The Marrowbone Marble Company

by Glenn Taylor

  Ledford fished the front- and backdoor keys from his pants pocket. His finger through the keyring, he whirled them a few times, Old West style, catching them mid-rotation with the snap of his hand. He held them out for Mack Wells to take.

  The women came in the back door, Mary in the lead. She dropped to all fours on the cracked ribbon tile and picked at a loose piece of grout. Before she could get it in her mouth, Rachel reached down and snatched it.

  “Harold used to put everything in his mouth,” Lizzie said. “I caught him eating mud more than once.”

  In the backyard, Rachel had asked her about having more children, and Lizzie had explained she was no longer able. I’m sorry, Rachel had said, and it seemed to Lizzie that unlike some white folks, she meant it.

  “Mary hasn’t yet sampled mud, but I figured early I sure can’t set out mouse traps.” They laughed together. They watched Mary pull herself up by a loose drawer handle.

  “Strong,” Lizzie said.

  Rachel pointed out the range’s unsteady leg. She showed Lizzie how to bang on the refrigerator’s monitor top if it quit running. “Loyal put some work in the kitchen over the years,” Rachel said. “Nothing’s new, but everything’s fixed.” She ran her finger over a long, glued crack in the table’s porcelain top. It pinched at her insides to think of him alone in that house back then, still a boy, doing a man’s job and a woman’s too. She rubbed at her round belly through the silk.

  Lizzie was used to some age on her things. The hand-crank wringer-washer next to the sink was the same one she’d grown up with, same one she still used. It was possible that Mack had not been crazy when he’d agreed to rent this place.

  When Lizzie knew it wasn’t obvious, she stole hard looks at Rachel’s face. It seemed the woman was kind and genuine. She suspected the only black folks Rachel knew growing up were those who cleaned her house, those who followed the orders of her parents, but it was possible that such ways had not rooted in her.

  “Loyal raised himself alone from age thirteen in this house,” Rachel said. She’d knelt to Mary, who was at the windowsill, pulling at an edge of unstuck wallpaper. She blurted something over and over that vaguely resembled “flower,” the paper’s pattern. Rachel looked through the windowpane, her eyes glazing over. “I know he hopes your family will find the house suitable.”

  Lizzie did not answer. She listened to the baby girl talking in her own language. Down the hallway, Mack and Ledford laughed at a joke. From the scrapyard there came an extended squeal and crunch. Lizzie’s knees nearly buckled and her forehead popped with sweat. She was thinking how dangerous all this was. Her new job had come by way of Mr. Ledford. Her family’s new home, the same. White folks. Those whom her father had raised her to be wary of. And here she was, talking kitchens and children, vegetable gardens and barren wombs, all as if the expectant woman across from her had been born into the same world as she.

  CHARLIE BALL WAS eager to hand out the cigars he’d bought. He walked the factory floor, sidling up to every man in sight with his box of White Owls, lifting the lid like it was a treasure trunk. “It’s a boy,” he said. “Little William Amos Ledford. Saturday morning. Mother and baby are just fine.” Most men took a cigar and stuck it in a coverall pocket, then went back to work. Fishing for conversation, Charlie said to more than one, “I’m not real sure where that middle name comes from, but to each his own, I guess.”

  The name came from the Bible, a book Ledford had read yet again. Ledford arrived at half past noon. It was Tuesday, the last day of the month, and he needed to get a few things done now that Rachel and the baby were home from the hospital. Her aunt, a retired schoolteacher, was helping out.

  Charlie caught him as he walked toward the office door. “There he is,” Charlie said, loud. His hair carried too much Royal Crown at the front. It clumped in spots. “Cigar for the proud papa?” He opened the box with flair.

  “Thank you Charlie,” Ledford said. He pocketed the thing as the others had.

  “How’s Rachel faring?”

  Charlie spoke about his cousin as if he knew her. Ledford didn’t care for such talk. “She doesn’t complain. Tough as ever,” he said. He moved past the younger man and stepped into his office. Charlie followed.

  Ernestine poked her head in the door. She’d just come back from lunch and carried a doggie bag. “Congratulations Mr. Ledford,” she said.

  “Thank you Ernestine.”

  Her smile was genuine.

  Charlie watched her hips, and when she was gone, he leaned across the desk and whispered, “How old is that gal?”

  “What can I do for you Charlie?” Ledford hung his jacket on the back of his desk chair. The air smelled damp and old.

  Charlie straightened back up. “My uncle would like to know when he might stop by and see his new grandson.” Lucius had officially retired. He spent his days drunk at Chief Logan’s Tavern. Nights he was in bed by seven.

  “Well, he hadn’t hardly come by for the first one, has he?” Ledford was running short on sleep.

  “You can understand the excitement over a boy child, Ledford.” There was nothing but the sound of his own swallowing. “Can’t you?”

  “Sure Charlie. Tell him his daughter will phone him.”

  Ernestine poked her head in again. “Mr. Ledford,” she said, “there’s a man here to see you. Says his name is Admiral Dingleberry.”

  Ledford laughed. Ernestine didn’t, and neither did Charlie. It occurred to Ledford that they weren’t familiar with the term. “Well by all means, send in the admiral,” he said.

  Erm stepped through the open door. He spread his arms wide, brown-bagged bottle in the left one nearly knocking Charlie in the head. “Private Leadfoot,” Erm said.

  “Squirmy Ermie,” Ledford answered. He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face, and he didn’t know why. The two had not spoken in more than a year, not since their awkward parting at the Chicago diner. “What the hell are you doin here?” Ledford came around the desk and they shook hands, clapped shoulders as if to injure.

  “Visiting my old friend is what I’m doing.” Erm hadn’t acknowledged Charlie, who stood by the hat rack and swallowed and smiled wide. “Who’s the broad?” Erm asked, motioning with his head to Ernestine’s desk in the hall. His breath smelled of gin and chewing gum and cigarettes. He wore a new scar across his right eyebrow.

  “That’s Ernestine,” Charlie said.

  Erm looked at him as if he’d insulted his mother.

  “How old would you guess she is?” Charlie’s voice was pinched. Erm squared up on him. He cocked his head and smiled. “Eighty-seven,” he said. “What’s your guess?”

  Charlie laughed, then looked down at the cigar box. He opened it, looked in Erm’s general direction, and said, “Cigar, Mr. Dingleberry?” His voice cracked on the last syllable.

  “No, it’s Admiral Dingleberry, kid. And yes, I wouldn’t care to partake of your smoking pleasures.” Erm kept his expression straight. Ledford did the same beside him, though the urge to laugh was strong. Erm still hadn’t reached for a White Owl. He said, “That your position in this dump? You the cigar girl?”

  With that, Ledford laughed out loud. “All right, Erm,” he said. Charlie frowned and closed the box. “Hold it now, Kemoslabe,” Erm said. “Big Chief White Owl want smokem.”

  Ledford interceded. “Charlie here is handing out cigars on account of Rachel giving birth Saturday.”

  Erm spun his head. “No foolin. You son of a bitch.” They shook hands again. “Boy or girl?”

  “Boy. William, after my daddy.”

  “How about that? Big Bill Ledford. I bet he’s a biggin. Hung where it counts like his old man.”

  Charlie laughed.

  Erm glared at him. “Let’s have at it then. Open er up and fire the torch.”

  The three of them stood and smoked and Erm uncorked his gin and passed the bottle. Ledford couldn’t bear to tell him how much he’d cut back, so he sipped light instead. He explained how they w
ere doing just fine, careful not to badmouth his job too much in front of Charlie. “Renting out the old house,” Ledford said.

  “Yeah, to a nigger,” Charlie said. He laughed and took another swig off the bottle.

  Ledford stared Charlie down and breathed slow and even. He contemplated his response.

  Erm said, “Well Sally, you just jump in anytime.”

  Now both men stared at him, and Charlie set the bottle on the desk and excused himself.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Erm said. “Who the hell was that pansy?”

  “That’s Rachel’s first cousin. Her daddy’s nephew. Pain in my ass.” They both reached for the bottle at the same time. Laughed and exchanged after you sirs.

  Erm sat down and explained he was passing through on business he had in Baltimore. He got quiet after that. Neither spoke of their last meeting. Of Ledford’s serious talk, of Erm’s fuck you admonition, of the inevitable end of the auto driver who’d run over the wrong man.

  Ledford still owed Erm six hundred on a straight play from the previous November, when Army had blanked West Virginia. The spread was two touchdowns. The final score was 19–0. Erm even made him pay the vig.

  Ledford had been laying off the gambling like it was the sauce. After a long silence, Erm said, “I got married.”

  “I’ll be damned. When?”

  “Last Thursday.” He looked around at the empty walls, tapped his shoes on the floor.

  “Well…congratulations Erm.” Ledford nodded his head to convince himself such a move was wise for his friend.

  “Yeah,” Erm said. “She’s got a bun in the oven.”

  Ledford raised his eyebrows. “Congratulations again.”

  “A toast to married life,” Erm said. They drank again, and Ledford was about to ask what her name was when Erm hopped out of his chair and said, “I gotta hit the road, but I’ll be coming back through real soon.”

  Ledford stood. He smiled uneasy. There was something in Erm’s demeanor, something that said he was running from trouble. Ledford would not protest the abrupt departure. It was the way things were for Erminio Bacigalupo. Always, he was running. Don Staples had been talking to Ledford about such movement through life. Away from things. Toward them.

  “Listen,” Erm said. He was making sure his shirt cuffs stuck out beyond his jacket. “I got something I need you to hold on to for me.” He pulled a fat-stuffed leather envelope from his inside pocket. “Just make sure it stays where nobody gets their hands on it.” He held it out, but Ledford didn’t reach. “It isn’t a bag of dogshit Ledford. It’s dough. And a book.”

  Ledford laughed and took it. Rubbed his thumb across the gold snap button holding it shut. “I got a safe spot in the basement at home.”

  “Good. And for your trouble, we’ll wipe your paysheet clean. Get you out of my left column, back on the right.” Erm winked. Then he leaned forward. “But listen,” he said. “If I don’t make it back from Baltimore, you see that money gets to my old lady.”

  An alarm sounded from the factory floor. Erm stuck his fingers in his ears. “Some job you got here,” he hollered.

  “It’s just a backup on the flow line,” Ledford hollered back. He looked at the half-full gin bottle, wondered if his friend would be leaving it behind.

  “Whatever you say.” Erm licked his pointer and pinky fingers, then smoothed his eyebrows. “For Ernestine on the way out,” he said. He turned, was gone, then stuck his head back in the office. He yelled, “I’ll be back in a week or two.”

  The alarm shut down, and from outside his door, Ledford could hear the low murmur of Erm’s voice, then Ernestine’s giggle. The leather envelope in his hand was squared off, worn at the corners by whatever it held. It was smooth cowhide, a deep brown. Ledford wondered why Erm might not make it out of Baltimore alive. He wondered how much money was in his hands. He put the envelope in the middle drawer of his desk. In the bottom right drawer he set the gin bottle on its side. Then he sat down and stared at the pile of paperwork before him. At home, Rachel would be nursing or napping. Mary would be playing with her great-aunt. Ledford looked at Mary’s photograph on the wall. He’d need to get one up of William.

  OCTOBER 1947

  THEY WERE CALLING HIM Willy within a week. Sometimes Ledford called him Willy Amos. He slept just fine in the daylight hours, but at night he fussed and fought his swaddling. Rachel was too tired to rise every time, so Ledford took to walking the house with the boy. He sang to him and he danced with him. He stared at the boy’s eyes and how they locked on to an unknown point and stayed there regardless of swaying, all iris and pupil, black as cast iron. He had a darker tint to him than Mary. He was bigger than she’d been.

  Ledford one-armed little Willy in the basement early Sunday morning. It was not yet four a.m. He pulled the lightbulb chain hanging from the rafters, and the boy squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s all right,” Ledford told him. “Just a lightbulb.”

  Willy cried some, so Ledford lifted him high and sniffed directly at the seat of his diaper. It smelled only of powder. “That’s a boy,” he said. “You just stay that way until your mother rises and shines.”

  He strolled the length of the basement floor, pointing to and naming the tail fan of turkey feathers, the glass scrap shaped liked diamonds, the map of the world he’d hung. He put his fingertip to the map and said, “This here green chunk is the United States of America, and right here, West Virginia, is where we live.” He slid the finger to the right. “And if you take a boat or a airplane across all this blue water, and you cross this pink Spain and over all these different colors in Africa, you get to here,” he tapped his finger against it, “to these little specks of nothing on the blue ocean, to where your daddy was for a time.” Willy’s head wobbled from his propped vantage point on Ledford’s shoulder. He liked the tapping sound of his father’s fingers on the paper map.

  Ledford laughed. “All right, little one,” he said. They stared at one another for a moment, and Ledford kissed him on the forehead. Then he looked back to the map.

  He took a deep breath and told his boy that he’d not ever have to go to the little specks on the ocean, nor any other place like them. He put his hand on the boy’s chest, his fingers nearly wrapping around the girth of him, and he said, “I will protect you from all of it, William Amos.”

  When the boy fell asleep, Ledford set him on a cushioned desk chair from the old house. He began unpacking the last of the boxes. Attic Junk it read on the side. In the box, an old black album of photographs popped and cracked when he opened it. With each turned page, it shed little black corner frames. Ledford gathered them as they fell. The photographs themselves were lined and chipped with age. They were not in the order they’d been intended. Their look made them his daddy’s people, the Ledfords of Mingo, mostly tall and thin. Unsmiling faces and cheekbones that cast shadows. There were dates in faded pencil on the backs of some. Names like Oliver and Homer and Eliza and Wilhelmina. In one photograph, Ledford’s daddy swung on a rope hung from a tree limb. He looked to be about six, his T-shirt dirty, loose around the neck. His head a blur of black hair and bared teeth.

  Ledford picked up the other album. There wasn’t much inside. Four pages filled out of twenty. An old woman who looked to be part Indian sat in a rocking chair and smoked a clay pipe. There was no name or date on the back. A baby picture of a child with eyes big and dark like his own children. On the back, somebody had written Bonecutter.

  He picked up another book, leatherbound. It was small but thick, the size of a good Bible. It was his daddy’s batch book from the early days at Mann Glass. Pages were organized by color. White Batch and Opal and Best Opal and Shade Batch White. There were penciled-in measurements of hundreds of pounds of sand and soda. Lead and arsenic. Ounces counted for borax and manganese. Bones. Bill Ledford had figured out how to make a transparent green by adding copper scabs. Every shade of green may be obtained, he wrote.

  In the back pages, the batch book became an account of disparat
e times in his life. Bill Ledford had written in it almost daily, it seemed, from the years 1916 to 1925. There were passages about his days playing ball in the Blue Ridge League for the Martinsburg Blue Sox.

  Lefty Jamison threw at my head today on account of me running off at the mouth last night when the likker oiled me up. I believe I had poked at his stomack to show how fat it was, and I may have called him a bench blanket.

  The baby shifted and grunted on the seat cushion. Ledford eyed him a minute and knew he wasn’t long for sleep. He flipped fast through the journal’s pages, looking for something. In all those years alone in his house, he’d never been able to look. He’d feared doing so would make everything worse than it already was. But Ledford was the father now, and fear had been replaced by the single-minded need to keep his wife and children above ground. He’d protect them all.

  On the next-to-last page the handwriting was easier to read, as if written slow. It read,

  January 12, 1924, I am twenty-six today. Last night I dreamed the same dream again. I can’t pick my feet up so I look down and I’ve got no feet. They are inside the ground. I fall forword and my legs bend the wrong way. A cracking sound and a feeling of my bones breaking. I’m unable to put here in words what it is, but it is bad. Then comes the roaring sound like a glass furnace and I’m holding my punty rod in one hand and my blowpipe in the other. I get to my knees and I’m all cut up as I’ve been laying on cullet. It is raining and I have to keep my eyes shut. That’s what the voice is hollering at me, not to open my eyes up. But I do, to see who’s hollering in that awful familur voice, and when I look, it is our littlest one. Loyal. Nearly two now. And he puts the fear of God in me because his mouth don’t open when he talks and his hands are afire.

  Willy screamed out sudden. Ledford dropped the book back in the box and stood. The hair on his arms and neck was pricked and he couldn’t get enough saliva to swallow. He held little Willy and felt his own heart race against the child’s side, pressed to him. He could not understand what he had just read. The mind was not made to know such words as those from his daddy’s pencil. Ledford breathed deep and looked out the single-pane window. The ground there was warming, sunrise gathering in its well. He watched a dwarf spider navigate the glass and wondered why he opened the books. He’d been getting by all right as of late, drinking less on the advice of Don Staples. Dreams visited Ledford with less frequency, their horrors dulled. But what he’d read had stirred anew the unquiet. He looked at his boy, no longer screaming but not yet settled, his eyes like those in the photographs.