by Lisa Belmont
“Yessum.”
“And see if Caleb’s caught any crabs. If so, we’ll have crab cakes and grits.”
“Yessum.”
“And pick some collard greens.”
“I will, Momma,” I said, opening the front door to the fragrant scent of lilacs. Widow Jones had a whole row of lilac bushes along a fence. They liked to smell to high heaven. More than them roses even.
“And Chloe,” Momma called after me. “Send Caleb. I don’t want to be walking home by myself.”
The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
Thomas Carlyle
Chapter Four
I walked right up to Widow Jones’ prize elephant ears and broke off a leaf. Those giant leaves made the best fans, and I found myself stirring up a whirlwind in no time. Rufus ran ahead, scaring birds out of bushes and barking at squirrels. Poor dog thought he was something.
I walked to the end of Widow Jones’ property, where the mimosas grew, and looked back at the main house. Sometimes I wished I could curl up in one of Widow Jones’ chairs and hide away amongst her books. Her library seemed like the happiest place in all of Mills Hollow.
I untied the ribbon under my chin, so I wouldn’t sweat through Widow Jones’ hat, and walked right under them dark cypress trees. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help thinking about Moses. He’d walked under these same cypress trees. He must’ve been so scared that night running from Miss Priscilla’s daddy. I wondered where it happened. Where he’d fallen in. All them cypress trees looked awful dark all of a sudden.
I got to listening to all them strange noises. They seemed to come out of nowhere, but mainly them cool hidey places where them critters would hole up and get to singing. I could hear frogs croaking under toadstools like there was no tomorrow and dragonflies gliding along the swamp. Bees were buzzing through tufts of cotton grass and Spanish moss blew in the breeze. The entire swamp seemed awakened somehow, like it was popping and spitting with life.
“Rufus,” I called.
When he didn’t come, I looked down at the dark water. Widow Jones said they never found Moses’ body. I wondered if it was still there, buried deep under the swamp. The thought gave me chills and I told myself to keep moving. I made it a short way down the path before I heard the low roar of a gator. I froze in my tracks and looked around, hoping a gator wasn’t basking nearby with its mouth gaping open. This time of year them gators were downright ornery. Pa said they’d take your arm off if you looked at them funny.
My best hope, I realized, was to make a run for it. Pa said I was like the wind when I ran and, this time, I think I was even faster than that. I ran so fast down the path that Widow Jones’ hat flew right off my head. I turned around and watched it float onto the branch of a cypress. The branch hung way over the black water. I couldn’t take my eyes off the lavender ribbon. It just dangled there, waving in the afternoon breeze.
Rufus came bouncing down the path, his tail wagging in all kinds of directions. He sniffed me real good – probably smelling Hattie Mae’s fried chicken – and licked my hand.
Widow Jones would have a fit if I lost her hat from Charleston. And I didn’t even want to think about Momma. She’d have me tarred and feathered.
I rummaged around in the overgrown grass for a stick and walked right into a beehive. Those bees were jumping mad that I’d invaded their territory and, for a minute, I thought they were gonna sting me. I hightailed it back to the trail and Rufus came bounding through the grass with a stick in his mouth like he was the smartest dog in the world. He dropped the stick in front of me, and I hugged his scruffy neck, telling him I didn’t care what Caleb said, he was still the best darn bloodhound in the Carolinas.
I stood on the bank and lifted the stick, but the hat was too far away. I looked down at the black water, not wanting to think about what was under the surface. Caleb always said that, “Water that black means death. Death for anyone who steps in it.”
Maybe it did, too. There were enough stories to go around for every swamp, tree, and critter in these parts to keep folk half-scared out of their minds.
“Rufus,” I said. “What should I do?”
He cocked his head to the side, barking something fierce and wagging his tail. Maybe it ain’t right to take advice from a dog, but I figured it was either this or get my hide tanned.
A frog croaked from the cattails, and I wished I was that agile. I wished I could just hop up on a branch and stick out my tongue the way a frog catches a fly. Widow Jones’ hat would stick right to my tongue, and I’d call it a day. Sometimes I think them frogs didn’t know how good they had it.
The old cypress seemed to be calling my name. Pa said the swamp cypress was known as “eternal wood” because the heart of it was resistant to decay. I hoped that was true as I grabbed ahold of the trunk and stepped onto the knobby knees. The woody bumps stuck out of the water that lapped at my feet, darker than Pa’s whiskey. It was all I could do to keep from looking down at it, wondering if Caleb was right.
A drop of sweat trickled down my face as I lifted the stick real high. I was on my tippy-toes, listening to a couple of egrets croak like a pair of toads. I never could get used to their strange bird calls. They walked along the shore until they got startled by something. They flew away and I doubled my efforts. I stretched so far I felt like I was on one of them medieval torture devices. Lord, my arm had never twitched so bad. Rufus let out a bellowing bark, the kind that’d startle the dead, and I jumped. I fell right in the water, every pore covered in the slimy residue of tadpoles and insects.
I came up spewing duckweed and cursing Rufus something awful. Dumb dog just kept wagging his tail.
“And don’t think I’ll be feedin’ you none of Pa’s bacon neither,” I said, splashing water at him.
Rufus always thought he was on a hunt, trying to track some coon. Course, Pa said he was too old to do much hunting anymore. Best the dog could hope for was to find some rabbit caught in a trap.
Rufus barked and jumped in the water after me. I think I was so distracted by his barking that I didn’t notice the way the water was streaking toward us. A few birds startled from the cattails, and a pair of eyes moved through the water. It was a gator. He was coming real slow and confident like.
“Rufus!” I shouted.
Them cypress knees were sticking up everywhere and made it hard to get to shore. I grabbed for Rufus, but he took off without me.
Rufus got to the bank and barked like he was saying, “What are you doin’? Don’t you know a gator’s comin’?”
“Help,” I hollered. “Please help!”
I splashed real good, trying to get to shore, but the whole time I was wondering if this was gonna be it. If I’d die right here, like Moses. Them gators were good at dragging folks to the bottom.
The gator went underwater and I imagined Momma walking back this way and finding Widow Jones’ hat. She’d be mumbling to herself the whole way home that I was due for a good whuppin’.
I grabbed at those knobby cypress knees like they could save me when something clamped down on me real hard. It dragged me through the muddy water, duckweed rushing past and cattails bobbing furiously. Sometimes I’d see trees swaying above. Other times just water. Black, murky water.
I don’t know if I screamed. Sometimes all a body can do is ease into the grip that’s holding it. That’s what I was doing, I reckon. Easing into the grip that dragged me to the soft cotton grass.
Rufus was smelling flowers, his nose stuck way down in them, and I realized I was on a hilly embankment. Down below, at the water’s edge, the gator snapped its mouth shut and disappeared under the surface, probably heading for the chorus of frogs.
I closed my eyes and felt the deepest sense of relief. It’s a strange thing the body does when it’s recovering from something traumatic. It kind of woke me up and shut me down all at the same time. Everything got real still and I listened to the sound of a wren churning out
a tune. I hoped in some way it’d calm me down, ground me in its sweet melody, but as I sat up, I knew someone was behind me.
It wasn’t intuition, but the smell of onions that clued me in. They reeked something awful, and I wished Rufus would get his hide over here and act like a dog. He’d go to tearing up half the swamp for a coon, but not raise an eyelid over a convicted criminal.
That’s who I imagined was behind me. Someone who’d broken out of the Charleston County Jail. He’d have on leg irons and want me to go to Momma’s cupboard and bring him some biscuits and a file, like Mr. Magwitch in Great Expectations.
A breeze blew over my wet dress and I shivered. I wrapped my arms around me and my gaze drifted to the side, slower than the way Caleb moved in the brush when he was hunting deer.
The first thing I saw were a pair of black boots. They reminded me of the pair Pa wore at the sawmill. I was too scared to move, but my eyes had a mind of their own. They traveled upward to a pair of denim britches and a strapping arm that looked like it could haul them great sacks of flour in Uncle Hickory’s store. There was no mistaking the barrel chest and the neck that was thicker than a jug. Big Jim was blacker than night, even in daytime, and I let out an ear-splitting scream. It echoed through the trees and reverberated across the swamp, startling birds from the water.
Rufus came bounding down the path, barking like he’d treed a coon. I moved beneath the refuge of an oak, trembling as blood drizzled from a cut on Big Jim’s face. It was a gruesome sight, me standing in my white dress, wetter than a sheet, and Big Jim’s mouth gaping open.
In no time Pa and Caleb came moving through the brush, their voices echoing across the water. Big Jim looked at me and I wondered if it was true what they said about him. That he haunted Foxhole Swamp like the haints he was descended from, coming down here at night to stir up trouble. I didn’t know for sure. All I knew was that I was glad when he disappeared into the bushes.
Troubles are often the tools by which God fashions us for better things.
Henry Ward Beecher
Chapter Five
Pa and Caleb came sweating down the path. I stayed under the tree, too afraid to move.
“Chloe,” Pa said, with a real wild look in his eyes. “What happened to you?”
“I fell in the swamp.”
“You fell in the swamp?” Caleb laughed. “That’s what you were screaming about?”
“Hush, boy,” Pa said, following my gaze to the straw hat bobbing on the surface of the water. “Ain’t safe with them gators.”
Part of me wanted to tell Pa that Big Jim had been here, that he’d frightened me something awful, but when I looked around and didn’t see him, I started wondering if I’d seen a ghost.
“We’ll get you home,” Pa said, giving me a hand. “And Caleb will get his canoe and go after your hat.”
Caleb knew better than to say anything, but he spat on the ground as he went after his canoe.
That night we had the crabs that Caleb caught. He’d gotten a whole passel of them down at the salt creeks and Momma made crab cakes. I was so hungry I thought I’d never get full. That’s what a good fright will do to you.
“Funny,” Momma said. “After you left, Chloe, Widow Jones got right settled in, but guess who came over looking for Hattie Mae?”
I had a spoonful of beans in my mouth and waited for Momma to go on.
“Big Jim,” she said with a look of concern on her face.
I fixed my stare on Pa.
“He was at Whitehall?”
Momma nodded. “Came in covered in mud. Asked me for a towel and I gave him one. Too scared not to. Lord, he acts like he owns the place.”
“He go there often?” Pa asked.
“Seems like every time I turn around.”
Pa narrowed his eyes and got to smoking his pipe. You could tell when he was getting worked up about something cuz he’d start whistling. It was always the same tune and you could practically hear them Confederate soldiers marching off to war.
I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten. Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Momma brushed my hair that night in soft, long strokes as I sat on the edge of my bed.
“Would you like a bedtime story?”
I was too old for a story, but I kinda liked the idea of Momma telling me one anyway. She sat with me in bed and read from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The pages were yellow and wrinkled, but I enjoyed hearing Momma’s soft voice as she read to me.
I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens – there ain’t nothing in the world so good when it’s cooked right – and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
“I think that’s how it must’ve been for Huck Finn and Jim,” I said to Momma. “A boy and a runaway slave. Both just wanting to be free.”
Momma closed the book and kissed my forehead. The kerosene lamp burned on my nightstand as I pulled the covers to my chin.
My mind was restless with an agitation I couldn’t shake. I tried not to think about it, but I was there again, amongst the Spanish moss that hung in great, ghostly strands. I heard the eerie call of birds and slipped deep into the water. That gator nearly got me, its jaws coming down hard and fast the way Rufus gnarled a bone.
I rolled over and thought of Big Jim. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me earlier, but his blacker-than-night hand must’ve reached down and saved me. There wasn’t anybody else around. No one who could’ve rescued me.
I sat up with this newfound knowledge, wondering if the bloody cut on his face was because of me. I didn’t know and looked out to the moon, low and full in the sky like it was ready to serenade all them ghosts at Foxhole Swamp.
Caleb said there was only one ghost, but other folks said there were more. I didn’t have an answer either way. Seemed like I didn’t have an answer for much lately, especially for why Big Jim saved me.
Maybe he didn’t see me standing beside Caleb the other day when he shot at him. Or maybe he didn’t know Caleb made fun of him every night at the supper table. Or maybe he didn’t know Pa got real ornery when it came to black folks. No, that couldn’t have been it.
Like I said, I didn’t have an answer, but as I lay down and listened to the katydids chirping like there’s no tomorrow, I got to thinking that maybe Big Jim wasn’t so bad after all.
Talk about your strange thoughts. I’d never had one that strange and had to admit it was troubling for sure.
War and drink are the two things a man is never too poor to buy.
William Faulkner
Chapter Six
In the South, there’s a little thing called hospitality. It goes deeper than calling someone Sir or Ma’am. It reaches wider than simply bringing a dessert to a church social or a gentleman removing his hat indoors. It’s more than wearing a magnolia in your hair or having real nice manners. It’s something that gets taught deep down in your bones when you’re knee-high to a grasshopper and never lets up.
I think that’s why it was so ingrained in us. No one was a stranger, and everyone was welcome at our house. Momma would get to cooking early in the afternoon and the whole house would smell like fried biscuits. That was one thing I never could get over – how much food Momma cooked when company was coming. You would’ve thought she was fixing supper for all of Mills Hollow the way she got out her frying pans and tubs of butter. Why, she’d fry up half the chickens in Charleston County before you could sneeze and she’d still have time to make mashed potatoes and gravy, hush puppies, and a rhubarb pie.
Tonight the Bleekmans were coming, which meant it was going to be Joss, his wife Alma, and their two boys, Chester and Henry. Chester was in my grade and Henry was in Caleb’s class. It seemed like every time ou
r two families got together, I got to wishing they’d had a girl. It wasn’t much fun talking about hunting and fishing all night.
At least Momma was making her famous hummingbird cake. It was a recipe that’d been passed down from Momma’s great-grandmama. Momma didn’t even have the recipe written down anymore. It’d become such a part of our family that she could’ve made it in her sleep.
One thing was for sure, I’d get myself in that kitchen before the flour hit the counter so I wouldn’t miss licking the spoon and scraping the bowl. That was the best part of making a hummingbird cake as far as I was concerned.
“Chloe, get me three eggs and two cups of sugar.”
“Yessum,” I said, as Momma chopped the pecans.
She’d sprinkle them all over the frosting. I think that’s when Caleb and I’d get to drooling – when we’d see that cake perched on the counter, smothered in white frosting and sprinkled with nuts.
“Why do they call it a hummingbird cake?” I asked, while I mixed the batter.
“I’m not sure,” Momma said, adding in the mashed bananas and crushed pineapple. “Maybe because it makes you hum with delight.”
That got us both to laughing good. Momma measured out the cinnamon and nutmeg, and I stirred in the vanilla and ginger. All those fragrant smells made me think I’d died and gone to heaven. We mixed the batter real good and poured it in a couple of cake pans.
Our house never seemed more like a home than when we had cakes in the oven. I watched them rise, real high and thick, before we took them out and let them cool.
Momma got me started on the frosting, and Caleb came over and stuck his finger in the powdered sugar. Momma whacked him good, telling him he’d better stay out of her kitchen if he wanted any cake. He moseyed outside with Pa. They left the door open, and flies buzzed in the house something awful. I got to swatting them while Momma took the barbecued pork out of the oven.
Rufus barked when Joss and Alma came to the front. I went out to greet them, trying to avoid eye contact with Chester and Henry, but Pa made me shake their hands. I hated those awkward situations when I had to pretend to like them. Actually, the whole time, I was hoping Chester’s warts weren’t contagious.