by Laird Hunt
“It’s a good one, sure.”
“But my thought isn’t broken. I’m still thinking it. Even as we’re talking, even as we’re sitting here. It’s about cemeteries,” Bob said.
I tilted my head. Bob said he expected it sounded strange. I said it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d heard that day.
“You reckon they’ve done it yet? The deed? Lifted up those boys?” I asked.
Bob shrugged.
“I wanted to bust them out.”
“’Course you did.”
“It’s true.” I said this and felt it, suddenly, through every speck of myself. Feeling it made me shiver and want to stand up and break something and not scream this time but howl. But there we all were, sitting in the stand of trees, so what I did was nod and make a fist and then let it go.
“I wonder where they’ll let them rest,” Bob said. “Once they’re done with them.”
“Our place, I expect.”
“Did you know we’ve got more than one?”
“What?” I was still thinking about howling and breaking things besides bus outings but I was listening too.
“Here’s what I was thinking on,” he said.
Bob leaned over and picked up his cooking stick. He brushed the ground to the side of the fire clear, then started poking and scraping at it. He made ten marks, then leaned back. Then he leaned forward again, scratched it all out, and set the stick down again.
“You know that mess of a map I was working on?”
“Didn’t look like a mess to me.”
He reached behind him, groped a minute, leaned way back, and, without dislodging Myrtle, fetched back up with the thing in his hand. “First I thought I would leave it back home. Safe, I hoped. But then I thought maybe those boys come back and maybe they burn the place down. You can’t know. You walk out your door and you can’t be sure. That’s just the way of the motherfucker. And I didn’t want to lose my thinking on this.” He pulled off the rubber band had been holding it tight and unrolled the map. Told me to come around to his side of the fire so I could see better. Bob smelled like sweet corn, sweet barley; like good-cooked fish and smoke. If Myrtle minded having that map lying on top of her and me leaning over Bob’s shoulder, she didn’t show it.
Bob had kept working since I’d been to his bait shop, and the map had grown its frame of faces. There must have been fifty cornflowers and cornroots too around that map’s edges. Looking up out at us. Bob had pasted a old, blurry picture of the courthouse in its middle. He said it had taken him a while to decide to do it but when he had, it had seemed just right.
“You see all those black marks?” he asked. “Spread all out and scattered over the countryside?”
As he pointed I could see his pinkie finger. It was still swollen plenty. I touched at a couple of the black marks. I had green and yellow spots on the back of my hand. I nodded.
“Those are graveyards,” he said. “They’re ours or they’re old cornroot burying grounds. Spread out across the county. Around home.”
“Cornroot burying grounds?”
“’Course. Who do you think all this country belonged to. Big one’s out near where they fought the Battle of Mississinewa. We widen out the scale, see, and find plenty more. More of ours too. These are the ones in the vicinity. According to my researches.”
“So this is a map of the county.”
“It’s bigger than the county.”
“You have been thinking about this.”
“I’m always thinking, aren’t you?”
“I’m always trying not to.”
“This is just the map part. I’ve got a scale model in the back room at home.”
“Of graveyards?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
It wasn’t just pictures the map had grown since I’d seen it earlier. There were silver lines across it and colored flourishes too.
“You need to listen up now, Calla Destry.”
“All right.”
“You need to watch,” he said. “We’re just out here at the fishing hole and losing light and that fire’s flickering awful and we can’t see too well, but watch anyway.”
I leaned forward. Bob began tracing the silver lines he’d made between the black marks. He squished down on Myrtle some as he did his tracing but she stayed still. By and by he had traced the lines between all the marks, and then he put his index finger down on the picture at the middle.
“That’s why it seemed right to paste on the picture of the courthouse,” he said.
“It’s where all the lines cross,” I said.
“Makes a star right there at Marvel. Right at the middle. It’s the crux.”
“The crux?”
“Middle of the ghost roads.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I don’t either but it’s the ghost highways. It’s where they walk. It all goes through Marvel.”
“What are the pictures for? Of the cornflowers?”
“To show that we know. That we see. That we’re here.”
“Show who?”
“Whoever looks at it.”
“But what if you drew the lines a different way?”
“This is the way it’s done. The way I’ve done it. Make a star from your specks and find the star’s heart. I’m just trying to figure it.”
“In your figuring is there anything we can do?”
“It’s just how it is.”
“The way of the world.”
“The way of the world, that’s right.”
I had my mouth ready to make another question but at that minute Myrtle lifted her head and gave out a sharp bark.
“You see!” said Bob. “Even old Myrtle agrees.”
“Agrees with what?” It was a little old man. Walking over to us with a apple in his hand. He put the apple to his mouth and bit down with a bright crunch and said he and his were looking for a ride over to the prayer vigil. Bob smiled and shook his head and the old man walked off to the next fire.
“Prayer vigil?” I said.
“Against the lynching. That’s what they’re saying, anyway. At an old Quaker meetinghouse not too far off.”
“I met a Quaker earlier. Said he was a Quaker.”
“Was that before or after you punched a bus and went swimming in some paint?”
“I didn’t punch a bus.”
“Might as well have.”
“I’d have broke my hand.”
“Instead you broke a car.”
He laughed then. Long and loud. I could see heads turning our way.
“Aren’t they all already doing that, praying, right here, praying at their fires?” I asked when he had got quiet again.
Bob looked around and then back at me but didn’t answer.
“Are you going?” I said.
Bob shook his head. He shook it more than he needed to, like he had got started back in thinking about his ghost roads and had forgot to stop. He was still shaking his head—but just tiny movements, you could barely see them, and maybe his eyes were closed, closed and thinking about ghosts and oranges—when I got it into my mind that maybe I’d find Aunt V and Uncle D at that prayer vigil, that if they hadn’t come here, that was where they must have gone. Meaning that was where I had to go too. Tell Uncle D I had wrecked his Dictator. Tell him I was sorry I had taken his gun. Tell Aunt V that she was right. That I was in trouble. That I had gone looking for the devil. That it wasn’t ending well. It hadn’t helped at all telling Leander what I had needed to tell him. Surely talking to Uncle D and Aunt V would be different. I would tell them everything and I would apologize for everything and they would listen and then we would find our way home together. After we had bowed our heads. I didn’t mind bowing my head. Hortensia and I had gone to church together every Sunday when we were still at the orphan house. Bowing your head was better by far than getting beat to sleep and yanked up into the air.
I told Bob I thought I might just find my missing family at the Qu
aker house, and he opened up his eyes, or at least looked at me again, and smiled and said that maybe, yes, they had gone there, that maybe that was so. It was a big night and full of mysteries, he said, and maybe that was just exactly where they had traveled along their own stretch of the evening road. There wasn’t any way to be sure until I had gone and looked but he could see I had to try.
Bob’s words and the idea that I might find Aunt V and Uncle D at the vigil and tell them everything and that I was sorry—for stealing money, for taking the car, for taking the gun, for telling them that morning to go to hell, for getting myself into exactly the kind of trouble they had tried to keep me out of—and ask them to take me back and not give up on me no matter what I did and no matter how much I cursed them, and maybe the fact on top of it that I finally had some food in my stomach, made me so happy I hugged Bob right over the top of Myrtle and got growled and bit at by her. Bob hugged me back a little, then I kissed him on his cheek and picked up my basket and told him I was going to fix everything.
“Everything, is it?” he said.
“Everything.”
“Everything is an awful lot.”
“I know it.”
I laughed. He didn’t.
“Take this,” he said. He tapped the map with his finger, then rolled it up and put the rubber band back on it.
“I can’t take that.”
“Borrow it for a while. Might not lead you right but it can show you clear where you shouldn’t go. Not tonight. Not while it’s dark.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You decide to go on somewhere from the church, you can leave it there. Leave it with Desmond if that’s where they are. I’d like his opinion on it anyway.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
“What he always does.”
He winked but didn’t say what that was and I let him put the map in my hand, hand with the paint splotches on it, told him I’d take good care of it, hugged him again, and went walking off fast through the fires. On the way I passed that old man with the apple and told him I had a wagon and was heading to the vigil if he wanted to come. He did, Lord, yes, he said, and five minutes later it was me with fixing everything on my mind and that old man and his three women kin riding up the lane for the prayer vigil behind Calliostro.
It had been nice in the trees by the water with the fires and smells and sounds of cooking fish but it was nice too out on the evening road, listening now to the crickets and to Calliostro’s hooves on the gravel, now to the creak of the wheels and a swirl of sleepy wrens replaying their day in a stand of nearby hickories. The old man’s name was Jasper, he said, and the older woman with him was Miss Marjorie Keys. The two of them sat up on the front bench with me. The other two sat behind and didn’t give their names but after a while one of them asked into the noisy country quiet if we thought praying could help those boys. Jasper said if anything could help those boys over in the jail, if they were even still in the jail, it was mighty prayer, and when he said this, Miss Marjorie gave out a deep sigh and began to sing. She sang and after a while the two others on the bench behind began to sing too. And it was nice and it was pleasant. Nice and pleasant to ride along in that wagon with those women singing. Ride with the sound of the crickets and song and to be just sitting there behind Calliostro with Big Bob’s map and my basket at my feet.
The song came to a close and Miss Marjorie went quiet but the two behind us took up again so soft you could hardly hear them and after a while of rolling like this Miss Marjorie said, “There is the world and then there is what is in it and that’s not the same thing.” Jasper nodded and patted her on the leg like he had heard it before and then she said, “I once had a cornsilk woman I had never seen before tell me what the ground ought to do was just open itself up and swallow me and every other kind of corn wasn’t silk that there was. Ought to recognize its mistake and take us back unto itself. They say things like that. Stand around next to them and they say it. Just comes out. Maybe not every last one of them, but enough. Enough to make it true. Is it true? Am I lying now?”
“No, ma’am,” said the two women behind us. They said it then went back to their singing.
“Still, I’m done being sad tonight and I plan to be done forever. How does that sound? Does that sound good to you all? How ’bout to you, young Miss Calla Destry?”
“Can’t be done forever, Marjorie. It doesn’t work that way,” said Jasper.
“Then how about for a little while? How about for right now? On our way to this vigil.”
“For just right now?” asked Jasper.
“Just for this minute. Till we get there. Does that sound good to you girls?”
I nodded. The two behind me did too. They hadn’t stopped singing. And before we had gone another ten feet Miss Marjorie had joined in their singing and we were just rolling along through the night, not sad or anyway saying we weren’t. I would have liked to roll along like that forever, and thought a few good times as we went rattling that maybe we’d slipped over into something a little better than it had just been and than it was about to be, that we had slipped all five of us into some small hurt heaven wasn’t anybody’s but our own.
Good feeling or not, ten minutes later it came upon me that I needed the bushes just about as badly as I had ever needed anything in my life, and I handed the reins to Jasper and was off the wagon with my basket and heading for cover before anyone had time to much more than notice I was going.
“Where’s the fire, girl?” said Miss Marjorie.
“I’ll catch up, you just keep on!” I said.
“There’s a tight turn up here a little ways, we’ll meet you on the other side,” said Jasper.
“Calliostro can make any turn if you lead him right!” I called.
“Look at her go!” said Miss Marjorie.
Leander called that kind of bush work “making your opinion known.” “Excuse me, I have to share my opinion, my beloved,” he liked to say. He had a delicate stomach and it came upon him plenty often. Had come upon him plenty often; bent over there myself and feeling sorry to see Bob’s fish go, I forgot a minute I was done with all that. I forgot other things too. Like those boys in that jail. They lived once. They were real. Fool boys, that’s all. Got into trouble. What do you expect? Maybe even done some of what they said. But air killings?
It was cornflowers and cornsilks both supposed to be at the prayer vigil we were heading to. Jasper had said that as we climbed into the wagon. I got worried as I sat down a minute to wipe my eyes and stop my head spinning—even nice and pleasant as I had been feeling—that I might walk in the door and put my fist in the face or worse of the first cornsilk I saw. Then I wished I still had mop doll so I could knock every cornsilk at that prayer vigil upside the head with her. Every cornflower too. I shouldn’t have left the fires. I’d left happy and dreaming about reunions and feeling good and now here I was. Must have been the wagon bouncing had sent me this way. Fuck Leander. Fuck confessions. Fuck asking Aunt V and Uncle D to take me back. Fuck Leona Hale and her wrinkles and her blackberry tea. I’d go find Roscoe. Raise my child up right. I raised my child up right. All I needed from Leander was money. That’s what the gun had been for. Could still be for. I straightened up and felt its weight in the basket. So I pulled it out.
Pointed its blue barrel at my face. Held it there a good long time. “Don’t you dare take that gun of mine, Calla Destry,” Uncle D had called after me that morning as I left the house. “You take it and we won’t be here when you get back.” I let it rest against my forehead, the gun I had taken anyway, for I needed something, anything, that would look close at me and tell me what it saw.
THE ANGEL RUNNER
So I said my good-byes to them and they went off on their way and I hoped to myself it was a fair way, though I did not like where they were going and thought they would probably go to hell for it. I allowed myself one little look at Bud Lancer over my shoulder—because unless you’re Lot’s wife, one little look is
always allowed—but Bud was dancing around in a circle with Ottie Lee and I could not see them either one very well.
It wasn’t much of a walk back over to the church, where I found them all still sitting there so peaceful and more coming in every minute. Earlier we’d had Homer Hale in to set with us awhile although he hadn’t lasted any much longer than it had taken for some of us to convince the crowd that had chased him straight up to the church doors to go away. He had been considerable excited at the start and had flopped around like a big hooked fish and said loud he had made mistakes and many of them but that he was a good Christian underneath and had drawn pursuers away from his beloved and would we give him haven in his disgrace. We said we would, sure, but that it wasn’t a talking vigil and he needed just to sit quiet a spell. We were praying for the poor boys up in Marvel and for the poor world they and many among our number had to do their living in, we told him. If he had played some part, as we just about all had, in the poor quality of it, he could stop his fish-flopping and think on that. After we said that he sat quiet sure enough for a little while and mostly stopped his flopping and prayed, or anyways bent over his head and breathed heavy and dripped some good sweat with us on his lap.
Homer Hale was gone now, though, and Bud and Ottie Lee and Pops and Dale were gone too, and I saw Veronia and Desmond Combs from Marvel had come in and were sitting soft and quiet and leaned up against each other like any other way they would fall. I went in past a pair of quiet-talking women I hadn’t met yet discussing a Klan gathering being planned just south of Marvel town and how they were streaming in now from everywhere and we would have to pray even harder to keep that evil down. They were holding hands as they talked. I took a seat for a while near the back of the house where someone had set a pot of dusky-pink carnations.
I sat with my head bowed and I prayed for those boys in the jailhouse just like my angels had taught me, which was by counting to ten and not skipping any decimals. They had told me that each time I prayed, I must pick up where I had left off. I had got about to the middle point between 1 and 1.5. It was a good way to pray because I knew I would get it wrong from the start because you just can’t count all the numbers and getting it wrong is a kind of love because getting it wrong teaches you and teaching you is a kind of love and love is always good—my dead father told me that—it is what Jesus taught.