Once There Were Sad Songs

by Velda Brotherton

  Shrugging, she fit the lid down tight and sat at the table to wait. Soon the delectable fragrance floated on the night wind. As she lifted the lid to test the potatoes, someone spoke behind her, and she dropped it with a clatter.

  “What is that?” the voice asked.

  Someone else replied, “Puts me in mind of something good to eat, but it’s been so long I can’t rightly remember.”

  Another joined in. “It ain’t hot dogs and pork and beans, that be for sure.”

  Carefully she replaced the lid, turned to face her uninvited company. A trio of shaggy men.

  Steven grinned at her, features shadowed by the meager light, the haircut making him appear almost civilized. “Canned stew?”

  “Maybe it’s them little bitty mushy meatballs and spaghetti out of a can,” Shadow offered.

  “Tuna casserole,” Steven ventured. “That’s what it is, tuna casserole.”

  Shadow gasped, grabbed his belly and staggered around. “Oh, I can’t stand it. She’s cooking something, man, you ask her. She like you.”

  “I ain’t asking her nothing,” Steven replied.

  “Well, I sure as hell ain’t asking her,” Lefty growled.

  “Will the three of you stop that,” Mary Elizabeth said, hardly able to control her laughter. “In the basket there, get plates. There’s some plastic forks, too. Bunch of beggars.”

  Steven spread a hand over his bare chest. “Us? Beggars? I beg your—”

  “All of you. Lend a hand if you expect to join me in this fine repast.”

  Shadow hurried to do as she asked. “Man, if I never have to look at another slick and greasy baloney sandwich, I won’t care. This ain’t baloney, is it, ma’am?”

  “Of course not. It’s sausages and potatoes, and there’s plenty. Sit down, all of you. I’ll just make some gravy.”

  “Oh, man,” Shadow moaned, taking his place at the table. “She making gravy.”

  Mary Elizabeth met Steven’s quizzical gaze for a moment, then turned back to dishing up the meat and potatoes and making the gravy. Then she remembered her aborted errand to the store.

  “I’m sorry I ran out of bread. I was going to go get some, but my car wouldn’t start, and then, well, never mind. Anyway, if you have some, you might go get it while I finish this up.”

  While Steven continued to stare at her as if she had snakes coming out her ears, an oddly subdued Lefty sprinted off, evidently to do as she asked. Even after he returned with a partial loaf of bread and sat beside Shadow, Steven just stood there.

  “You going to join us, ole son, or stand around looking goofy?” Lefty asked.

  Steven jerked as if coming awake and slid onto the bench opposite his friends. The smell of that food cooking had hurled him back into the past and his mama’s table, her serving up good-smelling food that tasted like you’d died and gone to heaven.

  He glanced at Liz. The only place left for her to sit was at his side. Warily he watched her carry the pan of gravy and a plate mounded with potatoes and sausages, set them in the center of the table and slide in next to him. He hunched his shoulders together, her nearness like a fire burning too close.

  Shadow rose, lifted the spoon out of the gravy, and ladled it over a slice of bread in his plate.

  “Excuse our friend. He got no manners,” Lefty blurted.

  Hell of a thing. Amazing that a man with the tact of a bulldozer would actually be embarrassed by Shadow’s bad table manners. But then, Steven had never seen Lefty around a well-bred woman, only the occasional whore he picked up to verbally abuse for a few hours before sending her on her way.

  “Manners got nothing to do with it,” Shadow said. “Hunger is what it is. Man, you smell this stuff? I ain’t smelled food this good since I left my granny’s in Detroit.”

  The woman—Steven tried to think of her as Liz now—had a go at easing the situation.

  “Please, do help yourselves. All of you. I’m afraid I don’t have coffee or beer. Should’ve told you so you could bring your own.”

  She must’ve smelled the stench coming from that cracked old enamel coffeepot that sat in the edge of their fire day and night, simmering away. Never dumped, never rinsed, just added to when the occasion demanded.

  “I have tea,” she ventured when no one replied.

  Couldn’t, their mouths were stuffed so full of food. This was no time to talk.

  “I’ll just put some on,” she said, slipped away and rattled around behind him a while before returning to sit once again at his side.

  Her sitting so close and the smell of the sausage and potatoes reminded him of the farm down on the Red River, and his mama standing over the stove, her fine-boned face flushed and damp. Most times, when he thought of her, it led him to thinking of the flight home from ’Nam after they told him she had died. And him over there set to be killed himself, seeing as how he was on short time. Instead, it was her who died, and that got him home safe. And so, naturally, he had to go back. After he burned the house.

  But this time he refused to get lost in that reminiscence. It would spoil this moment in time. This peaceful serenity, felt even by the irascible Lefty, was too precious to barter away on bad memories.

  Lingering tears stung at his eyes and he forked the last of the potatoes into his mouth. Something pretty weird was happening to him, and he struggled to talk about anything that would make these feelings of total calm stay around a while.

  The eerie scream of a screech owl nearby offered him the chance, for Liz dragged in a noisy breath and the other men muttered about the woeful call.

  “Just the restless ghosts from the Valley of the Vapors,” Steven intoned, and looked around as if they were gathered around the campfire to tell ghost stories. “Anyone know what Ouachita means?”

  Lefty stared at him, eyes black pits in the light’s dim glow. “Who cares?”

  “What is a Ouachita, man?” Shadow asked.

  “It’s Indian. Means the land of dreams and visions.”

  Lefty snorted. “Where you come up with this kinda shit?”

  “I read, man. Wouldn’t hurt you none. You know, them square, heavy things you find in libraries, all full of paper pages? They ain’t just for doorstops, you know.”

  “I am not amused, ole son.” Lefty snorted, but watched him closely all the same, eyes saying, “Get on with it.”

  “Tell us,” Liz urged, her voice sweet in the cool night.

  “There’s this legend about this cat, the main man of his mighty nation, the strongest on earth. Well, he got the big head, like some will. Manitou—that means God, for you too ignorant to know ’cause you don't read—had smiled upon him and his, and they were blessed. He’d bestowed upon them the secret of youth. The ultimate, man. So this cat, he got to thinking he was better than anyone else, or else why would Manitou have given them so much?”

  “Hey, no shit, man.” Enthralled despite himself, Lefty urged him to go on. “What this dude’s name, man?”

  “Hell, how do I know? Speeding Deer. Call him Speeding Deer. Now if you’ll quit interrupting, I can tell you the rest of the story.”

  They all nodded. Shadow sopped his plate with a piece of bread and crammed it into his mouth, eyes locked on Steven. The light cast muddy shadows on their faces, and the dark around them seemed to close in as he continued.

  “Okay, so ole Speeding Deer and his folks, they just went along, living in this paradise called the Valley of the Vapors and bathing in the healing waters and living forever, till one day along come this paleface usurper.

  “Now, ole Speeding Deer, he’d long ago promised his God he’d be good—had to do that to be blessed, you see—anyway, this white guy scared the hell out of him. Maybe he’d want to take over the tribe, see? Tell the people how to live. So—”

  ”He kills the fucker, right?” Lefty squalled.

  “He slays the usurper,” Steven corrected. Embraced by the night and the soft stillness, the gentle lapping of the lake, and the presence of the woman,
Steven didn’t want to finish the story. To do so might summon the angry spirits of the marauding savages out of hiding.

  “Well, what? Go on, man,” Shadow urged.

  “Yeah. You start this, don’t stop now,” Lefty said.

  Liz gazed at him expectantly. He could smell her hair and her skin and her sex, all womany and fresh and inviting. Dammit, why had he started this?

  “So, what do you think? All hell busted loose. The mountains erupted, filled up the valleys in an ocean of boiling lava. Buried every last one of ’em.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ,” Lefty brayed. “Whatever happened to happy endings?”

  “Surely, you jest,” Steven said.

  “So, then, ole son, what is the moral of your story?”

  “Don’t piss off your gods, even when they’re on your side.”

  No one said anything for several moments. The wind picked up, soughing through the towering pines in a mournful lament.

  “Listen, hear that?” Steven asked.

  “What?” from Lefty and Shadow.

  “That’s their spirits, looking for the healing waters. They say they still roam the Ouachitas in search of redemption for their sins.”

  Shadow heaved himself up from the table. “Well, hot damn. I suppose that son of a bitch was s’posed to let that fella just take over. That figures. God ain’t never been on the side of the oppressed. All He ever done was see we stay in our place and offer us a reward in the afterlife ’cause he made us suffer so in this one.”

  Lefty threw back his head, shouted at Shadow. “Oh, not that same old song again, like you’uns the onliest ones who ever suffered. Woe is the black man, woe, woe.”

  “I ought to whallop you up the side of your head,” Shadow muttered, but evidently was too satisfied with the good food to make good his threat.

  Lefty grunted and rose. “Well, it’s just a friggin’ story, no sense taking everything so all-fired personal. Goddamn, ole son, next time you wanta tell a story, give it a happy ending, will ya? I’m goin’ to bed. Good vittles, ma’am.” He didn’t look at Liz with the compliment, just strode away into the night.

  Obviously silenced by Lefty’s refusal to fight, Shadow looked from Steven to Liz, then back again. “Much obliged for the food. Thank you.”

  But he didn’t get up and made no move to leave. Steven signaled with a tilt of his head, but Shadow ignored him. Just as well. He had no business being alone with her anyway.

  Liz played around with a bit of sausage, twisting her fork this way and that and looking at neither of them. Like maybe she was thinking real hard on his story and its moral.

  God, but she was beautiful, even with all that gorgeous hair pinned severely in a wad at the back of her head. He wanted to nip the pins from it, let it fall down around her shoulders like they did in the movies. Good thing she couldn’t read minds. Know what he was thinking right now. How he’d like to run his fingers over the flushed skin at the base of her throat, feel the flyaway hair tickle his nose when he buried it in that tempting hollow. Rest against her for just a moment, embracing her world and leaving his.

  The first time he laid eyes on her, floating down in the murky lake water like some spirit, he’d known she was trouble. Mostly for him, but trouble for them all and the way of life they’d established. Yet here he was, rushing pell-mell into the danger she represented, like he’d lost all good sense.

  He lurched to his feet, climbed over the bench, his knee grazing her shoulder. “Excuse me,” he mumbled. “Thank you for supper.”

  Shadow gave him a languid grin and stayed put, glued to the bench. Steven wondered if the black man had read his thoughts and was playing as protector. But whose? His or hers? Suddenly, he didn’t give a damn. He wanted away from there, away from her. He heard Shadow say something, laugh, heard her join in. Felt lonely and afraid.

  When he finally crawled into his sleeping bag, he fell into a restless dream about the gentle touch of her hands cutting away his hair while she breathed her sweet fragrance over him. While her long, lush body brushed his shoulders, his arms, his naked back. Cutting his hair. Prying her way into his heart, his soul. Smothering him with her goodness and a spirituality that overpowered his worst inclinations. Delilah, shit!

  Chapter Seven

  A little jumpy with only the taciturn Shadow at the table, Mary Elizabeth began to clean up after the meal. Without speaking, he helped clear away the debris, and she accepted the gesture even though she suspected he had something on his mind she might not appreciate.

  The night before when she’d lifted the flap of that disgraceful tent and crawled into the dark beside him, drawing him into a conspiracy to beat Lefty and Steven at their own game, something had happened between the two of them. An understanding that extended beyond the reach of an ordinary relationship, especially one between a black male and a white southern female.

  She had never known a black person, man or woman. None lived in Cedar Valley, and she only saw them at a distance when she accompanied Reudell to the county seat on business. Yet she felt more comfortable with him than with either Steven or Lefty. Why that was, she couldn’t imagine.

  She handed him a suds-coated plate, which he dipped into a pan of hot water steaming on the stove, then dried with a wad of paper towels.

  “Is your name really Shadow?” she asked.

  “Nah, but it’s good enough for now.”

  “So, it’s your nickname, like Lefty. How come Steven doesn’t have one?”

  “He do... I mean, he did. Made us quit using it. Said it reminded him of them days over there, you know? And he wanted shut of that time, once and for all.”

  She nodded, shivered. There was no way she could ever imagine fighting in a war, actually having someone shoot at you, shooting back. Killing. Dear God. She hesitated, then asked, “And what was Steven’s nickname?”

  Shadow rinsed another plate, shook off the water and dried for a long while without replying.

  “Shadow?”

  “Maybe it be better if you don’t know, ma’am.”

  She nodded again. “Why do you need them? Is it some man thing?”

  “Steven says they’re so a man can separate from the dreadful things he’s forced to do. Like it was someone else with that other name who did them, and now he, well, he ain’t so guilty of it. He say he ain’t that man no more. That killing man.”

  She held out another dripping plate. “And have you had to do dreadful things, Shadow?”

  “Who me? Nah. I didn’t even get to go to Vietnam.”

  “So why? I mean, I don’t understand why you’re with them.”

  “Or why they tolerate me. Maybe that’s what you wonder.”

  The facade he kept so carefully in place, the speech patterns that displayed his disdain for himself, disappeared in that statement. For that instant he might have been someone else.

  Yet when he continued, he dropped back into the patois that marked his speech. “Lefty, he thinks that’s the only war was going on in those times. His war. But that’s cause he’s ignorant of the mean streets. Coming up in the swamps of Louisiana like he done. Cajuns have a cultural drawback. They think the only dangers in this world is alligators and water moccasins and some Bubba bully. The war only if they have to fight in it.”

  “But that’s true of almost everyone, isn’t it? I mean, people only know and understand the threats that are immediate to them. The suffering too, for that matter. The horror of thousands of children being slaughtered pales if your own child dies.”

  He glanced at her, stacked the dried plates back where she’d gotten them earlier. “I reckon that’s true. Don’t excuse ignorance, though.”

  “No, it doesn’t. You lived in the mean streets?”

  “Not exactly. More like fought.”

  “And your granny, you lived with her?” She filled the skillet with water and set it on a burner to heat, squirted in a few drops of detergent.

  He opened the cooler and placed the butter inside. He k
ept his back to her an inordinately long time, not answering her question about his granny.

  A soft breeze tickled at the back of her neck, and far off a whippoorwill called until she wanted to breathe for the mournful bird. Still Shadow remained silent, so she went on to something else.

  “What did you do? I mean, before you fell in with those two?”

  “Went to protests. Strangest thing, though. I run into Steven once, in New York City in sixty-seven. I was just a kid, shuffling around with all them peace lovers while they got their heads busted in. And he’d got his busted, but good. Who’d a thought I’d run across him again in a juke joint in Memphis so many years later. We didn’t figure it out for a long time. Where we’d met, I mean.”

  On the table, the battery-powered light dimmed and she turned it off. “Have to get a lantern, or more batteries.”

  In the darkness he continued to talk in his velvety soft voice, as if feeling better about her not being able to see him.

  “It was my nickname he remembered. I’d go poking around saying dumb things like, ‘I’se the Shadow, sneak in, sneak out.’ Goofy kid stuff like that. Listening, watching, learning the trade, you might say. My sister…my baby sister, she’d... Well, anyways, I couldn’t stay in Detroit after that shit went down in Black Bottom, and so I lit out.” The pleasant voice turned crisp with a bite to it. “Wanted to bust a lot of heads, payback for Dory, you know? A lot of heads.”

  She couldn’t imagine what had actually happened in such a place as Black Bottom, but she shivered all the same. The moon had risen, sending lacy patterns over the ground. She touched the water in the skillet with the tip of her finger, then turned off the flame.

  “Let me do that,” Shadow said, and she jumped because he was standing so close and she hadn’t heard him move at all. “I like to wash things, makes me feel like I’ve cleaned myself too. Squeaky and spotless, you know?”

  She moved away, sat with her back to the table, and watched him carry the skillet a few feet off, wash it with a paper towel, and toss the water out. He rinsed it in the pot of hot water, dumped both out, and dried each pan without saying another thing.