The Marrowbone Marble Company

by Glenn Taylor

  Orb had been a puzzle from the get-go. Even for the doctors. He’d been small, of course. Fragile. Reverend Thompson had baptized him at the hospital, for fear that he’d die before he made it out the door. Rachel remembered the day they brought Orb home. How everyone, including her, wondered if he was meant to make it. Dimple and Wimpy had seen this kind of baby before. They sat Ledford and Rachel down, insisted that they contemplate a certain old way of doing things, a way that had kept many a sick baby alive. And Rachel had gone along with it. Orb swaddled against her, she’d followed the twins to the crib barn, and inside, Wimpy had led Boo the mare from her stall. While Dimple rubbed Boo’s muzzle and hummed to her, Wimpy positioned Ledford and Rachel on either side of the horse. Orb cried, loud and raspy. “Now,” Wimpy had told Rachel, “I want you to pass him under Boo, clear across to Ledford. Ledford, you take him, then pass him back. I want you all to do this three times.” And they did as they were told. And Orb ceased to cry.

  When he was two, he fell and split his forehead wide open on a coffee table corner. It was Christmas Eve. The blood refused to clot, and Orb was drained to a pallor the likes of a ghost. Ledford wrapped and rewrapped the boy’s head, using first his own shirt and then Willy’s. At the hospital, the doctor said the boy had hemophilia. Later, another doctor said that was hogwash, that the boy had von Willebrand disease. None could figure over the years why some of Orb’s cuts and scrapes clotted and others didn’t. The only thing they uniformly agreed upon was that internal bleeding was to be feared, and that the boy ought never be jostled hard, as one might be in a fall from a height or an automobile crash.

  Rachel had looked at her husband when this was spoken. His blank face told of the thoughts inside. Thoughts of his own family’s end in an automobile.

  By five years old, it was clear that brain doctors could not figure out the boy’s episodes. They spoke of electrical currents, explosions in his mind that rendered him useless, but there was no evidence of seizure.

  Orb was a mystery child. The only thing they knew was that he couldn’t read worth a damn, and that he didn’t belong in regular school. So, Rachel had kept him at home, where she and Ledford let him be who he was. Turned out he could shoot the daylights out of a marble and sing like an angel from heaven.

  The light in the kitchen shifted. Rain clouds were moving in. Rachel walked out back to unpin her wash. She’d just reached for the bedsheet corner when something caught her eye. Wimpy was thirty yards off, at woods’ edge, and he was talking to someone who wasn’t there. Rachel took a few steps in his direction.

  At the foot of a sumac tree, Wimpy regarded the redbird, perched on a high branch, side-stepping and wagging its head. “I don’t know,” Wimpy said. “You tell me.”

  The bird whistled back, “Whoit, whoit, whoit, whoit,” and Wimpy laughed out loud.

  Rachel got within twenty yards when Wimpy and the redbird turned and looked at her. She stopped, thought about turning around. Instead, she raised a hello hand and quickened her pace. Wimpy smiled nervously and turned back to the bird. He said something she couldn’t make out. When she got within a few feet, the redbird shot from its perch and disappeared into the woods. Rachel stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all right.” Wimpy started to walk away.

  “Wait.” She didn’t know what to say after that. In her bones she knew this to be the same bird that had stared her down and dive-bombed her more than ten years before.

  Wimpy turned and looked at her like he’d done something wrong. “I think I know that bird,” Rachel said.

  Wimpy cocked his head and regarded her. He stepped in close. “I’ve knowed him for twenty years,” he said. “Now what kind of cardinal lives for twenty years?”

  “How do you know it’s the same one?”

  “Cause he’s missin the middle toe on his right foot and his eyes is twice the size of most.” Wimpy used his tongue to excavate a clump of snuff from his jaw. He spat it on the ground. “What do you mean you know him?”

  “About ten years ago, that bird dive-bombed me in the backyard over here.” She pointed back at the house.

  Wimpy laughed. “He had the horn for you, I reckon,” he said. “Was it in April?”

  Rachel felt momentarily as if she were in a dream, as if this conversation could not occur in waking life. “It was April Fool’s Day,” she said.

  “Well, there you go. He was foolin with you.”

  Rachel felt faint. “I need to sit down,” she said. And she did, right there on the dirt and grass.

  Wimpy sat across from her. “Maybe it’s that whiskey I smell on your breath.” He winked at her. Then he looked to the woods, where the bird had disappeared. “Dimple thinks I’m touched in the head for how I feel about that bird, but he’s been visitin me so long, talking to me like he does, that I just don’t care what Dimple thinks.” He pulled at a hunk of crabgrass and tossed it over his shoulder. “As I recall, that bird used to visit in April, then it was May the next year, then June. He comes every year, and he tells me things.”

  “What does he tell you?”

  Wimpy pulled the leaves off a crabgrass shoot and stuck it in his teeth. He sized Rachel up before he spoke. “When he’s happy, he weets and whoits and dances, like he done today. That tells me there’ll be no flood, no deaths in the family and what have you.” He watched her react. There was nothing there but genuine interest. Belief even.

  Rachel swallowed. Her throat was dry. Lips the same. “And when he’s not happy?”

  “Well, then he chips.”

  “Chips?”

  “Chips.” Wimpy proceeded to imitate the bird’s unhappy sound.

  “And he don’t dance, and he stares at you a good bit.”

  “Has he ever flown at you?” Rachel asked.

  “Can’t say that he has.” Wimpy stood up. “But I ain’t a beautiful creature like yourself.” He reached down and helped Rachel to her feet.

  “Redbirds is horny for women that smell good and keep a little money in the breadbox.” He laughed. Rachel joined him. “I got to git,” Wimpy said. He tipped his hat and walked away.

  STAPLES STOOD BEFORE them, his Bibled hand raised above his head. The pews were nearly filled. In the back sat Paul Maynard and his family. Paul had combed his hair and trimmed his mustache for the service.

  “How many here know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?” Staples asked. He waggled his Bible and watched the hands raise before him. There were only three. Ledford, Lizzie, and Paul Maynard.

  Staples spread his Bible on the podium and combed his fingers through his beard. “When Nebuchadnezzar had a giant golden statue erected in Babylon, he made it law that all should fall down and worship it upon hearing the sound of a musical instrument. Those who did not obey this law would be thrown in a furnace and burned alive.”

  In the very first pew, Jerry sat at attention. His hymnal was in his lap, and upon it were paper scraps and a pencil. Jerry had long ago begun to take notes at the Land of Canaan Congregational. He hung on every word that split Don Staples’ lips, and he’d come to like church more than anything else in his life. With his pencil, he wrote, Nebakudazzer? and vowed silently to crack open his Bible that evening back at home. He checked his wristwatch. It was nearly eleven. Herchel was still in bed, no doubt snoring, too hungover to keep his word and come to church.

  Staples said, “But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were wise, and they knew when man’s law was foolish. They knew that when God’s law conflicted with man’s, only one could be obeyed. And so it was that they refused to fall down and worship the golden statue, and so it was that Nebuchadnezzar had them thrown into the furnace, which he’d stoked to seven times its normal temperature.”

  Ledford looked out the window at the smoke rising from his own furnace. He wondered if Stretch Hayes was eyeballing the fire as he should. Wondered if the temperature was too high or low, if the batch on the rollers would be prone to cracks.

  Staples leaned
forward on his elbows, the podium seams creaking under his weight. He pulled his spectacles from his shirt pocket and put them on. “The three were not burned,” he said. “They walked from the furnace just as they went in.” He put his finger to its designation on the thin, greasy page and read, “And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counselors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed, neither their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.” Staples looked out at his congregation over the bridge of his spectacles. His bad eye rolled wide, then he blinked and found his focus. “And Nebuchadnezzar blessed their God who had delivered his servants, for these men had yielded their bodies and changed the king’s law.” Then Staples, as he was prone to do, slammed shut his Bible on the podium and removed his spectacles. The thud emitted would awaken any drowsers among them, and he would search out their dozing eyes with his own. “Why do I tell you of this story?” he asked. “Why today?”

  None knew the answer to this question better than Ledford, who had ceased to look at the column of smoke out the window. He knew that the lesson was meant for him especially, as Staples had taken him aside after the cattle prod incident at Smalley’s. He’d questioned Ledford’s discipline for nonviolent protest. Staples had told him, “We will never find the change we seek if we give in to our baser instincts.” He’d gone on to say that Ledford might need some soul-searching, that he might need to reconcile his past. His parents, his brother, the violence that took them away. The war, what it had done to him. Staples had tapped Ledford on the chest and said, “Son, you’ll never make it unless you turn all that war inside you into something else.”

  Now he looked at Ledford where he sat. He smiled to the younger man before continuing. “I tell you this story today because I was reminded of it by a magazine article. I’m a subscriber to the magazine, and in last week’s issue, I read one of the most extraordinary pieces of writing I’ve ever come across. Its author was Dr. Martin King, who Ledford and I had the privilege of meeting a few years back at the First Baptist Church in Charleston.”

  Paul Maynard shifted in his seat and pulled at the crotch of his slacks. He sighed and worked his jaw. He’d sat his family closest to the door on purpose. They’d taken to attending services about a year prior. The rest of the Maynards had not followed suit. When Staples got to talking like he was now, about King and his cause, Paul always got up and walked out. On this morning, he did not.

  “While imprisoned in Birmingham Alabama a few months back,” Staples went on, “Dr. King penned a letter in the margins of newspapers and on smuggled-in scraps. That letter was addressed to the six Alabama clergymen who had denounced his tactics of direct, nonviolent action.” Sweat gathered in Staples’ graying eyebrows. He wiped them with his thumbs. “In the letter, he points out that such nonviolent stances against the unjust laws of man trace back to the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and that the acts of civil disobedience we see practiced by oppressed Negroes today serve to remind us all of what many have forgotten.” He looked Paul Maynard dead in the face, and then he looked over all of them, his brow furrowed, his jaw set. “That the immoral ways of segregation and the oppression of the poor must be met head-on with the strength of God’s moral law, and if done peaceably, with yielded bodies, the unjust kings on their bloodied thrones will no doubt change their ways.”

  “Amen,” Lizzie said. Beside her, Harold and Mack nodded their heads.

  Staples gathered up his Bible and his papers. Then he said, “And now, I believe our young preacher has some words for you this morning on the same subject.” He smiled at Harold. “He’ll be leaving us for law school in Morgantown soon, and I for one will miss these too-rare sermons of his, one of which some of us witnessed at our very first service here, nearly fifteen years ago.” Staples smiled. “You could hardly see his head over the pulpit back then, but he’s a real pawpaw knocker these days.” He waved Harold up.

  Paul Maynard slid from his pew and left just as Staples was about to take Harold’s empty seat. Instead, Staples followed. As he went, Harold was saying, “I believe Preacher Staples was right, and I believe that history will show us who has truly exhibited great power and righteousness in these times of trial.” Harold could feel the burns on his chest with each breath he drew. “As Dr. King wrote in his letter, ‘One day the South will recognize its real heroes. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream.’”

  Outside the doors, Staples called after Paul Maynard. “Hold on now Paul,” he shouted. He descended the stairs and gave chase.

  Down at the lot, Paul swung open the door of his truck but did not get in. Instead, he fetched his cigarette pack from the seat and lit one. When Staples was in talking distance, Paul blew smoke in his direction. It pounded from his nose and mouth as he said, “I swear Don…by God, if I’d known you were back to this type a thing…”

  Staples regarded the bigger man. “It isn’t a type of thing, Paul,” he said. “It’s everything. Weren’t you listening?”

  “You can git off your high horse with me, buddy. I live right here.” He pointed to the ground below his feet. “Right on this here, and it’s a place I was elected to protect.” Elections were coming up again, and Paul was worried. With the family mine shut down, he counted on the paychecks. “Now what do you think people’s going to do if they find out I’m attendin services where a colored boy takes the stage to spout off about King?” He pulled so hard on his cigarette you could hear the paper sizzle.

  “I think it doesn’t matter what people do. I think from the sounds of it, you ought to have listened to the sermon a little closer Paul.”

  “Oh hell,” Paul said. He threw his cigarette on the ground and got in his truck. He’d wait there for the rest of his family. “Look here,” he said, elbow on the open window well. “I’m glad to support the gym, and I’m happy to train white fighters alongside colored ones, but I’m done with your church Don.”

  “Paul…”

  But Paul had already started cranking his window up. He’d seal himself off and fry inside the cab before he’d hear another word on it.

  Staples turned and walked toward his church. His bones ached and a cough came over him.

  The sign had gone crooked above the door. Staples looked at it for a moment, then decided to sit under a shade tree on the lawn. He pressed his back into its bark and scratched at an itch on his shoulder blade. He wished he had his pipe with him.

  Above him, tied with twine and dangling from the skinny branches, were chunks of scrap glass from the factory. One hundred or more. They twisted in the wind and sparkled like costume jewelry. They were hung in the tree years before by Harold and Mary and Willy after Staples had told them that glass trees warded off evil spirits.

  Now he slouched and watched the sun glint white on the weathered edges of blue, red, and clear glass.

  From inside the church, he heard only silence. Harold had finished preaching. Then came the sound of the piano, Effie’s fingers so knowingly finding their mark. It was “Wade in the Water.”

  Staples closed his eyes and listened, and when Orb began to sing in his high and haunting way that God was going to trouble the water, Don Staples nearly wept.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY HAD come to Charleston like he promised. The state’s one-hundredth birthday was not an occasion to be overlooked. Bob Staples had gone to witness the sight that morning, and at five p.m., when he pulled up to the gate at Marrowbone, he was still smiling.

  “Evenin Bob,” Dimple said, nodding from on horseback.

  “Evenin Dimple.” The top on Bob’s Impala was down. He nodded to Wimpy, who was taking a leak beside his horse. For the first time, the brothers looked old to Bob. “Rained much here today?” he asked.

  “Off and on,” Dimple said.

  “Cats and dogs in Charleston. Ol
e Kennedy just stood right there in it.”

  “Did he now?”

  “See this hand?” Bob said. He took his right hand from the steering wheel and raised it before him. “This hand shook the hand of the president.”

  Dimple nodded. He was not impressed. “He came right down the Capitol steps and onto the sidewalk. Shook hands with anybody in reach, including yours truly.” Bob marveled at his own hand. “Those Secret Service men must have a real time trying to do their job.”

  Wimpy zipped up and walked over to the car. “You say you touched the president?”

  “That’s right.”

  Dimple spotted a tick burrowed in Silver’s mane. He leaned back and fetched from the saddlebag his needlenose pliers. He secured the tick with the pliers, struck a kitchen match on his thumbnail, and burned it alive.

  Bob watched, his brow furrowed. “Did you speak to him?” Wimpy asked. He stared at Bob’s hand as if the presidential seal might appear.

  “I can’t recall. It happened fast.”

  “I reckon you ain’t warshed your hand yet,” Wimpy said. Bob said he hadn’t.

  Dimple dropped the burned tick into his open palm and blew it into the air. He stuck the pliers back in the bag and said, “Did you pull his britches down and kiss his rump while you was at it?”

  Bob drove on in and parked.

  It was hot. A breeze came steady through the Cut, making it bearable for those raising the circus tent. Herchel swung the butt end of a maul into the last stake. He stood and beheld it. Double-peaked and striped red and white, it would seat two hundred. His new girlfriend had gotten the tent cheap. Bendy was her name. Russian. She’d once been a flying trapeze artist. After she broke her hip and found God, she moved out to Marrowbone and began teaching Herchel the fine arts of acrobatic lovemaking and marijuana cultivation.

  Bob Staples nodded to Herchel and looked over the tent. He felt a little foolish leaving the state capital festivities for this particular centennial affair.