A Peach For Big Jim

by Lisa Belmont

  “Why, Chloe,” Widow Jones said, looking up with her violet-blue eyes that liked to sparkle from across the room. “Haven’t you grown?”

  She was wearing a champagne dress with a little ivory hat and birdcage veil. The veil was made of dainty netting that reminded me of the hats the real fashionable ladies wore in Vogue magazine.

  She closed the wedding album and got up from, what Momma called, the “French sofa.” It had all kinds of fancy curves and silk cushions.

  “Let me look at you, sugar,” she said, taking my hands and holding them to either side. “You’re about the size I was when I had my first cotillion. And, I’d say you’re ‘bout the smartest girl in Miss Lilly’s class.”

  “I am?” I said, hoping that was true.

  “Why, of course.”

  I always liked how she smelled, like lilacs on a spring morning. Course, Caleb called her the “crazy clock lady” cuz she was as eccentric as all get-out when it came to her clocks. She had shiny silver ones and sparkly gold ones. Not to mention them hand-painted ones she kept in her room. Momma said they were from Paris and looked like they’d been dipped in jewels. And, Lord, don’t go in Widow Jones’ drawing room unless you wanted to hear all them cuckoo clocks go off at once. They came from someplace called the Black Forest in Germany.

  I asked her once why she had so many clocks and she said, “Time is the one thing we can’t get back. My clocks help me remember that.”

  I didn’t ask but always wondered what was so important to Widow Jones that she had to have all that chiming go on. Lord, when noon hit, you’d a thought you were late for church.

  Widow Jones touched my cheek and frowned. “You’re starting to freckle, dear. You’ve got to protect that complexion of yours.”

  The Carolina heat never did agree with me. I’d freckle something fierce and, before the end of summer, I’d have more speckles than a robin’s egg.

  She crossed to a dark-stained chest and rummaged through some sweaters in plastic bags. Beneath all those sweaters, she pulled out a hatbox.

  “Now, this is very special,” she said. “Mr. Jones bought this for me in Charleston.”

  She opened the hatbox and took out a straw hat with a wide lavender ribbon that tied under the chin.

  “If this doesn’t get you the handsomest boy this side of the Mississippi, I don’t know what will,” she said, placing the hat on my head.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, tying the ribbon under my chin.

  I felt awkward standing in her library with that big floppy hat, but she was right. It would protect me from the sun.

  “And, while we’re at it,” she said, taking a leather-bound book from the shelf, “you’d better read this.”

  She handed me a book on etiquette by Emily Post.

  “If there’s one thing a Southern girl needs, it’s manners.”

  For some reason, I thought I’d already learned the most important manners in life. Don’t spit in the house and never yawn at Pa’s stories about Briscoe Mason, not even if you’re dog-tired. That’s how Caleb got a knot on his head.

  “Your momma thought you’d enjoy that book, dear,” Widow Jones said, with a hopeful look in her eyes. The kind of look that makes you feel like you’re the worst person in Charleston County for not wanting to read it.

  “Yessum, I’m sure I will,” I said. “But could I have another?”

  “Another Emily Post book? Of course,” she said, reaching for a second book.

  “No, I mean one by Mr. William Faulkner. It’s called Absalom, Absalom!”

  She turned around slowly and looked at me like I’d lost my mind. I knew what Miss Lilly had told me about the book. The main character, a white man named Thomas Sutpen, disowned his family when he found out his first wife had Negro blood. Thomas later remarried and had more children, one of which ended up killing Thomas’ son of mixed blood. It sounded like a tragedy through and through, but I still wanted to read it. Miss Lilly said no one, not even some of the older boys in Caleb’s class, had ever read it.

  “Your momma would skin my hide if I gave you that book. It’s been banned in Charleston,” Widow Jones said. “Course now, if you don’t tell your momma, then we won’t have no trouble, will we?”

  She handed me the book and smiled.

  “No, ma’am,” I said, slipping the book in a canvas bag. “We won’t have no trouble.”

  Some folks said Widow Jones had all kinds of secrets, but I wasn’t sure about that. I was just glad she kept my little Faulkner secret from Momma.

  We walked down the wood-paneled hall to the dining room where Hattie Mae had set up lunch. I’d never seen so much food in my life. There were platters of buttermilk fried chicken and crystal bowls of potato salad. Fluffy biscuits and oyster crackers for crab soup. Crystal pitchers of sweet tea, lemonade, and some kind of rhubarb punch. But if you were feeling up to it, Hattie Mae would make you a gin fizz or a bourbon sour. That’s what Widow Jones was served. A maple bourbon sour. Even though she didn’t touch the stuff, Hattie Mae’d become real good at mixing drinks for Widow Jones.

  Momma and I sat across from each other, and Widow Jones sat at the head of the table. We said grace before starting in on Hattie Mae’s mile-high biscuits. I wasn’t used to the real fancy silverware, but I got to buttering my biscuits good anyway.

  Hattie Mae turned on the radio, and a silky voice crooned like honey dripping from the comb. It was Nat King Cole.

  I think of you every morning, dream of you every night, darling, I'm never lonely, whenever you are in sight.

  Hattie Mae tapped her foot at the sideboard, humming as she set out the dessert. I took a long sip of iced tea and then dug into Hattie Mae’s potato salad. It was downright unreal.

  “It’s the dill, Miss Chloe,” she said, when I asked about it. “The dill and all them red onions. They make it extra good.”

  I don’t know how many helpings I had, but when Momma shot me a glare, I took my hand off the ladle and let it sink into the potato salad.

  It was nothing but, “Your hair is looking real fine, Miss Charity,” and “Thank you, Miss Madeleine. I love your dress,” kind of talk until Widow Jones wiped her mouth with her linen napkin and motioned to Hattie Mae.

  You could have heard a pin drop. Hattie Mae quit humming and came to the table. She was wearing the frilly apron she always wore for serving guests and said, “Yessum, Mrs. Jones.”

  “We need more mint, Hattie Mae. These leaves have wilted.”

  Hattie Mae’s gaze drifted to the fresh, green sprigs of mint on the little saucer beside the tea. We didn’t need mint any more than the man in the moon. Course now, Hattie Mae just nodded, real polite like and said, “Yes, Mrs. Jones. I’ll get some from the garden.”

  We watched her go, listening as the front door closed.

  Widow Jones turned to Momma. “Have you seen the posters? They’re all around my property. Scared poor Hattie Mae something awful.”

  My mind went to Big Jim. No wonder Hattie Mae was scared. Her son looked just like them men hanging from nooses.

  Momma got to playing with her necklace like she always did when she was nervous. “Joss came by the house last night. Said he wants to make sure Big Jim don’t get too uppity.”

  Widow Jones and Momma exchanged a look. It was the kind of look that said they knew more than they wanted to let on.

  “Joss is the one getting uppity,” Widow Jones said.

  Lord, Pa would take a switch to her hide if he heard her talking about Joss that way.

  “I used to think he was a gentleman,” she said, looking out the window like she was trying to conjure some long-lost memory. “Always opening doors and pulling out chairs. I thought he was trying to do right and protect folks, make things good in Mills Hollow. But that was a long time ago.”

  Momma got real quiet and glanced my way.

  “Joss is just like his father,” Widow Jones went on, taking a drink of bourbon.

  We all knew what that meant. J
oss’s father had been part of the Ku Klux Klan. He’d gone on night rides that left black folks shaking in their boots. Some even said he’d burned down a few houses and lynched some Negroes.

  “Joss didn’t fall far from the tree, did he?” Widow Jones said.

  I knew why Momma got quiet. Pa and Joss were cut from the same cloth.

  “He’s barking up the wrong tree with Big Jim, though,” Widow Jones said. “The boy’s been real helpful around Whitehall. He built the footbridge over my pond. Made a real sturdy henhouse. And besides, he’s a good boy. Hattie Mae raised him right.”

  “Miss Lilly said someone’s been spying on her,” Momma said, meeting Widow Jones’ gaze. “Someone real dark.”

  “Big Jim’s always talking about books. Not that he can read a lick, but he likes the pictures.”

  “You think that’s all it was? He’s just wanting to see them books?” Momma said, with a real skeptical look, the kind she had when Caleb told her a haint had chased him through the woods when he was hunting last fall.

  “Big Jim isn’t like other folks. He’s kind of slow, you know. More like a child. But he’s got a good heart. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  When Momma didn’t say anything, Widow Jones crossed her arms and said, “Joss will have you so scared, you’ll be afraid to have that boy walk past your house.”

  I looked at Momma, thinking she already does.

  Course, most of Mills Hollow had talked nonstop about Willie Earle’s lynching since it happened in February. Seemed like the incident made Joss real confident. If those men got off scot-free in Greenville for lynching an innocent black man, then who knew what folks could get away with? Seemed like there was an entire history of lynchings in the South backing him up.

  Hattie Mae entered through the kitchen with a saucer of mint. She set it on the table and asked if we needed anything else.

  “Another one of these,” Widow Jones said, pushing her empty bourbon glass to the edge of the table.

  Hattie Mae raised an eyebrow and took the glass. I watched her leave, the door to the kitchen swinging back and forth a few times before it settled down.

  Widow Jones changed the subject, and I was glad for it. She and Momma got to chatting about the latest fashions and some new lipstick that Max Factor was putting out. I didn’t pay much attention until Widow Jones asked, “How’s Mason doing at the sawmill?”

  Lord, here we go.

  “His hours been cut. Not much work lately.”

  “Some folks say the mill’s about ready to shut down,” Widow Jones said, as Hattie Mae brought her another drink.

  “Mason’d sooner die. Ain’t nothing worse than a man outta work.”

  Lord, didn’t I know it? Things were tight enough with Pa and Momma both working. The last thing I wanted to think about was Pa losing his job at the mill.

  I started feeling antsy and looked out the window. The leaves of a peach tree were shining in the sun. The trunk was framed in the window, its branches laden with golden fruit. Funny, I’d never noticed it before.

  Widow Jones dropped a couple sprigs of mint in her bourbon sour, real genteel like. I did the same with my iced tea and said, “You could have peach cobbler all summer long with that tree.”

  She followed my gaze to the tree. It was halfway between the main house and the footbridge that crossed the pond.

  “Not with that tree, Chloe. We don’t touch it.”

  It looked like the prettiest tree I’d ever seen.

  “How come you don’t eat them peaches?”

  “Chloe, ain’t nice to pry,” Momma said in her real syrupy voice that meant I was supposed to hush up.

  Hattie Mae cleared the dishes and brought out her famous banana pudding. I got real excited about all them vanilla wafers and whipped cream. She set a crystal bowl in front of each of us and, Lord, I thought I was seeing the gates of glory. I dug in without even thinking about Momma.

  Widow Jones ate a spoonful of pudding and said, “Carlton’s great-aunt, Miss Priscilla, wanted a peach tree at Whitehall.”

  I looked at Widow Jones, waiting for her to go on. She was real connected to Whitehall’s past. Seemed like it was her lifelong ambition to preserve its heritage.

  “Just before the South seceded from the Union,” she said, “Priscilla’s father, Drayton, had a peach grower come all the way from Georgia to plant the finest peach tree he could find.”

  I got to gazing at the tree, wishing we had one like it in our yard.

  “There was a slave at Whitehall named Moses,” Widow Jones said like she was drawing on something from the past.

  Momma sensed it, too, and got an uneasy look in her eye. She ate real slow and glanced my way.

  “Moses worked the fields picking cotton. He was a real good picker, too. Drayton wrote in his ledgers how Moses picked more cotton than anyone, but apparently cotton wasn’t all he liked. He and Miss Priscilla started meeting down by the slave quarters. One night Drayton found his daughter talking to Moses under a sweet gum.”

  I looked at Momma. She pushed her bowl aside, and I knew she’d lost her appetite.

  “Drayton liked to have a fit. I reckon Moses’ wife did, too. Moses and Ruth had gotten married out in the slave quarters the year before. She was a house slave,” Widow Jones said. “Made all them pretty stitches in Miss Priscilla’s dresses.”

  “Well, Drayton told his overseer to whip Moses good. They say Priscilla ran out to the slave quarters when the moon was brighter than a coon’s eye. The only thing she had was a sack full of peaches. She and Moses ran toward the swamp, but they didn’t get far. Drayton grabbed his rifle and shot her in the back.”

  I sat there on the edge of my seat, taking in her words. It sounded like something Faulkner could’ve made up.

  “What happened to Moses?” I asked.

  “You’ve heard of the legend of Foxhole Swamp? Folks say he drowned while running away. His tears, they say, made it black.”

  I’d heard Caleb say it. He was always seeing the ghost of Foxhole Swamp.

  I got to looking real good at the tree and said, “Is that the tree Miss Priscilla took the peaches from to give to Moses?”

  “No, Chloe,” Widow Jones said. “When one tree dies, we plant another in its place. That way we keep Miss Priscilla’s memory alive.”

  “But you don’t ever eat them peaches?”

  “No, honey. No one wants to eat fruit that bitter.”

  I didn’t know what to think of Miss Priscilla and Moses, other than things hadn’t changed much in eighty years. Momma sensed it, too. For the rest of lunch, I sat there mesmerized. I pictured the moonlight shining on Miss Priscilla and Moses, the two of them running toward the swamp. I wondered if the Spanish moss swayed in the breeze that night. Or if the crickets were singing. Seemed like the story was casting a spell on me cuz I conjured it up a few different ways. Sometimes Miss Priscilla was wearing a tightly corseted ball gown and other times she was dressed in a flouncy nightgown. Everything got real vivid cuz I didn’t come out from under my trance until Momma said, “Chloe, it’s time we be gettin’ home.”

  Widow Jones carried her bourbon sour to the door.

  “Take care of that hat, sugar.”

  “Yessum. I will,” I said, touching the wide brim.

  Widow Jones reached to give me a hug, but her bright violet-blue eyes closed, and she toppled forward. She dropped her glass, and bourbon splattered everywhere. Momma caught her and eased her fall. We laid her on the rug and I took off my hat, fanning her real good. I hoped she’d recover because otherwise I knew Momma would tell me to get the doctor and he lived a good three miles away.

  “Get me some water, Chloe.”

  I ran to the dining table and grabbed the ice bucket. It’d bout melted, but I figured it’d do. Momma took the ice bucket and splashed water on Widow Jones. She shook her head and sat up.

  “Why I just look a fright, don’t I?” she said, looking down at her dress.

  “You fainted, Madel
eine,” Momma said, helping her up. “We’ll get you a change of clothes.”

  Momma guided her into the powder room, and I went upstairs where I found a pretty lavender print dress that would bring out her eyes. We waited in the foyer as Hattie Mae came from the dining room carrying a tray of dessert dishes.

  “Lord, Mrs. Jones fall again?”

  “Afraid so,” Momma said. “Third time this month.”

  “She still taking them pills?”

  “The doctor said she needs them for her nervous disorder.”

  “Lord, she ain’t got no hysteria,” Hattie Mae said. “She’s tore up cuz her baby’s buried under the willow tree. What’s the doctor know about that?”

  I knew it had been at least ten years since Widow Jones lost her child, but Momma was right. She hadn’t gotten over it.

  “Last week I mixed up some taro root and lemon balm in Mrs. Jones’ iced tea,” Hattie Mae said. “Liked to calm her down real good after she got to crying over them old photographs of Mr. Jones.”

  “Widow Jones been crying?” I said.

  Momma gave me a wary glance and rubbed her arms. “I don’t feel right leaving her alone in her condition. You think you can watch her this afternoon?”

  “No, ma’am,” Hattie Mae said, clutching the tray. “Today’s my canning day. I’ve got to be picking all kind a fruit in the orchard. You know how Mrs. Jones gets if I get backed up on my chores.”

  Sometimes it seemed like Hattie Mae was downright nervous. Couldn’t hardly blame her, though. She had an awful lot of work to do around Whitehall and could use some extra help.

  “It’s my day off,” Momma said to Hattie Mae real sweet like. “Can’t you spare some time?”

  “I don’t mean no disrespect, Miss Charity, but I don’t get paid to be no nursemaid.”

  Momma put her hands on her hips and gave Hattie Mae a real hard glare, but it didn’t scare her none. Hattie Mae pushed through them swinging doors and got to making all kinds of noise in the kitchen.

  “Chloe,” Momma said, shooting an angry glance at the kitchen. “Why don’t you go home and get things ready for supper? I’ll stay here and make sure Widow Jones don’t have another fainting spell.”