by Tayari Jones
I sat myself down on the bench to read the letter again. I didn’t believe in Olive’s “prophetic dreams”; besides, it wasn’t Celestial that was my undoing, it was the State of Louisiana. Still, I took some comfort in the tenderness lacing my mama’s words, but I was cut to the quick remembering how I’d reacted all those years ago. I responded, hemming and hawing, but I was a hit dog, hollering. Don’t be ashamed of us, she said without saying. I read the letter over again and again, each word a lash. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I slid it back into my pocket and looked at the mess I’d made with the boxes. Something as small as a bottom tooth could be easily lost among the rubble, easily hidden between blades of grass. Maybe it was only fitting that I move into this uncertain future without it. The grave robbers of the next millennium would find me incomplete for all eternity, the story of my life there in my jaw.
I swear to God my plan was to leave right then. I would gas up Big Roy’s car and get back on the highway, taking nothing with me but my mama’s letter.
But then I thought I spotted a tennis racket in the garage. It had been expensive, and more important, it was mine. Maybe I would give it to Big Roy; when I was little we used to hit tennis balls at the rec center in town. I walked up the sand-white driveway, thinking of Davina and what Celestial told her after Olive’s funeral. “Georgia,” I called to the air, “you are not the only one who’s a terrible person.”
I scanned the garage wall. Sure enough, the racket dangled from a little hook. I pulled it down and found it to be warped with age and disuse. When I bought this racket, it was the finest to be had in all of Hilton Head. Now it was reduced to corroding metal and catgut. The grip had gone gummy, but I mimed my backhand, butting up against the bumper of Celestial’s car. The first blow was an accident. The second, third, and fourth were more purposeful. The car alarm squealed in protest, but I didn’t stop until Celestial entered the garage with her bag on her shoulder and her keys in her hand.
“Honey, what are you doing?” She used a little remote to silence the alarm. “You okay?”
The pity in her voice scraped over my skin.
“I’m not okay. How am I supposed to be okay?”
She shook her head, and again there was that soft sadness. I have never struck a woman. Never have I wanted to. But at that moment, my hand itched to slap all that concern off her lovely face.
“Roy,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
She knew full well what I wanted her to do. It wasn’t that complicated. I wanted her to be a proper wife and provide a place for me in my own home. I wanted her to wait for me like women have been waiting since before Jesus. She kept talking, but I didn’t have any patience for damp cheeks or noise about how she tried.
“Try spending some time as a special guest of the State of Louisiana. Try that. How hard could it be to stay off your back for five years? How hard could it be to make a tired man feel welcome? I picked soybeans when I was in prison. I have a degree from Morehouse College and I’m working the land like my great-great-granddaddy. So don’t tell me about how you tried.”
She was sniffling when I attacked the car again. The tennis racket wasn’t much match for the Volvo. I couldn’t even bust out the windows. I did get the alarm to wail, but Celestial silenced it immediately.
“Roy, stop it,” she said, sighing like an exhausted mother. “Set down that tennis racket.”
“I’m not your child,” I said. “I’m a grown man. Why can’t you talk to me like I’m a man?” I couldn’t stop seeing myself through her eyes: hot and funky in my Walmart clothes and high school sweater and swinging a raggedy tennis racket like some kind of weapon. I dropped it to the floor.
“Can you please calm down?”
I scanned the neatly labeled rows of tools, hoping to find a heavy wrench or a hammer that I could use to bust out every window on that vehicle. But there, just at arm’s length, was the double-sided axe and I liked the look of it. Lo and behold, as soon as I got my hand around that thick wooden handle, the room leaned in a different direction. Celestial sucked in her breath, and there was raw fear on her face. This grated, too, but it was better than her pity. I lifted the axe as best as I could in that cramped space between the Volvo and the garage wall. The window burst, sending safety glass everywhere. But even though she was terrified, Celestial had the presence of mind to again turn off the alarm, keeping things quiet.
Still gripping the axe, I walked toward her as she shrank back.
I laughed. “You think I’m dangerous now? Do you know me at all?” I walked out of the garage with the axe slung over my shoulder like Paul Bunyan, feeling like a man. Stepping out into that cold sunny day, I was set to head back to Eloe with nothing but the axe, my mama’s letter, and the fear in my wife’s eyes.
Isn’t there something in Genesis about not looking back? A stupid glance over my shoulder showed her expression relaxing, glad I wasn’t taking anything that couldn’t be replaced and glad I didn’t destroy anything that couldn’t be repaired.
“Do you care for me, Georgia?” I asked her. “Tell me you don’t and I’m out of your life forever.”
She stood in the driveway with her arms wrapped around herself like she was freezing. “Andre is on his way.”
“I didn’t ask you about no Andre.”
“He’ll be here in a minute.”
My head hurt, but I pressed her. “It’s a yes-or-no question.”
“Can we talk when Andre gets back? We can—”
“Stop talking about him. I want to know if you love me.”
“Andre . . .”
She said his name one time too many. For what happened next, she would have to take some of the blame. I asked her a simple question and she refused to give me a simple answer.
I turned from her and made a sharp left turn, pounding across the yard, feeling the dry grass crunch under my shoes. Six long strides put me at the base of the massive tree. I touched the rough bark, an instant of reflection, to give Old Hickey the benefit of the doubt. But in reality, a hickory tree was a useless hunk of wood. Tall, and that’s all. To break the shell of a hickory nut, you needed a hammer and an act of Congress, and even then you needed a screwdriver to get at the meat, which was about as tasty as a clod of limestone. Nobody would ever mourn a hickory tree except Celestial, and maybe Andre.
When I was a boy, so little I couldn’t manage much more than a George Washington hatchet, Big Roy taught me how to take down a tree. Bend your knees, swing hard and low, follow up with a straight chop. Celestial was crying like the baby we never had, yelping and mewing with every swing. Believe me when I say that I didn’t slow my pace, even though my shoulders burned and my arms strained and quivered. With every blow, wedges of fresh wood flew from the wounded trunk peppering my face with hot bites.
“Speak up, Georgia,” I shouted, hacking at the thick gray bark, experiencing pleasure and power with each stroke. “I asked you if you loved me.”
Andre
I expected to come home to psychological chaos. But when I pulled my truck to the end of Lynn Valley Road, what I encountered was more physical than emotional. The yard was strewn with cardboard and other garbage; Celestial was standing in the driveway dressed for work, sobbing into her fists, while Roy Hamilton was hacking away at Old Hickey with my double-sided axe. I hoped that I was hallucinating. After all, I had been driving for a long time. But the piercing thwack of metal against green wood convinced me that the scene was real.
Celestial and Roy both spoke my name at the same time, striking a peculiar chord. I was torn, not sure which of them to respond to, so I asked a question that either of them could answer: “What the hell is going on?”
Celestial pointed at Old Hickey as Roy gave another gutsy swing, leaving the axe buried in the tree, like a sword stuck in a stone.
In the driveway, I stood midway between them, two separate planets, each with its own gravitational pull and orbit. The sun glinted overhead, giving light, but not heat.
“Look who’s here,” Roy said. “The third most terrible person in the world.” He picked up the tail of his shirt to mop his perspiring forehead. “The man of the hour.” He smiled broadly, looking snaggle-toothed and unscrewed. The axe jutted from the tree, immobilized.
I don’t know that I would have recognized Roy if I had run into him on the street. Yes, he was the same Roy, but prison made him bulky, deep grooves creased his forehead, and his shoulders caved a little toward his overdeveloped chest. Although we were roughly the same age, he seemed much older but not in that elder-statesman way like Big Roy; he was more like a powerful machine that was wearing out.
“What’s up, Roy?”
“Well . . .” He looked up at the sun, not bothering to shield his eyes. “I got locked up for a crime I didn’t commit, and when I get home, my wife has hooked up with my boy.”
Celestial walked toward me like this was any other day and I had just returned from work. By habit, I curled my arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. The touch of her was reassuring. No matter what had happened in my absence, I was the one holding her now.
“You okay, Celestial?”
“Yes, she’s okay,” Roy said. “You know I wouldn’t hurt her. I’m still Roy. She may not be my wife, but I’m still her husband. Can’t y’all see that?” He held his hands up as if to show he was unarmed. “Come talk to me, Dre. Let’s sit down like men.”
“Roy,” I said. “Everybody can see we got a conflict here. What can we do to squash it?” After I released Celestial, my arms felt useless. “It’s all right,” I said to her, but I was really trying to convince myself. Joining Roy in the “don’t shoot” salute, I advanced toward Old Hickey. The odor of the exposed wood was oddly sweet, almost like sugarcane. Displaced chunks of wood littered the grass like misshapen confetti.
“Let’s talk,” Roy said. “I’m sorry about what I did to your tree. I got carried away. A man has feelings, you know. I have a lot of feelings.” He swept the wood chips from the seat.
“My father built this bench,” I said. “When I was little.”
“Dre,” he said. “Is that all you got?” He popped up, snatching me into a back-clapping man-hug, and I was embarrassed at how I balked at his touch.
“So,” he said, releasing me and plopping down on the bench. “What you know good?”
“This and that,” I said.
“So are we going to talk about this?”
“We can,” I said.
Roy patted the space next to him and then leaned back on the tree, stretching his legs in front of him. “Did my old man tell you how we set you up?”
“He mentioned it,” I said.
“So what was it? I need to know that, and I promise I’ll get out of your way. What was it that made you say, ‘Fuck ole Roy. I’m sorry he’s sitting in prison, but I think I’ll help myself to his woman’?”
“You’re misrepresenting,” I said. “You know that’s not how it went down.” Because it felt dirty leaving Celestial in the driveway, out of earshot, I beckoned to her.
“Don’t call her over here,” Roy said. “This is between me and you.”
“It’s between all of us,” I said.
Across the street our neighbor straightened several poinsettias, placing them into a row. Roy waved at her and she waved back. “Maybe we should invite the whole neighborhood and let it be between everybody.”
Celestial sat on the bench between us, clean like rain. I circled my arm around her shoulder.
“Don’t touch her,” Roy said. “You don’t have to pee on her like a dog marking your territory. Have some manners.”
“I’m not territory,” Celestial said.
Roy got up and began an agitated pacing. “I’m trying to be gracious. I swear to God, I am. I was innocent,” he said. “Innocent. I was minding my business and next thing I know I got snatched up. It could happen to you, too, Dre. It takes nothing for some he-say she-say to go left. You think the police are going to care that you got your own house or that you got that Mercedes SUV? What happened to me could happen to anybody.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I said. “I been black all my life.”
Celestial said, “Roy, not one day went by when we didn’t talk about you, didn’t think about you. You think we don’t care, but we do. We thought you were gone for good.”
I was silent as Celestial explained. Her words were those we agreed upon, but now they rang less than true. Were we saying that our relationship was an accident of circumstance? Were we saying, too, we loved each other only because Roy had been unavailable? That was a lie. We loved each other because we always had, and I refused to ever claim anything different.
“Celestial,” Roy said. “Stop talking.”
“Look,” I said. “Roy, you have to see that we’re together. Full stop. Details are not important. Full stop.”
“Full stop?” he said.
“Full stop,” I repeated.
“Listen,” Celestial pleaded. “Both of you.”
“Go in the house,” Roy said. “Let me talk to Dre.”
I pressed my hand to the small of her back to urge her toward the door, but she was adamant. “I’m not going,” she said. “This is my life, too.”
We both turned to her. The admiration I feel for her flashed on Roy’s craggy face. “Listen if you want to,” he said. “I told you to go in the house for your own benefit. You don’t need to hear what me and Andre need to talk about. I’m trying to be a gentleman.”
“It’s her choice,” I said. “We don’t keep secrets.”
“Oh yes you do,” Roy sneered. “Ask her about last night.”
I asked her with my eyes, but her expression was blank, shuttered down against the sun.
“I’m telling you that you don’t want to be out here,” Roy said to Celestial. “When men talk, it’s not a pretty kind of conversation. That’s really the main thing about being in prison. Too many men in one place. You’re stuck in there knowing that there is a world full of women who are putting out flowers, making things nice, civilizing the whole planet. But there I was stuck in a cage like an animal with a bunch of other animals. So I’m going to give you one more chance, Celestial. Take your pretty little self in the house. Go sew some baby dolls or something.”
“I’m not going,” she said. “Somebody has to be out here who has some sense.”
“Go on in the house, baby,” I said. “You had your chance to talk to him all day yesterday.” I tried to make the word talk sound neutral, not like I was wondering what they did beyond conversation.
“Ten minutes is enough,” Roy said. “This won’t take long.”
Celestial stood up. I watched her back, smooth and muscular, as she walked away. Roy looked across at the neighbor who was watching openly now, not even bothering to fiddle with her flowers.
After Celestial finally disappeared, he said, “Like I said. The world is full of women, Atlanta especially. You’re black, employed, heterosexual, unincarcerated, and into sisters. This shit is your fucking oyster. But you had to go for my wife. That was disrespectful to me as a person. It was disrespectful to what I was going through, what all of us are going through in this country. Celestial was my woman. You knew it. Hell, you’re the one that introduced us.” Now he was standing before me, his voice not so much raised but going deeper. “What, was it just convenient? You wanted some pussy next door so you wouldn’t have to bother getting in your car?”
Now I got to my feet, because there are some words that a man can’t take sitting down. When I stood up, he was waiting on me and thrust his chest against mine. “Get out of my face, Roy.”
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me why you did it.”
“Why I did what?”
“Why you stole my wife. You should have left her alone. She was lonely. Fine, but you weren’t. Even if she was throwing it at you, you could have walked away.”
“What about this is so hard for you to comprehend?”
/> “That’s bullshit,” Roy said. “You knew she was my wife before you got caught up with this love stuff. You saw your opportunity and you took it. Long as you got your dick wet, you didn’t care.”
I pushed him because there was no other option. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Or what? You don’t like my language? We are not all that PC in prison; we say what’s on our mind.”
“So what do you mean? What do you want me to say? If I tell you she was a piece of ass, you would want to fight. If I tell you I want to marry her, it won’t be any better. Why don’t you just hit me and cut the chitchat? The bottom line is that she doesn’t belong to you. She never belonged to you. She was your wife, yeah. But she didn’t belong to you. If you can’t understand that, kick my ass and get it over with.”
Roy paused for a minute. “That’s what you have to say? That she doesn’t belong to me?” He let out of stream of spit through the space where his tooth used to be. “She doesn’t belong to you either, my friend.”
“Fair enough.” I walked away, hating the questions twining up my legs like a barbed vine. It was doubt that did it, that left me exposed, not watching my own back. Roy’s laugh shook me up, made me forget that I trusted her like I trusted my own eyes.
He struck me from behind before I had even taken a step. “Don’t walk away from me.”
This is the violence my father promised me. Take it, he had said. Take it and get on with your life. I offered my face and Roy hit me squarely in my nose before I could even ball my fists. I felt the impact first, then the hot gush over my lip, followed by the pain. I got in a couple of strong blows, a low hook to the kidneys and drove my head into his chest before he wrestled me to the ground. Roy spent the last five years in prison while I’d been writing computer code. Up until this very instant, I was proud of my clean record, my not-thug life. But on the grass beneath Old Hickey, shielding myself from Roy’s granite fists, I wished I were a different type of man.