by Lisa Belmont
Old times there are not forgotten.
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Big Jim and I snaked through the tall grass and hid behind some overgrown shrubs. Pa was swinging the can of gasoline with a real big grin that liked to shine in the moonlight. He unscrewed the cap and poured gasoline around the base of the tree, getting all that dry grass soaked real good. The pungent fumes got to moving through the swamp and I felt like I was holed-up in the smokehouse, everything suffocating all of a sudden. Pa lit a match and tossed it on the ground.
A blaze of fire erupted, and the flames licked the trunk. Sparks flew up and ignited the branches.
I squeezed Big Jim’s hand and got to thinking of all the times I’d gone up and down that rope ladder, slipping into my own little world.
Caleb came down the trail and joined Pa.
“Lookey there, boy,” Pa said, grinning real big.
A wall of the fort curled and collapsed, falling with a thud.
I wondered if this is how Adam and Eve felt after they’d been driven out of the Garden of Eden. I wondered if they clung to one another, not thinking about anything but how they weren’t ever gonna see their little paradise again.
Everything got to crackling, and the smell of burning wood filled the air. Our little fort looked like it’d slipped right into the bowels of hell. It was all I could do to watch them branches disintegrate right before my eyes.
But sometimes you gotta know God’s looking down on you. That’s what I thought when I felt them raindrops. They came slow at first, then faster. Then pretty soon they’d doused the fire completely.
I think God was saying, “You ain’t gonna destroy Big Jim’s hard work that easy.”
Caleb and Pa stood in the pouring rain, their hats flopping down over their heads like a couple of wilted flowers. Pa looked downright pathetic as he squatted low to the ground.
“Come on, Pa,” Caleb said, holding his lantern so that it shone a path through the swamp.
“You go,” Pa said, holding up my choker.
Lord, my cheeks burned so hot I thought I was standing over an oven.
Pa just stood there, holding the necklace. It was all there. The cameo in the center. The black ribbon. The little gold clasp. He couldn’t take his eyes off it until everything sank in real good.
Caleb motioned to the house, but Pa shook his head. Caleb grabbed the can of gasoline and walked home without him.
Pa’s hand dropped to his side, and the choker sifted through his fingers, falling to the mud. That’s about where I felt I was. Down in all that oozy, thick mud.
It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Chapter Forty-Seven
Big Jim and I came out of the bushes shaking something awful. I don’t think I’d have been any sadder if my own house burned down.
Big Jim lifted his lantern and the murky light moved over the charred boards. I couldn’t hardly think straight; I was so mad at Pa. He’d taken all them memories. Taken them and burned them all to hell.
“Don’t be sad, Miss Chloe,” Big Jim said. “I can build another fort.”
I just looked at all them ruins and said, “No, Big Jim. You can’t.”
“Yessum,” he said. “I can build another one. A real good one.”
It was one of the things I loved about him. That he could always find a silver lining, but I think deep down we both knew what had to be done.
Maybe it was this way for Miss Priscilla and Moses. Maybe they knew things would never turn out right between them and yet, they didn’t want to give up. Didn’t want to quit for trying.
“Big Jim,” I said. “I’ve never seen Pa like this. He’s real mad about losing his job at the sawmill. He’s blaming everybody for it. Ain’t no one safe.”
“Yessum,” Big Jim said.
“What do you think ‘bout going up North to see your aunt and uncle?”
“Up North?”
“Yeah, tomorrow night.”
Big Jim stepped into the bushes and it reminded me of the time he saved me down by the swamp. How he’d done nothing but right and yet still had to hide. He wiped his brow and took a long look at all them ashes. I was looking at them, too.
“Okay, Miss Chloe,” he said. “Tomorrow night.”
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington
Chapter Forty-Eight
That night I took the book on Booker T. Washington out from under my bed. I went to my dresser and opened the bottom drawer where I’d been saving the $30 I’d gotten from working at Widow Jones’. Next to it was a Sears catalog that was full of hats and sweaters, nice gold watches and chocolate candies. The fruitcakes that Momma liked and a Kenmore “Synchromatic” 1100 Watt Electric Iron for $10.95. I got to looking through it and thinking about the Christmas dress I was gonna buy, not to mention the Sweetheart Dresser Set which included three gold-colored hair brushes with decorative trim and a shiny new mirror for only $3.98. All them pages were looking real good – wrapping paper on one, a set of perfume on another – but, in the end, I knew I had to give Big Jim the money.
Who knew how far $30 would take you up North anyway? Probably wouldn’t last him more than a week. I stuffed the catalog back in the drawer and put the money in a burlap sack along with the book. I stuffed them both under my bed and took out the train schedule. I checked it again, just to make sure I had the time right. Nine o’ clock, it read.
My eyes started getting blurry just looking at it. I couldn’t help it, I guess. I really didn’t want Big Jim to go. I guess I never realized how much until now.
The following day I went around the house, gathering up anything that might be of use to Big Jim. Caleb had some chewing gum and Momma had some peanuts in a jar. I added them to the collection and started thinking about how good life up North would be.
Big Jim could work on one of those big buildings with other colored folk and feel like he fit right in. He’d cut the boards and hammer the nails, putting up them walls like there’s no tomorrow. The thought got me downright excited. I started moving around the house like a dragonfly let loose from the swamp. Didn’t seem like anything could bother me, not even Momma when she told me to get some flour at Uncle Hickory’s.
“It’s time to get started on baking, what with Thanksgiving around the corner.”
That was one thing Momma liked to do. Cook for the holidays. She’d make the biggest meal out of practically nothing. Caleb and Pa would go hunt up a turkey in the backwoods and Momma would mash up some taters from the garden. We’d have biscuits and gravy and green beans smothered in butter. Of course, we’d have pie too. Thanksgiving was nothing without Momma’s pecan pie.
I laced up my leather shoes as Momma handed me a list. Flour, sugar, and a ball of wool yarn.
“Have we got any money?”
“No, Chloe. It’s gonna be on credit.”
“Yessum.”
Sometimes Momma would trade a dozen eggs and a smoked ham for some fabric. Uncle Hickory was good about extending credit, but we’d usually paid him back by now. I hoped he wouldn’t give me a funny look or make some comment about Pa. The last thing I wanted was to see Margaret Wilcox behind the counter handing me a bag of flour like I was a charity case.
Fall leaves were scattered along the path. Even though I’d walked this path a thousand times, I didn’t recognize it. The sweet gums were out with their dark red foliage, and lots of shrubs were covered in berries. The sassafras leaves had their usual resemblance to turkey tracks and, if you listened, you could hear wrens chirping. But nothing seemed the same anymore.
Maybe that’s what happens when you stop listening to all them voices. All them voices you’ve grown up hearing.
I watched a squirrel move along the branch of an oak. It reminded me how scared Chester was
on Halloween night. Funny thing, a little squirrel scaring a coon hunter like Chester Bleekman. I got to thinking folk get scared of all kinds of things they oughtn’t be.
Big Jim had been like that for me. He’d been some kind of myth or legend. Something like the swamp monster Momma told us about when we were kids so we wouldn’t go near the water. Or the ghost of Foxhole Swamp. That story kept everyone away from the gators.
That’s what all them made up stories were meant to do, I realized. Keep people safe. But all they’d taught us to do was fear.
At least I was making up for it. All I could think about was helping Big Jim escape tonight. I felt like one of them brave abolitionists, like Harriet Tubman or, more likely, Lucy Stone cuz she taught all them fugitive slaves how to read.
I got to Uncle Hickory’s little country store, and a few men were sitting outside reading the paper. There was a covered porch where folks would discuss local affairs and sometimes, in summer, Uncle Hickory would turn the radio on and folks would listen to a ball game. Outside, there was a gasoline pump, used mainly for tractors, but once in a while, you’d see Uncle Hickory go out there to fill up someone’s car.
I went inside and there was a long line. Probably because tomorrow was Sunday and on the Lord’s day the store closed. I got to looking around the store at all them shelves. You could buy woolen mittens from Massachusetts or cotton from Tennessee, but Momma always said you’d be in a pinch if you tried to find the exact fabric you wanted for a dress. Uncle Hickory only carried so many kinds of fabric, and most of the time Momma would end up ordering what she wanted from a catalog. There were several jars of candy on the counter and cans of Alaskan salmon on the shelf behind Uncle Hickory. I started fidgeting something awful, wondering if I’d ever see half as many places as them cans.
I finally got to the front of the line and told Uncle Hickory what was on Momma’s list. He took the paper from me and looked it over real good. I got to feeling real embarrassed cuz I was sure he was mulling over whether or not to loan us more goods when we ain’t even paid yet for what we got.
“Chloe,” he said, looking down at me over his spectacles.
I tried to be real brave, especially when he handed the list back. I thought for sure he was gonna tell me he ain’t running no charity program.
“Why don’t you pick out a piece of candy from the jar?” he said. “I’ll gather up your items.”
I liked to died of relief. I went right to those covered jars and pulled out a peppermint stick. It was wrapped in cellophane and I unwrapped it, licking it until all them stripes liked to come off.
Uncle Hickory put the flour, sugar and wool in a paper bag and told me to hold it so the bag wouldn’t break.
“Tell your pa,” he said, “that I’m glad he’s taking care of things. Don’t want no colored folk getting the idea they can build them shacks wherever they want. Especially not up in no trees. Course, it could be cuz they’re related to them monkeys,” he smirked.
I felt my stomach drop. Colored folks were used to stepping in the gutter when white folks passed them on the sidewalk, and they’d be careful not to brush up against a white person in a store – that was common knowledge – but something liked to rise up in me when Uncle Hickory got to calling them monkeys.
Thanksgiving dinner or not, I pushed the bag of goods onto the counter and told Uncle Hickory, “You ain’t nothin’ but a mean, old sourpuss.”
“What in tarnation?”
“You heard me. And I don’t want none of your candy neither,” I said, throwing the peppermint stick on the ground and hurrying out of the store.
I might as well have murdered him. It’d be all over town. Miss Chloe Mason’s gone stark raving mad. She’s a nigger sympathizer and can’t be trusted. Lock your doors and hide your children. Ain’t nothing she won’t do to protect them niggers.
The little bell on the door jangled something fierce as I left the store. I hurried down the front steps, terrified someone was gonna come after me. Pa would for sure tan my hide once he heard what happened. No one disrespected their elders and got away with it in Mills Hollow.
I ran faster than the wind toward the trail. A few folks hollered, “Where’s the fire?” but I didn’t stop. I just kept going, knowing Margaret would never let me live it down.
I could hear her saying, “My pa says you deserve a whuppin’ and he’s gonna give it to you. Forty lashes on your bare butt with a willow switch. And that ain’t all. It’s gonna be in front of the whole class.”
Her voice turned to cackling as I met Puddingtate Mosley on the trail. His sleeves were rolled up and he had a handkerchief tied around his neck, but that wasn’t what was bothering me. It was the way he hunched under the oak like his knees were too tired to carry him. That’s how I started feeling all of a sudden. Like I was about a hundred years old.
He reached for me and said, “Miss Chloe. It’s bad. Real bad.”
I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I just wanted to find Big Jim.
“Widow Jones,” he said. “She down with Moses.”
“Get away from me, Puddingtate.”
He got to caterwauling something fierce. I didn’t know what he was going on about and frankly, I didn’t care. For all I knew he was getting old and senile. I left him there, moaning like the ghost of Foxhole Swamp.
I got part way down the trail and he hollered after me. “I pruned them roses jes’ like she said. The little white ones by her child’s grave. And that’s where I found her.”
I turned around slowly. “What did you say?”
“I found Widow Jones in the swamp. She drowned in that black water jes’ like Moses.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, Miss Chloe.”
I stood there a moment, utterly dumbfounded before I took off running. Lord, I flew through that black swamp like a bat out of hell. I’d never seen it so gloomy looking. A blue mist got to moving through the trees and I wondered if it was gonna swallow me whole. For the life of me, all I could think about was that she had her talk with Joss and it didn’t go so good.
“Widow Jones,” I hollered when I got to the gate.
It was locked. I rattled it a few times and, when that didn’t work, I climbed the tall wrought iron fence.
There weren’t any lights on at the house, and the only sound I could make out were the toads croaking. I got as far as the painted footbridge when I noticed a cool mist moving through the branches of Miss Priscilla’s peach tree. The moonlight was shining on it real good and Widow Jones’ words came to me. You’re like her, Chloe. You’ve got to fly with your own wings.
I don’t know why it gave me an uneasy feeling, just watching the tree glow in the moonlight, but I felt like it was calling me.
“Widow Jones,” I whispered, looking down at the black water.
And then, as if sent by messenger, her pillbox hat with the little French veil floated across the water. It bobbed up and down in the moonlight like it was waving goodbye.
“No, Widow Jones,” I cried, watching her hat disappear into the cattails. “You ain’t down with Moses.”
A cold wind kicked up and it started to rain. Everything blurred as I ran through the swamp, realizing I’d never see Widow Jones again. She was the one person who encouraged me. Who understood me wanting to teach Big Jim to read. I can still remember that bright summer morning when she handed me Faulkner’s book, like she realized I could handle whatever its pages held. And now, she was gone.
I ran through the dark blur of trees, never so glad to see the smoke from our chimney. I tore across the front porch and the boards got to squeaking real good.
Momma was playing the radio and all them blue notes floated up as Lena Horne sang Stormy Weather.
Keeps raining all the time.
Momma sat in the rocker, just staring at the hearth.
“Widow Jones,” I cried, kneeling at her side. “It’s real bad.”
“I know. Doc Maybley sto
pped by.”
Life is bare. Gloom and misery everywhere. Stormy weather.
Caleb’s gun was missing from the mantle and so was Pa’s. That alone should have told me it was going to be a terrible night. I just didn’t know how terrible.
“Doc Maybley says it wasn’t no accident,” Momma said, her eyes red and puffy. “Somebody dragged her to the water.”
“No, Momma. Can’t be true.”
“She’s got marks on her.”
Part of me wanted to curl up in her lap and pretend there was nothing outside of our little shotgun house. No black or white. Nothing but me and Momma. Nothing but sitting on the front porch and watching them dragonflies buzz through the swamp asters. Just me and Momma, baking peach pies and frying up okra in the iron skillet.
I looked out the window at the rain streaking the panes and knew those days were gone.
“Pa and Caleb went to get Joss.”
“What for?” I said, knowing the answer.
“Widow Jones trusted Big Jim.”
“He didn’t do nothin’.”
Momma looked at me like she knew it was true. Like she’d finally figured out that he wasn’t like everyone made him out to be. But she also knew something else. In Mills Hollow, no one else would be found guilty. It wouldn’t have mattered if Joss himself ran out of Whitehall with blood on his hands. There’d be one person to hang for the crime and that person was Big Jim.
Momma looked at me real serious like. Maybe she knew a lot more than she let on cuz as I stood there, not blinking, not breathing, she said, “Run, Chloe. Run!”
I took off for my room, anxious as all get-out. I grabbed the sack from under my bed and climbed out the window.
Pa and Joss met me on the path. Pa lifted his lantern so that the light shone on me like one of them coons he’d hunt. I stayed there, feeling the charcoal nights of blue smoke when I’d wade into the creek. When Pa would come home with a pair of rabbits flung over his back and I’d run alongside him, listening to his stories of Briscoe Mason.
Part of me wanted to be his little Buttercup forever. The little girl who’d watch from the window on cold December nights as he’d chop wood for the fire. The girl who’d sit at his feet as he’d salt pork in the smokehouse, telling me how General Robert E. Lee nearly won The Civil War.