Three Days Before the Shooting ... (208 page)

She’s a sinner coming to testify, he thought…. A white? Is she white? Hearing the woman scream,

He’s mine, MINE! That’s Cudworth, my child. My baby. You gipsy niggers stole him, my baby. You robbed him of his birthright!

And he thought, Yes, she’s white all right, seeing the wild eyes and the red hair, streaming like a field on fire, coming toward him now at a pace so swift it seemed suddenly dreamlike slow. What’s she doing here with us, a white sinner? Moving toward him like the devil in a nightmare, as now a man’s voice boomed from far away, Madam, LADY, PLEASE—this here’s the House of God!

But even then not realizing that she was clawing and pushing her way toward him. Cudworth, he thought, who’s Cudworth? Then suddenly there she was, her hot breath blasting his ear, her pale face shooting down toward him like an image leaping from a toppling mirror, her green eyes wide, her nostrils flaring. Then he felt the bite of her arms locking around him and his head was crushed against her breast, hard into the sharp, sweet woman-smell of her. Me. She means me, he thought, as something strange and painful stirred within him. Then he could no longer breathe. She was crushing his face closer to her, squeezing and shaking him as he felt his Bible slipping from his fingers and tried desperately to hold on. But she screamed again with a sudden movement, her voice bursting hot into the sudden hush. And now he felt his Bible fall irretrievably away in the well-like echo punctuated by the heaving rasp of her breathing as he realized that she was trying to tear him from the coffin.

I’m taking him home to his heritage, he heard. He’s mine, you understand, I’m his mother!

It sounded strangely dreamy, like a scene you saw when the big boys told you to open your eyes under the water. Who is she, he thought, where’s she taking me? She’s strong, but my mother went away, Paradise up high…. Then he was looking around at the old familiar grown folks, seeing their bodies frozen in odd postures, like kids playing a game of statue. And he thought They’re scaird; she’s scairing them all, as his head was snapped around to where he could see Daddy Hickman leaning over the platform just above, bracing his hands against his thighs, his arms rigid and a wild look of disbelief on his great laughing-happy face, as now he shook his head. Then she moved again and as his head came around the scene broke and splashed like quiet water stirred by a stick.

Now he could see the people standing and leaning forward to see, some standing in chairs holding on to the shoulders of those in front, their eyes and mouths opened wide. Then the scene suddenly crumpled like a funny paper in a fireplace. He saw their mouths uttering the same insistent burst of words so loud and strong that he heard only a blur of loud silence. Yet her breathing came hard and clear. His head came around to her now, and he could see a fringe of freckles shooting across the ridge of the straight thin nose like a covey of quail flushing across a field of snow, the wide-glowing green of her eyes. Stiff copper hair was bursting from the pale white temple, reminding him of the wire bristles of Daddy Hickman’s “Electric Hairbrush”…. Then the scene changed again with a serene new sound beginning:

JUST DIG MY GRAVE, he heard. JUST DIG MY GRAVE AND READY MY SHROUD, CAUSE THIS HERE AIN’T HAPPENING! OH, NO, IT AIN’T GOING TO HAPPEN. SO JUST DIG-A MY GRAVE!

It was a short, stooped black woman, hardly larger than a little girl, whose shoulders slanted straight down from her neck inside the white collar of her oversized black dress, and from which her deep and vibrant alto voice seemed to issue as from a source other than her mouth. He could see her coming through the crowd, shaking her head and pointing toward the earth, crying, I SAID DIG IT! I SAID GO GET THE DIGGERS!, the words so intense with negation that they sounded serene, the voice rolling with eerie confidence as now she seemed to float in among the white-uniformed deaconesses who stood at the front to his right. And he could see the women turning to stare questioningly at one another, then back to the little woman, who moved between them, grimly shaking her head. And now he could feel the arms tighten around his body, gripping him like a bear and he was being lifted up, out of the coffin; hearing her scream hotly past his ear, DON’T YOU BLUEGUMS TOUCH ME! DON’T YOU DARE!

And again it was as though they had all receded beneath the water to a dimly lit place where nothing would respond as it should. For at the woman’s scream he saw the little woman and the deaconesses pause, just as they should have paused in the House of God as well as in the world outside the House of God—then she was lifting him higher and he felt his body come up until only one foot
was still caught on the pink lining, and as he looked down he saw the coffin move. It was going over, slowly, like a turtle falling off a log; then it seemed to rise up of its own will, lazily, as one of the sawhorses tilted, causing it to explode. He felt that he was going to be sick in the woman’s arms, for glancing down, he could see the coffin still in motion, seeming to rise up of its own will, lazily, indulgently, like Daddy Hickman turning slowly in pleasant sleep—only it seemed to laugh at him with its pink frog-mouth. Then as she moved him again, one of the sawhorses shifted violently, and he could see the coffin tilt at an angle and heave, vomiting Teddy and Easter bunny and his glass pistol with its colored candy bee-bee bullets, like prizes from a paper horn-of-plenty. Even his white leather Bible was spurted out, its pages fluttering open for everyone to see.

He thought, He’ll be mad about my Bible and my bear, feeling a scream start up from where the woman was squeezing his stomach, as now she swung him swiftly around, causing the church tent, the flares, and the people to spin before his eyes like a great tin humming top. Then he felt his head snap forward and back, rattling his teeth—and in the sudden break of movement he saw the deaconesses springing forward even as the spilled images from the toppling coffin quivered vividly before his eyes then fading like a splash of water in bright sunlight—just as a tall woman with short, gleaming hair and steel-rimmed glasses shot from among the deaconesses and as her lenses glittered harshly he saw her mouth come open, causing the other women to freeze and a great silence to explore beneath the upward curve of his own shrill scream. Then he saw her head go back with an angry toss and he felt the sound slap hard against him.

What? Y’all mean to tell
me?
Here in the House-a-God? She’s coming in
here—
who? WHOOOO! JUST TELL ME WHO BORN OF MAN’S HOT CONJUNCTION WITH A WOMAN’S SINFUL BOWELS?

And like an eerie echo now, the larger voice of the smaller woman floated up from the sawdust-covered earth, JUST DIG MY GRAVE! I SAY JUST READY MY SHROUD! JUST … and the voices booming and echoing beneath the tent like a duet of angry ghosts. Then it was as though something heavy had plunged from a great height into the water, throwing the images into furious motion and he could see the frozen women leap forward.

They came like shadows flying before a torch tossed into the dark, their weight seeming to strike the white woman who held him out of one single, slow, long-floating, space-defying leap, sending her staggering backward and causing her arms to squash the air from his lungs—Aaaaaaaah! Their faces, wet with wrath, loomed before him, seeming to enter where his breath had been, their dark, widespread hands beginning to tear at his body like the claws of great cats with human heads; lifting him screaming clear of earth and coffin and suspending him there between the redheaded woman who now held his head and the others who had seized possession of his legs, arms, and body. And again he felt, but could not hear, his own throat’s
Aaaaaaaaaaaayee!

• • •

The Senator was first aware of the voice, then the dry taste of fever filled his mouth and he had the odd sensation that he had been listening to a foreign language that he knew but had neglected, so that now it was necessary to concentrate upon each word in order to translate its meaning. The very effort seemed to reopen his wounds and now his fingers felt for the button to summon the nurse but the voice was still moving around him, mellow and evocative. He recognized it now, allowing the button to fall as he opened his eyes. Yes, it was Hickman’s, still there. And now it was as though he had been listening all along, for Hickman did not pause, his voice flowed on with an urgency which compelled him to listen, to make the connections.

“Well, sir, Bliss,” Hickman said, “here comes this white woman pushing over everybody and loping up to the box and it’s like hell had erupted at a side show. She rushed up to the box and …”

“Box?”
the Senator said. “You mean coffin, don’t you?”

He saw Hickman look up, frowning judiciously. “No, Bliss, I mean ‘box’; it ain’t actually a coffin till it holds a dead man…. So, as I was saying, she rushed up and grabs you in the box and the deaconesses leaped out of their chairs and folks started screaming, and I looked out there for some white folks to come and get her, but couldn’t see a single one. So there I was. I could have cried like a baby, because I knew that one miserable woman could bring the whole state down on us. Still there she is, floating up out of nowhere like a puff of poison gas to land right smack in the middle of our meeting. Bliss, it was like God had started playing practical jokes.

“Next thing I know she’s got you by the head and Sister Susie Trumball’s got one leg and another sister’s got the other, and others are snatching you by the arms—talking about King Solomon, he didn’t have but
two
women to deal with, I had seven. And one convinced that she’s a different breed of cat from the rest. Yes, and the others chockfull of disagreement and out to prove it. I tell you, Bliss, when it comes to chillen, women just ain’t gentlemen.

“For a minute there it looked like they were going to snatch you limb from limb and dart off in seven different directions.
And
the folks were getting outraged a mile a minute. Because although you might have forgot it, nothing makes our people madder and will bring them to make a killing-floor stand quicker than to have white folks come bringing their craziness into the church. We just can’t stand to have our one place of peace broken up, and nothing’ll upset us worse
—unless
it’s messing with one of our babies. You could just see it coming on, Bliss. I turned and yelled at them to regard the House of God—when here comes another woman, one of the deaconesses, Sister Bearmasher. She’s a six-foot city woman from Birmingham, wearing eyeglasses and who ordinarily was the kindest woman you’d want to see. Soft-spoken and easy going the way some big women get to be because most of the attention goes to the little cute ones. Well, Bliss, she broke it up.

“I saw her coming down the aisle from the rear of the tent and reaching over the heads of the others, and before I could move she’s in that woman’s head of long red hair like a wild cat in a weaving mill. I couldn’t figure what she was up to in all that pushing and tugging, but when they kind of rumbled around and squatted down low like they were trying to grab better holts I could see somebody’s shoe and a big comb come sailing out, then they squatted again a couple of times—real fast, and when they come up, she’s got all four feet or so of that woman’s red hair wrapped around her arm like an ell of copper-colored cloth. And Bliss, she’s talking calm and slapping the others away with her free hand like they were babies. Saying, ‘Y’all just leave her to
me now
, sisters. Everything’s going to be all right. She ain’t no trouble, darlings; not now. Get on away now, Sis’ Trumball. Let her go now. You got rumatism in you shoulder anyway. Y’all let her loose, now. Coming here into the House of God talking about this is
her
child. Since when? I want to know, since
when?
HOLD STILL DARLING!’ she tells the white woman. ‘NOBODY WANTS TO HURT YOU, BUT YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT YOU HAVE GONE TOO FAR!’

“And that white woman is holding on to you for dear life, Bliss; with her head snubbed back, way back, like a net full of red snappers and flounders being wound up on a ship’s winch. And this big amazon of a woman, who could’ve easily set horses with a Missouri mule, starts then to preaching her own sermon. Saying, ‘If this Revern-Bliss-the-Preacher is her child then all the yellow bastards in the nation has got to be hers. So when, I say, so when’s she going to testify to all that? You sisters let her go now; just let me have her. Y’all just take that child. Take that child, I say. I love that child cause he’s God’s child and y’all love that child. So I say take that child out of this foolish woman’s sacrilegious hands. TAKE HIM, I SAY! And if this be the time then this is the time. If it’s the time to die, then I’m dead. If it’s the time to bleed, then I’m bleeding—but take that child. ‘Cause whatever time it is, this is one kind of foolishness that’s got to be stopped before it gets any further under way!’

“Well, sir, there you were, Bliss, with the white woman still got holt of you but with her head snubbed back now and her head bucking like a frightened mare’s, screaming, ‘He’s mine, he’s mine.’
Claiming you
, boy, claiming you right out of our hands. At least out of those women’s hands. Because us men were petrified, thrown out of action by that white woman’s nerve. And that big, strong Bearmasher woman threatening to snatch her scalp clean from her head.

“And all the time Sister Bearmasher is preaching her sermon. Saying, ‘If he was just learning his abc’s like the average child instead of being a true, full-fledged preacher of the Gospel you wouldn’t want him and you’d yell down destruction on anybody who even signified he was yours—WHERE’S HIS DADDY? YOU AIN’T THE VIRGIN MARY, SO YOU SHO MUST’VE PICKED OUT HIS DADDY. WHO’S THE BLACK MAN YOU PICKED TO DIE?’

“And then, Bliss, women all over the place started to taking it up: ‘YES! That’s right, who’s the man? Amen! Just tell us!’ and all like that…. Bliss, I’m a man with great puzzlement about life and I enjoy the wonderment of how things can happen and how folks can act, so I guess I must have been just standing there with my mouth open and taking it all in. But when those women started to making a chorus and working themselves up to do something outrageous, I broke loose. I reached down and grabbed my old trombone and started to blow. But instead of playing something calming, I was so excited that I broke into the ‘St. Louis Blues,’ like we used to when I was a young hellion and a fight would break out at a dance. Just automatically, you know; and I caught myself on about the seventh note and smeared into ‘Listen to the Lambs,’ but my lip was set wrong and there I was half laughing at how my sinful days had tripped me up—so that it came out ‘Let Us Break Bread Together,’ and by that time Deacon Wilhite had come to life and started singing and some of the men joined in—in fact, it was a men’s chorus, because those women were still all up in arms. I blew me a few bars then put down that horn and climbed down to the floor to see if I could untangle that mess.