by LOTT, BRET
The four men were watching me now, waiting, I figured, for whatever might happen next.
I said, “Bring him on inside.” I paused, then said, “Somebody go find Pastor, too.”
It would be lifetimes later before I knew what’d really kept me out there on the porch Sunday afternoons long after my momma, kept my eyes on the green and searching for signs of his life. Only after the lifetime between my daddy’s death and my momma dying, two months that couldn’t be measured by any means of a calendar or the movement of the moon, then the lifetime spent on the little piece of childhood I had left, spent with Missy Cook, my grandma, in a house more dead than my parents would ever be. Then the lifetime of school I spent away in Picayune, lifetimes that ended, all of them, with my first night with Leston and hearing the ghosts of my momma and daddy there in the room with me. And since then have come countless nights spent with those ghost sounds surrounding us, the strength and power and quiet warmth of Leston’s hard worked body the surest comfort I have ever known. My silent husband’s language grew to be my own body and how he touched me, the miracle of a callused hand placed gently to my cheek, my neck, my breast word enough of the love he held for me.
But on that first night, our wedding night, those sounds of my momma and daddy rose up around us like the resurrected dead, I knew love then, the doom and joy of it, the pain of Leston inside me and the pleasure of knowing the promise of a future. I knew only then that I’d stayed out on the porch because I loved them both enough to wish my daddy dead, but loved them both enough to wish him back.
I have taken care of myself since the moment I pulled the blanket over him, a fact Leston already knew before he’d even let out his words to the cold morning of our room. I knew what loss was, knew what it was God could take away from you, His answers to prayer sometimes the greatest curse you could call down. But even so, I prayed right then and there, my husband sitting on the edge of our bed and growing old in what seemed only the few moments we’d been awake, myself going the same way, too, I knew, that the baby inside me would be born alive and breathing, with ten fingers and ten toes. That was all I sought, what I figured couldn’t be too much to ask.
CHAPTER 2.
WE’D BURIED MY DADDY THE NEXT DAY, HIM LYING OUT IN THE ROOM OFF our kitchen just overnight, time enough for Pastor to have his hand at trying to comfort us, and time enough for my momma to dress Daddy in a bundle of fine clothes I’d never known we had. Time enough, too, for the men who’d brought him, my uncle Benjamin one of them, to get back to the logging camp and settle up his monies with the foreman, then pack up his belongings, all of them fitting into one yellowed pillowcase.
When the four of them showed up on our porch the next morning, they were all cleaned up and wearing what I figured were their best clothes, new jeans and white shirts buttoned up to the throat, boots rubbed with a daub of oil. Each of them’s hair was thick with pomade, and for a moment I wondered if they’d used my daddy’s own tin of it, greased up their hair with the toiletries of a dead man.
I’d been the one to answer the door, and Benjamin led them in, the pillowcase slung over his shoulder. Once they’d filed in, Benjamin let it fall off his back, held it in front of him. He started to smile at me, the corners of his mouth just turning up, but before he could finish I’d brought my eyes down to the floor, closed the door quiet as I could.
I didn’t want to see him smile, didn’t want to run the risk, I knew even then, of seeing in his face any bit of my daddy’s.
I turned from the door, and watched what would happen next. If I had my way, I thought, if I could fix all this, I would have them out of here and back at camp, my momma and me the only ones waiting for Pastor and for Mr. Reeves, the coffin-builder in Purvis and the man who would be digging the grave not fifty feet behind our house.
It was what Momma asked for as soon as Pastor had arrived in his wagon the afternoon before, as soon as he’d made his way in the door. She’d looked Pastor square in the eye, her chin higher than I’d ever seen it, and said, “Bring a coffin tomorrow at noon. Mr. Reeves can bury him out back.”
Pastor had only nodded, took off his hat, held it with both hands. For some reason I thought I could see fear in his face, as though her merely meeting his eyes were enough to destroy him, or as though she’d suddenly become someone else, a woman with standing, bearing, a voice he knew he had to listen to.
She said nothing else to him, though he stayed until after dark, reading to her from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes and the Gospels of Luke and John, first by the light from the failing sun outside the windows, then by the fire. All that time she only sat in the rocker, her chin still high, Pastor hunched with the work of recognizing words in a room too dark for reading.
Then he left, his Bible tucked under one arm, the hat in both hands as he backed his way to the door, me standing there and holding it open for him. When he made it to the threshold he paused, glanced down at me. He reached out a hand, touched my head, and I twisted away from under his palm, the move now instinct in me. I wanted no one, ever, to pat my head again.
“Jewel, ” he said, smiling. “You’ll be fine.” He looked at my momma, still in the rocker. “The two of y’all will be just fine. Given time, and the Lord willing.”
My momma gave him a small nod, let her eyes fall back to the fireplace, the dying light there, and he was gone.
As soon as I heard the sound of his wagon moving away into the night, Momma stood, her chin now low on her chest, hands limp at her sides, eyes nearly closed. She stared at the fire a moment, then turned, and I followed her back into her room, listened in the dark to the low groan the bottom dresser drawer made as she pulled it out, heard her move hands through whatever clothes were in there. Then came the sound of the drawer pushed closed, a small, high scream of wood on wood, and I turned, not certain where she was behind me, but knowing we were headed for the room off the kitchen, where the men had laid my daddy on the table.
We moved through the darkened kitchen, the only light the small bits of flickering red that made their way from the fireplace in the front room.
Before me was the room my daddy lay in, but I could see nothing in there, only black, a black so black it seemed to crawl into me, a darkness that came in through my eyes and ears and skin, and I remember closing my eyes, holding my breath, afraid the darkness would swallow me up. I moved into the room, my hand in front of me, feeling the air, and then I touched rough wool. I stopped.
Behind me came the sound of a match strike, the sudden and awful smell of sulfur in the air, and I opened my eyes.
Momma had lit a candle she’d gotten from somewhere, before me now the heap that was my daddy, covered with the blanket. Across the gray folds and contours danced my own shadow, Momma with the candle held high behind me. My head and shoulders were huge, moved across him, bobbed and jumped with the light from the candle, and I knew I would never be that big, knew I could never move in such fanciful ways, my daddy now dead.
“You go on into the front room, ” Momma whispered behind me. “You leave us two alone.” She was beside me, my shadow trailing off the blanket and, I could see out the corner of my eye, taken up by the wall. I was even bigger now.
I stood there a moment, reached to the wool again, took a-piece of it in my hand and fingered it the way Benjamin had. Then I let it drop, looked at Momma.
She had a bundle of clothes under one arm, the candle in the other.
She swallowed hard, her chin down, her eyes never leaving the blanket.
I couldn’t recognize her. I’d never seen her before, never seen the hair pulled back and tucked above her neck, the soft curve of her nose, the line of her chin. A lady stood next to me, one whose beauty I’d never felt nor could lay claim to, and I knew already she was on her way to dying, something inside me, maybe the Holy Spirit, maybe God Himself letting me know what was ahead, the word orphan suddenly too close, loud in my ear.
She lifted her chin, blinked. “Go, ” she whispered, but there’d been no need
for the word. I was already backing away from the two of them and toward the kitchen, then toward the fireplace. Once there I poked up the flame, the spring night outside still holding close some last shard of winter, and as I felt the warmth and comfort of the fire rise up to me, I heard the hard, cold weeping my momma gave out, the give and pull of the blanket as she revealed him to herself, and began dressing him.
Benjamin and the others I would never know their names, never even see any of them, my uncle included, again stood a few feet from my mother, her rocker still set near the hearth, the flames and embers and heat long gone.
He still had the pillowcase in front of him, then gently set it on the floor. He said, “Ma’am, ” and paused. I was next to the rocker now, my hands at my sides, though some part of me wanted to place my hand on Momma’s shoulder, feel whatever life might be in her after she’d stayed up the entire night with my daddy. Her eyes were puffed up and full, her hands white as she worked her fingers, clutching them, letting go.
Then, quieter, Benjamin said, “Patricia, ” and looked down.
“Ma’am will do just fine, ” she shot at him, her voice iron. I nearly flinched, her words so quick. Her chin was up, and the same feeling I’d had, the feeling she was no one I knew, came on me again.
“Ma’am, ” Benjamin said right back at her. He looked up, and despite myself I saw in his face pieces of my daddy, his cheeks high and shiny, his skin a deep tan, black hair with the same smell as Sunday mornings.
And there were his eyes, the irises nearly black, the whites all the brighter for it. Of course he was my father’s brother.
He knelt, the pillowcase on the floor blossoming with the move so that what lay inside suddenly spilled out. “This here’s his things, ” he said.
I leaned forward, looked down at the small pile. No one else moved, not even Momma, and for a moment I felt I’d somehow betrayed her by giving in to what lay here. But then I knelt, too, and began to take things up, examine them for what they might tell me about the man I’d wished dead.
The first thing I picked up was a cigar box. I shook it, the sound like rocks inside. I opened it, found only one rock, a chunk of fool’s gold the size of my first three fingers, the gold specks in it bright enough to give good reason, I figured, to keep it. Next were two cuff links, cheap things rusted where the gold paint had chipped off, in there, too, were three small arrowheads, nothing special, one of them even with the tip broken off. I’d seen enough of them before at school, boys bringing them in from the ground their fathers worked.
There was nothing else in the box.
No one spoke while I pawed through my daddy’s souvenirs, what he’d deemed keepable from his life, this pile his legacy to me and my momma.
There were a few picture postcards from New Orleans, a steamboat, Jackson Square, another of a smiling black mammy, a little burrhead next to her, the two of them grinning and holding huge pieces of watermelon.
Scrolled across the bottom of the picture were the words Greetings from New Orleans. On the backs of the cards were no words, no stamps. Only blank space and the small words telling who’d printed up the cards. I held them in my hand, just looking at the empty space.
“He couldn’t write, ” Benjamin said. “Nor read, of course, neither.”
I put them down, then pushed around an old comb, a coil of rope, a belt.
I said, “When was he there? In New Orleans.”
No one answered, and I didn’t look up, didn’t want them to believe I might truly be interested. But I was.
Momma was the one to speak. She said, “That’s where your daddy and I had our honeymoon, right down in the French Quarter. That’s where he got those.”
“Oh, ” I said.
Benjamin took up the cards, held them out to Momma. “You want to keep these? ” he asked.
“I” she started, and I held my breath. She stopped rocking, then slowly put out a hand to him, took the cards. Benjamin put his hand down as soon as she’d taken them, and Momma let the cards rest on her lap, her hands holding one another again. She didn’t look at them.
Then I found the tin of pomade, there beneath a shirt with three buttons missing. I opened up the can, saw inside the dull pink swirls, evidence of his fingertips. I brought the tin close to my nose, took in the sweet smell, but this time it was too much for me, so that I gagged a moment, brought the tin down and snapped back on the lid as quick as I could.
Benjamin must have thought I’d begun to cry, because he put his hand to my back again, the same touch he’d given yesterday when we’d stood looking at my newly dead father, and said, “Now, honey, you go on ahead and cry.”
But I got my voice from somewhere, tried my best to make it the same iron my momma had. I said, “Don’t you worry about me, ” and reached down to the bottom of the sack where a photograph lay face down, all I could see of it the curlicued edges of the paper, the white back faded to brown.
I picked it up, turned it over. It was a picture of a man, the photograph soft and worn, as though it’d been crumpled and rolled flat any number of times. He stood next to a big wingback chair, his elbow resting on top, the other hand on his hip. His chin was hard, the bones in his cheeks high, his skin even darker than my daddy’s. His eyes were black, turned from the camera to something far off. He had on a white hat, the crease in the crown perfect, the vest he wore black and white stripes, gray pants. His boots shone in the picture, one foot crossed over the other so that the toe pointed down and rested on the Persian rug beneath him. Even through the wrinkles and folds of the photograph I could feel the attitude he bore, the one that kept the eyes focused somewhere else, the hand at the hip, his head tipped just a hair to the left, as if daring the photographer to tell him to hold it up straight.
Before I could think of what I might be asking, I said, “Who is this?
” Again no one answered, and I waited, the photograph in my hand.
I looked up from it after a few moments, saw Benjamin eyeing my momma.
I turned to her. Her eyes were on the window, searching for something I couldn’t imagine, and she nodded.
Benjamin said, “That’s his daddy. Our daddy. Your grandpa.” He paused.
“Jacob Chetauga. Then Jacob Chandler. Choctaw. Was. He been dead twenty-one years.”
I looked up to Momma. Her eyes were closed now.
I turned to the photograph, tried to figure what this might mean, my grandpa an Indian.
But it only took a moment before I felt my fingers go hot, felt my face flush at the sudden knowledge that things tumbled down from this photograph, down to me and who I was and the part of me that gave me the same black, fine hair my daddy had, the same thin nose and skin that stayed more tan than any child I knew, even through dead winter, while my momma’s skin turned red after twenty minutes outside.
I held it with both hands, ran a finger across the soft paper, and I saw for the first time that no matter how much I’d wished my daddy gone, he would always be with me, here in me, just as he was here in his own daddy. This was me I saw in the photograph.
I stood. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me now, even Momma’s. I said, “This is what I’ll keep, ” and I turned, headed into the kitchen.
Once in there I didn’t know what to do, where else I could go. From where I stood at the sink-pump I could see into the room to the table my daddy lay on, could see, in fact, his legs from the knee down, boots stiff and shiny, pantlegs black. I knew I didn’t want in there, but outside, right out the back door, was the coop and the garden, beyond that the tree he’d be buried under not long from now.
Then Cathe ral stood in the doorway. She was holding a huge blue cookpot, her thin, black arms straining with the weight, the muscles there shiny with sweat. I moved to the screen door, the photograph in one hand, and pushed it open.
She moved in, and already I could smell the food. Chicken, I knew.
And sweet potatoes, and collards and biscuits. Her teeth were clenched, and I wondere
d how far she’d carried the pot, as she made her way through the kitchen and toward the room my daddy was in.
“You can’t” I started, but by that time she was in the doorway. She froze.
“Lord have mercy, ” she whispered, and turned, her eyes shut, teeth still clenched, sweat across her forehead. She made it to the stove, and set the pot down. She opened her eyes, looked at me only a moment, her eyes never meeting mine, before she brought them to the floor.
She’d never looked at me any longer than that.
Her hands were at her sides, and she shook them a little, loosing up the muscles, her arms still glistening. I’d always imagined she was a couple of years older than me, her hips still narrow but her face with a grimace I figured could only come with a little more age, more knowledge about the world as she moved through it. But all I knew of her was that a nigger girl had showed up at our house not a week after my daddy’d left, and had been here three times a week since to weed out in the garden or to clean out the coop, take eggs into town, chop off the heads and pluck the chickens we would eat, while my momma sat on the porch and I practiced my multiplications. One evening a few weeks after she’d started I asked Momma where she’d come from, how she’d gotten her name.
Cathe ral never spoke to me any more words than she had to, our language a series of nods and glances defining which rows of tomatoes she would work, whether the rhubarb was ready or not, each jerk of a chin or half-word freighted with what we wanted to give it. I knew her name only because I’d asked her after she’d been working for us a week.
Momma’d answered that Cathe ral’s family’d been owned by Catholics in Bogaloosa, and that she’d hired her on now Daddy was gone, that she’d been paying her a nickel a week. I believed her about the name, but I knew that the money paid out wasn’t true, I’d never even seen the two of them talk to each other, much less exchange any money between them.
She was only here, standing at the back screen door each Monday, Wednesday and Friday once I was home from school, or there just at sunup during the summer, waiting for me to signal her what to do.