Snakes and Stones

by Lisa Fowler

  “Now den, you jes’ tell ol’ Abraham about yo’ wife, Slim. Where in de world is she at?”

  I know Daddy well enough to know his head is probably hung low, maybe even between his knees. He’s rubbing it with his hand and probably spitting on the ground a time or two. He doesn’t say a word for the longest time and there’s such an uncomfortable silence hanging low, it makes the chilly bumps stand up like soldiers on my arms. Quiet as a church mouse at an all-day dinner, I lean over and try to peek at the two of them.

  Abraham starts in again, and I push myself back up against the wagon. “What happened, Slim? It ain’t like you to be here wit’out Mavis. And I gots to tell you, a man alone with four young childrens? Well … it jes’ don’t looks right.”

  Daddy clears his throat, and I hear him pouring another cup of coffee.

  “You and Mrs. Mavis was happy. Least dat’s what you always say and de way it look to de outsiders.” He lays a hand on Daddy’s shoulder. “Now come on, Slim. You can tell ol’ Abraham. What be going on?”

  Drinking in every word, I breathe slow and shallow, knowing there are secrets that Daddy hasn’t told me. Maybe this Abraham knows the truth, but if he don’t, I reckon Daddy’s fixing to tell him.

  “Yeah, well things aren’t always as they seem, are they, Abraham?” Daddy asks. “We had that real once-upon-a-time kind of love once, but, well, she run off and left me a couple of years ago.”

  I stretch and lean out a little, just enough so’s I can peek at them out of one eye.

  Abraham doesn’t look surprised at Daddy’s tale at all. “Well den, I reckons dat was hard on you, Slim, you bein’ an orphan yo’self and all. Dat woman was de only real family you had, ’cept de childrens o’ course.”

  Daddy sighs a relaxing, after-a-hot-bath sort of sigh. “You have no idea, Abraham. I mean when she said she wouldn’t be back until I could put her and the young’uns in a respectable home, I don’t mind telling you, I was stunned. I mean, she left me holding the bag with—”

  “You bes’ stop dere, Slim,” Abraham interrupts. “Now, we not seen each other since I left de mines, but we know each others a long, long time. Don’t you think I deserve de truth?”

  I’m listening—straining to hear—but Daddy don’t oblige.

  After the longest bit of silence I ever did hear, Abraham starts in again.

  “Slim,” he says, “I’m gon’ tell you now dat I saw your Mavis a while back, but she tol’ me a different story, so don’t go puttin’ on airs for me.”

  I swallow down a gasp. All of a sudden, more questions than answers run around in my head. Was Mama here, or did he see her somewhere else? How did she look? Did she say anything about us? Was she looking for us?

  I knew it!

  There’s more to this story than Daddy’s telling, and this man knows what it is. Now I’m going to finally find out the whole story, and when I do—

  “Wait a minute, Abraham,” Daddy whispers. “You know what they say: little pitchers have big ears; and the way your gums are flapping you’re liable to fill up every pitcher within miles around.”

  Daddy clears his throat and yells out, “Chestnut Hill?”

  Now how in the world from where he’s sitting with his back to the wagon does he know I’m here? I’m being as quiet as a sleepy fly on a church bench, barely sucking in air at all. Just for a second I think about not answering Daddy, but reckon he never has taken kindly to being ignored. “Yes, sir?” I say, sort of timid and quiet.

  “You go on now and do as I say. Shut that door and help your brothers and sister with their reading.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I stomp up the steps a-fierce mad at my daddy and aiming to be sure that he knows it.

  “What’s happening?” Filbert asks when I open the door and then slam it—hard—behind me. “What are they talking about?”

  “Sssh!”

  I run through the wagon, then open wide the front door as quiet as I can. I ease out onto the bench where Daddy rides behind Old Stump, hold my breath, and listen, but all I can make out are the low rumbles of men talking. I stretch and lean over, trying my best to get closer to hear their words; still, I can’t make them out. But I’ve just got to know about my mama. I have to know the story—the whole story—and I’m aiming to find out if it’s the last thing I do.

  Holding to the side of the wagon, I bend as far out as I can. Standing up on tiptoe, I stretch and reach and lean, and before I know what’s happening, I’m flying out of that wagon, smacking the dirt facedown, sprawled out flatter than a busted egg on the ground right in front of Abraham and my daddy.

  7

  LOST COINS

  Daddy jumps to his feet.

  “Chestnut, what in the world are you doing?”

  He steps over Abraham and reaches a hand down to pull me to my feet.

  “Um, well … uh, I just—” Now I’m on the other end of the hemming and hawing, stumbling and stammering around, searching for words, and let me tell you it’s every bit as unpleasant as it sounds.

  I rub the dust from my face, slap it from my dress, and brush my knees with my hands. They’re stinging and burning from the fall, and I’m pretty sure at least one of them is bleeding, but I’m not dare going to bend over and look.

  “Uh-huh, that’s what I thought,” Daddy said. “Your ears are bigger than your brain. You’re messing around in business you’ve got no cause to be messing around in, and making a fool of yourself to boot. Now get on up in that wagon and stop all this nonsense. Don’t let me have to tell you again, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Reluctantly, I go back in the same way I come out, but I’m not happy. I didn’t hear one lick of what Abraham and Daddy were saying about my mama. Makes me mad, but I won’t give up. No sir, I’ll find out the truth if it’s the last thing I do.

  Seems like hours that Abraham and Daddy continue talking and I’m left inside with them three young’uns, working on reading—reading, of all things.

  I’m tired and can’t remember when I’ve been so happy to see the night lights peeking through the windows at the top of the wagon’s wall. I reckon Abraham and Daddy must have talked until way up in the night because I drifted off to sleep listening to the low mumbling tones of their voices.

  Sometime in the night though I feel the bump, bump, bumping of the wagon wheels and I know by that we’re headed to another town, maybe even another state. Reckon most girls my age would be happy to travel around and see the country. Not me. I won’t let myself be happy until I find my mama and put our family back together.

  I open my eyes and stare through the window with so many thoughts running around in my head that there’s no way I could possibly turn off my brain enough to get back to sleep. Where’s Abraham, and what did he say about my mama? What’s made Daddy leave town so fast? We didn’t even do a show and it’s not like Daddy to miss a chance at making money.

  After the longest night I can remember, the morning sun don’t have a chance to wake me. Daddy pounds on the side of the wagon yelling, “Get up, sleepyhead!”

  Mercy, that man can work a nerve.

  “Come on, Chestnut,” Daddy yells. “We’re heading into town for supplies. We’ll leave the wagon here for now.”

  I smooth my dress with my hands and slip my shoes on my feet, but not before reaching way back under my cot and sliding out my metal box, taking out what I’ve saved and shoving it into my pocket.

  I climb on out and eye the triplets. “Where’s that Abraham man?” Mac asks, flipping his yo-yo out and back again.

  “Never mind,” Daddy says, making sure Old Stump’s reins are tied to a tree close to the wagon. He gives her rump a friendly sort of smack and picks her feet up to look at her shoes. “Abraham’s got his own things to tend to.”

  With coins jingling in my pocket like a handful of rusty skeleton keys, I’m following Daddy and the triplets into town, studying the houses that dot the grassy hills as few and far between as the fre
ckles across the nose of a hound dog. It all puts me in the mind of the poorer folks’ homes back in Kentucky. Then again, I reckon there’s poor folk everywhere, even in towns with fancy names and buildings that reach up and touch the sky like this Birmingham.

  Filbert and Mac run up ahead, but Hazel is holding tight to Daddy’s hand and looking up at him all googly-eyed. She cuddles his hand, kisses and swings it back and forth, and smiles and jumps along beside him like a toddler chasing after an all-day sucker.

  Hazel—all show and no substance, prancing around like the world revolves around her—just like Daddy. Cut from the same piece of cloth, them two are.

  “Chestnut gots money,” she says.

  “She does?” Daddy asks, pretending to act surprised. Dressed in a pair of his black show pants and a white shirt, it reminds me of how he dressed back home on Sundays, when we’d walk to church as a family.

  “And just how much money does Chestnut have, and where, pray tell, did she get it?”

  He looks down at Hazel then looks back over his shoulder at me and winks. I can tell that he doesn’t believe her, and by the tone of his voice he’s just going along with her for fun.

  “She gots twenty dollars.”

  “Not dollars, Hazel, cents; twenty-eight cents to be exact, and I found it, thank you very much.” Mercy. That girl works my nerves.

  Daddy stops walking and turns to face me, like he’s suddenly run into a brick wall.

  “So, where did you get the money?” he asks, the smile on his face fading.

  “I found it,” I say, and I don’t say it nice either. I even catch myself smirking before I realize what I’m doing.

  He cocks his head sideways, like a dog trying to figure out people talk. By the look on his face he’s asking for more of an explanation, so I reckon it’s up to me to give it.

  I want to smart off, knowing that his not trusting me is at the heart of his question, but I don’t. Matter of fact, I practice his tactic for a change, and take a deep breath before I speak. Then I let the words that come out of my mouth be just as quiet as I can—but so’s he can still hear them of course.

  “Everywhere we go,” I say, “I look for coins along the streets and gullies. Folks lose them and I find them. I pick them up, put them in my pocket, and save them.”

  “Oh?”

  He shoots me a look that makes me feel less than twelve again—a look that says he don’t believe me.

  I hang my head. “Yes, sir,” I say, shoving my hand as far down in my pocket as I can, grabbing hold to my change, and scrubbing the toe of my shoe across the dry dust of the gravel-strewn road. Dirt and tiny pebbles squeeze in through the holes in the bottoms of my shoes, working their way between my toes.

  “So, what are you planning to do with all that money?” he asks.

  “I’m not rightly sure,” I say, still staring at the ground but knowing all the while the plan I’ve conjured up.

  There’s no way I’m going to tell him my plan though. No way he would understand.

  So, I lie—just like he’s taught me to do.

  I shrug and scuff a shallow trench in the dirt with my shoe. “I might just keep on saving it, or I might see something in the store that I want.”

  The words come out easy—more easy than they should for them to be a lie—but it’s the sinking, sick-like, you-done-something-bad sort of feeling that comes after the words that feels the worst.

  All he says is “Humph,” and then he turns his back to me. He cradles Hazel’s hand and off we go, just the same as if we’d never had a conversation at all.

  I sigh, but I’m sort of proud that I didn’t jump back and yell at him like he expected, realizing too that if he knew what I was planning, he’d tan my hide just for thinking it.

  The closer we get to town, the better things start to smell, like fried chicken and fresh baked bread. There’s a sweetness in the air too, like the scent from pies or cakes or cookies pulled fresh from the oven. It all reminds me of Sunday dinners with Mama.

  “Why so quiet, Chestnut?” Daddy asks after a while of listening to the triplets’ shouts and hollerings.

  “No reason,” I say as we head down the street alongside other folks we don’t yet know. “Just thinking.”

  We walk under a metal sign near the train station that’s so tall it nearly touches the sky. It reads:

  BIRMINGHAM, THE MAGIC CITY!

  Birmingham’s streets are wide and made of bricks lined side by side. There are large metal streetcars running right through the middle of town, their tiny wheels sinking deep into the little grooves cut and buried in the bricks.

  There are the biggest buildings I’ve ever seen, some of them as wide as they are tall, with names right on the front of them in huge white letters. There’s nothing like this back in the hills and hollers of Kentucky, that’s for sure.

  Across from the theater—The Alabama—and next to The Alabama Bank, in the middle of town is a large store with a skinny sign high on the side of the building that reads DRY GOODS GENERAL STORE.

  Mac and Filbert see it first and make their presence known to the folks inside by cupping their hands around their eyes and peering in through the big glass window in front.

  The doors of the store swing wide and pine boards line the floor from front to back. Never in my life have I seen floors so polished and shiny. Why, you could almost see your reflection, if you was to get down on your knees and look close enough, that is.

  Shelves that stretch from floor to ceiling line the walls and are planted down the middle of the store too. From the looks of things, there’s everything on those shelves you could ever dream of having or wanting.

  The triplets’ mouths are hung open down to their chests and their necks stretched back about as far as a neck can go. For the first time in a long while Hazel’s been empty of words and I don’t mind saying, it don’t bother me in the least.

  I stay back as usual, away from Daddy and the triplets, but close enough to see them from the corner of my eye.

  The young’uns are touching and handling and picking up everything in sight, and it makes me as nervous as a baby rabbit in a bear cave thinking they’re going to grab up something important and shatter it into pieces.

  You’d think they’d never been in a store before.

  Then again, reckon a big old store like this, they haven’t.

  All of a sudden I hear a loud crashing sound. I whirl around expecting to look right into the eyes of one of the boys.

  But I don’t.

  It’s Hazel’s eyes that are filled with tears and her face is as white as a cotton ball.

  8

  BROKEN DISHES AND WIGGLY BELLIES

  I didn’t do it! I promise! My hands were in my pockets the whole time,” Hazel wails.

  And as if I didn’t know what was coming next, she covers her face with her hands and goes to sobbing. Weeping, wailing sobs.

  I stare at her, afraid to breathe, much less move.

  A lady dressed to the nines in a red suit and large ivory hat covered in red flowers steps up. “The little one’s right,” she says. “It was me. My purse rubbed against the platter and I’m afraid I’ve dragged it from the counter in my haste. I’ll be happy to pay.”

  Never in all my days have I been so happy to see a fancy, big-hatted lady in the middle of a confession.

  I run to Hazel and pull her to me, patting her back while she sobs.

  “Hear that, Hazel? You didn’t do a thing. This nice lady says it was her purse that done it.”

  I sigh, letting out the deep breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

  “Uh-huh,” Hazel sobs.

  I look around for Daddy, but as usual he’s nowhere to be found when he’s needed.

  I raise Hazel’s chin with my hand and wipe her tears with the heel of my hand.

  “You okay now?” I ask.

  She nods.

  I leave her side with my eyes jumping from wall to wall and on everything in between. This i
s one of the biggest stores I’ve ever been in, and I’m not aiming to miss a thing.

  Stacked to the brim with everything from flour to fabric, from cornmeal to candy, and from canning jars to coffee cups, all shiny, bright, and new, them shelves seem to have it all, but what I’m looking for I don’t see at first glance.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I say to the man behind the counter with the wide red mustache, all curled and swirled and circled on the ends. “Do you have any paper?”

  “What kind of paper, little missy?” he asks in a voice so booming and loud it could wake the lions in the jungle from right here in downtown Birmingham. “Newspaper, cigarette paper, wrapping paper, toilet—”

  I shake my head real fast, like a cat slinging milk from its whiskers.

  “No, sir,” I interrupt. “What I need is going-to-school type of paper. The kind you practice writing letters and numbers on.”

  “Oh, you want loose-leaf paper. It’s back here,” he says, pointing toward the back of the store.

  His belly moves from behind the counter before the rest of him, and it jiggles up and down with each step that he takes. He’s limping, like he has a game leg, and from behind, where I am, it’s clear that one of his shoes is large and clunky and bigger than the other. He limps down the aisle between the door and the shelves toward the back of the store.

  I tag along as close behind as I can.

  Along the way we pass two closed doors with a sign above that reads:

  RESTROOMS

  WHITE COLORED

  “What’s that?” I ask, pointing to the doors with the signs.

  He stops and whips around so fast I have to put my hands up to keep from running into the back of him.

  “What do you mean ‘What’s that,’ child? Haven’t you ever seen indoor toilets?”

  “I have, sir, but—”

  He narrows his eyes, and his one long eyebrow dips low in the middle of his forehead. “Well then, what’s the problem? You know about keeping whites and Negros apart, don’t you?”