“Yes sir, I do.”
He released smoked from his mouth. “My wife had dimples.”
“So does Roy Rogers.”
He dropped his cigarette on the ground and put his shoe on top of it. “My name’s Billy Udean.” The man extended his hand.
“Mine’s Emerson Bridge, Mr. Billy Udean.”
“Emerson Bridge,” the man repeated. “I like that.”
“I like yours, too. We both got us two names.”
“Guess that means we should be working together, then. Show up at 0800 sharp—that’s eight o’clock—tomorrow morning, and we’ll get busy clearing out where this old garden used to be.” He brought his stiff hand up to his forehead.
Emerson Bridge brought his hand up the same.
The man’s hand was shaking.
He turned to leave, and, when he did, Emerson Bridge took off running to tell his mother the good news. Inside the house, he tiptoed towards her room in case she was asleep. But when he got close to her door, he couldn’t hold back any longer. He ran in and hollered, “Mama! I’m going to make us some—” but he stopped.
His mother lay crumpled in the floor.
…..
Ike heard his name being called in a tone that scared him. He was still in the middle of the road. It was Emerson Bridge, and something was wrong, the boy in the yard, waving his hands like he was on fire. “I think Mama’s dead!” he called out.
Ike began running.
He found Mrs. Creamer on the floor, got down beside her, and checked for a beat in her neck. “She’s going to be all right, son. But we need us an ambulance out here.”
“Go see if that new man over there has a telephone. I was just talking to him. I’ll stay with Mama.”
Ike was at that man’s house in a flash. He banged on the front door and hollered through, “We got an emergency and need to make a telephone call.”
The man led him to the hall, where a telephone sat on a small table. “Just got it hooked back up.”
Ike dialed 0 for the operator. “We need us an ambulance out here at the Creamer Place on Thrasher Road, second house on the left. Mrs. Creamer’s passed out on the floor.” Ike felt himself become faint with those last words. He thanked the man and started for the door.
“Excuse me, sir,” the man called after him, “but did you say Creamer? The Creamer place?”
“Why yes, sir, I did,” Ike told him and ran back to the Creamers, their name cycling through his mind like a wheel on the boy’s new bicycle, how the name starts out hard but then goes soft by the time it’s over.
The mother cow heard loud sounds and lifted her head from the bale of hay she and her young were sharing. They came from the gentle wind’s little one and from the man with the high hat.
She lowered her head back to the hay and resumed eating.
Another sound, this one high pitched and from afar, came in, the sound getting louder. She kept her head high. The sound and a light, flashing, approached. She positioned her body in front of her young.
Then all sound was gone.
Someone she was not familiar with, a man, skinny, came to stand near the top fence. Tiny swirls of smoke came with him. The mother cow could feel him watching her. She watched him back for a while, then moved to the side of her young, bringing him forth. She was free to move, now that what had divided them had gone away. Her calf had nursed her twice since then, but, mostly, he ate grass and grain and hay.
This was fortunate for the mother cow. She needed to keep her nutrition for herself and her growing calf inside her, now the size of a small dog and out of reach deep in her womb.
DECEMBER 26–31, 1951
Luther, dressed in his best suit of clothes, walked into the South Carolina National Bank at 8 A.M. sharp on the day after Christmas and asked the lady behind the polished counter to see the president himself, Mr. Donald Brown. “Tell him it’s Luther Dobbins.” When she told Luther that Mr. Brown wasn’t yet back from the holidays, Luther wanted to say, Fa la la, but kept his mouth shut and slid two one-dollar bills her towards her. “I need two of the shiniest silver dollars you ever thought about seeing.” The four days had given him a lot of time to think his plan through and get every piece of it perfect.
He straightened his tie and looked around the lobby. Two other men stood at the counter, but neither had on a suit.
The teller placed two silver dollars on the counter. They sparkled like his floors after Mildred waxed them.
He left the bank and stood outside on Main Street, lit a cigar, and sent his attention south towards Church Street, two blocks down. That’s where a lot of negroes lived and congregated, even Uncle after old man Allgood threw him out. And Luther had seen a Church Street address for a fair number of negroes in the police section of the newspaper.
He began walking that way. That was another part of his plan. Driving his truck could help identify him. He was careful not to walk with purpose, but to stroll as if he was killing time. He passed the women’s window at Sullivan Hardware but stopped to look in the men’s side. Shovels of all sizes were displayed. He threw his cigar on the sidewalk and used the bottom of his dress shoe to grind it into a splattered piece of nothing.
When he passed Kress’s Five and Dime, a bum with a nasty beard was leaning against the glass. In the man’s coat pocket, the top of a liquor bottle protruded. The drunk. If Luther wasn’t on a mission, he’d go to the police chief and tell him to lock the man up.
Luther turned down Church Street, and, as soon as he did, a sweat broke out. This was not part of the plan, his being scared. He had his trusted pearl-handle with him, had it stuck in the waist of his trousers. He knew it could kill a hog. Surely it could kill something on two legs.
He looked down the street, where a preponderance of two-story houses Luther thought of as “negro hotels” lined both sides, along with an occasional shack and a café or two. He saw a couple of older uncles talking near the road. But mostly he saw chickens, red ones, roaming as if they owned the land. Above them, curls of blue rose from chimneys. The place was saturated with smoke, with negroes and smoke. He could smell them. They were everywhere. He just couldn’t see them yet.
Merritt’s words “The one to beat” floated through his mind. Ha! How about the one to eat? He was on a search for a couple of negro boys, and not just any. He needed two that looked comfortable with trouble. It would be easier to find country negroes for what he needed, but they might know him. Over the years, he had transported several to his farm to work in his fields. He moved his wrist against his waist and felt his pistol and then took a few steps down the street. The men seemed to hold their eyes on him. Luther’s hands shook so, he brought his arms up and crossed them in front of him. If he squeezed his muscles tight enough, he could stop them from shaking. The beauty was it sent a signal that he was tough, and maybe the uncles would scatter.
But the opposite happened. Negroes came from everywhere, a thousand of them peering from around the side walls and through windows and beside trees and in trees. They huddled, mostly, like packs of dogs. Luther was losing. He had to do something. He took a deep breath and yelled, “Here now!” and braced himself, should he need to take off running.
But he didn’t have to, because they shrunk back like he was a mighty wind. He held his shoulders back now, letting his power settle into his bones. For a moment, he forgot what he’d come for, but the sight of two negro boys leaving the front door of a shack reminded him.
“Hey, boys,” he said when they passed near him. One looked to be about the age of LC and the other, three or four years older. “What’s y’all’s names?”
The older one crossed his arms and looked at Luther sideways, but the younger one said, “I’m DeWitt, and this here is my brother Hosea.”
“Didn’t ask what your mama named you. Asked what your family name was.”
“Williams,” the older boy said and stepped closer to the younger one.
“Williams, huh?” Luther had seen some n
egro Williams listed several times in the police section. This was good.
Most of the lurkers had gone back to their business. He could take his time now, make sure he could trust these particular ones. He lit another cigar. The smoke from it snaked up through the air like it was dancing, which negroes were free to do. He wondered if the boys would start a jig. He’d heard they couldn’t help it.
“Y’all got a daddy?” Luther asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Luther could see that the older boy was going to do all the talking now. “He ever been locked up?”
“Yes sir.”
“He locked up now?”
“Yes sir.”
Luther couldn’t be more pleased. “For what?”
“They say he killed somebody, but he didn’t.”
“We on our way to see Pop now,” the little one said. “He’s at the chain gang camp.”
Luther figured that had to be close to five miles away. “How y’all going to get there?” He made sure he kept his voice low.
The young one kicked out a foot. “We gone walk.”
“That’s a far piece,” Luther told them, and in his mind knew he’d found his boys. If they could walk to the stockade, they could walk about the same distance in another direction, to the Creamer place.
He stepped in closer. “How would y’all like to make a whole silver dollar a piece?” He held up the two coins, wet from his perspiration.
The boys’ eyes grew wide.
Luther felt like he’d put a pole in the water, and two catfish had just bit down on a dangling worm.
“Here’s what I need y’all to do. Tonight after dark—and I mean way, way after the pitch black—I need y’all to go out in the country and steal a steer and then get rid of him. Get one of your people to kill him right quick and cut him up and throw a big party and eat him. Use its hooves for balls to throw.” He watched their eyes to see if either of them had taken any pleasure at the thought of what he’d described.
He saw it in the older boy’s. It was a yearning that Luther recognized as wanting to leave this place and better himself.
The sound of a chicken squawking came from the yard beside them. And then the sound of wings flapping hard. Up through the air came a hawk with a chicken hooked in its talons.
“It got my Sally,” the little one said, his hand pointing.
Chickens everywhere came running. They cowered behind a board propped against the trunk of a water oak. None of the birds made any sounds.
The little one’s bottom lip trembled.
Luther now was rethinking his choice. Just what he needed, sensitive negroes. But he’d already told them too much to back out. “Which way y’all go to the stockade?”
“To the viaduct,” the older one said, “and follow the tracks to the grain elevator and then head off over the hill towards town.”
Two uncles appeared from behind the boys’ backs. Luther lowered his head. But all he’d done was ask for directions. He raised his head back up when they walked the other way.
“All right,” Luther said, his voice almost a whisper now, “when y’all get to the grain elevator, that big concrete building that rises in the sky, instead of going towards town, y’all go the other way, out towards—” He had to stop and think what town negroes would know out in the country, but there was nothing. So he said, “Y’all need to go that way,” and pointed with his left hand.
“You there, older boy. Hold out your arm and show me you’re getting this.”
But the boy did not move. “We’re going to need the money first.”
Luther wanted to slap him for insubordination, but that would draw a scene. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself and then said, “Hell no, boy. This is my show.”
“We stepping out for you, Mister.” The boy talked in a normal voice. “Money first.”
Two women now gathered in a side yard. One had a big stick, stirring a black pot of boiling water that set up over burning firewood. He wondered if she had muscles in her arms like his mother had from lifting and stirring.
“We could buy Pop some smokes with the money, he likes to smoke,” the younger one said, his voice dreamy and his eyes open with possibility that told Luther he still believed in Santa Claus. His own boy’s eyes on Christmas morning had been flat. LC no longer believed.
Luther clenched his fists, making the coins dig into his skin. “Y’all get the job done, do it tonight, and when I hear of it, y’all will get your smokes money.” He opened up his coat and let them see his pearl-handle, then let his coat close, choosing not to address the rope he had wrapped around his waist. “Like I was saying, boys, at the grain elevator, turn out towards the country and hustle for a long half hour or so until you come to a church, a white one, sitting atop a hill. It’ll also be on y’all’s left.” He held out his left hand and watched the older boy hold his out the same way. They were back on track.
“Then at that church, turn down that road in front of it and hustle five or so minutes till you come to the second house on that same side we’ve been talking about, the left. It’s just a shack of a place with a barn behind it. The steer’s in a lot beside the barn.” He opened his coat again and watched the boys put their eyes on the gun like flies on a cow patty, then unwrapped the rope and held it out in front of them.
The older boy reached for it, but before Luther let him have it, he told them, “This is between the three of us. If I ever get pulled into it, I’ll come hunt y’all down and kill you dead faster than y’all can strip a chicken leg.” He popped the rope.
More negroes were out and about now. “Tell y’all what. When I leave out of here, I’m going to toss this thing by the side of Kress’s on the corner. Y’all can pick it up there.”
Luther headed towards Main Street. “Hey Mister,” he heard called out. It was the young one. “Our Pop’s got new legs!”
Luther told himself to keep walking, but he needed to put a stop to this. “So?” he said but kept his back to the boys.
“So, that’s why we going to see him.” The boy’s voice was louder now. “He lost both his legs working on the chain gang, and some nice white man made him new ones for Christmas. They plastic and have shoes on them.”
Luther stiffened his legs and turned toward the boys. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
The little boy lowered his head. “Nothing.” His voice sounded like a mouse.
“Our Pop’s gone walk again,” the older one said. “That’s what it’s got to do with.”
Luther took a step towards them. “Then y’all get that gall dang job taken care of. And do it tonight.”
These boys loved their father. How dare they rub it in his face. Luther resumed walking, his feet flat on the pavement, but in his heart, he was climbing stairs on Christmas morning, LC having already opened his presents, Luther going to his bedroom, where he looked out the window at all that he had amassed, but his eyes fell to the sill, to a ladybug that had come in from the cold, sought refuge inside Luther’s house. Luther had put his finger against it, this time gently scooting it, as his mind played out what he wanted to do, call his boy upstairs, his boy running to him, Luther pointing to the bug and saying, “Get that red crawler there, and eat it,” but LC putting his hand over his mouth and beginning to laugh, small at first but then taking off like he had wings. Luther knowing he had him then. Luther laughing, too. LC bending low towards the bug and saying, “He’s got spots on him, and I can count them, too, Daddy. Watch!” LC counting all the way to ten and LC laughing again, laughing like he was free to laugh and tender enough to laugh, even enough to carry into his whole life. Luther hoping it so.
Then Luther had taken a deep breath and called his boy’s name, calling “LC! Got you another present. Think you’ll like this one.”
Luther had listened for footsteps, eager ones, climbing the stairs.
But he heard none. Absolutely none.
Only the back door slamming. He looked out his window,
his boy coming into view and then running across the field with arms wide open towards Uncle’s tiny house.
…..
Ike Thrasher looked in on the boy and found him asleep and no longer crying. His mother lay in the Anderson Memorial Hospital, worn out. That’s how Ike thought of her condition, although the doctors had used big words, called it “exhaustion” and “dehydration.” “I’ll take care of the boy,” Ike had told her before the nurses pushed him from the room. “We ain’t got no lights,” Sarah was saying as they closed the door.
The light from the moon fell onto the boy’s pillow, just above his head. It looked like an angel’s halo. Ike knew this was one of those rare moments when God delivered a direct sign. He would provide the light.
The boy feared his tablet had done this to her, but Ike had tried to put him at ease, telling him it did not. They stayed in the front lobby all through Christmas night and much of the next day, but Ike began to worry that the boy would begin to suffer like his mother and insisted they go home. By kerosene light, Ike warmed up a supper of leftover Christmas food and told Emerson Bridge, “As soon as they get her built back up, she’ll be good as new.” The boy had begun to cry.
Ike now dropped to his knees beside the bed. He started to put his arm around the boy’s shoulders, but Emerson Bridge beat him to it and threw himself against Ike. The boy held on with a fierceness that made Ike tremble.
“Them last words in Roy Rogers’s prayer, about riding, Mr. Ike, can you say them to me?”
Ike knew the boy was thinking his mother was going to die, but he wanted to do what the boy asked. “And when in the failing dusk,” Ike recited, “I get that final call, I do not care how many flowers they send. Above all else, the happiest trail would be, For you to say to me, ‘Let’s ride, My Friend.’ Amen.”
“Let’s ride, My Friend,” the boy repeated.
“But your mama’s going to fight her way back to you. She’s that kind of mama.” Ike felt the boy’s body relax. At that moment, he felt more like a preacher than he ever had.
One Good Mama Bone Page 25