Rails Under My Back

40

THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID, Gracie said.

Well, what did you say?

Sheila, you think you know everything.

You jus don’t want to admit when you wrong.

And you always right.

I didn’t say that.

I know what you said.

I—

The flight attendant brought them both cups of water.

Sheila drank — the water was cool going down; it brought her back to herself — and thanked. Gracie drank but said nothing. Her heavy Bible rested like a paperweight on her narrow lap to keep her from blowing out of her seat. She sat on the aisle. Sheila had allowed her that. Her comfort and more comfort in the knowing. But Gracie was ungrateful, face frowned up as if the water was poison.

Can I get yall anything else?

No, Sheila said. Thank you.

Just call.

The plane hummed through the deep sky. The sisters sat in remembering silence.

He’s a good boy, Lula Mae said.

I know, Gracie said.

He’s a good boy, Sheila said.

She jus said that. You my mamma too?

Well—

She’s right. He would make you a good—

Sides. He ain’t no boy. He a man.

Marry him.

Nawl.

Why not?

I don’t want to, that’s all.

Quit thinking bout yoself.

Who said I’m thinkin bout me.

Think about—

I don’t care.

But—

Why don’t yall jus leave me alone.

Sheila looked at the sea of shifting clouds outside the small window. Traveling clouds. Great flocks of memories. Flurry of claws. She fastened her seat belt. They would be landing soon.

THE MEMPHIS HEAT almost pushed her back onto the plane. She’d left home only an hour ago. The sky was sharp and clear and hot in the morning silence, telling you that, yes, you were someplace else. How many times in the last months had she made this trip? Now, she saw the pattern complete, first stitch to last. Lula Mae on loan, body and soul, both to be returned to her creator.

How you, Miss Pulliam? the white nurse said.

I been better.

Yo cancer actin up?

Lula Mae looked at Sheila, her secret revealed. She had hidden the cancer for five years. I didn’t want yall to worry, she said.

In the following months, she waited patiently for death. This cancer gon kill us all, she said. Now she had passed, moved on to the world to come.

The bridge was steel and stillness and silence. A pyramid of rails and cables. Memphis this side, West Memphis the other. The river below was bright and clean, rocks on the bottom distant but clear, large and white as plates. Just a ways down the river, the dog track sat like a giant oil silo in the sun. Memphis’s best greyhounds chased circular rabbit motion. Real rabbits once. But that too had changed.

The yard across the road was peaceful now, no longer crowded with scurrying chickens. A colorful rooster or two. You would go there and buy fresh brown and green eggs. Now it stood empty and yellow. And on this side of the road where Lula Mae lived an empty field had replaced John Brown’s house. Both the man and his house gone — Brown first then the house — many years now. The promised construction had never begun. John Brown dead a good ten years or more already. Sheila couldn’t say for sure. John Brown would stand in the yard and point up into the tree. See the monkey. See the monkey.

Shell-shocked, Lula Mae said. But he treated her good. Took her anywhere she needed to go in his old pickup truck (gray? blue?), shaking and shuddering and steaming like a train. He believed it to be the only vehicle of its kind in Memphis or West Memphis.

Sheila let Gracie go first on the splintery wood placement — like an old railroad plank, which perhaps it was — that offered a skinny path across the grass-covered drainage ditch. Gracie opened the chain-link fence and charged through the yard as if it all had ordinary meaning to her. Sheila watched from the sidewalk and fought to still her insides. A half-circle of spokes poked through the grass, straighter than peacock feathers. Wrought-iron lawn furniture, painted silver in the sun (Lula Mae hid the red rust with seasonal coatings of silver paint), was positioned in front of the green-and-white two-story house — well, the second story with the miter-shaped roof was an attic — for the right combination of sun and shade. A motherly awning reached over and sheltered a snug little concrete porch. No sides or banisters. Barely room for a chair. A porch for looking, not sitting.

TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING.

I will.

Make sure Hatch has everything he needs.

I will.

You know how he forgets.

You don’t have to remind me.

And try to get here Friday night at the latest. The funeral gon be Saturday morning.

We’ll come well before that.

Don’t be in such a rush. Give your father chance to return.

We will.

Maybe that damn fool John’ll be with him.

More than likely.

You take care and I’ll see yall when you get here.

Okay.

Bye.

Bye. Oh, Mom.

What?

Should we tell Jesus?

You decide.

THIS WAY, Reverend Blunt said. The young and handsome reverend took Sheila by the elbow. He led her down the hall. Sheila looked back to see Gracie still standing at the front door, her Bible tight at her side.

Aren’t you going to come? Sheila said.

The reverend never stopped walking.

No, Gracie said. I’ll see her later.

Well, stay away from that sun, the reverend said, looking back, still walking.

Gracie looked at him as if he’d spoken to her in a foreign language.

I’ll have my boy bring you some tea.

Keep it, Gracie said.

The words caused the reverend to blink. Please, ma’m, keep over there in the shade or you’ll catch heatstroke. Outside, the day’s heat was still rising. Gracie didn’t budge.

The reverend took Sheila where he needed to take her, then stopped and stood sentinel-still. I’ll wait here, ma’m.

Sheila entered the room. She saw the body, open in a casket already chosen. Lula Mae’s face was gray as the quilt that covered her. The dew of death on her breath. Sheila searched for the old image in the sunken face. Searched but did not find. The body had been emptied of both life and memory. She stayed as long as she needed to stay, then she went out.

We gon make everything perfect, the reverend said. He retook Sheila’s elbow. Miss Pulliam already made all the arrangements. If there’s anything you want to change or add … We’ll bring her over to the church Friday evening for the viewing. Come on in here and we can go over everything. I’ll just need you to give me cash or a certified check. My credit-card machine ain’t seem to be workin today. His hand was a crane lifting her up at the elbow. Boy, bring her some cold tea.

Yes, suh.

And check on that lady out front there.

HOW SHE LOOK? Gracie said. She was a long time rising.

Fine. They did a fine job.

How she look?

LULA MAE WOULDN’T LIKE THAT CASKET, Gracie said. She returned the brochure to Sheila.

Well, we can go back and you can help me find one that you like.

It ain’t about what I like.

It’s the one she chose.

They sat for a long time. Sheila felt the silence all around her. When she spoke her voice was lost. Well, I guess we better be gettin on to the church.

Gracie leaned forward. She put both hands to her face. She sat like that, both shoulders moving.

THE SLOW GRAY PREACHER took Sheila’s elbow to help her negotiate the collapsed steps leading up to the church. Gracie followed behind, carrying her heavy Bible like a suitcase at her side. The preacher took them into the small chapel and showed them all there was to see. The wake and funeral would be held here, the church that Lula Mae had attended just blocks down the road from her house.

Why we got to have it here? Gracie said. It’s old. Dirty. Unclean. Stinks.

Lula Mae wanted it here.

I don’t see why.

SHE WOULDN’T WANT TO BE BURIED IN THAT DRESS, Gracie said.

This is the dress she told me, Sheila said.

Well, she didn’t tell me that.

She didn’t have to tell you.

You know everything.

It’s what she wanted.

You always right.

Gracie, what’s wrong with you?

You always gotta have everything yo way.

I TALKED TO BEULAH. She’ll be here tomorrow.

They driving? Gracie said.

Yes. Rochelle’s husband rented a van.

That’s a long drive from St. Paul to here.

I know. But that’s the only way they can afford to come.

Beulah can’t stand no long drive.

I offered to send for her but—

That’s a long drive. Too long. Beulah is ninety—

Yes, well, Jacky and Lil Judy coming too.

Gracie half turned to her with some new complaint.

WASN’T NO LAUNDROMATS in the old days. Jus soap, water, and yo two hands. Wash the clothes in a big steel tub, scrub them hard across the scrubbing board, and lay em across the line to dry in the sun. Took a lot out of a person. That was the way Lula Mae had washed. That was the way Sheila was washing now. After she finished the laundry, she started on the floors, walls, and windows. She took little time to rest. Then she ironed the outfit she would wear Saturday, cut, color, and fabric chosen many months before. (She would wear it with Lucifer’s gift, the yellow bird made of unidentified Brazilian stone.) That done, she went on to her next task. She knew what she needed to do beyond knowing, and knowing, knew that she had turned knowledge into obligation, duty, and the fulfillment of that obligation and duty.

Her hands are anything but idle. She must put the house in order. The house will be rocking with people come Saturday. And she has to sort through Lula Mae’s belongings. What will she keep for herself? Those things dearest to her heart. Can she lug it all back to the city? What she doesn’t keep Gracie and Lula Mae’s friends can have. Whatever they don’t want, she will try to sell. She will—

What are you doing? Gracie said.

Sheila turned and faced her. Trying to sort through all these things.

Why you ain’t tell me?

Sheila looked into Gracie’s eyes and saw the calculation in them.

I already told you.

Gracie said nothing.

Why don’t you come help me? When Porsha gets here, she and Hatch can go through the attic.

Gracie said nothing.

They can do the little house, too.

Gracie turned and left the room.

SHE SAT ON LULA MAE’S BED and listened to the night frogs and crickets. She had accomplished all she could and deserved rest. She saw very clearly how her life had led to this moment. A moment that demanded perfection. It would take everything she had to grant a wish, but she would pay it. That much she owed Lula Mae. She had refused money from the Sterns, from Porsha, from George. She had bought her plane ticket and Gracie’s. She had paid for the wake, the funeral, the burial arrangements. She could breathe easy and Lula Mae could rest without worry, knowing that her death had been placed in Sheila’s loyal, dutiful, and determined hands. Sheila was the host that Death had promised her.

Tell Gracie to stay home, Lula Mae said. Don’t come here no mo. All she do is set up in that rocking chair and accuse and pity.

When Cookie died, Sheila had had to make all the arrangements, pay all the expenses. Gracie moved slowly and stiffly, her heart beating at a heavy cost, carrying in her blood the lead fact of the death of her firstborn. After the funeral, Sheila helped Gracie put Cookie’s wheelchair into the closet of the Kenwood apartment they shared. From there they pushed it to the patio of the May Street apartment and finally into the basement of the house on Liberty Island, where it waited in the corner, uncovered and empty. The house on Liberty Island with a real hearth where a fire could burn. Where Cookie’s photograph held command on the mantel above: a will-less face and loose eyes that looked in two directions at once; a white-and-pink bow; a pink dress with white collar and black belt; black patent-leather shoes; a white cloud surrounding her body, Cookie standing out like a gem against cotton.

She had defended Gracie from Ivory Beach, the wicked Houston stepmother who staked claims during Lula Mae’s New Mexico absence, the swamp woman who found daily satisfaction in tormenting Gracie. And, many years later, she exacted payment in Gracie’s name and memory. She saw a woman standing old and thin and alone on Sixty-third and Church Street. The sight slowed then stopped her feet. No, it couldn’t be. Surely her eyes deceived. Illusion. Mirage. She stood thinking that her cold desire for revenge and justice had caused the woman to crystallize. The woman’s eyes jumped with recognition. She started to turn her face away. Thought twice about it. Why, why, Sheila.

Sheila listened to the remembered voice and said nothing.

Is that really you?

After all these years, Sheila said. Sheila had heard no word about the woman since leaving Houston. Now to find her here, in the city, on this very street corner.

Yes. How you makin along?

After all these years.

Ivory Beach lifted her nose with her old pride. Yes. After all these years. You was a mean one.

Sheila punched Ivory Beach in the face, feeling the ancient brittle bones go soft under her knuckles.

Gracie had forgotten all of this. Remembered only what she wanted to remember, needed to remember, cause if she remembered it all the past might force her to forfeit her anger.

Sheila found Lula Mae’s Bible where she thought it would be.

Lula Mae had inserted strips of white paper throughout the Bible, perhaps to catalogue important sections, clue her to crucial passages. Sheila found a yellowed newspaper clipping sandwiched between two pages.

Sheila returned the clipping to its exact place. She ran her palm over the book’s rough cover. She left it here for me to find, she said to herself, thinking, and thinking almost saying aloud. She put the Bible in her suitcase and locked the latches.

41

SHE MUST BUY NEW CLOTHES for the funeral. A plague of moths had eaten her old ones. (Could this be? Is it not true that moths eat wool and wool only? Perhaps certain varieties of moths feed on a range of fabrics.) An army of babies rode off in her shoes, tanks.

She fluttered, angels in her body. She blessed the railroad plank above the grass-covered drainage ditch. Blessed the ditch itself. Blessed the chain-link fence that surrounded Lula Mae’s property, contained it. Blessed the lawn. The lawn furniture. Trees — apple, pear, and plum. Blessed the concrete walkway leading up to the house. Blessed the two concrete front-porch steps. Blessed the front porch. Blessed the lil house out back behind the house. Blessed the two railroad planks positioned side by side to offer a walkway to the three concrete back-porch steps. Blessed the back-porch steps. The back porch itself, an uncovered block of concrete. Blessed the kitchen. The bathroom. The living room. The bedroom where Sheila slept. The second bedroom where Mr. Pulliam used to sleep, the bedroom that Lula Mae rented out after he fled to heaven. She blessed the hall. The attic could wait.

Blessing done, she entered the second bedroom where Mr. Pulliam used to sleep, the bedroom that Lula Mae rented out again and again after he fled to heaven. She undressed and slid under the covers, full and satisfied. Sharp-edged silence. Sheila slept quiet across the hall behind a closed door. Memory wheezed in the darkness. She put her Bible underneath her pillow and heard Lula Mae talking.

42

DAMN, MAN. Can’t you see that Indian behind you?

Gunfire crackled through Lula Mae’s house.

Man, is you blind?

Turn that TV down.

What? Woman, you ain’t left to get my medicine?

A folk can’t even think round here. All that clamor.

Think what? Think bout gettin my medicine. Mr. Pulliam breathed.

Fool, get out of my face, Lula Mae said.

Woman, you make me, Mr. Pulliam said. The words bubbled, like he had something in his throat, phlegm, dammed spit.

You touch me, I steal yo life.

Mr. Pulliam grunted at Lula Mae. Turned back to the loud TV. Lula Mae left the room.

Mr. Pulliam sat bent forward on the divan, face almost touching, kissing the TV screen. He breathed beneath the TV’s traveling volume. The sound of his breathing always reached the front door ten steps before he did. His belly bulging his ribbed, sleeveless undershirt like a white laundry sack. He plowed clean paths through his lathered face with a straight razor. Fool, how many times I tell you to close the door when you in the bathroom. Ain’t nobody interested in your business. Lula Mae was careful to tell Porsha not to touch his food. (He had his shelf in the refrigerator, and she hers. So too the freezer.) Not to enter his bedroom.

Lula Mae returned with her largest skillet, black iron, creased with shining grease.

Woman, what you think you gon do wit that skillet?

Lula Mae rung the skillet against his head.

Damn, woman. You tryin to kill me. I’m callin the police.

Call them.

He did.

The white officer arrived with the speed of arterial blood.

Can somebody turn off that there TV?

Porsha turned it off.

You see what the woman done to me? Mr. Pulliam gestured to the white kitchen towel pressed to his head. I jus asked her to get my medicine. I’m sick.

Sick in the head.

Damn this woman. She sposed to be my wife. Look at what she done to me.

I can’t miss it.

Take her to jail. I worked a good job. I’m sick.

He struck me.

Law, I swear I never touched that woman. I swear on a mountain of Bibles.

Don’t let your nasty mouth mention the Good Book.

I’m sick.

He struck me.

Well, seem like what we got here don’t add up. Somebody talkin out the side they face.

Law, it ain’t me.

It is you.

You both want to go to jail?

I’m sick.

Not sick enough.

Well one of you is talkin sideways. Girl—

The white officer looked at Porsha.

— what happened here?

That’s right. My granddaughter here can testify.

That’s fine wit me. She saw what happen. Tell Law here what happen.

Porsha said nothing. She had something to say but the words wouldn’t come.

Girl look scared to me.

She from the city. Up North.

Maybe that explain it. City life. Come on here. The white officer took Mr. Pulliam by the shoulder and moved him toward the front door. We better see bout yo head. Now, ma’m. You be nice. I don’t wanna come back here. I do, both yall comin down wit me to the jail. We got plenty room.

Law, she attacked me.

The white cop looked at Porsha. Something mighty wrong wit that girl.

She’s a mamma’s girl. Lula Mae smiled. When she was a toddler, I used to call her Duck. Followed her mamma everywhere.

Well, pigeons never fly far from home, the white officer said. All wrapped up in them apron strings.

Young folks. Lula Mae smiled. What can you do? Who can you blame?

Blame? the white officer said. I know this, what you put down is what pops up.

Lula Mae gave the officer a hard look. Her brown eyes toughened like shit.

WHERE DID LULA MAE GET THE TREES? Porsha said. Did she plant them herself or were they already here?

I don’t know, Mamma said.

EACH MORNING, Lula Mae angled into her white dress, pulled old lady stockings over her cotton-scarred legs, slipped on her white rubber-soled shoes — nurse’s shoes she called them, tennis shoes she called them — fitted the helmet of her wig, clamped in her horse bit of teeth, stepped into her face — it shone like a powdered mask — checked her clam-shaped purse—Where my pocketbook? — then hustled off to clean some white folks’ house.

You be good while I’m gone. Don’t act up.

GRACIE STARTED IT.

No I didn’t.

Yes you did.

You started the whole thing.

You started it.

No I didn’t. You did. Mamma was crying now.

You a lie. You started it. Gracie was crying now too.

You the one that’s a lie. You know you started it.

I ain’t start shit.

Yes you did.

Why you wanna lie?

You know you started it.

SHE WOULD KEEP THIS FOR HERSELF. All those years she had never mustered the nerve to ask Lula Mae to give it to her. The photograph shows three card players in a bare-walled shack. Two brothers and a stranger. All three wear tattered clothing. The older brother, mustache and all, passes the younger brother a card under the table, passes the card with his toes.

COME ON HERE. We going to the dolla sto.

The dollar store on Main Street next to Kress’s (the five-and-dime), next to the bicycle shop where Porsha purchased her first real bicycle (without training wheels), across the street from the Rexall, where you could buy anything you wanted. Lula Mae walked to the dollar store every day and spent money simply because the spending was cheap. Items two for a dollar, four for a dollar, ten for a dollar. Stocking up.

Come on here. We going to town.

Meaning Memphis. Down Main Street to the bridge and across the bridge, the river beneath reaching up to touch you like a live cold hand, into Memphis, John Brown bent forward over the steering wheel, his two withered hands moving near his throat like they were adjusting his tie. John Brown always looked at Lula Mae as if she was something rare.

YOU THINK THIS WILL BE ENOUGH? Sheila said.

Porsha looked at the seven bottles of Mogen David wine in Sheila’s suitcase.

You got those from the Shipcos? she asked. Steal wasn’t the right word. If it was she couldn’t say it. Both she and Sheila knew that the Shipcos would hardly miss them. Even if they did, they had money to spare and could buy more.

Sheila nodded.

I guess they’ll do. You know black folks like sweet wine.

YOU BUY THE DRANKS?

Yes.

You thought I didn’t see you. Comin from Chinamen’s. Actin a fool.

What I do?

Actin a fool round those mannish boys.

When?

I can’t send you to the sto without you actin a fool?

I ain’t—

You better be careful. Can’t jus run fast and foolish when those boys bother yo principle.

I ain’t do nothing.

What I tell you bout talkin back?

I ain’t talkin back.

You mamma ain’t teach you no better.

She teach me.

You need to be churched, Lula Mae said.

That’s where we going? I don’t want—

Hush yo mouth.

— to church.

We going.

You gon dress me?

Why, child, why?

My mamma said don’t put none of them cheap earrings on me.

Lula Mae drew back her hand. Go on. Lip smart. Go on.

PORSHA STOOD IN THE KITCHEN and looked out the door to the backyard. Not ready to enter the yard yet. Let her toes feel the sun-heated grass.

Little Sally Walker

Sitting in her saucer

Weeping and crying for someone to love her

Rise, Sally, rise

Wipe ya weepin eyes

Put ya hands on ya hips

And let ya backbone slip

Shake it to the east

Ah, shake it to the west

Shake it to the one you love the best

Skip a song down the two long railroad planks that flattened the grass in a path to the lil house.

Here, kitty kitty. Here, kitty kitty. Lula Mae calling out the back door. Calling her cats. Cans of dog food (Chuck Wagon) waiting in the grass. She never let them in the house.

MAMMA? Porsha said. I wanna ask you something. How long was she gone?

Trolleys that carried you down the serrated palisade of Main Street, carried you past the poplar-filled and maple-filled square, by dingy brick three-storied houses or smoke-grimed frame houses with tiers of wooden galleries in grassless plots, junkyards, greasy spoons with rows of noisy backless twirling barstools, a lone tree out front, lop-branched magnolia or stunted elm.

A long time.

But how long?

I don’t know, but it was long.

Beulah says two years.

Way longer than that.

And Gracie says ten.

Not that long. We went to Houston to live with Daddy Larry and his wicked heifer.

The wicked stepmother?

Mamma nodded. Yes, the wicked stepmother. Ivory Beach. She never messed wit me or R.L., but she jus couldn stand Gracie.

Why not?

Said she was two-headed. And the way she used to knock Gracie wit her fist, she like to give her a second head. So one day, I grabbed her fist. Squeezed it to crumble it to dust. And I told her, If you hit Gracie again, I’ll beat you till you can’t see. And that was the end of it.

Porsha said nothing. She let the new words soak in with the tea.

I saw that woman years later. She used to live on Kenwood.

She did?

Yes, she did. She said, Sheila, you wuz an evil child. I said, No. You the evil one. I hit that heifer. Like to kill her.

Porsha rowed her spoon in her cup and changed the direction of the conversation. Well, what did she do in New Mexico?

She ain’t do nothing. Casey Love, the man she went wit—

You mean run off wit.

— worked road gangs. Construction. In Tucumcari.

Where?

Tucumcari.

Porsha made a mental note to look it up.

See, R.L. was her son by that man, Casey Love. Real name was Robert Lee Harris, but everybody called him Casey Love. So I remember. She wuz married to Daddy Larry, but she left him for this man.

Porsha felt the warmth of her teacup. How old was you?

Well, R.L. was eleven or twelve, I believe. So I was ten.

Then Gracie was seven or eight?

Yes …

Why she come back?

He went on to California and she came back to Memphis. We moved back into the house on Claybrook Street that she rented from her friend. She started working at the car factory.

Car factory?

Yes.

They had a car factory in Memphis?

And a lot else.

Thought she was workin fo those white people.

That was later.

You came wit Beulah? Porsha was heavy, full of questions.

Yes.

When Gracie come?

Bout a year later. She stayed wit Lula Mae in the house on Claybrook.

What they do?

You ask Gracie.

She say that Lula Mae put you in Catholic school but wouldn’t let her go.

That’s a lie. I paid fo my own schooling. Helped Beulah at those white folks’ house.

Why she say it then? Why she lie?

You ask her.

Porsha thought about it all. How old was she when she had him?

Eighteen, I believe.

That means she was only sixteen or seventeen when—

Yes.

So R.L. was twelve when she left. That means she was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine?

Yes, that sounds about right. A year or two before the war …

Porsha thought about it all. Lula Mae was sixteen. Sixteen. A mother at sixteen. It was all starting to make sense. You said she left round the time the war started?

Yes.

But how could that be? Sam and Dave fought in the war.

They were older than R.L.

How much older?

Not that much older. A few years. They were still boys really. Couldn’t have been older than sixteen when they went.

That young?

Yes.

Well, how did they get in?

They wanted to go. Trouble never had to find them if they could find it first. Beulah did her best to keep R.L. on the straight and narrow. The people she worked for were good people. The Harrisons. Those white boys treated R.L. like a brother. Took him everywhere wit them. Then when he got grown, he went out to California. That man, Casey Love, had a ranch out there. R.L. sent me letters.

Where the letters?

Don’t know what happened to them. Beulah got them. Maybe Lula Mae.

How they get them?

You ask them.

Well, what did he say in those letters?

I don’t remember much. It was so long ago.

What happened to his father, this Casey Love?

I don’t know, but R.L. did take his daddy’s name, Love. And you know Beulah got those letters from China, his Indian wife, and R.L. Junior his son. Yeah, they out there somewhere in California. Call the phone company or get a phone directory and see if—

Mamma, you know I ain’t never tried that and you know why. You know how many Loves there might be in California? And where in California?

I don’t know …

How R.L. end up in Brazil?

I don’t know. R.L. was always ready to throw a saddle on a tornado.

There ain’t no tornadoes in Brazil, Porsha said, her mouth serious and factual.

Mamma said nothing, seemingly stunned …

How old was he when he died?

Twenty-five. Twenty-six. I believe.

Sam and Dave never went looking for R.L. out in California?

They say they did.

They weren’t with him when it happened?

No. They were already in the city by that time.

Why they chase Dave out of Houston?

I can’t remember. It was so long ago. But Dave, Sam, R.L., and Nap was always gettin into something. They were young men looking for trouble. They chased Sam out bout a year after they chased Dave. Then Nap end up dead in that jail in Jackson.

Houston?

No, Jackson.

How’d he—

Never would take his medicine. Bout the same time, R.L. passed. That red Edsel. Dave, Sam, Nap, and R.L. — all them fools drive faster than next week.

Porsha played the silence. But why?

Why what?

Why did she take up with this Casey Love? Why did she leave Daddy Larry?

Ask her.

DID YOU BRING AN EXTRA SUITCASE LIKE I ASKED YOU?

Porsha nodded.

Well get it.

Porsha got it.

Put these things in it.

Why?

Hurry up.

Porsha did as instructed.

Quick.

Her hands moved quickly. A photograph flashed up into her eyes and made her quick fingers pause. A baby-faced man grinned up into the camera from a poker table. Three other men — smoking, drinking, winking — shared his company. He sat upright, no curve in his spine, upright under a stiff-brimmed hat, tweed blazer draped over the back of his folding chair. Is that R.L.?

Mamma looked at the photograph. Nodded.

Is this the only—

Put it in the suitcase. Mamma took it and put it in the suitcase. Look at it later. Put these things in there. Hurry up. Come on. Quick. Before Gracie take everything.

43

HATCH LED SHEILA to the casket, his hand in the small of her back. A pyramid of flowers. The casket was black with silver fittings, the trestles hidden by flowers in a mass of shapes: wreaths, crosses, bows. He leaned forward and looked into eternity. About what he had expected. She had shrunk since the last time he’d seen her a year ago. Her head almost too small for her black wig. He noticed a red dime-sized hole on her neck, a red scarf trying to conceal it. A faucet hole where they had drained her decaying insides? Damn that mortician!

He held Sheila up, kept her from falling. Helped her back to the pew. Had she seen the red hole in Lula Mae’s neck? (Her old eyes weren’t as sharp as his.) He was unsure if he should ask her. She cried next to him and he watched, knowing nothing better to do, jumpy inside himself but calmly waiting for her to settle.

Clothed in righteousness, Gracie walked quickly to the coffin, looked, and didn’t linger. Sheila — resolved now, firm in herself again though still shaky, motion in every cell of her body — and Porsha carried Beulah up to the coffin, the way Lucifer and John would carry her from her bed to the front porch and the swing she enjoyed, though her legs were too weak to move it. Her frail body trembled as if she was soaked in cold water. Her smooth yellow face and long black Indian hair had escaped the snares of old age. Mamma, I been obedient, she said. I followed your words, Keep over your brothers and sisters. I’m the oldest and put the youngest in the grave. Carrie Sweet. Sheila and Porsha held Beulah up, kept her from collapsing into the casket.

Beulah!

Lil Judy, Jacky, and Rochelle — Hatch’s first cousins, age exact versions of himself, Jesus, and Porsha but raised differently, living now in a place they had never been, possibly living a life they had never known and would never know; when had he last seen them? Surely at their father’s funeral, old drunk Dave — followed Beulah up to the coffin, a mocking light in their eyes, indifferent to the proceedings. They had never been close to Lula Mae. Only Hatch and no one else from his family had attended Dave’s funeral, and only he and Uncle John had gone to their grandmother’s funeral, Big Judy, Dave’s mother, the woman Dave’s crumb snatchers called Mamma — they called Beulah that too — since she had raised them.

The church was crowded with people. Standing at the back and along the walls. Who would have thought that Lula Mae had so many friends and acquaintances? Who would have thought?

She walked in the road with her black umbrella open to the pounding sun. She spoke to everyone she saw.

How you duche?

Fine.

Alright.

And the next person she saw a few feet ahead.

How you duche?

Fine.

Alright.

And the next person.

How you duche?

Fine.

Alright.

Children greeted her. How you, Miss Pulliam?

Alright. Yall be careful playing in that road.

She knew everyone. All of West Memphis. Now all of West Memphis came to say goodbye, stopped by the first pew to offer their condolences to the family. Hatch didn’t recognize most of the well-wishers. Perhaps he knew them beyond recognition. Memory knowledge.

The hot church made hotter with hot people, two small windows to let in the hot air and let out the sweat. The church was a small one-story structure with chipped and dusty stained-glass windows. A little piece of church pastored by a little piece of preacher. No white-robed nurse standing with one white-gloved hand behind her back to hold Sheila in her seat and fan her when she got the Holy Ghost. Yes, Lord. Oh come oh come oh come oh come oh glory. No ark that rocked to Beulah’s shouts. You may bury me in the east. You may bury me in the west. But I’ll hear that trumpet sound in the morning. Lula Mae, dear sister, hear that trumpet blast.

Porsha sat next to him bent forward on the pew, face in her hands, water escaping between her fingers. Lula Mae would greet Porsha with a hunk of grease in the palm of one hand and a straightening comb in the other, the necessary tools to keep her hair from going back home.

Hatch, put some of this Duke on yo head. Make you look like those nice boys I work for.

I hate white folks.

Hush yo mouth. You don’t hate nobody.

How you know?

What I tell you bout talkin back! You have to love somebody before you can hate them.

Porsha had wanted to track down Jesus and notify him of Lula Mae’s death. Reasoning swiftly, Hatch had persuaded her not to. Remember how he acted Christmas? What if … The family was none the wiser about the situation with Jesus, John, and Lucifer. He would keep it that way.

The choir sang:

Swing low

Sweet Lord

And carry all home

When I shall stand

Before the great white throne

When he shall wrap me

In the flapping wings of his robe

If I make it home

My saviour let me hold his hand

You’ll know, he satisfied me

Their bodies swayed, following the motion of the spirit.

I AM THE WAY, the preacher said. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Yes, Lawd.

My sheep, hear my voice. Know and follow me that I give eternal life. No one shall snatch you out of my hand.

Wooh. Beulah let her soul escape through her mouth. If I could have been there, sister. Wooh. I would have seen you through. Mamma and Daddy told me to watch over you. Wooh, Beulah howled. Wooh.

Hatch looked at Porsha. They both wanted to laugh, Beulah’s grief humorous to hear.

Aw, Sam! Wish I had been there. To hold up yo head. To put a pillow under you. Mamma told me to take care of you. You were her only boy. The youngest. She told me to take care of you. And I did my best. But this wicked woman … Sam!

O Grave, where is thy sting? Beulah, humming the words, preacherlike, singing them. O Death, where is thy victory?

The young organist — judging by the looks of him, about Hatch’s age — dripped water from the wells of his eyes. He wiped his eyes quickly to keep from missing a chord.

Wooh. Ah, Lula Mae!

Sheila attempted to quiet Beulah. He understood. She had faith. Belief. But he would not give in. Both grief and belief deceived.

Let us rise now. Heavy though we are. Rise as on that great getting-up morning.

The words dimly echoed what Hatch was attempting to slip away from.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

Yes!

Stand now, and go, stand, having your loins girth about with truth, and having on the breastplate of salvation. Stand now, and go.

MISS JONES, Reverend Blunt said, we got a problem here. He took both of Sheila’s hands with his long-fingered preacher hands. He wore a sky-blue suit made in heaven. I couldn’t find nobody to fix the air conditioning. Sheila said nothing.

Hatch gave the reverend his meanest look but the reverend wouldn’t look in his direction. The reverend had promised that the faulty air-conditioning units in the two limousines would be fixed by the time the funeral ended. A promise he either couldn’t or wouldn’t keep. Now they would drive two hours to the Houston graveyard in the full heat. Lula Mae’s instructions for her burial written in her own hand: BURY ME WITH MAMMA DADDY AND THE REST.

Now, I’m gon return some of yo money. The reverend rubbed Sheila’s hand as he spoke. We can discuss that later. Why don’t yall hurry on. It’s a long drive.

They loaded up the limousines. Rolled down the windows. Prayed for a cool breeze. Started the engines.

Reverend Blunt leaned into the open driver’s window and passed his mother what looked like a brick of hundred-dollar bills. In case of emergency, he said. The mother smiled. I’ll see you when I get back, he said.

SUN WHIPPED THE LIMOUSINE FROM SIDE TO SIDE. Slapped him across the face. He struggled out of his blazer. Loosened his tie. The wet heat touched him everywhere at once, a hot bath. Sheila looked quietly ahead, determined. Intact and withdrawn and conscious all at the same time. Lula Mae’s long spell in bed had prepared her for this moment. Death was a challenge, for that was what it was, a war. Beulah appeared to be asleep. Porsha was looking out the open window, wind moving her hair. Gracie and the rest of the family followed in the other limousine. Sweat moved in the wind and he thought of Elsa’s fragrant rain of black hair. It came to him just like that. The first thought of her in days. Since … He leaned forward in the limousine to get a better view of the tall trees that lined the road and held the sky in place. (He would sit like this for two hours and let the heat prey on him.) Looking and seeing, everything neither familiar nor strange. Abu had never been down South, and Hatch had spent many hours talking up images of his southern experience. He wanted to tell himself these now, bring it all back, but that past was hidden behind a screen of trees. Mules and shadows of mules black-moving against the green. Black-moving into the red ‘Sippi delta. Black images glided through the blue sky. He sat and watched from the black limousine. Black absorbs without reflection, roots itself in unreflecting calm.

Seemed like they always arrived in West Memphis to a sickle moon and the flutter of insects, Lula Mae with a big smile and an expansive hug. The yard drank black water at night and spat up dew in dawn silence. Birds bounced from tree limb to tree limb. You and Jesus searched the grass for dragon’s teeth. Kept them on you as a secret. Rain always fell clear, solid, and slow. After the rain, the sun sailed out into a clear sky. Broad dented leaves — and winged seeds, birch? maple? elm? — sparkled light. Black cherries hung straight and heavy among foliage. You and Jesus pulled snails from their shells, then held up the freed shells to your ears to hear ocean roar. Frogs bellowed, their voices grave, deep, measured. Masters of the earth, they wandered out into the road — yes, the road, a rich mixture of red dirt and red gravel — to stop cars. You and Jesus tossed flattened frogs like Frisbees into the cornfield across the road. Stop that chunkin! Lula Mae screamed from the yard. A shower of leaves and Lula Mae with a mop handle knocking apples, pears, or plums from the trees in her yard. You had to guard your head from falling fruit. You had the same fear of falling when you passed beneath the horseshoe nailed above every door in Lula Mae’s house. Her fruit made the best preserves for your morning toast, eggs, and bacon. Miss Bee’s cornfield grew transparent in the setting sun’s light. Lula Mae pulled the creaking attic stairs down from the ceiling — thick robot legs — unfolded them, and lit a kerosene lamp to a fragrant glow. You and Jesus followed her up the wobbly stairs. Her shadow quivered on the attic ceiling and walls.

MR. BYRON MET THE PROCESSION in Fulton, a good sixty miles from West Memphis, another state, ‘Sippi, near Houston, the family’s beginning place. A little red-colored white man in overalls and a Cat trucker’s cap, the visor pointed right at the sun. He leaned into the window of each limousine and gave instructions to the driver. Follow close behind me, he said. You get lost, just honk.

Who’s that ole white man? Hatch said.

Mr. Byron, Sheila said.

Who?

Mr. Byron.

Who’s that?

Mr. Harrison. His son. Nephew. Grandson.

Who? I don’t know no Harrison.

The people she—

What people?

Questions furled and unfurled into fire. Mr. Byron drove his black car fast as if the cemetery was in danger of disappearing. Fast in transport, fast in arrival.

Do you know how to find this cemetery? Hatch said.

Yes, Sheila said.

Is that white man the only one who know?

Sheila said nothing.

Mr. Byron guided the family through the cemetery. Nowhere else had Hatch seen earth so red. Gravestones shimmered in the high noon light. They followed Mr. Byron past a clutter of crippled tombstones,

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF FLORA

A COLORED WOMAN, WHO DIED JAN. 5, 1826, AGED 104 YEARS

STRONG FAITH, STRONGER, TRUSTING IN HER SAVIOUR

then mounds with handmade crosses, then mounds with no crosses at all. Hatch knew. The Griffith family was buried here. All whose hearts had quit the job. Buried beneath red soil. Beulah had worked for the Byron (Harrison?) family. Koot and Big Judy too, for all Hatch knew. There Candice Griffith. Mr. Byron’s voice banged like a gavel. He pointed to an unmarked grave. Hatch smelled brilliantine on the white man’s hair. There Dave Griffith. There Carrie Sweet Griffith. There Judy Randle. There Buck Randle. Big Judy’s husband. There Arteria Stone. There Nate Stone. There Dave Griffith the Second. The weight of names. All buried in the same red constipated earth. All gone headlong in red clay holes. Only R.L. was missing, interred somewhere in California, foreign soil.

Whosoever will, whosoever will

Hear the loving Father

Call the wanderer home

Whosoever will may come.

We got to bring Sam home, Beulah said. Sheila and Rochelle kept her standing, holding up her arms like broken wings. Bring him here. Gather up the family. Yall ain’t got to wait long. She was speaking to the graves now. I’ll be with you soon. Follow you now if I could.

Hatch and three strangers dressed in black held two wide straps of canvas that cradled the casket over the grave’s yawning red toothless mouth. On the headman’s signal, Hatch released length after muscle-straining length of the strap, like undocking a boat to open water. He lost his footing and almost slipped into the grave.

A WHITE HOUSE comes to you from long-forgotten times. Floats, flutters, flies, a moth-eaten memory.

You reached it by a red string of road that snaked up through the hills — at the foot of the hills, neat white double-level houses, each perfect as a double scoop of ice cream — and from there up to the crown, flat houses like rotting boats, scaling walls, sagging blinds, torn window screens, pieces of curtain, sunlight blasting the exposed ribs and wafting mildew smells as Big Judy gunned her car along the narrow, curving road, yes, right up to the crest of the hill, where her house stuck out under the sunlight. Koot’s house was just down the road, pushed back beneath the shadow of poplar and maple trees, like the oval portraits of every family member (except R.L.’s) pushed back into the space above Koot’s fireplace — as if someone had mashed it there under their palm. A big range house — yes, how big it seemed to you then; years later, you returned to it (Dave’s funeral) to discover that it had shrunken in size, like cotton under excessive heat — sweating in the Fulton summer.

A swirl of summer chickens. An invisible rooster strutting in the sun. Used to have a rooster, Big Judy said. Henry, we called him. Never crow when he sposed to. Never at dawn. But five or six times during the day. But he ruled. If you see my little red rooster, please drive him home. Been no peace in the barnyard since he been gone. The vapors from three or four hogs fenced stomping and grunting in the pen. Big Judy dumped pails and pails of rotten fruit and kernel-depleted corncobs. Hogs roll, a boiling sea of stinking pink.

The ravine behind and just down the hill from the house everyone called the snake pit, a serpent-stricken hissing valley, smoke wreaths during the day and mist at night. Over the years, Big Judy had lost several hogs and chickens to the pit. But the old people would come and sit, bending the legs of the metal folding chairs under their weight of creaking years, in the shade of her concrete driveway, unbothered by the chicken and hog noises and smells or the threat of scorpions and snakes, and suck the sap of memory.

Koot had a long life, Big Judy said. And Mr. Footy treated her good. Now, that Buck. He called me every kinda name, and ain’t none of them in the Bible. Jus the meanest cuss. Couldn get him to walk ten feet down the road and ask Koot fo a cup of sugar.

A flower blazed between an angle of roots. You took a close curious look. The yellow jacket stung you, your jaw puffed up and threatened to explode by the time you made it back to the house and Big Judy powdered it with tobacco — some of Mr. Buck’s chewing snuff — to smoke out the swelling. Bandaged your face good with a shroud of handkerchiefs.

Your jaw swelled so your ears hurt. Pain new and undreamt of. Thankful that you had not been attacked by a snake or one of those blue-green lizards that Big Judy called scorpions. Better off than Koot, killed in a car accident — no, a crash, that claimed, yes, claimed, staked with jagged glass and twisted spikes of metal, the life of a pregnant white woman and the white baby black in her belly, and a second woman who was driving Koot to the hearing-aid store, thrown through a car’s windshield—If it means anything, if it can help, she was killed instantly; she didn’t suffer—her reluctant feet still planted to the passenger side of the floor where they had refused to follow her body roadside. Feel yourself driving through a wet curtain (beads, yes, beads) of glass, like jetting from beneath a pool to break water’s surface; feel yourself flying through air, a bird sailing wind in slow motion, then feel your face covered with crumbs of glass, and a numbing sensation in your feet.

THE FAMILY SAT DOWN TOGETHER, their knees close under a table covered with a fresh white cloth. The room heavy with greasy odors. The delicate aroma of yellow watermelon that grew wild in unattended winds. Cool iced tea that people drank year-round. The graveyard preacher joined the family at the reception table. Word had salted down to him. Or he had invited himself. His plain black three-piece shined the satin gloss of a raven’s wing. Small, but a big horse head and face of a man. Processed hair flowing manelike. He found it easy to blend his religion and his appetite. (He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin after every bite.) Gracie matched him word for word. Angels angled out in their speech.

Sister, the preacher said, you know your Bible. His chin hung close to Gracie.

I try. She stirred with the start of a laugh.

Yes indeed.

The preacher’s mouth smelled like money. Hatch had already endured two preachers that day. Now a third. Preachers troubled him. And the presence of this one strengthened his inclination to spit in every preacher’s eye.

The preacher led the family in prayer, rising on food steam to heights invisible to the eye. With his paper napkin, he wiped the prayer from his lips.

Keep the faith. By and by God reveals his divine plan to man. And with that, he heaved himself up from the table and quit the house.

I HAD TO PUT THE GUN ON MR. BUCK, Dave said. I asked him, What you call my mamma? I told that motherfucker. Say it again. Big Judy screamin, Dave, it ain’t worth it. Shit, it’s worth it if I say it is.

The earth cooled. A heat-hushed night. The heavens low-hanging. Moonlight soft-showered the window. You rested under the white bedspread, translucent from use, safe now, the wire screen having been checked and double-checked so that no bat would fly through the open window on a dark breeze.

Jesus, you sure it closed?

Yeah.

Check it again.

I already did.

Them bats bite you in the neck. Flying rats.

Pale moths and bright mosquitoes yellow-revolved around Big Judy’s single porch light. John, Lucifer, and Dave, ghost-gray men in the night carrying their gin and beer, sat rough on Big Judy’s metal folding chairs and lit up the dark with their cricket talk.

Uncle John blew magic lamp smoke from his mouth and nose. Why didn’t you tell me that Fulton is a dry county?

I did tell you.

You ain’t tell me shit.

Nigga, you got cotton in yo ears, that’s all.

And what you got in yours?

Lucifer, you better tell this nigga.

He can’t tell me shit.

Nigga, I’m older than you. Talk to me wit some respect.

You ain’t sayin nothing.

Say what I got to say.

Say it then.

I’m gettin ready to.

You gon make us wait.

Did I ever tell you bout that time—

The men spoke brick upon brick, sharing mellow-golden stories — some about Sam, about And (who Hatch knew only as Beulah’s former husband who visited her every free chance), about Spin, Spokesman, Dallas, Spider, Ernie; some about men Hatch didn’t know (he hung on to their names); some about Bataan and Okinawa, where And, Sam, and Dave had fought and claimed blood, and others about that yellow-green place where Lucifer and John had done the same — building backwards, word after hard word.

WHY, SHEILA, THIS MUST BE YOUR DAUGHTER.

You know that ain’t my daughter. That’s Gracie.

Gracie? The drunk’s red eyes widened in mock surprise. The drunk and Gracie sat squeezed tight together on the yard swing. The Gracie I used to know?

Cut that out, Mr. Man, Gracie said. You knew it was me.

I thought it looked like you but I knew you couldn be lookin that good after all these years.

Stop that, Mr. Man, Gracie said. You still a fool.

You still know how to love a fool?

Stop that, Mr. Man.

When had Hatch last seen Gracie show such girlish energy and exuberance? (Never in John’s presence. Never.) Ready to lift her skirt and flirt.

When you going back home?

Why?

I’m gon drive up there to West Memphis to see you befo you head back.

You don’t wanna do that.

You still know how to dance?

I don’t dance.

You still know how to move yo body the way you used to?

Gracie grinned at the grass beneath her feet.

Why don’t you move back down here? Why don’t you come home? Why you want to live in a big city? City life, piss in a can. Bury it.

I LIKE EM SLIM. Streamlined. Built for speed.

St. Louis woman the best type. Way down from the Gulf of Mexico.

Can’t hold a match to a Texas woman.

Who you know from Texas?

You’d be surprised.

You brought yo kids. Why didn’t you bring Jesse?

I like my coffee in the morning. Crazy bout my tea at night.

What fo? So she can slow me down.

That’s yo woman.

Like hell.

Sam should be here.

You know what he told Koot after Mr. Footy died?

What?

He said, Koot, you got to have somebody on the vine. Had to say it five or six times cause you know Koot deaf. Koot say, Sam, that ain’t no vine. That a jimsonweed.

Well, I’ve given up chasin women.

I leave you there.

But I’ll still go to a bar—

Dave, damn if we don’t know that already. You a drinkin fool.

— have me a taste and talk to the womens. They’ll give you some too, if you know how to talk to em right.

HE DIED TEN YEARS AFTER SHE CAME BACK.

No, it was fifteen.

You can’t never get nothin straight.

Look who’s talkin.

We can look at the death certificate.

Why don’t you go get it.

I would if you hadn’tah lost it.

I ain’t lost nothing.

That ain’t what I recollect.

I don’t give a damn—

Yall stop that arguin, Beulah said in her usual shrill voice. All yall do is argue.

You always agree with her, Gracie said. You always have.

I ain’t tryin to take nobody’s side.

You jus like Lula Mae. Take Sheila’s side in everything.

Shut your damn mouth! Sheila said. All that happened a long time ago. What can I do about it?

THE ROAD HISSED under the black tires. They rode in the black limousine, silent as the dark they traveled through. The sun had fallen but the heat had not let up. The dark had absorbed it like black cotton.

THEY STOOD IN THE ROAD under the failed sky. Sheila passed Reverend Blunt a tip, slipping him the money quickly.

Why, thank you. Reverend Blunt had changed into a fresh suit. He smiled into Porsha’s eyes. I’ll drop by tomorrow and see how yall doing.

Porsha returned the smile.

Good night. Reverend Blunt charged up the road.

Why you do that? Hatch said.

Sheila said nothing.

Why you give that bastard a tip?

HATCH STEPPED INTO A HOUSE FULL OF MOVING VOICES.

You must be her granson. Is that her granson? Is he her granson? Why I ain’t seen him since he was nay high. Where that other one, that red-lookin one? Her granson sure a handsome one. We gon miss yo granmother. Look, there Gracie’s boy. A fine woman. I’m gon sho miss her. Ain’t he the devilish one? You remember me? Why, I ain’t seen you since I know when. Any kin to Lula Mae kin to me. You come down here to visit me anytime you want. Come on by my house and sit a while befo you go back. I bet you like pecan pie? You a fine young man. You a handsome young man. Look like yo daddy. You come down here to visit anytime you want. I live jus up the road there. You member where I live? Drop by and sit a while.

He couldn’t wait for the house to clear of people. Juiced out by the sun, he needed sleep.

He found quiet escape in the kitchen. He would have shut the door but there was no door to shut. He thought about all he had seen and said and heard and done all that he had not seen said or heard or done and all that he would see say hear and do.

Well, he said, if you ain’t never been nowhere other than Kankakee, here, and West Memphis—

I been more places than that, Porsha said.

— Tucumcari might as well be Arizona and Arizona Brazil and Brazil might as well be France and France California and California Texas and Decatur New Mexico and—

What map you lookin at?

He saw Mr. Byron standing and pointing and spitting his name. The past that wasn’t past sparkled like a reminder above the kitchen shelf. Lula Mae’s old serving set. He remembered it from his many trips here. She had purchased it in either Texas or New Mexico. The cocktail bowl showed a rodeo scene. The lid made like a cowboy hat, a Stetson. The ice tray was a chuck wagon held in place by black wire wheels. A coffeepot sat on a black wire stand with four matching coffee mugs. Each piece glassed in a western yellow-brown. The serving set had been waiting for him all these years. Waiting for his return.

Why are you sittin in here by yourself? Sheila spoke from the open doorway.

I want that.

What?

That dinette set. Hatch pointed up to it.

Well, get up and get it. You better put it up before Gracie see it.

44

TREES STOOD LIKE AN ARMY in the clear morning air, their leaves glowing rivulets of lava.

His sweat-dampened saddle fit easily into the horse’s back. A horse can tell if a man is strong-willed. Give him a chance and he’ll stand on your foot and let you know who’s in charge.

He climbed on the horse in proper fashion and tightened his legs around the iron belly. He kicked the horse into motion. Man and horse galloped off in a mute cloud of dust. Ponds like glistening uniform buttons. Word of his talents had spread far. More than once he had talked gently, sweetly, and rubbed a calf’s legs all night long.

The speed of the gallop watered his eyes. He looked into the shimmering distance and told his horse things about the world he knew to be true. The horse blew and rolled its eyes at all it saw.

45

PORSHA ROSE BEFORE THE OTHERS and moved quickly through Lula Mae’s house, her quiet hammer taking down the horseshoes nailed above Lula Mae’s doors. Each and every one of them. These she would have for herself. Luck. Magic doesn’t fade. Maybe the magic could work for her, work in her life.

YOU CAN’T MISS WHAT YOU AIN’T NEVER HAD, Gracie said.

It’s passed, Mamma said. What can I do about it? I’ve had forty years of dealing with that misery. Go on with your life.

You go on with yours.

THE LIL HOUSE was much smaller than Porsha remembered. Half the length of a city subway car. And even smaller inside, boxes and more boxes where seats might be, the space between the boxes only wide enough for one person to stand comfortably. She, Mamma, and Hatch rummaged through Lula Mae’s belongings while Gracie stood in the grass watching through the open doorway.

Gracie, why don’t you stay in the house and keep an eye on Beulah.

Why don’t you.

The lil house had four small windows, all rusted shut. (Lula Mae had never opened them.) The open door offered the only light and air. Hatch had pleaded, begged to light one of Lula Mae’s kerosene lamps and all had agreed, but the lamps were empty, long minus kerosene. No one could find a flashlight. So they worked in the metal dark and the heat, hauling out goods to the sun-heated lawn, cataloguing them by location on the grass.

Mamma discovered her wedding dress, Hatch’s blue baby bonnet, Jesus’s first rattle, Porsha’s paddle-and-ball, Cookie’s bib (Gracie wanted it), unidentified wigs, and Lula Mae’s first partial, false teeth.

Look at this, Hatch said. He held up a green duffel bag by its canvas straps like a dead rat by its tail.

I believe that’s Mr. Pulliam’s old army bag, Mamma said.

I’m gon keep it.

Let me see it, Gracie said.

Hatch played deaf.

Porsha tunneled through hatboxes and shoeboxes. Lula Mae had thrown nothing away. She opened the last shoebox and found a mummified pair of shoes, peeling white leather that had long gone gray. She lifted the shoes from the box by the laces and found a thick, business-sized envelope. No stamp in the upper right corner, only a pale blue postmark, like watercolor. The envelope was burned black with the shoes’ shape, the burn obscuring most of the words. She found a second envelope, twin to the first. Eyes working, she deciphered one letter, two letters, then two words or the semblance of two words. Brazil, Nebraska.

THAT WAS MR. PULLIAM’S DAUGHTER, Mamma said. She want the house.

Too bad. Lula Mae had willed her house, lil house, and everything in them to Sheila.

I told her she can have it.

Porsha cocked her ear. What?

Mr. Pulliam’s name on the mortgage.

Mr. Pulliam been dead fifteen years. Lula Mae the one who paid off the mortgage.

Mamma said nothing.

Ain’t you gon contest it?

It ain’t worth the time and trouble.

I’ll hire us a lawyer.

I don’t want to go to court. For this old house.

But, Mamma—

Hush. It ain’t worth the time or the trouble.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MEMORY, she saw the lil house stationed on grass not concrete, the trailer hitched behind a brand-new truck on the red gravel road before Lula Mae’s house. Gracie had sold the lil house for a hundred dollars to Lula Mae’s daily hospital transport.

I gave him a good deal, Gracie said. Since he was good to Lula Mae.

The truck and the lil house pulled away, leaving a thin gown of dust.

Gracie sold Lula Mae’s stereo (for a dollar) to Lula Mae’s best friend, an old lady with hands like a man, wearing a hearing aid like a spy. She sold Lula Mae’s kerosene lamps, flower-rimmed plates, crystal pitcher and glasses, bread box, spice holder, red metal kitchen chairs and matching table. She sold the meat freezer for twenty-five dollars, frozen meat included. She sold the dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer (seventy-five dollars for the set).

Two middle-aged white women — daughters of Lula Mae’s employers, kin of Mr. Byron, the white man who knew the Griffith family graves the way he knew his teeth — rushed through the house grabbing up everything in sight, like a tornado. Glass figurines, decorative baskets, vases, ashtrays, place mats, plates, and anything else Gracie had not sold.

Together they lifted a stunned and immobile Porsha off her feet. Hatch stayed their hands. They put Porsha down. Said, We jus wan something to member Lula Mae by.

MAMMA AND GRACIE fought for possession of the quilt, tugging at it, an angry game. A store-bought pattern — a tattered circus clown, once bright patchwork colors against a dull yellow background — now frayed at the edges that Lula Mae had sewn together in a matter of hours and stuffed with store-bought stuffing, an everyday quilt to keep you warm at night, protection against the air conditioner’s winter cold. (Gracie had sold the air conditioner for twenty-five dollars.)

YOU SAY IT’S FUN?

Porsha thought about a favorable way to describe her line of work. Nothing came to mind. What about you?

Reverend Blunt smiled. There’s no better job.

It must run in your family.

Why do you say that?

Ain’t that how most people start?

He laughed. I guess so. I guess that is how they start. You must go to work and prepare the way of the Lord, he said in a deliberate humming preacher’s voice.

She found it hard to laugh, laughter pinned down by everything heavy inside her.

It’s a hard time for you. I know it is. Miss Pulliam was a special woman, very special.

His eyes were clear and kind, free open space.

Thanks.

I can—

She stopped him. I would like to. I really would. But to tell you the truth, she pushed the words up from inside her, I’m seeing somebody.

Reverend Blunt said nothing for a moment, his eyes showing no change. Well, he said, I hope he seeing you too. It never works when one person is invisible.

He said it the same way he said everything else, without malice or sarcasm. She listened and accepted it and thought about it and thought about other things she was thinking through and sat saying nothing not knowing what to say. Sat smelling the new car leather, supportive, firm against her body, Reverend Blunt smiling into her face—got to admit, he is the perfect gentleman, ain’t looked at my body once, short skirt and all—the air conditioner blowing cool in the silence. How long had they been sitting here and talking? one hour? Two?

Sun shattered in flakes against the windshield. The reverend’s mouth moved but she missed the words.

He was handsome, yes oh so handsome — but she found it hard to hear what he was saying. The sediment of the past floated to the top of her still memory. Memories thicker than a snowstorm, free-floating in the reverend’s car, a single, contained space, a Christmas paperweight. His mouth moved again.

What was that?

I said why don’t we drive to Memphis? Take your mind off things.

No. I really would like to. I really would. You are so sweet. But I better stay close to the house. In case they need me. You understand.

Of course. As it should be.

Reverend Blunt opened his door and exited the car, rocking it with his strength. He came around the front of the car slowly, giving her ample opportunity to observe him, take him all in and appreciate. He opened her door, took her hand, and helped her out of the car.

Well, he said, it has been a pleasure.

The same.

He held her hand, his eyes watching and holding. She read his heart in his handclasp. Well, I better be going.

Yes, he said. That is the proper thing to do. He kissed her hand. Under different circumstances we might have—

Yes.

He pulled her closer. She leaned and took his kiss as if it were her rightful due. Kissed him until the pleasure began to send her.

She turned to the house and made it to the front porch when he called her.

Oh, Porsha. Let me give you this. He crossed the small bridge over the grass-covered drainage ditch and waited for her on the road side of the chain-link fence. She walked to the fence slowly but without hesitation.

I’ll be in the city in a few weeks for a mortuary convention. This is where I’ll be staying. He extended a business card.

She took it and read it carefully. She turned for the house. Walked on in the fresh sunlight.

SOMEBODY TOLD YOU WRONG, Beulah said. I ain’t never been po. Daddy always said, When you needy, eat the skin of a cow.

Porsha wondered if he meant this literally.

Yeah, Sam was a devil alright. But Mamma and Daddy couldn lay a hand on him. Our animals fight them. Our pigs and cows wouldn let Mamma and Daddy lay a hand on nwine one of us kids. Beulah’s lungs wheezed above her words.

How you feel today, Beulah?

I had everything. Cancer. Stroke. Heart attack. Hypertension. Asthma. Diabetes. Arthritis. I feel as good as I should feel. What else is left? I’m too old to get the clap.

Porsha did her best to laugh. She had it in her somewhere. She wanted to laugh with Beulah, for her. Lil Judy, Jacky, and Rochelle had stayed in Fulton where grave and gravity conspire. Had promised to come up in a day or two to bring Beulah back to St. Paul — and her nursing home bed — where all four lived. Beulah had bought them all plane tickets. In her Decatur house, she had raised the three girls as her own. Their mamma, Jesse, just thirteen when she had Rochelle, thirteen with the chaotic brain of a five-year-old, a parentless drinking fool, made worse when a stroke shriveled up the left side of her body, threw her red eyes out of balance (one up, the other down, like losing cherries in a slot machine), shortly after the birth of her last child, Lil Judy. And their father, Dave, Beulah’s nephew, Big Judy’s son, ran the street with his uncle, Beulah’s younger and only brother Sam, two stray dogs. So she had raised them as her own.

How come Beulah never had any kids?

I don’t know. Maybe she already had enough to handle.

You ain’t married yet?

I’m looking. I’m trying.

Well, take yo time. Don’t be in no hurry. Soon as they get some pubic hair, folks figure they old enough to marry.

46

NO. LULA MAE AIN’T HAVE NO MONEY, and I aint’s have none either. So we was gon ask Mr. Harrison to ship him. Never did. He had done enough.

Hatch thought about it. And he would do that?

Yes.

Why?

Kind.

What?

Kind. He kind. That was the best white man that ever lived.

I wouldn’t go that far.

I would.

Hatch examined his shoes. Patterns there. So how was he gon ship him? Plane?

Train.

Train? All the way from California?

Beulah said nothing.

Hatch seethed, sunk, settled, let his mind clear. And you worked for him in Memphis?

Yes. He was good to work for.

Cleaning up after them is good?

Better than a lot of jobs.

When you’d come to Memphis?

During the war. Bought a ticket long as my right arm and hopped that locomotive. That locomotive pack. No room for nobody. No seats.

The smell of everybody’s life mixed together.

So we ride wit the soldiers, sittin on our luggage in the aisles.

And you came to Memphis?

Colored folks bouncing babies to sleep on they knee. Some even draggin long the family hog. Huff and puff up the rise. Two points make a line and we gone ride em all. Where the Southern crosses the Dog.

Her voice thin as the sheet that covers her. And is talkin. Andrew, her husband, the railroad man. Railroad talk. The beat in between the beat of her voice. His cigar puffing up the rise. Lil nigga, that the rail and that the tie and that the sleeper and that the rail chair. Come heah, lil nigga, so I can show you this.

Oh, my soul got happy when I come out of the wilderness.

You went to Memphis? He said it louder this time.

Yes. Sam and Dave got jobs in the meat factory. I found me some day work.

Yeah. Cleanin these white folks’ houses. But why did you come? She was the right person to ask. Her memory clean and clear. I want to tell you and keep you told.

Same reason we all came. The big river flowed from there to here, and they built the railroad right next to it.

The rails are two rivers. Two watery trails.

First came to the city—Lord, I’m traveling. Lord, I got on my traveling shoes—in the middle of winter. That cold liked to kill me. Cold city winds. Snatch off yo durn draws.

There was these two right evil hoodlums laid for me every Friday payday. Two cutthroats wit stockings on they face, lookin like onions. They knock me down in the snow and kick me til I rolled. Grab my pocketbook. And laughin. They yell, Stop thief! Somebody call the police! But this one Friday, I was ready for em. Put a straight razor in my bosom. I cut them every which way but loose. Shoulda seen the blood running away from they evil bodies. Glad to be free.

I WOKE UP THIS MORNING with my mind still on the Lord. You read your Bible?

Sometimes. He lied. He didn’t want to hear nothing bout no Bible.

Those words ain’t written in ink and paper. You go to church?

Sometimes.

Don’t you know? Church is life and fire insurance.

Beulah had walked hand in hand with death most of her life. Beulah will outlive us all, Sheila said.

Turn on the game. Yankees playin today. Beulah never missed the Yankees.

You ever see them play?

Course I seen them play.

I mean did you ever go there to see them play? New York? The Bronx?

No. I’m gon wait for you to buy me some tickets.

He found no humor in her statement. Lula Mae was gone, lost, forever silent, and Beulah was alive, pillows propped up behind her in Lula Mae’s bed — the creaking pain of old age — the windows shut, the shades drawn. Here before him now. She would soon return to St. Paul, resume her life there. He had little time. But why not? You rambled?

First Houston, then Memphis, then the city, then Decatur, then Fulton, then St. Paul. No grass grew under her feet.

Yes, I rambled. The hand of the Lord was upon me. I’ve never been to the seminary, but I’ve been to Calvary. I’ve had no education, but moved the Red Sea.

DROUGHT SUMMER, the topsoil gray and loose, light. Cracks wide, thirsty mouths, the desperation of breathing. Bent cane stalks like old men. No greening rains. Once, the plowed fields were like quilts in shades of green and brown. Now, a haze of thirsty yellow. He had to see the house, Beulah some other place now. Beulah’s house, down the hill past the weed-choked cemetery, the crooked stones, past the train depot, the train shrieking through the intersection of road and track, speed eased or stopped with a red flag. He found a pile of ash-blackened boards where her house once stood, the hollow brick frame trying to swallow up the sky.

Uncle John always drove them to Beulah’s during winter. Speeding out the city to cut gray slush paths through white winter space and silence. White flakes drop to the earth, fleeing the sun (just as black ashes rise to the sun’s warmth). Square upon square of cornfield, the state hospital surrounded by corn, the crazies made crazier by the constant green beyond the window bars. These plains an hour outside the city, plains fitted for sweeping and rolling winds, twisting arrows that stick everything in their path and carry them off to the farthest horizon. Now the town itself. Decatur. Kankakee County. Snow brilliant white like a second skin on trees, rooftops, awnings, window ledges. The cement path to her house, winter-covered, sunlight blinding on white snow-thickened grass. The mound behind the house, the mound that you could enter through two wooden doors, pull them up and back, raised insect wings, and walk down four or five crumbling stone steps, descend into the earth itself. Cept it wasn’t earth, but a concrete cave filled with dark cluttered junk.

You and Jesus square off against Jacky and Lil Judy. Scratch each other’s eyes in a tumbling-down clinch.

Don’t yall play so rough, Porsha says. They girls.

Ain’t nobody playin.

And the two-story house itself where Beulah had raised Rochelle, Jacky, and Lil Judy, Dave’s three girls—Dave, that nigga, God durn his soul; he spend his check before he make it home; and Jesse would jus grin, Mr. Dave, you so crazy; what she know; she weren’t but thirteen and green as a grasshopper; Dave feed them babies sugar water; Jesse ask the neighbors fo some bread and crackas, then that firewater take a holt to her and she have that stroke, and Sam and Dave, God durn they souls, Sam and Dave runnin the streets actin the biggest fool; Dave spend his check befo he make it home; them babies white as ghosts from all that sugar, sugar sticking to they diapers; and Lil Judy sucking on Sam’s wood stump leg like it some kinda pacifier; sure I took them, raised them; what else was I gon do? — who were quicker than Beulah’s old apron strings.

Don’t get too close to them, Porsha said.

They got worms again?

Yeah.

How they get em?

From eatin all that candy.

Worms live in candy?

No, in sugar.

Thanks and praises. Pregnant and grown, Rochelle, Jacky, and Lil Judy packed up babies and belongings, journey west, to St. Paul — to get the maximum government check from public aid — and left Beulah in an empty house. Beulah musta gotten lonely. That’s why she sold the house and moved with Koot in Fulton; but Koot died; she moved up the road with Big Judy; Big Judy died; where could she turn? Lula Mae? She and Lula Mae didn’t get along. Never had. So she moved to St. Paul, where Rochelle, Jacky, and Lil Judy passed her from house to house, passed her around like a hot reefer joint.

The sweet smell of her asthma cigarettes floated through the room and refused to leave. Brown and green medicine bottles, still on the surface of the nightstand next to her bed. Bedridden—When you old and sick and gotta stay in bed, ain’t much else you can do—in the silk Chinese robe that Andrew, her first husband — two husbands, was this a family tradition? — had brought her from Seattle, splotched with black-lined ginkgos, gold dragons, jade rivers, and scarlet flowers. The smooth tan skin, the neck a hill of wrinkles sliding down to her big-boned torso. The years had preserved her hair—good hair, Sheila called it — flowing in a silver wave down her back. Used to be longer than that. All the way down to her knees. She would brush it in long, slow, attentive strokes as if to bring the words out.

Dave say you had really long hair back then.

Yes, down to my ankles.

Bird wings.

I had to cut it when I started to work in the factory. Your hair get caught in one of those machines.

Couldn’t you just wear a cap?

All that hair?

Late in life (at age forty? forty-one?), she had met And in Houston and married him soon after. They came to the city together. When the gettin was good, she found a job in the war (car?) factory, while the draft shipped And overseas. He speak Japanese, Dave said. Shit, I know a word or two but that nigga sound like he born a Chink. War done, he found work as a Pullman porter. The marriage lasted five years. But the divorce (separation?) didn’t end them. And drifted into town like smoke. Aw, girl, what you doing up in that bed? Every time I come to see you, you up in that bed. How I’m gon look at yo butt?

Gon way from me, mister.

Clicked open a gold initialed (AA) cigarette lighter and lit a sweet-smellin cigar, squirting smoke out of his hair-filled nostrils. (Did the hair filter the smoke?) Silk monogrammed (AA) socks, gleaming alligator shoes, shiny three-piece (his forefinger hooked in the vest), polka-dot tie with diamond stickpin (AA), sparkling and blinking like Christmas lights, blocked Dobb, cocked over one eye — he reached up a hand in salute, taking the hat edge onto his long-tipped fingers, then bringing the hat into the circle of his lap — initialed (AA) silk handkerchief, big sparkling cuff links — Hatch teased him, What’s those, handcuffs? screaming the words wet in his face, as he was hard of hearing; He listening to the sound of the railroad, Beulah said — and a big cloisonné horseshoe ring (he liked the races, horse and dog) that glittered and wavered. Always clean as a broke-dick dog, Beulah said, through the worn threads of her voice, plenty of jack. Come here, little nigger, And said, worrying the railroad watch attached to his vest from a heavy silver chain. Hatch came. And put the big watch in Hatch’s hand. Hatch examined it like some fossil. Engraved on the back, a double track between two crossed semaphores, stop signal. You know how niggas is. Niggas loaded everything into they steamer trunks. No engine, I don’t care how powerful, could move that train. We had to open up some of them trunks. See what inside. One nigga got his bathtub in there. One got his stove. Another got his horse in there. Another his house. Got good tips, And said, but some white folks cheaper than Jack Benny. Give you a quarter or a cigar and pect you to do a song and dance.

Divorced (separated?), Beulah moved to Decatur and found a job in the local dog-food factory. Purchased a two-story (wood and brick, green and white) house with a length of green lawn where Hatch and Jesus could wrestle, chase Jacky and Lil Judy, and enough yard for a grove of pear trees. Her second husband, Mr. George, a co-worker at the factory—I knew him before we decided to jump the broom—was as plain as And was colorful. The light of the body is the eye. Overalls and snuff. Smoking his pipe — snuff and a pipe? — under the spreading pear trees. (Hatch could not recall a single instance of Mr. George speaking, the tucked pipe clogging back the words.) Wearing a basin-shaped hat and a black mortician suit on his way to church each Sunday. When she had the strength, Uncle John and Lucifer would walk her — one of them could have carried her without missing a breath, but she insisted on Walking on my own two feet. That’s what God give them to me for. Last person who carried me was And. Over the threshold. Mr. George too old to carry anybody and I don’t plan to marry no more—to the front porch, slowly, every inch of skin shaking with the effort as if she would crumble. The two of them, Beulah and Mr. George, the unlit pipe tucked between his lips, sitting in the cushioned rocking chairs on the screened porch, not a single word from the man, nothing escaping past the plug of pipe. And when And came to town, the three of them sitting on the long, noisy rocker/glider, where summer voices floated around them and fireflies flickered and faded at night. That was how Mr. George died one evening as the sun turned copper, heart exploding inside his chest, Beulah hearing the creaking rocker stop, seeing the angles of the chair freeze in place and blood thread from his nose.

Sugar. Hypertension. Heart attacks. Two operations to cut out the cancer. But I’m still here. Death try to sneak up on me when I sleep. But I go when the good Lord call me.

A wedge of light fell outward from the door. Found glints in her hair.

You hear bout people falling off a mountain and survivin wit nothin but a scratch, then you hear bout people dyin from a bump on the head. You go when it time fo you to go.

Her voice was soft and secret, almost a whisper, as if she were talking to herself.

When St. Peter say Come home, better put on yo runnin shoes.

She had outlived her one brother and many sisters (she killed one herself, when she was a girl, dropped the baby and busted its skull), some — Sam, Koot, Big Judy — whom Hatch had seen, heard, and touched, found various ways to die — though she was the oldest child.

Beulah, you the firstborn?

No, the second. The first baby, a lil baby girl, drowned on Mamma’s milk.

All that remained, silent photographs, shadowy names, and inscrutable memories. Her family originated somewhere near Houston (’Sippi, not Texas), and she knew little more than that, knew nothing of her grandparents, so the family lineage began and ended at her maiden name, Griffith. (Some even spelled the family name differently. Griffis.)

Now they talkin bout men on the moon. Life motionless but alive, Beulah spoke between wheezes, cast talk in his teeth, a film of mist softening every word, the voice weak.

They open a new highway, let it roll wide the earth, shake trees from their roots. Birds leave the edges of the forest, abandon the highway, carry pieces of the moon between their claws. Their sharp wings cut through the clouds. They fly up to mountaintops and from the highest peaks take in the widest landscapes. Foresee the space age.

If God wanted men on the moon he woulda put them there. I ain’t gon believe no men on no moon til I go there myself.

Beulah, they had it on TV. In the newspaper.

I don’t have no truck with such nonsense. Them white folks think they got the sun and the moon locked inside a briefcase. But there are some things the Lawd wants all folks to know, some things jus the chosen few to know, and some things no one should know.

She could tell stories, though Sheila didn’t want to hear them—Hush; Beulah, don’t go digging up the past; I been through enough in my life; that was then, this is now—though Gracie stiffened at the voice, closed her eyes against remembrance, though Beulah took so long between words you didn’t know if she had finished talking or was only resting, and you listened attentively, clutched every kernel from her throat, for she was willing to pass on greasy-fingered tales. Tales like houses, yards, gardens, other worlds, spaces to inhabit, hand-me-downs, generational clothes.

Thirteen of us in that shotgun shack, fifteen cluding Mamma and Daddy.

Hatch listened.

Fifteen. She watched him from across the lamp. People today don’t know nothing bout being crowded. Fifteen of us. Fifteen. Thirteen—

Thirteen.

— chillun. The five oldest chillun stay and help Mamma and Daddy work the farm. The five younguns go to the fields. Crawlin through them fields on yo hands and knees. Tie some cloth patches cross yo knees so they won’t wear down.

Talk bout hard times. People today don’t know nothing bout no hard times. There was this one bad season, real bad, bad harvest. Our dogs Blackjack and Redman howled all day and night, bellies hanging off them like empty sacks.

One afternoon, Daddy came home all slumped up, bone-tired. He hadn’t been to the fields that day. And he come in and take something outa his shopping bag and set it down on the table. A ham. All wrapped up neat and nice in butcher paper and smelling like sawdust. A big heavy one too. Make the table wobble.

What that? Mamma said.

Daddy looked at her. Woman, what you think it is?

Where’d you get it?

Where you think?

Well, can’t eat that thing by itself. She removed a quarter from her bosom. Go to the store and get me a pound of greens.

Why can’t you send one of these chillun?

Cause they busy doin stuff for me.

What about Beulah there?

Daddy looked at me.

Beulah gon help me fix this ham.

Soon as Daddy left, Mamma tucked that ham under her arm. Beulah?

Yes’m.

Follow me.

We walk and walk. I could feel the heat all along the back of my neck, that heat trying to get into my head and legs and arms. I never knew a person could get so hot. Mamma, where we goin?

To get some seasonin.

We walk bout a mile from the house. Mamma stop and let the ham fall to the ground. I start to pick it up.

Leave it, she say.

Mamma find her a thick branch and start to diggin at the ground.

Mamma, what you doin?

Preparin that ham.

You gon cook it in the ground? I ask. (Sure was hot enough.)

She didn’t say nothing.

She dig her a hole and kicked the ham into it.

I says to her, Mamma, why you do that?

She didn’t say nothin.

Mamma, why you bury that good ham?

DADDY LOVED THEM DOGS. Redman and Blackjack. What we ate, they ate. Never had a cold meal. Followed him everywhere, he just talkin away and they beside him, noddin they heads and waggin they tails. They be the first at the do when a guest come. Gon way from this door, Red. This caller ain’t fer you. And what you, Blackman, his shader? They could howl so, like to scare off any thang come creepin long in the night. Walk us to school, one long each side a us. And be waitin outside the schoolhouse to walk us back. And them dogs could sniff out the devil down in the deepest hell. When the huntin be good, Redman and Blackjack liked to rob the woods of all coon, possum, and rabbit.

Nasty, Hatch thought, almost saying it.

Daddy even have enough meat to sell.

There was this mean ole cuss, Mr. Boatwright. Talkin bout a nigra shouldn do this, and a nigra shouldn do that. Even the other white mens couldn’t stand him.

Hatch watched her in disbelief.

One day, Daddy and I take Redman and Blackjack to town. Mighty fine hounds you got there, uncle, Mr. Boatwright said.

Yes, suh.

Mighty fine.

That Mr. Boatwright was a right nasty white man. He carry this brown snot rag hangin long out his back pocket. He pull it out and start to blowin.

Reckon a nigga can do right well for himself with such hounds.

Daddy keep walkin.

I figure five dollas a right mighty, uncle.

Thank ya, suh, but they ain’t for sell.

Awright, ten dollas, uncle.

No, suh.

Damn it, uncle. You got somephun gainst money?

No, suh. Daddy keep walkin.

Next morning, Mr. Boatwright come out to the farm. Daddy greet him. I’m holdin back Redman and Blackjack, barkin.

Well, uncle. Come to bring you that ten dollas.

Suh?

Fer them dogs. We had a deal. No, suh.

Now, uncle, you callin me a liar?

No, suh.

Well, bring me them dogs.

White folks, why don’t we let the sheriff handle this.

Mr. Boatwright look at Daddy. Now, ain’t no need to get the sheriff involved. Sure he got plenty to keep him busy. Be seein you, uncle.

Bout a week later, ole Redman and ole Blackjack out in the front a the house chasin each other tail. Round and round. Round and round. Then they start spittin up meat filled wit maggots.

Moving like tiny white fingers.

Turnin round and round in a circle. Then no meat jus maggots start to comin out they mouth, churnin like milk. You shoulda seen it.

He wished that he had.

Next morning, Daddy buried them out behind the house. Daddy never did talk much, and he talk hardly at all after that.

Mamma rubbed his shoulders. And rubbed. And rubbed.

Daddy said, Don’t you go and Bible me.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold but climbeth up some other way—

Beulah worried the silence. And Daddy didn’t say nuthin else. But he was the first one to enter the church when Mr. Boatwright died, all respectful, hat in his hands, walked right up to that white man’s coffin and just stood there so long that the usher had to make him move long.

47

BIG JUDY WAS A MESS.

You remember the time she cut that woman for tryin to cut in with Buck?

Don’t remind me.

Beulah, Lula Mae, and Koot tried to steer Big Judy away. Judy, you know that woman crazy. You know she done killed five peoples. But with that quick straight razor from her bosom she cut that woman ten red roads on her hands and arms — a good Christian, she spared the woman’s face — before the tramp could even get the handle of her gun out of her purse.

Well, Beulah, I guess we better get you all ready to go back to St. Paul.

Beulah’s colored medicine bottles waited on the nightstand like missiles on a launching pad. No, Beulah said. I ain’t ready to go back. They keep passin me round like a plate of green peas. They only interested in my pension check. You know they all on that stuff.

I kinda suspected that, Sheila said.

I don’t know how much mo I can take.

Beulah’s look pushed in at her. She recalled how Beulah had pleaded with Sam’s woman, Don’t kill him. He’s my only brother.

Can I come live with you?

Beulah, I’m tired. You know that. Tired. I’ll come up to St. Paul and help you find the best nursing home they got there.

I wanna come live with you.

Beulah I work every day. Who gon take care of you when I’m gone? I bet they got some good nursing homes in St. Paul. I know they do. Find you the best.

YOU’LL FEEL BETTER, Montel said. My father is buried just down the road. I talk to him as I could never do in life.

Sheila studied Montel’s long, melonlike head — some hair left, not much, enough for a small Afro — and the body gone soft in a few places. A miracle that Montel was alive at all, here in Miss Emma’s living room. (The same after all the years. More the same each time she visited.) Doctors had predicted, promised that the sickle-cell anemia growing inside would kill her by age forty. She battled continual sickness and always bounced back. She had remained a familiar, normal presence for fifty years. They became best friends from day one at the Catholic high school during the war. Pencils in their hands and legs proper under their desks. Stealing looks at the white boys under the nun’s habited faces, hovering above them, monitoring, anxious to punish. Girl things. Frequent Beale Street clubs, flirt with the men, get the cute ones to buy them drinks. A beer or two, nothing hard. Drink, giggle and flirt, dance. No sex. Just fun. Gracie had tried to strain their solidarity. Kept popping up in their path, a needlelike weed. You’d be having a good time on the riverboat then turn and see Gracie watching you, angry but calm, uneventful, natural and forceful like the waterwheel. Ain’t nobody following yall. She had a right to be there.

They had it on the news that big flood yall had, Montel said. Yall didn’t have any problems getting out of the city?

No. They say they got it under control.

That’s good.

Never know, though. We might have problems going back.

I hope not. Pray for the best.

That’s all you can do.

Where’s Lucifer? Why didn’t you bring Lucifer? I ain’t seen him in so long. I missed him at the funeral.

Lucifer, sound and name, entered Sheila and flowed like an unknown substance through her body. You didn’t miss him. He wasn’t at the funeral. He couldn’t make it. She thought about telling all, all to tell, all she knew. He had to work. Couldn take off.

I see. Working hard.

Yes. He don’t know how to stop. Ditchdigger mentality. His co-workers always call the house. Slow down. Tell him to slow down. He makin us look bad.

Montel laughed. (The blood and warmth of her laughter.) Sargent the same way.

Sheila stirred in her seat, surprised at the comparison, Lucifer and Sargent. Sargent worked a good job, a well-paid superintendent for the Board of Education. She had always believed that if Lucifer found a good job he might slow down.

Some men are just like that.

I guess so.

An easy silence in the room.

Please wait for Mamma to come back. She sure wants to see you. Before she left this morning she was telling me how much she wants to see you. You know how much she likes you. I don’t have to tell you that.

Yes. Miss Emma was the bouquet of the house, the growing force that kept it alive. (Miss Emma nursed a piece of money that her husband, a tavern owner, had left her.) You sat in the room with Miss Emma and felt force radiating from her, heat. She talked sparingly about the past but feverishly of the present, never advising, always asking about you, discovering, disclosing. Her look silently said that she knew more about your life than you knew yourself. Silent circumstances. I want to see her too. But we haven’t finished packing.

That’s too bad.

I wish I could.

Yes, Montel said. She’ll be sorry. Hurt. But she’ll understand.

Sheila smiled a genuine smile. Miss Emma’s house looks good. Always does.

Sargent stays on top of things.

I hate that Miss Emma ain’t here. Tell her that I said her house looks good.

I will. You can always come visit. Nothing has changed. We want to see you. Don’t be a stranger. You have a reason to visit.

Sheila rode the deep currents of Montel’s voice.

And you be sure to send Porsha by here. Maybe she can motivate Gregory. He got the cutest daughter. Did I send you her picture?

No.

I’ll give you one before you leave. Remind me. Don’t let me forget. Her mother ain’t bout much … You tell Porsha to come on by here and see him.

Yes. She needs somebody good in her life.

Good? Good and broke. I can promise you that. All his money go into paying his car note. You see that fancy thing sitting out front there? Montel pointed. But maybe they would be good together. It happens.

Wouldn that be something.

Yes …

Seeing Montel before her, sitting and feeling it all in Miss Emma’s house, Sheila lived the old life again, felt the old feelings, drawn by the new promise, driven, determined, energetic, expectant. She found day work and worked it, while Lula Mae exhausted her New Mexico savings and worked three times as hard to put and keep Sheila in the Catholic high school, her day carrying her from Memphis to Tupelo to Fulton and back to Memphis. After graduation, Montel went off to teachers college and Sheila followed Beulah North to the city. Her first Christmas in the city, she boxed some snow, wrapped it with ribbon and bow — web of excitement — to send Montel. See, the world really does get cold. Snow really does exist. Yes, it tastes like milk. I really am in the city, up North.

I think about it all the time, Sheila said. A ghost of a chance. Invisible possibility. Moving back here.

Believe me, Montel said. Memphis is nothing to move back to. We got the same problems here where you live. And West Memphis is even worse. They call it Lil City. Young people are crazy. Crazy. Changing change.

Montel said what Sheila already knew. Her eyes were open to the world’s frightening changes. Even the blind couldn’t miss them. But saying made the knowledge immediate, acceptable. Helped ease her terminal homesickness. I’m gon buy me a suitcase. Leave this town. A voice she trusted telling her never to return.

Maybe if I had stayed, she said. She sees it all before her now. Shapes only a foot away.

48

THE POLAROID INSTANT CAMERA hugged his eye. He shot the bare kitchen — no red metal table, no red metal chairs, no white stove, no white refrigerator — the bare bathroom, the bare living room, Lula Mae’s bare bedroom, Mr. Pulliam’s bare bedroom. He shot the front yard, now minus lawn furniture. He shot the pear, plum, and peach trees. He shot the backyard, the thin clothesline — wind filled trouser legs and blouse sleeves, blowed them about, whipped them light and dark — the railroad plank that flattened the backyard grass, and the bald grass-free space where the little house had been docked. He shot the back end of the house. He reloaded the camera. He shot a frontal view of the house. Shooting done, he arranged the fresh photographs like a chessboard. He had what he needed, unyellowing artifacts. He packed camera and artifacts in Mr. Pulliam’s canvas army duffel bag. Green force.

SUITCASE IN HAND, he opened the chain-link fence — he did not close it behind him — and crossed the wooden railroad plank — swollen but firm, the belly of a sumo wrestler; splinters like prodigious hair — that offered safe passage over the grass-covered drainage ditch. He loaded the suitcase into the cab’s open trunk. Then he stood in the red gravel road — sun flowed down his arms, out his fingers, and arrowed through the tips to stab the earth — and took a final memory-absorbing survey. Miss Bee’s house across the road, her backyard once yellow with corn and chickens. Miss Witherspoon’s house on the corner on this side of the road, her backyard — flowers still in the summer wind; he could describe the colors and textures but knew none of the names — no further than a stone’s throw from Lula Mae’s front yard, next to where the pear trees grew. Lula Mae’s house itself. 1707 Monroe. West Memphis. Summer. The South.

Go ask John Brown to carry us to town in that buggy of his, Lula Mae said. (She called any automobile a buggy.)

Yes, ma’m.

John Brown’s old blue pickup truck waited in the red gravel road. Animated by its own rhythm. Humming grunting popping farting mumbling across the Memphis Bridge. John Brown leaning forward, arms bent around the huge steering wheel, the arcs of his tall knees pointing like mountains. The steering wheel moving between his raised knees. Lula Mae immobile beside him. You and Jesus in the open back, your feet hanging over and out the lowered door. Back-wheel boats churned a still black river — time fell off the great waterwheel but the ferry never moved — and steel stools spun smoke and talk before a wood counter in a steaming greasy spoon that served the best hamburger, something called a Hawaiian burger, and real soda from the fountain. And looking through the low-hanging bushes of the tree before the sidewalk, you could see John Brown’s rotting shell of a house. The sagging roofline. The worn porch steps like bad teeth. (One plank had rotted free.) The crooked mouth of porch. Peeling green paint, a shade darker than the uncut grass swamping the yard, as if the house were part of the very land itself, growing up from the earth.

See the monkey? John Brown circled the length of his property, fingering every link of the chain fence, every blade of grass, every rough edge of tree. See the monkey? he said again, pointing up into the treetops. A few hairs on his skull, head and hair like a coconut shell. Gnarled arms like vines. The veins wormlike beneath his dirt-colored skin. You could hear ghosts inside him, warring for control.

See the monkey? Boy, do you see the monkey?

You saw birds wheeling above tall trees.

Boy, do you see the monkey?

You saw sun like fire in trees.

Boy, you see the monkey?

You saw treetops filtering shafts of light. No, sir.

No, sir? No, sir? Course you see that monkey. There. John Brown stuck out a board-long finger.

Where?

There. John Brown shook his pointing finger for emphasis. Right there. Shakin his bare ass. Poppin it like a.45. Rattlin his hairy balls. Right there. Snappin rim shots wit his tail. Course you see him—

You ran like speed itself to Lula Mae’s house.

THE HOUSE CROWDED WITH GHOSTS. Some dead, some alive. The brightness of their sunken eyes. Forever hospitable, they offer familiar praise, extend the usual invitations. Words spin in his head, marbles in a bowl. His muscles unravel like spools of thread.

Time whirling inside, he moved fast. The voices behind him. He entered the bathroom. Shut and locked the door. Sat Mr. Pulliam’s indestructible green army bag on the white sink. Words flew off to nothing. Came indistinguishable through the door. The bathroom offered white solitude. His pulse slowed. There was the small gas heater next to the tub. (Every room of his grandmother’s house had one.) No flame. Flameless heat. The tile lit brown inside. Humming a soft smell. The tub where Lula Mae demonstrated the proper method of washing the body. Get a big washcloth. (The kind that could fold over your hand, floppy, like damp pizza crust.) Get it real soapy. Like this. And always use white soap cause it make the most suds. Fold your ends when you wash your face. Like this. Be sure to wash down there, wash your elephant snout. And dry off good. Be sure to dry your back off. Like this. This small tub had once been large enough to hold both him and Jesus. Imagine that. For whatever reason, this thought, this fact, unnerved him, set him back.

The mirror held him in its still gaze. He studied his cool pose and expressionless mouth, the face he had brought to West Memphis and worn daily like a favorite hat. His skin pressed Lula Mae’s outline. Over the past few days, he thought and thinking remembered everything. Stored up memories and studied them now in the mirror. Dreamed his way through all shapes and solids, for they were a map to get back by. He dwindled to a wet point in himself.

He heard it moving, water that refused to be stopped. Water that dimmed his features.

You ready? Sheila said through the closed door. You got everything?

With air and motion his head began to clear. Sheila rubbed his knee and said soothing things. Night touched him through the open window. The bridge hung by threads in the darkness. The iron grid made the cab’s tires sing. Trawlers sparkled and winked on the water’s black surface. The invisible water spoke no secrets. Under blinking bridge lights, the Memphis River took back its older form, its original name. It went on the same way, never hurrying, never hesitating.

He became aware all at once, the thought became clear though it was both wordless and beyond words: His tears were selfish. He was crying not for Lula Mae but for himself. Not her death but what he had lost, what was forever beyond him now because she was gone. Summer. Her house. Her yard. Her kerosene lamps. Her lil house. Her trees. Her red gravel road. Her railroad plank that covered the grass-choked drainage ditch. Her railroad plank that led you from the back porch to the lil house. This bridge. West Memphis. The South. His tears were private, selfish, for him only. He would never cry again.