One Good Mama Bone

by McClain, Bren; Monroe, Mary Alice;

  “Why, Mrs. Creamer,” Mildred said.

  The woman stood in the entranceway again, her head bowed as if in prayer. Wasn’t that what he had been—in prayer? He wondered if she was joining in his, or had she heard what LC had said? Luther put his eyes on his boy, whose head was bent low, too. But Luther didn’t have to wonder about his boy’s prayer. His boy was praying for a father who could be a good man.

  The preacher’s words “washed in the blood of the Lord” flooded his mind. The Lord could use blood to cleanse? Luther looked at his hands, the pink of blood, its stain, lying just below the surface.

  Mrs. Creamer dashed towards him and laid something shiny beside his plate. It was a key. “To my automobile,” she said. “I want to trade it for Mama Red.”

  Luther imagined his hands cleansed, put his eyes on LC, and from his mouth came, “Keep that mama cow.”

  He watched for his boy to bring his eyes to him, wide open eyes. Because it would be safe to now. His father could be a good man.

  “Oh, Big LC,” he heard Mildred say. She was swooning like she did before they married. Maybe she might love him again, too.

  “No sir, it ain’t right for me to give you nothing for something worth so much.” Mrs. Creamer said.

  “No, keep the cow. I don’t want your automobile.”

  There they came, his boy’s eyes. And they came wide. Luther wanted to jump inside them, soak up his boy’s goodness and the two of them run to that pine tree to look for ladybugs.

  “No sir, wouldn’t be right,” Mrs. Creamer said and laid the money she had been holding on top of the key, then headed back to the entranceway. Mildred offered to drive her home, but the woman said she preferred to walk. “Feel what it’s like for a mama to go that distance for her boy.”

  Luther stood at the window and watched her leave. He had thought the calf would be dead by summer. He changed his mind now. It was the mama that would be, not by summer but by winter. This woman would not know to wean the calf from the mama in a couple of months, so the calf would continue to nurse, and with the cow being old and having no good grass to eat, she would have nothing to replenish herself. Being the good mother that she was, she would not tell her boy no. She would let him nurse her until she was skin and bones and dead.

  Luther told himself he should stop Mrs. Creamer and tell her this.

  But he did not.

  He looked back at his boy, who was looking at him. Distance for her boy. I’ll go the distance for mine.

  He would not leave his boy’s eyes.

  …..

  It took Sarah Creamer an hour and a half to return home.

  She spotted Mama Red and the steer first, standing near the tree, where she’d left them. She broke into a run. “You can stay, Mama Red,” she called out, her voice high and clipped, her breathing hurried. Still, her legs whirled like a handle she was turning on her flour sifter, preparing to make biscuits for her boy.

  He was near the barn, swinging something. Mr. Thrasher was bent towards the ground.

  “We’re making a fence for Lucky and his mama!” Emerson Bridge yelled and ran towards her.

  Sarah knelt to the ground, her arms held wide.

  But he stopped in front of her, his eyes past her. “Where’s the automobile, Mama?”

  “I traded it for her.”

  The sun caught the red in his hair just right and lit the space around him. “I know I can’t never take your papa’s place,” she told him, her mouth dry, “but I want you to know that I’m going to try to be more than just a hired woman around here. I’m going to try to be a mama to you.”

  “You are my mama.”

  Sarah looked over at Mama Red. The mother cow’s eyes seemed to be on her. Sarah moved her hands to the top of her boy’s arms, curling her fingers around the soft curve of him.

  He did not move away.

  “I mean a good one.”

  part 3

  TEACH

  SEPTEMBER 21–22, 1951

  You only have one job to do with your steer, boys,” the county agent, a Mr. Merritt, said to the room of nine 4-H boys, including Emerson Bridge, who sat on the outside row. This was the third Friday in September and the first 4-H meeting of the school year. It was also the official kick-off for the 1952 Fat Cattle Show coming up in March.

  The man held up one finger in the schoolroom air, still full of flecks of chalk dust, floating from the lessons of the day. “And that is to finish him.”

  The way Mr. Merritt said the word “finish” told Emerson Bridge the word was important. Some boys must lose interest along the way. He balled up his fist on his right hand, making his knuckles pronounced. With his left index finger, he began counting the months until March, touching the rise and fall of his bones. He counted seven, and part of that time would be through the winter, which would be cold. He could see why some might not want to finish. But he would. He and Lucky had become best friends. He wanted to say that out loud. He wanted to raise his hand and be called on and say those words.

  But this would be unusual for him. He’d never raised his hand without the teacher first asking a question, and he was in a room full of strangers, except for this one boy, LC, who was sitting beside him. They’d been in the first grade together and now in the second. LC used to be nice, but he had gotten mean.

  “Looks like we have only one boy new to the steer project this year,” Mr. Merritt said.

  This was his chance. He put his arm up in the air. “Emerson Bridge Creamer, sir. And I want you to know that I aim to finish.”

  “Pear boy!” LC called out.

  The boys all turned his way and laughed.

  Emerson Bridge nodded. His mother had just harvested the new pears on their two trees. He was thankful he had them to eat.

  “I aim to finish, too!” another boy called out from the front row. Emerson Bridge had seen him at school. He was in a higher grade.

  “Crybaby,” LC said.

  “Now boys,” the county agent tried to say.

  “Ain’t no crybaby,” the boy said.

  “You are, too,” LC said. “You can’t lose no sleep over what we’re doing. If you ain’t cut out for it, you ain’t cut out for it.”

  “I am cut out for it, too,” the boy said. “I’ve grown up over the summer.”

  Mr. Merritt stepped in closer. “Growing up is certainly what the 4-H helps you boys do. The beauty of the steer project is that it teaches responsibility and taking care of another living creature and seeing it all the way through.”

  Emerson Bridge raised his hand. The man nodded towards him. “I’m doing it for the money. For me and my mama.”

  “Us Dobbins men do it for the glory,” LC said.

  Emerson Bridge saw dried blood on LC’s arm. He’d been in a fight that day.

  “You didn’t get no glory this year, did you, big talker, Little LC?” that boy up front said. “You won’t ever catch your big brother.” Many were laughing.

  But Emerson Bridge did not. He didn’t see what was funny.

  “Now, boys,” the county agent said, but LC cut him off. “Next year is what I’m talking about. Y’all better watch yourselves next year.”

  “My dad went all the way to the North Carolina mountains and bought mine,” one of the boys said. “They got good minerals in the ground up there. Dad says 284 different kinds.”

  “Mine is from the Dobbins stock,” LC said. “And that gives my baby beef a leg up.”

  “I see we have some friendly competition this year,” Mr. Merritt told them. “You all should have your project steer by now. Should have chosen him for his good muscle in his forearm, rib, loin, hip, and stifle quarter and also have a square rear end and an overall good wide base. If you don’t see it now, you won’t see it down the road when he’s finished.”

  Emerson Bridge pictured Lucky. He had a lot of muscle and seemed pretty wide, too.

  “He should be in the five-hundred-pound range at present,” Mr. Merritt was saying, “and be anywh
ere from a low end of six months to a top end of a year old.”

  Talk about a leg up. Emerson Bridge had already spent six months with his steer.

  “As for his feed, you should have him on full dry, boys, with a balanced ration of small grains and some kind of meal.”

  Mostly, Lucky liked to nurse his mama, but he did eat grass, too, out behind the barn where the fence was. But Mr. Merritt said Lucky also needed a “meal.” Emerson Bridge and his mother barely had enough for themselves, but he would start sharing what he had with Lucky.

  There was applause in the next classroom over where the 4-H girls were meeting. The windows were open, so the sounds came in easily. The girls talked of sewing, of salvaging their mothers’ scraps of fabric and making them into something useful. That’s what his mother did with the dresses she made. All day long and way into the night, she sat bent over her sewing machine. Sometimes, he’d make himself quiet and stand in darkness just outside her door and wonder if her back hurt. He couldn’t wait for Lucky to win.

  Since the school bus had already left, he would need to get home on his own. His brogans were too little to run in. He would remove them when Mr. Merritt dismissed the meeting and take off running.

  …..

  Sarah Creamer pulled up out front of Emerson Bridge’s school that Friday afternoon in a new automobile, a black 1929 Model A Ford. He was inside, attending a 4-H meeting. She had just come from town, where she’d bought it on credit at Scarboro Motors. Mr. Thrasher had found it in a newspaper advertisement, “2 door. 2 new tires. Runs. $49.50.” She’d paid $10 down and promised $5 a month. In seven months, she would have it paid for. She knew she was splurging, but she’d taken advantage of Mr. Thrasher’s goodness to haul her and her boy around long enough.

  Three other automobiles were parked near her. She hoped they belonged to the teachers. She was there to try to sell them dresses. Six lay beside her, each folded top to bottom. She would have preferred to lay them flat, but that was not possible, since the automobile had no back seat, only a rumble seat, and that was unfit to carry them. Folded down, her dresses would be crushed. Kept open, they would fly out.

  She was down to $2.14 to her name. The most she’d been able to sell was a dozen a month, mostly to Mrs. Dobbins’s friends. Sarah had tried to sell them out front of Gallant-Belks in town, but she was run off for interfering with the dress business inside. Now, with the automobile payment, she needed to sell at least a dozen and a half a month.

  Three women emerged from the schoolhouse. They had to be teachers. They were carrying books and all well-dressed and of average size. Her dresses would fit them.

  Sarah waited until they were close and then opened her door and said, “Excuse me, Ladies.” She crouched low and kept her voice to just above a whisper. “My name is Mrs. Sarah Creamer, and my boy goes to school here. He’s inside at that steer meeting right now. I’ve made some dresses, some nice ones I hope, and I was wondering if y’all might be interested in buying one.” Her hands perspired beneath her gloves.

  “My mother makes all my clothes,” one of them said. She was wearing a long dark skirt and a heavily-starched white blouse, high at the neck.

  “She done a good job,” Sarah told her. Sarah’s own house dress, a washed-out brown, hung loose on her body from lack of eating. What if they thought she couldn’t sew? She should have taken the time to sew a cinch belt for her waist.

  The two women who remained wore dresses, a dark green and a medium blue. One didn’t look old enough to teach. The other looked too old.

  “May we see them?” the older one said.

  Sarah scooped them up and presented them as if on a platter. “I don’t mean to sneak so, but I don’t want my boy in there to see me with all them windows across the front. Don’t want to embarrass him to have his mama out here having to sell dresses.”

  The two women looked at each other. Sarah had made them uncomfortable. Now she had lost any sale she may have had. Her hands shook.

  The older one cleared her throat and bent towards the dresses like a person would bend towards a child. The younger one picked up the top dress, a rayon butcher linen in a pretty shade of green and held it by its shoulders. The older teacher did the same with the light-gray linen. The fabrics were so thin, Sarah could almost see through them. “I’m sorry,” she told them, “but they’re more for summer wear, as y’all can see.”

  She hoped they wouldn’t put them back. The four that weren’t picked up yet were made of either gingham or seersucker, summer fabrics as well. “As soon as I sell these, I’ll have money to buy some nice fall and winter gabardines and that very ladylike fine corduroy and maybe worsted wool.”

  The older picked up the light blue and white gingham and the younger, the pink and white seersucker. The women passed the dresses back and forth.

  “You are an exceptional seamstress, Mrs. Creamer,” the older one said. “How much are you asking?”

  Sarah swallowed. She needed more than the flat $3 a dress she had been charging. For her boy’s sake, she closed her eyes and pushed out, “Would $4 a dress be too much to ask for?”

  “That’s all?” the younger one said. “For this fine work?”

  They opened their pocketbooks and put in Sarah’s hands several bills and coins. They took all six dresses.

  “I can’t thank y’all enough, I can’t,” Sarah told them and closed her gloved hand around the money. She now wished her skin was naked so she could feel.

  …..

  LC bolted from the schoolhouse. He wished he could run somewhere far away, but his father would hunt him down and hurt him.

  An old timey automobile was parked out front with a woman standing beside an open door on the passenger’s side. This was the Creamer boy’s mother. She had come to his house twice, and both times, she was nice. His father had her old automobile parked behind his barn. She must have bought a new one and come to pick Emerson Bridge up. LC’s own mother was not there. She had come to pick him up the year before, but his daddy had stopped it this year, saying that LC needed to grow up and get home on his own.

  LC got in behind the bushes beside the front stoop and hid. He thought that Emerson Bridge would run to her, and she would hug him. Right out in the middle of the world, hug him.

  There came Emerson Bridge out the door. LC jumped up and shoved him off the other side and took off running. When he passed the boy’s mother, he yelled, “That automobile’s dumb. And ugly, too.”

  He could have yelled to the boy, I appreciate you not laughing at me in there, but he did not.

  …..

  That Saturday morning, Sarah rose early to make Emerson Bridge a surprise. This was a day of celebrating. The county agent was coming by to look at Lucky for the first time. Sarah was making her boy biscuits. She’d stopped at Drake’s Store the afternoon before and spent $1.32 of the $16 her dresses had brought. In her dough bowl, she put two cups of flour and a good fork’s worth of lard. Then, she trickled buttermilk from a quart bottle on top of the mixture, while her fingers began working it, bringing it all together, making what was separate, one.

  There were two more reasons the day was special. It was Harold’s birthday and the day Emerson Bridge was conceived. Sarah had made biscuits that morning, too. Harold going out the door to work, driving his automobile over to Mattie’s and picking her up so they could ride to the telephone office together, while Sarah stayed behind, her kitchen rich with the smell of bacon, eggs, grits, and biscuits. Like the smells in her kitchen that Saturday morning. She’d also bought eggs and grits and bacon, two strips, cut extra thick, Mr. Drake’s dial showing they weighed close to a sixth of a pound, a whole dime’s worth.

  Sarah covered her hands in flour and sprinkled a layer on a wooden board, then gathered the ball of dough she’d made and placed it in the middle. She had a rolling pin but preferred her hands, at first using her palms to press the dough to a half inch thick. Then she turned a drinking glass upside down in the flour, coating the rim, an
d brought the glass to the dough, where she cut out circles, ten of them. And then came what she’d waited for. With her hands hovering above the ten, her fingers spread wide and ready, Sarah, one by one, pressed her fingertips into the dough, making little dimples. She’d made them that September morning in 1943, too, but they’d been Mattie’s that day.

  When she served Emerson Bridge his breakfast that morning, she watched him bite into one. “You happy, hon?” she asked.

  He giggled and nodded his head, biscuit crumbs falling from his mouth down his chin. She watched him take his fingers and scoot them back into his mouth. “I’m going to give half of my food to Lucky, Mama,” he said and moved his fork down the middle of his plate, making two sides. She liked that he wanted to share.

  Before he went outside, she combed tonic from Harold’s bottle on his hair. She combed it like Harold used to, parted on the left side.

  “I know about the money we need, Mama,” he said.

  “Oh, hon, no, no.” She tried to keep her voice calm. “We’re fine.”

  She ran the comb through his hair again. “Don’t you worry none about that. That ain’t for you.”

  “I ain’t worried. Me and Lucky’s going to win, and we’ll be rich.” He ran out the door.

  He had a scrape on his elbow from falling when the Dobbins boy the day before must have wanted to play and got a little rough and knocked Emerson Bridge off the stoop. She had wanted to apply a second dose of mercurochrome on the wound. She would do that later.

  Mr. Thrasher would be there soon. He came every Saturday and Sunday to see the steer, but Sarah suspected it was also to see Emerson Bridge, who called him Mr. Ike now. They enjoyed each other’s company, which she understood. Her boy needed a man around, and Mr. Thrasher might need a boy.

  She went outside and stood at the fence and watched Emerson Bridge inside with Lucky. Mama Red stood a few yards away, eating grass. A hard rain had come overnight and left a big mud puddle near the middle of the lot. Lucky was playing in it with his head, splashing water. Any time it rained, Lucky played like that.