The boy pressed his forearm against Lee’s throat and bore down hard. He was as black as if he’d been cut from night. Lee gurgled, his vision splotching, and reached for the space just above the boy’s shaved head.
“Give me money,” the boy said, showing a knife meant for filleting fish.
“I ain’t got none.”
“Lie one more time and I’ll cut open your nigger neck.”
Lee got loose enough to land a fist upside the boy’s hard head. He fell and Lee reached for the dropped knife. A rush of pain. The boy thumbing Lee’s eyeballs. Lee swung wildly, hitting him a few more times. They rolled like reunited lovers across the field. Lee tasted blood and he felt the boy’s heat all around. Pinned down again. Lee felt an unbearable itch at his side, saw a burst of light, then was all sudden let free.
The boy had Rosette, shaking her. The worn-smooth pennies dropped inside her body jangled. The boy chuckled. He had but four teeth in his head. Toting pennies was something Lee’s daddy always did. The boy set Rosette’s bottom against the ground and held her slender neck in his hand. He stomped. It took but once. As the boy began picking pennies from the grass, Lee felt a powerful burning at his side. His shirt was wet.
“Bleed nigger,” the boy said, then shook the change in his fist and burst into feathers that formed the shape of an owl. He flew off, leaving Lee shivering where he lay.
After a time dandelion fuzz blew onto his face and he fought, fearing it owl feathers marking the boy’s return. Was this It? he wondered. Everybody’s heaven is his own making, Momma Pat used to say. And hell too, Mr. Robin would finish. Lee heard hollow voices begin singing. The voices were his momma momma’s and his daddy’s. His strong and clear as wound-tight metal, hers high and soft as an angel’s ought to be. He harmonized with them. After a while a dog wandered up and licked the sticky hole in Lee’s side. He talked to the dog till it grew bored and padded off. The voices seemed to depart with this creature. Lee hollered for them to come back, please, but they would not. He dragged hissself over to Rosette and reached inside what was left of her body. The space empty, silent.
At the prison he transitioned the hillbilly melody into a song about passing mile-marker signs and city-limit lines, searching for peace he’d never known. He’d come up with this one on the train back from Wisconsin. A few brave prisoners tapped their slippers on the concrete floor. Lee watched the guards taking note. The warden gnawed on a cigar where he stood cross-armed next to Aaron Guthrie. Waiting for Lee to slip up, waiting for a reason, though none was needed. Lee knew old men who, in their youth, had gone to prison and been leased out to coal companies. He knew about the dogs and the hoses and the ropes used in cities like Birmingham and Montgomery. He knew that one more black body gone missing in the backwoods of Poarch County would not require explanation.
When he finished the song, a prisoner hollered, “Nigger!” The guards just smirked. Lee looked down at Ricky Birdsong and wondered if the boy had any notion why he’d been sent to this place. He would of swapped spots with the boy if he could. Now what would Mr. Prince think of that? Time, Lee thought he’d leave The Peach Pit and the rest of his property to Ricky Birdsong. Fool. There was no stopping fate. You either gave yourself up to it willingly or were consumed by its immanence. Lee strummed a few major chords and said, “Thank you for having me today.” A younger him might of dropped into a tremendous blues then, the way he did most nights at Roger’s. Instead he tried remembering what song he was singing the night he lay bleeding in that field. He tried remembering two days later when Maybelle stitched shut the wound he did not want her to see. The plaid dress she wore, so pretty it hurt to look. At present he picked out an introduction to “The Great Speckled Bird.” He beat the guitar with the heel of his palm as he picked, tilting Rosette so he could see inside the busted hole, as if doing so might reveal a way in which all this could of been prevented. All what? Life, hurt? This was Maybelle’s favorite hymn. A song of adoration and praise. Lee Malone was about as religious as a stump, but he loved this song—as he did her.
Some folks never would understand that. Tammy, he thought, chief among them. Lee’d run into her just the other day at the old Rampatorium. He often took Buckshot there and let the dog run around the useless lot till he wore hisself out. Tammy like to scared Lee to death when she hollered at him from the projection room. He knew hisself a fool to climb those stairs. Alone with the woman he had, for a moment, been suspected of kidnapping—the very same woman who like to have killed him last summer.
Tammy sat with a catalog open on her lap. Looked like she may of been crying. “I tried to buy it,” she said.
“Buy what?”
She gestured. “This.”
Lee looked around the room. “Oh. You always loved movies, ain’t you?”
She cry-laughed and said, “Yeah.”
Buckshot was barking outside. Lee whistled and the dog bounded up the rotten stairs. He nudged Tammy and she petted his head.
“The Authority don’t like to sell,” Lee said.
“I made them a fair price.”
“It ain’t always about the money.”
She cry-laughed again. “You sound just like Ren.”
“How’s he doing? I ain’t seem him lately.”
“He’s good,” Tammy said. “You know Nita left.”
“I heard that,” Lee said.
“This is as much as me and you ever said to each other.”
Lee smiled. “Yeah, I reckon so.”
Buckshot fell out on his back and Tammy rubbed the dog’s belly with the toe of her shoe. “Spoiled rotten,” she said.
“Lord yes.”
“Momma loved him.”
Lee agreed.
“Whew.” Tammy stood up and folded the catalog under her arm. She wiped her tears with her thumb. “Well, enjoy the rest of your walk.”
As Lee sang “The Great Speckled Bird,” his mind jumped between this encounter with Tammy and the period after the storm when the barge would dip so low that Roger had to kick folks off or sink. Those exiled to shore built fires and cooked rabbits and squirrels over open flames. Fights broke out, babies were made. Stories got told about the old Indian woman whose name nobody remembered that’d warned of a wind that would gouge this valley so bad its soul’d seep out and blow away. Kids played in sand among the cattails while the grown-ups talked and stared at the sky, waiting for the end to appear. One night Woodrow went and halved a steel drum and smoked chickens to feed the masses. Bamboo poles were cut for catching turtles that the kids then turned on their shells and counted how long it took the creatures to flip over. Lee sang the blues for them. He’d heard and could play it all. Hard-driving songs you could dance a woman to, slower tear-your-heart-out-and-stomp-it-flat songs that let you sit there feeling good and lowdown sorry for yourself since nobody else would. Railroad, hillbilly, church of course. The songs Lee Malone sang belonged neither to him nor to anybody else. Melodies and words shifted, music a living thing thrumming unseen throughout the air. Best you could hope for was to grab ahold for a while and hang on.
He stared directly at Ricky Birdsong as he sang the song’s final words,… on the wings of that Great Speckled Bird. The boy’s bruised face revealed nothing. What did Lee want, what did he expect from this? A song would not save Ricky Birdsong no more than one’d saved Lee hisself. That didn’t mean it wasn’t worth singing.
After the performance Lee put Rosette in back of the sheriff’s patrol car then climbed in next to her. They drove out through the prison gates and down a long straight road.
“That was a nice thing you did,” the sheriff said.
Lee caught his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Figured I’d let you know we dropped the investigation of Mrs. Treeborne’s death,” the sheriff said. “Deemed a accident.”
As they drove across Poarch County, Lee Malone thought about how the world had not ended after the storm, and how it hadn’t ended either when Maybelle died. We’re all of
us barreling on in fits and starts toward some inevitable conclusion though. Seems the trick, he thought to hisself, the world going past outside the car window, is being alright with that.
Stories We Tell
TODAY
Time sometimes folded together like the front end of a vehicle driven head-on into an oak tree. How long since the young man last visited? Janie tried to hammer the time passed flat while searching his peculiar face for a clue.
“Buckshot went missing,” she said.
“Excuse me Miss Treeborne?”
“Don’t you Miss Treeborne me.” She hushed as if she’d say no more. Of course Janie Treeborne could no more be silent than a flower could become a rifle. “That was the last time Lee visited poor-old Ricky in jail though. Some of the used-to-bes set up a trap down below the ballfield and it did not a lick of good. Peach pickers were always claiming dog sightings. One Sunday afternoon Watson ran into Buckshot in a field up yonder above the old cannery. Not only did the devil escape, but he took four of them pretty little-old birds Watson had blasted out the air! Ain’t your daddy told you any of this?”
“No ma’am.”
“Well,” Janie said. If she didn’t know better she’d wonder if the young man sitting before her was a Treeborne at all. “My daddy, he figured Buckshot was traipsing wherever him and Lee used to hunt. So they went to walking The Seven. Searched all over it, I mean. When’s last time you been out yonder?”
“I never have Miss Treeborne.”
“Lie,” she said. “Why would you lie to your old grandmomma thisaway?”
The young man frowned. He started to say something. Instead he shifted in the wicker chair and cleared his throat. “Can you show me where they saw him?”
“Saw who?”
“The dog.”
“I don’t like to be out after dark,” she said.
“No. On one of those.”
Took Janie half an hour to find the map she wanted folded among newspapers that seemed to the young man of no consequence. He cleared the kitchen table of dirty dishes and laundry, trying not to balk at the old woman’s considerable white bloomers lying among a pile of nap-worn dresses and gowns. They pinned down the map with a glass ashtray and pieces of sandstone. Janie put a kettle on the stove then scooped coffee grounds into a press. Took her another moment to situate herself, then her finger raced across the paper. She stopped on The Seven and traced its borders two-three times. She wrote with a pen The Seven. She marked places Buckshot was seen with a small cross. Then, with a little prompting, she began writing the names of other places not marked on the map: Birdsong houseplace, The Washout, Livingstown, Prince’s Peach Cannery, Dismal Creek.
“Daddy did the best he could,” she said, putting down the pen. “But I was mad, buddy. Sometimes still am. Piece of paper just didn’t mean squat to him, I reckon. And look here, he was right. Piece of paper don’t mean squat, does it?”
She leaned back and gazed at the map as if she could take the entire valley into her mouth, like some great-beaked bird, and carry it away from where it set.
“My buddy Thomas Dale took me up in his airplane once,” she said. “Thomas Dale had him one of them little-old Mexican dogs. Awful things, shaking and yapping all the time. That’s ugly in me, but oh well. Anyhow, he brung it with us. Took off from a pasture out yonder at the lake. That dog was just carrying on, I mean. When we got up there it felt like we hit a pocket of nothing. The dog hushed. My innards come plumb up my throat. You could see clear down to Bankhead. Thomas Dale, he tipped the wing and I thought I was fixing to spill out! It was, well, it was just beautiful, you know. That was my fifty-sixth birthday. Lord.”
“Miss Treeborne, can you point out the dam for me?”
“Dam?”
The kettle whistled. Janie poured boiling water onto the grounds then replaced the lid on the press. The young man took two green cups from a cabinet next to the fridge. Janie thought she used to keep a special cup for him. This cup had on it the Conquistadors’ logo—a glowering bearded man wearing gold armor and wielding a spear—and the young man, when he was still a boy, still her grandson, he would drink cold chocolate milk from this cup while flicking his earlobe and turning sleepy-eyed in her arms. He’d nap and she’d whisper, The Good Lord’s got a plan for you son. The untroubled innocence of youth enough to cause Janie Treeborne to utter such foolish words against her better self.
“I ain’t got cream,” she said.
“That’s fine.”
“Used to you liked cream in yours.”
The young man smiled. “That’s right,” he said. “I did.”
“They called it a security problem.”
“Called what one?”
“You know they threw MawMaw May a retirement party down at The Fencepost, don’t you? Fixed her a yellow cake with chocolate icing. She ate the thing with her hands, like a baby. I didn’t think too much of that at the time. ‘Retire, foot,’ she said—just laughed and laughed and laughed while Daddy and them posed next to her for a picture they run in the paper.
“She held on to them keys though. Folks would find letters stuck up in the crooks of trees, scattered down underneath the bridge, set out on rocks by the dam, placed in De Soto’s very outstretched hand. Most folks knew who done it and just give the letters back to the mail carrier when he came around on his route. I reckon they realized what was going on with her. How could I? But the postal service found out and all hell like to broke loose. Started talking felonies and foolishness like that. They called it a security problem. Foot.”
In the Eye of the Looker
1958
Janie hadn’t seen Pud Ward since before the bones were found on The Seven. She figured he’d read the story in the paper: UNKNOWN REMAINS DISCOVERED ON LOCAL FAMILY’S PROPERTY, EXCAVATION ONGOING. Football season was over, and all the big-talkers and bullshitters and the used-to-bes gathered in daily mourning at The Fencepost, which kept them, for the moment, from moving on to the subject of the Treebornes and those bones, and the archaeologist who’d arrived to excavate them.
Sherrill Robinson had a wide face and kept her straight brown hair tied behind her neck. She’d gone to college in Tuscaloosa, dug up pyramids and opened the tombs of Egyptian kings for a while after graduation, then came back home to teach. She missed fieldwork though and was thrilled to return to it on The Seven.
The end of football and the discovery of the bones also brought Jon D. Crews back into Janie’s life. He was struck more than anybody by the find. “Walked right over them no telling how many times,” he said, again and again. Jon D. helped keep watch on crowds that gathered as the excavation took place, patrolling the property on his motorcycle, which he’d bought back with cash the Conquistadors Club had given him for making All-State. Janie and Jon D. both battered Sherrill with questions while she worked. The first bone was part of a leg, Sherrill told them. Janie had been right about the skull, which likely belonged to, Sherrill figured, a young man at the time of his death. She judged these bones, and the many others she uncovered in the clearing over the coming weeks, to date back into the 1800s, before Alabama became recognized as a state.
“What was it here before then?” Jon D. asked.
“Just a place,” Sherrill said.
Over time she showed the kids how to clean bones with picks and soft silken brushes. Janie, Sherrill pointed out, had a natural steady hand. Tammy hovered and recorded Sherrill’s work. It would, she said, be perfect for her De Soto movie. The camera ran off some gawkers who didn’t want to be caught on film. But Wooten, Tammy complained, kept ruining shots as he stomped around, fussing about when he was going to be able to finish building the concession stand, projection room, and movie screen. He didn’t see how a bunch of bones should keep them from continuing their work on the drive-in. The archaeologist, he told Tammy when they laid in bed at night, was up to something no good.
Sherrill liked walking The Seven, Janie noticed. She trailed the archaeologist at a distance till
one day Sherrill invited her along. They came across an assemblie half-buried in the groundcover. Sherrill was taken with this strange object. Janie decided the archaeologist could be trusted and led her to Hugh’s studio. When Sherrill saw the incomplete history hanging from the rafters she wanted to know everything about Hugh Treeborne’s art.
They laid beneath the assemblie and Janie struggled to tell. It’d been so long since she heard the stories herself. Foot, she thought, MawMaw May ain’t been dead but six months. Seemed like longer though. Sherrill Robinson was a forgiving listener. Allowed the girl to start and restart as often as needed. The stories Janie began telling underneath the assemblie stretched out across long days on hands and knees, holding a brush and a pick. Sometimes Jon D. would add to a story he remembered. As Janie’s telling loosened up she felt unbound by memory and free to interpret the history her own way. A delightful discovery. Often a day of excavation ended with coffee on the porch. Sometimes Tammy joined them, pretending not to eavesdrop on what the archaeologist said.
Turned out Sherrill already knew a good amount about Elberta, Alabama. “Hiram Transtern wasn’t a true scientist,” she said one day. “Nothing but a sideshow man. That’s how he started out. His family had bought this collection of artifacts from all over the world, and Transtern’s sorry ass paraded it across the country, giving what he called lectures. The man didn’t know a thing about science or the art of excavation!”
Janie’d never heard such blasphemy; it excited the girl. “What about De Soto?”
“Murderer,” Sherrill said.
Tammy interjected: “He ain’t done it.”
Sherrill shrugged and smiled at Janie, who was grinning ear-to-ear.
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