Paradise (12 page)

Folks said these young men needed something to do. But Soane, knowing there was so much to do, didn’t believe that was it. Something was going on. Something besides the fist, jet black with red fingernails, painted on the back wall of the Oven. Nobody claimed responsibility—but more shocking than collective denial was the refusal to remove it. The loungers said no, they hadn’t put it there, and no, they wouldn’t take it off. Although Kate Golightly and Anna Flood, with Brillo, paint thinner and a bucket of hot soapy water, eventually got it off, five days passed, during which the town leaders in a hot rage forbade anyone but the loungers to erase it. The clenched fingers, red-tipped and thrust sideways, not up, hurt more than a blow and lasted longer. It produced a nagging, hateful pain that Kate’s and Anna’s scrubbing could not erase. Soane couldn’t understand it. There were no whites (moral or malevolent) around to agitate or incense them, make them ugly-up the Oven and defy the adults. In fact local citizens were prospering, had been on a roll for more than a decade: good dollars for beef, for wheat, gas rights sold, oil fueling purchases and backing speculation. But during the war, while Ruby thrived, anger smallpoxed other places. Evil Times, said Reverend Pulliam from New Zion’s pulpit. Last Days, said Pastor Cary at Holy Redeemer. Nothing was said at Calvary right away because that congregation was still waiting for the new preacher, who, when he did come in 1970, said Good News: “I will vanquish thine enemies before thine eyes,” saith the Lord, Lord, Lord.

That was three years ago. This was 1973. Her little girl—was it?—would be nineteen years old now if Soane had not gone to the Convent for the help sin always needed. Shortly afterwards standing at the clothesline, struggling with the wind to pin sheets, Soane had looked up to see a lady in the yard smiling. She wore a brown wool gown and a white linen old-timey bonnet and carried a peck basket. When the lady waved, Soane returned the stranger’s greeting as best she could with a mouthful of clothespins—a nod she hoped was polite. The lady turned and moved on. Soane noticed two things: the basket was empty but the lady carried it with two hands as though it were full, which, as she knew now, was a sign of what was to come—an emptiness that would weigh her down, an absence too heavy to carry. And she knew who sent the lady to tell her so.

Steam hiss interrupted her menu of regret and Soane poured hot water into a cup over the little muslin bag. She placed a saucer over the cup and let the medicine steep.

Maybe they ought to go back to the way they did things when her babies were new. When everybody was too busy building, stocking, harvesting to quarrel or think up devilment. The way it was before Mount Calvary was completed. When baptisms were held in sweet water. Beautiful baptisms. Baptisms to break the heart, full of major chords and weeping and the thrill of being safe at last. When the pastor held the girls in his arms, lowering them one by one into newly hallowed water, never letting go. Breathless, the others watched. Breathless, the girls rose, each in her turn. Their wet, white robes billow in sunlit water. Hair and face streaming they looked to heaven before bowing their heads for the command: “Go, now.” Then the reassurance: “Daughter, thou art saved.” The softest note, when it hit sanctified water, doubled, trebled itself; then other notes from other throats came and traveled along with the first. Tree birds hushed and tried to learn. Slowly, then, hand in hand, heads on supporting shoulders, the blessed and saved waded to the banks and made their way to the Oven. To dry, embrace, congratulate one another.

Now Calvary had an inside pool; New Zion and Holy Redeemer had special vessels for dribbling a little water on an upright head.

Minus the baptisms the Oven had no real value. What was needed back in Haven’s early days had never been needed in Ruby. The trucks they came in brought cookstoves as well. The meat they ate clucked in the yard, or fell on its knees under a hammer, or squealed through a slice in its throat. Unlike at Haven’s beginning, when Ruby was founded hunting game was a game. The women nodded when the men took the Oven apart, packed, moved and reassembled it. But privately they resented the truck space given over to it—rather than a few more sacks of seed, rather than shoats or even a child’s crib. Resented also the hours spent putting it back together—hours that could have been spent getting the privy door on sooner. If the plaque was so important—and judging from the part of the meeting she had witnessed, she supposed it was—why hadn’t they just taken it by itself, left the bricks where they had stood for fifty years?

Oh, how the men loved putting it back together; how proud it had made them, how devoted. A good thing, she thought, as far as it went, but it went too far. A utility became a shrine (cautioned against not only in scary Deuteronomy but in lovely Corinthians II as well) and, like anything that offended Him, destroyed its own self. Nobody better to make the point than the wayward young who turned it into a different kind of oven. One where the warming flesh was human.

When Royal and the other two, Destry and one of Pious DuPres’ daughters, asked for a meeting, it was quickly agreed upon. No one had called a town meeting in years. Everybody, including Soane and Dovey, thought the young people would first apologize for their behavior and then pledge to clean up and maintain the site. Instead they came with a plan of their own. A plan that completed what the fist had begun. Royal, called Roy, took the floor and, without notes, gave a speech perfect in every way but intelligibility. Nobody knew what he was talking about and the parts that could be understood were plumb foolish. He said they were way out-of-date; that things had changed everywhere but in Ruby. He wanted to give the Oven a name, to have meetings there to talk about how handsome they were while giving themselves ugly names. Like not American. Like African. All Soane knew about Africa was the seventy-five cents she gave to the missionary society collection. She had the same level of interest in Africans as they had in her: none. But Roy talked about them like they were neighbors or, worse, family. And he talked about white people as though he had just discovered them and seemed to think what he’d learned was news.

Yet there was something more and else in his speech. Not so much what could be agreed or disagreed with, but a kind of winged accusation. Against whites, yes, but also against them—the townspeople listening, their own parents, grandparents, the Ruby grownfolk. As though there was a new and more manly way to deal with whites. Not the Blackhorse or Morgan way, but some African-type thing full of new words, new color combinations and new haircuts. Suggesting that outsmarting whites was craven. That they had to be told, rejected, confronted. Because the old way was slow, limited to just a few, and weak. This last accusation swole Deek’s neck and, on a weekday, had him blowing out the brains of quail to keep his own from exploding.

He would be pulling in with a bag of them any minute now, and later on Soane would serve up a platter of their tender, browned halves. So she contemplated rice or sweet potatoes as the contents of her cup steeped. When she swallowed the last drop, the back door opened.

“What’s that?”

She liked the smell of him. Windy-wet and grassy. “Nothing.”

Deek tossed his sack on the floor. “Give me some of it, then.”

“Go on, Deek. How many?”

“Twelve. Gave six to Sargeant.” Deek sat down and before taking off his jacket unlaced his boots. “Enough to take care of two suppers.”

“K.D. go with you?”

“No. Why?” He grunted with the effort of debooting.

Soane picked up the boots and put them on the back porch. “He’s hard to find these days. Up to something, I bet.”

“You put coffee on? Like what?”

Soane sniffed the dark air, testing its weight, before closing the door. “Can’t tell, exactly. But he has too many reasons for wearing thin shoes.”

“Chasing tail, I expect. ’Member that gal dragged herself in town some time back and was staying out to that Convent?”

Soane turned to him, coffee tin at her breast as she eased off the lid. “Why you say ‘dragged’? Why you have to say ‘dragged’ like that? You see her?”

“No, but other folks did.”

“And?”

Deek yawned. “And nothing. Coffee, baby. Coffee, coffee.”

“So don’t say ‘dragged.’”

“Okay, okay. She didn’t drag in.” Deek laughed, dropping his outer clothes on the floor. “She floated in.”

“What’s wrong with the closet, Deek?” Soane looked at the waterproof pants, the black and red jacket, the flannel shirt. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Heard her shoes had six-inch heels.”

“You lying.”

“And flying.”

“Well. If she’s still at the Convent, she must be all right.”

Deek massaged his toes. “You just partial to those women out there. I’d be careful if I was you. How many of them now? Four?”

“Three. The old lady died, remember?”

Deek stared at her, then looked away. “What old lady?”

“The Reverend Mother. Who’d you think?”

“Oh, right. Yeah.” Deek continued stirring the blood in his feet. Then he laughed. “First time Roger got to use his big new van.”

“Ambulance,” said Soane, gathering up his clothes.

“Brought three payments in the next day. Hope he can keep up the rest. Not enough hospital or mortuary business around here justify that overpriced buggy he got.”

The coffee smell was starting, and Deek rubbed his palms.

“Is he hurting?” Soane asked.

“Not yet. But since his profit depends on the sick and the dead, I’d just as soon he went bankrupt.”

“Deek!”

“Couldn’t do a damn thing for my boys. Buried in a bag like kittens.”

“They had lovely coffins! Lovely!”

“Yeah, but inside….”

“Quit, Deek. Why don’t you just quit.” Soane touched her throat.

“I ’spect he’ll make out. If I go before he does. In which case, well, you know what to do. I don’t feature riding in that van nohow, but I want a top-of-the-line box, so he’ll make out just fine. Fleet’s the one in trouble.” He stood at the sink and lathered his hands.

“You keep saying that. How come?”

“Mail order.”

“What?” Soane poured coffee into the big blue cup her husband preferred.

“You all go to Demby, don’t you? When you want a toaster or an electric iron you order out of a catalogue and go all the way out there to pick it up. Where’s that put him?”

“Fleet never has much on hand. And what he does have has been there too long. That lounge chair changed colors three times sitting in the window.”

“That’s why,” said Deek. “If he can’t move old inventory, he can’t buy new.”

“He used to do all right.”

Deek tipped a little coffee into the saucer. “Ten years ago. Five.” The dark pool rippled under his breath. “Boys coming out of Veetnam, getting married, setting up. War money. Farms doing okay, everybody doing okay.” He sucked at the saucer rim and sighed his pleasure. “Now, well….”

“I don’t understand, Deek.”

“I do.” He smiled up at her. “You don’t need to.”

She had not meant that she didn’t understand what he was talking about. She’d meant she didn’t understand why he wasn’t worried enough by their friends’ money problems to help them out. Why, for instance, couldn’t Menus have kept the house he bought? But Soane didn’t try to explain; she just looked closely at his face. Smooth, still handsome after twenty-six years and beaming, now, with satisfaction. Shooting well that morning had settled him and returned things to the way they ought to be. Coffee the right color; the right temperature. And later today, quail without their brains would melt in his mouth.

Every day the weather permitted, Deacon Morgan drove his brilliant black sedan three-fourths of a mile. From his own house on St. John Street, he turned right at the corner onto Central, passed Luke, Mark and Matthew, then parked neatly in front of the bank. The silliness of driving to where he could walk in less time than it took to smoke a cigar was eliminated, in his view, by the weight of the gesture. His car was big and whatever he did in it was horsepower and worthy of comment: how he washed and waxed it himself—never letting K.D. or any enterprising youngster touch it; how he chewed but did not light cigars in it; how he never leaned on it, but if you had a conversation with him, standing near it, he combed the hood with his fingernails, scraping flecks he alone could see, and buffing invisible stains with his pocket handkerchief. He laughed along with friends at his vanity, because he knew their delight at his weakness went hand in hand with their awe: the magical way he (and his twin) accumulated money. His prophetic wisdom. His total memory. The most powerful of which was one of his earliest.

Forty-two years ago he had fought for hand room in the rear window of Big Daddy Morgan’s Model T, space in which to wave goodbye to his mother and baby sister, Ruby. The rest of the family—Daddy, Uncle Pryor, his older brother Elder, and Steward, his twin—were packed tight against two peck baskets of food. The journey they were about to begin would take days, maybe two weeks. The Second Grand Tour, Daddy said. The Last Grand Tour, laughed Uncle Pryor.

The first one had been in 1910, before the twins had been born, while Haven was still struggling to come alive. Big Daddy drove his brother Pryor and his firstborn son, Elder, all over the state and beyond to examine, review and judge other Colored towns. They planned to visit two outside Oklahoma and five within: Boley, Langston City, Rentiesville, Taft, Clearview, Mound Bayou, Nicodemus. In the end, they made it to only four. Big Daddy, Uncle Pryor and Elder spoke endlessly of that trip, how they matched wits with and debated preachers, pharmacists, dry-goods store owners, doctors, newspaper publishers, schoolteachers, bankers. They discussed malaria, the booze bill, the threat of white immigrants, the problems with Creek freedmen, the trustworthiness of boosters, the practicality of high book learning, the need for technical training, the consequences of statehood, lodges and the violence of whites, random and organized, that swirled around them. They stood at the edge of cornfields, walked rows of cotton. They visited print shops, elocution classes, church services, sawmills; they observed irrigation methods and storage systems. Mostly they looked at land, houses, roads.