One Good Mama Bone

by McClain, Bren; Monroe, Mary Alice;

  LC, no more than ten feet away, scooped up some cobs and brought the shovel’s wide mouth into the air, his arms wobbling some, but he managed to empty the corn onto the table, a man’s arm’s length and running on a slope so the corn could easily fall into the opening that fed to the knives.

  “There you go,” Luther called out as loud as he could, but his boy had his back turned, scooping up another load. LC was a hard worker.

  The sound of the machine grinding made Luther clench his fists with joy and ram them into the air, and when the ground corn begin falling into the sack, he shook his head at the magic of it all. Yellow chaff now occupied the space between Luther and LC, their clothes covered, as well as their skin, and Luther felt a communion with his younger blood that bonded them beyond anything Luther had ever known with his first namesake. He took his hands from the bag and wanted to put them on his boy, touch his yellow shoulders and leave his fingerprints on him. But his sack was nearing filling, and Luther held his hand up to signal his boy to stop. He disconnected the sack and set it against the wall of the shed. Uncle would be proud. Luther had left about eight inches, enough room to bunch the burlap and tie it with twine.

  A big racket sounded behind him like the machine was tearing up. The scoop end of the shovel was sticking out of the hammer mill, which was jumping, the shovel jerking as if in a fit.

  “Turn it off!” Luther yelled. The shovel must have been too much for his boy and gotten away from him.

  But his boy did not move. He stood at the end of the table with his arms folded and looking at Luther with eyes unwavering.

  His boy had thrown in the shovel on purpose. “I said by God, turn it off!”

  Still, his boy did not move.

  Luther ran to the tractor and threw the gear in neutral, the machine grinding to a stop, the shovel bouncing, then falling off the side of the table as if it was a tongue, long tired and dry.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Luther said.

  His boy shrugged his shoulders.

  Luther grabbed him there and shook him hard. “What’d you do it for? Huh?”

  “Felt like it,” his boy said. His face showed no expression.

  Luther slapped him and then balled up his fist and let it hover just out from his boy’s cheek. “I feel like beating you to a bloody piece of nothing.” Luther’s hand was shaking.

  “Do it, then,” LC said.

  He hit his boy’s face. He hit him hard and knocked him into the pile of corn. “Charles never would have pulled such a baby stunt.”

  His boy got on his feet. “What?” he hollered. “You don’t like what you made? Somebody just like you?”

  “Somebody like me wants to win. And how do you expect to do that with the hammer mill tore up?” Luther slid his boot up a couple of cobs and kicked them hard his boy’s way.

  “I don’t want to win!” his boy yelled and came at Luther with his fists clenched.

  Luther caught them and held them stiff in the air. “Is that all you got?” He shook his boy’s arms. “You want to be a little baby and pitch a fit, is that it? Well, let me treat you like one then.” He held his boy’s wrists with one hand and spanked him with his other, as LC tried to twist away. “And I want you to know that your do-gooder self didn’t get away with what you pulled the other night, either. I might have been born at night, but not last night. If you want to call yourself sneaking out, try to sneak out of a one-room nigger shack, where you and your mama and pop all sleep on the floor on boards that are so rough, they put splinters in your ass. And it gets so hot in the summertime, you keep a coat of sweat on your body the white folks call nigger shine. I kept a coat of nigger shine on me, boy. Did you hear that? I lived like a goddamned nigger. A white boy, living in a goddamned tenant house like I was a goddamned nigger.” Luther’s hand had become hot. He stopped and squeezed LC’s shoulders. “You got it easy, boy.”

  He released LC and walked away. “No, you ain’t me,” Luther told him. “You ain’t nothing like me.”

  LC came after him, screaming, “I don’t want to be like you!” and shoved Luther towards the tractor, but Luther made himself stiff. He barely budged.

  Luther pushed him into the corn cobs. “You go get you an ax,” he said, his entire body quivering. “Or for all I care, my by God pearl-handle. And you can either shoot up or chop up what you’re laying in, into pieces no bigger than a tip end of a by God bullet.” Luther gathered saliva in his mouth, more than was possible, and aimed it at his boy. It hit his forehead.

  He turned from his boy, pulled a cigar from his pocket, and lit it. I’m done, way past done, with trying to be saved. Bring on the damned fires of hell.

  …..

  “How bad is it?” Luther asked Uncle, who was leaned under the hood of the hammer mill, examining the circle of knives.

  “Afraid two or three are bent pretty bad, Mr. LC.”

  Luther kicked his foot in the dirt.

  “Ike Thrasher reporting for Monday morning hired hand duty, Mr. Boss Man.” He was at Luther’s back. Luther made no effort to turn around.

  “What seems to be the problem here?” Thrasher asked in that cheery voice of his.

  “You’re fired,” Luther told him and kept his back to him. It wasn’t that Luther was afraid to tell him, he just didn’t want to have to lay eyes on him ever again. He was of no use to Luther. The man had no respect with the Creamers.

  “Pardon me?”

  Luther could feel his scalp sweating beneath his hat. “I said you’re by God fired. Shoo fly. Don’t you ever prance back over here to or at the Dobbins ranch again.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because you get on my nerves. You get on my goddamned nerves.”

  …..

  Ike Thrasher opened the door to his chifforobe. His Rider shirt and jeans outfits, six of them, hung pressed and ready. He was wearing a set, which would make seven and give him one for every day of the week. He removed the first set and folded the two pieces and laid them on his bed. He thought about giving them to Emerson Bridge to keep until he reached Ike’s size, but by then the boy would no longer be playing dress up. He was a smart boy. He would have moved on to adult wear.

  Ike’s hands were shaking. He needed a cigarette. He opened the drawer in his nightstand and removed one from the pack of Lucky Strikes. He put it in his mouth and took the small box of matches, tucked under the cellophane, struck one against the box’s rough edge, and brought its fire to the cigarette’s end, drawing inside heat, unparalleled heat. Ike had never smoked until he became a preacher. But no one in his congregation ever saw him do it. He only smoked in the confines of his bedroom. It wasn’t that he thought smoking was a sin, not smoking by itself. It was the pleasure the Lucky gave him when he took one between his parted lips.

  He finished folding the rest of the outfits and saw, at the end of the rod, what he’d always meant to keep in the shadows, his one and only suit. It was dark navy with stripes of gray so slight, they could be missed. This is the suit he wore on the last Sunday he preached. He’d given all of his others away.

  He lifted it now and brought it into a ray of sunshine as wide as his old preaching Bible. He laid it on the bed and unbuttoned the coat, folding back both sides. He was heavier then, easily claiming the space high in the pulpit, where he delivered the word. He was good at it, too. At least one person came to salvation or to recommitment every Sunday. Not every preacher could claim that. In fact, he knew some to be jealous.

  He mattered to those people.

  Ike let himself have that thought. He wanted to matter again.

  He put his arm in his right sleeve. The smell of his former cologne, Old Spice, filled his nostrils. He never liked the smell. He only wore it because that was the fragrance that preachers wear. He was a liar back then, and he wore that fragrance and that suit, and he preached the word.

  He removed his arm. He would not be a liar again. Like Mr. Dobbins. Mr. Dobbins was a liar, too.

  Ike retu
rned to his truck and drove back to see Luther Dobbins, found his former boss and Emmanuel still bent over the hammer mill. He marched up to the machine. “You’re a liar, Mr. Dobbins,” he said. “And our heavenly Father doesn’t like liars.”

  The big cattleman looked at him this time. “Thought I told you not to never step foot on the Dobbins ranch again.”

  Ike took a deep breath. “Should have quit last week. Should never have let you talk me into staying. You weren’t on the level with me when you said I was a good cattleman. I’m not about to take the Lord’s name in vain like you did, but I have strong feelings, too, about you and about what you’ve done.”

  Mr. Dobbins drew back a fist, but Ike held up two fingers and kept going. “You’ve told me wrong twice, sir. The first was about that full feed and the second was to get that steer to lay down. The boy went along on the first one, and that’s why our steer got in the fix he did. But, thank the good Lord, the boy had enough sense not to listen to me twice.”

  Mr. Dobbins shook his fist in Ike’s face. “I ought to beat you for saying that goddammed nonsense and on my land, too.”

  Ike worked to gather spit in his mouth. It wasn’t much, but it landed on his former boss man’s shadow, tiny at that early hour of the day.

  “Your hired man there, Emmanuel, he’s the one that runs the show around here. He deserves better than you. But I reckon because of the color of his skin, he’s stuck here. With you. Bless him. There’ll be jewels in his crown.” Ike tipped his hat. “Good day. I’ll see you in March. May the best steer win.”

  He returned to his truck and drove straight to the Creamers. Telling Luther Dobbins the truth made him want to keep going with it.

  When he got to their house, he knocked on the door. But Mrs. Creamers did not answer. Her automobile was parked in the yard. She must be sewing. He had barged in her house before, but he would not do it again.

  He walked around to her bedroom window and saw her sitting before her machine, her body bent towards it like he used to bend towards his pulpit. He did not want to scare her, so he waited until she stopped pedaling and then gently tapped on the window.

  She looked his way and showed him not scared eyes, but tired ones. She rose from her chair and lifted the window. “Mr. Thrasher,” she said.

  “I’m afraid we’re in a heap of trouble, Mrs. Creamer. I don’t mean to worry you, but—”

  “So, it’s true?” She put her hands on the window sill, as if bracing herself.

  “That I’ve been fired? How did you know?”

  She lifted her hands and crossed them on her heart.

  “This is real hard to say, but that two dollars a week Mr. Dobbins gave me is going to be missed in my pocketbook. I’m about to run through all my money, and I know it costs a whole lot to feed that steer. I never meant to let y’all down. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s what you found out?” she said. “That you ain’t working there no more?”

  He nodded. The scarf around his neck felt tight.

  He had expected her to cry, because girls are free to do that, but all she did was look beyond him, off towards the lot where the cows were.

  He put his hands up to loosen the scarf, but, once he did, he removed it altogether. “We both know I ain’t no cattleman.”

  She brought her eyes back to him. “You’re very much of one.”

  He felt his face go hot.

  He waited for her to laugh, to show him that what she’d said was a joke. But she did not. She kept the same look on her face, her eyes as steady as they come, and from him spilled words only known to himself and God. “I’ve never told you why I wanted to win with the steer so bad, Mrs. Creamer. It’s so I can prove I’m a man, a real one, and be able to step on my daddy’s land over there. And so he’ll—” He looked across the road. “So he’ll love me.”

  “But you’re a man now,” she said.

  “No ma’am, not enough of one.” He shook his head.

  Under her eyes, he saw bags, deep ones, her skin discolored like a bruise. “When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep?”

  “Why, Mr. Thrasher, I get a good one every night. I’m alive. My boy’s alive.” She returned her hands to the window sill. “And so is Mama Red. And Lucky.”

  For the first time, Ike could see that she had the makings to be pretty. If she had been born into an easy life, into money or privilege, she might even be considered striking with her high cheek bones that could be set off by just the right shade and amount of rouge. “You’re a good mama, Mrs. Creamer. All boys should be so lucky.”

  She took her eyes away and stepped from the window. “Better get back to that dress.”

  “No, come back,” he said, the words slipping easily from his mouth. His face flared red. He could feel the heat of it.

  She had returned to the window, even leaned in some. “I’ll pay you back, Mr. Thrasher, every red cent I owe you.”

  He wanted to touch her arm, but there was a screen between them. And she was wearing a brown sweater over her dress. He realized he was letting in cold air. Still, he raised his hand and held his fingertips against the screen. He’d never before had feelings for a woman. He’d been on a few dates early on, but none had panned out, so he’d let that part of his life go. But this woman, her gracious self, and her heart, the way she loved her boy, all of this stirred in Ike Thrasher possibility.

  She looked behind her. “I believe somebody’s knocking on my door. Would you excuse me, please?”

  “Let me go around there and see,” he said and started for the side porch but then froze in his steps. What if it was a burglar? He tied his scarf back around his neck and began slinking his body outside the shrubbery. A truck was parked behind his, and just out from the porch steps stood a man that looked familiar. Mrs. Creamer had the screened door open. It was the younger Allgood from the FCX. Mrs. Creamer had her head down.

  Ike extended his hand towards the man. “What’s the reason for this call, Mr. Allgood?”

  The man pushed his eyeglasses up his nose. “I was just saying I’m afraid we can’t extend credit any longer.”

  Ike tensed his right butt cheek, where his billfold was.

  Mr. Allgood turned his head towards the barn. “I’ve come to strike a deal with you, Mrs. Creamer. I happen to know that you do have that splotchy-face mama cow.”

  Mrs. Creamer’s body looked like she’d been slapped, but she regained herself and put an expression of such certainty on her face that Ike leaned towards her. “Yes sir, we do,” she said. “And I didn’t mean to lie to you back then, but that’s my mama cow.” Her voice had muscle.

  “Tell you what,” the man said. “You give her to me, and I’ll forgive your debt, all sixty-eight dollars and thirty-two cents of it. Plus, I’ll supply all the mixed grain and anything else your boy’s steer can eat until the show. We got a deal?”

  Mrs. Creamer stepped towards him. “No sir, we ain’t got no deal.”

  “Thought you wanted to win, ma’am.” He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Can’t do it without feed. And lots of it. It’s all free choice at this point, which means you give him all he can eat. With the grain at $2.50 a bag, and he’ll probably eat four to five bags a week, and then the molasses to mix in to make it sweet, along with linseed meal for protein and bales of hay, we’re talking $80, $90, upwards of $100 a month. And you’ve got close to four months to go.”

  “I’ll tell you this, Jeremiah Allgood, and I’ll tell it to you strong. This woman named Sarah Creamer will scrub every woman’s floor out here in the country before I’ll let you take my Mama Red.”

  “And I’ll, I’ll,” Ike began, trying to find equivalent words. “I’ll protect the floors of this here woman.” Both Mrs. Creamer and Mr. Allgood looked at Ike, who swallowed hard. He didn’t know what his words meant, but he did know he wanted to keep going. “And furthermore than that, I’m going to make sure Mrs. Creamer here gets to keep her Mama Red.”

  “She wouldn�
��t be that far away,” the man said, “just down the side road by New Prospect, the first farm on the right after you go around the curve and climb the hill, then start back down towards the creek.”

  Ike pulled out his billfold. He had only two one-dollar bills, but he handed them both to Mr. Allgood and told him, “I’ll go to the bank and come by later today with all I got to my name, $50.02. You can have it all.”

  “But, Mr. Thrasher,” Mrs. Creamer said.

  “He can have it all,” Ike said in a voice that had grown stronger.

  Mr. Allgood cleared his throat. “Keep your two dollars, but y’all know I can’t sell you no more feed until you catch your total bill up.”

  “We’ll find us a way,” Ike called out as Mr. Allgood made his way to his truck.

  “Yes sir, we will,” Mrs. Creamer said.

  Ike tried not to think about having a zero balance in his account. Maybe he could take out a loan.

  Mrs. Creamer turned towards him. “Mr. Thrasher, you said you wasn’t no cattleman, but I’m here to tell you that you are. You’re every bit of one.”

  Ike could feel himself blushing. Beneath his shirt, he flexed his muscles.

  The temperature that day was fifty-two degrees, a cow’s ideal. The mother cow and her young stood together near the fence, their mouths to the earth, the grass soon to go dormant.

  You staying here, Mama Red, I’m here to declare that. When you come in my life back in the spring, you gave me reason to keep on going. Like I was with Mattie, when she come in my life. That morning after that Saturday when I met her, I had a reason to get up out of the bed, went to stand at my kitchen sink, and looked over at her house. That one right over there behind you. I didn’t see her that morning, but I saw a man I took to be Billy Udean. He was skinny as a stick and had quick moves. He looked to be putting something in the back of a truck that was parked out front.

  Harold was sitting at the eating table. I told him, “Mattie says her husband goes fishing on Sundays. Why don’t you go with him? Think he’s getting ready to go now.”