Nowhere Is a Place (23 page)

“Sir?” Brother says, giving Familiar Eyes a blank look.

Obery coughs, shuffles his feet, and the rifle sways. “They talk about my brother like he ain’t here no more!” he barks.

Fenton’s head bobs up and down in agreement, but his eyes never leave the saltbox; his ears are trained hard on the musical sweeping, the humming that rises and falls like the cresting waves of the ocean.

“Ay-yuh,” Brother mumbles, and clutches the parchment tighter. “Been gone some time now.”

Fenton’s eyes let go of the house and fall on Brother. “What’s that?”

Brother, careful not to move too fast or too freely, slowly twists his head around so that his eyes can meet those of Fenton. “A year or more by now.”

Fenton’s face does something Brother is not expecting. The young man’s face lights up and then he smiles.

Brother turns back to Obery, and he’s smiling too. Gushing.

The rifle is forgotten, its mouth kissing the ground now as the two men gaze and grin at each other.

* * *

Inside, Laney pauses, cocks her head, and listens.

Laughter?

Suce’s humming comes to a halt too.

* * *

They were laughing, bent over, clutching their sides. Laughing so hard, the corner of Brother’s mouth began to twitch, but he cleared his throat and forced the smile back down inside of him.

“Well, well, well,” Fenton said as he pushed on his knees and brought himself upright again.

Obery turned a glowing red face to Brother and asked, “Did you send that son of a bitch off grand?” He chuckled sarcastically, and Fenton let off another string of guffaws.

Brother didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

“Umph,” Obery said, and turned his back on Brother so he could take in the big house on the hill. “That sure is a fine house,” he muttered as he pulled a cigar out of the breast pocket of his jacket.

“He would put it out here in the middle of no-man’s-land, where nobody could find it,” Fenton commented.

“But we did.” Obery snickered happily before biting off the tip of the cigar and spitting it down to the ground. Then, almost as an afterthought, he pulled another cigar out of his pocket and handed it over to his nephew.

“And now it’s ours,” Fenton said as he took the cigar from his uncle and twirled it between his fingers and beamed.

* * *

They were going on like he wasn’t even there.

Like he was a tree, a rock, something less than the silvery dust the crushed bodies of gnats left behind on Spin’s pinching fingers.

Brother looked down at his hand, at the tube of parchment, at his shoes, at the ground, and at the inchworm that quickly made its way across it, and reminded himself that there was nothing to go back to. So he stepped forward and pressed the open end of the rolled parchment against the lower part of Obery’s back and pushed so that the blade of the knife that was hidden inside of it slid as smooth as butter through Obery’s jacket, the shirt beneath it, the undergarment beyond that, and straight into his right kidney.

* * *

The laughter had stopped and then the shouting started, so Laney began sweeping again and Suce pressed the palms of her hands to her ears and found a new tune to hum.

* * *

Brother was glad not to have to see his eyes, even though there was no pleasure in witnessing the blood that was pumping out of the hole in Obery’s back and spewing all over his hand.

He pushed harder and Obery fell to his knees, his hands frantically reaching behind him, one hand swatting at Brother’s face while the other worked at trying to remove the knife from his back.

By the time Fenton realized what was happening, Willie had pounced from the tree and they both went rolling, coming to a stop right in from of Spin, who had eased out from his hiding place from behind the house, pitchfork in hand.

* * *

Brother removed the knife, raised his booted foot, and kicked Obery in his neck, sending him toppling over and into the dirt.

* * *

Fenton didn’t have much of a fight in him. The ambush had knocked the air clean out of him and he lay on the ground, dazed. When Willie finally jumped off of him, there was little to do but turn his head as Spin brought the sharp teeth of the pitchfork down into Fenton’s astonished face and then sauntered over to the squirming Obery and repeated the act.

* * *

Suce watched them drag the bodies away, out back into the woods. Seeing those bodies didn’t do much to her, although it seemed to upset Laney, ’cause she held her mouth, squeezed her eyes shut, and turned her head away. Suce, she licked her lips, tasted salt there, felt the new feeling in her grow, thought about the brother she never knew, the father she never knew, the mother who was never well enough to care for her proper and then birthed an ocean and died . . . She thought about it all, hitched her skirt high enough that Willie took a second look at her ankle—hitched it high enough so that when she stepped over the dragging legs of the white man her husband was pulling, the material didn’t even brush his cuff—held her skirt there, and started to hum a tune again as she made her way up the hill toward the big house, through the door, up the stairs, and to the bedroom where Lessing lay wheezing.

Cataracts covered his left eye, so he watched her with his right. He smiled at her when she approached his bedside and looked down on him. She didn’t even move when his free hand reached up to touch the swell of her breast. She let him stroke her there where her husband’s hands fondled and caressed; she let him stroke her there until the disgust ran from her and she became the hate and gently lay that part of herself across his face, pressing hard enough to rupture the bad eye, hard enough to cut the air from flowing, hard enough so that in his last seconds of life, Lessing would feel her heart and know it.

US 78

We stare hard at the sign that says,
BIRMINGHAM 243 MILES
.

I think about the four little girls who died there.

I think about the way the world was before today and how much of it has still remained the same.

I wonder if Sherry thinking the same thing.

The radio is on now.

We quiet.

Birmingham, Alabama

We arrive late. Almost midnight.

Streets are dark, wet, and shiny. Seem like we the only ones in the world up.

Sky black, a few rain clouds—moon bright, though.

One blinking yellow light, a parked police cruiser.

Sherry move slow. Looking hard.

She make a left on a street called Cullom.

My breath catch in my throat. The houses are beautiful. Large, spread out.

Wow.

We stop in front of a three-story house painted white from top to bottom, blue door, healthy ferns in hanging pots all around the porch.

I look for a sign that say somebody’s bed and breakfast, but I don’t see none.

Sherry pick up her phone, press a few numbers, hold it against her ear, and wait. I hear the phone ringing in that big house—it’s loud—I look around for the police cruiser.

Sherry say, I’m outside.

The house light up. First upstairs and then downstairs.

Whose house is this?

You’ll see, she says.

She climb out of the SUV, I follow.

The door swing open and a small old lady standing there. She pale as snow, hair white like cotton, but she stand straight as a ruler.

Ms. Meadow, Sherry says, starting toward her.

I rack my brain. I don’t know no Ms. Meadow. Don’t know too many white women at all.

They embrace. Sherry hug her tight, I wait to hear the woman’s bone crack—she look fragile like china.

Evenin’, ma’am, I say, and extend my hand. I look closely: her skin white, but her features black.

The woman’s eyes look on me; they gray and watery.

She say, Dumpling! And her whole body jump. She ball her fists up and pump the air, her feet do a little shuffle, and then she fly into me, hug me tight.

I hug her back, look over at Sherry, and mouth, Who is this?

Ms. Meadow step back, look me up and down, grab my hand, pull me inside, tell Sherry, We worry ’bout the bags later. Come on in and have some pie!

* * *

First slice and she just watch me eat. I try not to watch back, but I do, looking for something familiar in her face. But nothing come.

She older than me, maybe by twenty years—Lawd, put her near a hundred years old!

More tea? she ask me, just a-beaming.

Yes ma’am, thank you.

We sitting in her dining room. Biggest one I ever been in. Beautiful. Walls seem to be papered with flowers. Roses, red.

Furniture heavy and dark. But everything else look delicate like Ms. Meadow. Doilies, china, knickknacks.

You still don’t remember me?

No ma’am.

Sherry smile like a cat with a secret.

Ms. Meadow lean back in her chair. Her hands shake a bit.

Well, I remember you when you were just a little girl.

I say, Really? but think, All the stories start that way.

Short and fat, she laugh and point. Not much change, huh?

No ma’am.

She laugh some more. Laugh till she cough and wave Sherry away when she jump up.

I lived right down the road from you in Sandersville.

I nod my head.

Me and your Aunt Helen was best friends.

Is that right, I say.

She nod her head, wipe her eyes, say, I sure do miss her.

Yes ma’am, she was a good woman. But how you know my Sherry?

Ms. Meadow turn and look at Sherry and say, Ain’t you told her nothing?

Not a thing. I wanted to surprise her.

Ms. Meadow smile.

Sherry know my great-grandson, Arthur Lawrence. They went to college together, she say, and point across the room at the framed pictures on the wall. He the one in the military uniform.

I look across. Handsome boy.

That my heart, she say with a sigh, then say out of the side of her mouth, I think them two were sweet on each other way back when. She swing a crooked finger between Sherry and Arthur’s picture.

Sherry shake her head and say, We were never more than friends.

That’s what all them young people say. Ms. Meadow wave her hand. Everybody afraid to commit themselves these days. Oh well.

One day Arthur and I were talking and it came out that his grandmother was from Sandersville, Sherry say.

Small world, I mumble and yawn.

And great-grandmother too, Sherry add.

Uh-huh.

My eyes burn. I sneak a peek at my watch and it say after one.

Ms. Meadow and I have been talking for a long time, Sherry say.

That’s nice.

She’s told me a lot of stuff about the family.

Well, she would know, I say, and I feel another yawn climbing up my throat.

Even about Vonnie.

The yawn gets caught and I gag.

The Sin

___________________

1867 is like sandpaper rubbing up against her memory and chafing it to silt. With a blink of Suce’s eyes, the powder-fine grains of yesteryear disperse and float in the air around her like the early-morning mist of a late spring before finally clearing and leaving the glaring luster of the here and now.

The here and now is 1915, and Suce’s belly is scarred with the stretch marks of fifteen pregnancies between 1873 and 1900.

It was the scars she was thinking about in the generous kitchen of that saltbox as she looked up from her potatoes and out the window, spotting her last son, Vonnie, embroiled in a discussion with a white man whose face was unfamiliar to Suce. He stood with his hands pushed deep down into the pockets of his overalls while he nodded his head to what Vonnie was saying.

Suce laughed to herself. It was such a common scene now. Black and white folks talking. Some even visited one another—not past the porch, you understand, and not too long, but visits just the same.

Suce sighed.

Time changes everything; it wasn’t too long ago she was eating and drinking fear for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, waiting for more white people to show up, accuse, claim, or at least ask questions. But none came, not for months. By then, the rains had washed away the blood and Willie had assured her that all that was left of the bodies were bones.

“The animals take care of the skin,” he said after her face told him that she was still unsure.

By the time another white man came strolling onto their land, Suce was pregnant with her second child and she and the rest of them had found the taste of food again; she was able to sleep heavy, even if not straight through the night—the outright fear had dissipated to just a skipping heartbeat.

Big and pregnant and unable even to see her toes in 1875, the middle of August squatting down on them, pissing heat all day and night, and the white man was standing on her front porch with a white handkerchief tied around his neck as he melted away in his dusty black suit.

They were somebodys by then. Citizens, neighbors, land-holding blacks who traded cotton for cash, raised pigs for slaughter, had cows and hounds and chickens and a story that backed it up all the way to 1866. They had a last name too, and kind words about an even kinder master who’d left them everything after he dropped dead from the fever, the pox, pneumonia—not uncommon—someone else had a similar story, not unbelievable, just unforgettable.