Wild Midnight (38 page)

“Don’t start that, Loretha,” Rachel said quickly. She didn’t want to be close to sentimental tears this day, of all days. And she wanted to avoid the questions in those sympathetic dark eyes that might ask her about Beau. Til had kept his silence, arid Rachel was grateful, although she knew Til suspected something more than the excuse she’d given for leaving—that her work was over. If nothing else the scandal that the co-op’s executive secretary was pregnant was something that could discredit all their hard won successes.
 

“I’ll see if they need any help in the office,” Rachel told her, turning away.
 

The crowd around the big green late-model diesel tractor with air-conditioned cab, its paint still shiny and new, was solid and friendly; several people she didn’t know spoke to her as she tried to work her way politely past them. A tall red-faced farmer mentioned soybeans.
 

Rachel smiled, but kept on going. Was this the scene of her defeat, or her triumph? she wondered wryly. In the past few weeks, after the tomato field had been planted with soybeans and after they’d opened their offices, the Ashepoo River Farmers Cooperative had rapidly assumed the status of a successfully expanding agricultural company. People were now talking about the farmers’ cooperatives in the peach and beef cattle country around Columbia and Aiken and how comparatively well they’d done the past few years. Almost completely gone was the original plan of truck farming set up by the United Friends Committee grant. But the black tenant farmers as well as the white, Rachel had found, were just as enthusiastic about renting machinery and land to go into large-scale operations: Uncle Wes’s sons had presented him with a Ford pickup truck of early 1980’s vintage to replace the fifteen-year-old vehicle he’d been driving. It wasn’t paid for, but the Faligant family was joining in the enthusiasm for the cooperative, and Uncle Wes’s sons and some of his grandsons were meeting the notes.
 

Perhaps everything was for the best, Rachel thought with a sigh. She was on her way to D’Arcy Butler’s wedding in Charleston as soon as the picnic lunch and ceremonies were over, and within a few days she’d be with her mother in the Philadelphia Main Line town of St. David’s, making plans for her baby.
 

The sharp, heart-stabbing pain that she felt when she thought of Beau and his last words to her had become a dull ache that she was managing to deal with. Or so she kept telling herself. In the past two weeks she hadn’t seen him nor, she gathered, had anyone else. He had retreated to his isolation at Belle Haven; even his jeep hadn’t been seen on his usual errands around town. She had also made peace, she told herself, with the fact that he would lie to her about being sterile.
 

Even now Rachel wondered at the queer ring of truth, the unconcealed pain when he’d spoken the words. But it was clear that whatever he had said, he wasn’t going to acknowledge her pregnancy, even to her. She had told herself that Beau didn’t want the responsibility. That was one excuse. Or that he didn’t want to be tied to her in any way. After all, he had never said he loved her. The worst was to think that he believed she was lying—either that she wasn’t expecting a child at all and had hoped to trap him into some sort of commitment, or that it was someone else’s. From what he’d said, he could be cruel enough to believe the child might be Jim Claxton’s. But why would he go to all the trouble to tell her he was sterile? He had never lied to her before.
 

“Miz Rachel?” A black hand touched her arm hesitantly. It was Wesley Faligant, starched and sparkling in a white shirt and tie. Over one arm he carried the jacket to an ancient rusty black suit that spoke of being used only for weddings and funerals and other important occasions. “Miz Rachel, we mighty sad to see you go.”
 

Uncle Wesley’s dark, wizened old face with its coal-black eyes surveyed her with a particular sharpness. Rachel suddenly had the uncanny feeling that by some mysterious gift he knew most of Draytonville’s deeply hidden secrets.
 

“Yes, Uncle Wes?” she said softly. She wanted to put her arm around him but knew that he was of an older, more circumspect generation, and would be unsettled by the gesture.
 

Before the old man could reply a small black child with enormous eyes, his hair braided in corn rows, tugged at his hand. The boy said something in the liquid Gullah speech that Rachel couldn’t understand.
 

Uncle Wesley tried to put him aside quietly. “Not now, chile—cain’t you see I talking? Go back to the truck.”
 

“What is it?” Rachel asked curiously. Most of Uncle Wesley’s teenage grandsons, smaller children, and even a few half-grown white youths, were gathered around the black man’s somewhat-new Ford pickup. “I want to see your new truck, too, Uncle Wesley,” she said on impulse. “Is that what you were going to show me?”
 

Before he could stop her Rachel started toward the pickup truck. As they saw her coming several of the boys around the tailgate stepped in front of it as if to hide something. Rachel had a sudden, embarrassed thought that Uncle Wesley might have beer or even moonshine in the truck, and immediately regretted the thought.
 

“It certainly is handsome,” Rachel said, admiring the pale blue truck. A CB antenna jutted from the side, and it sported white-sidewall tires.
 

The youths gathered around the tailgate suddenly stepped aside, and Rachel saw what they were hiding. The gate was down, and whatever it was had been dragged from the end. She tried not to gasp.
 

It was a poor, leathery thing that had never breathed, black and curiously sticky-looking, in a tangle of legs and spavined trunk and knobby extensions that could not quite, at least at first, be recognized for the legs they were.
 

“Good heavens, what is it?” she cried.
 

“Black pig,” one of the younger boys said with a sidewise glance at Uncle Wesley. “Two headed. Got six legs too.”
 

Rachel kept staring, fighting back a feeling of revulsion. It was a malformed pig fetus, her mind kept telling her, twin piglets that hadn’t separated properly in the sow’s womb, so it had two heads and too many legs. The older boys certainly knew what it was—they were students in Til’s high school science class. But, she also realized, it was still the two-headed pig of Gullah black magic too. An omen. A conjure sign.
 

“Mr. Wes,” Rachel said feebly. When she turned to him the old man’s eyes were on her with a dark, glittering intensity she’d never encountered before.
 

“Tell her, Uncle Wes,” one of his grandson’s murmured.
 

“Bad t’ing, Miz Rachel,” the old black man said reluctantly. She had to strain to understand, his soft Gullah speech nearly incomprehensible. He lifted his hands to describe vague circles in the air. “Bad t’ing come fer n’everybody this time.” The dark hands hovered like a wizard’s. “Mak the water, mak the rain, move the earth bye ‘n’ bye, bring them back togedder again. Make fer to change everyt’ing. Werry bad t’ing, bad sign, werry big.”
 

Rachel tried to smile, but the bright noontime sun that glared down on the road and the parking lot was suddenly too brilliant, too warm. She felt a faint churning in her stomach, “If you say so, Mr. Wes,” she managed.
 

The old man followed her as she started back toward the crowds. “Miz Rachel.” His touch on her arm was insistent.
 

“Please, Uncle Wes,” she told him. “Just have the boys ... could you have them cover that thing up a little? I know it’s a conjure sign, an omen and all that, but a lot of people are going to be eating lunch soon and—”
 

She stopped, staring at the old man’s wise, black face, struck by a sudden horrible realization.
Not Uncle Wesley,
she told herself.
 

“Missy, I gives you somethin’,” he was murmuring, taking her hand and opening it to slide something hard against her palm. “Fer you to tak wid you, mak you happy—you see. Things be bedder fer you, hit’s comin’, you goan get what you desire.
 

His voice, his tone, held Rachel mesmerized, unable to take her eyes from his face. Uncle Wesley was the root doctor, the conjure man, she was sure of it. He was the one who had put the little conjure dolls on her doorstep to watch the road and keep her safe. Had he known about Darla Jean and her brothers, what they were planning, before it happened? She refused to believe it. And all this time—
 

“T’ings be bedder for you, doan you fret none now,” he was still murmuring. “Bye ‘n’ bye dey come the water, you turn back, allus turn back, you come back whatfer you look to find, hit be waitin’. Doan be feared to cross the water—you follow the heart and hit be fine. He be waitin’ fer you.”
 

It was Til Coffee who came up behind them, striding across the asphalt with a determined look on his face. “Uncle Wes,” he said impatiently, “she don’t need her fortune told.” He turned to a dazed Rachel. “It’s low-country hoodoo, Miz Rachel, he doesn’t want to frighten you. Uncle Wes doesn’t declare it on his income tax, but it does help supplement his Social Security check. Uncle Wes,” he said sternly, “you get that pig out of here. I don’t care if it’s a sure sign of nuclear war, it’s got to go.”
 

“You knew he was a witch doctor?” Rachel whispered. She thought they had all gone crazy.
 

Til grinned. “Mr. Wes and I don’t really discuss it, we represent what you might call incompatible fields of interest, but I’m not going to argue with him. I don’t want to end up being the South’s only two-inch-tall congressman. What’s he been telling you?”
 

“I don’t really know,” Rachel said, staring down at the object Uncle Wesley had given her. The elderly man had quietly slipped away to join the boys at the truck. “Something about water, lots of water that would change everything, and that things would be better for me, and following my heart. I think,” she added doubtfully.
 

Til was examining the small object the old man had put in the palm of her hand. “Well, it’s not hurricane season yet, but Mr. Wes is pretty accurate about forecasting the weather. I think he does better than the government most times.” His forefinger prodded the primitive image carved out of pine wood, outsized Orphan Annie eyes staring with an unfocused if rather contented expression, little arms fashioned to clasp a pot-bellied midsection. Tufts of red yarn had been pasted to the wooden skull.
 

“It’s a
mamua obeah
,” Rachel said, frowning. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
 

“Not quite.” Til’s amber eyes were hooded, their expression hidden as he lifted his head to stare at her. “It’s a fertility symbol—pure African, looks a little like Ibo or Fon images. These people take a long time to forget.”
 

He closed Rachel’s fingers around the wooden figure and held her hand shut for a moment, watching her. “Rachel...” Whatever Til was going to say, he changed his mind. He said diplomatically, “Uncle Wes’s going-away present’s got a baby in her big tummy. That means he thinks you ought to settle down, get married, and do the same thing. How’s that for the thought for the day?”
 

Chairman Billy Yonge was striding toward them, his wide-brimmed straw hat in his hand and a rare smile on his face. “We’re getting ready for the ceremony,” he called when he was close enough for them to hear. “And they want the young lady who’s responsible for all this to say a few words. The mayor’s going to make a little presentation.”
 

“Oh, no.” Rachel groaned. She hadn’t even thought of that. It was impossible to make a speech—she didn’t have anything to say!
 

“Lighten up, Miz Rachel,” Til said, taking her elbow as he headed for the group around the tractor. “My choice was a satin pillow with Souvenir of DeRenne County, South Carolina painted on it and that neon yellow fringe all around. I just knew you’d love it, but the committee decided on a gold locket.”
 

“What did you want to go and tell her for?” the co-op chairman growled, putting his hat back on.
 

“Heart-shaped,” Til added. “But it’s got a diamond in the middle.”
 

Billy Yonge glared at him. “It’s engraved, Miz Rachel. The committee worked hard to think of something nice to put on that locket. Because,” he said, suddenly staring off into the distance and blinking his pale blue eyes, “we want you to think of us when you wear it, and remember us all.”
 

The sun was hot as the crowd gathered at the back of the store. A few cars passed on the dirt road that ran behind Draytonville’s main street, and a motorcycle drowned out the mayor’s voice at one spot in his speech, but his listeners were gravely attentive. The children were quiet, enclosed in their mothers’ arms, and the men stood with their arms folded, wide-brimmed hats pulled down over their eyes against the bright glare. Rachel looked around her with a lump in her throat. She was being credited with so much more than she had actually done, and her mistakes were being generously overlooked; she didn’t feel she deserved all this.
 

The slow, peaceful course of time here in the low-country was not what it would be in the future; the Harborside development and the planned connecting road were going to make vast changes in Draytonville and the whole county—it was just beginning. Perhaps the board of directors of the co-op were right, after all, to match their combined strength as small farmers with the big agricultural companies and try for the biggest profits they could get. No one really knew the answer to that. But they
were
together now, the evidence of black and white families gathered around the picnic tables was there to see. And above them all the vast blue sky filled with the first plump white clouds of hot summer was like a benediction.