In Love and Trouble (10 page)

“Like I say,” he drawled lamely although beginning to be furious with her, “we’ll do what we can!” And he hurriedly rolled up the window and sped down the road, cringing from the thought that she had put her hands on him.

“Old home remedies! Old home remedies!” Rannie Toomer cursed the words while she licked at the hot tears that ran down her face, the only warmth about her. She turned back to the trail that led to her house, trampling the wet circulars under her feet. Under the fence she went and was in a pasture, surrounded by dozens of fat white folks’ cows and an old gray horse and a mule or two. Animals lived there in the pasture all around her house, and she and Snooks lived in it.

It was less than an hour after she had talked to the mailman that she looked up expecting the doctor and saw old Sarah tramping through the grass on her walking stick. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t home with the smoke climbing out the chimney, so she let her in, making her leave her bag of tricks on the front porch.

Old woman old as that ought to forgit trying to cure other people with her nigger magic … ought to use some of it on herself, she thought. She would not let her lay a finger on Snooks and warned her if she tried she would knock her over the head with her own cane.

“He coming all right,” Rannie Toomer said firmly, looking, straining her eyes to see through the rain.

“Let me tell you, child,” the old woman said almost gently, “he ain’t.” She was sipping something hot from a dish. When would this one know, she wondered, that she could only depend on those who would come.

“But I
told
you,” Rannie Toomer said in exasperation, as if explaining something to a backward child. “I asked the mailman to bring a doctor for my Snooks!”

Cold wind was shooting all around her from the cracks in the window framing, faded circulars blew inward from the walls. The old woman’s gloomy prediction made her tremble.

“He done fetched the doctor,” Sarah said, rubbing her dish with her hand. “What you reckon brung me over here in this here flood? Wasn’t no desire to see no rainbows, I can tell you.”

Rannie Toomer paled.

“I’s the doctor, child.” Sarah turned to Rannie with dull wise eyes. “That there mailman didn’t git no further with that message than the road in front of my house. Lucky he got good lungs—deef as I is I had myself a time trying to make out what he was yellin’.”

Rannie began to cry, moaning.

Suddenly the breathing of Snooks from the bed seemed to drown out the noise of the downpour outside. Rannie Toomer could feel his pulse making the whole house tremble.

“Here,” she cried, snatching up the baby and handing him to Sarah. “Make him well.
O my lawd,
make him well!”

Sarah rose from her seat by the fire and took the tiny baby, already turning a purplish blue around the eyes and mouth.

“Let’s not upset this little fella unnessarylike,” she said, placing the baby back on the bed. Gently she began to examine him, all the while moaning and humming some thin pagan tune that pushed against the sound of the wind and rain with its own melancholy power. She stripped him of all his clothes, poked at his fibreless baby ribs, blew against his chest. Along his tiny flat back she ran her soft old fingers. The child hung on in deep rasping sleep, and his small glazed eyes neither opened fully nor fully closed.

Rannie Toomer swayed over the bed watching the old woman touching the baby. She thought of the time she had wasted waiting for the real doctor. Her feeling of guilt was a stone.

“I’ll do anything you say do, Aunt Sarah,” she cried, mopping at her nose with her dress. “Anything. Just, please God, make him git better!”

Old Sarah dressed the baby again and sat down in front of the fire. She stayed deep in thought for several moments. Rannie Toomer gazed first into her silent face and then at the baby, whose breathing seemed to have eased since Sarah picked him up.

Do something quick, she urged Sarah in her mind, wanting to believe in her powers completely. Do something that’ll make him rise up and call his mama!

“The child’s dying,” said Sarah bluntly, staking out beforehand some limitation to her skill. “But there still might be something we can do. …”

“What, Aunt Sarah, what?” Rannie Toomer was on her knees before the old woman’s chair, wringing her hands and crying. She fastened hungry eyes on Sarah’s lips.

“What can
I do
?” she urged fiercely, hearing the faint labored breathing from the bed.

“It’s going to take a strong stomach,” said Sarah slowly. “A
mighty
strong stomach. And most you young peoples these days don’t have ’em.”

“Snooks got a strong stomach,” said Rannie Toomer, looking anxiously into the old serious face.

“It ain’t him that’s got to have the strong stomach,” Sarah said, glancing down at Rannie Toomer. “
You
the one got to have a strong stomach … he won’t know
what
it is he’s drinking.”

Rannie Toomer began to tremble way down deep in her stomach. It sure was weak, she thought. Trembling like that. But what could she mean her Snooks to drink? Not cat’s blood—! And not some of the messes with bat’s wings she’d heard Sarah mixed for people sick in the head? …

“What is it?” she whispered, bringing her head close to Sarah’s knee. Sarah leaned down and put her toothless mouth to her ear.

“The only thing that can save this child now is some good strong horse tea,” she said, keeping her eyes on the girl’s face. “The
only
thing. And if you wants him out of that bed you better make tracks to git some.”

Rannie Toomer took up her wet coat and stepped across the porch into the pasture. The rain fell against her face with the force of small hailstones. She started walking in the direction of the trees where she could see the bulky lightish shapes of cows. Her thin plastic shoes were sucked at by the mud, but she pushed herself forward in search of the lone gray mare.

All the animals shifted ground and rolled big dark eyes at Rannie Toomer. She made as little noise as she could and leaned against a tree to wait.

Thunder rose from the side of the sky like tires of a big truck rumbling over rough dirt road. Then it stood a split second in the middle of the sky before it exploded like a giant firecracker, then rolled away again like an empty keg. Lightning streaked across the sky, setting the air white and charged.

Rannie Toomer stood dripping under her tree, hoping not to be struck. She kept her eyes carefully on the behind of the gray mare, who, after nearly an hour, began nonchalantly to spread her muddy knees.

At that moment Rannie Toomer realized that she had brought nothing to catch the precious tea in. Lightning struck something not far off and caused a crackling and groaning in the woods that frightened the animals away from their shelter. Rannie Toomer slipped down in the mud trying to take off one of her plastic shoes to catch the tea. And the gray mare, trickling some, broke for a clump of cedars yards away.

Rannie Toomer was close enough to catch the tea if she could keep up with the mare while she ran. So alternately holding her breath and gasping for air she started after her. Mud from her fall clung to her elbows and streaked her frizzy hair. Slipping and sliding in the mud she raced after the mare, holding out, as if for alms, her plastic shoe.

In the house Sarah sat, her shawls and sweaters tight around her, rubbing her knees and muttering under her breath. She heard the thunder, saw the lightning that lit up the dingy room and turned her waiting face to the bed. Hobbling over on stiff legs she could hear no sound; the frail breathing had stopped with the thunder, not to come again.

Across the mud-washed pasture Rannie Toomer stumbled, holding out her plastic shoe for the gray mare to fill. In spurts and splashes mixed with rainwater she gathered her tea. In parting, the old mare snorted and threw up one big leg, knocking her back into the mud. She rose, trembling and crying, holding the shoe, spilling none over the top but realizing a leak, a tiny crack at her shoe’s front. Quickly she stuck her mouth there, over the crack, and ankle deep in the slippery mud of the pasture and freezing in her shabby wet coat, she ran home to give the still warm horse tea to her baby Snooks.

I

John, the son. Loving the God given him.

T
HE BOY HUFFED AND PUFFED
and swatted flies as he climbed the hill, pulling on the rope. He stumbled on the uneven ground, a pile of grit and gravel collected in the toe of his shoe. He could not stop to empty out his shoe, nor could he stop to rest, because he did not have the time. It was getting late in the afternoon and there was a chance the gorilla would be missed. He hoped he would not be missed until at least tomorrow, which would give him time. He jerked on the rope. He would have to reach the top of the high hill very soon or the gorilla was going to fall down and go to sleep right where he was.

“C’mon,” he said encouragingly to the gorilla, who looked at him with dreamy yellow eyes. He had been talking to him soothingly all the way but the gorilla was drowsy from the medicine the zoo keepers had given him and did not reply except to grunt sluggishly deep in his throat. He hoped to have better luck with him when he woke up tomorrow.

All around them now were trees and grass and vines and he hoped the scenery was pleasing to the gorilla. It was pleasing to him, and he was
himself
a person; who did not need trees and grass and vines. There was a faint drone from the direction of the highway as cars whizzed to and fro around the outer edges of the zoo. They sounded, he thought, like wasps or big flies, as he swatted at the gnats that were hanging around his face. Behind him he felt a tugging on the rope as the gorilla cleared the air in front of his face, too, but with a sluggish petulant swipe, and his black plastic eyelids had started to droop.

The boy leading the gorilla was young and very lean, with exceptionally black skin that seemed to curve light around his bones. The skin of his face was stretched taut by the pointed severity of his cheeks, and this flattened his nose, which was broad and rounded at the tip.

There was a wistful gentleness in his face, an effortless grace in the erect way he held his head. It was not apparent, in his stride, what he had suffered. Those first days at the zoo, when he stood crying in front of the gorilla cage, had left no lines of agony on his face. The hour of his deliverance was not stamped forever on his forehead; when he embraced the God that others—his mother—had chosen for him.

The boy tugged hard at the rope; they were going over a big lump of ground that was a half-submerged rock. The gorilla stopped abruptly, sniffed resentfully at the boy, and without further notice sat down on the ground. The boy pulled the rope once more but the gorilla didn’t budge and instead stretched himself out sullenly and fell asleep. Soon he began to snore, which caused the boy to stand over him and look wonderingly into his open mouth. It was deep rose and pink inside, trimmed in black, like a pretty cave. His big swooping teeth were like yellowed icicles and rusty stalagmites. There was a sturdy bush nearby to which the boy fastened the end of the rope, looking back momentarily at the mouth. Then he raked together leaves and grass and branches to make the place where they would spend the night more comfortable. Then he took from under his shirt half a loaf of rye bread and a small bottle half full of red wine. He laid them carefully underneath the bush around which he had tied the rope. Then he left the gorilla sleeping as he walked away from their campsite to try to figure out where they were.

They were still within the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, that much he knew, for they had not yet come up against the high fence that surrounded the zoo. However, it was not his intention to get outside the zoo, so this did not bother him. He hoped that if the zoo keepers missed the gorilla before nightfall they would think he had been taken out of the area, for that would keep them safe until he had got what he wanted from the gorilla, and the gorilla would have received the kind of homage he deserved from him.

He satisfied himself that he would be able to spot searchers if they started up the hill toward them. There were trees and shrubs and vines and large boulders, and if necessary—and if he could arouse the gorilla—they could move about and lose anyone who came after them. But for the present he was not worried for he did not expect the gorilla to be missed until feeding time tomorrow and by then everything would be over.

The boy walked back to the gorilla and sat down on the grass. Dusk had begun to fall while he made his survey and now it was quite dark. Like a drunken old man the gorilla snorted and grumbled in his sleep. The boy supposed it was the medicine. Each year about this time the gorillas in the zoo got a dose of something to protect them from diseases and it doped them up for a couple of days. That was how he had been able to get this one out of his cage without bringing down the whole zoo; gorillas could be noisy when alert.

The boy smiled down at the black hulk of fur next to him. He looked in awe at the size of this beautiful animal. Gently he rubbed the gorilla across the back of the neck and the gorilla snorted, then sighed in complete comfort and abandonment like a huge sleepy baby. The boy stretched out next to him, laughing out loud. Soon he fell asleep and as the air got cooler toward the middle of the night he snuggled closer and closer to the clean warm fur of the big ape.

He slept dreamlessly and greeted the slow windless dawn with keen anticipation. The gorilla was still asleep, but less peacefully now. The boy thought the medicine must be just about worn off. He stood on the lump of ground over the head of the gorilla and looked in the direction of the zoo buildings and of the building from which he had taken the gorilla. All was quiet, the forest all around was still. He listened intently, waiting. Soon the birds began to chirp and the wind stirred, moving the leaves. The very air seemed alive. It was like singing or flying and the boy felt exhilarated. He stretched his hands above his head as high as they would go as he greeted the sun, which rose in slow distant majesty across a misty sky, nudging clouds gently as it made its way. The boy stared straight at the sun through the mists, delighted at the sunlike spots that stayed in his head and danced before his eyes.