The Ghosts of Varner Creek (9 page)

"I don't want no trouble between you and my brother for what happened last night. He was just being protective is all."

"Yeah, well, he shouldn't have sucker punched me like he did."

She certainly wouldn't have called it sucker punching, as Abram had walked up on Marcus like he was going to throw a punch himself, but it had been awfully quick and she didn't want to agitate him further, "I know. He's my brother, though. He's supposed to be like that."

"Yeah, and what reason does he got to be going around calling us white-trash niggers fer?" asked one of the other men, who let a disgusting glob of chew fly out of his mouth.

Emma jumped in. "He didn't say them things."

Abram studied her and then glanced at Colby and figured as much. "Yeah, well I heard him say it. He’s been talking to that Mary Jo girl and done told her that Mr. Wilkins hired himself nothing but a bunch of stupid and lazy good for nothing workers this year. He said how we all just like niggers. I heard him say it myself, I did." He had a smug look on his face when the other three men there besides Colby and Abram looked at each other and seemed to share a silent resentment.

Both Annie and Emma knew Marcus wouldn't have made that type of comment. Marcus was as good as color blind in his ethics. Unlike these men, he didn't care if a man was white, black, pink, or purple. To him, a man either worked hard or was a lazy good for nothing. It was one way or the other and there wasn't anything much else he deemed important in a man. In fact, he had commented more than once on the fact that the coloreds Mr. Wilkins hired on for the harvest were working harder and didn't mess around near as much as this group of slackers. The only one in the bunch who was really working hard was Colby. The rest took every opportunity to slough off, or, when they were working, put in a half-ass effort. Marcus even tried to talk Mr. Wilkins into taking on a colored or two full time, but Mr. Wilkins always seemed to believe in giving a white man a job over a black man, said it was his Christian duty. Marcus thought it backwards thinking, but didn't say as much. Annie had to admit, however, that even though she couldn't see Marcus making that particular reference, she could see him calling these boys stupid and lazy good for nothings. In fact, that's just the language he might use and Mary Jo Greenley was just the person he’d say it to. After all, he took after his father in his work ethic, and he had little respect for anyone who didn't work half as hard has he did. So instead of addressing that portion of things, Annie just responded to the one she knew wasn't true.

"Well, I've never heard him say such things," she told Abram, "and I'm his sister."

"Neither have I," supported Emma.

"What, y’all saying I'm lying?" Abram was ready to cuss them both out. He stood up to give them an earful and much to his surprise Colby, who had previously been leaning against the tin building's back wall, leaned forward and uncrossed his arms. He didn’t do it aggressively, but it didn’t go without notice, either.

"I didn't say you're lying, just said I've never heard it," said Annie.

"Maybe he just said that 'bout you because you kept talking to his sister during the harvest when we was working and he got mad," offered Colby, still standing ready to move if events went that way. “That’s probably why y’all had that scuffle in the first place.”

Abram could feel himself losing ground. Colby was taking the side of the girls and that was swaying the opinion of the other men. If Abram had differences with Marcus because they didn't agree on him talking to Annie, well that was between them, the other men would think. That was different from Marcus talking bad about all of them.

"Well, I best not hear your brother talking such things about me, or I'll have him answer for it," said one. "But since I don't know what he did and didn't say, I reckon I'll leave it alone."

Abram knew they wouldn't help him put a beating on Marcus, now. And he didn't want to go up against him alone. As much as Abram hated to admit it, he was scared of Marcus. He thought quickly about what could be salvaged out of the situation, how he could still save some face in front of everyone, "Well, maybe if you was to be a little nicer to me, you know, to make up for your brother sucker-punching me and everything, then I guess I could let him slide." He wanted to play the part of the bigger man looking the other way, "But just this once. You know, if had been anyone but your brother, I'd of already done something bad to 'em." He even tried smiling at her.

Now it was painfully clear to Colby, even if he was generally considered as slow and dullish as one could be, that Abram lost his nerve when he lost the help of the other three. But in the mind of a fourteen year old girl like Annie, who didn't understand that Abram was just trying to cover up his own cowardice, she thought she had won a victory. Here was this man, older than her brother and who was just a little while ago planning Lord knows what in the way of revenge, offering to let her brother out of a most dangerous situation with the compromise that she just act nice towards him. She took it that he was doing her a considerable favor.

"Thanks, Abram," she said. "I appreciate it."

And Abram could see it on her face, she did appreciate it. He felt puffed up knowing he had succeeded in making her see how kind and forgiving he was being. He could feel his confidence rising again. So much so that he thought this whole thing might have even bettered his chances of laying her, "And maybe I can dance with you tonight without being sucker-punched," he quipped. It was awfully bold of him considering, Annie thought, but now she felt obligated. And in addition, she felt such a weight lifted not having to worry about what they might do to Marcus that she almost wanted to dance with Abram just to say thanks. Everything could be smoothed over now. She'd have to make sure Marcus didn't come and start trouble again, though. "Okay, Abram. I think that'd be nice." With that, her, Emma, and Colby went back inside, her to go ask Marcus to let it alone tonight, and Emma and Colby to go dance.

Everyone agreed it had been a good resolution and Abram felt just like a Saint with his friends telling him how good he was to look the other way for that girl's benefit. “Yeah, that boy just doesn’t know any better, I guess. He’s lucky he’s got his sisters to get him out of trouble,” he told his friends.

Marcus was none too pleased when Annie told him she had promised to dance with Abram tonight. "What do you want to go and waste your time with that one for?" he asked angrily. "'Specially after you just said he was telling lies on me so he could get others to help him whoop me."

"I done talked to him about that. He says he heard you talkin' to Mary Jo about Mr. Wilkins hiring good for nothings like them. But he says he ain't going to make no more trouble if'n you leave him be."

Marcus sucked in his breath and let it out with a bit of a tsk, "Well, they are a bunch of good for nothins, Annie. And here you go wantin' to mess with one of 'em. Too ignorant to know what's good fer yah." He waved her away just like he'd done with Mary Jo's questions earlier. "Go on and do what you want. I don't care if you ain't got better sense."

Now she was getting upset with him. Here she was smoothing things over for his benefit and he thanks her by calling her ignorant and waving her off like an annoying fly. Well, she would do what she wanted, then. If he couldn't see what she had done for him and how maybe Abram had a right to be mad like he was, she wasn't going to worry herself over it.

And when Abram and Annie did meet up for a dance, circumstances had conspired just right, or just wrongly enough, that she saw him as being better than he truly was. And he was so full of himself at that moment that he believed himself to be just as good as she thought he was. So they danced and had fun, laughing together and actually enjoying each other's company. And when Mrs. Stotley pulled Emma aside to ask why in the hell Annie was dancing with that man again, Emma told her happily, "Oh, they worked all that out. He's not so bad."

Mrs. Stotley was just sick with her two oldest girls. Annie was with that drunkard having the time of her life and Emma was joined at the hip with that bushy ogre. She tried to pour out her anxieties and horror to Mr. Stotley, but he was indifferent.

"Let them enjoy the festival," he said.
Let them find someone to marry and go off to live their own lives so I can have mine back,
he was probably thinking.

Chapter 5

The harvest was over and so the extra hands that had been needed around the various farms were let go. The out-of-towners found their work dried up and most moved on. Abram and Colby didn't, though. Their third housemate, Keller, had joined up with some other men that were headed East where there were more people and more jobs to be had. Louisiana had a lot of farmland that needed extra hands, they’d been told. But Emma had been so quickly infatuated with Colby that she had gone to various farmers she knew looking for work for him. Mr. Wilkins said he was full up and didn’t seem to think Colby had much in the way of smarts about him, but Mr. Andrew Pyle said he could use a strong hand and took Colby on. Colby didn't want to stay by himself, though, so he asked Abram to stay since Keller had made up his mind to leave. They weren't the best of friends, but they’d walked a lot of roads together, and since Colby offered to pay the rent until Abram got himself a job, too, Abram saw it as a good deal for himself. They stayed in Mr. Wilkins' work shack and Colby paid a meager rent per week while he worked for Mr. Pyle. Abram sold his hemp cigarettes to the other field hands for a little extra spending money that went mostly to whiskey. Both were still convinced that they could get rich off of the marijuana but the selling was few and far between. The only people that would buy any were the laborers like themselves and most of them seemed to prefer a stiff drink to Abram's hemp.

After a few weeks of working like a mule Colby began winning praises from Mr. Pyle. He'd tell the other workers, "Why can't you work like Colby, there?" And brag to other farmers.. "That boy Colby is just like having two men. He's strong as an ox even if he's only as bright as one." Colby could do it all on a farm. Besides plowing and sowing seeds, he knew his way around horses and cattle and he wasn't a half-bad carpenter. He wasn’t nearly as dull as people thought, either. He was just an introvert who wasn’t interested in much more than the simple things in life. Mr. Pyle thanked his good luck on taking a chance on the boy. And so when Colby asked if Mr. Pyle could find a place on his farm for Abram, Mr. Pyle made room for him. He was never as pleased with Abram's work as he was with Colby. It was like night and day watching Colby sweat through the hot day working all the while and watching Abram follow along behind him doing a third of what Colby did. He would have gotten rid of Abram except he didn't want Colby to leave along with him, so he dismissed the nuisance.

Emma and Annie both walked about a mile and a half over the fields and through the pastures each day to bring lunch to the men. By this point Emma was utterly smitten. She had heard Colby's praises from Mr. Pyle, and in church on Sundays, even though neither Colby nor Abram attended, she held her head a little higher. Annie was happy for her sister. She tried to feel the same way about Abram but she felt she must have inherited her father's indifference on things. She didn't dislike him, but nor was she enamored with him. When folks got to her asking her if he was her beau, she said yes, she supposed so, but it didn't elicit the same warm and tingly feelings inside that Emma had described to her.

Time went on this way for months. Marcus got his apprenticeship with the blacksmith in town and moved out. He was a spectacular metal worker and besides shoeing the horses and repairing tools, he could also make wrought iron fence work and beautiful ornamentation. He would marry Mary Jo Greenley and they’d leave Varner Creek some years later when word of Marcus' talents spread and he was offered a job making more money than he ever imagined up in Houston working for the railroads.

But before Marcus had become a metal working marvel, and before he and Mary Jo Greenley left for the city, Emma and Colby had expressed their love for one another, both verbally and physically. Annie and Emma got in the habit of going to visit Colby and Abram sometimes at night. It was a practice Mrs. Stotley was completely against, but since she couldn't get Mr. Stotley to side with her, as he of course was indifferent on the subject, she yet again accepted defeat. Colby and Emma would immediately disappear into the one-room workhouse when they went to visit and it shook with their passion like there was a tornado trapped inside. Neither of them were fragile people, after all.

It wasn’t long before Abram began pressing for a tornado of his own. He and Annie would take walks sometimes while the other two were engaged in their activities. He was always at her dress trying to get a hand somewhere inside to find a spot of bared skin. She let him kiss on her and press up against her but wouldn't permit the removal of her clothes. And when Abram started pulling out his manhood on a regular basis she'd rub it for him until he got release. It wasn't because of love or lust for him, though. She just wanted to help him get over his urges so he'd stop squirming all over her and dry humping her dress.

I had often pressed my Aunt Emma in later years about how Mama ended up with Pap, and while she never would give me all the details, I’ve managed to splice together the bits and pieces. Getting Aunt Emma’s recollections was like pulling teeth, but there would be a lot of confusion in my early adulthood that Aunt Emma wanted to help resolve in any way she could. She never came right out and told me I was a child of rape, of course, but all the stories I’ve heard seem to skirt dangerously close to that conclusion. As I came to understand it, things took a serious turn on one of the walks Mama and Pap used to take. They had lain down on a blanket in the grass that they had brought with them. The mosquitoes were biting and Abram had his tongue all over her, down her mouth, in her ear, all down her neck. He had been drinking and was in a foul mood. The rubbing had been holding him off pretty well for a while but tonight when she reached down to rub it for him he moved her hand away.