everyman

by M. Shelly Conner

  The Ford rolled alongside Hezekiah as a face loomed from the obscurity of its interior. The passenger door opened, and Hezekiah remained fixed. From the depths emerged the pinstripe-clad, 250-pound frame of Cornelius Gaines.

  Hezekiah allowed himself to breathe but was still guarded. “I wouldn’t spec’ you out dis late, Big C.”

  “I ain’t neva had no set bedtime, Hezekiah.” Cornelius’s voice was rolling thunder. A smile lit his dark countenance.

  “I mean out the juke joints.” Hezekiah’s laughter allowed him to relax.

  “Business don’t sleep either.” The smile disappeared from Cornelius’s face, silencing Hezekiah.

  “We got business, Big C?”

  “’Fraid so, Hezekiah.”

  A glance toward the automobile revealed two more people. In the driver’s seat sat Deuce. Stoic in the back seat, was Claudette. Hezekiah looked toward the road. He could just make out the stream of smoke from Gertrude’s chimney. Big C moved closer and wrapped a large arm around his shoulder almost comfortingly. “Don’t worry, Hezekiah.” He soothed. “I’ll take care of ’em.”

  Hezekiah struggled to think of the words that would inspire Cornelius to let him go. “I neva touched her, Big C.”

  Surprisingly, Cornelius laughed. “I know. But it’s somethin’ bigger than you and me. You know what dat is?” Hezekiah remained silent as he continued. “Big C is what dat is. Hell, we just men, Hezekiah. But it’s the name, my name, dat’s got bigger than even me. I got to protect it. It’s all I got.”

  “I got family, Big C . . .” Hezekiah began. He looked pleadingly at Deuce who lowered his own eyes.

  “Then you lucky!” Cornelius growled. “I got a wicked woman that—” he momentarily lost himself in the memory of Claudette sauntering the stage in a necktie before continuing, “a wicked woman that would see a man kilt than accept that he don’t want her.”

  “But—”

  “And . . .” He continued. “I got a name that so big round here that I gotta kill a man too dumb to know dat chickens always come home to roost and it don’t matter whose chicken it is.” Cornelius nodded toward Deuce and the car began to move away from them. They watched it a while in silence.

  It was true that Hezekiah had not touched Claudette, but he was guilty just the same for the many women that he had touched. It didn’t matter whose chickens; they always came home to roost. Cornelius’s blade slid quickly beneath Hezekiah’s rib cage, stealing his breath mid gasp. Hezekiah struggled to take one more breath as he slumped against the massive frame of his assailant. Cornelius caught him and held him gently. “I’ll make sho yo’ family eat and yo’ girls be safe.”

  Hezekiah heard the words, but he was far more captivated by how bright the sky had gotten. His final thoughts were of his girls. He struggled to say their names one final time, Ann and Mercy, yet what he managed sounded instead like “Have Mercy . . .”

  Cornelius nodded and made the sign of the cross over him. “Right. Lawd ha’mercy on yo’ poor soul and mines.” He continued his confession to the dying. His grandmother had taught him that it was one of the surest ways to achieve absolution. “And Claudette be finished in dis town. I worked hard for dis name. Ain’t no way imma let some gal use it, spittin’ venom round town and put me in a situation like dis.” He paused and looked down into the staring eyes, open but no longer seeing. Cornelius’s large palm gently closed them. “I gots a special place fo’ dat gal.”

  The car returned and picked up its cargo, leaving only a small collection of blood to blend into the red clay dirt. Inside, Claudette sat nervously next to Cornelius. Her constant chatter grated on his nerves. A few miles up the road, Deuce pulled over.

  “Where we goin’, baby?” Claudette purred. Her thoughts were on returning to Johnita’s. She was tired of her role and the play of keeping men so enticed that they’d dig no deeper than she allowed. She just needed to talk to Johnita and hoped that was where Cornelius was taking them. All she had wanted was for Hezekiah to walk her outside. The rumor mill would have taken care of the rest. She’d be called a whore and harlot and all manner of insults, but those would keep her and Johnita safe from what happens to women who choose each other

  over men.

  “You and me goin’ fo’ a walk by the ol’ dry well,” he answered stoically.

  “The well, baby? But no . . .” She stroked his arm, but he did not look at her.

  Claudette was a wildcat, clawing and scratching. It had taken both men to remove her from the car and carry her into the woods. Deuce more than once suggested that they first silence her to make their work simpler, but Cornelius wanted to see the fear in her eyes for as long as possible. He wanted her to feel every moment, knowing her fate. Hezekiah deserved that much. Yet fear had not been a part of Claudette for a long time, and it made no presence on her countenance. Her face only projected hatred even as she struggled to breathe in the vice grip of Cornelius’s last embrace.

  A tear and a barely perceptible “Johnny” rode her final exhale, so faint that Cornelius couldn’t be sure he’d heard anything at all.

  Deuce and Cornelius stood for what seemed like an eternity at the edge of the dry well. “I ain’t hear her hit bottom,” Deuce said. “How long you figure it is to the end?”

  “Ain’t no end,” Cornelius answered. “Grandmere always said dis ol’ well go straight to hell.”

  If the dry well was the portal to hell, it had become a very busy thoroughfare for forgotten souls. Perhaps it was the reason that it took so long for stories to be resurrected.

  Still, Eve would never know the particular details of her grandfather’s demise, and she was too amazed and happy to have learned the little that Deuce and Evelyn shared to pry too much further.

  When she asked, “How did Grandfather Hezekiah die?” Deuce and Evelyn shared a sideways glance. Deuce stared off across the yard, and Evelyn answered for him. “He fell down a well.”

  Thirteen

  the wives’ tales

  There is a strange emptiness to life without myths.

  —N. K. Jemisin, “Dreaming Awake”

  Ancient Egyptians are credited with creating the first urine-based pregnancy test. According to a papyrus document dating back to 1350 BCE, pregnancy and gender could be determined by a woman urinating on wheat and barley seeds over several days. If the barley grew, then the child would be male—female if the wheat grew. If neither seed sprouted, the woman was not pregnant. A 1963 test of this theory found it to be 70 percent accurate.

  The Mayans believed that the gender of an unborn child could be determined by taking the age of the mother and the year of conception and comparing the numbers. If both were odd or both were even, then the child was a girl. If one number was odd and the other even, then the child would be a boy.

  The ancient Chinese used the mother’s birthdate and the date of conception to determine the sex of the child.

  Much later in other parts of the world, it came to be believed that if a woman carried the child high in her stomach, she would have a girl. If she carried low, then the child was a boy.

  A ring tied on a string and held over the pregnant woman’s stomach is said to reveal the child’s gender by the way it moves. If it swings from side to side like a pendulum, it is a girl. It moves in a circle for a boy.

  If a pregnant woman picks up a single key by the wide end, she is having a girl; the narrow end means she’s having a boy.

  If a toddler boy shows interest in a pregnant woman, then she will have a girl. If he shows no interest, then she’s having a boy.

  Perhaps one of the most troubling methods of all involves mixing the woman’s urine with Drano. The Drano-urine mixture emits fumes that may be harmful.

  In the rural south, during both the time of Eve’s conception and her investigation into it twenty-two years later, the prevailing belief was that a dream about fish
was the harbinger of pregnancy for a close personal acquaintance. Not quite satisfied with the information she had received, Eve made a second visit to Deuce and Evelyn’s house, hoping that she could spend more time with Evelyn. There had been a sparkle in Evelyn’s eye, a twinkle, as if she were holding on to something in her mind. Eve felt the connection with the older woman and tried to soften her own eyes to encourage sharing. She’d soon find that the only encouragement Evelyn required was a little cup of liquid courage or what she referred to as her “nip.”

  Evelyn didn’t drink around Deuce. Growing older, he had “retired” from the early days of criminal activity and completely changed his lifestyle. This included getting himself a bona fide churchwoman and getting into the kingdom of heaven by marriage. He wanted to cover all the bases. It’s not to say that he didn’t love Evelyn. He had fallen in love with her very quickly. But certainly, her religious background had played a part. He had desired her chasteness, not as one who wanted to break it or own it, but as his very own vessel to God. In his mind, Evelyn had done all the grunt work toward salvation. Marriage to her, coupled with relinquishing his past endeavors, should land him on the right side of the rapture when Gabriel’s trumpets blew. Quite naturally, as Deuce was coming into his awareness of spiritual development, Evelyn was realizing, after a lifelong devotion to Christian dogma, that one’s purpose was not to ignore the physical or to avoid engaging in it, rather it was to be in it but not of it.

  They had debated the issue. Deuce scornfully watching Evelyn pour two fingers of Old Fitzgerald whiskey into her water glass and admonishing that it was the devil’s playground. Evelyn, raising a defiant eyebrow, responded, “If the devil was in this likker, then you wouldn’t have ever gotten to where you are now.”

  Deuce credited his turnaround to “the power of the Lord.”

  Evelyn’s frequent retort, “If the Lord is so powerful, then what’s the risk?”

  To which sometimes Deuce shook his head and said, “Woman, you don’t know I been there in a handbasket.”

  Evelyn replied, “Husband, I been where you tryin’ to git to. And I can tell ya that the color of the grass don’t even matter.”

  They eventually settled into a typical compromise of the married: to agree to disagree. Most evenings Deuce settled on the front porch with an after-dinner pipe, while Evelyn headed to the back porch with an empty glass to join the bottle of “Old Fitz” that she kept on a rickety bookshelf next to her white wicker armchair.

  This is where Eve found her when she returned for her second visit. After greeting Deuce, she had been unceremoniously waved toward the rear of the house, where she found Evelyn. Her gray hair was as neatly pressed as at their first meeting, and she wore a 1950s-era house dress with kitten heels. To Eve, she looked like a brown-skinned, pleasantly plump model from an older Ebony magazine.

  “I remember you.” Lubricated by her first sip of Old Fitz, Evelyn’s smile eased toward her eyes.

  Eve’s eyes furrowed. “Yes, Ms. Evelyn, I was here yesterday.”

  “Don’t be flip, gal. I ain’t that old. At least not as old as my husband, you know.” She giggled. “I remember you ’fo you even got here.” Evelyn gestured for Eve to sit in the matching chair across from her.

  Eve complied, taking a gaze at the older woman as she refilled her glass and offered one to Eve. Evelyn was younger than Deuce in a classic May-December romance manner. Eve’s thoughts were just grasping at the importance of such a detail yet couldn’t fully uncover its implications. She accepted the glass but didn’t drink from it.

  “I was there when your grandmama dreamed of fish.” Evelyn smirked, and slowly clarity began to enter Eve’s mind.

  1950

  Gertrude had dreamed of fish last night and it had thrown off her entire day. She couldn’t concentrate on cooking, cleaning, or any of her church duties. She sat next to the charred brick that was Sister Evelyn’s pound cake and stared at the fierce woman who trembled with anger in front of her.

  “What de devil, Trudy! All I asked was for you to watch it. Now look at it!” Evelyn grasped in vain at the scarf tightly bound to her head. “What on God’s earth is goin’ on in yo’ head?”

  Gertrude opened her mouth to speak, but the words escaped her. All day she had searched the faces and mannerisms of each woman with whom she had come into contact. They all appeared the same. No one had made any changes. Still, Gertrude had dreamed of fish, and it only meant one thing. If there was a woman who reflected some change in her body, then it was someone in her own home. She dreaded going back there.

  Evelyn’s tirade lost steam. She sighed and plopped onto the bench next to Gertrude. “Trudy, what is it?”

  Gertrude focused on her friend. They had been as close as two peas in the church pod. Gertrude had taken Hezekiah’s advice and began volunteering at the church to give her a sense of purpose while he was away at work. She found such comfort in the place. Polishing the wooden pews felt like dusting her own furniture, and she sat with such pride in them every Sunday morning. She beamed at the other parishioners, knowing that the seat of their salvation contained her sweat and work. Yes, church was home to Gertrude. More home than home itself.

  Pastor Reid’s thunderous voice was the vessel of God. Its cadence rumbled inside of her. When it spoke, she listened. What it said, she obeyed. She had tried to get Hezekiah involved, but he wanted no part of it. He seemed to revel in his heathen ways. Gertrude felt that it was her duty as a Christian and a wife to help him to salvation, but when he refused and denounced the pastor as a two-bit hustler, she knew that she would have to save herself alone.

  After Hezekiah was killed, Pastor Reid and the church were lifesavers to Gertrude. It still seemed like yesterday when she was awakened in the early morning by the intent rapping on her door. It could be no one but Hezekiah. She snatched her housecoat from its perch on the bedroom door and checked on the girls before making her way to the front door. She sighed. She would make him wait a while. She would feign anger when she saw him, but the truth was that she missed her husband. She missed his presence and his touch. Most of the time, her body belonged to the Lord, but Hezekiah had a way of borrowing it now and then. She blushed with the thought as she yanked open the door.

  Cornelius stood before her, filling the frame with his mass. He removed his hat. “Gertrude . . .” She began to shake. Cornelius Gaines had never been the harbinger of good news, and he was usually the cause of whatever devastation he reported.

  Evelyn stayed by Gertrude’s side night and day for months until she was able to get herself together. The years passed, and time brought about a very odd construction of family in a way that only small communities can incubate. The cement that hardened Gertrude’s insides against Cornelius gradually melted until it was a mere stone at the center of her heart. He provided for her family financially. She tolerated him. He became a father figure for the girls. She cared for him. He never made any advances toward her, and she began to accept the strangeness of this fictive kinship and allowed herself to admit that she now had with Cornelius what she had tried so hard to shape with Hezekiah.

  Her heart battled with the realization. She told herself that the price was too great. The price of Hezekiah was not worth the life she had with Cornelius. Yet Hezekiah had been a spiritual test with his every visit. He was the last temptation that she could not overcome. Eventually she reconciled that the Lord had known her struggle and had removed Hezekiah, casting him away and giving her the angel of death, who did not tempt her physically yet cared for her girls. Was not the biblical Job blessed with a replacement family once God and the devil were done playing chess with his life?

  When Mercy and Ann began to call him Uncle Cornelius, Gertrude did not correct them. It was a Faustian exchange: a life for a particular lifestyle, with the payment made up front. Normalcy settled like a scab over a wound, visible yet allowing continuity and function. But a scab remov
ed too soon may reopen the wound. And when Gertrude dreamed of fish, it ripped her world apart.

  Gertrude thought again of her dream as she gazed at her daughters. Her eyes fell on Mercy. At fifteen, Mercy exhibited the changes of a girl becoming woman. Her hips were rounding, her bosom expanding, but where her face should have narrowed in the transition from mahogany cherub cheeks to firmer raised cheekbones, something was awry. There was a fullness to her face. Her nose had widened. Gertrude examined her youngest daughter with her eyes. Mercy had indeed changed—changed in a way that only a mother knows. She stared until Mercy dropped her eyes.

  “You wit chile.” It was more a statement than question.

  “I don’t . . .” Mercy began. Know? But she did know. Understand? She had understood. A part of her had probably even hoped.

  “Who the devil is it?” Gertrude demanded. Devil was right. For Gertrude had made a deal with the devil and foolishly thought that the debt had been prepaid.

  As if mocking her mother’s feared transgression, Mercy replied, “It’s the Lord’s.”

  “Don’t you get smart with me, Mercy! Don’t you dare blaspheme God with some lil bastard!”

  Mercy folded her hands across her chest.

  Her sister Ann stood across from them at the stove, silent but listening. It would serve Mercy right. Did she think that she could have everything and everyone? She smirked at Mercy.

  “Why cain’t it be God’s will?” Mercy shot back.

  “Because God’s will is marriage, not opening yo’ legs for anybody at any time!” Gertrude shouted.

  “But God’s will is also murder, ain’t it?”

  “What you talkin’ ’bout, girl?”

  “It was God’s will for Cornelius to kill Daddy . . .” Mercy’s eyes were full of anger.

  Gertrude interrupted, “Don’t you talk ’bout things you too young to know!”