I took off out the screened door after that dog. But I didn’t see her nowhere. I wanted to call out “Hey, girl,” but I kept quiet. Mama’s room was right up over me, and her window was open. It was hot and in August right before I started to the first grade. Then I heard this sound like a steady beat from under the house, so I crawled up under it, and there she was. That was her tail I was hearing. She was wagging it. And I believed it was for me.
But then her legs went to lifting up, holding them out stiff like broom handles, and she let out this squeal and stretched her head back towards her tail that was all hiked up, and there she come back holding something in her mouth by her teeth and started shaking it hard like she was mad at it. But she wasn’t mad, she’d had a puppy, Mama Red. She laid it real soft in the dirt and got her tongue and licked it and then took her nose and tucked in that baby up to her teats, so she could get her a good drink. My eyes started filling up in buckets.
She had four more of them. I scooted back that way, so I could watch. I wanted to see it all. And just like you would, Mama Red, she welcomed every one of them like she was saying to them, “Hey there, I’m your mama, and I think you’re good.”
But then my mama started calling my name. I didn’t want to leave, but I knew I had to go. Before I left, I soaked up how still that mama dog was, and that made me get all still, too. I whispered to her, “I love you.” She held her eyes on me like I might matter. And then I crawled out, and Mama yanked me to my feet and told me, “You ain’t got no time to be playing, girl.”
“I wasn’t,” I told her, “I was watching a mama dog have puppies.”
“Don’t you talk back to me!” she said and slapped a fly swatter up against my shoulder.
“It was sweet, Mama, what I seen,” I told her.
“Sweet? It’s just having babies. Anything can have babies. That ain’t nothing. And you so fat, you’d smush them.” Then she brought that swatter down and hit me on my arm. It stung some but not like the words she said to me next. And with every one of them, she timed out a slap. She said, “You-ain’t-got-you-one-good-mama-bone-in-you.”
I felt like a knife had sliced me open, cut part of me out and flung it to the winds.
“And nobody wants to see no crybaby,” she said. “You better learn to carry it, is all I say.”
Papa come home from the mill that night, and she made him get the dog and the puppies and carry them off somewhere. We never did have no more talk about it.
But I’ll tell you this now, mama’s words to me was the first stitch on a garment that I would wear for the rest of my born days. And once that stitch got to running, it kept going more and more off seam. I let her words take up housekeeping inside of me.
They inside of me now. But I don’t want them to be.
MARCH 18, 1951
Luther did not enter the church sanctuary that Sunday morning in his usual fashion, from the hall that led into the front near the pulpit and choir loft. He would have to face people that way, men from the Cattleman’s Supper the night before who saw another father and son crowned winner and people in general, good people. He entered on the opposite end, through the outside door and walked the center aisle, stretching twenty five rows of pews, putting the congregation’s backs to him.
This was no usual Sunday. Luther wanted to get saved. God had brought him back from almost dying the night before and given him another chance to be a better man. Even though he’d gotten saved when he was a boy, when the preacher gave the altar call at the end of the sermon that morning, Luther would answer, and LC would witness his father humbling himself. Yes, Luther could do this.
He thought about sitting on the first row. That way he would have only three or four steps to make when the altar call was given. But that would signal he was up to something, since Mildred and LC were already seated in their usual spot, fifth row back. Luther decided to join them, but, instead of sitting between Mildred and LC, as he typically did, he motioned for LC to slide over and let him sit at the end the pew on the aisle. Neither questioned him, nor did they question finding him in the lobby after the supper the night before.
LC sat with his hands folded on top of his Bible. The look of sunburn had faded. No one would know he had killed a deer the day before. Except Luther.
The preacher walked in, and the organist began with “Up from the Grave.” Luther’s stomach knotted up. One hour lay between him and the altar call. He wondered if his family and the whole church would faint when he answered the call, because next to the preacher, the head deacon was considered the next most godly.
When the ushers began passing the offering plate, Luther took his billfold out and tried to catch his boy’s eyes, turning his head towards LC and leaning in. Luther had never tithed his ten percent before, always putting in a dollar bill and making sure it lay on the bottom beneath the tithing envelopes. But this Sunday, Luther took out ten one-dollar bills, his tithe of the money he’d received for the steer the day before and put them in one at a time in an envelope with his and LC’s name already on it. He held it out for LC to see. “Mine’s on it, too?” LC said. Luther nodded and dropped in the envelope and thought about showing his boy the ladybugs soon.
The sermon began, but Luther did not listen. There was no need to until the end for the call. He looked down at his shoes. They were black dress shoes, his most expensive. The first time he answered the call, he’d worn boots, white ones with tassels. He was a boy of eight with no shoes to wear, and cold winter had set in. He and his family were white but lived in a tenant house on a rich white man’s place, a Mr. Joseph Allgood. They lived beside another family, this one negro. This was Uncle’s family, and back then, Luther called him by his name, Emmanuel. Luther’s mother cleaned for the Allgoods and saw a pair of girl’s boots, white with tassels, in a paper sack by the front door. Mrs. Allgood was going to throw them away but gave them to his mother. “Nobody’ll know, son,” his mother told him. But a boy in his Sunday School class said, “Hey, ain’t them girl’s boots?” Luther slid his feet back and told the boy, “Naw.” “They are,” the boy said louder, “and they’ve got jelly tassels.” The boy laughed. The preacher’s sermon that morning talked about getting saved, saying that God protected the saved with a shield. Luther wanted that shield. So when the altar call was given, little boy Luther yanked on the bottom of his pant legs and walked the aisle and told the preacher, “I need one of God’s shields around me.”
Luther wondered if the preacher that morning would use that kind of language. He wasn’t sure if God had given him a shield back then and taken it away. Or if God never had.
“The time has come,” the preacher said, and Luther felt a wave of sweat move over him.
“We talk of ‘once saved, always saved,’ brothers and sisters. But are you sure? Are you sure that if you died going home this day, are you sure you would escape the eternal burning fires of hell and spend eternity with our blessed savior and Lord, Jesus Almighty Christ?”
No, I’m not sure, Luther screamed inside.
“Because if you’re not,” the preacher said, his hands now raised, “why don’t you come forward and have all your sins forgiven and be washed in the blood of our almighty Father?”
Yes, I want to be washed in the blood.
The congregation now was standing. Luther burst into the aisle like he’d been shot from a gun. He took two steps and thought he heard smirks and whispers. Is that Luther, the head deacon, stepping out as a sinner? He took another. You’re a fake, Luther Dobbins. The words now in full voice. You mean you’ve been living a lie all this time? Laughter breaking out, coming in waves, big ones. Luther taking long strides now and within reach of the preacher’s hand, now extended towards Luther. You running tuck-tailed to the Lord now that you’re no longer Grand Champion? Screams now.
He turned and headed to the door past the pulpit and choir loft, and then to the bathroom, where he stood at the sink and turned on the hot water faucet.
He ran it until it bu
rned.
Into that fire, he placed his hands.
He wanted to sear them.
…..
Ike Thrasher told himself he would not show his face at the Creamer’s until he had properly outfitted his truck with bodies, but he fell short of that pledge that Sunday morning as he traveled west on Portman Highway in his “unequipped” truck, as Mr. Dobbins had called it the day before. But the steer needed a fence.
Harold Creamer had always looked to be a real man, so likely he had materials in his barn Ike could use to build the fence, although Ike had never built one. By the time he was old enough to learn from his father, Ike had kissed that boy and was told to stay in the house and be a girl like his mother. Ike knew he could learn a lot from Mr. Dobbins, and now that he had seen the cattleman had a helper, Ike set his sights on becoming one. Roy Rogers called them hired hands. “Yeah,” he said aloud, “this future hired hand is riding out to build a fence for the Grand Champeen.”
He drove up close to the tree where the steer was tied and saw the steer nursing a bigger cow.
“Mr. Thrasher!” It was the boy near the barn, holding something with both hands. It looked like a thick stick, and he was swinging it.
“What’s that big cow doing here?” Ike called out his window.
“That’s his mama,” Emerson Bridge shouted. “She loves him.”
“Loves him? A cow?”
The boy came towards him. It was an ax he was holding, one almost as tall as he. “Yes sir, Mama said the cow loves him so much, she broke out of the fence at Mr. Dobbins’s and walked all the way here in the night. Four miles.” He took a big swing through the air with the ax. “But I think Lucky, that’s what I named him, I think Lucky just needed his mama.”
The steer’s head was still beneath the big cow. “Hey, this ain’t no sissy boy needing his mama.” Ike got out of his truck.
“And she got cut up so bad, Mama put some medicine on her to help heal her up.”
Ike slammed his door.
“And Lucky’s getting him a fence, too. That nice man Mr. Emmanuel from yesterday’s going to build it.”
“You mean Mr. Dobbins?”
“No sir, Mr. Emmanuel, the one that did all the work.”
“I thought his name was Uncle.”
The boy hunched up his shoulders. “Told me his name was Emmanuel. He walked all the way here this morning rolling that little wagon over there with a big ball of barbed wire he kept underneath a coat. Said the wire was a toss off, that Mr. Dobbins didn’t think it was shiny enough.”
“Where’s your mama?” Ike asked.
“In the house, sewing. Mr. Emmanuel had to leave but said he’d be back.”
Ike marched towards the house. He started to knock on the porch door, but the matter was too urgent. He went inside, and from the kitchen called “Mrs. Creamer.” She didn’t answer, but he heard the sewing machine across the way and followed the sound to a bedroom. He stood in the doorway and saw her hunched towards the machine. He was aware he still had his hat on and that gentlemen did not do such inside a house, but it made a statement of serious intent.
“I’ve come to say that mama cow out there’s got to go,” he said in a loud voice, which startled him.
She stopped pedaling and jerked her head his way. “No, sir. No, sir.” She came towards him.
“Yes ma’am, yes ma’am, she does.”
“No sir, she don’t.” She was standing in front of him. She was barefooted. With his boots on, he was a tad taller. He wanted to make himself even higher. He raised up on his tiptoes.
“I aim to go to Mr. Dobbins today and not leave until he’s said I can buy her,” she told him.
“Where you getting the money? I’m not giving it to you.”
“I’m making a dress right now to sell, and when I finish, I’ll get on another.”
She held her eyes wide like a fishing net the Bible talked of to catch fish. That’s how his congregation looked when he had hit the height of his sermon, and he knew he had them with his words about righteousness and filthy selves and spending eternity in hell. After that, they would soak up anything he would say. He took a deep breath and mustered all the volume he could. “I said we ain’t going to have no sissy boy needing his mama.”
“And I said I’ll pay for her.”
He watched her neck to see if she would swallow hard. He’d learned to put his eyes there when his parishioners would talk of their troubles and then ask him to get the Lord God Almighty to help fix them. Their necks showed if they believed or not. If they swallowed, they were in deep, both in their troubles and their belief in divine help. But, if they did not, they were skimmers and shut off from any help that could come.
Mrs. Creamer swallowed hard.
“I’ll pay for her and my debt to you, too, if it means I don’t eat nothing but cold loaf and the pads on chicken’s feet, if I can ever afford a chicken again, and give my boy all the good vittles.”
Ike felt a tremor move through him. Her boy was right. This woman did love him. Ike’s mother had loved him like that. He could smell his mother’s talcum now, fragrant as her red roses growing up the trellis by the side of the house, the way she’d sprinkle the powder on her body after a bath. The time his father had gone to the cotton gin, and she let him sprinkle some on him, lavender snow, he had thought of it, the lightness of it like his father’s field dust, but the talcum didn’t have to be washed off, it could stay. His mother let it stay.
He came down off his tiptoes. He was thinking now that maybe it wouldn’t hurt the steer to have his mama around.
He reached up and took off his hat.
…..
Luther took his seat at the dinner table that Sunday and wrapped his hands around his iced tea glass, letting the condensation on its outside sooth his skin.
“Here’s your favorite, the pulley bone, Little LC,” Mildred said, her body leaned over the table with a platter of fried chicken.
“I told you not to call—” Luther started.
“Don’t call me that no more, Mama. I ain’t little.” LC’s voice was louder.
Luther shifted in his seat. He had laid in bed the night before, thinking about what he was creating in LC, a small version of himself. The cold look in his boy’s eyes told him that, but Luther could only see them sideways. He wanted his boy to look at him straight on.
A knock came at the front door. Luther saw an old black automobile out the window behind him. It was that heathen woman, Mrs. Creamer. She was on to him about the steer being too young and wanted to get that man’s money back. But that wasn’t going to happen. The note on his place was due that coming week, and the $90 he had left would cover it.
Mildred got up from the table.
“Tell her a deal’s a deal,” Luther called out.
“I bet Splotchy took off over there after her calf,” LC said.
“Thought I told you not to name them cows,” Luther said.
“I got to talk to him,” he heard, footsteps, loud ones, coming his way. He slid his chair back and started to leave the room, but Mrs. Creamer met him in the entrance. She was holding out money.
“I’m sorry to barge in here, but my boy’s steer’s mama has come for him, and I want to buy her from you.”
Luther saw a ten, a one-dollar bill, a quarter, and two dimes.
“This ain’t enough, I know,” she said. “But it’s a start.”
“One of my cows got out?” Luther yelled. “There’s a hole in my fence?”
“Uncle’s down there fixing it,” LC said.
Luther whipped his neck back towards the boy. “How do you know?”
“While mama was cooking, I went down to see the cows and saw him.”
Luther waited for someone to laugh at him for being the last to know and for having a hole in his fence and for not riding herd over his own cows.
But no one laughed.
LC was looking at Mrs. Creamer.
Luther blew air through his nose and
told the woman, “That’s my cow. I’m coming to get her.”
“No sir, please don’t. I want her.” She pushed the money closer.
“If you want her, then you can go see her at the Greasy Spoon at the end of the week. Order you a hotdog—extra chili. I’m selling her at the sale Tuesday for scrap, the only thing she’s good for now, ever-loving hamburger meat. She’s worse than broken mouth, she’s a gummer, used up, empty, spent, open, and her udders ruined.” He knew his words had come fast. Once he’d mentioned the sale, he had to keep going for fear that LC or Mildred would ask him why he never took his cows himself, always making Uncle do it, while Luther found something “pressing” to do, such as needing a haircut for a special church meeting. The truth was Luther couldn’t bear to see them being herded into the ring and sold to the highest bidder and then carried away for slaughter. Occasionally, though, on days when his own cattle were not being sold, he would make a show of going and milling around with other farmers and talking price on the hoof or price hanging.
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Creamer said and ran from the room.
He had scared her off. Maybe he could get LC to look at him now.
Luther returned to his chair. He wanted to lean over and whisper, “I’ve picked better for you this time,” but what came out was “So you went to check on your steer, Mr. Grand Champion Man? Good to see you taking that kind of interest.”
LC brought his eyes to him, just like that. So all it took was a question?
But then they started to fill. “I was wanting to see something still alive.”
Mildred gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.
A shot of heat rose through Luther and settled in his hands. They were on fire again. He wanted to run from the room, run down his sloping land to the pond, where a preacher would be standing, his hands outstretched, welcoming Luther for a saving, then a baptism, and saying, “I baptize thee, my brother, Luther Charles Dobbins, Sr.”
One Good Mama Bone Page 10