. A clatch of gnats moved slowly on a breeze coming his way. He got up, swatted at a mosquito and walked farther down-creek toward the river.

  He hummed as he walked, listening to the sound resonating through the back of his jaw and into his skull. He wondered what difference there might be between a black man’s skeleton and a white man’s skeleton. When he died, would anyone be able to guess what color he had been? Being both black and white, were there extra pieces inside him? Or missing? What was the difference if everybody were blind?

  Leon heard a noise and stopped humming. He saw movement in the fading light. A potato sack shirt, lighted by a deep violet sunset, slipped behind a tree. He waited, but nothing more moved. Thinking clearly what to do, he walked backwards. In a few steps, Tunny peeked around a tree. At that moment, Leon understood how stupid he had been night after night. The humping. The nakedness. It had all been known.

  Tunny stopped as though he thought Leon couldn’t actually see him.

  “How many times you follow me?”

  “We know what you ‘bout,” Tunny said.

  “Git, then.” Leon ran toward Tunny, who shoved Bud out from behind a tree and ran after him.

  Leon watched. Neither of them looked back to see whether he’d stopped or kept following. A darkness deeper than night set over him. He picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could toward Tunny and Bud. It crackled through leaves then thunked into a tree trunk or branch and fell to the ground. He picked up another and threw it harder. His breath came hard. His teeth clenched. He scanned the area for anyone else who might have followed him. Shaking his head, Leon walked back to the shack. He felt hungry. He hurt for the comfort of food. Even cold fish would be better than nothing.

  Big Leon was not home when Leon arrived. When he came inside, Bess mumbled in the corner, called, “Sweet Leon.” When he ignored her, she rolled into the space nearest the wall, the thin blanket falling and her bare shoulders and buttocks showing. Martha presented Leon with a plate of fish and a biscuit as quickly as she could. She blocked his view of his mother by standing between them, the plate held out.

  The room smothered him with the odor of sweat and compression of night heat. His hunger was deep and covered many areas of his life, many emotions. He hated Tunny and Bud. Their knowledge disgusted him. What they do with what they know didn’t matter any longer though. How could they alienate him more than he already felt?

  Leon left the heat of the shack and ate, sitting on a rock out back. Using a biscuit, he cleaned the last of the grease from his plate. He set the plate down at his feet and leaned back against the shack. Stars and fireflies blinked in and out of life overhead.

  His head against the shack wall, Leon heard Bess and Martha arguing. None of their words came through clearly, but the tones of their voices belied their exchange. He let the sounds comfort him, like humming a ruckus song. Their discourse took place in a rapid-fire question and answer format. He imagined how they might hold back conversation that he and Big Leon were not invited to hear. When alone, those two could lash out with no need to pause unless one of the men came walking through the door. How amusing it was to hear so much talk coming out of them now. At times they both talked simultaneously. He giggled. All the talk of respect that Martha delivered suddenly felt—and sounded—like a complete lie.

  Remembering Tunny and Bud once again, Leon wondered where Big Leon went on his walks. Did he follow Leon as well? Nothing seemed real or honest. Even the fireflies were false stars.

  Leon stayed outside, swatting an occasional mosquito, until the anger inside the house slowed, until the humming began.

  He usually met with Hillary three times a week, sometimes more. He questioned his own intentions and wondered what would happen, truly, if he refused to meet her, like Martha suggested. Should he test this new idea?

  The thought of Hillary caused his heart to beat faster. His body reacted against the memory of her touch, yet his mind leaned toward it. She had a peculiar smell about her body and a strong scent from her mouth. When tender her manner was superior. Was he her nigger, like Bess was her father’s nigger?

  Enough pain slithered through their little shack even before he was born, was he to carry that pain through, add new ingredients, and make it venomous? His mind boiled and his body ached. The way Hillary rubbed against him made his skin crawl, yet the way she moaned made him hard.

  Leon dashed the thoughts from his mind. He grabbed his plate and stood quickly, exerting his body to release its hold over his thoughts.

  He never had to make a decision on his own, but it was getting to that time and he could feel a decision standing over him like a large man in a black cloak. He couldn’t let Tunny and Bud see him with Hillary again. He couldn’t imagine his father watching. And Martha knew. Bess? His stomach churned and his throat opened. He squeaked and groaned. He gagged at the combined thoughts of Hillary and Bess and their awful connection through him, through Sir, through Big Leon, who knew too much about his own family to stay inside the same shack for more than a few hours at a time. Hell could not be a hotter, more sinful place.

  Leon wiped sweat from his brow. He used a shoulder to wipe his mouth dry. His hand and shirt were rough and scratchy, work heavy and sweat soaked. He remembered as a child being hugged by Martha and caressed by his mother. He had wished to be touched by his father, but that never or seldom happened except by accident. His mother’s touch soured. Martha retreated. Now his skin tightened at anyone’s touch except his own. He’d move out of the way to avoid being brushed against. As Hillary searched his body, he squirmed and shifted claiming that it tickled or scratched or hurt.

  He kicked the dirt, sending dust into the air. He swatted at a mosquito using his empty plate. He breathed deeply, looked to the sky, said a silent prayer for himself, for Hillary, and for the rest of his family. He had decided. No matter the outcome, he could go on no longer. Not as things were.

  Big Leon returned home. He sat near the wash basin, then lifted his eyes to stare out the window, his head held high, his eyes fixed on a cloud, the sky, the treetops. Neither Leon nor Big Leon spoke. Leon set his plate with others on the ledge. In his own corner of the room, Leon sat on his bed of straw. He reached down and back with his hand, touched his book, the one he’d kept, Wordsworth.

  Martha lay flat, barely visible in the dark, yet she was the witness in the family. Bess lay curled facing the wall. A thin cover lay over her back now. Martha must have covered her. Still her bare shoulders shined with sweat. Her neck looked soft. That single thought shot guilt through Leon. How could he think such a thought? What tenderness he felt for his mother was tarnished and although it was tenderness he wished for, he could no longer accept it. That he knew. Martha seemed to know it as well. Big Leon appeared to deny it.

  An urge to stand and shout came over him, but he did not move.

  Big Leon must have felt the boy’s energy. He turned and looked at Leon. “Go to bed,” he said. “Rest.”

  “Yes, Pa.” He wanted to hear his own voice as he addressed his father. He heard the familiar sound, but it stood riddled with untruth. So many untruths lived in that one small shack. In that room. At that moment. Leon nodded and Big Leon returned to his eyes-fixed position.

  A heavy breeze blew in. Leon wiped his mouth dry. He undressed and lay down. He felt like pissing, but wouldn’t get up to go outside. He fell asleep with the slight pain of an unreleased bladder. Horrible dreams plagued his sleep. He could do nothing inside them without an audience, without being watched. The woods were riddled with people watching him. His home was no better. Faces peered in the windows, from every corner, in through the door. Leon tried to run, but faces appeared in the sky, in the trees, and in the rocks along the river.

  He awoke before sunup, shaking, exhausted. He pulled on his trousers, held them at the front and ran out to pee in the bushes that grew along the side of the shack. Nothing felt quite right that mor
ning. It began in physical pain and with an uneasiness that followed Leon all morning. Grits and bread for breakfast. That was a treat. No one spoke, though, only grunted and hummed.

  Leon hurried to Sir’s barn to settle the stalls, ready them for evening. The teams would already be out. He planned, too, to clear the kitchen garbage, relax and make up songs, then head for his father’s side to work out the remains of the day.

  The plan was right. It reeked of familiarity clear up until his rendezvous with Hillary. Already, early in the day, he knew it would be different from all their other meetings.

  Leon glided through the day, an uneasy feeling thick in his chest and throat. Hank and Earl weren’t much help, but they weren’t much hindrance either. Leon took orders from them without comment, without acknowledging them except to respond.

  On his way to the back of the house, he saw Hillary for a moment and she winked at him. From that time, it took an hour to adjust his mind. He thought of her thick legs and soft breasts, the wetness between her legs and her moans of pleasure. From there, he imagined her smell, then her threats and rudeness when he didn’t respond the way she wanted. This all flowed, like the creek where they met, into thoughts of Hillary and her other man, Jacob.

  Stamping his foot and hitting one fist into the other palm didn’t fully illustrate Leon’s anger or pain at the thoughts he brought up. Nor did it belie the confusion of those emotions. He loved and hated her. He feared what she might do. He loathed himself for the power he let her have over him, for it was not merely the power of ownership, but of much more. As much as he didn’t understand that power, he also knew it well and from more places than he should. Leon accepted his own feelings. He spit, trying to reduce the acrid taste in his mouth. He pissed onto the garbage trying to empty the poison that was building up inside him. And he hummed and sang with teeth clenched and fists tight to draw his mind back into harmony.

  Before heading for the fields, Leon pushed his back straight, his head high, and let his nostrils – those white-man’s nostrils – flare out and suck in the world as he knew it. The rest of the day, Leon worked hard, often to exhaustion. At one point, Big Leon asked whether Leon was all right. A moment of fatherly concern Leon would remember. Yet, he was never able to respond.

  That evening, near dusk, Leon carried his anger to the creek flat.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Hillary said.

  He wondered how she could possibly know his thoughts were torn? Did he walk differently? Was his face twisted, tightened, or expressive in some other way?

  “Nothin’,” he said, but knew she wouldn’t have it that simple.

  “You mad at me for not stoppin’ to speak today?” It sounded as though her guilt had come to the creek flat with her.

  “That weren’t no reason.”

  “Why are you talking like that?”

  “I wanna.”

  “You know how I hate for you to talk that way.”

  He stared.

  She walked closer to him, her eyelids lowered to a seductive half-closed position.

  Why he said what he did, he would never know. “You juss want me to sound white so’s you done have to think about who you sinnin’ with. So’s you can imagine it be Jacob stickin’ you and not some nigger farmhand.”

  It was his delivery more than his words that hurt Hillary. He could feel her pain as the words were delivered, and if that weren’t enough, he could imagine her pain being worse from the way her face twisted hideously into a snarl.

  “How dare you?” She fell to her knees, ready to cry.

  He leaned toward her…his hand reaching out. Then he held his position. “You can’t love no nigger. And you can’t, you show can’t, love you half-brother.” He pulled his hand fully back. “You an evil woman. We both evil. I evil the day I’s born of this world.”

  Hillary looked up as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, her face streaked with tears. The setting sun set behind Lean; she squinted.

  “I know.” Her whisper was so soft Leon wasn’t sure he’d heard the words correctly.

  “We stoppin’ the sin now.”

  “You have no right to decide.”

  “I have the say,” he shouted.

  Hillary curled back from his voice.

  Leon searched the woods for movement. How did this scene look? How did it sound? He tried to think from outside his small world. His stomach burned and his throat locked shut. Nothing made sense. He wanted to run away and hold her at the same time.

  “Go,” Hillary said. “I hate you.” She crumpled sideways onto the ground. “You’re just a lousy nigger. Like your mama you enchant us with the idea of forbidden fruit, but you’re nothin’ but flesh. You’re flesh and blood and bone like us all.”

  Leon turned to leave. He bent over and coughed, sensing bile rise in his throat, surprised he didn’t vomit.

  “I’ll make you sorry,” she cried.

  Her words shoved at him until he ran stumbling over roots and stepping into holes.

  As the light burst across the horizon before the sun disappeared, Leon came to a stop. Bending forward, his hands on his knees, Leon spit. He gulped hot humid air, like trying to breathe under water. He waited, sending his will to his lungs, trying to get them to operate more slowly, more efficiently.

  Suddenly, Big Leon stepped out of the bushes.

  Leon’s eyes stretched as wide as they could. “What?” was all he could muster.

  “Need your help,” Big Leon said.

  Leon spit again. He glanced up through the twilight.

  “A late calf comin’. I need a hand. It may be breached.”

  Leon wondered why him, but didn’t ask. He followed Big Leon to the South barn where they kept the few head of cattle Fred Carpenter owned.

  On the way Leon asked why one of the other men wouldn’t do it.

  “Cain’t.”

  Leon didn’t ask why.

  At the barn, a cow lay in its stall bleating like a sheep. Big Leon and Leon were the only two there.

  “Why not Tunny?”

  “Toll ‘em all to scat home.” Big Leon kneeled next to the cow and stroked her neck.

  “How you know it’s breached?”

  “Said maybe. She breached last year.”

  Leon kneeled near the cow’s back and laid his hand on its bulbous belly. They waited for a while.

  Big Leon stood and paced for a moment.

  The barn stood quiet now, with only an occasional creaking sound from the wind. A breeze blew through the open doors scuffing up loose straw.

  Leon noticed how well kept the barn was. He wondered briefly why Tunny and the others were sent home.

  Big Leon leaned against a stall post. He stared out the barn door at a dark sky. An owl hooted. “I always hated you. You face mostly, that white ugly.”

  Leon kneeled, silent, listening to Big Leon’s even tone.

  “And you mama, she could-a died instead a birthin’ you. Lord knows I died. Still do when I looks at you. And I know she hate you too, only she hate you and love you. They’s always opposites. When they’s sun they’s night. When they’s poor they’s rich. And when they’s divine, they show-‘nuff be sin to go with it.

  “What I sayin’, boy, is with all my hate, they’s love too. I cain’t see you gettin’ kilt for nothin’. And white girls, they jus’ nothin’.”

  Leon’s questions never got out.

  The cow bawled and action occurred.

  Like a dream, the world took over and Big Leon’s words faded as though never said.

  The next day the two men separated early in the morning and went on with their chores.

  Hillary was missing and Leon heard snippets of conversation that suggested she had become unstable, “Like her momma,” someone said. He heard she’d run off.

  After dinner, he sat out back, waiting for Big Leon to return from his walk. But he didn’t return and Leon went in to get some sleep. Martha and Bess had already fallen off.

  He sl
ept after the long day of fence post repair, wagon wheel greasing, and animal feedings. He slept exhausted by the birth of the new calf the night before. He slept in his own sweat beaded along his neck and shoulders, in his own dirt and grime from a long day’s work after a night of no sleep. Leon slept soundlessly until Big Leon woke him with a start.

  CHAPTER 7

  Face to face, Big Leon’s black eyes bordered by white indicated fear. “We gotta go.”

  Leon pushed onto a shaky elbow.

  “I got somethin’ for you.” Big Leon held a burlap bag tied at the top with a rope.

  “Why?”

  “White girl been talkin’.”

  Leon lowered his head and whimpered. Big Leon placed a huge hand on the boy’s shoulder. His whimpering stopped and his mind cleared.

  At that moment, nothing mattered to Leon but life. Nothing felt so new and so fresh, nothing more deliberate than his immediate actions. Awareness of the pending darkness outside frightened him. Yet, there was no escaping it. Run. That’s all he could think. Run into the woods, through them like a finger pushes through axle grease. Get slippery. Come out the other side into the reflective sheen of escape.

  For his size, Big Leon ran fast and sure-footed. At first, he sprinted ahead of Leon as though he knew exactly where they could find safety.

  It was daybreak and the world leaned into awakening. Birds chirped and squawked as the eastern sky blossomed. The running footsteps of two Negroes broke the typically quiet summer morning like an egg dashed to the rocks. A crackle and snap, the brushing by of leaves, the hiss of heavy breathing followed them through the woods and along the creek.

  They headed south where the lowlands turned to swamp, thick with vegetation. Eventually the broadening of the creek joined the river.

  Leon had never been that far except in his dreams, but he had heard about the terrain and seen it labeled on maps.

  Big Leon halted and before he could say listen, before his hand raised into the air to quiet all sound around them including nature’s noise, Leon heard the distant yelp of dogs. He turned to run, but big Leon grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.