“You are marked now,” she said. “You. You are.”
…..
Sarah and Mildred sat just out from the open door of Luther’s truck, both women rocking their boys against their bosoms, both releasing steady streams of cries. They sat in dirt, full of dark red with swirls of yellow. It was springtime.
Others stood around them in a circle. From them came only whispers.
The only other sounds were the approaching sirens, growing louder, before falling silent.
…..
There was no auction held. The men who intended to bid got together and bought the whole lot, paying 55 cents a pound for the Reserve Champion and 42 cents a pound for the steers that did not place. That was a nickel more than the 1951 prices. Emerson Bridge’s Grand Champion brought a dime more, brought 73 cents per pound. C. V. Richbourg wrote him a check for $763.36.
The removal took place as planned. Trucks pulling trailers arrived to transport the steers to slaughter at Walker’s Abattoir off the Liberty Highway, all except Emerson Bridge’s. C. V. Richbourg sent his own personal truck to carry the grand champion to his farm to stay the night, before being taken the next day to Richbourg’s Supermarket and put on display out in front of the store.
When the Richbourg truck pulled in, Emerson Bridge broke away from his mother’s arms and watched Lucky being loaded. He told the newspaper woman, “There goes a whole lot of love, ma’am.”
…..
Ike Thrasher brought Sarah and her boy home in an empty bed truck. No one spoke a word.
When they reached the house, Ike told them he couldn’t stay. He needed to go change out of his clothes. Sarah and Emerson Bridge needed to change out of their bloody ones, but all they could do was stand in the yard and hold hands.
“I can’t even begin to know how hard this day was for you, hon,” she told him. “It was a day too big for a little boy.”
“Papa said I’m the man of the house now, Mama.”
“You are. But it was a day too big for the man of the house, too.”
Sarah knew he had shaved again. There were cuts on his face. They weren’t as deep or as long or as numerous as the time he had shaved a year ago. Almost to the day, a year ago.
She felt him shaking, the whole space of him shaking.
“We’re rich now, Mama,” he said and lifted the folded check from his shirt pocket, his eyes of butterbeans no longer clean and shiny.
“That’s an awfully steep price to pay. I broke your heart. I did, I broke your heart, just to be able to put more than a pitiful pear on your plate.”
“Lucky said he would do this for us, Mama.”
She ran her fingers through his hair. She had not cut it since their visit to Gainesville. She could see more of the red in it now. “You’re the kindest soul God ever made, Emerson Bridge Creamer.” She dropped to her knees and leaned her head back to look up at him. “It’s not just food you need, hon. I know you need more than that. Do I give you more than that?” She swallowed and waited for the answer, whatever it was.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Because I want to. More than anything, I do.”
“You do, Mama, yes ma’am.”
She pulled him to her, wrapped her arms around his back. Before Mildred had folded herself into that long, black automobile, her son’s body lying covered with a sheet that was too starched and too white, Mildred had told her, “You’ve got a mother’s heart.” Sarah thought about that now. The night she laid Mattie’s and Harold’s baby outside Mattie’s front door, the baby had cried, calling out for someone to come take care of him, to please come take care, because he couldn’t do that himself. The words I came for him whispered from her bones. She told him, “I want you. Do you know that I want you and that I’ll always come for you, hon. I always will.”
“I know that, Mama.”
Mama she heard and repeated that word down inside of her, where it had lived since it was born that late afternoon with that mama dog. For the first time, Sarah wanted to move that word to the outside. “Mama,” she said out loud and noticed how the word carried.
She thought of Mama Red and looked towards the lot, empty.
Her plan, if they won, was for her and her boy to get in the automobile and go to the bank and cash the check and then go pay everyone she was beholden to and then stop by Drake’s and buy her boy anything he wanted.
But that didn’t seem so important now.
“Need to ask you something, hon. What do you think about us using some of that money to go get Mama Red and bring her home?”
She could feel his head nodding, the sound of his hair rustling against her. “Lucky would like that.”
She had seen Mr. Allgood that morning. She called up in her mind where he’d said he lived, down the road by the church. She would find it. She and her boy started for her automobile.
A truck came up the driveway. She was thinking Ike had returned, but it was Mr. Allgood, Jeremiah Allgood himself, and in the back of his truck, Mama Red.
Sarah went running, met the truck before it made it halfway up the driveway. She wanted to tell him she was on her way to him to fetch the mother cow home and pay him whatever he wanted, but she could not talk, only run along beside the truck to the barn, where it stopped, and she could lay eyes again on that glorious face of red brown and white.
“She belongs with you,” Mr. Allgood told her.
…..
Luther did not see the undertaker slide his boy into the ambulance. Nor did he watch the removal trucks come and go. Luther Dobbins sat in pine needles that blanketed the ground around the first tree stump, the marks on his face drying, his skin tight and shrinking.
Luther watched the ladybugs.
The man who had cut the pines advised against it, saying they were too young and innocent for lumber, but Luther told him they weren’t for lumber, they were for dust.
They were for nothing, he was thinking now. Nothing. Like me.
His boy’s eyes had held on Luther after the announcement, eyes so dark, they could be black. Like the spots on ladybugs. Luther knew what his boy was asking, asking if Luther loved him, “Do you love me, Daddy?” as he had asked outright before the show.
“Here’s Daddy’s answer,” he called out, “here,” and raised his hands, his open, unclenched hands into the darkening air, stretching them towards the lot, where his boy had been, his boy who was tender, too tender for what Luther had asked him to do. Too tender to have a daddy like me.
The mother cow looked for her young but did not see him.
She called but heard no answer.
As darkness fell, she bent to the earth, laying her body down on it, while dots of white, even twinkling white, sprinkled above her and around her in patterns of order and beauty. The top of her tail now having risen, her lower back softened, her ligaments and tissues made supple. Her baby no longer lay on its back but had followed the natural course and moved from its high place near the mother cow’s tail, past her pin bones to her womb, deep inside her womb, where her baby now, just now, under dots of twinkling white, is rotating to its belly for the rest of its journey.
part 4
LEARN
MARCH 12, 1952
My boy’s ribs, they filling out some now.
I know that might be hard for you to hear, Mama Red. Because your own boy, I know you miss him. Here you are laying down out here in the grass by your lonesome. And you keep lifting your head and moaning and you got your hooves cutting up the ground.
You’ve been back a day, and I was thinking I’d just let you be with your sadness, but me and you’s got some unfinished business, and I want us to have a clear line between us. You mind if I have a seat? Rub your face. I see God’s already getting you ready for hot weather. Your hair’s thinning, getting that slickness to it. But it’s a little chilly out here now.
What I come out here this morning for is to ask you to forgive me for what I had to do with your boy. Can you do that, Mama Red, can you forgi
ve me? I’m sorrier about that than I can ever say.
You looking down towards your tail. And your moans are getting louder. You breathing heavy. I see your tail’s getting all hiked up, and you holding your legs straight out and stiff. Wait a minute. Are you … Mama Red, you having a baby?
You are. You having a baby. There’s its hooves hanging out of you, two little black ones, like rocks. You about to be a mama again.
But you feel all cold back here, girl. Your legs, they’re cold and not sticking out like your front ones. That mama dog, all her legs were sticking out. And where’s your baby’s head? Don’t the heads come out first? Them puppies did. Head first on their two front legs like they were diving in a pond.
You in trouble, girl, ain’t you? And hurting, you hurting. I got to get your baby’s head out. Oh, mercy.
It’s too tight for me to get my hand in there over them hooves. I’m going to have to push them back in. It’s all warm up in there. And your mama squeezes, I feel them. There’s its legs. I’m just going to follow on up. Got my whole arm in now. There goes another squeeze.
I feel its head, I do. It’s turned backwards like it’s trying to look at you. That’s why it couldn’t come out.
Got both my hands in now. I hope I’m not hurting you, got one holding onto to its legs and the other one straightening out its head. I’m trying to hurry, girl. You’re doing good.
Got it all lined up now, so on that next squeeze you give, I’m going to pull. That’s what I had to do with Little Claudia for that doctor. You squeeze, and I pull.
We’re doing it, girl, we are. The tip end of its hooves are back out. But your squeezes are getting a little softer. I need you to keep them going hard. I know you getting tired.
That’s right. Squeeze for me.
Them hooves are out now, and I see the tip end of its nose.
My hands keep slipping. I need some help pulling. Like maybe a rope. That Mr. Allgood hung one on the fence over there. Let me get it. Hold on, Mama Red.
All right, here we go. I’m tying one end to one leg, tying a sewing knot, and the other end to the other leg and now slipping the rope behind my back and having me a seat on the ground and making it real tight around me. Going to work one leg at a time. Like walking. Come on, little baby, that’s right, come on, let’s walk, let’s walk on out.
Got my heels dug in good, cutting in the earth like you, girl. Come on, little baby, that’s right. Let’s walk on out. We doing it.
There’s its nose and part of its head now, Mama Red, you looking? Come on, little baby. Mama’s got you, hon. Mama does. Oh, mercy, I said ‘mama.’Not papa, but mama. That’s right, come on, let’s walk. Mama ain’t going to let you fall. I got you, hon. Come on.
Its whole head, Mama Red, oh, its sweet whole head and its shoulders. Come on, baby. Almost. Mama’a got you. You almost there.
There it is. Mama Red, your baby. Full out. You want to see? You lifting your head.
She’s got all kinds of wrapping on her, some clear, some white, but she looks kind of blue. I believe she might be blue. And I don’t believe she’s breathing. I don’t see no rise and fall. That mama dog licked that sack off of hers. Mama Red, you going to get up and do that? No? Then let me clear her nose and her mouth out with my fingers.
I still don’t see no rise and fall. Oh, mercy. I’m going to breathe in her mouth, I am, and run my hand down her body, trying to get her going. Come on, little baby. Wake up, little baby. Let’s take you a breath.
She just coughed. Mama Red, your baby just coughed. She’s alive, your baby’s alive. Raise up and look at her. She wants to see her mama. You too tired to lift up now, is that it? I’ll bring her to you, then.
She’s heavy. I’m going to have to slide her a little bit on this new grass.
There’s your mama, little baby, there she is. I’m going to hold her up to your mouth, Mama Red. That’s right, lick that baby girl clean.
That good mist is coming from your mouth, girl.
Look at her, trying to get her eyes open. She wants to see you. And look, she’s trying to work her legs, wanting to stand already and just a few minutes old. Listen to me, calling her a little girl.
I bet she’s hungry and wants to nurse. You going to stand up for her, Mama Red? Or you too tired? That’s all right, I can help you. I see your milk sack’s all full for her. Let me get some in my hand, but let me wipe them down my dress first. Got some cuts from that rope.
I’m picturing how your little boy pulled on you. He wrapped his mouth around you and yanked. That’s what I’m doing. Oh, your milk is so warm. Am getting me a handful. And now bringing it to your baby. Here you go, hon. I’m going to have to help you learn to suck. My boy, I had to help him, too. Going to dip my finger in some milk and hold it up to your lips and run my finger around.
There you go. You doing it, you sucking. Now let me get some more of your mama’s good milk.
Oh, she’s lapping it up. You watching your baby drink, Mama Red?
The markings on her face. Another little pattern of you. Different from your boy’s. His gathered up more in the bottom on the left, but hers is gathered more on the right. Looks like somebody’s made a fist and then stuck her thumb up to show that everything was good. Do you see that?
Mama Red, you’re scaring me. Open your eyes. Can you? I know you’re tired. You’re just tired. Ain’t that right?
She’s working her legs, trying to stand again. There she goes, getting on her feet, all wobbly. Oops. She fell down. But there she goes again. She’s a fighter. Back on her feet now and coming up to see you. Smelling your face.
Believe I’ll have a seat up there with y’all. Oh, you want to prop your mouth up on me, girl. That help you see your baby?
You breathing on me, Mama Red. That mist. Your mist. That morning after you come them four miles through the pitch black for your boy, I watched you put it on him, and I was wanting it on me, too. You just put it on me, too. I don’t mean to be whispering, but I feel like God himself is right here with us. Right here.
No preacher’s ever dunked me in what my mama called holy waters, but I feel like what you just did, just saved me. Coated me in your holy waters and saved me.
You breathing’s slowing down, girl. And your eyes keep opening and then closing.
You leaving, ain’t you, girl? That mama bone of yours, the best there ever was, you done used it plumb up, ain’t you?
That question I asked you when I first come out here about you forgiving me. You do, don’t you? You forgive me enough to leave your little girl with me, even after what I done to your boy, you trust me that much with your girl. Me. Clementine Florence Augusta Sarah Creamer. I’m going take that down inside of me. For the rest of time, I am. That right there, girl, that right there is going to see me through, and I promise you, my teacher, that I’ll take care of her with all I got. With my mama bone. My mama bone. Mine.
Mama got it wrong. I do have a mama bone in me.
And I believe, Mama Red, I believe it might even be a good one.
By the time the mother cow no longer could open her eyes, the long shadows of the day had begun to show themselves.
She released sounds, low ones. They rose skyward, towards the gentle wind’s face.
Around them, in grass, newly green after its long and cold sleep, her newborn calf kicked up her back legs and ran. She was a girl. She was becoming strong. The gentle wind’s little one ran with her and filled the air with shrills.
By the time the mother cow’s sounds faded into silence, the night air approached, and the wind began to call.
A sound emerged from the gentle wind. She wept.
It carried.
Because, when the nighttime air and the winds get just right, a sound can do that, carry. It can carry across land that is foreign. And across barbed-wire fences made to hold. It can even carry across a lifetime, sounds sent in infancy and in youth and a body grown.
And across lands that are foreign. And barbed-wire f
ences made to hold.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One morning, in light so early it still could be considered dark, I caught a glimpse of the divine. I caught it in a gathering of mama cows, a dozen of them, all huddled and straining against the corner of an old barbed-wire fence on my daddy’s farm, each cow with her chin shoved high into the air, sending forth sounds. They were guttural.
I was standing some ten feet away in my pajamas and boots. Their sounds had drawn me from my bed. Mostly, I could see their eyes, their lids pulled back and showing a vast sea of white that surrounded circles of deep brown. One cow stood nestled in the corner. She cut her eyes my way and bellowed. Above her mouth, a mist hovered.
I would not see it yet, but she and the others had pushed the end post forward with such force that it angled out like an arm waving at something familiar.
And it was. Their babies. They were some thirty yards away, at the other end of a grassy lane. They, too, stood huddled, and they, too, sent forth sounds. Deep ones. Long ones. They were steers, neutered males, aged six to eight months. My daddy the afternoon before had separated them from their mamas. It’s called weaning.
This is what farmers do. Just like later that morning, a trailer hitched to a truck would pull around to where the steers stood, and a man would herd them and load them and take them to the other side of town to the cattle barn to be sold. For slaughter.
One of the mothers, the one nestled in the corner, cut her eyes my way again. I knew what she wanted. In my bones, I knew. She wanted me to get her baby back. She wanted me to knock down fences, hers and his.
But I couldn’t.
But, then, something came to me—I could tell their story. I could tell about the way they love their babies, about their bond, this maternal one. This piece of the divine.
I made a promise to her, and One Good Mama Bone was born. She became my Mama Red, and we’ve been looking for champions, and they have come, acres and acres of them.
We send thank-you’s, deep, guttural ones.
Beckey Badgett, who will never know how much her daily question—“How’s the gang?”—fed my soul and kept me going.
One Good Mama Bone Page 33