The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow (34 page)

“I don’t know; there’s lots of men got their faces messed up.”

Another twenty left the detective’s wallet. “I have reason to believe this fellow was a veteran. Do you remember him now?”

“There’s lots of vets around here, mister. You need to give me a little more to go on.”

A third twenty slid across the bar. “He doesn’t look familiar to me. If I was you, I’d try over to the Rouge,” the barman said. “There’s guys over there that got hurt in the war, and guys that got hurt when they first tried to bring in the union, and there’s guys been hurt by dynamite too.”

Tate made a visit to the auto plant, where he had another costly conversation, this time with a personnel worker who gave him the names of four disfigured men who’d served in the military and ended up at the Rouge after returning home from the war.

July 14, 1957
The Sounds of Sorrow and of Angel Blood

I
N
the moment between dreaming and waking, it came to Bonaventure that the mournful slip of paper he’d taken from his mother’s closet and the small smothered sound that lived in the chapel might comfort one another.

Grand-mère was at Sunday mass and his mother was sleeping in. He skipped breakfast altogether, retrieved the note from Mr. Silvey’s shop, and took it to the chapel. Bonaventure looked at the carved wooden box for a while and listened to that sad, soft weeping. When he pulled the box from its niche, the weeping quieted down to the little hiccup breaths that trail after sobbing. He bent his knees, lowered himself to the floor, and sat there Indian fashion. Then he opened the lid as gently as he could.

All that was inside was a small rectangle made of two pieces of glass that were stuck to each other by a reddish-brown smear. He pulled the note out of his pocket and put it inside the box, on top of those pieces of stuck-together glass, and then he closed it up. There was nothing but quiet. Bonaventure smiled, and on the heels of his happiness the inspiration came that the note and the glass pieces should be buried in the garden, where they would be away from the house and could console each other forever and be surrounded by flowers.

Bonaventure went back to Mr. Silvey’s shed and removed a small spade from where it hung on a hook between a long-handled hoe and a three-pronged cultivator. He took the spade to a spot in the garden and began to dig.

It had rained the day before, leaving the soil dark as wet coffee grounds and soft as butter that’s been left to sit out. Bonaventure listened to the earthworms in their tunnels and tried to be very careful. It was slow going when such care was taken, but he would never want to bring harm to the earthworms and so he didn’t mind. He didn’t fling the dirt up and scatter it but rather placed each scoop gently down one upon the other. Bonaventure maintained concentration on the grave until the spade’s point hit upon something that had managed to get past his uncommon hearing. He immediately stopped digging and acknowledged the surprise.

He put the spade down and dug in the cool moist soil with his hands, probing with his fingertips until he recognized roundness. He used the spade to loosen the shape until he could pry it free. At the end of his efforts, Bonaventure held in one grimy hand a cool and hefty, dirt-covered stone that gave off the finest silence he had ever had the pleasure to encounter.

That stone was immediately precious to him. He took it over to the old brass tap beneath the chapel window in order to wash it. He held the stone under the running water, rubbing it gently until it was smooth as a pearl and cleaner than rain. Then he took it to the garden bench and set it to dry in the sun.

The stone maintained a constant stillness, which Bonaventure took to mean that it was always listening, for in his experience you could hear a lot more if you kept real still. And then too there was the idea that the stone made no sound of its own; Bonaventure could only imagine how much it must be able to hear, what with not having to listen to its own breathing or its own footsteps or its own chewing, and he began to feel a reverence and a solid admiration. Now that the stone was clean, he could see that it was speckled, black and white.

He listened to that stone harder than he’d ever listened to anything, and indeed the stone did speak, sharing its knowledge of how earth and time and all other things had been brought out of darkness and into great light by the Source of all there is.

And then the marvelous sounds began, and Bonaventure heard that good and steady
bup-bup, bup-bup
, the same as he’d heard inside Dancy’s womb.

The stone’s knowledge carried him through a wind that caused the cosmos to fall inward and then burst open.

Bup-bup, bup-bup.

Bonaventure could feel the rushing of waters blown over by that wind, and then he himself was swept into the sky.

Bup-bup, bup-bup.

His whole body filled with stars being born, with the spinning of atoms, with the pull of the planets, and with suns and moons and constellations.

Bup-bup, bup-bup.

He saw fishes and creatures and trees. He saw people living and loving and dying.

Bup-bup, bup-bup.

And then the stone brought forth echoes of its own birth and how it had tumbled from oceans and rivers and streams to come to rest in the garden. The stone took joy in the warmth of the light now, having known the coldness of the dark.

Bup-bup, bup-bup.

Bonaventure knew then for certain what to do with those sounds of sorrow and of angel blood he had been about to bury.

Dancy still wasn’t up when he went back in the house. Bonaventure didn’t want to wake her, so he wrote a note that said
Gone walking
and propped it up against the coffee can where he knew she would see it. Then he went to get the wagon. He took hold of its handle in hopes of feeling his father’s warmth or perhaps hearing the sound of his voice, but none of that happened. What did happen was a gravitational tug, much like the one that had brought Trinidad Prefontaine to Bayou Cymbaline. Bonaventure did not fight that tug, but leaned back to feel it pull him all the more.

He walked alone save for the company of the carved wooden box that was perched in the wagon and the speckled stone tucked in his pocket. The stone bumped against his leg with every left step, all the while blending its silence with his, just as a soul mate would do. The narrow trail of hard-packed sand felt solid and warm beneath his bare feet, and its dusty surface sent the softest powder sifting up between his toes. He passed by blue gentians, purple trilliums, and pink yarrow. The day was so wonderful that Bonaventure thought it would taste like cherry pie if he took a bite of it. Feathery clouds streaked the sky, and even though the sun was out, he could still see the moon.

By the time he’d walked long enough to get thirsty, he’d come to the Neff Switch road. He kept right on walking, and in five minutes’ time found himself in a clearing where stood the two-room house with a wraparound porch and a mansard roof and a cupola sheathed in copper.

Bonaventure stood as still as he possibly could, feeling the gladness that always accompanied the sound of Trinidad’s smile, a sound nearly identical to that of sun sparkle on water. He wished he could capture it to put in his memento box.

Birds and insects pierced the stillness with their songs and beckoning buzzing, while a light breeze whispered through the weeds and wild grasses. Bonaventure considered the scene wildly pleasing and so plucked a blade of grass to keep. A lark stood in the rainwater pond that was growing warm in the old birdbath, and a dragonfly hovered close by, iridescent and splendid.

Inside her house, Trinidad felt Bonaventure’s approach with her right-sided heart. She pulled the big crockery bowl down from its shelf, set it on the wooden block table, and filled it with ingredients whose amounts she knew by feel, sifting flour and brushing it between her hands. She reached into the bowl to knead the smooth, cool dough before plopping it onto the cloth and working the rolling pin, performing the everyday miracle that would turn the mixture into beautiful, thick, round golden biscuits.

She sent a shout through the open window—“Who you are out there?”—even though she knew perfectly well who had come.

Bonaventure sent his silent answer.

“Does that be you, Bonaventure Arrow? Come on, okay, move yourself and get up here then. I can’t be waiting on you all the day.” Then she wiped her hands on her apron and stepped out onto the porch.

Bonaventure approached the house, parked his wagon, and threw his arms around Trinidad’s waist. When the hug was done, she brought him in and set him to work scrubbing the crockery bowl as if he’d done it every day of his life, while she busied herself with the biscuits. When the baking was done, they sat down to partake of not only the biscuits but the juice of ripened muscadine grapes that grew wild on Trinidad’s land. When they finished eating and cleared their plates, she took a small spade from a hook and motioned for him to follow.

“I’m glad you bring your wagon. It going to come in handy.”

Bonaventure listened to the wind singing through the sweetgum and sassafras, the prickly ash and hickory, and tried to absorb their tree-songs through his skin. And just to make sure he wouldn’t lose that music, he plucked a leaf from each one to put in his wagon and carry back to Christopher Street.

Trinidad began to dig.

“This be a whole lot of healing we digging up today, Mr. Bonaventure. A whole lot of healing,” she said.

—Okay! Bonaventure said, by way of making a circle with the thumb and index finger of his right hand and giving her a wink.

Thready roots snapped as they were tugged from the earth, and bits of loamy soil pattered to the ground. One by one, and with the greatest of tender motions, Trinidad placed plants in the bottom of Bonaventure’s wagon very close to the carved wooden box. The two of them worked in quiet companionship until the sun had moved beyond its greatest height.

“That be enough now,” Trinidad said, and led the way to the small barn back of the house.

As his eyes adjusted to the shadowy interior, Bonaventure noticed thin lines of sunlight filtering through the boards of the walls and imagined he could feel them touch him and fracture apart as he walked into dusky dimness. Their splintering sounded like the pinging of raindrops, which pleased him through and through.

Trinidad began to shake out the harvest and hang it from twine strung diagonally for that purpose.

“These here be what called simples,” she told Bonaventure. “They get they start in the dark of the earth, and then they reach for the light.”

This trajectory reminded Bonaventure of his black and white stone and how he’d found it buried in the garden.

“The simples be wild herbs, and they be for tea and poultice and chew.” She touched the brown leaves and went on. “Some folks, they use the simples like poisons, but that not what God intended at all. The simples is supposed to be used for good. Take this one here now; it be witch hazel and good for the skin. And this one here with the tiny pink buds on it, that comfrey. It be used to knit up flesh and bones.”

Bonaventure reached toward another plant, a question in his eyes.

“Don’t touch that one, child; it be stinging nettle. Stinging nettle good for the gout.”

Finger point, raised brows. —And this one?

“Yarrow. It for the toothache.”

—How do you know all these things? Bonaventure communicated this question by sweeping his arm to encompass the hanging herbs, then holding his hands out palms up and shrugging.

“I knows some of it from my mama, but only some. She didn’t fix on the notion that simples be meant for healing. She had a fear in her that made her think they only be used for harm.”

Index fingers pulled down the sides of his mouth in a sad face.

“Don’t I know it, Mr. Bonaventure. Don’t I know it. All’s we can do now is ask the Lord to forgive her.”

A very solemn nod.

With their bounty hung to dry, they returned to the house to wash the dirt from their hands and eat one more biscuit with butter and jam. When it was time to go, Bonaventure took the carved wooden box from the wagon and regarded it solemnly. He opened it gently, removed Dancy’s note and Grand-mère’s pieces of stuck-together glass and set them on the table. Then he removed the speckled stone from his pocket and set it down alongside them. He felt he’d best leave the stone with Trinidad, a woman he associated with the seraphim angels, the ones Grand-mère liked to talk about, the ones that were closest to God.

Trinidad accepted the offering entrusted her, in silence, as was appropriate.

Bonaventure set off then, the empty carved box and the sounds of simples filling his father’s childhood wagon all the way up to the brim.

Those Things She Found Spiritual

W
HEN
she could no longer see Bonaventure’s small back heading down the Neff Switch road, Trinidad picked up the note, the prisms, and the stone and went into her front room to kneel before a small altar upon which rested those things she found spiritual: a plaster-of-Paris Virgin Mary, three red feathers of a Shanghai rooster, and pieces of sea glass worn smooth as silk by lapping waves of salty water. There was also a rabbit’s foot, a pouch filled with catmint, and the rosary of fine wooden beads so recently given her by Miz Arrow, senior.

From the time she’d awakened that morning, Trinidad Prefontaine knew one thing for sure: this day held a promise in its hands. She laid the note and the prisms on her homemade altar amidst those symbols and souvenirs of her deity’s Spirit, the Blessed Mother who loved every single child: the sea glass, like pieces of broken lives made lustrous and baptized by the ocean’s healing waters; the feathers of a bird that can fly precious little yet proclaims the new hope of every day’s dawn; and those odd little bits of nature’s bounty. From her pocket she pulled a holy card, one given to her in the orphanage by Sister Sulpice. The card was soft as a piece of old leather, made so by the oils in the skin of Trinidad’s hands. The front bore a picture of Francis of Assisi, and printed on the back were the words to his Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Her lips moved silently over the words of the prayer until the very end, when she spoke them loud and sincerely: