Playing by the Rules: A Novel (17 page)

“I’ll come with you.” To Ruby Rose, Medford’s search sounded like an adventure.

“Okay. Make sure it’s okay with your brother and I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes.”

When Medford rang the doorbell, he saw that Ruby Rose was dressed and ready to go. Jeremiah came to the door and extended his arm.

“What’s happening, Blood? That’s what we used to call each other in ‘Nam.” Jeremiah smiled.

“Are we fightin’?”

“Uh, no.” Jeremiah was confused by the question. “Look, I don’t have any beef with you.”

Medford hesitated, but shook Jeremiah’s hand anyway. He hadn’t been this close to the Outsider since Christmas and was reluctant to touch the hand that he was sure was fondling his woman.

“I hear y’all are going to church today.” Jeremiah decided it was best to change the subject, and hoped that Medford would elaborate on his schedule. “It’s Saturday. Getting some religion a day early?” He tried to make light of the situation to give Medford a chance to respond.

“I got some family business to attend to.” Medford wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

“Sounds like it’s personal.”

“It is.”

“I hope everything turns out okay.” Jeremiah forced another smile.

“I’m not worried about it.” Medford kept his eyes on the stranger standing before him. “I’m a patient man.” He paused long enough, careful not to rush his words. “What I’m looking for is worth waiting for.” He narrowed his eyes at the Outsider. “And I usually get what I want…eventually.”

“Whatever it is, I wish you luck with it, brother.”

“Won’t need it,” Medford snapped. “Just time, so the pieces will fall into place.”

“Listen, bro, take care of my little sister.” Jeremiah thought he’d get to the point. “She’s all the family I got.”

“She’ll be safe with me.” Medford looked over his shoulder at the sycamores in the woods, then turned back to the Outsider again. “I’d expect the same level of courtesy from you, if you know
what I mean, Blood.” Even though Medford made what he said sound like a threat, he extended his hand to Jeremiah, who thought it was best to slap him five.

“I hear that,” Jeremiah replied, his jaw tightening.

“We’ll be gone for most of the afternoon,” Medford said, backing his way to the road. “I’ll return your sister before dark.”

Ruby Rose walked out the door. “Let’s book,” she said, grabbing Medford’s hand. Then she added to her brother, “Medford is my friend.” Climbing into the passenger side of the pickup truck, she yelled out the window, “I don’t know how long I’ll be. So don’t stay up for me.” She locked the door and looked straight ahead, waiting for Medford to start up the engine.

When Medford and Ruby Rose walked into the church, Sadie was at the organ rehearsing hymns for Sunday service.

“What brings y’all here a day early?” she asked, looking beyond the music stand, glancing over her glasses. “Y’all know service don’t start until tomorrow morning. I wish all of our members were as anxious as you.” She chuckled at her own little joke.

“Miss Sadie,” said Medford. “I’m doing some research on trying to find out who my mama is or was, and I want to look through the church records to see if there’s anything in the files to give me a clue.”

Sadie didn’t answer at first. She looked like she was deep in thought as her mind flashed back through the calendar years.

“That happened a long time ago when you arrived at your Daddy’s front door. Why you want to open up Pandora’s box?” Sadie pushed her glasses farther up on the bridge of her nose, giving her a look of concern.

“I’ve put it off long enough.”

“Sometimes, it’s good to leave well enough alone.” Sadie waited patiently for Medford’s response and when she didn’t get one, she
added, “Does your Daddy know about this?” She felt a ripple of warm heat rise within her, and she picked up her fan and started waving.

“No, Ma’am. I haven’t bothered him with it. Besides, I don’t need his permission,” Medford said, sounding more defensive than intended.

“He done raised you all by himself. He might think you weren’t happy with the job he did.”

“That ain’t the point, Miss Sadie. You know I love Clement.”

“You may be stirring up more trouble than it’s worth, and you know what you might find when you get to the bottom of the pot? Residue; something you cain’t use ‘cause it’s crusty and burnt. Sometimes it ain’t worth raising the dead. You might not like looking at what’s left over.”

“Miss Sadie, you’ve known me all my life and you’ve known my father for a very long time too. What do you remember about that night?”

“I don’t remember squat. All I know was that he was a drunk. Then you showed up.” She took a deep breath, then looked Medford in the eyes. “We all knew Clement wasn’t past doing something crazy, but kidnapping a little baby was beyond anyone’s thinking and no one believed that’s how it happened. Back in those days, if Clement was gonna go out and steal something, you could be sure it wasn’t gonna be somebody’s baby, it was gonna be another bottle of Old Crow. So when he showed us he had a little baby, we had no idea how it got there. Everybody explored every angle of possibility and came up empty-handed. After a while we just forgot about it, and you became Clement’s son, plain and simple. There were no more questions asked, and you was just a natural part of Lemon City as if Clement had delivered you himself.”

Having finished her little speech, Sadie started playing the
organ again. But when she realized Medford wasn’t going to move until she did, she reluctantly stood up to grant his request. “Come on. I’ll take y’all to the church office, but I doubt you’ll find anything useful.” She pulled on the back of the skirt that clung to her round behind, which resembled two cantaloupes stuck together on top of thin legs that looked like twigs of asparagus. “You’re just wasting your time.” She led the way, with Medford and Ruby Rose following her through the sanctuary.

Medford winked and lowered his hand to Ruby Rose, who slapped him five, then he flipped over his hand and she slapped him five on the black hand side.

Sadie showed Medford the file cabinets and pointed to the one that chronicled church history. “How far back you wanna go?”

“Nineteen twenty-eight to 1929, if you have the file.”

“Here’s 1920 to 1930.” She grouped the folders with the dates he requested. “Good luck. Hope you find what you’re looking for. If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs… minding my own business… staying outta trouble… not bothering nobody.”

Medford sifted through the folders until he spotted the one labeled 1929. Looking through various newspaper articles on church functions and events and numerous photographs taken by church members for the monthly newsletter was fascinating. He thought the material should be archived in a library where the history could be copied, stored, and properly maintained. Louise would make sure of it. Then a disturbing image of Louise and Jeremiah came into his head and he tried to replace it with the fantasy of finding his mother.

As Medford glanced over at Ruby Rose to change the course of his thinking, he could see she was sitting patiently, anxious for what he might discover, and he resumed his mission of searching the files until something grabbed his attention.

“‘December 5, 1929. Baby found,’ ” Medford read aloud from
the article he was holding in his hand. Then he unfolded the old newspaper clipping from the
Lemon City Chronicle
and turned to face Ruby Rose. “In the
Chronicle
, it says, ‘Male baby found on Clement Attaway’s doorstep, December fifth. Dropped off by accident, or delivered to wrong address. Rightful owner, please come forward and claim.’ ”

“No one came to claim you, so it was case closed,” Sadie said, waving her church fan across her face, startling Medford and Ruby Rose. Neither one of them had heard her walk up the creaky church steps, and they wondered if she had been standing outside the door all along. She snatched the file from Medford’s hand, put it back where it belonged, and closed the cabinet drawer until she heard the click that meant it was locked.

“Wait. I didn’t finish 1929, and I need to check out 1930.” Medford put his hand on the drawer handle and Sadie reluctantly moved out of his way.

“Be my guest,” she said. She reopened the drawer, still waving her fan despite the comfortable room temperature.

As Medford continued turning page after page in the folder, Sadie kept an eye on him while striking up a conversation with Ruby Rose.

“Look at how long and beautiful your fingers are, young lady.” She walked over to where Ruby Rose was sitting and touched her hand. “I was admiring them at Christmas. You should learn how to play the piano one day. I could teach you.”

“I already know how to play.” Ruby Rose looked at her fingers, examining them as if she were seeing them for the very first time. “I’m up to
John Thompson’s Modern Course for the Piano Fifth Grade Book
.”

“You are? Well, why didn’t you say so? I’d be happy to have another student. I could teach you how to play the classics and gospel music.” Sadie started singing “Go Tell It On the Mountain.”
Her fingers pounced on the air as if she were playing actual keys. Her voice was loud, sounding like a cross between opera and gospel, and Ruby Rose was starting to get a headache. Medford had a hard time concentrating on what he was doing. Ruby Rose tried to be polite and not interrupt the private performance, but she couldn’t help herself and shouted over the woman’s voice.

“What about radio music?” Ruby Rose asked, forcing a smile on her face.

“I don’t know much about radio music,” said Sadie, stopping in the middle of her phrase.

“I want to learn how to play Roberta Flack…‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ is my favorite. Can you teach me how to play that?”

“Oh.” Sadie gasped and clutched her chest. “Killing me what? We can’t play ‘killing’ songs in church.”

Ruby Rose wanted to laugh, but she didn’t. “It’s not about killing. It’s a nice song.” She stood up from her chair to make a more formal request so Sadie could see that she was serious. “I’d like to take piano lessons again. Will you teach me? Please. Nana said she was going to call you about it, anyway.”

“Lord, chile. We can start on Monday. Just check with your brother to make sure it’s alright.”

Ruby Rose was beside herself. She couldn’t believe her luck. She had a nice place to live, she had a new friend, and now she had piano lessons.

Medford started looking through the folder labeled 1930. To his surprise, there was no mention of the mysterious baby, but what he found instead were familiar faces in old black-and-white photographs that had yellowed with age. One of the pictures showed Nana and Granddaddy holding hands with a little girl, who was younger than Ruby Rose, and Ole Miss Johnson and Easely standing beside them. It made sense that the little girl was
Louise’s mother and although he had never seen a picture of Easely before, the way Ole Miss Johnson was cozied up to the handsome man, it must have been her husband. There was another picture of Nana. This time she was with Theola, Vernelle, Sadie, and Ole Miss Johnson with their arms over each other’s shoulders and their legs at an angle as if they were in a chorus line. Then there was a smaller photo in a newsletter of Sadie with her arm around Ole Miss Johnson with the caption reading, “First-Runner Up and Grand Prize Winner at This Year’s Annual County Fair.” Behind that picture was another one stuck to it. It was Ole Miss Johnson standing on her front porch with a hoe in her hand and Sadie beside her in a white nurse’s uniform with a stethoscope around her neck. Medford had no idea that Sadie and Ole Miss Johnson had been friends. He wondered why the two weren’t close today, but he knew that Ole Miss Johnson had the kind of personality that could make cast iron run from a skillet and would eventually push everyone away. Nor did he realize that Sadie used to be a nurse, and he wondered why she’d given up saving lives in exchange for saving souls. These pictures had a lot of stories to tell, but none that led him to the information he was looking for.

“Thanks,” Medford said to Sadie. “You were right. There’s nothing here.”

“Not a problem, young man,” said Sadie with a look of satisfaction on her face. “Y’all come back here tomorrow, for Sunday service, ya hear? Where you’ll find Jesus and won’t have a need to look for nothing else ever again.”

Medford nodded in politeness. As he and Ruby Rose started walking out the door, Sadie called after them.

“And by the way, Ruby Rose,” she said. “I’m usually in the church in the afternoons, so come back for your first lesson on Monday. All it takes is practice, practice, practice … until you’re perfect.” Each time she said the word “practice,” she clapped the
back of one hand against the palm of the other as if she were a metronome. Ruby Rose didn’t know if she did it to show that she had rhythm or to demonstrate she smacked her students if they hit a wrong note.

“And if you’re good at it, and if you’re still in Lemon City, there’s a big recital around the time of the Annual County Fair,” Sadie added before her visitors were gone.

As Medford drove Ruby Rose down the road to the cottage, the little girl turned to him and said, “Having a mother you didn’t know is better than having one who didn’t care, like me. At least you can pretend that she was nice and had to give you away for a good reason.”

Medford smiled at Ruby Rose, appreciating her effort at consolation.

After dropping her off at the cottage, he reflected on the day, and something Miss Sadie said that kept coming back to him like a gnat circling his ear. He didn’t want Clement to think that he wasn’t a decent father.

Later that night Medford found him sitting in his favorite chair that faced the bay window overlooking the mountains, smoking his pipe. The room smelled of cherry tobacco and the way the moonlight illuminated Clement, it made him appear to be a silhouette surrounded by a fog. Medford wanted to chat with Clement to make sure he wasn’t upset by his search for his mother. Between puffs, Clement began to speak.

“First of all, I ain’t offended by your curiosity. I been curious about who left you here many times myself. But that was only every now and then, mostly in the beginning. After a while, I didn’t worry about how you got here. I just enjoyed your company. You was a good boy, weren’t no trouble at’all. Still ain’t no trouble. And I was just happy to have someone to teach everything I know. You were good at skinnin’ opossum with a pelting
knife, holding a Winchester .44 and bringin’ down a deer with a single shot at less than a hundred yards. Not scared of stalkin’ and takin’ aim at a big ole black bear, dern lucky at long-lining a trout using a single pole and one bait, and you still is good at all of that. You were only just okay in school, barely got through, just like me…having more interest in going outside to see what you could do with your hands rather than staying inside feeling awkward with words. I knew you was gonna be a builder just like me, and since you had growed up to be just like me, I stopped caring about who left you on the porch. It didn’t seem to matter as you got older. I just considered you was mine and treated you as such.” He took a hit off his pipe and the smoke hovered in a haze. “I feel bad because I ain’t got nothing else to tell you, other than what I been saying for all these years.” To make sure he was clear, Clement added, “In other words, do what you got to do. It’s okay by me.”