Nowhere Is a Place (20 page)

He moved to the east section and began extracting the nails.

* * *

“I think we can trust him.” Brother spoke slow.

“Why?”

“’Cause he been here all this time and ain’t asked but one or two questions.”

“So?”

“So? You think he don’t know something is wrong here?”

“And?”

“Look, Laney, he here, he helping out, he got a right to know.”

“He want Suce. Did you know that?”

Silence.

Spin fumbled with his fingers, but kept his face calm.

“I see the way they look at each other,” she pressed.

Brother’s face was serene, his voice low. “Can’t expect nothing less. She at that age and he far beyond it and alone, what you ’spect them to look at, the trees and the dirt?”

“Humph.”

“Suce gonna need a husband. You want her to walk off down the road in search of one and not come back, like Tenk?”

“We don’t know that’s what happened! Tenk had a wife right here. I was his wife and I was right here, always right here!”

“Ain’t nothing against you, Laney. I’m just saying, what you ’spect?”

Laney rubbed at her chin. “You talkin’ foolish talk anyhow; Suce just a child.”

“Won’t be a child forever.”

“By then someone else closer to her age might come along.”

“Or might not.”

* * *

They told him.

Well, Brother did most of the talking, while Suce kept quiet and Laney paced, and Spin just stared out the window into the night.

“Sure ’nuff?” Willie was astonished; he had been called a dumb nigger so many times that he thought it was true of him and the rest of his race. He slapped his thigh and laughed. “Well I’ll be,” he said, shaking his head in amazement.

Brother folded his hands across his chest and waited, while Laney just made a face.

It all made sense now. And he kind of smiled at Suce. It wasn’t no haint, just Suce, he thought to himself. “Well I’ll be,” he said again.

“So now you know.”

“Yes, yes I do,” Willie said, still unable to wipe the look of amusement off his face.

“C’mon,” Brother said, and jumped up from his chair. The move was so sudden, Willie’s body jerked and he had to fight the urge to bring his hands up to his face in defense.

Brother threw him a baffled look, snatched his hat off the nail on the wall, and started through the door.

Willie hustled behind him, not daring to ask where it was they were going in the darkness. He realized he didn’t need to when Brother turned left and started up the path that led to the big house on the hill.

It was a climb, and the farther they went, the darker it seemed to get. Willie felt his chest constrict and suddenly found himself gasping for air. Fear?

“Keep up,” Brother muttered, and his stride quickened.

Willie sucked air and walked faster.

When they got to the door, Brother looked around cautiously before grabbing hold of the knob and pushing it open.

Willie hesitated. The main hall was dark.

“Well?” Brother said, and Willie looked up to see Brother’s yellow-tinged eyes glaring down at him.

Willie stepped in.

There was a smell. Something he couldn’t name. Willie sniffed at the air and then covered his nose with the palm of his hand and moved closer to Brother.

They climb the stairs, Brother surefooted and swift, Willie stumbling. Once at the top, they turn left and start down the narrow hallway. The light is better there; the moon is framed in the small window at the end of the hall. Willie’s heart slows a bit, and he’s able to straighten his back some.

They move toward the only doorway, located at the end of the hall. When Brother pushes it open, the hinges scream and that horrid feeling Willie was just able to shake off leaps back on him again.

“Who’s there?” a small voice asks through the darkness.

Willie remains in the hallway while Brother steps inside and disappears into the gloomy darkness of the bedroom. There’s some fumbling and the distinctive sound of a match being struck.

An orange-blue flame momentarily illuminates the darkness before it catches hold of the wick of the oil lamp.

Brother holds the lamp low over what—or who—it is he’s brought Willie to see.

In the dim yellow glow, Willie’s gaze slowly slides down the mahogany headboard, falling first on gray hair, then blue eyes lodged in a face that is as white as the bedsheets.

The mouth is the worst—thin lips, turned in, but still managing a ludicrous grin that barely contains the toothless pink gums.

“Who you?” the horrible mouth asks as the blue eyes roll frantically in their sockets.

Willie’s tongue fumbles for his name, but is rescued from the task when Brother quickly extinguishes the flame and throws them all back into darkness.

* * *

Back down at the house, right in front of the door, Brother turned to Willie and asked, “You in or out?”

Willie looked up into Brother’s eyes. “Well” was the first word that came to mind, because this here was a dangerous game they were playing. White folks were hopping mad at what Lincoln had done, and as much as things had changed, Willie felt sure that the old ways remained the same. He himself had seen smoking bodies swinging from tree limbs. And he was sure it was for some meager offense or maybe just the offense of having been born black. He didn’t know.

If he had never been sure of any one thing in his life, looking into Brother’s eyes made him sure of the fact that if his answer wasn’t the right one, he would be dead before daybreak.

“In.”

* * *

Now that he knew, he didn’t know how to sleep at night.

“How you do it?” he asked.

“Do what?” Brother said as he examined the dull edge of his knife.

“Sleep. How you sleep at night?”

Brother looked at him with bewilderment. “What?”

“I can’t sleep now.” Willie’s voice shook a bit and there was a small film of perspiration above his lip.

Brother stared hard at him and he saw that Willie’s eyes were bloodshot. “You forgot how to do it?” Brother laughed and shook his head.

Willie let out a frustrated sigh. “You ain’t worried you’ll be found out?”

It was Brother’s turn to sigh. “Think about it every day, but I ain’t got it in me to worry,” he said.

“What?” Willie questioned eagerly. “What’s that?”

Brother turned the knife over in his hands. “What can they do to me that ain’t already done?”

“They can kill you,” Willie snapped back at him.

“Shoot.” Brother laughed, turned away from Willie, and aimed the knife at the bark of the ash tree. He narrowed his eyes, pulled his arm back, and then brought it forward with a quick jerk, sending the knife sailing through the air. “I was born dead,” he said as the point of the knife stuck in the bark of the tree with a thump.

Willie gave him a blank look.

“What, you sayin’ you call slavery living?” Brother said, and started toward the tree to retrieve his knife. “Well lookee there,” Brother chuckled as he pulled the knife from the tree. “Wasn’t as dull as I thought it was.”

* * *

Months pass and Suce becomes comfortable in her twelfth year and her place at the supper table, right next to Willie.

Brother sees that her eyes are moist with womanhood, even though Laney remains tight-lipped about the blood that had stained Suce’s bloomers a month earlier.

Willie seems barely able to contain himself. Brother has spotted Willie rubbing himself up against the hard bark of the spruce, sometimes hears his shuddering cry from his place in the barn, and Brother was relieved to slaughter the cow, especially after he caught Willie eyeing it a little too closely.

Brother tried to push his own thoughts of lust and the want of a woman out of his mind. But sometimes they just seemed to rush at him, and he would have to go out into the woods and touch himself to beat back the heat that boiled inside of him.

Not only did Spin have half a mind and no words, he also had no shame. So when the feeling hit him, he whipped out his penis right where he stood and began to stroke it.

Laney had beat Spin near senseless with her broom the first time he’d done it in her presence, but now when she saw his hands fiddling with the rope that kept his pants up, she just waved a tired hand at him and said, “Go on away from here with that nastiness now.”

Suce, stepping away from childhood with every footfall she took. Womanhood clinging to her hips and pushing out her chest. Barely five feet tall, still childlike in height, but anybody could see if he looked hard enough that no child’s face could carry such an intense look of determination.

Brother supposed that living the way they were living growed her up a mite faster than if there wasn’t so much to look out for and worry about. He himself was only twenty-seven and had a head full of gray hair. Laney was bent over so far, it was a wonder her lips didn’t kiss the ground, and what was she? Forty-five, fifty?

Spin was the only one who didn’t seem affected by their circumstances. Just about twenty, if Brother was counting right. Broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, arms too long and feet too big. Tiny head, small mind, dead tongue. Simple.

Brother wouldn’t label the luck they’d had over the past year and a half. Wouldn’t call it good or bad, but he would give it a sex: female.

Female because it could be fickle and could turn on you on a moment’s notice. But the luck they had was still in its infancy, crawling. Brother supposed that when luck gained its footing, it would either pitter-patter around and cause some confusion or just stroll straight away.

They were living on borrowed time for sure, and so when Brother gave the word, Laney made Suce a wedding gown by stitching two of Lessing’s fine linen tablecloths together. Spin made a crown for her out of the honeysuckle vines and daisies. Brother gave her a pouch of seeds that Lou had saved from the apples Buena had brought to her during their courting. Willie, embarrassed that he had no grand gifts to offer, blushed and presented her with the tiny slip of paper that said
MYANMAR
.

Suce frowned, embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of anything to present him with. “You giving me you,” Willie reminded her, and took her by the hand.

* * *

Down in the clearing, just in earshot of the stream, Brother shared some words.

He thanked the ancestors for blessing them and thanked the earth for providing. “Go on now,” Brother whispered to the couple when he’d run out of things to say. “Go on and jump that broom.”

Willie and Suce exchanged looks, peered down at the broom that rested at their feet, and leapt into marriage.

Laney uttered some words, sprinkled dried herbs at their feet, smiled when they looked at her, then sneered when her face was to their backs.

No children would bless that union for twelve years.

___________________

By 1867 the town is like a maggot, gobbling up whole tracts of land. Laney look at Brother and her look says,
See, we are not alone.

Their middle of nowhere now seems to be the center of everywhere.

Wagons inch up and down the road, heavy with lumber. Curious faces, white and black, stare up at the house on the hill and then fall to the saltbox down below that has now grown into five rooms.

Some venture past the posts, walk right up to whoever is available. They ask questions, point, smile, nod, and in the end are sent away with a story that is worn thin with time and layered with dust.

Willie, Spin, and Brother wait until a December winter night to walk the few miles it takes to get to where the white clapboard of the new houses shines like lamplight from between barren branches.

They tilt their heads and inhale the old familiar scents—fried chicken, cabbage, stewed beef, pig’s tail—that seem to be sprinkled in the air all around them, and they recall the aromas at each and every meal when Laney placed plates of boiled potatoes down before them.

There was nothing left. The winter had taken away the collard greens, peanuts, peaches, figs, and watermelons. Wild game was even more scarce, but they had a stable full of potatoes.

Brother supposed they had planned wrong or hadn’t planned at all when it came to the food. It wasn’t until Laney snapped the neck of the last fowl that they even thought about where the eggs would come from now.

And then they had to deal with the accusing looks from the rooster for two months before despair and dejection engulfed him and he flapped his wings and rushed the side of the house hard enough to shatter his beak and fracture one of his wings.

When the others heard the thump, they came running and were witness to the sad sight of the rooster running in circles, its face bleeding, one wing dragging in the dirt, before throwing itself headfirst against the house. The impact crushed its skull, and it collapsed. Dead.

Laney thought, as she collected the body to prepare it for dinner, that the rooster had the right idea.

Now Laney’s eyes traveled across the bland faces around the table and she spit defensively, “There ain’t nothing else I can do with a potato that I ain’t already done.”

Brother gave Laney a comforting look, but it was too late; feelings were hurt, the damage was done, and she just threw herself down into her chair and huffed.

“Someone’s got to go,” Willie muttered as Suce pushed her dinner plate away, thinking she cannot eat another potato, sweet or Irish.

“Someone’s gotta go,” he said again, nudging the plate back toward Suce and whispering, “You gotta eat.”

Brother nodded.

He’d been fighting the reality for months, but now that every tin had been scraped clean, every flour sack emptied, Brother figured the fight was over; reality had won.

And there was still Lessing to think about, up in that room wheezing his way through the remaining days of his life, calling Laney “Mother” and Brother “Pa.” He’d reached out for Suce one day and touched the swell of her breast and sputtered, “Nice.”

After that, the sheet rose up from between his legs and Suce came down the hill and said she thought it best if Laney or one of the others tended to Lessing.