Promise

by Minrose Gwin

  Her foot touched something slick and soft. She reached down and slippery fingers snatched at her. She went under and pulled but she couldn’t budge the one attached to the fingers. She groped around under the water and felt a naked man, his skin slick like he’d been greased. Then she touched his middle and found out why she couldn’t move him: a piece of wood—felt like a two-by-four—had gone straight through him. Pinned him to the bottom. She pulled on the wood, but it kept slipping out of her hands. Then she pulled on the man’s arm, which was even slicker. She kept hold of his hand, but the fingers didn’t move now. She shuddered, left the hand to float then sink, and kept on moving.

  Now she was up to her knees, now emerging, her sodden, muddy dress, still covered in the apron, clinging to her, heavy and cold, reminding her of a wet sheet on the line. She hurt all over, touched herself here and there: her belly and breasts, her head. She swung her arms, kicked out her legs. All moved. The cut on the bottom of her foot she couldn’t see.

  Get on home, that’s what she needed to do, find Virgil and them. Her arm grazed something with feathers that floated on the surface of the pond.

  Dreama and Promise. Were they in church when this thing hit, or on the way home? Outside like her? Dear Lord. She imagined little Promise sailing through the night sky, then plummeting down and down, his little head bouncing on something hard—a rooftop or one of the newly paved streets—and bursting open like a cantaloupe. If the storm had managed to blow her all the way from her house up on the Hill down into Gum Pond along with the rats and chickens and dead folks, if she could see (she did see it!) an upside-down cow coming toward her in that monster funnel, it sure enough could have blown that child all the way to Tennessee.

  Everything pitch-black. Tangled shapes all she could see.

  And here came the rain, hard, stinging her skin like bleach, and with it a whistling wind and a deep chill in the air. She shivered and shook and hugged herself, looking around to get her bearings. No trees, no houses neither. Just piles of lumber and tree trunks and what was that before her? Dark and metallic, with sharp jagged edges. A hunk of the water tower from the crest above her house, or where her house had been.

  She staggered on in the dark, heading back up the ridge toward home. She put her feet down carefully. Broken glass all over. The bottom of her right foot already cut, don’t need no more. All around her, folks cried out for help and dug at piles of wood as tall as houses. Moans came from underneath. People pulled at her, begged her to help them find this one or that one. She kept on, stumbling right into an almost-dead horse, lying on its side. She felt its head, flung back at an impossible tilt. Against its warm belly, she could feel its heart gallop, heading, heading down that long lonely road. The rain had by now chilled her to the bone; she trembled and shook. More than anything she wanted to stay and warm herself against the animal while it was still alive. The horse’s heart was slowing now. It wouldn’t be long. Maybe she should stay until then. She drew closer to the animal’s belly, her hands folded across her chest so that she could feel her own little heart, clickety-clack across the track, four beats to the horse’s one. Her eyes closed against the blistering rain. She took a long shuddering breath.

  Somewhere, off in the distance, a woman moaned.

  NOW SOMETHING startled her awake. The horse was ice cold and so was she. How long had she been asleep?

  Her first thought was Virgil. Just today a cold spell had come over her and she’d turned away when he went to kiss her good night. His shoulders had slumped and he’d gone on off to bed, not saying a word.

  She got up and began to make her way through the dark. Buckets of rain and darkest dark. There was no finding the street and without the street, there was no finding the house. Or where it had been. There were no markers, and she couldn’t have seen them even if they were there. Not a single house left standing. Not Martha Johnson’s front porch with her pretty colored pots, not the Davises’ rusted school bus, children popping in and out of windows every hour of the day and night. Not a single measly tree neither, just big old holes filled with water where their roots had been. She caught herself just before falling into one.

  She climbed higher, then turned in a circle to try to get her bearings. Through the downpour she caught sight of the white tombstones across the way in Glenwood Cemetery. Most scattered here and there, but some still upright. Dead white folks good for something. From the location of the cemetery, she paced out where she judged the dogtrot should be. When she’d found the place, she stopped, stood there in the downpour, and peered at what looked like a towering pile of kindling.

  She ran toward it. Virgil. Had she called out his name aloud or only in her head? She went up to where the pile of wood began and started pulling on it, hollering for help. The rain poured, drowning her out. How could anybody be alive under this here? She was panting like a dog, couldn’t draw enough air. She began to claw at the pieces of wood, splinters gouging her hands. Some of the pieces of lumber bigger than her.

  The rain came on harder, little needles on her arms. Then it was sleet.

  A man lurched toward her out of the dark. He wove from side to side like he was drunk, his face bright as a fresh handkerchief against the darkness.

  She ran and snatched at his sleeve, pulling him toward the pile of rubble that had been her house.

  “Whoa, horse,” the man said. He started pulling up the lumber, two and three pieces at a time.

  She tried to help, moving the smaller pieces to let the man get at the larger ones. After awhile he said, “Move over, auntie, you in the way.” So she ran from side to side of the pile, wringing her hands, crying out to the man to, please mister, hurry. He didn’t answer, just kept on pulling at the lumber, the freezing rain pouring off his shoulders. As he dug down, the pieces of wood seemed more thickly embedded one into the other, like the pickup sticks Virgil had whittled for Charlesetta to play with when she was a girl.

  Was her Virgil still drawing breath under all that? And if he was, what kind of shape would he be in? Virgil crippled? Better dead.

  At long last, the man got it down to where they could see the shattered bed. It was flattened, nothing but a little pile of lumber with Dovey’s quilt, soaked and clotted, underneath, along with Virgil’s shoes.

  Dovey jumped in to help the man pull the last of the boards away. Virgil, Virgil, Virgil. She’d steeled herself, expecting to feel a foot, a hand, limp and bloody and deader than dead. How could anybody not be, under all this?

  Nothing there. Nobody there.

  The white man stopped pulling away the boards. “Nobody under here,” he hollered at her over the downpour. “He done got hisself blowed clear away.”

  Dovey put her apron to her face, collapsed into the mud, sobbing.

  The man patted her head and then turned and trudged on, through the black and the rain and the sound of somebody down the street wailing.

  The wailing grew louder, closer: a woman’s voice, high pitched and constant, coming from the direction of the church. The woman almost tripped over her before Dovey got a good look. Poor thing had hardly a stitch on, only a thin slip, once white, soaked and plastered to her body. You could see right through it. It was a moment before Dovey recognized the woman, saw the face and realized it was Etherene Johnson, Dreama’s English teacher. She’d been snatched bald-headed by the storm, her piece and the hair that held it peeled back like a boiled egg.

  Dovey snatched off her apron and put it over Etherene’s front side, tying the soaked ties with numb fingers.

  Over the downpour, Dovey hollered, “Where you coming from, Etherene?”

  Once, not too long ago, she wouldn’t speak to Etherene. And for good reason. When Dreama turned up pregnant from that Devil McNabb boy, Etherene had gotten into it. She’d come to her door, sat down at Dovey’s kitchen table, and said there was a white man, a sure-enough doctor, out in the county. She’d take Dreama there. She’d already talked to Dreama’s other teachers. A collection had been taken
up. It was all settled. Etherene always dressed to kill, and her stockings swished as she crossed and recrossed her legs.

  “You got your business, I got mine,” Dovey had told her. “I lost one child, ain’t going to lose one more to some dumb peckerwood with a coat hanger. Stay out of it.”

  Now Etherene put her lips to Dovey’s ear. “Church. Coming from church.”

  “Y’all in church when this thing hit? You see Dreama and the baby?”

  The warm breath from Etherene’s lips tickled her frozen ear. “Last I saw, both of them on the ground. Just leaving church and we heard it coming. She put the baby down in the street and threw herself on top. Sounded like a freight train going ninety miles an hour. I jumped in a ditch next to the Horton place. Got blown across the street, old thing whipped my dress right over my head. When I crawled out, no sight of them. Nobody else either. A whole bunch of us walking home when it hit. Did you see the water tower fly apart?”

  “So they was out in it?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Then no telling.”

  “No.”

  “I’m going looking for them. Them and Virgil.”

  “Can’t see your hand in front of your face, much less find anybody. Here you are shaking like a leaf. Here I am with nothing on but a slip and an apron. I’m heading back for the church.”

  “You heading the wrong way then.”

  “You sure about that? Seems like it’s this way.” Etherene pointed toward downtown.

  Dovey turned her around toward the cemetery. “That’s Glenwood over there. Church is back the other way.”

  Etherene wiped her face with Dovey’s apron. “Oh Lord, nothing looks the same.”

  “You see Dreama and them, tell them I’m looking for them. Tell them I’m all right.”

  “If the storm blew them, it blew them same direction it blew me. Maybe somebody’s taking care of them down in town.”

  Dovey peered through the night at Etherene. “You think white folks going to be taking care of us in this mess? You think they’ll put us in their hospital longside them?”

  Etherene didn’t hear. She had turned around and started back the way she’d come, melting into the downpour. Dovey wanted to follow her, she did; now that their spat was over, she felt sorry for Etherene. There was something about her that folks didn’t cotton to. Was it her bright skin, her pride, her little piece perched on top of her head like a watchful nest? The fact that she was a busybody where her pupils were concerned, Dreama being a prime example? But those were only pebbles; there was a boulder there somewhere. Dovey didn’t go around talking, so she didn’t know what it was, but it was specific, that much she knew, specific enough to make people move slightly over in a pew when she settled next to them, as if Etherene carried an odor or some contagious sickness.

  THE SLEET had turned to hail. Dovey touched her hair and felt shards of ice. She heard sirens coming from downtown. She stood in what she thought was the road and looked around her. If she’d gotten blown clear down to Gum Pond, maybe Virgil had too. She couldn’t stand to think about what had happened to Dreama and Promise. She turned and headed back down the ridge to the pond, slipping and sliding in the mud and, here and there, something oily she assumed was gasoline, given the smell. Nobody better strike a match, she thought, then began to laugh out loud, a crazy high-pitched laugh that turned into something else. It was easier to go down the hill than it had been to come up. She slipped and slid past the moaning and crying out for help. All around her bedlam. Folks hollered back and forth, digging through the rubble, throwing wood every which way, toward the voices underneath. Where are you? Here, no, over here.

  At Gum Pond an old woman was coaxing a bonfire along. Hail the size of eggs sputtered into the fire. Then the hail turned back to sleet. Men were walking up to hip level in the pond, poking at the bottom with the branches from trees. Dovey stumbled over a dead man, then saw the row of bodies. They were laid out uncovered, their faces flung upward, receiving the sleet without flinching so that they seemed to be weeping silently. Dovey walked among them, bent down to try to see their faces, hoping she wouldn’t find Virgil or Dreama or Promise. Some she recognized. Luther Johnson, Etherene’s husband who’d moved out in a huff over a decade ago. Beulah Winson, one of the Heroines of Jericho who worked in the church nursery. Essie Lee Miller, who used to work for the McNabbs, each week preparing the laundry for Dovey to pick up. Essie Lee had put a sheet on the floor, then put all the dirty clothes and linens in it and tied it neatly in a knot for Dovey to grab on to.

  Lord, all these folks. Decent folks. Lord, what You gone and done here? What You trying to accomplish?

  Looking down at Essie Lee’s streaked, impassive face, Dovey began to tremble.

  She walked along and peered at the other faces. No Virgil. No Dreama. No baby boy.

  Somebody in the pond called out, “Got one over here,” and her heart stopped. Some men went to help.

  It was covered in mud. But thank you, Jesus (and Lord forgive her for being thankful for somebody else’s misery), it was large and had on a skirt.

  Now, as if they’d planned it this way, all the men came out of the pond and made a circle around the fire. Bent over with the cold, they shivered and shook, looking as if they were doing some strange dance. One of them announced to those who hovered close by, “Can’t do no more tonight. Feet and hands numb. Can’t feel nothing.”

  Dovey went all the way around the pond, looking. She climbed through furniture and dead animals, and God knows what else. Nobody else that she could see, though for all she knew, there could have been dozens flung about in the mud.

  She felt her bladder tighten and she squatted. What if Virgil and Dreama and the baby were hurt and somebody had found them? If they didn’t take colored at the hospital, they still must have them someplace downtown. Having delivered laundry for umpteen years, she knew Whitetown like the back of her hand. She rose and headed back toward Green Street. Once she came to the roadway she took a left, threading her way as best she could around downed trees and giant shards of wood and metal. No sizzling wires, and for that she was thankful. Somebody had turned off the power. The sleet stopped; then it began to hail again. The stones bounced off the top of her head, burning and stinging. She walked on, nothing around her except debris. She knew she’d moved from black to white when the dirt turned to pavement. She crossed Jackson, or what she thought was Jackson, heading south toward downtown, picking her way around flipped cars and wagons and tree limbs and whole trees. People swept by her, hollering names. A man staggered by, mumbling something about a cow, how it was there one minute and gone the next. Dovey wondered if that was the upside-down animal she’d seen sailing along in the funnel.

  On the corner of Green and Franklin, a house came up to the left, the first she’d seen upright. She went up onto the porch and stood there shivering, thankful to be under cover.

  A lady with white hair opened the door. She had a flashlight and shined it in Dovey’s face, blinding her. “What you doing up on my porch?”

  “Just looking to get out of the weather.”

  The woman shot the flashlight around and behind Dovey. “Got anybody with you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “All right then. Come on inside. Take your shoes off.”

  “Ain’t got no shoes.”

  The house was dry but tomb-cold. There was a fireplace in the living room and some wood beside it.

  The woman stood with her flashlight pointed at Dovey. She didn’t ask Dovey to sit.

  “You dripping on my rug.”

  Dovey’s teeth were chattering. The shaking, now that she was inside, had grown worse. “Sorry, ma’am. You got something I can dry off with?”

  The woman ignored the request and drew closer. “Was that a tornado just came through?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Blew me all the way down to Gum Pond. My house is plumb gone. Nothing left of it. Can’t find my people.”

  “Lord. Did everybody up o
n the Hill get hit?”

  “I think so.”

  Dovey stood just inside the front door, her wash dress clinging to her. The woman had a shawl over her shoulders. Dovey briefly considered snatching it and running. Had she ever wanted anything as much in her life as she wanted that shawl? The more she tried not to shake, the harder she shook.

  “You ain’t going to up and have a fit on me, are you, girl?”

  “No, ma’am, just cold. Reckon I could build a fire for us to warm up?”

  “Wouldn’t mind if you did. My husband usually lights it, but he went over to see about our daughter. Don’t go burning down the house.”

  Dovey went over to the fireplace and knelt down. “You got some paper and matches?”

  “Over there.” The woman pointed the flashlight toward the hearth.

  Dovey crunched up the paper and put it in the fireplace, then put some light pieces of wood on top of it. She lit the match. The paper caught, then smoldered, then went out. She tried again and the paper lit, then caught the kindling. She put on two larger pieces and stood shivering in front of the fire, rubbing her hands together.

  “Don’t block the warm, girl.”

  Dovey stepped to the side. She turned in a circle, trying to dry her dress. The light from the fire danced across the room.

  “Stop that turning. You making me dizzy.”

  “Just trying to dry myself.”

  Dovey cleared her throat. “You know where they taking the colored? I’m trying to find my husband.”

  “Don’t know nothing. Saw some of your people walking by, going up Franklin, heading for Church Street. Why they heading that way instead of down into town I don’t know. Maybe the road’s blocked.”