Brother tried to push his own thoughts of lust and the want of a woman out of his mind. But sometimes they just seemed to rush at him, and he would have to go out into the woods and touch himself to beat back the heat that boiled inside of him.
Not only did Spin have half a mind and no words, he also had no shame. So when the feeling hit him, he whipped out his penis right where he stood and began to stroke it.
Laney had beat Spin near senseless with her broom the first time he’d done it in her presence, but now when she saw his hands fiddling with the rope that kept his pants up, she just waved a tired hand at him and said, “Go on away from here with that nastiness now.”
Suce, stepping away from childhood with every footfall she took. Womanhood clinging to her hips and pushing out her chest. Barely five feet tall, still childlike in height, but anybody could see if he looked hard enough that no child’s face could carry such an intense look of determination.
Brother supposed that living the way they were living growed her up a mite faster than if there wasn’t so much to look out for and worry about. He himself was only twenty-seven and had a head full of gray hair. Laney was bent over so far, it was a wonder her lips didn’t kiss the ground, and what was she? Forty-five, fifty?
Spin was the only one who didn’t seem affected by their circumstances. Just about twenty, if Brother was counting right. Broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, arms too long and feet too big. Tiny head, small mind, dead tongue. Simple.
Brother wouldn’t label the luck they’d had over the past year and a half. Wouldn’t call it good or bad, but he would give it a sex: female.
Female because it could be fickle and could turn on you on a moment’s notice. But the luck they had was still in its infancy, crawling. Brother supposed that when luck gained its footing, it would either pitter-patter around and cause some confusion or just stroll straight away.
They were living on borrowed time for sure, and so when Brother gave the word, Laney made Suce a wedding gown by stitching two of Lessing’s fine linen tablecloths together. Spin made a crown for her out of the honeysuckle vines and daisies. Brother gave her a pouch of seeds that Lou had saved from the apples Buena had brought to her during their courting. Willie, embarrassed that he had no grand gifts to offer, blushed and presented her with the tiny slip of paper that said MYANMAR.
Suce frowned, embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of anything to present him with. “You giving me you,” Willie reminded her, and took her by the hand.
* * *
Down in the clearing, just in earshot of the stream, Brother shared some words.
He thanked the ancestors for blessing them and thanked the earth for providing. “Go on now,” Brother whispered to the couple when he’d run out of things to say. “Go on and jump that broom.”
Willie and Suce exchanged looks, peered down at the broom that rested at their feet, and leapt into marriage.
Laney uttered some words, sprinkled dried herbs at their feet, smiled when they looked at her, then sneered when her face was to their backs.
No children would bless that union for twelve years.
___________________
By 1867 the town is like a maggot, gobbling up whole tracts of land. Laney look at Brother and her look says, See, we are not alone.
Their middle of nowhere now seems to be the center of everywhere.
Wagons inch up and down the road, heavy with lumber. Curious faces, white and black, stare up at the house on the hill and then fall to the saltbox down below that has now grown into five rooms.
Some venture past the posts, walk right up to whoever is available. They ask questions, point, smile, nod, and in the end are sent away with a story that is worn thin with time and layered with dust.
Willie, Spin, and Brother wait until a December winter night to walk the few miles it takes to get to where the white clapboard of the new houses shines like lamplight from between barren branches.
They tilt their heads and inhale the old familiar scents—fried chicken, cabbage, stewed beef, pig’s tail—that seem to be sprinkled in the air all around them, and they recall the aromas at each and every meal when Laney placed plates of boiled potatoes down before them.
There was nothing left. The winter had taken away the collard greens, peanuts, peaches, figs, and watermelons. Wild game was even more scarce, but they had a stable full of potatoes.
Brother supposed they had planned wrong or hadn’t planned at all when it came to the food. It wasn’t until Laney snapped the neck of the last fowl that they even thought about where the eggs would come from now.
And then they had to deal with the accusing looks from the rooster for two months before despair and dejection engulfed him and he flapped his wings and rushed the side of the house hard enough to shatter his beak and fracture one of his wings.
When the others heard the thump, they came running and were witness to the sad sight of the rooster running in circles, its face bleeding, one wing dragging in the dirt, before throwing itself headfirst against the house. The impact crushed its skull, and it collapsed. Dead.
Laney thought, as she collected the body to prepare it for dinner, that the rooster had the right idea.
Now Laney’s eyes traveled across the bland faces around the table and she spit defensively, “There ain’t nothing else I can do with a potato that I ain’t already done.”
Brother gave Laney a comforting look, but it was too late; feelings were hurt, the damage was done, and she just threw herself down into her chair and huffed.
“Someone’s got to go,” Willie muttered as Suce pushed her dinner plate away, thinking she cannot eat another potato, sweet or Irish.
“Someone’s gotta go,” he said again, nudging the plate back toward Suce and whispering, “You gotta eat.”
Brother nodded.
He’d been fighting the reality for months, but now that every tin had been scraped clean, every flour sack emptied, Brother figured the fight was over; reality had won.
And there was still Lessing to think about, up in that room wheezing his way through the remaining days of his life, calling Laney “Mother” and Brother “Pa.” He’d reached out for Suce one day and touched the swell of her breast and sputtered, “Nice.”
After that, the sheet rose up from between his legs and Suce came down the hill and said she thought it best if Laney or one of the others tended to Lessing.
Willie thought they should just let him starve to death or, he’d whispered to Brother, “If you like, I can take care of it for you.”
Brother hadn’t answered him. He wanted Lessing dead more than anything, but something in him told him that he needed him alive.
So yes, somebody would have to go.
It couldn’t be either of the women.
Spin was just too slow in mind and, besides, he didn’t talk. So it was down to Brother and Willie.
Brother had never ventured more than five miles away from the Lessing plantation. Willie, on the other hand, had walked clear cross two states. Brother lifted his fork, jabbed at a chunk of potato, and said, “You go.”
Two days later, just before daybreak, Lessing’s small velvet sack filled with coins in his pocket and Brother’s straw hat pulled low over his forehead, Willie left after midnight to begin the twenty-mile trek east toward town.
The woods where he once found safety and shelter now held fear. Willie moved unsure through the thick of trees, twigs breaking away beneath his shoes, him looking over his shoulder every three paces. Shadows danced in moonlight-drenched places, and even though the night was still with no sound except the crunch of cold earth and twigs beneath his feet, Willie’s mind was filled with the rolling sound of carriage wheels and he was sure he could smell the foul stench of death’s breath wafting around him.
When the sky faded from black to purple and finally the pale blue of dawn, Willie caught sight of a white blouse, gray skirt, and black-buttoned boots.
He stopped, crouched, and waited. One s
welled into five, five into ten, ten into twenty and more, until the road was teeming with people. Black folks walking, some on wagons.
He stepped out just as two young black women were approaching. They walked along smiling, baskets hanging from their wrists, whispering and giggling. All that stopped, though, when Willie emerged from behind a tree.
“Mornin’,” he muttered, and tipped the tattered hat.
They nodded, but did not offer him anything beyond that. He fell into step behind them.
He was nervous, that was a fact, but no one seemed to notice. He checked himself, brushing away burrs from his jacket sleeves, making himself look presentable even though Suce had put him together quite nicely—she’d even been able to sew his old dust-lapping shoes closed again.
Closer to town, the road narrowed and went thin as a line and then spread out again. Shops made out of clapboard and pressed close together leaned on either side of the street.
Willie couldn’t read, but there was a feed store, a bank, a post office, a tannery, a blacksmith, and a millinery shop. He moved through slowly, not knowing where to stop, but the saloon seemed the best place, as there was a black woman dressed in bright colors, leaned up against a post and smoking a cigarette.
“Afternoon,” Willie said, and tried to keep his eyes even with hers. Trying hard not to let them drop down to the rounded mounds of her bosom that pushed up out of her corset.
Her eyes rolled over him and she smiled. “You a sight, ain’t you?” She laughed and took a long drag on her cigarette.
Willie straightened his back and fumbled with the tattered material of his lapels.
“Uhm, I’m new in town, needing to know the ins and the outs ’bout here,” he said, and chanced a glance inside the saloon.
“Uh-huh,” she said, and took another long drag of her cigarette.
“Wanna know where I can buy some feed, maybe get some cheese, flour, and whatnot.”
“What’s the whatnot?” she purred, and rested her free hand on the curve of her hip.
Willie could do nothing else but laugh. Not a hard laugh, more like a snicker. “I dunno.” He coughed and stepped out of the way of a white man who was exiting the saloon.
“General store right ’cross there,” the woman said, and nodded her head to the left.
Willie’s eyes swung in that direction, but the letters on the windows meant nothing to him.
“Where y’all staying?” she asked.
“Yonder,” he said, but didn’t nod his head in any particular direction. The woman tossed her head and humphed, then blew smoke over his head.
Willie’s feet did a small shuffle like he was going to walk off, but then he stilled them and moved his eyes toward the battered saloon door.
“Niggers welcome in there?”
“There?” The woman threw a look over her shoulder. “Nah,” she said, and snubbed out the butt of the cigarette on the bottom of her shoe. “But you all can buy a taste ’round back.”
“That right?” Willie said, and fingered the velvet sack of silver coins in his pocket.
“You all got money?” she asked, coylike, but Willie saw the eagerness in her eyes.
“Some.”
“You all sharecropping?”
“Yeah.”
Another sound in her throat and her eyes just stretched into saucers while her hand reached out and fingered the torn buttonholes of his jacket.
He could smell her. Lord, he couldn’t remember the last time he smelled something so good. Suce was clean-smelling, like the stream behind the house and the honeysuckle flowers she pressed between her fingers and rubbed around her neck. But this woman smelled like what he remembered sex reeked of the first time he stole some from a woman twice his age down in the Kentucky bluegrass.
Willie rocked on the balls of his feet.
Suce fading and what he’d come to accomplish gone with one inhale of that harlot’s perfume.
Willie’s eyes fluttered closed and he rocked closer.
The shotgun blast tore through the spell, and his eyes flew open and fell on the woman’s grinning, painted lips. He took two steps backward and shook away the cobwebs in his head.
“Fool,” she muttered just as the moment slipped completely away and Willie’s eyes cleared.
“You say the general store that a-way?” Willie’s voice stalled and started again.
A laugh, a fling of her head, and then, “Yeah, nigger, right o’er there.”
Willie double-stepped getting across the road, but he chanced a quick look over his shoulder to see the sashay of the woman’s behind before she stepped between the swinging doors and the piano music swallowed her whole.
* * *
No, he didn’t know what anything cost. He’d never handled money a day in his life, and so when the white man handed him the packages of flour, cheese, slab bacon, sugar, and meal, Willie just pushed a silver coin across the counter and started to walk away.
“Hey, nigga!” the white shopkeeper shouted after him.
Willie stalled, thought about running, but his feet didn’t obey.
“Boy, you gotta give me two silver pieces!” The man slammed his palm down on the counter and muttered, “Stupid niggas.”
Willie blew air out from his nose, turned around, careful to keep his eyes lowered as he approached the counter, and set another silver piece down on the flat surface before making a quick departure.
* * *
Twelve hours and no sleep. Suce pacing the floor and worried to death. Laney holed up in her bed and muttering to the ceiling. Spin walking the cold air in and out of the house until Brother gave him a threatening look and Spin stepped in and pulled the door shut behind him.
* * *
A soft rapping came at the door just when the moon was at its fullest. Spin and Brother looked at each other and then back at the door. Before they could move, Suce had crossed the hardwood floor and swung it open.
Willie stepped in, his arms full of packages and a wide, bright smile looming above them.
* * *
It seemed to take forever to get that cast-iron stove hot. In between stirring the kindling, mixing the flour, and rolling the dough for biscuits, Laney and Suce tried to get all of what Willie was saying.
His words showered out in a rush of excitement. He did his best to describe everything and everyone.
“Were you scared, Willie?” Suce asked.
“Sure ’nuff scared that one of them white men was just going to snatch me up and haul me away!”
In the end, they all sat gathered around the table at the midnight hour and ate like it was the first time they’d ever tasted food.
After they’d feasted, Laney went off to bed and Suce gathered herself on Willie’s lap and fell asleep while Brother sat at the table studying his fingers.
“What’s on your mind, Brother?” Willie yawned as he stroked Suce’s hair.
“I’m thinking next time, I’m coming with you.”
* * *
Next time came a week later, and Suce wanted to go too. But Laney didn’t. “And neither should you!” she said with a cough, spitting a wad of mucous into the dirt. “I ain’t trying to test fate,” she added, and shook her head.
Brother and Willie hitched the mule to the wagon and made the trip by themselves.
The following week, Suce went along.
And after that, Laney couldn’t stand it anymore and decided that fate was what it was, and she and Spin went to go see.
There they were, five niggers living high on the hog, walking through town, careful where their eyes fell, not forgetting how to address the white folk, and having to walk just a little stooped over.
They got some hard looks, just like Willie had said, but nothing really beyond that, except for the man at the general store who looked at Brother and said, “Are you Jennie’s man, Thomas?”
“No sir.”
“Damndest thing, you look just like him. Quarter-pound of lard, you said?”
&
nbsp; “Yes sir.”
* * *
They all came back laughing. Joyous, arms loaded down with packages of everything, including a new pair of shoes for Willie and new frocks for Laney and Suce. Medicine for Laney’s cough, a ball for Spin to play fetch with the dogs.
Luck, Brother decided as he snapped the reins against the horses’ backs, had earned a first name, and so he christened her “Good.”
They came home with so many things, but the joy carried the most weight and so it hit the ground the hardest when the wagon turned the bend and there were two white men standing and smoking on the porch of the big house.
___________________
Willie had taken to calling her Suce-Suce. Enjoying the whistle of breath on his tongue that came along with the “Ssssss” that began her name.
It was her name he was calling, her fingers he was fiddling with, when Brother pulled the reins left and the horses turned down the path toward home.
Suce was laughing softly and shaking her head at her husband’s foolishness when Laney muttered, “Help me, Jesus,” and clutched her heart.
Suce’s head jerked around, and her hands followed just as quickly, urgently grabbing hold of Laney’s arm as she asked, “What is it, what’s wrong?”
Laney’s eyes were focused straight ahead. Not noticing, Suce shook Laney’s arm and asked again, “What is it, Laney?”
And Suce’s eyes never would have left the struck expression on Laney’s face if it hadn’t been for the nudge in her side from Willie. Suce’s head swiveled toward her husband’s face, where she found the same startled expression.
Her eyes followed his, and she almost jumped up out of her seat when they landed on what Willie and Laney were seeing, but Willie’s hand came down hard on her thigh, crushing her urge to bolt.
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