The Marrowbone Marble Company

by Glenn Taylor

  Most in attendance were silent. One man in the rear stood and pointed at Noah Ball and Shorty Maynard. “Why don’t you ask them two about it,” he hollered. There were cheers and applause.

  Paul Maynard leaned against the back wall with his thumbs in his gun belt. He chewed a matchstick, expressionless.

  Martingdale tried to regain control. “Please,” he said into the microphone. “Please try to keep things civilized.” He said a few more words about what a good sign it was to have such turnouts at a meeting. “If everyone can work together,” he said, “we’ll all get somewhere.”

  He was out the door by six-thirty.

  After that, Ledford lost control of the crowd. They took turns standing up and shouting about the lack of bus service to their hollers, the unpassable roads and swinging footbridges with half-rotted boards. One man, a retired miner with advanced silicosis, stood and said, “I want to know what is being done with all that money coming in from Washington.” He took a deep breath. “I got a feelin that Deputy Maynard over there is padding his new boxspring with it.” There was approval, and some chuckling. The man went on, “I reckon he figures to pad enough greenbacks he won’t feel that pea poking him no more.”

  At that, laughter erupted, and so did Shorty Maynard. He shot from his seat and went for the old-timer, leaping over the seated laps of those in his row. Somebody stuck a foot out and tripped him, and when he sprawled across the wide middle aisle, the laughter grew louder.

  Shorty stood, his height extended, his face almost purple with anger and embarrassment. At a loss for words, he nearly drew his sidearm. Noah Ball sidestepped across the row and suggested they go outside to cool off.

  Paul Maynard snuck out before they turned to the door. He rounded the corner of the community center and waited in the dark. When the door opened, he listened. A metal lighter opened and struck flame.

  “These people have gone plumb crazy if they think they can get away with this here,” Shorty said. “I’ll ride ever one of em out on a rail.”

  “I know it, I know it,” said Noah Ball.

  Paul watched his own breath condensate on the air. He craned his neck forward to get a better listen.

  “And I will end this place quicker than Loyal Ledford can say marble.” Shorty was fuming.

  “Keep your voice down now.”

  “Why? What the hell for? You think I give a good goddamn what these welfare cases and nigger lovers hear? You think I won’t do what I say I will?” Shorty looked down at Noah Ball. He wanted his questions answered.

  “Well, I just think we ought to remember that Loyal Ledford is a war hero. He’s a decorated Marine who—”

  “You think I’m scairt of Loyal Ledford cause he fired a rifle at some slope-eyed midgets? You got another thing comin, Noah.” Shorty only shut his mouth long enough to pull on his cigarette.

  “Well,” Noah answered, “those Bonecutter brothers are rough people too, now, and I think we also got to remember that your Uncle Paul is the law around here, and he—”

  “I’ll tell you what about my uncle,” Shorty said.

  Around the wall’s corner, not five feet away, Paul quit breathing. His ire was building quick. His heartbeat slowed and he thought of his son Sam, how he’d talked this way.

  “That old man has lost it if he ever had it in the first damn place. His time is comin to an end.”

  Paul wondered what his nephew meant by those last words. He could have been talking about the next election, in ’68, making his own run at sheriff. He could have been talking about something more. Paul had always wondered if Shorty had the property deed Sam had talked about. Some old relic that claimed all of Bonecutter Ridge, including Marrowbone Cut, belonged to the Maynards.

  Paul imagined what Shorty would do if he found out his daughter Josephine was dating Willy Ledford.

  Up the Cut, the gym door opened and a swath of light and sound poured forth. Stretch Hayes was laughing and egging on Chester, whom he’d dared to backflip off the gym roof.

  “It ain’t even that high. See?” Stretch pointed to the stair step roofline.

  Shorty glared in their direction. “See that,” he said to Noah Ball. “That Hayes boy is just what I mean. Comes from a family of criminals.” He shook his head. “I’ll git him and the rest of em fore too long.”

  Orb followed Chester out the gym door. “Don’t do it, Chess,” he said. “You’ll break your neck.”

  Chester looked up, calculated rotations in his head. “I won’t Orb, don’t worry,” he said.

  Paul thought not of his dead son then, nor of his no-good nephew. He was listening to the voices of the boys up the Cut. The boys from the gym he’d come to love. There was promise in their sound.

  MARCH 1965

  HERCHEL HAD ONCE SEEN his uncle play a stand-up bass made from the gas tank of a milk truck. The instrument was part of a Tennessee jug band, and Herchel had never forgotten its sound or size. He’d vowed to one day make such an instrument, and when Mack was rebuilding the Short Bus, Herchel got his chance. The bus’s immense gas tank was corroded in two spots. Dime-sized holes spread wide. But it was made from thick-sheeted steel, and it was made to carry a tune.

  They’d been bolting and soldering for a month.

  On Sunday night, inside the Marrowbone Community Center, band practice was set to commence. Mack held the gas-tank bass off the floor by its long maple neck. Herchel rolled underneath on a creeper board and fastened there the rubber head of a toilet plunger. When he finished, he rolled back out and stood up. Mack was testing the plunger bottom, wiggling the big bass around by the neck. The suction had worked. Their contraption did not skid against the floorboards—its foundation was airtight. “Works like a dream,” Mack said. “Care to try it out?”

  Herchel plucked at the strings they’d fashioned from clothesline soaked in melted candlewax. His new bass played loud and deep. He smiled at Mack and then at Jerry, who sat in a folding chair and picked at Herb Wells’ old guitar. Over in the corner, Herb tuned a trade-in fiddle he’d gotten that morning in town. Like everyone in the corner, his eyes were on the new RCA Victor. Ledford had bought it the day before. No longer would residents have to cram into Don Staples’ dorm room for news and entertainment. Now they could watch in color. The wide cherrywood cabinet had hinged-top doors, and underneath was a stereo phonograph and an AM/FM radio. The thing had set Ledford back six hundred dollars, but the marble business was good, and his people loved television.

  Staples was the only one standing. He stared at the screen and shook his head. “Why on earth did you buy this monstrosity?” he said.

  “Price has come down on televisions.” Ledford scratched at his ever-growing beard. “I figured we could afford it after the run on cross racks at Christmas.” Mack’s invention of the Ringer cross rack had been a gold mine. Children no longer had to hand-space their marbles—the rack was precut with holes.

  “Just keep up your inventory,” Staples said. “Next thing I know you’ll steal the only cross I got.” A few years back, he’d nailed a cross-rack prototype to the top of a walking stick. If any children were interested, they could carry it down the aisle during church procession. Staples liked to joke that the drilled holes in the cross were perfect for a church such as theirs. “When the persecutors get to chasin you,” he’d always say, “there’ll be less wind resistance.”

  Across the gym floor, Chester let out a cheer. He’d done the impossible and scored on Orb. The two of them crouched on their knees over the Ringer circle and eyeballed angles.

  Herb looked in their direction, then back to the television. He thumb-plucked his strings and set the fiddle on his lap. “Bonecutters won’t even look at a television,” he said.

  Lizzie told him to hush. She and Effie and Rachel sat closest to the screen. They knitted marble bags while they watched. ABC’s Sunday Night Movie was Judgment at Nuremberg, and on the screen Marlene Dietrich strolled along a thoroughfare in a fur coat. “The German people love to sing,
no matter what the situation,” Dietrich said.

  Mack had finished up the last of his bass adjustments and strolled over. “I never heard no Kraut carry a tune,” he said.

  Lizzie told him to hush.

  Marlene Dietrich’s face filled the screen in a close-up shot. “The words are very beautiful,” she said. “Very sad. Much sadder than the English words.”

  Mack scoffed. “Sadder my black behind,” he said under his breath. Dietrich’s character went on, “The German soldier knows he’s going to lose his girl. And his life.”

  “How old do you think she is?” Effie asked. She’d lost count of her stitches.

  “She’s sixty if she’s a day,” Rachel said.

  “No. Can’t be.” Lizzie frowned and shook her head. “Look at that skin on her face. Woman doesn’t have but one wrinkle.”

  Mack said, “She sang on the USO Revue in the war. I met a private in France who said he stole her stockings right from the dressing room.” He got a far-off look, laughed a little. “This boy used to sniff em.”

  “That ain’t true,” Herb said.

  Mack went on. “She wasn’t no spring chicken back then, either. I say she’s a old woman. I say that’s a makeup job.”

  Dietrich disappeared from the screen and in her place was a black circle, ABC written across its face. The network was interrupting for a special report.

  Over by the water cooler, Herchel was walking his fingers across the strings and bobbing his head. Jerry strummed along with him, improvising what sounded like the old tune “Oil It Up and Go.” They both stopped dead at the sound that escaped Effie’s throat. There was something familiar about the sound, something terrible that Herchel couldn’t place.

  Effie stood up from her chair and put her hands to her open mouth. Lizzie followed suit. Their unfinished marble bags fell to the floor in silence. On the screen, police in Selma Alabama trampled a column of people who’d crossed a bridge.

  Ledford’s heart rate quickened. He found it difficult to breathe. “Oh no,” he said.

  A policeman swung his club against a bloodied fallen woman. Effie turned away.

  Tear gas clouded most everything. Limbs scrambled, searching for a foothold, for escape. There was none.

  Unseen white folks cheered from the roadside.

  Staples sat down in a folding chair, put his elbows on his knees, and prayed.

  Effie headed for the door. She’d not watch another moment. She needed to call her father.

  Mack held Lizzie’s hand. On the screen, a policeman in a hard hat and gas mask unknowingly stepped in front of the camera. His head was on a swivel. He watched his fellow officer ride into the crowd on horseback. As he rode, he swung a bullwhip in a figure eight, like a medieval knight. Like a Horseman of the Apocalypse.

  Mack worked his jaw. Lizzie let go his hand and followed her sister out the door. Mack watched her walk away, then turned back to the television. “Ain’t nothing new,” he said.

  Rachel looked over her shoulder at him, then at Ledford. His teeth were grit behind his lips and his nostrils flared wide. She recognized this face. She’d seen it before, more than twenty years prior, and for a moment, she was back on the sofa in her very first apartment, a fire going in the middle of the day, a voice on the radio calling for righteous might.

  In the opposite corner, Orb and Chester had ceased to shoot marbles. They were still on their knees, each holding his taw and staring at the adults, whose actions they could not figure.

  “Somethin bad happened,” Chester said.

  “It’s the Sunday movie.” Orb wanted to finish the game. “It’s about war.” Chester stood up. He tried to make out the picture from across the room. He watched the old white preacher pray, and he watched the black engineer cross his arms on his chest. The scarred man and the mute put down their instruments and walked to the television. There was a ringing in Chester’s ear. “That ain’t a movie,” he said.

  THE GROUNDS OF the City of St. Jude were covered in the sunken shoe-prints of five thousand souls. Two days of rain had turned the lawn to mush, and when the people filed in on Wednesday afternoon, the mush went to mud. They’d come for the final leg of the Selma-to-Montgomery March, and among them stood Don Staples, Harold Wells, and Mary Ledford. Don had rolled up his slacks to keep them dry. He and two other men held the rope of a field tent while Harold repaired a snapped pole. Mary stood by and reloaded her camera.

  Harold had blown off an exam and left Morgantown Monday morning. He’d seen what the rest of them had on television, and then he was at Marrowbone, asking who wanted to go with him. There was no sense trying to talk him out of it. His eyes bespoke determination, dedication to the cause. Even Lizzie had held her tongue. Like all of them, she knew that such a trip south held in its path the very real possibility of death. They’d shot Jimmie Lee Jackson. They’d beaten Reverend Reeb until he no longer drew breath.

  When Ledford had taken Mary aside and said to her, “I won’t let you go,” she’d responded, “Daddy, it’s not for you to decide.” When he’d expressed concern over Staples’ health, the older man told him, “You’re going to take over the pulpit sooner or later, son. If it’s sooner, so be it.”

  Tuesday, when night had fallen on Tennessee, Harold had crouched in a ball on the car’s floorboard. At a stoplight in Lenoir City, Mary put a blanket over his back. A man in the crosswalk eyeballed her, walked around the car, and checked the plates. He had a package of Pall Malls rolled in his T-shirt sleeve. She could read the writing through the worn cotton. He spat on the ground and kept walking. Mary’s hands trembled.

  They spent the night in Chattanooga, in the home of Herchel’s uncle, and they made it to Alabama alive.

  The City of St. Jude was God’s domain, a campsite for those who’d descended upon Montgomery to do his work. As dusk fell, Mary pointed her camera to the sky, where a helicopter droned and circled before doubling back. “Why does it keep flying over?” she asked.

  Harold wiped his hands on his blue jeans. The tent pole was repaired. “Looking for snipers,” he said.

  All around were Army troops and Alabama Guardsmen. Mary filmed their helmets and rifle tips, so cold and dull, dancing above the heads of nuns and schoolchildren and men and women from north and south and in between. White and black were together in her viewfinder. They were jammed on the lawn like sardines.

  They passed sandwiches hand over hand. The setting sun glinted off the foil wrapping and Mary’s lens filled with white light.

  She filmed a U.S. Marshal standing out front of Women’s Tent Number 4, his senses trained to know an assassin.

  Dr. King’s convoy of black sedans had been hurried through a gate in back.

  The sun set over the red brick St. Jude’s Spire.

  Darkness set in. Folks in the crowd spoke on numbers. They’d heard they were ten thousand strong.

  By nine o’clock it had gotten cold, and the mud in the field sent shivers through anklebones. Everyone waited before a big flatbed truck. Celebrities were to appear there. Their songs and jokes and words of wisdom had been promised. Behind Staples, a man asked, “Did I hear right? Is Tony Bennett here?”

  Harold had his eye out for Nina Simone. He hoped she’d sing “Mississippi Goddam.”

  The crowd pressed forward, and exhaustion got the better of some. Mary managed to squeeze out the side and find some peace at the children’s playground. A rusty carousel squealed as it spun. Four little black girls with braids in their hair gripped the bars and propelled it with their feet. When it hit top speed, they jumped on and giggled at their dizziness. Mary smiled at them. She filmed them as they spun, around and around again. Beyond the playground, a dull orange light emitted from the windows of St. Jude’s Hospital. A small boy stood in one of them and waved to Mary. She raised a hand back.

  In the pressing crowd, Harold lost track of Staples. He heard the old man’s cough and tried to locate him, but the people were too many, too loud, too anxious for something to happen. T
here were shouts here and there for help, for a doctor. Harold worried that one of them might be intended for his friend. The mood was beginning to sour.

  By the time Harold found Staples, the entertainment had begun. Anthony Perkins spoke into the microphone about the importance of the night. Feedback whistled, assaulting the eardrums. Harold locked elbows with Staples in order not to lose him again. “You all right?” he asked.

  “I’m just fine,” Staples answered.

  Dick Gregory and Sammy Davis Jr. rattled off jokes at the expense of Governor Wallace. Pete Seeger and the rest led the crowd in a rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” Harold closed his eyes and sang. He wished he knew where Mary had gone.

  Staples stifled his coughs as best he could. His feet were wet. For the first time in his life, he felt old and small.

  They did not find Mary until two a.m. They slept sitting upright in the car. The windows fogged and the air inside went stale. Harold wished Mary would lay her head on his shoulder. He wished he could kiss her and press his skin against hers, but it was not to be.

  Morning came quick, and as the march filed out of St. Jude’s, Mary, Harold, and Staples found themselves in the middle of a pack that stretched before and behind them for miles. The clouds broke up and the sun warmed their bones. Beside them, a young black man carried an enormous American flag atop the wind-bent arc of a tree limb. He led them all in a chorus of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Helicopters flew over twice and the chopping of the blades nearly drowned out their voices. They sang louder. Among them were a myriad of nuns and men in clerical collars. Staples walked straight-backed. His shoes had dried. He nodded to a priest. “Peace be with you,” he said.

  Soldiers dotted the highway. They donned helmets and leaned against the hoods of their jeeps. Rifle straps lined their shoulders. They wore looks of disinterest, their faces revealing nothing, as if they watched a parade of thirty thousand every day.

  Harold took note of the sneakers on a young black woman to his left. They were worn to nothing, the soles separated from the toe and flapping loose on the blacktop. He pointed to them. “Looks like you could use a new pair,” he said.