Sweet Song

by Terry Persun

Bob rolled his blanket while lying in his bunk. He packed his sack inside the blanket making sure he could reach in to grab money if what he had in his pockets wasn’t enough.

  Hugh wasn’t in his bunk when Bob peered around the door. Had Hugh abandoned him? Bob stepped into the morning, tired from the fitful night. “Hey,” Hugh called from near the outhouse door. Bob nodded and walked toward him. The outhouse had a terrible stink coming from it. “I think someone was deathly sick last night,” Hugh said.

  “I heard someone go out.”

  “Didn’t hear nothin’ myself.”

  A man left the outhouse and Hugh stepped inside.

  Bob stepped up into Hugh’s space. Two other men now stood behind him.

  Once inside, Bob pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth. Someone had gotten sick and the odor practically made Bob sick as well. He did his business, held his breath, and walked out, stepping quickly to put distance between him and the outhouse.

  Hugh waited. It had been two days and Bob wondered why Hugh had attached to him. Bob wasn’t used to having someone with him all day like that, at least not when there was nothing particular going on. If they were working together then it would be fine. If they were traveling, on the move, it would be fine. But wandering around town with little on their minds gave Bob the oddest sensation he had ever had in his life. Like he had picked up a stray dog. Bob didn’t know what to say to Hugh much of the time. He’d already learned that Hugh had been on his own for years, and either enjoyed labor or felt that was all he could do. Regardless which way Hugh felt, he had come to terms with it and appeared satisfied.

  Bob considered his rebirthing in the river where he had essentially died, going in black and coming out white. There was his new name, now. Where had that come from? Bob White had been born in an instant. Already the story of Leon faded as though it were only a story. Except in his dreams, his past became foggy and thin, weak and elusive.

  Hugh focused on work and encouraged Bob to, “Go in and talk to the man,” whenever he noticed a possibility.

  Time and again, Bob listened, went into establishment after establishment, and was turned down over and over again. His first interview was short. A stubby man with greasy hair stood at the counter of a feed store. The words on the sign were misspelled. The sign said ‘Halp Wantd.’

  Bob, on Hugh’s insistence, stepped to the counter. Before the man could say anything, Bob said, “I’m here to help.” He pointed to the front where the sign hung.

  “You know feed?” the man said.

  “I know it, but I never sold it.”

  “What you know?”

  “Animals eat it,” Bob said.

  The man looked at his own shelves – bags, boxes, buckets, and bins. “You know the difference between oats and barley, between hay and straw?” the man asked.

  “Grew up on a farm,” Bob said, then he looked at Hugh to see whether he took that bit of information in.

  The man behind the counter also glanced at Hugh, then back to Bob. “You lyin’?”

  Bob turned back. “No. I’m not.”

  “Then why you give your partner that look?”

  “What look?”

  “I don’t need the help right now,” the man said. “I’m thinkin’ I’ll need help in a week or so. When the town fills.”

  Hugh grabbed Bob’s arm and pulled him around. Bob followed without resistance.

  “The place was filthy,” Bob said. “Did you see it?”

  “Sour grapes,” Hugh said.

  “What?”

  “You ain’t never looked for no job, have you?”

  “I’ve worked on farms and logged all winter,” Bob said.

  “You ain’t never ‘looked’ though, have you?” Hugh said again. “’Cause if you have, you’re no good at it.”

  Bob gritted his teeth.

  Hugh slapped Bob’s shoulder hard, sending a sting through his arm and into his neck. “Listen to me,” Hugh said. “You got to first introduce yourself. Look ‘em in the eye and say, “I’m Bob White. Glad to meet you, sir.’ Then you tell ‘em straight out. You say, ‘I’m lookin’ for honest work.”

  Bob pulled free of Hugh’s lingering hand.

  “Okay. It’s fine if you don’t want work,” Hugh said.

  “I want work.”

  “Then why do you refuse work yesterday and act like a damned ass today? I’d say you’re not wanting very hard.”

  “I don’t want to be a logger any more. Or a rafter or a roller or a stacker,” Bob rattled off just in case Hugh didn’t hear in his voice how he felt.

  “And here we are in a loggin’ town. Where in hell do you think all this money comes from? Why do you think half this town is here?”

  “Half,” Bob said.

  “Well if you want to be part of the other half of the town remember where the money comes from. Lumber. And remember whose payin’ you in the long run. Lumbermen.”

  Bob felt a few drops of rain land on his arm. He looked up. “It’s going to rain again.”

  The two of them walked silently until Bob cleared his head. “Jobs have just been there. I never had to talk my way into one.”

  Hugh spit on the ground. “You’re in a new world. Once the floods hit, this town will be totally different. Maybe then someone will drag you off the street and beg you to work, but you won’t have no choice in it, all the best jobs will be filled.”

  “I’d like a choice,” Bob said.

  “You want me to teach you?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “Then you do as I say.”

  The rain was intermittent and sparse. “We have a little time,” Hugh said. “We’ll pick places you don’t want to work.”

  “Why?”

  “So you can practice.” Hugh walked Bob through the important interview steps as he saw them. After he tested Bob a few times, they entered a cobbler’s shop. There was no sign for help.

  One man stood behind and off to the side of the counter. He pounded a tack into a boot sole. The man looked up. “Be with you,” he said. After several more nails were forced into place, he pulled the boot off the anvil-like fixture it was draped over. He grabbed the boot’s mate and placed the two together on a shelf next to him. “What’s the problem?”

  Bob held out his hand. “Name’s Bob White and I’m looking for some honest work.”

  The man stared at Bob’s hand. He wiped his hand over his apron, then placed the fingertips of each hand in a pocket along the front of his apron. It looked as though he were scratching his own belly. “Barely enough work for me. You don’t see no sign do you?”

  “No, sir,” Bob said. “But when the town fills up, you might need help.”

  “When the town fills up I’ll have a full day’s work.” The man nodded. “Thank you for comin’ in. If you ever need yer boots repaired, I’ll be here.”

  Bob lowered his hand. “Thank you, sir.” Back on the street, he said, “You make me nervous. Watching and listening from behind.”

  “I have to see what you’re doin’ or I can’t help.”

  “Well, what the hell was wrong with that?”

  “Nothin’ except he didn’t ask no questions.”

  “Two more times,” Bob said.

  “We’ll see.”

  They visited five more places before Hugh let Bob go in alone. They walked up and down the streets looking for help-wanted signs, of which there seemed to be plenty. The first one Bob visited alone – Hugh waited in the drizzle – he was asked to write down his name and where he stayed while in town.

  “Be needin’ help soon,” the man said.

  Bob felt confident after that even though only about half the places he went into appeared to be interested in hiring him. None needed help right away.

  CHAPTER 20

  Bob slept in a room that increasingly smelled like urine as the men decided not to visit the outhouse. The rain continued. The snow melted. The river rose.

  He lay on his cot imagining the water
screaming down through the creeks and streams and runs. Eyes closed, he watched piles of timber lift from the banks, turn into the flow of liquid, and get propelled down stream, a battering ram so massive and so powerful that it would rip creek-side trees out by their roots. So angry would the spirit of the timber be that men caught having the wrong footing along the banks would be killed. The stories were everywhere. The river gave and took life with equal assurance and disinterest.

  Bob loved the river. He loved its power and strength. He loved its fish. What he feared was the wrath of the trees. The floating logs with a mind of their own. He knew that the timber would use the angry and vengeful part of the river, and he wanted to be away from it.

  After some weeks spending much of his time indoors, the stench of bodies and excrement even permeated Bob’s clothes. The men became agitated with one another. Bob kept to himself.

  He took a short walk down muddy streets and alleys. He sat alone at breakfast. Then he walked to the edge of town and curled next to the trunk of a densely leafed tree where the rain was less likely to soak him. Under the tree, Bob listened to thunder, far off on the other side of the mountain, but coming closer.

  Bob did not hear Hugh coming into the woods until branches were pushed aside and a hale of drops fell with the sound of hands clapping. “What are you doing here?”

  “Did I interrupt a private party?” Hugh said. He sat near Bob. “I’m sick of smellin’ piss and sweat.”

  “There’re just too many people there all the time.” Bob and Hugh both leaned against the trunk of the tree, their legs stretched straight out, pant legs damp, boots muddy.

  “You don’t like people much, do you? I notice you don’t talk to no one unless you have to. You don’t engage in no conversation.”

  “There isn’t much to say. I don’t know them. I don’t know their families,” Bob said.

  “You don’t ask no questions,” Hugh said.

  Bob shrugged.

  “You got secrets. I know men who got secrets and they stay quiet. They talk a little. They ask questions. They learn about people, but they don’t let too much of themselves out. Only a little.” Hugh fell silent.

  Bob listened to the distant thunder.

  “You got big secrets. I see it in your face. So can some of the other men. They talkin’ about you. They curious.”

  “Let them be curious.”

  “Damn, Bob, I’m trying’ to tell you that they get nervous about you. They don’t like it. The more they feel you got secrets the more they don’t trust you. They watch you. They blame you for stealin’. Hell, they blame you for the rain comin’ and the jobs being slow. They’ll blame you when the river drives the lumber to the boom.”

  “What can I do?”

  Hugh slapped his thigh. “Now you talkin’. You got to open up. You don’t have to tell yer secrets, but you got to be interested in what’s goin’ on.”

  “I am interested. I listen to them talking.”

  “You got to participate.”

  The wind blew and the tree dropped collected rain all around them. The smell of spring rose from the ground. Bob took a deep breath. He didn’t belong there, yet he had to learn to belong.

  “What is your secret?” Hugh asked.

  Bob thought back. He had been born, then reborn in the river, then reborn again in the town where he now lived. He didn’t know whether he even knew the secret he held inside. He knew dreams. He knew memories, but none of them could be articulated. None seemed to be important enough to matter. He could lie, but what would that matter? He knew only one secret, and it was nothing. It was from long ago, in a dream, long before two rebirths. At the moment, under the tree beside Hugh, Bob hardly knew whether he was black or white. Neither felt real to him, even when he remembered Big Leon’s bulging, begging eyes. He remembered blood pushing from Big Leon’s chest up through his shirt. He remembered Edna’s words, the… ‘blood and gush…’ of his own birth.

  Bob lowered his head. “My Pa was killed right in front of me and I don’t want to remember.”

  “I see,” Hugh said.

  The thunder boomed closer. The rain let up.

  A trickle of wet ran down the side of Bob’s neck.

  “What’d your pa do to get kilt?” Hugh asked.

  Bob heard the question as accusatory. Had he said too much? Big Leon had done nothing wrong. He had done something right, something thoughtful, unselfish, and loving. “It was an accident. Hunting. There were too many of us in the woods.”

  “I’m sorry, I thought it might have been in the war.

  Bob said, “No, not the war.” But he wished he had said that. That might have made Big Leon a hero at least, which was much more fitting than getting in the way of a bullet.

  “I didn’t fight in the war either. But don’t tell no one. Sometimes I lie about it so they don’t think I was scared.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “Not everybody was called to. Me, I was deep in the woods. Part of the time I was livin’ with Indians. Part of the time I was just walkin’. Truth is, I don’t know why I never walked in that direction.”

  “It’s okay,” Bob said. “We all walk in our own direction.”

  Hugh looked into Bob’s eyes. “You could lie and I wouldn’t say nothin’ about it.”

  “That’s kind of you,” Bob said, but he knew he had already lied.

  In a moment, Hugh lifted up to go. He crouched so that he could crawl out from under the tree branches. “I got work,” he said, then laughed out loud. “It’s a good thing, too. I’m broke. Ate my last meal this mornin’. Got a letter said I’m hired so I can get a tab.”

  “You leaving the boarding house?”

  Hugh shuffled his legs to get comfortable. He stared beyond the tree’s canopy. “Be gone tonight.” He looked at Bob. “Yours is comin’.”

  “I know.”

  “Been lookin’?”

  “Not today.”

  “Now’s the time.”

  “I know. I just couln’t.”

  “You must have a shit pile of money if you ain’t worried,” Hugh said. “Shit, I’d be thinking about this summer. You know, once them jobs is taken there ain’t no more of ‘em?”

  “I realize that.”

  “Don’t act like you know. Damn, Bob, even niggers is gettin’ jobs. You don’t want no nigger doing your work now, do you?”

  Bob tensed. He gritted his teeth. “No. Don’t suppose I do.” The words hurt more than he expected.

  “Mill’s callin’ in all they can get. If you don’t like mill work, there’s raftin’. The river’ll be black with lumber soon. Money will be flyin’.”

  “Told you before. I’m not working with timber.”

  “Don’t get mad. I’m just helping, is all. You don’t seem worried, yet mid-summer you’ll be starvin’ and sorry. And once they start hirin’ niggers they won’t want to replace ‘em. Niggers come cheap after the war.”

  “I wish you’d stop calling them that. They’re Negroes. They’ve got a heritage too.”

  “Touchy are we?”

  “No, it’s just not respectful of people.”

  “At least now I know somethin’ about you.” Hugh crawled out from under the tree. “You want to let them wooly-headed niggers have your job, go ahead.” Hugh stepped into the clearing and walked away.

  Bob watched him go. He pushed his chin out. He was as much Negro as he was white. More, once he considered who raised him, who he could rely on. His next thought negated the first. Bud and Tunny had been as insensitive and mean-spirited as Hank and Earl.

  Hugh blended into the mist. His footprints remained in the soft leaves dropped the prior fall. The weeds had, but were already gaining their composure, lifting back up to fill the space Hugh had opened. Bob inhaled deeply. The scent of rain and rotting leaves filled his head, reminding him of his childhood. He had been thinking too much about the opposite sides of the road he had grown up on.

  Bob didn’t feel totally white or
totally black. He spit onto the ground next to him, as angry with himself for not knowing, as he was with Hugh for suggesting what he couldn’t know. Hugh had been a disappointment, but could he be blamed for it? Bob’s own mother had been a disappointment as well. Both his fathers were disappointments until the very end when they both came through for him in their own way.

  Sadness settled over Bob’s shoulders. He let the cool, wet air bring him to shivers. He wished he could just cry out in sorrow and in pain, but there were no tears in his eyes. His chest thickened, his throat closed, but there were no tears.

  An opening in the sky let the sun splash over the weeds and hit the tree, bringing it into amazing brilliant color. Bob laughed at the sun. He laughed at his sad heart. He was alive, after all, alive and living as if he were a white man, even though he grew up in a black house. His life suddenly seemed funny.

  At mid-day, Bob, wet and clammy, strolled through the downtown streets then up and down the square blocks. He looked for work, but ended up bypassing every help-wanted sign. Mud collected on his boots making them heavy. He did see several Negroes, but they didn’t make eye contact. They walked past him, heads lowered and turned away. The white men said hello, or nodded. Even women looked at him. How could the Negroes not recognize him as one of their own?

  Bob sensed a renewed confidence in himself. Perhaps recalling his past also let it go? The next help-wanted sign he came upon, he stepped onto the stairs, walked through the door, and up to the counter.

  A big man with fat, wide hands came from a back room. “May I help you.”

  “Your sign says you need help.” Bob turned to point out the door.

  “Ever bake bread?”

  At that moment, Bob recognized the sweet odor his thoughts had drowned out. He looked around. He was in a bakery. “I’ve watched enough times,” he said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bob White.” He held out his hand.

  The man’s chubby cheeks tightened into a smile. His flower-dusted hand reached to take Bob’s. He gripped firmly, the strength due from kneading and rolling. Heat poured from the back. “Somebody did you no favor giving you a name like that.”

  “You learn to live with it,” Bob said.