“You know better than anybody how smart these young people are. Better than anybody…” His voice trailed off under “Silent Night.”
“You think what I teach them isn’t good enough?”
Had she read his mind? “Of course it’s good. It’s just not enough. The world is big, and we’re part of that bigness. They want to know about Africa—”
“Oh, please, Reverend. Don’t go sentimental on me.”
“If you cut yourself off from the roots, you’ll wither.”
“Roots that ignore the branches turn into termite dust.”
“Pat,” he said with mild surprise. “You despise Africa.”
“No, I don’t. It just doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“What does, Pat? What does mean something to you?”
“The periodic chart of elements and valences.”
“Sad,” he said. “Sad and cold.” Richard Misner turned away.
Lorcas Sands leaves the group of families and in a loud but breaking voice addresses the masks: “Is there room?”
The masks turn toward each other, then back to the supplicant, then back to each other, after which they roar, shaking their heads like angry lions. “Get on way from here! Get! There’s no room for you!”
“But our wives are pregnant!” Lorcas points with the staff.
“Our children going to die of thirst!” Pure Cary holds a doll aloft.
The masked ones wag their heads and roar.
“That was not a nice thing to say to me, Richard.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I am not sad or cold.”
“I meant the chart, not you. Limiting your faith to molecules as if—”
“I don’t limit anything. I just don’t believe some stupid devotion to a foreign country—and Africa is a foreign country, in fact it’s fifty foreign countries—is a solution for these kids.”
“Africa is our home, Pat, whether you like it or not.”
“I’m really not interested, Richard. You want some foreign Negroes to identify with, why not South America? Or Germany, for that matter. They have some brown babies over there you could have a good time connecting with. Or is it just some kind of past with no slavery in it you’re looking for?”
“Why not? There was a whole lot of life before slavery. And we ought to know what it is. If we’re going to get rid of the slave mentality, that is.”
“You’re wrong, and if that’s your field you’re plowing wet. Slavery is our past. Nothing can change that, certainly not Africa.”
“We live in the world, Pat. The whole world. Separating us, isolating us—that’s always been their weapon. Isolation kills generations. It has no future.”
“You think they don’t love their children?”
Misner stroked his upper lip and heaved a long sigh. “I think they love them to death.”
Bobbing and bowing, the masked ones reach under the table and lift up big floppy cardboard squares pasted with pictures of food. “Here. Take this and get on out of here.” Throwing the food pictures on the floor, they laugh and jump about. The holy families rear back as though snakes were being tossed at them. Pointing forefingers and waving fists, they chant: “God will crumble you. God will crumble you.” The audience hums agreement: “Yes He will. Yes He will.”
“Into dust!” That was Lone DuPres.
“Don’t you dare to mistake Him. Don’t you dare.”
“Finer than flour he’ll grind you.”
“Say it, Lone.”
“Strike you in the moment of His choosing!”
And sure enough, the masked figures wobble and collapse to the floor, while the seven families turn away. Something within me that banishes pain; something within me I cannot explain. Their frail voices are accompanied by stronger ones in the audience, and at the last note more than a few are wiping their eyes. The families cluster campfire style to the right of the stage. The girls rock the dolls. Away in the manger, no crib for His head. Slowly from the wings a boy enters. He wears a wide hat and carries a leather bag. The families make a half circle behind him. The big-hat boy kneels and draws bottles and packages from the satchel, which he arranges on the floor. The little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head.
What’s the point? Richard asked himself. Just enjoy the show and let Pat alone. He wanted to discuss, not argue. He watched the children’s movements with mild affection at first, then with growing interest. He had assumed it was in order to please as many children as possible that there were four innkeepers, seven Marys and Josephs. But perhaps there were other reasons. Seven holy families? Richard tapped Pat on the shoulder. “Who put this together? I thought you told me there were nine original families. Where the other two? And why only one Wise Man? And why is he putting the gifts back in the satchel?”
“You don’t know where you are, do you?”
“Well help me figure this place out. I know I’m an outsider, but I’m not an enemy.”
“No, you’re not. But in this town those two words mean the same thing.”
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. In a shower of gold paper stars, the families lay down the dolls, the staffs and form a ring. The voices from the audience peal as one. I once was lost but now am found.
Richard felt bitterness take the place of the nausea that had driven him from his seat. Twenty, thirty years from now, he thought, all sorts of people will claim pivotal, controlling, defining positions in the rights movement. A few would be justified. Most would be frauds. What could not be gainsaid, but would remain invisible in the newspapers and the books he bought for his students, were the ordinary folk. The janitor who turned off the switch so the police couldn’t see; the grandmother who kept all the babies so the mothers could march; the backwoods women with fresh towels in one hand and a shotgun in the other; the little children who carried batteries and food to secret meetings; the ministers who kept whole churchfuls of hunted protesters calm till help came; the old who gathered up the broken bodies of the young; the young who spread their arms wide to protect the old from batons they could not possibly survive; parents who wiped the spit and tears from their children’s faces and said, “Never mind, honey. Never you mind. You are not and never will be a nigger, a coon, a jig, a jungle bunny nor any other thing white folks teach their children to say. What you are is God’s.” Yes, twenty, thirty years from now, those people will be dead or forgotten, their small stories part of no grand record or even its footnotes, although they were the ones who formed the spine on which the televised ones stood. Now, seven years after the murder of the man in whose stead he would happily have taken the sword, he was herding a flock which believed not only that it had created the pasture it grazed but that grass from any other meadow was toxic. In their view Booker T. solutions trumped Du Bois problems every time. No matter who they are, he thought, or how special they think they are, a community with no politics is doomed to pop like Georgia fatwood. Was blind but now I see.
“Do they?” It was phrased as a question but it sounded like a conclusion to Pat.
“They are better than you think,” she said.
“They are better than they think,” he told her. “Why are they satisfied with so little?”
“This is their home; mine too. Home is not a little thing.”
“I’m not saying it is. But can’t you even imagine what it must feel like to have a true home? I don’t mean heaven. I mean a real earthly home. Not some fortress you bought and built up and have to keep everybody locked in or out. A real home. Not some place you went to and invaded and slaughtered people to get. Not some place you claimed, snatched because you got the guns. Not some place you stole from the people living there, but your own home, where if you go back past your great-great-grandparents, past theirs, and theirs, past the whole of Western history, past the beginning of organized knowledge, past pyramids and poison bows, on back to when rain was new, before plants forgot they could sing and birds thought they were fish, back when God said Good! Good!—there
, right there where you know your own people were born and lived and died. Imagine that, Pat. That place. Who was God talking to if not to my people living in my home?”
“You preaching, Reverend.”
“No, I’m talking to you, Pat. I’m talking to you.”
The final clapping began when the children broke the circle and lined up for their bows. Anna Flood rose when the audience did, pushing her way through to where Pat and Richard stood, animated, eyes locked. Both women had been subjected to speculation about which one the new and young and single and handsome preacher would favor. Anna and Pat were the only single women of a certain age available. Unless the new preacher liked them much younger, he’d have to choose between these two. Two years ago, Anna had won—she was sure of it—hands down. So far. Now she moved toward Richard smiling broadly, hoping to freeze the tongues of anyone who might think otherwise seeing him prefer Pat’s company to hers during the Christmas play. They were careful in their courtship, never touching in public. When she cooked supper for him they made sure the parsonage blazed with light, and he drove or walked her home by seven-thirty for all Ruby to see. Still, no date having been set, tongues might get restive. More than seemly behavior, however, was on her mind: Richard’s eye light. It seemed dulled to her lately. As though he’d lost a battle on which his life depended.
She got to him just before the crowd surged out, pressing toward the food tables, chatting, laughing.
“Hi, Pat. What happened to you, Richard?”
“Sick as a dog there for a minute,” he said. “Come on. Let’s stand outside before it starts up again.”
They said goodbye and left Pat to decide whether she wanted to talk to happy parents, mind the food table or leave. She had decided on the last when Carter Seawright stepped on her foot.
“Oh. Excuse me, Miss Best. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Carter, but please calm yourself down.”
“Yes, m’am.”
“And don’t forget. Right after the holidays, you and I have a makeup lesson. January sixth, you hear?”
“I be there, Miss Best.”
“Is that ‘I’ll’? ‘I’ll be there’?”
“Yes, m’am, Miss Best. I will.”
In the kitchen heating water for tea, Pat banged the cupboard door so hard the cups rattled. It was a toss-up as to whose behavior had annoyed her most, Anna’s or her own. At least she could understand Anna: protecting her stake. But why had she defended people and things and ideas with a passion she did not feel? The deep weeping pleasure the audience took from the play disgusted her. All that nonsense she had grown up with seemed to her like an excuse to be hateful. Richard was right to ask, why seven and not nine? Pat had seen the play all her life, although she had never been chosen for any part other than the choir. That was when Soane taught school—before she even noticed the singularity of the numbers. It was some time later that she saw there were only eight. By the time she understood that the Cato line was cut, there was another erasure. Who? There were only two families who were not part of the original nine but had come to Haven early enough to have a kind of associate status: the Jurys (although their grandson, Harper, had married a Blackhorse original—good for him) and her father’s father: Fulton Best. They didn’t count as originals, so it had to be—who? Surely not the Floods if Anna married Richard Misner. Wouldn’t that count? Could Richard save the Flood line? Or was it the Pooles, because of Billie Delia? No. There were shiploads of males in that family. It would be proof of Apollo’s or Brood’s dalliance, but if that were a deterrent, the Morgans themselves had been in grave danger until K.D. married Arnette. And if Arnette had a son rather than a daughter, how much safer their position would be. The Fleetwoods’ too. Since Jeff and Sweetie had not measured up, Arnette was critical to both families.
The tea was ready, and Pat leaned over it, frowning, and so intent on puzzling the problem out that she did not hear Roger enter until he stood in the doorframe.
“You left too early,” he said. “We caroled some.”
“Yes? Oh. Well.” Pat dredged up a smile.
“Missed some good cake too.” He yawned. “Took up a good collection for Lone afterwards. Lord, that’s a crazy woman.” Too tired to laugh, Roger shook his head and smiled. “But she was good in her day.” He turned to leave, saying, “Well, good night, baby. I have to squeal tires early tomorrow.”
“Daddy.” Pat spoke to his back.
“Uh huh?”
“Why do they change it? There used to be nine families in the play. Then eight for years and years. Now seven.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You know.”
“No. I don’t know.”
“The play. How the holy families get fewer and fewer.”
“Kate does all that. And Nathan. Picking the children, I mean. Maybe they didn’t have enough for the usual size.”
“Daddy.” He must have heard the doubt in her tone.
“What?” If he did, it didn’t show.
“It was skin color, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“The way people get chosen and ranked in this town.”
“Aw, no. Well, there might have been a little offense taken—long ago. But nothing hard.”
“No? What about what Steward said when you got married?”
“Steward? Oh, well, the Morgans are very serious about themselves. Too serious sometimes.”
Pat blew in her cup.
Roger met her silence and then returned to a less uncomfortable topic.
“I thought the play was pretty nice, myself. We have to do something about Nathan, though. He ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer anymore.” Then, as an afterthought, “What Reverend Misner have to say for himself? Looked awful serious back there.”
She didn’t look up. “Just…talk.”
“Anything happening with you two?”
“Daddy, please.”
“No harm in asking, is there?” He paused for an answer, and when there was none he left, murmuring something about the furnace.
Yes there is. Harm. Pat sipped carefully from a spoon. Ask Richard Misner. Ask him what I just did to him. Or what everyone else does. When he asks questions, they close him out to anything but the obvious, the superficial. And I of all people know exactly what it feels like. Not good enough to be represented by eight-year-olds on a stage.
Fifteen minutes later Pat stood in the garden, seventy yards from Delia’s tombstone. The evening had turned chilly but still not cold enough for snow. The lemon mint had shriveled, but lavender and sage bushes were full and fragrant. No wind to speak of, so the fire in the oil barrel was easily contained. One by one she dropped cardboard files, sheets of paper—both stapled and loose—into the flames. She had to tear the covers off the composition notebooks and hold them slant with a stick so they would not smother the fire. The smoke was bitter. She stepped back and gathered clumps of lavender and threw it in as well. It took some time, but finally she turned her back on the ashes and walked into her house trailing along the odor of burnt lavender. At the kitchen sink she washed her hands and dashed water on her face. She felt clean. Perhaps that was why she began to laugh. Lightly at first and then heavily, her head thrown back as she sat at the table. Did they really think they could keep this up? The numbers, the bloodlines, the who fucks who? All those generations of 8-rocks kept going, just to end up narrow as bale wire? Well, to stay alive maybe they could, maybe they should, since nobody dies in Ruby.
She wiped her eyes and lifted the cup from its saucer. Tea leaves clustered in its well. More boiling water, a little steeping, and the black leaves would yield more. Even more. Ever more. Until. Well, now. What do you know? It was clear as water. The generations had to be not only racially untampered with but free of adultery too. “God bless the pure and holy” indeed. That was their purity. That was their holiness. That was the deal Zechariah had made during his humming prayer. It wasn’t God’s brow to be feared
. It was his own, their own. Is that why “Be the Furrow of His Brow” drove them crazy? But the bargain must have been broken or changed, because there were only seven now. By whom? The Morgans, probably. They ran everything, controlled everything. What new bargain had the twins struck? Did they really believe that no one died in Ruby? Suddenly Pat thought she knew all of it. Unadulterated and unadulteried 8-rock blood held its magic as long as it resided in Ruby. That was their recipe. That was their deal. For Immortality.
Pat’s smile was crooked. In that case, she thought, everything that worries them must come from women.
“Dear God,” she murmured. “Dear, dear God. I burned the papers.”
CONSOLATA
In the good clean darkness of the cellar, Consolata woke to the wrenching disappointment of not having died the night before. Each morning, her hopes dashed, she lay on a cot belowground, repelled by her sluglike existence, each hour of which she managed to get through by sipping from black bottles with handsome names. Each night she sank into sleep determined it would be the final one, and hoped that a great hovering foot would descend and crush her like a garden pest.
Already in a space tight enough for a coffin, already devoted to the dark, long removed from appetites, craving only oblivion, she struggled to understand the delay. “What for?” she asked, and her voice was one among many that packed the cellar from rafter to stone floor. Several times a week, at night or in the shadowy part of the day, she rose aboveground. Then she would stand outside in the garden, walk around, look up at the sky to see the only light it had that she could bear. One of the women, Mavis usually, would insist on joining her. Talking, talking, always talking. Or a couple of others would come. Sipping from the dusty bottles with handsome names—Jarnac, Médoc, Haut-Brion and Saint-Émilion—made it possible to listen to them, even answer sometimes. Other than Mavis, who had been there the longest, it was getting harder and harder to tell one from another. What she knew of them she had mostly forgotten, and it seemed less and less important to remember any of it, because the timbre of each of their voices told the same tale: disorder, deception and, what Sister Roberta warned the Indian girls against, drift. The three d’s that paved the road to perdition, and the greatest of these was drift.
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