Rush Home Road (42 page)

It was possible to reach Degge Street without passing The Oakwood Bakery, and this Addy had done each night since her dismissal. The indirect route meant going by the vacant house and the thicket of trees though, and tonight Addy was more afraid of the footsteps than she was vexed by the injustice done her at The Oakwood. It was at that moment, as she chose one path over the other, that her fear was replaced with something she might have called courage, if she'd been a woman given to self-deception.

The bakers would not arrive until three o'clock in the morning and it was only near midnight. Addy looked into the sky at the wispy night clouds. She decided the man in the moon wasn't so fearsome after all and grinned, challenging him. She felt the weight of the hatchet, swinging it back and forth, recognizing what an unusual thing it was for a person to know precisely what they would do next.

It was quiet and dark as Addy made her way to the back of the big brick building. She dared to think it was the Lord on her side when there was no fierce barking and growling from the old guard dog behind the gate. Addy didn't know that Mr. Revello had beaten and killed the animal a few days after she left. Like the broken office window, the dog just never got replaced. The back door would be locked, of course, but Addy would use her hatchet to pry it open and she hoped the wood was just rotten enough to
give. The office door would be locked too, but she felt sure a few mighty swings could break the lock and was prepared to hack all night if she had to.

Breaking through the back door was even simpler than Addy'd anticipated. So simple it made her wonder what fools the thieves in town must be not to have got there first. She chose not to wonder about the thieves too much though, for she believed herself righteous and her action not a burglary but rather a recovery.

Except for the mewling cats who skulked in the halls and kept the mice out of the flour bags, The Oakwood Bakery was still. Yet Addy knew, even before she rounded the corner to the office hallway, that she was not alone. It did not occur to her then that the presence she felt was earthly. She imagined only that L'il Leam was there, silently horrified by what she was about to do. Addy set her sights on the office door at the end of the hallway. She swung her hatchet and wondered vaguely at the odour that was climbing up her nostrils.

She reached the office door and took a breath, thinking she heard the sound of a cry.
Go away
,
Leam,
she thought.
It's my money and I mean to have it.
Now the odour she noticed before was stronger and, she knew, burnt. The ovens, she thought. They must have burned a batch today. She drew her hatchet up and again heard something like a cry. This time she did not wonder about Leam and knew it was only one of the hungry cats. She paused to listen for the cry again, then thought to put her hatchet down and
try the door, imagining how she'd feel if it was never locked at all.

The doorknob fairly glowed in the darkness. She reached out to turn it and it took some time for her brain to decide that the smooth metal was not icy cold but burning hot. She withdrew her hand, made a fist, smelled the smell again, and knew it was smoke. She had no thoughts after that. At least none of which she was captain. She hacked at the door until she felt it give, then she followed her feet inside the smoke-choked office. The flames ate the walls at the far end of the room. She heard the faint sound of coughing. Addy fell to her knees, her hand searching the floor for flesh and bone. The other hand reached up to save her mouth and nose as she shouted, “Hello! Hello!”

Addy felt the flames licking the drapes behind her. She turned to beat at the fire, not sensing the scorch on her hands. Then she saw the girl lying on the floor, sooty and unconscious. She picked Fiorella up like she was an infant and not a child of eight, slinging her over her shoulder, moving toward the door, coughing and choking. She had a vision of herself then, melting into a puddle, like she was made of wax and had never been human at all. She reached for the door, but a wall of flames exploded before her and she saw in the firelight the bodies of the Revellos. She screamed.

The window was the only way out. Addy reared back, using her foot to kick out the wood planks that had replaced the broken glass. She leaned out her dying head to draw in air. Then she lowered the child from her shoulder
to the ground before she climbed out herself and collapsed.

It was described in the
Chatham Daily News
the following day how Adelaide Shadd had saved Fiorella Revello from the fatal fire that killed her mother and father at The Oakwood Bakery. It was described how Adelaide Shadd was a hero and did not mention she'd ever worked there or had recently been fired. It also didn't describe the scarring burns to her hands, which would prevent her from doing common things easily for the rest of her life.

She'd spend the next two weeks in the hospital receiving thoughtful care and decent meals from whites in white. After that she'd go back to Degge Street and let the Baldwins look after her while the bandages remained on her hands. And when the bandages came off and her fingers were pulled tight and mottled white, Addy would cry, thinking of Mose and Chick and Leam and Chester, ashamed that she had survived.

The fire and the deaths were a mystery. Revello had a successful business and a nice family. The fire chief had scratched his head, wondering why the man would have doused the place with gasoline and set them all aflame. He wrote “accidental” on his official report and hoped the surviving child could one day lead a normal life.

Mr. Revello had no relations, so it was Mrs. Revello's brother, Umberto Folo, who would take over the business. Fiorella would erase her father's transgressions, grow up in the loving embrace of her Uncle Umberto and his wife, and become a very different girl than if her parents had lived.
Addy was surprised when Fiorella showed up at her door on Degge Street shortly after her bandages had come off.

“Your hands went white,” Fiorella said, staring.

“Mmm-hmm. That's from the burn.”

“Nearly white as mine,” she said, looking from her hand to Addy's.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“My Uncle Umberto saved ten newspapers.”

“That right?”

“He says only special people get their names printed in the newspaper.”

“Special people and criminals, I suppose.”

“He says it's a
complish
to have your name in the newspaper.”

“You feeling fine then, Fiorella?” Addy asked, wondering how she could find no affection whatever for this saved-from-the-fire child.

Fiorella nodded and went on, peering past Addy to see the place where she lived. “Uncle Umberto says you should save a newspaper so you can show your children someday. Did you save a newspaper?”

Addy shook her head and held the door open with her foot, wondering why the child had come, as it did not appear it was to express her gratitude.

“Uncle Umberto wants you to come in for work tomorrow,” Fiorella said, looking at Addy's hands once again.

“Work. I can't work. I don't believe I'll be able to roll a nice dough for a long time, if ever I can again.”

“He knows. He said you're scarred for life and not gonna be much good in the pastry department now.”

“That right?”

“He still wants you to come. He says he's gonna find some work for you.”

“Like sweeping-up kind of work? Like cleaning the ovens kind of work?”

Fiorella shrugged and skipped off and never did, and never would, say thank you for saving my life.

It was difficult, the next day, for Addy to fasten the buttons on her blouse with her stiff claw hands, and she felt vaguely foolish walking the few blocks to The Oakwood Bakery. It occurred to her that Fiorella was a mean-spirited child and this all could be a cruel joke. She was relieved when she reached the smoke-smelling building to find that Umberto Folo was expecting her. She was further relieved that he was a pudgy and kind middle-aged man.

He and his bug-eyed young wife had been living somewhere in New York when they got word of his sister's tragic death and had come at once to find they were to inherit the bakery and become custodians of their niece. Umberto took Addy's hands, careful not to squeeze. “You saved the life of Fiorella.”

“Yes.”

“It is not I can repay you, but to offer you a job.”

“Thank you, Mr. Folo.”

“Umberto.”

“But you see,” she said, holding out her paws, not for
pity but to be understood, “I can't work the pastry. Not like I used to.”

Umberto winced and touched his own heart. “What job you would like, Mizz Shadd?”

“What job would I like?”

“You can't make the pastry, you choose a job you like.”

“Choose a job?”

Addy was suspicious, of course, for a Negro woman could not have just any job. She wondered if Umberto realized that with the war over there'd be throngs of men lining up to apply for work at the bakery. “Any job?” she asked.

Umberto smiled. “You like to work the ovens? You like to keep the books? What you like to do?”

The thought came to Addy like a craving, and she said it before she thought it through. “I'd like to drive.”

“You like to drive?”

“Yes, Umberto, I'd like to drive. I'd like to sit myself behind the wheel of an automobile and press my foot down on the gas pedal. I'd like to be all by myself and go places too far to go on foot.”

“You like to be my delivery man?” Umberto asked, tilting his head.

“Yes. Yes. I'd like to be your delivery man.”

“You know truck? You know how drive bread truck?”

“No I do not. But I seen a good deal of driving done in my day and I have always wanted to learn.”

There were protests at first, for few had seen a
woman delivery man and
never
a coloured woman delivery man, but Umberto was unruffled and told his customers if they didn't like his employees they should find another bakery. All but one or two got used to the idea of seeing Addy Shadd in their stores, restaurants, and homes, hefting boxes of bread and baked goods, trailing the scent of yeast and cigarettes.

Her job as delivery man for The Oakwood Bakery would see Addy through nearly two decades. She kept up the house on Degge and stayed friendly with the neighbours but didn't get close enough to care. From time to time she'd head over to The Chicken Shack on King Street, mix with the regulars, and watch the young people dance to the jukebox. Mostly she worked and was thankful to occupy her time and mind.

One evening around Christmas, shortly before her fifty-first birthday, Addy'd just finished working a double shift when she climbed down from the truck and found she could not walk a step. Dr. Zimmer took some X-rays and gave her some pain medication but said the long hours behind the wheel were stressing her already-troubled hip joint. He told her it was time to retire and that's what she did.

Years later, sitting at the kitchen table in her tiny trailer, Addy could close her eyes and feel the steering wheel. She could see the country farms and city streets, and recall each season of death and rebirth. She could see the people waving from the sidewalk, too, for she'd been
known to all, though no one knew her. Not until the Lord sent Sharla Cody did Addy realize just how lonely she'd been since Mose. Not until she embraced the child that first time did she realize it had been decades since she'd smelled skin and felt flesh. For the longest time, it had been just Addy and the moon.

 

Corn

ADDY SHADD WAS SIX
years old and afraid her brother L'il Leam would die. Wallace was working as a handyman for Teddy Bishop and Laisa couldn't cope with both her sick son and her well daughter at the same time. Teddy had generously suggested Addy could come stay at his house on the lake until Leam had recovered. He said it'd be nice for the twins, Camille and Josephine, what with Addy and his daughters being best friends.

Wallace simply ignored Addy when she whined, “I hate Camille. I hate Josephine. I'm
not
going.”

Laisa hastily packed some summer clothes and said, “You remember your please and thank yous at Mr. Bishop's house.” She was set to leave the room when she noticed the quiver in Addy's chin. She bent to embrace her daughter, but Leam coughed in the other room and Laisa hurried to his side. The following morning Laisa was still fretting over Leam and forgot to kiss Addy goodbye.

Though she tried, Addy could not avoid the twins in her first few days at the Bishops'. They followed her everywhere and watched her every move. She spent most of her
time in the big barn, hovering over the crate where one of the cats had recently given birth. In the few weeks since they'd been born, the litter of kittens had grown soft downy coats over their pink wrinkled skin. Their eyes were no longer slits and Addy liked how they'd flick their raspy tongues to lick salt from her fingers and thumbs.

Camille brought the crate out to the front lawn one dewy morning. Addy asked could she hold one of the squirmy things and Camille considered a long moment before she said that was fine. Josephine already had two kittens hanging off her summer blouse and she laughed when Addy reached into the crate and came back with not a kitten but a bloody scratch from its Mama. Camille slapped the Mama cat's head, then tore a grey kitten from her teat and tossed it to Addy like a ball.

The kitten folded up like a curl-bug and cried in Addy's arms. Addy whispered, “Shh. S'all right. S'all right.” Truth was she wanted to cry too, for she missed her little house on Fowell Street and had been torn, as such, from her own Mama.

Camille looked inside the wicker basket Mrs. Bishop had sent them out of the house with and announced there was no more jam and biscuits. Josephine looked in the basket too, for she never did believe her sister. Addy hadn't eaten a biscuit or anything else that day but didn't care there was nothing left. She felt sick and sorry because her brother Leam had a fever and her Mama'd be crying and her own front tooth was loose. She pushed at the tooth with
her tongue, heard the tissue tear, and tasted blood. She stopped pushing and sucked on the blood, looking back and forth from Camille to Josephine, thinking how with their bigness and their matching summer dresses, they appeared to be four girls and not just two.

Addy brought the kitten to her cheek, stroked its bumpy spine, and wondered at the yellow crust in its eyes. She kissed its slippery nose, and then, because the kitten was still crying, whispered, “You want your Mama? You want your Mama?”

“Give him here, Adelaide,” Camille demanded.

“He wants his Mama.”

“Give him to me.”

Addy handed the kitten to Camille and winced when she held him aloft by the scruff of his neck. “That hurts him.”

“Don't neither. His Mama hold him like that in her teeth.”

Addy'd seen Mama cats clamp their mouths over their babies' necks before, but she'd never seen a kitten squirm and pedal the air the way the grey one was doing now. She looked out toward the big barn set on the cliff near the lake. She could see Wallace high up on the ladder and she could hear the faint sound of his hammer hitting a nail. “Daddy!” Addy called, though she knew he couldn't hear.

With a short little yawn, Josephine announced she was tired of the kittens hanging from her blouse and tried to pull them off. Addy could see the poor things wanted to be
rid of Josephine, too, but their claws would not retract and they cried and clung even as they were desperate for release. “Get them off me,” Josephine hissed.

Camille dropped the grey cat and laughed when it landed on its back and staggered for refuge under the porch. She reached for the kittens on her sister and yanked until one of them had lost a claw and the fabric of Josephine's blouse was frayed. “Go on,” she screeched at the lost babies, and used her foot to guide them under the porch. “Ignorant things,” she huffed, and settled on the lawn.

Josephine found a place beside Camille and watched her sister select a plump clover flower, pull off a tiny tube-shaped petal, and suck the sweetness from it, sighing like it was a long cool drink of water. Camille watched Josephine do the same and envied her the plumper blossom. Neither wondered when Addy didn't join them and neither cared when the handyman's daughter began an idle stroll toward the barn out back.

Wallace had taken his work shirt off because of the heat and his white undershirt shone against the background of watery blue sky. Addy's mother would be horrified to see her husband in just his undershirt, though secretly she'd be pleased at how clean and bright his was compared with those of other working men she'd seen.

“You don't tell your Mama I take off my shirt, understand, Daughter?” Wallace had warned on that first day three weeks ago.

“I know, Daddy.”

“And you don't tell your Mama about Mr. Bishop's friends coming around neither.”

“The ones with them big automobiles?”

“That's right. Don't be telling her.”

“Can I tell Mama when Josephine and Camille get mean on me?”

“No.”

“Mama told me I ought to tell her if they get mean.”

“Just make her feel bad.”

“Makes me feel bad.”

“You keep that to yourself, you hear?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Your Mama's got enough grief these days.”

“Leam gonna die?”

“No,” Wallace said sharply, like his saying so was enough.

“Can I tell Mama what Mrs. Bishop give me for dinner?”

“Only if it ain't a complaint. And don't say nothing about that shed near the water neither.”

“What shed?”

“Never mind, Adelaide. Just don't say nothing about nothing.”

The sun was sinking toward the horizon, and though she'd been told never look directly, Addy couldn't help but sneak a glimpse from time to time. The sun watched her, she knew, for her mother had told her so and the Pastor
said so each Sunday at church. The sun was the son of the father. The son of the father was Jesus too, but he died on the Cross for our sins, and whether he'd become that big don't-look-at-it ball of fire in the sky or that's just where he was living now, Addy hadn't quite figured out. She just knew that he was the light. And the light was the sun. And the son loved and protected them all.

It was hard to get a deep breath on a thick summer day and Addy didn't want to open her mouth too wide lest her loose tooth fall into the grass and get lost forever. She knew her mother would cry if she lost it, for baby teeth, like wedding linen, were to be saved in a box along with pieces of hair from the newly born and newly dead. She inhaled deeply through her nose and was about to call to her father again when out of the corner of her eye she saw a little grey ball. She giggled when she realized it was the kitten and that he had followed her.

She bent down to stroke the kitten but the grey ball rolled off toward the cornfield on the other side of the barn. Addy giggled again and watched the kitten stop and tilt its head at a flitty white butterfly. “Get him,” Addy called out. “Get him.”

The kitten jumped at the butterfly, swiping and nipping as it flew into the cornfield. Addy laughed and chased them both. “Get him,” she called again. “Get him.”

Within minutes Addy knew she was in trouble. “Don't you never, never, never go near the cornfield,” her father had cautioned her. She'd said, “Yes, Daddy,” but the warn
ing had been administered along with a hundred other
don't
s regarding Mr. Bishop's place, and until she was there, dwarfed by the stalks and crowded by the dense rows, she hadn't considered her father's words.

Addy had often wondered whose wrath was greater, the Lord's or her father's, and she was afraid of how she might be beaten, particularly in front of Camille and Josephine, if her father caught her emerging from the field now. She scooped up the little grey kitten and turned to go back the way she came. Only she could not see the way she came, for each stalk and each row and each leaf that cut her arm was exactly the same. She stopped, listening for the sound of her father's hammer hitting the nail, but she could hear nothing other than her own heartbeat and the motor-car purr of the kitten clinging to her chest.

With a great sense of relief Addy looked through the slicing green blades and saw a patch of light. She went toward it, reaching the patch and finding only that it was a small area where the cornstalks had mysteriously withered and died. “Never, never, never go near the cornfield,” she heard her father say, as she jumped higher than she'd ever jumped before. But Addy could not even begin to clear the cornstalks and it occurred to her she couldn't be seen among them either.

“DA-DDYYYYY!!!” she cried. But there was no answer and no feet running down the row to save her.

“DAAAAA-DDDDYYYY!!!” she cried again, and made the kitten cry too.

The field was vast, Addy knew. She'd heard her mother talk about the acreage at the Bishops' and wonder at how he was the only farmer in the county who seemed to do well regardless of floods or drought.

“He's a rich man, Laisa. He has other resources,” Wallace had said once, meaning it was best not to speculate.

“I suppose we should be grateful we ain't cursed with wealth, Wallace. Harder for a rich man to pass through the gates of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”

Wallace looked at his wife sideways and whispered, “Likely as not Teddy Bishop gonna buy the gates and fire St. Peter and don't matter if his wife and twins fat as camels.”

Laisa had laughed and laughed. Addy thought of Laisa now and wondered if her mother knew never to go near a cornfield.

“DAAAAA-DDDDDYYYYY!!!!” Addy cried once more. But just as she was ready to weep in earnest, something got caught in her throat. She knew by the bloody taste in her mouth it was her tooth. She gagged and swallowed and thought how it'd be another thing she never, never should have done. But even after she'd been walking for an hour, then two, then three, and was sore and cut and thirsty, she didn't know the true danger of being lost in the corn was that she might not be found before she was taken by the heat.

Parched and exhausted and wishing now she'd wrestled just one jam biscuit from the twins, Addy looked around at
the long, same rows and let herself sink to the ground. It was shaded at least, she thought, then realized it wasn't shade but darkness over her head. The sun was making its final dip and she could glimpse the faint pink light in the sky above. “Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red sky at morn, sailors take warn,” her mother would say, though Addy couldn't recollect Laisa knowing any sailors at all.

The kitten in her arms had been sleeping for some time and seemed unaware of their peril. Addy placed the animal on her lap, closing her eyes too. She wasn't just tired. She was near ready to give up.

She dreamt then, or at least she thought she dreamt, that she had wings and was soaring high above the corn. She could see everything and everyone, including her mother in their house on Fowell Street. She dreamt she called out, “Mama, I'm here. Look up. I'm here.” But Laisa's eyes only left the face of her sick, sleeping son long enough to look at the clock and worry over what it was keeping her husband tonight. Out on the lake, Addy could see a large boat heading toward shore with men loud and drunk and pleased with their day's catch. In the field, she could see Teddy Bishop and two other men with kerosene lamps barrel past the body of a small brown child asleep in the corn.

She could see her father too. He was alone, with a lamp of his own, moving slowly through the rows crying out in a choked voice, “Adelaide? Addy! Baby?! ADDDDDDDDYYYYY!!!”

Addy dreamt that she flew downward, the tips of the cornstalks tickling her tummy, to see her father's face. Even in her dream Addy felt confused, for it was not anger on Wallace Shadd's face but fear. “ADDDDDDDDDYYYYYYY!!!!” he called. And Addy cried back, “Here Daddy! Look up! I'm right here! I'm flying!”

And then, though Wallace did not look up, he stopped and looked down, and there he saw his daughter, curled up with the grey kitten in her lap. He lifted her and shook her gently, whispering, “Baby? Wake up, Baby. Wake up, Addy,” until she opened her eyes.

He drew a flask of water from his pocket and brought it to her dry lips. When she drank greedily and wanted more, he knew she would be fine. “Daddy,” she whispered. “You see me flying?”