Jump into the Sky (12 page)

But the voice came through loud and clear the second time.

“That you, Levi Battle? Don’t you go passing by my house without saying a good morning. I been setting here all this time waiting to meet you.”

Heck, I didn’t know what to think.

I
’m sure I must’ve looked like a complete fool, standing smack in the middle of the road, turning around as I tried to figure out where the voice was coming from. The closest house looked like a run-down shack. It didn’t even appear lived-in. There wasn’t a lick of paint on the place. A jungle of overgrown vines and big clumps of baskets swallowed up the front porch. Scruffy chickens pecked in the yard.

“Boy, up here.” Among the vines and baskets, there was a sudden flash of color as something moved. Thought maybe I saw a hand waving. “I’m setting up on the porch,” a voice called. “Gate’s open.”

Never noticed the gate until then. Right in front of me was a plain wooden gate with a faded sign hanging on it:
OPEN. BASKETS FOR SALE
. Still feeling cautious, I stepped carefully toward the porch, squinting into its green, dapply shadows. Somebody was sitting there, I could tell that. Only the person didn’t seem to have much shape.

As I got closer, I could see the outlines of a lady who might’ve stepped straight outta slavery times from the way she looked. The woman was sitting in an old cane-backed rocker, and she wore a shapeless gown made of mismatched remnants—as if a bunch of cast-offs had been turned into somebody’s idea of a dress. A red cloth turban was knotted around her head. As I reached the porch steps, the turban leaned forward and two eyes peered at me from a face so wrinkled, the eyes coulda been mistaken for knotholes in a tree. How those little bitty eyes could see, I don’t know.

“You Levi?”

“Yes ma’am,” I answered, wondering how in the world my name had already reached this lady. Word didn’t even travel that fast in Aunt Odella’s building, where the walls were paper.

“Heard about you already,” the woman said, leaning back in her ancienty chair. “You come down here looking for your daddy, ain’t that right?”

Her words ran together worse than slow syrup pouring. Wasn’t sure I caught half of what she said, but I nodded anyhow.

“You been looking for him for a long while, I hear.”

No, I’d only left Chicago on Saturday, I told the lady.

The old woman shook her head. “Way longer than that you been looking for your daddy. Way longer than that, I’d say.”

I gotta admit, those words rattled me. Couldn’t tell if
she was just an old lady babbling nonsense or if she knew about my life somehow, or if I was hearing every single word wrong. She reminded me of something you’d find in a museum—something that you’d stare at and wonder what the heck it was. She was an odd, talking artifact.

“Folks around here call me MawMaw Sands,” the woman continued, picking up a half-finished basket near her feet and licking the end of her finger. Working on the top edge of her basket, she started pushing a flat, green reed through the woven coils using the sharpened handle of a spoon to make holes. Then she’d pull the reed through the holes and wrap it around the top. It was hard to tear your eyes away from watching the rhythmic pattern of her dark hands working.

“Almost nothing in this world I don’t know about.” The woman’s eyes flashed up at me quickly, two tiny pinpricks of light. “You ask any folks around the Pines and they all know me. White, black, brown, purple. Don’t care what color they is. I been here way longer than anybody else. I seen it all and then some.” The old fingers kept working as the woman talked. “Heard you been searching for your daddy since you was a little child. Ain’t that right?”

Now the real creepy-crawlies were popping out all over my arms. How did she know all these things about me? I eased up two of the sagging porch steps, trying not to look as all-out curious as I was, but I’m somebody who likes proof, you know what I mean? Had she met my father, maybe? And what other sorry stories about me had she been told?

There was a faint smell of vanilla as you got closer to the top of her steps, and I swear there must’ve been an entire squadron of fat bumblebees buzzing around the purple flowers dangling from her porch. Had to keep ducking out of the way because I did not want to get hit by any of that deadly yellow and black ammo, let me tell you.

When I reached the top step, the old woman put the basket in her lap and rested her elbows on the arms of her chair. “So, you come from Chicago,” she said, closing her eyes for a minute. “Busy place, I hear. Lots of hustle and bustle going on.”

“Yes ma’am.” I nodded, still wondering how she knew.

“So that makes you a northern boy. A Yankee. A
brown
Yankee.” Her eyes snapped open and she chuckled at her own joke. “Let’s see—you’re smart but quiet. Big and strong, but not as tough as your last name sounds. And you got a place in this world but no home.”

Well, she might’ve been right about some things, but she was dead wrong about the rest. Gotta admit it burned me up a little to hear the old lady making judgments about how tough I was or wasn’t when she didn’t even know me. But the remark about me not having a home and all that—well, those words were tiptoeing close enough to the truth that it gave me more goosebumps on top of the ones I already had. I was convinced she’d talked to my daddy.

“You know Lieutenant Charles Battle?” I asked.

Couldn’t tell if the lady missed hearing what I asked
or was flat-out ignoring it. Saying nothing, she picked up the basket from her lap and started working again, her thin lips staying as tight as the coils she was making. The rocker creaked back and forth in the silence.

Tell you what, the curiosity was killing me.

Aunt Odella probably woulda said it was impolite to keep on pestering—she was an old lady and the morning was warm—but I tried repeating my father’s name, louder this time, and asked MawMaw Sands if she’d heard about him leaving town with the other soldiers.

This time the old lady nodded and glanced toward the side of the porch. “Go on over and get that basket for me.” She pointed at one that looked more like a round cookie jar than a basket. It was made of coils of dark and light grass with small handles on each side and a woven lid covering the top. “That’s a sweetgrass basket you’re holding,” the old woman said as I carried it to her. “All my baskets is made of sweetgrass. They all got names. That one’s called Keeper of Secrets. Go ahead and open it. See what you find.”

I lifted the woven lid reluctantly. Who knows what would be hiding inside, waiting to jump out and scare the daylights outta me, right?

But the basket was empty. Just some bits of grass and a vanilla smell, and that’s it. “Nothing in there,” I told her. Tried not to sound irritated at being taken for a big fool.

MawMaw Sands plunked her weaving spoon down in her lap and gave me a glinty stare. “Now, if there was to be
something in there, it wouldn’t be called Keeper of Secrets, would it?” She jabbed one finger in my direction. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. War is full of secrets. Some you can see and some you can’t. That’s the hard part—believing what you can see and trusting what you can’t.”

Right then, the only thing I believed was that MawMaw Sands was making up absolute jib-jabbering nonsense. Showing me an empty basket and telling me it was full of secrets—only you couldn’t see them? Well, Archie mighta fallen for that trick, but not me. Half the time he believed everything he saw in the movies was real too. One time he dragged me around Chicago searching for a gangster’s stash of gold. Nearly got both of us flattened by a train. Me, I was somebody who liked proof. Don’t try and ask me to believe something dumb.

Still, I tried not to make it too obvious that I didn’t buy one word of the story. She was an old lady, after all, and you don’t want to be disrespectful. Setting the basket back down on the porch, I pretended to take a minute to study some of the other ones hanging there, like maybe I was interested in them too.

Brushing bits of grass off her lap, the old woman came shuffling over. “All these baskets here got names,” she said. “This one’s called Cat Chasing Tail.” She reached for a basket with a thick coil twisted around the outside and showed me how you couldn’t tell where the coil started and ended as it circled around and around the basket.

“And this one’s Signs and Wonders.” She held up a flat, star-shaped basket about the size of a dinner plate. “Made it after I saw a shooting star land in my garden one night and grow into a tree.”

Didn’t believe that story either.

Next to the star basket hung a heart-shaped one.

“Love,” MawMaw Sands answered before I asked.

I gave a loud snort.

“Now, love ain’t all bad, Levi Battle.” The old woman’s face crinkled into a papery smile. “You just wait and see.”

Uh-huh. I hadn’t forgotten about Margie with the Margarine Hair, and the crumbled cake that didn’t even make it from Kansas to Washington, D.C. Or my daddy and Queen Bee Walker. Love was a mess. Nobody could convince me otherwise.

While we were standing there talking, a fancy Packard pulled up, all shiny and sparkling in the sunshine. A white lady stepped outta the passenger side and came up the dirt path to the porch. She was wearing a straw hat the size of a turkey platter and high-heeled shoes. They tottered sideways on the uneven ground. “You sell baskets?” she called out, as if she didn’t have eyes and couldn’t see them hanging everywhere.

“Yes ma’am, I does,” MawMaw Sands answered back, real polite.

The lady sashayed up to the porch and took forever studying all the baskets, holding them up to the light and turning them back and forth in her hands like she was buying diamonds instead of dried-up weeds.

MawMaw Sands didn’t say a word about the baskets’ names while the lady looked, just eased back down in her chair and worked on one real intently, humming a little to herself to fill the silence. Finally the lady picked out one of the largest ones—a kettle-sized one with all kinds of braided loops and twists all over it.

“This one’s my favorite,” the lady said. “I’ll take it.”

“Six dollars,” MawMaw Sands told her.

I’m telling you, my eyeballs just about fell out.

Six dollars woulda bought a big part of a war bond to help the troops. Or an entire afternoon and evening of tunes on the bubbling jukebox at Lennie’s in Chicago. Or who knows how many half-price double features you could see at the Regal Movie Theater with that kind of money. And the lady was spending it all on a basket.

I watched the woman dig through her pocketbook and pull out six crisp ones from a coin purse full of them. She made Uncle Otis and all his money seem like nothing special. After the lady got back in her car and drove off, I asked MawMaw Sands what the basket she bought was called.

“A Rich Lady and Her Money Is Soon Parted,” MawMaw Sands said loudly, licking her fingers and laying the
dollar bills on her lap one at a time. “That’s what I call it, anyhow.”

A snort of laughter escaped outta me, and the old lady gave me a sly sideways look before she started chuckling too. Pretty soon we were carrying on so much that the striped cat who’d been sitting peacefully on the porch bolted right over the railing from the noise. “Even the Cat Was Scared Off basket.” I waved an arm in the direction of the fleeing cat, and we just about fell over ourselves crying with laughter again. Never did hear the real name of the basket.

I think the laughter must’ve worn out MawMaw Sands, though, because she got quiet after we were done carrying on and didn’t make a move to pick up the basket in her lap. Just flopped her hands over the rocking chair arms, looking suddenly weary. “Hear there’s a nice ribbling crick waiting on you,” she mumbled, eyes closed.

“What?” I said, not following a word.

Sighing loudly, the old woman opened her eyes and waved her weaving spoon in my direction. “I says, it’s about time for you to go ahead and visit that nice cool crick you was on your way to see. McDeeds used to have crawdads the size of Maine lobsters. Probably don’t have none of those no more. Been years since I been down there myself. Stop by some other time and visit again, you hear? Gotta get back to my work.”

Hunching over her basket again, the lady turned me off
like a radio. Taking a few steps backward, I retreated down the porch steps silently, closing the gate quietly behind me and latching it. Straightened the crooked sign too. Just being polite. It wasn’t until I got to the road and looked back at the porch that I realized I’d never told MawMaw Sands I was on my way to the creek.

T
he creek sure was pretty, I gotta admit. Having grown up in the city, maybe it looked better to me than it would have to other folks who were used to that kinda thing. The water was clear and sparkly and ran above a pale orangish sand. Silver minnows the size of Aunt Odella’s sewing needles darted back and forth in the shallows.

I leaned over the bridge, looking down, and tried to come up with a sensible opinion about MawMaw Sands. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, I had to admit that something about the vine-covered porch had felt strange. Couldn’t figure out how the old lady had guessed some of those things about me either. And I swear my ears were still ringing with the hum of those nasty porch bees.
Levi Battle
, I told myself,
you’re going completely crazy. Two days in the South and you’ve lost your ding-donged mind
.

I picked up a warm pebble from the road and tossed it over the side of the wooden bridge, just for something to do.
Listened to its lonely plop in the creek below and weighed how close a person could get to the tempting cool water. Tall weeds covered the sandy banks on either side of the creek, but the idea of jumping down into the tangle of brush made me real uneasy. The dark pistol sticking outta that storekeeper’s palm wouldn’t leave my mind, you know? Had the jittery feeling of eyes watching me and kept hearing rustling noises in the weeds and that kind of thing.