by R. A. Nelson
I stop on the stairs and turn to face him.
“I’ve seen her. I’ve touched her. She took me to the island last night.”
Certain Certain grins his lopsided grin. “In that storm? You sure you don’t need to go see a head doctor?”
“I don’t care if you believe me. I don’t care if you think I’m crazy. That doesn’t make it any less true.”
Tee Barlow asks about the cut on my forehead.
“Lightning been somnambulizing in his sleep,” Certain Certain says, winking at me. “Probably ran into a door.”
“Thanks,” I whisper to him when we sit down to breakfast.
Faye Barlow comes in holding a little green jar. Her eyes look sad.
“Ronald Earl, here’s some calendula cream I can rub on your—”
“No, thank you, I’ll be fine.”
It hurts to cut her off this way, but I don’t want her touching me ever again. I think too much about the touching she did. We did. Does Lucy know? Can she see everything I do?
“Y’all ready?” Certain Certain says.
The outdoors has been washed fresh, and the sun is already burning the last of the mist off the lake. As we walk down to the pontoon boat, I take in long pulls of the clean air, blowing it out like it’s pulling the sickness out of me.
“Better get your business done now,” Certain Certain says, grinning. He jerks his thumb at two plastic King Johnnies standing in one end of the boat.
“Leviticus, chapter twenty-six, verse thirty-one,” Sugar Tom says. “‘And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.’” He frowns when he doesn’t see me smiling. “Is there anything wrong, Ronald Earl?”
“No, sir,” I say, taking a seat upwind.
Nothing moves on the far shore. In the bright sunshine, what happened last night hardly seems possible. “Morning courage,” Certain Certain calls it. He chats with Tee Barlow about the stage.
Sugar Tom sits next to me and lights a Marlboro. The paper crackles when he takes a drag.
“When you get to be my age, Ronald Earl, you’re kind of on the edge of things. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes, sir. Well, I’m not sure, really.”
Sugar Tom taps the ash over the side. “When you’re this old, you’re not in the middle of things anymore. You do a lot of watching from the sidelines. It’s nature’s way. Moving us off, making room for the young. Folks tend to forget about us, forget we’re still fully here. But we are. We think, we observe. We see plenty of things most folks don’t notice, all because we take the time to do so. We don’t have any choice.”
I watch the ashes swirl in the dark water, and think of Lucy. How any day she’s liable to just not be there anymore. The thought floods me with a kind of anger.
“What are you getting at?” I say.
“I’ve seen her, too,” Sugar Tom says.
I’m too surprised to speak.
“That little girl in the blue dress. I can’t recollect, what was her name?”
“Lucy,” I manage to say finally. “You’ve seen her?”
“Yes indeed. One morning I got up before everybody else, came out into the hall to use the bathroom, and there she was. Just as solid as a fence post.”
“What… what did you do?”
“Nothing. She drifted right up the other end of the hall and vanished. Never made a sound.”
“Did she … did she see you?”
“She didn’t act like she did.”
“When did it happen?”
Blue smoke rushes out of his nose. “The first morning we were here.”
“What! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t figure you needed to know, that’s all.”
I lean toward him, hoping my voice is covered up by the noise of the engine.
“Did you tell Certain Certain?”
“Why tell somebody about something who isn’t going to believe it until it happens to him?”
“But—we do that practically every day,” I say. “That’s what we do. Get people to believe in the Lord even though they can’t see Him.”
Sugar Tom exhales. “Did you know a granddaddy longlegs will eat the meat out of a walnut?”
“No. Well, I never really thought about it.”
“Well, they will. But if you want to watch them do it, it takes time. A whole lot of time and being very still. Most people can’t do that. Stay still for a long time. You find you an old logging road, pick a spot to sit down under a walnut tree. It might take an hour. It might take two. Maybe more. But when you watch long enough, they will come, you will see them. Do you believe me?”
“About the spiders? Sure.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because you told me. I believe you.”
Sugar Tom nods at Certain Certain. “See, Ronald Earl, it’s easy to believe things about spiders. Not so easy about other things. You have to be patient.”
“Shoot.”
“Now, don’t get disappointed. I’m just telling you I did see her. I know I did. I believe you. That’s what I’m trying to say. I believe you.”
I pat him on the shoulder. Lord. Feels like nothing but bones underneath there.
“Thanks,” I say.
“For what?”
“For everything. Just—thanks.”
As we make our way up the hill, I notice some branches down here and there, but not much else to show for the big storm. The whole island smells washed clean over. Tee Barlow and Certain Certain and the other helpers get to hauling the King Johnnies up to the clearing, while I get Sugar Tom situated in the shade in a special folding chair all decked out with cushions and a little thing to hold a drink of cranberry juice, his favorite.
I’m impatient watching the men work, standing up the Johnnies and hauling wet tarps off the lumber. But I’m determined to wait till Certain Certain can come with me. Finally he takes a break, coming over to get a drink in the shade.
“Whew,” he says, mopping his face on his sleeve. “Folks got to have they baffrooms, I reckon. All right, Lightning, what you got in mind?”
“There’s something I want to show you back up in the woods. It won’t take long.” I turn to Sugar Tom. “You going to be all right here? Is there anything you need?”
“I’m fine right here, Ronald Earl. Plenty for me to observe. Take in. Don’t forget what I told you. About being still, I mean. And seeing.”
“I won’t. You sure you’re not too hot?”
He takes my hands in his, clutches them to him a second. “I’m fine. You head on.”
“All right.” I look at Certain Certain.
“Lead on, McDuff,” he says.
We hike a good ways up the trail without talking, then Certain Certain pulls up, breathing hard.
“Getting old?” I say.
He grimaces, making his tore-up lip look awful. “You feel old, too, you been slavin’ with the rest of us. This gonna take much longer?”
“I don’t think so.”
But it’s always further back than I realize. “Mercy.” Certain Certain picks at a spiderweb tangling his ear after we’ve walked a good ways more. “These woods are full of haints. Can’t you feel ’em, Lightning?”
“I thought the Bible teaches we’re not supposed to believe in that stuff.”
“Not the kind like you’re thinking. I mean the history.”
I can see the long bend in the trail now, picturing Lucy’s dress flowing out in front of me as she disappeared.
“It’s in that clearing up ahead.”
There it is—the tree, just about as awesome in the daylight. I can see the rusty metal things now, dozens of them, sprouting from the branches like muddy Christmas ornaments.
Certain Certain huffs up behind me. “Boy, this better not be a wild-goose chase, or I’m liable to—oh my Lord. Oh my Lord.”
I wait for him to go on, but he’s just looking. “What d
o you think?” I say.
“Oh my Lord. You know what this is, boy? Oh my dear sweet Lord.”
Certain Certain takes a few steps into the clearing, then a few more. He squats down facing the giant trunk.
“My Lord. I sure never expected to see one,” he says at last. “Makes a man feel downright small. Reverent.”
“But what is it?”
“Trouble tree,” Certain Certain says quietly. “Goes back to the beginnings of slavery. The trouble tree was the place where slaves took all their troubles. A place all their own where nobody would mess with them. A place where they could gather, mostly in secret, late at night, lament all their sorrows.”
I squat down next to him. “What would they do?”
“Folks have written about it. Mostly white folks who didn’t understand, made fun. The slaves would form a circle around the tree, most likely. Sing to it. Songs of lamentation. Go up one at a time, stroke the bark, whisper their troubles to the tree. That was their way of letting them go. Like them kings in Africa. Trees meant a lot to them, boy. Sacred. Spirits lived in ’em. ’Specially ones like this big fella here, hundreds of years old. A tree like this has wisdom in it. Strength. Protection.”
I try to see it—all those people, torches set up around the clearing for light. Gathering in a circle to stroke the tree and sing to it.
“Doesn’t sound too Christian,” I say.
Certain Certain snorts. “Shoot, you see them things up yonder?”
He points at the rusty metal rings and chains hanging from the fat branches. Dozens and dozens of them, sunk so deep in the flesh of the tree it looks like they are part of the tree itself.
“Manacles. Leg irons. Collars. That look Christian to you, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s who made ’em, God-fearing Christians. Slaves most likely slung them things up there after emancipation come about. Part of their way of celebrating.”
Manacles, I suddenly realize. That’s what Lucy has been talking about. I can’t believe I called them bracelets.
“You’re saying the people who used those things on the slaves went to church?” I say.
“’Deed they did. Some plantation owners even brought their slaves with them. Sat them around a little balcony looking down on the rest of the congregation. I saw a little church like that down in Port Gibson, Mississippi. Other owners saw the whole church thing as a threat. See, can’t be teaching what Jesus taught, they thinking, on account of that means all people are loved, important, valued. Which ends up meaning equal. So all people are meant to be free. See where that thinking is headed?”
I nod.
“But for a good many years, they kept their tribal customs. Place like this, sacred tree, I imagine they used this clearing once ’pon time for a ring dance.”
“What’s that?”
“Ritual where the slaves formed a ring, moved in a circle, some stepping forward, some stepping back. A lot of hand clapping, chanting, leaping. Sometimes going on for hours, folks taking each other’s places when the first batch got tuckered out. Sooner or later they brought the ring dances indoors and mixed them in with their Christian worship. Called them shouts. White folks didn’t understand worship that active. Called it heathen. Sound familiar?”
I’ve heard people say that about our church. People who don’t understand the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
“What those white folks didn’t know, this was how those people felt God,” Certain Certain goes on. “Today we know it was the Holy Ghost bubbling up inside them. Everybody feels the anointing the way they feel it. Dancing, speaking in tongues, praisin’. It’s a personal thing. Outside folks, they still don’t understand, do they, Lightning?”
We stand there looking at it all a good while. I can’t help but think about Lucy, the way she looked at the edge of the clearing, how scared she sounded when—
“Huh, what’s this?” Certain Certain bends over and picks up the orange flashlight I dropped. He clicks the switch, then has to smack it against his leg. “Still works. That’s a good flashlight. Expensive. Why would somebody leave it out here?”
“I dropped it last night,” I say.
“You truly came out here after dark, Lightning?”
“Yes, sir. In the storm.”
“Good gravy train. All by yourself? Whatever did you do that for?”
“I told you, she brought me out here, Lucy—”
“She ain’t here today, though, is she?”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“Not that I recollect, no.”
“She wanted me to see this place. And now I know why. The trouble tree—maybe it really can do what the slaves thought it could do.”
“What’s that?”
“Absorb things. From all those people that touched it. Think about it. A hundred years, maybe two hundred, of people pouring all their troubles straight into its insides. Like maybe something has built up in the tree over time. You’re going to laugh at me—”
“No, I won’t. Spit it out.”
“I think … all that anger, pain, and fear—I think it somehow changed the tree. Turned it into something different. Something evil.”
A wind comes off the lake, making the branches of the tree move, rattling its chains.
It’s listening.
It goes on like that a little while, neither of us speaking. Certain Certain looks around, squinches his face up.
“Let me tell you something, boy,” he says after the wind settles back down. “Old places like this, I do believe they can soak up some of the bad feeling out there. I truly do. What is a body without the soul of the Lord breathed into it? Dust. So where does that soul go to when the body goes back to dust? Got to be somewhere, waiting on the Judgment. That’s nothing but pure energy. Energy got to go somewhere. Good and bad.”
He throws a hot arm around my shoulders. “But the true power is all on our side. Leave it to the Lord. He’ll take care of things. Always has, always will.”
“But Lucy… she was standing right here. Just as solid as you. I touched her. She pulled me out of here when the tree … well, I don’t know what happened, exactly. I got really sick….”
“I don’t know what you’ve been seeing,” Certain Certain says. “I don’t. But I’ve counted you a friend ever since you could, well… count. I can see how serious this is to you. Pray on it, boy—”
“But I have….”
“Then pray some more. No such thing as stopping when it comes to prayer. Only quitting. Now”—he pats his stomach— “speaking of energy… you think you could lead me out of this jungle? I could sure stand me some kipper snacks. What you reckon Miss Faye packed in that cooler?”
As we make our way out of the clearing, the last thing I can hear is the clinking and clanking of those hateful pieces of iron hanging in the trouble tree. Like it’s noticing us leaving.
I feel better when we can see the plantation, the bases of the tall pillars sprouting long-stemmed grass in the cracks under the mortar. It’s so bright and sunny after being in the clearing, it lifts my heart a little. Especially with old Sugar Tom sitting there at the edge of the shade, gone to the world.
Certain Certain chuckles. I can tell he is feeling the lift, too. “Tell you what, Lightning, Miss Wanda Joy is right. I do believe that man could flat sleep through the final trumpet. What you say? Should we wake him up for dinner?”
Sugar Tom’s head is draped over on his arm, eyes closed, feet spraddled in front of him, same as always. I can see the volunteer workers moving a couple of green four-by-fours up on the new stage, skin red, T-shirts wet.
“What you say there, old son,” Certain Certain says, nudging at him. “You trying to set the record for Rip van Winklers? Think you might want to …”
He stops. Sugar Tom doesn’t budge.
“Sugar Tom?” Certain Certain says, shaking him a little harder. Sugar Tom’s head flops forward.
“Oh my Lord.”
Certa
in Certain lets go of the flashlight and drops to his knees, lifts up Sugar Tom’s craggy head, puts his big fingers against the old man’s eyelids, trying to make them come open. I see everything like it’s moving slower, and all so clear: little wispy white hairs playing around on Sugar Tom’s head in the breeze; Certain Certain’s eyes big, afraid; his voice sounding like he’s behind a wall or something.
“Ronald Earl,” he’s saying.
It’s the first time I ever remember him calling me that. It’s like the walls of Jericho are plunging down around me all at once.
“No,” I say. “Oh no.”
No. Sugar Tom’s dead.
It takes the EMTs nearly thirty minutes to get here from the closest volunteer fire department. Sugar Tom’s alive, but we don’t know what is wrong with him or how to help. Tee Barlow is afraid to try and take him across on the boat, so we keep him in the shade and use shirts and a piece of tarp to try to make him comfortable. Certain Certain damps his head with a wet cloth. Sugar Tom’s eyes look afraid; he tries to say something, but the words come out garbled.
We watch while the emergency people get him trussed up on a long board, arms folded in front of him, head tucked in place with a thick strap on his forehead.
“They think it might be a stroke,” I hear one of the men say to Certain Certain.
“What’s a stroke?” I say, clenching my teeth to keep from tearing up.
The EMT man is bald and looks like he has a weight bench at home. He talks without looking at me, fiddling with something in his bag.
“The blood flow gets cut off to the brain, meaning the brain’s not getting any oxygen,” he says. “A lot depends on how long it’s been going on. If you get to it fast enough …”
“Was it the heat?” I say. “A heatstroke?” I should have gotten him better shade or made sure he was drinking enough.
“Nah, it’s probably just age,” the EMT man says. “A thrombosis, embolism. Hypertension. Too early to say.”
They fuss with a lot of tubes, get something poked into his arm for fluids, and I sit right down in the dirt. Certain Certain comes up to me.
“You okay, big man? Don’t worry. He’s a tough old skizzard.”