Sweet Song (7 page)

Martha lay flat, barely visible in the dark, yet she was the witness in the family. Bess lay curled facing the wall. A thin cover lay over her back now. Martha must have covered her. Still her bare shoulders shined with sweat. Her neck looked soft. That single thought shot guilt through Leon. How could he think such a thought? What tenderness he felt for his mother was tarnished and although it was tenderness he wished for, he could no longer accept it. That he knew. Martha seemed to know it as well. Big Leon appeared to deny it.

An urge to stand and shout came over him, but he did not move.

Big Leon must have felt the boy’s energy. He turned and looked at Leon. “Go to bed,” he said. “Rest.”

“Yes, Pa.” He wanted to hear his own voice as he addressed his father. He heard the familiar sound, but it stood riddled with untruth. So many untruths lived in that one small shack. In that room. At that moment. Leon nodded and Big Leon returned to his eyes-fixed position.

A heavy breeze blew in. Leon wiped his mouth dry. He undressed and lay down. He felt like pissing, but wouldn’t get up to go outside. He fell asleep with the slight pain of an unreleased bladder. Horrible dreams plagued his sleep. He could do nothing inside them without an audience, without being watched. The woods were riddled with people watching him. His home was no better. Faces peered in the windows, from every corner, in through the door. Leon tried to run, but faces appeared in the sky, in the trees, and in the rocks along the river.

He awoke before sunup, shaking, exhausted. He pulled on his trousers, held them at the front and ran out to pee in the bushes that grew along the side of the shack. Nothing felt quite right that
morning. It began in physical pain and with an uneasiness that followed Leon all morning. Grits and bread for breakfast. That was a treat. No one spoke, though, only grunted and hummed.

Leon hurried to Sir’s barn to settle the stalls, ready them for evening. The teams would already be out. He planned, too, to clear the kitchen garbage, relax and make up songs, then head for his father’s side to work out the remains of the day.

The plan was right. It reeked of familiarity clear up until his rendezvous with Hillary. Already, early in the day, he knew it would be different from all their other meetings.

Leon glided through the day, an uneasy feeling thick in his chest and throat. Hank and Earl weren’t much help, but they weren’t much hindrance either. Leon took orders from them without comment, without acknowledging them except to respond.

On his way to the back of the house, he saw Hillary for a moment and she winked at him. From that time, it took an hour to adjust his mind. He thought of her thick legs and soft breasts, the wetness between her legs and her moans of pleasure. From there, he imagined her smell, then her threats and rudeness when he didn’t respond the way she wanted. This all flowed, like the creek where they met, into thoughts of Hillary and her other man, Jacob.

Stamping his foot and hitting one fist into the other palm didn’t fully illustrate Leon’s anger or pain at the thoughts he brought up. Nor did it belie the confusion of those emotions. He loved and hated her. He feared what she might do. He loathed himself for the power he let her have over him, for it was not merely the power of ownership, but of much more. As much as he didn’t understand that power, he also knew it well and from more places than he should. Leon accepted his own feelings. He spit, trying to reduce the acrid taste in his mouth. He pissed onto the garbage trying to empty the poison that was building up inside him. And he hummed and sang with teeth clenched and fists tight to draw his mind back into harmony.

Before heading for the fields, Leon pushed his back straight, his head high, and let his nostrils – those white-man’s nostrils – flare out and suck in the world as he knew it. The rest of the day, Leon worked hard, often to exhaustion. At one point, Big Leon asked
whether Leon was all right. A moment of fatherly concern Leon would remember. Yet, he was never able to respond.

That evening, near dusk, Leon carried his anger to the creek flat.

“What’s wrong with you?” Hillary said.

He wondered how she could possibly know his thoughts were torn? Did he walk differently? Was his face twisted, tightened, or expressive in some other way?

“Nothin’,” he said, but knew she wouldn’t have it that simple.

“You mad at me for not stoppin’ to speak today?” It sounded as though her guilt had come to the creek flat with her.

“That weren’t no reason.”

“Why are you talking like that?”

“I wanna.”

“You know how I hate for you to talk that way.”

He stared.

She walked closer to him, her eyelids lowered to a seductive half-closed position.

Why he said what he did, he would never know. “You juss want me to sound white so’s you done have to think about who you sinnin’ with. So’s you can imagine it be Jacob stickin’ you and not some nigger farmhand.”

It was his delivery more than his words that hurt Hillary. He could feel her pain as the words were delivered, and if that weren’t enough, he could imagine her pain being worse from the way her face twisted hideously into a snarl.

“How dare you?” She fell to her knees, ready to cry.

He leaned toward her…his hand reaching out. Then he held his position. “You can’t love no nigger. And you can’t, you show can’t, love you half-brother.” He pulled his hand fully back. “You an evil woman. We both evil. I evil the day I’s born of this world.”

Hillary looked up as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, her face streaked with tears. The setting sun set behind Lean; she squinted.

“I know.” Her whisper was so soft Leon wasn’t sure he’d heard the words correctly.

“We stoppin’ the sin now.”

“You have no right to decide.”

“I have the say,” he shouted.

Hillary curled back from his voice.

Leon searched the woods for movement. How did this scene look? How did it sound? He tried to think from outside his small world. His stomach burned and his throat locked shut. Nothing made sense. He wanted to run away and hold her at the same time.

“Go,” Hillary said. “I hate you.” She crumpled sideways onto the ground. “You’re just a lousy nigger. Like your mama you enchant us with the idea of forbidden fruit, but you’re nothin’ but flesh. You’re flesh and blood and bone like us all.”

Leon turned to leave. He bent over and coughed, sensing bile rise in his throat, surprised he didn’t vomit.

“I’ll make you sorry,” she cried.

Her words shoved at him until he ran stumbling over roots and stepping into holes.

As the light burst across the horizon before the sun disappeared, Leon came to a stop. Bending forward, his hands on his knees, Leon spit. He gulped hot humid air, like trying to breathe under water. He waited, sending his will to his lungs, trying to get them to operate more slowly, more efficiently.

Suddenly, Big Leon stepped out of the bushes.

Leon’s eyes stretched as wide as they could. “What?” was all he could muster.

“Need your help,” Big Leon said.

Leon spit again. He glanced up through the twilight.

“A late calf comin’. I need a hand. It may be breached.”

Leon wondered why him, but didn’t ask. He followed Big Leon to the South barn where they kept the few head of cattle Fred Carpenter owned.

On the way Leon asked why one of the other men wouldn’t do it.

“Cain’t.”

Leon didn’t ask why.

At the barn, a cow lay in its stall bleating like a sheep. Big Leon and Leon were the only two there.

“Why not Tunny?”

“Toll ‘em all to scat home.” Big Leon kneeled next to the cow and stroked her neck.

“How you know it’s breached?”

“Said maybe. She breached last year.”

Leon kneeled near the cow’s back and laid his hand on its bulbous belly. They waited for a while.

Big Leon stood and paced for a moment.

The barn stood quiet now, with only an occasional creaking sound from the wind. A breeze blew through the open doors scuffing up loose straw.

Leon noticed how well kept the barn was. He wondered briefly why Tunny and the others were sent home.

Big Leon leaned against a stall post. He stared out the barn door at a dark sky. An owl hooted. “I always hated you. You face mostly, that white ugly.”

Leon kneeled, silent, listening to Big Leon’s even tone.

“And you mama, she could-a died instead a birthin’ you. Lord knows I died. Still do when I looks at you. And I know she hate you too, only she hate you and love you. They’s always opposites. When they’s sun they’s night. When they’s poor they’s rich. And when they’s divine, they show-‘nuff be sin to go with it.

“What I sayin’, boy, is with all my hate, they’s love too. I cain’t see you gettin’ kilt for nothin’. And white girls, they jus’ nothin’.”

Leon’s questions never got out.

The cow bawled and action occurred.

Like a dream, the world took over and Big Leon’s words faded as though never said.

The next day the two men separated early in the morning and went on with their chores.

Hillary was missing and Leon heard snippets of conversation that suggested she had become unstable, “Like her momma,” someone said. He heard she’d run off.

After dinner, he sat out back, waiting for Big Leon to return from his walk. But he didn’t return and Leon went in to get some sleep. Martha and Bess had already fallen off.

He slept after the long day of fence post repair, wagon wheel greasing, and animal feedings. He slept exhausted by the birth of the
new calf the night before. He slept in his own sweat beaded along his neck and shoulders, in his own dirt and grime from a long day’s work after a night of no sleep. Leon slept soundlessly until Big Leon woke him with a start.

F
ace to face, Big Leon’s black eyes bordered by white indicated fear. “We gotta go.”

Leon pushed onto a shaky elbow.

“I got somethin’ for you.” Big Leon held a burlap bag tied at the top with a rope.

“Why?”

“White girl been talkin’.”

Leon lowered his head and whimpered. Big Leon placed a huge hand on the boy’s shoulder. His whimpering stopped and his mind cleared.

At that moment, nothing mattered to Leon but life. Nothing felt so new and so fresh, nothing more deliberate than his immediate actions. Awareness of the pending darkness outside frightened him. Yet, there was no escaping it. Run. That’s all he could think. Run into the woods, through them like a finger pushes through axle grease. Get slippery. Come out the other side into the reflective sheen of escape.

For his size, Big Leon ran fast and sure-footed. At first, he sprinted ahead of Leon as though he knew exactly where they could find safety.

It was daybreak and the world leaned into awakening. Birds chirped and squawked as the eastern sky blossomed. The running footsteps of two Negroes broke the typically quiet summer morning like an egg dashed to the rocks. A crackle and snap, the brushing by of leaves, the hiss of heavy breathing followed them through the woods and along the creek.

They headed south where the lowlands turned to swamp, thick with vegetation. Eventually the broadening of the creek joined the river.

Leon had never been that far except in his dreams, but he had heard about the terrain and seen it labeled on maps.

Big Leon halted and before he could say listen, before his hand raised into the air to quiet all sound around them including nature’s noise, Leon heard the distant yelp of dogs. He turned to run, but big Leon grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

“Boy, you been done this to. I know you not bad. You change the future for yourself, hear?”

“I’m evil.”

“You listen here. You had evil happen to you. You have evil around you. But you not evil in you-self until you accept evil.”

“What I did—”

“Is called learnin’. You good at learnin’. Learnt everythin’ I teach you, before I finish. Faster ‘an any the others. You got white smarts inside, and you got to use ‘em.”

“They’re getting closer,” Leon said.

“We can outpace ‘em for a while if we keep movin’.” Big Leon stood as tall as his muscular frame would allow. He looked around. He listened. “You go ahead. I’ll keep my eyes on you.”

“Don’t—“

“You listen up, son. You change the course of yo life. Don’t be no dumb nigger.”

“But, Pa—”

Big Leon pulled the boy close and squeezed him to his chest. He held tightly as if he didn’t want to let go, as if all the hugs he hadn’t given to Leon were shoved into that one embrace. Then he shoved Leon hard. “Go!”

Leon ran ahead. His father never said where to run to, but Leon figured, for now, toward the river.

To slow the progress of the dogs pursuit, Leon and his father entered and exited the creek in only the most gravelly and rocky areas, eliminating the chances of muddied water giving them away. Balancing over the rocks slowed them down, but it was worth it until the sound of barking dogs got too close. Then they’d leave the
water and sprint through woods and underbrush. The closer they got to the river, the lower the stand of vegetation, the broader the flatness of muck. Nothing was said, but Leon knew they’d eventually be in the open.