by Lisa Belmont
Big Jim held my hand real good like we were joined together. I’d never been so scared and yet, I’d never felt so free.
I didn’t hear the gun cock and I didn’t hear the shot go off. I’d drifted somewhere far away and only became aware of my surroundings when I heard the sound of tears. They came into my consciousness along with a heaviness in my chest. I was afraid to open my eyes, afraid to see what I’d caused – but that’s the funny thing about standing up for what you believe. Sometimes you’ve got to just stand there and take it.
Everything was hazy at first, the smoke thick and lingering like it was gonna swallow me whole. And then I saw Caleb. He was sitting at the base of the oak, on them old, twisted roots. His arms were around Pa – the first time I’d ever seen it – and that alone should have told me something was mighty wrong.
Caleb’s lantern shone a waxy light through the trees. It lit up Chester and Henry, their figures hunched over Joss. I was too scared to move, too scared to think, but there he was, Joss Bleekman. Pa’s best friend in the world lying stiller than a hollow log.
My knees went weak and I collapsed onto the soft Carolina soil. Big Jim did the same, kneeling beside me as it started to rain.
Joss was Pa’s best friend in the world. He knew all of Pa’s stories by heart, every last one of them, including the one about Briscoe Mason spilling his drink – two parts grape juice and one part rum – all over Jefferson Davis’ freshly laundered coat.
And Pa had shot him dead.
I couldn’t hardly take in what happened. I just sat there with my knees stuck in the mud, wishing Pa would hold me like he used to when I was a little girl. Wishing he’d give me one of them peppermint sticks from Uncle Hickory’s store and tell me that everything was going to be all right.
But he didn’t. He just looked at me over Caleb’s shoulder, his lip quivering in the rain-soaked air.
Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.”
It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power.
And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Chapter Fifty
They buried Joss under the sweet gums that grew out by his house. He didn’t believe in cemeteries. Too many ghosts, he’d say. It seemed like a lot of ghosts were being put to rest lately.
It was a rainy afternoon, dark as all get-out, and our umbrellas turned inside out from the wind. The words “hunting accident” got passed around along with a small brochure that paid tribute to Joss’s life.
I looked around at all the familiar faces. Alma, Joss’s widow, and Henry and Chester. They looked downright beat up, like trampled lily stalks. I wondered how they were gonna survive. Uncle Hickory and his wife were there, along with Emma Kate and Margaret. They’d closed up the store and come out to pay their respects.
Momma was next to me, crying some, and Caleb, too. Pa was the only one who wasn’t there. I didn’t rightly know what to make of it. Sometimes it seemed like Pa had died along with Joss. For the last couple of days, he’d hardly gotten out of bed – just to go to the outhouse and get moonshine from the cabinet. I couldn’t hardly blame him, though. He was mourning the only way he knew how.
The preacher from the church on Mulberry sprinkled dirt over the pine box and said, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
They were the same words spoken at Widow Jones’ funeral. I couldn’t hardly look when her pristine white coffin was covered in Carolina soil. I tossed roses on her grave and cried all the way home. Seemed like nothing would ever be the same again.
At least Big Jim said he’d meet me down by the swamp later. He wanted to teach me to fish by hand.
As soon as we got back from Joss’s funeral, I put on an old pair of overalls and rolled up my britches to the knees. I grabbed a few items from my room: an old towel I could tie around the fish, some chewing gum I’d stuffed in a drawer, and a butterfly net I figured I could use if all else failed.
Momma was knitting by the fire, and Caleb was holed-up in his room. I figured it’d be pretty easy to slip away. I got as far as the front door when Pa said, “Chloe, I’d like a word with you.”
I’d never felt a shock wave of fear go through me like that before. Pa hadn’t said a word to me since Joss died. The air was suddenly charged, electric, as we stepped onto the porch.
Thunder cracked in the distance, and Rufus went to howling. We sat down in them rocking chairs and Pa filled his pipe with Daniel Webster tobacco. He lit it and got to rocking real slow. I couldn’t help but hurt for him. He had little wrinkles around his eyes, and his skin looked parched like he needed some of that honey I’d drizzled on Big Jim.
“Chloe,” he said, looking more tired than a coon dog after an all-night hunt. “A man don’t shoot his best friend without thinkin’ about some things.”
I looked up at him like I’d never seen him before. That was the last thing I ever expected him to say. I knew why he was looking so tired then. He’d been wrestling with all them ghosts.
Smoke curled around us like it was trying to bind up our wounds. Heal what’d been broken. But some things don’t heal so easy.
Pa tipped some ash from his pipe and relit it. He leaned back in his rocking chair so that it got to creaking real good.
“My daddy and granddaddy were good men.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Real good men,” he said, looking up to heaven. “Maybe not perfect, but good. They worked hard and took care of their families. You come from good stock, Chloe. Real good.”
An awkward silence filled in the place between us and Pa said, “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Cuz I won’t have you thinkin’ otherwise.”
We stayed like that, in silence, until he nodded to me and asked, “Where were you going?”
I looked to the swamp, to the trail I’d taken so often. Pa followed my gaze and removed his pipe, exhaling smoke so that it bristled forth in a haze of gray.
Pa nodded for me to get in the house and I did as I was told, trying to ignore the riled up feeling I was having. I knew what he meant. I wasn’t ever going to the swamp again.
I went to my room and gazed out the window. Seemed like hours passed before the moon rose over the trees. But as it rose, bright and gleaming in a halo of light, I realized something. You can’t stop the moon. No, sir. It just keeps coming up.
I lifted the sash and climbed out the window. The twinkling stars guided me along like they were saying, “Come on. It’s this way.” And it was, too. The frogs, the crickets, the coons. Even the cypress tree that housed the ghost of Foxhole Swamp. They all came out to watch me move through the swamp like I was a part of it, like meeting Big Jim under the moon, high and full in the trees, was the most innocent thing in the world.
Big Jim and I stayed in the light of the silvery moon, our laughter echoing across the water. Sometimes I think we drowned out all them slave voices. Other times, I think they joined in with us. Either way, we stayed like that for a long time, captivated as the sun rose in a brilliant sparkle through the trees. A whip-poor-will sang from a redbud, lo and sweet, and, I realized, there wasn’t a thing left to do but go forward and meet the dawn.