Nowhere Is a Place (21 page)

Willie thought they should just let him starve to death or, he’d whispered to Brother, “If you like, I can take care of it for you.”

Brother hadn’t answered him. He
wanted
Lessing dead more than anything, but something in him told him that he
needed
him alive.

So yes, somebody would have to go.

It couldn’t be either of the women.

Spin was just too slow in mind and, besides, he didn’t talk. So it was down to Brother and Willie.

Brother had never ventured more than five miles away from the Lessing plantation. Willie, on the other hand, had walked clear cross two states. Brother lifted his fork, jabbed at a chunk of potato, and said, “You go.”

Two days later, just before daybreak, Lessing’s small velvet sack filled with coins in his pocket and Brother’s straw hat pulled low over his forehead, Willie left after midnight to begin the twenty-mile trek east toward town.

The woods where he once found safety and shelter now held fear. Willie moved unsure through the thick of trees, twigs breaking away beneath his shoes, him looking over his shoulder every three paces. Shadows danced in moonlight-drenched places, and even though the night was still with no sound except the crunch of cold earth and twigs beneath his feet, Willie’s mind was filled with the rolling sound of carriage wheels and he was sure he could smell the foul stench of death’s breath wafting around him.

When the sky faded from black to purple and finally the pale blue of dawn, Willie caught sight of a white blouse, gray skirt, and black-buttoned boots.

He stopped, crouched, and waited. One swelled into five, five into ten, ten into twenty and more, until the road was teeming with people. Black folks walking, some on wagons.

He stepped out just as two young black women were approaching. They walked along smiling, baskets hanging from their wrists, whispering and giggling. All that stopped, though, when Willie emerged from behind a tree.

“Mornin’,” he muttered, and tipped the tattered hat.

They nodded, but did not offer him anything beyond that. He fell into step behind them.

He was nervous, that was a fact, but no one seemed to notice. He checked himself, brushing away burrs from his jacket sleeves, making himself look presentable even though Suce had put him together quite nicely—she’d even been able to sew his old dust-lapping shoes closed again.

Closer to town, the road narrowed and went thin as a line and then spread out again. Shops made out of clapboard and pressed close together leaned on either side of the street.

Willie couldn’t read, but there was a feed store, a bank, a post office, a tannery, a blacksmith, and a millinery shop. He moved through slowly, not knowing where to stop, but the saloon seemed the best place, as there was a black woman dressed in bright colors, leaned up against a post and smoking a cigarette.

“Afternoon,” Willie said, and tried to keep his eyes even with hers. Trying hard not to let them drop down to the rounded mounds of her bosom that pushed up out of her corset.

Her eyes rolled over him and she smiled. “You a sight, ain’t you?” She laughed and took a long drag on her cigarette.

Willie straightened his back and fumbled with the tattered material of his lapels.

“Uhm, I’m new in town, needing to know the ins and the outs ’bout here,” he said, and chanced a glance inside the saloon.

“Uh-huh,” she said, and took another long drag of her cigarette.

“Wanna know where I can buy some feed, maybe get some cheese, flour, and whatnot.”

“What’s the whatnot?” she purred, and rested her free hand on the curve of her hip.

Willie could do nothing else but laugh. Not a hard laugh, more like a snicker. “I dunno.” He coughed and stepped out of the way of a white man who was exiting the saloon.

“General store right ’cross there,” the woman said, and nodded her head to the left.

Willie’s eyes swung in that direction, but the letters on the windows meant nothing to him.

“Where y’all staying?” she asked.

“Yonder,” he said, but didn’t nod his head in any particular direction. The woman tossed her head and humphed, then blew smoke over his head.

Willie’s feet did a small shuffle like he was going to walk off, but then he stilled them and moved his eyes toward the battered saloon door.

“Niggers welcome in there?”

“There?” The woman threw a look over her shoulder. “Nah,” she said, and snubbed out the butt of the cigarette on the bottom of her shoe. “But you all can buy a taste ’round back.”

“That right?” Willie said, and fingered the velvet sack of silver coins in his pocket.

“You all got money?” she asked, coylike, but Willie saw the eagerness in her eyes.

“Some.”

“You all sharecropping?”

“Yeah.”

Another sound in her throat and her eyes just stretched into saucers while her hand reached out and fingered the torn buttonholes of his jacket.

He could smell her. Lord, he couldn’t remember the last time he smelled something so good. Suce was clean-smelling, like the stream behind the house and the honeysuckle flowers she pressed between her fingers and rubbed around her neck. But this woman smelled like what he remembered sex reeked of the first time he stole some from a woman twice his age down in the Kentucky bluegrass.

Willie rocked on the balls of his feet.

Suce fading and what he’d come to accomplish gone with one inhale of that harlot’s perfume.

Willie’s eyes fluttered closed and he rocked closer.

The shotgun blast tore through the spell, and his eyes flew open and fell on the woman’s grinning, painted lips. He took two steps backward and shook away the cobwebs in his head.

“Fool,” she muttered just as the moment slipped completely away and Willie’s eyes cleared.

“You say the general store that a-way?” Willie’s voice stalled and started again.

A laugh, a fling of her head, and then, “Yeah, nigger, right o’er there.”

Willie double-stepped getting across the road, but he chanced a quick look over his shoulder to see the sashay of the woman’s behind before she stepped between the swinging doors and the piano music swallowed her whole.

* * *

No, he didn’t know what anything cost. He’d never handled money a day in his life, and so when the white man handed him the packages of flour, cheese, slab bacon, sugar, and meal, Willie just pushed a silver coin across the counter and started to walk away.

“Hey, nigga!” the white shopkeeper shouted after him.

Willie stalled, thought about running, but his feet didn’t obey.

“Boy, you gotta give me
two
silver pieces!” The man slammed his palm down on the counter and muttered, “Stupid niggas.”

Willie blew air out from his nose, turned around, careful to keep his eyes lowered as he approached the counter, and set another silver piece down on the flat surface before making a quick departure.

* * *

Twelve hours and no sleep. Suce pacing the floor and worried to death. Laney holed up in her bed and muttering to the ceiling. Spin walking the cold air in and out of the house until Brother gave him a threatening look and Spin stepped in and pulled the door shut behind him.

* * *

A soft rapping came at the door just when the moon was at its fullest. Spin and Brother looked at each other and then back at the door. Before they could move, Suce had crossed the hardwood floor and swung it open.

Willie stepped in, his arms full of packages and a wide, bright smile looming above them.

* * *

It seemed to take forever to get that cast-iron stove hot. In between stirring the kindling, mixing the flour, and rolling the dough for biscuits, Laney and Suce tried to get all of what Willie was saying.

His words showered out in a rush of excitement. He did his best to describe everything and everyone.

“Were you scared, Willie?” Suce asked.

“Sure ’nuff scared that one of them white men was just going to snatch me up and haul me away!”

In the end, they all sat gathered around the table at the midnight hour and ate like it was the first time they’d ever tasted food.

After they’d feasted, Laney went off to bed and Suce gathered herself on Willie’s lap and fell asleep while Brother sat at the table studying his fingers.

“What’s on your mind, Brother?” Willie yawned as he stroked Suce’s hair.

“I’m thinking next time, I’m coming with you.”

* * *

Next time came a week later, and Suce wanted to go too. But Laney didn’t. “And neither should you!” she said with a cough, spitting a wad of mucous into the dirt. “I ain’t trying to test fate,” she added, and shook her head.

Brother and Willie hitched the mule to the wagon and made the trip by themselves.

The following week, Suce went along.

And after that, Laney couldn’t stand it anymore and decided that fate was what it was, and she and Spin went to go see.

There they were, five niggers living high on the hog, walking through town, careful where their eyes fell, not forgetting how to address the white folk, and having to walk just a little stooped over.

They got some hard looks, just like Willie had said, but nothing really beyond that, except for the man at the general store who looked at Brother and said, “Are you Jennie’s man, Thomas?”

“No sir.”

“Damndest thing, you look just like him. Quarter-pound of lard, you said?”

“Yes sir.”

* * *

They all came back laughing. Joyous, arms loaded down with packages of everything, including a new pair of shoes for Willie and new frocks for Laney and Suce. Medicine for Laney’s cough, a ball for Spin to play fetch with the dogs.

Luck, Brother decided as he snapped the reins against the horses’ backs, had earned a first name, and so he christened her “Good.”

They came home with so many things, but the joy carried the most weight and so it hit the ground the hardest when the wagon turned the bend and there were two white men standing and smoking on the porch of the big house.

___________________

Willie had taken to calling her Suce-Suce. Enjoying the whistle of breath on his tongue that came along with the “Ssssss” that began her name.

It was her name he was calling, her fingers he was fiddling with, when Brother pulled the reins left and the horses turned down the path toward home.

Suce was laughing softly and shaking her head at her husband’s foolishness when Laney muttered, “Help me, Jesus,” and clutched her heart.

Suce’s head jerked around, and her hands followed just as quickly, urgently grabbing hold of Laney’s arm as she asked, “What is it, what’s wrong?”

Laney’s eyes were focused straight ahead. Not noticing, Suce shook Laney’s arm and asked again, “What is it, Laney?”

And Suce’s eyes never would have left the struck expression on Laney’s face if it hadn’t been for the nudge in her side from Willie. Suce’s head swiveled toward her husband’s face, where she found the same startled expression.

Her eyes followed his, and she almost jumped up out of her seat when they landed on what Willie and Laney were seeing, but Willie’s hand came down hard on her thigh, crushing her urge to bolt.

Spin, who was sitting alongside Brother, looked at the white men who were standing on the porch of the big house, then down at the rough skin of his own knuckles. He felt a strange quivering in his chest and felt his eyes begin to fill up with water.

Brother snapped the reins, and the horses remained steady in their advance.

The white men, who were standing close to the front door, turned when they heard the wagon, and started across the porch and down the steps.

Willie looked down at his new shoes and thought how nice it had been to wear something that hadn’t been passed down, tore up, and mended. He thought about the neck of the goat and the fatback crackling in the pan and his mother’s soft lap beneath his young legs and how these last two years hadn’t been bad at all—tense, but not bad at all compared to the first thirty. This whole experience had been a breath of fresh air where before there had been no air at all.

Spin’s mind whirled and caught on something in his memory that had sparkled and given him great joy as a child. And there he remained.

Brother had no thoughts other than keeping the horses at a steady pace and meeting the eyes of the white men who looked back at them.

“Whoa!” he ordered, and the horses came to a stop. By then, the white men had made their way down the path.

“Afternoon,” Brother said as he began to climb down from his perch on the wagon.

The first white man had familiar eyes and a face that was cratered and red. His hair was blondish-brown and he wore a fine suit that looked out of place on that backwoods property. The other one was thin, dressed just as fine, with a tall black hat and a nose so thin it was a wonder he didn’t grab air with his mouth. He stood, lips pinched, eyes glaring.

The man with familiar eyes spoke first, but not until he’d tucked his thumbs into the slits of his jacket. “Is this Charlie Lessing’s property?” he asked as he made a sweeping gesture with his hand.

“Yassir.”

“Is he home?” the thin one said, pointing up toward the house.

“No sir.”

The men exchanged glances.

“Well, what time are you expecting him back?”

“A day or so.” And then, “May we ask who’s inquiring?”

“Obery Lessing. His brother,” the thin man said.

“And Fenton Lessing, his son,” Familiar Eyes said, and waited.

Brother faltered a bit; his words started and then stopped when he realized that he had nothing more to say.

“Gone to Ohio to buy pigs,” Laney said, and then dismissed the men as quickly as she would have a bothersome child. “Help me down, Brother,” she said, and stuck a fragile hand out toward him.

“Pigs?” Fenton’s voice betrayed his bewilderment as he watched the old woman carefully climb down from the wagon.

“Yassir,” Brother said, and turned and nodded toward the pen.