The Arms of God: A Novel

by Lynne Hinton

  “I used to take E. Saul fishing,” Tincan Gentry would say when he heard that E. Saul had won a history contest as if somehow the moments spent on a quiet riverbank had taught him how to store up names and dates.

  “I showed him how to pull a string across a row before he plowed it,” John Cotton would add as if this had given the boy his brilliance.

  “I slipped him his first seed,” one neighbor would say proudly, like this had granted him his ability to do math.

  “Me, his first paper,” another would brag, like it had been the one paper that caused him to understand how to piece his own words together.

  And Ruth and Miss Nellie would smile and invite them in, letting them share in the joy they all felt about E. Saul Love. They were, after all, not stingy with their pride.

  Olivia had been the only one who thought to ask E. Saul what he wanted to do, whether he wanted to be president or go to law school, whether he was going to study literature or medicine. Everybody else around him was already so busy making the plans for his life, making him into their own dream images, that no one had thought to find out what he wanted to do, which ambitions were really his.

  She asked him on a Thursday, the day before he graduated, as she sat on his front porch waiting for Tree to walk home from school. The semester was quickly coming to an end and so far the young man had not made a commitment to any school or profession.

  It had taken him completely by surprise that someone had wanted to know, that someone had really wanted to know, that someone was giving him the question without already planning to tell him in the next breath what it was they thought he should do, where they thought he should go to school, or where it is that they would have gone if they could have.

  It had been his young friend, his sister’s best friend, who had no other expectation or dream to hoist upon his shoulders, no other fantasy for him to fulfill, who had honestly wanted to know, who had asked the question and grown silent without leaving him a look of longing that made him answer untruthfully. And so, the day before he was going to be honored as the valedictorian of Greensboro Second School for the year 1945, the day before he received the Principal’s Award for the Year’s Best Student, the day before his mother spent six weeks’ pay on a party to celebrate his bright beginning of adulthood, he sat down next to his young neighbor and told her what he had not told anyone else before.

  The afternoon opened before them like the clear spring sky, wide with possibilities.

  “I want to farm.” It was just as simple as that.

  Olivia, who was leaning on her elbows, her head tilted up, her eyes closed, fell toward him in disbelief. She immediately glanced around, wondering if Ruth or Miss Nellie were anywhere close and had heard the startling news of a boy who would be their king. When she realized that no one else was at home, no family member other than the young man, she stared in shock at her best friend’s brother, the smartest boy she had ever known, her tutor and teacher, the one all the other children came to with their homework.

  She faced him, showing some sign of surprise.

  E. Saul continued without noticing the reaction of his little sister’s friend. He was savoring the chance to be candid.

  “I’d like to buy that piece of land behind the church and plant corn, maybe soybeans, then maybe switch off one year and grow tobacco. I’d like to have a tractor and three barns, a couple of horses and mules, maybe some cows.”

  Even though he had never said these things out loud, it was obvious to the young girl that E. Saul had thought all of this through. She tried to monitor her surprise. She dropped her head and listened.

  E. Saul rested against the porch railing beside her, his brow eased, his eyes distant. He was enjoying the sound of being honest.

  “I’d like to change this house, maybe stretch the front a bit closer to the road.” He reached out and gripped a railing. “Maybe add a little fence all around it, put on a new roof.”

  Olivia thought about the leaks in his house, about how many times she had helped empty the buckets with E. Saul and Tree.

  “I’d maybe hire some of the neighborhood kids to help me, you know, give them something constructive to do, run a small business, sell the produce in town or maybe drive to Raleigh to the market.” He had considered all the details of his dream.

  “In the winter I’d do the carpentry work on the house and barns, paint or plaster; and in the summer I’d never go inside until the moon was halfway across the sky.”

  Olivia turned to see her neighbor’s face, the brightness in his eyes, the uncensored pleasure in finally being able to name what lay beneath the silence.

  A breeze stirred around them and the two of them stopped talking to hear the soft sounds of the season, the singing of a lone sparrow, the flutter of the leaves on the sweet gum tree that stood tall and full in the left corner of the yard.

  “What about college?” Olivia asked in hesitation, already measuring the weight of the question, already sad for those women she loved like family, those women who did not yet know the burden of this disappointment.

  He turned to his sister’s best friend and immediately began to answer the way he had answered everyone in the past three years about where he was going to go after he graduated.

  He started to say, “I’m still considering my options,” which were the words everybody else in Smoketown loved to hear, words that sent a chill of delight down their spines, words that pulled up on the corners of their lips and could not keep them from grinning since never before had they known a black man who had options, since never before had they even imagined what that could possibly feel like. That’s what he started to say to her and then he paused and realized the sincerity in her question, the loose and easy way she meant it.

  “I don’t know,” he answered uncomfortably.

  Olivia nodded. She knew that E. Saul had been accepted at five or six colleges, a couple of them somewhere up north. She knew because every time he got a letter from an admissions office, Ruth had thrown a party. Catfish, pork chops, banana cream pie, the menu was endless. She stewed beef and fried fish until everybody was having trouble sleeping at night because they were eating so much more than they had ever eaten before. Ruth was spoiling the community in her pleasure, having already managed a special supper at least once a week for the past two or three months.

  When he heard from the school in Atlanta, an acceptance notice that was hand-delivered by some man at the college who was also promising him tuition and living expenses, Ruth had cooked so much food that the next day they were still wrapping it up and giving it to everybody who walked by.

  In his mother’s mind, E. Saul was getting out of Smoketown and in his departure he was automatically paving a way for the rest of them to join him. First his little sister who would go to the same college and then his mother and grandmother who would live near them and lovingly help them raise their children.

  E. Saul had not thought of a way to explain his decision to his mother who so desperately wanted to leave her life.

  “What about your writing?” Olivia asked. She saved every poem he had ever given her and some she had taken from his pad of paper without him knowing.

  “Who says a farmer can’t be a writer?” he answered. And to hear him say it, it made perfect sense.

  “Don’t you want to go to school? Get out of here?” Even though she was white, Olivia was just like everyone else in Smoketown. She too was trying to figure her way out. She and Tree had already planned to leave together.

  E. Saul shrugged his shoulders. He liked school, liked to learn; but he loved the earth more, loved to dig his hands in the dirt, watch things grow. He knew an education would offer him more opportunities, give him more space to make a life; but the truth was, he really didn’t want to go anywhere else.

  He liked Smoketown, liked the history and the familiarity of the place, liked the coolness of spring and the crisp chill of fall. He liked the way the soil could hold water and the way the narrow creeks
flowed straight into the beds of three rivers.

  He was not naïve. He knew the consequences of racism that everyone around him had suffered. He knew how hard it had been, how hard it still was for a black man to make anything of himself in the South. He knew that if he chose to stay at home and farm, like all the other men in Smoketown, that he would never win the approval of the white people in Greensboro, the respect of town leaders and officials. And he knew that’s what everybody else in his community, everybody swollen up with pride, was waiting for.

  But the truth was, E. Saul understood that he would never win that anyway. He knew what the other people in Smoketown didn’t know, a diploma or certificate might help you get a good job or help you make a path into the city, but it would never change the minds of white people. He knew because he had seen how they leered at him when he entered and won the regional spelling bees and speech contests. He saw the sting of surprise in their eyes, their looks of disgust that a black boy had beaten their perfect white children, and he realized then that being smart, winning awards, having perfect scores did not change what white people saw when they looked at him.

  His mother hadn’t seen it because she was blinded by her pride, so hindered by her desires. She had thought she was watching respect and honor when her son received his trophy or plaque at the hands of a white man; but E. Saul had recognized the disdain. He understood at a very early age that white people might have to give a black person what it was that they deserved; but they never had to give it with approval.

  Unlike what Ruth and Miss Nellie thought, E. Saul understood that he would always and forever be black and no matter what a college said you should call him, he would always and forever be judged by the color of his skin.

  “What you going to tell Ms. Ruth?” Olivia asked, honestly pained by what she knew would destroy her best friend’s mother.

  “I guess I’m going to tell her that I’m going to college somewhere close by.” He seemed disappointed.

  “I guess I’m going to tell her that I still haven’t decided what I want to do with my life.” He blew out a breath of air.

  “I guess I’ll wait until I graduate from a university and then tell her that all I really want in my life is to make things grow, that my dream is the same dream her father had, the same dream his father had, and his father before him.”

  He glanced out across the long golden fields that surrounded their houses and thought of all the backs and shoulders of the men he stood upon. All the longings and dreams and desires that could be summed up so easily, so tightly.

  “I want to be a farmer, own a little piece of land. I want to add color to a world that sees only black and white. I want to laugh with old friends and read books and fall in love. I want to be left alone and drive a truck on a dirt road and not be afraid. I want to dream my own dreams instead of having somebody else stuff theirs inside me. I want to see my mother smile and not because I passed some test or won some award. I want to see her smile because she knows I’m happy, not special or gifted or the best, but just because she knows I’m happy.”

  Olivia watched as the young man shifted under the weight of such a heavy load. She knew he was not quite finished with the answer to her question. She waited as he angled his body in such a way that the sun pressed itself hard upon his already encumbered shoulders.

  He stared into the endless sky and completed what he wanted to say. “I guess I will wait four more years and hope that she has found her own dream or at the very least somebody else to waste hers on; and I will tell her what I have known for a very long time. I will tell her that I want to come home.” He sighed, concluding the speech he had practiced for years.

  Olivia dropped her eyes away from the favored son that she, like everyone else she knew, admired and adored, and watched as the sun slid behind a cloud embarrassed that a boy could be so burdened on the day before becoming a man.

  NELLIE STAR BROADNAX BLACKWELL

  NOVEMBER 13, 1868–MAY 5, 1945

  Nellie Star Broadnax Blackwell of 319 Pinetops Road died Monday, May 5, 1945, at her home.

  The funeral will be held at 2:00 P.M. Friday at The Ashley Grove Church, AME Zion Congregation, by Reverend James Irvine.

  A native of South Carolina, she has lived most of her adult life in Greensboro.

  She is survived by her daughter, Ruth Blackwell Love, and two grandchildren, Edward Saul and Teresa. She was preceded in death by her parents, three brothers, and her husband, Robert Blackwell.

  She was a loving mother and grandmother, a good friend. She will be missed by all.

  Eight

  Everybody knows that bad things come in threes. But when Miss Nellie died only one person saw it as the beginning of the evil that was to unwind its way around the two little houses on the edge of Smoketown. Only one woman knew it for what it was but she had already resigned herself to her own passing and had no way to send along her knowledge. No one else knew to start at the place of Miss Nellie’s death and say to a gathering of believers, “Let us ready ourselves for the coming of the devil.”

  No one painted blood along the entrance of their doors or hung crosses on their bedposts. No one burned sage or splashed holy water. No one held a vigil in preparation, fasted and prayed or lit candles. No one opened their eyes and saw what was so clearly happening in front of them because they were all blinded by a brief afternoon of uncontained self-indulgence, lost in a few hours of bliss.

  They missed the omen because of the grandness of the celebration when it happened. They failed to pay attention to their better judgment because of the seductive nature of encumbered joy and the numbing of the senses as a result of having been so satisfied. They resisted what they normally would have seen so clearly because everyone had only and always relied on the dead woman for warning, and they just didn’t think that her final counsel would come as violently as death.

  E. Saul’s graduation party held at the house just at the corner of Smoketown was the Kingdom of God banquet that had never before or would never again be enjoyed by folks living or dead. It was the dinner where nobody walked away hungry, nobody left wondering how something else might have tasted, no one headed home thinking of another meal.

  Ruth and Miss Nellie had been planning the dinner for most of the boy’s life; so when the evening finally came, there was not a serving spoon unused, not a dish unprepared, not a dining wish left unfulfilled. Fingers smacking, toes tapping, it was the wedding feast only Jesus could have imagined.

  There was meat from every sort of animal the residents of Smoketown had ever milked or slaughtered. Long, narrow cuts of beef, marinated in a sauce that caused even the preacher’s wife to lick her thumbs without apology. Pork ribs steeped in dark honey, chicken fried in new grease, even goat meat and lamb stewed until the pieces fell off the bone, delicate like the swing of loose leaves in autumn.

  There were tender collard greens with thick strips of bacon, fresh green beans and yellow squash stirred with curls of sweet onion, pickled beets and cucumbers soaked in vinegar, pinto beans with chow chow, and potatoes cooked every way conceived, baked, fried, browned, mashed, and cut up in neat little cubes and mixed into salad.

  There were big juicy beefsteak tomatoes that nobody, not even E. Saul, could figure out how Ruth had picked so ripe when it was so early in the season, and piles of bread and saucers of butter, roasted ears of silver queen corn, and buckets of barbecue slaw.

  There were so many desserts that they were placed in another room, a church table spread across a feather bed. There were fruit pies and cobblers, peach and gooseberry, rhubarb and ladyfinger apples, white and chocolate glazed cakes, sugar cookies and butter mints, plate after plate of sweetness.

  The amount and display of food were endless and people were so full at the final hour of eating, they lay down in bunches, rested and gratified in a way they had hardly deemed possible on earth, some of them sleeping as soundly as they did when they were babies wrapped up tight in feed sacks and slipped inside a
dresser drawer.

  There was nothing missing, nothing forgotten, nothing left uncooked, anything and everything planned and carried out, all the way down to the tubs of lemonade and spiced tea that were set in the middle of the front porch. It was all as it should have been. So that even though Miss Nellie rocked before she fell and held out two fingers before she dropped, the senses and capabilities of everyone in Smoketown, everyone present at the honored boy’s party, were dulled and slow.

  Nobody recognized trouble in a place where such perfect joy had been unloosed. And nobody thought anything other than what a shame that death would happen in the midst of pure pleasure since it was clearly the best party anyone had ever attended. And they did not consider anything of a vexing nature since Miss Nellie, now dead, was the only one in the community who had ever recognized the early shades of malevolence.

  Ruth’s mother was, after all, the one with the gift for catching sight of trouble. She was the one who smelled the coming of evil. She heard its faint whisper of arrival. So without her to warn the people with the interpretation of her dying, without her to contradict what the deacon reported, that she wanted to die in the center of splendor, they simply gathered her up and laid her in the arms of death. They wept and read Scripture, prayed and sang crossing Jordan songs; but they did not look upon her dying as a means of the beginning of anything worse than an old woman who passed over after just having tasted a bit of glory.

  They paid no attention to the fact that she collapsed while Mr. Eden, the school principal, was speaking about how he thought it might be time for representation from the community on the city council and how he thought Edward Saul might just be the first black man to do it. No one noticed that she had the attack at exactly the moment when the preacher was walking out the door, having blessed the boy, his path, and the deep but hidden desires of his spirit.