by H. M. Mann
I grab it and pull him to me, giving him a quick hug. “Thank you.” I step back.
“Uh-yep.”
“We’ll have to go fishing sometime.”
“Uh-yep. I’ll have everythin’ we’ll need ready for you.”
I nod. “And I’ll bring my son, too.”
“I’d like that.” He clears his throat again and exhales deeply. “You got everythin’?”
I reposition the backpack. “Yeah.”
“Just stay on Twenty-nine, and you’ll be fine.”
“Bye.”
I walk away, two quarters sliding back and forth in my boot, as my tears dry in the Alabama sun.
20: On the Road, Valley, Alabama, to Roanoke, Virginia
After half an hour of walking through Lanett, Alabama, I rest near some railroad tracks just before the bridge over the Chattahoochee River into Georgia. The river looks like it wants to spill its banks all the way to where I’m standing. The railroad tracks look tempting, especially since the skies above are looking as gruesome as they were down in Mobile. But I’m through riding trains. I have a sturdy set of legs, a full canteen, and Twinkies. What more could a man need to go for a walk?
How about an umbrella?
It’s not …
It starts to drizzle, and then it pours.
What is it with you and rain, Manny?
I don’t know. I must be a magnet.
As I trot across the bridge into Georgia, I hear a tinging sound coming from my backpack. Thinking it must be the lighter hitting the canteen and not wanting to set the backpack on fire, I slow and hold the backpack in front of me, unzipping the main compartment until I see … a silver snuff can lid, the one with the deer on it.
I stop in the middle of the bridge and pull it out, and it shines despite the darkened skies. Why would Hughes give this to me? The lid is solid silver and literally worth a bundle, maybe two. I guess he had to give it to someone. I could give it to my son, after setting it in stone or something. Yeah, it’s a gift from one father to a son not his own to yet another son—
Not his own.
Don’t start.
I only come out when you’re confused, or hadn’t you already figured that out?
But I’m not confused.
You’re crying again.
It’s the rain.
I wipe my face for good measure and find a few hot tears.
You gonna cry all the way through Georgia, too, boy?
No.
You are getting soft.
Tears don’t make a man soft. They make him human.
I’m rolling my eyes over that one. Who died and made you a philosopher?
I smile.
What you got to smile about?
Everything.
I put the lid into the backpack and zip it tightly, and The Voice zips his lips, too. I don’t mind the Voice as much as I used to, not that we’re best friends or anything like that, because in a way, the Voice keeps me honest. I don’t know if it’s me, or my conscience, or my soul, or even some angry soul or ancestor from my past. But we’re getting along as I’m moving along.
The rain stops as I pass through North West Point. Funny name for a town. Is there an East West Point or a West West Point? And by the time I get to Long Cane, I see folks out and about in front of their houses. It’s not quite like stepping back in time, but it’s close. I see old style curly kits, nearly every man wearing a baseball hat or hat of some kind, lots of striped shirts and rolled up jeans, and even folks playing horseshoes, the pit splashing up whenever someone gets a ringer.
When the sun’s standing highest in the sky, I get to La Grange, more railroad tracks tempting me. I’m doing okay so far, and though I should probably take my boots into Boston Shoe Repair in front of me, I don’t. They’ll make it. I see a sign on Bull Street that makes me smile. Ebony Hair Design, just a half block from 29. I haven’t left 29 since Valley, and I’ve been doing fine. Do I walk a measly fifty feet away?
Why are you so superstitious all of a sudden?
Because strange things have been happening to me.
There’s an explanation for every one of them.
Explain my jump from the McKees Rocks Bridge that didn’t kill me.
Luck, sheer luck.
And Luke happening to have a heroin addict cousin so he knew what to do.
Coincidence.
And Rose getting me a job.
A woman that desperate, she would have hired the next live body.
And me catching that first train outside Tunica.
Luck.
Finding Red?
He found you, remember?
It was a big train yard. What about the train stopping at the right place just before the bridge in Mobile?
Water on the tracks, I don’t know.
Explain the lighter.
It caused a cop to find you.
He didn’t arrest me.
But he could have.
True, but he didn’t. And now I have fifty cents in my boot to make a phone call.
You got fifty cents in your boot to give you a blister is what you have. How do you know it’s for a phone call?
What else can you get for fifty cents?
I don’t know. A soda. You’ve got to be thirsty for more than water. And it’s probably your own money anyway, and you just forgot you put it in there. It don’t mean nothing.
Well, if it don’t mean nothing, it won’t hurt nothing either.
I step away from 29 and walk into Ebony Hair Design, an old standing ashtray holding the door open. When I see a row of black ladies under hair dryers and three more in the chairs getting trimmed, I almost walk out.
“You lost?” a stylist asks.
“Uh, no.” I have thirteen sets of eyes on me. Though that’s my lucky number, I’m feeling strange. “Um, do you have a payphone?”
“There’s one around the corner,” another stylist says.
“Out on Twenty-nine?”
“Yeah,” the second stylist says. “You probably walked right past it.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
I walk back out to 29 and look up and down the street. Across the street is a payphone.
You looked pretty foolish, boy.
Shut up.
You ain’t supposed to see no sistuhs till their hair is done.
It’s because I left 29.
No, it’s cuz you don’t know that a sign that says “Ebony Hair Designs” is a place for women only.
I cross the street while the scratchy voice laughs in my head, take the phone out of its cradle, and fish in my boot for the change.
Who you gonna call?
Leave me alone.
Why don’t you call Penny? You have her number, right?
No.
How about Rose then?
I don’t have her number either.
Auntie June?
I could …
She won’t take no collect call. She’s cheap.
Yeah, you’re right. I could call Mary—
—and talk to her mama.
But I might get Mary this time. She always accepted my collect calls from County.
But what if it’s her mama? You might lose your magic coins.
Shut up.
Oh, but you know it’ll work cuz you’re still on 29. Magic coins always work on Highway 29.
Maybe I’m supposed to call Maxi to thank him again for the lighter.
Him? What for? He’ll just give you another history lesson and tell you to “listen to the wind.”
It’s a lesson I’ll never forget.
Give me a break. So who can you call?
I have Hughes’s number. I could call him.
To tell him what? That you’ve walked all of maybe twenty miles? The man’s probably out fishing anyway.
I could tell him that I wish he was my father.
Not that sob story again.
I take Hughes’s card from my pocket, drop in the coins, and dial the number. I let it ri
ng fifteen times with no answer.
Told you he was fishing.
I dig the quarters from the coin return and return them to my boot.
How do you know those are your magic coins?
Shut up.
They could be any two coins, you know.
Give it a rest!
But I have no time to rest. The Twinkies disappear before I get through Whitfield, where a Seaboard Coast Line train seems to follow me, and I finish the canteen by the time I get to Hogansville. It’s also getting close to dinnertime. I decide against stopping to eat at Spradlin Restaurant even though the air around it smells so good, and I continue on through Trimble.
I pass an old brown woman wearing an apron, her gray hair parted down the middle. She feeds kittens dry Purina on the steps to her house. Her wooden screen door is open, flies buzzing in and out, and the kittens slurp water from a Mason jar. A wooden basket of squash sits at her feet. She waves, and I wave back. As I’m almost past her, she begins shucking peas from a paper bag into a glass bowl.
In the next field over, I see black kids playing dodge ball, several children playing hide-and-seek in some woods. Beyond them, I see wooden frame houses far back from the road, dirt driveways leading up to them. Some are boarded up, but they’re still standing. Some even have outhouses. I must be in the country. The electric wires overhead don’t have a single pair of shoes dangling from them. This is nice. This is watermelon, ham hocks, and collard greens country for sure.
I rest beside a tree, a mailbox nailed to it, wiping my face with my hand towel. An old dusty brown man with a walker shuffles toward me from a house that has hundreds of tree stumps around it, the roof silver tin. He wears a plain striped shirt, overalls, and a dusting of white hair.
“Evenin’,” he says.
“Hey.”
“You mind gettin’ my mail for me?”
I reach into the mailbox and pull out a woodworking catalog. I hand it to him.
“Thirsty?” he asks.
“Yes sir.”
“C’mon back.”
Don’t leave 29!
I’m only getting a drink.
The old man might be the devil!
Shut up.
“Name’s Moses Green,” he tells me as we take a leisurely walk back to his porch over the damp, red earth.
“Emmanuel Mann.”
As old as Moses must be, his face has no wrinkles at all. He must have had a hard life with few smiles.
“My well is around back,” he says as he carefully mounts his steps.
I walk around to the back and see more stumps, a few large logs, and lots of kindling. I also see an old metal pump with a spigot. I crank the handle until water gushes out into my free hand. Cold, and crystal clear. I fill my canteen and even douse my face, neck, and back. I return to the porch and find him whittling, several tools within his reach.
“Thanks,” I say, and I turn to leave.
“You could stay,” he says. “You look tired. Been walkin’ long?”
“I, uh, left Valley, Alabama, this morning.”
He stops whittling. “You walked forty miles in one day?”
I’ve come that far? I’m almost halfway to Atlanta. “Yes sir, I guess I have.”
“You better come sit down ‘fore you fall down.” He points at a stool.
I sit on the hand-carved stool next to him and take sips from the canteen, watching his hands turn a little piece of dark wood into the figure of a man about five inches tall. My feet thank me for getting off them, and I unlace my boots to let my feet breathe a little. Fireflies dot the night outside the porch, and I don’t know how Moses can see to whittle without a porch light.
“You hear voices, Emmanuel?” he asks suddenly.
“Excuse me?”
“I asked if you heard voices. I do.”
What’d I tell you? This old man is the devil!
“You … do?”
“Um-hmm. They tell me what to carve.” He turns and takes a sip of something from an old jelly jar. “You see, the voices of my ancestors are in this wood, and they talk to me. All the wood you see around here, they planted it.” He blows dust from the figure. “And I turn what they planted into art.” He holds it up to me. “What do you see?”
The dusk is creeping in, so I have to lean close to the figure. “A man.”
“Look closer.”
He’s holding something. A shield? “He’s African.”
“Yes.”
“A warrior?”
He pulls the figure to him and continues carving. “The voices told me to carve a warrior today. I don’t know if I’m to give him a spear or not. They’ll let me know.” His hands grow still. “They said not to give him a mask, that he wouldn’t need one.” He looks at me. “I think I’m supposed to give it to you.” He opens his palm, the figure standing at attention.
“I can’t take it.” It’s like art I’ve seen at the Crawford Grill, and that stuff has to be expensive.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t earn it.”
“You got my mail for me.”
“That’s hardly worth it.”
He taps the woodworking magazine with a gnarled finger. “It is to me. I use this to get my tools. Can’t work without ‘em.”
“Where I come from, they’d sell figures like this for fifteen, maybe even twenty dollars apiece or more.”
“And where do you come from?” he asks.
I used to answer “Pittsburgh” automatically, but now I’m not so sure. “Well, originally my people came from Ghana.” And just saying that gives me goose bumps.
He leans back and nods. “Yes.”
“They were captured and brought to Mobile Bay, and they later started Africatown.”
He nods and smiles. “Yes. Africatown. Down near Mobile.”
“Then they migrated eventually all the way to Pittsburgh. That’s where I live now.”
“Ah, Pittsburgh. You must know Thaddeus.”
“Who?”
“Thaddeus Mosley. Another man the wood speaks to. You must visit him when you get back.” He closes his fingers over the figure. “I want you to have it, to show to Thaddeus, to let him know I am still alive. Will you do that for me?”
“Sure.” He hands me the figure, and it feels heavy in my hands. How can something only five inches tall weigh so much? “Where will I find him?”
He smiles. “Probably at his home, sittin’ as I’m sittin’, talkin’ to a piece of wood that’s talkin’ back.” He looks off into the distance. “Hmm.” He reaches for a stick of wood in a bin beside him and immediately starts carving. “You need a place to stay tonight?”
“Yes.”
He closes his eyes, but his hand still carves. “I have a shed out back. It has a floor, so it’s dry.”
I am feeling weary, and trying to see through the dark to watch his hands is wearing out my eyes. “Is there something I can do for you?”
He smiles. “My dishes. I can’t seem to keep up with them.”
“Okay.”
“And if you’re hungry, there’s some stew on the stove. Won’t take but a couple minutes to warm it up. Bread’s in the fridge so it doesn’t get moldy.”
“Great. You want me to bring you some?”
“Already ate.”
I leave the stool and enter Moses’ house, and it is an art show everywhere I look. There isn’t a bit of space anywhere that doesn’t have an African figure on it. They fill an entire bookcase against a wall, they litter the floor, they even perch themselves on top of his refrigerator. He has carved an entire tribe, an entire African nation, and they live in his house with him.
Told you the man was crazy. He could be a rich man if he did something with these.
He is a rich man. And one day someone will do something with these.
Even at only ten bucks a pop, there must be ten thousand dollars’ worth in here. You got that backpack, right?
So?
He won’t miss a couple. H
e’s almost blind as it is.
No. I’m his guest.
The sink in the kitchen is full of plates and more jelly jars, but it doesn’t take long to clean and dry them, and I eat my stew and bread while I work. As I open the cabinets to put the dishes away, I see more figures, some so intricate they almost look like flesh and blood. The cabinet where the jelly jars go bursts with painted figures, and the shelf for the plates is lined with fierce warriors, all of them raising spears and fists.
After washing my own bowl and wiping off the counter, I return to the porch. “All done. The stew was delicious.”
He holds up a carving of a little boy and a little girl. “Give this one to your children. As a gift.”
I take the carving, this one done in lighter wood, and look into the boy’s face, and it almost looks like me. “I’m having a son this Christmas.”
“Hmm.”
“How’d you know?”
“The wood told me.”
This is amazing.
Oh yeah, it’s a miracle. Let’s put a tent over this guy and let him preach.
Hush. It is a miracle.
“Have you sold many of your, um, sculptures?”
He closes his eyes. “I give them away mostly. I used to have many more. Used to be you couldn’t even walk much in there.”
“But you could make so much …”
He puts a finger to his lips. “I get paid in other ways, Emmanuel, better ways.” He opens his eyes and looks out over the horizon. “You’ll find a pillow on a shelf in the back room. And make sure the shed door’s closed nice and tight. Bugs are murder after a storm.”
I put the new carving in my backpack. “Well, um, thanks for letting me stay.”
“Hmm.”
I get a dusty pillow from the back room and go out to the shed. After stumbling around and tripping over heavy wooden objects in the dark, I find an open space, lay out my blanket, and settle in. A mosquito or two buzz my ears at first, and then I drift peacefully to sleep …
Sunlight streaking through some cracks in the shed wakes me, and I bolt upright to see what I had tripped over. An entire African army of warriors surrounds me, some as tall as three feet high, many of them wearing grotesque masks and waving a sharp spears.